You know I have more people with this theme set on Story Alert than reviewing. An amusing fact.

Rating: PG13

Theme Set Beta 4/5

081. Can you see me?

She's blooming, like the flowers after a long harsh winter. After many years of adversity she is coming into her own. She is finally standing tall and glowing like she is supposed to without the unnecessary burdens and shadows forced onto her to carry. But somehow he has to keep them all blind, because she is made for him only.

082. Weak

" She is weak." Hanabi says some day down the line. " She needs to be protected." The little girl is fierce in her belief.

" Strength is relative." Neji imparts the realization it took him a long time to understand.

083. Gravity

Gravity, it's what keeps you standing. Gravity, it's what keeps you on the Earth. Gravity, it's what you sometimes cursed. Gravity, it's what you blame for keeping you grounded. Gravity, it's what pulls you to her.

084. Wings

They cautiously stepped into the newly found ancient door of the ruin. Pillars and long ago art rose up high above them and the group took care to watch their surrounds. A alter was set at the end of the long corridor and they headed towards it as the only direction they could go.

Naruto slowly turned full circle to take in the room. " This place is crazy." He said in awe.

Hinata walking between her comrades was pale, sweating and getting paler.

" Hinata-sama?" Neji asked sharply.

She fell to her knees in a pained gasp with her arms wrapped around her torso tightly. They rushed to her and Neji knelt with one knee bent in front, reaching out in concern, when his finger touch her skin. Her back arched, head flung back, and she screamed.

They erupted from her shoulders and down her back, shining white ivory feathers swirling around her as feathered limbs came where there was supposed to be none, leaving all of them stunned.

085. Cannot Say "I love you"

" I hate you." Neji spat at her viciously when they were children.

" Let me protect you." He pleaded when they were Chuunin and rising in the ranks of ninja.

" You are mine." Neji said fiercely when they grew older, half proclaiming a truth and half trying to convince her.

" Please." He begged when they are past the age of foolish power games. " Please."

She sighs in the end, letting go of her plan of escape, dropping the small duffle bag from her shoulder and allowed him to take her into his arms desperately. He never said the words, but that doesn't mean she doesn't understand his actions when he mumbles incoherently into her hair and the painful grip he has on her shoulder now that he realizes that he had only just made it in time.

086. Sacrifice

Sometimes it's in the small things: the shortening of a leisure time, the loss of a favoured flower, the parting of a broken locket, the cutting of the length of hair, the closing of ones eyes.

087. It's not sex

He was angry and bitter and he came onto her one night with all the dark emotions inside of him bursting free. He was rough and harsh with pain and bitterness and she had thought they were past this. She hurts as unrealized dreams were broken once more and she was going to step back, allow him the space to fly, and free him with all her power. This time she was going to truly let him go.

But she woke the next day to find him crying and shaking, begging for forgiveness he has always had and murmuring the word 'love, love, love' with everything he had. She is hesitant but slowly takes him back into her arms to allow him to show her how he really meant it.

088. Silliness

Neji slowly came into awareness as the sun's ray tingle to his eyelids. He opened them to stare in bewilderment at Hinata's peaceful, sleeping face mere centimetres away from him. He sat up in shock and gaped at her bare shoulders exposed by the blanket and recognized his torso was also bare (distantly his mind recognised that he was still in his boxer and though Hinata's smooth silky legs were touching his own, his hand under the blanket rested on a very nicely curved hip and fingered a piece of thin silk that reveal she was still in her panties). There was movement from the other side. He quickly snapped to his right an explanation halfway to his throat and his jaw dropped at the sight of Naruto followed by Sasuke also in the bed asleep. With a yell of incoherent panic he pushed them off the mattress.

089. Sake

" I don't care how drunk you were!" Sasuke roared in the middle of the living room; Hinata and others watched stunned as a disbelieving Naruto tried to talk his way out of the agreement he did not remember making. " You agreed to marry me!"

090. Song/Singing

" We're not all lost/ we're not all broken/there is still courage/we live in the sun." Hinata sang to herself as she tended her garden. " There's a crack in the ceiling/a disappearance of stars/but some day soon/two roads diverged shall become one."

If Hinata turned around now, maybe she could have explained the unreadable look on Neji's face.

. : TBC : .