Characters: Hinata
Summary: You will never fly.
Pairings: None
Author's Note: Another Hinata-centric piece.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
There are two things that build a house: the walls of its structure and the people inside it, the latter being what makes the house a home. Hinata lives in half a house that has never been a home, a trap to cage her and bind her to a series of empty, white-washed walls.
Her eyes roam a maze of empty places. There are people here but they are visible only with the activation of the Byakugan and even then they seem as corn husks, dry and cracked and brittle, ready to split at any time.
In a world of corn husk dolls, Hinata feels like the only thing that's real. Faces flash in front of her—Neji's, Hanabi's, her father's and uncle's—from the luminous mist, but they have marbles for eyes, buttons for noses, cloth for hair and stitches for mouths. They're just puppets, dancing to a song they can't comprehend.
They can't help her.
And Hinata is a little bird, who stretches her wings towards the sky but never does more than dream.
She's wearing white silk, expressly crafted to weight her wings and break them, fluted bones snapped and shattered.
No matter how much she wishes it, she will never fly.
All Hinata can do is trail through a maze of white walls without a roof, as the sun beats down on her flesh and she thinks that half a house is no house at all, if it doesn't keep the rain out.