Disclaimer: I own nothing but the story contained. The characters are not mine. (Obviously)

"The choices one makes. The decisions they chose. What do they mean if in the end they don't get what they want?"

Choices Made

by Ryoga Saotome

"Funny how a person has time to contemplate thins as they lie bleeding in the middle of a forest. How different would things have been if you'd taken another option, another road? The choices one is given in life can be based on the choices made earlier. Good, evil, and fool are a few of the titles given based on a person's actions. Given to them by another person who agrees or disagrees with that person's earlier actions, their choices. I made a choice a long time ago. To wait. To view from afar. Afraid of what acting would cause. Because I wasn't brave enough to make the other choice."

Hinata watched him from behind the pole. Naruto was leaving and wouldn't be back for a long time. She wanted to go and tell him goodbye. To tell him how she felt. So much she wanted to say to him. But time had run out. She couldn't take the next step. All she could do was watch him leave. Telling herself she must do her best. So that when the time came again, she could talk to him.

She saw him again after he'd returned. She couldn't face him, couldn't step out from her hiding place. Even after all this time. She couldn't take that step. She even fainted when he'd noticed her and gotten so close. Too late again. He'd left the village for another mission before she'd regained consciousness. Nothing else she could do but say that next time would be different. Next time she'd tell him everything she wanted him to know. Next time she wouldn't hesitate.

But she couldn't do it. Time after time she watched him from afar. Always making the safe choice to watch from afar. Watching him grow and watching him learn. She watched so long she lost her chance. He asked Sakura for her hand in marriage. Sakura said yes and the two started their life together. Hinata could do nothing now.

"He's better off without me."

"I don't deserve someone like him."

Thoughts had filled her head as she watched more. Why would he want to be with someone who couldn't do what he always did? Make the choice to act. To approach a person and speak with them. She had always chosen to watch. Saying one thing and doing another. The title fool could easily be applied to her. The negative things she says to herself become more and more harmful to herself as she watches them both love each other and it almost breaks her when Sakura announces that she's pregnant.

Seven months after that something happens. Akatsuki makes their final stand. Everyone able to fight is called out to help. Sakura must stay behind, no way to help in her current condition. As the battle rages Naruto is separated from the rest. Hinata notices immediately and tracks him down. He's fighting one of the members alone with no one else around. Hinata watches. Just as she's done all these years. A foolish thing to do, but a fool does what a fool does. Naruto makes the final blow and turns around to go back to the others. He doesn't see it happen. The man makes a final attack. A kunai aimed for the back of his head. He doesn't know its coming. She does. She makes her choice. Naruto is aware of being pushed out of the way. He sees the attack after it's over. The man collapses after he sees he got someone. He won't die alone. Hinata is dead. The kunai pierced her head. She made her choice.

"With all the choices I made, good, bad, or foolish, it ended with me dead and him not. But the choices made, while painful to me, saved him. If I had approached him earlier I could have very well been the one pregnant. Then who would save him. Sakura would be healing others in the backfield. He would have died. If the years and years of choices I made to wait made it possible for him to be saved now. Then they were some of the best choices I ever made.