(loving the wrong person must be very painful)

Hinata

fell in love with Naruto one fall day, as the leaves died slowly and the sunset washed the world in gold.

He is—this is not an exaggeration—everything to her. The way he never gives up is the greatest inspiration she's ever known. When he cheers her on, she feels as though she can do anything. He's known pain, and he's known loneliness; she knows because she's watched him for years, and it makes her love him all the more, this boy who has suffered more than anything she's ever suffered and grown so much stronger because of it. Where others see obnoxiousness, all she sees is light. He's so brilliant and blinding that it whisks her breath away. Watching him is like staring into the sun.

She would die for him.

She almost does.

Hinata loves the good in people, and Naruto is everything that is right with the world.

Naruto

fell in love with Sakura at first sight. Puppy love, they call it, which must be right, because at first he chased after her with dogged determination, happily, full of admiration and joy, the way a puppy runs after his owner. The first time she punched him, her face twisted with disgust, he was in genuine pain, but he learned to laugh it off like he did everything else.

Eventually—he doesn't know when; Naruto doesn't keep track of things like this, or anything at all, really—he fell in love. It must have been hard, and fast, until eventually he couldn't remember how to not love Sakura anymore. It's as much a part of him as his orange jumpsuit or his chakra or the Nine-Tails. Everytime he sees her, something warm lights up in his chest.

The way she fights, terrifying and awe-inspiring and dangerously beautiful; her green eyes, always fixed on the horizon, glimmering with something he can't read; her hopeless smile, the one she wears whenever he asks her out, right before she slaps him over the head. 85673 tries, he thinks, laughing and rubbing the sore spot. Next one's the charm.

Naruto never gives up, and eventually Sakura will give in, like everything else, to the sheer force of his will.

Sakura

has always loved Sasuke. It comes as easily to her as breathing, even when he glares at her, even when he knocks her out, even when he coldly shoves her self-esteem into a hole in the ground and tells her, mockingly, to have fun looking for it. She used to love the elegant slope of his nose, the hard curve of his mouth, the sharpness of his cheekbones. She used to hate him, too—for making her love him and then leaving, just like that. It was like—she thought—tearing out a heart, and the heart still beat, but the body gaped with torn veins and arteries and blood that never seemed to run out.

But now—now she loves him. She's made a study of Sasuke, after watching him for so many years, and she loves everything she's seen. She even loves the smoke in his eyes: he hurts, she knows he does, so many things in him have been broken and rebuilt and broken all over again.

Together, she thinks, together they'll fix everything, slowly. Cleaning house. They've already begun.

She loves the way the world seems so peaceful around him, when he stands alone in the shade of a tree, when it almost makes her tremble to approach him for fear of ruining something she isn't allowed to touch. She loves the way he smirks at her when Naruto says something particularly stupid, the way he rolls his eyes but joins them at Ichiraku's anyway, the way he eyes her with new respect each time they spar and it ends in a draw.

Sakura knows how to fight for what she wants, and all she's ever wanted is Sasuke.

Sasuke

will never admit that he loves anyone, especially not the pathetic heiress of a clan he loathes on principle. Out of all of them, he falls in love the slowest. He's the only one who learned, before love came to him, how to be careful with his heart—too scared (though he'll never admit it) of broken bodies and bloody floors. Hinata was nothing to him in the academy, and far from his thoughts in Sound.

But after he returns, she is there, a growing awareness. She treads quietly—no longer like a weakling unsure of her place in the world, but with the deliberateness of one who does not need to be told her worth. She isn't weak. While he was gone, seeking power, she searched for strength, and found it inside herself. He respects that. Respects her.

In a world where everything seems too bright, too loud, it is inevitable that he subconsciously begins to seek her out. Her smiles are small, but serene. Her voice is gentle, but firm. And her eyes are—of all things—kind. He begins to watch them, to see the way they light, and begins (he will never say the word) to love them.

The way she sees the good in people—sees the good in him, makes him think that perhaps there really is something worth seeing—frightens him and lures him in. In her he sees the past, the distant, painless parts, the ones no one else can touch: a warm kitchen after a long Academy day; his brother's voice in a low murmur; his mother's long, dark hair, brushing the counter as she stirs the pot, humming.

The hole in him where that memory aches—she fills it.

Sasuke never knew that what he wanted all along was peace, until Hinata made it possible.

A/N: I wrote these because I wanted to explore different kinds of love-what different people look for when they look for love, and what they fall in love with.

SasuHina may not be canon, but it's my guilty crack ship.

I have a writing tumblr! It's deusexmarmaroth (because I'm clever).

UPDATE: this fic was recently translated into Spanish by the lovely Yumeien! You can find it at the /s/10756236/1/Desdichado (paste it after the fanfiction URL).