Sasuke wears his ghosts like corpses wear worms and maggots. He hates them, the way they invade his body, mind, heart—the way he can feel them squirming through, hollowing him out. But he needs them, as all bodies eventually do. To return, he thinks, would be a blessing.

Because he meanders the world in a state of indefinite purgatory—half here and half there. He does this in a cold motel room after vomiting his latest nightmare. There's blood in the sink too, and he doesn't remember how it got there (but he can guess.)

He paces around on oak floorboards that look like perfect replicas of the ones his parents had died on. He stares at the protrusion of bone beneath the stretch of skin on his white, lightly veined feet. He tries not to think of Itachi's corpse and how it was also white and lightly veined.

Sasuke has been trying to get better these days. He would like to be happy—a promise held tight in the small hands of a pink haired sprite from years and years ago. He didn't want it back then, and didn't deserve it either. Deserves it even less now. And yet, he yearns.

He desires to neatly tuck away his dead kin in the crescent of his disintegrated left palm, longs to restore with his right. Maybe meet Kakashi's hand in a shake, a formal yet fond acknowledgement. Perhaps slap his palm against Naruto's, bask in the slight sting of their silent victory. Auspiciously knit his fingers between Sakura's, smooth his thumb over a knuckle in a long fermented adoration.

Instead, it smears wetness from his face, and blood from the rim of the sink. Instead, he thinks of Itachi.

He thinks of millstones tethering his brother to duplicity, the lives of a village forever separating them from each other. Sasuke hates himself for falling for the facade. Of course he knew at the time there were absent pieces in a grim puzzle. But he had been asking the wrong questions, grieving in the wrong gradient of injustice. It seems Itachi was fated to be his immortalized eidolon—forever escaping his grasp.

And Sasuke misses his niisan. Miss. Like he strung his bow but the arrow flew past the swine and instead impaled his every chance to do right by Itachi. Sasuke would do anything to turn back that arrow, would do anything to save his brother's contused heart.

The regret is a constant yearning collapsing on his chest, muddling his head with an aching nostalgia for another life where everything fell together in a repetitive motion instead of falling apart. A life where his brother never scrambled his head and left him deeply mislead and so very alone.

And Sasuke feels the fragments in every empty crevice of this motel room. Alone.

The metallic knobs of the shower are cold under his quivering fingers. The spray of the water is unpleasantly cool too, but he doesn't bother to change it. The chill is easier on his wounds.

He washes himself with a foul, astringent soap until he rusts. The tiles of the shower are cracked, archaic, just like the floors. The motel features are stark and vivid and bring him back to the phantoms of his clan. Sasuke traces at the cracks in the tiles, like a small hand once traced the rings of a dead tree in the floorboards. He remembers the swirls meeting his parents' blood. He remembers strangers washing his body, and even their showers smelled like antiseptic. He stares until he retches into the tub drain where blotches of browns and yellows mix with the red. He quietly notes to avoid this motel.

Sasuke came back because he needed familiarity again. Not this kind of familiarity—not old architecture, or blank lapses in his memory before he's greeted with violence unearthed from the rifts in his head. He needs warmth of a familiar affection again—the warmth of his Team 7. Except he's come to realize that Team 7 isn't quite Team 7 anymore and he knows it's his fault. He misses them the same way he once missed Itachi—they just slipped through his fingers.

Kakashi is locked up in the Hokage's office these days. Maybe this isn't too much of a problem—Sasuke wouldn't know what to say to him anyway. But there's a whistling regret between them. Kakashi wishes he was a better sensei. Sasuke wishes he was a better student.

The remorse is varnished with their daily encounters in the town graveyard to revisit their greatest failures. Always at the same time, just before sunrise. They don't walk together, or even look at each other really—but there's a quiet confession between them. Sometimes it's comforting, the way they speak without speaking. But usually it's just unsettling, like he's been living in the wrong side of the mirror.

The missing is far worse with Naruto, despite the fact that they speak more often. They hang out at Ichiraku's every now and then but things aren't the same. Fate has had it that Sasuke would miss the interim of them growing up in mutual brotherhood. Now they're older, burdened by expectations beyond themselves. And Naruto feels worlds apart.

Sometimes Sasuke visits Naruto at his house, though he tries to avoid it. It doesn't matter that Naruto tries to bribe him with his favorite dishes and tomatoes. It's all just ash in his mouth when he watches the way Naruto smiles at Hinata. It's bittersweet, because Naruto's love is his too, and vicariously, he's happy. This is the slow accumulation of everything they had both always wanted. But outside of their cosmic union, it's fatal to watch. Because this is what he has forfeited. This is what Naruto built and Sasuke destroyed: family.

He's remorseful, and angry, and the resentment that storms through him makes him want to kill the both of them all over again. (Itachi was white, lying slack with the rubble of their clan's collapse. Sakura won't even talk to him.)

He doesn't mean to be. Naruto deserves what he has—every last bit of it, and Sasuke knows this. The jinchuuruki has done so much, saved so much. But Naruto was blessed in so many ways he wasn't. Yes, he had it hard—Naruto lost his parents too. But he didn't see them piled in a heap of blood, didn't see the hollow through their eyes when his prized sibling cleaved through them. He didn't have a cursed soul, or a heritage of yearning leading him astray. Naruto didn't know the desperation to be enough despite the bodies—to be enough for the bodies. And they were everywhere—fuckfuckfuck, what is Kabuto doing—don'tthinkaboutitdon'tlistendon'tthink—but oh gods what is he doing? No, Naruto had choice. Sasuke had eons of rage, the divine wrath of a second-handed punishment, and a macabre screenplay of mock volition. . YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING, YOU DON'T KNOW—

Naruto just looks at him with that soft resignation, wearing pity.

The cerulean iris torpedos Sasuke from a fiery wrath to the infernos of madness. Naruto is his soul brother, and there's a terrifying truth lying in that sad gaze. Sasuke hates it. He'll give everything to destroy that image. Pity. He doesn't want to be a victim. He refuses. Never again. Skin ablaze, chest made of lead, and then his mind blanks.

Then he's awake, panting and hurting and writhing in his own blood. Like Naruto, but Naruto is smiling in that way he always does before he cracks a joke and repairs what Sasuke has done. Again.

Sasuke regrets it every time.

He flounders in his disappointments, ossified failures weighing on him like Fugaku's expectations once did. Now he gets to disappoint the whole clan. And Sasuke aches to tell them he's sorry. He never really deserved to bear the noble brand of Uchiha, couldn't live up to the cost of their lives. But there's no one else to do it now and he's sorry.

And in moments like these, where he's begging for restoration of his blood, his distraught soul, he thinks of her.

She moved through him just as powerfully, yet so differently from Naruto. Where the golden boy was bright, shrugging off every obstacle with a flap of golden, gilded wings, Sakura was a gentle animal of terra, curiously exploring the place where vegetation meets the blue. And if she dipped her toes low enough, he could feel her grounding warmth brush against the depths of his cool underworld.

The knob is cold when he shuts the shower off, but he can't feel it. His head drums with that last missing. He had played and replayed every encounter between them in his head. Where did he go wrong? he had wondered stupidly, before realizing, Where did he ever go right?

But which transgression was the tipping point? When did she decide she'd be better off without him? Yes, she must have always known, but when did she choose?

It was Naruto, fuck, he knows it was Naruto. No, Naruto wouldn't do that. The dobe wanted their family whole. It was Ino. It was her parents—her fucking mother. He knew he should have done her in before she—Nonono

It was him, it was him and he deserves it. He has no justification to lament. He asked for this. In so many ways, even after they brought him back. Sasuke remembers. He remembers and he wishes he didn't.

"I don't want to see you like this," he had said, the shell of a man who wanted more. He'd only been solid in contrition and desperation when Naruto took him out of the dark. Still, he would never be low enough to drag Sakura down with him. Not like that. Never like that.

"Like what?" Sakura had asked, pink brows and cherry lips disgruntled. She'd been feigning innocence like she'd always done with him. It wouldn't fool him this time. She knows. He knows she knows.

"I don't want your forgiveness," He said it bluntly and he meant it down to the marrow of his bone. Her smiles were all rigid and laced with anguish—not at all like the smiles for Naruto, for Kakashi, for anyone but him. He would rather she spit in his face and tell him to go to hell than wear that repulsive expression. It made him ache.

"W-what do you mean?" Her voice quivered, and her eyes trembled too. She was scared to be revealed and Sasuke thought Good. Because it was about damn time. He was sick of them carrying his burdens.

"It's disgusting and I don't want it." He made a point not to look in her direction.

There was a silence and some part of Sasuke could hear his heart protesting beyond the wild thumps. But he was too contained to care. Besides, he was certain he'd broken through her altruistic mask and he believed that to be a victory.

And he was right, the bitterness swimming between the crack in her words. "Oh, but it's perfectly fine when it comes from Naruto, right?"

"You're not Naruto." He said, and he stared right into her eyes for this because he was never allowed reprieve from this truth. He can't forget the red-hot passion swimming in bleary viridian. It haunts him in a different way than his dead kin.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Sakura asked, and his eyes traced the pretty wave of her pouting lip. "What makes it so different with him? Why is it acceptable for him but with me it's disgusting?" He had to turn his head away again. It was easier to just listen. Her voice was more confident than the trembles of her hands.

"He doesn't force it," Sasuke said. "It's cleaner."

There was a quiet. And then:

"Cleaner," she repeated, voice strained and so subtly dark. He found his head riveting to see her but her posture was turned away, shrunken in on itself, and looking fucking miserable.

He thought the reaction was entirely unprecedented, but that didn't stop the sand pit from swallowing him in regret for it. An apology, or at least a half-assed excuse, was on the tip of his tongue, but then she was bolting away, a wet whimper left like a footprint on the cold cement.

He expected Naruto to give him shit for it, but the jinchuuriki seemed entirely unaware. Sakura didn't avoid him for long either. Soon enough, she was all nerves, and abhorrent smiles again, so skittish he could hardly believe it. It strangled him and he badly wanted to confront her again but he also just needed to get the hell away. Naruto and Sakura were too good for him, always were. And Sasuke felt so out of place, so out of mind.

He knows he still is. The only difference between then and now is that he just doesn't care anymore. He doesn't care if he's not good enough, because he wants to be. He just wants them again. He wants Naruto's goofiness, and Kakashi's lateness, and Sakura's sweet affections. It was never perfect, but it was his, and he'd give anything to just have again. He's been missing for so long.

But Sakura...

Sakura must have finally gave in to his petulant, bitter requests. She's nowhere to be found.

Sasuke slings clothes onto his wet skin and it sticks uncomfortably. The sensations are lost on the twitch of his fingers, a feral need to scrape his flesh off in the confines of this stale, archaic room. Considerate, he leaves his weapons when he closes the door.

He thought he could go through life without them. He'd die with his brother and complete the cycle with a casual shrug and a silent scream. But Sasuke knows himself better these days. So he's not surprised to see himself too alive and hopelessly frantic about seeing Sakura again. The longing was always there when it came to her. Not that she was perfect. Sasuke certainly meant it when he called her annoying. She was always trying to babble her anxiety away, rambling about how irritating her okaasan was, and it made him fume because at least she had a kaasan.

But she was also exceptionally brave when she acted on instinct—on passion. And this was the kernel of Sasuke's fears. Because it was this instinct, this passion, that spoke to him in isolated moments. Her voice had been so raw, possessed with something otherworldly when she called his name. She loved him. And it bewildered him because how the hell could a 12 year old girl know that? Feel that? And for a boy as displaced as him?

He wanted to vehemently deny all of it, wash his hands of this feeling, this breed of cancer infecting his every thought since the massacre. It was the flames in her eyes—the same flames that warmed the beats in his chest—that drove him to desperation. Missing his mother, his father, his brother, his brother—it was love that provoked him to wage war on himself. And he hated the idea of Sakura enduring that too. She was better off without that crippling feeling—without him.

So when Sasuke left her on a bench on a night much too cold for either of them, he only thought about how beautiful she was, how agonizingly wonderful her weight felt in his arms and—This is why I have to go. He would give every life he has before he let Itachi poke holes through her too.

He had run his fingers through the silkiness of her hair and could only loathe those pretty tresses—that exotic pale pink. Sasuke had never seen anything like it. It was so predictably alluring that he hated how he fell for it too. Had Sasuke's paranoia not wrenched him away when he heard the screech of either bird or bat, he was sure he would have greedily stolen her first kiss that night. The liquid yearning demanded he did.

Now he's stalking up and down Konoha's streets in the dead of night like a mad man and he feels like one too. His stomach is eating itself again, his nails are chewed up to their bloody nailbed, and he's scouring the civilian villages, looking for that soft green chakra.

Just wait, Naruto had said. She'll come. Just give her time. But he can't. He tried and he just can't so fuck Naruto's shitty advice because it's not like he ever abided to patience either. It's been too long. Too damn long.

He can recall the first time that warm chakra grazed his senses, and it was subtly addicting even then. It had started when Sakura had found him meditating in the midst of foliage while they waited for their habitually late sensei. He remembers being taken by bewilderment by her elation, the white glimmer in her emerald eyes, when he instructed: You just sit down, shut up, and breathe.

She had urged Naruto to join them too, despite Sasuke's protests. Naruto was compliant because it was Sakura asking but he was often too hyper to bother for long, lasting all but a few minutes. Lets join hands! Sakura had chirped. Maybe we can counteract your nerves. But this just made Sasuke anxious. Naruto's chakra was enormous and scalded him and Wow, you're right, Sakura-chan, I feel better already! Your hand is so warm, and soft, and your— He had hissed,Dobe, shut the hell up! It's a meditation. Neither him nor Sakura could combat the eccentric waves of their teammate. Sasuke was always grateful when Naruto gave up, because then he could focus on just him and Sakura.

And Naruto was right. Her hands were warm and soft. And her chakra was vibrant. It flowed into him seamlessly, with a perfect cadence that synchronized with the contours of his own. It had a luminosity to it, like Naruto's, but it wasn't overbearing like the jinchuuriki's. Sasuke had found it inexplicably soothing. And each time they were deep inside their catatonic states, her thumbs would ever so gently trace over his palms.

He hadn't thought it was intentional, so he selfishly allowed it. But as he got to know her better, he realized she was much more devious than she let on, actively using her innocuous appearance to her advantage. He never said anything about the gentle caresses she gave him but it made him wonder.

But now he's not sure if he'll ever get an answer because a week has gone by and he can't find a trace of her anywhere. He's certain she's either on a lengthy mission away from the village or she's walking around with her chakra masked.

He knows it's not like looking for Naruto, who's chakra is a constant beacon of light. But she shouldn't be this hard to find either, especially with the Rinnegan. Damn that perfect chakra control. She's made it difficult on purpose. She's not just avoiding him, she's trying to erase herself from him completely.

She can't do this. She shouldn't be allowed to. She came and cradled his battered and broken head in her healing palms. She poured into the hollow of his chest, flooded his every pore, his battle driven heart. She couldn't tell him—in all her infinite beauty, an ethereal pixie with those green, green eyes and that beautiful, beautiful pale pink hair—that she loves him.

And then just take it back.

Sasuke wanted to cry out, to cut open every piece of him she had poured her faith into. He wanted to drown the world in the heat of his black flames with bleeding eyes and terrorizing screams. It wasn't fair, it wasn't right. Sakura couldn't leave him like the others. She promised herself to him too young, too full of conviction. I love you. She had said. I would do anything for you. Please, just stay with me... And he hated the naked sincerity in her voice, how it trembled in open vulnerability back then. Now, he hates it even more.

Don't leave! She had cried.

(But he did.)

His fist smashes into the wall of a nearby shop, and he crumbles onto the floor. Her absence has him feeling misplaced in this forlorn village of heros and casualties. It was like she had scooped out his bone, muscle, and promise and left him with nothing but the vast empty. Another family member lost, another love fallen to his everlasting grief. Was he meant to spend his life missing her, loving her, resenting her, the way he has with Itachi?

And he is as dumbfounded by this thought as much as he is tormented. There was a modest amount of certainties Sasuke held in his lifetime, but Sakura loving him was one of them. Now Sasuke doesn't know what to believe. He needs her oh so bad and he doesn't know why she's not there. He doesn't know why she isn't holding him. Because he just saw his dead niisan again and his skin is peeling off beneath his fingers and he needs her.

Sasuke only ever wanted his family back. He wanted his love again. And Naruto, yes, Naruto is family, his brother. He would give his life for Naruto a thousand times over and forever. But Sakura. Sakura was his. Even before herself, she was his. And his alone. Her avoidance has heightened his madness and has him cycling into bouts where he's pathetically desperate for control.

And he knows he's acting crazy as he does it, he knows he needs to stop—just forget the past and let it be. It's too much. You need to let it go, Sasuke. Kakashi had said—but he can't. Can't sleep, can't eat, can hardly breathe, his mind is rotating in infinite loops of SakuraSakuraSakura. He misses her too much.

Miss. Like he was reaching through the swell of the prenatal aether, but then she had been forced out before their fingers could meet. And he just needed to feel her, dammit, We should have stayed dead.

Desperate, but never sloppy, Sasuke finds himself following Naruto with his chakra fervently masked. He follows him everywhere—to Ichiraku, to the training grounds, to Hinata, to see Sai, back to Ichiraku, to Kakashi, to the market… For several days, he follows him and follows him, promising he'll stop in the next hour, the next night, the next day. But he never does.

He tracks him until finally, finally Naruto is presented with a slug summon one night at Ichiraku's. The jinchuuriki takes ramen to go and leads Sasuke to an old apartment building between Konoha's shinobi hospital and the civilian district her parents lived in.

She moved out, Sasuke realizes. And he doesn't know why he is so stunned. Who wouldn't want privacy from their parents at age 24? Privacy for what?—Shutupshutup.He has no right.

He sees her chakra through the walls, a soft green, quietly condensed to her being and barely 's scrambling around, looking for a branch that is level with her apartment floor. He's thankful for the obscure of night because he's feeling maladroit, palm slick with suspense.

He finds a branch by a window, and she's already with Sai and Ino before Naruto meets them in her walls are an ugly mustard color though beautifully decorated with art and knick knacks, and he's in awe because it's hers. But he doesn't soak in any of it the way he wants to because once his eyes find a small figure on the bed, they do not leave.

His throat is tight and his heart is violently palpitating because she is so damn beautiful. Her hair is longer than he remembers, just reaching the small of her back. She looks thin, bones jutting instead of muscle, and her eyes are worn with fatigue, but her smile is radiant and tender.

They chatter about nonsense, and they're notably playful. A sanguine calm overtakes him as he watches through foliage that is only just beginning to wither. He notes everything, the rigidness in her shoulders when Naruto says something stupid, the shine in her eyes when Ino makes a joke, the intention in her gaze when Sai speaks.

But then Ino is peeking through the open window with paraphernalia in her hand. Her eyes are perplexed, studying him close. Fuck! He turns away, hiding from sight before he hears her attention called away. He doesn't stick around to find out if she's revealed his presence or not. Heart in his throat and head in the clouds, he absconds with the image of pastel pink behind his eyes.

He silently pledges not to come back after that incident, because that's not a thing good teammates do. But two days later, he's right outside her apartment window again.

And again.

And again.

He's stalking her, he realizes. It's completely stupid of him. Sakura is perspicacious and intuitive, and he has to be painstakingly meticulous if he doesn't want to be caught. But he needs this and he promises he won't do anything, he wouldn't ever hurt her again, it's Sakura for fuck's sake. So it's okay. It's okay if he just looks.

It becomes a nightly ritual. Waiting around her streets beneath slivers of moonlight. Rinnegan attentive until he catches that viridescent hue on her walk home. He sidles closer to her building, patient until her chakra is flaring, alive and free—a signal she's asleep. Then he casts an area genjutsu, finds a comfortable position on a tree, and watches.

She's never doing anything. Just sleeping, soft breaths moving with her naked shoulders. And it soothes him. It makes him feel close. Close to what, he's not sure, but he knows it's something good.

Sometimes she comes awfully late and she doesn't get many hours before she goes back to the hospital again. Many times she'll be having a nightmare and Sasuke doesn't find it easy to suppress the searing impulse to break in through the window and hold her, tell her it's okay. Because he knows the nightmares. He has them too.

He relives that fateful day of the Uchiha massacre, sees visions of Madara burning him alive, of Orochimaru taking his body, of becoming Kabuto's experiment—of killing Kakashi, killing Naruto, killing Sakura. He has so many vivid dreams about Itachi, his life, his death, his genjutsus, that Sasuke is genuinely surprised he hasn't snapped and put himself out of his misery (although, not for lack of trying.) But no matter the nightmare, Sasuke's left puking at late hours and cutting himself open. Sometimes he pokes himself through with a single claw of a Susanoo finger—and the burning—the burning of that chakra clad arm engulfs everything.

Sakura doesn't do that though.

She cries and she hugs her knees, rocks back and forth. He can hear her whispering, "It's okay, Sakura, it's okay," before she recites a list of terms he only knows must be medical. Sometimes she carves into her headboard with a kunai too, and it ranges from small nicks in the wood to violent stabs. It doesn't get easier to watch.

Every now and then she rolls a joint afterwards too and he's surprised because he wouldn't have pegged Sakura to be the type to smoke. But he also found these vices to be more common than most nin let on.

Suigetsu had once slaughtered all the inhabitants of a shinobi inn while the rest of Taka was gone. He'd found him amidst a bad trip, mumbling, All of us are ghosts, all of us. Sasuke had snuck into his bags to confiscate every remotely suspicious substance after that.

Karin only preferred alcohol as her main vice, but everyone in Taka partook in smoking before, besides him (it wasn't worth the risk.) He knew Jugo enjoyed it more than he let on, and Suigetsu laughed at everything when he was high. Sasuke hated when Karin got stoned because she often got riled up and tried to coax him with a sultry Sasuke-kun, I'm cold. Won't you hold me? He never cared to touch her, but he wonders about Sakura then.

Would she be horrified like he once was, if he admitted aloud that he fantasizes about brushing his lips against her neck, about burying himself inside of her?

Probably.

Ino visits Sakura every now and then, and Sasuke is confounded spectating their intimacy. His stomach burns seeing Sakura curling up against her like that. Sometimes Sakura will even wake up and kiss Ino's cheek or head, sigh so sweetly his throat feels like it's been stuffed with cotton. They're unfathomably close and it makes him sick in a way he never thought he could be.

It's even worse when one night it happens with Naruto. Much worse. They hold each other, and Sasuke knows it's platonic because Naruto never does anything that he knows he would do if he were against her like that. But it still makes him want to rip the jinchuuriki's heart out from the cage. It should be him against Sakura, breathing her in, legs tangled, lips pressing in steady affection, whispering, It's okay, the worst is over.

He sees Naruto the very next day and he's senselessly volatile. Naruto asks what's wrong but Sasuke shrugs him off, "Just a bad day," followed by a "Let's spar."

And then, some nights, Sakura wakes up and touches herself.

The first time it happens, Sasuke is so alarmed and flustered with embarrassment that he immediately bolts away. The second time, he doesn't quite make it that far—eyes mapping the slender of her neck, the protrusion of a clavicle peeking beneath lilac comforters. His body has been ensnared by her, pulse quick, pants cramped and tight. And the fourth time Sasuke undoes the fastening of his lower garments and touches himself with her.

He finds she likes to take her time. Needs it, even. Sasuke usually liked to just get it over with when he was alone and needing, like it was a horrible inconvenience to make love to his body. But when he's with Sakura, he follows her pace and enjoys it. It's slow, tantalizing, and it heightens his every nerve watching her hazy expressions.

Sometimes he even gets to hear the small sounds she makes when a window is left open. And he has to be careful these nights, because he gets so caught up in her that he becomes prone to letting the mask of his chakra leak. Fortunately, the few times it happens, she is too wrapped up in bliss to notice.

But sometimes her whines still and the whimpers start to sound pained, like she's been wounded. And then she starts to cry, curling into herself and fingers pulling at her head. Sasuke can hardly feel himself softening in his hand because Why? Why is she hurting amidst a moment as lovely as her ecstasy?

Witnessing her grief becomes harder to sit with. He can't sleep again because he knows she's going to do something. She's too restless at night, too much like him. He starts to send summons to play guardian for him. So I know she's okay, Sasuke tells himself, although his methods are too intrusive to persuade his crumbling ethics, so he limits his antics to twice a week.

And on those days, he feels the slightest ease of the violent paranoia. On those days, she can't hurt herself. On those days, a morally conflicted nin with a suicide mission can't snatch everything—her—away from him too.

On the other days, the insomnia gets worse because he just can't stand sleeping alone anymore. Sasuke is sick of only ever sleeping with ghosts and he needs her bad. He wants her to wake him up from the nightmares, like she used to when they were kids. And every day when she's not curled up beside him in his bed is a day spent in panic, certain that this is The Day. So eventually, he stops trying to sleep altogether.

He takes missions and fills his time with tedious training. Sometimes he blacks out in the middle of the training ground, and sometimes he falls asleep on missions. But his teammates are too scared to rat him out. It's only Naruto who speaks up about his decay. Oi! Don't act all high and mighty, I could have killed you, bastard! His head is a fogged miasma and Sasuke doesn't complain because maybe he's tired and a little slow, but at least he isn't reliving the massacre in another bad dream.

The unrest makes seeing Sakura that much more rewarding. And when he watches her like this, with her expression soft and her hair draped over her pillow, he's tempted to edge closer. Just a peek by the window to see her features more clearly, to feel the vibrance of her chakra against his.

But he knows it's too dangerous a thought, one that will inevitably end with him wanting more. So, for once, he tries not to be selfish.