Kiss it Away
Pairing: SasuSaku
Rating: T
Genre: Romance/Angst
Red, red lips were the last things he saw as his vision faded and his body fell to the blood-soaken snow, as she smiled sadly and endless, emerald eyes blinked tearily.
Uchiha Sasuke would die on the outskirts of Konoha, on a cold winter day, his body left to the icy snow which claimed the lifeless form.
He would die beneath the crying figure of one Haruno Sakura, her face weary with sweat and tears and her lips a crimson red. The crimson red of his eyes, his blood.
She had been assigned on a final retrieval mission after Uchiha Sasuke, a week before Christmas. The snow had fallen and made the trip difficult, and she found him unable to fight, unable to move. And she poured her green chakra into her hands, and she tried and tried, and nothing would make the blood go away. And she picked him up and ran back to Konoha, faster than she knew she could go, because she refused to let him die like this.
And he protested, his pride embedded into his mind, but she shook her head and he lacked the will to kill her hope again. And he lay in her arms, this time the one who needed saving, and she moved through the trees with the agility of a true kunoichi, and he sees her as something more than an annoyance.
Sakura can see the walls, and she goes faster, faster than her limbs should have allowed, but panic and hope drive her forward, voices chanting in her head, 'Faster, Faster,' but before she can take another step, the world slows around her and her footsteps are so heavy in the pure, unstained snow before her, as she leaves a trail of scarlet droplets behind her. Her hands are stained in his blood and he is breathing weakly, his onyx eyes fluctuating between opened and closed, and she is telling him that he can live, that she will get him to Konoha and they will save him and he will live.
And for once, he believes her. He believes in her, believes in her newfound strength.
He trusts her to save him for all those times he saved her.
And the icy cold begins reaching out with freezing fingertips, and they brush his skin, and it is cold, so cold, even in the warmth of her arms. And all is silent except for her unsteady breath and her beating heart which threatened to break open her chest, and she can see the village, but every heavy step seems to take her backwards, and she is scared, so scared, and she has never felt such utter panic.
Sasuke begins coughing, and she looks down at him and tells him that they are close, so close, and that he can make it, to hold on, but he shakes his head slowly and says that he cannot hold on any longer. And she cries with the weariness of the past few hours showing on her face and hands, the blood on her hands and face and clothes, as she lays him on the white snow, his blood dying it red. And he asks her to do something that nobody has done for him since his mother, to kiss away the pain for him.
And he swears he almost sees a smile grace her lips as she does so, tenderly pressing those lips against his wounds and scars and suddenly he can no longer feel the deadly touch of the icy wind or the throbbing pain, but all he can feel is her touch and her warmth, and he is at peace.
He whispers, "Thank You," and she smiles sadly, pathetically, but it is a true smile and it lifts his heart to see it again after all these years. "You're welcome," she replies, as she gently leans down to kiss him on the cheek, but with the last of his strength he lifts his hands, his hands with the blood of his brother on him, and wraps them around her and pulls her to him, giving her the one thing she had wanted for years.
Their lips meet softly, and there is no spark between them because it has been there all along. They have found contentment in each other, in a final outpouring of unspoken emotions, and he releases her of her bounds, of her love for him. And his head falls limp against a patch of snow as her lips are stained in crimson red, his blood, and she smiles and cries as she feels freedom again for the first time in so many years.
She knows he has gone to a better place, but it hurts, hurts so much, because before she loved him, he was her friend and teammate first, always, and she feels she has failed.
They find her lying in the snow, her skin almost blue in the cold, but she is still alive as she holds the last Uchiha in her lap and her tears are beginning to freeze to her pale face.
She tells them, that she wanted to follow him so badly, as badly as it hurt her to see him dead in her arms, but if it hurt her this much, then how would her friends, her parents, her teacher, feel? And so she has chosen their happiness and peace over her own once more.
Because she is, as she always has been, Haruno Sakura.