1.
*
"Hey, dickhead!"
Sasuke sighs. He'd already been having a shit day, but the tell-tale signs of one Hinata Hyuuga could always make it worse.
She marches into his father's office, dressed not in her training gear but in those obscenely distracting short shorts and mesh shirt, her lilac eye blazing, nostrils flaring, exactly what he wanted to avoid but knew would find him anyway.
She'd probably known he was hidden in the police headquarters because of that repugnant byakugan of hers that he'd forgotten all about when he came here for refuge.
"Heeey Hinata, what brings you here this fine evening? You look," sweaty, furious, terrifying. "Gorgeous as always"
"Cut the shit asshole. Have you heard about this?" Hinata snaps, holding up a scroll he had indeed heard about before.
Sasuke sighs.
He doesn't need to see it up close to know exactly what's on it. His father had told him only some hours ago, didn't ask what Sasuke thought he just told him what was happening, a similar scroll laid on the table between them at home.
'You'll enter a marriage alliance with the Hyuuga heiress by year's end. They have certain assets we want and will prove decent allies should a civil war arise...' Sasuke lost track of what he said after that.
He hadn't even known they were on the verge of civil war.
Useless, troublesome second sons like him don't usually need to concern themselves with that kind of politics and Sasuke never bothered to.
That was all Itachi's business, right up until he left at least.
His father must have hoped he'd turn out to be some high-ranking lieutenant or military commander on the day he was 'blessed' with a second son. Someone powerful and brilliant who could support his even more powerful, even more brilliant older brother however it seemed that bored, beautiful and popular second sons don't always share the same vision as their fathers.
Yet, Fugaku was persistent.
It didn't matter that his youngest was good for nothing, lazy, flirt. He'd make his son useful to him one way or another.
Sasuke's sure there's a joke in that somewhere.
"Yeah, I heard."
Hinata seems flabbergasted at that, at his indifference.
"You heard? So what have you been doing about it!" She yells, growing more and more exasperated with each second that passes.
"Well, I haven't been screaming my head off like I know you have."
"Are you serious? They want us to marry. You can't be okay with that!" She begs in desperation, "You've never been monogamous in your entire Weasley little life!"
That's not actually fair. He's never really been in a relationship full stop. And neither had she to his knowledge, but he shrugs it off, indifferent in his response, used to those kinds of comments.
"I'll do what my clan needs me to do, as should you."
Hinata stares, preparing to scream at him again. Sasuke braces himself for it until he feels something wet on his cheek.
"Coward." She'd spat at him. "Fuck! Fuck you! You're a coward Sasuke. I can't believe I really thought you were better than this. Better than some- some dog for the clan."
Funny. He thought so too.
"I thought you were different, like Itachi was but-"
She laughs breathlessly running her hands over her face halfway between destructive rage and a total breakdown.
Her words should hurt him but his chest still feels numb, a heavy nothingness.
He wasn't better than that, he wasn't like her or Itachi and it made him feel empty.
What good were all his small petty rebellions, his laziness, his indifference, his endless flirting and dishonouring of his family if at the end of the day when it really matters he knows he can not say no to his father, can never disappoint him when it truly counts.
Itachi was perfect, their parent's pride and joy and still, he ran away.
How the hell was Sasuke supposed to do any better?
The news took him by surprise when it shouldn't have. He knew his father, he knew his temperament and that his tolerance for Sasuke's behaviour was wearing thin.
This wasn't any surprise to him.
"You're supposed to be in love with Sakura." Hinata cries, more desperate than before. "You love her, you do, I know it. You love women - plural - for fuck sake."
There. Sasuke could feel his father's presence arriving at the office, coming in through the back exit with the key from his secretary's desk. He stands in the shadows, his gaze shifting onto them, observing them from the shadows of the back entrance and if Hinata can feel it too- see it more likely, she doesn't care, doesn't change how she speaks.
"Like I said." Sasuke insists deeply, changing his tone so abruptly it startled her just a little, "I'm just going to do as my clan needs me to, I suggest you do the same. Quietly."
Hinata stares. Stares and stares more. Huge lilac eyes burned into him that he was desperate to look away from but he couldn't show weakness not while his father was here.
She's always been emotional and vocal about it (poor qualities in a wife his father had said pityingly when breaking the news as if he was discussing a thing not a person), but it's rare for her to also look sad, rare to look so hurt.
It's so odd to know he was a part of making her feel that way. She shakes her head closing her eyes tightly as if trying to wake herself up from a terrible dream.
"What do they have over you? Why are you doing this I don't understand."
"It's nothing like that." He lies easily.
"Then do you know what they have over my clan? This isn't like them, a marriage alliance with outsiders it's archaic it's-"
"You can't change this," Sasuke cuts her off, "Accept it, make the best of it or whatever."
He didn't mean to sound so dismissive, didn't mean to cause the hurt on her face but if he showed her he cared at all he'd falter, with his father behind him and he couldn't risk that.
"They can't make me."
Sasuke feels his father's gaze on them like a weight. He wonders how exactly he forced the Hyuuga into this, how he'd stripped everyone of their choices.
"Yes, they can."
"I don't love you." She tries again, her voice heartbreakingly sad.
"You don't need to."
Hinata glares, eyes watering, lip quivering in a way that was so unlike her but exactly how he felt inside.
She came to him, angry yes, but she came to him for support, for help to figure this out and rid them both of this fate and her crushed whatever hope she had left as his father watched on, probably proud of him.
Hinata wastes no more words on him, her eyes finding Fugaku for the briefest moment before turning to flee from the office, leaving Sasuke standing there, but not quite alone.
"You did well, son," Fugaku says, emerging from the back entrance where he'd watched them.
"You didn't lower yourself to her level. Nothing you could do now, I suppose, but you can tame her a bit after the wedding. Although I suppose you always did prefer them a bit fiery."
Sasuke wants to vomit. He wants to vomit every time his father alludes to Sakura. He wonders about his mother and if this was how his father was with her and feels bile burning in his throat.
This was his own fault. This was all his own fault.
He'd expressed interest in marriage first but not with Hinata.
Things were just starting to go well for the two of them and so in his lovestruck haze, he'd mentioned it off-handedly to his mother.
He'd told her, he was happy, that he was going to get married someday soon.
She laughed like it was another silly joke of his, but Sasuke didn't mind, his mother liked Sakura, and he'd show them all eventually, he'd show that he could be good enough for her, he'd show them he wasn't just the playboy flirt, that he could earn her.
He'd show Sakura the man he could be.
It took a long time for him to realise why she was different to all the other girls he'd been with, she was always his friend first, there was something real and genuine and unbreakable between them. Something between comrades who'd fought together, colleagues who'd defend and protect each other, between a team who watched each other grow up and when it all added up in his head, that's when he told his mother.
Sure, he was still working on the details; mainly getting her to like him back and for her to say it out loud - with her words instead of just her actions that were hidden away, secrets of their shared night- but regardless, Sasuke was more of a big picture person.
Given his interest in the concept of marriage, his father took matters into his own hands, petitioning the Hyuuga for their brightest heiress in a generation. He hadn't given them much of a choice and Sasuke was more than uninterested in finding out what his father had over the Hyuuga to make them give up such a strong leader and shinobi but they did, eventually.
Handing over their prodigious once-in-a-generation heiress to a clan of outsiders.
Fuck, his in-laws will probably despise him.
Sasuke was more concerned about what his father had over his own head.
His pretty flower.
He started using that nickname instead of a kitten when Ino threw him a bone and whispered to him about Sakura's secret penchant for flowers - not roses though, after all these years he made sure she grew sick of those.
He noticed the way her eyes narrowed less when it was a lily rather than a rose, less still when it was a daffodil or a cosmo.
Noticed how she'd tucked her hair behind her ear when she scolded him instead of tensing her hands into fists.
He would notice her struggling not to laugh at his jokes rather than exasperated rolling off her eyes or flat out ignoring him.
Notice her fiddling with the ends of her hair coiling them round her finger just like how a younger Sakura had with a younger Menma.
Those were positive signs, right?
All that and the mind-blowing sex they've been having blowing off steam between increasingly busy schedules all pointed towards the fact she might actually like him back.
But now his father knew, just like he knew about Izumi and Itachi all those years ago.
So instead he was marrying her rival.
Typical.
Sasuke sighs, "I should go and speak to her, calm her down some." He tells his father before he can get close enough to his son to see how little conviction he really has, leaving the room after her and before his father can say anything else.
He needed to talk to her without Fugaku breathing down their necks. If there was a way out of this or a way to make the best of it they wouldn't find it with his father in the room with them.
Sasuke's unsure how he knows the way all the way through the Hyuuga compound and up the back entrance to end up by her window but he does - maybe he remembered from a fling or two with some similar-looking clan mates. He gets there not long after she does, avoiding as many busy streets and unfriendly Hyuuga on the way as he could, tapping on the window twice.
"It's open." She shouts, she must have seen him coming.
Her room was neat, bare, he didn't know what he expected but it wasn't what he saw.
It looked barely lived in and barely loved. Nothing of Hinata could be felt in this room until he noticed that all her things, all the objects that should have made this place her own were in boxes on the floor. Shuriken and knitting equipment, cute stationary, summer dresses, and an old teddy bear in a box with sealing scrolls.
She doesn't even look at him, sorting through her things with an unsteady efficiency as he takes in everything.
"You're running away."
She doesn't respond to him, packing her things with an increased gusto. He can't blame her, he considered the same thing mere hours ago.
"You won't get far."
She laughs, obviously confident she would and who knows, he certainly didn't know her skill level now. She was a Jonin, right?
So instead he says.
"You know it's not you they'll punish Hinata."
For a moment she hesitates, of course, she considered this.
"I don't know what my father has over your clan but it will hurt them more than you. Your kin, your father, your cousin-"
She ignores him still.
"-And little Hanabi."
Her eyes darted to him hot and angry like he'd just crossed a line she didn't even want to acknowledge because of course her sister would be her one weakness.
Hinata had a way of reminding him of Itachi ever since they were young and it made his skin crawl every time.
Even though she was abrasive, loud, and stubborn, she'd always always put her little sister before anything else, just like his brother would.
Sometimes Sasuke hates Itachi for that, and he hates himself for using it against Hinata now, but what choice did he have when he had someone just as precious to protect?
She turns to his eyes, brimming with angry tears. "How do we stop this?"
"I don't know. What was the rest of your plan?"
Hinata drops onto her bed and stares at him incredulously.
"That was my plan! You were supposed to be as horrified at the notion as I was and back me up!"
Sasuke laughs at the idea - as if he's ever been reliable. "That was your plan?"
"I just found out that I, Hinata Hyuuga, the next greatest leader of the Hyuuga in a generation, a taijutsu master of unparalleled gentle fist ability is going to be sold off to be a housewife of the second fucking son of the Uchiha to keep a secret my clan won't even share with me-" She pauses, breathing heavily, "Forgive me for not being in the best mindset."
"So what is it you're doing now then?"
"Isn't it obvious? I'm leaving, Itachi had the right idea. Won't stay here, live as a political puppet."
"No, you won't. You love your clan, your sister. I know you could never be so selfish."
"I love my clan, and I love- I love Hanabi more than anything in this world, but I won't kill myself for them." She tells him.
"I don't love you, I love Menma. And I'll probably never get him now," she says with a pitifully hopeless burst of laughter. "But I'm sure as hell won't settle for anyone I don't like and who doesn't like me. I'm choosing myself this time, you should do the same."
It's painful not just because he believes her, the conviction she looks at him with is the same as that of Itachi's when he left the village. That was the first time the famous genius heir to the Uchiha put himself first, and Sasuke couldn't bring himself to hate either of them for it even though he wanted to.
The universe had a cruel way of bringing things back around.
Sasuke wonders if he could be brave enough to do the same, to put himself first, to put himself out there and say what he wanted directly to his father.
In an instant, he finds himself reflecting on his life - short as it is - and finds all the he evidence points to a 'no', and he laughs again.
Maybe if he was stronger like Hinata was, if he had a stronger reason to fight or if he and Sakura were actually, really something more.
"Maybe... do you think there is a version of this where Menma and Sakura ever reciprocate our feelings?"
Hinata sighs, her bright eyes unusually solemn.
"I don't know. I used to believe so, but" She sighs, "I'm not foolish enough to wait around and find out when it's already much too late. I'm getting out of here."
Sasuke watches her pack for a little while before turning to leave, hoping beyond hope she makes it far, far away from here but knowing deep down, she won't.
*
Several years later...
*
Sakura was so beautiful. She grew up even more so than before, and Sasuke, no matter how much growing he did himself, never got over that.
The woman she'd become was nothing short of inspiring, incredible, visionary, and utterly perfect. Her aura had calmed and her personality had matured but she was still her, still as bright and brilliant.
Team 7's hardworking, dedicated soon-to-be Hokage who always took care of them.
And yet she still wasn't his and never would be.
Sometimes Hinata accuses him of getting injured on missions as often as he did, just so he could end up in her hospital to see her again.
She'd be right.
Sakura would greet him like an old friend, smile like she was happy to see him, laugh at his jokes and tell him she missed his humour, tell him how she'd been and ask about him too.
Sometimes it got flirty too, reminiscent of their past, it was always innocent but it was so nice just to talk with her.
But then she'd say something, something like, "How's the wife and kids?" And the illusion would break.
Sakura wasn't a bad person, she'd always be the one to catch herself if the flirty banter started to seem like something else she would push back, ask something that dragged the sweetness of the moment back into reality.
"They're good." He'd say, and it was true, they were.
He and Hinata had, well, they had found a way to make it work, not just for their clans but for each other, so they wouldn't break down and also for the kids. There was no need for them to be miserable when they didn't need to be. The kids deserved a happier life than what they both got.
After Hinata's failed escape she'd been confined to her home for the months up until the wedding and then after that, confined to their new home, together that Fugaku had built for them as a 'gift'.
Barley 19, married to someone you didn't much care for and trapped in an unfamiliar place, the two figured out how to make it so they at least weren't suffering.
They became friends, not like how she was with Kiba and Shino and certainly not how he was with Sakura and Menma, but it was enough. They only had each other most evenings and having spent her whole day alone and him pretending to be happily married to colleagues at the police station, Hinata was eager to talk and he was eager to listen.
Hinata was funny in a way that everything she said felt like a threat. He called her dramatic for it once, and she'd thrown a glass at his head.
She was also an excellent cook.
You don't normally expect a brilliant, terrifying, genius heiress to also be able to cook, but in that aspect, she put others to shame with her skill. Before, it might have annoyed him how she was so good at so many things, but he just appreciated home-cooked food too much to feel any kind of irritation.
The way she'd pack the kids' lunchboxes with the same effort and attention she'd put into a new jutsu was cute, with the same contorted focused frown on her face. But if he ever told her he thought she looked cute, he suspected she'd hit him. She would cut hotdogs to look like octopi, little faces out of bread and fruit and arrange them so prettily it'd put his brother's lunches to shame.
Privately, he always thought she smelt nice, always, no matter if she was sweaty and dirty from sparring in their garden or just woken up mid-morning in the summer. It wasn't a specific smell that he could give a name to. It just smelt like her, like their house. He didn't know when it happened, but it was oddly comforting in their lonely little life together.
He appreciated his wife, respected and cared for her even, but he couldn't say he loved her, not really, not when Sakura was still a part of his life and the same went for her and Menma.
And all those nice things he'd learnt to appreciate about her were just excuses to help him get by day by day.
On missions, he saw them less and less as his old teammates perused new heights in their shinobi career while Sasuke transitioned to full-time at the station to support his new family. While Hinata's missions were heavily restricted by his father's influence, forced into the role of house-maker which she might have thrived in had it been with someone else.
All their classmates marched right ahead of them into new promotions and opportunities while their lives became, only each other, stagnant and simple.
And that would’ve been fine, that would’ve been perfectly okay had they chosen this, had they ever been in love.
The constant reminder that neither of them chose this, that they had been trapped in this picket fence life with no alternative so abruptly that even the small, beautiful things they learn to love and appreciate about their life together and their family are not enough to hold over the pain.
*