Hyūga Hinata is happy. She is. She has everything she once hoped for - two children to lavish the love that she has never known, at least until the later stages of her life, a caring husband - someone she has spent her whole life loving and admiring from afar - loyal friends that she can count on, ones that would not turn her away if she was weak or useless.
But she is plagued with the reminder of what got her here, what allowed her to live her dreams. How many people died to achieve what she wished for?
She will never know.
All she knows that there is an emptiness in the air, there are shadows curling themselves into the cracks that slither across her mind, that there will always be regret swirling in the deepest recesses of the survivors. The ones that lived.
Hinata has never been an angry person. She is controlled, and perhaps she loves too much but that is okay, because love is supposed to be the final answer to every question in the world and love is supposed to make people forgive each other and it is supposed to be the final ending to a fairytale.
Love is supposed to make people happy and it is not supposed to hurt because love is all that Hinata has ever hoped for in her wretched life before Naruto and Neji and her and Shino and Kiba and Sakura and Ino - but sometimes - and goddamnit-
Love hurts so much.
Hinata is not angry, she is not angry when Naruto misses Himawari's birthday and she finds him weeping over an album of dusty memories. She is not angry when he is in the Hokage's office for a whole night even though she knows full well that he is done with his paperwork and she is not angry when he stumbles back home at the crack of dawn with eyes that are found on corpses and not people that are alive.
She can see the look of pity that Shikamaru gives her after Naruto has not gone home again and she wants to scream that no, she is not angry at all and she doesn't need his pity!
But Hinata is a controlled person and she does not yell at Shikamaru and she smiles briefly at Naruto's solemn form before leaving the office and starts the day by waking Boruto up for his Academy class.
And Hinata knows that she is not the only one because she sees that Temari and Sakura have shadows carved into their bodies and whenever they look at their husbands they reach into their pockets and bring out photos of days that have long faded into ash - and maybe it's cowardly and something that someone who isn't a true friend would do - but Hinata feels relieved that they are going through the same thing.
She wonders what that makes her. Perhaps someone that is not-a-friend, because she has never learned how to be a friend. Hinata doesn't know the proportion that dictates how much friends give and take - she doesn't know how much she needs to give before it's okay for her to take.
But she tries her best and maybe that's enough.
Sometimes Naruto comes back home early and everything seems okay because he's finally back to normal - back to the lovable idiot that Hinata has always loved - even from her earliest days - and he spends time with Boruto and Himawari, telling them stories about Jiriya-sensei or Ero-sennin, as he likes to put it. Naruto tells them about Neji, their uncle, and their rapt expressions delight Hinata because this is what she has always wanted.
Naruto spins them stories in that sheepish way of his and it is only when his two children are in bed that he drops the carefree mask that he has always put on.
Hinata has never been stupid - far from it, actually. She passed the written chunin exam portion without cheating, something not many of their fellow Genin could hope to say, with the notable exception of Sakura, and if Shikamaru had actually applied himself, him as well.
So she realizes that Naruto always avoids talking about her, when he talks his head off about how Ino once sprinkled a whole bouquet of roses onto Sasuke's head ; how Sai proclaimed that Naruto had balls how Kiba wanted a National Dog Day ; how Shino infested his entire apartment with his bugs because Naruto had 'insulted' him...
It's not surprising, at least, it shouldn't be, yet Hinata still feels some part of her ache at the thought. She's not angry, she really isn't because in spite of everything that has happened, she has always loved her twin sister, in life or in death.
Sometimes Naruto comes back home and he is drowned in sorrow. He stumbles around as if the house that they live in has become a stranger, and when he sees her he calls her by a different name.
Even then, Hinata is not angry, she is just tired, she is so, so tired.
Hinata is not blind either - she can see the looks that people give her - chunin and jonin that she once battled with stare at her sympathetically, and when Kurenai-sensei asks Hinata if Naruto even loves her, she doesn't even know anymore.
She doesn't know if Naruto is in love with the ghost of his first love that is shown so clearly amongst Hinata's face - she doesn't know if Naruto sees her set of pale lavender eyes when he looks at Hinata - she doesn't even know if he pretends that the girl that he married is not Hinata but her!
Kurenai-sensei asks if Hinata is truly happy with the boy that she thinks she loves, and Hinata cannot reply. But she cannot leave Naruto either, because she loves Naruto, and she will not risk her children, even if she has to stay in this marriage that she might hate.
But Hinata remembers all the reasons why she married Naruto in the first place and her heart hardens again - she would not have married him if he hadn't loved her because she has seen what a loveless marriage does to people. She has seen how her own mother and father grow further and further away - and how her father positively despised her because he did not love Hinata's mother.
Hinata would never have done that to her precious children, who deserve the best that this world has to offer.
So when people ask her, why do you stay with a man that can forget his first love, Hinata says that it is because Naruto tries.
She knows full well that Naruto may never escape the love that he once held - still holds - for her own twin sister - but maybe that is okay.
Perhaps Naruto is not the fairytale ending that she once dreamed of - he isn't the prince that rescued her from a broken tower, isn't the white knight that promised to love her and only her - but he is Naruto all the same.
It is how Naruto fashions a lopsided lantern that he engraves with kanji during late August and smiles at her - perhaps sadly, but a smile nonetheless - and allows Hinata to be the one who sets afloat her dead twin sister's tribute.
It is how Naruto brings her sunflowers during her birthday because he says that they remind him of Hinata's love - warm and comforting, allowing him to smile when days are hard.
It is how Naruto takes her to eat zenzai every evening when he has time because he remembers that that is one of Hinata's favorite foods - and because Hinata was not allowed to eat it when she still lived in the Hyūga compound - he makes it up to her by ordering as many as she wants.
It is how Naruto spends days making her a scrapbook so that 'she will never forget how many people care for her, how much Naruto cares for her.'
It is the little things that makes Hinata fall in love with Naruto all over again.
[A/N]: so this is my take on Hinata's marriage with Naruto if Naruto had been in love with Hinata's twin. it's going to be a one-shot book about this twin sister and how her friends deal with her loss.
disclaimer: i do not own naruto or any of it's characters, this is for entertainment purposes only.