Broken Angel
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto… yet. I have my plans… (In the mean time, I still have to put in this stupid disclaimer. I hate disclaimers.)
She was an angel. He was a demon. That was what they always said.
She was the heiress to one of the most prominent clans in the Hidden Leaf Village. He was the scum of the earth. It was almost funny. They didn't know how wrong they really were.
It was she who was unworthy of him.
naruXhina/ brokenXangel
They all thought that she was an angel, a gift granted to the mortal world to help them through the darkness that they had created. Maybe that had been the case once. Maybe she had been an angel once, back before all the "she is of less value than her sister" and "if only Neji hadn't been born into the branch family." But now, saying that she was a pure being sent from the heavens was a lie. She was a fallen angel, if anything.
Not like him.
Back during their days at the Academy, everyone had shunned him, calling him a failure and a dropout and things far worse. She had seen his tears, his pain, but she had lacked the courage to stand up to those others, to be his friend, to let him know that he wasn't alone.
She was weak.
Weak. Everyone said that she couldn't be weak. She was a Hyuuga, they said. How could a Hyuuga be weak? But she was. Everyone had always been forced to protect her, to save her when it turned out that she wasn't able to handle even the simple ninja tasks set to rookie Genin.
She couldn't do anything.
He wasn't like her. He was strong, a fighter. From the beginning, they'd told him that he couldn't be a ninja; that he'd never graduate; that he could never become Hokage.
He'd proved them wrong.
Naruto had graduated, the same year that Hinata had. Admittedly he'd been dead last in their class and he failed the actual graduation exam, but he'd graduated all the same. He'd already proved that he was stronger than they thought he was.
He forced everyone to acknowledge him.
Everyone had been amazed that his team even bothered to enroll in the Chuunin Exams. They attributed it to the success of his teammates. Sasuke was the top of the class and the sole survivor of the Uchiha clan, and Sakura had scored 100 on every test they'd taken in the Academy. It would practically be a crime to hold them back just because they'd been assigned a moron for a teammate.
No one had known it then, but he'd grown as well.
He was assigned to fight her teammate, Inuzuka Kiba, in the preliminaries to the Third Exam. At first the fight had gone as everyone predicted. Kiba was winning, Naruto wasn't even managing to score one hit. Then, Naruto had revealed his true strength.
His amazing, Hokage-worthy strength.
He'd won. Naruto had gone on to the Third Exam, where he battled her cousin Neji.
She'd lost her preliminary match.
By the end of the Exams, everyone's view of Naruto had changed. He was no longer thought of as the failure, the demon, the loser. Everyone finally saw him for who he was: Uzumaki Naruto, the strongest Genin in Konohagakure Village and the future Sixth Hokage.
She'd been so happy for him.
But she was still the same. She was still just quiet little Hyuuga Hinata, the only failure ever produced by the main branch of the Hyuuga clan. No one had wanted to say it to her face-
Not to sweet little Hinata.
-but the thought was there. Even Shino and Kiba, even her teammates who were so kind to her, even they had to have noticed that she was weak, hopeless, a nothing. And it wasn't changing.
She'd tried to change.
For two and a half years she'd tried to change herself. She'd put every ounce of her being into her training, hoping to change herself.
Hoping to become worthy of him…
But nothing had changed. He'd returned, and just like that, all her hard training had vanished. She was no longer the strong, confident kunoichi she'd worked so hard to become for him. She was just weak little Hinata, the same stuttering failure she'd been before he left.
Please, notice me.
She wasn't worthy of him. He was so strong and confident and pure, and she was weak. Maybe that was why. Maybe it was because of how wonderful a person he was that she couldn't let go.
Please, look at me.
Maybe that was why she dared to love someone who could never love her back, who deserved to be loved by someone far better than the likes of her. Maybe that was why she still tried to better herself, still wished that someday, somehow, he could love her like she loved him.
See me.
She was a broken angel.
Naruto-kun.
hinaXnaru/ brokenXangel
I stare into the mirror.
My face stares back at me.
Just like that, I let all my barriers dissolve,
I finally show my pain.
I can see it all:
Tears yet to be cried, brimming in my eyes
Cries of anguish forming upon my lips
The tired beating of heart that wishes it could all end.
I stare into the mirror.
A broken angel stares back at me.
A/N: I was trying out a new writing style here. The parts in italics were Hinata's ideas; the things in normal type were the details about it. In case anyone wonders: I do not actually think this about Hinata. I think that she's totally awesome, and her family is so cruel to her. This was written as what I think her ideas about herself are. It's probably a little bit darker than she is, but her opinion of herself is actually very similar to this. I just… amplified the self-loathing a little, for the purposes of writing a story.
I may end up coming back to this, if enough people like it, because I think I have an idea for a second part. (As in, I'm not entirely sure that I do, but I could probably think of something.