She let herself go, today.
She'd been living in a personal hell for years, her own insufferable self-consciousness getting in the way of everything she wished to be. No, Hinata was not as pretty as Ino, she was not as strong as Tenten. Never could she be as bold as Temari and – most certainly – she could never be like Sakura, the one person Naruto desired.
It was a silent struggle that went on for too long. Occasionally she would reach a breaking point where she would stand only a few centimeters from the edge of no return. But she would coax herself away with kind, false words of a better tomorrow, a hope building inside herself because it was the one thing – the only thing – that kept her going on. Every day, every day. Keep going, keep going.
Today, she did not coax herself away, she could not keep going.
She let herself go.
It came fast, death. She had made sure to be far away, to give a story so no one would worry those first few hours she didn't return home. "I'm assigned a mission" she had lied to Neji, that wonderful cousin of hers who had not always been so wonderful. Once, he had hated her. Once, he had tried to kill her in front of hundreds of people. Yet she had seen the goodness inside him and forgave him for all the wrong he'd done, if only to please herself and satitate her own personal, selfish desires to feel like a better person than she actually was. For Hinata was kind, right? That's how everyone saw her, right? A kind, good hearted girl who would forgive anyone no matter what.
If she could not meet to that expectation, then she really had no worth.
Neji had once told her she was worthless on a bad day he cannot take back.
He regrets it, today.
She had regretted a lot in life, too. Sometimes they haunted her throughout the nights or the wee hours of morning training when nothing but getting stronger occupied her mind. In those moments she was weak, for she was vulnerable. Thoughts of her father's scolding words came to her in those moments, of his harsh truths of how she would not be anything in life. She was a disappointment, a failure to the Hyuuga name.
Hinata's father had always been like that, though. He wished to push her, make her better.
That pressure had backfired terribly.
Perhaps, had he not been so cold, she wouldn't have done it. If he had smiled at her once, she might have found strength to convince herself tomorrow would be better than today. If he had not told her he had given up, perhaps she would have felt... worthy.
He found the note, today.
The words were like knives that cut him deep. They weren't sharp, they were not harsh, and maybe that was what made it cut the worst. The way they were all words of apology and regret, of sadness and fear and humiliation at how useless she had been.
Her words of parting sorrow chilled him to the bones, and as Hiashi read her final pleas of forgiveness he felt the unsettling force of unconsciousness wash over his being.
Naruto found her, today.
That lifeless body of hers will be engraved in his memory forever, he believes. Constantly he questions why it happened, what would ever lead the young girl as soft as snow and as sweet as sugar to do such an act as cynical as sin. For a while he blames the world; Hinata was a good soul trapped on a desperate planet filled with tortured people looking for an escape out. She took too much, dished out too little. She was too kind, too soft for a world so cold.
He cried, today.
Long and hard, the tears did not stop. And if Neji had not been there, he would have murdered that man who ruined her life, who ended her life, who she begged for forgiveness at the end of her life. Even before death she was still so kind, still able to forgive others before forgiving herself...
She let herself go.
And Naruto knows it was best. She would have been abused too much alive. She was too good a person for a world like theirs. Hinata belonged with those she shared a heart with, the angels so soft and gentle like she had been in her short mortal life of 16 years. Naruto knew, and yet it did nothing to lessen the pain. Somehow he knew it was his fault, too, nothing entirely landing on any one person but as the village itself for neglecting and disregarding such a beautiful young girl as she.
Unknowingly, they caused her death. Never wanting to intrude or burden others, of course she had never shared her personal feelings with others. They were kept inside, and as they bottled themselves together more and more, she kept smiling through it all, more and more until her facade broke and it came spilling out in tears and blood and shame in the form of a blade against skin.
They let her go, today.