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Midnight, in C Minor
Chapter Four: Tacenda
(n.) things better left unsaid; matters to be passed over in silence
"Do you still love me?"
He asks it across the table from her, so that her hand stills with chopsticks over her plate, her other hand holding the sleeve of her white kimono back, effortless in her grace.
Sasuke curls his hands into fists in his lap. Around them, the cheerful noise of the wedding is in full swing, but he has no mind for it. He has only this:
"Do you still love me?"
He doesn't know which is worse anymore: that she doesn't, or that she does.
He asks again, because she has been silent for too long, and maybe this is her answer after all and he is simply too stubborn to accept it.
But Hinata has only a blank look for him, only a thin press of her lips when she glances up at him. She stares at him with those white eyes, those fucking endless white eyes and then she blinks, because suddenly her new husband is approaching the table, her name lined with affection on his tongue, and her chopsticks clatter to the table, her sleeve brushing carelessly along the plate, grazing the food, and Sasuke has bile at the back of his tongue as he stands swiftly, his chair scraping against the floor but she is already standing herself, already turning to her husband and Sasuke stops.
("What would you have me do?" he growls at her ear, the news of her impending wedding still simmering in the air between them. He grips at her hair, curling into her even as she keeps her hands between them, splayed against his chest, pushing uselessly. "What would you have me do?" he asks again, this time desperate, this time trembling.
"Look away," she tells him, resigned, tears already hot against her lids. She kisses him and never forgives herself for it.)
Hinata turns from Sasuke now, eyes downcast as she reaches for another man's arm.
He is staring at the stain along her sleeve for longer than he knows is proper but the man across the table doesn't seem to notice, not when he winds his arm around her waist and pulls her to him and suddenly that bile at the back of his tongue is a churning sickness in Sasuke's gut.
"Look away" she had told him. He never does.
Because her wedding kimono will always be stained now, and he understands her well enough to know she hasn't the heart to wash it out.
It is the only answer he will ever receive, after all.