Five By Five
By TwinEnigma
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto nor its characters and I do this for fun and no profit.
Sakura lies nearby.
She's raw and pink, her heart bloody and twisted up with all kinds of regrets and fears and self-reproach. She is burning alive with worry and anger. The scent of it stings like acid and guilt drops leaden in his gut.
He follows the long sloping curve of her hip with his eyes, trailing down her leg as she pulls it to rest over the other one. There's a subtly to the way her body's turned from him, one that speaks of anger and things he should have seen, but didn't because he's him and he's never been good at these things.
He knows her, or he thinks he did, but she's shattering that image he's clung to like glass and it's scary because he's beginning to realize he's not known the real her for a while.
The Sakura he clung to was twelve, going on thirteen, and every bit the lovestruck girl with eyes only for the dark and broody boy that was. She was cute, the eternal innocent, and he'd have carried a torch for this memory of her forever.
The real Sakura tore into that memory out of nowhere, a surprise attack, and the memory hangs tattered in sun-faded ribbons. It shouldn't hurt, but it does because he loved it. He has accepted the memory Sakura as truth for so long that to lose her is like being blindsided and he almost resents the real thing for destroying that image, almost.
The image was a falsity, built on memory and longing, a perfect Sakura from a better, happier time and whitewashed of all shortcomings. In his head, he'd woven her into a convincing genjutsu of a girl and when reality finally hit it, his instinct was to reject it.
He thinks perhaps he should be grateful to her for breaking down that illusion, but instead he's conflicted and angry. He loves her and is furious with her in the same heartbeat.
Sakura is no longer innocent and cute. She's a woman, outspoken and powerful in her bearing. There's weight in her eyes and in her step that wasn't there before, a burden he sensed the moment she appeared to him and shattered little genin Sakura to pieces. She's given up, even just a little, and it's not like her at all. She's changed and that twists him up inside, because it's not allowed. He wants to shake her and demand she stop this nonsense, but in some ways she's still recognizable, a Fury with talons and barbed words, and he knows she can chew him to pieces because she cares about him.
No, she loves him, impossibly, bogglingly, and he is unable to fully digest it as truth, because this isn't her – she's not supposed to have given up!
And now he finds his own conviction faltering, Itachi's words biting into his brain like poisoned knives, and he's at an utter loss.
It's maddening, torture and agony.
He follows her and here he is, standing over her. For the first time in ages, he can see her and she's flawed and human as he is. It's sobering, the truth, and he wants to tell her its okay, but it'd be a lie and he's beginning to accept that, too.
"What happened to you?" he asks.
She is burning hot like fire, like fury, like acid. "People change."
"That's not what I meant," he says and he buries his hands in his blond hair, the fingers twisting, tugging.
"The Sasuke we knew died three years ago," she says and it is bitter, the cold of one who has lost hope.
"He's still in there," he tells her, because he knows things she doesn't. She should trust him, let him take care of it – he can bring him back and things will go back to the way they were... before.
Even as he thinks it, the thought curdles in his gut.
"Don't," she says. "I love you, but I have my limits."
He opens his mouth to protest but she is faster, angrier, more raw and her leg whirls to catch him like an axe, smashing him to the ground and pinning him.
"I won't let him kill you," she bites out. "You are always protecting me. It's time I protect you."
"Please don't do this. I can bring him back," he begs. He doesn't want to contemplate what would happen if she were to disappear and he doesn't want his last memory of her to be of her being angry with him.
"I won't take no for an answer," she says and her eyes are burning, burning bright, consuming him in their conviction. "Is that clear?"
For a moment, he wonders if Sasuke should be frightened. This isn't the faded memory of the Sakura in sunshine, the little lovelorn girl. This Sakura is a whole different animal and she won't allow him to stop her, not this time. No, this time, she'll lead and he can't stop her. He could tie her up, but it won't help – she needs this, needs to do this, and she'll never forgive him if he stops her.
He understands, gods help him, he understands and he wishes he didn't.
"Is that clear?" she asks.
"Five-by-five," he says at last, and the words taste like ash.
AN: Five-by-five means "I understand you perfectly" in radio communications. In ways, Naruto does. In ways, he doesn't. He needed to get the image of Sakura-as-she-was out of his head if they're to move forward as a couple.