Chapter 9: Repairing Frayed Ties

Heavy fatigue. Illogical, unbearable heat. These were the first feelings to plague Naruto after he awakened in unfamiliar surroundings.

It took Naruto the better part of a minute to recall why he was at Kurenai's place and not in his new apartment, and over two minutes to summon the needed energy to get off her couch. He looked around briefly after getting up and rubbing his eyes and saw that he was alone. Kurenai was gone, but she had left the clothes he wore last night folded up on the coffee table along with a note explaining that she went to talk to Kakashi about giving him another day off and instructing him to return to his apartment as soon as he woke up. He sighed as he put down the note and changed back into his clothes. These simple gestures from Kurenai made Naruto feel worse about the way he'd behaved. He still didn't like how strict she was on him most of the time, but that moment last night where she showed her gentler side was more than he felt he deserved.

After another sigh which turned into a brief coughing fit, Naruto sluggishly made his way out of Kurenai's apartment and through the streets of Konoha, paying no attention to the villagers who went out of their way to avoid him as he passed by. A small part of him still wanted to avoid Hinata even though he knew what he needed to say to her. But the anger that drove him to run away last night was gone for the most part; now it was fear that conspired with his present malady. Fear that despite Kurenai's reassurances, his anger towards Hinata, justified that it was at the time, had finally rid her of her desire to help him.

The fifteen minutes it took Naruto to get back to his apartment felt more like fifteen hours. He lost his grip on the doorknob once before opening the door, and almost tripped over himself as he stepped inside, forgetting to close the door behind him. He tiredly kicked off his sandals next to the door before trudging his way towards the kitchen table, where Hinata was sitting. She was turned away from him, but from what Naruto could see, her cheeks were still puffy and her eyes were a little red, which left him feeling that much more guilty over going off on her.

"Hinata," Naruto whispered, his voice hoarse. He gently nudged Hinata's shoulder to get her attention, making her gasp and suddenly turn her face towards him.

"Na-Naruto-kun?" Hinata asked, startled by Naruto's presence. "W-Where were you last night? I was so worried when you ran off and didn't come back…"

But Naruto was unable to make out any of her words. His vision was quickly growing blurry, his surroundings spinning though he remained still. He was rapidly losing his grip on consciousness. He still tried to fight against whatever was ailing him to tell Hinata what she needed to hear, but it was a battle he had already lost.

"Hinata…I'm…" Naruto did not get to finish speaking before falling face first onto the floor.

"Naruto-kun!"

Hinata threw herself out of her wheelchair and landed next to Naruto, and struggled to flip him onto his back. She saw that he was drenched in sweat and his face was a dark red. Carefully placing most of her weight on her left leg, she pressed her wrist against Naruto's forehead and quickly pulled it away.

"He's burning up," Hinata whispered. She looked around the apartment, not sure what or who she was looking for, but right now, she needed to get Naruto into his bed and out of his clothes. Her own face heated up at the prospect, but she had to remind herself that now was not the time to suffer from her usual crippling mortification. This was for Naruto's sake. But with her present condition, Hinata did not know how she was going to aid him this time.

Just when she was about to call the nearby Anbu for help despite believing the odds of them helping were slim, Kurenai appeared outside the still open front door.

"That kid is a handful," Kurenai commented on the scene in front of her. "I forgot some tools at my place and saw he was already gone. I wanted to make sure he got back safely and it appears I was right to check up on him."

"Um…Kurenai-sensei? I-I don't understand," Hinata said in confusion.

Kurenai sighed as she knelt down next to Hinata and pressed her hand to the unconscious Naruto's forehead. "Yep, that's a fever all right. Maybe next time he won't be so quick to run off into the rain at night," the jōnin muttered.

"Kurenai-sensei," Hinata said disapprovingly.

Kurenai picked up Hinata and sat her back in her wheelchair. "Wait here while I attend to Naruto," she instructed. Hinata nodded and watched as Kurenai lifted up Naruto and carried him into his bedroom, her heart clenching as the sun kissed blond vanished from her line of normal sight. She was caught in a new well of agony that quickly overflowed. Was this just a normal cold or a far worse sickness? How long would it take for Naruto to recover? And why did she have to be powerless to prevent this from befalling him? or to do anything but cause him more misery?

"It's a good thing Kakashi is patient. That kid will be lucky if his fever breaks by morning," Kurenai told Hinata as she emerged from Naruto's bedroom. She turned away for a few seconds, and fixed a disapproving stare on the girl when she turned back around. "Of course, he wouldn't be in this situation had things between you and your sister gone differently last night."

Hinata bowed her head in shame. "I…I didn't mean to offend Naruto-kun at all. Hanabi and I have been distant from each other since Chichi-ue made her the heiress. When Hanabi came to see me, I was shocked, and I guess with everything that's happened, I went a bit too far…"

"That's quite an understatement there, Hinata." Kurenai sighed deeply and narrowed her eyes as she gripped the arms of Hinata's wheelchair. Hinata instinctively flinched away, knowing another dressing down from her caretaker/instructor was imminent. "You hurt Naruto very badly! You offended him so deeply that he was convinced you were just exploiting his feelings! If Naruto had been thinking clearly enough to account for the Anbu surveillance when he ran away last night, there's a good chance he would have managed to escape from the village, and who knows what might have happened then?! The only way I was able to get him to calm down and see reason last night was to explain your family's history to him, which was something that you should have done!"

Kurenai let go of the wheelchair and took a few steps backward and a deep breath, then crossed her arms and continued in a softer tone. "I won't pretend to understand what you're going through right now, Hinata, but I'm certain Hanabi meant you no harm when she came to see you last night. Naruto takes that sort of thing very seriously. He would give anything to be part of a family, you know."

Hinata's downcast eyes were glistening with tears she refused to shed as she replied, "I-I…I wasn't thinking of it like that…"

Another deep sigh from Kurenai. "No one ever does when it comes to Naruto," she said, admonishing both Hinata and herself. "I know you didn't mean to hurt him. But Hanabi had no part in your emancipation from the Hyūga Clan. She's one of the victims here, too. You need to apologize to her, and not just because doing so will help you regain the trust Naruto was starting to give you before you threw it away last night."

Hinata nodded and lifted her face. "I understand, Kurenai-sensei."

Kurenai smiled. "Good. Well, I'd better be off. I still haven't informed Kakashi that Naruto needs another day off. Possibly longer at this rate. Stubborn kid…"

"I will take care of Naruto-kun," Hinata assured her.

Kurenai shook her head. "Not this time, Hinata. Keep yourself isolated from Naruto and let the iryō-nin do their job. He doesn't need to have you be sick by the time he recovers."

That did not sit well with Hinata. "I cannot just sit around and do nothing while Naruto-kun is suffering," she protested. "Not when it is my fault he is suffering."

"I'm only saying this for your own good. I can tell that you're still upset from the fight you had with Naruto last night, and while I know you want to make things right, getting yourself sick will not help Naruto get better any faster and we both know he doesn't want you to do anything like that for his sake," Kurenai explained.

"But—"

"No buts," Kurenai's voice turned harsh, forcing Hinata into silence. She continued to stare at Hinata for a short time to shut down any further protests from the girl before getting a reluctant nod out of her. "Good. I'll be back later tonight, so please stay out of trouble in the meantime," she said more softly, and gave Hinata a pat on the shoulder before walking out the door.

Hiashi grumbled as he reviewed the paperwork on his coffee table in his private chambers. Today was well on its way to becoming yet another debacle. He had expected as much from the moment he was informed of last night's incident. While Hiashi had been away from the Hyūga estate discussing matters of village welfare with the Yamanaka-Nara-Akimichi triumvirate, Hanabi had sneaked out and left for Naruto's new apartment, then returned home in tears and attempted to demand an audience with him, only to be struck across the cheek by her grandfather and escorted back to her bedroom by Natsu. He had yet to find time to discuss the incident with Hanabi. As for the other involved parties…

The Hyūga patriarch whispered one of the less offensive curses in his vocabulary as one of those parties knocked on the door and slid it open without waiting for a response. Hyūga Haru, Hiashi's father and the most vocal of the clan's elders, had demonstrated time and again he was too old to give any serious consideration to any viewpoints which contrasted with his traditionalist nature. Even before Haru passed the burden of leadership to him, Hiashi was involved in semi-frequent arguments with his father; after he became clan head, the arguments became somewhat less frequent, but also far more heated. The worst of these had taken place right after the so-called "Hyūga Affair" which ended with his twin brother sacrificing himself, since Hizashi and Haru had conspired to have Hizashi die so that Hiashi could live after slaying the Head Ninja of Kumogakure. Hiashi and Haru's relationship had only continued to deteriorate over the years since that affair.

"What brings you here, Otōsan?" Hiashi asked in his usual stoic tone.

Haru answered with a nearly identical tone, altered by minor levels of annoyance. "You know full well why this discussion is long overdue, Hiashi. Why did you allocate clan funds to purchase a new apartment for the jinchūriki when his previous apartment was more than sufficient, and not only that, banished Hinata from the clan instead of sealing her? Furthermore, why have you attempted to put off this discussion?"

Hiashi immediately stood up and gave his father a piercing glare. "You have already made three grave errors this afternoon. First is in your enduring presumption that you have any right to make demands of me. The other two are questioning the orders Hokage-sama issued to the entire clan regarding Uzumaki after his recent suicide attempt, and also my own orders regarding Hinata. For the second offense, I would be well within my rights and obligations as a Konoha shinobi to kill you right now. As for the third offense, I have reminded you too many times that anyone who attempts to brand my firstborn with our clan's curse seal will themselves be sealed and be subjected to my wrath. No one in the clan is exempt from these orders."

"Hmph." Haru was unfazed and almost completely disregarded what he viewed as an empty threat from his son. "You are still much too soft at heart, Hiashi."

"When I die, the clan's records will show that I at least attempted to be a proper father before the last time you got your way. Whether they show anything of your life remains to be seen."

That Haru was also unmoved by Hiashi's threat to invoke damnatio memoriae spoke volumes about the arrogance he held onto tightly in his advanced age. "It is rather odd that the duties of parenthood and clan leadership should conflict so much, wouldn't you say?" Haru asked, voice dripping with sarcasm.

"That is why I had to liberate Hinata from the clan in the first place. Your interference did not permit me to raise her the way I should have. But that isn't enough for you. It never was."

"There is no place in the Main House for her weakness." There was no concession to be found from Haru, who was well aware that Hinata could not be sealed unless she was first expelled from the shinobi corps and clan law was rewritten to permit females born to the Main House to be subjected to the clan's cursed seal. He remained adamant that such weakness as he perceived to exist within Hinata was too dangerous to allow freedom from the confines of the clan.

Haru's jaw clenched ever so slightly, the creases around his eyelids tightening. All but the youngest Hyūga had learned long ago to recognize these signs of the head elder's anger. "Perhaps when Hanabi has succeeded you as the clan head, you will remember to focus on what is best for the clan."

Hiashi waited a few moments for his mind to register what his father just said before doing something which was very unlike a Hyūga: bursting into laughter. He bent over and clutched his abdominal region as he laughed for almost a full minute, ignoring the disgust on Haru's face.

"How unbecoming of you, Hiashi. Have you forgotten the meaning of shame?"

Hiashi immediately ceased laughing and stood ramrod straight, glaring at his father once more. "It must have slipped my mind that you lack a sense of humor, Oyaji," he said, earning a glare from Haru with his deliberate switch to a disrespectful form of address. "Your assumption that you will be able to control Hanabi is comical."

Haru managed to largely ignore his son's disrespect for now, though his glare did not let up, and when he spoke next, his tone grew considerably harsher. "She has almost grown completely out of her childish phases. Once she has matured sufficiently—"

"You will brainwash her into following your ideology?" Hiashi asked with a sneer, repressing the urge to laugh again. "You haven't come remotely close to doing any irreversible damage." He left the elder with no chance to dispute his position, no time to protest against his specific choice of words. "After last week, you would have better luck trying to get the Hokage's grandson to pay attention to his studies than you will with continuing to indoctrinate Hanabi. And if I may be frank with you, I should point out how you squandered your chance to mold one of my children into your ideal figurehead."

Haru narrowed his eyes at Hiashi. "Explain yourself," he demanded.

"Surely you must have realized by now that had you ever bothered to see past Hinata not being a prodigy of the clan like the rest of her lineage, you would have known that her self-esteem issues would have made her an easier target to manipulate? Hanabi, on the other hand, has a greater level of confidence that was starting to border on arrogance, which makes her far more dangerous. Did you really think Hanabi was the easier of the two to control based on that knowledge?" Any semblance of courtesy towards the elder was long gone at this point. All Hiashi showed on his face now was cold anger, and the slightest hint of regret which he could not manage to repress. "It took me too long to see it, but forcing my hand when you did was a mixed blessing. Pitting my daughters against one another helped create an opportunity for me to spare Hinata from the crueler fates you had in store for her."

Now it was Haru's turn to laugh, but unlike Hiashi his laugh was purely spiteful and desperate. "You are deluded enough to suggest Hinata's defeat in that fight is actually a victory?"

"It is not the only success that is misconstrued by the rest of the clan as a failure. Or need I remind you that Hinata's actions that night are the only reason Naruto is still alive right now? My firstborn made all of her superiors, including the Hokage himself, look like we are the true failures. And yet you still believe her to be so incompetent?" Knowing the question would not be dignified with a response, Hiashi muttered a few choice words under his breath and turned his back on Haru. "You mastered your Byakugan decades ago, but I have never seen another person who is so utterly blind."

Haru recoiled from the insult. He was rapidly losing his composure, which was exactly what Hiashi wanted. With their reputation built on their all-seeing eyes, calling a Hyūga blind was usually one of the better ways to offend them. "What the hell are you getting at?!" the elder shouted.

"It doesn't matter anyway."

Haru's next demand died in his mouth as his ears picked up the sound of footsteps from outside Hiashi's chambers. He turned his head just in time to catch a glimpse of long brown hair disappearing behind the corner. But Hiashi remained perfectly still, which further infuriated the elder.

"Did you know Hanabi was listening in on us the whole time?" Haru angrily demanded. It was met with a shrug from Hiashi.

"It is as I said. I have never seen another person, Hyūga or not, who is as blind as you." Hiashi sat back down on his zabuton, signaling that this was the end of this particular discussion. Haru didn't even bother maintaining proper Hyūga behavior as he stormed out of the chamber with clenched fists and a bruised ego.

For the entire day after Kurenai left her and Naruto's shared apartment, Hinata felt restless and distressed. She had wanted all day to go into Naruto's room to check in on him, but three things kept her from doing so. First on that list was the nurse who came in during the afternoon to handle Naruto. Second was not knowing how she would go about apologizing to Naruto if he had awakened. Hinata was certain Naruto was still angry with her after last night, and Kurenai's speech to her this morning seemed to hint at that. And the third was Kurenai; Hinata's caretaker/instructor had yet to return to the apartment to check in on her, and with Hinata's typical misfortune, Kurenai was bound to arrive at the most inopportune time possible. Some of her worries had lessened over the past twelve hours, while others had strengthened.

"I may as well just get this over with," Hinata muttered, and sighed deeply. "Even if Naruto-kun is still angry with me and Kurenai-sensei chastises me again, I need to apologize." With another deep sigh, she steered her wheelchair towards Naruto's bedroom door and gave it a gentle knock.

"Na-Naruto-kun?" she called out softly. There was no response. "Maybe he is still asleep?" she asked herself. She looked around for a few moments, fearing that Kurenai might pop out of nowhere, before she quietly turned the doorknob and entered the bedroom.

Naruto's room was mostly dark, the only light being provided by a small lamp on his nightstand. It didn't provide enough light for Hinata to see more than the outline of Naruto's body under the blankets, so she rolled herself over to the nightstand quietly and reached towards his face. Naruto's head was soaked in sweat, his arms were twitching, and he was moaning and incessantly muttering "Stop" and "Leave me alone" along with a few harsher words.

Naruto-kun is experiencing a nightmare and there isn't anything I can do to pull him out of it, Hinata thought, her feeling of uselessness making her miserable. She reached out with her one good hand and pulled Naruto's hand from under the blanket and grasped it tightly. She then looked back at Naruto's face and let out a sad sigh.

"What is tormenting you right now, Naruto-kun?" she asked herself quietly. Hinata couldn't even imagine the kind of nightmares Naruto might experience, but she could at least relate to what he must feel in their aftermath. Lacking a parent's comfort was something they had in common, after all. Her father wasn't exactly the compassionate type and she didn't have many memories left of her late mother. But Naruto didn't even have that much. Kurenai's words from earlier in the day sunk in that much deeper after that thought. It was no wonder why Naruto went off on her after she yelled at Hanabi last night. Between the strained bond with her sister which she believed was now broken forever, and her seeming inability to do anything but compound Naruto's suffering…

This is my fault, the anguished Hinata thought. Everything that goes wrong for the people I care about is my fault.

"I am so, so sorry for doing this to you, Naruto-kun," she whispered as tears started to fall. She couldn't help herself any longer. Kurenai's orders be damned; Hinata needed to be close to Naruto and offer him what little comfort she could. She moved to the other side of the bed and with some difficulty, climbed out of her wheelchair and onto Naruto's bed, and crawled on top of him and hugged him with her good arm.

"Please get well soon, Naruto-kun. I hate seeing you like this," Hinata pleaded with him before crying herself to sleep.

Nightmares were a frequent occurrence in Naruto's life. Nightmares that felt as vivid as this one were much rarer, but always left him rattled when he awakened.

Naruto was back in the marketplace, quickly finding himself surrounded. It took him a moment to recognize the memory manifested in this nightmare, the day he'd clashed with a merchant selling porcelain masks like those worn by the Anbu. Except neither the merchant nor the crowd looked remotely recognizable as people. They were all just dark silhouettes with no faces, no distinctive features, but Naruto recognized their hatred all the same. He could feel the malice from the crowd in their incessant whispers.

"What's wrong with that kid?"

"Why won't he just go away?"

"What an annoying brat."

The voices of the silhouettes rang in Naruto's ears. He was unable to block them out; the voices were being amplified. The harder he pressed his hands against his ears, the louder the voices grew.

"You bastards! Leave me the hell alone!" Naruto shouted, desperate for reprieve. Naturally, the silhouettes drowned out his frustrated cries and moved closer, their circle around him gradually shrinking. Naruto could do nothing but curl into a fetal position and try to tune out all of his surroundings. It was to no avail; none of his attempts to terminate his lucid nightmares before they finished playing out had ever worked.

Just when he thought he was going to be completely overwhelmed, the world shifted. In an instant, Naruto went from being surrounded by a hateful crowd, to landing face down in the snow in an older section of the village in the middle of the night, the streets dimly illuminated.

"Now where am I?" he asked as he stood up, brushing the snow off his clothes and shaking his head rapidly before examining his new surroundings. "This place seems somewhat familiar," he thought aloud.

Suddenly, he heard the sound of someone crying and while he wasn't sure why he did so, he quickly hid in some roadside bushes as the cries grew closer. A small girl dressed in a black kimono was running by, but before Naruto could get a proper look at her face, she tripped over herself and fell face first into the snow. The girl slowly pushed herself to her knees and Naruto saw her trying to wipe the tears out of her eyes. Before he had a chance to approach her, he heard another voice and this one was very easy to recognize.

"What are you doing?"

Naruto peeked from the bushes and had to rub his eyes to make sure he wasn't seeing things. "Wait a sec. Is that me?" he asked in a hushed whisper.

Sure enough, the person who had spoken was himself, from when he was younger. He couldn't have been much older than seven or eight when the events in this memory had originally happened.

"What're you doing here?" the younger Naruto asked the girl. "If you keep crying, how am I supposed to find out?" he went on, not giving her much of a chance to speak up, and even had the gall to smile at her as he kept bombarding her with questions.

How the hell was I so insensitive back then? Naruto thought as he witnessed this memory. Is this even a memory? Naruto didn't have very many pleasant memories from his childhood, so he tended to repress as many of his memories, both good and bad, as possible. He had grown so good at doing so that he often had problems remembering anything that had happened in his past. But it wasn't until the girl looked up and Naruto clearly saw her face that he was convinced that this was another forgotten memory, and he knew he would be cursing himself both for forgetting this memory, and over what had happened on this night.

"Hinata…" Naruto whispered, feeling like a colossal idiot for failing to recognize the younger Hinata in this memory earlier. Seeing the tears still streaming down her face made Naruto want to run out from his hiding spot immediately to comfort her, but he had no choice but to watch the memory play out before him.

"Where's your house?" young Naruto asked Hinata. Hinata didn't answer; she could only shake her head. "Oh well, come on. Let's go."

"That's how you treat her? Are you really that big of an idiot?! That's Hinata, you dumbass! She deserves better from you!" Naruto yelled at his younger self, ignoring how his recent behavior towards Hinata had been so much worse than this. His words were completely wasted, lost in the cold winter breeze as the memory kept playing out before his eyes. It looked like Hinata wanted to say something, but before she had a chance to speak up, the younger Naruto took her hand and started leading her away. Naruto noticed her eyes sparkling a little and quickly jumped out of the bushes, trying to stay quiet as he followed the pair to the front gates of the Hyūga mansion and hid behind a street lamp once they stopped.

"You live in a big house like this and you're crying?" the younger Naruto asked, his cheeks tinted red from exposure to the cold air. "I don't have anyone, but I never cry. Never!"

"What an insensitive brat," Naruto growled at his younger self.

"Later!" the younger Naruto shouted, waving at Hinata and then disappearing into the night.

Naruto couldn't believe what had just transpired. He had not remembered Hinata at all from that night and worse, he had been so rude to her when he came to her aid. He watched the younger Hinata stand there for a few moments and saw her tears had stopped, and she was giving his younger self a sad smile as he ran off and an older Hyūga was walking out to scold her for running away. Naruto couldn't take it anymore. He dashed out from behind his hiding place with every intention of trying to make Hinata feel better, but the scene shifted once again. He barely stopped himself as he found himself no longer in the darkness of that winter night, but atop the Hokage Rock, just one wrong step away from falling.

"Back here again, huh?" Naruto growled, annoyed at the much more familiar scene. He looked down and saw the silhouettes from before his nightmare had been interrupted by that repressed memory amassing below him, like a sea of primordial darkness rushing into the abyss.

"Can I please wake up now?" he whined, slowly backing away from the edge. Only for his foot to slip as he took that first step backward, causing him to tumble down into the darkness below…

Naruto shot straight up, gasping for breath during his sudden awakening. His whole body was covered in sweat and his throat ached. He also had a strong urge to start coughing again. Quickly, he reached for the garbage can next to his bed and lifted it up, coughing violently for several minutes to expel all of the phlegm that had accumulated while he was out of it. After his coughing fit ended, he reached for the box of tissues that was left on his nightstand and spent several more minutes blowing his nose, using up almost the entire box. Once he was done, he rubbed his eyes and wiped the sweat off his forehead. His throat ached worse now, and his pajamas (which he noticed someone had changed him into after he collapsed in the kitchen earlier) were soaked through with sweat, but his head was clear now, and the burning heat from earlier had simmered down.

"What a crazy nightmare," Naruto whispered as he hopped out of bed and went into his bathroom to take a quick hot shower, cleansing both body and mind. He stepped out a few minutes later and changed into another set of pajamas before climbing back into his bed, and as he did, he felt a slight movement next to him. He looked down, lifting up the blankets…

And what he saw left him utterly confused.

Hinata was in the bed with him. it looked like she had struggled a little bit, but she had somehow wormed her way under the blankets next to him. Her cheeks were red and crusty all over, indicating she had cried herself to sleep. But what confused him the most about this image was how tightly she just gripped his hand.

"Why?" he asked her, knowing she was too deep in her slumber to hear him. "I don't understand. Why do you care so much? All I've done is hurt you, and you still do everything you can to help me. Why, Hinata?" And then he felt the tears sliding down his own cheeks. This confused Naruto even more. When he had attempted to kill himself, he felt nothing but emptiness. He believed the void in his heart was impossible to fill. Yet here he was, moved to tears, and he did not understand why. It made absolutely no sense that Hinata would continue to risk her health for his sake, especially after their fight last night. And yet…

Is it okay…? Naruto wondered. Can I actually…be happy for a moment? After everything he had been through, it was utterly impossible for him to know the answer to such a simple yet complex question. Yet, as he glanced back at Hinata, he quickly decided that it didn't matter. He settled back under the blankets after wiping his eyes and pulled Hinata on top of him, gently pressing his chin against her head.

"Hinata…thank you…"

When Naruto awoke the next morning, he was feeling light headed, but that came as a relief to him after yesterday's fever and nightmare. Both of those had passed, but now he was feeling a slight chill. He looked around and saw that it was cloudy outside, and that the heater was currently inactive. He then glanced back at his side and saw Hinata still sound asleep next to him, and he quickly recalled everything he could of what had happened after he collapsed yesterday morning, the main detail concerning him being that someone had undressed him while he was unconscious. Blood quickly rushed back to Naruto's head as he hopped out of bed to change into regular clothes, wondering as he looked back on Hinata's sleeping form how much she had seen this time. Given her injuries, it wasn't logical for her to have been the one to undress him, but with her behavior since they started living together, he couldn't completely put it past her to have attempted to do so.

Naruto's face turned a faint shade of red as he changed in his bathroom. He recalled how he accidentally exposed most of his body to Hinata during their second night of cohabitation along with some of his inner doubts. He had let himself be vulnerable in her presence, and while his guard only fell briefly, he was still surprised by how easily it happened. Hinata had proven herself uniquely capable of drawing out all of the feelings he wanted to keep everyone else from seeing…something which was both a good and bad thing, he thought with a grimace as his thoughts went back to their big fight and how it led them to this point.

He emerged from his bathroom several minutes later and walked towards the kitchen slowly, to find that Hinata woke up right after he did and was now sitting at the table, resting her chin on her good hand and looking bored. It was too difficult for him to make eye contact with her, so he settled on tapping the wall to alert her to his presence. His eyes were fixed on the floor as Hinata turned her wheelchair to face him.

"Good morning, Naruto-kun," Hinata said sweetly. "Are you feeling better?"

Naruto nodded, but still tried to avoid looking at her for the time being. "I don't think I've ever been sick longer than a day at a time. I always get over it quickly."

"I see. I'm glad you're feeling well now." Hinata smiled at Naruto, but it quickly faded and was replaced with a look of embarrassment. She would have also started twiddling her fingers if her right arm wasn't broken. "Um…shortly after you passed out, Kurenai-sensei arrived and carried you to your bedroom. There was also a nurse who came here and gave you a sponge bath a few hours after Kurenai-sensei left. I didn't enter your bedroom until well into the evening. Kurenai-sensei told me that I should have left you alone, but I…I just couldn't. So I kinda…um, well, I…"

Naruto could tell Hinata was also having some embarrassing thoughts about snuggling with him last night and decided it was high time to address the more pressing matter between them. He briefly looked up at Hinata, but quickly averted his gaze back towards the floor. He clenched and unclenched his fists twice, and sighed deeply, before he tried to speak.

"Hinata…I'm—"

"Please don't say it, Naruto-kun," Hinata quickly interrupted Naruto, making him look up at her with a shocked expression. "You shouldn't apologize to me. What happened two nights ago was entirely my fault."

Naruto shook his head. "That's not true, Hinata. I shouldn't have said what I did. I was at fault too, y'know."

Predictably, Hinata let out a deep sigh. "That may be so, but I see now why you reacted the way you did. I hurt both you and Hanabi. I offended you in the worst possible way by yelling at my sister when she didn't deserve it." Hinata appeared to crunch up in her wheelchair, but she was trying to bow to Naruto, or at least perform something as close to that action as her broken limbs permitted. "Please forgive me, Naruto-kun…"

Naruto leaned in and lifted up Hinata's head by placing his hand under her chin. "It's okay now, Hinata. But y'know, Kurenai-sensei told me about the way your former clan treated you before we started living together. So that's why I should be the one apologizing."

Suddenly growing uncomfortable with Naruto's close proximity to her, Hinata steered her wheelchair half a meter away from him and looked down and towards her right. Naruto was normally slow to pick up on these cues, but quickly saw that Hinata didn't want him so close to her and took a few steps backward. Hinata breathed a heavy sigh of relief and slowly looked back up at Naruto.

"I…I forgive you too, Naruto-kun…but I can't forgive myself for letting that happen…"

"Look, Hinata. I get why you'd be mad at them. If it had been anyone else who came over that night, I might not have gotten angry with you for blowing up like that," Naruto explained, his tone appropriately somber. "But it didn't look like Hanabi came here to argue, y'know?"

Hinata struggled to maintain eye contact with Naruto. "The situation between Hanabi and I…it goes deeper than you think, Naruto-kun. Did Kurenai-sensei tell you about that part of my life?"

Naruto looked puzzled for a few moments before shaking his head. "She told me about you being forced to fight Hanabi, but she didn't say anything else about her."

"I…I see." Hinata sighed deeply and gripped the joystick of her wheelchair hard, moving forward this time. She sighed again as she let go, then took several deep breaths to steady her nerves before looking up at Naruto again, recognizing this would be one of the most difficult conversations she would ever have with anyone.

"Hanabi and I…we used to be very close," Hinata explained. "Hanabi would get very sad when she couldn't play with me. Sometimes, she would sneak into my bedroom late at night and see that I collapsed from training too hard, and she would take the blankets off my bed and wrap them around us, falling asleep next to me against the wall." Hinata glanced at the walls and sighed wistfully at that memory of her younger sister. It seemed like a lifetime ago when Hanabi had been that sweet girl instead of the cold, typical Hyūga she'd become after Hinata had her birthright stripped away. "Those were among the few happy memories I have from living with my former clan."

"What happened between you two?" Naruto asked. He was starting to get an idea of when and how things went wrong between Hinata and the rest of her family based on what Kurenai told him, but he didn't want to assume anything before Hinata finished speaking.

"Things started to get worse after…after Neji-niisan was…too aggressive in a sparring match." Hinata's gaze turned away from Naruto for a few seconds and her body shook a little as she went on. She couldn't bring herself to repeat what Kurenai had told Naruto, that her cousin tried to kill her on that day. "My grandfather and the other elders were questioning my strength and wanted to strip me of the title of heiress to the clan. Things eventually came to a head and my father was forced to have me defend my birthright against Hanabi. That was…the cruelest thing anyone in the clan ever did to me, forcing me to fight my little sister. I should have won that battle, but I…I couldn't. I couldn't bring myself to land the winning blow. Not if it meant hurting her. And now everyone in the clan believes I'm nothing but a weakling and a failure…" Hinata's voice trailed off and Naruto saw she was trying to hold back her tears.

"B-But even before my father made me fight Hanabi, she had started spending more time with our grandfather and the other elders, and her behavior had been changing slowly. It didn't take long after the match for her to start acting cold towards me like the rest of my former clansmen. So when Hanabi came over that night and behaved like she used to before our match…I was blinded by my anger towards the Hyūga Clan for casting me out, Naruto-kun. In my anger, I thought Hanabi was just pretending to be concerned for me…"

Naruto gritted his teeth and clenched his fists, feeling a new surge of anger over the way Hinata was treated back at her old home. He was now starting to wonder if she had had it worse than him all along. The whole time Hinata spoke, he paid acute attention to the ocean of negative feelings he saw in her eyes: disappointment, inadequacy, a general sense of worthlessness. It was already terrible enough that her family held her in such low regard and nearly drowned her in those feelings. But even worse was the fear he'd caught a glimpse of when Hinata brought up the incident with her cousin. He couldn't even begin to imagine what that must have been like, living in fear of one's own family.

And yet despite everything that was done to break her, Hinata rushed to aid Naruto when he was at his weakest and tried to support him in every way she knew how. That had taken a tremendous amount of strength. Strength he unknowingly helped her learn to find within herself when he came to her rescue all those years ago.

But now it was Naruto's turn to be the strong one again and give Hinata the emotional support her family denied her. Naruto screwed his eyes shut for almost a minute and took several deep breaths, making a gargantuan, but incomplete effort to release or bottle up his anger before speaking up.

"You are not weak, Hinata," Naruto growled, unable to fully keep his anger towards the Hyūga Clan out of his voice. "Being gentle and not wanting to hurt others isn't a weakness. It's everyone else there who's weak for doing all of that to you."

"Naruto-kun, that's not—"

"And I don't think Hanabi was just pretending when she came over," Naruto interrupted Hinata's protest, but managed to keep his tone gentle. "It sounded like she truly missed you."

Hinata quickly looked away from Naruto and felt her face heat up as conflicting emotions waged war within her heart. "I-I want to believe you, Naruto-kun," she said hesitantly, her inner doubts still tainting the hope Naruto meant to inspire in her. "You and Hanabi…you're the most important people in my life. There is almost nothing I would not do for the two of you."

"Huh…" Naruto's voice trailed off as he thought on Hinata's latest words, unable to fully comprehend the meaning of her statement. "So why don't we just ask Hanabi ourselves?" he suggested after a brief silence. Hinata's head immediately shot back up.

"Wait…what are you suggesting, Naruto-kun?"

"It's simple. We invite her back here and get this whole thing cleared up."

Hinata hung her head and sighed. "I don't think Hanabi wants to see me now…I did tell her she wasn't welcome here, after all…"

The grin Naruto gave her would have almost been infuriating if she wasn't so lost in her doubts. "Of course she does! If she didn't, she wouldn't have come here to visit in the first place, right?"

"B-But—"

"Oh, come on Hinata! Stop worrying so much. We're on the same page now. It should be simple for us to fix this, right?"

Hinata's moist eyes widened at the tone Naruto was using. The confidence in his voice was just like she remembered from the days when she would observe him at a distance, only he sounded surer of himself now than he ever did back then. Seeing this glimpse of the old Naruto rekindled the spark of hope inside her, slowly burning away many of her insecurities and doubts and letting her own self-confidence begin to grow again from their ashes.

With Naruto at her side to support her and be supported by her, she knew she would get her family back, and at the same time, she would make sure they became Naruto's family as well.

"Yes…" Hinata whispered, smiling a true smile as she wiped her eyes before tears could start falling. "Yes. We will fix this, Naruto-kun."

[line break]

A/N: Finally, some progress between Naruto and Hinata that won't have a setback occur for a while (in-universe; IRL it will obviously be a much longer length of time). You're welcome?

*cue brief nervous laughter over running way behind schedule*

Between severe RL struggles, gaming addictions (Kingdom Hearts III, Final Fantasy XIV and VII Remake for Zorback, the Fallout series for myself, and Puzzle & Dragons as a shared addiction), and our interest in Naruto waning, plus massive writer's block on this chapter that conspired with the above to completely destroy our motivation to continue writing, the current arc of this fic did not get off to a good start. Autumn 2019 in particular was terrible to both of us; both my main computer and my Chromebook died, while my co-author…well, I'd better let him explain what happened on his end, if he wants to.

And this year is even worse thanks in no small part to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the draconian lockdowns enforced by our treasonous Democrats which are continuously proving to be worse than ineffective at stopping the spread of a virus that was deliberately inflicted on the world by the Chinese Communist Party, a virus which is perhaps the least deadly pandemic in all of human history and is certainly nowhere near deadly enough to warrant the measures that have been taken to wreck our economy, worsen our collective physical and mental health, and strip us of our freedoms. The Democratic Party seeks only to destroy the United States of America and transform the ruin of the once-great Republic into a socialist nation, purging all dissenters while brainwashing and enslaving the rest of its citizens. All of the evidence out there - and there is an overwhelming amount of evidence out there which the mainstream media and social media are actively suppressing - points towards this statement being true. Sadly, millions in our nation and across the entire world have already been irreversibly brainwashed into blindly following their narrative. Thankfully, however, millions more have awakened to the evil they are propagating. But I have to wonder if it's too little, too late…

But enough about real world politics, which should not have any place in the majority of fan fiction.

Chapter 8 was supposed to have an additional detail that I was unable to include before posting due to pressure from Zorback to post that chapter before the end of that year. This detail was Kurenai feeling guilt over being too strict on Naruto after he breaks down in front of her at the end of the last scene. Of course, this is not the only issue with the chapter that I need to correct. For those guests who came here from AO3 to read Chapter 8, I will not cross-post it there until I have revised it to fix all of its major issues. This chapter is also technically incomplete, as it wasn't beta read prior to posting, and there was an additional scene with Kurenai that was supposed to be present, but I was forced to cut due to the aforementioned writer's block.

I honestly have no clue when the next update might be. With the writing spark all but extinguished for the time being, I might have no choice but to place this story on hiatus so we can focus on my co-author's solo fics…and on simply trying to survive these dark times.