"Of Lye and Talc"
Prompt- Hinata and slavery
Reality was a nightmare. Her life was a nightmare. She herself was a nightmare. A harsh yell. A gasping wail. It was. It had been. And she feared it ever would be.
She hid it all behind shy smiles and fidgeting fingers, but that was the truth. The sun didn't touch everywhere and sometimes what occurred behind closed doors mattered more than the sunshine.
Death was the sure thing. Life was tentative at best but death was a given. As soon as there was life the death was guaranteed. She was tired of death. There was more behind her pale eyes than she would let on, even to herself.
It sickened her. All the murder and betrayal. Not only in her own family. This "business". If you had the cash you could wipe out a life. An existence. A soul. She was part of that cycle. That vicious circle of decay. Death. The stench of it never left her mind.
She had been told since she was a small child that the good of the individual would always be sacrificed to the good of the majority. That was why she had been born. That was why her uncle was dead. Her cousin bound and full of anger and misery.
The thought made her frantic and sick inside. She felt some desperate, harsh need to run. It was almost primal, that need. Fight or flight. She wanted to run; but there was nowhere to go. Nowhere safe. Nowhere where she could escape her own thoughts. Her singing blood.
And everywhere there was that symbol staring at her. That hateful sign of her captivity. The proof of all hatred.
It was even more pronounced since it wasn't burned into her skin as well. Always there. Mocking her.
If there was fate or destiny or some force outside this earth, she wished that it would strike her down and even the balance. Sometimes. Other times she wished that she could conquer it. To be everything that was expected of her. That he expected of her.
But all she seemed to get, in excess, was rebuke, ridicule, disappointment, anger. These things tainted every aspect of her life. And always that sign. Her dreams were haunted with their looks. Their hollow eyes, judging her.
She tried not to ever curse. It was her small rebellion that she wouldn't cave and be vulgar at her toss of fate. Like die cast in a poker game. That's what it felt like, there was no skill involved, all there was, was chance. It didn't seem to matter though, nobody understood it. It was taken for granted, like her meager scrap of existence. For a fault it never seemed like much of a victory.
What were hopes and dreams to that? What was love to the sacrifice? The never ending onslaught of injustice? She longed for it. That love. Anything really. Anything opposite to what she had known her whole life. She yearned for ignorance. She recoiled from it. It was unknown.
She would do anything for it. For that door to open. For that idea to become more than a passing thought or fancy. For the sun. For the smile. For the kiss.
For it to matter again.
She remembers when she was a little girl, when the sun shone and the birds sang. When the song didn't sound like raucous laughter or the coughs and moans of the sick and dying. She remembered when Neji had smiled at her.
She remembered.