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ssretsudenweek22

Dec 21, 2022

silentvoicescryingout

(Re)Awaken Me - Sasuke Retsuden Week 2022

Co-authored by @ephemeredoll for Sasuke Retsuden Week, day 1 prompt "(Re)Awaken Me" @ssretsudenweek22

⚠️ Heavy Angst ⚠️ CW: major character death, gore, blood, delusions

Her body sinks to the ground, flower petals dancing around her like snowflakes in the midst of winter.

She feels cold, weak; all of her chakra points are destroyed beyond repair. Her sacrifice is an unfortunate waste—but one that will assure the peace in the shinobi world.

It will keep her daughter alive.

Keep Sasuke safe, for once.

Sakura lets her eyelids fall shut. Her organs shut down one by one, heart beating slower with each passing second, until it ceases to beat at all.

—

He is far away from home, in an unknown village decorated with colourful garlands and flooded with stalls of all sorts. The chatter of vendors and civilians, childrens’ giggles reach the top of a mountain where Sasuke is sitting, observing carefully.

The soft grass between his fingers reminds him of home, the shade of it resembling those beautiful eyes he had fallen in love with so long ago.

A screech echoes somewhere above him, a loud and distinctive sound calling for his attention. Sasuke turns his head to see his hawk above the tree crowns, descending rapidly as it flies towards him. The bird lands on his shoulder, a small scroll attached to one of its feet.

The letter is short. Naruto’s messy handwriting makes it hard to read the words so obviously scribbled down in a hurry, as if he wanted to get them out as soon as possible.

Return to the village immediately. It’s about Sakura.

She is gone.

Sasuke stares at the letter for long moments that feel both like an eternity, and like the span of a single breath. He stares until the words seem to undulate about the page, blurring and spinning together as a fog takes over his vision.

Slowly rising to his feet, he clutches the scrap of paper and sends a gentle thrum of chakra through his hand. Next he engages his sharingan and searches for details that would signify some code, some hidden message, an alternative meaning. He finds none.

With a pivot he begins moving, taking slow, heavy steps in the direction that will take him back to the village, to home. His attempts to channel chakra to his feet and imbue speed to his steps and take to the trees seem fruitless.

All he can do is walk.

He inhales sharply, his heart thudding painfully within the cage of his ribs. The scrap of paper slips from between his shaking fingers and he gasps for his next breath, his knees meeting the cool wet of the grass below.

Gone.

“Sakura,” he rasps. His entire body shakes, a coldness seizing his form from the top of his head to his toes, spreading like a sickness to his extremities.

He can hardly feel his fingers as he fumbles for the letter, reading it over and over again, cycling through the three short sentences. The tomoe in his eyes zoom onto each individual character and his muddled mind fixates again and again on that specific word–

Gone.

The next utterance of her name comes on the current of a sound unlike he has ever heard before. A moan, groaning as if from the very depths of hell, a keening that harkens from well below the underneath of the underneath. It echoes his surroundings, drowning out all the noise of nature and of the people going about their daily lives at the bottom of the hill. His chest aches, his ears ring with it and still all he can hear and recognize among the cacophonies is her name.

“Tsuma,” he croaks. And despite being a man of realities rather than dreams he hopes, hopes for his voice to summon her from whatever beyond had taken hold of her.

She does not come.

Not even when his groaning devolves into sobs, into screams, into soundless, breathless shapings of blood-chapped and tear-salted lips.

The world around him fades from light to dark and he is alone, and she is not there.

Gone.

Hours pass, or maybe an eternity, before he comes to awareness again. His eyelids feel as if they are made out of lead, too heavy for him to simply open and face the reality that resembles his very worst nightmare.

His heart is pounding still, helplessness spreading through and lodging itself in each of his pores, just as it had when he had fallen to the ground in front of his brother, after having witnessed the carnage the village officials had brought upon his family.

The piercing chill breaches his innards, tearing through the layer of fat and muscle until it settles deep inside his bones. He is freezing and Sakura isn’t there to fix it, isn’t there to provide him with that warmth that would always radiate out of the soft smile that adorned her face whenever she looked at him.

She cannot be gone.

How much more does Konoha plan to take from him? How much more is he to give, willingly or not, before the universe decides he has finally atoned for the sins of his youth?

Slowly, he stands, gripping a nearby tree for support, pieces of the crumbling bark sneaking underneath his fingernails as he looks at his surroundings. The crumpled paper still lays on the ground, ink smudged from moisture that seeped from the grass into the porous material. He watches how it disappears under the sole of his sandals, sinking into the mud.

He races in the direction of the village, his feet falling from one branch to another, shaking off the half-dead leaves still clinging onto dry branches. An image flashes before his eyes—one of Sarada, mourning the loss of her mother, inconsolable and alone. With no one to console her, except for Naruto, the only other person he had ever learned to trust.

Naruto, who turned out to be a liar.

Because his Sakura must be on a mission, perhaps reporting late or staying undercover. In danger somehow, maybe, and likely in need of his support. Whatever it is, he knows she is not gone.

She is not gone.

Sakura is just fine, as she always is.

She would be waiting, anticipating Sasuke’s return. She had promised him such, many times over and over. And his Sakura, his wife has never been a liar, and she never breaks a promise. Not to him.

—

Naruto’s cerulean eyes shine with the gloss of tears, his face pooled red with blood as Sasuke’s fingers clench about his throat.

“Tell me where she is,” he says sternly.

No less than ten anbu crowd the perimeter of the room, creeping about the edges of the Hokage’s office, daring not to draw any closer to the wall of caustic chakra nor the half-crazed man who wields it.

“Sasuke,” Naruto croaks, his bandaged hand gripping at the fingers tightening about his jugular. “I…I can’t imagine how bad you’re hurting–”

“Usuratonkachi,” Sasuke snarls. He drags the man closer, until he can make out the rows of his yellow-blonde lashes and the faint lines shaping his eyes and temples grow stark. “Tell me where my wife is.”

Droplets of red drip down, splashing over whiskered cheeks. At the same time, Sasuke feels liquid slipping wet and hot down the right side of his own face, pooling in the corner of his mouth and bringing the faint taste of iron to the edge of his tongue.

“Teme,” comes the hoarse reply. His hand spasms as bandaged fingers loosen their grip, sliding to curl around his wrist. “I told you. She’s gone. I’m…I’m sorry.”

With an infuriated sound that seems mixed between a growl and a cry, he shoves his friend away. The force sends Naruto careening into his high-backed chair which promptly crumbles under the weight and sends him crashing to the ground.

“Clear the room,” Naruto rasps. “Now.”

Any other day, Sasuke might have found the lack of hesitance with which the anbu operatives flee fairly humorous.

But now he can only suck in shallow, too-quick breaths, chest heaving and forehead throbbing with a splitting ache. The room flashes through hazes of red, grey and blinding white in dizzying increments, the trickle of thick liquid from his remaining eye near-constant.

He can no longer tell how much of that liquid is tears and how much is blood. At this point, they might as well be one and the same.

“If you do not tell me where Sakura is,” he says, his own voice almost unrecognisable in his ears, “I will ruin everything you have built. Everything you and this fucking place has taken from me, I will repay tenfold.”

Two hands raise in the air; one bandaged palm, one bare point toward him.

“Easy,” the man across the room mutters, his voice soft and tone placating.

“The peace you fought for will be left to ashes,” he hisses. His fingertips dig into his chest with bruising force, as if they could scrape over the aching, bleeding organ within. “The peace I bought with my blood and blade will crumble to nothingness if you do not explain what has happened to my wife.”

Naruto’s features twists like the roots of rotted and gnarled trees, his eyes growing red as the area around his frowning mouth pales. He creeps forward a few steps before pausing, his back hunching as if under the weight of the very mountain his face has been etched on.

“There is only so much I can say,” he whispers.

“Say the truth of it,” Sasuke growls.

An eternity passes, the sound of his beating heart thundering in his ears, the rush of blood through his veins like an angry, crashing tide. Naruto’s waxen mouth trembles and shapes around the beginning of words, each time faltering until his lips finally twist into the sourest, most pitiful expression, water spilling in rivulets over his rough-hewn face.

“Sakura-chan’s dead, Sasuke,” Naruto chokes. “She is dead.”

His breath stalls, his vision blurring before the red haze seeps away from the edges, leaving him to blink with a regular eye at the man standing (just barely) in front of him.

“No.”

“I’m sorry,” the man croaks, voice thick. “It should have never happened.”

The room begins to spin, weakness usurping the tension that had overtaken his limbs, loosening his coiled muscles.

“Liar,” he whispers. Naruto stares at him with wide, wet blue eyes and frowns. “Liar.”

“Sasuke,” Naruto calls brokenly. “I would never lie about this.”

“Where is my daughter?” Sasuke demands. His palm throbs with a distant pain as his nails dig into the skin there, warm blood coating his fingertips.

Pain and rage swirl in his gut, burning like acid in his throat. He feels madness slithering about in the recesses of his mind, an awakening of ghosts he believed long laid to rest. They lurk about the edges, whispering to him.

It takes every modicum of his strength to hold it all at bay, to grasp onto his sanity and remain present as images of his child’s face take over his mind. The sudden desire to see her, to take hold of her and take her away from this hellish place seizes him, slides beneath his dermis and spreads like stick pestilence.

If she has been tormented by these lies, Sarada needs him.

“She’s at Sakura– at your house,” a voice cuts through the chaos of his thoughts. “Hinata is watching over her.”

—

As soon as he steps a foot inside the house, Sasuke feels like an intruder.

He does not recall how long it’s been since the last time he saw this place—doesn’t think he even had a chance to yet—but somehow it feels just as lifeless as his childhood home used to, right before it had been razed to the ground.

Ironic, how this brand new house was supposed to become their solace, the place where they would be able to finally find some peace once he retires from the shinobi force and ends his travels.

Now, it feels like nothing more than a concoction of bricks and wood. A curse, reminding Sasuke of what he had lost.

Sarada is holding a photograph, their old family portrait, cradling it to her chest. She walks over to the sofa which faces a big window overlooking the garden.

Small tomato plants appear, growing vibrantly in his peripheral vision, making him nauseous.

He ignores Naruto and his wife as they murmur quiet condolences before making their exit. All he can do is trace his eyes over the space dazedly for a brief moment, before his attention is drawn to the young woman standing quiet and sad nearby.

“Peanut,” he says softly, never one to know how to handle any sort of delicate situation. That was always her expertise.

His daughter’s head turns towards him, her eyes glossy with tears, the smudge of dark circles underneath. Sasuke wonders how many nights she had to cry alone, helpless and scared, before the letter reached him and he was able to come back to the village.

“Papa,” she croaks. “You’re back. I guess the…news finally reached you.”

At this moment, he is selfishly glad that he had not been forced to deliver this ‘news’ himself. Watching her now, as her pretty features twist slightly despite the blankness of her expression, he knows he would not be able to bear seeing Sarada’s face when she was told her mother is gone. To see the utter devastation she must have felt, losing the person who loved her unconditionally, openly and cared for her when he could not.

“Sarada,” he murmurs, fingers shaking and mouth tightening as a wave of agony threatens to fell him once again. He pushes past the ache, takes slow steps in her direction until he can kneel before her, bracing a hand over one of her wrists.

It was Naruto who had to look into these eyes while saying those words–and Sasuke is almost glad for it, thankful even. It vindicates that wretched, festering part of him that wants to see the blonde-haired man punished. For the pain his darling child suffers now, her inky lashes clumped together with tears, face pale and drawn like someone well beyond her years.

It is the minimum he owes, Sasuke thinks, for casually delegating his wife as another casualty in his foolish attempts at achieving an everlasting peace.

The thought in itself causes his blood to boil. He clenches his hand more tightly over her wrist. “I will fix this, I promise.”

“There is nothing to fix, Papa…” she replies hoarsely, sniffling. “Mama is gone. You can’t bring her back.”

“Shh,” he hushes, feeling something break in his chest that he thought had already been shattered beyond repair.

Sarada’s eyes fill to brimming and her throat bobs in a swallow. She utters a word under her breath, calls out a quiet Mama and Sasuke uses his hand on her wrist to tug her forceable into his chest. Wrapping an arm around her waist, he tucks her head under his chin, curls his body around her and buries her into his embrace as she dissolves into wrenching sobs, soaking through his shirt with her grief.

“It hurts, Papa,” she gasps out. A keening sob rings in his ears and he gathers her impossibly closer, blinking as wetness begins to spill forth from his own eye.

“I know,” he whispers. “Papa will make it better, Sarada. You’ll see.”

Hours pass before his child finally cries herself to exhaustion. He manages to carry her to bed with his single arm, tucks her under the blankets and washes her tear-stained, flushed face with a cool cloth.

When he is sure she will not wake again, he exits her room, knees buckling as he catches sight of Sakura’s touch throughout the house–her favourite paintings on the walls of the hall, photographs of all of her loved ones framed and displayed throughout. He is gritting his teeth against sobs by the time he breaks free, stepping into the cool night air and finding Naruto waiting.

“I hope it was worth it,” he growls. The other man stares at him, face shadowed but blue eyes near-glowing in the moonlight. “To torture my child like this… You will give me an explanation. Now.”

“I’ve told you all that matters, teme,” Naruto whispers. “But it’s not what you want to hear. So I have no choice but to show you.”

“Show me.” His fingers twitch with the urge to throttle his friend, to shake him until he purged the secrets that he keeps.

A rough hand clasps his wrist and with a rush of air and the flurry of leaves they find themselves in a room that is ice-cold, illuminated by buzzing, fluorescent lights. A long metal table is at the centre, covered in a lumpy, stark-white sheet.

“I asked you to show me where to find my wife,” Sasuke says, the cold slipping between the layers of his skin and freezing everything that dwells inside, “and you bring me to the morgue?”

“I’m sorry Sasuke,” Naruto says raspily. “I’m so sorry. This should have never happened. I should have– I didn’t have to let her go. She insisted but I should have said no.”

“Naruto,” he says cooly. “Where is Sakura?”

“Damn it, bastard,” he practically whimpers. “You have to accept this. For Sarada, for yourself. She is dead.”

“Sakura is NOT,” he shouts, the sound echoing off the pristine tile and metal, “dead.”

“Look,” Naruto says, breathing heavily. “Just look.”

Before Sasuke can think of turning away, Naruto snatches the sheet off of the table between them. A figure is revealed–pale, naked, marred by bisections on each portion of her limbs and the sides of her face.

Bile burns his throat, tears pooling in his only eye. He stumbles a half-step back, forced to bow his back to maintain his standing position.

“You shouldn’t have to see this,” a voice whispers, the words slurring and reverberating through his mind. “But tomorrow is your wife’s funeral. And you have to face the fact that this is reality and that Sakura is dead and she is not coming back.”

“Liar,” Sasuke breathes.

“WAKE UP, SASUKE!” Naruto roars. In the next moment he is sobbing, clutching his face and pressing his fingers into his leaking eyes.

“Where is my wife, Naruto?” he asks, sparing one more glance at the horrid, disgusting thing that lay prone before him. A pathetic, malignant mimicry of his own wife’s corpse.

“Sasuke, please.”

He turns away then, unwilling to stand in this room with this man any longer. He turns away from the body laying on the table, away from the familiar pastel locks and faded lavender rhombus so stark in that pale, dissected face.

“When I have my wife again,” he pauses, refusing to turn around as he throws the words into the silence of the almost-empty room. “There will be hell to pay.”

The next morning, the sun shines bright as if to mock him. A crowd of no less than five hundred gather, his peers and former classmates occupying the first rows of mourners dressed in black. Many people have tears on their face, a specific woman with platinum hair and icy-blue eyes sobbing openly and violently, clutching a handful of long-stemmed flowers.

Sarada stands in the embrace of both of her teammates. Each time her breath hitches on a quiet cry, his heart breaks.

Naruto officiates. Barely able to speak through his own grief, he welcomes mourners to pay their respects.

Sasuke makes sure he is the last of them. And he engages the sharingan on his approach.

“Sasuke,” Naruto says. His voice is rough like gravel, his blue eyes shining and bloodshot. “Don’t do this here.”

“Traitor,” he whispers.

“Let me lay my friend to rest,” the other man cries, voice raw and resonant. “You can fight me later. Take all of your pain out on me, but not here. Not now.”

Sasuke stands still, his single arm relaxed at his side, fingers twitching every now and again. Behind him, he can hear his daughter sobbing, the rustle of the crowd of mourners and observers as they try to make sense of the scene before them.

“She was my wife,” he states. His voice carries in the space, despite the volume being no higher than one would keep a normal conversation. “She was the mother of my child. The love of my life.”

“I know, teme,” Naruto replies brokenly. Everyone around can surely see and hear the thick swallow that works its way down his throat.

“She is dead,” he rasps. The words fall like a weight in his stomach, settling deep in his bones.

A quiet sob breaks through his best friend’s twisted mouth. “Aa, she is. She shouldn’t be, but she is.”

“You did this.”

Grey clouds swirl above them, dark and ominous. Naruto looks up when the first clap of thunder resounds from the sky, concern painting itself on his pale face.

“Sasuke,” the Hokage tries carefully, his palm raised up as if begging for peace.

Only peace is what took his family and then continued taking bits and pieces of happiness throughout his lifetime, to finally snatch the only person that mattered away from him, for good.

He takes a step forward.

“You did not deny it,” he says, his calm tone foregone and replaced with something more akin to a growl, “didn’t even try to give me a reason not to take my revenge.”

“Do whatever you have to do, but do not do it in front of Sarada. Don’t force her to lose both of her parents, like we did.”

Sasuke lurches forward, a current of lethal electricity formed in the palm of his hand.

Gasps sound all around, then a few scattered screams. They are ultimately drowned out by the roaring thunder, the buzz of lightning bolts crackling and carving lines through the expanse of the sky.

His lips tug slightly to the side, a dark mirth creeping about the edges of the chaos of his mind. How convenient, that on the day of his wife’s funeral, the gods would bless him with such a mighty storm.

His hand raises, palm facing up and fingers curled as if he could cradle the rolling, rumbling clouds above. The electric bolts fizz and crackle more intensely, until they begin to take shape, forming into the gaping maw of a fierce, terrifying dragon under the influence of Sasuke’s chakra.

Influenced by his pain and hopelessness, it might be the most horrifying sight anyone has ever seen.

“ Papa,” Sarada’s voice screams bloody from behind him and for a single moment he nearly falters.

But then the lightning flashes, casting a hellish glow over the marble of Sakura’s tomb and everything he is, finally, is lost.

“A life for a life,” he whispers.

Naruto’s eyes grow wide, the pupils narrowing to slits as the creature of pure energy and wrath falls upon him, consuming him with electric currents that cause his limbs to jerk spasmodically and the air to fill with the scent of burning hair and flesh.

“No,” a voice cries, another roars and he is forced to jerk away from his place to avoid a barrage of jutsu sent his way.

The electricity stings and singes at his own skin as he reaches through Kirin’s maw before it fizzles away, clutching his hand around his best friend’s throat and squeezing until he can feel muscle and tendon begin to bend under the force.

“You saved me once, only to torture me with a fate worse than death in the end,” he chokes.

Blue eyes glazed with water and fogged by agony and disbelief blink up at him, a bandaged hand latching onto his wrist. His own fingers tighten further around Naruto’s throat until blood coats the digits and leaks down his cheek. The other man only stares up at him, prone in his grasp.

They both know he could fight. Yet the Kyuubi is no more, and Naruto’s power cannot compare to that of Sasuke’s now that his restraint has been wrecked by this otherworldly circumstance.

And he owes him a debt in blood, and flesh.

“Sakura w-would hate to see y-you like this,” Naruto croaks, barely audible around the thick of blood and lack of air.

“Aa,” he breathes. “She would.”

A sickening crunch, and his soul brother exhales his last.

Blood curdling shrieks erupt around him, finally reaching past the thundering storm and the rush of blood in his eardrums. Footsteps thud, a wave of ninja charging toward him, but he looks over his shoulder, sharingan swirling and catches them in a genjutsu so powerful that they all immediately falter and collapse to the ground. Most stare with blank eyes into the distance, while some jerk with spasms, and others dissolve into screams and sobs.

He catches sight of his daughter standing amongst the piles of unconscious bodies. Her entire body quivers, lips bitten raw and pale, both eyes swirling dizzyingly with a new, terrifyingly beautiful pattern.

Red seeps from her lashline and drips from her jaw. Sasuke catches her horrified gaze with his own and swallows past the lump in his throat. He traces his eye over every single one of her features, mapping a path where he and Sakura had fallen in love, had created a being so beautiful, a perfect balance of everything he is and she was.

For once, he prays to the gods who had cursed him, that he might have the chance to see her again. Many, many years after this moment.

“Till next time,” he rasps. “Forgive me, my Sarada.”

And with all the mastery over his cursed blood-line limit he has, he pushes her into an illusion where the world is painted in greens and pinks and golds and red. Where blossoms and grass and lazy rivers trickle by, a sweet voice lulling her into a restful, safe sleep.

When Sarada finally slumps slowly to the ground, he stumbles over to the shining, ornate tomb, dragging the limp form still in his grasp until he is forced to drop it and reach to sweep away the pile of long-stemmed flowers.

With a ragged, painful breath, he curls his fingers around the cold, heavy stone edge and pushes back the lid.

—

“What have you done, Sasuke-kun?” she whispers.

Sasuke’s lips tremble, even as he attempts to pull them into a smile. She stares at him, her eyes wide, pupils stained an inky black. He searches for the bright viridian of her iris, and finds them pale.

“I forgot your eyes wouldn’t be the same green,” he says thickly. He lifts his quivering hand, tracing his index over one of the fine cracks that mars her beautiful features. “I…I had hoped to see them one more time.”

“Anata,” Sakura murmurs, cupping his face between her hands. “Oh, my love… I’m so sorry.”

Her palms feel just as he is accustomed to, only cold, so cold.

“Tsuma,” he chokes, chest heaving as he clutches his hand around her nape, pushing his forehead against her forehead. “Sakura.”

As tears start to stream down his face, Sakura’s own expression morphs into one of concern. “Sasuke-kun.”

He cries out when she says his name and realisation slowly settles; he will never again have it whispered in his ear as he holds her kisses down the expanse of her neck as her pulse vibrates softly underneath his lips.

The question about her motives behind accepting the mission so willingly sits right at the tip of his tongue, ready to roll off and fall between them. Only the possible answer scares him, enough that he chooses to keep his mouth shut, instead.

“Why am I here?” she asks, her tone soft and cautiously gentle, taking Sasuke right back to that day on the bridge, to that moment that marks the peak of his madness.

Everything had changed since then and yet somehow those feelings managed to crawl their way back into his heart, poisoning it once again with profound hatred towards the Hidden Leaf village and the entirety of the shinobi system.

“I had to say goodbye. I need you to–” take me with you. “I need you to tell me it’s going to be fine. Sarada…” His voice cracks as he forces himself to swallow the bile that forms inside his throat. “She will be okay, won’t she?”

Sakura watches him silently and Sasuke cowers under the weight of her gaze. His chest grows heavier the longer he looks into those dead eyes as they slowly move about his face in search of an answer.

“What have you done, Sasuke-kun?” she inquires again, only this time the question resonates with hidden authority.

This time, she does not ask as his wife, but as a shinobi of Konoha.

His jaw ticks, taut with rage that bubbles anew in the pit of his stomach, threatening to strip the last of his restrain, to ruin the safety and calm he usually finds in Sakura’s presence. Now, all that is left is a bitter taste coating his tongue.

“I did what needed to be done.”

Coldness settles between them, so akin to the dread he felt in the forest upon first hearing the news about Sakura’s departure.

A startling clarity overcomes him; he realizes that he had been clinging to the delusions of a man made sick with grief. He had believed, hoped by some miracle that it was not true. That his wife, his precious Sakura, was not dead, simply…lost somewhere. Still within reach. . Seeing her now, like this, tears that hope away, leaving a gaping wound behind.. He feels nothing but anger mixed with a painful grief, so great he knows it has changed him on an atomic level. Forever.

Because Sakura is gone.

And with her gone is the last thing keeping broken pieces of Sasuke together.

“Anata–”

“You,” Sasuke rasps, words scraping his throat on the way out, “you knew it was a suicide mission. You knew you were not coming back.”

A sigh leaves her, so quiet it is barely a whisper of air flying past them. She holds his gaze still, although Sasuke notices the way her fingers tremble when she clasps her hands together in front of herself.

“I did,” she admits.

The tears rolling down his face are scalding. They sear his skin, leaving permanent marks on his cheeks. Sakura’s touch burns even more, the hand on his nape once again bringing him close, until his forehead is buried in the curve of her shoulder.

They stand there, stuck in a limbo, on borrowed time.

“You left me.”

“You have spent your whole life leaving me, Sasuke-kun. I know you understand the reason behind it. The village–”

“The village took you from me!”

“ Anata,” Sakura says gently. “It is our home, Sarada’s home.”

“You are my home,” he all-but roars, his insides feeling like they are crumbling to dust. He fists his hand in her pastel locks, buries his face deeper into her neck and grits his teeth when he realises there is no pulse beating there.

With a ragged gasp he repeats, “You are my home, Sakura. What was I supposed to do without you?”

She groans painfully, shaking him slightly by her grip at the back of his neck.

“Not this, darling,” she whispers. “Never this. You must…you have to be here for Sarada. For the village and for N-”

Her words stop all together and Sasuke hears only the sound of his own laboured breaths and the ambience of the woods and its creatures. He pulls away slightly, enough to look at her pallid face, watching as her beautiful features twist into a frown.

“Who was it?” she asks hoarsely.

Sasuke only stares, tracing each dip and curve and line of her face. Absorbing and consuming all he can, this last time.

“Sasuke-kun,” she says urgently, gripping at his right arm and the stump of his left with bruising force. “Who?”

His mouth trembles, and he bites the inside of his lips. Each second passing seems like an eternity, but also no time at all as she stares up at him with eyes that are not quite hers.

“He has taken many things from me,” he finally says, his voice rough like a grinding stone. “And I let him, because I owed him a debt that could never be repaid. But this…taking you. That, I simply count not endure.”

Sakura shakes her head furiously, abject horror bleeding over her face.

“No.”

Sasuke smiles a bitter smile. His hand, trembling and grasping, reaches in her direction. Suddenly, through the haze of his rage and grief, the full weight of his actions, of his reality presses upon him.

“You probably believe I’m a monster,” he whispers, “now that I’ve killed my best friend.”

“Sasuke-kun,” she gasps out, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes. Her shoulders hunch forward and she sways side to side with a small whimper. “I- this can’t be true. Please.”

“I had to see you again,” he breathes. When her sickly-pale eyes fly to his face again, he shrugs one shoulder weakly.

“Oh,” she chokes out, clutching her fingers to her forehead. “What will you do? You…I won’t be there for you. And Naruto? He-”

Her words cut off for a moment as she sobs, crying even as no tears trickle down her face.

“Who will you lean on?” Sakura questions, her voice laced with such pain. It makes his own heart thud in his chest, a weak organ attempting to pump its last.

He shakes his head, simply staring at her as she laments the loss of their very best friend, their brother in arms and most precious teammate. Not for her own sake, but for his because even beyond the grave, she loves and cares and worries for him.

Moving fast enough to shock him, Sakura moves in close, reaches out and drags him close by his cloak. With rougher motions than he is accustomed to, she shakes him violently.

“What will you do without us, Sasuke-kun?” she cries. The cracks lining her face seem to deepen and elongate around her squinting eyes, the edge of her frowning mouth.

“My love,” he murmurs, tracing the tip of his middle finger over the edge of her hairline, shaping the faded diamond on her forehead. “You won’t have to worry about me anymore.”

There is a voice of doubt ringing inside his head—not about what he is planning to do but about how. It doesn’t seem fair to taint Sakura, with the darkness he never quite managed to rid himself off.

Only this isn’t Sakura.

The person before him isn’t his sweet, loving wife but merely a poor imitation brought about by the worst crime he has ever committed (many they are)that did not offer him the closure he so longed for.It does not offer him the closure that he so yearns for, that he expected. Instead of diminishing his burning desire to continue with the carefully crafted plan, seeing her like this—so cold and lifeless—only further fuels his resolve.

Sakura’s eyebrows are drawn together so closely they almost become just a single curved line running across her forehead while she searches Sasuke’s face for answers.

He presses his lips against her slightly parted ones in a chaste kiss, tasting of despair instead of affection.

Closing his eyelid, he focuses on summoning all of his chakra to fuel the very last jutsu he is ever going to perform. “You will never have to worry again.”

The Sharingan swirls, a bright reddish glow bouncing off her white-greyish completion when he captures her gaze.

Her gasp comes too late, too delayed for it to mean anything. Before the echo of it dissolves into buzzing and then calming nothingness, Sasuke has her will restrained with chains of his genjutsu.

Sakura stares at him, eyes wide, her hands shaking violently as she clutches a dripping kunai between her fingers.

Sasuke smiles, blinking past the wetness in his eyes, “Thank you, my love.”

“No,” she moans. Her hands jerk forward, the tip of the blade grazing over his chest and leaving a fine, bleeding line behind.

“We will see each other again,” he whispers. His hand, tremulous as well, slides over her cheek, heart thudding as bits of skin flake away like dried paper.

“Don’t make me do this,” Sakura sobs. “Please, anata. Think of Sarada, what will she do with both of us gone?”

He inhales shakily, tightens his grip on her face.

“She will do better than I ever did,” he says quietly. “She will surround herself with friends, and lean into community with her grief. She will succeed in protecting her loved ones and make a name for herself as a hero, someone strong and bright.”

Sakura’s face crumbles, her eyes blinking furiously as she sobs, dry cries with no tears.

“Sasuke-kun,” she chokes.

“Free me, tsuma,” he breathes. He strokes his fingers through her hair, grasps the back of her neck and brings her forehead to his. “Let us rest now, hn? Don’t we deserve it?”

Her shoulders heave and the sharp point of the blade sinks into his flesh, blood pooling warm around him as it slides in, slow.

“Reawaken me,” he says, letting his eyes slip shut and his lips curve into a smile.

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SS Retsuden Week 22