To Die A Hero
Description: SasuSaku, NaruHina. Because nobody told you dreams end, did they?
Disclaimer: Naruto is Kishimoto's.
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It's night.
There's a simplicity that comes over the world when darkness shrouds the land, when stars wink silently against a blue-black emptiness, when light and truth hide beneath shadows and ambiguity.
And here she is, standing outside, all alone. The night's the same as it always is. Night is deceivingly simple, she thinks. Because there's nowhere to hide a lie in an already pitch-black space. There's nothing to run from if you can't see anything. There's nothing to fear, if you're not scared of shadows.
She thinks these things as she walks out the gates. Memories, unbidden yet always welcome, spring forth to the forefront of her mind, bringing a soft, faint smile to her lips. She sees Naruto complaining loudly to Kakashi-sensei, while Sasuke pointedly ignores their chatter.
She used to enjoy watching from behind them.
Now, it makes her want to scream.
But it's too quiet, too nostalgaic, too simple to scream into the nothingness of the evening, and so she doesn't. Instead, she looks down at the cobblestone path leading out of Konoha. She's walked this road a thousand times, maybe more, but the stones beneath her sandals are still strong. They don't wear away after years of use, after years of being trod upon, of being beaten by the wind and battered by dirt and debris. The cobblestones are small, but strong.
She wishes she could say the same for herself.
Because even after years of training, of years of devoting herself to that one cause - to be better, to be their equal, to bring him home - even after years of hard work and grueling practice and tears and cuts and broken bones and broken hearts, she's still not strong. Nowhere near what she needs to be.
She stops by that all-familiar bench. She's come here so often lately. After what happened here - her words, his words, a jab of pain, and nothing - she used to avoid this spot like the plague. It was a reminder of everything she had been: weak, useless, hopeless, naiive. Even being near it always brought a sense of unease, of restlessness, and she always hurried past this spot if she could manage it. As if even being near it would make some of her old self rise up again, some of that former weakness rub off on her.
But here she is, after years of avoiding this place. This cracked placeholder, this broken piece of her past, of who she used to be, a reminder of all her past failures and current shortcomings.
After a brief hesitation, Sakura sits down. The stone is cold against the bare skin exposed from her shorts and skirt. She shivers involuntarily. The trees on either side of the stone road rustle faintly as a wind picks up, blowing her pink tresses into her face. She brushes them aside, tucks them behind her ears, and lets out a sigh.
What is she doing here, anyway?
It isn't as if she has any particular reason to be out right now. She could be at the hospital, tending to those in need of her healing skills; she could be training, honing, sharpening herself, so that maybe she could match her boys someday; she could be at home, getting ready for bed, preparing herself for another day as a kunoichi.
But she isn't. She's here, at night, with wind kissing her cheeks and memories haunting her mind.
If he goes, I'll tell the Hokage. Stupid.
If he goes, I can stop him. Stupid.
If he goes, I'll go with him. So stupid.
How could she have been so naiive, so gullibly hopeful? How could she have believed she was capable of any of those things?
She looks up at the stars. They seem so far away. They ARE so far away. Just like the past that she would never be able to reclaim, like all those memories she and her team had missed out on. Like all those empty hopes and dreams they'd all voiced when they'd first become a team, before everything had become so impossibly complex. The bitterness that she can never escape, her hatred of herself, the disgust with which she looks upon her own inability to do something, is much closer, much more real to her, than those tendrils of light reflected by stars that had long since ceased to give off any real brightness.
She closes her eyes, and remembers those old voiced hopes.
She used to dream.
Silly things, little girl dreams. Dreams of princesses and knights in shining armor and rainbows and castles and love that conquers all. But she's a kunoichi. A different kind of princess, crowned with a headband, a kunoichi is her own knight, only without the shining armor; there are no rainbows, there are no castles, and love doesn't - can't - exist. Being a kunoichi means ruling a different kind of kingdom, one of battle and blood, of quick thinking and even quicker reflexes. This kind of princess doesn't cry when she gets hurt, doesn't show her tears to her subjects, doesn't negotiate treaties - she bleeds, she hides behind a mask of steeliness, and she kills on sight, by instinct, with no regrets. There's no room for feelings, for things that can cloud her judgement, for things that might make her go weak in the knees. There's no time for being a damsel-in-distress in a kunoichi's line of work. She kills, and moves on, doesn't think about life or death or fear - she just exists, survives, does as she's told to do. She is a weapon, not a human.
Sakura reopens her eyes, stares down at her pale skin, looks with disdain upon her scrawny little body that is so powerful yet so weak at the same time.
Ever since that night, she hasn't had dreams.
She's had rest, of course - the desperate kind, like the type she used to get after staying up late into the early morning studying for Academy exams. The dead-tired, asleep-before-you-hit-the-pillow kind, the kind where your brain's too tired to come up with dreams to entertain you with, so just gives you a few precious hours of blankness instead, of not having to care about or feel anything.
But she hasn't had dreams since then. Not since Sasuke left her with a broken heart, out cold, on this bench, all alone, with nothing but her own regret and weakness to remember him by.
But in a twisted way, it makes sense. Because her old dreams were like fool's gold: pretty, but worthless. Foolish ideas chased by a naiive mind before reality sets in. The workings of a child's heart, of a simplistic view of the world. The wistful wishes of a young girl blinded by an impossible love. Again: pretty, but worth nothing.
Kind of like her.
Exactly like her.
She feels fatigue clawing at her body. Even being here for these few minutes has been so mentally taxing, so heartbreakingly painful, that she's ready to cave, ready to curl up and give in again to the bliss of dreamless sleep, of uncaring limbo. But she's not ready. Not yet.
There's a reason she's here tonight, even if she doesn't know what it is.
The wind calms down, and by now her skin and the bench beneath it are both cold to the touch. She's definitely freezing, but she's not about to get up and leave. Green eyes squint up at the moon, almost accusingly.
It's not fair, she thinks vehemently. It's not fair!
She's been through a lot, too. Sasuke and Naruto, they've both lost their families. But she's lost them, and they're her family, too, and doesn't that count for something? Yes, it has to, otherwise she wouldn't feel the pain she does sometimes when she's made aware of her loneliness by other teams, by other couples, by groups of friends laughing together as they walk past her. She's all alone, even if Naruto's with her sometimes. She can laugh with him, but he's so far ahead of her, so far beyond her, that laughter seems empty, hollow. She's nowhere near him or Sasuke. She absolutely longs to be, desperately needs to be, with them, at their level, equal to them, but she isn't. It's the cruelty of life that holds her back, the unluckiness of her own limitations, of her own human faults and weaknesses, that keep her from pursuing them. If she had it her way, she'd be right there with them, walking hand-in-hand with them, but she isn't. It can't happen that way, not with how she is now, and even if she works herself to the best she can be, even if she struggles and trains, endures brutal punches and takes shattering hits, spars until her knuckles bleed, until her calluses become so painful they numb themselves, until every last human, frail little flaw has been erased from her (which is impossible, she knows), she would still be miles away from them.
Her boys, they're capable of so much.
And she isn't.
She's a kunoichi. She does her best not to cry for being alone, out in the simple night that holds only the stark truth, in the pale moonlight that doesn't lie to her. But since she's weak, and since she's got limits, and because she's so goddamn HUMAN, she feels tears welling in her eyes.
She stands abruptly, hops off the bench as if suddenly burned by the cold stone, wipes her tears away furiously, and whips around, walking briskly back towards Konoha's front gates. Her sandals slap against the cobblestone pathway, clacking loudly as she storms along, impossibly angry at herself and her own weakness, impediments created by just being who she is, hopelessly lost and confused.
But she knows one thing for sure.
She's a kunoichi, and she'll see this damned mission through to the end, even though it's a broken dream, shattered porcelain that can never fit quite right again.
She'll bring Sasuke home, even if it kills her.
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A/N: Short, but melodramatic. Not sure whether to make this a one-shot series, or pick up where I left off with it... We'll see.
Thanks for reading, and review, please!