soft day
pt 2: a tangled knot
The songbirds are beginning to wake up and hop between tree branches when Sasuke decides he's worked enough for the day. There's another matsutake to his right, hidden under a mound of pine needles, but he'll leave that for next time. His wicker basket is filled with enough mushrooms to pay for the month's groceries. He treads back to the village gates, swinging the basket over the undergrowth to encourage the spores to spread.
Foraging is a skill Sasuke picked up on his journey as a quick way to fill his pockets. He's good at it—born for it, even. Maybe in another world he's living a simple existence in the forest. With his doujutsu, he can easily uncover the rare mushrooms blending into the foliage or hidden underground that others will miss. It takes him an hour to gather a haul that would otherwise take half a day. The rest of his morning he'll spend training, or wandering, or even finding a quiet spot to nap. Sometimes he sleeps better outside with his back to a tree.
At the market, a buyer sorts his finds, whistling cheerfully as he jots down notes in a thick ledger. Usually, Sasuke's reputation precedes him, setting civilians on edge. But this young merchant is delighted by his presence, if only because Sasuke's helping him earn a huge profit.
"Three premium-grade matsutake! Next time you go picking, be sure to come to me first. I'll give you the best rate." He flicks a clump of dirt off the mushroom before weighing in order to spare himself the negligible expense.
"Thanks," Sasuke says, humorless. He will not, in fact, be returning to this stall.
The merchant passes him a thin wad of cash, smiling broadly. He'll probably mark up the prices for double or triple what he's paying Sasuke in wholesale. If Sasuke wanted, he could sell his wares himself. But he can't be bothered to sit around the village marketplace all day and attempt to appeal to Konoha's public. As if anyone would buy from him.
Sasuke tucks his earnings into his cloak and turns for home. Even though he dozed in the forest this morning, his eyes feel gritty and heavy from lack of sleep. Recently, his body seems to be aching for extra rest, though he's getting plenty.
He shouldn't feel as worried as he does. He's still adjusting to a new life, a new routine. And yet, a trickle of fear tightens his throat.
He doesn't want things to get bad again.
Sasuke catches the elevator just as it's closing and comes face to face with Sakura.
She jumps. "Oh."
He can't think of what to say in response, and a stiff silence falls. He faces forward, willing the elevator doors to open, but they're taking their sweet time.
In the corner of his eye, he watches as Sakura tries to stifle a yawn.
"Late night?" he tries. Though the answer is obvious—she's wearing wrinkled scrubs and the face of someone who hasn't slept.
A curtain falls over her face. "Yeah."
Sakura is a different person when she's not fully awake—short-tempered and straightforward, surprisingly dry. He remembers from all the mornings they spent traveling together as genin. It's only after the sun rises a bit higher that she remembers to be cheerful.
It's the perfect time for honesty.
"You're upset with me." He feels a twinge of guilt, taking advantage of a moment when she's most likely to give him an answer. But he can't waste his chance.
Exactly as he expects, Sakura's face transforms. "And if I was, then what?" She rubs her temples like she's trying to ward off a headache. "Why does it matter now?"
"It's not what I want," he says.
Her lip trembles, then anger washes over her face. "What do you want?" The elevator reaches their floor. She punches the button to open the door faster. "Nevermind. Please forget I said anything."
At the first opportunity, she tears down the hall and out of sight.
Sasuke clenches and unclenches his fingers, fighting a wave of vertigo.
Perhaps silence and a few unanswered letters aren't the real problem. He's done so much wrong, from flinging away a plate of apples to thrusting a chidori at her skull. It's far more likely that through all this time and distance she's simply grown to hate him.
Never mind her soft smile, as he said goodbye at the gates, and promised to write; the smile that he considered deeply in the moments he did write. It's useless to think about that anymore...
Sasuke lets the door slam and throws his keys somewhere in the vicinity of the kitchen counter. He whips around at the sound of a strange tapping to find a dark shape resting on his balcony—a hawk, bearing the symbol of the Leaf.
A mission's summons. Sasuke's mood darkens further.
He opens the sliding glass door with a rough shove. Too well-trained, the hawk doesn't scare away. It hops to the railing and patiently waits for him to take the scroll secured within its harness.
What do they want him to do? Assassinate some political enemy, protect some daimyo, pass on some urgent message? He flips the scroll over without bothering to read it and scrawls a message.
Kakashi,
I'm not taking missions.
Try someone else.
The thick, artisanal paper cracks as he shoves it back inside the harness, glaring into the hawk's blank stare. The animal coos mildly before lighting off.
The righteous anger bubbling in Sasuke's stomach quickly cools to unease. He can get away with this for now.
How long until the village won't accept no for an answer?
.
.
Sasuke's on his way to the Uchiha district when he feels the pavement shake under his feet. He pauses in his tracks to pay better attention. Earthquakes are rare in this part of Fire country.
The shutters on all the buildings around him are closed, as expected this close to the district, blocking out the bright blue skies of a perfect summer day. A stray cat eases through a gap in a fence and crosses the empty street.
Another tremor sends the electrical wires swaying overhead. The cat halts, tail raised. Sasuke follows its gaze to the secluded training ground at the end of the block, where the tops of a few scraggly trees peek over flaking plaster walls. It's a secluded, run-down spot, and has been empty every time Sasuke's walked by.
He edges over to the arched entrance. The landscape inside is torn and littered with craters. In the center, Sakura stands beside a pile of toppled bricks, shoulders heaving.
How is it that he's lived weeks here without running into her once, and now it's a common occurrence? He backs away. Best to leave before she notices him.
Sakura is graceful as a dancer even as she spins to pummel the earth beneath two fists. A fault line zigzags fast as lightning across the rumbling ground. Roots snap, and the pine tree towering above Sasuke topples to crush him.
He unsheathes his katana and slices. The two halves of the severed tree land harmlessly to either side of him and roll away.
Sakura stands, shading her eyes as the dust settles. "Show off."
It's nothing special, just chakra channeled through the blade. Sasuke kicks a pebble into the small chasm cracking open between them. "I'm showing off?"
She stomps over the rubble a few paces in his direction. "I didn't know I had an audience."
Sasuke sheathes the katana with more force than necessary. "It's hard to ignore the sound of you destroying half the village—" He cuts off abruptly, not liking at all where this sentence has taken him.
Sakura stands straighter, a sharp gleam to her eyes. "Since when do you care about things like that?"
Sasuke chews on his tongue—because he's not going to respond. He's going to turn around and leave her alone.
"Is that why you came back?"
He blinks. "What?"
Her voice is not friendly, but is softer, somehow. Curious. "For the village?"
Sasuke almost laughs. "Not at all." Being the village hero is Naruto's job.
Sakura frowns. He notices a dusting of light brown freckles across her nose, faint even in the bright sunlight. The sight tugs oddly on his memory, his idle glance growing into more of a stare, until he understands why with a small flinch. In some long forgotten moment, for some unknown reason, his sharingan must have memorized the pattern of her freckles.
"Then why?" she says, guarded.
He doesn't know. To wake up in his quiet apartment and look at the forest in the morning. Is that enough of an answer?
Sakura breaks the silence. "You're the same." It doesn't sound like a compliment.
"So are you," he says, matching her tone.
Annoying, he'll say, if she asks. It's spring-loaded on his tongue.
She doesn't ask. "Don't you have somewhere to be?"
As her back turns, she lifts the hem of her shirt to wipe away the sweat beading near her hairline. Her bare stomach flashes before him—the steep curve of her waist, the edge of a scar?—and the shirt falls.
Sasuke's brain fuzzes with static. He can't remember what he was going to say, if anything. He leaves before she turns around.
.
.
This time, Sasuke hasn't bothered to bring tools along with him to the district—what growth, to no longer lie to himself about the purpose of coming here. He sits leaning against a tree by the lake, and doesn't fight it when his eyes drift close. When they open again, the sun has fallen low in the sky, bleeding gold over the surface of the water.
Around this time of day was when Itachi would return home from training. He used to strain his eyes peering for the shape of his brother's silhouette against the setting sun.
An ache starts up in Sasuke's chest.
His grief manifests in shapes and forms that never make sense to him. Sometimes he can recall his past without batting an eye—the taste of his mother's tea, the summery fragrance of tatami drifting through the air of his childhood home. The view of the persimmon tree from the kitchen window and the quiet scrape Itachi's door made when sliding open. Other times, these same memories feel like they're piercing a hole in his chest.
A blur of movement streaks to his left. Sasuke turns, half-expecting to find his brother cresting the hill to call his name.
He meets a messenger hawk dead in the eye.
Sasuke presses his lips together. Kakashi knows he's not taking missions. He knows.
This time, without knowing why, he unrolls the thick scroll. Maybe he wants to see what's driving his old sensei to ignore his refusals. He skims across the words sworn duty and protect the village and mandatory before his vision goes red.
Just over the top of the hill rests a crumbling mausoleum of empty streets Sasuke once called home. And here at the bottom of the hill is Sasuke, the only one left, so angry he could breathe fire. And because he's an Uchiha, he does.
Lifting his face to the sky, fire erupts from his throat like a scream. His form is sloppy and wild—his father would have scolded him—and when smoke fills his lungs he falls back gasping for oxygen. Part of his lip and the left side of his face are searing with pain. He's burned himself, badly.
He breathes in.
He's tired.
Sasuke slinks home, eyes glued to the pavement until a flicker of green light draws his gaze. Sakura's leaning against the arched entryway of the training ground, one glowing hand pressed to her shoulder. They lock eyes, and she stiffens.
There's nothing to say. Sasuke just wants to collapse into his bed as soon as possible, and moves to leave.
"Wait," she calls, pushing off the wall.
"I'm not in the mood, Sakura." He angles the wounded side of his face away from her. Did she see?
"What…" She catches up behind him. "What happened to your face?"
He picks up the pace. "Nothing."
Sasuke knows his strengths: self-sufficiency, pushing others away. It's too bad one of Sakura's strengths is persistence. Before he can even consider lunging away she's gotten a firm grip on his jaw and is tilting his face for a closer look.
"Nothing? This is at least a second degree burn!"
Her touch is what burns, in a way that makes his heart skitter against his ribs. "So?"
For the first time, the hard edge to her voice is missing when she speaks to him. "There's a risk of infection. Let me heal it."
"I'm fine!" he snaps.
The outburst awards him such a rush of ugly fulfillment. But it only lasts an instant. Sakura jolts back as if wounded.
"Fine." Her hand curls against her chest. "Whatever you want."
Sasuke suddenly struggles to maintain his scowl.
Something is tangled between them. He feels it in his chest like a hard knot, making it hard to breathe. It's so much easier to feel angry than to begin the work of untangling.
And since he's angry, he can't accept her help.
Street lights flicker on, and a bat swoops high over their heads in a stumbling flight path. At the edge of the forest not too far away, the crickets are singing more and more confidently in the growing dark. Sakura's shoulders rise and fall as she takes a deep breath, and unconsciously, Sasuke does the same. The night air tastes sweet like summer and oncoming rain.
Sakura glances at him and turns away. "I'm in 704."
Maybe the pain is getting to him more than he thinks, because at first the sentence sounds like gibberish. Slowly, it clicks—her apartment number.
"Stop by later," she says. "If it hurts too much."
.
.
Later, it begins to hurt too much.
Sasuke's been through worse, but the burn seems determined to prove otherwise. It throbs at the slightest movement of his face and feels feverishly hot to the touch. He pushes away a full plate of food at dinner, unable to swallow more than one bite.
Eventually, when the skin starts to blister and swell, he slinks to the medicine cabinet to scour for a solution. Unless toothpaste has healing properties he hasn't heard about, there's nothing useful at all. He lets the cupboard slam. The sight of his reflection in the mirror makes him wince. What a mess.
He retreats to bed, hissing as the pillow brushes his cheek. Maybe it'll resolve itself by morning?
He fights for sleep, the entire left half of his face throbbing in time with his pulse.
Sasuke opens his eyes again when the ache of a migraine rises in his skull. Coupled with the burn, it's near excruciating, a hammer pounding on half his pain receptors as a flame sears the rest.
Without a conscious thought, he kicks off the blankets. He feels lightheaded and half-delirious, dropping his keys twice before managing to pocket them. His eyesight is blurring too much to read the kitchen clock, but it must be past midnight as he stumbles to the elevators and veers left.
The door he's looking for is waiting down the end of the hallway, the exact position of his own apartment on the opposite end of the floor. A wreath of dried flowers hangs in the center, washed purple in the dim light.
The door swings open part way through his clumsy knock.
Sakura sounds breathless and a little surprised. "You came."
The influx of light forces Sasuke's eyes closed. "I couldn't sleep…"
A cool hand cups his cheek, and the pain dampens like a cloud blotting out the heat of the sun. His vision waters with tears of sheer relief.
"Why did you wait so long?" Sakura demands quietly. Without pausing her work, she dries his cheek with a soft sleeve. "There's no need for you to suffer."
Sasuke's throat closes. It's so hard to stand tall and straight—to not lean into her touch.
"It was my katon," he mumbles, in answer to a different question. "I was being careless."
"I can see that," she mutters, but her voice has no bite to it. "How's the pain now? Better?" When the light of Sakura's chakra winks out, an ache sharpens in his skull. He winces, fingers digging into one temple.
Sakura's hand covers his. "Sasuke?"
"Migraine," he rasps. It hurts to keep his eyes open.
The light under Sasuke's eyelids glows green, and a pleasant warmth replaces the pain. "Migraines—do you get them often?"
He hesitates, then nods. Often is an understatement.
He feels Sakura rise to tiptoes and reach over his shoulders, fingers landing on the base of his skull. Then she massages slowly, back and forth, in a small, delicious motion. The last traces of his migraine dissolve away, like sea foam on wet sand. As does the rivulet of dull pain that has lived in the back of Sasuke's head, more or less incessantly, since he was a teenager. A sigh floats from his lips, or perhaps it's a whimper. He can't bring himself to care. He's forgotten that his body can feel like this, so light…
Sakura says something that he doesn't catch.
"What?" Sasuke says, eyes sliding open. His jaw feels loose, and he's halfway to sleep, with no sense of how much time has passed.
They're still hovering in the threshold of her doorway, Sakura inches from his chest, holding him in a half-embrace.
It's not a good time to remember that she loved him, once.
"The suboccipitals," she says, voice near a whisper. Sasuke shivers as her fingers card through the hair at the base of his skull. "Right here. This helps a lot for migraines."
"Thank you," he says.
Her arms drift to her sides. She's still wearing her day clothes with a robe thrown over top. As his brain begins to shut off, he's left with one last, dim thought: perhaps she stayed up, in case he gave in and sought her help.
"Good night," she says.
Sasuke doesn't remember what he says next, or if he even responds—only stumbling home and falling asleep before his head hits the pillow.
.
.
Sasuke wakes up slowly, a shaft of afternoon sun warming his face and the folds of his sheets imprinted on his arm. He is the most well-rested he's been in years. His mind buzzing with an empty, blank calm, he wonders why that is, when the burn was hurting so badly last night…
A hand flies to his cheek.
There's…drool. And no trace of the burn, as if it were nothing but a dream, lit by a soft green glow.
Heat shoots up the back of Sasuke's neck, and his whole body tenses with the strong urge to curl over and cover his face. What was he thinking?
He pries himself out of bed. It's late enough in the day for the sun to fill the apartment with shifting golden light, a touch too bright for Sasuke's eyes, tender with the memory of pain from his recent migraine attack. With some regret, he draws the curtains.
Then out of curiosity, he reaches back to rub the base of his skull. Sakura was right, this does help…
His shoulders tense up. It doesn't matter that Sakura answered the door in the middle of the night, healed him without even blinking, and taught him where the suboccipitals were. It was a mistake. It can never happen again.
Sasuke throws open the refrigerator and scowls at the barren shelves—he thought at least he'd find an egg. Time for a trip to the market. Although there's a six-pack of instant ramen in the pantry, a gift from Naruto, in case he feels like starting off the day by downing soggy noodles coated in an ocean's worth of salt. Market it is.
At the door, Sasuke reties his cloak three times, unsatisfied with each attempt.
What's he supposed to do, if he sees her?
He grits his teeth and darts to the stairwell.
Shadows are growing long by the time Sasuke returns home. When he gropes for his keys—nothing. He drops the load of groceries and palms his other pocket. Empty. It's not like him to be forgetful.
But it won't be a huge issue, thanks to the rinnegan. He'll simply scale down to his own balcony and swap with the first small household object he spots through the glass doors. Simple.
Except—he shut the curtains. Shit. The headache Sasuke was hoping to avoid blooms fully in his skull.
The rinnegan requires a clear visual, something like a green jacket discarded in the sand. If he swaps on a blind guess, and makes a mistake, who knows where he'll end up. Tempting as it is, it's not worth the risk for something so trivial.
He trudges to the super's door on the first floor. The building is managed by an old woman with large glasses and a bent spine. She better be home—he has produce that's going to wilt.
Visiting my grandchildren, reads a note on her door. For any urgent matters…
Underneath she's scrawled an address to an office building somewhere across town. But the business day is long over. It's unlikely they're even open.
Sasuke stalks outside. If he really wanted, he could kick down the sliding glass balcony doors, though the clean-up sounds like a mess. Not to mention how much that might terrify his civilian neighbors.
Naruto is probably home. Moments later, Sasuke's pounding on the dobe's door. A lot of shinobi live in this area, a few streets from the Academy. Judging by the whispers and dark stares, they recognize him.
There's no answer. He gives up and storms to the address written on the super's note. The building's hours are posted cheerfully in the window. They locked up five minutes ago.
Sasuke swallows a frustrated noise and considers Kakashi, before remembering that he has never actually visited Kakashi's home, and has no idea where it might even be. His old sensei is a private man. In the distance, lights flick on to illuminate the exterior of the Hokage tower. Perhaps Kakashi's still there. But Sasuke hasn't stepped foot into Konoha's political district since he arrived and he doesn't plan to now.
There are two options. One option he does not allow himself to consider.
So Sasuke looks east, where the sky is already dark, where the Uchiha district rests.
The last time…he was there after dark…
A shiver traces Sasuke's spine, like something wet sliding down his back. It's hard to swallow.
He turns west, facing the setting sun, and prepares himself to clean up broken glass.
.
.
.
.
Notes:
thank you so much for the kind words you all have left on the first chapter! it's so amazing and gratifying to see which moments and details stood out to you after working on this story for so long. please keep sharing your thoughts with me, I love it!
I hope you enjoyed all the yearning and pining in this chapter (literally, our boy poor was nearly crushed by a pine tree). see you in the next update!