NaruHina: Postscripts

Three

Can I request too? I'm not sure though if you've done this already but I'd love to see what would be your take on how Naruto discovers that the girl in the waterfalls was Hinata and his reaction afterwards 😊😁

"It's fish tonight!" Naruto declared to Hinata as he rolled up the trouser legs of his orange pants. His black coat was already discarded and was lying on one of the rocks.

Hinata looked up from the fire she'd just built and asked, "Do you need my help?"

"Nah! I think I can handle a couple of fish on my own, Hinata," he said as he waded into the water.

She looked at him doubtfully, but she kept her thoughts to herself as she threw another log into the fire. Just in case, though, she was ready to jump in if he needed her help catching their dinner.

Instead, Hinata got their tents ready. They were heading home from their recent mission from Kumo and needed to relay the message from the Raikage to Kakashi-sama tomorrow. They would need to leave early in the morning—hence the two tents she'd pitched. Her lips firmed, anticipating that Naruto was going to complain loudly about spending the night in separate sleeping bags.

She sighed. She truly wanted to share the same tent with him, but she just didn't trust his forever wandering hands and his restraint whenever it was just the two of them together on missions.

Hinata suddenly heard wild splashing and loud cursing.

"Stupid freaking fish!"

Naruto kicked at the surface of the water in frustration. His prey was proving more difficult than he'd imagined. Who would have thought it was this difficult to snare a couple of rainbow trout?! He glared at the fish swimming cheerfully underneath the lake.

He'd had to resort to using his chakra to try to trap the damned fish, but he'd still failed.

"Naruto! Are you okay?"

He looked over and saw that Hinata was at the edge of the lake, the waterfall behind her, and a worried look on her face.

Hoping to make her lose that concerned frown and make her laugh, Naruto enthusiastically shook his head, his wet hair sent water droplets flying everywhere. It worked because her soft laughter drifted with the waves of the lake towards him, making him smile in response.

He gave a tiny sigh, though, as he heard the splishy splash of their dinner swimming away.

"Hinata! Um, I think it's food pills for dinner, instead," he admitted with defeat.

She chuckled again and said, "Come on, then! You need to dry off!"

Naruto grinned to himself as he walked over the water, suddenly remembering his earlier lessons with Ebisu-sensei—that time he'd learned how to mold his chakra when he was twelve. But his memories abruptly shifted to another time when he'd been on a mission with his genin team of Shino, Kiba, and Hinata looking for the Bikochu beetle.

He felt a spurt of guilt as he suddenly remembered that fairy-like creature he'd glimpsed dancing in the mists under the cover of moonlight.

That beautiful girl by the waterfall.

A memory he'd kept hidden in his heart.

Before he'd fallen in love with Hinata.

Naruto chided himself for the direction of his thoughts. He suddenly felt like he was cheating on Hinata. And what was worse, it was with a dream, a hazy memory.

To ease his guilt, he smiled at her and called out, "See, I can do a water dance!" as he executed an awkward pivot, one leg up, arms up in a parody of a ballerina's turn.

She laughed and waded deep into the water, uncaring that her uniform was becoming wet.

"That is not a water dance," she corrected, snorting with amused laughter as she saw the expression on his surprised face. "Here, let me show you how it's done."

All his mirth died as Hinata, with her boots and tights off, gathered her chakra onto the soles of her feet and climbed up so she was standing over the lake. She dipped an elegant toe into the water, tapped twice, and then lightly twirled on the surface.

The flecks of water rolled off her glistening skin, the outline of her body so clear to see in the evening light, her footsteps nimble and airy over the water.

And Naruto suddenly realized that he'd seen this dance before...because he'd just seen it in his memory a few seconds ago.

But it was much clearer now that the same dancer was doing it right before his eyes and he wasn't relying on that faulty, dreamy memory of his youth to distinguish the way her body moved above the water.

He watched, mesmerized, as his boyhood fantasies coalesced into this living, breathing, dancing sprite—the woman of his dreams, the image that had haunted him sometimes when the lonely nights became unbearable.

She raised an arm up in the air, the other arm came right above her head and water splashed merrily as she whirled slowly, her back arched into a graceful curve. There was joy on her face—which slowly faded when she saw him charging hard towards her, sprinting over the water.

Hinata shrieked with surprise as his arms wrapped tight around her, but her breathing was cut off when his mouth was suddenly plastered over hers. His hands were roaming all over her back, but they were also pressing her to the warmth of his body.

Then his lips traveled up to her cheek, brushing over her long eyelashes and then finally over her temple, when he mumbled, "That was you, Hinata! It was you all along that night at the waterfall."

He pulled back and looked at her suddenly horrified face as she realized that she'd unknowingly given her secret away. She tried to deny it, but he cut off her protest with another kiss.

"No, you can't deny it! That was you that night when we were all on the mission to find the Bikochu beetle. You danced the same dance then."

His arms around her tightened when she opened her mouth to disagree, but he shook his head. "I know it deep in my heart Hinata. I saw you then. It wasn't a dream, never had been because the proof is right before my eyes."

She tried to hide her face into his chest, but he cupped her jaw and forced Hinata to look into his eyes.

"I thought you were pretty then, but now I know that you're even more beautiful because you're mine."

"Naruto, how is it that you always say things like that?" she finally asked quietly, but her mouth was sweetly smiling.

"Because it's easy to say them to you when I love you so much," he answered truthfully.

She laughed then and said, "Okay, I finally admit it. That was me you saw dancing all those years ago."

He smiled at her. "I'm glad because now that girl in my dreams can finally join the woman in my heart."

And Hinata, overcome with the sweetness of the moment, reached up and pulled his head down so they could share one more passionate kiss, which made them both so heated that Naruto found himself frantically reaching for the buttons of her shorts. Hinata squeaked in surprise, breaking her hold on her chakra and disrupting his. They both suddenly plunged into water as their chakra control broke.

Still, Hinata managed to make use of the situation as she quickly snared the fish that came within her reach. She swam up and heard Naruto sputtering just as he tried to grab hold of her.

"Hinata, are you okay?"

"Yes," she yelled triumphantly, holding up the trout she'd caught. "And I've got dinner!"