Things are not necessarily easier after that–but things with Sasuke are never “easy”. Still, Sakura brings him lunch, and tells him hospital gossip, and reads trashy romance novels to him. Sasuke bears it with more patience than stoicism. That’s something. Every few days or so, Sakura brings books other than the usual hilariously terrible bodice-rippers, and Sasuke runs careful fingers over the covers those books, looking thoughtful, but he always sets them aside and eats lunch with Sakura. That’s something too. And sometimes, Sasuke tells Sakura things like, “I don’t really like rainstorms,” and “We used stock the lake behind the house with decorative koi, these huge orange ones–but they never tasted good,” and “The mountains in Rock Country are nice.” The things Sasuke tells her are of small import–his opinions on the weather, brief reflections on places he has been, scraps of inconsequential memory.
They are also dearer than almost anything else Sakura possesses–she hoards them, like a dragon with its gold. Sometimes, after a bad day at the hospital, Sakura takes them out, as if to hold them up to the sun and marvel anew. He tolerates cats, but he likes birds better; he was disappointed by the sword-smithing in Stone Village, after all he’d heard about the quality of the blades made there; he has a horrified fascination with Sakura’s taste in food, mostly because he is sure she has none, mostly because he is sure all of her taste buds committed ritual suicide out of despair. “Ass,” she calls him, and one corner of his mouth twitches up, very faintly.
A winter passes in such manner, lunch dates and bad romance novels and nonsensical conversation about nonsensical things. Sakura is surprised one day to find daffodils blooming through the snow, and trees budding in the forest.
discoholicmusic
romaincrisis
annaxmalina
turnnoffyourmind
gummygunk
snowghoul
titsay
origamiaround
