Notes: Non-ninja AU with modern elements. OOC and shifting POVs. But I actually like it – messy, frilly, dancing, disjointed snapshots and all – because I do so want to be a bird right now. You know, to match my brain.
For Darth-Taisha, because she was so nice.
Disclaimer: The fandom is Kishi's. The lyrics are Secondhand Serenade (I think). I also disclaim any accurate knowledge of how the world works but if you can spot any admonitions on military neo-imperialism… coughit'sminecough.
Flightpath
Love is like flying.
One.
Mud smears across the cheek. Another day of grueling regimen in a muggy, far-off land. Familial connections spare you nothing and you trudge to the bunks as beaten in as everyone else. Every night the grit washes off in a shower that comes to scalding.
All this to prepare for fighting for the red-haze dreams of the dangerously small-minded denizens of your government.
The field is exactly as your cousin described: a little primitive, a little lonely, a little cruel.
As you drift into a light sleep which may be your last – accidents have been known to happen – you want to just go vamoose into the night, catch a civilian plane and fly, fly, fly home in reckless desperation (or something close to it).
That flight would be long, nothing short of halfway across the globe, but this journey into the outbacks and unknowns of the earth where safety is forfeit – to defend the civil liberties of total strangers – longer still.
But sometimes…
Sometimes – an ephemeral smile from a child, a mother's tears at the delivery of life-saving vaccines, a fissure of hope from a liberated prisoner, a safe motherland even at the cost of more than a few bodybags – being a soldier is worth it.
The degrees of human cruelty and human selflessness no longer hold any surprise for you.
Two.
Life is full of surprises.
They had never minded each other before, never crossing the line of distant acquaintance, never imagined the wondrously clumsy/awkwardly wonderful future – a life more-or-less together – that had lain in wait.
Sasuke's prodigious and standoffish-bordering-on-unfriendly older brother. Sasuke's gentle and quiet classmate.
(No great, explosive chemistry. No sheer magnetism.)
But one day, one day…
Down a flight of stairs and not even her fault, the stumble of a lifetime.
"Are you all right?"
"Y-yeah…"
"May we go to the nurse's office to verify?" A smile framed in golden sunlight.
(Just sweet, simple gravitation.)
Three.
Their relationship had never been more than subtle and sublimely practical.
Never demanding, never claiming ownership, never assuming.
(And fun – long hikes into the woodlands, hiding amongst the leaves in dappled lights, volunteering programs at the hospital where Itachi had involuntarily gathered a following, driving along in companionable silence and heart-stopping speed and skill that would later carry on to jets... Just fun.)
They were a song, effortlessly graceful, without disruption. A smooth roll across the runways, mechanically beautiful despite so many odds-and-ends that never should have flowed together but did, still does.
After about several years of smooth parallel running across the strip, and armed with nothing but promises, flight.
You married in autumn, in a brilliant cold-air swirl of dead leaves in the hues of fire that were, in that photo-perfect moment, equal to any of nature's great vistas.
Now, you are not afraid of flying even into the most brilliant sunshine.
You've found your parachute.
Four.
They are people who never know when to stop giving, who do not leave others hanging – and this becomes a problem when one is one of the best pilots in your generation and the other is the protégée medical surgeon at your local hospital.
Duty – for God, for country, for kin – need not call for them to snap up to it.
They are not married a year before it beckoned – trouble down south, prepare for some desert action, let's kick some sandcastles – jarring turbulence that put a lot of senses on high alert.
"I just don't want to read your name off some memorial." Half-kidding, Accidents have been known to happen.
"And I do not want to come home to an empty house." Half-kidding right back.
It is strange - there is no one to budge you unceremoniously awake at unholy hours save for your harried patients and the puppy dog collie from Inuzuka Hana you unanimously agreed to name Shisui, no one to replenish the stack of ice-cream you both so loved because you were buried in late-duty nights and medical journals, no one to crunch gravel with.
These are times when the absence is felt the most – hearing the muffled roar of jets, thin air that yields no laughter at the mention of things that sounded fleetingly funny in your head, a single-plate dinner, a cold bed that smells only of detergent (and you). It is bad when the strains of teenage emo music starts taking on an unnerving, embarrassing truth on rare occasions.
– call I'm sick, call I'm lonely, call I'm desperate for your voice –
(As if in unconscious telepathy, the call comes.)
Five.
You reprimand yourself for wondering if the other is safe, is happy, is still there.
Six.
The day international conflicts subside to a manageable portion is marked with cold winds and the slate blue sky and a lightly falling rain that dots the plane's windows. The aircraft lands, rolls into sun-shaped puddles, you disembark and the fresh, cold breeze feels like a benediction.
Officer's privileges makes it such that it does not take more than a few minutes to spot the person you've been waiting for (who's been waiting for you), in crisp doctor clothes – just off duty – and a swirly bright-red umbrella.
Both that and your heavy-duty bag of personals fall – too bad for them – as you two twirl and twirl and twirl in a blur of olive-green fatigues and flawless white.
He sets you down – Solid. Both feet on the ground. - and the missing that felt like a chasm from earth to sky , a floaty sort of feeling, vanish. The flight is over.
"Welcome home, Hinata."
If you love something, set it free, watch as it comes spiraling back to you.
End
Wait, if any of you read Treasure (that's the cracky one), note that I lost...half the next chapter and all the notes...hardware explosion. Until I recover that, I'm not updating. Meanwhile - oneshots! :)