Where are you going?
Where are you going?
Can you take me with you?
For my hand is cold,
And needs warmth
Where are you going?
Sakura didn't know what was happening, exactly, except that her perfect world was about to slip away and she had to try to grab it before it walked down that road and was gone. How could he expect her to go home and sleep, knowing she would wake up and he would be gone forever? She knew he didn't care, that he hated her, but she almost believed he would change his mind that night and this would just be an awkward situation to never be spoken of again. She begged, pleaded, and even threatened at the end, but all that had earned her was a blow to the back of the head and a cold night on the bench and an achy back when she woke up the next morning.
The next morning, when her first thought upon being woken was 'gone'. Then she was forced to calm down as she told her story, avoiding hyperventilation. She watched the makeshift squad go out to get him with tears in her eyes. She had wanted to go with Shikamaru, Naruto, Neji, Choji, and Kiba as they went after him, but she didn't know why. She wouldn't have been able to convince him the second time over and he could have killed her easily. He didn't care about her, and she blamed herself for that and everything. Neji and Choji lying still in hospital beds for the longest time, Naruto narrowly avoiding death, losing Sasuke, it was her fault. If she had been stronger, able to hold him down, be the one that knocked him out and dragged him to Tsunade so she could find a fitting punishment for him…
If she had made him care about her in the least, maybe he would have stayed. But all she could do was plead and sob and do nothing but stand there, not even realizing she should scream when he was in the position to take her out. If only she hadn't froze it could have been avoided, Sasuke would be here and not in Orochimaru's clutches. Sure, he would hate her a great deal more, but wouldn't it be worth it? Having him here and having fun every day, always being happy, like she had promised him although she knew she couldn't fulfill it even as the words spilled out of her lips.
The thoughts of what he could have done, how much closer he would have been to the sweetest revenge would have driven him nearly insane until he just left anyways which would take him, what, a month or so? She wished she had let Naruto take her home and tried to pretend it wasn't going to happen until she woke up from the nightmare she would have had. It wouldn't have been nearly as bad as the simple reality that she had been fighting since the minute she found out about his clan.
She had hoped that her telling him she would help would show him how much she really cared and made him stay, and they would have a perfect little life with no Orochimaru and no whispers from the Sound and him and Naruto and Kakashi could keep on being the perfect team until they all became successful, wonderful jonins and won all the S class missions and were never hurt because they were all so goddamn great and she ignored the time Sasuke 'died' on the Great Naruto Bridge or the time she was beaten by Ino so easily or the time Orochimaru could have taken Naruto's life away so easily if Tsunade hadn't been standing there in the oh so convenient spot and jumped in front of him even though she had only known him for a fucking week.
No, they were perfect, and there would be no deaths in her imaginations, even though they were all average and her and Sasuke would have been dead in ten years, and Naruto would go on longer because he was the nine tailed fox and he was damn lucky for that, too, or he would have been long gone by now and the only people who would miss him were some weakling kunoichi and a boy who wouldn't have any extra room in his heart for mourning.
When she was older and advanced to Chuunin and then Jonin, she wasn't happy. It was a bittersweet victory. How could she celebrate knowing that if she had made this decision earlier, to get stronger and faster and make something of herself, that the one who she had always wanted to prove her worth too would actually be around to see it? She could almost see how it played out.
He'd be walking away and she wouldn't talk or let him get the advantage as she started to cry, she would just run after him and she would be the one knocking him out instead of the other way around. Or if he slipped past her, god forbid, she would run after him to the ends of the earth if she had to and not let herself regret what she hadn't done because she would be out there doing it instead of watching Naruto get hurt even worse then she had, emotionally and physically, and feeling sorry for her pathetic self.
She didn't think about how she would lose herself in her emotions more then likely and all that would be accomplished was him staring up as her sadly, bleeding and most likely dying as she went to hard on him and he lost consciousness and maybe even his life as she stared down at him in horror and slowly realized that she was the reason he was leaving, and she imagines herself being Haku or Aoi or Orochimaru only worse because they couldn't actually kill him and the one who actually gave a damn about his pathetic life was the one who had taken it away.
Almost poetic, but she couldn't think about that, because she just needed to regret and not think about how it was the best way for everyone and once Orochimaru got his teeth into Sasuke(literally, in fact) they wouldn't hear the end of it and she was so goddamn lucky everyone got off as lucky as they did because everything could have easily died and Neji and Choji were constant reminders of that but she ignored it as soon as they were out of the hospital beds and everyone was slowly learning to forget to talk about Sasuke because he was the one they couldn't stop from doing whatever he damn well pleased.
After he was gone, she pretended to only buy flowers for Lee and act as though she had forget about the days when her and Ino competed to get him the best kind of flowers or the most flowers but sometimes she wouldn't bring them to Lee at all, she would just take it and sit in her room and stare at it, letting the tears come when they may and not hiding her feelings about what had happened and how it was her fault like she did around everyone she knew because they couldn't know inside she was as weak as she used to be before Tsunade took her under her wing and all she could do was run around and scream 'Sasuke, Sasuke, Naruto, Sasuke' Every fucking minute and then feel bad about it later because she was just a pest and Kakashi knew that, which is why she was always guarding people and never doing anything remotely productive while he, Sasuke, and Naruto completed the missions. Not always flawlessly, mind you, but it was more then standing there with a kunai and hoping nothing would come close to her because god knows she couldn't handle it.
And all she could do as Sasuke collapsed down into Naruto's arms and Naruto stared for what felt like forever was stand there because she had to protect the target but everyone knows that wasn't it because Kakashi could handle Zabuza and Haku was busy with Naruto for now and how she wanted to go in there but damn it, she was scared and she couldn't move and she could only walk past Naruto to kneel beside him and try to hold the tears back because shinobi couldn't have feelings.
Couldn't regret or grieve because they were weapons, inanimate objects that died on a regular basis and she shouldn't have cared when Sasuke left, he was just a member of the village. The same as, say, TenTen or Hinata or Choji, and all it would have been if they left was a shame, but it ached and something inside her broke as she watched him walk away and realized she couldn't do anything about it except run to tell Tsunade after a night had passed and he was long gone. So the only time she showed she cared was in her thoughts or when she was alone and nobody could judge her. Nobody could laugh and smirk and call her unprofessional because she cared that the only thing she cared about was gone. It was like laughing at Romeo as he killed himself because Juliet was dead, or so he thought. It didn't feel right.
So how was it that a weapon could silence an entire room with its name alone, that a whole team would be sent to retrieve a single stray weapon? It went against everything. They expected her to think like that, to view him as that, while they were showing her that he mattered much more by their actions at the same time. It was insanity. No weapon would be valuable enough that they would send a chuunin and four genins just to take it back. They knew and she knew that a human was more valuable then that. That even the one who made Ino spit when she spoke his name and made her feel like it was a taboo in itself, and the one that made Naruto look at her with those eyes, like he was silently begging her to stop, was valuable. And maybe that's why she buys him flowers on the anniversary of the day he left and thinks about he it makes her feel and always hoping that it's better then it was last year, even though it never changes. Maybe that's why every night she dreams about what would have happened if she was able to stop him, or has nightmares about what he must be going through alone. Maybe that's why she loved him.
(A/N— This is first and probably the only time I'll ever write SasuSaku, I despise it, so don't get your hopes up. I couldn't help after I watched episode 109. Thanks to Naruto(the show) and Godspell and the song this fic was based around, all of which I do not own. Yep.)