Hinata Hiden: The Princess and the Invisible Cage

Chapter 1 - Red Flags

Naruto's first ever family dinner was not going exactly as he had hoped. In retrospect there were a few red flags he probably should've picked up on.

The first was right when Hinata had invited him to this dinner, or rather Lord Hiashi Hyūga himself had invited him, and Hinata was acting as a messenger. He felt almost giddy with excitement, a real family dinner! Great food, surrounded by laughter and loved ones and happiness! It sounded magical.

He still had dinner at Ichiraku with Iruka-Sensei on the regular, but this was different. A home cooked meal in a proper family home! He'd have to make a good impression of course, but the idea of being accepted by a big family like Hinata's was very exciting. He and Hinata had only been officially dating for a few months, but in that time he hadn't actually seen her father once.

Actually, he hadn't really seen any of her family in that time, Hinata was always coming round to see him, and he realised that he'd never actually been inside her house. That was red flag number one.

Red flag number two was that Hinata didn't seem nearly as excited as he was about the prospect of "family dinner", in fact she seemed confused as to why Naruto was so interested in the idea. At the time he figured that it was just so normal for her she didn't get why it was such a big deal. But now as he looked around at the cold dead eyes surrounding him, and listened to the crushing silence as Hinata's relatives ate their dinner with a formality so severe you'd think they were just marionettes acting out the motions, he wondered if maybe they had two very different ideas of what "family dinner" actually meant.

The third red flag was when Hinata came to pick him up an hour ago. She had told him to dress formal for the occasion, but Naruto didn't exactly do formal, so Iruka-Sensei had taken him out to find something proper to wear. Iruka tried to push him towards something simple, a nice white shirt and black suit to go with it, but when Naruto spotted the bright orange shirt he knew exactly which one to buy. Black and white just wasn't him, he needed that vibrant colour, he was dressing to impress after all.

The first face Hinata gave him when he opened the door told him he was right on the money. It was one of his favourite of her many faces, the "stunned at how handsome you are face", that one made him feel pretty awesome. But it only lasted for a few seconds before it shifted into a more common Hinata face, the "slightly worried but trying her best to hide it face".

When he got a better look at what she was wearing he started to feel slightly worried too, she was dressed in a full black Kimono, extremely sleek and proper, perfectly tailored with the pattern of some sort of flower around the edges that he couldn't identify, one of the fancy ones, he assumed. Her hair was done up in a way so elaborate that he didn't understand the physics of how it was even staying together, she had a thick layer of makeup on and a whole lot of Jewelry as well.

She looked as though she was about to be crowned a queen, was this really what she was wearing to a normal family dinner? She looked amazing, of course, she always did, but he'd gotten so used to seeing her in her casual clothes, with her hair down and a bit unkempt and little to no makeup, seeing her like this he barely recognised her at all.

Maybe Iruka-Sensei was right about getting the tie...

The 4th and final red flag happened just as they entered the Hyūga compound, on the way over, despite their new looks, they'd been chatting like normal. He always found it so easy to talk to her, for a while just after they'd gotten together he was worried that he talked too much and wasn't letting her get a word in, but she assured him that she liked it that way, and that he was a good listener too. Eventually he managed to stop worrying about it. After all, she laughed at all his jokes, and that was the most important part.