I don't know how I'm doing this. I don't know how I can't stop writing Hinata fan fic. (I've already written the next two chapters for Summoner-nin, so expect an update next week.) This one had been inspired by all those fan fics that have a ruckus-loving Hanabi. I kinda wanted to portray the Hyuga Clan with this.

Thanks for reading!

The Hyuga Garden

The Hyuga were known to be mechanical, to be as faceless and blank as their empty eyes. They were incapable of feeling or being anything but the soulless name that was the Hyuga. Other and insubstantial – something nothing short than air and nothingness, the Hyuga were autonomous beings – unnatural and irregular from the rest of the human race. For the countrymen outside the walls of Konoha, they knew the Hyuga as an elite force whose commercial ventures lay over the Fire Country like a thick wraith-like web, silent and deadly. For those who lived within the walls of Konoha, the Hyuga were nameless ninja whose sole purpose served the populace without feeling or care, ghostly and vile, and in turn they looked to the clan without feeling or care, ghostly and vile. For the Hyuga themselves, they saw themselves as a machine, mere cogs and springs in a magnificent piece of robotic structure – each piece serving a function, each piece a part of the whole, each piece as significant as the others.

Each piece as soulless as the one next to it.

But unbeknownst to those who lived outside the Konoha wall, or even inside the wall, within the farthest corner of the Hyuga Compound, within those blank cold walls and those heavy oppressive gates and passing the many faceless and nameless Hyuga copies, there was a garden. It was unlike all the other well-manicured, well-restricted, well-limited gardens that could be seen elsewhere within the Hyuga Compound. This one was almost wild, feral, uncontrollable – natural in the face of all this machinery.

It was not new. Perhaps it was new to the non-Hyuga, the visiting foreign dignitary or the lucky ninja who came bearing a message for the Lord of the Household, but it was not new. It had been in existence for years now, a small thing that had grown and matured despite its chilling environment, its suppressive masters and mistresses – but it had had help. It would not have survived otherwise; the Hyuga gardeners had been persistent in their mission in annihilating anything that was not of their plans, not within their well-devised stratagems and insistent Feng Shui – not within the cogs and springs of the Hyuga machine.

But they stayed away from that small corner, watching throughout the years, somewhat insulted, as that small patch began to slowly swallow the rest of the corner, and then along the side, and then the whole courtyard altogether within a successive year.

They had not, did not, touch it, because it was her garden.

It began first as herbs, small patches of rosemarys and thymes, feeble rows of nettles and basils, more weedy and mangy than anything else, certainly paled in comparison to the neatly-divided squares of Hyuga chrysanthemums and strictly-placed lotuses. But in time, just as she had grown, the patches and rows spread, disease-like in the eyes of the Hyuga, into blueberry bushes and groups of carrots. When she made genin, the garden sprang forth in asters and pansies – colours the Hyuga had never seen in their robotic, well-orderly lives.

He did not stop her. No one stopped her, made ever cautious as she made chunin (lilacs and rose bushes appeared within the night), and then jounin (gerbera daisies and even a whole apple tree found their place within the courtyard), and then seemed to skim ANBU (a pond for cattails and her own collection of wild water lilies; swans were ordered in), but withdrew on her own accord to sit on their Lord's right side (orchids and freesias).

Left untouched by the others, it did not mean they did not speak of it, of the garden that was not Hyuga, wild and untamed, colourful and emotional. Parts of the machinery would wander by, eyes averted as if ashamed, hurrying their steps as if running from the pain caused by the sweet scents carried by the soft breeze – ignoring the warmth stored within their hearts to see such a sight. They would ignore that small corner, that ambiguous courtyard so far away, but they could not ignore her garden outside of that obscure corner, that small courtyard – the garden that was not so much as vegetation, but under her care nevertheless.

There was their Lord, the mechanical brain in their machinery – her Pine Tree. Tall and overbearing, strict and hard, strong and fitted with prickles along his branches, their Lord could endure any weather, any temperature, any threat – winter did not dull his senses, spring did not induce feelings. He was of hardwood, when cut, he could heal himself – his sap all-enduring and patient. His age made him stronger, his wisdom made him dangerous – he was unbendable with his roots several metres into the ground, weaving across the earth to tangle and choke his enemies to their deaths.

They dared not touch her with him near, dared not breathe in the oxygen he provided for it was reserved only for her and the rest of his seedlings.

Then there was the Young Master, from a lower branch in their machinery, but of a skill that made him necessary to the binary of their master code. He was her Venus Flytrap. Precise and deadly, he appeared as fragile as any other Hyuga with his thin stem and rounded leaves. He should have been the perfect machine, so inconspicuous with his bright green and untoward geniality. No one could have expected him to be carnivorous, his teeth sharp and acid biting. No one could have expected him to be so fluid and conniving, so protective and scathing – so masterful his disguise and tricks.

They dared not touch her with him near, dared not go near for fear of being eaten alive.

Of all those within her garden, the Young Mistress was one they had thought they could have prevented. She was a mimicry of their Lord, before he had turned natural, just as robotic as the rest of them, just as blank as the rest of them – just as unfeeling as the rest of them. But they should have known. She was a Hyuga like the rest of them, just as full as guile. It had been a rouse from the very start, her obedience to the collective, her compliance to the inner workings of the Hyuga computer. She was her Rose. Beauty incarnate, rich with velvet petals and pliant as their Juken, she was painful to the touch, littered with thorns that drew blood and poisoned whoever came near. She would weave lattices with her deadly stems, knit cages for those who dared to transgress her, and string ropes to strangle her enemies and the enemies of her beloved. She was, perhaps, the most deadly of all the plants in her garden.

They dared not touch her with her near, dared not speak in fear of a thorn to their throats.

It seemed, then, that her garden was complete, wild and destructive to the machinery whole. It seemed, then, that there was nothing else to do, but for the collective to douse fire upon her garden and smoke her out, peg her with a computer virus and suffocate her before she could infect the rest of their hardware. It seemed easy; they outnumbered her, but a machine was but a machine, incapable of independent thought.

They were their own destruction, parts rivalling other parts – cogs versus springs for the super brain. In their endeavour to multi-task, to down her and her garden, they began to vie amongst themselves as to who was to be their next Lord and Master – their next brain in their robot. Sprockets broke off in factions, levers divided themselves – screws, wires, batteries – they all wanted what they could not have, for they were only machines, they did not know what they wanted or if there was even more to life than this unlife.

It surprised them then, when their collective finally fell to pieces of nails and switches, when she held her palms open to cup them gently before they could hit the ground. It surprised them, then, when she took them carefully, one by one, and planted them in the ground, watered them, gave them sunlight, fed them in the mornings and sung to them in the evenings. It surprised them, then, when her garden, the only natural thing within the Hyuga Compound, manifested branches and vines to bolster them up, to stick their pieces back together – to make them complete again.

And through the process of rebirth, a form no machine could take, the Hyuga became something more than just ones and zeroes. They became living beings, capable of multi-tasking, of understanding more than face value – of living and feeling and being.

They became her tulips and daffodils in the spring, sunflowers and dahlias in the summer, burning bushes and chrysanthemums in the fall, and winter jasmines and honeysuckles in the winter. They ripened into apples and lemons for her teas, oranges and nectarines for her tarts, and cherries and strawberries for her jams. They became her ivies, supporting the inner walls of the Hyuga, and her grape vines, trailing along the edges of the roofs to provide refreshment for the collective wherever they went.

And outside the Hyuga, they became wilder, livelier. They were her clovers along the streets of Konoha, and the golden rods in the Fire Country fields. They became her snapdragons and buttercups along the rivers. They became her foxgloves and poppies across the borders; her trilliums and dandelions in the forests.

And they would return every time they wandered off. She did not nip their buds or fixate their roots. She did not hold them in with fences or discard them in the waste bin if they weren't feeling well. She opened their cages instead, gave them the key so they may find the door themselves if they wished it. She allowed for their leaves to reach for the sun, they faces to turn towards the sky and they roots to take flight, in whatever direction and carelessness they found whimsical at the moment.

She allowed her garden to live, and they began to live for her in turn.

In all their blooming faces and colourful petals, their beautifully spun kimonos and bejewelled hair pins, they hid their smiles behind their sleeves, their laughter behind the Hyuga walls, for they had to be careful. They were still Hyuga, they prided themselves for their own riches and luxurious adornments, their honour and laws, but above all-

They had to be careful with their most cherished flower.

They were her garden, and in turn she was their most cherished. They would not let just anyone pluck her away, monopolize her beauty or unintentionally over-water her. They would not let anyone overshadow her and keep the sun away, or forget to feed her in the mornings or sing to her in the evenings. They would not let some insect take her sweet pollens and never come calling again.

No. They were careful in letting her be seen, be heard, be felt. The Venus Flytrap ate all the pests who were unworthy; the Rose let her thorns fly amongst those who wanted to hold their most cherished ransom. The Pine Tree, ever resolute, did not look kindly to any male or even female who may wish to pluck her petals.

They had been lucky thus far, very lucky. Her beauty was sublime, subtle in the face of her sister Rose, quiet in the background of her cousin Venus Flytrap – overshadowed under the force that was her father Pine Tree. She too, to the blessed relief of her garden, very modest with how she displayed herself, very gentile and natural, not attracting any sort of pest when she was outside the Hyuga walls – very inconspicuous, well-liked of course, but no one made to court her when there were the other fabricated and plastic-painted flowers in Konoha, made and displayed for the any old pest to consume freely.

And as the years passed, the garden began a plot of their own, to dig up a new plot of earth in another corner within the Hyuga walls for someone new. Of course, they understood, that their most cherished would need someone to care for her as much she had cared for them, but the new seedling, whoever he would be, would need to bypass the garden's carefully scrutiny and death-defying tests first.

Weeds and caterpillars-disguised-as-butterflies needed not to apply.

The Hyuga were perfect, were all-seeing, numerous in their flowers and hardy in their roots. They did not think that they would make a mistake. They did not think that they had not kept their most cherished away from prying eyes, from those harmful garden bugs. They did not think that she would be out in the gardens when he arrived on one of those "lucky" chances of delivering a letter to their Lord Pine Tree.

The garden refused, of course, to believe that it had been fate, but rather dumb luck.

He had meandered out of the rules concerning his task of being a messenger. He was to go straight down the hall, one of the undecorated, unplanted halls the Hyuga dared not to infuse with flowers in order to deter suitors. Instead, he had walked off the path. He had turned the damned corner, ducked though a rafter and tread through the geraniums by mistake.

It was a mistake, the Hyuga, the garden collective, understood, of course. Many younger blossoms and seedlings within their clan had stumbled when they first laid eyes on her, on her subtle beauty and forgiving smile – but it was inexcusable for him. He was an outsider trampling over their flowers – her flowers – by passing all the rules and tests they had planted months beforehand to weed out the inefficient and the unworthy, and sometimes both. (Months later they would contemplate on using pesticides on him.) They did not need recessive genes, they wanted good dominate genes. They wanted someone they could prune and graft, to shelter her from the harsh winter winds and to beat back at the rabbits that would dare gnaw at her roots.

He was not their first choice. He was not the brightest bulb in the package.

But it was too late. He had seen. No man, no matter how intelligent or controlled, would have been able to resist her in her most natural habitat. It was only right to see a flower in her true environment to really capture the essence of her beauty, and with the Hyuga Compound littered with berries, fruits, vines, bushes, trees and flowers, no sane man would have been able to look at her and turn away without even a word spoken or a smile given or… to the horror of the garden, a soft kiss on her petals.

She was a Lily. Their most cherished one could be nothing but a Lily. She was dignified in her posture, royal in her height, powerful in her broad leaves. The strength of her stem was not based on how well she could remain standing in the face of the wind, but rather how patient she could bend and remain calm under the wind's fury. Her splendour was not about how the sun reflected off her petals, but how unafraid she was to face the light and fire with a grace most others could not contemplate. She was a power not unlike the Pine Tree, or a deadliness that was not unlike the Venus Flytrap, or a beauty not unlike the Rose, but she was something of the better parts of all three drawn into one magnificent flower.

And her petals were white, white like the Hyuga eyes, white like the stone walls of Hyuga strength – white like a blank canvas. For there she was, long black hair like soft ink in the wind, milky complexion like fairy dust in the sun, feet bare like roots to feel the earth, and dress white like the lily's petals, the Lily was more than just white. A lone figure of ethereal laughter and smiles, a watering can sprinkling warm rain over her charges, the Lily stood in the very middle of her garden, as fragile and charming and delicate as dawn and twilight.

Her dress, her petals, reflected the reds in her roses, the pinks in her bleeding hearts, the yellows in her pears, the blues in her forget-me-nots, the oranges in her marigolds, the purples in her hyacinths, the greens in her beech trees, and all the other kaleidoscopes of colours from her raspberries, peaches, sakuras, maples, hollies, lavenders, junipers and lemongrass.

The dress, her petals, was simple. Nothing crying for attention. Nothing fancy. Nothing fake or machine. It was sleeveless and it fell to her knees. But it was that simplicity that made her enchanting, that made the Lily stand above all the other flowers in her garden. It was a thin material that made her natural beauty stand out, the supple curve of her breasts, the pliant arc of her hips, the gentle outline of her bottom that trailed out to her slender legs and maiden arms – graceful fingers and soft face.

He hadn't known that he wasn't breathing. He hadn't known that he was staring. He hadn't known that he was in the middle of mission until she caught him standing there, at the threshold of her courtyard, of her garden, with his eyes wide, his heart beating loud and his face growing warm.

"Naruto-kun?" Hinata enquired, blinking curiously in the middle of her white lilies.

He jostled, almost stepping onto the nearest peony bush. He must have looked like a fool, he realized, gaping like that, with her staring at him like that, and with him unable to find words like that.

Hinata frowned, an action that did not mar her floral beauty, a crease that showed her inner workings. "Is everything alright?"

"I-I," he stammered, trying to catch his breath, cursing her dress. "I-I'm on mission! Yeah! That's right! A-A mission!"

She tilted her head, her neck exposed to the sunlight. It was so smooth and so long; something he hadn't noticed before, like a lily's elegant stem. "Do you need help, Naruto-kun?"

He paused, his heart loud and wild in his ears. For a moment, he dared not to believe in her offer. He could ask for anything, and she would graciously give. A lily was never selfish. Hinata was never selfish.

He laughed sheepishly and scratched the back of his head. He would be a fool to not take the opportunity given to him.

Bashful, cautious for this was all new to him, this feeling all new to him, this garden so unlike him that he was afraid he'd damage the fragile ecosystem that was her garden, Naruto asked, "A-Actually…"

Hinata encouraged him with a smile.

He breathed a little easier in her scent. "Can you lead me to your father? I kinda have a message for him."

Hinata's smile widened, teasing almost in his nervousness, and she set the watering can down. "Of course, Naruto-kun. I'll-"

"No need, Hinata-sama," the Venus Flytrap appeared, ever vigilant – ever carnivorous.

"Neji-niisan?" Hinata blinked, surprised by his sudden appearance.

"We'll lead him to chichioya-sama," the Rose said, coming out from under the shadows to stand by the trespasser's – the pest's – side, her thorns as sharp as her teeth.

"Hanabi?" Hinata enquired, frowning. "Are you sure it won't be out of your way?"

"Iie," Neji assured, putting a placating, but what felt like threatening, hand on Naruto's back.

Hanabi took Naruto by his hand like a vine, constricting – warning, and crafted a smile for her sister. "We were just on our way to see chichioya-sama. Please, onee-sama, you must go back to tending your garden; the hazelnuts are ripe for the picking."

"Hazelnuts?" Naruto sounded, confused by the appearances of the other Hyuga. "I like hazelnuts!" He beamed at Hinata, who grew warm under his enthusiasm. "Maybe I can help you-"

"NO!" both Neji and Hanabi deterred at once.

Hinata's eyes went wide and so did Naruto's. They did not understand the brief panic that flittered through the usually blank Hyuga eyes of the Hyuga prodigies.

Calmer, and with a certain grit to her teeth, Hanabi tugged at Naruto's hand, leading him back into the hallways. "Naruto-san, you must meet my chichioya-sama. You would like him. He is like a pine tree."

"Good day, Hinata-sama." Neji bowed before following after the younger Hyuga and the jinchuriki.

"B-But," Naruto tried to voice his protest, but Neji cut him off quick with a glare.

Naruto had not seen that glare since the first Chunin Exams.

He should have known then, that afternoon when he first caught the true beauty and warmth of the Lily, that there were more than just a Venus Flytrap or a Rose to contend with, or a Pine Tree to nervously side-step from. There were a whole slew of apple blossoms, cheery trees, plum trees, carnations, hibiscuses, jasmines, magnolias, rhododendrons, sweet peas, pumpkins and tomatoes to wade through.

For although the Hyuga had become less mechanical, more colourful, and able to feel, they were no less Hyuga than before. They were not going to let their heiress be courted by just any male who thought her pretty and nothing more. They were not going to just bow to any bee or butterfly that may just be curiously floating by.

No. They would not just give her away!

But of course, they had forgotten that Naruto Uzumaki was Naruto Uzumaki. He was the jinchuriki. And a fox in a garden was always bound to stir up trouble.

xxx

the point