(Yes, it's back.)
The confessions come slowly. Everything comes slowly. It takes a few weeks for him to move back in.
He stayed with her that first night. Not in the bed, but on the couch where they eventually fell asleep together. It was too soon to return to that painful familiarity.
He stops taking so many missions, and tries, when he can, to meet her after her shifts finish to cook her dinner and spend a few quiet hours together.
One night, while she prepares a cup of tea beside him in the kitchen, leaning her body slightly into his, he realizes that he's allowing them to slip back into their comfortable silences. He turns, takes the cup from her hands, and wraps his arms around her shoulders.
"Can I say something?" He broaches, hesitantly. She stiffens a fraction, but relaxes into him, ready to listen.
"Of course."
"Until it…" they still have trouble putting words to that morning, "until the miscarriage, I had never pictured myself having children."
"I hadn't either," she whispers back. Before, that might have been enough, that tacit understanding could have been where he let it go, but he realizes, now, that he owes her more. He owes her explanations and vulnerability, and he shouldn't keep making her do the work of understanding him.
"I don't think I even thought of this as being real, as being permanent," he continues, "I didn't think I'd still be alive by now. Things like marriage, like children, that was always my family's plan for me. It wasn't something I really thought about, not tangibly."
She pulls back, but only to remove her teabag and pull him to the couch. When his arms are around her and her back is tucked against him, he continues.
"And when I met you, things - they changed. I wanted to live longer, I wanted to stay with you longer, but some part of me still thought I was biding time, that we could stay like we were because..."
"How do you build a life you don't plan to live," she finishes quietly. He's not the only one with commitment issues.
They stay quiet for a while after that. He moves an arm from around her shoulder to gently play with her hair.
"I, uh-" she chokes here. "I should have known. I'm a doctor. I'm a shinobi. I should never have allowed myself to get so out of tune with my own body. If it was the field that kind of carelessness could have gotten someone killed."
That phrasing makes her pause.
"I mean, logically, I know it was still just a bundle of cells. It wasn't even really a baby yet. I just-" should have known.
Should have, should have, should have. They both have that chorus refraining in their minds.
He should have taken better care of her. He should have broken with his clan ages ago. He should have told his parents exactly what they would be allowed to demand of Sakura: nothing.
But he had enjoyed the ease of their life together. The comfort of a routine. He hadn't wanted to disrupt it.
"The worst part is I don't know if I could have kept it. I wasn't ready. So a part of me is almost relieved. But I should have known. It never should have happened like that."
He pulls her closer at that, and this is one moment when she doesn't resent his silence. They don't need to talk any more now. She's still good at reading him, and she knows he understands this part of it.
The pain feels different, now. Different, but familiar too. She feels helpless again, weak, pitiful. She hasn't felt that way in years. That feeling had never really left her, not completely. It had been buried under brute force and perfect charkra control, and now here it was again.
"You don't heal," Ino had said, during one of those late-night conversations that can only happen between women in low lighting in crowded bars, "you just survive it. The pain changes and it just becomes something new, and you have to learn how to carry yourself in the world so that no one will take advantage of it."
She's used to thinking this way; tactically, strategically, defensively. And Ino was right, you couldn't let the pain become a weakness. But that didn't mean it vanished, that didn't mean it 'healed.' She's a doctor, she knows what healed means, but the psyche isn't the body, and intangible things can't be fixed or stitched back together the same way flesh can. There was no healing, there was no going back, there would not even be scarring, there would be something new entirely.
That day, when Itachi held her hand as she curled up on the hospital bed, she hadn't thought about the babies they wouldn't have. She thought back to the Forest of Death, she saw, clear as day, her teammates, her friends, her precious people, being hurt, and not being able to do a thing about it. She saw that fish, that fucking fish, that had taken her days to learn how to revive. She saw every face, every pair of eyes that had ever gone out in front of her. On her table, in the field.
She was supposed to be better than this, now. She was supposed to be stronger. She was supposed to be able to protect people. This rage, this self-loathing, it wasn't a new feeling, but it had been sharpened, somehow. What had settled into a dull ache, a nagging pull, pierced her like a senbon.
She felt changed, again. The pain of the miscarriage hadn't quite done it, but Itachi had. His earnest desire to connect, really connect, with her had done it. It had cracked her open like a rib spreader, and had dragged up all those wounds, all those dark thoughts, that she had told herself that she had healed from. But here he is, this impossibly strong, beautiful man, telling her that she didn't need to be healed, and that he wasn't either.
Slowly, his side of the closet fills up again.
Itachi hasn't lived at home in nearly eight years. It's one of the reasons his living arrangement with Sakura didn't raise as many eyebrows as it may have otherwise. It's also why his mother is unaware of the details of their breakup and eventual make-up.
He tells Sasuke because – well – it doesn't seem like an option not to. They had been close as children (not that Itachi had much time to be a child) but that closeness had waxed and waned as Sasuke started to move through the shinobi world on his own. When he and Sakura had first started dating (if one could count those first months when they seemed to keep stumbling home together dating) he had not felt the need to tell his brother. When things are started to develop, had started to get truly intimate, it had felt like too much of a hassle.
For all his skill, Itachi can be a lazy man. A lazy man who likes routine and simplicity and peace.
Sasuke finding out that he was – the term he first used was "shacking up" – with his genin teammate, friend, and first kiss (it had been awkward, Sakura informed him), was the antithesis of peaceful.
They had been spending a lazy morning together, both having just returned from separate, but equally draining, missions the night before. Itachi had knocked on her door nearing midnight, knowing it was probably a bit too soon to be disturbing her, considering she had only made it through the village gates some twenty minutes ago (he had checked with Genma, who was on watch, directly after debriefing the Hokage).
"Just a minute!" Was the exasperated cry from within, and for a moment he regretted disturbing her. She opened the door a minute or so later, gear off save her usual black shorts, mednin smock replaced with a t-shirt he – smugly – recognized as his.
"Hey," she breathed out with a smile, immediately reaching for his face and bringing his lips down to hers. "Come in, I still need to get cleaned up."
The mission had not gone well. There had been no fatalities, but one too many close calls for his comfort. The idea of returning to his sparsely appointed apartment, and collapsing, alone, onto his bed would have held some appeal, though as soon as he stepped into her warm apartment and into her warm presence, he couldn't imagine what that appeal was.
The next few hours were spent over chamomile tea, telling each other what they could of their respective missions, and leaving out the things better not discussed. In the morning, in her bed – which, of course, they always found their way back to – Itachi was struck by a sudden feeling of contentment, a fullness and peace he hadn't been aware of before.
Holding her, that small, strong woman, he was hit by a wave of tenderness. He had felt love before, of course. He loved is mother, his father, his teammates. He loved Sasuke. But this was different, somehow. This was both a possessive and a protective sort of love. He didn't want to lose her. Not to anyone else, not to an enemy, not to any will of the universe.
It was then that a steady pounding started at her front door.
She buried her face in the crook of his neck and groaned. "God dammit."
"Hey, Sakura!" They both stiffened when they recognized the voice.
"Shit, shit, shit, shit-" she muttered as she scrambled out of bed, frantically pulling on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, then frantically pulling off the t-shirt when she realized it was his. "I'm so sorry, I didn't think they'd-"
In the few second it took her to do this, Itachi arrived at a decision. He pushed himself off the bed, retrieved his regulation capris from the floor, and kissed her soundly, before making his way from her bedroom to the front door.
"What are you-" she hissed, before closing her mouth and looking at his retreating form incredulously.
"Don't think just because you're getting all the exciting missions you can just-" Sasuke was in the middle of shouting, before the door opened to reveal a stoic, and shirtless, Itachi.
"Sakura won't be available this morning," he said, calmly. "In the future, you should be more proactive about finding room in her schedule."
With that, he promptly closed the door in his brothers face, and turned back to find his – lover, girlfriend? – staring blankly at him. For a moment he was worried he'd seriously miscalculated, but then a wide smile broke across her face, and she said, a bit cheekily,
"So, I guess this means we're official?"
The euphoria of that moment was just enough to outweigh the veritable roller-coaster of annoyances his brother was the cause of over the next few weeks.
His first reaction had been shock. He'd walked to training ground seven in a haze, which Naruto had promptly taken advantage of.
"Hey, bastard, when's Sakura coming?"
"She's busy," had been his only feeble response.
"What?! But we haven't seen her in weeks, what could be more important than-"
"I'm not talking about it."
What followed was one of the more aggressive sparring matches he and Naruto had ever had. After a bowl of ramen (well, one for Sasuke, five for Naruto), he made his escape and stationed himself outside of his brother's door. When Itachi finally did make his return, some seven hours after their initial morning run-in (my god, what had they been doing together for seven hours?), the shock had worn off and been replaced with a righteous anger.
"What the fuck, Itachi?"
His only answer was a raised eyebrow as he sidled past his brother and into his apartment, allowing Sasuke to follow behind him.
"Do you have anything to say for yourself?"
It would not have helped matters to remark on just how like their mother he sounded in that moment.
"I mean – Sakura? Of all people?"
That gives Itachi pause.
"Yes, Outou, and I'm surprised that you, of all people, should find fault," he responded, a hint of warning in his tone.
"That's not what I-" he began, then promptly silence himself. "It's just- I mean- Sakura? I didn't think you two were even friends."
"We're not." He responded significantly.
"So you're, what," he didn't bother to keep the disgust from his voice. Fucking? Dating? "shacking up?"
"Don't be vulgar," Itachi chided as he returned his gear to its proper places.
Sasuke threw himself onto the couch and sat in dumb, petulant silence for a few moments.
That visit only ended when he had secured promises from Itachi to 1) not make things fucking weird. "You seem to be the one intent on making things 'weird.'" 2) Not take up too much of Sakura's time. "She's a grown woman. Her time is her own." And 3) not do anything to hurt her. "I could never intend that."
Sasuke, in turn, promised not to breathe a word to the family.
The next several weeks were not without discomfort. Sasuke made it apparent, at every given opportunity, that he was unhappy with the relationship, though his anger shifted from person to person.
"I mean, my brother, Sakura? What could you possibly want with the least emotive man in Konoha?"
"Are your intentions honorable? Do you plan to ever tell the clan? Is she going to be your mistress until you die?"
Eventually, though, the anger simmered to vague discomfort, and over the years they found their biggest champion in Sasuke.
Despite not living at home for the past eight years, he's a frequent presence in his childhood abode, which has made his increasing absence these past couple months noticeable and worrying. On a chilly day, when the brisk winds of autumn start to make their way through Konoha, he lets himself in through the kitchen door.
"I'm home," he says softly to his mother, who stands at the counter chopping vegetables.
"Itachi," she says eagerly, shoulders sagging a bit in relief. "Close the door, you'll let the chill in. Sit down, I'll put the water on."
"Thank you, mother," he demurs.
She looks at him for a long moment out of the corner of her eye. He looks better than the last time she saw him, that last dinner they had had with Sakura, the one where she had tried to weasel information out of them on when they would be planning to make things official with the clan. 'Your father wants to retire soon, you know,' she'd said to him playfully in the kitchen as she and Sakura had busied themselves plating the various dishes. Both of them had had an air of weariness about them. At the time she had hoped it was just the stresses of work catching up to them, maybe a bit of wedding jitters. Then, she'd heard through the grape vine (okay, she'd wheedled it out of Sasuke) that they were taking some time apart. Every motherly instinct in her wanted to march to her son's apartment and demand to know what had happened, if he was okay, if she was okay, but Sasuke had begged her to leave it alone.
'The family shouldn't be involved with this,' he'd told her.
Itachi looks a bit more rested now, she would even go so far as to say content, but there's something else, something just under the surface, that keeps her from rejoicing.
"I need to speak with you and father."
Yes, it's true. Over a year later and I finally came back to this. As always, it's marked complete, but if inspiration strikes again, who knows! Delighted to have found people still interested in this piece after all of this time, and, as always, your reviews give me life. (Apologies for any grammar or spelling mistakes, I am so tired.)