Characters: Team 7, with hints of Naruto/Sasuke/Sakura.
Prompt: Fuse.
On the nights when it happens, Sakura is always the first to wake up after Sasuke leaves the bed. She pulls on Naruto's shoulder, sometimes gives him a smack or two to get him to wake up, and then they both get up and head out into the courtyard.

That's where Sasuke is. He sits there in the center of a flickering mass of candles, utterly silent and gravely still as he watches them all burn. He never tells his teammates how he gets the candles, or where. It's not like there's much else he's capable of keeping from them, these days.

Naruto stalks irritably over to him, arms folded across his chest. "This is so stupid," he complains. "We have perfectly good lights inside the house." But after some such pointless comment, he always flops down next to Sasuke, leaning on the other boy just a little, and soon enough the candlelight is reflecting in his eyes.

Sakura takes a little while longer to walk through the sea of tiny lights and settle down next to her teammates, but she always follows, all the same.

Sasuke never says why he does it, but Sakura has the feeling that on some nights, he just wants to pretend that the candlewicks are fuses burning down to a swift, untimely end.

Once he was a fuse burning down to a single end. That was simpler and easier than what he is now.

Orochimaru is dead by his hand and Itachi by another's, and Sasuke sits between his teammates and watches the candles burn down in quiet peace.