Sweet Dispositions I: Kumogakure | Sasuhina

Unforeseen

Sweet Dispositions

-Chapter 44-
Unforeseen

The first time Hinata saw Hanabi, her father had watched her with a mystified expression. Ordinarily, children would rush up to their siblings with reckless abandon, endless happiness and curiosity. Hinata wasn't sure of what to do, she hid behind the folds of her father's haori and clutched them tightly.

Hinata hadn't watched her with enchantment like the millions of women cooing and the men saying Hanabi was going to grow up to do marvelous things.

Hinata was completely horrified, he saw it on her trembling lips as she held onto his robes.

He tried to push her away gently, goading her to try and greet her barely month-old sibling. No matter what he did or said, she would tremble slightly with her half-lidded eyes, shaking her head.

His expression was one of absolute bewilderment. "Why must you be afraid of every little thing Hinata?" Hiashi demanded in a low tone.

She jumped at his resentful tone and didn't respond, instead just burying her red face in the fabric.

"Anata, have peace," her mother would say.

Her father was the epitome of men being wretched for over-working and showing small amounts of affection.

Her laugh was like wind chimes and her dulcet voice was almost as distracting as her velvety eyelashes. Hinata thought the hawking, scraping sound her mother's throat made didn't belong to her. It was supposed to be a laugh...

"How can I have peace, my great love, when you are ever so frail?" he asked. His expression mirrored his desperate tone. Both were pleading.

"Anata, there is nothing amiss with me," Hisana said softly. She always said lies softly.

Hinata wasn't sure of what amiss meant but she knew it wasn't true.

The recent weight loss of hers wasn't un-dramatic but it was discerned. The scent of death wafted off from her mother's skin like perfume from a jasmine flower. She looked ghastly. Her cheeks were hollow and her white eyes were fishbowl eyes. She always commemorated her mother as the poster-woman for appeal. She had an exquisite face and a soft smile that highlighted her sherbert-sweet lips.

Usually, Hinata's senses lived happily with her five-year-old self until she realized how ill her mother has gotten. Something in her stomach made her uneasy. It was a pit of despair. She knew her mother would die. Her mother's skin had been so pink, she peachy and now it's a lacking color of gray. In correlation with her mother's stomach deflating and her sibling being there, Hinata knew they were tied.

She couldn't know whether or not to be happy for the arrival of her new sibling.

Hisana died two weeks later.

-x-

One day, when Hanabi was seven and Hinata was eleven, it was a glorious day in May. Cherry blossom trees were tragically beautiful, Hyuuga men and women allowed their hair to flow freely in the breezy weather and everyone was outside.

The dry sun was wonderful but it burned Hinata. Hiashi decided to include Hinata in Hanabi's rigorous training exercises. He habitually left her to her own devices. Unless he wanted to make an example of her or even ridicule her, that was when they made contact.

This sudden connection wasn't out of the goodness of his heart, the yearning of a father for the attention of a daughter or simply because he wanted company. She was a punching bag.