Sasuke had returned.

His return to the village—long after the great Empire's war had ended—was punctuated by the fulfillment of a five year old promise and the contempt of the elders.

Why did he not come back to his waiting bride, Sakura, at the first sign of truce? Did the emperor need a new recruit from a farming village for elite tasks? If so, why?

His two year delay in coming home was troubling indeed.

On another level, the rush to finalize the marriage of himself and Sakura began as soon as he was sighted on the horizon, and ended as their hands were clasped together by the leader of the elders. They wore their most formal kimono: he in black, she in red, both wearing familial emblems. A wreath of cherry blossoms joined their necks.

They left the ceremony to Sasuke's waiting, empty hovel at the bridge. One bedroom, one front room, one bath, one kitchen, one attic. A waste pot was next to the bath. It was furnished minimalistically: no excess. Everything was as he had left it. It was strangely clean despite going unused for several years.

Sakura cautiously walked on ahead. She had never entered his house before, past the front room. She felt his hand snatch her wrist, and she whipped herself around to face him. His gaze was down, the corners of his mouth strained.

"Not yet. I have a gift." Seeing her hesitation, he looked into her green eyes with his black ones. His irises glittered like black opals. "Please."

Should I have done this? she thought, suddenly, but pushed it aside. Their marriage would make her family's status soar. That was all that mattered. Perhaps a silly childhood crush would grow into a mature, adult love. But five years.

Sasuke's smell was now mixed with kunai oil and the smell of foreign spices, none of which she recognized. He looked older than his twenty-one years. Far older. His eyes were like crushed jet and his hair was the color of charcoal.

He reached into the folds of his robe and drew forth a little lacquered box. "Sakura..." He knelt, opened it. He held up an ornate rose gold ring dotted with garnets and pearls. "This ring was my mother's. Please."

It fit around her thumb. Before she could admire it more closely, Sasuke pressed the box into her hands and closed her fingers around it. She swallowed, suddenly thirsty.

"Thank you...Sasuke."

"I want tonight's experiences to go beyond the barriers of my humble home," he said. The proposition sounded rehearsed and formal. "Perhaps something like the gods will come down upon us."

"Indeed." It was nearing supper time, and soon after they would consummate. As tradition. However... "I will require some time to prepare."

He nodded. Stood up. His thumb dragged across her knuckles, rough with callus. "Of course. Take as much as you need. In an hour, the hired help will bring in your belongings."

That gave her pause. "Hired help?"

Sasuke nodded. "A noblewoman, broke. Begging for work on the outskirts. I offered to hire her as housekeeper. What clan she's from, she won't say. I pay her well."

It wasn't exactly uncommon for the emperor to disband noble houses that got too power-hungry. Supposedly, that was what happened to the Uchiha clan a hundred years ago. At least, before Sasuke's family was found murdered in their beds, weapons pinning them down through their chests.

(And his older brother had gone missing as well. Rumor was that he had killed them and ran instead of facing the consequences.)

So Sakura was led to the bath and the curtain was drawn around her. Weak winter sunlight filtered in. The steam made her feel like she was in a cloud.

She scrubbed at her toes and fingers with a pumice-stone to soften them, removed as much body hair as she could reach. And then she treated her hair with the fragrant oils she found there, lacing it with ginger from her pouches of herbs. When she finished bathing, a white silk yukata was waiting for her in the hands of

"You must be the hired help."

The "noblewoman" couldn't have been much older than Sakura herself. Barely an adult. Though her dark blue-black hair was tied back in a simple ponytail, it still carried the sheen of nobility. Her skin was free of blemish. Her eyes were strange, the color of milk, and shiny like pearls.

"Um, yes." Her demeanor, however, was meeker than the lowest peasant. She looked at the floor and mumbled. "Uchiha-san said to give this to you, ma'am."

"I see." Sakura took the robe and shrugged it on, tying a complicated knot in the belt. "Do you have a Name?"

"H-Hinata, ma'am. Just Hinata."

At least she was polite.

000

He was waiting for her, unclothed except for a loincloth, in the bedroom. He looked out the window, down at the river. His body was free of scarring and injury save for a tattoo on his neck, and an angry red scar on his torso. She wanted to run her fingertips over it, and press healing herbs upon it.

"Your chest..."

He snatched her hand mid-motion. A crow's cry could be heard despite the walls.

"I understand your concern, but I want to remember this scar," he said. The words were still formal and alien on his tongue. "And the battle that gifted it to me."

His eyes regained a familiar look, one she hadn't seen since they were much younger. He looked over her body in the robe, and slid his fingers around her waist. The knot came undone, the robe parted. Her cheeks warmed at the bulge in his crotch.

"Shall we?"

She gazed into his eyes. "Yes."

She doubted no longer.

000

AN: I've been fiddling around with this idea for a long time. It's based on a dream I had that had a lot of mythic qualities and stuff with Itachi and Hinata. I have to dig my notes out from another notebook apparently, but I figured I'd finish this chapter and post it for you guys! -Val