A/N: Sorry about taking so long to update. Thank you to my reviewers for cheering me on! Unlike the first chapter which only took one sitting to write, this one gave me a bit of trouble. As the chapter title suggests, this will be a "reflection" chapter where the two will reflect on what happened in ch.1, so don't expect much to actually happen since the characters are just thinking to themselves. Also, for those that might be a bit put-off by the overabundant usage of similes and metaphors, please understand that a good amount of them are necessary to create a certain mood/atmosphere/reader mind state.

For example, the different usage of "night" in ch1, one scene describing it as paper and the other as a tapestry. The first one should be a bit self-explanatory since I just wanted to emphasize how fragile and unstable the world was. The second was little more vague, but essentially its affect is similar to a blanket, hiding the two from the rest of the world, but also to make it seem more "intimate" yet "magical" at the same time since it's not a plain old blanket but a tapestry. I'm sure many of you are familiar with the concept of "close reading analysis" so I won't delve too deep into my word choice and let you guys figure it out on your own.

Okay, I won't bother you guys anymore with this technical stuff. Enjoy!

2. Reflection

The mirror has always been a source of intrigue since man first saw his own reflection upon the still surface of water. Two parallel images where the slightest touch of fingertips pressing against each other connects two separate worlds. However, is there any truth in the image shown upon a mirror? Is it reality or is it a falsely created fantasy?

Hinata pressed her lips against her bedroom mirror, kissing its frosty surface. Cold kisses and hot kisses. Reality and fiction, it was hard to discern the difference. She was not kissing herself, but she had, in reality, kissed Sasuke. However, as she stood there, slightly off-centered in the world she lived in, the kiss she gave herself was infinitely more real than the one she had experienced during that dream-like night.

A surreal and incandescent memory she wished were but a dream. Hinata had built her life upon dreams, laying each sweet dream upon dream until she had created herself a magical glass castle. But reality was a hardened stone, shattering her beloved walls, scattering her dreams until they rained like crystal shards all around her only to melt away like ice, every trace of their existence gone. Her life was built on fairytales, but reality told her it was just a book and slammed the cover shut.

Hinata had not left her room for three days since that incident. Hibernating like a bear in its den, Hinata refused to meet with anyone or take a foot outside her house. Her family and friends blamed it on her failing the mission and she allowed them to make that excuse for her. She had locked herself away into her own castle, afraid not of the world, but of herself. But the memory played upon the walls that surrounded her like a dozen film projectors all running at once, and she sat at the center, holding herself, her face buried in her arms.

Cursed was her skin that still burned with the phantom of a snake coiling around her body. He was a snake; Uchiha Sasuke, a sly serpent that snuck into her Garden of Eden, enticing and tempting her to taste forbidden fruit. Hinata wasn't sure how she felt about him. On one side she loathed what he had done to her, but on the other side, there was a sick longing as if he had poisoned her, his venom wreaking havoc on every cell of her being.

"Uchiha Sasuke," she tested the name on her tongue. Embarrassment swept across her pale cheeks, turning them pink from shameful interest.

She knew she shouldn't be hiding this information, but every time she made up her mind to tell someone, his words echoed into her mind. "Don't say anything." And there was something exciting, something breathtakingly intimate about a secret made under a star filled night. It was as if they had formed something that was all their own, their own secret world where only they existed and she couldn't bring herself to give it away.

But there was already someone that she loved and he was her sun. She could not help but turn towards him like a sunflower thirsting for rays of light. Naruto was the one she loved, not Sasuke.

When Hinata finally reunited with the outside world again, she smiled her characteristically shy smile that assured them that everything was okay again. She went about her daily routine, each day a repetition of the last. She was once again the sunflower to her sun, following Naruto with unfaltering loyalty. But this life had turned into a painting for her, abstract and only an imitation of the reality she used to know. When reality becomes a dream and dreams become reality, Hinata wasn't sure what to think or feel anymore. So she continued to read the script of her life out loud because at least this way, she didn't have to think about it anymore.

Sasuke brushed against his lips for the umpteenth time with the back of his fingers. He had tried his best to drown away what had happened that night, but it stubbornly resurfaced over and over again.

He was irritated, thoroughly irritated at the constantly swelling itch that he couldn't scratch. A primitive demon had awakened in him and he stood, trapped in its house of mirrors: no matter where he turned this persistent devil caught him with a knowing smirk.

It was a classic example of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He cursed himself that night as the lightning had cursed the sky. He was making his way back to his temporary hideout when rain started to waterfall from the sky, covering the world in a ghostly translucent curtain. But he had stumbled upon a scene, three ninjas chasing one female. He followed her movements, but it seemed she had reached her limit and within seconds of spotting her, she dropped mid-jump and came crashing through the trees. He hadn't planned to rescue her. After all, it was no consequence of his if she was caught.

But curiosity seized him, perhaps even empathy. There was something gapingly lonely about the night that drew out a more basic human emotion that he would, under any other circumstance, refuse to have acknowledged. He had been deceived by Mother Nature's wrath and in a moment of weakness, he miscalculated.

The last person he had expected to find was Hyuuga Hinata. He remembered being shocked still for exactly three seconds as he stood before her. She laid there, her body partially covered in wet leaves and broken branches, nature's half-assed attempt to cover up a quick crime. And without a second thought he lifted the girl and carried her away to safety. He planned to deliver her back to Konohagakure, close enough so that she would be found, but far enough so that that they wouldn't find him. By the time she should awake, he would be long gone and it would be as if their meeting had never taken place.

He had remembered Hinata as a morbidly quiet girl who spent her life half hidden in shadow. She was a person of no relevance to Sasuke, weak and unimpressive; he took no notice of her. He did not like her, but neither did he dislike her, between them existed only the ambivalence of two strangers. She had simply been an image in the background of his childhood.

So, it had surprised him when he felt her weak heart beat faintly against his, her shallow breath quietly warming his neck. There existed a sweet vulnerability in its light rhythm and he wondered how she had survived for so long in such a harsh world. As he felt her warm body against his underneath the approaching dawn, an astonishing revelation came over him. The world, his world, his existence now included the life of this girl. Her life now meant something to him.

Since when was it, Sasuke wondered, as he carried her home did he suddenly want to monopolize her heartbeat? A strange and unfamiliar sensation washed over him and he wasn't sure what to make of it. All he knew was that he continued at a much slower pace than before so he could continue to listen to the soft thumping of her heart. That simple desire began to grow and branch out as the sun descended again.

He didn't want her to forget him, to wake up not knowing that he had saved her. He wanted her to acknowledge that he too should mean something to her. So he waited for her to wake, unaware that this desire to meet her would grow exponentially out of proportion. In one moment he just wanted to talk, but in the next his intended acquaintance included more than an exchange of a few words. And he was unable to shake off a sudden thought that had taken possession of him; what does she taste like?

But he immediately extinguished the thought, knowing too well that such an action could only end disastrously. Unfortunately the men who had chased her earlier had stumbled near his temporary hiding spot which happened to also coincide with the moment that she awoke. Caught off-guard, he pulled her to him without thinking. He didn't know what else to do. Sasuke was not worried about the other men, he knew he could easily finish them off, but he wanted an excuse to keep her with him. The sensation of her body so close to him…

Simply at the memory, a pulse of warmth coursed through his veins. Alarmed at the sudden resurfacing, Sasuke immediately extinguished the feeling, angry at himself.

He couldn't help but silently laugh at the irony of his situation. Who did this girl think she was to possess him like so? He resented her for making him feel this way, for humiliating him. Bitter animosity began to replace his anguish; yes, afterwards he had started to hate her. But with a painful precision, he also knew all too well that no matter what his thoughts were in regards to her, his body wanted her. He was powerless against his own primal desire; it was a feeling that he had never experienced before and it drove him mad with frustration.

Sasuke believed that there was nothing he couldn't conquer from sheer will power. That was why he had to see her again, why he needed to see her again. He had to prove to himself that she had no power over him. But, perhaps on some deeper level, he knew that he went to see her in order to appease another simple desire: a wish for a second bite.

/end

Ah so did I kill it? Haha, let me know how it was. Honestly, as the writer, I can't actually form an objective opinion as to whether this is complete junk or complete gold until the fact that I wrote it wears off (which will take awhile). So review and tell me what you think~

I'm sorry to disappoint anyone that expected them to meet again, you'll have to wait for the next chapter for that.