[Fic] "Prison Keys" -- Naruto

[edenfalling]

This is a little Hanabi and Hinata story, written during my lunch break. Introspective, dark, and mostly plotless. (The revised and improved ff.net version is here.)

ETA, 4/19/08: riko remixed this story for Remix_Redux VI: Prison Keys (And of Course There Is No Key). If you're wondering about Hinata's side of the story, go read it -- it's brilliant!

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Prison Keys
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Hanabi was nine years old before she realized she hated her sister.

Hinata was the one who sang lullabyes at night and smoothed healing creams over the cuts and bruises Father's training left on Hanabi's body. Hinata was the one who tugged quietly on Hanabi's sleeve and led her little sister out into the gardens to watch a butterfly struggle out from its chrysalis. Hinata was the one who stammered and trembled and drew all of Father's anger like a lightning rod, leaving Hanabi free to bask in his chilly approval.

And Hinata was the one who decided Hanabi's fate for her. Hinata was the one who escaped from the iron way of the Hyuuga and left Hanabi behind -- her quiet attempts to reach back across the gap did nothing but show Hanabi everything she could never have. Because Hanabi was the heir-apparent.

By the time Hanabi realized her life was frozen in stone, she wasn't even sure she'd change things if she had a choice. But she wanted that choice. She wanted control, if not of her own life, then of others' lives.

She killed her first enemy when she was thirteen, and she watched the boy with the Byakugan as he gurgled and drowned in his own blood, his breath hissing and bubbling as his lungs collapsed and his heart shut down. His chakra writhed wildly through his inner coils, pulsed, faded, and died. Tiny wisps seeped out with his last breath, thinned, and vanished in the warm summer air.

Hanabi wondered if she could escape her life like that final breath.

The next time she killed, she cut the woman's throat after her palms struck chest, abdomen, and neck. Chakra strands coiled from the wound and wove into patterns, riding on invisible winds, until life left the woman's body. Their dance was beautiful.

Chakra ran like water through the human body, kept under pressure like water in a sealed pot. When Hanabi cracked the lid, steam coiled upward. When Hanabi cut the skin, chakra bled out.

She could see enough to know that killing tended to bother people, and to wonder why she felt nothing but curiosity. Pressure, she decided. She kept herself under pressure and nothing could escape. She wondered what would happen if she ever lifted the lid off her emotions. What would bleed out? What patterns would she make?

Hanabi joined the Anbu assassination squad. Father objected, but by then Hinata had been reinstated as heir-apparent, was safely ensconced in the hospital as a medic-nin, and was heavily pregnant with cousin Neji's child. Hinata reminded Father of this, and Hanabi eventually got her way.

Hinata was still deciding Hanabi's fate for her. Hanabi didn't hate her anymore -- she was sealed too tightly to hate anything -- but she thought the tingling bubbles running through her veins would probably weave into anger if she let them out.

Hanabi liked assassination. She killed, and she let chakra and blood boil outward and scream her emotions for her. As long as she opened others, she could keep herself sealed. She could keep herself away from Konoha and from Hinata's knowing eyes.

"If a wound isn't lanced, eventually it poisons the whole body," Hinata said one evening when she met Hanabi in the gardens. She rocked her baby back and forth, back and forth, while Hanabi closed her eyes and stared through the back of her head at a spider weaving its net.

Hanabi shrugged. She didn't need Hinata to heal her. She didn't need her sister to decide her fate again.

Hanabi was a ninja. She opened people to death. Someday she'd miss her strike, and somebody would open her.

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Loosely inspired by the 6/20/2005 15minuteficlets word #111: deaf

Comments

[redwolfoz.livejournal.com]

Nice work comparing the sisters and their fates.

[edenfalling]

Thanks! One thing I like about Naruto is that it really does have the stereotypical "cast of thousands," and many of them do get sketched just clearly enough that there's food for a lot of interesting character extrapolation.

[permetaform]

lkdsfjhlkhsdf1!!

whoa.

[edenfalling]

Heh. In the back of everyone's mind, there be Dark Places. Sometimes I go down there and fish around. :-)