o.O.o.O
Title: .endings
Pair: SakuNaruSasu, containing OT3 material—don't like, don't read, don't cry.
Author: darkenedmoonlightflame
Rating: T, for implications.
Summary: Fic challenge, Team 7 OT3. In three parts.
Word Count: 2,034
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, and do not claim to. However, everything else, AKA: the writing, the (nearly-cliché) plot, et cetera, IS MINE.
(A/N: It's short, for me. And yes, it really is finished. Sorry for my inactivity, all. Team 7 OT3 fic challenge, you should be able to find the link to my LiveJournal in my profile, in which I should link to it. really needs to clean that up, too
(SasuNaruSasu fans, please note that the Sasuke x Naruto FC (fanclub) on NarutoForums is hosting a banner contest and a festival for the New Year! Submissions are due within a few weeks, please sign up. If you do not have an account, you may PM with your submissions and I will enter you. Please read the rules before getting to work, okay? Links are in my profile.
(So, presenting, .endings. Feedback is love, thank you.)
.endings
Sometimes, Sakura sits out beneath the stars, closing her eyes and steadying her breathing—in, out, in, out, in-out-in-out—arms crossed behind her head for support. She stays there, vulnerable and unmoving until she can no longer feel herself, as this is December and therefore very cold, waiting for an unfamiliar feeling of weightlessness to settle into her bones. She lays there, inhaling and exhaling, chilled, sometimes bloody and sometimes in perfect health, thinking.
She won't admit it, ever. Of course she knows!—but there is an enormous gap between knowing and believing, one that she isn't quite willing to leap blindly over without confirmation.
'They're together.'
Her warm breath clouds the air, congealing and twisting away, unwinding as the wind brushes by, languid in its motions. She breathes in again, ignore the pangs of winter that tear at her throat and teeth all the way down her esophagus into her lungs.
'It's plain in sight.'
The corners of her mouth turn upwards. "Save it."
She tried not to think back into the days where Sasuke was here, by her side and her side alone. She tries not to think back into the days where Naruto was always smiling, blue eyes squinting and grinning in an obnoxiously-wide and knowing way, laughing, laughing…! She tries not to think back into these days at all, because that was then and this is now.
'They're in love.'
"Don't say that! It's wrong. It's wrong."
This is her fairytale, she thinks. It should be. But it's been stolen, and deep down she's given up hope of seeing it gyrate and gallop back her way, clad in shining silver armor and chivalrous, wielding sweet promises of One True Love. Rather, it's gotten caught in traffic and has taken an unexpected detour that leads around to nowhere, looping forever and ever in a place she won't be able to reach.
It isn't her feather-soft hair flittering between his fingers, tangling and pooling erratically. It isn't her heart skipping beats here and there each time a smile that is meant-for-her-eyes-only is given by him. It isn't her beneath the sheets next to him, intimately pressed up close in utter silence as the world looks away. It isn't her hands that soothe his anger, her words that spark desire in the pit of his belly, her eyes that entice him to listen. It isn't her that he loves—it's him. For a moment she stops breathing."I've wanted him since the beginning. He's supposed to be mine."
And if she can't have him, then maybe at least she can have Naruto. As soon as this contemplation makes its presence known, she feels ashamed, cheeks flushing, callused palms drawn fingers close to them into fists, and she bites her lip. Naruto is not a tool, neither she or Sasuke would like for that to happen. It's her job to protect them both; somewhere at the back of her mind, she knows this is true and just and right and fair—no matter how much it hurts.
So she will leave them be and keep on living, as always.
'You're hopeless, you know?'
She's long since gotten over the fact that her logic is cracked, and that waiting here picturing happy endings is stupid. It's just plain stupid, she's been told before, plain stupid and plain naïve. But what does she care? Sakura may not even have all the time in the world, but she would rather die a death of ignorance than a death of cruelty and impassivity. And so she sits beneath the heavens, breathing in and out, and trying not to cry.
-x-
There is no such thing, of this Sasuke is absolutely-positively-unchangingly certain. At the moment, he may finally feel the way everyone describes him to be—beautiful, wanted, incredible, astral, confident, and most of all, complete. But there is no way—no, no way at all—for this feeling to last. Euphoria is a temperamental myth to him. His life is one big tragedy, in which he's already learned to play the part. It's impossible for him to go back and press the 'erase' key in his mind, to just lock it all away, because he is Sasuke and Sasuke must never forget.
They're here altogether now, the two of them resting in the darkness, illuminated by something akin to torchlight. The candle's wick has burned down, nearly to its stubby base, sticking out in a lopsided fashion amongst the pool of oil. Their bodies are slick with perspiration, and they've only just separated a bit, panting and only half-aware of their surroundings. There's an arm around his waist, which is strange enough without his being around Naruto's—and of course, it is. His muscles ache, and his limbs are heavy. His chest rises and falls, and although Naruto is tucked close to him, Sasuke can barely see his breathing through the opaque nighttime.
It's amazing, he thinks, for a person to be able to have so many emotions and for them to be able to experience them all at once.
Sasuke feels like this, a topsy-turvy humanoid fuse. He's been knocked over, uprooted into a new and strange universe, which has been falling, spiraling out of control ever since he first took the plunge and kissed Naruto again. This sky is falling, and so is he, back against the tree, for it's just the memories talking now.
Sasuke is quiet, tilting his head, exposing his throat to the starlight of miles away. His lips have thinned over the years, with no one to care for them and to chastise Sasuke for neglecting them. His body has scarred, for there is no one to take him aside and apply balm to it. Now and then, his left hand hurts: an eternal reminder of that one day, in the rain and beside the waterfall where they parted ways.
There is no one to kiss it better. Naruto cannot be here at his elbow, brushing shoulders with him, grinning foolishly and pecking him on the cheek. Naruto cannot be here, it's impossible, and so it is impossible for Sasuke to love him in return. That is how he has convinced himself to simply move—an easy task made insurmountable by this absence of sunshine—each and every single day.
He's been reduced to left foot forward, step, right foot forward, step, left…
He may be moving mechanically now, without conscience as he kills the people one after another, but it doesn't mean that his faulty wiring has completely been blown out. It's ridiculous for him to be so attached, he understands this indefinitely-well, and he can't stand this One True Weakness of his. He misses that boy, the one he spent his first night with, the one who kept him warm and safe and fought away those demons he was unaware of.
Naruto is an unlikely hero, one that is clumsy and more than a bit slow. His heart is too big, it is Sasuke's opinion, but perhaps that's not a bad thing. After all, there was enough room for one more person, for one more antagonist in his ironic story, for one more turned back. There was enough room for a traitor, for him, and it's likely that there still is. But Sasuke was the one to shut the door, and he hasn't yet forgotten or forgiven that either.
-x-
It will be what it is meant to be—and if that makes him a hypocrite for believing in something so fixed, so rigged, then he is a hypocrite. Naruto is alone again, but this time he doesn't mind the loneliness in actuality, the hollow feeling clawing through his insides, welling up in his lungs and choking out the sensation of warmth from the nearby heater. His house is cold, as always, and so he lounges on the floor near to the heat source, having dragged his futon and a handful of scrolls over.
He has to be careful, because scrolls are just paper really, and to put paper close to fire is to ask for trouble.
He has to be careful, because humans and their bones and flesh and hearts and worries are so fragile really, so to bring them too close is to ask for trouble.
He sighs and draws the sheets closer around him, burying his face in the crisp fabric and drawing in a few shaky breaths. It's been a long time, he knows, since another person—another man, to be blunt—was last over into his apartment. Since Sasuke left, he's been watching Sakura. Closely. On the surface, she smiles.
She dreams, but Naruto can perceive that it's just the same old dream, replayed again and again in different lighting, meant to tempt and make her bitter. Superficially, she's Sakura, through and through, genuine.
Beneath it all, Naruto can see the desire brewing in fields of resentment, lost amongst the budding sorrows. And of course an impulse strains from within him! Naruto wants to just dive in and seize her my the arm and haul her out and knock some sense into her, for the Sakura he knows should not be chipping away bit by bit, affronting personality becoming the victim of a particularly-corrosive situation.
He's waited for so long to be seen as the champion.
"Do you like them?" He used to ask her, bashful and shy and biting his inner cheek and fidgeting and beaming with pride all at once. Flowers in his hand. "Do you like them?" He would ask her again, and she'd just look at him, in a way that sent his stomach awry, wrenched him into knots and rendered him pitiable in the face of infatuation. Her eyes were deep back then, almost like the universe—but that's Sasuke's eyes, he thinks now—and so they were really like the water rushing, deceptively alight with flame and life and yet so compassionate, running in circles. Maybe even a little stormy, around the irises.
She'd say: "They're very nice. Thank you, Naruto."
But she'd never accept them, and she'd never look back at him again with those river-not-cosmos-eyes of hers. They'd stay there, clutched in his violently-shaking grasp, until every last petal was withered and shredded beyond repair and control. Then, and only then, he'd go and pick another bouquet.
But it's too late and too silly to forget what has come to pass and its repercussions, he thinks to himself. Now her eyes are distant, searching, searching…! The color of vibrant jade is suddenly only semi-precious but still very dear to him. She's to bring about her own demise, floundering about in the treacherous waters that accompanied Sasuke's departure.
That name again, the one that hurts.
"We're both looking for something, I guess," he says aloud, breaking the stillness that has set itself right at home in his apartment, layered crisp like the patterned snowflakes outside. He swallows hard, struggling with the unexpected lump in his throat—gaze drawn to the cheap vase in the corner, plump with withered daisies and camellia and hyacinth and violets and lily-of-the-valley and of course there are roses, perfectly preserved. They stare defiantly back at him, crumpled and battered and wounded he thinks but does not confirm.
Like soldiers, imprisoned there with only themselves to think of and not the world through cold steel bars.
He stands, brushes off the comforter, yanks on his jacket, blows warm breath onto his hands. He may forever be the One True Fool, but he'd rather be that than hung up on the past—'Sasuke…'—or shooting down the future. 'Won't you come home, soon?' He takes a deep, long drag of the air in his apartment, musty like noodles and warm and comforting, spending the time tying up his plaid but orange scarf and slipping on his shoes. He steps out. There's a garden nearby, in full bloom and irreplaceably-breathtakingly-beautiful under the heaven's expanse at this time of year. Sakura's home is just a ways off in the distance.
"And it's not each other, but I won't give up for something, something so stupid like that…!"
The door slams shut behind him; once again, he's on the move.
-x-