A/N: Content warning for this chapter: IT'S HEAVY AS FUCK. Just a little caution for those who are a touch squeamish

Time for Chapter 8

Enjoy!

"You sent for me, Father?"

HIashi gave a curt nod and fought the urge to rub his eyes. It was exceptionally early, hardly five in the morning, but the topic at hand required such an early meeting given that Hinata tended to be long gone by six-thirty most mornings.

"I did, yes. Please sit, Hinata." he replied. The girl did as she was told and sat primly across from him at the dining table. Once they were both situated, the older man took a deep breath to begin relaying what he had called her forth for.

"I'm afraid that you won't be able to watch over Naruto Uzumaki today. For reasons I'll elaborate on shortly, you'll be entirely preoccupied today." he began. As expected, Hinata's expression immediately soured, and a look of frustrated puzzlement quickly overtook her features.

"Go on." she said rigidly. Somewhat impressed by her ability to hold her tongue, the Clan Head folded his hands in his lap and glanced to either side of them to determine how legitimate their privacy truly was.

"Much to my chagrin, and clearly yours, the Elders have called for you to undergo a day-long examination. Taijutsu, basic academia, clan structure, the works. As for why, it's because they severely doubt the quality of your education due to you practically homeschooling yourself at present." he explained. Hinata's left eye twitched.

"Do you share those feelings, Father?" she asked as respectfully as she could. Hiashi considered the question momentarily, but soon shook his head.

"I'm of the unpopular opinion that learning at a personalized pace can be beneficial, so no, I don't. Believe me, I tried my best to talk them out of it. I managed to push it back a few days, even, but they were insistent." he said sympathetically. Hinata's hands tightened into fists at her sides as her knuckles dug into the matted floor.

"Now is the worst time for something so petty. I don't trust him on his own. Not one bit." she said darkly. The older man frowned and eyed his daughter intently.

"Has he worsened?" he asked slowly. The heiress kept her eyes glued to the wooden table as she appeared to consider her words. After a time, she spoke.

"He's openly admitted to self-loathing, and he's harmed himself more than once. He's becoming more receptive to me, but he's no less volatile mentally. Leaving him alone for a day feels...very unwise." she said. Hiashi pursed his lips.

"Is he at risk of suicide? Be honest." he pressed. Hinata tensed visibly at the question, clearly disturbed by the thought of the boy she so clearly adored ending his own life.

"I don't think so. At least, I haven't seen anything that makes me think he would be. He hasn't said anything to suggest that it's on his mind." she said a tad shakily. The Clan Head exhaled through his nose and glanced up at the clock. They were short on time.

"Iruka is likely already in the academy building, and it's far too short-notice to find a replacement for him. I'll send a branch member to inform Naruto of your absence." he said. The heiress swallowed nervously.

"I still don't like the idea. I...I really don't think he'll be safe." she said quietly. Hiashi stood up from his seat and made his way over to her, prompting the girl to rise to meet him. He then put a hand on her shoulder.

"All we can do is hope. I understand your concern, and I take pride in your empathy, but this is out of your control for now." he said gently. The heiress sighed and turned toward the door of the kitchen.

"When does my testing begin?" she asked numbly. The older man studied her carefully before answering her simple question.

"In twenty minutes, just about. I'd suggest stretching beforehand. The first phase will be taijutsu." he informed her, earning a stiff nod from his daughter. She then briskly exited the room. Once she was gone, Hiashi sighed.

'Keep your head, Naruto. She'll blame herself if you do anything rash.'

Naruto stared straight ahead of him as the sun peeked through his mostly-closed curtains. He had not slept a wink. He was utterly exhausted, but his body refused to shut itself down. He hadn't even managed to change his position for all eight of the hours that he had been on the mattress. As he had been when he initially came to the mattress, he was sitting with his knees drawn up to his chin. The human mind was the ultimate abyss of torment. It was capable of invoking more pain than any weapon or spoken word.

He had very nearly drowned in the depths of his own psyche that night. Literally and figuratively. There had been points at which he had forgotten to breath, and he had mentally collapsed in on himself several times. Hellish was an understatement. Numbness was his friend, as it had dulled the physical damage to the point of it being a non-factor in adding to his discomfort. His nails had returned to their usual length roughly two hours prior, but up till that point, they had done their job.

Most of the damage had been done to his hands, largely due to him keeping them clenched into fists for much of the night despite the claws on the ends of his fingers. Try as he might to resist the urge, he had also scratched violently at his chest and forearms more than once. The blood had dried, but it was still very visible. Naruto felt very little. The early stages of visceral pain and emotion had given way to total dissociation.

Above all else, however, he was mentally shot. He no longer had any desire to clean himself up the way he had less than four hours previously. All that remained were his autonomous functions. He breathed periodically, he occasionally shifted to ease his joints, and his heart beat in his chest. Nothing more, nothing less. If cold water were to suddenly be splashed on his face, the closest thing to a reaction may have been to blink the liquid from his eyes.

One thing was bothering him, however. It was a few minutes past nine in the morning, and Hinata had yet to arrive at his apartment. If it had been a Saturday or Sunday, Naruto would have blown it off as an unspoken caveat of the heiress' arrangement to stay in his apartment during the day, but it was still two days short of the weekend. In the spirit of his never ending, new found pessimism, the blonde's mind easily twisted the information.

'She says all this crap about being there for me, and then bails less than a week in. All I did was sleep, too. That's a new low for me.' he thought to himself, a bitter chuckle escaping him as he pondered the worst possible scenario as though it were a set reality. In the farthest reaches of his mind, a small voice screamed that he was wrong, but the voice was quickly and brutally suppressed. The torment had taken its toll.

Despite what he told himself, despite the numbness and nihilism, he still patiently waited for the sound of the door to his apartment to open. Try as the ancient being living within him might, he could not purge the small spark of hope that he would be shown care soon. For as much as he had been broken down, who he was at his core remained. A person who looked forward. A person who wished to be successful. These truths of his personality lacked the strength to surface, but they retained their ability to keep him alive.

Unfortunately, Hinata never came that day.

Hinata briskly made her way up the stairs of Naruto's apartment. She hadn't a minute to waste. Within her own mind, at least. The previous day had been chaotic, and had prevented her from taking to her usual duties at the blonde's dwelling. For the most part, her stress was unfounded, for her father had sent a branch Hyuga to inform Naruto of the reasoning behind her absence. She strongly disliked members of the main house giving orders to those of the branch house, but Naruto's condition was severe enough for it to be warranted, by her estimation.

'I hope they were polite. Depressed as he is, I suspect Naruto-kun's temper is still intact.' she thought to herself as she reached his front door. With a quick twist of the key, she stepped inside and closed the entrance behind her. Once inside, the Hyuga girl was immediately struck by how still it all felt. It was certainly quite early in the morning, so the silence was more than justifiable, but something felt off. Something was missing.

Suddenly feeling the urge to check on her classmate, Hinata made her way to the door of his bedroom and knocked on it. Oddly, and unsettlingly, the force of her knuckle on the wood pushed the door open a touch. It was not only unlocked, but already a crack open. Though her knee jerk reaction was to simply open it all the way, something in her gut told her that she may come to regret the decision. She quickly brushed her intuition aside and used her elbow to gently open the door.

For better or worse, her gut had been telling her the truth. Sitting with his back to the bed frame, a bloodied, tattered shirt hanging from his upper body, and a look completely void of emotion on his face was Naruto. Her entrance seemed to have roused him somewhat, as while his face was blank, his eyes were indeed trained on her. For several moments, Hinata stood in disturbed silence as she struggled to process the horror before her.

"You came." he eventually said in a monotone voice. There was no life in his tone. No personality. No vigor. They were robotic words. Dead words. Hinata then began to shake. It was a nightmare. A horrifying vision of something she perceived to be hellish. It wasn't long before the tears predictably crashed through any defenses she had previously erected. She did not sob. She simply let the burning tears drag down her face. The messenger had not come. He had not been notified. And the results were far worse than she possibly could have imagined.

"You can leave if it's too much." Naruto said numbly. His words snapped her from her silent trance. In an instant, Hinata burst forward and came down upon him with all of her bodyweight. She didn't care one bit about the bloody stains on her jacket or the fact that she was being so physically forward. The only thought on her mind was the boy in front of her.

"Why? Just why? Why are you doing this to yourself? Are you...are you trying to hurt me? Because if you are, it's working…!" she wailed tearfully as she beared down over the blonde, who was now flat on his back with Hinata pinning his wrists to the mattress. Her emotions were violently intense, and they consisted almost entirely of despair and anger. Despair at the pain Naruto was clearly in, and anger at the horrible truth of how little he seemed to value his own life.

"I did my best. I really did." he said quietly. It was then that Hinata took a long, hard look at his injuries. There were brutal scratch marks all up his arms and across his chest. They stopped just below his throat. There was a story to be told in the cuts. Any and all vital areas had been avoided, but only barely. Whatever terrible experience Naruto had lived through the day before had come dangerously close to being fatal, and from the inflection of his words, he had fought viciously to keep it below that threshold.

"Please tell me what's going on. This isn't mere depression. There's something else going on. Be honest with me, Naruto-kun. I can't stand this. I can't help you if I don't know the truth." Hinata pressed as she suppressed her urge to completely break down into tears. Naruto shook his head. He was staring right through her.

"I can't. I can't let you know. I don't want you to go away. I don't like being hated." he replied. Hinata tightened her grips on his wrists and stared hard at his dull eyes.

"Don't make me laugh. You have no idea how much it would take. I'm quite a fan of yours. Your biggest, I'd say." she shot back as firmly as she could. For a time, Naruto simply laid limply in his silence. Eventually, he began to speak.

"Take a look at the tattoo on my stomach." he said vaguely. Frustrated as she was by the lack of straightness to the answer, the heiress did as she was told and activated her Byakugan. Out of respect for the blonde, she had never used her eyes to view his body directly before, and as such, what she saw when her dojutsu pierced through his tattered clothing was jarring. There was a containment seal printed on her classmate's stomach.

"Why...why is there orange chakra centered in it? What does that...mean?" she whispered aloud as she tried and failed to understand what exactly she was looking at. Her head was then turned back up by the blonde's voice.

"What's my birthday, Hinata?" he asked. The Hyuga's response was instant and confident, as she had memorized the date long ago.

"October 10th." she said automatically. For a brief time, she was unable to follow the trail of breadcrumbs Naruto had laid out for her. The mystery did not hold up for long when the cogs of her mind began to even slightly turn. The conclusion she came to made far too much sense. Apparently, she did a poor job of hiding her shock.

"Pretty wild, huh? It surprised the hell out of me too." Naruto said brittly. Emotion had finally returned to his voice, but not in a healthy form. He sounded utterly defeated. There was even a trace of fear laced into the undertone.

"They...they all avoid you because of the…" she began, trailing off into silence out of sheer shock and awe. The information being presented to her gave context to so many things she had witnessed that it made the heiress' head spin.

"Demon brat. Fox devil. Little monster. Those are the classics. That's right, you've got it exactly, Hinata. The Nine-Tailed Fox never died. He was never beaten. He was put inside of me the day I was born. I'm a monster." the blonde clarified with an odd look on his face. The Hyuga girl mouthed something, but it was far too quiet for the blonde to hear. Five more times, she did the same thing. Mouthing silent words.

"I'll tell Iruka-sensei that you got behind on your homework. He'll understand. We don't have to let this leave this room if you don't want it to. You can forget all about me." Naruto suggested. Hinata's silent mouthings then explosively increased in volume.

"You're not a monster! You're a boy!" she yelled uncharacteristically. The sheer intensity of her voice caused Naruto to flinch. The heiress paid his unease no heed and seized the sides of his face with her hands.

"You're a wonderful, lovable, kind boy! You're not a monster!" she yelled once again, adding further superlatives to drive her point home. Her face was hardly more than two inches from his own, and he could feel her rapid breath on his face. Her expression held boundless contempt, but not for him. It was directed toward his oppressors.

"If you ever call yourself a monster again, I'll introduce you to the palm of my hand. You're precious and endearing. You're handsome and cute. I could go on and on. You are not a monster or a freak." she hissed through clenched teeth. Her reaction clearly had absolutely not been what Naruto had been expecting. He was completely tongue-tied and at a total loss.

"If what you're saying is true, and the village treats you so terribly because of something so far out of your control, then I'll be relegating myself to interacting with my family and you. Nobody else. They aren't worth my time or yours." Hinata continued bluntly. She had calmed outwardly, but a fury was still burning within her. All of the hours she had spent watching him, all of the tears she had seen him shed, they had all been a result of nothing more than scapegoating.

"Why? Why are you being this way? Everybody else, they all just…" Naruto began, losing his voice well before he could finish the thought. The Hyuga girl lightened her grip on the sides of his face and maintained firm eye contact with him.

"You know what? Since you told me the truth, I'll do the same. I'm not dancing around this any longer." she said shortly. Rather than continuing to speak, Hinata simply crushed her lips to his and clamped her eyes shut. Naruto made an odd squeaking sound in response. After several moments, Hinata broke the kiss and left her forehead to rest on his.

"You're worth so much more than you think." she said with conviction. At first, the blonde did nothing more than stare up at her blankly. He was overloaded. Slowly but surely, he processed all that had happened and been said. When he did, for the first time since Hinata's arrival as his caretaker, he began to cry. He was completely drained. He had no more strength left with which to contain his pain.

"Oh, come here, you." Hinata said as she scooped him up and pressed his face into her chest. Naruto immediately clung onto her and openly sobbed. It was an entire ocean of neglect and loneliness.

"H-He keeps telling me a-about all of the people he slaughtered during his r-rampage. He even t-told me how he killed my mom." he stammered tearfully. Hinata felt her heart break in several places.

"He's also t-told me that he wants to do it all again. He...he threatened you. I w-wanted to make sure my b-body was too ripped up for h-him to be able to use it." the blonde whimpered. This revelation in particular sent the heiress entirely over the edge.

"That's why you hurt yourself so badly…?" she practically whispered. Naruto gave an almost imperceptible nod. At this, Hinata tightened her grip on him and ran a hand through his hair.

"If you're anything other than human, you're an angel, not a demon. They've got it all wrong. You keep the fox under control. You keep them all safe. And when you thought there was a chance of me being in danger, you...you tore yourself apart to try to stop it." she declared, struggling a bit to get the last part out. She then gently lifted his head up to face her.

"But please, don't do this to yourself. Don't hurt yourself. Don't put your body through this. You matter just as much as I do. You have no idea how much it breaks my heart to see you like this." she pleaded with him.

"I don't know what else to do." Naruto replied sadly. Hinata shook her head and released him before standing up.

"Treating your body like a whipping post isn't the answer. I don't have a solution for the fox, but I'll say this: you being his container doesn't make it okay for you to completely abandon yourself. Stand strong. Maintain your identity. Be your own person. Don't let him define you." she said strongly. The blonde sat up on the edge of the bed and sighed heavily.

"That was a hell of a lot easier before I learned that everybody had a good reason to hate me." he said glumly. A split second later, he was slapped across the face.

"What the hell was that for? I didn't even call myself a monster or anything." Naruto complained as he rubbed his cheek. The heiress grabbed him under his arms and stood him up with surprising strength.

"You were thinking it, and I won't let you wallow in self-loathing. Now, I'm going to give you two choices." she said vaguely. Though he was still somewhat irritated from having been slapped, Naruto gestured for her to continue.

"You can either stay here, or you can come stay at the Hyuga Estate. If you choose to stay, I'll be moving for the time being as your roommate. If you choose to stay at the Hyuga Estate, you'll be sleeping in my room, and you'll be accompanied by me at all times. Take your pick." Hinata said as she held him by the shoulders in front of herself. Her classmate furrowed his brow.

"Why would I agree to either of those things?" he shot back defensively. The Hyuga girl remained unwavering and kept him still with her hands.

"It isn't a matter of agreeing. It's a matter of choosing which ultimatum you like better. This isn't up for debate. From here on out, you're not leaving my sight." she said firmly. Naruto opened his mouth to retort, but seemed to think better of it when he hung his head.

"I'll stay here. I don't want to screw up your home life." he muttered tiredly. Hinata's grip on him softened at this.

"You wouldn't be damaging anything by being a guest in my home, but if it makes you more comfortable, I'll come to you instead. Father likes you, and he understands your situation somewhat, so I'm confident he'll let me." she assured him. The blonde then lifted his head again to reveal a weary expression.

"Why'd you kiss me, Hinata?" he asked out of the blue. The question spoke a thousand words. Contrary to the norm, the heiress did not blush or stutter. Instead, she simply gazed at him and gave an honest smile.

"Because you were spiralling, and I needed to get it across to you that you're loved and worthy of care. I adore you, Naruto Uzumaki." she said sweetly. The blonde blinked several times.

"I...really don't know what to say to that. I don't know what it feels like to love somebody. Or really to be loved, honestly." he said, his tone conflicted. Hinata's hands then drifted up to his face once again.

"To love is to care for another more than yourself. Which is exactly why I don't care about the fox or the danger you think he poses to me. I'll stay here with you, no matter what comes my way." she said softly. She then let her hands drop from his face.

"I know you don't feel the way I do, and that's okay. I have no right to expect that of you. Just...take it as a sign that you're just as important as anyone else." she said quietly. Naruto remained silent and unmoving for several seconds before finally speaking.

"I'll...think on it. I really can't give a good answer either way. I need to figure some stuff out. Give me time, okay?" he said. Hinata felt a spark of hope ignite itself in her, but she pushed it down in favor of logical thinking.

"When you're ready to discuss this again, I'll be waiting for you. No matter what your answer may be." the heiress said. Naruto nodded and winced as his cuts throbbed. Easily noticing his discomfort, Hinata pointed to his dresser.

"Get dressed. I'm taking you to the Estate. We have our own medics." she half-suggested, half-ordered. Her classmate's expression instantly became apprehensive.

"Are you sure they'd even heal me?" he asked skeptically. Hinata nodded confidently and began walking toward the door of his bedroom so as to give him privacy.

"Oh, don't worry about that. They'll do their job. They know how...unpleasant I can be when I'm angry. Besides, I have hell to raise with them already."

A/N: Like I said up-top, this was a pretty brutal chapter, though it ended nicely. Had a mini-confession, so that's fun. They'll be together fairly soon, but there are still things to sort out first. Tell me what you thought :)

See you next chapter! Read and Review!