A/N: Written in the 1Sentence Challenge format.

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.