Author's Note: I'm so, so fucking tired at the moment. /loud sigh/

Fair warning guys: this is a rather heavy chapter in comparison to all of the others. I feel like, although I am enjoying the fluff and the smut, in order to develop this story further, I need to explore every facet of their relationship; even the unpleasant bits. Be relieved that I kept it so light (for all of those people reading this who know what my writing is generally like) in comparison to my usual stuff. Thanks for your reviews! Enjoy.

Melt the Mistletoe

Twenty-One: Fallout

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Characters: Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura

Categories: Drama, Angst (hints of romance if you squint)

Rating: T (for language)

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Sasuke ducked in time to dodge the first blow.

Glass shattered with a resounding crackle against the wall he had been leaning against a moment beforehand, and he flinched from the proximity of the sound. His ears were ringing, blood rushing into his head until all he could discern was the rapid pulsations of his heart as he threw a bitter glare in the direction of his enraged attacker.

Haruno Sakura stood across the room from him, face flushed and contorted with rage as she stooped in her wrath, posture positively rigid with tension as she glared back just as intently. The raven haired Uchiha had honestly not expected such a volatile reaction from his pink haired lover. She usually held the jubilance of the sun in the palm of her hand, and had never once suffered from the urge to inflict physical harm on him—no matter how unhappy with him she may have been.

In retrospect, Sasuke knew he deserved it. He had expected it in the aftermath of his defection; but the pink haired kunoichi had left him reeling in legitimate surprise when all she did was tell him to shut his mouth because he was a stupid jerk as she healed him and wept into his shoulder.

His apology, as genuine and heartfelt as it could come considering his half-dead state, was all she had needed to hear to completely forgive him for his cruelty, and he continued to marvel over her selflessness to this day. The fact that she had continued to love him throughout all of the messy insanity that had been his life had stunned him beyond all feasible reckoning, but that was Sakura.

Infinitely patient, and endlessly forgiving—and he couldn't have loved anyone else more than he did her.

Which was why her outburst was so unexpected. He had merely assumed that she had discarded her negativity towards him after he had returned to the village, but clearly this wasn't the case; her ill-will had been bottled up for so long that it had finally reached its boiling point. The cap had blown off, and now she was inconsolable.

"Sakura! Calm down!"

Her incredulous green eyes widened at his stern tone, before they narrowed into vicious viridian slits that brewed with repressed anger.

"Don't you fucking tell me to calm down, Sasuke!" She spat venomously, dropping the affectionate suffix from his name as she clenched her palms into taut fists.

Said man swallowed inaudibly, anxiety leaking into his frame as he noted her stance shifting more towards a brutal offensive. One thing he had learned from watching her beat up Naruto was the fact that he never wanted to be on the receiving end of her monstrous strength. Ever.

"Where do you get off," Sakura continued, oblivious to the mounting sense of discomfort etching itself into the planes of her boyfriend's face as she stepped forward with a malicious thrust of her hips.

Sasuke's eyes took an unexpected detour, drinking in her curvy form with dark irises that flickered between burgundy and scarlet as he sensed her chakra spiking alongside her temper; and he quickly returned to scowling as she picked up the nearest projectile—an old and battered lamp that he secretly hated—and hurled it his way.

"Telling me that you're leaving for another one of your little expeditions when we're supposed to be getting married in three months?" Her voice rose into a fevered shriek, eyes wet with tears as she burned holes into his cold countenance and slammed her fist through the nearest wall; he watched with morbid fascination as the thick plaster crumbled under her practiced touch, the cracking of the wooden framework beneath it echoing forebodingly in their ears.

Sasuke scoffed, indifferent to her indignant tone as he turned his disconcerted frown her way.

"It's not like I'll be gone for long, Sakura—"

"And I call you on your bullshit! The last time you were away, you were gone for six fucking months! And you called that a short trip?!" The pinkette hissed vindictively, pink lips puffed out in a pout as she clenched her hands at her sides in a futile attempt at controlling her shakes.

Sasuke's gut filled with trepidation, and guilt flickered all too fleetingly across his handsome features as he met her frigid gaze with sombre ebony irises. He knew that his leaving her for any stretch of time was more than she could bear most days; but she had born it all with her sweetest of smiles, understanding colouring her complexion beautifully as she wished him well and parted with him with patient sorrow in her eyes.

Sasuke couldn't have been luckier to have her love, even if right in that moment she wanted to gouge his eyes out with a spoon.

"I don't make promises I can't keep, Sakura!"

His words, sharp and biting, were like a slap to the face. He may as well have raised his hand and struck out, because the aftermath was eerily and unpleasantly similar to the motion itself as Sakura stared back at him, aghast. The raven haired Uchiha felt his stomach churn, and he was quick to amend his statement.

"I don't leave because I enjoy making you suffer. You should know that by now. I… This is something I have to do. For both of us. I can't be the bringer of further pain. Never again."

And just like that, all of the anger fizzled out of her features, leaving her hollowed out with sympathy and heartache. She bit her lip, looking distraught and exhausted as she held his intense stare with watery green eyes.

"Does that…" She began with a touch of hesitance lining her tone, expression torn as she cast her gaze down towards her feet. Sasuke stiffened, heart twisting within the stranglehold of regret as he watched her shrink into herself once and for all.

"Does that mean that you don't want me anymore…?"

Shockwaves rippled through his stilled frame, and he barked out a harsh laugh at the ludicrousness of her assumption; Sakura's head snapped up, eyes burning with vulnerability and emotion as she jumped in surprise at the nearly animalistic quality to his tone. The blatant ire on his face was palpable, and the pinkette had to stave off her hiccupped sobs as the first tear trailed traitorously down her cheek.

Sasuke was pissed.

He peripherally supposed that her presumption was validated in some ways; his lack of compunction and clarity regarding his phrasing left a lot to suggestion, and so he could theoretically understand where her misconception had come from. But the larger, more dominant part of his mind—the aspect that was not influenced by rationality—was insulted that she thought he would ever tire of loving her.

"I thought you knew me better than that, Sakura. Have I not made my feelings perfectly clear to you? Do you think any woman other than you could ever make me so fucking angry because she thinks I'm walking away for good?" Sasuke spat irately, expression harsh and unforgiving as his voice rose alongside his mounting temperament. Sakura quailed, stepping back as he stalked toward her with eyes that had bled into crimson.

Black tomoes spun chaotically in his irises, and he was quick to slam his hand against the wall behind her head, effectively boxing her in against his body.

"H-How could I know any better, Sasuke?! You're gone so often that sometimes I wonder if you were ever really here at all!" Sakura exclaimed without missing a beat, the hurt in her expression mirroring the pain in her lover's ebony orbs as her face fell.

Utterly crestfallen.

Defeated by his intensity, Sakura sagged against the wall, guilt gnawing away at her insides as she took in his crumbling countenance with wide eyes. She couldn't believe that she had said that; something so cold, so cruel and untrue, that it left them both reeling in their own respective stupors.

He came home more often than he ever would have had he not loved her—had he not felt he owed it to her to be there for her. To be with her. Sakura knew this. She knew that he loved her, that he needed her more than anything; and the fact that she had so easily dismissed his efforts, the efforts to better himself and to make time for her, was worse than a chakra-laden punch to the gut.

Sasuke's expression was unreadable, and the pink haired kunoichi was filled with a bitter chill as he fixed her with a frosty stare bereft of the sting of her words impact on him. He leaned away, brushing a strand of frizzy pink hair behind her ear before he cupped her cheek with his calloused palm and parted his lips to speak.

"… If I didn't love you so much, I never would have come back in the first place." His voice was a sad murmur, sweetened with affection as he turned away from her and made his way to their apartment's front door.

The empty sleeve where his left arm used to be fluttered soundlessly with his movements, and Sakura sunk down to the floor as Sasuke bent down to put his sandals on without another word her way. The pinkette lifted her knees to her chest, heart thudding erratically beneath her breast as she wrapped her arms around them and buried her face into the cradle her legs provided.

"If loving me is such an inconvenience to you…" Sakura's voice was a breathy whisper, a dying husk of her usual verdant cheer as Sasuke paused with his hand on the doorknob; waiting for her to continue.

"… Then don't bother coming back."

The moment those words left her lips, Sakura regretted them, wished she could take them back. She wanted nothing more than to pull him into her arms and deny all of it, because they were all lies, every fucking syllable and sentence—but she couldn't. All of the power in her body had been sucked out of her, anger leaving her desolate—wallowing in the vestiges of self-pity as she heard the faint scuffle of shoes and the door falling to a soundless close behind her renegade love's back.

Only when his chakra had dissolved and eventually faded into the distance did she allow herself to fall apart. In their first serious fight, everything she had worked so hard to establish between them had come undone. For years, Sakura had expected him to walk away of his own volition; it had been an inherent part of his nature, to be absorbed in his own plights, for so long that defecting down the wrong path had become his greatest talent.

But what Sakura had never in her life anticipated was the fact that when he finally walked out of that front door for good, it was because she had been the one to tell him to go.

And she was sure that it would be the death of her, because letting him go was killing her inside.

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…TBC…

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Ending Remarks: Just a reminder that every relationship has its ups and downs. And in one as complicated as this, there would definitely be more lows than highs at times like this.

Until next time.

-x-R i n-x-