Something Left to Save
By Helena Thessa
In the aftermath of the shinobi war to save the world, from their own war to save Sasuke's soul, Team Seven adjusts, mends severed bonds, and strives to love.
Introduction Note: Hey everyone (: Something Left to Save is a story inspired by canon, my own personal exploration of how a realistic, trauma-informed and emotionally available development would occur between Sakura and Sasuke. I.e., this is a slow burn, with self-discovery, earning trust, and developing friendships. It is mostly but not entirely canon compliant until Chapter 699. Most of the story takes place in the Blank Period. I don't want to inundate the story with author's notes or incidentally share spoilers, so please read and heed the tags below. If you would like specific information or warnings, message me on here or tumblr and I'll happily advise! My update schedule will vary. Thanks everyone. I hope you enjoy. xx
Rating/Content Warning: Rated M for violence and gore; trauma symptoms including but not limited to anxiety, panic attacks, depression, and self-harm; implied/referenced suicide; implied/referenced child abuse; unexpected loss/grief; adult language; and sex.
Publishing Note: In early 2020, I published and almost completed Something Left, but a bunch of Certified Crap happened and I lost the time and motivation to write. A year later, I was determined to finish, but was filled with so many more ideas, and really, the need to make the story more intricate and in-depth. My original plan to add a few scenes resulted in a near-complete rewrite, which is what I've started to post on Ao3 and what I'm posting here. I deleted Something Left, but if anyone wants a copy of it, message me with your email. Thank you so much for all your support and helpful feedback over the years! xx I hope you enjoy this new version, which has about 50,000 words more than the original.
Part One
"It kills me not to know this but I've all but just forgotten
What the color of her eyes were,
and her scars or how she got them…"
— Savior (Rise Against: Ghost Note Symphonies Vol. 1)
"If you don't share someone's pain, you can never understand them."
— Nagato
Chapter 1: Homecoming
It was a good thing he was bleeding to death.
If Sasuke had been in any better condition, they would have sent him straight for the sealing jutsu, prison, and isolation. Instead, the reunited members of Team Seven were kept together: triaged swiftly and put up in a private, heavily-guarded room.
With the last ounce of chakra she had left, Sakura managed to bring both of her teammates back from death's dark gates. Blood loss and severed limbs aside, Naruto and Sasuke were at least alive. Alive was all that she hoped for by that point in the war, together or apart.
The three of them were left unconscious in the Valley of the End. Somehow, Kakashi defied the laws of nature and kept his exhausted, chakra-depleted body moving long enough to get them to Konoha's first entrance point. He never thought of himself as having any sort of paternal streak before, but that seemed to be the only explanation for his last exertion of strength. It wasn't until the first nerve-wracked genin caught sight of the motley crew and offered assistance that Kakashi finally fainted, too.
Almost every medical ninja from Konoha had been deployed for the war effort, and none who remained had any real affinity for leadership. When the four of them were given a specially designated room in the Konoha Hospital, it was less from intentional thought and more out of haphazard confusion. At least when Sakura-sensei woke, they thought, she would know what to do. In the meantime, the mediocre medical staff provided the emergency care needed for Naruto and Sasuke's severe blood loss and matching missing limbs.
Team Seven was reunited inside of Konoha for the first time in years. None of them were conscious to decide whether it was cause for worry or celebration.
.
.
Thanks to Kurama's chakra within him, Naruto woke first. Though he could barely keep his eyes open and was groggy from pain medication, he kept himself propped up long enough to take in his surroundings. Those he loved most were near him; alive, safe, and seemingly peaceful. It felt like a dream. It was a dream; one he'd forced into reality. When he slipped back into unconsciousness, there was a lingering smile on his whiskered face.
Sakura hadn't been inflicted by any serious injuries, only the depletion of her vast chakra reserves. She fought herself to wake up, and with great reluctance, adhered to her staff's instructions to heal herself first. It felt counter-intuitive, but as she hadn't yet seen any of the experienced healers from the battlefield return, she allowed her rational self to make the right call. If she wanted to help others, she needed to help herself first.
Somewhere in the depths of her tired mind, she acknowledged how that particular lesson was one she wished she learned sooner.
.
.
It did not bode well for them the first time that Sasuke woke, but half-alert as she was, Sakura tried to smooth it over. None of the staff were too keen on providing treatment for the Uchiha. After all, the complimentary injured limbs between he and Naruto made it all too obvious what had transpired. Naruto was the village hero, garnering permanent celebrity status after defeating Pain. Sasuke was the traitor who almost killed him.
After drawing the shortest straw, it was a male nurse lacking in the altruistic department who was assigned the task of changing bandages on Sasuke's stunted limb. When the Uchiha heir came to, he not only saw trembling hands over his wound, but felt the animosity of their owner.
"Don't touch me." It mattered none that he had just been unconscious. Sasuke sounded as if he wanted to slay the nurse, and looked as if he could.
"I… I h-have to cha—"
"Leave."
Bound by his ego more than a healer's oath, the nurse persisted. "J-just let me—"
"I said, lea—"
Sasuke's lethal command was interrupted by the soft-spoken kunoichi on the other side of the room. "I'll do it."
Sasuke whipped his head toward her quiet voice, unaware that she was laying there in the other patient bed. His threatening disposition– narrowed eyes, taut posture– didn't waver.
The nurse looked between his patient and one of his superiors, then gulped. "Um, are you sure, Sakura-sensei? He's not…"
Stable. Safe. Cooperative. She didn't know what he meant to say, but it didn't matter.
"Yes." Then she looked at the patient in question, failing to hide her uncertainty. "Will you let me, Sasuke-kun?"
He stared at her. She considered what recent memories might flutter to his attention; they were probably partial, chaotic and disheveled from wartime exhaustion and near death. Did he remember dying? That it was only Sakura's unanticipated arrival and her own warm, healing chakra that halted the fatal blood loss from his arm?
She wondered if he remembered what he said. Sakura, listen… I'm sorry – for everything. There was nothing to show on his grave features to suggest that he did.
Sakura waited. She waited without expectations. Another lesson she learned too late.
It took a moment of deliberation, but Sasuke must have considered the severity of the wound as he glanced in disdain at his only other option. Eventually, he conceded with a brief nod.
Sakura turned her attention back over to the nurse. "You can come back for the cart later. Thank you, Iko."
Iko was more than glad to be dismissed. He quickly dropped the materials he'd been holding and scrambled away, muttering his gratitude as he left.
Sakura took a deep breath. The truth was she didn't exactly feel ready to be exiting the bed, but she focused on the movements and carefully pulled herself up. She was certain she hated the hospital gowns more than any of her patients said they did; it was bulky, awkward, and crackled as she moved. The last thing she felt like was a competent healer.
While Sasuke did not speak, he watched her, and she thought it was apparent enough what he thought. Are you actually able to do this? Of course, that only made her more determined.
She went to the sink and thoroughly washed her hands, wrists, and forearms. The familiar ritual helped her to focus. Medical ninjutsu had trained her to transition into something of a different person when healing; objective, clinical, and sometimes cold.
Or maybe that's who she was forced to become. The last few years of instability and then abrupt thrust into a large-scale war hadn't given her the chance to figure it out.
Sakura splashed the cold water onto her face too, closing her eyes to focus the last bit of energy and chakra she could summon. Then she went to work. In a move so familiar it was actually comforting, she maneuvered the stool with her foot, pulled it to Sasuke's side by the utility cart, and sat down.
"I need to remove your current bandages, clean your wound, ensure no infection has begun to spread, and re-bandage it. They have you on sedatives and painkillers, but now that your adrenaline isn't coursing through to minimize the pain, it will probably hurt."
Sasuke didn't answer. She knew better than to expect him to.
Sakura proceeded as she normally would for anyone: careful but tenacious, communicative when making a transition and pausing on occasion to assess the patient's pain tolerance. Even in this horrific state, Sasuke hid any discomfort from her. For a sliver of a second, she allowed herself to grieve for him. Unless it was anger or arrogance, she supposed hiding how he felt was more natural to him than revealing it.
When it came time to make one exception, Sakura did it. She should have waited until later, when her chakra reserves felt at least half restored, but she decided then to put special attention onto the torn-off limb.
"I'm going to try and heal the severed nerve-endings. If I do it right, and if I do it now, it will eliminate some of the phantom pain you'll experience later."
He just looked at her. Even with bruise-shaded lids and the grayish pallor to his skin, he was distractingly handsome. This close, it was tempting to study him, to memorize the changes of his cheekbones, the curve of his aristocratic nose, how the strong line of his jaw kept his thin lips taut. Instead, she kept her attention fully on his ruined limb.
"Usually, my healing chakra feels like warm, running water," Sakura explained, not because it was Sasuke, but because that's what healers did. "But this will feel more like sharp pinching, and might even burn. Let me know if you need me to stop."
The indifferent look he passively maintained told her that he either wasn't concerned, or she couldn't do worse than whatever careless attempts Kabuto had made on him in the past. The latter made her stomach twist, but she ignored it.
Sakura went on, taking his lack of response as implied consent. She wasn't sure it would surprise her if he didn't speak for days, maybe even weeks. Until the most recent events in the Valley, part of her accepted he may never speak to her again. She certainly didn't need to mourn his lack of commentary while she performed an advanced healing technique.
With one hand, she situated her healing chakra over the end of his limb, but with her other, she streamlined her chakra into only her fingertips. Her brows furrowed from concentration, she focused on finding the damaged nerves and repairing them— one by one, as many as she could. Even if she had the capacity to focus on errant thoughts like counting, she wouldn't have been able to keep track. It was a grueling, exhausting effort, requiring more patience than drawing out poison, and more care than repairing broken heart vessels.
By the time she finished— an hour? two hours? later— a thin sheen of perspiration was settled by her temples. When she released her healing chakra, her shoulders instinctively slumped in relief.
"There. That should do it," she said quietly, as if to herself.
She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and promptly went onto re-bandage his stunted limb, straightening her shoulders and forcing her exhausted fingertips not to tremble. Once upon a time, she hadn't been afraid to let him see her at her weakest. But that part of her, soft and sincere, had been severed from her. Their fight on the Samurai Bridge in the Land of Iron had seen to that.
.
.
Shock, sedatives, and searing pain made it impossible for Sasuke to gather all of his thoughts. He could only focus on one thing, one thought at a time. Attempting to process, let alone accept, the recent events that brought him back to Konoha was like reaching out to grab hold of water. It drained immediately from his hands.
If there was one thing, one thought that was the most obvious and unavoidable one, it was his arm. Or lack thereof.
It felt surreal to Sasuke that he was missing an arm, that his entire hand was abruptly no longer there—gone. Gone forever.
He was already nauseous, probably from the cocktail of medication as much as the blood loss, and staring down at his disfigured arm was enough to bring bile up from the base of his throat. He made sure to swallow soundlessly.
Yet, the effortless manner Sakura used to heal his limb, bandaging its stump without so much as cringing, almost made the whole affair seem normal. Like she was wrapping together a pair of broken fingers, or maybe tending to a few fractured ribs at the end of a routine mission. There was something about this normalization that grounded him, even when he couldn't consciously admit it. The bile receded and the immediate urge to vomit passed.
When Sakura stood up, he noticed she didn't turn to him for affirmation. Not expectant of verbal acknowledgement, not asking for his gratitude. She didn't even look at him. She just stretched, slender arms lifting up toward the ceiling, then cracked her back and lithely climbed back into her own bed. It was only the crinkling of the paper gown and her languid movements that reminded him she was a patient, too.
More fragmented memories came to the forefront of his mind: impossible strength setting off earthquakes on the battlefield, a summoning as famed and enormous as his own. Not to mention the instantaneous healing, endless chakra reserves, and apparent mastery of medical ninjutsu. How had she amassed so much skill? It was too foreign of a thought for his too injured, too tired, and too medicated mind to process. More thoughts that slipped like water through his incapable hands.
Hand. He only had one hand now. And he wasn't the only one.
Sasuke looked over to the blonde who had the exact same injury as he did. An injury caused by him. One thing, one thought at a time. What about healing Naruto?
Sakura must have been watching where his eyes wandered.
"Naruto doesn't need the same kind of medical attention. The kyuubi chakra can do what I just did— a thousand times better, and much faster."
It unnerved him that she was able to read his thoughts so easily. He deflected it by asking the status of his previous sensei. "Kakashi?"
It wasn't a clear question, but she understood that too.
From his peripheral, he saw that she frowned. "He sustained a few serious injuries that I only healed minimally on the battlefield, one of them I'd consider critical, and they've been tended to by the staff here. Kaka-sensei has more chakra than most jōnin, but not enough. When he's chakra-depleted, it takes him almost a week to fully recover, but…"
He wasn't sure if her voice softened or hardened as she finished. "Well, this was worse."
There was a slow-forming tension that blossomed from her incidental words and the ensuing silence. The sort of thing that Naruto would have barreled right through without half a thought, but the two of them lacked the naiveté or optimism to dismiss. Sakura knew the finer details of their old sensei's aptitude for healing. He didn't. Sakura was there for Kakashi's other near-fatal injuries. He wasn't.
"You should rest," Sakura said calmly, sounding nothing like the twelve-year-old girl who squealed about her concerns for him, and only like a doctor.
She took her own advice: rearranged her blankets, turned onto her side, and curled into an extra pillow. Certain her eyes were closed, Sasuke allowed himself to study her. She'd been in the thick of battle like the rest of them, used her enormous swath of chakra to literally travel across dimensions, and even sustained what should have been a fatal wound from Uchiha Madara himself. But she was laying there, alive and awake and uninjured. Other than subtle signs of tiredness, matted hair, and streaks of dirt and sweat across her porcelain-pale skin, she appeared healthy and unharmed.
Only capable of one thing, one thought at a time, Sasuke couldn't sort out his consideration on her strength. He turned away from Sakura. Past precedents of a well-formed habit guided him as he forced himself to forget about her.
For awhile, Sasuke resisted her professional recommendation. There was no way he could willingly fall asleep in such a vulnerable state, in what may have technically been in his home, but felt like enemy territory.
Eventually though, the combination of sedatives, painkillers, and inevitable exhaustion got the better of him. He drifted back into a fitful, but desperately needed sleep.
.
.
"That should be higher," she murmured. "Add two milograms of midodrine to her IV drip for three hours, and then wean her off it during the next six hours, and see if it stays up on its own. If it doesn't, add the midodrine back and find me."
"Right, of course. Thank you, Sakura-sensei. Um,..."
"Go on, Mika," Sakura allowed.
"What about the child who's in for migraines?" The nurse rushed out desperately. "It's the fourth time this month. I'm at a loss, and- and his mom is rather hysterical about it all."
"Did they complete the food log?"
"Yes. It's in the chart."
"Okay, let me see it."
The nurse clearly hoped she would have the chance to ask and promptly pulled out the clipboard with the child's records. She handed it to Sakura, who was still bedridden with chapped lips, dark circles beneath her eyes, and a creased brow from a near-constant headache.
After a quick moment of reviewing the log's records, Sakura handed it back.
"I know we told them to cut out the cheese. Tell them again to eliminate the aged cheeses. There's clearly a pattern of the migraines starting within six hours of ingesting it. Give them one more refill of sumatriptan, but remind them it's hard on the stomach, and it isn't meant for long-term use. They need to be strict with the diet."
"Oh! Okay, yes. I'll be direct," Mika promised.
"You'll need to be. Is there anything else?" Sakura eyed the nearby stack of charts.
"Um… Are you sure you're up for it?" The nurse asked nervously, pushing up her glasses.
"Sure, Mika," Sakura said without hesitation. "If I can't help on the floor, at least I can do this."
The nurse looked relieved. She quickly pulled out another chart she'd brought along. "Okay, this one's Iko's patient, an elderly man with chest pains. We ran the cardiac tests, but neither of us are sure about this EKG irregularity,…"
Naruto rubbed at his eyes with his one and only good hand. In just the limited amount of time he'd been conscious, he already found several things inconvenient about only having one of them. As he made the extra effort to clear the goop from his sleep-ridden eyes, he looked over to Sasuke. Though the other shinobi had his eyes closed, Naruto could tell by his rigid posture and tight breathing that he was awake.
"Hey, Sasuke," Naruto called over.
As he expected, the Uchiha wasn't asleep. Sasuke turned his head slightly, and belatedly opened his eyes, acknowledging Naruto with casual indifference.
"Guess we know now we're pretty much equals, eh? I knew you weren't stronger than me."
Sasuke stared at him.
"Since we both lost an arm," Naruto continued, unaffected by the statement in the slightest, "it will be a fair rematch."
Sakura clutched the chart so hard in her hands it splintered. "A rematch is what you're thinking about right now?"
Naruto grinned sheepishly. "Well yeah, I mean, I've waited years to show the bastard I was better than him."
She rolled her eyes, but returned her attention back to the chart, finding solace in the knowledge that she knew the truth. The truth that there were so many other things that Naruto was actually waiting for, besides a sparring match, when it came to Sasuke's return.
Anxiety was a near-constant throttle in her veins. As if it was the first time every time, she continued to realize that their reunion was actually here. Team Seven, sitting together under one roof. No whirling of lethal jutsu, no crying or begging. Awkward and tense as their current arrangement was, it felt so unbelievable to hear, even more preposterous to see.
More so, it was inconceivable to consider what Sasuke and Naruto's return would entail for her. Sparring on the old training grounds? Missions as a reinstated team? Dinners together like the olden days? Every time she tried, Sakura couldn't visualize any of it.
And when had it become what their return would entail for her instead of what it meant for them?
There hadn't been a them for years. It hadn't been safe to hold onto faith that there ever actually would be. For the first time, Sakura realized how much hope she had lost. No, not lost— how much had been stolen. Fear, insecurity, and loneliness had been thieves in the night.
First, the disappearance of smaller pieces during insignificant moments: eating alone at restaurants, training on her own, and listening to the others relentlessly complain about, yet fiercely defend their own teammates, while never having any stories of her own. Then, the rest of it taken it the events of the last few weeks. Events so painful that if she started to replay them in her mind, it risked expelling all the breath in her lungs.
Naruto continued to banter as an attempt to provoke Sasuke, but she couldn't hear him.
Even with them in the same room, even with a half-conscious apology from the boy she loved throughout her entire childhood, she felt hollow. Like the little girl who sobbed and prayed for this day and these moments didn't make it— didn't live to be a part of them.
If hope was fickle and fleeting, hopelessness was not. It was a weight that dragged her under, threatened to sink her into the depths of an unknown sea.
It was all made worse by the reality of Sasuke's presence in the same room. Trying to sort through this revelation while right across from him was akin to torture. She might as well of shoved her own heart into a meat grinder and watched the muscle be shredded into wayward bits and blood.
Sakura forced herself to focus fully on reviewing the patient charts with Mika.
.
.
Once the nurse left, Naruto whistled.
"I don't understand half of what you're talking about," he said. "When did you learn all of that, Sakura-chan?"
She playfully rolled her eyes, though her tone was anything but light. "What do you think I was doing while you were gone?"
Sasuke almost thought she was talking to him by mentioning someone gone, but when he looked up, he saw that she was looking to the blonde. She was referring to Naruto. Gone where? When?
Naruto's laughter was meek.
Though it was slight, Sasuke's brows lifted in subtle confusion must have caught Naruto's attention. He was able to pick up on the unspoken question.
"After your dumbass defected, I left Konoha for a few years, too. I traveled and trained with Master Jiraiya. To prepare for the Akatsuki attacks, and to be ready to get you back from Orichamaru before he took over your body."
Sasuke was unconcerned. "I knew I would be able to kill him before he could do that."
Naruto shrugged. "Well, we didn't know that."
Unable to help it, Sasuke thought of how his older brother was actually the one to truly kill Orichamaru. How Itachi purposefully brought him to the end of himself so that the sannin's power would come forward. Only then was Itachi the one to put a final end to him. More than his arm could ever hurt, thinking of Itachi's love hurt far worse.
"I still haven't really been home," Naruto said, somehow sounding both sad and elated at the same time. "When I first got back, we immediately left for the Sand Village to rescue Gaara. Then everything else with the Akatsuki happened so quickly."
It was quiet after that. With Kakashi unconscious and Sakura strangely quiet, there was an awkward tension in the room.
Sasuke would have been fine to ignore it, but he needed the conversation to focus on something else– anything else– besides how it felt to be 'home.' He didn't actually care, but he latched onto the part about the Sand shinobi.
"I thought Gaara was a jinchūriki."
The implied question was obvious enough: so, why wasn't he dead like all the others?
Naruto frowned. It was a strange sight to see, but it was fleeting. For some reason, it was like he instinctively sought to check on Sakura. His whole frame shifted toward her.
Nobody answered at first. Sasuke's curiosity piqued, but not enough to ask for details.
He watched how Sakura bit her lip, pensive about whatever answer was being kept from him. She placed a hand atop her stomach, as if touching something beneath her hospital gown. Despite himself, Sasuke's curiosity doubled. He blamed it on the fact that he'd already been searching for a distraction.
Eventually it was Sakura who explained. "An elder from the Sand Village, Lady Chiyo, used a forbidden resurrection jutsu to sacrifice herself and bring Gaara back to life."
Nothing but immense respect was in her tone, in the stern set of her delicate features. Sasuke wondered why and how this Lady Chiyo meant more to Sakura than to Naruto, who seemed friendlier with the Kazekage, but then Naruto smiled one of his large, overwhelming grins at Sakura. His love for her was so apparent in his watery, blue eyes, Sasuke had to stop himself from pointedly looking away.
"Lady Chiyo saved Gaara and you. I owe Lady Chiyo an eternal debt!"
Sasuke watched as Sakura placed both hands placed atop her stomach now. He wondered if there was the memory of a near fatal wound beneath it. It wasn't a random guess, but an educated one. He had a habit of touching old wounds; even if they were healed, sensations of pain existed like ghosts.
Sakura tried and failed to smile, muttering some form of gratitude.
Naruto whipped his head back to Sasuke. "Sakura and Lady Chiyo killed Sasori of the Red Sand. Did you know that? They were the first ones to take out an Akatsuki member."
Sakura's cheeks went red at his random boasting. "It was all Lady Chiyo," she said, her familiar insistent tone, one Sasuke only now realized how precisely he remembered. "She dealt the final blow. I was just able to assist her beforehand."
"I actually read that report, Sakura-chan," Naruto argued. "You kicked his ass."
Sakura released her hands from her stomach. She huffed. "And next time you leave me behind to go off alone on a suicide mission, I'll kick your ass, too."
It was the first time he'd seen a hint of her trademark temper from their younger years. Opposed to sounding childish and shrill, she sounded feminine, and strong. But the imagery of her as an immature child and the information brought to light now were difficult to reconcile as the same person.
This time, Naruto's cheeks reddened. "I-I know. Sorry, Sakura-chan."
She offered a conciliatory smile toward him, and then looked over to their sensei. Though the three of them were up and talking, he still hadn't woken.
"Is he going to be alright?" Naruto asked, not for the first time.
"He's stable," Sakura promised. "He's never used his sharingan for kamui so much before, not to mention all the other injuries he sustained. It will take awhile for his body and chakra reserves to heal, but there's no reason to worry yet."
"Yet?" Naruto all but hollered.
Sakura didn't look gravely concerned, but she was honest. "Well, he's not an Uchiha. His body wasn't meant for this."
At the mention of Uchiha, she for the first time looked over to Sasuke. He was looking at their old sensei too. While technically the Kakashi lying before him physically appeared the most similar to his childhood memories, it was the role reversal that was difficult to resolve. The students were up and animated. Their mentor was a sickly gray and still in a coma.
"Well, he better wake up soon," Naruto said, settling back down into his hospital-grade mattress. "Team Seven is finally together again! We need to celebrate."
Since Sakura's eyes were still on him, Sasuke knew that she could see the subtle tremor in his lips that pulled downward: an inevitable grimace. Oblivious, Naruto yawned and decided to go back to sleep.
Sasuke reluctantly met the wary gaze of the pink-haired kunoichi: his frown was mirrored by her own.
He was a rogue ninja, international criminal, and traitor to the Leaf who almost killed Uzumaki Naruto. They wouldn't have the chance to celebrate anytime soon. Maybe not at all.
Despite her vivid look of uncertainty as she chewed on her bottom lip, Sakura answered Naruto aloud in a deceptively cheerful tone. "Of course. We will when Kaka-sensei wakes up."
It was Sakura who turned away first, breaking their eye-contact in a hurry. They both knew who else he almost killed, even if the citizens of Konoha didn't.
Their time in the hospital left Sasuke with two realizations. Naruto was exactly how he predicted he would be. And Sakura was not at all who he imagined she would be. While he was confident that he knew the former like the back of his hand, he realized he didn't actually know the latter. Maybe he never had.
.
.