Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. But I'm sure he misses me.
Okay, so this is late, I know. But I need you guys to know that whatever happens, I will be updating this. I just have so many things going on in my life. There's been a death in the family, and it was really hard not just on me, but with everyone in the family. Plus, I have tons to do with school. So I just need you guys to understand. You have given me so much support with the previous chapters of this story, and I really appreciate it. I just hope that if ever I come late with updates, you guys will still be waiting and reading them. Anyway, enough with this. I hope you enjoy this.
Chapter 10: Uninvited
The memory of you emerges from the night around me
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea
In you the wars and the flights accumulated
From you the wings of the song bird rose
In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank
This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of longing
And in it my longing fell, in you everything sank
It is the hour of departure.
- A Song of Despair
It would pass, she repeatedly thought. She wiped the already drying blood from her mouth, her hands with the sleeves of her sweater. She forced her heels to stay on the ground as she struggled to get a grip of the swing. The sun was at its peak, high noon already. When she was in the academy, she used to love high noons. She would run around the playground, trying to catch her shadow. Now, its warmth had never felt so fatal to her, so she closed her eyes and decided to take comfort in the wind. Sakura knew that today, everything would change permanently. If she ever got through today, she knew that the rest would be easier. Going away would be easier. Death would be easier.
She felt the familiar ache in her lungs. Throwing up blood was not something she thoroughly enjoyed. She had never gotten to being used to it, despite having routinely experienced such nuance for the past three years. Her episodes would come and go, and it has gotten significantly worse. She tried to rub the spot in her chest which ached the most, failing to soothe it. But that was only because the pain was not caused by her episodes. Thinking about how at this very moment, her best friend would seal his bond with another, made her feel a certain kind, of well, she couldn't give it a term really. Maybe it was a type of despair, or final realization. Either way, she knew that all she could do now was be happy for him. And happy, she was, though not enough.
She straightened her covered legs and watched as it make a vertical shadow beneath her on the grass. She tried not to remember the look on Naruto's face when he told her to go away. He was genuinely angry, his eyes had this look of disgust and his mouth formed a form straight line, as if telling her that there was no chance for them anymore. He was more than disgusted at her, he felt betrayed. She had two options then to deal with it. One, she could grovel, apologize and beg for him to forgive her. Or two, she could let him go. Telling the truth was not an option. Maybe she really was a bad person, for she chose to lie. Seeing him so hurt that day made it easy to make her choice. It was by far the hardest decision that she had to live with, and it was more painful than any of the things she had gone through for the last three years when she became sick.
Seated on the swing, she took a deep breath and tried to smile. The wind was sweeping her long hair now. At least now she knew that Naruto was going to be alright. He was now surrounded with people who love and respect him. That fact made her worry about him a little less. Lately, she had realized that leaving him was really for the best. She could not imagine how it would hurt Naruto more if he knew how sick she was. He was a kind person like that. It would've distracted him from reaching his goals. She would not permit it. She knew she had this battle to herself. Even now when was losing, she was at peace knowing that she would never burden her precious people again.
It really sucked, having these realizations now. Had she known earlier in life how much she had inflicted pain on Naruto and everyone else she cared about, she would have tried to change and mind more the feelings of others rather than herself. Had she known that chasing a ghost half her life was something she was not meant for, she would have stopped. Had she known that the person who loved her the most was the one in front of her shouting "Sakura-chan! Let's eat some ramen today!" every day, she would have loved him sooner. These regrets come and go as she thought about it, but what good would it do? That was the one thing she did not like about her current lifestyle, she had too much time to think.
That was enough thinking for today, though. It was time to go home and take a long nap. She intended to sleep the rest of the day, so tomorrow, she'd wake up and hear the news of how the Hokage-to-be and Hyuuga heiress' wedding had gone without a hitch. Neji would definitely check up on her tonight. She did not want him to worry more about her.
Pushing her heels, she gently stood up while holding a grip on the rope of the swing. Her vision was becoming blurry. That wasn't good. She had to get home soon. She planted her feet firmly on the green grass and started walking but was immediately interrupted. In front of her, the wind rustled a set of leaves. Then the wind became suddenly strong, blowing around her like a small tornado. She closed her eyes while her arms covered the front of her face. The wind almost knocked her down so she tried to hold on to the swing. As the sound of the rustling wind stopped, she carefully opened her emerald eyes.
She coughed whatever dirt had gotten to her mouth. Standing a few meters away from her were two forms clad in dark brown clothing. Shinobis? She couldn't tell. They were now approaching her. Her breath hitched as one of the two forms unsheathed something from his back. A dagger.
It was like time had stopped for Hyuuga Hinata. The walk down the aisle, her father's grip on her hand as they walked together, and Naruto's peaceful face as she approached him. All of it seemed wrong.
It was like there was a heavy weight on her shoulders that refused to leave. In front of her was the man she had always loved, the man who promised he'd marry her if she'd have him. His love was the one thing she wanted to have. And yet, what Neji had revealed to know about what she did was eating her conscience.
Tears were still running through her cheeks. For the first time, she wondered if it were really a good thing for Naruto to be apart from Sakura. She had been the best friend to Naruto that Hinata wanted to be for the longest time. Ever since Naruto had been without Sakura, Hinata watched as she went into a deep depression. He would always train, almost destroying the training fields in her rage. He would smile, but it was not the kind anyone would buy to be true. It was obvious how angry and hurt he was. She believed then that enough patience would eventually get him out of his reverie, and that in time he'd be okay, with her preferably. But now, seeing the disappointed face of her cousin who was standing next to her fiancé, Hinata thought she is a fool for ever believing that she was the one who could heal him. She had only served to complicate things for him. She had only led him to play a game of pretend.
What was worse was what she did to Sakura.
"You love him, don't you?" her father asked as he sipped the warm tea in his hands. The seated Hinata, fisting her hands on the fabric of her pants, answered meekly.
"I do, Father."
"Then this is the only way," Hyuuga Hiashi replied, intently looking at his daughter with a firm authority of a clan leader.
"But father, I can make him love me myself. He cares for me and..." Her answer was interrupted by her father's abrupt standing.
"Do you think you are enough? Do you think it is enough that you have him now?" It hurt her to realize how much her own father doubted her. Her eyes started to water as she could not answer the older Hyuuga.
Her head remained bowed as she heard her father's footsteps approach her. She was taken completely aback as her father bent down to her, his hands reaching out to tip up her chin and made her look at her.
"Dear daughter, I am only looking out for you," he said in a low voice. At this, her tears had started falling.
"If he is the one you want to keep and he is the one you want to be with for the rest of your life, then it is my duty to make sure that he becomes yours." She did not know how to react to such an unusual speech from her father. He continued.
"We must work together to keep him away from those that confuse and hurt him, don't you think?" She could not do anything but to nod at her father's question.
"Do not worry. It is a harmless procedure. We shall only proceed with it when she agrees." She knew that whatever her father's words were will be followed anyway. He tolerated no amount of defiance, that she knew.
But at that moment, with what her father said, she felt like she was his daughter that he was really trying to protect. There was no harm in believing in the better possibility.
After that conversation with her father and the head of their clan, Hinata had agreed to place a special seal on Haruno Sakura. Despite having known so little with this new procedure, she took the word of her father that it would only serve to keep Sakura away from Naruto. Her father had been the one to present to Sakura the proposition, and according to him, she surprisingly agreed. She would never forget their conversation on the night before the sealing.
"Sakura-san, I hope you understand. I need a chance with him. I would never get a fair shot while you're there," she wanted to continue, but it seemed that Sakura had not been paying attention, having this dazed look on her face. Hinata heard a deep sigh from the girl sitting in front of her.
"The way he looked at me last time..."Hinata could see how her mind had drifted away.
"If it would make your heart and his at peace...then I guess there's no other way," Sakura finally looked at her, her mouth turned upwards like a small smile.
"Promise me, though. That you will never hurt him the way I did." It was a subtle plea.
"Yes, I promise."
"Then that's all I can ask for."
What she didn't know back then was that the one thing she promised not to do was what she was doing right now. She had deprived him of the power to choose.
She was shaken as she her mind was brought back to the ceremony. The priest had been calling her name. Apparently, he had been wanting to get some sort of answer from her.
"Hinata-san, are you okay?" the priest asked worriedly. Hinata looked around to see her father's stern look and her fiance's confused one towards her.
She could not answer.
A warm hand found its way to her wet cheek. It was Naruto's. It was always him. It was terrifying how much she loved him. It terrified her more what she had done.
"Hinata, don't be so nervous. I'm here," he said. Those eyes she fell in love with, they were boring through her with such care. But were they real? Or just the effects of her genjutsu on him? She couldn't tell. She took another deep breath.
"I think she's ready," she heard Naruto say to the priest.
"Hyuuga Hinata, do you take this man as your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, in sickness and health, for richer or for poorer, til death do you part?" Naruto had obviously took his vows. She hadn't even noticed.
It was so simple to do it now. Say "I do" and all would be done. Why was it so difficult now?
"Hinata..." the man in front of her called. It was wrong. All of it. Her hands flew to her mouth as her whole form trembled. She heard Naruto move to her, but she lifted her head to stop him.
"I need you to tell me that you want me to say I do." She finally said.
"What?" her confused fiancé asked.
"Do you want me to say I do?"
"Of cou..." As soon as he started saying it, with all the love that was not meant for her, she knew what to do.
"We put a seal on Sakura. So that she couldn't get near you. She couldn't even think about you. It was a special bird cage seal."
His blue eyes widened. He was rooted to the spot, while gasps from the audience were heard all over the place.
"Hinata!" her father shouted, trying to reprimand her. She couldn't turn back now. It was then that she realized that she and Naruto never belonged to each other. She ignored her father for once.
"I also put you in a genjutsu to sever all your ties with her. That's why you could never feel her or think about her. It was the only way I could win you," she finally confessed.
She watched as he struggled to form words.
"It was not fair and I'm sorry."
Another blow of the wind caused her to crash on the wide bark of the tree. Sakura screamed as blood trickled from behind her head. She slumped on the grass. Her body had now refused to help her stand up. One of the two men approached her, but when he was a few inches from her, a barrier suddenly formed. Her mind scrambled to figure out what was happening but gave her nothing.
His face was completely covered with a dark cloth that not even his eyes could be seen, but he could see alright. He cocked his head to the side as he palmed the circular barrier. Sakura could only watch as she still struggled to stand up.
The other man was sketching something on the ground. Sakura could not understand why these two were here.
"What do you want?" she said, her voice already too weak to be heard. No one answered. The man in front of her formed a seal with his hands, mumbling something she could not understand.
"Kai!" he finally uttered as he forced his fist onto the barrier. It disappeared immediately. The man continued to approach her and held her arms, pulling her to where the other man was.
"Stop! Why are you doing this?" she asked once again. Nobody paid attention.
She was pushed onto the ground where the other man had been scribbling something. There, on the ground, she could only see circles, symbols she did not recognize. She tried to roll around and crawl away, her hands trying to grip the nearest rock from her. Blood from her head wound continued to ooze. Her vision was now completely blurred.
She could only go so far as a heavy weight forced her on her back once again. One of the two men was on top of her now, pinning her arms spread on her sides. Her breaths were ragged now.
"Don't!" she tried to yell. She was not able to move now.
Her consciousness was slipping. She felt another surge of pain as she heard a dagger cut her wrist. The two men were mumbling again.
Was this how she was going to go?
"You're pathetic," a feminine voice said. It seemed familiar.
"You're pathetic," it said once again. She had faintly remembered this voice from three years ago.
"Who are you?" she wanted to ask, but before she could voice it out, it spoke again.
"Fight back," it said softly this time. How in the hell could she fight back? She had lost all her ability to fight back years ago. She was sick now.
"Fight back," it repeated. It now angered her. Didn't this voice understand how weak she was? What was the point?
"Fight back."
"I can't. Stop it!" she finally answered. She wanted the voice to go away. What did it know about her anyway?
"Fight back!" A strong emotion overcame her as she shouted in pain. She did not know what happened after that. Her blurred vision went white...and then she went.
A combination of powerful wind and chakra swept over everyone in the ceremony. Hyuuga Neji felt it the first time. The protective barrier he had put upon Sakura had been broken moments ago. If it weren't for his uncle's watchful gaze on him, he would've been out the door.
Every shinobi in that ceremony felt it. Uchiha Sasuke who had watched Hyuuga Hinata's confession unfold was not at all bothered. But the sudden energy over the entire place shook everyone's attention from the wedding to the invisible force just now, including him. It had the familiar air to it, like he had experienced it before. Was it that energy?
Most ninja had been spread out to find the cause of the disturbance by now. The heads of the villages were already in panic.
"An attack?" one woman shouted.
"Karin," he called.
"About half a kilometer from here," his subordinate answered.
"Sasuke, it's nothing like I've felt before. Something big's happening," the redhead added. Sasuke tried to remember when he'd felt this chakra before. Was it Madara's? Definitely not. He had killed him three years ago. But he was sure he'd encountered it.
Screw it, Neji thought. He needed to go to Sakura. She was in danger.
"Neji! Don't you dare leave this place!" Hyuuga Hiashi bellowed.
"Fuck you," was the only answer the older Hyuuga got.
Sasuke watched with black eyes the departure of Hyuuga Neji. Then a sudden thought came to him as he shouted to the groom.
"Naruto!" The blue-eyed man, who had been previously shocked by the sudden departure of his bride-to-be also felt the tremendous and familiar energy. Naruto saw the worried look on Sasuke's face as he also heard the defiance in Neji's voice while leaving the ceremony.
"We need to go. It's Sakura," Sasuke said.
"What?" Confusion overwhelmed Naruto. All that's happened was not making any sense. Was there an attack? He tried to search the crowd for Tsunade, whom he found with her eyes closed, sitting in her spot during the ceremony. She seemed trembling with fear and something else he could not name.
"Baa-chan," he called.
The Godaime opened her eyes with genuine fear in her eyes that Naruto has never seen before, not even during the war. It alarmed him.
"Go," she said.
"I'm giving Uchiha my permission to go. Shizune will follow you."
"But what's happening..."
"I said go!" the Hokage ordered. Sasuke was already waiting for him by the door. With much confusion, he took off with the sharingan-user.
"Spill it," Naruto ordered his best friend as they were leaping through the trees of Konoha at the fastest pace. He tried to make sense of it all. The possible attack should be the one bugging him the most, but his thoughts were all on Sakura. He could almost hear the chains in his heart breaking at Hinata's confession. Part of him wanted to believe that it was a lie, but it was time he believed in the truth for once.
The raven-haired shinobi did not answer.
"Teme! What the hell's happening?" Why were they going to Sakura? Was she alright? How would he face her? His chest constricted painfully. It was just now that he was truly terrified of seeing her again.
"You are the stupidest moron on Earth. I mean it this time."
"I know that already, you fucking asshole!" Uchiha Sasuke, who had been ahead of the blonde a few branches, did not need to look back at his best friend to see that he was near tears. His hands fisted at his sides. If only he could tell him the truth.
"Sakura's in danger. We need to get to her. Neji's already ahead of us."
"What?" Before he could ask more questions, Naruto noticed where they have arrived. They were in the academy. Scanning the area, he found two bloody forms near the swing. It was a horrible image, the sight of those two which seemed like they've been ripped to shreds. Sasuke was already approaching the bodies.
His vision settled on the kneeling Hyuuga Neji. He was holding a form in his arms.
"Sakura..." he heard Neji call. For the second time that day, he was frozen to the spot.
Neji blamed himself for leaving her. He knew something bad was going to happen, and yet he left Sakura to fend for herself to attend some stupid wedding.
The night before the wedding, he checked up on her. He accompanied her to the top of the Hokage mountain.
"I feel it so close," she said. She let the wind move slightly move her. Neji knew that aside from the academy, the mountain was the place she went to the most. She loved feeling the wind, for some strange reason.
"What is?" he asked.
"Death." He remained silent after that.
"You know what's funny? It doesn't scare me that much now. What scares me the most...is that one day, he'll forget about me. He'd search somewhere in his heart for a girl named Sakura, and he'll fail to find me."
"I know how selfish I am. That's why it surprises me how much I'm still willing to give everything up just to see him happy, even if it means I won't be." It was one of the rare times she spoke of him. Sometimes Neji wished she would not talk about Naruto in front of him, because it only caused him to want to punch him in the face.
He was surprised to feel her fragile arms around his torso. A certain sadness went through him as he held her back.
"You don't have to take care of me now," she breathed, burying her head on his chest.
"Yes, I do." His hold on her got impossible tighter, refusing to give her up to death.
"My three years is up. You heard Haji. Three to four months left."
"That's still plenty of time," he lied. She laughed, pinching his nose. In his life, he had never imagined letting any one do that type of stuff to him. But Sakura was a different case.
"Stubborn as ever, Hyuuga." She smiled at him. Truly smiled.
"I have something for you," she said, handing him a piece of scroll.
"I can never repay you for everything you've done. But I hope this comes close."
He gritted his teeth as he looked around the academy's playground and found Sakura on the ground. She was surrounded by some kind of writings on the ground. There was no time to pay attention to it now.
Blood covered the side of her head, her clothes. Running to her in amazing speed, he knelt and checked her pulse, only to find her bloody wrist.
"Sakura, hold on, okay?" he called. She was not responding. His heart beat impossibly faster as he ripped a piece of his sleeve and wrapped it around her wrist to stop the bleeding.
He tried calling her name over and over, touching her cold cheek as he tried to figure out how to move her quick without agitating the blood flow. Soon he heard footsteps behind him, but paid it no mind.
"Sakura-chan," he heard from behind him. He did not know, but it made his blood boil in rage and anger.
"Don't! Don't you dare say her name," he said, his voice almost croaking in frustration. It seemed to work, for Naruto stopped in his stride to get near Neji holding Sakura. Neji had to think fast on deciding where to take her. Uchiha and Naruto would never let him leave without them following.
Soon, Shizune arrived with a medical team.
"You can't touch her," Neji said to the head medic when she tried to take her from his arms.
"Neji, I need to take a look at her," Shizune pleaded.
"You can't help," he saw that he was testing the medic's patience.
"What the hell do you mean? Let me look at her!" the medic shouted.
"She's sick," was his last words as he jumped through the trees, Uchiha and Uzumaki following suit. To hell with all of this, he'd deal with the two bastards later. For now, he needed for Sakura to live.
To be continued.
Just so everyone knows, there's still a lot of ground to cover. Let's just consider this the end of an arc. I don't think we're halfway through the story yet. So I hope you still tune in. I'll be updating sooner if you like this chapter, I promise. :P
Again, your comments and reviews are all much appreciated. Thanks and see yah!:)