Authors Note: One shot, Hinata-centric, enough angsting to leave you gagging, a Naruto x Hinata if you squint and tilt your head sideways
She brushed her hair back, amazement laced with fingers. When had it grown so long? She couldn't tell, except suddenly, after days and nights of brushing her hair, a hundred strokes, back and front, side and side, it was suddenly so long, tucked behind her ears, feather light against her neck, gently brushing against her shoulder blades. She picked up a brush, her calloused fingers grasping it like she might grasp a kunai, and for a second she saw herself fighting against assassins and enemy shinobi, brandishing her hair dryer and brush. She smiled faintly and ran the teeth of the brush through her hair. One, two, three, and lost herself in the monotonous sweeping through untangled hair. And her eyes saw the world in black and white, in shadows, and even the sunlight was a wan gray, that felt cold and week and dimmed on her cheeks. She wondered where the color had bled away and she felt a little lost in this color less world. But she shouldn't have because when she watched her reflection in the mirror, she was black and white too. And she smiled, a little, maybe, or was it a grimace because finally she fit in, finally she didn't need to pretend to laugh, because all the laughter had become weighed with stones and it had died. But she couldn't help but feel cheated because now when she could finally shine, finally, finally reach those ever high expectations, there was no light for her to shine in, because you can't shine in a world of black and white. You can only grow dimmer, and fade, like a photograph, a fragmenting memory of what you were.
"Hinata-chan!"
For a second she hesitated, her hand holding her brush at the name of her hair, and for a second she wondered, if maybe she should reply, or shout back, but her hair protested and instead she whisked her brush out of her hair. (Eighty-seven.) She should have replied back, maybe then she could taste something sweet again, like for a second when that noise, that music had echoed in her room, she could taste chocolate and summer and the breeze playing with the sunflowers. And on her skin she felt the touch of a hand she knew well and had blushed under, but now she couldn't, could she? When she was so black and white, white and black, when she blushed, it was like a bruise discoloring her skin, the pain of someone who had given up. Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred. She could stop now, she should stop now, because one hundred and one would hurt, would tingle at the roots of her hair, like the darkness behind your eyelids. But she couldn't, because stopping would mean that she would have reason to answer back and feel that first breath of fresh air, when you have been pressed underwater for too long.
"Hinata-chaaaan!"
The voice was insistent, loud, brash, uncaring. Her ears should be hurting, tingling with the strength, protesting against the tone. But instead they pricked up, yearning for more, for the words she had learned that that voice could utter, those soft, purring syllables that were so lovely against her cheeks, her lips. But she wasn't lovely any more and those words would recoil at how her skin was charred; rough, scarred, and it bled sometimes, in long, trickles of black. Her eyes dimmed and she wrapped her hands around herself, in order to feel the warmth of her own beating veins and prickling skin, to tell herself, with eyes squeezed shut, that it would go away, like everything did, and leave her to the black and the white and to be dulled and dimmed. She wanted that, she needed that.
"HINATA!"
She could turn away, she would never need to face it, never need to own up that she heard it. Except at that ill chosen moment, she opened her eyes, black slits glittering with salty tears, that she could taste, and feel, running in ghostly trails down her cheeks. Even they would be black and gray, she knew, she knew so well from experience. And she curled her head into her arms, trying to blink away her tears, when in the baubles that hung in her vision she saw light glitter across them, blue and golden, a gasp of color in the gray tones that choked her. And she sputtered, and for a second, she was Hinata-chan, from ten years ago, that, blushing girl, who even in her black and white had been colorful. Her eyes flew open and the tears traced their ghostly trails with real sliding wetness and she wondered, where was she now? Where was she? She ran towards the window, tripping over her feet, over air, and fumbling against the glass, that glass that separated her from the color that would be there, that sweet beautiful color. Hinata-chan was waiting, she was waiting beyond that glass, she was there. And through those pretty baubles, that had once again faded into gray, she looked outside, into the wan sky, and the dead, harassed branches of trees, looking for Hinata-chan, in her sunshine, rays of light wrapped in her fingers, pressed against her lips, kissed with sunlight and the sweet taste of morning.
"Hinata…."
When had her fists started pounding against the glass, she wondered numbly. When had they broken through and when had the glass shattered, glittering, slick with black glistening rivulets, intertwined with those little shards of hope, sunlight and darkness, gently brushing each other, in the light embrace of lovers. And she looked for her sunlight, her rays of yellow, blue, orange; waiting for her rainbow, and dripping, trembling fingers reached for the sky, looking desperately for the blue, for that happiness that she had been promised, that memory that should have been reincarnated. But through her tears, her gray toned tears, all she could see was the bleak sky and the vanishing traces of what should have been sunrise.
If you have read this, try reviewing, however much inane your comment is. (cough, note to self: do not unknowingly insult reviewers before they click the button. if they already clicked it and are waiting for the page to load, too bad -)