a/n

First note: when I published last night, ff net was being all craaaaaaaazy; so sorry for the wait! Thanks goodness though, seems like everything is working fine today!

Sorry about posting this at the butt-end of the weekend; but hey, I did post on the weekend, as per my promise!

Thanks so much for all your warm reviews; they make me smile so:) And also, thanks for all the alerts and subscriptions and what not; I don't think I've ever had so many subscriptions for a fic! Y'all must really like SasuHin:)

Special super thanks to my beta Ninjakittee for her beta'ing magic:)

Things have been a bit on the busy side here; and it occurs to me that I have two fics I haven't updated in over a month and a half (facepalms) and I have two gift fics that I need to write before X-Mass (facepalms); in short, it might be two weeks until I update this fic! Just FYI! Don't worry though, I love this fic and will definitely stay on top of it:)

Okay, ready and enjoy:)

Chapter 3

Murder the Murderer

"Anyway, Hyuga, I have a proposition for you."

Hinata's mind whirls as they exit the tea shop— a p-p-proposition? Oh dear gods! Did he want her to help him restart his clan? Unfortunately, Sasuke wasn't her type: for one, he wasn't blond enough. Or tan enough. And his eyes definitely weren't blue enough…

But Hinata has no more time to think, because Sasuke continues in a firm, almost mocking voice: "I have a job for you. Something a lot better than becoming a sacrificial lamb for some religious cult. I need you to kill me."

At first, Hinata feels relief. "Oh thank gods, you don't want me to have your children!" she gushes. And then—"Wait a minute. Y-Y-You want me to w-w-what?"

"Not want, need," Sasuke replies slowly, as if it would help Hinata understand if he enunciates every word clearly and dilatorily. "I need you to kill me."

"B-B-But y-you a-are a-already d-d-dead! O-Or y-you w-w-w-were!" she manages to say as the Uchiha continues to drag her through the small, dirty streets. Ignoring her, he buys a bag of cinnamon raisin mochi and hands the treats to Hinata.

"I know they're your favorite," he replies to her quizzical look, and Hinata blushes; it seems Sasuke knows all kinds of factoids about her.

Hinata is many things, and over her short life, she has gotten used to a myriad of weird scenarios: for one, she has grown accustomed to Hanabi claiming the title of Hyuga heiress, even though Hinata is the eldest. She has gotten used to her father ignoring her and to her new, equally aloof stepmother. She has even become comfortable with methodically and obsessively stalking the Hokage-sama; and she is okay with the fact that Naruto is married to Sakura, and his three, pink-headed children (when they should all have either blond or black hair).

But Hinata would not— nor would she ever— get used to having her own stalker.

It sucks. It is unnerving. It is just plain wrong.

(Not that this makes her reconsider her own surveillance of Naruto, but still…)

Sasuke is standing still in the street, and he is staring at her; Hinata realizes that he is waiting for her to eat the mochi. But what if it is poisoned? What if she chokes on puffed rice pastry and dies? What if she hopes that she will die from eating the dessert, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophesy? She makes a pained, choking sound, and under his glare, she hesitantly puts a square of mochi in her mouth. It is delicious, or at least it would be, if there wasn't a dead man watching her chew it. Hinata's mouth goes dry. It is hard to swallow down the mochi, though she manages, somehow.

Sasuke takes Hinata by the elbow, as if she is a mannequin, incapable of movement by herself; as if she is a pet dog, who must be lead on a leash. He sits her down on a park bench, and the wind whips an errant oak leaf on to her black leggings; she lets the leaf rest there, and enjoys how the bright yellow juxtaposes against her black clothes. She stares at it listlessly as the Uchiha begins his soliloquy.

"You see," he says tightly after a long pause, "I have a problem. I can't seem to die."

Hinata's head turns towards him slowly. "How…?"

He seems to divine her question. "After the last war, I was, for all intents and purposes, dead. This is what happened…" And as he speaks, his eyes glaze over, like the full moon hidden behind dark clouds. And Hinata closes her eyes, and she lets his words roll over her like waves, and she confuses past and present and sees as he speaks.

There is Madara, all orange mask and an animal look in his ridiculously hax'd eyes; and here is Naruto, his long black and red Sage cloak fluttering in the wind, his eyes rimmed with orange. Sasuke merely watches as the loud-mouth, bull-headed blond and a horde of toads seal Madara away to Mount Myoboku. There, Madara is chained above a pit of boiling oil for all eternity; every morning, a toad will gouge out his eyes with barbed kunai and pour boiling oil over his skin. Hinata is reminded of Prometheus and shudders; it does not sound pleasant.

After the Big Bad Uchiha is sealed away, it's time for the epic fight they had all been waiting for: the Team Seven Battle Royale. Except that Sasuke doesn't give a rat's ass anymore.

"I found the two elders," he explains, his fingers clenching, unclenching, then contracting once more. "Before I slit their throats, like pigs, I got the last bit of information I needed." Hinata shudders again, thinking about pigs, oh gods, why? But Sasuke explains: what Itachi had never told him. What Madara had never revealed.

What exactly was the infamous coup d'état the Uchiha had planned, all those many years ago, when Sasuke had been just a tender academy student? "They were going to murder every man, woman and child in Konoha," Sasuke remarks in a monotone. And then there was Itachi, and an almost self-fulfilling prophesy, and the Uchiha themselves were sacrificed; but to what god, to what greater good, Sasuke does not know. However, it is implied in his tone, in the way he hunches over his knees, that he believes the Uchiha clan got what they deserved.

"The fight went out of me," he says simply. "When Naruto and Sakura came at me," all fists flaming and glowing and mouths screaming Sasu-keeeeeeee!— Hinata remembers and Sasuke continues, "I didn't flinch. I didn't Chidori-Sharingan-Amaterasu-Tsukiyomi-or-Susanoo. I wanted to die," he states without any feeling, and Hinata can just picture it all over again: the looks of horror on Naruto and Sakura's faces when Sasuke doesn't fight back, and it's too late to withdraw, to turn back the blazing fists, and Sasuke's body explodes under the weight of extraordinary jutsu.

"Imagine my surprise," Sasuke remarks drolly, "when a year later, I am laying cold and naked on the battle field in one solid piece." Hinata surmises from his tone that Sasuke is less than pleased at this miracle. Sasuke goes on to describe how he has tried to throw himself off of cliffs, to gouge out his own eternal Mangekyou Sharingan with a kunai, how he blows himself up repeatedly, all to no avail.

This is why Madara is sealed, and not killed. Those with the eternal Mangekyou cannot die; their eyes cannot be removed; their limbs cannot be severed. Sasuke glowers. Why didn't Naruto and Sakura realize that tearing him asunder and burying him in the earth was but a temporary solution? Now, he is a man who yearns for sleep, but his eyes are eternally pried open to the wheeling of the sun.

Hinata stares down at the yellow leaf in her lap, then spins the stem in her fingers, twirling the foliage idly. She asks what he has been doing, then, for the past four years—b-b-besides trying to commit a Sisyphean suicide.

Sasuke shrugs. "At first, I contemplated destroying the Leaf." He had originally thought, since he had the rest of eternity to fuck shit up, that he could start with Konoha; but that plan was short lived. He had lost his taste for it. So instead, he spent three years sightseeing, traveling, sleeping with lots of women, drinking sake and finding himself in gutters the next morning: in short, three years of debauchery.

Sasuke pauses, and Hinata cannot decipher what he is thinking. She almost asks what he did for the last year, but catches herself. The answer is obvious: he was stalking the village stalker to stalk the village. So instead she asks, "W-W-Why did you come back to Konoha?"

And Sasuke shrugs. Maybe he doesn't know himself, he says, but he saw all the sickening smiles and the peacetime and gods the memorial service for himself, with the Hokage weeping like a big fat baby and Sakura behind him with a Prozac-glazed look in her eyes.

And then there was Hinata, who also stood on the edges of Konoha, looking in on lives that were closed to her. He saw her bitterness, her kindness swallowed up like cream turning murky brown in black coffee. At first, Sasuke says, she was just a means to an end, a way to commit espionage from the safety of Hinata's giant cloud of misery. But at some point, Sasuke realizes that Hinata has stopped being the means and has become an end unto herself.

"You're just like me," he says, but Hinata doesn't buy it; she does not come from a long line of homicidal maniacs, she has not lived a life of revenge and violence and betrayal, of dying and becoming undead. But Sasuke continues, "And you're perfect. Only you can help me." In his voice there is a hint of a question, a hint of please, and since Hinata has nothing else on her plate at the moment—she does not want to go back to Konoha, nor does she want to become a sacrificial offering to a nebulous goddess— she says yes.

She likes to think that she says yes because she is kind, because Sasuke is suffering and she can help him. But she knows it is a lie. She knows it is because she cannot think of a reason to say no; because she has always been a push-over.

"Good," he says without emphasis. "We'll head out right away to one of Orochimaru's old hide-outs. Your Byakugan will be useful."

She merely nods her head and stands; the yellow leaf falls from her lap onto the ground, and they exit the village, whose name Hinata cannot remember.

Later, Hinata thinks, she will regret this. She will regret the yellow leaf, drinking tea, eating mochi, and saying yes when she means no; but for now, she is too stupefied to do anything but walk after a man who would probably be better off dead.

a/n hope you liked it:) Will update again in about two weeks; until then, feel free to check out "Song of Aether", which I also recently updated!

reviews= my undying love and affection! xoxoxo!