Chapter Text
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6
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"Sakura, stop!" She doesn't. But she slows, if only for the irony. "Please, I—"
"I shouldn't have come back here at all," she admits, looking over her shoulder. "But here I am. And this time, you will watch my back, Sasuke-kun."
Green steel bores straight into the saddest red she's ever seen him wear.
This night isn't as warm as when their positions were switched. Long before bridges were built, and burned, and built, and burned, over and over—she remembers a warm breeze and pink petals. She remembers her heart shattering to the scent of spring. But tonight, the dark is nipping, and the branches lay bare. Tonight, her heart ices over to the crack of dead leaves beneath their feet.
Sakura realizes she will never miss the cold of the winter season again.
The wheels in his eyes spin with intent. "I could make you stay."
She doesn't think he will, but still looks away when he steps closer.
She gazes up the path before her. It's only a few hours to Suna. She won't head for the closest bar when she gets there, either. She has a plan. She'll apply for her job in the hospital again, for permanent residency this time. Pull her life back together. Move on.
Maybe even date...one day. Maybe.
Whatever she has to do, she plans on doing it. Sakura will not become her mentor.
She'll get away from him, from her, from their family.
It hurt to think about. It hurt even when she drowned herself—sometimes even more when she did.
What was the point of drowning if it never took away the pain?
"I…need you. And I'm sorry that I called you a liar. Sakura, I'm sorry for everything. I… I lov—" Sasuke stumbles on his words.
"Don't," she says in the quick silence.
Sakura doesn't want to hear what's coming next. It didn't matter back when they were her words, and it's too late for him to use them against her now.
They won't change anything. They can't change that everything about him hurts her. They don't change that she loveloveloves him so fucking much, or the fact that none of it matters anymore.
She only ever wanted him to be happy. He had a wish when they were twelve. Ten years later, she still remembers that wish, because she remembers everything about him.
He wanted to restore his clan. And now he is.
And she made sure his child will be strong and healthy because he asked—only because he asked. But he cannot ask any more of her, she thinks. Her love has limits. A heart can only take so much.
"Let's not forget ourselves, Sasuke-kun."
They don't know who might be listening. He can't afford to be seen, or to say what's on the tip of his tongue. It's too late for that, and he was already caught once.
He stays silent. She smiles bitterly.
"Attachment is weakness, you told me. Bonds only bring pain. You were right."
"Stay," he pleads; and to anyone but Sakura, it may have sounded like a command.
Sakura closes her eyes with a sigh. How badly she's wanted to hear that word for so long.
"For what?" She means to yell, but it only sounds tired. "Even if I stay, it couldn't be with you."
It's quiet for long enough that Sakura thinks he won't answer. Without looking at him, she moves to leave.
"If I could change things!" he spurts quickly, and Sakura stills. "If… If I could go back, I would."
"But you can't. And even if you could go back… To when?"
"…"
She feels the slow drip of hysteria starting. "To when would you go back, Sasuke-kun?" She turns to face him again, but his eyes give nothing away.
Has Karin told him her secret?
"To last year?" she asks. His face remains neutral. "To the war?" she presses. Something passes across his face and her stomach drops. Does he know? Her voice is barely above a whisper—"Or maybe you'd go back to when we were fifteen and—"
"Sakura," Sasuke interrupts, frowning. "I…didn't mean it that way."
He knows. A wave of nausea hits her and she laughs, though nothing is funny.
"Even you can't change everything!" she shouts. Now that it's out, she feels like she can't stop the words from coming. "So, Sasuke-kun? If I stay, will you still leave her once he comes?" Her words are quick and hopeful, but mocking. "Will you do that to your clan—for me? Leave them both? Will you?"
He doesn't say anything. Of course, he has no answer when she needs one the most.
She gives a small laugh again; he had offered what she just asked before he knew!
His eyes move from her face to the ground.
God is an evil, unfair man, Sakura thinks.
She knew Karin would tell if only to ensure Sasuke wouldn't leave. But isn't that the very reason she told Karin in the first place? So the woman would tell Sasuke, so he wouldn't ever make the mistake of choosing Sakura?
Hadn't she planned for this?
So why does it feel like she can't breathe?
Her misplaced laughter is very soon going to turn into crying, and that isn't something she wants to show this man, anymore.
"I am flawed if I'm not free, right?" A bitter chuckle is rising in her throat. "You said that too…remember?"
"…Aa, but—"
"Well, I want to be free. And you know what? You deserve to be free of me, too. You deserve to be happy."
They're looking at each other, and for the first time in her life, she can read everything in his eyes. They're spinning, but she knows he won't do it now.
She stares at him, staring at her, for what feels like hours.
"You'll be a wonderful father, Sasuke-kun," she finally whispers. She forces her mouth shut on the ramblings of broken hopes and useless promises that want to fly out.
Sakura holds Sasuke's gaze a second longer before turning away and taking a step toward Suna. She feels the air shift behind her and knows it's now or never. She uses the same flash-step he once used on her, on this very road.
One second Sasuke is reaching out to take hold of her arm and make her stay, regardless of what's wrong and right or his clan or his selfishness.
The next he's grasping at empty air.
He spins, ready for her.
She doesn't use it to jump behind him, though. She uses it to jump away. Her chakra picks up far to the northwest.
Sasuke calls for her before the thought to do so even processes. Startled birds ascend from trees in answer, and he listens to her unforgiving footfalls grow further away.
He curses. He wants to follow… But he can't. She must know he can't, dammit! Why must she make him choose? She knows he would choose her if she stayed—she knows—fuck!—she knows if she stayed, he would find a way to make this work.
Sasuke stands for a very long time in the same spot, convincing his feet to take him back home. He tries to quiet the screaming in his conscience to follow her. He tries to tell himself this is the right choice.
Sakura has always been the most intelligent, he thinks, and if she says this is right, then this is right. This is right. This is right.
Just like a mantra. This is fucking right, okay? She's right about leaving. She's right. She's always been right.
She's always been right here, and now she's gone, you fucking idiot. Go fucking get her—
He blasts the blasted bench beside him with Chidori. It's the same damn bench he once left her on. Fitting, he thinks, though he knows he'll regret destroying it in the morning.
He reminds himself that his clan must be restored. He has a pregnant fiancée at home, for God's sake. He tells himself love is for the foolish and love was never his to hold, anyway. Love is only in happily ever after's, and people cloaked in sin like him don't get to have those kinds of endings.
Sasuke tells himself that he cursed Sakura enough and she deserves to go be happy somewhere far away from him. Just like she wants to do.
That it's his fault, probably, for everything in the first place. God's way of punishing her for falling in love with someone as cursed as he. The angel losing her wings for falling in love with a demon, as they say.
He tells himself all this, but he doesn't move, because he isn't sure which way his feet would take him if he did. Back to the compound?
Towards Suna?
He's lost many loved ones in his lifetime. By now, he should be used to this. But his eyes find a dead cherry blossom tree hugging the path in the direction she ran, and Sasuke cries for the first time in many years.
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Far into the forest, the branches before her are obscured by tears.
It hurts… But she will never go back.
Sasuke deserves this, after everything. The Uchiha clan deserves this. Not more shame. He deserves a family, and Itachi doesn't deserve to grow up in disgrace in Suna, away from his mother and away from the town the Uchiha belong in and built.
As much as she wants him to be with her, she won't break his family up. Not when he's gone so long without one.
Her name echoes off the trees and haunts the wind at her back. She prays that one day, she really will be free. His voice tugs at her very soul, at a place ingrained so deep within she's afraid she won't ever be able to dig it out, but Sakura doesn't slow down, and she never looks back.
Anything is better than what she would endure in Konoha.
If he loves her enough, he will follow her, she tells herself. If he loves her enough, it wouldn't matter what she can't give him.
But she won't blame him if he never comes. If he loves his clan enough, she knows he never will.
What life must Sasuke be on now?
She has to stop on the branch as a sob overtakes her. She pulls the rubberband on her wrist as far as it will stretch, and though it slaps hard against her skin, she barely registers it.
She wonders, hot tears spilling across her cheeks: Would her severed bond be considered enough to warrant the death of one?
Or maybe this is the death of two lives for Sasuke.
After all, he's getting married next week.