Title: Like Gold
Summary: Sasuke grapples with love and intimacy regarding his developing relationship with Sakura after returning to the village from his journey of redemption. Kind of a character study on Sasuke handling an intimate relationship after dealing with PTSD and survivor’s guilt in solitude for so long. Blank period, canon-compliant, Sasuke-centric, lots of fluff and pining, slowly becomes a smut fest with feelings.
Disclaimer: I did not write Naruto. This is a fan-made piece solely created for entertainment purposes.
Rating: M
AO3 Link - includes author's notes
______________________________________________________________
It feels as though the earth has ceased its tireless turning for a smear of seconds as Sakura returns to awareness slowly, lashes sparking. Her eyes catch gold, too, once they open; there’s just enough light streaming in through the thin curtains to skew her irises warm, though her pupils are unfocused as of yet.
He tries to resist the urge to snort when she immediately squints as if said light has personally offended her, expression the utter picture of someone who is being assailed by a hangover; she must have been out pretty good. Her hand in his twitches as if to rise to her head in reflex, not remembering that their fingers remain intertwined between them.
That prompts her to open her eyes fully in clear befuddlement, though her brows are still sort of furrowing. Jade eyes then widen, rapidly shifting to his to make contact.
Her cheeks redden. It’s fascinating to watch, he finds. He barely manages to catch the stupid smile threatening the curvature of his mouth when she raises her left hand to her head instead, choosing to keep her dominant hand right where it is, intertwined with his in an orphic edict for hereafter. It’s as real and as tangible as gravity exacts its will on rock and crag, or perhaps as five calloused digits re-crease years-old letters, the reaffirmed slide of pell against parchment laden with meaning on sleepless nights.
“...Hi,” Sakura breaks the hush by saying, voice cracking a little from disuse and possibly dehydration as her fingers begin to glow green and the earth resumes its revolutions.
At that, he can’t help but exhale a tired, breathy wisp of a laugh, humor and something else warming his chest.
“...Hi.”
A long pause fills the air, and her expression relaxes as the minute passes, as whatever headache she must be experiencing fades with the aid of chakra. It’s rather impressive how little time it takes. He wonders absent-mindedly if it requires similar focus as ocular healing does; he imagines threading chakra into one’s own head must take a lot of practice, yet her ease indicates that she’s done this hundreds of times.
“The power’s back on,” she remarks, likely in reaction to hearing the vent currently pushing air in the otherwise soundless room. It started back up a couple of hours ago.
Not too inebriated to remember, then, he thinks to himself, recollecting their conversation before she drifted to sleep. Somehow it still doesn’t feel like an overly enormous admission, now that all’s said and done. Conceivably it’s the mutuality of it that’s granting him enough repose to be okay with it.
“Came back on a couple of hours ago,” he offers quietly. His own voice comes out a bit hoarse from disuse, too, and he realizes that his own throat is slightly parched.
Must be the alcohol. Duly noted, though he’s going to avoid losing to Naruto in the ensuing months at all costs. He has little desire to give himself additional headaches; his lack of a coherent sleeping schedule forces him to contend with the affliction fairly often.
Sakura nods after a moment as if this makes sense, gaze dropping momentarily to their intertwined fingers.
“...The storm kept you up?” She asks tentatively, gaze rising to his steadily.
Sasuke blinks, then nods, as it’s an easy excuse for the reality of his disturbed sleep patterns and a good way to proceed. He probably will need to sleep at some point today, which means he won’t make the best company for part of it. Best to be honest about that, at least.
Sakura examines their hands once more, as if his response has prompted some variance of study there. Sleep is edging at the corner of her eyes, he sees now that the light appears to be bothering her less. Eventually her green chakra dissipates, and her left hand drifts back to her side, the action seeming almost… listless.
She then says the most severely nonsensical thing she could ever come up with, jade eyes still cast downward at the space between them. There’s something in her expression that screams of disquiet, lips pursed sideways.
“I’m sorry.”
His brows knit together in puzzlement, mouth contorting into a hard frown.
“For what?” He asks in bewilderment, because she’s done absolutely nothing wrong. He could write pages upon pages of all of the reasons why she never needs to apologize to him. She’s never-
“For pushing you,” Sakura’s voice cuts through the speculatives invading his brain at a mile a minute. Her mouth is pulling to the other side at present, as if in dismay. “I didn’t mean to… Or, well… I just would have worried, is all-”
“You didn’t push me,” he cuts in, clearly enunciating every syllable. His issues have nothing to do with her. If he was just normal, it wouldn’t have been a question if he wanted to stay at all. He would have greedily jumped at any chance to get closer to her, to be invited into her bed, as innocent as it was.
It’s his own stupid issues that cause all the problems, without exception; she has nothing to do with his sins. He’ll tell her again if he needs to.
Green eyes stewing with guilt meet his and pink brows jump closer together.
“I think I did,” she insists. “I mean,” her gaze pitter patters to the side again, as if she’s suddenly very interested in studying the exact hue of her pillowcases. “Or, well… I know it hasn’t been very long, and I… Well, it was maybe moving too fast, and I really didn’t mean to… to…”
Her vocal train of thought comes to a screeching halt when he very gently squeezes her hand, fingers still interlocked with his.
“Sakura,” he says quietly, insistently, because he urgently needs to squash this line of thinking. While he appreciates the unending evidence that she cares deeply for him, Sakura has also always had a way of somehow interpreting that his exigencies are her problem, that some sort of fault lies with her, when that has never been the case. His choices are his causatum to bear, as are all of the rest of his shortcomings.
Doesn’t she know that she’s the paramount jewel of his life?
“You didn’t push me.”
Her mouth stubbornly stays set in a solid line, worry evident as she searches his gaze. He stares right back, unusually so, as his left eye remains uninhibited by the shield of his hair as it typically is, still positioned such as to capture her sleeping form with both Sharingan eyes; he didn’t move much throughout the night in the hopes of not waking her.
She exhales slowly, face relaxing; it’s calmness he finds there now, as if she’s satisfied that he's told her the truth. The eaves above their heads settle with it, the maxim that follows a squall.
“Okay,” she says finally, pupils flashing from him to the pillowcase again. She then flushes darker for some reason, and her gaze drops to their hands once more.
“Um,” she says, shifting her shoulder slightly. Her cheekbone catches the sunbeam cradled through the parting of her curtains, freckled cheek on perfect display. She really is beet red; he wonders what she’s thinking about, a lone dark eyebrow raising in curiosity.
“Well. Should I…”
She seems to struggle for words, as if the same gravity afflicting him earlier has snatched them out of her lungs. Maybe she can heal the headache itself but not the scattered thought processes that he’s heard tend to accompany a hangover; it’s hard for him to gauge, considering he himself has never had one.
“Well, do you want… breakfast, maybe? Before you go back to your place, I mean. I assume you need to sleep? Um. We could have okonomiyaki, ochazuke, or… Or, maybe just tea? Decaf, of course, so you can… Or, you don’t need to stay for breakfast, if you’re too tired or if you don’t want to-”
He squeezes her hand once further, as gentle as he is capable, because there is little he wants more.
“...I would. I’ll help.”
It takes a handful of minutes to plan out the morning and rest of the day from there, plans made for evening tea and a sweet smile that he will never tire of being the cause of. Despite his fatigue, he is loath to untwine his fingers from hers, and he thinks she is perhaps of the same mind. He’s not sure if she notices - he doubts she’s doing it on purpose - but her thumb twitches slightly against his at irregular intervals, as if she’s checking to ensure he’s still there, and it feels eerily like she’s pressing a sort of poem into his skin, alliterated by the soft cadence of her voice.
When they finally do rise, he helps make his side of the bed as she makes hers, adjusting the pillow at its conclusion; it was off kilter from lying on his side the majority of the night.
For some reason, Sakura stares at him openly as he reshapes it to a typical pillow shape, and her cheeks stain incarnadine nearly immediately as he catches her gaze questioningly, wondering what about the action is odd. Sporadically he wishes he was capable of reading her mind, uncovering what she’s thinking; he often wishes to know just what exactly she’s preventing herself from saying, as most of it is probably for his benefit when it needn’t be.
Give it time, he thinks as she metaphorically curls in on herself again, green eyes gradually realizing that he’s looking at her inquisitively.
“Right. Um, I’m going to, uh. Use the bathroom. But if you want to start the water to boil, you can!” She squeaks the tail end of the words more than she speaks them, turning rather abruptly in pursuit of said bathroom.
He reasons it is a little strange to see an ex-rogue ninja doing something as inane as making the bed; presumably it’s that, he thinks as the bathroom door creaks slightly: open, then closed.
His focus wanders to the ornamental fan displayed atop her vanity, where it lingers. He watches as the iridescent thread catches the light, twinkling atop aged wood unaffected, as if eagerly soaking up every last drop of metaphorical adage.
It fills him with an odd feeling. Something numinous and presaging, but also… complicated.
He shakes it off in favor of proceeding to the kitchen to start the water to boil, resolving to reflect on the why of it later on. He has better things to focus on at present than the drowned memories of the past.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Following an hour of tossing and turning in his own bed, Sasuke manages to find rest; it seems his brain has seen fit to reward him with a break, which is good, because there are other things that it’s decidedly not offering respite from: namely, the fact that his own bed does not smell like Sakura, and also the cavillous sense that he is metaphorically standing atop the precipice of a rather important realization, obscured by the mist of morning much like fogged or frosted glass.
Later, he urges his brain resolutely, banishing the thought of freshly-watered soil and drenched paper boats, giving in to sleep.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The mission summons arrives just as he’s finishing up the preparation of a simple dinner: onigiri with plain broiled salmon, making use of leftover rice. He covers the pan for the time being, removing it from the burner to temporarily cool before making his way to the Hokage’s Office. He’ll eat it later.
“Sasuke,” Kakashi greets as he pushes the door open, greeted by an otherwise empty room. Naruto’s not there, and Sasuke supposes that makes sense; this is likely to be an assignment for guard duty in anticipated absences for the Chunin Exams. Security coverage is the foremost concern for Shinobi villages during such events.
“...Kakashi,” he acknowledges quietly, shutting the aged wood door behind him.
“How are you feeling?” The copy ninja asks, smiling jovially in a manner that is entirely too knowing. “A little birdy told me you were forced out to the bar last night.”
Sasuke rolls his eyes, exhaling a quiet sigh through his nostrils.
“...Two drinks.”
His old sensei’s smile only grows more exponential.
“Ah. Had fun?”
Sasuke holds his sensei’s gaze disparagingly, frowning and refusing to give in to the twitch. While it wasn’t really so bad, he has short regard for a repeat situation in which he’s forced to consume more than the two drinks. He doesn’t intend to lose to the dobe again anytime soon; he’ll drag it out for months if he has his way of things.
“So, you don’t intend to lose to him again anytime soon,” Kakashi beats him to the punch by saying, Cheshire grin wrinkling the edges of his mask. Sasuke, in turn, betrays nothing, deeming the frown encapsulating his iwn mouth confutation enough.
“At least you have Sakura,” Kakashi continues, at which Sasuke’s neck warms and his brows furrow. “Word on the street is she can heal a hangover like nobody’s business.”
“...I’m not hung over,” he concedes after a moment of pause. Best to pummel that implication into the ground, truth of it set aside.
The Hokage waits a beat to respond, as if he’s carefully assessing him. But no, that’s not right; Sasuke’s pretty sure he is assessing him. He has the faintest sense of sharing commonality with an artifact being looked over, like sand slipping through one’s fingers on the beach, falling away to reveal tiny nacreous slivers of shell and rocks weathered smooth.
“...I know,” the copy ninja finally says, dark mask twitching in the manner that suggests additional ribbing is imminent. “But…”
His voice trails off, dark eyes evaluating him as if waiting for him to speak, and Sasuke knows that his sensei isn’t actually spying on him now that he’s been back for the better part of two or three months, but the manner in which he can read Sasuke like an open book is eerie, so he chooses to not be baited in the slightest.
Apparently gathering that Sasuke isn’t going to gift him any supplemental information, Kakashi looks to his desk, rifling through a stack of papers and looking entirely too pleased with himself despite the fact that he provoked no rejoinder.
“Well... Maybe next time, yeah?”
Sasuke’s ears redden and his left eye twitches in annoyance, but Kakashi doesn’t look up once.
Damn copy ninja. He supposes he wasn’t exactly subtle, all things considered, but he finds himself wishing now that he had said that goodbye privately; it may have earned him less importunateness in the long run.
“Well, not particularly exciting, again,” the Hokage elucidates further, pulling out two sheets stapled together, one of which clearly has Sasuke’s name inscribed at the top. “Given we’re taking a large number of our ranks to the Chunin Exams, I want to play our remaining forces rather close to the vest. I didn’t have any bigger tickets come in, so…”
As expected.
“Guard duty?” He questions, already perceiving the answer and still internally fighting down the warmth licking at his neck. In confirmation, Kakashi nods, not looking up from the array of papers littering his desk.
“Yes. We’re spreading the shifts out a bit more; two instead of three like usual. Kotetsu and Izumo are coming with to help with staff and security. Shino, too. I’m afraid you’ll be pretty busy; six to six, day shift indefinitely beginning tomorrow, though you’ll still be able to make our team dinner on Tuesday, of course. Length of assignment pends on how long the first round of exams take; obviously once that’s concluded, we’ll be back for a month, so you’ll get some time off then, should nothing bigger come up.”
Sasuke’s brow furrows, briefly wondering why Shino’s presence would be necessary at the exams prior to realizing he’s likely going to watch past students and also that his insects would be an excellent safeguard for all involved. He’s caught off guard once again at the different roles everyone he attended the Academy with are playing now. He anticipates, then, that both Kiba and his sister will be rounding out the night duties; if Aburame's insects are absent from the village, canines are the logical next best defense.
His brow furrows further, wondering who will be assigned with him, as the dobe will be out of the village. Shikamaru is out, too, as the coordinator of the Shinobi Union. He still isn’t sure if Sai or Choji are attending the exams, come to think of it.
As if on cue, heavy footsteps resound from down the hall.
Ah. Not so bad, then; at least it’s someone he’s familiar with. The shifts will be free from any sort of disdain. They might even be… enjoyable. Free from teasing, most notably.
“Hokage-sama,” Choji greets genially, laughing as he pushes the door open, then closes it behind him. “Just when I thought I might’ve escaped guard duty…”
Kakashi simply smiles through the mask. “Sorry to disappoint, Choji… though I’m told you bring quite the spread for lunches while on duty. I’ll make sure to say hi to Karui for you while we’re away, anyways.”
A hearty laugh escapes the ninja’s chest as he grins, coming to stand within a few feet of Sasuke to accept the paperwork Kakashi’s offering him.
“Well,” Choji begins at the tail end of a chuckle. “Karui’s not likely to focus on anything but work during all this Exams stuff, but you can attempt it if you want.”
A ninja, then, and likely high-ranking. A Chunin or Jonin, he expects, based on the comment he recalls about her right hook. He briefly finds himself wondering if she’s instrumental to inter-village politics, given she’s attending the exams.
“And anyways, it’s hard to beat fresh roast duck, but I’ll always give it the ol’ Akimichi try!”
Sasuke exhales something near a snort in response to that. It meanwhile earns a chuckle out of Kakashi that implies he understands exactly what an Akimichi try entails, at which point Sasuke realizes that his old sensei gives orders to the elder ninja in addition to the younger, inclusive of Choji’s father.
How strange that must be. He rarely remembers that most people have living parents, and also that, in the grand scheme of things, Kakashi is still fairly young: only a few years into his thirties. Yet he is charged with the difficulty of governing an entire village, giving orders to ninja who are decades his senior, an instrumental piece of the puzzle that is the Shinobi state.
It’s a monumental task. He doesn't always consider that Kakashi is holed up in this office more than Naruto is.
“I’m pretty sure I read a report from the Fourth once, actually, that heralded that as a family tradition,” Kakashi says as he passes Choji his paperwork of assignment. “Perhaps I’ll have to stop by sometime. When the exams break, maybe… I have it on good authority that your family makes incredible barbecue.”
It also must be difficult, Sasuke reasons on the walk home to his apartment, to read through old reports of your former sensei who is now deceased, let alone the huge ask it is to train his son to become Hokage in his stead nearly every day.
He supposes he can take the teasing. It’s not much, in the grand scheme of things, especially given what Kakashi has done on his behalf. Their sensei deserves a bit of happiness, too.
He carefully avoids any further thoughts of family and the dead much like he avoids the small collection of puddles percolating in the street, back in his kitchen at a flash of residual gray and green from what must have been a midday rain. He resumes quick preparation of his dinner, fastidiously examining the salmon as it sizzles in the pan. It’s the perfect distraction for thoughts he is unwilling to reckon with at this particular hour, bland unseasoned sight and smell and taste cajoling him to a more docile state of mind. He counts the grooves he’s managed to carve into the specialized cutting board, too; they add up over the weeks. Maybe he’ll examine the one at Sakura’s the next time they cook together at her apartment. There are bound to be many more shared meals in the coming month or two.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Sakura is kind.
There is no avoiding that thought, no running away like a coward; it washes over him suddenly, remnant spring raindrops in the thick of summer as he calls her name, slipping off his sandals in a threshold he entered without knocking. He finds her submerged in a sea of paperwork, ebbing tides of documents surrounding her every which way on the couch.
She works on her day off, tireless in pursuit of goals that he’s sure, whatever they are, will help others far more than they will help herself. She's altruistic, affable, caring, and far too intelligent for him. She may well be developing a cure for cancer for all he knows.
Yet she also piles it up without so much as a second thought, beaming at him with jade eyes refulgent as if she's delighted to see him, even though he’s here far earlier than the agreed-upon time. He dragged out the process of doing the dishes, trying to ditch the melancholy in an exsiccate of clarifying lemon-scented dish soap that he definitely didn’t buy just because it’s the same scent she uses, but even that wasn’t lengthy enough. There’s only so much one can scrub away one-handed. Clean and shining to the eye, certainly, but to the other senses…
“Tea?” Her voice is soft. It shimmers in a way no other sound does, glitters like sea glass in a lamp-lit apartment with shoal floors, a kind budding breeze afore a hard evening.
He can only nod, struck dumb and voice ensnared in his throat at the disarming dichotomy of what he’s just realized, the last intenerating puzzle piece of the past twenty-four hours sliding into place.
He doesn’t say much the rest of the evening - thankfully, he doesn’t have to, with her - but he does choose to sit serried by her side on the couch, his thigh a scant inch from hers. His bad shoulder bumps hers once, twice, thrice, and the contact helps him feel less emotionally numb, less like he’s going into shock after a grievous injury.
It helps even more when Sakura returns from her trip to the kitchen, alone at her insistence: “No, it’s okay, Sasuke-kun; I’ve got it.” She shatters their routine completely, taking up residence on his other side, just as close as they were previously whilst interlocking her clement fingers with his.
She doesn’t say much then either, but she rests her head against his good shoulder after they’re halfway through another movie that he’s barely processing. He basks in it, the way the weight feels against his bicep, the way her digits smooth patterns against his.
It’s nice to have her closer than ever. That helps the most, really, but he still tries not to stay too late, to put it off for too long.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
He spends the better portion of an hour, then two, sitting at the memorial stone, gazing at lily sprouts and trying to determine if they've drowned, reaching for childhood optimism and failing in the attempt to reconcile what the storm has stirred up.
It is freshly-watered anger, and it is directed at his brother.
He is angry with his brother.
It’s not necessarily a new emotion. He was angry with his brother for years, prior to learning the truth; he’s no stranger to it.
He has not, however, been quite this enraged in the after , since learning the provocation. But no, that’s not quite honest, either. He was angry afterwards. He directed that anger many times, fought for it, killed for it. He's the textbook epitome of a quick study in it, for all he stewed, not knowing how to put it down as weaponry needs to be put aside in exchange for a meaningful life.
But seldom directly consolidated at Itachi.
Until now.
Sasuke is aware that his feelings in regards to his family are complicated. He is also cognizant of the fact that everything Itachi did, everything he gave up, was out of love for him.
So why is he livid ?
How can he be so infuriated?
He wants to scream, overwhelmed with the feral urge to dig up all he’s planted, blotted with rain, and throw it to the wind in some misguided attempt at gaining his brother’s attention, at having his ire recognized in some way.
It still never feels like Itachi’s here, no spirit from beyond touching stone or soil. And Sasuke supposes that makes sense, because his brother died later, separately from the others, but…
Didn’t a part of him die when he murdered their family, too?
How could one emerge from that unscathed?
Sasuke's earliest memories are hazy, half-recollected minutiae pleasantries stained with the positivity of jejune childhood. Most of what he recalls of his clan, his family, are the few short years prior to the massacre. Sure, his father’s favoritism for Itachi over him colored it less sunny, but he had his mother and his brother and all the rest. There were shared sweets at the bakery, shuriken practice in the backwoods behind the clan compound, evening treks back from the pond through grove and brushwood, clutching freshly caught flowers or a pail of perch as he learned a new distant cousin’s name and how they were related.
But when he was twelve or thirteen? His memories were well developed by then, which means Itachi's were, too; double the recollections that Sasuke had at the point of the massacre, at least. Itachi would have known what he was about to give up, what he was about to rip away from Sasuke, that it would scar him for life and leave him alone in their family home to cook dinner in the dark, because the kitchen light had a string pull system on the ceiling and their mother used to scold him when he climbed up furniture to reach things-
"You could fall and hit your head, Sasuke. Just ask me or your brother to get it for you; you'll be taller in a few years-”
-and Itachi did it anyway.
Complicated as their past is, Sakura is willing to set aside her work for him in a heartbeat, to choose kindness over and over and over when he deserves anything but, when he's not good at words or explanation or conversation, when he left her on a fucking bench , when he tried to kill her. She didn’t give up on him, even when she wanted to, even though by all divine rights in existence she should have; he's certain that he's been the cause of her tears countless times.
But Itachi? Itachi was thirteen when he killed their family, a prodigy with devastating outside influence, sure, but capable of at least some level of higher reasoning. Sasuke had memories at thirteen. He loved his team at thirteen, he loved Sakura at thirteen, messy and scattered and covert as that love was.
Itachi saw the effects wrought and continued the charade that got their family killed with barely so much as a glance back at him.
Did I make it that easy? He questions inwardly, bitterly, heirloom frown overtaking his being, lone remaining fist tightening at his side as he realizes he's never going to fully move beyond this feeling: the unalloyed abandonment , the feeling that his soul has been sliced by the gilt of a razor. It's just as fresh as it was on that night, years ago, exposed to the light and raw .
Was I that easy to walk away from?
Maybe that's why he loves his team so much. No matter what he did, they didn't abandon him like his kin did. Even Sakura couldn’t. She tried, but couldn’t, burst into tears, and he-
And maybe that's part of it, too: his attempts to be alone. If he chooses to be alone, it stands to reason that he won't lose anyone. No one can leave you alone in the dark if you leave them first.
But no, that's… not quite true either. He isn't making any sense. He seldom does, not when he's like this. He's briefly overcome by the desperate urge to visit the pond - to do what he's not sure; to scream at abandoned air, perhaps, for all the good that will do, toss excess confessionals to the wind that have already been thought a million times over - but he doesn't, because he's pretty sure that would break him on this particular day.
In lieu of ripping the buds from the soused soil, he shoves his lone hand into his pocket and begins to turn a pair of keys, soft onomatopoeia gambit clinking over and over and over.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Ultimately he lets them be, angry as he is, for his mother and his aunt and the woman in the alley with her newborn and all the rest who might like them.
For his past self, too, maybe. If the green grows tall enough, it might grasp the mnesic stardust that slipped through his fingers.
He returns to his apartment, examining empty walls and thinking about the photos that would have lined their houses were they all given the chance to age instead of ash. They would surely be more formal pictures than Hanako’s are, given clan traditions: formally posed for major events and wrapped in traditional garb for weddings and Shogatsu and Kodomo no Hi and Tanabata. He tries to imagine what their yukatas would look like, Uchiha emblems blazed upon their backs. All of his own family’s pictures, he recalls, were old-fashioned, solely black and white or sepia toned, so it’s difficult to place what colors they were wearing in retrospect. Their relatives’ pictures were much the same, he’d seen on any occasion he was taken elsewhere for dinner as a child, kept under foot and at his mother’s watchful side.
Mikoto Uchiha had a navy blue kimono she reserved for such occasions, emblazoned with finely stitched shooting stars. It just looked plain in the pictures, washed out from multidimensional blue to a dark swath of gray; he was just a baby in her arms in the most recent one of her wearing it he can recall, long lost to time and neglect. But he remembers it, the fabric of her sleeve billowing at eye level as she led him through Konoha’s streets by hand during festivals so he wouldn’t get lost in the crowd, his father and brother nowhere in sight. Cataclysmic lantern glow arched across Konoha’s streets, seeping between each booth and crowd intermingled with the rich aroma of roasting nuts and the warm spice of fried rice.
He realizes, sitting at the kitchen table and staring and thinking, that his father disliked festivals; he was not present in a single one he can remember. He must have disliked having his picture taken, too. He appeared enormously unhappy in all of them he can recollect, even in the last one Sasuke has left.
That is another thing Sasuke inherited from his father, he realizes as he finally reaches out to swipe his sole thumb across the aged photo, dug from its grave beneath Sakura’s stack of letters; he also dislikes having his picture taken, though he recognizes now that such things are… rather important, in retrospect. He’s clutched onto their team photo from years ago on countless nights.
He is like his father, though he doesn’t wish to be.
He then stares at the eyes that are encased currently in his own sockets, frowning at his brother. And this has consistently been Sasuke's problem: setting down his anger, abiding injustice. There are stages to grief, he's been told dozens of times, though he's rarely experienced them in any sort of coherent order.
His gaze inches away, frown tugging at his mouth, until he's looking at the lamp.
The details of the picture aren't as clear after he's shut off the overhead, an echo of a perpetually dark kitchen an age ago. He can barely see his father at the edge of the aged paper if he holds it just right, his face a shifting shadow in the mirk.
But he looks at the four of them, studies them catalyzed in the subtleties of lamplight, easier to bear when the colors are less saturated. He looks at himself and his brother a lifetime ago. He stares even as it feels like his insides are being scraped clean with a rusted kunai.
Take notice of what light does, to everything.
It still doesn't feel like he’s found what he’s truly searching for, but he manages to endure the elegy for nearly ten minutes before deciding he's not yet ready to confront this particular demon. He buries it beneath Sakura's letters with the rest of his good sense, anger to be confronted another day.
Because did he really need to toss him into Infinite Tsukuyomi again when he was thirteen? A simple genjutsu would have been plenty to stoke his hatred. He didn't need to make him relive the entire ordeal, to drag him back to hell as if he hadn't relived it hundreds of times by then in his own nightmares.
He's remembering the names again, a salient group autopsy carved in concrete and lost to history.
He's also remembering that he put Sakura in a similar genjutsu in a misguided attempt to protect her, too, so perhaps he and his brother aren't that dissimilar, because he didn't have to do that, yet he did. He always hurts her, loving her from afar without telling her a damn thing about it, while his lost hand burns with the phantom pain effort of pushing her away, of holding her forever at arm’s length, of aiming his Chidori at the blurred pink of her head where he knows it will wreak the most drastic damage, at-
He is like his brother, cruelly, horrifically so, just as he wished to be when he was little, though now he-
His arm hurts-
He doesn’t know a thing about love, really. He never has, has he? That part of him is stunted, twisted, cleaved off, cut from the same bark as the rest of his ilk. He always-
His arm hurts, the pain radiating up nerve endings that are no longer there, and he always-
Sasuke chooses to do what he unfailingly does when it feels a bit like he’s losing it, like he’s forgotten how to breathe or exist.
He trains and trains and trains in the grounds at the furthest edge of the village, far from anyone’s home. He repeats sword formations until they feel like a second skin, as if that will protect him, swiping at imaginary foes and endlessly wondering if he’s made one fucking bit of headway in the years since the war.
He then gulps caffeinated sencha, barely tasting it before reporting to guard duty at six, plain onigiri shoved half-assed into a container for lunch. He’ll eat dinner with Sakura after as they planned, so it’s not like he needs anything more than that to make it until six. He’ll endure his arm’s surging pains, too, until she can look at it. If he spends a day contributing to a greater good, perhaps it will feel more like he earned it.
They take over for both Inuzukas, as he expected. Hana Inuzuka says little, still studying him warily and maintaining a healthy distance, to which Sasuke can take no offense. Kiba acknowledges them both, at least, though he seems tired. It makes sense; guard duty is invariably an uninspired endeavor, and less so when the shifts are lengthened.
They’re two hours into duty when Sasuke arrives at the conclusion that Choji talks less than he remembers he did in their youth.
It’s not that Sasuke isn’t aware of this. People change. He’s been on two missions with the man now; obviously people develop beyond the time that they were school children. Gods know he has, to everyone’s unfortunate detriment.
But, it still surprises him. He’s not sure if it’s out of politeness for the fact that Sasuke has always been lackluster at best as a conversationalist or if it’s out of simple contentedness, as guard duty in an era of peace is uniquely suited to allow a snack here and there. Missions in the field don’t frequently allow such a privilege; Choji is as cheerful as he’s always been, chomping away at a bag of chips and for all intents and purposes seeming as if he’s enjoying this assignment, even without the aid of any conversation to help the time pass.
What doesn’t surprise him one bit is when his partner for the day creates a shadow clone prior to pulling out a miniature iron griddle, kindling, another container of signature spices, and all of the fixings needed to make teppanyaki in the umbra of the gates, save a lighter.
“Say, could you…?”
Serpent, ram, monkey, boar, horse, tiger.
The real Choji continues his rounds opposite Sasuke as the clone prepares what he gathers must be the standard Akimichi lunch. The fire is small, but it doesn’t take long for the pan to begin its sizzling.
Another surprise arrives in the form of the clone handing him a fair clutching of neat kebabs. Sasuke stares at them in absolute fucking bewilderment.
“You can eat first,” his old classmate of a lifetime ago tells him cheerfully. “It’s tradition.”
The clone then sidles back to the grill to rotate a mass of remaining skewers in the shade, as if the kindness cost him absolutely nothing.
It’s significantly more substance than onigiri, that’s for sure; it basically melts off the stick and into his mouth, fragrant and filling and way higher quality meat than he typically buys for himself. It helps with his tiredness at the very least. It makes the light of day bearable, too; less grating on the eyes and his arm’s phantom pain.
“...Thanks.”
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
If you could only keep one sense, which would you choose?
Sasuke finds himself reflective on past conversations following an evening well-spent with Sakura, throbbing phantom pain freshly healed in his bad arm and eyelids drooping with the didactic endeavors of the past day and then some.
Perhaps losing his sight wouldn't be the worst option after all. Like any Uchiha, he relies on it far too much, has worn it thin. He thinks of revolving keys passing between his remaining fingers. He thinks of Sakura’s hand intertwined with his, of the sound of a storm roaring overhead and the poetry of her berry scent and soft breaths beside him, the pumping of her heart akin to the ticking of a clock, concatenation all within his grasp.
He walks, tethered to a shaky impetus and contemplating the nature of smell as he tries to avoid peeling back his own skin in his urgency to get to the fucking point. Did his own kin smell like fire, smoky yet with enough bite to sear sustenance? He must have been so used to it that he never noticed.
And he needs groceries, anyway. Not that he remembers that once he’s there.
Taste is a good sense, as Choji said. Maybe Sasuke hasn't fully appreciated it. It seems a safer alternative than shaking down the sky.
There are many varieties of jasmine tea at the market, he learns, even at the handful of places that linger open after the pitch has swallowed the last trace of the sun, stars twinkling into existence stretched across a lacquered navy sky. He picks the one that seems the most traditional, because of course he does.
Sasuke then reaps the smell of summer, the twinkling of green grass and azaleas and fresh drizzle saturating everything once more, intermingling in the street as he wanders at a snail’s pace back to his apartment, trying to summon an appetite or further mettle for what he’s about to do.
It's easier, he finds, if he doesn't look at the puddles for too long, if he passes beneath the cherry blossom tree across the street on his way home, ramified branches flourishing emerald and juniper.
His eyes prick at the smell alone, steeped in wistful memory contained within a steaming cup anew. It's been years since he cried at the simple smell of it - you’re fucking hopeless, it’s just tea - and that's a shame, because he was really hoping that his journey had helped him get somewhere, broached common ground in the form of miles marked and exchanged endearments. Instead he’s still blistering with the same old wounds, scarred and bruised black, smearing the metaphorical ink before it’s even dried.
Sasuke manages two assiduous sips. Corrosion, he reflects.
The first is alchemic, transcendental, synodic threaded memories hooking scattered stars across a navy blue kimono sleeve that was once the scope of his entire world, come alive from where they reside trapped in his every neuron, tucked away for safekeeping.
The second sears his insides with demise, croons down his capillaries and trickles into every cell like the sweetest poison, violently dissolving brittle bones and haunted flesh and reminding him of things that are no longer his. Things that will never be his. And he is lacking, lacking-
The taste is good: fragrant and salt of the earth.
The memory is not: always bitter, always biting, exposing his turpitude for all to see.
The problem is him, always him. He is not like his mother, but he wants to be. He wants to be worthy of it, all of the love and smeared sacrifice and the chronic weight of expectation.
Instead he is himself.
He dumps the remainder of the cup unceremoniously down the sink. The remaining box of tea is shoved to the very back corner of the lower cupboard in short order, hidden behind his meager collection of pots and pans to be forgotten before heading to his bedroom and slamming the door shut to lie in the dark alone. He plummets beneath the weight of dark bedding and the dispiritingly neutral aroma of clean laundry.
And memories. Memories burning at the windows, memories snarling and tugging at his eyes in saturnine demand, colossal bleeding mazarine blue just waiting to be let in with the summer air and the distant susurrus of night herons and crickets counting time against their fresh wings and swishing grass. One small step, then another. It takes a century on little legs, wisps of the past haunting the present: wildflowers clutched in both tiny hands, utterly oblivious to the damage it would cause, far worse than a stray thorn or the tender sting of a bee. And how could he emerge unscathed, when he was plucking away their sustenance?
He can’t hear anything currently, save his own heart, beating incessantly on.
He shuts his eyes. He relies on seeing far too much, apotheosizes it beyond everything else. His sight and his propinquity for anger and running and beating something bloody never got him anywhere. He needs to feel.
He can imagine it: natant sunshine atop tide rolling in, how it would feel to trace the lineament of her face with touch rather than his brother’s vision. He could leave something tangible behind, something that doesn’t hurt, a careful but purposeful fingerprint or ten across the caress of her cheek instead of simply stealing his mementoes while she’s asleep like a coward.
The empty spaces between his fingers ache like loss, like liminal longing, like the border between land and seafoam, palpable with resolved desire to close the distance.
49 notes
·
View notes