Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or any of its characters.
Sakura knew Sasuke was her soulmate when he handed her a tooth-marked, blunt number two pencil. It was their third year at the academy, and she had the good fortune of being placed next to him in their seating assignment. As always at the start of class, she lined up her school supplies precisely. Pencils on the right, eraser on the left, and notebook in the center. That day however, she accidently knocked one of her pencils to the floor. It rumbled across the wood until colliding with the side of Sasuke's foot, and to her disbelief he reached down and picked it up for her.
"Here," he muttered so quietly she almost didn't catch the word.
Sakura's stomach seized and her palms gravitated toward her left collar bone, clutching together at the center of her chest. Her soulmark was simple compared to others she had seen, just one word written in neat capital letters red as blood right above her heart. 'Here'. The first word her soulmate would ever speak to her. The same word that had just fallen from Sasuke's lips. While she'd always openly admired Sasuke from afar, she had never dared speak to him before in fear of his reclusive nature. Girls prettier than her had been ignored. And now, with one softly spoken word, she believed their fates intertwined.
Sasuke furrowed his brow and gently placed the pencil on her desk, evidently deciding she was just another stupid girl fawning over him. Then she spoke.
"Thank-you."
His back straightened a little and his onyx eyes quickly slid back to meet her wide emerald ones. They remained that way for a heartbeat, one hard thump in Sakura's chest, suspended in time. Then Iruke-sensei rapped the board with his knuckle and the moment was broken. He turned his eyes from her and slid into his classic brooding pose.
Years later, after she had grown-up a little bit more and he had continued to grow so far out of her reach, a small hate for her soulmark sprouted. She felt her mark burn like a brand at all the moments he was close to death on their missions and during the Chunin exams. She would never forget how it seared after he received the curse-mark, how that pain made her cry out in the night over her fallen boys into the misty gloom of the forest. While she was too weak to fight, forever stuck on the sidelines as a bystander while her most important people risked everything, the mark would blaze and her heart would freeze over as if death itself gasped it in his palm. When they were first assigned to the same team she rejoiced, but now she cursed herself for being too weak to protect him and her mark for reminding her of her failures.
Then, on one night when the moon hung swollen in the sky, she felt her mark burn faintly. Sasuke was in pain. Sakura stopped and listened to the crickets chirp lightly, and at that moment the wind picked up softly and tossed jade leaves in the dusty moonlight.
By the time it died she was long gone.
"If you go I'll scream and-!" He disappeared and reappeared behind her, she felt his breath against her hair. The pain in her mark was gone.
"Thank-you." She had one moment to feel the bitter sting of irony. Then the world was darkness.
Naruto and his team leave her at the gates to go get him back. And she stays there. Until the sun has long set and the stars are just beginning to peak out behind the black curtain sky. Eventually her mother finds her and takes her home. Sakura grips her hand loosely and stares at the soulmark decorating Mebuki's forearm. Her father's sloppy handwriting runs across her skin in a shade of pale green, spelling out one of his famous jokes that did less than amuse her mother at the time they met. When they arrive home Kizashi shouts his greeting and waves his arm enthusiastically from the kitchen, and Sakura spies the blue soulmark matching her mother's on his arm. She looks at them together, like a well-oiled machine, Mebuki immediately taking his place in cutting something for dinner. She knows this is not the fate of her and Sasuke, who is so lost in his pain she wonders if he's ever thought of the house he'd like to live in someday or any part of his future at all outside of revenge. Sakura gives her parents a smile and goes to her room just before the tears come, sliding down her face silently like rain rolls down a window.
The next morning Sakura's mark is a slowly smoldering bonfire that builds and builds as if someone is throwing gasoline on her. She wriggles in her sheets and somehow knows that Naruto has found him, and they are fighting. She throws on whatever clothes she can find and goes to the hospital to wait for her boys to come back, because Naruto never goes back on his word. When he returns inches from death, she doesn't need a mark to feel the terrible hurt. He's wheeled away from her into the depths of the hospital, followed by so many others of her class and she can do nothing but wait. Shikamaru waits with her for a while, both silent in their grief and guilt.
In the years after Sakura scrubs at her mark in the shower, hoping it washes away in the swirl of soap, water, and blood going down the drain. But it remains proud and red and here against her pale skin, taunting her. Sasuke is not here, and she doubts he will ever be here again.
A/N: I felt this chapter needed a little more fleshing out, so I updated a bit. I hope you enjoyed, and thanks for reading.