His weren't much better.

But now, when her hands were clutching his wrists, wrapped around tight enough to break, it seemed like she'd found a place where she belonged.

"Hinata-chan," he said softly, because it would take too much energy to speak any louder, and energy was not something either of them had. Her hands tightened spastically, fingernails digging in between his veins on the underside of his wrist. "You've grown up."

"Itachi-san." Her voice was the same, even if everything else was different. It was breathy, full of sighs and whimpers and little-girl dreams. But maybe it was that way from the chakra that was draining out of both of them, in little rivulets that became rivers that became floods.

"You're pretty as ever, Hinata-chan." He tried to ignore the way his hair was sticking to his cheek, slick with sweat and blood, and focused on her eyes. The byakugan was gone, slipping away to pale stillness on the sides of her eyes. But there were crowfeet, pulling the corners of her eyes, and lines almost like dimples next to her mouth. "Pretty as a picture."

"Itachi-san," she murmured, breathy voice, full of sleepy tiredness that dragged down the limbs. He felt his eyes droop at her voice, felt his arms drop a little. "Kind as ever, kind as ever. Just like when we were children."

"Were we children?" And he couldn't remember, for the life of him, when they were children. It seemed years ago, times when Konoha was in the blood and mind and heart of everyone he knew, and it was a part of him, all of it. But he'd cut it out, just like he'd cut out hearts of little children with demons inside them.

"Children," she murmured again, "just like Naruto. Do you remember Naruto?"

And he did, he remembered perfectly, because Naruto was like Hinata, full of dreams and wishes and sighing fantasies. "Naruto," he whispered in her ear, and he had to wonder when his head had lowered next to hers, "Naruto still is a child. Just like us. Aren?t we children?"

Hinata's lips were cold and firm, just like her hands. They moved against his cheek, icy. "Children don't kill children." And as an almost afterthought, "Itachi-san."

"Sweet Hinata-chan," he drowsed in her ear, and when had he fallen? When had her hands become so weak on his wrists? And why was it so cold? "So cold, pretty Hinata-chan."

And she was pretty, pretty in a way so different from years and years ago, and how long had it been? Too long, he couldn't remember anymore. Her skin was paler than his, white against his white, and her eyes were just as pale, beneath closed lids.

"Age becomes you, Hinata-chan. Pretty as a picture, pretty as ever." His mind couldn't keep up with something important, but he couldn't decide what it was. He turned his face against hers, kissing her cheek. Not since she was little, the pretty heir to a pretty family, had he kissed her cheek. Pretty pretty, with red staining her cheek now. "Pretty together." And it rhymed, pretty words with pretty red snowflakes, and he couldn't remember why it mattered, but it did, and there was something there, in her cold face and cold hands and cold lips, that was so very important.

"Love you, Hinata-chan."

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