Second Bloom

It was an expensive war. SasuSaku.

Sasuke-kun. Go to sleep, you look tired. I'm not going anywhere, you know. I'll still be around.

He groans when he falls asleep, gasping blindly and grabbing onto anything he can feel. His hands have been desensitized to touch, and they feel like blocks of heavy lead as they cling to the blankets and work to push his body upright. Sasuke doesn't want to open his eyes, but he's glad of it when he does.

Sakura's eyes are peering back at him, but in this dream, they've lost the brilliant color that they had in reality. She sits at the edge of the bed, legs swinging off the side, her incorporeal form gleaming a translucent silver in the sunlight. Everything is tinged with red around him and his eyes boil with a ragged fire, but he keeps them open.

"Oh, you're awake."

He doesn't notice when the door creaks open, or when Naruto holds his hand and looks at him worriedly.

"They said you're fine," the dobe tells him. "You can leave the infirmary. Well, if you want."

"Of course I want to leave," he snaps. "Why wouldn't I? Because I enjoy the horrid food here?"

Naruto grins. "It's actually pretty expensive, according to Tsunade baa-chan." His expression fades when Sasuke looks at him. "Uh, is there a reason your Sharingan is on?"

Sasuke peers back mindlessly. "I just feel like keeping it activated. It no longer damages my eyes."

Naruto looks somewhat uneasy at this, but he relents with a nod. "So are you coming, then?"

He slips out of the hospital bed. Pulls on his shirt. Then stops, and realizes that she's beckoning him to wake up. Sasuke slides back into the bed.

"Maybe tomorrow."

-v-

The process of waking up drags him down a long, knee-jarring, mind-bending path of decadence. It creeps into him slowly but certainly until the air is clogged with the cloying sweetness of the umeboshi Sakura likes and the world is reflected in the candy-pink of her hair.

She's standing by the window when he wakes up. Over the years, she's grown out of her expansive forehead and slight pudginess, but his mind can't properly piece the changes together, so this Sakura is merely a taller, older version of her twelve-year-old self.

But her hair is still short.

"Sasuke-kun, you're awake," she says, tugging at his hand. "Come on, will you go on a date with me?"

Punch me, he wants to say. Punch me like you punch Naruto. But he knows she won't, because she spends too much of her energy on Naruto and Sai to waste any on him. With him, she's brilliant eyes and blinding smiles, a cheery girl. Stop trying, he thinks. Can't you see I'm not capable of responding?

"We can have our date here," he tells her. The curl of her arm around his wrist is a shackle that locks him down to reality, and here, it's solid and slowly growing in rigidity. "What's the point of going to a fancy place to eat, anyway?"

Sakura shrugs and settles beside him on the bed. "Alright. Here. I guess it's an ok place. Even if it's supposed to be a hospital." Her weight dips comfortingly onto the sheets and her presence almost radiates warmth.

Sasuke doesn't know why he asks, but the word skitters out anyway. "Why?"

There's a long pause of thought that drags itself thin between them, and eventually her hand tightens around his wrist. "For the same reason as Naruto. The two of you kind of became my life. And it affected me more than it did him, because he's a lucky sort of idiot and thinking doesn't get to him. It gets to me, though."

He knows. Her mind is her life, the potential that he and the dobe had long buried between them. They went out and gambled their lives and thoughtlessly dragged Sakura and Kakashi right along. "You and Naruto were never my life."

"That's fine. You got what you wanted in the end, and you're alive to reap the benefits. You succeeded, Sasuke. You did well."

And Sakura fingers are skating across his chin, turning his face towards her. There's something heavy between them that smacks of the unspoken but it fades as she pulls him in, kisses him like its her first time. She always does that, in this place. Kisses like it's her first. For a while he doesn't move, simply lets them rest mouth to mouth, before finally nudging his lips against hers and allowing her to guide him to a different kind of oblivion.

"And I'm glad," she breathes against him. "I'm glad that I succeeded in this too. I protected my precious people, and I protected you."

But you're not alive to reap the benefits.

Their lips move harshly, breathily in the quiet hospital room. Her fingers skitter across the expanse of his chest in a languid joy, but his hands remain firmly on her shoulders because this is for Sakura. Just for Sakura. Just to repay her. Her lips frown under his own, as if she notices something, but he redoubles his efforts and kisses her furiously.

Because how can he possibly admit that he's incapable of something this fundamental to the human condition?

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