Author's Note: umm...yeah...i should probably update my other stories...hehe...life has been a little...off recently. As it is, this story will make me feel guilty, and i might go back to the others later.
I have no idea what this is. I started it at midnight, and finished it a week later when i was super tired and not thinking straight. It might develop into something...or a series of oneshots or drabbles or something...depending on my sleeping...
Disclaimer: psh...i don't have the time to own naruto. stupid history.
listening to: Let Love In (The Goo Goo Dolls)
The view would have been breathtaking. Looking over the rolling waves some fifty feet below, that she knows without having to look crashed unto the rocks. The sun's rays are peaking over the horizon, reflecting slightly over the moving water. She watches as the sky in front of her is slowly painted with pastels in pinks and oranges while the indigo of the night slowly fades behind her.
"Sakura,"
She smiles faintly at the irony as she continued to watch as the sun's light reaches its long, frail fingers out to her, trying to grasp what is no longer theirs. If she knew how to, she would laugh at the thought of how much she had wanted this but a few years ago. As it is, the two stand there, lost in thoughts of the other.
When she moves, pink tresses swish lightly across her hollow cheeks. She turns her head slowly, as if only to observe the tree on the other hill that was already blooming with spring buds.
"Don't."
His sharp words cut through stillness, and her head snaps quickly back to its former position. Instead of crying like she would have done many years ago, her lips only turned upward at the tone, for it is much kinder than any he has used before.
Yet she ignores the reason behind his gentleness, and takes another step towards the edge.
"You can't stop me, Sasuke-kun."
Her voice is soft, but firm. The suffix added only out of habit. She listens as he walks closer, keeping her eyes on the horizon, where the sun is just cresting the edge of the water. The ground before her is sprinkled in drops of sunlight, and her step closer had brought her toes to the edge of the glow.
"How do you know?"
His voice is closer now, barely above a whisper. The statement holds traces of cockiness that has yet to disappear, but a clearer, scarcely hidden ambiance of worry radiates from his body and she knows that the words are spoken as much to defy her as they were to reassure himself.
But he couldn't save her. There was nothing
-all too much-
left to save, and it was all his fault.
"It's your fault you know."
She hears him let out a quiet breath of air, but in mockery or regret she knows not. But instead of anger or denial as she expects, he only looks at her.
"Will you marry me?"
It is seemingly out of the blue, and had it been anyone else, she wouldn't have believed it. But she does, and her expression changes as she starts to laugh a laugh that would send shivers up a spine and does not reach her soul. Her cruel laugh continues for a few moments, and then, just like that, she turns around to face him, traces of the laughter surrounding her mouth, but he could see it does not reach her eyes.
Slowly, she takes in the man before her. He had not changed in the five years they had been apart. She knows from his medical records that he is much too thin, and hasn't gotten enough sun, but to see the hollowness in his cheeks and to watch the light make his already pale skin transparent was almost too much to bear.
"Why?"
Because she knows that she looks worse.
So many things have happened in the five years he has been away. Too many to count really, yet she remembers them all. Some of them involve him; others were out of her control. They just…piled up until it was too much.
"Why not?"
No explanation, no apology, no begging. Yet in a twisted, Uchiha Sasuke way, it makes sense. He was never one to give answers or apologize for previous actions. His answers have always been short, one worded, daggers that pierce her soul with each issue.
'Would you like to go on a date Sasuke-kun?'
'We could study together for the history test coming up…'
'The Halloween dance is tomorrow and I was wondering if you wanted to go?'
"No."
In a way it is childish, but she doesn't care. She wants to watch the little bit of hope that glimmers in his eyes die away as hers had over the past five years. It wouldn't make up for it, but she wants to deny him something, like she had never done and he has once too often; just an ounce of payment before she leaves.
As she turns around, green eyes once again look out to sea, she feels, more than hears him slowly step up behind her. It was a silly thing really, something she had picked up when her crush on him was still in full force. Before, it had been a shining beacon, a warning to turn on the charm in the hopes that today would be the day Uchiha Sasuke recognizes her existence. Who would have thought that the one time she does not wish-
-hopes for way too much-
-to feel his presence, does not turn and smile at him, is the time he wants her the most.
He listens, knowing far too well and yet hoping as he never had before, for something in her tone from the old Sakura. There is none. His grasp on faith slips a little more.
"Sakura."
He would like to think that this one word conveys all he cannot say. It is a lie (for he knows all too well that all emotion left his voice long ago), but he deludes himself anyway. Delusion of any sort has always been his forte.
"I loved you, you know."
She doesn't look at him, and he doesn't expect her to. Her voice is not as passionate as it had been before, as if only speaking of the soft chirping of crickets. He remembers how she used to talk about things like that, once. He hopes that she will do it again someday, futile though it is. Hoping was useless to people like him. But she…she had been able to.
He knows she loved him. He had pretended (he knew that too) that he thought it was just a crush, and that she would get over it.
How wrong he has been. Wrong. Like how they are watching the sun rise, and yet falling into a sunset. Like how the waves are crashing below, like they have done before, and will undoubtedly do again, mocking the people above them, who were-
-and still are-
-bound together in the irreversibly tangled web of faulted love and in the steel hands of fate. Neither of which he believes in. Yet, he does not admit to knowing. It is not because he dislikes emotional things, or letting people know what he knows. It is because he knows she knows that he knew, and yet did nothing. Had he been anyone else, he would be overwhelmed by guilt, but time has dimmed his emotions, until the only thing he knows is anger.
But he will try, for her sake.
"So try again."
Looking at him, she finds he is not looking at her, but out at sea. At the waves who have not moved since the beginning of time. The wind is blowing slightly, and she looks on in wonder strands of his once gorgeous dark hair wave untamed in front of his face. His hands are in his pockets, but she knows they are not clenched.
She knows that his order (Uchiha do not request) is as much for her as it is for him. It is an order, as well as a promise: a promise that he will search his feelings if she does the same, and maybe they will come out with something tangible, something more than hope. He is telling her that, together, they will face the difficulties of life in this world, slowly climbing out of the dark abyss they dug, giving a leg up and offering a hand when needed. There or not, wanted or not, they would help the other start again.
She need only say okay.
end