title: threadbare
prompt: #13 - 2 am
summary: he wouldn't mind the aching of his chest and how much he missed her if she could wake up that morning with a smile.
Dreams were rare to Sasuke, but one night he dreamed he was a boy again, back to training in one of the dimly lit rooms of Orochimaru's hideout. The oil lamp that hung at the corner of the chamber did away with enough shadows for him to see the bruises written across his knuckles in ringlets of purple-blue, but the pain barely resonated and was hardly enough to wake him from slumber. A slim mirror across the room provided him a glimpse of his reflection: he hadn't been this age in a while—the area beneath his eyes was dark, the hollows of his cheeks sunken and more defined.
He clenched his fists after shaking out the knots in his joints, aiming a series of blows at the punching bag in front of him, and when he was finally content enough with his punches, he swiveled, barely pausing before directing a high roundhouse kick at one of the training dummies behind him. The dummy's head flew off its shoulders and slammed against the wall across the room, rolling just a few spaces in front of the door, and Sasuke aimed a kick at the headless dummy's neck before switching to a taller punching bag in order to avoid breaking any additional equipment.
His katana made its way into his hands hours later, slashes deep against the wooden surface of the dummy he had beheaded earlier. He had just succeeded in beheading a second dummy when the door sighed and creaked as it swung on its hinges. The empty wooden head fell to the floor as a girl slipped into the room.
Sasuke swiped the back of his hand over his damp forehead and glimpsed pink as he pushed his bangs from his eyes. Sakura gave him no time to say a thing about how it was impossible for her to be there, with him, and instead pried his sword from his hands and nudged him to take a seat at the single bench against the wall.
"You've been training too hard again, look at your hands…" Sakura sighed, pulling his fingers into hers, holding a roll of white bandages into her right hand. Sasuke said nothing, let his eyes close at the sight of her. He knew it was a dream, now more than ever—Sakura had never seen him train under Orochimaru, but seeing her provided him real comfort. Even in a dream, though, he could never say so.
"Let me," he said to her, plucking the bandages from her hands. Now Sasuke noticed that Sakura's own fingers were bandaged individually, and her short hair was pulled back into a small ponytail at the nape of her neck, as though she had just gotten back from training herself. He mimicked her bandaging, wrapping his hands in the same fashion as hers before holding them up for her to examine.
Sakura nodded and smiled at him, but Sasuke was at a loss for words when he noticed how threadbare her smile was, how fragile and gossamer. Her eyes held little else besides sadness, and he was numb as she leaned down to ghost her hands over the already-bandaged portions of his arms, where he had injured himself before.
He glanced up at her, and Sakura shook her head, tears pooling in her green eyes, spilling as she pressed her lips into a line. Sasuke's own eyes widened, and he instinctively reached for her, his hands pressed tightly at the bends of her arms. "Sakura," he heard himself say.
Sakura shook her head again, face obscured by her pale, bandaged hands. Sasuke grimaced, hating nothing more in that moment than himself; in every world, he would somehow always manage to make her cry. He reached up to cup her face, slowly, but just as his fingertips grazed her jawline, his vision faded to black and she was gone.
Sasuke stood from the bench that had disappeared from under him, his arms extended at his sides, searching for Sakura in his blindness. He yelled her name over and over again, only to be answered by deranged echoes of his own screams. When he finally caught hold of something, Sasuke jolted awake under a sky that was almost as dark as it had been in his dreams.
He slumped against the bark of the tree behind him, hands cold with sweat in his lap, and when he reached up to touch his face, his fingers came back damp with tears. He clasped his hands together and found himself thinking, though, that he wouldn't mind the aching of his chest and how much he missed her if she could wake up that morning with a smile.