[...] my friend, blood shaking my heart / the awful daring of a moment's surrender...
"Haruno-san, there's someone looking for you out front."
One of the nurses—she'd started while Sakura had been on leave—stands at the door, peering tentatively into her office. Pushing her chair away from the desk, Sakura nods and stretches, futilely trying to roll her stiff neck into something that feels less like a brick pillar.
It had been a quiet day, and a good opportunity to catch up on paperwork. Thinking that it had to be Ino or maybe even someone from the precinct, Sakura barely takes half a second to pull her hair into a ponytail and rub the grit from her eyes before heading to the nurses' station.
—
—
epilogue
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—
There is someone tall and dark waiting for her, and it is not Ino, or Kakashi, or an unfamiliar agent.
Intellectually, she recognizes his hair, and the gray coat, and the slope of his shoulders. Intellectually, she knows that he has not gone away, that they still live in the same city, with the same friends and the same lives, and yet.
And yet.
(She's half-tempted to run, because she hasn't had enough time—shouldn't he have known that she hasn't had enough time?)
Sakura takes a deep breath and, clearing her throat quietly, walks up to his back. She almost reaches out to touch him on the arm like she has a million times before, but falters at the close, hand hovering awkwardly in the air before she lets it fall.
"Sasuke-kun?"
He turns like he hadn't been expecting her; she thinks he'd been watching for her to emerge from behind the counter, and the satisfaction of catching him off-guard soothes her nerves almost as much as finally saying his name out loud. He doesn't look different; he doesn't look changed—still a little wan, still like the boy she'd known all too well.
"Sakura," he pauses, brows furrowed, (she's not prepared for how much having him near would hurt). "I wanted to…"
She waits.
He lifts his hand and reveals a wrapped bento that she hadn't seen before, "For you."
The innocuous box is wrapped in a soft navy fabric dotted with plum blossoms; she remembers buying that bento cloth herself. There is a hot stinging in her eyes all of a sudden.
"Can we eat together?"
She stares at the furoshiki, at the tiny printed blooms blurring into indistinct red shapes. The hurt that had dulled to a throb roars to life, like the tide rising and dragging her inexorably back out to sea.
"Sakura—" His whisper cuts through the ringing in her head, and Sakura realizes she had been shaking her head.
"I think you should go," Sakura says, unable to meet his eyes, unable to bear both of their pain. She can't make herself take the bento either, and after a pause he lowers his arm and murmurs a rough goodbye.
Sakura is aware that there are more than one pair of eyes on them, but she still says his name. He turns around, expression carefully blank.
"Ask me again in a little while, I—I think I'll be less busy then."
Sasuke nods, the aa so soft that she can barely hear it, but the way his entire face eases is loud enough for them both.
—
—
Two weeks later, she makes good on her silent promise, and Sakura and Sasuke share a simple lunch in a secluded corner of the hospital grounds.
Conversation had been light and careful, Naruto a safe and neutral topic. Spring is just beginning to settle in, and Sakura tries to relax and enjoy the burgeoning warmth.
They'd finally run out of easy things to talk about, and the silence that had descended reminds her more of her last year in his family's house than the quiet companionship they used to share in school.
"I'm sorry," Sasuke suddenly says, and Sakura frowns, eyes still closed as she keeps her head tipped towards the sun.
"You've already apologized," she murmurs.
"I never told you what really happened that day."
Sakura opens her eyes to find Sasuke looking at her, his expression somber.
—
—
"I should have never let it get that far—"
"Sasuke-kun, why didn't you just say something?"
He grits his teeth, and Sakura feels the break like it's hot and new.
—
—
He says:
"It felt like I was losing you."
She says:
"I wish you hadn't told me."
She says:
"It would have been easier if you'd just hated me, if you didn't want me anymore—"
—
—
His face is drawn and pale; he looks like he wishes he could look away:
"Sakura, I have never…I have never wanted to not have you in my life. Not when we were twelve, not when we were twenty."
She holds every part of herself still.
"Not now."
She knows, she knows, but hearing him pull the words out of himself, painstakingly, one by one…
"You have always been enough," he draws in a shuddering breath. "No matter what, you've always been enough, and I should have told you."
—
—
She says:
"Thank you."
—
—
One day, in that same secluded corner, Sasuke will tell Sakura that he has resigned, that he has, in fact, left politics entirely—that he is done having someone else dictate the shape of his life.
Sakura will tell him that she is proud of him—and then tentatively tease him for being a layabout. The joke is weak, but his smile will disarm her, and fluster her, and be the first thing between them in a long time that is completely free of shadows.
—
—
One day, him bringing her lunch will become routine. One day, as she's walking him back to his car in the garage, their hands will swing close and she will reach out. Their fingers slotting together will feel like coming home.
—
—
One day, they will look at each other, and he will ask a question, and she will say yes.
They will move into a little house together, and it will be smaller than anything Sasuke is used to, but that only means he will always have an excuse to edge close to Sakura in their cramped, sun-warmed kitchen.
They will paint the walls yellow, and they will never hesitate to reach out—to tangle their hands and their bodies and all the days of their lives together.
—
—
One day, they will visit those bluffs in the South of France again. It will mean something different entirely.
—
—
Today though, today they sit on the grass side by side, and that is a start; that is enough.
—
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fin
...which an age of prudence can never retract / by this, and this only, we have existed. (The Wasteland, T.S Eliot)
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note: This is finally, and really, the end. The Awful Daring has changed in so many places over the decade that it took to finish, and I want to thank all of you that spent time reading, and following along, and leaving a kind word.
Originally, the inspiration for this fic came from a single scene in the film adaptation of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, where one of the characters, Rose, confronts her husband in the rain (one astute reader drew the direct connection-kudos!). I veered further away as the story and the years progressed, but ultimately I wanted to write about Sakura finding her voice and her agency, even if that meant walking away.
Despite all of the inconsistencies and tonal shifts that come with letting years pass between writing one scene and the next, I hope that was the one thing that I was able to clearly convey.
Thank you again, and I hope you all find your own version of a soft, easy morning in a sunny kitchen someday.
