The fall was so much shorter in distance than that of a bridge. It surprised her to find her hands bloodied, her knees torn. It occurred to her only briefly that she had been right about jumping being the wrong way to go.
"Oh." She said, and her breath wavered like a cripple through the door of her mouth. "Oh."
In the downtown core where his shop sat snug between the ancient buildings night time was not quiet time. The green space in the centre of what had once been a square now hid shadows heckled by the twinkle lights tangled on leaves. Fences guarded prisoner bushes and above the branches the telephone wires hemmed in the tops of trees.
No one stopped to ask the girl kneeling on the cobblestone in the middle of the path if she was okay. Hinata suddenly remembered why it was that with Sasuke she had stayed.
The tears came in earnest then.
"Hinata."
Breathless and yet pale despite the exertion he found her bloodied and alone. Her brain told her it was wrong. Yet her fingers reached to him all the same. In his arms the scent of possibility filled her nose and she sobbed. Only three words made it out of her throat, thick as the pain welling up to tighten a noose around her throat.
"I can't stay."
It was not the three words he had hoped for, but he smiled against the curve of her shoulder all the same.
"No. I know. Of course you can't."
It didn't make her tears any easier to weep all the same.
They rode the bus holding hands. The fluorescent light was too bright for Hinata's eyes and she hid inside the safety of the space between his shoulder and neck.
"What's the matter with her?" An old croaky voice told her someone had dared to notice the blood on her hands, the smears of her tears still not fully dried. Sasuke breathed in at her side, worked the air around in his lungs and changed it to something worth saying.
"Nothing. She bleeds and cries just as one should when you fall."
There was a chuckle filled with bemusement at his reply, and then the shuffle of plastic being torn before a fistful of tissues was shoved into Sasuke's free hand. "For her face."
The bus stopped, the wheels groaned and they were alone again.
"You think it's normal for me to be like this?" Hinata whispered when the silence resumed and the bus began to roll. Sasuke patted at her hands with the tissues, too careful not to know it stung and too thorough not to make it sting all the same.
"Normal is what happens to a lot of us, just not everyone." He murmured, lifting her hand to his mouth to kiss at the end. "What does that tell you?"
Hinata didn't know.
It was strange seeing him away from the walls that had thus far encircled them. In the light of the antique shop his face was less pale. Or perhaps this was the color of distress. Either way, he had changed.
They boarded buses twice and when the chill ripened goosebumps across her skin his sweater came up over his head, pulled over her own with the scent of him still attached to it.
"How do you not hate me?" She offered by way of thanks, gaze levelled as it had been the entire time on their joined hands in his lap and how gently he held her.
"Why would I?" He asked, kissing the words against her temple.
For breaking your heart, she wanted to say, but found the actual voicing of such a sentiment repulsive. How could she assume that his heart was hers to break in the first place? A memory ripped through her like the flick of a hot tongue to her earlobe. His dark eyes fixed upon her, his mouth busy on her skin and the unwavering flood of affection so impossible to dispute that made constellations in his gaze.
"I said we would regret it." He whispered into her ear, as if he too was remembering the look they had exchanged. "We made a mistake, but we did it together." He waited a beat and then added. "If anything, I should apologize."
Behind him through the bus window the city swam on in an endless current of shadows and neon colors and pale gold light. Hinata watched it pass until the shudder broke from her lungs and she turned to him. "I don't want to hear it."
"What?" He chidded, soft as the press of his mouth to her lips. "You don't want to hear that I am responsible for my own choices? Or my apology?"
Eyes once more downturned Hinata sighed, burying her face into her hands, and his by sheer association.
"Sometimes… we love so hard it breaks." He did not elaborate on what it was that broke, but Hinata understood all the same. When it's everyone's fault, is there really anyone to blame?
The bus they had taken had not been the correct one. Hinata tried to tell herself she had not noticed but the truth was the right bus led towards something she had been running from. The wrong one, despite all it's wrongness led to the unknown. It had been willing blindness on her part.
The city was alive in the way it could only be when there was no rain and hardly any chill on a late spring day. People talked loudly despite the long gone dusk. Sasuke held her hand and studied the post with the bus schedule on it, cocking his head as he tried to make sense of where they had gone wrong.
Or right, depending on how you squinted.
"It won't be here for another half hour." He said, and Hinata shrugged, shivering despite his sweater on the chilly sidewalk.
"Come on." He tugged then, and like the wind in sails pushed and pulled her both in the direction of the grocery store blowing warm yellow artificial light into the crazed darkness of the night.
It was late enough for the humming of many refrigerators to greet them as the automatic doors swung wide. The crinkle of wrappers and late night murmurs from quiet evening staff enveloped them in a hug. Softly, Hinata sniffed the air.
"Cinnamon." She breathed.
"I'm starving." Sasuke lied as they walked. "Grapes?" He lifted a bag of bright green baubles and Hinata felt her mouth smile, knowing it was more sad than if she had frowned. His eyes never changed.
"Cheese then too." He continued, pressing her fingers to the edge of his sleeve. Easily anchored, Hinata let him guide her through the aisles. She watched him watching her as a hodgepodge of different items allocated themselves to Sasuke's arms.
"Crackers, pepper jelly- have you ever had that?"
"It sounds...counter intuitive." She tried and he let himself smirk.
"Some of the most right things in the world are counter intuitive."
"What did you use to get, when you went to the grocery store?" He asked when she returned to silence and the minutes stretched out with only the badly recorded song playing over the overhead speakers dared make a noise.
"Oh." Hinata thought, finding a dusty old memory unwrapping itself in her mind. Her mother's hand gripping hers, Neji hopping along at her side and the crinkling of a cellophane packet being shared between them.
"My mother...used to buy us a cinnamon bun, every time we came." She blinked, seeing from a distance the long haired shape of a young woman not unlike herself in the bakery section, a goopy white glob of icing on her finger that she poked into a baby's tiny mouth. Hanabi, sitting in her grocery cart seat squeaked with delight, kicking her fat infant legs with enthusiasm.
Sasuke didn't follow her gaze, knowing he would not be privy to the images playing out in her head. Instead he let her lead to where the cinnamon buns were and placed them in the pile on his arms without a word.
When the bus did come it was not the one she had anticipated. It screeched to a stop and both Sasuke and Hinata hesitated to climb in.
The bus driver gave them an exasperated look from beneath the bushiness of his eyebrows. "In or out?"
"We were expecting to head east." Sasuke admitted, unmoving.
"It's a loop." The bus driver shrugged. "Could wait until I come back 'round."
Hinata stepped forward then, and Sasuke followed. "Do you know where it's going?" He asked when they had settled on their seats with their grocery bags whispering at their feet.
"Hanabi used to take this bus to school in elementary." Hinata admitted. "We used to live out west… before.." She frowned, unsure of what else she meant to say. Sasuke did not push but waited, gaze level on the shifting street beyond and when she dragged in a breath he finally inspected her face.
"We lived on the westside with my mother, before she died." She tasted the words for a moment, turning her eyes to him to see how they made an impact and finding him calmly waiting continued. "She was so beautiful, my mom."
"I believe it." Such a short factual reply. Hinata felt her eyes smile even if her mouth flooded with a metal tang.
"We used to go shopping on the weekend. She taught me to cook, even after she died because her cookbooks were all over the house. Not that I had to learn… we had nannies. Father was busy. Even more busy after she-" Hinata paused again, skipped over the chasm that her mother had fallen into and continued.
"The first time I cooked I must have been about eight. I set my hair on fire." She paused, watched his eyes widen and began a heartbroken laugh.
"I had my hair cut then too." She pressed her hand to her chin where the feathery ends of his work on her mane tickled. "Neji did it that time."
"Neji." Sasuke pronounced. "Your brother."
"Mmm." Hinata drew a shuddering breath.
"Why were you cooking on your own so young?" Sasuke asked, because her eyes were flooding and her throat looked incapable of swallowing the coming torrent.
"Oh. I… Hanabi." Hinata let him wipe at the tears edging her lashes, relishing for a moment the warmth of his skin on her face. "She wanted stew… I wanted my sister to have everything she wanted."
Sasuke didn't have to ask more for the next words to come forward, painful as the mention of her mother's passing.
"She wanted a mother...my sister." Pressing her face to his shoulder was the only way she could stand the silence that followed until her heart ache lessened enough for words again.
"Do you think maybe that's why it feels like I'm dying anyway? Do you think it is different, losing a sibling to losing a child?"
Sasuke made a soft noise in his throat, aware of the warmth of her tears drenching his shirt collar.
"Why would a difference matter? Pain is pain, no?"
Hinata opened and closed his hand, watching the creases fold and gape in rhythm with her thoughts.
"Pain is pain." She breathed. Perhaps it didn't matter what had been before, only that it had ended.
When they got off the bus they walked two streets past the old cemetery on the east end of town. Hinata pointed to it, trying to draw up the words that would say that someone precious waited there.
Sasuke waited only a minute before whispering. "Let's go visit him."
There was a wall, and gates. A keeper's house sat lit in the distance for it was not a small plot of land on which the cemetery sat. But there were trees enough. And when their grocery bags were hidden in the bushes Sasuke folded his hands together at the wall and motioned for her to step up.
Hinata didn't hesitate, with a quick heave he had her up on the wall edge and together they scampered over and onto the other side.
In the city centre the light still kept the shadows at bay but on the suburban east side where the edge of the city hinted at wildness beyond the asphalt and road there was much less to see by.
Willow trees, aptly weeping in the wind whispered as they passed. Hands together they wandered through the neat rows of stones and grassy patches until Hinata found in a corner the two square bits of grass topped with the cold rock engraved with her last name.
"Hyuuga." Sasuke breathed as he read her mother and brother's names. The plots were clean, flowers neatly laid out on both and slowly Hinata crouched down to hug her knees.
"Father sold our old house when mother died. When Neji and Hanabi- when I- when it happened he sold that house too and bought one on this side of town, to be closer to the cemetery." Softly said she motioned to the flowers. "I always thought it was to remind me of what I had done, but…" She breathed in a sob. "It appears he has been visiting."
Sasuke let her cry, hands in his pockets as he studied the world. Above the stars kept shining, the trees painted dark against the navy sky. The breeze scented heavy with the chill licked at his exposed arms and even still she cried.
He had forgotten how it was painful to have time pass, dragging on endlessly as the grief slowly ate you alive.
When she stood and turned to look at him there were no more tears on her face.
"Let's go." She offered, reaching up. The kiss she gifted was slow, textured with the tremble of her pain.
It felt like the whisper of good bye.
"Okay." He nodded, and hand in hand they walked back to the closed gate.
It occurred to Hinata late that there was no key in her pocket. Weeks had passed between her leaving and returning and so she gazed at the tidy house on the other side of the sidewalk and wondered if it was still home.
A step towards the latched gate barring the street from the lawn told her it was not anymore, even if the door opened at her touch and her father welcomed her at the threshold. Not that this was likely… judging from the dark windows on the house's impassive face.
No one was home.
"I think… he probably left the door unlocked, if he saw my keys on the entry table." Hinata considered.
Sasuke frowned at this, clenching an invisible fist around the anger that rose up at the thought of the neglect. He had no right to judge. It was not his son and daughter that had perished. It was not the third family member in his life to have lost.
Together they reached the front porch, and Hinata let her fingers linger on the handle, feeling the cold metal sharp against her skin. There were signs of care to the rose bushes on the flower beds, and the wisteria plant that twisted in a tangle around the door frame.
Unused outdoor furniture sat in the corner of the porch, it's bright cheery yellow cushions offensive as she gazed at it.
Just to escape the garishness of the cushions she pushed open the door.
Silence breathed back from an empty hall. The tiles gleamed on the entry floor. There were no coats on the hooks, no shoes by the two steps leading inside and when Hinata glanced at the little table in the corner her cell phone and keys glinted back.
"He never noticed." Hinata whispered.
Sasuke pressed his mouth to the curve of her neck, palm stretching to encompass the softness of her waist.
Before he could say something damning Hinata leaned her head back, letting his mouth blur the thoughts inside her head with fog as he explored her throat.
Softly, for the truth felt too sharp to handle any other way she whispered with her eyes closed. "I think this is going to hurt."
Just as softly, Sasuke pushed the door closed.
.