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Anodyne - for Sasuke Retsuden Week 2022

Pairing: SasuSaku Prompt: Day 2 - Time Stops (For Us) Title: Anodyne Vibes/Tags/CW: AU; Magical Realism; Unreliable Narrator; Blood/Violence; Magic Forest; time is a construct 

Time does not seek forward and back, but sifts endlessly, emergent, everywhere all at once. 

Sasuke gets lost, and Sakura is found — perhaps, though, it’s the other way ‘round.

This is a love story, one that anyone can tell. Ao3 | twt | FFN | @ssretsudenweek22

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But I must confess, I did it all for myself; I gathered you here to hide from some vast, unnameable fear.

— No Choir, Florence + the Machine

I. 

The sensation rocks him skull to heels, seconds before the actual sound pops — a savage crack wrenches the air apart, a ragged, violent riff on the dank forest chill. Heat torches it first, skewering his shoulder; then cold, prickling with a heady buzz.

Bullets take no prisoners, and the understanding comes a nanosecond after:

Uchiha Sasuke realizes he’s been shot.

Utterly alone in a strange, ancient wood on a ridiculous hike precipitated by an unraveling, a crisis. Of course, despite doing all the right things like wearing a garish orange jacket to ward off wayward hunters and making sure to trek the abandoned trail with friends — as if they would have actually ever been able to fight off bears or other predatory animals, packing snacks and following tracks and weighed down with flares, flares — !

Swinging his pack off with a grunt, the movement makes him dizzy, that massive adrenaline dump usually following trauma arriving on schedule. He lands on hands and knees in the mud, and his collapse releases unsettling and rich terroir smells, hazy through the overwhelming and coppery tang of his blood pouring inside out.

Rooting desperately, fingers fumbling with zippers and velcro flaps, digging and seeking and he chokes, throat tightening at the pain starting to seep through the adrenaline’s cloaked protection. He is so stupid, he could have gone skydiving or drunk himself comatose in a bathtub or any number of normal crises but he was convinced to come find his heart and soul on an adventurous camping trip after his family’s arranged marriage for him fell through. Leave it to his dumb best friend to convince him.

His fingers shake and hitch momentarily before closing with relief around the flare. Red:  Emergency, immediate assistance needed.

He flicks his thumbnail under the cap and it arcs, landing in the pulpy soil. For a moment, it’s a beacon against the loamy brown, sitting lonely in the mud. Snatching it up, he gasps against the wave of encroaching pain; it’s starting to puncture the defensive cloak of adrenaline shock. Curling his fingers into a fist around the plastic, his knuckles pop and sing. He startles at a strange, low wounding sound reminding him of lonely, winter-stranded animals, before registering that it’s coming from him.

He pulls the scratch of the flare cap across the black, rough strip. Nothing. Strength dwindling fast and pain spreading swiftly, he swipes it again in anger, crying out.

Breathing shallower.

It happens too fast for him to perceive properly, and one bullet whizzes by so close he can swear it tickles his cheek, and then,

perhaps it’s lucky another one hits true, aiming to take him out of this misery.

Lodging itself less accurately than the first, the impact a glancing blow against his left shoulder.  He sways, suspended in a crystallized microsecond of agony before the ground rises up to meet him without mercy and he lands facedown. He fades in and out, tasting blood, the pinch of smoke, and his own sweat.

Footsteps in the mud squelch toward him, heavy but with a sense of urgency. A mistake, Sasuke mouths into the forest floor — a mistake. Blood, liquid and loose in his mouth. Tries to cough and clear it but the attempt makes him nearly blind with pain. At least one person, maybe three? His mind is scrambling, spinning, fighting off nearly three decades of memories all spilling into frayed milliseconds of impending doom.

“Hmm, human. Didn't expect that.”

Someone else groans and he can sense they are closer, grumbling in tones bearing the weight of physical work and hard years.

“Flip him over.”

And someone does — not gently, and with his boot, lifting and then kicking to roll him over the rest of the way.

Well, there go his hopes.

Two men stand on either side of him, making Sasuke feel as though he’s at the bottom of an endless well, drowning and all. With the view of the forest trees fluttering at the edges of pain and panic, he groans against the threat of unconsciousness tugging, its claws too close.

He registers these strangers’ details in flashes of barely managed understanding: Boots for difficult terrain, thick wool coats knit for the forest's endless chill. Both carrying an ease and familiarity with the whispering woods surrounding them. Left man shoulders his rifle onto his back, tilts his head with a sour grimace and blinks his strangely filmy, vacant eyes. Right man picks an unruly nail and, nostrils flaring, kicks Sasuke in his side again, and none too lightly.

The man on the left:  “Ah, we may be in trouble for this one.”

His counterpart: “‘We?!’ Neji, you shot him!”

“What do you mean ‘you shot him’?” This voice is new.

Sasuke cries out at least as much in frustration as pain; he’s sure he’ll bleed out before these imbeciles complete their ridiculous conversation. Eyes falling closed against what might be his first unvarnished taste of the pain, goodbye adrenaline, his body bucks and his hand flies to his shoulder. Immediately soaked and thick with blood, he tries to staunch it, teeth gnashing, seething all the while.

Someone new enters the clearing, casting a strange and spectral hush. Sounds defined now only in their reverberating absence, the gut sensation of missing a step down the stairs. Twittering birds, moaning and majestic trunks of trees, the ululating, sharp wind. All smothered, vanished, perhaps scattered by the twined scents of cherry and smoke, of steps crackling the leaves underfoot, fluttering and light and, if his soul wasn’t being wrung of blood via two bullet holes, he’d like to look upon this specter, drawn to its strangeness.

Inhuman. Asked later, he would not be able to give words or shape to this kernel of knowledge, only surety running in deep fjords in his very bones.

Sasuke senses close movement, his body shakes with simultaneous heat and chill.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t—”

A soft sound of rustling fabric —

“— touch him,” Neji sighs.

And Sasuke feels delicate fingers on his cheek. A woman’s? Slight callouses, skincatch and gone.

If he does one final thing before he dies, he needs to open his eyes.

“I’ll have to, if I want to ensure he lives. How could you?”

“According to the genius here,” and Neji’s chilly tone slides into clipped arrogance, sharpening each syllable, “there was no question it was animal game.”

“Imbeciles.” There’s no doubt she’s muttered it a million times before.

Sasuke’s breathing shifts, bursting in gasps now, shallower in each one passing, and she taps his cheek gently. In a low voice she asks, “Can you tell me your name, sir?” Her hands move quickly, seeking a pulse in the hollow of his neck, fingers pressing the wound between his to help along the pressure.

In his dying haze, a flutter in his gut. Flicker and fear, and something yawning and dark.

He tries to oblige her request, but of course, there’s blood backing up into his throat. It comes out as choking and bubbling instead.

“Need to move a little faster,” she mutters, seemingly to herself. Patting his fingers with a fairylight, sticky touch of blood, she removes her hands and he’s oddly desperate; but then, that could simply be the response to not wanting to die on the ground alone.

There’s whispering, and he wonders if hallucinations are standard exhalations of the body in crisis. Odd and serpentine, skinsmears on bark, open your eyes open your eyes open your eyes —

With a last burst of desperation, Sasuke does.

Again, such frantic and chaotic processing: Glassgreen eyes, pursed lips that now part slightly at the sight of him, silk pink hair braided into a plait, the lengthy end strands tumbling in milky-way formlessness against the forest floor. Whispers from nowhere override his common sense, and his bloody hand leaves his shoulder wound and lunges for her black cloak instead, dragging her close.

Blood flows freely, and it’s the least of his worries. The voices go quiet.

She looks stricken by his sudden movements, and there seems to be words on the apex of her lips that she swallows deeply, down, locking a secret and eating the key. Instead, with a little shake of her head, she says firmly, “We’ll have to put him out.”

Neji frowns; the tracker shows pointed teeth.

“Are you sure?”

“If you’d shot an animal and it was hurt, half-alive, would you drag it all over creation, prolonging its suffering?”

Whereas Neji has the grace to deliberate it, or at least pretend to, the tracker shrugs and unearths his own rifle, flipping it around to brandish the gunstock end.

“Sorry pal. Doctor’s orders.”

A strange electricity and snapcrackle in the air. Sakura carefully loosens Sasuke’s fingers from her cloak.

“H-Help me!”

Something flickers in her expression at his outburst. The smile stretching her beautiful lips is strained, a mask that doesn’t quite fit.

“We will, don’t worry, sir.”

She leans in, closes the distance, and the seconds stretch to years. Her fingers lift his dark hair from his perspiring forehead, graze his ear, his chin, and she directs his face to hers, squinting into his dark eyes.

Is this dying, the harrowing second of every nerve and neuron misfiring while collapsing into every single, finespun memory he’s ever known? These fierce and forest eyes beholding his last gasps?

Sasuke feels faint; he feels beloved.

The doctor’s companions step forward as she retreats, fingers trailing off his bloodsoaked chin as she murmurs,

“You really don’t want to be awake for this part.”

Pain splits his face wide open, scattering stars in his vision only to be swiftly blotted out by blackest night.

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Slivers of senses at first:  The muted tap of a pen on paper, lifted and placed down again with intention, dots of i’s and the scrape of t’s. A sigh into silence.

Groaning, heavy boots on thick wood floors, a comfortable call and response. The uncanny sensation of deja vu; routines for years.

Starchy sheets, clean-bleached and tugging the sensitive hairs on the skin of his arms, and finally,

the sunlight blooms with the shift of time, pulling him to full consciousness with a jolt as the midday beam falls across his eyes. He opens them.

It takes Sasuke a long minute to realize where he is, what’s happened. Ideally, it would have been a vivid dream. But, no, the heaviness of his head and stiffness in his limbs and the dry, acrid aftertaste of blood in his mouth cements his reality. He’s lying on a cot in a brick room of sorts. The floor is chilly, the atmosphere damp, air tasting of silt.

“I think he’s awake,” the woman — doctor? — says, more to herself than to her companion. She doesn’t stop writing, doesn’t break pace.

The latter has a rifle lying across his knees, wearing the same canine-sharp grin.

Sasuke’s vision finally adjusts, and he realizes he’s staring at this doctor and wild tracker from behind iron bars.

The doctor follows his gaze, which is warily fixed on the weapon, and continues. “Please understand, no one will be hurting you here. We’ve just . . . never had this happen before. Visitors, yes . . . in this circumstance, well.” She smiles gently, tilts her head; Sasuke’s stomach swoops for reasons unknown. “You’re certainly the most handsome stranger we’ve had in a long while.”

Sasuke muses on her quip of long while as he observes this doctor can’t be a day over twenty-eight.

“Don't let Hyuuga hear you say that,” the tracker quips, picking his teeth with a fingernail that looks more claw than human. “He styles himself the prettiest.”

The doctor sighs, shrugging her endless pink plait over a shoulder. Finally, she puts down the pen.

“Handsome, meet Inuzuka. Resident tracker of game and apparently, occasional humans. Inuzuka, meet—?”

Feeling on the spot, Sasuke remembers his born and bred manners and valiantly struggles to a sitting position despite his slinged left arm. Glowering at Inuzuka and his compensating weapon, he instead tries to meet the doctor’s eyes.

Wild and green, layered as the forest Sasuke’s quite sure they’re surrounded by. There’s curiosity there, a sharp intelligence, and —

something tugging under his ribs, there and then gone. Staring instead at her long pink braid, he inclines his head politely and clears the blood and phlegm out of his throat before answering.

“Sasuke. Uchiha Sasuke.”

Careful not to hang on her gaze too long, he sees a brightness flicker, her lips twisting. Hiding a smile, something. Even in this dank cell, miles from home, shot twice, in an objectively bad situation, he’s feeling a strange heat and it is certainly not a fever.

“I’m Doctor Haruno,” she offers, rising from her chair. “But my first name is Sakura.”

As she comes to a stop outside the cell, watching him through the bars, he wonders what she’s given him that he’s not feeling a bit of pain. Who knew they had great medicine this deep in the wildwood? Named after a flower — fitting, he thinks, but his eyes don’t miss a beat as she rifles through her white coat’s pockets and locates the jail keys.

“H-hey,” Inuzuka stammers, “you’re just letting him out?”

Sakura waves her hand over her shoulder, smiling kindly as she enters the key into the lock. “Go find Hyuuga and tell him it’s all right. Don’t let him sulk.”

Grumbling, Inuzuku leaves as she opens the cell door and comes inside without preamble, sitting next to Sasuke’s cot on the floor. Unearthing a small flashlight and stethoscope from nowhere, she begins to poke and prod him gently, checking his vision, feeling his forehead.

“I removed both bullets,” she begins, “and cleaned you up. Sleep and time are the true healers, and you’ve been out for, oh, a couple days.” Sasuke blanches, and Sakura pats his cheek gently. “You’ve missed nothing important, I promise. You have all the time in the world here.” She taps a slim finger on his sternum with questioning eyes. “May I?”

Anxious electricity in his hands, dancing with delight on the merry way down his spine. She’s hard to look too closely at — but then, he’s never been quite good at romanticism, at vulnerability, at being anything but a stubborn ass who ultimately couldn’t even hang on to the good woman his family had hoped he’d marry.

He’s sorry, but still relieved.

“Sorry, cold hands.” The ghost of a nervous laugh, more from the throat than her lips, as her hands steal beneath the hem of his shirt and the metal bell touches his chest. But it’s warm, all of it, all of her.

He’s acutely aware of how little he’s speaking, how a man in this situation should have more questions. How little he cares about where he is now that he’s here. Clearing his throat again to delay,

“Haruno — erm, Doctor —”

“You can call me Sakura.”

“Hmm. Ma’am?”

“Miss,” she corrects. “I’m only twenty-eight, sir.”

“Ah. Then can we dispense with ‘sir?’”

“I think that’s fair,” she says. Those green eyes gleam, playful, sinking him in unknown heat. She moves the bell to various places on his chest, as if searching for something.

“Where am I, exactly?”

“A small town outside the hiking woods. We’re a quiet place. Some people move through town for a day or two, simply needing a break. Others leave difficult things behind, like hard lives or tough circumstances, and decide they would like to stay.”

Sakura goes still for a moment, unblinking, as a game animal pauses and points in pursuit. The nod to herself is imperceptible, and she untangles herself from him and his shirt, folding the stethoscope tails over themselves.

That unexplained warmth flees, dissipates, as she retreats.

“What was it?” Sasuke asks. A long beat, and he watches as she slips a moment into a momentary sojourn to a painful past. Where he gets the familiarity, the notion to tap her arm, he doesn’t know, but when accompanied with an urgent, low, “Hey, Sakura,” she rejoins him on earth.

“Nothing,” she says, embarrassed. Indicating the stethoscope in her hand, she repeats, “nothing there. All good.”

Now bustling, woman on a mission, she’s on her feet, all business again. “This town can be prickly on the outside, a bit insular. Those who do stay, do so for a long time. Please don’t be surprised if people take a while to warm up to you. It’s not their fault.” Now it’s she who doesn’t seem to look him right in the eyes. “There’s . . . a lot of people trying to heal.”

Sasuke thinks on the last time he was in his family’s home, waiting in the main corridor outside his parents’ drawing room to break the news, that yet again he could not do this, could not marry, could not find it in himself to act halfway human, always spurning their carefully-laid plans and choices for him. Except he had been beaten to the punch, his fiancee’s crimson eyes eating him alive as she stalked past him on the way out, setting him on fire in the vile way, the devil-drag-me-down way, nothing left in them but venom.

She’d left the door cracked open, the red carpet rolled out to plead his case and confess his mess.

Several arguments later, he found himself crammed in a car on the way to his camping crisis adventure with nothing but a rucksack and his guilt, the unending sound of his best friend droning in his ear. Trying to shake off the old, cling to a new north star.

Finding himself lulled by the sea eyes of this stranger, he can’t shake the same sweet sensation of fire. Not in the way of resentment, in which one side aches and the other takes — this, here, is a precipice, a loving and mutually assured destruction.

“I’m assuming until you’re better,” Sakura says, “you’ll be needing a place to recuperate. There’s a room above the bar where most newcomers stop first, but I’ll be frank with you, they’re going to be wary of a strange man.”

Sasuke forces his feet underneath him, crouched, intent on standing, and Sakura kneels to assist, frowning. Irritated, he waves her off and she obliges his stubbornness with a shake of her head and an impatient tuh!, leaning against the iron bars and folding her arms. Typical patient behavior, and he’s made acutely aware of his weakness when he makes it to a standing position, sways, and catches his weight by throwing his good arm across the bars, bracing himself.

Looming over her, breathing heavy, unbearably close.

He doesn’t realize his eyes are closed until the serpentine voices return,

open your eyes open your eyes open your eyes,

and her beautiful mouth closes around the phrase at the exact same time in an echo,

“Sasuke, open your eyes.”

And he does.

With a gentle, steadying hand on his chest, her voice is a notch above a whisper when she says,

“I think it’s better . . . if you come with me.”

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They move as a single unit, Sakura supporting the stranger’s unhurt flank as they walk through the main drag of town.

Stranger . . . more like prisoner, tone grim even in her own head. Until they know his motives, people will be skittish. Like she should be.

She’s hoping the sight of her personally escorting him will ease their fears. When a newcomer arrives in town it’s always an inevitable habit, birds returning to their same migration patterns, like instinct. They gather and hover and breathlessly whisper, conjuring up excuses to visit her home and pry for gossip, suddenly needing medicine for their ills, herbs and plants for cooking and warding off spirits, tea to replace the two month’s supply given only a fortnight ago.

She has a more personal, and arguably selfish, reason for keeping him close. The ethics, debatable. But there are voices in the winds and signs in her nightmares, and the unsettling swirl pattern etching itself into reality upon dropping her own tea leaves and dregs on the floor.

Truth is there, moaning in the shadows and tugging at her sleeves, reminding her not to overstep. His arrival brings premonition she can only taste the edges of.

His looks are an irrelevant bonus.

While she senses he would be perfectly comfortable in pensive silence, she tries to make a kind effort to play tour guide.

“There’s a general store, a tailor . . . a library, of course. Across the street and down a bit further, you’ll see the town seat — you know, records and things.”

“Sakura?”

She doesn’t like the way he says her name — by which she means she’s obsessed with the low baritone in which he does. Looking away, she pretends to observe the world with intent under the scrutiny of his dark, intense eyes: Bluegreen leaves on the cusp of autumn turning, wind fluting through trees, seeking chainless escape. There’s been a steady hum since he’s crossed the boundary, forty-eight hours of seeking meaning.

And, the solstice is late.

“Yes, Sasuke?”

He pauses. There’s nothing in the intervening silence but the scraping sounds of their shoes.

“Where would I find a phone? The one I had with me on the hike is gone. I can see it’s a small town; still, I’m sure there’s one somewhere, for emergencies.”

“Sure.”

She doesn’t elaborate, and Sasuke waits.

“We’re coming up on my place,” she continues. “I’m so sorry, it’s on the edge of town. Once you’re settled in and have a chance to heal properly, we can discuss hiking to the next village over to use the phone.” Heading off further inquiries, she laughs, though it sounds strained. “I know, we’re really rural bumpkins out here.”

Sasuke doesn’t mention how little pain he’s in. Aside from a few attacks of dizziness and weakness, he has the distinct feeling that this lightness and lack isn’t quite right. Though, what would he know? Prior to this, he’s never been seriously injured, much less shot.

“Sure. I understand.”

Tension releases, unlocks and smooths her stiff shoulders. She notices he notices. They are dancing much too close.

Her cabin is set back from the road, a winding path leading any visitor through a lush front lawn and rippling, thick trees. Summer’s finale hanging on, refusing to let the season turn. By the crisp scent of molding foliage, autumn is merely seconds away. Dark windows, telling Sasuke that she hasn’t been home since their encounter; wind chimes, wood and metal brushing against one another and separating again, softly, as fingers plucking at instrument strings; bushels of produce, foodstuffs, and other goods, arranged to one side of the front door in a way that suggests someone else dropped it off, perhaps on a route.

Up the stairs, through the front door. Sakura can feel him handling his own weight with ease, but still finds herself rotating within arm’s length, excuses to touch.

“Let me bring these in,” she calls from the porch, “and I’ll give you the tour.”

Sasuke watches her maneuver the bushels with aplomb, looks around the entryway, taking in the cabin’s generous space. Sensing rooms in all directions, for the first time he wonders if anyone else lives here. With her. The lack of additional pairs of shoes or jackets on hooks, however, indicates otherwise.

Leaving the goods aside, Sakura shows him around. The front of the house is for receiving — exam room, a small area for waiting guests. Deeper in, a storeroom laden with strong smells of bundled herbs, containers of tea leaves, roots tied in bundles with ribbons, all hodgepodge amid more practical items like gloves and gauze. Here and there, an errant scalpel, functioning as a bookmark or knife or a potential accident depending on the task they’d been left in the middle of. Shelves and shelves of books, all looking much older than her.

“Messy, I know,” she says, blushing. “I’m classically trained — obviously,” and she indicates his slinged shoulder, “but there’s plenty to learn in the realm of herbs and tonics.”

“And teas, apparently.” Sasuke inclines his head to a particularly precarious stack of glass jars.

“Right.” She brings her hands together, fingers twisting in agitation. “Still, someone has to do it. And I certainly have the time.”

Sasuke doesn’t miss the focused intent in the way she shuts the door, or the way she makes a fleeting gesture before she brushes the tips of her fingers across the lock.

Superstitious, he thinks. Interesting.

He follows her through her home, lost in thought.

Abruptly and by magic, it seems, she’s gathered a pile of sheets and towels in her arms, and presents them to him.

“I’ll show you the guest bedroom. I’m sure a shower’s been on your mind as well. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.” She starts down the hallway, and he follows. “There’s also a kitchen, a den — oh! A garden in the back, if you’re interested. My room, and also my study.” A pause. “Please understand I would prefer if you didn’t go in there, for privacy reasons. Patient records, you understand. The storeroom can be dangerous, so I’d rather you let me know if you need something.”

“Dangerous?”

“What if you trip?” It’s supposed to be a joke, but tension threads the attempt at humor. “Or poison yourself?”

“Hmm. And should I be worried about my safety, Doctor? Are you moonlighting as a mad scientist?”

The back of her neck burns so red, he can practically hear it sizzling. Tossing her pink plait over her shoulder with a huff, Sasuke smirks.

“No,” she says, honeyed but sarcastic. “Just your resident forest witch.”

An awkward laugh murmurs between them. Sasuke thinks back to when he was shot. Voices and lush scents. Eyes endless and layered green thickets beckoning him in. Maybe it was the adrenaline, maybe it was the fear of dying. All from the trauma, he’s sure he’s read it in a book. Maybe that explains why she’s so easy to lo—

“Here’s the shower, Sasuke.”

He finds himself staring through the doorway directly into a mirror, startling at his own reflection. With his tangled, mussed hair and dried blood accouterments, slouchy wrinkled clothes, and sling, he has the urge to apologize. Gods, does he reek? He hasn’t even thought about it. Steps forward as in a dream, nose nearly to the glass, the chaos of his last few weeks before he came here begins to settle into his shoulders, his neck. His mistakes. And here he was teasing this doctor, being flippant.

As if he has the right.

“I’ll leave you to it.” Sakura’s voice is quiet and she prepares to step away from the door.

“Doctor Haruno.”

“I said Sakura was fine.”

“Sakura, then.”

Her pink eyebrows arch upward, indicating her attention.

“ . . . Thank you.”

A tiny head tilt. She runs her fingers down the door frame, looking at anything but him, and eventually melts away and out of his sight, embarrassed, almost like vanishing.

Returning his attention to the mirror, he sighs at his haggard reflection. In his head it all plays on repeat, the engagements he’s fractured, the business endeavors failed, the drinking lapses, and all the people constantly picking him up again, the brother he shrugged off, lovers he didn’t love, well-meaning friends. He shakes it away, and removes his sling. Runs his fingers over the bandages, seeking the place where the edge meets tape.

Sasuke unravels himself bit by bit, gauze and tape and disintegrating tissue, soaked with dried bloodrust. His stomach lurches before he pulls away the last thin layers closest to the wounds, layers which slip through his numb fingertips and float, tumbling, to the tile.

Almost expecting it, the guileless and unmarked skin, smooth where the collarbone meets the shoulder meets the pectoral, that prized spot of yesteryear swordfighters where the armor never quite reaches, a fleshy target for near-certain death.

No evidence of bullets; no evidence of anything.

The dizziness sweeps at him hard, feeling like a real blow and making him unsteady on his feet. His own common sense takes him by the shoulders, gives him a hard shake.

Rubbing his thumb, hard, in repetitive motions where the bullets had nested in, tried to claim his life — and they were there, he had known, he had felt the pain, he had seen —

Behind him, Sakura passes by in the hallway, head tilted forward in thought. Pink, beautiful braid laddering down her back, swaying, flyaway tendrils escaping her tight-knit plait.

Sasuke grips the edge of the counter, holding his breath and trying to convince himself in vain that the good doctor did,

she did, she must?!

have a reflection in the mirror.

[silentvoicescryingout]

Hana

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.

Tag list: @ephemeredoll @lezzxe @psalloacappella

[psy-ay-ay]

ohmygod OHMYFUCKINGGOD SASUSAKU heaven if you even care???btw??

[silentvoicescryingout]

Honored to be tagged to participate! Warning-- I write long senteces and know few people T_T

tagging: @psalloacappella @ephemeredoll @pomeyasha @motheryoon @elegiesforshiva and anyone else who would like to participate!

Last Line

Rules: Post the last line you wrote in your current WIP and tag as many people as there are words.

Tagged by: @corneliaavenue-ao3

and did somebody say fun dream sequence in a 2K fic that's slowly growing!

tagging: @sunshine-states, @lafgl, @thenicestthingiveseen, @alphacrone (don't give me that look – you've been on a murderous roll!), @addawithbalmiki, @secretkeeper13, @narukoibito, @yellowocaballero...yeah, i'm going to stop there. but feel free to cheer yourself on, if you want!

[theredconversegirl]

hi!! first wanted to say your lists are so useful and really helps readers find niche genres or types of fics!

I've been reading this one for a while, sirens, https://archiveofourown.org/works/24449026 and hope they update it soon, it's a dark modern AU where Sasuke was listening to sakura on her radio show and becomes obsessed with her, but then they meet! it's super twisty but totally worth it!

truly I'd rec everything by them but in particular this one is just so different in a good way

Hi nonny,

Thank you for stopping by with a rec! 💕

Ah, Sirens is a great fic; the AU is so unique and fascinating. 🤩 I'm happy to recommend it again here:

Sirens By: psalloacappella “So you’re his best friend.” A statement, not a question. “Crazy handsome, kind of a jerk?” ❦ He only knows her as the voice that accompanies him while he works overnights; it’s akin to an obsession. The night she takes a seat at the bar, their lives will never be quite the same. [Rated M, incomplete?]

I also hope the fic gets more updates soon. Thanks for the help and I'm glad my lists are useful. 🤗❤

Wishing you a great weekend!

Stay Safe,

xoxo

[narutobad]

Black period fic rec list?….. 🌝👀

hi anon, i'm so sorry it took me so long :( here you go, under the cut

i’m tagging the authors’ tumblrs so you can follow them too; if you happen to be the author of any of these fics, please know you’re important and deeply appreciated. thank you so much for your work!

multi-chapter

close to home by dances.with.sunflowers

Something in his eyes told her, it was always you.

// this is my absolute favorite get-together ss fic, i don’t see it on rec lists very often and it’s such a shame because it’s so great?? the most realistic one i’ve read so far. if op wants to post those bonus chaps 10 years from now i won’t be mad! //

equilibrium by @psalloacappella​

We bear the whispers of stories we didn't write, and the burden of becoming legends we never desired. All we do is keep chasing one another in circles, endlessly wanting.

Everything has changed; nothing has. Team Seven navigates life after war.

// the fics in this series go beyond sasuke and sakura’s relationship, they explore the complicated dynamics and push and pull within so many others, and do such a great job of depicting every gray area. so unique. love it so much. about sasusaku especifically, i adore sasuke’s devotion to sakura in each and every fic they’ve written. do check those out! //

unspoken by silentvoicescryingout

Years had passed between Uchiha Sasuke and Haruno Sakura. It took them time to re-learn each others' silent language

// this fic is full of miscommunication and angst and it’s so good, so incredibly well written //

in times of peace by @southsidestory

The war is over, and like Konoha, Team 7 has rebuilt itself from the ground up. Everything has changed, but Sasuke and Sakura remain much the same. Eleven years, she thinks, is a long time to be in love.

// ok this author is put on rec lists all the time as she should and for good reason!! i love her characterization of both characters, they’re so messy and angsty and so GOOD //

satoru by pudgypanda.

A series of vignettes set chronologically over the course of the years Sasuke and Sakura spend traveling together - and a story of how two hurt people reaching for each other can grow back together again.

the garden by @catflorist

Sasuke left Konoha for a cottage in the woods. One day, Sakura arrives injured at his doorstep. They recall their past and think about what comes next.

Slow burn, post-canon about how Sasuke and Sakura grew close again.

// one of my fave ss authors, appreciate how they become friends again before anything romantic happens, and fics addressing the injustices in konoha’s system are so important to me!! plus they garden together!!! //

heat by @lady-otori [on-going]

Sasuke’s temperature has always run higher than most, and Sakura has always, always burned for him. Moments of heat, spent together in the time after his return. 

// the ust is so thiiiiick, definitely one of the hottest ss fics i’ve ever read //

i follow rivers by @diwatafolk

Sasuke and Sakura throughout the Blank Period. Also, in this universe, they own cats.

// love this author. they’re written with so much care and tenderness //

one-shots

(we bloom during) Hanami by sparklyfaerie

He wants her to say it first; he wants her to take the burden from him and put voice to what’s growing between them. It’s the only way, he knows, that he won’t feel like he’s being selfish and pressuring her into anything.

tender by pain_somnia

He ignored freckled shoulders and winsome smiles meant just for him. He ignored creamy thighs and slender fingers that pinched at the back of his shirt.  Those tender feelings weren’t meant for him to explore.

// i adore this author’s writing. their blank period trilogy of sorts is so fluffly and achingly sweet. finally and nightly visit //

open my chest and colour my spine by whirpoools

two weeks  by @kuriquinn

Why do you stay with me?” she asks quietly, tentatively. She's never asked anything this intimate before.

He clears his throat, letting the question hang in the air. Thinking of what to say to that. If he could ever put it into words and say those out loud. He thumbs the curve of her waist. “Why do you keep me?” he asks.   He feels her shift to burrow her head deeper on the crux of his throat. “There’s no one else,” she answers.   He exhales. “There’s nowhere else,” he answers.

Two weeks from now, Sasuke Uchiha will fall in love for the first time in his eighteen years.

// legendary author. one of my favorite sakura / sasuke characterizations out there. i think miso soup everyday also fills this prompt, do check it out! //

the burden of unknowing by @anthropologicalhands

Unexpectedly, Sakura joins Sasuke on his travels. There is something weighing on her. He will wait until she's ready to tell him.

// sakura finding out about the uchiha massacre is a favorite of mine. she deserves to know, it’s so satisfying to see her allowed to get angry. and well, if it’s written by this author it’s guaranteed to be good 🥰 check out their other stuff!! //

pockets by miyachondria.

They've been beginning for quite some time.

interim by stannide

Sasuke lives with Sakura in the weeks after the war.

[scribe-of-elysium]

Hi, Seraphina. These are my fave SS fanfics I read: “Sunrise” by Amraklove, “Komorebi” by Fatalfascination(luxillume), “Sirens” by psalloacappella, “The Uchiha’s Wife” by Ombree, “A Cornucopia of Conundrums” by zgs1994, “A Twist in Time” by wolf08, & “Reacquaintance” by thisthatfictions. I hope you enjoy reading them!

Oooh, thank you for the recommendations, Anon! I'll look these up.

[pinkhairedlily]

Love your snippets!!!!!!! Can you recommend me a writer here who has a similar writing style to yours?

Thank you for loving those tiny stories, anon! This short comment warms up my heart so much!

Hmm, I don't know who has a similar writing style to me (I'm not able to define it yet tbh im sorry!). But I can recommend you these authors with exemplary writing styles which you may enjoy too! :)

@psalloacappella @nonawaaa @airashisakura @thatsakurastan @sassysaku (please feel free to reblog and tag your fave snippet/author accounts)

You can also find them by just exploring the #sssnippetaday tag both here and on twitter! Hope this helps!

[ao3feed-sasusaku]

by psalloacappella

In the library, being lectured by a slug, plagued by a kinked neck.

In which Katsuyu speaks out of turn and Sasuke sulks.

❦

For Day 20: Summons

Words: 3679, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 8 of this is for the hearts on fire | SSM21

Fandoms: Naruto

Rating: Mature

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/M, Gen

Characters: Haruno Sakura, Uchiha Sasuke, Katsuyu - Character, Uzumaki Naruto, Hatake Kakashi

Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke, Uchiha Sasuke & Katsuyu, Dai-nana-han | Team 7 & Hatake Kakashi

Additional Tags: Blank Period, One Night Stands, Eavesdropping, the kids are all dumb, and Sakura is the least dumb, basically a bunch of overpowered kids run this village, laundry headcanon returns

[psalloacappella]

Finals week at a top 5 program for my field choice has been super hectic, to say the least. I also work FT but thankfully work is really slow this time of year. All this to say I have basically been running on caffeine and disassociating, but am 3/4 of the way through my last paper and then one timed final and I am FREEEEEEE

Then id like to take a couple days of rest, do some holiday stuff like visit the markets and hang up lights and then FINALLY — FINALLY, get to work on some Retsuden week writing. I will take any good creative vibes y’all have to send!! 💫💕 Sending out love and peace for the holidays 🎉

[psalloacappella]

SasuSaku Fanfic Index

{Organized by genre + tag types}

last update: 02/13/2022

Indulging in my desire to have everything organized properly, here’s an index of my SasuSaku fics. Non-SS fics, of which there are a few, will be in a separate post ����

Ao3 | twitter

⇣

Sections: 

AU - Alternate Universe

Blank Period

Smut

Heavy Angst/Character Death/Characters crushed by Shinobi Politics

Team 7 Dynamics

Complicated Relationships - SS&other pairings

Series Index

Snippets Index (coming soon)

🍅 🌸🍅 🌸🍅 🌸🍅 🌸🍅 🌸🍅 🌸🍅 🌸🍅 🌸🍅 🌸

[AU] Alternate Universe

Sirens | WIP - ongoing | Modern AU Rating: Mature (stretching to Explicit in specific chapters) Tags:  Haruno Sakura | Late Night Radio Host; Everyone has issues; Obsession; Drama; Crazy Clan Shit; Cat and Mouse; Mystery; Soulmate-ish

“So you’re his best friend.” A statement, not a question. “Crazy handsome, kind of a jerk?”

He only knows her as the voice that accompanies him while he works overnights; it’s akin to an obsession. The night she takes a seat at the bar, their lives will never be quite the same.

↠ 

show me how | Episodic - ongoing | bodyguard/driver!Sasuke; heiress Sakura Rating: Mature Tags:  In which Sasuke is a driver; and Sakura plays no games; and Sasuke thirsts for that ish; Dominant Haruno Sakura; Sexual Tension; Jealousy

“Don’t play coy,” she says. “Tell me what the quidnuncs on the street say, gossiping over their limp salads and lackluster lives.”

“I’ve heard you’ve run every driver out of town.”

“Yes, that’s fair. The last one quite literally; he was terrified, in the end.”

The first rule of fight and club and the first rule of crushing on your boss are the same; you don’t talk about it. 

↠ 

la fuga | twt timed writing challenge - ongoing | Partners in Crime Rating: Mature Tags: On the run; Experimental Style; timed fic; Illegal activities

Her sob cracks, splits as fire kindling, as glass underfoot. Incapable of love-story soothing, he runs fingers over the frayed locks left and murmurs reassurances like incantations, warding off the evil of the necessary deed.

“Is this the end?” she whispers.

↠ 

watch the world explode, from underneath your glow | Assassins AU | Smut

Rating:  Explicit  Tags: Assassins and Hitmen; Explicit Sexual Content; Shower sex; Closet sex; Cunnilingus; Unclear Motives 

Sasuke snorts, glancing up briefly at the barrel pressed to his pretty temple. “Is this your way of courting me? Seems aggressive.”

“I’m not going to kill you if you say no.”

↠ 

Chiaroscuro | Modern AU | Artist Sakura; Disillusioned Office worker Sasuke Rating: Mature Tags: Love at first fight

She’s marked him so the universe can see — she has marked him for change.

(n.) Chiaroscuro - in art: the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold, affecting a whole composition.

↠ 

the horses are coming, so you better run | Greek Mythology AU Rating:  Mature Tags: inspired by a novel

Their language of silence is legendary, spoken only in glances.

↠ 

sparks will fly, they ignite our bones | Modern AU | Festival Date Rating: Mature Tags: Pediatrician Sakura; Nervous Sasuke; First Dates; Wooing

Lips burning against his, mouthing soft words in the detonation din.

(In which Sakura has the better aim.)

↠ 

this city’s burning, it’s not my burden | Wartime AU  Rating: Mature  Tags:  Combat Medic Sakura; Soldier Sasuke

In these dim and flickering emergency lights, he says,

"Marry me."

↠ 

but I think I’m a believer, I believe in something new | Space AU | Rating: Mature Tags: Space Opera; Rebellion; Drama; Romance

"By the time this finds you, beloved, I'll be a fragment of a star."

↠ 

Blank Period:

à deux | death anniversary Rating: Mature Tags: Healing; Grief with a joyful ending

“Cold,” he croaks, like unhinging an old metal joint. Instead of the weight of unused years, it’s the weight of unshed tears. The strain in his voice zigzags, lost, falls into its baritone groove. “You always are, when it rains.”

↠ 

scherzo | SS traveling - Hangry Sakura, Amused Sasuke Rating:  Mature Tags: Bonnie and Clyde outlaw vibe

“You miss him — don’t deny it! You’re a softhearted man.”

“I plead the fifth.”

Quiet laughing, shared only in a small clearing at the edge of the world, filthier than they like but close to the salt and earth and sea, nothing in between them but love and a basket of peeled fruit.

↠ 

sotto voce 

Rating:  Mature Tags: Confessions; Hair-washing

Could he tell her that when she lays her hands on him, touches his scalp that tender way in which she unravels his hair soaked with salt and sweat and travels, he finds himself catching his breath? One of the few times his limbs find the level and tranquilize, luxuriate in the chillbumps that sweep from the base of his neck down the spine?

That he’s considered lifetimes in scattered astronomy-dimensions in which all they do is this?

↠ 

reprise | Sasuke is released from prison - acclimation Rating: Teen  Tags: Hurt/Comfort; Prison release; team as family

So then, so now. In the simmering tangerine heat, she stands waiting in knee-high boots and the skirt he’s glimpsed her in so often, and he commits her shape to memory through each stage of the return of his sharp sight.

↠ 

poco a poco | Lover’s Quarrel  Rating: Mature Tags: If it’s orange it’s poison yo

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.

↠ 

tenerezza | Headcanon: Sasuke does Sakura’s laundry Rating: Mature Tags:  Cuddles, bittersweet ones; head surgeon Sakura; Hurt/Comfort

He keeps his comments to himself: That she has staff for a reason, that their ex-sensei-turned-Kage works her too hard and he’d made a curt mention of it when reporting back, that perhaps someone could take the task of laundering bloody work clothes off her hands. Their responsibilities even in this delicate period they call peacetime still weigh heavy, principle baked into their bones.

In the future, their children won’t know the world quite like this.

↠ 

tempo rubato | They bring home a baby Rating: Mature Tags:  Falling in love; Love and Duty; Team as Family

They speak of scars, this one that one, from the one they called Sasori she breathes, his fingertips tracing a swift cleaving crescent, from him, he mutters, and he knows she’ll know which man simply by the smolder in his sloe and violet eyes.

↠ 

Perigee | Sasuke reflects on love, in 2nd person POV  Rating: Mature Tags: Experimental Style; post-war; Astronomy theme; existential musing

In the future you’ll emerge from pilgrimage as three, clutching a girl new and fragile marveling at it all, the love you never thought you’d have, of which you were so sure you were not capable.

But you don’t know this now.

↠ 

we’re in danger, sleeping with a friend | Of love and slugs Rating: M Tags: Blank period shenanigans; one night stands; gossip / eavesdropping; the kid are all dumb; and Sakura’s the least dumb; overpowered kids run this village

In the library, being lectured by a slug, plagued by a kinked neck.

In which Katsuyu speaks out of turn and Sasuke sulks.

↠ 

Smut (as the focus, or included heavily)

Red | Office Cunnilingus Rating:  Explicit Tags: Sakura gets a new office; shut up and love her

An old dress, a new office — Uchiha Sasuke offers regards to both.

↠ 

Pink | Office Blowjob Rating:  Explicit Tags: Orgasm Denial; they’re in love, your honor

Hems, hips — her hair, those lips.

↠ 

Gold | AU - College/University Rating:  Explicit Tags:  Art Class - live model drawing; Sakura in pursuit; Sasuke has issues; sexual tension; Deidara’s a teacher fresh out of prison Background: past NaruGaa; onesided NaruIno

Contrary to the urban legend, painting the body in full won’t cause imminent death for the model. Sasuke inherently knows this.

But as he watches her skin drown in shimmering gold, transcend the human shape in gentle whorls and bends, piercing green eyes daring him to move — he believes suffocation is still a distinct possibility.

(Alternatively: Sasuke’s sprung, Naruto’s in crisis, and their new art instructor just got out of prison.)

↠ 

Peril | Sasuke scared and horny  Rating: Explicit Tags:  Choking

Six months past a world war, two weeks post-prison, and all he’s been dreaming of are her dangerous, beautiful hands.

↠ 

and I came here to make you dance tonight | bars, jealousy, an ugly flower Rating: M Tags:  canon divergence; jealous Sasuke; wall sex

It’s garish, ugly, gold without its shine. Saffron without its luster. Clashes with her pink hair and appears to him to be craven semaphore bobbing in the dark sea of the dance floor, catching the light in a flippant way no nicer than giving him a crude gesture.

In the language of flowers, he’s so very sure Sakura is telling him to fuck right off.

↠ 

See Also:  watch the world explode, from underneath your glow ↠ 

Heavy Angst &/or Character death &/or #fucktheshinobi state

Embark | Blank Period Rating: Mature  Tags: Curses; Fate and Destiny; Angst

When he comes home from a mission or arrives after a debrief, he appears at her office window lingering as a beast, a bat. The lovesick trope, a tale as old as time.

I was gone too often. Again. I was given a second chance, and squandered it.

↠ 

Dun | SS as State Traitors Rating: Mature Tags: Post-war; Treason 

They reunite at the edge of the world, surrendering to the universe on the dark side of the moon.

↠ 

al niente | Blank Period Rating: Mature Tags: Starcrossed Lovers; Terminal Illness

Her breath catches as she rolls to face him, insides roiling and dizzy as the sea. From the floor she meets his dark eyes and whimpers,

“Don’t go. Not tonight.”

His mausoleum pause could halt the axis turn of the universe.

“Please.”

↠ 

I’m lost, so lost, I’m lost at sea you see | Blank Period | Shinobi Politics Rating: Mature Tags:  Canon Divergence; Angst; Bittersweet; Nod to Equilibrium

The sun's setting - it may never rise again.

↠ 

give me a long kiss goodnight, & everything will be all right | Shippuden  Rating: Mature Tags: Canon Divergence; Tragic Romance; Stalking

Copper tang between them, blood and sweat and salt. Both loathing the way they want each other, entangled, love and hate and the will of the state all in one divine knot.

grace note | post-war angst; Konoha falls Rating:  Mature Tags: Amnesia; Angst; Arranged Marriage

But now she purses her lips at the shadow left behind, the clear imprint of a ring previously worn. “Do you know where my husband is?” This is the way the world ends: With a man claiming his wife.

↠ 

Team 7 Dynamics 

Fare il Prezioso | Implied One-night stand; rumor!mill Rating: Teen Tags:  Team as Family; Jealousy; Bar room brawl

When Sasuke, looking drunk, angry, sick, or some combination of them all, recoils from the anticipated touch, Naruto changes tack by pointing at him, then at the back of Sakura’s head, and claps his hands together messily, like he’s squeezing an orange.

↠ 

Tremolando | T7 lives together, SS FWB, chaotic AF Rating:  Teen Tags: self-hating Uchiha; Angry Sakura; Drama; Jealousy

Placing her hands on the sides of his face, she whispers, “I’m scared. I’m scared of us, of this.” A beat. Her touch burns in the most wonderful way, but it doesn’t couch the awful way she finishes, speaking it into his lips like a secret. “Sometimes I’m scared of you.”

↠ 

Stretto | The morning after | T7 + Kakashi bonding Rating: Teen Tags:  Conspiracy; Jealousy; Disassociation; Unhealthy coping mechanisms

“I’m moving,” Sakura says abruptly, dreamily. She’s sunken into the couch, chin on her chest, staring into space. “Anywhere. A lonely underserved village. A castle. The bottom of a well. Change my name. I’ll kill someone otherwise.”

“That’s dramatic,” Sasuke says drily, without changing tone or expression.

“Did you just make a joke? Sakura, what did you do to him?”

Kakashi leans in closer, voice low. “Are all of you quite sure you haven’t taken anything funny?”

↠ 

Epoch | T7 officially gets back together | Mentor/Protege Rating: Teen Tags: Conspiracy; Drinking; Team as Family; Overpowered children; Implied/referenced Rape/Non-Con

Team Seven seals their fate and returns to active duty. Sakura keeps secrets. Tsunade prepares for next steps.

↠ 

Affrettando |  FWB mess | Shinobi Politics Rating: Teen Tags: Stalking; Trauma; Drama; Complicated Relationships; Belligerent Sexual Tension

If it’s half of what he feels, a touch could erupt them in an instant, a lit match to a tinderbox. She stays silent. Her movements reflect the dance, and he wonders if she thinks a detail ever escapes his gaze.

Arms unfolded now, his fingers signal something universal.

“Come.”

(Perhaps this is what you’ve been terrified of—how she breathes life into you, and holds you up to the light.)

↠ 

L’anima | Sakura’s attacked at the hospital

Rating: Teen Tags: Political alliances; Shinobi system critique; blood and injury

Defying him, at a time like this. In her worst moments, or perhaps her best, she is difficult to bend. A habit now ingrained, he rubs a thumb across her cheekbone, a fixation, like it will bind her to the earth and to him.

The hospital is infiltrated; they face the unknown specter of betrayal.

↠ 

Ostinato |  Sakura gets eaten out in a closet | Alliances falling apart Rating: Teen Tags: Lime; Closets; Shinobi politics; complicated relationships

Departing in mutual weakness, culminating in the end of the world, and returning to a hurricane. Always in the eye of her, some complicated but honest peace.

Sasuke and Naruto blow off steam. Sakura gets what she wants. Strangers come to visit.

↠ 

Fuocoso | Team 7 goes rogue & Sasuke falls in love (officially) Rating: Mature Tags: dai-nana-han, T7 has issues; Sakura is the glue of this team; shinobi politics; friendship

A crackle in the dirt, the energy of his dear children, he swears, prompting the earth to shudder underneath their feet.

"They'll come for you in seven days."

Time ticks away. Reunited, Team Seven prepares to depart for their first mission, but not without ensnaring one another, and those that love them, into their convoluted myths.

(In which they learn about what they've missed, and how to come together again.)

↠ 

Fics involving other pairings &/or complicated relationships:

fission | Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage | SS & SakuIno Rating:  Mature Tags: Drama; complicated relationships; POV 2nd person

The reception’s gaining steam and congratulations are coming soon. Your wedded is six champagnes deep and flickering her eyes at a handsome member of the event staff. All your cousins know you fought for a flower but in the end, bent the knee.

↠ 

Appoggiatura | Friendship, maybe, tilt your head and squint | Post-war Rating: Teen  Tags: ShikaSaku friendship; SakuIno friendship; a ton of pining from every corner; Drama; Shinobi Politics

In a moment she feels them trying, futilely, to fix it all. Everything they broke.

↠ 

Series Link Index:

Equilibrium Genre: Post-War; Blank Period; Canon Divergence Rating:  Mature

We bear the whispers of stories we didn't write, and the burden of becoming legends we never desired. All we do is keep chasing one another in circles, endlessly wanting.

Everything has changed; nothing has. Team Seven navigates life after war.

↠ 

Chromatic Genre:  Smut; soulmate stories.  Rating: Explicit

Love in every shade. SasuSaku.

↠ 

fix me with your grace Genre:  Blank Period Rating: Mature

All entries for SasuSakuBlankPeriod2021 event. peep hashtag - #SSBlankPeriod2021

↠ 

Particles Genre: Varies - check above for individual listings Rating:  Mature to Explicit - check individual story

Scraps of things that have no home. Loosely edited. A cemetery, a playground.

↠ 

this for the hearts on fire Genre: Varies - check above for individual listings Rating: Mature to Explicit - check individual story

All entries for SasuSaku Month 2021 Peep hashtag - #ssm21

↠ 

[psalloacappella]

grace note

original post on twt, here.

Edit: Published on ao3 as grace note 

“𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑 𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑎 𝑏𝑎𝑛𝑔 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑎 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑚𝑝𝑒𝑟.” — T.S. Eliot 

What is the liminal difference between low, sad sundown and the rust skyflickers of a village succumbing to self-immolation, its deserved ritual burning?

Turns out, Sasuke reflects at her bedside, not much. 

Day and night mingle and suffuse, bleeding through, not so unlike her blue veins pressing up to crepe paper skin, urgent signs of life; as one claws at the glass he imagines trapping her body, soul,

sanity. 

Sakura’s engagement ring rests on a small table, and light catches the glittering, smoky rainbow blend of a failed state. Bending reality — warping the room.

The silver earring next to it feels gauche, and Sasuke knows his sins are writ in the deepest grooves of the karmic universe. 

Some stupid kid, too young to be managing a hospital floor on his own: When Sasuke arrived averting his eyes and stepping over the dead lined in cemetery rows, ready for earthly departure, and perhaps the only wherewithal this unlucky medic still possessed, he thinks his brusque but desperate questioning will leave the man (no, this boy) combusting, shattering in an instant, a perfect model portraitcapture of the devastation ravaging the village. 

It had been this unsettling destruction that made Sasuke for the first time refuse to report to the best friend now former, as they had nothing left to say, and head straight to the only place left that held any meaning —

to the last person that made him feel alive.

“C-Coma.” The kid’s voice quavers, flickering and going out. Because Uchiha Sasuke is a legendary destructive demigod and the splintering of the new Sannin had been so palpable, so whispered and gossiped about in dark bars and back rooms, and children were carrying their parents’ political opinions to school as talismans and gifts, learning not how to love but how to live, how to navigate a crumbling world power. 

“She stayed as long as she could, evacuating staff and patients and then . . . well . . . a blow to the head. Bad. I think she . . . can’t remember what’s happening. She’s stuck under the surface, you know?”

Something apt about the way he describes it to Sasuke, an accurate specificity; she’s drowning, indifferent to reality, and maybe it’s a fucking blessing.

Because this kid worked as an assistant under Haruno Sakura; because he knew of the infamous final severing of friendship among them, Uzumaki Naruto accepting his ascension in a time of which he’d never dreamed. Too early, too full of loss to make sound decisions, which applied to all of them. Gone, two Hokage in a row. Morale, nonexistent.

And so, bereft of all the people that had made them whole, a council of elders survived another purge as they so often had, clinging to decades of greed, and began to run the chessboard. 

Sasuke hadn’t said thanks before brushing past, too busy struggling to stay upright, lest another person lose hope in hell, so another man can’t see his chest cave in to despair.

“Are you able to stay with her?”

Sasuke’s eyes don’t leave Sakura’s grey face. He can feel the young man shifting his weight foot to foot. The world’s too bright, vibrating at the speed of collapse.

“There’s no one left alive up here. I’d stay, I would,” and now he’s pleading, pleading with the last surviving member of the Uchiha, but truly, only a stranger, “but my mother. My sister. My husb—”

“Go.”

A stunned silence, before Sasuke forces it out again. “Just go.”

Weeping; Sasuke’s reminded of his young age again in the sniffles and gasps and thank you, oh gods thank you, but then, he’s not that much older. Not really.

“When . . . if her husband makes it back, can — can you tell him what happened?”

Instinct makes Sasuke brush a strand of hair out of her face, and he knows it’s pathetic and disloyal but all the world is falling and she’s the last thing that matters and he has never, ever made the claim to be a good and principled man. 

All he can offer up to the fleeing young medic is a noise in his throat, and its taken as assent despite the originator not knowing his real answer.

And they are alone.

After several silent minutes he finally squeezes her hand, as no one can judge him now in what will probably be the final hours, by death or infrastructure collapse or both. 

After so many years, it’s simply too difficult to be alone. To spurn any love left.

“I know you wanted me to forgive him,” Sasuke says to no one, “but you have always thought too much of me, believed in a goodness I never had.”

Before they could ever quite get it right together, find a foothold in a mad, mad world, they were put in their place by a sneering, cruel universe yet again. This is the punishment of those who take, who find solace in the state. Naruto, deeply in grief after the loss of Gaara, had been no match for the machinations of the council, a desperate plan to unite with their best ally for a second time as the rest of the world beared down on the seat of power, sniffing out imminent collapse. Sakura, reeling from her own losses (Tsunade, Kakashi, two Kages down, two kings tipped off the board), did not protest the arrangements. 

He places the backs of his fingers against her frigid cheek. 

“You had always worn your heart on your sleeve, at least . . . you did for me.”

Sasuke placed conveniently on faraway assassinations and assignments when they forced his friends’ hands and signed the bloodlines. 

He should have seen it coming — rotten roots of leaves.

Did Naruto take solace in marrying the fraying, threaded lifeline to his lost lover? Did he know the true nature of Temari’s visits, officially unofficial, that her eyes were always on someone waiting on the right way to tell her his feelings? Smart in strategy, stupid in women:  Everyone dancing a step too late. 

Sasuke presses her cold fingers to his lips, breathing hard and is it the anger as if to set fire, spark her back to life and memory and all his fears exhale in whispers did you smile like you loved him and did you kiss him like you meant it and did you give him a piece of you because no one can know Sakura without knowing a bit of team seven, a bit of himself, and in asking this, did you give him a piece of me? 

And her eyelashes flutter.

Fervent, the keen cleaving in his chest, blazing but cold. Relief and mild terror. 

He comes closer, bends over her in the bed looking so small, so bruised and worn and out of place, and for a moment she shrinks back, eyes rolling and then darting from his face to the bloodsky to the bedside table and flickering in panicked cadence all over again.

“What’s happening?” She clings to his cloak, pulling him close with a searing strength that he knows well, too well, that he thought he’d never feel again. Knowing she could crush him here and he would let her if he could stay. 

His heart daring to leap, though the guilt — well, he’s used to it.

“You were evacuating staff and patients,” he murmurs quietly, placing his hand on her balled fist, the one still with his shirt fabric in an iron grip. “You were hurt — hit your head.”

“Where is everyone else?”

Something’s unsettling in her glass green gaze. A missing detail, a filmy screen. 

“What’s your name?”

Sakura relents her grip, frown lines dashing across her forehead. “S-Sakura.” A fierce glare. “I’m in charge of this place, you know.” 

“Sakura.”

Divine, the way he says her name. She shivers and he thinks she’s weakening — 

she shivers and she knows this man has her soul.

“What,” Sasuke begins, settling on the bed next to her, “do you last remember?”

Flashes:  of stealing bells and forest snakes and waking up on a bench and climbing aboveground to stare at his handsome face in the glare of the sun; of the end of the world, of the beginning of theirs, the quiet moments in her office and the way he knows her heart.

“Everything.” Comes out in a coarse whisper, and she stares at her shaking hands. “At least, everything about you, Sasuke-kun.”

Like the tap of a tuning fork caressing each nerve ending — there’s never been a better way to hear his own name.

But now she purses her lips at the shadow left behind, the clear imprint of a ring previously worn. 

“Do you know where my husband is?”

Acutely aware that there’s a clipboard with pinned paper, reality writ black and white, Nara in sloping lettered ink. Attestation of her husband’s name. It sits on the table with the rest of the proof.

When her beautiful eyes flicker, there and back again, the expression she gives him asks for forgiveness. A request to abide. Or perhaps that’s wishful thinking from desperation, a man disloyal and low. 

Does he know her as well as he thought he did? Take parts of her for granted? 

In the flickering sundown, sky saturated with apocalypse fire, her expression could be earnest or confused or detached from reality — all depends on the angle of light.

Now she takes his face in her hands and asks, pleading, each word deliberate, 

“Do you know . . . where my husband is?”

The myth of making the selfish choice is that you agonize, game all the outcomes. Consider. Reality unfolds at the synapse-speeds of seconds.

“He’s right here.” Sasuke swallows hard after the admission, throat scorched dry. Leaning into the warmth returning to her hands, fighting the pinch of emotion in the tip of his nose, the prelude to tears. Placing his hand on top of her own, rubbing the indent on her ring finger in silent deliverance. For his cowardice. 

Mouth forming a lie against her temple, one he’s not sure she’ll ever know,

“I’m right here.”

[psalloacappella]

Flight crew AU - snippet

Finding inspo lately has kind of been like pulling teeth so I’m digging back through WIP’s and snips ✈️This deserved edits since I wrote it on the fly in that tiny twitter box lol. OG snip

In which Sakura is the best pilot from her class and Sasuke is crew + Ino best copilot/wingwoman.

“You did,” he whispers, breathing hard against her temple, feeling her coat against her chest, between them. “But not the job - I don’t care about that.”

Desperate, the way he takes her face in his hands, thinking if he holds on she can’t flit away into the bright blue world.

“It’s that you’ll always love me second.” 

.

.

.

“You know they’re separated for a reason? Pilots and crew?” 

Lingering by the cockpit near the crew rest quarters is the height of pathetic, he knows. In the aftermath, the chaotic fireworks of an illicit fling, it feels like a smoldering fire the whole route’s crew can see. 

Ino’s glower cuts deep.

“Sniffing around isn’t a good look,” she says, raising her eyes up to the crew rest area above first class. “You’re so obvious.” 

Sasuke sighs, expression pained. No matter the roles, he still feels responsible. He was the catalyst; in his life he’s never been “that guy.”

“It’s ending.” Voice harsh, a knife’s curt cut to drive home his point. Bitterness.

“It better be,” she hisses, folding her arms across her uniform. “I can’t stick my neck out for crew that doesn’t know their place.” 

He glances at her stripes, jaw clenched.

“This is the last time. I’m . . . saying goodbye.” Dark eyes boring into Ino’s, he acutely feels the weight and tenor of his disrespect. 

“She’s too good to be disgraced. This could end her career. She’s an idiot for overstepping.”

“I wanted her,” he says simply. “It’s me, too.”

The longest pause:  First class dishes clinking softly, the murmurs of the engines and gentle waves of passenger conversation. 

A few feet above him, she sleeps. Sasuke prepares to leave the only woman that’s ever made him feel a thing. 

Pilot and cabin crew:  A timeless cliche.

“You’re a mess, Uchiha.” Turning her ocean eyes back to the ceiling, she stretches tall and reaches for the ladder latch. Enters a code. “I’d better not see you on this route again. Go close the book on this.” 

She sweeps past him, gifting him a hard nudge to the shoulder. He deserves it.

Pilots and crew always have separate quarters for a reason — it didn’t manage to keep their hurricane love apart. 

Ascending the ladder, aware of the risk to him and the copilot, he curses himself for it all:  The utter cliche of it. The drunk layovers. Whispers. Loneliness.

The lifestyle’s a difficult one, holidays and milestones celebrated on crash couches, the new year rung in halfway over a dark ocean with only your crew and passengers for company. But he jeopardized her one true love, and for that, he owed it to her to go.

Dim rest quarters, plush bunks for the pilots; long-haul routes offered comfortable accommodations, and he’d been around the world on them, whipped into a whirlwind by one of the best and youngest pilots of her flight class. 

“Sasuke?” Her eyes trap him, glitter and green.

“You’re almost up again,” he says quietly, staying near the ladder. “Approach is soon.” 

Sakura sits up, swings her legs to the bunkside. “But that’s not why you’re here.” 

Unraveling, the frayed threads of their silence. 

“I’ll make this easy for you,” he says. “I’m going.”

“Absolutely not.” 

Watching one another askew, reflections bouncing at odd angles off the mirrors; seems they can only watch with distance. 

“I’m taking a commuter route,” he mutters to the carpet. “I’ll work out of—”

“So that’s it, hm?” She stands, eyes blazing, feet planted. Looking every bit the charming, vivacious, undaunted young pilot he took an off-duty drink with not long after FA training. Did he know he was doomed then? “The mistakes were all mine,” she rasps, shaking her head. “This power dynamic — I disrespected that. Became a cliche.”

“And I begged you to,” he hisses. “I’m not about to ruin your career for this — for me.” 

Aloud, it’s too fraught:  He will take the hit, alter his course to stay out of hers and keep that runway clear. 

“Don’t you see, Sasuke? I don’t deserve this position. I’m a mess.”

He snatches her jacket off a hook and tosses it at her with force. Catching it, she squares her jaw in anger. 

“That’s what I want to see,” Sasuke says, acknowledging her with a handsome jerk of his chin. “The fire. You love what you do. So take it. Be the best.”

She feels the fabric in her hands, fingertips tracing delicate stitches in winding curves — her long-haul journeys, her thousands of hours in the sky. Mapping the world, her one true love. 

Ah, and don’t they both know it, as their last flight ticks down to the approach.

“I’ve destroyed you,” she whispers, trailing her fingers over the epaulets. Four stripes — the culmination of her life’s work. 

He crosses the small space in a few swift steps, crushing his lips on hers without pausing to breathe, tasting her for the last time, their epilogue.

“You did,” he whispers, breathing hard against her temple, feeling her coat against her chest, trapped between them. “But not the job — I don’t care about that.” 

Desperate, the way he takes her face in his hands, thinking if he holds on she can’t flit away into the bright blue world.

“It’s that you’ll always love me second.” 

He steps back, feels the ache and loss immediately, a stitch in the chest. “But to love you, Sakura, even second has been worth it.” 

And he retreats, turning his back on her because her sorrow will absolutely ruin him. 

“You’re up.”

.

.

.

Ten minutes later, crew and passengers alike enjoy a smooth descent and taxi, like slipping into a warm bath. 

Sasuke lingers, nodding as people disembark, avoiding the blonde copilot’s sharp eyes while hating the soft warmth in his chest as he watches Sakura smile at the departures, taking compliments with grace.

When people shake hands with her, thank her, marvel at her, he knows in his heart she was born with wings.

This is what she’s made for. A thing not easily articulated but apparent the minute you meet her.

A great love, destiny at 20,000 feet.

And Sasuke knows it’s impossible to compete with a fate like this. 

“We’re off-duty now, you know.” 

She’s staring at him, handle of her rolling suitcase in hand. Of course he knows, and feels her gaze, unwavering. 

That hunger, consuming.

“If you changed airlines,” she says, turning on her heel in a way that always manages to make him fall into line, “it could be less of a mess.”

And she starts walking, heels tapping the dirge of their great love undone, echoing across the airport floors.

He doesn’t hesitate to follow.

“Perhaps,” she says, “your name’s already been brought up at another legacy.”

“So then what would I do?” He catches up, watching the top of her pink head. Cap tucked under her arm. “Chase you around the world, meeting up when our schedules cross?” 

Sakura shrugs, eyes ahead.

“Is that not what we’ve been doing anyway?” 

They arrive at street-level, standing on hard concrete, bereft of words. 

Then—

Sakura hands him a business card, a number scribbled on the back in a gorgeous, looping hand. “Go to your hotel,” she says. “Call her. Discuss it.”

“Sakura—”

“If you like the terms, I’ll see you at 7:00 p.m. in your finest, non-crew dress. I’ll be a stranger, and so will you. Endings and beginnings, you know.” 

Her smile could power a city with its light and magic. It could chase away every cranny, small and dark.

“I’m sorry you’ve been second.” Summoning a taxi with a wave of the hand, she lets the driver take her luggage and lowers herself into the back seat. Pauses before continuing,

“But I have two great loves, and I don’t want to let go of either.” 

Leaves him standing there on the curb, contemplating his fate.

.

.

.

Two strangers meet in a bar.

With his dark hair and eyes and hers so fair, they paint complementary shadows in the thrown curtain of dim candlelight; a new and foreign city. 

They speak of everything and nothing, her considerably chattier than him, but upon taking her hand, she sinks into a companionable silence.

The bartender’s used to seeing this play out:  International crews criss-crossing the globe, anonymous in a place like this. Flickering sparks of two kindred souls catching fire. 

Unsurprised when they leave together, sailing into the night giddy on desire.

Watching a stern man chase a soft love. 

Embarking on their star-crossed life in perpetuum, circling infinity. 

[psalloacappella]

SSM21 Day 20 - Summons

Pairing: SasuSaku Prompt: Summons Title:  we’re in danger, sleeping with a friend Tags: Sasuke & Katsuyu talk; T7+Kakashi; Blank Period; One night stands; the kids are all dumb, but Sakura’s the least dumb; laundry headcanon returns

Ao3 | twt | full series link | @ssskmonth

In the library, being lectured by a slug, plagued by a kinked neck.

In which Katsuyu speaks out of turn and Sasuke sulks.

Excerpt: 

“What’s the point of all this?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“This,” Sasuke says with a shrug of the shoulder she’s perched on. “What exactly are you doing here?”

Hmph! If expressions could kill. Feeling her affront, he ignores the unusual reveal of frustration from Katsuyu, smirking a little at her irritation. From what he knows, she’s the most respectful of them all and enjoys a buoyancy and affinity with her summoners many others don’t.

“Since Sasuke-san asked,” she begins, words poised but pinched, “I’m here at Sakura-san’s behest to monitor your vital signs, assess your levels of pain over a defined period of time, ascertain insights, note new symptoms.”

“In short, all the things that I’d be dealing with if I was a patient.”

“You are a patient. Albeit a mobile one.”

Sasuke channels annoyance in the flick! of the thin pages.

“May I ask after your mental and emotional state?”

“You may not,” he snaps.

“This was not a rhetorical question. I’ll continue. Please let me know how you’ve been managing the following:  Dreams and nightmares; perception of self-worth; physical prowess during spar sessions with Naruto-san; sexual health.”

Somewhere, a book hits the floor.

[psalloacappella]

domestic / slice of life snip

Still searching for the spark lol I think the SSM entries + RL wore me out a little, but this is a favorite even though it has zero plot whatsoever ✨ WHO NEEDS PLOT

OG snip

.

.

.

Classic examples of affection — stolen pecks, brushing hands, a kiss on the lilac diamond on her forehead. As a flower, as a jewel. His default in daylight is a slight frown; her countenance only cracks in sleep, brows furrowed, fraught with unsolved medical perplexities.

And this is where the habit lives, guiding her subconscious to real, true rest. Gentle, touch he’s learned over time — with plants; with his loved ones and their tiny, squalling offspring, frightened by their fragility; with the whirlwind arrival of his own. 

She’s dreaming.

Wouldn’t tell her the true minutes that slip by with lack of sleep. He’s not there yet; he may never be. Perhaps that’s where the root cause yearns, the desire to release all tension, any distress, in the repetitive and comforting movement of his fingers smoothing her brows.

Assurance, and perhaps the emotional gift received in response — rendering her relaxed again, and he pretends she’s been mollified into paradises more pleasant than untangling the world’s problems in a dream. If asked, he wouldn’t breathe a word. No man admits his weakness.

But she is his. 

The night breaks way to morning when she slams her hand on her side table — he can hear its wooden innards give, crying out. 

“Need this,” she grumbles, grabbing a pen. 

(Less brushes, more pens now; antiquity creeps into their age, the world’s been turning.)

She scribbles incomprehensible notes on a scrap of paper, yawning as she goes. Tosses it back onto her table, satisfied and grinning in the limbo of consciousness; her eyes only open a sliver, hesitant to let in the orange-wash light of sunrise. 

She rolls to face him.

“Whyya frowning?” she whispers, opening one eye. She’s lovely, he thinks, in her state of perpetual winking suggesting the ghost of a secret, and the secret, for her, is always love.

And she brings her fingertips seared strong by antiseptic to his brows. Smooths his lines.

“Figured something out,” she adds.

“About?” 

“A bit of this, a bit of that. Guess I was dreaming about it.” 

“Only you,” A tone of teasing — he smiles after. Thumbs her diamond, brushing what seems like an exposed, divine sliver of her soul. “Dreaming of cures and antidotes.”

She shimmies closer, sighs into his chest, burrowing in. 

Two of her fingers walk up his ribcage, shoulder, skim his hair and tap(!)on his brow. 

He can’t help his scowl. 

“Weird how that happens, hm?” 

And he wonders at the charming coincidence. 

[psalloacappella]

SSM21 Day(s) 10 & 11

Pairing: SasuSaku Prompts:  Day 10 (Distant) & Day 11 (Safe and Sound) Title: but I think I’m a believer, I believe in something new Tags: Space AU/Space opera; Rebellion; Drama; Romance

Ao3 | twts 1 & 2  | full series link | @ssskmonth

"By the time this finds you, beloved, I'll be a fragment of a star."

Excerpt:

It’s getting harder to breathe, in this thin and fraying air.

There’s a sharp, honed scent; it burns and withers the tip of her nose. Another ship system is failing. These emergency podships weren’t meant to last.

Sakura’s laugh cantillates as gentle chimes, a facsimile of breeze where there is none. Tears keep slipping, undulating, and she hopes this all reaches him.

“Ah, what else can I say?” she murmurs, tilting her head. “I’m remembering the whole of my life now, as you do when you sense the end. The mind knows, rips you through a thousand memories in fractions of seconds. I see my graduation as I remember earth’s soil, our first meeting as I remember killing my first man, and all they do is fall on top of one another until the context disappears.”

Lights on the command panel flicker and snuff themselves out one by one, beginning as a single bulb here and there, as raindrops swallow dry dust in the desert by way of pinpoints until it all becomes a sweep.

“But never forget,” she says quietly, swallowing around the sob in her throat, “that we caught fire and changed the world, and I’ve never wanted to do that with anyone but you.”