Title: Never Let Go
Fandom: Naruto
Pairing: Naruto x Hinata.
Summary: A young wife makes a deal with a demon to leave her and her husband alone, forever.
Prompt 2 out of 10 from Bitter-Smoke's 'Faint Sunshine Challenge'.
02: Never Let Go
Married life was nothing like she expected.
At a certain time of night, Naruto's mind entered a state Hinata could never understand. He often woke her between the hour before midnight and three in the morning. On this occasion, he recalled a conversation from earlier that day and how it offended him, the memory of his father; how the people of Konoha would suffer if he were to leave this person undisciplined. Hinata asked groggily what this person said. Apparently, it was a drinking buddy who had asked the Hokage for money; it was money to travel to Sunagakure to gamble in the desert, probably see a woman or two, if he made it that far. A good friend, a soldier, leaving Konoha to blow his money elsewhere. It hurt Naruto. Somehow it was like asking to move in and insist on paying no rent for months on end. Then add to that an unpaid tab for alcohol and card games.
Naruto continued his tirade without pause, saying that he was better off not fighting for Konoha. Maybe he should go with his buddy to Sunagakure on the money he could siphon from the Fire Country's welfare budget. It frightened Hinata how personal and obscure these rants became. How did his brain get to these thoughts in the first place? She was startled awake each time he spoke at normal volume right by her ears. It frightened her more that these thoughts arose at this time of night. It was too late to consider it a party anymore and too early to consider it useful information to retain. There was danger to this in-between time that she never spoke out loud.
Rather than get angry as she wanted to, she listened to him talk. Then, he started to cry.
Her heart dropped, and she rushed to hug his head to her chest.
"I can't do this," he said.
"Do what?" Hinata asked.
He never answered her, just kept crying. He said it again. Then it started a cycle she couldn't finish. For every time Naruto said, "I can't do this," Hinata tried to tell him that he could. After all, they were talking about something else, weren't they? Something that lurked deeper inside him.
"Never let go," he said, finally.
The words shocked her, breaking her out of willing him to go to sleep so she could too. This was Naruto, a man who had broken his body many times over for Konoha, crying in her arms.
He got to sleep in the end, but she lay awake, going over what stirred inside her too.
Would he be there in the morning?
Would he tell her next time?
What if she wasn't there?
Or what if he lost the battle, laying right next to her?
Hours passed in darkness before the Kyuubi twisted in to Naruto's form. Hinata's eyes, scared, found themselves in their Byakugan state, without prompting. Her hair raised on her scalp and on the back of her neck and the palms of her hands pulsed with a heat designed to pierce chakra points and cause organ failure. The heat receded on a mental command, but she remained vigilant, watching the Kyuubi take hold of her beloved.
She took Naruto's hand though she wanted to run and bared down for the darkness ahead.
"Hyuuga girl," the voice of Naruto mocked. "I had missed you. Block our chakra, why don't you and put me back to sleep?"
"Go away," she said.
The Kyuubi snarled and large, orange coils snapped from Naruto's body like snakes. "My vessel is mine and without me he has no strength."
Naruto's sky-blue eyes turned to rust red under the Kyuubi's mind corruption. The slit, cat-like eyes spoke of an animal she could not touch without damaging Naruto first.
"He is stronger than anyone I know, even without you."
Naruto squatted down, or the Kyuubi did in Naruto's body, taking Hinata with him while she hung on. It was hard for Hinata to see his face and not beg him to stop playing around, the face of the Kyuubi as it was every inch like her husband's.
"Foolish woman," the fox said. "I've always been inside him. Lurking. I've even watched the two of you. I like how you moan underneath him and get all breathy when he kisses you."
Hinata vanished inside her head for a moment, trying to remember the last time she and Naruto had been intimate - had she seen the eyes of the Kyuubi then?
The Kyuubi broke her concentration before she could finish that thought. "Listen, girl," he said. "I should have told you sooner. We Jinchuuriki are partial to a good love story. If you can last the night, holding his hand, while I use the last of his chakra I promise I'll never appear again."
Hinata nodded, unsure what she was agreeing to.
The Kyuubi smiled then and the darkness around them seemed to get darker, if only in Hinata's mind.
The Kyuubi was done talking and let Hinata try and guess his next move. A strong breeze picked up despite all the windows being closed so she kept an ear out for any falling furniture or banging cupboards. A loud crash came from the next room over that made her jump. It could have been a book from the shelf she told herself. Or a heavy file slipping off Naruto's desk because he was too busy to put them away as Hinata told him he should. Naruto-Kyuubi smiled and licked his lips. The look suggested he was going to get started and Hinata was waiting.
First thing he did was place a hand on Hinata's free one. The fingers caught her one by one causing her chest to tighten in anticipation. Her heart thudded wildly when she saw the deformed shape of a claw on her. "Please," she said, closing her eyes. He gripped her hand tight, squeezing flesh and bone like he was trying to break a nut open. And Hinata cried out in pain.
The face of the fox pressed against her cheekbone as she said "ow, ow, ow" to herself over again and started to cry. His breath was hot and rapid against her skin. She started to crawl off the edge of the bed awkward and desperate trying to hide as much as possible without letting go.
It gave him leverage to shout more, to stand over her and to make her feel smaller to him than the floor beneath them.
"What are you, Hyuga?"
She tried to cover her ear with her one hand, now broken and winced when she tried to raise it and realised she couldn't.
"You think you can ignore me?!" he shouted. "Are you too good for the Jinchuuriki?" At this point the wind in the house was stirring up her hair, the clothes she was wearing and some of the items on her bedside table fell to the floor. The air seemed to bristle with a frightening electricity she couldn't explain.
She shook her head and pulled her knees up to her chest. She leaned her head back on the bed, looking up to beg to the Gods to please help, please let her keep her word.
The jinchuuriki appeared like a peek-a-boo toy directly in front of her eyes, causing her to jump and scream hysterically.
He laughed, and she cowered low again, shaking her head and crying.
"I can't," she said. "I can't, I can't. Bring Naruto back, please."
"You made a pact."
"Please," she cried. "Leave us alone."
"Let's go for a walk, shall we?"
The jinchuuriki lifted her up not too kindly, practically dragging her while she felt her arm stretched too far, about to release itself from its socket.
She shut her eyes tight and held on, reminding herself that she was told not to let go.
The Kyuubi had brought her to the nearest graveyard and mocked her Hyuga name several times over on the way there. "What does Hyuga rhyme with?" and "What's a Hyuga baby with no Hyuga eyes? Worthless."
They came to a standstill and he said, "Where would the Fire Country be without the Hyuga clan? Without your father?"
He pointed out a set of headstones. She read the names of her mother, her father, her sister. She'd already been crying so much her head was aching by now. She had only seen her father the week before at the Hyuga compound, this was impossible.
"It isn't true," she said, to herself because her breath had been taken away by the sight of their photos on each tombstone. Hanabi was barely twenty-two, too young to be dead.
She had no tears left but tried to cry all the same, hanging her head in defeat.
To see her family's smiling faces immortalised was too much. She didn't know how she could live without them.
The Kyuubi seemed satisfied by this because he let out a roar of laughter that was followed by a terrible sound of thunder overhead.
Hinata was frightened, desperate, needing her husband. Please, come back.
The remainder of the night the Kyuubi used Hinata like a doll, flinging her helpless body around while he went about destroying what he could. Buildings were brought down in swift blows and nobody was awake to come to her rescue.
The pain, the fear was never ending.
Naruto came to in their marital bed, well-rested and perky. He sat bolt upright and gasped at the sight of his wife beside him. Her body too broken to move, Naruto touched her carefully, in disbelief, completely amazed by the level of damage she'd sustained. Even his endless reserves of chakra could not have repaired these injuries quickly enough.
She winced as her hurried to pick her up. She tried to grip his shirt with her broken, mangled hand and winced, leaning in to him for comfort. It was impossible to move even a small amount without shots of pain moving all up and down her body. He attempted gentle movements while he carried her but even these were too jerky for her to tolerate. Her pain scale had not downgraded from a high ten with a possible coma incoming.
He tried to tell her she was okay, but he wasn't sure. He slammed doors shut without locking them and raced to the hospital.
Many hours later, Hinata woke to hear a female voice say, "She'll recover, Mister Uzumaki. Remind her to take two of these each night for two weeks. If the insomnia gets worse, come back and we can change the medication."
"Thank you," he said, and feet pattered away down the hospital corridor. He happened to glance over at Hinata then and his face lit up to see she was awake. "Hinata!" He wasted no time getting to her side and hugging her tight. "Are you okay?"
He buried his face in her chest and she laughed and tried pushing him away with no luck. "We're in public, Naruto," she said.
"Yeah, but I wasn't sure if you were ever waking up. I might never have got to enjoy these again." He gave one breast a squeeze which she hit away gently, and he kissed her cheek, too happy now to be hurt.
His face turned serious and he nodded towards her bandaged hand. "Why did you let him do that?"
Hinata looked down and tears welled in her eyes. When she looked up again, Naruto hugged her again.
"I'm sorry," he said. "This is not how a marriage should be."
"But it is what it is," she said and turned her face into his neck to kiss it and linger there while she let herself cry. "You said never let go," she whispered.
Author's notes: This is actually based on a fairytale I read in a book I now can't find. There's a myth of a man who turns into a werewolf and to break the curse, his lover must promise to hold his hand the entire night he's transformed. I thought it was super tragic and so unusual it stuck with me.
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