Spoken From The Heart

In most cases, it's relatively easy to tell how you feel about someone. First impressions aren't everything, and love doesn't always come at first sight, but in many cases, you're more or less sure whether you like a person or whether you do not.

But what happens if you realize that your knowledge of a person is incomplete? And what happens if that knowledge colors everything you know about that person in a new light?

My name is Uzumaki Naruto, and the person in question for me is Hyuuga Hinata, a classmate and friend of mine from the ninja academy in the Leaf Village.

Hinata had always been nice to me, even if her shyness had made it difficult for her to show it. Interacting with her was sometimes awkward, but I got along with her better than most kids my age. She also did some nice things for me, including offering to let me cheat off her test in the Chunin Exam, without giving any indications of having a self-serving ulterior motive.

But while Hinata was shy, timid and not very confident, she never gave up when it mattered. She continued fighting her very talented cousin, Hyuuga Neji, even when it seemed hopeless. When I later fought Neji, angered by his belief that destiny was inevitable and his mocking Hinata's efforts, I truly understood what Hinata was up against, and what it meant for her to persist against him. This made Neji's fatalism come off as all the more infuriating; if so-called "losers" like us could beat the odds and change our destiny, why wasn't he doing anything constructive toward that end.

Between Hinata's battle with Neji and mine, I learned a little bit about why she seemed so fond of me. She understood that I was not perfect, but found my struggle against my flaws more endearing than a genius like Neji succeeding at almost everything he tries. I appreciated the sentiment, but didn't think it was anything more than simple admiration, until three years later.

When Pain attacked the village, reducing it to rubble and killing many strong ninjas, I fought against him, but was defeated. He planned on taking me back to the Akatsuki, who would extract the Nine-Tailed Fox from within me to further their sinister plans, a process that would kill me.

But Hinata intervened to help me when all hope seemed lost. She knew she was outmatched, but knew that someone had to do something to help me. It was in that moment, when it seemed that one or both of us would die, that Hinata took the opportunity and declared that she loved me, knowing she likely wouldn't get the chance again. That moment was very nearly Hinata's last, and the shock of seeing her almost killed before my eyes drove the seal on the Nine-Tailed Fox within me as close to breaking as it ever got.

With the help of the part of my dad left behind in the seal, it didn't break. Regaining control of myself, I managed to defeat Pain, eventually locating and confronting his real body and his accomplice, Konan. Pain's final act brought most, if not all, of his victims from his invasion back to life, but Hinata had never died, and I was glad for that. Perhaps I never would have pulled through and won if she had died, whether at Pain's hand or during my rampage.

Returning to the village, triumphant, I glanced into the crowd of onlookers celebrating my victory. Hinata and I saw each other and realized that we were alright, before heading off to our respective tasks in the aftermath of the invasion. Even after Pain's defeat, the village was still on high alert and we had to be on the lookout for anyone who might try to attack us in our weakened state.

Some would say that the proper answer would be to either accept or politely refuse Hinata's confession of love. But things weren't quite so simple.

I now saw everything I knew about Hinata in a different light. She was a kind person by nature, and cared for those close to her, but it seemed as though I had a special place in her heart. I realized that she admired me since just before the Chunin Exam finals, but I didn't know that she also did much of what she did so that she could be acknowledged by me.

I also liked another girl, Haruno Sakura-chan, albeit in large part because I was unaware of Hinata's feelings for so long. I had to wonder; how would things have gone if Hinata had been open with her feelings from the beginning?

But I also believed that Hinata was desperately trying to become stronger, both as a ninja and as a person, and she'd said as much prior to the confession. She wanted to not only be my lover, but also someone I could respect, and so perhaps, all these years, she did not feel ready to talk with me about her feelings as long as she felt herself to merely be following in my footsteps.

In any case, Hinata had probably been thinking through what she'd say to me for years. If I had to give my response now, with so little time to think things over by comparison, what sort of answer could I give? Would I end up disappointing Hinata?

I had little time to think things over or have a private chat with Hinata about her feelings, though, since I had more pressing issues to deal with. To put a long story short, three years ago, my best friend, Uchiha Sasuke, had left the village. And now, it seemed less likely than ever that he would ever come back.

I had promised Sakura-chan that I would bring Sasuke back. She'd tried to talk Sasuke out of leaving, only to fail, and Shikamaru told her that she would not be able to help the team sent after him- which included Shikamaru, Kiba, Chouji, Neji and I- now that a more forceful approach was required. Breaking down in tears, she begged me to do what I could to help Sasuke, and I promised to help. After all, I shared her desire to see Sasuke come back.

Of course, there was another dimension to all this. Just as I had an unrequited crush on Sakura-chan, she also had an unrequited crush on Sasuke, like every girl our age except Hinata did. With all three of us on Team 7, things were... complicated, even in the best of times.

But Sakura-chan was closer to Sasuke than most of those girls, as I saw when Sasuke seemingly died while fighting Haku in the Land of the Waves, and when Sasuke emerged from his coma after his encounter with Itachi. The night Sasuke left the village, Sakura-chan had apparently, among other things, professed her love to him and promised to stay with him in the hopes that he would not leave. She'd apparently been rejected, but that didn't change how she felt about him any more than her rejection of my advances changed the way I felt about her, or my ignorance of Hinata's love changed how she felt about me.

Knowing this, you can probably imagine my surprise when Sakura-chan approached me, declaring that she had fallen in love with me and asking me to give up on Sasuke, just as she had.

When she said it, Rock Lee- whom I typically call "Bushy Brows"- stared at us with his jaw dropping before covering his face with his palm. I felt bad for the guy, since he also had feelings for Sakura-chan, so I wondered why she brought him along with Sai and Kiba. But I had to wonder- did Bushy Brows really believe this was happening?

I had often daydreamed about the moment when Sakura-chan would confess her love to me, even if I knew that, in reality, things wouldn't go that smoothly. The entire sequence felt like I was in another of my daydreams, and Sakura-chan was acting like a figment of my imagination rather than the person I knew.

My intuition told me that Sakura-chan was lying, but I didn't know enough to know why she was lying, so I decided to bluntly challenge her on her lie. She seemed to have trouble believing me at first, and I honestly couldn't tell if that was an act. Maybe she was still trying to keep up the facade for as long as she could, or maybe she couldn't believe that it wasn't working.

But not long after I called her out on her lie, Sakura-chan cast it aside, the same way she would discard a kunai with a broken blade. The ruse no longer served its purpose, so there was no point in keeping it up, and I couldn't decide how to feel about her giving up the lie.

Unfortunately, it was evident that the part about wanting me to give up on Sasuke was genuine, in spite of all the other lies she had just told me. That was unfortunate, as she had not only been counting on me to bring him back, but also someone I could count on to help me. I had to wonder; was I really the only person still trying to save Sasuke from himself?

Sakura-chan was still acting suspiciously, though, and I noticed her prevent Kiba from telling me something by subtly kicking him in the shins before leaving. But then Sai, or rather, an ink clone of him, arrived, and told me that her plan was to kill Sasuke because she loved him, and did not want to see him commit any more crimes. As for me, Sakura-chan was willing to bear my hatred, so long as I was free of the promise I made to he three years ago.

What happened with Sasuke is another story, one that isn't over yet. But at this point, it was clear to me that if she considered my hatred an acceptable result from her killing Sasuke, then perhaps that was all the more proof of how insincere her confession was. Where Sakura-chan and I will stand with each other after resolving the issue of Sasuke is anyone's guess, since it's largely dependent on how it's resolved.

But the experience was a lesson on how not to answer Hinata's confession. Hinata's smarter than I am, and her Byakugan can read body language, so it would be pointless to tell her what she wants to hear when she can see through that lie. I don't know what future she envisions with me, but I hope she'll believe me when I tell her what I feel about her. For now, I believe she's a strong individual, one that I can respect, but I'm not yet ready to give her a yes or no answer as to whether I also love her.

I don't know why Sakura-chan thought confessing her love to me would dissuade me from my quest to bring Sasuke back, or what she would have done if I had said yes. I'm also not sure what I would do if she were to give me an honest love confession; I know the story of the boy who cried "wolf". But I believe that when you confess your love, it's not about getting the desired answer from the person hearing it, but simply saying what you feel. Hinata had no ulterior motive for her confession, and was saying why she cared enough to risk her life for me.

I don't yet know what I'll say to Hinata about her feelings, but I will give my answer when I have come up with one worthy of her confession, one that I can say with the same passion and conviction she had when she faced Pain for my sake, and one that both she and I know expresses how I truly feel. Maybe I'll be the one to save her next time, since I owe her at least that much.

So, Hinata, I hope you don't mind waiting for a while for my answer. I can't guarantee it'll be the one you envisioned, but I hope it's one that you'll believe and accept, as one spoken from the heart the same way your confession was.

Author's Notes

Thank you for reading this fic.

I wrote it to provide my own interpretation of why Naruto hasn't responded to Hinata's confession. The short answer is that he has too much to deal with at the moment, and not enough time to rethink how he views Hinata well enough to give her a good answer.

He cares for her, but it's probably too soon for him to come to love her in the same way that she loves him, especially when he's considering all their prior interactions in a new light. And, of course, there's also his feelings for Sakura; as much as I hope that he'll give up on Sakura and fall in love with Hinata, it's not realistic to expect him to do so overnight.

He does, however, regard Hinata in a more favorable light than before, and does make it clear to her when he saves her, and after she gets through to him following Neji's death, so perhaps he's already given Hinata something she wants more than his love- his acknowledgment.

It's set between the confrontation between Naruto and Sasuke in the Land of Iron and Naruto going off to war. As such, the part in Chapter 693 in which Sasuke rejects and mocks Sakura's feelings for him doesn't come up, since Naruto hasn't had time to consider that.

I do have to wonder, though, how Sakura could confess her love to Naruto after the "fake confession" incident("Naruto, I love you and I mean it this time") and whether he could believe her.

I did try not to bash Sakura in all this, but it's clear that Naruto isn't happy about the fake confession (he says, "I hate people who lie to themselves"), or the fact that even Sakura has, at least momentarily, given up on trying to save Sasuke.