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She can barely keep her eyes open from the impact, her breath suddenly not reaching her lungs anymore. She hisses in pain, weapon still held tight in her hand as she rolls on her stomach, from where she slowly tries to stand up again. She doesn’t have time to look around, to realize how huge the disaster is, to see the rivers of blood that stain the world as she knows it.
Her eyes are focused on an enemy they didn’t even touch and a sour laugh, so not like hers, erupts from her throat, before her attention is snatched by grunts of pain from around her.
Hinata changes her train of thoughts, only a single plea in her mind, repeating all over again.
Be alive, be alive, be alive…
She notices only few moments later that she didn’t even look at Naruto, his bones broken, his breathing as the white flag of the ones who already gave up. She lets him to Sakura, whose hands already work on making things just a little bit better, even if right now they have no right of using positive words.
She drops on her knees near Sasuke and he’s cursing and hissing in pain and two kunais are stuck at his side and one of his legs is in an abnormal position and his chakra is almost not there. He doesn’t speak, even if he's raised his head to look at her muddy clothes, at the tens of scratches all around her body that sting, but not as hard as the tears at her eyes.
He wants to speak, but she doesn’t let him and she tries to make things right, as right as they can be with death all around them, with death breathing at the back of their neck, with death already in their bones.
She doesn’t realize the air has been kicked out of her lungs again and she’s dropping in her knees again, until her face gets filled with blood and she can’t see clearly anymore. She wipes it dumbly, not understanding how and why…
And then their enemy is laughing and laughing and laughing, one of his hands holding Sasuke by his hair. But he doesn’t hiss in pain, not anymore and his leg can stay normally again, though Hinata doesn’t know for how long.
She realizes, moments later again, as her mind is detached from what she’s actually seeing, like it wants everything to be a dream, that Sasuke doesn’t look at Sakura, his life-long comrade, neither at the blonde brother with whom he shares everything but the blood in their veins. Sasuke looks at her and in his eyes she sees regret and the broken promises of what could have been if this didn’t happen.
She holds her breath for as long as he holds her eyes and then, as their enemy’s hand is moving towards his neck, she lets out a scream, raw and broken and holding everything that the young kunoichi had to give to the world that no longer belongs to anyone.
How sad, he thinks before his bones snap, for this to be the last things he hears from her.
Her hands turn red from the coldness of the river, as she keeps on cleaning the clothes of their family, as her younger sister was left in the town, to prepare the meal, while her cousin and father are gathering woods.
She frowns at how hard the blood from Neji’s blouse, from killing one of their chickens, earlier that week, is to be cleaned, but she keeps on going, steadily, until, eventually, the stain is not recognizable anymore. She sighs, pleased, putting the clothing in her basket, and turning to clean the next one…
But she stops mid-air, looking at the person silently watching her. Her eyes go around her, panicked, searching for something that might resemble a weapon, that might help her held her ground in front of a man-
He steps closer, hands up, palms visible, showing he’s no threat to the young woman. She still doesn’t trust him, because after all, who would not make their presence known, if they were honest people?
He sits next to her, at a distance that calms her, and she’s grateful for the thought. She continues her job, now her fingers even colder, feeling his eyes on her with every move she makes.
When she already dropped the clothing thrice in the river, she turns around, suddenly mad, but those feelings are stopped when she sees the way he looks at her, like he knows so much more than her, like he had already figured her out, like he could see the line her life follows.
She turns around, blushing. She gets her basket, turns on her heels and ignores the man that follows her until they reach the town, until they reach her home.
During their walk, she notices the way he got only just a little bit closer, how his hand would drift in her direction when there was a sharper sound, how travel-worn both his clothes and his face looked, how much hope he held in those eyes.
She refuses to try to understand, and as she gently puts the clothes she just washed outside, to dry, she pushes away the feeling that she might have done it somewhere, some other time, with him watching her, just like now.
The thought feels like too much to bear. She bows in his direction and runs in her house, shutting the door maybe a little too hard, making Hanabi turn around worried and the traveler outside grin wide.
She drops in the bed, grunting, refusing even the soup Hanabi prepared, letting her do the chores after the diner, not getting up even when Hiashi and Neji come back.
They nod in her direction and the only word she gets from anyone in the house is only at night time, when Neji asks her to go and talk with the seller that is passing through the town, hoping to trade a few medicinal plants for some chicken eggs and few fishes.
She doesn’t even strap her sandals properly as she hurries in the opposite part of the town, the stranger lingering after her like a shadow.
“Why?” She asks, though she doesn’t turn and neither does she slow down.
“Because I’m afraid.” He answers and she wonders why an armed man in all his strength has reasons to be afraid.
He turns before her upon hearing the panicked screams and the wind has suddenly piqued and Hinata can actually see straw roofs catching fire, igniting with the force of the sun and then passing on the disaster.
She starts running and her sandals are dropped in the middle of the road and she’s nowhere near as lady-like as her father would have liked her to, but there’s only her family in her mind and the thought that the river is several miles down and saving the town is only a matter of the forces of the gods.
Her partner doesn’t seem so fond on the idea of gods, as even if she stopped, the road engulfed in flames and remains from houses, her soul heavy with the desperate screams for help, he goes right ahead, running in the flames like they couldn’t harm him, like he only needed such catastrophe to disappear just as strangely as he appeared.
Then, like a memory appearing from some other times that she can’t comprehend, she screams a name. And she knows without a doubt that it is his name.
And even when, after what seems like hours, her whole family finds her hunched in the middle of the road, she can’t stop crying.
Years from then, whenever she hears the first letters of his name - Sas- she’ll turn around and hope.
His legs are numb under him, from the long day he had to stay in the formal position, though no matter how much he glares in the direction of the elders in the room, none gets intimidated, none dares to offer the suggestion of taking a break.
When Hiashi Hyuuga finally gets up, after he made sure he got everything he could out of Sasuke’s power and status, to make their… negotiation as profitable for his own clan and his own land, everyone in the room sighs, content no one lashed out their swords.
The old man, grinning, looks at him and the lady who’d been quiet near him.
“Take care of the former heiress of the Hyuuga-clan, now the head of the Uchiha one.”
Sasuke doesn’t take the bait, though he knows how much it entertains the old man the idea of a clan of only one. Slowly, one by one, the elders disappear, leaving him with his - wife.
The word is foreign, though not that strange, and the picture of his own mom comes into his mind. He hears the woman next to him crying, trying to mute her sobs and he gives her his handkerchief.
She turns to him and smiles and then it’s the first time his eyes actually look at her and he sees not a trophy to be won through promises and given words, but a woman, and a beautiful one on top of that.
The idea that she couldn’t hold a grudge against him, for snacking her away from her own clan and her own family is thrilling to him.
And when the official ceremony is held, at the biggest temple on the Hyuuga property, with both of their clans’ flag and signs swinging in the air above them, he kisses her on the lips, sincerely.She kisses him back and during the long procession of important people and peasants alike wishing them a prosperous life, she holds his hand tightly. And even if his hand turns numb, he doesn’t comment on it, for fear his wife might disappear, just as she fears it could happen to him if she lets go.
On that first night of many, filled with awkward breathes and lots of talking, she thanks him.
“What for?” He asks, as he knocks into a wooden table, through the dark, until Hinata lights a candle.
“For freeing me.”
As they have sex, for it will take much longer until it’ll turn into making love, Sasuke biting at her neck and her screaming loud enough for the whole compound to know what they’re doing, he isn’t sure if he didn’t put even more shackles on her instead.
But Hinata never complains and wears jewels big enough to cover the marks he leaves at night. She always looks so proudly at him, like she made him. Sometimes, when political businesses turn too tiresome and she takes over whatever problems, using the benefit of being a woman to get more than he even initially hoped for, he thinks that maybe she did.
At night, he kisses her shoulder and praises her, but that proud look is gone now and instead she’s ready to cry. She hugs him close instead and refuses to answer any of his questions. It would be too painful for both of them.
Words of treason start going, especially related to the Uchiha clan. People say that their senior has been wicked by the Hyuuga witch, with eyes like those of the blinds, but seeing even more than the trained assassins. She lets them say it, because up to a point, it’s true.
Other seniors are, instead, vexed at how easily a woman is allowed in politics, job that shouldn’t involve any of her kind.
“It’s the Hyuuga’s inheritance.” She answers them, sipping at her tea, leaving her husband out of this, because he’s busy enjoying himself in the company of old friends.
“You’re not Hyuuga anymore”, they answer her and she smiles at them, while she calls the guards to kick them out.
Not this time.
And she couldn’t be happier with this outcome.
But when Sasuke is called over by the high lord, her hands are trembling and she knows she played with the fate’s patience more than she should have. He’s getting dressed, wearing his best clothes, sheathing his beloved sword. She looks at him and she is so proud to have him, even if she’s not as worthy as in the beginning.
And then she wraps her body around his arm and asks him not to go, to leave together with her, not to leave her alone. She can see his resolution break, and she kisses him.
He doesn’t kiss her back and Hinata drops on her knees, thinking sourly how honor is more important than love.
When he’s accused of treason, Sasuke Uchiha keeps his head high. When his high lord gives him the possibility of ending his own life or being shamed in public, he unsheathes his beloved sword.
He thinks back at his wife whom he didn’t kiss back and regrets it.
His sword didn’t fail him.
Since the death of their king, who managed to protect his grandson instead, the word war was in her household spoken way too often, way too low. It is a secret kept away from the weak ones, and Hinata’s brows furrow upon realizing she’s considered as such.
The tension starts to rise. People reinforcing their houses, buying food for ratios.
But she heard stories about the war, how you either die, or you come out totally different than how you were at its beginning. Her grandfather fought in a war, her father survived one and she could only hope she would survive through one as well.
Hinata closes her eyes every time this is brought into discussion, refusing to believe, refusing to be put down because of something that isn’t even sure. Then one evening, she hears over the radio that the war has officially started, and she faints before Neji or her sister could catch her.
At the beginning, nothing’s different, except the empty eyes of mothers, the walls covered in propaganda papers. She is still allowed to go outside, she can still talk things with her sister, she can still go to school.
And then the news of an attack at the border, small enough, but also big enough to show it as it is, a threat, comes. She has to part with her sister, too young and too innocent to stay at their house that turns into an improvised hospital. Her father leaves as well, too important for the strategics of the war. Hinata swallows down her sickness, dries her tears and knots a white apron around her waist, turning to tend to poor souls and to bodies that could not be healed.
The pressure is put on the men left in their house, heroes of war, and Hinata cries for them like they are already dead. Neji somehow finds the strength to laugh and joke, so unlike his usual self, that Hinata sees it as his way of coping with disaster. He wears his pilot badges proudly on his uniform, and she is always there to see him off. His first mission is to do to the enemies what they did to their country, and Hinata, at the back of her eyelids, as she tries to fall asleep, sees just more disfigured bodies, hears only more cries for help.
Two days after that, Hinata wakes up being thrown to the floor from the chair where she hoped she’d take a nap, her whole body hurting. The dimension of the attack can’t be said at night, but in the morning it becomes just too much. Half of their town is destroyed. The survivors are evacuated during the next week, only fighters and savers camping at the Hyuuga estate staying behind, holding the lines.
Then Neji comes back and her hands start to tremble, because she can hear him, from different parts of the house, but he’s not coming to her, and the patient in front of her is only screaming harder in pain. He has bad news, she thinks as she cuts open the man’s stomach, his only relief being a sponge in his mouth, to be bitten as hard as possible. It pains her to know that the medicine she needs so hard is stopped at the border, in fear it would do more harm than good to them. The sewing back part is always the hardest, because her mind starts spinning, thinking that she’s butchering these people, not saving them. So when she is done with it, she moves as far away from the main hall, full of wounded, because if that means to be a saver, then she doesn’t exactly wants to be one anymore. But she knows that they’re short on people, that hundreds maybe would have died without her, but just as many died because she wasn’t good enough.
When she reaches the hallway, she realizes that her hands are unwashed and until Neji screams her name, she doesn’t realize there’s someone else around. He turns and says sorry to the person that accompanies him, but she can’t really see his features in the dim lighted hallway.
“This is Sasuke Uchiha, he’s a pilot.”
Hinata can feel it from the way she is watched like he’s hawk is ready to gauge her eyes out. She wipes her hands on the white apron, blood already dried on her fingers.
“He has some wounds. Please tend to him.”
Neji could have simply taken him to the main room, where all the nurses are, but Hinata smiles at him when she thinks that maybe he trusts only her with one of his comrades. Straining her body not too feel the fatigue obvious under her eyes, she takes his hand in hers and guides him through the house, into her bedroom. She stops to wash her hands, as she gestures for him to sit down on the bed in which she doesn’t have the luxury of sleeping anymore. Then, she sits on a chair, facing him, looking at him as hungrily as he did on the hallway, and even if he found her staring several time while she gently worked on tearing his shirt and seizing the seriousness of his wounds, she doesn’t find it in her to look elsewhere.
His breath is even and he doesn’t say a word, even as she disinfects his wound, though his brows furrow and he closes his eyes. Only when she moves on applying an ointment at one of his deep scratches, near his eyes, does he speak.
“My whole family died in the last attack.”
She doesn’t stop treating his wound. The way he says it, like he has already seen it tens of other times, like he’s too tired to care anymore, makes her fully aware he doesn’t need pity or whatever she has to give. And when her eyes find his, it’s the same feeling in there as well, and she lungs her arms around his neck, careful not to touch any of his wounds, in a hug that he does not reply to.
That night he kisses her. It’s forced and it’s like he wants to make her remember something, himself forgetting everything.
His name becomes a constant in Neji’s speech, and Hinata smiles a little, seeing how a friendship is blooming between the two of them. Sasuke doesn’t have a home anymore, and they are close enough for Neji to offer him a place to come back to.
When he’s home, Neji keeps her company, and his jokes do more to her patients than to herself, but she’s still grateful. Because when she’s alone, after the cries of pain of the wounded end, after the march of the soldiers on the street stops, she cries for those who are not fallen yet.
Sasuke kisses her often, and in the dark of some recluse parts of the house, he usually brushes his lips against her temple, her forehead or her nose, instead of her lips, and it makes it all the more intimate. It’s usually before he takes his leave, and Hinata would turn her head away, while his eyes flicker in recognition.
She thinks that maybe she reminds him of a former lover, and Sasuke doesn’t clear things up, because in a way, she does just that: remind him of a former lover that bears the same name as her, but one that didn’t even find out his.
She still listens to the news and with every battle they lose, she learns to count one more scar on Sasuke’s body. Every time he’s back from a mission, she silently takes him by his hand, tends to his wounds and he kisses away her worries.
She thinks again that she’s the one saved instead of being the one that saves, but she never gets to voice out this idea. Because his stories make her dizzy and he dances around the subject, not to hurt her. She hugs him tighter and wishes people would just start telling her things earlier, giving her time to adjust to changes.
But Sasuke never does this and in a bed that Hinata has outgrew, they both make a pact with their devils to let them be happy for a night, for a few minutes, for a few seconds where they can imagine there’s only them in the world. But he never forgets something, there’s always something at the back of his mind, the shadow of his thoughts hovering over both of them. Hinata kisses him, because she’s oblivious and happy and deep in her heart, determined to keep what she has now, with him.
And then failures after failures come in every circumstance they’re fighting, but especially over the pilots of their nation: unidentified projectiles being launched at their planes before they can accomplish their mission, and Neji has to hug his cousin and pat her back to keep her from fainting again.
Both men hurry to change in their uniform and Hinata is left trembling in the hallway and she feels a sour taste in her mouth, until she realizes it’s blood, but biting the inside of her cheek is the only thing that keeps her grounded.
When they’re back, Hinata almost saw them pale and dead, dead, dead. Neji leaves silently, leaving the lovers a few minutes alone. Sasuke hugs her and for minutes in a row, he waits for her stance to relax, her breath to even out. And when it does, he slips an old ring on her finger, and all they can do is stare into each other’s eyes. Sasuke’s bear such fulfillment that Hinata is taken aback by the love.
“I wanted to do it the last time”, he says, and Hinata smiles, because they had been promoted and Neji asked for a celebration, before they immediately had to leave. But Sasuke seem like he is referring to some other time, much older than they are, so far in past that years have eaten every sign of what happened once.
And then he turns around and leaves. But he stops at the exit and asks, his back still at his now fiancée.
“Who do you want me to save?”
Yourself. Neji. The country. My heart. Yourself. Yourself. Yourself.
But she doesn’t answer so he doesn’t do it.
When Neji comes back, he’s wearing death like a second self, and she is attacked by his apologies.
Sasuke looks over the decorations of the tablecloth, as Sakura, opposed to him, talks about her night spent working, tiredness obvious in the darkness under her eyes. She stops with a happy sigh, as the food is brought to their table, and he gives a curt nod to the waiter.
And then she returns to another row of words sputtering to which he can’t really give his attention. Instead, he’s more interested in the fight of a couple a few tables away from their own. The man has a habit of passing his hand through his hair, mostly in exasperation, while the girl, with a long black purplish hair, is frowning, unable to actually finish even a sentence, stopped mainly by her partner’s outburst.
Hinata notes dully how much she would have cared, if before Naruto was another her, one that wasn’t loved, but now she’s here and her quest didn’t include arguing with him, periodically.
Sakura, which now isn’t talking anymore, is watching the quarrel as well, spreading her arm over the table to hold Sasuke’s, in a way making sure they would never make such a show of one of their fights. If he is to appreciate one thing about the girl in front of him, that is that she knows to keep her personal things personal, even if she is actually a huge lover of scandal and gossiping. He supposes her job as a celebrity magazine editor fitted her best.
And then he turns back to the couple, now the man up on his feet, glasses turned upside down on the table, the girl still seemingly unbothered by his outburst.
“You are saying another’s man name in your sleep every night!”
And with that, Hinata deems that the restaurant had enough of a show for the day. Elegantly, she puts her sunglasses on her nose, grabbing her bag and turning towards the door.
“Hinata! Hinata – you can’t, you just can’t leave like that!”
But she turns around at the entrance, waves in the blonde’s direction, while Sasuke is sure, though he couldn’t see, that her eyes are glued to him.
Sakura turns to him, after the blonde was approached by a waiter, and then she mutters “what a bitch” under hear breath so happily, that it makes Sasuke retreat his hand and lose his appetite.
The next days, he can’t stop getting glimpses of her: at the row of his favorite coffee shop, in the crowd of people on the other side of the road. It scares him how easily he started noticing something, just because they looked once at each other.
And that’s when his phone starts ringing and the next time he looks up she disappeared. He picks up every time, hurrying his pace so his father won’t have reasons to scream in his face as he does on the phone.
By the time the day ends, he’s already too tired to phone Sakura and he’s not sure he wants to do that either. He decides to stop by his favorite coffee shop, not ready to go home, but not feeling like doing anything else either. And then there she is, munching on the end of a pen, sketchbook open in front of her, a cup of hot chocolate on the table. Before he even knows what he’s doing, he is already sitting on the chair opposite of her, while she raises her head from her sketchbook, startled, but immediately smiling at him.
“Hello,” she says and Sasuke doesn’t reply until the waiter who brought his coffee leaves.
She closes her sketchbook and stretches her ink stained hand ahead, trembling just slightly, as he takes it.
“Hyuuga Hinata.”
“Sasuke Uchiha.”
I know, she wants to say, but instead asks him if he drinks his coffee flavored or black. He’s almost amazed at how easily the conversation flows, though she still dodges his eyes and blushes and looks down whenever he’s a little bit too bold, too close.
And then she excuses herself, but Sasuke isn’t going to let her go this easy. Grabbing one end of her sketchbook, while she holds the other one, he tugs.
“Would you please give me your number?”
She stares at him, eyes a little bit open, a little bit sad. It’s too easy, she think bitterly, and hates this life the most, because she feels like this time, she doesn’t deserve it.
Then Sasuke lets her sketchbook go and she drags it into her bag. Then, before she gets her pencil case as well, she takes out a pen and scribbles something on the tissue on the table.
Unworthy she might be, but it doesn’t diminish her happiness. Leaving a startled Sasuke behind, she waves in his direction and leaves the coffee shop.
Sasuke stares and stares and then finally gets his phone out and types out the numbers, pressing the call button at the end.
“Thank you!” He breathes, low and Hinata might have not heard him if she wasn’t used to this part of Sasuke. He is blushing, she’s sure, and the thought makes her smile.
“You’re welcome,” she answers, and it’s almost motherly. She ends the call and then decides to go to the art gallery one more time, to make sure the pieces are all in their place.
Sasuke spends that night searching information about that one particular Hyuuga. Although this name was widely known in his business, it looks like Hinata has no relation to that, instead being a modern painter, that took themes from their history and putting them in art. It looks like she was highly acclaimed by the public, and her first exhibition will open the next day, featuring some of her famous paintings, but also a lot of new ones that only completed the theme.
History of a family was the exhibition’s name, and Sasuke feels horribly awkward as he stays in the doorway, unsure if he should enter the building. But he did the mistake of calling Hinata and telling her he’ll be coming, and so he takes a deep breath and enters.
Hinata is chatting with some of the other visitors, dressed in an elegant simple red dress, wearing lipstick in a similar shade and only an elegant necklace. She smiles upon seeing him, but does no move to get to him, so instead he turns to look at her works.
The few pictures he saw on the internet do no justice to the actual works. They are put in order, showing the life of a family from feudal Japan, starting with… an arranged marriage. The girl in the painting is crying, though her face is dark, only her tears visible, while the man next to her is handing her a handkerchief, to dry her tears. It makes him think that their life is already going to be unhappy and based on politics, but instead the next paintings show them on their wedding day, both smiling, and on different other occasions, just as enthralled by the existence of the other as in the first painting.
And then he gets closer to the end, the story unfolding, becoming too much for his mind, too familiar to his heart. It strikes him then that the girl looks exactly just as Hinata, while the man really does… resemble him.
Hinata is at his side now, smiling and asking him something, but he has only one thought in his head.
“How?”
“I keep having these dreams…” Which are just memories.
“Whose names are you saying in your sleep?” He inquires, dizzy and unsure on his feet, looking at the last painting, ‘Young widow cleaning her honorable dead’s head’.
Hinata gets closer and closer, looking him in the eyes, searching for the confirmation that this was not all for nothing. That somehow, his mind has also shares what hers hold.
“Yours.”
Sasuke feels her stopping at his side seconds later than he did and the wind outside makes her hair dance, touching his skin, and his hands grab his weapons harder. She surveys the area, veins popping around her eyes and she nods.
“It’s clear,” she says and in her tone it’s the coldness of the Hyuuga clan heiress.
He has to remind himself that this Hinata is a killing machine that can see his inside and might even hear his thoughts the next time he will see her – and he is still as madly in love with her, because she still radiates a caring nature. For her purposes and her interests, determined as she had Naruto in front of her since day one of her existence, but still having one.
Dropping to the ground, he has only one thought in his mind: that even in this changed reality of their initial one, he’ll get close enough to Hinata.
To make her remember as vividly as he does the happenings of some other lives.
But she’s now a sannin and her lips pluck as he looks at him, stopped in his tracks. He knows that now her teammates are Naruto and Sakura, and her only choices were to get stronger and stronger or be left behind, and she desperately clanged to whatever she could learn, no matter how many scars she earned from this effort. And he knows that he’s a weakling, the big disappointment of the undead Uchiha clan and she probably hates him the most for having the best conditions to become the best and failing.
But he managed to watch after her, to appreciate her growth, to see her becoming someone so different, yet still someone who still stirred something in him.
As he drops to the ground, tired and his whole body hurting from the mission, he asks for a break, to wait for the others as well, and she doesn’t say anything, but lounges on her back next to him, closing her eyes and breathing, as she wasn’t able to do it ever since they started the mission.
Then she rolls around on her stomach, and start to boringly dangle her legs in the air.
“Uchiha.”
“Hn.”
And then she brushes his hair like he’s a child, but she grins like he’s made of poison.
“You did well.”
He grunts again in response, remembering a time when he told that to another her and how amusing it is that the roles are inverted now.
From now they can hear Akamaru’s excited bark and Hinata’s mouth twitches while Sasuke cringes, preparing himself for the inevitable hug he’ll get from Kiba, his teammate.
No. My temporary teammate.
Because he didn’t like to think of this timeline as a good one, as one in which his wishes would come true. Everything’s temporary, until the next time he’ll die, until the next time he’ll see her again.
But still, he should enjoy the time here; he should make sure he tries his best, nonetheless.
So when Hinata wants to get up, he snatches her arm and pulls her into his owns, kissing her. It feels right and fulfilling, but their hearts pump in their chests – this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong. They both still smile when they part.
“Don’t get cocky, Sasuke.”