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Sasuke leaves Konoha a week after he’s released from prison. He keeps the sun over his left shoulder and a bag with a few meager supplies; bandages, soldier pills, a bedroll, slung over his right. He walks quickly the first day; he can feel the city staring accusatorily at his back, reminding him of promises he never made but should have. Reminding him that what he’s doing could be considered another defection. That Naruto and Sakura hugged him and begged him never leave again.
He doesn’t care. Or rather, the weight of all the guilt he carries is pressing down like a boulder on his chest until there’s no room to feel anything else. When he walks Konoha’s streets every man, women, and child, is a reminder of an atrocity he would have committed. And they know. Saskue can see it in their eyes when they duck their heads and shuffle their feet as he passes. His very presence in Konoha is an irritant within the delicate veins of a city trying to rebuild. Trying to forget.
Sasuke knows too much to forget. His head is full of Itachi, and honor, and whispered meetings in the dead of night. The Uchiha crest is an anchor, holding him steady and dragging him down at the same time.
He stops walking when he reaches the ocean. The surf pounding steadily against the rocks echoes his heatbeat and the salty wind whispers his brother’s name. It reminds him of the day Obito told him the truth-wrapped-in-lies that sent him spinning down into depths darker than he’d thought possible. A good place to rebuild- no, build. Because to rebuild there must have been a foundation in the first place, and Sasuke has been realizing more with each passing day that his was rotten from the start.
So he sets up camp right there on the sand and spends the first night staring up at the stars, whose names he’s long forgotten.
Sakura and Naruto arrive the next day, ambush him while he’s picking his way between rocky tidepools looking for shellfish. Naruto shouts half-intelligible curses for minutes on end and when he’s done, Sakura places a calming hand on his shoulder and turns to Sasuke with seafoam eyes.
“How can we help?”
Sasuke grunts and continues walking. He’s not going to make things easy for them, but by now it would be foolish to hope that they would give up and go home. Not after everything he’s put them through. They comb the beach for hours, and when they return back to camp, Naruto throws down his sleeping bag without another work and Sakura pulls out a pot to cook their haul in.
They eat a wordless meal and Sasuke turns in immediately without looking at his two former teammates. He can still hear them holding a heated whisper-argument about him as the fire fades to embers.
“What the hell’s gotten into that bastard?” Naruto, a mixture of anger and hurt.
“I think he needs some time away. To heal.” Sakura, patient but tinged with sadness.
“But what about us?”
A pause. “I think we need some time too, don’t you?”
The next day they go about making a proper shelter. The trees in the area are little more than scrubby bushes clinging to the rocky soil so they make do with driftwood, of which there is plenty thanks to Konoha’s relatively recent destruction.
Naruto flexes his tanned arms as much as possible whenever Sakura’s around and Sasuke notes the way she pauses to admire them with a detached anger. He doesn’t have any right to be upset of course; he’d refused Tsunade’s offer of the mokuton prosthetic, and Sakura could admire anyone she wished. In fact, after all the times she’d bared her feelings to him only to be met with condescension and scorn, it was probably healthy for her to move on.
Sasuke frowns around the nails he holds in his teeth while his remaining hand steadies a plank that will soon be part of the eastern wall.
Naruto and Sakura.
The idea of them together grates worse than sand stuck between his toes. But he has no right to an opinion. His leaving brought them together, made them a unit. While he was off forming Taka/Hebi, Naruto and Sakura were training- holding tight to their hope that Team 7 would be reunited one day.
He tries to shut out Sakura’s tinkling laughter at some private joke. After all these years, now it’s his turn to be left behind.
The fourth day brings rain lashing across the beach and their pitiful shack shakes with the force of the wind. Sasuke is restless. Trapped in this small space with his former teammates, the air grows hotter and stuffier by the minute.
Naruto paces; one, two, three, four steps, heel-turn, and back again.
“Are you done yet?” He finally blurts out.
Sasuke responds with a blank stare. “Done with what?”
“Your little snit! Dontcha think it’s time we head back to the village?”
He shrugs. “You’re free to go. I don’t recall inviting you in the first place.”
Sakura opens her mouth but Naruto buts in. “No. No. No.” He stomps his foot to emphasize each word. “You don’t get do to that to us anymore. Not when team seven’s finally back together again.”
“Well was it worth it?” Sasuke snarls. “All the blood, sweat, and tears it took to drag me back to Konoha? You could’ve just left me at the Valley of the End. It would’ve been quicker that way.”
A stunned silence descends upon the room, but Sasuke doesn’t wait for the thunder to arrive. He stalks out into the night, rain instantly soaking his hair and running down his collar. His stump throbs at the sudden shift in temperature.
Waves crash into the shore, sending up plumes of white spray. He walks as to their hungry mouths he dares, imagines what it would be like to be born away into that darkness.
Sakura grabs his arm and spins him around. He hears a crack, then his head snaps backwards, and the salty taste of blood and seawater mingles on his lips.
“You’re such an ass sometimes, you know that? How do you think we felt when we woke up and found you’d left again? You hurt us, Sasuke. Again and again. You push, we pull. Why don’t you just lean on us for once?”
There it is again. Us.
He gingerly feels his swollen nose, decides it’s not broken.
“I’m not like you two.” I’m too broken. “What I did—”
“Was shitty,” Sakura finishes for him, her gaze softening. “And you paid the price,” she gestures at his stump with her bloody knuckles. “I understand if you need to be away from Konoha right now. But you don’t have to spend the rest of your life alone as some sort of twisted penance.”
Sasuke sits down with a heavy thump. The wet sand sucks at his clothes like mud.
“I don’t know what to do,” he says finally.
Sakura takes his hand and pulls him to his feet. “Come back inside.”
Naruto meets them about a hundred paces from the front door. Or rather where their front door should be. The little hut has been reduced to a handful of toothpicks scattered along the beach. Sasuke spies telltale marks of rasengan.
“Roof’s sprung a leak,” Naruto says blithely, jabbing a thumb at the mess behind him. “But I found cave back by the tidepools the other day,” he adds as Sakura winds up for another punch.
So they trudge through the rain single-file; Naruto’s back ramrod-straight in front, radiating chakra that cracks and sizzles in the rain. Sakura brings up the rear. Her chakra feels as grey and as turbulent as the waves throwing themselves at the shore with increasing ferocity.
The tidepools are gone, hidden by swirling white, but the rocky outcrop above them stands firm and it is there they find a cleft deep enough to shelter the three of them. The sandy floor is more or less dry, and they find enough driftwood to start a meager blaze.
Sasuke can sense the wounds he’s made festering in the silence, like the wounds Itachi forced him carry for so many years. He clears his throat.
“You guys should leave when the weather clears. Konoha needs you.”
The only way he knows how to heal is through cautery; burn away the hurt until the nerves die and you can’t feel anything anymore. Something about a forest that needs to burn to the ground before it can renew.
“Konoha needs you too!” Naruto splutters. “Didn’t you want to be Hokage? Didn’t you want to change things? Ya can’t do that if you insist you’re just gonna give up and be the bad guy all the time.” An unreadable expression flashes across Naruto’s face and his hand rubs subconsciously at his stomach.
Demon child-turned-war hero sitting next to his photographic negative, the golden boy fallen from grace. Sasuke wants to laugh at the irony.
“Tell me exactly what I have left for me in Konoha.” Besides ghosts and memories.
“You have us,” Sakura whispers, the flames enhancing the shadows under her eyes. “I don’t know why that’s so hard for you to believe.”
“But you and Naruto can be happy! You don’t need me around fucking up your lives anymore,” Sasuke bursts out. His breath is coming unevenly now, the smoke stinging his eyes and dulling his senses.
Naruto stands and grabs his shoulder to turn the full force of his gaze upon him.
“Maybe we don’t want to be happy without you.”
Sasuke leans forward until their foreheads touch. He hears the sand shift as Sakura stands as well and wraps her arms around his waist from behind. He’s shaking, not only from the cold, but because for the first time he understands the true depth and power of their love.
I was always going to lose.
Thank God.
Sakura’s teeth chatter in his ear.
“M-maybe we sh-should get out of all this wet gear?” She hasn’t sounded this shy since she was twelve.
Naruto’s fingers stretch questioningly out towards Sasuke’s chest. He nods, and Naruto pulls his shirt up over his head, taking care to run his knuckles lightly over hip bones. Sasuke reaches for Naruto’s jacket and yanks the zipper, pulling him in close with a grunt.
Sakura has already wriggled out of her top, but together they peel her skirt and leggings down. Sasuke marvels at a thick white scar that slashes across the top of her thigh. She catches him watching and makes to move her hand over it, but Naruto presses a kiss to the area instead.
Not to be outdone, Sasuke bites down gently on the inside of her other thigh. Sakura throws her head back and groans, then pushes them away.
“Take your pants off, dammnit, this isn’t fair,” she gasps.
Naruto’s ears turn pink as he fumbles with his zipper but eventually they’re both shivering slightly in their boxers. Sakura pats the ground on either side of her, but first Naruto drags Sasuke’s hips forward until their chests are touching.
Sasuke sinks his teeth into the hollow between Naruto’s neck and jaw, relishes the way he whimpers. As soon as he releases his hold, Naruto’s pulling in for a kiss that tastes like the sea.
They pull apart and, as if on cue, flop their full body weight onto Sakura. She giggles breathlessly underneath them until they arrange themselves into a more comfortable position. Sasuke finds himself sandwiched between his companions; Naruto nuzzling the back of his neck with his arms and legs wrapped around him like a koala bear, Sakura with her head resting underneath his chin, arms holding his lower back.
He counts each breath that tickles his skin until he falls asleep.
The storm passes by morning, leaving behind a cloudless blue sky. Team Seven struggles into stiff, sandy clothes. They begin their journey back to Konoha under the watchful eyes of wheeling gulls.