Pairing: Sasuke and Sakura

Song: Don't Wanna Lose You Now - Backstreet Boys

Genre: Hurt/Comfort and Romance

Description: There's only one road in and out of Konoha.

He wondered if he was doing the right thing.

It was something he struggled with these days, trying to do right. It had been so long since he weighed his decisions based on whether or not it was ethically, morally right or wrong. The last few years of his life, he'd done things both great and terrible in pursuit of what he believed was his destiny. He hadn't had to worry about pesky things like right and wrong back then.

It felt cowardly. It certainly felt cowardly. To have requested a secret mission from Tsunade. To have kept it quiet from his friends and his teammates. To pack for it in the dead of night while everyone slept.

He was leaving. A recon mission in Oto; it was expected to take a year, at the least.

He knew it would look bad, when everyone found out. He knew it would look like he was growing dissatisfied, bored, impatient with life back in Konoha after the war. He knew there would be anger amongst his peers; after devoting so much time to earning back their trust, what was the point of his reintegration if he was just going to leave again?

Sasuke decided they didn't need to know the truth: that he felt at home in Konoha. That he loved being back among the sunshine, the perennial warmth, under the trees. That he cared about his friends and wanted them to be happy.

And thinking of one painfully pretty medic-nin – the only one in their age group who remained wary of him – he knew that the only way to make her happy was to go.

He slipped his katana into its sheath and ignored the fissures in his heart. Leaving again. It was the right thing to do.

She'd never quite gotten over what had happened between them.

That was Sasuke's primary incentive for taking this mission. Sakura's inability to trust him the way the others did, the skittish way she looked at him from a distance, like she expected him to snap…the way her smiles in his direction were fleeting and forced. He'd had to make amends to everyone for his decisions, even if they were never personal, and everyone, from Naruto to Kakashi to Tsunade, and to the rest of the rookies who'd survived the war, had welcomed him back with open arms.

Except Sakura, who held him at arm's length.

He'd be lying if he said he wasn't disappointed. Sakura had always been special to him in a unique, difficult-to-define way, and coming back to Konoha, she'd been one of the people he was looking forward to reconciling with the most. (Maybe the one he owed the most to.)

But while she accepted his return and reassimilation into the Konoha shinobi ranks, she was clearly uncomfortable around him, a discomfort that didn't seem to ebb. She avoided him whenever possible, and on missions, spoke mainly to Naruto, Sai, and Kakashi, or whoever else was accompanying them. Any conversation between them was stilted and abrupt, often leading to arguments (he couldn't remember ever being on her bad side back when they were children, and found he didn't like it one bit) and she never sparred with him, at team practices. Aside from seeing her fight in a few scuffles on their many missions, he had yet to discover what Sakura could actually do, after years of separation.

Granted, he understood her uneasiness. He'd tried to kill her, more than once, and as a teammate, that was the ultimate betrayal. It sickened him to remember the depths he'd sunk to, the madness he'd accepted in pursuit of his empty goal. He could still recall what her slim, smooth throat felt like crushed under his hand, the wide green eyes reflecting betrayal as she watched his Chidori explode to life…

He knew that Sakura was a kunoichi now and that she'd probably seen much worse, had had much closer calls, but he also knew that, once upon a time, he'd been important to her. And there was no easy way of moving on from the way he'd tried to violently shred their childhood bond.

But understanding her discomfort didn't make it any less painful.

He was growing more and more attached to her by the day, even as she kept her shields up, and it was only after he'd realized how badly he'd always wanted her in his life that he knew what he had to do. She feared him. She didn't trust him. And he wanted her to be happy, in the end, at the cost of everything.

The path out of Konoha was a familiar one. It had been five years since the last time he'd made this journey, and much had changed since then. He was taller now, older, a full-grown man this time around. There was no anger or bitterness driving his decisions, nothing but surety of purpose. His steps were slow and measured as he inhaled the summer scents of his home, so he could remember them in the months to come when he missed it, when he missed them, when he missed her.

He knew he would think of her the way he thought of her now. With longing, with regret, that there had to be a consequence to all the things he'd done before. That things couldn't be allowed to go back to the way they were when she smiled at him without fear or restraint; his reintegration had come so easily to him, and after every terrible choice he'd made, it wouldn't be fair if everything was restored to him.

He didn't deserve her anymore, and she didn't deserve the pain his presence was causing her.

Sasuke shouldered his knapsack as he passed through the village gates. There was no one to try and stop him this time around; remembering the scene from five years ago, where a little lovely kunoichi had screamed her love by a concrete bench, he was glad that that bench had been destroyed during Pein's invasion. He didn't need a physical reminder of the way he'd callously cast off the love and trust of the sweetest girl in the world.

But he'd only made it a few yards onto the dirt road that led out of Konoha when he detected the presence of another shinobi.

Years of a hard shinobi lifestyle had honed his senses carefully, made him wary of almost everything, but once he recognized the familiar chakra signature, bright and shiny and warm, his sudden grip on the hilt of his sword loosened and fell.

"You shouldn't be here, Sakura," he murmured, nostalgia hitting him like a brick to the back of the head.

She flashstepped onto the road in front of him from her place in the shadows of the trees. It was one of the very few times since his return a year ago, when he found himself alone with her, so knowing he was about to leave for a year, he felt he owed it to himself to commit her to memory. The summer wind tossed her pink hair back and forth around her shoulders, her bangs skirting in and out of her eyes, which were focused on him, hard and almost hateful. She wasn't much taller than she had been the last time they'd met on a moonlit road, but there was no question that the beautiful kunoichi in front of him had grown into a woman. He read it in the set of her jaw, the pout of her full pink lips, the way she stood with her hand on a hip that jutted out further than it used to. Long legs and a short skirt and stubborn as she had always been.

"I had a feeling you'd be leaving this way," she said, her voice quiet and accusing.

Sasuke kept his expression apathetic and replied, "Go back home. It's late, you should be asleep."

"That never worked before," she snapped. "And it won't work now. What's this, huh? What's this about requesting a year-long mission in Oto?"

So her mentor had told her. Oh, well. It saved him the trouble of having to do it himself.

"You just came back!" she argued. "And you're just so ready to leave again, aren't you? After everything we did to bring you back home, it's not enough for you?"

Sasuke's eyes narrowed. This was the reaction he'd been expecting, but it didn't make it any easier to hear it coming from her.

"This is what's best for everyone," he said flatly. "I'm not leaving forever. It's a mission. Get out of the way."

He could have moved her. He could have sidestepped her and continued on his way. He could have flashstepped behind her and knocked her out, like last time. But things were different this time around, and at the very least, he could let her have her say. Tell it to her face, this time, that he was leaving and she couldn't stop him.

"What's best for everyone," Sakura returned stiffly, "is if you stay here, where you belong."

"And that's what you want, is it?" Sasuke demanded. "Don't kid yourself. You're terrified of me."

Far from crumpling at his accusation, Sakura's green eyes flamed in the moonlight.

"Terrified?" she repeated, scoffing. "Don't kid yourself. I'm uncomfortable around you, absolutely, and I don't really trust you, but I'm not afraid of you."

She drew closer to him, her arms folded across her chest, her expression hurt.

"I was afraid you were gonna do something like this again," she said quietly. "I had a feeling you weren't going to stay. That's why I could never…relax."

Suddenly Sakura's reactions to him in the past were starting to make more and more sense. Maybe he'd misinterpreted her discomfort to him. Maybe he'd just assumed that she was afraid he might snap and attack her again, when really she believed that he was going to leave her again. Maybe that was the real reason she'd never adjusted to his coming back.

"I know I hurt you," he said softly, the words sounding foreign and awkward to his ears. "I don't want to anymore. That's why I'm leaving."

"I believe you, Sasuke-kun," she said, invoking his old name, and then a tiny smile lit up her face. "I just had to be sure."

Then she tossed him a scroll. He caught it deftly in one hand, frowning, before opening it to read its contents.

His eyebrows raised when he realized that this was a mission scroll. The same that he had been issued earlier that day: a year-long recon mission in Oto. A two-man cell.

"You're coming with me," he said coolly.

And Sakura's smile widened as she revealed her mission pack to him. "I'm not gonna let you walk away from me again," she said. Then, her smile morphed into a playful, challenging smirk. "So I hope you can keep up with me."

Then she turned her back to him, revealing the white Haruno Clan circle splayed across her back as she made her way into the night, expecting him to follow. And follow he did, vindication settling in his bones as he realized what this was: the closing a circle. A window opening. A new opportunity, for him to earn Sakura's trust back the right way.

Fleeting images of an Uchiha fan on her back instead brought him a smirk to match hers. He had an entire year to work for that dream.

He wasn't going to lose her again. And she refused to lose him.

note.. quick half-hour drabble...i like the idea of sasuke having to work for sakura's trust again, even if he never lost her love. ;)

xoxo Daisy.