AN: This is utterly random. I'm not trying to show that Sasuke's an angel now, simply that he's back, and he is still human so he still feels. And with Sakura, not that she is extremely fragile but that she had grown empty overtime, dead to Sasuke.
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Back
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"Sakura?"
It's a question. It's a question that holds more emotion than the boy has evereverever said before, and it's for a good reason.
The girl he sees is scarcely what he remembers her as. She's dead—it doesn't matter if her heart is still beating. Her eyes, the eyes that once held more life than he ever felt, were so dead. They were hollow, empty.
He can't believe it—he won't believe it. This isn't Sakura, he tells himself. This is someone else, not the Sakura who confessed her love for him so many times.
She tries to hide her shock, tries to show him that she is stronger now, that she does not need him. But she realizes, that she is so dead, that it does not matter if she is stronger, she is still just as useless as when he left. "Sasuke-kun," Her voice is hoarse, from what neither know. She gets quiets on the –kun, not able to break the habit.
She notices that he is not hiding, that he is standing in the open. He has no weapons that she can see, and is wearing normal clothes.
He can't help but to reach his hand out to touch her. It's under his touch, and his touch only, that she crumples.
At first he wants to pull back, pull away from her. But he realizes that he is doing something that has been very much delayed. Color, for what has probably been the first time in months, maybe years, returns to her face.
Even though he has not seen her for so long, he can't help but believe she may be coming back. Coming back to her old self, not whoever she was pretending to be.
Somewhere, beneath the sobs, he can make out her words. "It can't be, It can't be," like a mantra.
She looks up at him, eyes expecting him to vanish into thin air, but he doesn't, because maybe he's finally learned his answer or maybe he just doesn't have anywhere left to go. Whatever the reason, he responds to her mantra.
"I'm back, Sakura."
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