disclaimer: don't make me set a tiger on your face.
dedication: to sonya and les. legit. also to Elle and Briony. you're so cute.
notes: may or may not have been written entirely to Framing Hanley.
notes2: i look so good without you, babe. :)
notes3: also, this is the longest one-shot i've ever written. aren't i awesome?
title: life, ever after
summary: When Sasuke moved into the abandoned house at the top of the hill, he hadn't been expecting the garden, or the dead girl who inhabited it. — Sasuke/Sakura; 29/5o.
—
.
.
.
.
.
It was an old house.
There was a certain charm to it; it a decrepit, neglected way, anyway. It stood atop the highest hill in the vicinity. Once, it had likely been a beautiful place, but time has taken that away from it. The oak panelling was a pathetic sort of dark with a fresh coat of stain, but the old silver grain was still visible beneath. The electrical wiring was ancient, and looked to be about ready to give out, and set the entire place on fire. There was a thick coat of dust along the windowsills, and the scent of age stained the air in a way that no lemon scent of clean could ever wipe away. Late evening sunlight poured in through the old-glass windows, and caught on the dust floating in the air.
Sasuke actually almost grinned.
It was exactly what he'd been looking for. Old, empty for a long time, and quiet. That was the most important thing: it was quiet, and no one would bother him. He would be left alone, to live as he so chose. Naruto wouldn't be able to come barging in at all hours of the night, drunk off his ass, just-as-drunk girl hanging off his arm, and Sasuke would not be subjected to the subsequent moaning and thumping of coitus.
Sasuke suppressed a shudder.
Coitus. Tch.
He shook his head to himself, and lugged his second suitcase inside. The movers would be there the next day with the rest of his things; a couch, a bed frame, a dresser, and a bookshelf. Several boxes of books would be along, as well.
Sasuke liked to read. He read a lot. People who read a lot said he read a lot, and people who didn't read said that he read obsessively. Not that the opinions of other people mattered all that much to Sasuke; that would mean that he cared about what they thought, and thankfully, he didn't. He'd much rather they let him alone.
The house creaked in welcome, and Sasuke nodded quiet at it in return; it would only make sense to acknowledge the place that would be his home. He closed the door behind him, and waited for the echoes to dissipate.
Perfect silence.
Sasuke sighed in relief.
Home.
He plodded upstairs, threw himself down on the freshly-made mattress, and closed his eyes. Night was falling as the sun set. Darkness came early and easy, in Konoha. The sun began to sink behind the horizon, and the golden light in Sasuke's room turned to the purple of dusk, and then the thick black of night-time.
He lay on the bed, motionless on the sheets, and listened to the sounds of the night filter in through the open pane. The low hum of a cricket. A sharp, loud cry from some sort of bird. The soft thrust of the wind through the trees right next to the window. There were others, too, but Sasuke ignored them in favour of listening to the wind.
There were many trees on the property, Sasuke had discovered. Rising tall about Sasuke's line of vision, it was likely they were almost as old as the house itself, possibly older, and that was probably saying something. From what Sasuke had been told of the place, it was more then a hundred years old, and had been empty for a long, long time.
It was an old house.
—
Sasuke awoke to the sound of birds chirping. He sat up, and looked about. He was completely alone. He had not moved during the night, and the sheets had remained unwrinkled, but Sasuke stripped the bed, and re-made it, anyway. He gave it a satisfied nod, and quietly padded downstairs.
The kitchen was white and empty, and looked out onto the garden. Sasuke walked to the window, and stared out.
It had probably been a striking garden, once. But, like the rest of the house, the taint of age had smeared away its former splendour. The grass grew wild, waist high and a tangle of gold and green—it had been left to seed, and was a mixture of the natural grasses and weeds. The rose bushes had grown higher than Sasuke's head, thorns a snarl around the lovely, pale yellow flowers. The trees, too, were disproportionately large, in the back.
Sasuke stared at it, galled.
That was to be his next project. Everything else could wait.
And so he began.
He gathered his deceased mother's gardening tools—she would have been amused, he thought, oddly happy. He wasn't even putting up a fuss. He smirked, a little wryly, at the thought of his mother.
He missed her, he did.
He shook the thought of her away, and went to change into a pair of decaying jeans. Black with grime and shiny along the creases, they were his oldest and often, they were the jeans he wore to fix cars; the dirt would never wash out and therefore, there was absolutely no point in even trying.
If Naruto had taught Sasuke anything, it was that most times, it was better to leave lost causes alone.
The garden, however, was not a lost cause, and so he would work on that.
(Who was he kidding; Sasuke was the kind of person that was a lost cause; too stubborn to see reason, too rich to spend it all in a single lifetime, and far, far too anti-social for his own good. Saving other lost causes had become a sort of twisted hobby of his.
That was kind of why he was friends with Naruto, in the first place.)
He trudged outside, scissors, rake, and shovel in hand. The world was splashes of bright blue against a mostly cloudy sky.
Sasuke headed to the garden gate. It screeched, rusted from rain, having gone unoiled for so long. He pushed it open, and found himself facing the overgrown garden.
It was seething with life. He stood there, and enjoyed the cacophony of chirping coming from all directions. It was rather cheerful in nature.
He stood there for another moment.
And then a shriek tore through his reverie.
"ACK—WHO ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOU—GET OUT, GET OUT!"
Sasuke whipped to his left, the direction from where the shriek had come from.
He was astonished to see a girl standing there.
She looked young—perhaps eighteen. She was short. Her hair was a misfortunate shade of pink (one that Sasuke would never have wished on anyone—rather, he had never seen such a shade as hair before). Her eyes were green, and snapping sharply at him. Her hands were fisted in the fabric of her dress, on slim hips.
He stared at her, bemused.
"I told you to get out!" she snapped at him, furious.
He simply continued to stare at her.
"Are you deaf? I told you to. Get. Out. And I mean NOW!"
"What are you doing in here?" Sasuke asked her, completely passing over her question—who was this girl to order him out of his own garden?
"I live here! In that house? You see it, that big one right behind you—oh, you wouldn't happen to be the new gardener, would you? If you are, I'm so sorry, my name is Sakura!"
Sasuke blinked at her. "No, I'm not."
The girl—Sakura?—raised an eyebrow at him. "Then who are you? And why are you in my garden?"
Sasuke raised a slow eyebrow in return. "I live there," he told her, and pointed at the old house.
Sakura narrowed her eyes. "No, you don't."
"Yes, I do," Sasuke actually stressed the words.
Sakura stopped, and looked at him very carefully, for a minute. "You know it's haunted, right?"
"What?"
"Yeah. It's haunted. I live there, I would know!"
"Sakura. It is not haunted."
A strange smile spread across her face. "Oh, yes, it is."
"How do you know?" he asked, bored.
"Because I'm the one haunting it."
—
Gobsmacked. He was gobsmacked.
The girl that had stood in front of him, that day, had looked solid enough. She'd looked alive and warm and solid, and there had been just no fucking way that she was a ghost (for that matter, Sasuke didn't really didn't believe in ghosts—there was nothing to prove they existed, and Sasuke liked evidence; he liked proof, because Sasuke didn't like to take things on faith alone).
But then he saw her walk through a closed door, and all his disbelief went out the window.
She was an odd girl.
(Er, an odd dead girl, that is. That, on it's own, should have said something about the situation as a whole.)
She spent most of her time in the garden, he'd noticed; she absolutely hated it when he tried to tame it, give it some sense of direction. She'd have a freak out, and Sasuke wouldn't see her for a day or two.
And then he would wake to her version of vengeance, be it frogs in his shower or water all over the old, hardwood floor.
It would have amused Sasuke, if it hadn't been so bloody annoying.
She sat on his kitchen table, swinging bare legs back and forth, a child in a beautiful girl's body.
"How did you die?"
The words were out before Sasuke could stop them.
"How did I die?" she asked, rhetoric. Her eyes took on a faraway look, and Sasuke regretted asking immediately.
"It was a long time ago," she murmured. "I got sick—really, really sick. And I died. It's not as complicated as some people make it out to be."
She stopped speaking, and smiled wistfully at him.
Sasuke swallowed the lump in his throat. He almost wanted to reach out and touch her; comfort her in the only way he knew how. Sasuke was no good at words, and he never had been. Touch was not his strong suit, either, but at the very least, it was something he could do.
But Sakura was a ghost girl, not real flesh and blood, and Sasuke didn't want to destroy the illusion of fragile peace that they'd established in the times they'd been living together.
(Oh, Sasuke had gone through the denial—he'd told her to go away, Sakura, you're ruining my silence, and had ignored her for a week. She'd thrown a fit, and started to float in on his showers. The first time it had happened, he'd screamed like a girl and she'd laughed herself to hiccups. The fifth time it happened, Sasuke had sighed, and given in.
Sakura did exist, he decided, and, to his great displeasure, she was never going to let him live down that very girly scream.)
They were almost friends.
Winter came and went. Sasuke sat in front of roaring fires with his ghost-girl, and the fragile peace between them persisted, a shining gold thread of hope that hung between them.
Spring bloomed in April, and Sasuke watched Sakura dance between the just-beginning-to-flower bushes, laughing like a little girl.
He felt himself start to smile.
Horror over-took him, and he realized he was in love with her.
—
"Sasuke, you know… you've been—kinda weird, recently. What's wrong with you?" she demanded, one day in May.
Sasuke said nothing, and just stared at her, angry and mute. He loved her.
She was dead, and he loved her.
"Nothing," he said, voice strained. "Nothing's wrong."
"Bull," she replied, jaw taut, green eyes flashing, and Sasuke was reminded of the first time he'd ever seen her, standing in his garden, surrounded by seething life, with her arms crossed over her chest, and a scowl on her lips.
She'd picked up the word from him; it had happened that one time that Sasuke had allowed Naruto and his shy little girlfriend over. Swearing didn't suit Sakura, at all.
(Neither Naruto nor the shy little girlfriend had been able to see Sakura, but she kept tugging on Naruto's hair and hugging Hinata, and they'd both commented on it, and that was how Sasuke knew that Sakura wasn't just a figment of his imagination.)
"Sakura," he said, breathing through his nose to keep his temper in check. "It's nothing."
She took a step towards him, purposeful, worried. Her voice was low, when she spoke. "Sasuke. Just tell me. What's wrong? Did you meet someone, or—?"
Sasuke exploded. "No, Sakura! There's no one, no one except for you!"
She stared at him, wide-eyed. "Wh-what?"
"…I love you," he said, at last. "I love you."
He strode forward, wrapped his arm around her very-much-alive waist, and pulled her flush against him.
"I love you," he said, again, and then his mouth was hot against hers, furious, insistent, and wanting.
Sakura let him kiss her for a full minute, before she shuddered, twined her arms around his neck, and kissed him back.
It was like rain and fireworks, every single cell sparking up with energy, pleasure soaking into his head, dizzy with need. Sasuke wanted to burrow into her body, wanted to keep her forever. She was happiness, light and life incarnate (which was kind of ironic because she was a dead girl).
When Sasuke finally pulled away, to breathe, he leaned his forehead against hers, and stared down at her face.
Sakura's eyes were glazed. "What—what was… that?" she asked him, genuine and soft.
"I kissed you," Sasuke said. He thought it had been fairly self-explanatory, himself.
"Why…?" she asked.
"I love you," he said, again, again. The words felt right against his lips. He loved her, dead girl or not. He loved her, he did.
The colour drained from her face. "No," she whispered. "No, you don't. You can't."
Sasuke frowned. "I do love you, Sakura."
She shook her head, terror in her eyes. "No, Sasuke, you can't. I'm dead, remember?"
"You feel pretty alive to me," he muttered. He didn't understand what she was so afraid of.
She shrank away from him, and passed through the circle of his. It was like trying to catch smoke, and Sasuke's arms felt like he'd just shoved them into a bucket of ice-cold water.
"You're not supposed to love me back! It's not allowed!" she almost shouted at him. Her eyes were glassy.
"I—I have to—go," she said. Her face was turned towards the floor. She was shaking, and she started to disappear.
Panic shot through Sasuke, and he nearly toppled a table, trying to grab at her before she was gone completely. "Sakura!"
His arms closed around empty air.
He stood there for a long, long time.
She was gone.
The old house was empty. Sasuke was completely alone. He stomach churned. He was completely alone, again.
He stood still, and listened.
Perfect silence.
Perfect silence.
—
Summer passed.
Sasuke didn't notice it, as it went. He wandered the over-grown estate in a fog, and felt a little like he was dying slowly, the same way the garden itself was. Sakura must have kept it alive, Sasuke thought, just by existing.
And she was gone, now.
He missed her. He missed her. He didn't know if he was ever going to stop missing her. With every breath, he missed her more.
Sasuke resolved to stop breathing.
—
Summer turned to fall, and then fall to winter. Naruto's wedding was to be in March. Sasuke would attend as the best man.
And he did.
His life fell back into the pattern it had had before he'd met a dead girl with a magical smile. He still avoided Naruto's overbearing presence like the plague, and he still refused most social events. But he no longer sought complete silence, and he avoided the garden with a determination that would have impressed even the most obstinate old donkey.
He was still quiet.
Sometimes, he would hear a peal of laughter, high-pitched and happy, and he'd whip around in search of it. The person it had come from was always elusive, but then, he only ever heard it in the midst of a crowd. Sasuke put it down to the noise of the three, and told himself he was not going crazy.
It even worked, for a while.
And then, he began to forget.
—
He finished his doctorate when he was twenty-six.
Sasuke walked into his home. The old house creaked in welcome. At that moment, it was exactly the way it had been, when he had bought it. A beautiful, old house. Big. Big enough to raise a family.
But Sasuke was in no mind to have children.
"Sakura," he told the old, empty house. "I miss you. I just came to say… goodbye."
He didn't know why he needed to say it, just that he did. He needed her to understand.
"I'm going away. Moving. To Suna. I won't be coming back. I'm going to sell this place."
He paused, and waited.
Nothing.
So he continued. "I came to say goodbye," he said again. He didn't say anything about closure, but that was what this was; he needed the closure.
Sasuke had never had the chance to say goodbye,
He looked up at the vaulted ceiling. He loved her, he loved her, he loved her, even three years later, her loved her. He would always love her.
"Goodbye," he muttered, and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his coat. The word echoed.
Nothing.
Sasuke, dressed head to toe in mourner's black, turned his back and left, with the idea that he was never to return.
—
He moved into an apartment in Suna. It was painfully modern; black granite, clear glass, and silver steel were the main components of the building's architecture.
Sasuke privately missed the quiet echo of old, polished wood and spacey rooms. The acoustics in his apartment had nothing on that sense on space, nothing.
Two weeks later, he drove to the hospital. He donned a white lab coat, and went to find his supervisor.
She was a crotchety old hag (Sasuke's ignored that he was using vocabulary worthy of Naruto), who went by the name of Chiyo. She surveyed him through squinty eyes and glasses. Her iron-grey hair was pulled back into a tight, no-nonsense bun.
The first thing she did was look him up and down, twice. Then a strange, twisted grin crossed her lips. And then she picked up the phone on her desk, punched three numbers into it, and barked "Karui! Send Haruno up! I need to speak to her, now!"
The old woman glanced at Sasuke, and then at the chair in front of her desk.
Sasuke raised and eyebrow at her.
Chiyo glared.
Sasuke hastily sat.
She gave him a look entirely too satisfied, and then paid no heed to him. She shuffled some papers around, on her desk, and ignored Sasuke completely.
The door was ripped open, and someone came bursting in. Her breathing was shallow, like she'd been running. "What do you want, Chiyo-baa? I just got out of surgery!"
Sasuke went stiff.
That voice.
He twisted around, and his breath caught in his throat. Sakura.
She looked older then he remembered. But her eyes were the same, violently green and snapping. Her hair was cut short, brushing her jaw line, and not the long, carefully-cared-for locks he remembered, but the colour, the colour was the same, that ridiculous pale pink. Even her stance was the same; she still crossed her arms over her chest, feet planted shoulder-width apart, a scowl on her lips.
And she was beautiful.
Chiyo was talking. "—is Uchiha Sasuke, Sakura. He's our newest neurosurgeon. I expect you to show him the ropes, get him set up in his office, and the like. Questions?"
Sakura stared stonily at Chiyo. She hadn't even looked at Sasuke yet. "Why do you always pick me to do this? Why? Can't an intern do it?"
Chiyo smiled sweetly at the scowling girl-who-should-have-been-dead. "Because, Sakura, my dear, it is funny."
Sakura groaned, and Sasuke almost choked at how familiar the sounds was. Three years, almost four, and he still knew the sounds she made.
His ghost girl.
Sakura addressed him. "Well, we're stuck together, Sasu–ke–" she stopped, and looked at him. Really looked.
Sasuke thought he saw a flash of recognition in her eyes, but then it was gone. He stood up—he still towered over her—and nodded. "Lead the way, Sakura," he told her gently.
He watched her swallow, and she nodded in reply. He followed her out, and ached to touch her hair.
Just as the door closed, he thought he heard Chiyo cackling.
—
Fall came. The leaves on the trees in Konoha would have just been turning colour, and beginning to fall. The garden would have been golden.
And Sakura was just the same.
Sometimes Sasuke thought that maybe he had dreamed her. Sometimes he thought he was going crazy. Sometimes he thought that she knew something.
But that didn't explain they way she avoided touching him.
Once, their fingers had brushed when she was passing him a follow-up document about one of the surgeries he'd preformed. And electric current had passed between their hands, and she'd squeaked in a way that had Sasuke in half a mind to shove her against a wall and find out if this new Sakura tasted the same as the old Sakura.
But he never did.
—
"What's wrong with you?" she demanded oh him, one day. He'd been working at the hospital by then for almost a full half-year.
The words froze him at his desk. He stood up, slowly, and looked at her. "Nothing. Nothing's wrong."
The déjà vu threatened to stop his heart. She looked frustrated, so frustrated.
"How do I know you?" she burst out, the emotion escaping what Sasuke knew to be very strong reservations.
Sasuke stuffed his hands in his lab-coat pockets.
"You must be mistaken," he said quietly, and saying those words physically hurt. "We've never met before this year, Sakura."
"That's a lie!" she screeched. She stomped towards him, her fists clenched at her sides. They stood nose-to-nose, Sakura on her tiptoes. She was glaring furiously up at him.
"I know you, Sasuke, but I don't know how, and it drives me crazy!" she hissed.
Sasuke's already-thin self-control snapped. His hands found her hips, and his lips found her ear. "I loved you," he whispered to her. "I loved you a long time ago."
She didn't move, her head bent. Sasuke' heartbeat was loud, so loud, and he was certain that the rest of the world could hear it, too. He lowered his head to her, and nudged her face up, until he was looking her in the eyes.
He had no idea if this was going to work.
But he touched his mouth to hers, anyway.
She whispered a soft "Oh…"
And then she passed out.
Sasuke caught her body as she crumpled towards the floor. She was warm. Alive. He could hear a heart-beat. He could feel her breathing.
Alive.
His ghost-girl.
—
The conversation went like this:
"How did it happen?"
"I don't know. I just… woke up. I just… was."
"…Are you happy?"
"Yes."
Sasuke nodded, then, and let her stare at the ceiling of his apartment. He was just waiting for proof of sunsets and silhouette dreams.
She made them possible.
Dead girls, he thought, and shook his head.
—
Two weeks later, they stood hand in hand outside of the old house.
It was an old house. A beautiful, old house. Big. Big enough to raise a family.
Sasuke looked up at it, and then down at the girl-who-should-have-been-dead. She was looking up at the house, too, and he watched the past reflect in her eyes. He watched a dead girl come home in the body of a girl older then she possibly could have been, and younger then should have been possible.
Sometimes, Sasuke confused himself, too.
"C'mon," he said quietly, and gently tugged her inside.
All was exactly as he'd left it. He shed his jacket, and hung it carefully in the closet in the front hall. The polished hardwood beneath his feet was smooth and cool, the chill of an unlived-in house seeping up through his legs.
He'd missed this place.
They walked through familiar halls, fingers twined together.
Sasuke could feel Sakura's pulse beating, strong and steady, against his flesh. It gave him pause every time; she was alive, alive, alive, and half the time, he still had trouble convincing himself of it.
He had trouble rationalizing it, as well.
But then he found himself thinking that perhaps an explanation was not necessary; it was the here and the now that mattered. He couldn't tell her what he didn't know, so he didn't even try.
He clutched her fingers a little tighter, and gestured towards the garden.
Sakura just nodded, her fingers unconsciously tightening. Sasuke didn't move to extract himself from her grip.
Sometimes he just understood.
This was one of those times.
They left the old house, and walked towards the rusted gate. Sasuke frowned; it was far worse then he remembered. He nearly broke the latch, trying to get it open.
"It's not—"
"Let me try," Sakura said, quiet, a look of concentration on her features.
She touched the latch, and the rust melted away as if it had never been. The latch shone new-chrome bright, and Sakura shrugged helplessly.
Sasuke shrugged in return. He took her hand, and led her into the garden.
It was dead.
It was dead.
The ground was grey-brown, covered with dead leaves—so much so that the cobbled path through the garden was barely visible. The trees, too, had lost the healthy, dark brown bark, and stood stark and bare, reaching towards the sky, branches clawing at the clouds. Nothing grew, and the remnants of dead bushes and stalks of dead plants sat about, looking sad and lonely.
Sakura looked troubled, and knelt. She touched her fingers to the ground, and mumbled "Oh…"
A small green shoot sprung up, a simple two rounded leaves and a pale green stem, and nestled against her fingers. She looked up at Sasuke, and blinked. "What—?"
"Figured as much," Sasuke murmured to himself, and pulled her away from the ground. She jerked up, and smiled at him as she stumbled into the circle of his arms.
It had all started here.
And here it would all end.
Sasuke leaned down, and methodically sealed his lips over hers.
The garden burst to life around them, and all was silent.
—
.
.
.
.
.
fin.
notes4: according to my anthropology teacher, i've never even had an original thought in my life, and, weirdly enough, it's true. anyone care to dispute?
notes5: please review. :)
