WARNING: This contains SPOILERS for up to chp 395 of the manga.
Hinata sat in front of the memorial stone gazing at the names and idly twirling a kunai in her hands. There was one missing, one name that should hold a place on this stone that she knew the village would never commission.
She was free now. Free of the marriage that had been forced on her years ago. But she couldn't bring herself to be happy about it.
She had never learned to love Itachi, not in the way that woman is supposed to love her husband, but she had cared for him. They had been friends. It had taken time, but the stoic man had eventually opened up to her. She had learned his past and seen the fragility within him. She had been his companion, which was all he had really wanted.
Every meeting, every carefully planned liaison between them, had shown the young heiress a little more of the others soul, until she believed that she knew more of who Itachi was than anyone else could ever hope to. She missed him.
She didn't know if anyone had picked up on her ulterior motives as they had raced through the treetops in search of Sasuke, but she had definitely felt them. She wasn't sure what exactly she would have done had they found Sasuke prior to him finding Itachi, but she knows she would have tried to stop him. Now she's not sure she'll ever be able to look at the boy again.
She sighs and rises to her feet, intent on heading back to the Hyuuga compound. Maybe she should tell Naruto how she feels about him, now that she's free to do so. But she knows that, for her, it is to soon. It would feel disrespectful to her, selfish. She'll wait.
She passes Kakashi as she leaves the area surrounding the memorial, on his way to visit his own ghosts. And when he gets there, if he realizes that a new name has been carved on the stone, with rough and unprofessional strokes, or knows who put it there, he doesn't say anything.
~*~
AN: Ok, so we have the beginning and the end. I'm toying with the idea of doing a few oneshots that would go in the middle. Tell me what you think please J