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Sasuke has never told anyone this before, but he has always held a very deep attachment to Sakura’s hair.
When they were children, and her hair had been long and silky and beautiful, he often imagined running his hands through it, down the length of it. On missions when they’d lie next to each other at night, she’d be so close and all he’d be able to smell was her strawberry-scented shampoo—when he would eventually fall asleep, his dreams were of cherry blossom trees.
Sasuke has not seen pink hair since he was a seventeen year old boy.
It is why he feels as though he has been electrocuted, shot from the inside out with his own chidori when he walks into Kakashi’s home and sees pink.
“Wh—” Sasuke’s wide, disbelieving stare remains glued to her. There she stands, looking like an angel and a ghost all at once, watching him with eyes like broad green fields that have never once seen a storm.
Ubiquitous. That’s what her eyes are. If this is what drowning, falling, flying feels like, he doesn’t want to be saved.
“Don’t…just don’t ask,” Naruto rasps with an almost distraught expression, regretfully pulling his attention away from the visage of the woman he had mourned and grieved and loved. His voice is quiet and somber and after catching his gaze for a nanosecond, Sasuke merely casts his eyes away in response.
There is nothing to ask. Sasuke immediately knew why Naruto did it. And he knows very well the consequences his best friend would face should anyone find out what he had done. But Sasuke can not bring himself to spare a single molecule of his body caring about that. Not when—when—
Not when she is here. Kami, she’s here.
At the beginning, he often laid awake at night, thinking of her. Wondering why fate was so cruel to those who did not deserve its wrath. During nights where it would storm outside, the distinct sound of trees swaying roughly and water pellets mercilessly hitting the windows, Sasuke would feel that the sky must be crying for him. That it must be thundering for him.
And when lightning struck across the midnight black canvas—vengeful, furious, howling with pain—he felt that the world was ready to crumble to the ground, much like he had when he had seen her coffin being lowered into the mud.
For how could life continue on its course when Spring has withered and perished?
Not having anything to say and neither the strength to stay on his feet, Sasuke shakily lowers himself into the sofa, his eyes never once straying from hers.
“Sakura-chan…” Naruto croaks before swallowing and starting again, “Sakura-chan has already had a look at his vitals and ran a check on his condition. She…she said it’s pretty bad but not irreversible. Kaka-sensei will live, and he’ll also get better once Sakura-chan creates the medicine for him.”
“Well, that’s…that's if I can,” Sakura speaks for the first time since he’d stepped foot inside and Sasuke’s form freezes at the sound of her voice. It was sinking in, slowly slowly, just how much he’s fucking missed her.
“I have no doubt that you will, Sakura-chan!” Naruto reassures her, but it seems to fall flat considering his jittery movements and red eyes. He is not in a great state, though neither is Sasuke.
Kakashi seems to notice that too, for he turns his eyes to their Hokage and sends him his trademark eye-smile. “Naruto, you should head home, get a little rest. We wouldn’t want our Hokage to collapse from exhaustion now, would we?”
His voice is as light-hearted as ever, doing his very best to cheer him up, and Sasuke feels a tug in his chest. This old man loves them so much. It makes him realise that as stupid as this most likely spontaneous decision was, he is indescribably glad Naruto has brought her back.
One irreplaceable part of team seven was already gone. He doesn’t think he’d be able to handle another loss.
“You’re right,” the blonde sighs, shoulders hunching inwards. He looks so, so tired and Sasuke feels yet another tug in his chest. Turning to Sakura as he begins heading to the door, he sends her an incredibly soft smile. “I’m going to get going, Sakura-chan. I’m…sorry for putting you in this position, I just…felt like I had no other option.”
Sakura stops him with a hand on his forearm before he can continue. “It’s fine, Naruto, truly. I want to help Kaka-sensei. He will still always be my teacher, no matter what,” she says, directing her gaze to the slumped figure laying on the other sofa. The copy-nin’s face softens, and he looks back at her as though he is memorising every inch of her face.
“Besides…” she continues as she looks back at Naruto. Her face lights up in a small smile. “I’m very happy to be able to see you like this, having achieved your dream. This is an opportunity I never thought I’d have the privilege of having.” Her hand gently squeezes his arm. “I’m so proud of you, Naruto,” she whispers.
The Hokage’s blue eyes immediately glazes over with unshed tears. He exhales slowly as if bracing himself. “Thank you, Sakura-chan,” he whispers back sincerely. Naruto then gently pulls himself away and turns his attention towards Sasuke as he reaches the door. “You’re staying, right?”
Sasuke was still in such a state of shock at the events that have just unfolded in front of him that he barely remembers to respond. Unluckily for him, Kakashi chooses to speak up for him.
“Why, of course!” he exclaims jubilantly, “It’s not as if he has a wife waiting for him at home like you do. Now, shoo!”
Snapping out of his stupor, Sasuke sends a withering glare in his sensei’s direction. Naruto laughs nervously at the ill-timed, insensitive joke before swiftly making his exit without sparing a glance in anyone’s direction. He more than likely wants to escape the awkwardness that comment would rouse.
Sakura falters for a few delayed seconds before seeming to acknowledge that no one would be breaking the silence anytime soon. Her eyes linger on Sasuke for a moment, whose gaze is already back on her, intense as always. After a moment, she quietly ventures into the kitchen.
Kakashi says nothing, merely closes his tired eyes, as Sasuke follows her.
He seats himself at the counter and watches as she gathers her ingredients that he assumes Naruto had somehow obtained for her, and begins assembling them to start on the medicine. It is silent for a long moment save for the clinking of cups and glasses. She feels his unwavering stare on her but stays as focused on her task as she possibly can.
But when the silence begins stretching until it sounds like loud ringing bells vibrating painfully against her eardrums, she parts her lips and asks the question that has been plaguing her ever since the topic was mentioned.
“You…never married?” Sakura asks sheepishly, inquisitive, peeking up at him from under her feathery pink lashes.
Sasuke’s form stills at her tentative enquiry, images of a long-forgotten dream paneling through his mind as though he is watching a slideshow, or a rather tragic love story.
He is not particularly surprised she had asked. He is a thirty-four year old man, after all. She must have been curious after hearing Kakashi so generously mention it to her.
He is not surprised but he is torn.
How can he tell her that there was only one person in the world who he would have ever tied knots with? Only one person who held the very essence of his calamitous, depraved, utterly undeserving being in her benign hands?
Sakura had rescued him, ruined him all at once. She had taught him how to give love and how to receive it. But she had also left him, had also ingrained herself so deeply into the very marrow of his bones, only to never open her multifaceted jade eyes ever again. She has ensured he would never love again.
Sasuke had never thought Sakura to be cruel until that day he begged her to open them, to wake up, to not do this to him.
“No,” Sasuke finally answers, a very long time after she had asked the question. The sound of the fabric of her clothes shifting fills the otherwise quiet apartment. She had not expected him to answer, after all, it seems.
“Why?” she whispers immediately, before promptly flushing in embarrassment and clumsily clarifying her words. “I—I mean, not that you have to tell me, of course. I’m…sorry, that was terribly invasive.”
“It’s fine,” his quiet voice carries around the room, reaching her. He watches as she stills, staring at him with wide, shocked eyes.
Funny. He had once believed he’d never see that particular shade of green again. He cannot bring himself to feel anything other than pain at the thought.
“The one person I wanted to tie myself to for eternity had left this world,” he tells her, watching her intensely, suddenly feeling bold. He wants to see the very moment that realisation flashes through her iridescent irises, the exact moment she learns that it is she who has stolen his heart.
Sakura does not disappoint, though she never does.
She blinks her wide eyes repeatedly, long rosy lashes brushing the tops of her cheekbones, hiding her jade gems for only milliseconds before mercifully revealing them once again with each blink (he almost lets out a deranged laugh at the irony of that). Her mouth falls open and she looks at him like she has just lost something very precious to her.
She knows now , Sasuke thinks to himself as he watches her delicate features crumble in such a way that the cracks in her deceitful skin do not compare. His throat constricts and his breaths are shallow because Sakura is breaking right in front of him just like she has done time and time again and he can do nothing about it because she is dead. She is dead.
Sasuke could drive himself mad until the earth is nothing but rubble and there are no more bodies to sacrifice but he will never truly have the power to reawaken his love. She will forever be the one that got away.
Looking at her now is a bittersweet thing. Sakura finally knows for how long and how deep his love has run for her, but it is simply far too late.