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constellations
(riptide)
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"This'll be nice, you know. For the Konoha summertime."
Silence follows her words, and Sakura pulls off the newly purchased floppy sunhat slowly, the woven material a bare whisper against her hair. The similarly new dress, an unsurprising dark red, stops in its flowing tracks to brush her kneecaps.
He doesn't say anything, and her lips purse. "Only three more months until it's hot enough," she remarks again, attempting to goad some response out of him, but his gaze is firmly set on the map in front of him.
"I think we should head to Water next," he carefully suggests. He doesn't look at her.
But Sakura has changed over the years, and she won't back down without her answer. "Sasuke-kun," she says heavily, and sits down in the chair opposite him, tugging the map out of his hands, forcing him to meet her eyes. She sets her hat on the table. "When do you intend on returning?"
He shrugs. "I don't know."
She breathes. "What do you mean you don't know?"
Absolute silence. She laces her fingers together tightly, and finally, when she can look at him no longer, she gets up robotically and turns away, sliding her shoes off before her feet meet the carpet.
She pauses in her step and turns, and when she does, her face looks sunken. "It's your home," she impresses, and is about to walk away when—
"It's not my home. It's yours. Just go back if you miss it so much."
Her breath catches in her throat. "What?! No! I said I wanted to be here—and what do you mean it's not your home? It's where—you grew up there! You have friends there! Your history is all there!" She wants to scream it, but she can't—you have me there.
"Fuck, Sakura. I haven't been in Konoha for almost five years now. I don't have a home anymore."
Her throat constricts, and her eyes burn. "Yes, you do. But if you insist on that not being your home, then it's not mine, either. My home is with you."
The words are acid from his throat, and he's suddenly reminded of all the dimensions that separated them, the spaces, her arm bubbling from a burn. "No, it's not. You belong in Konoha," and the words feel like the sun, burning and honest. She's too far from her roots, and she's wilting. "You always have. Just…" and he swallows, "just go."
Her lips thin, and her eyes are flinty. "If you are so insistent upon me leaving, then why did you ask me to come with you?"
"Because of your—" he stops, squeezing his eyes shut. He rubs a hand over his face.
"Because of my what, Sasuke-kun?"
He stands up abruptly, walking over to her medical pouch and going through the gauze packet. He finds the letters with ease, pulling them out almost violently, and the last one tears at the edges, caught on the teeth of the zippered pouch.
"Please come home. Please come home to me," he bites out, and when he looks up, she's crying.
The tears have managed to make their way to her chin, collecting there and waiting to drop. "You…" he words are shaky. "You read my letters."
"I did."
"You read my letters," she hisses this time, and her hands are curled into fists. She still hasn't stopped crying and she hates it. With his every movement, he makes her feel weak and she wipes them away furiously, as if taking away the symptom will remove the disease.
"I did."
"You…is this some kind of act of pity? You took me with you because you felt bad?"
He doesn't respond, and suddenly she wants nothing more than to run away because he's right. Konoha is her home. She lives and breathes it. The Will of Fire is ingrained in the curves of her aorta, pressed into the contractions of her heart.
She ignores the parts of her that scream that home is where the heart is.
"Rest assured, Sasuke, I have lived many years without you. I can do many more just fine. So…so fuck you. You know, for someone who claims that he loves me, you have a funny way of showing it."
He looks away as she packs her bag in silence. He cannot bear to meet her eyes that have always been so good at reading her. She doesn't bother to take her summer hat, doesn't bother to change out of the dress. Her canvas painting of him is left on the easel, the brushes still scattered by the window sill. She doesn't even reclaim her letters.
She leaves, and the door shuts behind her without a sound.
It is the loudest break he has ever heard.
(-00:00:00:01:19)
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notes: *hides*