Disclaimer: *Best Yoda voice* Not mine, Naruto is.
This is another "Sasuke returns before everything goes crazy" story, so most of the things after Kishimoto went apeshit and mindscrewed everyone a million times over didn't happen. I will leave what happened before he actually returns to your imaginations.
This will be a very short multichap. (Probably won't exceed ten chapters)
prologue
for the days to come
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When Uchiha Sasuke returned to Konoha, many things happened that he didn't expect.
He didn't expect not to be arrested and/or executed on the spot when he walked through the gates, instead being convoyed peacefully (If you could count Naruto and Kakashi that,) to the Hokage tower.
He didn't expect such a lenient sentence. (One year probation for a missing nin?)
He didn't expect to be accepted, trusted and befriended so quickly by the comrades he had utterly betrayed.
He didn't expect Sakura to completely ignore him for that full year (though it wasn't that difficult, with her always out on missions.)
He didn't expect Sakura to be the medic on his team on his first high level mission as a Konoha-nin afterwards.
He didn't expect to get badly hurt protecting a civilian child without any rest, and he didn't expect her to heal him with genuine concern in her eyes.
He didn't expect how she finally seemed to forgive him in those moments.
And, in the months following, when she had slowly begun to talk to him again, and really get to know him, and eat ramen at Icharaku when Naruto dragged them there, he didn't expect to fall in love with her.
Most surprising of all, just a little later, he didn't expect her to fall in love with him as well.
For Sasuke, who was so used to being supposedly in complete control of his life, of not being surprised by anything (though the years he was away proved that wasn't quite true), this was all incredibly difficult to adjust to. He was prepared for prison, being an outcast for life, for having missions become his only purpose. He was not at all prepared for the freedom, the friends, and - he would admit - the happiness that he would feel more often than he would ever in his life deserve. When he told Sakura this (during one of those nights when he had nightmares - nightmares of the things he'd never forget seeing and oh god the things he'd done, and he would wake up with her beside him, and she would be awake and worried and he would just hold her because he was sure he would break otherwise.) she surprised him by laughing.
"Silly, Sasuke-kun." She had said. He still had an arm loose around her waist, and her breath blew against his chin and neck as she spoke. "Don't beat yourself up over it, because you're right. You do have friends now. Nobody thinks their friends don't deserve to be happy. You can't do anything to change the past, so why not leave it where it should be, behind you, and start living for the future?"
It was one of those poetic, idealistic things that she normally wouldn't have said and he would have scoffed at, but the way she had said it that night, the way she was resting against his chest and the unwavering tone of her voice, made him begin to believe.
One more thing that Uchiha Sasuke never expected when he returned to Konoha was that he would ever, ever begin to forgive himself.
That night, just a little bit, he had.
Just a short prologue. Could almost be a oneshot actually, since nothing happens at all, but I wanted there to be a bit of explanation as to how Sasuke ended up in Konoha and got together with Sakura, though it's not really much of an explanation at all orz
Next chappie will be up soon. This will actually have a story, though it doesn't seem like it right now. The next chapters will also be mostly in more normal, third person point of view and not this weird confusing thing.
Feedback is appreciated!
