She was sitting on the couch, with a blanket covering her legs and a voluminous medical journal in her lap. Sakura had been poring over its pages for so long her back hurt and her eyes stung, scribbling annotations here and there. Most of her evenings ended like this nowadays, especially with the dreary weather. Even now she could hear the rain pattering against her window.
Naruto had invited her to dinner a couple of times, but she had declined. She did not want to intrude upon the newlyweds. Naruto and Hinata deserved some time for themselves. And Sakura thought she deserved some time for herself. After all, she now spent most of her days working at the Konoha hospital. Evenings were all she had to devote entirely to herself. To not thinking about Sasuke.
Sakura shook her head with a bitter smile, returning to her book. Two years had passed since she had last seen him, after the war, and she still refused to think about him. Someday she would gather the strength to summon her memories of him. But not today.
She closed the book and pushed the blanket away to stand. She went to the kitchen to cook dinner. Learning to cook was one of the few things she took pride in. Having the time to do it had helped a great deal, along with her mother's parting gift when she had moved into her new apartment – her recipe book. Living alone had not turned out half as bad as Sakura had imagined.
She grabbed a bag of rice and just as she was about to open it she heard the window open in the living room. Sakura sighed and stepped into the room, ready to give Naruto a mouthful for using the window instead of the door again, but it was not Naruto standing in the middle of her living room, dripping rain water all over the tatami. It was Sasuke.
The bag of rice fell on the floor with a thud. Sakura gaped while he stared back at her impassively, his eyes betraying nothing. Hers, however, betrayed everything as they filled with tears.
"Sasuke-kun," she managed to say, blinking them back in an attempt to regain her composure. "You're back."
He dropped his traveling cloak and bag in a corner and removed his sandals. His movements were slow, weariness etched on his figure, pale in the light. The dark circles under his eyes looked like bruises and there were lines on his skin that she had not noticed before, even though his dark hair obscured part of his face. Had he found what he was looking for out there, she wondered as her eyes followed the dark traces of water on the tatami.
"Is it alright if I take a bath?" he asked, his voice raspier than she remembered, too. She wondered how long it had been since he had last talked to someone.
"I'll go prepare it for you," she said instead, still in a daze.
Was he back for good this time? Sakura was too afraid of his answer to ask, so she said nothing. Neither did Sasuke, aside from a small 'thanks' when she handed him a towel, telling him the bath was ready.
Sakura picked up the bag of rice she had dropped earlier and returned to the kitchen, still refusing to think about what his return meant. She went about her business absentmindedly. This was not how she had envisioned cooking for two would be. Apprehension should have had no place in her heart and she berated herself for feeling that instead of joy. What was there to be afraid of, after all? Disappointment, a small voice said in her head. Abandonment.
She turned on the rice cooker and sat in a chair, propping her chin with one hand. Her mind felt numb and a dull ache throbbed in her chest – the pain of a heart broken one too many times. Her arms felt heavy as she returned to her task, chopping the tuna, slicing the tomatoes and, finally, making the rice balls.
By the time she finished arranging the food on a plate, Sakura realized she could no longer hear any sound from the bathroom. No water running, no splashing. She rushed to the living room, terrified by the thought that this had all been a dream, a hallucination. She stopped in the doorway, her heart nearly skipping a beat.
Sasuke lay on the couch, dressed in a dry shirt and a pair of slacks, sleeping on his side with one arm under his head. Sakura's vision blurred, eyes swimming in tears. She pattered across the room to the couch and quietly knelt beside it, shoulders shaking as she stifled a sob.
It hurt to look at him and see him like this, with his taut expression softened in the peacefulness of sleep, with his cheeks still slightly flushed from the hot bath and his hair in damp disarray. It hurt to see that Sasuke looked more human when at his most vulnerable. And it hurt that she had allowed herself to dwell so much on her worries that she had not heard him exit the bathroom.
Sakura raised her gaze from the hands she had been wringing in her lap only to meet Sasuke's dark eyes watching her. A tear ran down her cheek when she blinked in surprise. Sasuke wiped it gently with his thumb.
"Dinner is ready," she blurted out, flustered.
They ate in silence, Sakura struggling with a rice ball despite her lack of appetite. Sasuke ate his fill, color slowly returning to his face. After washing it all down with a cup of steaming tea, he leaned back against the chair, staring into space. Sakura put her unfinished rice ball on the plate and folded her hands in her lap in an attempt to hide their trembling. She swallowed the lump in her throat.
"Are you back for good?" she asked, her voice quivering.
Sasuke raised his eyes to look at her, thoughtful, as if weighing her question. He considered her for a while, apparently unaware of how uncomfortable he was making her. However much time Sakura had devoted to hardening her heart, to bracing herself for the answer she dreaded and despite all the times she had vowed to never let her expectations grow again, all the strength in the world could not have protected her from the small shake of his head. It shattered her.
How could a person be so feeble as to be obliterated in a heartbeat by such a small gesture? Sakura smiled bitterly, suddenly feeling empty and numb. Pain would have been better. Anger, even. But she found herself unable to summon even an ounce of feeling into her shriveling heart.
"Why have you come, then?" she heard herself ask before the thought had even formed in her mind.
She did not look at him, she could not. Her body seemed unwilling to obey her. She waited for an answer for minutes which felt like ages. The void in her heart stretched along with the silence, swallowing all until nothing was left. Sakura's muscles twitched as she willed herself to get up and leave, but then Sasuke's answer came, in a steady, somehow gentle voice.
"To ask you to marry me."
His words hung in the air. Rain pattered against the window. Sakura halted, her mouth slightly open. She looked at him then, wondering if she had heard him right. He gazed back at her as if he had just stated it was raining outside and could not understand why she seemed bewildered.
"I said I would come back to you, didn't I?" he added when Sakura still did not make a move.
Before she knew it, his arms were pulling her to his chest. She broke down in his embrace.
Two days later, they got married in a small, private ceremony. Sasuke left again the day after. This time, Sakura held back her tears, knowing he would return to her. Months usually passed before he did, though, time and time again, always weary and taciturn, only to leave once more within the same week. Sometimes, in the lonely evenings, Sakura wondered if he would ever find what he was looking for and settle down into a normal life, but that was the one question she never dared ask him. She had learned that sometimes to love is to let go.
Sasuke missed the birth of their daughter, the one time in their marriage he truly made her sad and bitter over his choice of lifestyle. However, he made up for it in his own way, she noticed, by returning home more frequently than before. In a way, Sarada seemed the perfect ending to all those years of heartbreak. Yet Sakura knew, watching her daughter grow up, that in some endings, there is also a new beginning.