The time wherein Sasuke and Naruto slept weeks away on hospital beds after the war where amongst the most confusing to Sakura. Despite the dizzying flurry of tending to the wounded and mourning the dead and healing beyond the psychological scars left behind by the Infinite Tsukuyomi, Sakura’s mind gravitated toward Sasuke.

🌟 SasuSaku Blank Period Week 2023 DAY 5🌟

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Day 5: 

- Hey, I've not finished! 😡

Left alone in the darkness of the room, Sasuke didn’t know which was more painful — the excruciating headache or the nightmare he’d had. 

He had been away from the village for a few weeks on a mission where he had to swap dimensions continuously. Last night when he returned to Konoha, he couldn’t complain about his headache to Sakura because she was already asleep in bed. He slipped in beside her silently. He didn’t wake her up, because taking care of their baby and hospital was tiring too.

When he woke and Sakura wasn’t beside him, he knew it was already morning. It was time to get out of the bed, but he didn’t want to. His lone hand rubbed his temple, groaning, replaying the bloody shattered images from his dream. He had been used to them from his childhood, and they hadn’t affected him much until Sarada was born. 

He always thought love brought risk and the pain of loss along with it. He had been haunted by that risk until a trust had formed between him and Sakura, and he started a family with her. He sighed heavily, covering up his eyes with his arm. The past few weeks had mentally exhausted him. Traveling alone in dark and unknown dimensions had not only drained his chakra but had triggered a fresh fear — losing again what he had. 

Perhaps he had made a mistake. Loving Sakura was a mistake. 

Threats were still there in the world — ones that could take everything from him again. He sprang up at the very thought. He couldn’t waste time mulling about bad things. He needed to meet the Hokage and get to work as soon as he could. 

He would leave her again — not for his own selfish purposes this time, but he was leaving nonetheless and there was no justification for that. 

He was being dragged to the deeper abyss of his own regrets, self-doubts, and anger until he heard the voices of two of the important people in his life. Like the sunlight rays that were trying to remove the darkness in his room, those voices pulled him from his thoughts. 

Sarada greeted him first when he left the bedroom. She ran towards him excitedly, hugging his legs, as she squeaked, “Welcome home, Papa,” in her baby voice. A faint smile lit his face as he lifted her up and made his way towards his wife. 

Meanwhile, Sarada updated him about what she did when he was away. Although it warmed his heart, deep down it saddened him. As they reached where Sakura was, Sarada tugged on his sleeve to put her down. Sarada ran towards Sakura, and the sight of both of them giggling together made him rethink. 

He needed to tell Sakura that he was leaving again. Maybe he needed to tell her to stop loving him so he could stop hurting her again and again. He wondered whether he loved her as much as she loved him, and that’s why the decision to leave was always easier for him.

“Anata, did something happen?”

Sasuke groaned, “No,” his arm reflexively moving to soothe his aching head.

Sakura smiled, “Come here, I will fix that.”

Sasuke walked towards Sakura, readying himself to talk about the issue. Sarada followed him  and as he took a seat, Sarada tried to climb onto his lap. He picked her up again as Sarada curiously watched Sakura.

Sakura placed her palm above his left eye, and her green chakra started to soothe Sasuke's headache. Sakura frowned as she said disappointedly, "You always push yourself too much, Sasuke-kun. Time and again I told you not to, but you never listen to me. "

Sarada giggled, “Mama is scolding Papa, like Mama scolds me.” 

Sakura also burst into laughter. She lowered herself to Sarada’s level, ruffled her hair playfully, and said, “Yes, your Papa never listens to your Mama.”

Neither do you, Sakura. Even if I asked you to stop loving me, would you?

Day 5 Prompt:  Lover’s Quarrel // “You never listen to me.”

@sasusakublankperiodweek

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Underneath the dense foliage of a magnificent, custodial beech tree, they sit quiet for a bit, apologizing without moving their lips — in the buzz of insects, the nostalgic trilling of toads, the whispering of tree leaves.

Sasuke watches her in profile; then, with an unexpected tenderness, tucks her hair behind her ear, dark eyes on the split skin of her cheekbone.

The sound Sakura makes isn’t quite a scream, but it startles Sasuke enough for him to pause in his foraging task. Reaching for a benign fallen fruit nestled in the grass, her reaction seems theatrical on its face and now he’s distracted by the glistening, bright nettles getting in the way of securing the bag. 

“Don’t—!”

It makes sense in an instant:  The alarming shade of orange they possess, an alien glimmer and dance about them. He scoffs and has a thought that immediately reminds him he’s occasionally stupid, Ah, plants don’t move like this —

And though Sakura’s never possessed his level of speed, she’s already yanking him out of the brush as the alcove swiftly aims to trap them in.

They tumble backward, Sakura bodily pulling him along without tapping the wellspring of her true strength; they’ve played that game, and he’s intimately familiar with the shiver a grown man feels dancing down his spine when a fissure snakes beneath the earth under his feet.

Tangled up in one another and already catching angry mutters, he’s sure he’s missed something he doesn’t understand and she’s about to tell him exactly what it is.

Well, he’d never have it any other way.

Kneeling on her haunches, she roughly clears her vision of stray hair and levels a gaze, green-glass and sharp, that could slice and feather him as a mandolin. 

“Are—you—blind?”

“Not quite yet.”

Sasuke never knew her eyes could get quite so wide, and he considers the merits of keeping his witty comebacks to himself.

Something draws his gaze, though, and the amusement sinks as fast as it came. The thin line, a surface split in the skin dashed across her cheekbone, doesn’t seem to impede her anger roiling along as a volcano, folding in on itself and furthering its validity as a runaway chemical reaction.

“If you touched it, we need to extract the poison right away,” she says impatiently, speaking through gritted teeth. Luckily that’s only a side-effect of her fury, rather than the cut.

“Sakura—”

“Come here—”

“Your face!” A spark of his own surfacing out of guilt and irritation; there’s no way she’s unaware of the poison now coursing through her systems in a chaotic melee, seeking whichever biological home feeds it best. 

Her response is to yank him by the hand, turning his arm at the elbow and spreading his fingers. 

“I’m fine!” he barks.

“All it takes is a tiny way in, Sasuke—”

“And what about you? What do we do?”

“I’m asking the questions, here.”

“I’m not your patient out here, you know,” he snaps, indicating the forest clearing. 

“Then maybe stop trying to act like one!” The rouge of her anger lights up the cut in her face with an odd white rim, and Sasuke catches the sinister gleam from the split in her skin from a passing moment in the shifting canopy. 

Orange.

“A color that bright — gods, I can’t believe you—”

Ripping her belt from the waist and unfurling it with a snap!, a motion saturated with ire, her hand hovers for a second or two, fingers bouncing in rapid thought, before plucking a vial and fluttery gauze from the pack. 

“Tell me what to do,” Sasuke growls.

The response is savage muttering, and he’s so sure he catches something like that’s some Naruto shit and handsome-stupid. No stranger to her temper flaring bright and subsiding with haste, but his helplessness makes it difficult to keep his dumb mouth shut.

“Sakura!”

“Concentrating.” 

Emerald, soft and with an incandescent, almost mystical texture and glow. There’s something about her skill that roils his gut into abstruse knots of anxiety threaded through with intimidation, spun through with tight, woven pride. In contrast to the coarse and hackneyed way in which he’s healed or handled injury in the past, cowering in caves and sweating out lonely fevers and even the way he’s used another body, sinking his teeth in to rob an unknown and murky power from another vessel. 

But her behavior jerks him back to the present as she squeezes venom from her fucking face into her stupid glass vial and he absolutely cannot believe he’s watching this from the woman he loves, as she gently coaxes it to the surface and manages not to spill a drop despite the shakes settling into her limbs.

“What do I do, Sakura? Tell me.”

She corks the vial with aplomb and offers nothing but a heavy sigh. “Please gently put this back in my waistbelt.”

Now it’s his turn to stare, and though she blinks in the moment his eye flickers and flares to crimson life, it doesn’t frighten her like he thought it might.

“You’re annoying.”

She frowns, and the gentle glow around her fingers brightens a bit. “How could you touch something so bright? Is something like that ever not poisonous?”

“Then what about you? Acting like it’s not a big deal!”

The shrug she gives him makes him clench his jaw, closing his eyes for a moment. Not quite a praying man, but most of the things that are destined to pass his lips will only escalate their bickering.

“There’s nothing to be gained from panic,” she says quietly. “I’ve learned this many times, now.”

And though she’s not and has never been stone cold, he can see the bobbing in her neck after her heavy swallow, the deep breath, the search for calm as the glittering orange comes away in her glowing hand, suspended in-air as the formless shapes of ink blot tests, losing it’s luster as she flicks her fingers and it dissipates into the wind. Harmless.

“And anyway, I’ve played with poison before.”

Grey pallor receding from her face, she smiles at him in a small and faint way that prompts him to ask, again, 

“What do I do?”

She exhales, shoulders slumping, body relenting to the aftermath of adrenaline rush by losing its strict form. “Can you help me?” She nods at a nearby tree. “Need to sit for a moment.”

Miles from home, it seems their paltry disagreements last for the better part of years, but when they’ve burnt out, twinkling out as tiny stars, they know they’re never angry for long.

Underneath the dense foliage of a magnificent, custodial beech tree, they sit quiet for a bit, apologizing without moving their lips — in the buzz of insects, the nostalgic trilling of toads, the whispering of tree leaves.

Sasuke watches her in profile; then, with an unexpected tenderness, tucks her hair behind her ear, dark eyes on the split skin of her cheekbone.

“You haven’t healed this.”

Emerging from what seems like a deep reverie, she nuzzles against his fingers, absorbing his touch.

“I shouldn’t do that with you,” she says, eyes glossy. The threat of tears. “It’s what I do in an emergency — you learn it’s simply not about you, that you’re the one in charge. They’re scared, so you put away your fear and feelings.” Her eyes swivel to him, offering an apology and asking forgiveness. “They need you to lead, and so you do.” 

Why she hangs on the notion that he might not forgive her, that she needs to ask even silently, he’ll never be able to parse, given the grace he’s been extended from his loved ones and above all of them, her, so many times over. 

“You should know how to do this.” Voice firm, a statement rather than a suggestion. Head still resting against the venerable tree trunk, she continues. “Even basic skill could go a long way.”

“You’re not suggesting—”

“I absolutely am!” she interjects. “What if you need to heal someone and I’m not there? What if I’m incapacitated, and it’s me?” Taking him by the shirt, she pulls him a little closer to drive home the solemnity, the gravity of what she’s implying. “In the future, in a life with new loved ones . . . what wouldn’t you do for them?”

Sasuke’s eyes flicker from her intense eyes to the cut on her cheek, the discomfiting orange glimmer long gone, but the injury still resolutely present.

“Great men,” she whispers, “have died from many benign, simple things.”

Here is what he’d never confess:  She adores him and believes in him more than he deserves. The idea that he’s a good man, a talented one, possessing an unshakeable compass when his narrative has proven, in his view, the absolute opposite. 

That nearly every day, his instinct is to sink into shadows that tug at him, but right on cue she emboldens him to step into the light. 

“You should do it,” he says quietly, aiming for a dissuading tone. “This is your face, I don’t want to hurt you.” Again. As always. 

“I trust you.”

“I can’t do it now, like this.”

“You never listen to me, Sasuke-kun.”

She takes him by the hand — he can feel the warmth of the green glow he’s observed many times, relieving bodies of their healing burdens and broken bones; has seen it used on his good friend, an old sensei, a child’s skinned knee here, an elderly’s poor joint there. A body brought back to life, snatched from the void’s edge of an unknown thing they’ve yet to explore.

And for an otherworldly instant that unwavering devotion is reflected in the eyes he’s woken up to for days and weeks now:  Unshakable belief reflected back to him, a second in which he sees himself as she always does.

We’re now on our fifth day of the SasuSaku Blank Period Week 2021! Thank you for all the submissions so far! You guys are blessing our timelines with amazing content!

Here’s the prompt for #SSBPDay5!