For the next few days, life in the Uchiha Manor was practically lifeless. Hinata didn't speak to Sasuke unless she absolutely had to, and then it was to inform him of something. All in all, she didn't speak over 20 words since she came.

Sasuke sighed. 'Oh well' he thought to himself 'it's better than having those fan girls around that keep on chattering along'. He smiled. His fan girls lost all hope in him when he married Hinata. They haven't even tried to separate between him and Hinata- people didn't just "get divorced" in Konoha. Because of that, about half of the faces in Konoha were depressed. When he trained with Sakura and Naruto, he could see that Sakura was on the verge of tears. For some reason, so was Naruto. Was everyone depressed now in former team 7?

"Why are you upset?" Naruto had asked him "You've got Hinata." He said, and Sasuke could see he was on the verge of tears. So Naruto liked Hinata... Hmm.

"Mind your own business, dobe." He told him. Naruto lay off. The rest of the training was quiet. Sakura tried extra hard in taijutso now, Sasuke saw. He complemented her on improving. He really wanted to cheer her up. Sakura smiled at the compliment for a second, then frowned and tried even harder.

Instead of going to a restaurant, he told them that he had to go and see the Hokage. And so he did.

"the Hokage told me to come here." He told the guard, which was still afraid of him.

"Go right in then..." he told him. There was really no need to, of course. When the Uchiha came, he came in; there was no question about it.

"Starting tomorrow, you are a jounin. Come to my office tomorrow at 10:00 AM, I have an urgent mission for you to carry." Tsunade told him. With that, he left. It was still only noon. He went back to his Manor, and fixed himself some ramen. god... how he hated ramen!

Hinata came over and sat on the other side of the table.

"You don't look like you're enjoying your ramen too much." She said quietly.

"You're right, I'm not. But someone has to finish the endless stock of ramen I've got..." he told her.

"You can always give it to Naruto... his... his is coming soon." She said. Sasuke sighed. Naruto again? He wanted Hinata to love him... to think about him... not that damn fox.

"No can do. Naruto gave it to me in the first place. Why would I buy ramen anyway? I hate ramen." he informed her.

"Oh..." she replied. But Sasuke liked it when she talked. Besides... they had to talk about it eventually...

"I'm sorry, Hinata..." He told her. Hinata looked up, surprised.

"Sorry?" she asked.

"Yeah... sorry... that you got separated from your dreams because of me..." he continued "But this... this is really important to me." He needed to cheer her up. "Besides, if I could have chosen all over again I'd have chosen you. I like you." He told her. Anything to stop her from being so sad...

Hinata looked up. It was not like Sasuke to tell someone how he feels.

"I'm going on a mission tomorrow. My first mission as a jounin... and I don't know when I'll be back... please don't run away while I'm gone." He finished, and stood up. So did Hinata.

Hinata was thinking of something to say.

"Arigato." She finally got out of her mouth. Sasuke looked at her. She wished he wouldn't. His eyes were... red? Why was he activating his sharingan? "Why... why are you activating... the sharingan?" she asked him. The sharingan was deactivated without a word.

And then it happened. Hinata didn't expect it. Sasuke leaned over and kissed her. Hinata pulled back, and went outside. "I-I'm going... to train..." she said. When she got outside, she ran. She ran all the way to Naruto's house. She knocked. Naruto answered the door, and let her inside. She sat on his bed, and cried. All the tears that she wanted to let out the past few days and couldn't... because she was afraid of Sasuke. But now Naruto was here...

She felt safe. She always did next to Naruto, but now she was slightly scared even here. But... it was either here or at the frightening, empty, Manor of the past Uchiha clan.

She looked up at Naruto. He looked... sad. Not sad, because he was slightly smiling. But his eyes were very sad (visualize episode 98 when Sakura hugs Sasuke).

Half an hour later, when Hinata stopped crying, he served them both ramen.

"So... how's life with Sasuke?" he asked her. "If he's a jerk to you, I'll beat him up bad."

Hinata smiled. "He's alright... really..." she said. But she started crying again.

"What did he do?" Naruto asked. His eyes were those of the nine tails.

"He... he kissed me." She told him. Naruto looked at her, as if he wanted her to continue.

She didn't.

"Well... that's not that bad..." he chuckled. "you are his wife, after all..."

"demo... I don't want to be..." she said. "I want to be with you."

Naruto looked stunned. He had that sensitive look again (I'm in love with that look, shoot me). It took him a while to reply.

"Now you're telling me." Naruto said and cleared the table. "Well there's not much I can do about that right now. I can still beat the hell out of Sasuke if you want though. If you don't though, you should... you should leave now." He said to her.

'of course he'd say that baka' she thought to herself 'this isn't rejecting you.. this is staying loyal to Sasuke. He's his best friend after all...' she thought and went back to the Uchiha Manor. Sasuke was sleeping.

Of course he did. he was leaving on his mission tomorrow, he needed sleep. Even if it was only 4 PM (time flies). She sat beside his bed and waited for him to wake up. She was making another doll for her collection.

Sasuke woke up, and noticed Hinata sitting next to his bed. She was making something.

"What are you doing, Hinata-chan?" he asked her, trying not to sound intimidating, but more... loving. He knew Hinata was afraid of him, and it pained him. The attachment to her name seemed appropriate to him for some reason. Hinata looked up in surprise.

"Umm... I- I was waiting... for you to... to wake up..." she replied.

"Ah... well... I'm awake now... is there any special reason you were waiting for me to wake up?"

"No..."

"Hinata... I'm so sorry... I don't want you to be afraid of me. I want you to love me... the way I love you. All I want is to be a good husband to you... and a good father to our children..." he said, and quickly added, "When the time comes..."

"Right." Hinata said in her quiet voice.

Sasuke hugged her, but she didn't hug him back. She didn't tug away from him either. Her hands dropped to the sides, and she cried. Sasuke kissed her, so she won't cry anymore. He couldn't stand her crying. She didn't resist like she did earlier, at lunch. She just didn't do anything. Tears were still rolling down her eyes.

'It'll happen sooner or later anyway. Even Naruto said so... I'm his wife, and well, kissing shouldn't be so special... but still...' Hinata was thinking to herself. She didn't want this, but she had to do it. So she wasn't resisting. Her dreams will never happen now, anyway... so the least she had was to accept her fate. Just like Neji would have put it. besides, this was better than being almost ignored, like she had been the past few days, and like she always been in her life... ignored by her father, by all of the Hyuuga, ignored by Naruto, who never noticed her... and now... Sasuke said he loved her. Did he mean it?

Suddenly, she didn't hate him anymore. He made her lose her fantasies about her and Naruto together, but Naruto had never really noticed her anyway. No matter how hard she tried to change. And she did try, never with much success. And now Sasuke was here in front of her, and he loved her. And he loved her the way she was, and she didn't have to change for him to notice her.

So maybe she was still useless, but she still meant something to Sasuke.

She kissed him back.

"Do you have to go to your mission tomorrow, Sasuke-kun?" Hinata asked.

"Hai, Hinata-chan... I'm sorry..." he said.

"It's ok... really..." She answered.

"Don't you have missions too?" Sasuke asked. When he was a chuunin, he had missions every other day.

"I do, usually... but I'm on vacation right now. I did an A rank mission that lasted two weeks a month ago, so Hokage-Sama let me have this month and a bit of next one off."

"Don't worry. I'll be back- I promise. I won't die... until my clan is fully restored."

"Hai."

I'm not very pleased with this chapter. But, shikata ga nay. The most I can do is rewrite it over and over again, and aside from not feeling like it, the points I'm trying to get through here probably won't look better even if I rewrite it.

This took me a long time to write, I sat to write it the minute I finished the last chapter (what? I was in suspense too!) that's right, it took me more than 12 hours to write this short, annoying chapter. I sometimes sat hours on a simple reply, because I was trying to make it sound like something that character would say... but it's not that simple... I watched episodes over and over again so I could feel 'in character' to get better replies... but no... argh!! The next episode is going to be much less annoying, I hope.

Anyway, I hope you liked this chapter as well although all of its downfalls. Finally, fully SasuHina! I was waiting for this to happen. And it's not over yet! More battles will come!

And another thing: I'm so sorry that I keep forgetting that loadsa time passed and that they're all 20 now. It's so... damn... annoying!!! I'd keep them 12 or 13 if it was up to me, but it didn't make sense because:

Sasuke had to have time to improve greatly in order to defeat Itachi, and I felt that would take 8 years (Itachi is strong. I love Itachi.)

They had to be old enough to marry each other.

Sasuke and Naruto had to be jounin.

So don't hate me ::hides::