Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. If I did, this would not be taking so long.
Hinata & The What-?
-Paper Screens & Useless Screams-
Hinata Hyuuga lay face down in her bed, body trembling uncontrollably from exhaustion and stress. She had been crying and as a result, unable to sleep the entire night.
And the night before and the night before that night.
She let out a small grown and fisted the expensive sheets underneath her.
Hinata was growing tired with herself, hearing her own muffled cries constantly vibrating around inside her head and performing the same ninjutsu every morning to cover up the residual blotchy red colour on her face. Pulling the satin sheets tight, she shifted onto her left side so she faced the sliding doors overlooking her own private garden. The upper-part of the closed doors were made of a thin cream-coloured paper, painted with intricate ink designs to allow a delicate and subtle design of light to fall upon the hardwood floors at exactly the crack of dawn.
Remembering a sweet memory, she momentarily allowed herself a little smile and closed her eyes,.
On the eve of her eighteenth birthday, Hanabi, her younger sister, had hand-painted those paper screens and without a word of fore-warning, came into her room at exactly eleven fifty two pm and replaced them when she thought the elder was sleeping. When Hinata approached her about them discreetly during her birthday celebration that evening, her sister's pride had not allowed her to say anything but her feelings were written in her eyes, a mesmerizing and unique shade of off-white, more purple than Hinata's more blue-toned ones.
After the party, as a content Hinata was just in that state of pre-sleep bliss, Hanabi had crept in to the room laid down on the bed beside her and began to cry. Instinctively, the elder Hyuuga had hugged her sister and whispered soft whispers into her ear until she calmed down. Then, the two had held hands, talked and giggled as young girls often do until Hanabi fell asleep with her head tucked under her sister's chin, hands still intertwined. Hinata had stared at those screens the whole night, her arms full with her precious sister and heart even more full with happiness.
Those screens were the first present Hanabi had given Hinata in ten years and the beginning of a still kept tradition of giving the other secret hand-made gifts on birthdays.
That morning, as she woke her sister up to go to her own room before anyone had noticed, her eyes had burned with tears of happiness and pride, of what her sister had been brave enough to do.
Hinata shook herself out of her reverie. Frustrated, she flipped onto her back and threw the sheets back, suddenly angrier with herself than she had been all week. With the way she was acting now, she was not worthy of being that brave little girl's big sister.
'Hanabi' she thought, lifting a hand to rub at her eyes, 'she's coming back from her first foreign mission today. 'Oh no.'
The worst part of Hinata's depression had to be creating a perfect superficial, happy expression and greeting her friends and family normally, as if nothing was wrong. Hanabi would be the most difficult to keep up her facade around especially since the two had bonded over the last years and could see through each others' lies quite well.
Hating the aches in her body from tossing around in bed awake, she got up and made her way to the sliding doors, pushing them aside to take a step out. She sat down on the external walkway and looked ahead. A beautiful bouquet of pink, orange and white buds stood in a clay pot slightly to the left. It was a thoughtful gift from one of her friends Ino whom she had confided her novice gardening aspirations in.
The accompanying note indicated that the flowers needed minimal care and bloomed beautifully in the summer. Ino had given her the flowers three days ago but she just could not plant them.
She could barely bring herself to touch the perfect combination the flowers' two colours made.
She whipped her head to the right, feeling incredibly silly. Ino was a lovely, well-meaning friend but she did not know her well enough to know how deeply she could be affected by freaking flower colours.
She did not want the flowers, daresay even hated them, but could not bring herself to throw them away either. That pot represented her very own personal hell.
And a very masochistic part inside of her thought she deserved to be reminded of it even at home.
She exhaled slightly and pushed herself up with her hands, she did not have a mission today but promised to be there for when Hanabi returned even if nobody else knew she was there.
She was just about to close the door when she heard a loud crash simultaneous with a female voice mumbling, 'Crap!' and another more muted 'thud' sound.
Hinata went perfectly still and activated her Byakugan.
The pot had fallen over and broken, its flowers and dirt tumbling out. Beside the pot was a girl who presented no traces of chakra, laying face down, legs twisted out oddly to the side. Wondering how she had managed to get past the clan's impossibly tight security network, she turned around, getting into fighting position, ready to battle the strange girl if need be.
"Ehehe, sorry about that! I'm just getting used to this!" she said, flipping over back onto her feet quickly, stumbling a bit but managing to remain upright.
"I just, wow! Uh, don't worry! I'm not here to do any harm!" She said, throwing her hands up into the air. The sleeve of her dress caught on a branch, disturbing a family of nesting ravens that cawed loudly before flying off in all directions, raining black feathers on her head..
"Sorry... Again... Man, this is more difficult than I thought." She said, swearing softly, lowering her hands and clasping them behind her back where they could cause no more damage and rubbing small circles into the ground in front of her with her bare feet.
Hinata found herself holding back a smile; her mannerisms were similar to those of the genin-aged Naru-
"What are you doing here?" She said, lowering her hands but not de-activating her Byakugan. There was nobody else in the vicinity other than some maids working two rooms to the left, changing the linens, but a ninja could never be too certain while facing a stranger.
"I am here to meet you, of course," she said looking up from the little circles, "And it was not easy either, let me tell you! I swear all the guards around here have like eyes in the back of their heads."
'Here to meet me? Why would she be here to meet me? She thought but instead asked, "How did you get in here?"
"I flew."
'She flew? What? Oh no, wait! From the Akatsuki, that blonde man, I heard he flew around on a giant clay bird, maybe she does something similar. But that takes amazing ninjutsu capabilities; I can't even sense any chakra on her, unless she is hiding it.'
She decided to dismiss it, and tell the guards later to reinforce their aerial surveillance and ask the more imminent question.
"Why do you need to see me?"
"I'm not really sure," said the mysterious girl honestly, shifting to rub small circles with the other foot instead. "I disobeyed my superiors' rules and they were upset with me. They said that I needed to learn my lessons so they sent me here as punishment, most likely."
"They sent you to see me as punishment?" Hinata asked surprised, thinking 'I've been called awkward but..'
"Well they did not specifically say anything to me; they never do, to me or my brothers and sisters. However, wandering through these lands I was drawn to this village, this compound and now, to you, and I'm sure they have something to do with that. They always do."
She said the above statement with a defeated air as if there was no rhyme or reason to her superiors behavior and no point in asking.
Hinata was completely dumbstruck and had no idea how to react to what she was saying. So she settled for remaining silent and analyzing the perplexing girl. The most obvious thing about her was that she was extremely tall, Kakashi sensei's height or even taller and as skinny as a pole. Despite the height, she had a childish face, puffy cheeks with dimples, full lips and unruly grey bangs framing wide-set dark eyes. Her apparel was unusual, a floor-length, wide-sleeved white gown with multiple sashes tied to the dress haphazardly, seeming to have no real purpose or aesthetic value.
The girl had a lovely voice, Hinata noticed, since she could not stay quiet for more than thirty seconds and she found herself randomly wondering if she was a famous singer who had suddenly become crazy. Then she cringed at her own craziness. Nonetheless, she found no harmful intent in the girl, so she fully de-activated her Byakugan.
"What is your name?" she asked.
Her eyes widened subtly and she picked up the speed of the leg making the circles."M-m-my name? Uh, well you see, I have a name. And the name that I have is an extremely good name. It is a very normal an-and appropriate name as all good names are."
Hinata hoped she did not sound like that when she stutters.
Hinata considered if this was some sort of prank Kiba was playing on her but this level of creativity is not something he possessed. Maybe, it was Shikamaru? But Shikamaru would have been too lazy to pull this prank off and he did not have the incentive. But that meant that there was a giant, flying, baffling, nameless girl standing in her gardens because she was supposedly drawn to her.
Which was even more ridiculous than the thought of Choji on a diet.
"Well, what do people call you, then?"
"Everyone calls me a different name."
"Then how do you know when to respond?"asked Hinata, patiently, as if the girl was a young child.
Here, the girl grinned brightly, stood with her feet together and showed of her childlike dimples while looking up, "It is something I learned through experience. Everyone says different things, uses different sounds to call me, but the language of their thoughts is a unified one. I respond to that language."
Hinata was speechless once more as she watched the girl attempt to put the flowers back into the pot. She closed her eyes, trying to figure out the intruder and upon re-opening them, saw the grey haired girl sitting cross-legged on the ground, with the fixed and re-filled pot in between her thin legs. She was absent-mindedly touching each orange flower, turning it's petals blue and each white flower;s petals' violet.
Hinata watched transfixed until she was done.
"I think," said the mysterious girl getting up, "the blue, pink and purple look better, neh?" She approached the paralyzed Hyuuga and presented the pot to her with a small smile and an innocent tilt of the head.
"What do you think, Hinata-chan?"
"...I-I" She stuttered, mentally panicking, 'How does she know my name? Her uncanny ability to ask about the flowers, could she, does she know? How c-'
"Hinata-sama! Hinata-sama," a male voice called from outside her bedroom door, "are you in there?!"