Rewritten 7/15/08.

Rewritten again 11/24/09.

One

Faber Est Suae Quisque Fortunae

Hyuuga Hinata

1. Hyuuga Hinata was destined to become a queen.

As the eldest daughter of Hyuuga Hiashi, the leader of one of Konoha's most ancient and powerful noble families, it was her fate from the moment she was conceived to one day take control of the venerated house of Hyuuga. High hopes had been placed on her shoulders before they were even formed, expectations for a child who would one day grow up to be the greatest empress the Hyuuga had ever seen.

2. Fantasies, all of them.

Shy, timid, and meek, what was supposed to be the Hyuuga clan's strongest member ended up being the weakest. The signs were there early on—the way she would hide behind her father and cling tightly to his robes, the lack of words that came from her mouth, the distress she was in whenever she came across something foreign to her. Nothing about Hinata indicated she could one day run a clan or even become a decent kunoichi.

Oh, did Fate have a cruel sense of humor making her the Hyuuga crown princess.

3. No one was more disappointed in Hinata than her own father. For Hyuuga Hiashi, many of the tragedies and regrets he had suffered in his life were directly related to his daughter.

She was just three when the head ninja from Kumogakure came to Konoha to sign a peace treaty between Fire and Lightning. It was a ruse—what Lightning was really after was the secret behind the Hyuuga bloodline limit. As the Hyuuga slept one night, the Kumogakure ninja stole into the family compound and abducted Hinata. His attempt failed, however, as Hiashi detected foul intentions and woke up in time to catch and kill the man.

But politics is such a tricky art. Lightning demanded Hiashi's head for the murder of one of their own. If they were refused, the peace treaty would be no longer and Lightning would declare war on Fire. For the greater good, the Hyuuga had to abide by Kumogakure's demands.

Hiashi had been prepared to accept the consequences of his actions, even if they were undeserved. But the clan elders wanted his twin brother Hizashi to be sacrificed instead. Born just seconds after Hiashi, Hizashi had been relegated to the Branch family and branded with its curse mark because of it. Upon death, the elders reminded Hiashi, the curse seal would destroy the Byagukan and protect it from Lightning.

In the end, Hizashi offered himself up as the scapegoat. Hiashi had tried to stop him, but his brother paralyzed him with a single blow. This was to save him, Hizashi had said, and to save their country. Most of all, this was Hizashi deciding his own destiny. Hiashi could only grant his brother his one wish.

And think how in exchange for watching Hinata grow up, he lost the most important person to him in life.

4. Hiashi never let himself dwell over what happened all those years ago. To do so would be useless, only saddening him and making him want to turn back the hands of time. There was no point in wanting to change the past. He owed it to Hizashi to remember his brother's death for the honorable sacrifice it was.

But even the proud, indomitable leader of Hyuuga had his moments of weakness. Every time he trained Hinata and watched her fail miserably to live up to his expectations, he wondered if Hizashi's death had been in vain.

Hinata was not a genius. Great effort had to be exerted so that she could learn the way of the ninja, both on her father's part and on hers. It wasn't that she was stupid. Rather, it was because the shinobi way went completely against her natural tendencies. Hinata was a gentle girl who resented confrontation; making her fight was almost akin to asking a mother to poison her own child.

Eventually, Hiashi decided that teaching Hinata was a fruitless endeavor. She was docile and spineless, not fit to be anything more than a common housewife. He wondered if Fate was taunting him, giving Hizashi and his wife a genius for a son while he got a meek mouse of a daughter.

And then came a second chance.

5. Hanabi was born five years after Hinata. Because she was not the firstborn, she was supposed to have suffered the same fate as her uncle Hizashi and been placed in the Branch family. But for the first time in the history of the Hyuuga, the curse seal was not placed on the younger sibling. Hiashi, desperate for an heir and finding his firstborn unsuitable, ignored custom and named Hanabi his successor.

Hinata didn't know what to make of this sudden turn of events. She did not envy her sister at all for being the new heiress. In fact, she was glad to be rid of the heavy title. It was burdensome, knowing that one day she had to make decisions affecting the welfare of everyone in her family. But she couldn't deny the feelings of sadness at her father's outright show of favoritism. Wasn't a parent supposed to love all of his children equally and unconditionally?

6. It was Yuuhi Kurenai who became the mother Hinata never had. A newly minted Jounin at the time Hinata was placed on her Genin team, Kurenai had seen enough of the horrors of reality to no longer be fazed by them. But none of that—the dead bodies, the burned flesh, the rivers of blood—compared to the shock that came from Hyuuga Hiashi's dismissal of his daughter as though she was nothing but trash.

"Do as you like with her," he had said coldly. "A defect who is even weaker than Hanabi, someone five years her junior, is not needed in the Hyuuga."

When Kurenai stepped out of the training hall and saw the child's face, she felt her breath catch at the look of pure and utter sadness there.

7. Getting to know Hinata was a challenge. Her loveless childhood had made her withdrawn and reluctant to interact with others. She progressed so slowly at first that even Kurenai was frustrated. Just how deeply had Hiashi wounded his daughter? Enough for her to turn into that vengeance-obsessed Uchiha Sasuke or into that bitter cousin of hers? Hyuuga Neji was the son of her father's twin brother—the kinship was too close to dismiss the possibility of Hinata harboring the same kind of poisonous blood.

8. But family does not always mean blood relation. For Hinata, Kurenai, Aburame Shino, and Inuzuka Kiba were more of a family to her than her father and sister ever were. They were some of the few people who believed in her, who didn't deride or condescend to her every time she made a mistake. Being in their presence made Hinata feel relaxed—gone was the suffocating pressure she felt every time she was around her father.

9. Being away from her father and around her Genin team encouraged Hinata to come out of her shell. It was a slow process but under Kurenai's tutelage and her teammates' brotherly care, the disgraced heiress of the Hyuuga family began to blossom. She activated her family's bloodline limit and proceeded to learn the Jyuuken with a quickness that Kurenai was sure would have surprised Hyuuga Hiashi.

The real reason Kurenai allowed Team Eight to enter the Chuunin Exams that year was because of Hinata.

10. None of the members of Team Eight became a Chuunin that year. But for Hinata, it was a personal best. Just entering the Exam was overcoming a barrier for her. In part she did it because Kurenai recommended the team and Shino and Kiba were eager to "crush the competition" and be promoted. Hinata had always been a compassionate girl, thinking of others first. But she also entered the Exam because she wanted to prove her worth—not just to her father but also to herself.

11. She answered every question during the first part of the Exam, relying not on Byagukan or other ninja abilities to cheat and steal others' answers but on sheer intelligence. She honed her talent in medicine, making a healing ointment by herself for Kiba and Akamaru. Most importantly, she stood up to her cousin. Neji, the once sweet little boy who had smiled at her from beside his father, had grown into a bitter thirteen-year-old who despised the Main House and all of its members for what happened to his family. He had mocked her, called her a failure and a weakling. She would never change, he said coldly, because it was her fate to forever be inferior.

In retrospect, Hinata had to thank her cousin for his kind words.

12. Neji was a genius. It was as if Kami-sama decided to play a cosmic joke on him by granting him extraordinary talent in exchange for relegating him to the Branch family and for taking his father away. His Byagukan was far more superior to Hinata's. By her age, Neji had mastered everything she had and more. Next to him, Hinata really did look like the failure and weakling he had called her.

But she'd be damned if she took it lying down. She may have gone into cardiac arrest because she took a few too many jabs to her tenketsu but instead of crying or running away—things she would have done in the past—Hinata fought. She fought for what she believed in, for her honor, because she didn't believe in the omnipotence of Fate and she never would.

She wished her father had seen it.

13. Hinata would have never been able to do it had it not been for Uzumaki Naruto. The dark horse going into the preliminary match against Kiba, the absurd, embarrassingly loud Hokage-hopeful had made the impossible possible when he pulled off a victory because of a timely bout of flatulence. When it came time for Hinata's own match, Naruto hollered at the top of his lungs from the overhead balcony, cheering her on. They were simple words: "You can do it Hinata!" "Don't listen to him!" But to her, they were the weapons she needed to fight Neji and his overwhelming hate.

14. From the moment Hinata first laid eyes on Uzumaki Naruto, she didn't stop noticing him. At first she felt pity for the boy. It was common knowledge that he was the Kyuubi container and because of it, many shunned him. He was the worst in their class at the Academy and, most of all, he was an orphan—a title that didn't technically fit Hinata but she was able to empathize with it well enough. Gradually, pity turned to admiration. It amazed Hinata that somebody could be so cheerful and optimistic when there was so little in his world to be happy about. What did Naruto have? Nothing but a demon fox inside his body.

Uzumaki Naruto was Hinata's idol. It only took a little while before he became the object of her affection.

15. For years nothing happened between them. Not a surprise considering every time she saw him, she was a mess. She twiddled her thumbs. She stuttered. They were nervous tics of hers that she had developed as a child, most likely physical manifestations of the crushing pressure she grew up with. She couldn't control them because they happened almost unconsciously.

It didn't help that Naruto was still head over heels in love with his teammate Haruno Sakura. Next to her pink hair and green eyes, Hinata felt washed out. It wasn't that Hinata was ugly; the passing of the years saw her transform from a girl into a woman with her figure filling out and her blue-black hair growing down to her back in a silken mass. But Hinata had never been one to give a thought to her appearance and the self-consciousness that plagued her since childhood prevented her from seeing what a lovely young woman she had become. The thought that she could never compare to a kunoichi as brilliant as Haruno Sakura further lowered her self-esteem and only worsened her stuttering.

No wonder Naruto had called her weird.

16. It literally took an apocalypse for Hinata to tell Naruto she loved him. Pein had invaded Konoha and everywhere she turned, chaos ruled. People were dying and the sky was dark from the smoke of destroyed buildings. Screams of fear and pain and the clashing of metal and jutsu and chakra resounded in the air. It was raining rubble and blood. A member of the Branch family had been injured and she was insisting that his wounds be healed but then she saw something that made her blood run cold. Through the haze of war, Hinata saw Pein standing over a fallen Naruto.

She didn't think. All she knew was that Naruto was in danger and that she needed to do something—anything—to save him. A strength she had never known coursed through her and she threw herself into Pein's line of attack.

"What are you doing here!" Naruto had screamed. "It's dangerous!"

"I'm here of my own free will."

She was choosing her own destiny.

17. Hinata knew she was going to die. Pein was a god, a monster that had taken out Kakashi, Tsunade, and countless others. If he could make Naruto fall to his knees, then there was no way she would stand a chance against him.

But she wasn't going to the grave burdened with all her secrets and memories. In the few agonizing seconds before Pein's attack—the calm before the storm—Hinata revisited her childhood and revealed to Naruto the depths of her soul.

"I nearly went the wrong way. I used to always cry and give up. But you…you showed me the right way. I was always chasing you, wanting to overtake you…I just wanted to walk with you, to be with you. You changed me. Your smile saved me. So I'm not afraid to die protecting you because I love you!"

18. "Love breeds sacrifice…"

It was a simple observation, made so quietly that Hinata barely heard it. When she did, she wondered if Kami-sama was amusing himself by stating the obvious. What other reason did she have for making the ultimate sacrifice for Naruto than love? She thought of her uncle Hizashi and how he had sacrificed himself to save her father. In the end, had it been fate for her to repeat his actions?

And then Hinata realized that it hadn't been Kami-sama talking—it had been Pein. He hadn't killed her, although she was suffering such excruciating pain she almost wished for the peace of death. There was an awful taste in her mouth, a mixture of blood, saliva, and dirt. Her face and hands could feel the gritty earth beneath them. But they were minor discomforts compared to the gaping hole in her torso. Pein had stabbed her with his chakra blade and her life was bleeding out of the gash. She was alive—but barely.

If Hinata could have laughed at that moment, she would have. Because by defying death she had finally proved that there really was no such thing as Fate.

19. When Uchiha Sasuke's entire clan was massacred, he swore to avenge them by killing his traitorous brother.

When Hyuuga Neji's father was taken from him, he was filled with a bitterness that consumed him whole.

Hinata was no stranger to suffering. For much of her early life, she had been groomed to become a great kunoichi and a powerful clan leader against her will. On the outside, she took up her duties like the obedient, respectful girl she was; on the inside, she was falling apart. But no one was there to listen. Her mother was practically nonexistent, hidden behind her husband's imposing shadow. Her father had shunned her for being a disgrace to the Hyuuga name. Hinata may not have lost a loved one like Sasuke or Neji but she knew the tempting chill of the darkness and how familiar the desire to indulge the demons and alleviate the pain in her heart was.

But she resisted. Little Hyuuga Hinata—timid, faint-hearted Hyuuga Hinata with her speech impediment and jittery thumbs—did what the Uchiha and Hyuuga geniuses weren't able to. By strength of will, she had scorned Fate and determined her own destiny.

That made her a queen in her own right.

20. Faber est suae quisque fortunae.

Every man is the artisan of his own fortune.

I changed quite a bit of Hinata's piece. Changed her Latin phrase, tightened up the overall structure with several overarching themes, went more in-depth, took out a lot of my unnecessary additions. I think it's a lot more faithful to canon.

I've deleted the old Amare Et Sapere Vix Deo Conceditur. It can be found on my LiveJournal. From now, I'll be uploading the revised versions as I go.

Stick with me :)