A/N: Ew filler. At least it's short.

Warning: This chapter contains adult material, descriptive, because I'm the writer and I can write what I want xD. I changed the rating and if you don't want to keep reading because of this, don't. You have been warned.

*Disclaimer*


Chapter 7

- The Dream -

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She visits her parents the next morning. They greet her with happy faces and her mother makes tea for both of them while her father hugs her and later sits in the living room to read the newspaper.

She sits on a chair in the dining area. Her mother boils water.

"Well, how's my princess been?" Sakura has the urge to roll her eyes, but she knows it's been a while since she saw her parents, so she just smiles and nods a little.

"I'm fine."

Her mother suddenly gives her a distrustful look, though it goes away and replaced by a smiling expression just as quickly. "Really? How's Ino?"

"She's okay, with Sai and all that," a cup of tea is placed on the table and she grabs it with thankful words. Her mother sits in front of her and sips on her own cup.

A few minutes pass by; the only sound heard is her father's newspaper rustling with the absurdly brusque turning of pages. He doesn't say a word, but rather listens and, sometimes, gazes at them through the corner of his eyes. She sees it.

"Are you managing fine at the hospital?"

Sakura stifles; subtly leaves her cup on the table. "You mean I can't?" There is no biting tone, she's asking out of raw curiosity.

Mebuki looks at her in the eye, serious and at the same time with a tint of warmth.

"Directing the hospital is a big responsibility, I just wanted to make sure it isn't a heavy weight on your shoulders."

Sakura interrupts her. "Co-directing the hospital, mum. I'm only managing a small part, as I told Tsunade-sama to take her time. She's retiring soon."

Her mother nods, and they finish their beverages.

She does not mention the fact that right now she has the week off. Who's to say the things they'll plan for the whole week in order to "have fun" with their daughter. Last time they did that, Sakura came home with a crab bite on her leg and a broken finger. Needless to say, she loves her parents, but she'd rather keep quiet about time off—and keep her fingers intact.

She leaves as the sun is setting behind the trees, and they hug her like there's no tomorrow. She leaves as the night approaches, with a full stomach and a smile on her lips. She leaves, and she doesn't think of him until she's alone at night on her bed and his face is all she can imagine; formulate in her brain.

It's futile, the attempts, because at the end of the day she always remembers him.

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She doesn't get to sleep that night—she diligently refuses. She plants her warm feet on the floor of her room and takes off her clothes. Not even sparring a glance in the mirror, she puts on black shorts and a red shirt—one of her ninja outfits, one of the many. Adjusting the pouch on her hip, she leaves the apartment.

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She should've known; not in a million years would she guess it. She gazes up to the person she bumped into while running in the desolated streets, toward the training grounds.

Sasuke passively looks back at her for a moment before regarding her attire. He tilts his head slightly, scowling before the creases on his brow smooth out. "At this hour?"

Sakura has to shake her head a little in order to recollect herself. She looks down at her feet in embarrassment. She had bumped into the man! In the back of her mind she hears something he says—what was the question again?

"A mission," he elaborates, and she gapes at him, mind clicking with the missing pieces, "it's really late." His voice is low and slow, carried away with the barely-there wind. She opens her eyes wide, recognition stepping in. "Oh." She looks at herself and smiles at him a little under her blush.

"I couldn't sleep," he raises an eyebrow, "so I'm heading to the training grounds."

She bites her lip when he doesn't say anything—it gives her some time to think about why he had been walking around at this late hour, just like she had been. She breaks the silence, as usual.

"You couldn't sleep either?" The question is out of her before she can take anything back. He's still looking at her with the eyes of a killer; the eyes of a man that has suffered countless times; the eyes of a man who desperately needs to find himself. Maybe he's looking at her because of he previous night—maybe he had noticed, after all, her strange behaviour, the sole tear escaping her eyes before she could close the door completely. She swallows down a shiver.

But if he noticed, at all, he never voices it. Instead, he regards her with a gentleness and a patience she craves to hear again.

"I like to take walks. It's calming," He almost whispers, against the top of her head from his height.

She smiles at him.

He doesn't avert his eyes.

"Well, I better get going," taking a step forward, she places a hand on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze as a means to say goodnight. She leaves, jumping rooftops, before she can regret the touch. The look he gave her was too dark.

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She should've done this before, is all she can think about. The moon shines upon her sweaty form all the strength she musters; it's like a battery recharging.

She swirls around her personal axis, rotates and creates a perfect circle on the earth below her feet. Inhaling some of the oxygen she's been missing, Sakura punches the center of the circle, and everything trembles for a moment before the ground breaks beautifully. She has to jump in the air, but that just gives her a more perfect view of the destruction her tiny fist has caused.

Yes, she should have done this before. She should've resorted to this method from the beginning. The blood boils in her veins but it's not from anger, but from the adrenaline she feels. The power she emerges, alone in one of the training grounds—the only one she could find without a clearing in sight, only trees and rocks.

A simple touch on the ground again and she's back on her feet, light and energetic.

She doesn't dare think of Sasuke, but the memories still come to her anyway. She tries to tell herself that's not the reason why there is only one tree standing after only two hours of training. The field is wrecked, and Kakashi will kill her, yet she does not let that deter her from the surge of relief she feels in the end.

Sweat dribbles down her face in thick trails; the night air is warm against her skin in the midst of summer.

Dropping to the ground, she looks up—the cold grass against her sore back is just what she needs—and sees the stars in the sky.

She remembers how one night her team had to sleep on grass and how she looked up at the sky with her two boys by her side sleeping, a twelve year old fool she was. And now, a nineteen year old accomplished woman. Accomplished, she thinks, is not the exact word for what she is, because there are things in life she could never reach. His heart, for instance, is one of them.

She closes her eyes. It's futile, the attempts, because at the end of the day she always remembers him.

However, it is she who forgets him in the morning, and it is he who doesn't care. So she stays that way, blindly gazing up at the bright light of the stars, and remembering someone she can never recall.

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Sasuke stirs in his deep sleep, sweating profoundly. After numerous turns and changes in position, he finds no way of staying asleep any longer; to his dismay, he opens his eyes to stare at the empty space on his small bed. His breathing is slightly disturbed; his heart is erratic inside his chest. He stares, gazing with no purpose whatsoever to the dark space his white sheets make. Blinking, he sighs—and then he feels something settling in his stomach, and he doesn't know what exactly it is that makes him sit in bed and frown, but he doesn't think much of it. With the same feeling in the pit of his stomach, he gets up with a tiredness he's sure to feel throughout the remainder of the day—it's four in the morning. He feels alert, surprisingly. Noticing the perspiration on his skin, he gets rid of his shirt in a swift motion.

He walks across the short hallway leading to the kitchen and opens the fridge, hoping that the growing feeling stops once he eats something.

But after two cups of milk and an apple, he's still dreading the sensation. It's still there, annoying his insides. In his stomach, past his stomach, past his navel, right where his-

When he looks down, his heart almost drops. The blood in his body is directed south.

He quickly leaves the kitchen, hurriedly entering his bedroom and closing the door, eyes confused and frown deep. No. But it's there—it's really there, present and very noticeable. He swipes a hand through his hair, clearly frustrated, pacing around his room like a madman. He scowls, a memory passing by his eyes.

Then, unexpectedly, he hears her soft moans as if she was indeed there, in the back of his mind; he hears her whisper his name in the same needy voice from the dream that didn't let him sleep that makes him throb. Shivers run up his spine without his consent, and then he remembers the way she arched her back against his torso, and he can't help but twitch against his better judgement. He closes his eyes quickly, fist balled with anger at himself, before his dream can toy with him like it did before.

Releasing a breath, he opens his eyes.

The first thing he sees is the bed, amidst the darkness of the room.

He didn't want to do it, but the hard bulge in his pants had another opinion. He didn't want to think about her, but the dream was still vivid in his head; he could almost feel the same way.

It's inevitable. He is only a man, after all. The quicker he gets rid of it, the better.

So he climbs onto the bed, in the far middle, and sits with his bare back against the cold of the wall. With a sigh, his hand moves past the waistband of his pants, and past a trail of dark hair to grip—his breath hitches at the tension in his muscles. Soon, he forgets the voice in the back of his head telling him to stop. Because after he tightens the grip on his dick, and gives a few strokes up and down, agonizingly slowly, the only thing that makes him choke back a groan is pink tendrils under his body and soft hands on his own skin.

He closes his eyes, hard, until he sees big green eyes looking back at him; until he enters her with a quick thrust, hearing a soft a gasp from her under him; until he moves so slow inside her that she's quick to whimper and mewl in pleasure, writhing her small curves on his bed; until it almost feels real.

His hand moves faster. His teeth grit against each other with his jaw clenched tight. Nevertheless, he can't swallow a low moan from he back of his throat at how close he is to the edge. He should feel ashamed, yet the only thing he feels is the way his cock already lets out pre-cum, the way he gasps against her collarbone. God, and how good she feels behind his eyelids.

The only sound in the room is his harsh breathing.

The sounds in his dream are the only things he can focus on.

She moves her head closer to him in a desperate attempt to kiss him, hands on his nape to guide him down; he moves closer, while he quickens his pace inside of her, hand gripping the sheets next to her. And when her lips are too close to his own, he opens his eyes—head thrown back to the wall and body shaking, gasping at his release. His chest heaves up and down, his breath irregular. He doesn't look down to see the inevitable mess he has created inside his pants, but rather regulates his breathing pattern and feels the smallest of guilts in his chest—not because of what he has done, but because of who he chose to imagine in such way.

He almost believed it had happened; the orgasm he had, proof of this. And yet, he sighs in contemplation, deciding that he doesn't want to think about his actions, for he is a man and he needed to relief himself. And the little part of him that thinks it meant something—that he did this for an obvious reason—doesn't come close to his stubbornness.

The pleasure soon is gone and he stares blankly at the ceiling for quite some time.

He takes a shower five minutes later. And, although no one but him can ever know of the event, for some reason far beyond him, he doesn't leave the confines of his home for two days.