Love's Green Thumb

17. Mother Knows Best

Song: Ungodly Hour- The Fray

Local Girl, Sister of Nationa...

You Probably Know The Brothe...

Who's Really At Fault For The De...

Rising Volleyball Star's Dreams Sha....

Hinata's eyes began to water from staring at the news article titles on the laptop screen. He slammed it shut.

They're just a bunch of headlines. What do they know?

He stared at the ceiling fan complete its cycle, round and round, round and round, round and-

"Hinata Shouyou, if I'd have known that you were going to bus down from college two hours away and come down here just to sit in the dark on your laptop, I'd have told you to stay there and finish your homework."

At the sound of his mother's voice, Shouyou shot six feet into the air. The aging- ahem. The finely aging woman made her way over to the bedside, switching on the ceiling light as she did so.

Hinata shuffled over to give her room to sit next to him. "Sorry, mom. I was just making up some homework on the laptop from when I was sick."

He blinked too much- a dead giveaway in this household. Everyone knew the sign when Hinata was lying. Still, his mother paused. "You were thinking about her, weren't you?"

Eyes burning, he flung himself backward towards the soft, comforting pillows. Shut his eyes to try to block out the images. "...Why won't the feelings go away?" His voice was soft, course, tortured.

Yuna (a/n: that's gonna be his mom's name in this fic since they have yet to name her in the anime/manga) could only try to understand how her son felt. She'd been there, she'd felt the pain of losing a child- still did feel the pain-, but she knew that what she felt was very different from what Hinata was going through.

"Feelings are only a part of life." Yuna smiled sadly, a face full of knowing and a life full of hardships that would go unnamed. "If we didn't have hard times, we'd never learn to appreciate the little things."

Hinata wondered if moms got sent a how-to-be-a-mom catalog as soon as they gave birth. They always seemed to have the right advice, always knew what to say and do. "...Do you miss her?"

It wasn't that he didn't know the answer; he just craved the smallest comfort of knowing that someone else knew the pain he was going through.

"Yes, but... I'll never stop missing her. That's part of being a mom." Her voice was soft. "But that doesn't stop me from living my life, Shouyou. If Natsu is watching me from up above, she'd want me to do that. I know she would."

Would she want the same for Hinata? "It just hurts... so much."

He deserved to feel this way. To feel a thousand times worse, and even then it still wouldn't even begin to make up for what he'd done. "So, so much."

His arms curled themselves around bent legs. Nails cut into palms, eyes squeezed shut.

"I know, baby, I know. And it will hurt for a long time, maybe always. But you're here, alive, and that means that you're going to hurt. But that also means that eventually, you're going to stop hurting."

"You read that somewhere, didn't you?" Hinata laughed softly. "That sounded way too perfect to be on the spot."

Yuna combed a hand through his hair with a loving touch. "Motivational speeches are part of the job requirement, hon."

Hinata opened his eyes slowly. The lights were too bright, but he needed to see the real world, see that he wasn't stuck in his head 24/7. "Thanks, mom."

Yanu stood up and leaned down to give Shouyou a kiss on the forehead. "She wouldn't blame you, Hinata Shouyou."

He wondered if she was right.

***

"Hey, guys."

It was a snowing winter Saturday, two days before the end of Christmas break, and Hinata Shouyou stood awkwardly inside the entrance of the Garden Club arboretum, holding his arm behind his back and nervously tapping his foot against the tile.

Five pairs of eyes stared back at him--

But then Hinata noticed the volleyball uniforms.