Uchiha Sasuke had felt the pain in his lungs for a few weeks before he coughed up the first petal. It was pale blue and looked similar to a rose petal in Sasuke’s untrained eyes. He understood, on some unconscious level, what the delicate petal meant. It only truly dawned on him, however, when, after coughing up petals for a few days, a single blue rose fell from his lips.
It was a rare disease, he knew. Hardly anyone, whose love was unrequited, ended up having flowers blooming in their lungs and heart. None of his admirers had, to his knowledge, acquired the affliction. Ironic that it was he, who was the object of so many women’s affection, fell in love with someone who would never love him back.
His love was a quiet one. It emerged silently and quickly grew strong, as he watched from afar. What had started as casual admiration had evolved into deep felt love. The disease was, after all, said to be a result of an abundance, an overflowing, of unrequited love.
He had never had any intention of revealing his feelings. It hadn’t even crossed his mind. He understood that there wasn’t a chance of reciprocation and so it wasn’t really an option he would acknowledge. Even as he stood with the blue rose in his hand, he didn’t feel remorse, anger or even sadness. In some odd way, it was fulfilling to know that his love and affection wasn’t simply some flight of fancy but in fact strong and deep enough to literally kill him.
He knew that there were ways of surgically removing the flowers from the lungs and heart, at the expense of the love that caused them to bloom. For Uchiha Sasuke, it was too high a price to pay.
He tucked to blue rose away for safe keeping and told no one of his ailment.
It was an unnatural flower, Ino told him, and they therefore symbolised the unattainable and elusive.
“People use them to say ‘I can’t have you but I can’t stop thinking about you’” she told him, “might be a married woman!” She had cackled at that and Sasuke had shrugged, letting her believe that he had received such a flower from an admirer. He bought a book on the language of flowers on his way home and added another flower to his growing collection.
White petals began to join the soft blue ones and weeks later, a sharp pain brought forward a single white gardenia. A flower with several meanings, one of them being ‘secret love’. Sasuke found it very appropriate and found that the white blossom enhanced the subdued brilliance of his display of collected flowers.
They never wilted, for some reason. Years passed and they never lost their delicate petals and soft hues didn’t turn brown and bleak. Sasuke usually wasn’t the sentimental type, at all, but he had kept them and he liked to think that they stayed fresh and beautiful just like his love remained strong.
The occasional pain in the chest had turned into a constant ache, shortness of breath and constricted thumping of the heart. No one said it was a quick death. No, this was a quiet killer that slowly but surely suffocated its victims. Still he regretted nothing as his quiet love only grew deeper and remained the only thing keeping him afloat, keeping him human.
The petal in his hand was long, with a slightly sharp tip and vibrantly yellow. It reminded him of her. It was sunny and hopeful and quietly captivating.
She joined him for tea that day. She often did. Especially after his ailment had begun affecting him more severely. It had affected his ability to perform in missions and as a result he spent more time in the village. He was still very much a capable ninja and able to take missions no one else could or would. Now he was just only able to take on many and not an overwhelming amount. When he didn’t have a mission, and wasn’t invited out for something specific, he stayed home. He always had. So, she started coming to him, whenever she had the time.
She made excellent tea and she insisted that he made excellent company. Sasuke was doubtful, but would not contest it. Their time spent together was quiet but warm and comfortable. It only made the disease worse, but he would not give it up for the world.
He had never married and she was the only person he regularly let into his home. His friends never understood it. Didn’t he want to restore his clan? How could he want to spend his life alone? He couldn’t bear telling them that he could never love another than her, could never let another into his heart. He had coughed up globe amaranths for years and truly his love was unending. He would never tell his friends what it was that was slowly killing him nor that he was slowly dying. It would only bring them unhappiness and drive them crazy to not be able to help him. And besides, he was not unhappy. Melancholy, perhaps, but not unhappy. He was dying, yes, but he didn’t mind much when he got to sit with her, drinking tea and drowning in her radiant beauty, breathing in her quiet laughs like air. Flowers bloomed in his lungs and heart when she looked at him and smiled and he didn’t mind one bit.
She didn’t have to love him like he loved her. Sasuke knew her heart was taken. He had always known that there was no hope for him. Her heart had been given away many years earlier and it had been picked up and cherished before flowers could bloom in her lungs. Sasuke knew that she loved him, simply in a different way. She had love enough to give to her husband, her children, friends, family, the village and still have more than plenty left for him to drown in it. He knew he wasn’t the first and only one; though he hadn’t been there to see it, it was rumoured that after sacrificing himself for her and her beloved, her cousin had looked at her, and with his dying breath he had coughed out blood splattered flowers.
She still mourned him. Sasuke took comfort in that. She hadn’t been revolted by Neji’s love for her and held him dearly in her heart.
Sometimes he suspected that she knew. Her smiles were sometimes to tender and tragic, as if she knew what she was doing to him and knew that she could do nothing to hinder it. He loved her for it. He couldn’t fault her for not loving him. He was happy that Naruto had been blessed with such a love and that Hinata herself had found true love.
They were sitting together on his veranda, quietly looking out at the small sea of flowers, when he coughed up a single daffodil. Blood stained his palm, but the droplets slid off the flower petals, leaving no trace.
After a moment, Hinata reached out and caressed the delicate petals with a pale finger. Carefully, she picked the blossom out from his hand and placed it behind her ear. Blood dribbled from the corners of Sasuke’s mouth when he smiled boyishly at her. Pain welled up in his chest, his lungs constricting even as he smiled. She guided him to lay on his back, head in her lap. She caressed his face and brushed his bangs out of his face and smiled with tears welling up in her eyes as he caught one of her soft locks of hair between his fingers. She bent down to place a chaste, lingering kiss to his lips. Tears hit his cheeks as she straightened, her face and hair still blocking out the sky above them.
Uchiha Sasuke smiled at his beloved Uzumaki Hinata, with his daffodil in her hair, as he took his last breath before the Hanahaki suffocated him.