A/N: Oh, wow... Look, many reviews stated how I shouldn't let the lack of reviews make me give up on writing... Guys, even though reviews (praising or criticizing) are a wonderful gift for any writer, I'd like to make it clear: my writing breakdown is due to events and reasons outside this site or any other. It was not an attempt to get attention for reviews. I had these thoughts of disappointment I had to share with someone and I found it good to do that here, basically anonymously.


"Thank Kami you were here, Naruto. Your capacity to mold chakra is incredible..." Sakura-san?

"Two infarcts in less than 24 hours... Even though not knowing a freaking thing about medicine, I can guess that's a lot." Uzumaki Naruto?

"Hanabi is stronger than you think." That was a strong, confident statement - accepting no countering. Hinata?

What had strength to do with the current situation? Maybe it was a situation that required strength, but she could not make up a lot of thing right now. Why was Hinata talking about strength? Was Hanabi strong, as such a confident voice stated? And it was maybe abnormal that 'confident' was now connected to what many had called 'weak'.

Ah, but she knew that Hinata was not strong now either - in many ways. Though she had watched, somehow amused, how people had seen Hinata standing high and straight lately and told to themselves 'that girl was weak, but she's strong now'. But things don't really work like that.

Hinata wasn't changed at all from who she had ever been. And she couldn't really say Hinata had been 'weak' all along. That she had been weak back then. Or that she was weak now. Not at all that she was strong now. But these labels - strong and weak - they were quite intriguing, she thought.


Hanabi fought Hinata for the first time when she was around three or four. Not that she really understood why that had to happen, but it was something she was asked to do and she did fight. And even though she really had no idea what that meant, she put Hinata to the ground and that day their father shook his head disappointed in her sister's direction.

She did not know what his shaking of the head meant, but it looked like something she did not want for herself. And so she tried to avoid that to happen. It seemed, from where she looked, that Hinata was also trying to avoid that to happen again for her, too. But she couldn't understand why it did not seem to work for her sister as it did work for her.

They sparred more other times from then on, until a day when, as they fought and things seemed to go from bad to worse for Hinata, Hiashi raised a hand for the fight to be over and just walked out without a word.

And from then on, Hanabi did not train with Hinata any longer. At the time, she did not know what all this meant.


Just when to the usual training started there started to be added serious discussion concerning leadership, Hanabi started to get where it was all going. And she was not only under the constant supervision of her father, but also her grandfather's. This last one mostly scared her somehow. She was not really afraid of him, there was nothing threatening she found about the old man, but there was simply a feeling of uneasiness that wouldn't let her in his presence. And she felt the pressure of not allowing herself go weak more than in her father's case.

By that time, she was seven. At the age of seven, two very intriguing things that marked her profoundly happened.

First, she heard about the confrontation between Hinata and her cousin, Neji, and that her sister ended up gravely wounded in the hospital. Now, she did not dare to ask her father, but she did ask other people about it, because she found the situation very confusing. And they answered that these fights were meant to be serious and many are wounded even by friends, but there's not something abnormal about it. They gave the example of one Genin named Rock Lee and how he may never be a ninja again - the shinobi path was a risky, serious one.

But Hanabi asked about that. And it seemed that this Gaara of the Sand, the one Rock Lee had fought, was truly scary and there was nothing to be done about him. And, otherwise, no other Genin of Konoha got it as bad as Hinata.

It was just that, even though she did not really know Neji particularly, he was their cousin. And it was generally something in his attitude towards Hinata that she found troubling, despite all of that blabbing about shinobi and normality. Not when her sister came later than three weeks after (and seemed alright) and simply made her shudder when, passing along the hallways, she heard Hinata starting to cough at once. And not the beginning of the coughing startled her, but that it went on and seemed to not come to an end. She had no idea how much it lasted, but she stood there, telling herself constantly that if it would last just a bit longer, she'd walk in or at least found someone to help, fast. But the coughing stopped, in the end, and she walked away fast, as if afraid the coughing would start again.

The second event was the Chuunin exam. Her fathers had her sit next to him and watch the battles. And she heard a story she first doubted to be true. She asked her father if it was true, but he did not answer her and just continued looking at her cousin. She had never seen such a point of view of their family rules. But, that day, things started to slowly reveal themselves in another light.


By the time she graduated school, at ten, things started to get even more serious in her preparation. Now, she had even a lot more things to learn, a lot of legal matter, family seals and regulations, constantly sit down and scan different type of documents, more than fifty pages long documents she was supposed to assimilate after one reading, which was simply impossible. So, at night, she'd sneak and take them for a second, third, fourth reading, staying long hours, at night, with her back arched, her head bowed to read, sentence by complicated sentence.

She had a lot of lessons time with her grandfather now and, it seemed to her, he was watching her even more closely now.

She became Chuunin at twelve (only because the other members of her team weren't yet ready for an exam in their first Genin year) and a Jounin shortly after. By fourteen, she had a lot of missions, a lot of work and little did she know that it would get harder to be Hyuuga Hanabi pretty soon.


She tried to gather her thoughts and make out the events that led to her lying on a bed, feeling so powerless. She doubted she could lift a finger if she tried. She was sure she was not wounded. But she was simply exhausted. From every point of view. Thinking, or at least trying, gave her a headache.

"I don't know which the circumstances were, but, for now, they both stay outside. Having suffered an infarct, she was not supposed to get through the least of shock so soon." Shock? Infarct?

Oh, the pain. The lack of air. Infarct. But was it a shock? She'd call it merely surprise, she though, as she remembered what was it - she saw him. She just didn't expect to see him again. Well, that is much to say... He'd have eventually got to her somehow, she supposed. But maybe just enough time could have passed, to make it possible for her to... Forgetting him was stupid to ask from herself, but at least get a bit of... indifference? If that was possible?


"Boys, boys, don't bother anymore. She thinks herself too good for anybody!"

Hanabi was not preoccupied by boys and, really, she couldn't stand most of them. But she did feel the characteristic pride as, when passing by, she heard their whistles, cheers or them calling her name. She found all these disgusting, but, at the same time, it fed her feminine ego. But the proper idea of relationships and crushes had never even crossed her mind - no worth to even mention such.

So she didn't even have the knowledge to put her defenses up when someone like Sarutobi Konohamaru came her way. Not that she knew he would be 'that boy' at the time, not just a little hint. Of course, as in any other girl's case, she saw him as 'different from any other'. Not that Konohamaru wasn't a very 'just as one gentleman should be', not that he was ugly, or disrespectful, or bad-mannered. But love always emphasizes all the good traits in one. The thought of them makes you dizzy and has you dreaming. And she was caught. She did not know that for long. And she told herself it was nothing bad in befriending someone like him. He was really nice. He was funny. Sometimes unpredictable. Always interesting. Not at all anywhere near perfect, but perfect for her.

At first, she'd just meet him by chance. And then she'd make all the possible to meet him... until the days she, at her own will, stopped seeing him at all.


The day Hanabi started to think that maybe her thoughts were not only of mere friendship for Konohamaru was the day just the idea of a possible marriage between her and her cousin, Neji, was mentioned. A cold chill ran down her spine, not because she really had anything about marrying someone like Neji, but because it had never crossed her mind, this 'marriage' part, not marriage as a leader's responsibility of bringing heirs, not marriage itself.

And when it was brought up as a real possibility, she could breathe out relieved, as Neji already had other plans. But, from then on, she had it set in her mind, that it was not an everlasting escape. The time would come when there would be no other choice than to follow rules and tradition, keep the heirs as part of the Hyuuga family - marry a Hyuuga. And it wouldn't have been such a big deal, if thing hadn't looked brighter on the other side. If she hadn't start to link 'marriage' to that feeling of belonging. Of easiness of sharing hardship. And Konohamaru got to be the object of such thoughts.

And in such times, her thoughts got back to Neji's story and freedom. What was freedom? And that was not a rhetorical question. She really wanted to know the answer.

But further events, all unrelated to marriage, got her doubting even more that the boundaries of her own freedom were too far from reach.


A/N: Well, the story might have a couple chapters more than I initially predicted, but that's it...