A/N: I do not necessarily agree with any of the character's thoughts. I don't like bashing, and while it may seem like it sometimes, I try to let the characters lead. From what I know of Hanabi and the rest of Naruto canon, this is a glimpse into my construct of her thought processes.

Hyuuga Hanabi knows, okay?

She knows her sister. (She loves her sister.) She knows that she holds back in their spars, she knows that she'll get the seal if she doesn't continually win, she knows that Hinata is only trying to help her.

But she hates it.

Hinata was who she looked up to when they were younger, before Neji-nii-san got colder and colder, before their father grew disapproving. Hinata was everything she wasn't – kind, courteous, a lady. She was graceful, beautiful, determined – she was the closest family Hanabi ever had.

(Don't even mention their father to her – he does not exist as a father, only as the clan head. He is someone to be respected, someone to show obedience to. He's a good clan head; Hanabi acknowledges that, and she knows him in that capacity, but as a father? Don't make her laugh.)

Hinata was her reason. And somehow, the fact that she's decided to passively accept everything that life throws at her –

Hanabi wants to scream into the depths of hell, match the silence that is Hinata, anything to fill the fucking quiet.

She was always the louder one, the brash, hot-headedness that is so prominent in the Inuzuka clan – she wondered sometimes if she was a Hyuuga. Hinata, though, Hinata was always her idol.

Contrary to what Hiashi says, or what Neji sneers, or what the branch members whisper, Hinata is not, was never clumsy. She was graceful. Has always been graceful. It is speed, surety that makes her falter, not lack of grace. It is her doubt that Hanabi hates.

It was different before Neji rejected her. She had a fire then. And she got up after every fall and pressed harder, faster, more and more and more.

Oh, has she mentioned that she hates Uzumaki Naruto?

Not for the usual reasons, or rather not because of the irrational hate that the village seems to dole out on a daily basis, but because he has let Hinata become just a spectator.

Because Hinata was strong before her infatuation with Naruto. And eventually, even while wanting to spare her sister, she would have fought, a desperate act of the shunned. But what did she find? Naruto. Naruto who withstood the villager's hate with a smile, never lashing out, only wishing to do better. Naruto who held that awful chakra that hindered him at every point. Naruto who… who became her sister's idol.

Hinata was strong because she didn't have an idol, because she knew that in the cruel world of clan politics and clan succession, she could only rely on herself, on her values and her beliefs. Because Hanabi loved sparring with her sister to test her limits – Hinata had always been strong enough to withstand the oppressive atmosphere of the clan, their disapproval, their disdain. But when Naruto came, Hinata began to smile that idiotic, sad smile, the one that said "I forgive you" and Hanabi could no longer bear what her sister had become.

They are shinobi, and despite what people think, Hanabi has always been perceptive for her age. She excels was heir candidate not because she wants to gain the approval of her father, or take the place of Hinata, or to avoid the Caged Bird Seal (if Hinata were Head, she doubts that she would use it anyway. Neji wouldn't either – he has too many nightmares about it to ever use that power), but because she knows that the shinobi world is cruel (Hinata taught it to her when she came back with bruises and all Hanabi could think of were her father's words: "In the battlefield, you would have been dead forty-three times." All she can see are wounds in place of bruises and Hinata bleeding out, the same goddamn passive look on her face as she just accepts it.)

Because if she does not excel, she will be injured or killed – she is the second-born, she is disposable, she will be given the more dangerous missions. (Sometimes she wonders what her father was thinking, wanting to have another child, then feels bitter because she knows that she is the backup plan.)

She knows her place.

But she wishes that Hinata would see hers.