Characters: Hinata, others mentioned
Summary: He has her heart but he doesn't even know it.
Pairings: onesided NaruHina
Author's Note: I'm attempting to take a more realistic (read: darker) look at Hinata's feelings for Naruto and Naruto's "feelings" for her, and frankly at the reality of NaruHina. This takes place past the timeline of the manga.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

This is how he makes her feel: jitters all around and completely and totally inadequate. Hinata has never been the most eloquent of women, but around him, her tongue ties itself into the most painfully intricate of Gordian knots. No matter how much she pries at it, the knot will not—can not—come undone.

Naruto never notices her, not at all. Hinata knows this and yet she can't stop herself from looking out from under her eyelashes, smiling foolishly, blushing, and pressing her cheek up against a cool window as she often does when she wants to think. Shino shakes his head, wearily accepting of her daydreaming again, Kiba waves a hand in front of her face and Hinata is too abstracted to notice.

Today, Shino and Kiba have left her to her thoughts in her home, perhaps sensing that she wants to be left alone or perhaps just finally growing impatient with her unresponsiveness. They have places to be and things to do. Hinata can come along later if she wants.

I wonder… I wonder just what it would take…

Her cheek is pressed to the cool window and she watches as the silver rain falls beyond the glass. The soft, whispery song of the rainfall fills her ears and Hinata sighs, closing her eyes for a moment and letting the coolness seep into her bones. It's at moments like this when she can finally still her heart.

It's during moments like this that she can finally think.

Hyuuga Hinata's… infatuation, if you want to call it that, with Uzumaki Naruto has dated back to her Academy days. Ever since she first met a certain scrawny boy with hair like the sun and eyes like the midsummer sky, Hinata has not been able to call her heart her own; it has belonged to someone else since the first day she heard a loud, guttural voice proclaiming confidence that he would succeed at whatever he did.

Funny, so very funny. Hinata's heart has been in Naruto's possession since day one but he doesn't even know that he has it. Naruto doesn't play with her heart nor does he treat it with care because he doesn't know it's his. It's so funny that for a moment Hinata just wants to laugh, but she clamps her mouth down and the giggles never come. The smile that had been playing around her lips fizzles and fades. Her tongue doesn't knot; instead, Hinata's throat feels the knots on it.

She can't even speak.

Someone goes running past the window in the rain and it's Hanabi, fresh home from training, her sallow face flushed with excitement and soaked with rain. Sometimes—no, all the time—Hinata wishes she could be like that, wishes that she could always be energetic and lively like her sister. If she were like that, maybe she could get Naruto to look at her just once.

She knows her competition, if the girl can even be called that, has energy and liveliness in spades.

This is the only thing Hyuuga Hinata and Uzumaki Naruto have in common: they're chasing after someone who doesn't even look twice at them as a romantic option.

Naruto's been pursuing and pining after Haruno Sakura for about as long as Hinata's been doing the same for him. No one's quite sure why he kept trying to get her to go out with him long after she had made it clear (in no uncertain terms and quite violently too), but anyone can see what the attraction was to start with. A boy like Naruto, bold and loudmouthed and utterly lonely, naturally gravitates towards a girl like Sakura, pretty and outgoing and completely oblivious of the true ugliness and cruelty of the world. She's like an oasis to him and Hinata can see instantly what the attraction is.

Hinata can't compare to Sakura and she knows, knows that even if Naruto hasn't been dogging her as desperately as he used to, he can't see any girl for the pink-haired one his eyes are locked on.

Maybe that's why he hasn't even so much as looked at her since that day.

It takes nothing at all for Hinata to remember the experience of a man with soulless eyes driving a stake through her flesh. She hadn't been upset at all. Not angry with herself or anyone else. Not even sad.

She had given Naruto an opening, and she had finally worked up the courage to tell him how she felt about him. Hinata had been prepared to die at that, if only so Naruto could live and because whether she lived or died, he finally knew that she loved him.

Hinata was accepting of the idea of dying then—going down in a blaze of glory, giving the village's greatest hope the time to recover and attack; even her father couldn't possibly complain at that—but when she didn't Hinata was perfectly happy with that too. Surely he'll at least speak to me. Surely, he'll acknowledge what I've said. Perhaps he doesn't feel the same way but at least he'll feel obliged to get to know me.

Or, so she'd thought.

Here's reality, and here's what Hinata tries so hard to deny: It's been over a year since Pein's invasion of Konoha, and Naruto has not said a word to her since the day she took an attack for him that nearly killed her.

Not a conversation.

Not a talk.

Not a sentence.

Not even a fleeting "How're you doing?".

Nothing. Nothing at all.

Nothing has changed, despite Hinata doing everything in her power to change her own situation. Naruto has either forgotten her entirely (for all his virtues Hinata has ever been aware that Naruto's memory is not the best) or he simply chooses to behave as though her confession never happened and they never met. Hinata isn't sure which alternative she dreads more.

Again, there's something that's funny though, too.

What's absolutely hilarious is that Hinata hasn't changed at all. Yes, so very hilarious, she thinks with a slight tremor at the lips. For a moment the trembling deepens, then it ceases and Hinata attributes it to tiredness; it's been a long day. She must just have the jitters again like she always does; thinking about Naruto always gives Hinata the jitters.

She still looks at him the same way, despite everything. Hinata just can't bring herself to be angry with Naruto, or to be offended because he doesn't speak to her after she declared her love for him at the top of her lungs and then nearly paid for it with her life. She's made her life out of making excuses not just for him, but for everyone. When someone doesn't perform the way they ought to Hinata always manages to come up with a plausible reason why they don't.

And of course, Hinata thinks to herself, there must be a reason why Naruto hasn't so much as bothered to ask her if she really loves him since that day. Maybe he's just shy when it comes to women; yes, surely that must be it.

Until that distant, sunny day when Naruto smiles at her and addresses the matter that weighs down Hinata's shoulders as a funereal shroud weighted with lead would, she will survive. She will simply nurse her love in the dark, as she has always done. It hurts so much, but Hinata will revel in her pain and survive it.

The dark is where Hinata feels most comfortable with her love for Uzumaki Naruto, anyway.

Yeah… I know I just made a lot of people unhappy by writing this. Since I was probably begging for flames when I wrote this, I won't be surprised if and when I get them. Honestly though, I regret nothing.

When I first started out on Naruto, I was completely and totally sold on NaruHina, never mind that I had no idea how that would even work, considering they've never seriously spoken to each other for more than ten seconds at a time. I loved it, partially because I don't like Sakura very much and partially because the idea seemed so right somehow.

As time went on though, I became a bit disillusioned on the pairing; okay, very disillusioned. I tried to deny it at first, but as of right now, I have embraced the truth: I no longer seriously ship NaruHina. At least, not reciprocal NaruHina.

So yes, I know that by writing this I have portrayed Hinata as some sort of doormat-nut and Naruto as a colossal jerk. Well you know what? When it comes to love, Hinata is a doormat; she accepts everything. When it comes to women, Naruto is a complete insensitive jerk; not intentionally, but he still isn't emotionally mature enough for a healthy relationship even if he is the Messiah of the Narutoverse. He has no idea how to deal with his own romantic feelings for anyone, let alone someone else's romantic feelings for him.

Now excuse me while I prepare to be shot dead for posting this.