title: home
disclaimer: naruto, not mine since 1999.
There have been many nights like this under the open air, too many to count. The air is crisp and cold, the stars painfully bright in the velvety blue-black night sky.
As he rests there on the ground, arm folded behind his head, Sasuke thinks about all the things he's left behind.
A warm bed, for one. But he can easily find one of those.
A decent meal. He can't remember the last time he had a meal that wasn't tack or preserved. Hot food is a luxury that this sinner forgoes while he finds himself. He barely remembers what a tomato tastes like.
Friendship. Brotherhood. Naruto understands why he had to go. Why he'll come back. Thanks to Naruto, his feet have found the path again, and he knows his rival will never begrudge him the need to walk it.
Guidance. Kakashi understands the need more atonement more than any of them, and he is grateful to the older man for allowing him to fix his mistakes.
Home. Home is a place he has barely been in the last eight years. One month's respite cannot make up for the years lost or the wrongs done. Home is not an empty house full of ghosts or a village that doesn't trust him. But home isn't just a placeā¦
Sakura.
He misses Sakura with an ache so profound and sharp that he's tempted to check his chest for holes.
The hope in her eyes that day as he left, he's always leaving, has made him think that maybe this time, for once in his life, he can do the right thing.
He knows, even as he knows that he had to make this journey, that she should never have had to wait for him. That she shouldn't be waiting now. But her unbending faith in him gives him a spark of hope that maybe the man she believes in really is inside him.
It's been two years, two years too long, and he wonders if he's yet learned enough of what the world has to teach him. He's seen life and death, destruction and rebirth, love and hate. Is he wise enough to be deserving of those he left behind?
He looks to the stars for answers, but they keep their ancient mysteries to themselves. But as he stares long enough, he starts to see her face in their patterns. He starts to hear her laugh in his memory and feel the imprint of her smile on his thudding heart.
The answer is there, he's just been walking around it. Home isn't just a bed, or where he eats or trains. Home is where the people who love him are. Home is the people who make him want to try to be better than he his. Home is where his heart has long since been, even if he didn't want to notice its absence.
Home is Sakura's smile and Sakura's laugh and the way she says "Sasuke-kun!" Home is how Sakura would follow him to the ends of the earth, but understands when he needs to go alone. Home is where she waits and waits, and it doesn't matter if it's Konoha or Hell, he will fight his way back to wherever she is.
It's nearly two in the morning in the middle of nowhere, and Sasuke gets to his feet brusquely, gathering his things and wrapping his poncho around him.
It's time to go home.
Home to Sakura.
