Hey minna! I'm writing a quick little something before I leave for the summer, so this was a quick something that I wrote for KorenGal5 on and my dear friend Song! I hope you all enjoy!
DISCALIMER: I don't own Bleach or Naruto
"Are you sure?" Matsumoto stated, her sky blue eyes begging the slightly shorter girl to say no. But she had no such luck.
"Yes. Please take me" Matsumoto sighed, taking the smaller girl's hand, hoping against hope that the sinking falling feeling in her abdomen wasn't foretelling what she thought is was, that the worse had happened.
"Stay close" They ran towards where the boys had been fighting. Matsumoto held on to her tightly as they neared the mouth of the alley wrapping one arm around her waist and arms to keep her from running out, and the other arm to clamp her hand over Oriole's mouth to muffle her screams of horror and rage.
"So what's it like? Having the table's turned on you?" The boy on the ground didn't respond; only clutched the knife wound that the taller darker haired boy had inflicted on him. The dark brown haired boy turned to the struggling Hinata, and very angry Matsumoto.
"Sorry you had to see that, Hinata, Matsumoto" He didn't look all that sorry, apathetic maybe, but most certainly not sorry. Hinata broke away from Matsumoto, rushing to the white haired ocean eyed boy on the ground, falling down beside him.
"Nata"
"Toushiro" she whispered, stroking his hair.
"Shouldn'ta come" he slurred, she shook her head in response.
"We still have to find Neverland" she whispered, referring to their mutual childhood favorite, "Peter Pan" Hinata had loved it because she wanted to go to the magical place called Neverland, where she would never have to grow up, and be able to fly. And Toushiro... well he just liked the sound of cannons firing.
"Second star to the right" he replied Matsumoto picked him up, not caring about the blood that got on her lucky top.
"I'll be back," She stated just before she began to run.
"And where do you think you're going Matsumoto?" Matsumoto turned her head, tears making her eyes look like beautiful glass marbles from afar, and she took a deep breath.
"His parents have the right to say goodbye" She choked out before taking off again.
"Well go then" Kusaka sneered, waving her away. Hinata got up to follow, but he held onto her hand.
"Stay" he stated. His voice was clipped, harsh and cold like the voice of a military officer. Hinata turned to face him, trying desperately not to shake or cry, but in the end it didn't matter, because she was shivering from the freezing breeze that was whipping around, and the cold combined with the sorrow made her eyes produce even more tears. Kusaka's eyes softened.
"Don't cry" he didn't wipe away her tears, but the words were soft, and somewhat soothing despite the circumstances.
"I know that you and Toushiro were...close" he spoke slowly, as if trying to break some hard news. But the news had already been broken, in the worst way possible. His hand rested on top of her head, ever so slowly slipping through her navy hair. And for a moment, Hinata just let it happen. She was too tired, to upset to knock his hand away. She just let herself forget that it was Kusaka, and just let it be a warm soft dragging across her scalp.
"But it had to be done" Hinata's lavender eyes snapped open, tiredness falling away in an instant.
"Had to be done!" She smacked his hand away.
"Yes" Kusaka replied calmly.
"He had to loose to me for both of us to get what we wanted"
"Toushiro didn't want to die!"
"No, he wanted out" Hinata blinked. Toushiro had never mentioned that to her. Ever. Even when she had tried to convince him to leave. He told her it just wasn't that easy.
"And you?" Kusaka smirked
"That's easy, I wanted you"
"The rules of our fights are that whoever looses has to forfeit his weapon, and anything else he holds dear"
"And you happen to have wormed your way into that punk's heart"
"So now you're mine"
"If I don't want to be yours?" Hinata whispered, almost afraid of the answer. Kusaka scoffed.
"You don't have a choice"
And so it began.
Some of the changes were subtle, she still wore mostly skirts and dresses, but they became just a little bit shorter, and her shirts long sleeved, dark and more form fitting, sometimes they were even off the shoulder. Her make up got just a little bit heavier, and dark circles under her eyes became a normal addition to her pale skin. Other changes weren't so subtle. She got home late almost every night, and though her grades didn't change much, it was only because she did her schoolwork late into the night, which complimented her new slightly insomniac tendencies. But there was one change that was unavoidable. Her hair, once long was cut into a short sort of mop that hung in her face if she wasn't careful to wipe it away every once and a while.
Toushiro had sometimes let her come with him, but only every once and awhile if she begged enough, and she even when she accompanied him she was forbidden to do anything illegal. But with Kusaka it was far different. If he was drinking, she had to as well. If he was smoking, cigarettes or otherwise, she had to as well. Hinata couldn't even bring herself to mind anymore, the alcohol tasted like shit, and burned her stomach and throat as if she had drunk straight vinegar, but it also made her forget a day if she drank enough, and everything seemed very funny too, even the obvious things like the color of a yellow wall. Kusaka showed her off, always kept her close as possible. His arms were always hanging somewhere on her figure, and someone not looking all that closely would think that they were a happy couple, typical teens who couldn't keep their hands off each other. But anyone who looked close saw another story completely. They saw the churning look in her eyes that begged someone, anyone to take her to somewhere that wasn't where she was.
"Hinata?" Toushiro called out, his voice was unsure. Unsure that the girl before him was the klutzy girl he had met on the first day of middle school because she had run into him in the literal sense of the phrase, who was scared shitless and had optimism that she could get out of the second rate place she had been born into, and go on to bigger better things. It had been before he had gotten into the things he had gotten into, and before things got complicated. Hinata's body was still, but her voice had other agenda.
"Toushiro" it wasn't quite a statement, certainly not a question, but it beckoned him forward anyway. Today she was wearing an off the shoulders top, it was black and it's sleeves were long enough to come over her knuckles, her skirt was a deep shade of slate gray, like city blocks after a storm.
"Hinata... I-" he placed a hand on her shoulder. Her body tensed like a rubber band, shaking with all the energy that was swirling in her, screaming out in chaotic voices, he abandoned you, again and again like yelling into the chest of the tin man. Echoing. He abandoned you. The thrumming of her muscles scared Toshiro just a little bit. The Hinata he had known would have jumped for joy, and maybe have hugged him, ranting on about how worried she had been. But she wasn't. Finally her body relaxed, but somehow that was even scarier then the pent up rubber band feeling under her skin. She turned; making sure that her hands weren't visible until the last moment. The moment she pointed a gun at his heart. Toushiro was speechless. More then speechless, his big blue eyes were flopping like fish out of water trying to make sense of the surreal metallic weight against him, and the look that was painted across Hinata's face. He knew that with one twitch of her finger he could die. He knew (or at least thought he knew) she was irrational, so completely out of her head that she'd pull a gun out to try to deal with whatever emotions or events he had missed. She would snap out of it, she would. She had to, didn't she?
"So you came back" her voice was cold. Calculating. So unlike her.
"Hinata! What's wrong with you? What happened?" Now he was desperate. She wasn't snapping out of it, she wasn't breaking down in tears, or hugging him, or doing anything that was even vaguely Hinata-like. He couldn't find her smile that reached her eyes in the mascara and eyeliner, and he couldn't see the modest girl that wouldn't show off anything in the form fitting off the shoulder shirt, and pleated concrete rain skirt. He couldn't see the long strands that he remembered her having. Suddenly the surreal metallic weight was all too real, and he knew that she could very well kill him.
" Whatever happened to faith and trust and pixie dust?" She chuckled.
"Faith? Trust? Pixie dust?" her voice rose into a yell, her hands shook and eyes began to swirl in a confusing hypnotic manner.
"Those are just words from a story! They don't mean anything!"
"Look around you!" she gestured to the graffiti covered building behind her, and the cracks in the concrete. There was no hiding that their home could be better.
"There is no such thing as f-faith, or trust or pixie dust!"
"Did you think that I'd fall into your chest, crying because I was so happy at seeing my knight in shining armor? " She clutched the gun tears rushing down her face. Toushiro backed away; Hinata closed her eyes, her finger pressing on the trigger. The resounding bang echoed through the air. She had missed completely, but Toushiro had a feeling it was a purposeful miss. She could and would kill him with her next shot. She wasn't snapping out of it.
"Leave" she whispered, Toushiro complied, running like a bat out of hell. Running away from the girl he could have known at some point. And could have stayed by if he had the guts to upset her further.
"And don't you ever come back!" She screamed, saving herself some face from the crying, only after he was gone did she let herself relax a little bit.
"Faith... trust..." She whispered to herself, turning the gun over in her hands, why had she missed? She could have shown him how he had abandoned her, shown him how her fairy tale optimism had shattered by him; she could have shown him everything! But... she couldn't.
"Nonsense" She muttered, tossing the gun to the ground. Hinata's heart silently rejoiced, as if afraid that if it made it's celebrations known then
"Utter nonsense!" she yelled at the sky, cursing every known deity under her breath as she stormed away, wiping hair and tears away in single movements of her small hands