#implied sasusaku

[scarletofspring]

This totally happened after Boruto episode 208 btw #trustme

#sasusaku #sasuke uchiha #uchiha sasuke #sakura uchiha #uchiha sakura #sakura haruno #haruno sakura #sarada uchiha #uchiha sarada #mitsuki #mitsusara #iiii guess???? implied atleast #LMAO i forgot to tag #NARUTO #BORUTO #my art

[every-sakura]

#naruto #vol 8 #ch 66 #partial sakura #sasuke uchiha #chuunin exams #sasusaku propaganda #implying he holds her in high enough regard to consider her #he's not dismissing her entirely #he's saying he's weighed the options and decided he must follow his dream #sad sure but he does care about her and her opinion in the end

[tranquil-turbulence]

SS Month ‘23 - Day 3

Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4

Prompt: Medieval (Japan) AU

Warnings: Mentions of adultery, period-typical misogyny

“Sakura!” Her mother called. “Another letter!”

The girl gasped in delight with her friend. Gathering up their skirts, they rushed from her bedroom and hurried down the stairs as fast as they could muster.

As they reached the reception room, she breathlessly asked, “You called, Mother?”

“Another letter for you,” the woman repeated, holding out a crisp white envelope with a hint of a smile playing on her coral lips.

The pink-haired young lady took it gingerly and both her and her blonde friend squealed excitedly at the intricate red wax seal. The uchiwa fan embossed in the silky wax spoke volumes as to who the sender was.

“I can’t believe he actually sent you one,” Ino, her friend, gushed, clasping her hands together.

“I know!” Sakura giggled, pausing in her steps to delicately break the wax seal on the back of the envelope. “I still can’t believe he talked to me in the market! I was so sure he thought me vexing.”

“Well, read it!” She impatiently crossed her arms.

Rolling her eyes, the younger girl unfurled the letter, pausing to clear her throat dramatically for emphasis. “To the young Miss Haruno, I bid you good tidings with the blossoming of spring valleys and tenderly weeping sakuras. I have arranged for a luncheon on the fifteenth between you and my brother to bless your forthcoming union.” Biting her lip, she continued, “May your union flourish and bring honor to our bloodlines. With regards, Uchiha Sasuke.”

“There’s more… oh!” The blonde looked away as the girl hastily rolled up the end of the letter, bright scarlet painting her dainty face.

“Well,” mused Ino, “I should think it’s good fortune that your future brother-in-law is so welcoming.”

“I was worried at first, when Father told me I was to marry a prodigal,” she admitted, gingerly closing the letter, “but if Sasuke has no objections, surely he cannot be such a horrible person.”

“Perhaps not, but you know Sasuke has always idolized Itachi.” Ino gave her a meaningful look. “If any opinion would be colored, I suspect his would.”

“I trust his judgment.” Sakura firmly stated. “He’s one of my dearest friends. Itachi is not a scheming man.”

Ino gave a shrug and heaved a sigh. “I still worry about you. He’s five years older and not tied to the Uchiha fortune anymore. Why would he choose you to wife?”

“Perhaps he remembers me from childhood.”

“Perhaps, but you would think he would choose another girl.”

“I know him, and he must know me. Maybe he was uncomfortable choosing a stranger with qualms about treating him well.”

The blonde wrapped her arms around her friend, embracing her tightly. “I worry for your marriage. This could be his way of clawing his way back up to his former fortune. Once he finds an even more respectable woman to wife, he may leave you.”

“You distrust Sasuke.” Sakura accused.

“I distrust Itachi,” Ino corrected impatiently. “You believe too much in him.”

“We’ve known each other since infancy, of course I believe in him.”

“Too much belief is a dangerous game, Forehead. One day it will bite you.” The blonde sighed, shaking her head. “Besides, Sasuke is already married. Are you still pining for him?”

The young lady gave her a flat look.

“His heart may choose you, but his duty rests most on his wife.”

She looked indignant for several long moments, but finally she sagged against the wall. “I hate it when you’re right,” she muttered.

“I would be remiss if I let you get hurt.” With a soft smile, she grasped her hand. “Is he still visiting you?”

“Only twice so far,” she answered, walking with her back to her room. “I’m anxious. If he visits me again, wouldn’t that make it official? And I would hate to earn the scorn of the Lady Fujiwara.”

“It’s none of her business what Sasuke does with you, anyway,” huffed Ino. “We’re childhood friends.”

“Still…”

“Quit worrying about it. I know well as anyone else that he still holds you dearly. It’s his vagrant brother I fear.” With a sigh, she gave the younger a grimacing smile. “Itachi may have been tenderhearted in our youth but a decade changes things.”

“I… I’m not worried. If he loves me not, I will still have Sasuke.” Her shoulders were set squarely, a sense of determination overcoming her anxiety. “Is it wrong of me to be so brazen?”

“Women are expected to receive affection, and it’s a man’s duty to provide affection. You’re hardly scandalous to feel unsure of that. But you really should temper those desires before someone begins a rumor that you’re more salacious than you are.”

“I feel so conflicted,” she sighed, waving her small fan. “I’ll be okay, won’t I?”

“I’ll make sure you’re alright,” Ino reassured, resting a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll make certain to put in a good word for you among the ladies of court. Regardless of who your husband is.”

#sasusaku #sasusaku month 2023 #tw: implied adultery #period-typical misogyny #platonic itasaku

[victimsofyaoipoll]

Round 2

Propaganda under the cut

Jane Crocker

Dynamite gumshoe gal.... I will NOT be talking about homestuck 2 or any of that mess. She loves baking and held so much rage inside of her and I understand. Was hated by large swathes of the fandom for "standing in the way of Dirk/Jake" because she had a crush on Jake. 

She had the hots for Jake, but couldn't accurately convey her feelings, and he ended up with another male character (Dirk). Later on she was brainwashed and evil and had him captured and it was heavily implied some awful things would be done but a fair amount of people who ship Dirk and Jake took that as free reign to villainize her entirely for getting in between them when she never really did.

So victimized by the yaoi fangirls people claim Random Fascism in the sequel was in-character

Hinata Hyuga

Now, I know she is not as widely hated as Sakura, but as a Hinata fan I have seen a LOT of hate for her in this regard. She is in the same boat as Sakura except instead of loving Sasuke she loves Naruto. And let me tell you some people hate that she ended up with Naruto canonically. She gets the same 'she's so annoying' crap that Sakura gets and with NaruHina being canon along with SasuSaku they are certainly sisters-in-arms.

People hate her because she is a teenage girl with a crush on Naruto. Everyone is mean to her for no reason :(

one of the OG early internet hatesinks and deserving of SO MUCH MORE. She starts off so shy and anxious and full of anxiety about her skills as a ninja and has deep trouble connecting with her peers!!! But her abusive upbringing and self doubt does not get in the way of her growth!! She will put herself in danger for the sake of those she loves, even if she greatly is outmatched!!! and on top of that she's adorable!!! in fandom spaces she is often made out to be emotionally manipulative, a "baby trapper" (gross term), or even homophobic as a way of justifying her demonization and getting Naruto away from her

#round 2 #poll #jane crocker #homestuck #hinata hyuga #naruto #naruto shippuden

[leportraitducadavre]

Edo-Tensei implies the sacrifice of a living human being for their body to become the vessel of the soul they're trying to bring back. What this author means is that Sasuke and Sakura are willing to perform inhumane acts to "see each other again".

The jutsu was created by Tobirama, someone Sasuke despises.

This is the same jutsu Orochimaru, whom Sakura admitted to hating as he "took Sasuke away from Konoha", used; why would she willingly use a jutsu from his book?

The caster has complete control of the person they summon, the person that was "revived" has no real volition of their own. Obito, who used to love Rin, never even entertained the idea of summoning her (and thus, controlling her), what a disgusting thing to do to someone you "love".

This is the same man who canonically has the chance to see his wife whenever he pleases, yet he doesn't, why on earth would he revive her? Why wouldn't he revive Itachi, Mikoto, or Fugaku for that matter?

Sakura has little to no knowledge of füinjutsu, let alone enough chakra to perform something like this.

Sasuke having a "moment" with Itachi doesn't translate to him actually liking the technique.

"Sasuke and Sakura are only thinking of a possibility" is just as awful as performing it; they're willing to do such a monstrous thing to others to fulfill their selfish wishes. The fact that they didn't do it isn't because they aren't prone to do so, but because they didn't have to, as both are still alive.

Edo-tensei is not romantic, at all. It's one of the worst techniques ever invented as it was devised to seek control over powerful (deceased) shinobi to use their souls/techniques as tools of military power. The person revived has no control over their actions, so they see themselves committing acts they might not agree with because the person who summoned them wanted their strength. Its origin was about complete control of a human being (humiliation likely plays a part, as having no control over your body yet having your mind intact is the ultimate form of torture), the possession of the power of others, and the ultimate tool as those revived receive no real damage as they respawn.

Edit to add: This line was, in fact, in Sasuke Retsuden (in the manga adaptation Sasuke never actually confirmed this, as it was Sakura who replied for him -lol-). Jun Esaka just butchered the entirety of Sasuke's characterization, this woman was paid to write a SasuSaku story and couldn't even bother to understand and respect the characters' original personality, having to modify everything about them and using their trauma as a "romantic device" to show "how much Sasuke and Sakura love each other". I have no respect for her as an author, at least, not as an author inside the Narutoverse.

#anti sasusaku #anti sasuke retsuden #anti ss #anti sss #anti sakura uchiha #anti jun esaka #not sure it was in actual retsuden tho #adding the tag just in case #anti sasusaku fandom #anti sasusaku stans

[madara-fate]

You know I have to realise that one of the reasons why SasuSaku's dynamic is interpreted wrong is not only because of the unnecessary Sakura hate but also the lack of understanding for Sasuke's character, more specifically, his love language. It's easier to understand that Sakura cared for Sasuke, she's extremely expressive of her emotions. But with Sasuke, it's a different story. He's not good at expressing his emotions or verbalising them (which is understandable bc of his trauma), his love language is primarily ‘acts of service’. For example, what Sasuke SAID was Naruto is a ‘loser’ and ‘scaredy cat’ but what he DID was immediately risking his life when Haku was about to attack Naruto. think this is something which fans tend to forget about him often. He's a VERY show-dont-tell person. Sakura, in contrast, is good at expressing her feelings. Her love language also includes physical touch and words of affirmation. She can easily tell Sasuke she's in love with him or hug her when he wakes up from a coma. Which is probs majorly why so many fans feel their relationship is ‘one sided’ because of the clear difference between their love language.

I think THIS is exactly one of the main reasons why I saw SS becoming endgame. While Sasuke isn't fond of physical touch, he felt comfortable enough with Sakura to calm down at her touch, let her hug him, carve for her hand in the FOD, hold her, poke her forehead etc. Similarly, he's not the best at verbalising his feelings in words but he tried, again, the thank yous, the apology, cheering her up before the exam. This is something he doesn't do with anyone else. While I am sure Sasuke fell in love with her only after ch. 699, it's pretty clear he had a soft spot for her before leaving the village, which was evident from the way he had been with her, (which eventually turned into love after his redemption journey).

Yeah I agree, Sasuke's definitely the most misunderstood character in the story, and even in the few instances when he does actually verbalise his affection, they're always just glossed over by the fans. The amount of times that I've heard people say...

That he hates Sakura (despite never saying or implying that).

That he doesn't give a damn about her (despite indicating that she is one of his most precious people on multiple occasions).

That he constantly insulted her (despite never insulting her once).

That he was forced and guilt tripped into being in a relationship with her (as if anyone could ever force him to do something that he doesn't want to do).

That he allows himself to be in a loveless marriage (despite how canonically important love is to the Uchiha).

I honestly just don't think he was that difficult to read, especially when you give the Curse of Hatred the significance that it deserves.

While I am sure Sasuke fell in love with her only after ch. 699, it's pretty clear he had a soft spot for her before leaving the village

💯

Yep, Sasuke wasn't in love with Sakura during the main story, nor did he need to be, but the fact that he nonetheless held her (and Naruto) very close to his heart is undeniable.

He described her as a dear comrade.

He was ready to risk his life fending off Gaara so that Naruto could get her to safety.

He thought of her and Naruto when Kakashi referenced his precious companions.

He was reminded of her and the rest of Team 7 when Taka were sacrificing themselves for his sake.

He revealed how he saw the shadow of his family within her and the rest of Team 7. And when considering just how precious Sasuke's family was to him, those are big words indeed.

Your point about how he only tends to show direct verbal affection towards Sakura is also a significant one. One could say how he also apologised to Karin, but the difference between them is very clear.

#Sasuke Uchiha #Sakura Haruno #sasusaku

[sasukesun]

i love how delusional people sound when they say kishimoto was lazy when writing sasusaku because it takes effort to write sasuke as uninterested and uncomfortable near sakura as he is in canon, it takes effort and balls to imply twice they never kissed, to show that sasuke left his “family” for 12 years with no contact despite having a phone and a hawk and being able to teleport while meeting up with naruto and going to his favourite restaurants (lol?), it takes effort and balls to show how miserable sasuke is whenever sakura is present and how he still denies her giving any kind of affection. it takes effort to be this level of a hater. #respect.

#not lazy just a hater #ramblings i don’t feel like tagging

[stopthebig3]

To the Sakura stans who ship sasusaku and narusaku in my mentions liking my anti hinata posts, (and being too lazy or incapable of making such posts themselves) know that Sakura is also a useless and selfish character that Kishimoto despises..

Kishimoto wrote her as selfish. She never cared about Sasuke as a person, she doesn’t even know who he is. She only knows he’s hot. Her crying every five seconds doesn’t mean she cares about him, it means she cares about herself. Both of her confessions were about herself.

The fact you guys can see Hinata is useless and selfish but can’t see the same with Sakura, despite the fact it’s underlined in the manga over and over again, only shows that you overlook things in characters you relate to. Sakura doesn’t even make a good self-insert considering everytime she makes a confession, she is brutally rejected, by both boys.

This is Sakura uselessly moping over the fact Sasuke didn’t care about her getting stabbed. You know, instead of focusing on the task at hand like a good shinobi would, she focuses on the fact a guy that never showed interest in her still doesn’t. Her whole attack before getting stabbed wasn’t based on any well thoughtout plan but was solely fueled by her selfish need to satisfy her own ego as we see in her inner thoughts just before.

Here she had another moment of realization that she isn’t that important to Sasuke. But she still pushes on because self respect is not something she has.

And here is yet another moment in which she realizes she isn’t that significant to Sasuke. But since she is stubborn and refuses to take no for an answer, she gets all angry and starts to scream her selfish confession, despite it’s not even relevant to the situation. I mean look at her, I remember someone said she looks like she is getting ready to fight lol. And then she gives her self pitying confession that some people think is love. Sad.

This was how Naruto was acting after Sasuke almost butchered Sakura. He wasn’t approving and was telling Sasuke not to do it, but he wasn’t that angry either.

Or here, after Sasuke put Sakura in a murder genjutsu. “Hey that’s not nice” but overall doesn’t care much. When will you Sakura stans realize Kishimoto doesn’t care about her nor has any respect for her? Even when Sakura confessed to him, Naruto wasn’t heartbroken. Sakura is just a tool to Kishimoto, and he is well aware both Sasuke and Naruto deserve better than Sakura any day. He even implied twice that Sasuke never kisses Sakura.

You people simply sacrificed all reading comprehension, standards and logic at the pink altar of a subpar female character. Hopefully you people are at least young so there’s some room to grow. Sorry if this feels like an attack, but I’m tired of seeing Sakura stans liking my Hinata posts and Hinata stans liking my Sakura posts when both characters have the same bad traits and are constantly being trolled by Kishimoto. It’s hypocrisy.

But I see this person reblogs Sasuke Retsuden stuff so it’s not like she cares what the actual author of Naruto thinks. Wonder if she has even read the manga. Fanfic written by someone completely different is much better I guess.

#anti sakura #anti hinata

[happypanda101]

How Sakura’s Love Interest Ruined Her Character Development

Alright. I promise this is the last Sakura related content I’ll do for a while. But after seeing several other people on here talk about about this subject, I thought it would be interesting to discuss. This isn’t gonna be a full on analysis, rather my thoughts as someone who loves Sakura and was disappointed to see how her character was handled in canon.

I think a lot of the fandom can be agree that Sakura’s biggest flaw was her love for Sasuke. Love is typically supposed to be a character’s strength, but unfortunately for our pink cherry blossom, it’s her weakness. And her downfall.

Now, I’ve already made it clear what my feelings on SasuSaku are. I like the pairing, they could have been better developed and aren’t nearly terrible as people claim they are. However, it would be ignorant of me to not acknowledge that canon Sasusaku is… kinda shitty.

Don’t get my wrong, they have their cute moments in blank period, like Sasuke asking Sakura to wear the clan crest, but things start going downhill when they get married and the plot of Burrito rolls around. Sakura is left to be a single mother while Sasuke is off god knows where for that stupid space alien/ “remains of Kaguya” whatever plot. Sasuke never writes to check up on his family, it’s implied that Sarada doesn’t remember him at all or what he looks like, and Sakura is left there trying to assure her poor daughter that Sasuke is doing this because he loves them. But when Sasuke comes back, he rarely acknowledges or wants to spend time with them at all. Not to mention, he seems to care more about Naruto’s kid than his own. Naruto suffers from this problem as well, but that’s a discussion for another time.

For the canon endgame, Kishimoto certainly doesn’t write any of his characters being happy in their relationships.

Anyway, Sakura and her character development. It may not have been grand as her teammates, but it was still there. Sakura went from a naive girl that was obsessed with boys and her looks to someone who acknowledged that she had to work harder if she wanted to help and protect those she cared for. She went from disliking and envying Naruto to someone who was willing to throw her ninja career away so her friend could follow his dream. She wanted to help Naruto to bring Sasuke back, but realized she wasn’t strong enough, so she went to Tsuande for help and become a damn good medical ninja as a result. She became more confident in herself and was always there to support her friends. She never needed an epic fight or a tramatic backstory, I would say her development was pretty great.

But then all of that gets thrown away whenever Sasuke comes into the picture. Sakura may be able to stand up for others, but never does she stand up for herself when it comes to Sasuke. When he belittles her in the War Arc for simply asking him what was going on, she gets all quiet and sad. Defeated. Worst part is that Naruto can’t even stand up for her properly.

The kunoichi who broke off Kaguya’s horn and aided in sealing her, therefore saving the world, is left a begging, whimpering mess for Sasuke to come back to her, to come back to team 7. And what does she get in return? A genjustu of him killing her.

And just when you think oh this has to finally get her to realize that she can do so much better than him, or at least get her to step back and reevaluate her feelings, let her spend time away from him, it’s just forgotten about! Forget traumatizing and hurting her, it’s okay because Sasuke apologized and now she wants to go with him. Don’t get me wrong, I do think that was a genuine apology, but the fact that she was just expected to forgive him at the snap of a finger was infuriating. And down right sad.

It doesn’t help that nobody else comments on it, or tells Sakura “hey, what he did was pretty shitty, you didn’t deserve that.” Or stand up for her at all. Kakashi kinda did, but it was so weak.

In Naruto, a woman’s role is to support the men, because what else are they good for? And if they ever move on from a guy they like, they’re a “terrible person,” in Kishimoto’s words. Whatever improved or developed Sakura’s character, it reverted backwards or was simply forgotten for Sasuke. Because Sakura loves him, she can never disagree or argue or fight with him, because that would make her a bad person.

Sakura had the potential to become one of the greatest heroines in anime, but that was all thrown away becasue of her misogynistic creator and his idiotic editors. She deserved better, every female character in Naruto deserved better, and burrito should have never happened because it’s an abomination to the Naruto franchise.

#naruto fandom #naruto shippuden #naruto manga #haruno sakura #sakura haruno #sasuke uchiha #uchiha sasuke #pro sakura haruno #sakura haruno deserved better #anti canon sasusaku #anti canon #anti kishimoto #anti studio pierrot

[ammy246]

Have you ever wondered how things would've turned out if sns had become canon, but naruhina and sasusaku didn't? Bumbleby (a canon sapphic ship from RWBY) answers your questions. The people who ship Blacksun (a straight ship confirmed by the writers to have never been meant to happen) didn't happen and they were furious. Almost all of the fan rewrites involve bumbleby never happening and there being queer erasure for both Blake and Yang. So, if sns happened, people would've thrown a tantrum and done the same with Naruto and Sasuke. This is meant to be a warning for bakudeku shippers: if we do get canon or an implied canon, just know that all of the antis in the fandom are going to go ballistic. I've seen it before, so I know for a fact it can and will happen again.

#narusasu #naruto shippuden #bumbleby #rwby #bakudeku #my hero academia #don't say that nobody warned you #we gotta stick together and not let ourselves be silenced

[multisaku-advent-calendar]

Day 10: Secret Santa

Author: al_holland Pairing: SasuSaku Additional Tags: Workplace Sex, Office Sex, Implied Sugar Daddy Word Count: 998

(This beautiful SasuSaku artwork is by @mayskalih!)

Read it here on Ao3!

By the way, we have a Carrd and a Spotify playlist! Please leave this author some love!!

#under the mistletoe #al_holland #sasusaku #multisaku advent calendar

[anerdinallherglory]

Approaching Sun (37)

CW/Important Note, PLEASE READ: There are two versions of this chapter. This is the edited, non-explicit version. This version is a more poetic, fade-to-black version that adheres to site rules and guidelines. I also wanted to respect readers on these platforms who have not been following me under the impression that this is mature fic, because its original rating is not M. With that being said, there are still implied parts in this chapter that may be sensitive to some readers, so skip ahead, if that is you. 

If you would like to read the full, unedited, absolutely unhinged-in-how-filthy-it-is version, visit my linktree (https://linktr.ee/anerdinallherglory) to find the fic on AO3, where appropriate tags will be used. After reading the tags, you may have decided not to pursue reading that M version. Some may ask why I decided to write an alternate version, and I’m going to say that writing from Sasuke’s, a male’s perspective, seemed a little less delicate than Sakura’s, and after reading it several times, I decided that this version only belonged on AO3 where readers could read the tags and then choose which one to read. The only part that is different is how detailed the descriptions go. I do believe that many would prefer this edited version, but I could be completely wrong for some. 

As always, thank you for reading. Happy early Valentine’s Day. I’d love to hear your thoughts. 

Here is a visual for the chapter.

Pairing: SasuSaku

Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36

Chapter 37: Stars and Orbits

The location that Sasuke sought was something he had stumbled upon once on his mission between villages, concealed by pools of shallow water at the base. Now, in the darkness, the cave was near impossible for anyone to locate. Once inside the dense cover of forest, Sasuke had led them directly toward one of the many tree-covered mountains, the one with the fracture in the side that hid behind dense foliage. The falling rain had created flood waters and the shallow brook that Sasuke remembered was now rapidly flowing into the mouth of the cave, disappearing completely, and only Sasuke knew where it came out on the other side. 

The darkness around them had faded infinitesimally, just enough that Sasuke realized night would soon give way to the faded in-between of dusk and dawn. But Sasuke was determined to have both he and his teammate safely tucked away into the mountain’s embrace before any sort of light could reveal them to any potential followers; Sasuke was fairly confident that there weren’t any left in the near vicinity that he hadn’t already dealt with, but he wasn’t going to take the chance anyway—not with both he and Sakura’s depleted chakra levels. And so, he jumped into the rushing waters that had turned into a lapping stream, a tongue snaking out from the sideways mouth of the cave. 

“What are you doing?” Sakura whispered loudly over the roaring sounds of the water and Sasuke could sense her reluctance to follow his lead, most likely not wanting to subject herself to any further waterlogging. 

“It’s a cave,” he informed her, digging his feet deeply into the rocky bed beneath his feet, stretching his arm up to offer her assistance, which she immediately denied to Sasuke’s extreme annoyance. Fine, he thought to himself. He was fine with her indignation because he was just as pissed off as she was. “We are going to have to swim through the entrance to get inside, so there’s no point to waste chakra trying to walk on it just yet.”

As Sakura slid into the black water, tightening her eyes at the shock of cold, the stream swelled up to her chest, pushing her tired body toward him in a jerk before her feet finally reached the bottom. “A cave? Won’t it be flooded?”

“No,” he answered. “Not dangerously so, at least.” He offered no further explanation before allowing the pull of the water to guide him the rest of the way to the entrance. Just before committing himself to the dark fissure in the mountain’s side, the open grin of the cave, Sasuke turned and grabbed Sakura’s uninjured hand and lifted her arm straight up above her head. “The ceiling will lower. Keep your arm extended so you know when you must go all the way under water. I’ll be in front of you, so stay close.”

Sakura’s eyes widened at this revelation before frowning at his command, and when Sasuke realized his teammate’s unbending anger towards him was going to prevent her from asking him any questions, Sasuke pushed forward into the all-consuming blackness. 

The rumble of the water draining into the crevices of the cave was deafening and almost more distracting than the coolness of the water itself, and Sasuke took a minute to be grateful that they were in the dregs of late summer, otherwise they would be wading in critically low temperatures. The narrow entrance scuffed against Sasuke’s single palm as he dragged it along the side of the craggy tunnel. He could hear Sakura’s quick breathing behind him as she followed him, staying close enough where their bodies still brushed one another occasionally. 

When his fingers brushed against the ceiling, Sasuke turned back to Sakura who had been following him in silence for the last fifteen minutes. They bumped together in the dark and Sakura brushed his side with her hand. It was terrifying and disorienting, how unreliable it felt to be this cut off from light. And yet, not even the darkness could dim her presence to Sasuke, that hyperawareness he had for her wherever she was in a room even if he didn’t know she would be there. His eyes would find her, his body would move in her direction, his soul would reach out as if hers were doing the same. He didn’t need the daylight to see her. 

“This is the narrowest part,” he told her emotionlessly, preparing her for the dive that was to come. “It opens back up in about ten meters. Just hold your breath and keep swimming.”

She didn’t respond, only continued to breath raggedly in exhaustion. Even though he was angry, so damn angry with her, that he too, only wanted to give her a stony silence in return, his concern for her in this situation overrode all of that. “Did you hear me?” he hissed in frustrated urgency and Sakura’s echoing, emotionless “yes,” was the only confirmation he needed before he inhaled sharply, filling his lungs to capacity, and diving. 

The vacuum of the current was stronger than Sasuke had anticipated as he felt forward with his arm. Water relentlessly pushed him forward and his knee met a sharp rock, and he grunted underwater as he pushed off of it, hoping Sakura’s smaller frame would avoid her any collisions. His lungs began to burn just when his fingers grasped for the ceiling and found it open. He took a huge gulp of air as he met the surface and immediately ducked back under, waiting and waiting in nervous anticipation before Sakura’s outstretched hand collided with him and he pulled her up with him. Her gasp of air, evidence of her safety, was just as relieving as Sasuke’s own inhaled breath. His body needed it just as much to keep going.

“There’s a drop,” Sasuke spoke quickly, the water still relentlessly tugging their bodies forward toward the cliff-like edge he remembered standing at once before as he looked down at the chasm below with a fireball sailing down to meet the bottom. Now, he only had memory and darkness to rely on in order to spare his chakra. Sasuke held Sakura’s body to him as they drifted. His stubborn pink-haired partner resisted his hold initially until his words registered, and he felt her arms cling tightly in response to his shoulders. With the standstill between them, Sasuke only had a second to hold her before they were freefalling. 

Sasuke fell back-first over the drop, tucking Sakura tight against him, before spinning the both of them until his feet hit the surface of the lake below. He landed lightly despite the force of gravity from such a height, his weight distributing easily across the water as he pushed against it with his waning chakra. “Can you sta—” he began to ask Sakura, but she pulled away from him as soon as they landed, finding her own chakra-enhanced footing. 

“I can take care of myself,” she reminded him, walking forward in the darkness as if she were the one who knew where to go. Her words carried the weight of their impending argument, the temporary peace between them coming to a swift and immediate end. 

“I know you can,” Sasuke hissed as he pursued her footsteps in the dark. “You can stop trying to prove it to me, now.”

She spun to him and Sasuke felt her body accidentally crash with his and repel from him all within a millisecond, like two colliding ninja in battle. “Then why did you follow me? You didn’t think I could handle this on my own?”

Sasuke ground his teeth, because that just wasn’t it. It wasn’t that he doubted her abilities. She had proven herself more than capable—multiple times, in fact, in the last two months. During her most recent encounter with the anti-peace members in the desert after Mako had kidnapped her, Sasuke had arrived post-battle, the pieces of Sakura’s aftermath scattered among the sand like inconsequential annoyances. And tonight, when Sasuke had finally reached her after deposing of an obscure number of pursuers, he had stood on the edge of the clearing, watching her engage in hand-to-hand combat, the black dye of her hair running down her skin like the war paint of the Anbu Black Ops. Seeing her in combat, Sasuke had held himself back with all the willpower belonging to his being contrary to his instincts to act. He hadn’t wanted to intervene, hadn’t wanted to interrupt Sakura’s process because he knew she could easily handle the three ninja who fought with her. He had every intention to watch and let her handle them her way. That was until that last bastard trailed a blade up her stomach and used his own fingers to trace swirls into her skin with the red of her own blood. Not even the most controlled of men would have sat by and watched such an offense against their loved one—watch their woman be violated in any way—and Sasuke… he was not a controlled man. He was the opposite of that. He was an Uchiha who loved. 

“Your silence speaks what you won’t say to my face,” Sakura whispered, disappointment replacing her ire in a moment of transparency. 

Sasuke brushed past her, fisting her arm in the dark and guiding her over to the precipice of land that jutted out of the lake like a domed table. When Sakura’s feet met the rock-strewn beach, she stumbled in the dark and Sasuke held her more firmly as he, too, struggled to find even footing. Jumping to the top of the table-like plateau, Sasuke reached down and grabbed Sakura’s hand to pull her up behind him, but her hand was slick with the blood of her injury, and she threw her other hand up to grab his wrist to accommodate. Exhausted, the both of them fell back on their backsides and scooted away from the edge. 

Feeling the stickiness of blood against his palm, Sasuke frowned. “Why aren’t you healing yourself?” he asked irritably, his carefully concealed anger similarly bleeding out in his tone.

Sakura’s own annoyance was evident in her response, an edged stillness that might have cut Sasuke as deep as any wound might had she meant to do damage with her words. “I have to reserve my chakra. I’m channeling to Katsuyu.”

Sasuke almost told her how annoying she was when she neglected herself, but he refrained, knowing that it would open the floodgate between them. Instead, Sasuke found himself reaching until he found her injured hand. He pulled at Sakura’s resisting palm until he held it out between them, a restorative green globe beginning to radiate from his own hand. They both squinted at the sudden flare of light, a speck in the immense blackness around them, and their dilated pupils suddenly constricted at the emerald glow. The circumference of light was no larger than that of a candle and the roaring cave swallowed the light hungrily beyond their bodies.

Sakura fisted her hand and looked away from him. “Leave it. Save what little chakra you have left.”

Sasuke ignored the command and his irritation momentarily faltered at the redness in her eyes that he could see over the dome of light between them, the tears she held back there. She was desperately trying not to cry at the misunderstanding of Sasuke not having faith in her regardless of his previous reassurances. 

“It has nothing to do with doubting you,” he whispered, answering her question from moments ago. He tried his best to conceal his anger with her, but every word still came out sounding clipped, sounding cross. “You can tell me to stay away. You can trick me and leave me without chakra. You can leave me a damn goodbye letter telling me you love me in case you die.” Sakura sucked in a breath as her skin slowly knitted back together, sewn with the needle of Sasuke’s chakra. “You could be the strongest ninja in the shinobi world, but I am still going to go after you, Sakura.”

“But you have your own mission—The Otsusuki Race—” she began as Sasuke’s hand released her palm, moving down along her arm until he was pulling the fabric of her shirt up and away from the assaulting crooked line of the cut to her flesh. She sucked in a breath when he did so, reacting more so to his touch than the pain of it. She leaned back on to her arms as he hovered his glowing chakra across her abdomen. 

Sasuke’s white-hot anger returned just looking at the damage, and he took a steadying breath as he passed his glowing palm along the gash. When his chakra met her injury, Sakura stopped speaking altogether as she inhaled a sharp gasp of pain. 

“—can wait their turn,” Sasuke finished for her. “I still have time to hunt them down. Your enemies are also mine. Just like I told you back in the Sand Village, I can help you take care of these guys first.” The words were edged, punishing, even though he knew that he had absolutely no right to emphasize those words after years of rejecting her offer to help him with his goals. But he was trying, wasn’t he? Sasuke had let her come with him. He had let her help him just as she had wanted. But she didn’t want it to go both ways?! Or was it that Sakura didn’t believe that Sasuke wanted it to go both ways? What would they be able to accomplish as a unified force if they stopped this tug of war between each other of whose enemies were whose and what missions were hers or his?

Sakura’s eyes found his in the dimming light and she finally pushed his hand away. He knew that she was probably thinking along the same lines, and this was confirmed for him when she whispered. “How does it feel? To be left behind?” Her voice was thick with emotion. If it weren’t so dark, he might have seen tears prick her eyes. 

He internally winced, but leveled a scowl at her, a flame she could no longer see returning to his eyes. He bit back the various answers that came to his mouth unbidden: Torturous. Like the hell I deserve. Like I couldn’t fucking breath every second we were separated. Like the relentless stomach-turning fire of panic, vengeance, and loss all at once. Either because those words would make Sakura’s own past feelings painfully corporeal, because none of them were the apology she deserved, or simply because he was a stubborn, prideful Uchiha who couldn’t admit that she had such power over him, he refrained from voicing them. Sasuke stopped those words on his tongue and bit back the confession. 

Standing, the Uchiha jumped down off the giant stone jutting from the side of the cave and retreated back down the bank and onto the lake’s surface. “I’ll be back in a moment,” he announced to her “Stay here.”

She exhaled silently to the air around her, but Sasuke heard it regardless, no amount of riotous rushing of the waterfall behind them flooding out the sadness in her sigh. He should have told her his truth. He shouldn’t have held it back regardless of the reasons. 

.

.

.

As Sakura waited for Sasuke on the bank, her eyes began to make out just the tiniest pinpricks of light coming somewhere very high above her. Her first thought was that it must be the night sky she was seeing, and as the time passed, it bled into a larger crack across the ceiling, beams of morning light reaching fingers down into the serrated ridge of the clamshell’s mouth, but not able to reach Sakura where she sat looking up at it. She was the pearl at the bottom of the shell that the sun just couldn’t reach no matter how desperately it clawed for her. Even though she couldn’t make out any of the details around her, Sakura was able to follow the jagged edge of the mountain’s opening for what she believed to be about a half-mile sideways before it disappeared into a rocky enclosure. She estimated that the distance between the two halves of the opening were just enough that a very small person might be able to scale down between the walls to find this place. But even if someone had managed to squeeze themselves through the ceiling, Sakura could now see that they would be dangling about thirty-five or more meters before they reached the surface below. It honestly astonished her that Sasuke knew this place so well, but she also understood him to be an individual who traveled to places and dimensions where no other human feet could ever touch. 

After about thirty minutes of shivering in the same spot and tapping her feet in frustration at Sasuke’s absence, the annoyance turning to fear as the time lengthened, Sakura stood and began to strip her clothing. Firstly, she removed her headband, the water-saturated, black coat, and pants until she was in her water slicked shirt that hung off her and hit her thighs. Even if the cave was roughly about seventy degrees inside, her drenched clothing was lowering her temperature quickly. 

As if sensing her predicament, the universe aligned so that Sasuke arrived at that specific moment, shuffling the rocks behind her announcing his arrival. She immediately sought to cover herself before she realized that he wouldn’t be able to see her anyway in this endless depth. 

“Where did you go,” she asked incredulously, continuing to wring and shake out her ditched garments in the peace of blackness. 

“Firewood,” he announced emotionlessly seconds before he directed a trivial fire release of flame at his newly assembled pile. Before Sakura could even ask where on earth he managed to find wood down here, light and heat branded the air around them and Sakura gasped at the suddenness of it. The fireball instantly caught the tiny pyre aflame despite how wet the wood must have been, creating a circumference of contrasting brightness in the black. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Sasuke seethed after catching sight of her and immediately turned his back on her state of undress. Sakura blushed privately to herself as she turned her back to him. 

“You can still get hypothermia in the summer,” she defended as she glanced back over her shoulder at his own drenched body. “I suggest you do the same.” That was the last thing she said before dropping the oversized shirt at her feet. After arranging the clothes to dry out on the ground next to the flames, Sakura settled before the fire, hiding her body behind her knees as she crouched. 

She watched as Sasuke’s entire posture grew rigid at her nearness, his spine replacing itself with a rod of steel, and even with his back to her, Sakura recognized the curved shoulder and bowed head mannerisms that revealed he was pinching the bridge of his nose. Sighing, the Uchiha yanked a scroll from his jacket and knelt on one knee as he activated the summoning seals along the parchment, revealing two sets of clothing that materialized instead of the weapons she was expecting. The clothing was thrown forcefully in her direction, and they hit her body in a way that his words weren’t needed to communicate the command. 

She was wet and cold and didn’t hesitate. She pulled one of Sasuke’s gray long-sleeve shirts over her shivering frame, never so grateful for a piece of fabric in her life. Trying not to get even the slightest bit elated over the fact that she was wearing one of his shirts like the teenage version of herself might, Sakura stripped herself of her still-wet undergarments before yanking on a loose-fitting pair of his clean black pants. 

She watched as Sasuke released a defeated sigh from the other side of the fire and begin to pull his own clothes off, replacing them with his own set of dry clothes. Sakura did her best not to delight in the show, turning her beat red face away to give him some privacy. She mentally berated herself for her perversity. She wasn’t Naruto, Kakashi—or even worse, Jaariya, was she?! 

She cleared her throat. “Where did you manage to get firewood?” she asked, desperate to fill the awkwardness. 

He sighed as he shuffled on his own pair of pants. “There’s a back entrance. Even more discreet than the way we came in.” 

“Won’t the smoke give us away if it’s daylight?”

“No. The fire is small and it’s a long way to the top. The ceiling opens up which will prevent the cavern from filling with smoke, but it’s a long way to the top. It will disperse before it exits.” 

“How did you find this place?”

“I’ve looked in every corner of the Land of Fire for any trace of Kaguya or her white Zetsu army. It was the very first thing I did.”

Sakura’s heart panged, knowing he had been so close, sleeping nightly in the Land of Fire during that first year away from home after the War when she longed for him the most, when they had just gotten him back. 

When Sasuke turned and walked over to lay out his clothes next to hers, Sakura felt the shift in his mood again. It was remarkable how her body knew his without even an exchange of words or a shared look between each other; Sakura could read every line of him, sometimes written in cursive roundness and sometimes written in sharp jagged, hidden scripts. She had always known every motion that made up Sasuke, even when they were younger. She had known when Sasuke wasn’t fairing well after Orohimaru’s cursemark, Sakura had known when he was in pain, when he was changing and no one else could tell; she had even known him well enough to intercept him as he left Konoha after he had decided on his path of revenge. But more recently, Sakura didn’t realize until now that she had spent the last several months learning and coaxing out new, infrequently used symbols she had never seen until now. Sakura guessed that Sasuke was currently struggling to sort out emotions he wasn’t used to feeling and after what had happened a mere few hours ago, she didn’t know if that was all entirely a good thing. 

Sakura’s eyes flicked over to where he stretched out his black cloak with jerky, angry movements, snapping it loudly after wringing the literal life from it. His jaw was tight and Sakura crossed her arms as she scowled, trying to decipher what had him so vexed. Wasn’t she supposed to be the angry one? Hadn’t he interfered in her plans?

“Did Kakashi know?” came Sasuke’s question after he decided to join her by sitting across from her, the small fire offering no protective emotional barrier between them. Sakura frowned more from Sasuke’s question than she did the diminishing fire as it burned, his anger feeling suddenly hotter than any fire ever could. 

She leveled him with her own scowl, feeling defensive at the abrupt question, not quite sure what he was inquiring about. “What are you asking—”                                           

He averted his eyes for a moment, before locking them firmly with her own, deciding he didn’t want to miss a fraction of her reaction to his clarifying question. “Did Kakashi know you would be using your body in a brothel for your covert mission?”

Sakura’s mouth fell open. That’s what this is about?! He thought she had gone through with it, being completely committed to her undercover persona as a prostitute in order to gain information. Sakura could certainly see how he, or anyone else for that matter, might connect the dots and make that assumption, but the forthrightness of his interrogation shocked her. She was always so accustomed to his silent brooding. 

“Sasuke—” she began, and she leaned forward, trying to immediately assuage his concerns, but he wasn’t going to give her the opportunity. He must have thought she was deflecting, changing the course with an explanation, because his next words cut her off. 

“Did he?” he bit out, breathing the words out lowly and urgently. “Answer my question.” 

Feeling rushed for an answer, she admitted quickly. “Of course he knew…some of it. He’s the Hokage. I told him what I was planning.”

Sasuke’s face turned white, and he closed his eyes as he inhaled deeply. “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to kill him for letting you run off and do such a thing for the sake of the Leaf Village—or for yourself—it doesn’t matter! You’re one of us. He’s supposed to—”

“It’s not what you’re thinking it is,” she tried, but his questions kept coming. 

“How often? How often have you done this type of thing for a mission?”

“You’re misunderstanding—” 

He leveled her with his challenging stare again. “Am I? I saw you. I saw you in the memories of that girl. In the lap of that ninja with his hands in your hair.”

Sakura gasped at his confession, not because she was distressed that Sasuke had seen her with Rugo, but knowing that he had actually tracked her to the bathhouse and searched for her in the girls’ memories of her just as she feared he might. It explained how he knew what location she had been planning to go, but Sakura dreaded knowing what else he must have seen in those memories of the brothel she had used as her stage for Act 1 of her plan. 

Sakura could see his misinterpretation of her reaction settling into the shadows under his brow line. It darkened his eyes and he raised his chin as he mentally braced himself. He thought her gasp confirmation of all his worst fears. 

��What you saw—it wasn’t what you’re thinking—”

“Did you sleep with him?” he breathed the question, not wanting to ask it but needing the truth all the same, desperately. “The man whose clothes you’re wearing.” The words were cold.

“Sasuke!” she shouted, aghast at his bluntness. 

“Did you?!” he snapped, the same type of emotion he used when arguing with Naruto now flooding his voice. 

“No!” she finally managed to get past him. “I didn’t have to. I have never had to sleep with anyone, nor would I. Not even for a mission.”

His face went into his hands and she felt his audible sigh as Sasuke focused on regaining his emotions, trying so desperately to shove them behind the black wall of granite where he kept them once more. She watched his entire body slacken in relief, surrendering to the exhaustion of chakra-depletion. Had it been his fury that had kept him going until now?  

“What you saw was just an unexpected occurrence during the mission,” she bit out, using his temporary silence to get out what she had been trying to say for the last few minutes.  “Rugo, the man you saw me with, recognized me, and I had no choice but to play along not to blow my own cover. Choosing that route, I knew I would have to take some calculated risks.”

He was silent, but Sakura sensed the war with himself to say more, ask more, but exactly what she wasn’t sure. She waited. But he bit his lip and looked away.

“I’m a woman. There are always going to be men who try to take advantage of me in that way.”

She saw his jaw set, his teeth clench. She knew he was holding back whatever it was he wanted to say. She saw his eyes land on her stomach, searching for the concealed wound there, and she knew he was recalling the man who had dared to touch her. Self-conscious, Sakura covered the freshly healed scar with a hand over the fabric as if he might be able to see through it. 

“Then I will make you untouchable,” came his final reply. Sakura’s skin prickled at the acerbic promise. 

“I am already untouchable. I have made myself untouchable. Every predatory touch on my person was calculated, allowed. But nothing will happen that I do not allow.”

Sasuke scoffed, but it was the type of scoff that admitted he could not win the argument. The type of scoff that eased the tension between them. 

Sakura stood and stepped around the fire, coming to kneel before him, his glare doing nothing to hold her back. “You’re going to have to trust me. Trust my abilities and trust my decisions,” she said to the Uchiha as she turned to sit down beside him, using her proximity to soften the harshness further. “I can handle myself.”

He sighed in irritation, leaning his head back against a low, darkness-concealed boulder that Sakura hadn’t realized he was perched against until she had come to join him. Again, Sakura was reading him, could tell that his anger with her was being pushed back and categorized in his brain to handle on his own. “Annoying,” he exhaled, and Sakura recognized it as the full-stop he used to end a conversation, to end the argument and concede to her points.

“My turn,” she announced after a moment of de-escalating silence, and Sasuke’s eyes narrowed suspiciously as he rolled his head to the right to look at her. 

She plucked up his hesitant right hand and entwined her fingers with his to help with what she was going to say next. He didn’t pull away. 

She was recalling his episode in the clearing, the torturous screams of the man who had been ignited with the flames of the Amaterasu. She spoke for him and others like him now, even if he didn’t deserve her representation. But it wasn’t on their behalf that she chose to do so. She recalled his words to her in Konoha after he discovered her collaborative plan with Gaara to be used as bait: ‘If something happened to you, I don’t know who I would become again.’ She loved Sasuke. Cared about Sasuke. She needed to say this for his sake more than anyone’s. She wouldn’t be the person responsible for his moral deterioration.

“I don’t want to become a detriment to you, Sasuke. I don’t want to be what breaks you. Earlier—” she stumbled, casting her eyes down at the narrow space of fire-lit ground between them. “It was all too familiar.”

“I know.” He responded quickly, unwilling to let her give voice to his actions any further. Sakura realized it was an attempt to keep his sins within his own personal head so that neither of them had to bear witness to them a second time. “It’s a part of me. No matter how hard I try to eradicate it, there’s a monster in here.” He brought her hand to his chest. “And we both know what he’s capable of. Even now, I don’t feel regret when I should. I have absolutely no desire to apologize for my actions tonight. But that look on your face is the same expression you looked at me all the times I’ve been lost. I don’t want to see that anymore.” 

“You’re not a monster,” she stated as a fact, her focus hung upon that derogatory word. “Naruto and I will not let you be a monster. Even if you were to fall again, we would force you up. We will not let you become lost again.”

“I know,” he breathed, suddenly going very still and gazing at her as if the truth of her words were the only thing allowing him to cling to sanity. “It’s why I can choose you and the world will not pay for it.”

Using their conjoined hands, Sasuke tugged her toward him slowly, his fingers releasing her to find the back of her neck. His fingers were calloused but warm, hooking into the vertebrae of her spine like his fingertips were just another part of her—like they belonged there just as much as her spinal cord or her skin or her hair. She would let him permanently bond them there if only he never stopped touching her. 

“Three days ago, you told me you weren’t going anywhere. But you left anyway.” His words were a shared breath between them, so close that Sakura could taste the abandoned shapes of them. 

Sakura recalled the moment Sasuke talked about, a broken promise she had given him in their shared sleeping quarters in Sunagakure. A promise she had stamped with a peck on his lips and a promise he had accepted with a rare smile and the decision to brand the promise into her lips more fully.

“I know. I’m sorry,” she whispered, feeling ashamed despite all her reasoning.

“Can I remind you why you said it?” It was a question. And Sakura instantly recalled her reasoning back then: ‘I can finally do this.’ But Sasuke wasn’t going to push her without her consent, and Sakura realized his request was an attempt to give her voice back the power so many women didn’t have, the power that other men would have tried to take from her if she had stayed in that brothel.  

Sakura held her breath and nodded, and then his mouth met hers, slowly, carefully, parting them with his own. Sakura didn’t need to be fluent in the script of Sasuke Uchiha—nobody who bore witness to this moment would—in order to grasp the intensity of how he truly felt about her.

.

.

.

When their kissing had evolved, Sasuke had stilled the desperate hand that had slid across his cheek and into his hair. It had been so difficult to once again be the one to halt something that he had started, but Sasuke had to stop. He wouldn’t be able to bring himself to do anything more. Not after what he’d seen tonight. Not after he had watched Sakura in that vision, pirouetted in front of ravenous men like she could be any of theirs to handle, to claim, to devour. 

Sasuke couldn’t touch Sakura in the ways he desperately wanted to in this moment, because he couldn’t distinguish the color of his wants from the various shades of cravings of those men. He couldn’t see the difference between himself and them in this instant, because Sasuke had begun to desire her just as feverishly, just as frenziedly. His eyes had lingered over the planes of her body just as theirs had. Sasuke couldn’t erase the words from his mind that were whispered to her as she was being bloodily fondled before his very eyes: “But he won’t mind if I have my fun with you first before he gets here.” And the rage returned at the thought of it and that type of rage would disappoint Sakura. It disappointed himself. He didn’t want to be with her in this way right now feeling how he did. He didn’t want to be able to still feel those emotions as he attempted to smother them with his own desires of her. It would be the same as tangling threads together: a blue cord of worry, a black fiber of icy wrath, the blaring red string of his love for her, the violet twine of possessiveness, a white piercing strand that Sasuke couldn’t identify as need, hunger, or desire… He wouldn’t be able to sort them out in time and touching her with a greedy hand would stamp all those interwoven emotions into his memory forever, and Sasuke didn’t want his memory of such actions with Sakura tainted in his mind. 

“What’s wrong,” she asked when he broke their contact just before it had really started, his forehead falling against hers. She misunderstood his labored breathing, hand moving to his forehead. “Are you okay? Is it your Rinnegan?”

The question reminded Sasuke of his weariness. Both of their current states and exhaustions. He always seemed to forget how tired he was when his lips would meet hers. Her breath gave him life. He brought her against him until her chin rested on his right shoulder like a bird returning to its nest, as if her chin belonged to that very spot, and Sasuke buried his face into her neck just to inhale her in. They both smelled damp, like mud and rainwater, but there wasn’t a man alive that had worshiped a scent like Sasuke did now. Because it meant that she was alive, here with him in a cave he had once refuged, not knowing then that he would return to this very spot and hold another person urgently as if the very purpose of his existence was so that he would end up here again, with her. 

“Sasuke?” he heard Sakura whisper when he became lost in his silent reverence of her. 

“Hn,” he responded in the crook of her neck, not ready to pull back and face her. He was afraid he’d get lost in her liquified green eyes and lose his resolve. 

Her delicate fingers came up his neck to touch the black, feathered tips of his hair. “Maybe you should try to get some sleep. I’ll take first watch—”

But Sasuke was already pulling her to the ground next to him, the small fire warm against their skin. He turned Sakura so that she was closer to the heat and Sasuke curled her into himself, trapping her back to his chest. “Only if you sleep, too,” came his response. “No one will be able to find us here.”

Even with her back to him, Sasuke could feel the smile spreading across her face as they lay together, tangled and sleeping, for the very first time. Sasuke felt lucky to be doing so. And as he dozed off beside her, he tried not to think of her in the ways of despicable men, despite how tempting it was to do so with her in this proximity, wearing his clothes as if it were already the after. He buried his nose into her half-dyed hair, frowning at the dulled shade of it. He found her neck instead and inhaled until sleep found him.

. . .

When Sasuke roused sometime later, the lack of her body against his was almost painful despite the novelty of it. As if their bodies where they had lain touching had been sewn together while they slept, and Sakura had risen at some point, unknowingly cleaving the delicately fabricated web between them. Sasuke sucked in a panicked breath, the fire now extinguished and leaving nothing but a consuming blackness that Sasuke desperately tried to adjust his eyes to. 

“Sakura,” he rasped, his throat dry from disuse. How long exactly had he been sleeping? Hours? Days? He had no sense of knowing in this submerged world of black that left you feeling as if your soul simply floated in an abyss somewhere free of time and space. Thankfully, his eyes adjusted, and he could make out a few isolated stars puncturing through the craig above. By the lack of the deafening sound of collapsing water, Sasuke assumed that the waterfall had lessened, most of the floodwaters now pooling in the cave and flowing to the exit. Asleep for the day, then, Sasuke concluded.

“Over here,” Sakura calls out, somewhere across the cavern, her voice skipping across the water like a thrown stone. Sasuke couldn’t help but focus more on the distance than the direction. It was much farther than Sasuke would have ever liked it. His panic gave way to a small irritation as her tone seemed absolutely confident and unharmed. Sasuke recalled his irrational fear the last time she had snuck off on her own while they had slept in the forest between Konoha and Suna. And then again in Kaguya’s tower. Sasuke was starting to realize this was an annoying habit of hers. He huffed to himself as he rose to his feet, adorning his now-dry cloak.

“There’s a glow,” she spoke again and Sasuke traced her echo across the river. Some of his chakra had returned and when Sasuke’s feet met the edge of water, he summoned his energy to the bottoms of his feet to walk across the surface to where she stood. “Just over there. Do you see it?”

When Sasuke neared her, the glow she claimed to see began to register in his vision. A distant sphere of blue light somewhere farther down a tunnel. And then Sasuke was remembering the sight he beheld the first and only time he had come here to hunt Kaguya. He had forgotten about it, since he had learned that the natural phenomenon bore no connection to the Otsusuki race. 

Reaching out to search for his hand, Sakura asked, “What do you think it is? A jutsu?”

And Sasuke realized in that moment what had caused her to tear away from him in his sleep. Sakura thought they had been found, the faint glow a sign that someone was performing a light release through the tunnel. 

Sasuke smirked to himself in the dark, knowing the truth of the light would be a welcome surprise for once. “Come. I’ll show you.”

.

.

.

When they reached the mouth of the cave, Sakura still only saw an indistinct glow coming from an angle farther down the tunnel. It was a vibrant blue-green and it became brighter as she followed Sasuke, clutching desperately at the fingers of his hand, unsure of what they would soon face. 

Sasuke rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand to reassure her and Sakura tried not to let the affectionate action distract her. He was surprising her, Sakura admitted to herself, more and more every day, as he slowly let his guard fall, the pretenses drop, the ice melt away for her. She had never slept so contentedly as she had in Sasuke’s embrace, only broken moments ago. Her entire life, she had reached across her bed, her bed roll, the forest ground whenever she woke in the dead of night, fingers searching for the outline of a person who had never really been next to her, but who her heart told her that should be. As if the delusion of her passion was real and existed between the realm of sleep and wakefulness, an imprint belonging to someone from an alternative universe still etched into the space beside her, only available to her in the subconscious. How right it had felt for Sasuke to nestle his nose into the back of her neck, as if Sakura’s very soul had known all along that the lover of her intuition had a face, had a name she already knew and called out for, but that only time separated them for this long. 

Rounding the corner, Sakura refocused her thoughts on the illumination and gasped at what she beheld before her. A galaxy worth of stars hung above her, twinkling like distant blue supergiants in an abyss of black. Sakura’s mouth dropped at the spectacle, astounded by the millions of tiny orbs of light splayed beautifully across the onyx walls and tops of the tunnel. 

“What are they?” Sakura finally asked, glancing to Sasuke’s face, now alight with the blue-green light, his black eyes a mirroring universe for the pinpricks of fluorescence to glow against. 

He smirked and confessed. “I’m not entirely sure you will want to know.”

Because they weren’t stars. Of course, they weren’t, being thousands of feet deep inside a mountain cave made that an impossibility. As Sakura observed them carefully, walking forward on the glimmering water, Sasuke in tow, she began to notice the fidgeting movement of the lights. Thin, sparkling, silk-like strands hung from each light, every star bearing a comet's tail that made them look as if they were shooting up toward a sky they would never reach. It became clear to Sakura suddenly that this was an organism— many living organisms.

“I suspect bioluminescence is at play?” Sakura asked as she immediately assessed the sight with a medic’s mind. 

Sasuke nodded in confirmation, and Sakura saw the gleam of approval in his eyes, as if he were impressed that she solved it so swiftly. “When I stumbled upon them the first time, it took me a minute to realize what they were. When I came here searching for the Otsusuki race, they caught my attention at first, but I dismissed them after I realized they were of no relevance. I had forgotten about them until now.”

“How on earth could you forget such a sight?” Sakura questioned him, eyes roaming the ceiling as she paced forward once again, her neck straining to hold her head as she stared. “I’ll think of it every night. When I saw them, I thought of stars. But now when I see stars, I’ll think of them.”

Sasuke rubbed the back of his head, and Sakura could tell he was hesitant to ruin the moment with further details. “It can’t be that bad. Are they insects? I’m a shinobi, Sasuke, and a medic. Such things don’t bother me.”

The Uchiha smirked at her again and Sakura was hopelessly falling for that rogue smirk. She hoped he would do it for her the rest of his life. “Worms,” Sasuke revealed. “Larva, actually. And that’s mucus and excrement hanging from the ceilings.”

Sakura’s mouth dropped, not in disgust, but in absolute awe that there were threads of mucus hanging as long as two feet from the ceiling at a distance she could never reach unless chakra came into play. Sakura’s medical nature had her standing on her toes to look closer. Instinctively, she wanted to take samples, research them, and learn all about the ezymes responsible. 

She heard Sasuke’s signature half-laugh, the ejection of air through his nose, the “hmph” resounding in his throat as she appeared to be completely unbothered by the truth of what she was seeing. Sakura didn’t care what it was. It was no less unusual than learning that stars were giant orbs of floating rock and gas giants. 

“The light is predatory,” Sasuke informed her again, but Sakura had already guessed as much. “To draw moths and other insects to their flaming blue light. The mucus acts like a spider’s web.” 

“Fascinating,” Sakura marveled, grinning and pulling Sasuke closer to further inspect one particular cluster of mucus strands that suspended on a low hanging rock. 

“Ironically, like you,” he teased, pulling her back against him as she faced the depthless tunnel, the lights a never-ending trail into the void.

She laughed, elbowing him in the side, “Are you calling me an insect?”

“Insects are annoying,” he goaded, and Sakura realized she would have punched anyone else, but the tongue-in-cheek from his lips was like the saccharine additive she put in kids’ medicine. 

She spun around in his arm, sending him a grinning glare. “Don’t make me give you another black eye.”

His smirk turned into a feral smile and the sight of it left Sakura breathless. He was so beautiful. More beautiful than the glowing worms. More beautiful than the cosmos. Who was she kidding? It wouldn’t be the stars or the larva that she thought of each night before she slept. It would be this smile. This moment between them as they lay hidden from the rest of the world, hundreds of feet underground in their own starry space and time.

The air stilled between them as both their smiles fell away. Sakura couldn’t help herself and she knew Sasuke could immediately sense what she was about to say. She would say it again, though, with the stars that existed below a mountain to witness. “I love you,” she breathed, staring into his glass-like eyes. “I want to tell you now, so that every time you see the stars at night without me, you’ll remember.”

And something snapped in Sasuke’s expression, a carefully constructed guard that Sakura didn’t even know was there. Because his mouth was on hers. Gently at first and then so very hungrily. Sakura was surprised at the fervor of the kiss. Like an inevitable collision that they had both anticipated for so long. And he wasn’t stopping. And she wasn’t stopping. Tangling her fingers in his hair as he guided her to the wall where the water turned into shoreline. She hadn’t even known there was a spot high enough out of the water to sit, but Sakura was soon placed upon it and she let out a gasp when Sasuke released her lips to press his open mouth against the throbbing of her pulse in her carotid artery. She bit her lip to hold in the sound she wanted to moan as the heat of his tongue brushed against it, and then further down, until he was peppering kisses along her clavicle. He was moving slowly despite Sakura’s reassuring fist in his hair. It felt like a burnt offering to her body. The most delicious string of fire igniting a path along her skin. She bit her lip harder to stop herself from making the noises she knew would flood from her mouth. And Sasuke realized what she was doing and returned to her mouth, freeing her lip from herself as he pulled it between his own teeth. The sound she had held back until now escaped into his mouth and he swallowed it as if he wanted to taste the sound. 

The glowing spectacle around them was forgotten because it paled in comparison to what was finally happening between them, but Sakura tried not to get ahead of herself. Sakura had gotten her hopes up once before, believing their progression would lead to the inevitable, the release of years of sexual tension and pining. But Sasuke had slowed the last time she had hoped, halted their intoxicating, careening fall, just as he was doing now. Kissed once more. Waited. Then just once again more as if he was afraid that he wouldn’t be able to do it again once he regained some control over himself. And then stopped, looking to her face, anxious of her reaction. 

“Don’t stop,” she pleaded as he stilled. “Please don’t stop. Just this once.” 

“I can’t do this without knowing that if I had just—” he breathes heavily, trying to fumble for the words that had never come to him naturally. “I have to be sure. I need you to be sure. I’ll never forgive myself if this makes you suffer.”

“The only thing making me suffer is you kissing me like that and then stopping.” It was simultaneously a hiss and a plea. 

In the glowing dampness of the cave, Sakura could see her words registering in his starry eyes and the smirk playing at the corner of his freshly abrased lips, but he grew serious again before it could spread into something more. “We won’t be able to go back from this. This life you’ll be choosing. If I am your choice—I’m terrified you’ll come to regret it.”

And Sakura realized what he was trying to say. What crossing this line for him would mean. That it wouldn’t be ‘just this once.’ It would mean them. This act would make it impossible for him to deny that they were together, officially. Maybe forever.

“I have already chosen you a thousand times,” Sakura sighed, clutching his cheek with the palm of her hand and bringing their faces closer together. “The only thing I will regret is knowing we were so close, but we chose to stop.” She glances up to the celestial larva above them, and Sasuke follows her gaze. “Even if we spend our lives like orbiting stars, passing one another in the night…The miniscule amount of time I spend next to you will be more than I would want with anyone else.”

Sasuke’s eyes soften. She watches his resolve waver. “I’m not very much like a star, unless black holes count,” he states sarcastically, punctuating his frank admission with the slowest of kisses. The kind that wanted to feel every microscopic inch and relish in every millisecond it took to join their mouths, just in case she changed her mind. Instead, Sakura wanted to tell him that she believed he was her sun, a central point in the glazy that captured her with its immense gravity, a sun that grew warmer as it approached her. 

.

.

.

She had said, “Just this once.” And Sasuke had internally flinched at such words because that’s exactly what he was afraid of: their combined inability to leave it at “once.” It was never going to be just once between them and crossing this line would be rolling the snowball down the hill. It would be igniting the bang to the universe of them. Once Sasuke had her, he knew he would crave her forever afterward, and the rest of what came with it: the relationship, the label, a life with her. He would want everything as badly as he had ever wanted revenge or to find the Otsusuki race. 

This past month traveling with Sakura, Sasuke had been like a man wandering the desert, starved of water, and following the mirage of a future, seeing it before him in the distance, telling himself he could have it, have her if he only reached out and grabbed it. That he might be able to choose Sakura after all. And that’s what Sasuke had been doing, stepping one foot in front of the other toward the mirage knowing that it could very possibly not turn out to be the reality he hoped for, but wanting it badly all the same. 

And now this beautiful mirage was pulling his mouth to hers again, offering to become substantial. To give him a drink of her.  And Sasuke knew it was better not to drink, because he was always going to be that man in the desert, unable to grasp an ever-fleeting illusion of happiness. But Sasuke also knew that if he got a taste of her, he would drink and drink and drink and want more, and he would suffer in the desert of his future knowing she was out there, and he couldn’t even see the mirage of her anymore. It was better for him not to even taste her. 

But she had gone and said that, the devotion of two celestial bodies orbiting around their common center of mass, reuniting as time allowed them. And Sasuke had decided at this moment that until the time came where their orbits were ripped apart, Sasuke was going to love her, and spend every day waiting for their orbits to align again.

Her fingers pulled at his shirt and lifted it from his skin, and Sasuke sucked in a breath as her fingertips met the coils of his flesh beneath the fabric. He didn’t stop her because like any man wandering the desert of loneliness, stumbling upon the oasis of love and happiness, Sasuke was going to drink because he needed her so badly it physically hurt. And he wasn’t going to be able to stop drinking until he was satiated. 

He breathed her in, knowing his resolve was gone. Shuddering with anticipation, Sasuke cupped her knees and pushed her back further along the ridge, following up after her. “We can start with once,” he breathed as he found her mouth again. And like a starved man, he drank.

In between their exploration of one another, their combined sighs and gasps that echoed off the cave walls, Sasuke made loved to her for the first time, both of their first times, ever, but it was such an inconsequential term for what they were experiencing. They both realized they weren’t as inexperienced as they had thought. Sasuke was both amazed and not surprised to find that they were both fast learners, but Sakura was obviously an academic with a complete understanding of anatomy. And Sasuke delighted in discovering the truth of what his instincts led him toward. 

“Wait,” he pleaded before it evolves further. “I have to tell you. That I love you. You must already know, but I have to tell you now. Before.” 

Tears began to brim her eyelids after he said it. She doesn’t need a further declaration, his worship of her body speaking beyond what words are even capable of. 

And as soon as their bodies finally align, joining together, Sasuke thinks faintly somewhere in the back of his mind about orbits aligning and how the wait between orbits would be worth it if they always came together in this way at the end of it. Finally uniting into one solid, burning star. And then, if Sasuke had anything to say about it, their two orbits would fly off their trajectories and collide as they were now. Sasuke didn’t know collisions could be this beautiful. Absolutely nebulas.

 “I love you, too,” she breathed into his mouth as they break into a million pieces together. 

In the vast cathedral of blue green celestial after, as Sasuke made up for the slow and tender kisses he had skipped for other forms of reverence, he reached behind her to trace between her shoulder blades. The crest, an uchiwa fan had never belonged on any Uchiha’s back the way it did on the woman of his choosing, the woman that Sasuke Uchiha loved.

“What are you doing?” Sakura gasped, the realization of what he was tracing dawning on her. “That symbol—“

“I’m making my vow to you in this underground temple,” he whispers unapologetically, never as sure of any other words he had ever spoken to her before. “I told you what this would mean. That there would be no going back” 

Sakura’s green eyes widened, as she lets out a whispered “What?”

He only pulls her closer, not retracting his statement despite her effort to give him a chance to take it all back, to clarify. “How do the words go?” 

Sakura breaks into a sob as she buries her tear-streaked face into his neck and murmurs, “I am yours. And you are mine?” He can tell she can’t even believe this promise he was making her to be true. Because she had dreamed of it all her life and now it was happening.

“Those ones.” He leans forward and kisses her softly, suddenly sorry for the relentless pace of their first time. He would make everything up to her, including all his previous wrongs, in all the ways only a lover could, a husband.They had forever, didn’t they, even if it would be few and far between. A life with her was no longer a mirage in the desert. What was the next line? Ah, “Until death,” he announces to the air around them, voices it aloud for her so she will never forget the memory. He rubs the center of her forehead with his thumb. “Good thing that stars take forever to die.”

#naruto #ssfanfiction #naruto fanfiction #sakura hiden #approachingsun #sakura haruno #sakura uchiha #approaching sun #narutoshippuden #naruto gaiden #sasusakufanfiction #sasusaku #sasuke retsuden #sasuke and sakura

[tranquil-turbulence]

SS Month ‘23 - Day 26

Day 25 | Day 26 | Day 27

Prompt: Bodyguard

WARNING(S): Mentions of the war and death, mild/undescribed injury, painfully mutual pining

“All you have to do is escort him to the capital,” Kakashi had said to the both of them, visible eye creasing in an invisible smile. “Even though it’s B-rank, I don’t think you’ll have to worry.”

Well, a job was a job.

Sakura gripped the medical wrap between her teeth as she carefully wound it around her arm, pressing the gauze tightly against her wound. Sasuke was no doubt keeping watch amid the branches above while their client slumbered in a tent several feet away.

Being ambushed was never something she enjoyed, but she couldn’t deny the rush of battle and the thrill in her blood as she fought to protect. The client was, apparently, the boyfriend of an important councilwoman who wanted to come home after a vacation in Konoha. Unfortunately, that meant he was a prime target for political dissidents who wanted to get one up on her. And that meant…

“Ow, shit,” Sakura hissed as she scooted along the ground. A rock dug its sharp edges into her thigh, making her move off of it and shift again. Glancing back at the tent, she heard no shuffling within, only light snores.

She sighed, making her way towards the trees. It was nearly time for her shift, so it seemed, The worst thing about missions were the night - the darkness didn’t help her paranoia, and it seemed to span on forever. The sun’s rays over the mountains couldn’t come fast enough.

Leaning against a tree, she closed her eyes. It would’ve been nice for Naruto, or Kakashi, hell, even Sai to come along too. But this mission called for two, and out of all of them Kakashi had recommended her and Sasuke heartily. But why, she still didn’t know. She knew they worked well together, but surely Naruto and Sasuke or even Kakashi and herself would’ve been a better team.

“He probably didn’t want to deal with the trip, that lazy old pervert,” she huffed to herself as she envisioned the man giggling at that damn hentai. “It’s not like the ladies at the capital care when it comes to handsome men.”

Naruto certainly wouldn’t have minded, though she supposed he would have some reservations about the affections of girls now that he and Hinata were an item. If there was anything about him, it was that he was loyal to a fault. He’d once hugged Sakura and freaked out thinking he’d accidentally cheated. Hinata’s gentle laughter in response echoed in her mind, and a smile unconsciously spread across her face.

It was nice to spend time in the village, but sometimes she needed an excuse to take a trip. Peacetime was largely boring, routines built and dredged firmly in the foundations of their little village - she felt bad for being momentarily grateful she wasn’t on-call for the hospital anymore. Her patients needed her more than an escort did.

Before she knew it, there was a sound of feet touching down on the forest floor. Opening her eyes, she noticed Sasuke nod to her. His hair was growing out now, reaching past his shoulders and covering his Rinnegan in a manner painfully like the ancestor they'd fought together not that long ago.

“Thanks,” she murmured, getting up and brushing little bits of twig and dirt from her back. His gaze was sharp and intuitive as ever - and sometimes she felt it was a little unfair that he’d remained so much the same over the years. He could probably read her like a book, yet she was now struggling to make it one page into his mind.

He said nothing as she leapt into the treeline, but she could feel his eyes on her back. The Haruno family symbol was still proudly emblazoned into her clothing, yet every time she stood with her back to him his eyes always seemed drawn to the white circle. Perhaps it reminded him of when they were young?

Her cheeks flushed, coincidentally as a breeze whispered against her face and ran its chilly limbs through her hair. It was arrogant to think like that. They’d grown up and matured, and she was not in love with him anymore. She wasn’t. It was foolish to hope.

Sakura took a seat on a rather thick limb, resting her back against the trunk. It was lucky that she’d brought a cloak this time, she thought, pulling out and unrolling a tight cylindrical bundle of fabric from her pouch. The dark material was a good cover for the night, as well as a toasty blanket around her shoulders.

The moon was high in the sky at this point, stars twinkling in a quiet radiance through the vast darkness. It was peaceful, yet painfully familiar.

Ah, yes, this was a night much like that one, wasn’t it…? She frowned at the memory of her past self, begging through tears for him to please stay, that she loved him with every fiber of her being, that if he just listened, they could be a happy family together, that Team Seven could be the connection he desperately sought after after a lifetime of pain.

Not one of her finer moments, she mused. That night still caused a bitter pang of regret to pierce her chest - and still, after all these years, it served to remind her that it was hopeless to think she had Naruto’s uncanny ability to reach others. If she couldn’t even convince Sasuke to stay, what did she have to hope she could convince him to come back in the end? Hell, it had taken beating the shit out of him for him to come home, and it wasn’t even by her efforts.

A breath escaped her nose, a heavy weight on her shoulders as she closed her eyes to focus. It didn’t do her any good to ruminate on what could have been. Sasuke was home now - on probation, but here - and Naruto was happier than he’d ever been, and Kakashi was more open now and true, people were dead and a cloud of guilt seemed to hang over their friends because of the war, but everything was better. He was home and everything was better, and she wasn’t in love.

The moon seemed to gaze down at her knowingly from its perch in the sky, and as she stared right back at the celestial body hanging silently above she wondered to herself. Had he ever looked up at the same moon and thought about them? Had he thought about Naruto, about her, about their village in the years he was away? How had he whittled the time away through sickness, through grief, through restlessness? Had he thought, even once, about coming back to them?

The world they knew now was vastly different than the one she knew in her youth, and she had to be grateful for that. But everything felt like it was moving too fast to comprehend - new technological advances, new techniques by precocious youth that just a decade ago hadn’t even existed, new connections between old places, new treaties between enemies and friends alike, new laws dedicated to protecting and guiding graduating shinobi instead of tossing them headfirst into turbulent waters - it was dizzying at times, and even getting a moment to herself didn’t help with the fast-paced advances a newfound - if not very shaky - peace had inspired.

Yet her team remained the same - Naruto was his old goofy self, Kakashi was still reserved (and a little perverted), Sai had that same smile painted on his face, and Sasuke… Sasuke was the same as he ever was, aloof and quiet and somehow so vastly different. The transplanted eye and missing limb didn’t change his demeanor, but there was something mature, something wise beyond his years about him now, and every time she locked eyes with him she felt as if she were peering into something incomprehensible.

Maybe being given half a god’s chakra had awakened something else in him. But what, she still didn’t know. And it frustrated her to no end. She was the same as she always was, always one step behind, always lagging from the rest - and even now she felt as if he were heads above her, looking down just as she'd always feared in their childhood days.

Shaking her head, she stared at the sky, taking in its ancient beauty, and tried to erase the bitter pangs of regret that chased her thoughts, and the longing that stubbornly held fast to her heart. Everything was better now. She was better now. She had to keep facing forward, not dragged backwards by the grief that stained their youth black.

"Look at me now," she'd proclaimed to her boys once, high with the thrill of blood and dirt smudging her face, with blazing bright blue chakra shielding her fist, with eyes wide and euphoric with adrenaline. "I won't drag you down anymore. I'm done watching your backs - now watch mine!"

She closed her eyes, with Naruto's stunned expression and a hint of a smile on Sasuke's lips painted into the backs of her lids, and focused her thoughts.

#sasusaku month 2023 #post-shippuden #mutual pining #implied on sasuke's end #oblivious sakura haruno #war mention #mild injury #sasusaku

[watermelonsloth]

NaruHina Makes Sense for All the Wrong Reasons

A lot of people have said that Naruto and Hinata ending up together doesn’t make any sense and I disagree. It does make sense. It just makes sense because Naruto is a narrative rather than it making sense in-story.

By the time the ships were made canon, it had already been decided that there would be a sequel to focus on the next generation (as far as I’m aware). If SP and SJ wanted to maximize profits, and they did, they needed as many of the coming generation to be related to Naruto’s generation as possible. So, I’m guessing they tried to maximize kids from a variety of relationships.

There were, of course, exceptions, but those exceptions tend to fall under one of two categories: no options that are non lgbt or unproblematic without getting into heavy crack shipping (Gaara, Kakashi, etc.) and not popular enough to make a difference (Shino, TenTen, Kankuro, team taka, etc.). Rock Lee probably adopted Metal to follow in Gai’s footsteps, Kishimoto probably putting the dog boy and cat girl (Kiba and Tamaki) together was funny but Kiba wasn’t popular enough to give a child, and Shikamaru was too popular to pass on making a second Ino-Shika-Cho (with all of them staying separate to maximize kids from different ships). I’m not entirely sure why he chose to put Choji with Karui specifically; maybe he wanted to diversify the cast, maybe he liked Karui’s design, or maybe he wanted one of the rookie nine to get with someone from another village and Karui was the only girl around his age (Kurotsuchi was the exception because she was hinted at becoming Tsuchikage too much to turn back).

So, what does this have to do with Hinata? Everything. Hinata was too popular to leave single and she had options. Or, rather, one option: Naruto. Now if you’ve spent anytime around the Naruto shipping fandom, you know that’s a bold-faced lie. Hinata is commonly shipped with Sasuke, Kiba, and, to a lesser degree, Shino. The only problems: Sasuke and Hinata never interacted in canon and Kishimoto wasn’t quite desperate enough to go with a crackship, and romantic feelings had never been implied between Hinata and her teammates, nor were her teammates popular enough to ignore that fact. Naruto was popular, NaruHina was popular enough, they had a handful of interactions, and Hinata’s character revolved around her feelings for Naruto. NaruHina was the obvious, safest option.

From here, SasuSaku makes sense. Sasuke and Sakura were too popular to remain single, Sakura was more popular than Karin (Sasuke’s only other available straight option that makes any sense), and Sakura’s only non lgbt, unproblematic (sort of) options that made sense were Naruto and Sasuke. Again, safest option.

Of course, mandatory disclaimer, all of this is speculation and isn’t necessarily the whole story. I do think this was at least part of it, but biases, interference from editors/SP/SJ/other people in Kishimoto’s life, building stress, and more could’ve also played a role in why the final ship-related decisions were made. I don’t know enough about Kishimoto or what the situation was production-wise to say for sure. For all I know, he threw darts at a dart board.

In conclusion, Kishimoto should’ve only used crackships, trolling the entire audience and production team, because that would’ve been the funniest option. It’s not like he was planning to write the sequel anyways.

#anti NaruHina #i guess??? #hope this helped??? #maybe #a little bit #naruto #naruto shippuden #this is all speculation and guesswork #but this is the only way it makes sense to me other than saying “sexism” or “heavy bias” #and I try to give people the benefit of the doubt #anti naruto ending #anti canon ships #I’m not gonna tag the characters because I don’t want to be killed #my stooff

[mixelation]

hi! I love the way you write women in your stories and I've seen you post about Sakura in the past, so I've been wondering how you'd rethink the Sasuke/Sakura ship? I was always really disappointed in canon because Sakura is an ambitious and competitive character with her own goals and motivations but she's always held back either by her teachers, the system (team placement, being civilian born) or her "crush". I completely understand if this is not your jam or not something you like, but if it is, I'd love to hear your perspective! 🫶

Ummm I'm pretty neutral to the ship. IMHO, in part 1 we do see that Sasuke genuinely likes her (platonically, at least), so a billion years ago when I was a kid I shipped them because I wanted to see Sakura "get the guy." Now as an adult and with more canon interactions available to ~analyze~, I don't really like them as a ship but I do like when they're written as close friends. I don't think we see enough growth on Sasuke's end through the war arc or the beginning of Boruto to indicate to me he's at a place where he's willing and able to Treat Sakura Right, or treat like.... anyone right? And the end result is that, from what I've seen of Boruto, Sakura got done real dirty.

So I don't really like SasuSaku, but I can see the bones of something that would make a compelling ship. I do like Sarada a lot, so I have put some thought into how SS could function in a canon-compliant, non-shitty way. First, I don't think Sasuke is really capable of romantic feelings, and that Sakura desperately wants romance. This doesn't mean their marriage to doomed, but it does mean they need time to develop an understanding of one another: Sasuke needs to understand and validate Sakura's feelings and ideally be okay with participating in the sort of romantic gestures she wants, and Sakura needs to come to terms with the idea that Sasuke can love her, but he might not ever be in love with her, and that's okay. In theory this could have happened off-screen during the years they traveled together.

Some tweaks to canon I would make without doing massive rewrites:

*Generally I think Sakura should have gotten more hype, especially from Sasuke. I'm banning myself from massive rewrites, but two places where this could have been fixed with with only some dialogue changes/a handful or panels are:

The scene where she confronts him after he kills Danzo and he tells her to heal Karin. I think this whole subplot with Sakura was pitched in kind of a stupid way, but I do like "Sakura tries to deal with Sasuke herself," and I think to really flesh this out, Sasuke should have treated Sakura as more of a threat. I think when he finally attacked her, we should have gotten at least of couple panels of an even fight before Kakashi stepped in. This isn't ship-material but it sets them up to more "even," rather than Sakura as a passive force begging Sasuke to take her.

Second, I think she should have just gotten more hype in general during the War Arc. If we had more than just the one panel of Sasuke reacting positively to her, it would have at least signaled there's potential he still cares for her the way he did in part one.

*Moving into the end-game of the manga, I think Sasuke should have been the one to ask Sakura to travel with him. She could initiate the conversation, she could make a bunch of faces that indicates that she wants to ask, but Sasuke should have verbalized it.

*Finally, I know there's a panel of Sasuke with Sarada as a toddler, but I would have liked it established that he was around for his wife and kid in the early years. I'll accept "years long mission during her formative years means Sarada barely remembers him" if you REALLY want the family drama, but I just think it's SO shitty that Boruto implies he was barely there for Sakura at all in general, including when she had his baby.

If we go into vaguely canon AUs, I can totally see SasuSaku happening in an AU where Sasuke never goes to Orochimaru. I think Sakura and Naruto were really important social bonds for Sasuke, so I can see him eventually being like, "Yeah, okay, I can take you on a date." I'm imagining they're like 15-16 when this happens, so Sakura herself is more mature, and also in the processing of figuring herself out as a kunoichi, Sasuke finds there's a lot to like/admire about her.

That, or Sasuke abruptly and painfully realizes his true sexuality is "could break me in half"-sexual.

I realize most of my tweaks are on Sasuke's end. That is because loving Sasuke and being willing to sacrifice and compromise for him is like 50% of Sakura's personality. So mostly on her half she just has to learn to prioritize herself and her own feelings and communicate that, and most of these skills I think we see her actively cultivating as she integrates Inner Sakura into her outer personality. So I assume with age she'd only get better and better-- it is needed growth, but also I think it's closer to her canon trajectory that Sasuke's, so the solution is "just write her slightly better" LMAO.

[sentimental-idiot25]

{Posting on it's own, SasuSaku: Hello} "Oh Sakura!" Ino blared, singing through the hospital hallways upon seeing her pink-haired friend.

"Ino?" Sakura said, surprised. "What brings you here?" She looked at Ino, checking if anything was amiss.

"Guess who I ran into? Sasuke!" Ino said, knowing how it would cheer Sakura up, so she didn't even bother waiting for Sakura to guess. And the news did, in fact, visibly brighten Sakura's face.

Sakura began to blush at the thought of her husband coming back. "Where did you see him?"

"He was entering the Hokage's office. Probably debriefing with Naruto. Sounded like he was gonna go home after that," Ino said, grinning and poking Sakura's arm, implying something suggestive. Sakura blushed even more. "Say, isn't Sarada away on a mission with her team?" Ino grinned even harder.

"Ino!" Sakura said, covering her face with her hands.

"What? You have been married for years! We can talk about this kind of stuff!"

"But not in public!" Sakura said, smiling widely, looking around to see if anyone was listening in.

"Well, I just wanted to be the one to deliver the news to you," she said with a large grin and a wink. "When you go home... go get him, tiger." She joked as she turned around and walked away.

Sakura's heart began to beat faster with anticipation of seeing Sasuke later today.

The last time they saw each other was about three weeks ago. And as she remembered their last encounter, she was reminded of where they left off. Her eyes widened. Revenge.

Sakura was at the hospital on her day off anyway because she didn't want to be home alone. So she gathered her belongings and decided to go home to beat Sasuke there.

And that she did. She came home to no one else being there. She just wanted to arrive there before him, wanted to make it seem like she didn't know her husband would arrive home. As inconspicuous and unplanned as possible.

~

She was in the living room organizing some papers as she sat on the floor when she sensed his chakra. Her eyes went wide, and her heart rate rose ever so slightly. He entered their home.

Sakura looked at him from over her shoulder, her face lit up with joy upon seeing him return. "Hello! Welcome home, dear," she said with a gleam.

"Hello," he said with his charming smile.

While they spoke about his mission and how Sarada is doing, he took off his cloak and rested his sword against the wall before taking off his shoes and sitting near Sakura, continuing their conversation. While speaking, Sasuke would glance at Sakura's lips, then back to her eyes when she would look up. He remembered the last time they were together and wondered if she remembered they were going to pick up where they had left off. He thought about it often during his travels.

She remembered too. She also remembered how she was going to get back at him.

Sakura noticed the glances he had been stealing. She was well aware of how intensely he was looking at her. But she wanted to have fun too.

Sasuke finally leaned over and kissed Sakura while she was mid-sentence. He put his hand on her face and kissed her gently.

"I missed you," he whispered against her lips.

She held his face in her hands. "I missed you too," she smiled against his lips.

"Sarada isn't home, is she?" He asked cheekily.

Sakura let go of his face. "No. But don't you have to shower?"

Sasuke blinked. "Yes, would you like to join me?" Thinking Sakura is making a plan for the two of them for the night.

Sakura raised her eyebrow. "No, I'm okay. I have some things I need to wrap up."

"But—" Sasuke pouted.

"But what?" She said innocently as she went to shuffling the papers and hitting them against the ground to make them all even.

"Never mind," he said, almost defeated, and got up to go shower.

She smiled as he walked away, watching him. She didn't even know what the papers in her hands were about. She just wanted to make it seem like she was busy. She's going to tease him all night long.

~

"Sakura!" Sasuke called from their bathroom. She got up from her position in the living room.

Outside of the door, she called out to him.

"I forgot my towel!" He yelled out. "Can you grab one and hand it to me inside?" Sakura rolled her eyes and smiled. He never forgets his towel. He really wants Sakura. It made her giddy how much he is trying, but it just makes it so much better for her game.

"Thankfully, there's one on the shelves!" She said with a grin on her face.

"Ah, thank you," he said flatly, clearly defeated once again.

~

"Sakura," Sasuke said from the hallway, approaching Sakura. Sakura was cutting vegetables for their dinner in the kitchen. She looked up to see Sasuke with just a towel wrapped around his hips. She couldn't help but look him up and down. "I cannot let him win," she thought to herself.

She looked back down at the vegetables and cut them up again. "Yes?"

"I think my ribs might be fractured. Can you check to see if they're okay?" Unbelievable, Sakura thought to herself.

She looked back up at him. "I don't see any bruising. I think you're fine," she said, her eyes glued to him, unable to look anywhere else.

"Well, can you still check it out? It hurts a lot."

"Of course, dear." She smiled as usual. She put down the knife and washed her hands. She could feel him staring at her. She wanted to stare too. He was leaning against the wall, and the water from his hair was dripping onto his body.

She walked over to him, and he still hadn't moved! He followed her with his eyes from the kitchen to right before him. He moved slightly to block Sakura's path to their bedroom. "I know what you're doing," he said, raising his eyebrows and giving an impressed smile. "It's clever, but—"

"I'm just gonna check up on your ribs like you asked, dear. Nothing to it," Sakura said, looking up at him innocently. But not so innocently, she ran her hand slowly down his arm to his hand. Hand in hand, they went into their bedroom.

"Go on and lay down on the bed," she pointed to the mattress. She cleared her throat, "So I can check your ribs."

He didn't do that. Instead, he shook his arm around her waist and spun, so they were pressed against each other. "Kiss me," he said with kind eyes. He was hoping his sincerity would be what made Sakura give in.

She wrapped her arms around him. "No," she said with a slight smile, looking up at him pouting.

"No?" he said, surprised.

"No."

"Sakura," he said, lowering his head to her ear and nuzzling his head against the side of hers. "Kiss me." He rested his head on her shoulder, his breath on her neck.

"Do you really think you're the one in charge here?" she said.

"Yes."

Sakura laughed.

"What's so funny?"

"I just think you're adorable doing all of this. I can get used to it."

"You're cruel. Do you get pleasure from watching me beg for your attention?"

Sakura scoffed, "I'm not letting you win today. No way. Not after the last time we saw each other."

Sasuke laughed gently, "You're still hung up on that?" he said with a smile, raising himself from her shoulder.

"Yes!" She looked up at him playfully. "You caught me off guard and then left. It felt like you had the upper hand in the relationship."

"Do I not typically?" he asked.

Sakura smirked, her eyes sparkling mischievously. "Well, maybe it's time for a role reversal," she suggested, stepping closer to him. "You've had your fair share of power and control. Tonight, it's my turn to call the shots."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow, intrigued by Sakura's confident demeanor. He had always admired her strength and determination, but now he was curious to see what she had in store for him. "Alright," he said, a hint of curiosity in his voice. "Show me what you've got."

With a playful glint in her eyes, Sakura took a step back, leaving a small gap between them. She raised her hand to her lips, lightly biting her finger as she contemplated her next move. "Well, first things first," she said, her voice low and sultry. "I think it's time for you to prove just how much you've missed me."

Sasuke's eyes widened slightly, his gaze locked on Sakura's tempting expression. He sensed the challenge in her words and decided to play along. "And how should I do that?" he asked, his voice husky.

Sakura smirked, stepping even closer until their bodies were almost touching. She leaned in, her lips brushing against his ear as she whispered, "I want you to show me just how much you desire me. Kiss me like you've been longing for my touch all this time we've spent apart. Make me forget everything but you."

A surge of desire coursed through Sasuke's veins as he absorbed Sakura's words. He had missed her fiery spirit and her ability to take control. Without hesitation, he closed the distance between them, his lips crashing against hers in a passionate, hungry kiss.

"Fine." He says against her lips, "You win."

#sentimental idiot25 #sasusaku #sasuke #sakura #pro sasusaku #sasuke x sakura #ao3fic