gigiree:

Day 1 Trampoline, Continuation of the day 1 prompt. This combines day 2, stress and day 3, Roads.
—

It’s not really the rejection that bothers her. She’s gotten over it. She confessed once, didn’t get a reply…although she can’t really blame Naruto for that one. Nearly transforming into an eldritch fox made of burning chakra could do a number on one’s memories.

So the next time she tells him, she lays it all out with no expectations. And she’s okay. She makes it out in one piece, with her minimal expectations of maintaining a good friendship met.

She’s been down all those roads, but she’s still meandering. That had simply been a detour on wherever her heart was taking her, floating away on dashed hopes and dreams and her trailing after it like a wispy cloud.

So bringing Sasuke his missing groceries is something strange for her to decide to do. It’s a decisive thing. A kind thing. A silly thing prompted by a shopping list written out on personalized stationery.

She asks Sakura where she may find him, only to receive a look of incredulity and a friendly warning.

“Oh you’re so sweet, Hinata. If he bugs you in any way, just tell me and I’ll set him straight…or Naruto will. I think Sasuke listens to him a lot more than to me.” Sakura says with a warm smile, and a little bit of pained nostalgia.

She looks like she wants to say more, but merely gives Hinata an encouraging pat and moves on down the street to attend to her daily duties at the hospital.

The flash storm of yesterday has left the town a little more refreshed. Although all the moisture had dried up with the rising of the sun, Hinata still finds the scent of rain lingering in the shadier spots.

It’s nice. It reminds her of her own chakra, sparking and full of clarity. It’s with this thought that she finds herself bearing the heat of the summer sun on her bare legs, the beams harsh on the skin exposed by the cuff of her dark shorts and her sleeveless shirt.

Still, she holds the brown bag of groceries close, and looks at the wrinkled, slightly torn list she’s tucked in between the tomatoes and the tea blend.

“I’ve got all of it.” She assures herself, and that manages to buoy her confidence…at least until she reaches the beginnings of the once inhabited Uchiha district.

The sunlight seems to wane a bit here, the lengthy shadows of derelict buildings stretching out like begging ghosts to ensnare those who still remember.

She feels her eyes burning a bit, and uses the back of her hand to wipe her tears away. This isn’t her sadness to carry, and she’s fairly sure Sasuke isn’t the type of person who would like her sharing in this old, searing grief.

The scent of rain is sharper still here, curling in from under all the shade and the overgrown trees and flowers left unattended for so long.

Derelict the buildings may be, but the bright yellow crocuses and daisies that stubbornly grow here show her that there was once life and love here, and that there is still a seed of it that’s gone and moved on, sprouting towards the sun.

She envies them. They have a sense of direction.

She walks down the upraised cobblestone street, turns left at the weirdly shaped cypress that looks like Kakashi-sensei and comes upon a little traditional house.

It stands out in that it’s fairly well kept, the aged wood of the outdoor walkway ringing the house is still solid. The white of the walls is clean and fresh. The blue black tiles of the sweeping roof are all accounted for, although if she looks close, she can tell that a few of those tiles are newer.

There’s an adorable ghost doll hanging from one of the wide windows. She hopes it brings this little home good weather. A few flowers cluster under the window sills, bright reds and whites and oranges bringing a spot of careful color to the plain motif.

Perhaps the most striking feature of all is the peony bush sprouting large purple blooms that brush against the sides of a very traditional sliding door.

This house is loved. This house is a home. She feels a lot more comfortable traveling down the stone walkway and knocking on the front entrance.

There is no answer.

She gathers her courage again, looking at the cheerful peonies who seem to wave at her with encouragement.

She knocks again.

There’s still no answer. She frowns, setting down the bag of groceries on the front porch, and quietly picks her away across the brambles and branches of the haphazard garden. She feels so badly about this, but her willful kindness is rearing it’s pretty head and making her determined.

She must apologize for the crotch-meets-umbrella incident. (Speaking of which, she’d really like her umbrella back.) So even if kindness means stepping over a particularly thorny rose bush and peek in through his window, she will.

The problem comes when said window slides open with almost a reprimand, and it bounces with the force of the movement. She is startled by a sharply spinning red gaze, burning eyes underscored by a fierce snarl.

And a dark umbrella opening up in front of her face with a vengeful fwoop.

She screams and falls backward, arms flailing as she struggles to keep her balance. Unfortunately, her shorts catch on a branch, and she is sent sprawling painfully into the thorny rose bush.

Her yelp of pain is met with a question.

“What the hell do you want?”

She momentarily can’t answer because of the stinging thorns catching onto her exposed skin, clawing at her as she struggles to stand up.

She lets out another moan of pain, her eyes wide and tearful as she finally manages to stand up. She rubs at the fresh cuts, scoring her body in too many places to heal with her chakra.

She eventually gives up and looks at her attacker, spotting his dark, annoyed eyes glaring at her over the rim of the open umbrella.

“I’m sorry…I’m just…I’m sorry for yesterday. I brought you a peace offering?”

She looks nearly tearful, and a little bit lost, a little bit lonely. (And Sasuke will never admit this, but in that moment he saw a bit of his directionless self in her.)

Perhaps that’s why he invites her inside. Perhaps that’s why he accepts her offerings without a word and why she’s allowed to sit on a cushion at his low table and tend to her wounds.

Perhaps that’s why he offers her a bottle of antiseptic and why he makes her a cup of bitter tea.

Regardless, this road has brought a soft, silly girl to his doorstep and he’s bored. There’s not much harm in entertaining someone who doesn’t need to fill up the silence all the time…even if everything is awkward and stilted.

“I’m sorry for the…crotch incident.”

He winces.

“That’s the worst thing you could have called it.”

“Sorry.” She repeats.

He’s sincerely like to throw her umbrella at her again if it would get her to stop apologizing. But she’s sincere, and doesn’t demand a lot more than a grunt of forgiveness.

She thanks him for the tea. Thanks him for his acceptance and bows politely. A clean, simple transaction.

Perhaps that’s why, when she leaves after a few quiet minutes, her tea untouched, he feels a little colder…even with the sun streaming through his home.

But for some reason, there’s a small assurance…because she forgot her umbrella again.
———

“So he opened the umbrella in your face and you fell into his rose bush? Huh…I would’ve expected more retaliation from him, to be honest. I think…” Sakura muses as she unwraps the bandages on an unconscious patient. She makes a quick observation, applies a bitter smelling salve to the grossly swelling gash on his leg, and then promptly makes a note on the chart she pulls from the pocket of her white coat.

Hinata waits for her friend to finish the sentence. She’s just come in from a low ranking mission. Her vest is torn and dirty, but it’s more from it getting caught on stray branches and cavernous walls than any attack she had experienced.

A simple rescue mission where she got a little dirty. Perfect for her current state of mental health. Perfect for giving her time to mull over her encounter with Sasuke.

Beyond the slightly childish revenge he’d pulled on her, she’s stumped. She had been expecting startling rudeness, perhaps a well-aimed genjutsu that would send umbrellas shooting into her crotch for the next forty eight hours…but that’s just it…nothing much had happened. Nothing at all.

The road had lead to an uneventful morning.

Which made her more curious, more eager to follow it because it seems that there’s a bend in this road, and there’s something exciting beyond all the stubbornly growing trees.

Finally Sakura finishes her examination. She tucks away her notepad and her pen, strips off her gloves and disposed of them correctly, before continuing.

“Where was I?”

“You think?”

“Oh yeah…I think you surprised him a lot. You shocked him out of his usual tactics. That’s why he let you in.” Her green eyes are pretty, sharp and amused as they look at Hinata. “You should try and see if you can do it again.”

“Uh-hwah?” Hinata says, startled by the idea. She’d merely been curious. Nothing beyond that. Curious and apologetic are a fairly strong combination. But now that her apology has been accepted, there isn’t anything left to pursue.

Sakura seems to think otherwise.

“It would be good for him to know people outside of Team 7. We’re all a mess…maybe it’s time for him to get to know other people.”

Hinata shakes her head.

“I can’t force my company on someone who doesn’t want it…I’m glad that I was able to apologize, but that’s as far as I will go. If he seeks friendship, he must chase it of his own volition.”

Sakura snorts and ruffles Hinata’s hair affectionately.

“You’re always so polite, Hinata. Don’t you know Naruto and I practically had to beat out friendship into Sasuke. But you…Just keep being you…and if you happen to cross paths with him again, just…roll with it.”

Hinata hums in disbelief, but affection for her friend softens it and brings a blooming smile to her face.

Sakura finds it adorable and thinks that Sasuke could benefit from a friend like Hinata Hyuuga. But she keeps these thoughts to herself.
—-

He finds her at the crossroads of a major trading route and a smaller mountain path. She is wounded and delirious. Her team is nowhere in sight.

While summer in Konoha is currently burning away the days, the summer here on the border of Amegakure is cursed with never ending rain.

She’s soaked to the bone, her headband limp against her pale throat. Her vest a barely clinging shredded thing wrapped haphazardly around her.

She is a fierce tiny thing, one moment slack as a ball-jointed doll lying against the trunk of a tree…the next, a wounded, screaming kunoichi with lightning crackling at her fingers and her white eyes all-seeing.

She has hardly any chakra left. The poorly bandaged wound right below her fifth rib is bleeding. She’s done as much as she can in healing herself, but the blood in the corner of her mouth tells him there’s not much she can do.

He is careful when he approaches her and painstakingly slow as he pulls out her umbrella from the folds of his dark cloak.

With a casual movement, he opens it and holds it over her.

She relaxes once she sees it’s only him. And then she reverts back to the girl with so many apologies in her mouth, he’s wondering why she hasn’t atoned for everyone’s sins yet.

Still, there’s a hidden kind of steel behind her polite greetings and thank you, and when she looks up at him, her eyes are not tearful, but mournful. Ashamed.

He’s long since grown past the childish need to always put down those weaker than him. He’s slowly, very slowly, assuming the role of protector of those weaker than him.

But protecting has always meant a fight for him, a noticeable effort to dispatch an enemy. Perhaps that is why when she finally slumps forward, unconscious, he catches her. Perhaps that’s why he takes her to a neutral territory, a dilapidated cabin in a strange forest.

Perhaps that’s why he bandages her wounds and feeds her clean water as her system struggles to evict the poison that she’d been cut with.

He panics…very quietly…but he panics when she wretches in her sleep and coughs up blood. He’s not good at this healing thing, but he wipes away the red bile from her chin with awkward carefulness.

Perhaps that’s why when she wakes up, slightly feverish and incoherent, babbling about how she killed her brother, he lays her back down and brushes back her hair.

Perhaps that’s why he waits until her fever is broken to silently slip away.

He leaves her a note on personalized stationery.

“It was raining, so I took your umbrella. Sorry. Drink more water and take some of the soldier pills I left in your bag. Good job on finishing the mission.”

-S.

Day 3 and 4

Well I’ll be watching out for you from now on clearly. There’s a very fresh feel to your delivery that I appreciate a lot. It’s poetic and clear all at once. Good balance, kudos again!