"Your soulmate isn't someone who comes peacefully into your life."
It was odd, how many times Naruto had come barging right into her mind with hurricane force. Whether it was the first time they'd met, when he'd shouted that he was the future Hokage, when he told her that she should kick her cousin's ass, that he was rooting for her, or when he said that she was a shy, dark weirdo, and that he liked people like her.
Somehow, after glancing into her eyes, he was able to read her mind with ease, whether it was when she had been fighting the White Zetsu or when she had been ensnared by the God Tree. When they'd both been mourning at Neji's grave or when he challenged her to a ramen eating contest. It was an odd trait, one that had only intensified after the incident on the moon.
This was a very unfortunate fact for enemy ninja who tried to attack them. They had not been on the same genin team together, and Hinata had been most dejected at this fact when she had been a child.
Now, however, she began to suspect that it was a good thing that they hadn't. For everyone else's safety.
Naruto wasn't even bothering to activate his Kyuubi mode lately whenever they were paired together on missions. Instead, he just glanced into Hinata's eyes and she into his. They'd share a look. And then he would just pick up the enemy ninja and hurl him in her direction with hurricane speed, and Hinata would finish the job.
It was funny, how it was during the most fraught moments in their lives that they were in perfect sync.
"It is the person who makes you question things."
It didn't mean that there weren't peaceful moments between them, though. Sometimes, when the sky was clear and blue, Naruto would glance at the flock of bush warblers in the air, and he'd wonder what it would have been like if he'd never met her, or if he had met her, and the grave in front of him read Hyuuga Hinata instead of Hyuuga Neji.
His mind went blank. Instinctively, his brain shut down, not allowing him to add imagined agony onto real ones.
Somehow he thought he knew the answer to his question. He reached out and squeezed her hand like a lifeline.
"The one who changes your reality."
"...Hinata?" he asked. "Um...you dropped this."
Hinata's heart stopped beating as he held out a ball of red yarn that had tumbled from her arms, then went into abnormally fast rhythms as he abruptly withdrew it.
"Eh, I'll just carry it for you. You have a lot of stuff in your arms, ya know? Your house is that way, right? Race you there!" He grinned, running along the road already, and she had to sprint to catch up to him.
She would, one of these days.
"Someone that marks a before and after in your life."
Naruto sometimes couldn't believe that there was ever a time before he knew that Hinata could eat forty-six bowls of ramen without puking, before he went on missions with her and found out that shy, dark weirdos were actually kind of cool and brave and awesome, before he knew that she randomly broke out in feverish rashes in his presence and that it would take years and years for him to realize that those weren't feverish rashes at all.
By the time he realized it, Pain had already impaled her with a black rod, and his mind went blank, as it often would whenever she got involved.
It was like a seismic shift, leaving a faultline in his heart. All he knew was that they should never have been on opposite sides of the rift. They needed to be together, always, because no matter what she said, she was the one who changed him, not the other way around, and he wouldn't hesitate to destroy anyone or anything who made her (him?) suffer.
Kyuubi was right about that, at least.
"It is not someone you idealized."
In a sick, twisted way, sometimes when she was a kid, Hinata would be glad that she wasn't the only hopeless case in class, that she wasn't the only one shunned by those whose acknowledgement she craved.
She'd always thought that maybe, just maybe, if her voice was just a bit louder, her gait just a bit more steady and strong, she could have pushed him on the swing during those times in the Academy, and then the rest of the world wouldn't matter.
She made up her mind one day, walking towards him eagerly.
"Naruto-kun...!" she began.
(Too little, too late.)
His stomach growled, drowning out her too-quiet voice. He went off to Ichiraku, leaving her behind.
"But just another human being."
Naruto grinned proudly at his successful prank, which had seen the whole western side of the village drenched in bright orange paint: stores, homes, windows, the roads, everything.
A pot sailed through the air and almost brained him. It was that grumpy old man, the one he'd asked for some spare clothes because he'd had enough change. The amount of salt the man had spilled on his doorstep after kicking Naruto out had rivaled a miniature blizzard in color.
He stuck his tongue out at the man. This prompted an old lady to hurl a broomstick at him, and then he was off, deftly dodging irate villagers and shouts of "call the Hokage" and "I'll kill that brat this time!"
The Hokage wouldn't let the villagers kill him, that much Naruto knew for sure, so he wasn't too worried about the consequences of defacing a whole side of the village.
Still...it had taken a long time. To get the paint ready. To make sure no one noticed him doing it until it was too late. It was ninja training! Training to become Hokage.
It...it would have been nice if someone would show him some appreciation. Things like these were hard to do.
As he turned a corner, he heard a cough and whirled around nervously.
It was Hinata, walking along innocently in the opposite direction, looking like she hadn't seen him at all.
Naruto sighed in relief and kept running.
Hinata hid a smile in her fist and innocently coughed again.
"Who can revolutionize your world in a second."
"I'm the Hokage of the future!" a golden-haired boy her age shouted, leaping between Hinata and the bullies.
A long, flowing scarf and a blinding smile swept into her field of vision.
Hinata blinked and her whole world turned upside down, inside out.
A/N: Happy NaruHina Month! This one-shot was inspired by a gifset I saw with those same quotes: happyocelot dot tumblr dot com / post / 666173601954791424 / uzumakihinatas-insp
Ughhh, why is this site allergic to links? Anyway, just remove the dots and spaces and you'll get the post. :)
Meanwhile, tell me what you think of this reverse-chronological one-shot. :)