"Oh, hello, Hinata." Naruto stalled after each word, she could barely hear him. "Everyone has stopped visiting me. Why are you here?"

"Um, well, I haven't seen...I mean, visited you y-yet. And I wanted to give you s-some lilies." Hinata stuttered, trying to find the right words to express herself.

"Thank you, Hinata-chan." Naruto's voice lacked any feeling whatsoever.

"Here!" Hinata thrust the flowers at his unseeing face, he didn't even flinch. "Smell them! Aren't they beautiful?"

Naruto just pushed them away turning his head away from her. "What do you want from me Hinata? I'm useless now to the shinobi of Konoha, nobody wants a blind man to become Hokage."

Hinata wanted to yell at him, say that wasn't true. Ask him where his zeal for life had gone. But all she could do was stand there feeling sadness like no other well up inside of her. And then she did what she promised herself she would not do. She cried. First is started out silently, her body shaking. But then wretched sobs like no other leapt from her throat. "I'm so sorry, Naruto-kun. I, I am stupid for coming here, I was not ready." She felt the need to explain herself.

Naruto's Adam's apple was bobbing up and down as he too, tried not to cry. "No," he whispered. "No, thank you for coming. Everyone else, even Sakura has stopped visiting. Nobody wants anything to do with me. They all think I am worse than a man with no legs or arms. They are too busy with their…their missions." The last word came out strangled, maybe by anger, sadness or frustration.

He held out his hand to her. Hinata took it, and gripped onto it for the rest of her visit. When the nurse came to tell her that visiting hours were over, Hinata resembled something of a limp dish rag. She said goodbye to Naruto. But just as she got to the door he called out to her. "Come back, Hinata. Come back on Wednesday."

Hinata didn't know if she could handle seeing him again so soon. But she said she would anyways. When she glanced back at him she saw Naruto feeling around for the lilies and once he found them, he€ pressed them into his face. How could the world be so cruel? Hinata wondered as she trudged home. Why wasn't it someone else, anyone else but Naruto who got caught in that horrid attack? Naruto was too quick, too smart to get blinded. But he did, how? Hinata felt questioning glances landing on her haggard appearance, she broke into a run and sprinted the rest of the way home.

When Hinata lay down on her bed and tried to sleep, every time she closed her eyes Naruto's blank eyes were staring at her. The once vibrant blue had diminished to a milky gray almost like her own. But they still lacked the alertness of a seeing person's. Hinata was out of tears, so all she could do was shake as if she were crying, dry sobs were lost in her pillow. Finally a restless sleep came filled of terrible nightmares.

The next day was Tuesday, and all Hinata could do was train aimlessly with Kiba and Shino, after she had just barely dodged a spinning shuriken Kiba spoke up. "Holy shit Hinata. What's with you today? You just barely missed getting impaled by that shuriken!"

Over the years team Kurenai had become a second family to Hinata. She was sure the others felt the same way. They told each other everything. "I…I went to see Naruto-kun yesterday." Hinata managed to squeak.

A grunt came from Shino. Probably meaning something along the lines of, "You're an idiot for doing that, you weren't ready."

"What the hell Hinata? You knew you weren't ready for that! Anyways, just forget about him. He's basically useless to Konoha now." Kiba laughed it off, as always.

"What do you know about being useless Kiba? You have no right to talk about Naruto-kun that way!" Hinata barely screamed at Kiba.

"C'mon Hinata, drop the suffix already and accept it. He's dead to you now. Or at least he might as well be." Kiba whined, not taking her seriously yet.

"Kiba, you horrible brute! How would you like it if you lost an arm and I stopped talking to you just because you couldn't be a ninja anymore? Naruto-kun is my friend, and he always will be!" Hinata turned away from him and started walking.

"Yeah, you're just glad that he's blind now because you'll have more of a chance getting noticed by him than you first had when he was a ninja!" Kiba yelled back.

Hinata was not very good at getting mad; her words came out childish and didn't pack the punch she wanted them to. So instead of yelling back at Kiba, she spun around, stomped right up to him, her face a blazing red and smacked him. Then she ran. Hinata had a special spot up on top of the Hokage hill that she went to often. She used it before to think about Naruto or to sort out her feelings. Sometimes even to train. Nobody knew about it except her. Now, she just cried. Kiba knew he shouldn't have said that. He knew he shouldn't say half the things he does. And he knew he could hurt her, so why did he say those things? Hinata wrapped her arms around her legs and drew her knees close to her chest. She dozed off and when she awoke the sun was just coming down from the sky. Hinata jumped up, and then cringed in pain because her legs were stiff and asleep. Hinata wiped her face and combed her fingers through her dark hair as she flew down the hill towards the hospital. She knew she probably smelled as bad as she looked but she didn't care. Naruto was waiting for her! She waved to the nurse at the desk and ran up the stairs to Naruto's room. His face was positioned towards the door. When he heard Hinata's rasping breath his face did this weird sort of smile and he said, "Hinata?"