Disclaimer: Naruto is of the ridiculously large franchise of Kishimoto. Wish I had half his genius to create something so damn cool. Oh and the title is inspired by an Arctic Monkey's song. Kudos to anyone who guesses it and spots the little line taken from YUI's Laugh Away music video. It's been awhile and I may be rusty but enjoy yourselves.
………
"Courage was not always a matter of yes or no. Sometimes it came in degrees, like the cold; sometimes you were very brave up to a point and then beyond that point you were not so brave."
-Tim O'Brien
……
Before the Lights Come On
By Sketched Words
……
Hinata first realizes Uchiha Sasuke looks quite different than usual happens to be the day she first spills coffee on him.
She's juggling her purse and coffee mug while twisting her damn keys to lock the door, a door that never really closes. Something she should have told the land lord to fix the day she signed the lease but never actually got around to asking. The hallway lights are dim, practically pitch-black that she's tempted to run back into her apartment to snatch a flashlight to illuminate this darkness.
But she doesn't. She's already late for work at the hospital and can't spare another minute drowning in this darkness.
Besides, she prides herself in accepting the inevitable, even if it is only a door with a slight closing malfunction or a hallway in dire need of a change in light bulbs.
The prone foot sprawled on the floor changes all that.
As the door finally clicks satisfactorily, she turns on impulse only to trip over the foot and the attached body. The coffee splatters, staining her pale blouse while searing a hollering Uchiha. Gasping is the only sound of her coherent apology. Oh shit, is the only modest reply the Uchiha yells dabbing at the large dark stain blossoming on his shirt.
Hinata's mind races as she shuffles through her purse, pulling out a tissue-pack to toss to the glowering Uchiha. His look hardens as he pulls out tissues to press against the scalding coffee stain and again she attempts an apology but fails, her voice strangling in shame.
Besides, she never prides herself in this weakness at confrontations, or any social situation for that matter.
Silence as thick as cotton overwhelms the hallway and Hinata suffocates in its denseness. Her throat is dry and she's not entirely sure how to compose herself in the Hyuuga manner to apologize and flee from the steaming Uchiha. Softly she curses the dim lights and glances at her obstinate door when she feels the Uchiha's eyes upon her glowering in his intensity. Apprehensive, she shifts her focus to anything but escape and soon finds herself observing the Uchiha groom himself back to perfection, scrubbing at the coffee stain with a ferocity she's only seen in war.
She notes quietly that his hair has grown back, its hue rivaling the blackness of the coffee coating the Uchiha and herself. He looks better with long hair, she muses, healthier too than he did during his stay at the hospital. Then again, no one staying at the hospital ever looks healthier than an ashen corpse – including the doctors and nurses.
But still, something else is different today with the Uchiha.
His fingers rough with the markings of battle, twitch every so often. His eyes, once an endless black night, bleed a richer and darker red than the blood spilt on the soil outside Konoha's gates. The dark circles that encase such color hollow out the beauty, haunting. And then there is the scar. Knitted skin trails from the edge of his left eyebrow, flowing down across his taunt jaw to wind around his neck before retreating underneath the security of a collared shirt. Some say it marks the path of the snake, of betrayal, of deceit. To Hinata, his scar marks the path of his loss.
Loss of what, she cannot say.
But war, she thinks, has changed everyone. The Uchiha is not immune to its affects as she had previously thought.
She doesn't realize she's been staring at him for the last five minutes until he awkwardly clears his throat. And that's another thing that's changed. Before the Uchiha was never awkward.
He hands her the tissues back, grunting in what she politely assumes is gratitude. She stands there for a moment, holding the tissues and not moving – just enjoying the utter stillness and smothering silence. The Uchiha doesn't frighten her. At least not in the same way she felt before she spilled her coffee on him.
He looks at her with a strange shadow playing in his red eyes that holds her breathe as she tries to return its intensity. It overwhelms her once more, and she finds her eyes downcast and drawn to the fiercely scrubbed blotch staining his shirt. She almost screams at the unbidden thoughts whispering at how similar that coffee stain reminds her of all the blood stains she's had to clean herself.
Her hands shake a bit as she tightens her grasp on her tissue pack.
The Uchiha doesn't notice or rather doesn't seem to care as he casually slouches into his original position before the crazy coffee incident occurred. She blinks at him, sitting his back to the door of the apartment right next to hers, Apt. 247. She wonders whose apartment that actually is, never finding the chance to introduce herself to neighbors despite the weeks she's lived here.
Another moment wastes away in silence before she asks if he needs any help.
He replies trenchantly that no, he is waiting for someone. And that she's done enough help for the day so fuck off.
She blanches but holds her ground. She hasn't felt this need to know and act in years that it's addicting, this blatant recklessness of provoking a pissed-off Uchiha. She'll probably regret it later, but for now she stays.
Quietly she asks if he's lost the key to his apartment and needs help finding it. He ignores her, opting to stare listlessly at the opposing wall finding the peeling paint more interesting than this nosy mute girl.
She fidgets at this unpronounced rejection. Sighing, she folds unto herself sliding down across her own apartment door in a position very similar to the Uchiha. His eyes flicker to her in curiosity before vanishing beneath a scowl. She doesn't return his stare. Her fingers twiddle on the ends of her tissue pack just waiting.
The silence stretches for what seems like eternity to Hinata. The hallway feels dead, hollow, and empty despite the Uchiha sitting right beside her. And when she finally feels the stillness of the whole situation about to snuff out her sanity, she slowly rises from the floor.
She doesn't dust her clothes off but turns politely in the direction of the Uchiha and bows. In silence and darkness does she leave the Uchiha alone in the hallway, suffocating in its void.
……
When she returns back from a gruesome and sweaty shift at the hospital, she's not entirely sure what she feels seeing Apt. 247 deserted from the Uchiha. He's gone and she guesses it's what she could only expect from someone as enigmatic and confusing as the Uchiha.
She sighs, walking just a little closer to Apt. 247.
Her heart tightens in emotion though when she feels the little strain of warmth emitting from the door of Apt. 247. She inclines her head in a bow at the door, similar to this morning before turning around and entering her own apartment – her door surprisingly smooth in its closure.
……
Her door is apparently fixed, opening and closing smoother than the flow of coffee pouring into her mug this morning. She doesn't quite fully recall if she ever did approach her landlord about her door's slight closing malfunction. Despite this little bout of amnesia, gratitude keeps her step light and her eyes crinkled in a secret smile.
However her gratitude is capped when she tediously opens her apartment door, scanning the dark hallway. Her eyes immediately pick out the prone form of the Uchiha once again leaning on the door of Apt. 247. The Uchiha meets her stare in a bored nod as he returns his attention to the peeling paint of the opposing wall.
Her eyes crinkle and she slips out into the hallway, closing her own door before sliding against it and sitting beside the Uchiha. He says nothing but does glance at her from time to time. The silence once again impresses upon her, but Hinata is too buzzed from the change that her tolerance snaps sooner than yesterday.
And just like yesterday, she stands up and bows leaving her coffee mug with the watchful Uchiha.
She returns home to a waiting fresh batch of coffee steaming in her mug sitting by her apartment door. Her eyes crinkle as she gently picks up the full mug and takes a sip.
His coffee tastes of silence and hope.
……
It's become nothing but habit for her to open her door and see the Uchiha resting against Apt. 247. She always joins him and waits in the silence for a few minutes before leaving with a polite bow. She doesn't ask too many questions since she knows he'd never answer half of them. But she enjoys this little respite of companionable tranquility every morning. Another escape from the chaos and expectations of society, she tries to tell herself.
Except there's always something more to it. And lately, the Uchiha seems a little too restless around her as if he were an animal pacing inside a cage. All the Uchiha does is wait.
One day she sits beside him, feeling as if their distance and silence is clawing through her heart. It plays with her memories and the shadows of this dim hallway encroach upon her in fear. She can't muster the courage to sit closer to touch him. Instead she talks.
Her stuttering words stab at the silence in blunt and awkward sounds, but the tension and fear are gone. And so she rambles on about nothing and everything. He doesn't reply but she knows he listens. His posture is taunt and still as she talks.
She thinks he's probably been waiting for her to open up, but dashes the thought away.
Her voice croaks and throbs, rusty from the silence she's lived in for so long. She can't remember the last time she talked like this and even tells him so. His slight nod of acknowledgement, fuel her fumbling words to talk.
She tells him about family, sometimes about her own or someone else's. She shivers at their cold stares, more like strangers of blood than a family of smiles. How their words use to burn and tear at her heart, how they bruised and battered her dreams. She tells him of honor, duty, and the bullshit it's full of. There was once one who did care, a mother who died young. But it happens, doesn't it? And besides that point, we never really do get a choice at family, do we?
She thinks she ought to be crying at this point. But she talks on, feeling as if she stops now she'll never speak again.
The Hyuuga complex, she says, was just a fancy prison. No, more like a high-class tomb. Its white-washed walls that reflected the sterile silence within. The walking pale and beautiful corpses staring past her eyes. The utter control of puppets dancing to a tune everyone but me hears.
She hates it, she says, but she escaped.
This time she doesn't elaborate on her freedom. He doesn't need to know the details of her hunger and coldness or the fear that ate at her every night because it all pales in comparison to what she has just revealed. She never wants to go back.
Rather she came here, and she tells him so. She lets her tragedy sink into the atmosphere before dissolving into the silence. She wonders what makes this silence in this dingy dim hallway different from the white-washed blinding silence at the Hyuuga complex.
The thought perturbs her and so she stands up and bows, retreating down the hallway. Before she's out of earshot, he shouts at her.
You're an idiot, he breathes, for coming here.
…….
The next day, she exits her apartment straight into a thick fog of cigarette smoke. She coughs, covering her nose with her hand as she frowns at the silent smoke alarm. Her gaze shifts to the Uchiha, a paper thin cigarette hanging from his lips.
He bellows out a steam of smoke straight into her frowning face, her eyes tearing up. The apartment floor is littered in stubs of used cigarettes and she asks how long he's been up, smoking.
His answer is another puff of smoke straight into her face with the accompanied ever-polite fuck off. Her disapproval pierces through the fog of toxics frowning at his deadpan stare. She doesn't sit beside him, not with that foul shit hanging from his lips so in a stalemate do the two stare, quiet.
The cigarette's smoke billows in the atmosphere, soaking up their tension.
However the vapors burn her lungs and eyes, and she gasps coughing uncontrollable. She briskly bows before running from the smoke. She feels her face burn from the poison and the sensation of his dark eyes ablaze in her mind.
She never does hear him exhale one last stream of fog before snuffing the cigarette on the heel of his shoes. Damn, he mutters basking in the loneliness and venom in the air.
He frowns, looking at all the cigarette buds surrounding Apt. 247 and mutters again. Damn.
…….
Hinata avoids returning to her apartment for almost three days, working double shifts and sleeping at the hospital when exhaustion overwhelms her. She hates the sight of blood, but the Uchiha's dead stare unnerves her even more so she stays. It is only after she's completed a 48 hour shift sustained solely on coffee and granola bars that she's forced to go home, back to the room next to Apt. 247.
The hallway is dim when she enters, but the Uchiha is not there waiting at Apt.247. Instead, only the clean floor free of cigarette buds or smoke greets her tired eyes. Nothing waits for her today. But right now, she's too tired to care. In a daze does she enter her own apartment door, oblivious to the warmth emitting from her own apartment door.
Today, she doesn't care.
…….
Hinata doesn't leave her apartment the next day, sleeping in from the exhaustion of her shifts at the hospital. She keeps her mind busy from straying to the Uchiha sitting outside on the door of Apt. 247 by cleaning her own home.
She's neglected her house plants, wilting brown in their small pots. The dishes pile high with grim and crumb of her sparse and lone meals. Dust has settled snuggly on her shelves and furniture, itching her nose in sneezes and allergies.
She needs to clean this defunct apartment, and not think about the Uchiha waiting outside. She needs to start living again.
…….
She's finished cleaning, the exertion of the task dusting her pale cheeks pink. But now she's left at an impasse wondering how the piles of trash she's accumulated are to be disposed without running into the Uchiha outside. She's trapped in this apartment if she cannot face the Uchiha and the thought maddens her beyond rage.
Huffing, she picks up the bags and waddles to her apartment door. She doesn't burst out and dash down the hallway as originally planned but peeks through a crack of her door. The Uchiha isn't waiting by Apt. 247 today. Sighing in something besides relief, she pushes the door open with her hip, dragging the bags behind her. Her efforts stop when a voice startles her to attention.
You never came out, the Uchiha accuses.
He's standing across from her door looking tired as hell but she says nothing.
He stares pointedly at her, expecting her to say something. But today she has nothing to offer except a small frown that masks her fear. This time he sighs pushing off against the wall toward her. Immediately she tenses, on guard and distrustful of his actions but he only reaches behind her to snag the trash bags.
Grunting, he lifts the two largest bags from the floor and looks expectantly at her to pick up the last one. She blinks owlishly staring at him and the bag.
Pick it up, he intones turning down the dim hallway.
She fumbles to follow, unsure of his actions or why the hell she's following him anyways. He leads her down to the dumpster, always a few steps ahead of her trailing slow pace. She feels wary when he easily tosses the trash bags into the dumpster and even relieves her of her own burden to toss. When all's done and finished, he turns to her with something deep lurking in those dark eyes.
She's reminded of the day all this started, when she first noticed the change in the Uchiha before her.
Her voice feels sticky in her throat but she manages to thank him and ask would he, by chance, like to share a cup of coffee with her?
He nods hesitantly and this time she leads the trailing Uchiha back to her apartment past the closed door of Apt. 247. She sees him throw a glance at that door before snapping his eyes back to her own inquiring ones.
The lights here are much brighter than the dim hallway and she sees him squint at its glare and shine. To her, these lights are a blessing highlighting his features she had only barely detected out front of her door. Scars jump from his pale skin and everything about him is intensified in these bright lights of hers. His eyes have become richer and darker in their hue observing her home as his whole body moves in precise and graceful steps.
He's beautiful and she's suddenly blushing so she excuses herself to the kitchen to hide it. When she returns with two steaming mugs though she notes the strange uplifted twitching at the end of his lips and points it out.
The twitch spreads higher for a moment before the Uchiha smoothes out his entire face with that damn impassive expression. She swears that if her heart wasn't beating this rapidly, it might have all been a trick of the eye – the Uchiha's brief gift of a smile.
She tries not to meet his gaze as she passes him the mug and sinks deep into her chair, praying she might disappear into it. He holds it, contemplating the depths of muddy coffee within before setting it down.
I'm sorry, he begins. He looks at her unsure how to continue and she nods her head a little, encouraging him. He exhales deeply, staring at the coffee mug as he talks.
When the Uchiha talks, his whole voice resonates in the walls deep and thrumming. Hinata decides she loves this sound, his voice, and these new feelings make his story all the more poignant in her heart. He doesn't stutter, like she does, nor does he fumble with words. The Uchiha examines and picks at his words, selecting each sound carefully as if he'd been practicing this speech for hours.
And she listens.
She listens to his family, distant yet lovingly – dying too young for a boy to really appreciate or understand what it meant to have a Father or know a Mother. She listens to his brother, stoic but always playful around his younger brother and making promises he always intended to keep. She doesn't need to hear him describe the cutting betrayal he felt at his brother's mass murder or the loss and loneliness that surrounded him.
He tells her of new hope, friends, teachers, and the burning feeling that melted something cold inside. He tells her of madness, power, and his own betrayal. He tells her of sinking into darkness that felt endless, that pulled at his legs the harder he struggled. He never speaks of his surrender.
And then he says something that pulls at her heart real hard that she wishes she wasn't listening at this point.
Everything's changed because of Naruto, he pauses head almost falling into his clenched fists. She's tempted to stand up and wrap her hands around his own if hers weren't shaking so God damn hard too.
That damn bastard, he says. And sometimes I wished it hadn't because its times like these, waiting outside that fucking door that it hurts like hell. He's gone and I just can't accept that.
Damn it! he snarls, standing up and facing the window. His shoulders are so still that she worries he'll break from such stillness.
There are times when I wish I could just leave this fucking village and chase that bastard down. He has to still be out there. I can't accept that he's… gone.
And this time he turns around with eyes so hard, Hinata realizes, that all the tears have gone dry. They share in a moment of silence and pain. He's lost the first and only real friend, one who fought and dragged him back from hell, as she's lost her first love, unrequited and naïve, that inspired her to great freedoms she's always seen in the depths of eyes holding the skies.
He's gone and even though I can't accept that… I'm the one that has to fucking clean out his apartment. They charged me the honor, the duty, the bullshit of erasing his last tangent existence from Konoha… as his friend! Am I that much of a bastard to be the one to finally expunge his last memories from life?!
He's pacing around now, restless and ranting. She can't stop him from speaking, her voice long gone at the slight mention of his name and the loss it brings. But even if she could, she doesn't think she will. The Uchiha has been waiting for this, for so damn long. She needs this just as much as he does.
A few weeks ago, they gave me a key. The key to Apt. 247, right next door. It's why you moved here wasn't it? He glances at her for a response but doesn't pause long enough for her to find the courage to admit it.
That damn key to Apt. 247. It was supposed to be cleared out… so long ago it seems. But I couldn't do it. He slows in his pacing wrenching the next few words clean from his chest.
I lost that damn key. And I don't think I want to find it.
He's silent. After so much talk, he's poured himself empty and exhausted the words of every God damn thing. He collapses into the chair, running his fingers through his dark hair.
And she's quiet. She's left speechless after exposure to such uncharacteristic loquacity of the Uchiha. And such depth and pain. Who knew such hell burned through those dark eyes of his?
But after some time, she stands up and approaches him in slow small steps. She lifts his heavy chin, cupping his smooth face under her pale and tiny hands and through her own pale unwavering eyes, she offers something: solace, forgiveness, understanding, or hope.
Whatever it is, the Uchiha takes it all.
…….
The Uchiha leaves before the lights come on. And all that's there to mark his presence is one untouched coffee cup.
…….
The next morning is different, changed from her night with the Uchiha. She walks out of her door looking at Apt. 247's door but doesn't sit with him. He's not there. She looks around the hallway and sees no one.
It's then that she notices the hallway is no longer dim. Somebody's changed the light bulbs and now that she sees herself all alone, she wishes they hadn't. She doesn't know what to do and in her daze, sticks to the habit of bowing to Apt. 247 before walking away.
Maybe the Uchiha will be back later.
…….
She's left work in a rush, hair damp from her run after work. The lights are still glaringly bright when she slips into the hallway but one glance at Apt. 247 dashes her hopes.
The Uchiha's not here.
Her feet stumble toward the door and she wonders if yesterday was all a dream. Her legs buckle and she crashes against the wall, tumbling toward that damn door of Apt. 247. She lays by its old and rusted paint, staring at the ground until the world blurs in emotion.
She's crying. She tells herself to stop, stop crying. It doesn't matter. He doesn't care. He doesn't matter. But still her mind wraps around those three blunt words she heard in a whisper, a caress in the dark while the lights were out.
I loved yesterday.
She stays at that door of Apt. 247, waiting. She cries harder.
…….
An incessant voice shakes her awake, a crick in her neck aches from falling asleep against Apt. 247. The lights are still bright and glaring, almost blinding in a way. She rubs at her eyes before a rough but gently hand smoothes the hair behind her ears and now she's wide awake.
The eyes of the Uchiha glisten darkly at her.
They stare at one another, searching the other's eyes for some reason and it's him that speaks first.
I'm sorry I had to leave you alone. So soon. But there was something I had to do… to find, he speaks slowly brining his other hand before her. She watches with wide eyes as his fingers uncurl around a key – a simple key of bronze, tarnished with abuse and old age. For a moment her mind disconnects with the image, simply staring until his deep chuckle brings her back. She looks questioningly at his slight nod before hesitantly touching this ordinary key from his palm. His hand tightens around hers for a moment and then releases, falling away to his side.
This ordinary key feels so light in her hand exactly like how she felt every time she glanced at the skies in his eyes. She looks at it in wonder, shaking at the immensity it brings. Her legs stand of their own accord and she's got the key in the lock ready to turn it when she stops.
The Uchiha is watching from the opposing wall, distant and apprehensive. She walks over to him and takes his shaking hand encasing it within her own sweaty grip. And she smiles.
I'm scared shitless, he grudgingly admits.
Her smile widens and brightens, Me too.
She holds his hand and he holds hers. Together they unlock the door, allowing its groaning lock to echo in this empty hallway. They open the door and step through.
………
End.
.......
A.N: Not my best writing in terms of sentence structures, adjectives, descriptions, or grammar. But certainly my most rawest and deepest writing. I am proud.