Date: 6/10/13
Rating: T
Genre: Angst, Drama
Prompt: Sasuke's already left the village, and Sakura decides to visit his old house in an attempt to understand him better.
Nervous. Sakura was nervous. She shifted on her feet and glanced at her watch. It was still early. There was still time to go back to training. She didn't have to do it. She could forget the whole idea entirely. Easy.
However, when Sakura looked up at the familiar red and white fan—faded and forgotten—so different from the crest worn by the boy whose back she always watched, whose eyes blazed with the promise of retribution and concealed the secret of inconceivable pain, pain she could never understand, Sakura knew she couldn't turn back.
Because there comes a point when the tales told in the whispers of village gossip are no longer enough. Because she wanted to see it for herself and she wanted to understand. Because Sasuke was gone, and Sakura couldn't breathe.
His home was the furthest from the entrance, someone had told her. She gulped, taking the first step into the Uchiha compound. It felt like she was intruding, under the constant and irrational fear of reprimands she knew would never come. But Sakura walked on, careful not to disturb the quiet that seemed to emanate from every building and every turn.
It was eerie.
Was it this quiet when you came home, Sasuke-kun?
To keep her mind off the silence, Sakura tried to imagine what it was like before the massacre. She could almost see it, almost hear it: children playing in the streets; parents coming home from missions. Sakura wondered what it must have been like for a place full of smiles, laughter, noise to be robbed of its life only to be replaced with silence, silence that rang in your ears, silence that held the screams of your family.
Did it scare you, too?
She stood outside Sasuke's home for a few moments, hesitant, but took a deep breath, gathering enough courage to open the door and preparing for the worst. But to her surprise, the inside wasn't the mess she expected. Each room still had its furniture. The beds were made. Picture frames, though empty, hung on the wall. Despite the layers of dust, Sasuke's home still seemed livable, as if his family would walk through the front door any minute, making the truth of the massacre all the more haunting.
A spot on one of the walls caught Sakura's eye. Blood stains. However, the color wasn't uniform, lighter from her waist down, evidence of an attempt to clean the mess. Sakura's eyes widened as she covered her mouth with her hand, the realization sinking in. Did no one come to help you, Sasuke-kun? She could feel the tears begin to well in her eyes. Was this the beginning of your loneliness? Here, cleaning the blood of your parents?
Overcome with a crushing sadness, Sakura slowly backed out of the room and closed the door. That was enough for one day, she decided. However, she couldn't move, frozen outside the room with the bloodstained walls, tears now streaming down her face.
The stories were true, she realized, the Uchiha compound was haunted. But it wasn't the faded signs or the neglected buildings. It wasn't the jarring silence or the imagined screams. It wasn't even the dust-covered home, waiting for its owners that would never return.
Rather, it was the image of a seven-year-old boy on his knees with soap and a sponge, alone and waiting for revenge.