I know I promised to try to give you guys happier stuff the next time around, but a certain line got stuck in my head and more angsty SasuSaku ought to be better than no SasuSaku, so here we are : 3

For the 31 days theme, "Somewhere just left of the point of nowhere". Cross posted to my LiveJournal. Suggestive spoilers up till chapters 400+

Returning

You stand on the top of the hill overlooking the village and you let your gaze drift across it, while the breeze quietly ruffles your cloak and hair and sweeps a whirling bunch of leaves up and past you.

Leaves. Ha.

Konoha - what was your home and is no more, hasn't been for a long time.

It hasn't changed much; you can still see the fine outcrop of the Hokage's sculptures, now with Tsunade's regal features alongside the rest, the Hokage tower, the rows of shophouses, the Ninja Academy - and the long deserted, empty households of the Uchiha clan.

Something bitter stirs inside you but you don't move, yet, still looking - looking at the fields and forest yonder and almost trying to remember some things far away (bells, and snakes in the jungle), looking at the road that leads to the village's large wooden doors and hearing an anguished echo of the girl's voice that called you back, so heartbreakingly desperate and painful, the night that you walked that path for the last time.

It is ironic, now, how the way of carnage and bloodlust that you've carved out from there with flesh and bone has twisted and turned and at last led back to this same path that you left, bid goodbye three, almost four years ago.

But you don't want to think any longer of whether it was worth it or not. This isn't a return - no, now there simply lies another task to be done, blood yet to be avenged, and you will see to it that it is finished.

Team Eagle waits, silent around and behind you, but even as you give them the one-word order to close in with a cold, blank face, you realize that there is a part of you that is wondering.

And that you are wondering, somehow, if somewhere behind those doors and along that long dusty road leading out of the village, Sakura will still be waiting.

-FIN-

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