Kage
of the Graves:
Sadly Sang the Bloodied Blade
How could I..? What did I..? How could you…? Oh my Naruto, dear sweet Naruto, I know life was hard for you, but did you have to? I don't know how I could… how you could… how I will survive! I try to be brave, just like you always told me to, but I can't! You left! Left us, left me behind! It hurts so much to think that you honestly believed you were not loved! How could… what did you… I WAS HERE FOR YOU ALL THIS TIME!
I quail and quiver, my body wracked, wretched with shivers. It's nightmare that holds me as if in a bind. You're gone, and I know, that I'll never be the same again. I thought I was over you, as over you as I could ever get, but you still have the power to destroy me! How could you, my first and most treasured of loves. I know, though I don't like to admit to myself, I know! I know why you did it… I betrayed you, my dear sweet Naruto-kun who has never once done anything to deserve such betrayal!
Oh how could I? How could I do this to you, you magnificent blonde, how could I have not seen what my actions would do. It was a test - a test of our love - wasn't it? To send me on a date with Kiba… And… and… and I FAILED! Well, I shan't fail you again, my beautiful blue eyed love from beyond. I go now to join you, I go now to silence the terrible accusations that you've sent my way. I, Hyuuga Hinata, daughter of Hyuuga Hiashi, betrayer of pure and innocent love, shall now take mine own life to be with you at last.
I have seen the dreams you've sent me. I know the message they carry… You want me with you still, don't you, my love? Who am I to deny you? I'm sure Kiba will understand, after all, how can anyone stand in the way of love? It is for your love that I do this? Are you watching? I shall make the first cut a symbol, a message of the intimacy which I will give you…
Outside of her tortured mind, Hinata bared her chest. The large slab of sharpened steel that was a mini-meat cleaver sliced dreadfully into the yielding flesh of her bosom. Huge gouts of blood sprayed across the pretty tiles of her kitchen floor - but the pain did not even reach her. Hinata, who's hair clung to her face and body with a fever sweat adhesive, slowly sunk to the floor. In the corner she crumpled and curled upon herself. A second slash crossed the first, making a morbid 'X' over her heart. It was a symbol, as she had though it would be, of the fact that she would never allow herself to love again in this mortal plain.
Are you watching, my dearest? I'm sorry if you need more proof. I can't even feel the pain that I know I deserve, and so I will give you more. For you, and no other, I willingly die. I shall risk hell for you, to be with you, to have you…. Naruto-kun.. I'm sorry I hurt you. Here is my amends for the terrible wrong I've done to you!
The cleaver, already lubricated for easy passage, cut deep into the meat of her wrist, grinding against bone and sinew.
And here again! I'm sorry Naruto-kun! I love you so much, and yet I failed you - completely and utterly did I fail you - when you needed me the most!
The cleaver tore into her flesh once again, making ragged incisions unlike even the least skilled of a butchers trade. She was mutilating herself more thoroughly than any enemy ever could. She would do this and more, simply to escape the nightmares that had robbed her of peace - the guilt that had become all consuming, and at last, to join her love in what she figured to be the only way to make up for a perceived betrayal.
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Some powerful sensation tore through the spectral Naruto, and without warning, he left Sasuke's side, forgetting the conversation at hand entirely. He knew not where it was he was going, but for some reason, a powerful fear had gripped him. A sensation - a chill - he knew without knowing, someone close to him was dying. And so he raced across time and distance until he burst through the wall of Hinata's and Kiba's apartment. There he witnessed something which would have made him vomit if he'd eaten anything since his death. Hinata lay in a corner of the kitchen, and the blood was on the walls. He could see her vital aura slowly receding, but he could no nothing. Well, not nothing. He left, intent on finding someone, anyone, who could possibly remedy this terribly unfair tragedy that was about to take place.
At last, he found Kiba, who was walking home in a daze, groceries tucked within his arms. Naruto didn't know what he was doing, but before he knew it, he had done it, and all he could do from that point was to helplessly watch.
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-"KIBA!"-
The Inuzuka's head snapped upward and out of his haze. A voice.. It sounded familiar but it wasn't as if he'd actually heard it. It had seemed to come from deep within his mind, and it was a voice fraught with fearful panic and desperation.
-"Ki… It's…Nata-ch… e's hur…"-
The voice came through hazy and indistinct, but the message was more than clear and frantic enough to instill his instant obedience. Groceries were dropped without thought and Kiba raced towards home without thinking. He ran so hard that his heart felt as if it would burst and his muscles screamed for relief.
By the time he reached the building in which Hinata and himself shared an apartment, there was no breath left to him, he couldn't breath at all, but it didn't slow him down. He was on their floor before something stopped him. The cloying scent of copious blood loss hit him as it were a smithy's hammer, and he skidded almost to a halt as his brain sent the panic symbols to his body. This blood… this blood was familiar. With his heart in his throat, Kiba could scarcely make his limbs cooperate, but he eventually made it to the apartment, and then inside where his nightmare truly began.
The scent of blood was already heavy in the air, a cloying smell that hammered against the Inuzuka's sensitive olfactory. He knew it all to well, his life had given him a harsh familiarity with it, but despite the panic that welled in his heart, his body seemed to have gone numb on him. Kiba knew there was only one other in the apartment, and the
scene was eerily familiar to one he'd witnessed only a few days before. The presence of death was close, but there were no sings of break in - no signs of struggle. Strangely, he was unable to hurry his body despite the terror welling inside of him. Until at last, with hesitance born from a wealth of denial already setting in, Kiba turned the corner into
the linoleum tiled kitchen and spotted his love.
She was barely conscious, and he would already be sure of her death just from the sight before him - Hinata lay there, curled up in the corner, slender digits no longer able to hold the knife she had so obviously put to use. Blood was everywhere, and the alabaster skin of his beloved Hyuuga had gone
even further until she seemed almost painted... were it not for the butcher's lines that arced raggedly across her arms. She would have seemed comatose - eyes wide and blank, staring off into the distance - were it not for the slight tremble of her lips. Had he not been possessed of such amazing hearing, he would have missed the words that had become a
morbid mantra, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." It was these words, spoken with such gloaming anguish, that finally brought Kiba out of the stasis his brain had been in, and he snapped forward. "HINATA!"
His tortured mind barely had the presence to alert him that Hinata was half naked, so he had grabbed a towel without slowing down and wrapped her chest as he hefted her into his arms and raced out of the apartment, kicking the door off of it's hinges in his haste. His run to the hospital was, if you could imagine such a thing, even faster than his race to the apartment. Hinata, his dearest love, the woman who he had pined for since the academy days, was barely breathing in his arms. Already, he feared that he could feel her growing cold beneath him, but if he had possessed a rational state of mind at this point, he would have known that to be an impossibility. Rational, however, was hardly an issue to Kiba right then.
All he knew, all he could do, was to save Hinata. So he ran, and when he reached the hospital, he didn't slow down until he had kicked the doors open to the operating room. Hinata was set down and a nearby medic had the unfortunate experience of a frantic Inuzuka slamming him bodily against the wall.
"If you dare let this woman die, I will hunt you down. I will hunt you no matter where you run, and I will kill you, slowly. Inch by inch I shall devour your body in ragged, bloody chunks, keeping you alive and conscious until there is no longer enough body for your fucking soul to cling to, DO YOU HEAR ME!"
Once the medic-nin nodded, Kiba was off again in search of the Hokage. She was, luckily, in the hospital. When he found her, he immediately grabbed her hand and yanked her of her feet, practically dragging her to operation room he had left his love of loves. The operation to save Hinata's life commenced shortly thereafter.
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Naruto had followed the event in its entirety, and he now stood outside the operating room, tense and expectant as a soon to be father. When Sasuke found him sometime later, there was no mirth to be had this time around. He gently rested a hand on Naruto's shoulder, not even trying to come up with words of comfort. Naruto quickly turned and buried his face into Sasuke's shoulder as tears fled his eyes.
-"I didn't know! How could I have known what this would do to her! To any of them! I didn't know! I want to say I'm sorry but I know it'll never be enough!"-
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(AN: There. I know I didn't spend nearly enough time on Hinata or Kiba the first time around, and I probably still havn't... but.. eh... -shrug- I do what I can in the time that I have. Hope it was enough, although if anyone is like me when they read a story, there is seldom ever enough, right?)
Dirtwater.
