"Stand up straight."
"Speak up."
"Look at me when I'm talking to you."
Of all the things her father ever said..."I love you" was never one of them.
She gets the call while she's in a meeting.
She doesn't recognize the number and is tempted to ignore it, but one too many instances with Naruto has taught her better than that. She politely excuses herself before answering.
There's faint static on the line and then a voice she hasn't heard in awhile. "Hinata."
Neji.
Immediately, there are a dozen questions trying to punch their way through her brain. Not the least of which is why it's Neji calling her because she hears from him maybe once or twice a year, and since it's not her birthday she's immediately concerned that something may have happened to his pregnant wife. She was due any day now, according to Hanabi.
"Your father's in the hospital." He tells her without preamble, derailing her concerns and bringing sudden static to her brain.
"Wh-what?" She sinks into her office chair, hating the way her knees tremble at the mere mention of the man.
"I don't know all of the details, but it's not good," he tells her.
"What...what happened?" she asks. She's still trying to process.
"Stroke." Neji continues in that same clipped and efficient tone he's had his whole life. "I can't get away. I need you to go and handle the situation."
She doesn't want to do that.
Not at all.
But Neji lives on the other side of the country and has a pregnant wife to care for.
Asking Hanabi is out of the question.
While Hanabi never suffered like Hinata did beneath their father's exacting standards, this wasn't something that Hinata was going to pawn off on her younger sibling.
"-Hinata?"
She realizes belatedly that Neji is still talking to her.
"I'm sorry, what?" she gives her head a little shake, trying to focus.
"You'll handle it?"
She really doesn't want to.
She bites her lip. There really is no one else.
She swallows against a dry throat. "Yeah...I'll handle it."
He rattles off the hospital and room number and before long Hinata is on her way across town, towards a man that she swore to cut out of her life forever.
He looks fragile.
Frail, even.
Laying there beneath the starch white hospital sheet, with IV lines in his arms and an oxygen hose in his nostrils and monitors recording his vitals.
Nothing like the monster in her memories, and yet she still hovers just inside the doorway with her purse clutched tight in hands that trembled, afraid to venture too close, lest she disturb the beast.
She doesn't want to be here.
She doesn't know why she is.
The doctor has already met with her-told her that he suffered a massive hemorrhagic stroke. His brain was damaged-the full extent, not yet known-but whatever the case, he was never going to make a full recovery.
Complications, she was told, could range from limited mobility to memory loss, to his being completely dependent on a home care nurse. That was assuming he survived these next few critical hours.
She waits for some sense of satisfaction to hit her-some righteous glee that the tormentor of her childhood lays before her broken...but all she can feel is the faint echoing sadness of a daughter that wanted her father's love.
In the bed Hiashi shifts, his sunken eyes blinking awake and Hinata feels her breath catch and tremble in her chest. He turns his head, ever so slightly, towards her. It takes him a moment to register her presence, but when he does he sighs out, "Hikari."
Her mother's name.
She shakes her head. "N-no," she tells him, taking a single step closer, a little more into the light. "It's Hinata."
He seems not to hear her.
"Hikari…" Only part of his face moves when he speaks. There's a slight slur on the word. His eyes close again and his monitor makes a high pitched whine.
She is quickly ushered from the room by people in blue and white scrubs. She hears orders being called out-phrases and medical jargon that she can't even begin to comprehend. Her father is wheeled from the room and taken into surgery.
Forty-seven minutes later, a moustached man in a blood stained surgical gown meets her in the waiting room and gives her his condolences.