The Illusion
Is it cruel?
It must be. To her. To Naruto. To the boys (because even if two are adults, they really are just boys in her mind) surrounding them.
Naruto has an expression of disbelief splattered all over his face. There is no dawning light, no sudden hope – just a stunned stare. She has perfected her smile over these past few hours and can now do it without making it seem as if she is barely withholding her tears. So she smiles. For him, for a world that needs to live – and for a world that needs her to let go.
But it hurts. God, it hurts.
She'd thought she could do it – could throw away everything she'd been shoving beneath the carpet and get rid of all of those sky-high hopes and dreams. But now, now when she's looking at this boy directly into his unfathomable eyes that rival the ocean—
She can't.
And he knows. It's obvious. The boys around them – except for Kiba and Kakashi, because the latter is a father to them and the former not nearly as stupid as everyone thinks – stare with their jaws dropped, but Sakura knows that this plan of hers has already slipped past her fingers.
She doesn't flinch when Naruto's hands—
(when, when did his fingers get so cold? Isn't Sasuke supposed to be the cold one? What had happened to her sun?)
—wrap around her arms—
(and really, since when had his hands grown big enough to encircle her arms? Had she really let herself go that much, or had he just gotten that much older?)
—and she wants to cry again. She wants to cry because this was supposed to be it, the plan that would make everything fall back into its picture perfect place, and Naruto was supposed to be ecstatic and jumping for joy while she cried inside but pretended not to—
But he's not. His eyes glare into her own (and it's funny; he's never really glared at her before, and she sees how terrifying it can be) and he whispers to her, "I hate people who lie to themselves, Sakura."
The snow swirls around them (and if this was a fantasy dream, a picture would have been taken of them—two kids, two prefect kids). She stares back at him and wonders vaguely to herself when exactly he had started to address her without an endearment. Had he really grown up that much?
…Or had she just lost herself in an illusion?
AN: Sakura… T__T Why lady? T__T But yeah. Follow up to 'The Reality' but much shorter and much more confusing with a worse-er ending. Yay. Andand because I need to vent: go die science fair. Go die. =)
Credits for that one line of dialogue (with Sakura's name added by me): one manga's scan of Naruto 469.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.