TRAGEDY | Shouyou Hinata (Murder of Crows) ✓

CHAPTER SIX

The sun lowered slowly to the water's edge, touching the gentle film of blue with delicate burning fingers, setting the lake alight. Water lapped the embankment in front of you as shadows scurried to and fro across the surface from the trees blotting the horizon.

Pollen itched at your eyes and nose from the reeds rustling dryly at the waterside, their leaves bleached from exposure to the sun. Bone-white like a mirage of skeletons.

Hinata exhaled quietly beside you, picking daisies from the grass around him and threading them into a crown, like you used to do as children. You'd make each other flower chains and crowns and bracelets and pretend to be royalty. You were always his Queen. But thinking about that now only seemed silly. Childish ideals and fantasies.

He let out a frustrated growl as the flower in his hand snapped suddenly, petals drifting solemnly in the wind, getting caught in a spider's web that had been strung between the reeds, glinting silver gossamer threads. You looked away from him.

"Pretty sunset," you commented, setting down the blade of grass you were fiddling with and laying back to stare up at the sky. "Don't you think?"

"Mhmm."

You rolled onto your front and crawled over to him, resting your chin on your hands as you watched him thread the last daisy and complete the chain. "Hey, c'mere."

With a childish grin, you sat up and let him tuck the crown into your hair, the daisy stalks tickling your head. "Real cute," you said with a chuckle, patting the top of your head to make sure it stayed there.

Hinata smiled too, but you had to look away from it because it wasn't the smile you remembered. That smile was long gone, just like the old Hinata. Because something had changed. It was like something inside him had broken and you had no chance of fixing it, no chance of getting the old him back. You just had to accept that people changed, sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse. Whatever happened, you had to make the best of it, or you risked losing them altogether.

"Natsu used to love making daisy chains."

"She did, didn't she? I remember we always used to make crowns and take it in turns to be the King and Queen," you added, leaning over and resting your head on his shoulder. His body stiffened slightly, then his arm went around your waist and held you closer. You could feel the heat radiating off his skin, the fragrance of his breath dancing along your forehead. "We used to come here a lot when we were younger. Shame we stopped. It's peaceful."

You imagined Hinata didn't have much peace in his life anymore. Troubled by an uncertain, bleak future, still clinging onto his past. His head was a graveyard of memories he couldn't let go of, dreams that haunted him in the form of reality, a living nightmare. Grief wasn't a peaceful process. It was exhausting and chaotic.

"We should head back soon. Your mum will be worrying."

— ♠ —

"I wonder what his family think."

"Who's family?" You asked, already knowing the answer. You were both sat on Hinata's bed, his head resting on your shoulder as he looked through a scrapbook, the same one you'd taken away from him on the morning of Natsu's memorial.

"The man who killed my little sister." He spoke with such powerful hatred that you felt a chill touch the base of your neck, just ever so slightly, but enough to put you on edge.

He had a page open with her first school photo. Her hair was untidy and her uniform was askew but she had the brightest smile you'd ever seen, one that took over the whole face, made her eyes shine like stars. "I think they'd be... grieving too. Over the loss of their own son, over the loss of Natsu, over their disappointment of what he did. They're the only ones left to face the backlash."