AN: Content warning for underage sex.
This is an alternate take on what could have happened after Sakura offered to join Sasuke at the Samurai Bridge. To be 100% honest, I mostly wanted to write some enemy SasuSaku smut. If that sounds like something you'd enjoy, please read on!
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THE GHOSTS WE MAKE
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This isn't the Sasuke that Sakura once knew. That boy, the one she loves, is dead. And in his place stands a man far beyond salvation. A stranger in Sasuke's skin, corrupted by the vengeance he sacrificed everything for. Including her.
On the Samurai Bridge, she made him an offer, one she didn't expect him to accept. He did, though, and now Sakura walks by his side. Only a few scant inches separate them; that and the betrayal she intends. Because allowing him to live is an insult to the boy he once was, kind and protective beneath that cold facade. The facade has finally fallen away, but the heart beneath it is long gone.
"Here," Sasuke says, pointing towards the small village hovering on the horizon. "We'll stay the night."
So he won't take her to his hideout yet, wherever that is. Doesn't trust her enough, she supposes.
Well, he always has had good instincts.
"All right," Sakura says. "That's fine by me. I'm tired."
It's been a long day, a long week. A long four years without him. She wonders how long the rest of her life will feel, once he's not in it. Endless, probably. Either that, or she'll fail, and the rest of her life will be very, very short.
The village can barely be called such, and there's only one inn. A traditional looking establishment with a tiny, grey-haired woman behind the front desk. She narrows her eyes at them, and Sakura supposes they must be quite a sight: travel worn, obviously shinobi, Sasuke's left cheek streaked with dried blood, like rust-red tears. For a moment, Sakura thinks the old woman is going to kick them out, but she accepts their ryo without complaint and hands over the key to a third floor room—just one room, with one bed, which Sasuke asked for.
She should be thankful. Sharing the same bed will make this—simpler. (Not easier. Nothing will make it easier.) It's hard to feel thankful, though, because she can't stop wondering what Sasuke wants with her. She's a medic, the perfect replacement for that poor girl he left to die, but there are plenty of medics in the world, if few of her caliber. Why allow her to join him when he has to be suspicious of her motives?
The answer may be as obvious as it is base, and found between the sheets of the one bed he requested.
No sooner than the door has closed behind them, he says, "I know you're trying to trick me."
Sakura swallows. "I've missed you, Sasuke. So much. I just want to be with you."
She's never told a lie with so much truth in it before.
Sasuke's jaw relaxes a fraction, but his eyes are all wrong. No warmth, no hidden softness—and on a purely clinical level, he seems unwell. His left eye has been bleeding, and both are clearly strained.
"Let me heal you," Sakura says.
Which is stupid. A weakened Sasuke with dulled vision is a Sasuke she might have a chance of killing.
He dismisses her with an abrupt wave of his hand. "I'm fine. Danzou was no match for me."
Whether or not that's true, he looks sick, but Sakura lets it go.
Their rented room is clean enough, if plain, but the bed is small.
Sasuke catches her looking, and his lips turn up at the corners. "Nervous?" he asks, a cruel edge to the question.
He's playing with me. Like a cat with a mouse. Batting her one way and another before striking the killing blow.
"Why would I be nervous?" Sakura asks.
He walks over to her, so close that she can smell him. Exertion, fresh air, the smoky scent of some fire jutsu. And blood. Sasuke wraps his hand around her throat, the gesture gentle and ominous at once. A threat, but a tender one.
"Why do you think I asked for only one bed?" he whispers.
"To save money," Sakura says flippantly.
His hand tightens, and she can feel his thumb pressing into her pulse point. It should terrify her, but it isn't fear that's making her tremble.
"You used to be bolder than this with me," he says. "You told me you loved me so much you couldn't stand it."
That night… it all comes back to that, doesn't it? The night he left.
Sasuke bends down, until he's only a few inches away, and asks, "Can you stand it now?"
She swallows, feels her throat flex against his hand, which loosens and then quickly works to unfasten her cloak. It falls from her shoulders, leaving her in her combat gear, which suddenly feels immodest.
The way Sasuke is looking at her—it's not right. He seems unbalanced, that cool calm he always exudes utterly shattered. More than that, he seems shattered. There's a manic glint to his weakened, dark eyes. Anger and energy ready to burst free at any moment. She's a fool to come here, to risk this. Sasuke has always been dangerous, but right now he's wild. There's no telling what he might do.
So it really shouldn't shock her when he kisses her, but it does. Nothing has ever shocked her more in her entire life than his lips pressing against hers. Not at all like she imagined her first kiss, because this is rough and demanding. He bites her lower lip, and it hurts just enough to make her gasp. Then he's kissing her more deeply, and Sakura can't care whether this is a good idea or not, whether he loves her or hates her. All that matters is this kiss, and she throws herself into it, wraps her arms around his neck and gives in.
When he finally breaks away, his breathing is as ragged as her own. "You didn't answer my question, Sakura. Can you stand it now?"
What a hateful way to ask, Do you still love me?
Sakura steps backward, but that new distance does nothing to diminish the heat and want that charges the air between them.
"No," she admits. "I can't."
That must be the answer he hoped for, because she's suddenly in his arms again, and he's kissing her throat. Nipping, licking, sucking in a way that's sure to mark, and she lets him do it. Because soon that's all she'll have left of him—
Sasuke jerks at the zipper on her shirt, yanking it down. Her nipples harden just from that, which he must see through her bra.
"Did you think about me?" Sakura asks.
His answer will either hurt her or make this harder, but she can't take it back.
He stills, his hands grasping her sides, fingers on her ribcage, just below her breasts. "I tried not to," he says, and for one fleeting moment he sounds like her Sasuke again.
Maybe she doesn't have to do this. Maybe he isn't beyond salvaging—
Then he says, his voice harder, "It doesn't matter now."
"If it doesn't matter, why did you bring me here?" Sakura asks.
"Why did you come?" he snaps.
It's the cheap way out, answering her question with a question, and he doesn't even give her a chance to respond. Just kisses her again, hard and unyielding, like this is a fight instead of an embrace. Perhaps in a twisted way it is.
He manhandles her onto the bed, then his lap, his hands buried in her hair. There's a desperate edge to his kisses now, and Sakura knows hers are just as needy. Because this is it, her best chance, and it seems horribly wrong that it will happen this way. That she'll lose the boy she loves at the moment when she finally gets to have him.
Now, now. She has to do it now.
Sakura pulls a poison-edged kunai from her pouch, and she has a split second to stab him before he notices—
But she freezes. The deadly point of the kunai is pressed against his stomach, not quite close enough to prick, and she can't muster the force to carry out the deed. Her chance slips away like sand spilling through open fingers. He'll kill her now.
Sasuke grabs her wrist and squeezes so hard that she drops the kunai. He snatches it up, throws it away, and flips her onto her back, arms pinned over her head. His expression is vicious and furious, but worse than that, hurt.
"So much for love," he says, and he sounds choked. "I should kill you."
Sakura bites her quivering lip. She's shaking out of shame, not fear. Because she failed; because she attempted this in the first place.
"Go ahead," she says. "I'm ready."
And she is. Because a world without Sasuke is not one she'll ever find fulfillment in anyway. Her heart has been tied to his for what feels like forever, strung together by an invisible thread, and he's so far gone. It's just a matter of time until she follows him. She closes her eyes, waiting. For a kunai to slit her throat, for his capable hands to break her neck. Surely he'll at least make it quick.
He releases her, and when Sakura looks up, she finds him frowning down at her. Still angry, still wounded, but saner.
"Either get out or take off your clothes," he says. "No weapons anywhere near you. No tricks."
Sakura sucks in a sharp breath. "You—you still want me?"
He glances away. "I want a willing girl. Are you willing, or was that a ploy to get close to me?"
"Both," Sakura says. The least she can give him now is that truth. "You're more handsome than ever. I'm sure you could find plenty of willing girls."
"None like you," he says. The words are ground out of him, like he's angry at himself for admitting it.
None like her. He has no idea what that does to her. To be wanted, finally wanted by him.
Get out, or take off her clothes, he said. She finishes what he started, and undresses.
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Back at the academy, before she knew anything about loss or passion, she sometimes daydreamed about making love to Sasuke. In the vague and distant way that a twelve-year-old girl could conceptualize, mostly focused on having done it rather than the particulars. Later, once they were genin together, those daydreams turned both baser and more emotional. She imagined getting married someday, and the night that would follow, in more detail than she should have. In the time since he left, she has tried not to indulge in such fantasies. They only make her yearn more. But that doesn't stop the dreams, which only grow more heated with every passing year. Dreams in which a shadow Sasuke is on top of her and inside her, leaving her flushed and wet when she wakes.
She's fantasized about making love to him a thousand times, but she never imagined anything like this. A rough fuck in a rented bed, with her face pressed into the pillows while he pins her down with his strong body. She can't look at him in this position, but she can feel him. Rocking in and out of her, using her, driving her pleasure higher and higher with every thrust. It hurts so sweetly that she can hardly bear it. It's not supposed to be like this, and Sakura doesn't know what's worse: how little care he's putting into their fucking, or how much she's enjoying it anyway. She can't help but moan and arch her back, giving as much as she can with him holding her down this way.
Sasuke grasps her chin, turns her head to the side, and presses a messy, lopsided kiss to her open mouth. He swallows her whimpers and somehow takes her harder. She's not going to come this way, not without more careful attention, but she doesn't give a damn. Nothing could be better than this, even if it's ruining her. The Sasuke she knew is gone, but this savage stranger in his place is close enough that she can forget for a moment.
She can tell he's close from the sounds he's making, rougher and needier, and then he gasps—
"Sakura."
Her name, he said her name, and that's so much better than a climax could ever be.
She thinks, anyway. Then he pulls out of her, flips her over, and starts caressing her between her legs. It's clumsy, too much pressure in the wrong places, but then he finds the right spot and Sakura cries out. She's so wound up already that the slightest touch feels electric, the pleasure coiling tight so quickly that it doesn't matter that he's clearly never done this before. It's Sasuke touching her, taking the time to get her off even though he's already gotten his, and that's enough to push her right to the edge—and over it.
Sakura rocks up against his fingers, her back arched and legs painfully taut as bliss washes over her in luxurious pulses. He doesn't stop until after she falls to the bed, breathing hard in a way that's almost like sobbing. Then it is sobbing, because something so wrong has no right to feel so good, but even pleasure this profound can't fix them.
"Come home," Sakura says. "Just come home, and we'll figure out the rest—"
He clamps a hand over her mouth, smothering her plea. "Konoha isn't my home anymore. And it's not the place you think it is. Everyone's hands are bloody, they're all guilty, every one of them—"
Sasuke jerks away from her and pulls at his hair. He seems broken, half mad, and Sakura tries to soothe him. She touches his hands, gently pries them away from his head, and whispers nonsense: "It's all right" and "You're safe."
And, "I love you."
He looks at her then, frowning. "You tried to kill me."
"I thought it would be merciful. I'm sorry, I—I was wrong."
"No, you were right."
He lets out a feral, startling burst of laughter without one bit of humor in it. He looks crazy, less like himself than ever, and Sakura hates it.
"Stop that!" she shouts.
He does, abruptly, and says, "The only reason I'll ever return to Konoha is to destroy it."
No. No.
Sakura grasps his beautiful face between her hands. "You don't have to go this way."
"Maybe not, but I want to."
That mad laughter is gone, but she would almost take it back over the deadness in his eyes and voice.
"Did you ever love me?" Sakura asks.
It's a selfish question, but she needs to know. The curiosity has been eating her alive for years.
He softens when he says, "I did. But not anymore. I can't love anything anymore."
That's the last thing she hears before his sharingan awakens. In another moment she's lost, dragged into blank, black unconsciousness.
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Sasuke must have put the covers over her and tucked them around her snugly, because that's how Sakura wakes up the next morning. Sunlight peeking around curtains, surrounded by warmth, the ache of latent pleasure between her legs. It takes a moment for the world to right itself around her, and when it does, she feels strangely at peace. After such a tumultuous night, she has no right to be so calm, but she is.
Sasuke said he can't love anything anymore, but she doesn't believe him. Because there was something in his eyes when he told her that, a hesitation. A lack of confidence in his own words, the kind that means he's lying to himself.
He's not gone, not truly. And as Sakura lies on her side, savoring every scratch and bruise from their brutal lovemaking, she makes a promise to herself: that she'll never give up on Uchiha Sasuke again, and she'll do whatever it takes to bring him home.
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AN: I hope you enjoyed this angsty, smutty little oneshot. I certainly had fun writing it. ;) I know this fic ends a little abruptly, but I really need to focus on The Valley of the End and didn't want to let this expand into another multi-chapter WIP.
The title for this fic comes from Laurie Halse Anderson's novel Wintergirls: "In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves."
If you have a minute to drop a review, please let me know what you thought!