Heres the next chapter and I'll post another one tomorrow as soon as I edit it. Enjoy you guys.
Chapter 11: Forgiveness
Sasuke watched as Sakura bounced the baby up and down in her arms. Watching the two of them, Sasuke's whole body seem to almost freeze with the emotions overtaking him. His heart thumping loudly in his, previously thought to be hallow, chest. Sasuke sat at Sakura's small kitchen table with a cup of tea in his hand while Sakura stood a few feet away from him making happy faces at Sarada. Her green eyes widening each time her smile grew. A sight he had been sure he would never witness again after their last encounter.
After the war and he had come back to the village he had apologized profusely for his actions, in the best way Sasuke could as an Uchiha. She had of course been livid about the incident and had of course been mad at him for longer than anyone had been mad at him. For so long she had avoided him, whether it was out of anger or sadness, he had no idea. By the time he found his answer, a whole month had passed since his return and she had slapped him across the face after Naruto had tricked her into coming to Ichiraku promising that Sasuke won't be there.
Sasuke had been utterly confused at her lack of a reaction the first time he apologized, but he assumed it had caught up to her and before he knew it she was raising her arm to punch him sending him flying across the street hitting the large tree across the restaurant. Sasuke remained quiet and still as she straddled him and hit him wherever she could over and over and over again until he was all bruises and blood. He watched her above him as she cried, her eyes spilling tears and her nose running. He had no right to stop her and she had every right to punish him as she saw fit. So he let her. After he was all black, blue, red and basically a mess, she stood up and walked away not giving him a second glance. He knew, even without a word from her, that he will never be forgiven for what he had done to her, that he had finally hurt her to the point of hatred.
Four months later, he walked into the village with a baby she had thought was long gone and out of her reach.
Sakura couldn't take her eyes off Sarada. She was so beautiful with a full head of thick, dark hair and a small smile on her thin lips. Sakura had been unconscious for her rescue nine months ago. After waking up in Konoha hospital she had scrambled out of bed knowing full well where Kabuto's experiment had lead. But she had been assured that the team that found her found no trace of anything like that. Even after Sasuke's return, it had been understood, reasonably, that nothing came of the experiment. It was understood by both that neither would ever see the face of their would-have-been child.
But seeing Sasuke, four months later, walking in with that same child was heart wrenchingly happy. This was her child, she may not have conceived her in the conventional way and she may not even have carried her, but Sarada was hers all the same and Sakura would love her like no other. She didn't care that she had vowed to never speak to Sasuke again, she didn't care that she had promised herself she would make herself stop loving him, she didn't care about any of that because he had brought her to her. Against every doubt and all odds, Sakura was now holding her daughter because of him, nothing else matters. If nothing else, she was thankful to him for that.
Because, while she was tied to that bed in that dark cave cursing the two men that she knew was responsible for to the fiery pits of hell, all she had been able to think about was this innocent being, her child, who will be robbed of everything a child should have. This vicious cycle of pain and hatred that she is so familiar with not ending with her generation.
Kabuto never kept her up too long, she was always on sedatives so strong that even after coming back she had a hard time keeping her eyes open until the sedatives left her system. But in her hazy mind, she had imagined what it would be like to raise this child, she vaguely remembered having resolved to take the child away from these people and giving it everything she had imagined she would one day give her child. But waking up in Konoha, she had known that it was impossible, without her there was no way for them to carry the child, no way for the child to survive. To distract herself from the fact that she would never be able to hold her first child, she had resolved to hating the two men who had put her in that position.
Which is why, after Sasuke came back after the war, she had refused to talk to him or have anything to do with him. The first time Naruto invited her to lunch with "team 7", she had told him there will be no more team 7. It had saddened her to tell him that because she knew, of all people, how much he had been looking forward to this. But she couldn't, not even for Naruto, pretend to enjoy a meal sitting beside the man that had ruined her life. She had refused any contact with him, had refused to go to any place where he would be present and had even refused to treat him at his check ups at the hospital, which Kakashi had allowed under the circumstances. Naruto was the only one who fully didn't give up on the idea of the three of them being in one room together. He understood what she had gone through and after her rescue he had been her best friend through it to the best of his abilities with a war going on. But team 7 was still the only family he had known and he found it hard to give up on. There wasn't a conversation they had in which he didn't try to make Sakura understand that he hadn't been himself back then, that he was surrounded by such darkness he himself wouldn't have known what he was doing.
And she was sure she would have forgiven him had it been anything else, but she couldn't. She couldn't forgive him for this. For a while it had seemed like Naruto had given up on the idea until he invited her to lunch and when she got there Sasuke was there as well, even after Naruto had confirmed he wouldn't be there.
Until then she had thought that Sasuke didn't even deserve to be acknowledged by her, that she wouldn't even waste her breath on him because she was done with him. But seeing him brought back all the pain in her and she just snapped. She had slapped him, she had hit him and she had punched him until she was too tired to carry on. It was there that she decided she was finally done. She was finished with him and after that incident even Naruto gave up on trying to get her to hang out with Sasuke. As much as it didn't take her pain away to hurt him like that, it still made her feel a little better to have had hurt him and finally get some closure and it had helped in her resolve to cut off any ties with him.
The next time she saw him was in Kakashi's office, carrying the child both of them had thought hadn't survived.
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