#m/m sasusaku | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

catflorist · 1 month

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omg that sasusaku art you reblogged... i would pay so much money for your take on that prompt!!!

hi anon! here you go! :) thank you for this prompt, it's been a long time since i wrote anything and it was really fun! i hope you like it!

inspired by this incredibly beautiful artwork by @millientea!

dreams [post-war sasusaku, rated T] ao3 / ffn

In the brief time between the break of his fever and the break of dawn, Sasuke was absent of all his guilt. He held onto Sakura’s hand, and fought sleep to experience the sensation for as long as possible.

After the war, Sasuke's injuries keep him stuck in the hospital. Sakura visits every day.

First Sasuke lost a war with himself. Then he lost an arm. Then the infection and the fever struck, making him keel over then shiver feebly in his hospital bed for three days straight.

His more lucid moments were filled with strangers whizzing into his room to poke and prod him and stick needles horribly into his arm. And when the fever took hold, it carried him downstream to delirium. His nightmares were kind enough to visit him in waking hours, magnified and painted in strong color and detail. And each time he drifted briefly back to consciousness he was greeted with hot, billowing pain at the stump of his arm and the sound of his vitals blaring.

Later a team of doctors inform him that he’s survived a deadly case of sepsis and avoided a second amputation of his left arm. He’ll need bedrest and continued close monitoring. Naruto’s healing well, he hears. Figures.

The days blur. An IV chains Sasuke to bed, where he chokes on boredom thick as smoke. He memorizes the markings of each bird that lands on his windowsill. He watches a ball of dust in the corner move three riveting inches to the left over the course of twenty-four hours. He whips out his sharingan to memorize the lines of his palm, and compares that image to a corresponding record from the last time he was bored to death in a hospital. His heart line has grown longer.

Monotony breaks whenever Sakura breezes into his room.

“I brought you apples.” She smiles at him, a little knowingly. The apples are cut neatly into decorative slices.

She visits at the beginning and end of each shift. In the mornings she smiles brightly in a crisp white coat, and twelve hours later she still smiles brightly, with tired circles under her eyes and loose uncombed hair. This time she’s wearing civilian clothes, here to see him even on her day off.

She’s fearless, for her part. He’s quiet.

When he thinks back to the haze of fever, he remembers slender and cool fingers smoothing damp hair from his brow. A swirl of healing chakra that felt like the way her voice sounds. When he awoke, a nurse mentioned the doctor attending his case invented a new chakra technique on the spot to siphon away the infection.

Sasuke didn’t need to ask who. She never said anything, and he never asked.

He suspects Sakura’s involvement elsewhere, too. When he thinks about why he’s not kept in handcuffs or locked away entirely. In the roasted tomatoes that appear on his meal trays. The reason why Naruto is allowed the occasional visit, shuffling in on crutches and staying until the nurses chase him away.

Sakura sets the plate of apples at his bedside. Today, they resemble rabbits. Sasuke has never eaten more apples in his life, but he does not think of complaining.

“Good news. Your IV is coming out tomorrow!” She smiles, waiting for his reaction.

Right. He should be happy. The feeling flickers dimly and goes out like a damp torch.

Sasuke doesn’t know what his life will look like from here on out. There’s nothing left to hunt after. The main sources of his suffering have all vanished or changed form. All that awaits him is empty space and time—time to reflect, to let the cumulation of all his actions and decisions sink in.

He doesn’t regret the desertion, the treason, as much as others might hope. If he were to go back in time, knowing what he knows about the village, his choices might even look similar. But he regrets hurting the people who cared for him.

He regrets hurting her.

Sakura’s smile has faded. “What’s wrong?”

Sasuke wants to sink under his blankets, to be alone with his guilt. “Nothing.”

“Are you in pain?”

He throws her a glare. “I said it’s nothing.”

Years ago, this would have been enough to scare her away. Now green eyes meet his with full force. “Don’t do this. Don’t be distant.” Sakura’s fingers flex and curl at her sides. “Whatever is on your mind, you can tell me.”

She treats him with such kindness, such patience, though he’s certain he doesn’t deserve it.

“Why are you here, Sakura?” he asks quietly.

“I’m a doctor,” she says, with a flash of irritation.

“You know what I mean.” Sasuke’s vision swims like the beginnings of a migraine. “Leave me. Get on with your life.” He wants the words to carry a touch of contempt, but the lump in his throat filters it all out.

“Why would I leave you?” The pure sincerity of her voice cuts him through. “We just got you back.”

His tongue feels thick and heavy. “I’ve hurt you.” How could she forget?

“I’ve hurt you, too.”

He manages a shake of the head. It’s not the same.

“It’s in the past,” she insists. “We want you in our lives—we always have!”

“I don’t understand why,” he bites, gaining strength.

“Because I love you!”

Birds take off from the windowsill.

Wringing her hands, Sakura clarifies, more weakly, “I love all my friends.”

An icy flame tears through Sasuke’s entire body. He doesn’t believe her. Somehow, he must have tricked her. After everything he’s done, how can someone lower themselves so deeply as to love him? Hot pressure rises behind his eyes. He opens his mouth to recite every reason why she’s wrong.

“So get used to it,” Sakura snaps, recovering and doubling down, like she knows what he’s about to say. Sakura, who has always been a little brazen with her affection, who has so much love and care to give that it confounds him and most others. “I don’t care what’s happened or how long it’s been. You’re still my teammate.”

Sasuke feels a phantom of his past self crouch on his chest. It whispers, push her away, break the plate of apples. Trust yourself and no one else. Be alone. This is the way he knows to protect himself. It’s worked so well, all throughout his life, he can’t imagine anything different.

Does he need to protect himself, from her? Did he ever?

“And…you’re still my friend.” Sakura’s shoulders rise and fall in a deep breath. “If that’s what you want.”

Outside, a raven’s feather drifts in a slow spiral of wind. Sasuke nods.

Sakura straightens. “Good.” Her eyes are jade reflecting fire. “Being friends won’t kill you, I promise. See you in the morning.”

In the morning, Sakura arrives to remove his IV. She’s still carrying an air of quiet victory. To inch this close, to insist on picking up their friendship exactly where they left it, that’s some audacity. Bravery, even.

He needs it.

His heart would crack without it.

Sakura carefully loosens the adhesive and presses gauze over the IV site. Sasuke is already looking away, taking a shallow breath to prepare himself.

“There’s no needles at this part,” she says.

It’s true, he hates needles—one glimpse and he breaks into a cold sweat. But he’s never told anyone. It bothers him that she noticed. “How did you know?”

“I’m a doctor,” she says, which explains very little. “It’ll be quick, I promise.”

“Still hate it,” he breathes.

“I know,” she says. “Done.”

He looks back. She smiles when their gazes meet, holding down pressure on his arm. He didn’t feel a thing.

“You make a small sound.” Her voice is soft. “Under your breath. Like you’re trying to speak but hold it back.”

Sasuke thought he hid the discomfort well. If he can miss such small details about himself, no wonder he was wrong about almost everything—what path to take, and where to place blame, and who to trust. His world has turned over too many times to count.

His senses hone in on Sakura’s touch, muted as it is through gloves and layers of gauze. She’s never changed. Never failed to ease his hurts.

He wants to ask about the fever. The infection that strode in like one last attempt by the world to kill him. She saved his life.

He feels his hand float through the air, stretching towards her face.

Empty air buzzes where his fingers should be grazing her brow. He’s still not used to the loss of his dominant hand. His stump lowers back to his side. Sakura’s expression remains calm, unknowing.

“Thank you,” he says instead.

He knows what the words will mean to her. And so he says it.

A soft smile overtakes Sakura’s face. Sasuke is known for his infamous gaze, but now he doesn’t know where to put it. When to meet her crinkling eyes and for how long. If it’s considered normal to observe the rise of her cheek, the strands of pink hair falling around her face. If he should risk a glance at her smiling lips. The decisions overwhelm him, and he finds he must look away.

Something is different, he thinks.

“He’s on your roster today? Good luck.”

Sasuke’s room is stationed at a quiet bend of the hall, a blind spot between patient rooms and administrative offices where hospital staff stop to gossip before continuing on their rounds. Whether he wants to or not, he’s often forced to eavesdrop.

“—ripped out his IV. Yes, just ripped it out. Three times. Maybe four. Wouldn’t let anyone touch him.”

“Have you noticed all those horrible birds outside his window? The crows?”

A laugh. “Never seen anything like it. Like a curse, I swear—”

“Excuse me.” The conversation grinds to a halt at Sakura’s sharp voice. “Room Four is still waiting on warm blankets.”

Footsteps scatter in two different directions. Sakura sweeps into his room. Her face is a storm. If he saw that expression on a battlefield, he would reach for his weapon. He pictures her cutting apple slices into playful shapes to reverse the effect.

“Don’t listen to them,” she mutters, and throws the curtain divider closed.

“I don’t care.”

“I care.” Absent-minded, a frown tugging at the corners of her mouth, Sakura does something she’s never done before: she sits on his bed. All Sasuke’s attention is pulled to the hand’s width of space between his ankle and the slight dip of her weight on the mattress. He slowly shifts his legs away, careful not to draw her notice.

Sakura pulls a velvet pouch out of her coat. “Here. I brought something.”

The most exciting part of Sasuke’s day was when the scent of antiseptic wafted through the door a little stronger than usual. His interest spikes. “What is it?”

Sakura opens the pouch and pours dozens of black and white Go pieces onto the bedspread. She begins arranging the board among the folds of his blankets, and after a moment, Sasuke leans forward to help. He hasn’t played Go since he was a child, but the smooth, round stones feel familiar in his palm, and the rules come back quickly. They play five games in a row without speaking. Sakura wins the first, and he wins the last four.

When they look up again, it’s dark. Sasuke’s neck is stiff from bending over the game for so long. Time has never passed so quickly for him in the hospital.

Sakura is sitting fully atop the bed now, as she has for the past three games, legs crossed with a pensive hand held to her chin. She packs away the game pieces in silence and pulls the drawstring shut. A crease lingers between her eyebrows.

“You could have died.”

Her eyes swell with tears. She doesn’t make a sound.

“I didn’t,” Sasuke says, soft as he can.

“But you could have.” The tears flow faster than she can wipe them away.

“You didn’t let me.” It makes his gut twist to see her cry, even if she cries because his life matters to her.

“I almost didn’t bring the flowers that day. I didn’t know if you’d want them.” Sakura lifts a sleeve to her face. “If I wasn’t there when the shock hit…”

Sasuke struggles to follow. His memory of the whole ordeal is hazy. He has a vague recollection of a nurse removing a vase of wilted flowers from the bedside in the days after the fever lifted.

Sakura’s shoulders tremble with a sob. “I could have lost you.”

“You didn’t lose me.” He catches her hand. Fingers slide together like whispering a secret. “You have me.”

She lifts her tearstained face. Sasuke feels feverish as his words echo back in the silence of their breathing. Her lips part, bitten and red.

“You only ripped out the IV twice, Sasuke-kun.”

Her expression is knit with determination. Sasuke can’t stop himself—a smile twitches onto his mouth. Sakura seems confused by the reaction, studying him hard.

Movement flashes in the corner of Sasuke’s eye as a large black bird lands smoothly on the windowsill. He recognizes this one for a miniscule nick in its leftmost flight feather.

“And the birds. They’re ravens,” he says evenly. “Not crows.”

Sakura smiles, sudden and shining and wide. Sasuke doesn’t fully understand the meaning of the exchange, but contentment sweeps over him.

The warmth of her hand lingers long after she lets go, and he remembers something about the fever.

The infection stalls for days, but when the worst comes, it comes quickly.

First Sasuke’s mouth fills with saliva, then arrives a tsunami of inexplicable dread, and that’s all the warning he receives before an important current in his body shifts off-course and begins to sweep him away. Sasuke breathes deep. A sweet scent hovers in the air. Sakura arrived a moment ago with fresh-cut flowers.

His stump throbs with such a sick, bleeding ache that he loses his grip on his senses. His limbs are all trembling. Another breath. His lungs allow just enough air to call out her name.

Footsteps, a sharp voice. “Sasuke? What’s wrong?”

Healing chakra skims over his body. Sakura lets out a tense breath.

Sasuke knows suffering like he knows the face of an old friend. He can feel it loom over him, its breath ghosting the back of his neck.

“It’s—it’s serious, Sasuke-kun.” The air thickens with chakra, a thrum strong enough to detect by ear. “But you’re going to be fine.”

The breath returns to his lungs, but in exchange, screaming hot pain erupts at his arm and reverberates through every corner of his body. Each pain that flares and fades is replaced quickly by another. His mouth and the tip of his nose go numb. His vision cuts in and out. He is a boat tossed by angry waves, kept afloat solely by the light touch of Sakura’s fingertips.

“Don’t leave,” he hears himself say.

Her voice finds him like sunlight. “I won’t.”

“Do you hate me, Sakura?”

Not long ago, Sasuke hated her. The ache of hatred never left his chest. He hated her so much that her face sometimes replaced his nightmares, and he would wake up blinking away tears. He understands if she feels the same.

He never hears her response. A dark, turbulent quiet rushes over his head, and his old friend follows after him.

At dawn on the day his fever breaks, Sasuke floats awake, greeted by swirls of light floating on the inside of his eyelids. His body feels like his own, but different, like he’s been pulled apart and put back together in a different order. He curls his fingers—the numb tingle of phantom pain lights on one side. The fingers of his other hand tighten around something.

He opens his eyes to a world washed in soft grey. To Sakura’s sleeping face, her hair silver in the light. A dream? No, his mind doesn’t grant him peaceful dreams.

Her head rests tired and heavy on the edge of the bed. Between them lies their hands, tightly clasped, as if they met in a moment of turbulence and held on ever since. Long enough so he can’t distinguish her touch from his own. Flowers watch on the windowsill, shedding petals.

Sasuke plays more games of Go. Less needles are stuck into his arm. He begins to walk again. He feels fresh air on his face. Sakura’s visits continue like clockwork, until one morning she fails to walk through his door.

He sits and watches the birds as morning stretches into afternoon. The chair that has never left his bedside remains empty. After years apart, how quickly he’s grown accustomed to her presence. But this stretch of time is coming to a close. When he leaves the hospital, he doubts he will see her so often.

His window looks out onto the hospital roof, crisscrossed with pipes and exhaust vents, and a small sliver of the street. When the wind blows just right, the branches of a sakura tree wave into view, buds unfurling.

Hard as Sasuke tried to shunt away his past life, he could never escape the spring. The torture of falling petals, of green and pink. The world around him transformed as if to ensure he could never forget her.

Daylight is getting long when Sakura wobbles in, rubbing her eyes. “Hi.”

Sasuke’s spine straightens. “Hey.”

She sits in her spot by the bed, where he’s been playing a game of Go with himself. “How’s the game?”

“I’m losing,” he says.

Sakura smiles and shifts one of the white stones to a dangerous location. Warmth floods Sasuke’s chest, though now he’s certain to lose. Their hands move back and forth over the imaginary board, bold and quick.

Sakura yawns victoriously as she captures his last tile. “Another?”

Exhaustion shadows her eyes, but if he answers yes, she’ll delay sleep even longer. Does she ever sleep? Hospital staff are always wandering the halls to seek her opinion, or pull her into surgeries, or hand her a stack of paperwork. Yet she carves out a portion of her valuable time for him.

Sasuke shakes his head. But he’s not selfless enough to give up her company so soon. “How are you?”

Her tired gaze lifts and flicks away. A faint blush dusts her cheeks. Why? Is it strange for him to ask? He’s still ruminating when she answers. “I’m okay. It’s been a long day. Emergency surgery, complications, everything. I can’t remember the last time I slept…” Their fingers brush twice as they put away the game pieces. “I’m really sorry I couldn’t come earlier.”

“You don’t have to be sorry.”

Sakura leans against his bed and drops her head onto her arms. “Hope you didn’t miss me too much.”

What can he say? He did miss her.

Springtime has come again. The season used to drive him mad. The sakura flowering all at once, all over the continent, wherever he looked. The petals scattering like rain in the wind, catching in the folds of his cloak. The sight of blossoms on bare wood, crossing over his head in a blooming lattice. The five-petaled flowers, the five fingers of a hand he would never touch again. The color. It tested his patience, his devotion to his goal like nothing else.

Sasuke skims his fingers over the pink wave of her hair. He’s always wanted to, deep down. Sakura cracks open her eyes, catches him red-handed in his affection. He runs a thumb in the barest caress across her cheekbone. He is at his weakest in the spring.

“Come here,” he mumbles, fairly certain that she will. Terrified that she won’t.

“Where?” she whispers.

Sasuke lifts his chin. He rests his hand on the blanket. His fingertips burn from touching her. “Here.”

Even as Sakura slides into the bed, rests her head in his lap, he cannot fully believe what he’s seeing. She presses closer to him, as if she wants to be close, and her eyes drift shut, as if his presence soothes her. A spell falls over Sasuke as he listens to her breathing. His hand lowers to her back.

Maybe, in the end, it’s as simple as she said. She loves him.

Sleepy green eyes blink open with a trace of shyness, of the girl that used to blush each time he spared her a glance. He will never admit how often he tested his powers. “You don’t mind?”

“No,” he says.

Sakura climbs higher. She folds her arms across his chest like he’s a pillow and tucks her cheek into the crook of her elbow. Sasuke’s heartbeat grows unsteady. Her hair smells the same, like jasmine.

Sasuke never imagined a future beyond his revenge, that his life could continue on and contain moments lit in a glow like sunlight through petals. Holding her awakens desires that have nothing to do with pain and sacrifice. He wants to stroke her hair until she falls asleep. He wants to visit her dreams. He wants even more. His chest aches in the way he once thought was hatred.

He touches her cheek, straightening out a lock of silky hair. She doesn’t stir.

Sasuke closes his eyes, and like he’s never had trouble with it before, dreams.

#sasusaku fanfiction #sasusaku #sasusaku post war #sasusaku fanfic #ss fic #my ss #sasusaku prompt

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anerdinallherglory · 5 months

Text

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.”

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