Five Words Left Unsaid

by Nezuko, Prince of Rats This is a work of derivative fiction based on the manga "Naruto" by Kishimoto Masashi. The characters and the world in which they live are the property of Kishimoto-sensei.

AN: Written for Kilerkki, who plays Yuugao at the RevancheRPG community on LJ, where I play Hayate. This was done as part of the "List of Five" meme. Her prompt was:

Five times Hayate's wanted to tell Yuugao he loves her (but hasn't).

• The moment that Hayate realized he loved Yuugao wasn't profound or dramatic. The knowledge struck him early one morning, some months after they'd started seeing one another. The cool violet light of a winter sunrise filtered through the drawn white blinds, promising frost or snow on the ground outside. Hayate looked down at the delicate, sleeping face of his lover, nestled against his chest and shoulder, and he reached to pull a silken strand of long, deep purple hair away from her cheek. He watched her eyelids flutter slightly in her sleep, and felt her breath warm and gentle against his skin, and in the space between one heartbeat and the next, he realized he loved this woman.

• Squad four, Hayate's ANBU squad, was heading back from a mission. They'd finished the job with what seemed like maybe a little too much ease, and while it felt good to have things go so smoothly, it also left Hayate with a sense of incompletion. Something was out of kilter, it had to be, because the only blood drawn had been their target's. Hayate was a sensible man, and he didn't believe in superstition or fate, but as he watched the armor-clad shapes of his comrades leaping through the trees ahead of him he had what he could only call a premonition that something bad was about to happen. Almost without thinking he shouted a warning, and as Yuugao, Shou, and Ryouma hesitated at their captain's voice, a rushing sound filled the air and an enormous wall of flame leapt up from a trap they must have triggered.

Hayate caught up to the other three and stood staring at the fire pit they'd narrowly avoided, with his heart pounding and his hands shaking no more than any of the other three. He could see Yuugao's wide, alarmed eyes flickering behind her mask, and he had an almost irresistible urge to put his arms around her.

Almost.

• It was a rare day of leisure for them both. Hayate had finished filing reports and planning upcoming sorties, and Yuugao was done with training. Both of them had, by a huge stroke of luck, managed to get their household chores finished, so now all they had to do, really, was eat, and they could do that together. So for a few blessed hours they strolled along the river bank and watched the birds and fish and insects, and acted like what in any other lifetime they would have been: a pair of young lovers on a spring afternoon. Not trained assassins, not humans molded since early childhood into lethal tools of war. Just a handsome young man with dark hair and large eyes, and a beautiful young woman with delicate features and a willowy grace. As they strolled, Hayate casually slipped an arm around Yuugao's shoulder, and while he said not a word, he was pretty sure she could tell what he was thinking.

•As soon as he took the hit, Hayate knew it was bad. Not just bad, but catastrophic. The fact that he was still alive to have thoughts at all, a part of his brain told him, was fairly remarkable, and a sign that his countering jutsu had hit, even if it hadn't succeeded. It had come just weakly and just late enough to buy him a slower, more painful death than if he'd missed altogether and taken the enemy's jutsu full force.

His team had no idea what had happened to their captain. They were much too busy fighting the ninja who had ambushed them in the first place. To their eyes, Hayate's sword had flashed, his hands had flickered through seals, then he'd staggered and fallen to his knees, retching, and the enemy had rushed in to finish the ambush. They'd had no time to see to him, but Hayate, frozen and choking on the ground, had all the time in the world to watch them. He saw Ryouma take out the one who'd cast the jutsu with a blinding, chakra-enhanced swish of his katana through air and flesh and bone.

He watched Shou leap over him, and Yuugao, with her broken arm in a sling, struggling to provide backup with kicks and thrown weapons alone. His team was poetry, Hayate thought, the way they moved with choreographed precision. Yuugao was beautiful, with whirling, graceful movements and flowing ribbons of purple silk streaming out from her mask.

Then the fight was over and people were shouting. Yuugao was kneeling next to him, pulling him up and looking horrified as another wracking cough brought what was obviously too much blood cascading out of Hayate's mouth and down his chest. She'd shoved her mask off her face and was reaching for his, and as Hayate's vision dimmed and a raw buzzing sound filled his ears, he tried to mouth the words, "I love you." But his mask was still in place.

• The way Hayate knew he wasn't actually dead was by the pressure on his arm of a blood-pressure cuff being inflated. Because while in Hell they might indeed cut you open, shove hoses down your throat and tubes into every orifice, and make every breath an agony of wishing you could pass out again, they probably wouldn't bother checking your blood pressure. Which had to mean, he deduced, that as much as it felt like he was dead, as much as he'd been sure the last time he'd been conscious that he was certain to die, he was alive.

He could feel something else, too, that made him want to open his eyes, if only he could muster the energy to do it. It was a soft, barely there hint of pressure, like warm velvet being brushed against his cheek: the chakra presence of Yuugao. After what felt like an eternity, Hayate managed to force his eyelids apart, just a little, and to move one hand just a few millimeters. It was enough, because as soon as he'd managed it he could feel Yuugao getting nearer, and suddenly her frightened-looking face filled his vision.

He tried to say the thing he'd failed to tell her on that battlefield, but there was some mechanical obstruction in his throat and a pain like an electric jutsu erupting in his chest, and Yuugao hushed him, told him not to try to talk. "You can't," she told him. "You're on a respirator. Shhh, it's okay, we're in Konoha." And then Hayate slept again.

In his dreams he told her.