A/N: Last update took forever, so here's another in the same month! To make me feel productive. And because I so happened to finish it without too much obsessing...

Enjoy - and review!

More music to come next chapter. (Brush up on your skate punk acumen.)

XXX Morbid Original XXX

Chapter 10: Miss Nothing

The short, routinely leisurely walk to her apartment proved none too pleasant that day as with each step taken Sakura's head filled with more and more reservations. As her distance from the training field, and Naruto, increased so crystallized the realization that she was a total fucking moron in more ways than she could count.

First (but not foremost) she had agreed to sing in a band. Her friends' band. Naruto's band. Drunk karaoke was one thing, and even that she'd barely managed to do in front of a crowd, but performing with live music and an original song – that she was supposed to write, no less – in a capacity that would purport some sort of talent on her part…it just didn't seem possible.

Surely she couldn't take this as far as a performance. She'd promised to try her best, but when that failed they'd give up after a handful of rehearsals and ask someone else, sparing her the fiasco of a massive public embarrassment. Till then she'd have to suffer the relatively minor mortification of singing with the boys, but that she could handle. She'd have to. It was the only way to make amends to Naruto after all the shit she'd put him through, the present day's events included.

Naruto…His smile was cut so clear in her mind then he might have been standing in front of her. He'd looked so thrilled when she'd said yes. She hated to disappoint him but could think of no way around it. She simply wasn't a singer, certainly not a performer. Just a penitent friend willing to go to stupid lengths to secure his favor, and she could only hope that would be enough. But if it wasn't...

By now Sakura had reached her building and walked straight past it, heading who-knew-where. Bloodied and tired and unshowered as she was she knew she couldn't stand the confines of her apartment then, and even if she couldn't escape her thoughts at least she could face them outside. She'd just reached the flowery path of a park before her legs and thoughts grew heavy, and she sank down onto the nearest bench.

What if it wasn't enough? What if she sucked so hard she didn't make it through one rehearsal? Given her stupendous idiocy of late it would definitely take more than a mere hour of voice-cracking awkwardness to make it up to him. She needed to ensure a stint of at least a few weeks with the band if she was to make any progress, but how? What if her greatest efforts failed and she lost this, her one opportunity to get things back to normal?

If normal was even possible at this point, she reminded herself, pulling her knees to her chest with greater strain than usual. Hours of dodging bombs and hopping tree branches had made her sore of course, but still she hurt in other ways, more benign but distracting in how foreign they were to her. Then she saw a peek of bruised flesh where her spandex had ridden up and recognized the odd hollowness in her core she couldn't tell if she was imagining or not.

No, normal was certainly not an option. Not after what they'd done – what she continued to do. What the hell was that on the training field? What on earth had possessed her to try to kiss him, ignorant of her own dead-set objective as well as the literal chaos raging all around them? Had she learned nothing from the previous nights spent sleepless from stress? Had she no control over herself at all?

She replayed the scene despite herself, then suddenly she remembered. He had gone for it too. Just before the bomb had obliterated their tree, he had leaned in to kiss her. She may have stirred things up initially but hell if he didn't seem ready to follow suit – more than ready, she recalled, face burning feverishly as the memory grew clearer, almost tangible.

She shook her head roughly, trying to rid herself of his scent, his warmth, his touch. There was no point dissecting an almost-kiss. It hadn't happened after all – and moreover it shouldn't have. That was not part of the plan, had no hand in their return to almost-normal. She had to stop dwelling on past stupidities, however recent, and focus on her next move.

A deep breath of autumn air, meant to be tranquilizing, only sent a shiver down her back as the world she'd barely noticed cooled toward evening. It would be dark soon, time to return to her apartment and go about her life as if she weren't so torturously overwrought. Already only a matter of hours stood between her and another unrefined encounter with Naruto – hardly enough time to master vocal arts or somehow transform her personality into one suited for the stage. If she could sing or even just command the spotlight with any intrigue or authority that would be one thing, but in the absence of these traits she had to find another way to prolong her involvement.

The song. She could write a song, she thought, as Naruto had requested. That way regardless of her innate inaptitude the others should feel obligated to include her for her efforts. That was assuming she could write one, of course; one that would fit the band's image and tastes. One she would need to finish by the following afternoon's rehearsal.

"Fuck me," she groaned, burying her face in her knees. It was no use. She couldn't possibly come up with something of any merit in a single night. She'd never even thought of writing music before. What would she even write about?

"That your new catch phrase?" came a familiar monotone. With a start Sakura snapped up to find Sasuke standing before her, brow cocked in what might have belied amusement.

Sakura blinked, wondering where the hell he'd come from, how long he'd been there and how much he'd seen of her probably blatant stress-fest culminating in her talking to herself. She must have looked a real mess, comparable to their previous encounter, but she found herself too tired to care. Their little cosmic joke was losing its edge from overuse.

"Recently, yeah, I guess," she sighed, returning her head to her knees, this time propped on her chin to consider her counterpart. His white monikered attire was spotless, and he bore not a single scratch she could perceive. "How bad did you give it to Sai?" she asked with mild interest.

"He'll live."

She snickered, feeling none too sorry for her earlier tormenter, however innocuous his intent may have been. "That didn't take very long."

"He was in pretty bad shape to start with," Sasuke said. Then his eyes ran over her. "You don't look so hot yourself."

"Well, I did almost die, so," she shrugged.

"Yet you didn't go home after."

Her gaze darkened so starkly it wouldn't take a sharingan to notice. She shook her head.

"I don't wanna be there right now," she admitted vaguely, eyes drifting to the cobblestone path at his feet.

"So you came here," he said, something of incredulity infiltrating his tone.

She glanced up at him, not realizing. "Yeah, for lack of anywhere else," she began; but then it hit her.

The cobblestones. The cut stone bench. The trail of flowers and fat shrubs that lined the wall behind her. She'd come to the exact spot where he'd left her all those years ago; knocked her out cold and abandoned her on that very bench the night he'd walked out on all of them. The village, the team – the girl who'd come there to tell him she loved him, enough to throw everything else away. Enough to turn her back on her whole life, just to be with him.

A reaction welled within her, all the fury and grief of half a decade's resentment boiling in her core. Suddenly she became aware of her breath, the slow, controlled airflow through her nostrils as her jaw clenched tight, body went stiff as rusted steel. Next would come the shaking, she knew in the back of her mind, for that was always how it was with Sasuke. Somehow she'd forgotten yet again, in the wake of her new distraction, but now the trigger had been sprung. She couldn't stand to be around him, even if she didn't understand why. And unlike the other night at Rock Bar she had no accessible excuse to bail, no one with whom to hide under the pretense of smoking a cigarette; nowhere to escape before the fit came down full force and she felt in its uncensored entirety all the hurt that Sasuke stirred in her.

She couldn't speak; sat there paralyzed, waiting to see which would emerge first between tears and violence. Then with a sigh Sasuke sat beside her, the gesture shocking her enough to override all else. Like a shot of Novocain to the nervous system, everything went numb. She unclenched, released her knees, lowered her legs to the ground; sat back beside her former teammate as he folded forward pensively, hands laced before his mouth.

"Sakura," he began, with an intensity that sounded almost like anger; it wasn't, of course, but anger was the only other thing she'd ever heard bring the same roughness to his voice. "I –"

But then he turned to her and paused, face changing entirely as he asked, "…What happened to your neck?"

Suddenly her muscles sprang back to life as she leapt to her feet, slapping a hand over the offending area. Her makeup must have rubbed away during training, meaning she'd just waltzed through town with love-bites brandished for anyone and everyone to see.

"I got hit," she stammered. "During training."

"It looks like a burn," Sasuke said, frowning. "…Or –"

"It's nothing. I have to go," she spat; and then she ran away from him for the third time in as many days.

The second the apartment door fell shut behind her she collapsed, legs weak from overwork. The weekend's trials had finally taken their toll, exhausting her mind, body and soul – and still she could see no end to any of it. She was losing Naruto; pushing Sasuke away. Lying to Ino and acting strange in front of their friends. She'd been off her game at training, in front of her sensei, and enough of a zombie afterward that she hadn't even noticed where she was – or that she was prancing around covered in obvious hickeys. It was all too fucking much – too much to feel, too much to think about. Too much to keep inside her head all to herself.

She lay down where she was, pressing her cheek to the cold wood floor as the first tears fell, shook free from their prolonged internment. In a way she was surprised – morbidly impressed, even – that she hadn't cried before then; had managed not to break down in Sasuke's presence despite three consecutive close calls. After five years – more than that, really; ten years, fifteen years, however long it'd been since they'd first met – of weeping for him, about him, because of him, she'd finally broken the pattern. That was the only progress she could account for, she thought darkly. Instead of falling to pieces right in front of him she could now suppress her emotional episodes until she was alone. Fantastic.

She rolled onto her back, slamming her fist against the ground in frustration as the tears poured, chest quaked with each gasping breath. How was it that after all this time he could still do this to her, reduce her to nothing through no such direct effort on his part? How had she ever cared so much for someone who only brought out the worst parts of her, made her feel weak and helpless and inferior until she seemed to actually become all those things? How had she ever loved him?

Her eyes shot open at the thought, breath stilled, tears seemed to halt. Only her heart still sounded in the otherwise complete silence.

She had loved him. Really. Truly. She had loved him and he had left. He had forsaken the greatest gift she could ever offer another human being like it was nothing and gone off on his own pursuits. Of course that hurt. His actions had never contended on her feelings, not his leaving nor his return, and that fucking hurt. But that was just how things were, and the fact remained that she had loved him. That must have meant something, if only to her. Just like the pain that engulfed her then had to mean something. It all depended on what she would make of it. How she moved forward.

Slowly she sat up, kicked off her shoes. Her head swam with all the dizzying heaviness of a concussion, so full of thoughts and emotions she couldn't distinguish a particular one from all the others; so full it was as if she'd overflow.

Then with a jolt of revelation she knew that was exactly what she should do.

Wary of her stiff limbs she stood and made her way to the desk in her bedroom, plopped heavily down on the chair; reached for a scratch notepad, and with the last of her strength wrote:

Hello again, friend of a friend, I knew you when

Our common goal was waiting for the world to end