A Life in the Sun

Chapter 2: Tangled


Hinata looked at the present day miniature Naruto, at his bright grin in the face of disapproval and his perseverance in the face of his own incompetence. At the way he would brush himself off, stand chin-up when people sneered or laughed at him. And she thought that falling into old patterns wouldn't be too difficult, if she let herself. She could mold him into the ideal she'd once seen in him. There was enough time left in the Academy for her to start making friendly overtures and reinvent him.

Hinata had considered it carefully, turned the thought over in her head. But no, she finally concluded, she's not quite that callous yet. And there is also her distinct lack of a need for an ideal, this time around. She has her strength, and she has Kiba.

So Naruto never becomes more than an acquaintance, though Hinata can't quite help herself from subtly pushing him and Sakura together. Sakura only has Ino and Naruto has nobody, and perhaps if she and Naruto grow loyal to each other, the pink-haired would-be medic will never fall for a man who would slash her throat. Perhaps Naruto will never give his loyalty away so completely that he'll be blinded to flaws that by all means should be deal-breakers in a friendship.

Hinata will never let herself fall into her past ways, she swears as she turns away from him, never admire someone her age like they're innately more than her. And she is too cautious to spend too much time with the same people, day in and day out. She can't risk them noticing her as more than a bright star. She plays go with Shikamaru, looking straight into his considering eyes and countering his strategies with apparent ease. Shino had had dozen meticulous kifus of their games transcribed, and so Hinata knows the Nara heir's playing style intimately. He is much more intelligent than she, but Hinata has force-fed herself knowledge since her rebirth and that gives her a durable advantage. For how long, she doesn't know, and feels the urgency beat like a ticking clock in her chest every time she manages to stay just one step ahead.

"You're interesting, Hinata," says Shikamaru one day, and there's something about the tone of his voice that makes Hinata wonder if he suspects something isn't right about her. Her mask is strong enough that she doesn't even bat an eye at the off-hand comment, but the words stay with her.

The feeling that certain people will be able to see through her like she's glass is both persistent and acute, and thus it's neither here nor there that she avoids both Kiba and Shino for the duration of her time at the Academy. It feels like a betrayal, but Hinata is woven too deeply in the web she's spun to go out of her way to acknowledge them when it will serve no purpose. She's going to protect those two, watch them grow into fine men and be their friend and more someday, but not right now. It's too early. (She's a coward. Some things don't change.)

Hinata left the Academy behind with acquaintances in every class, her unwitting informants, and having cultivated friendships between people who might never have looked at each other twice without her discreet nudging. She's pushed the children of clans loyal or in some way indebted to the Hyugas together with children of clans that she remembers opposed them in the past. All while making sure her friendship with all are stronger than their newfound ties to each other.

She visits the Academy as often as she can, sends letter after letter when she can't, and prunes and culls her spiderweb as its strands solidify. At least a handful of those strands are well and truly loyal to her, Hinata knows. She's going to turn them into gems, in time.

Hinata is almost nine when the team she's with is nominated for the chunin exam. Their teacher sends them off with an awkward smile. The woman has only been with them for a few months after their first jounin-sensei, a young Uchiha named Shisui, vanished overnight. Hinata feels a little sorry for her, because the two boys on her team have taken Shisui's disappearance hard and resisted his replacement's training at every turn. This with a grouchy passive-aggressiveness that required ungodly patience on their new jounin's part. Hinata imagines she isn't too unhappy about seeing them off.

A crow with one bright left eye watches Hinata and her much older teammates walk into the forest and Hinata, who sees more with this life's Byakugan than she ever did the last time, looks up at it. She knows the situation within the Uchiha clan is very soon to burst and plans to do nothing about it. She's taken care not to become friendly with any of their members, so that she won't feel like stopping Itachi when he comes roaring through his clan's compound. She's seen the ANBU captain pick up his brother from the Academy looking like he's in need of sick leave or perhaps a year's worth of sleep, and she's watched dispassionately as Sasuke's gone with him. It hadn't taken much out of her not to befriend that particular classmate, though she made sure to make her evasion look accidental. (Something she hadn't quite managed with her avoidance of Kiba, eager as he was to make new friends.)

Hinata is glad that the current chunin exam is not a complete copy of the one that Orochimaru interrupted so long ago. The forest is a lot more dangerous than it was back then, with poisonous rivers and exploding tags set in the ground, but at least she won't have to do show-off matches with the other chunin hopefuls.

It's a relief because she is distracted, which is both dangerous and rare in this life. This Hinata, the person she is today, is fully aware of where she's going and why and her focus is usually the edge of a very sharp kunai. But her reason for traveling back came by just before her team entered the forest, eyes shining with admiration and stumbling over his words as he wished her good luck. Hinata had smiled at him and thanked him and, incredibly, watched him blush. At her.

Hinata had tried to see the real Kiba, the future Kiba, her Kiba, in that little boy and failed miserably.

Back when they were teammates, she'd admired his brashness and incredible loyalty. It had been the kind of loyalty that led him to expect the same level of faithfulness from others that he showed them, and to despise traitors. Hinata had approved of that way of thinking, when she finally let go of her bright-haired ideal. And she'd thought well of Kiba's abilities and his friendship, had found it easy to be kind and sweet to him. She'd fallen in love with him, in the end. He'd died, in the end. And she'd gone back for him, in the end.

…Hadn't she?

But then, why, as she watched him run off to his sister when he'd said his well-wishes, didn't her disappointment at the profound feeling of unfamiliarity as he stood before her hurt more? She didn't particularly want anything to do with that boy, felt the same level of ease with him as she did around the other Academy children, if tempered by their shared history. But he wasn't difficult to look at. His bright child's eyes didn't cause ghosts of another time to ripple in front of her eyes. And that was not how it should be, was it?

In the Academy she'd avoided him like he was fire and she was dry wood, unable to keep herself from noticing him but making sure she was never close enough that he would latch onto her. She'd never looked at him like she just did. She'd never seen the absence of what made him her Kiba, not until this moment.

Hinata comes out of the forest with a single deep wound across her cheek and the realization that Kiba is probably exactly as he'd been at this age during her first life, and that she is the one who has changed. She isn't the person who saw herself reflected in Kiba's eyes and wide, fanged smile anymore. The present-day Hinata is the true heir of the Hyuga clan, one of the brightest shining stars of this generation. She's strong and intelligent, and she's a spider in the middle of a very large web. Being in love with Kiba doesn't fit in that web. She hasn't made room for it.

It shouldn't shake her so much, but perhaps because she'd assumed that he was the reason she'd grown strong in the first place - that he was her beacon as she threw herself into the murky waters of the past - it feels shallow to dismiss what she'd felt by acknowledging the lack of that feeling in the present. It would mean that she'd started over with false purpose, and after a new lifetime with the goal so clearly in sight, that's not an easy thing to accept. She should have realized, when she felt no need to befriend her teammate's child self with the justification that she was too busy setting the stage to ensure his future survival, that she'd gone back for more than just Kiba.

Perhaps he hadn't even been her primary reason for starting over. Perhaps… Hiashi's pride in her. The top spot in her Academy class and her mother alive. Her new strength. The exhilarating feeling of being the spider instead of the fruit fly. Being a person worthy of notice, impossible to dismiss. Thoughts of her worthlessness have never crossed her father's mind, this time around. (Hinata is sure of this, because she's looked at him closely after every mistake she's ever made in training. Expecting a veneer of icy disappointment to slip over his face as he turns away... the thought that he might look at her like that, again, put her heart in her throat every single time.)

Hinata breathes out slowly, and wonders if she isn't a lot more selfish than she's ever realized. Who had Kiba been to her, really? She'd been in love with him, she doesn't doubt that, but what had she intended when she came back here? Had she meant to seduce him? She, who would always be at least two times his age?

"Hinata-chan, you're really awesome!" he'd said, gap-toothed and lisping because of it. "Maybe we can play ninja and samurai sometime?" He had mud on his knees, snot under his nose and he wanted to play a child's game with her. Kiba was endearing and very young, and Hinata was not.

She could confess her true origins to him before she ever attempted anything more than friendship, but- Hinata thought of the man she'd loved post-mortem and of the way he'd never really learned to keep his mouth shut. Rather like Naruto in that respect. Then, reluctantly, she thought deeper of the fact that if she confessed the secret of her life, someone would know she hadn't always been outstanding. That she'd once been of no use to anyone, an unwanted and discarded child. The prospect was not appealing, and that this additional motive for keeping herself secret was entirely self-serving was even less so.

Was she even that same person who'd once fallen for her outspoken teammate? Hinata reminds herself that the core of her is still there, if sharpened and colder. Her father's approval is still a much wanted commodity. The idea of her own worthlessness still terrifies her. Her wish to grow stronger is more present than ever. Her ideals... Oh.

Hinata wonders if in addition to her selfishness, she's not also more mentally weak than she'd assumed. Naruto had been an ideal, something to strive towards. And Kiba, he'd been a symbol. Of Sasuke's betrayal and her own failure and weakness, and the end of her feelings for Naruto. Her wish to be more than that, to take what she wanted and stand up for it. All of it, wrapped up in the idea of one person and what she could be with him.

In hindsight it was so obvious she could scream.

In the back of her mind, before her rebirth, Hinata had decided that her protection of Kiba would lead to a relationship somewhere down the line. Somehow. In retrospect, the idea of that perfect relationship had been something to strive towards, like with Naruto. Lacking strength of her own, she could cocoon herself in the strength of another and that would solve everything else.

Like the end goal of her life was to lay herself at Kiba's feet and love him. Just. Like. With. Naruto.

Hinata prods the slash in her cheek with a nail, and tampers down on the self-hatred that bubbles in her stomach as blood waterfalls down the side of her face. It won't do her any good. She's recognized this flaw now, and she'll carve it out just like she's done with every other useless part of herself.

(Every other warm part of herself. Where is the Hinata that liked taking care of people?)


A/N: And here's chapter 2. I've read every single one of your reviews several times- Thank you.

What do you think of Hinata's realization in this chapter? I'm very curious.