🧡💜ภคгยђเภค ๓๏ภtђ 2023🧡💜

On The Outside Looking In

This is a follow up to last year's one-shot called Never Mine from the 2022 NaruHina fair!

Chapter Twenty-Eight

On The Outside Looking In

Prompt: Stolen Glances

Stepping through the wide, open doors of the Hokage Tower, a lone woman walked sedately into the lobby with laden steps, heart pounding painfully, stomach knotted tight as she moved closer and closer to what felt like her own personal gallows.

She swallowed the sick in her throat as memories arose, many, bittersweet, others nightmarishly painful.

Two months, sixty days away from the Tower, felt like a lifetime away in that moment.

Nostalgia bloomed in her chest, aching longing sinking it's fingers deep inside her heart. She recognized these feelings weren't only a desire to work here again, but a desperate wish to return to the point in time before she'd destroyed her career and reputation.

Pressing her lips together in an effort to hold back the sudden swelling of emotions, Yuka straightened her spine and coaxed her hunched shoulders from beneath her ears.

There was nothing she could do.

No way to change the past.

She could only move forward.

That what Yuri told her.

Push forward and don't look back.

She could do this.

Yanking her eyes from her toes, Yuka looked up...

...and froze.

He was there, striding through the open double doors towards her, white cape billowing behind his powerful form.

Tall.

Blonde.

Blue eyes burning with an intensity she'd only seen directed at her in her dreams.

Naruto Uzumaki was as handsome as ever.

More so if her pounding heart was any indication.

She hadn't seen him outside the occasional television interviews she only allowed to remain on her screen briefly at home; and once time at a distance during a red ribbon cutting in the newer developed area of the village while she was out with Yuri and other friends. Keeping Naruto Uzumaki out of her line of sight and thoughts had become a necessity, the only the way she could get through her cloudy days if she wanted to avoid having his presence, his very existence rip the stitches from her wounded feelings and leave her bleeding all over again.

Having gone cold turkey for so long, Yuka hadn't known how she'd feel if... when she saw him face to face.

If her heart would sing like it once had.

If it'd shatter into a million pieces as it had the last time he'd spoken to her directly.

She had her answer now.

It sang...

With every fiber in her being it sang like the choir of a thousand angels in the presence of the One True Divine Creator.

Her heart still belong to him.

Still longed to take that golden, coveted place right at his side.

Still wanted to wake up every morning looking at his beloved face.