A/N: Written in the
1Sentence Challenge format.
#33 - Never
The first time Naruto is
ever paired up with a Hyuuga for a mission, it’s an A-ranked one, he’s a Jounin
on the rise, and he thinks that Hinata, who’s still a Chuunin, won’t be able to
keep up with him.
#35 - Sudden
During their briefing,
Tsunade tells the pair that they have to infiltrate a gathering of high-profile
royalty from the Rock by disguising themselves as a well-to-do Daimyo and his
belly-dancing harem girl -- to which Naruto openly blanches, asks her if she’s
being serious and is subsequently met with a hard, blank stare.
#48 – Precious
“You have got to be kidding
me!” Naruto bellows, throwing out his hands and jumping out of his chair,
indignation clear on his face and surprise clear in his eyes as he points to
Hinata and says “There’s no way you can put her through something like that!”
#25 – Shadow
Though he thinks it’s for
the best because he knows how Hinata is – shy, coy, innocent, and this
mission doesn’t call for any of these things -- Naruto doesn’t see the shadow
of a frown that passes across Hinata’s face.
#17 - Vision
“Why would I joke about a
mission?” Tsunade assures Naruto; the subtle evil eye she fixes on him telling
the blonde that, even he if doesn’t know why, something he just said was very,
very stupid.
#21 - Fool
After Hinata leaves, Naruto
stays behind and does not find it funny that Tsunade answers his:
“Why’d you pair me up with the her, of all people?” by telling him that
if it weren’t for Jiraiya cajoling her into doing it, she wouldn’t have even
thought of sending him along with the Hyuuga girl.
#07 - One
Later that night, when he
gets home and sits down to fix himself a bowl of ramen, Naruto thinks that if
there was only one thing he had learned after traveling with Jiraiya for so
long, it was that the old man loved to play the matchmaker.
#41 - Power
“You’re not good
enough to do this.” The Fox whispers to him while he sleeps; to which
Naruto can only manage a half-hearted “Yes I am.”
#26 - Goodbye
As they’re leaving the
village the following morning and after seeing Hinata turn pale when he tried
to discuss just how they were going to pull this off, Naruto’s first thought
about his partner is: Fuck, we’re not even gonna make it through the door.
#13 - Change
“They’re not even going to
make it though the door if they don’t learn how to work together.” Tsunade
tells Jiraiya as they watch the two leave from the balcony overlooking the
Northern Gates, to which the old man answers with nothing but a smile.
#04 - Last
Hinata is the last
person Naruto expects to be teamed up with for this kind of mission because
the heiress just doesn’t look or act like a kunoichi anymore; she
acts like royalty trying to pretend, and Naruto doesn’t need that.
#30 - Ghost
Later, though, he’ll berate
himself for dismissing her so casually and acting just like Sasuke would in his
stead.
#20 - Picture
He knows that part of him
should be impressed when she manages to match his pace as they travel through
the canopies for the first few days, but another part -- a small, bitter part
that reflects on how much she is still a child -- tells him that any
Chuunin could do the same if they tried hard enough.
#42 - Bother
As they’re leaving a
village somewhere near the board, and when he thinks that they should talk
about anything but, she finally brings up the mission by saying: “I know
this m-mission w-wasn’t your…f-first choice, Naruto, but c-could you at least
b-bother p-pretend t-that I was?”
#43 - God
If there were any Gods that
looked down favorably on Naruto, they would have deserted him as soon as he
turned around an hour later and said, quite directly to Hinata: “It’s not that
you’re not my first choice Hinata, it’s that I just don’t know why they
partnered me with you of all people.”
#19 – Soul
The look she gives him,
half-angry, half-sad, sears him straight through to the marrow, and it is then
and there that Naruto wonders when exactly he became so bitter.
#14 – Command
She’s quiet while they
walk, and from the small amount of conversation they do have he gathers that
she’ll keep on being quiet unless he gives her a direct order to not be;
which depresses him, really, because from what Tsunade had told him about her
and her career as a Chuunin he had hope that she might’ve changed a little and
grown a spine.
#27 - Hide
As they’re traveling, it
begins to rain, and it is underneath the falling water that both mutes his
unsatisfied grumbles and distorts the worry on his face that Naruto finally
lets his disappointment show
#28 - Fortune
“You’ll never survive.”
The Kyuubi whispers to him in his daydreams during the rain; and even though
Naruto doesn’t want to agree with the Fox, he sees no way to turn the situation
around.
#12 - Wait
“I’ll make this work, even
if I have to go back to Konoha and ask for a better partner to do it.” He
whispers to it, half-serious.
#32 - Eye
Eyes are the most
expressive part of the human body, and despite knowing that he shouldn’t lie to
her when she asks him “Naruto-kun, d-do you think w-we can do this?” over the
sound of the rain, Naruto can’t help but say “Honestly? Yeah.” while trying
hard not look directly at her.
#47 - Harm
The first time he mentions
Sakura and himself in the same sentence, Hinata makes a face somewhere between
a frown and a grimace.
#24 - Now
Though he says to himself
that staying away from her as they rest and sticking to the shadows of the
canopy while she sits underneath a tree nearby is just protocol, only a
small part of him gets the irony.
#18 - Attention
He still thinks she’s weird,
from the way she won’t talk to him when he tries to strike up conversation to
the way that she always seems so far-away and distant during the
drawn-out silences between them makes it so that all Naruto can think about when
he’s walking with her and not talking is that he’s being ignored.
#40 – History
When he tries to tell her a
joke that he knows she laughed at when she was younger and she doesn’t
smile – or react, for that matter – Naruto feels his feelings of being ignored
compounded.
#22 – Mad
Never really tactful even
in the presence of royalty, when Naruto just can’t take it anymore he grabs
Hinata by the wrist and asks her what in the hell was bothering her, to which
the heiress just looks away and then, strangely, gives him an icy glare as she
says: “I can read lips, N-naruto.”
#49 - Hunger
They eat in silence that
night.
#10 - Learn
He’s always been a
particularly early riser because of his training with Jiraiya, but when he
wakes up one morning and proceeds to walk near the creek they were camping next
to for some early training, he does not expect to see Hinata up before him
practicing Kata so intently that she doesn’t notice him watching her until
she’s finished.
#03 – Young
“Where’d you learn Forward
Dragon?” he asks her, disbelieving that the Hyuuga Heiress would submit herself
to that kind of intense training -- to which she only smiles, flicks him on the
nose, and says “You w-weren’t the only one w-who asked someone to help you
t-train.”
#37 - Time
She’s different than he
remembers -- acting not-quite like Hinata, but almost-like Hinata;
stuttering less, walking taller, showing spine and actually looking at
him when he’s talking to her – and Naruto has no idea how to act around her
anymore.
#11 - Blur
They’re ambushed by a gang
of would-be thieves on the border between the Waterfall and Fire, and Naruto,
acting like the hero he always wanted to be, makes sure to take all twelve of
them out before Hinata can even join the fight.
#50 - Believe
Afterwards, she looks and
him with her arms crossed, and say:” If y-you don’t trust in me to t-take care
of m-myself, then don’t trust me at all.”
#08 - Thousand
He can think of a thousand
different things to tell Hinata, but when he tries to go over the apology he
wants to say to her in his head, he can’t find the any of the right ones.
#31 – Book
He’s always been able to
read people better than most, but spending three years out of Konoha and little
less than a year back in it seems to make it that much harder to sort
out the memories of his past from the memories of his present.
#23 - Child
He catches her staring at
him as he’s catching fish for their dinner, and can’t help but smile and think
that maybe not everyone he knows has changed as much as he thinks.
#29 - Safe
“Do you still have a crush
on me?” he asks, bluntly because he doesn’t know how else to be, and the way
she looks at him across the campfire after he asks her again is just enough
to tell him that she thinks he’s a complete idiot.
#39 - Torn
That night, he doesn’t know
whether to say, “Yes” or “No” when she asks him if he was being serious.
#44 - Wall
For the rest of the day next, he doesn’t say a word to her or even try
to start conversation -- even when they stop to take a break and seem to get
into an argument out of nowhere, he can only jump up into a tree, close
his eyes, and whisper “Why me?” to himself while trying to stay silent.
#36 - Stop
She asks him if they can stop to rest for a minute, Naruto sighs, says yes,
and leans against a tree almost forty feet away from her to just stareat Hinata
and wonder what in the hell he did in his life to warrant...this.
#09 - King
When they arrive, the Nobles that are their sub-targets invite them to
dinner with enough fanfare and unneeded circumstance to make Naruto feel very,
very uncomfortable in their presence.
#02 – Cool
Hinata, however, takes it all in stride and diligently keeps Naruto from
running his mouth when a particularly affectionate noble-woman proposed that he
get rid of his “ugly street rat” and come find her later for a “good time”.
#34 - Sing
As the party winds down, their mark – a man by the name of Kagare Ito –
chooses to sit down next to Naruto and begin a conversation; though when the
topic of the night’s activities comes up, all the man says is “Tomorrow will be
even greater than this, my friend.”
#05 - Wrong
That night, though his first thoughts about the Hyuuga Heiress and the
mission that they were on were quite the opposite, his last thought is ‘Maybe
we can pull this off.’
#46 - Drive
It is the mid-afternoon when they come for them again, and even though the
Daimyo’s attendants are anything but subtle about the importance of the night’s
performance, when Naruto looks at Hinata practicing the movements of the dance
out of the corner of his eye he can’t help but smile.
#38 - Wash
As he gets ready for the night, Hinata happens to storm into his room in
some sort of huff and catches sight of him naked; to which, keeping his cool as
only he could, Naruto can only laugh at her and the sight of her entire body blushing.
#06 - Gentle
They reconcile without meaning to, or planning to – another accidental bump
in the hallway an hour before the event leading to more “I’m sorry’s.” and “I
didn’t mean what I said.” than either of the two had ever heard in their lives.
#15 – Hold
Naruto can see the fear in
her eyes before she steps on stage, and as she’s passing him, he reaches out
and gives her hand a soft squeeze.
#01 - Motion
Graceful is the only word
he can ascribe to her movements, and they, like the Jyuuken, make Hyuuga Hinata
all that more of a mystery to him.
#16 - Need
When she finishes, the
audience roars with enough approval to distract their mark long enough for
Naruto to slip enough cyanide into his drink to kill him.
#45 – Naked
That night, they stumble
back together giddy with the success of their mission, and in the darkness, in
the place somewhere between the motion, the act, and the alcohol, they kiss,
and the rest of the night melds sighs that echo through the room into the early
morning.
#50 - Believe
When he wakes, she’s in his
arms asleep, and even though it isn’t quite as perfect as he wanted it to be,
even though it makes no sense, Uzumaki Naruto is finally content with something
he never wanted to have in the first place, and thinks that maybe, just maybe,
something unwanted is what he truly needed all along.