Summary: People saw them as night and day, but really they were just two sides of the same coin. A story in which we can't be sure if Sasuke and Hinata find each other because of or despite the odds.

I wrote this intending for it to be a one-shot since I'm trying to focus on writing the next chapter for The Call of Midnight. I don't know, maybe I'll write a follow up because I have an idea for it already.

Edits (Dec 23, 2017) because grammar and time.

The hot summer night caused sweat to bead on their skin and their bodies shone with a dull, slick layer of exhaustion. He did not hold out her hand for her to take, but she took it anyways and interlaced their fingers as they lay side by side on the grassy hillside, trying to stay cool. The day died before them, glowing red hot then purple until all that was left was a deep lapis sky with the beginning of blinking stars coming out.

Heat emanated from his palm and she deftly unlatched their hands to press hers into the coolness of the ground. Her mind was a lazy haze of comfortable agitation as the warmness of the day transformed into a colder, chiller night. If he minded the contact or missed its sudden lost, he said nothing. Initially, he never said more than a few words to her, if that. It had been disconcerting to her at first because he had taken her role; she was the one that listened while others chattered. In the silence that spread itself between them, she had not known what to do.

But then an image of a brown-haired boy who always tied his long locks behind him flashed in her mind. He had been silent as well and perhaps just as sullen. Once upon a time, she had to coax him out of his crabby shell too.

It comforted her that she had been here before.

He remembers how frailty clung to her like a cloak that nobody could see through. Her presence was a ghost in the room. Their touches grazed her arms, shoulders, back like she could become alight without warning. Her water vapour breath seemed volatile. They were scared the friction of their skin would be the match.

Except for Naruto. He pulled her into his arms when he saw her, spoke words of comfort and she cried rivulets down the front of his jacket. When she lifted herself from him and left with a small smile, he plastered a giant smile on his face. His lips stretched until they hurt and for the first time, Sasuke noted the visible amount of effort put into that facial expression. The moment her back was turned, the corners of his lips would tremble and his whiskers would shake. It could pass for laughter,
so violent it knocked the air from his lungs and muted him, if it weren't for that look in his eyes.

If dead men told secrets, well, this one had told enough without talking. His death had conveyed more than a declaration ever could.

Flinching became her first instinct. Her frazzled nerves were doing all they could to keep her safe even if that meant her heart would beat out her chest when someone called for her. It was the sleep deprivation. Her head ached, her neck was sore and nothing could ever be deemed comfortable anymore because nothing was safe anymore. Or so she had learned.

She spent her days walking in the gardens, sitting on the edge of the pond where the fish nipped at her feet. She would sit there until her legs grew numb in the cold water. Hanabi would come looking for her at that same spot every day. Sometimes, she'd find Hinata's lips a veritable shade of purple and blue. Her sister was scared that one day she wouldn't find her there at all.

Lying became her second. "I'm fine," she would always try and reassure.

The villagers were all frightened of him, as they should be he thought. When he came into view, they'd scamper off into their homes and avoid eye contact with the intimidating Uchiha. Mothers would pull their children off the streets and lock the doors of the house, as if that would stop him. The boys would suddenly grow dumb with discomfort and scurry off together because they knew better. At first, they had all tried to get a good look at the man who had destroyed their village; they wanted vengeance and it would be delivered with axes and hammers. One glance at the avenger shook sense into their brains. They were not fools. They knew their limits.

The girls were quite the opposite. They huddled with their stitching and their mugs of steaming tea and plates of sweets, and glanced too often at him. Some were bold enough to stare and giggle. They all thought him very handsome. Most were sensible enough to only admire from afar. A few were foolish enough to think they could tame him. All of them gossiped about him shamelessly. They voiced fantasies with him in the lead, made up silly stories to pass the time, and soon became all too comfortable around him. He was glad because they talked freely amongst themselves even while he was in earshot. He would hear things no one would dare tell him otherwise.

He died protecting her, they whispered in hush tones. What love, said some. What devotion, praised others. She's so lucky, they said. You fools, scolded others.

If a person were allowed only so many vices, this would be one of hers. He sat with her, both of them cross-legged, on the weaved bamboo mat. The delicate fragrance of jasmine tea wafted in the air. She poured the hot water slowly into the teapot, a gentle fall of liquid that steeped the shrivelled leaves until they bloomed open, like an aged man uncurling into his youth once more. They sat on the same side of his tatami table, rather than facing each other. He leaned back on his elbows, and she leaned on him.

What caused this change of heart, she'd would have wondered if she could but her mind was clouded by grief and there was no room for anything other than sorrow. It does not matter, she had told herself. But it did matter because he saw her, for the first time, in the war. He saw her fighting for the village, for him, and she had broken from the black silhouette of his mind's view into a person of flesh and bones.

And when Neji died protecting them both, Naruto had seen how he had trained that hazy gaze on her face with his diminishing breaths. Guilt, thunderous and unmistakeable, pierced his heart then. He knew he had caused the lost of more than just a life; no, he had stolen away a future. As his comrade laid dying in the arms of the girl he sacrificed himself for, Naruto swore he could see the thread of their intertwined lives fading in Neji's eyes.

It was hard to not hate himself when he started to love her. How could he steal from Neji even in death, even without intention. He had taken his life, and now he wanted to take the girl he loved. If Naruto had any sense, he would have known that he had taken the girl Neji devoted himself to years ago when they were only children, when he had only known the chilled hand of loneliness and she had begun to fall prey to that wretched weakness of her beating heart.

How fitting a punishment perhaps that she could no longer find space in herself to think of anyone but her dear cousin. All those years of pinning for the sunny boy beside her now were only memories of the past. She could never be that girl again. Not when she owed so much to the dead.

They sipped their tea in silence. Hinata glanced up at him with a blush, and that pink dusting of her cheeks looked so familiar to him. It transported him back to simpler times when the village was the world and everything outside was barely real. He couldn't help the pink that rose to his own cheeks in response. He did not notice how the heat on her face did not belie the same embarrassed yearning it once it. He chose not to notice the discomfort in that redden flush, the guilt and indecision in her eyes.

Her body only know how to mourn now. She never thinks it outright, but she can feel that knowing sensation that she will never love like she used to.

It was an inevitable coincidence that they should meet in the graveyard. The place evoked the feeling in them both, unspoken and barely acknowledged, that they belonged here. It had become a sanctuary for her, and she stepped on its holy grounds every Sunday without fail. Hinata worshipped at the alter of her cousin's dead, decaying body; she found no rest.

For him, burials were his home. He had nestled himself between the cold dirt plots since he was a child. Death had always surrounded him and now that he had settled down from his rogue lifestyle, now that the war was over, only the graveyard brought him remembrance of this old, old friend. His brother's sharp, smooth headstone lay next to their parents' weathered and grayed ones, a purely symbolic gesture – his body had been burnt and left as a pile of ash. Sasuke wondered when he would be able to join them.

She brought flowers with her, and wept tears from time to time. Once, she had thrown herself on his marked headstone. Sasuke could still hear the words she sobbed. I wasn't worthy.His greatest sacrifice had become her greatest burden.

He wondered if she had felt any betrayal having found out that Neji had loved her only after his death. It made him think of Itachi and he began to realize that notion of sacrifice left a bad taste in his mouth. It was a good thing he indulged in so little of it, he thought to himself.

They did not speak with one another, merely nodded at each other should one happen to pass, until one day when they did.

She found herself here too many days in too many weeks. They had tea at his place. Sometimes, she would cook. It made her feel less guilty about Naruto. He had been asking, finally asking, for something that she could no longer give. It made her feel weak to think about it. If anyone had a good reason to curse fate, she would have been the one. The timing was off, and having the chance to achieve what she had wanted for so long but could no longer allow herself to have felt too cruel.

Sasuke found comfort in her company. She reminded him of his family, each one of them dead in their graves. She had his mother's gentleness, had Itachi's disposition for taking on the burdens of others. When she set her lips in a thin line in moments of agitation, he could even see the sternness of his father in her. But the biggest resemblance was that she was a dead man walking, purple bags under her eyes, one foot in the grave. She was the closest he could get to death without dying.

He found out that she had nightmares too. His were atrocious, frightening things that woke up him with screams. Hers were pernicious in their gentleness, making her want, making her desire and then taking away so that she woke up choked on tears.

He remembers how they discovered each other's night time terrors. She had stayed at his place late into the night. Today was nii-san's birthday, she had said. Don't make me go home, her eyes had begged. She wanted to hide away from her family, from their blank stares and worried expectations. He offered to let her stay the evening in one of the (too many) free rooms. That night, she ran into his room from his screams, even as her own face was wet and her voice broken.

He realized then that perhaps, she spent time with him because he, too, was a dead man walking.

The only ones left in the village who loved him were Naruto – always Naruto, with his heart too big and his smile too strong, Naruto who was everything Sasuke could never be but was everything that made Sasuke ache for his adolescence – and Sakura – who gave him so much emotion and was infinitely patient and maybe that's the reason her presence only roused up agitation in him. These two were the closest people he had to friends, maybe even family, but it had been years. In the end, they chased after him out of habit. They chased after a ghost. Neither of them knew him anymore and he didn't know them. They were strangers in familiar bodies.

He was with Hinata more often that he would have liked but even he could grow lonely. And she came because she was surrounded by people who didn't understand.

"They tell me they love me, and I believe them. I believe they have good intentions. But I know too much now," she'd told him one afternoon. Her eyes were semi-hooded with weariness and the sleeve of her thick, silk kimono dipped into her tea. She had just come from an official Hyuuga ceremony. For what she would not say and he did not ask.

"Is there anything more pure than love that sacrifices all?" A tremor was building in her voice and Sasuke was surprised to find that she looked half-crazed. "How am I suppose to move forward from perfection when I am so distinguishably flawed in comparison?"

He choked on the warm tea, feelings caught in his throat, caught him off guard. He had never thought those words exactly but he could feel the truth in them; they plucked at a thread in him and pulled. He thought of his brother then. As a child, he had necessarily been jealous of his brother's superiority in all aspects. Years down the line, he still couldn't help resenting the older sibling for being too perfect. How was he suppose to live with himself knowing that perfection had died to give way to him. He could accept his shortcomings, even relished in them and how they defined him, back when he didn't know the truth about his brother.

She was right. They both knew too much now.

Love and hate both have passion in common. He understood this after she slept with him for the first time. Afterwards, they both lay bare and panting. I blamed you¸ she told him. You took away all the certainty I'd ever known. She was speaking of Neji. Of course she was. She spoke of him often and almost always under the guise of her beloved cousin but sometimes, she would let slip he loved her as a man and that perhaps she would have grown to love him as a woman. This was the first time she brought up a topic they both sidestepped normally: that he, Sasuke, was responsible for ripping away the opportunity for her to have found out if she could have loved him.

Sasuke rarely thought about this minor detail. He was assaulted with enough guilt without him having to go look for it. But even without thinking about it in his free time, the fact of the matter was unavoidable. He hadn't just been on the wrong side of the war, he had a hand in starting the damn thing and that meant he was responsible. This didn't just extend to Neji. He was aware of the looks people cast him from the shadows, how they blamed him for the deaths of their loved ones but years of calculated hate had allowed him to become callous to their accusing stares. Hearing Hinata talk about Neji was the only time that he felt in uncomfortable places.

When she finally cast the stone and acknowledged that she too knew he was the cause of her suffering, he couldn't help feeling that was the end of things then. He didn't expect she would carve out a space for herself in his bed every night. He didn't expect her to writhe under him every night, to beg him to fill that gaping hole inside her with something real.

He wondered if she slept with him for the sole reason that he was the instigator of the events that ultimately led up to her cousin's death. And if she did, was it because she wanted to torture him with the guilt or herself?

He rocked himself between her thighs and she rocked her hips in response causing him to breath in sharply. He could hear her wetness spreading on him, lubricating his cock with each slick slide. Pushing her upper body down by her head so that she had to support herself by her elbows, he slid inside her eliciting the most wanton moan from her lips.

She shivered from pleasure and panted out incoherent noises that still effectively conveyed the message that she needed him to move. Her walls hugged him and he reveled in the warmth and softness of her. His pumps started out gentle and slow as always, and as always she moaned with ferocity for him to increasing the speed of his thrusts.

With one hand steadied above her hip, his free hand reached out and slid up her loose top and brushed over her nipple until it grew into a hard peak. "Ah, that's too much. Sa..suke, please." she mewled under his ministrations and he couldn't help his satisfaction with the reaction. He gripped a breast firmed in his hand and squeezed and palmed it while she cried out.

She pushed him back until he slid out of her. "What-" he growled in displeasure, but was cut off when she shoved him and he fell backwards onto the bed. She slid down his member in one smooth motion. He groaned at the sensation, doubly so when he stared up to see Hinata's dishevelled appearance as she panted above him. Her lips were swollen from his bites and her pale skin was marked with heavy dark bruising from where he sucked too generously on her. She still donned her silk pale-pink thin-strapped chemise.

She began to move. The swiveling motion of her hips was incredibly erotic for him to watch. Even more so, because he found feel her gripping the base of his cock from time to time, trying to position him within her so that she could hit the right spots when she grinded on him. He couldn't help his sharp intake of air when she found her sweet spot and a moan ripped itself from her pink lips. The speed of her hips increased at a frenzied pace and he found his cock throbbing inside of her.

When he found himself at the precipice of release, she removed herself from the tangle of their limbs and the hotness surround his member was suddenly replaced by a rush of cool air.

Sasuke regained a hazy consciousness. The hot summer heat had abated in the darkening of the night, and his sheets had been thrown off the bed. A cool breeze came in through the open window. Still, he laid on his bed, covered in beads of sweat that caused his bed coverings to stick to him uncomfortably. It had been almost two weeks since she left for her mission and his body missed hers. He couldn't help but recall the vividness of his dream, his cock still hard against his thigh.

When reason is lost, when hope lays underground, people find themselves sinking into depravity.