A/N: Sorry for the wait and the epicly short chapter ahead! I'm currently swamped with school work so I'm just snatching bits of time to work on this. Thanks again to all the favouriters, followers and reviewers, you guys are da bomb and I love you to bits 3 So without further ado...
She felt as if lightning had struck the stream before her, electrocuting her every nerve-ending until she was numb to the pain.
But the pain was still there.
"Why do you love me, Sakura?"
Why indeed?
Sometimes when her mind happened to wander over the fact, arresting her heart, all she could think of was the foolish obsession of a young girl for the mysterious and handsome boy in her village. For a long time, Sakura had to admit—it had just been that—an obsession.
Then what changed?
Perhaps, it was all the hardship and loss she had faced that had turned a silly infatuation to something stronger, deeper—a need to save the one person she felt she'd failed the most. She had already failed Naruto more than once, and while he lived with the guilt of being unable to fulfill his promise to her, she lived with the guilt of letting Sasuke go in the first place.
Still, she couldn't say it was guilt or pain, loss or need that drove her love for Sasuke. It was the simple, yet complicated feeling that she wanted him by her side.
That was all she ever wanted.
She stared at the stream and the rush of translucent water over her pale feet—it strangely reminded her of how easily Sasuke had slipped away from her, time and time again.
In the past she would have replied to this question with embarrassment and would have stammered out a response that she would realize afterwards had displeased him. Now she just spoke the truth that gnawed at her soul.
"I don't need a reason to love you Sasuke-kun," she said, sounding more bitter and forceful than she'd intended. She stared up at the serene cerulean sky, the polar opposite of her tumultuous heart. "I just…do. I wish I knew the reason, because then maybe I could stop loving you. Maybe then I wouldn't always be waiting for you to return to me, maybe then my heart wouldn't hurt this much."
Sasuke was quiet, and Sakura decided with a sense of defeat that it was time they returned to the house. She stood up and so did he. "We should go back, I have to—"
"Kakashi. He said the same thing," Sasuke said. "After I used genjutsu on you before the fight with Naruto. He said you wanted to save me." An icy note entered his voice. "I never asked to be saved, Sakura."
She felt utterly frozen by his words, but the anger and frustration that rose up in her heart began to crack the ice, unleashing piercing shards at him. "Of course you didn't want to be saved, Sasuke! All you ever wanted was to destroy yourself along with everything you've ever cared about!"
She rounded on him, struggling with her ankle but still drawing up close enough to him that she could see the perfect rings of his rinneagan. She tried not to fear the power in those eyes, but even more so—she tried not to fear the emptiness in them. "You ran away. That day three years ago—you ran away. A brave man leaves his home to protect the people he loves. You were a coward, who ran away because you were afraid of ever feeling love again. Afraid of losing someone again. You turned to anger and fear and revenge, and let those feelings consume you until you couldn't even recognize yourself. Until you had turned yourself into someone incapable of love, someone who thought he didn't need love."
Sasuke was still. He watched her as she stepped closer and brought a hand softly to the side of his face. She was surprised by how right the gesture felt, but even more that he didn't flinch away. "But you need love, Sasuke. You will always need love. Even if it's not the romantic kind. You need to let yourself care about people again. That's the only way you can be freed from the prison you've locked yourself in."
And with that she dropped her hand from his face, cast him one long look, and turned to trudge away. Never looking back, for fear he'd see her tears.
"There is nothing in me worth loving, Sakura. Nothing capable of love."
She shook her head, still turned away from him, blinking through the tears. "Nothing but you."
The trek back to the house was silent and tense. Or at least it felt that way in Sakura's head, she had no way of knowing what Sasuke was thinking—ever.
Despite her ankle she managed to limp her way along and Sasuke surprisingly said nothing about the sluggish pace she set for them. He seemed lost completely in his inner turmoil, staring broodingly at the trees as he lugged the katanas in his left hand and the packs over the same shoulder. He touched nothing with his prosthetic arm, as if still wary of its condition.
Despite this he had picked up Sakura's pack without a word even though she insisted that she could carry it herself. She supposed it was a practical kindness. She knew never to expect anything more than practical, calculated actions from Sasuke. To believe anything more would be to feed that childish infatuation, to feed the faint hope she still held at the bottom of her heart that somewhere deep, deep down, in some corner of his heart, Sasuke cared for her, maybe even, possibly—but very improbably—loved her.
However, their earlier conversation was proof enough that he didn't feel any where near the same. He probably saw her affection as an unnecessary complication—an annoyance. Something that held no advantage nor purpose—at least to him.
After nearly an hour of silence, Sakura's tumultuous thoughts were scattered when Sasuke spoke up again.
"When did you know you loved me, Sakura?"
Sakura's breath caught. She tripped over her makeshift cane, falling headfirst towards the massive oak three feet in front of her. Fortunately—or fortunately not—Sasuke instinctively reached out, grabbing hold of her wrist and yanking her backwards. Her spine smashed into his chest and while Sakura let out an breath of surprise, Sasuke had the wind knocked out of him.
She heard his brief grunt of pain and surprise, but she was still too bewildered and dazed by what he'd just asked.
"When did you know you loved me, Sakura?"
Apparently, Sasuke hadn't tired of precipitous questions this morning.
There was something about the question though. In the innocence of the way he'd said it. Careful, but not calculated, cautious but not testing. He was genuinely curious, demanding an answer to make sense of something he so thoroughly could not understand. It was in that moment she truly pitied him. For to live without love, is a fate worse than death.
When he'd asked her earlier if she loved him, there'd been a bitter, and frustrated tone to it. But now…
Something tugged at her heart. A feeling that this time it wasn't the cold and calculative Sasuke asking the question but the scared and innocent boy who lost the family he loved at too young an age.
Sakura took a deep breath and rotated in his arms. His cold fingers had moved from her wrist to her upper arm when she'd crashed into him and now they left a pale imprint on her skin from how tightly he'd clutched onto her.
He let go.
Hold onto to me, Sasuke-kun. Lean on me.
Let me love you.
Even if it's only until you can love another on your own.
Despite letting go of her, Sasuke's gaze held her just as strongly in place. He asked her again: "When did you know that you loved me, Sakura?"
Sakura was probably about a half head shorter than him, so she lifted her chin and beheld him with resolve. "Honestly, Sasuke? I don't know."
A flash of confusion crossed his features, but they were quickly reigned back and composed.
She nearly burst out laughing.
"What is it, Sasuke? Did you expect that this would be some kind of idealistic, fantasized love? That I just chose to start loving you on particular day? A particular time? A particular moment? Because it doesn't work that way, Sasuke. I don't chose how, or why, or when it happens. I just know that when all of it was set and done, after all these feelings were placed in motion—at the end of it, all I knew was that I had been in love with you for a long time. But what took even longer for me to realize was how I'd been hurting because of it ever since.
"You know what the funny thing is, Sasuke? I didn't stop myself. No matter how badly I was hurting inside, no matter how many days I cried myself to sleep when you had left, no matter how pathetic and insufficient and useless I felt after you were gone—I didn't mind. So long as you came back to me, I wouldn't have cared even if I had to suffer a lifetime. So long as you returned safe, so long as I could see you happy one day—I would have taken any penance necessary.
"And it wasn't just me. The two of you are so similar, so stubborn—Naruto may have been perhaps even more devastated than I was when you left. When he couldn't bring you back. When he returned, having failed the promise he made to me, I wished I could take all the words back. I wished I could erase the hurt in his eyes, the powerlessness in shoulders, the way he looked at me but wasn't seeing me—because he was seeing you. Haunted by a friendship he had failed. Haunted that he had failed not me, but you."
Sakura took a shattering breath. Standing so close to him, she could count the rings in his eye and the scars that lined silver on his neck and collarbone. "So you see, Sasuke. My love isn't about specifics, or about calculated moves or hidden agendas, or even about me. My love isn't an obsession or a fleeting pass of time, it is real. I don't want to save you, Sasuke. I want to love you—unconditionally. Even if you never feel the same. Even if it amounts to nothing.
"Just let me do that, Sasuke. Just let me love you."
A/N: Eeek! I hope you liked that very long speech-y love confession of Sakura's at the end. I hadn't intended for it to be that long or to fill that deep scope but the words just kept coming! I couldn't stop myself and I think Sakura really needed to get those words out to Sasuke. To show him that there was much much more to her love than he ever deigned to believe of her.
Anyways... I hope you enjoyed the chapter and I'm sorry it was so short and that not much happened plot-wise but I will try picking things up in the next chapters! So pretty pleeeease - review! I'd love to hear your thoughts, reactions, and criticisms! :)