Red Butterfly

Chapter 108, Upon A Crescent Moon

"I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence, and as justice likes to sit back and watch everything go wrong"

~Lemony Snicket
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"...I remember...that very day, I was tired and I just happened to stumble over there", she cracked out a soft chuckle that warmed my heart, "who would've thought that the flow of my life would change completely?"

"Do you wish you never stumbled across that clearing that fateful day?", I ask with a bit of uncertainty, to which she says the thing that makes my heart skip several beats at once, "In all integrity, everything I've been through was nothing less of a pain, and I would've probably gone off the rails if I hadn't held onto the notion that everything might return back to normal"

"But you know that it won't go back to normal", I sadly inform as she gives me a weak smile while exhaling a breath.

"The truth is, I certainly don't know the answer to that question of yours honestly. I don't know if I'm glad that we met like this, amidst the void that was stirred by the past, but...", she gazed up at the sky with those sparkling blue eyes of hers and said, "what I do know, Itachi, is that one way or another, I am most certainly glad that I met you"

The silence that followed after her words were left hanging in the air gave her my response. I'd simply stared back at her in awe, appreciating this very moment between us. I'd stopped trailing my fingers along her vertical scars only to fully intertwine our hands in a grip.

Her hand had willingly succumbed to my fingers snaking between hers, I knew she was probably tired from tonight, which is why she couldn't return the tight grip.

"Does your wound hurt?", I ask in concern when I realized that I'd completely overlooked it.

"I feel it getting slightly better", she breathes out reassuringly.

I had propped myself in a sitting position, laying at an obtuse angle as Hanabi laid her head on my packed stomach. Her shoulders were resting against my side and her scarred wrist was right beside her head near my chest.

The grass was cool and the air was soothing. I looked around us before remarking, "doesn't this place remind you of that clearing?"

She chuckled softly, as her eyes were glued to the night sky. The corners of her lips lifted slightly before she softly replied, "yeah, it is, guess the butterflies were too smart to let us forget how we officially met".

I had used one of my arms to prop myself up in our current position and utilized the other to keep our hands intact, which lay resting near my chest.

"Did you seriously knew I existed just because of that day at the clearing?", I satirically asked, creasing my brows as I looked at her face from this angle, awaiting her response.

"Not really", she smiled, still gazing up at the crescent moon, "I'd vaguely spot you from time to time. I did know your name when we were kids, but back then you didn't have such long hair and a stare that made a girl's stomach flood with butterflies. Like I did remember girls like Izumi would fangirl over some Uchiha boy. It's like whenever I'd try to be friends with one of the girls, every single talk would turn into a debate about which of the guys was stronger and you'd simply be the talk you know"

"And that bothered you?"

"Not really, what did bother me were those egotistical boys that'd challenge me because they somehow knew I was raised by the Fourth. You did capture my attention, Itachi, since I realized you were the only one who didn't challenge me and that'd sometimes get me thinking: What is it with the dark-haired?"