Hidden within the thick branches of a maple, with a cold autumn breeze sweeping through her hair, she watches Sasuke kiss another woman.
Their lips move slowly against each other, Sasuke’s large hand holding her small waist while her fingernails scratch at the back of his neck. She says something when they part for air, her cheeks flushed and lips glistening with a mixture of their saliva and strawberry red gloss.
The woman’s hair is coloured pink, like cherry blossoms in season, a beautiful cascade of locks falling down her back and framing her face, her bright green eyes standing out against soft colours. She is wearing a long red jumper, the front of it tucked inside white chinos.
And judging by the small smile that spreads on Sasuke’s face as he stands up and offers her hind hand—he must think so, too.
Sakura follows them to an estate built along the border of the village, a place so familiar and yet so strange. Like a phantom of what could have been if they had not chosen to destroy it.
She fixes the mask covering her face as the couple enters one of the houses. It is an impressive looking one, at the very end of a long dirt road, with a garden stretching to a nearby field—the Uchiha training grounds.
She stays a fair distance away, both conscious about getting discovered and not quite ready to witness the things that happen behind the closed doors.
Her suspicions are enough, the events of the past few days plenty to tell her all about the nature of their relationship.
She stays put, wrapping the cloak around herself for warmth when the light filling one of the rooms eventually disappears.
It takes a couple of weeks for Sakura to come up with a plan and make necessary arrangements. A couple of weeks during which she learns just how different this world is from the one she knows.
She waits until, one evening, the woman—another her—steps inside a small flat.
Sakura observes through the window how she carefully hangs up a beautiful kimono, made out of white silk with embroidered with flower petals and her family symbol at the back, on top of the wardrobe.
Sneaking inside is easy. What isn’t easy is seeing all the photographs and little evidence of Sasuke’s lingering presence scattered across the bedroom. Her heart aches, suffocated by the bone prison of her ribcage as unjustified anger starts to simmer in the pit of her belly.
It isn’t fair that this Sakura gets to enjoy everything she could only ever dream of.
A frustrated groan escapes her mouth. Eyes snap towards the door frame where she finds equally confused and terrified looking woman clutching a soaked towel to her chest.
‘Hi. Sorry’, she says, smiles wide as her kunai shines against the other’s throat; the first drop of blood rolls down polished steel. ‘I’m afraid you won't make it to the wedding.’
[ Or canon divergent SS au where Sakura succeeds in killing Sasuke on the Samurai Bridge.
Years later, she stumbles into an alternate universe... where the massacre never happened, Sasuke never left the village and their relationship wasn't so complicated. ]
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