Well, I won’t do that again

Or

Konoha’s Number One Unpredictable and Irresponsible Ninja Team

This is a huge and terrible divergence, splitting off from the main Naruto timeline after the Chunnin exam arc. So, Naruto has beaten down Gaara, and returned to Konoha, but not gone looking for Tsunade yet.

Here, in the wake of Orochimaru’s attack, people respond negatively to reports of a huge Kyubei out in the forest after they’ve seen Naruto use Kyubei chakra in the stadium.

Strange behaviours will include, but will not be limited to: Hinata wearing bunny ears, Shizune with tattoos, Naruto asking for fashion advice, Jiraiya wearing bunny ears, and Tsunade singing ‘that’ song about hedgehogs. Yes, this should be a small hint that this fic will include humour. But not wild OOC humour... I'm trying to do this while working within the existing bounds of the characters.

Disclaimer: I’ll just include this once. I don’t own Naruto and co. I’m just fingerpainting with someone else’s palatte.

Chapter 1 – How it all began

I was sitting at the serving bar of the ramen joint, letting waves of nostalgia wash over me. The sights and sounds of Konoha: it had been a long time since they were anything but a memory.

Even now, surrounded by the warmth of my precious people, I could still remember that terrible cold day, outside the walls of Konoha, in the rain.

flashback

I opened my eyes, and the first thing I saw was Naruto. Normally this would be a wonderful thing, but not today. Blood dripped down the side of his face from a cut on his forehead, and his eyes… They held so much pain in them.

“Naruto-kun,” I murmured. I reached a hand out towards him, unable to help myself.

“Oh,” he sighed. “Hinata… look… I’m sorry about all this. I won’t try and stop you if you want to go.”

“Why…” I managed, my hand hovering near his shoulder.

“Hinata… damn it,” he said. “I kidnapped you, remember? I held you hostage. Remember that?”

I did remember it. I remembered him coming back to a Konoha just devastated by Orochimaru’s attack with the rest of his team. I remember being at his side, seeing the utter exhaustion, and the wounds he’d suffered defending the village. I remembered the accusations coming from the villagers, the mob of civilians forming around the group of ninjas. I remembered the first rock being thrown, and the others that followed.

A Hyuuga retainer shouted at me, telling me to get away from the monster, and drawing Naruto’s attention to me.

He grabbed me, threatened me, escaped in a group of shadow clones throwing kunai with explosive tags attached to them.

“Look,” he said. “Just get out of here, or stay here. It doesn’t matter. I’m sure the hunter nins will be here soon enough anyway.”

He stumbled out from under the cover of the dense bushes, and into the dense sheets of rain pouring down into the Konoha forests.

I remembered the tears in his eyes when he faced down the villagers. I remembered the way his hand trembled, holding the kunai at my throat, its blade not touching me at all. I remembered helping him run in the rain when he stumbled and fell down.

There was one more thing I remembered clearly that I’m sure he hadn’t noticed at all.

I followed him out into the rain again.

Before long, he noticed me behind him, and spun unsteadily.

“You want to stop me?” he asked. “I’ll fight you! Don’t think I won’t!”

“Naruto-kun… no…” I reached a hand out towards him.

“Come on! You might as well,” he said with a choking laugh. “Kill the Kyubei. You’ll be a hero.”

I reached him.

“Listen, Naruto-kun,” I said to him. “Let me help you.”

He stared into my eyes from less than a yard away. His spikey yellow hair was plastered straight down, and the rain ran down his face in rivulets.

“Why?” he whispered to me. “Why?”

“I… I… I don’t…” I lowered my eyes from his, closing them against the tears, and the rain running down from my bangs. “I still think you’re a strong person, Naruto-kun.” It was the best I could do.

He collapsed against me, his total exhaustion finally catching up with him.

It was lucky that there was a village nearby, or otherwise between the exhaustion and the heat loss from the rain, things might have been much worse. I hid us in a dark corner of a barn on the edge of the settlement, tied a string on his jacket to my wrist, and fell asleep.

I knew just how tired he was when I woke up before him. He still looked tired, even while he was resting. There were dark circles under his eyes, and from carrying him last night, I knew that he wasn’t very heavy.

I shivered a bit. It really wasn’t comfortable having been soaked through to the skin last night, but the alternative…

I knew from survival lessons what I probably should be doing, but my head started to spin and go all woozy just thinking about it. Sharing… body… warmth…

After about an hour of shivering, I managed to convince myself to lean up against his arm, and instantly felt about ten degrees warmer. I really did.

He woke up a little while after. I heard the catch in his breath, and felt his muscles tense. I jerked away from, and turned to face him.

He looked at me with a question in his eyes.

“Hinata… what’s going on?”

“You were… ummm… exhausted last night, Naruto-kun.”

“I know, but… where are we?”

“I… found a barn for us to shelter in.”

There was a silence.

“I guess… I mean… what are you still doing here, Hinata?” he asked. “I took you hostage, right? I mean, just by being here… I’m a missing nin, right? And you’re helping me?”

The rain pattered on the roof of the barn.

I looked down at the straw.

“You didn’t hear what my father shouted when you carried me away, Naruto-kun,” I said. “He told the Hyuuga retainers to make sure they retrieved my eyes. Just my eyes, Naruto-kun, not me.”

“But… Hinata,” he said. “It’s your family!” He leaned over and grabbed my hand. “It’s Konoha! You can’t just turn your back on that!”

“My family… they’ve already turned their backs on me,” I said, looking down. “And the villagers wanted to kill you, Naruto-kun. I couldn’t live with that.”

He looked down, and I could hear the sorrow in his voice.

“I have a monster inside me, Hinata. You heard the villagers.”

He tried to pull his hand out of mine, but I wouldn’t let him do it. He looked up at me, surprised.

“Years ago… there was a Hyuuga,” I told him. “He would wander the streets of Konoha, using the Byakugen and the gentle fist to burst people’s hearts when nobody was watching, just because he could do it.”

I looked up at him.

“Naruto-kun… each one of us… who is a ninja… we all have a monster inside us.”

“But Hinata, you don’t run around killing people!”

“And neither do you.”

I could see the tears glimmering in his eyes in the faint light, but he still caught me totally unprepared when he grabbed me in a hug.

“Thank you, Hinata,” he whispered. “You always know what to say.”

It was the first hug I could ever remember being given, and it warmed my heart in a way I couldn’t even begin to describe. I managed to put my arms around him as well, even if they did tremble, and even if I could feel a terrible blush on my cheeks.

I was crying as well. The feeling of contact with another person, and of not being alone was overwhelming.

We’d fallen asleep again soon after, with the rain still pouring down outside. Planning our escape would have to wait for a while.

Present day

Looking back on it, I think it was probably when Naruto hugged me that I knew I’d made the right choice. Not just because I’d got to snuggle with my Naruto-kun; at the time it was more because I’d done something right, and important. Even if we had been cut down by hunter nins the next day, and burned up into ash to protect the secrets of Konoha, I don’t think I would have had many regrets. We would have both known that we weren’t alone.

Maybe it hadn’t been much of a choice, after all.

What was I going to do? Not protect one of my important people against something that wanted to harm them? And really, even though I hadn’t quite got the courage to admit it to myself back then, he wasn’t just an important person to me, he was my precious person.

I look around at my surrogate family, eating at the ramen bar with me. Things were going to be a bit tricky when the ANBU squads showed up, but I suppose it didn’t matter. We’d been through worse.

Naruto must have felt my eyes on him, and maybe sensed I was a bit nervous, because he looked up from his bowl of ramen, and gave me his ‘nice guy’ smile, where his eye shuts, and you can see his elongated canines.

I stand up a bit.

“Another bowl of miso ramen, if you could, proprieter,” I say. I turn to Naruto and grin back.

Konoha? Whatever.

My home is wherever the two of us are.

Notes:

I think I’m going to tell this thing from Hinata’s POV. Why? Just cuz.

This seems to be starting of pretty WAFF, but humour will play more of a part here than in any of my other stories.

Some people are going to say that the whole “let’s stone Naruto / hostage taking” bit at the start just wouldn’t have happened. If you’re totally exhausted though, who knows what weird decisions you’re going to make. Whatever. I just needed to get the two of them out of Konoha and I hadn’t read a story using this exact method before, so….

This story is obviously NaruHina. Why? Because they’re cute.