MIDNIGHT
There's approximately six more hours until the end and they've still got too much left to say.
Get the two here, Tsunade sighs, rubbing her forehead. Let's get it over with.
Sakura bounded up the four flights of stairs, taking them two at a time. She counted each step she took—there would be forty-eight. The thirtieth step, or the sixtieth stair, she knew had a funny crack in it that many, caught unaware, had tripped over. And then the wall alongside the left railing climbing to the second floor had been in need for a new coating of paint since last year.
Stopping suddenly as she arrived on the second floor, abrupt realization dawned on her: she knew this building, inside and out.
(She knew about the hidden balcony on the third floor; overhanging a beautiful stretch of the woods to the east of Konoha, where red Japanese maples, known for their stunning scarlet color, stood with their brilliant leaves dappling the stretch of sky overhead. Looking down from the balcony lay a wild, natural path—full of shrubs and animals, native to this land. In mid-spring, cracked robin's eggs weren't uncommon finds amidst the sea of leaves atop the white of the balcony floor.)
(And then there was the curiously empty room hidden in the back of the first floor—it was regularly swept and cleaned, yet Sakura had never seen a person grace its floors; which were, she found out after a month of questioning annoyed superiors, made from ancient oaks before the first Great Shinobi War. The old-style blackboard and plastic-covered windows gave the air of a classroom.)
(It was funny; the little interesting facts a bit of introversion could prompt.)
Crossing over to the Hokage's office, Sakura made to turn the brass doorknob (she doesn't bother with knocking anymore; this was Tsunade's office) when the door suddenly swung back. She stumbled forward, to Naruto's startled expression.
Oh, he said. You're here.
She had replied, yes, with a somewhat questioning tilt to her voice. Then,
Tsunade-sama?
Tsunade looks up from the stained wood of her desk:
(What would she say, whatwouldshesay, she had heard enough of pain, Sakura didn't want to suffer anymore, no more)
Blunt and to-the-point, Tsunade would never change—
Uchiha Sasuke has approximately six hours left until the end.
Oh, Sakura said, a little unsure of herself. She waited.
Her blood didn't run cold. Her brain didn't freeze. Her eyes didn't leak hot liquid.
He's going to die? Naruto asked; voice raw, yet cold—frozen.
Tsunade didn't bother with an answer. Just said: twelve o'clock, midnight. Uchiha Sasuke was assigned to die the first second of tomorrow.
Which had a poetic ring to it, really.
(First second of tomorrow.)
Six hours. It all seemed so, so close; but to what, Sakura was still unsure—the whole world had been waiting, shaking, breaking, when Uchiha Sasuke came home (home?) because it had been so long, too long, and there were too many blanks to fill in—and then, when she thought about it, it was really much too far away—
Sasuke, why are you always so, so far away?
Sakura tottered down the (four flights of) stairs, wobbling slightly in her favorite knee-high, leather boots that she was in love with, peeling off the black skin-tight gloves that had, what, thirteen runs and holes in, the ones that she kept under her pillow at night (these little things about Haruno Sakura, from boots to balconies to blanks— they were the biggest empty spaces in the book; the voids that Uchiha Sasuke would never see, never read, never, ever understand) and barely pausing to wave hello at Shikamaru on the third floor.
(Incidentally, his office was the one closest to that beautiful balcony; Sakura often wonders if he was the one to have had it built, but then realizes the floor of the balcony really wasn't too comfortable for one to lie on his back and gaze up at the clouds which were, actually, barely visible through the canopy of red leaves.)
It hurt to know that Sasuke would never know the real them.
(But it was okay, because all Sasuke ever knew was to destroy.)
Naruto, indubitably, was still standing in front of Tsunade's sake-stained desk, shouting out to the world that this can't happen and Tsunade-baa-chan and can't you do something about it and Sasuke can't die and whywhywhywhy. But Sakura had already given up. She'd given up a long time ago. Given up the hope of one day, Team Seven being reunited, because Sasuke was too far gone and the distance between them was miniscule but he would never make the effort to cross it.
So she might as well pay him a visit.
Hey, Sasuke, Sakura said quietly, kneeling in front of his cell. His back was still ramrod straight, head held high just hours before his death. Did you know you're going to die in six hours?
He looks up at her, but not really, because Sakura was sinking fast as well, and that is all the answer she needs.
Well, She pauses. What was there to say to a dead man? Good luck. I wish things were different.
Sasuke tilts his head down, acknowledging her words. Thank you, he answers, eerily reminiscent of a spring breeze, a cold moon— that night so many years ago.
Bye, Sakura whispers half-heartedly. What more was there to say? She left, size five footprints left imprinted in the dust.
It was just another night—just another night, where every sane person was enjoying at least eight hours of rest because tomorrow was a weekend—void of any symbolic dates. It wasn't October twelfth, which would have made so much more sense, nor was it anybody's birthday or deathday or anything like that.
A nameless night. Sakura hoped it would stay that way. She didn't want to have to remember this night every year.
Naruto didn't even watch, though Tsunade had promised a painless, bloodless death. He didn't even end up going to Sasuke's quiet, secluded funeral.
Sasuke had been allowed to inhale once in the deep, cool night air, before he turned away from Kakashi and Sakura, staring at, in, beyond Tsunade's eyes.
Ready? Tsunade murmurs, as if it matters: midnight was three seconds away, and so three second later the world would pause.
Three.
Nod.
Was is just her, or did Sakura catch the glimpse of something vaguely similiar to regret in his eyes?
Two.
Flash of hand signs.
One.
Sakura closes her eyes. She didn't want to see the lifeless, ghostly eyes of her teammate, whose soul would always fall under her wonders.
Zero.
The world ends for a moment, and all they can hear is a small, quiet sigh from the Uchiha that bridges the distance from this world to the next. It was like an insomniac finally succumbing to sleep: the last Uchiha finally, finally, finally ending.
The only word to describe it?
Peace.
His shriveled heart, mutated beyond belief, thumps once, and collapses.
It was inevitable, really; there were always those things they should keep dreaming and struggling for; but a happy future in the ninja world was beyond impossible for Team Seven.
All they could do, really, was keep moving forward, because some things were just unavoidable on this one way road.
fin
wowowow this was random... :/