A/N: This weird little piece was born from two images in my head, without any idea where I might take them. When I started to write, everything started to fit into place, like they were always supposed to go like that. I wish writing was always that easy.

As I'm not a native English speaker, grammatical corrections and comments are very appreciated!

Pairing: SasuHina
Words: 5,239
Rating: T for mentions of violence and sex, but don't worry, it's done so stylishly that even I'm embarrassed.
Timeline: I'm fairly sure it's buried there somewhere. Pretty AUish, though.
Disclaimer: characters and milieus are not mine.

Flower Fields

by eishi (2010)

Not a leaf rustled as she passed the trees by. She was far too professional to make such a mistake, too used to hide herself, too used to kill anyone crossing her way. The sun was already setting; the orange hue gave the mountains a cruel impression, dyeing them red and black against the horizon. She glanced at the view, smiled despite the circumstances and tripped – the mistake cost her two seconds but not a sound. She was still ahead the group chasing her and the scroll that she was clutching with her too-soon-aged fingers. Being a shinobi – an elite ANBU shinobi, especially – might have kept one in a great shape, but it most definitely did not have that impact on mental health. She had seen one too many friends of hers age before they were supposed to, retire from missions when the first wrinkle of tiredness appeared, sigh tragically as the blue lines popped into a view in the back of the hands.

She was not twenty, and yet her hands belonged to an old maid.

The screams stopped her. She listened for a moment, making sure that there was none left alive, and then went back to check the bodies. All five men chasing after her and the scroll had fallen into her basic trap – the heads slain by the invisible wire were still bobbing from one side to another on the light-green leaves, the wire itself dripping blood. She undid the wire, robbed the bodies from everything valuable, then took all the heads by the hair and carried them away from the thick forest.

The sun was sending its last few rays when she stepped out of the bushes to a small clearing by the steep cliff. The river below seemed to avoid the heads sent to it, dodging the whirling red color for a moment and then accepting the offering, taking away the last memory of their identities.

She relaxed, against every order given to her, and took away her mask. The cool evening wind touched her face, but she merely smiled at it, welcoming the breeze, and let herself rest for a moment before she needed to get back to her village. This would be her last mission in a while; she had requested a month long leave because of her wedding. She wasn't looking forward the ceremony, or the reception afterwards, but the foods and the decorations: she got to choose every flower in every single tokonoma, she got to decide that the fish would be eaten before serving anything else. Her future husband didn't care for such things. She would be able to decide everything.

She put on her mask and turned to face the forest again. The journey back home would take a day and a half, and she didn't want to be late and let down her senior officer who had put so high hopes on her – "Hyuuga-san will retrieve the scroll and get back here faster than a lighting strikes a tree," he had said, laughing, loving the metaphors he thought he invented all by himself. She neither liked nor despised the man, but she was still responsible for the mission and her team's success. She crouched to reach the highest branches and heard a groan.

That's when she saw him.

Nearby the sharpest and highest point of the cliff, laying on the ground, bleeding to death but not desperately gasping for air he laid, looking straight at her. She turned around and walked to him. When she removed her mask, the man smiled. It was that same cold, cruel, a bit unsure smile she had seen him give to everyone unfamiliar to him during the Academy days long, long ago.

"Hyuuga Hinata," he said. His voice was raspy, but it didn't tremble. Even near death he was still as cold as ice, not ready to show any kind of emotion as he was bleeding away.

Hinata spared him a look. She had only needed one glance to know that he would not make it – the wound in his stomach was disgustingly large, revealing his intestines, and his red-glowing eyes were only a faint shimmer of what they could have been in the Sharingan's full glory – but decided to grant him a wish he hadn't asked and didn't deserve to be granted, and stayed where she was, standing next him, staring at his faint eyes, sparing a minute or two of her time to a dying ex-comrade.

"I should kill you," she said coldly. "Sasuke-kun."

She mocked him, stressing the honorific, making him painfully recall the carefree memories of childhood and the times they had played in the flower fields, promising each other that they would stay together always, always, like a mother and a father, taking care of the flowers like they were their children, until his family died and he started to ignore him, only sparing her a glance and then a glare if she dared to whisper from the shadows a small, desperate, "Sasuke-kun..."

He smiled. "Yes, you should."

She smiled sweetly back, too sweetly, too friendly, too soon. "But that would be too good for you, Sa-su-ke-kun."

He coughed, and blood dyed his cheeks and mouth and nose. She didn't kneel to wipe it away. She stared at him, coldly, contemptuously, longingly.

"I killed him," he said. The more he spoke, the raspier his voice got. He must've been lying there for hours, waiting for death, without a drop of water and listening the river roaring below. "I finally killed him, Hinata."

She glanced around. The older Uchiha brother's head was by the bushes, the body wasn't. Someone else's body was, though: Orochimaru, rotten and eaten.

"I'm free from him." It took her a moment to realize he didn't mean poor Itachi. "He's gone."

He smiled. It wasn't cold. It wasn't calculated. It was simple. It was real.

She sat down, took her water bottle and poured a bit of the liquid to his lips. He didn't even notice this, and the precious drops fell to the stony ground as he shifted his head to look into Hinata's motionless eyes.

"I'm glad it's you." His eyes started to flutter. "I got to see you just before I died. That must mean I did something right."

The Sharingan glow faded and disappeared, his eyes closed. She observed him a moment, closed the bottle and put it down. She spent a while there, before his body and thinking what he had just said, how he had yet again manipulated her to do something that she didn't want to do, because that would strain her conscience and yet, give her a wonderful feeling of being useful the moment he would smile at her, like they were kids again and he would laugh and say, "Hinata-chan's so nice."

Hinata-chan is not being nice, she thought as she put her hands together, forming complicated seals faster than an eye could see, Hinata-chan is being mean. She is going to save your despicable life.

She though of her future husband, her cousin, her guardian, as she carried him through the woods and needed to take more breaks than usually. He slept peacefully, breathing slowly but steadily, dreaming restless dreams that revealed themselves to her by the movements of his eyeballs (upper left – he was dreaming about the past, down right – he was dreaming of something meaningless). She didn't stop until it was necessary, aware that the enemies might close up on her faster now that she had extra weight on her.

The waxing moon graciously showed her the road as she made her way through the woods, dreaming of the delicious scents of her home and only receiving the smell of dried blood, sweat and urine from the weight on her back.

He realized he was not dead when he could move his arms. He had been staring at the twinkling night-sky for a while, floating in the eternal darkness and then coming crashing down as his toes started to wiggle and his fingers tap the ground and his eyes flutter. He wasn't dead, but he certainly wasn't alive either.

She was there, staring at him. He blinked.

"Where are we?"

"In the border of Leaf," she answered, those unnerving white eyes never leaving his. "You've been sleeping for two days."

"You're slow," he croaked. He observed her stiff figure sitting on her knees before him, the happy fire crackling in the background. She hadn't changed much from his memories – she still didn't smile unnecessarily, but this time it wasn't because she didn't have the courage to. Maybe she didn't have the feelings left to. "Why?"

He knew and she knew what that one syllable word contained, but she still left him hanging. She rose, listening carefully to the surroundings.

He could only lay there and watch as she killed each and every one of the enemies, disposing of their bodies in the same cold and cruel manner in which she had healed him and carried him. The ANBU mask never even left her face as she glanced at him, put out the fire and hit him hard in the acupuncture point in the neck that put people into restless sleep of nightmares and fear.

The next time he woke up, she was still there. It took him a moment to recognize the other faces, and when he did, he knew that he was going to die. It just puzzled him why she would go all the trouble just to send him to death.

"Do not try to move," Godaime said. Her voice was stern, but not cruel, like hers. "You'll only hurt yourself if you do."

"Hello, Sasuke-kun," Sakura said. Her smile was not the same he remembered it to be. She looked old, wrinkled and tired. "I'm going to work on your stomach next. It's going to hurt."

She hadn't lied: it hurt, badly, excruciatingly, but he never let out a sound. He just watched Hinata standing on his right, just standing there, not doing a thing to help him. Naruto was there on her side, taking turns at staring curiously at him and then giving him a dirty look and glancing away.

It took hours of pain, but they saved his life. They couldn't save all his limbs – his left hand still stopped at the point where the forearm just reached halfway before curving to the goal of wrist, and his ankles had to be strengthened with metal parts. He was left laying there, alone in the unnerving all-white room, chained to the bed. Not that he could escape in his weakened state, nor that he wanted to. Just to be extra-sure, they had said. Just to be sure you're not going to run off before receiving your death sentence for leaving the village and killing dozens of our own men and messing with powers not to be disturbed to outlive your brother.

No one visited him for a whole day; he was left without food or water, chained to his bed, unable to move a muscle. He fell asleep and thought he had heard Sakura enter just then, walking up to him and saying only one thing, I'm over you, I don't need you, I'm glad you're going to die, you killed the only man I ever loved, you bastard, and when he startled awake he laughed and wanted to shout after her that she was just kidding herself and that she was just as pathetic as ever for fooling herself to think that she really cared for that lazy idiot Kakashi. She wasn't there, though, and he kept his thoughts to himself, confused and dry-mouthed.

Naruto didn't come. That confused him even more: Tsunade came, fed him and told straightly that the committee had decided unanimously that he would be kept alive until he was in the best of his health, then questioned for his actions, even though he could do nothing to defend himself, as his crimes were too horrible, and then they would kill him. If he wanted, he could still redeem himself, she said, almond eyes soft but not one bit empathetic, he could commit a seppuku, he could end the Uchiha bloodline there and that would be the end of the shame that would haunt the village for generations. He didn't answer. He waited for Naruto to come, to grin and say that it took him a few days and some questionable methods, boy, those committee guys are really perverts, but now you're free, you bastard! Naruto never came. Tsunade said after a week that he had taken a long mission far from Konoha and had said just before his leave that Sasuke would better be dead when he came back.

He fell asleep, seeing only black in his fearless dives to escape the reality.

She entered the room. He smiled weakly, but her face was ice. Ironic smile reached his lips.

"They're going to sentence me to death," he laughed. "Why save me?"

She stood on his right again, staring directly into his eyes. She was paler than he remembered her to be, her eyes even bigger than usually. Then he realized that she was wearing thick make-up – her face was completely white, looking only faintly healthy on cheeks as the red dots decorated them.

"That's what you get for leaving me... us all—," (she corrected it hastily, too fast, too soon to be believable, or so he wanted to see the situation, she still had to care for him, someone had to), "—and doing all those things you did," she said, coldly, cruelly, crushing him. "You're only going to live to see death."

He looked at her, peacefully. She trembled, but it was not because of fear. She was angry – she was still angry. He smiled to himself as he noticed how her long hair was starting to fall from the complicated hairdo it had been bound to.

"Who's the groom?"

She smirked, tearing the combs and pearls from her hair and scattering them all over the floor. "Neji."

"Lucky man," he breathed. "You broke our promise."

"You broke it first," she spat, not one bit amused. "Besides, we were only five back then. You never meant it."

She gathered the remains of the wig and the pearls and combs and turned to leave. He would have sat up if he could have.

"Hinata," he said, as loudly as he could, "I meant it. I still do." She stopped. The trembling made the pearls roll off of her hands, but she didn't pick them up. "I'm sorry."

She didn't answer, but she knew as well as him that he had truly meant the proposal, even when it had only been a few clumsy words, and then the world had gotten between them and tore them apart.

It took a month, but he got better. They stripped him from any weapons, all the money, forbade him to enter the Uchiha compounds, chained him to his bed for nights. He didn't care – why should he? There was nothing left to live for. She had been right: he was going to live only to see death, but unlike any other person on the planet, he knew it was coming soon, and it wasn't going to forgive him and be nice. He would die painfully, almost as painfully as it had been killing his brother, or so he liked to imagined on the long nights bound to his bed.

The only one that visited him excluding Tsunade was her – Hyuuga Hinata, the newlywed wife of Hyuuga Neji. It was really handy, he had said to her, she hadn't even needed to change her surname. She hadn't smiled, not outwardly: he knew he had seen a sadly twinkling humor in her eyes.

"Why keep me company?" he asked her as she visited him once again. It wasn't often, but since he had been brought here a month ago, she had visited him at least six times.

"No one else is going to bother," she said as she sat down. "I'm not sure why even I bother. You do not deserve this kind of attention."

"Thank you," he said, meaning it. They watched each other curiously, sadly, humorlessly. "I mean it."

"I know," she said. "You mean everything..."

He got to walk all by himself in the village, since he was powerless – the jutsu cast on him had destroyed all the connections between his chakra veins and his nerve cells, and the only thing that was left was his physical strength, and even that they took from him by potions and jutsus. Everyone avoided him like he was plague, and indeed, he looked like someone who had plague in his all-white clothes and the jutsu tag firmly planted on his back so that they knew exactly where he was and with who.

He had no money to buy anything, but he didn't exactly want anything, and really, just one thing, and he knew he couldn't have that with money. The main street was crowded when he entered it; it was void of any laughter and chatter by the time he had crossed it. He took a turn to the darker alleys to be by himself, and that's when he saw her.

She stopped by the sight of him, eyeing him carefully. He couldn't help but notice how pretty she looked in her traditional blue robe and with her hair up, like any honorable wife of a big house.

"You're out," she said, her full lips apart from surprise. "I didn't know."

"They let me walk by myself," he shrugged. "It's not like I can get away."

She nodded. She averted his gaze now, and it was clear she wanted to get away. He rushed to keep the conversation going – her company was the only thing that kept him from jumping to the change to commit a seppuku. She wouldn't be there.

"Where are you going?"

She blinked. "To run an errand. Hanabi-chan needs some pearls."

"I thought your servants did that for you."

She smiled. He smiled, too, when he noticed that her smile was real, for once. "Of course."

The observed each other, curiously, carefully, understandingly. She only needed to take one look at the tag on his back to know how to get rid of it – one swift movement, and they all would think Sasuke was heading downtown, but only the tag was, in the back of some poor unsuspecting little boy that had walked by.

"Hinata," he said, but she smiled sadly and shook her head – what good would confessions or long talks be for them? There was no time. There was never time.

He only needed to cast one soft glance at her, and suddenly they were children again, playing man and wife in the flower field, giggling and taking care of their sweet flowery children, having no concerns about the world outside theirs. Neither sensed the ground as they fled through the alleys and found solace in the abandoned storage; it was dusty and old, but when they entered, it suddenly seemed to glow like the flower field surrounding their minds.

She didn't love her husband, but he loved her, and that was why she had agreed when first her father came to her with the proposition and then Neji himself with his short proposal. It was not because she would be unhappy on her own – it was merely for the greater good of their house, their family, their bloodline. When he took her and kissed her it was nothing like with her husband; it was far from her husband who just buried himself inside her, grunted and then turned away when it was over. He was powerless and so was she, and as they were both unafraid to show it, they entered a mystical moment of understanding as they stared into each others' eyes and basked in the glowing heat.

As her hair fell down, as his movements finally relaxed, as they sleepily looked at each other, it felt as if the fifteen years in-between the flower field and the storage room didn't mean a thing.

She was not a stupid woman, nor carefree; she knew very well that they would be discovered one day. One day someone would notice that Sasuke was not where the tag said he was, or that Hinata was not where she had said she would be, or they could be seen, or they could be heard. They played tag with hide-and-seek: quick withdrawals just before they were seen, muffled voices, longs sleepless nights spent on their cushions, bound to their own lives. It was not usual for the village committee to let a convict wander around freely, but then again, he was just as secluded within the village as he would be alone in a cell. She knew she was marked already: that was her, the heir, the girl who spent her time with that murderer, didn't she have any kind of shame, how could she, why would she, didn't that man kill two of her closest friends?

"You," Neji said one morning, as she was fixing her hair. His voice was always lovable and gentle towards her, and it was now, as well. "I don't understand why you keep visiting that Uchiha criminal."

"He's lonely," she said, pulling her heels together before rising. Her husband had wanted her to leave her job now that they were married, and she had done so: the only thing she could nowadays get done properly was behaving acceptably. "I don't understand it, either."

"He's dangerous."

"Neji," she laughed, "within his current state, he literally couldn't hurt a fly."

"I'm warning you," he suddenly said, as she was leaving the room, "leave him alone. You'll just get hurt."

Her hand on the shoji frame jerked, but she never mentioned the scene to him as she saw him later that day. She was not stupid, and nor was her husband: she knew he knew and he knew she knew. They just wouldn't discuss it, ever.

"They're going to execute me next month," he said, when they had finished and she was catching her breath in his arms, safe within the skinny forearms and hiding against his scarred chest. "Just when I'm starting to enjoy my life again."

"That was the plan to start with," she mumbled, pulling him closer by the hair. "I warned you from the beginning, didn't I? I said you'd only see death."

"Maybe," he said, smiling to her. "Maybe not."

Nobody knew, not even she, that he had been training out: on the silent nights when the moon was still new, he sneaked out of the hospital (no – prison) and ran trough the village, climbed the trees, did everything he could just to get a bit of his powers back. He felt like being a child again, like a five-year-old: his hands couldn't get a proper hold of branches, the "knives" he had made from wood missed the target and he fell painfully to the ground every time he tried to climb a tree using only his chakra. Some nights he didn't feel like going back, but instead, sneaking to her and waking her – but he never did, because her husband slept but one meter from her and everybody thought he was neatly tied to his bed, unable to escape.

One week before his scheduled execution, he took her to a small forest just outside the city's rush. They climbed to a tree and sat there, watching their hometown, feeling young and invincible again.

"I'm leaving tonight," he said. "I've been breaking out of the hospital for weeks."

"Really?" she asked. "Why didn't you—"

"I want you to come with me," he said. His voice trembled. "I... we can run away together. Come with me."

She remained silent. He couldn't bear to look at her. "I understand if you don't want to. That was a stupid thing for me to even ask. Sorry." He scratched his disabled arm where it ended – it constantly itched, even when he had rationally proven to himself that there was no hand that could be itchy. "If... if you're not coming with me, then there's no reason for me to leave. I'll just stay here and die."

"I'm going with you," she abruptly said, fully aware how he had yet again manipulated her to do something that she didn't want to do. "You can't cross the mountains on your own. You don't have the strength."

"I've worked—"

"You don't have the strength," she pressed. "But I'm not coming with you because you want me to." She smiled at him, and he smiled gently back. "I'm coming with you because I want to."

Her husband was not one of a jealous character, but he wasn't blind, either. The night she tried to sneak out he followed her and seized her by the gate, gently keeping her in place by her wrists.

"You," he said silently, that one word containing all the affection he held for her. "Why are you leaving?"

"I—I have to," she said, looking down. "I'm sorry, Neji."

She tugged her hands, but he didn't let go. She glanced at him, starting to get frightened by the sight of his darkening eyes.

"Neji..."

"Don't go," he said. It surprised her how much pleading there was in his voice. "Why would you go? There is nothing for you out there."

"Let me go," she said, scared by the sound of his voice. "Let me go!"

He pushed her violently away. She stumbled but kept her balance; he glared at her, tugging his long hair in frustration.

"So this is it?" he laughed. "You're leaving because of him?"

Her face was suddenly stern, cold and cruel – much like it was in the battlefield. "I'm leaving because there is nothing for me here."

They stared challengingly at each other, milky eyes forming flames. He was the first to give in: he turned, shrugged once, the twice, then kicked the ground and then just stood there, not making a sound. She turned to the gate, opened it but turned to him once more.

"I'm sorry, Neji," she whispered. "I truly am."

His shoulders stiffened. "Just go."

They met by the main gate; the waning moon showed them the way out, whisking them forward with her blue glow. They ran, ecstatic, laughing, dancing, hugging, stopping for a kiss or three, never letting their hands part. In the night, they were safe; but when the morning started to rise and they noticed they had arrived to the Leaf border, they were in danger.

"They're not letting us go," she said, tugging his hand and prompting him to stop for a while. They glanced down the mountain path, the green leaves blurring everything in sight for an untrained eye – he saw clearly what she was referring to.

"We need to run," he said, taking a step. "We can cross the border today, if we're fast."

He was slow; it took them hours to fool the chasers behind them, but they got away, crossed the border. The day was starting to fade away as they finally stopped. He was gasping, she was unfazed. She stared at the path behind them and listened with her eyes closed – when she activated her technique, he knew they needed to run again, even if he had no breath left.

"Why aren't they letting go?" he coughed as they tripped forward in the bushes, side by side. "We already crossed the border, they're wasting their time trying to catch me!"

She didn't answer. That's when he realized.

"It's you they're chasing after."

"Maybe," she sniffled. She did not see the bushes they were running through but the wedding ceremony before eyes, how she could only wish that her husband's eyes were darker and his hair shorter and a bit darker and how the pinks and cypresses she had chosen for the tokonomas hadn't conveyed the hidden meaning to her unfortunate husband: I'd rather choose death, I'd rather flee, I don't want to be here.

The moon was at her highest peak when they were stopped. They attacked viciously from the sides, throwing him aside as easily as a rag doll. She battled back with all her might, but it wasn't meant to be; he helplessly watched as her own relatives tore her apart, ripped her heart out, crushed her face, sliced her chest. When they finally stopped, stepped back and graciously bowed to her shredded body, he saw them as they really were: cold-faced, white-eyed killers who couldn't tolerate the shame of her leaving her husband for a convicted murderer.

They did nothing as he crawled towards her body, stared at her eyes that were now forever concentrated on the sky above and finally cradled her against his chest. As the oldest of the attackers took a step towards him, he just silently raised his hand; he instantly knew what he could and what he couldn't do. They left, not sparing him another glance; they were alone, finally. The forest had silenced: no more footsteps, no more giggles and laughs because of the excitement, nothing. He took her hands, or what was left of them, and stared at the darkness for a long while.

He hadn't wanted to commit a seppuku for his clan, but this he would do for her – to redeem her, to repay her family and her sacrifice. He would take the blame. They would all think Uchiha Sasuke had long lost his mind, ran away and killed the precious leader of the Hyuuga clan in the process. It didn't matter. He'd do it, all for her; to repay every single thing he'd ever done to her, to redeem himself to her, to regret every mistake he'd done until now. If he did this, then maybe, maybe not, but maybe, the gods would reconsider and send him to be with her in the next life...

As the sun cracked out and the first rays of morning lazily climbed over the horizon, he rose, needing a few tries to get a proper hold of her remains. A bird was singing: she would have liked it, he mused.

"Look, Hinata," he said as he stepped out of the woods, to the cliffs, to see the silent river below, "here's where we met…"

He lifted her high above his head, as high as he could with his disabled hands and negligible powers, and offered her to the river below. The waves swallowed her easily: she merged with the clear stream in a second or two, and then she was gone, traveling to a new world.

He wouldn't get such a gentle treatment, he mused as he looked down, he would hit the rocks and get crushed, and the fish would have to eat his body to pieces until the river would accept him and send him forward. But it would be all right, because that was where she was, too.

When he jumped, the last thing he saw before him wasn't the morning sun, or the gray water or the foam floating on it, but the flower field, that flower field surrounding him with the bright colors and vivid smells and her standing there, waiting, smiling, saying—

He couldn't remember anymore, but she probably was there.

End.

A/N: Yes, I'm sorry for making you feel misarable. It just seems to me that unless a SasuHina fic is labeled "humor", it can only boil down to two elements: shinju (double suicide) and angst. Sorry.

Thank you for reading, though!