notes: I'm really glad so many of you are liking this! It's definitely fun to write, anyway. :) Thanks for the reviews, support, etc!
Sakura allows herself to wonder, only once, if she's made the wrong choice. Because if she'd chosen Sasuke, if she'd chosen him again, then right now, at this very moment she could be curled in the protective circle of his arms. Hiding from the chill of winter.
She spends exactly five minutes indulging in her fantasies and old regrets, eyes closed to the dark. When she opens them again, she concentrates on the hard mattress at her back, the thin sheen of cold sweat covering her brow.
Here, in the desert, the temperature is always at extremes: blisteringly hot during the day and so, so cold at night. All of her small windows are still open though, a habit left over from Konoha summers. Sakura thinks she might be feverish, maybe delusional. The rational part of her brain shrieks and yells and stomps its feet. That part of her wants to close the windows. Avoid pneunomia.
Her first day starts at the hospital in half a week. She's supposed to oversee the new experimental cardiology department as well as attend as the head surgeon. Getting sick won't do.
But she doesn't get up and only toes the rest of the blankets off of her body. Her bare skin prickles in the wake of cold air and she can't help but feel triumphant in defying any good sense she has left.
The paint is uneven on the ceiling, Sakura notes from her position on the bed. The lit streetlamps outside provide just enough light for her to make out shadows and contrasts, hazy shapes of ideas etched over her head.
Sakura vaguely thinks that the light patch in the corner resembles Naruto's profile in silhouette. She knows that none of what she sees is actually there, that her brain tricks itself into recognizing faces and familiar, reassuring patterns from meaninglessness.
She's not very sure where she's going with this particular train of thought anymore. Sakura turns over, groans and presses her face against the pillow. It smells strange, not like hers at all, and there is no comfort derived from the scratchy sheets pooled beneath her back.
Fevers help the body purge itself of infections. Sakura knows hers is not caused by any virus or bacteria-it's Uchiha Sasuke. Tonight will be the worst of it. She will try as hard as she can to empty her heart of him, and at the end-when she wakes up tomorrow, she will only have to contend with all the little pieces of him hiding in the crevices of her memory. Sakura will avoid tea and the business section of the newspaper for a time, she knows, and when she forgets to do that, reminders of him will sneak up on her and she will be quietly bowled over.
But there are three long years to learn to cope with that.
In the meantime she will have the hospital and the gritty sandstorms of the day to distract herself with. After tonight she will remember to close the windows and buy new sheets. She will wash them with her favorite fabric softener and they will smell like home.
Right now though, she will drown in the wanting for just a little longer. Some things, after all, must get worse before they get better.