Miserable Joy

When he found her he didn’t make his presence known although he had a feeling he didn’t have to. She was shinobi and so he doubted that she had not heard him, his steps had not been hushed on purpose. 

Instead of saying anything he stood with his hands folded tightly within the fabric of his black cloak and he tried to breathe as normally as possible. 

She was laying on the grass, her smooth pale calves and the backs of her knees glowing by the light of the evening sun. The dress she wore every time she visited was made of a combination of lace and something smooth and white and silky beneath it. It made her a piece of snow in the summer day, laying there on the grass with her head in her hands and her black hair a curtain to separate her from the world. 

In the stillness he could see the particles of dust and pollen and summer cotton floating in the air through the gold of the sun’s light. It sparkled and glimmered and he wondered that something as distasteful as dust could look so beautiful. 

And that was the truth of life, he knew it. Because even blood when shed in the snow had a startling jaw dropping quality and the eyes of the dying always took on a hue he could never find the words to describe and Hinata laying there with the angles of her shoulder blades elegant and breath taking and her hips smooth and pleasing was a thing of beauty even laying on top of the grave that housed her Sun. 

For her, there was no warmth on the anniversary of his falling. It was always winter, right in the middle of July. He knew it because like her he could not feel the sweltering touch of the summer day, only the ice in his bones and the ache of missing him, his longest and strongest bond. 

When finally her shoulders stopped shaking with tears and the shadow of his tombstone stretched to cover her bare feet Sasuke whispered, as he always did. 

“It’s late, Hyuuga.”

And like every year since the first year when she didn’t move he walked forward, pulling her first to a sitting position on the grass, leaving stains of green on the lace dress that Naruto had given her last. 

Her eyes were dull and unseeing. It was the only day of the year when a Hyuuga was blind to the world, fixed instead on memories within her mind that haunted. 

Wordless Sasuke slid her freezing arm over his shoulder and around his neck, tucking his arm beneath her knees and hoisting her up with ease. 

Head lolling tiredly she closed her eyes, red and painful from weeping through the day. 

“I’m sorry.” she always apologized, because it was unfair for him to see this. 

And he always shook his head, starting the walk back home from the cemetery in silence, his strides long and fluid. Letting her head rest on his shoulder she closed her eyes and focused on the feeling of him rocking her as he walked. 

“I know.” He said this time, and her eyes opened as he spoke. “I know you love him.” His pace didn’t change as he moved, and his grip didn’t shift on her body but with her lips near his jugular she could feel the pulse of his heart thumping blood at an increasingly quickening pace. 

Eyes half closed she watched the warmth of the sun through the rest of the tombstones of the fallen, among them her cousin, and now too her husband. 

“…past tense.” she whispered. And this made him pause, staring straight ahead towards the exit of the the cemetery where he would take a right turn to the village outskirts, to where the Uchiha Compound now grew. He would enter the house and lay her on the couch and she would let him kiss her, and kiss her until the heat began to flow back into her body and warm her skin. And her warmth would seep into his bones and fight away the chill that overtook him from missing his best friend. 

And they would moan and sigh and move together to forget, if only for a few moments their sadness. 

But she had never said this before. Never called it her past. It was always her present, even more so on the day of his passing, it was always fresh. 

Still without looking at him her lips pressed warm despite her tears to his neck, feeling the pulse of his heart on her mouth. Pulling back she whispered. 

“I loved him.”

Finally daring to look down at her in his arms he studied her face, not as pale as it usually was after so much weeping, so much feeling, so much misery. 

Breathing in softly and shakily as she often did after heavy tears she smiled and it struck him as the most painfully beautiful thing he had seen since the dying hue of blue that had come over Naruto’s eyes as he faded away. 

“He told me… to be happy.” She whispered again, and her fingers, warmed as they touched his lips, sliding smooth over the curve of his mouth. “I love someone else now.”

And he continued walking then, unable to say anything. 

He had told her more than once the depth of what he felt for her, and so there could only be one person she meant. 

He was glad that with certainty he knew she could only mean him.