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The first few weeks were rough. Her body wasn't ready. Her center of balance was off, her depth perception made strikes clumsy. But Hinata didn't cry. She didn't complain. Every time she fell, she got up again.
Neji never praised her. But after one particularly long session, he left a small salve jar at her door. No note. Just the medicine. That was enough.
Hinata had never felt more seen.
One Month passed. Hinata's coordination improved. She began to understand the flow of chakra again. Her Byakugan wasn't as strong on one side, but her sense of presence was sharper now. She didn't rely on sight. She began noticing intentions, pressure, the weight of footsteps.
The elders still whispered, but now it was different.
"She's adapting."
"Is this... a recovery?"
"She's more composed than expected."
But the wound was still there.
Hinata still wandered at night. Still found herself at her father's grave. One night, she sat cross-legged and pressed her palm to the stone.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "But I'll make this count."
She imagined the Kumo jounin's hand around her throat. Her father's voice trembling. The silence of the elders. Neji's distant gaze.
"You protected me. Now I'll protect everyone."
The wind blew gently. Cherry blossoms scattered. Her hair lifted in the breeze.
Hinata stood. Back straight.
From then on, she wasn't the same girl.
She was still quiet, but it wasn't emptiness. It was focus. She trained harder. Her movements became graceful, more fluid. She asked questions. She listened to the politics—learned about the caged bird seal, about the power void in the clan.
She kept her distance from the elders. But she watched them. Closely.
She began writing. In secret journals. Notes about the clan. Who said what. How often. What their tones meant. She was building a map—of power, of fear, of future plans.
One day, her mother found one of the notebooks.
"What is this, Hinata?"
Hinata looked up slowly. For the first time in months, her voice was firm.
"I'm learning how to protect the Hyuga."
Her mother didn't reply.
Hinata Hyuga was no longer the girl who cried.
She was the one who watched.
The one who remembered.
A piece of her had shattered that night—ripped apart like her Byakugan—but what remained was reforging into something new. Not out of vengeance. Not out of rage. But out of necessity. Survival. Resolve.
Her training with Neji continued. Silent, brutal, unrelenting.
He never went easy on her. And she never asked him to.
One afternoon, she took a strike to the ribs that dropped her to her knees. Blood welled at the edge of her lip. But Hinata pushed herself up with trembling arms, her eye burning with the beginnings of something fierce.
"I'm not finished."
Neji stopped acting infront of hinata, started using his potential. Hinata already got that feeling so she didn't mind. Neji paused, his stance unmoved, but there was the smallest twitch in his brow—acknowledgment. Maybe even respect.
And with every bruise, every fall, every quiet moment with her breath ragged and her hands scraped raw—Hinata grew.
She wasn't the strongest. She wasn't the fastest. She wasn't the loudest.
But she was becoming unbreakable.
Back within the clan, the political gears continued to turn. The elders grew impatient. The village council had begun pressing them for stability. Kumo had not retaliated openly, but the tension had not eased. Whispers of reparations, of trust shattered between great clans, still hung in the air.
And now, with no clear heir of Hiashi's strength, they considered more desperate measures. Some spoke again of dividing leadership. Others of forging external alliances through marriage. And always—always—Hizashi hovered at the edge of their discussions.
They watched Hinata too. Carefully. Measuring.
They thought she didn't see. But she did.
She saw everything now—not with the clarity of two Byakugan, but with something deeper. Intuition. Insight. The eye she'd lost had forced her to rely on more than vision.
One night, as she sat alone in the clan archive hall, poring over old scrolls her father once read—strategies, clan laws, chakra theory—Neji approached and knelt beside her.
"You should rest."
Hinata didn't look up. "I can't afford to."
Neji was silent for a moment. Then he set a folded cloth beside her. Inside was a pressed blossom—the kind their mother used to preserve.
"You're not weak, Hinata."
Her breath hitched faintly. That was the first time he had said her name with softness in years.
"You're not like before," he continued, standing. "That frightens them more than your weakness ever did."
When she turned to look at him, the truth in his gaze was steady, calm.
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