Blooming Dais

Altogether, Hinata gets close to three years of peace.

974 days of her husband's undivided attention. Affection. Adoration. And every other kind of '—tion.'

It shouldn't have to end.

He's given her no reason to believe it will end.

But she knows it will, nevertheless.

Sasuke's still alive and breathing, after all.

Because that's just how kismet works; how karma works.

Nothing perfect lasts.

And she knows it the instant she jolts awake to the static shock that rips through her when she snoozes their alarm clock one stormy morning.

Electricity.

It crackles all around her that day.

Alive.

Resonant.

Overwhelming—the way it floods every last square inch of the house and swirls madly through the decade's fiercest thunderstorm outside—

It's electric.

Everything, everywhere is electric.

Every breath she draws is steeped in its metallic tang; every surface she touches—charged with its sting; every bone she moves—alive with its high-pitched thrum.

It hurts.

It's painful. Painful in a way that's familiar. Nostalgic.

She can pretend it isn't. Act as though she doesn't feel it—doesn't recognize the signs—know what it all means.

But she does.

For the past three days now, her husband and his advisors have been in and out of the house—frenzied. Frantic.

Embroiled in yelling matches about contingency plans, evacuation strategies, and "which allies are worth reaching out to for aid."

In that time, Konoha's power grid has shorted out a total of twenty-three times.

Twenty-three times residuals of His electric chakra—traces of whatever nonsense He's been up to for the last 72 hours—have overloaded the village circuits. Twenty-three goddamn times.

So yes.

She knows.

Better than anyone, she knows what's happening when the storm peaks now; when Konoha's lights flicker and die out one last time; when the world around her buckles, collapsing in on itself; and—

—when her husband finally crashes through the kitchen window, four massive scrolls strapped to his back, positively wild-eyed.

Red-eyed.

"I need you to do something for me and I need you not to have a problem with it." He gasps. "Can you do that, yes or no?"

Sasuke's in trouble, Hinata interprets.

Immediately, that little devil pipes up from the cracks in her heart.

Say no, it whispers. Say no. Let him die, echoes in those deep chasms.

Good fucking riddance—

"Tell me what you need." She grabs her forehead protector and plunges into the tempest after him instead.

Because at the end of the day, she's better than that. She's better than them—better than her husband; than the man he loves.

She's a good person.

A good fucking person.

So, "just tell me." She calls out over a clap of thunder when she catches the uneasiness in his eyes—the wariness—as they shoot through the chaos.

"Naruto." She snaps louder when he continues hesitating.

"The worst I can do is say 'no.' Now, what,"—roof shingles shatter beneath her soles—"does Sasuke need?"

He grimaces.

For a minute more, he says nothing; lets the thunder and tinny voices crackling out of the radio around his neck, do the talking.

Then, so quietly, she nearly misses it, he says, "... your eyes."

She turns to him.

"He needs," he repeats as they soar over the village gates, "your eyes."—Simple.

Easy enough.

Hinata cocks a brow.

Anticlimactic.

"That's it—?" Her feet find wood.

"His Rinnegan isn't enough?" She pushes off the thick branch.

"Not this time." His voice thins as he shoots ahead. "He's up against another Otsutsuki."

"And?" She rakes back her soaked fringe, speeding up to match his pace as they weave through trees. "They specialize in dimensional warfare, no?"

Lightning tears open the sky above them–paints everything bright, light, and painfully white in that short moment.

"What's—," she winces at the skull-rattling crash of thunder that follows.

"What's he expecting me to do?" She raises her voice above the ringing in her ears. "Just because I can see rifts in the space-time continuum—."

"Doesn't mean you can manipulate them like he can—I know." Naruto drops into a crouch. "That's fine."

He takes off again. "That's all he needs." He says. "—Someone who can see them."

She casts him a sidelong glance as she follows.

No, she thinks.

No, that isn't it.

That isn't what he's so scared to ask of her. Not looking as guilty as he does.

There's something else going on. Something worse. Something he isn't telling her.

So, "what is it?" She frowns. "What aren't you telling me?"

He doesn't answer right away.

His lips part instead. Then press together and part again—like he's stuck; caught in a loop. Not so much hesitation this time as it is him struggling to shape what he wants to say.

"It's …," he starts. And then trails off—words seemingly caught somewhere between thought and breath.

"... This Otsutsuki," he finally manages after a minute. "She's … different." His brows furrow. "Creative."

Hinata makes a face. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"She—," he shakes his head. "I don't know, she just—."

Hinata looks at him.

"The way she uses dimensions—," he frowns, "it's different."—Again with ominous ambiguity.

"Different, how?"

"Different, like she still leverages them to teleport and all—."

"But?"

Naruto swallows. He shakes his head again. "She doesn't just open the dimensions up around her opponents."

She blinks.

He finally looks back at her—grimace tight across his blanched lips.

"... She opens them within."

Hinata stares at him.

Ice begins crawling down her spine; chills racking up beneath her skin pulling out a shudder so visceral it makes her blood freeze.

Her eyes gradually widen as the weight of his words sink in; as the implication unfolds.

The enemy can open dimensions inside the human body. They can tear a person apart from within; disassemble them cell by cell, tissue by tissue, organ by org—oh.

She blinks.

Oh.

An inkling of what he wants from her takes root.

"—suke can only handle so many dimensions at once and—," he's saying when she looks at him again.

"He's been holding out for three days. But—," his voice goes tight, "his body—," it cracks up. "He can't—," it breaks.

"He can't take anymore—."

Hinata glances up at his eyes. Catches those red embers flashing bright beneath his big blues—mixing; fusing into a deep purple she hasn't seen for the last three years.

She swallows. Turns back down.

He clears his throat.

"We have specialists onsite." He continues, hoarse.

"They're dismantling the rifts Sasuke can't handle. But—," he clears his throat again when his voice goes all scratchy.

"But they can only close the dimensions they know exist—," he says, "the ones they know the exact locations of."

Hinata looks up. Watches the edge of the forest—the end of it all—draw closer and closer.

Tick—tick—tick—tock.

"... And they can't see them all," she murmurs, "can they?"

It isn't much of a question. Not when she knows the answer. Not when she knows where this is going now—what he's going to ask; why he'd been so nervous to ask it.

Tick—tick—tick—tock.

"No." Her husband shakes his head. "Not the ones …," he licks his lips. Swallows again. Nervous.

Tick—tick—tick—tock.

"Not—." He tries again.

"—The ones inside Sasuke's body." Hinata finishes for him.

Tick—tick—tick—tock, goes the timer on her marriage–on her peace—on her happiness; that clock that had been paused three years back.

Tick—tick—tick—tock.

"And you want me," she pushes off one last branch, "to pinpoint," the trees vanish, giving way to waterlogged soil, "the rifts inside him," they hit the ground running, "so they can close them."

That's what he's been so skittish about.

He's asking her to save him. To save the life of the man he loves—the man she wholly and utterly despises with every fiber of her being; the man he knows how much she hates.

"I wouldn't ask if I thought anyone else could."—Is his excuse.

"Yeah?" Hinata's laughs, sardonic.

She bites the inside of her cheek—tries to bite back the bile rising within. But—

"Where are the rest of our Byakugan users then?"—it still seeps out. And what ends up being louder is what she isn't saying: why does it have to be me?

He spares her a sheepish glance. "They're out of chakra."

"Out of ch—?" Hinata whips to him. "You dispatched them already?" She frowns. "My clan?"

"Sasuke's been fighting for three days, I needed someone—."

"So you come to me?" She snaps. "After wearing out the rest of my family?"—she's being unreasonable. She knows.

Any other Kage would've likely made the same decision in the same situation. But she can't help it.

It irks her. The way he'd apparently bled her family dry—reduced them to nothing more than a means to an end: protecting Sasuke.

"Tsk."

It's already coming undone—all of it.

The man's barely been back 72 hours and all the work her husband had put into bettering himself and their marriage is unraveling.

It's already fraying at the edges; slipping back into that familiar, old tangle of knots wrapped tight around Sasuke's little finger.

"I didn't—," he grimaces at her. "Hina, it wasn't like that—."

"Wasn't it?" She cracks her knuckles. Grits her teeth. "You mean every other Byakugan user in Konoha isn't completely drained because you ordered them to help Him?"

"Hina, ple—."

"Naruto!" Sai swoops in beside them on a sketched falcon before he can finish.

"Twenty-eight!" He cups his mouth to yell.

"Twenty-what?!" Her husband's voice hitches as they leap off the ground.

Sai swerves the bird beneath them.

"What happened to the nineteen dimensions he already had inside him—?!"

"He isn't—," Sai scrambles to steady the drawing as it wavers beneath their added weight, "defending himself anymore—."

"He's letting her open them?!"

Lightning shoots over their heads

"He has no choi—," Sai falters. "—Fffuck—,"

They all grimace when a clap of thunder rings out so hard, it sends shockwaves through everything in existence—their bones. The earth. The very air around them.

"—Ugh," Sai crouches low, pressing the hand he doesn't have over his ear into the falcon to urge it faster. Higher. Closer to the eye of the storm.

"Naruto." He raises his voice over the ringing in their ears. "He's out." He says. "Sasuke doesn't have enough chakra to fight her and protect himself at the same time. So—"

The winds whip faster. Rain beating down harder. Eye of the storm inching closer.

"—He's prioritizing offense over defense."

The next bolt of lightning burns brighter. Thunder roaring louder. And louder still.

"He's …"

Hinata glances up. Her husband's voice is small. Scared.

"... He's sacrificing his body for stronger attacks …?"

Sai doesn't answer.

He keeps his mouth shut. Jaw tight. Eyes up. And slides his palm over the falcon's head.

"Hang on." He says instead as it picks up speed; shoots ahead. Too high, too fast; slicing clean through the crackling heavens like an arrow.

Hinata grimaces.

She can taste it now more than ever—the electricity. The ozone. The currents swirling in the thinning air around them—like fire and metal in her mouth, searing white, hot down her tongue.

His chakra.

Everywhere. Saturating everything. Every last atom in existence.

She looks down as Sai begins leveling them out at a few hundred feet—gets a bird's eye view of the entire situation.

It's been cordoned off—the battlefield beneath them.

Seven spectral, dome-shaped barriers carve a perfect ring of annihilation into the earth; separates friend from foe; makes for some thirty thousand square feet of thoroughly obliterated terrain amidst the lush steppe.

Countless shinobi and red-clad priests and priestesses stand around the entire contraption, holding it steady.

And still.

Still, his chakra leaks past. Still, it whips the world around them into pandemonium.

Because that's who He is.

A calamity.

She flinches as lightning from the storm—His storm, His chaos, the tempest unleashed by His chakra—blasts past, mere inches from their faces.

It strikes nearby—midair. Fractures reality with a BANG, cracking the boundary between realms and giving way to a wrinkle in space and time.

The barriers waver.

They warp and bend; pulse ominously as that wrinkle stretches—tears; makes it such that the very fabric of reality slowly shears apart at that single holographic seam.

Realms converge.

Worlds bleed into one another—saffron skies. Mercuric seas. Saphiric valleys. And rivers of stardust.

A patchwork of landscapes pulled from the ether; melding. Spilling over. Seeping through the frayed edges of the widening rift to stain their barren battlefield with nameless colors, haunting hues, and shades unknown.

Hinata watches for a moment. Entranced.

Then lightning strikes again. And a color she does know—a color she does recognize—begins taking shape within the opening dimension.

Crimson.

Two shadows haloed in its deep shades rip free from the void—sudden; in the blink of an eye.

They spill forth into their world alongside countless other realms: one rising. The other plunging in rapid freefall.

Heavenward and hellbound; a soaring comet. And a falling star—one that plummets so fast it paints a reddish blur over storm-lit skies as blood scatters off the person's wounds to trail behind them in an ominous crimson mist.

Him.

Her husband shoots to his feet.

"You two." The scrolls tumble off his back as he unfastens them. "Get to Sakura—," wisps of fiery orange simmer up around him, "—now."

Hinata whips back when she feels it.

"N–," she starts. "Wait!" She lunges after him. "Don't jus—!"

But he's already gone. Tipping over the edge. Falling; the red hem of his overcoat fluttering just out of reach as he dives into the battlefield.

She's left in a lurch.

Fingers swiping through empty air. Heart shooting into her mouth. Knuckles going ink-black as she digs her nails into the falcon's wing to keep from falling as well.

"Hinata!" Sai snaps when it teeters beneath her grip.

But she doesn't hear it; doesn't care enough to.

Her marriage is quite literally slipping through her fingers; husband literally drifting further and further away from her by the second. Again.

She can't bring herself to focus on anything beyond that. So her eyes stay fixed on him. Fixed.

Unblinking.

She watches owlishly as he shoots through the stratosphere—Kurama's spectral likeness enveloping him as he goes.

Its solar glow spreads along the way—growing. Warping. Swelling and blooming; going supernova and flaring as waves of molten chakra morph around his body.

They take shape eventually.

Crystallize.

Light condensing into the form of the fox—its nine legendary tails. Eyes forged from fire. And talon-tipped hands.

As Sai arcs them around the battlefield, Hinata sees those claws—those ancient weapons of mass destruction. Life-enders. Nation-crushers. War-makers and peace-breakers—close around the falling figure with surprising delicacy. Tenderness. Care.

Such restraint, there is.

All that raw power—those centuries of devastation—held in check to cradle the figure instead—slowing its descent, sheltering it. Shielding it. Protecting it—.

"Hinata."

Within Kurama's cloak, her husband reaches out.

He waits; hands up—raised to the heavens like a prayer; every last tendon coiled tight with anticipation; shoulders set, legs braced, and eyes focused as Sasuke drifts down through the shroud of chakra to settle in his arms—

"Hinata."

—the exact way she had the night of their wedding, when her husband carried her across the threshold—

"Hinata."

"What." She snaps, unwilling to look away.

He'd been so careful when he'd done it with her back then; when he'd carried her across the threshold. Every breath measured. Every move deliberate. Every step calculated.

She'd been touched at the time. Delighted.

So utterly enamored by the idea that her husband might be afraid of hurting her, that she hadn't considered—hadn't even imagined—he was adjusting for the original vision he'd had in mind.

His body flows now.

No hesitation. No calculation. No careful planning or scrambling to readjust for unexpected differences in angles or weights.

No.

Her husband moves with absolute certainty this time. Pure instinct. Nothing but muscle memory.

So Sasuke drops into his arms—perfect.

He fits against Naruto—perfect.

Every angle finding its hollow, every curve finding its bend; bodies aligning in flawless symmetry—perfect.

It's perfect.

All of it.

Fucking perfect.

Like her husband's spent a lifetime learning exactly how to hold this person. This one fucking person.

"Tsk."

There's just such a rightness to it all that makes her skin crawl—

"Hinata." She flinches when Sai finally grabs her shoulder.

"What—?" She looks back.

He jerks his head, chin jutting to something beneath them.

She blinks. Turns again. Finds herself at odds with what appears to have been an emergency command post at some point.

It's just remains now. Wreckage and ruin, she notes as she climbs off the bird.

Splintered support beams. Steel frames twisted like withered stems. Rain-heavy canvas torn to and fro by violent gusts of wind.

The ground crunches beneath her feet as she settles onto it.

Glass—she realizes as blasts of lightning refract into sudden bursts of kaleidoscopic light through its shards. Shattered glass.

Lightning splits the darkness again.

And Hinata catches a glimpse of the original medication vials scattered on the ground all around her; leaking.

Another flash has the overturned medical crates they'd spilled out of, coming into focus a few feet away.

A third bolt strikes.

Then a fourth. A fifth. A sixth and a seventh—nature's strobe light pulsing faster. And faster still.

It brings to life the pandemonium around her in a shuttering stop-motion film; still frame by still frame.

Hinata moves through them one by one. From the edge of the base to its core.

From the blur of Jounin darting around her with armfuls of salvaged scrolls, medical supplies, and communication equipment; to the med nins shouting orders over them.

From the makeshift infirmary, where forehead protectors from every village catch the light; to their leaders beside them, crowded around what appears to be the last standing table.

They're exhaustion personified: Lady Tsunade with shadows rimming her eyes. Kakashi presiding over his personal graveyard of empty coffee cups. Gaara hunched over the table—one hand raised to maintain the gargantuan shield of sand that's replaced their shredded tent canvas. And the new Mizukage beside him, slumped at the table's edge, closer to unconsciousness than consciousness.

Shikamaru's further ahead—removed from the rest. On a different level—a different plane of existence altogether—playing shōgi with flesh and blood.

Hinata sees it now as she makes her way through: the game he's laid out.

He stands at the tent's edge—behind a vanguard of radio operators calling out coordinates—as King of the board.

A map is crumpled in his left hand, twin walkie-talkies vying for space in his right, a radio transmitter circling his throat, and a satellite phone jammed to his ear.

He stands immobile—a fixed point in the churning sea of his faceless footsoldiers; his unknown Knights. Unnamed Lances. And uncounted Pawns.

His Generals flank him.

And for each new set of coordinates called out, Shino—his Gold General—dispatches insects to scout out and relay back the dimension's nature to Shikamaru.

Chōji—his Silver General—translates the intel into color, marking off each new dimension location according to its nature on the map; void-black, flame-red, ocean-blue, star-white.

Galactic. Volcanic. Aquatic. Celestial.

Shikamaru takes it all in. Processes and plans; calculates then commands.

He comes up with a new game plan for each new dimension before issuing orders through his array of receivers.

Even closer to the tent's edge, his Bishop plays her part—"hold him still, dammit!"—interrogating.

Within her circle of guards, Ino holds a palm to the head of a handcuffed captive being pinned down by Kiba and Lee.

Then beyond them, at the forefront of it all, beneath the rain, right outside the barrier, weathering the blowback of his entire game—the final piece, completing his set: his Dragon Horse.

"Sakura." She calls out to her as she walks up.

But Sakura doesn't hear her.

She continues prowling the muddy ground like a caged thing instead; the way she paces—back and forth and back and forth and back again.

Six steps right. Six steps left. Six right. Six left. Six, six, and six again, until the winds suddenly change and a chakra that isn't molten electricity surges to life.

She stills.

Warmth surrounds them. A heatwave.

Sunlight blooms in Hinata's mouth. Summer on her skin. Konoha's Will of Fire in her blood.

She looks up.

Her husband moves so fast, he breaks the sound barrier; becomes light itself as he shoots across the battlefield—splitting horizon into sky and earth—coming to materialize before them five entire seconds before the sonic boom catches up.

He is every inch his father's child—all golden with raw speed and power. Except where Minato had burned yellow, his son stands before them baptized in red.

Red eyes. Red clothes. Red dripping from his soaked robe. Red, red, red—nothing but the colors of death.

It corrupts him.

Sasuke corrupts him—his blood twisting that otherwise perfect reflection of the Yellow Flash.

Hinata cracks a knuckle as she stares.

His bleeding body hangs limp in her husband's arms. Mangled.

Motionless.

More corpse than person; more blood than man—save for the subtlest rise and fall of his chest.

She bites back her disappointment. Swallows. Forces back that familiar surge of bitterness, as she watches her husband sink to his knees.

There's something devastating in how he's gathered Sasuke close; how he's cradled him against his chest.

Desperately gentle.

Like he's something delicate; something infinitely breakable. Crystal-fragile. As if there's anything left of that ruined body worth such gentle handling—anything left to protect.

Still. He eases Sasuke to the ground as gently as someone like him in all his power can.

Guides his knees, lowering them in the tiniest of increments; palms ghosting along each calf, each thigh once they're grounded, ensuring they settle without twisting.

He lays Sasuke's head down with the same heartbreaking tenderness next. Palm curved around his skull. Fingers threaded through that dark hair made darker by all the blood.

He adjusts. Readjusts. Makes a thousand tiny corrections in his grip—each breath bringing another shift. Another shaky realignment. Until those black locks finally spill across the ground.

Rainwater immediately leaches red from them when they do. Paints the earth with death.

Her husband's hand stays trapped there—between black and red, bloodied hair and even bloodier ground.

In that moment, there is no legend. No myth. No hero. Not even a man.

Just a boy.

A little boy who'd never stopped chasing this one dream—

—now crumbling.

Shattering.

From the inside out.

She can see it; the way he breaks—the way his shoulders tremble with each ragged breath. Eyes glazed. Distant.

Redder now than they've ever been as they dart from wound to wound with increasing desperation—like he's searching for one that isn't catastrophically fatal.

His shaking hand mirrors that same frantic path; moving from ankle to hip to ribs to face; never quite touching. Never daring.

Just hovering.

Like he's terrified that a single wrong move might snap the last of whatever fragile thing is keeping Sasuke together.

The first touch, when he finally breaks and allows himself it, makes her ache.

His bloodied knuckles drift down Sasuke's cheek with such profound reverence that just watching feels like trespassing on something holy.

He's always worshipped Sasuke. Always.

But this is different.

This is something … unspeakably sacred.

Something private.

Something so desperately intimate that even outsiders are averting their eyes—recognizing what they have no right to recognize. Understanding what they have no right to understand.

The fucking audacity.

The audacity of these people to presume. To think they have the right to look away. To act like their polite withdrawal somehow honors what they're witnessing—like they understand even a fraction of what she's lived through all these years.

Tsk.

She cracks another knuckle. Starts tapping her foot. Watching.

Waiting impatiently as her husband lingers; as he traces Sasuke's cheek with that same infuriating tenderness one final time.

And then he's gone.

Hurtling back into battle—a singular ray of sunlight cutting through the storm.

She looks down at what remains. At the piece of his soul he's left behind; the heart that's always beaten outside his chest.

It's bad.

Worse than bad.

Sasuke's broken in ways she hadn't imagined the human body could even break.

And that's just on the outside.

Traces of the dimensional rifts the enemy had opened within him linger between his muscles. His vessels.

They're microscopic. Small. Deceptively harmless spaces where the seams of reality have unraveled and given way to otherworldly realms—realms underwater. Among the stars. Amidst black holes. Within erupting volcanoes. Shard-filled, toxin-filled, blight-filled deathtraps. Countless.

And they destroy. Ceaselessly.

Alone, they're too small to be fatal. But together—the sum of their damage has wreaked a kind of havoc she can't begin to describe.

Arteries torn. Veins severed. Muscles ripped. Bones snapped. Guts punctured—

Nothing—nothing—is flowing the way it should. Not his blood. Not his oxygen. Not his chakra. Nothing.

Frankly, she doesn't know how he's still alive.

Eighteen of his twenty-four ribs are broken. Six vertebrae completely shattered. Eleven more fractured. His right lung is collapsed and his left one is collapsing. Multiple major arteries—lacerated and hemorrhaging. His left shoulder—dislocated. He's sustained multiple partial fractures of nearly every bone in his arms and legs. And the blood pooling beneath his body is rapidly reaching a fatal amount.

Sakura's hands shake as Hinata continues listing the injuries; one after the other after the other.

"Focus." Tsunade tells her when she starts hyperventilating. "Focus Sakura. Focus—," she turns up, "both of you."

Hinata glances at her. Then at the red-clad woman that settles beside her.

"Hinata-sama." Her hands rise up, showcase small galleries of red glyphs tattooed into her palms—fractals upon fractals; scar-like runes that seem to shift when she isn't looking directly at them.

"If you would be so kind," she gestures with those arcane hands of hers. "Please."

Another woman in red settles opposite Hinata.

"Guide us."

Specialists, she gathers, catching the same array of symbols mirrored on this woman's palms as well.

Her husband's dimensional experts.

The ones who folded reality like origami. Who walked the space between spaces. Who understood the mathematics of existence itself, and who—.

—she was now expected to work with to save—she turns back—this asshole's life.

The irony.

That after years of being the woman who wasn't enough, suddenly she's all her husband has left.

Suddenly, she's everything he ever needed. Needed. Like Sasuke was a need. Like breathing is a need.

God.

She slowly closes her eyes.

God.

Such cruel, cruel beings they could be, these gods of theirs. To finally make her necessary only so she could make herself unnecessary again.

Truly, divine comedy at its peak.

She sighs.

"Hinata-sama?"

Her eyes lift open.

Chakra spiders through her temples—delicate lattices of veins spreading out beneath her skin in their wake.

She stares ahead; stares into those cruel heavens, now stripped bare through her Byakugan: reality unfolding layer by layer, dimension by dimension.

And then her gaze drops—to what Naruto had so desperately needed her for.

She leans in.

Looks.

Breathes in.

And begins: "... thirty-nine dimensions."

Sixty-three minutes it takes for them to map and mend each otherworldly rift opened in Sasuke's body.

Another forty-four, for Sakura, Tsunade, and Shizune to work their magic, before Sasuke's finally opening his eyes.

That's 107 minutes of her husband fighting a losing battle.

107 minutes of him being flayed from the inside out while the rest of them can only watch.

Because that was just it. That was the paradox of divine power; the trade-off for being touched by the gods: only he and his best friend could withstand dimensional travel without being shredded into cosmic dust over the space-time continuum.

The rest of them would've been reduced to their component atoms in minutes; just disintegrated.

The human body simply hadn't been made to exist between realities.

Which means she stands there, useless, for the extra forty-four minutes it takes for Sasuke to fight his way back to consciousness.

His voice comes out cracked when he finally does: "... How—?"

"Don't move." Sakura immediately hisses back. "Sasuke, don't move. Don't fucking move—."

"How …," he ignores her, "... long …?"

Hinata turns away from the battle, eyes dropping to meet his, but finds his gaze already fixed on her husband's every move past her shoulder

She turns back.

"107 minutes." She says, watching the enemy's chakra writhe like smoke; each twist of each plume giving rise to a different reality. A different space. A different time.

Thirty-four more have manifested in the time she'd wasted looking at Sasuke. Thirty-four new dimensions beginning to open around Naruto, adding to the ninety-three already there.

"He needs a—," she quiets.

The veins beside her eyes throb.

Her Byakugan shifts.

It moves on instinct; reacts before her conscious mind can—drawn to a wrongness it hasn't yet grasped.

The final dimension, she realizes when her thoughts eventually catch up.

It hasn't formed.

The thirty-fourth plume of chakra—it isn't splitting reality like the rest.

No.

While the others pulse together—126 dimensions breathing in harmony—this last one remains frozen. Static.

A gnarled knot of chakra that won't unravel.

Strange.

For nearly two hours now, she's watched reality fracture again and again; watched dimension after dimension opening in and around her husband—memorized how their enemy's chakra gathers before each tear forms, learned its rhythm, begun to understand the method to its madness.

But this one is different.

She leans forward.

This one doesn't fit the pattern.

Its chakra isn't … fluid. It doesn't waft like smoke or flow like water as it should.

Instead, it jerks. Twists. Turns. Beats—pulsing with this … odd arrhythmic rhythm that breaks the pattern she's picked up on.

Hinata squints harder; studies it—that lone, irregular blip of lavender chakra; the quickening beat of it. The sinister brightening of it; the gleam, shimmer, glint, and increasing strength of it.

It's like it's being … repressed. Held down.

Like their enemy is forcing that particular plume of chakra back each time it flares—refusing to let it bloom into a dimension like the others.

Like she's waiting instead. Waiting for something—something specific—before allowing this dimension to form.

So it hovers there. Unopened. Beside her husband—a soft, dreamy haze of lavender chakra; steadily concentrating; condensing but never breaking—there, just behind his right flank, three inches above—

She stills

His blindspot.

She takes a breath. "N—…,"—takes a step forward.

She's figured it out.

"Naruto...,"—her whisper breaks when her body moves before her next thought can form.

The enemy's figured out his blindspot.

One step. Two.

It falls into place now—the strategy; the reality of what's unfolding.

All these dimensions—these 126 rifts in space and time—blooming across the battlefield; each one is designed to pull his focus wider; spread his defenses thinner.

They're just a mask.

"Naruto—."

A distraction.

"—No—no, no—."

All of it designed to hide this 127th dimension hovering over his blindspot, still unopened—visible only to her and Sasuke's bloodline limits.

She breaks into a run.

Space cracks open behind the enemy's back the instant she does—a small dimensional tear—a new dimension forming.

"Hinata—?!" Someone shouts.

But she doesn't hear it. She can't.

Her entire world has narrowed to the fleeting glint of the blade the Otsutsuki woman is threading through that new dimension now, and to that lavender knot of chakra finally breaking open beside her husband—right where she knew it would. Right in his blindspot.

They're going to connect.

The dimension behind the enemy and dimension behind her husband—they're paired; two sides of the same coin.

What enters the first will emerge from the second. And so the jagged blade that had gone in through the woman's side—

"NO!" She screams when it arcs out of the dimension on her husband's side.

"NARUTO—!" His name dies in her throat as she's wrenched away from the barrier just as her fingertips graze its iridescent surface.

"NO!" She thrashes against Kakashi's iron grip as he continues pulling her back. "NO, LET GO–LET GO!"

The blade swings forward.

"LET GO!!" She pounds her fists on Kiba and Shino when they grab on as well, helping Kakashi. "I SAID LET FUCKING GO! SHE'S GOING TO—!!"

She scrabbles, fingers straining out, clawing frantically through empty air as her lungs burn—

"—NARUTO—!!"

Time should slow in moments like these.

That's how the stories are supposed to go; pivotal moments like these are supposed to lag—stretch out infinitely—give way to an eternity; and give a person time to think, to plan, to move—to save what matters most.

But this is reality.

And time doesn't slow for her.

It fractures instead.

The world suddenly goes out of focus like a broken kaleidoscope.

All at once, everything that is anything smears together.

Shapes, colors, things, people—all of it runs together; reality dissolving into running pigments; the entire universe bleeding into a bad watercolor painting.

Hinata stumbles, motion-sick from the sudden change of it all.

Around her, light decays. Dims. Goes from day to night—solar gold to violet before vanishing completely.

"Wh—?" She hears her husband's voice.

Behind her.

She whips back. "Naruto—?"

"Wh—?" He stumbles where stands between Sakura, Tsunade, and Shizune—disoriented.

"What—," he frantically takes stock of himself; frantically pats himself down; touches his face—"where—w—,"—trying to make sense of what his mind can't.

"What," he snaps up, breathing hard. "What just—?"

And then he freezes.

Time does too.

One heartbeat. Two. Three.

And then, slowly, his eyes widen.

Blue dilates into black as his hands begin to shake; as his knees buckle; as his face pales; and he stares ahead.

"No …," he breathes. "... No …"

Hinata whips back.

The world's been reshuffled by the time she has—like a deck of cards; things out of place. Nothing where something should be. Everything where nothing would be.

And all of it—all of it—is wrong.

She sees dark hair where there should be light; pale skin where there should be tan; mismatched eyes where there should be blue; violet where there should be gold.

And her mind catches up one detail at a time:

The changes. The things out of place; out of order.

The chakra signature displacement.

That residual ripple in space—the Rinnegan's fingerprint—like reality folded over itself, creased deep, and smoothed flat. But unsuccessfully. Because she can still see the wrinkles it's left behind; the traces; the scars marking where the natural world had been forced to bend.

Her eyes widen.

Spatial manipulation.

Slowly, she turns back to her husband.

… Sasuke's swapped them, she realizes.

Where he'd just been, Naruto now is. And where Naruto had just been—she turns again—He now is.

Which means—

He's safe.

Her body knows it before her mind does; the way her muscles spontaneously uncoil; held breath melting into a soft sigh; heart calming beat by beat.

He's out of harm's way.

She watches as the sword meant for her husband slams clean through Sasuke's abdomen instead.

Thank God.

She takes a step back, watching—silent—as the pendulum swings back into motion

Time restarts.

Tick: she watches that first drop of blood form.

Tock: watches as it slowly beads at the very corner of Sasuke's mouth.

Tick: watches. As it quivers there.

Tock: as it catches light like a ruby.

Tick: before breaking free.

Tock: and falling.

Tick: the second drop is darker. Thicker. Almost black.

Tock: she watches it swell.

Tick: sees the exact moment it grows too heavy.

Tock: and slip.

Tick: it falls like a tear, this one. Slower. Heavier.

Tock: trickling to his chin and dripping off his jaw.

Tick: another drop follows. Crimson-bright.

Tock: then another.

Tick: and another one after that—

Tock: —drip, drop, drip, drop—a macabre metronome—drip, drop, drip, drop—

Tick: nature's own crimson hourglass.

Tock: until, eventually, it's built up into a river—a steady stream of fast-flowing blood spilling down his throat, dyeing his shirt in another layer of red.

Tick: And then there's the rest of it.

Time catches up. Reality snaps back.

And she's thrown headlong into a present that's fractured apart—every second splintered into a thousand shards of chaos. A place where steel screeches against steel—weapons clashing and clattering.

Vials of medicine grinding underfoot. Bodies a blur–shooting past, slamming together. Boots churning earth into mud. Air thick with manic panic.

Screaming. Shouting. A symphony of desperation.

Sakura's voice shattering through it all; Shikamaru's frantic orders trying to stitch the pieces back together—

Bodies in motion. Bodies in flight.

Sai's ink falcon wheeling around and diving through the skies.

Gaara and Temari streaking up through storm clouds on a slab of crumbling sand.

The earth itself, quaking.

Lady Katsuyu jarring reality when Lady Tsunade summons her. Captain Yamato's wood-style technique erupting from the earth—spiraling outward.

Even more nameless techniques quickly joining the fray behind it—water dragons and lightning bolts and wind scythes—

—all bending toward a single point; every technique, every Shinobi behind it, every particle of power—shooting toward Sasuke.

Except for Hinata.

She stands aside.

In her own little pocket of peace amidst the pandemonium. A place where time flows slower. Quieter. Infinitely calmer.

The only other person who remains just as still amongst the unfolding chaos, is her husband.

He hasn't moved. Hasn't blinked. Has barely even breathed.

He just sits there.

On the ground. Where he'd collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut.

His hands rest in lap—open. Useless. Still stained with Sasuke's blood. Fingers twitching every few seconds like he's trying to form the seal for kai—to break out of whatever nightmarish genjutsu he thinks he's trapped in.

His shoulders slump. Broken-winged. Bloody cloak slipping off his shoulder. Catching on his elbow, before sliding further.

His chest rises and falls oddly—in a stuttered rhythm. Halted. Uneven and jerky. Like he has to consciously remind himself to keep breathing every few seconds.

And his face.

Oh, his face.

She's never seen him look so young—so broken—before.

There's a hauntedness about him. Eyes glassy. Unfocused. Blank.

Something behind them—behind those seaglass blues—has gone missing. It's left him with unsettlingly hollow wells for eyes—dull. Black. Bottomless.

Empty.

They reflect light like a cat's—catching it. Holding it. Throwing it back with colors that shouldn't exist as wetness drips from them.

Silent tears. Tears he doesn't even seem to be aware of.

They gather on his lashes. Spill over. Carve clear paths through the drying blood on his face as they make their way down his features.

Features that rest wrong on his bones; like his face has forgotten how to hold itself together—how to function altogether.

It shifts. His expression going from micro-movement to micro-movement, but never really adding up to a single, complete emotion.

Like … a thing.

Something trying to remember how to wear her husband's face.

There's just something not quite right about it; not quite human. Something that makes her instincts cringe back while her heart reaches out.

He's dissociating.

Lost. Adrift between reality and denial.

She can see it—the way he repeatedly fails to reconcile what's real with what isn't. Because he's too scared to face it. To face reality.

Too scared to wake up and return to a place and time where the love of his life is dying. In front of him. For him.

So he sits there. Unmoving. As if by refusing to take part in this moment, he can somehow prevent it from being real; from being th—

His eyes snap wide.

Something shifts.

All at once, her husband is lurching to attention—almost violently; the way he jolts, every muscle tightening up, every tendon pulling taut, every vertebra aligning to draw his spine ramrod straight—his entire body rigid.

Hinata blinks.

She watches him; watches his chakra—the way it rolls off him in these wild, increasingly uncontrolled heat waves that warp the air around him; make it burn.

Make it sting.

Make her wince.

She hisses, cringing away, glancing back to the battlefield he's staring at.

He's still there. Sasuke.

Still suspended within Susano'o's violet ribcage, impaled on the enemy's blade—all those major organs torn through, blood loss critical, minutes—maybe seconds—left. Time slipping away in that crimson rain. Yet still conscious despite it all.

And smiling.

She squints.

It's a smile she knows; a smile many of them know having fought against it or alongside it—wild and unhinged.

Just this side of completely fucking insane.

Victorious.

It's the face he makes when he knows—without a shadow of a doubt—he's got this; he's won this.

Except he hasn't.

He's dying. Literally dying right before their very eyes.

So she takes a slow step forward—curious. Then another. And another—peering to focus her Byakugan.

He's holding the enemy's wrist she realizes, the closer she gets.

He's holding her wrist—her blade—in place; holding it still within his body—holding her back from pulling it out.

Still though.

She doesn't see it. Doesn't see checkmate; salvation; doesn't see a single move left to make on this carnage-strewn gameboard that'll win him the game.

Survival itself seems like a long shot, let alone victory.

And yet—

She turns back to her husband who's suddenly back up on his feet—shaking hard. Hyperventilating. Pupils narrowing into feline slits as he loses whatever little control he'd had over his chakra.

—he can.

He can see a way out. A solution.

Whatever twisted salvation Sasuke's weaving together in that brilliant, demented mind of his. Whatever impossible checkmate the rest of them are blind to—

—he sees it.

No. She sees his lips move. A whisper. Soft. Mumbling to himself and his demons.

His head slowly shakes.

No. He stumbles forward a step. No, no, no, no—

—Lightning explodes across the sky like veins—one bolt spidering out into hundreds of little branches that turn the skies into a web of electricity—

"NO SASUKE, DON'T!!"

She whips away from all that blinding, stark white; sees her husband taking off again.

Everyone else stares as it all unfolds in a fraction of a second:

That crackling tangle of lightning. Everywhere. Touching everything.

Susano'o's arm—raised. Splitting the storm—pulling. Drawing. Conducting every last stray thread of lightning down.

Deep down.

Taking it in—all that power. All that electricity. Compressing it. Condensing it. Concentrating it into a white-hot arrow before it turns the sharp point on itself, towards its chest and—

It's a Kamikaze attack, Hinata realizes too late.

—Stabs.

She watches it happen, frozen. Watches Sasuke hold the enemy in place as the celestial weapon runs them both through in the same stroke and thinks, ah.

This is it.

This is the legacy he's choosing to leave behind. Not one of vengeance. Or glory. Or power. Or tortured righteousness.

But one of love.

Legendary love.

A love so deep and so sacred it'd be carved into the bones of history itself; written into myths and sung by poets to echo through generations—

A fairytale about a final legacy rooted not in vengeance, but in sacrifice. Not in destruction, but in protection. Not in what he destroyed—but in what he died protecting.

Who he died protecting.

Her husband's there.

But exactly half a second too late.

Sasuke's already fallen—his Susano'o dissipating into nothingness around him.

Her husband only just manages to catch him, skidding violently across the ground as he crashes into his arms.

Hinata shoves. Manages to break free of Kakashi and Kiba to chase after them.

The battlefield she runs across is more battle than field—all scars and smoking craters; trees snapped like twigs; earth crumbling to dust—dust crumbling to nothing beneath her feet.

They sit amidst it all. At the very eye of it; where destruction radiates outward in ripples.

Her husband—crumpled on the ground.

Sasuke moving—trying to move—where he lies in his arms.

But it's all wrong. Sluggish and alien. Unnatural in its slowness and discoordination.

Her eyes narrow as she nears.

She watches the eerie quirk of Sasuke's lips—too red, too wet—around words she can't make out; words she isn't meant to make out; but words she still knows, regardless.

I love you.

Her husband frantically shakes his head back.

"—ut up, shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up—," she hears him whispering feverishly as she runs up.

Desperate, desperate denial.

"Just don't—," like he can blot out reality through sheer force of will—"don't say anything—."

He's infusing Sasuke with what little chakra he has left, she notices the closer she gets.

More than chakra, really. Life itself.

He's sacrificing it—his life force—to replenish his own drained chakra reservoir so he can keep giving it to Him; just burning through decades in seconds—nineties, eighties, seventies—as he pushes everything he has into Sasuke's crashing system.

Her heart sinks as she watches.

He's dying.

They both are.

Sasuke's too damaged.

And her husband is burning away his very existence trying to rewrite the fact of the matter. Like he can even rewrite an ending that's likely already been written.

"Naruto …," she reaches out as she settles beside him.

"Don't say that." He ignores her. "No, no, don't talk—don't fucking speak, Sasuke just—breathe—."

Except it isn't working.

The chakra transfer. The life force conversion. The frantic begging.

None of it is working.

Nerves are still failing. Tension is still unraveling, muscles releasing, breaths slowing, eyes dulling—Sasuke's life, still slipping through his fingers.

Just as Sasuke's fingertips slip from Naruto's cheek a moment later, leaving crimson trails—final brushstrokes—before falling through the air and splashing heavily into a puddle of bloodied rainwater.

"No, no, no, no, no—Sasuke—," her husband grabs his hand off the ground and frantically brings it back up to hold against his cheek.

Like somehow that'll be enough to make it stay. To make Him stay.

But Sasuke—that body of his; that body forged in combat, honed by vengeance, and tempered by redemption—continues crumbling in on itself.

It settles deeper into Naruto's arms; legs bonelessly collapsing against one another as those legendary eyes of his begin clouding over like frosted glass; each glacial blink coming slower than the last.

"Sasuke—," her husband's voice splinters. "Sasuke, please." He leans down, pushing their foreheads together.

"Please—," the words crack. "Not—like this—," shards of letters; sharp, razor-edged things. Cutting deep. Drawing blood.

"—Just stay with me—." Truth bleeds out from between his lips: "you're all I have—."

Hinata's arm drops.

Her husband clutches Sasuke's limp hand against his cheek, tears spilling faster—pitter-pattering onto that too-pale skin below. "… —I can't—."

She swallows.

"—I can't do this without you—," he starts rocking.

"Please," he curls around Sasuke—closer, tighter—like he's trying to shield him from death itself.

"Please don't do this to me," he begs.

"Don't leave me alone here—don't—," he breaks—shatters—"—leave me—," he sounds like a child.

"—Sasuke—." So scared. So terrified. So alone.

Hinata's knuckles crack as she folds them into a tight fist against the ground—blood and mud squeezing through her fingers.

She watches silently—the way she always has. Sees what he's refusing to see—what he can't see without her eyes; her bloodline limit—the fact that the man is mere centimeters away from death.

Two, as a matter of fact.

Just two centimeters left of his damaged heart.

One strike from her.

That's all it would take to make it stop beating altogether. Right there. Right then. No delay of whatever coma he'd likely end up in if anyone tried saving him now.

One strike.

She blinks.

One simple strike. And the bane of her existence would disappear. Just like that.

Poof.

No more brazen flirting. No more disguised indecency. No more 'just messing around' or 'heat of the moment'-type slips.

One strike. And she'd never again have to suffer any of it.

She'd never have to return to living in a state of constant, unending hypervigilance—always watching, always waiting for a next time. Another mistake.

Slowly, she lifts her hand off the ground.

One strike, and she'd get the breakfasts in bed back. The lunches in sun-dappled bistros. The dinner dates in candle-lit corners. The family outings, family dinner, family—everything.

She would get it all back.

She takes a deep breath.

One strike. And she'd get her husband back.

Not for three years.

Not for whatever amount of time Sasuke deigned to fuck off.

Forever.

Slowly, she draws her arm back.

Just one strike. One simple strike. And he'd be hers. Forever.

Her hand shoots forward.

"HIN–?!" Her husband yelps when her fingers find their mark. Precise. Perfect—.

"WHAT T—?!"

—five, not two, centimeters left of Sasuke's heart.

Then, she lets her hand drop back to her side.

And watches.

Watches as life eventually remembers its way home—the way her husband's chakra surges through Sasuke's newly-cleared meridian like a river breaking free, dragging stagnated blood in its wake.

Life chasing death away with each pulse. Each wave. Each desperate rush of energy.

Time begins again.

Tick—tick—tick—tock.

Color bleeds back into those too-pale cheeks as chakra pathways realign downstream—as blood flows, as oxygen returns, as that failing body remembers how to live; that damaged heart—that faltering, fragile thing—steadies. Strengthens. Survives.

Sasuke's chest finally rises.

He breathes.

And breathes.

And lives.

He lives.

(Her nightmare lives).

The world blurs around her as the thought (the regret) settles in.

Voices fade in and out. Bodies flickering at the edges of her vision—medics in white. Shinobi in camo. Hands reaching in. Pushing. Whisking Sasuke away. Stabilizing and teleporting him off.

None of it quite reaches her.

None of it really real.

She just sits there; frozen between moments; between choices; between what she'd done and what she could have—should have—done.

All the while her husband is slowly sinking into her arms, shaking.

"Thank you," he's whispering. "Thank you, thank you—," each word sliding like glass between her ribs.

And she just sits there. Taking it.

Simultaneously in pain and numb to it all.

💍

Sasuke has his own hospital.

Literally.

They head straight to it right after getting treated—that hospital of his.

This glass marble of a thing. Carved out of white spinel and clear quartz; two stories worth of crystal; 9278 Sasuke-specific chakra restriction seals sculpted into its every facet.

It's a failsafe.

A feat of architecture designed to withstand his night terrors.

It'd been among the first things to have been built after the war.

Naruto had warned the elders to do it sooner; had even strong-armed ANBU's barrier specialists into drawing up the blueprints; had all but spoon-fed everyone the answer to a question only he knew to ask.

But the Council of Prehistoric Idiots Elders, in all their wisdom, had rejected it.

They'd decided they knew better; decided, instead, that Konoha's relief funds were better spent on more important things.

Like rebuilding the Hokage's Office. In imported rosewood and mother-of-pearl inlays.

A grander council chamber with warmed floors. Larger private offices. A taller, fancier gate to impress their self-importance upon the world; remind them exactly who they had to thank for not being doomed to eternal damnation.

Idiots.

They'd paid for it—for their ignorance; their idiocy—quickly enough. Hand over fist.

Within a week—barely seven days after huddling together to spawn all these spectacularly stupid decisions—seven lives were lost in the span of a single night. A single minute.

Seven entire souls; with ninety-three more maimed.

All because they'd underestimated the full extent of Sasuke's power—no, his trauma. His PTSD.

They'd ignored her husband, yet again, when he'd told them to hospitalize Sasuke—comatose, unconscious Sasuke—in an isolated ward after the war.

And they'd cited "wasted resources" and "needless precautions" before placing him in the general ward—among Konoha's defenseless citizens—instead.

It wasn't until the nightmares came—as her husband knew they would; as he'd told them they would—and Sasuke didn't scream himself awake the way most others did, that they understood why.

Sasuke's nightmares don't rouse him.

They simply trigger his defense mechanisms. And the one they'd triggered that night at Konoha General was the one everyone and their mothers rightfully feared: his ultimate defense mechanism.

Susano'o.

It had manifested on its own. And as he'd laid there unconscious, it had torn through everything within a two-mile radius—wild and unchecked; answerable to no one.

Sleepwalking on steroids, if you will.

So now he gets his own private hospital in the middle of nowhere; twenty miles out from anything and everything.

His very own fortress.

A prison masquerading as a place of healing; a glass cell where the very air itself is regulated; where every wall hums with suppression seals; every corner teems with cameras; every med nin whispers and tiptoes, terrified that one wrong sound might stir Sasuke's dreams—and end their lives.

He lies there now. At the center of it all. Comatose. On life support.

Her husband hasn't left his side. He never will.

He sits there; sits vigil at his bedside, clutching Sasuke's hand between both of his own, head bowed low as he holds them against his forehead—praying.

Hinata watches from above, standing on the balcony lining the room's four walls.

"Thank you."

She doesn't look away.

"For what."

Warmth settles in her wet hair; fingers threading through; digging deep; pressing in.

She eases a touch under the pressure. Exhales. Lets her head tilt with the slow stroke of Sakura's hand.

"For saving him." She says.

"The only reason he survived surgery was because you," she continues, combing back flyaways, "restored his chakra and blood flow before permanent damage set in. So—."

The hand drops.

She leans against the balustrade beside Hinata. "Thank you."

Hinata's lips twitch.

She doesn't answer.

Keeps her mouth shut instead; her heart still; her eyes on the steady stroke of her husband's thumb over Sasuke's knuckles—hypnotic. Over and over and over and—

"... I could've killed him …"

Seconds pass: one.

"Just two." She wistfully muses on when Sakura doesn't reply. "Just two centimeters left of his heart instead of five, and I could have …," the words taste like regret.

Bitter. Icy in their burn.

"So?" Sakura folds her arms on the banister. "Why didn't you?"

Hinata sighs, irritated.

At them. At herself.

"Because."

At the entire world and all the audacity of it.

"He," she tips her chin to her husband, "would've killed himself if I hadn't."

Sakura looks at them. She hums. "You think—?"

"I know."

"Yeah?" Sakura turns back to her. Cocks a brow. "How do you figure?"

Hinata blinks.

Her Byakugan strains with overuse; pulses angrily at her temples as she raises her eyes and looks past flesh and bone; into His core—at it.

The thing her husband owns. The thing he remains a prisoner to.

His heart.

"It stopped." She says, counting its beats.

"What?"

"Sasuke's heart—," it isn't racing the way it normally does when her husband touches him, "—it'd already stopped beating by the time I got there."

She hears Sakura's breath catch.

"Naruto was converting his life force into chakra to keep it beating." She goes on.

Sakura snaps up. "What–?"

"And he would've kept going," Hinata's eyes narrow, "until either he died," she frowns, "... or Sasuke woke."

The veins at her temples recede.

"... So I saved him."

She finally turns to meet Sakura's stunned stare.

"I saved him," she repeats, "to save my husband."

💍

She almost doesn't expect him to come back to her that night. If ever.

That is to say, she's genuinely surprised to see her husband stroll through their front door a few short hours after they'd parted.

"Hey," he offers her an exhausted smile. But a smile, nonetheless.

"I'm gonna' hit the shower," he says as he's kicking his shoes off, "wanna' order out tonight?"

Hinata blinks.

"I was thinking—maybe that new place 'round the corner?" He goes on. "You know the one Temari told us about …"

Hinata doesn't hear the rest of it. She just watches him. More or less stunned.

He's here.

Somewhere deep within, a tiny flame of hope reignites.

He's here.

Not standing vigil at His bedside—here. With her.

When he could be anywhere else in the world—doing anything else at all—

Naruto is here.

Even as that man's life hangs in the balance—

The mere thought of it is reassuring enough. Actually seeing it—him casually walking around the home they've built together, going about the life they've created for one another—

—it fills Hinata with such insane happiness. Happiness straight from the tap—pure, warm, and unrestrained.

He might carry a torch for Sasuke. But at the end of the day, it's her he's coming home to.

It's still her.

💍

Days pass. Weeks. Nearly a month.

Sasuke never stirs.

Not once.

He stays more or less dead—life support machines threading oxygen into his collapsed lungs; powering his weak heart; circulating his chakra—living for him.

Sakura insists he's on the mend. "Suspended death," or some such magic.

But Hinata could care less.

Her husband still visits him. Often.

But he's discreet about it. Nothing like that desperate teenager who'd made a second home out of Sasuke's prison cell back then.

He doesn't make a thing out of it this time.

Just says he's running a few errands and disappears for a few hours. No more. No less.

And he comes back home with groceries. Or the scrolls she needs for her next mission. Or the thingamajig Boruto needs for his class project.

He's subtle with it.

If he's concerned about Sasuke he doesn't let it show. Much.

At least not in front of her.

No, in front of her, he's the perfect husband he's been for the last three—nearly four—years.

All morning kisses and date nights. Surprise bouquets of her favorite lilies and love notes stuck to fogged up bathroom mirrors; teaching their son how to make her beloved sweet dango on Sunday mornings and picnics in the afternoons—

He's trying. Overcompensating.

Hinata can appreciate that.

She'd expected so much less after all.

She'd expected him to set up shop in Sasuke's crystal prison and just—

—live there.

The way he had as a wayward nineteen-year-old.

That he's trying to do better this time, makes her soften; feel a kind of fondness for him she thought she'd forgotten how to feel altogether.

Love again.

She knows better than to take it for granted; knows the other shoe's going to drop—that it's only a matter of time.

But it's more than she'd dared to hope for.

So she takes what she can get.

She follows her husband's lead. Adopts this strategy of his—takes all the same careful, little efforts he, himself has taken to minimize Sasuke's influence on their relationship.

And they live on.

At some point, they make an art out of it—dancing around his existence as a whole.

Naruto makes sure she's never placed on guard duty at Sasuke's hospital. She pretends she doesn't see the way his hands shake after "grocery runs."

The formula works, regardless.

They continue pretending Sasuke doesn't exist.

And the only reason that delusion ever breaks is because, at some point, she and Ino realize Sakura hasn't been to work in two—nearly three—weeks. Presumably to focus on treating Sasuke instead.

So she returns.

Begrudgingly, she ends up back in that prism of a prison for the first time since they'd entombed Sasuke in it.

Nothing's changed since.

He lies there. Still.

Amidst a hundred guards and a thousand more machines; chest rising and falling to the rate programmed into his ventilator, cardiac monitor beating eerily slow.

He's on his side though, that particular evening—gown loosened and drawn low over his shoulder.

A resident doctor stands over him.

She isn't moving—can't; hands trapped between tasks—caught between pressing saline-soaked gauze to Sasuke's shoulder and searching for somewhere to set down her clamped suture needle.

All the while, the pager at her hip shrieks. High and shrill beeps. Too loud in a silence too quiet until it stops.

Only to start back up again.

"Shit—," she whispers.

Hinata lets the glass door swing shut.

She surveys the medical suite, walking in. Counts one—two—five—sixteen guards scattered about.

Useless, the entire lot of them. All unwilling to help. All their eyes fixed on Sasuke instead of his stressed doctor.

Polished iron catches the room's harsh overhead lighting as weapons clink and clatter in their white-knuckled grips.

They fall back. Step. By step. By step; collectively flinching back with each beep, sandals squeaking halted across polished glass floors.

They're scared. Terrified.

Hinata rolls her eyes.

They know the stories. The whispered warnings. The consequences of what happens when you disturb The Uchiha Sasuke's subconscious just enough for Susano'o to manifest and kill anything and everything.

"Hinata-sama—!" One of them hisses frantically when she walks right up to the bed. "Hinata-sama, don't—!"

She ignores him.

"Need help?" She asks the resident.

"Sakura-sensei—oh." She stiffens. "Hin …" —they know, apparently. All of them.

She isn't supposed to be here.

Her husband had probably warned them: 'My wife has no business being here. If you see her—tell me.'

Because he's afraid.

She'd saved the man he loved—gone out of her way to do everything he'd dared to ask of her—and still. Still, he's afraid.

Afraid of what she might do to him. Of what he knows she wants to do to him.

Asshole.

"Um—." The resident looks at anything but her.

Her eyes dart absolutely everywhere—to the door. The guards. Her patient. The floor—anywhere but Hinata's face.

"Uh—."

She grimaces when the beeping quiets only to start back up again—a third time.

"Here." Hinata leans over. "Let me."

The woman gives her an uncertain look.

Lord Seventh said I shouldn't—Hinata can read the apprehension clear as day behind those big grays.

But then the pager falls silent for a second before it starts screaming again.

And she seems to reprioritize.

"Here—." She quickly reaches out. "Like this—" She lifts her hand off the gauze, guiding Hinata's to take its place.

"Firmly." She squeezes it into position.

"His sutures reopened a few minutes ago. Sakura-sensei—," she tips her head to the pair of fresh surgical gloves on the cot, waiting as Hinata slips one on.

"—was just redoing them—they're sterile," she adds as she's handing over the clamp with a curved suturing needle locked in its jaws.

"Just don't …," she carefully pulls back as Hinata takes it. "Don't let it touch anything else." Her eyes rise—find Hinata's.

"...Okay?"

Hinata nods.

The woman stares at her a second longer. Apprehensive. Worried. Then quickly turns away and snatches up the phone clipped to her waistband.

"What." She snaps.

Hinata looks down.

Curious, she slowly tilts back her hand. Watches, as the surgical thread attached to the needle draws taut before tenting up the blood-stained gauze—

"What the fuck."

She turns back up.

The resident has her head hung—the bridge of her nose pinched between her fingers. "God, I leave for three minutes and you all …"

She covers the phone speaker as she turns back to her with a grimace.

"Hinata-sama …," she starts.

Then trails off because there really is no polite way to verbalize the fact that a) she's nervous about letting this page go and b) she's equally nervous about disobeying a Hokage's direct order by leaving her alone—useless guards aside—with Sasuke.

"I—," she shakes her head. "I don't know what to—."

"Go." Hinata jerks her head to the door. "I'll handle Naruto."

And the woman seems to deflate with sheer relief.

"Bless you," she sighs. Then runs out, whisper-screaming into her phone.

Hinata waits until the door drifts shuts behind her before turning back again.

Her thumb finds the edge of the tented gauze this time—slipping beneath it; pulling; rolling it back to look at the wound the suture thread is anchored in—

Her breath catches.

Wounds. Plural; not just one. Four.

Four long lacerations carved into his flesh. Slicing parallel to one another. Deep and savage.

Like someone had sunk in their claws, their talons, and just—yanked.

Yanked and yanked and yanked. All the way from the side of his deltoid, cutting deep across his shoulder blade before tapering off halfway to his spin—

She blinks.

Then tilts her head sideways and narrows her eyes.

She squints at the very top of Sasuke's spine—at what appears to be a mark too light to be a birthmark, but too dark to be a scar.

A curse mark, then?

She switches the clamp over to her left hand. Uses the heel of her left palm to continue holding the gauze in place while reaching for his shirt collar with her right.

"Hinata-sama—?" One of the guards starts.

She hooks her finger into the fabric and pulls slowly.

One centimeter. Two. Just enough to reveal the entirety of it: a little black spiral.

Tight.

No bigger than a coin. Almost like—

The clamp slips.

She jolts; frantically fumbles, grabbing his shirt tighter to steady herself—

And freezes.

She stares.

The Uchiha crest stares back at her from beneath that little spiral.

She blinks.

Curious, she straightens. Then pulls the fabric lower. Lower. Lower still. Until a crescent moon emerges.

A few more inches and there's another—thinner—crescent which—the gown stitches begin popping—leads to—

She stills.

Blinks. Blinks again.

And then the gauze and clamp are suddenly clattering to the floor.

"Hinata-sa—?"

She whips out a kunai instead.

"Hinata-sama?!"

She's white-knuckling Sasuke's collar before she knows what she's doing—before sense can set in—and plunges the kunai into the fabric—ripping down. Top to bottom. Neck to hem. One savage slice.

Then she stands back. And stares.

Stares.

Stares at what appears to be multiple phases of a solar eclipse tattooed down Sasuke's spine.

Small black spirals up high and down low; they anchor the entire design at his nape and the base of his spine.

Between them is a complete eclipse—yet another spiral—the pinnacle; the apparent heart and core of the entire masterpiece—the way every other element seems to build up to it.

Intermingled, are Uchiha fans that shift from crest to crescent, charting the phases of sun and moon merging into one perfect eclipse.

It could be anything. Mean anything. Anything at all.

But she knows the stories.

Everyone does.

The sun and the moon. Yin and yang. Light and dark—all those infinitely irritating comparisons people made about His and her husband's dynamic.

She fucking knows.

She also knows that spiral. Knows it intimately, having stitched it into the backs of all her husband's shirts.

The crest of his family. His bloodline. The Uzumaki spiral.

And so now, running down the entire length of Sasuke's spine are spiral suns and crescent moons born from two ancient clan symbols.

It's beautiful.

Truly.

It's also the literal equivalent of her husband's name carved into his body.

The kunai in her hand twitches.

Did he know?

She grips it tighter.

Did Naruto know?

She swallows.

How many times had he seen this? Traced it? Known it was there while he'd smiled at her over their dinner dates?

Her fingers twist.

Had he known all along?

Either consciously or subconsciously, her wrist turns ever so slightly so that the point of her blade is no longer pointed up but in—perpendicular to the center spiral of Sasuke's tattoo.

One centimeter—two—three—she advances the tip until warmth suddenly wraps around her hand, stilling it.

She turns slowly. Finds jade. Seaglass greens.

Pleading.

"I know." Sakura's fingers tighten around hers. "I know." She grimaces.

"I'm sorry—I know. But—," she shakes her head, "just for now …"

Hinata looks down at their hands.

"Please don't."

She looks back up.

"Please." Sakura shakes her head. "Please, Hina."

But the words don't reach her.

She should've let him die, she thinks instead, staring unseeingly at Sakura's moving lips.

She should've let him die.

She should've let him die. Sheshould'velethimdiesheshould'velethimdiesheshould'vefuckinglethimdie.

She should've fucking let him die for her husband.

💍

It's like they wait for it.

The Gods.

It's like they wait 'til she's at her happiest. 'Til she's soaring; living the dream—atop the world—at the peak of her entire existence—

—before plunging her into the seventh hell.

It's like they wait for it.

For her to fall back into love with her husband for three years; develop that inkling of hope–that sense of safety, that feeling that everything would be alright for years. Years. Just long enough for her to believe it.

Before, quite literally, hurling Sasuke back into their lives.

It's like they wait for it.

For her to hope again. Give her one month of her husband trying to be the person Sasuke doesn't turn him into.

Before throwing that fucking tattoo in her face.

It's like they wait for her to settle into the rhythm of daily flowers and weekly date nights for seven more months after the fact.

For her birthday to creep up.

For her husband to fail at hiding the extravagant getaway he's secretly planning for it; for the morning of, when they bid their farewells, board their carriage, and grab some snacks for the road.

For that one last stop at Sasuke's hospital, where her husband runs in to get a few last-minute updates.

And for the precise moment he's barely three steps past the threshold, running back to her—returning to her—

—before making the entire glass fortress flash violet and just. Explode.

It's like the Gods. Fucking. Wait. For it.

They wait for this perfect canvas of joy, watch her paint her life in all these brilliant colors. Before setting fire to it all for shits and giggles.

She stands there now, amidst the flames; amongst the wreckage; betwixt glittering ruins that refract the winter sun a thousand different ways scattering rainbows all about.

Truly, the most tragically hilarious reflection of her life. Truly.

Eight months he'd been out. Eight entire months.

A foot in the grave. Halfway to hell. Walking death's tightrope. And now—now he decides to wake up?

Right as they're leaving? As they're trying to get away? Move forward without His ghost between them?

There's a poetic irony here. Some divine playwright's sick fantasy. A cosmic joke.

A fucking punchline eight months in the making: the man she'd pulled back from death's edge, the one who holds her husband's entire heart in his hands, choosing this exact moment to open his eyes.

Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Now. Right as they're leaving to celebrate her birthday and renew their marriage vows.

What vengeful god had written this script?

Her husband's at his bedside already.

Of course he is.

Because why not?

Where else would he be?

Where else would her husband be the day they'd decided to renew their vows, but with the man he'd wanted them with?

Sasuke's huddled against the headboard in front of him. Wood digging into his healed spine. Knees drawn to his chest. Breaths short—wheezy. Blindfolded.

Shaking.

The chakra seal on his blindfold pulses faintly—all delicate red threads that melt into the background as blood soaks through the white fabric it's sewn into, turning everything the same shade of crimson.

It begins as spots—blood welling beneath cloth. Then spreading. Until it oversaturates the fabric and spills down his cheeks; stains all that sterile white around him—gown, sheets, bed, Naruto—a dark, damning red.

Her husband's sitting beside him, one hand curved around his bloodied cheek, the other pinning Sasuke's trembling wrist against even bloodier sheets.

"Breathe." She hears him whispering.

"Breathe, Sasuke. You're okay." He leans in close. "Everything's okay."

Sasuke flinches at the press of their foreheads—a sharp jolt.

"It's me." Her husband quickly grabs him by his nape when he jerks back.

"It's me," he lets go of Sasuke's wrist to tear the blindfold off.

"Hey," he ducks to catch his eyes. "Look at me." He whispers, "look—," he cups his jaw. "Look," he demands, lifting his face.

"It's just," he nods when those mismatched eyes finally meet his, "... me."

He smiles cautiously. "See?"

Sasuke stares back at him, hyperventilating.

"Just me," her husband repeats as his breathing begins to slow. "Just me." He keeps reassuring him. "It's just me."

He brushes a thumb over those bloody teartracks.

"You're safe."

Hinata pushes her tongue into her cheek.

"Okay …?"

She watches as Sasuke's breathing begins to level out when recognition finally seems to settle in; when he finally realizes that it's him. Her husband. His Naruto.

She watches that wild, cornered look in his eyes fade to something softer—less animal; watches as he pulls his wrist free to touch the hand cradling his face; as he turns into her husband's palm.

"It's just me," her husband murmurs again. "Just us."

And Sasuke's eyes flutter shut.

The tension bleeds out of him—every rigid line dissolving until he's boneless against her husband, melting into his touch—his entire form—as though he belongs there. As though he always has.

His fingers curl weakly over her husband's, slipping to trail down Naruto's arm before they go limp and fall away altogether.

His head lolls against his collarbone, long, dark hair spilling across his golden skin as he exhales—long and soft—breath catching when her husband scrambles to catch him.

"Naruto …," Hinata hears him whisper before he phases out of consciousness again.

And it hits her.

Right then—as she watches her husband tuck him under his chin, voice cracking as he yells for Sakura.

It's hits her.

Clarity.

She shouldn't have let him die, she realizes in that moment. No.

She should've killed him herself.

💍

They end up scrapping the trip. Obviously.

Her husband tries to suggest she go by herself, so it isn't a complete waste. But she isn't about to leave them alone together.

She doesn't trust him. Them.

Three years and eight months of Naruto acting the part of a good husband has done absolutely nothing for her paranoia, apparently.

So she stands there—against the crystal wall opposite Sasuke's bed—because Sakura and Tsunade need her Byakugan to monitor his chakra flow.

At some point, her husband is called (forcefully dragged) away to a meeting, and the hustle and bustle in the hospital suite thins. And thins. And thins.

Until even Sakura has to run out to deal with some lab issue.

They're left alone together in that half-crystal, half-wood paneled room—courtesy of Sasuke's Susano'o destroying it and Captain Yamato mending it on the fly.

The guards had scrambled off after Sakura for who-knows-what reason, because they had eyes; a brain; common sense. And they could read the atmosphere in the room—sense the tension building between the pair of them. Peaking.

Sasuke eventually ends up being the one to break it: "I owe you my life, apparently."

Hinata continues spinning a kunai over her knuckles and back.

"You owe me a lot more." She replies quietly.

His eyes drop.

And he raises a hand—slowly slips his fingers over the meridian she'd corrected on the battlefield to get his blood and chakra flowing again; over that unassuming patch of skin that should've been scarred, but wasn't; that twist in his chakra network that should've strangled the life out of him but hadn't.

Because of her.

"... Why?" He asks.

"Why do you think?" She asks back.

And he stares at her, silent.

His lips part at some point, but nothing follows.

Hinata flashes back to that last time she'd seen him nearly four years ago right after her husband's birthday; to the way he'd done this exact thing.

She spins the kunai faster. Irritated.

"No guesses?" She tilts her head to look at him around it. Cocks a brow.

"It isn't a trick question, you know." She watches red bloom in his right eye—a reflex. Protective. Defensive.

"Simple, really." She abruptly stills her kunai mid-flip.

His basic Sharingan form immediately swirls into its astral Mangekyou form.

She ignores it.

"He," she swings her kunai around, "would've killed himself if you'd died because he," she points the blade at the door, "can't live in a world without you." She turns the sharp point to Sasuke.

"But I," she turns it on herself, "can't live in a world without him." She points it at the door again.

"Which means I,"—herself again—"can't live in a world without," she points at him, "you."

He stares at it; eyes drifting—slowly tracing the kunai's moonlit edges before lifting to meet hers.

"... You shouldn't have."—It comes out uncharacteristically soft.

"No." She agrees.

"But then...," she readjusts her grip on the kunai's hilt. "He shouldn't love you as much as he does..."—iron flashes—"...should he?"

She snaps her wrist.

He jerks his head aside just enough so that the blade only grazes that meridian in his neck and buries itself into his wooden headboard behind him instead.

He grimaces.

Blood beads where metal had met skin; smears beneath his fingers as he brushes them across it; trickling down—painting pain.

He stares at it smudged across his fingertips.

Then, he looks up as she kicks off the wall and walks over.

"That's it then?" He starts. "You saved me for h—."

Then stops.

Grim epiphany seems to dawn on him—the way his eyes suddenly dim; blood-smeared fingers dropping back to the comforter with a resigned thump as the entire weight of the world seems to settle on his shoulders.

"... What do you want for saving me?" He amends.

"There you go." She smiles when he finally asks the right question.

His jaw ticks.

"Nothing crazy." She continues, coming right up to the edge of his bed. "Just ..."

She braces herself against its footboard. Leans in over it. Looks him in the eye. Unblinking.

And says, "don't sleep with my husband."

He blinks.

She cocks a brow. Tilts her head. Smiles wider—sardonic.

"Think you can manage that?"

He can't.

She knows it. He knows it. God probably knows it too.

Him pushing Naruto away that first time had been miracle enough. It isn't going to happen a second time. Lightning doesn't strike twice like that.

Still.

"You don't think you owe me that much?" She presses. "You said it yourself—you owe me your life—."

"He is my life."

The bedframe splinters in Hinata's grip.

The audacity.

Wood chips fly off.

The fucking audacity.

The frame creaks, bending in.

The unmitigated, breathtaking audacity of this man who only breathes because of her. Her kindness. Her mercy. Her weakness.

The audacity of this fucking man—to tell her she already owns what he owes her. That by having Naruto, she already holds his life in her hands. That there's nothing left of him to give.

The absolute fucking audacity.

His eyes widen as soon as the words are out of his mouth. But it's still a fraction of a second too late.

The valium's still working its loopy magic, apparently. He's still flying high on his pain meds.

Belated realization seems to dawn on him just as the bedframe comes apart in her hands—the fact that he'd actually spoken his mind; verbalized his stream of consciousness.

His breath catches. "I—." He starts.

She releases the bedframe.

It croaks one last pitiful creak as she raises a hand. Stretches out her arm. Reaches off to the side.

Her fingers sift through the constellation of IV's hanging there—that web of plastic tubing feeding into saline bags, blood products, medication drips—

So many lines. So very many bags suspended on that IV pole. So many delicate balances. So many, many opportunities for it all to go wrong.

She reaches through them, parsing. Searching. Looking for exactly the right one—the right opportunity.

She grabs the line when she finds it. Curls her fist around it. Kinks it.

And waits.

She waits until he begins feeling it—the consequences of her having cut his morphine infusion off.

And then she spends another minute—just watching. Satisfaction running thick in her veins as she watches pain remember it way home; as she watches his body welcome it back into his bones, his blood, his breaking points; as she watches it remember exactly what it was she and her husband had saved him from.

She waits until he's in pain pain; until he's hurting that fetal-position kind of hurt.

The kind of hurt has him wrapped up around himself in a straightjacket of his own making—limbs clutching limbs, arm around his stomach, legs bunched up at his chest—a knot of a human.

His body just crumples around it. Around the sheer, blinding pain of a body having been disassembled and reassembled a thousand and one times.

She can only imagine.

Humans simply weren't meant to survive what he'd endured, let alone emerge intact. Death would have been a mercy.

And she gets a twisted sort of kick out of having deprived him of that mercy; out of forcing him to live instead; to endure. The physical pain. The emotional pain.

It's the silver lining to her entire shit show of a situation—the force holding together her broken mess of a heart.

Her fist tightens.

He gasps. And it seems to ambush him—that sudden breath; this ragged, raw, desperate thing that forces his hand over his mouth as he tries to stifle it.

"... Your life?" She whispers, watching him break.

The machines monitoring him erupt in a crescendo of alarms around them as his vitals spike.

Heart rate. Respiratory rate. Blood pressure. Temperature—one by one, each parameter shoots past its threshold.

"Your life," she squeezes the line tighter as all those screens flash red.

His jaw twinges as he slowly raises his head to look at her.

"Is nothing more," her grip becomes vise-like, tendons straining up along her wrist.

The alarms screech louder. Voices sound off in the distance. Footsteps—rubber soles slapping against glass floors—echo.

"Than what I," Hinata stresses.

The door slams open.

"Let you keep."

She finishes, staring owlishly at him. Unseeing. Her Byakugan somehow active, veins carving out their places in her temples; and still. For all that it's worth, for all its power and superior vision, she still can't see through the rage that's incinerated the last threads of her sanity.

She's going to kill him someday.

"... Understand?"

💍

She stares at herself in the mirror as she's brushing her teeth that night, equal parts weirded out and in awe of her apparent sadism.

"You good?" Her husband asks at some point.

"... Hm?" She's distracted, staring at her palm now; at the speckling of red across it—all those splinters she'd gotten from tearing apart Sasuke's bedframe.

"Are you," she flinches when she hears his voice right beside her, "alright?"

He's leaning over her shoulder, frowning down at her hand.

She quickly shoves it into her pocket.

"Fine." She lies. "Fine."

Because she's so much better than just fine.

💍