Prologue

.

(Somewhere in the outskirts of Konoha; three months before it is destroyed)

.

"You're bleeding," she tells him, trying to help him up.

"Don't touch me," he lashes out. "I dont - "

But his words are cut off by a violent cough. Something heavy that builds up from his stomach and forces its way through his chest and out his throat, scratching and clawing at it in its wake.

Her frown deepens in concern despite his attitude - she had grown used to him, over time (and so little time it was).

"Sasuke," she says his name, soft and almost caring, then - "please."

He sits up from his position on the ground. Wipes the warm blood that had splattered down his chin, face pale and haunted and - even then, Hinata wonders detachedly, he looked beautiful.

The moon is somewhere beyond his shoulders, a ball of soft light that always seemed to manage to be small - smaller than anything else. There are shadows from its light all around them, from those created by the trees - thin skeletal lines of branches intersecting in different directions - to the ones created by them. Their shadows, at least to her, look human; almost defeated, but still alive.

There's the slightest tremble in his hand that he tries to hide. He clenches it, exhales out. Hinata sees the cold fury he had before dissipate into thin air, as sudden as it was gradual, like thin wisps of smoke blown away by the wind. When he speaks again, it is strangely subdued.

"I don't need your pity."

"I know," she replies, "I wasn't giving it."

"Then - " he coughs out again, once then twice, but there is no blood, "what can you give?"

The question catches her off guard; nothing seems to faze her nowadays - just a constant string of monotony and anxiety and death blending into one, moving surreptitiously to disguise themselves as day and night. Her eyes meet his in inquisition, and she is terribly curious why he would ask, but he does not back down. He doesn't falter in the slightest, just holds her gaze as steadily as he holds everything else - with quiet indifference, and yet with something more.

She looks down first.

"... I can't give you anything anymore." Her hands move themselves to her back as she stands. Looks at the moon. "But for what it's worth," she continues, voice growing softer, "I'd give you my life if I could."

His eyes turn cold.

"Foolish," he bites out. "I don't want it."

I know. "But I'd give it to you all the same."

She turns to him and smiles softly - a slight upward curve of her lips, barely even reaching her eyes - and then hopes, with all the fire in her left to be extinguished, that he would live through today and the days after, so long as the moon stayed just beyond their reach, even when she was no longer there to see.

.

.

.

TBC