Stillwater

…don't rock the boat…

Sakura is certain—in the silent understanding of a girl-not-quite-yet-a-woman—that her world is ending. She sits underneath the cherry-blossom trees (her birthright, how bittersweet) and watches as a river unwinds, tracing a lazy blue ribbon through Japan.

Naruto is sprawled in the dirt nearby, running his hands over the barren earth. He uses his thumbs to carefully smooth over tiny hills of hardened soil, moving with patience that Sakura will never understand. His fingers are brown and…he almost looks dead, she wants to think, but there's a fire dancing in his eyes, some quiet purpose that ties him into the world and keeps him vital.

Kakashi is perched in a tree, watching each of his three students thoughtfully, his attention fixed mostly on Sasuke.

…Sasuke. He is the reason Sakura's world is ending.

It's spring – a time of rebirth and new beauty, neat beginnings and tidy ends.

If Sakura's instincts are leading her in the right direction (and they've never lead her astray before), Sasuke will leave her before the end of the season. It will happen in the same way that a prince leaves his princess in fairytales-gone-wrong. …And she'll accept it, having anticipated it for days and days, having cast him wondering glances for weeks and weeks.

Every time she stares his way, she drinks in the strong features of his face like she'll never see them again.

It started with Itachi—of this, she is sure—and Sasuke's willingness to chase after what he loved. She imagines that Sasuke was like a blank slate when he was younger, waiting for someone like his older brother to carve a reason for living into his existence. …If there's one thing she can't help but find a little funny, it's that Itachi didn't keep him waiting for long. He etched a reason into every fiber of Sasuke's being.

When Sakura first noticed him at the academy, he was, in her eyes, disciplined in every way that a boy his age could be. It was obvious that he'd been taught to enunciate every word with clear and specific distinction. He spoke with deliberate, flawless diction.

During shuriken practice he threw shining metal stars with a steady hand, and later, in the classroom, that same hand signed his name in effortless perfection.

At first, she was in awe of him and everything that the Uchiha fan on his back stood for. After the accident (after Itachi snapped, like a rubber band, leaving stinging impressions on Sasuke's life), she began to feel sympathy for him.

For three years, the academy provided her with a valid excuse for being near him. She sat as close as she could and paid him a certain amount of attentiveness when she felt she could afford it.

Most of the time, she listened to the smooth consistency of Iruka's voice and she daydreamed, melting in the sound of it and the assurance that, as long as he was still talking, she was safe. Whenever there was silence in the classroom, she would pull herself from her personal fantasies long enough to make sure that it wasn't Sasuke trying to make a point about something.

Whenever Iruka paused to break for air, it could only mean a few things. Either Naruto was mouthing off, the entire class was in trouble, or Nara Shikamaru was complaining again. Occasionally, a fangirl would worm her way to Sasuke and beg for a date and he'd shoot her down. Sakura liked to listen to him, even if his voice was so hollow she could burry herself in it and die.

When she heard the news that they'd be on the same three-man cell, she was overjoyed and couldn't hide it. But then she'd approached him and he shot her down, too. In his head, she was pushed into a crowd of faceless fangirls. Insignificant.

It killed her.

Now, as Naruto searches the earth for answers to questions nobody asked and Kakashi observes dutifully, Sakura watches Sasuke and waits for a sign to tell her that she's become someone important to him.

She wonders if he knows her name. He should, by now—it's been almost a year, and they've stood back-to-back a countless number of times—but subtlety has always been lost on him and he walks through life with his head in the clouds, thoughts hazed with a fog brought on by Itachi.

He's been slipping, for as long as she can remember, into a hole that he will never be able to work his way out of. His heart is like a black abyss, sucking everything from the outside world in, blocking out unwanted treasures from a foreign and strange place that doesn't hold enough hatred.

The worst of it all is that she wants to think that, yes, he does know her name, and yes, he does actually like her, and yes, he might actually really like her. In fact, she knows that he really likes her. But she also knows that he isn't sure about how to show it.

For an eternity, Sasuke has sheltered and nurtured his own shadows in a spot disturbingly close to the thing he calls a heart. He keeps these shadows closer to himself than he could ever think about keeping her.

He cares for killing Itachi more than he cares for loving her.

(She can't breathe.)

She can't breathe!

Sasuke glances her way, gaze half-shielded by raven-colored bangs, and all of the air leaves her lungs at once. She wants to run to the side of the river and empty her stomach, but she can't breathe. She can't think. She doesn't really know what she wants.

She swears, for a second, that his eyes are pulling her into a mystery world. It mocks reality in a way that makes tears swell in her throat. The fake sky is darkened with crows (and aren't they supposed to be a bad omen or something?) and the fake river is occupied with a fit of violent waves—so rough she can hear them crashing against the sides of the bank—but then she's back where she belongs (wherever that is), and Sasuke is staring at her curiously.

"Sakura," he says quietly, and nothing has changed from before; his voice is still hollow and coolly detached and firmly indifferent.

They examine eachother for a few moments and wonder at the illusion they've just seen. Sakura doesn't know that he cast it, and Sasuke doesn't know that she really caught it all.

Naruto is standing up, wiping dirt from his pants. Even distracted, Sasuke and Sakura can discern this. They are not poor ninja.

…But they are confused. They're both fumbling through life paths they never imagined themselves walking (Sasuke breaks everything in front of him, and Sakura trails after him, picking up the pieces), and they both wish they could go back to the beginning—but the truth of things is, there's nothing wrong with the present.

Despite Sasuke's illusion, the sky is as clear as ever, and the water is as still as it will ever be.

Fin.