I Do Not Own Naruto.

Chapter 2

In the year afterwards, they had all gotten better. She had gotten better; everyone was relieved she wasn't on active duty anymore. Instead of the temporary reprieve of fighting for her life, Hinata spent time with people she hadn't seen at all, but the laughter wasn't hers and the smiles didn't reach her eyes. Usually she wouldn't say things about his disappearance, after the initial shock wore off, the realization that even Naruto could break promises, and that her sun could stop shining.

After that she hadn't really cared about anything except to ease the pain that ripped apart her heart, over and over again, and the more pain she felt in her body, the closer she got to death with each injury, the less she would focus on things of the past. She'd been dancing the fine line of hurting herself, or putting herself in the way so she didn't have to do it. Even she didn't know on which side she belonged, but she planned to keep doing it. It was a dangerous game she was playing, and the only way it was going to end was with her death. She wanted to trust him, and wait for him to come back, and have him tell her that everything would be okay because he was there and she didn't have to fight to breathe, or work to keep up the façade that she was alright. She couldn't even do daily functions right. Did she wait until her eyes started burning to blink? Or did she do it periodically?

He was gone and everything went with him. She wasn't a shell because things went in shells nothing was going into her, there might have been something there before, and there might be something there later, but right now she was a crust, and she was crumbling. She couldn't take much more of this, waiting at home like some kind of housewife. She couldn't take knowing that she was a shinobi, and that she could kill hundreds by herself, she could make a man twice her size grovel like a child at her feet; for his life, She could save entire villages, but when it came to the person she most wanted-no needed to save, she came up short. She was smiling, but inside she was seething. There was nothing she could ever, or would ever be able to do.

"I think there's something wrong with Hinata," Sakura looked at the nurse who asked to have lunch with her today and raised her eyebrow. Of course there's something wrong with Hinata, Naruto had left, and there were no messages, not even a word that he was okay. It didn't look like he was coming back. The doctor didn't know that of course. The two had kept their relationship quiet, not wanting to incite the wrath of her father, but from Sakura's point of view it had been pretty obvious. There were small things that you had to notice. Hinata had once told her that she couldn't even be around him, because she'd forget to breathe, and pass out. After awhile she couldn't stand be away from him, and the feeling was mutual.

Sakura was once entrusted with the task of finding them both because they had a mission in an hour and neither had bothered to show up for the debriefing. Thinking she would have to go to opposite ends of the village to find them she decided to find Hinata first because she would be easier to get away from whatever was keeping her.

Hinata had somehow convinced her father to let her use the old garden shed as a room, something about independence and learning how to govern herself before she learned how to rule the clan. When Sakura had first seen it, the day she had been recruited to help clean it, it was bigger than the first floor of her house, she could only image what Hinata's former room had looked like. It was easier to access than the rest of the house and Hinata figured she didn't want her friends going through the "state your business" nonsense every time they came to see her.

When Sakura arrived at the shed she knocked, but there was no one in, and she'd gone to see if Hinata was in the garden, and found both of them there. Naruto was laying spread eagle on the ground, and Hinata was curled up next to him with her head on his shoulder while he was playing with her hair. And they were covered from head to toe in dirt and leaf bits. This was the first time Sakura had seen them actually together. They looked so happy and at peace that she didn't want to break the calm that washed over the entire garden with a mission. So Sakura went back to Tsunade and told her she'd take another two for her mission because she couldn't find them. After that you couldn't mistake that they were in love. It was in the very air around them. They could be sitting in the ramen shop, and she would unconsciously straighten his jacket. Then he would steal food out of her bowl without even realizing it. She was the only person who could ever tolerate his incessant talking for more than half an hour and he never once got impatient with her stutter. After awhile it disappeared, and both were happier for it. Naruto told them this was his last chance to find Sasuke, and bring him back. He told her specifically, that he would be back. And when Sasuke finally woke up and told them that Naruto had traded himself to Orochimaru for Sasuke's release Hinata walked out of the room. Straight to the assignments building and asked for an A-rank mission. She got it. The minute she came back she asked for another and another and it kept going. When the Hokage finally got fed up and took her off active duty she poured what was left of her heart and soul into the hospital. So when the nurse said something was wrong with her, Sakura resisted the urge to let her know that most people knew that already.

"Hinata was a very close friend of Naruto's and his disappearance is upsetting her a lot," Sakura answered trying not to give away any information, Hinata's father had spies everywhere.

"No it's something different, she's got most of the symptoms of an impending breakdown, it looks as if they were closer than you think because every day she comes in for work, it looks like she got less sleep and has less peace of mind, It's upsetting because the only way anyone would know is if they watched her closely. The symptoms are barely there, but they're there. " the doctor told her.

"So you're not trying to get information for her father?" Sakura asked with as much nonchalance as she could get in at the moment. This was getting to be a bit more serious than a broken heart, as Sakura first anticipated. Hinata was doing well in her opinion she ate more, and the bags under her eyes were slowly disappearing, but this woman was a doctor of the mind, she could tell when you were trying to hide something, and when you were lying. She could probably tell her about Hinata's mental condition, better than anyone. Hinata was a Hyuuga, and they were the best at trying to hide their emotions, but when you've been trained to pick apart those emotions for most of your life, very little could conceal them from you.

"No, but Hinata, she's got a swirl of emotions going through a mile a minute every moment of the day. The most dominate being anger and hurt. It looks as if she needs someone to get her to snap out of it, because, I've seen many cases like this, right now she's just going through the motions. Wake up, go to work, eat, and sleep, that sort of thing. Later she won't even be able to do that, she's driving herself insane from the inside, and it won't be long before she does something drastic." The doctor looked seriously worried, and that worried Sakura, this was getting to be more drastic.

"Thanks, I'll see what I can do," Sakura got up, paid the bill, and went off in search of the girl.

Hinata was just finishing up fixing a broken arm when Sakura found her and told her that she needed to talk right now.

"I go on break in about five minutes, so I think I can leave a bit early," Hinata told her. Sakura waited impatiently in the little café at the hospital until Hinata arrived, cheerfully, but she could tell, Hinata was tired, and she fidgeted a lot. The other girl sat down next to Sakura and took a deep breath. Sakura watched her while she ordered. The bags under her eyes were back. Her cheeks were hollow and her skin took on a yellowish tinge. The muscles in her arms looked almost grotesque against the loss of weight in her body. She had been training, but she hadn't been eating. At this point Sakura could tell when something was wrong physically, even if she wasn't very good with mentally. Hinata was running on fumes. She should've passed out weeks ago, but her body had stubbornly hung on. Her hands were shaking, telling of her inner battle to stay conscious. If Hinata continued doing this to herself she was going to die. Realizing this, she decided that talking was going to get her nowhere.

"Um...can we talk another time Hinata?" Sakura inquired. "I just realized I have to go check on Sasuke, I haven't seen him in a while, and he won't eat unless you shove food into his mouth."

"That's…alright I guess, tell him I said hello, okay?" Hinata told her. She tried giving her friend a smile, but it turned out more of a grimace.

Sakura turned towards Sasuke's apartment, hut as soon as she was out of sight of the café she doubled back and went towards the tower. Hinata was killing herself, and it was worse than the missions something had to be done.

---

The Blond lay on a metal cot, staring at the ceiling, fighting sleep. Sleeping was dangerous. Better to just rest and pass out from exhaustion later. That way they'll put him in the infirmiry, where he'll be safe from Orochimaru's experiments. The next vessel had to be in tip top shape right? He had long since put out of the snake's mind anything that involved his chakra or his body, (the sick bastard) but that didn't mean that the disgusting little man did not have free reign over his mind. That he could not stop, he wasn't strong enough to keep the him out, and even if he did succeed even for a minute he was rewarded with unparalleled waves of pain and torture. Faces and people he'd known he'd seen before were tortured and killed over and over again, he did the killing, or he sat and watched enjoying every minute of it even though in is inner mind he was screaming for it to stop. Then the man started attacking him at his weakest point. So there was no resistance at all. After a fifteen hour practice, when he'd finished throwing up, too tired to pick himself up off of the ground, would look up and every time, and those eyes narrowed into satisfied slits, would always be the only thing he could see. He didn't know if it was seconds or hours that he stared up, but he'd always pass out under the weight of them. And then the dreams would start. The grotesque, ugly, misshapen forms of people he once knew, but couldn't place. Killing him, being killed, fighting for their lives, for his life, but always, always loosing. Dying by the hands of a frenzied mob, a single person, a group of shinobi, or him. He would scream. He knew he would scream, because he couldn't talk for hours after he waking. There would always be memories there that weren't his. Battles he remembered, but never fought, entire villages he destroyed, children he'd slaughtered, girls he'd raped. The last haunted him the most, he could feel their screams, as if they were next to him, feel his sick, sick pleasure he got at the power he had over them, taste the blood that splattered all over him when he killed them afterwards.

In the beginning he could easily discern these fake memories from reality, but as time wore on (of how much he wasn't sure) it took a little more concentration, until even attempting to differentiate the memories and his own left him gasping on the floor, clawing at his scalp in pain. Wishing for oblivion, knowing it would never come. Then there would be things…missing. Things replaced by the false memories, he knew this, but he couldn't call them back. There were names, but no faces to go with them. Zabuza, Haku, Gaara, Sa-ku-ra? The last one was supposed to stir something in him he knew, mean something to him but he couldn't reach it.

In the beginning he even tried to delude himself. Thinking that he was only gathering information for his village and be rewarded with cheering instead of grim silence upon his arrival. He would be a hero, the greatest one ever to walk through those gates. But the poison seeped through his mind, until he barely even knew who he was anymore. He tried to call back anything that would make him fee sane again. Names, faces, locations, but his former life was becoming more unfocused, in the sharp reality that was his now. Every time he looked into those eyes. They would take something from him, twist it and turn it until he wasn't sure that he himself was real. That he wasn't some sick artificial reality, and some asshole wasn't having fun and driving him over the brink of insanity, and hanging him there by his toenail. The bastard was toying with his mind, tearing it apart, adding pieces that weren't his, leaving things out, doing it over and over again, until his head was some misshapen puzzle. He didn't even know whether his name was his own or something that the snake gave to him. The only thing that remained constant was the beast inside of him, and the training. The gut wrenching training he hated and loved, long for and dreaded, lived and almost died for. The small untouched place in his mind was only used for the growing hatred he kept for the people who left him to this. He wasn't living. He barely existed. This man was adding more and more pressure and it wouldn't be long before he broke. But he refused to be reduced to that. His mind would grow stronger. The dreams would fade, and he would escape.

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Decided to put this on hiatus (that goes without saying), but had this in the archives. Cleaned it a bit and added it.

Might even come back to finish this up. :)