An expansion of a drabble I read years ago. After the Itachi incident in canon, but deviates in that Sasuke eventually returns in peace.
It's half past two in the morning when he stops by. She twirls a strand of pink hair around her index finger as the front door opens and shuts, his footsteps on the stairs are light, she knows that he makes that noise only for her benefit. He'd just came back from a tough mission, she guessed. She hadn't been keeping track of him lately, not like before. She didn't ask anyone where Sasuke was, never wondered what he was doing. She distanced herself from thinking about him as much as humanly possible, filling her days with work and study. It just made her feel sad; he had always made her feel sad. Sad from rejection and now sad from nostalgia. They were both older now, but the way they acted it didn't seem like it. All that had changed was the sutra involved. In Sakura's mind they were but children- though any progress she had accomplished with Naruto in that one year had been erased. It was like starting over from before square one even existed. He hadn't grown up in any meaningful way- sure, he knew more ways to kill a man than she could count, but he was still the little boy who had seen his entire family slaughtered before his very eyes. He hadn't put his scarred past behind him. He still had zero interest in healing the wounds that had tainted them all, the bad blood that ran through their veins. She had given up a long time ago. Trying to change who he had become and ultimately who he always wanted to be was a waste of effort and breath- yet she could never say no to him; not then, and not even now. If he told her to jump off of her balcony, she would actually contemplate it before remembering that Sasuke was not the only person in her life.
She knew that Sasuke never, ever thought about other people. Of course she did. That was the difference between them both, stark as daylight. Though she wasn't the same girl, that part of her had never changed. He was selfish, and she was not.
Haruno was the only person in this village who would still take him after all the things he'd done. He wasn't interested in forgiveness from any of them, and especially not in hers. He could admit that he had let them detain him- Kami knows he could kill any leaf nin faster than they could blink; but he could not admit that for once he was tired of fighting, of running and sick of killing for reasons he no longer felt in his crooked little shell of a heart. He was also nearly blind from using his sharingan, and he knew that he couldn't bring himself to trust anyone else but her. She had proven to him time and time again that she lacked the sheer will required to harm him- even with the cards placed in her favor. He trusted nothing about Sakura but her weakness. And so she was his medic, but even she could not stitch him back to 100%. Sasuke compensated well, as he always had. The only person who could beat him at accuracy was Tenten, though she would not look him straight in the eye any more.
He asked himself every time he went to the pink-haired medic: Why did he not kill her? He knew that if Kakashi hadn't been there then Haruno would be bones in the earth. He'd had so many opportunities to rid himself of her for good. She was annoying, she was weak, and most of she was his past- and thus she was useless.
And now he was letting himself into her home on a regular basis.
They didn't speak, not even once. Never bringing up the painful, useless things that had long been buried. It worked well for both of them. She was wise enough never to ask him; in fact, not even the shadow of a question existed on her placid face. They simply melted and forgot. It was fine by him- he'd done more than enough mulling over events long done.
When they were younger she'd stick to him like glue. Then they were separated for years, by both distance and motivations. She became a healer, and in turn he became a killer. She was no stranger to death. She knew that there was blood on her hands and she regretted nothing, but where she killed to protect what she loved he killed to further his own goals. She didn't think she'd live to see the day he was brought in, barely scraped, by the blonde she'd known for half her life- the half that mattered. She thought all that would remain of him would be a perfect body and a twisted heart, no longer beating. She didn't think she'd live to hear him ask where she was staying now as he looked past her blankly, eyes unfocused and blank. Maybe she had been half right, he possessed a dead man's soul.
The first time he'd shown up, she thought he was there to finish the job. Instead he pushed her down into the mattress. She never believed it would happen, but she didn't even want it to any more. She just gave in. It became something they did, a new addition to her life that held no great significance. No more than the laundry or eating breakfast or going to work. He wanted it, and she was ready to give it away. She hadn't been with any man in the long years since Sasuke had left, she never felt the desire to be cherished. Nobody else's feel mattered to her and not even his did now. No longer did she live for the sake of herself, what she could provide for others she did. What she once had inside her had been stolen away, the flame of love and life and laughter. Slowly at first, and then all at once. A flicker then a puff and she was smoke in the air, wafting about aimlessly, uncapturable, untouchable.
He didn't know what compelled him to do that only a few days after they'd released him. He was still under tight surveillance. Maybe he wanted to throw off the ANBU watching him, give them a little show, but he knew that hadn't been running through his mind when he popped so easily into her bedroom. Her window barely made a creak. He saw the way she looked at him, frozen with something akin to almost-fear, but half of her was accepting, pliable. Resigned. He knew that she wasn't thinking of the ANBU outside, and she looked so ready to have her life ripped away from her. He could have slit her throat and she wouldn't flinch. It was as if she was expecting him. It amused Sasuke's more sadistic tendencies, but he never intended to kill her. Maybe he was just in need of a warm bed that night, but why he continued to come in the weeks, the months after- it was hard to comprehend. They never met outside her home. Never once had he even stayed until daybreak. She never asked any questions, never even smiled at him. When he arrived she looked just as empty as he did.
Maybe that was why. They were now only hollow versions of who they once were. She lost the sparkle in her eyes long ago, and he knew that he was the reason behind it. Sasuke sometimes caught her gaze in the silence of that bedroom, illuminated by moonlight; sometimes she looked as if she saw through him, to a window in the past; a past where love meant picking daisies, doing your hair nicely and polishing your forehead protector. Things were simple, and she could blush and croon and cry all she wanted. He knew he had ruined her dreams, her youth and ultimately her life in one fell swoop when he abandoned them all that night so long ago. He had abandoned himself too.
At the time he didn't know anything at all. He thought he understood killing and hurting and loneliness- but no, he hadn't experienced anything until he became Orochimaru's man. He didn't know what cutting somebody open and letting them bleed out felt like before then, and then he forgot what humanity was. In that time he learned more than anyone could imagine and lost everything imaginable. He shut off his emotions, and found that not feeling remorse or regret was in itself a debilitating loss, but he didn't understand how to flip them back on. The way he lived was not living at all. Sasuke knew that he was a broken thing, and only somebody as broken as he could ever stay with him. The crevices and cracks and hollows within Sakura, he knew them well. He had put them all there. Somehow, he understood her in a way he had never understood himself.
She gets up in the morning, alone once again. She knows that he didn't sleep at all after they were done, she was aware of his piercing gaze on her bare skin all night. She never, ever falls asleep on the nights he visits. She doesn't sleep a lot period. After his pulse slows and chakra dims she just stares straight ahead, sometimes out the window and sometimes at the ceiling. Always, Sakura goes through the memories, slowly, relishing them. They are the picture book of crayon-lined sketches she has read over and over and over. Sometimes she closes her eyes and pretends that they're still young and happy, as happy as they could've been, and not ancient veterans of death. She is only 21, but she feels as though her life has already ended- so she tries to forget. They're making love, not just having sex. He'll be home for dinner, not just sneaking around. He cares about her, not just about her willingness.
She breaks the plate compulsively in her hands, disgusted and drained out by the lies that play out in her mind. A child. Only a child could think that way. Sakura would have cried, but Haruno has run out of tears. It's not that she's strong, it's that so much pain has filled her up that any more just spills away onto the floor; like the broken bits of ceramic surrounding her pink slippered feet.
A while later he's at her door again, limping this time. He's bleeding heavily through the hasty wrappings he applied. They were ambushed and caught by a force near double their own. The others are in the hospital, either waiting... or clinging onto the lives they have to live. He doesn't care about waiting, about life, he just hopes that she's home. Sasuke doesn't just barge in right away. Even knowing it's unlocked he doesn't want to invite himself. Not like how he always has, instead he just coughs because he knows she's awake. The pain from the cuts is nothing compared to the fire that has licked at his skin, that still nips at him during restless nights. Even this blood is nothing compared to his scars, hidden underneath thin clothing. Sakura has seen them, but she never cared. She never traced him with her fingertips as if she wanted to remember anything about him. She didn't love him.
He waits and waits until he hears the faintest hint of footsteps growing closer. She opens the door for him for the first time since their business began. She's wearing a pink robe, freshly showered after a long shift at the hospital. He supposes if things were so dire they'd have called her in long ago. He lets out a breath he didn't even know he was holding, for comrades he believed he didn't care about. She catches his uninjured right arm and leads him inside, to the first-level floor he had never noticed before.
The living room is small, compact, he spies a shadowed bookcase tucked in the corner, fitted to the brim with medical textbooks. The place is sterile, lacking in the feel of a true home. To Haruno it is just a place to eat, sleep and sit around waiting for work and him. The couch is uncreased, it looks brand new, as if she has never used it before and just bought it for show. She lets him go there and sits in front of him, perched on the glass table just beginning to show signs of dust, moving over the vase of artificial flowers that would never wilt on her. Her fingers are slim and nimble, forever feather-light.
He understands. Acutely, in that moment, on the trembling leaves of the orchids. He knows exactly why he is here, and why he has always come here when the nightmares become too real to bear. He reaches for the petals, expecting them to crumble under his fingertips because he ruins whatever he touches- but they don't, they only quiver and spring back up. Sasuke realizes that he too has something that refuses to wilt no matter what happens to it.
He knows that she is looking at him, confused by his actions, and he turns to face her as she strips off his bloodstained clothing. In her eyes he catches something other than emptiness for the first time since he had come back to Konoha. She undos the messy bandaging under his shirt, brows knitting together in concentration. He sees a shadow of who she used to be, the free, kind girl he left behind. But she never truly died either, she was only replaced for a time. Sasuke knows why he is here when he should be in the hospital. It is because he no longer has a life to cling too, she is his life, now. That is why he has only been here, why he has barely spoken a word to Naruto, and why he hasn't killed her yet. She used to be the emblem of all that was wrong with him; he hated her spirit and her easy love- everything he wanted she already had. He hated her, and yet...
He was wrong about her. He didn't succeed in destroying her because of all the unquestionable loyalty she gave to him. All that thoughtless trust; and none of it given while expecting anything in return. She was warped, but the pieces of her were still there to be reassembled, to be found. She was the unshakable proof that not everything good in his life had been irrevocably ended. Sakura and Haruno were the two halves of one whole, the positive had just been drowned out by the negative for a time. He knew her, knew her cracks and crevices and perhaps he knew how to fix them too. Create, instead of end.
The first words are spoken from her lips: "You fucking moron."
And slowly, slowly, slowly, they begin to fix their broken selves.