Happiness Will Bloom From Sadness
Disclaimer: Naruto and its characters don't belong to me.
AN: This is my fanfic for elsiecchie on tumblr. I was writing this and just couldn't choose between two of my ideas, so this story has two different endings. I hope you like both versions. One in a modern AU and the other one will be in canon verse, so the location of the gallery will be slightly different. To figure out what that means, please read further.
Warning: Angst Angst and some descriptions that might be a little gorey,but minimal and only done to try to describe what is going on, lie ahead. If you prefer a happy story, please consider reading the other version of this story. The beginning is the same, but it changes after that.
Prompt: Sasuke is an artist and Hinata is his muse.
Rating: K+, just in case. This is now T rated do to some descriptions of injuries
Happiness Will Bloom From Sadness
Sasuke sighed in frustration at himself. He didn't know what he had been thinking. He couldn't get her off of his mind. He turned to look out the window as the snow fell to the ground. After a few moments of contemplation, he looked back at the painting he had just done of a violet haired girl that seemed to have become such a focus in his mind without even trying. He turned back to face the window as he tried to figure out why he couldn't stop thinking about her, but truthfully he knew that he had fallen for the girl, Hinata.
It was the way her smile could bring warmth and happiness to everyone even in the deepest of blizzards,
It was the way that her hair glistened as snowflakes looked like jewels in the light before they melted away,
It was her light laugh that lifted his heart every time he heard it,
It was her patience that allowed her to stay in his company even when he was impatient, angry or sad whenever she stopped by to visit him at his studio. What had he been thinking when all he could think of to paint was her. She stood smiling in her winter jacket with a few trees that glistened with ice in the background, her eyes ever so carefully painted so that they had the slightest purple hue but still glistened with like the bright white moonlight that he saw whenever he looked into them. She was his muse, his inspiration, even if she didn't have a clue. Even if she didn't know that that day when she first entered the gallery after seeing paintings inside, not knowing that the gallery was closed because the door was open. He had been slightly annoyed and she had been embarrassed. She had gone back the next day with coffee to apologize, and had caught him into a short conversation.
After those first two encounters, she eventually began to visit more often, even as the summer turned to a chilly fall, and eventually to a freezing winter. It had become a given that she would let herself into the gallery and watch him work, sometimes even making art herself, drawing or painting, or making him a small trinket of an infinity loop with two small charms on it, one hanging from each of the loops,. One was a cinnamon roll and the other a tomato, which they had accepted as their symbols. Hinata was a cinnamon roll and Sasuke was a tomato, in regards to their favorite respective foods, and the trinket symbolized their close relationship. Whether that relationship was a romantic relationship or just one between friends was something that had remained undefined between them. That charm now hung from the lamp over his easel, a constant reminder of her, and of how he had never gotten the chance to ask her out officially, rather than just continuing their meetings over coffee or cocoa in his gallery. He had of course enjoyed those meetings and conversations, but he still wished that he had admitted his true feelings and had gotten to know what her true feelings for him were.
Sasuke ran one of his hands through his hair as he turned back to the painting and picked up a brush again, unable to let the painting be. He wanted to try to make the painting as beautiful as she truly was, but he couldn't do it, he couldn't make the painting as good as the real person. His thoughts wandered to her, the memories that he had of her, how he missed her walking through the door, with the scent of her vanilla perfume wafting through the room leaving a pleasant aroma.
Sasuke turned to look through the door, waiting, hoping, wishing that she would walk through the door again and ask how his day was with a bright smile on her face. He knew it was fruitless, he had lost her, she was not going to come back. Sasuke's heart ached and a tear slid down his face. Sasuke Uchiha didn't cry, he didn't show emotion, he didn't love- no none of that was true! Oh how he had loved her,
loved her for every word she spoke to him to help him feel better on a bad day,
loved her for every caring look that she sent his way,
loved her strength even if so many people saw her as weak,
loved her for trying to visit him even during the strongest blizzard, bringing the hot cocoa that had spilled all over the ground and stained the snow that day. What had she been thinking, walking through the blizzard? He knew it wasn't her fault, and that it wasn't the driver's either. From what he had learned, the driver had been driving extra slow and extra carefully because of the weather, but the roads were so icy. The car slid when it hit a patch of ice, the patch that sent the car onto the sidewalk that Hinata had been walking on. She had no time to move out of the way before the car hit her. Again, the car hadn't been travelling fast, but it had slid out of control and hit Hinata at an angle fast enough that she hit the ground quickly, her head hitting pavement of the shoveled sidewalk too hard.
The medics had tried their hardest to save her. Sasuke was there by the time they arrived. A waitress at the cafe a few buildings away from where the accident happened was a close friend of Hinata's. Hinata had just gotten the cocoa from that cafe a few moments ago. Her friend had gone outside when she heard the screeching of brakes and shouts. When she saw that the girl on the ground, bleeding from an injury on head that she couldn't see, was Hinata,she had cried for someone to call 911. She sat by Hinata, trying to talk to her. It was only when she saw the spilled cocoa on the ground that she had called out to her coworker to call Sasuke, yelling out the number to him as she tried to feel a pulse on Hinata's wrist.
Sasuke had arrived in only a couple of minutes, out of breath from running the few blocks from his gallery in the blizzard, not even wearing a coat. His phone was deserted somewhere on the ground of his gallery, he had dropped as soon as he had enough information from the waiter to know where Hinata and the waitress were. He collapsed beside her, not hearing a word that waitress was telling him about how the ambulance was on its way. All he could do was look at her, watching the blood pool around her as the rosy color on her cheeks started to fade. He didn't even feel the warm tears rushing down his face or the cold snow that pelted him, he was already numb, and it wasn't because he wasn't wearing his coat. It was only when the medics arrived that he was forced to leave her side as the medics started to try to save her, do everything they could. It was only then when he regained some connection with the world and saw the cups and spilled hot cocoa on the snow and ice. He turned to the waitress who had caught him looking at the cocoa. She couldn't help but to look away, knowing that he probably already felt guilty because he knew that she had been going to visit him.
Sasuke turned his attention back to Hinata after a few moments of looking at the waitress, silently hoping, pleading that she would turn to him and tell him that it was a cruel nightmare, that he would wake up in his gallery that he had probably fallen asleep at, only to see Hinata's smiling face, handing him a cup of coffee to make him less sleepy. When he slowly started to regain the rest of his senses, he finally felt the cold of snow and wind,
felt the terrible pit in his stomach,
felt the ache in his heart,
felt the warm tears roll down his face,
felt his world collapsing around him as he heard the medics say that she was losing too much blood. The next thing he knew, he was in the hospital, waiting in the room assigned to Hinata, waiting for news about Hinata because she had gone straight into the ER. The last thing they were told that they were going to try to save her, drying her off so that they could use the defibrillator, careful enough so that between the attempts to restart her heart that they could put more clean bandages under her head to try to stop the blood that was escaping because her skull had been cracked and had cut through her skin. Of course, Sasuke and the waitress didn't know about what exactly was happening. When her family arrived 5 minutes after they got there, he heard Hinata's family asking something but he was unresponsive, the waitress had to answer any questions that she could. The police had reviewed the recordings of exterior security cameras of the store nearest to the accident and arrived ten minutes after the family to explain what had happened. She heard the sobs of Hinata's family, unable to discern who was sobbing and what anyone was saying because he had gone numb again, his gaze locked on the door that led to the area of the hospital that Hinata was in, the door that the doctor, or surgeon, or nurse, or whoever could tell them about Hinata would come out of. He didn't care who it was, as long as they could tell him how Hinata was doing.
Twenty-five minutes had passed since the ambulance had gotten Hinata to the hospital. Twenty- five minutes since Sasuke had seen Hinata. When a doctor appeared in the doorway, he seemed to hesitate for a moment, not wanting to say what he had to say. The room was completely silent and Sasuke was silently hoping that Hinata was alive, that they had been able to save her, to keep her alive to smile and laugh again and have a long and happy life. The doctor looked at Hinata's family, asking if they would prefer to talk in private, without Sasuke and the waitress in the room, but they quickly just said that they wanted to know how she was right then. The doctor hesitated for a few more seconds, the longest seconds that Sasuke had ever known. The doctor said the words had Sasuke had hoped that he wouldn't hear. Hinata was gone, dead, no longer alive. Sasuke could do nothing else but sit there and crumble in front of Hinata's family and her friend, despite having never broken down in front of someone else. He tried to keep some composure, getting up and walking from the room with tears streaming down his face.
Sasuke didn't know how he got back to his apartment, only later finding out that the waitress had taken him home after he had said that he just wanted to go home, rejecting her offer to go with him, trying to help him and help herself as well because she didn't want to be alone and she could tell that he needed someone with him, even if it was a stranger like herself, because she needed someone to comfort her right then. He rejected her again but she got him to accept a ride home when her boyfriend arrived. She wouldn't be alone anymore after those few lonely moments in the hospital, but Sasuke didn't have anyone to comfort him. When he somehow managed to put the key in his door and enter his apartment, he shut the door behind him and only managed to take a few steps into his living room before he collapsed to the ground crying, only ceasing when he fell asleep on the floor where he had collapsed in tears.
Everything had happened a little over a month ago, it was Christmas time now. The funeral had passed. He had gone to the funeral,
had tried to keep himself composed,
had offered her family condolences,
had returned to his apartment after the funeral and again fell asleep that night on his living room floor.
Sasuke stared at his painting, remembering the heart wrenching memories that he had just started to come to terms with. He knew that she wouldn't like to see him crying and unhappy, so he had made an effort to try be happier, to remember the good memories he had with her since they had met only half a year ago. He came back to his senses, a few more tears falling from his eyes and falling into his bit of purple paint that he had out. He looked at purple that was now slightly watery and slowly picked up a clean paint bruish and mixed his tears with the purple. With the lighter purple, he painted words above Hinata on the painting and then followed the words with a flower, a lilac, her favorite flower. He then carefully put a few words under the flower before setting his supplies down. The painting was finished. He would leave that painting on that easel, and leave the paints and brushes next to it. He would never move it, it would stay as a reminder of Hinata. It would not only bring up the sad memories, but also the happy memories. Finally, the painting would remind him that he would be happy again, she would want him to be happy again. He got off of his stool and went and put his coat on before returning to the picture to look at it one final time before going home.
"Goodbye Hinata, I will always love you." he said quietly, finally voicing his feelings to the empty gallery. He took one last look at the painting and the words and flower that had been added before he left the gallery, shut off the lights, locked the door behind him, and headed home. Sasuke went to his apartment and made hot cocoa. He then sat on the couch with a blanket around him as he sipped the cocoa while looking out the window at the snow that Hinata loved so much. He felt a little sad and empty and looked down into his cup of cocoa, but he reminded himself that she wouldn't want him to be sad, so he shut his eyes and thought about the happy memories he had with her. Sasuke opened his eyes and smiled a small smile at remembering all of the happy times he had had with Hinata. He repeated the words on the painting one more time then turned and watched the snow fall outside his window again.
In Memory of Hinata. Under the small Lilac lay written Happiness Will Bloom From Sadness, Just As My Love For You Bloomed From The Loneliness In My Heart