Bamboo Hearts Firefly

Shino and Hinata

This heart, longing for you,

breaks to a thousand pieces--

I wouldn't lose one.

-Izumi Shikibu

Maybe it was no surprise to Shino that sending he and Kiba out alone to pick out a wedding gift would end up in disaster like this.

After all, when it came to gifts, Hinata was always better at this kind of stuff.

~

"But I think I do know what that's like," Shino had said quietly to Hinata, as they sat by a gentle creek watching the sunset after a long day of sparring together. "The reason is because I understand exactly what you felt...why you risked your life to come between Naruto and Pain...even if I'll never agree with you doing it."

"Shino, I'm so sorry," HInata whispered, blushing. "I didn't mean for it to sound like I think you couldn't possibly...I mean, what I really meant was..."

She sighed, afraid that she was only making it sound even worse. 

Of course Shino understood why she stood up to Pain. 

How could anyone assume an Aburame like him wouldn't understand an experience so beautifully human as love?

"There is someone," Shino confessed to her, as his sunglasses tracked the zen flow of the river in front of them. "There's someone I would've stood up against Pain for too. If that is what you mean by love, then yes, I understand what you felt completely."

"Shino, you're in love?" Hinata asked him, surprised. "I'm so happy for you! But with who?"

"That doesn't matter now," Shino answered quietly. "Why, you ask?...The reason is I know she will never love me the way I love her, because she has always loved someone else that way."

"Oh...I'm sorry, Shino," Hinata said soft-heartedly. "Does she at least know you feel that way about her?"

"It's better if she doesn't know. It would only complicate things between us, and I don't want that. That's because I always want her to be happy, and if she is happy, then that is enough for me," Shino replied. "Besides...we still have training to complete. I'm going to help you get stronger. So, when you do challenge someone like Pain again, I won't have to worry about you getting hurt the next time I'm away on a mission."

Hinata turned a bashful pink. 

"That reminds me," she said. "While you were gone on your mission, I realized I forgot about your birthday. I feel so ashamed. It's just, when Naruto and me-"

"It's fine. There's no need to feel ashamed. That's because I forgot my birthday too," Shino lied to save her from the guilt, no matter how much her forgetting his birthday made him hurt.

"But still...I wanted you to have this," Hinata said, her hands gently reaching over Shino's bushy black hair to slip a gilded pendant around his neck. "Do you like it?"

"It's a...honey stone?" Shino examined the fiery golden gem hanging from the necklace. And being an expert on all things to do with bugs and their rocky habitats, Shino knew that the stone symbolized love and friendship. "You really picked this out just for me?"

"For good luck. So, I won't have to worry about you when I'm gone either," Hinata smiled at him. "They say fireflies love honey stones. They're attracted to their light. I remember you telling me once before, how you would do anything to find Firefly. So, I thought maybe this gift would be perfect to help you find one. Wouldn't catching a firefly be so beautiful for your bug collection?"

But knowing how much fireflies loved water, Shino didn't have the heart to tell her (again) that the Land of Fire didn't have enough rain for fireflies, and that a honey stone would not likely bring back to him the "Firefly" he had actually meant.

Nothing would ever have the power to do that again.

"I'll never take this off then," Shino told her anyway, slipping the chain hidden and safe underneath his flak jacket. 

The stone warmed itself against his heart, which seemed to always flutter like kikaichū wings when Hinata was around.

Especially when she smiled at him like that.

And it was like a kunai to Shino's heart to be damned to eternal silence for the deeper feelings he could never say to her.

Showing himself some mercy, Shino finally dropped his eyes from her lavender gaze.

"I'm grateful to have you as my friend, Hinata," he said. "Thank you for the birthday gift."

And then he sat in the stillness of nature, enjoying the silence with her by the creek, knowing this was the last time they would sit together as a team before she married Naruto.

"Hinata," Shino finally spoke again, his eyes still on the creek in front of them. "The way you love Naruto... do you think it could ever be that way for me too? Could I share the same happiness with someone some day?"

"Of course!...And in a way, I kind of envy the girl you're in love with," Hinata confessed. 

"You do?"

"I've always had the Shino no one else sees all to myself, and maybe that was selfish of me. But every day, you showed me a beautiful world through your bugs, and I have improved so much as a shinobi because you were always there giving me your best. So, I know you would do your best to make this girl happy too. And one day you'll find the courage to tell her how much you love her, and then maybe she'll finally realize she loved you all along...You just have to have confidence, Shino. If you just show her the side of you that you've always shown me, I know she would take on anything to love you too."

Shino doubted it.

Because what was the point in loving someone, when he just kept losing people in the end?

And now, he was losing Hinata too.

'But I know now, it'll never be the same for me, as it is for you and Naruto...because I can't go through falling in love all over again,' Shino thought to himself, in wordless heartbreak. 'That's why I've decided to never marry. Love is like a Bikochu beetle. Extremely rare and too complicated to master....And in the end...I'm more likely to catch a firefly.'