"I'm sorry…"
Exhausted, she shoots him a glance. "For what?"
"Everything up until now."
And even as she pours her life into saving the two before her, Sakura wants to throw her head back and laugh. Here is the man who turned her back on her each time she offered to save him. Here is the man who never acknowledged her, who never stopped to realize that she, too, could offer what Naruto offered him, the promise of life and love and a family and home. Here, he is apologizing to her, after putting her through hell and back, after subjecting her to horrible, awful visions of him- the man she pined for, who she loved with everything she had and everything she didn't- killing her. Taking her life, vicious, callous, the moment she offered her heart to him. The pain was- is- unbearable. Yet, with a single, simple apology, he wants to wash it away. He has been saved, his dark eyes are telling her. Naruto has shown me light. Naruto has always believed in me. I am a changed man, that gaze claims, changed and ready to come home.
Beside them, Naruto is silent, hopeful. She looks at the fallen Uchiha, her former comrade, the one who breaks her heart without any effort, and says, "Go to hell."
Naruto doesn't understand why she won't forgive him, because he knows that she still loves him, and he knows it too, and so does everyone in the damn village, so- just give him a chance, Sakura!
But when she thinks of Team 7 and the irreplaceable bonds they forged, all she feels is a wave of nostalgia and bitterness tainting the air she breathes in. She's busy, she tells them when they come to see her, ignoring Naruto's pained confusion and Sasuke's stare that burn right into her heart just like it has since she was twelve. She's busy cleaning up the mess they made, just like she always does, just like they always make her do, and she has no time for love or apologies or forgiveness anymore.
So Sakura turns away to save more lives, because it's all she can do after Sasuke destroyed hers.
They won't talk to each other, despite Naruto's best efforts to reunite them. Sometimes she feels guilty for refusing to properly reunite their team, which is all she and Naruto had wanted all this time, but at night she wakes up screaming, with the vivid image of the Sharingan fresh in her mind and a pain in her chest that reminds her of the deaths she had to relive countless times that day, and the tears wash away everything else.
Surely he understands what he's done, she hopes every morning, when the sun has come up and promises something better, but then she remembers that he had turned the light away willingly each time it was handed to him, and Sakura sobers. He chose to do that to her, just like he chose to leave her every single damn time.
I see no reason to love her, just as there is no reason she should love me, he had said.
And there hasn't ever been a reason, but she loves him anyway, and she hates herself for it.
When he finally decides to grace her with his presence, she is exhausted from a long day's work, and she is losing patience quickly. Seeing his tall form standing proudly- he would never admit to waiting for her, that raised chin tells her- by the hospital entrance does not do her temper any favors. Sakura stalks quickly by him, refusing to look at those narrowed eyes, afraid she will recognize a flash of crimson. She wants to go home and sleep.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees his hand reach out as she passes, and instinctively, Sakura recoils. It's instantaneous and violent; the sudden motion alarms him, evidently, as his movements quicken and he grasps her arm to prevent her from falling over, but all she sees is her beautiful nightmare, a blooming doom approaching from the depths of her dreams, and she lashes out.
Sasuke's arms try to restrain her when she attacks, grip tight, and her heart and her mind finally unite in an attempt to survive with IhavetogetoutofhereIhavetoleaveit'sdangerousIneedtogo-
"Sakura," he says warningly, as if she shouldn't be afraid of him, as if he hadn't done anything wrong, and it is velvety and warm and deep against her ear and the sound vibrates through her head and she almost breaks down right then and there.
Chakra that she doesn't really have left suddenly flares through her muscles and she breaks free. He might be surprised. She doesn't care.
"Don't touch me again," she hisses, and she goes home and doesn't come to work for the rest of the week.
The dreams don't fade, even half a year later. Sakura is not weak, but her friends have learned to treat her as if she is fragile, even though she can shatter a life with her pinky if she so chooses.
But taking lives has never been her job, so she spends her days in the hospital and her nights at home, curled up in the corner of her kitchen with every light in her apartment turned on, waiting for the shadows to go away. They don't. Sometimes, when Naruto or Ino visit her, concern etched into their faces, the darkness recedes for a single breath, but it always returns when they leave.
The worst thing is that her dreams are a mixture of terror and longing. They always begin with him, almost dead, with that apology on his lips and promises of days spent together happy and loving and just like things used to be, and they always transition from the rays of the sun to the glint of Kusanagi piercing through her. Over, and over, and over again, until she forgets how to breathe.
She tries to kill herself one day. She knows exactly seven hundred and fifty six different ways to commit suicide, all studied from the village's oldest archives, all taught to prevent information from slipping to the enemy and other practical situations. But Sakura doesn't have anything left to give to the world, or anyone, not anymore, not even when she loves with a desperation that is tearing her apart, so she settles for a kitchen knife.
It doesn't hurt as much as the visions did. She almost smiles at the ache. The blood is streaming down in rivers and pools, and it's so beautiful that she marvels at how death is such a natural thing, and yet she always works to prevent it. It's the last thing she sees when her eyes shut.
She awakens against her will much later, her consciousness heavy, some time later. It smells like the hospital, with muted cleanliness and heavy chemicals, so she realizes that someone must have found her. Naruto, most likely. She would reach out to him and comfort him, reassure him she was still here, if she had the strength to. As it is, Sakura only musters enough will to open her eyes.
And there, sitting by her bed intently, is Sasuke.
She freezes, wills him to go away, tries to scream for someone, but her voice won't come out. She doesn't want to know how he found her, or why he seeked her out in the first place. She wishes she had succeeded, although perhaps a small part of her had wanted someone to help, to find her and save her- but something in his eyes, painfully evident despite the cloak of the night, stops her thoughts.
Concern.
Sakura laughs quietly at the irony and falls asleep.
The next time she opens her eyes, he is gone. Instead, her friends, her teachers, her coworkers- they all have gathered around her in a display of genuine love, with gifts and flowers and plenty of chocolate, and she smiles a real smile for the first time that entire year, and hugs Naruto when he wraps her in a warm embrace. That entire day is for her, a party in her cramped hospital room, and although they tiptoe around the subject of how she got here in the first place, she is struck with the reminder that there are people who love her. It's a small comfort.
They offer her words of reassurance and encouragement, wishing her well before slowly tapering out until the only one who is left is Naruto, and he is peering at her with hurt in his deep blue eyes that makes her soften.
"Why did you do that?" He is the only one who dares to ask. She's not quite sure how to answer and they sit in silence for a while.
"I see him in my nightmares" she finally tries, but her voice breaks and Naruto's face darkens, suddenly understanding. She almost sees Kurama boiling behind the mask, furious. He tries to get up, but her hand stops him. He is always doing the work for her, always the one doing the saving, and Sakura is a kunoichi, not a damsel in distress. She is too old and worn for her knight in shining armor now, and so he doesn't go to confront her fears for her, instead taking her hand and squeezing it so tightly she can't feel her fingers.
"I'm so sorry," he says, and she accepts his apology without a second thought, because Naruto will never try to hurt her.
The nurses don't let her heal herself so instead she patiently waits in the white of her bed for them to allow her to leave. Tsunade visits her again during the week, and instead of asking why, tells Sakura that she better not try such a foolish endeavor again. Her mentor gives her an affectionate kiss to her forehead, tells her she'll be out soon, and leaves. Sakura thinks to herself that Tsunade must have tried something similar once, too.
When she gets home, she finds apples on her windowsill, the slices carefully carved to leave nothing but soft, sweet, white flesh. It smells amazing. She doesn't remember having left the window open.
Sakura closes it promptly and throws the apples away.
The next time he confronts her, he has the sense not to touch her. Uchiha Sasuke is not to beg for forgiveness, but the look he gives her on the streets of the marketplace is close to it. Her heart aches to ignore the one she loves like this, but she does it anyway. He follows beside her, trailing ever so slightly behind, as she leaves the shops, hands empty. She turns abruptly instead of following the path home, taking him across the village. Her jaw is taut.
She feels his presence change into something dangerous when she leads him to the remnants of the Uchiha compound. She takes them straight to where she knows his old house used to be, where she and Naruto had lingered and cleaned up after the nothing he had left behind. Her legs are shaking, but she has to do this.
Sasuke is furious. Ice drips from the air. His eyes whirl into a threat, into the very thing that keeps her awake every night. She looks into them and sees her death, her pain, and her heart; looks past him and sees cruelty and darkness and sleepless nights and everything she thought she could save him from before he plunged her into it himself.
"This," Sakura tells him quietly, gesturing to where his pain and broken trust and shattered dreams are housed, "Is what you did to me."
And then she leaves.
Bursting from the hospital doors, not even wiping the strands stuck to her clammy skin, Sakura staggers home reeking of failure.
It isn't the first time, but it hurts just as much. Nothing seems to register in her mind; she bumps into several people and can't form the sounds from the back of her dry throat to apologize so she just continues on, unseeing, uncaring. The world is blurred, and each time she tries to blink it away, it returns twofold.
Eventually her legs give out and she slumps into the seat of a bench- the same one her heart always seems to be broken at, she notes- and sobs and sobs until her heart has bled out and she can't cry anymore so she wrings her hands as if she can remove the stains that way.
Losing a patient is an occurrence that every doctor learns to cope with, especially after years of experience. Sakura is just as talented, if not more so, than Konoha's top medics, but she is still young, and the only thing she receives is pity and resignation. It happens all the time, they tell her. You tried your best. That's all you can really do, in the end. People die and we move on because we have a job to do. You'll learn. You'll see.
This is simply the way the world is.
He finds her there, when the air has become sharp enough to prick her skin, and she can't feel her own body anymore. Every fiber in her being is screaming at her to leave, to run away from him. She doesn't want to think about him right now. All that she deserves to see are blank, unseeing stares to be covered by white sheets, and blood, and he certainly does not deserve to see her, not with how much she still loves him.
He hurts her each and every day and he doesn't even have to lay a finger on her.
Sasuke stands, unmoving, by the bench, maintaining careful distance. Perhaps, in another time and place, she could lean into him, grasp at his shirt in her fists and cry until she has nothing left, but instead she straightens her back and slows her breathing until she can see clearly again past her eyes, rubbed raw. She doesn't look at him. He doesn't look at her.
They sit there, a killer and a healer, a traitor with the one left behind, a boy and a girl, grief with grief, and they understand.
The next day, Sakura finally joins her team for dinner. Naruto is gleeful, as if she has been eating with them all along. There is a seat between Naruto and Sasuke, who doesn't turn to greet her. Still, she doesn't miss the way his eyes widen. She hears his sharp, silent breath as she sits down, and begins rebuilding the life she thought they had all left behind. Sakura offers him a small smile, and he nods carefully in return.
It's not forgiveness, but it's a start.