Archive of Our Own

Sakura noticed him for the first time on a Tuesday that should have been ordinary.

It was one of those clear Konoha afternoons where the sun turned the rooftops warm gold, and the alleys smelled faintly of tea, dust, and grilled fish from the market district. Team 7 had just been dismissed after training, Naruto already running ahead toward Ichiraku with loud complaints about starvation, Kakashi vanishing with his usual lazy excuse, and Sasuke falling into step beside her without comment. That part had become its own quiet sort of habit over the last few months, especially since he and Sakura had slipped from teammates with secret feelings into something softer, sweeter, and still mostly hidden from everyone except, Sakura suspected, Kakashi, who noticed far more than he ever let on.

Sasuke walked her home often now. Not every day, because that would be suspicious, he’d said with a flat expression that had somehow made her blush harder, but often enough that Sakura had started expecting the shape of him at her side, the calm weight of his presence, the occasional brush of his hand against hers when the lane narrowed. It made the end of missions easier. It made the city feel smaller, safer.

That Tuesday, she had been talking about a medical text she’d borrowed from the hospital library and how annoying it was that the diagrams labeled muscles in a needlessly confusing way when she felt the prickling sensation of being watched.

At first, she ignored it.

Shinobi were watched all the time. By shopkeepers, by civilians curious about missions, by other ninja evaluating threat. By Naruto when he wanted attention. By Sasuke when he thought she wasn’t looking.

But this felt different.

It clung.

When she glanced over her shoulder, she caught only a flash of movement at the corner of a side street—someone stepping back too quickly behind a wall. A dark sleeve. A glimpse of a sandal. Nothing enough to identify.

She frowned, slowing.

Sasuke’s eyes shifted to her immediately. “What?”

“Nothing,” Sakura said too quickly.

His gaze sharpened. He had become unfairly good at hearing the difference between her real nothing and her fake one. “That wasn’t convincing.”

She forced a smile. “I just thought I saw someone I recognized.”

Sasuke looked past her, scanning the street, and for one tense second, Sakura thought he might actually find the person. But the alley mouth was empty now, the crowd moving as normal, housewives carrying baskets, a pair of academy students racing by.

“Hn,” he said at last, though his hand hovered at the small of her back as they started walking again. Casual, almost careless. Protective anyway.

Sakura told herself not to be silly. It was probably nothing. A civilian. Another genin. Someone was avoiding them because Sasuke had one of his intimidating moods.

Then, the next morning, she found the flower.

It lay on the windowsill just inside her bedroom, a camellia bloom with its stem cut short and the petals slightly crushed from being pushed through the narrow gap she’d left in the window the night before.

Sakura stared at it for a long moment, a heavy, cold feeling settling into her stomach.

Her mother hadn’t put it there. Neither had her father. Neither of them would climb onto the small outer awning and slip a flower through her window as a joke. Her room was on the second floor.

She picked it up carefully, as if it might somehow explain itself in her hand. It was just a flower. A pretty one. Innocent.

Still, her skin crawled.

She almost told her parents. Almost told Kakashi. Almost told Sasuke.

Instead, she wrapped the stem in paper and shoved it into the bottom drawer of her desk as if hiding it would erase the wrongness of it.

It didn’t.

Over the next week, little things began to happen.

Footsteps that slowed when she slowed and stopped when she stopped.

A folded scrap of paper left on the training ground log after Team 7 finished exercises, with only two words written in careful ink: You’re beautiful.

Another flower.

A ribbon she was certain had gone missing from her dresser reappeared tied in a neat bow around the handle of her bedroom window.

Sakura stopped sleeping well.

She would lie awake staring at the ceiling, every creak of the house suddenly too loud, every whisper of wind at the shutters sending her heart hammering. During the day, she functioned well enough to fool almost everyone. She smiled. She argued with Naruto. She trained. She answered Kakashi’s questions and dodged his suspicious looks. But the fear stayed lodged beneath her ribs, making her too aware of every stranger in the street.

She did not tell Team 7.

At first, it was because she didn’t want to make a big deal out of something she couldn’t prove. Then it became because saying it aloud would make it real.

And, if she was honest, because she hated the thought of burdening them.

Naruto would explode. He’d storm all over the village demanding answers and turn it into chaos. Kakashi would report it, involve patrols, maybe her parents, maybe even the Hokage. Sasuke—

Sasuke would look at her with that frightening stillness he got when he was angry, and she didn’t know what he would do after that.

So she kept it to herself.

That worked for exactly twelve days.

On the twelfth day, Team 7 had a D-rank mission helping clean out a storage building behind a dango shop. Naruto had spent most of it loudly complaining about dust and unfair labor while Kakashi read, and Sasuke silently carried entire stacks of crates by himself. Sakura, sweeping debris into neat piles, had almost started to feel normal again. The morning had been busy and bright and public. No strange notes. No flowers. No crawling sensation at the back of her neck.

Then she found the little paper charm tucked beneath the strap of her weapons pouch.

No one else saw her freeze.

It was folded from pink paper. On the inside, in the same careful handwriting: I like your hair best when it’s loose.

Sakura’s vision blurred for a second.

Her hair was usually tied back on missions and during training. Right now it was down because the mission had been simple cleanup work and she hadn’t bothered securing it more than pinning the front out of her face. Very few people had seen it that way today.

Very few people could have gotten close enough to slide that note beneath the strap at her hip without her noticing.

Her fingers clenched around the paper until it crumpled.

“Sakura-chan?” Naruto asked from across the room. “Why do you look like you swallowed a bug?”

She forced herself upright. “I’m fine.”

Naruto squinted. “You sure? Your face is all weird.”

“My face is not weird!”

“More weird than usual,” he said helpfully.

Under any other circumstance, Sakura would have shouted. Maybe even hit him. Instead, she shoved the note deep into her pocket and bent over the broom again before either of the boys could see her hands shaking.

Sasuke was watching her.

She could feel it.

She avoided his eyes.

That afternoon, after the mission payout, Naruto ran off to challenge Kiba to some idiotic race across the rooftops, and Kakashi ambled away, claiming he had important business. Sakura made to leave quickly, hoping she could escape before Sasuke cornered her, but of course, he stepped into her path.

“Sakura.”

She smiled too brightly. “What?”

“You’ve been distracted all day.”

“No, I haven’t.”

He ignored that. “And you haven’t been sleeping.”

She blinked. “How would you know that?”

His expression didn’t change, but one dark eyebrow lifted slightly, as if the answer were obvious. It probably was. They trained together. He noticed when her reflexes were a fraction slow, when the shadows under her eyes deepened, when she looked over her shoulder one time too many.

“I’m fine,” she said again.

He took a step closer. “You keep saying that.”

“Because it’s true.”

“Sakura.”

He said her name quietly, but it hit harder than if he’d snapped it. There was concern in it, and patience, and an edge of insistence she knew too well. The look in his eyes made something tight and frightened in her chest want to crack open.

She looked away.

“I can handle it,” she muttered.

That made him go very still.

“Handle what?”

Too late, Sakura realized what she’d said.

She bit her lip. “Nothing.”

Sasuke exhaled through his nose. “You are very bad at lying to me.”

“I’m not lying.”

“You are.”

She glared at him, mostly because the alternative was crying. “You don’t have to sound so smug about it.”

“I’m not smug.”

“You are a little smug.”

A pause. Then, softer, “Tell me.”

There it was again—that gentle tone he used so rarely, one he seemed to save for moments when it was just the two of them, and Sakura was already a breath from unraveling. It made her chest ache. It made her want to lean into him and tell him everything. It also made her stubbornness flare.

If she told him now, in the middle of the street, he would immediately start hunting through the village for whoever had been following her. He wouldn’t stop to think. He would just act.

So she shook her head.

Sasuke stared at her for a long moment, jaw tight.

Then he did something unexpected. He reached out and took her hand.

Not a dramatic gesture. Not enough for passing civilians to look twice. Just his fingers threading with hers, warm and sure, grounding her before she could even think to pull away. Her breath caught.

His thumb brushed once across her knuckles. “Fine,” he said quietly. “You don’t want to talk here.”

Sakura blinked at him.

“Come with me.”

He led her, still hand in hand, away from the busier streets and toward a quiet stretch of training ground at the edge of the village where the trees grew thick, and the grass rolled down toward the river. The sun was lower now, leaves flickering gold-green overhead, the evening breeze cool against Sakura’s heated face. He didn’t let go until they reached a fallen log half-hidden under the shade of an old cedar.

Then he turned to her.

“Now tell me.”

Sakura wrapped her arms around herself. The note in her pocket felt like a stone.

“I didn’t want to cause trouble,” she said at last.

His expression turned flat in that ominous way. “For who?”

“For anyone.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

She looked at the ground. “There’s been someone following me.”

The words came out almost too small to hear. Saying them made her stomach twist violently.

Sasuke’s silence was immediate and awful.

Sakura rushed on before she could lose her nerve. “I don’t know who it is. I haven’t seen their face. At first I thought maybe I was imagining it, but then there were notes and flowers and—I know it sounds stupid—”

“It doesn’t.”

She forced herself to meet his eyes.

His face had changed.

He wasn’t shocked. He wasn’t confused. He was furious, and the frightening thing was how little of it showed. It lived only in the chill steadiness of his gaze and the way his posture went dangerously still.

“How long?” he asked.

“Almost two weeks.”

His hands curled slowly into fists at his sides. “And you told no one.”

“I didn’t know how,” she snapped, fear and embarrassment making her temper spark. “I didn’t want Naruto charging around yelling about it, and I didn’t want Kakashi-sensei turning it into some huge report, and I definitely didn’t want you—”

“Didn’t want me what?”

She stopped.

His voice was sharp now, but not at full volume. That was worse somehow.

“Going after them,” Sakura admitted. “Doing something reckless.”

“I see.”

“You do reckless things when you’re angry.”

“I do necessary things when people touch what’s mine.”

The words landed between them like a struck match.

Sakura’s cheeks went hot despite everything. “Sasuke—”

His expression shifted instantly, anger flickering aside in favor of something almost startled, as if he hadn’t meant to say it aloud.

Then his gaze dropped to her mouth and rose again, and when he spoke, his voice was lower. “You know what I mean.”

She did.

The fear hadn’t vanished, but now it tangled strangely with warmth, with the fierce comfort of being wanted, protected, loved by someone who could be so guarded with everyone else and so devastatingly direct with her when it mattered. She swallowed.

“I know.”

A breeze stirred her hair. Sasuke’s eyes tracked the movement with that familiar quiet softness he reserved for her long hair, for the strands he often tucked behind her ear or smoothed between his fingers when no one was watching.

“What kind of notes?” he asked.

Sakura pulled the latest one from her pocket and handed it over. His fingers brushed hers. He opened the crumpled paper, read the words once, and something dark flashed through his face so quickly she almost missed it.

“I like your hair best when it’s loose,” he read aloud, voice icy. “How sentimental.”

Sakura made a miserable little noise. “There were others.”

“Show me all of them.”

She hesitated, then nodded. “At home.”

He refolded the note with precise care, like he was restraining himself by sheer force of control. “You’re not going anywhere alone until we find them.”

“Sasuke, I can’t just—”

“You can.”

“I have a life.”

“You’ll still have one. I’ll be there.”

“You can’t spend every second attached to me.”

He took one step forward, close enough that she had to tilt her face up to look at him. “Watch me.”

In spite of everything, a tiny laugh escaped her. It was nervous and shaky, but real.

His expression softened immediately at the sound. “There. That’s better.”

Sakura’s throat tightened. She hadn’t realized how badly she needed someone to know, someone to take this seriously without making her feel foolish. The relief of it crashed over her so hard her eyes stung.

Sasuke noticed at once, because of course he did.

He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers, gentler than his angry face had any right to be. “Hey.”

“I’m not crying,” Sakura said, immediately betraying herself when her voice wobbled.

“Hn.”

“I’m not.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “You’re a terrible liar.”

“That’s your line.”

“It’s still true.”

Then his hand slid from her cheek to the back of her neck, and he drew her in slowly enough that she could stop him if she wanted. She never wanted. Not with him. Not when he looked at her like that, like she was the most precious thing in his world and he was almost offended by the existence of anything that frightened her.

His forehead touched hers first.

Then his lips did.

It was not their first kiss, but it still stole the breath from her.

Sasuke kissed like he did everything else—with focus, restraint, and a depth of feeling that revealed itself only the longer she stayed close enough to notice. His mouth moved softly over hers, patient at first, comforting, and Sakura felt some of the panic she’d been carrying for days loosen at the edges. She lifted a hand to his shirt, fingers curling in the fabric at his chest. His other arm came around her waist, pulling her nearer until there was no space left between them.

Safe, something inside her whispered.

Safe.

When he finally drew back, just a little, Sakura didn’t realize she had leaned after him until his eyes softened.

“I’m going to fix this,” he said.

She searched his face. “Without getting arrested?”

His mouth nearly smiled. “Probably.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

“You worry too much.”

“I’m not the one who once broke a training post because Naruto insulted me.”

“He insulted you badly.”

Sakura huffed out another laugh, and this time he did smile, faint and private and beautiful.

Then he kissed her again, quicker, almost as if he couldn’t help it, and rested his forehead against hers for one more heartbeat before stepping back.

“Come on,” he said. “Show me everything.”

Her parents were startled but pleased when Sasuke arrived with Sakura at the Haruno house just before dinner. He was always polite to them in that careful, formal way of his, and Sakura’s mother was so delighted by his presence that she immediately offered tea, sweets, and a look to Sakura that was far too knowing. Under any other circumstance, Sakura might have died of embarrassment. Tonight, she just wanted to get upstairs before she lost her nerve again.

In her room, she shut the door and went to her desk. Sasuke stood near the window, examining the latch, the sill, the angle from the outer roofline, saying nothing while she pulled the first flower and the earlier notes from the drawer. When she handed them over, his face got colder with each item.

“They’ve been in your room,” he said at last.

Sakura hugged herself tighter. “Maybe only the flowers. Maybe they just used the window.”

“That’s still getting into your space.”

She did not answer because the thought made her feel sick.

Sasuke moved to the window and pushed it open, leaning out slightly to inspect the ledge and the sloping tile below. The evening air lifted his hair. “Someone agile enough to climb quietly,” he murmured. “Probably not a civilian.”

Sakura’s pulse jumped. “A shinobi?”

“Or someone trained enough to move like one.”

“That’s worse.”

“Yes.”

He said it with such blunt honesty that Sakura almost laughed again from sheer disbelief. “You are terrible at comforting people.”

“I already comforted you.”

Her face heated. “That does not count.”

His eyes flicked to her mouth, then back up, and now there was definitely the hint of smugness she had accused him of earlier. “It seemed effective.”

“Sasuke.”

He crossed the room and stopped in front of her. The dark anger was still there beneath his calm, but softer now around the edges because she was in front of him and he could touch her. He brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, then let his fingers trail gently down the length of it. “It was effective,” he repeated.

Sakura rolled her eyes, though her heart was thumping a little too fast. “Only because I was upset.”

“Hn.”

“That was an agreement!”

Another tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Maybe.”

She shoved lightly at his shoulder, and he caught her wrist with effortless ease, then used the hold to pull her a half-step closer. It should have annoyed her how easily he could do that. Instead, it sent a warm flutter through her that felt almost absurd after the fear of the past days.

“Let me stay here tonight,” he said.

She blinked. “What?”

“I’ll tell your parents Kakashi assigned extra patrol precautions after a security concern.” His expression remained matter-of-fact, as if this were the most obvious solution in the world. “I’ll keep watch.”

“In my room?”

“Yes.”

Sakura stared at him.

He stared back, entirely unbothered.

Her face burned hotter. “My parents will never allow that.”

“They will if I explain there’s a threat.”

“You are not explaining to my parents that I have a stalker and then sleeping in my room!”

“Why not?”

Because her mother would combust. Because her father would turn pale and then sharpen every kitchen knife in the house. Because Sakura herself was not sure she would survive sharing a room all night with Sasuke voluntarily, while he looked at her with those dark, serious eyes and touched her like she was delicate and precious and his.

Also, ridiculous as it was, a part of her still felt ashamed.

Sasuke must have seen something of that on her face, because his expression changed.

He let go of her wrist immediately. “This isn’t your fault.”

Sakura looked down.

He tilted her chin up with one finger, forcing her to meet his gaze. “None of it.”

“I know,” she whispered, though some ugly small part of her had still been wondering whether she’d somehow invited it by smiling at strangers, by wearing her hair down, by wanting to feel pretty sometimes.

Sasuke seemed to read that thought right off her face, and his eyes darkened.

“If anyone makes you feel otherwise,” he said softly, dangerously, “I’ll deal with them too.”

Sakura swallowed hard.

Then, because he was Sasuke and gentleness from him always seemed to arrive wrapped around something fierce, he leaned in and kissed the center of her forehead.

The tenderness of it nearly undid her.

In the end, they compromised. Sasuke would not stay in her room, but he would stay on the roof outside her window for most of the night, and if Sakura’s parents found that strange, he would tell them Kakashi had assigned perimeter watch after hearing about suspicious movement near the Haruno district. It was only a partial lie, Sakura reasoned weakly. Kakashi would absolutely assign something like that if he knew.

Her mother, after one searching look between the two of them, accepted the explanation more easily than Sakura expected. Her father looked unsettled but grateful.

Sakura lay in bed that night in her room, window latched, curtains half-parted so moonlight pooled pale across the floor. She should have felt embarrassed knowing Sasuke was just outside, perched somewhere on the roof tiles or a tree branch with all his silent intensity focused outward. Instead, she felt, for the first time in days, able to breathe.

She still didn’t sleep right away.

Old tension kept her awake, listening.

The house creaked softly. Leaves whispered outside. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. She rolled onto her side and looked at the window.

After a long moment, there was the faintest tap.

Two light taps, pause, one more.

Their signal from training, childish and simple. I’m here.

Sakura smiled in the dark despite herself and rose carefully from bed. She slid the window open just an inch.

Sasuke sat on the roof beyond it, one knee bent, arms resting loosely, moonlight tracing silver along the line of his cheekbone. He looked completely at home there, like some quiet dark guardian the night itself had produced for her benefit. When he saw her face in the gap, his expression softened immediately.

“You should be sleeping,” he murmured.

“You too.”

“I’m working.”

“You’re brooding on my roof.”

“It’s a useful kind of brooding.”

Sakura hid a smile behind her hand. Then the smile faded, replaced by the vulnerable truth she hadn’t meant to say aloud. “Thank you.”

Sasuke regarded her for a beat. “You don’t thank people for this.”

“I do when they sit on rooftops all night for me.”

“Hn. Then stop.”

She hesitated, fingers tightening on the windowsill. “Can I ask something?”

He nodded once.

“If they come—if whoever it is comes tonight—don’t kill them.”

That earned her the flattest look yet.

“Sasuke.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were thinking about it.”

A pause. “Maybe.”

She sighed. “Please.”

His gaze stayed on her for a long moment, unreadable except for the affection quietly threaded through it. “Fine.”

“Really?”

“I said fine.”

Sakura searched his face. “That’s not the same as promising.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re annoying.”

“That means you weren’t promising.”

He leaned closer to the window, lowering his voice. “Go to sleep, Sakura.”

She knew that tone. Deflection. She crossed her arms. “Promise.”

He looked offended by the concept of being ordered around. It made her smile again, a little. Then, unexpectedly, he lifted one hand and cupped the back of her neck through the narrow gap, thumb brushing just beneath her ear.

“I promise,” he said quietly, “to bring them in alive if possible.”

She groaned. “That is the most Uchiha wording imaginable.”

“It’s the wording you’re getting.”

Before she could complain further, he drew her gently forward and kissed her through the gap in the window—brief, sweet, enough to turn her thoughts soft and scattered. When he pulled back, there was something warmer in his eyes.

“Now sleep,” he murmured.

This time, she did.

The next three days passed in a tense, careful pattern.

Sakura was never alone.

If Sasuke wasn’t with her, Naruto somehow was, though Sakura strongly suspected that was not accidental. She hadn’t told Naruto, but Sasuke clearly had found some way to steer him into staying nearby without explaining why. Naruto, oblivious and loyal, bounced along beside her to lunch, missions, and even errands, happily filling silence with chatter.

Kakashi noticed the new formation immediately.

“So clingy lately,” he observed one morning at Training Ground Seven, eye curved over his mask. “How youthful.”

Naruto squawked. “I’m not clingy!”

Kakashi’s eye shifted lazily to Sasuke, who was standing a little too close to Sakura while pretending not to. “I wasn’t talking about you.”

Sakura turned bright red. Naruto looked between them, baffled, then scandalized, then loud. Sasuke ignored everyone and adjusted the strap of Sakura’s gear pouch because it had twisted. The simple domesticity of it made Kakashi’s eye crinkle with infuriating amusement.

By the afternoon of the third day, Sakura was beginning to think the stalker had backed off. Maybe Sasuke’s watchfulness had scared them. Maybe the added company had made approaching impossible. Maybe they had simply gotten bored.

Then she returned home from a supply errand and found another note pinned beneath the eave outside her bedroom.

I don’t like him touching you.

Sakura’s blood ran cold.

She snatched the note down so fast she tore the edge, then spun, scanning the rooftops, the lane, the surrounding houses. Nothing. No movement. No chakra signature she could detect. Just the ordinary quiet of the neighborhood.

For one sickening moment, she realized the obvious truth.

The stalker had seen her with Sasuke.

Seen them close, maybe even kissing.

The violation of that made her want to scrub her skin raw.

She went straight to Training Ground Seven because she knew Sasuke and Naruto were sparring there under Kakashi’s half-hearted supervision. By the time she reached the clearing, her breathing was too fast, and her hands were numb.

Naruto stopped mid-shout when he saw her face. “Sakura-chan?”

Kakashi straightened from his post against the tree. Sasuke turned.

In one second, his whole body changed.

He was beside her before she spoke, hands landing lightly but firmly on her shoulders. “What happened?”

Sakura held out the note.

He read it once.

Something lethal settled into his expression.

Kakashi’s visible eye sharpened. Naruto craned forward, saw the writing over Sasuke’s arm, and immediately exploded. “WHAT? WHO WROTE THAT? I’LL KILL THEM!”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Kakashi said mildly, though the mildness was gone from the rest of him.

Sakura’s stomach dropped. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you sooner.”

Kakashi took the note from Sasuke’s rigid hand and read it. His eye flicked to Sakura, then softened a fraction. “You should have, yes,” he said, not unkindly. “But we’ll deal with that part later.”

Naruto looked personally betrayed. “You had some creep following you, and you didn’t tell us?”

“I didn’t want to make a fuss.”

Naruto’s face crumpled into outrage and hurt. “Sakura-chan, that’s exactly when you tell us!”

Sakura winced. “I know.”

Sasuke still had not removed his hands from her shoulders. In fact, if anything, they had tightened, as though he was grounding himself by making sure she was physically there and unharmed.

Kakashi tucked the note away. “All right. New plan. Sakura, you don’t go home alone. Naruto, no shouting details around the village.”

Naruto puffed up. “I can be subtle!”

No one responded.

He scowled. “Fine. I can try to be subtle.”

Kakashi went on as if that hadn’t happened. “We have enough now to make this official. I’ll inform the Hokage and request patrol attention around the Haruno district. In the meantime, we can use the stalker’s interest in Sasuke as leverage.”

Sakura blinked. “What does that mean?”

Kakashi’s eye curved. “It means they’re possessive and bold enough to get closer when jealous. That gives us an opening.”

Sasuke’s voice was flat. “Use me as bait.”

“More or less.”

Naruto brightened. “Oh, I like this plan.”

Sakura did not. “Absolutely not.”

Sasuke looked down at her. “It’ll work.”

“It’s dangerous.”

“For them,” Naruto said gleefully.

Kakashi gave Naruto a look. “Less gleeful murder intent, please.”

Sakura shook her head. “No. What if they try something when—”

She stopped because Sasuke’s thumb had started moving over the fabric at her shoulder in a small, absent stroke meant only for her, calming without drawing attention. The touch steadied her more than she wanted to admit.

He lowered his voice so only she could hear. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Her heart gave a painful twist.

And because he was infuriatingly persuasive when he wanted to be, because Kakashi was already clearly planning the operation, and because a part of her was so exhausted by fear that she wanted this over no matter how, Sakura reluctantly agreed.

The trap was simple.

Too simple, Sakura thought, which only made her more nervous.

At dusk the next evening, Sakura would walk with Sasuke through the quieter eastern district after a staged “date” involving dango and the riverside path. Naruto and Kakashi would shadow from a distance. ANBU would monitor the outer perimeter once Kakashi’s report went through. If the stalker approached or tried to interfere, they would be taken.

Sasuke seemed offensively calm about the whole thing.

Sakura, on the other hand, spent the entire day feeling like her insides were made of bees.

By evening, she was so tense she nearly stabbed herself trying to adjust a kunai holster. Sasuke, arriving to meet her at the appointed spot near the market, took one look at her and quietly removed the weapon from her hands before she could do any further damage.

“You’re shaking,” he said.

“No, I’m not.”

He waited.

She exhaled. “A little.”

The sunset painted the street amber and rose. Merchants were beginning to pack up for the night. Somewhere nearby, someone was frying dumplings, the scent warm and savory in the air. It should have been romantic. Instead, Sakura felt ill.

Sasuke’s expression softened.

Without a word, he guided her into the shadow of an alley between two shuttered shops, away from the last of the foot traffic. Then he set both hands at her waist and drew her forward until she bumped lightly against him.

“Sasuke—”

“Look at me.”

She did.

He bent his head slightly. “Breathe.”

“That is not helpful advice.”

“It is when you’re forgetting to do it.”

Annoyingly, he was right. Sakura inhaled, then again, slower this time.

His thumbs rubbed small, steadying circles at her sides. “Better.”

“You act very calm for someone being used as jealous-stalker bait.”

“I’m calm because they’re stupid.”

“That’s a lot of confidence.”

“It’s accurate.”

She almost smiled. “You’re impossible.”

“Hn.”

Then, because apparently his answer to every problem involving her anxiety was physical closeness—and because, to Sakura’s immense frustration, it worked—he tipped her chin up and kissed her. Not brief this time. Not merely comforting. Slow and deep and warm enough to make the whole nervous buzzing in her body reroute into something softer and more dangerous. Sakura made a startled little sound into his mouth, hands coming up to clutch his shirt. Sasuke’s arm tightened around her waist, pulling her flush to him, and for several blessed seconds, she forgot about traps and stalkers and plans and everything else except the fact that Sasuke Uchiha was kissing her like he had all the time in the world.

When he finally lifted his head, her cheeks were burning, and her knees felt unreliable.

“There,” he said quietly, eyes dark. “Now you’re thinking about me instead.”

Sakura stared at him. “That was manipulative.”

“Yes.”

“That’s terrible.”

“You seem calmer.”

She hated that he was right. “A little.”

His mouth curved faintly. “Good.”

They rejoined the street a minute later, looking, Sakura suspected, exactly like a couple on an evening walk and not at all like bait in an operation. Sasuke bought her dango from a vendor without being asked, which startled the poor man enough that he nearly gave them the whole tray for free. Sakura took one bite, mostly to have something to do with her hands.

They walked the riverside path as dusk deepened into blue. Crickets began their evening song in the grass. Water moved dark and smooth below the banks. Sasuke stayed close enough that his arm brushed hers with each step.

At first, nothing happened.

Sakura’s tension built higher and higher.

Then, near the old footbridge where the trees thickened and the lantern light grew sparse, Sasuke’s posture changed almost imperceptibly. His hand found hers and squeezed once.

Someone was there.

Sakura’s skin went cold.

She kept walking because that was the plan, though every instinct screamed at her to stop. The trees ahead cast long wavering shadows over the path. Leaves rustled.

Then a voice came from the dark to their left.

“She doesn’t even look at you the way she smiles at everyone else.”

Sakura froze.

A young man stepped from the trees.

Not a shinobi she recognized from their age group. Older, maybe late teens, wearing plain dark clothes with no forehead protector visible. Slim build. Sharp eyes. Familiar in the worst possible way—not because she knew him, but because he was exactly the kind of forgettable face that could disappear in crowds and linger on the edges of streets unnoticed.

His gaze was fixed entirely on Sakura.

“You should wear your hair down more,” he said softly, as if they were in the middle of an ordinary conversation. “It’s prettier.”

Sakura’s stomach lurched.

Sasuke moved half a step in front of her.

The young man’s attention snapped to him, and the softness curdled instantly into resentment. “You.”

“Observant,” Sasuke said.

Sakura wanted to scream at how calm he sounded.

The stalker’s jaw tightened. “You keep touching her like she belongs to you.”

Sasuke’s voice dropped into something glacial. “She does.”

Sakura’s face flamed, wildly inappropriate in the middle of a confrontation, but the stalker recoiled as if struck.

“No,” he said, eyes flashing. “No. You don’t get to— She was always kind. She smiled at me. She thanked me when I held the shop door—”

Sakura stared. A flicker of memory surfaced: a nondescript assistant at a supply stall near the eastern market, someone who had once picked up a dropped package of bandages for her. She had smiled, thanked him, and moved on without another thought.

The realization made her feel sick.

“You should’ve stayed away from her,” he hissed at Sasuke. “You make her smaller. Quieter. She looks at you and forgets everyone else.”

“You followed her for weeks because she thanked you once,” Sasuke said. “And you think I’m the problem?”

The stalker’s expression twisted.

Then his hand moved.

Sakura barely saw the glint before Sasuke shoved her behind him and steel flashed through the air. A senbon struck the tree trunk where her throat had been an instant earlier.

Everything exploded.

Naruto dropped from the branches above with a furious yell. Kakashi appeared on the path in a blur. The stalker whipped backward, vanishing into the trees, and Sasuke was after him before Sakura could breathe.

“Sasuke—!”

“Kakashi-sensei, stay with her!” Naruto shouted, already splitting into shadow clones and charging after the others.

Sakura hated being left behind. Hated it. But Kakashi’s arm barred her instantly.

“Wait.”

“I can help!”

“You can,” Kakashi said, eye hard on the forest, “if he comes back for you.”

That was enough to still her.

The sounds of pursuit crashed through the trees: feet on branches, a curse, Naruto yelling, the sharp ring of metal. Sakura’s pulse pounded so hard she could barely hear anything else. She pulled a kunai and scanned the shadows with every ounce of training she had.

A second later, the stalker burst from the underbrush not twenty feet away, wild-eyed and desperate, a bleeding cut across one sleeve. He had doubled back.

For her.

Sakura’s fear burned instantly into anger.

He lunged.

She sidestepped on instinct, drove her kunai hand across his wrist to knock the weapon aside, and slammed the heel of her palm into his nose with enough force to send him staggering. Not elegant. Effective. He reeled, swearing, and Sakura pivoted to sweep his legs out from under him.

He hit the ground hard.

Before he could recover, she planted her foot on his chest and leveled the kunai at his throat, hands absolutely steady now.

“Don’t,” she said, voice shaking only a little with rage. “You do not get to touch me.”

For one stunned second he just stared up at her, as if he had built an entire fantasy around her in which she existed only frightened and pretty and grateful, never angry, never dangerous, never fully herself.

Then a shadow dropped beside them.

Sasuke.

He looked down at the man on the ground and became the coldest thing Sakura had ever seen.

There was murder in his eyes. Pure and simple.

Kakashi arrived a heartbeat later, Naruto and two ANBU close behind. The stalker went pale as the ring closed around him.

Sakura did not move her blade.

“I think,” she said, every word crisp with fury, “he owes me an explanation.”

The stalker looked at her, dazed and bleeding. “I just wanted you to notice me.”

Sakura laughed once, sharp and unbelieving. “You broke into my room.”

“I brought you gifts.”

“You watched me sleep?”

His silence answered loudly enough.

Something in Sakura’s face must have changed, because the stalker flinched.

“I was nice to you,” she said. “That was all. Do you understand? A smile is not permission. Kindness is not invitation. And fear is not love.”

He looked away.

Kakashi signaled the ANBU, who moved in to bind his wrists. The moment they touched him, he started protesting, babbling excuses, insisting he never meant real harm, that Sasuke had ruined everything, that Sakura had been different before. Sakura stopped listening.

Her hands were beginning to shake again now that it was over.

Sasuke saw.

He gently closed his fingers around her wrist and lowered the kunai from the prisoner’s throat before she even realized she still held it there. “Enough,” he said softly.

The softness was only for her. When his gaze shifted back to the bound man, there was nothing warm left in it.

The stalker noticed too and went abruptly silent.

Kakashi’s eye curved in a way that wasn’t remotely pleasant. “All right,” he said. “ANBU will take it from here.”

Naruto bounced on his heels, still crackling with outrage. “Can I at least yell at him more?”

“No,” Kakashi said.

“I have some excellent insults ready!”

“I’m sure you do.”

As the prisoner was dragged away protesting, Sakura finally let herself breathe. The night air felt too cool against her skin. Her legs were threatening to give out. She hated that. She hated that after holding it together through the worst part, she might fall apart now in front of everyone.

Naruto, surprisingly, solved part of the problem by throwing his arms around her in a crushing hug before she could protest.

“Sakura-chan!” he said loudly, voice suspiciously thick. “You should’ve told us!”

The force of it nearly knocked her backward, but the warmth of the hug made something in her chest loosen. She let out a weak laugh. “I know.”

He squeezed harder. “I’m still mad!”

“I know that too.”

Then Naruto stepped back, sniffed, pointed threateningly in the direction the ANBU had taken. “I hope he steps on a thousand caltrops.”

“That’s very specific,” Kakashi noted.

“It’s what he deserves.”

Sakura actually smiled.

Kakashi rested a hand briefly on her head, ruffling her hair. “You did well.”

That praise, quiet and sincere, almost made her cry on the spot.

Then Kakashi’s gaze shifted meaningfully to Sasuke, who had not moved more than a foot away from her since returning. “We’ll give our report,” Kakashi said. “Naruto, with me.”

Naruto opened his mouth to object, then looked at Sakura, looked at Sasuke, and for once in his life understood immediately. “Oh.”

His grin turned enormous. “Oh.”

“Go,” Sakura said, mortified.

Kakashi steered Naruto away before he could say anything worse.

The path fell quiet.

The river moved dark beside them. Night insects sang in the grass. Somewhere in the village beyond the trees, lanterns were being lit one by one.

Sakura suddenly felt tired all the way through.

Sasuke stepped in front of her. “Are you hurt?”

She shook her head.

“Anywhere?”

“No.”

He searched her face like he didn’t fully believe her, hands hovering near her arms, shoulders, waist, checking without checking. When he seemed satisfied there was no blood and no hidden injury, his posture eased by a fraction.

Then Sakura’s composure finally cracked.

It wasn’t dramatic. No sobbing collapse. Just a sharp inhale and then tears she had been holding back for days slipping loose despite her best effort.

Sasuke’s expression changed instantly.

He pulled her into him without hesitation, one arm tight around her back, the other cradling the back of her head as if shielding her from the whole world. Sakura buried her face in his chest and clutched at him, shoulders trembling.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered brokenly. “I know I should’ve told you.”

“You should have,” he agreed, voice low above her hair. “But not because you’d be bothering me.”

The words hit hard because that had been exactly what she feared.

He tipped her face up with gentle fingers. Moonlight caught on the wetness of her lashes. His gaze moved over her with unbearable tenderness.

“You could never be a burden,” he said.

Sakura’s throat closed.

“I was scared,” she admitted.

“I know.”

“I hated it. I hated that someone could just—” She broke off, shuddering. “I couldn’t even feel safe in my own room.”

His jaw tightened again at that, but when he spoke, his voice stayed soft. “You will.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ll make sure of it.”

She let out a watery laugh. “You sound insane when you say things like that.”

“Hn.”

“You do.”

“I don’t care.”

That dragged a real smile out of her through the tears.

Sasuke looked at it as if it were something precious returned to him. Then he bent and kissed her, slowly, carefully, as if asking permission to soothe what the world had bruised. Sakura rose onto her toes at once, arms sliding around his neck. The kiss deepened by degrees, his hand spreading warm at her waist, her fingers slipping into the soft hair at the nape of his neck. Everything frightening seemed very far away for those few moments. There was only the steady certainty of him, the way he held her, like letting go was not an option.

When they finally parted, Sakura rested her forehead against his shoulder, breathing him in.

He pressed a kiss to her temple.

Then another to her hair.

And because he was Sasuke and apparently incapable of being normal once his protectiveness took over, he murmured into the top of her head, “You’re staying with me tonight.”

Sakura blinked up at him. “What?”

“At my house.”

She stared.

He was completely serious.

“Sasuke, we are twelve.”

“And?”

“I cannot just go sleep over at your house because I had a traumatic evening!”

“Why not?”

She gaped at him. “Because that is not how anything works!”

“It can.”

“You are impossible.”

“I know.”

Despite herself, warmth crept back into her face. “Your house has one room.”

“That’s enough.”

Her blush deepened furiously. “That is exactly why it is not enough.”

For the first time all evening, Sasuke actually looked faintly embarrassed. Only faintly, but still. It made Sakura’s heart squeeze with helpless fondness.

“I didn’t mean—” he started, then stopped. “You can take the bed.”

“You also have one bed.”

“I can sleep on the floor.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You’d hate that.”

“I’d survive.”

The idea of him trying to act casual while sleeping on a hard floor a foot away from her bed was so ridiculous it finally broke the last of the tension strangling her. She laughed—a full laugh this time, helpless and bright.

Sasuke watched her, something warm and relieved moving through his face.

“There you are,” he murmured.

Sakura swatted lightly at his chest. “I’m not going to your house.”

“Fine.”

“But,” she added, quieter, “will you walk me home?”

His answer was immediate. “Always.”

So he did.

He walked her home through lantern-lit streets, their hands clasped openly now because neither of them cared who saw. At her gate, he spoke calmly with her parents, explaining only what was necessary—that the person had been caught, that there would be increased patrols, that Sakura had been brave. He did not mention how terrified she had been, or how close his own anger had come to violence. He protected her dignity as carefully as he protected everything else.

Her mother hugged her hard. Her father looked torn between relief and the urge to personally punch someone. Both thanked Sasuke until Sakura thought she might die of embarrassment all over again.

When at last she escaped upstairs, Sasuke followed only as far as her window from the garden below. She leaned out, moonlight silvering the soft line of his face.

“You’re going to stay out here again, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Yes, I do.”

She smiled helplessly. “Stubborn.”

“Hn.”

For a moment, they simply looked at each other in the quiet.

Then Sakura said, “Kiss me goodnight.”

He was at the sill in a heartbeat, one hand braced on the frame, the other sliding into her hair. The kiss he gave her was deep and lingering and full of everything neither of them was especially good at saying aloud: relief, protectiveness, devotion, the fierce certainty of young love that already felt immovable. When he drew back, he rested his forehead against hers exactly as he had under the cedar tree.

“Sleep,” he murmured.

“I will if you do too.”

“I’ll try.”

“You’re a liar.”

“Yes.”

She smiled. “Goodnight, Sasuke.”

His thumb brushed her cheek. “Goodnight, Sakura.”

She closed the window, latched it, and this time when she climbed into bed, the room did not feel haunted. The moonlight on the floor was only moonlight. The creak of the house was only the house settling. Outside, somewhere just beyond the glass, Sasuke kept watch with all the silent possessive devotion of his heart laid bare.

Sakura curled onto her side and touched her fingers to her mouth, still warm from kissing him.

She thought of the fear that had followed her for days, the way it had shrunk her world inch by inch. She thought of the moment on the river path when she had planted her foot on the stalker’s chest and remembered herself. She thought of Naruto’s furious hug, Kakashi’s quiet praise, Sasuke’s promise.

You could never be a burden.

The words settled deep.

For the first time in what felt like forever, Sakura let herself believe them.

Outside, two soft taps sounded against the sill.

Pause.

One more.

I’m here.

Sakura smiled into the dark, closed her eyes, and finally slept.