Chapter 1
There is nothing in the world so rare as true loyalty; it’s a beautiful thing, being there for someone through the trials and triumphs of time. It’s unfathomable, that kind of love, so difficult to be expressed in anything but action, the truest form of dedication.
Loyalty is a selfless form of love that, when true, cannot be fouled.
Uzumaki Naruto is loyal to his bonds, and loyal to the end.
And, as has been a constant throughout his life, it is that which Naruto loves that destroys him.
There is no pardon for the crimes of a man who slaughters masses dispassionately, even when he ultimately turns to fight on their side. Not even the voice of the hero of Konoha is loud enough to reach the ears of the counsel, when Uchiha Sasuke walks into his home again for the first time in years and is sentenced to death.
And there is no pardon for a man who allows his loyalty to guide him into becoming an accessory to such awful crimes.
Uzumaki Naruto follows his loyalty to the back of a temporary isolation internment cell, hundreds of feet underground, with only a halogen bulb and chakra-defusing titanium bars for company. It’s barely larger than his old apartment; the floors and ceiling are both made of the same chakra-defusing material, an inescapable titanium box.
The counsel does not allow him the courtesy of being present for Uchiha Sasuke’s execution, but the Hokage does, leading him into a secluded shadow with only the chakra-defusing cuffs around his ankles and wrists to restrain him.
Everything happens so quickly.
An unexplainable lapse in power and a five second window, and Naruto earns himself a life-sentence.
But Uchiha Sasuke escapes, and that’s all that matters.
Naruto repeats this like a mantra as Ibiki leads him by the arm down to the internment cell, his new home. He doesn’t say a word to him, and Naruto doesn’t have much to say for himself either.
The cage shuts with a resounding snick behind him, and Naruto slides down the wall and closes his eyes.
✧
It takes two months before Sakura convinces Ino to convince Ibiki to convince the Hokage to permit Naruto visitors. Sakura is his first, and his last for quite a while. As it turns out, prisoners of war don’t get many visiting privileges.
And that’s exactly what he is: the prisoner of a war between his best friend and his village, one he so frustratingly had to choose sides in. Sasuke will not return for him, he knows this clearly and he doesn’t expect anything less.
He goes docilely into captivity because he’s done well by his heart, and not an inkling of regret remains. He doesn’t plan on staying here forever, but he has so much time to think and to plan. Sakura would be proud of him, as she had been proud of his actions on the day of Sasuke’s execution, one of few who understood.
He spends all of his time training within his cage, and planning. Sometimes he lays aside and wonders, daydreams, pictures the faces of those he loves and wonders how time is changing them.
He wonders how time is changing him.
Mostly, he thinks about Iruka, and how much this must be hurting him. He tells Sakura whenever he sees her to be with him and to comfort him as best as she can with what free time she has, and doesn’t ask why Iruka doesn’t visit him.
He thinks about Hinata, too. The memory of her bright eyes and the gentleness of her smile, the rapid racing of her heart under his ear. This is still new, these thoughts, these memories. They’re novel and they’re precious and he holds on to them with an iron grip, forbidding them from leaving his mind’s eye for long.
He had only so recently translated the feelings of his own heart, and the reasons for which it sped up in Hinata’s presence, and only hers, in a way that wasn’t fear but hope. He had only just begun to hold her hand, to be able to reach out and trace the delicate points of her cheekbones, and the soft curve of her chin. He had only been able to lay his ear against her chest the one time, and how he regrets not doing that sooner, not pressing close enough to hear the way her heart calls to him in the same way that his calls for her.
It’s not fair, he thinks, to have realized he loves her moments before being taken from her forever.
Sometimes, when the shadows of his cage press in against his skull, he wonders if she’s hurting. If she feels the magnetic pull that he feels between them, the one that draws him to sit up against the corner of his cage closest to the exit, closest to her.
He knows why she does not visit.
Naruto has always been the kind of person intent upon hearing important conversations, whether or not he is invited to them. After so many years of eavesdropping on Tsunade’s conversations in the Hokage tower, he’s learned a lot about the nefarious workings of Konoha’s underground factions.
For instance, the oaths shinobi must swear when one of their own goes rogue, is apprehended, and imprisoned. He’d never heard about anyone of his status being imprisoned, and none for life, but he’s willing to assume that the information he’d gathered about similar oaths still apply, if not even more critically.
Under Directive S, upon which a Konoha shinobi of outstanding rank be taken into long-term custody of Konoha’s imprisonment system, Tsunade had read from the scroll in her hands, in perfect monotone to a room full of ANBU and counsel members. Prisoners will receive no visitation outside of family. No removal from the cell. No relief of interrogation when mandated and until utility expires. No providence for—
Naruto had listened long enough to understand that Sasuke was in trouble, serious trouble, and had tried desperately from then on to find a loophole without success. He can still hear Tsunade’s final recitation, the words barbed and blade-sharp.
Under oath to the Village Hidden in the Leaves and the gods residing over us, every Konoha shinobi must consent and vow to uphold this Directive.
He’d left moments later, before Tsunade entered into the options of dissent and where disagreement amongst shinobi would lead the Directive into further political change.
He’d gotten enough then to know now that his current situation, tucked so meticulously out of sight so as to be out of mind, is dire.
His friends will have had to swear the oath, and sign the Directive.
Naruto has known Hinata long enough to know that there isn’t a universe in existence in which she would voluntarily sign that oath, with him as the captive. He knows this in the same way that he had known with conviction that he would save Sasuke before their home erased him.
He takes the time every day to pray for Hinata; for her to rest well and to wake up feeling rejuvenated, for her to be safe, for the weight of her soul to be lifted if only temporarily every day, enough to let her feel peace.
Seeing as the counsel will know what he knows about her loyalty, they will have planned accordingly; as such, he asks most frequently for her rest and her safety.
Long-term missions are an easy measure for prevention of dissension, after all.
✧
Naruto loses track of time in the cage, and starts measuring it by Sakura’s visits. Three since having been imprisoned, and with a bulk of time in-between. He would estimate somewhere just shy of a year, if pressed to make an honest estimate.
It’s been enough time for him to plan, and to plan well. He does not intend to spend his life locked away from his loved ones, docile to an unfair sentence, when he had moved to save the life of someone who wanted to change for the better.
He waits for Sakura’s next visit, and he’s careful in the way that he asks new questions. Sakura is the smartest person he knows, right next to Kakashi-sensei, so she sees right through him easily.
She says, “Naruto,” when he asks how Hinata is doing, and if she’s home from her latest mission. He is careful to keep his expression only openly curious, eyes wide all the while so endlessly tired. He has all the time in the world to sleep down here, but sleep rarely comes. The bags under his eyes are heavy, pulling his expression down. Dreams are figments of the distant past.
“I’m just curious,” he says, and then, because he knows he’ll need to tug at her emotional attachment to him ever so slightly just to get an upper hand, he frowns and adds, “I miss her. I just want to know how she’s doing. If she’s okay.”
“She’s okay,” Sakura says haltingly, carefully, in just the way that Naruto knows to mean that she’s not being completely honest. After a long moment of consideration where Sakura deliberately does not look at Ibiki over in the doorway, she whispers, “She’s home, but not for long. The counsel is working her hard, constantly sending her squad out. Their reconnaissance is useful for the tensions running between us and Mist right now, so they have the perfect excuse to overwork them.”
Naruto’s shoulders bow under the news, though hope settles in heavy and novel in the corner of his heart. He reaches out and wraps his hand around one of the bars, a brainless mistake, and the metal acts as a black hole’s orbit he’s suddenly been caught in, taking and taking and taking from him until he falls to his knees. He rips his hand away and it trembles before his eyes, and even with the incalculable measure of his and Kurama’s chakra within him, the power of the charka-defusing bars around him leaves him dizzy. It could’ve been worse—he’s tested the walls of his cage frequently over the months of his stay.
He knows from experience that dizziness isn’t a great sign, but it’s not a bad one, either. It means he still has so much left to give, and that he won’t forget not to touch them again. Especially not so close to the fruition of his plans, all steadily falling into place before him. This had been an irritating setback, but not by much.
“I hope she’s resting well in-between,” he laments, not knowing what else to say. When he gets back to his feet, there are tears trailing down Sakura’s cheeks. He can sense her need to reach out to him, to pull him in against the warmth of her chest. The bars stand tall and impenetrable between them and Naruto reaches up and touches his own cheek, right where her tear trail is.
“I hope you are too, Sakura-chan,” he adds, smiling. “I can’t be the only one getting good rest!”
Sakura snorts, no real humor behind it. “You’re not sleeping well,” she says honestly, watching the way he holds his expression so carefully still. “You’re not sleeping at all.”
“I have all the time in the world to sleep, believe it,” he says, eyes flickering over her solemn features. “Seriously though, you need to get more sleep.”
It’s then that Ibiki straightens, a slow rippling of muscle unfolding, and Sakura’s time is up. Naruto senses his lost time viscerally, and his lips rush to get the words out, his plan still prevalent in the forefront of his mind.
“Tell Hinata too. Tell her I say so, tell her tonight is the night, if she’s just gotten back from her mission she can rest.”
“I will,” Sakura says, and Naruto knows he’s got her in the way her voice trembles, in the way she lingers behind until Ibiki’s hand wraps around her arm, fingers gentle but insistent. He guides her to the exit, the seemingly endless flight of stairs up into the next level of darkness, still closer to daylight than Naruto is. He watches her go, even as he calls out to her, says, “I’ll be okay down here, believe it! Never a challenge I’ll back down from!”
The door at the base of the stairs slams closed, and Naruto lowers himself to the floor and crosses his legs, knuckles against knuckles and thumbs pressed together.
He sets his plan in motion while Ibiki is distracted and he has the knowledge he’s been waiting for.
He thinks of Hinata and he gathers chakra along his veins.
The time has come.
✧
It’s not easy, breaking out of a prison that’s built to withstand someone with Naruto’s level of chakra, experience, and power.
It’s not easy, but Naruto has broken through more formidable challenges in the name of bonds, and even then, only a few of them had ever been as strong as the bond between him and Hinata.
He’s spent months perfecting a shadow clone that retains his power, so much so that it’s convincing enough to not even draw Ibiki’s eye. He leaves him in his cell and flits through the shadows of Konoha under midnight stars, until he manages to find himself outside of the Hyuuga compound. His eyes widen at the heavy security, countless Hyuuga shinobi stationed along the entirety of the perimeter, both inside and outside of the gate.
Naruto chews on his lip, frowning and confused, until he shifts his position and can just make out the oval window of Hinata’s private room.
There are guards there, too, and understanding floods Naruto with a tired kind of anger, heavy and slowing.
Not only had the counsel been working to keep Hinata from seeing him, despite the oath Hinata must have given, but her family, too. Long-term missions to keep her away and tire her out, and an army of family to form a blockade between the two of them.
Even though the moon is lodged directly overhead in the obsidian sky, Naruto knows that the entirety of the Hyuuga compound has eyes open and wary. It wouldn’t even take that many Hyuuga shinobi to sweep the compound, not with their far-reaching Byakugans activated.
Naruto can’t say that he expected an army of Hyuuga to stand between him and Hinata, but he’s not entirely stilted, either. This way, he just has to be quicker than they can track; quick enough to disengage the two sentries closest to Hinata’s window, and the one near her hallway. His ability to sense chakra has advanced over the years, and his closeness with Hinata over the few months before he was imprisoned meant he’d gotten a lot of practice sensing Hyuuga chakra signatures.
Naruto moves quickly, soundlessly, into the courtyard. The first two sentries are no match for his speed and the precise chop of his hand against their throats, and consciousness leaves them instantaneously. He helps their bodies fall silently, and lays them partway under the wood paneling of the deck, just outside of Hinata’s window.
Had there not been an army of relatives outside of her window, had Naruto had all the time in the world, and had Naruto any room for manners he would not have just broken into Hinata’s room without at least knocking or alerting her.
But he has none of those things, so he makes her room easily and passes her startled shadow by in order to incapacitate the cousin in the hallway, dragging her motionless body back into Hinata’s room and tucking her into the corner as carefully as he can. He slides Hinata’s door shut and closes his eyes, letting his sensory chakra flood out of him to see the rest of the compound in as similar a way as someone without Byakugan can. The nearest sentries stand still in their positions, too far for Hinata’s room to be in their field of extended vision.
He opens his eyes and the weight on his shoulders dissipates the moment he turns and sees her, for the first time since being locked away underground.
She’s as beautiful as he remembers, every night that he pictures her face, and her eyes glisten with pearls of moonlight, slipping down her gaunt cheeks. He frowns, going to her without hesitation, enfolding her in his arms and tucking her head against his neck. His fingers card through her hair and he closes his eyes, struck with bone-deep pain when she sobs quietly against his chest, her hands fisting in his prison jumper. She holds him tightly, as tightly as he imagines he’s holding her, and he runs his hands through her hair and hums against her, soothing and temperate.
“Oh,” she breathes shakily, and he pulls back just enough to press kisses against her temple, her cheek, the hinge of her jaw. “Oh,” she breathes again, when he lifts his hands to her jaw and presses their foreheads together, lips so close to touching, so close Naruto can barely breathe with the desire to just allow it.
“I missed you,” He whispers against her skin, lips just off-target, pressing against the apple of her cheek. She trembles against him, and he says, “I love you. Are you well, Hinata?”
It’s his own question that reminds him of the gauntness of her cheeks, and the business of her schedule. The utter and complete exhaustion riding her frame, putting lines of strain on her pale face. She pulls back enough to look up at him, tears pooling in the splendor of her depthless gaze. She looks up at him in wonder, in awe, and it breaks Naruto down a little how unguarded she is for him.
“How,” she breathes, and then she lifts herself onto the tips of her toes and presses her lips to the strong line of his jaw, the tip of his chin. “How are you here?”
He gives her a wry smile. “It’s kind of a long story, but it was really freakin’ sneaky, believe it.”
The joy that blooms over her expression knocks the breath out of Naruto’s lungs, and he thinks there won’t ever be a sunrise the world can offer that will be as beautiful or as welcoming as that smile on her face.
“Hey,” he breathes, so quietly, suddenly shy. He reaches out and runs his thumb along her bottom lip, eyes tracing the movement. “Can I kiss you?”
“Naruto-kun,” Hinata whispers, and she lifts herself back onto her toes at just the same time that he allows his shoulders to bow under the luster of her tender gaze, and the way her fingers thread into the longer hairs at the nape of his neck—longer now, without proper haircuts. Long enough for her to grasp and pull, until her lips move over his with a shaky breath of excitement and exultation.
Naruto takes control of the kiss immediately, uncontrollably, hands moving away from her cheeks to slide down her curves, until he can get a hold of her thighs and pull her up against him. She gasps against his lips even as she wraps her legs around his waist, and he presses his hands against her tailbone, wanting her as close to him as he can possibly get her.
Her hands slide to hold his jaw, angling his mouth up to meet hers again, her hair a curtain of the night sky cascading around them. She kisses him with a desperation he knows in his bones, every breath shared between them a promise and an apology for time lost and not enough time to make it all up.
Naruto kisses her knowing that time is running out. He presses kisses along her jaw and down to her throat, sucks intently at the pounding of her pulse, and shivers under the feeling of her fingers carding through his hair.
“I’ve been trying,” she breathes, voice trembling. “So hard, to come see you. They won’t let me, but that’s never stopped me. I’m going to keep trying. I won’t ever stop trying.”
“I know,” he says, lips against her skin, eyes suddenly getting watery. “I know, Hinata.”
She pulls his head back so they can look each other in the eyes, and she takes in the unabashed showing of his tears, the trembling but smiling lift of his lips. She leans in and kisses him slowly, carefully, in a way that she might have if they truly had all the time in the world. When she pulls back again, she repeats her last sentiment, drilling it into his head, “I won’t ever stop trying.”
“I think you should,” he admits, and he knows that she’s going to retort, to argue, so he moves quickly to explain. “There are rules, Hinata. Really serious ones. I don’t want you to break them and get into trouble to see me. Not when I can come see you instead.”
“And take all of the danger and threat of retribution onto yourself?” She asks, shaking her head even as she bends down once more to press a chaste kiss to his already swollen lips. “I won’t allow you to do that on your own, Naruto-kun. I love you, and I’m not going to leave you.”
“I’m already sentenced for life,” he argues, frowning up at her. “They can’t do much else to me, even if I break some rules. The consequences will be less forgiving for you, because you’re free. Don’t you see that? This is something I can do.”
“It is,” she agrees, and she runs a hand through his hair, from forehead to nape, so gently he closes his eyes for the duration of that slow slide of fingertips over his skin. When he opens them again, he sees the pain in her eyes coupled with determination, and he knows that in this, he will lose. “But it’s something I must do. For you, but for me, too. You are my heart, Naruto-kun. I won’t stand idly by while you’re locked away.”
Naruto can feel his resolve waning under the steadfast certainty in her eyes, and the desperation of her lips pulling at his, pressing close with fingers tracing over his features, trying to memorize him by touch and taste alone.
His last defense is weak, something they both already know, but he offers it anyways. He says, “You made a promise, Hinata, as a shinobi of Konoha. Are you so willing to betray it?”
Hinata pulls back and untangles her legs from his waist, sliding slowly down the length of his body with the help of his hands supporting her. She threads their fingers together and leads him to her bed, uncaring that she’s still in her gear, sandals and all. She crawls under the sheets and waits for him to follow suit, until the both of them are on their sides and facing one another, their foreheads touching.
She reaches out and traces the line of his cheekbone in just the same way that he always does to hers, and she smiles.
Hinata doesn’t look away from him, and her voice, while low, is so heartbreakingly sincere that all he can do is stare at her in wonder.
She whispers, “I’d break a sacred oath to see you.”
And all of the heaviness and the loneliness, the worry and the fear that Naruto has felt for the past year scatter, leaves in the wind. He pulls Hinata in against the length of his body and presses them together, lips moving against hers with renewed desperation.
“I won’t ever stop coming to you,” he promises, and the words are a brand on his heart, the most powerful part of him, so indomitable and profound that nations have shuddered at the mere tale of it—and he gift-wraps it for her, this most incredible and beautiful of souls, the woman he loves.
“Believe it.”