ᗰOᑎᔕTEᖇ [🧡 ᑎᗩᖇᑌᕼIᑎᗩ 💜] [Ɱҽէąʍօɾքհօʂìʂ] Bσσƙ Oɳҽ

Restless Night

Chapter Forty-Nine

Restless Night

May 20, 2010

His letter to Naruto was simple, and easy.

Questions about his fiancée's condition and how he was handling the situation, inquiring if there was anything he could do to further assist the woman that was to marry his best friend. A few lines of banter and expressed annoyance over having been nagged into writing a letter, and that was it. He'd rerolled the small scroll and attached it to the messenger hawk a while ago.

His letter to Sakura however...

He'd been staring at blank paper for nearly fifteen minutes, his mind uncharacteristically empty.

What was he supposed to say?

Should he address the question mark they'd left off on, or should he keep things light?

He didn't know. Socializing wasn't his strong point, but he knew...he had to do something. He had to write something.

He didn't want her to think he didn't care about her...

But he also didn't know what he was supposed to convey to her.

What he told her hadn't been a lie, an excuse or an exaggeration. It truly wasn't a matter of not wanting her. It was a matter of not knowing what he wanted. He'd never had feelings, the type of feelings she had, for any woman. His life had been one trauma after another, one emotional injury after another, one mistake after another. There was never time, there was never interest, there was never any real desire to develop romantic feelings. Quite the opposite in fact. For the mentality he'd been laboring under, the most important thing to him had been the severing of any and all emotional connections, and that included love of any nature. Even now, he lived amiss trauma, struggling, often times drowning in the consequences of the life he'd lived. When his mind journeyed beyond the hell within his memories, when it searched for a name for the sensation in his chest when he though about her, he was met with frustration, intimidation and deep rooted indecision.

He just... didn't know what he felt for her, and that was the unvarnished truth.

But...

He couldn't deny that something was there. A connection considering their proximity as children and the nightmare they'd lived in during their teens.

What label was he supposed to put to that?

Was that care?

Was it love?

Was it simple familiarity?

He sighed, then picked up the pen.

Whatever it was, it was enough to propel him into action. His words were awkward even to him, woefully short and stunted.

A touch of anxiety prickled his nape.

Fuck...

She had to realize he wasn't good at this sort of thing...

She'd known him for nearly the entirety of their lives. Would she see his efforts, meager though they were, or would she chalk up his uncomfortable attempt at conversation as confirmation that he was stuck in his ways and unwilling to change?

He stared at the words. Wracked his brain for more sentences to add to the brief message and came up with nothing.

Silently resigned, he rolled it up, attached it to the hawk and sent him off to the post.