Chapter 21
I.
He travelled so far, only to realize...
II.
In front of Sakura were two folders. One contained two plane tickets to the North, and one contained two plane tickets to the South.
North would be Celeste, a territory belonging to Hatake Kakashi. It was a place of frozen memories and ice. A place where the whole world was white.
South would be the city of Silvia, on the edge of a desert and a paradise. There was a river that ran through the city, and it flourished because of the rich farmlands.
Sakura felt numb as she sat in the luxurious study, with Uchiha Itachi standing behind the desk, examining her.
"Consider it a gift." He said, "For the past few years."
She smiled a little and said, "Uchiha-san, you don't owe me anything."
"Then consider it as a charity." He waved his hand in a lazy manner. He had a reputation of being cruel to people other than family.
She wanted to laugh as she gathered up both folders, "May I?"
He made a gesture that indicated, 'be my guest.'
Sakura stood and bowed, "Thank you for everything-everything."
He didn't reply as he leaned back and placed his hands on his temples while closing his eyes. Sakura took a last look at the elder Uchiha and felt that the entire time, he held the whole world up for his family, and they took it for granted.
Hikari was packing up his luggage with his aunt. Chiro carefully folded all the clothing she bought over the past few weeks for Hikari and Sakura. Cutting off the tags on each one while stacking them neatly in the leather made luggage suitcase, also brought by her.
Hikari was sitting quietly in a corner reading a children's book called The lost Stars, and Chiro smiled while patting his head. "You'll be good, right?"
He was very observant and clever, therefore he jumped off his chair and hugged his aunt tightly, "You're my favorite, after mother."
Her heart melted as she teared up once again, "Hikari, you're going to grow up so fast, don't forget us, ok? If you can, ask your mother to come and visit once in a while..."
He nodded his little head, and Chiro examined him carefully, "do you feel ok? Are you hurting anywhere?"
"No." He shook his head, "I feel very healthy!"
It was true, his cheeks were much rosier than before and there was finally some meat on his bones.
She sighed as she ran her finger through his soft black hair, "You look just like your father..."
Hikari was careful not to let out any negative emotions.
Chiro sighed once more before closing the book and putting it on top of his pile of clothes stacked inside his suitcase, "Take this. Erika hardly ever reads it."
The little boy hugged her once more and said, "I will come back and visit, I always will."
Sakura leaned against the door as she observed the whole scene. Sometime she found it absurd that someone like Arai could possibly marry into this family. She wasn't cynical on the matter, rather, she regarded it as a miracle of some sort. Without her, the Uchiha's would probably be a dark family, darker than what they alreadywere.
Sakura hugged Chiro as Hikari zipped up the suitcase.
"Uchiha-san." She mumbled. "I just wanted to say, thank you."
Chiro assumed it was for these past few months. She waved her hands and sighed, "It doesn't matter..."
"I meant, for six years ago." Sakura corrected herself.
Chiro didn't remember what she said or did six years ago.
"When I was confused about my marriage..." Sakura clarified, "I came and talked to you. What you said woke me up, and it acted as a buffer against what happened later. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I received the punishments that I did..."
"Nobody in this world," Chiro corrected firmly, "has the right to dictate the happiness and sorrow of others. Only you have the power to do that."
"What should I do then?" Sakura asked her pleadingly. "Is this the right move? Do you think..."
Chiro smiled before saying, "I would've made a different choice. But then, I was faced with a different brother."
Hikari dragged the suitcase to the door and tugged on Sakura's sleeve, "Mama, I'm ready."
Sakura hugged Chiro one last time and breathed out a, "thank you", before turning around.
This luxury mansion of theirs was too dazzling for her eyes. Sakura had a sinking feeling she would never set foot in it again.
III.
The airport was extremely crowded. Then again, Sakrua mused, it was probably always crowded.
Many planes departed and arrived every hour, and Sakura still had to face the choice of which city to go to.
She took the tickets and began to mix them together.
After pulling one randomly out of her bag, it was the ticket to Celeste.
She smiled at Hikari and said, "We'll go to Erika's city."
Hikari's eyes lit up, "Really? I can see Erika?"
Sakura nodded before she gathered up her and her son's luggage and walked them to gate 97.
Beside gate 97 was an A&W. She bought a kid's meal for Hikari, who gobbled up the burger. Only after he finished it, did Sakura remember that she had yet to eat.
"Mommy..." He lifted up the small bag of fries."Want some?"
Sakura smiled at him and gave him a kiss on the forehead. "Mommy's not hungry at all. Eat your food, when we settle down, I'll start cooking..."
They sat on one of the long benches, waiting for their time to board. There was another woman sitting beside them, urgently fumbling through her luggage. She looked appeared to be in her thirties, and her hysterical behaviour caught the attention of both Sakura and Hikari. The woman had dark hair and grey eyes with worried look on her face. She opened up everything and laid them out one by one, checking the contents. Sakura felt that since she was so close to her, she might be obligated to hep her look for whatever she lost. So, she opened her mouth and asked gently, "did you loose something?"
The woman had very good manners and was polite, but through all the fumbling she muttered, "Yes, thank you for asking, I think I packed my tickets in my other carry-on, and I already sent that to Celeste..."
"That's unfortunate..." Sakura checked below the benches and around them, "Maybe you should talk to the staff and have another one? Do you have online copies of them?"
"Of course." The woman nodded, "but I only have an online copy of mine, my little girl… I bought her ticket with cash a few weeks ago. I can't provide proof for that, so it's basically useless. There is no way I'm leaving without my child."
"Yes..." Sakura frowned. While the intercom announced it was time to board. A little girl ran towards the woman and yelled, "Mommy! It's time to go!"
"Give mommy a minute, baby." The woman started checking her entire belonging, then decided to stuff them all in and talk to the flight attendant. While she was in the process of doing so, the girl yelled, "Mommy, we have to go now! Or else we're never going to catch daddy!"
The woman quickly zipped up everything and said, "Just wait, I-" She caught sight of an attendant and quickly ran up to her. Sakura saw them talking and the woman's expression fell from urgency to sadness, and eventually to defeat. She returned to the bench and signed to her little girl, "Let's go to security, Emiko, we can't get tickets without talking to them-"
"Wait." Sakura quickly said. "I have-we-we have two tickets to Celeste, if you want, you can have them."
The woman's face was astonished, "what? We can't take-no. Aren't you guys going to Celeste too?"
Sakura smiled, "it's a long story. We have tickets to Silvia too, and we decided that's our destination. So these tickets are a waste, see?"
She showed the four plane tickets to the woman and said, "these two are for a woman and a small boy. Your daughter... maybe hide her hair with a cap?"
The woman was extremely grateful, and offered to pay her for the tickets. Sakura refused payment, but the woman wrote her address, phone number, email and work phone onto a piece of paper, while asking for Sakura's phone too. She promised to call her and pay her through online banking as soon as they landed. Sakura watched in amusement as the two disappeared behind the boarding gates.
Hikari didn't say anything while he watched the entire scene. After it was all over and the door closed, he tilted his head and asked, "We're not going to see Erika?"
"No, baby." Sakura sighed. "She's an Uchiha after all. It really isn't a good idea to see her to begin with."
She checked her tickets to Silvia and then her watch, "Hikari, finish up. We have to board this one in 20 minutes..."
He quickly gobbled up the rest of his fries. All that left to do was to sit tight and hold onto his soda, sipping it through the straw bit by bit.
IV.
Sasuke was on the top floor of his skyscraper office when his secretary Juugo knocked on the door.
He looked up at the orange haired man who had a white envelope in his hands. On top was the logo for Flames International Airline, and something began to prick lightly into his heart while he cleared his throat and asked, "What is it?"
"This came for you a week ago." Juugo said, "but you stayed over at Leon last week, so I kept it here. Since you came back, I opened up all the mail and thought I should relay this to you. Would you like to read it?"
"Tell me." Sasuke leaned back on his leather chair and began rubbing his forehead. Since he had been away, there was a lot of work to catch up to, and his dear brother wouldn't help at all. He would never ask Itachi for help either, of course, but sometimes Sasuke got so envious of his brother's life that he thought he must be getting old.
"It's about the tickets booked a of couple weeks ago. They were for Haruno Sakura and Haruno Hikari. Flight 247-B to Celeste. There was an accident on board…" Juugo hesitated before continuing, "the plane went down and sunk into the ocean. Those name were shown on our ticket list that Uchiha Corp. booked, and now the flight company is asking for the the family contacts of the deceased..."
There was something that started ringing in Sasuke's ear, and it was slowly growing louder and louder.
"Leave it here. Get out, don't let anybody in." Sasuke had difficulty opening his mouth, but he struggled these syllables out as if someone else were speaking them. He turned the chair 180 degrees to look at the bright and sunny day outside his window. In front, he was faced with a sea of of skyscrapers, cars, pedestrians, and planes that descended and ascended every three to five minutes. The sky was blue, without a speckle of clouds in sight. His eyes seemed to water as he stared into the glass like panel.
When someone dies, every good memory of them appears like a picture book. Flipping through any of these pages Sasuke found that Sakura was exceptionally good to him during the early years of her infactuation. She would follow him everywhere when they were young, and even though he was extremely annoyed, she sat in his room as quiet as possible so she wouldn't disturb him.
She used to say, "Sasuke, I feel that even if I look at you, just one glance per day, I will consider this day fulfilled."
He wondered then how long it has been since she felt fulfilled.
Back then she would burn her fingers while cooking for him, plead to her father to give him the capital he wanted, or be extremely jealous of Karin...
All those things annoyed him to death before, but he couldn't remember a time back then when she didn't look at him with eyes full of longing.
She was spoiled, but really, she wasn't inherently bad.
On a hot summer's day, she offered up her favorite ice cream. On a cold day, she knit him a scarf...
In truth she gave him all that she thought was the best in this world, and he offered nothing in return.
In his defence, he didn't ask her for anything, and so, everything she did became a burden.
He stood still in that silent and shiny office until it was time to get off work.
Outside, Juugo called Uchiha Itachi, who boarded his private plane and arrived in York late in the afternoon. Juugo already refused visitation request from several others, but Itachi was one he could not block the path of. Therefore, the elder brother walked into Sasuke's office in large strides.
What he saw an almost delusionary Sasuke from a neuronic level. He was staring outside his window as if he wanted to lean over and smash through the glass to jump.
"What is it?" Itachi asked calmly.
The entire office was like a pool of dead waters, without any exchange of atmosphere and flow of fluids. Sasuke tired to speak, but couldn't. Itachi observed a letter on the desk large cherry wood desk and picked it up. He, then, understood.
"Sasuke."
The man dressed in a suit with refined features looked up at his older brother in a helpless and hopeless state. His eyes were bloodshot and his hands clenched on the arms of his.
"She's dead, brother. She's dead."
Itachi watched his brother fall apart as he said word for word while bending his back, one hand holding his chair and another holding his chest, "the plane she boarded dropped into the Kaiju Ocean. Brother, she took my son with her."
Sakura, the one who offered up ice cream, the one who gave him a large sum of money when he needed it, the one who roped him into a marriage, and the one who looked as if all life has been drawn out of her at the time he threw the divorce papers in her face.
That day, Itachi stayed with him until the moon rose in this dark, dark night.
Finally Sasuke realized, when he fell into a seeminly drug-induced sleep forty hours, that she had won. It was a war between them, and even though she died... She won, utterly and completely.
She didn't even leave anything for him to treasure in this world.
IV.
Three days later, Sasuke arrived in Celeste.
The first thing he did was go to the edge of the Kaiju Ocean to watch as the waves splattered against the shore. It was not a particularly cold day, but he stayed there until it was dark, and the snow started to fall.
The vastness of this ocean continued to baffle him, and he wondered if it was possible to scoop up all the waters there just to find her corpse.
He felt like he had run all his life during a long a journey. This journey was full of obstacles, difficulties, and dilemmas that he overcame, and he expected a price that stood above all , what awaited him at the finish line was a tombstone. Offered up for him to mourn, to cry, to drench and soak himself in sorrow.
The last words he said to her were the ones that drove her away.
That was when he realized, he travelled so far, only to offer to her a goodbye that couldn't even be said in person. It was a desperate sort of goodbye, one that screams longing and regret.
He stood there, as beautiful and cold as ever, like a statue by the seaside.
As he stood in the dark and snowy night, he said a silent goodbye. To the emptiness in front of him; to the waters that felt as cold as ice.
He went back to York, and collapsed on his couch at home. It was extremely quiet, and empty. There was a point where he thought his breathing had echoes. There was food on the table and drinks in the fridge, but he didn't eat anything. He didn't eat a solid meal for almost two days, yet he couldn't feel his hunger at all. He tried to concentrate on his stomach, but he couldn't, because it was the part of his body that he felt the least pain.
In the first instand, when a human body suffers tremendous physical damage, like a fracture of a knife wound, the body feels nothing. Because your neuronic system can't access and analyse the pain yet, and your neurons haven't reached its pain receptor. When you truly experience that awful sensation, it would be a while after, and when the neurons respond, pain would be in strands, wrapping up your existence.
At first, it would be your skin, then your blood and muscle, and after that would be your bone and marrow. However great was your wound, the pain intensifies, and the most excruciating part isn't the initial extreme pain, because the wound would close up and heal. The painful part is when it heales, you think it won't ever bother you again, only to discover whenever there was rain or bad weather, it acts up and start to send pain through your system. It wouldn't be so bad, but it would be truly and completely real. It forces you to recognize its existence, and forces you you to consider how the wound was created. It follows you thoughout your life. The older you get, the harsher it feels.
Sasuke lay there like a dead man. Even though it was completely dark, he could see as clear as day the long and slow future that awaited him; the strands of pain that would slither through his skin and into the marrow of his bones.
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TBC
A/N: Edited by K-chu, reupload Oct 16.