A double-level home sat uneventfully on a civilian residential street. It was unassuming. I was normal. He didn't know what he expected. A whole compound for two people? Was the choice of a civilian street a deliberate decision, or had they just liked the house? He stared from past the front gate and waited for something, anything, to come from him, but all he was getting was impatient.
Was his house not important to him enough to trigger something? What was triggering the memories anyway?
Hinata's lips came together in a line of disappointment before she realized it and turned away to open the gate. "Welcome home."
Sasuke pushed the gate open and paused to look up at the house. Would she be home? There weren't any lights on in the house, but the sun was only starting to set.
He didn't even make it to the door before it burst open for him to barely catch a ball of fluffy sweater and dark hair. He held on to her and sighed comfortably. This felt good. He missed this.
Hinata sniffled on his shoulder. Emotional as ever. "Welcome home."
Sasuke ducked his head into her damp hair and clenched his eyes shut. His home wasn't the house.
"You're crying." Sasuke heard before he realized it was his own voice.
Hinata blinked at him, touching her face in a panic. "What?" Did she think she wouldn't notice?
"You ran out, crying." Sasuke cleared his throat, looking up at the front door. "When I came home."
"Oh." Hinata wrapped her arms around herself. "There was a point where one of us would be assigned before the other went back, and it just kept happening for months. I was… happy to see you." She tightened her arms, shutting herself off. "Let's get inside."
Was she uncomfortable with the memory because of what he remembered or because of something that he didn't? It was hard to tell, with her already clearly being insecure around him.
Sasuke was expecting something but wasn't prepared for the nauseating wave that would hit when she opened the door.
Memories ran over each other, mashing over each other as they came in too quickly, moments of humming from the kitchen followed by the sound of shattering glass, joy-filled screech, and a cold silence that he could feel her anger.
His head spun as more small moments overlaid over each other and just kept coming, but he could discern any of it. He squeezed his eyes shut to try to get it to stop. He couldn't even retain one memory before the next laid over it.
Sasuke clutched at the hand he found on his chest as he took a few heaved breaths and then gagged. Hinata pulled toward the bathroom, where he emptied his stomach. He hated every minute of this. This was ridiculous. He couldn't even make out the memories. What was the point? "Damn it."
"Maybe you should lay down for a while." Hinata brushed his hair out of his face as he coughed. Maybe her discomfort was easier to forget when he was in such a pathetic condition. "Now, I feel bad for hoping that the house would trigger something."
Sasuke sat back on the bathroom floor with his head blistering. He blinked at her as a question appeared with another brief memory. He blinked blindly at the bathtub. "Did we take baths together?"
Hinata's face turned red in an instant as she gapped at him and cleared her throat. "Yeah… and more than that."
Sasuke face flattened as his own cheeks heated up. Yeah, they were married. He should have expected that, but he wasn't expecting her to say it outright.
"I'm sorry." Hinata waved her hands and covered her face. "I shouldn't have said that."
Hinata closed the bedroom door to let him sleep in peace, hoping tomorrow the memories would be kinder because if they were going to torture him like this, it was possible he wouldn't want to remember, and she couldn't ask him to go through that for her.
She held her hand on the knob for longer than she wanted to admit because she wanted to go back in there and lie down. Just a few days ago, they told her it was possible that he wasn't going to wake up, and it had set in her heart that this could have been the time that she had told him she feared. The time he didn't come home.
And she couldn't even go in there and curl into him like she so desperately wanted to.
She backed away from the door and felt a tear run down her face. She wiped it away quickly. She needed to stop being so emotional about this. It wasn't going to help anything. It would only make him feel worse, and she didn't want him to stay because he felt guilty.
Because it was always a possibility that he didn't stay.
It was possible that he wouldn't like what he was seeing. He could look at the life they built and decide that he didn't want it.
And it would break her heart.
Hinata took in a deep breath and closed her eyes.
One day at a time.
Sun streamed in through the window, making him duck his head further in the sea of dark hair. Sasuke pulled her closer under the covers and kissed her bare shoulder.
Hinata was going to complain about not putting her hair up before bed, but he loved to see the slight crinkle to her usually pin-straight hair. It was a special treat after nights like last night or just when she was just too tired to finish her routine.
He should get out of bed.
He didn't want to.
One of the few things that could keep him from his training schedule was spending more time tangled in her skin.
Sasuke woke up in the same bed but found himself alone. He reached out to the void on the empty side.
The dream clung to him instead of fading away, but was it a memory? The low ache of his temple told him it probably was.
It felt… like he shouldn't have it. Like he was violating a boundary with a stranger. He was happy in the memory, but right now… he couldn't imagine her being comfortable with him seeing that.
But did that make sense?
Sasuke had to remind himself that just because she was a stranger to him, he wasn't a stranger to her. This was their bed. She already told him it wasn't the only place they had…
Sasuke pressed his face into the pillow. He would rather suffocate in the fabric than think about it anymore.
As far as he remembered, he was a virgin who put aside all thoughts of that kind of affection in favor of his goals. Did he regret that? He regretted the goals, at least.
Maybe he should just get out of here until he figured it out.
Excruciating pain shot straight through his eye, and he almost cried out, holding his hand over it as it violently spun. Sasuke sat up, holding his eye shut, as the pain ebbed away. The pain didn't come with a memory and didn't stay like it did when it did when he remembered something.
What the hell was that?
A faint knock came to the door, saving him from the rest of his spiral. The door peeked open. "Sasuke-san?"
Is that what she called her husband? "I'm up."
The door opened the rest of the way, revealing Hinata in the same clothes she wore the day before. She padded into the room toward a dresser. "Sorry. I didn't want to wake you last night, but I am going to shower, so I need some clothes."
Sasuke watched her collect clothes from one dresser and make a pile and then go across the room and make another pile out of a second dresser. Those must be for him.
Hinata stopped in the middle of the room and put her hands on her hips, thinking, bleary-eyed and not quite awake. At this point, Sasuke noticed the kink in her hair. She fell asleep without putting it up. "Is your eye still bothering you?"
Sasuke blinked his Rinnegan back open. "I'm fine." Her vigilance was irritatingly accurate. It was hard to think straight about this with her hovering. He needed to get away from her. Another sharp pain shot through. "Shit." He covered it back up.
Hinata came to his bedside with her Byakugan activated. "There is still a lot of activity. Did you remember something?" Her eyes looked through him, intense, blank, focused on her task. The scar above her eyebrow was clearer now, jagged like it wasn't a passing shot.
Sasuke stared back into her face, waiting, concerned. It wasn't a memory he was reacting to. Was his Rinnegan trying to tell him something? Could it do that? "I'm fine." He lied.