chapter 9: back to black

title: back to black

word count: 1016

disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

note: Back To Black by Kilian is one of my favourite scents. Out of all the scents featured thus far in the story if there is anything you need to smell, it is B2B. Despite its name, it is warm and inviting - it is what home smells like for me. It doesn't have monster sillage either, meaning you have to be close to the wearer to smell it.

Sakura loves Sasuke's cape.

It's thinly woven cloth reminiscent of the dark shirts he used to wear in their youth.

She still remembers how he had covered her under his cape in one handed embraces during their encounters as he began returning to Konoha more regularly. Still looks forward to the strange silver, gold and platinum artefacts he brings back from his travels, small trinkets and unknown spices.

The pendant around her neck suddenly feel heavier against her skin.

'What's this?' Sakura dangled the thin chain on her fingers, letting the sunlight hit it.

'It's for you. Don't take it off.'

Naruto snickers when he hears this when the scene is mentioned another time.

'Sakura-chan, the bastard gave that to you after I told him he should at least leave a mark on you since our Sakura-chan is so cute!' He laughs as he remarks.

'Why, Naruto? You know better than to try and make Sasuke feel like he needs to do something to keep me!'

He looks at her like she grew another head and smiles his sunshine smile at her.

'I thought you were the smart one Sakura-chan,' he patted her head as she continued to pout. 'You can't make him do anything he doesn't want to, I only gave the bastard an excuse to do what he was going to do anyway. He's shy like that.'

And when she cracks a smile to herself when she looks at herself in the mirror in the privacy of room, she tells herself that 'no, he really didn't have to' and that her silly show happiness from receiving a material manifestation of his intentions is only due to Naruto's stupid smiles being contagious.

Sakura loves Sasuke's hair.

She loves threading her hands through the strands, and pulling at them like she knows he likes.

The gravity defying spikes are a little like her love - a bit more complicated than classically romantic. Something that looks rough and tough, but was in reality, soft and malleable. The fact that he grew it out in their later years only made her husband more attractive to her.

Sakura loves Sasuke's eyes.

Dark and seemingly expressionless, but able to express more than any part of him.

Weapons that summon unimaginable power but look at her with unexplainable love and only with an aim to protect. Eyes that for a while - ignored its instinctive urge to look at the sky and only stared at the earth, at her.

On the long nights that he had been gone, Sakura revelled in not knowing if it's day or night when she is buying time in the hospital, waiting for him to return.

She loves his darkness, his purposely cold exterior and his ability to return home. Orbiting the earth she embodied to Naruto's sun and Sasuke's own moon.

So it is only natural that she loves black. Because everything she loves about Sasuke is black and in their black and white world - he takes up half of her whole world. He is the Yin seal of her heart, properly adopting the philosophical principal's shade.

And when she first sees her child, she knows that Sasuke has given her yet another reason to love black.

The small smoky patch of dark brown hair, she knows will slowly darken as the ink of melanin dyes it a few years on. As will the chocolate ash of her daughter's large eyes, the iris and pupils to soon be blended.

She would be lying to say that she was not a bit sad that her baby did not seem to have followed her colouring in any sense at all. Perhaps a little hint of her own raspberry coloured hair would have been flattering in the sunlight? But as Karin came back to her to carry her crying daughter for a bath and dried the sweat covering her forehead, she could only feel an overwhelming sense of joy.

Sakura will love her daughter in very way that Sasuke wasn't able to be loved when they were young. Her child will be raised by everyone in the village, she will not allow her to feel lonely.

Her talent and growth will be fanned by her bloodline burning the will of fire she is born with. Her every step will be nurtured in the rich soils of her love and knowledge, and her father will protect her in his darkness. The night will never scare her, the untimely deaths of her descendants and their sins will not be allowed to bother her.

She will be known against all odds as a miracle of the Fourth Shinobi War. Across Konoha, across the Land of Fire, and all the areas her father has allowed himself to be taken. The time that Sasuke may not be with her will serve as her protection in her future.

Sasuke's hand in one of her own, she was sure was suffering from a few broken bones.

But even he seemed to have forgotten about everything else in the world as he saw his daughter and Sakura could not be prouder of herself for giving him what he had always wanted the most.

The two of them hadn't spoken much throughout the ordeal, Sakura having been much calmer than the average expecting mother while Sasuke fell into the depths of worry in the last few hours.

Unexpectedly, Karin was the one to break the silence of the room as she trotted back with the child in mossy green blankets given by Naruto and Hinata, smelling of chamomile and honey baby wash. Sakura thought that her daughter looked like she was being wrapped up in a ball with lettuce and cabbage!

'Forehead! She's been cursed with a forehead that matches yours!' Karin exclaimed, in hushed tones for her friend.

And as Sakura laughed and laughed for what seemed like the longest time and exhaustion finally caught up; Sasuke looked on at the two with a small smirk, leaving Sakura to safely fall to the familiar blackness of sleep while he kept guard for his new family.