It seems that even after more than a year of writer's block with this little tale, I still can't quite let it go XD

Besides, I still wanted to write more with Sasori and with Sasuke; so I hope that some of you are still hanging in there with me.

Enjoy.

(c) Masashi Kishimoto

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Even as she stood against the cemetery gates, Hinata's eyes began to sleepily close aginst her will, and it was only the gentle tickle of her long lashes brushing down aginst her round cheeks which was keeping her from nearly drifting off right where she stood. It's beginning to get late, she realized as she stared out into the distance to see if she colud discern any possible movements or signs of her mysteriously absent partner-to-be, but there were none to be found.

Few people are brave enough to travel anywhere near such a place as this at night, she thought, deciding that it would probably be best to stay the night over at the temple-owned inn nearby, in spite of the wandering ghosts which were sure to keep her wide awake throughout the long, cold night. Not to mention the fact that she would no longer have the guilty conveniance of Itachi's warm body lying beside hers, but she was far more relieved about that undelicate little fact than she'd originally expected to be, as it meant that she was now free of any unneccessary crutches to leran on.

Free, but if she had learned anything at all during her brief time away from being an ignored, unhappy wife in Konoha, it was that freedom was most often temporary at best, save for the freedom which came only with death. There was always someone or something else around the corner waiting to drag her down and shackle her back up again. It was only a matter of time before she was enslaved in some way or another once again, and so she silently resolved to hold on as tightly as she could to whatever fleeting fragments of freedom happened to come her way. She wanted to hold them as tightly as she held the now-wilting, drooping flowers in her small hands.

Turning around to leave, however, she found herself gasping aloud with her mouth wide open like an idiot as she found herself eye-to-eye with what was perhaps the most beautiful human being whom she had ever laid eyes upon. Indeed, it was the young male stranger's beauty, rather than his sudden and unexpected presence, which had caused her to gasp and let loose her solid grip on the blood and sable colored flowers, causing them to fall ungracefully at her feet.

Her fingers begged to reach out and touch the smooth-faced, red haired stranger, but a raw and sickening sort of fear held her back from doing so, as his beauty was far different from Sasuke's rugged good looks, Itachi's dark and subtle attraction, or even Naruto's sunny charm. His was a cold, dead, doll-like sort of perfection which caused her to wonder whether or not she was staring into the face of one of the very ghosts which she had been nervously thinking about just moments before.

"S...Sa...Sasori..., she suddenly spoke aloud, hoping that her hunch was right. "Sasori-sempai?"

"Sempai?" His surprisingly deep and mature tone of voice startled Hinata a little bit more than she already was, if that were even possible. "Well, I supposse anything is pereferable to being called danna all the time, but as for you..."

Hinata was beginning to grow weary of hearing herself referred to in a dissappointed manner, and was more than eager to prove herself, if she were given the chance. Aside from that, she knew that there was no danger of falling for someone who seemed so clearly untouchable, so obviously beyond her leauge.

"You're barely out of adulthood, a mere child, perhaps a little older than Deidara had been, but with none of his worldliness, or love of violence. I can sense it already. You're not at all the fierce, renegade master of the byakugan that I was led to believe I'd be paired up with." His glasslike eyes and face barely moved as he spoke, giving Hinata an odd rush of nerves from her stomach to her rapidly beating heart as he continued. "If this is all some sort of joke meant to shame and punish me for the failure that left me a comatose soul wandering without a body for all these years, then I won't hesitate to make you suffer and bleed until you go running right back where you came from, begging for mercy from your spineless Hokage."

Hinata now clenched her fists hard, causing the fragrant oils within the flowers to burst out and run down her fingers.

"Nothing that you could possibly do to me could be any worse than what I've already done to myself. Go ahead and do what you will."

"If you insist on it."

With a brief flicker of his wrist, a thin and flashing needle flew straight towards Hinata's ungaurded throat before she had even a second to react to it. It penetrated itself there, letting loose a small spray of blood which dotted her skin like scarlet raindrops. With unsteady, shaking hands she pulled it from her skin, leaving a small but ragged hole in her neck as she dropped to the ground on her knees. Then, the unsteadiness and jerkiness of her movements began to steadily give way to an unsettling and eerie stillness. A sort of nothingness, she thought as her numb body met the cold dirt face-on.

Sasori knelt down towards her and turned her over with a smile which she woulkd've described as tender or compassionate, were it not for the gleam of malice which gave a sudden vivid and frightening life to those lifeless, empty eyes.

"Are you in pain, Hyuuga?"

Hinata attempted in vain to move her mouth in reply, but it felt tight and heavy, as though it were filled with a mound of heavy, bitter tasting stones.

"Ah, how stupid of me."

His enjoyment was clear and unhidden from his voice. "Of course you feel no pain. You're completely free of all feeling, of all movement even." In a cruel mockery of affection, he pressed his lips to her still-bleeding throat, staining that flawless babyface of his and momentarily blocking her view with his impossibly rich and red head of hair. To her complete shame and terror, Hinata realized that indeed, she could feel none of what was happening to her, but could only watch as one watching a play or a performance would.

"What courses through your body right now is something that Orochimaru invented years ago with different varieties of snake venom. I gladly stole it from the bastard before he got away from Akatsuki, and it's the one thing that I'm grateful to him for."

No, Hinata thought, trying with frantic desperation to will even a finger or a knee to move. No, I can't die here, I won't die here, she repeated to herself.

"Don't wear yourself out trying to move, little girl. It will wear off on it's own after some time," he murmured as he stared her in her unblinking eyes, seeming to read her every thought and fear. "You can still breathe, but just barely."

His grip on her shoulders was rock hard and unrelenting, causing her to feel as though he could push her down beneath the moist, black earth to lie down with all the other corpses resting there if that were what he really wanted to do.

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Sasuke liked to think of himself as a champion of sorts when it came to the not so subtle art of the staredown. So it caused him a near insane amount of pleasure to watch Neji's eyes roll downwards toward the ground during what had been a pretty intense bout of an across the sidewalk staring match before the Hyuuga finally turned and walked away, back to minding his own damn business.

Serves him right, Sasuke thought while musing over the unpleasant fact that his Hyuuga nemesis, and chief rival when it came to ANBU domination, seemed to be hiding something very large up those absurdly long sleeves of his. He had seemed even more secretive than usual as of late, but in a smug, knowing, arrogant sort of way that made Sasuke's blood feel like it had gone boiling hot throughout his entire body and would cause him to explode shortly if he didn't get to the heart of the matter and quickly.

He had first noticed it on an obligatory visit to Hinata's memorial. It couldn't be called a grave really, due to the lack of a body, but was merely a stone engraved with her name in kanji and covered with an overflowing abundance of flowers, cards, and other tokens of love and devotion scattered all around it as though they had rained down from the blue sky itself. 'A Sunny Place' it said, in reference to Hinata's name, and it lived up to that name for the many who treated it as a shrine to the lost Hyuuga beauty, but to him it was anything but. For him it was yet another reminder of someone that he trampled upon, despised at times even, but who was now lost to him forever.

Did he still miss her? He had accepted her death, to be sure, but wished that things had ended a little...cleaner, that was the word which he had been searching for in his mind that day. Then there had been him.

Neji had walked over towards his cousin's shrine as casually as though he were walking past a goddamned grocery store, Sasuke had thought, wondering what had happened to the tears, the occassional wailing and cursing God, and of course, the chilly stares in Sasuke's direction if they happened to be there at the same time. Instead, Neji had merely smiled, lifted his head up and whispered. To Sasuke, it sounded like he had said something along the lines of, this won't be here for much longer.

Had he been implying that the woman Sasuke had finally laid to rest in his heart hadn't been reduced to ashes after all? Sasuke couldn't deal with that if it was true, he couldn't bear to look her in the face after so long, but at the same time, he needed to know the truth. He was beginning to sweat now as he thought about it, despite the fact that it was a relatively cool day, and held on hard to his kunai as though he could battle away any of his disturbing thougts. I'm imagining things, I have to be, kept running over and over again in his mind, but still, he couldn't shake the feeling that there was something very important that he needed to know and knew nothing of. It was the same sort of feeling that he'd had as a child before his parents died.

He would get the truth out of that cursed cousin of Hinata's even if he nearly killed him in the proccess, but in the meantime, he had to get back home. Hotaru would be waiting for him, waiting to make him forget whatever it was that was bothering him. He could deal with her brand of sympathy now, because it helped him to forget, when she gave herself so willingly and with so few regrets, just the way that she used to, that wife he had trampled over like a dandelion.

END OF CHAP.

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Sasuke is an insane perv,lolz

oh, and on a final note, thanks to the recession, I officially have no Internet of my own and am forced to use the library for this, so forgive any weird, rushed typos, I did my best...

REVIEW!!!!!