Prompt: Princess and Knight

Notes: Pumped for SH month...but I'm so unprepared.

She almost seemed like a trick of the light, his princess. A hopeful mirage that could comfort his dishevelled mind. Sasuke kept his eyes closed, he basked in her touch as her slim fingers tenderly touched his rough, cold cheeks.

"They have not been treating you well," her sweet voice whispered, her words trickled over him like honey. "You're too cold." His eyes had sunken, his cheeks looked drained of life and his hair had lost any healthy sheen to it. His entire body, once proud, lay defeated, malnourished, and decomposing. Bacteria gnawed at his flesh and yet no infection took place of their bite marks. Although it would be rather petty to focus on that. He supposed he was, in fact, cold. But Hinata; she was warm and that was all he thought about.

Her presence seemed ethereal – ghostly, as if she were barely there. She probably wasn't, they would not let her see him.

"Since I heard, I couldn't bring myself to come to you, I'm sorry." Pale, glowing eyes were blinding against the darkness, and he wanted to touch her but was afraid his hands would slip through her and she would disappear. Instead his hands sought out the wrought iron bars and he clenched his fist around it.

"Won't you speak to me, Sasuke?" She beseeched, the notes in her voice cracking. It was breaking him, again. They'd won, her father had already defeated them. His only regret was that he'd let them win. Still, he'd tried to stay strong. For her. She could not be strong on her own, and he would. To his last day and his dying breath.

"Please, my love, you don't have to be strong. That oath has brought us grief and not much more. Please speak to me," Her pleading tone was becoming more earnest, her voice was now shaking and her hand was removed from his face. Eyes remaining shut; Sasuke said nothing. Gods, had he been able he would have heeded her cries.

Hinata placed her hand on her still-flat stomach above her formal Kimono.

"We were fools," she said softly, tears collecting on her eyelid, "such fools."

He bit his tongue to refrain from speaking to her, gripped the bars to refrain from touching her. He could not offer ghosts comfort. The scandal of the heiress and the samurai running away past the horizon would not be heard outside of the Hyuugas, it might well have never happened. He vaguely wondered if her wedding ceremony had already taken place.

"It can't be all for nothing," She sobbed, tears streaking down her cheeks, yet she managed to smile sadly, gripping the fabric over her abdomen. "A piece of your soul grows within me."

If only he could've been there to see it. Such wishful thinking was utterly useless in the face of their surrender to all that was fated to them, but he allowed himself the luxury.

"I wish you could speak to me."

His princess was kneeling next to him, where he lay, on the other side of the gate, she sobbed endlessly. As she did on the the night before her initial marriage. This time Sasuke could not offer her himself instead. His grip on the bar, like a dead man's, would not loosen.

"Had we not run away – or been caught, you would not be here," she admitted. It was the truth, he knew, but he even though a song of rat's feet skidding across the floor bombarded his ears, and the stench of the damp cell walls and death invaded his nostrils, he did not regret anything. He couldn't regret anything. He chose only to remember her softly blushing and beautiful face as she smiled at him, walked with him. When they could be with each other, as partners, in public.

"You have been protecting me since the beginning. Always, you were strong." She breathed, and her soft cadance had never sounded more defeated. "But I didn't have the strength to live in a marriage with a man that was not you, to raise a child with a man that was not you." No, she'd had the courage to find something else, a new life. A less extravagant, dull, beautiful life with him.

"And now...I have to be. I will be. I'll be strong for myself and our baby." She promised, once again reaching out to his face, only this time placing her delicate fingers on his eyes. Had Sasuke the ability, the strength she spoke so intensely about, he might've pondered on the life she'd live with another man smiling down upon his offspring as Hinata contentedly sipped tea.

The image was resentful, but he wished her only the happiness that he could not give her.

Standing up, she turned her back to him as she should have so long before, and in the dark he could not see her retreating figure, but he heard her speak to man he had not noticed was there.

"He deserved far better. His body must be taken from this dishonourable place, burn him. Give me the ashes." Her voice was no less watery than when speaking to him, but held an underlying solemnity to it. "And please keep this from my father."

"Yes, Hinata-sama,"

A gate shut and the darkness was once again unbearable.