Chapter Text
[. . .]
"I searched for your soul and couldn't find it."
[. . .]
Chapter 1
The Hiraeth Lover
[. . .]
Uchiha Sasuke is exhausted.
He is exhausted, so he sleeps.
Sleeping is dangerous. He knows this. He learned it the night he lost nearly everyone he loved—when a man he once placed on a pedestal stained the whispering floors of his home with blood. He spent every moment of that night trapped in it, reliving it thousands upon thousands of times until his mind finally stretched enough to contort into a tangent of manic repulsion every time he closed his eyes. He chased pain, mistaking it for strength, and became a fugitive because his nights were restless. He took part in a shared catastrophe that nearly destroyed the world, and later helped save it because the visions in his dreams wouldn't leave him alone. And in the end, he was granted a mercy he knows he doesn't deserve by a man far better than him, all because he had allowed himself to listen to a boy he'd seen in his dreams.
Uchiha Sasuke is not good at sleeping. He is not good at falling asleep, nor staying in it.
Yet here he is.
Asleep.
He knows he is, as his dreams are often lucid, confusing. He dreads it, but he can't push himself to wake up.
Because Sakura is in it.
Sakura. Eternal Sakura. Loving, forgiving, Sakura, who mourned him for far too long. She's smiling at him, here. Here, in this field of grass prespiring with dew of an afternoon shower, bathing her body with moonlight. Her hair is long and lustrous, cascading against her soft skin, colored a supple moonstone reflecting the pitiful stars in the sky that shine something visceral and vulnerable in her eyes of jade. Her glossy lips create indents of happiness onto her blushing cheeks, pronouncing the youth in her face with her vivid, dilated pupils centered directly onto him.
Here, she is in love.
She is in love, and she reaches for him, as if he never left.
He lets her. He, void of black, endless Sasuke. Selfish, hateful, Sasuke, who never learned how to love someone properly. He lies beside her, clotheless much as she is, his attention greedily taking in the sight of her and the promising way her weight bends the blades of grass. There is a soft glow of crimson that lathers her entirely, belonging to the eternal memory in his eyes of avarice that traces every curve and crevice like salvation.
Here, he is loved.
He is in love, and he lets himself believe he is worthy of it, as if she were still here.
The ends of her eyes crinkle with a distant happiness.
He wants her to stop.
"Wake up," She murmurs, delicately brushing her fingers against the skin of his face.
It tickles.
"Don't want to," He admits with a pathetic croak, loathing the lump in his throat that forms.
She doesn't stop smiling. "Why?" She whispers, as if it is a secret between lovers that only one will know now.
He supposes it is.
"...You're here," His tongue moves to express the words he never could. But much like everything in his life, it is too late. It's too late, because Sakura is right in front of him, and her eyes remain the same, longing for deception she can't hide. Because Sakura is not Sakura anymore, but a golden memory sunk into the darkest waters of his laments.
Her smile looks sad.
His eyes burn.
They burn, they sting, they water.
"I'm not real," She responds. Cruelly. Fataly.
Sasuke lifts the hand he lost her in and places it on her face. They stare at each other for endless miles, searching for the other half, his thumb brushing the mocking diamond on her forehead and her fingers probing at the meat under his prized eyes. But it's fruitless. Because his hand shakes to touch the cold, cold skin that isn't Sakura.
Because Sakura would never be so cruel as to tell him that.
Still.
Sasuke is Sasuke.
And Sasuke knows, more than anyone, about denial.
"Go home," Sakura's smile is gone now, replaced by fatigue. "She needs you." Her skin pales further, her peach undertone becoming a pallid, sickly jaundice. Slowly, her hair and eyes lose their color. Slowly, her eyes begin to close.
Sasuke is dying.
Sasuke is dying again.
And again.
"Not," Cotton on his tongue, stuffed bloody into his throat. She isn't looking anymore. "Not without you. I can't. I can't do this without you." His words are desperate. They are desperate, and they go unheard.
"Oh, Sasuke," She promises.
Sasuke thinks he may see red.
There is blood on his hand.
The wail of an infant echoes.
She cannot be saved.
It is his doing.
"You are falling."
You are my undoing.
"Let me go."
And he wakes.
[. . .]
His body jerks.
He stiffens, taking in a quiet, desperate lungful before he lurches forward, cold sweat clinging to his face and neck. A searing brightness causes him to hiss with discomfort, squinting his watery eyes as his hand grasps a grainy surface beneath him that feels suspiciously like hot, over-stepped on dirt. He curls his fingers skeptically to test his wild theory of being outside rather than in the safety of a bed he'd taken for the night, before letting the object of inquiry go at the lurch his heart gives.
Where is Sarada?
His daughter becomes prominent in his mind, forgoing the alarm of wondering why on earth he's outside, somewhere bright, somewhere that smells like the brutal heat of Konohagakure from the panic.
Small, genin-like chakra signatures surrounding him spike, but Sasuke doesn't give a fuck.
His hand pats the ground around him as he twists his body, breath catching, heart thundering with the horrible thought that his daughter—!
—is sitting behind him on his cloak, giggling, gurgling nonsense as she stuffs a fistful of leaves into her mouth.
Sasuke exhales all at once. His entire body sags with a profound relief that nearly sends him into slumber again. He quickly gathers her into his lap with practiced ease, holding her close, his lone hand smoothing back the wild tufts of her hair.
"Don't do that," he murmurs, almost chastising, but his voice stays soft. His eyes search her tiny face, looking for traces of her mother—her eyes, her smile, and the familiar pang of his dream makes him refocus; he scolds himself for remembering.
His nine-month-old beams at him, her mouth smeared with dirt, leaves stuck to her drool-coated chin.
"...Ew," he mutters, grimacing as he wipes her mouth with the edge of his sleeve.
"Hey! What are you doing with that baby, you pervert!?"
Sasuke freezes.
That voice.
Slowly, his head turns, his Sharingan flaring to life like a curse.
Three children stare back at him from across the clearing—wide-eyed, on guard, familiar in a way that makes his stomach churn.
A pointing Naruto.
A shocked Sakura.
...Himself, who is a mirror of the past, wide-eyed and glaring.
Uchiha Sasuke stares. His breath catches again, but for a very different reason.
"Maa…"
A kunai gleams in the sunlight, held by a man with one eye and a smile half-hidden beneath a mask.
Kakashi.
"And who might you be?" the much younger copy-nin asks casually.
...Shit.