A/N: Ignore if you want, but might be informative: I wrote this a while ago based on the prompts of SasuHina Month 2018 on Tumblr, which I heard about (er..read about) through this website. I don't really know the rules, but since these prompts are not mine, I'm giving credit where credit is due. I only did one, but this might be my outlet for when I need to write something. I don't really like how I wrote this, but since I need to improve, here we go.

Disclaimer: Naruto does not belong to me.

She was late. He was early. She had left at the same time as him. He paced the house ten times over. She should have been back by now. He wasn't allowed to leave. She could have been majorly injured. He already was.

Hinata and Sasuke both got sent out on individual S-class missions due to a limited supply of shinobi after the war. Though he wanted to argue against it, he knew she would be offended and would think that he thought that she was weak. After he got back, he had been told he received seven broken ribs and had severe internal bleeding. Although he's had worse, the Leaf Village was starting to take better care of their shinobi.

"Like they should," he grunted. He knew there were Anbu surrounding their house, as well as many Hyuuga who "hid" in the surrounding area. Both Sasuke and Hinata knew they were there, being the superior shinobi they were, but they let it go, knowing they would want them to protect the other in case one of them weren't there.

As soon as Sasuke got back, he looked for Hinata, starting at the Hokage's tower, hoping she would already be reporting her mission. When that proved fruitless, he searched for her chakra signature from the rooftops he jumped on his way home. Home, how funny. He didn't think he'd ever be able to live back at the Uchiha manor or even go on the Uchiha ground, but with her, with her everything was all right. She understood his need to live there, along with the fear and the trauma that came from being at the compound.

Why wasn't she here yet? He went to the gates, against the medic's orders. He looked for her and her chakra signature everywhere. He deduced to stop by the hospital in a last ditch effort for that he hoped wouldn't have happened. And now he was pacing, driving a ditch deep into the floor with his silent steps that were now heavy.

Shuffle.

What was that? S looked for a chakra signature but couldn't find one. As he scanned, he felt a small pulse of a familiar lavender chakra. Could it be?

"Hinata, is that you?"

No duh Sasu. Who else do you know that has purple chakra? is what Hinata thought, but instead said from the crack in the door, "I'm home."

"Hinata," Sasuke breathed. He opened the door further to see a masked woman leaning on a Hyuuga. "I've got this," he growled, gently lifting the Anbu while not-so-gently nudging the Hyuuga away.

He held her to his chest while he carried her into the nearest bathroom. As he set her on the edge of the tub, he noticed all the blood on her that leaked onto his clothes. Slightly terrified of what he would find under her clothes, he breathed a shaky breath.

"It's mostly their's," she squeaked, smiling weakly under the mask. It really was. She sustained a few injuries due to a miscalculation on her part, but if you really thought about it, the other guys got off worse.

"You're shaking," she observed aloud as he took off her mask.

"Only for you," he replied. Peeling off Hinata's drenched vest, he noticed blood seeping out from under the shirt. Fumbling for some bandages off to the side, he then noticed the dark liquid pouring down her pant covered leg.

It wasn't the sight of blood that made him upset, its was the fact that it was Hinata's blood. He felt hands cover his. Looking from their hands to her face, he calmed. "I'm okay. It's just a little blood." She took the bandages from his hands and set them down.

Sasuke turned on the water, and Hinata allowed him to continue to undress her. With much protest from her, he lifted the petite woman into the bathtub. Without pretense, he allowed her to wash he wounds while he turned his back.

"Make sure you clean your wounds, so I can bandage them," he ordered.

"Yes, governess," she giggled. Though he grumbled at that he couldn't help the smirk that crossed his fcae as he continued to turn away from her.

Knowing she was done before she could say so, he threw a towel gently at her. Once he finished hearing the rustling of the cloth around her, he turned around. "Sit down," he told her, while grabbing a cream and the bandages.

He got a sincere sense of déjà vu while applying the salve onto the wounds that weren't as deep in hindsight, although they bled profusely.

As a child, he tended to get into situations that would leave him bloodied and battered. Itachi always rescued him if he could and cleaned him up before his mother could find out and lecture him. He would jump into the rosebush because his cousin would dare him to do so - and also because he liked the color red, and maybe also the flowers.

So on the next dare from his curly-haired cousin, he snuck into the Hyuga compound. Now don't get Little Sasuke wrong, he was terrified of his cold distant cousins who thought they were better than him. It's just that…he didn't want his brother to think that he was weak, like his father did.

Once he jumped over the gate, well more hopped ands tumbled than jumped, he had no idea what he was doing. He roamed the garden that he assumed was what they considered small.

He jumped behind a bush at a slight shuffle of feet heading in his direction.

"P-please leave me alone. I'm j-just going to check on the flowers," he heard a meek voice say. Peering around the bush that he now realized was part of a garden and was probably the flowers the voice wanted to check up on, he saw a petite girl with a larger girl that looked just like her. As he dubbed the girl as the Indigo Pixie, using the new word he learned/heard from Itachi, he heard her murmuring protests to the woman he dubbed the Scary Governess.

The Scary Governess finally went away, allowing the Indigo Pixie to slowly shuffle over to the garden she seemed so keen on checking up on alone. "What are you doing here?" she whispered. What? She knew he was there?

"I-I..," he tried to explain to which she replied by pushing him back behind the bush and joining him with much more strength and confidence than he thought she possessed. "Is it because of a d-dare from Shisui-san or t-to impress Itachi-san?"

"How did you know?" he asked incredulously. She sighed in a way that a girl at her age shouldn't have been.

"Itachi-san is m-my friend, and he helps me sometimes because I am also a clan heir and I also have a foolish l-little sibling." The way she said that with a straight face made him twist up his into a sour pout. Once she realized, she turned into the stuttering mess he expected her to. "O-oh I-I'm so sor-ry," was the statement she got out before her flailing about in apology made her fall back into the rose bush that Sasuke had learned to be wary of.

Remembering that his mother had a sense about these things, he followed her lesson to be respectful and helpful to girls, and it wasn't because this one didn't fall at his feet. Instead, she fell away from him. It also had nothing to do with the fact that his brother knew this girl, and he didn't want her to tell him anything about what he had done, or hadn't done in this case.

Upon realizing that the pixie had scrapes and cut that were bleeding, he reached into his ninja pack that he now carried because Itachi also did at his age. "What are you doing?" She asked, now sitting up on her own after Sasuke helped her.

"I'm going to bandage your cuts," he gruffly replied, as much as a boy his age could.

"Here," she said while handing him a container. "I-t's a s-salve," she explained.

"Wouldn't want the little princess to be a little hurt would we?" he muttered.

"I'm sorry. You din't have to do this if you don't want. I can go ask my nii-san for some bandages."

Ignoring her protests he held onto the arm that he was patching up. As soon as he was done he got up to leave before Hinata stopped him and then showed him a secret way to get out that was better than the stupid idea he had to scale the wall.

They breathed quiet 'thank yous' to each other before going their separate ways.

Now it was over ten years later, Hinata lost her stutter and grew more confident, and Sasuke was a redeemed avenger who now found peace after growing smarter and stronger.

Brought out of his thoughts by a small wince, he took a nice long look at Hinata's face, appreciating the loss of the lioness mask. "Are you okay?" He finally asked.

"Fine, it stings a little, but are you injured?"

"I'm fine," he grumbled. As he finished wrapping the last bandage, he helped Hinata up, allowing her to lean on him, not because she was injured and definitely not because he liked the feeling of her pressed against him.

When they finally stumbled to her bedroom, he helped her up onto the bed and gazed down as her petite form as she snuggled into the blankets and beckoned him, like she was a child, to join her. He climbed in after her without a word of protest from either of them.

It was always after these types of missions that they both became more affectionate and were willing to be touched. All the shiniobi understood that. Hinata and Sasuke knew they were both just lucky to have each other and that both of them were alive. They knew they both had pain and they embraced it in each other and helped each other through it. They both took a deep breath in, Hinata felt it against her back while Sasuke felt it against his front, and let it out together, breathing in the smell of home.

A/N: If you recognize what I'm doing, please read the top. Thank You.

P.S: I gave Hinata a stutter when she was younger, and I wrote the stutter on the words that I used to usually stutter on.