AN: Hi and hello! I'm super excited to show you guys my part of a collaboration I've been doing with artistari-chan from tumblr! I picked a gorgeous drawing of hers and wrote a fic around it, and she'll be posting a comic she's been working on from one of my fics (stay tuned for that!). We've both been working since early December on this, so hope you enjoy the fruits of our creations!

Original art piece: go to artistari-chan on tumblr and add at the end of the url: (slash) post (slash) 133586207063 (slash) you-are-my-universe
(Alternatively, find this post on my tumblr (matchaball) and there will be a direct link and an image of the drawing there too!)

1. you are not alone

Every day is a game that starts the moment Naruto wakes up to the moment he goes to sleep. It doesn't have to be of course, but he prefers to think of it that way. It gives him a reason to toss aside his thin comforter, barely enough to keep him warm from the winter chill seeping through the cracking walls of his apartment, get dressed, and leap out the door to face the day.

The door slams shut behind him like jaws snapping closed. He runs from the teeth within and chases the watery light of the sun out into the open streets.

Winter chills the air, blankets the ground in soft, thick snow, and frosts people's attitudes. People are much more likely to hurry to their destinations, wrap themselves up more tightly, and stay shut inside. The streets are quieter, emptier. There are less people to engage in, less people to try to get a reaction out of.

Sometimes Naruto wonders if it's better this way, that they ignore him rather than lash out against him. But that's not how he plays the game and he discards the thought with the ease of long practice.

The quiet works to his advantage. He slides noiselessly through the snow until he reaches the main market street, where grocery stalls and food vendors are still open. Rich, enticing smells waft through the air, all the more heady when savoured against the sharp cold, and Naruto has to work to ignore the persistent growls of his stomach.

He crouches low and slips to the side of the stalls and vendors he knows he is unwelcome at, working swiftly to construct crude, miniature snow sculptures in caricatures of that particular cook who nearly tossed him out with his broom once; of that stall worker who accused him of stealing apples from the stand when he had been nowhere near it; of the little old lady in the convenience store who always stared at him as if she were about to scream; of the rice ball maker who always charges him quadruple of what Naruto knows he charges everyone else.

Sticks and stones create unflattering limbs and expressions on the rough sculptures but Naruto thinks it suits them. They are much kinder than the words he is often speared by.

He tallies up his creations and darts away when he finishes the last one, slowing down as he turns to stroll down the parallel street. As if on cue, a chorus of voices raised in ire rings in the frosted air as his sculptures are discovered and likely swiftly destroyed.

He runs, just in case someone tries to hunt him down again. His cheeks glow rosily and a laugh falls bright and just a little bittersweet on his tongue. It's a victory of sorts, even if it sits in his stomach like instant ramen: ultimately unsatisfying and unfulfilling. But he entertains the notion that perhaps some people saw him and acknowledged his existence for even just a moment.

It's not much. But on some days, it's all he gets.

The cold clings to him as he scuffs his way absentmindedly to the swings, his regular haunt. On days like this, where the untouched snow tells him of every person who hasn't passed by, maybe he really is a ghost. He tugs his red scarf higher and his goggles lower to shield his face as he settles down on the swings, the creak of metal accompanying the grumbling of his stomach.

Hunger is a different game and one he often doesn't win. Quantity over quality is how he tries to play but beneath that aching emptiness is an undercurrent of something darker, something more insatiable and ravenous.

Some days he's better at ignoring it than others. The hunger and the darkness.

"Hey, you look like a freak!" The first insult is hurled from seemingly nowhere and the distant voice strikes Naruto as if it had been a rock.

"You're so creepy!" "A white-eyed freak!" "A monster!" Several voices slice through the air in a cacophonous strike and Naruto instinctively recoils, his head instantly swiveling to face the attackers. His gaze lights upon a crying huddled form, surrounded by three jeering boys all bigger and stronger than him.

Naruto leaps up without a second thought and storms in, blue eyes sparking in anger and fists clenched until they are as whiter than the snow around them. He's always acted on instinct rather than considered thought and the fire in his gut tells him this is wrong.

He doesn't know what it's like to be a bully; but he does know how it feels to be a victim.

"Hey! Stop that!" he yells furiously and when all three boys turn to look at him, he doesn't stop running until he's up in their faces. Their faces twist to sneer at him instead, but he welcomes it. They are listening and looking and he is angry. "I'm Uzumaki Naruto! Fight me if you dare!" His name jabs out like a weapon and the challenge hurls after with reckless abandon.

Laughter is tossed back in his face but he shakes it off of him as easily as snow.

"Oh yeah? What you gonna do?" one of the boys taunts. His lip curls like a hook, baiting.

Naruto's hands fly up in an instant, his fingers forming a familiar seal. The control needed for this jutsu is still beyond him; he knows that, somewhere deep in his mind. But he channels his will and surges his chakra through his system with a single goal in mind.

"Kage Bunshin no jutsu!"

The smoke clears to reveal two clones, exact replicas of him… but the size of hand. Naruto blinks, thrown off by his results. The three other boys stare, stunned. The huddled girl's quiet crying ceases, and she peers at them between her fingers.

The silence in the wake of the underwhelming reveal shatters as the three bullies start laughing so hard Naruto thinks at least one of them may pass out. His momentum completely derails and he's scrambling to do something, anything, before he barely registers a swing of movement heading alarmingly fast towards his face.

The hit connects in a stunning impact and he's knocked down into darkness.

It only lasts a moment; or at least, that's what it feels like. A moment of dazed empty thought and the waiting dark, the same as an eyeblink, before he abruptly surfaces awake. Adrenaline shocks his body into sitting, shocks his fists into swinging through empty air, shocks his lungs into yelling for the boys to "Come at me!" before he realizes they are already gone.

His head's a fog as he struggles to catch up what just happened. Colour, he registers, has a sound. The dark hums. White rings.

Worried white eyes appear in his line of vision and for a dazed moment, he thinks he can see clear through the girl's head to gaze at the cloudy sky behind her. He's not bothered. It's not the most concerning thing he's ever seen.

"Are you ok?" Her voice is so quiet that he would've missed it if she hadn't been right by him.

The question stuns him for a moment but his throbbing cheek demands more of his attention. He rubs along his whiskers and sighs, "Yeah, I'm good."

Quiet envelops them, soft and thick, and now that there are no pressing issues to confront, hunger stands staunchly at the forefront of Naruto's mind. Fighting in the cold worked up his appetite, and the pinpricks which had clawed his stomach since he woke up now feel like rakes.

"Ah… your scarf…" The girl interrupts his train of thought and his head turns to catch sight of the tattered, muddy red scarf clutched in her hands, clearly salvaged from the abuse the bullies wrought upon it. She shyly offers it to him, and he's strangely touched that she folded it so carefully despite the wrecked fabric.

He blinks, then looks up into her strange white eyes, the kind of white that rings in his mind. Something in her gaze seems familiar to him, even though he feels only honest sincerity and genuine concern rather than scorn and fear from her.

Maybe it's because she holds herself timidly and warily, as if used to the rigid scrutiny of others. Maybe it's because she had looked defeated and lost when the three other boys set upon her. Maybe it's because she knows how it feels to be called a monster too.

Maybe, he senses, she isn't all that different from him.

He considers the bright red scarf for a moment then grins broadly at her. "Keep it," he insists. "You can have it."

Her fingers dig into the gaping holes in the loops of yarn as she tucks it against her chest protectively.

"Thank you." The gratitude she conveys so simply yet earnestly is entirely heartfelt; and against her fingertips, the bumps of the red yarn feel like a pulse.

She thinks maybe it's because she's as small as he is that when he looks up, his eyes meet hers in full collision. Unlike the adults whose gazes slide over the whiskers of his cheeks before glaring off to the side, as if the sight of him is too abhorrent to directly acknowledge, she searches until she can see into the black pinpricks yawning from the center of those bright eyes.

She blinks; and from within the darkness, something gazes back.

A hand grabs her and she is yanked abruptly away. Her gaze tears reluctantly from his and she catches Ko's quiet but insistent stream of warnings urging her to stay away from him.

The word dangerous binds onto her like shackles. She considers the weight of the word chafing her and finds it untrue. Danger did not feel this familiar. Danger did not look abandoned or lost or lonely.

His scarf warms her hands and eases the aching hollow in her ribcage.

Ko is still talking. He tells her there is something very real and very frightening about that boy. Something that she might not understand now but will in the future. His vagueity frustrates her. She knows she saw a someone and not a something, and even if she does not fully comprehend why everyone else around her is so repulsed by him, she understands the undeniable energy within him that churns and pulses, radiating a fierce light on and on and on.

She wonders if she has it in her to shine too.

.

2. the light you seek is within you

She learns there's no reason why she can't.

Although- maybe this is not quite how she imagines she'd burn: beginning and ending with the blooming of her heart within her chest. Neji's merciless strikes still reverberate through her body, the shockwaves lingering even after she's picked herself up from the ground from his hits.

Her heart pulses, and ruptures, and overflows until the iron tang of blood coats her teeth and spatters onto the ground.

Is this how it feels to shine? She didn't think it'd hurt this much. The pain keeps her on her knees this time, makes her want to curl up and dissolve into herself.

She doesn't though because she can feel herself becoming undone and she wants to meet whatever is coming head on, eye-to-eye. There is no running away, no turning back on her word, and she lets the strength she's always seen in Naruto fill her up until it simmers familiarly in her fingertips, until it becomes her own.

Her fingers shake uncontrollably as she grips the stadium floor and she stands, one foot at a time. Her gaze lifts to meet Neji's incredulity and anger.

And she breathes.

"C'mon Hinata! You can do it!" A voice sails through the air, an electric swath of orange within the dead space. It lights something up within her and she lifts her head up high, the only motion she can do that will not collapse her broken body back to the ground.

Neji's hate she can feel radiating off of him in palpable waves, his familiar white eyes shadowed in anger. Despair pricks at her briefly when she sees how unchanged he still is after every expectation he held against her that she defied.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees bright orange, leaning so far over the railings that his knuckles are white. He is looking at her, and only her, and she is still standing. Still blooming.

Despair ebbs away and sadness settles in its stead, hanging heavy in her limbs. She mourns for Neji, that he believes he cannot change. That he feels he is so stuck in the circumstances he had been born in, that he chooses to believe he can only become the very least he can be. She understands him, more than he realizes; but the difference between them is the boy in vivid technicolour standing over them both, cheering her on.

She's come to understand too how finding a catalyst that ignites the potential within can inspire and initiate change. Even if just a spark.

Naruto unknowingly did that for her. Hinata wonders if maybe she can do the same for Neji.

Blood flavours the words she gives him. "You are confused and hurting within the confines of the Branch and Head families. You are suffering more than I, Neji-nii-san. "

His eyes widen, then tighten impossibly with fury and black hate. His killing intent precedes him and Hinata knows, before he even takes that first step to rush towards her, that he will brutally strike her down for good.

She doesn't look away as he whips forward, a streak of white crackling with malice. He locks onto her, looks at her, but he does not see her, and the darkness she finds when she gazes right into the bright center of his eyes rejects her.

This is what death sounds like: the broken tides of her heartbeat within the cavity of her ribcage, building up until there is only a roar of white noise ringing in her mind.

Her vision shakes with the blur of sudden movement and she thinks her heart really has stopped when she registers the flash of jounin instructors restraining Neji. She holds his gaze for as long as she can, looking for something- anything. She finds nothing.

Her heart stutters, fails, and she finally allows herself to fall. There is no more she can do to help him.

Is this how it feels to shine? She didn't think it'd feel this empty.

The roar in her ears quiets when she sees Naruto's face appear above her, his expression pinched in worry, his eyes full of pride and fear. Something flickers alight within her again and she almost wants to smile.

He looks at her and sees her. Maybe he can tell her if she's managed to change herself, if even a little. She tried; she's never tried harder or persevered as tenaciously as she just did. She didn't give up despite the many chances given and maybe, maybe that is something she can take heart from.

Courage is new and sits strangely on her tongue. It tastes a lot like iron and a little like hope.

She catches the darkness in the center of Naruto's bright eyes and breathes at the warm familiarity, at the comfort she finds. Sinking into black unconsciousness does not seem so frightening when she knows how kind the dark can be.

She lets go; and she carries a mouthful of dark red iron with her like an offering.

The medical team rushes out, unrolls the stretcher to cradle her body gently, and whisks her away. Her absence carves itself a space with an ominous prognosis: "She won't last ten minutes, hurry to the emergency room!" and blood splatters staining the ground.

Neji stands immovable in his contempt and rigid in his belief in fate. There is no regret or concern as he considers the damage he wrought; only a bitter sense of satisfaction and a simmering anger.

Something within Naruto shakes like tremors foretelling an earthquake as he watches Hinata disappear and Neji curl his lips in disdain. She had been explosive, unconquerable as she kept standing back up after being knocked down.

Naruto had been riveted by the sight of her, by her tenacity and will that seemed so familiar, that he felt in his bones. All the times Hayate went to declare the match at an end, he had to speak up because couldn't anyone see it? Couldn't anyone see how she still had the strength in her to try again?

He cheered for her fire. He cheered for that fierce gleam in her eyes, the shaking of her hands, the wet coughs that wracked her body as she got back up. Even till the very end, she lost- but she hadn't. She looked hate straight in the eye and told him she wouldn't go back on her word; and instead of a clenched fist she had offered an open palm of compassion, even as she knew it would invite death.

She shone, so unexpectedly but so incontestably. The proof lay before his feet, in puddles of dark blood that marked each place where she reignited herself and kept going. Kept trying.

He couldn't stand the way Neji dismissed her, wrote off her bravery and heart like she had been nothing.

Her fight catalyzed her, turned her quiet demeanor and actions sonorous. The darkness in his chest thrums in a familiar echo, making his lungs burn and ache.

The blood gleams at him from the ground, catching his eye. She is gone but her heart isn't. His fingers dip slowly into the vivid red that is still warm, and the dark thrumming in his chest growls louder. His fingertips drag through and he clenches the iron of her heart in his fist as he stands and turns to face Neji.

"You," he addresses Neji, and doesn't continue until the other boy's eyes swing over to him in complete attention, "are going down."

Naruto's jutted fist drips a dark and shining red: a promise.

.

3. the darkness you fight is within you

When Hinata is soaring through the air, when she lands solidly to stand between the one she loves and one who she fears, this is what she knows: courage still tastes foreign in her mouth. But when she hears the panic in Naruto's voice, courage blooms with a roar in her chest and with effortless grace upon her tongue.

She is afraid too, staring death in the eye once more; but there are a myriad of things she is more afraid of than Pain. Than death.

She fears how he'll destroy her friends and her home. She fears doing nothing. She fears losing Naruto, because she loves him enough that his loss might hollow her out, might blow out that flame he lit within her and leave room for only a familiar and unwelcome darkness.

"I'm just being selfish," Hinata admits, and her words surprise them all. "I used to always cry and give up. I nearly went the wrong way but you- you showed me the right way." She wishes she could turn to face Naruto, because if there is one thing she has never feared, it is him. "I was always chasing you, wanting to overtake you… but really, I wanted to walk beside you. I wanted to be with you.

Your smile changed me. Your smile saved me." And she remembers a cold wintery day, long ago, and a bright red scarf. "So I'm not afraid to die protecting you.

Because- I love you."

Her heart and her fists roar as one in a shining, brilliant blue as she steps forward without hesitation. She's changed; this she knows for certain now, and she understands what it means to shine. That the light she burns and becomes is as much for others as it is for herself, that her light could ignite others even after she is gone.

Hinata knew long before she even stepped on this battlefield that she is outmatched, but that does not stop her from charging forwards with everything she's got, from getting up in Pain's face and grabbing his attention. For this split second, Pain is listening and looking and she is blazing starfire bright.

He strikes her down in one hit.

Before darkness seizes her and drags her under, Hinata wonders when she started equating shining with dying. She breathes, and her heartbeat crescendoes until she succumbs to the roar of white noise ringing in her ears.

Her heart is not the only one crashing up against the shore of her ribcage and the howl that tears from Naruto's throat cracks through the air like thunder.

When he watches her fall, when Pain's gaze lingers on her prone form, when she does not get back up, this is what Naruto knows: burning. Six tails, whipping behind him and as searing as solar flares. The most potent cocktail of explosive rage and raw despair rippling through his veins, wiping his mind and turning him feral.

His body wavers dangerously between being his own and being Kurama's but their acidic fury tastes the same and he scorches the earth in pain.

His mind is a frighteningly dark abyss that he does not have the strength to stand up to this time. His heart bleeds and breaks and when Kurama's claws grip into him in the dark, he doesn't resist.

The seal on his stomach appears, black and ominous, and swirls into the center like a gaping mouth. The locks start slipping out from Kurama's cage, and panic chased by helplessness sets in as Naruto watches Kurama's monstrous grin creep closer and closer.

He cannot move. He cannot stand back up.

This is what Naruto remembers: how it feels to collapse into a black hole.

.

4. you are stronger than you know

No one tells him of the vacuum left in the aftermath of war.

Absence claims sanctuary everywhere: in families, in governments, in buildings, in bodies, in minds, in homes. Settles itself comfortably in every available pocket of space so wherever one looks, absence stares with the heavy gaze of presence.

Naruto is never afraid to stare back. Absence, after all, is an old friend.

A bouquet of white calla lilies sway in the basket swinging from the crook of left arm as he walks past houses being reconstructed and roads being rebuilt. His shadow clones wave back from everywhere, as populous as the hollows absence has carved. A mother calls out a greeting, her arms full of blankets; a genin huffs as she lifts wooden beams in conjunction with one of his clones; a man who wears his many years in deep drooping wrinkles pats the hole in the road he just refilled and repaved; a young boy darts out from a rebuilt food stall and offers him an orange with a gap-toothed smile.

Naruto stops, and tilts his head in question. "For me?"

The boy nods vigourously. Naruto hesitates, but beams widely in thanks and crouches a bit to lower the basket when the boy insists. As the boy drops the orange in, his small fingers trail along the stems of the lilies, his brown eyes wide with fascination.

"Take one!" Naruto gestures as he lowers the basket further in invitation. The boy shyly picks out a stem, his movements careful and precise. He smiles widely at Naruto before racing back to the woman with the blankets, his arms and fingers signing excitedly in the air.

Naruto watches the woman gasp theatrically and smile brilliantly at the boy before turning around to catch sight of him. The blankets in her arms shift until she can free a hand, lifting up to press a kiss against her fingers in thanks. Her fingers twist in a sign for the boy to follow and with a last wave from them both, they disappear into a rebuilt apartment building.

Absence isn't always permanent; sometimes, something wonderful can emerge to repurpose the emptiness. Naruto steps onwards, his heart a little lighter, the empty sleeve of his right arm fluttering behind like a flag.

The cenotaph already has company by the time he arrives. Flowers of every type adorn the base, colouring the old, worn stone with rippling warmth. A figure stands before the bed of flowers with a similar basket by her feet, her head bowed and her long indigo hair swaying gently in the wind.

Naruto catches the faintest whisper of sound from her and stops a distance away, giving her some privacy. After a moment, Hinata's head lifts and she turns to see him standing a ways behind her. With a small smile and a beckoning of her hand in invitation, he comes to join her, gently dropping his basket to the ground and adding his bouquet of calla lilies to the bed of flowers.

In the past, coming here always seemed slightly foreboding with the simple, undecorated bare face of the cenotaph watching and waiting, surrounded by previous cenotaphs laid to rest. But now, with the multitude of colourful flowers resting easily against the plain stones and their fragrant scent hanging light in the air, he finds only quiet and peace.

Perhaps the emptiness here had simply just been waiting to be formed into a home.

"How is your arm?" Hinata asks softly after a few minutes of comfortable silence.

Naruto instinctively lifts his right arm intending to flex his hand, only to remember that he has no hand left. Pain ghosts along his healed stub, leaving him with a raw and uncomfortable itch that he can't scratch. Even after nearly a half a year of healing, he sometimes forgets for a split second what he's lost.

He grimaces. "It's been worse."

A lifetime ago, he might've laughed off his pain with a smile that was a little too wide and a little too bright, and carried on alone. That was before war devoured them and spat them back out, before they all realized they lost a part of themselves in the process. Before he finds out that this time, he doesn't have to heal by himself.

Indigo hair shifts in his peripheral vision as Hinata nods in understanding before bending down to retrieve something from her basket. When she straightens up and extends her hands out to him, Naruto's struck by a sense of déjà vu as he recognizes the pot of medicinal cream.

"Sakura-san mentioned phantom pain," she explains as he takes the small, heavy container. "There are herbs in here that help relax your muscles and encourage stimulated circulation of your chakra." The beat that follows holds another thought, but silence swallows it instead as she looks away.

Naruto chuckles as he bends to place the pot in his basket. "You're the best, Hinata." He stays crouched, taking in all the names newly inscribed onto the cenotaph- and there are many. Noiselessly, Hinata crouches as well, wrapping her arms around her legs.

The sigh she exhales does not go unnoticed by him, nor the faint tremours hidden in the undercurrent. His eyes shift over from the stone to see tuck her chin onto her knees, her expression weary and sad.

"Are you still having trouble sleeping?" he asks hesitantly.

Hinata smiles humourlessly. She doesn't look him in the eyes. "It's been worse."

She's never been afraid to meet his gaze; but that is before she started having nightmares about everyone she loves- dying. About blood and spikes and a deafening roar that does not come from her. About a burning that devours them both.

Her dreams she shares openly; her nightmares she locks away.

There is no response that follows her admission but she doesn't expect one. Nightmares, like grief, are a common consequence in their careers. It's a handicap she's become accustomed to, though not one she's ever found easier to bear.

Movement catches her eyes and she looks up to see Naruto offering his hand out to her.

Hinata doesn't hesitate, and her right hand links with his left as naturally as breathing. Their fingers tangle like roots and in the back of her mind, she hopes someday something more may grow between them.

He offers her support and comfort, even understanding, and she cradles his gift with care. One day, perhaps she will tell him about the vast darkness and terrible fire she fears; but for now, she holds on to hope and is grateful.

Their locked hands hang easily between them like a swing, almost brushing the warm stone footprint beneath them. She treasures the warmth of his palm and the faintest pulse of his heartbeat that she can feel at his fingertips. Maybe she will dream of a fire that cauterizes instead of consumes and a light that's soft and does not cut.

"How long is Ino going to leave these flowers before she clears them?" Naruto asks idly. Cut flowers never last very long, and piled on bare stone means they will rot instead of decompose.

Hinata sifts through her memories for a particular conversation. "At the end of the week, she'll come for them," she recalls.

A sigh blows out of him, light and gusty, tickling through some of the petals closest to them. "Too bad. It's nice having this place look…" He trails off, searching for the right word.

"Soothing?"

Naruto nods, his brow furrowed, and she understands. The cemetery where most are properly buried rest between soaring, ancient cedar trees that fill the air with a comforting, lingering scent of something warm and fragrant with spice. Hinata visits Neji's grave there often enough to find the place tranquil. But the cenotaph she finds to be somber, if not a little overwhelming with the vast number of names.

The flowers help. Their company fills the haunted absence with colour and life, however brief.

"Ino was telling me actually, that you were going to plant some flowers around here?" His voice tilts at the end, turning the remark into a question.

Hinata hums in confirmation, and explains, "I thought it could be healing, to those who come here and feel... guilty. Or feel as though they've failed or lost something important to them." The trauma of the patients she's treated is an ache that sits heavily at the bottom of her stomach. She knows how often many of them visit here, even before war happened. The rents in their physical bodies she can mend; the unease in their minds she wonders if she can help as well.

"I was wondering…" Naruto hesitates, his fingers tightening around hers just a fraction, and she turns to see him gazing intently at her. "Can I help?"

She searches and finds a beautiful kind of hope sitting bright in his eyes, encircling those pinpricks of darkness.

"Of course," Hinata smiles. "Of course."

Her hand slips from his with a measure of reluctance but his warmth in her fingers lingers. She roots through her basket beside her and pauses.

"I only brought one-"

"-trowel?" Naruto finishes her sentence with a sheepish smile. "Don't worry, I got one! Ino lent me hers when I got flowers. Oh, and a really awesome kid gave me an orange on the way here too. Want to share?"

She thinks it's just like him to share whatever he has in less than a heartbeat, even as she knows that oranges are regrettably scarce in the markets these days due to ruined farmlands and interrupted trade routes. The kid must have looked up to him so, to gift him his favourite fruit.

Hinata remembers three tall bullies and adults whose gazes never went past his whiskers from long ago; and is glad, for how far they've come.

"Ok," she accepts. She's learned from experience that Naruto finds happiness best shared and is reminded again when he beams at her. Her fingers grasp at the handle of her basket as she rises up. She waits for him to join her before they step together across the worn, smooth faces of stone and onto cool grass and warm dirt. "I was thinking of planting lily bulbs along the edges and radiating out there from."

"Like a sun?"

"I was thinking pathways, but that too." There is plenty of room to start a garden in the clearing, and she hopes they could transform the emptiness of the space to be so.

"You're thinking pretty far ahead, huh?" he comments casually, but when she glances at him his expression is similarly distant as he imagines what the cenotaph could become.

Hinata's always been one to think about the future. Tomorrow was an elusive goal she never thought she could catch when she was younger. Tomorrow was where her father would be proud and her worth viewed as a success rather than a disappointment. Old habits die hard. She's never stopped planning or working for the future she keeps imagining waits for her, if she only pushes herself a little more intensely, a little more painfully.

She should've known that anything concerning Naruto would defy predictability, because he anchors her to the present, to the moment they are both living in right now. Tomorrow is an empty dream she can never grasp; today is what she knows to be true.

"I like it! This is going to look awesome when the flowers start growing," Naruto declares, his excitement contagious. Light glints off the trowel he retrieves from his basket and he turns to her with an expectant grin. "Where should we start?"

They start at one corner of the large, flat stone ground and work methodically in digging out hollows and planting small, furled bulbs with fragile, delicate roots to grow. The balmy scent of the bundles of flowers piled around the cenotaph keeps them company as they talk and joke and laugh. They slowly make their way around, their pace relaxed and unhurried, and the pale spring sun slides across the ground as clouds come and go.

Naruto proves to be just as adept and quick as Hinata with his one arm, though she knows he also has a fondness for gardening. They take a break halfway to split his orange, and Hinata laughs until her belly aches as he insists she toss his slices in the air for him to catch. His aim proves true, though his dives are graceless and his face almost becomes intimately acquainted with the newly buried lily bulbs more than once.

Planting the remainder of the bulbs doesn't take them too much longer, but they linger together in the soft grass. Silence settles comfortably over them both as they watch the sun slip further down the sky towards the horizon.

One day, the lilies will emerge and bloom to reveal large, fragrant pink and white blooms with soft, rippling edges and golden centers, their faces tilted up to also gaze at the skies and stars. Hinata hopes they will catch the heavy grief of those who come to mourn and do what plants have always done best: transform it into something that's light to breathe in.

An insistent growl from an empty stomach interrupts the quiet peace and embarrassment lightly colours Naruto's laugh. "Hey Hinata, want to get dinner? I know a great ramen place," he jokes.

A shy smile lights her face at his invitation. "I wonder what this amazing place could be."

"C'mon, it'll blow your mind!" He swings his legs up towards the sky, his spine curling back into a ball, before nimbly rolling up to stand on his feet. His left palm unfurls before her, waiting. "My treat, to pay you back for the medical cream."

"Oh, no, you don't have to," she hurries to dissuade him as she takes his hand once more. He pulls her up effortlessly and she snags both of their baskets to carry, smiling at him serenely when he protests. "I'm just glad to be with you."

She only has a moment to catch his bright blue eyes staring at her, startled, before his gaze slides to the ground, his throat working around some sort of mumble she's not sure she's meant to understand. The faintest flush steals over his cheeks and she wonders how often he's been told that, so plainly and honestly.

His stomach growls again, and he laughs himself past the moment before meeting her eyes once more, a soft smile on his face. "We can figure it out as we go."

She hums agreeably at the compromise and when her head ducks in a nod, she doesn't notice how his gaze lingers over the last of the gold light sinking into her indigo hair, a cluster of sparks in the dark, before she falls in step beside him.

They walk away, leaving the slumbering stargazers to take root and bloom.

.

5. i love you because you are love

Sun spots blur over the ground, their edges softening until Hinata can't tell where the light ends and the shadow begins. There's no definable shape she can pin down, though she watches and she tries. Light blinks up at her, bright one moment and then gone the next.

Her fingers reach out to catch a spot of pale gold in her palm, her movements slow and watery. The light slides over the back of her hand and over her pale arm, leaving just the faintest whisper of warmth in its wake. She watches the spots glide over to her, watches as they sink into the bare skin of her stomach. Heat pools and coalesces into a pulse within her, swelling until she feels the tap tap tap of the spotted sunlight against the inner walls of her body.

The taps pull her slowly towards the blurring between dream and reality until Hinata hazily thinks she has become a sun spot as well.

But no- the tapping persists, and the sensation anchors her until she can properly surface awake and breathe in the cool, night air. Her hand flutters to curve over the slight swell of her stomach only to find another hand already resting covetously on the spot.

Her palm settles over that large and warm hand she knows so well, and her fingers fit between the spaces that she finds. The weight of their joined hands rest reassuringly against that fluttering in her stomach.

"Is that-?" Naruto asks, his breath ghosting along her ear. His voice shakes in with excitement and wonder, but he is utterly still otherwise, transfixed. His heat entirely envelops her, from the orange jacket draped so carefully over her front, to the cradle formed by his broad chest against her back and his arms and legs framing and supporting her sides.

"The baby kicking," Hinata confirms, and laughs when she feels him inhale sharply.

"I can't believe it," he whispers, even as the tiniest thumps flutter against his palm. "Does it hurt? Are you ok?"

"I'm fine. It's a little ticklish, actually." The tapping continues in an irregular rhythm before falling silent. Naruto's sigh she feels more than hears as he tucks his chin on her shoulder. "What time is it?"

"A little after midnight, I think," he guesses. "You feeling a bit better?"

Hinata stretches within the confines of his limbs, testing the elasticity of the muscles in her legs and arms and finding them at ease. "Much better. Thank you for coming with me up here."

Tiredness is a symptom in pregnancy she has read about and prepared for, but experiencing it is an entirely different matter. Instead of sparring and training, sleep commands her attention, and when she wakes up, her unused muscles complain by spiking her with restless energy that she can't burn off.

Late night wanderings become a new habit and Naruto, despite being such a heavy sleeper, is always awake in an instant when she sits up in bed and needs to move. Sometimes they only make it to the living room to curl up on the couch together; and sometimes they walk and walk until they end up perched on top of the Hokage Monument, far above the sleeping village and under the uninterrupted vastness of the night sky.

"My favourite spot with my favourite girl." She can practically feel his whiskers brushing up against her cheek as he grins over her shoulder. "How could I possibly say no?"

The sentiment has her smiling goofily and she turns and plants a kiss on his waiting cheek.

They sit wrapped in a comfortable and easy silence, watching the village breathe beneath them in soft lights that flicker on or off. Most of the buildings slumber on in darkness, leaving the stars to appear that much brighter.

It made one feel small, sitting before something so incomprehensibly endless. The stars never appeared differently, even when Hinata had been on the moon with her Byakugan activated. They were simply too far beyond her reach, even when she had been so close to them. She wonders what she'd see, if she ever got close enough one day.

Even as she knows the effort is futile, she activates her Byakugan anyway. Being with Naruto makes believing in the impossible easy. Heat ripples from the center of her eyes and radiates out; and in less than an eyeblink, her own channels of chakra appear in her vision, lightning-bright.

The stars still stare down, impassive in their place in the sky, but there- resting in the cradle of her womb- is a slumbering, fragile pulse of chakra, as soft and silver-white as spiderwebs.

This is not the first time she's seen the baby with her Byakugan, but the sight takes her breath away every time. There is no need for her to look so far for something extraordinary when it rests much closer to home.

"You see something?" The rumbles in Naruto's chest shiver up her spine and she releases her Byakugan with a last lingering look the tiny fluttering heartbeat.

"Just taking a look at the baby," she reassures him. She feels his hand smooth over her belly, as if he could see through touch; and when a tiniest flutter responds to his fingers, she believes maybe he really can. "What were you doing, when I fell asleep?"

His head tilts up and she instinctively follows suit to gaze up at the night sky, a colour deeper than indigo and scattered with boundless pinpricks of light.

"Trying to pick out all the constellations Iruka-sensei showed me when I was little," he explains. His body shifts behind her so he can lift an arm and point out particular patterns in the sky. "He used to tell me stories about each one too. Right there, is the claw and the tail of the Blue Dragon of the East. And over there, those form his body, so he stretches all the way across the sky. Sometimes you can see his heart too. Iruka-sensei called it the fire star."

Star lore isn't something she's paid particular attention to, so the stars Naruto picks out for her to follow are lost to her eyes. His gaze reaches where her Byakugan can't, and with the help of his words, a dragon unfolds in the sky for her to see; and she can imagine, in another time and place, the same story being told to the child growing in her belly.

"Mmm," she hums as she settles more deeply against his chest. "You'll make a wonderful father, Naruto."

"You think?" Anxiousness unabashedly colours his question, even as excitement far outweighs it. "I definitely know you'll be the most amazing mother."

He can practically hear her smile as she replies with no small amount of cheek. "I think that we'll figure it out as we go."

It takes him a moment to remember why those words sound so familiar but when he recalls that day by the cenotaph so long ago, he laughs long and clear into the cool night air. "It's not so scary when I know you're with me."

Her fingers slide over the back of his hand and search until she finds the warm metal of his wedding ring. "You inspire me to be brave," she confesses.

He hugs her tight and buries his head against her shoulder, his nose brushing against the side of her neck until he can almost feel her pulse beneath his lips. "You make me so... unbelievably happy."

His voice shakes, just the tiniest bit, because even as he cradles his most precious person protectively in his arms, he fears. He fears losing her, that one day she'll wake up and realize this is not what or who she wants. He fears that darkness within him, that's been with him since before those days of taunting stall owners and fighting off bullies, long ago. He fears that what the darkness says is true: that he will never be good enough to stay for.

"You have me." The iron in her voice leaves no room for doubt and she turns in his lap until her eyes find his. "You will always have me."

Naruto's throat tightens impossibly until he's ready to laugh or cry from sheer emotion, but he does neither. He surges forward to kiss her, and thinks he can taste the honeyed light of the sun on her tongue and the heady memory of a golden day. His fingers splay against her lower back, tangling with the ends of her hair and drawing her impossibly close.

His tongue brushes against hers as he sinks down, and as he feels Hinata smile against his lips, warmth blooms in the dark of his chest. It spreads throughout every root in his body until he almost aches with her light.

Her heartbeat races in rhythm with his and he can't tell whose is whose. Her heart beats in the dark cavity of his chest, as if it had always been there; as if he had always been the home.

She is the moon and sun and stars; but more importantly, she is love.

She curves into him like a crescent, pressing into all his negative spaces until there is only heart and breath and quiet between them: a tiny infinite moment, a tiny infinite universe.

Overhead, the stars sing, and sing, and sing.

AN2: Thank you ghostbananas and harunamotokis for your guys' help and general everything! Section titles are from the poem found at the end of Minecraft. Also I have certainly not forgotten about a blooming of cosmos but this took priority for the past little while. Look for an update in the next week or so!

Edit: Thank you OGAFazer89AC for pointing out a mistake!