omg that sasusaku art you reblogged... i would pay so much money for your take on that prompt!!!
hi anon! here you go! :) thank you for this prompt, it's been a long time since i wrote anything and it was really fun! i hope you like it!
inspired by this incredibly beautiful artwork by @millientea!
dreams
[post-war sasusaku, rated T]
ao3 / ffn
In the brief time between the break of his fever and the break of dawn, Sasuke was absent of all his guilt. He held onto Sakura’s hand, and fought sleep to experience the sensation for as long as possible.
After the war, Sasuke's injuries keep him stuck in the hospital. Sakura visits every day.
First Sasuke lost a war with himself. Then he lost an arm. Then the infection and the fever struck, making him keel over then shiver feebly in his hospital bed for three days straight.
His more lucid moments were filled with strangers whizzing into his room to poke and prod him and stick needles horribly into his arm. And when the fever took hold, it carried him downstream to delirium. His nightmares were kind enough to visit him in waking hours, magnified and painted in strong color and detail. And each time he drifted briefly back to consciousness he was greeted with hot, billowing pain at the stump of his arm and the sound of his vitals blaring.
Later a team of doctors inform him that he’s survived a deadly case of sepsis and avoided a second amputation of his left arm. He’ll need bedrest and continued close monitoring. Naruto’s healing well, he hears. Figures.
The days blur. An IV chains Sasuke to bed, where he chokes on boredom thick as smoke. He memorizes the markings of each bird that lands on his windowsill. He watches a ball of dust in the corner move three riveting inches to the left over the course of twenty-four hours. He whips out his sharingan to memorize the lines of his palm, and compares that image to a corresponding record from the last time he was bored to death in a hospital. His heart line has grown longer.
Monotony breaks whenever Sakura breezes into his room.
“I brought you apples.” She smiles at him, a little knowingly. The apples are cut neatly into decorative slices.
She visits at the beginning and end of each shift. In the mornings she smiles brightly in a crisp white coat, and twelve hours later she still smiles brightly, with tired circles under her eyes and loose uncombed hair. This time she’s wearing civilian clothes, here to see him even on her day off.
She’s fearless, for her part. He’s quiet.
When he thinks back to the haze of fever, he remembers slender and cool fingers smoothing damp hair from his brow. A swirl of healing chakra that felt like the way her voice sounds. When he awoke, a nurse mentioned the doctor attending his case invented a new chakra technique on the spot to siphon away the infection.
Sasuke didn’t need to ask who. She never said anything, and he never asked.
He suspects Sakura’s involvement elsewhere, too. When he thinks about why he’s not kept in handcuffs or locked away entirely. In the roasted tomatoes that appear on his meal trays. The reason why Naruto is allowed the occasional visit, shuffling in on crutches and staying until the nurses chase him away.
Sakura sets the plate of apples at his bedside. Today, they resemble rabbits. Sasuke has never eaten more apples in his life, but he does not think of complaining.
“Good news. Your IV is coming out tomorrow!” She smiles, waiting for his reaction.
Right. He should be happy. The feeling flickers dimly and goes out like a damp torch.
Sasuke doesn’t know what his life will look like from here on out. There’s nothing left to hunt after. The main sources of his suffering have all vanished or changed form. All that awaits him is empty space and time—time to reflect, to let the cumulation of all his actions and decisions sink in.
He doesn’t regret the desertion, the treason, as much as others might hope. If he were to go back in time, knowing what he knows about the village, his choices might even look similar. But he regrets hurting the people who cared for him.
He regrets hurting her.
Sakura’s smile has faded. “What’s wrong?”
Sasuke wants to sink under his blankets, to be alone with his guilt. “Nothing.”
“Are you in pain?”
He throws her a glare. “I said it’s nothing.”
Years ago, this would have been enough to scare her away. Now green eyes meet his with full force. “Don’t do this. Don’t be distant.” Sakura’s fingers flex and curl at her sides. “Whatever is on your mind, you can tell me.”
She treats him with such kindness, such patience, though he’s certain he doesn’t deserve it.
“Why are you here, Sakura?” he asks quietly.
“I’m a doctor,” she says, with a flash of irritation.
“You know what I mean.” Sasuke’s vision swims like the beginnings of a migraine. “Leave me. Get on with your life.” He wants the words to carry a touch of contempt, but the lump in his throat filters it all out.
“Why would I leave you?” The pure sincerity of her voice cuts him through. “We just got you back.”
His tongue feels thick and heavy. “I’ve hurt you.” How could she forget?
“I’ve hurt you, too.”
He manages a shake of the head. It’s not the same.
“It’s in the past,” she insists. “We want you in our lives—we always have!”
“I don’t understand why,” he bites, gaining strength.
“Because I love you!”
Birds take off from the windowsill.
Wringing her hands, Sakura clarifies, more weakly, “I love all my friends.”
An icy flame tears through Sasuke’s entire body. He doesn’t believe her. Somehow, he must have tricked her. After everything he’s done, how can someone lower themselves so deeply as to love him? Hot pressure rises behind his eyes. He opens his mouth to recite every reason why she’s wrong.
“So get used to it,” Sakura snaps, recovering and doubling down, like she knows what he’s about to say. Sakura, who has always been a little brazen with her affection, who has so much love and care to give that it confounds him and most others. “I don’t care what’s happened or how long it’s been. You’re still my teammate.”
Sasuke feels a phantom of his past self crouch on his chest. It whispers, push her away, break the plate of apples. Trust yourself and no one else. Be alone. This is the way he knows to protect himself. It’s worked so well, all throughout his life, he can’t imagine anything different.
Does he need to protect himself, from her? Did he ever?
“And…you’re still my friend.” Sakura’s shoulders rise and fall in a deep breath. “If that’s what you want.”
Outside, a raven’s feather drifts in a slow spiral of wind. Sasuke nods.
Sakura straightens. “Good.” Her eyes are jade reflecting fire. “Being friends won’t kill you, I promise. See you in the morning.”
In the morning, Sakura arrives to remove his IV. She’s still carrying an air of quiet victory. To inch this close, to insist on picking up their friendship exactly where they left it, that’s some audacity. Bravery, even.
He needs it.
His heart would crack without it.
Sakura carefully loosens the adhesive and presses gauze over the IV site. Sasuke is already looking away, taking a shallow breath to prepare himself.
“There’s no needles at this part,” she says.
It’s true, he hates needles—one glimpse and he breaks into a cold sweat. But he’s never told anyone. It bothers him that she noticed. “How did you know?”
“I’m a doctor,” she says, which explains very little. “It’ll be quick, I promise.”
“Still hate it,” he breathes.
“I know,” she says. “Done.”
He looks back. She smiles when their gazes meet, holding down pressure on his arm. He didn’t feel a thing.
“You make a small sound.” Her voice is soft. “Under your breath. Like you’re trying to speak but hold it back.”
Sasuke thought he hid the discomfort well. If he can miss such small details about himself, no wonder he was wrong about almost everything—what path to take, and where to place blame, and who to trust. His world has turned over too many times to count.
His senses hone in on Sakura’s touch, muted as it is through gloves and layers of gauze. She’s never changed. Never failed to ease his hurts.
He wants to ask about the fever. The infection that strode in like one last attempt by the world to kill him. She saved his life.
He feels his hand float through the air, stretching towards her face.
Empty air buzzes where his fingers should be grazing her brow. He’s still not used to the loss of his dominant hand. His stump lowers back to his side. Sakura’s expression remains calm, unknowing.
“Thank you,” he says instead.
He knows what the words will mean to her. And so he says it.
A soft smile overtakes Sakura’s face. Sasuke is known for his infamous gaze, but now he doesn’t know where to put it. When to meet her crinkling eyes and for how long. If it’s considered normal to observe the rise of her cheek, the strands of pink hair falling around her face. If he should risk a glance at her smiling lips. The decisions overwhelm him, and he finds he must look away.
Something is different, he thinks.
.
.
“He’s on your roster today? Good luck.”
Sasuke’s room is stationed at a quiet bend of the hall, a blind spot between patient rooms and administrative offices where hospital staff stop to gossip before continuing on their rounds. Whether he wants to or not, he’s often forced to eavesdrop.
“—ripped out his IV. Yes, just ripped it out. Three times. Maybe four. Wouldn’t let anyone touch him.”
“Have you noticed all those horrible birds outside his window? The crows?”
A laugh. “Never seen anything like it. Like a curse, I swear—”
“Excuse me.” The conversation grinds to a halt at Sakura’s sharp voice. “Room Four is still waiting on warm blankets.”
Footsteps scatter in two different directions. Sakura sweeps into his room. Her face is a storm. If he saw that expression on a battlefield, he would reach for his weapon. He pictures her cutting apple slices into playful shapes to reverse the effect.
“Don’t listen to them,” she mutters, and throws the curtain divider closed.
“I don’t care.”
“I care.” Absent-minded, a frown tugging at the corners of her mouth, Sakura does something she’s never done before: she sits on his bed. All Sasuke’s attention is pulled to the hand’s width of space between his ankle and the slight dip of her weight on the mattress. He slowly shifts his legs away, careful not to draw her notice.
Sakura pulls a velvet pouch out of her coat. “Here. I brought something.”
The most exciting part of Sasuke’s day was when the scent of antiseptic wafted through the door a little stronger than usual. His interest spikes. “What is it?”
Sakura opens the pouch and pours dozens of black and white Go pieces onto the bedspread. She begins arranging the board among the folds of his blankets, and after a moment, Sasuke leans forward to help. He hasn’t played Go since he was a child, but the smooth, round stones feel familiar in his palm, and the rules come back quickly. They play five games in a row without speaking. Sakura wins the first, and he wins the last four.
When they look up again, it’s dark. Sasuke’s neck is stiff from bending over the game for so long. Time has never passed so quickly for him in the hospital.
Sakura is sitting fully atop the bed now, as she has for the past three games, legs crossed with a pensive hand held to her chin. She packs away the game pieces in silence and pulls the drawstring shut. A crease lingers between her eyebrows.
“You could have died.”
Her eyes swell with tears. She doesn’t make a sound.
“I didn’t,” Sasuke says, soft as he can.
“But you could have.” The tears flow faster than she can wipe them away.
“You didn’t let me.” It makes his gut twist to see her cry, even if she cries because his life matters to her.
“I almost didn’t bring the flowers that day. I didn’t know if you’d want them.” Sakura lifts a sleeve to her face. “If I wasn’t there when the shock hit…”
Sasuke struggles to follow. His memory of the whole ordeal is hazy. He has a vague recollection of a nurse removing a vase of wilted flowers from the bedside in the days after the fever lifted.
Sakura’s shoulders tremble with a sob. “I could have lost you.”
“You didn’t lose me.” He catches her hand. Fingers slide together like whispering a secret. “You have me.”
She lifts her tearstained face. Sasuke feels feverish as his words echo back in the silence of their breathing. Her lips part, bitten and red.
“You only ripped out the IV twice, Sasuke-kun.”
Her expression is knit with determination. Sasuke can’t stop himself—a smile twitches onto his mouth. Sakura seems confused by the reaction, studying him hard.
Movement flashes in the corner of Sasuke’s eye as a large black bird lands smoothly on the windowsill. He recognizes this one for a miniscule nick in its leftmost flight feather.
“And the birds. They’re ravens,” he says evenly. “Not crows.”
Sakura smiles, sudden and shining and wide. Sasuke doesn’t fully understand the meaning of the exchange, but contentment sweeps over him.
The warmth of her hand lingers long after she lets go, and he remembers something about the fever.
.
.
The infection stalls for days, but when the worst comes, it comes quickly.
First Sasuke’s mouth fills with saliva, then arrives a tsunami of inexplicable dread, and that’s all the warning he receives before an important current in his body shifts off-course and begins to sweep him away. Sasuke breathes deep. A sweet scent hovers in the air. Sakura arrived a moment ago with fresh-cut flowers.
His stump throbs with such a sick, bleeding ache that he loses his grip on his senses. His limbs are all trembling. Another breath. His lungs allow just enough air to call out her name.
Footsteps, a sharp voice. “Sasuke? What’s wrong?”
Healing chakra skims over his body. Sakura lets out a tense breath.
Sasuke knows suffering like he knows the face of an old friend. He can feel it loom over him, its breath ghosting the back of his neck.
“It’s—it’s serious, Sasuke-kun.” The air thickens with chakra, a thrum strong enough to detect by ear. “But you’re going to be fine.”
The breath returns to his lungs, but in exchange, screaming hot pain erupts at his arm and reverberates through every corner of his body. Each pain that flares and fades is replaced quickly by another. His mouth and the tip of his nose go numb. His vision cuts in and out. He is a boat tossed by angry waves, kept afloat solely by the light touch of Sakura’s fingertips.
“Don’t leave,” he hears himself say.
Her voice finds him like sunlight. “I won’t.”
“Do you hate me, Sakura?”
Not long ago, Sasuke hated her. The ache of hatred never left his chest. He hated her so much that her face sometimes replaced his nightmares, and he would wake up blinking away tears. He understands if she feels the same.
He never hears her response. A dark, turbulent quiet rushes over his head, and his old friend follows after him.
At dawn on the day his fever breaks, Sasuke floats awake, greeted by swirls of light floating on the inside of his eyelids. His body feels like his own, but different, like he’s been pulled apart and put back together in a different order. He curls his fingers—the numb tingle of phantom pain lights on one side. The fingers of his other hand tighten around something.
He opens his eyes to a world washed in soft grey. To Sakura’s sleeping face, her hair silver in the light. A dream? No, his mind doesn’t grant him peaceful dreams.
Her head rests tired and heavy on the edge of the bed. Between them lies their hands, tightly clasped, as if they met in a moment of turbulence and held on ever since. Long enough so he can’t distinguish her touch from his own. Flowers watch on the windowsill, shedding petals.
.
.
Sasuke plays more games of Go. Less needles are stuck into his arm. He begins to walk again. He feels fresh air on his face. Sakura’s visits continue like clockwork, until one morning she fails to walk through his door.
He sits and watches the birds as morning stretches into afternoon. The chair that has never left his bedside remains empty. After years apart, how quickly he’s grown accustomed to her presence. But this stretch of time is coming to a close. When he leaves the hospital, he doubts he will see her so often.
His window looks out onto the hospital roof, crisscrossed with pipes and exhaust vents, and a small sliver of the street. When the wind blows just right, the branches of a sakura tree wave into view, buds unfurling.
Hard as Sasuke tried to shunt away his past life, he could never escape the spring. The torture of falling petals, of green and pink. The world around him transformed as if to ensure he could never forget her.
Daylight is getting long when Sakura wobbles in, rubbing her eyes. “Hi.”
Sasuke’s spine straightens. “Hey.”
She sits in her spot by the bed, where he’s been playing a game of Go with himself. “How’s the game?”
“I’m losing,” he says.
Sakura smiles and shifts one of the white stones to a dangerous location. Warmth floods Sasuke’s chest, though now he’s certain to lose. Their hands move back and forth over the imaginary board, bold and quick.
Sakura yawns victoriously as she captures his last tile. “Another?”
Exhaustion shadows her eyes, but if he answers yes, she’ll delay sleep even longer. Does she ever sleep? Hospital staff are always wandering the halls to seek her opinion, or pull her into surgeries, or hand her a stack of paperwork. Yet she carves out a portion of her valuable time for him.
Sasuke shakes his head. But he’s not selfless enough to give up her company so soon. “How are you?”
Her tired gaze lifts and flicks away. A faint blush dusts her cheeks. Why? Is it strange for him to ask? He’s still ruminating when she answers. “I’m okay. It’s been a long day. Emergency surgery, complications, everything. I can’t remember the last time I slept…” Their fingers brush twice as they put away the game pieces. “I’m really sorry I couldn’t come earlier.”
“You don’t have to be sorry.”
Sakura leans against his bed and drops her head onto her arms. “Hope you didn’t miss me too much.”
What can he say? He did miss her.
Springtime has come again. The season used to drive him mad. The sakura flowering all at once, all over the continent, wherever he looked. The petals scattering like rain in the wind, catching in the folds of his cloak. The sight of blossoms on bare wood, crossing over his head in a blooming lattice. The five-petaled flowers, the five fingers of a hand he would never touch again. The color. It tested his patience, his devotion to his goal like nothing else.
Sasuke skims his fingers over the pink wave of her hair. He’s always wanted to, deep down. Sakura cracks open her eyes, catches him red-handed in his affection. He runs a thumb in the barest caress across her cheekbone. He is at his weakest in the spring.
“Come here,” he mumbles, fairly certain that she will. Terrified that she won’t.
“Where?” she whispers.
Sasuke lifts his chin. He rests his hand on the blanket. His fingertips burn from touching her. “Here.”
In the brief time between the break of his fever and the break of dawn, Sasuke was absent of all his guilt. He held onto Sakura’s hand, and fought sleep to experience the sensation for as long as possible. He did not deserve her, but he pretended he did.
Even as Sakura slides into the bed, rests her head in his lap, he cannot fully believe what he’s seeing. She presses closer to him, as if she wants to be close, and her eyes drift shut, as if his presence soothes her. A spell falls over Sasuke as he listens to her breathing. His hand lowers to her back.
Maybe, in the end, it’s as simple as she said. She loves him.
Sleepy green eyes blink open with a trace of shyness, of the girl that used to blush each time he spared her a glance. He will never admit how often he tested his powers. “You don’t mind?”
“No,” he says.
Sakura climbs higher. She folds her arms across his chest like he’s a pillow and tucks her cheek into the crook of her elbow. Sasuke’s heartbeat grows unsteady. Her hair smells the same, like jasmine.
Sasuke never imagined a future beyond his revenge, that his life could continue on and contain moments lit in a glow like sunlight through petals. Holding her awakens desires that have nothing to do with pain and sacrifice. He wants to stroke her hair until she falls asleep. He wants to visit her dreams. He wants even more. His chest aches in the way he once thought was hatred.
He touches her cheek, straightening out a lock of silky hair. She doesn’t stir.
Sasuke closes his eyes, and like he’s never had trouble with it before, dreams.
A Cornucopia of Conundrums and Murphy's Law of Love by zgs1994
Perpetual Winter by thefangirlslair
In Pieces by Masami Aomame
All I Want for Christmas by TheRedConverseGirl
Tribute by SouthSideStory
Recently, I've realised that I just crave for some of the fics to be read again. So I'll be collating here the fics which serve to me as a comfort on my bad days. I promise to keep updating this list to help other fellow readers too.
hi! i’ve been trying to find this fic where it’s like after the war sasuke gets jealous that sakura spends a lot of her free time with the other teams and when he tells naruto about it naruto is like i used to feel the same way until sakura told me what it was like for her to be alone after we both left the village or SOMETHING LIKE THAT HAJDJD i can’t remember that well but im trying sooo hard to find it and i cant
Hi nonny,
Thanks for stopping by! 💕
I believe you're looking for this fic:
time spent By: sincerelyLen
Uchiha Sasuke is not oblivious to how popular Haruno Sakura has become over the years. Once in their lives, she tried to spend most of her free time solely with him. However, years later, Sasuke begins to feel a frustrating displeasure rise when he realizes how happily she splits her time with others, especially those who are not a part of the immediate Team Kakashi. [Rated K+, complete]
This story is an all-time favorite of mine and I was overdue a re-read. Love me some Jealous Sasuke hahah. 🥰
I hope I got it right (lmk if this is not the fic). Happy reading! 😊
The roads felt more like home to him: the birds chirping, the rustles of leaves, the absence of bloodstains on his hands and cheeks, the distance of an older brother’s confusing love. Beside him is spring personified, listing down the groceries they need to get before continuing their journey through the heart of the Land of Fire. The pink strands on her head contrast with the surrounding brown and orange foliage. She looks up at him, asking him what he wants for dinner.
He thinks… and thinks some more. He wants grilled fish, freshly caught, unsalted, a little dry and charred from the fire. Like the ones they had in the Forest of Death, as they strategized on how to get the Scroll of Heaven, with too little time remaining. She said, ‘Okay, we’ll hunt them.’ Her arms reached up, stretching, like a cat, and she took a deep breath, eyes closed, the warm sunset filtered through the trees and gleamed on her flushed cheeks. Red from his gaze.
While tragedies of loss, parents and brothers, and souls, were written on his palm, hers were etched with the lives she couldn’t save. He wants to think that they’re the same as his, but they’re not. (Are they? He never asked her what her patients mean to her...) And sometimes he wonders why a North pole like her and a South pole like him found their way to each other. A healer in the world of bloodlusted youths, a misstepped avenger guided by grief and animosity. A gear within the automation, a misfit who desired a new system. He has yet to tell her about his past. He has to. Some time later.
The war is over, but the resolution leaves much to be desired. To accept his loss is to mold his sharp edges to the village's clockwork. He wonders what she thinks of his dilemma. If she, in her years as the apprentice of the Fifth, ever saw tragedies similar to his. Perhaps smaller ones? A famine in a district? A failure of the sanitation system in the slums? The roofless orphans? Medicinal plants she couldn’t acquire because money is ‘short’? Every great story has devils hiding in the details, between the lines. Did she rebel within the confines of the round prison? How? Why? He wants to ask her that. He’s apprehensive of her answers. As much as she’s a girl keen to follow the rules, she once offered to follow him into the dark. But the moon has yet to rise. So, right now, he wants to drown in the lilt of her voice as she reminisces about the lake they left behind this afternoon. They caught the last few blooming lotuses floating on the water and encountered daffodils as they walked further from the reservoir.
Black hair cascaded down over Sasuke's face, blocking Sakura's view of him. She wanted to get a closer look at him, but could only follow the movements of his hand, watching as more and more bandages wrapped around her arm.
Sasuke performed his task with concentration, careful not to injure Sakura further. The wound inflicted by the kunai was burning her, but she made no effort not to show it. She was already struggling with her reddened cheeks anyway, which deepened in color with each successive touch from the boy.
‘How strange,’ she thought, tapping her nails against the tree trunk.
The sun was slowly hiding from behind the clouds, illuminating them with its orange light. Sasuke gently grasped Sakura's wrist, lifting her hand and watching it closely all around, before carefully placing it on his knee to tie the knot.
He deftly dealt with everything.
"Done."
He announced, raising his head at last. His black irises came into contact with her green ones. Sakura opened her mouth, but no sound came out. They stared at each other, and a strange tension grew. Her breath caught in her throat.
Finally, she forced herself to lift her lips, showing her pearly teeth.
"Thank you, Sasuke-kun!"
The boy looked away quickly, once again hiding under the locks of hair. He felt warmth on his neck and ears.
"Aa," he muttered, tucking the rest of the bandages into his pocket, "Be more careful next time. If I hadn't been there, this could have ended worse."
"But you were here." she replied, gently punching him in the arm.
Sasuke stood up, standing backwards and putting one hand in his trouser pocket. He started to walk away, just waiting for the girl to wrap her arm around his elbow. He sighed.
“A body can acclimate to anything. The burning, the stabbing, the cutting. When it was done, always, she was permitted to heal herself. The torture was bearable. Painful, but bearable. And it always came to an end.The betrayal hurt far more.“
If you haven’t already... go and do yourself a favor by reading Covenant by @starry0-o! - an incredible slow-burn, novel-length SasuSaku fanfic that will have you double guessing everything after every update!
I made this moodboard as a small token of appreciation for Starry on her birthday so go give her some love 🥹
