Hinata trained every day. She started in the morning; early, when the sun was just peeking out from behind the horizon, she would be in the courtyard, going through her katas silently so as not to wake Father.
Father, too, got up early but not as early as she did. Father, too, practiced his katas but alone in his room. No one was allowed to see him do anything as lowly as training.
After breakfast Hanabi usually joined Hinata. Then they stood side by side, striking the training dummies again and again, and Father would stand behind them, arms folded, watching, judging.
In her father's presence, Hinata could feel her heart flutter, always. Weakness – and she knew about it, in hushed conversations she tried not to overhear that word, weak, often trailed her name like a shadow – weakness, which she'd inherited from her mother, or so she'd heard, soared when he was near.
She tried to think of it in those terms, weakness, a separate being, an enemy she could and would fight. Although, deep down, she knew of course that it was a part of her. That in a way, it was her.
She was weakness and she fought herself until her palms could not strike true any longer because they were slippery with blood.
In moments like that she would risk a glance over her shoulder, at Father's face, anxious to see his reaction, yearning for his approval, hoping—
And then she'd see, each time, that his stern gaze had already slid past her, that it had already settled on her younger sister, as if there was only one real girl there to begin with and she, the other one, was just a ghost, a memory of failure, soon to be forgotten.