Green eyes leveled at him, glinting like a freshly sharpened and polished blade. Pastel lashes lowered to shade jade eyes, casting a shadow that colored them darker, like rain soaked leaves after a summer storm.
“Brute strength might have made you,” he muttered, taking slow, lazy steps around the circumference of the invisible boundary of Sakura’s turf.
He came to a stop, five paces behind her left shoulder. Her right ankle twitched, the heel shifted back by a tenth of a tenth of an inch.
“If left unrestrained,” he continued, marking the ripple of tension that rolled from the top of her head to the soles of her feet, “I can unmake you with nothing of the sort.”
“Save your riddles, Kakashi-sensei,” she snapped. “You agreed to train me.”
“So I did,” he sighed. Her next breath whooshed out audibly from between her teeth. “What if I told you it was to humor you in your moment of elevated emotion?”
Using the right foot, she pivoted, appearing before him in the blink of an eye, her fist curled tight in the front of his shirt. The flexible fabric popped under the strain of her grip.
“I’d say that you owe me,” she murmured. Despite the cool quality to her tone, her fingers yet trembled, ever-so slightly. “For all the time wasted, and the days you ignored me before. It’s the least you can do.”
“I acknowledge my failures,” he replied. He swallowed thick, eyed the deepening furrow between his former student’s fair brows, the dancing of freckles along the wrinkled bridge of her nose.
“I’ve moved past wanting your acknowledgement.” Sakura released him with a shove that smarted, no doubt leaving a bruise. “I want you to create in me what you made of Naruto and Sasuke.”
He dodged her next blow, his blood pressure spiking in response to the reverberation of her fist smashing into the spot where his face could have been. The world whipped around in a whirlwind of color as she launched herself at him again and again, taking direct blows to her abdomen, her legs and face without as much as a flinch.
With a frustrated growl, Sakura heaved herself up from the ground, swaying into an offensive stance. He stood rooted in the spot he was in before, unruffled and unmarred save for the throbbing bruise at his sternum.
“If you have to break me apart to make me strong,” she panted, sweeping dirt from her cheek with the back of a torn glove. “So be it.”
“That’s not a healthy mentality,” he mumbled, scratching at his chest. He glanced down lazily at his feet, toeing a bit of rock with his sandal. “I suspect this is perhaps a twisted sort of coping mechanism, and I must say I do not recommend it.”
Kakashi attempted to keep his tone light, aiming for brevity and familiarity. Inside him something curled in his gut, sickening him with the image of a pale, youthful face splattered with strangers’ blood and tiny gobbets of flesh.
“You’re the last person to talk to me about coping mechanisms,” Sakura spit, commingled saliva and blood falling, splat, to the side. “You’ve killed or found dead most of your loved ones and spend your free time reading porn or talking to headstones. I couldn’t care less to know what you consider ‘healthy’.”
“Now, that isn’t very nice.” His jaw clenched before he inhaled deeply through his nose, becoming the picture of relaxation once again. “My sweet Sakura-chan would never have talked to sensei like that.”
She scoffed, rushing toward him with yet another full frontal assault. Even as he maintained his composure and twisted away and around her attacks, his muscles strained and heart raced with adrenaline.
Despite the assumed simplicity of her battle style, her technique was near-flawless. Sakura was fast, precise. Lethal. Each movement had a purpose and nothing was wasted from the flexing of her forearms to the touch of her toes to the ground. Kakashi knew that if she were to get her hands on him, he could very well be a dead man.
She fought with a ferocity born of trauma and marrow-deep determination. Her only failure was being fresh, lacking the experience that had festered inside of him for decades; her terrors had accumulated over only a handful of years.
His knowledge of her talent was now supplemented with the new awareness of her capacity for cruelty. It frightened him, even as the part of him buried deep inside who once sought out shinobi for qualities just like that was…intrigued.
Her voice tore from her throat, ripped through his musings and brought him back to the present just in time to duck below a kick that likely would have freed his head from his shoulders:
“You never had any qualms about ruining your students before. Why do I have to be different?”
Because you are different, he thought. He wanted to say, this isn’t you.
Kakashi had to stop completely in his tracks, locking his hands around her wrists in a hold that he knew she could break. He stared down, into her green eyes that were so bright they seemed to glow, at the thick locks of pink brushing past her shoulders.
He had seen that face so many times, watched it age and change slowly through the years. But everything, at this moment, looked so very unfamiliar. As if he hardly knew the girl–no, woman now– at all.
He wondered if he ever knew who Sakura was, if there was a Sakura to know— or if the young woman standing before him was an amalgamation of the people who had been there to form her. The compassion of her mother, wit of her master, quick temper from Naruto, hatred from Sasuke. That just barely cruel edge masked with pretty snark, everything Yamanaka Ino pruned her to be.
Kakashi wondered what, if anything, she might have inherited from him.
“If you want me to treat you like everyone else,” he said, shifting his feet ever-so-slightly, rolling his shoulders back, “so be it, then.”
Her next swipe of a chakra-laden hand cut through a billow of leaves. In the next moment, her legs were kicked out from under her, Kakshi’s knee pressed to her nape, a kunai glinting next to her cheek.
She growled in frustration, the tips of her ears stained red as she bucked and thrashed, dislodging him from his position on her back.
“There is no honor in the field,” he said, watching her face as her eye flitted between his feet and hands. “There are no standards of ethics, no codes of conduct.”
“I have been in the field before,” Sakura hissed, her limbs almost trembling with pent up energy. “I haven’t just been sitting around playing pretty nurse.”
“Assume what you know of shinobi to be a lie,” he continued, marking how she bristled at his lack of response to her quip. “We are not heroes. Not ninja like us. We don’t fight to protect the weak and the poor, nor do we fight enemies because it is the right thing to do.”
“Let Naruto and Sasuke be the heroes,” she spat. Mint-green chakra condensed around her fists, morphing into blade-like protrusions between her knuckles. “I just want to get the job done.”
“If I asked you to assassinate a man who is not even a shinobi,” he asked, lowering his voice so he knew she would have to strain to hear it, “would you do it?”
A beat passed, a minute shift in her features come and gone within the span of a blink.
“Yes.”
“Hesitation,” he sighed. “You don't have the heart for it, Sakura-chan.”
“You don’t know me,” she barked, her hand snatching him by the collar for one brief second before his form slipped away with a poof, leaving a log in its place.
“I do.”
“Everyone thinks they know who I am, what I’m capable of,” Sakura panted, swiping moisture from her brow and whirling to face him with a kunai glinting in her hand. “They make assumptions based on my background, on how I look, on who trained me–”
Their blades clanged, the force reverberating through the bones of his arm.
“–on who didn’t,” she whispered, baring her teeth and narrowing her eyes.
Kakashi allowed a tendril of electricity to zip between his fingers and crackle down the edge of his blade, watched as his former student flinched violently for a fraction of a second before she schooled her expression and steeled her grip.
“I don’t need to assume,” he said cooly, tightening his grip on his blade and his own emotions. He allowed his voice to deepen, his gaze to harden as he stared down into her pale, pinched face. “I know exactly who and what you are.”
“Yeah?” she grunted, bared her teeth. The tendons and his wrists began to ache, muscles bunching with strain as she slowly increased the force of her hand. “What am I, then?”
She had been angry since she arrived on the training grounds. But even as she cursed and spit nastiness at him, he knew that she was still restrained. By respect and her own inherent composure.
He also knew just how to strip that all away.
“Just a civilian girl,” Kakashi whispered, “playing shinobi games.”
When he had pushed Sasuke to his limits, the immediate response was pure, unadulterated rage. Anger that had festered into a pestilence, that carried with it the stench of rotting trees and old blood. He could see in his mind’s eye that way the young boy’s features had twisted like gnarled roots, how his eyes had bled the deepest red.
As always, Sakura was different. In the split second after his words filled the air around them, an agonized expression stole across her face, slackened her jaw and pulled her eyes wide until the green pupils seemed like pinpricks in the whites of them. Her breath stalled in her throat, lips trembling and jaw clenching tight.
Within the blink of his eyes he was slammed backward, pain radiating like a vibration to his spine as a crater formed to his shape around him. He twisted his fingers through hand signs furiously, throwing a barrage at ninjutsu in her direction. It bought him a few seconds, just barely long enough to pull himself to his feet unsteadily, lock his knees as she threw herself at him again in a flurry of feet and fists.
“Tsunade’s tricks, as usual,” he grunted, ducking low to avoid a blow he was sure was intended to actually free his head from his shoulders this time. “I suppose you’re a creature of habit.”
The sound that spilled from Sakura’s mouth could only be described as a garbled roar of fury. She kicked up a chunk of earth and launched it in his direction, following up with a veritable storm of kunai that it took more effort to avoid than he cared to admit.
Kakashi was equal parts proud and terrified at her performance.
“What about you,” Sakura shouted, her voice raw and broken. He fought to hear her still, over his thundering pulse.
“Me?” he questioned mildly. He sent a crackle of lightning toward her that ate away at the waist of her clothes, leaving bubbling, burned skin behind.
It was healed, fresh skin covering the area within moments.
She drew closer than anyone who truly knew him dared, and he managed to snag both of her wrists and lock her against him with a kunai pressed to her sternum.
“Friend-killer Kakashi,” she breathed, her breath hot on his face. Sweat tricked in rivulets from her temples, blood crusted at the corner of her mouth.
Deep inside of him, something ached. But he simply arched his brow, poising himself for the moment Sakura would break his hold, hoping he could avoid losing a limb or more when it happened.
Instead, she only stared. Until both of their breaths began to slow and silence settled like a weight on his back.
“You see her in me, don’t you?” Sakura asked, her voice quiet but piercing in the unnatural quiet around them.
“Are you ready to end our training session already?” he quipped. “I have quite a large pile of paperwork waiting on my desk.”
“The little civilian girl,” she continued, voice taking on that soft, child-like quality it had that blood soaked night that changed their lives. “One you could not save from a shinobi’s fate. I’m sure it keeps you awake at night.”
“Be careful, Sakura-chan,” he replied in a low voice. “Remember that you asked me for help.”
“Of course I did,” she grinned, and it looked sickly, false. There was no light to be found in her wide, wide eyes. “Because how could you deny me? Poor little Sakura-chan. So much like the friend you lost.”
“Training is over,” he stated. He loosened his grip on her wrists and inhaled deeply before stepping back. “Next time we work on your focus and control of your emotions.”
“Was Rin a deadweight, too?” Just as he turned his back and took the first step away, that name slipping past her lips made him falter.
“Sakura,” he whispered. “Enough.”
“I’ve thought about it many times,” she sighed, and he heard the shift of her feet over pebbles and upset soil. “Eventually I came to the conclusion that you neglected my development to somehow make up for the ways you failed to protect your teammate. If I never got into a fight, I couldn’t die in one, ne?”
Kakashi began taking tremulous steps forward, determined to leave the training grounds and this twisted turn of conversation behind. He would deal with his so-obviously cracking former student later. He had his own splintering glass to patch over, for now.
“I’m sure you thought you were protecting me,” Sakura raised her voice, her words falling upon his unwilling ears even as he sauntered away. “But did you ever think that instead of keeping me safe, you could have got me killed?”
Guilt burrowed so deep in his bones he struggled to breathe around it. He closed his eyes, unwilling to look into the memories and truth.
“You almost killed me, Kakashi-sensei,” she cried, something like mirth but far darker clouding her voice.
“I didn’t mean to,” he breathed.
“Kakashi,” a whisper, carried through the wind. His blood froze in his veins. “You killed me.”
Every single one of his muscles locked into place, his heart stalling for a long handful of seconds before resuming at a thunderous, violent pace. His hands shook, knees becoming weak as he toiled to pry his stiffened lips open–
“Kai.”
“You killed me, Kakashi,” the voice whispered again, tremulous. “Why?”
Kakashi’s body jerked, and he clenched his fists, allowing his blunt nails to bite sharply into his palm and uttered the phrase again.
Yet the air did not change, nor his visage of the ruined training ground. His breaths became shallow and a lump lodged in his throat as quiet, tiny footsteps sounded behind him, drawing closer.
“Why did you kill me, Kashi?” she asked. “Aren’t we friends?”
“Stop.”
He flared his chakra, snatched it inward. Fire danced over his knuckles, scalding him and yet–
Wake UP!
“Kashi,” she whispered, voice thick with pain and sadness. “How could you do this?”
As in all of his nightmares, he was helpless and unable to prevent his stiff neck from turning, to avoid the sight of a small girl soaked to the bone in blood, a gaping darkness where her chest should be.
“I’m sorry, Kashi,” Rin whispered. Black marks like diseased veins snaked from the edges of the maw of her wound, up her throat, webbing across her cheeks.
“No,” he rasped.
The scent of blood, pungence of burnt flesh filled his nose and mouth with every gasping breath. He stumbled backwards, clutching at the area above his own wildly beating heart.
The fabric of his shirt stuck to his fingers, and he snatched the hand away, staring blankly at the streaks of red spread thickly from fingertip to forearm, bits of sharded bone and fibrous clumps of flesh clinging to the fine hairs.
He gagged, nearly losing his footing again.
“Why would you do that, Kakashi-sensei?” The sound of Sakura’s voice caused his head to whip upward, but he was once again met with Rin’s small, ruined face.
“Stop this,” he begged.
“Kaka-sensei,” Sakura whispered.
Suddenly it was her, wide green eyes glossed with tears, pink hair stained with blood and small, pale hands prodding tenderly around the bleeding hole in her chest.
“Why, Kakashi?” she sniffled.
“Why?” Rin echoed, her face flickering over Sakura’s. “Why?”
“Why,” they both whispered, such different voices somehow entangling and becoming one, “did you kill me?”
Kakashi crumbled to his knees, clutching at his ears and shaking his head, unable to free himself from the lilting cacophony of the two voices, questioning and taunting him. They refused to be quieted or drowned out, even when he began to scream. It was as if they had multiplied into a chorus, hundreds of his failures joining to ask him why, why, why-
WHY?
WHY?
“Kakashi-sensei.”
He came to awareness with a violent gasp, back arching upward and sending a bruising ache rattling down his spine.
Sakura gazed down at him, the sunlight forming a halo around her head, lightening her pink strands until her hair resembled more a rose-gold. Sharp rock pressed into the backs of his legs and neck, and an incessant pressure against his chest urged him to look downward.
“Get off,” he croaked.
She moved her foot away from his chest without a word, taking a step away from the crater within which his body was stuffed. He pulled himself up to stand on shaking legs and swallowed his panting breaths.
“A new trick,” she eventually murmured, after minutes of standing by as he struggled to grasp reality. “You told me once that I had an affinity for genjutsu. So.”
Kakashi barked a laugh that burned in his throat.
“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “That you do.”
Finally, he met her eyes. Her expression was blank, her eyes downcast. Not even a tell-tale twitch of her brow or crinkle of her nose cued him into what she could possibly be thinking.
“Well,” he exhaled, straightening and shoving a hand into the pocket of his pants. His fingers stroked against the edge of his kunai. “You’ve proven your point. See you tomorrow, same time. Have a good day, Sakura-chan.”
As he walked away, in the direction of the Hokage tower, he could feel her stare on his back. The feeling persisted for hours after.
Give up the ghosts
Sakura peered down at the sleeping Mitokado Homura, still and silent as the dead. It was easy to do so, considering she felt as if her own heartbeat was but a mere illusion. Her focus remained on the rise and fall of a frail chest, the webs of blue-green veins barely visible under paper-thin skin illuminated by moonlight.
A shinobi who had served under the second Hokage, one who had lived at least three shinobi lifetimes, laid so peacefully— face marred with wrinkles of age rather than the horrors of death and murder and generational strife. Sakura did not think it possible for any shinobi to indulge in such a peaceful slumber.
A pale hand, littered with tiny scars and roughened with callouses reached out, fingers fluttering over the pulse thrumming gently in his neck. To his credit, his cloudy eyes snapped open immediately upon the faint contact, but it was already too late.
Fingers crushed around his windpipe, effectively bludgeoning his vocal chords and choking off the exclamation she knew would fall from his lips.
“Shhh, Mitokado-san,” she whispered, hands glowing faintly as she smoothed over the damage she had done to his trachea and esophagus.
A terrible, wheezing croak slipped from his lips as Sakura moved her hand back, leaving behind a dark, gritty stain.
Then a kunai swung toward her face, but—the poor wretch—it was far too slow. She snapped the wrist holding the blade like a rice cracker and went about hauling the man from his bed and tossing him none-too-gently into the plush armchair at the center of his room.
Planting her hands on thin thighs, she knelt in front of him, fingers dipping deep into the muscles, the tips of them coating with warm, sticky blood.
Homura’s breaths were coming out in frantic pants, his eyes shooting around the room as he squealed and whined helplessly, words shaping intelligibly on his thin, wrinkled lips. For a long moment, Sakura only stared, feeling oddly light and ungrounded as she watched the practically ancient man struggle desperately, numb to the weak blows rained upon her shoulders and head.
“You don’t look like a man who could eliminate an entire community of people,” she whispered eventually. The man froze at the sound of her voice, gaze widening in horror as she withdrew her nails from the flesh of his legs and reached for his face with blood-caked hands.
“I didn’t get a chance to talk to your friend, Utatane-san,” Sakura continued, smearing blood in lazy patterns over his quivering face. “I made it quick, too quick for her. Because I was mad. Shishou would be ashamed that I let my anger control my actions that way.”
“Y-you,” the murderer rasped, voice sounding ripped and warbling. He began choking, unable to say more as red bubbled from his lips.
“I want to talk to you,” Sakura nodded slowly, voice soft. “I want to talk about why you soaked your hands in the blood of innocents, why you ruined Sasuke-kun’s life.”
“Uchiha...not...innocent,” he wheezed and Sakura tilted her head.
“Are you? Innocent?” she inquired. There was no answer as the pressure of her hands increased and with a sickening crack, Mitokado Homura’s jaw crumbled against her palms.
The sound of his attempted cry of pain was barely audible above the roaring in her ears. One hand fell from his face and the familiar glow of her chakra illuminated his slackened, terrified face for a moment before it condensed into a scalpel that she cut into his side.
“I did this before,” she murmured, pushing her hand into the neat incision, reaching between ribs to wrap her fingers gently around the hot, pulsing organ in his chest, “in the war, to save Naruto’s life. I’m sure you hate the fact that I did that. Like how you hate that we brought Sasuke back, that you weren’t able to execute him. Pity.”
Her grip tightened around the frantically thumping heart in her hand; instead of steady compressions to a still, quiet organ, she mapped the arteries and cavities with her fingers and chakra and after a breath sent a thrum into a particular spot. The chunk of flesh in her grip seized, hardening, misshaping itself before twitching erratically. As the organ struggled to find its rhythm, Sakura noted the convulsing of its cage, glancing up to see the way the old man’s eyes rolled white into the back of his head.
She withdrew her chakra for a split second before it flowed out again from her fingertips, gently guiding the flow of blood to the lungs and brain, calming the erratic twitching of the fickle organ once more.
“Sasuke-kun told me he’s haunted by the ghosts,” she informed, watching as tears flowed thick down her enemy’s face, pooling in the divots and valleys of his worn flesh. “Are you? Do they visit you in your dreams, too?”
She disturbed the flow of her chakra again, clutching the malfunctioning organ as Homura once again thrashed, legs kicking uselessly at her belly, spittle foaming white at the corners of his mouth.
“Do you want to see them, Homura?” Sakura pushed her face close to his as she once again stabilized his heart. “Don’t you want to talk to them about your innocence?”
An otherworldly feeling rose up like a wave in her chest as the frantic, glazed eyes above her suddenly sharpened and began darting about the darkened corners of the room. Faces that were mostly unfamiliar to her, but so very recognizable to him bled out from the shadows, drawing closer, closer still.
The furnishings of the lavish room fell away, filled to the brim with pale faces framed with pitch-dark hair, glinting crimson eyes floating toward them.
“P-plea-,” Homura choked, a weak hand rising to clutch at his face, bony finger tips catching in the fragile lids framing his wide eyes. “St-st…”
His gaze grew more horrified by the moment as the room filled with the faces of young men, old women, small children, infants cradled in the arms of black-haired ladies with bleeding irises.
“Look at them,” she breathed, fingers undulating about the slick surface of the heart thundering in her grasp. “Look.”
What would have been a high pitched scream ripped from his throat in the form of a wheezing squeak as the blood-red eyes of his demons fell from their heads, leaving behind gaping darkness in their skulls as they continued to move forward, ever advancing.
“Shh, Homura,” Sakura cooed, reaching up to force his gaze back down to hers. “They can’t hurt you. They’re just ghosts. I am your reckoning.”
Cracked lips gaped in a silent shriek as her once green irises bled red.
“M-m-monster,” he gurgled.
“I know you are,” Sakura replied, sinking back onto the heels of her feet and holding his gaze, “but what am I?”
Then she was ripping her hand from the cavity of his chest, blood, bone shard and viscera splashing hot over her cheeks as cloudy brown eyes widened before the light in them faded and his entire body went slack, sinking lifeless into the back of the armchair.
The taste of iron bit at the tip of her tongue as her lips spread into a crooked smile.
Forgive me not
Sasuke pretended that his gaze was focused on the tepid cup of tea cradled in his palm when the door creaked open and closed. As if moments before he had not been watching, waiting for it to swing open, for the sound of shuffling footsteps and rustling fabric to reach his ears in the ambience of the night-time hours.
“Okaeri,” he greeted quietly, voice raspier still than he would have liked. More internal wounds to heal from, he supposed.
“Tadaima.”
It was more of a sigh than a response. And so he allowed himself to look toward the doorway, to watch as Sakura trudged further into her tiny living room. She flicked on a lamp, casting the space in a weak, yellow glow.
“We don’t all have night vision like a cat, Sasuke-kun,” she muttered. Nearly each word was chased by an exhalation, a release of breath that made him wonder if words weighed like burdens on her tongue, too.
“You look tired,” he stated. His eyes tingled and the room became clearer, if less colorful as he engaged his dojutsu. “Chakra reserves are low.”
“Yeah, well,” she replied stiffly, footsteps pausing for a beat before she shuffled forward slowly. “I have a job. No special house-arrest vacation for me.”
“Hn.”
Sasuke let the snide comment wash over him, inhaling deeply through his nose and out of his mouth. Had Naruto said it, they might have come to blows. But this was Sakura–she had more than earned the right to tug on his nerves now and again.
“There’s dinner in the refrigerator,” he said softly as she finally swept past him, the scent of antiseptic thick, hints of jasmine seeping through.
“I’m not hungry,” she replied without turning.
“You must be.”
Her shoulders lifted in a shrug and she did not respond, swaying her way around various obstacles on the path to her bedroom. A low table, a small stack of heavy tomes. The tall, flowering plant that Sasuke watered and clipped every other day to give himself something to do other than sitting and stewing in his own thoughts. It had a strong fragrance, almost cloying, and it made his nose burn and head ache if he spent too much time in proximity to it. But Sakura would smile a little when the flowers looked vibrant.
When he stepped behind her, she froze, formerly slumped posture overcorrecting as her spine became rigid and her neck stiff.
“I’m not hungry,” she sighed. Sasuke only stared as she rotated slowly, bracing one of her hands on the doorframe leading into her room.
“You’ll sleep better on a full stomach,” he stated.
“I’m too tired to eat,” she countered. Indeed, her lips parted and jaw elongated on a wide yawn.
“It’s not poisoned.”
Sakura rolled her bloodshot eyes, “I know you wouldn’t poison me, Sasuke-kun.”
“I waited to eat with you.”
When her eyes finally met his head on, he knew he had won.
“Come on,” she grumbled.
Her shoulder brushed his chest, just barely, as she stepped around him. Sasuke traced the slope of her shoulders with his gaze, tracking the rhythm of her slow gait as she shuffled to the kitchen.
Sakura wrenched the fridge open and collected the collection of tupperware, scraping their contents into plates and bowls and shoving them into the microwave in silence. Sasuke stood quietly on the other side of the counter and watched.
“Are you,” she bit her lip, sliding his food toward him, “waiting for me to attack you, or something?”
“What?” he blinked, absently reaching for the chopsticks she had slid across the counter as well.
“You’ve been staring at me with the sharingan since I walked in,” she waved one hand in his general direction. Her chin stayed low, eyes fixed on the food in front of her.
“It scares you?” he asked, blinking again and letting his dojutsu disengage. “Sorry.”
“That’s not what I said,” she mumbled around a mouthful of food, chewing somewhat aggressively. “Just…I don’t understand why you’d use it when you’re at– here, with me.”
Sasuke took his own bite, studying her face as he considered.
“Sometimes I want to see more than I can with regular eyes,” he finally said.
“Hm. Okay,” she muttered. She continued to shovel food into her mouth.
“Are you sure it doesn’t scare you?” Sasuke asked, suddenly unable to take another bite. He set his chopsticks down and opted to swirl his spoon around the steaming bowl to his right.
“Should it?” she asked quietly. Her eyes flitted up to his briefly before focusing lower, perhaps on his chin.
“No.”
She stared downward, motionless. His fingers tightened around the spoon.
“Then, no. It doesn’t.”
Sasuke stirred his broth some more. Sakura resumed eating and silence blanketed the kitchen again.
“You don’t look me in the eyes when it’s engaged.”
“That’s shinobi 101,” she said briskly, sipping a spoonful of her own broth. “Never look directly in the eyes of someone who has the sharingan. I would do the same with anyone.”
“I’m the only one left,” he whispered.
She stilled, before lowering her spoon with a quiet clack to the counter. Her mouth opened as if she were going to speak, then closed again.
“You never looked away from it before,” he stated. His fingers tightened around the spoon once more, the metal warming in his grip.
Sakura glanced up to his eyes again, her full lips turning down a fraction. Then she shook her head, and let loose a quiet laugh.
“The last time I looked into your sharingan,” she said, lips twisted in a rueful smile, “you wrapped me up in a pretty nasty genjutsu, Sasuke-kun.”
An ache settled in his chest and shame washed over his head like an angry tide. He dropped the spoon and dropped her gaze.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped.
“It’s okay,” she said softly. “I forgave you long ago, Sasuke-kun.”
“Yeah,” he whispered. “But your instinct tells you that I’m a threat. I have made you uncomfortable in your own home.”
“Sasuke-kun. That’s not true.”
“You hardly eat,” he replied, voice low. “I hear you awake in your room at night. You spend more hours at the hospital than you are scheduled for to stay away as long as possible.”
“Sasuke-kun…”
He lifted his head, watched as she flinched at the sight of his red iris. A sick feeling swirled in his gut as he let the crimson bleed away.
“It was better for you when I was tied up and blindfolded in the prison. You probably felt safer.”
“Sasuke-kun, please,” she choked. Her palm smacked into the surface of the counter. “Don’t say things like that. Don’t be cruel.”
“I mean it,” he said quietly. “It makes sense that things would be easier when you actually felt safe with me.”
“I’m going to bed,” she said thickly, whirling away from the counter and taking heavy steps toward the exit of the kitchen.
“You never ran from me before, either,” he murmured. Sakura froze midstep.
“I can’t do this tonight, Sasuke-kun,” she breathed, voice barely audible with how she faced away from him. The desperation rang clear yet.
“I won’t stay here if you’re afraid of me,” Sasuke replied tightly. “I want you to feel safe.”
Sakura remained silent. He stood, the sound of his chair scraping the ground causing her to flinch.
He decided against approaching.
“Sakura,” he whispered.
“I can forgive you for anything, Sasuke-kun,” she said quietly, her voice tremulous and so very tired. “Anything. But I can’t forget so easily. I can’t help that my mind clings to certain images and that my body reacts. Call it fear if you want.”
Her head turned slightly, pink tresses shielding the majority of her face.
“Maybe it scares me to sleep under the same roof as the boy who put his hand through my chest in a dream,” she rasped. “But it scares me more to sleep under this roof alone, without knowing you’re somewhere close by. So let me have my fear–let me have you in the only way I can, until I get over one or the other.”
Shame, his oldest friend, clung heavy on his shoulders. It pressed upon his back and caused an ache in his chest, dragging especially on his left-hand side.
“If there was something I could do to take it back,” he rasped, “I would. Doing that to you is the worst crime I have committed.”
“Maybe not the worst,” she muttered. A heavy sigh brought her shoulders up, then down into a slump. “What’s happened, happened. I forgive you, Sasuke. You have to let it go as much as I do.”
Sasuke took a step forward despite himself, despite the way she stiffened.
“Sakura,” he whispered, drawing closer and daring to touch her arm with the tips of his fingers.
“Sasuke-kun, you can’t take it back,” she whirled and looked at him, chin tilted to stare straight into his eyes. “We both have to live with it. We can't unsee it or undo it; we just have to live with it.”
His lips turned down into a frown, an ache settling between his ribs.
“I’ll stay with Naruto,” he murmured. “I will leave– tonight.”
Yet his feet remained rooted to the spot, his body looming mere inches from hers. Staring, breathing.
“You won’t,” she whispered. “Not unless I tell you to go.”
“Tell me then,” he replied thickly. “Tell me to go.”
“No,” she breathed. She began shaking her head slowly, blinking as if meeting his eyes was the same as staring straight into the midday sun.
“Don’t let me hurt you more than I already have,” he begged. His hand lifted, drew close, cupped her face just as it turned away.
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“You’re so beautiful,” his voice coos huskily, mere breaths from her ear. “ My Sakura .”
She moans, stretching her limbs like a cat, legs splaying wide as his fingers brush, featherlight, over her folds.
“Touch me, Sasuke-kun,” she begs in a whisper, rolling her hips against the air, leveling him with a needy stare. She spreads her legs wider, presenting all of herself to entice him into action, into granting her relief from the throbbing ache inside.
“Here?” he murmurs, that small grin she loves so much curving his mouth as he presses his palm fully over her dripping core.
She gasps, eyes rolling back as he rubs at her with his full hand, spreading her wetness all over. The tips of his fingers slip teasingly between her sensitive folds, one dipping slightly into her entrance now and then.
Her release is so close, maddeningly close but just out of her reach. She whines through Sasuke’s ministrations, canting her hips and begging him to give her what she needs, to push deep inside of her to touch that part of her that needs it most.
“Shhh,” he whispers, leaning forward until she feels surrounded by him, his heat, the scent of sage and ash and smoke. “I’ll take care of you, my love.”
And finally, finally, he sinks two fingers deep inside, curling, reaching and thrusting as he chants–
“Sakura.”
Her eyes fly open to find obsidian and hints of lavender staring down at her. The thin padding of her mission pack digs into the flesh of her cheeks, her blanket tucked high around her chin but tangled and askew around her legs.
His gaze is dark, apologetic when he murmurs, “I’m sorry to wake you, but we have to move on. I can smell a storm coming in soon. We should leave before it hits.”
Sakura nods shakily, sitting up abruptly and offering her sweetest smile. Once he turns to stalk out of the rickety abandoned shelter, she presses both hands to her blazing cheeks and muffles a groan in her knees.
Fuck.
~
The air is so cold it feels like tiny kunai scraping against his cheeks as it whips by. Water is falling in sheets toward the ground and in various directions. Freezing droplets splash against his scalp and the exposed skin of his throat, dribbling down to soak under his clothes.
He glances to his side, single hand tightening over Sakura’s trembling fingers as she blinks up at him through spiky, wet lashes.
“It’s really coming down, isn’t it?” she murmurs. Sasuke is sure she is likely speaking at a normal volume; it is only that her voice is drowned out by the sound of the pouring rain, and the whistle of wind slashing through the trees and brush around them.
“Come on,” he says at an elevated volume, drawing her close to his side. “There should be a cave nearby to shelter in until the storm passes.”
A fizzling crack of lightning followed by a thunderous boom makes her flinch. Sakura shoots him a sheepish smile before shuffling closer to his side and ducking her head against the onslaught. Sasuke frees her wrist, fanning out his cloak to fall around her shoulders in a last-ditch attempt to shield her from the downpour. It is useless, he knows, as they have both been practically soaked to the bone already.
With her pressed this close to his side, Sasuke can feel the way her entire body is shivering. His hand unconsciously firms in its grip, fingers tightening at the curve of her waist. The bit of skin exposed by the cropped nature of her top is riddled with gooseflesh. He is attuned enough to her after weeks of close-contact that he can tell she is circulating her chakra in an attempt to keep warm.
He inhales deeply, the scent of rain, soil and Sakura filling his nose. As he exhales, he begins to follow suit, kneading his chakra beneath the surface of his skin and concentrating it in the palm of his hand at her side, where his hip is flush against hers as they tread heavily through the thick mud and water.
She shivers again, tightening a fist in his cloak and bringing it close to her chest. Her other hand snakes behind his back, fingers splaying at the center of his spine. He flits his gaze down to hers again and sees her pale cheeks tinted with the slightest bit of pink.
“Thank you,” she mouths, offering him a smile. Her soft bangs stick against the frame of her face, colored a dusky rose from the moisture. Her eyes somehow look brighter against the dark and the gray around them, shining like two jewels in her face.
“Aa,” he breathes. Another streak of lightning and clap of thunder sounds and then the rain begins to fall impossibly heavier.
Facing forward, he quickens his pace to a jog, clutching her absentmindedly to his side all the while.
~
By the time they reach the mouth of the cave, Sasuke and Sakura are dripping wet, pale and shivering. The storm rages outside, rivulets of water flooding the ground. Luckily this place is carved out of a ledge a few feet above ground level, high enough to avoid flooding and deep enough to protect against the violent winds and icy rain.
Sasuke drops his pack near the edge, venturing deeper while clutching a damp scroll. He unfurls it, using his sharingan to make things clearer in the darkness; with a click of his teeth, blood beads on the tip of his thumb and drips slowly onto the scroll. He murmurs a summoning jutsu and a pile of dry kindling appears.
He uses his katon , exhales a stream of flame to bring the fire roaring to life. He finds stray stones on the ground nearby and uses them to border the fire. A small sigh falls from his throat at the rush of warmth.
“That’s smart,” Sakura stutters from behind him. He turns to see her lingering near the mouth of the cave, dripping and shivering violently. “Storing firewood in a summoning scroll…genius.”
“Come closer to the fire,” he says, brow furrowing at the way her lips seem tinted purple even in the low, flickering light. “You’re freezing.”
She shakes her head, “I’m too wet. I need to change these clothes, and you do too…”
Her voice trails off as she drops shakily to a kneeling position, opening her pack and fumbling around. After a few moments she curses weakly and Sasuke rises to approach, peering down at her as she pulls out handfuls of wrinkled, wet fabric.
“Everything is soaked,” she sighs, cursing quietly again. “I wore the last of the clothes I had stored in my own scrolls. I should have known better. Fuck.” His lips almost quirk into a small smile; the very first week of their travels had brought the shocking realization that Sakura, sweet-voiced and angelic-faced as she was, cursed like a sailor.
His concern over her trembling form and blue-tipped fingers quickly kills any mirth he might have indulged.
“You’re going to get sick if you don’t get out of those wet clothes,” he says quietly. “I’ll check if there’s something in my bag that managed to stay dry.”
“Oh, Sasuke-kun…” she begins to protest, but Sasuke is already kneeling beside his own pack, rifling through his belongings.
Blood rises to his face slowly as he finds everything inside his bag is wet as well. He glances up at her apologetically.
“I have nothing dry enough,” he sighs, rising to a standing position. “I keep some bedding stored in my scrolls. We’ll have to make do with blankets alone.”
Sakura nods slowly, lashes fluttering as her gaze falls to the ground, focusing on the shadows cast by the dancing flame feet away. She fidgets for a second before reaching down to peel off her knee-high sandals, then, her tiny, pale toes flexing over the rocky ground.
Sasuke swiftly summons another scroll, pulling from it a small pile of thick blankets, and two thin sheets. He saunters toward the fire, laying the blankets as close as possible in the hopes that they would take on some extra warmth. He sheds his dripping cloak, tossing a kunai so that it wedges into the cave wall and hanging the garment from it. Even standing nearby the fire, a chill snakes down his spine as he levels a line of other kunai the same way, creating a space for them to hang up their clothes to dry.
He turns back to see Sakura clutching her arms around herself, shaking like the leaves being torn about by the racing winds outside.
“Here,” he says sharply, snatching up one of the thin sheets and walking briskly to stand in front of her, “take this and dry yourself. Then come wrap yourself in a blanket and sit by the fire. I’m going to quickly set up a few traps outside.”
Her teeth chatter as she said, “Sasuke-kun, I can help. Just let me-”
“Please,” he intercepts, stepping slightly closer. He can smell jasmine and rain and something sweet like berries standing this close. A hard swallow works down his throat before he urges her again, “Get warm. You’re shivering hard enough to break your bones. It will only take a moment, and it’ll give you privacy to…undress.”
Understanding lights her eyes and the tiniest pink flush dots her pallid cheeks. She nods again, creeping deeper into the cave and closer to the fire with her shoulders hunched forward.
Sasuke exhales a slow, heavy breath before pivoting on his heel and trudging out of the cave into the chaos outside. Rain pours over him, icy and feeling almost solid with the force of the downpour. He moves as quickly as he can about the perimeter, anchoring traps where he can only hope they won’t be swept away by the tiny current building on the ground as it floods with water. He casts an area genjutsu, wide enough that he thinks the traps will be a last resort anyway.
It takes him all of a handful of minutes to secure their area, but he dawdles anyway– he tells himself it is to ensure Sakura has time to dry and remove her clothes in peace. But the staccato of his heart behind his ribs and the sharp breaths puffing steam in the cold air cue him into his own desire to avoid being in close quarters for as long as possible.
The first few weeks of their travels had been maddening; they both were awkward and stilted, him being moreso, of course. His attraction to her only intensified in proximity, causing him to struggle every moment to not stare at the way different levels of light cast over her face, to lean in to capture the tinkling of her quiet laughs. Sasuke had nearly embarrassed himself on multiple occasions with the urge to sniff at her sweet-scented hair and overall pleasant aroma, because it called to him so.
Now, these reactions were more tame. Exposure had served them well, lulling them into an ambience of comfort–an anticipatory stasis at best. Sparing a glance did not seem such a monumental feat, and he did not feel the need to study her for hours, as if he would not see her again at any given moment.
Yet, all of the struggles of their early days alone rushed back and did so tenfold at night. Whether they sheltered in a cave like the one he loitered outside of now, or in adjacent rooms at a small-village inn, the late hours brought with them traces of insanity, a yearning so intense it would cause him embarrassment that would linger until the morning.
He hesitates now, shivering and drenched because he is achingly aware that when he returns, Sakura will be bare save for one thin swathing of fabric. She will be close enough to breathe in her scent, to feel the essence of her chakra against his senses.
He realizes that she is likely huddling close to the fire now, cold and trying to sap in warmth with only a blanket and a meager flame.
Inhaling deeply once more, Sasuke turns and makes his way back to the mouth of the cave, slowing his steps once he is deep enough to not feel the rebounding splashes of water as it ricochets off the ground. He pauses, glancing upward at Sakura who sits mere inches away from the makeshift fire pit, curled in a ball so tight her form seems tiny, insignificant among the looming shadows dancing over the walls.
“Sasuke-kun,” she says, each consonant trembling as her teeth chatter lightly. “You’re back.”
“You’re still cold,” he replies, browns pinching as he notes the shudders wracking her form.
“Yeah,” she stutters, bobbing her head in a slightly disjointed manner. She attempts to give him a smile, nonetheless and his heart skips a beat. “It’s freezing. I’ll warm up soon, though. Hurry and get changed!”
He nods slowly, taking a few more steps before pausing again. His gaze falls to her small fingers clenched in the fabric at her chest, the still-damp locks of her hair falling waywardly around her face.
“I’ll, uh, I’ll close my eyes,” she snaps her lids shut, whipping her chin to the side so her face is turned away from him. “I won’t peek, promise.”
Sasuke chooses to believe the shiver that works his way down his spine is the result of the damp and the cold, and definitely not his body and mind traitorously reacting to the thought of Sakura choosing to watch him change, openly, instead.
She begins rocking back and forth as he makes quick work of slinging off his clothes. Her shoulder twitches under the blanket when his shirt falls with a wet smack onto the hard ground. He can see her visibly sucking in a deep breath when his pants follow suit. If he were not shivering from the low temperature, he is sure his face would be burning as he brusquely scrubs at his skin with a thin sheet, tossing that to the side before hunching, positioning his arm in front of his pelvis as he creeps forward carefully, inching around Sakura’s possible line of sight as he reaches to grab one of the blankets folded near the fire.
He tucks the fabric around him, relishing for a moment in the initial warmth before kneeling on his haunches as close as he can to the fire. As he positions himself, his shoulder brushes against Sakura’s and she perks up slightly, still turned away.
“You can open your eyes,” he murmurs.
She swivels her head to face him, eyes blinking open slowly and fixing on his face. The green of her eyes is slightly marred by the orange glow of the fire, her lashes looking more red in the dim light. The flames glow is the only thing bringing color to her cheeks, her lips tinted with lavender in their pallor.
Sasuke stiffens, mind swirling with solutions to bring her temperature up high enough for the danger of hypothermia to fade. He considers giving up his blanket for a moment before realizing that Sakura would only expend her energy fretting and he would likely become sick with cold and burden her even if he managed to convince her to take it.
“Tea,” he sputters, gnawing at his lip and blinking his eyes closed for a moment in humiliation when Sakura only tilts her head in confusion. “I’ll brew tea. Hopefully it’ll help us get warm more quickly.”
“Oh,” she bobs her head vigorously. “Yes, tea. That’s a good idea, Sasuke-kun.”
Sasuke springs to his feet before she is completely done speaking, glad to be doing something useful, yes, but also to create some distance even if shuffling over to his packs near the cave wall takes him away from the warmth of the fire. He sucks in a few quick breaths, trying to calm his thudding heart as his fingers fumble for the small muslin pack holding his herbs. They are soaked and wilted, but hopefully useful enough to brew a decent, if not so flavorful tea. He holds the sack gently between his teeth, reaching once more for the light, steel teapot. He hooks the handle over his pinky finger and wrestles out his water tin before straightening with a small huff.
When he turns, Sakura is watching him over her shoulder. She offers him a small smile when their eyes meet and he nearly stumbles despite standing motionless. Heat makes a valiant effort to pool in his cheeks and he dips his gaze, watching his frigid toes as they tap across the rough, hard floor back toward the fire and his companion.
She murmurs a quiet Thank you, Sasuke-kun as he goes about preparing the brew. By the time the teapot is stabilized over the burning logs, Sasuke is left with nothing to do but to clutch his blanket around his shoulders and stare at the water, willing it to boil faster. Despite his own trepidation, he had sat down so close beside Sakura that he could feel her shoulder brush against his arm with every breath either of them took.
His gaze wanders to the side for the umpteenth time in a handful of minutes, flitting over her pouty, chill-paled lips, the gentle arc of her brow and sweeping curve of her jaw. The freckles that are so faint in the natural light of the daytime seem stark, sprinkles of brown across the bridge of her nose and high points of the cheek due to how pale she has become. A shiver wracks through her and Sasuke tenses against the urge to reach out to her.
“Still cold?” he murmurs, pinning his gaze on her more fully. The fire was blazing strongly and most of the chill had faded from his own bones.
Sakura shivered again and scooted around slightly to face him.
“Yeah,” she whispers, lips tilting in a sheepish smile. “It’s much better than before, though. I’m just a wimp when it comes to cold weather.”
As she says those words, a clap of thunder sounds, loud enough to echo into the cave. A whoosh of cold air sweeps in, causing the fire to bend and flicker before it rights itself again. Sakura’s teeth chatter.
“I’m sorry,” Sasuke-kun says, a frown creeping over his features. “I shouldn’t have taken us the long way around. I wasn’t expecting a storm like this so soon in the season.”
Sakura shakes her head quickly, “No, no! I’m glad you did, the scenery– it was a really beautiful route. I enjoyed it a lot. I’m sure that’s not why you took us that way, of course, but…”
“It was,” he interjects, clearing his throat when her wide, green eyes shoot up to peer into his face. He can see the flames dancing about her pupils, casting an orange tint in her iris. “It was why I…took the scenic route. To show you. I thought you would like it.”
“Oh,” she says quietly, the word more of a sigh. Her lips curve upwards again, into a shy, sweet smile. “I liked it. Loved it, really. The river and the flower fields were so beautiful.”
“Aa,” he mutters gruffly. “Good.”
He turns quickly, rising to his haunches to stir at the bubbling liquid in the pot, hoping the flames would cast glow enough to camouflage the red tint of his cheeks.
Behind him, Sakura whispers, “Thank you for showing me, Sasuke-kun.”
The spoon he is holding catches against the rim of the teapot with a loud clang as he grunts some unintelligible response. He can feel a blush burning from neckline to temple, but he sets about pouring tea into two travel mugs with the straightest face he can manage. Sakura’s thanks and her bright expression seem to replay on a loop in his mind; he is left wondering, briefly, if he had managed to capture the moment with his sharingan, not even knowing it had been engaged.
A quiet sniffle causes him to snap out of his thoughts, resting the teapot back over the fire and reaching to offer one of the steaming cups to his trembling companion. She grabs it with both hands, soft, cool fingers brushing over his before drawing back slowly.
Sakura clutches the tea to her chest, shoulders hunched and head tipped downward to let the warm steam wash over her face. She sighs softly disturbing the whitish translucent stream rising about her cheeks for a second before inhaling deeply.
“You make the best tea, Sasuke-kun,” she mumbles, leaning in closer and closing her eyes as she breathes deeply once more. “This smells nice. It feels good, too.”
Sasuke nearly chokes but forces out a quiet scoff, “You’re just happy because it’s warm.”
She lifts her head long enough to throw him a grin and a quick wink. Sasuke nearly tips over, fingers clutching tight around the mug that nearly slipped from his grasp.
Pale, slightly chapped lips part, making a small o as Sakura begins blowing on her drink rhythmically. He finds himself mesmerized with the way her mouth puckers, the skin wrinkling slightly, soft folds looking like delicate petals. Her cheeks puff slightly, some of the color gradually returning to her flesh. It looks supple, so smooth and soft despite having spent time in the chafing cold. The fine hairs at her temples have begun to dry, curling slightly away from her forehead from the heat and steam. Sasuke has to bite the inside of his cheek to restrain the absurd urge to reach out and tap the rhombus on her forehead, the only thing that mars the perfection of the smooth expanse of skin.
Shutting his eyes, he lifts his cup to his lips, not even bothering to blow before chugging half of its contents. It’s hot, and burns going down his throat. But he mentally shrugs, because he breathes fire routinely and a little hot tea is not so bad in comparison.
The liquid is warm sliding down his throat, and he can feel it pool in his belly, chasing away most of the last dredges of cold from his muscles. Without his express permission, his eyes reopen and immediately come to rest on Sakura’s huddled form once more. He watches with apt attention as she blows gently once more, before bringing the cup closer to her mouth.
The metal rim rests on her plush lower lip, steam gathering at the top before she tilts the cup and slurps carefully, pulling the brew into her mouth. After the first tentative sip she sighs, humming quietly as she treats herself to a longer drink, tipping her chin back so that Sasuke catches a glimpse of the delicate column of her throat. It undulates softly with each of her swallows and his mouth runs dry, skin suddenly feeling rather hot beneath his blanket.
Bare skin. Just like hers is, hidden behind the thick layer of cloth.
He swallows thickly, quickly throwing back the rest of his tea, hardly even tasting the earthy, if slightly bitter, flavor.
“Mmm,” Sakura hums, the sound between a relaxed exhalation and husky moan. Sasuke’s fingers tighten around his empty container. “That feels so good .”
She could have very well pulled those very words from his dreams, an echo of one of the many, many imaginings that had circulated through his psyche when he let himself indulge in the deepest, most unguarded kinds of rest. It was these same imaginings that would cause him to awaken suddenly, sweating and panting, aching so much that he would be forced to flee from whatever sheltering space he shared with Sakura to wait out the effects of his own torturous fantasies.
“Aa,” he croaks.
Mechnically, he reaches to drain the last of the teapot’s contents into her cup, unable to prevent himself from openly staring as she repeats her process again. Curling into her own body, pursing her lips, blow, blow, blow , blow , inhale, exhale, slurp, slurp, swallow. He watches as a deep shudder works its way down her body, her muscles visibly relax, shoulders falling away from her ears. A healthier flush takes residence high on her cheekbones, creeping slowly across the bridge of her nose. Her lips look moist now, more red than pink, soft and full with the blood finally rising to the surface.
She drains this portion quicker than the first, setting down her cup with a satisfied sigh. Delicate fingers come up and sweep through the nearly-dry strands of her hair, raking them back away from her forehead. A few chunks of her grown-out bangs slip down slowly to frame her forehead, and Sasuke’s fingers twitch with the urge to touch them, to brush them back and secure them behind the pretty pink shell of her ear.
“Thank you, Sasuke-kun,” she says, voice stronger and more chipper. “Your tea pulled me away from death’s door!”
“Don’t joke like that,” Sasuke snaps, mouth flattening. Sakura only laughs, rocking back slightly and adjusting her grip on the blankets wrapped around her shoulders.
“Sorry,” she snorts quietly. “But really, I was starting to not be able to feel my toes. My body temperature has always run a bit on the low side… I thought maybe I was anemic or something. Tsunade says it’s just how I’m made. But it really sucks in situations like this.”
Sasuke only nods. He runs his eyes over her with a more critical eye, focusing on the digits peeking out from underneath the blanket at her chest and below, at the ends of her small feet. They have lost that palish blue hue, to his satisfaction.
Sakura continues, as always, so gracefully undeterred by his lack of responsiveness. “You always run hot, isn’t that right?”
“Aa,” he nods in the affirmative. “Uchiha thing. Didn’t think you’d noticed.”
Red fills her cheeks and she chuckles, rubbing at the side of her neck, “Ah, well, I’ve had to look at you medically quite a few times. And running your vitals, too! Your natural state is like a low-grade fever. You’ll be happy to know I finally put a permanent note on your file, so no one else will force you to go through illness screenings because of your temperature.”
Sasuke rolls his eyes, “It’s not like anyone else will ever be treating me.”
Sakura huffs, casting a disapproving glare at him that was more cute than ferocious.
“Sasuke-kun! None of our medics would ever turn away someone in need of medical care. It is against our code of honor.”
“Aa, I suppose they wouldn’t,” he says absentmindedly. Her flush has deepened and she chews on her lips in the most hypnotizing fashion. “But I’ll only ever want you.”
The words slip out of his mouth too easily, naturally. It is possibly the boldest thing he has ever said to anyone–to her – before but it feels so commonplace, so true , in all contexts, that he takes a moment to realize just how intense it is.
And by that time, Sakura has become so red that Sasuke fears for her health. He is caught between intense embarrassment and concern as she gapes at him for a split second, before clutching her blankets tighter to her chest and looking away from his face.
“O-oh,” she stutters, hands shifting under the fabric. “I’m flattered, then. And…I’ll always do my best to take care of you, Sasuke-kun. Whenever you need me to.”
Sasuke’s heart flutters then pounds in his chest. Always , he thinks. He knows he will always need her, but he has exhausted his bravery for the night and cannot bring himself to say it. So, he only nods, leveling her with a meaningful look, hoping that she will catch on to the things left unsaid between them.
There are many of those things–but slowly, they rise to the surface and reveal themselves to the light. With each day, each evening spent side-by-side, he grows to know her and open up to her better. And she is patient with him, granting him the chance to meet her where she has already been at his own pace.
He is pulled away from the soft train of thoughts by a quiet cough, followed by a sniffle. Sakura throws him a small, light smile even as her hand rises to cover her mouth and she coughs again.
“You’ll catch a cold,” he frowns. “Here, take my blanket. My cloak should be dry enough.”
“No!” she seems to startle herself with the volume of her own voice. Her lips are beginning to tremble again, but she says, sternly, “Your cloak is definitely not dry, and I’m not going to let you catch pneumonia and die because you want to sleep with wet clothes on you. Keep your blanket, Sasuke-kun.”
Sasuke feels adequately chastised for a short moment, very close to being surprised at the tone she takes with him. He has heard it before, of course, usually when in the dobe’s company. Never had it been directed at him.
He is both amused and slightly pained by the experience.
Sakura shivers again and he forgets all about his wounded ego. He shoots a glance into the teapot, agitation gnawing at his insides.
“You’re cold again,” he states, wincing when the teapot is as empty as he knew it was. “At least I can brew more tea, though it’ll be weak…”
“No,” she interjects with a harsh exhale. “I can tolerate it, Sasuke-kun. I’ll just have to sleep it off–I’m tired anyway.”
The less than reasonable part of Sasuke’s mind immediately flashes to the worst-case scenario, Sakura freezing into a block of ice while they slumber. He submits himself to the idea of staying up throughout the entire night, keeping a vigil to maintain the fire as well as push his blanket off on her once he is sure she won’t awaken to scold him.
“You get rest, too,” she says. Sasuke nods stiffly, knowing he won’t. “ Seriously . If we spread out by the fire, it’ll be fine. Even better, if we…”
Sakura trails off, pulling away Sasuke’s struggle against his newly developing morality which weighs the eternal cost of slipping Sakura into a slight genjutsu so she’ll sleep more heavily and not notice if he stays awake and gives her his blanket in the night. He tries to catch her gaze, only to find her studying the woven fabric in her lap.
“If we?” he prods. Her shoulders twitch and she hunches forward.
“Nevermind,” she mumbles.
“Sakura,” he says firmly. She flinches slightly but rolls her eyes. He has been firm with her in the past (many of those times to his deep regret).
“It’s silly,” she starts, sighing heavily. “But I was going to say, ‘even better if we lay close to each other’. Sharing close quarters means sharing body heat means sharing warmth. But, it’s not necessary and you burn hot enough already. So forget it! Good night.”
Sakura nods once, before unceremoniously flopping onto her back, then turning to her side and curling up in a tight ball facing the fire. Her form quivers slightly, drawn taut as if she is trying to staunch her reaction to the slowly increasing chill.
Sasuke can only watch as she fidgets for a couple of minutes, bunching a portion of the blanket so it forms into a sort of makeshift pillow. Her body looks so small, curled up as it is, drowned in the thick fabric she has cocooned herself in. And yet he can still make out the small quivers.
With a deep breath, he turns his back to her, clicking his teeth at his thumb to draw forth a bead of blood. He summons three empty scrolls, unfurling them and tearing them into medium-large pieces with his hand and teeth. He can feel Sakura’s eyes on him from behind, but focuses on his task of tearing the thick, pristine paper until he has a hefty pile of scraps at his feet. Squatting close to the fire, he crinkles and stuffs wads of papers between the gaps of the burning logs. With a deep inhale, he breathes out a small stream of flame, urging the fire to lick higher, blaze hotter.
Rising as smoothly as possible, and ignoring the eyes peeking at him from over the bunched blanket, Sasuke walks until he is but a single step away from where Sakura lays. He kneels behind her, watching carefully as her shoulders stiffen, her form ceasing any movement as if she is not breathing.
He holds his breath, too, as he pulls the blanket from his shoulders, swiftly fanning it out so half of the large cloth falls over Sakura. Consequently, it covers her head and he uses that bare moment to dart under the other edge, securing it over his nude form just quickly enough before a pink head emerges and whips around in his direction.
“If lying close together keeps you warm, then that’s what we’ll do,” he says quietly before her parted lips can spew whatever words were brewing. “Sleep, Sakura.”
She looks as if she will protest, but he gives her his best blank stare. With a heavy sigh, her body relaxes incrementally and she casts only one more cursory gaze over her shoulder as she turns to face the fire once more. Sasuke clenches his jaw as she wriggles about under her blanket, and now part of his. A few times, he thinks her hip or elbow will brush against him, but she eventually settles, bundled tightly in both blankets.
A small yawn spills from her mouth before she utters softly, “Thank you, Sasuke-kun. Good night.”
Quicker than he thinks should be possible for any ninja, Sakura’s breaths even out and her body slumps, fully relaxed as she slips into slumber. He indulges in a tiny smile, shifting carefully until he is on his side, her back a mere six inches or so from his chest.
Sleep evades him; he is too aware of her proximity, her scent, the warmth of another body in his space. She is closer than anyone has been in a long time–perhaps ever in his life. He can smell the rain in her hair, residua of the herbal tea they drank. The scent of burning wood and ash tickles his nose, but still the sweetness that he can only name as Sakura reaches him. For a long while, he simply watches the rise and fall of her slender shoulders under the blanket, the shadows of the fire dancing against the small visible part of her cheek. Quiet snores begin to whistle through her nose and a sensation so endearing, compelling in its combined simplicity and intensity rises up from his belly, spreading through his chest.
Sooner than he anticipates, his heartbeat slows from its frantic staccato, his breaths growing deeper and longer. His eyelids grow heavy, blinks coming more frequently by the second before the sounds, sights, smells and feeling of Sakura lull him, too, into sleep.
~
A violent shaking causes him to jerk awake. First, he notices the dark, only the barest of dim orange flicking in a sea of blackness. Then, he notes a weight against his chest, the cause of the quaking that drew him into consciousness in the first place.
It is not even an hour since he finally succumbed to sleep, he guesses. Yet the air inside the cave is frigid cold, heavy with moisture as thunder booms and wind sends rain thrashing audibly outside.
Sasuke's eyes manage to focus on a head of light-colored hair, and he leans forward to peer into the face pressed into his shoulder. Pale brows are drawn tight, pearly teeth peeking between pale lips, chattering. A tiny whimper falls from that mouth and his chest grows tight.
He shushes her quietly, emitting an unfamiliar, husky coo as he reaches to loosen her iron-clad grip on the blankets slipping haphazardly on down his torso. The fact that he actually manages to free the fabric and himself from her grip (with quite a bit of effort, despite his desire to be careful) cues him into the fact that she is still asleep, albeit freezing.
Moving as swiftly as possible, he rises to his feet, situating both blankets around her as they have slipped down her back in favor of being clutched to her front. Next he stalks close to the dying fire, grabbing handfuls of his pre-cut, makeshift kindling and stuffing it over the struggle coals. He blows gently until it catches a tiny flame, inhaling deeper and pouring from his mouth in a spherical katon . The fire blazing strongly once more, Sauske returns to kneel by Sakura’s shivering form, hand shielding his pelvic area.
“C-cold,” comes a hoarse murmur. He jerks in surprise, activating his sharingan to peer down at her face. Her eyes remain closed, lashes fluttering but never sliding open. “So cold…”
His heart squeezes before beating wildly against its cage. Biting his lip, he fights against his own shiver as the cold creeps over his skin. Making sure to keep his gaze fixed on her tightly-drawn face, Sasuke reaches his hand out to Sakura, gripping her shoulder lightly before rubbing his hand up and down the side of her body. He hopes, desperately, that the brisk motions would bring her some additional warmth.
Shudders wrack her frame and he can feel the muscles bunching under his hand, fighting to curl even more inwards onto herself. She thrashes suddenly, rolling dangerously close to the fire, with her back turned to him. The blankets nearly unravel completely, tangled about her legs and covering her only to the hip. She cries out painfully as the cold of the cave bites at the exposed skin of her back, sprouting gooseflesh and bringing forth another violent shiver.
“Sakura,” Sasuke breathes, snatching the blankets up over her once more. She struggles still, seeking warmth but preventing him from situating the blankets effectively in the process.
“I’m freezing, Sasuke-kun,” she moans, voice too sluggish and slurred to be fully lucid. “Freezing, freezing…”
Sasuke grinds his teeth nearly to dust. Before his logical mind can fully catch up to the action, he is ripping the blankets away from her form completely. Her startled cry does not even manage to echo into the cave before he is pressed up behind her, throwing first one blanket and then the other over both of them. He curls his right leg over both of hers, using it to drag her closer, nestling the stub of his left arm under her head and slipping the right between the two blankets to curl over her waist.
“Shhhh,” he hisses into her hair, exhaling heavily onto her neck in the hopes that his breath would aid in his efforts to warm her. “Rest. It’ll be warm soon.”
She sniffles, shaking and shivering as she burrows further into the blankets, further into his embrace.
He endures a few long minutes of her wriggling, his mind torn between extreme concern, embarrassment and distant elation before she stills slightly and releases a relieved exhale. As if in a faint, her muscles loosen all at once, her body relaxing into his. He breathes in short inhales and long exhales, fingers clenching and unclenching at her waist, torso stiffening with each minute shift she makes as she slowly falls back into a deeper sleep. Her skin feels cool against his, and soft, so soft . Were he not in such a daze and so on edge from her frightening condition a few minutes before, he might have fixated on the suppleness of her waist or the press of her thighs in front of his.
Instead, he focuses on the sound of her breathing, relaxing bit by bit as it filters through her nose easier and more slowly by the second. Eventually her skin seems to feel warmer, his own body growing quite hot with the weight of two blankets over him and another human body lying just so. He nestles impossibly closer, anyway, hoping to emanate as much warmth as he can.
Exhaustion grips him and he finds himself falling more deeply into sleep, irresistible with the weight of Sakura’s body against his own, and the feeling of her safe and secure within his grasp.
~
Sasuke feels hot. His skin is prickling with the sensation of licking flames, his blood simmering in his veins. The heat is centralized in his core, pooling low in his belly and radiating throughout his form.
He exhales, fingers clenching over something soft, smooth. The smell of jasmine, cherry blossom, her , fills his nose with each inhale.
Ah, this dream again.
Sakura is fitted snugly in his grasp, her back to his front. He can feel her hair brushing over his collarbones, the plush flesh of her buttocks cradled in his hips. Her thighs rest flush against his, a slim, smooth calf hooked around his knee.
A slight shift causes white-hot pleasure to shoot down his spine, and Sasuke shudders. He feels as if every one of his nerve endings is at attention, soaking in the sensation of her skin against his, the breath expanding her chest and a slow, rhythmic motion rocking him back and forth.
The feeling of something warm, slick, soft slides over his shaft and he sighs deeply. His hand slips down, squeezes a plush handful of flesh before slipping back up to dance over her ribs. Her skin is like silk, his rough fingers sliding so easily. She shifts again, forward , back , pressing into him with a curve to her spine, straining against his grip at her front. It all feels so real that Sasuke nearly succumbs to the pull of a deeper slumber, tempted to stay asleep and continue to see where this fantasy leads.
It is different this time. His surroundings are not so clear as usual– his imaginings usually for vivid, visually stimulating than this new, physical stimulus. A faint orange glow flickers at the edge of his awareness, a rustling sound like shifting fabric and cracking embers filtering in slowly.
He shakes himself mentally, painstakingly forcing himself into awareness. The dream grips him, forcing him to remain locked in his psyche where Sakura is clutched against his chest, where she is soft and warm and wet and…
Sasuke’s eyes fly open and he chokes on a gasp. The first thing he sees is pink obscuring his vision. Blinking away the wayward strands, he sees next a roaring fire, the rough cave wall washed with shadows.
And then he feels , a slow drag over his achingly hard member, slippery and hot, cushioned between two walls of warm, firm flesh.
Then he hears a sigh, sweet and underscored with a high-pitched wine.
“Sasuke-kun…”
A startled groan falls from his mouth as the dragging sensation comes again, and he drops his gaze down to the form in front of him, only partially shielded by a blanket that is bunched haphazardly about his waist.
“Sakura,” he chokes.
I must be dreaming, still. Sasuke nearly gives in to the urge to stay asleep when another quiet, gasping moan spills from her lips as her hips rock back into him before curling forward, his throbbing shaft trapped between her thighs. His hips flex in response to the motion, white flashing over his vision again before he shakes his head violently, willing himself to wake up .
“Fuck,” he rasps, yanking his hand away from its spot on her ribs, disturbing the blanket further with the motion.
Red bleeds over his iris, his eyes widening as he takes in Sakura’s bare form. Her skin is flushed, glistening with a fine layer of sweat. Muscles bunch and ripple under the skin of her back, the knobs of her spine peeking through with each rolling grind of her waist. She writhes against him, her head falling back into his chest and revealing a face with features twisted in a distant expression.
Her eyes are closed. His, on the other hand, are definitely open which means that he is not dreaming.
But Sakura…is.
“Sakura,” he calls hoarsely. His hand shakes, floating uselessly in the air as he attempts to control his ragged breathing, flinching as she makes that rocking motion once more and sends pleasure rattling down his spine.
“Mm,” she murmurs, “Sasuke-kun…”
She’s dreaming of me , he realizes in a daze. His trembling fingers fall to her shoulders, squeezing more tightly than he intends as he attempts to rouse her with a gentle shake.
“No, no,” she murmurs, and his hand snatches away from her. Her thighs clench tighter around him and he sees stars. “Stay…stay…”
Arousal and heartache combine in a terrible mixture, swirling in his gut. Sasuke bites his lip hard enough to draw blood, letting his hand fall on her shoulder once more.
“Sakura,” he says firmly, making his voice as clear as possible even as the pace of his undulations increases, the wetness becoming more apparent against his turgid member. His pulse thunders, nearly drowning out her gasping whimpers and breathy moans. “ Wake up. ”
Sakura jerks, her hands fisting in the blanket that managed to get stuffed against her front. Her head whips in his direction, wide eyes falling on him from over her shoulder.
The world seems to freeze around them as they both stare into each other with bated breath. The sound of the fire crackling and the winds outside seem loud in the silence, suddenly absent both their panting breaths and her unconscious ramblings.
Her gaze darts away from his face for a flash of a second, flitting to their surroundings before swerving back to his. Her eyes grow impossibly wider and her mouth–Sasuke notes that it is moist, red and indented as if her teeth had sunk into the lower lip–gapes.
“Sasuke-...kun?” Sakura croaks, voice unsteady and breathless.
He can only stare down at her, unable to form a full thought as he watches her glossy eyes blink up at him convulsively, her cherry-red lips plump and shining in the dim glow.
“You were dreaming,” he manages to whisper, biting back a groan as a shudder works its way down her form. Even the slightest motion brings attention to their intimate contact, bodies still flush against each other.
“I- Sasuke,” she gasps, shaking in earnest now. Her chest heaves and one of the blankets slips to expose part of a full, pert breast. A dusky nipple peeks just over the edge, plump and distended and oh so… tempting.
“You were dreaming,” Sasuke raps, shifting his body and eliciting his own shiver as the movement causes friction between them once more, “of me.”
“I’m sorry,” she chokes. The flush on her cheeks darkens, her hands scrabbling over the blankets in an attempt to cover herself. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t-”
Her words cut off with a gasp, lashes fluttering as she twists her waists to escape from his grasp, the motion causing the head of his rigid arousal to slip through her folds. A low, rumbling groan finally rips free from his chest and she freezes, panting hard as she tilts her head to meet his gaze once more.
Sakura’s lips are sweet, soft between his own when he jerks forward to suck them into his mouth. They part on a startled exhale, a soft tongue slipping out to join his as she hums a quiet, helpless moan.
Their teeth clash and sink into giving flesh, tongues slipping, sliding and thrusting in a frenzied dance. He delves into her mouth as deeply as he can, tasting her essence and the remnants of the tea they shared, feeling each texture, ridge, bump of the insides of her mouth.
When his lungs burn for air, he retreats slightly, tugging her lower lip with his teeth to its limits, opening his eyes to stare down at her in a daze. Her hands have lost their grip on her coverings, one reaching up to tangle in the hair behind his neck and the other shaping the underside of her breast.
As if of its own accord, his lone hand plants itself at the beginning of the luscious curve of her hip, tracing a line up the side of her waist. His fingers creep upward until they meet the hand at her chest, sliding over the obstacle to splay over the globe of her breast, relishing the weight of it and the tickling brush of her pert nipple against his palm.
Sakura moans softly, drawing him back to her mouth as her hips sway into his again, backward then forward. This time, Sasuke is lost to the sensation, to his instinct and curls his own hips against her, rocking into her once, twice, then many more times at a building pace.
Soon she is panting into his mouth, their lips grazing against each other sloppily, hardly kissing at all. His hips snap against the round flesh of her behind, his member throbbing and dripping with her arousal and his as it slides back and forth over her softest lips.
Sakura , his mind chants. And perhaps between the tiny spaces and breaths between their dancing mouths, he calls her name aloud too.
“Ah, gods,” she cries softly, gripping her free hand over the one resting at her breast. She squeezes their fingers over herself and bears down on his shaft, slipping back and forth until he is nestled deep into her slit.
His grip tightens and he pulls his hips back as far as they will go without completely losing their contact– when he careens forward again, the very tip of his dips into what he can only describe as a well of pure, liquid heat before slipping forward and through her folds again.
Sakura’s hips jerk and she loosens his grip on his hair, her face turning away as she lets out a sharp cry.
He freezes, even as she continues to undulate against him, trying to blink past the haze that had taken his mind the last handful of minutes.
“Sakura,” he says breathily, swallowing thickly as the hand that was in his hair tugs at the blankets until they lay carelessly at the edge of the fire. “Should we…?”
“Don’t stop,” she hisses, reaching back once more to cup her fingers around his nape, pressing her hips back into his pelvis. Her breast presses more deeply into his hand with the arch of her back and he grits his teeth.
“If we don’t,” he pants, dipping his face into the curve of her neck and inhaling deeply, “There’s no telling how far I’ll go.”
His teeth graze the soft skin over her racing pulse and he bites down, sucking and nibbling at the spot recklessly. Distantly, somewhere his logical self is screaming, banging against the wall of arousal and pent up frustration to call for control.
Sasuke’s inner consciousness is silenced for good when Sakura gasps out, “Go as far as you can, Sasuke-kun. Take me with you.”
With a sound resembling a growl crawling from somewhere deep in his chest, Sasuke loosens his grip at her breast, sliding his hand over a muscular thigh and heaving it up, and back to hook behind his hip. Then he braces his hand at the crease between her thigh and pelvis, swinging his hips back until his dripping tip notches at the source of the wetness that has made them both slick and glistening.
The barest flex of his hip has the head of him teasing past the syrupy rim of her entrance and stars seem to take over his vision. He blinks to clear his head, sucking in deep breaths and restraining the urge to careen forward and sheathe himself inside of her as quickly as possible.
“Are you sure, Sakura?” he manages to grit out, gentling his grip at her hip and nuzzling his cheek against the edge of her jaw. “Is this what you really want?”
“Yes,” she breathes. Her hips tilt back, she opens herself to him more fully. “I want you so bad, Sasuke-kun. I need it.”
His breath falls out of him on a shudder and he grips her tightly again, brushing his lips over her shoulder, neck and jaw in what he hopes is a soothing manner.
“I’ve dreamed of this, too,” he murmurs, slipping his eyes shut as he slowly curls his hips, pressing against her soft flesh slowly until it gradually gives and parts around him. She lets out a low moan. “Ever since you joined me, every night you lie by my side…I dreamed of this.”
Sasuke’s entire body is trembling with strain, his member throbbing with each centimeter it sinks into her depths. Her walls flutter around him, her core squeezes and releases in maddening increments. The urge to slam the remainder of his length into her until he is buried to the hilt is strong, but he curbs that instinct, unwilling to cause her pain. He feeds himself to her inch by achingly slow inch.
“If this is still a dream,” he gasps, stilling for a moment as her inner muscles spasm around him, her body bunching tight when nearly half of him is inside, “I hope I never wake up.”
“Sasuke-kun,” she begs, hips tilting back and spine arching severely. “Please. Please .”
With a deep, shaky breath Sasuke slips his hand up her body, bracing her throat with his palm and cradling her jaw with his fingers. He opens his eyes, shifts to catch her glistening gaze and slides deep, until he can move no further.
Sakura’s head knocks back against his chin on a loud, guttural moan, and his tight grip on his restraint snaps.
Flesh meets flesh with loud, wet smacks as he rocks into her, gripping tightly at her jaw and pressing his forehead to her crown. Choked groans and uttered curses spill from his mouth as his perception of reality slips away, his mind only able to hone in on the sound of her rhythmic cries, the snap of his hips against her ass and the tight, slick grip of her sliding over him, again and again and again .
Sakura thrashes in his grip, hips knocking backward to meet his thrusts as her upper body arches away from him. His hold on her face, at her neck keeps her in place to receive each unforgiving thrust, his pace as wild and untamed as the fire blazing through his veins. When he opens his bleary eyes, his irises swirl, taking in and cataloging the sheen of sweat on her skin, the ripple of her toned muscles beneath. Her cheek is warm and wet with a combination of sweat and the tears trickling slowly from the corner of her squinted eyes.
Sasuke moans deeply, curling his body over hers to drag his tongue over her face, lapping at the salty perspiration before kissing his way desperately toward the corner of her mouth. He wrenches her head toward him so he can plunder her lips with his own, thrusting his tongue against hers in a pace matching the way his shaft burrows into her core.
“Sas-,” she slurs around his lips, sharp nails fixing themselves in the flesh of his forearm. His hips piston faster, more forcefully in response.
She is everything he has imagined, more . A culmination of every one of his fantasies, dreams and wishes made flesh. A keening whine builds in her chest and she gasps out his name, a shiver wracking her entire form as her nails dig more deeply into his flesh and prickles of pain sprout where her hand tugs at the strands of his hair.
“Let go,” he grunts, half desperate as he laves the skin of her neck with his tongue, sucking the lobe of her ear between his teeth. He smells jasmine, sweet fruits, rain, Sakura and now him all over her skin. “ My Sakura.”
“ Sasuke-kun! ” her voice is a shattering cry and her inner walls grip him so tight white flashes over his vision. Her hips stiffen before roiling in dizzying circles and waves, nearly dislodging him from her fountain.
A rush of liquid coats his shaft and both of their thighs between them and suddenly the heat bubbling deep in his core bubbles over, a tingle forming at the base of his spine as his hips snap forward once, twice before tunneling him deep inside the third time and pressing tight against her. His shaft throbs, jerking into her depths as he spills everything he has inside of her until he is sure some of his own essence leaks out to join hers between their legs.
They jerk and pant together for long seconds that could be millennia before finally the aftershocks fade, the muscles of his abdomen relaxing as she falls, weightless into his chest.
Sasuke cradles her close, squeezing his eyes shut as their breaths slow and the final twitches of his muscles cease. He can tell the air around them is beginning to cool but he still feels flushed, their skin sticking with their combined sweat and fluids.
He searches for trepidation, for guilt, but can find none. Only a deep-rooted satisfaction warms his chest, creeping into his extremities until he cannot resist a tiny smile from curving his lips before he presses them to the flushed skin of her shoulder.
“Some dream, eh?” Sakura breaks the silence quietly, emitting a small, slightly shaky laugh.
Sasuke hums in response, sliding his hand down, between her breasts to rest over her lower abdomen.
“Aa,” he says, huskily.
“Should we…talk about it?” she asks, her voice still breathless with exertion but carrying a tinge of hesitance that sets a fire burning in his depths.
“If this is a dream,” Sasuke muses, slowly untangling himself and relishing in the shudder that works its way down his lover's spine when he slips free from her core, “there are still many things to be done. We can talk in the morning.”
Sakura squeaks when he grabs her thigh and tosses her gently to lie on her back. Green eyes widen up at him, a deep flush spreading from her temples to the tops of her full, delicious looking breasts as he snatches a blanket, fanning it around his shoulders and then plants himself on his knees between her spread out legs. His gaze slips down to her soft, dampened pink curls.
“This part, I fantasize about often,” he murmurs dazedly, peering down at the milky fluid dripping slowly from her folds.
Sakura gasps before crying out when the blanket billows over both of them and he slides down to plant his face between her thighs.
End.
Tag list: @zenonico @ephemeredoll @psalloacappella
Ino loved Sakura through all her phases–sometimes from up close, and sometimes from afar. Sometimes her love was sweet and bright, like dango-sticks. Other times it drilled deep into parts of her that were dark, cold and dampened like the underlayers of scorched, fertile soil.
She loved things from their beginning, loved them to their end once or twice.
Her mother had told her she was simply made that way–born with soil in one hand, and seeds in the other, always looking for places to plant roots, seeking new lives to nurture and tend to. A true florist's daughter, able to coax even the shyest petals to unfurl in the light with the gentle strength of her hands. Some were poisonous, some healing and others that could provide sustenance and strength.
From the day she first laid eyes on a girl with cherry blossom hair and rose petal cheeks, lily pad eyes and a cherry-like mouth, it was as if all she dreamed of was spring.
Sakura.
She tended to her with more care than she gave to any of the other beings that grew in her garden. She was Ino’s special blossom, which at the beginning needed consistent attention and murmured words to coax quivering buds to spread open fragile petals. Her project of passion that could so easily be scared into dormancy by a strong breeze or droplet of icy water.
She fertilized her soil with her own two hands, imbuing confidence, grit, nutrients of character. She showered her with praises, moistening delicate stems so they might grow firmer, stronger to withstand the harsh winds of harsher words and cutting gazes.
Ino watched and waited, cradled her close and stiffened her spine when she wilted, when she cried her petals dry. Some days, she wanted to keep her in glass, protect her in full bloom, for people to admire but only herself to reach in and feel.
She pushed when all she wanted was to pull closer, forcing herself away from this sprouting blossom she’d planted, watching as her roots burrow deeper, spread farther than just her own garden. And, oh, did she bloom: a wild thing invading outside soils, rooting itself and taking shape in so many other peoples’ hearts.
And when she was torn, uprooted by his traumas and psychotic machinations, Ino was there once more. Cradling her in gentle hands, carefully replanting. She became sunlight, and drowned her cherry blossom in it. She poured and poured, until Sakura no longer wilted, until the stems thickened and petals unfurled in the brightest shade of pink she had ever seen.
When the day came that the earth split and fell open under their feet and the sky bled with the tears of a thousand lifetimes, she finally looked with her eyes instead of searching for meaning with her planter’s hands.
Ino saw Sakura in a way she had never before. She realized that her blossom, her beloved flower, thrived best under conditions that she was not able to provide. No matter the ways in which she tended her, shielded her (and trimmed away at her, clipped her stems) she grew, stretching higher, branching wide and bright in the nighttime, face upturned to the dark, luminescence of a stoic night sky.
So, she watched as the flower was plucked from her garden, silencing the cries of her aching heart and focusing instead on the way those blood-stained hands handled the blossoms with such care, fingers scarred and gnarled, stroking against those vibrant petals oh so gently.
She would be planted elsewhere to sweeten the worlds with her fragrance; she could only hope it was under the widest and starriest of skies.
Yugao, Ino mused— breathless as she watched him watch her, with those deep, dark, eyes— would have been a better name for a woman who blossomed as Sakura did, under the dark gray and lavender sides of the moon.
The sun is bright, the air warm and fragrant. The silence of the forest is hardly that at all; each second and the transient modicums in between are filled with ambient noise. Wind whistling through trees, water trickling over rocks. A bird cawing here, a wild hare snuffling through dry grass there. Creatures cooing, the earth singing its quiet, yet reverberant song.
In the midst of it all stands an imposing, lone creature. Tall, lithe and dark of mane, sharp-mouthed and fine-jawed. Eyes that glow deep red like burning embers.
“What brings you here, small one?” says the figure, voice rich and deep.
Sakura rises from her haunches, clutching her woven basket against her side. As she approaches, the light from the sun shining above beats down over her head, fractals of rose and gold reflecting off her pink locks, her honeyed face. Eyes green like the mountainside, green like the moss climbing up the trunks of towering trees settle first on the coastline and then upon him.
“I am small, among many things,” she says, casting her eyes over his face for a long moment. “Nameless, I am not.”
“Sasuke,” he offers, tipping his chin ever so slightly.
“Sasuke,” she repeats, full, berry-pink lips widening in a tiny smile as she dips her head. “Of the fire. The Fae King’s second son. I know who you are.”
“You do,” he says, blinking slowly as his red irises flicker over her face. “Who are you, then? Surely you stray far from home.”
“I am called Sakura,” she states, glancing away to peer at the small waves lapping against the sand. “And I am far from home.”
A small, dainty, bespeckled hand moves to lift the cloth resting atop the basket at her side. Spinly green shrubbery is revealed.
“I am here collecting these little plants,” she murmurs, voice soft, almost a coo as she runs her fingers lightly over the bristles. “Legend says that the best medicine could be found at the edge of the land, sprouting mere weeks before the floods.”
“And you would risk the journey and the waters for it?” Sasuke’s fine brow quirks, a quizzical glint in his eye.
They two, although separated by much distance, are both children of the Earth. It is impossible for them to cross moving waters (and how terrible would it be for the waters to cross them). Risk enough persists when one dares to even dip their toes in the swells.
Both have risked much coming to this place, daring to linger by the coast even as the sea prepares to swell.
Slender shoulders shrug, “The waters do as they must, and I know to keep my distance. I can mark the phases of the moons.”
“The waters obey no moon nor markings,” he mutters, a bitter note to the richness of his tone. “The floods come when they must, not necessarily when they should.”
“And yet you risk it,” Sakura smiles with another shrug. “I bet it’s not even for the best medicine in the world. Me , I will be helping many sick people by venturing so far.”
“Tch,” the whites of his eyes hide the red for a moment as they roll upward. “A healer, then. I should’ve known.”
“Pardon my station, great Majesty,” the elven woman responds dryly. “Pray do not burn me to ash where I stand.”
Another scoff is carried away by a strong gust of wind and Sasuke takes a long stride forward. The gentle tide laps mere inches away from his sandaled toes and as Sakura watches with a critical eye, his knees begin a slight tremble.
“The Fae must be in an uproar with their Prince away,” her soft voice muses.
“I go where I please.”
His legs start to shake in earnest. Green eyes bore into him as his chest rises and falls with each haggard breath.
“Ah, in that much we are alike,” she murmurs. Sasuke’s long fingers have curled into a tight fist. “Pray step away from the water, Prince.”
His eyes narrow until mere slits of blood-red irises are visible as he peers across the glittering waves, sunlight reflecting off his pinched features.
“Pray leave me to my solitude,” he mutters, but stumbles back a step nonetheless.
Sakura’s hands glow green and then they are pressed against his chest. Applying light pressure, she pushes him back one pace, then two, three. A coolness sinks into his over-hot flesh, a feeling like taking a seat in the cold, damp soil under the shade of a large tree after days of long-journey.
The aches of his body and his consciousness seem to slip away as they both sink to the sand. It is coarse, gritty against his palms but no more noticeable than the sensation that sweeps through him. Like a balm applied to his inside, it smooths over his muscles, below to the sinow, sinking deep (but soft, gently) into the marrow of his bones.
“The tide rises, Prince,” Sakura’s voice is weak and yet the wintry aura does not falter. “We must move elsewhere. It weakens you.”
“ You weaken me,” he slurs, eyes burning less brightly by the moment. A flickering ember rather than simmering coal.
“Come,” she breathes. Her small hands move to his shoulders, hauling him up to unsteady feet.
Her petite frame is bent nearly double under his weight, but she trudges forward.
Hours, she walks. Till sweat clings the fabrics of her clothes, and her breath burns icy in her throat. Yet her grip does not falter, her arms rigid with strain as she pulls them further and further away from the waters which siphon their strength. Sasuke is limp for much of the journey, hardly conscious until the distance between them and the shore is large enough that the sounds of crashing waves muffles.
The sun is falling steadily, but beats heavy still against Sakura’s brow as she crests a tall hill. A tiny hut sits deep within a cocoon of thin trees and hanging vines and it is at an overgrown path to the doorway that the elf falls to her knees.
“Small one,” Sasuke rasps. “Here you have weakened yourself and yet admonish me for the same.”
Pink strands spill toward the ground like silk when the fairy heaves Sakura into his arms. He stumbles the entire way up to the tiny abode, but keeps a tight grip on his passenger. Sweat beads at her temples, trickling slowly down the sides of her face and pooling in her exposed clavicle. The golden hue of her skin has turned grayish and wan.
There is a layer of dust on every surface inside and so Sasuke manages to cradle the small figure against his chest with one arm briefly enough to wave his hand and send a gust of air just strong enough to remove the thickest layers.
Her lips tremble and teeth begin to chatter as he lays her down upon the low-sitting, narrow bed in a far corner of the place.
“ Foolish elf,” says he, running his warm palms over her arms. “How can someone I’ve known for less than a day irritate me so?”
“Ah, such gratitude… for the one who has saved you,” her voice is weak but holds its snark. “And who is he that throws around the word fool after nearly diving in the ocean swells?”
Sasuke’s face hovers above her own and their gazes lock. His hands continue their motions over her goose-pimpled skin almost absently as they stare into each other.
“Your warmth has returned,” she murmurs.
“It is a good thing,” he scoffs quietly, applying more weight to his fingers as he strokes over the muscles of her arms, over the knobbed joints of her wrists. “Had it not, you would have collapsed and frozen.”
“I did not collapse the entire trek here,” green pupils peer at him through the narrowed slits of her eyelids.
“Another good thing,” he murmurs. “A thing I truly should show my gratitude for.”
“It is not necessary,” she breathes, flush returning to her cheeks. “Any other elf would have done the same.”
“Ah, kinder beings than mine,” he replies, voice low and rumbling. His skin burns hot, like a fever but not quite. “I shall thank you, nonetheless.”
Fae were well-known for many things, but above all their thanks. Self-sufficient creatures they were, and so rarely did they need to express gratitude; they were those that gave favor, hardly did they ever receive.
And so their thanks was a tangible thing, a gift bestowed only upon the special, the deeply appreciated.
“Are you familiar with the ways fae show gratitude?” he asks.
“I’ve heard tales,” she mumbles, staring as his face looms close.
Lips far softer than such a hard creature deserves brush lightly over her own. Pale pink lashes flutter as if taken by a breeze, and Sakura’s head lulls back against the flat and threadbare pillows. The rush of heat through her person causes deep pink to rise to the surface of her cheeks, for her pulse to quicken and her breaths to grow deep. No rejuvenating herb could have such an effect– she could have trekked down and up that hill again, three times, in this state.
“That was a fine thanks,” she huffs, sitting up slowly.
“Only the first one, for your company,” Sasuke says. “The second, for your labor.”
This time, his mouth presses firmly, his exhale seeping between the small space between her lips, sinking into the depths of her chest and warming it like a hearth. Large hands wrap around her waist, before one reaches to cup her cheek.
“A third,” Sasuke’s voice is gruff, his eyes soft and burning red like a blood moon, “for my life. Because who knows if I would have let the tides sweep me away on this day.”
Sakura’s mouth is soft and plush, tasting both of tangy herbs and sweet fruit. Her hands are dainty–they creep slowly from his chest, to his shoulders, to the nape of his neck. When his tongue dips inside to slide against her own, the soft exhale she elicits is cool like a sip of water from the deepest of wells.
They pull apart at the sound of clapping thunder, followed by the distinct patter of rain against waxy leaves.
“The floods,” she whispers. “They…are early.”
“It is safe here,” Sasuke murmurs. His lids rest low over his irises, gaze fixated on the warm flush about her mouth. “We must only wait until the waters pass.”
“That might take weeks, Prince,” Sakura shakes her head, fear creeping about the edges of her green orbs, darkening their hue. “And to journey around the area to my home…to your home-”
“I suppose home for both of us is here, then,” he remarks. No fire had ever glowed so bright as the one in his chest. “Until it is safe for both of us to return from where we came.”
The air feels heavy with a sense of timid anticipation, a slight foreboding. The waters are routine, but also unpredictable. It is unlikely the tides would climb so far up, but how long would they stay high and cover the land below this hill? How long would Sakura be far from her village and its forests, Sasuke from his kin and their fires?
“Sleep, small one,” Sasuke stands from the bed and sheds his long, inky-colored cloak. The fabric falls heavy and warm over Sakura’s waist. “I will ensure this place stays warm through the night.”
✣✣✣
Five days pass before the two reach a breaking point. The two stranger-companions attempt to make their shelter more hospitable. Sakura gathers the fabrics and washes them with water from an old well, refilled by her efforts to turn the soil deep below and reveal trickles of water from within. Sasuke sends gusts of hot air to force dust and debris out of the windows, through the open door. They stabilize the walls and ceiling, scrub at the dinghy floorboards and fuss at each other over temperature and ambience.
The towering, flame-eyed fairy would have them trapped in a dark, stifling heat day in and out. The petite elf prefers to leave the windows open to allow a whisper of cool breeze, to welcome the smells and sounds of nature in.
“You’ll freeze to your death if you do not draw these shutters,” Sasuke growls. His footfalls are heavy on purpose as he approaches where she stands, reaching around to tug the window shut.
Sakura hisses as he crowds her, her nose centimeters away from his chest, “Better than suffocating from heat and ash. Must you have a fire burning constantly ? We will run out of lumber soon enough.”
“Then you shall draw up more for us,” he says brusquely. The small creature before him vibrates, pointed ears burning red with frustration.
“ Oh , I do hope you are betrothed to an old, wrinkly hag,” she spits.
The scoff elicited in response is nasty at best.
“And who would be your betrothed? Some tiny little man with whiskers falling to his knees?”
“Not all elves are small!”
“And yet, you are the smallest intelligent creature I have seen,” as if to emphasize his point, the prince bends slightly at the waist to peer into her face. “Were you not so loud, I might tread on you by mistake.”
“I am loud, but I wager that is better than having the character of a stone,” Sakura retorts. Her arms cross tight over her chest.
She had shed her heavy dressings for a thin tunic to combat the heat Sasuke caused in the small shelter. It exposed much of her flesh in an irritatingly appealing fashion.
“This stone keeps you from freezing solid in the night,” Sasuke is deadpan, and he mirrors her stature.
“ Thank you, kind Prince,” she drawls with an eye roll so violent it is a wonder the green jewels do not fall from her head.
“If you intend to show your gratitude, at least do so properly,” Sasuke says.
With his arms crossed tight over his chest, his shoulders look broader, the muscles of his biceps sinewy and defined. His hair is long enough to brush his collarbones, locks swept wild about his head and falling haphazardly over one side of his face. The room feels small with him drawn to his full height and Sakura hates that she can feel the heat of him from where she stands.
“If you desire me, simply say so, Prince,” she snaps. “All this talk of thanks and gratitude tires me.”
A single dark brow rises and his jaw clenches tight.
“I desire you.”
“Your games exhaust me, truly,” Sakura steps around his imposing form and makes her way to the sorry excuse for a bed. “I feel not one ounce of guilt for you sleeping on the floor each night. If I must suffocate from the heat–”
“Sakura,” her name is nearly foreign to her for how little she hears it from his lips. A shiver crawls down her spine despite the heat of his breath behind her neck. “ I desire you .”
“You have been cruel to me since we began to shelter here,” she whispers.
“Have I been cruel?” he murmurs and now his palm is resting on her shoulder, heat seeping deep into her muscle, licking over the surface of bone. “Or have I disagreed with you on occasion?”
“Those things are one in the same,” she says, voice weak. His fingers are long enough to sweep over the flesh just below her collarbones, the heat of his body stifling as he draws closer.
“You have been the cruelest,” he breathes, grip tightening as his head lowers to level his mouth with her ear. “You lie inches away from me in the night, but do not allow me to share with you my own warmth. You shed layers of dress, but hide the best of you underneath such frustrating fabrics. Teasing, and taunting you are, but…”
Sakura’s mouth is dry, her voice hardly a rasp, “But?”
“But you do not want as I do,” he says tightly. “You do not suffer through a one-sided attraction. I am but a stranger taking up your space.”
“You speak so lowly of yourself, my Prince,” she mutters. “Perhaps a tonic for your mood.”
“Joke how you like,” he hisses and a shudder works through her at the way his chest vibrates against her back. “I will desire you no less, even as you annoy me so.”
Sakura can finally feel the chill of the night air as the prince rips away and stalks over to the old fireplace. She hears the deep exhalation and then the crackling and popping of embers. The fire roars to life, sending flickering shadows and licking silhouettes across the walls, but she still feels cold, freezing.
Sasuke lingers close to the hearth, unflinching as tiny sparks sprinkle across the skin of his feet and arms. A cool pressure at the center of his back pulls his attention away from the dancing flames.
“You have kept me warm each night,” Sakura says, so quiet it is as if he feels her voice rather than hears it. “And I should thank you for it.”
He turns, a scowl curling his features but is given pause by the shining of green that faces him. The shape of the flames dance across jade irises, cast shadows over high-set, freckled cheeks and plump, blossom-pink lips.
She beckons him and he bends so she can grasp his face, pressing her mouth to his. And he is lost, falling into her embrace as if he did not better her in size and stature. They sink to the floor, resting on their knees as small hands scrape through his locks and against his scalp, and strong, hot hands grip at her slender waist and full hip. Steam billows thinly between their mouths as their lips and tongues dance together, pulling and pushing, taking and giving in.
Sakura’s posture crumples slightly as her muscles tremble. Sasuke tightens his grip and guides her slowly to rest back on the floor, cushioning her head with one palm and cradling her back with the other.
Her fingers knot near-painfully in his hair and a small whimper spills from her mouth when he nips at her lower lip in response. He soothes the sting with a sweep of his burning tongue and then sucks it into his mouth with a deep groan.
“I could kiss you from sunrise till dawn,” he whispers, running his lips over her jaw, kissing at her ear before flicking his tongue at the pointed tip.
“Aren’t those the same, Prince?” she laughs. Her mirth turns into a shuddering gasp when he sucks at her earlobe before kissing wetly down her neck..
“The entirety of the day is what I mean, elf–from one sunrise to the next,” he chuckles. “And call me by my name, Sakura.”
“Sasuke,” she breathes.
“ Yes .”
His mouth covers her once more, pulling another whimper from her throat. His hand slips around her waist and slides slowly until he is palming her breast, kneading the flesh with a dizzying combination of heat and firm pressure.
“I wish to see you,” he rasps.
Sakura frees his hair from her grasp to tug at her gown with clumsy fingers. A shuddering breath expands his chest when her breasts are exposed to his gaze. He pulls back slowly, enough to kneel between her thighs and shrug out of his own tunic, before tugging her skirts away from her legs.
A deep flush rises from the top of her chest to her hairline when Sasuke grasps her knees and pushes them wide to stare down at her center. Her crevices are slick and plump with desire already.
“Bless the waters,” he chokes before lowering himself so his face is level with her stomach. He presses a deep, fervent kiss to her belly button before trailing his mouth lower, and lower still. “Bless them, for bringing you to me.”
“Pray they don’t rise high enough to submerge us now,” Sakura replies tremulously. The stroke of a wet, flexible appendage between her folds sends her squirming.
“There is no better place to drown than between your thighs,” he groans before kissing her intimately, his tongue lapping at her wetness and lips teasing the pearled nub at the peak of her mound.
A strangled moan spills from her lips before she catches them between her teeth, thighs trembling and flexing as she tilts her hips away from the hungry mouth, and rolls them back toward him incrementally.
“Be still,” he orders, voice thick and slightly muffled. A particularly invasive lick that takes his tongue from her clitoris all the way to her entrance and inside sends her bucking against him with a gasp.
The gasp turns into a sharp cry when the fingers gripping at her hip become unbearably hot for a fraction of a moment. Sakura is left reeling and panting at the residual sting as she stares down at the burning red eyes peering at her from between her legs.
“Still,” he repeats, keeping his eyes locked on hers as he treats her to another long, lascivious lick.
Any refute she has is swept away as the fairy feasting on her flesh doubles his efforts, sucking and laving at her with sinful abandon. One of his hands creeps down, a long finger pressing deep into her core, followed by a second before she can even wrap her head around the sensation.
His head pulls away ever so slightly as he thrusts the appendages into her at a building pace. A keening moan spears through the quiet and her hands fall to his head, pulling him closer.
“Wh-what manner of thanks is this, my prince?” she pants, words hitching with every stroke of his hand.
“The most pure form of gratitude,” he says, pinning her with his heavy gaze. His fingers curl on an outward stroke and her hips buck in his grip, rising just in time to meet his seeking mouth as he sucks at her again.
Climax rushes through her in an instant, and Sasuke seems to burn hotter for it. The heat is emanating off of his skin in waves, combating even the fire burning just alongside of them. Sweat slickens her flesh, trickling between her breasts and he catches it with his tongue as he crawls back up her body.
A tortured groan rips through his chest at the press of her cool hands to his bare abdomen. His trousers are kicked away in a rush, but he reaches for her slowly, drawing her shivering and glistening body to his chest as he rolls to his side. Small, slender fingers creep downward and brush lightly over the dampened tip of him before he grasps her wrist and loops it behind his neck. Brushing reverent fingertips over the smooth, silky skin of her calf, he grasps at her leg and notches it over his, aligning their hips and capturing her mouth with his in a searing kiss.
Rigid flesh sweeps over her soaked folds and they both moan deeply. One large hand spreads wide at the center of her back as the other grasps at her hip tightly, rocking her lower body such that Sasuke’s arousal slips against her, the head of him bumping against her pearl.
“I have desired you since the moment I first saw you, my prince,” Sakura breathes against his mouth, cupping the back of his neck with her hand and brushing the knuckles of the other against his flushed cheek. “My Sasuke.”
He smothers her with a kiss and a breathless moan she can feel , just as she can feel how he shifts their hips and lowers her slowly over his shaft. The muscles of her inner thighs tremble as her inner walls spread to accommodate his flesh. It feels like an eternity passes before her buttock meets the firm muscle of his thigh and they exhale deeply as one.
Sasuke gives her no chance to inhale before he is thrusting in and out of her, bottoming out deep inside with each sway of his hips. She is wrapped tight around him, sliding slick and heady and he feels as if his chest will burst, as if even he cannot tame his own flames as they roar in his chest, lick hot through every inch of his flesh and through his flexing muscles.
But then she is there, all cool, soft skin and refreshing breaths, cooling the simmering in his lungs and pulling him tight into her arms, between her legs. He sinks into her depths until he can drown himself no further, pulling back only to plunge in again. He rips his mouth away from hers to take the fleshy part of her shoulder between his teeth, panting steam from his nostrils and clutching at her with feverish palms.
Sakura clings to him as he pushes and pulls at her, knocking into her so forcefully her breath is taken and returned with each forward sway. When he begins chanting her name into the cradle of her neck, she digs her nails into his nape, anchoring herself as she tilts her hips against his onslaught, mimicking the passion of his movement to the best of her ability.
A slight adjustment of his flexing hand sends him careening against a spot deep inside that sets her mind reeling. Sharp pants and rough groans spill from his lips and she cries out, clutching at him as her body draws tight like a thread, a feeling like reaching a tipping point rising inside of her.
The thread breaks, the world falls away and she is floating, no, she is pinned to the earth, sinking into the soil and being wrapped up and pulled apart by deep-reaching roots, stretching her body to its limit until she finally snaps in a burst and a shrill cry.
Sasuke shudders violently against her and she is only just coming back to the present when she finds herself slammed onto her back, caged by his arms around her head as he drives into her, pistoning in and out faster than her body can keep up with as she weathers the aftershocks of her climax.
Green eyes stare upward, nearly cloudy with bliss and awe, locking onto his and Sasuke is burning, caught in the central blue flame of a supernova, melting into her so deep it would take an eternity to remove his remnants.
“Sakura,” he gasps once the breath comes back into his lungs. Her arms wrap tight around his shoulders and he buries his face into her chest.
They are lulled to sleep by the crackling sounds of the dying flame and the slowing of their own heavy breaths.
✣✣✣
Shallow puddles pepper the grassland, muddy divots already springing forth new plantlife. The tide is gentle against the coast, golden sand glittering under the increasing sunlight. A cool breeze tickles against their napes, blowing pink and raven strands into slight disarray.
“There are many small elven communities in the kingdom,” Sasuke says in a low voice, nearly overtaken by the whistling wind.
His face is drawn tight, reminiscent of how it was when they first happened upon each other. Features pinched and brows furrowed like the day he stood with toes dipping into the swells, his flames sputtering out in the sunlight.
A small hand reaches up, up until he is forced to bend. Just long enough for her to brush the pads of small fingertips over his jaw, bringing to life the softer expression she became so well acquainted with through many waning days and vibrant nights.
“I am needed,” Sakura replies with a tiny smile. “At least for a long while. No one else has the mastery over healing and medicine as I do. But…I will return here before the next flood season to gather my herbs.”
Her smile remains steady, even as the slightest tremble creeps about her words. Sand crunches lightly as the tall, lithe creature takes a step forward.
“It is my earnest hope that one day we shall be able to lie in each other's arms every sunset, every dawn” Sasuke murmurs, pressing too-warm fingers against his lover’s cool cheek.
A deep breath expands his chest, puffs hot over Sakura’s face. The edge of his lips tilts in a tiny smile and he moves his hand to prod the center of her forehead, a feather light tap.
Sasuke arrived at the towering, daunting gates leading into Konohagakure, with the sun shining high in the sky and a gentle, warm breeze rustling through the trees. He inhaled deeply through his nose, taking in the scents of leaves, soil - the place he once called home.
The closer he stepped to the village’s entrance, the more the shadow it cast fell over his head and shoulders.
Slow, steady steps soon brought him mere feet away from the entrance into the village, and as he drew close to the guard-desk, he caught sight of a pair of heads, blonde and silver (or was it more white, now?). His lips quirked, just barely, and his eyes roved nearby the pair, seeking a special shock of color.
“Sasuke!” came the yell and then he was encompassed by the heat of an almost painfully tight embrace.
Naruto’s palm thumped heavily against his back once, twice, and then he was grasping at Sasuke’s shoulders, pulling back to grin at him with a smile so bright it rivaled the sun shining above.
“Welcome back,” Kakashi spoke in his typical lazy drawl, snapping his favorite book shut as he slunk closer. His hand was gentler as it came up to pat Sasuke’s shoulder, dark eyes sliding over his form briefly. “You’ve gotten tall, haven’t you?”
“Maybe you just shrank,” he replied, glancing around once more as Naruto guffawed in laughter at their former sensei’s expense.
There was a very important something— someone —missing from this reunion. Despite how hard he looked, in whatever direction, he did not catch even a glimpse of blossom-colored hair, nor twinkling green eyes.
“Where is Sakura?” he finally asked.
Silence met his question.
He halted his perusal of the entryway to the village to fix his gaze on Naruto and Kakashi again. Naruto shuffled in discomfort while Kakashi stared impassively, the only tell of his disquiet being the barely noticeable clench of his jaw under the cloth of his mask.
A frown took his face as they continued to stand, saying nothing. The muscles that had only just begun to feel relaxed after a long time (years, maybe) tensed up as his patience spread thin.
“She is on a mission,” Kakashi eventually supplied. His voice was casual. “I expect her to return today. Come, let’s take this conversation to my office.”
Sasuke only nodded, his mood slightly darkened by Sakura’s absence and especially by the way Naruto seemed to be holding something tight behind his lips, an outburst clinging to the tip of his tongue.
Something was amiss, and no one was telling him what it was.
He barely took notice of the changes in the village, more preoccupied with staring at the tense set of Kakashi’s shoulders, the stiffness of Naruto’s gait as they led him through the streets of a new Konoha. He could feel stares, but he had learned long ago to not acknowledge them.
His blonde-haired friend was babbling as he so often did, saying everything but also nothing at all.
“Hey, bastard,” Naruto spoke, hesitantly, hands fidgeting awkwardly in his lap. “I feel like I should say. Sakura’s- different, you know…”
He only tched in response, because of course she was. It had been nearly three years since he had left; he expected everyone had changed. But she was Sakura. She would always be Sakura, no matter how she had grown.
As a matter of fact, he was as close to excited as he thought himself capable. He longed to see just how different Sakura had become. And he wanted to see what she thought of his growth, too. Sasuke had atoned for his sins, and he had returned. Just as he’d told her.
For once, he’d kept his promise.
Sasuke was glad when they finally climbed the stairs of the Hokage tower. He stood rigid in the center of the room, watching with slightly narrowed eyes as Kakashi fell heavily into his seat behind the grand desk, Naruto flopping into a chair closeby.
“When exactly is Sakura due to return?” Sasuke asked, propping his hand on his hip.
Trying to shove away his petty anger at the robed-man before him was a feat. Sasuke had wanted to blame Kakashi for many things in his life, but this time it actually made some sense.
A hand was raked through locks of silver-white and the older man sighed deeply. “Soon. Don’t worry, I will...send her your way once she comes back and gives her report.”
Before he could inquire as to exactly why Sakura was absent when he had sent a missive of his return more than two weeks ago, his thoughts were interrupted by the quiet pop and puff of smoke that signaled the appearance of a fourth person in the room.
An anbu knelt just beside him, masked face tipped toward the floor as they bowed deeply before the Hokage. The first thing Sasuke noticed was the acrid scent of blood, thick, cloying— yet it was barely detectable to the eye due to the black of the nin’s outfit. He could neither make out the markings of the mask they wore, and every inch of skin was covered in an opaque black fabric; not even the individual’s hair was visible.
“Reporting, Hokage-sama,” came a decidedly feminine voice, startlingly soft but also extremely monotone.
Sasuke’s ears twitched in response and he found himself staring at the petite form as they rose slowly from the ground, stalking toward Kakashi silently, and materializing a scroll that was rusted in certain spots with specks of blood.
Uchiha Sasuke feared no one living or dead, but something about this anbu operative made the hairs on his arms stand at attention, his instincts set on edge. Their aura felt menacing, and if they had not been suppressing their chakra, Sasuke imagined it would feel cold and slimy, not unlike that of the snake sannin. Dangerous.
This was a trained assassin, a member of a prestigious and insidious organization, the shadow that fell at the edges of every hidden village.
A member of the organization that bred friend-murderers and killers of kin.
“Anbu-san,” Kakashi’s voice sounded odd, even as he formally addressed the individual who lingered in front of him. “Thank you. You are dismissed, off duty for the rest of the week.”
The figure’s head bobbed in a small nod, “Understood, Hokage-sama.”
“Anbu-san,” Kakashi addressed them again, leveling them with an intent stare and expression Sasuke could not figure out. “Tonight.”
“As you wish, Hokage-sama,” they replied in a whisper.
The nin disappeared, once again in an instant of silence and brush of smoke.
Naruto seemed to release his breath in a whoosh and their former sense cleared his throat.
“So, Sasuke,” Kakashi sighed heavily, leaning back in his chair and throwing an eye crinkle his way. “I technically need a ‘report’ of your travels, but I’d really just love for you to catch us up on what you’ve been up to the last few years.”
There was still a tingly sensation at the back of his neck and he found himself almost preoccupied with the interaction he had bore witness to, the anbu who seemed even more mysterious than others of their class. He shook his thoughts away to focus on Kakashi’s request.
Sasuke recounted parts of his travels, filtering out the unnecessary details. He spoke of the state of small civilian communities outside of the hidden villages and borders of the other countries. Many of them needed help, and he was most times able to provide it, as well as promises to take their troubles to the highest authorities he knew. He told them, quietly, that he felt better now, relieved of the albatross that had been slung about his neck.
What he did not tell them was that his stomach had been sickened with longing whenever he crossed paths with a cherry blossom tree. Sasuke left out retellings of the instances where he was attacked by men, by women, by children who despised him, who would rather spit upon his kindness than accept the atonement of a man who only knew sin. He did not speak of the nights he woke gasping, the taste of a sweet name bittered with salted tears on his tongue.
“It seems like you’ve seen quite a lot, and done many things as well,” Kakashi replied, eyes crinkling (more) at the edges. “From the way you speak, though, seems you feel there is more yet to see and do.”
Sasuke nodded, shifting his weight slightly, “Aa. I still have much to atone for, and… things to discover about myself. But I want to stay here for a while. Until it’s time to depart again.”
Until she’s ready to join me.
“As long as you stay your ass here long enough to actually spend time with your best friend,” Naruto interjected loudly, rising from his chair with a dramatic stretch, “sounds good to me. Speaking of which, you’ve given your report, I’m starving, so let’s go get some ramen.”
A younger version of himself might have scoffed, turned up his nose at the request, but he found Naruto’s display somewhat endearing, tugging at a nostalgic muscle that had been unworked for a long, long time. He was not as happy as he could have been, had the one he had been waiting and yearning to see been there. But he could share a meal with his best friend— he had missed him, too.
~
It was completely dark out by the time Sasuke stepped into the apartment Kakashi had provided for him. His jaw felt tired and overworked from carrying less than one-quarter of the conversation with Naruto at Ichiraku. The social battery that was perpetually at half-way empty seemed to be operating on fumes after dealing with the shocked greetings from former classmates, some he remembered and some who he swore he had never seen before in his life.
Sasuke blamed his exhaustion for how long it took him to notice her presence. He had already kicked off his sandals, set down his bag and begun padding into the dark living room before his eyes shot to the dimmest corner, crimson bleeding over his iris.
A petite figure unfurled itself from the shadows, slinking forward a few steps before a tiny light flickered on, illuminating delicate features.
Those eyes, they were bright and lovely as they had always been, but with an unfamiliar glint, an edge that he had never seen there before.
“Sasuke-kun,” his name in her mouth was familiar, so satisfying it made his head spin.
Her voice was different– still feminine, still Sakura but with a timbre that signaled age and a tone that was cooler, completely unlike the bubbly way she used to speak to him.
“Sakura,” he whispered, feeling as if the breath had been siphoned from his lungs.
They stood without words for a moment that could have been a century. In that moment his eyes swept over her like a flash. She looked just as he had remembered, but somehow also totally different. Slightly taller, but still so very small. Her face had matured, her hair grown longer. There was a sharpness about her jaw that made him think that she was no longer the girl who had loved him, but a woman that he hoped still did.
Her eyes flitted over him as well, taking him in fully. That gaze on him was almost a physical thing, a touch that he could nearly feel, but not really. It reminded him of days long past, of dreams long-treasured.
Unable to help himself, he strode toward her, reaching out to tug her against his aching chest.
He thought of the last time they had embraced, on a cool morning as the first rays of dawn were breaking over the horizon. She had clutched him so closely then, clinging to him even as she insisted she was fine with the fact that he had to go.
This time, her arms did not reach for him. This time, a tiny, tight fist caught his hand, before he could even get close.
Sakura’s eyes blinked slowly, as if confused by the fact that his fingers were clenched between her own. Then she was dropping his hand, her arm falling limp at her side.
A moment of heavy silence passed between them. Something like a dying flame glimmered deep in her gaze as her eyes ran over the breadth of his shoulders, slipping quickly over the lines of his face. It felt as if deep under the new, cold film overlaying her formerly warm, expressive eyes, there was a flicker of the familiar, recognizable appreciation.
Or perhaps it was just his own wishful thinking.
“Welcome back, Sasuke-kun,” she spoke again, quiet. The whisper of a smile twitched at her lips, but it looked almost mechanical, like she was out of practice. “Sorry I wasn’t able to meet you at the gate.”
“I wrote to you and told you I was coming,” he said, voice hoarse. His mind was still fixated on her reaction to his attempted touch, unable to focus as she stood at a casual, but meaningful distance away from him.
“I know,” she said. A rueful smile tugged at her mouth, but it seemed shaky, lacking the same light her smiles always had before. “This was an important mission. But I made sure to hurry back, you see? I didn’t even stop home to change.”
Small hands spread out at her sides and he drank in the sight of the pale skin of her arms, the only flesh exposed by dark, snug fitting clothes that covered her from neck to ankle.
“I see,” he nodded, swallowing as she took a small step in his direction. Something told him it would be a bad idea to mirror her movements, and so he remained perfectly still as she crept closer until her nose was inches away from his chest.
“That’s why I’m a little jumpy,” she said sheepishly, reaching out slowly–maddeningly slow– until her hands rested on his right arm and what remained of his left. “Adrenaline and all that.”
Sasuke would have questioned her further, had she not taken the final step that pushed their fronts against each other, and slipped her hands about his waist. Small palms pressed firmly into his back and her head rested lightly over his chest.
In the next seconds, he was returning the embrace. He clutched at her, so tightly he distantly feared it would be a trouble for her to breathe. There were no complaints, and she only squeezed him more tightly in response.
And Sasuke was finally, finally home.
Monster we made
The night Sasuke left the village to seek out his atonement was one that haunted him, just like many nights before it.
It was late, too late even for his staff to be around. The Hokage Tower was silent, dark save for the small lamp illuminating the paperwork strewn haphazardly before him.
Kakashi stiffened, hand freezing where it was poised to etch his name on a document that probably did not even need to pass over his desk. His eyes rose slowly, peering into the darkness in front of him, unable to make out the figure he knew stood in the shadows.
A slow inhale brought the stinging scent of iron to his sensitive nose. His hand lowered, setting the pen aside before moving slowly to finger the edge of the table. The exhale that filtered through his lungs was much like a sigh, if slightly more shaky.
“Sakura-chan,” he muttered. A brief moment of dead silence and then movement, so quiet he could barely make out the light footsteps as they drew nearer.
“Hokage-sama,” she greeted, and a chill shot down his spine as she entered the small pool of light, standing directly in front of him.
Despite the shadows cast over her features, he could see the blood splattered across half her face, deepening the red of her dress. Green eyes gazed at him, and so cold that he shivered again.
“Are you okay?” he murmured, eyes roving over her body, searching for injury. Fruitless, he knew, because her healing prowess had surpassed that of the formerly most skilled and innovative medical shinobi of multiple generations.
But, he also knew that it had been a bad day for her. Shinobi were known to act out of character on bad days.
“I think so,” she mumbled, and then she was leaning forward, her face looming closer to his as she gazed at him with wide, nearly expressionless eyes. “I did something, Kaka-sensei.”
“And what is that, Sakura-chan?” It took a gargantuan effort to keep his tone light, even as the scent of blood thickened with her proximity, as he noted the way her face seemed frozen stiff, save for a slight tremble at the very edges of her mouth.
“Sasuke-kun,” she started, invoking the name of her absent love instead of answering his question. “He told me things before he left. About...his clan, Itachi, the village. The Third, Danzo, the Elders.”
Now, the fine hairs on Kakashi’s arms stood up. Her gaze lowered, glossing over the desktop in between them as she continued her breathy monologue.
“I knew Danzo was a bastard, especially after what he tried to do to shishou,” she mused, and Kakashi remained quiet even as he began to feel she was no longer speaking to him. “I was happy when he died. Back then, I felt guilty for that. The Third...it was disappointing, finding out how complacent he was. We all looked up to him, but now...now I’m really glad he’s dead, too.”
“Sakura-chan, what-” Kakashi’s words froze in his throat as her green eyes shot back to his own, searing, looking so deep he felt as if she could see every single one of his secrets.
“Sasuke-kun cried when he told me, Kakashi-sensei,” the steadiness of her voice faltered here, and her eyes glazed over once more. Soft features pinched, furrowing with phantom dismay as if she were reliving this tragic storytelling all over again. “And when he stopped crying, he apologized... For being angry, for wanting to harm the village, for wanting to kill the people who wronged him.”
“Sasuke has grown,” Kakashi interjected, eyeing her carefully. “Him going on this journey to atone for his sins shows us that, doesn’t it, Sakura-chan?”
He was speaking in a tone he had not used in years, a voice he had adopted for his three emotional, dysfunctional, adorable genin students.
Sakura was not a genin anymore.
“He’s atoning for his sins,” she echoed, nodding slightly. Green eyes flashed to him again. “What about theirs?”
A thick swallow slid down his throat, nearly choking him as her head tilted in a horrible mockery of the way she used to do as a child. Seeing that innocently-confused, slightly troubled expression on a grown-up face, smeared with unknown blood and caked with gore was eery, despite the plethora of unnerving and terrible things he had seen. He fought back the urge to move, the instinct that shrieked in his blood to dispel the threat-
She is-was his student.
“Sakura-chan, can you tell me why you’re covered in blood?” he asked quietly, steeling himself as he rested a barely steady hand over her own. It, too, was smeared with red, half-damp still in some areas. “Let sensei help.”
She only shook her head, peering down at his hand over hers for a moment. Then she moved, flipping her palm up to grip at his fingers with her own, so tight Kakashi flinched in both surprise and discomfort.
“He called himself a monster,” she whispered, and the sudden tremble to her voice was heartbreaking, the first glimpse of the Sakura he knew. “And-and I told him he wasn’t but… I think he was. He had to be. It takes a monster to kill monsters, doesn’t it?”
Kakashi could barely follow her string of musings, and he was torn between signaling for his anbu guard or attempting to redirect the conversation so he could get some real answers.
“I think all of you were monsters,” she stated and Kakashi’s heart thudded before skipping a beat. “Naruto, Sasuke, you. Monsters in your own way. Not because you were bad, but because terrible things made you that way. Maybe that’s why I never really fit in.”
“Sakura,” Kakashi said firmly, “tell me what happened tonight.”
Tell me what you did.
Her eyes blinked at him for a long moment before her gaze lowered to their hands again.
“I killed them,” she stated, voice devoid of any emotion. “Because they should also atone for their sins.”
“Who?” he asked, blood freezing cold in his veins. Who?
“The Elders,” she replied and Kakashi’s eyes widened, terror settling deep into the marrow of his bones-- deeper than that. “I would have come to you sooner, but I know you would have tried to stop me.”
“You’re fucking right I would,” Kakashi snapped in a harsh whisper, eyes roving about the room as if suddenly the walls had ears. He looked back to his former student, unable to mask the fear bubbling inside his guts. “They are some of the most important figures in this village, in this country. Way more important than me.”
The hat was all but decoration, his power reined tight in wrinkled, wealthy, wrathful hands.
Dead.
“They needed to die,” she whispered, her nostrils flaring. As quick as anger flitted over her face, her features settled back into a cool, almost blank expression. “You know why they had to.”
And the way she stared down at him made Kakashi feel sick because he did know, but he had not gotten to the point yet that they could. There was no reason this young kunoichi, favored as she was, should have been privy to the stakes that she seemed to be leveling at him now.
“You know,” he realized, voice barely audible.
She nodded, one barely perceptible dip of her chin.
“How?” he nearly choked on the question. “That information-”
“You would be surprised,” she murmured, “how much men are willing to tell when their lives are in your hands. It only took a little time for everything to click, Kakashi-sensei. Sasuke-kun’s story just made me need to move faster.”
“That was not your decision to make,” he hissed, free hand clenching so tight his knuckles popped with strain.
“You would not have made it,” her voice was still quiet, but startlingly sharp. “I couldn’t stand them breathing for a second longer. They deserved to die.”
And it was this, blaring so intensely in this moment, that made him rue the day Haruno Sakura was presented with her headband, when she was placed on his team of disasters. Loyalty, fickleness and violence wrapped up in a tiny, pretty package, fit to explode at the slightest disturbance. A pink-haired child who was prone to cry only half as much as she was equipped to rage.
“A lot of people deserve to die. That does not give you the right to assassinate village leaders in cold blood without my clearance,” Kakashi muttered fiercely, freeing his hand from her tight grasp and rising to his feet. He stalked his way toward the bookshelf behind his desk.
The touch of her palm on his back caused him to shiver.
“I know, Kaka-sensei,” and there was that soft, breathy tone that had made him so uncomfortable before. It was terrifying now.
“I don’t think you do,” he huffed a chuckle that bordered on hysterical, “I cannot protect you from this, if anyone finds out.”
“I don’t need you to protect me,” she murmured, and he figured the stroke of her fingers was meant to be comforting. It was not. “I just need you to help me. Better yet… use me.”
“Sakura, what the fuck are you talking about?” he whirled on her, frustration sharpening his tone.
She was standing so close he could make out the whites of her eyes, the glow of green irises in the darkness.
“Kakashi-sensei, I want to be a monster, too,” she murmured, and when she slipped her arms around his waist, he felt the way she was trembling. “So I can get rid of them once and for all.”
“Sakura, you’re talking about entire systems and structures, underground dealings that have been in place since even before I was born,” he said earnestly. His arms hung limp at his sides even as the young woman clutched at him like the genin she once was. “I don’t have any real power, you know that. If this goes wrong-”
“You could solidify the power of your station. Do you want the Hokage to be just a figurehead to a corrupt institution when it's Naruto’s turn?” she asked, and Kakashi felt himself being swayed despite his best efforts. “Hasn’t he fought enough?”
The image of blonde hair, sky-blue eyes and a shining smile appeared in his head as if summoned by her very voice. Years of abuse and then struggle and finally recognition, well-documented in his mind and heart. Maybe now the only innocent soul left of the pitiful crew that he was meant to groom into top-tier assassins, protectors, heads of state.
“The elders’ remains have been dealt with,” Sakura continued, voice lilting as if she were reading him a bed-time story rather than confessing to murder and sabotage. “I made sure to save the good parts, to harvest information. I’ve found the location of files and scrolls holding information worth the price of the daimyo’s head. The elders were practically ancient, weak and sickly. I was their personal physician, of course. Only I have the clearance to tell exactly how and why they perished.”
Kakashi could only stare down at the top of her head. Belatedly, he realized the anbu entourage that accompanied him in his every waking moment should have appeared by now.
Their chakra was still there, he found. It was murky, constrained in a way that signaled only the strongest of genjutsu had kept them docile, entrapped in a world where the Hokage’s infamous student was not reeking of blood and death and cornering him in his own office.
“I can help you,” she whispered, hands pressing more firmly into his back as she locked him in her embrace.
“You are not a killer,” he said weakly. Her face drew back slightly and she speared him with an icy stare.
“You and I both know that isn’t true, Kakashi-sensei,” she said, almost chiding. Green eyes blinked wide up at his face. “I was trained to be a killer.”
“You were never supposed to have to do things like this,” he whispered, shutting his eyes to shield himself from her penetrating gaze. “By the gods, not you.”
Wide green eyes blinked at him, glazed over but so, so cold, “Perhaps you should have disposed of me, then. It’s too late now. And we...we have a job to do, sensei.”
Edge like steel
The room was silent save for the sound of soft breathing and the rustle of fabric in response to slow, careful movements.
His lips found her jaw and then trailed slowly, carefully, to the protrusion of her collar bone. Here, he planted an open mouthed kiss, following with a tender lap of his tongue.
Sakura breathed above him— inhale, exhale, the weight of her body slight on his hips. Her left hand remained planted on his chest as the other hovered about the shoulder of his missing arm.
A breath rattled through the cavern of his chest when the hand on his chest began stroking in tiny circles, a harmless touch bringing forth a heat he was only beginning to understand within him. Cautious, he remembered, as he moved the hand from her hip into her line of sight. He inched it toward her shoulder, cupping it gently and pulling her toward him gradually as he stared into the quivering green pools of her irises.
By the gods, he had missed this– her.
Another shaking inhale and her bare chest was pressed flush to his, her left hand trapped between them. Fingers dug into his shoulder as their lips met, molded, gliding past each other like a whisper of wind. Then harder, like grinding rock smoothed by the force of the waving current. An exhale from her mouth formed an inhale into his lungs and his hand moved, sliding around to cup the side of her neck, thumb brushing, fleetingly, over the pulse thrumming there.
And then her right hand flashed from his shoulder, reappearing at the base of his jugular, a materialized kunai’s edge pressed cold into heated flesh. Both quivering bodies turned into solid ice from warm, flowing water.
The moments passed between them like an eternity of bated breath. Sasuke did not dare to even blink.
“You could have killed me in a second,” she finally said, edge like steel. An explanation, maybe even an apology—spoken like an accusation and underscored with a threat.
“I wouldn’t,” he murmured, fingers falling weakly away from the column of her neck. Green eyes shone down at him, like a well overflowing. He bit his lip as his heart pounded under her left palm. “I wouldn’t.”
“I know,” Sakura whispered fiercely, voice shaking like dry leaves in an autumn wind. The blade she held to Sasuke’s throat was steady. “I know.”
A thick swallow pushed down his throat and he moved his hand haltingly, so slow it could barely be called movement at all, until he could rest it behind his head. Green eyes watched his every move, a mixture of vulnerability and distrust swimming about in the irises. His heart felt fit to wilt inside the cage of his ribs.
“I’m sorry,” he said, exhaling, relaxing each of his muscles in increments. “I’ll be more careful.”
Pink locks billowed like a curtain around them as she shook her head back and forth. A ragged breath expanded her chest and, finally, the hand at his neck trembled before being ripped away. The kunai fell against the mattress with a quiet thump.
“It’s not you,” half a sob seeped through gritted teeth, “it’s me. It’s me…”
“It’s okay,” he murmured, running his eyes over her form like he wished his hand could. A gentle caress, running languid over every inch of soft flesh covering iron-forged muscle.
How heartbreaking, that she could look so beautiful as she wept.
Tears slid down reddened cheeks even as her eyes fixed on his chest, unfocused, and her hands settled over her thighs, the press of her fingers dimpling soft flesh. Sasuke bit his lips against the urge to reach for those hands, knowing that it would only cause both of them more pain.
“Sakura,” he breathed, fixing his eyes on her face once more. “Look at me, Sak.”
Quick as a flash her eyes were sharp and alert once more, boring into his own. They were still wet, droplets clinging to long pale lashes and he felt that he was drowning in them, like they could see past his skin and sinew, all the way to the core of his bones.
His tongue undulated behind his teeth, tasting, testing words of comfort but then a small, warm palm was pressed against the center of his chest and she was leaning over him again. Her face drew closer until all he could see was green, black, pink.
The whoosh of air through her lungs was all he could hear and then her mouth was pressed against his, her body stretching over every inch of his that she could reach. The hand on his chest remained, another coming to grip the wrist of his bent arm, a heavy pressure making it immovable, pinned to the bed.
Her lips moved over his as she breathed, “I want to be close to you. I never want to be close to anyone else.”
“Come as close as you like,” he whispered back, breath quickening as his blood began its dance once more, heat sweeping like flame against his insides.
A shuddering sigh slipped through her lips before they began to move against his again. The press of her kiss was achingly familiar, reminding him of months spent in darkness, his only senses stimulated by a sweet voice, a soft mouth molding against his own in stolen moments of quiet. But it was also different, as she was now, her kisses more forceful; a contradicting balance between hesitance and desperation. The grip on his wrist became bruising but he would not complain, if it meant he could be closer.
Sakura ripped her mouth away from his only to delve into the crook of his neck, tongue slithering hot over his pulse, flicking over and warming the part that had been subject to the cool pressure of her blade. Her shifting caused her hips to move, the spot between her legs brushing over him intimately— a small sound escaped his mouth with his next breath.
She moved back slightly to peer down into his face, head tilting calculatingly. Then came an intentional roll of her hips, a twist that caused him to press against the damp warmth of her center. Sasuke groaned quietly again, barely able to keep his eyes open, clinging to his control just barely enough to keep his arm steady in her hold.
“You look like you could fall apart,” she stated, eyeing him in a way that caused a shiver to creep down his spine. She began a gentle rocking motion, not enough to bring him toward the edge, but just enough to make him feel like he would go mad.
“I could,” he grit, his own hips undulating, seeking more friction. Her thighs clenched tight like vices around him and his head fell back onto the pillows weakly as he panted, “I would fall apart for you.”
Sakura inhaled sharply through her nose, face drawing close to his once again.
“What if I can’t put you back together, anymore?” she asked, and she sounded so unguarded then, so much like his Sakura that his eyes slipped shut and he craned his neck to push his forehead against hers.
“It doesn’t matter,” he breathed, “as long as you’ll still have me, even in pieces.”
There were no more words spoken as she crashed her mouth against his again, the weight of her bearing down heavier than was natural, pushing him deep into the mattress. The chakra she kept suppressed more often than not these days came alive, spreading around them like a heavy blanket. Distantly, he wondered if it was a jutsu; surely, he would struggle to free himself from her grip even if he tried. The presence of chakra, of her, was almost suffocating, but the air spilling from her lips was enough to fill his lungs, anyway.
He groaned into her mouth and she responded with a soft sigh that contrasted starkly with the tight grip of her hand about his wrist, the way her sharp nails scratched against his chest.
She lifted her hips up and away from his straining arousal, prepping to sheath herself over him, but he ripped his mouth away from her kiss with a gasp.
“Wait,” he rasped, his own voice sounding distant and unfamiliar in his ears, “let me taste…”
“Taste?” her lips formed around the word almost inaudibly. Sasuke watched with heavy lidded eyes as she dragged her hand away from his chest to reach for her center, staring intently as her finger tips slid through her slick, pink folds.
“Please…” he whispered wantonly, hypnotized by the gentle stroke of her hand on herself, mesmerized by the way the wetness gathered and spread with her ministrations.
She brought glistening fingers up to his face, fluttering them tantalizingly across his gaze before swiping them against his lips, smearing her essence.
He sucked the appendages into his mouth, hungrily, becoming dizzy and drunk at the taste of her on his tongue. His eyes rose to hers pleadingly, crimson bleeding across his vision as a deep moan rumbled through his chest.
Quickly, her eyes flitted away from his to focus on his mouth. Another desperate sound slipped around her fingers and she tilted her head again before pulling her hand away.
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” she asked, and if he were a different man he might have fallen for the innocence of her expression, the feigned uncertainty.
But he knew this Sakura had been groomed into a world of lies and deceit and that she was playing him.
“Sakura,” he entreated, tongue slipping out to lap at the vestiges of her nectar that clung to his mouth. A flash of pride burned hot through his breast when Sakura’s chest expanded with a heavy breath, and her gaze sharpened at the movement.
“Oh,” she murmured. A pink flush spread across her cheeks and heavy lids slipped down partially over green eyes as she continued to stare at his mouth. “Like this, you mean.”
So quickly he barely even caught the movement with his sharingan, Sakura repositioned so both her knees pressed hard on his shoulders and his sole arm was stretched straight, shackled far above his head in her tight grip.
He groaned as her dripping core settled over his mouth, slipping his tongue through her folds and sighing at the taste. The thighs caging his head trembled as did her breath above him.
“Good, good, Sasuke-kun,” she sighed, rocking her hips gently as he laved at her bundle of nerves with his tongue, and sucked the petals of her labia between his lips.
The praises caused his pulse to race faster and his arousal to throb furiously between his legs. He doubled his efforts, moving his mouth against her hungrily, neck straining and jaw becoming sore as he licked and sucked and lapped at the juices trickling from her center.
He was becoming slightly light-headed, partially due to the way her thighs were tightening about his head and how she was settling more heavily onto his face. Also, because the way she was whimpering and gasping and uttering soft praises was euphoric, making him want to work harder, to bring her more pleasure.
“Fuck, you’re so good. So good for me, Sasuke-kun,” Sakura whispered above him. Sasuke echoed the quiet moan that came shortly after, latching his mouth onto the pearly nub peeking through her blushing folds and sucking hard.
A keening cry sounded above his head as the muscles under her soft, silky skin drew tight and the inner parts of her thighs trembled against his cheeks. He felt as if he were drowning as her essence spilled over his lips, smeared across his chin and up to his nose as she undulated and bucked over him.
Sasuke was still gasping for air by the gulp when she slithered down his chest and seated herself onto him in one fluid motion. And then he could do nothing but clench his fist beneath her iron grip as she rose and fell over him with the grace and control of a well-trained machine, her innermost parts squeezing him in such a way he thought he might die for the bliss.
“Shit, Sak,” he panted, moaning pitifully as his hips bucked upwards, spearing into her each time she slammed herself down. “Sakura.”
Choking on a shout, he bit down on his lip so hard he could taste iron. Sakura shifted ever so slightly, allowing her to take him deeper, so deep his eyes rolled back before fluttering shut. A sudden pressure at the sides of his jaw nearly startled him, causing a chill to creep down his spine as small fingers gripped his face.
Sakura squeezed until his lips parted slightly with a low whine before she delved into his mouth with her middle and index, hooking them behind his teeth and yanking down until he was gaping, harsh pants and groans spilling. His cheeks twinged with soreness from being stretched to their limit, but nothing could overshadow the feeling of her hot and slick, gripping and sliding over him like a heady mixture of punishment and reward.
He gazed up at her, helpless, lost in the pain and the pleasure. She moaned nastily, stretched his lips even wider. Dribbles of saliva slipped from the corners of his mouth, mixing in with her juices stickily about his lips.
“Open your mouth,” she hissed, breathless as she crashed over him harder, faster, cheeks red and eyes brimming. “Scream.”
Sasuke’s back arched off the bed, head falling back onto his shoulders as he did just that.
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Natsukashii (懐かしい) -(Adj.) of some small thing that brings you suddenly, joyously back to fond memories, not with a wistful longing for what’s past, but with an appreciation of the good times
A thick layer of dust coats every surface in the room. Slivers of light slip between boarded-up windows, a scent like woodsmoke, ash and dry dirt in the air. A dated, foggy bulb fizzle-buzzes to life with the flip of an old switch.
“Wow,” Mitsuki murmurs. “This place really has remained untouched.”
Glancing to his right he sees Sarada push her white, dramatically-brimmed hat back from her forehead. It rests between her shoulder blades, held at her neck by a thin red chord. Their former teammate had laughed for hours after seeing that subtle alteration.
“Aa,” Sarada replies, her dark eyes flitting around the room. “I suppose it would.”
She glides further into the space, the hem of her robe causing dust to billow gently as it sweeps just above the ground. Everything, from the way her inky-black hair smoothly frames her face to the pristine white of her robes and hat, drips poise and honor.
Long, slender fingers reach out, tap lightly against the wooden desk. Dust clings to the tips of the digits as she draws her hand away, and her eyes flit about the room all over again.
“Beneath the dust and debris,” Mitsuki begins, voice soft as he watches his teammate turned leader circle around the desk, “this place looks like it was well-made, and well-used.”
“Papa says the Uchiha ran the Konoha police department basically since the founding,” she whispers. Her chin tips down as she glances over dingy, yellowed papers and metal encased pens. “This office would have been used by the first clan head to serve during those times. And the last was… my grandfather.”
Her shoulders lift and fall with a deep sigh, and silence reigns. Not even ambient sounds break through, none that one would expect to hear in a place so old, with so many ghosts.
The deafening lack of noise is broken when Mitsuki takes a few steps forward, placing himself close enough to brush his hand over Sarada’s back.
“It is a privilege to be allowed to work in this space,” he says. His fingers splay between the blades of her shoulders, applying gentle pressure. “I swear to honor both the village and the Uchiha’s legacy with my service.”
“Don’t get all ‘honorable shinobi’ on me,” she grunts in reply, her voice a little too hoarse to go unnoticed. Mitsuki simply takes a step back, granting her the space he knows she needs. “Let’s just get all this cleaned out before we die from inhaling all this dust. Kami, why did I not leave my robes behind…”
Mitsuki indulges in a small smile when his companion begins to bark orders, directing him to grab hold of the cleaning supplies they had brought and begin sweeping away decades worth of dust and dirt.
He tries not to focus on the sound of her quickened breaths, the delicate clearing of her throat as she finds items to pick up and discard or adjust. And he does not note that cleaning out an office is not a fitting use of time for the Hokage of the Leaf. For he knows that it is not simply clearing out an old room, but a great act of care being bestowed on not only him, but the memory of a clan that was gone before either of them came into existence, but whose blood and legacy were steeped into the very soil their entire lives were built upon.
The two of them work in a companionable silence, slipping past and around each other easily, with a practiced synchronicity honed by years of fighting and training side by side. Every now and then one or the other glances up to see a pair of eyes lingering, and they share a small smile before moving on with whatever they were doing.
Before long, the light in the room begins to dim with the setting of the sun. Most surfaces are clear of dust, relatively clean save for a few stubborn stains on pieces of furniture that will likely need to be replaced anyway. Sarada’s robe has been discarded over a chair pushed against one of the walls, her hat balanced at the corner of the now glossy if not antique-looking desk.
“Much better,” she announces, planting her hands on her hips. With a harsh puff of breath, she blows a wayward lock of silky black hair away from her face. “A lot of the furniture is salvageable, if not a bit dated. I’ll leave the decision to you whether to keep any of it or choose to use your still untouched budget for any upgrades.”
“I said before the budget is unnecessary,” he replies, walking to stand in front of the desk as she slumps down into the old, leather seat. “It’s also rather extravagant considering the police force has gone through a series of upgrades quite recently. I fear I might be accused of receiving favorable treatment.”
Sarada rolls her eyes, scoffing charmingly, “Of course you received favorable treatment. No one else is putting Orochimaru’s kid at the head of any Konoha institution except me.”
“Thank you,” he says simply, curving his mouth in a smile.
She rolls her eyes again, more violently this time.
“Use the budget or I’ll just add it as a bonus to your salary,” she says sternly. Mitsuki nods, still smiling, and she scoffs again. “Now, we should probably clear out any of the belongings left by…this office’s former occupant.”
A beat passes as her gaze falls to the surface of the large desk in front of her. Her irises shine with a faraway look, her features remaining carefully smooth. Mitsuki sees the slight tremble of her fingers, though. He catches the deep inhale she sucks through her nose and how her shoulders sag as the breath is released.
At this moment, she favors her father even more than usual. Stoic, regal and perfectly in control of their emotions, at least to those who do not have the privilege of knowing them. Uchiha Sasuke had much the same reaction when Mitsuki approached him to ask for his blessing to make use of what used to be his father’s office.
The older man who had inspired equal amounts of awe and intimidation from Mitsuki in his youth had seemed close to wavering, his aging eye taking on the same half-absent look as his daughter’s did now. Anyone else might have missed the brief (perhaps merely a couple of seconds) of hesitation. Mitsuki had not. For he had spent years in close contact with a girl turned woman who is just like him.
“The desk should be a good place to start,” he says gently. Because commenting on the history and turmoil hanging between the words unsaid would not reach her, nor would it really bring any comfort. Uchiha Sarada was a woman of action. Only she could decide when she was ready to loose the feelings she surely held captive between her ribs and behind tightly clenched teeth.
Dark eyes flit toward his before she nods, full mouth flattening for half a second before she bobs her head again with a quiet, but forceful grunt of determination.
“Come here and help me pull it all out,” she demands. Mitsuki’s lips twitch at the tone of her voice. Boruto had called her bossy many times over the years for it.
He, personally, finds that he rather likes her authoritativeness. He always had. To him, it signaled strength and someone he could put his trust in, perhaps even before he truly understood what that was.
“Coming, Hokage-sama,” he drawls. Sarada jabs him lightly in his side with her elbow when he is close enough, to which he responds with a quiet laugh. A light flush dashes over her cheeks and his chest warms, just a bit.
“Right then,” she breathes. A slow exhale, a deep intake of air again. Then her graceful, lethal hands come up to grasp at the slightly rusted knob of one of the desk’s drawers, pausing for a breath of a moment before she begins to slowly pull it open.
He steps a bit closer as she reaches in to grasp at a stack of yellowed paper, waiting in silence for her to pull it gradually from the confines of the compartment.
This task does not physically require two people, he knows. He is also cognizant of the fact that the task in this place, for this person–his person–requires a delicate balance of support where his presence is required, but his words are not. So he stands quiet, still, as close as he can without exactly touching, and allows Sarada to hold in her hands the belongings of her lost kin for the very first time.
“Letters,” she whispers. “These are letters. Should probably set them aside in case there’s information that needs to be filed away or preserved.”
When she passes the papers to him with a just-barely trembling hand, he accepts them quietly, stretching his arm to deposit them safely across the room. His free hand coincidentally smooths against the small of her back, fingertips barely brushing over the fabric of her blouse for a second.
By the time she reaches back in, Mitsuki has cut the brief contact, remaining at a close, but careful distance. Her hand remerges with another stack of papers, some folded, others much smaller than standard sheets. A surprisingly pristine folder is among the rest.
Something flutters to the ground as it is passed to him and they both look down to peer at it.
“Oh my,” he mumbles. “That looks like…”
An impressively clear photograph lay face-up on the ground, reflecting a glossy sheen in the yellow light from a thin plastic covering. Staring up at them is a pair of young boys, one who looks to be between the ages of ten and twelve, the other seeming no older than five or six. Both boys have dark hair, dark eyes and pale faces. Their delicate, almost aristocratic features are immediately recognizable, especially that of the younger.
He looks like a masculine version of Sarada as a young girl.
“Papa…,” her voice was quiet, the word riding on the heavy current of a tremulous breath. Sarada slowly lowered to her haunches, reaching out to pluck the photograph up carefully. “And this must be Itachi-ojisan.”
She pulls herself to standing again, peering down at the photo with wide, shining eyes. Mitsuki’s gaze traces the lines of her face, the soft furrow of her brows, the slight downturn of her lips. Her lashes flutter and begin to clump as they gather some of the telltale moisture brimming at the rims of her eyes.
“I have never seen my dad so young,” she says thickly. His heart does a peculiar flip in his chest and he finds himself taking a step closer, so close that the back of her knuckles brush against his chest. “The only photo I’ve ever seen of him when he was a kid was the one with the original Team 7.”
“This confirms where you got your looks from,” Mitsuki says softly. The chuckle he gets in response wavers a bit, but he decides it is better than nothing. “You looked exactly like him at that age.”
“Mama would hate hearing that,” Sarada replies. Her eyes are still fixed on the photograph, a wry smile shaping her lips. “She is convinced that I have her eye shape and mouth. Papa always agrees, but I think they’re both just in denial.”
Mitsuki hums quietly in gentle amusement. Sarada’s free hand slips forward, grasps lightly at the edge of his wide sleeve. He continues to peer down at the photo in her hand, and neither of them acknowledge the movement.
When multiple long minutes have passed and Sarada’s face has mostly relaxed in a wistful sort of smile, he murmurs, “Shall we keep looking?”
If he were anyone else, if she were, too, he’d ask–should we stop?
She nods, gives him a heavy sort of look and turns back to rifle through the drawer of histories. More papers emerge, scraps of metal, sharp tools and old fountain pens. Some of the documents hold ink so faded it would take an expert to glean their contents. Much of the paperwork logs events of petty crime, the rare investigation brief.
More photographs emerge, as well–if only a few. One depicts a young woman with waist-length, pitch-black hair. She is wearing a jounin uniform, posture slumped as her face spreads in a wide grin. Sarada’s breath catches when she takes in the image, and her lips tremble when she flips it over to read the single word etched in an elegant scrawl: Mikoto.
If Sasuke as a child was a mirror image to his daughter as a child, this woman is nearly an adult Sarada’s doppelganger. From their deep eyes to their soft mouth, fine jawline and small, sharp nose, they hold a near-startling resemblance.
Next is a photo of a young man with what seems to be a permanent scowl on his face. A pair of thin arms are wrapped across his chest, the face of the other person out-of-frame, but the dark locks brushing over the lighter brown of his hair and the intimate way the feminine hands grasp at him cue Mitsuki into who exactly is in the photo.
By the time the first drawer is empty, Mitsuki is feeling rather raw himself. Because of his knowledge that most of the people centered in this small collection of photographs left the world not long after they were taken, as well as his sensitivity to Sarada’s own mental and emotional turmoil. Even as she fights it before his eyes, he sees it in the slight reddening of her eyes and the tip of her nose. He hears it in her shallow breaths, in the sound of shifting fabric as she fidgets and shuffles her feet.
“It’s getting dark,” she says, her voice near-hoarse and quiet as a spring wind. “There are piles of papers waiting to be signed on my desk. I think you can manage the rest of the organization, right?”
“Right,” he replies. He watches as she backs away slowly from the desk, curling her fingers away from the aged wood.
Her gaze dips to the small pile of photos.
“Make sure to save any documents relating to actual investigations or closed cases. These will need to be processed into the village’s archives. Intra-department correspondences can probably be discarded, but I leave it to your discretion.”
“Okay,” he says in agreement, before offering her a slight bow. Usually she would wave the gesture away, possibly even blush. This time she gazes foggily toward the door, as if part of her has already escaped through it.
“And please make sure to put aside any, uh, personal items,” she swallows thickly again, eyelids sliding shut for a moment and shielding her iris. He wonders if they were crimson for that hidden moment when they reopen, deepest gray. “Bring things like…that to my parents’ house when you’re finished with everything. Please.”
As soon as she is done speaking, she snatches up her robe and hat, disappearing from the partially transformed office in a flutter of leaves and gust of wind. She leaves behind the scent of green tea and ink, and a lighter, sweeter fragrance that he has come to associate with simply her over the years. He imagines all of it, her essence left behind, is marred by a bitter tang, residua of bittersweet reckonings and a memory that never was.
For a few long moments, he battles with himself. The urge to follow in her suit, to abandon this honorable labor to provide comfort in the space where Uchiha Sarada feels and is most powerful is an intense one. To offer his shoulder to grasp on, his chest to lean into would be easy, fulfilling even. Yet he knows that woman better than he sometimes knows himself (it took so very long for him to recognize a “self” as his, anyway); she does not flourish under watchful eyes or coddling. Her strength is found in solitude where she can battle her demons without respite or distraction.
Mitsuki had not made a habit of acting the savior to his betters in the past, and he does not begin now. Instead, he reaches for the loose and faulty knob of the second desk drawer and pulls it open to reveal more history, more secret memories.
The first thing he sees is the delicate links of a long, thin chain. At the end, a broken clasp–what would bring the two ends together. Hooking his fingers under the slightly tangled coils, he drags it out slowly from it’s spot, picking it out until it swings from his hand, anchored at its nexus by a large, blood-red gem, bracketed by two koi fish fashioned out of slightly tarnished metal.
Even the feeble overhead lights make the stone glitter and shine when Mitsuki swipes at the dust veiling its face with his thumb. His eyes trace over the fragile-looking chain, the heavy but comely gemstone fit snugly between the highly intricate koi bordering it.
A necklace, perfect in length and weight save for the broken fastening in need of repair. He supposes this was one of those things found here Sarada would wish that he presents to her parents.
. . . . . ╰──╮╭──╯ . . . . .
The sun burns hot, beaming down on his face. His eyes tingle, sensitive and aching. The sting of sweat dripping from his temples as well as the too-bright light causes him to squint and yet even his discomfort cannot quite break through the fog of his thoughts.
In his blood-stained, bruised hands is a heavy, dark-green vest. Fashioned with multiple pockets, sturdy shoulder pads and the large, red, swirling design of the Uzumaki clan’s insignia, it feels both extravagant and plain in his grasp. Years of training, weeks of exertion and days of reaching deep into his very core for strength and determination had led to this very moment, this very thing.
It borders on anticlimactic. He supposes he could describe it as surreal.
Uchiha Fugaku, second son to the Uchiha Clan. Jounin of Konohagakure.
“Fugaku-san,” a voice calls from behind him.
His head rises and he turns to meet a mirthful gaze. Deep black eyes ringed with equally dark, sweeping lashes flit over his form.
“You look a bit rough, comrade,” Mikoto drawls, loping in his direction and leaving behind her chatterbox friend with the flaming hair.
“Hn,” he mutters, mentally berating himself for even acknowledging her call. He steels himself for her teasing, as he knows she could never resist. “I suppose I should offer my congratulations, Mikoto-san.”
Her jounin vest is held haphazardly in one of her hands, dangerously close to grazing the ground as it swings at her side.
“That nin nearly got you in the last round,” she continues as if he had not said a word. She is close enough for him to make out just how thick and long her lashes truly are.
“And yet here I stand,” he says dryly. He holds his vest higher, biting down the twinge of irritation and forcing his expression to remain neutral. “Only one of us is walking away with a vest. Or…walking away at all.”
“Hm,” she hums. Her inky brows arch and he rolls his eyes before pivoting and beginning to walk in the direction of their clan’s compound. She keeps pace beside him.
“Good thing your opponent wasn’t me, ne?”
Fugaku’s jaw clenches. “That wouldn’t have been a problem.”
“Still full of it, I see,” his uninvited companion sighs. He glances down at her from the corner of his eye, studying the long, glossy strands of her hair, the splattering of dried blood on her cheek.
“Still a nuisance, I see,” he mutters, eventually. Too much time has passed after her words for it to be an effective rebuttal, but he chooses to not acknowledge his distraction.
“How clever!” she coos. “Too bad your fighting style is not as refined as your wit.”
“Bold of you to say,” he grinds out, “when you have never had the privilege of engaging me in a spar. Ah, and with two failed missions under your belt.”
“Kushina and her big mouth,” she grumbles. “The missions were only technically failed, and that was because I took out a few extras in addition to our assigned targets. Perhaps I damaged a greater-council member’s property, but it was a success in the end.”
He snorts in response, deigning to not respond. Quickening his pace and lengthening his stride, he toils to reach the compound faster, to wipe away the layer of blood and grime from his skin and change into clean clothes.
Then he would present his certificate to his father. And then lay it before his elder brother's grave alongside incense and an offering. A thanks for his support while he was in this world, and now that he resides beyond.
“You think you would smile, even a little, on such a monumental occasion,” Mikoto’s voice breaks through the haze of his thoughts. A glance to his side finds her keeping pace with him, still, slanted eyes staring at his face.
Something in her gaze always made him uncomfortable. Perhaps it was the pure depth of her eyes, so dark they rivaled the sky during a lunar eclipse; it could have been the knowing in her look, intuition that seemed to peel back one’s layers and reveal the secrets lying beneath.
“What are you talking about?” Fugaku chooses to ask in response, unable to think of any true retort. Even after he breaks her gaze to focus on the path ahead, he feels her stare on his face.
“You never show any emotion,” she states. “I could almost bet you were born with a scowl. That’s terrible for your facial muscles, you know. You’ll age like a prune.”
“Why do you care?” he questions, injecting as much disinterest into his tone as humanly possible.
“Care is a strong word,” she says, before sighing quite dramatically. “I just think you should be a bit more cheerful, is all. You’ve upheld the legacy of the clan–of your household. You must be proud at least.”
“I am as proud as any shinobi of the Leaf would be,” he replies. “Taking pride in serving one’s village is a given.”
“Well,” she sing-songs. “Personally I’m proud that I was able to best some of the most ferocious shinobi that have ever competed in the exam. I’m proud that I proved to be one of the strongest among my peers.”
Fugaku fully understands where her self-assurance comes from. Uchiha Mikoto is one of the strongest of their generation. With a full mastery of their bloodline limit, a tenacious drive and ruthless comportment, she is a force to be reckoned with.
Her easy-going manner when off-duty was dichotomous enough to give lesser men whiplash.
“You seem proud to be a braggart, as well,” he drawls. A sharp jab to his side has him shooting a glare at the young woman. The left side of his waist smarts, adding to the rest of his aches and bruises.
“Confidence goes a long way, Fugaku-san,” Mikoto’s voice sounds like a grin. “Maybe if you had a little bit more of it, your fireball jutsu would have been less…humble.”
Fugaku bristles despite himself.
“I have mastered that jutsu as well as anyone from our clan,” he says stiffly. “Better than most, actually.”
“Not better than me,” her breath brushes against the side of his neck, voice a whisper startlingly close to his ear. She has taken a few steps on her tiptoes to draw so close.
They arrive at the entrance of their compound before he can gather his frazzled thoughts. Mikoto pulls away to stand at a normal distance again, a small but telling grin on her face.
Crossing into the compound brings a heaviness to his step, a weight materializing on his shoulders. It has been this way since his brother’s death–since his fate was changed before his eyes, his predetermined future re-written.
A war that had given him a name other than “second son” had also taken from him his closest friend and hero. Since that day, the responsibility of an heir, all of its privileges and duties fell to him.
Mikoto’s words serve to remind him that he should be the best of not only his shinobi class, but of the village as a whole. Strong enough to carry the weight of his clan, their history and the legacy his brother left behind.
“Fugaku,” a deep voice thunders, jerking his attention outward as he looks in the direction of the call.
His father stands a couple yards away, posture perfectly straight and features as severe as always. White streaks backward from his temples, contrasting starkly against his dark hair and brows. Age shows in the areas around his eyes and mouth, yet he looks as strong and as deadly as any ninja in their prime. Dangerous, powerful.
“Father,” Fugaku responds, bowing slightly as he approaches.
“Mikoto,” his father says blandly, his gray-ringed eyes glancing over his son’s shoulder briefly.
“Uchiha-sama,” she responds politely. She sounds far more reserved than she had mere moments before.
“You passed the exams,” his father states, looking at the vest he cradles in his hands before piercing him with his heavy stare.
“Aa,” he nods, clearing his throat before affirming, “I did.”
“Good.”
A knot ties itself in his gut as he watches his father stride away.
He blinks his tired eyes, spinning in the opposite direction of the main house, taking steps toward the edges of the compound. He thinks that he would far prefer the quiet and solitude of the gardens over the rice paper walls and sliding doors of the place he called home. So he stalks briskly away from the path that would bring him to his residence, firming his jaw against the sour sensations in his stomach and the rush of his pulse thumping in his ears.
It is not until he has broken away from the residential areas and the promenade housing kiosks and shops that he realizes that he is still not alone.
“Your father is a severe man,” Mikoto says softly when his steps pause and he turns his head to see her meandering beside him. “Quite intimidating. I suppose he should be, as the head of our clan and all.”
“Why are you still here?” he snarls, his voice harsher than he really intends. It must be exhaustion finally catching up to him. From training so hard for the exam, from giving his all in the matches and utilizing all of his accumulated knowledge to excel in the theoretical portions.
His mind and body have been stretched to the limit for days, weeks, years and he is simply tired.
And all he said was ‘good’.
“I live here, too,” Mikoto’s voice pulls him back to the present. He is left wondering exactly when he became so prone to wandering thoughts and letting his guard down in the presence of another. “These grounds are as much my home as they are yours. Or will you simply order me to leave the premises, Uchiha-sama.”
“That’s my father’s job,” he bites. His feet begin moving forward once more.
“Mhm,” she hums, voice light. “And he is very good at it. I’m sure you will be, too.”
“But not better than Mikoto-san would be, I’m sure,” he mutters. A joke it surely is, but her words of confidence lessen the pressure in his chest by a little.
“Of course not,” she exhales heavily, as if exasperated. “We have gone over this, Fugaku-kun. You’re just lucky I am not one to covet positions of power.”
“Fugaku-kun?” he asks, just barely curbing the shock that seeks to leak through his tone.
“I figure we’re friends now,” she says. Her shoulders shrug and he is momentarily distracted by the glossy sheen of her hair as it shifts around her arms.
“Friends?” he questions quietly. She looks up at him and smiles.
“Well, we are taking a walk together,” she muses. Her eyes move away from his to survey their surroundings. Artfully placed plants and bamboo fountains border the space. At its center is a large, pristine koi pond housing numerous, multicolored fish. “We’re engaging in comfortable conversation.”
Fugaku scoffs, “You’ve been basically insulting me. And following me around. I did not invite you.”
“Aa, but you also have not sent me away,” when her face turns toward him again, she bats her long lashes and his heart seems to momentarily lodge itself in his throat.
He swallows it down heavily and spits out, “Perhaps I should.”
“You won’t,” she replies. Her steps slow and she gazes into his eyes steadily.
He says nothing and looks away. They continue to walk, side-by-side.
A silence settles over them, underscored with the quiet bubbling sounds of moving water, the occasional splash as koi peek their heads over the surface of their pond. A warm breeze shakes the leaves of small trees and long-stemmed flowers sway gently. The temptation to engage his dojutsu, to capture the most minute and subtle movements and shift of his surroundings, for once not out of a need to mark danger, takes him as it often does when he is alone. His eyes had consumed so much death and terror; sometimes they yearned for beautiful things, too.
“Your father’s response to your accomplishment left much to be desired,” a soft voice filtered to his ears on the current of the wind.
“That is simply the man he is,” he replies, voice equally as soft. Distantly, he realizes he has now passed the same short tree twice, that he has to adjust his steps to avoid the same stone a second time.
“You have accomplished something that many of our peers and forefathers could not,” she says, and her voice is so earnest that it draws his gaze away from the puckering mouths of hungry koi to her dark, glittering eyes.
“Aa,” he breathes. Her features furrow, a small wrinkle taking residence between her brows.
“Your brother would be proud,” she says. And her face that had become slightly troubled seems to melt into pleasantness once more, her lips curving in a smile. “He would be so happy for you, today.”
“Aa,” Fugaku whispers, again. And despite himself, despite his father’s aloofness and the ache that settles in his throat and his chest–
He believes what she says.
. . . . . ╰──╮╭──╯ . . . . .
Sasuke smiles when he hears two feminine voices laughing from somewhere near the front door to his and his wife’s home. The sound of a long sigh and the wet smack of lips against a cheek filter to his ears, along with a half-hearted protest and more sweet giggles. He sets the last dish on the table, straightening in time to see a tall, slender figure step through the doorway, swathed in pristine white robes and a wide-brimmed head-piece.
“Sarada,” he murmurs, allowing his mouth to shape in another gentle smile.
“Papa,” she replies, pausing to shrug off her robes and deposit it, along with her hat, haphazardly in her usual seat. “Tadaima.”
Sakura sighs, bending to pick up the items and arrange them neatly on the coat-rack off to the side of the room as his daughter sweeps forward to clasp his shoulders in a warm hug. A pinkish splotch on her cheek in the shape of her mother’s lips draws his attention and he chuckles, swiping it away with his thumb before looping his arm around her back.
“You would think the Hokage would have learned to hang up her coat by now,” Sakura muses, throwing him an eye roll from over their child’s shoulder.
He simply casts a look her way before leaning down to rest his cheek at the crown of his daughter’s head.
“Okaeri,” he says.
“Did you cook tonight?” Sarada asks, pulling away from their embrace.
“Aa,” he nods. Her mouth widens with a grin for a moment before it fades.
“Mitsuki might join us,” she informs, glancing between Sakura and him. “I hope that’s alright.”
“He’s always welcome,” Sakura says, voice sweet. She moves to stand behind their daughter, reaching up to stroke her fingers through her dark, thick hair.
Sasuke revels in the warm feeling that pools in his chest as he takes in the sight of his two most precious people. The top of Sakura’s head reaches only a few inches above her own child’s chin, her pale pink locks (slowly being interwoven with strands of silver as the years pass by) an intense, but beautiful contrast to Sarada’s inky black hair.
His daughter looks both just the same as the tiny infant he once cradled in his one hand, and so different in her maturity. He sees his own mother in the color of her eyes, the shade and texture of her hair. Even her voice is reminiscent of the one that his memories have barely managed to cling to, a smooth alto that can be soothing and gentle or hard and sharp like stone.
It causes a bittersweet pang in his center that he has come to cherish. To be able to see the growth of his and his beloved’s creation, and remnants of his lost loved ones all at once.
The sound of the front door opening and shutting brings him back to the present, where his wife and daughter have settled into their seats and make quiet conversation. He slides into his own just as a tall, lean form appears in the doorway to the dining area.
“I let myself in,” Mitsuki announces. Sarada sighs heavily with a shake of her head while his wife visibly bites back a laugh. “I do hope that’s not a problem.”
“You’ve done so for nearly a decade now, Mitsuki,” Sasuke says dryly. He gestures to an open seat with a flick of his fingers. “If it were ever a problem, there’s no use in harping on it now.”
“You are always welcome to let yourself in, Mitsuki-kun,” Sakura amends. She smiles the smile that can light up an entire room, and chase the darkness away from even the most ruined of hearts. “You’re too special to us to worry over such a thing.”
“Thank you, Sakura-san,” Mitsuki chirps as he lowers himself into his spot. His golden eyes immediately latch onto Sarada. “The office has been cleared and rearranged. I’ve brought with me all the…personal effects.”
A look passes between them that Sasuke finds familiar. He glances toward his wife, who meets his gaze with a particular glint in her eye before directing her attention back to the pair of former teammates and current…something.
“Good,” Sarada nods, clearing her throat delicately. She glances down for a split second before pinning Mitsuki with her gaze once more. “Let’s talk about all that after we’ve eaten.”
Sasuke glances toward Sakura again who arches her brow subtly.
“Let’s eat, then,” she says cheerfully. She pushes her palms together, painted fingernails catching the light with a glossy sheen. “Itadakimasu!”
The rest of the table echoes her words. Sasuke doles out a serving first to Sarada, then to his wife before passing some to Mitsuki. His daughter digs in enthusiastically, shoveling food into her mouth at a breakneck pace while somehow managing to keep her movements graceful.
He is forced to bite back a chuckle as he notes that Mitsuki stares at Sarada eating for a solid minute before directing his attention to his own food. A small, nearly inaudible snort breaks free when the young man manages to mirror the exact order to which Sarada consumed the different food items on her plate.
“Sasuke-san,” Mitsuki says after they eat in a comfortable silence for a little while. “I would like to offer my thanks again to you for allowing me to use your father’s old office.”
His chopsticks pause briefly before he resumes the process of scooping up a portion of rice and meat.
“You’ve already thanked me,” he responds before taking his bite. After he chews and swallows he adds, “And really, you didn’t need my permission.”
“It wasn’t really your permission I wanted,” the younger man smiles, the expression somewhere in the realm between genuine and Sai-like in his younger, post-ROOT years. “It was your blessing.
Sasuke nods, resisting the urge to emphasize the fact that his permission nor blessing were required for Mitsuki to occupy that space. He recognizes the respect wrapped up in the request and is appropriately moved by it.
“You had my blessing when you first asked,” he states. Leveling his gaze at Mitsuki’s, he offers a shallow dip of his chin. “You still have it now. I wish you luck in your new position.”
“You’ll do a wonderful job, Mitsuki. My Sarada made the perfect choice, appointing you,” Sakura says. She reaches out to pat the back of the boy’s hand, which he responds to with a slightly startled glance. “The two of you have always made a great pair.”
Mitsuki smiles and murmurs his thanks while Sasuke barely holds back an eye roll. His wife is kind, beautiful, intelligent– subtle, she is not.
Sarada updates them on the goings on in the Hokage tower, some of it relating to village politics and a good portion involving gossip that her mother is absolutely riveted by. Mitsuki interjects now and then, but seems content to simply gaze at Sasuke’s daughter with an intensity that borders on unusual. Were it not for the faint, but unmistakable lovesick look on his face, he might have been concerned or ruffled.
He empathizes with the poor man’s plight–even after years of marriage, with stretches of heart-wrenching distance in between, Sasuke also finds himself caught in a daze when he watches Sakura simply…exist. Time had brought with it a softness that he was still getting used to. Peace–true peace, and not the fragile mirage of it– reigned fully for the first time in his living memory. His daughter had become the second woman to sit as the Hokage to the Leaf, and the first ever Uchiha at that. Rather than spending his days seeking out trouble and dispelling threats, he spends them taking care of the house he and his wife lived in.
Each morning, he rises after the sun sits fully in the sky. He kisses Sakura on her cheeks until she stirs awake, brews her coffee and his tea. He tends to his garden of tomatoes and other produce, does chores while his wife goes to review proceedings at the hospital or visits one of her clinics. He makes her dinners, gives her flowers, takes her on long walks around a body of water. And he watches her, when she joins him in the garden on the weekends, when she curls up against his side and plays long, mind-numbing episodes of her favorite shinobi dramas on the television that he has still not managed to learn how to operate.
It takes a conscious effort to pull his attention away from her now, to take in the visage of the young man who gazes at his child with stars in his eyes. He recognizes the feeling of staring at someone who has seen you at your worst and your best, and managed to stand at your side through every second.
“Papa,” Sarada’s voice is quiet, but it breaks through his musings with ease. He figures it is a father’s sensitivity to the tone of her voice, the hesitation he can almost taste from even that single word.
“Yes,” he responds, turning his head in her direction so he may study her face. Sakura shifts at her end of the table, instinctively leaning in toward her daughter. He figures her instincts must be even more finely tuned to her troubles than his.
“While Mitsuki and I were beginning to clean out the office,” she says, voice level save for the barest tightness that most probably would not even notice, “we came across some of what must have been Ojiisan’s personal items. I saw some of them, but had to leave before the room had been completely sorted out. I’m sure Mitsuki came across more. I asked him to set them aside and bring them to you.”
“Aa,” he says, nodding. Her words inspire a tug in his chest, but the years had tamed those reactions, too. “Thank you both, for that. I’ll be happy to take them.”
Sarada nods vigorously. She hesitates for a moment before rising from her seat and circling around the table to stand by Mitsuki. He reaches into the lapel of his shirt and brings forth a pristine white envelope.
Sakura moves away from her own seat, coming to kneel behind Sasuke. Her hands snake over his biceps, fingers squeezing gently as her chin comes to rest on his shoulder. Sarada’s friend passes the envelope to her, and she approaches slowly, carefully kneeling at his side and extending it to him with open palms.
His heart thuds in his chest as he accepts the parcel, but he makes sure to send his daughter a small smile and meaningful glance. She blinks quickly but graces him with a tiny smile of her own. It’s a tremulous thing, one that makes the backs of his eye burn and the spaces between his ribs ache. That expression reminds him of the longest night of his life, years in the past, when those wide, deep eyes had been flooded with tears and more emotions than he could name. It was that night when he felt anything but pride watching his child’s irises bleed to red.
Whatever was in this packet seemed to remind Sarada of that night, too. It is all Sasuke can do to remain strong in the face of it, for her.
He does not need to ask Sakura to offer a helping hand, her hand reaching down to hold the envelope steady in front of him as he opens the seam and flips over the tab. Reaching inside, his fingers encounter a thin stack of paper, the surfaces of which seemed smooth, almost slick, while dry.
As his hand emerges, the first thing he sees is a glimpse of his mother’s face. His breath catches in his throat, and he hears both his daughter and wife take in a deep, shaky breath. He adjusts his hold to reveal the entire image, running his eye over it again and again. The telltale tingling and newfound intensity of the black-and-white photo signify his dojutsu coming to life.
“She is so beautiful,” Sakura breathes, the hand still holding him squeezing gently. “Sarada looks just like her.”
“Aa,” he rasps. Using his thumb he slowly, gently slides the photo aside, setting it down carefully on his knee.
The next image causes a lump to lodge itself in his throat. It shows an Itachi that his memories had begun failing to conjure up, one who was not so deathly pale, and not at all blood-soaked. And beside him, his own face absent of any signifiers of age, or pain or ill-fate. He is rocked with an intense wave of emotion, his single eye sliding shut as flashes of a time long past filter through his thoughts in what should have been hours, in only a handful of seconds.
“Oh, Sasuke-kun,” Sakura whispers. Her hand begins to stroke up and down his arm, her cheek pressing deeply against the side of his neck. He tilts his head to touch his cheek to her temple, briefly, before straightening and looking into the crimson eyes of his (not so) little girl.
“You know who they are,” he says in a low voice.
“Yeah,” she croaks. Her throat bobs in a swallow and Mitsuki’s hand rises to her shoulder for a second, before falling back to his side nearly immediately after. “Obaasan, Itachi-ojisan.”
“It makes me glad that you’re able to see photos of them, Sarada,” he murmurs. He releases his grip on the photos long enough to stroke his finger over her reddened cheek. “They would have loved you dearly.”
She takes a shuddering breath but still manages to give him a heartwarming smile. It could practically be his mother’s face, but it is Sakura entirely in that smile.
“I noticed you take your looks from your mother, Sasuke-san. Your brother as well,” Mitsuki comments. Sasuke glances up but the younger man’s golden eyes are pinned on Sarada, tracing over her slightly trembling shoulders. “You seem to have taken some of your personna from your father.”
When Sasuke sets the photo of him and his brother aside, he is confronted by his father’s stoic face. Although younger than he was when he perished, his features are nearly as severe as Sasuke gleaned from his sparse and blood-filtered memories. He sees very little of himself or his child in the man’s image. But the carriage that practically bleeds from the page, the quiet, almost cold air is more familiar than he would honestly like to admit.
That coldness he remembers, the distance from his second son and seemingly constant disappointment stands at odds with the material presented before him. Sasuke stares down at the photos, as well as a clumsy drawing of a dinosaur captioned under his own name and small, mundane notes etched into yellowed paper. And he struggles to contend these tiny glimpses into the life of a man who existed first as an unreachable figure of authority and since as a memory with the father he thought he knew.
“I never knew he kept photos of us in his office,” he admits quietly. “And…I never thought to ask for any of his belongings.”
“Who knows if they would have given them to you, anyway,” Sarada says tightly. “Maybe it’s better that we were able to find them this way.”
Sakura shifts her position, discarding the envelope to the ground so she is able to place a hand on both Sasuke and Sarada at the same time. His chest tightens and grows warm at the reminder that she has always been and will always be their rock, the person who keeps the three of them secure and whole.
“Aa, maybe it is better,” he acquiesces softly. For a moment he watches the intricate patterns in her iris swirl before they settle into place, and Sarada leans into the stroke of her mothers hand over her hair. “Mitsuki. Thank you.”
“There is something else,” the young man replies, reaching carefully into his wide sleeve. “I came across it after Sarada left. I purchased a box to hold it since it did not have one.”
He is passed a thin, rectangular box that feels velvety to the touch. He uses his thumb to lift its opening and freezes at what is revealed.
In a bed of off-white silk is nestled a necklace. One that he is very familiar with, having seen it mostly every single day during his childhood. A handsome, glossy ruby shines in the overhead light, with such luster that he suspects his daughter’s paramour had it polished before bringing it here.
He hears both Sarada and his wife gasp as he carefully plucks the thin chain and pulls the piece out of its case.
“This was my mother’s,” he whispers. The tip of his thumb sweeps gently over the delicate chain, traces the shape of koi fish crafted from steel. “She wore it every day. I always assumed it was a courting gift from my father.”
“The chain was broken when I discovered it,” Mitsuki informs. To his credit, he does not waver when his voice draws the attention of one and a half pairs of sharingan eyes. “I took the liberty of having a new clasp fitted and the links repaired, so it could be worn. Or displayed in its fullest capacity.”
“Mitsuki,” Sarada says shakily. Her scarlett eyes seem to glow brighter for a moment, iridescent through a sheen of moisture. “Thank you so much.”
The young man’s usually rather placid expression softens, his lids lowering over yellow eyes and his mouth curls into perhaps the most genuine smile Sasuke has ever seen. He simply lowers his head, offering no other words in response to the gratitude.
Sasuke looks back down to the necklace, running his fingers lightly over the detailed koi bordering the stone once more. He thinks of how this piece of jewelry was worn by his mother, a piece of her that he had not seen in years and had never expected to see again. It is something she obviously cherished, held literally close to her heart at all times. A gift from his father who, for all his flaws and his inadequacies, must have loved deeply and dearly enough to give it to her.
It makes Sasuke think of his own love, and his own short-comings. The years spent in pain, in darkness, time wasted while he attempted to reign in his feelings and wrangle his emotions for the sake of power. He wonders, then, if the man who was so hard on his son, was equally hard on himself. If a husband who could love his wife enough to give her a beautiful piece of jewelry that held no utility except to be pleasing to the eye could so easily sacrifice a life with her for the sake of his clan.
“Grandfather must have loved her a lot,” Sarada says quietly. Sasuke looks up to see her smiling as she studies the necklace in his hand.
Sakura hums in agreement, leaning in to take a closer look. Her verdant eyes hold the gloss of barely contained tears and Sasuke’s heart flutters. He shifts over, letting her lean into his side. He brings the necklace closer to her, meets her gaze and urges her to take it with a nod. A shudder works through her form as it slides into her palm and she reaches out with careful fingers to touch it hesitantly. Reverent, as she is with all the things and people she cares for.
“My father was a hard man, and he had many flaws,” Sasuke murmurs. He stretches his hand out, to touch his wife rather than the jewel. “But I could never begrudge him for how he loved his wife.”
The gemstone nestled in the center of the necklace matches perfectly with the ring Sasuke had created for his wife many years ago. A stitch of mirth snakes through his being when he notes that Uchiha men seem to favor gems that mimic the color of their clan’s bloodline limit.
He remembers the urge he had back then–to find some way to make the bond between him and his wife material, a physical thing that could be touched and seen when neither of them were in close enough proximity. And, perhaps, it had been to assuage his jealous feelings as well. But presenting Sakura with her ring on that starry night in the middle of an unknown place, her green eyes glittering up at him with warmth and affection easily became one of his favorite memories.
Sasuke wonders if his father had felt the same way when he gave this necklace to the woman who would become his wife. He wonders, if time had not turned as it had, and if he and his father were able to engage in more conversations, if he might have done it sooner.
“Sakura,” he breathes. She drags her gaze away from the jewelry to meet his. He smiles, swipes his thumb at the wetness just under her eye. “I’d like you to put it on.”
“Sasuke-kun,” she gasps. “I couldn’t.” Her hair falls in front of her eyes slightly as she shakes her head. His fingers curl around a pale lock of hair, pushing it back behind the shell of a softly speckled ear.
He holds her stare. “Please.”
She pulls her lip between her teeth, “It should go to Sarada.”
“And it will,” he says. He glances at his daughter and smiles. “Someday. And it will pass to her daughter, too, if she so chooses. For now, it is yours.”
Sakura hesitates for another moment before carefully undoing the clasp on the necklace and bringing it to her neck. Sasuke gathers her soft hair in his hand, lifting it out of the way so she can fasten the chain.
He adjusts its positioning about her neck, until the deep red charm is centered perfectly between her collarbones, just above her sternum.
“Beautiful, Mama,” Sarada sighs and his wife smiles widely, eyes shining.
Sasuke feels a new lightness take up residence in his being. The final unloading of a weight that he has carried for so long, it hardly felt like a burden. It is as if in this act, passing on this trinket that was once his mother’s to his own wife, creating a new family heirloom that could be transferred through future generations, he finally sits fully in his promise to remake his clan and honor their legacy.
They have a legacy again. Because of his wife. Because of their child.
His eye wanders away from his precious little family to study the guest who lingers just on the outside of this intimate moment. If the emotions of it all have an affect on him, it is difficult to see beneath his calm expression and relaxed posture. And yet his gaze seems to burn from within, fixed on the necklace hanging now from Sakura’s neck.
Sasuke watches as those cat-like eyes flick away from the jewelry Sakura wears to Sarada’s direction, tracing her features and stopping at her neck. His gaze lingers, and grows warm, wistful.
Sasuke huffs quietly to himself, and smiles.
. . . . . ╰──╮╭──╯ . . . . .
Fugaku walks with his hands pushed deep into the pockets of his training pants. The fingers of his right hand fiddle with the long, slim box hidden beside it, nerves scratching at his very bones.
Mikoto studies him with narrowed eyes, a small twitch of her berry-stained lips giving away the smile she is trying to hold back.
“Shifty today, are we?” she teases. “Failed mission?”
He snorts through his nose, perhaps more aggressively than intended. “Obviously not.”
“Oh, obviously not,” she drawls. “Because you are simply perfect in every way.”
And, although he knows he is anything but, he simply responds, deadpan–
“Yes.”
When Mikoto’s head tips back in a warm, belly-deep laugh, Fugaku fights his own smile and revels in the oozing, honey-like sensation that pools in his chest. The warm light from the last rays of the sun disappearing over the horizon brings out the bare flush to her cheeks. It glints off the sheen of her hair and casts about her a glow that he can only describe as otherworldly. Angelic, perhaps.
“You’re learning,” she coos. And he rolls his eyes, quickening his step just a bit as they wander mindlessly in circles around the same koi pond they always find themselves at.
“Your big-headedness must have rubbed off on me,” he states, focusing his gaze on the gently rippling water. He catches sight of the pair of red and black koi that circle around each other, slightly separate from the rest of the shoal.
The pair seems to be inseparable, always chasing after each other's tail fins. Fugaku hopes it is an omen, or some manner of sign.
“Good,” Mikoto chirps. “If only my skill and prowess could, too.”
Fugaku growls in only half-feigned irritation, “Mikoto-chan.”
She bounds ahead of him, spinning to pace backwards and shrugs.
“You have not bested me yet,” she states, tilting her head in a way that makes his heart skip a beat in his chest.
“I won our last spar,” he reminds her, lengthening his stride to move close enough to her that each of his steps forward forces her to take one of equal measure back. “The one before that, too.”
Her dark eyes seem to absorb all the fading light around them as they dip toward his chin.
“...I let you win those,” she mumbles. His mouth curves upward slightly.
“Sure.”
“Your fireball still isn’t bigger than mine,” she challenges, her voice firmer now. She meets his stare and stops her steps.
He pauses only when her forehead is mere centimeters away from his nose. The scent of lilies fills his nose, something like iron and smoke underneath. It is pleasant, comforting.
“You think so?” he murmurs.
“Shall we test it and find out?” she whispers. Her breath brushes warmly over his chin.
His fingers grip tighter around the parcel hidden away in his pocket. Anticipation and trepidation grip at him in a heady mixture that nearly draws him into a daze. Or perhaps it is simply the proximity, Mikoto’s breath mingling with his, her scent.
In the next second she is dashing away, jogging through the more compacted sections of the gardens. Fugaku blinks in shock before trailing after her at a slightly slower pace.
Long, dark hair floats behind her as she dashes around trees and vaults over stubby shrubs. She does not stop until she reaches a small dock at the edge of a lake far on the outskirts of their compound.
“Future clan heads first,” she says with an exaggerated bow as he draws close.
He shoots her a look that he hopes fully imparts his annoyance. She simply laughs, gesturing for him to position himself at the edge of the dock.
For a moment, he feels bitterness grip at him–his plans to present the item he holds firmly even now had not involved one of her little competitions. Yet the shining of her eyes, the mischievous tilt of her smile as she watches expectantly washes those feelings away like a leaf in the wind. He realizes that even these silly, mundane activities are more than fulfilling when she is around.
So, he steels himself, drawing on his chakra with focus and intense concentration. He squeezes his eyes shut as he allows the heat to boil up from his stomach, to seep inward from his fingers and limbs. As it coalesces in his lungs, he pushes further, until the burn is nearly unbearable, the flavor of smoke coating the roof of his mouth and tongue.
When the burn becomes so intense he teeters at the threshold of pain, he allows his jaw to fall open and lets loose possibly the largest fireball he has ever created in his life. Its circumference spans over half of the lake’s surface, lighting up their darkening areas and washing his body with a wave of heat that causes sweat to prickle on his face and a tingle at his brow.
The water bubbles and steam billows when he spits out the last dredge of flame, a cough seizing him that shakes his bones.
“Impressive, Fugaku-kun,” Mikokto says from behind him, her hand stroking gently over his back.
Her tone is sincere as is the look in her eyes when he blinks his own clear enough to see them.
“My turn,” she grins, patting his back. She trots to the edge of the dock, glancing over her shoulder briefly to check that he’s watching.
He is. With his sharingan engaged and every iota of his attention focused on her.
Her fingers fly through the hand-signs fast enough to shock him before her head tips back slightly, her mouth falling open while a stream of flame so fierce that it blows the hair away from both their faces spills forth.
The grass at the edges of the bank shrivels and dries under the heat as a fireball larger than Fugaku has ever seen completely encompasses the span of the lake. The surface of the water roils, nearby trees and shrubbery sway in the wind created by the bursting steam.
The display is wild and magnificent, awe-inspiring. Frightening. Riveting.
She is all of those things, and more.
“Told you,” she cries, dashing over to stand in front of him.
Her lips are singed, slightly raw as are the edges of her mouth. The skin of her cheeks is flushed a deep red, the fine hairs at her temples plastered to her face with moisture. Yet her face is lit up in a bright smile, eyes wide and glittering.
“What do you say, Uchiha-sama?” she plants her hands on her hips, staring at him with her teasing expression.
“I say that you’re better than me in many ways,” he responds in a quiet voice. She laughs gleefully, combing hair back from her face.
“Finally, you admit it.”
He steps closer, so close that her smile wavers and her eyes widen a bit more.
“I say that you’re not better than me at fire jutsu, though,” he continues, tilting his head so he can hold her gaze.
Her inky brow arches, “Did we not just prove that I’m better at it?”
“I say,” he whispers, pulling his right hand out of his pocket and bringing it and the item it holds up between them, “that I do not want to compete with you anymore. I’d much rather simply stand by your side.”
“Fugaku…” she breathes. Her fingers curl around the box, her other hand moving to slowly lift the top.
Nestled in a bed of red velvet is the gift he has made for her, toiled over with his own hands, melded and molded by his own flame. Two koi fish made of shinobi’s steel circling around a ruby pool, dangling from a long chain.
“My favorite kunai,” Fugaku explains as the item is revealed and she elicits a sharp gasp. “And my expert, masterful use of fire jutsu.”
He smiles at his own humor, but Mikoto simply gazes at him in shock.
“The ruby is the only thing not created with my own hands. I had help shaping it.”
She stares until he begins to wonder if she is breathing, and if he has made a terrible, humiliating mistake.
“What do you say?” he asks quietly.
“Fugaku-kun,” she breathes, dark eyes glittering, warm with the reflection of the moon that had finally risen to its place in the sky. “I… you’re right, I suppose. My flames could never create something like this.”
Then her face breaks into the widest smile he has seen from her yet. And he finds that this, too, she is better at than him.
. . . . . ╰──╮╭──╯ . . . . .
The Hokage’s residence is larger than it was during the Seventh’s time. The house is sprawling, a single level building formed in a traditional fashion. The designs had come from old blueprints of what used to be the Main House of the Uchiha compound, he was told. It was a gift, and perhaps even an apology from Sarada’s predecessor to herself.
“The sky is so clear, tonight,” Sarada murmurs, her head tipped back as she gazes at the heavy sprinkling of stars. “It’s nice to be able to see it for once.”
“Are you glad now that I tricked you into leaving your office?” Mitsuki asks, raising his brows as she shifts her eyes to look at him.
“As glad as you’ll be tomorrow when I leave the stack of paperwork you’ve encouraged me to neglect on your desk in the morning,” she replies, blinking at him with a doe-eyed expression.
He chuckles and she grins before directing her attention to the sky above once again.
Their steps slow to practically a crawl as they draw close to the dark, rippling water of the koi pond that was built at the center of the property. Bubbling sounds filter softly to his ears, and every now and then silvery, colorful koi pass under beams of moonlight, exposing themselves before disappearing into the inky black shadows of the pool.
“I want to thank you again,” Sarada breaks the silence with a quiet voice. His attention is drawn to her as acutely as if she were shouting. “For what you did for my family. For me.”
“It was nothing,” he replies.
“It was more than nothing,” she insists. And when her fingers slide against his palm, his own respond immediately, wrapping around hers firmly. Feeling as if that is their rightful place. “Using that space, sorting my grandfather's belongings…repairing that necklace. It meant something, everything to me.”
“Anything,” he whispers.
“What?”
Using his grip on her fingers, he tugs them to a stop, shifting around until they are face-to-face. Her long lashes flutter when he steps forward, trapping their joined hands between both of their rising and falling chests.
“Anything for you, Sarada,” he states. “I would do absolutely anything for you.”
His other hand rises slowly, fingers stroking lightly over the high point of her cheek before tracing a path down the side of her neck. He brushes at the center of her upper chest, uncovered in the absence of her robes, with his thumb for a moment and imagines himself one day placing that necklace that had changed their worlds exactly there.
Mitsuki pulls his fingers away, letting his hand fall back toward his side until it is caught mid-air by Sarada’s. She interlaces their fingers, drawing both pairs under her chin and leaning until her forehead rests against his.
“I believe that,” she breathes. “And I love you for it.”
His responding confession is drowned out by their mingling breaths, snaking its way between the minute spaces between their joining lips.
Hyuga Neji stands before her, a perfect four paces away, for propriety's sake. He offers a small, respectful bow. Sakura tips her chin in response. They stand silent, observing each other as those around them exchange greetings and kenin bustle about in an organized fashion. A restrained, but excitable energy fills their surroundings, but does not quite reach the pair.
His long hair flows to the silken belt holding his robes together, the top half swept back into a neat bun high on his head. The strands shine, chestnut brown and glossy like oil in the sunlight. His eyes are pale like the moon, near-white with the barest lavender tint. The goddess’ favor, the histories say: irises as powerful as they are ethereal. A fine nose, shapely lips and arched brows give a delicate facade to a man known to be stern, far more likely to frown than smile.
“A pleasure to see you, Hyuga-san,” Sakura murmurs, tipping her chin once more, slowly and gracefully as she had been taught.
Everything from the perfect posture she held when she straightened again to the shifting of her gaze slightly to the side of his face was second nature. Truly second as this delicacy, this gentile performance was so at odds with the way she spent the majority of her time.
Her muscles were used to being bunched tight, head constantly swiveling to and fro, poised to attack or be attacked.
“The pleasure is mine, Sakura-san,” with these words, he takes a single step forward. The swishing of his fine robes accompany the movement, bringing with it a gust of his scent.
He smells of patchouli and the slightly spicy-sweetness of persimmon. Pleasant, but it does not compel her to take a deeper breath, to inhale and experience more of his essence. His appearance is fine, his body tall and lean and strong, but she does not experience any quickening in her heart, nor heat in her veins. If anything he is simply…familiar. Someone she is used to, and can be comfortable enough sharing her presence with.
“I do wish you would call me by my given name,” he says. The words sound sincere, but his delivery is lacking. Bland, even. “You have long permitted me to use yours.”
“Aa, I have,” Sakura replies, her lips spreading into a small, demure smile. So well practiced, she does it without thought. “But I know how highly you value your family name.”
They had been children of only five and seven years old, the first and last time she had called him by his first name.
It is Hyuga-san, to you! Do not address me so casually, girl! He had said. And so she had not, ever since.
His lips curve in a shadow of a smirk before he tilts his head in a small, rueful bow. In the next moment, his hands emerge from their place tucked into his billowing sleeves, revealing pale flesh marred in a few places with thin scars. He offers a long-fingered hand.
Sakura curls her fingertips lightly around his, their callouses scraping slightly against each other. A gaggle of maids gather at their backs, waiting until the pair has taken about five steps before following after them as they begin to walk about the garden.
“The cherry blossoms are blooming beautifully,” Neji murmurs, cutting a glance at her with his pale eyes.
Sakura stares back into them until he looks away, turning to glance up at the hanging branches, tracking the few petals that float to the floor with each gentle breeze.
“They are,” she finally agrees, smiling gently.
“As they should, being your namesake,” he adds. A small giggle bubbles in her chest and she glances at her companion once again.
“Do you flirt with me, my lord?” she asks. His head turns and he glances down to study her face.
“I suppose,” he says, arching a fine brow. “It is part of courting, is it not?”
Sakura rolls her eyes, emboldened by their distance from the other people meandering about as they take a less-beaten path, wandering into the less tamed sections at the very edges of the garden.
“Courting does not make much sense for us, does it?” she huffs a quiet laugh. “We have been betrothed since I was born.”
“Longer than that,” he corrects. With a gentle squeeze over her fingers, he draws them to a stop. Her hand drops from his as he steps— sweeps — a few feet away to stroke a finger against the delicate petals of a brightly colored flower. “It was actually since I was born. And you took a terribly long time to show up.”
Their chaperones have stationed themselves just outside of the enclave they disappeared into, within technical earshot. But, they had been engaged for years. If they had not completely scandalized each other yet, it was unlikely to happen now.
Sakura leans into the thin trunk of a small tree and relaxes her posture, crossing her arms and ankles.
“You are only two years my senior, Hyuga-san,” she drawls. “Too young to even note the difference when your soon-to-be bride came into this world.”
“That is what you think,” he mutters. His fingers sweep over the differently colored petals, almost startlingly gentle. Those same hands had spilled much blood. “I was waiting for you, of course. Most impatiently.”
“You joke so masterfully, my lord,” Sakura deadpans. Neji hums in amusement, as close to a laugh as she has ever heard from him in more than two decades.
He turns, capturing her gaze as he moves toward her slowly. His steps are steady and sure, but graceful. Raw power and nobility wrapped in one man who has been bathed in gentility and blood for as long as he could read his letters and hold a sword.
Just like her.
When he finally stops, his steps have brought him within two paces of her leaning form, close enough that he does not have to reach far to rest a hand at her shoulder. His palm brushes featherlight over the topmost fabric of her luxurious robes, stroking down to tickle his index and middle finger at the sliver of exposed flesh at her wrist.
“Never would I joke about my affections toward you,” he says in a low voice. His hand withdraws, and he straightens, peering down at her with a haughty expression.
Sakura has been in his company long enough to know that it is simply the way his face looks.
“You do all the time,” Sakura mumbles. “We both know this is not a love-match, my lord.”
“Is it not?” He raises a dark brow, pale irises tracing every line and curve of her face. “Love exists in all its varying forms.”
The attention is not discomfiting for it is familiar. As is the barest hint of heat in his gaze.
As is the press of his lips to her mouth, chaste and soft. First, to her upper lip, then the lower. When her mouth parts on a sigh and she sinks more fully into the rough bark behind her, he presses deeper, shaping his mouth to hers perfectly. Practiced.
She can nearly predict how long it will be before he pulls away, having become used to the routine. She knows that his tongue will slide out to flick lightly over her lower lip next; then he will dip his head to press a peck to the side of her throat. On the spot that he will place his mark on her, as he’d promised when she was eighteen and he, twenty.
When he pulls back to stare down into her face, they will smile. His small, restrained, and hers gentle.
“How scandalous, my lord,” she whispers, watching the way his nearly nonexistent pupils dilate in their proximity. “Accosting a maiden behind the backs of her chaperones.”
His eyes roll dramatically and he hums his quiet laugh again, straightening and reaching up to swipe at the dot of saliva lingering beneath her lips with the pad of his thumb.
“At this point, I believe they wish I would accost you,” he scoffs. “We have been engaged for longer than many people have been wed.”
“Because there is a war raging,” she reminds him, quirking her brow. His tiny smile tamps the fire that began to spark in her veins.
“That there is,” he nods. “And so I do not believe it is a sin for me to want to share at least a kiss with my betrothed every once in a while. Considering the battlefield may take me before you ever will.”
“Speak not of such things,” she frowns and he sighs, leaning in to press his lips to her temple before sliding back smoothly, stopping at a distance of four paces. Proper.
“Apologies, my lady,” he nods, his features taking on a sterness and stoicity. “I meant that perhaps the battlefield will take you before I have had the chance.”
Sakura barks a laugh, pressing her finger tips to her lips to muffle the sounds after the initial outburst. Shaking her head, she straightens and steps away from the tree, once more taking Neji’s outstretched hand.
The two of them reemerge and melt back into the promenade. They complete a circle around the huge koi pond, their steps small and graceful, each dip of their chins and tilt of their heads so refined it might have been choreographed.
Neji’s pale eyes sweep their surroundings one too many times, and once Sakura follows his gaze, she knows.
“Lady TenTen is a vision, is she not?” she smiles at the young woman standing a few yards away, toying with a tiny, ornate blade of glass and metal. “Her beauty is nearly as impactful as her skill with the blade. And the ax. And the bow.”
“Indeed,” her fiancée says dryly.
TenTen dips her head to Sakura before her chestnut eyes shift a bit higher, focusing behind her. They soften before slipping away quickly as she turns her head.
“You know I would never fault you,” Sakura says softly, squeezing his fingers lightly. “What was it that you said of love?”
“I have arranged with my father to build us a small estate, away from the center of the compound,” Neji’s voice holds a sharp edge that pricks like needles against Sakura’s skin. “By the time we are wed, it will be complete. I know living with my clan, and their archaic ideals troubles you. We shall have our own space to live and grow together.”
“Hyuga-san,” she sighs. “I know you heard what I said.”
His hand squeezes hers and they come to a stop, mere feet away from his parents and her master. “My commitment, my loyalty and my protection are yours. My life is yours. So it has been since you came into this world, and so it shall be, until the goddess reclaims our souls.”
No such declarations are made of his heart. She knows the truths unsaid, in her own soul feels them deeply.
With a heavy exhalation, he frees her from his grasp, gliding away and leaving the scent of patchouli, persimmon and the tang of pain behind. He disappears, graceful, behind another wall of green, the length of his robe teasing the petals of low-bearing flowers.
She pulls a fan from her sleeve and waves it open to demurely shade half of her face.
A few moments pass as she gazes around with her practiced, pleasant smile, and shifting movements engages her peripheral vision. Lady TenTen bids her graceful goodbyes with a bow, and trails with small, careful steps in the direction Neji has just gone before.
Her mouth twitches, and she wonders not for the first time how well she and the weapons-mistress know the taste of each other’s lips.
Taking leisurely steps around the pond, peering about the garden, she thinks of the future, the children she might bear. She imagines what kind of parents she and her soon-to-be husband will be, having spent their formative years in battlefields flooded with blood. Ponders the sacrifices she is willing to make for her husband-to-be’s happiness and levity of heart.
Just twenty-one and twenty-three.
She reflects on the warm fingers attached to hers, the pale irises that flick toward her face every few moments. The same ones who stray whenever a certain iron-forged lady draws near. Those eyes, so beautiful, dangerous, reminiscent of the moon that they all pray to.
Yet she can only appreciate them for a moment before her mind is taken with visions— of black, of deep blood red, circling about in a burning iris.
┗━•❃°•°❀°•°❃•━┛
Fifteen
Pain. Cold. Wet.
It is these sensations that bring Sasuke from the abyss, back into the world of the (unfortunately) living. His limbs tingle to awareness slowly, and through the fog of his mind he finds that he is shivering, soaked to the bone. He wonders if the pool of liquid at his back is water or his blood. His dulled senses cannot yet tell the difference.
Air rushes into his lungs and agony throbs at his side, causing it to whoosh immediately back out. If he had command of his body, he might open his mouth to scream, yell to the heavens or to hell to decide who will take charge of his soul and let him die .
Pressure at his side jerks him fully into consciousness and then he does scream.
His throat feels bludgeoned, so his voice comes forth more as a whimper, hoarse and quiet.
“Be still,” a soft, distinctly femnine voice sounds near his ear, whispering close under the sound of pouring rain. “I will get you mended. Please, do not move.”
Sasuke’s lids peel open and his cursed eyes bleed, the dojutsu passed down through his bloodline whirring to life.
As if he is just a boy again, blinded by the pure intensity of his new sight, he only makes out the finite details at first. Pearlescent droplets of water clinging to pale, fuzzy hairs the color of ripe peaches, ripples of jade, emerald and prasiolite, specks of pale brown like drowned, fallen leaves during the start of the rainy season.
His cursed eyes hones in on pale skin spattered with freckles, wide-set green eyes taking up a heart-shaped face. Hair strands the color of dampened pink rose petals drip water onto his face. She is beautiful. Exquisite, even.
Goddess? he thinks. Have you come to collect this unworthy son? Perhaps to breathe life into him once again?
“You must stay awake,” she speaks again, bites her full lower lip till it dots cherry-red. “I will help you.”
A small hand, streaked with blood reaches to push back the hair from her face, reveals a lavender diamond at the center of her forehead and suddenly he knows–
This is no goddess.
“ Senju ,” he croaks, clenching the fist he has just remembered he has. “You are…the enemy.”
“Yes,” she nods, bracing both hands against the right side of his ribcage. “I am your enemy in every moment except this one. Right now, I am your savior. Take a deep breath, Uchiha-san, and pray do not bite your tongue.”
The palms resting on his torso give a mighty push and any air he might have breathed is forced out of him as pain lances through his form, the sound of bone grinding to bone echoing in his ears.
Surely, he slips into darkness once more, the reapers’ claws brushing at his ankles before he slams back into himself, groaning like the animal deep within as his ribs are forced into their natural place. He is reminded that the hands bending his bones and body to their will could easily disturb them even more, press them until they become nothing but dust if so she wishes.
He has seen enough of his kin crushed between those insultingly small hands to feel rage and terror in waves.
“Demon,” he curses, spitting blood with his words. “ Senju scum .”
She ignores him, takes his flayed skin in her hands and pulls, drawing it together and then bathing it in cool, fresh chakra, weaving his flesh together like his cousins in the compound do their quilts.
“Easy,” she murmurs as he writhes, cringing away from the sensations.
“Why do this?” he bites out, panting, eyes rolling wildly as she sinks her fingers into him to grasp at the edges of more torn flesh. “I could kill you. Your kindness here could be your end.”
Rainwater fills his gaping mouth as she presses her sharp fingers into a spot near his hip where a blade had sunk in deep, then broken off.
“Aa, it is a good way to end, is it not?” she mutters. The shard of metal slices him on its way out. “I have been spilling blood since I could count my age on both hands. I would much rather die in an act of kindness– even if it is to you.”
“You have the fantasies of a child,” Sasuke scoffs, biting back a growl of pain. “There are no good deaths.”
“There are honorable ones,” she replies.
“There is no honor ,” he hisses. Her lovely, hateful face sways into his line of vision, fingers prodding at the aching spots sprinkled over his chest. “There is only war. And we two stand on opposite sides of it.”
“If honor did not exist, you would be dead, Uchiha-san.”
The girl continues her work of piecing him back together and Sasuke can only swallow the taste or iron down his throat. He knows her words to be true, and has seen the havoc she can wreak with her own two hands many times, if only from a distance. His kin spit on her name, yet shudder when they speak of it.
A woman warrior who can crush a man’s skull between her palms– she offends the Uchiha twice.
“Nearly done,” the angelic face above him turns away as she rifles through the pouch belted at her hip. When she turns back, a small, round container that carries with it the smell of pungent herbs and oils even when sealed shut is clasped in her hand.
The scent of its contents prick at his sensitive nose as she flips open the canister, scooping up the muddy-looking substance with two fingers. It is cold and thick when she smears it over the now-closed gash at his side.
The girl’s hand pauses in the air mid-withdraw and her face jerks up to squint into the distance. Her nostrils flare, green eyes flashing and taking on a luminescent glow.
“Your comrades approach,” she mutters, upper lip peeling away from her teeth. She straightens her posture, rising to her knees as she surveys their surroundings, inhaling deeply. “They are coming, quickly. I must go.”
Sasuke wants to blame his weakness from the injuries he has sustained for his inability to sense his kin before his unlikely savior was alerted to them. Something deep within, where everything is dark and no lies can be beheld growls in disagreement.
“I expect no thanks,” the girl–Sakura is her name, bringer of death and life in equal measure– rises to her feet, still crouched low enough to speak into his ear. “Let this be a testament of a possible future, where maybe our peoples will find peace together.”
The small, round container of her foul-smelling ointment is pressed into his limp hand and then she is gone, her lithe form zipping through the trees before disappearing completely.
In the next moments, while his mind is reeling and his body growing stiff from the cold, he hears a deep voice calling to him.
“ Sasuke! ” it is his brother calling, his voice loud and desperate.
He groans when a large body slams into his shoulder, hands gripping his arms and hauling him up into a half-sitting position.
“Otōto,” Itachi gasps, his fingers slick with rain, trembling as they grip at Sasuke’s face. “You live. We thought-”
“I am fine,” he cuts in, his voice hoarse. He bites back a groan, pulling himself from his brother's hold and sitting upright. “We must return home and report back to Father.”
Despite his (and his unlikely savior’s) best efforts, Sasuke is too wounded to stand on his own. He chooses not to imagine what his fate would have been, the state in which his brother and kinsmen would have found him were it not for the healing hands of a girl who he was duty-bound to hate.
“I wish you would just let us take you to shelter and rest, brother,” Itachi murmurs, walking beside Sasuke’s head as he is carried by four men in a makeshift gurney. “What is so urgent that it cannot wait to be reported to Father for one more day?”
Sasuke blinks water out of his eyes, staring up at the stormy gray sky. The edges of the heavens are darkening, blackness creeping in amidst the swollen rain clouds. He feels that same darkness snaking about the corners of his mind, creeping through the gaps of his ribs and swirling in his gut.
“Senju’s most prized warrior,” he finally says. “She saved my life.”
Itachi is silent for a stretch of time that could have been moments, could have been hours. Eventually, he barks an order, urging the men in their party faster, tightening his lip when Sasuke is forced to bite back pained sounds as he is jostled about.
┍━☽【❖】☾━┑
Eleven
Sakura sits seiza, hands folded neatly in her lap, fingers soft. Her spine is a straight line from tailbone to nape, her chin parallel to the tatami beneath her knees. She has been in this position for nearly an hour while awaiting the end to the intense talks happening on the other side of the shoji.
Pins and needles prick at her calves, a numb sensation verging on pain creeping through her thighs. Still, her face remains unaltered, expression smooth and pleasant, just as Tsunade-shishou taught her.
“They have been talking for so long I believe the war will be over by the time they finish,” a voice calls her attention outward.
Sakura blinks, focusing on the boy sitting directly across from her. He holds himself in the same position, save for his hands which rest on either of his thighs. His long hair is pulled back from in a long, ornate braid, the face-framing portions held in place with a thick hair-band.
“I am sure they will be done soon,” Sakura murmurs. Their chaperone sighs from her post in the corner of the room, unfurling a small scroll for likely the fifth time.
“Neji,” his father’s deep voice booms. With the grace of a prince and the agility of a killer, the Hyuga boy rises to his feet.
He shuffles a few steps forward, stopping alongside Sakura’s kneeling form and offers a low bow to someone (Sakura’s own guardian, most likely) before pivoting smoothly on his heels to offer her the same.
His braid slides off his shoulder, swinging to brush against hers.
“Good-bye, my betrothed,” he whispers, “let us hope we always return from the battlefield and meet again.”
Sakura nods to him, keeping her eyes lowered as he straightens and glides smoothly out of the room behind his father and their accompanying kinsmen.
She inhales through her nose, lifting her chin once more to look straight ahead. The rustle of robes and a soft brush of air touches over her hands as multiple figures pass by quietly.
She watches as Senju Tsunade sinks down to the floor, flanked by her closest maidservant and another woman–Haruno Mebuki. Sakura’s own mother.
She was not allowed to call her such by name. The woman had nursed her, bathed her, taught her how to be a lady since birth, but she had been claimed by someone else immediately after her first breath.
“Sakura,” spoke the woman who named her heir to the Senju. Her parent by right, if not by blood. “There is a matter I…we wish to discuss with you.”
“Tsunade-shishou,” Sakura murmurs in response, dipping her chin and curving her spine ever-so-slightly in a modest bow. “I am always ready to listen.”
A beat of silence and then Tsunade’s fingers twitch. In the next blink of the eye, they settle into a relaxed position in her lap once more, prone against the layers of her robes.
“While your marriage is many, many years off yet,” Tsunade sighs and her trinkets and jewels clink together with the movement of her shoulders, “there are…details which you must be informed of in advance, for your safety and peace of mind. You are now at the age where it is appropriate to receive them.”
As unnatural as it was for Sakura to sit on her knees swathed in layers and layers of fabric with painted eyes and painfully combed hair, Tsunade’s formal approach to this conversation and circular speech was moreso.
“I see,” Sakura utters, uncertainty lacing her tone despite her best efforts.
Tsunade sighs deeply again before her golden eyes flick over her left shoulder, to the woman who has eyes green like young spring leaves and a mouth full and pink and just-barely downturned.
Just like Sakura’s.
“Sakura-san,” the woman begins, dipping her chin. “With Tsunade-sama’s permission, I will explain to you what…what it means to be a wife. How it will be, after the ceremonies and celebrations end and you are taken to Hyuga-sama's marital house.”
She sits, silent and still as her mother–no, she is not– tells her of a night in which she will be asked to bare herself in both mind, body and spirit to the boy who makes jokes of the war and demands she call him by his formal title. She hears a warning of the changes that will occur in her body, spurned and forced upon her by the ceremonial bloodletting, ceremonial joining, and the ceremonial release of her spouse.
Sakura learns that she will be ceremonially bitten, bedded, and then locked in coitus with her one-day husband for an entire night before the beast inside her is forced awake. Then her body will become something she does not know– fragile, sickly, feverish. She will become ill with a hunger for ceremonial breeding for as long as three days in which her husband will satiate her with his seed and then-
Then she will carry the pups that come forth from this honorable union and never see the battlefield again. Left to raise young, manage a house and destined to hunger desperately each month again and again until her death.
“There was a time when things were different,” her mother says in a soft voice. Her green eyes hold a sheen, long, dainty fingers sliding together in an uncomely show of nerves. “When our ancestors first presented and evolved into creatures who shifted with the turns of the moon. They found mates that were destined for them, and these changes in the body happened as a natural progression, with less pain. True Matings are what we call them. It is different now, in our time–”
“True matings are the stuff of legends and fairytales,” Tsunade cuts in brusquely. “We do not know if half of those stories are true, but we do know that your joining with Hyuga Neji will be vital to our victory in a war that has lasted for generations. Peace will come to this land, finally. And your future pups will be the key to the new world borne from it.”
Haruno Mebuki lowers her head, but her green eyes linger on Sakura’s for a long moment. In those mirrored irises, Sakura sees oceans of regret.
Sakura swallows past the lump in her throat, leaning forward to place her fingertips to the floor, hunching over in a deep bow.
“Thank you for your wisdom, Lady Tsunade,” she croaks. “I understand and will honor my duty.”
With the rustle of layers and layers of silk and the tinkle of jewels, Tsunade floats to her feet and sweeps out of the room, her lady maid following closely behind her. Sakura lingers, prone in her bowed position, forehead pointing down toward her wrists.
“Lady Sakura,” comes a soft voice, a trembling whisper. Hands slide up her curved back to grasp at her shoulders. “Come, child.”
“ Mama ,” she chokes. The woman hushes her, shaking her head vigorously before tugging at her shoulders until she sits straight once more.
Tears prick at her eyes and she bites the inside of her cheek.
“Do not fret, my lady,” says Mebuki, green eyes glistening. “It will be alright.”
“I do not want a ‘heat’,” she says thickly. “I do not want to be made into something other than myself.”
Thin arms pull her into a warm chest. Her intricate hairstyle is smashed on one side, but neither of them care.
“You will overcome this,” her mother says. She presses one hand to the side of Sakura’s face. “As you have overcome every challenge brought to you. I cannot protect you…I never could. But trust that this lowly woman will always be on your side. And please…you must remember not to call me ‘Mama’, Lady Sakura.”
Sakura cries quietly into the woman’s chest, shoulders shaking and chest throbbing with an ache.
┗━•❃°•°❀°•°❃•━┛
Twenty
“That girl,” Uchiha Fugaku’s voice is a growl, an echo of a time when their kind was feral and closer to the beasts laying dormant inside. “How is it that these so-called men that have been trained by my hand fall to a mere waif of a girl ?”
The room is silent. Men and boys kneel at the edges, positioned by rank, class, age. The few women deemed worthy enough to listen to the proceedings are farthest to the back, kneeling perfectly still and with their heads pointed to the ground.
On a raised dais sits only one man, in an intricately carved chair instead of seiza on a mat. He is the most still, the quietest of them all.
Sasuke keeps his chin tilted down, but traces his father’s predator-like steps as he stalks around the space. His robes are heavy and black, disturbing the air each time he passes by. He carries with him the stench of rust, of aged blood and woodsmoke.
Sasuke hates it. He hates him .
“The Senju’s heir is a force, Otōsan,” Itachi’s deep voice breaks the silence. Their father’s head whips to the side, a hard gaze falling on his eldest son. “Not many men who face her live to tell the story. It is by no fault of their own…her defense is impenetrable. Such is her strength.”
“Such is her trickery, you mean,” the patriarch growls.
Sasuke’s eyes slide shut for a moment. Jade green and pastel pink dance behind his closed lids, the sounds of earth breaking apart and a soothing, gentle voice ring in his ears. He thinks–despite himself–of the cool pressure of her hands, so dainty despite the power they hold as they pushed chakra into him, through him, changing him on a molecular level until he was sure he could never be the same again.
Not trickery , but something otherworldly, to be sure.
“Perhaps we should investigate such trickery for our own purposes, then,” Sasuke says dryly. The silence becomes even heavier, if possible. After a beat he adds, “Father.”
“What exactly is it you say, boy?” His father approaches, and stands a tall, looming presence. Sasuke keeps his eyes on the floor, the protruding tendons in the man’s feet.
“I say, maybe this trickery the enemy utilizes would serve us well,” he continues, “since we are losing this war.”
Here, a ripple through the room. Greater men hunch their shoulders inward while the ladies–his mother and sister among them–clutch their hands in the silken fabric of their clothes.
He dares not lift his head, but his mouth moves unendingly, “The enemy’s trickery , honorable Father, is utilizing the whole of their populace to supplement their military force. Women are for more than bedding, breeding and bludgeoning in the Senju clan.”
“Dare I think my very own son has been poisoned by his enemy’s ideations?” Fugaku says coolly. He steps close enough that his toes brush against Sasuke’s knees. “Perhaps the Senju girl saved your life with a welcoming mouth and sucking cunt? Is that why you spout nonsense?”
“Father,” Itachi calls softly.
Finally, he raises his gaze to meet that of his sire.
“That girl has been trained in battle since she was less than half her age,” he says, voice cold. “She has mastered the healing art, can close any wound and mend any shattered bone. The Senju have crafted a weapon and curative in one. But this is beside the point. They have numbers , twice as many as we have.”
“Half of their number of the Uchiha’s men make three times their forces,” Fugaku hisses. “Our people have been forged by fire and blood.”
“Our people are dying by the hundreds. As our Clan Head, should that not concern you?” Sasuke fights the urge to shrink into himself as his father’s lip curls in a snarl, irises bleeding a deep, blooded red.
“Father, I believe my brother begs a solution that perhaps…requires a different approach than the one we have been using,” Itachi cuts through the intensifying moment.
“My sons seem to be full of thought this day,” Fugaku sneers. He takes one step back, pivots to face the eldest of his children. “Pray that my eldest will actually speak sense.”
“I must agree with Sasuke, my lord Father,” his brother dips his chin only briefly before boldly meeting the clan leader’s gaze. “Our numbers dwindle at a startling rate. The…traditions we uphold mean that we are always at a disadvantage due to our civilian populace far exceeding our military count. Battling outright, no matter the skill of our warriors, will bring slow and hard-won progress. I fear the cost to our clan will far outweigh the benefits.”
Silence again. Sasuke’s fingers dig into his thighs, his chest aching with the need to exhale as he traps his breath between closed lips.
Fugaku paces a step closer to his better son. “What, then, would be your suggestion?”
Itachi swallows visibly. His eyes flit side to side quickly as he searches for an answer.
A tremulous, aged voice fills the space instead: “Sabotage.”
A sharp laugh that holds no mirth falls from his father’s lips, “A tried and true method. We have burned hundreds, thousands of military camps to the ground. Forgive me, Grandfather, but I expected a new solution.”
The entire room swivels their heads to look up at the man sitting on the dais, back curved and hair colored with an abundance of silver and the rare streak of black. His face is a canvas of wrinkles and scars, signifying age and many battles won.
Destruction and mayhem made his story–the man who fought in the first war with the Senju, who rivaled the best of their own in every way:
Uchiha Madara.
“What exactly does the Elder suggest, if I may ask?” the voice of his father’s second-in-command sounds from across the room. “We have already blocked trading lines and taken numerous villages bordering their territory. We have poisoned wells and food and yet they persevere.”
“Today you have told me the most pressing matter is this supposedly indestructible weapon the Senju have in their arsenal,” Madara responds, casually resting his hand over his cane. “This weapon is a girl. A skilled warrior, healer and bargaining chip to solidify their alliance with the Hyuga.”
The commander nods, visibly uncomfortable with the bleary gaze of the nearly ancient man fixed on him.
“To weaken the enemy,” the elder intones, slowly as if to ensure those listening can keep up, “take away their most valuable weapon.”
A beat of silence. Then a gruff sound, what Sasuke supposes is meant to be a laugh, breaks out into the space.
“Your suggestion is to kidnap the Senju’s so-called heir,” Fugaku states. Madara only tips his chin in a nod.
“It is near-impossible to get close to the girl on the battlefield without the risk of maiming or death,” one of their kinsmen pipes up.
More muttered protests and uncertainty filter in from various sides of the room. A common theme among them– retrieving such a dangerous individual would prove nearly impossible.
Nearly, but not completely.
“What say you, boy?” Uchiha Madara interjects, and Sasuke stiffens, meeting that almost-blank gaze.
He swallows, eyes flicking around the room as suddenly everyone focuses their attention on him. His brother watches with a keen eye, wary and concerned.
Green and pink swirl in his mind’s eye, the sound of a soft voice speaking of peace and dainty hands providing relief from pain, safety from death. He thinks of the girl who pulled him back into the world of the living when by all rights, he should have died. Those bone-breaking hands had felt so gentle then…a kinder touch than he had known in years, if ever in his life.
Sasuke clenches his jaw.
“It would be impossible to retrieve the Senju heir in the midst of battle. We would waste manpower and lose many in the process. Even then, the probability of success is low,” he states, voice steady despite the erratic thudding of his heart.
“So?” Madara watches him like predator to prey, patient, waiting for the perfect moment.
“We would need to move when the enemy least expects it,” he continues. Another thick swallow works down his suddenly tight throat. “When she is likely to be unarmed and her comrades unsuspecting.”
“And when would we come across this golden opportunity?” Now it is Fugaku who prods for clarification, his gaze heavy on the side of Sasuke’s face.
He does not turn away from the elder’s watchful eyes, “On the day Senju’s heir is to be wed to the Hyuga prince. Taking her then, we weaken and humiliate our enemies in one.”
Uchiha Madara slides back in his seat, a satisfied grin marring his ruined face. Sasuke feels a heady combination of pride and trepidation roil in his gut. It nearly sickens him, the concoction that makes him think of the cloying scent of blood underscored with the sweetness of early-spring flowers.
┍━☽【❖】☾━┑
Eighteen
Sakura often ponders the fact that she prefers the weight of thick-woven pants and heavy plates of armor to flowing, finely made robes. With her hair tied back in a long tail, bare of any ornaments or paint, she feels her truest self. Simply a body, covered in armor, free from society and all of its conditions and proclivities.
The muscles in her legs and lower back throb with a distant ache. They have been walking for miles, nearly a full two days' journey toward their destination. The horses would tire if they rode them the entire way, so she and her clansmen and women trudged for hours on foot, the sun and sometimes rain beating down on their heads.
Most of the time, the goings and coming backs were a blur–her memory fixated on the moments of action, when warm blood slicked her hands and a forceful enemy tested her grip. What came to her in her dreams were the faces of those who perished before her eyes, some with snarling faces, others peaceful and smiling.
This time, Sakura has the feeling that she will acutely remember the cool brush of the wind, the crunch of sticks and soil under her feet. She thinks that she will remember the sun glinting off the helmets of the soldiers at the frontline, the texture of her favorite weapon’s belt at her waist.
The scent of fire and ash, burning wood, and the sound of screams.
“ENEMY AHEAD!” comes the roar of the general at the front line.
They are caught in an unfortunate position, surrounded by trees and un-level ground. Shouts and growls of aggression filter to her ears as her eyes flit around the mayhem happening at the front. She turns to the rear of their party, where the youngest of their forces, the medics who do not fight and their supplies are being slowly surrounded by men with inky black hair and glowing red eyes.
Sakura is facing off against an opponent before she takes her next breath, using the plated metal at her forearms to block a blow meant for a girl who is likely at least five years younger than she.
Red irises spin, capturing hers and thrusting her into a word of gray and black. In the next second, she is pulsing her chakra, pulling herself back into reality and swinging her blade in an arc, cleaving the man’s head from his body, blood spurting thick and hot over her face.
The young girl plastered to her back shrieks, body rocking with fearful shudders. Sakura forces her backward, step by step as she blocks attacks and sends her fists flying at anyone who attempts to breach the barrier being erected around the supply wagons and non-fighting healers.
“Go, child,” she hisses, reaching back to shove her hand against the girl’s thin chest. “Take to the supply wagons, hide yourself and keep your weapons close.”
Before she can ensure her directions are followed, she is forced to spin around and catch the wrist of a man swinging an ax toward her head in a deadly downward motion. His muscles bulge and tremble with strain as she forces his arm away, fingers clenching so tight that his tendons begin to bend and bones fracture in her grip.
“Yield and you may live,” she mutters quietly, gritting her teeth. Sakura avoids his bloody eyes but catches the snarl that shapes his mouth.
“Senju scum ,” he grunts, one of his hands slipping from the handle of his ax.
That hand reappears clutching a glinting blade which he slices against the small portion of flesh at her side not covered in armor. She hisses in pain and snaps his arm with her left hand, thrusting her sword deep into his stomach with her right.
Ignoring the bleeding in her side, she glances at her surroundings with her pulse thumping in her ears. Tens of bodies litter the ground, most of them–and she feels sick at the rush of relief that sweeps through her–wearing the uchiwa insignia of their enemy.
A chorus of shrieks snatches her attention to the rear where the supply wagons are gathered, healers frantically treating some wounded on the ground. The youngest of their party are crowded behind a few older warriors, Neji in front of them. He rotates in his specialized technique, Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven. Raining arrows are rebounded away from the cowering children– soldiers –while other officers wrangle a second wave of men who had snuck behind during the chaos of the initial confrontation.
She sprints toward the scene, swinging her long blade as she goes and cutting down two. Another meets the end of her fist, flying yards away to collide with a tree with a sickening crack and thud . Skirting in front of Neji, she ignores the pain of arrow tips slicing at her arms and stomps a foot, creating a crack in the earth and a rumble that takes many of the enemy off their feet. From the high branches of the trees, three men drop.
Sakura freezes. Inky black hair tousled and falling to obscure one eye catches her attention, next a shapely mouth and sharp jaw. His eyes, scarlett with black patterns spinning in dizzying revolutions, take the breath from her lungs.
Tall, handsome, terrifying.
It is the boy she once saved, now a man grown. Standing on the opposite side of battle, as always, but nearer to her than he had ever been before.
Her knees buckle and Uchiha Sasuke visibly inhales before releasing a stream of fire over the crack in the ground, scalding the tip of her braid as she ducks under it just in time. The wave of heat against her back causes goose pimples to prickle across her skin, smoke quickly filling the air as the surrounding brush and trees ignite with flame.
More screams and grunts and clanging metal sounds and she pulls herself up to avoid the thrust of a thin blade right where her head was before. This man, dark of mane and pale of face just like that particular warrior falls by her hand.
Even the surprise attack does not weaken them and soon the Uchiha heir calls for a retreat, he and the remainder of his men sinking back into the shadows of woods.
Blackness spots across her vision and her sword clangs to the ground. Sakura finds herself falling to her knees. The forgotten wound at her side throbs with its own heartbeat, a burning sensation spreading to the surrounding flesh.
Uchiha Sasuke stands alone in the distance, close enough still to make out the glow of his visible iris. He watches her for long moments, as her breath rattles through her chest and her form slumps forward heavily. It is only as her face draws near to the blood-soaked soil that she blinks and he disappears.
“ Sakura!” comes Neji’s shouting voice and she finds herself airborne, cradled against a broad chest fastened with slick armor. “What has happened?”
“Poisoned blade,” she guesses, her voice merely a croak. “It will heal.” She does not explain that while she is resistant to poison, she is not resistant to pain. It hurts too much to say.
Instead she slurs, “I will be fine.”
Neji ignores her, roaring orders for water, for medicine and for someone to secure the area and someone else to pitch a healing tent.
Time passes blurrily and at some point she comes to full awareness with a fur-covered palette at her back and nearly white, glowing eyes peering down at her from the darkness.
“Hyuga-sama, it is improper–,” a tremulous voice murmurs.
“She is soon to be my wife,” he bites out. Long fingers stroke underneath her eye and she tilts her mouth in a small smile. “Leave us.”
He scowls down at her face and she smiles wider.
“Greetings,” she breathes.
“Quiet, fool,” he snaps. “You were nearly burned to death and then poisoned all at once. I should ask my father to expedite our ceremony so you may be barred from the battlefield. What possessed you to stand there like an imbecile and be poisoned? Almost incinerated?”
Sakura only smiles more, allowing her eyes to slip shut. More words of admonishment and rather extravagant insults fall on her ears before a just-slightly shaking hand grasps her own, squeezing her fingers tightly. Warm breath exhales unsteadily against her face before a mouth covers hers, lingering there for a deep, slow kiss. It has much more edge, more desperation than usual.
She starts slipping back toward unconsciousness before it is over, her heart thumping steadily and belly filling with a fluttering sensation. For a moment, she wonders what another’s kiss would feel like. Red and black swim in her mind's eye.
┗━•❃°•°❀°•°❃•━┛
Twenty-two
Sasuke lurks at the edges of the garden, tracing his surroundings with black eyes. Dressed as a kenin and occasionally finding something to tinker with under the guise of righting one of the extravagant decorations. Finely dressed people–individuals who in any other setting would have slit his throat on the spot–glide by without sparing him even a cursory glance.
In comparison to the hyper vigilance of his clan’s compound and the battlefield, he almost enjoys the sensation of being invisible.
A murmur rolls through the assembled crowd, heads dipping in reverent bows as a tall figure cloaked in a fine black kimono sweeps into the garden.
The man is tall, his features delicate from his long flowing hair to his aristocratic facial structure. His walk is graceful, steady and light despite the weight of near one-hundred eyes tracing his every movement. Hyuga Neji is every bit the prince the nation quietly calls him, bred so well he seems too good even among the most privileged of figures from the most powerful clans.
But his eyes are that of a predator. So pale that light merely reflects off them, lavender in hue but nearly white from afar, his eyes trace his surroundings with practiced accuracy. The civilians in attendance might think it a show of etiquette, but any warrior can see him searching for ill will, for shadows creeping about the edges of this bright, early-spring day to wreak havoc and disturb peace.
Sasuke slinks behind an artfully trimmed bush, lowering his gaze to the vibrantly colored blossoms, fingering one in the illusion of coaxing it into place. He waits long enough that he is sure the groom has made it to the large temple nestled into the very back of the garden before lifting his head.
A priest emerges, waving his hand expectantly to a shrine maiden who moves forward meekly. Sasuke takes this moment to fall into step beside a handful of kenin carrying golden platters holding sake and various small food items, delicately cut and placed on sparkly-white porcelain.
When a lanky young man with dark hair casts him a sideward glance, Sasuke allows the black of his irises to swirl with red, pinning the stranger’s attention as he mouths quick words under his breath.
The platter containing the ceremonial sake is placed in his palms and Sasuke takes measured steps toward the altar where the groom now stands.
Pale eyes meet his as he follows the silent command of the priest to place the sake down gently on the raised platform. They analyze his face for a moment before slipping away in the next. Sasuke exhales slowly as he dips his chin, backing away to stand just behind the shoulder of the shrine maiden.
A minute that feels like an eternity passes. And then a hush goes over the small crowd, and the sound of tinkling metal, and the brush of cloth over grass and stone can be heard.
The Senju heir enters the garden with tiny, careful steps, her head raised high and cherry-red lips drawn in a small, gentle smile. The guests sigh and grin giddily as the bride sweeps past them toward the temple, flanked by two young girls that ensure her crisp white outer robe’s long trains did not become dirtied on the ground.
Pale lashes flutter and Sasuke is suddenly struck by the green of her eyes, somehow brighter among the plant life. They hold a glossy look to them as she offers more smiles and tiny nods as she makes her way to her soon-to-be husband.
The man himself stands taller, if possible. His eyes no longer rove around, instead remain fixed on his bride as she draws near.
The bride, in all her beauty and poise comes to stand beside the Hyuga and they share a knowing, if slightly stiff smile.
Sasuke watches, hands clasped tight behind his back as the ceremony begins. The priest speaks words he does not hear, motioning with hands and purification tools. His gaze remains on the couple who stand a careful distance apart, not even their robes brushing. The Hyuga glances at the woman at his side now and again, but her green gaze remains fixed on the priest.
It is when they both are compelled to reach for the ceremonial sake that Sasuke’s stance loosens by a fraction. Sakura’s eyes trace the movement of her own hand as it takes hold of the small, delicate cup. They linger for a moment before flitting upward, landing directly on his gaze.
Her eyes widen, pupils narrowing to pinpoints but his swirl red and she is slumping in a faint before she has the chance to even take a breath. The guests gasp and Hyuga Neji jerks to grab at his almost-wife as she slides toward the ground. Sasuke stalks forward, casting his gaze to the startled priest who hits the ground with a thud. When pale-purple eyes jerk up, he captures the groom, too.
Weapons are being drawn, voices screech in alarm and confusion but Sasuke hears only muffled sounds. He focuses inward, churning his chakra until it blankets the area and slowly the cries die out, some bodies slumping to the ground and others standing stock still, frozen in place– many with hands reaching for or holding weapons drawn.
He bends, snags the front of Sakura’s carefully folded kimono and tugs her into his arms, swinging her limp form over his shoulder.
Then he is sprinting, taking bounding leaps over small ponds and bushes as voices begint to groan and growl, battling against the restraints of his genjutsu.
He runs, and runs and runs, skirting around the edges of the sprawling estate and throwing himself into the thick of the woods. He runs until his back is slick with sweat, his lips and throat dry like autumn leaves from his heavy, panting breaths.
Miles stretch between the Senju territory and his home and he hardly pauses more than thrice to shift the weight of the slumbering warrior princess onto his back, and creep quietly around base camps manned by more enemies than even he is equipped to handle.
A few times his mind wanders and a startling thought takes him–
Why am I doing this?
He only grits his teeth and continues to run.
┍━☽【❖】☾━┑
Twenty-two
Sakura jerks to awareness, her thoughts sluggish and her eyes bleary. Browns and greens and blacks rush by her vision and it takes a spasm of blinks to take in her surroundings somewhat clearly.
She should be standing beside her groom, taking a small sip of sake and binding herself to him for the rest of her life.
Instead, she is being carried somewhere. And fast .
Her fist slams into a flexing back, landing with brutal force directly on the spine and the figure holding her crumples.
She crashes to the ground, wet dirt immediately soaking into and ruining the pristine white of her wedding kimono. She scrambles to her feet and swings her leg in a kick that sends blood splashing at the hem, her captor reeling back from his partially raised position.
Dropping a knee to his throat and a palm to his head she hisses, “ Who are you? ”
Red eyes stare up at her face, features twisting into a grimace of pain and fury. And Sakura buckles, losing her grip on her opponent and her sanity as she stares into the face of the boy she saved once upon a time.
The boy who haunted her dreams from that day.
Uchiha Sasuke takes full advantage of her moment of shock, slamming a palm into the center of her chest and sending her reeling back, head smacking hard against the ground.
She kicks at him from her prone position, shutting her eyes as he attempts to trap her in his gaze. She slips away from his hold, her steps unsteady and imbalanced due to the weight of her clothes and the heavy ornaments tilted in disarray about her head. They hit at each other with bruising punches, clawing and scrappling for the upper hand.
Thunder claps and rain pelts over them, causing Sakura to slip from her stance in the mud. A sharp dagger materializes in Sasuke’s hand and he moves to swipe at her side, which she avoids by the skin of her teeth. He manages to slice into the outermost of her coverings, leaving it hanging open, limp and drenched.
“Why are you doing this?” she gasps, grunting as she dodges another of his attacks, catching his forearm and bending it until he groans.
“For obvious reasons,” he rasps, freeing himself and attempting to swipe her feet from under her with a low kick. She springs away, ducking as flame bursts briefly from his hands, sputtering out in the rain. “You are valuable to the Senju. Powerful. They will either fight and be weakened without you, or bargain away their victory to have you back.”
“I am no more valuable than the people who clean your estate,” she hisses, dancing away from his attacks. Anger rises within her as she realizes he toils to subdue, rather than kill. “I am Haruno Sakura, a lowly common girl born to a kenin woman who serves in Senju Tsunade’s house. She claimed me in name, but by your clan’s standards, I am nothing. Nothing worth losing a war.”
“You are wrong,” he bites out, growling in frustration as she darts away from his grasp, kicking up a mound of earth to block his advance.
“If you think I will be tortured into revealing my clans secrets,” she shouts, gritting her teeth at the sharp pain as she pivots away from the swipe of his blade and her ankle rolls in the unstable sludge, “you are highly mistaken. I would never betray them.”
“You would betray your dashing groom least of all, I am sure,” he says tauntingly, taking light, predator-like steps as they circle each other. “The Uchiha care little for your cooperation. Having you in our territory, away from the battlefields is more than enough. You might even find your treatment pleasant, should you behave accordingly.”
“Behave?” she chokes on a laugh, her words squeezing past the lump in her throat. Her ruined hair sticks to her face and neck, her opponents inky locks doing the same. Cold water slips between the layers of kimono that had been wrapped so dutifully around her likely mere hours before, ruining the fine fabric and weighing heavily on her back.
Sakura darts forward with all her speed, slamming Sasuke to the ground, her body holding him prone with inhuman strength. Black patterns seep from her seal and snake over her wrists for a second before they retreat and she slumps forward, gripping at the wrist the wields his weapon.
“Kill me here,” she demands, lips trembling but voice deadly quiet and firm. She jerks his hand, his blade until the glinting edge presses to her jugular. “I will die before I am prisoner to a clan like yours.”
“You will die?” he spits his words, blood and spittle joining with rain and salt water on her cheeks. “Just so? You will let me kill you?”
“Aa,” she mutters, and her traitorous fingers begin to shake. “I choose to die knowing I cannot be used for such dishonorable schemes. You will find no victories in me.”
“Dishonor,” he laughs, tossing his head back and guffawing up to the stormy sky. “There is no honor. Only fighting and death and more fighting. You should know as well as I do that there is no place for honorable creatures in war.”
“You are wrong,” she shakes her head. “You are still wrong.”
“I suppose this is your good death, then?” he grins, and it is a beautiful and an ugly thing. “Me slitting your throat, leaving you here to bleed out in the rain and in your wedding clothes is the honorable end you once spoke of?”
“So you do remember,” she mutters. An odd stillness comes over her, seeps into her veins and she inhales deep.
Petrichor, iron, wet grass, soil. Him . Smelling of sage and smoke, ash and spice. She inhales it all, and exhales her resolve.
Pressing forward, she bears down on him with her weight until the blade knicks her flesh, blood trickling down with contrasting warmth to her chest. Her lids lower and mouth softens, her body not even flinching at the spark of pain.
His eyes widen, irises switching from red to black, from black to red in the span of a single second.
Then he snatches back with surprising force, jerking both hand and weapon away so that the latter is discarded feet away in a muddy puddle.
The hand that at one point sought to strike her down rises, shakily, and moves to cup her face.
“What horror have these jade eyes seen to look into death with such a blissful expression?” he whispers.
“The same horrors as your rubies,” she breathes. “Too many, too terrible to name.”
Sasuke’s face tightens and the organ in her chest squeezes in tandem. She finds herself battling the most peculiar urge to laugh, to cry, to scream into the heavens and drown her gaping mouth in the pouring rain.
Here she is, mere inches from the enemy, gazing at his full, blood streaked mouth and wishing, hungering with all her being to kiss him.
She had never hungered for Neji’s kiss before.
Sasuke’s form goes limp under hers, head thumping lightly against the wet ground.
“I am a failure,” he half-coughs, half-chuckles. “My kinsmen would be kind to string me up and leave my brother’s crows to pick at my eyes.”
“What?” she asks, recoiling slightly.
“I cannot kill you,” he sighs, shielding his scarlet eyes with a dirt-smudged hand. When he reveals them again, they are black.
Perhaps closer to a dark gray, this close .
“I cannot kill you, and you will not kill me,” he continues, breaking her away from her wandering thoughts. “Your darling honor makes it so. What will kill us is the storm brewing–we must find shelter. Build fire.”
Sakura can only blink down at him for a long while. Then a chill creeps under her skin while a peculiar burn starts in her belly and she decides to drag herself in a standing position, watching warily, but following willingly as he leads her deeper into the woods.
┗━•❃°•°❀°•°❃•━┛
Twenty-two
For as long as his memory serves, Sasuke has known this place to be a home away from home. A tiny bit of paradise where danger was far too afraid to come near, whether that be from the enemy or from within his own household.
His brother had brought him there once to hide away from a battle that had turned south even before it had truly begun. Another time they visited was when his father was raging at another loss and took to lashing out his anger on his smallest child. As the years crept by and he grew strong enough to hold his own in battle and in domestic affairs, Itachi had stopped escorting him to this little haven.
“This way,” he mutters in a low voice, swerving to the left and reaching to push aside a thick blanket of handing vines. He holds still as she slips past him through the opening, the scent of soil and water doing very little to camouflage her own scent.
Fragrant oils like lavender and rose waft from her skin, underscored with something deeper, like jasmine leaf and sweet, juicy fruits.
He is horrified to find that his mouth waters.
It is pitch black inside the passageway and so he takes hold of her elbow, engaging his doujutsu to guide them through safely. Once they enter the heart of the hovel he breathes fire to the lanterns set at the edges of the room, casting it in a sudden, orange glow.
“This is…,” Sakura’s whisper trails off as she pivots on her heel to take in her surroundings.
Weapons and small wooden carvings grace most of the walls, baskets of dried and preserved food anchored to the ceiling. Deep in the space a fire pit is dug out, a makeshift chimney curved upward toward ground level to let smoke filter out somewhere it is likely for others to find.
“We can warm ourselves and shelter here,” he states, swinging damp locks away from his face. “And then…”
He trails off as their eyes meet, jade green and blood red. He knows not what will come next and it appears, neither does she.
What will this temporary truce, if it can be called such, bring?
A visible shiver wracks through his captive-turned-companion’s form and he shakes himself from dooming thoughts and steps toward a pile of quilts. They had been stowed away to this place one-by-one over many years.
“Undress,” he orders, voice edging on too-sharp. He supposes his peacefulness does not have to come with kindness. “You must get dry and warm else you will come down with a devil of a fever. And then all of the drama of me sparing you will be for naught.”
A soft, husky chuckle causes the tips of his ears to heat despite the cold water dripping from his hair.
“Goddess forbid I think you a benevolent soul,” she drawls. “You worry for no reason. I am not susceptible to sickness, nor disease. But I do not enjoy being wet and cold, either.”
Sasuke nearly turns to throw her a bemused glance when the sound of wet fabric slapping onto the stone ground causes him to freeze. The sound comes again, again, again and again for what seems like an eternity as she peels what he imagines is nearly one hundred layers of clothing from her body and drops them to the floor.
His neck heats and a thickness forms in his throat as the wet thwack sounds once more, and then silence. He realizes then that the woman he has just kidnapped, who he had at many times between this day and years before tried to kill is standing behind him– nude.
Worse yet, unarmed. It is humbling and startling in equal measure.
“Here,” he fists a handful of blankets and shoves them behind him in her general direction. Cold fingers brush against his as she reaches for them and he jerks his hand away as if he had touched hot metal.
“Arigatou,” she murmurs. More rustling sounds and she clears her throat before stating in a small voice, “I am decent. I shall turn so you may change as well.”
Sasuke grits his teeth as he slacks off his own wet clothing, shivering as he bundles a thick blanket around his waist.
Without a word, he stalks over to the fire-pit, ignoring Sakura’s suspicious eyes and the way she turns to ensure her front is always to him, a few feet of distance keeping them apart. Inhaling deeply, he exhales a stream of flame, maintaining it until the dried logs catch fire and it spreads to a roaring blaze.
“Convenient,” she mumbles from her spot near the wall.
He scoffs as he goes about ruffling through a bamboo bin for bed rolls, shaking them out onto the floor with more force than is strictly necessary. The skin at his back warms as it faces the fire, but his toes flinch away from the icy stone ground.
As he draws nearer to Sakura, arranging the larger bed roll slightly further from the fire with the intent to create a safe boundary, his ears pick up the sound of her teeth chattering.
“Move closer to the fire, Senju,” he grumbles. “It will not warm you from over there.”
“I am not a Senju,” she retorts pausing briefly before amending, “Not by blood or name, at least. I am Haruno . Sakura. You may call me either of those things.”
“Haruno? Is that even a known house?” Sasuke shakes his head and says, rather nastily even to his own ears, “I suppose you are indeed common.”
“You sound like my betrothed,” she scoffs, kneeling down so close to the fire he for a moment wonders if her blanket will set ablaze. Her back stiffens and she glances over her shoulder with a faraway look in her eyes. “He used to call me common. Lowly, too.”
“Charming,” Sasuke says dryly. “I wonder what other sweet nothings he liked to whisper in your ear.”
Sakura only cuts him a sharp glance before rotating back toward the flames, huddling into herself for warmth. A sharp chill causes Sasuke to move forward despite himself, drawing closer to the fire as well.
“My mother is favored by Tsunade-shishou,” a quiet voice suddenly murmurs. “She was her companion when she was a young girl, a lady in waiting by the time she was my age. When she fell pregnant with me for a traveling merchant, Tsunade shielded her. Mama was stripped of her status and privilege, but remained by her mistress’ side.”
Sasuke finds himself torn between cutting her off and demanding silence so he might concentrate on organizing his wayward thoughts and blocking out her scent, her nearness. A larger part of his being perks in curiosity, hanging onto each word spoken in her soothing, lilting voice.
“When she gave birth to me,” Sakura inhales shakily before expelling a tiny laugh. “Tsunade saw me, and said that she would take charge of me. I was from then on heiress to the Senju clan, future inheritor of the Strength of One Hundred Seal– but I was not her daughter. I was not my true mother’s child, either. Just a lowly, common girl provided with the privileges and opportunity of a princess.”
“And was the honorable Hyuga Neji terribly displeased when he learned the origins of his destined bride?” Sasuke speaks without thought.
Kidnapping, battling and then finding a shaky truce with the enemy was one thing. Fraternizing, conversing about her history and inquiring for details regarding her life was another completely.
The flickering flames cast dancing shadows across her cheeks as they curve with a small smile. “Hyuga-san was disgusted with me for much of our early years. It was not until we nearly died together in battle that he seemed to see me in a different light.”
“You love him dearly,” Sasuke mutters, voice gruff. Why do you care?
Silence reigns for a while. He watches her profile unabashedly, tracing his gaze over the curve of her forehead, the ridge of her nose and slopes of her full, pouty lips. At some point he forgets that he has even made a statement, no longer expecting her to respond as he conducts his distracted perusal of her visage.
“I do not love him,” she whispers, jerking him to the present. “I respect him. I care for him. Deeply . I would lay down my life for him.”
“But you do not love him,” he murmurs, shifting slightly on his feet and wrapping his arms around himself. Despite the crackling flames, the air in this hovel is icy-cold. “You did not wish to marry him. So why today were you walking so beautifully to the altar to do just that?”
He chooses not to acknowledge the compliment that managed to sneak past his lips, and is shamefully glad when Sakura seems to miss it altogether.
“Because it was my duty,” she whispers. “It is my duty. Our marriage is the key to solidifying the relationship between the Hyuga and the Senju.”
He rolls his eyes, “Your clans have been allied for nearly a century. Longer, depending on who one asks. Marrying off the sole heir of the Senju to the Hyuga would only serve to fan their hubris and stoke their pride. That is their lifeblood, of course.”
“And the Uchiha are not prideful?” green eyes land on his face, tinted orange from the flames. “Is it not your clan who refuses to permit women and lower-class members to participate militarily despite your dwindling numbers?”
“We do not need to rely on women and servants to aid us in war,” Sasuke’s retort is knee jerk, but weak-willed. He has questioned these choices on his own, many times–has challenged the idea of his clan setting itself at an inherent disadvantage for something so fallible as ‘tradition’.
“Ah, because women are too weak and commoners’ blood is not worthy to be spilled,” she drawls. Her tone is biting, but her voice is frustratingly musical to his ears.
“That is the belief of the clan,” he mutters, watching her gaze swim with deep disappointment. His chest tightens and he shakes himself mentally. “Whether I hold the exact same beliefs as my clan is neither here nor there.”
Why he feels the need to defend himself to this woman is beyond him. He wonders in a moment of restrained exasperation if perhaps his father was correct and the Senju women were indeed mistresses of trickery.
It would explain the lump that forms in his throat each time her long lashes flutter and her gaze meets his own. It would provide an excuse for his constant staring, his horrendous desire to draw close and inhale her scent of fruit and flowers once more. Perhaps it would make it clear the reason he finds himself stiffening with an emotion he refuses to call concern when he notes that the edges of her mouth are blueish and her hands and legs are shaking.
“Why did you take me?” her voice draws him out of his frantic musings.
“You are a valuable hostage,” he says flatly.
“And when I am no longer that?” she questions. Her voice is softer than it was before, less accusatory and more resigned. “When I am eventually found to be useless for information, and end up being killed…what will the point have been? How was it worth the risk?”
“Any risk is worthwhile when it could be the key to turn the tides for my clan,” he growls, the sound rumbling low in his throat. “ Anything is worth an end to this war.”
“Does one side have to come out victorious for the war to reach an end?” she sighs, drawing her knees to her chest.
“Are you a pacifist then?” Sasuke questions, a cruel edge to his tone that something deep within him manages to regret. “After taking the lives of hundreds of men, of my kin , you yearn for a peaceful end to it all?”
“I bled to the blade before I bled to become a woman,” her voice is tight, as if she is just-barely reigning in her frustrations. “That is not the kind of life I would wish for my own children. This fighting…there is no joy in it. No victory, either. Only death, and pain.”
Sasuke prepares to retort, but then Sakura’s face screws in a pained expression, eyelids drooping as her shoulders quake with a violent shiver. He hesitates for a moment, before moving to drag the bedrolls he found and his remaining quilts closer to the fire.
Then he sits beside her, so close that their covered arms brush. Her head whips to the side and she peers up at his face with a squint.
“What are you doing?” she asks weakly. Her voice is small, her lips pale and quivering.
Yet a deep flush has residence on her cheeks, crawling over the lightly freckled bridge of her nose.
“Sharing warmth,” he mutters.
Ignoring his own trepidation and her small gasp, he reaches an arm around her shoulders, slowly, drawing her slightly closer until her head is underneath his chin. When she shifts, tilting her chin to look up at him with wide eyes, her cheek brushes against his and he jerks.
“You are feverish,” he murmurs, cupping his palm over her forehead before he can gather his suddenly racing thoughts. “I thought you could not fall ill.”
“I do not-,” her voice breaks off on a violent shudder and a feeling like needles piercing his skin washing over him.
He inhales to speak again when her scent floods his senses, somehow more intense than before. It is almost cloying, thick and…alluring. Sasuke exhales harshly, clasping a hand tightly to her shoulder before shifting the hand at her head down to rub briskly at her arm, gathering the covering closer around her form. By the moment, the weight of her feels heavier against him and alarm spikes through him when her lashes flutter sluggishly and her virident eyes gaze up at him with a glittering sheen.
“Stay awake, Sakura,” and he shivers, too, because somehow he can taste the syllables of her name against his tongue. “Tell me what I can do. I am no healer.”
“You wish to care for me, Sasuke-san?” her lips curve in a lazy, tiny smile. The expression falters and her brow furrows. “Perhaps this is…your repayment for me saving your life?”
Her words become more slurred as she goes on.
“Call it what you wish,” he snaps, gathering her closer until she is all but in his lap. Her scent is dizzying, spurning something within that he cannot understand. “Simply tell me what to do .”
“You know, I dreamed of you after that day,” she is panting now, beads of moisture gathering at her temples. “And when…when I kissed my betrothed, I thought of your eyes. Red like rubies.”
“ Sakura ,” he growls. Then he freezes, flaring his nostrils and inhaling deeply again. Fragrance like nothing he has ever known seems to wrap around him, seep into his insides and curl around his vital organs. “It is heat. You are…you are going into heat.”
┍━☽【❖】☾━┑
Twenty-two
Sakura feels strange, each of her thoughts cycling slowly as if through a heavy, suffocating fog. Outside stimuli struggles to reach her through the sensation of her pulse pounding in her ears and the chills creeping over her flesh.
When the word ‘heat’ filters through her consciousness, though, her entire being freezes and time seems to come to a halt.
“What?” she breathes. Rather, she tries, as her air is caught and held hostage in her chest.
“You have begun going into heat,” the man holding her against his chest replies. She can hardly remember how he got to be so close.
“No,” she mumbles. Pulling herself away is like attempting to move a mountain, and her head spins when she manages to peel herself away by a meager inch. “I cannot.”
“You are,” he whispers huskily. “I can smell it on you.” Distantly, she wonders why he bothers to speak so low.
“I cannot ,” Sakura rasps. A sudden cramp in her lower abdomen like no other pain she has felt, even during her monthly courses, takes her breath. “I have not been marked. This is…it is not–”
Her voice breaks on the precipice of another contraction, pain radiating from her pelvis down the backs of her thighs. She clenches her legs together in response and feels a surge of wetness between them as if she has soiled herself.
Sweat trickles over her brow and a low whine falls from her lips. She has never made such a sound.
“What is happening to me?” she asks, looking up at his face. Heat builds in the pit of her stomach, making the pulsing pains more acute.
“Did no one teach you of these things?” Sasuke’s dark brows furrow, his irises slowly bleeding into red. For once, her instincts do not urge her to look away, and she is almost ready to beg him to pull her into a genjutsu, into a world in which this is not happening to her.
“I have not been marked yet,” she gasps around a sob, water building in her eyes and blurring her vision. She reaches out a shaky hand for something, anything and finds the fabric of her quilt, suddenly suffocating and near painful where it brushes against her flesh.
“It seems that it does not matter,” says he, his voice both quiet and somehow booming in her ears. Strong fingers wrap around hers and she chokes, nearly crying out when that small touch brings minute relief. “Heat is only spurned by marking when a mating has been...manufactured between partners.”
Sakura struggles to maintain their eye contact and so allows her lids to squeeze shut, slumping down until her weight is entirely pressed against the man who she calls enemy ’s chest. She wishes to rip off her coverings, to flay her flesh from her bones and crawl outside of herself, if only to escape the contradicting sensations of hot and cold, of pain and–
And something boiling to the surface from somewhere deep inside, from a place she has yet to fully explore. Something that shallows her breath, slickens her thighs and draws her aching breasts into swollen, tight peaks.
“Sakura,” a deep voice calls softly and she peels her eyes open to stare, to drown in vibrant pools of red. “Listen to me, and hear what I will say.”
A warm palm slides over her flushed, dampened cheek and she lets loose a guttural sound, halfways between a growl and a moan. She experiences a sudden reprieve from the clenching pain, a soothing rush flooding her body, beckoning her to tilt her head into the caress, seeking more of the blissful contact.
“Touch me, touch,” she mumbles, nuzzling her face into his broad hand as she has seen foals do against their mothers’ hides. “I ache .”
“ Listen ,” he barks.
Sakura’s spine snaps into rigid attention, her head lifting to peer fully into his face. His hand slips away and she trembles when the pain bites again. He sighs, reaching to cup the side of her neck gently.
“A heat only comes on like this,” Sasuke sucks in a breath, blowing it out unsteadily and Sakura nearly moans again as she is awash with his scent, “when a true mating occurs. Do you know what that is?”
“True mates are the stuff of legends,” she croaks, tracing the line of his jaw and curve of his mouth with her gaze. She continues in a daze, “Just stories.”
“No,” he murmurs, and the movement of his lips is hypnotizing, alluring. “We have simply chosen to forgo our true selves in the pursuit of power. Political arrangements have made matings like this…like ours so rare they sound like fantasy.”
“Ours?” she mouths, her head lolling on her neck as he reaches to grasp at her cheek with the other hand. The secondary touch does wonders against the cramping, but stokes the flames licking at her insides higher and higher.
“A day ago I was your enemy,” his voice sounds rougher, accented with a low rumbling that causes her very bones to quake. “Now, I am the only one who can help you through this. It is my nature to relieve you from this pain.”
Their skin-to-skin contact, while minimal and arousing , has managed to clear her mind enough that she is able to distantly recognize the consequences of her situation.
An array of emotions swirl with the heat building inside–shock, that everything she was told was legend should come to be true, fear that she is weak, vulnerable and literally within her supposed-enemy’s grasp. Shame, because she must admit now that she is not unhappy to be in this situation, to be held in this particular man’s arms.
“You hate me,” she manages to say, lips trembling as if she has chills despite her insides feeling like a cauldron boiling over the rim of her sanity.
“I surely do not ,” he replies, voice rasping. “I hate many things, but somehow I never could hate you.”
Something within her breaks, the pulsing pain spiking in intensity once more in her belly. She disentangles her hands from the thick quilt around her shoulders and claws at Sasuke’s chest, climbing upward and pushing aside his coverings until she can dig her fingertips into the flexing muscles of his shoulders.
Her mouth crashes over his and he growls, tongue slipping in between her lips in a plundering kiss. She moans, whines as he licks at her mouth, sucking at her tongue, one of his arms shackling around her waist.
She detaches for a mere breath of a moment, long enough to gasp, “It hurts. Oh, Goddess, I ache .”
He kisses her more deeply, if possible, smoothing a hand down her back and sliding the quilt down in tandem. The press of his fingers on her bare skin, kneading into her bunching muscles pulls a whimper from her throat. She smashes her breasts to his torso, seeking more points of contact, praying to the goddess that she would douse this fire in her veins and loosen desire’s grip on her lungs.
“Shhh,” he hushes as she whines into his mouth, “I shall take away this pain.”
“Please,” she gasps out, “I hate it. Please, Sasuke- kun .”
Were she in her right mind, she might have balked at using such an honorific. But it hardly matters when the man’s body vibrates with a resounding growl and the word spins around her as he flips her onto her back, shoving her into the pile of quilts haphazardly strewn across the bed roll.
“Show me where the pain is, Sakura,” he pants. Their flesh sticks slightly when he peels away, planting himself on his knees between her splayed thighs.
Her eyes fall away from his beautiful features and stormy expression, tracing down her body to gaze at the elenching muscles of her abdomen, and lower to the slick sheen of wetness spread over her thighs. A sharp clenching inside results in another spilled stream of the clear, viscous liquid and the muscles above her pelvis draw tight.
“Here,” she groans, pressing her hand to the slight curve of her lower stomach.
Long fingers brush hers aside, sliding over the spot with gentle pressure and she gasps in relief. His hand glides over the spot in slow, soothing circles and Sakura’s head falls back heavily, her eyes lowering to slits.
Without her express permission, her lower half begins to shift, hips circling in time with his ministrations. Through the slim line of her vision, she catches his glowing irises fix their focus between her legs and his lower lip slipping between his white, shining teeth.
“Tell me where else it hurts,” he breathes. His hand stops its circular motions, finger tips trailing in a featherlight touch as they descend toward the pink curls at her pubis. “Here?”
She can only nod, the muscles of her thighs tensing and lower back curving as his fingers comb through her curls and make contact with swollen, slick flesh.
Her body screams for more, but her mind combats her instincts, eyes widening and her chest rising and falling rapidly. Anxiety swirls and begins to cut through the haze as his fingers trace a path up and down the weeping slit in her flesh.
“Sasuke?” her voice does not sound like her own, too high-pitched, too shaky. Her mind whirls as her hips curl into his hand as if tethered to some outside will.
“Sweet Sakura,” he whispers, voice just barely audible over her own panting breaths and the crackling of wood burning in the fire alongside them. “You are more than anything I could have conjured in my dreams.”
“Dreams?” she stutters, eyelids fluttering as one of his fingers slips between her folds, sliding up and down slowly. He makes contact with the erect nub of her clitoris and she keens quietly.
“Yes,” he all-but purrs. Then, his form is looming over hers, their foreheads brushing as he speaks quietly, lips brushing her mouth. “Since the day you saved my life, you have haunted me. My enemy turned savior, object of my darkest desires. I should have known it was the beast inside, trying to tell me that you were mine .”
The possessive tone of his voice should have frightened her. Instead, she feels comforted, her own anxieties slipping away bit by bit, being replaced by more of the surging, dizzying heat.
“Let me care for you, as only I can,” his breath brushes against her ear, his teeth catching against the lobe.
Sakura’s voice breaks on a desperate moan when he shapes her pulsing clitoris with his fingers, stroking in small, addicting circles until her hips are pulsing off the ground into the cradle of his hand. A fluttering begins in her most private parts, wetness spilling from her like an over-run fountain. Pleasure like no other washes over her, swelling within her chest, between her hips like a tide and she clutches at the hot skin of his back, pulling him closer.
“I feel…,” she gasps, swallowing his tongue in her mouth as he interrupts her briefly with a languid kiss. “I feel strange.”
“Trust me,” he murmurs. The long fingers strumming her into a frenzy slip down, reaching lower through her folds until they brush against her entrance.
Before she has the time to tense, he sinks into her with one digit, sliding slowly and gently. She inhales sharply at the sensation, her lower half shifting as it accommodates the intrusion and adapts to the stretching sensation.
It takes a beat for her to acclimate, and by the next she is sighing, “More.”
A smile curls his lips and he slides out with his single finger slowly, pushing back in at the same pace. At the second outward stroke, a second digit joins the first at the rim of her opening, sinking inside bit by bit as her back arches and she mewls and writhes.
It feels as if he has slightly filled up a gaping emptiness she did not know existed. Now she hungers for more, to be filled completely to bursting.
His lips trace a line down her jaw and plant themselves at her neck. She hears him inhale deeply, exhaling on a quiet growl as his fingers begin to thrust in and out of her core, stirring up her wetness and mixing up her thoughts. She can only dig her fingertips into his flexing muscles, her inner thighs trembling as she strains to press into his hand in time with each motion. The swelling sensation builds, her body becoming so sensitized she imagines she can feel the smoke wafting from the fire against her dampened skin, the thud of Sasuke’s heart slamming against her chest.
A particularly deep stroke and she is gasping desperately, sucking in air around keening whimpers and shaking moans. His digits curl upward, fingertips grazing over a spot that makes her vision blur, every muscle in her body tensing up for a heart-stopping moment before they all loosen at once, her inner walls pulsing and her hips bucking outside of her control.
She cries out, his name spilling from her lips along with other nonsense words. He hums an approving sound, taking her lips and drinking her sounds until she finally comes down from the euphoric high, blinking away the tears that have welled and obscure her vision.
Her body is buzzing with sensation, her skin practically pulsating as she watches in a daze as Sasuke draws back slightly, allowing her to drink in the sight of his glistening, heaving chest and flexing abdominal muscles.
When her gaze dips lower, she swallows hard. Standing proud between his hips is a long, thick shaft, the reddened end reaching above his navel. Pearlescent droplets linger about the tip of him, a glistening trail marking a path toward his heavy-looking sac.
“I can soothe you with my hands and mouth,” he murmurs, drawing her gaze back to his. Red eyes trace her features, a hungry look to them that sends gooseflesh creeping over her skin. “But it will not rid you of the pain. For that I must…take you. Place my mark on you and satisfy the beast inside.”
Sakura can only stare, her eyes dipping low again to stare at the intimidating organ bobbing with its own pulse between them. Climax has alleviated her symptoms but already she can feel echoes of the cramping in her belly again, sweat trickling between her breasts and slick between her thighs.
“If this is not what you want,” Sasuke says gruffly, drawing her attention to his face once again. “If I am not what you want, we will press no further. I will will return you to your betrothed where he may tend to you–”
“No,” she blurts. Her fingers curl into the blankets at her sides, chest heaving. She can feel herself slipping once more, is forced to hold tight onto her senses as the heat and her hunger for fulfillment attempts to drag her consciousness away. “I want you. ”
The black tomoe in his irises spin faster, the red of his eyes somehow more vibrant, perhaps due to the reflecting light of the dancing flames. She is held captive by his gaze as his palms slide up the side of either of her legs, grasping behind her knees and sliding her across the ground until her lower half is slung over his lap. He hooks her legs behind his waist before leaning over her, brushing their mouths in their most chaste kiss.
“You will suffer no longer, my mate,” he whispers. His mouth takes hers more deeply then, and he rests one hand lightly at her throat while the other slides between their bodies to cup her mound.
She moans into his mouth as he thrusts into her with two fingers once more, coaxing her into wave after wave of release. She crashes each time like the tumultuous ocean tide during a storm.
By the time she feels his engorged length slide over her sensitized folds she is all but begging for him, raking her nails down his back and baring her neck to him, mindless in pleasure and wanting for the final act. The hot tip of him notches at her entrance, burning somehow hotter than she herself and she pries open her eyes, sinking into his gaze as he sinks into her depths. Her insides part and stretch around him, a distant ache settling between her legs while the one in her belly loses its intensity.
He moans, deep and gravelly, pushing forward so slowly an eternity might pass, Sakura becoming lightheaded as she contains her breath.
Air is expelled from both their lungs when Sasuke finally slides all the way inside, the fine hairs at his pelvis mingling with her own. She feels stuffed tight, so full that she might split apart were she to move.
So she simply relaxes in his grasp, tilting her chin toward the wall behind her head when he growls and clasps his fingers at the underside of her jaw. His hips pull back, shaft stroking against her slick walls in a slow, mind-breaking drag before pushing forward again, thrusting him deep inside her until she feels that they will never be separate beings again.
Sage and spice, ash and smoke fills her nose, her eyes bombarded with flashes of his reddened mouth and glowing eyes. The sound of wet flesh meeting filters in her ears, underscored with her own whines and moans, his pants and deep, rumbling groans.
The climax that builds this time rushes over her like a waterfall, yanking her away from the earth for a moment until it is as if she is floating, her soul being brought forth for the goddess to bestow her with a kiss to her face before she tumbles back down to where her limbs writhe and quake, fingers digging into the flesh of her hip and around her jaw as she screams worship and praises to the dark ceiling above.
“ Sakura ,” her mate– mate– growls, slamming so deep that her entire body jolts from the force. His face buries in the side of her neck, hot breath washing over her throat as his mouth opens wide.
Sharp pain pricks at her neck and warm liquid trickles down her skin as he sinks his teeth into her, locking his jaw as he lets loose a series of hungry moans and snarls. Between them, fit snug inside of her core, he begins to pulse and throb, his shaft thickening deliciously until she feels him pressed against every part of her there is.
Then he grows further, a bulging growth at the base of his member pressing hard to the top of her mound and growing to the point of pain, a throbbing ache that sends a confusing spasm of discomfort and acute pleasure rolling through her entire form.
“Sasuke-kun,” she chokes, digging her hands into his back and thrashing in his hold.
His teeth retract from her flesh and her laps at the wounds, mumbling in between, “It will be alright. I am with you.”
Another sudden orgasm takes her sight, so quick and intense that she is left reeling, panting. She feels a powerful spurt of hot, thick liquid spill inside of her in a series of pulses and Sasuke shivers in her arms, latching on to her new mark with his lips and sucking soundly.
She is rocked with wave after wave of pleasure, the throbbing between them near-constant until she is practically sobbing with strain.
“Sweet, sweet Sakura,” Sasuke slurs into her neck, flicking his tongue at frequent intervals at her neck.
Time stretches into what could be many minutes or many hours with them intimately joined and locked together, their skin dripping with sweat and combined essence, clutching each other tight as they lay prone in front of the slowly-dying flames. She is tired, deliciously warm and sated. Yet her mind spins, pondering their fate now that they have both committed treason against their clans. She wonders what sort of future the world beyond this tiny, hidden shelter might hold.
Eventually, Sakura speaks, voice and mind mostly clear, “What happens now, Sasuke-kun?”
Her head is on his chest, leg hitched over his hip as he pillows her waist with his arm. A pulse between them causes her to gasp quietly and he to shiver, his eyes sliding shut.
Forehead bumping against hers he whispers a reply, “I do not know. But I shall not be without you, no matter what the future holds.”
┗━•❃°•°❀°•°❃•━┛
Twenty-seven
“You were blessed with a lucky catch this day, Haruno-san!” a boisterous voice bellows, and a heavy palm smacks hard at the center of his back.
He offers a tight grin, glancing at the horizon as the sun peeks over the rolling peaks. It grows late, and he hates to be behind schedule.
“Indeed, I was,” he says with a nod to the talkative merchant. “I am blessed to have you as my best customer, as well.”
The flattery rolls ungainly off his tongue but the older man laughs riotously, smacking his back again. Any awkwardness of embarrassment is soothed by the weight of the coin ban he tucks into his coat. His pitiful attempts at socializing–and his skill for fishing–had brought in twice the coins he usually received.
He was wise to take another’s advice, for once.
The sun has risen high in the sky by the time he steps into the clearing filled with wildflowers, forcing him to shade his face with his hand as he squints at the small house nestled among them. The outside is handsome enough although he cannot help but take a mental note of the slightly leaning awning and the tiny tear in the shoji.
When he slides open the door and kicks off a sandal, quiet squealing filters to his ears along with the scent of poppies and sugar. A tiny body slams into his knees and he pretends to teeter off balance, leaning down to scoop the wriggling form into his arms.
“What is this? A wild creature tearing about my house?” he questions with mock seriousness, wrangling the thrashing body around until it goes limp in a fit of giggles.
“It is me! ” the small voice shrieks. “It is Sarada, not a creature!”
“Sarada is a wild creature, anata. Do not fall for her tricks,” another voice sounds from a few feet away. There is a smile in her words. “Okaeri.”
Sasuke lifts his head and inhales deeply, taking in the scent of jasmine, of sweet, perfectly ripened fruits. And there is a hint of himself there as well, a bit of sage and a little smoke.
“Sakura,” he murmurs, mouth curving in an indulgent smile. His eyes fall to her hands, resting on the curve of her belly. They are littered with scars, remnants of a long-abandoned, but never forgotten lifetime.
She is floating. Or, perhaps, tied and tethered to something solid–stone? The light is bright, shining white like the reflections of the sun; no, it is pitch-dark and she is blind. She sees nothing, hears nothing, only feels the brush of a million fingers over her skin, exhalations uncountable whispering against her nape.
Actually, she can feel nothing. She is nothing, only space, only air and water and earth and fire itself. All around her, inside her, below and above creatures coo, they roar, they pray and beg and…and…
Someone calls. For something. They are… He is desperate. Seeking.
She opens her eyes.
❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜
Sasuke’s eyes are itching and burning, his joints aching and throat dry like sand. His vision seems to warp for a moment before he blinks as much moisture as his body can produce over his lenses. A deep exhale at his side ruins his concentration and he whips his head in that direction.
“ What? ” he snaps, voice hoarse and terribly un-threatening. The electricity crackling between the webs of his fingers, though, is nothing but.
“You have been at this for days,” his brother drawls, dark eyes foggy-looking and expression virtually blank. His face is like porcelain, smooth and delicate. Exhaustion and age creep about the edges, held at bay by determination and lucky genetics. “This is not an exaggeration. You have been in meditative stasis for four days. The masters always warned us to never go past two.”
“The masters,” Sasuke croaks. He inches out of his meditative position slowly, his muscles protesting as he uncurls his stiff legs and straightens his arms. “The masters of today pale in comparison to those of old.”
“Ah, yes, of course,” Itachi sighs when he brushes off his attempt to offer a helping hand. Rising on his own two feet and slightly trembling legs is a balm to his ever-fickle pride. “You know better, as an expert of the ancient ways.”
“The ancient ways are the way ,” Sasuke retorts. His swimming vision ruins the impact, though, and he is forced to bite his tongue when his brother brackets an arm around his waist and shuffles him to a seat.
A light broth, rice and a steaming cup of tea are placed there already.
“You are a powerful caster, Sasuke,” Itachi stares at him as he sips spoonfuls of broth. He can feel his gaze, but refuses to lift his own to meet it. “It is imprudent to go to such lengths when you have advanced farther than most of our direct line, even in the entire clan. This…inordinate preparation does not serve you.”
“Are you my mother, now? Or is it father this time?” he spits the words with more vitriol than necessary. He draws near to regret until he hears the heavy sigh fall from his elder brother’s lips.
“The living cannot replace the dead,” Itachi says gravely.
“The living can surely try,” he mutters, shoveling a large spoonful of rice in his mouth and pretending he does not see the older man arch an inky brow from his peripheral vision.
His brother speaks throughout his meal and Sasuke’s mind wanders. Sustenance helps to clear his addled brain and pull his focus away from the weakness of his flesh into the recesses of his psyche where he cycles through ideas and plans.
The Summoning Ceremony is but a week and a hand away. Sasuke has immersed himself in meditation and spent hours and days honing his skills, stretching the limits of his mind, body and soul to flow in such a way that his essence draws nearer and nearer to all that is natural and long-standing. He toils in a venture to entice the most majestic of creatures into a contract with him; he hopes to prove himself a worthy majin and counterpart to a companion from the otherworlds.
His greatest, everlasting wish is to summon the infamous hawk of old, the companion animal that had accompanied his most legendary ancestors in battle. Such a companion was rare and difficult to come by; only a very strong majin would be able to even call the animal forth, much less entice the creature into a contract and to lend its power for as long as the caster lived.
Sasuke is determined to be among that number.
❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜
Sakura can sense a shift in the world’s axis. It is slight, just barely a hint of change, the tiniest ripple over the surface of what is the balance of all things.
The fact that she knows she has a name, that she knows herself (at least a bit) is proof that something is happening, a change has occurred that is outside the cyclical monotony of all that exists. For the first time in…she knows not how long, she can pick out individual sounds, scents and smells and see kaleidoscopes of colors and hues with startling clarity.
But most of all she can feel a tugging sensation at what must be the center of her dissipated form (was it a body , once?). A call without words, pleas without sound filter in above the buzz of natural things and ring inside her consciousness.
Flashes of images ripple through her mind, of faces, eyes, curving mouths and fluttering fabrics. She cannot truly grasp on to any one thing, and they cycle faster and faster until it is dizzying and feels as if she is plummeting, drowning in a sea of…something.
How can she catch a breath with no lungs?
❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜
The day of the Summoning Ceremony brings with it a muted sense of excitement and anticipation. Young men attempt to remain confident and maintain their humility all the same–they receive their blessings from the masters, send prayers and commune with the spirits and place offerings at the altars of their kin.
Sasuke’s hands are slick with oil, his hair wet and pushed back from his forehead. A cool breeze trickles between tall, thin trees, causing the flames of small torchers positioned around to flicker and spit. His entire body shivers, skin wet and blanketed by the light, soaked fabric of his robes, smelling of ash and herbs from the ritual cleansing.
He treks away from the central gathering point, opting to crest a tall hill and move further than any of the other majin participating in the summoning. The air grows colder the higher he climbs until his entire form quakes, teeth chattering as he peers toward the horizon where the setting sun bleeds red across the sky.
His bare feet sink into cold, damp soil, long and spindly grasses tickling at his ankles. Rolling his head back, eyes slipping shut and face pointed toward the ombre of the red and orange sky, he inhales slowly, deeply through his nose.
The breath rushes past his lips in an equally long exhale and he repeats the process again. He does so until his breaths filter in and out of his lungs in pace with the steady beat of his heart behind his ribs. He breathes until he can home in on the myriad of scents that make up his surroundings, until his own essence spills out of him and fills the space.
A thrumming beneath his feet, a roiling from deep in the earth rolling over the arches of his soles overtakes his own thudding pulse.
Heat pools in his fingers and toes, tingling in his appendages before it spreads inward, reaching to his navel, coalescing into an orb of energy in his belly that strengthens him and weakens him in equal measure.
Sasuke feeds the power seeping into the center of his being with each breath in, blowing out the excess to be reabsorbed into nature, balancing himself as he toils to tune himself with his surroundings.
The Hawk is the apex predator of his realm, the closest sentient being to the ancients. He, the creature who served the first men of civilization and turned the tides of the first wars, his origins reaching so far back only the trees and soil could comprehend.
Sasuke focuses on the warmth of the sun's rays, building heat in his limbs and chest before exhaling flames over a patch of brush, to honor the creature with a delight of fire. Next, he hisses a sharp gust of air between his teeth, wielding it like a fine whip through the leaves, a symphony of sounds to make a song worthy enough to accompany the beast’s entrance.
Electricity crackles between his fingers and a spear of lightning splits the slowly darkening sky, a display of power to prove that he, second son of a once great and long-standing clan holds power enough to stand alongside and utilize the raw energy the Hawk wields for its summoner.
His knees meet the soil and his sparking hands rise to center, palm against palm, at his chest. He clicks his sharpest teeth at the corner of his lips, allowing warm dribbles of blood to slide over his chin and pool in sporadic droplets on the ground.
And he pleads.
Great Hawk, is the whisper of his soul, his voice merely an echo among the vibrations of his power as it undulates around him.
Honored Primogenitor, come to my side.
The air whips around him, his flames blazing higher and the electricity between his palms becoming so caustic that his skin grows raw.
“Ancient among ancients,” Sasuke rasps, iron bathing his tongue and the force of his efforts rattling his bones, “Conductor of the wind, sire of fire and flight, tamer of earth and soil, join me at my side. Stand beside me and share with me your strength.”
Make of me something that is more than I am.
The wind whips faster, slicing cold over his damp, feverish skin. His bones rattle with strain, muscles convulsing and joints throbbing as he toils to channel the energy of everything around him and simultaneously release his own into the sucking void leading to what he hopes is the path to his future.
His pulse thunders in his ears, so loud that he fears the pumping organ in his chest might fail him, fears that his brother will prove himself right, that his body is not strong enough to wield such intense power and that he should have simply reached for lower hanging fruits.
Then he hears a sound of disturbance in the wind, the flapping of huge, powerful wings. A hoarse, shrieking caw echoes in his ears, his heart crashes harder against his ribs and then–
The forest around him goes silent, the flames sputtering out and leaving everything dark save for the white glow of moonlight from the clear, starry sky.
I have done it .
Falling forward on to his hands, Sasuke pants, trembling fingers sinking into the damp soil. A few violent coughs rip from his chest, leaving behind a tender ache and the faint taste of iron.
“Great Hawk,” he breathes, awe and trepidation filling him in equal measure.
He pulls his gaze up to meet the beady eyes colored like blood, to stare upon the deadly sharp beak the tales told of.
It takes a moment for his vision to clear, blurry swathes of color slowly coalescing until he sees what is in front of him with full clarity.
Sasuke sees not the Hawk of old, the famed warrior companion of his forefathers and their forefathers.
He sees a woman, with cherry blossom hair in a flowing white dress.
❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜
Soil feels odd– both wet and dry, soft and rough somehow as it slides between her toes and sticks to the skin at the bottoms of her feet. Sakura finds herself playing the small digits through the stuff, scrunching and wriggling them about, fascinated by the texture and sensations.
A chill seeps into her, surpassing flesh and sinking deep to her bones. With a shallow breath, she locates the point within her being that allows her to circulate chakra, molding and manipulating it until it feels like warm, dripping honey to be smoothed under the surface of her skin, chasing away the biting sensation of cold.
“Who are you?” The sounds are unlike any she has heard– well, perhaps she has. If she strains to grasp at the flickering images in her mind, memories she now knows, she thinks she might just know a sound like that.
She pries back the thin layer of flesh that shields the roving orbs positioned high on her face. Tiny, curved hairs border the top and bottom, obscuring her vision only briefly every few moments.
Eyes , her helpful memories supply.
Before her stands a tall, lithe, pale figure. With an inky mane, and glossy black eyes , they resemble none of the creatures she has become or met before.
None that she remembers, at the least.
“Speak, woman,” the figure rumbles, the sounds from their mouth so deep it seems to rock the earth beneath her. “Tell me why you have interrupted this summoning ritual. This is no place and no time to wander.”
Sakura stands still, inhaling the sound of that voice. It is this being, this person who had called so desperately that it reached her non-hearing ears and awakened her slumbering and static mind to create thought. An echo of a moment long past that her mind could barely brush against to comprehend and recall, his voice had stirred her into activity, true existence once again.
This night, he was calling for the Hawk. She arrived instead.
She opens her mouth, a screeching caw ripping from her chest. Since he has so fervently toiled to summon the Hawk, she figures he might understand the beast’s tongue.
Rather than reply, he stumbles back a step before electricity crackles at his fingertips, eyes taking on a reddish glow.
Tilting her head to the side, Sakura studies him more closely.
If not a hawk’s cry, then to which tongue will he respond?
She opens her mouth, looses a bellowing roar. Then small yipping barks, low hisses, gentle purrs that make her chest vibrate. With each sound she attempts to relate to this being, to understand the reason behind his call and offer her help.
“If you are sick in the head, woman, you will find no healing here,” he finally shouts, his voice somehow sounding deeper, a hard edge that seems unique compared to the baser sounds of the creatures she mimics.
A short wall of fire springs forth between them, the flames licking up to a height level with her navel. They burn intensely enough that she can feel the heat emanating over her skin, creating on it a peculiar damp and sheen.
She studies it curiously before stepping forward, the soil shifting beneath her feet as she does. Three paces bring her over the line of the casted flames and as she steps through them, they part, fading slowly as she sweeps her hands to her sides.
The man elicits a startled gasp and a bolt of electricity strikes out at her. She catches it between her fingers, lowering her hand to study this as well, molding the raw, crackling energy into a spherical orb of dancing white and blue.
Colors , she muses. They are so vivid and varied .
The orb buzzes out after a few seconds and part of her laments the loss. It was a beautiful display, so many colors and such sensation to hold in her grasp.
“I seek to answer your call,” she curls her lips and tongue around each word carefully. It requires a bit more finesse and concentration than does the languages of beasts.
“I have certainly not called for you,” he spits, chest heaving. Her eyes trace the movement, up and down, up and down. “You speak ?”
“Your cries for help pulled me from a slumber,” she continues, taking a small step closer. The tall man retreats an equal distance and a strange burning sensation pools in her face. “Before you called into the void, I was…not. But now I am.”
“Woman, speak your insanities and strange mumblings elsewhere,” his voice is more like the beasts who crawl on their bellies, now, a hiss instead of a growl. “Return home to whomever it is that cares for you and leave me be. I must complete the summoning ritual before this night ends.”
“Summoning?” she murmurs, tilting her head in question. A moment later a flashing image and accompanying voices pull from her memories a meaning. “Ah, this night you summon a companion. That is why you were calling so desperately. And yet, you have been calling out for much longer than this night alone.”
“ Away from here,” a long-fingered hand slashes the air like a blade. “Leave. I came here to summon the Great Hawk to be my companion. And summon the Hawk, I will.”
Sakura stands close enough to see beads of moisture dotting his temples, inky strands of hair slicked away from a smooth, fine forehead. Dark brows furrow over even darker eyes and she sees flashing images of vast pools, of depths underneath the underneath, further down than even she can conceptualize in this form.
“The Hawk?” she questions. He only stares, full, shell-pink lips curling away from pearlescent teeth. “He will not come.”
The man’s eyelids lower until only slits of his near-black iris peek through.
“If it is a hawk you desire,” she hums, moving a couple steps backward. “A hawk you may have.”
Inhaling deeply, she closes her eyes and focuses her awareness inward, to the knot of energy tangled up behind her belly button.
Her bones begin to shift under her new, but familiar skin, pores widening and allowing tufts to break through. Her jaw disengages, lips lengthening and hardening, finger and toenails growing sharp and extending far past their size.
When she blinks her eyes open, the world is near-fluorescent, the colors much brighter and almost glowing in her vision.
A sharp gasp and quiet thud jerk her attention downward, where the man who stood so tall and proud before rests on his buttocks, scrambling on unsteady palms through the damp soil.
“Great Hawk?” he rasps, eyes so wide the white of them seem to overtake his face.
“Are you now satisfied?” she asks. It is difficult to shape a beast’s mouth around the tongue of man, but she is certain that she accomplishes the task nonetheless.
When the awed face below grows pale and his mouth gapes silently, she fears her assumption is incorrect.
“Are I not bigger than that beast you call the Great Hawk?” she tilts her head, stretching her new feathered limps wide and rustling the long, glossy feathers. “Do my wings not stretch wider? Is my beak not as sharp? My eyes are the keenest, and I can show you the heights to which I can soar in the air if you so wish.”
“You-,” he chokes. “You…y-”
Sakura frowns. The air around them whips faster as his discomfort feeds into her confusion. “Perhaps it is not this beast you desired to contract with, after all. A feline, perhaps?”
She falls to four limbs, a thick, striped coat of fur sweeping over a muscled back. She bares long, glinting teeth and a gaping maw, undulating the coiled muscles of her shoulders as she takes slow, measured steps.
A quiet, growling purr vibrates her ribcage, “How is this? Will you tell me what it is that you are so desperate to find, now?”
“This is a mistake,” he whispers. Her furry ear twitches, listening closely as his breath filters in and out of his trembling mouth in harsh pants. “No, I am dreaming. Hallucinating. I have meditated too long. Itachi was right.”
“I-ta-chi?” she mutters. The word is fine, but it does not taste lovely in her mouth. “What is that?”
Silence reigns as the man simply stares. After what feels like both a long while and only a blink of time passes, she sighs heavily and reaches for the energy concentrated in her belly again and returns to the first form she appeared in. On two feet, she stands, with two arms and hands dangling at the sides of her waist.
This one, she finds, is the most natural. It feels like… her .
“What are you?” he whispers.
She tilts her head.
“I…am not sure,” she replies, thoughtfully. “I know that… before, I was not. And now, I know that I am. What I am, I have not figured out yet.”
She blinks as he stares without sound once again.
“What are you?” she questions, if only so he will move his mouth and she may listen to the sound of his voice again.
“I am a man,” he mumbles. “A person, a human being. A majin .”
“Man?” she drawls. Somehow, somewhere she understands. “ Majin . This, I know.”
“You know?” he questions. His gaze darts to either side of her before leveling at her face again. Slowly, he rises to his haunches and stands straight. Soil sticks to his fingers.
She nods, “I know. The word is…something I feel is familiar. I am sure I will recall its meaning. It means, at least, we are similar enough.”
“I am not so sure about that,” he says in a low voice. “Is it…is it true what you have said? Will the Hawk truly not respond to my call?”
“He will not,” she says.
There is a shift in the placement of his features, a dampening of the glow in his eyes. The thrumming organ behind her ribs seems to clench, her throat becoming dry and tight.
“He was going to,” she adds, spurned by some unknown instinct to offer a more detailed response. “It was I who bid him to stay away.”
Those dark eyes widen once more, colors shifting until it is as if flame dancing about their pupils.
“ Why? ” The sound from his chest is raw, so strong the earth seems to quake beneath the soles of her feet. “ Why would you do such a thing? How?”
It is this , the familiar sensation that pulled her into consciousness and then into materiality before. A desperation that ignites her veins, that she can taste with her ears and feel on her tongue. It reverberates between her bones and joints and slips between the spaces of her teeth and muscle and she is .
“The Hawk is powerful, and has been a companion to many since it all began,” she murmurs.
She feels untethered, rocked from her perch at the way his eyes glint in the moonlight, how that dizzying kaleidoscope of color crackles like tiny lightning bolts between his knuckles.
“He is not I,” she continues, dragging her gaze away from the raw energy cradled in his hands. “The power you hold is like the heat of the earth’s center, like the expanse of the waters below and above. No single beast could tame or awaken it.”
“And you can?” he rasps. Her gaze is filled with his face, his jaw and lips and eyes. Heat emanates from his chest to hers and she raises her hands slowly, grasping at the crackling electricity dancing in his palms and slipping it away.
She holds her hands before his face, allowing his energy to dance about her upturned palms.
“Yes,” she says in a breath. Flame roars to life behind her, water pelts over their heads from above. Her voice rides on the wind, is the wind when she says, “I can.”
❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜
Sasuke has watched the sun disappear behind the horizon and rise over it once more. He stands, feet fastened deep in the cool, soft soil and peers at the ever-brightening sky. His attention is eventually drawn downward, to a small thatch of long green grass and colorful blossoms, where a small, pale figure lays.
The strange woman who had shaken his entire world by appearing during his most vital and vulnerable moment the evening before sleeps fitfully in the bed of plant life that she seemed to summon with merely a touch.
She had spoken her riddles for a time after toying with every bit of casting he attempted to throw at her. He was loath to harm her, peculiar as she was. A woman, young by his observation (no less and no more than his age, likely), and so delicate-looking he feared she might be swept away by a strong gust of wind.
Yet she had snatched his lightning in her hands, once from the air and a second time from his very palm. The balance of nature that he toiled so hard to meld himself seemed to be at her very whim, all the more to his pure confusion and the fear he would admit to none but himself.
And now, the woman sleeps. After scrambling his mind with her odd musings and shifting forms, she had dropped to the ground and slipped into a snooze, accompanied with light snores and nonsense mumblings.
Sasuke considered leaving her to her slumber and returning to his home to face the fact that his summoning ultimately failed. He would have had to stand among his peers, endure their introductions of their new would-be companions and pretend to be happy and congratulatory. All the while planning to participate in the Summoning Ceremony for a second time come the next turn of the moon.
No , he thinks, for the umpteenth time. He would rather face the strange, possibly mentally unwell woman who had promised to lend him power beyond even his over-ambitious imaginings than endure the shame that would come from returning to his home sans a contract with the hawk of old.
His gaze roves over the delicate features of the stranger's face, her pouty mouth and long, pale lashes. Her blossom-colored brows are furrowed, bringing attention to a lavender rhombus positioned at the center of her forehead. The mark is reminiscent of something he has seen before–perhaps from the histories, a decorative feature carried on from the days of old.
He wonders if perhaps she is a student of the ancient ways, like himself. If, even, her strange powers come from such study; he begins to ponder the opportunity to be found in such a person who can wield such power with such ease.
She does not look so terrifyingly powerful at this moment, though. Rather, she looks delicate and vulnerable and…lovely.
Sasuke shakes himself mentally, pushing that thought out of his head. He is not currently sure if the woman can be classified as such, or as a creature . Her current form’s aesthetic appeal should not– does not–matter to him.
“Woman,” he calls, maintaining a distance lest her power be unleashed as she comes to consciousness. “Awaken.”
Thin, venous lids flutter before peeling back slowly to reveal bright green irises. For a few moments, her long lashes slip down a fraction, before lifting up in lackadaisical blinks. Her pouty pink mouth opens in a wide yawn, slender fingers braiding into the brush of her bed of wild shrubbery as she lifts herself into a half-sitting position.
“I do have a name,” she says. “I have recently remembered it.”
Sasuke’s spine stiffens at the sound of her voice. It is clearer than it seemed the evening before, amongst all the confusion and chaos. The quality of it is soft like down feathers, smooth with a raspy edge, like silk drawn across dunes of sand.
“Keep it to yourself,” he grunts.
“Why?” she asks, tilting her head. The gesture is similar to that of the stray pups that often run about and beg for scraps at the compound.
“Exchanging names solidifies a contract between summoner and summoned,” he states stiffly. Her eyes look like wide jade pools as she blinks at him, a sprinkling of golden specks catching the sun about her iris. “I have not summoned you. I will not enter into any contract until I discern exactly what manner of creature you are.”
“But I already know your name,” she chirps. After rolling over to her knees and arching her back, like a cat, she rises slowly to her feet. “You are Sasuke.”
A cold spike shoots down his spine. Gritting his teeth together, he demands, “Tell me how you know my name.”
She only smiles.
“What shall we do now?” she wonders on a sigh, tilting her head side to side in a languid stretch. Bits of long grass and tiny petals cling to the mussed pastel strands of her hair.
“You shall tell me how you know my name,” he says in a low voice.
It must be hubris that bids him take a threatening step toward her. His chakra boils at his center, awaiting for him to call it forth and shape it into a weapon of fire or electricity.
The woman watches him with a placid, if ever-so-slightly amused expression. Her chin dips low, following the movement of her eyes as she sweeps her gaze from his head to his feet. It rises when she trails her look back up.
“Brave majin ,” she murmurs. “I can smell your chakra, how your energy shifts beneath your flesh and bone. This is good.”
“ What is good?” he spits.
“Many things,” she replies.
He stares at her. She gazes back with that nearly blank, pleasant expression.
Eventually his frustration mounts high enough that he fails to maintain his grasp on the energy he built up within himself. He turns with a huff, bracketing his brow with his pinky and index.
“Follow me. And when I ask…change into the form of the Hawk.”
❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜
Sakura is nearly overwhelmed with the visuals before her transformed eyes. Deep reds, bright reds, inky blacks, cloud-pure whites. Deep sea blues, vibrant yellows, pinks, greens make up a mosaic before her as she moves toward the towering torii, feathers sweeping over the lightly pebbled ground.
No sight is clearer, more mesmerizing than the man she follows behind, though–Sasuke. His name came to her in a vision while she slumbered– dreamed . It was first a garbled murmur, warbled as if intoned under the surface of unsteady waters. Then it was a whisper, at the back of her neck like the wind, then a shouting chant thrumming in her ears and through her blood.
Sasuke , the man who called for her. He who yearned with the force of the rising moon and sun.
He had asked her to take on the form of the hawk when they crested the hill that led back to his compound , as it is apparently called.
In warning her away from erratic behavior, he had described the place as one where his kin and clansmen lived and studied, worshiped and worked. A stretch of land where he was born and raised, hidden behind the mountains at the bottom of a hill.
Home , is what her memories whispered. She was still unsure if that was a wholly specific place, or this one only.
She stands tall as a hawk, beady eyes taking in everything around her, hidden ears caching on to every slight sound. The wind feels sharp, whizzing past with the energy of a hundred people milling about. All manner of creatures crawl or walk or bounce around, trailing after or leading their two-legged companions. Some young men practice breathing fire, laughing and wiping sweat from their eyes. A pair of young women wave their fingers and hands in sensual patterns, pulling water up from the earth to dance about their shoulders and wrap around their wrists and ankles.
Sasuke stalks through the throng, barely sparing a glance to people who call out to him as he passes them by. When Sakura meanders through behind him, sharp talons scraping over the ground and dislodging handfuls of rock, they intake sharp breaths, backing away from her path.
She clicks her beak and extends her wings slightly to either side of herself, the tips of her feathers brushing against square-shaped structures, disturbing the air below them with a current that disturbs floating bits of fabric and colorful sheets.
They come to a stop in front of a large, flat-topped building with steps leading up to a tall, white door with dark brown borders. Sakura can smell water and grass, some tart and tangy fruits. It causes her mind to flash through images, again, of thin white walls and doors that slide over a frame with a whoosh . Tatami floors, gardens of multicolored flowers and the bubbling of water flowing through apparatuses– fountains, she remembers.
“Brother,” comes a deep voice.
“Itachi,” Sasuke says, his voice a modicum less deep, but doubly resonant. Like the sound of earth, forever shifting.
“You are a success,” the other man, Itachi, says. His lips spread wide, baring pearl-white teeth. “The Great Hawk has answered your call.”
“One would think,” Sasuke mutters. “I have indeed summoned…a hawk.”
Sakura finds herself distracted, pulling away from their murmuring conversation as a buzzing begins to overtake her hearing. An itch builds underneath her feathers, the gargantuan form of this hawk seeming too heavy, its beak too burdensome.
“It would be an honor to greet the Great Hawk,” Itachi’s voice spears through the overwhelming sensations. She uses that sound to anchor herself to reality.
Slipping her eyes shut, she focuses inward until her body shifts, her form collapsing in on itself until she plummets downward.
When she reforms, she slithers on a broad, scaled belly, her head weaving high above as a pointed tail dashes against the ground behind her.
“ Greetingssss ,” she hisses.
A sharp intake of breath sounds, and footsteps pad over the ground in her direction. She undulates, reveling in the freedom of this form without limbs, fanning out the hood around her skull.
“That is a snake.”
“The Great Hawk did not come to me,” Sasuke says. There is a quality to his voice that elicits that strange thrumming in her chest. “Instead, he apparently was intercepted by…this.”
“And what is this?” the other questions. Through her serpent’s eyes, their two bodies are but silhouettes and mosaics of color–green, blue, yellow, orange and red. Somehow, she knows that these eyes see the heat of them, rather than their physical appearances.
“I do not know,” says Sasuke. A disturbance on the wind and the quiet crackle of electricity calls her attention.
Sakura tugs at the well of energy in her center until she stands before the pair on two limbs.
“I have a name,” she announces. Her mouth twitches against her express permission and a warm feeling fills her chest. “I have remembered it during my slumber.”
“Wonderful,” the man standing at Sasuke’s shoulder whispers. “Sasuke… who is this?”
“Sasuke does not wish to know my name,” she continues. The electricity forming in his palm has doubled in size and force. She tilts her head. “He does not wish to have a contract with me.”
“You are not what he expected, I fear,” Itachi says. His voice feels less like the edge of a sharp thorn, and more like the downy, soft texture of chenille. It is pleasant. “Perhaps we may remedy this. Can you tell us where you came from?”
Sakura runs her eyes over his features, noting similarities as well as differences between this man and the one who she might call her companion.
Sharp lines mar the undersides of his eyes, and his skin is so pale it seems near-reflective. His irises are not so deeply black, rather a very dark gray. Everything about his face is like an echo of Sasuke’s, but more refined, sharper, signifying something like the numerous rings radiating from the center of sky-tall trees.
“I come from everywhere,” she eventually replies, fashioning the words carefully. “Or perhaps it is nowhere.”
Something like a shadow passes over Sasuke’s face, yet a glance upward toward the sky shows it blue and bright, unmarred by even a single white cloud. When her gaze lowers again, Itachi is watching her with a strange furrow between the lines of hair above his eyes.
“Perhaps, we should visit the healer” he murmurs. With a movement that reminds her of a feline, he sweeps toward her. A thin, long-fingered appendage extends in her direction. She can see paths of what seem like blue-green rivers underneath his skin.
“I am not injured,” Sakura informs. She inhales deeply, finds her nose filled with the scents of incense and petrichor. “Look, see how healthy and vibrant am I.”
Her chest swells with a deep inhale and with a winding motion of her wrists, small vines and tiny flowers begin to snake their way through the spaces between the pebbles on the ground. They spring upward, and she exhales, causing them to sway back and forth according to the direction of her current.
“I believe you have summoned a very powerful companion, indeed,” Itachi mutters.
Sasuke’s voice grinds like stone when he says, “She is not my companion and I did not summon her.”
An ache pangs behind Sakura’s ribs. She brings a hand up to it, pressing her palm over the throb of the pulsing organ in the center of her chest. When her eyelids lower in a blink, she feels as if she is absent from her body once again, floating in the nothingness as images flash by and sounds echo around.
You go too far, Sakura-chan.
Lavender eyes, swirling lines concentrating toward a fine pupil.
I will be the strongest, I must be.
Fire blazing, burning so hot the sky seems to ripple and dyes orange and red.
Hashirama should have known better. Such power does not belong in the hands of a girl.
“Uchiha Sasuke,” Itachi’s voice snaps her back to the present. “Hold your tongue. There is no need to be crass.”
“It is easy for you to say, brother ,” Sasuke hisses. When she looks up toward his eyes, they seem to be circled in red. “Your summoning was not intercepted and ruined by some strange woman-”
“Uchiha…” Sakura murmurs, and Sasuke’s voice falls silent.
The name brings with it a knowing, deep in the marrow of her bones, calls back to something, some one she can remember .
“Uchiha Madara,” she blurts. “He knows who I am and what I am capable of.”
❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜
Sasuke feels Itachi stiffen beside him. He fails to meet the gaze he knows burns into the back of his neck, instead remaining frozen and staring at the figure of the woman before them.
Her eyes glitter like freshly-polished jade, a sharp yet dazed expression on her face. Once more, he finds himself nearly taken by the fineness of her features, as well as the ethereal aura she emits. It is as if with each word she speaks or movement she makes, the energy of all living and natural things around them shift in tandem.
“Madara?” Itachi breaks the silence with a whisper that somehow carries over the brisk wind and the distant sound of chatter and celebration.
“Aa,” the woman says. Her gaze flits behind him for a moment before fixing on his own. “Take me to him. If with him you share a name, perhaps you will trust his judgment.”
“My lady,” Itachi steps forward and takes on the tone of voice and turn of phrase he utilizes when speaking with the most delicate beings. Elderly women, confused children, frightened and lost girls.
It is not a language Sasuke has himself ever learned to speak.
“If I find him, perhaps my eyes will open to more that I can see,” she says, sounding breathless. The grass beneath her feet undulates.
“Madara has not been…with us,” Itachi says softly, “for quite a long while. Though we do know of him, he is gone.”
Before Sasuke can make a move to stop him, his brother has drawn close to the woman, has placed his hand over her shoulder.
“Let us go inside, I shall brew some tea.”
“Gone?” she mutters. And for the first time since she has materialized, unwelcome, in his life, Sasuke sees something so very human in her. “A while?”
“Yes,” he says stiffly, before he has explicitly given his mouth permission to speak. “A very long while.”
Madara, the progenitor of his clan and conqueror of the grounds his village stands on had been gone for centuries . His name passed down only through the histories.
“Exactly how many times has the moon risen and set since he went?” she demands.
Her voice seems to quiver but retains its otherworldly resonance. Or perhaps it is Sasuke’s sleep deprivation that makes it sound so.
“How many turns of the sun? I wish to know how many times the snow has melted and the flowers bloomed again since Uchiha Madara has been gone .”
“Many, many times,” Itachi interjects gently. His hand tightens around her shoulder and a fist grips around Sasuke’s thumping heart.
“Senju Hashirama,” she breathes. “What of him?”
“No man lives long enough for those people you claim to know to still exist,” Sasuke states. His fingers twitch in agitation, confusion warping his thoughts as the woman who had descended and commanded nature to her whims like a goddess begins to tremble and wilt before his eyes. “They are all dead. Ancient figures that are only known by name because of the histories and legends.”
Sasuke refuses to acknowledge the pinching feeling in his chest when her features seem to crumble, her eyes growing wide with confusion and what could be panic.
“How far did I go?” she gasps quietly, eyes falling to her hands as flames lick around her wrists and droplets of water fall like rain from her fingertips. “How long have I went?”
“Come now,” Itachi slides his arm around her hunching back, either woefully ignorant or uncaring of the tumultuous magic being held haphazardly in her shaking hands. “Let us go inside.”
Sasuke watches as the woman grows pale and sways into his brother’s hold. He watches with his pulse pounding in his throat, and blood rushing in his ears as the pair take slow steps past him and climb up to the entrance into his home.
The last glimpse of her face before it is shielding from him reveals one single droplet of water sliding down the lush curve of her cheek, catching on the blazing light of the beating sun.
It is not until they have disappeared fully through the doorway that he moves to follow.
❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜
Uchiha Itachi is more pleasant than Sasuke, but far less interesting. His chakra ebbs and flows like the softly bubbling current of a stream. His energy thrums like a steady, quiet buzz, nearly lulling like early morning birdsong, like honey-bees tracking their daily routes for nectar.
Sasuke, his brother, is a different creature. His chakra burns hot like wildfire, stings like a crackle of electricity against the senses. Yet it is kept tightly contained, compartmented between slabs of solid rock. When unleashed, Sakura can smell it like ash and oak on the wind, and can taste it like the spicy broths she sips over her tongue.
It excites her, ignites her own center and sets it ablaze. She appreciates the hunger, the raw desire wrapped beneath the layers of his self, wants to take of it and be surrounded by it so it can remind her of what she once was.
The two siblings likely do not believe her still, cannot grasp the pictures she tries to paint with her limited memories and the thoughts that she finds difficult to grasp and impart. Yet they welcome her into their home, their temple and the gardens. They feed her spiced soup and steamed rice and salty flesh singed over an open fire. She slumbers each night on the mat in a small room directly between the two.
Some nights, sleep does not find her, nor do dreams. Instead she listens and feels for the thrum of Sasuke’s pulsing energy, strains for whiffs of his scent. She slips her eyes shut and visualizes the way he wields his crackling power in strong, flexing hands and breathes fire from his lush, shapely mouth.
In the daylight hours, Itachi frets over them both and handles her like a fragile thing, as if she is an ill person undergoing recovery. Sasuke is colder, more distant. He is slow to engage in conversation, slower still to occupy the same space as her for extended periods of time.
There are times when she catches his gaze, notes how his eyes trails over her form from the top of her head to tips her toes. Often, they narrow as if his thoughts urge him to seek some hidden answers by his perusal.
She knows that she can at least answer some of them, if only he would ask.
❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜
“You meditate well,” a soft, feminine voice breaks him out of his meditative state, upsetting the careful balance he had just begun to create.
“Leave,” he grits. His hands clench into fists until he peels each finger away from his palm to rest against the curves of his knees once more.
“Would you like me to take the form of a hawk? Or did you prefer the snake?”
“ Leave .”
“Many things have changed since my time,” she murmurs, ignoring his protest and coming to sink to her knees beside him.
Her slender, lithe fingers run lightly over the items lined in front of him–the tiny pot of soil, a burning chip of bamboo in a flat dish. She dips her finger into the cup of water, letting it cling to the pad of her index before flicking it away.
“Your time,” he repeats, feeling the muscles of his face draw tight.
Her time , centuries past.
“To truly balance with all natural things,” she continues, as if he has not spoken. She does this often, to his utter irritation. Just as she often offers these unsolicited pieces of advice and anecdotes. “Taking pieces of nature and bringing them into a temple work, to an extent. But to reach your goals, you must do more, Sasuke.”
“What know you of my goals?” he demands. Her hand freezes just as it reaches toward the dish holding the burning wood, hovering just above the fluttering flame.
That appendage redirects itself after a beat, reaching toward him instead. Where his fingers tingle with licks of heat as small flames dance over his knuckles. She covers his right hand with her left, allowing the tips of her fingers to slide into the dips between his knuckles, reaching into and then smothering his fire.
It continues to burn, yet, underneath his skin, underneath her touch.
“You push so hard against nature, trying to create balance within and outside of yourself,” she murmurs. He watches as three fat droplets of water rise slowly from the cup set in front of them, joined seconds later by floating orbs of orange-yellow flame. They circle around each other as she continues to speak:
“Nature must be allowed to push back,” she whispers. “Achieving the perfect balance is not possible through force alone. You must relinquish control as well.”
“I have done,” he says, his voice almost a rasp.
Dryness tugs at his throat, exhaustion aching behind his eyelids. He spends his waking hours in practice and contemplation, and in the late night lies awake, unable to fall to sleep while sensing the presence of the extraordinary creature sleeping in the room beside.
When Sasuke drags his gaze away from the hypnotic revolutions of the water and the fire, he is faced with two green pools, the depths unbreachable and unknown. She watches him rather than her own work, lips tilted in a peculiar sort of smile.
“The fire comforts you, for it is strong and it is powerful,” she brings up her hand, palm facing upward as the elements dance above it, “the earth is solid, steady. Constant. It brings with it security and resilience. Air is flighty, but you master it because it represents a weakness–the wind can upset, redirect or blow out any flame. To tame it, is to tame your own shortcomings.”
“Who do you think you are?” he asks, a dizziness taking residence at the center of his forehead. His vision swims and yet the spinning, spinning of her tricks are so clear.
“What you lack is the fluidity of water,” suddenly the balls of fire are engulfed by the three water orbs as they combine into one infinite ring. “You lack its movability. It is nature's conduit, it moves and strengthens earth, it douses fire. It fills the air and spreads itself through everything . It takes on multiple forms. Failing to give attention to this element is what holds you back from true balance.”
“I have a mastery of all the elements,” he retorts. His face feels warm, his palms becoming sticky with sweat as frustration becomes him. “For years I have toiled, have mediated and circulated my energy, my very essence and given all of the elements their equal share. My affinity for fire, for electricity is out of my control.”
“Perhaps,” she muses. “And yet I have an affinity for all of them.”
“You are different,” he mutters. “You are a strange being who speaks in riddles and holds power this world has never seen and yet does nothing with it save for interrupting my time of contemplation.”
“If only you would allow me to,” she breathes, and the water stops spinning and falls with a quiet splash into her palm, “I would show you the way to accessing such power. When I intercepted the hawk you summoned, it was for this reason. I sensed you from beyond this place. Your efforts called to me, your yearning. It brought me back to myself . And so I wish to help you, to guide you. As any other beast of a companion would.”
Distantly, he feels lost once more in her odd manner of speech, in the way she says so much but very little makes sense. But he feels as if he can see through her skin, how the chakra flows through each of her pathways, how her very essence surrounds him and the space they occupy. It reminds him of the moments he sinks deeply into meditation, when he feels most connected to the world and how everything gives and takes, how energy ebbs and flows.
It feels right . Free.
“You are no companion of mine,” he says, his voice hoarse. Whether it is from dehydration or the weight of this moment, he refuses to consider. “But I will accept your guidance. To become like you, powerful the way you are.”
The woman kneeling beside him smiles again, the curve of her mouth more natural, her eyes glowing so bright they seem lit from within.
❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜
They two are submerged in the waters of the lake, its ripples lapping at their chins. In the moonlight, Sasuke’s face reflects a bluish hue, his eyes glittering with the images of the stars.
His chakra is calmer now. Similar to a slow boil rather than a shock of heat and flash. Many nights have they spent floating atop this body of water’s surface, swimming down to its depths, cycling at its center. He toiled until the exchange of energies between himself and the natural world was as simple as taking in a breath and exhaling it a moment later.
“Ready yourself,” she breathes now, lifting her wet hands, sliding her palms over his eyes. The tips of her thumbs touch at the center of his forehead, the other digits sliding through the dampened, silken hair at his temples.
He rests his hands at the crook of her elbows and she hears the deep inhale whoosh through his nose, before the warmth of his breath brushes over her face when he releases it. The cycle continues, and the breaths grow deeper, the inhalations and exhalations farther and farther apart.
Mist rises around them, eventually coalescing into hundreds, then thousands of small spherical droplets hanging in the space above the lake’s surface. Slowly, she slides her hands away from his face and slips out of his gentle hold. His hands float together gradually, palm pressing against palm.
She blinks and, for a moment, he is gone. She sees nothing, but then she sees a star-filled night sky, the lake and herself floating like a mirage before her.
When she opens her eyes, Sasuke’s shoulders and chest hover above the meniscus, rivulets of water dripping down the portion of his breast exposed by the gaps in his thin, white robes. A pearlescent glow accents his silhouette, and he looks pale but lively yet, ethereal.
Take me as yours, make me one with all that is living and nonliving. All that is and was and will be.
It is her voice in her ears, like an echo, close like a whisper but also a faraway cry.
I humble myself before thee... I offer all that I am to taste all that is.
“ Universe ,” Sasuke’s voice and hers both filter to her ears. Yet she is not speaking.
Or is she?
“ Take of me, ” he murmurs and the words resonate through her mind, memories unraveled. “ Give to me. ”
“Sasuke,” she rasps.
Long locks the color of cherry blossoms flow like silk as she rises above the surface of the water, until liquid drips from her toes in tiny plinks that hardly disturb the surface. The winds sing in the trees, the earth quivers and groans, a gate of fire bursts to light and circles the bank. Ripples and ripples turn to small waves and she remains still, untouched. Light emanates from her skin, an iridescent glow, until she grows pale, paler still.
Sakura can see her veins, her muscle, tendon and bone as the light grows brighter. A lavender mark materializes at her forehead, center and her mouth falls open in a silent cry, spilling light like the rays of sun.
Her green eyes are revealed with the lifting of her eyelids, glowing brighter than ever seen before.
“Stop,” she chokes. “ Stop .”
The water laps at his knees, the column of his throat stretched long as his head tips back. As if the moon hides behind him, a glow surrounds him that causes Sakura’s eyes to burn and her throat to draw tight.
Even with human eyes, she can see how his skin has grown less opaque, the barest hint of blue-green beginning to show through his face and chest. Crackles of electricity snake across his arms and legs, the wind picks up. She smells pungent scents of ash, soil, rain.
It is nirvana. It is the opening of her eyes for the very first time, her first breath as a babe, the last she will ever taste. It is life, it is death, all that falls between. For one single moment, a single eternity she is everything –
And then she is nothing. There is nothing, no one, nowhere at all.
… Sasuke .
“ Sasuke! ” she shrieks, the sound pulled from her throat like the ripping of a soul from its flesh.
She draws from the neverending pool of chakra deep in her core, drains it to her fingers, her head, the tips of her nose and toes and reaches up from the water to snatch at his ankles.
With a mighty tug that strains her muscles and all-but breaks her spirit she pulls Sasuke down, down until he breaches the water’s surface with a great splash.
All at once, the air grows light once more, the light disappears until she can only rely on the dim glow of distant stars to see him. He sputters, spits water from his mouth and claws at her wrists until she is pulled toward him, her chest pressed to his as he gasps harshly against her face.
“What are you doing?” he croaks. Her teeth rattle as he uses his grip on her arms to shake her violently. “I felt it. What-what you spoke of. I was there, with nature, with the universe. It accepted me. It would have gifted me that power.”
“I stopped you,” she whispers.
“ Why? ” he roars. This close, she can see how his inky lashes clump together into long, luscious spikes. A dark hue rises to his cheeks and creeps toward his temples.
“Because,” she replies, “now I remember.”
Lips trembling, she reaches for his face. His teeth gnash and he flinches, but she rests her quivering palm against the curve of his cheek nonetheless.
“You have tricked me,” he chokes. More wetness clings to his lower lashes.
“I nearly sentenced you to an existence that is not an existence at all,” she says thickly. Her eyes fill and overflow.
“You and your cursed riddles ,” he cries. His hands knock against her chest and she is pushed a few inches away. In the next second he is crowding her once again, squeezing his long fingers around the sides of her skull–
“I was going to ask you for your name this night.”
A throbbing ache lances through her chest, a thick, poisonous affliction snaking its way between her ribs and taking hostage of her lungs.
“Nature does not give of itself freely,” she murmurs. He groans, as if pained, turning his face away even as his palms press tighter about her head. “The cost of this –”
She lifts her free hand from the water, summons a swirling mass of wind and water, earth and fire.
“--is everything .” She flings the display away from her as she wishes she could cast away the memories that had resurfaced, cast away the foolishness that brought her to this very moment.
“You tempted me,” Sasuke speaks in a voice like rocks grinding together underneath a tumultuous current. “With your fanciful tricks and your eyes of jade, hair of cherry blossoms. You pulled me under your spell and made me believe I could actually be something. All to make of me a fool.”
“Not so,” she gasps, whimpers.
“Is this your answer to a poor, foolish man’s yearning?” he asks, his mouth curving in a heartbreaking mimicry of a smile. “What a cruel, fickle creature.”
Sakura braces her hands on his shoulders, calls forth the strength of one of the beasts lying dormant inside of her and pushes him down, down, until the water grows icy cold and she can see nothing in all directions for the absolute darkness of the depths.
Sasuke struggles in her hold, thrashing and tugging at her until her thin gown tears around her. She uses her grip to pull him toward her through the thick pressure of the water, locking his chest against hers.
She finds his mouth with her own, parting their lips wide and exhaling her very own breath, her essence into him until she can feel his lungs seize as they fill with air, his heart beating an intense tempo against her ribcage.
“Breathe,” she whispers against his lips, the words impressed into the cavern of his mouth.
And he does. He inhales and exhales, and his skin burns amidst the cold and dark. The pressure of hundreds of feet of water pressed down upon them lifts as she reaches outside and inside of herself and him , and it is as if they are simply floating.
“Feel this,” she says. She pulls away enough to gaze into his face, so clearly visible now due to the glow emanating from both of their skins. She reaches for one of his hands, links their fingers. “Does the water not hold you? Does it not grant you the privilege of keeping your breath?”
Dark eyes stare at her so intensely, the silky black locks of his hair floating about his head and revealing to her all of his wonderful, beautiful face.
“I was once a weak little girl,” she says. The water only serves to ripple the sound of her voice, his breath around them. “Sickly, clumsy. Useless in a world of warriors and conquerors. Forever neglected in a world of boys and men.”
“I care not to hear of your history,” Sasuke retorts, his voice deeper still than even the depths to which they’ve sunk.
“Senju Hashirama healed my body by pulling from a well of energy that existed within himself,” she continues. “He made me whole, made my body strong and my mind clear. And when I begged to remain at his side, he taught me how he came to find this ability.”
Her other hand seeks out his and despite the dark, tightened look on his face, he does not pull away when she links these fingers, too.
“We called it chakra ,” she smiles, blinks wetness that cannot be seen from her eyes. “And I theorized and hypothesized and submitted my life to learning until I figured out that it not only existed in us, but all living things. Then I learned that it could be channeled from these places, these things, too.”
There is curiosity, and a handsome portion of hesitance, in his gaze. It makes her smile, makes her feel sadness as well.
“We spread the information to anyone who would listen,” she says, closing her eyes for a moment to allow her to experience the full burden of her memories, of a time long, long past. “Many people thought we were mad. Others were hungry to learn. Your clan’s forefather was one of the first to submit himself to tutelage. It was I that taught him to breathe fire, myself. It is funny that this has become a tradition for your people.”
“You were Uchiha Madara’s master.”
“There were no masters,” her mouth curves in another small smile. “We were all students of the natural world, and we were all teachers to one another. Still, I was different from the rest. No matter how much I learned, how skilled I became, I hungered for more. The sick girl I was once still existed in me, and I wanted to cast her out. To become powerful, to have all of nature’s unlimited energy at my disposal.”
She shakes her head, sends a curtain of pink between them, obscuring her vision. Sasuke raises their joined hands and pushes it away.
“I was a fool,” she whispers. Perhaps the water carries the sound not as her voice, but as the bubbling of water, as a quiet current. Her shame radiates throughout. “I cannot tell you how it felt, to have my very soul torn from its temple, to have my body dematerialize into nothingness. For…for however much time has passed, I was not all-powerful. I was not everything , as I hoped to be. I was absolutely nothing . Unseeing, unhearing, unfeeling of all things. What I knew was what all natural things do–it was not a life, and not a death. I was suffering and not even sentient enough to know it until…”
“Until?” he asks. The strain has nearly melted away from his face and her chest feels lighter for it. His gaze burns her, creates a lump in her throat as he watches her with keen, glittering eyes and slightly furrowed brow.
“Until I heard you,” she chokes. “I heard you, calling for something greater than what existed within your grasp. The first voice I had experienced, the first face I could see in such a long time. And you sounded like me , so much that I remembered what it was to be myself. ”
“What if I am willing to pay the price?” he asks, voice small.
She shakes her head again, “I can teach you to wield power based on what nature is willing to lend in a fair exchange. I will not teach you how to lose yourself to infinity.”
Sasuke’s eyes dart back and forth between hers, and his chest begins to rise and fall more quickly. His plush lips part and his breaths veer toward gasps, and Sakura wades closer, concerned and prepared to share her breath with him once again, or pull him up to the surface if she must.
When her mouth hovers mere centimeters from his and her own lips part, he frees both of his hands from her fingers and grasps at the sides of her face.
Their mouths meld together, but instead of her breath pushing through his mouth, a flexible, hot muscle sinks into hers. It plays around, running against the inside of her cheeks and the roof of her mouth until her own tongue rises to its call, twisting and swirling in a slow, sensuous dance.
Bright, glittering shards of light shine around them as Sasuke steals her breath, returning it back within the same moments. Her hands find a place against the back of his nape and her waist sways toward his until their bellies are flush, hearts throbbing against each other's ribs in a brisk staccato.
Sakura’s eyes slide shut.
Somewhere, a sound, a deep, rumbling groan filters to her ears and her fingers sink into the waving, dark locks about Sasuke’s head. His hands slip away from her face, slide down the contours of her shoulders, and stop at her waist. The floating fabric of her gown is bunched against her thighs, exposing her to the gentle current of the unknown below as their feet twist together.
“Sasuke,” she murmurs into the minute spaces between their gliding, flowing lips. Heat pools in her belly, in her cheeks and between her thighs.
The fingers of one of his hands slip lower, reaching under the fabric of her dress to cup the enclave of her center, the tips of them brushing feather light over sensitive, tingling flesh.
Aa, this, I remember, she thinks as her leg rises to notch around Sasuke’s hip and she feels the press of something warm, hard, thick under his robes.
Their kiss becomes frenzied, a symphony of sighs and quiet groans filling their ears as they rock together, upheld by nothing like gravity, her essence seeping into him and his into her like an infinite fountain.
She hooks her foot into the loose waistband of his coverings and pushes them down, letting them float or sink away into the vast unknown. The tear in her gown is split further by his desperate hand, parting so that her breast brushes against the softly wrinkled fabric of his robes before those, too, are pushed away.
Euphoria dances behind her eyelids as his teeth nip at her lips and the broad width of his hand burns hot pressing into her lower spine. She feels and feels, becoming nearly dizzy with the overflow of sensation. After so long as nothing, she lives once again. And she is touching, feeling the brush of his hair against the tips of her fingers, the sucking warmth of his mouth, and tiny bumps overlapping his tongue. The heat of his chest, the prod of his turgid length at her lower belly and his heart, throbbing and racing in a rhythm she can feel against her own.
The hand between her legs slides up and down, delicious pressure causing the tips of his fingers to dip between her slick folds. An errant slide over the throbbing bundle at the top of her mound sets her breath hitching and voice spearing in a high-pitched moan.
This time, when Sakura forgets herself it is as she is lifted by the tangible, iron-clad grip of strong hands before being lowered over a thick, intruding shaft that splits her apart and puts her back together again directly thereafter.
She is torn and mended over and over and over as his strong thighs thump against her buttocks, his teeth rasping over her lower lip and breath mingling with hers in desperate pants. The insides of her spread to make room for him, they wrap tight and pull him in deep, flowering like blooming petals and let him reach further still.
She curls her legs around Sasuke’s waist, throws her head back away from his plundering mouth and cries out so loud she is sure the sound tunnels through the water and breaks its surface, echoes between the towering trees and overpowers the song of the nighttime.
Sasuke is a mosaic of light and color, his irises tinged red and electric courses racing over the planes of his chest and flexing abdomen as he sinks his teeth into his lips and rams inside of her with enough force to break her in a way even the Universe could not.
Yet, she feels whole, more than ever, in his arms. With his body against hers and reaching into herself as far as he can go.
“You,” he gasps, choking on a groan when she twists her hips in a way that she knows , remembers she has done before, “It is because of you that I will be unmade.”
The yearning that drew her to life again, the burning want for something, anything builds between them, slips around and is mixed up inside of her with each plunge into her depths, spills out between both of their lips and floats on the current soft each gasping breath, each gentle sigh. She knows with certainty, then, that despite his declarations and protestations Sasuke had summoned her to be his companion, to be many things other than that, evermore.
The muscles of her lower body clench and her softest flesh tightens around him, grasping, hungry to lock him where he belongs. She grips at him with her fingers, rolls into him with her hips and starts the journey to crest a peak she could not reach even if she flew with wings to the highest mountain.
“You addling, perplexing, exquisite creature.”
Her breaths hitch and her voice stutters on the rhythm of his thrusts as she pleads–
“Call me Sakura, please.”
As if she has taken her very first breath all over again from a time even she cannot remember, like the flower buds peeking up through the soil after months of snow, like the sun edging over the horizon and casting away the dark of light, something fills her, her very essence brighter, more tangible.
He thrusts so deeply, then, that she finds herself almost aching, but his hand is gentle as it comes to cup her chin.
“Sakura,” Sasuke whispers, drawing her forward to drink from her mouth again.
Sakura is my name, Sakura is who I am.
Climax breaks her and oozing warmth fills her as Sasuke anchors his body inside of her and calls her name and she is.
