Author's note: Well, no-one is more surprised that me at this brief piece of fiction. I suppose this is what procrastination does: instead of churning out several overdue essays, I have a Naruto story.
Title: Dawn
Category: Naruto
Pairing: Sasuke/Sakura, Sasuke/Sakura/Naruto
Word count (excluding lyrics): 995
Summary: Sakura escapes reality and Sasuke tries to bring her back. The sun may be gone but they still have each other. AU.
Rating: T for language, non-explicit scenes containing sex and drugs.
Disclaimer: All characters are borrowed, as are the the below lyrics.
you are my sunshine
my only sunshine
you make me happy
when skies are grey
you never know dear
how much i love you
please don't take my sunshine away
- johnny cash
The lights, oh, the lights, they're rainbows, white light refracted, beams of red orange yellow green blue indigo violet, straight and sure as Cupid's arrows falling from the heaven of the club's sparkling ceiling to the earth of its drink-stained floor and the mass of bodies writhing upon it.
Her eyes are closed but she can see them, the lights. Each colour lasts an eternity yet disappears after only a moment; she's drunk and she's high, and it's a feeling akin to joy, and she wants to feel like this always. Wants to never leave this moment of heat and colour and rhythm.
Because the world is an unbearably harsh place.
Because good people die and murderers are worshipped and children are tortured and it's all so fucked up and at least here she can forget all that.
She can forget.
Sakura dances.
Sasuke watches from the bar, eyes on her liquid form. He barely recognises her; the sheer red top, the short skirt - she's not the Sakura he grew up with, sweet, shy Sakura; and yet the cotton candy hair is the same shade, the apple-green eyes behind their mask of mascara and eyeliner. Men and women grind against her and Sakura moves with them. Sasuke frowns and feels compelled to protect her.
From herself, if necessary.
He winds through the crowd effortlessly with that unreal Uchiha grace, somehow managing to barely brush anyone - it's nothing short of magic, Sakura thinks distantly, honestly. Sasuke approaches and she laughs, throws her arms around his shoulders unheeding, and is it her imagination or do his eyes smoulder just a little?
Whatever he's feeling, Sasuke resolutely grabs her wrist and proceeds to pull her away from the centre of the people moving as a syncytium. Sakura resists, not wanting the pretty lights to go away - but Sasuke's pull is stronger.
Outside, the night air is warm but fresh. The moon sulks in the Earth's shadow, hiding. The stars are few and far between, blinking blearily like dying hope.
(Sakura remembers - once upon a time, a camping trip; fireflies, an empty bottle of vodka drunk around a campfire, affectionate bantering, grass blanketing the earth beneath her, her own personal sun and moon laying solid and loving on either side of her - she could hardly see the darkness of the sky for all the diamond-bright stars.)
Sasuke grabs her by the shoulders, shaking her fiercely. Sakura barely feels it.
"What is your problem?" he growls, banked fury in his eyes. The neon lights of the club district make his eyes appear red, Sakura observes - she sees three dark dots spinning around his iris and blinks; no, Sasuke's eyes are the same obsidian as always.
"Nothing," Sakura protests, prying herself free. Hazy days and summer's rays, she thinks distantly. "I'm fine, really Sasuke-kun, you don't need to worry -"
"Like hell I don't," he retorts shortly. The bouncer glances at them; Sasuke drops his voice, staring at Sakura soberly.
He rarely drinks, Sasuke; he can't bear to lose control. The one time Naruto challenged him to a drinking contest amidst yells of encouragement and galvanisation (apparently the only thing Sasuke could tolerate less was losing a challenge) he'd somehow ended up in boxers and a pair of too-small, pink, glittery fairy wings (scrounged from Sakura's childhood dress-up chest - she had eventually and reluctantly conceded to Ino's insistence that she host a party while her parents were away), vomiting in a toilet while a slightly inebriated but amused Sakura rubbed his back soothingly and gave him sips of water.
(Well, Naruto lost the drinking contest; but ended up winning the prize anyway, which consisted of Polaroid photos of Sasuke in aforesaid attire. Needless to say, that experience apart from anything else ensured Sasuke never again drank anywhere near enough for a sequel incident to occur.)
Sakura used to be that way too, disapproving of substances that altered the mind, but that was before -
Well. Just before.
"Sakura."
She quells at the sound of her name from his lips. He says it without frustration or even worry; without love or tenderness. He says it with such quiet knowingness that it cuts directly through all the layers of gauze-thin bullshit protection she'd erected since Naruto's death - the death she couldn't prevent - she, Sakura, the legendary Tsunade's greatest pupil; she, who had saved hundreds of lives but couldn't stop death from taking the one of the two lives most precious to her.
Naruto, her sun. Indomitable, incorrigible, undeniable, burns-your-eyes-to-look-at-him bright Naruto -
Extinguished.
(That was the moment, as the heart monitors flatlined and the time of death was called, that Sakura stopped believing. Naruto was belief personified.)
Sakura hasn't been back to the hospital since.
"Sakura," Sasuke repeats, this time gently, and she knows that he knows her turmoil, and she knows that she has been selfish in her grief and of course Sasuke has been suffering too, equally, but she just wanted to forget that her sun was gone -
Sakura realises that she has been staring at her hands, which are clenched so tightly that when she releases them little droplets of blood well up on her pals. There's a kind of beauty present, in the paleness of her skin again the striking crimson. A kind of poetry.
She sighs. Raises her head to look Sasuke in the eye. Sees her heart reflected in his gaze and almost breaks down but his arms are encircling her, holding her together, and their lips are meshing, teeth and tongue and passion and grief.
The first time they make love that night, it's to honour their memory of Naruto.
(They'll visit his grave, soon, and for the first time Sakura will be sober and Sasuke will not have that gaunt hollowness in his face. The healing process has begun.)
The second and subsequent times, as dawn breaks and day blossoms, Sasuke and Sakura make love for themselves.