Ten years later
Ten years...had it really been ten years since Hinata had died? Had it really been ten years since he had become a missing-nin?
Indeed it had been.
Naruto laid on his back staring up at the star filled night sky with a sad look on his face. It had been ten years since Hinata had died and truth be told, he had never really gotten over it. Her confession and then her death had changed him in ways that he still didn't understand. Ten years ago he thought that he knew what he was going to say to her but now...now he didn't even remember what he was going to say.
Hinata...I miss you so much. I know that I could have saved her, I know it! If only I'd have known what the elders of the Hyuga clan were planning I could have stopped them.
Naruto continued staring up at the sky as he thought of what he could have done. He could have taken her away from the Hyugas before the attack, he could have warned her of what was to come. There were so many things he wished that he could have said and done before she died.
Despite thinking of new things he could have said every day, there was one regret that was almost constantly on his mind: The one regret that haunted his dreams at night.
He had never addressed Hinata's confession.
I'm so sorry Hinata...I'm so sorry.
It just hadn't seemed important at the time. There was the threat of Sauske and Akatsuki. He had taken care of the remaining members of Akatsuki except for Madara Uchiha who had vanished after the fall of his organization. As for Sauske...he seemed to have vanished along with Madara and hadn't been seen since.
But they didn't matter anymore. Nothing really mattered anymore. The only thing that Naruto was focused on was surviving each day and focusing on the many regrets that he had.
Even though he had left the Hidden leaf village and had managed to get himself branded as a missing nin, there was one thing that he did once a year. Something that made him feel slightly better about the decisions he had made in his life.
He would visit Hinata's grave.
The journey usually took a few days and there was always the risk of being caught and executed but he was always able to get inside the village undetected and was then able to visit her grave. Of course, the visits always had to be made under the cover of darkness to avoid detection, but it was worth it just to be able to sit next to her grave and talk.
He would talk about anything that came to mind. Things like the weather, the battles he had fought against hunter nins, anything that he could think of.
Of course he would get no answer. Hinata was long dead and nothing was going to change that. Nothing would change the fact that he was talking to someone who had died long ago.
But it still made him feel better so he would continue to do it.
He looked up at the sky and smiled a rare smile. He didn't really have much of anything to do anymore so what harm could it do to visit Hinata a few months early?