AN: In this chapter i tried to describe a Hinata that in my mind is changed from what we know her as. (In the mange we also whitness the result of her maturity, thought its not explained taht thoroughly) I tried to be as clear as possible, without being obvious or redundant, and I really hope that though less the blushing and stuttering girl, she is still Hinata, that is, still in character.
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6. And I held you with bloodstained hands…
'You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that.'
- E. B. White, 'Charlotte's Web' -
It was a strange thing, the silence after a battle. It pushed at your eardrums, not because it was too still, but because it was only after it was over that the roaring noise of the fighting finally started to hurt. When you were in the thick of it, the adrenaline so high, the heart flying and your muscles feeling immortal, the blows almost didn't hurt and you fought tooth and nail for every inch, you did extraordinary things because there was someone by your side you wanted to protect, someone for whom you'd even lay your life.
She had come to understand something important in this war, something that she had known for a while, but if was different seeing it so widely, admits so much death: at the seed of themselves, those who fought hardest did not do it because they hated what they were fighting against, but because they loved those they were fighting by their side. That was why she was immune to the games of the mind that their enemy had tried to play. Immune to the draw of hatred and nihilistic denial of life… because she loved, she always would. She was filled with love, and nothing reminded her better of it than fighting side by side with those she had sworn to protect.
It was strange perhaps, but it was so.
And that was why now she felt like something inside her was torn and bleeding inwardly, so much so that she was drowning with it. Because she loved with all her heart, and therefore also suffered just as deeply. And though throughout the years she had schooled herself to deny tears, sometimes the heaviness of grief was just too much to contain and you had to let it out. She knew she had to, because sometimes strength meat letting go.
…There are some emotions the body simply isn't built to contain.
So she made herself move from where she had first collapsed after the troops retreated, and the only place she could think of going was… away… somewhere where the quiet wasn't so deafening, inside a place she could be on her own. But in a camp of several divisions from several different countries, privacy was a luxury that not many could afford. She had shared a tent with Ko, but he was in the medics tent.
And Neji, with whom she'd also shared quarters… he was not there either.
The urgency of her tears was what made her move. In the end, she only had to think of him to feel the hole in her chest expand and overwhelm. Like a fresh wound, it bore no teasing lightly. It hurt like nothing had ever hurt before… and this time Hinata didn't deny it: it was loss, it was pain and the unspeakable desolation of being left behind. It hurt… and she needed to wash herself in it, feel every bit of it, before she could ever even consider being able to live with it.
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He went to her without premeditation, without even thought of where his steps were leading him or what he would do once he got there. It was a simple matter of need, of something that felt as unavoidable as that part about a rock coming down after you throw it in the air. The thread of her emotions was so strong that there was no resisting, the thought didn't even cross his mind.
Out of an entire division, she had been the one to seek solitude… and that was something he couldn't ignore because it was so unbelievably unfair. For a very brief moment he was resentful. Did she not really believe what she said to him? Were those words she spoke to him with such conviction, just words and nothing more? Didn't she know that by keeping to herself her pain would fester, like a bad wound? Sorrow like that couldn't be shouldered alone, you had to bear it with friends, because it was the only way to survive it.
So he went to her: because she would the one of those that was hurting deeply, and she was also the one that was alone in it… and also because she was the one that was there to grip him and steady him back to his own purpose when he wavered, reminding him of himself better than any mirror. It would be too unkind and shamelessly ungrateful not to be there when she was the one most in need of a friend.
Besides… there was nowhere else he could think of going. That was where the inevitability of it came into stark relief.
So when he reached her tent, he knocked just once but didn't expect to be invited in. He knew he wouldn't be. And when he opened the flap and did what he would have never done in any other circumstance, he saw her, and even that flimsy rebellion he'd felt before fell away into oblivion, leaving him only with is feelings that so mirrored hers at the moment.
Because she wasn't isolating herself, or hiding, or simmering.
…She was just crying.
Her protective vest was thrown where she'd taken it off, somewhere near the entrance. She was kneeling on the ground, close to one of the bedrolls but not on it, looking as small as a child with her face sunken into a pillow like that, to muffle the heavy sobs that were shaking her whole frame. And it was just by chance, or maybe not, that he thought she looked just like he once might have looked when he was a kid and hid away to cry alone in a corner, so that nobody could ever witness it.
She looked up and he saw that her tears had made pale runs down her cheeks, clearing tracks the dirt that had accumulated on her face, and smearing in other places in a more messy result. That face that had been so familiar was now so marked by the violence and death that it seemed to belong to someone else.
The girl he remembered was gone.
She too perhaps had just died with her cousin…
As she noticed who it was, her face crumbled anew and she turned her face away… not to refuse him, because he knew by now that she would not do that, but to hide her tears and all that which was so transparent on her face. Had she been anyone else, he would have granted her that privacy. Emotions so intense were almost indecent to witness and everyone had the right to shed them in private… but not this time.
He stepped closer, but had to stop again when a hand that was stained in dried blood and dirt, came up to halt him. Her shoulders shook and he could hear her trying not to hiccup with the effort of holding back.
She spoke, and her voice was thick with tears.
"I'm fine. I a-am. Please, I just… I j-just n-need a m-m …"
But he didn't let her finish, even if she could have been able to. He took her hand in his, that same hand that was raised to stop him, just as the other went around her shoulders to pull her close and hold her there, without hesitation or the barest uneasiness. He felt her freeze in his hold, for a moment she didn't even breathe, but he didn't let go and brought their joined hands over his heart between them... and that was all it took.
Strange how sometimes you can hold your composure and be proper whenever the occasion calls for tears, and then just as someone shows you the tiniest bit of kindness, you completely fall apart.
Hinata proved to be like that. It took that contact between them for her to crumble; and maybe she did because she couldn't hold back any longer, or maybe she could break that way because it was him and no one else... it didn't matter. Naruto felt her weight fall on him as she let go of all the defenses she had left. She folded into him and wept with a kind of desperation that could break stones, her sobs so violent they seemed to come from the bottom of her soul. She sounded inconsolable and Naruto had no idea what to do but hold her tightly enough to remind her she was not alone and let her hide her face in his chest as she wept without barriers or control.
His own tears ran down his face silently. He cried for many things: for the friend he'd lost and the pain it caused him, for every moment throughout the rest of his life when Neji wouldn't be there and Naruto would miss him. He cried for the girl in his arms who was suffering so deeply there could be no meeting her in the middle, and for the countless others who had also lost friends and everyone who had laid down their life. He cried because this was a moment when it would be alright to do so, to just let it go and leak some of his emotions out without restrain.
It should have been embarrassing to be laid so bare, because the soul is appallingly self-conscious about its deepest, darkest emotions, and that self-consciousness is a horrible and overwhelming thing... but at the moment nothing seemed to matter, because they were both so overwhelmed by their emotions that there was nothing left to be embarrassed by.
…
It felt like hours before her tears too turned to being as silent as his. And though she still shook and shivered from time to time, it was not as before when she'd felt like a leaf in a violent storm.
They sat there in silence for a long time, each lost in their own mind, not bothering to move because neither saw the point of it. Now, in both their minds there was that strange quiet that often follows immediate grief, one that usually people mistake for clarity, but that it's really just another form of shock. Naruto had come to lean against one of the poles of the tent and she was seated where he'd manoeuvred her, almost laying over his chest, using him as a kind of pillow with a heartbeat. Neither had a particularly clear idea how they had ended up where they were, and if the very remote chance of either of them coming to wonder of it, the only pause their current placement would merit was to acknowledge how things had changed from merely some weeks ago, when the sight of a girl in tears would had terrified Naruto beyond imagination, and Hinata would have blushed like a fireball at the mere thought of holding him, let alone leaning against him so freely for so long.
But then again, nobody better than shinobi knew just that there were some things one could not share with someone else without feeling much closer to them, or how much deeper a bond of friendship gets when you risk your lives for one another. And so far Hinata and Naruto had inadvertently shared more with each other in a few weeks than they had their whole lives: dangers, death, loss and heartache; that terrible void of someone that is not there, that indescribable solidarity that comes from one kind gesture when it feels most needed.
…and also something else that hung between them, some words and feelings that, at the moment, were more of a blanket of comfort than anything else: they both held the unspoken, but undoubted, understanding that they cared for one another. How, and how differently, remained peripheral because it didn't matter, not right then. When the world is falling apart and you're the one trying to hold the seams together, any touch of compassion is a gift more precious than anything else. And there was a strange, new kind of safety – especially for Naruto - in knowing you are in the arms of someone that cares for you warmly.
Some things it seemed, needed not to be spoken. Some things just were. And they were friends... and perhaps a little more than that – or was it, a little differently friends from all those he had called friend before - because they shared something just slightly out of the schemes. She had love for him, and he knew of that love, and that alone was enough to create a whole new dynamic between them that he'd never had with anyone before, even if it was silent and nothing was accepted.
But they were always, first and foremost, friends.
And it proved a great thing, to have a gentle friend. Especially when you feel frail enough that by the wrong brush or at the wrong word, you could crumble in a dust pile and be swept away by any breeze.
…
Perhaps it was proof of how the battlefield had sharpened her awareness, or how years of drilling it had finally proved useful, but when Hinata woke up hours later in the depth of the night, her first thought was about assessing her surroundings: she was in her tent and laying on someone's shoulder – and Neji was gone, her heart clenched painfully – and she hadn't done that since that mission in Wave when the younger part of Team 8 went and got so drunk that they'd practically passed out on top of each other (she using Kiba's shoulder as a pillow and Shino using the small of her back the same way).
She found that she had no recollection of laying down in the first place, and that – strangest of all, but she'd realize that one much later – beside a slight apprehension for her current situation (and undeniable gladness that he hadn't gone and she didn't have to be alone), she could not bring herself to feel much else. There was a strange void in her, something she had never felt before… or perhaps it was matter explained as a sort of numbness that stood like a tall five-foot-thick wall between her and her emotions.
Ephemeral… inconsequential – those were words that could fit her state of being right then.
How would she ever grasp the strength she'd need to keep fighting?
She could of course, the proof was the very underlying current beneath the thought itself: that she would do it by every means necessary. That she would fight for all those that remained and that she would fight alongside those that were already gone where she couldn't yet follow. She knew that she was strong enough to do that.
But not now…
Now was the moment she'd allowed herself to fall and break and come together again. There would be no other, this was a luxury that would not repeat itself. So she did what she felt like doing and cried some more, this time quietly because she didn't want to wake him who was sleeping beside her. He deserved rest more than anyone.
He'd been so brave, so strong. He'd fought with all his heart and gave it his all. But looking at him now, sleeping so close, his face almost relaxed and unguarded… he seemed more like the boy she remembered than the hero everyone saw him as.
Of course, those aspects of him were not mutually exclusive, not to her at least. To her he had always been a hero – for smiling when it hurt most, for struggling with everything and everyone, but never giving up. For daring to believe in radical concepts like 'peace' in a world where death was a form of art, and having the strength of will to say it aloud, over and over again until it was heard over the laughter and ridicule of those that were not as brave to believe - until it was undeniable, and they had to.
He had always been a source of courage, someone that banished fear with a smile. It was so when she was a child and needed a sunny thought to hold on to, and even now, when she was an adult and rattled by grief that had felt so like fear.
And though she was still hurting, she was not afraid anymore. She knew that would never be the same nor should she be the same nor should she want to. That crack in her heart would never heal, would always hurt, but she did not mind it. She'd never minded scars and it was in the scar tissue of the heart that those that love us and leave us, live forever. And that was alright. It had to be… even in those moments when grief felt like a window that opened in its own accord and you were so helpless against it that all you could do was shiver with the cold it let into the room. It had to be ok, because no matter how great her heartbreak, the world would not stop for it. Her heart was her own and only she could shoulder its pain.
Loss of family, unfortunately, cannot be shared - you'll feel them missing every day of your life, in the void places that their absence has left being something nothing else can fill but the memory of those that are gone - … even though it does warm the heart a little not to be in that cold room alone.
'The darker the night, the brighter the stars.
The deeper the grief, the closer is god.'
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky –
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TBC:::
PS: I was wondering if perhasp i should add the 'morning after' scene? Should I? Sometimes this chapter feels complete like this, sometimes it doesn't. Let me know.
Pps: just out of curiosity, do you think that there would be akwardness between them the next morning? I think I do, but I'm not sure... Probably why i haven't written that scene ;P
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Disclaimer: I used quotes from several authors to enspire me for thsi chapter and some pasages ended up here.
- Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering." s. Plath
- It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses. ― Colette
- You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to." ― Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
- Grief is a most peculiar thing; we're so helpless in the face of it. It's like a window that will simply open of its own accord. The room grows cold, and we can do nothing but shiver. ― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha
