Disclaimer: Moi doesn't own Naruto. –GASP-

A/N: A drabble inspired-in-reverse by Utada Hikaru's 'Colors'. May become a series of drabbles, depending on the response. So please take 10 seconds and review!

Pictures Without Dreams

She tried to paint pictures with her metal, to dictate scenes imagined in her mind like calculated dreams. And the silver never failed to pinpoint blood with her striking precision, and she could spin the kaleidoscope any way she wanted to.

But the brush never even landed on him and no matter how many times she threw, the paint never flowed. Even when she tried a challenging smile and a friendly glare, the only kind she knew he would accept without hate, the cold pain in his eyes never lessened. And so she tried again and again, throwing weapons until she herself fell to the ground, only her eyes paralyzed above the dirt by the electrifying mist he offered in those moons.

"You are weak. You will never win against me. It is fate."

But she could never paint that picture.

And soon it became dazzling thrusts of silver flung through the air, and yet the metal all felt so dull in her hands and she thought the dangerous scenes were starting to rust. The images seemed less whole as she turned them around in her hand with frustrated fingers, growing wearier each time as she tried to find their old appeal. Soon they become reluctant fingers, tired and hopeless and blind. The blood no longer depicted her landscapes, the battles became mechanical and thoughtless and all drive for perfection was lost.

She was tired of failing.

And he was noticing. Sharp as his omnipotent gaze was, he saw how she tossed around the pieces of metal like jigsaw puzzles in the air with an expert hand and yet no longer even cared where they landed. The spars had turned into chores for her, where even dragging her feet along the bark had become-dare she steal Shikamaru's word?-troublesome and she flung bombards of weapons out of mere reflex now, brushes that never even touched the canvas. Her dreams were dead. Her eyes no longer watched him.

But she could still feel his questioning eyes boring into her even as she looked away into the trees, a piercing stare that tried to penetrate through her uselessly. As much as he opened his eyes, he closed his heart, and her graying eyes could no longer spark into a glare at him. She could not even see him anymore, would not look upon him. Her excitement was gone. Lightning had started to taste bitter.

She turned away, swinging through the branches that easily took her away from him without even evidence of the footsteps that had once led to him. She could no longer feel that burning pulsate through her fingers-it was gone. His smile would just never come for her, a dream left unpainted. Rocks did not gain faces unless you carved them in, and her kunai were all dry.