Work Text:
Even now he could not admit this to Sakura—that hearing her bedtime stories was his favorite part of every day.
Sasuke would sit in the semidarkness of their kitchen, slowly sipping at his ginger tea while he listened to his wife’s animated voice issuing from Sarada’s room. At four years old, their daughter already had a discerning mind when it came to the stories she was told—the storyteller could not afford to be lazy or repetitive. Sakura rose to the challenge every time: from her fertile imagination came buccaneers and cowboys, feudal era lords and goddesses, samurai and chakra-wielding ninjas—each with their own lore, their own new world to inhabit.
He thought the tales somehow familiar—no matter the setting, there was something of him and her in every story. In one of them, she chronicled their childhood affection as it blossomed into the tenderness they knew. In another, she told of their many years together—how they felt as if they could conquer anything in the world as long as they had each other. There was even that story—proving her graceful beyond compare—where she recalled the years he was lost and uncertain of the path back to her. She shared that history with their daughter, shrouded in fantasy, without any hint of regret or bitterness. It just was.
Looking back on those glowing moments of recollection, he thought: what he would give to go on hearing her stories every single night of their lives.
The ritual had had to be put on hold, after several fainting fits and a visit to the hospital. And what they all thought would only be a weekend of supervised rest turned into a month of confinement.
Their daughter was sent to her grandparents’, because Sasuke could not bear to leave his wife’s bedside. Knowing that Sarada would be nervous and uneasy, Sakura felt she should not be deprived of her bedtime comforts—so while tests were being run on her, she phoned their little girl in the evenings. She was daily losing her energy, but Sakura did not allow for her cheer to be dampened, or for her inventiveness to run dry.
She made her heroines perform glorious feats of strength, as if she were seizing victories through them that she could no longer claim herself.
One day at dusk, Sasuke finally confronted her about it.
“You’re dying.” The whispered words were as breaking glass in the hush of the room. He could not even look her in the eye as he stated the fact—afraid of the hurt he might see in her expressive features.
“Yes.”
The calm in her voice shattered him, so that he finally found it in him to look at her. Sasuke saw only shuttered emotion, and a fragile, untruthful smile. Anger boiled within him at the sight.
“Sakura. You’re dying. How are you so calm about this? How—” His heart breaking and his thoughts dissolving into incoherence, Sasuke averted his gaze once more. Trying and failing to master his voice, it trembled as he continued, “How about me, Sakura? How about our daughter?”
“You think I do not worry?” For a moment, her carefully crafted cheer broke, and he glimpsed a deep, unspeakable despair. It was gone in the blink of an eye, shielded by rage. “You don’t think I see how unfair this is?”
“Sakura—”
“I can’t, Sasuke. Don’t reproach me for my weakness. I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. Help me.”
He could never refuse her anything, so Sasuke pushed his anguish aside and sat himself down on the bed beside her. “I will! I’ll do anything you ask me to do. If only you wouldn’t leave us. I’ll do everything, Sakura.”
“Hold me, then,” she asked, growing tearful. “The way you always had, when everything was alright. Just hold me.”
He was quick to comply, wrapping both arms around her wasted frame. As Sasuke leaned into her, his nose filled with the hospital’s sharp, antiseptic smell, which almost masked the sweet-sour note of sickness laying over her. Almost. He fought the urge to weep.
They just sat in the waning daylight for a good while, no words passing between them. Until Sakura spoke, and once more sent a keen wave of pain through his heart.
“Our daughter is too young—maybe she won’t remember me at all when she grows up,” she began. All the while, she stroked his hands, as if drawing comfort from their contact. “I should be consoled she will be spared much pain, but I’m selfish, and I can’t bear it.”
“No.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not selfish, Sakura. And she won’t—forget you. I won’t allow that.”
She could only hum in gratitude, utterly spent. Sasuke laid her gently on her pillows, kissing her brow. She smiled.
“Won’t you go home to her tonight, darling? She needs you, too.”
“If you wish it, I will go.”
“Please.”
And so that same evening, he fetched his daughter from the Harunos’, and sat with her as she waited for sleepiness to come over her. She was talkative as usual, having seemed to inherit her mother’s cheerful spirit.
Looking at her dark hair and eyes, and the delicate shape of her little face—all Uchiha—Sasuke regretted that she did not inherit more.
“Papa,” she called brightly, holding back a yawn, “I miss Mama’s stories. When’s she coming home?”
“Soon,” he lied. He could not bear to spoil the illusion Sakura had painstakingly woven for their child. He managed a smile. “For now, what about a Papa story?”
“Please! Please!”
“Alright, love, please sit tight.” He paused in thought, scrambling for a story. Until at last the answer came to him. Of course.
“Once upon a time, there was a lovely girl with petal-colored hair.”
“Like Mama?”
“Yes, exactly like her. And she was the kindest and the bravest lass in all the land…”