DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN NARUTO OR SHAMAN KING!
I'm always gentle with her. Almost suffocatingly so, despite her squirming and pleas for roughness. I always make sure to kiss her softly. I always make sure to hold her close. I never let my teeth more then graze at her moon-pale skin, despite the fact that she begs me to bite her in earnest. She begs me to draw blood, but I cannot bring myself to. I see the scars, old and new. I see bruises, ugly and purple against her pale, as cloud skin, and I can't bring myself to ask how she got them. Not that she would tell me if I ever overcame my cowardice and asked her.
She does not want to loved, not by me. I'm not sure she wants to be loved by anyone to be honest. She does not want pleasure, she does not wish for closeness, and any more pain will kill her. I'm is always so scared of hurting her. I'm so scared of shattering this shaking shivering, sobbing little girl and sending her into oblivion. Because she is just a little girl. She is a little girl that has been bent and manipulated, her personality and innocence all but shattered. She's so close to me. But sometimes, I can't help but wonder where her mind really is. She clings to some non-existent edge, just barely keeping herself from insanity. I want to find that ledge. I want to find her clinging there, I want to pull her back, hug her, and never let her go again.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm that edge. She clings to me so tightly, tightly enough to bruise me. She holds on to me as if I'll disappear into the flames just like her brother. I tell her that I'm not going anywhere, and I think that might be a lie. I might die fighting Hao. I might die and leave her to fold into her own insanity just like the wilting flower that she is. I wonder why she got into the business of killing people anyways. It's clear to me that she's too fragile for such an occupation, but she insists that she could never disgrace her father by doing anything different. That made the two of us.
She always asks if I love her. What she doesn't know is that I lie when I say yes. Maybe I used to love her. But now she is just there. Undeniable, beautiful and needy. And maybe I do love her in a strange, twisted and destructive way, it's just that I'm not sure. But I like how she snuggles into my chest when I say it. I like how she momentarily looks happy. Excited even. When I say those simple words she smiles, and her smile is more addicting then even the feeling of power. The thing that I've sacrificed my friendships for, the thing I'd studied and chased since my parents murder. She is enough to make me want to forget revenge, make me forget my role as the heir to the Diethel's dowsing legend, forget being a detective. I just wanted to make her smile.
Each time we meet, she seems to get even more fragile. Her collarbones and hips become a tiny bit sharper, her hands a bit bonier, and her ribs a little more visible. Every time I see her my pity and shame grows. Sometimes I have trouble looking at her like a girl. More like someone who needs to be mothered a lot of the time. But I'm not a mother. I'm a boy. I'm not yet a man, not yet a father, but given our habits, that might change in the near future.
She doesn't even want me. She wants her dead brother, she wants someone named Naruto. I won't lie. Sometimes, I don't think about her either. Sometimes I think about Jeanne-sama. But that makes me berate myself. Jeanne-Sama is everyone's. She is a savior to our world. Maybe if it were her in my place, Hinata would stop getting skinnier. Maybe she would stop crying, maybe. Just maybe she'd be able to smile again. Jeanne-sama always seemed to be able to do that kind of thing. Draw people out of themselves, and make them only think of helping her in her goal of defeating Hao.
But I am not Jeanne. I cannot save her. I cannot even save myself, I'm well aware that this is slowly killing me too. I know I've been eating less and less lately. I know that I've wanted to just jump off the X-laws ship and into the ocean a number of times. I cannot save her from herself either. My dowsing my never miss the mark. But her sanity is one thing I'll never be able to find, no matter how I try. Sometimes I wonder if it existed in the first place. Maybe she's being hanging off this ledge forever, and I'm the first one to notice.
But when she sneaks to my door, risking being caught by any one of the X-Laws, risking being killed, what kind of person would I be to not let her in, and not let her use them? Let her cry onto the heavens. Let her moan at the ghost pains from wounds old and new. I can't help but let her use me. However destructive it is for the both of us.
One night she came to my door. I hadn't been expecting her that night, but her knocking drove me from my dreams. I rubbed sleep from my eyes and opened the door. She said that she was sorry for waking me up. I only nodded. My dream hadn't been pleasant anyway. I ushered her in, and I notice that for once she hasn't gotten skinnier since the last time I saw her, and that made me smile at her, even if it was a tired smile. She asked me how I was feeling. That caught me off guard. I wasn't sure if she'd ever asked that before. I say cautiously that I'm fine, though secretly I wonder where she's going with this. Her expression is sad, but when I think about it, her expression is always sad to a degree. If she were happy why else would she try and come here to forget?
That's when she said she was sorry. Part of me wanted to laugh. Apologize? Apologize for all the crying, all the sadness, all the ways she had begun to destroy herself? I ask her why she's apologizing. I lie to her once again, telling her that there isn't anything to apologize for. She shakes her head, insisting that there is. This is the first time she's ever noticed when I lied to her.
She says that she's sorry again. That's she's been stupid, that she's been mean and said all sorts of terrible things. I tell her that she hasn't. I tell her that there isn't anything wrong about being sad sometimes. That there isn't anything wrong about what goes on between us. She shakes her head violently again. Whispering no under her breath. Couldn't she just listen? Couldn't she just stop being so stubborn? Couldn't she just...try? Couldn't she try to smile for once? I felt my temper rising, and the fact that I didn't want my temper rising just made me even more frustrated.
"I'm dragging you down with me" She says, a terrible guilt in her voice. I looked away; I'm unable to hold her eyes in the dark. They seem to glow now, and a long time ago, I'd like to think that they once shined, but now they merely smoldered like the dying embers of a dying fire. It took nothing away from their beauty, their depths are merely less piercing then one would expect. Her stubborn anger and guilt seem veiled and muted. But I do find the words to reply with.
"I don't care" For once I tell her the truth.
Yes. More LysHina. More angst. I can't help myself!