exists on the false assumption that sasuke had been caught before killing itachi, and after the timeskip. i understand sasuke might seem a little ooc, so please tell me what you think.

"I'd be lying, if I said I love you."

You wince at the irony. You tell her you don't love her when she is all you can think about, when she makes your heart pump so quickly you can't even tell one beat from the next, when the thought of leaving her leaving this (whatever you had) tears you apart. But that doesn't stop you from lying anyway.

You love her too much to let her go, but it is exactly because you love her that you have to let her go.

Belatedly, you wish you knew what you were going to say beforehand, for those simple words burn your tongue with the venom you inject them with. It had come out worse than you intended, and regret begins to gnaw at you when you see her petrified in front of you, sucking her breath in, her body stiff as a board, as if your words are a slap to the face (they are, you acknowledge, as painful as a knife to a gut. You have always been told that you are a man of action—that what you do means more than what you say, but you are not inclined to believe this at the moment.)

You barely recognize the voice coming out of your mouth as your own. You hardly even know what you're saying. It is not you, you cannot be the one hurting her like this—but it is you. The resentment seething from your words is much too familiar, the cynicism slathered all over them, the desperation running beneath them much too similar to yours to belong to someone else, anyone else.

The moment you start doing the right thing, the moment you start thinking of someone else it backfires. As usual, everything seems to be going against you.

You can't help letting down the people around you.

There are ghosts of the past lingering in your mind, telling you to abandon this foolish idiot already—of course she is foolish, what else could you call someone who was stupid enough to "love" you? There are more important things to be done, debts to be collected, debts to be repaid, clans to be avenged. It would be terribly convenient to cut her loose, the voices say, to make her forget you and hate you so you could break this connection between you and her that makes you unacceptably weak and vulnerable.

Better yet, you could just kill her and be done with it.

Problem solved.

What was more important, they ask: the heart of a useless girl, or the revenge of a clan who gave you everything you had?

But they are forgetting one thing: you love her—and in the end that is all that matters, and you know this better than anyone else, even Sakura.

Because everything you do is out of love. You are hunting your brother because you love your family, because they deserve at least this much from you. You left Konoha once because you love your teammates. You love them enough to make them stay out of your troubles, out of your madness. You do not want them to suffer for you—you do not want them to pity you any more than they already do, and that is why you leave.

And this. You love Sakura enough not to let her lose herself for your own futile vengeance. Because you know in the end that killing Itachi will mean killing yourself too (because despite everything you still love him because he is your brother and what kind of person kills the people they love?) and you have enough of a heart not to rip hers out and tear it into pieces.

Her voice trembles when she speaks and you ignore the shudder that tries to run down your body. "Then lie to me," she says. "Tell me how much you love me."

Despite yourself, you laugh bitterly in your mind, laugh at how pathetic everything is. Did she relish causing both of you pain? Would it do her any good, you wonder, if you told her you love her (which you do) and leave her right after (which you will)? What was the point of giving her hope, to have her continue wanting you when she could be happy somewhere else, with someone else?

You know she knows this. You know she knows that no matter what she says, no matter what she does you will leave. The fact that she loves you and you love her is of no relevance. You will walk the path you have set for yourself, see it to the end no matter what it takes. You have told her this the moment you first met her, that you had an ambition you didn't intend to leave as a dream.

That there was a man who needed to be killed and you didn't care if you had to kill yourself just to kill him.

But she still hopes, regardless.

You don't reward her with an answer, nor with any kind of response, and when she grabs your arm with a tiny sweaty hand you don't make any move to stop her, nor to remove her from your person. You have always enjoyed her touch—one of the few things you still appreciate, her peach hued skin in stark contrast against yours, pale like snow—and now is of no exception.

She touches you and your mind is empty and your mind is blank and why can't you say anything back, when you are the one who always has the words, all the right things to say?

You turn to her and your eyes lock with hers. In that one single moment you try to convey every single emotion you find yourself feeling, all your desperation and regret and love and hope and pain, because you know you can never find the words to express how you feel, not you.

Yet she remains ignorantly blissfully unaware.

Perhaps you have perfected your stoic expression a little too well, that when you try to remove the mask hiding you from everyone else you find that it has already stuck to you like a second skin.

"If you could just say it, I could pretend. That all the time I spent chasing after you, wanting you, loving you, needing you was worth it. That we had something."

"That you could return even a fraction of what I felt for you."

It doesn't have to end this way, a baser part of you tempts, a part of you you can't control as easily as you'd like, a part of you that needs to shut up. She doesn't have to pretend you love her when you really do. You can leave with her. Run away and be happy.

You don't have to be alone. You can be selfish, just like you have always been.

Her grip on you tightens, as though agreeing with your thoughts. It is certainly an interesting proposition, if not overly simplistic. You will take her with you and she would come, no questions asked. You will take her and you would have a chance to make her happy the way you could not here.

You conveniently forget that you have no intention of returning to Konoha, that if you have no intention of ever coming back to settle down in the village and eat ramen and take orders from a certain idiot Hokage once your mission is over. You don't quite remember that she would be leaving behind her whole life to follow a man too absorbed with his own past, too focused on fighting his own demons to even concern himself with her wellbeing.

You will lie to her, but not to yourself. You know how you have set your priorities. Your clan before anything else, just as it has always been. You love her, but it comes second to the vengeance you bear like a cross. She will always be second best with you, because you are selfish and you will not rest until you get what you want the most—and that is not her.

But your mind cannot control your desires, and you can see yourself with her, in her, all around her hands held tight, kissing holding, indulging in activities you have forbidden yourself to think about.

You can see it all too clearly, so much that if you reach out you can touch her, feel her skin. The temptation becomes harder and harder to resist each moment you lose yourself in your (delusional) fantasies. One word and she is all yours.

You tell her to come and she would—a dog, a slave to you, a slave to her own pity.

Stop it you say, to her and to your mind. "You will have no future with me. I cannot love you as you want me to."

You speak in truths and lies. "Stop being so selfish," you tell her—but aren't you the one who's being selfish, daring to think what you are?

"It's not being selfish, Sasuke," she counters easily, saying your name, caressing each syllable with her voice, as if it were precious, and your heart constricts. "I just don't want you to be alone anymore."

"I don't want your pity," you bite back. I don't need you, you want to think, but your heart whimpers I want your love I want you by my side I want your heart I want all of you. Yet you can still find it in yourself to tell her, your tone dark and low, "I don't need your love."

You watch her break, shatter in front of you. She cries big, fat tears despite herself—you know this because you noticed the redness of her eyes, the deep flush on her cheeks, the almost mechanical wheezing of her breathing that has been present the moment you first looked at her tonight, but it is only now that she cannot hold it back. Her sobs fill the air around you, and you find it difficult to breathe.

It seems that all you can do, really, is hurt other people, even the woman you love.

This is for her own good, you tell yourself. She does not love me. She only pities me, and what I have become. She will be better off without me.

You are only a few meters away from you freedom, a few steps away from your destiny, a few moments from pursuing your vengeance once more—it all begins with this, with you leaving Konoha.

But there's one last thing you want to know. "You know you can't stop me."

Silence is what you expect, and it is what you receive in return.

"So why did you still come after me?"

You do not know what answer you are looking for, really. Because I love you? Because I want you to stay? Because I want to come with you? But whatever you had thought it would be, it is certainly not this. "Because I wanted to know if anything had changed."

She snorts.. It sounds suspiciously like a sniffle, but you don't want to investigate. "Apparently not. You're still so far away and you're never going to let me reach you."

You don't know what to say to that.

"I suppose I should just give up on you, huh?"

A part of you wants to tell her no you can't but it is all true. All you've ever been doing is push her away and it was well within reason for her to give up on you.

You never even gave her a chance.

But you don't want to hear this.

"Stop it. Annoying." The words leave your lips without thinking, and Sakura scoffs.

"Of course, Sasuke-kun," the endearment drips with sarcasm. "That's all I've even been to you, right? I can't believe I've been stupid for all these years, stupid enough to care for someone who only cared for himself—"

She stops because you flicker to stand behind her, and you whisper her name like a caress on the side of her neck. Her green eyes are wide open and you can see every thought running across her mind. What do you want? What are you trying to do? What are you trying to say?

Her hope.

Your fingers are heavy as stone as you raise them towards her nape, to press that one spot so vulnerable (as vulnerable as she is when it comes to you), and as her stubborn eyes roll to the back of her head you lower your lips to her ear, to make sure she would hear what you want to tell her—because despite everything, despite all the walls you have built between the two of you, despite all your hesitation and fears and doubts, this is the one thing you can tell her, the two words you are willing to offer.

"Thank you."

Thank you for trying.

Thank you for hoping.

Thank you for giving me a chance.