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"Oh? So that's it? After all the trouble you took to find me, you're going to leave me to rot?" Sasuke drawls, and he sounds more curious then anything else. It makes her burn with fury, and she's never been more certain of anything then she was when she snarls back-
"Yes. Yes, I think I will. For once, there's not much you can do to stop me."
"Why don't you just kill me then?" He prods, bored, as if he wasn't all that concerned. Bafflingly, though, he doesn't sound dismissive- as if there isn't a doubt in his mind that she could. Just like it doesn't matter one way or another if she does.
She doesn't like that her heart skips a euphoric beat- it wasn't even a compliment. It was just a lack of an insult where one was expected.
She hates that she's suddenly more angry at his blatant disregard for his own life then she is about everything he's done. She loathes that she has to make an effort to stop worry and concern from rearing their unwanted heads.
Sakura Haruno is tired of Sasuke Uchiha's bullshit. She doesn't want to talk to him, like Kakashi had tried a dozen times over before giving up. She doesn't want to lecture him, like Naruto had tried- was still trying. And she doesn't want to hear his sob story or explanations or even an apology, not after she waited patiently for any one of those for years.
"I can't." She says, anyway, entertaining the conversation for some reason she can't really articulate, instead of punching him until he stopped talking like she wants to, or turning and leaving it to the far more objective Sai like she probably should. By the look he shoots her, he's as shocked as she is that she was responding. It's a cold comfort, and she's burning.
"Can't you?" He challenges, barely missing a beat in surprise, and her knuckles were so white they were begging to be colored red.
Her undying adoration and devotion to Sasuke had been tinted with hate bitterness for as long as she can remember and tainted with it since the day he left, and she can't hope to tell when the later finally overtook the former. Can't tell when she accepted- or even realized- that she'd rather bite through Sasuke's lip and rip it off then kiss him. Can't tell when crush turned to obsession turned to vendetta. Can't even tell if it had ever turned at all, or if it had always been this bad and she was just too naive and hopeful and dumb to notice for years.
Can't, for the life of her, tell how she got to be here, in a cave on the border of Kumo and Kuma, getting everything she thought she wanted and not feeling a flicker of relief or accomplishment. Not feeling much of anything, somehow.
(That was a lie. She knows exactly how she got here.
Kakashi and Naruto got in a screaming match over Kakashi finally publicly declaring Sasuke a Nukenin. Inner was screeching celebrations in her head, Yamato was trying to mediate the two men, and Sai just looked at her with an uncannily knowing stare that put her at an odd peace among the chaos.
Somehow, she knew in her gut this would be the end of their decade-long hunt for Sasuke, and she refused to be regulated to the background, deemed less worthy of closure then Naruto for the millionth time.
In the end, the other three didn't even notice when she and Sai slipped out of the room, then the house, then the village.
If there was one thing the two of them had in common, it was how insultingly easy people found it to overlook and forget them.)
Speaking of-
"She can." Sai's voice affirms, chiming in for the first time from where he's dutifully quintuple-checking the seals restricting Sasuke.
"...I can." She agrees, because technically he's right, and she almost wants to smile when she's reminded that she's not alone- he's here with her, after all, and she didn't even have to ask. "I won't. I want to, and I can, but I won't. You know that." She growled accusingly, glaring at Sasuke and forcing herself back to the matter at hand. Sai fades into obligingly the background again. She lets him.
(Almost desperately, she goes back to not thinking about Sai. She doesn't know how to feel about him, really. Not since he had broken into her apartment and sat with her on a bad day and gave her a real- if cautious- smile when she thanked him hours later for just sitting there, because he was there when no one else was. Not since her heart fluttered with something sickeningly-sweet and then stopped in horror-)
"I do." He concedes, frowning, and her thoughts focus back on him with laser-point fury. "I just don't know why."
"Because, you arrogant asshole-" She starts, mind suddenly buzzing with everything she's ever wanted to say to him-
Because I love you-
Because you were everything I had for years-
Because we finally were starting to get along-
Because we could have been something-
Because I can't be nothing to you-
Because I want you to be safe-
Because you deserve a happy ending, and revenge won't get you that-
Because sometimes the best revenge is living peacefully after every effort to ensure you wouldn't-
Because I don't want you to die-
Because I want you to live instead of surviving-
Because I don't want you to do something you regret-
Because you shouldn't be alone-
Because I want you to be happy-
Because this can't be all there is-
Because I deserve a happy ending, after everything you put me through-
Because I can't give up on you-
Because I need you-
Because I made Naruto make a promise-
Because Naruto would do anything for you, and I'd do anything for him-
Because Naruto deserves a happy ending more then either of us combined-
Because I need to prove a point-
Because I hate you-)
-and swimming with memories (nights and nights on end feeling nothing but of betrayal, hurt, hate, worthlessness, thinking of nothing but him and her and them and how and why-).
"Just because." She decides, ruthlessly, and if her pixie-cut hair was long enough to flip then she would have. "I don't owe you a fucking explanation, Uchiha. The only thing I owe you is a punch to the face and a kick in the balls."
"It'll have to be a well aimed kick. I'm sure they aren't large." Sai comments sagely, almost cute with how utterly unaware he was about exactly when humor was appropriate for a situation, and something in her softens before hardening again in the blink of an eye.
(She can't afford to fall in love again- not when she was quite literally staring her last attempt at love in the face. It was all too easy to overlay Sasuke's face with Sai's, and she almost vomits at the thought.)
Sasuke's face crinkles in something like confusion or disgust or anger, the most expressive she's seen him in years outside of fights with Naruto, and she takes the opportunity to finally punch him in the face. She isn't sure what it says about her, that it took so long.
She's expecting to have trouble holding back enough not to accidentally (on purpose) kill him, and is infuriated to find that she can barely bring herself to hit him hard enough to crack the stone wall behind his head.
He collapses limply to the floor, blood from his nose dripping steadily, face frozen in that perplexing expression she could study for hours, but is pleased to find she doesn't really want to.
Something in her settles, and she feels satisfied.
(Something else in her stirs, unsettled and unsatisfied, hissing and snapping. It's livid that she wasted a decade of her life on this man, that her teenage years were ruined in ways she can't fix, that she can't settle for anything else in return. She imagines breaking every bone in his body, removing his voice box so he can't spew hate and remorse and bullshit, putting him in an irreversible coma for a decade and letting him loose years of his life to her, plucking out the eyes he valued more then his life-)
She absently realizes that she's bitten a hole on the inside of her cheek with how tightly she's clenching her teeth, and her mouth pools with blood, but it feels weirdly appropriate. She spits a glob of blood and saliva into his hair, and it's disgusting but somehow exactly what he deserved.
It feels anticlimactic, and a part of her is enraged by that, and she's expecting to be vindicated, but mostly she's just blankly content. Their struggle was never one as big and loud and chauvinistic as his and Naruto's. Something obnoxious like that was what he wants, maybe, and what was expected of her, definitely, but she's weirdly certain it wouldn't be right for the two of them to end in anything but this somber and underwhelming cave.
Besides, she's doing what she's wanted to. She took advantage of his arrogance and proved herself a better shinobi, she robbed him of whatever dramatic ending he was expecting, after so long. She was too tired to spend the energy of anything more on him.
She kicks him in the dick and considers making him infertile (half of his goal had been to restore his clan, after all-), but instead she kicks him again and walks out of the cave.
"What are you going to do with him?" Sai asks, three steps behind her and one step to the left, a subservient position. Awaiting orders, because it's the only way he knows how to help- because he wants to help her.
"....I don't know." She admits, and she winces when she hears how absolutely wrecked she sounds. Like she's been crying for hours, even though she hasn't shed a tear in months. "I don't know."
Sai doesn't respond. She doesn't really expect him to. He lays a hand on her shoulder and mechanically guides her to sit- almost certainly a maneuver he read somewhere- which she also doesn't expect, but welcomes nonetheless.
She sits, and reaches out to hold his hand.
It's tense and awkward and cold and bony, but it grounds her. Her fingers slip from his palm to his wrist and rest on his pulse, and he tenses automatically at the dangerous touch but doesn't pull away. His faint heartbeat calms her down, and the blatant show of trust almost actually has her in tears. She's a mess.
"I don't want Naruto and Kakashi-sensei to find him. I want to stuff him someplace where they'll never find him and leave him to rot, or make a better person of himself, or make a worse one. I don't care, I just don't want to hear about him or see him again- and I don't want Naruto to destroy himself anymore over him. He isn't worth it." She says, and it feels like the words are being pulled from her lips, but it's a weight of her chest, to finally say them.
"Nothing is worth what you two have poured into him, and he's worse then nothing." Sai claims with a nonchalant shrug, and she flinches. He frowns. "It's true."
"Yeah- yeah, it is. I guess. Probably. Maybe. But still- you shouldn't just say that!" She protests halfheartedly, then gives an angry breath of laughter. "Fuck. It's still reflex to defend him, even after all this time. Sorry." She apologizes, much more sincere, and he nods.
"I could kill him for you." He states, and she rolls her eyes.
"Sure, you can. Would you, though?" She asks, because that's the real question. It would ruin Naruto, and send Kakashi into a depressed spiral, and drive Ino further into T&I work-
"Yes." He responds instantly, as if it were the easiest question in the world. "Do you want me to?"
It's tempting. She looks at him, and his pulse is steady. No matter how close he is with her, Naruto, and Kakashi, he's never been shy about not liking Sasuke. It wouldn't be impossible for him like it is for her to kill the Uchiha. It wouldn't even be hard.
If she asks him to, she's sure he'd even deny her even asking it of him. Take the inevitable blame and hate for himself, so she might have peace of mind.
(Somehow, that makes her more angry then thankful, but it's an irrelevant emotional response to the question, so she ignores the flash of anger.)
"I don't know." She huffs in indecisive defeat, and they're too high up for breathing to come easily but somehow it feels easier then it has in years. Her mind runs a thousand thoughts a second, trying to figure out what the "right" option here was, and she can't comprehend a single one of them. She can only hear Sai's steady pulse and breathing. "I don't know."
She turns and gently pulled him backwards. She leans them both against the wall, hand still holding his wrist, and scoots next to him. They watch the sun rise, and it isn't silent. The world isn't still. The end of a decade long conflict doesn't end with a whisper or a bang- it just ends. It ends, and the world goes on.
Hell, maybe Sakura will too.