There was nothing she could gift him. Not really. Nothing he would want and nothing she would feel was adequate in response to the hurt she was sure to inflict. What did she have to give anyway?

Although, if Hinata recalled, the most valuable thing between them thus far had been time.

This occurred to Hinata as Sasuke wandered with her through the dark house, examining rooms from doorways like one would in a museum. Clean living rooms and dining rooms and elegantly decorated untouched offices, a sitting room replesent with books that she didn't recall existing.

"This place…" Sasuke began and then paused as if to consider if what he was about to say next was polite. Hinata let her gaze turn into something understanding if a little sheepish.

"Yes. I know."

There were no papers anywhere. No books with dog eared corners, no magazines with half torn pages, or magnets on the fridge when they found the kitchen. In the dim light of the moon coming in through the sliding doors at the back of the house the appliances glimmered with an untouched perfection that felt uncanny.

"We moved months ago but I have never cooked anything here." Hinata admitted, recalling with a spike of pain that in Sasuke's kitchen she had made many meals, one after the other. Enough to know that the tap had to be turned almost full to the back to get warm water, and that if you weren't careful when you closed the second drawer to the right of the sink it might get stuck on the track.

Sasuke stepped forward, sliding hands along the door frame in search of light switches only to be thwarted. This was a house too new and strange. In the dark they deposited their grocery bags and examined each other.

"What would you have made Hanabi, if she were living here with you?"

It was such a specific question. Hinata blinked at him, feeling the goosebumps rise to cover her from neck to ankles as he began to remove items from the grocery bags in quiet methodical silence.

"I…" She breathed, snapping her mouth shut when the knot in her throat threatened to make her voice tremble.

Sasuke let his gaze flicker to her and away, giving her the room to collect herself as he deposited the grapes in the sink, letting the cold water rush over them so they glistened like jewels in the dimness.

"She really loved curry." Hinata managed after a long beat. "With shrimp, not beef. So spicy I could never eat it." She shivered and her gaze flickered to the corner where the stove sat, picturing her sister's small form perched on the counter there cross legged, chin in hand.

"Don't be a wimp. Add one more pepper."

Sasuke let her stare, taking the time instead to memorize the fullness of her mouth and the glitter of her tears on her lashes in the night.

Letting out a long breath of his own he pulled one of the grapes loose from the bunch in the sink, pressing it softly to her mouth so that she bit into the fruit automatically as she wiped her face.

"I think I would have liked Hanabi, after we stopped arguing."

The sharp flick of her gaze was piercing in the dark, the startle softening her clenched jaw, lifting the dark curve of her brow. And it wasn't the words he said so much as the fact that a laugh, weak and uncomfortable lifted from her mouth that shocked her.

"You're right." She admitted, picturing Hanabi's nose wrinkled at Sasuke, arms crossed over her chest as he told her off for some nasty joke she had played on her sister. "You're absolutely right."

It hurt how often he was right about everything.

In the garden they were able to see the stars and listen to the wind chime hum a tune when the wind decided to tickle it. Hinata pondered at the wind chime, examining it hanging from her father's window with some confusion. Who would have put that there?

She wondered at this miniscule sign of life while fiddling with the blanket they had pilfered from the living room. It's tag still swung from a corner, the smell and feel of it that of something yet unloved.

At least in the grass and the trees of the yard that new, untouched scent was harder to identify.

"What about Neji?" Sasuke asked as he came back from the kitchen with a plate covered in different snacks to tempt her and a mug of tea steaming that he offered without a word.

"Neji?" Closing her eyes to feel the breeze, and Sasuke's fingers lingering at her mouth where he offered a sticky piece of cinnamon roll Hinata hesitated.

"Tell me one thing."

"Neji had long hair." She opened her mouth and let the sweetness of the icing explode on her tongue, cinnamon and mother's laughter igniting at once through her senses. "He teased me that he could braid better than I could. He was right. His hair never tangled or broke or seemed to get in his way." The words came thick with the mouthful of sweetness and for a moment she wondered if it was easier with a bit of her mother lingering on her tongue, to say the things that hurt her most.

"Sounds pretentious." Sasuke grumbled good naturedly, and Hinata opened one eye from where she lay her head in his lap to see his smile.

Painfully but honest she smiled back. "I used to think he hated me."

There was no icing to soften the tremble in her voice as she closed her eyes again, whispering the words into his palm so she could kiss the warmth of his skin.

"I was born after he had been the only child in the house for so long…. He hardly ever spoke to me, but then one day Mother was… she didn't- she went to the hospital and didn't come back."

For a moment Hinata could feel Neji's hands through her hair, much like Sasuke's as she sobbed into the comforter that Mother had picked out special just for her. The lillies across it had been Hinata's favorite at the time but after the hospital the sight of them made her insides invert with something like disgust.

"He brought me peanut butter sandwiches." Hinata whispered. "Honey and peanut butter… they were a mess. I forgot to eat sometimes, or didn't want to when the nanny offered us dinner and Father was not… he couldn't...Neji did though."

In Sasuke's hands Hinata's face was small, her cheek fitting warm and delicate into his palm, lashes wet with her pain.

"There were rows of them sometimes on my nightstand, my bed, the floor. All these stale sandwiches made badly everywhere. He was only a couple years older than me." Her laugh came out wet as rain. "He started cutting them into different shapes, maybe hoping that would make me eat them. First triangles, then circles, then stars..."

The sob wracked through her body and Sasuke felt it travel up into his own spine, held like a fist in his chest, constricting his lungs.

"My Mother used to call me Hime… I was her princess, she said. No one else in the world called me that and one day, when I couldn't stop crying and the nanny left me in my room Neji came inside."

She did not hear or see him come in. The world had been reduced to the growing pit in her chest, the endless vacuum her mother's absence made, like a black hole devouring everything. His small hands had been uncertain as they slid across her dark hair, petting as one would a wounded creature who did not speak the same tongue.

"It's okay, Hime." Her brother had said. "It's okay. I'm here."

"It's so stupid." Hinata whispered, aware only of Sasuke pressing his forehead to hers. "But suddenly it was okay."

Sasuke heard the silent question left at the end unsaid.

How could anything be okay now? How could anything be okay without her brother?

It was too cold to remain outside, no matter how beautiful the stars. Even with the heat of Sasuke's hands grasping her body to his, she shivered. They left the mess they made in the yard and in the kitchen like evidence of their existence and Sasuke let her guide him down the dark corridors and halls.

Passing the living room closest to the front door he paused, tugging her to a stop at the sight of the frames that lined the mantle above the fireplace.

"Is that…?" He began. Hinata followed his eyes to the mantle where frames hid in half shadow and with a long suffering sigh stepped from him into the room to peer at the photos within.

It took a moment to recognize the faces she saw. The mantle held nothing familiar on it. There was a ball of decorative twine, a tall set of candles with pristine unlit wicks and a shiny silver bowl, empty and gaping like an open mouth.

But the photos were of faces she had seen before. There was her sister, gazing at the camera over her shoulder with sunglasses on, glamorous as always in her freckles and sunshine. There was Neji, stoic and respectable in a suit and tie as he received some award or other.

And there they were together arm in arm with Neji in the middle, a trio of piercing gray eyes, smiles varying from Hanabi's cheeky and mischievous grin to Neji's tolerant smirk and Hinata's tight lipped mouth, as if containing a laugh she was too shy to share, but which despite all her efforts had risen to her eyes, turning them to half moons of delight.

For a moment Hinata wondered who that girl was.

"Is that…?" Sasuke coming up beside her made her start and Hinata turned in time to see the disbelief flicker over his face.

"Yes." She whispered, taking his hand to keep herself steady as he continued to stare at her picture eyes growing more ravenous with every blink.

"You...you look-" He stopped, seemed to catch himself and turned from the picture of the girl to the one that held his hand with a firmness that reminded her of bracing for a fall. "You seem young there."

Hinata's smile was unlike the one in the photo, cracked in places by dry tears, ravaged by a knowing that came with experience.

"I was." she admitted gently.

When they passed the entrance she didn't glance twice at her phone sitting on the side table, glowing as it charged in the quiet and dark. She didn't wonder why he might have plugged it in, nor cared to ask.

She thought only of the girl in the photo and how much she hated her and how much she wanted to not think of her again if she could avoid it at any cost.

She entered the room like she knew what hid behind the door, and this was enough unlike their journey thus far that he paused at the threshold.

The curtains were thrown open to the moonlit sky. Her bed was made, soft lilac in the shadowy dark. A vanity and mirror reflected moonbeams to the carpeted floor and he watched as she rummaged with her hand beneath the pillows to pull out a yellow bottle of pills and another sloshing with a clear liquid that sparkled as it moved.

Cold slid down his spine, his gaze transfixed on her full hands and how they handled the things she held with a care that grated on his soul.

"I wasn't sure they would still be there." She admitted softly, placing them on the nightstand with a sigh.

"Hinata…" Sasuke wasn't sure what else he had intended to say as his fingers gripped the door frame hard enough to turn his knuckles white. Her name had left his mouth without permission. There was no control for him here. At home with Itachi's invisible presence at his back he had faced the darkness in her gray eyes with a fearlessness that had not followed him out the door.

Here the shadows were longer. There were too many corners and nooks where more hid and although she looked at him with the same pale face, wide eyes gentle she was less a feather and more a knife in his mind all the time. Growing sharper and sharper she lifted her hands to the shirt she had borrowed from him and began the unsteady process of undoing the buttons one by one.

"Don't be scared." She whispered this as she pushed the pants down her hips and to the floor. "Please don't be scared."

Even in the half dark the tightness of his shoulders was visible to her eyes, the set of his mouth unlike all the times he had gazed upon her in exasperation back home.

"What kind of a person would I be, Hinata, if I weren't scared?"

Folding the clothing methodically she sighed, shoulders slumping. The unbuttoned shirt slid along her shoulder, exposing the jagged cut of her collarbone and the beauty marks on her skin at her neck that he had traced like connect-the-dot art in the warmth of a buttery yellow morning only a day ago.

Silently she stepped into the doorway just to the right of her bedroom's entrance where he clung so fiercely to the frame as though it could keep him from being swept away in the coming storm.

From within what appeared to be a bathroom the hiss of a shower answered his question instead of her voice and when he finally peered around the corner she stood with her face in her hands and her shoulders tight.

Oh, but she had always been a storm, arriving with the rain, fighting with the sun. He had never had much chance of being truly anchored.

Open.

It was such a broken imploration, her soul on it's knees as it trembled through her mouth. "Don't be scared of me. Please."

How dare you?

He had her in his arms in two strides, pinned to the wall by the stampede of his heart.

Closed.

How dare you think it's you I fear?

Mouth searching for her pulse, for the drum beat that made the song make sense he kissed his way from shoulder to neck to mouth and trembled with her as their lips met.

Open.

Please, please stay with me.

"You don't scare me." Praying, that's what he sounded like as his breath hitched and he shook at her hands exploring. "You don't scare me."

Closed.

"Sasuke." Such a sad knowing reply. Forehead to forehead they studied each other in the heat of their mingling breaths. Her face broke into a smile more damning than her tears. "You know better."

I could love all your sharp edges down.

He kissed her all the same. Kissed her until all she could say was his name, and the remainder of their clothes began to fall away.

Open.

I could kiss myself bloody against the sharpness of your wounds, if you would let me.

There was no sharing her pain, but the fear, that they could share. Beneath the pounding heat of the shower the tremble of their hands was the same. In silence Hinata memorized the curve of her fingers against his hips, the gasping sound of his pleasure and the way the water trailed in rivers on the skin that her mouth wanted to taste.

Closed.

But you won't let me, will you?

He didn't have to say it. It was whispered in the way he kissed her neck, moaned in his hands lifting her to press against the smooth flatness of the tiles, gasped as he traced the curving softness of her side before lingering on her hip where he loved most to kiss. Stay, stay, stay with me.

You with the shattered gaze…

I am not afraid of the acidity of your tears, or the hollowness of your already passed worst fears.

Closed.

She answered him only by turning the water off and dragging him gently to bed.

The silence of your absence, it is that which haunts me, that which scares

"You should go, you know you should."

Closed.

Nose to the base of her neck he breathed in and tried to instill the scent of her to memory. Skin, and earth and something sweet from the soap in the shower. There was an ache beneath his closed eyelids that felt like fire and it wasn't until he felt her wipe away his tears that he dared acknowledge what was happening.

Let me hold my fear as you hold your pain, beside me.

"Don't make me."

Closed.

He wasn't prone to crying, and even less to dreading. It happened anyway. With her back arched beneath him, with his name moaned in her mouth.

But you won't, will you?

"Sasuke… I am not making you do anything. I'm asking."

Closed.

"Please, please, please…" She whispered it into his ear as he held her, bodies twined together so every breath she took knocked on his ribcage in a pleasure he had not prepared for. "Please don't stop."

It is not you I fear.

Closed.

He smiled, quiet and young in a way that broke her heart as he cradled her face in his hands and shifted within her, forcing her to gasp and close her eyes as he satisfied the craving.

No.

"I won't." It was a promise he kept as her hands found sheets to tangle in, pain blotted as his affection rose.

Please.

Don't make me go.

She was warm beside him. It had been a long day and an even longer night. But his eyes didn't close. He watched her and she watched him sadly, the pleasure ending with the bitterness of the words he had been dreading.

"If I leave…" His voice shuddered and only then did she let her eyes fill with tears, lips trembling.

"I am so sorry. I don't want to break your heart. I beg you."

"Don't apologize to me. I chose you. And if my heart needs breaking then I would still choose you."

She followed him in a shirt that was too big for her to the doorway of her bedroom. There was something endearing and delicate about the bones of her ankles bare above her toes on her carpeted floor.

"Tell me you will come to the store tomorrow." He said.

Hinata studied his pale face, gray eyes searching his for something he couldn't name and gently her mouth moved.

"I will see you tomorrow." On tip toe she pressed the lie from her lips to his and he stepped back to hide the shaking.

She did not follow him out the door only listened until she heard the front door close.

He had wanted to ask her to tell him something about herself.

The door of the house closed behind him and he let this one solitary thought trickle through his brain as he slowly sat down on the porch steps.

"Tell me something about her," He had meant to say. He could picture her inquisitive little face, the tickle of her dark hair against her chin, the flutter of her lashes as she blinked.

"Who?" She would have asked, and the shape of her mouth would have made him want to kiss her again.

"The girl you were before." He would have said, because that was a loss she did not seem to know.

"Before?" Hinata would have whispered, and he could see her in his mind's eye turning away, face sad, eyes hooded.

He had wanted to ask so she might know how little it mattered who Hinata of before was, now. She was not familiar in his hands. She had not smiled through agony that made her sharp and broken and possibly new.

She was Hinata's past, and although curiosity lingered it was Hinata's future Sasuke cared about. It was Hinata's future that he wanted her to love.

But he had forgot to ask.

It came in trembles at first, the hurt. The shaking of his hands as he turned on the unfamiliar ignored phone Hinata had identified as her own in the entryway so that it glowed against the fading night.

The pain expanded as he watched the device wake up, and the singing tune of a notification ring tallied the growing pit in his gut.

A dozen rings as messages were received became indecipherable. The chirping stream of texts only visible for a moment as he stared into the phone's face.

Why aren't you answering...

You can't ignore...

I'm so sorry that….

Please call me…

I miss you..

We miss you…

Where are you…

Come home…

There was no bypassing the lock screen, but that had never been his goal. He let the ringing stop, frozen on the doorstep as he wondered if she would open the door at his back.

Would she have heard the ringing?

Bare feet and confused would she look to find him outside holding a world where she was dearly missed?

The minutes passed, no lights turned on at his back and though the door remained unlocked he breathed in deep and hung his head as his fingers dialed.

Somewhere beyond the shadows a sun was beginning to think about the coming rise. Still, it was darkness yet when his voice tangled in his throat and he tried to reply to the questions being asked by the man on the phone.

"Hello? You've dialed 911, can you hear me?"

"...Yes."

"Sir, are you alright? Sir? Do you need police, fire or ambulance?"

Eyes closed, Sasuke tried to picture her inside. Tried to see her shape in the rumpled covers of her bed asleep, safe and sound.

But he knew she was kneeling instead.

"Sir? Sir, are you all right?"

A bottle of vodka and a bottle of pills and the shining white of the pill bottle's innards lined up like a pearl necklace on the floor ready to choke her.

"No."

"Police, fire or ambulance? Everything's going to be okay. Let me get help to you."

"Yes, I… ambulance. I need an ambulance." The break in his voice startled him dimly until his hands smeared the tears on his cheek and he understood. "Please."

The sun thought about rising. The sky remained black. Even when the sirens started wailing and the blue and red spirals of light tried to fight back the dark.

Behind him, the door remained.

Closed.

Business slowed dramatically after New Years.

The snow encased the buildings. The roads became long dangerous fjords and even if he had wanted to stay open what was the point?

Naruto came over anyway.

Even the blonde succumbed to the silence of the first wintery days of the year. Slouched in the living room couch, long body taking up too much space he read books, complained about Sasuke's lack of television, ordered chinese take out and made his friend laugh.

"How was Christmas?" Naruto dared as he gathered his coat and mittens and hat from all the places in Sasuke's little house that he had deemed to crowd with his stuff.

Sasuke rolled his eyes, hands in his pockets to ward off the winter chill that had made its way even inside. "Fine."

"Ugh." Naruto replied thickly. "Sounds so Uchiha."

"Father drank half a bottle of whiskey before dinner. Mother asked about the shop and about me coming back home for a longer visit." Sasuke elaborated, because Naruto's version would probably be worse if he didn't.

"Sounds about right."

"I drank the other half of the whiskey by the end of the night." Sasuke shrugged as he followed his friend down the stairs. "Typical Christmas, really."

"Ha."

"Well what about you?" Sasuke grumbled. "You and Kakashi and Iruka can't have been much better."

"We had Kentucky Fried Chicken and milkshakes, actually. So even just the food was better."

"I disagree."

"Also, Iruka got sloshed because I made him a couple drinks and he trusted I knew how to measure tequila."

"He was sloshed prior to you measuring if you think he would trust you to measure anything sober."

"Anyway, it did get kind of heavy when he started crying about how I needed to get married." Naruto made a face like he'd bit something and cracked his tooth. "As if I don't lament enough about that for all of us."

"Ah." Sasuke wrinkled his nose and leaned on the store front counter tiredly. "I got a lot of that from Mother this time too, but I-" He stopped.

Naruto rearranged his scarf unnecessarily to avoid looking his friend in the eye. "Ah." It was strange, that such a Sasuke one syllable sound would leave his mouth to convey such understanding. Sasuke sighed.

"...no news, huh?"

Soon it would be a year since the paramedics and then police had climbed the steps of Hinata's house. He'd stood in the chill of a coming morning, dazed by the lights as they dragged her outside.

In his memory she was calm, but he thought this was likely untrue. It had taken four men to remove her from the house.

Still, all he could recall was the smooth blankness of her face as her gazed locked onto his own and the whisper with which she told him to go home.

"This was never your choice to make."

When they had asked her if he should come with on the ambulance she had said no and the doors had closed.

"It takes time." Sasuke turned away, studying the darkened shadows of the store aisles, lumpy and strange in the dim. Only a string of lights Hinata had arranged on a shelf cast any brightness, and as he watched they flickered with uncertainty, wavering in their strength.

"I know." Naruto nodded, squeezing his shoulder hard. Sasuke offered a smirk, both sheepish and thankful and a myriad of other things he couldn't say. "Who knows though? Everyone's different, we all heal at our own time."

The door bell's ring as he left echoed through the silence eerie and long. Sasuke sighed as he turned from the door, examining the light on the shelf for the burnt out bulb that was likely causing the problem.

With his back turned the door bell rang again and he rolled his eyes.

"We're Closed."

Someone shifted behind him, winter shoes clunking nervously on the wood floor. Irritably, he turned and froze.

"I...I know you're closed, but I...was hoping I might be able to come in anyway."

There was a roundness to Hinata's face that hinted at an appetite. Inches of her hair that traced her shoulders covered in the sprinkled sugar of fresh snow.

But it was her eyes that were familiar, shattered still like a stained glass window. Broken, but able to let the light through beautifully, even more.

"It's okay if you want me to leave." She broke the silence like coming up for air from a fall in deep water, stepping back hesitatingly as she spoke. "I… I understand. I just… I wanted to.. I wanted to say thank you and I.. I wanted to say I-"

Frozen as he was he could see the swallow passing down her throat, the blood rising to her cheeks, the tears welling in her eyes.

"I wanted to say I'm so sorry and that I… that I miss you and I-"

If there was more he didn't bother hearing it. In his arms she sobbed, surprised despite all she had learned to be enclosed and not closed out.

I miss you, she had said.

Those were not the three words he might have been hoping to hear but they were a start. And there was time anyway.

All he had ever been able to really give her since the start, had been time.