First Watch
The border between the Fire Country and the Wind Country is stark and dry. Green hills flatten to brown savanna as leaves give way to sand. There is nothing but open grassland as far as the eye can see – even with the aid of the sharingan, as Kakashi and Sasuke can both attest. So Team 7 makes camp in the middle of a defenseless plain, and Sasuke takes first watch.
Within minutes Naruto is asleep, limbs sprawled and mouth open. Sasuke does not watch Sakura or Kakashi, but on the edge of his perception he feels the bright points of their chakra fading from vivid awareness to the dullness of sleep. As the first hour passes Sasuke watches the landscape darken from a shadowed blue to true black, so dark he cannot see past arm's length without activating his kekkei-genkai. He wonders if this is how the world appeared to Itachi in his final days.
Sasuke often falls asleep remembering Itachi's eyes, crying tears the same scarlet as the sharingan. On these nights, the last Uchiha jerks awake from his own private Tsukiyomi, a nightmare world painted in shades of red and black. In the unforgiving darkness of his bedroom Sasuke is blind, and he presses his hands to the warm wetness streaking his cheeks, convinced for a moment that it is blood. When awareness returns his fear is replaced by the sinking dread of weakness and loss. Even now, Itachi is the stronger. Child prodigy, traitor, missing-nin, or ghost, it doesn't matter. Somehow his elder brother remains so far ahead.
A subtle rustling catches Sasuke's attention. He turns, and sees that the perpetrator is no sand shinobi – just his pink-haired teammate rolling over in her sleep. Sasuke sheathes the katana in one fluid motion, but he doesn't slide back into the guarded stance of a look-out. Instead, he watches his team.
Kakashi sleeps with the same deceptive laziness with which he does everything, one arm behind his head, a copy of Icha Icha Paradise open on his chest. By contrast, Konoha's number one, knuckle-headed ninja manages to be energetic even in the midst of deepest slumber: he snores thunderously and mumbles, tossing and turning every few minutes.
Sakura is quiet and still. She lays on her side with her head pillowed on one arm, legs slightly bent. Her features are softer, her anger and mistrust of him smoothed away by sleep. She looks more like the girl he knew three years ago. The girl he left on a cold stone bench when he abandoned Konoha.
Lying on a stiff mattress at one of Orochimaru's outposts, willing sleep to steal him away from the cold air and overwhelming silence, he would remember the way she looked that night. So still and pale, red dress slightly twisted around her knees, bright hair spilling across the grey concrete. This memory came back to him again and again at strange moments. As he sliced through Orochimaru's pet projects, katana rippling with the blue-white shock waves of raikiri. The first time he saw the curse mark spreading across Juugo's skin like some rapid disease. And when Itachi's first and middle fingers poked his forehead for the last time, and Sasuke thought his death was moments away, this was the image that came to mind: Sakura, eyes closed, lying where he left her.
Now she is just inches away. Close enough to touch, and still out of reach.