Author's Notes: I burst into tears when I see or hear the word "Sasuke."

Goddamnit, WHY DO YOU HAVE TO BE SO HOT AND MESSED UP AT THE SAME TIME?! AND SUIGESTTSSSUUUUU. (Karin can die for all that I care.) BUT SASUKEEEEEEEEEEEEEE—! (… now that I think about it, Juugo can die, too.)

Chapter 349 was so sexy.

Without Karin, of course.

(I want Sasuke's shoes. They were so hot.)

And, speaking of shoes, my math teacher's shoes are like boats.

BE NOT AFRAID.
THE LOVED BIRDS—
(your choice of term is incorrect.)

"Sakura," he says passively, frowning at her pleading face. "Face it. Leave me alone." She shakes her head, pink hair falling into her eyes. "Let it go." She frowns and tightens her grip on his sleeve.

"Sakura." No, and he sighs, already knowing her answer. "Sakura. You know the answer. I know the answer. I will not go back to Konohagakure until I avenge my family." What family? Your family is in Konoha. "The ghosts—"

"What ghosts?" she shouts, speaking for the first time. "What ghosts? Ghosts?"

The same Sakura, always filled to the top with emotion. She is halfway on the road to hysteria. Does that girl want to die? He knows that she knows that she is breaking about half of the rules she has followed for God-knows how long. (The rules he had cast away when he stepped out of the village.)

"The ghosts," he answers in that same apathetic tone, "of my family. The ghosts that long for revenge. My ghosts. The ghost of my father and my mother and the rest of my goddamn family. Why won't you understand—"

"What ghosts?" she says again, fury flashing in her eyes. "You know that I know that every-fucking-body-else that there are no ghosts." She shakes her head again. "Why won't you understand?" (Naruto rubs off of everyone he knows.) And something inside of him snaps.

"What does someone like you know about ghosts?" he says in a low tone. She flinches. "What does someone who lived such a soft life know about ghosts?" (The red wheels of the sharingan are spinning by now.) "You've never lost anyone important! You've never seen your loved ones killed in front of your eyes! The ghosts, Sakura, the goddamn, son-of-a-bitch ghosts won't leave me alone, and so why don't you join them in pestering me—"

"What ghosts?" She is looking deep into his eyes, and he sees that it is not the pale sea-foam green it has always been. They are chipped emeralds, cutting wounds into his skin.

By then, he is so annoyed with his former teammate that the Heaven Seal is starting to bother him.

"The only ghosts I know," she continues, her eyes not straying from their path, "are the ones who died in the Uchiha Massacre and once-upon-a-time, a goddamn twelve-year-old boy ran away from his goddamn home and took his ghosts with him because he thought that he could do fucking something by himself."

Her grip tightens.

"Please."

He only stares.

"Please."

"… Thank you." And then it's déjà vu, sort of, but before he could aim the blow to her neck again, she stops him. Pushes him away.

"No!" she says, back to hysterical. "No. You can't just stay wandering around! You can't just stay a missing shinobi forever! What about your—what about—us? Team 7? Why can't you just forget about your stupid ghosts? Why can't you just come back?" She is shaking her head at something—what she was saying or what he was doing or what she was remembering?

"Sakura." His voice had a edge of warning in it. "I can't."

"You can!" She really convincing at all. "You really can! Why are you running away? Why do you have to do this to yourself? Why do you have to do this to us? We're your—why can't you just stay? If you stay… we can fight it together!"

"It's something I have to do alone, Sakura."

Her eyes soften as they narrow and she looks away.

"Do you… still think of Konohagakure as Konohagakure? As your home?"

He does not answer her and she smiles in a bitter way. "Just as I thought. You ran away from home, and now you have no home to run back to." The corner of his mouth twitches, but Sakura does not notice. "Isn't that right? It is, isn't it."

"Your choice of term is incorrect."

(Her gloves are torn as she takes a sudden interest in them. She really needs to either sew them back into a working state or buy new ones. She opts for the first option—the other would mean throwing someone valuable to her heart away, and she doesn't want to do that.)

"Why do you insist on chasing me and pinning me down and then taking me back, Sakura? You and Naruto. Go do something better. Don't waste your time on me." Her head snaps back to meet his. "You really haven't changed at all. Underneath that new shell, you're still your old selfish-little-girl self. You're still that old jealous self. You want me to come back. You want me to come back. You think that you could convince me to come back by yourself? Do you want to prove yourself to someone?"

Her mouth opens halfway and a sudden flood of embarrassment and humiliation and anger and sorrow goes through her.

"What is it that you want, Sakura?"

Her mouth is stuck, she thinks bitterly. And she cannot answer because of that. No more. No less. It's just as is.

"Has a cat gotten to your tongue?"

Her flinch is visible to everyone within a meter of her. Her mouth is stuck. She knows that it is stuck because she wants to go home and cry because she failed (again) and because she wants to say that he has got it wrong—that she isn't some stupid little girl who doesn't know how to do anything but she can't. She doesn't say anything because she doesn't know what to say.

Sasuke steps forward and Sakura steps back. "I'll tell you what you want, Sakura," he says harshly. "You want me to come back. You want the world to be okay for dreaming again. You want great things to happen to you. You want to be stronger. You aren't."

"You…" Sakura's breathing was uneven and her throat hurt (don't cry, don't cry, please, don't cry). "You… said that… my 'choice of term was incorrect.' What choice of term?"

He takes a look at her face, scrunched up like she was twelve and about to cry.

"My home," he says bitterly. "I don't have a home anymore. My home tore up into pieces when my family died, and with them… they took it away." His composure fell a little bit. "I want my heart back. I wish I had my heart back. And I don't. So I don't." He looks back and starts to walk away.

"Wait!" Sakura cries out. "Wait. Don't go—please, don't go—we can come back home and you'll be happy, I fucking promise, please, please, please—" She is running blindly, watching to touch his shoulder to find out that he was real and not just some doll pretending to be her former teammate.

"Please stay."

"Sakura."

"Bloody hell, just stay."

"Sakura." His voice is enough to stop her in her tracks. "Thank you," and he keeps on walking. (I'm sorry. Thank you, and I'm sorry, I'm sorry—I'm sorry, okaa-san and I'm sorry otou-san and I'm sorry aniki, and I'm goddamn, fucking sorry.)

And, strangely, she does not follow.

ALTERNATE TITLE: Odynophobia (fear of pain), but that wasn't cool enough. Yeah.

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