A/N: This is my second fanfic after my "yay, sasusaku is canon" feels. This is somewhat a companion piece to my previous piece, "She Bleeds", but only with my headcanon that Sasuke and Sakura eventually travel together so you don't really need to read that to read this. I want to write a real companion piece to "She Bleeds" in Sasuke's perspective but…writing Sasuke is hard, so I don't know. I also want to try my hand at Naruhina so...eventually I'll get on that. But please read and review! With "She Bleeds" I got a lot of favorites, which I very much appreciated but I would also appreciate any reviews that provide constructive criticism and I also just want to hear your guys' thoughts. I really appreciate it, and I'm really happy that my writing can be shared with a lot of naruto and sasusaku fans across the world. So thank you for everything and again, please read and review!
Summary: As they stand on the precipice of a new life together, both Sakura and Sasuke battle with the anxieties and fears they feel in the face of an unknown future together. "He was afraid – but for her, he would feel." post-699/pre-700 [sasusaku, implied naruhina] [oneshot]
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, Masashi Kishimoto does. The song lyrics included in the beginning and end of the story are from "More than Words" by Extreme.
~x~
Saying "I love you"
Is not the words I want to hear from you
~x~
"Ma'am?"
The stern voice of the desk receptionist breaks Sakura out of her reverie and with a start she turns to look up at the older lady.
"You're next." The receptionist holds up a placard with a number that matches the placard Sakura had placed on her lap. Sakura's eyes flit between the two placards, realization quickly dawning.
"O-oh is it our turn already?"
"There's no one else left, honey," the receptionist reasons tiredly, her patience growing paper-thin and the fatigue from both her long workday and old age evident on her wrinkled face.
"Ok, uh," Sakura casts a quick glance at Sasuke, who had been sitting quietly beside her, his one arm crossed across his chest and gripping the opposite sleeve, a habit he had grown accustomed to doing after losing his arm in his fight against Naruto.
His eyes look up to meet hers and she quickly looks away, trying to calm her anxious nerves.
"Just give us a moment," she pleads. There was no else remaining in the queue before or after them so they still had the time. Sakura had cleared the day of any hospital duties for this occasion and Sasuke had nothing pressing to attend to before his next departure. And so here they were, the both of them anchored to their seats in Konoha's municipal office as they hesitated to take the first – and really, final – step to make their marriage official.
The receptionist heaves a deep sigh before placing the numbered placard back down and attending to other paper work, her lips set in a grim line as she begrudgingly accepts Sakura's excuse.
Sakura's hands awkwardly smooth over the creases of the manila envelope containing their signed marriage registration documents and she notices the slight trembling of her fingertips. She hastily balls her anxious hands together, trying to will her thrumming heart to calm down.
His proposal had come out of the blue on the night they had returned from their – his, but she had insisted on going along – journey. His warm and slightly damp hand had snatched her wrist just as they were about to make their way through the familiar large oaken Konoha gates.
"I want…"
She remembers his voice, deep and low, trailing off, his chest shuddering and falling as he let out a shaky breath as if afraid of the words lodged in his throat.
"I want to be with you."
She had been happy at his words, but only fully realized the weight and implications of what he was saying when he had embarrassedly – cutely, she had thought – looked at her though his long dark locks and tagged on a soft "always".
At that point she had been over the moon. Her heart leapt and sang happily in her chest as she had struggled to wipe away the happy tears streaming down her face; laughing softly as he had reached forward and wiped them away for her, a gentle smile on his lips.
He was a man of such few words but she loved him so much. With a burning fire and passion that she often feared would burst from the confines of her chest and consume her in red-hot greedy flames.
But today she felt her blood run cold in her veins as she stared at the documents on her lap; the yawning chasm between her old life and a new one with him. The envelope weighs like lead in her sweaty hands and as she casts a glance to her calm fiancée she hates herself for being so vulnerable and feeling so much. She wants to keep it together as much as he is but her stomach feels like a million butterflies fluttering and rising painfully up her throat like bile. Her heart had taken it upon itself to do sprints in the prison of her ribcage; hammering vengefully against her ribs as if struggling to break free.
What if they fell out of love? – Her worries poured forth and multiplied like a disease - Did they even love each other? What if this was a mistake? What if they grew to hate each other? What if he left? What if she left? –
Did they even love each other?
The jade green pools of her eyes turn to look desperately at his mismatched ones, her eyes clearly reflecting the churning sea of her emotions that threatened to form into tears. Pleadingly seeking some sort of confirmation, some sort of sign…
Sasuke had long passed the stage of finding her sensitivity and emotions to be annoying. In fact he envied her – envied her soft, feeling heart and detested his own that had been hardened by years of heartbreak and loss and had crusted over with scales of bitterness and hatred.
But her love, as blinding as the sun, as sturdy as the earth and as pure as the white moon, had washed over him like a deluge, softening him. Her constant "I love you"s poured over him like rolling waves, pulling him deeper into its calming depths and, like her, he was afraid to drown.
She felt so much, but he was afraid to feel at all.
"Sasuke-kun," she whispers his name, the material of the envelope straining in her tightening grip. Her eyes flit away from him, the envelope now held close to her chest as her mind delves deeper into the murky waters of worry.
"I'm scared..."
She's beautiful, he thinks and is at her side in an instance, shocked at the rapid beating of his own heart. He had faced death in the face and had laughed, had walked down the road through hell itself and had bathed in the crushing weight of darkness and the blood of those who had wronged him and yet there was nothing – absolutely nothing – that could compare to the fear that accompanied laying his heart bare to her.
His hand rests on hers, willing her to relax as he draws the courage to face her once again.
He was afraid of getting hurt, of hurting her, of feeling too little, of feeling too much, and that soon – with this constant push and pull – soon he would break.
He was flawed: so sinful and so imperfect and so sullied and so wrong but she - she was so right and so pure and her every touch was a baptism but his sins were not hers to bear – and so he was afraid.
But for her – yes, for her – he would feel.
Her green eyes shift upwards at his touch and her breath escapes her as she sees the foreign emotion clouding over his eyes.
"Sakura", a pause and a shaky breath, "I'm scared too."
When he looks at Sakura he wonders if love was something one felt in an instance, like lightening clanging and crashing from the heavens. He wonders if it was a rush of electricity that jumpstarted the heart and had it trilling to songs it never knew it could sing.
When he looks at the dobe and his Hyuga companion, he wonders if love was constant like the steady pull of gravity. Or if perhaps it were weightless and invisible like air and that the rush of serotonin would send one's feet floating off the ground and soaring into the clouds in a giddy high.
But he muses that, like his parents, perhaps it was more like red-hot iron, forged in the hottest flames and hammered down with the clanging tests of time.
As they hand in the documents to the receptionist together, Sasuke realizes that, in all his genius, this was a question he did not know the answer to. Perhaps it was all of those things or none. But as he gathers the courage to grip his wife's hand in his – the two of them sharing a nervous but loving glance as they take their first step into an unknown future together – he knows this is a puzzle he wants to solve with her at his side.
~x~
How easy it would be
To show me how you feel
More than words is all you have to do
To make it real
~x~
A/N: There are so many great sasusaku fic writers on tumblr, I feel so inadequate in comparison. Well anyway, there's my take on them getting married. I really never imagine them – or at least, not Sasuke – having a huge marriage ceremony, traditional or western. Even if they did, I imagine it would be super small, but I prefer this method for them and I do believe people can just walk into their municipal office and hand in their marriage registration forms in Japan (source: I've seen it in dramas!) so that's that.
I had another companion fic to my other fic "She Bleeds" that would've had Sasuke's perspective to their budding relationship but writing Sasuke…is really hard. I still haven't given up on that fic but writing from his perspective, it's like I want to show enough, but not too much, but it ends being too little, and I think that push and pull is a good description of what he's probably feeling in the face their growing relationship. But pre-shippuden Sasuke was really cute, and pre-Uchiha massacre Sasuke was even cuter, so I think somewhere deep down he craves affection and is affectionate as well. But I really can't write fluff for them…I end up writing introspective pieces…sorry everyone…
Anyway, please read and review!