A/N: Listen to His Favorite Christmas Story by Capital Lights while reading, if you would please. You'll understand the story better.

The blond man gulped, watching the long haired beauty in front of him laughing with a group that appeared to be her friends, a solo cup of punch in her hand. Her back was to him, so all he could see was her flowing black hair; she couldn't possibly know he was watching her from this up his mind, Naruto sat down his own cup. He steeled his nerves and before he could talk himself out of it, walked up to this mysterious lady.

Her friends (a long haired blond and a pinkette), having spotted him first, giggled like lunatics, turned, and fled with devious grins. The woman Naruto had been observing finally turned, looking very bewildered. He took this moment to study her closely.

She was looking in the direction the other ladies had disappeared to. Suddenly she seemed aware of Naruto's presence. The woman had beautiful red lips, lifted up at the edges, and a blush dusted over her pale cheeks when she at last faced him. Her white eyes were gleaming.

Naruto smiled like a fox.

"Would you like to dance?"

She nodded gingerly before taking his out-stretched hand, and Naruto spun her into his chest. His left hand found hers, and his right attached to her slim waist. Her small, gentle fingers laced with his and she put her other on his shoulder.

They danced for hours, spinning and spinning until they were both laughing giddily and the space between their bodies and significantly decreased. He pulled her to the side finally, off the dance floor, and found two empty seats at a table. Naruto pulled out her chair and waited for her before sitting down himself. He gazed across at her, smiling.

"Why haven't I seen you around here before?" She asked, smooth as silk.

"I travel a lot." It was true.

"For business, or pleasure?" A wink.

"Business, mostly." Another true statement.

"Are you staying here for long?" The beauty put her elbows up on the table and leaned forward, apparently interested. Naruto cleared his throat.

"No, my flight leaves here at 4AM."

"Oh." Disappointment colored her voice. Her smile dropped from her pretty lips. It didn't stay that way for long as she leaned back into her chair. "We still have awhile, right?"

Naruto pulled at his tuxedo sleeve, revealing his watch. His eyes nearly popped out of his head. "Shit, it's three fifty o'clock," he cursed, standing so suddenly that he bumped the table harshly with his knee, knocking over the ice water pitcher into the lady's lap. "I'm so sorry," he gushed, staring frantically from her drenched form to the exit. "I have to pack my things before I miss my flight!" Ashamed, he threw his cotton napkin into the stunned woman's hands, dashing for the door.

What he didn't notice in his haste to leave was the woman calling after him, telling him something.

Less than an hour later he was on the flight headed for Chicago, cursing himself for not catching her name.

It had been over a year and a half since he had seen his date on December 24th. Every once in a very, very long blue moon Naruto would go back to that place, at the same time, the same date, where he saw her last. His mysterious beauty, the woman with white eyes and waterfalls of black hair, with her red lipstick and shimmering navy blue gown slit up the side.

Naruto searched every part of Delaware, asked everyone he could about this woman. No one seemed to remember, not even when he found the pinkette at a grocery store and interrogated her at the cash register.

"You don't remember her? From 1937, December 24th, at a big party?"

"Dude, that was like, ages ago," the pink haired woman said, impatiently ringing up a pack of beef jerky, slapping it in a plastic bag before she looked back up at Naruto with blazing green eyes. "I don't remember her, alright? I was drunk for half of the night. There was a ton of chicks with black hair. Pretty sure I kissed half of 'em, too."

"But none with white eyes. Eyes like diamonds." He insisted.

The woman held up her hands in an exasperated manner. "Look, you freak," she hissed, "I don't care. Now pay for your shit or I'm calling security on your ass."

Well, that was the end of that.

Naruto thought he had a fair chance of seeing his mystery woman again, but as he walked out of the super market with his bags in tow, his hope began to fade.

But he never stopped telling people about his favorite Christmas story; when he met a girl with no name on Christmas Eve, a quarter til eleven. People loved him and his story, and earned himself a nickname with a few locals; The Christmas Story Telling Traveling Man. Catchy.

"I finally found you."

Naruto was an old, shriveled man now, the ripe old age of 73, sitting in a hospital bed with a beeping heart monitor across from him.

"What took you so long?" A little old nurse had a seat pulled up close to the left side of said bed, holding onto his hand with hers tightly. She no longer had long, silky black hair-it was gray and pulled back into a tight bun, her nurse's cap sitting neatly on her head. Her story about meeting a traveling man on the night of December 24th, 1937, was all the verification he needed. This was his woman. His beauty.

"I searched and searched, but I never saw... You... Again..."

A tear fell from the nurse's eye onto the back of Naruto's withered hand. "I searched too. But I'm here now, I'm with you. You can go in peace."

A shuddering breath racked his chest. "Name... Your name..."

"Of course." She kissed his hand, then his cheek, finally leaning in to whisper in his ear, "Hinata Hyuuga."

He smiled. "Naruto Uzumaki."

"I'll always remember you, Naruto."

And then he died, a smile still on his lips.