A/N: Thank you for all the wonderful reviews guys! I tried really hard to post this chapter before sasusaku month was officially over, but life happened. I hope the extra wait pays off though. ;)
P.S. This chapter is heavy and PACKED with drama, please don't freak out at the end omg. It's also why I made it shorter than intended.
She doesn't know how to tell him, so she doesn't. For a while, she dances around the subject without really giving anything away, and it nags at her brain for the better of two weeks.
It's not that she doesn't want to tell him about Orochimaru's strange visit, but that she doesn't know when to, how to, or what to tell him exactly without having him close off to her or start a new futile quest to find his brother. It hasn't really helped her that he's been in and out of the castle ever since he returned a day after the snake man's visit; in fact, him going away so often only serves as a petty excuse to keep the event from leaving her lips, and so she doesn't tell him.
He hasn't really informed her, but she knows something's up in the country as well, if not the village. In the short duration of two weeks, it doesn't make sense that she only sees him twice, and it's only quick and in passing. He either spends his days conducting meetings in his offices with people she does not know, departs to other villages, establishments, or castles she holds no knowledge of either.
The maids don't really tell her and his advisors refrain from talking about their superior's plans with so much freedom, even if it is to their superior's wife. There is this sort of secrecy in the castle that makes her suspicious, yet it's clear that war is not upon them. If it is, then the village is far too quiet for such a predicament.
When nobody wants to tell her what her husband is doing and she doesn't even see him to begin with, it makes it all the more bearable to hold the truth from him as well. She's not lying, after all; she's only preventing the truth of Orochimaru's meeting from reaching his ears, especially since she wouldn't really know how to approach the subject.
She's not stupid. She knows that telling Sasuke about what had transpired at the meeting with Orochimaru can only bring bad news. It will only ignite a stronger flame in her husband, and she knows that he will seek the answers from the older man like she knows he will take any opportunity to discover the truth of his brother's—possible, most likely—demise.
Not to mention that the way he had spoken to her would probably fall on deaf ears. Sasuke would definitely opt to look past that in order to get more information, and the disrespectful ordeal would be forgotten.
She still remembers the audacity of that man, how he had spoken to her in such a direct manner, almost talking over her head and down the bridge of his nose. It is true that women her age and status don't hold much acknowledgment or social recognition in the grand schemes of things, but she had been holding a meeting in the place of Sasuke, and he still had had the nerve to silence her with his blunt words—words that spoke of the Uchiha clan in foreign circumstances.
Whatever had he meant by that? An Uchiha massacre? Unheard of, and very controversial. The Uchiha had died in a fire several years back—almost a decade ago, even. Sasuke had been a teenager, and Sakura a toddler.
There was a fire, starting out small and consuming the old, highly-respected Uchiha grounds—including the castle and each and every tree. There was a fire, but there was no one at fault. The whispers of Daimyō and Samurai made sure of establishing that notion from the start. Anything different would be to question the possibility of a culprit in her current clan's fall, and she won't do that under any circumstance; she can't betray her own.
What she doesn't understand is why Orochimaru, merely one of the many Daimyō of Konoha, would risk his life like that. Either the man is out of his mind, or his statements, for some reason and however much evidence, hold truth to them.
At the end of the day, the costs of telling Sasuke about this meeting would outweigh the benefits, and that's what she tells herself as the time goes by.
After the first few days, she feels the words at the tip of her tongue whenever she sees him walk by. After only two weeks, she finds the words forgotten, locked away in a faraway part of her brain, and barely even thinks of it. That is, of course, until someone unexpectedly reminds her of it.
"Sakura-san," she hears the familiar tone to his voice a few feet away, and she pauses in her work for a moment before she hums, letting him know he can proceed. In the back of her mind, she hears him say something, but she doesn't pay much attention.
Her concentration can't falter in the slightest and she has no idea why he's even bothering; he knows just how careful she has to be. Taking out the venom from a viper is no easy feat, and it is her first time—after watching him do it several other times over the last month. Every time they'd found one small viper, or at least relatively small, he'd picked it up and proceeded to show her the process he calls "extraction."
This time, as usual, they had found the young, small and thin viper in the gardens that morning, and she'd had to do everything in her power to not jump from excitement when he'd told her it was time—it was time for her to do it on her own. Kabuto interrupting now doesn't really help her learn this rather complex trick, much less when her hands shake when she grabs it from his hands.
And yet, as she wraps a thin layer of paper over a small, transparent cup, and places her index finger and thumb on either side of the snake's head, she hears him again. As she places her fingers on each of the glands, she hears his—otherwise, and in other circumstances, soothing—voice again.
"Must you speak?" She asks, taking her eyes off the snake to spare him a brief glance that screams of warning, yet he talks again as if he hadn't heard her as soon as she looks away.
"Sakura-san," he repeats, his usually calm voice now escalating in volume for a second. It's the only reason she pauses midway to her learning lesson, and she turns her head to look at him once more, to her chagrin, though she doesn't move the snake.
"Yes? You ought to know I am trying to focus."
He doesn't give her a smile. He doesn't even move.
She frowns at the peculiar, serious look crossing his features for a moment, and almost turns to face him fully.
"What is it? Is something the matter?" She asks, and watches as he starts approaching her slowly from the door of the small cottage.
"My apologies, Sakura-san. I didn't mean to startle you in a dangerous situation like this, but I have a..." He stops talking and walking altogether, thinking his words through, before he starts again. "I have a confession to make. I can only hope it stays within these walls."
Sakura doesn't answer right away, but she nods after a few seconds of speculation. She has been spending her days with Kabuto for several months now, and she can only acquiesce to his humble, soft-spoken request. He has given her no reason to think otherwise, and doing anything against her is futile; it can only backfire against himself.
The green, small viper hisses when he speaks next.
"Are you rather close to my lord, your husband?"
"Am I close?"
Her mouth opens in wonder, at a loss for words. Out of all the things he could have asked in that moment, this had not been on her list. It hadn't even crossed her mind.
Is she close to Sasuke? The man has always been a bit standoffish, and maybe a bit distant and cold; maybe a little bit aloof and quiet; blunt and insensitive.
Maybe, at the start of their marriage and in the two years following, they had not been close at all. Maybe now, after endless discussions and several tries and fails at actually being husband and wife, they are starting to warm up to each other, but it's no exact science, and she can't really affirm it from the heart.
After all, it's almost a game they're playing, this constant push and pull that threatens to drive her mad. During the first year as a married couple, she had realised just how things were going to work quickly enough; Sasuke's not exactly an affectionate person, much less someone who takes others' people's feelings into consideration. And Sakura, as soon as she took note of this, had distanced herself slowly from him by taking an interest in books, sewing, painting, and gardening. Each any every one of her hobbies has died one by one, slowly but surely.
First it was sewing, then painting, then books. Gardening and learning with Kabuto has been the only up to her usually down daily turn of events throughout every rough patch, though she started quite late; she hasn't been learning for a whole year yet, in reality.
During the first year of their marriage, things had been quiet—the calm before the storm. During the second year, she had almost ended her life, humiliated him inside a public establishment, bathed with him, and risked having an affair of all things with a man she hadn't even known. Such turn of events shouldn't exactly be considered an improvement in their relationship, but a dent. They shouldn't, but they had, and for some strange and unexpected reason, she has engaged with Sasuke in this past year more than she has in the first two years of their marriage.
Because during the third year, and so far, she has shared her body with him for the second time, won at playing shogi against him, ridden a horse alongside him, argued about his futile desire to retrieve his older brother from the nothingness...
Is she close to Sasuke, though? Is she close to him as husband and wife should be? Is she close him like how she has read it should, and could, be? Is she close to him enough to know him inside out? Has she spent enough time with him to be that close? Have they been intimate enough? Have they been affectionate like she has been taught he would? More often than not, the answer is not something she desires to hear.
She doesn't want to answer Kabuto. Even with all of his friendly, calming aura and respectful words, she doesn't want to prove it or disprove it, so she does the next best thing, and dances around the question with another one of her own.
"Why ask this in particular?"
It seems as though he'd been expecting this answer, for he smiles and sits on the stool next to her, in front of one of his long, wooden desks for working—which is what she should be doing, if not because of the venomous snake still between her fingers.
"Pardon me, but I must say Orochimaru-san visited me a few days ago bringing the same news he did to you."
This makes her widen her eyes in surprise against her better judgement, and the hold she has on the viper loosens ever-so-slightly at the unexpected news.
The first thing that rings in her head is the fact that this comes as unexpected in the first place.
"How was I not aware of this?"
Orochimaru had passed the gates of her castle and walked across the gardens to Kabuto's hut, and she hadn't been notified? She hadn't noticed?
"I'm afraid he visited late. By then, you were asleep," he explains.
Holding knowledge of this only makes her feel at a disadvantage, if anything.
If what Kabuto's saying is true, then he knows everything Orochimaru had told her, and maybe even more than that. If Kabuto had been more of a listener than what she'd been, Sakura can only wonder how many more things he knows now that she doesn't.
She sighs and turns her gaze to the table, looking at the hissing, developing snake in her grasp. It had taken her hours to learn what she had to do, and weeks to muster up the courage to so much as touch it—she doesn't want to come close to a horse, much less a venemous snake.
It would have been a simple procedure. All she'd have to do is apply pressure and move its head closer to the cup. The fangs would break through the paper instinctively, and the venom would be shot into the vase one pulse at a time. It would have been a simple procedure, one that she can't perform now.
With another sigh, she places the animal inside the box where they had trapped it back in the gardens, and closes the lid; whatever Kabuto chooses to do with the vile creature is not her problem now.
"I think it is best if I perform the extraction on another occasion."
Kabuto looks at her with an apologetic smile, and he readjusts his spectacles to stand higher on the bridge of his nose.
"Perhaps," he agrees, "I believe that one day such extractions will give way to an antidote. That is what I'm currently working on, actually."
Sakura cares not for such trivial concerns. At the moment, the snake is finally gone from her grasp, and she can face him in her seat at last. She doesn't dare waste much time. Soon, she will be fetched by a maid for lunch, and she's almost certain her husband is arriving from a diplomatic mission at that time, so she doesn't feel any remorse when she neglects Kabuto's ramblings with another, more pressing topic.
"Talk."
.
.
.
She finds Sasuke as he's entering the castle's premises through the supposedly heavily-guarded front gates. His selected army of Samurai stands outside the tall and thick stone gates, bowing after reaching the end of their three-day journey. Sasuke dismisses them briskly, and watches as they retreat while the tall, double doors start closing.
Sakura almost runs to him, not because she's ecstatic to see him after a mere three days, but because the matter at hand is urgent. She moves through the trees—because he's finally here, and she can finally tell him—and the grass and the stone quickly, holding up her long dress so as to walk with more ease.
She almost dares trip on a branch on the forest floor, but regains her footing and doesn't lose her motivation in approaching him, especially not when the forest ends and her sandals are met with the concrete of the front entrance. She's so close she can make out his dirtied attire, his rather long hair in a low ponytail, and his rigid stance as he watches his team of Samurai walk away from the castle.
She yells his name as she reaches him, hands grasping his forearms as though he will escape at the sudden act or she will fall in her own momentum. His hands immediately find the small of her waist to steady her, and she tries to ignore this instantaneous reaction from him in order to catch her breath.
Her husband had turned his head in her direction a second before she reached him, right as the tall double doors closed with resounding vibrations. At last, she stands in front of him with urgency written all over her features, and gasps leaving from her lips at the hurried walk from Kabuto's home to the front gates.
When she wrinkles the material of his uniform in her grasp and looks up into his stern, troubled face, his eyes widen against the unpredictable welcome. He opens his mouth to speak, but comes at a loss of words for a moment while he takes all that she is in.
She's panting, catching her breath before she can even begin to tell him anything about her strange behaviour. Her hair is behind her in an intricate bun up on her head, her skin glistens with a thin layer of perspiration, and her cheeks are red from the rush of hurrying over to him.
And the first thing that he thinks is that, yes, they had agreed to know more about each other once he came back from his short trip. But that had been weeks ago and she'd never mentioned their silent promise to compromise more in the relationship. This should, most certainly, not be the reason why she runs to him after he comes back, holds on to him as if her life depends on it, and waits to catch her breath so she can speak.
The second thing that he thinks is much less rational, and lacks logic altogether. She looks scared, pale and frail, hesitant but distraught, and it's all he needs to wonder about her safety in their castle. Had something happened while he was away? Had she been attacked, for some reason, under the impression that her husband was gone for a few days? Had someone hurt her, lay their hands on her?
It all sounds extremely unlikely and ridiculous. If something had happened to her, at all, he would have been notified—regardless of if he was in the next town over or on the other side of the world. It all sounds extremely unlikely, but it's also true that Sakura, his small and resilient wife, has never shown him this horror-struck face before, and all the red flags in his brain stand against whatever his brain may be yelling at him. However unlikely, his eyes threaten to flash an angry red at the slim possibility of her wellbeing being compromised.
"What is it?" He asks. Her breaths are coming out more evenly now, and she looks up at him through some strands of hair that have escaped her intricate hairstyle during the run. His hands leave her waist in a second, but he grasps her shoulders in the next, almost shaking her when she remains silent. "What is it, Sakura?"
"I need to speak with you," she says, biting her lip when he doesn't respond right away. Surely, this isn't what he'd been expecting. "Now."
"So speak."
"No," she shakes her head and takes her hands off his forearms slowly, as if she hadn't known she'd ever put them there to begin with. Sakura breaks eye contact with him and remembers where they are, who could see them, and the example she has to set for herself. Then, she looks down and speaks in a much lower, much formal voice. "It must be in privacy, if you so consent. Such things should not be spoken in the outdoors."
There is no one around them, and his guards wouldn't be foolish enough to give away any information Sakura wants to relay to him, but he understands this might not be the best place to talk in private.
He nods and retrieves his hands from her bony—much too bony and small, he notices—shoulders, and turns around so they can walk back into the sturdy walls of the castle.
Sakura follows him with dainty but sure steps up the stairs and all the way to their bedroom. She briefly wonders why he hadn't led them to the room where he conducts most meetings, but shakes the thoughts away as soon as she closes the door behind them.
Sasuke turns to regard her, but wastes no time. She understands why he had led them here when he fumbles with his coat before shrugging it off.
"What troubles you now?"
He walks inside their closet, and she frowns at his insinuation. Granted, she has been prone to share her troubles with him on different occasions, though not all of them on the same spectrum.
All of her other concerns have been small considering what she's to tell him now, but there's no need to put her down like that. Yes, asking about his cat's name may have been a bit preposterous, yet asking about attending her mother's wedding had been far from that. She purses her lips at his sudden change of attitude; maybe he thinks this is just a redundant question, which is why she says what she says after a few seconds.
"I bring news about your brother, my lord," she cautions. "Our own safety may also be threatened."
She hears him pause inside the ample closet, and watches as he enters the bedroom again in one of his loose, training trousers and a shirt that fits him like a glove. They haven't eaten yet, so she only guesses that he's getting ready to train after they eat lunch.
She knows it's not going to happen.
In any case, and with his poorly-timed accusation minutes earlier, he only stands a few feet in front of her now, hands down and shoulders relaxed even after she mentions his beloved family member. His eyes search for hers while her mind spirals into oblivion, and she tells herself she's making this more than it should be—after all, it is what he's been investigating for the better of a year, and he deserves to know.
"Well?" He asks, voice low and eyes curious.
So she speaks, wobbly legs threatening to give out under her and heart in her throat. She speaks, a knot in her stomach and her eyes looking anywhere but at him.
"He's not alive," she says, slowly and cautiously, knowing he won't understand. The next words come out faster in her nervousness, and she knows she has made a mistake the moment she finds his gaze again. "Your brother's death was planned, my lord."
She tells herself she's making this more than it should be—it's a constant mantra in her head at this point in order to keep herself going. But such thought is futile and bears no truth to it when she sees her husband give her the hardest, coldest look in the entirety of their marriage. And maybe she's not making this more than it should be, but less.
"Everything was executed perfectly the moment he stepped on the battlefield, even the fact that you were far away from him when he fell. It is not your fault, and it definitely was not his."
She watches his face transition slowly; sees every subtle emotion crossing his face as if she's reading from a detailed book. At first, there is no reaction. She waits on baited breath, yet he only stares for at least ten seconds straight. Then comes the lock of his jaw, the clench of his fists, and the confusion in his features.
She sees the anger later, but it's the betrayal in his eyes that makes her take a physical step back. Sakura can't help the goosebumps from manifesting along her spine, or the natural-born fear in her eyes as she looks into his own—his own that are confused, betrayed by this woman who had sworn to stand by him through everything, and is now telling him that his brother had been meticulously murdered, right in his face, as if it means nothing to her.
Sasuke's heart is beating wildly inside his chest because, why is she mocking him as such? He has offered to let her in, shared his time with her, tried to understand her, but this? This is beyond his scope of comprehension. He is tired, exhausted out of his mind, from all the traveling he has done in the last few days; and, up until now, he has firmly believed his brother to still be alive. Why is she telling him otherwise?
She gasps when he starts approaching her slowly. With every step forward, she takes one back, and soon enough her back meets the wall of their room.
"Planned, you say?" He chuckles, but it comes off as dry and completely humourless, and it's the most terrifying thing she has seen ever since her father's funeral.
It's that image of his pearly white teeth, his black eyes shining with something even darker, that forces her to remain silent. "These past two weeks, I've been searching the fucking country for answers, and they all point to my brother being alive."
Sasuke has her by the collar of her white dress, pinned and looming over her petite form. Maybe she ought to have explained further, faster. Maybe she ought to have delivered the news more delicately. Her husband is an impulsive man by nature, and she should have known better than to touch the subject of his brother in such an insensitive manner.
"I can not let this pass," he threatens, and she feels her throat constrict at the idea that this time he will punish her if she doesn't explain herself in more detail.
"Wait!" she exclaims, her eyes looking up into his own and her hands holding onto his own, wrapped tightly around the hem of her dress. "Please, let me explain."
Sasuke only stares her down, a pained look flickering in his gaze as he debates on whether to let her talk or not.
"It's not what you believe. He died by orders from the council."
Sasuke stays still for a moment, then clicks his tongue and shakes his head as if she has really lost it. "Orders?"
"The war-"
"What do you know of war? Who's been feeding you all this nonsense?"
"No one, and that is not the point," she lies, and opens her mouth to keep telling him because there are so, so many more things left unsaid, but he interrupts her again.
"Bullshit," he growls, hand leaving the hem of her dress and finding its way down his unruly locks and dirty, tired face.
Sakura feels like she can breathe again when he takes a few steps back and gives her the space she needs.
He looks at her again after he gathers his thoughts, as if giving her a second chance from the goodness deep in his heart, and she feels the small, painful drum of her chest at the stone cold look he gives her instead—because she knows it's her fault he's looking at her like this. "Who?"
Orochimaru, and then Kabuto, she wants to tell him. In the span of two weeks, she's learnt more about his family than he probably even knows, and she's not quite sure why she's the one to know firsthand and not him. Why had Orochimaru come to her and not him? He surely could have waited a day or two for Sasuke to be back and available for a chat, but he had exclusively come to see her and tell her and her only.
She had spent so many days drilling her head for answers she didn't have. She had spent so many days wondering if she should tell him about Orochimaru's visit, only to refuse to because of the risks that could entail.
Right now, right here, the costs don't outweigh the benefits of telling him everything. He has to know, whether for the good or the bad.
So she tells him—though she leaves Kabuto's influence out of the story—everything; tells him how Orochimaru had visited her a few weeks ago and then again earlier, before he returned. She doesn't want to lie, but Kabuto should stay out of the conversation, lest Sasuke takes his anger toward him rather too soon.
She tells him of his brother's death by the prestigious, oldest members in the council of Konoha. The old couple have been in the council ever since the Shogunate started with the Uchiha, and they had been the ones to order the murder of Uchiha Itachi in the midst of the war so as to better hide their tracks.
She tells him of the Uchiha massacre—not just a fire accident, like they all know it to be. It had been orders as well, by the council no less, and some lesser, unknown and probably hired man had lit the smallest of flames to start what had soon become the biggest mystery in the Uchiha family. By some miracle, Itachi had made it out of the mansion with his little brother, and the threats hadn't, and will not, stop pouring until both of them are six feet under.
She tells him the nation has been plotting, ever-so-slowly, to rid themselves of the Uchiha Shogunate, this system that has brought war and peace all the same for years ever since the corrupt Danzō.
She tells him because, sooner or later, it will be his funeral she'll be attending. There are many conspiring clans against him, and so many more that stand by him, and yet, this will to overthrow his centuries-old government has been well-planned for months, maybe years, and she tells him because she can't risk losing him due to her irrational fears and lack of courage.
By the time she's done telling him everything, they're both sitting on the bed side by side. By the time she's done talking, he lifts his head from looking at the floor and fixes his gaze on her own, worried eyes.
She expects him to lash out, destroy the room, summon every Daimyō in the country, or walk out on her whilst calling her all kinds of names.
But he doesn't.
Instead, he stares at her and looks away with something in his gaze; this spark in his eyes that only tells her he knows something she doesn't.
The room is quiet, and she bites her lower lip in anticipation of what he might do, or not do.
"What is it?" She inquires, wanting to know what's plaguing his mind and why he's so uncharacteristically silent after all that she's told him.
When he only shakes his head and stands, she can only call after him.
"Sasuke-kun?"
"It's nothing," he mutters.
She watches as he calmly walks to the door as if in some kind of trance, and she can do nothing when he decides to simply, slowly leave the room.
.
.
.
At night, as they lie next to each other at arm's length, she hears him move in her sleep. She feels his restlessness like she feels the tired ache in her body, and all she wants to do is close her eyes and resume her sleep, but then she almost—somehow—feels him open his eyes, and the sleep leaves her in a second.
She turns on the bed until she's on her back, and opens her eyes to stare at the dark ceiling with him. It's a few minutes before he speaks, and she catches the words even if they are low and in between.
"My first wife's name was Karin," he confesses, affirming her suspicions from the start.
He doesn't go into the details of their three-year marriage or talk more than he needs to, but his sincerity and bluntness only make her breath catch in her throat, palms sweaty under the covers and gasp threatening to come out.
"She was very loud and overtly affectionate, and carried my son for the last six months of our marriage," he mumbles, but she catches his every word in the quiet of their room, almost wishing she hadn't.
Before she can even begin to feel any kind of pain at the realisation that he had planned to have a baby with his first wife but not with her, she hears him sigh deeply and fall silent, like he's lost in his memories, like he doesn't have the energy to speak again.
She waits for him, but when he doesn't speak for five minutes straight, she takes the risk and breaks the silence herself.
"How did she lose the baby?"
She means no harm, but she genuinely wants to know. She wonders, in the more rational and logical part of her brain, that if Sasuke is telling her about his first wife after all that has happened today, it must be because something is bothering him. It must be because it's important.
He replies immediately, without a threat of remorse or emotion; it's just a plain, bland sentence, even if she deconstructs the sentence after it's spoken and understands the meaning behind them.
"She lost it for no apparent reason, and took her life a few days later," he explains, voice direct but eyes hard on the ceiling. "With my sword."
Time seems to stop still for the nth time in the day. And for the longest second in history, she can only hear the words ringing in her ears like a broken record; the meaning behind them, the memories she had tried to bury, the fact that his panic back then, even when they hadn't known each other that deeply, makes sense now. He hadn't been thinking of her back then. He had been thinking of her.
He had been thinking of history repeating itself. He had lost the baby. He had watched his wife dead in his room. It makes sense; it all makes so much fucking sense that she almost chokes on the irony of her situation.
Sakura audibly gasps and turns on her side when she's sure he's nothing left to say about it. She looks at his profile on the other side of the bed, almost not visible in the darkness around them, and feels like he's miles away.
"But now," he confides, "I am certain it was for a reason. Things in the nation were rocky back then. If what Orochimaru's saying is true, then losing the baby was planned as well."
She frowns as she thinks the possibility of this, and watches as he lifts a hand and scratches at his eyes.
"How? Food poisoning would have killed her too," she comments. "Unless..."
"Unless?"
"Unless herbs for that sole purpose were ingested."
She goes through the names in her head: pennyroyal, mugwort, parsley... The list could go on and on. There are many, many herbs that could induce miscarriage in certain times of a pregnancy.
It may make sense, and they may be compromised, but it doesn't mean much. This was many years ago, and she's not Karin. She's Sakura, and she'll die for him if she has to, because that's what she's been taught and that's what she wants to do.
"You should know children are not part of my plans," he murmurs, not looking at her. "Not yet."
When Sasuke doesn't answer, she moves closer to him on the bed, closer until she reaches his side, and holds her weight up with her elbow so as to look down at his face, her other hand on his chest; on his heart.
He looks at her, at her green eyes that seem to glow in the dark with hope, and at the small smile she tries to give him.
"We can fix this," she says, though it sounds like an empty promise. "Promise me you won't go to him? There is no need when we already know enough of the danger we're exposed to. We can fix this."
"How?"
He doesn't answer her question. But when she doesn't know how to answer his either, he only reaches up to her face with one hand, and wipes at the wetness that keeps sliding down her cheeks silently.
He's gone the next morning.