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dawn

If this had been a movie or a story, that message would have been the end of it—a poignant moment neatly bookending Sasuke-and-Sakura. It had felt that way as Sakura had watched the colors of dawn bloom across the sky. It'd felt like it meant something; like they could go on.

Instead, because this is life and living, Tsunade forces Sakura to take two weeks of medical leave, and her apartment empties as her friends go back to their day-to-days. Instead, Sakura finds that she now jumps at every stray sound, and that the silence leaves behind too much space for the pain of missing him.

It had been easier, when she'd had the anger and a purpose, when she'd been constantly moving and working and readjusting, and now all Sakura has are quiet rooms and the time to sit with the way the residual fear keeps competing with the misery of missing Sasuke.

(Because this time, she hadn't walked away from the husband in that empty house; this time, she'd walked away from the boy that used to lay his head in her lap and pretended to not like the way she'd brush her fingers through his hair.)

So Sakura tries to cut through the fog with blunt force, attempting to sail right past the jitteriness and the way shadows still make her cringe. She tries to read, to catch up on any reporting or paperwork she'd brought home with her before, but mostly, she walks.

She walks every day until her feet and her legs hurt, trying to empty herself of the persistent ache in her chest, until her phone has logged dozens of miles and the old-timers in the neighborhood have learned to recognize her.

Sometimes, the exhaustion is enough to force her to sleep, but more often than not Sakura finds herself staring at the ceiling, following the lights of the cars passing by with dry eyes. There are no racing thoughts, just the sensation of being weighed down—held down—by the darkness and the hour of the night. She knows she did the right thing. She knows.

She knows.

Sakura does not reach for her phone to dial the number she's had memorized by heart since middle school. She does not reach for him, literally or figuratively, no matter how much she wants to, no matter that all the grief that she thought she'd already worked through during the summer has remade its home inside her ribs.

She'd told him this doesn't have to be the end, and it doesn't, it isn't, but Sakura knows whatever she wants to say to Sasuke has to wait until the light of day. So much of what had been real in their marriage had occurred between the hours of dusk and dawn; it is when the memory of being with him is the strongest, when the love cuts her closest to the quick.

So Sakura waits until morning, and climbs the damp stairs of her apartment building in the dark until she emerges into misty predawn light, breathing in great gasping gulps of cool air still wet with the promise of a new day. She looks at the sky, and tries to find the possibilities in the vastness again.

(She turns her phone on at five past nine.

Uchiha Sasuke Missed Call 2:37AM

Uchiha Sasuke 2:41AM

I needed to hear your voice. I hope I didn't wake you.

Sakura thinks about him listening to her voicemail in the darkness at 3 in the morning. She holds her phone a little tighter and takes a deep breath before tapping out a neat reply.

Haruno Sakura 9:11AM

it's fine)

She tells herself again: this doesn't have to be the end.