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Sasuke’s teammates were big balls of energetic sunshine during the day.
Two bright, warm kids who brought happiness to his blood-stained, dark life with their beaming smiles and dazzling clear eyes.
But they were two ridiculous scaredy-cats by night time; they clung to him while camping, trembled form head to toe at the slightest sound.
Sasuke felt obligated to take care of them.
He laid down by them when it was his turn to keep watch, and allowed Naruto to hold his waist as he soundly slept the night away. He hated being touched, recoiled from most shows of affection.
But, sometimes, late at night he allowed himself to love his teammates.
He combed Sakura’s hair those nights, caressed her pink locks with careful fingers and enjoyed the ritualistic feel of taking care of her in ways no one else did.
Sasuke had to will himself to concentrate on any possible enemy signs instead of their steady, calming breaths as he kept watch.
They were his biggest strength, but they also were his biggest weakness.
Naruto was childish. He believed in everything he was told like the naive idiot that he was.
This prompted him to be constantly scared, because everyone enjoyed the easy laughs they got from regaling him with horrifying tales of vicious ghosts and murderous forest creatures.
Sakura was superstitious.
She liked to read the horoscope for the team every morning. Believed in old ladies who promised her a bright future or threatened her with horrible deaths or eternal singleness.
She listened carefully to TenTen’s tarot reading, bought astrology books alongside Ino. She liked to spread weird rumours about urban legends and partaked on sorority rituals for love and health with her girlfriends.
Sasuke found those eccentricities interesting, he never really got to know the most important woman in his life in the way he knew Sakura.
His mother died and Sasuke survived, and now there's a woman that he knows better than her, who fills his heart with love, who sometimes makes him forget about the revenge that he needs to commit on her name.
He sometimes wondered if his mother enjoyed sorority in the way Sakura did. If she chanted ghosts names to the mirrors with friends at night for the thrill of it and then couldn’t sleep without someone by her side for days.
Sasuke decided to indulge her eccentricities and take care of her fears. He wanted to always be there for the nights she scared herself over superstitions and fantasies.
But he knew he wouldn’t always be there.
Because he was an avenger, because his life was blood tainted before his teammates came into his life. He knew he would leave them one way or another.
He started to hate the knowledge.
Everyday he spent by their side was another day to laugh at Naruto’s antics and blush at Sakura’s blooming beauty.
Every night shared with them, was another night for his protective behaviour to grow stronger and sicker.
He had to let them go, he was aware of that, and the idea killed him.
So he allowed Natuto to hold him close at night and find comfort on his steadiness.
So he indulged in Sakura’s rituals, enabled her interests in protection trinkets.
He even let her hug him when she was scared; holding back blushes and trembling fingers.
Because he knew, that one of these nights, maybe sooner than later, he wouldn’t be able to be there for them.
That he would leave them behind.