Equilibrium
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Summary
Broken bodies pour in to be fixed by broken hearts. The only way to start over is to speak.
Series
- Part 1 of Equilibrium
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"Do I retreat now, wave off the danger, and live a quiet life? Do I continue until I’m shipped home in a pine box? Or do I meander, like clouds?"
Series
- Part 2 of Equilibrium
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For reasons beginning with an aged handle of liquor and ending with a paid-off bartender, Sakura has seen her sensei’s face in a particular way, a story that will never surface.
Series
- Part 3 of Equilibrium
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"You can’t hear that? Pain echoing in the plunks of keys? Moving from black to white and back again, until it all melts into grey? That’s our story, Sasuke-kun."
Series
- Part 4 of Equilibrium
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In which Naruto’s coping mechanism is indulging in impulsive life-crisis-decisions.
Series
- Part 5 of Equilibrium
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"The kitchen is red," she whispers. "We need Kakashi-sensei." The world is rebuilding, but their lives and legends continue to crumble. SasuSaku and other things.
Series
- Part 6 of Equilibrium
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Pushing him out of the way, she extends her hand to Sasuke, palm facing up. He sees the dried blood under her fingernails, a thin layer of red soaked into her fingerprints, and the crude slash across the lifeline.
Series
- Part 7 of Equilibrium
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"I have nightmares of you lying on the ground, in your blood, in a broken heap. And sometimes . . . I'm not upset about it."
Series
- Part 8 of Equilibrium
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Words flow from his lips, muffled in her hair. “Speak in whispers. Everything has ears.”
Series
- Part 9 of Equilibrium
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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.
Series
- Part 10 of Equilibrium
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Sakura thinks it’s related to the game, but Shikamaru slips the cigarette into a front pocket on his flak jacket and leans on his elbow. Inhales quickly, a breath caught. Then a long, smooth exhale. “Feelings confuse me.”
With the ghost of a smile, her gaze resuming the sweep of the board in search of an opening, she says, “It’s probably one of the few things that does.”
Series
- Part 11 of Equilibrium
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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.”
Series
- Part 12 of Equilibrium
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“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?”
Series
- Part 13 of Equilibrium
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“What are you all even wearing?”
“This is my personal attire. I don’t have work today and am reinforcing and asserting my personal life.”
“By coming in on your day off to yell at your boss?”
“It’s not a personal life if everyone knows about it, Sakura-chan.”
Sakura covers her face with hands, groaning, if possible, in the tones of murder.
❦
Team Seven seals their fate and returns to active duty. Sakura keeps secrets. Tsunade prepares for next steps.
Series
- Part 14 of Equilibrium
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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.)
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They teeter together on the edge of a decision. Sakura aims to draw out the enemy. Naruto moves in.
Series
- Part 15 of Equilibrium
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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.
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The hospital is infiltrated; they face the unknown specter of betrayal.
Series
- Part 16 of Equilibrium
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“Haven’t – haven’t we lost enough already?”
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In a moment she feels them trying, futilely, to fix it all. Everything they broke.
Series
- Part 17 of Equilibrium
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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.
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Sasuke and Naruto blow off steam. Sakura gets what she wants. Strangers come to visit.
Series
- Part 18 of Equilibrium
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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."
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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.)
Series
- Part 19 of Equilibrium