Sakura stood in front of the mirror and stared at the second Sakura she saw there. Every day, she'd worked in the hospital, and once in a while she had run errands in the maternity ward. So it was normal. Of course it was normal. It was Society and the magazines in the hospital waiting room that liked to trick women into believing that it wasn't.
"Sakura?"
How long had she been in there? Obviously long enough for Sasuke to grow suspicious, or worry that she'd slipped on wet tiles or something. He tended to worry a lot even though he never showed it, unlike her. Maybe she was just playing hide and seek with him.
"I'm coming now!" she called, hoping that he wouldn't try and pry open the bathroom door.
After one last look at the second Sakura, she turned away, barely able to meet her own gaze any longer. The lacy silk nightgown was slippy when she pulled it on over her head, and it brought back memories of when she'd first bought it whilst out shopping with Ino. It was Ino's crude suggestion to buy it, making a little comment that subliminally implied that Sasuke would like it. That was a few months after the wedding, when they were still in the period of exploring each other's likes and dislikes.
There was a creak of the door, as she shuffled back into the bedroom playing with her fingers in a way that reminded her of Hinata. His eyes met hers immediately from where he lay under the bedcovers, but her stomach only flipped instead of her heart, and she was the first to look away.
"I'm sorry, I just lost track of time."
He was quiet for a minute, but it was difficult to tell whether this was the usual silence that lingered around him, or the way he retreated into deep contemplation. Sakura pulled back the sheets and climbed in beside him, but not quite touching him.
How unusual, Sasuke thought and watched how her pink lips crumpled at the edges. She was angry? Upset? With him or with herself? He had minded her incessant clinginess at the very beginning when they were first starting out as genin.
"Get off! Don't hug me!" he'd protested during the bell-test and had grabbed her head with both hands, pushing her as far from him as possible.
But over time, he'd warmed up to her touch, and she knew it.
So why the hell was she being so distant? The muscles of his jaw clenched in frustration and when she rolled over revealing her bare back to him, his eyes burned red. She was rejecting him? Haruno Sakura, the woman who apparently loved him with all her heart, was rejecting him after all these years?
"I'm tired Sasuke. I'm really tired. Can we just go to bed?"
Sasuke? He thought, taken aback by her words, Not Sasuke-kun? Not even Anata?
Her voice was weary. Weak. The tones in her voice certainly indicated tiredness, but he was Uchiha Sasuke and he'd grown to understand his wife better than that. When he didn't answer, she lifted an arm and switched off the bedside lamp with a flick of her wrist. At once, the room was plunged into darkness.
And then silence.
Sasuke simply watched his wife's pale shoulders rise and fall with her breaths – too steady for someone supposedly on the verge of slumber. It should've been relaxing, laying in bed beside her, but the air around him felt heavy against his skin. Filled with the utmost tension. And all of a sudden, the distance between them was greater than it ever had been before. Normally, Sakura would take any measures to close the gap between them, so it felt strange to him now that she'd changed her mind.
Outside, the crickets chirped from their hiding places in clumps of weed, and somewhere far away, two drunk shinobi cheered having returned from a lengthy mission. In bed, Sasuke reflected on his memories of his family, from before the massacre. He thought about his brother's gentle smile when he was carried home after hours of shiruken training. He thought about the glint of pleasant surprise in his father's eyes, when he'd finally mastered Goukakyuu no Jutsu after a mere week of hard work and determination. But most of all, he thought about his mother's soft voice when she said "Okaeri, Sasuke", and the way that she embraced him and combed her fingers through his hair whilst humming a little tune, and how she always smelled like flour and apples.
Nowadays, Sakura welcomed him home. Sakura was home.
But she was no longer welcoming him.
So if home wouldn't welcome him, he decided narrowing his eyes with a fierce determination, then he would have to welcome home. It would take some of his immovable pride and his courage, and he would have to overstep the invisible red line in his head that mustn't be crossed under any circumstances. Uchiha Sasuke was not a soft man, but this was Sakura, and which was more important? The line, or her feelings?
With the stealth that came with being a ninja, he inched toward her side of the bed, being careful not to rustle the duvet too much. Sakura neither turned, nor started by his advancement and Sasuke could only wonder what could've been distracting her enough to cloud her highly trained senses.
Suddenly, there was a tiny sniffle, and he froze in his place.
It was such a familiar noise to him, but not for any good reasons. His stomach lurched and something ached in his chest, like flames that licked and burned him from the inside out. Shaking his head to snap him out of his trance, he quickly stretched over her to turn on the lamp that she'd been so quick to turn off.
When she noticed the navy blue sleeve of his pyjama top, she gasped and buried her head deep into the duvet, which barely managed to shelter her from the yellow glow.
"Sasuke-kun, I'm trying to sleep!" she cried from under the duvet.
Sasuke-kun…That sounds better. His nerves had calmed to an extent, and he knew that he hadn't truly lost his wife. She was in there, somewhere, still loving him like she always did.
"Hn. No you're not, and if you keep shrieking like that you'll wake up Sarada."
The mention of their one year old daughter, who remained sleeping soundlessly in the next room silenced her for a second. For the first few months of Sarada's birth before and after they'd returned from their long mission, she'd slept right next to them. In between them to be specific. It was preferable, but then Tsunade kindly warned Sakura that Sarada would eventually get used to their sleeping arrangements and as she grew older, would eventually throw tantrums at the thought of her own bed. As a compromise, Sarada now occupied the bedroom beside theirs, and both doors were kept wedged open in case of nightmares or tears. Sakura's hand snapped out once more and with a flick of her wrist, they were engulfed in darkness again.
Sasuke hissed under his breath and snaked his right arm around the curve of her waist…only for her to slap it away. Briefly, he considered just letting the matter go, but if he did, then she would turn on him the next morning and accuse him of being insensitive. Women were moody and hormonal, as he'd come to learn the hard way. Annoying woman.
In the bed, she shifted further away from him, strikingly aware of how close he was to her. So solid and warm. And he loved her. She knew that. Otherwise he wouldn't have married her, would he? But she wondered, would he still see her that way?
When the pads of his fingertips brushed against silk and traced her spine, she realised that it was a bad idea to wear his favourite nightgown to bed. But her other pyjamas needed washing, so what choice did she have? She could only imagine the look on his face if she'd have asked him if she could borrow some of his instead.
"Sasuke-kun, please just let me sleep." She sighed and snuggled deeper into the mattress.
"Tell me why you're crying first."
Sakura tensed, and she heard nothing but the pounding of her heart and the crickets hidden in the reeds. "I'm not crying."
"Tsk. Yes you are."
She huffed and rubbed her face slightly into her pillow, which somehow smelled a little like her husband. "Sasuke-k…Anata I'm not crying."
That was the last straw for him. Putting all his strength into it, he curled his arm around her and dragged her closer to his chest, ignoring the way that she feebly tried to pry his wrists away from her stomach. Of course, he knew that if she was really unhappy with him, she would have pounded him to the ground by now. She was certainly capable of saving herself from his grasp, but she didn't even try. And Sasuke understood that a larger part of her craved his reassurance.
"Hn. Liar; your pillow's wet."
"Anata it's nothing, please just go to sleep." Her voice shook, like she was trying to hold back tears, or swallow the lump in her throat.
Through the open doors, Sasuke heard an small exhale and a creak as his daughter turned in her cot. She was most likely being disturbed by their voices. When he next spoke, he made sure that his words were hushed and audible only to Sakura.
"Has someone said something to you? Or done something?"
She shook her head and finally, fresh tears rolled across the bridge of her nose. He felt oddly glad at the sight, knowing that she was probably going to open up to him any time now. It was an unexpectedly nice feeling, being her rock once in a while.
"Anata…"
Sasuke answered with "Hn?" and rested his cheek against her pink hair, smelling the sweetness of her shampoo.
"You know…you know how I got bigger when I was pregnant with Sarada?" The question was merely a whisper now, and he strained to hear it. The subject matter was not an area of his expertise, but he tried to catch her drift.
"Aa."
"Well, you know that it takes a while to look the same as before again?"
Now he was completely lost.
"Sakura," he sighed, tightening his hold on her, "what are you trying to tell me?"
Any other day and she'd roll her eyes at him, but this time, she did nothing but squeeze out another tear and then another. Looking down at her, something inside him twisted painfully.
"I don't look like the people in the magazines anymore." She choked it out at long last, her words breaking up with sobs, sniffles and gasps of breath.
The people in the magazines? He thought, utterly baffled by the nonsense his wife was blubbering out with her tears. And then it hit him, like a slap to the face. Oh…The magazines…The media…
"I-I read an article when I w-was in the maternity ward l-last week," she continued in a stuttering mess, which drew him back to the present, "and it s-said that husbands see their w-wives differently after childbirth."
Sasuke's mind had gone blank. The woman was actually worried about her image? The notion was silly, to be frank, but a weight lifted from his chest at the knowing that she wasn't angry or upset with him.
She grabbed his hand with hers – she was trembling, he noted – and placed it on her stomach, still bulging beneath her nightgown.
"I-I'm all stretchy and b-big." She made his fingers move with her own so that he could feel where her skin was protruding and where he knew that she had silvery lines now. But he said nothing, and his eyebrows only furrowed and his lips parted in confusion. "And y-you won't see me t-that way again."
This was stupid, he decided. Absolutely stupid. He hesitated for a second before he spoke once more.
"…So?"
Against him, Sakura became rigid. What did he… "W-what do you mean 'so'?"
He shrugged, knowing that she'd feel it. "I don't see your point. You're not a picture in a magazine."
"I know, b-but you won't like me anymore, in y-you know…that way."
"Sakura, you're being ridiculous."
As soon as the words were in the air, her eyes narrowed. Ridiculous? She'd show him who the ridiculous one was, since he couldn't even comprehend such a simple point which she had so carefully tried to explain to him. Insensitive was the word which came to mind. Swiftly she twisted herself around until she was facing him, and parted her lips in formation of a comeback.
But he was smirking at her, and she stopped in her tracks. It was the same smirk that she'd seen all those years ago, when he'd left Konoha for the first time. When he'd left her.
"As expected, you're annoying."
It wasn't a malicious expression. The softness in his dark eyes told her that much. He was teasing her, for some reason that she couldn't comprehend. But before she could question him, he spoke for her.
"Do you remember what I said on the morning after we got married?"
She nodded, watching him with large green eyes and casting her mind back.
"I came to feel this way, because you're Sakura."
He closed his eyes and groaned quietly, knowing now that he couldn't be any further away from his comfort zone. The invisible line was miles behind him. Uchiha Sasuke was not a cuddle bunny, nor a man of mushy words. But if it meant that she'd stop crying…he guessed he'd have to suck it up and deal with his embarrassment.
"Hn. It still stands."
He cracked open one eye to see green and pink, the two colours dulled in the shadows of their bedroom, but full of life, just how he always saw her. And even if her eyes were still glassy, and her pale eyelashes were shiny with wetness, she was smiling. Sakura's smile was just how he believed a smile should be, and like he always did when she smiled, he remembered seeing the exact same expression on his mother's face whenever she stood in the doorway and said "Okaeri, Sasuke".
So he pulled his right hand away from her waist, and flicked the seal on her forehead with two of his fingers, just so that he could see her smile again. When at long last Sakura had curled up alongside him, peaceful and breathing deeply, Sasuke wondered whether Itachi would be proud of him and the home he'd created for himself.
"Tadaima"
"Okaeri" she whispered.
A.N: Well I may end this little drabble series/ anthology project here, because I thought that it would be nice to end it with Sasuke thinking of Itachi. thank you very much for reading xxx
I have a new AU SS fanfiction up now called 'Haunted'. It has ghost-Sakura and depressed-Sasuke. It doesn't have many views and I really am trying hard with it as I've been trying to improve on my writing. I'd like to know whether or not I've been successful in my attempt to improve, so please read it and let me know whether the style is better or worse than in Okaeri!
Thank you to those who do. I appreciate it.
