This is set in the same AU-verse as The Path She Chose.

I own nothing.

Hanabi had never been to war, but she had attended plenty of funerals in her time. Her mother's, though she was too young to remember it—Hinata always told her that it had been sunny, that their father had cried, though Hanabi had a hard time believing her sister on the latter score (Their father was a hard man, surely too hard for such displays). When members of the Hyuuga clan died, the whole clan turned out to send them to the afterlife, and when the Sandaime died, every shinobi in the village did the same.

To be honest, Hanabi hated funerals. Maybe the pomp of them was supposed to honor the dead, but dead was dead and it wasn't like elaborate funeral customs served anyone but the living. The dead weren't around to appreciate it anymore. All funerals seemed like to Hanabi was a way to romanticize death—she took no comfort from them.

Her father being dead was already unreal enough a concept for Hanabi; the bizarreness of a funeral only added to it. After the close of the war, Hinata had been rushed back to Konoha with their father's remains far ahead of the rest of the forces deployed to the front, and Hiashi's ashes (cremated on the field as all shinobi were during wartimes) were given a quick burial long before the actual wake or funeral. That wasn't how the old morbid ritual worked, was it?

When Hinata's teammates, old sensei and their families, when Hanabi's own genin teammates, sensei and their families gave their condolences at the wake, it did not feel real. When Hanabi, Hinata and Neji sat the long vigil at the wake, it didn't feel real; the only way her mind could parse it was as a test of endurance, with falling asleep being what would get her a failing mark. When the Hyuuga clan as a whole gathered by Hyuuga Hiashi's graveside to commemorate him, it did not feel real. Not even when her mother's kin came down from the Daimyo's court to console them did Hanabi think of her father's death as something that had actually happened. It always seemed to her that he was just in the next room over, or in the hall out of sight, and that speaking of him as though he was dead would get her a sharp glare and a round of laps on the training field.

Only when, a few days shy of her seventeenth birthday, Hinata was formally installed as the new head of the Hyuuga clan, was Hanabi finally able to feel as though her father was dead.

After all, that was what he had trained them to care about, wasn't it? Hanabi couldn't even remember the first time she and Hinata had been pitted against each other by their father, it had been so long ago, and happened so many times since then. Sparring was the main way in which the sisters interacted with each other, until the fateful day when Hanabi finally beat Hinata in a sparring match. Hinata's victories had been getting harder and harder-won for months—Hanabi was a natural at sparring, whereas her sister (at least at the time) was decidedly not. Both of them fought just as hard as it ever was, but it was already becoming clear that Hanabi eclipsed Hinata in terms of battle prowess, and this proved.

When Hanabi won a sparring match for the first time, Hiashi all but disowned his older daughter on the spot and handed her off to Kurenai. Hanabi had won a sparring match against her sister for the first time, but she could feel no triumph. Only a strong sense of bitterness roiling in her stomach as, in one stroke, Hinata was stripped of her title as heiress in favor of Hanabi, and Hinata walked out of the dojo the disgraced daughter of the Main Branch. Not barred from the Hyuuga compound, maybe, but Hinata had moved in with her sensei not long after that and hadn't returned for months.

"You must be strong to head the Hyuuga, Hanabi," her father had always said to her. "You must be strong enough to subdue all who would oppose you. If Hinata is not capable of that much, then she has no right to be the Head."

Their father's assessment of Hinata had never sat entirely well with Hanabi. As far as Hanabi was concerned, luck trumped strength any day—you could be strong as the Sage of Six Paths himself, but if your opponent got a lucky shot in, you'd be just as beaten (Or just as dead, for that matter). How could Hiashi know that Hanabi's triumphing over Hinata had been due to strength, and not to luck? He could he know that Hinata was weak and not simply unlucky? That Hanabi was strong and not simply lucky? Hanabi never challenged him on this verbally, though sometimes she wished she had. At the time, she had been too fixated on the idea of properly respecting her elders to challenge their judgment.

But something must have changed, at least for Hiashi and Hinata, because the latter had been reinstated as the heiress about a year ago. Hanabi didn't know whether her father had finally acknowledged the influence of luck on their lives or if he had discerned a sort of strength in Hinata that had nothing to do with battle prowess. Maybe it had something to do with Hinata's ability to turning reading people into a weapon all its own—the few times the sisters had ever fought, Hinata usually ended the fight with such an incisive remark (couched by her soft voice and non-confrontational tone) that Hanabi was left speechless. Hanabi could see how that might be considered a weapon of strength.

It hadn't mattered so much to Hanabi at the time; she was thoroughly occupied by missions and training with her genin cell. It seemed to her that her father would live for decades more, and it wasn't so difficult to accept Hinata as reinstated heiress when, up until Hanabi had beat her at sparring that day, she'd had it beaten into her head that it was her sister who would inherit, not her. Now, though…

Now, their father was dead and Hinata was head of the Hyuuga clan. Hinata was pressing for change among their people, and Hanabi honestly wasn't sure her sister was strong enough to see it through to the end. Hinata had grown into someone resolute under pressure, certainly, but Hanabi was convinced that some of the elders just lived to break people's spirits. They were all traditionalists without either desire or impetus to implement change, and it wasn't like Hinata really had their respect or support. The only reason she'd been reinstated as the heiress at all was because the naming of the heir was the right of the head, with the elders unable to veto his decision.

Alone, Hinata would probably stand strong for a few months. Maybe a year. But they would wear her down. Given enough time, Hinata would be browbeaten into silence and acceptance, forced to relinquish any dreams of reform.

So Hanabi would stand beside her sister, support her in any way she could. If there was anything she had learned from her time as a shinobi, it was that two were stronger together than they were apart.

-0-0-0-

Neji hadn't been thinking of Main Family versus Branch Family when he jumped to shield Hinata from that attack. He hadn't been thinking of the way his father had died, as a sacrificial lamb for the Main Family. It wasn't like the thought 'History repeats itself' ran through his mind or anything like that. Hinata ran forward to shield Naruto from the attack hurtling towards him. A quick look with the Byakugan revealed that Hinata had no chakra left with which to defend herself, and she must have known that herself, if she did nothing but use her own body as a shield. If she was struck, she would die.

Neji's relationship with Hinata had not always been sanguine. Honestly, it had not been sanguine at all until a few short years ago. Neji would willingly admit that this had been mostly his own fault, though it wasn't like he hadn't had his reasons (And he would never understand why Hiashi had waited so long to explain the exact circumstances behind his father's death). But to the surprise of anyone who knew Neji (including Neji himself), the two of them had reconciled, and Neji was willing to admit that he'd been wrong about Hinata. It might have been easy to write her off as such, but she was not the pampered, complacent daughter of the Main House he had thought her to be.

What had led him to jump between Hinata and the death blow was the desire to protect her, his family member and his friend. It was the same as he would have done for any teammate (even Lee, annoying as he could be), any friend, any comrade who stood beside him in battle. For those who would lay down their lives for him, he could give no less.

He was going to die. It was not a thought accompanied by panic, or bitterness. It was what any Konoha shinobi hoped for, the chance to die on his feet protecting his comrades. But the death blow never arrived. From behind him there came a terrible squelching noise; blood splattered on his back, and Hinata's mouth fell open in a silent scream, her eyes wide with horror.

His uncle had taken the blow instead.

"Why?" Neji's hands shook as he lowered Hiashi to the ground. The coppery reek of blood filled his nostrils; he could barely breath. "The Main Family—"

"Neji…" Hiashi's voice was faint, but it carried still the stern tone that Neji could never help but hearken to. "Long ago, your father was sacrificed to preserve my life. 'It is destiny,' they said. You… will not die that way, a slave to the Main Family. No one will again."

Even months later, Neji couldn't get those words out of his head. He had put aside any animosity he held towards Hinata personally, but his grudge towards the Main House still remained. For centuries, any Hyuuga child unlucky enough to be born into the Branch Family was branded with the Cursed Seal of the Hyuuga clan. It was the Seal that marked a member of the Branch Family as a servant, as a second-class citizen, as a sacrificial lamb for the Hyuuga clan, if it should come to that. Bound to obey, bound to serve, bound to die. Used and abused; discarded and forgotten. What forgiveness could there be for that?

No matter what anyone else said, Neji would have done everything he could to have the use of the Seal abolished. That was what he had wanted, even when he'd believed death for the sake of the Main Family to be his only destiny—for this injustice to be overturned. To change the fate of the Branch Family, Neji would have stood alone against the entire world.

He wasn't alone, though, and he would stand with Hinata as an equal, rather than beneath her as a servant.

It was a start.

-0-0-0-

Hinata liked graveyards. They were quiet, and peaceful, and the solemnity of the headstones was such that no one who sought her out would dare disrespect them by showing aggression or disharmony. At least here, she could think and plan in peace.

Hinata looked down at her father's gravestone, and sighed. He had been buried next to her mother, as specified in his will—it might have been a long time ago, but Hinata still remembered how hard her father had fought to have her buried in Konoha rather than north at the Daimyo's court; it seemed only fitting that his request be granted. She'd bought flowers from the Yamanaka Flower Shop, now run by Ino and her aunt (And apparently Ino and Shikamaru would be stopping by their own fathers' graves later today with their mothers and Choji and his parents—Ino remarked in a falsely cheerful voice that Hinata and Hanabi could come with them on other days if they wanted to). Sunflowers for her father and red spider lilies for her mother (red spider lilies being the symbol of her mother's clan), Hinata thought they went well together, though she was no expert at flower arrangement.

She reached forward and traced the names carved in the stone. Hyuuga Hiashi, January 8, 2526—October 7, 2571 AGB. Hyuuga Akahana, June 29, 2527—April 3, 2562 AGB. Hinata frowned pensively, brushing a lock of hair out of her face. She'd never expected things to be like this.

When she was small, Hinata idolized her mother. Akahana was not a shinobi, not even from Konoha—she had come from the Daimyo's court as the bride of a marriage alliance between her clan and that of the Hyuuga. She was not trained for war as a kunoichi nor to work as a civilian woman of Konoha, but rather in a court lady's graces. Hinata had not learned many of those graces of hers, and she knew that she would have stood out at the Daimyo's court like a sore thumb, but she had learned a few things from her mother, when she still had her.

From Akahana, Hinata had learned how to be quiet, and watchful, and wait. Maybe she'd done things with those abilities that her mother hadn't intended, in the last few years, used her quietness to hide the resentment she felt over the way she was treated by her clan. Though Hinata had known well enough that her mother would never have wanted her to harbor bitterness against her family, known it well enough that it made her feel guilty whenever she thought of her, Hinata wasn't sure if she would ever let go of that resentment of hers, not really.

She'd learned also from Akahana how to be gentle. But her father, though he might have appreciated gentleness in his court-born, civilian wife, he neither appreciated nor valued gentleness in his heir.

Hinata had never been enough for her father. She knew that. Hyuuga Hiashi was a man who desired only an heir as strong as he was, and he had tried to make her into such with constant training sessions and regular sparring against opponents her age to get an idea early on of what a fight against someone roughly her size would be like. As soon as she was old enough to read, Hinata was assigned books on military strategy and the history of warfare, on different types of weaponry and what was well-suited to whom, on one-on-one battle tactics, on the subterfuge and stealth necessary for being a shinobi. The tests her father held over these books were far more rigorous than anything Hinata encountered in the Academy, and the penalty for failure was far worse than a failing grade.

In retrospect, Hinata supposed she should have known that her father and the elders were considering having her replaced as the heiress when the former started pitting her and her sister against each other. The elders had been casting disapproving glares on what they considered her lack of satisfactory progress for a while at that point, and meanwhile had been lauding Hanabi's prodigious talent at taijutsu and Gentle Fist. No one in the Hyuuga clan valued weakness.

She had lost a sparring match with her own much-younger sister. She had been downgraded in favor of a seven-year-old. What could be more pathetic than that?

Her father… made her feel weak. He made her feel worthless. Like someone who could never stand on her own, someone who could never a shadow of the light he cast behind. That Hinata was still allowed to bear the name 'Hyuuga' after being cast aside as the heiress only added insult to injury. She was still a daughter of the Main Family, her forehead unbranded, but everyone could see her disgrace. Indeed, they stared right through her, except for Neji, who glared. Even when Hinata returned to the compound after her first time at the Chunin Exams, even when she thought she could bear it with equanimity, it still stung to be seen only as the disgraced daughter of the Main Family by her kinsmen. She never felt so small or insignificant as she did when faced with their scorn.

But Hinata persevered. She still trained. She still fought. She still went on missions with her teammates. She struggled, but she would not give in (Though Hinata might have resolved to stop chasing after Naruto, she had always admired his perseverance, and had vowed to herself that she would never stop following his example in that).

Something Hinata never expected was for her father to, without warning, without any prior consultation, reinstate her as the heiress. He spoke of the assessments he had made of her progress since her genin days, how he had reassessed her strength and decided that she was perhaps fit to lead the Hyuuga clan after all—"Though you will still have to assign someone to act in your place on the field in times of war."

He said that he had been mistaken, before. No explanation but that. No apology.

Hinata smiled, nodded, said she understood, and bit back all the bitterness that longed to roar up into words. She never demanded that he apologize to her or acknowledge that he had hurt her, that he had been hurting her all these years. She had been made to feel weak, worthless. She and Hanabi had been pitted against each other, all their value in the eyes of their kinsmen hinging on who would prevail over the other in a sparring match. Hiashi had concealed the truth behind his brother's death, and as a result of that Hinata had been cost a good relationship with Neji for much of both their lives.

Hinata had never said a word.

And now her father was dead, never to hear those words.

Well, it seemed to her that the practices of the Hyuuga clan did nothing but breed the sort of resentment that she had felt. The lot of the Branch Family especially was an unkind one, the Cursed Seal used to make servants and shields out of them, activated so that the Main Family did not have to listen to their grievances. And anyone who was not strong in the ways the Hyuuga acknowledged strength would be looked-down upon as she was, pushed to the side and forgotten.

But there was more than one kind of strength in the world, and as far as Hinata was concerned, a leader unwilling to countenance the words of their followers, even their criticism was no leader at all. Certainly, a leader who used their people as shields and sacrificial lambs was no leader at all.

I will make the Hyuuga clan a clan worth being born into.

Hinata walked away, into the uncertain future.