In Ame dawn came riding on a mighty gust, an ear-piercing shriek, and an effortlessly silent landing punctuated only by his name. Sasuke-kun. He blinked blearily and wondered, quite inanely, if he'd ever been anything else to her, if he'd ever be. Sakura's face was etched with worry that only became entrenched at the sight of him. But he shook his head and directed her to Tsunade, and off she went.
He supposed it could have been worse: his sword instead of an enemy's poison. Three years ago it would've been the only possible scenario. The hawk landed and ducked its head. Sasuke stroked the beak that could, theoretically, snap off his entire torso, mumbled a weak praise, and dismissed it.
His neck made a creaking sound as he sat back down. They were not out of the woods yet, though Sakura's presence lifted the pressure of his shoulders by that much. He could almost wish for an intruder or two. But none came as the sun steadily climbed. Sakura only emerged then. She sat close enough to feel her heat, far enough to be reminded of the distance.
"Tsunade-shishou is going to be all right," Sakura said. "Thanks to you, Sasuke-kun."
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, trying to gauge her sincerity. Sakura looked… she'd grown thinner, had shed the last of her childish softness and acquired a permanent tanuki-likeness that the Kazekage would approve of. Three years. Three years was a long time to not see someone. It unsettled him to think that of another person – but Sakura had always had that effect on him.
"I didn't do anything," he said.
Sakura only smiled as if she knew better. Her hand brushed timidly against his. "We were lucky your hawk found me during the one hour of the day I had to myself. You sure know how to surprise me, Sasuke-kun. No word for a year, and suddenly! A hawkful of unconscious prisoners in my lap, and from Ame of all places!"
"I'm sorry," Sasuke said. More ink he had spilled than in his entire life, each letter drawing from a vein closer and closer to his heart; all fodder for camp fire now, and when the time came the best he had was 'sorry'. Sorry I stepped on your toes, sorry I burned dinner, sorry you had to wait, sorry. Five minutes. Give her five minutes to sit next to him and he was a club-tongued man of words.
Sakura blinked, then saying more gently, "It's just that we signed a treaty of non-interference with the other countries about a year ago, if you didn't know. Either way, Shishou should have known better. No use crying over spilled porridge, now. Torture and Investigation should have the intel for Kakashi-sensei even as we speak. But…"
She hesitated. "But I think he'd also like to know how you and Tsunade-sama got a hold of them in the first place. Since he has to be accountable to the other Kage?"
From her expression, they seemed to have decided it was his fault, whoever they were. Which wasn't wrong, so he told her his theory. Sakura flipped between outrage at Ishi's notion of Kakashi's (and Naruto's) easy belligerence, and then Ishi's utter disregard for its own shinobi on top of a tactical folly.
"But what I don't understand, Sasuke-kun," she said, cheeks burning with righteous fury – he'd never get tired of that. "I'm just a little bit curious, because, well, it's you and Tsunade-shishou, and you're traveling together."
For multiple reasons – his ego still smarted, for one – he deflected with, "Ask Tsunade; it's hers to tell."
"Yeah. Yeah, it is," she said, brows ever so slightly furrowed. "I'm glad she's with you. Shishou just up and went missing one day, can you believe her? Just left a message not to bother looking, and left me and Shizune-senpai scrambling to get the hospital and the clinic in order, just like that. We were so worried, Sasuke-kun. I mean, despite her reputation she's not so awfully irresponsible like that, usually. But Naruto wasn't worried at all, so I tried not to, at first, but…"
She hesitated. "It's just… ever since the war I've had this suspicion – Shishou seemed in such a hurry to step down, to replace herself, really. I've wondered if she hadn't recovered properly but forced herself for the sake of the village – probably never. Looks like I'm right."
She stretched her neck one way, then another. He imagined her knotted muscles relaxing under his fingers, and felt annoyed with himself. Because one-handed massage would be so effective. And Sasuke didn't even know where he stood with her.
Instead he said, "You opened a new clinic?"
It turned out to be her sweet spot. With little prompting she told him of the mental health clinic for children she had built – she had tried to be modest, but Sasuke really wasn't that stupid – how she had been inspired by certain orphans, and made this the expression of her post-war euphoria. She wasn't the only one infected, the chief pathogen being the usual suspect (Naruto), and soon men's names began to fill her stories. So many women Sasuke had never even heard of, but had no doubt were real, so vivid was her retelling. Yet it was the children who had her wrapped around their grubby little fingers. He could see her surrounded by pink-haired little terrors… comforting a sulky dark-haired, dark-eyed brat…
The she glanced at his face and paused. "What?" he said. His smile was gone as quickly as it had come, but Sakura had seen it.
Sakura shook her head. "Enough about me," she said, and left it at that. This was Sakura, selfish enough to allow her feeling to fill to the brim so as to be palpable, selfless enough to leave him the choice for something as mundane as holding his end of small talk.
"This isn't how I want to see you again," he said.
She sighed, picked at the hem of her shirt. It still burst out of her. "And when is that?"
"I promised I'd return," he said, as terse as the set of her jaw. And stop sighing, he didn't say. Sakura had the right to it and so much more, and Sasuke to forbid her anything not at all. "I never asked you to wait for me." It wouldn't have been fair.
"Of course you didn't, you just said next time, next time! next time you'll return, and then… what?" Sakura sighed and hugged her knees. "What are we, Sasuke-kun?"
She'd said 'we', but he knew she meant 'I', the person beholden when he faced her. They were Sasuke and Sakura, and theirs was a history writ in black and red, of saving and killing one another. Of long conversations under her roof, the short dango breaks they'd managed to smuggle into her schedule. Sparring to regain his lost edge, to know each other. Sakura had come so far from her genin days, and all for his sake. For her sake, as much as Naruto's and Kakashi's, for his new family Sasuke had suffered the scrutiny of Konoha, until Kakashi came into power and finally restored some semblance of justice to his clan. A graceful retirement was not what Sasuke would have given the elders, but… he had to trust in Naruto's way. He had to; he had resolved to.
And that was another thing. Naruto always understood, and Kakashi was Kakashi; words were unwanted with these two. So it was Sakura he had come to, Sakura who'd known nothing and thus needed everything explained: the truth of the massacre, the Rikudou Sennin and his sons, and his family. His past opened to her as it closed to him. Naruto always had his eye on a future he would drag into the present, but Sakura had always been rooted in the here and now. Sakura was ready for the future, never one to be at odds with her heart for too long, and he admired her for that. Sasuke… Sasuke needed more time.
Her letters were the sonar beacon to his lost bat, trying to find his way home, faithful where his replies faltered, if they existed at all. But she was not the sun, and even Sakura tired. After a long silence on his end she wrote what was to be the last, should he wish it. He had agonised over odd jobs, as the seasons changed and he crossed the continent. There was never a reply, and that was that. He still felt it sometimes, when he awoke in the hour of the dog for no discernible reasons and thought of her, the relief of a man, hanging on a ledge, at the last moment no longer needing to strain himself.
But all this time she was still waiting, still hanging, still unwilling to let go. Not forever, he thought. Here she was and here he was, Sasuke and Sakura on a precipice, how would they fall?
"We are whatever you want us to be." Time and distance only crystalised the truth: what Sakura wanted was also what Sasuke wanted. He felt his heart swell thinking about it, wings unfurled and ready to take flight, drawn to full height and poised to strike. Sasuke had never had a clear endpoint for his journey, but at some point it became urgent for him to return to Konoha. He saw Sakura at the end of his road, and it terrified him. He had to know. Do you know him, do you know the great man I could become? Naruto did, and he believed in him. Sakura, though… Sakura had tried to kill him. Out of love, he understood; just like Itachi. And Itachi, much as he loved him, much as he loved Sasuke, clearly Itachi had never known him. He had to know. "Whatever you want me to be."
Sakura's lips parted as though she didn't understand a word he said, and he had to stamp the urge to explain himself even as her lips drew taut. "I don't understand," she said, fists clenched. "I've been trying – Tsunade-shishou said that you need to find your self apart from anyone – so maybe I don't understand that–"
"It's nothing to do with you." Sasuke said, a captain trying to seize the helm when his ship was already in the storm.
The many angers of Sakura had been a discovery to him, and he had taken a perverse sort of joy in cataloguing all of them. Sasuke had been on the receiving end of her volatile tempers, but she'd never sneered at him. Ah, she must have learned that from Tsunade, he thought with a kind of peaceful resignation. Sakura was practically bursting at the seams. "Of course not! I'm too nice, too – too stupid to understand, is that it? Three years, Sasuke-kun! At least tell me you've found – I don't know, I almost would rather hear you've found another woman! Instead you… what, you've lost yourself? Again? How many times is it now?"
Throughout her tirade Sasuke sat absolutely still. He didn't dare to look at her and catch her tears. Her silhouette buried her head in hands. "I'm sorry," came her muffled voice after a while. "You must be tired, and this isn't…" With him Sakura was pathologically honest, and honesty demanded she never finish that sentence.
"You're tired, too." Of waiting, to be sure. Of Sasuke? Well, he'd wanted to know, he thought dully, there was his answer.
Sakura made a sound like a wounded dog. "You should get some rest. I'm going to stay until Tsunade-shishou is recovered, and then." She shrugged pitifully.
He wished she'd have gone right then, stormed off in a huff as she sometimes did when overwhelmed. "We'll talk. I…" He steeled his voice. "It's a promise."
Stiffly, staring ahead, Sakura nodded. He went first, but as he disappeared into the house, she said, "I still love you, Sasuke-kun, I'll always do. But I can't love you for you."
The only serviceable room in the house had used to belong to a child. Sasuke was folded on the bed like a shrimp, too exhausted to care that his back would hate him.
Sakura couldn't do whatever, but she definitely could stop him from sleeping.