Chapter 6
Sometimes, there’s a name you can place to your pain; a person or a thing that was the cause and the catalyst, the one thing in the world at that moment that your focus hones in on, and it’s easy to say the name.
Naruto has known many people, many things that have caused him pain.
His own name is at the top of the list, after all.
But there have been others, too; he is not the sole party responsible for the pieces of him he’d lost along the way. With some of his wounds, it’s okay—to have lost them, those pieces of himself no longer recognizable. It means he had to grow stronger around them, to build over them, to start new where they’d left him bare. Others, still, were not okay. Would never be okay.
Many more of those have names than the former, and he knows them offhandedly. Many of them are the names of people he knew, the letters of who they were bright and legible behind his eyelids, so easy to identify.
Sometimes, it’s not so easy.
Sometimes, it’s a wayward blade tossed through a battlefield of thousands, speed too great and timing too precise to do anything more than absorb the blow. As with so many of Naruto’s deepest wounds, the blade pierces through the flesh of someone he loves.
His eyes catch sight of the blade the moment it breaks through her defenses; he hears her scream, and time suddenly slows.
It hits Hinata with such force that it rocks her stance, pushes her out of alignment. He sees her lips part, blood dripping over her chin, the blade of the kunai sunk all the way in to the hilt at her collarbone. She’s jarred for only a moment, just a single blink of time, but they’re in the middle of chaos and even a blink of disorientation is enough to cost her.
Naruto only manages to part his lips around her name before three more kunai slam into her, this time with pinpoint accuracy. There’s more screaming, but her lips are closed and Naruto’s throat aches and everything happens so suddenly, after that, that he hasn’t a mind to wonder about it.
She falls, and Naruto feels his own ribs cracking.
He doesn’t have the time or the energy to wonder why no one had helped her, stepped in to deflect the incoming attack—this is war and everyone has an enemy at hand. Instead, he races to her side, slicing through incredible numbers without hesitation. By the time he crashes to his knees at her side, her Byakugan has receded and she isn’t breathing.
She’s not dead, though, not yet; he can hear a terrible rattling sound coming from her throat, as if her lungs are filled with something thick and sharp. His hands hover over her, afraid, not for the first time, of touching her. He doesn’t want to hurt her.
“Hey, Hinata,” he tries not to sound frantic, tries to retain his calm even with a quivering voice and trembling hands. “Can you hear me? Stay with me, huh? Hinata?”
She doesn’t respond, not even to look at him, not even to breathe. There’s so much blood, he thinks, and his hands won’t stop shaking. His eyes search anxiously around them, seeking aid in any form he can attain, and finding nothing but destruction around him.
“Medic!” He screams, so loud that he has to cough around the way his vocal chords feel shredded. “I need a medic, now!”
The only response he receives is more shouting, more blood, more of the high-pitched screams that come from the slide of metal-on-metal. He hears various jutsu being called out, and the way the earth trembles beneath them. He still hasn’t touched her, doesn’t know what to do about the four blades that have made holes in her chest, or the way her eyes—so bright, usually, so clear—can’t seem to focus on anything at all.
“I don’t know what to do,” he whispers, too low for anyone to hear. A body collapses down beside him, and he can’t even bear to see if they’re friend or foe. Something crashes nearby; trees, maybe. Or bodies, flung. He isn’t certain.
He reaches out at last, carefully fingering the entry wound of the nearest kunai. Hinata shivers and doesn’t stop shivering, and the word shock flits through Naruto’s mind.
The sky is too blue for a day like this. It’s too bright, too clear, too spotless and clean. There’s so much red, down here. So much that should be hidden away from the virtue of that light blue.
“Hey,” he says, as something detonates nearby, covering them in a new layer of dust and grit. He ignores it entirely, until he glances back down at her wounds, gaping and spilling, and suddenly remembers infection. Purpose flows through him, a steady unconquerable current, and his voice is laced with promise when he says, “I’m not going to let you die. You hear me?”
Hinata has never been anything but strong, in his eyes—strong enough to overcome the pressure and the criticism of her clan, strong enough to learn how to love herself, strong enough to love him. It had taken him longer than he likes to admit to recognize the steel in her, the iron of her morality and the indomitable spirit of her heart. But he got there eventually; just in time to want the strength of her—the whole of her—all to himself.
She’d been the one to teach him the meaning of true strength. He’d had help along the way, of course, with his mentors and his friends, but Hinata’s impact on his life was still a beacon, a guiding light he’d been searching for. He hadn’t known the true meaning of strength before her, not even close.
When he slides his hands behind her nape and knees, she chokes on the agony she no longer has the breath to express. He lifts her through it, gentler with her than he’s ever been with anyone or anything in his life.
He’s never held anything so breakable.
And it’s this, too, that hurts: that the strongest person he knows can be weakened so easily. So carelessly.
“Lean on me,” he breathes, just against her ear, hoping that she can hear him. He tilts her body closer to his, just in case, and turns his attention away from the battlefield. There’s no sign of a medic, beyond those lying still in the dirt, and no sign of anyone capable of turning to offer anything more than their back to the enemy. So he turns his attention towards Konoha, towards the hospital, and he runs.
Later, the survivors that had seen them will say that Hinata had gone down as silently as a wraith, and that when Naruto lifted her into his arms and headed for Konoha, all he’d been was a blur.
A flash.
✧
“You need treatment,” Sakura insists, frowning down at him. He doesn’t move, barely blinks, refuses to budge. Hinata is alive, and he’d thought that that would be the only thing that mattered to him, but.
But she’d been worse off than he’d ever even known, and she was still fighting her way back to life. He’d been lucky to find Sakura resupplying at the hospital, intending to return immediately to the battle she’d only just left. Maybe it’d been his pleas that had stopped her in her tracks. Maybe it’d been the sight of Hinata, her friend and Naruto’s fiancé, dying in his arms.
Regardless, if she had not been there at just that time, Naruto isn’t sure if Hinata would have made it through.
“Thank you,” he whispers, voice like burnt gravel. She frowns even more, lifting a hand almost tentatively to his shoulder. There are burns across his back and sliding up the thick column of his neck, and more that run deeper still down his torso. They’d done something to his arm, wrapped it up in bandages and locked it into a sling. He has to sit with more pressure on his left leg because there’s something off about his right one, something that feels definitively like a break he’s unwilling to bring attention to. He heals on his own, quicker than anyone he knows.
And he is not going to leave Hinata’s side.
There’d been no way for him to help her out in the battlefield; all he could do was call for medics that hadn’t been there. Every bit of information Sakura had tried to drill into him over the years, and the sight of Hinata bleeding out in front of him erased it all.
“You did all you could,” Sakura says, low and conciliatory. “You did the right thing, Naruto.”
Sakura’s hand is a heavy weight on his shoulder, despite the tenderness of her touch. He doesn’t look away from Hinata, and Sakura sighs. He waits for the snick of the door closing behind her before he allows himself to blink. He resents the action, ridiculous as that is.
It’s all the time that some shinobi on the warfront had needed to nearly remove the light of Hinata’s presence from this Earth, and it’s something Naruto is having trouble forgiving. He watches her chest fall, an even rhythm, now that machines are breathing for her. Temporary, Sakura had told him.
He can’t bring himself to move, and it’s not the pain and aches of his body or the murkiness of his exhausted mind—when was the last time he’d been able to sleep? He’d been on the frontlines for months now, at the most frequently attacked posts, leading his own segment of Konoha’s army. He can’t remember a single night of uninterrupted sleep.
Even still, he doesn’t think sleep would even register to him, now. He watches Hinata breathe, and it’s the most important work he’s done in years; he makes sure that she’s alive, that she’s still here, with him, and it’s right. He couldn’t protect her out there on the battlefield, after her defenses had been breached, and he couldn’t protect her once he had her in his arms. All he could do was bring her to those who could help, and make sure that their work holds true.
The sounds of war rattle the edges of his awareness, and he selfishly pushes them away.
He knows without a doubt in his mind that if their positions had been switched, that she would return to the battlefield. There’s something powerful in her, a compassion that runs ever deep in her character. She would return to offer whatever aid she could, and then later, when it’s the right time and she’s done what she could for her shift on the warfront, she’s be the first person he’d open his eyes to; the first to lean down and kiss his forehead, whispering something soft and sure against his skin.
He moves, at last, with this in mind. Every part of him aches and he very nearly tumbles to the ground when his bad leg refuses to take pressure at all, and his good leg starts to follow suit. He manages to get his hip against her hospital bed, and allows himself to settle in beside her. He carefully avoids the cords and the machines, the plugs and the IV. He curls around her, presses his lips to her forehead, and whispers three distinct sentiments, all wrapped up in the same blend of relief.
“You did well. I’ve got you. You’re safe now.”
And he makes the last a promise.
This is what he can do for her, for now.
And when he heals enough to stand evenly on his feet, he will do what he must, and return to the war outside their window. He’ll do what he must, because that’s what he does, what he’s always done.
And in the end, he will return.
To her. For her.
This is what he can do.