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“It won’t be so bad,” Sakura says, clearly not buying it. But she’s talking to herself.
Sasuke’s palm rubs soothingly over Sarada’s tiny back, his eyes cast down to her chubby legs slung over his lap. She’s drooling on his shoulder, through his shirt, and she’s clutching a fistful of his hair while she sleeps. He almost cries. “It won’t be so bad.”
Sakura exhales shakily and leans back into the table, unable to sit still whilst Sasuke barely moves a muscle. Her nails are curled over the edge. She tries hard not to chip the wood, but. It’s difficult. She feels it splinter against her fingertips. “Maybe, sometimes, maybe, you could visit.”
It’s a long shot and Sakura knows that. Sasuke knows that. He can hear her start to cry into her hands and Sarada starts to stir, like she knows too. Like somehow, she knows too.
He presses his mouth to the baby’s head. “Mm.”
.
Sakura looks remarkably good for someone who was up all night crying. She hoists Sarada onto her hip after breakfast as she cleans up, blowing a raspberry into her cheek to make her giggle. The sunlight catches them through the kitchen window, and Sasuke puts everything he has into remembering them here, like this. Right now.
Sakura looks back at him, sees his uncovered eye glisten. She pretends she doesn’t see it and occupies herself with getting her braid out of Sarada’s greedy mouth. “Tsunade gave me the day off today.”
Not that she’d have gone in anyway. Not today. Sasuke nods. “Ah.”
“We should go out,” she says, kissing the baby’s nose. “Would you like that, Sara-chan?”
She claps, a new habit of hers, accompanied by her squealing giggle. Her cheeks are pinker than her mother’s hair, watching Sakura happily as she laughs back at her, a mirror image, beauty on beauty, angel on angel, and Sasuke’s tears drip onto the dinner table.
.
They went to the park. Fed the ducks. Played peekaboo with the monuments. Walked Konoha’s perimeter three times over. Made as many memories as twenty-four hours and an eighteen-month-old’s temperament could permit.
“Papa,” Sarada whines, her face starting to scrunch up when the sun sets, her chubby arms reaching for him across Sakura’s lap. She’s also called a cup, her teddy, a tree, Naruto and a dog that, but it still hits home every time.
He lays her over his shoulder, not sure at what point he became Sarada’s favourite napping post, but he doesn’t mind it. He likes it (he loves it). Sakura leans onto his free shoulder, playing with the empty end of his sleeve. “If it wasn’t such short notice, I’d’ve been able to get you a prosthetic before you go.”
It probably would’ve helped, probably would have been a smart decision, but Sasuke doesn’t have time for ifs and maybes today. He wants to see her smile before the sun disappears over the horizon one more time. Just one more time. “And match with Naruto? No thanks.”
He sees her mouth hitch up, her cheeks starting to dimple. His heart stammers. “It’d be cute. I could get you an orange fleece and take you both to the market.”
“I’d rather chidori my own face.”
“I’ll dress him in black, then.”
.
Sakura climbs off Sasuke’s lap just before he unhooks her bra, like she’s suddenly remembered something, digging through her bedside drawer. He’s cold without her. “What are you doing?”
She pulls out a small square, looks carefully at it as she walks back over to him and takes her seat back on his bare thighs. White border, faded colours, tilted angle. The day they came back to the village. Sarada was only four months old, asleep, Sakura was dying for her afternoon feed, Sasuke was annoyed by Naruto’s loud voice waking the baby, but he took a picture.
Sakura looks up at him, green eyes aglow in the darkness, and it’s like it’s the first time all over again. She offers it to him, pink hair touching her cheek and lips pulled thin. Determined.
“Not a goodbye. A good luck.”
He kisses her.