five years ago and three thousand miles away
Sometimes Sakura has to stop and remind herself that she loves him. Sasuke was not only this cold shell once, hands in his lap, sitting by the hospital window with trained stillness. He is not only that now. She hopes. She picks up the plate of apple slices each day, browned and curling in on themselves. Even entering the room one morning to see the ceramic shards on the floor, the carefully peeled fruit crushed would strengthen her. Even some memory of his touch lingering on the apple, his eyes wavering from their focused stare. He has become a fixed point in time and all she can do is flow around him, wear him down.
Sakura wants to shake him, to shout sense into his ears until he has no choice but to lower his walls, to hear her. "You aren't the only person who's ever lost anything. People move on. We grieve and we mourn, but you have to keep going, you can't stop like this. You have me, I love you, I always will." She wants to hurt him like he's hurt her with his shuttered eyes and thin lips, but he is so wounded already she can't bear to look at him for long.
She has other patients. Sakura moves through her schedule, checking off follow-up exams and broken bones. She works methodically with all of them, talking in a gentle murmur, always keeping her hands busy with bandages and medicines; she is well practiced in the art of comfort. Even with the dying ones she keeps smiling, places a cool hand on their forehead or arm, and afterward files the report quickly, biting off her signature on the death certificate with a flourish.
Had she really been that young once? Stuttering out her love with tears on her face and convinced that she was all he needed, that she could be mother and daughter and sister and lover to him. Strange that she could have believed love was so pure and simple. Strange that she still believes it now.
At night she goes home to her flat, washes her face alone in front of the mirror. She sits at the window in her oversized sleep-shirt and looks at the stars she promised Sasuke he could have once, if he wanted them. The city sprawls outside her window, lights flickering in wayward contrast, and somewhere on the skyline is the smudged outline of the hospital where Sasuke is sleeping, slumped upright against the headboard of his bed. He is dying, and so is she, sliding towards an unknown future filled with the remnants of the people they loved, the ones Sasuke cannot close his eyes against, the ones peering at her out of the white corners of hospital rooms.
There are people on the street below her, walking and laughing, but Sakura cannot hear them; this is her moment, backlit by the stars and the moon, and she feels she almost understands Sasuke, feels she knows who he is, all alone in the night.
"I forgive you," She says. "I won't stop loving you." Sakura doesn't know where the words come from, or who they are meant for: herself, or Sasuke or for the ghosts that crowd around the both of them, driving them out of heart and home. She doesn't even know if they are true. She hopes they are. She needs them to be.