"You don't need to know everything about a person to be a family. You just need to know where exactly to push their buttons for the funniest effect. And when to stop."
She didn't understand why he looked at her that way, so guarded and suspicious. It wasn't like she was hiding something. She wasn't lying. Most people thought she wasn't capable of that, and it was true to a large extent.
She was always happy when he looked at her, because just a short while ago, he'd looked right through her. It wasn't because he was ignoring her or being malicious. She was positive he wasn't capable of that, to a large extent. It was because he had never really known her.
When she smiled, his eyes misted over. When he laughed with her, she felt there was something slightly deranged in the hollow way it echoed.
But she tried to be objective about it. She tried to see it from his point of view.
He'd saved the village three times so far. She wasn't sure whether it was because he was so strong or Konoha was so weak. All she knew was that they had hurt him, and all he had done was love them.
She never quite got down to asking him why he stared at her that way.
Maybe he was testing her.
That was what she felt most of the time.
Like whatever she was doing, even when he wasn't there, he was testing her, waiting for her to make a mistake.
She would endure it, even if it made her insides shudder.
She loved him after all.
He didn't understand why she hung around him. He hadn't particularly done anything for her.
When he was a kid, the civilians used to do that a lot.
They used to have ulterior motives for every kind thing they did for him. And she was weird and gloomy and sort of frail. She fainted pretty often.
He didn't think that he had ever had a proper conversation with her. It wasn't because she was boring or anything like that. He hadn't exactly heard her speak so he couldn't even tell. It was because there had never been anything to talk about. What could he say to her?
Ero-sennin had said to observe people carefully to figure out who they were.
So he did just that.
He watched her. Not all the time of course—that was just plain creepy. Whenever they met on the streets he would greet her and she would either faint, become red and run in the other direction, or murmur an obligatory response before running in the other direction.
He tried to be objective about it.
He really did.
But anyway you looked at it, it was obvious that she was scared of him; she was probably the only one. Most people yelled or looked through him. She was the only one to actually run away.
But that didn't explain why she nearly got herself killed by Pein for him. He just didn't get it.
He tried to understand because she was the only other girl who had never ignored him.
"Hey Hinata! Are you hungry?
"Mhmmurgh!"
"Okay, I'll take that as a yes. C'mon, let's get some ramen! They're having a two for one special today!"
"Hnmhurgh…"
He grabbed her hand and dragged her there.
She tried not to faint.