miscue (noun, verb) – failing to respond to a cue; an inadvertent mistake

["They must call her foolish behind her back, but she supposes there are worse things to be." Sakura. Sasuke. An open window, and saving the other. Post-war fluffy angst. (But not angsty fluff, no).]

There's no denying that her office is cluttered. Sakura tries to keep it tidy, but the paperwork that steadily increases together with her responsibilities as Head Medic isn't so forgiving.

"Can I open the window?"

For a moment, there's a stab of self-consciousness that there are smells her colleagues might have been too tactful to point out.

"Go ahead, Sasuke-kun."

Without moving her gaze from her work, she tracks the faint signature of his chakra as he moves across the room to fiddle with the lock. Sai was in charge of keeping watch of him tonight, so they should have some leeway.

The scent of dew and earth fills her nostrils with the slight breeze that enters her office. Beneath her coat, a small wave of goosebumps climbs up her arms from the chilly air. She can hear the rustle of the trees and the lively chirping of birds returning to their nests.

"It's a full moon tonight." He announces with his back to her and face tilted up to said celestial body.

He's undoubtedly losing weight, and she doesn't know what more she can do to help. His back seems small in those loose-fitting clothes, she thinks, against the orange-blue backdrop of early evening outside. It's a strange thing to observe when he's always been tall gait and broad shoulders to her.

She can't see what he does from her seat, so she simply returns to the papers on her desk with an acknowledging hum. Jotting down the last few notes on the patient case file, she closes the folder and sets it aside before cracking open a new one.

"It's already been a month, huh," she says. "Time flies."

"It felt longer actually."

"Oh, I can see how." She checks to make sure she's getting correctly the kanji for the name of this thirty-year-old patient. Quite a rare spelling. "So much has been happening."

"I lost track of time," he says after a bit.

"Right, I need to get a clock for your room!" She grabs her notepad to scribble down a reminder.

"No, I mean-" There's a slow headshake in his tone "-the moon, it's beautiful."

She pauses mid letter despite herself and smiles, knowing he would never mean it like that. He's always been clueless in these matters. It's quite endearing.

"Is it ever ugly?"

In the unassuming silence the follows where he says nothing, she finishes writing with a firm press of her pen.

A clock would be good for him. The council is demanding he be drugged up half the time of a day, as if sealing his chakra down to half what normal shinobi needs to move about wasn't enough. Absolutely ludicrous! With his wounds healing, she's also run out of excuses for the daily visits that probably used to help him orientate, too.

"I guess not," he finally says with hints of a chuckle, his shoulders slouching a little more.

Putting away the notepad, she resumes her work again. The key to optimism is to focus on what can be done, rather than what cannot. Being with Naruto taught her as much.

The test results for this patient is fairly straight-forward. Just malnutrition and lack of sleep, a combination not entirely uncommon these days with so much work still needs to be done in Konoha.

They were going through something close to an upheaval. Her shishō has been pushing for changes left and right, sometimes rather ham-fistedly (but with no less cunning), taking advantage of the smoke and debris of war that has yet to settle.

For all the newness of the situation, even the chaos is beginning to bleed into routine after a month. Adaptation is a truly amazing thing.

She prescribes the man two types of supplements and makes some additional notes for his discharge tomorrow.

"I lose track of time staring at it," Sasuke says.

"Ah, me too."

"Hn."

"I look at it sometimes when I can't sleep." It was in fact the only thing that got her through many sleepless nights for a while, but her words sound trite to her own ears, like some blatant ingratiation to force a connection with him.

She doesn't care to look for the hints, but she does wonder if Sasuke has taken offense. He's never had patience for people who pretended to understand, and she's still not sure she does. Perhaps she would never.

"Aa, I end up watching it most nights."

"I'm sorry, I wish I could give you some sleeping aid." He's rapidly developing monstrous tolerance for their tranquilizers, and she can only worry for his constitution after this is over.

"No. It's nothing I haven't been through. Some of the drugs Orochimaru gave me before also made sleep impossible. There wasn't much to do outside of training and traveling."

"Right." But she's not sure what is, because to be honest everything he just said is all wrong in her mind. He was barely over thirteen.

"The lulls in between are the worst," she says noncommittally, but it's perhaps the one thing they could agree on—he and she, both being single-minded people.

"The moon was there no matter where I was. Wasn't hard to form a habit."

She keeps her eyes on the paperwork but fails to concentrate on the words between her hands. Her throat is suddenly dry. She hasn't realized they could just talk about his time away from Konoha like this. She thought she wasn't allowed to know about the him of that period. He's proven as much when he left her on that bench all those years ago.

But maybe that night has never held much significance to him. Maybe from his point of view, he only did the sensible thing, what was probably best for her, if not himself, and she's the only one who's still sore, who treats it like the landmine it's not.

"All those times, it never occurred to me. That's…beauty."

Something in the movement of the air tugs at her attention then. She looks up and gapes at the sight of him standing precariously tall on the edge of the windowsill.

"S-Sasuke-kun!"

She runs to him in an instant, knocking over some folders on her way over. Even one arm down, he turns around on the narrow ledge with grace not unexpected of a shinobi. Still, her heart skips an ugly beat.

His inky hair is tousled, bleeding into the cooling sky; his flawless skin paler than the glaring full moon at his back. Mismatched eyes unblinking, he watches her for explanation.

"You need to get down from there."

"Why?"

She's sure she had a good reason, but she can only come up with, "It's dangerous."

"We're on the first floor."

"I-I know."

But something about the him right now unsettles her.

"Just- Get down, please."

He considers her words for a moment and dips his head a fraction. "Alright." And he turns around and leaps out before her wide eyes. She only knows to reach for him on pure instinct.

"Wait!"

.

"Oi Sakura." The baleful barb in his voice startles her as she hastily releases her grip on his ankle. He pushes himself off the ground to glare at her over his shoulder with a coal-black eye, looking about to pop a vein. There's a heated flush to his cheeks that matches the redness of his nose from having fallen face-first into the grass and dirt outside.

"I-I'm so sorry Sasuke-kun!"

She jumps over and kneels next to him as he sits up, green chakra glowing over the minor cuts on his face. He's as good as new in an instant.

"What was that for?" he asks as he accepts the handkerchief that she meekly holds out for him. It takes the better part of her control to keep from flinching where their fingers lightly brush.

She breaks eye contact from the intensity of his stare and considers lying before telling the truth. "Well, I-you scared me."

"I scared you."

"N-no!" She snaps her gaze back to him. "Not you. More like…what you did."

"Hn." His shuttered tone says he's zeroed in on an instant he thinks she's referring to, and she clambers to clarify.

"You leapt out the window."

He huffs, eyes turning hard. "It takes more than half a meter drop to hurt me. I'm low on chakra, Sakura. Not crippled."

He stands and dusts himself off, no longer looking her in the eye. Well, if he wasn't offended before, he certainly is now. It's well-deserved, really, but somehow, she finds it easier to breathe.

She rises and tugs at his empty sleeve before he can walk away. "I'm not scared of you, Sasuke-kun."

She speaks for no one else, but this he has to know. She has to make sure he knows, because it's probably the insecurity that pervades him these days. That he courts unrest and dissension. That he's that something to fear, and be shunned and left in isolation and neglect.

That he's somehow less human than the next boy.

She looks into his eyes until she sees the hardness melts into resignation.

"But I still scared you."

Her heart quickens again. "That's because you jumped-"

"-out the window, you've mentioned," he says with an eye roll and something between agitation and a sigh.

There's a sting in the corner of her eyes she hopes is just reaction to the chilly wind. "You don't understand!"

"Aa, I'm still waiting."

"It- You-" Her voice is starting to crack. How she loathes that she's always showing him this lovelorn, pitiful part of her that she knows he doesn't care for. She feels eight-year-old again before him, small and bumbling, an unaccomplished mess, and he just stood back and watched her in all his dignified apathy.

"Sakura." His hand grips at her shoulder firmly, a dash of concern in his countenance. She blinks at the watery sheen in her eyes, wondering momentarily, where he still gets his strength from.

"I thought you were going to disappear." At his wide, blank stare, she averts her face, her tears spilling anew. She's aware her words are as silly as she feels.

That stillness to his demeanor, that foreign tranquility—like silence, like rippleless water. It occurs to her sometimes that maybe he's making peace. That he's given up before the fight even begins.

Then his suddenly far-too-baggy shirt fluttered in a gust of strong wind, lifting to reveal a vulnerability of skin and bones, the white bandages underneath and stark black seals carved all over his body. And the next moment, he leapt.

"Right then…I was…afraid…" The massive leaf canopy that hangs over them rustles wildly. She picks at the hem of her coat, looking everywhere but at him.

He feels empty and faded when he's like this. Calm. Placid. Like he could be gone if she blinked too slowly. And then she'd wonder if the reason for this all is that she's actually just another one who can't forgive, another one who can only associate him with tumult and discord, despite all her vocal averment for his goodness.

His grip slipping from her shoulder draws her gaze back to him. He's looking down to where she's holding a fistful of his empty sleeve, and he wraps his hand over hers, the calluses on his palm grazing her knuckles with such gentleness, it hurts.

She lets go and steps back, never expecting him to step forward and pulls her against his chest.

"S-Sasuke-kun!?"

She flushes. Her body goes rigid as the weight of his chin rests over the top of her head and his large hand fits behind her neck. Her arms are crushed between their chests, and she smells medicine and grass; the spice of detergent in his clothes, the saltiness of the gauzes beneath.

"Sakura." His voice thrums deep against her forehead, through the skin of his throat. "I made up my mind, you know. I'm not going anywhere."

"O-oh, that's…great."

Nothing is said for a while, and they remain in that position. He shows no sign of budging, and she's not sure she has ever had it in her to break away from him.

"You're worried about me."

His scent, the coolness of his skin. His faint, beating heart against her thundering one. She chokes when she feels his thumb on her earlobe.

"Right?"

"Y-yeah."

"And you're not afraid of me."

"I'm not." She shakes her head the best she can in his embrace.

"Promise me one thing."

"O-kay."

His chest expands in a deep breath.

"Don't go anywhere, either."

.

Ah, how sly, Sasuke-kun.

.

She curls her fingers into the front of his shirt and nods against his chest. "I promise I'm not going anywhere."

.

.

.

.

Sasuke adjusts the angle of his chin against her headband, the metal sapping heat from his skin on contact. Sakura's grown wonderfully, he thinks, so able and strong; might walk so far out of his grasp, no dōjutsu in the world can find her for him, when all he's known of her for so long are naïve smiles and spindly arms and legs.

When they finally part, he wipes gingerly at the corner of her eye. They both know that this is in no way fair, because they are both the sort that looks far ahead, and even though she is certain to keep her words, he might never be able to keep his.

But the heat of her breaths breathes something tenacious into his chest, seeping into his lungs, and bones and marrows.

And for at the very least tonight, he decides he will not be going anywhere far away from her.


A/N: I think that as much as Sakura saves Sasuke, Sasuke saves Sakura too. Before they're husband and wife, they're both children lost in the traumas of their past.