SasuSaku Month 2014 Day 16: Indestructible
Note: This is an AU rant fiction with very heavy foreshadowing of canon based on my interpretations and speculations.
Of Denials and Everything Else Unsaid
SSM 16: Indestructible
. . .
Even after three years with no decent contact, he had found that she was still a burden.
That was all she ever was—the fragile girl who couldn't live without him. He knew. She had told him the day he left and broke her.
And now, three years later, here they were. She had matured. She was stronger now. She had decided that his leaving shouldn't be enough to make her remain broken. She was gonna get him back and be able to graduate from the weak burden who stayed behind the lines and shied away from hardships, to the one who stood beside everyone and became the one they could depend on.
He had to admit, he hadn't expected the fragile girl he had come to know to have that kind of resolve. But still, it wasn't enough. Nothing has changed. Otherwise, he wouldn't be carrying the passed out Haruno in his arms whilst trudging across a blinding storm in search for shelter in the middle of a damn forest.
'Idiot dobe and his tests of courage,' he thought despite his efforts to keep himself as level-headed as possible.
But it wasn't his blond best friend's fault. The idiot couldn't have predicted the storm, or that they would all get separated from each other. It was Haruno's fault the two of them were lost. He knew she had been trying to help, but she didn't have to go and get her foot caught in a tree root before slipping downhill and literally dragging the Uchiha down with her and then passing out as if things weren't already as bad as they seemed.
A burden. A fragile, easily knocked-down burden.
It wasn't long before he stumbled into a damp cave somewhere in the middle of the forest. Setting the pink-haired girl at the mouth, he proceeded to make a fire with the few pieces of dry wood he had blindly felt all the way at the back of the dark cave.
He gently picked her up again and set her more comfortably near the fire for warmth, her back leaning against the wall, before taking the jacket he had placed on her shortly after she passed out and he had decided to go look for shelter.
He squeezed the water out of it, exposed it against the fire for it to absorb the warmth, and then placed it back on the sleeping girl, his hands never leaving the collar as he knelt down in front of her and looked at her face to face, noting how beautiful her visage appeared against the dancing firelight.
Sakura.
This was her now. He had never gotten the chance to look at her this close since returning, but this was her now. The one who had screamed for him to stay with her three and a half years ago. The one who had filled his lonely existence. The one whose love he could not return. His former comrade, the one who had stayed by his side to the very end.
"I couldn't look at you then."
But he was looking at her now, and was it just him, or did his voice sound apologetic and...regretful? Since when had he been so soft? "I was different. I had a goal. I couldn't bear you to be a part of it, and you just weren't."
Because she just wasn't meant to live the lonely path he was destined to endure. She was never raised for that. It was for only him to take.
He couldn't understand why he didn't want to let go of the jacket and why he wanted nothing more than to continue looking at her. He was venturing deep into the Sasuke that he had always locked away from the world.
He cared about this burdensome girl, and there was nobody around to hide his actions from.
And so he allowed his hands, big and firm, to move up to cup the girl's delicate cheeks, and he stared all the more at her, as if his obsidian eyes could meet her emerald ones if he looked hard enough, realizing that, deep down, he had always wanted to finally touch her like this. Disregarding the fact that it had always been against his principles to show affection, he knew that it just felt right.
'How long have I wanted to do this? How many times have I tried to deny it? I don't know anymore.'
And then he looked down.
"I'm sorry."
He let her go and positioned himself beside her before he could do anything else, wondering why he was slowly abandoning his inhibitions just because he was alone with only her unconscious form to keep him company.
"Mn...Sasuke-kun...thank you."
The Uchiha's eyes widened an unnoticeable fraction as he calmly looked at the girl beside him, effectively hiding his surprise.
"You were awake," he deadpanned.
"I heard 'I'm sorry'," she whispered. "That said it all."
"Hn." He stood up. "If you're fine now, then let's keep going."
She ignored how cold he must have sounded. "Where are we? What happened?"
"You don't have to know. Just follow me," he replied. "Any hope of you being able to retrace our steps is lost anyway since you were knocked out."
She bit her lower lip. "I can't," she mumbled and after seeing him look at her questioningly, added, "My leg. It's..."
The Uchiha frowned and watched her further examine her injury. "Tch."
'Why are you like that? Always so—'
"I know." She looked down as if she had read his thoughts. "I'm still weak, still out of your league. I've tried, but I guess," she paused. "I still haven't changed a bit, ne, Sasuke-kun?"
There it was: one of her fake smiles. He had always been able to see through them ever since they were kids.
"Even though we've been through so much, both together, and apart, I'm still the same."
"Sakura, you—"
"Then, Sasuke-kun," she cut off, her eyes suddenly going strong as she took off his jacket from her and placed it in front of him. "Prove me right. If I'm still the same old burden to you, take your jacket and leave me here. You've always done a good job at dropping what slowed you down from your goals anyway. I'm sure you want to get back home as soon as possible."
He stared at her in astonishment. When did she get her resolve to challenge him? It dawned on him again that this was no longer the Sakura he had left behind. She had changed. A lot. And even now, as he watched her tear a piece of cloth from her shirt and expertly wrap it around her injured leg, he knew that she was no longer the fragile girl who depended on everyone and "couldn't live without him."
"Hn." He crossed his arms defiantly the way all Uchihas do every time they had a point to get across, and promptly sat back down on his spot beside her, ignoring the poor jacket.
"Sasuke-kun, what are you—"
"I'm proving you wrong," he muttered under his breath.
There was a long pause as silence overtook the two of them, with only the crackling of firewood as it burned to a crisp and the raging storm outside filling the void.
The Uchiha discreetly glanced over to see the girl beside him, looking unsatisfied with the few words he had disclosed to her, as if she had already convinced herself to finally face what she thought was the truth: that she was useless baggage, and that nothing would change that.
What surprised him, however, was the fact that despite her sullen expression, there was no hint in her eyes that said she was going to give up and accept it.
"You've grown, Sakura," he found himself admitting. He was never a man who spits out his thoughts, but with the two of them stranded in a cave alone, there really wasn't anything much to do but talk and clear out all the insecurities in the girl's heart that he had probably caused in the first place due to his blindness and inability to express himself.
"Sasuke-kun, you know that's not true," she smiled emptily again. "I'm going to keep trying, though. I won't lose anymore—"
"Sakura."
His voice was stern, and he himself did not know what made him speak up again. He was too conflicted and unsure about her for his own good.
"Then why am I still so weak?!" she blurted, clenching her fists until her knuckles turned white. "If I hadn't tripped on that root, if I wasn't such an idiot, if only I wasn't such a burden—"
"You were never a burden, Sakura!" he finally growled out, albeit a little too suddenly even for himself.
What was wrong with him? Wasn't he being inconsistent? How could he just be realizing all these things right now?
"Because if you were," he continued. "I'd have left you at the foot of that hill from the beginning and gone up to find Naruto and the others. Is that what you're implying?"
He had always, always noticed how insecure she could be. It seemed that, despite all the strength she'd gained and all the weaknesses she'd gotten rid of throughout all her experiences, she had never been able to free herself from her insecure nature, especially when it came to him. And he knew that it was mostly his fault. She had told him after all that he was everything to her and showed him time and time again that all she ever wanted was for him to acknowledge her.
He hadn't been giving her much of his acknowledgement, and it was high time that he had.
"Hn," he crossed his arms and looked ahead at the storm, not needing to glance at the girl to see widened eyes and a shocked expression. "If you're so hell-bent on insisting that nothing has changed, then do so; however," he paused. "At least get the facts right about it like you always make a point to do."
There was silence once again and he knew that she was waiting for him to continue.
And so he (almost begrudgingly) did.
"If there's one thing that hasn't changed, it's that I care about you."
He was looking at her now, and she was shell-shocked. Unsurprisingly, so was he, although he was doing a better job at keeping it hidden as his face remained as emotionless as ever.
Never in a million years did he ever think himself capable of verbally admitting he cared.
For as long as he could remember, he had always believed he was alive to be alone, to only use what was beneficial to achieving his goals, and to drop what was not without second thoughts. Logic and results were everything; emotions and camaraderie were nothing.
But he had learned to care, and he was done running away. In fact, it was his running away that had caused the girl beside him so much of the pain he hadn't meant for her to endure. He had been through so much, but nothing had been enough to destroy the fact that he just couldn't drop her. Because he cared. And that alone proved that she wasn't the burden he had always tried to believe she was.
"You're so sappy, Sasuke-kun," he heard her tease, but when he looked at her, he saw that her expression wasn't at all teasing.
Tears were streaming down her eyes as she tried to wipe them away and release futile laughter.
He stared on, unmoving and lips pressed into a firm line.
He knew. He knew based on her reaction that he no longer needed to explain to her every implication behind his short statement.
She understood everything.
That no matter how weak she was compared to him and Naruto, or how much mistakes she could ever make, she was someone special to him, and that fact was indestructible.
The Uchiha inwardly smiled.
Sakura was always able to understand his train of thought pretty well from the subtlest of hints. It was one of the things he liked about her—she was intuitive and sensitive of him. It was what made her the last, and only one to see him off the night he left their town to join a gang and pursue revenge against his brother for ruining the family company and scandalizing the Uchiha name. He figured that the only thing that clouded Sakura's sharpness was her insecurity.
"I really do still love you," he heard her exhale as if she was confirming something to herself. "...even after everything. I guess that's another thing that hasn't changed about me."
And she didn't have to tell him. It was painfully obvious that her feelings for him were apparently as indestructible as his feelings for her despite both of them having already tried to destroy their emotions themselves. Even though their reasons were logical, even though their separate worlds were against it, there was nothing anything could have done to break it.
"I'm such a blundering failure," Sakura laughed brokenly and continued to wipe her tears. "I just can't seem to redeem myself."
Good. Because he too was a blundering failure who will also never be able to redeem himself, even more so than she was.
"Hn," was all he could say, and he merely threw in more blocks of wood into the fire in front of them.
Silence had almost always been his own defense mechanism in the face of things he didn't know how to deal with, and as many as the responses his brooding mind could come up with at what the strawberry-blonde had been saying, he found that it was much more difficult to actually express.
He kept his eyes trained to the fire as he poked the hearth with a stick to get more flames out, feeling the girl's gaze focused on what he was doing.
"You...You never gave me a proper reply," she whispered to herself. His ears however, caught on even over the howling wind and falling rain.
"You're here with me now, and it looks like you plan to stay, so..." She looked at the ignored jacket in front of them and this time, looked directly at him. It wasn't like three years ago when she had spoken with his back facing her. "Sasuke-kun, I love you with all my heart."
This caused the Uchiha to stop his ministrations and finally look back at her, his jaw almost invisibly tensing.
"So if you plan to stay," she continued. "Then I'm still here. I'll still do anything for you, so..."
It was a repeat, a second shot. Both of them remembered all too well what happened that night and how things ended.
The reason why he never replied was because the life she had proposed then was never the life he was meant to live. He was different from them; he had his own set of goals. Returning her feelings was out of the question yet for some reason, he couldn't reject her either.
Why was that?
As a result, he had again resorted to silence and simply left her with the bare summary of what he had felt: Thank you.
Which, he admitted, could have been interpreted in a million different ways. This time, a thank you wasn't an option. She was now asking for a concrete response, not something as vague as what he had given her, because things were different now.
Could he, or could he not respond to her feelings? He didn't know. He knew, however, that as much as he did care for her more than he could ever care for any other girl, he just wasn't ready to go that way. He still had more things to fix; namely, himself.
'But isn't that why people are given to us? To make up for what we lack?' the dobe would say. And it was only now that the Uchiha was realizing the wisdom in them, though annoying as it was to admit that the blond idiot held even a sliver of wisdom in him.
And then it dawned on him that the idiot's words applied to her too. She was lacking too, and he was right there, being asked by her to be the one to fill that void up. He had never really thought about it that way. He had never had the time to.
He bit his lower lip and let his hand move to find hers before giving it a firm squeeze while hiding his eyes with his raven locks.
She gasped. "Sas—"
"Wait for me," he mused lowly, unsure of himself. "I can't. Not now. Not when I'm..."
Not when he wasn't sure. Because she deserved so much better than someone like him.
"Not when you're like that?" Her hand squeezed back, and she looked at him with the most tender eyes he'd seen since the death of his mother. "When did it ever change anything, Sasuke-kun?"
And she embraced him, which said a lot. It had taken a leap of faith for her to do what she was doing considering how strained the two of them were for the longest time, but he found that it was exactly what he had been needing.
He slowly, but surely, returned her embrace and squeezed back like it was the warmest thing ever given to him since who-knows-how long, and he was gonna keep it there and not let go.
Maybe it was time he responded, and even time he initiated. Maybe it was time he stopped denying the foreign feelings he was having towards the girl in his arms. Maybe it was time for a new beginning.
She didn't have to say it, but he knew she had already forgiven him. She had always been so good at wearing her heart on her sleeve, and it had always looked perfect on her. She was pure that way, and he admired how she almost never had trouble expressing herself both in her words and in her actions.
She was nothing like him, and maybe it was time he made up for it.
And instead of being the burden he thought she was at the beginning of that night, it turned out that it was her who had been able to remove all of his real burdens in one fell swoop instead.
He would definitely trudge even stronger storms for her in the future, and, he was sure, that they would always prove indestructible.
Notes: OH THE CHEESE. Ugh. Endings were never my thing.
And I'm such a noob at writing fanfiction. I only ever write it to rant; hence, the bombardment of (what I think are) the characters' thoughts and excessive narration and whatnot. And with the recent Naruto manga chapter (685), I just couldn't resist. I had to type down what I thought Sasuke would possibly think if they would ever be given closure opportunities.
So yeah, it's two days late, but since chapter 685 appeared on the 15th (in our country), I decided to immediately write on the 16th, and the prompt was 'Indestructible'. There was a storm raging over here then, with howling winds and no electricity, so I thought, why not? Write a storm fic. It happened to fit the prompt, anyway. And not to mention, I was writing in candlelight so, okay. Add in a dark cave and a fire. And then rant. Perfect.
I just wasn't able to finish it in time 'cause my muse kept dying.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, nor am I claiming to have been able to capture the beauty of Masashi Kishimoto's characters and their whole beings and build-up and, ohmygosh Kishimoto-sensei is just KING. I am also not claiming that my word is canon but please, oh please, Kishi-sensei. SasuSaku is perf. You know what to do.
So yeah. Comments, suggestions, violent reactions?
I would probably be imposing too much by asking this of you, but since you've already taken the time to finish this story and this additional rant, please do take time to review too. ^_^ It would very much be appreciated. Criticisms are more than welcome. Just please let it be constructive.