She's his yellow brick road
–
You give me something to sleep to
You give me something to dream to when I'm all alone and blue
Don't leave me now
(Don't leave me now)
–
For so long, the vision of Uchiha Sasuke's back has haunted Haruno Sakura. She remembers footsteps hitting the cobblestone street softly, footsteps leading him away from her, away from his home, of him leaving her. Even at nineteen, so close to two decades of her life lived, it is the memory of a thirteen-year-old girl that she replays when she thinks of him.
But now, in this instance, where they tread between worlds, in a rewriting of their shared history, in this time, where she howls and screams and hopes he hears, he does not leave her.
「Don't leave, if you go, I'd scream!」
He runs to her.
She has never called out to him like this before, voice breaking, voice ringing in her own ears, of desperation, of yearning and of love.
She had seen him in a distance, among the sand dunes, her heart had called out for him, her throat ached from screaming, she calls out to him without quite knowing if her voice ever reaches him, if her feelings are strong enough to transcend alternate dimensions and universes.
His figure comes closer to view. The features that she had committed to memory sharpening in focus, he had been so close to her but she had wavered. She had danced too close with the end, crossed her own limit, was stupid enough to think that she could matter.
The tears fall so easily. Salty tears, she knows because they always stay on her lips. They well up in her eyes first, she fights them as she has fought many others things before, but some battles she cannot win, some emotions she can never hide, the tears glide down her cheeks marking wet trails across her face.
She falls so easily.
Sakura tries and tries to muster the last of her chakra, she is fighting to make this count. She thinks she has one more try in her. One more time, she can channel all that she has into Obito, even with her own seal fading and her breathing turning ragged, one more time, she will try to bring Sasuke back. One more time, she will attempt to piece back what was broken. Even if her heart had already played witness to the miserable ways she had failed before in the past.
Sakura is fighting so much, so hard, green eyes struggling to stay conscious; she fights against exhaustion and understands that victory is not for her this time. With each labored breath she draws comes the sharp pang of realization that she is dangerously close to her own limits. Soon, the darkness will seek her out and her body will crumple as it did before. She tries to will more of her chakra but her own body rebels against her. The exhaustion blossoms inside of her, spreading itself through her being, settling in her bones, weighing down her muscles.
Her chakra, what is left of it, is just enough for her to register her own eventual collapse, to steady herself for the inevitable.
「If you were to stay with me...there would be no regrets.」
And she thought with pity, with a wry smile, with a heart that still manages to ache, that this was years of chakra that she had safe kept. Like a secret, she had guarded this vast amount of power inside of her, allowing it to accumulate over time, over days, over months and over the years that had separated Sasuke and her. It had all been diminished within the span of a few minutes.
Her reservoir of chakra sucked dry.
The years it took for her to reach this point.
And how fast she reached her limit.
She was not like Sasuke-kun, not like Naruto. Not the stuff of legends. She was human, finite and dispensable, with her kind of power, there were always limitations. With her, there were always limitations. She was the distant glow of a star that had shone its brightest in the matter of minutes and was now forced to extinction, to sink back into the cosmos of others.
The portal closed in a flash of seconds, the transition so quick that it was lost to her the moment she blinked. One moment, she could still see the dark spikes of his hair, feel the heat emanating from his determined glare and then, and in another, Sasuke was lost to her again. Sakura felt her own heart drop, pieces of it threatening to go asunder.
She is losing him again, even after so long, the same mistake still rings soundly, still marks her life, and even with him running headfirst towards her direction, she has lost him, still.
「He tried to take your life away, but yet...you still care for him.」
Her eyes are closing now. Her seal loses colour, she feels her own power leaving her.
She braces herself for the fall, for the sand, for the failure.
She braces herself for the inevitable.
She is falling, her breathing uneven, her own vision blurring—
—a hand grips her (how familiar, how nostalgic, how painful it is to faced with this proximity), a hand steadies her oblique form.
「Take care of Sakura.」
Sasuke anchors her.
How can he still anchor her when he has broken her so many times before? In an ironic twist of fate, he is her anchor when she has always desired to be his.
His touch should feel foreign to her. His hands should not feel this familiar.
He should not to have this power over her. With just one hand, he makes her world balanced again. He steadies her.
She looks up in a haze and she sees him. She feels him. And the shredded pieces of her heart are slowly mending themselves again. The exhaustion is still there, but more powerful, more overwhelming than her tiredness was the surge of emotions elicited by his presence— of joy, of relief and of love— he was here by her side. For so long, she had wanted to bring him back, bring him back whole and here he was.
There were years and unconquerable distance between them but in this moment, he is so close to her, closer than he has even in those absent years and Sakura is left wanting.
In her half-closed lids, relief and disbelief swirled with a pastiche of other emotions. Her mind tries to focus on the task at hand. There are more urgent matters to care for. They are in the middle of war, she has no time to ruminate on her feelings. But, her eyes are slowly closing and her heart is bursting. There is no time but now for her.
Sakura does not quite believe how far she has come since the moment Sasuke and her paths had diverged– when a thirteen-year old girl had cried an entire lifetime's worth of tears just to make a crestfallen avenger stay.
「The power to break open a path and see beyond... the power to find you.」
She has fought so hard to be here, to burnish her own strength, to find him.
(She would have given her whole heart just to bring him back whole)
Her efforts, Obito's efforts and Naruto's efforts, they had not all been in vain.
The tears are threatening to spill now.
Then, he looks at her and she is almost gone.
「All I want is...for you to acknowledge me. And I'm absolutely serious about this.」
His eyes— one, sharingan and another, rinnegan— register her. These eyes burnt with something Sakura could not quite place, they were not vacant. His arm holds her, his steel grip never wanes.
They share a quick moment, eyes interlocking, bodies close, and their shared history eagerly unravels itself in quick bursts of memory.
There is recognition in his eyes.
Sasuke knows her. He has known her for half of his life. He has lived almost two decades of his life and she will always have her part in it.
Her lips part as though to say something but he does not pick up any of her strangled words.
Her eyes close before him, fatigue consuming her whole.
Sasuke senses her irregular heartbeat. With his eyes, he sees her dimming chakra, the emerald spark that shone so feebly that he has to strain his eyes just to detect its presence. There is still life in her. He recalls the pull of her emerald eyes, the way he had felt those eyes on him, even as they were separated by dimensions and distances.
He followed those eyes back, dashing across sand, on his yellow brick road back to her.
And then she falls, slipping out from his hands like water, she falls again—
"Sakura!"
—body almost hitting the sand—
Obito calls out for her, even if speaking only makes breathing harder, only draws out more blood.
The forgotten Uchiha calls out to the pink-haired kunoichi, an action driven entirely by instinct.
Because, he has come to see this girl as someone else, someone precious, as someone he should have buried long ago.
He admires Haruno Sakura, a lover and fighter. A startling reminder of the younger ideals he used to possess, the ideals of what it meant to be a true shinobi.
But quietly, he also sees a part of himself in her, he has come to relate also to this girl's love, a love that may possibly be unrequited, but still burned strong enough to give her purpose and strength.
–if not for Sasuke's arms.
Sasuke catches her in a swift, familiar action. This much he owes her. His arms hold her, careful not to touch the sensitive part of her skin that had contact with acid before.
「Once you've got her, carry her, and run…as far…and as fast as you can...」
He thanks Obito briskly and he thanks Sakura silently. A prolonged look and silence is all he can return her in this time of war. Silence is the most accurate. Silence for Sakura, just for one moment, for all that she had done for him, for the years that she had given him, for all the heart that she will continue to give him.
Distantly, the image of a burnt flak jacket echoes in his mind.
He had traded places with her jacket. While her jacket rotted away in an alternate universe, he was here with her.
「Sakura, thank you.」
–
–
–
And the history books will always remember this and them when recounting the great ninja war that tore the world apart and gave it a new moon.
Years pass and as shinobi recalled the war again, it will be thwarted again by the romantic hand of fiction.
The tale of a brave kunoichi who loved a fallen ninja so much that she had willed him back, across dimensions, across unfathomable distances and against all known limits.
Haruno Sakura, almost three decades of her life lived now, would be quick to laugh this story off (even if her heart ached a little hearing it because some days, when she recalled the heat of the sand dunes, the way she had strained herself, the way her body had rebelled against her, she sometimes thinks that it was sheer willpower, not chakra, that she channelled into Obito to bring Sasuke back), shrugging it off as an exaggeration, everyone's favorite tanabata (七夕) tale of Orihime and Hikoboshi spun in to Konoha's war-torn story (of many dead civilians, of many dead ninjas, of many broken families) for a little glimpse at a silver lining.
But everyone who knows Haruno Sakura, who knows Uchiha Sasuke, who knows them and knows their relationship and what they had shared before understood that the fiction complemented, even mirrored the reality.
Just as Orihime and Hikoboshi harbored a deep love for each other, so did Sakura and Sasuke.
But unlike their folklore counterparts, Sasuke and Sakura lived in the same universe, under the same sky.
And unlike the tragedy that separated Orihime and Hikoboshi, without wars, without vengeance and without the promise of power to drive them apart, Sakura and Sasuke were present by each other's side.
Now, in this post-war climate.
And forever, into the future, where they will find their beginning and resume.
Always.
–
— fin —
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Notes: This one-shot was largely inspired by a few things – first, the latest Naruto chapter 685, which was a source of great joy, second, the tanabata surprise that had Sasuke and Sakura illustrated as the fated lovers, Hikiboshi and Orihime in the Naruto cards and lastly, the song Something To Sleep To by Michelle Branch of which the title and starting quote is from. I also want to thank the ineffable Miko for all the inspiration she's fed me, much love to you, my darling. Also, this fic is a partial dedication to Reem, whose Honey and Clover birthday fic is still residing in development hell, and to rest of the SasuSaku fandom, for the precious gifts that were bestowed on us this month and similarly, my way of adding to the gifts and contributing to the spirit of SS month.