He has gotten older. Then again, he never had much of a childhood to make him feel like the youth that he still is. Barely going into the second decade of his life, and he feels as if he's living into a second century of existence.
As the months became years, training made him much stronger.
Revenge had been a better motivator to get him going every day than the promises made to him by Kakashi, Tsunade or even Naruto. Their words couldn't stop him.
One word to sum up what he has done.
Unrepentant.
Without much of a word to anyone, he left that day.
Without much consideration, he didn't think she'd be there. Anyone would have been crazy to be outside at that time of day.
Dawn, he muses, thinking about the bench she once lay on. Her serene expression as she slept belied the melancholy at his decision to leave when she was awake.
Why had she cared anyway?
Everyone was well aware of his past. This self-inflicted mission was one he could not turn away from. It was his duty. A burden for him and him alone to carry. She, being in the same team, should have known better than to stop him.
Yet, she tried. And with disastrous results.
Not only had she failed to stop him, but he'd also become the most notoriously elusive shinobi to find since Zabuza. He'd even been a challenge for Orochimaru to pin down.
That was then.
Now he stands beside his other former teammate. Not really a prisoner, not an actual citizen. Naruto has grown up too, he notices. There's no longer that wild-eyed mischief in that blue stare. Naruto's gotten to be quite focused. Somehow that entailed the sort odd comrade becoming more serious in the process.
A breeze in the wind brings the once familiar scents of rain and fresh grass. He accidentally inhales through closed eyes, allowing the incidental wave of nostalgia to set in, much to his dismay.
Pink hair and green eyes fill his vision for a moment.
Damn.
All that time and still no way to forget.
The criticisms he's gotten from everyone else do not matter. They never have. Instead, he wonders what she'll say.
And too late he realizes he is not immune to her.
As he thinks about her, something heavy sets in as they near the village. He refuses to identify it, but it nags nonetheless.
"Something the matter?" Naruto asks with a hint of understanding in his voice. Of course it's obvious something's wrong with Sasuke, despite the way he tries to hide it under the guise of indifference.
"No," Sasuke lies and doesn't hesitate his pace toward the village. He remembers the blonde as dense and dead last, not as the annoyingly perceptive fellow at his left side.
At the top of the next hill, Konoha is visible. Spread out before them, it lays quiet and unassuming of his return.
It will raise a ruckus, he is sure.
Naruto hides a small frown. Although he had succeeded in his mission of retrieving Sasuke, he wonders how she'll take it.
Naruto knows how Sasuke forgets he isn't that hard to read. Those early years of training lent him some insight on the inner workings of the brunette's mind.
- - -
The first thing he notices right away is the bench just inside of Konoha's walls.
He cannot look away, transfixed by the cement structure. Perhaps it's guilt that stabs at him, but again, that sinking feeling settles in his gut.
And just when he is able to look at something else, he sees her. Slightly messy pink hair, bright green eyes and a med-nin uniform.
She seems confused at first, as if a desert mirage just popped up out of nowhere in the middle of her hometown, just like the time she experienced one during a mission to the Sand. She saw his illusion there in the barren landscape, walking away just like that cold morning. This figment just didn't belong there.
He clearly wasn't supposed to the there.
Didn't he know that?
- - -
She is a fleeting creature, running from him as if she couldn't stand the sight of him at all. Into the refuge of the hospital, the first task of the day is to attend a chuunin with a cut running from elbow to shoulder.
She wipes the skin carefully with a damp towel and sanitizes the large scratch. Thankfully, after cleaning up the excess blood, it isn't as deep as she first thought it was.
Applying an herbal ointment, she warns the young chuunin to be more careful. Wincing painfully, the boy nods as she wraps his arm with gauze.
Some jounin return from a mission. Tired, sore, and injured to some extent, she attends to them all.
Her day is like any other.
After seeing wound after wound, she can't help but think hers haven't quite healed as well as she once believed. The ones she has aren't visible though. Those are the ones that kept her up nights at a time worried sick and shaking before the cold sweat broke all over her skin. She ignores it in favor of concentrating on the first of the scheduled surgeries that morning.
- - -
Before the afternoon sets in, she is finished. The hospital is strangely quiet. She wonders if the nurse staff went a little overboard in administering painkillers.
Sakura reaches for another clipboard and frowns. The name is familiar. Too familiar for her. She frowns in response.
"Where is he?" she asks the nurse who filed the paperwork.
"Exam room four," the nurse replies.
Turning, she rubs her temple and hopes to wake from whatever form of delirium she's experiencing. Summoning the resolve to move forward, she charges ahead.
At first, she wonders if seeing him is a side effect from working overtime.
Clearly, it is not.
- - -
Mandatory shots were the first thing that brought him there. The nurse gives him a bright smile, causing a groan to almost get out. The only that he wants to see is her.
His wish is granted when she appears, snatching the syringe from the ditzy nurse who now seems insulted.
"Exam room eight," Sakura instructs to which he pays attention. The nurse makes a scoffing noise and rolls her eyes in irritation.
Sakura continues to ignore the girl as follows into the next room.
The door shuts behind them quietly as she preps the needle. He raises his sleeve without being asked to. She always was the most mature in the team. Because she was a girl or had better control over her emotions, he doesn't know.
At the moment, she is most intimidating creature he's ever laid eyes on. She taps the needle a few times before pulling an alcohol swap out of her coat pocket. Ripping open the tiny packet, he notices how her fingers are colder than the tiny piece of wet gauze. Without preamble, the needle is jabbed with unnecessary force into his bicep. He resists the wince that wants to surface so badly.
Another antiseptic is applied to the tiny puncture.
"I doubt you need a bandage," she drawls out before turning away.
She is jaded, he realizes.
- - -
"Pulse is fine, weight is healthy, blood pressure normal, eyesight is well," she states aloud to a hand held tape recorder and scribbles on the pad. The examination is only procedure and she hates it.
Damn protocol, Inner Sakura grumbles.
He watches impassively as she ignores him. Something begins to weigh on the tip of his tongue, but he cannot let it out.
"No signs of broken bones, although there is some scarring on arms and torso."
She is treating him like a science experiment. She's conducting an autopsy aloud on him. At least, it certainly sounds like one. Only he's not dead.
And he hopes he isn't. Not to Sakura.
"No cranial damage, allergies, or internal deformation," she drones on.
He stares moodily at her.
"Sakura," he says. Some part of him knows it's useless to try. For the mean time, it doesn't stop him.
"Please, do not interrupt while the examination is taking place," she tells him as if she were an instructor blandly scolding the student.
"Now, breathing and lung capacity are - "
"Sakura," he tries again.
"This is no time for talking, as I have told you before," she says in a bored voice and continues, seemingly unaffected. It seems she has learned from Kakashi a bit more than he would have thought. How disturbing.
"As I was saying, breathing and lung capacity are at functioning at a normal rate. X-rays showed clear passageways with no bronchial complications."
She pauses to scribble some more before continuing.
"Some dehydration is present, as well as stress and sleep deprivation, possibly insomnia. Neither of these seem to be caused by the seal though."
Her outright reluctance to speak to him personally makes him painfully aware that she doesn't want to know him the way she once did.
The almost silent conscience within him questions if he has truly lost her.
- - -
He asked to speak with her. In the small quarters of her office in the hospital, she humors him. His physical exam shows no life threatening signs that might endanger his life. She doesn't know whether to feel glad or let down. And yet, she wants to be the one to endanger him. It is a perverse thought, a feeling she cannot let go of and doesn't want to.
He was always reckless, as far back as she can remember. His antisocial tendencies haven't changed a bit.
Small talk is awkward, leading to a lot of heavy silence neither particularly feels like filling in with gaps of meaningless words.
Maybe it's the way the sun is harshly coming in through the window and the annoying sepia tones invading everything. It could have also been that whiny genin who screamed uncontrollably when she removed a kunai from a bleeding ankle or irritation at the nurse who refused to help her restrain the girl.
Whatever it is, she gives up after a few minutes.
"So what did you want?" she inquires aggressively, resting her chin on the palm of her hand.
She finds the dust suspended in air far more interesting than looking at him directly. She fears her eyes might sting if she does so. One of the particles drift in the stillness of the room without the need of a air to float and freefall by itself. No breeze is necessary to provoke movement. Just sheer will and playful whims to go about. Something she urgently wishes she had at the moment to take him out of the miserly existence of her mind.
His mind is screaming at him to tell her, protesting the endless stretch of miscommunication, but his mouth does not obey. He is silent, not for lack of wanting to speak, but a wave of ineptitude doesn't allow him.
"Why'd you even bother coming back?" Her tone is defeated, bordering dangerously on bitter. And when she sighs, he knows - she's tired. He wishes he'd learned to read her sooner. "It's always the same, nothing's ever going to change."
She stands up, ready and more than willing to leave. This was pointless, as she thought it would be. Disappointment rules her emotions. He shouldn't be here. Not alone with her.
He looks at her in the eye for the first time in years. She's different. He knows he's hurt her. He once thought he should have been wary of Naruto's reaction. How wrong he had been. Sakura should have been the one he should have braced himself for. As always, he left her low on the list of priorities.
Why did he return?
To change all that, he tells himself as he reaches for her arm.
When he spins her around to face him, she sees only shadow. It is dark but not forbidding, as she once believed him to be. It's the shoulder that had a healed slash on it. The left side, she recalls. How it healed so well without stitches is beyond her medical comprehension.
She almost manages to push him away. She is not supposed to sympathize with him, but he is just as fragile as she is and cannot help it.
He cups her face instead and kisses her.
"I'm sorry," he finally tells her when pulls away. She gets the feeling he isn't apologizing for the intrusive gesture.
Even if he has lost her, he has tried. Something he should have done a long time ago, he belatedly realizes. Uchiha Sasuke didn't owe explanations to anyone or beg for forgiveness, but he needs to atone for attempting to let go of her. He wants to make it better even though he has no idea how to go about it.
He pulls her close to him again in a desperate embrace.
"I'm sorry," he whispers in her ear before reluctantly letting go.
- - -
After Sasuke leaves, she is left to ponder. Her dinner plans with Ino are ruined as she continues to stare at her desk. Her appetite is disregarded in such musing. Simple things are fleeting, she realizes. Like her sanity, which almost betrayed her earlier. She wanted to stay in that embrace despite what he did to her.
Naruto had been right calling him Sasuke-bastard all this time.
He abandoned her once. Why couldn't she do the same to him? The clipboard in front of her becomes a blurry mess the longer she fixes her eyes on it. After wondering about it for moment, she understands why.
For the first time in years, she cries.
The tears are hot when they run down her face like fresh blood pouting freely out of a new gash. It isn't bitterness that washes through her, but frustration that wants to bleed her dry. The terrible longing she once believed she had surpassed has come back to haunt her in full force.
It makes her heart ache, tightening the feeling in her chest. And over the mountain of paperwork before her, she rests her head, not caring if the print is smudged because of her.
Why did he have to come back?
- - -
Sixteen hours after first stepping foot through the doors of Konoha Hospital, she is ready to leave. It is one hour shy to tomorrow. Fifty-six minutes exactly until midnight strikes, the watch tells her.
The moon is high above, bright and full, enough for her to see her shadow if she happens to look down. She is too preoccupied with tracing stars into constellations.
Shikamaru has his clouds to stare. She has the stars. Both are excuses to look above and be lost in the sky. An escape of sorts. If not physically in this reality, then in mind, where no one else is allowed entrance.
Cassiopeia is the first one she identifies. The queen who bragged about being the most beautiful woman in existence, even more than the goddesses themselves. Sakura smiles sardonically at the displaced royal who spends the night upside down. If that had been Ino, she thinks the gods might have gagged her as well so as not to hear her superhuman whining.
She ponders the meaning of the horoscope she read that morning. "Anything is possible today. Ignore any self-doubt, unasked opinions, self-consciousness and you'll be fine," the newspaper claimed.
What a load of crap, she thinks, frowning when she looks slightly further east, where her own grouping of stars resides: Aries.
The mythical ram of the Golden Fleece twinkles nonchalantly in some other star system, deciding her fate in the way the galaxy orbits around in eternal cycles. She doesn't believe in giving up control of her life to anyone, including providence and those damned stars, however beautiful they are. Cold, and with a distance that no mere human could reach even in a thousand lifetimes, they remind her of another.
The sky is clear, and she can distinguish smaller stars.
Orion's belt has more than three stars tonight. She can count at least seven in that particular row. Her feet stop moving, transfixed by that one cluster of brightness.
Orion was a hunter.
Just like him. A vagabond whose only undertaking in life was to track down objectives that he deemed fit to die by his hand. She wonders if brother's blood on his hands is worth it.
She shivers slightly in a passing frigid wind that carries several delicate snowflakes.
The sudden appearance of a blonde teammate startles her.
"Hey Sakura!"
She wants to stop the wild pounding of her heart. A relieved smile appears on her lips. Leave it to Naruto to find her. It doesn't strike her as weird to see him so late out in the street. He's come looking for her before.
"Geez, you're loud," she complains feebly, having no energy to yell properly at him.
He grins idiotically at her. A rueful sign.
"Well, you had Ino wondering what was going on," he explains. "So I thought you might be overworking again."
She nods.
"I wasn't very hungry," she replies, digging the tip of her shoe in the hard ground. "And I had a million files to plow through."
He scratches the back of his head, a reaction she learned to read as nervous.
She's had a rough day, he thinks, knowing she'd rather overwork than deal with the rest of humanity. Or at least that one member of their species she'd like to avoid for the rest of her life. He believes one day she'll drown in carbon copies alone if she keeps it up. With Sasuke's status in limbo, he fears it might be sooner than later.
He doesn't regret the promise he made to her when they were twelve years old. It was his well-intentioned vow that was meant to give her hope when no one else could. Those were days when faith came in short supply and he was determined to fix it. At least for her, though he never thought it would come back to hurt the way it does.
In their seven years as comrades, he never knew what to say, when to comfort, how to act with an upset Sakura. Though it was mostly PMS as far as he ever knew. He remembers the nights she used to spend distracted in crying and later brooding instead of sleeping during the missions they were supposed to complete. Nights like this one that tested his resolve and he understood her better than any sad song, tearjerker movie or Ino herself ever could.
Time was always the best teacher, he'd learned. Even better than Kakashi, who had absolutely no experience in handling a teenage girl's moods. It was he who taught their sensei when to speak to her when she was having her days or recalling the days their missing one-third of the group was not lost to circumstance and ill-fated judgment.
While he watches her shake in the icy gust, he only knows to take two steps forward and put his arms around her.
She felt cold when Sasuke had hugged her, thinking it was just a figurative chill that ran down her spine. But now, here with Naruto, all is warm and safe and so convolutedly uncertain that she doesn't want to be away. Not from him.
Seven years and she never once complained when he embraced her. She never once saw anything wrong with that picture though she would have balked if someone had told her at the Academy that Naruto would one day be her biggest source of comfort.
He doesn't move as her arms wind around his neck. Or when she pulls slightly away from him to stand on tiptoe and kiss his cheek. One small kiss to sum up how grateful she is to have had him take care of her. She winces remembering the injuries he sustained the times she had been distracted and he literally fought to keep her safe. Blood is a painful thing to see, despite her many years as a med-nin, his especially. She wants to do more, but is stumped at the moment and chooses to speak instead.
"Thanks Naruto," she says softly. As he holds her closer, her chin manages to rest on his shoulder. From the corner of her eye, she thinks she sees a silhouette between the market stalls. Maybe it's her imagination that makes it darker than the shadows cast by the street lamps but it seems to fade away the longer she stays with Naruto.
She smiles wearily and presses her face against his neck.
- - -
Konoha is a boring place to live.
At least that's what he tells himself.
There is no action to his faster reactions, no cause to his effect. Not like being out there along tracking a brother that was marked for death. He hasn't survived seven years all alone for nothing.
A killer instinct, a will to survive, revenge, whatever it was, he had the reasons not to die.
Konoha was where he was born, and he had little interest in it. The Academy was easy to pass, almost an insult to education and training was never as extensive as he had wanted it to be. By the time he had left, there was nothing left to learn.
But he had only one reason to return.
A stubborn motive. One that didn't let the last remnants of his scruples die in peace.
Still, as he watches from his place away from the streetlights, the rational part of his mind doesn't find it strange how both his former teammates move on. Without him. His own funeral is taking place before his eyes. He would smile at the irony but doesn't bother trying. His energy is suddenly drained when her gaze almost meet his. Almost but not quite.
An abrupt tightening in his chest appears without warning. It is until his eyes can no longer watch that his feet force him to walk away.
This was to be expected, he reminds himself. It is the sting of rejection he doesn't want but is stuck with.
She was the one person who would never physically harm him. He finds himself wishing she would. He isn't in the habit of feeling anything. It isn't Naruto, Itachi or Orochimaru who have done the most damage.
And while she finally did make it to the top of his personal list, it's too late for him.
So he does what he should have done a long time ago.
And lets her go.