"Okay…" Sasuke's voice was flat as he shuffled the deck and held the cards out face down in a fan shape. "Pick one."
Sasuke sat across from her. His plain, bland expression as he regarded the scrubbed wooden table between them with apparent interest did not reveal that he had recently asked Sakura to marry him.
Sakura invited him for coffee because she couldn't think of anything else to say. How do you respond to something like that, from someone you haven't been close to in years? The obvious answer is 'yes' if you love the person and 'no' if you think there's something wrong with him. But here it's not so simple. What are you supposed to do when you love someone but you think there's something seriously wrong with him?
Sakura furrowed her brow, sweeping her eyes back and forth across the arch of cards frozen in Sasuke's hands, eerily steady considering that he just drank two cups of coffee and was halfway through a third. Her hand wavered nervously as she contemplated a choice.
After about fifteen seconds, Sasuke sighed in mild irritation.
"You don't have to live with the one you pick, for God's sake," he said. "Just choose a card."
Impulsively, Sakura grabbed the one closest to Sasuke's left hand.
"Now memorize it and then put it on this pile," Sasuke instructed, pointing to the small stack of cards resting on the table.
Sakura quickly imprinted the queen of hearts in her memory before obediently laying her facedown on the stack. Sasuke combined the cards that were on the table with the cards that he held in his hands. He shuffled a few times in a suspicious manner, then laid the cards out in arrays of four by four.
"Was this your card?" he turned over a selection from the third row. It was a three of clubs.
"No," said Sakura.
"Didn't think so." Sasuke nodded, completely unperturbed. "I never did figure out how to do that trick. I just thought I'd give it a try." He shrugged and leaned back, taking a sip of his coffee.
After a moment, Sakura gave a shocked laughed while Sasuke ramassed the cards.
"Not that I came here to do card tricks anyway. Shouldn't you be summarizing your life for me? How's your work been?"
"Well…busy," Sakura answered after a pause. She didn't have much to say about it nor any particular desire to elaborate, but the pressure to keep talking and avoid the elephant in the middle of their table was too strong. "It depends whether I'm on call or not. It kind of alternates between long periods of having nothing to do punctuated by thirty seconds where everything in the world depends on you."
Sasuke traced his mouth with a finger, eyes on Sakura, but not really listening to what she was saying.
"Yes, fascinating, isn't it?" Sakura joked finally, guessing at Sasuke's silence.
"I'm wondering something.…" he asked carefully, setting down his cup. "Would you do your job even if you weren't getting paid?"
"I…...yes." Sakura said a little defensively, taken aback. "Of course I would. I mean, I wouldn't be begging to take out the hospital trash or any of those extra jobs that come with working for Tsunade, but I would still cure people if they needed me."
Sasuke nodded, his eyes on the table as he reached for the sugar. It seemed like he was afraid to meet her eyes for the next question. "Then what if there was an active barrier? Not only are you not getting paid, but there's something physically there making it difficult to work. Like you had to pay to do your job. Would you still do it?"
"What kind of job would make me pay to do it?" Sakura asked, nonplussed.
"I'm not talking about money."
That made Sakura feel awkward. She raised her cup to her mouth and averted her eyes. "Medic ninja have to give of themselves all the time. It's not something you can avoid."
"What if you knew that by treating the person, you would be exposing yourself to their disease? Wouldn't it be better to let them die? You can't save others if you don't first save yourself. Would you still do it?"
"For God's sake, yes! Can we stop talking about this?"
"Even if you could die from the disease?" Sasuke's normally level voice was slightly inflected with surprise. And…perhaps a little hope?
"The point of being a medic is that you risk your life to protect patients; not risk patients' lives to protect yourself." Sakura said firmly.
That shut Sasuke up, at least for the moment.
Sakura leaned forward, already regretting her slight outburst. "Is it that you want to know…would I save you if I could? Do you doubt me?"
He said nothing, and Sakura did not push the point.
"Look, do you want to marry me or not?" Sasuke asked finally, looking her directly in the eyes with a raw frankness that was much more characteristic of Naruto . "I'm fed up with this beating around the bush."
"Of course I don't want to marry you and I don't think that you really want me either," Sakura replied, trying to keep emotion out of her voice.
Sasuke wasn't sure what to say to this. He absentmindedly drew patterns on the table top with the ring of moisture left from his cup.
"Why don't you tell me the truth?" Sakura suggested quietly.
Sasuke thought about the truth. He thought about the tunnels, the fires, the pain of a curse spilling like wine, the corridors that dissolved into nowhere. He almost laughed, even though there was nothing funny about it.
"I don't know if you've noticed, but the truth has a way of ruining everything."
"Then let's start simple," said Sakura. "First of all, why?"
"Why what?" Sasuke asked irately.
"Why do you want to marry me?"
"I never said I wanted to marry you. I want to get married and I simply thought that it would be prudent to ask you first."
"Ah. Like first dibs?" Sakura asked after a pause, concealing, with a degree of success, her surprise and hurt by this answer.
"Something like that," Sasuke pulled a sour face as he drained his cup and Sakura was suddenly reminded of an old, grouchy man.
"Then why do you want to get married?" Sakura asked.
"What else is there?" was his response.
She frowned, becoming increasingly disturbed by his behavior. "What are you talking about—there's everything! You're too young to think the world is boring. You have your whole life—"
"Wrong." Sasuke interrupted her by holding up a long, pale finger and looking her in the eyes. "There's no life under the Christmas tree for me. Once there was. But it's gone now. I've felt naked these last few months."
"So what, marriage is your last resort?"
"Do you know what it means when you have nowhere to go?" Sasuke asked her.
"I—"
"That was a rhetorical question." Sasuke seemed pissed off now. He hailed the waiter for the check.
"Sasuke…" she hadn't meant to further estrange him. It wasn't his fault after all, that he felt his life was over at the age of twenty.
He didn't reply, scribbling on the receipt. He dropped the pen sharply.
"Sasuke, let's go for a walk," Sakura said in an attempt to assuage him. "Come on, I still have half an hour left on my lunch break…"
He didn't say anything, but when he got up and retrieved his coat, he waited for her by the door, so she took that a signification of his consent.
XxX
It was gray outside; not rightly described as cloudy, but a solid mask encased the sky. Sasuke kicked a pebble along as they walked in silence.
"Look, I saw this shrink a while ago and he said that my problem is that I can't hold down to any one thing," Sakura said finally, breaking the silence. "I always find some way to dig myself out, even if it's not what's best for me."
"Rough," said Sasuke.
"You know what I mean. You didn't exactly leave us a Candyland when you walked out…"
Sakura trailed off, still a little nervous about treading onto that branch. She cleared her throat.
"I'm honored by your proposal. I just don't know if…it's what you need right now."
"And how would you know what I need right now?"
"I don't," Sakura admitted. "But—Sasuke, you can't keep thinking that you're the only one who feels anything! We all suffer in our own way secret to everyone else. I've had problems, too."
"Oh really. What kind of problems?"
"Well…" the corners of Sakura's mouth twitched. "You won't believe how expensive mascara has become—"
Sasuke made a growling noise and sped up.
"Hey—come on, I was joking!" she jogged to catch up to him and tugged on the back of his jacket to get his attention again. "Listen, if you want me to come out with my own list of family members who were murdered by my older brother, then yeah, I've got nothing. But we all suffer. It's the only thing everyone has in common. And it's not the same for everyone, or even comparable a lot of the time, but it's there. It's your humanity."
Sakura broke off, watching Sasuke's face as she followed him. She swallowed and braced herself.
"And if you want me to be with you, I'll do it. I can't guarantee it'll be what you wanted, but I can offer you something in time," she focused on her shoes. "I'll always save you if I can."
There was a long pause.
"Is that so?" Sasuke finally spoke. His voice was a little softer, more oiled. "All of a sudden I'm good enough for you?"
"You said you only asked me out of courtesy!" Sakura pointed out, irked.
"I lied."
There was a heavy silence between them. Sakura turned her face to focus on a group of pigeons flocking a nearby bench so he wouldn't see the blush creeping up her neck. They were approaching the end of the walkway, where the flower and tree-lined sidewalk abruptly became a main street. They stopped at this frontier, looking out at the cars zooming past carelessly.
"I'm sorry, Sasuke," said Sakura softly, voice almost lost over the noise of the cars. "There's love; there's comfort; there's death—and not necessarily in that order. Choose to try to fall in love; you might risk everything you have and come out empty handed. You might be crushed, but at least if there are pieces, you can try to put them back together. Choose to marry and start a life—you have a chance at comfort but a risk of regretting it the rest of your life. Choose to run away; you might find peace. But I think you've already tried that."
Sasuke's eyes didn't move, but the perfect black wells reflected the passing cars and a disappointment deep as frost. "That's all I can have?"
The dejected-child tone struck a chord with Sakura; for the first time, she felt a pitieous compassion flood her. She turned to him, smiling gently, and lay a hand on the side of his face. His skin was surprisingly warm, humane. She had always thought he would feel like marble.
"…That's all there is. Pick a card, Sasuke."
ooo
Fin.
Did you know 'ramassed' isn't actually a word? I was convinced it was (I think because it sounds like 'ramasser: to pick up' in French. But I decided to leave it in because I like the sound. I've invented my first word.