Alone Anymore
Heavy breathing at his ear is disorienting. He’s running. Sasuke is running. Faster than ever before, he forces his legs to carry him faster, move faster, search faster. Shapes and colors blend and blur together, unimportant to him. Unnamed and superfluous people, easily cut down by his blade. All of it, the whole pursuit, is a waste of time. He doesn’t quite remember why he is running, but Sasuke knows he isn’t where he is supposed to be.
He arrives and opens the only door available to him: a light blue with rusted metalwork. His haste rattles the wood within its hinges. Sasuke’s mind pays it little attention, as the surroundings overwhelm him.
Sasuke is in his room, the night of his departure from Konoha to join Orochimaru all those years ago. Every step around the bed is difficult; his feet drag like weights stitched to his ankles. The reflection on the television screen shows Sasuke now, a young man of twenty, sinking into the pool of congealed blood that he carries around him everywhere. No matter how far away he runs, no matter how good his deeds, no matter his external perception is now, Sasuke cannot seem to shake his own self-image. Every movement is more difficult now, a heavy fight against the sins he’s inherited and those he’s committed himself.
Sasuke fights to pull away from the mistakes made in that teenage bedroom. ‘He’s done his time. He repents his sins. He is a hero now. So where is his family? So where is *his* happily ever after?’
He reaches the window where the moon’s glare obfuscates the sole picture frame in the room. Waist-deep in the muck of a lifetime of errors, Sasuke stretches out his lone arm. Every tendon pulls against the friction of his skin and bones, straining towards the one image of his family. He knows it’s there just out of reach, but he can’t see it. Fingertips topple the frame, bring it crashing away from the moonlight.
Sasuke fights and fights against the pool of old mistakes until there is no more fight left in him. His efforts are useless, so what does it mean when he stops trying? His vision blurs as he gives into what he believes his basal nature is: to destroy everyone he has ever loved.
----
Sasuke startled awake. His mind disorients him from his whereabouts and his place in life. Can he even trust what he knows about who he is now?
‘Of course not.’
Shinobi impulses rush through his nerves, ready to scratch and fight and kill his way out of wherever he is and onto safety. His blood rushes to his ears, instigating his tinnitus. Sasuke can’t hear anything but the harsh sounds of labored breathing and the ringing of a lifetime of ear damage. Everything else is drowned out, much like he is.
Overtouched, overworked, overly-damaged; Sasuke can’t keep it together. His sole hand reaches for something that might calm him down, anything beyond the thick tears clouding his mismatched eyes.
His fingers become constricted, like they’re being tied down. Sasuke can’t see what’s stopping their movement, can’t hear who’s there, and can’t feel the softness of the hold. He fights and fights, until his entire torso is weighed down by a heavy pool of clear, controlled chakra.
The ringing in his ear is dissipating slowly, allowing a voice to filter in beyond this anxiety.
“Sasuke-kun!”
Sasuke would know that voice anywhere. ‘Sakura…’
His eyes, already open, start clearing his lifelong sorrow in search of Sakura. Sakura, who has only ever wanted him to be safe in the Forest of Death. Sakura, who has only ever wanted to see him smile and have fun on one moonlight night. Sakura, whose only betrayal to Sasuke was a deeper betrayal to herself on a bridge. Sakura, who healed him from the brink of bleeding out and accepted his apology when he lost his arm. Sakura, who happily joined his wayfaring ways with no guarantee of anything. Sakura, whose clear green eyes shed tears of joy during the summer solstice as they became husband and wife.
The supercut ends. The haze clears and he finds his wife just a few centimeters from his face. With no more fight left in him, Sasuke falls into temptation, pulling her lips onto his. If only to feel something, to remind himself that he is not his past, that the future is as bright and long as the end of June, that his legacy is not to leave over and over but to carry on with his wife and the child Sakura carries under her heart.
Sakura’s slow rhythmic scratching of his hair helps recede Sasuke’s pain, helping lull them both back to sleep. War is over, he is safe, and Sasuke doesn’t need to fight alone anymore.
END.
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