This was originally much longer, and this was actually a near-ending/ending for the much longer, more complete version. That version has taken me forever to write and I'm still not done, so I figured this was good enough to post. I know some things aren't as understandable as they should be, and are not quite as meaningful but if I do complete and post the beginning of this, I think it would be even better.
Just a few words after getting a couple reviews—
These are Sakura's thoughts on Sasuke and his wife Saika. This is around age thirty for all of them. Sasuke had two children with Saika, and the line in which Sakura refers to 'words spoken in a cold torrential rain' are words Saika spoke to her when they were about twenty-eight. The part in which Sakura says 'time didn't we wait for me' refers to something from the original draft and is for the author to know and you to possibly find out if I ever post the whole thing. If I do post the whole story, this chapter (for lack of a better word) is subject to revision.
Please review and let me know what you think!
Flicker
Something is different today. The air is heavier, burdened with time. The casual state we have fallen into with each other has been shed like a coat in the summer. He's looking at me. He looks pained.
I'm hurt. I'm shattered and ruined….a wilted flower that disintegrates in the wind. An animal stabbed and bleeding to death, sometimes thrashing in its pain, sometimes still and dormant.
He chose her when I was there to be picked. He picked her instead, a beautiful, young, wonderful kunoichi who is ever so deserving of good.
I can't hate her for it. I can't even hate him.
There is only love, only ever love, and it is so strong. I wish someone knew the lengths and depths of it, the very breadth of my soul that it envelops. With it there is room for nothing more, and hate is so easily pushed aside. It took effort to hold up the pretense all those years ago. I never loathed her as I might have.
His presence is…more than intoxicating. It's necessary. It's desired.
But it's not always there. It's with her, in their house, with their kids. I can stand right next to him, and he can be a world away. I can beg and plead for my mind to imagine a scene that is better, but I never succeed.
Time didn't wait for me. I needed it to, I needed it to let me heal, let me be ready. I never met the time requirements. When I was finally scabbed over and reorganized, it was too late. He was gone.
But today…Something is different today. The air is heavier, burdened with time. The normal state is passing away, and we're returning to years ago in an instant. Words are flooding my mind, words I heard whispered to me in a cold torrential rain, words that were spoken through her lips, words I didn't believe. "I love him, just like you do. I was able to have his kids, and you…you were able to have his love."
Yet he was indifferent. Every time anything happened anywhere, he was indifferent. His eyes only sparkled alive for his children or for her. No one else ever had hold of his affections. Naruto only received toleration. Kakashi only received collaborative efforts. Tsunade only received duty. I received nothing. Not even a passing glance. All was too clear to me how the lines were drawn. I didn't believe her.
But today, something is different. Regret abounds plentifully from the onyx depths, and the pain that I've never witnessed before—it is easily on the surface. I wish, and I've always wished, for that other over-riding emotion to play itself out too, so that I would know. But it's absent as always as though he is incapable of it.
I wish he would say something. The moment needs to break. It needs to bur—
I have never, in all my life, seen this. Those onyx, hard, emotionless eyes are shining with tears.
A voice sounds outside the hospital wing door. Here she is, calling for him.
As though removed from a rushing and roaring, powerful and crushing, tilting and entrancing sea, he turns his head ever so slightly, just enough to hang on a second longer, and then he turns and dashes out the door, tears dripping from his eyes as he does so.
And I thought I saw a flicker. It was only for a second, only a flicker, but it was there. His eyes don't play with imagination or shadow. A flicker is enough to be real, a flicker is heavily guarded. Shall I hope on a flicker?
Or shall I know better?