Disclaimer: Bitch, you really think I own Naruto? Would I even be typing this if I really did?
The Calculator
By Kuri
In the midst of the darkness, when everything around her is falling, emotions running wild, and thoughts imploding into minds, Hanabi is calm. The daily problems in life mean nothing to her, because before the situation becomes desperate, she has already calculated her escape.
She is not a runner, she is a thinker. She is strong enough to fight, and smart enough to know when to lower her fists.
She is a calculator.
While her older sister has always been emotional, flighty, and sensitive, Hanabi is cool and detached. When she made Jounin at seventeen, a year younger than her sister was, the Hokage does not give her special, kunoichi only missions, like she would to Ino or TenTen. She is placed immediately in the Anbu Reserves, leading a strategizing team during the day. Her father is very pleased.
Her teammates(subordinates) complain. She is too heartless, they say. Too glacial. She doesn't care about getting the last man home, just getting the money or slitting the right throat. The Hokage listens carefully to their complaints, and dismisses them. She does not change Hanabi's position. She does not call her in to speak with the cold-hearted monster.
Instead, she sighs and pulls out a bottle of sake out from under the floorboards, and pours more than a generous amount. These complaints are good, she tells herself, as she knocks her cup back. It means she is doing the job as it needs to be done. This is want she had wanted from the hardened little girl.
That is all Hanabi has ever been told to do, all that has ever been asked. And in compliance, it is all that she has ever done.
But there is a stone that can still shatter the strong emotional walls that she surrounds herself in. Death.
And it shouldn't. Once the idea that her father is truly gone, and she has grieved in her own way, alone and silent, she is disgusted at how loose her control over her emotions has become. As a ninja, she is completely used to death, unfazed by the multiple ways blood can spew from the thousands of veins in the human body. As a Jounin, as an elite ninja, she has seen more carnage and gore in the past six years of being a kunoichi than many will in a lifetime. It still shakes her to the core.
She wants to ask Tsunade for a new A-ranked mission, but the funeral was coming. Things were changing in the Hyuuga compound.
The medics told her that it was quick, no pain, just the way any ninja would want to die in battle. Hanabi grit her teeth in anger, clenching her fists as Hinata nodded appreciatively to the sympathetic(pathetic) medics. She doesn't even bother telling them that this is not the way a Hyuuga dies.
A Hyuuga dies, as she remembered from the stories the elders told her and the records she found in the library, for the family. Hyuuga Hiashi died for the village, loyal to the core, a true ninja. He died on a mission to Lightening Country as a bodyguard for the Kazekage. And the Hyuuga family was no friend of the Sabaku clan.
There was a profound difference of dying like a ninja and dying like a Hyuuga, Hanabi decided. Hiyashi died like a ninja. Hiashi had not. How could the branch family have beaten them in death?
At the funeral, Hinata was (overly) upset. She shook and sobbed into her somber baby sister's shoulders. Hanabi did not embrace her big sister, she sat stoically in her seat and let Hinata's seats drench the front of her black mourning dress, and suddenly, she is embarrassed of the way everyone is deliberately not looking at the two little Hyuuga girls. She's not quite sure they're going to whisper about later.
The Hokage made a speech commemorating the virtues of Hiashi and she listened fully, without interest, until the Hokage was finishing her speech, and announced that according to Konoha law and tradition, the oldest child of Hiashi would take the reins of the Hyuuga clan. Hinata stepped forward shakily to make her speech as the new heiress, and she wobbled as she walked to the podium.
Out of the corer of her razor sharp eye, Hanabi noticed the way that the elders were smirking slightly. They were pleased that the timid little girl had been given so much power. She would become an easy puppet to play with.
Hinata clutched the edges of the podium tightly, like a life raft. "My father was a good man, an excellent ninja, and loyal citizen to Konoha." There was an uncomfortable murmur that ran through the crowd as many people noticed she'd mentioned nothing about what kind of father he'd been. Hinata pushed forward. "In his reign as the head of the clan, the Hyuugas prospered. He was always worried about the family, and maintaining order in the clan was the ultimate priority. As the new clan leader, I feel that I do not have the ability to lead successfully. I decline. I refuse to be the head."
A sudden rush of noise rushed through the crowd. Hanabi smirked. Hinata met her eye and nodded slightly.
"When I take my place as Namikaze Hinata in the spring, I will be ineligible to lead. Therefore, I hereby pass the title of Hyuuga Clan Head to Hyuuga Hanabi, along with my blessings." As she stepped away from the microphone, she winked broadly at her sister, and bounded down the steps to sit next to the head of the Namikaze clan, who gave her a foxy grin, and passed her a black box. She smiled demurely back, and slipped on the ring inside it.
The diamond glittered flawlessly. The Hyuuga elders glared hard enough to cause a double homicide. Casually, Naruto slung an arm around Hinata's shoulders, and they stared silently at the portrait of Hiashi together. Hanabi leaned back in her chair. And smirked some more.
There were more speeches, from Ibiki, from the head of the Anbu, still clad in full armor, the heads of the Uchihas, the Yamanakas, the Akimichis, the Naras, all passed through Hanabi's ears as she relaxed in her seat and the words floated lazily through her mind. Right now she had to think, think of what to say to the elders, of what to say to Hinata. Maybe a congratulations. Maybe a hug, even. She briefly flits with the idea, before moving back to her main thought.
She will be a good Queen, a good head, and she knows it. She is completely Hyuuga to the core, and the icy decisions that come with the responsibility of leading a clan will be second nature. Hinata is no fool; her sister was made specifically for the task, exactly as their father had wanted Hinata to be.
Hanabi leaned back again and caught Hinata's eye for the second time. She nods confidently, in agreement with the life changing decision, and Hinata throws back a smile that is surer than Hanabi has ever seen. Hinata didn't pull this little stunt just for her fairy tale ending. This is for her too. It is the role she was made for, the role she was groomed for, and the only one she ever wanted. The elders know already that they cannot make her their puppet. Instead, she will be their Queen.
And in the true Hyuuga fashion that was ground into her bones, Hanabi straightens in her seat with the posture of an empress, and calculates.
AN: This was a fun one. I think that Hanabi has such an untapped potential, and it's a real shame that we don't see more of her point of view on the whole Main Family-Branch Family conflict, and what she thinks of her sister. Somebody petition that. Later.