Muse
By xannychan
Disclaimer: I don't own characters.
Short A/N: It started with sentence that I came up with that I wanted to use…and it became this whole big thing that sucked up two pages of my inspiration notebook and came out to be less than one page on my word processor in Verdana font, font size eight (that might explain something, eh?).
Warnings: I don't know what the hell I'm doing.
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When Sakura thinks about him these days, she doesn't wonder how he is anymore, or if he's even alive out there somewhere. She thinks now of the person he's let himself become. She'll smile bitterly and hope that he's happy with the stupid decisions he's made. She'll whisper his name on dark nights in front of the mirror and hopes that he'll at least hear her so that she could curse his name and all the power he'll probably never have.
Sakura of the past would have been mortified. She would have starved for days without a blink of sleep, crying her eyes out about her broken heart and shattered dreams of perfect children and sighs of marital bliss. She would visit the many shrines of Konoha and beg the gods for mercy—on her heart and on his. Sakura of the past would have never learned to love again. She would think about him for the rest of her miserable life.
Sakura was so stupid back then.
Sakura doesn't think nearly as much of him now. No, she thinks of her two blond-haired sons and their ridiculous and loving father who was always there. When she thinks of Sasuke, she'll just as quickly snap his neck as easily as her many ANBU missions had called her to do. Of course, she would do it gently, ending his life in the dead of night, as any good shinobi ought to die, for the sake of old friendships that have long since gone awry.
When Sakura thinks of Sasuke, she thinks of her jaded years that followed after his leaving. She'll think of those hazy nights when the moon glowed red and her world was defined by line and shape. She ranked up quickly after that year of mourning, wanting nothing than to forget about him and busy herself with training, with missions, with glowing cigarette butts and warm, heavy sake that was the local specialty rocking her into fitful sleep. She quickly reached ANBU the same year as Naruto, who stayed behind only a year for her. She gave up on dreams in those years and lost her heart to dangerous missions.
It was on one S-class mission—a retrieval mission into Sound territory for a Missing-nin from Cloud (Leaf had given up on Sasuke ages ago)—that love was drop-kicked back into her life.
She had gone a little ahead to scout out and set up camp with Tenten and left Naruto with Neji and Lee. They set up their meager shelter for the night and waited, knowing full well that with Neji's Byakugen, they could find their way to their camp. They had waited for an hour when they became worried. They waited for another hour, and another hour, and another hour, and another…until five hours later, they went back and searched.
They weren't hard to find. Neji's head swung high in the trees, hung by his own hair, his white eyes nothing but smoldering remains of his seal's curse.
Lee had bled to death from the stumps that were once his legendary legs. Naruto was a moment from death, Kyuubi's chakra desperately trying to knit its vessel's entrails back together.
Sakura knew then who she could truly never bear to lose. She forced all of her chakra into him, screaming all the while as Tenten screamed with her through bouts of vomiting and tears.
When Tsunade heard Sakura's wild voice on the emergency radio frequency requesting backup, she knew.
Everyone agreed that it could only be Sasuke who could do such horrors.
Through the years and events that followed—the terrifying operations, the slow and painful recoveries (both for herself and Naruto), the funerals and the names of two dear friends being carved into the stone—she learned to love again.
To Sakura, Sasuke has always been a traitor and monster. And that was the last she thought of him.