Teaser: Runaway

A.N:

Paint With Words is coming to an end. I have one of two chapters left ready, and with the death of a story usually comes the screaming kicking birth of another.

This story has been festering in my mind for a very long time. It took root so long ago I don't recall it's complete origin.

Not to sound too melodramatic but this story is quite close to my heart. There are aspects of it that I do think will be hard for me to write (for personal reasons not creative ones) so I hope that people will take that into consideration when reviewing. It is the first completely new fic that I will be writing as an adult.

Writing is my therapy. What comes out is often more than just a way to entertain.

I do want critical reviews willing to be honest and eloquent in flaws or errors in my work. Those reviews are precious to me, more so than those stating they love the story and to continue, but ALL are welcome.

I hope that you enjoy this, it is after all part of the charm of my therapy, it can be shared.

much love,

Inky

With the air gone she couldn't think how she would breathe, how could she possibly keep on going with the pain in her lungs taking over the way her body moved. Each muscle was screaming, each vein feeling on fire, acid ripping apart her insides, pain spreading on the atoms that made up her skin.

The news had come with no fanfare. There were no cop cars with flashing lights in the driveway. It had been a call. The call had not been frantic there had been no screaming, no crying.

The words had been soft and quiet, she thought later, that he must have been in shock when he said it. But in the moment there was only the stillness of the words released into the air tainting it, making its very essence a poison.

The next breath was that of pain and death, she gasped on it, coughed, felt what seemed to be blood in her mouth, felt herself lowering down to the floor, feeling the hardness of the ground beneath her bare knees.

Outside of her room the window glistened with stars and rain, that was the one melodramatic part of the entire moment. The rain was pouring buckets. It was the killer, after all.

It was the thing that took her husband.

That godforsaken rain.

The airport was a beehive. Having not been out in public for several months she gripped the hands of her babies with white knuckled force and stumbled through the chaos with her eyes wide and frightened.

The toddlers were subdued at her feet, stumbling along in quiet steps. This was unlike both of them, where they would have been asking a million questions the children followed with muted breaths and downcast eyes.

Their questions and screams had torn the flesh from her soul when they found out. She had sobbed so hard as they inquired about their father, not understanding her muffled wept words. Eventually her sister had had to take over.

Your daddy did something very brave.

Your daddy loves you so much.

Your daddy is not coming back home.

Hinata did not smile at the woman at the counter. She pushed her passport towards her with trembling pale fingers and reached back down to take a hold of her son's hand. He held her in a sweaty pudgy grip.

"Are you going on vacation?" The woman asked her children.

The four year old looked back at her for a long agonized moment and shook his head, keeping his brilliant blue eyed gaze fixed on her face. "No."

"My daddy died." Beside her the three year old whispered it, one thumb popping out of her mouth just long enough to release the pain and awkwardness into the air.

The woman's face crumbled, searching first the kids faces and then looking back up to Hinata's own impassive gray eyes.

"Oh, ma'am. I'm so very sorry. Please... may I see if I can find you an upgrade?"

"That won't be necessary." her voice was like cracking ice. Screaming in her sleep, weeping until she was hoarse had made it's usually feather soft tones feel like ragged claws.

"Please, it would be a pleasure to make your trip more enjoyable. It would be on us."

For a moment Hinata hesitated. The look on the woman's face was agonized, searching her expression for some semblance of happiness.

Sighing softly Hinata nodded, unable to comply with a smile. "Thank you, we would appreciate that very much."

It was always like this, any shop they entered, any grocery store, any place where their faces were familiar in their tiny bit of nothing for a town.

It was time to go.

"Have a safe trip. When will you be returning, hun?" The woman asked her son, allowing herself to pet the dark locks of hair that crazily framed his head.

"Never." He whispered softly, shaking his head. "We're never coming back."

Before the poor girl could start crying Hinata slid her bag back onto her shoulder and took her children's hands.

"Let's go, darlings."

And she didn't look back.

He slammed back another shot and briefly observed that the taste which had been so bitter to him three years ago had long ago been burnt right off his tongue.

The pounding of the music and the frantic movement of the bodies writhing on the dance floor was a background noise by now. Instead he listened to the thumping of his heart beat and the essential way it sped through his veins, thinned by the high volumes of tequila he had downed.

It always took the edge off to start the night with tequila. After that, he knew he could do and say literally anything and just not care about.

In fact, his eyes lingered on the blonde next to him, eyeing him up as much as he was eyeing her.

In his intoxicated state he wondered briefly why she seemed so familiar until her blushing face turned away from him for a moment and whispered something to the pink haired girl next to her.

In that one second of girlish immature action Sasuke Uchiha felt the slam of responsibility hit him square on the chest and he felt sick for a second.

Those were his students. Those were two of his stupid hormone enraged students and they were in a bar and they were drinking and they were looking at him with less than virginal intentions.

Cursing he went to get up and realized that no-the tequila really had taken the edge off and with it, it had also taken his balance.

Sitting back down he pulled his phone out of his pocket and proceeded to turn rapidly, camera at the ready to snap a picture, flash on and everything.

Beside him the two girls jumped, their expressions a little offended in the photo that appeared on his phone before scooting over the two bar stools to get near him enough that they didn't have to yell so loud to be heard.

Pulling back quite a bit as they encroached on his personal space Sasuke fought to both not fall on his ass in front of the two irrational teens and not slur his words too much when he cut Ino off. "Just so you know that picture is heading straight to Principal Tsunade's office." And he began to type the email out on his phone while the two girls fluttered around him spouting words that were too high pitched in his drunkenness to make any sense.

"Please! Please, Uchiha-sensei! We'll do anything!" Sakura was gasping. On a regular day he would have had no problem ignoring the extra cleavage currently drooping out of her dress or the way she leaned out on the counter to implore him with big green eyes and plump pink lips. But that had been a lot of tequila and sensing that there was a real possible danger of him looking a bit too long at his students in a way that was disgusting and terrifying he took a chance at falling on his ass and stood.

The room swayed, beneath his feet he could feel the thumping of the floor as hundreds of dancers jumped up and down to some song he probably should know. The lights flickered and shimmered and began their aggressive strobe effect.

Ino's hand on his chest nearly had him tumbling off the raised step of the bar onto the dance floor. Her body suddenly wasn't in her seat but glued to his chest, her palm over his heart, her other hand sliding downwards. "Literally, anything, Uchiha-sensei." she whispered, blue eyes wide and innocent despite her words.

Adrenaline was suddenly pumping through his body, sobering him up just enough to give her a rather aggressive shove.

"Get yourselves back home before I call your parents," He snapped, proud that there had been minimal slurring and overall the whole concept of the sentence had made sense.

Leaving them wide eyed at the bar he turned and headed out through the throng of bouncing moving bodies, trying to keep his breathing even and his head down.

Hopefully no one saw the interaction. Hopefully no one had any of it on video or in a picture. Hopefully he had acted appropriately and wouldn't get in trouble for leaving them here to figure getting home on their own.

He was drunk, decidedly completely drunk, and going out the door with two of his students in their current attire sounded like a good way to get sued.

"Who are the babes?" Someone had their hand on his shoulder and for a moment he thought he was going to turn around and punch whoever it was in the face.

But the touch was familiar and after a moment he realized he also recognized the voice. Allowing himself a slow slightly dizzying eye roll Sasuke glanced back at Kiba, shaking his head.

"Students, you idiot. You want to spend the rest of your life in jail?"

There was a pause where he thought maybe Kiba was no longer with him as his hand disappeared but the boy was looking back and craning his head so hard it might fall off. "Holy smokes- what the hell are they doing here?" He shouted over the pounding of the next song. Rapidly he turned to catch up to the dark haired irritable drunk heading towards the exit.

"They were here for you?"

"I don't know."

"You do know!" Kiba's voice sounded awkwardly loud as they stepped out into the coolness of the evening, breathing in the fresh air and at the same time feeling significantly more intoxicated without the drunken crowd to blend into.

"All I know is I need this job, these stupid girls are going to get me fired."

"Oh but I mean, if you have to get fired, that would be a nice way to-"

"Ugh." Sasuke growled. He wasn't a dead man so yes, he was aware that being as young as he was, being a full teacher at a highschool he was BOUND to have a bit of a problem not... appreciating... his oldest students but he was still a teacher. Only a couple years older than them sure but still.

"They're only 18, Kiba. I'm their sensei."

Kiba was drunk, he could tell by the wolfish grin that plastered on his face and the "Kinky," reply he gave to that comment. Wincing Sasuke shook his head. The normal daylight Kiba would have been horrified that students were hitting on him again. He would have been more concerned about his friend's job situation, he would have supported his rational mature decision to not engage in any thoughts about the students and he would have been vocal about the kind of will power that probably took.

But this wasn't daylight Kiba. This was...

"I mean, just think about it for one second..."

"No, Kiba." Christ was he the only person on the planet that wasn't turned on by bouncing boobs and round asses?

Actually. Probably.

Kiba had bothered to look it up once, while in class at the university on their last semester before becoming full fledged teachers. It was called Sapiosexual, and it was the orientation of being attracted to someone's mind. Sasuke had been surprised that there was a term for it but also a little bit relieved. If there was a term then it wasn't that weird was it?

"It's a bit weird." Kiba continued, strolling along beside him on the busy street. Clubs lined all the sidewalks, as well as late night shops that carried less savory materials for daylight hour shopping.

"I mean, you're probably what, a ten in the girl one to ten hotness scale?"

"Did you just comment on my hotness?"

Ignoring him, Kiba continued, unaffected. "And so most girls who see you are like 'Oh Sasuke' with hearts around their heads."

"You just commented on my hotness."

"And yet," Kiba pushed on, as though words were not coming out of his friend's mouth. "You see them and it's like 'oh look, molecules in the shape of a woman'."

"Do not comment on my hotness again." Sasuke grumped.

"Do you even see them? Like if they have a nice... ya know... whatever." Kiba was sobering up a bit from the rapid walk, and as the tequila he had accompanied his friend with faded so did his ability to say certain words. Namely words his mom wouldn't be proud to hear him saying.

"Of course I see them." Sasuke grumbled. He wasn't a virgin, for crying out loud. It would have been a pretty damn hard thing to do, remain a virgin with women literally climbing into his lap at parties and clubs. He saw them, he felt them,but that didn't mean that he was particularly pleased when he got himself drunk enough to wake up next to one of them.

Anything that came out of their mouths after the fact was always so grating. Only once had he thought maybe he could have worked something out if he hadn't been so drunk as to take her home, and she had cried. She had cried because she had had the good sense to know that waking up next to a stranger- hot or not- was not the way to go about making life choices.

She had been smarter than him, he knew it was a bad idea, and consistently made the same damn mistake. Unlike the girl, whose name he could not remember, who had cried, apologized to him and vowing never to do this again scrambled out of his apartment at high speed.

"Okay so, you do think about it then?"

Sasuke stopped, glaring at his friend through a haze of liquor. "Kiba. They're kids."

"Not really, dude. Not from what I just saw at that bar."

"In their heads they are, and that's where it counts."

Kiba paused, thinking his statement over in his head while Sasuke continued down the street, his hands jammed in his pockets angrily.

"Yeah okay, I see your point."

"It's not a point, it's a fact." Sasuke muttered over his shoulder. "This isn't a debate."

"Well, it's going to be damn hard getting a girlfriend then. You and I are too old for our students, too young for our coworkers and too busy for a life outside of work." Kiba laughed, patting Sasuke's back as he caught up. "It's like, hey maybe we should just date."

Sasuke shoved him, hard, sending him sprawling into the wall of the building they were walking beside. "You comment on my hotness and then you say we should date. Whatever you're drinking you have to stop. I will kill you."

Kiba rubbed his cheek roughly as he caught up. "I just like that you keep saying the word hotness." he smirked. "Makes your face look like it's going to implode."

Hinata's little apartment had appeared cute in the pictures she had seen on the website advertising it as availability. It had soft colored walls of pastel blue, there were two rooms, one for the kids and one for her. There was a small kitchen with a window above the sink looking out into the street, and a sliding door to the porch beside it.

The living room and dining area were the same place, because it was Japan and in Japan you made moves to keep space flexible. Off the hall entering the little place there was a bathroom with a tub.

And that was that.

She spun slowly in a circle, feeling the tug of the kids hands on her skirt as she twisted, examining every angle of their tiny abode.

"Well. We didn't bring much with us so that's a good thing..." she murmured.

"Where will our couch go?" Beside her Haku eyed the space with confused eyes. "Or our table."

It had been hard to explain to a four year old that all of their stuff would not be coming with them. She had given them each a suitcase and with a lot of effort convinced herself to let them fill it with the items they wanted to take with them.

At first they had filled it with toys, dumping blocks and cars into their respective bags until she stressed that it was the only things they would be taking with them from the entire house. Suddenly her son had taken on a more serious expression and to her complete heart break began tearing framed pictures from his shelves.

Pictures of him and his daddy.

"We won't have a couch, really, honey." Hinata murmured, walking into the tiny kitchen. At least it would be effecient. She could touch both the stove and the counter and the sink without really taking more than half a step. And she would have to have fresh items on hand at all times because there wasn't much room for storage. It would force her to really allocate her time wisely, and not daydream or...cry... too much.

"No couch?" Beside her brother Sora frowned. "But mine shoes."

"Your shows?" Hinata inquired, deciphering her baby accent as she opened the cupboards of the kitchen.

"Ya!"

"I will get a tv, but we will get a little table with comfy chairs, and we can have dinner at the coffee table." she continued.

"But..." Haku stuttered, eyes wide. "But we don't eat in the living room."

"At our old house we didn't."

"At daddy's house." Haku corrected, and Hinata closed her eyes, pressing her forehead against the stove's fan cover. This was so hard, this was just so hard. Had she made a mistake? Leaving everything and everyone behind?

"It was all of our house." She whispered, walking over and crouching down to look at Haku directly in his sky blue eyes. "Daddy and Mommy bought it together, and we loved it, and we loved having you in it, and being in the house with you. But..." she sucked air into her lungs and felt the familiar burn of the grief turning it into a poisonous gas.

"But Daddy... he's gone now, he is gone now and we have to start over so that this can be our house now."

"Without Daddy." Haku clarified, searching her face. His gaze was filling with tears, and his chin was wobbling again and Hinata felt her own expression begin to mirror his own.

"Yes, baby... Without Daddy."

"I want Daddy." Sora gasped, reaching for HInata's arm with fat baby fingers in a vice grip. "I want Daddy too!"

Hinata lowered her head for a moment, putting her hand over her mouth to stifle the sounds that were clawing their way up her throat.

"Oh honey." she finally managed, looking up at them and smiling through tears. "Oh I want daddy too babies. But he is gone, okay? Remember we talked about that?"

"But I want daddy!" Sora was gripping her arm harder and harder, and Haku was now sobbing, his face hidden in the crook of his elbow.

Hinata settled down onto her knees, dragging both her babies into her as they began to scream, whispering her love for them even as she envied their ability to be so abandoned in their grief.

To those of you flaming- my dears...take a deep breath, you're going to have a heart attack...it's a story...its just a story.

Everyone else

leave me some love, ne?

-inky