Letters to Nobody
ObsessiveBrunette
Blanket disclaimer: I do not own anything but the plot, and maybe some words I make up along the way.
One
.
Dear Sasuke,
I hate you.
You're an asshole, you know that? A big one too. An assy asshole.
How do you have friends?
How do you have Naruto? You don't deserve him. Not even close. Do you realize that? All the pain you've put him through? He nearly died because of you. He nearly died because of you more than once. More than twice! And how do you repay him? You try to kill him and run off to frolic with a creepy pedophile!
Did you feel bad? Did you care?
I doubt it. If you did, you wouldn't have left. Or you would've come back.
If you cared, Naruto and Kakashi-sensei wouldn't have had to drag you back home. If Konoha's still home to you.
And don't even get me started on Kakashi-sensei! What did you do to him? I know you were his favorite. The lone prodigy, talented but distant? It's practically his life story! You killed him when you left. A part of him. Now he thinks it can be healed again. Both him and Naruto do.
They're fools.
I know what's really going to happen. You're going to come waltzing back in to our lives, which have finally gotten even remotely close to back-to-normal, and mess it all up again. It took us seven years to get over you the first time.
I don't know if we can do it a second.
You don't deserve me. I figured it out a long time ago. Why do you think I didn't come with on the retrieval mission? Because I was too weak? I'm not weak anymore. I haven't been for a long time.
I didn't come because I didn't want you to come back.
That's just it. I'm finally okay. I have a boyfriend now, a best friend, a job- and a pretty damn impressive job too. Then you come back, unconscious and bleeding and mess it all up.
And I haven't even spoken a word to you yet. I don't plan to either. So make it easier for me and easier for you too, since you obviously care so little for me as to leave me on a bench, and just stay away from me. Stay away from Naruto and Kakashi-sensei too. Stay away from Konoha.
Stay away from my life.
Because just like you don't deserve us, we don't deserve you.
We don't deserve all this pain that you've put us through. What did we ever do to warrant it? Save countless lives? Stop shinobi criminals from destroying the world?
Wow. I guess that's called karma.
We don't deserve all the looks we've been getting for the past two days, anywhere we go. Everywhere we go.
We don't deserve to be put on trial for "collaborating and plotting with a wanted criminal". Even unconscious, you're ruining our lives.
For saving your life, it could be the end of ours. And we don't deserve it. At least, I certainly don't.
Because if I had my way, Naruto and Kakashi-sensei wouldn't have gone to save you. If I had my way, you would be dead.
And we would all be able to finally completely move on.
I hate you, Sasuke Uchiha. I hate you for leaving. I hate you for coming back. I hate you for being alive.
I hate you because if you hadn't left, I wouldn't hate you at all. We could be living happily-ever-after right now.
But you did leave, and it's too late to go back.
And I know better than anyone that happily-ever-after doesn't exist.
Sincerely,
Sakura
.
Two days. It had been two days since he had been back in Konoha and already it was feeling hard to breathe. I jumped every time someone tapped me on the shoulder.
Stop it, I told myself. You're stronger than this.
At least I wanted to believe I was stronger than this. But I couldn't forget the way my heart raced when I saw the body Naruto and Kakashi-sensei lugged back, all black hair and pale skin and for a second my heart skipped a beat.
Was he back? Or was he dead?
For two seconds I wondered that. Two. But it was still enough. Why did I care? I didn't want to. More than anything, I just want to stop caring.
Stop caring that Naruto puts himself in danger every five seconds.
Stop caring that Ino was going through the biggest heartbreak of her life and I couldn't be there for her because I was under arrest until my trial.
Stop caring that Kakashi-sensei is getting old, really old in the ninja world.
Stop caring that Sasuke's back.
Stop caring that he's safe.
I was ready to kill him myself, years ago, out of love. Ha! I thought I loved him. But I wouldn't have been able to do it even if he hadn't tried to kill me. I realized that day, as I spent the entire journey home with a wounded red-haired girl- who was this red-haired girl?- that I was still weak.
Weak. God, I hate that word. Who is Sasuke to tell me I'm weak? He's the only one who has ever told me that in my life.
I guess he's the only one strong enough to tell me the truth.
I respect him for that. The way he does what he wants, the courage to do anything he pleases. But that doesn't mean anything. I still wish he was gone.
I still want him dead.
All those years ago, I wanted him dead out of love. Now, I want him dead out of justice.
So much.
I was interrupted from my daydreams of Sasuke's countless deaths from a knock on my door. Weird. No one's been knocking on my door for the past two days. I was an outcast now, a possible criminal. No one wanted to befriend me, and the people that did were stuck inside their houses too.
Oh, the irony.
"Who is it?" I called, making my way to the door.
"It's me!" a voice replied, somewhat muffled from the block of wood in between us. Oh, that was helpful. I opened the door.
"Naruto," I chided, "Me narrows it down to about, oh, everyone."
"But you still knew it was me," he grinned.
"Well I only know one person stupid enough to come knocking on my door. What's up? How did you get out of your house?" Then I noticed his apparel. "And why are you wearing a suit?"
He laughed. "Funny, Sakura-chan." Then he must of noticed my vacant and utterly confused expression. "Oh, you were serious? The trial, Sakura-chan."
"What about it?"
"It's today. Actually, it's right now."
Shit.
.
"It's okay," Naruto reassured me as we raced down to the Hokage's office, me holding my heels in one hand and earrings in the other. Gah, I forgot to put hairspray in! I was going to look like a mess by the time we got there!
I may be a ninja, but I'm still a girl.
"No, it's not." I snapped. "Do you think it's going to help our case if we're late?"
"No, but did you forget?" he asked.
"Forget what?"
"Kakashi-sensei's coming too. We'll be waiting on him for another hour."
"Oh." I said. "Then why are we running?"
He laughed.
.
Despite being thirty minutes late to possibly the most important day of my life so far, we still had to wait another forty-five minutes for Kakashi-sensei to show up, little orange book in hand. I would've thought that maybe a trial would be important enough for him to put his book down for a minute, but apparently not.
Must be some book.
Before I had the chance to scold him, however, Tsunade cleared her throat. So I settled with kicking him in the leg. He just smirked at me.
"Ahem. Would to guilty party please step forward?"
In which case we all just stood there looking at her like she was an idiot. We were standing in a maybe 8 by 8 foot office. There was no forward to step.
"Fine! Just stand there then!" Tsunade howled, glaring at us. My eyes widened. Then her expression softened and her body sagged. I resisted the urge to reach a hand out and comfort my former sensei. I noticed the bags under eyes, the droop in her posture. She just looked so… tired.
When you have the body of a thirty-year-old woman, it's easy for everyone else to forget you're nearly 60.
"Look," she said bleakly. "Why don't you three just sit down and we can go over everything, okay?"
Naruto looked like he was about to say something, but even he must have noticed something in Tsunade's expression, because he took a seat without a word.
"I'm not going to lie to you three, it doesn't look good. I have four out of five daimyos trying to eradicate Sasuke and three of them trying to arrest you." My heart sunk. Three out of five daimyos? Those odds weren't in our favor.
Kakashi-sensei leaned forward. "But what do you want?" he asked, and I could see that little flicker of hope in his one eye, fragile and faint, but still there. I realized that to him and Naruto a whole lot more rested on this than just our lives. Sasuke's did as well.
"I just want this to go away. I don't want you three to go to prison, maybe more than I should in a professional environment. And as for Sasuke… I don't know. I know you three believe in him," I bit my lip to stop myself from telling her, that no, only two here believed in him, "but I'm not so sure. He's been gone for seven years. That's way longer than you guys were a team."
"But he will change!" Naruto said. "I'll make him! You don't know him like we do, but he's a survivor. He adapts. If he understands that if he doesn't behave he'll-"Naruto choked a little, "die, then he will be good. He just wants to live, baa-chan. And we just want him back."
Tsunade rubbed her temples. "And what about you, Sakura?" she asked. "You're awfully quiet over there."
I wanted to tell her to go ahead and kill him, that it didn't matter to me, that I would actually prefer if she killed him. I wanted to say that Sasuke was a bad guy, that I wasn't sure if he could change or not. I wanted to tell her the truth.
But I looked over at Naruto and Kakashi-sensei and I knew my words would crush them in a way that they would never be whole again, so I just took a deep breath and looked Tsunade straight in the eye.
"Please." I croaked, and even I was surprised by how weak my voice sounded. I sounded like I was hurt.
I sounded like I cared.
I could've been talking about anything. I could've been saying 'please don't let me go to jail'. I could've been saying 'please kill Sasuke the next time you see him'. I don't know what that please meant, with its countless meanings and unspoken promises.
But it meant something.
It meant something, because Tsunade nodded. "Okay." She said. "I'll try."
I believed her. She was really going to try to keep us safe- all four of us. And I knew better than anyone that when Tsunade tried, Tsunade could get whatever she wanted.
He was back. We were safe.
And just like that, I felt myself start to care.
And that scares me more than any verdict ever could.
.
A/N: New story! This one will probably be one of my longest, and I'm not gonna lie, it might be a while in between updates. But, rest assured, I will try my darndest to finish it. The format will be the same every chapter- letter, then actual story. So tell me what you think! Did it suck? Should I continue? Reviews equal rainbows- the more rainbows, the happier everyone is. :)