Downfall

GALLANT

SHE mostly kept to herself. Hinata's best asset was her ability to blend in with the crowd and say nothing at all. At aged ten, she didn't really feel the need to speak up. She wasn't like those other people who couldn't hold their tongue, had the unwavering strength to voice their opinions and cared little of the reactions they received.

The conversations she had inside her own head with her own mental and the expressionless thoughtful look on her face was often mistaken for the meekness of a tiny mouse and a shyness unmatched. But Hinata only felt she had nothing worth saying that she needed to bother herself with.

Why did she have to point out obvious things when she knew everybody was thinking the same thing? And it wasn't out of fear for how people might view her, nor was it because she simply held an uncontrollable stutter that would ruin her good Hyuga name. Because Hinata wasn't meek and she didn't cower from the world's wrath.

She didn't find it scary how heavy the word "shinobi" felt and the darker meaning to it. She understood the consequences and conviction and the weight of the title she, and all these other children, were working for – what she was truly born for, what she was meant to inherit.

She wasn't stupid. Hinata understood much and with a clarity that could be of envy.

But she supposed her niisan was correct to assume she was just slow. She moved too slowly and she thought too slowly and she spoke too slowly. She was below average in terms of being the heir to a prestigious household as infamous as theirs, and she had accepted it.

Just like how she'd accepted she would never be the radiant glow that shaped the form of Uzumaki Naruto. Just like how she'd accepted that she might fail. (And a small voice inside asked – but haven't you already?)

It wasn't just of a heir to be picked on. Her best asset yet her worst enemy succeeded her in turning her pride into a sense of foolishness – Hinata was weak.

Cornered in the playground, ogled at like a goldfish in a tiny bowl, teased and sneered at. The teachers turned a blind eye like they always did – Hyuga can take care of themselves, she assumed they thought. Or better yet – maybe this is the reality she needs. Because her clansmen have an awfully pompous attitude and she knew it.

"You probably think you're above us. Don't you?"

She was leaning up against the fence, back pressed flush against the cold wood, and her hands were behind her back as her eyes flit from the trio who had trapped her like three wolves against a sheep. The sky was a disgusting murky grey and winter time in Konoha wasn't kind, however it wasn't cold enough yet where snow had clustered their playground.

Each breath she took, Hinata saw it exhale in front of her in a pool of white before it quickly faded.

She wasn't scared. What tormented her in the school fields was nothing in comparison to the demon lurking in her own home, her sanctuary.

She tilted her head in response and they scoffed at her, eyeing her in disgust. Other than her niisan who was in the year above, she was the only Hyuga in the school.

She was smaller than everyone else too, looking a little too thin and too fragile to truly be a successor of a great clan. She wondered if that was perhaps a reason she often got ganged up on when the teachers weren't looking, and if that were the reason teachers didn't look in the first place.

Her slow blink must have given them the idea that she didn't understand just what they were saying.

"Whatever. Stupid heiress."

In times like these, Hinata never said anything. She didn't stick up for herself or tell them they were wrong, because she knew that they knew they were. Hinata didn't do anything.