A Hard Return to White
-Sunpies-

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto et al.

He doesn't love her and doubts he ever will.

On March 3rd Uchiha Sasuke married the Hyuuga Hanabi. Spring was early and the grounds outside the temple were unseasonably green. His bride was painted white to symbolize the virtue she never had and Sasuke didn't see the difference. When they took their vows in dull murmurs, the Hyuuga lined the path on one side facing an empty garden.

Sasuke looked into her eyes before he took the first drink of sake and saw the end of a bloodline.

-

Hanabi didn't cook. She was the daughter of the head of the clan. She sparred, she killed, she played but she didn't cook.

Sasuke didn't cook because it wasn't important. A burnt bowl of rice was food the same as tora-fugu to him.

The first year of their marriage –with no servants to cook and neither being adept or willing to take up the task- was a hungry, bad-tasting one.

-

He watched her train every so often. As a Hyuuga, even when she was swollen and pregnant, she was graceful. The curves of her fighting form were beautiful even when nothing else about her was.

Sasuke never sparred with his wife but he waited at the hospital when he was told she had gone into labor while training.

-

Their first child was born with the Byukagen but went blind at age two. The embarrassed and shocked doctors told them that perhaps the clans were more closely related than anyone had thought. Sasuke vowed never to have another child.

When Hanabi told him she was pregnant again it was the first and last time he ever hit her. He couldn't feel his arm for days afterwards with the chakra holes all blocked and for all he remembered it being there, the tenuous trust that had stood between them was nowhere to be found.

-

Hyuuga Hinata was declared incompetent at the age of twenty-six. She was removed from service to her clan and to her village, restricted only to healing in the hospitals. Hanabi became clan head just a month later.

For all they were sisters, Hanabi didn't seem to care about her sister's fate and donned the family robes like she was born with them on.

Sasuke found himself thinking she was cold, just like her father. He wondered if he was like his father too.

-

They did not argue. Ever. Even when they were besieged by politics (which they both hated), missions (which they both loved), or children (which confused them both), they never argued.

In order to argue they would have had to have spoken to one another. They never did that either.

-

Even though it had been generations since the last successful assassination, Hyuuga Hanabi was killed by a mist ninja in her sleep.

The funeral was small and many of the Hyuuga were absent arguing over whether it was a good idea to replace Hanabi with Neji before the bloodstained tatami mats could be replaced.

After the cremation Sasuke and his sons dug through Hanabi's bones to place them in the urn. When they had finished, the remaining ash was spread in the forest and the urn was taken to the Hyuuga family grounds.

-

With his children grown and the house empty, a familiar feeling lurks in the periphery of his mind. It takes him two years to put a name to the feeling; he is lonely, he just can't discern why.

A Hard Return to White
-Sunpies-

Dedicated to Goosegurl