Fluid
Summary: Because malleable things may bend and take shape, but eventually they will grow brittle and break as the fluid of the atmosphere around them shifts and changes and goes on.
Hello, I know I haven't written anything in a ridiculously long time, but it's Friday, and it's been a crap week, so I'm spoiling myself.
Standard disclaimer applies.
On principle, weak things were eradicated in powerful households. In the face of the perpetuation of a dynasty of (cosmically insignificant, petty, vampire-esque) powerful and influential shinobi and politicians, the life of one of weakened stature meant little.
That is why no one understood how Hyuuga Hinata had matured to pubescence.
She was more akin to the petals of a lavender bloom than the cold, steely co-owners of her bloodline. She was the hopelessly in-love girl, always following, yet never quite drawing near enough to, Naruto. She was the box that, upon being unlocked, could be a chest of wonders, but the key was twisted (by family, by fear, by intolerance) into something unusable and hopelessly broken.
She was defeated by her cousin (by someone who had been born into subordination; her dealer of disgrace in the end) in the Chuunin exams. What brief flame of rebelliousness and strength she had lit was quickly blown out and away with the iciest of breaths. The empty eyes that watched her drew farther into the light (because to her, she would forever be doomed to the shadows).
She grew to go on from the defeat. She trained herself in secret and learned to stand on her own two feet. No one cared.
Hinata spent most of her life in irrepressible shadows. Shadows as pale as she and as cold as the void her mother left upon her death.
She spent most of her life attempting to fit into what she knew was the only way a Hyuuga could be. Strong (merciless), proud (vain), and graceful (stiff). She found early on that malleable things do well for building, fluid things are useless.
Naruto had been the conversion factor she'd been praying for in her childhood. If only she could assimilate some of what made him into what made her, she could solidify and fill the [impossible mold that had been laid before her. But as a principle, noble gases are generally unreactive, and even the fires of Kyuubi could not heat the metal of Naruto enough to change it from solid to liquid to gas. He trudged through the atmosphere that was (there but untouchable, and unable to touch in return) Hinata for years, until the atmosphere was so polluted with the breath of others that it simply changed altogether.
She eventually realized that she would do it herself, or wait forever.
Naruto left, Hinata matured. Her exterior self retained her childish crush, her interior self (the true self, the hidden self, the treasured self) snorted in disdain at how easily she fooled the other shinobi.
She trained and became a med nin. Sakura still (as she had in the past, as she would in the future) reigned supreme in the eyes of the world, but Hinata knew. Hinata knew she still pined for what could never be between her and Sasuke, knew it made her weak. Hinata knew that her skills far surpassed Sakura's. Knew because her intimate knowledge of all things fluid [herself, the water, the blood made her uncannily talented at reading the body, so fluid in it's structure.
Sakura knew too, but the last thing she had to hold on to was her reputation, and Hinata let her keep it (because even if she had outgrown what she had been, she liked to believe she had retained what set her apart from her family).
Hinata had also mastered her self-taught and created art. She could now manipulate water as easily as she breathed the (polluted) air around her. She twisted it into different shapes and contours. Her favorite being the slim, accurate whip. She knew she would someday learn to manipulate other things too.
Her father made no effort to mask the fact that he had, with utmost certainty, decided that Hanabi would make a fine head of the clan. By default, that would leave Hinata in the Branch Family.
Hinata's stuttering outer self still requested to be put on patrols and go on missions. Her inner self relished the freedom in being anonymous. She was the silent, liquid, pitch-colored shadows that came and went in the night in faraway towns, leaving nothing behind but corpses with their chakra supplies twisted beyond recognition (because malleable things can only bend so far, unlike fluids), and the occasional faint traces of poisons unknown (because fluids and plants and poisons follow a natural succession, and those who know shall reap the benefits).
There came the day when Hiashi announced that Hanabi would be taking over the clan upon her eighteenth birthday. Hinata, now in her early twenties, smiled serenely (they didn't understand for a long time).
Six months later, upon the day of her eighteenth birthday, Hanabi entered her father's suite to find his body sprawled upon the floor, his pale (still dark) eyes staring towards the ornamental pond outside of his window. When the medics arrived, they described the only wound upon his body, situated directly over his jugular; to be so cleanly dispensed that only a master of whips could have delivered it.
Hanabi took over the clan at a subdued (even more so) ceremony, and it took a while for people to notice that Hinata had been her usual silent self only because she wasn't there.
They found her outside, sitting on the bench adjacent to an ornamental pond, dressed for the occasion she had missed, but engrossed in her own mental meanderings. They left her as she was, because even their Hyuuga senses could not place the strange feelings that enveloped them when they entered her presence.
Hinata waited until Hanabi had been the clan head for all of two days before striding quietly into her suite and announcing that she was renouncing her identity as a Hyuuga. When Hanabi later recounted her story, she could give no reason for acquiescing to the request save that she felt a strange sense of languor overcome her muscles and quiet her thoughts to the point where she said yes. Hinata had smiled thankfully, and told her to enjoy her tea.
No matter how quiet the Hyuuga had attempted to keep the news that Hinata had left the clan, nothing could be done when she was seen moving all her possessions into an apartment as far away from her former home as she could find. She later went on to open her own medicinal store, which proved to be wildly successful. Her plants were the envy of even the Yamanakas.
Hinata applied for ANBU at age 25. The overseers of the selection committee allowed her into the hopefuls to humor her. They never expected her to surpass all of them in every test. She was allowed, though hestitantly.
All their reservations were shattered when she returned from an S-Class mission with hardly a scratch on her, serene smile in place.
Hinata retired from ANBU at age 40. She still retained her youthful body and strength, if not a little diminished, but she claimed she had most likely set a record at fifteen successful years, and she wished to have the rest of her life to herself. Her medicinal shop continued to draw in customers, even from far away places, and her ninja life receded to the less glamorous medley of C and B rank missions. Though she was still called upon to advise many missions involving tracking and stealthy assassinations; her knowledge of the human body (and poisons) had long since proven more extensive than Sakura's.
At 53, Hinata set foot in the Hyuuga compound for the first time since she had moved out. Many new faces greeted her, though some were new simply because they had changed so (her face had not changed, she had learnt the highly-coveted shinobi skill of masking). Hanabi greeted her awkwardly. The house watched from around corners and from in closets and behind doorways, listening as the two siblings exchanged pleasantries. Hinata later pressed a letter into Hanabi's hand before smiling serenely and exiting the compound.
That evening, an order was sent out to two of the highest ranked ANBU to return with proof of Hinata's death.
They failed their mission, because upon entering the medicinal shop/apartment of Hinata, they found her sitting as calmly as a deceased person can in her desk chair in the storage room. Later, after perusing her seemingly endless field books, medical journals, and hastily scribbled notes, found hundreds upon hundreds of home-made poisons running though her blood stream; so many years of exposure had caught up with her.
This is why people finally understood the ultimate shinobi that was Hinata.
This was done all at once, it's completely unedited, and I have no idea what the hell it's supposed to do. I just liked the idea.