a/n: It's my first time writing Naruto in a...long time. Be kind, please? (:
warnings: Spoilers for recent manga chapters.
disclaimer: Um. No.
maps
wait; they don't love you like I love you.
She looks for him in between the lines of all the awful things he does. She tries to find him in the traces of blood, in the rumors of a monster, but no matter how hard she looks, she can't recognize Sasuke. Sakura hardens her resolve and sharpens her kunai, and she tells herself that it has to be him doing these things. She tells herself that he's allowed himself to be consumed by rage and grief. She tells herself that she doesn't love him anymore—no, she loves Naruto, the boy who's always stuck by her side, who would break all his bones for her. She tells herself that, for the good of the village, she'll kill him.
Everything she tells herself is a lie.
Sakura loves him. She knows that he's doing those things, but if he saw her—if he looked at her—if he saw that even she, the weakest link on the team, would risk killing him...She reminds herself that he's no longer the little boy who whispered 'thank you'. He's Orochimaru's student. He's Itachi's little brother. She ignites a fire in her soul and tells herself that she hates him. That's a lie, too, but it's one she repeats so many times she believes in it.
She goes to kill him and tells herself that the person he was is gone. Sasuke-kun no longer exists; the shell he left behind is occupied by a stranger, by a ghost, by an S-rank missing-nin spoken of as Uchiha Sasuke. He is no longer his own. He is his brother's legacy. She builds herself around that belief—she is faster and stronger and better than was before. Killing him might hurt, but it'll only stop him from killing the other people she loves. She can do it. She can push the steel through his stomach, and she can watch him cough up blood that isn't quite as red as the Sharingan, and she can mourn the boy she used to know, not the monster dying before her eyes.
She goes to kill him, and it isn't until she feels the cold press of metal against the small of her back that she realizes that she is the lie.