What We Make of It
Summary: Sakura is spiralling, Sasuke's redemption journey is not going as planned, and their growing feelings for each other are not helping in either case. With unfulfillment on one end and danger on the other, they are faced with decisions that will pave the path of the rest of their lives.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Oh, hi. It has been awhile, huh? I can't believe I'm kicking off a multi-chapter fic, 6 years after completing my last one, A Twist in Time. But here we are. 😊
So my mental health has been through the ringer over the past few years which landed me in a writing rut. Recently, I've been chasing after illusive sparks of creativity and stumbled on the idea for this fic, got super excited about writing for the first time in ages, and decided to roll with it.
This story has become a bit of an experiment to learn and relearn what plotting and writing methods work for me, to build some confidence and new skills, and mainly to remind myself why I love writing.
Hope this turns out okay lol. Nevertheless, it feels so good to be back.
*cracks knuckles*
STORY CONTEXT
This fic is my take on Sasuke and Sakura's love story during the Black Period, after Naruto Chapter 699. It should be fairly canon-compliant, with some nods to things like the light novels, though I'll likely take some things in my own direction, to keep it fun.
TRIGGER WARNINGS
• Scenes of fighting and violence, about equivalent to the type of action seen in the canon NarutoTM world.
• This story includes scenes of experiencing and learning to manage symptoms of anxiety, phantom limb pain, post-traumatic stress, and panic attacks.
• The story is rated M for sexual themes, language, and violence.
Hope you enjoy it!
Chapter 1
"I promise I don't mean for this to keep happening. Could I… Is there any way I –"
"It's fine, Sakura. Maybe it's just… best if you step out while I clean up."
Sakura covered her face in her hands, peering at the owner of the gym she frequented through her fingers. "How much does a replacement cost?" she asked and eyeing the pieces of what had just been a rowing machine splayed around her. The only thing left in tact was the seat she was still perched on, but every other bit of it had all but exploded into scraps of metal.
The gym owner, Riku, a tall man with long blonde hair and a muscular physique, at least as far as civilians went, sighed and shook his head. "I'll deal with it. I know you're not doing this on purpose."
As usual, Riku forced a smile and reached for the broom and dustbin he always seemed to have within arm's reach when Sakura dropped in.
Thoroughly embarrassed, Sakura fumbled for her towel and water bottle, ignored the stares of the other gym patrons, and scurried out the door, after mumbling one final, pathetic "I'm sorry."
Despite being civilian born, Sakura stood out like a sore thumb at the civilian gym, as one of the few ninjas to ever set foot in it.
And routinely destroying gym equipment wasn't exactly helping her attempts to blend in.
With Sakura's gruelling shifts at the hospital leaving her very little time to herself (except for rare free windows at unusual hours), and most of her fellow ninja friends and comrades too preoccupied with their own lives to be her training partner nowadays, she felt she had little choice but to resort to facilities like this to keep her stamina and strength up. While it wasn't her top choice for staying in shape, the gym was open twenty-four hours a day and provided some variety of exercises with a dash of social interaction outside of a hospital setting, which were things her body and mind were craving lately.
The trouble was, facilities like this weren't exactly equipped for her.
Whenever Sakura got over the curious and often ogling looks from the other gym-goers and started to lose herself in the rhythm of her exercises, something would almost always go disastrously, and sometimes even perilously, wrong.
Snapped bike pedal. Warped dumbbell. Punching bag blown to confetti.
Okay, maybe that last one was on her. As a ninja with one of the strongest punches to ever grace the Five Great Nations, she ought to have known better than to punch anything she didn't want disintegrated or sent flying several kilometers away.
Frankly, she was surprised Riku even let her in the place anymore. Surely she cost his facility a fortune.
But perhaps he let her come back out of principle; after all, it was hard to turn away a war hero.
She stepped out into dark streets and determined it to be somewhere in the vicinity of two in the morning. The damp, early spring air was rather chilly at this hour. Sakura felt underdressed in her fitted workout shorts and sleeveless red top as a breeze sent goosebumps across her exposed arms and legs. Having jogged to the gym from her apartment, she hadn't bothered with a jacket.
Well, with her unfulfilling workout cut short once again, Sakura figured she might as well jog the return trip too, for warmth and to make this outing feel like less of an embarrassing waste of time.
Sakura's routine upon her return home was a familiar affair.
Upon entering her empty apartment, feeling like she hadn't depleted nearly as much energy as she'd hoped to, she flicked on the lights, peeled off her exercise clothes, and took a steaming hot shower. Then she brushed the tangles out of her drying shoulder-length pink hair, slipped into comfortable loungewear, and whipped up a simple, reheated meal.
She lit a candle. Pulled out a newspaper. Took a seat at her kitchenette table – which barely sat two but was aptly sized for her cozy bachelor apartment.
"Ikadakimasu," she whispered into the stillness before taking a bite.
Sakura began scanning the newspaper with lazy interest while her mind wandered, as it often did when she was left alone to her thoughts.
She hadn't seen her friends in awhile and wondered what they were up to.
Her best friend Ino, being newly engaged, was surely up to her eyeballs in wedding planning tasks. Despite intending to have a long engagement so they could take their time with the planning, Ino sure was a bundle of nerves about the whole thing these days. Sakura had offered to help, not that she had the faintest idea how to, but Ino seemed rather content with barking out orders to her mild-natured fiancé, Sai, who, in turn, was always willing to oblige. In fact, somehow, the two of them seemed to enjoy the chaos and frivolousness of it all.
After all, having flower arrangements and wedding vendors and catered dinners as your most pressing concerns wasn't so bad coming off the tail end of a war.
Sakura smiled to herself and turned her thoughts to her other dear friends, who hadn't waited nearly as long as Ino and Sai to tie the knot once peacetime had settled over the village.
If someone had told Sakura at any point in her life that Naruto would be the first of her friends to get married, she would have promptly checked their vital signs for indications of illness or hallucination.
And yet, he and Hinata were somehow ahead of the game as far as those types of milestones went.
Just a couple of weeks prior, Sakura had helped them with moving into a new house. It was just the right kind of house for newly weds: modest but with enough space for a family to grow, should they choose to venture down that path.
Naruto himself had broached thattopic just as Sakura was setting down the last of their boxes.
"So, now that you're done with wedding planning and finding a place, what are you going to do with all that free time?" she'd asked, while clapping her hands together dismissively. The move had gone as seamlessly as one would expect with the movers being Sanin-level ninjas.
Naruto smiled bashfully and ran a hand through his short, blonde hair. It was the shortest it had ever been, with credit to Hinata for informing him that the shorter style made him look more distinguished. Older. Sakura agreed, as much as the very thought of Naruto growing into a full-fledged adult made her heart ache a little.
"I think we're gonna just enjoy decorating the house and hanging out together," he said while peering around, like he was checking if Hinata was in earshot.
Sakura rolled her eyes and smirked. "You did not come up with that response on your own, did you?" she teased. Naruto claiming to have any interest in decorating was most suspicious.
Naruto chuckled and wiped his nose with his index finger. "Okay, maybe those were Hinata's words when I asked her the same thing," he confessed.
Sakura snorted. "She's trained you good, then."
His blue eyes twinkled with such raw joy that Sakura's lips curved upwards of their own accord.
"Okay, maybe I don't care about the house stuff. But I am excited to just be with her more, you know? Maybe we'll go on a trip. Or just enjoy the quiet life for a little while. I dunno."
"I'm happy for you, Naruto," Sakura said and she meant it.
He grinned. "Thanks, Sakura-chan! Besides, we've gotta enjoy this time before my Hokage training ramps up again and, well, before kids."
Sakura nearly tripped backwards over a box.
After a moment of flailing her arms to regain her balance, much to Naruto's amusement, she choked out, "Kids? Really?"
Naruto punched her shoulder fondly. "Sure! I think we're just about ready, you know what I mean?"
Sakura blanched.
Nope. Not at all.
Thankfully, she'd managed to get out something like "congratulations" while her mind had pulled her in a zillion directions.
The concept of settling down was a difficult one for Sakura to get her head around. Sure, she was happy for her friends finding peace in their lives. But her own headspace couldn't be anywhere further from the idea of marriage or, even more so, having kids.
In fact, Sakura wasn't so sure she wanted either of those things at all, despite everyone around her seeming to be going through those motions and the looming sense of others expecting her to do the same. The societal pressure that came with being a woman her age was unbearable sometimes.
Maybe when she had been a child and far less marred by the harsh realities of the world, she would have wanted that kind of picturesque, traditional life. In fact, she was rather envious of those who still did despite having lived through the realities she had.
But now, she wasn't so sure those were changes that made sense for her.
And yet, her life nowadays wasn't really doing her many favours either.
Her days consisted of working and more working. Without a doubt, her work was important and fulfilling, so she poured all of her energy into it. Her entrepreneurial skills were flourishing, as the pioneer of Konoha's first ever youth mental health facility. And, not to mention, she'd proven herself an excellent leader, as second-in-command at Konoha's main hospital, at least until Tsunade fully retired and Sakura took it over entirely.
Sakura thrived in these roles and couldn't conceive a life she would be happy in where she gave them up.
Where she felt something was lacking, however, was in everything else.
Hurried take-out meals in her empty apartment. Untouched hobbies. Half-assed attempts to keep her ninjas skills sharp. Longing gazes towards the Hokage Tower, where a part of her just wanted to be assigned a mission, about anything, to anywhere. Perhaps a good old fashioned infiltration or assassination.
But when would she have the time for that?
She knew her job was burning her out. And maybe she needed to take a break, but at the same time, she most certainly didn't want her career to lose its momentum or her life to slow down.
No, she didn't want slow. She wanted more. But more of what?
Would wedding planning and marriage and kids help her find that missing contentment like everyone told her they would?
…Maybe? Though she was skeptical.
Being single wasn't a problem for Sakura. That wasn't what felt unsettling about this milestone stuff.
In fact, Sakura was envious of friends like TenTen, who thrived in her life without any interest in a formal partnership. She buried herself in community work, spent time with her large family, excelled in her ninja duties, and, perhaps what Sakura was envious of most of all, TenTen just had this air of certainty and ease about her path that Sakura would give anything to feel even just a shred of.
No, Sakura really didn't have anything against being single.
Perhaps one of her problems was that she didn't quite know if she was.
She blew a stray strand of drying hair from her face, stowed away the newspaper she never read, cleaned up her dishes, and packed away the leftovers for tomorrow's lunch.
After her bedtime routine, Sakura paused before the cherry wood desk tucked in the corner of her bedroom. Instinctively, she jostled open the top drawer and pulled out the well-worn paper waiting atop a stack of scrolls. She smoothed it over the desk, its frays and specs of water damage illuminated in the dim bedroom lighting.
Her stomach twisted at the sight of the familiar slanted, scratchy penmanship, one of the few things that kept her believing she was on the cusp of figuring out something important about her life, kept her dreaming. The reminder that she was still tied to some kind of adventure.
She hadn't seen Sasuke in over a year.
Sakura's former teammate turned international criminal turned war hero had left the village not long after being discharged from the hospital post-war. He'd called the departure a journey of atonement to see the world through unclouded eyes and find a way to repent for the sins of his past.
Whatever exactly that meant.
The bond she shared with him was a special one to say the least. They'd grown up together, become as close as family, all while she'd worn her heart on her sleeve and, in their quieter moments, he'd fanned some of her sparks.
And then, despite hers and Naruto's best efforts… he'd left them.
Until, finally, after the Hokage-in-training himself had saved Sasuke from the clutches of evil in the form of a brutal battle that resulted in them literally tearing each other limb from limb, they were all together again, almost like old times.
Those first few weeks of peacetime were possibly the happiest of Sakura's life, between shared meals, game nights, long walks, and private medical sessions with her teammates to support their adjustments to having a prosthetic limb, or, in Sasuke's case, living as an amputee. All the while, she and Sasuke had grown closer, picking up the rhythm that had always come naturally between them.
So when he'd announced he was leaving again, Sakura had been caught rather off-guard.
While Sakura wanted to be supportive of whatever Sasuke needed to get his sense of purpose back, she couldn't help her own selfish disappointment. And then, when he'd explained she had no place on his journey but left her with a maybe next time, Sakura had clung to that promise, and convinced herself that it would all fall into place for her, for them, one day.
In the meantime, she would keep her head down, focus on work, and wait for things to make sense again.
Yet now, more than a full year later, things had never made less sense.
Their occasional letters to each other were her only glimpses into his life. Given Sasuke's constantly changing and intentionally untraceable locations, she'd addressed the letters to contact points he frequented, thanks to intel from Kakashi, the current Hokage, and hoped he'd receive them eventually.
His responses took weeks, sometimes months, to come through. They always did eventually though, which apparently said something as Sasuke only replied to about half of Kakashi's letters.
While their correspondence had rarely consisted of anything more than sparse life updates, they always gave her something to smile about because his messages were just as deadpan and familiar as the way he talked.
Like when Sakura inquired about his arm, or lack thereof, and his reply had been, It's fine, except the wind blew this stupid paper away while I was writing to you because I had nothing to hold it down with, which painted an extraordinarily hilarious image of the renowned and feared and immensely frustrated Uchiha heir chasing around a piece of paper.
Or when he'd said, Since Naruto only has the attention span to write up to two complete sentences per letter, thought I'd ask you how his wedding stuff is going.
Sometimes he described places he had been, but never mentioned his current whereabouts or planned destinations, likely as a precaution in case his letters were tracked. He never gave any indication of when, or whether, he was coming home.
As the months stretched on, the weight of this uncertainty grew harder and harder for Sakura to contend with.
Their sparse exchanges were friendly and nothing more and she couldn't help but wonder what exactly she was clinging to or hoping for from all of this.
Maybe their lives weren't as entwined as Sakura had made herself believe, and while she should have been focusing on finding a husband or starting a family or whatever, she'd wasted time fretting over a pen-pal. Maybe this was the natural conclusion of that could-have-been adventure.
It was finally sinking in that all of this with Sasuke, whatever this even was, was only fuelling her existential uncertainty.
One day, after a particularly exhausting day at work, a failed attempt to exercise at the gym (that had ended with a chakra-enhanced footprint in a treadmill), and a leaky faucet in her kitchen sink, the filter Sakura normally kept over her feelings while writing to Sasuke, slipped.
Thinking about you and your adventures around the world is the only thing that gets me through the day sometimes, she'd scrawled at the end of a letter, without thinking twice about it, just before signing her name.
And then, in a tired haze, she'd sealed and delivered the letter while on her way to pick up a take-out meal. It was only the following morning that she remembered what she'd written. Out of sheer embarrassment for sounding so pathetic, she'd even attempted to chase down the messenger hawk, but the letter was long gone and there was no way for her to recall it.
From there, she'd spent four brutal weeks festering in her humiliated panic while she awaited his response, though a part of her had wondered if this time, she wouldn't get one.
And then, it came.
It marked their most recent exchange, and after only a few short days, Sakura was a little ashamed of how many times she'd reread it.
She bowed over her bedroom desk, leaning on her palms and releasing a sigh, torn between tracing the words with her fingertips and tearing the letter to shreds. For the final words in Sasuke's letter had left her feeling unsure where to go from here.
I think about you too.