Naruto Fanfiction - Okaeri (Part VIII)
Naruto Fanfiction
Title: Okaeri (8/?)
Genre: General/Romance
Pairing: SasuHina eventually (various other pairings)
Disclaimer: SasuHina canon? No? Then Naruto is still not mine...
Summary: Sasuke is back in Konoha, Hinata is still in love with Naruto. Enough said. Prequel of sorts to ' Snapshots: Black and White' - How SasuHina came to be :)
A/N: Don’t faint, but yes, I’m actually back with a new chapter. Miracles do indeed happen. To those of you who have been following this, I grovel apologetically for the delay. For the new readers, welcome on board. :) Thank you to everyone who's reading this!
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Part VIII
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When Hinata realised that the sight of blonde hair didn’t make her catch her breath and her heart pound and that the scent of sakura blossoms no longer made her feel sick her first feeling was that of surprise. Her energy had been so focused on surviving past the bitterness which had consumed her that she hadn’t realised that she had actually done it.
How long does it take for things to go back the way they were once the foundations of your dreams have been shaken? Hinata could easily answer that - it never happens. Either one survives or one doesn’t, but something is irrevocably changed.
She couldn’t explain it. She didn’t want Naruto anymore, she still admired him and thought he was a good person and an excellent shinobi, but something was different.
“You’ve finally lost your rose-tinted glasses,” was Sasuke’s caustic way of putting it when she tried to explain herself. She looked at him with raised eyebrows, a trick she had caught from him and he snorted. “You’re so used to putting him on a pedestal you’re surprised to be seeing him for what he is,” he elaborated with exaggerated patience.
“Perhaps,” Hinata mused. She watched Sasuke as he stretched. Things hadn’t been the same between him and the other two, not since that night. Sasuke still trained with Naruto and Sakura, but there was that constrained politeness between them. She knew both his team-mates knew something was wrong, but that they had no idea what to do to rectify the situation they had created. It worried Hinata. After all, it wasn’t like Sasuke had alot of friends, and if he distanced himself from his two oldest friends, what would he have left? Also, notwithstanding the pain they had caused her, she knew the whole situation was causing a strain between Naruto and Sakura.
Sasuke hadn’t been forthcoming either about what was bothering him. Surely he couldn’t be bearing a grudge because they hadn’t told him about their situation? She’d tried to broach the subject in several ways in her mind, but every imagined situation got her blasted to a wall by a very irate Uchiha. Sasuke didn’t take kindly to his (very) private feelings being probed into, as she’d frequently witnessed when Sakura or Naruto had attempted it.
Sasuke sighed. “Go on, tell me, I won’t kill you whatever it is.”
“W-What?” she stuttered as he looked at her with a look which for Sasuke was a cross between amusement and irritation.
“You get that look on your face when you think I won’t notice,” he said, “You want to ask me something, but you’re terrified of doing so.” He passed his fingers through his hair. “I can’t stand it anymore, so just ask.”
Hinata scrabbled to get her thoughts back together, all well rehearsed scenarios taking flight. “Y-you’ve never said anything, but they’re your best friends... I only thought about how I was feeling, but what about you?”
“What?”
She took a deep breath in. “Are you in love with Sakura?” she asked quickly, getting ready to run.
He stilled. Whatever he’d been waiting for her to ask, it wasn’t this.
After an unending moment of silence, Hinata ventured to speak. “S-Sasuke?” she asked timidly, “I’m s-sorry... just forget I as..”
“With Sakura?” The look on his face made Hinata want to laugh and run at the same time. There was such a mixture of annoyance and surprise and something else she couldn’t put her finger on, that left her in no doubt that whatever the reason was for his distancing himself from his two best friends, love for his pretty team-mate was not it.
The relief which engulfed her at such a realisation came as something of a shock for her too.
“It’s just... you haven’t been spending much time with them and I, well we’ve always talked about me, never about you,” she explained lamely. “I thought you were angry at them or hurt because they didn’t tell you about them.” He scowled at her.
“I don’t care that they didn’t tell me about their love-life or their plans, even though it would have been at least polite to do so,” he growled.
Hmm. So he had been hurt by their apparent exclusion of him.
“But I’m not avoiding them because they’ve no notions of good breeding. And I’ve never had feelings for Sakura,” he ended. “Never had, never will. Get it?”
“How about Naruto?”
“What about Naruto?”
Hinata looked at him from beneath lowered lashes. “S-some people were saying t-that you’re hurt over Naruto, not Sakura”
“What?!” The horrified look on his face caused Hinata to collapse, laughing.
“I...I’m s-sorry,” she gasped, “B-but I can’t help it!”
“Tell me it’s not true!”
“I-it is,” she said, trying to stop laughing, but failing spectacularly.
“Who the hell came up with this crap?!” He caught her by the shoulders and she shook her head. The amount of gossip about team 7 was astounding, and this last titbit about the supposed love triangle between the team members (and occasionally their sensei too) was gaining ground among the gossip mongers.
He glared at her. “You wouldn’t laugh if it were you,” he said. Truth be told, she hadn’t laughed about it when she had first heard of it - the group of kunoichi who were talking about it had been treated with a sudden shower of ice-cold water by a very ‘apologetic’ Hyuuga who claimed to not have noticed them training nearby. But that little titbit of information, Hinata had no intention of sharing.
“ Damn!” he growled. “I was just trying to give them space... and people come up with this?” He threw a punch and let his arm drop by his side. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to behave - I feel like I’m butting in on their private time when we’re together, but if I don’t meet up with them, I’m the bastard who wants to make them feel guilty!”
Aha. So that was what it was all about. This was the reason most of the higher-ups were against couples forming between team-members, as things tended to get uncomfortable. Hinata was glad. At least, if this was the problem, something could be done.
“Maybe... you could talk it over with them?” she asked timidly.
“I don’t do ‘talking things over’,” he muttered.
“Then, you could just start acting more like your usual self?” she suggested. “After all, actions speak louder than words.”
Sasuke looked at her for a long moment. “Did Sakura put you up to this?”
She shook her head, blushing slightly. “I w-was just worried... I’m sorry I was so pushy,” she mumbled.
“Hmm.” Sasuke shook his head. “You’re sneakier than I thought, Hyuuga,” he said.
She smiled.
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***
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“I know now it was a crappy idea.”
Naruto and Hinata were sitting beside the campfire as they waited for the genin they were supervising to come back from their scouting exercise. It was not the first time they had gone out together for such an exercise, but after the first, initially gut wrenching time for Hinata, who had been trying to avoid spending time alone with Naruto, things went on surprisingly smoothly.
Hinata was glad their friendship was still intact, ever more grateful that Naruto was still blissfully oblivious to the fact that Hinata had once loved him. She was now his ‘adopted sister’ as he often told her and was not averse to asking for her advice or discussing things with her. Which was probably why Hinata plucked up the courage to ask about the reason he hadn’t told Sasuke about him and Sakura.
“Sasuke he’s my best friend… but well, Sakura felt that he might still be unstable and all that shit,’ Naruto said sheepishly. ‘I told her she was being paranoid, but she thought Sasuke might feel betrayed and gave me some psychobabble or something.’ He scratched his head. ‘I don’t actually understand why we had to keep it so hushed up - it’s not like Sasuke would have gossiped - but whatever she says, goes.”
Hinata nodded. “I see,” she said, although she didn’t, not really. After all, it had ended up having the opposite effect. “It still turned out well at the end,” she said smiling.
“It nearly didn’t,” he said grimacing slightly. “The first couple of months... I thought that we’d really screwed up the way he was acting. The way he was avoiding us and acting all polite! It just wasn’t Sasuke anymore. Sakura was going nuts, and to be honest, so was I.” Naruto laughed. “Turns out the teme was trying to be all considerate and stuff, trying to give us are space and all that.” He shook his head, “He can’t get it through his head that he’s always part of our family, and that things will never change between us no matter what goes on between me and Sakura.”
Hinata was silent for a while. It seemed to her that things had already changed irrevocably and that they would keep changing. She looked at the blond man beside her and wondered at his irrepressible optimism. That was perhaps what had attracted her in the first place, his ability to stand up again after every fall, his ability to look at the world and smile, no matter what it threw at him.
She picked a blade of grass and toyed with it idly. “If you don’t mind my asking,” she asked timidly, “don’t you think it’s too early for marriage?”
Naruto turned to smile at her, that beautiful smile which still made her heart beat a little faster, it was so honest. “It’s never too early to take a chance at happiness,” he said. “And Sakura is my happiness.”
He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply as Hinata listened. “I never thought I really stood a chance,” he said, suddenly serious. “She was fixated on Sasuke for all these years, and always pushed me away. When she told me she loved me back I almost couldn’t believe her... I thought I was the second choice just because Sasuke didn’t love her.” Naruto looked up at the night sky, his face serene. “When I realised that she really liked me for whom I was,” he smiled, “I couldn’t believe my luck.”
He turned to look at her as she took his hand between both of hers.
“I am happy for you, Naruto-kun,” Hinata said simply. “You and Sakura-chan were meant for each other.”
Naruto hugged her. “Thank you,” he said, “It means a lot to me, that my friends are so happy for us.” Hinata blushed slightly as she felt a flush of guilt at the thought of what he would think if he knew what her initial reaction had been. Still, that was over now. She had been wrong but it had all come alright in the end.
“Ne, Hinata, I’m sure you’ll find this great guy very soon,” Naruto said grinning and she shook her head, smiling embarrassedly. He leaned over confidentially. ‘Is there someone already?’ he asked teasingly. For some inexplicable reason, Sasuke came to mind. Hinata blushed to the roots of her hair and tried to push the thought away.
“No!” she said hurriedly, and Naruto smiled impishly.
“You have to make sure to tell me,” he told her, “so I can make sure he’s good enough for you,!”
Later that night, as Hinata was on guard duty, she kept thinking of dark eyes, and the smell of burning wood.
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Link to Part IX