He has a bad habit of making promises with no guarantees. Like that first time he comes home empty-handed. And the times after that. All the years of chasing to come. Always for Sasuke.
Sakura is asleep in the bedside chair. Naruto feels the starch of hospital linen.
Sasuke is in some place beyond the megalith statues of their founding fathers. Playing at repetition, at preordained destiny. Them, their elders, other versions of themselves. A river flowing away from them.
Naruto watches Sakura sleep for a long time. Watches the dance of shadows across her face, the flutter of her eyelashes, the creases of skin around her mouth. He wanders what she is dreaming about. Knows she is dreaming about him. Sasuke. Always the eternal rival. Although things are much different now. Sasuke is something else. Sakura is something else. Naruto watches the flushes of colour on Sakura's skin. If she is dreaming of Sasuke, Naruto hopes she has found some secret wormhole to wriggle her way to the place beyond the statues of their founding fathers.
Naruto knows what she will ask when she wakes up; what everyone will ask when they find him awake:
What happened.
What happened. And it will be asked like a statement, a statement of fault. Fault on his part. That is how Naruto will hear it, anyway. And he will not be able to explain what happened. Why Sasuke didn't kill him. Why Sasuke left him. Maybe for the crows to feed on, left him someone else's problem.
Naruto feels tucked into his bed. Swaddled in hospital bedsheets. He remembers the last time he was here, in hospital bedsheets. Remembers Sasuke climbing into his bed at 3AM and disentangling the mess of bedsheet around Naruto. He remembers Sasuke disentangling him from his own body, sending Naruto's pleasure scattering. He remembers, also, waking up later alone, Sasuke having disentangled himself from Naruto. From Konoha. Scattered with the rising.
Naruto didn't think this is what it would feel like, Sasuke leaving him. Didn't imagine it would feel this personal. This painful. Sasuke is a sore that doesn't heal.
Naruto looks through the window. Blue sky above the town. Everything looking as it always does. Except, of course, everything is different now. It looks painted in watercolour. He wants to cry. It feels like someone is squeezing his rib cage. Like Sasuke has forced his way inside Naruto's chest and stayed there. Naruto wants to scream.
What happened.
"Naruto?"
Naruto glances down and sees Sakura blinking slowly back to wakefulness. She is pretty like this. Bleary-eyed and vulnerable. With her hair pink. But Sakura has always been pretty.
"Hi."
He tries to smile, tries to inject any amount of enthusiasm into his greeting.
"How are you feeling?" Sakura asks.
Naruto wonders at the guilt in her tone.
"Great! I'll be back to chasing Sasuke-bastard in no time."
Sakura looks at him. She seems to be searching for something in his face.
"Naruto," Sakura says after a moment, "what I asked before was unfair. It's not up to you to bring him back. And it's not worth it if you're going to get hurt like this."
"But look at me, I'm healing fine. There's no lasting damage – that I can feel anyway. I made you a promise, Sakura, and I never go back on a promise."
"This is different, Naruto. Wanting him back doesn't give me the right to burden you. I won't be weak anymore, I won't let you fight my battles for me. I'll get stronger and I'll bring him back myself."
Sakura stands from her seat and walks out of the room, a bobbing head of pink hair flowing away from him. Naruto notices she doesn't look fourteen anymore. Maybe it's the moment, maybe it's Sasuke. Because, isn't it always Sasuke.
She doesn't look back. Naruto imagines Sasuke didn't either.
x
It is months later. Naruto has been waiting for Jiraiya. He is growing grey hairs, waiting. When Sakura finally asks him what happened, he is almost fifteen and he is going walkabout with the Pervy Sage. She asks and he doesn't know how to answer.
The Pervy Sage shows up in one of Naruto's many hospital rooms after all the months and grey and hair. He stands at the window considering Naruto's injuries and tells him they're leaving the next day. Leaving for two years. Naruto hasn't learnt how to say goodbye.
When Sakura finally asks what she has been waiting for months to ask, they have snuck onto the roof of the hospital. Sakura is working the night shift. She has the keys and a break, she finds him and leads him to the roof. They stand at the door and remember this roof. And all the catalysts for things that happen after.
"I heard Jiraiya-sensei came by your room today."
"Yeah, stupid Pervy Sage, after all these months. Didn't even tell me what he'd been doing for so long. Just shows up, says we're leaving tomorrow, and apparently that is that."
"How long are you going for?"
"He says two years at most. Something about the Akatsuki needing two years to prepare for hunting the jinchuuriki, and Orochimaru needing two years before he can put himself inside Sasuke."
That is when she asks. And the way she says it. Like defeat.
What happened.
"I don't know."
A silence.
"Neither do I," Sakura says and it sounds like chastisement. "I was the last one to see him. I should have done more."
"I don't know, Sakura-chan, maybe everyone should have done more."
Unfair burden that it is, everyone really should have done more.
They lie on their backs on the roof. There are a million stars. Naruto wonders if Sasuke sees the same stars wherever he is. Beyond the statues of their founding fathers.
"I begged him not to go," Sakura is whispering, "You two fought on this roof and when he walked away I could feel him. I must have known. I wondered around for hours after, found myself near the village gate. I must have known; I could feel him. If I hadn't called out his name, he wouldn't have looked back. And even then, he didn't look back, not really. He stopped, paused. Listened to me beg. He was so far away. Like now, but so much worse."
Sakura's eyes are shining. There is moonlight in her tears. Like so much wasted poetry. Naruto sees on her what he must look like. Sasuke. Like scarification on their insides. Sakura turns her head to look at Naruto, she looks lost. Her eyes are round and large and, deer in the headlights, it is too late to avoid the collision. Too late for either of them.
"What happened," Sakura says.
Naruto has asked himself the same thing. Over and over. Sasuke and what happened.
They are silent after that. For a long time. Sakura turns to face him completely, pink hair a drawn curtain around her face. Naruto mimics her. They lie like that, looking at each other. Around them the moon and the stars, a billion of them.
"I wish I had fallen in love with you," Sakura says. Full of big words tonight.
"Me too," Naruto says.
"We would've gotten married. Had children –"
"A brood of children."
"Yes, had a brood of children. Built a home together. Stayed together."
Stayed.
Naruto likes how that sounds. Looks at Sakura speaking and imagines she is spinning silken truths. Because he does love her. He really does. And it's different to how he loves Sasuke, but it's just as important. Big word that it is. He listens to Sakura and sees her through the white of a wedding veil.
"And on days when we're back from missions," Naruto picks up the thread of their other lives, "we'll take the kids to play by my old tree. And you'll worry when one of them swings too high, but I'll swing them higher and you'll knock my teeth in."
They laugh at that. Laugh into a hanging pause. A kind of hysterical calm settles.
"I'll love you best when you're barefoot and pregnant," Naruto says, smiling softly.
"I'll take offense to that," Sakura, grinning back at him, "go on missions anyway. You'll wrestle me down at eight months."
"Wrestle and pamper. Treat you precious, like something that really matters. Stay with you."
Stay.
And that word again. And how it sounds to their ears. Naruto wanders how it sounds to Sasuke's ears. How it sounded when they said it, Sakura and Naruto. Said, "Sasuke. Please. Stay." Each of these words broken, scattered from the same sentence. Like so many parts of Naruto, broken and scattered to Sasuke.
"And on cold nights," Sakura says, "when the wind is howling and sounds like anguish and the past, I'll wrap my arms and legs around you and you'll remember what it means to stay. I'll tell you I love you."
They are fifteen and full of big words. And poetry. And heartbreak. All of those things broken from the same sentence and scattered with Sasuke. Somewhere beyond the statues of their founding fathers.
"Sakura, I love you."
Naruto says this. Whispers it. The words run away from him. Like so many other things.
"I know." And the way Sakura says it. Like defeat. Like so much war.
They have been looking at each other. Naruto has noticed the deep blue dents under Sakura's eyes, has noted the faintest lines on her forehead. And other things. Like the three freckles on her chin and the direction of her eyebrows. She looks fallen. Like Helen of Troy. But Sakura has always been pretty. She's just harder to look at now, broken. Beauty like poetry.
Sakura reaches out a hand, holds Naruto's face. Watches the way her hand fits around his cheek. Naruto wants to know what she is thinking. The tip of her thumb touches the corner of his mouth and Sakura's eyes flicker to them. Naruto's lips tingle. She looks at his mouth for so long he wonders if his lips have crawled back inside his mouth in embarrassment. Naruto wants to know what she is thinking.
When Sakura looks into his eyes again. Eyelids unfolding slowly, like weighted things. When she looks into Naruto's eyes again, there is moonlight in her tears. She looks blinded.
"It hurts," she says, "it really fucking hurts."
And of course it does. They are fifteen and have fallen in love with an asshole. And it really does, hurt, this unrequited love thing.
Sakura blurs in front of Naruto. His face under Sakura's hand is wet. And then they are kissing. And it feels like they are gasping for oxygen. Like they have gills. They are desperate for water. For the mirage in the desert. Because this feels better. Not much better considering they are both still crying and neither of them can breathe through all the pain. But the kissing is nice. With the tears. It is ugly. It is poetic.
"I want-" Sakura says brokenly into Naruto's mouth and around his tongue, "I want it to stop."
Naruto doesn't know how to make it stop. He is fifteen. And heartbroken. And, honestly, he just wants to be held. To feel together, less… scattered. He puts his arms around Sakura and pulls her closer to him. Holds her like that. Really tight. Like she is water slipping through his fingers. Like Sasuke.
Sakura's leg wraps around Naruto's waist and pulls him even closer. Forces a fit. Hides all the gaping holes of their fronts by sheer will and pressure. Seeing them like this, Naruto thinks, you might think they were whole. Naruto remembers similar things with Sasuke. He wonders if the stars had looked down at them and thought they were whole.
None of them are. So much trauma from shrapnel wounds. And now Sasuke's gone looking for another war. And left them collateral damage. Left them somebody else's problem.
Fifteen and heartbroken and nobody's problem. They are broken and don't know how to fix it. They are hurting and they don't know how to make it stop.
Sakura rolls Naruto over her, wraps her arms and legs around him, and buries her face in his neck. Muffles her screams, shuddering through her body like electroshock therapy. Like the wind howling in anguish. Sakura sinks her teeth into Naruto's skin. Naruto thinks he hears sibilance slipping out the corners of her mouth. Sas-
And then Naruto's vision is white with adrenaline. His focus is Sakura's teeth in his skin. His ears are muffled by the rush of endorphins to counteract pain. He grinds, hard and harsh, into Sakura. Loses his mind for a moment. It is a bliss. He feels fixed.
Naruto grabs frantically at Sakura's clothes. Ripping in places. Naruto doesn't know exactly where he is going with this, but he is aware that it is going somewhere. He has one hand on Sakura's skin, under her shirt in the middle of her shoulder blades, and the other testing the consistency of the flesh on her thigh. He is grinding his cock against her and he notes that it is different to grinding his cock against Sasuke. But of course it would be. He is a little out of his depth with female parts. Naruto doesn't know exactly where he is going with this, but he is aware that it is going somewhere.
Sakura grabs his hand from her thigh, puts his whole palm against herself, presses the heel of his hand against her clitoris says,
"There."
Naruto hesitates, says,
"Hey Sakura-chan, I don't exactly know what I'm doing here."
Naruto is grinning at her sheepishly, very embarrassed and so eager to please. Because one or both of them desperately needs this. Whatever this is.
"Rip off my underwear," Sakura says like she has done this before, "and I'll tell you what do."
"Sakura-chan, have you ever done this before?"
"Which part?"
"All of it."
"No."
"Do you know how this works?"
"Medically speaking."
"I don't know what we're doing."
Naruto disentangles himself from the choke-hold of Sakura's limbs. He sits up between her legs, looks at her. Ripping clothes and arms splayed, waiting to be nailed. Naruto scrubs his face with his hands, begins to pull away from the casual bracket of legs around him, feels the sole of a foot on the small of his back, hears Sakura say,
"Please, Naruto. It hurts and I don't know how to make it stop."
Naruto hesitate and, smiles at her. Attempts to anyway, but his face is painted in watercolour and the smile flows away like so many rivers. Naruto touches her knee, softly, feels the creases of its skin, her shin, the smoothness of it. He kisses the underside, the bend of her knee, the warm, soft skin there. His lips feel rough. He doesn't know where this is going but it is going somewhere. Like his hands, moving on the insides of her thighs. Pushing up her skirt. He means to glance up at her, to ask her permission, but ends up staring, transfixed at the expression on her face. The anticipation. She is sitting up on her elbows looking at his hands, biting her lip, her nostrils flared slightly. She is watching his hands with the concentration of a bull seeing red. Legs open and vulnerable to him, she looks like a predator.
He holds her underwear with both hands, tears the material methodically. Her whole body shivers. He watches it, her body, her. Looks at her. Her pubic hair. His hand hovers over it.
"Touch me," Sakura says.
And he does. Does so like reverence. He is in awe of the machinations of female parts. Seeing them in magazines never having prepared him for the thereness of the third dimension.
Sakura's hands snake down to his hand on her, shows him how to touch her. He keeps his other hand on the trembling flesh of her thigh. Notes how soft it is, how malleable. He learns to gauge her satisfaction by flutters of sensitised sinew.
"Put your fingers inside me."
"What do you mean inside you?"
"Come now, Naruto, surely you've seen diagrams of female parts."
"Don't make fun, Sakura-chan, diagrams are hardly the same thing."
She laughs at that as she opens her legs wider, guides his fingers. He wonders at how easy this is with her. He wonders at their lucky selves in other lives. The selves that have been given easy. Like this, his fingers sliding into her.
"It's wet and sticky," Naruto says.
"Take it as a compliment," Sakura says and pulls him to her mouth.
They are a mess of orange clothes and pink hair. Spit and girl come. And Naruto doesn't know where this is going exactly, but he is starting to. He is hard and she is wet inside and it makes so much sense. When Sakura pulls down his pants and boxers, he hesitates again.
Sakura looks at him. With her eyes. Like she is trapped somewhere. The bull and the flash of red she is always running towards. The moonlight is in her tears.
What happened.
What happens. Like this: She bleeds a little. There is a terrible ripping when he thrusts into her. Naruto swears he can hear it. She bites his skin again, his shoulder this time. Naruto hears sibilance slipping from the corners of her mouth. Sas - .
What happens. Like this: They fuck. It is always punishing and painful and they both wonder what karmic crimes brought them here. Like so many rivers flowing to somewhere inevitable. Naruto wonders who he and Sasuke had been born as in past lives.
What happens. Like this: When it gets good, words pry apart Naruto's mouth, running away from him like so many other things. He says, "Give me pain." And she does. Viciously. She claws red welts down his back under the shirt he still wears. She claws like a predator desperate for the scent of blood. And he does, bleed. From his neck and shoulders also, from her teeth. Her desperate teeth biting back the slither of sibilance from her mouth.
What happens. Like this: It is poetry. The poetry of painful things. Painful pleasurable things. Of being fifteen and heartbroken and nobody's problem.
When they come, one after the other, they scream. It sounds like anguish. Like howling wind.
After, when Naruto is pulling out of her, Sakura looks at the stars, a trillion of them, and says,
"What a mess we've made."
She's pretty even now, Sakura is. Face tear-streaked. Broken and scattered. To where Sasuke is.
Naruto collapses down next to her. Holds her hand, fiercely. And she holds his. Because no-one else will. Where Sasuke is.
"Sakura," Naruto's words again, running, "I love him so much I can't stand it."
"Me too. And I told him. In exactly those words. He called me annoying. With his voice. Like it would make a difference. Like I would love him any less. Like I can stop. Like I can make this stop."
There is a silence. A long one. Naruto looks up at the stars and sees Sasuke. Wonders if Sasuke is looking up and seeing the same stars reflecting Naruto back at him. Naruto says,
"What happened?" Sakura says,
"I don't know."
And they don't. They have no answers between them, the answers are somewhere beyond the statues of their founding fathers. Where Sasuke is. Where Orochimaru is.
"You know Orochimaru wants to put himself inside Sasuke's body?" Naruto says.
"I heard," Sakura says, "Sounds suspicious."
"I keep having daymarish visions of Orochimaru and Sasuke. Of Orochimaru, well, inside Sasuke."
"I imagine Orochimaru does too, creepy fuck."
"Sakura-chan, since when do you swear."
"I figured now would be the time to start. How else would I have the language to say 'Sasuke is a fucking asshole'?"
"Too right. I might as well start."
"You already do swear."
"Yeah, but only at Sasuke."
"What do you think it is with him? Sasuke. What is it that makes us all want him."
"He's an asshole. The ultimate form of validation. The one who will never want any of us back. And all we want is his attention. His eyes. Dark and brooding. Like so many black holes, destruction. And his expressions. That's what I want anyway. The shape of his lips when he smirks. Casually chucking kunai at bull's eyes. That strength. And the cloak of arrogance with it. When he wields his sharingan. That intensity. And the pull of it on his body. His body. Bending taijutsu like an element, like he has control of it. Control of your body too if you're sparring with him. Maybe just me because I want him so much. All the time. Fuck. Sasuke and his bullshit."
"Yes, fuck Sasuke and his bullshit."
Why are they both crying. Again. For an arrogant asshole who doesn't care. Like black holes and destruction. Sasuke and his bullshit.
This is how they find themselves naked. Wading through Sasuke and his bullshit, the both of them crying. Sasuke somewhere else not caring. Naruto and Sakura's spit and tears and sweat flowing around them like paintings in watercolour. Their strength slips from them, practiced smiles and cheery disposition flow away from them like so many rivers.
When it gets good Sakura's sibilance slips: Sas - . And Naruto finishes it. Says,
"Sasuke."
Brokenly.
They scatter themselves for Sasuke. Pant his name. Whisper it sadistically in each other's ears; masochistically on each other's mouths. Let it strangle them when they both come. At the same time. Calling for Sasuke.
After, lying naked around each other looking like post-coital bliss feeling like so many scattered parts, Naruto is the one who says,
"What a mess we're making."
x
They kiss on the roof at dawn, Sakura and Naruto. They have not learnt how to say goodbye. Naruto goes home, packs a backpack – grey hairs and all – and waits for Jiraiya at the village gate. Everyone is there. Saying goodbye to him. Shikamaru and Choji and Ino and Neji and Lee and Kiba and Shino and Tenten and Hinata. These are his friends.
Sakura doesn't come. Naruto doesn't ask where she is. Doesn't ask what happened.
Naruto wonders why he doesn't just choose Sakura, and why she doesn't just choose him. It would be so easy. Like what's hard and what's wet. He doesn't mind what they did, is glad it was Sakura. They'd spent the early hours of the morning talking about what it had all meant. Talking about what had happened. She said she was glad it was him. At dawn, they had kissed, broken the word 'stay' from their vocabulary and sent it scattered, flowing to Sasuke on so many rivers.
Like so many broken hearts.