[The sound of me screaming for ten thousand years aHHHHH] I was literally in tears because of the reviews, I saw them last period of school via email and almost collapsed out of pure happiness bc I love you all so much. This is really short and LOWKEY a drabble, although I swear I had a plot meshed out. I'm so sorry for taking so long to respond to the reviews/likes I swear I wrote the first part, blinked, found myself taking at least two tests and handing in two projects every week, and threw myself into being a Good Student and consequently lost writing time.

ANYWAYS, this is how Sasuke reacts to the post-battle, post-Rebirth jutsu repercussions that Sakura has to face (it's his first time hearing about them because it's Sasuke and he's probably told his sharingan not to bother looking to closely at her fighting style or something, much less her forbidden jutsu tbh).

When there are no battles to be won and regrets to be made, sometimes Sasuke finds himself with moments of silence that last from between a second and an eternity. They are time periods that are both fleeting and unbearable, and yet Sasuke's half sure that they've just barely managed to keep him from losing himself.

He hates them. He hates them, because since waking up to a nightmare of dead parents and red eyes and tragedy after tragedy after one final truth to ruin him, the blood-baying of Sasuke's mind is the only thing that screams louder than his heart can ache.

And when the screaming stops, the avenger retires, and there is no longer a steady thrum of anger to shatter his skull, he can feel his mind calm and his chest begin to sob. And then the sobs travel up his chest, up his throat, and to the tip of his tongue, where they are suspended until he can swallow them when it's not longer so quiet that he can hear himself break. Sometimes, Sasuke wonders how many cries he has collected in his chest, how many eruptions of tears and grief and anguish have piled up between his trembling ribs and shaking chakra. Enough, he assumes, to dedicate to each and every dead member of the Uchiha clan thrice over. But he doesn't let anyone else know what's waiting to crawl back up his throat, to bow him over when he cannot take it anymore and remembers that he's only eighteen, he's only a child, and he has never been given a chance to grow up.

At least, that's what he almost always thinks. He'd like to believe, of course, that his suffering has been silent and wilted and flattened by Dattebayo!s and Temes and ramen bowls that tasted like melancholy, but—but, when he's sitting alone and looks like he's contemplating his next job as the resident fuckup avenger, Sasuke feels a glance that barely touches him but completely covers him.

Sometimes, sometimes, he can feel Sakura look at him carefully, carefully, ever so carefully and figure out things that no one else has ever taken the time to figure out.

Not even him.

And this is why Sasuke thinks—no, knows, that Sakura understands. Sakura, who has grown up on summer festivals and the shoulders of two parents who have been alive to lover her for years and years and still more years to come knows what is happening to him. She knows, he realizes, days after watching her beat down Madara with fists and blood-stained lips, that he hates silence, hates remembrance, and cannot handle how hard his own heart beats.

She knows, he can tell, and that's why he hates her a little bit more when she leaves him alone with silence in the Hokage's office after telling Team Kakashi what she has done to herself.

What she has lost.

And Sasuke swears that she's doing this to punish him, that she's left him here with the quiet agony of breaking his own heart himself because he's abandoned her and Naruto before and he never looked back but, he realizes, heat rushing up his throat, that Sakura has loved both her teammates and her sensei throughout years of abandonment and years of neglect and she has tolerated it because, because, because she is Sakura and she can cry for them and die for them and murder for them as easily as breathing.

So he just bows his head and stares at the ground, something cold tightening around his ribs and something fucking up his lungs while he tries to accept what he has just been told.

By the time the door opens and Sakura steps in, Sasuke is barely breathing.

"Sasuke-kun?" she says evenly, coming to stand in front of him with nothing less than the poise of every shinobi besides him that has stepped into this room.

He does not answer, he can't answer, because his shoulders are trembling and his pupils are dilating and there is a disbelief in his heart that this nightmare has gone too far, no way it can be reality—

"Sasuke-kun," she repeats, but this time Sakura's hands are gentle touches on his shoulders and a slight tipping-up of his chin so that his eyes meet hers.

Steady green meets denial-dripping brown-black, and Sasuke barely registers the tear that slips down his right cheek.

"Thirty years," he says, voice low and rough and lined with a plea of please, please, it can't be true. "You have lost thirty years of your lifespan, Sakura—" and then his voice breaks and his realizes that there is anguish slipping down the sides of his face, making his voice hoarse and his heart intensify in its aching.

Thirty years. She is only eighteen and she is Sakura and he only has to glance at her to know how long she would have lived, he only has to close his eyes and remember her smile to know how much she has lost in those thirty years.

Thirty years, Sasuke knows, is a shinobi lifetime.

When his vision blurs and he makes a choked sound in the back of his throat, there are a warm hands cupping his face and wiping away the tear tracks on his cheekbones with fingertips rough enough to hold a kunai.

"Sasuke-kun," she says, her voice a murmur in his ear when she tugs him closer so that he can bury his face in her neck and slip shaking arms around a girl who has grown to be only two inches shorter than him. "We are shinobi. It has always been about surviving for us—the fact that we are the generation to get to live, that we are the generation to witness a time of peace is something we should be grateful for."

He can barely realize that she's right, before he tightens his arms around her and breathes in the metal-scent of her skin and lets out another sob against her neck, a cross between a keen and a choke making its way out of his throat right after. He imagines her when she is fifty, mouth half quirked towards him and lines marking her face with age and injuries but still completely unable to stop her eyes from making his heartbeat speed up. It is a sight, he thinks, that he could tolerate as his last. Something that he would treasure for as long as he drifted after she passed, something that would making surviving everything else worth it.

And, he realizes, when his shakes slows to slight trembles and he breathes in once against Sakura's neck before pulling back to meet her eyes, he can tolerate this tragedy for as long as she accepts it as her duty.

So he cups her cheek and touches his lips to hers slowly, listening to her murmur to him in between kisses and the bearably-loud beats of his heart. She tastes like home and quiet acceptance, and Sasuke decides that he will use his undefined eternity with her to mark down his regrets so that he will never make them again.

a/n YIKES ~ me, the big loser, realizing that I've just given a pile of angst a corporeal form through writing.

EVERYONE WHO REVIEWED: yes yes YES I love seeing Sakura fight and I've always been extra salty that she's gotten like two to three actual good fight scenes in the entire 23049324 episodes/chapters that Naruto has been around for and I feel so happy seeing other people relate to this... one of my biggest fears was that people would see the fight scene unrealistic, even though Tsunade has literally shattered Madara's Susanoo's armor in the anime and manga before AND she's stated that the Rebirth jutsu makes her essentially immortal when it's in use.

Kaname1993 GOSH I was so happy to read your review because I really really wanted this to be an emotional and badass fight for Sakura, and it's so amazing to see that you saw it like that! & I guess this chapter answered your question of whether or not Sakura survived the fight... I initially wrote it intending to imply that she had, but your comment made me think that it was better off being ambiguous. But then again I also had the somewhat falsely advertised sasusaku aspect of this, which I really felt like I had to address... which is why I added this in (and also because I really do think the tragedy of her losing thirty years off her lifespan is important, undeniable, and something that would affect Sasuke greatly)

OK I'm done now and I really hope I won't be gone for another 3,000 years before posting again 3