Travelling with Sasuke Uchiha was an interesting experience. If she had to describe it, she would list words such as calm, tranquil, serene, sometimes thrilling, most times quiet. There would be days where they'd be sheltered in the room of a modest inn each with their own futons. Her eyes would be fixed on the lacquered floorboards, using the sound of his rhythmic breath to draw herself to sleep. Other days they would be out in the woods. They'd spread their sleeping bags on the grass while a hand-made campfire crackled just a few feet away from them. They didn't really need it to be honest as shinobi were trained to be accustomed to severe living conditions. It was mainly for its comforting glow more than the little heat that it would emit.
There was one unusual rule when travelling with Sasuke Uchiha. He had made it very clear that no matter where, their sleeping bags would have to be positioned a minimum of three meters apart, meaning that if they were staying at an inn they would likely be positioned wall to wall, a vast aching gap between them. Sakura wondered why he would insist on such a specific condition. A man like Sasuke Uchiha wouldn't make any unnecessary calls, unlike some other blonde knucklehead that they both knew.
At first she thought that it might've been a defense tactic, but that didn't make much sense. There isn't much granted territorial advantage to being three meters apart, and even if someone were to attack them in the middle of the night there is hardly a single person in the five nations who could pose a threat to either of them.
After racking her brain endlessly and reaching no conclusions, Sakura finally decided to ask him the meaning behind them sleeping three meters apart. His eyes darted ever so slightly, his expression undergoing a multitude of subtle changes. An infinite silence passed while the usually quick tongued Sasuke struggled to find the words to say. He ended with the line
"That's how it should be," His voice was almost as unwavering as his sharp gaze, and she wondered if he had realized in that moment he had activated his sharingan. Jet black being consumed by bright blood red.
"Did this rule apply to everyone you travelled with?" She inquired further, her mind specifically wandering to his previous motley crew that he had assembled soon after the defeat of Orochimaru.
"No," He replied, and that was the last they ever spoke of it. She didn't mind the rule, or so she told herself. It wasn't that she had any desire to be physically closer to him, on the contrary she was quite comfortable with their current level of intimacy. During the morning they would walk side-by-side. She'd engage with casual conversation and eventually he began to reciprocate in kind with similar enthusiasm. They would joke and reminisce and make fun of their loveable goofball of a teammate who would occasionally send them care packages via summoning animal or through the mail. How he'd always find their location they didn't know, but they qwere nonetheless appreciative of his kind gestures.
It was at night however where things felt off. The three meters of space between them seemed to grow with each passing night. Like she was lying on the edge of a wide valley, and on the other end would be his back, so far away that the Uchiha clan crest seemed to be only the size of a pinhead.
It's just three meters, three hundred centimeters, three thousand millimeters. She'd repeat this to herself like a mantra, hoping to quell the pain she'd feel as the valley continued to widen.
Oh God, it was starting to feel like that valley. That dreaded valley. And it was only on that night, sleeping in the woods, when those thoughts came in and she finally understood those three immeasurable meters dividing the two of them.
Sakura's breath felt hot, like acid running down her throat. Despite this she still carried on, supporting her sensei while they ran. He had told her to slow down, to take a break, but how could she. As soon as she had awoken the day before the first thing she noticed was the acrid smell of the air. Her skin burned as it felt like the entire atmosphere had transformed into fire. Looking up, what she saw sent chills down her very being. The sky was a pulsating mess of clouds, lightning sparking throughout her entire field of vision. Stray bolts would occasionally strike the ground, the shockwave of their impact could be felt for miles. The sun had begun to set, and the only thing on her mind was to find her teammates as quickly as possible.
Throughout the entire night Sakura and Kakashi searched for Naruto and Sasuke. Initially directionless, they realized that to find the two ninjas they had to go where the damage was getting progressively worse. She was horrified at the views. Where there were once mountain ranges and forests, now there only lay steaming kilometer wide craters and rubble. The lightning died down the next morning, but the light only brought to attention just how large the scope of their battle was. As if two gods had decided to clash, and she was now bearing witness to the aftermath of that unfathomable fight. The ruined landscape and scorched air only served to fuel her fears. If this was the state of the land, what would be the state of her friends once she found them, if she ever did.
"There they are!" She cried out.
"Figures they'd be here," Kakashi muttered next to her. At first she thought she'd be relieved after finding them, but it looked like this discovery might be the final nail in the coffin for the fate of those two boys. It was a valley. A completely destroyed valley, a shallow stream of water running down the center. Naruto and Sasuke looked to be lying on the remnants of two statues that might've once looked strong in the past, but now looked nothing more than cold dirty rock. They were bloody, beaten, and unmoving. Her heart sank when she noticed their dominant arms, or their lack thereof, rather. A shocking amount of blood pouring from where their arms had once been, now completely obliterated from the elbow down.
She steeled her resolve, unsure if her soul could withstand being crushed if it turned out that they arrived too late. She set Kakashi down and jumped from the precipice of the cliff to the valley underneath.
Please be alive, please be alive, please be alive!
"Sakura," Sasuke's voice cut through the blurry haze of her consciousness. Sakura's eyes fluttered open. It took her awhile to take in her surroundings, she was very much still disconnected from reality. But there he was kneeling above her, not bleeding on the ground, but perfectly healthy and safe, slightly older, and eyes definitely more concerned then they had been that other day. One similarity however was the arm, which she knew hid underneath his sleeve, obscured from view.
"Bad dream?"
"More like bad memory," She replied, accepting the water canteen that he was offering her. "did I make a lot of noise?"
"Your chakra spiked for a second, enough for me to notice, I have them too sometimes, which memory was it?" Sakura looked up at him, then looked up at the sky. Moonlight piercing through the hanging tree branches.
"I'm fine, we don't have to talk about it, let's just go back to sleep," She smiles at him, and he mirrors it albeit much quicker and less visibly obvious. Trusting her word, he steps back and retreats to his own sleeping bag, crossing the three meter void with four swift steps. Little did he know that Sakura was able to retrieve valuable information just from their short four line exchange.
The first day was rather uneventful. Nice, but uneventful. They journeyed through the areas that he once passed by during his time at Taka, relishing the culture of the towns and the surrounding scenery that he was never able to appreciate in his first pass through. At night they managed to get a room at an inn. After dinner they laid down at their futons once again, placed on polar opposites of the room.
They bid each other goodnight, except Sakura didn't sleep. She stayed up, not really sure what she was waiting for exactly. For two hours Sasuke's sleep was rather peaceful. Staring at his back, it was hard to believe that this was the same man who, a mere three years ago, was hell-bent on revolutionizing the shinobi world, and he was willing to go to whatever drastic means to get there.
Then he stirred. First a grunt, then he shifted his weight and turned to the other side. Sakura closed her eyes shut so he wouldn't see that she was still awake. She could sense him, restlessly attempting to go back to sleep. Then he stood up. She dared to peak and saw that he was grabbing a towel from the dresser, closing and opening it slowly so as to not wake her. Then he walked out the room, towards the baths she assumed. He came back 20 minutes later and was able to go back to sleep.
The second day was more exciting. An annual festival had been occurring in the next town they visited. They spent the day chatting with the locals, learning their traditions and history. They ate food and played games,both of them earning easy prizes at any booth that featured throwing. Even a genin with basic shuriken-jutsu could ace those. Sasuke however found no luck with a claw machine, and was bound to empty his wallet trying in vain to grab a plump green dinosaur plush until Sakura persuaded him to give it up.
"They're rigged, programmed to suck all the cash out of you," He whined.
"Yet your pride had the upper hand against that knowledge," She said, smirking back at him. "if you really want it we can probably find another one in a store nearby."
That night they slept at another inn. This time Sasuke stayed completely still for four hours. Sakura deduced that he would remain that way so she allowed herself to sleep. The third day was just as fun as the last. They remained in the town for the ongoing festival. Ate more food, played more games, and tried once more to attain the elusive green dino. Unfortunately there were no more to be found. Sakura attempted to sell Sasuke to take a red version of the toy but he refused, saying it wouldn't be the same.
Apparently that dinosaur was a precious belonging he used to have back in his early childhood, before the tragedies that were soon to follow. The same tragedies that she knew still haunted them to this day. And that night they did. After enjoying the fireworks that the town fired into the air, they set up camp in the woods. They feasted on leftover festival cuisine and talked about when Naruto's next care package would fall from the sky by a bird or carried to them by a frog that would suddenly materialize in front of them in a cloud of smoke.
Then they slept. Or he slept and she stayed awake as she had done the nights before. It was only a short amount of time, maybe thirty minutes, before Sasuke began to move restlessly as he had done during the first night. It happened in intervals, a few seconds of quiet grunting, followed by several minutes of quiet. Sakura debated whether she should wake him up. Then there was a flash. A blinding surge of energy that she was sure could have been seen from miles. Sasuke's chakra tore through the air in a two meter space around him. Small but concentrated, and very powerful. The surge was only a few seconds, but it was strong enough to scorch the ground beneath him, completely incinerating his sleeping bag and burning the grass in a perfect circle in which he was the center. The damage stopped just short of Sakura, who was now sitting up. The whole space now smelled eerily similar to the acrid atmosphere of that day she had recently dreamed about.
Sasuke was now sitting up too, his head geared towards hers for a second, their gaze meeting, then he turned away, his body language doing nothing to hide his shame. It wasn't a peculiar phenomenon. Ninjas frequently experience nightmares due to their highly traumatizing line of work, and more often than not their chakra reacts accordingly. In the same manner that a person's heart rate would increase during moments of fear or excitement, chakra does so too, and with a person with such immensely powerful chakra as Sasuke, you need to only look at the damage to the ground to understand the danger of this.
Sakura's thoughts went back to her mission's with Naruto, Sai, and Captain Yamato. She'd chastise Naruto for seemingly burning through his sleeping bags. And also another story she heard from Captain Yamato about Naruto attacking him with a rasengan in the middle of the night, though that might be unrelated. The sudden realization of what had actually been going on all those years ago made guilt boil in Sakura's belly. She'd have to remember to apologize to Naruto properly the next time they were back at the Leaf.
"Three meters apart," She broke the silence. Sasuke sat in his own circle of burned earth with his head still facing the ground.
"It happened only once," He croaked. "but that was enough, I couldn't take the risk. I knew that I would be able to control it from this distance, but nothing less."
Sakura stepped forward to him. The ground made each step feel like walking over steaming coals, his chakra truly was an incredible force. Despite the heat however, she approached slowly, waiting for any adverse reaction to her coming closer. When there was none she allowed herself to sit beside him, and he allowed himself to have his head cradled on his shoulder. They sat like that in silence. He needed a moment and she was willing to give an eternity just for his peace of mind. When she felt his tense muscles ease up she finally spoke.
"When was the first time?" Her voice was soft. Her tone indicated that he didn't need to answer if he didn't want to, and that if he was going to answer he could take his time doing so.
"The night before I fought Itachi," He answered. Itachi. That name was spoken with an amount of care unparalleled by anything else that could come out of Sasuke's mouth.
"Suigetsu was really on my ass about it the morning after," He continued, a little bit of comedy to relieve the tension, and a little bit of a smile forming on his lips. Sakura stroked her fingers through his hair.
"Well, he's basically 300% water, I doubt he was hurt by it," She contributed to his attempt at levity.
"What was it tonight?" She asked, but this time he didn't answer. That was alright. Sakura knew that there were a million reasons that could've been the cause of tonight's incident. Sasuke had lived a life of terrible moments so far. She didn't pry, instead she lay his head on her lap.
"Screw the rule, from now on you're falling asleep like this," She chided.
"What if it happens again?"
"If it does I can heal instantly, but I don't think it will, do you?"
Sasuke pondered for a moment, but all worries melted away with the feeling of Sakura's palm gently caressing his cheek. Maybe this was the solution to keeping the nightmares at bay. All the harsh memories of his complex life that followed him around all felt completely insignificant in the presence of Sakura Haruno. She was right, he thought. Screw the rule. He drifted off into a peaceful sleep. Sakura herself was satisfied enough to be blessed with the opportunity to see his sleeping face.
Travelling with Sasuke Uchiha was an interesting experience, she mused. Calm, tranquil, serene, sometimes thrilling, most times quiet. And she loved all of it.