With the sound of a bell, the trial begins.
Those too weak to stand sit in boxes, nursing old wounds and looking towards the hanging cage with vengeance in their slits of eyes. Those strong enough stand prouder, less bound by the physical, running more on their own spirits and less on their newly rehashed weaknesses.
It is the strong's eyes where pity can still be found, intertwined with necessity and vengeance. Pity for their former savior, pity for the golden months of security and safety, long dead and buried. Now is a new era, and it is not kind to the weak. The strong are the ones who will be the prosecutors for the weak tonight.
It is silent. There are no screams of indignation, no protests.
No admittance of anything here being wrong.
No sympathy for the caged devil, sitting, shackled and filthy, before them.
"The trial of Uzumaki Naruto will now begin."
…..
His breath panting, he ran through the streets, a barely disguised look of feverish madness in his eyes. Pushing passerbys out of the way fiercely, his legs cried out but were denied air. The sun seemed to undulate with his heartbeats, moving up and down in the middle of a glazed, hazy blue sky as he moved forward, ever forward, feet pounding the dirt no longer aware of pain, his eyes dull and dead, too tired to see.
Let me out.
Let me out.
…
Naruto stirred awake, hands clutching the pinkette's glorious hair as she snored softly. As his fingers deftly working out of the tangles, he wondered again how he, Uzumaki Naruto, had managed to led such a charmed life. To call the only woman he'd ever lusted/loved "girlfriend", to be the leader of his village….A man could die happy, he thought to himself.
"Hunnhhhh?" Like clockwork, Sakura woke up as soon as the alarm hit six A.M. and began screaming bloody murder, her green eyes suddenly focusing on the disheveled, bare sunlight world of their bedroom. Smiling sweetly, she turned towards Naruto and said, her voice like thick golden syrup:
"Want some breakfast, sweetheart?"
"Sure, babe." He smiled, hugging her closer to him. "But not for a bit. There's still fun to be had here…." Devilishly, he placed his mouth on her bare neck, moving lower and lower down as he went, hearing her girlish giggles with every bite.
"Oh come on, silly!" She pouted until he reluctantly loosed his grip and de-necked long enough for her to grab the spare clothes she had lying around, and, strapping on a white apron, pristine in the bare threads of daylight that streamed in from the window.
She looked like an angel, dimly light, clothed in white, her smile a simple bucolic rendering from some archaic painting. She was his, and she was perfect.
"I'll clean the room." Sakura looked around with an air of enthusiasm she always found whenever she began tidying up, a sort of elated satisfaction. "Why don't you go get some groceries or something?"
"Of course." He smiled, reaching for his wallet.
…
Strolling down the streets of Konoha, he waved to those he passed with exuberance, letting them know that today had started off well, as was to be expected. They all smiled the same way, each old woman strung with bags of shopping, each child dangling a stuffed animal from the crevices of their arms.
The world seemed lush and green, bright with morning dew, ever his for the taking, reminding him of all he could do. Would do, someday. The feeling of cheeriness spread through him once more, stronger this time, causing him to almost leap up to Cloud Nine. He was in heaven without ever having to look for it.
He even waved to the one girl who never waved back at him in his elation, shouting "Hello Ino!" so raucously he was suddenly sure that someone should have rebuked him in the streets.
But from their smiling faces, no rebuke ever came for him.
And as always, the quiet, shy blonde continued to water the colorful parade of flowers in her garden, eyes never looking up to face him, her mouth never forming even the beginnings of a greeting as she meticulously cared for those plants, caressing the oily leaves as though she was cradling a child.
Nothing ever seemed to change, he thought to himself.
And wasn't it such a wondrous thing?
…
As he was wandering down the fruit section, his eyes caught a hint of grey and lilac.
Pasty, pale, dull pastel colors, shining from the other side of the store in the eyes of a young girl.
Thin and hopelessly pale, she would have been mistaken for some sort of wraith, an apparition, a wandering, lost little ghost, had it not been for the pale man standing beside her, a sibling or relative, according to the similar pale eyes and facial features.
The man's hands clutched the girl's arms gently as he seemed to push her from one aisle of the store to the next, his face a caring show of sympathy and tenderness as he spoke to her.
All Naruto could hear, however, was a wash of noise, static, a rumbling that resounded, amplifying with greater and greater volume all over his body.
The more he looked into those peculiar eyes, the louder the sound resonated, the more he began to distinguish voices in the audio haze.
I won't let you…..
She said that.
Somehow, somewhere, she said that.
But…I've never seen her before…
He didn't even know why he follows them silently, his feet treading with the nonexistent footfall of a jungle cat. From behind, the girl's ebony hair, so black it almost seemed to become blue, washed over her shoulders in deep contrast to her quartz skin. He noticed, as he followed them that she wore a light blue hospital gown underneath a deep brown knit sweater.
"Neji, I think there's someone following me…"
He was so awestruck at the voice, so similar to the rambling in his mind, right down to the simple tone of the words, that he didn't at first recognize the content until the fearful grey and lilac eyes washed over him.
Another pair of pale grey eyes stared murderously at him.
"What the hell are you doing?" The long-haired pale man stepped towards Naruto, eyes glowing with the anticipation of an answer he could take offense at.
Her name is Hinata.
Somehow, he knows that this is her name, that she was the one to say that to him, and that, he has known her despite himself, which causes him to panic. How can I know and not know a girl I see in a grocery store? Maddening…
"Sorry, I was just…"
"Just screwing around! Now look, brat. I don't care if you lead the village or whatnot, it's no excuse to stalk my cousin!" The livid grey eyes blaze with a new sort of fury as the girl grips unto the arm of her protector, shaking in fear of a confrontation. "She's an amnesiac, for God's sake! What are you, some sort of pansy-ass freak who can't' get regular girls?"
An amnesiac….Her eyes look back at him fearfully, and he can suddenly see the vacancy in them. There is no memory contained in those haunting orbs. There is nothing but the present reflected in those eyes.
He feels the shove long before he can do anything about it, feels his back strike the floor with the force of protective rage, the wind knocking out of his lungs, his teeth clattering, barely having the time to curl up into a ball before the kicks begin to rain down.
"Neji!" The girl, Hinata, again, standing over him with a red-faced Neji, pulling him back with those pale, malnourished arms that had looked so feeble.
"Please…" She turned to look at Naruto, anxiety still written in the lines of her thin face as she clutched Neji's arm tighter, creating strained marks across the black fabric of his shirt.
"There's no need for violence."
She's afraid of me.
For some reason, the thought brought up an emotion of disappointment, cold and damp, that suddenly overtook him. Perplexed, he shookhis head on the white tiles of the grocery floor to clear it.
How did he know her?
As he heard the sound of their feet striding away, he picked himself up, hand smoothing over the back of his head. No blood, but it hurt, stinging, skin nearly broken at the back of his neck. Blood was collected, waiting to flow, only stopped by a bare thread of skin, now rendered purple and already bruising.
The clock as he walked out of the store read 10:00 AM.
Sighing, he walked out of the store a different way, on the road back home to Sakura.
He gave a wave to Ino, but as always, she never looked up from her plants, watering can raised, green and dented, in an eternal water shower.
…..
MAN FOUND DEAD IN FREAK CAR ACCIDENT
THE BODY OF HYUGA NEJI WAS FOUND LAST NIGHT AT THE SITE OF WHAT APPEARS TO HAVE BEEN A COLLISION ON THE HIGHWAY WITH A CAR BELONGING TO AN UNIDENTIFIED INDIVIDUAL, ALSO ABANDONED AT THE SCENE, POSSIBLY DUE TO THE INSTIGATOR OF THE CRASH'S FEAR OF DISCOVERY. MR. HYUGA WAS AN UPSTANDING MEMBER OF THE KNONHA COMMUNITY AND LEAVES BEHIND ONE COUSIN, HYUGA HINATA.
"You know," Naruto grunted through a mouthful of ramen at the breakfast table, "That's the guy who mouthed off to me in the grocery store. He thought I was stalking his amnesiac cousin."
"How horrible." Sakura said, her body shaking with disgust as she read the article further, delving deeper into body descriptions. "It's so bad that this had to happen to someone. I can't imagine how his cousin must feel."
"She's an amnesiac, I told you before."
"Oh, that's right, silly me. But, wait, didn't he insult you?"
"Yeah."
"Oh, you never said anything!" Her arms wound around him tightly, reassuring. "He's such a jerk to have done that to my Naruto-kun, even if he's dead!"
"It's okay..."Naruto awkwardly disengaged from her arms to pick up the newspaper once more, scrutinizing the smiling picture of Hyuga Neji . "It's just…why did he die, the day after he insulted me…."
"Coincidence, darling." Sakura purred softly into his ear. "Forget about it, it's too sad." She stroked his hair fondly, fingers working through blond locks with precision, soothing his suspicions.
"It's alright." She whispered as he slowly begin to drift back into slumber, his mouth wide open, arms collapsing at his sides in the orange kitchen table, head thrown back to her fingers.
"Live for your happiness, Naruto-kun." A whisper into the ear of a sleeping innocent.