it is a sunny day when sakura first heals sasuke.
perched on the wooden bench just below their usual meeting bridge, he makes a conscious effort not to lean her way. she was a little too close and he could smell her shampoo and feel her softness and that wasn't good. not good at all, because he had a goal. one that didn't involve pink hair or jasmine shampoo.
in an effort to distract himself, he clenches his fist and looks at anything that wasn't her.
sakura is not the least bit surprised. expects this kind of begrudging detachment even. she knows it must have taken a lot out of him to even ask for help, even if the naruto broke my arm and i hate hospitals rarely constitutes as an actual favour. but in sasuke-kun language, that was basically begging.
so she takes his injured arm and takes her time doing what she does best.
her chakra is soothing, he notes. never one to let someone else within his personal space (especially his chakra)he surprises himself when he has gone fifteen minutes without wanting to forcibly tear the invasive energy away.
though he thinks, when he sneaks a glance and finds her concentrated brows and electrifying eyes and comforting aura, that wasn't surprising too.
the sky is crying with her as she takes every bit of her chakra left and pounds it into him.
please wake up, you have to wake up, sasuke-kun please i can't—
he stirs a little and suddenly all breath has left her and her eyes snap to his very much alive ones. they were a little disoriented, like he was trying to focus on her but found it difficult to do so. then she is openly sobbing – right into his chest, right into his face, right into every corner of him that was here.
because having to see him thrown away and tortured with ice picks like a rag doll was nothing compared to those few torturous seconds she felt for a pulse and found none.
thank god, i wasn't, i couldn't feel anything- you were- haku tried to—
well they failed didn't they? he tells her with that same gruff but with a playful lilt voice that was so sasuke she could cry.
sakura reacts almost instantly. she blinks through the tears and looks past a point of him that was there but also wasn't because just seconds ago he wasn't; then she is heaving with happiness. she smiles the hardest he's ever seen her smile and holds him the closest she's ever tried to.
when sakura heals him after, she scoots a little closer and lingers just a little longer.
sasuke lets her.
the clouds grey with each nervous step she takes towards him.
he's probably sensed me by now, she thinks as she grips her kunai tighter. why isn't he moving?
only a couple of steps closer and a thousand beats faster until she's within his direct line of sight. even the faintest of sounds can alert him to her precise location if she wasn't careful, and then she could just—
sakura.
she freezes up almost instantly. years it has been since she last heard the familiar timbre of his baritone voice, even longer since that name passed by those very same lips. it weakens her resolve just a little.
then he turns around, and there it is.
the first thing that crosses her mind was how much of sasuke she truly did not know. she loved him despite his secrets and darkness, one of the last few who do, and yet this is a sasuke she is a stranger to.
his eye was bleeding and his shoulder looked dislocated and there was something profoundly off about him this time; he just seemed so disoriented.
he smirks and everything falls into place.
suddenly the resolve that melted when she heard him say her name all but hit her with a force so strong it was a wonder she was still grounded into her spot. the boost came with a name, then she remembers: naruto.
she betrayed direct village orders and marched off on her own because sasuke was a war criminal and has truly fallen far below anyone could reach out and maybe he is a lost cause at this point, but he was going to be her lost cause.
it seemed disingenuous for anyone else that wasn't team seven to put him in place — only kakashi was hesitant and naruto was persistent. they always had a soft spot for sasuke.
lucky for them she didn't.
because sasuke was already everything to her.
so this stranger with the bleeding eye and maniac laugh and would you betray konoha for me? is still her sasuke-kun through and through. maybe she couldn't heal his arm back then the right way it should've been or maybe she wasted too much chakra trying to keep his pulsing back in the land of the waves;
but this one metaphorical healing was one she was going to do successfully.
only when nostalgia makes her waver and sasuke is on her without a moment to spare – hand on her throat and another prepped for a roaring chidori – sakura knows she has failed again.
the sun is warm on her back as she tried hard not to spill any tears on their bleeding arms.
she barely registers the voices around her as her past teammates because they were talking all over each other and she was healing so if they could just stop for a moment because her head was spinning and they were losing too much blood—
i'm sorry for everything.
there is a halt in her movements for the fraction of a second.
but only a fraction; because she was a medic now and medics never paused for anyone. maybe the twelve-year old playing nurse who bandaged his arm would have dropped everything and continued the conversation, maybe even the ignorant sixteen-year old who felt she could take the world on alone. but not this one.
this haruno sakura who is healing uchiha sasuke is more than a medic — she was a friend.
she has grown past being startled by boys who said one thing but meant another or ones who left girls alone on a cold bench or made them abandon their village or drive lightning rods into their hearts.
she was going to heal them this one last time, then she was going to heal herself.
only she makes the mistake of looking at him after she is done and finds him already staring and suddenly she could easily just be the same foolish twelve year old but for entirely different reasons.
because sasuke wasn't sneering at her like she was the world's biggest inconvenience nor was there any genuine intent to kill in his eyes; this time he was actually looking.
the soft rain patters on as her heels meet marble on the prison holding.
she was his assigned medic, against the strong advise of her shishou and kakashi-sensei.
it goes unsaid she was also the only person he didn't feel like burning into flames the moment they stepped in. because naruto dragged him back into this place and kakashi didn't stop him and aniki died for this so maybe he should be considerate but he couldn't fucking see anything—
the doors to the cell open with a soft click.
he knows its her because he smelled jasmine right away. guess she never changed her shampoo then.
her footsteps are just as muted as the rest of her. it takes him a while to catch on, maybe only after the third week, until it hits him full force. because if he knew anything about his former teammate, she wasn't silent by nature.
so the quietness that envelops them every week wasn't companionable by nature, it was oppressive.
sakura wasn't supposed to be the quiet one.
she was supposed to be the one person who shouldn't see him like this because she was the only normal one out of all of them and what the fuck has naruto been doing all these years, didn't they have some sort of unspoken promise to protect her from this—
and by this he means the shadows that follow his darkness just as bloodshed follows his clan. or even naruto and his perpetually sad orphan life filled with dead parents and dead mentors and even more dead people.
he vaguely remembers kakashi trying his best to play his part but obviously the old man fucked up like he always did, because her chakra is still unguarded and soothing when it should've been clamped shut from someone like him.
she's still the same and he is angry at her for being the same.
where does it hurt?
in places you can't heal.