"Why is it suddenly purple?" Naruto asked. Though he'd freed her foot from the God Tree's constraints, his hand remained on her ankle.
Hinata glanced down and saw that her toes were bleeding, her ankle an ugly puce.
Oh.
The protective Kyuubi cloak Naruto had given her was still working. Every cut, scrape, and bruise she had suffered through the course of the war had vanished. As she sliced through an arc of White Zetsu, she hoped he could see her, sense her. After all, in front of the one she admired the most, she couldn't afford to look uncool.
It's all thanks to you staying by my side, he'd said.
Or maybe it was something she said. She knew she'd said something like that when she faced Pain and he was, for once, staring at her back.
Maybe…maybe she had changed Naruto as much as he changed her?
And then she saw him from far away, saw his heartbeat getting weaker and weaker. That wasn't supposed to happen. It couldn't happen. Didn't he say he was by her side?
She'd barely registered the pain surging through her foot as she rushed towards him. Who cared about things like that, when his arteries were losing their flow every passing second?
Through the fog of her panic, she caught a glimpse of blonde hair and a bright smile and a shrimpy boy who didn't know any of the answers to the exam. He was telling her not to worry, that an incredible ninja like him didn't need to cheat, and maybe she was hallucinating, but –
I don't want you to disappear here.
But she tripped and fell, and the last thing she remembered was the pain and the warmth of Naruto's cloak fading.
"Hey, don't hide your wounds and act tough," Naruto said. "You know, you don't have to prove that you're cool to me, Hinata. I already know."
He let a little bit of the Kyuubi's energy flow through her ankle, mending the ripped tendons, and he didn't let go even after all the cuts and bleeding had gone.
His eyes were still a bit wet, and it was then that she knew that he didn't want her to disappear either.
A/N: For the prompt "Why is it suddenly purple?" and a sequel to the previous chapter, "How exactly did you manage to get stuck in there?"
Dear reviewers - I mean that you can send me prompts through a private message on this site. Or you can just write your prompt in the review. That's fine too.