A Marriage of Convenience

Chapter 18

I wanna take you some place

So you know I care

It's just so cold and I don't know where

-Tom Odell (Another love)

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"I don't know Sakura, he seems okay."

Hinata muttered to her friend in between bites as they both ate their food slowly, in their usual place of hangout.

"Hinata, he's not." Sakura insisted. She sighed then. When you've known someone and loved them for as long as she had Sasuke...

"What do you mean? In what way?" Hinata prodded.

"He seemed like something was bothering him. Like eating away at him while he was in Tsunade sama's office yesterday." Sakura said, thinking back to the vacant expression on Sasuke's face.

She'd seen that look once before, when he was leaving the village. When he'd said "Thank you." to her. When he'd been at war with himself.

"You're his wife...you should talk to him." Sakura suggested.

Hinata nodded. "I will. Thank you for telling me."

"Hey-I just...want you both to be happy. After everything you two have endured in your lives." Sakura sighed. "Just...just be happy."

Hinata's heart broke a little when she heard her friend speak like that. But she nodded.

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"Sasuke-kun?" she asked when he was sitting in front of her, eating his food. She hadn't been feeling very hungry but she still sat down with him on the dinner table.

He looked up inquiringly. She had noticed that he looked a little distracted. Ever since he'd refused the Hokage's offer.

"Um...is everything okay with you?" she asked, feeling a little weird asking that.

Sasuke's gaze sharpened as he sat up straighter. "Why?" he asked suspiciously.

"You seem...distracted. Have been for some days?" she asked. He stilled. And then shook his head.

"It's nothing."

"But if it were...you'd tell me right?" she asked.

"Why would I do that?" there was no malice when he asked that. Or sarcasm. It was just a question out of curiosity. As if he couldn't think of a reason why that would be so.

"Because it would make me feel better....to be able to help you with anything." She said, raising her brows at him, feeling bold. "And you'd feel better sharing the burden."

His eyes stared at her for a long while. As if he was searching for something on her face. And couldn't figure out what he was looking for exactly.

Then his lips curved into a barely there smile.

"Okay."

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Of course, Sasuke didn't tell her.

Why would he? It's not like she could make the nightmares go away. Or she could see the logic behind his fucked up reasoning. Not like she would know how to fix him. She could support him. But support would only get him so far.

Not like she could feel the desperation which clawed at him, by just being in the village sometimes.

This lifetime, which seemed to stretch on into an indefinite future...it seemed like a curse sometimes. He was almost 20. And the average lifespan was 70.

How the fuck was he going to live out this literal life sentence? Sure, he could die before then in a dangerous mission or kill himself. But both seemed unlikely. Because he was too strong to die in a mission likely and he wasn't coward enough to kill himself.

And time seemed infinite to him when he had nothing and no one to live for. Until Hinata.

She had been a random whim of his. To marry her, corrupt her and be unhappy together with her. A simple companion for his misery.

Until she'd started to make time just a little bit finite. Until his hours passed more quickly. Until she'd started to make sense in his life.

And until her latest mission when he'd realized he truly, deeply cared for her. Until she told him she thought he was her home and he'd wanted to protect her. Until he realized he had been a fool.

He hadn't felt like this for a long, long time.

Hadn't had anyone that made him want to live. Made him feel alive. He hadn't cared for anyone since Itachi. He'd always been ruled by hate and Hinata's compassion scared him.

Naruto? He'd forced himself through his walls. He had been his best-friend from the start. He'd rescued him from the darkness. He'd never given up on him.

But Hinata? She'd snuck up on him. He hadn't realized when he started to look forward to going home and watching those strange movies she insisted on and trying her delicious foods and wanting to protect her.

And when she'd come into his arms first thing after coming back and had told him he was her home...it had made him realize everything he'd ever loved and cared for-

I'm sorry Sasuke, this truly is the last time

Your clan was massacred by your brother, I'm so sorry

Itachi loved the village more than anything else

-had been taken away from him. Died. Left to rot in shallow graves.

And that made him realize...Hinata was better off if he didn't care for her. It made him realize he'd been a fucking idiot for even letting Hinata consider trying to make this- make them- work.

As if she could stick with dead weight like his throughout her life. As if he could be patient enough or sane enough to be happy. As if he could actually stay.

As if he was deserving enough of peace. And...of falling in love.

So he did what he always did best. Pulled away.

He started going home late, started taking more dangerous and lengthy missions that would keep him as far away for as long as he could, from her, until he gathered enough strength to be gone for good.

All because she was the last person he'd want to become another casualty because of him.

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