Now
Sasuke can sense that this has already happened before. His eyes flutter open, his vision at first blurred until he focuses on a yellow head. He gradually begins to recognize, in full definition, Naruto's blond hair and whiskers. He still feels lightheaded, and the first thought that comes into his mind is how common it has become for him to lose consciousness like this.
He is partially thankful that his best friend remains silent as he returns to consciousness. Only partially because he half wishes that Naruto was yelling in that moment, just so that he could wake up earlier and realizes what had just happened.
Naruto looks at him with a concerned expression. Huh, that does not happen very often. Sasuke tries to make out their surroundings, but the dim light coming from the fire prevent him from identifying their location. The dampness in the air and the smell of sea tell him that they are near the ocean.
That is when it all hits him.
"Sasuke, calm down."
He does not realize that he is hyperventilating, that blood is rushing to his head and his heart is palpitating so fast that it is about to jump out of his chest. He can barely hear his own groans with deafening ears. Sweat builds in his brow.
And she is gone.
Sasuke knows he saw her, in good health and with the strength of a thousand elephants as always. She attacked him, did not recognize him, and went away with Indra.
A large rock drops from his chest into his stomach. The possibility he dreaded the most is his current reality.
Sakura does not remember him. She has adopted a new personality, a new identity, and forgotten all about her life in Konoha. She was unwillingly taken away from him to be with a man who should have been dead years ago. And now... and now Sasuke feels more powerless than a week ago when they spiraled into this living hell.
A pair of strong hands push his shoulders to the ground (was he panicking so bad that he almost got up?). Sasuke tries to control his breathing while Naruto tries to calm him down. He is surprised that his windpipe is clear from blood and that he does not taste any iron when he swallows.
"H-How?" he manages to ask.
Naruto takes something out of his pouch and shows him a small, very familiar looking pill. "I found a couple of these in your pocket. I didn't know what to do after taking you away from that place, so I took my chances with one of 'em and thankfully it worked."
Ah, the pills had somehow made it into this dimension with him. It is rare that Sasuke forgets such a small detail. He is often the one to pay attention to what others cannot see, but the pills flew over his head the moment Sakura was taken away from him. These capsules are a reminder of how much she cared for him.
Cared. Not cares. No, not like that anymore. She slipped out of his fingers when he was finally willing to give in, and now he has fully lost her to an entity that appeared out of nowhere. He ignores the rumbling in his stomach, not feeling entirely hungry for the pain in his heart is eating him alive.
"Here."
He feels something push to his lips. Sasuke never thought that the day where Uzumaki Naruto tries to feed him would come. How sad that he isn't in the right mind to taunt or even bother pushing his best friend's hand away. He turns his head away, silently rejecting anything to calm his rumble. Sasuke feels that he may not sense any flavour in whatever he puts in his palate anyway.
"How are we still alive here?" Sasuke diverts the conversation when he notices his best friend's uneasiness.
He tries to get up, and weakly straightens out his knees until he is fully standing. He feels lightheaded, almost as if the air he is breathing isn't fully coming into his lungs.
"You can thank Kurama for that," Naruto replies, patting his belly.
Sasuke finds himself shaking his head in spite of his current condition.
"Why?" This game of asking questions is slowly turning more bitter.
It was never like this with Sakura. No, they asked one another questions and the answers always gave him something he wanted to hear. A small anecdote of her life in the hospital, of their teacher, an update on where his feet have taken him. Right now, the words he goes on to hear only bring more grief to his chest.
"What do you mean why, teme?" The bitterness is seeping through Naruto's teeth as well, it seems.
The blond stands up in front of Sasuke and pierces him with blue eyes. Sasuke has seen that look before, the one of irritation at a challenge that hasn't been completed. This is the Naruto that has led to world peace, that has led him to come back from the shadows, the one the world admires and he had so much envied before. He still kind of envies this side of Naruto, though he will never confess it.
"Sakura is with Indra. What else matters?" He shrugs his shoulders. "It's too late to get her back."
It's too late to save her. Just as it was too late to save his family or even Itachi from all the suffering he had to endure. Sasuke is, from the depths of his soul, always a step behind from where he wants to be. And Sakura's kidnapping proved it once again. He was never meant to have a brighter future. No, because Indra was meant to arrive and steal it all from him.
He is destined to a life of solitude as the last member of an ancient clan of revered shinobi. He will just be a memory, one that Sakura will not even be able to remember because his Sakura is gone and replaced with Indra's Sakura.
Sasuke rubs his hand on his face to recover from feeling so lightheaded. It must be a side effect to the pills, he brushes. He suddenly feels a sharp pain on his chest, throwing away any train of thought that was forming in his mind. His back meets the floor once more, and he looks up in shock at Naruto's fist, sticking out of his stretched arm.
"You have to be fucking kiddin' me right now."
"What the f-"
"Shut it!" Naruto abruptly fists the hem of Sasuke's shirt, looking at him with feral eyes. "How can you be so stupid? Like, shit. Sasuke, I knew you were an idiot but do you really want to give up!?"
"Stop-"
"I said shut it! Sakura-chan would never forget you that easily," Naruto continues, his grip on the hem of Sasuke's shirt turning white. "She hid it really well when you went to Orochimaru and then when you left on your journey to redemption, but she missed you to the point where she stopped eating. It would take a great effort to get her out of her office. Those medicine books kept her mind occupied so that she wouldn't feel shitty about not having you around."
He lets go of Sasuke's shirt and starts pacing around the cave. Naruto's hands fly up to his hair and tangle it into a mess with all of his frustration.
"I love her, Sasuke. Not how I love my wife but how I love you and Kakashi. You're all my family, and if I end up losing one of you again then I wouldn't know what to do, do you understand? You and I. We're like " Naruto scratches the back of his head again, "we're brothers. In this life and all of the past ones."
Sasuke bites his bottom lip in frustration. Here is his best friend, he thinks, the one who sacrificed an arm for him, the one who did not think twice about leaving his duty as a future leader behind to help him out. Sasuke knows that he is still an ungrateful bastard to Naruto; there is no way that two years of redemption would be enough to make him feel like things have amended between the two.
"I know."
"Exactly, asshole," Naruto's shoulders relax. "It's finally getting to your head."
But, unlike him, Naruto has put it all in the past a while ago. And it breaks his already shattered heart even more, to know that he will never have enough time to be the kind of friend Naruto deserves, much like his chances at saving Sakura have run out.
"Just go back and live your life. Go back to your wife and future family."
Sasuke finds his back hitting the ground once again, and he feels it crack underneath his body when Naruto's elbows push him deeper into the soil. He does not get to say anything before the punches start flying in.
"Goddammit, Sasuke!" His ears pick up a combination of those words while Naruto continues hitting him. "You're so fucking stupid!"
He has enough energy to disappear from underneath Naruto and reappear behind his best friend, but the aftereffect of using his eyes makes Sasuke lightheaded and his knees almost give out.
"Please. Just go back to Konoha."
Naruto gets up from the floor and gives him a serious look.
"You and Sakura-chan," he pauses. "You're destined to be together, dammit. Do you really buy all that bullshit that Indra is the one meant to be with her? He loved her past life, like it's so obvious that even I could figure that out! Now's your turn to be with her, in this lifetime and the next. This is no tale where some ghost from the past comes back to take someone he thinks is his. And if you," he collects his breath while threateningly points his index at Sasuke, "if you think that I'm not gonna help her get back then I will completely give up on you."
Sasuke can feel his cheeks aching due to Naruto's punches and his mind vaguely wonders how it would have been like if Sakura had been here to stop the two from fighting. She could have been the voice of reason if they had listened to her all those years ago, before Sasuke defected. He could have gotten more time to spend with her if he had not been so consumed with his own past.
They could have had a future, something to hold on to. At least something more solid than just a few weeks of journeying and an intimate moment.
"If it wasn't for Sakura-chan, I wouldn't be married to Hinata right now. And you don't understand how happy I finally am to be with someone like this. I will eternally owe her for that. It's about time that you give her the same change. And being the idiot bastard that you are, you even get to save her to be back in your arms."
Sasuke can still hear her voice. Can still sense her smell on his skin, the weight of head rest on his shoulder. Sakura may not know that Indra is lying to her. She may want to stay here with him instead of return to Konoha with Sasuke. It hurts just to think about it, but there is no way to know how his Sakura -not the replacement Indra is maneuvering- may feel about this situation. And there is only one way to find out.
The idea of Sakura going back to him is scary enough as it is. Sasuke knows that, regardless of how much she truly cared over the years, he would never live up to the treatment she deserves. Sakura is just too good for him, even if destiny had placed them together in all of their past lives to tragic consequences. But times have changed, the cycle of hatred has ended with him and Naruto. It may also be that Sakura's undying love for him is meant to end in this lifetime too, and that she will find a more suitable partner once they return to Konoha.
It is between letting her stay in this fake reality, with Indra, have family, and potentially cause a threat to the Shinobi world, and making her go back to Konoha with them and live with the regret of never being good enough for her.
If Sasuke really thinks about it, he would be more scared of never seeing her again than of a chance to their relationship.
"Okay, enough of those Ootsutsuki bastards takin' our girls, right?"
He just scoffs at his best friend. "Lets go."
"Tell me, my love. How were our children like?"
She finds herself asking a collection of questions while they watch the sunset from their bedroom. Her mind is confused, and the only way to dissipate those clouds is by replacing them with a distraction.
And that distraction now is asking questions.
Sakura accommodates her head on Indra's strong shoulder. The sounds of the ocean create a peaceful atmosphere in spite of the turbulence she feels. A slight breeze raises goosebumps in her arms, and she tries to remember the last time she channeled chakra through her limbs in battle.
Ah, now she remembers. It was when she saw him. That strange boy, or young man. The one with a purple eye and a bandaged arm. The one with dark hair and an aura that hurt too much to be around.
He was... painful.
"Our children?" Indra's voice cuts across her thoughts. He smirks. (And that smirks somehow reminds her of another face). "Hoori was the peacemaker between them, and the one who was the most like you. Hoderi knew how to lead an army of men into the battle, and Hosuseri how to think strategically of our next move."
"And when they were young boys?"
Indra removes her head from his shoulder and looks straight into her eyes. Sakura sees his flicker from to the Sharingan before going back to their usual dark colour. She has noticed that he has been activating his eyes around her more often now. His facial expression soften after his eyes return to normal, as if he needed to reassure himself of something.
He strokes her cheek with a softness that foils with the strength he carries as a warrior. "They were obedient and curious. And they always wanted to meet their mother. I told them that you were in their dreams, and that one day they would sleep and get to spend time with you eternally."
Skaura smiles up at Indra with sadness in her face. He knows that his promised has changed after encountering that mongrel and Asura's reincarnation. It worries him, for she no longer looks at him in the eye with honesty but with doubt. At least she is not infected with the same curse that Asura placed on Indrani a millennium ago. Sasuke is reaching the last straw of his life, and the chances of him and the fox brat coming back to interrupt his eternity with Sakura are slim. He controls this dimension, after all.
"And your brother?" she asks.
Indra tenses at the question. "What about him?" He cannot tell if she is truly innocent or pretending to be.
"How was he like when you were younger?"
She can see his jaw tighten and contract. They remain silent for a moment before he answers. "He was the same." And Indra is certainly happy that Asura is no longer around. He will never find it in him to forgive his brother for killing his wife and then claiming he was not involved.
"Oh..."
"You must be feeling cold, my love," Indra points out. "There are shivers in your arms. Let's fall asleep. Tomorrow is an important day."
Sakura looks as if she wanted to find out more about that excuse of a brother he once had. But Indra has to overlook her curiosity. Tomorrow is when they renew their vows, and when the last Uchiha should be inhaling his last breath.
Everything is going according to plan.
Hi everyone! Sorry for the short chapter. I'm doing my MA in Latin American studies now and, well, it's like taking care of a child with no parenting experience. I read an average of two books per week, plus write reflections to what I read, attend class, and work as a TA. So my hands are a little full now, haha. Not to mention that I've decided to change my topic of interest and may end up doing a thesis (which means twice as much work but it is rewarding nonetheless). If you're interested in finding out about my studies, or would like to lend me a hand by reading what I've written for my classes so far, shoot me a PM!
Thank you all so much for your support and reviews! We've reached the 360 mark and it's just, wow. It's rewarding to see that so many people have added this story to their alerts and favourites. You all keep me going :)
This is more of a transition chapter. I hope to get the next one out by Christmas, if you do not mind waiting until then. We are building up to the big showdown wOooOoooo!
Best of luck to y'all!
MSM