Short story

Right, well, this is posted on Deviant art ( http://brutus87.deviantart.com/art/Loss-and-Love-114373360 ). 

I haven't sat down and tried to do fanfiction in...well, sense sometime last semester at the very least. I have never posted any online before. Ever. THis is a first.

I was out drinking tonite, with some friends at their apartment. Had a blast. Got back to the dorm, needed to make sure i was sober enough, and had drank enough water so I wouldn't get a hangover.

I ended up sitting down and writing this. First short fanfic I ever made. Shit, first completed fan fiction I've ever done. All the others are thes multichapter epics that have yet to be finished (tho after tonite, I think I'm going to work on one again, if I can find it).

This is in response to the latest chaprter of Naruto, of all damn things. Go figure.

Anyways, lots of thanks to Jacen, for giving it a once over before I posted it. He convinced me to keep all the story in there ( I was debating the last paragraph or two). He reinforced that it seemed like I had made the right choice as far as kind of ending, yano, Happy or Sad.

If you dont read/follow Naruto, hopefully this will still be decently pretty/moving. Just place yourself in the one role, and someone you love in the other.

Anywho, heres the story. I'm going to bed.

Loss and Love:

He sat there, hands trembling, bound in bandages, in the hospital room, as the first tears fell from his eyes. Stark with pain, they seemed to stare at the figure in the bed, and into space at the same time. A short life, full of hurt, lonelyness, emptyness. Friends were few and far between, love, nigh on nonexistant. The closest thing he'd ever had to a brother had left him, tried to kill him. Two surrugate grandfathers, one a true mentor, both dead. A replacement father, so to speak, possibly dead. Two parents he'd never met. So much pain, in so few years. More then anyone his age should have had to bear.

Add to that the battle. Devistating. Half the city, wipped out of existance. So much death and destruction, all because one madman wanted him. Wanted to use him, and leave him for dead, and people whom had hated him most his life, stood and said "no". He had to save them, he had to return. ANd so he did. It was costly, it was bloody...It was indecisive. The enemy had managed to escape. Beaten. Broken. Free, none the less. And what did he have to show for it? He lost control. He nearly killed his own people, as well as the enemy. And now his body was broken, it would be ages before he would be able to stand up and defend them again. Not that it mattered, not any more.

No, all that mattered to the boy, the man now, at this point, was the woman laying in front of him. So shy, so simple, never obtrusive, always careful, always in the background, never noticed. How could he not have seen? How could he have been so blind. The one thing that he longed for, so much, so very desperately much, in his life, lay beaten and broken on the bed. Someone so delicate, but so strong, so beautiful. To see her this way, to hear her last words, before she was struck down, broke his heart in two, deeper then any wound delt to him in the battle. 

Love. She loved him. She said it, then rushed head long to protect him. He inspired her. Gave her reasons to keep on living. She loved him, and he never realized it. Never once noticed. How he had longed for love, followed like a lost puppy one girl, to never see that what he wanted, what he needed, was right behind him all along. To come so close, so very close...to loosing it all....

The tears fell faster, staining the sheets, falling freely, as he has no shame left, no pride to keep his tears at bay. Tears, falling like raindrops. So many tears. They were all he had left. He had no voice. He was afraid, that if he spoke, it woudl all be gone.

For the tears were not of pain, sadness, or loss. They were of bewilderment, of hope, of love. He'd been sitting there, for two days, silent as a tomb. Not eating, barely sleeping. Holding her hand in his, praying with all he was, for a mirical. He cried, and cried, because her hand, her broken hand, had squeezed his wounded one, and lips, red from cuts, had parted, saying simply...

"Naruto..."

ITs all it took. One word, one small short word. His name. IT broke the dam inside. Everything that he'd held back, came rushing forward. The tears flowed faster, as his head sunk, to lay against hers. All he could manage, all he could force himself to say, he did, in a hoarse whisper

"Hinata....oh thank god, Hinata..."