Chapter 15: Fix You
People had gathered outside of the shack, waiting intently to hear the outcome of Sakura's labor. Sasuke emerged, walking silently through the crowd as it parted for him. His feet dragged over the rubble as a forlorn expression rippled across his face. He had gotten not but fifteen feet from the shack when he paused, the people especially close to team seven waiting for results and curious of his behavior. With his back turned to the crowd, he seemed to not even acknowledge them, time or the world at all. Looking up to the sky, he squinted as the sun peaked through clouds of ash and dust…all remnants of the shinobi life.
Was this the life they were born into? Would this be the life they would always live? With men dying in battle, children dying before their lives began? As women suffered over the loss of both their lovers and offspring, was this the life of the shinobi? Senju tried so hard for peace, but death would remain. And where there was love and death, there would always be bitterness. And where there was bitterness, there would always be revenge and war. Would the cycle of hate and love forever continue to clash, taking innocent lives in its wake?
Dropping his chin that he always held so high, he let the tears he had been holding back fall freely from his eyes. The people could only see the back of the young man, oblivious to his tears, but when his shoulders shook from the sorrowful sobs, they knew.
Naruto ran over to wrap a caring arm around his shoulders. For the first time in their friendship, he saw his best friend and rival completely vulnerable and humbled by sorrow as he crumpled in the blonde's arms . As his face grew wet and dingy from the tears and ash, Sasuke looked more like a wreck than the blonde had ever seen. A mournful announcement found its way out from behind the tears of anguish. "its…dead." He mumbled out and Naruto knelt and held him tighter as Sasuke lost the will to stand and fell to his knees. He had been looking forward to the child as much as his teammates had. Naruto looked up at their silver haired instructor and shook his head.
The door to the shack opened silently as the mothers and medic nins walked out of the shack in tears and solemn faces. Those who hadn't quite understood what had transpired finally got the message: the child was a stillborn.
Turning with his head hung low, Kakashi knew this sorrow all too well. Not miscarriages as much, but parents who lost their sons and daughters in battle. No matter what the age was, or the cause of death, it never became easy for a mother to bury her own child. He turned to walk into the shack when he spotted a familiar face approaching in the distance. Bloody and cloak-less, Kakashi knew this was not a face of the enemy.
At the top of the sloped hill they all stood on, Itachi paused and looked at the silver haired jonin for permission to enter the scene. Kakashi, having suspected his presence with Sasuke the whole time, nodded, then hung his head as he looked over at Itachi's younger brother shaking on the ground. Itachi walked down the hill to meet his former ANBU teammate.
"Kakashi." The ex-akatsuki bowed before the man. Upon raising, he smiled weakly and gave a quick, "Thank You" before walking on to meet the young wreck and take Naruto's place. A few people in the dispersing crowd gasped at the sight and change in relationship as they watched Itachi kneel in front of Sasuke to talk to him and calm him.
Turning on his heel from the scene, Kakashi dug his hands into his pockets and walked slowly over the debris and a short way up the hill to the shack. Opening the door, he saw Sakura lying on the wooden bed, the bundled child in her arms. She sat, simply staring out the window with a view of the rubble and open sores of the wounded land. Kakashi was heartbroken. The child was obviously not alive, but she held it close to her as if it were simply sleeping.
"Sakura?" he asked her quietly as she did not move an inch when he walked through the door. She did not even look at him. Walking over to her, he set a hand on her shoulder, causing her to finally and slowly turn her head in his direction. Her eyes were dull and her mouth curved in a flat line as they fell into a look of apathy. The only thing that gave away her hearts true emotion was the wet streaks of sorrow sliding down her puffy cheeks.
"What do I do from here?" She asked him in such a quiet voice that her words cracked.
"Live." He answered quietly, simply.
She looked down at the child and replied quietly, "That's not fair."
For the first time, Kakashi didn't know what to say. He always had some way to teach his students a lesson, some way to make them understand the world a bit better through simple words of wisdom. But not this time. What could you say to a mother who had lost her son before he had ever seen the world?
"Maybe it's a sign" she continued quietly, stroking the cheek of the child. Another large droplet fell down her cheek when she felt the coldness of the baby's soft skin, "What would become of a child born of two misbehaving teenagers? The child of a feared and bloodstained clan?"
"Nobody knows." Kakashi muttered, studying the wood grain of the floor as he hung his head.
"That's the damn truth." She grit her teeth as her façade began to break, "That fortune teller told me he'd be alive and respected, damnit!" Sakura yelled, "and look now! He's DEAD!" The rage of her emotions were so intense that they were, perhaps, more fearsome than the solemn apathy he previously witnessed. Her voice screeched in the small shack and echoed off the empty walls. They were truly the cries of a mother.
That evening, despite the massive battle, only one funeral was held. A small, makeshift procession was held for the child under a hanging sky of a heavy dark gray. The battle had been won. Akatsuki's leaders were gone. Yet team seven couldn't find the mood to celebrate. As the sky refused to cry for the child, the mother and father gathered around the gravesite, as well as Kakashi, Naruto, Sai and Itachi after the majority of those who had attended, left. Leaving the two to mourn, Itachi stepped away from the scene first, feeling mostly responsible for the incident. Had it not been his desire to keep the truth from his younger brother, Sasuke would have never resorted to sleeping with sakura and using her to revive him. Oh how his brother's life would have been so much better had he himself never existed.
Kakashi was the next to leave, feeling only sorrow for the two, but understanding the need for the two of them to be alone. Turning to leave, he hugged Sakura first and reached out to sasuke, giving him a reassuring grip on his shoulder. He had never had emotional, close contact with his students before. But then again, there had never been a tragedy on this scale with them, save for when Sasuke left. Team seven was always patchwork at best…but they were a family without even realizing it.
After sai and Naruto had followed suit and begun walking back to catch up with Kakashi, Sasuke wrapped his arm around the girl. She leaned into him, gripping his shirt and clinging close to him as her tears began to spill. Leaning over, he placed a kiss on her forehead, wet with his own salty tears.
And finally, the sky cried too.
Her cheeks glistened with the light of the moon shining in on her skin. In the dark, she cried as their lips connected. She poured out all of her emotion. Her heartache, her love, her confusion, her desire. Long slender arms wrapped around his neck as they held each other passionately, lovingly. He kissed her cheeks where the tears had streamed down and left little trails in their wake. He slid his lips unhurriedly down her neck to her collarbone and the gap between them, following the tears to the source of her pain and placing butterfly kisses over her right breast.
He worshipped her body—the woman he loved. Kissing over her stomach, he paused, resting his head and nuzzling the area there as his own tears threatened to fall. They needed each other, he found. He needed the reassurance of her love, as much as she did his. And he was wanted to give it to her so, so much. He wanted to show her what she meant to him. What her love did to him. Her physical and emotional love healed him, somehow. She had patched together the wounds that were tearing him apart from the very beginning. She exorcised the darkness within him, replacing it with her love and purity. And he wanted to do the same for her.
Something arcane and profound happened that night when he entered her. Fingers interlaced, he kissed her with all the emotion he could never speak, the feelings that could never be verbalized. It was if the dam burst open, the shackles and chains were cut apart. There were absolutely no words to describe it. She was pulling him down in a spiral of something deeper than he had ever felt before. And he found he never wanted to feel any other way.
As he moved within her, it was as if all her emotions began to take form in the warming tingling sensation of her impending orgasm. As he held her hands, getting lost in her green eyes, he saw her losing herself within his dark onyx ones. He could see everything within her, the ghost of the child rattling the cages of pain he was trapped in. With one last thrust she reached her peak, crying out loudly and releasing the ghost of the child in an ephiphianic, beautiful union. She gripped his hands painfully, but he held on, whispering the words "I love you" over and over again in her ear as he came within her.
Resting on top of her and still within her, he felt her shake as she began to sob into his neck. But as he stroked her hair, damp from their tears and her sweat, he understood that these were not tears of mourning or pain. They were tears of a feeling so profound that it shook them both to the core. It was love, it was deep understanding—something so beautiful that neither one could do anything but feel their souls being rattled by it.
And as he held her close, on their bed, in their house, in the moonlight, he studied the way her eyes shone when the moonlight hit them just right "I love you." He whispered stroking the tears away from her cheeks, "Marry me."
"I am…" she looked at him confused.
"No. I want to marry you. Not because we have to for a child's sake, not because it's acceptable. But because I want to be with you and love you for the rest of my life."
Pulling himself off the bed and walking over to the corner of the room, he reached within his bag and pulled out a woven pouch. Sakura watched him curiously, sitting up on top of the rumpled sheets, her body growing cold from the lack of contact and the cool air in the room. He returned to the bed, awed by her beauty as the moonlight shone in on the bed where she sat. She looked like a goddess, innocent and pure but with an inner strength to match that of the gods. Kneeling beside the bed, he opened the pouch and poured the contents of the bag in his hand. She gasped when she saw what he had.
Taking her hand, he placed a beautiful ring on her finger, kissing the backside of her hand as he did. She smiled, tears now rolling in happiness. "Sasuke…" she whispered, pulling him off the floor and back onto the bed. She rolled onto her back as he hovered over her.
"Lets do this the right way. We'll have a beautiful wedding, a beautiful family and a new beginning." He kissed her forehead lightly and she nodded.
And where there was death, there was a soul born again. Where a grave was laid, flowers grew. The soul that had once been pure, then tainted by darkness, was now wholly and beautifully resurrected once again.
Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you.
RA: Well there you go. I had a completely different ending in mind, but this really encapsulated everything I wanted to portray about their future. I want to say I really enjoyed all the reviews and favorites I got for this, and while it was difficult to write (Because I can never see Sasuke being anything like the guy at the end) I liked the challenge.
Until next time, Ja ne.