title: every genesis starts with a grove
summary: a moment of tentative peace; or, two seventeen-years-old war veterans sit under a camphor tree. — SS, canon-compliant. ish.
raw word count: 765
notes: this is a giftfic for luce; oh, the things i do for love.
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slow, like honey dripping down splayed fingers, noon bled its way into an after.
Sakura breathed deeply, drawing the valley in until she felt it land and pulse at the bottom of her lungs. war had left her greedy for green, for a green that she knew she could never return to. Konoha would never again feel as lush and as vivid as it did in her childhood, when she was yet to understand the full implications of being a shinobi.
A murderer, an indistinct voice echoed in her mind. she shook her head imperceptibly, and it ground to fine dust before disappearing altogether. somewhere along the way, ignoring things had become easy. sometimes, she wondered if it was a symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder. other times, she wondered if she truly cared.
war had left her greedy for a lot of things, in truth. one of them was a solid sense of self.
I slip so easily, these days, she mused. Go away to a quiet place. Like this. Like now.
she caught a stray strand of hair and twisted it back behind her ear, denying the wind its gentle play. sitting like this, shadowed by the heavy branches of the camphor, she felt, for the first time in months, corporeal. becoming a person after you had been a child soldier was a lot like learning to walk again: a difficult, lengthy, and despairingly isolating process.
Still, she thought, looking down at the man sleeping soundly on her lap, I suppose I cannot complain.
not that Sasuke could, mind you — if anyone had a right to complain, it was probably Naruto, who had had his fate thrust upon him in the cradle; or perhaps Hinata, sweet and terribly ill-lucked Hinata, whose losses always went unnoticed. Sasuke had lost his right to complain the moment he had driven a blade through Karin. lost it again the moment he expressed his intent to execute the unconscious Kage.
Sakura couldn't say when she had lost her right to complain, exactly, but that was only on account of being unable to pinpoint the specific moment: Was it when I decided to love him for life, or was it when I decided to love him for life despite everything he's done?
Either way, she thought, It takes a fuck-up to love a fuck-up.
like is always drawn to like — that kernel of truth had held true since her days on the playground. she brushed fine sable hair away from his eyes, thumbing the apple of his cheek as she went, and something inside her squeezed before yielding. I never thought I could grow to be so tender.
around them, the wind picked up and spun, sinking into the treetops with a sigh. the grove enveloped everything in its scent and she breathed in again, deeper this time, drinking the moment's bliss down to the last drop. contentment was a rare thing in their line of work.
"Something on your mind?" Sasuke murmured, opening up one eye to look at her.
she shook her head, shaking herself out of her reverie. "Not really." a pause. "Sorry. Did I wake you?"
"I wasn't sleeping," he said, blinking slowly. tentative, he reached up with his good arm, giving her forehead a light tap. "I just like watching you in your natural element."
"I wouldn't say that sitting under a tree is my 'natural element', precisely."
"No," he assented. he tapped her forehead again, and something like a smile washed over his features. "But serenity is."
Sakura begged to differ; she felt most at home in the trenches, most alive when there was blood caked under her fingernails — not her own, of course, never her own. she was Tsunade's heir, a peerage that came together with a certain legacy. for them, death was something that happened to others.
often, it was something that happened to their loved others, but —
"If you says so," she ceded, curating her tone. there was no point in arguing with him, not really. And besides, the moment is too still to ruin. she closed her eyes and leaned against the bark, content to simply exist for a while.
she hadn't gotten to enjoy much tranquility in the past six years.
"It's nice," Sasuke observed, almost as if on cue. "Being able to just...lounge."
"Mm. No paranoia over shadows..."
"...no worrying about knives."
she peeled an eye open, scrunching her face up in what could pass for a failed attempt at a wink. "No Naruto."
"No," he echoed, voice threatening to splinter fully into laughter. "Absolutely no Naruto."
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fin.