A/N: Hey everyone! I completely forgot that someone mentioned fanfiction stopped sending email notifications unless you go and fix your settings, so I have missed all of your kind reviews and messages from the last year. Gah! :( I am so grateful for your replies and I will be responding soon. Thank you so much. Here is Chapter 8, and Chapter 9 is ready to be published soon, too.
Chapter 8: Branded
In a matter of months, Sasuke's life had taken him from travelling through the lands of the Hidden Villages to being trapped within the four walls of Kakashi's home. Most nights, his heart thundered from the adrenaline racing in his system, begging him to run, to fight— to leave. The days only offered more in the form of distractions. Yet when the first day of the New Year arrived, Sasuke considered the conditions of his house-arrest and found little to critique. He'd easily choose confinement over ceremony.
It didn't matter that Sasuke adamantly refused to attend the memorial event of Pain's Assault. Naruto arrived at Kakashi's house at dawn to collect him.
"Come on, bastard. You're part of this village again, whether you like it or not."
It was the first time Sasuke was certain, without any shred of doubt, that he would've leveled Naruto flat onto his back if he had access to his chakra.
This wasn't necessary. It was inappropriate. It was uncomfortable. It would make others uncomfortable. The laundry list of excuses was both long and legitimate, but Naruto predicted all of them— and then promptly refuted them.
"Just wash your face and get dressed," Naruto said, insistent. "I know you own plenty of black."
He did. Sasuke took an exaggerated amount of time to complete his ordinary morning rituals, but apparently the idiot had planned for that. When Sasuke finally returned to the front room, Naruto was content and unhurried.
"Good," Naruto bit out. He waved a hand absently at Sasuke's black-on-black ensemble, not entirely different than the one he wore himself. "That miserable look on your face really suits you. Fits your tall, dark and gloomy aesthetic."
Sasuke stared at him. "You spend too much time with women."
Amusement flickered in Naruto's bright blue eyes. He smirked. "Yeah, and you don't spend enough time with 'em."
The jokes and jabs ended as soon as they stepped outside. Shops were closed, reconstruction efforts were put on pause, but Konoha's streets were busy, filled with shinobi and civilians alike. Everyone was quiet; even the children kept themselves composed or close to their parents' sides. Like the same melancholic tune sounded off inside of everyone's mind, slowing their steps and shifting their words into somber whispers.
It should have been raining. The shining sun and perfectly blue, cloudless sky seemed cruel in comparison.
Naruto greeted everyone warmly, but his usual enthusiasm was dialed down several notches. Anytime he withdrew from a friendly handshake or embrace, his mouth tugged back down to frown. Sasuke hated how he couldn't help but notice.
Throughout it all, Sasuke remained tense, every muscle attached to his skeletal frame pulling taut. With each step he took, he became more certain he shouldn't go further. The Hokage's command to join community events in Konoha be damned. He didn't belong in attendance.
At the time of Pain's Assault, he'd been wearing the Akatsuki's black cloak with swirling red clouds and moving in the opposite direction. It wasn't regret, but something close to it, that churned uncomfortably in Sasuke's gut.
The crowd doubled then tripled, everyone in Konoha heading in the same direction. Like the tide pulling them to shore, it brought him and Naruto to the central district of the village.
To commemorate, a white marble obelisk stood newly erected in the center of the rebuilt plaza. Even from a distance, Sasuke could read the engraved words beneath the symbol of the Hidden Leaf. In honor of the day we lost everything— and found everyone.
Sasuke thought that was a bullshit way to put it. Then again, he supposed a more direct recognition of Naruto's ludicrous ability to holler platitudes of hope and honor at his enemies until they surrendered would have been an odd statement for a monument.
It seemed more than half the village was already gathered within the plaza. In a sea of dark and dreary colors, her shock of petal-pink hair stood out among the rest. Sasuke noticed her first.
Naruto followed his line of vision, then steered them in Sakura's direction.
She looked different in formal attire. Hair pinned back in a perfect twist, dressed entirely in jet black. Her knitted top shrugged over her bare shoulders and cropped precisely at the start of a high-waisted skirt. For a split-second Sasuke found himself noting the curves in her otherwise slim figure, an observational instinct he blamed on compensating for his absent Sharingan. There was ordinarily an oversized sweater, white coat or flak jacket obstructing the view.
Then he remembered Naruto's earlier taunt. He promptly looked up at her face.
Same green eyes, dark as uncut emerald. But glassy and distant, red-rimmed and bloodshot. Both her pupils were dilated, pools of black ink in tired eyes. Not for the first time, he wondered what she took to keep herself awake during all those hospital shifts. If she took them for more reasons than that.
"Morning, Sasuke-kun." An obligatory greeting, her gloss-painted lips strained with a polite attempt for a smile.
It was the worst one he'd seen on her yet.
"Sakura."
This was why he didn't make small talk. He didn't need to ask her how she was doing. No matter the cut of her clothing, the subtle touch of makeup that worked just as effectively to emphasize her pretty face. She looked like shit.
Naruto stepped up excitedly, a sudden study in contrast. He was as sunny and clear-eyed as always, impossibly genuine. He grinned at the sight of Sakura, unbothered by the reason for all this pomp and circumstance.
"Hey, Sakura-chan." Naruto slung his good arm around her and pulled her in for a rough hug.
Sasuke waited for her to melt into him, to release the pressure of standing so strictly and slump into his side. To finally relax now that he was present.
She didn't.
"Hey, Naruto." She extended the same strained smile and brushed a hand over his shoulder before turning to face the front.
Apparently, Sasuke wasn't the only one who didn't want to be here.
.
.
In honor of the day we lost everything. Sakura stared up at the engraved words on the sleek marble, certain that if she looked down, she'd see a crowd of broken, battered bodies and a street stained red from their blood.
She almost always managed to avoid walking through the village. After being discharged from the hospital, she'd suffered through more than one failed attempt to walk through Konoha again. It was this ridiculous pomp and circumstance that forced it on her. Empty streets would have been easier, but this— this was a scene straight out of her worst nightmare. Crowded streets, filled with kids, and civilians, and friends. Filled with all the people Pain slaughtered.
In honor of the day we lost everything. What was there to honor? Why did they need a white-stoned monument to remember? The memory of the Akatsuki's invasion was all around them, it was in the piles of rubble just as much as the fresh, shining paint. In every job, every activity, every leisurely stroll: everywhere you went, you saw the damage. You saw the feeble attempt to repair it.
It wasn't just on the outside, in the streets, in the markets. It was inside, too. It was imprinted on her eyelids, a morbid movie that demanded to be played. Pain's Assault, the world as she knew it collapsed by his Almighty Push, like continuous back-to-back showings. Everyone had been brought back to life, but Sakura couldn't stand to look at them.
Not with worry that she'd recognize them, but in fear that she wouldn't. Red, yellow, green! The reds— dismembered bodies, gaping holes with spilled intestines, half-crushed skulls and severed spines of limp, dying children— had been assigned to her. The ones most certain to die, entrusted to her.
In honor of the day we lost everything. If she could, she'd take that day and wrest it from her memory forever. She'd shatter it, like she could throw a punch hard enough to shatter that marble obelisk. And maybe if it were shards and fragments, maybe if there were only pieces left, she'd understand why she felt this way: why she ached so desperately to be whole again.
Kakashi was giving a speech, dressed immaculately in formal black robes with fire-gold stitching. The Hokage stood beside him and one step back, a purposeful position. They were preparing for his political ascension. This public display of leadership, in collective grieving and gathering, was all part of Tsunade's plan for him.
Sakura could no longer listen to a word he said. It was just as foreign as his attire, as strange as his prominent placement. He talked so calmly and resolutely, a tone of certainty over a dialogue of nonsense. He died in Pain's invasion. Pain killed him. How could he be up there, encouraging everyone to move on? It made Sakura want to vomit.
In honor of the day we lost everything.
Naruto was eagerly listening. He stood at her side, enthralled. There was a spark in his sunlit blue eyes. His chin was lifted. His shoulders were straight. He was so sure. He was so confident and sure.
The day we lost everything.
Sakura wasn't sure. She wasn't sure of Kakashi and his uncharacteristically impassioned speech. She wasn't sure of Sasuke, standing silent and agitated and disinterested. She wasn't sure of Naruto, who believed in this village and his dreams and himself. She wasn't sure of herself and all her broken pieces.
The day we lost.
She wasn't sure of anything anymore.
We lost.
.
.
Sasuke knew he shouldn't have attended this damn event. He fucking knew it. The urge to leave, to get far away from these grief-ridden and yet grateful people, was a physical force that barreled painfully inside his chest. Thankfully, Kakashi, in his current role as the surprisingly sincere and somber Jōnin Commander, wrapped up the last of his remarks. The Godaime stood behind him, nodding approvingly in her regal kage hat.
There was a calm, but united applause that erupted from the gathered crowd. It went on and on, the sort of momentum that could only be gained through camaraderie and connection.
From the corner of his eye, he watched Sakura as she reluctantly began to clap. He wondered if it was mostly for the benefit of those around her who would notice if she didn't.
Sasuke wouldn't have clapped even if he had a second hand. He couldn't share in the grief of Pain's Assault any more than the ignorant villagers could share in the nightmare that'd been his Clan's Massacre.
As the rumble of applause continued all around them, Naruto turned around to acknowledge his friends. "Woah. What a great way to start off the New Year, huh?"
Sasuke remained indifferent. Naruto deferred to Sakura, who wrapped both arms across her chest and failed to hide her disagreement. Sasuke watched as every muscle tightened in her throat. She swallowed hard.
For the first time today, Naruto seemed to notice her detachment. "You okay, Sakura-chan?"
Sasuke once again waited for Sakura to seek comfort from her other teammate. That was the dobe's specialty, after all. Encouragement and whatnot. A monument had just been built to recognize that.
A flash of anger, fast and fleeting, flew across her grieved features. It lingered only in the darkened shade of her exhausted eyes. Naruto didn't see it; Sasuke didn't have time to consider it.
Naruto reached for her, an affectionate hand placed atop her shoulder, but Sakura jerked backwards.
By the time Naruto registered her withdrawal, she took off. As if she weren't in heels, tights and a skirt, she pushed through the crowd and sprinted out of view. Without his kekkei genkai, Sasuke had a difficult time tracking her swift movement.
Launched into a sudden state of alertness, he tuned out all the noise and commotion. Silence, a deafening silence, pulsed between him and Naruto.
For several seconds, Naruto just stood there— horrified— as he stared at the space Sakura previously occupied. When he finally turned to Sasuke, his confusion was apparent.
"What- what just happened?" Naruto asked him.
Sasuke blinked. Like he was supposed to know?
Naruto wasn't waiting for an answer, though. He grabbed Sasuke's shoulder roughly and pushed the both of them through the crowd. When Naruto started to run in earnest, Sasuke was already one step ahead of him.
They travelled in the direction Sakura left for, the fanfare of the ceremony and the full crowd soon far behind them. The two of them might have been faster than Sakura, but she had the advantage of a head start. She made it to the outskirts of the village, further than the 44th Training Ground. Sasuke recognized it even in passing, though it had been years. The Forest of Death.
Right before they caught up to her, Sakura whipped around. "Why are you following me?"
Naruto skidded to a halt. "Oh, well, we were just worrie—"
"He's here because he has to be," Sakura interrupted, not bothering to look at Sasuke while he slowed to a stop. Her angered attention was fixed solely on Naruto. "Why are you following me?"
Naruto took a step toward her, but she took an immediate step back.
"Oh." He scratched behind his ear, his uncertainty on how to proceed so blatantly obvious.
Sasuke took a deliberate step to the side, maintaining distance. He'd seen Sakura lose her temper with Naruto before, but this wasn't it. This was something fierce and unfamiliar.
"I was worried about you, Sakura-chan. I know this isn't easy for any of us to relive…"
"You know?" Sakura repeated, sharp as a kunai.
Naruto started to stumble over his words. Something on the despair and grief but the need to come together during it. Cheap words that echoed with an odd familiarity. Belatedly, Sasuke realized it was an echo of the same sentiments in Kakashi's recent speech. Or perhaps the Copy-Nin had borrowed them and these were the original orations.
It didn't matter. They didn't convince Sakura earlier. They didn't this time either.
Her blown out pupils swallowed up the last of the light in her bloodshot eyes. He heard the snap of crunched bones, the pressure from her clenched fist too strong and the weak aura of her healing chakra too late. It seemed the platitudes of hope and honor only worked on enemies. Not friends.
Sasuke watched from several meters out and waited for her to scream at Naruto. But she was too infuriated for that.
"You weren't here when it happened, Naruto." Her words were nearly silent. "You were late."
Naruto flinched. He recoiled as though she hit him.
"I didn't want to be late," he protested. "I wasn't supposed to be late…"
Sakura didn't, or wouldn't, hear him. She just shook her head. Loose tendrils of hair sprung free and fell before her eyes, but she didn't push them back.
"You didn't see it. You didn't hear them, Naruto."
He frowned. "I know, Sakura-chan. I know—"
"Stop saying that." Her heeled foot slammed into the ground and the earth splintered out around her.
Naruto leapt back at once to avoid the ground as it crumbled beneath him. With only a spare second afforded to him, Sasuke also jumped to clear it.
"You don't know," she told him, words strained. "You weren't there. You weren't here."
Grief that Sasuke felt detached from earlier began to sink its teeth into him now. She might have been talking about the invasion, but the violent despair threaded into her tone was forcing memories of his family to the forefront of his mind. She wasn't the only one to yell at Naruto for failing to understand. He'd been the first.
Naruto's surprise must have worn off. Taking it's place, a dormant rage hopped to the surface, as though it'd been waiting for this very opportunity.
"Don't you think I know that?" Naruto challenged. "I have to live with that. Every single day, I remember; I wake up here, I take one look around, and it's the first thing I remember. That I wasn't fast enough— I wasn't strong enough— to stop him."
That didn't get him any sympathy, it seemed. At least he slept.
Sakura took a fast step towards him. "You live with what— regret? That's nothing, Naruto."
For once, Naruto remained quiet, too startled to know how to respond.
She cleared the last of the space between them, the speed and stealth of a shinobi. More of her hair knocked forward, almost entirely unbound. Chaotic strands framed her severe stare. Her fractured fingers remained tight in unforgiving fists. She looked feral— was feral.
"I was here, I was right here, but everything— everything was gone," she ground out, jaw clenched. "I blinked, and everyone was gone."
"S-Sakura," Naruto tried. "I'm sorry, I kno—"
Her fury reached the precipice. It was brimming out, spilling over.
"You know?" Her prompt was bitter and brittle. "Do you know what it sounds like to hear hundreds of people die, all at the same time?"
She finally let go of her fists, but only so that she could shove him hard into his chest. "Do you know what it's like to watch? To see them all bleeding— dying— right in front of you?"
Sakura shoved him again, harder this time. Naruto stumbled back into a tree, the wood creaking as the trunk bowed out from the pressure. He should have fallen, but she used both broken hands to grab the front of his shirt and pull him upward.
She was no less furious, but breathless and rattled. Her words broke and fell apart as she said them. "Do you know what it's like to— to hold them once they're dead?"
She broke him. Sasuke saw it in the terror and the anguish that dimmed all the light in Naruto's eyes. He not only saw it, but he felt it. Carnivorous teeth ripping through his stomach, the reminder of his own barely-buried pain.
Sakura wasn't talking about Itachi and Obito's killing spree, but he could not stop himself from the remembering. Stumbling through the Uchiha Compound, surrounded by all the slain bodies. Racing to get to his home, only to find his parents on the floor, bleeding and unresponsive, their warmth fading beneath his fingertips. Memories he would spend every day running away from and every night returning to.
Sasuke tried to take a step back, but the trunk of a sturdy oak tree stopped him.
Sakura's shoulders were shaking, her chest heaving as she struggled to breathe. "That's all I hear. That's all I see."
Sasuke's vision swam under endless blacks and bloody reds, a trap as real as any Tsukuyomi. With all the reasoning and logic he could muster, he reminded himself he shouldn't be there for this, even more than he shouldn't have been at the ceremony to begin with. It was their pain and their mourning. He should have at least turned away. Given them some semblance of privacy.
He didn't. He couldn't. It might have been their grief, but Sakura had speared right through his own.
Tremors started in Naruto's ordinarily self-possessed frame. Sasuke tracked the tears that formed and fell from the corner of Naruto's eyes. He couldn't tell if it startled or mesmerized him.
"You're right," Naruto said, a quiet admission. "I wasn't there when it happened. I wasn't here. I don't— I don't know."
Sakura nearly snarled in frustration. She shoved him into the trunk of the tree again; the wood finally gave out and splintered into pieces. "Come on, Naruto."
With his collar held by her clenched fists, she shook him harder. Like the fury was all she had to cling to, and if that was all she had left, then she couldn't let it go.
"Don't give up so easily. You never give up, right? Not on anything, not on anyone. Not even on Pain. Even though he killed Kakashi— even though he tortured Hinata. Even though he destroyed our home."
Her rattled words rang through Sasuke's ears like the echoes of a bell, imperious and hollow. Even though he killed Kakashi. The Copy-nin had failed to mention that part to him.
Naruto withered beneath her, but he swallowed thickly and tried to speak. Despite the echo clanging inside his skull, Sasuke thought perhaps he shouldn't have. Words weren't going to get him anywhere. Words were not enough.
"The reason Nagato resurrected everyo—"
"Nagato," she spat, tightening her hold on his shirt. "I don't care about Nagato. You and your— your forgiveness. You can forgive him. You can forgive everyone. I won't. I can't."
Naruto put his hand around her wrist. As his fingers clamped around her, Sasuke realized that his hand was shaking. Naruto was shaking.
"You're wrong, Sakura-chan." He spoke quieter than Sasuke had ever heard him. "I can't forgive everyone. I can't forgive myself."
Sasuke watched the ripple effect of those words like a stone dropped into a pond. At first, there was nothing but the slight sign of startle as Sakura blinked. Then the shock of it, a physical repulsion: she dropped her bitter hold and promptly stepped backwards.
Neither of them could bear to face the other, both their gazes lowered to the broken earth around their feet.
"I should… I should go," Naruto mumbled quietly. He might have been talking to himself.
Sasuke didn't think Naruto remembered he'd been standing beside them, let alone that he was responsible for escorting him back to Kakashi's house. Naruto took off in a flash, a blur of blonde hair and funeral black that disappeared in the opposite direction.
That left him behind with Sakura. Alone with her and the gnashing teeth of grief.
Sasuke had to work to school his features. A more difficult task, he set about sorting through his shredded emotions. Without access to his chakra, he lacked the resources for his usual method. Instead, he turned to the sky above the canopy of trees. A flock of blackbirds flew through the cloudless sky, oblivious to the turmoil beneath them. He counted each one, breathing in and out until they disappeared from view.
With an uncomfortable sort of reluctance, Sasuke looked back down to deal with Sakura.
She faced in the opposite direction, her back turned toward him. At some point, she'd ripped her tights, the sheer fabric split down the back of her calves. With her disheveled hair and shaking fists, she looked like one half of a whole: her counterpart, the shattered earth she stood upon.
Sasuke knew, by the hammering of his heart and the lightning skittering under his skin, that he'd be her next target. Every instinct he had was honed into the threat of her and her chakra-enhanced fists.
You weren't there, she said to Naruto. You weren't here.
If her bottled-up hurt about Naruto not being here when Pain invaded had led to this wreckage, then Sasuke could only imagine what sort of fury she planned to unleash on him. The sort that wouldn't just splinter the earth around her, but level the entire training ground they stood on.
He waited for her wrath. If he was honest, he'd been waiting for longer than just the last few moments. He'd been waiting for weeks, in every hesitant conversation she started, during every assessment of his arm with her carefully probing fingertips. He'd been waiting for months, when he slipped the Akatsuki cloak over his shoulders and caught his reflection in the river, when he'd attacked her with genjutsu so she wouldn't have to witness what happened to him next.
Sakura didn't turn her anger onto him, though.
"Agh!" Her anguished scream was the only warning before she charged into the forest clearing, grief unleashed.
She hurled her bare fist into the dirt with the strength of a hundred. The earth instantly caved into itself, breaking apart into line by line of fissures. Sasuke watched the ground quake and crumble for hundreds of meters; trees with deep roots were ripped out and thrown skyward, an entire waterfall was swallowed up as the ground collapsed beneath it. Even without his Sharingan, he could see the decapitated heads of dandelions turn to dust in the wind.
Still, she didn't bother to face him. She hadn't spared him a glance earlier, she directed none of her fury and disappointment at him now.
It was more than minutes or weeks. More than months. He'd been waiting on her wrath for years, since he knocked her unconscious and dropped her onto a cold bench, since he left for Otogakure and trained himself to forget her face so that he could fall asleep at night.
Sakura remained listless, surveying the damage she'd wrought. She slowly lowered her throwing hand; her fingers were mangled, the skin scraped off to the bone. She didn't bother with tending to it. Her bloodied fist fell loosely to her side.
Sasuke watched the blood as it pooled onto her hand, then fell in silent drops that disappeared onto unearthed soil. The longer he stared, the more he started to understand.
She couldn't be furious with him for failing to protect Konoha when she hadn't counted on him to be there in the first place. She wouldn't blame him, not for Kakashi's death or Konoha's destruction. Not if she had already lost all of her faith in him.
For one soul-searing second, he was furious. For years, they'd been on a team, a team that had never been just a team, not when they became the only family he had left. Day after day, they relied on each other. They'd risked their lives for each other. He'd been willing to lose his own life, his unshakable need for vengeance and the restoration of his clan, to save hers. Didn't she know what that meant?
He stood there, rage gathering in a righteous need to be released. Only her broken and bleeding hand stopped him. An open wound, ruby-red blood forming and falling from shredded flesh onto shattered earth.
She might have known. Once, she had to have known. He'd thanked her for it, hadn't he?
But then he left. He left— and he chose not to come back. Sasuke felt the realization as it branded itself onto him.
He didn't just break her heart. He had killed her trust in him. He'd buried her ability to believe in him.
Sasuke felt the shame like a living fire. It burned through his chest, reaching into every place he'd sworn to forget about, thawing him from the inside out. The wrath he'd been waiting on for years, the fury-fueled resentment and regret, was never there for her to turn against him. It had been waiting for him to wield it all against himself.
.
.
She was too tired to be mortified. She was too tired to feel anything at all. Whatever energy Sakura had left, the last drop in a bone-dry bottle, was spent in fighting with Naruto. She slumped down to the ground with none of a kunoichi's grace.
Sakura forced her boneless legs into a slanted position. She tried to push her knees closer toward her. A tree she had felled lay behind her, one small mercy. She leaned her back against its trunk. Her injured hand hung limply, pulsing with pain she felt as an afterthought.
She needed to sleep. She desperately needed to sleep, but she was terrified at the threat of gore in the inevitability of her nightmares. Sakura wasn't sure how much longer she had before their endless fighting simply tore her clean apart.
She heard the subtle crunch of leaves, the telltale signs of approaching footsteps. Even if she wanted to look over, she couldn't. She was so gods-damned tired.
Sasuke took the seat beside her, unconcerned with the ruined earth and debris.
"Going to heal that?" He asked.
She choked on a strangled laugh. "No."
I'm too tired, she thought aimlessly. I'm so tired.
Sakura brought her injured hand to rest on her lap. All of her fingers were broken, the whites of her knuckles exposed in a mess of shattered bones. Shredded skin hung off in ragged strips while blood continued to seep out. Red-red-red. Sakura's eyes fluttered to a determined close.
She heard Sasuke reposition. He sat close enough for her to feel the brush of his elbow against her arm. Still, nothing prepared her for when he took hold of her wrist, a careful but firm grip, and placed her hand atop his knee.
Sakura slowly opened her eyes, the shock of his touch cutting through her bleary-eyed fatigue.
In his one hand, he carried her wrist and a black handkerchief. She stared, unable to comprehend it, while Sasuke slid the edge of her hand into his palm. He managed to maneuver the cloth until it draped over her bleeding knuckles. She blinked in tired fascination while he used his thumb to tuck the fabric under her trembling fingers, then tightened the cloth with only one hand. He deftly tied it into a knot.
Sakura bit down on her bottom lip. Only the sharp throbbing of pain in her hand could convince her it wasn't a hallucination.
She knew she should thank him, but she was afraid if she started to speak, she'd start to cry. If she started to cry, she might not be able to stop. So she kept quiet, not so tired she couldn't feel the warmth in the weight of his palm.
A moment passed before Sasuke lowered her hand back onto her lap, the back of his hand sliding off the top of her thigh. It snapped her out of a trance, the last and final flare of adrenaline to light her system.
She leaned back. She tried to breathe deeply, to bring more oxygen into her lungs. To clear her head.
It felt like it happened yesterday. Climbing out of the debris of what had been the hospital only a few seconds prior, she'd taken one look at the totality of the destruction before falling to her knees. It was Naruto she shouted for, completely confident in him, if only he could get there in time.
He did get there. He did save everyone. It was more than she could have ever asked for. It was more than she could have ever done on her own.
Guilt flooded through her, hot and horrible. What in the name of the Daimyo had she been thinking, yelling at him like that? Just because she couldn't move on didn't mean it was so wrong for him to want to.
Sakura couldn't bring herself to face Sasuke. She stared down at the dirt while she spoke.
"I shouldn't have— I shouldn't have said all that. I shouldn't have— made him feel guilty. He's the only reason everyone's alive. He saved them. Not me. It's not like I could do anything."
"Hn." Sasuke leaned back against the tree trunk, his shoulder almost braced against hers. "You did everything you could."
She felt her heart as it hammered painfully in her chest, her fight with Naruto echoing in the empty spaces between her rib cage.
"You don't know that," she whispered. "You can't know that."
It was dangerously close to what upset her about Naruto. He had to realize that.
Sasuke paused only to glance at her, though. "I know you."
Sakura cradled her injured hand into the center of her chest. She tried to calm her breathing, to bring her heart rate down to a restful rhythm. Her medical training failed her.
Did he know her? Did anyone know her? Lately, she barely recognized herself. She'd become so accustomed to putting on a show, to figuring out what the situation called for and then fulfilling that need. To taking on that role. The respected apprentice under Lady Tsunade, the hardworking surgeon in the hospital, the self-depreciating student to famed Kakashi of the Sharingan, the concerned teammate and fiery-spirited friend for Naruto. She was so tired of being the annoying girl to Sasuke; instead, after his release from prison, she found it safer to be the absent one.
Sasuke settled into the tree trunk behind them, his shoulder brushing against her arm. His words, spoken so easily and sure, settled with just as much weight. I know you. Lost in the mental fog of her exhaustion, she wasn't sure whether she believed it or not.
She only knew that when he slid her hand into his palm, it fit.
"I can't walk through the village," Sakura admitted quietly. "I'm— I'm apprenticed to the Hokage, Konoha is my home. But I can't- I can't look around without remembering what Pain did. I couldn't stand in that plaza, not without thinking how everyone could be dead."
She should have been startled by her own admission, but she wasn't. It was like her confession at his trial. There was something about telling the truth, to herself just as much as to another, that siphoned some of the poison out of her lungs. For the first time in months, she felt like she could breathe.
She didn't wait for Sasuke to answer. She never anticipated that he would. He wouldn't tell her not to worry, he wouldn't bother to try and comfort her. Maybe that's why she told him. There was no pressure to please or perform, no need to be perfect. Kami, even if she tried to be perfect, it wouldn't make him love her. It only made sense to stop trying.
Sasuke sighed, nearly silent. It barely caught her attention.
"I haven't been back to the Uchiha Compound," he said, a careful confession in the same cadence as her own. "People keep saying I'm the last Uchiha. Naruto keeps asking if I'm ready to go home. But when I go back there, it'll be the same as it used to be."
Sakura lifted her chin to look up at him, intent to watch him say the rest.
Sasuke reluctantly met her gaze. "Crowded with their ghosts."
She curled her trembling hand into a mangled fist, blood-soaked linen the only comfort she could hold onto. She was so used to giving, to helping, to healing. She needed to be able to give to him. But with nothing left to sustain herself, she had nothing of value to offer to him. Sakura could only hold his gaze, wishing for the world that he would be able to see her. That it would be enough.
He tilted his head down to face her, only the difference in their height keeping them at a distance. Heavy as her lids felt, she refused to blink. Somehow, despite what Sasuke shared, he didn't appear to be haunted. In the depths of his dark eyes, as bright and full as the starry expanse of a night sky, he looked calm. As calm as he'd been when he swapped places with her burnt vest and escaped Kaguya's distant dimension.
Maybe there was nothing he could say that would wash away her fears, and maybe she could do nothing to heal the worst of his wounds. But he was warm, he was close, and he was here. Her shoulders slumped in an overdue need for relief. Without permission, the top of her head fell to rest against the side of his shoulder. Sasuke didn't pull away.
He didn't leave.
.
.