Naruto's manga has ended! :D

Just two or three more chapters to finish this ;)

I realized that I hadn't answered the reviews left for chapter 25 a long time ago and that I promised to do it in the update of it. It's sad to see that it took me so long to update being so close to the end of the story and it has been hard for me. Like I said before I'm perfectly aware that some people don't hang around here anymore probably, so I think the ones who left these reviews deserve an answer for the time they took reading this and waiting for an update. So here it is:

MASSU CHAN: I didn't abandon it thank God! It took me long but here I am. Like I said there are only two or three chapters till the end and I thank you for your good wishes :)

BLACKBLOODEDWOLF: Thank you for your congratulations in personal matters and probably you started college already :) so good luck!

RIBOOTZ: Thanks for your support all the way and yes, I'll finish the story, I promise, I understand the sadness and frustration of not having a story finished!

BLACKBLOSSOM101: Thank you for favouriting it!

BIDDYAUTHOR: I'll continue! Thank you for loving it!

ABC: I'll finish it XD!

RUBYO: I'll continue it XD!

GUEST: I'll hurry and finish it XD! Thank you for thinking it's too good to stop!

BABYKAT570: Thank you for understanding :D!

AVAUCHIHA: Thank you for considering me a good writer! And for wanting to read it till it ends :) I hope to not dissappoint you now ;)!

RANDOMNESS07: I'll finish it! I expect for you to be into it still!

GUEST: I'm sorry for not keeping my promise sooner and I hope you're still interested!

GUEST: I'll update till the end of it! :)

SAILORDEEDLIT: I'll update till it's finished! :)

RIA: Yeah, he wasn't! I thank you for your words about the relationship between Sasuke and Sakura, no one had told me that! Thank you! :D

C.A.M.E.O.1 AND ONLY: Sorry for making you cry! :)

NOURA: I know the first time I updated Chapter 25 it had another title and it was just the beginning of it. I took so long to update that I put that only. I'll write more till the end of it! :D

GUEST: Thank you for re-reading it! It's updated :D

GUEST: I posted the entire thing already! XD

GUEST: Updated already! XD

XXBROWNSUGARXX: Thank you for your opinion about the story I really appreciate it. I'm glad you came across this story and you liked it, thank you for forgiving my grammar issues and loving the development and your admiration. The story will be finished soon I hope for you to be here to read it and like it! ;)

GUEST: I won't have you waiting for so long, I swear ;)

GUEST: You won't have to wait for a year again! :)

TONCOW: I'm sorry for hurting you and I'll keep updating till the end, so don't worry :)

TRANSYDNEY9: I updated! Thank you for loving this story and your kind words to me, yes, I had generally what's going on to happen in the last chapters but I need to develop them completely :) Don't be sorry for being pushy, I needed it!

GUEST: I updated :D!

Please, review if you feel it :) and thank you for reading, following or favouriting it! AND TO NEW READERS Welcome! And I hope you enjoy the ride :D!

Chapter 26

Dreaming

Sakura POV

I had gone over and over inside my turbulent mind replying my sentences and fixing my words composed by letters belonging to the pending talk Sasuke and I needed to have. After Rika's departure I spent a long part of the afternoon thinking about the situation at hand. It wasn't the way I misunderstood their relationship what I dreaded most of it. It was the part of confronting Sasuke concerning the facts she told to me about himself hours ago. Naruto and Hinata came back a couple of hours after Rika was gone and they offered to go and speak to Tsunade-sama and Shizune about it all to speed things up. They knew that I needed to talk to Sasuke first. They even picked Miyu up and offered to take care of her. I was beyond thankful for their support and help. I tried hard to really see all this with a cold head especially the way I reacted to Sasuke and Rika after watching them and thought them to be lovers. Just remembering it darkened my mood with expected and maddening jealousy. All the thoughts and the questions, the doubts and the confusions, the pain and the frustration, the disappointment and the impotence, were trying to drown me not minding that it wasn't true, that Sasuke wasn't cheating on me and I had imagined everything.

It didn't matter to this stubborn pierced heart and to my volatile crazy mind. I couldn't go there to repeat again all that transpired in that terrible moment when I thought I had lost him forever. I needed to get out of that painful room inside my head that held that memory still so clearly because it wasn't good for me and I couldn't dwell in it anymore without feeling it asphyxiating me. All I felt, all I said, all I did. I took a deep breath. So broken, so shocked, so jealous! So much despair and sadness had taken their toll on me. I wondered what Sasuke thought about it. Did he know that she had come to the village to talk to me? I sighed again feeling a little apprehensive and worried but definitely a little more relieved and calmer somehow. Why I feel this way? Because you know he's not cheating on you. The evening was coming soon and I couldn't wait anymore. I needed to suck it up and stop trembling and hesitating in my heart of hearts and be brave and coherent. I needed to fix this mess. I knew that Sasuke had some blame to take for being like this, for not saying anything, for keeping secrets, for going behind my back and taking decisions concerning our daughter without telling me. But I didn't know if he felt that way and at the end I realized that it didn't matter contrary to the truths spoken. I needed to talk to him and see where we stood now, for his sake, for my sake, for Miyu's sake, for this fragile family's sake.

"Momma?"

Miyu's sweet voice brought me back from my tormented reverie and I smiled warmly at her watching my daughter completely comfortable in Hinata's arms. They were ready to go and so I was. Yes, I was. Naruto was picking up her bag filled with her favorite and needed basic things. I tilted my head at her seeing how much she looked like Sasuke. So much like him, my little princess.

"What is it, sweetie?"

"Where's Dada?"

I stood up from the couch and I kissed her forehead thanking God for not giving her mine. After it Miyu looked up at me with her big, black, beautiful and adorable eyes and perked eyebrows full of curiosity and her little face showing pure innocence. When Naruto and Hinata came back they told me that while they were accompanying Rika to the gates she had shared some memories about Miyu and one of them was the way her mother had taught Miyu to call Sasuke "Dada". I felt a little sad and upset over the fact that I wasn't the one teaching her the word because in that moment of our lives I wasn't too happy with Sasuke's behavior but I knew that even then Miyu had the right to call him like that and recognize him like her father. But I wasn't going to stay thinking in the past when now things were so different between us and other priorities were more important. Before this incident we were at peace in our home and I wanted that back even if it wasn't going to be the same. Sasuke could probably get over my freaking show of fiery jealousy, annoying proclamation of unwanted love and harsh accusation of calling him an unfair cheater but I knew that he wasn't going to be so keen in the idea of us knowing about his secretive life. Just like he was mad before because I followed him and I discovered Rika and her mother's existence and his connection to them by consequence.

"He's coming home soon." I said trying to look decided and honest. I caressed her silky hair lovingly. "Momma and Dada will talk and soon we'll be together again."

Miyu's expression simply shone with utter happiness and she clapped smiling widely. I smiled back giving her a kiss on her left cheek and nodding to Hinata and then to Naruto gratefully. Even when our daughter didn't know what happened between Sasuke and me she missed him and noticed his absence already. She realized that something was off. Naruto smirked as Miyu played with Hinata's hair and both laughed. They were going to be excellent parents.

"That dumbass is staying at Kakashi's place." My blond friend told me with a lopsided smile and rolling his blue eyes. "I guess I'll need to talk to him later too." He paused thoughtful and stared seriously at me worried. "Do you think that he's going to be fine?"

I pondered it in silence and private concern and we both glanced back at Hinata and Miyu with sorrowful eyes. My little girl was a happy one waiting for her dad and mom to go back home. I sighed deeply and trying not to remember the way I felt when Rika was talking about Sasuke's health and her stare locked in mine. I dreaded the intention behind it and I knew there was one definitely there. What she didn't say out loud?

"He'll have to be it. I won't let him go." Let him go. To be gone forever. "He needs it to be."

Naruto huffed pensive before chuckling and smiling and he sighed too turning to face me.

"You're very right, Sakura-chan!"

Wishing me luck, Naruto and Hinata were gone soon and then I found myself waving goodbye to Miyu even minutes after their departure standing there alone thinking again in Naruto's question. I couldn't think otherwise. I didn't dare to think otherwise. Sasuke was going to be fine and I was going to make sure about it. No matter what.

Sakura POV

Get a grip on yourself, girl. I was now where I wanted to be since I was a child and I had met Sasuke Uchiha. In front of him and watching him staring back at me with those profound and hypnotizing onyx eyes of his. The environment was different from the ones in my memory. I was at my former sensei's doorstep but the sensation was always the same. I clearly remembered the moment of my childhood when I laid for the very first time my eyes on him. In that time the feelings weren't adult and mature, I was a mere kid after all but the intensity was the same as now, just in a different kind of way. Somehow I knew that the boy then in front of me was going to be in my life forever in one way or another and my heart was always to yearn to be close to him. I had a crush on him when I was that fool and naïve girl and as we both grow up that crush turned into affection, care and love. And a damned attraction filled with passion and sensuality that embarrassingly it burned my cheeks painting them in red and created pictures inside my head that weren't innocent or merely romantic and platonic anymore.

I blinked away my embarrassment trying to avert my eyes but knowing that I shouldn't do it and I cleared my throat giving myself time to focus and be stronger than I was when I was that young girl. I sighed deeply looking for the way to start up this conversation but I couldn't stop staring at him. Was he like this before? So magnetic, so beautiful, so good looking even when he seemed a little affected by his weird condition, pale, tired, thinner. My prince or maybe more precisely, my King. I couldn't help to cringe at my stupid ramblings and the nervous laugh I inwardly let out. How can he have this power still over me? How could I be so enchanted with his mere presence standing there without saying anything at all?

Surprising and unexpectedly he acted first making me feel weaker. He moved aside to give me space to come inside and I felt ashamed of myself and I was left without words to try to explain myself. I stepped inside and with each step I take I felt stronger again in my confidence and determination. It seemed that Kakashi-sensei wasn't at home and I was glad for it. I didn't need witnesses to testify in favor of my stupidity. I was enough for myself. In the silence of the room I knew that there wasn't a point in going on beating around the bush. Let's face it, I said to myself cheering me up.

"I'm calmer now." What a way to start, idiot. I heard him closing quietly the door behind me and walking softly but I didn't dare to turn around."I need us to… I need to talk."

I corrected knowing that he couldn't talk so easily. The sun was still out there peeping through the curtains hanging on the window and it distracted me enough making me feel more at ease. I turned around finally and saw him standing there and watching me intensely with concealed and serious expression. How he did it? Damn him for being able to hide everything behind that perfect face even before his rare sickness! I didn't have a clue about his intentions right now but at least I had his attention and I wondered why he had welcomed me so nicely. It only made me feel worse again.

"I need to talk to you."

He nodded and motioned me to take a seat on the couch in front of the one he was taking already place. I nodded and came over him sitting firmly and still staring at him and trying to not get lost in his mystifying eyes. I breathed out the nervousness and I remembered what I had thought back at Naruto's home after talking to the woman named Rika. Here we go.

"First at all" I started and paused looking and feeling totally sincere and ashamed. "I want to apologize for not giving you time to explain. Our case it's different from the others and I knew that you can't explain so easily your actions and I should have controlled my temper more. It's just that" I took a longer pause and I looked down pondering about the feelings conveying the words. Don't go in there. It wasn't true. "I felt betrayed. Even if we aren't a normal couple you're my husband" I looked up facing him again frowning serious and pained against my will. "And I felt it, the betrayal. I know that somehow I shouldn't feel it, I know your feelings for me and I shouldn't feel it, not in the way I did."

I chuckled realizing that all I had thought back at Naruto's home was gone from my chaotic mind when I didn't know what else to say. The speech I had planned and rehearsed was no longer there. It was like his stare had erased it from my mind after numbing it. It was difficult to talk without it and I felt lamer. I sighed seating more relaxed at least externally but still with invisible tension over my shoulders and pressing my chest.

"As your fake wife knowing that you don't love her I shouldn't have reacted so strongly. I should have reacted with the anger of a betrayed wife who is worried about her reputation and dignity and a little fury for not having the love of the man she loves but mainly concerned about her role and the implications of being cheated on. But I reacted like I owned your heart too and that got over my head and it blinded me. I should have known that you could find someone to love and it was normal when there isn't love between us. And if you have found someone it would be fine if you have talked to me first."

I tilted my head staring at him sadly but sincerely with a little lopsided smile. Please, don't talk to me about it now. Don't let me know that there's potentially someone out there for you.

"If you ever find someone who you can love… please, tell me first Sasuke. Don't play with me. Don't hurt me unnecessarily. I'll be glad for you." But not for me. "And when I followed you I did it because I was worried for you and then I saw you with her… and I lost my mind. I was very affected by it."

I furrowed my brow and I balled my fists. Affected was a little word to convey all I felt then and all I thought then. Affected wasn't near to the truth. Affected was a stupid word to totalize the pain I went through and the wreckage left behind it then. I wasn't going to tell him how exactly I felt then. I couldn't when I knew that I was pathetic enough for loving him without him loving me back. That disarming moment was only mine to bear. I laughed deep down mocking me for my choice of words.

"I felt that it wasn't fair to me, that you were just playing around with me. I felt that you didn't have respect for me."

I stood up unable to keep me unmoving and I paced slowly holding my hands together and fidgeting with my stiff fingers. I paused from time to time to look at him briefly seizing his reaction when he just looked calm and collected but definitely interested in my words. He was slightly frowning and for once I noticed something different in his eyes but I couldn't place a name on it. I stopped and gaped like a fish before speaking my mind.

"It hurt to know that you didn't… think in how much a lie was going to hurt me."

"Why? Why Sasuke? Why you played this game of our marriage and home when you had someone else? Why you didn't object to this mad and pathetic plan of me? Why you let it go to this point, dammit?!"

"Why? Do you really dislike me so much to hurt me this way? Do you really think that I wasn't going to discover your lover ever? Do you hate me, yes, even when I cannot really and I don't want really to believe it, so much to play with me all this time? TELL ME WHY!"

"I had always known that you don't love me and that you won't do it ever, believe me, I had always known it, and I've been beside you in some way or other despite that, despite the way it makes me look to myself and to others, because all I had done just these freaking years was loving you!"

"All I had done is loving you like a mad, like a stupid, like a pathetic girl, I had forgiven you, I had given you second chances, I had sacrificed for you, I had protected you, I HAD SIMPLY LIVED FOR YOU! ONLY FOR YOU!"

Why I was remembering precisely now our last confrontation? I cursed inwardly knowing that I had said so many things and some of them weren't really coming from discovering his supposed loved mistress. Some of them had deep roots in the things that were already wrong between us and sadly I knew that I vent them out because I was so angry, desperate and jealous and too hurt to stop. I tried so hard back at Naruto's home to not dwell in it and not think in it anymore and leave it behind but now I was here in front of him slowly being tortured by the possibility existing there and starting to shake and realize the truths I let out then helped by the immense fury I felt due to the blunt imaginary betrayal. All I had done just these freaking years was loving you. How I expected to go back to our home like before when I had said things that probably had him thinking about our fake marriage and our daily life together? Did I want to make him feel guilty for loving him? Did I want him to think that? He never forced me to take the decisions that had bounded us together so, why did I let my jealousy and madness to form those words? One thing was to reclaim him for the cheating, for having another woman hidden out there, but reclaiming him for the love I felt for him was just wrong. I didn't marry him asking something for it, I didn't want his obligated love for it. I was the one who chose and the one that decided to keep loving him and not trying to get over him ever. I never dated anyone else. I never let him go completely. It was me all along.

"I HAVE LOVED YOU! DO YOU SEE IT? DID YOU SEE IT ONCE? I'm not asking you to love me! I'm asking you to have a little respect for this cursed feeling I had for you! I'm reclaiming you for not giving it a little importance to spare me from this useless game we've been playing like a normal human being would do! Like a real man would do! It would have been enough for me just knowing from you in some way that you were with someone else! I would have understood it! I would have tried to free myself from your influence! I would have let you be happy with her! Why you could never really notice me a little? Just a little to not break me like this, to not hurt me, to not play with my feelings… to stop hoping and expecting and wishing! Why you were such a…. I don't freaking know how to call you!... to spare me from this pain eating me alive? Do you see the pity I feel for myself? How much I despise myself for loving you despite everything? How much I cannot understand about myself and justify about my actions when you're involved? You chose to stay with me and keep the act up! That's what I cannot forgive you! That's what it really hurts here inside me… not the fact that you don't love me because I had always known it and I had got used to that certain pain."

Did I say that loving him made me feel pity and despise myself? Did I taint this love with those appreciations I spit out so furiously just because I claimed this inexistent ownership of his heart in the name of the jealousy? I shocked my head really realizing what I had said in our last encounter. I never wanted him to feel forced to notice me, to love me back. Sure as hell I deserved respect like any person and I had that right being his wife and the mother of his child but I didn't free myself from his influence on my own because I really didn't want it. It was me all along who wanted to be kept there. How many times I told him that I wasn't going to pester him with my love and the fact that he didn't love me? Was I the hypocrite? Such a naïve little girl… How could I blame this love I feel for Sasuke for my own confusion and reasons to do things that were right or wrong?

"You weren't fair and you played dirty with me, Sasuke… I didn't deserve this from you, this build up show, and this illusionary hopeful scenery… I didn't deserve it… dammitt! You never really considered me a bit to at least have more value and worth in your world and inside your head… and I'm tired and sick of it… and I'm not going to keep it up… it's enough, Sasuke…"

"DON'T DARE TO TOUCH ME! Don't touch me with the hands that had caressed her and loved her in a way you won't ever do to me."

"I don't want you anymore in my house, I don't want you anymore in my life, and it's just too painful to stand!"

I didn't deserve his lies. I deserved the truth. I deserved his consideration and respect towards me and the home we had with Miyu. But he wasn't cheating on me. And I had said that it was too painful to stand this whole situation I created and loved because even if it wasn't the entire package of the happily ever after of a married couple… I had him with me and he wasn't looking for another woman. He didn't cheat on me, he worked hard and he had proven himself as Miyu's father and was never truly cruel to me just because he could be. And I couldn't live with myself knowing… dreading… feeling like his life… wasn't going to last and I wasn't there when it counted and when I could have made him happier living with his daughter in a secure environment. Naruto had been right all along. Nothing mattered when possible death, the final goodbye, now in our ninja world, was in line.

I stopped surprised my quickened pacing and stood there tense and still as a statue and barely feeling the tears falling from my eyes and moistening my cheeks. Some things I had said were true and they needed to be out. But other things were said in a wrong way and now I felt utterly mad at myself for it and frustrated because I didn't know if Sasuke took them that way. I knew that he had done things to me and Miyu and had said hurtful words towards us and I didn't know if he felt terrible about it but why not? Did I not notice that probably he felt terrible ashamed for saying that Miyu wasn't his at first? But he was he and I was me and despite the damage he had done to me in the past I didn't want to hurt him now, not even with words that sometimes can harm more than fists and I couldn't be in peace not apologizing for my wrong doings. And I didn't want to end this marriage because some things were said in the wrong manner and in the wrong tone of voice giving them another meaning that could change lives. I couldn't blame him for the love I felt for him. It was me all along who decided to stay loving him and not doing a life without him.

What a mess I made. I sobbed softly not really watching the polished floor with my down and blurred sight. Why do I have to cry always? My hands were soon covering my guilty face and I was shaking when I felt movement and I found Sasuke in front of me looking at me in his trademark lovable way. I lowered my hands and stared at him and somehow I could see that he looked somehow ashamed and guilty too. I stopped my sobbing with freaking will power and I dried my own tears with my weak fingers.

"I'm having an affair with that woman."

He suddenly said with husky voice due to the almost no use of it. I blinked rapidly with big and wet shocked eyes. Each arm at each side looking stiff and his fists were balled and he was glancing around distractedly avoiding my confused stare.

"I'm sorry. You're right, we must divorce."

"No particularly." She said and I nodded disappointed but not showing it. I expected that. "But you know" She added with a little smirk. "When I ask him about Miyu and you I couldn't help to see this glimmer of life in his eyes and the way he looks around avoiding me."

She winked an eye for me and then she was gone with my friends leaving me behind looking totally baffled.

I closed my eyes breathing deeply before lunging forward and slapping him hardly. As I watched him falling downwards and the trail of blood coming out of his nose and lips I smirked and a relieved chuckle was heard within my mind. She was right. You always talk directly to others and never avert your eyes from anyone when you are so sure of yourself. Sasuke sat down first and then stood up staring at me with sincere shock and obvious surprise in his eyes. I felt proud for being the one putting those emotions there and I was happy noticing his ability to show them even softly after his weakening sickness. Now he's the baffled one. I sighed and smiled sadly not wanting to kid myself believing that he loved me now but at least he was content with our arrangement and that was enough. I took out a handkerchief I carried with me and reaching out I cleaned the blood from his face softly and healed the injury in the thick and intriguing silence between us.

I could watch him narrowing his dark orbs at me trying to decipher my reaction and now I knew that the hardest part came: Telling him about Rika. Obviously he didn't know about her visit and I wondered why he was so ready to go with the cheating part. Why he wants to divorce me? I hesitated secretly thinking that maybe I had misunderstood everything and he wanted an exit of our marriage. Soon my heart pounded hard and painfully thinking that he wasn't content and was in fact trapped not knowing how to get out of it without hurting me. The rejection hit me like a cannonball full of sadness and resignation. But then I wondered if his motive was another, if he had other reason to leave me and Miyu behind not minding how bad he was going to be seen for taking this decision to everyone and more importantly to us. We were going to think the worst of him; we already did before knowing the truth and I wondered if he could be doing it to separate himself from me and Miyu, from everyone who cared about him, just like when he went away chasing our daughter's almost kidnappers? With what purpose he wanted me, all of us, to think he was cheating on me? Was it to free me from him? But… why would he want that when it meant leaving Miyu too behind when he loved her so much?

"Sasuke, I" I stopped after finishing cleaning and healing him. Why would he want that? To be left alone… to be despised… "I…" And the way the eyes of Rika looked at me crossed my mind in a rumbling thunder. Why, Sasuke? "I'm sorry for slapping you." I lowered my eyes and entertained myself folding the handkerchief and chuckling as my eyes refused to follow my command to not shed more damn tears. Some of them escaped them and fell splashing in the floor. I cleared my throat and distractedly I dried my eyes again not wanting him to have a clue about my real mental state. Don't cry here. "I know the truth about her."

I took my former seat sighing and gathering strength not wanting to recognize and much less name what I feared deep down. Sasuke was still looking confused and intrigued but he controlled it better showing his usual serious self. He sat down again in front of me. Before he could go on with his useless attempt to make me believe that he had a secret lover I opened my mouth prepared for anything. Be brave.

"Rika was in Konoha hours ago. She was looking for me and we talked. Naruto and Hinata were with me." I paused seizing his reaction that was obviously visible now listening to my words. He frowned quite angry and took a deep breath giving me time to go on explaining. "She told us everything, Sasuke. You don't have to lie anymore. I know you're not in a relationship with her, at least not of that nature. It's ok." His posture got tense and his fists balled again but more tightly than before. His frown increased and his eyes shone daringly. I stared concerned at him and his grave reaction and with my own serious self confronting his. I'm not going to lose against you. "I know you're mad but it's for the best, believe me, now I know more and I can help and"

Did I sound desperate in the last sentence? Yeah, I did. And I was because Sasuke was actually fuming in anger and glaring at me with clenched jaw and I knew that I needed somehow to convince him that it was ok for us to know what happened to him. That I didn't judge him in any form and I could understand even when I hadn't lived the circumstances that brought him to seek that kind of resolution that ended sickening him.

"Sasuke, please, just"

But he didn't let me go on when he stood hurriedly and just like I did minutes ago he started pacing through the room and contrary to me he did it strongly and so focused that his dark eyes almost burned with his boiling emotion. He stopped from time to time and opened his balled fists and then he closed them again and he never turned to me. He never glared at me again and he had furrowed so much his eyebrows that I was just simply staring petrified on my seat at his displayed reaction and showing of feelings. Sasuke was someone who didn't show a lot of them ever and not even when he was furious. He always kept his calm and collected façade, his coolness and coldness, his serious face and strong and decisive posture. Not even in a fight, not even in danger, only when a situation really got him deeply or meant something important to him. For some time this capacity had been debilitated by his precarious health's condition and it had gotten better with the passing of time and the treatments he received. I blinked noticing that I was probably right about my thoughts from before, about his desire to divorce me and leave me behind with our daughter, about his devastated physical condition. Was this the reason why he wanted everyone away? Was this his form to protect us from the painful truth that only he completely knew?

I stood up profoundly shaken with my mind debating all these questions and classifying answers that only achieved to worry me more and feel overwhelmed in trepidation and sorrow. I watched him standing near the window and staring through it not really into it. His mind was gone just like mine wanted to evaporate in dark and desperate thoughts. Observing his stiffness and the way I could see his expression getting his usual traces I realized that he was controlling himself again after that emotional moment of him. He was breathing deeply and his fists were finally balled again. I walked slowly and quietly to him and frowning decided I took a deep sigh before standing beside him. By the corner of my eyes I could see the pretty and stunning colors of the day lazily dying and welcoming the night. But my attention was on him. It's always on him.

"I'm not mad for what you did. I won't judge you for it." I started with soft and firm voice. "Rika told us what she knew so we could help you. I'm grateful for her visit. I understand your connection to her mother and her." I dared to unhurriedly lift my right arm and caress his left cheek with the back of my slightly trembling hand. I was completely looking into his eyes. "I'm sorry you have to feel the need for it. I'm sorry I can take the pain away."

This was my old known Sasuke. He was this young man who was looking so princely serious and so charming with his unshaken demeanor and his matured eyes. He reached out for my hand touching him and took it in his own holding it there against his face. His intense obscure orbs fixed in mine and suddenly I didn't know what to expect. I couldn't read him anymore and I didn't mind.

"Don't." He said. From the last and unique time when he spoke to me I knew that he couldn't do it a lot so probably he was conveying his thoughts in short sentences. I shook my head in a strong no. I didn't need him nor want him to talk. But he did it and I knew it was taking a toll on him even when he wasn't having a seizure yet. He got paler. His eyes were now more surrounded by lavender painting his eyelids and black circling his eyes. "Divorce it is the best, for you, for Miyu."

"What?" I shook my head again confused and he nodded once before lowering his hand and with it mine and leaving behind the paleness and warmness of his face. "No, it is not. Miyu needs you, you need her. There's no reason to divorce." You're not cheating on me. I misunderstood. I want you to be with us now that I know the gravity of what happened to you. I want to save you, to cure you, even if later we divorce indeed. But I didn't say it aloud."You know it."

Lame words. Sasuke sighed and he finally let go of my hand. He studied me for a long moment and I wondered what he thought and what he meant. This silence was killing me and I couldn't do anything about it, dammit.

"It is the best for you."

"I don't want you anymore in my house, I don't want you anymore in my life, and it's just too painful to stand!"

Oh. Suddenly I understood it after revisiting our last unfortunate got the wrong meaning of it. It didn't matter that it was just too painful to stand. The love I feel for him was more than that. It was painful when he wasn't in my daily life and when I didn't know where he was, what he was doing, if he was eating, if he wasn't hurt, if he was content, if he wasn't lonely. Yes, with him the love was bittersweet but it was much more the sweetness I got from it, for feeling it, for breathing it, for giving it to him, than the bitterness of not having his love and realizing that probably I won't ever. It was me the one choosing. It was me the one who didn't let it go. I don't want to let it go. I want to love him and if I never found someone who could turn my way from this love then I'll be happy knowing that I felt true love in my life.

"No, it is not. Every couple discusses and fights and more if one of them thinks that the other is fooling around and cheating. I believed that and I said some things in a wrong context because I was angry and jealous, I was so disappointed and sad…" I paused realizing that I didn't want the divorce, I didn't want my marriage to end now more than ever and I didn't want to be away from him when he… "I was out of my mind. I had chosen my life, Sasuke, I've been the one walking this path and I will keep doing it till I know that doing it doesn't mean so much to me. I prefer it than not. You chose to marry me and trust in my mad plan. What about giving it another chance? And if you're still thinking the same after some time then we'll… divorce."

He didn't agree with me. He shook his head and folded his arms giving him this stance of stamping his foot like a final decision. I sighed and chuckled sadly at his comical reaction. He frowned at me for it and I smirked just provoking his eyebrows to furrow deeper.

"And if you want to divorce, use another reason that it's only yours."

Sasuke shook his head again and turned around leaving me staring at his back. I wasn't going to back off nor was I going to plead to him again. I remained there on my spot waiting and thinking in how to convince him and planning already my conversation with Tsunade-sama and Shizune. One way or another I was going to take care of him.

"It's your final word?"

He suddenly asked and I immediately answered without a tiny trace of doubt in my voice.

"Yes."

He turned slowly to me with his arms still folded and staring intensely at me. I felt like he was measuring my honesty and my conviction and I stood proud and firm defying him to tell me that I was lacking it.

"I don't want pity."

"I won't give it to you." And I wasn't going to do it. If he needed to do something to improve his health and he didn't want it, I was going to force him. I wasn't going to pity him in any way, I couldn't and I shouldn't because I knew that it was so important to him, damn, it was for anyone in his situation. I was going to support him but rationally remembering his limits. I was going to cheer him up but I was going to scold him too. I was going to give my best. But then I thought that maybe he believed that pity was the reason of my decision. "I don't want you to think that I want to be with you because of pity."

By the way his expression showed a little tiny bit of reaction I knew that I was right. Oh, Sasuke, you really don't see it, right?

"I love you. You know it. It's love, no pity. It's always been love and I'll always be." I couldn't help to blush at my proclamation but I ignored it because I knew that I needed to add something else to it. I needed to say it to myself and to him. "And this is the last time, I swear it, that I'll talk to you about it."

For long minutes he just stared at me disapprovingly and frowning a little confused and I remained looking at him with a sad and sincere lopsided smile.

"It was the best for you."

"Stop it. I won't change my mind. There's nothing that could change my mind." Oh how much I wanted to take back those words from our previous meeting! Sasuke shook his head again looking thoughtful and he unfolded his arms. "Don't talk anymore. There's nothing else more to discuss, so…"

But I couldn't finish my sentence because Sasuke's lips were on mine out of sudden and unexpectedly and I was freaked out and taken aback by his quick and impulsive action, trapped in his arms imprisoning strongly my stunned and starting shaking body with his mouth searching and inviting mine, savoring and pleasing it eagerly. What the hell? I couldn't move and I didn't know if it was still the shock of his kiss that started soft and slow and was now turning intense and hot or if I was petrified because I didn't know the reason behind it. It couldn't be his way of thanking me, right? Sasuke wasn't like that, he wouldn't do that and he wouldn't be putting so much… effort and will in it. His lips soon were all over my face, on my neck, on my lips again, while his hands reached out for more intimate parts of my body that he damn knew so well. Why was he doing this? When was the last time we had sex?

And why the hell I was thinking in it right now?

His lips were on mine again and I didn't hesitate anymore. My body longed to answer to him, my heart wanted to beat at his heart's rhythm, my soul wanted to merge with his once more. As our tongues danced together with devastating passion almost depriving us from the needed air I let my hands to wonder desperate through his silky perfect damn hair listening to far away moaning and heavy breathing. Was it me? We kissed over and over barely giving time to breathe air and soon his hands were opening my blouse and tearing the plain bra leaving my breasts totally nude. He didn't give me time to react when his mouth was on one of my nipples sucking and licking and the other breast was being kneaded sensually encased in his palm and caressed by his agile fingers. I half opened my eyes staring blurrily at the ceiling completely swept away in a haze of pleasure and vulnerability. I couldn't think. I didn't want to think. I felt my hands moving on their own accord reaching inside his shirt and I let out a satisfied sigh when they felt his warm skin. I touched his chest from down to top incessantly, letting them roam to his shoulders, waist and back and feeling him sucking and licking the other nipple and his hand kneading the other breast with the same attention he did before. Was I dreaming?

"Sasuke… why… this…"

His lips were kissing mine again and silencing my questioning with wonderful mastery of the unleashed passion he set free in me. I responded feverish to his command, kissing and devouring his mouth and tearing his shirt apart with the strength I kept under control and achieved through my training with Tsunade-sama, purring delighted when his naked chest was against my sensible breasts and they were squeezed in our tight and demanding embrace. He just stopped kissing me when he decided to laid me down in a part of the floor that was covered by a very ugly and horrible carpet. What the hell, Kakashi-sensei? I stopped noticing it when I had Sasuke's mouth on me again lavishing and nipping my neck and nipples and his hands were busy tearing my skirt and boring underwear in minutes. I should have used something sexier! Oh, this is really happening… but why? I couldn't keep thinking when I felt his fingers probing my trembling and already preparing inside and I moaned louder and cried out in ecstasy. I didn't think I was going to last if he keep it up deliciously as it was as I arched helplessly my body. We weren't taking the time we took in the other times we had been together and somehow I felt like we were running against time or hiding from something or someone and I really loved it. The thrill of being discovered was so damn exciting indeed. I opened my eyes watching him on top of me keeping part of his weight off me with the help of one arm and testing and owning me with his other skillful hand. I looked into his eyes sweating as him, barely breathing like him, with fogged eyes like him, enjoying this like him, and I reached out at his face smiling and caressing his cheek and his swollen lips with tenderness. Mine sure looked the same, I could bet as hell they did.

Oh how much I love you.

He stared at my face, at my gleamed green eyes and he frowned looking a little confused and amazed. Why, Sasuke? He stopped suddenly and he kneeled still panting heavily and I looked worried at his eyes that looked pensive and far away. What was he thinking now that I was so fired up and obviously he was too? I sat down noticing by the passing of my worried and intrigued glance his need to finish this as me. I missed watching you too.

"What's wrong?"

I wasn't opposing even when in past moments we have talked about it and we had agreed in something. Then I remembered that and I understood, or at least I think I did, the reason why he did it and why he stopped. Oh Sasuke… you're still fighting to change my mind, don't you? Silly, silly boy… I chuckled and that got his attention back on me, on us. He frowned looking pestered and I sighed smirking a little.

"If you think that having sex with you now is going to make me to back off, you're wrong." I paused briefly putting my right palm over his accelerated heart. "I know what I said about it before. I remember what we discussed… but right now, I don't mind, I want it, and I'll take it for what it is. I won't regret it. So seducing me to have sex and then have me feeling unsure or bad about it" Because I love you, and I made love with you, I didn't have only sex with you. "It's not going to work."

My hands were then in his waist reaching out for his belt. He didn't move as I undressed him still looking feverish and yearning into his eyes with whole honesty and desire. I wanted him so bad, so much. I felt ready, dammit! I blinked feeling flushed when his pants and underwear were gone and probably on their way to the garbage or the seamstress and leaning over I kissed him profoundly with plain lust on the mouth toying with his tongue and nipping softly at his lips as I took him in one of my hands and run its length first slowly and knowingly quickening his breathing and making his heart to beat faster and wilder while my other hand was caressing his cheek and jaw. Soon my fingers run his length inch by inch and faster and it was trembling and getting harder in my hand and Sasuke was panting and losing the control he had until then, so he took me by the waist in a desperate and possessive way and I found myself crying out and riding him on his lap after that one perfect, delightful, satisfying and blissful powerful thrust. And the world around us was gone.

My hands grabbed tightly his shoulders for support, mi nails scratching the pale and warm skin, and I followed his rhythm equally and powerfully in each movement when he lifted me a little from his lap and then put me back down tortuously and the deep pounding increased and filled me completely. I was so sure that we weren't going to be able to go on in this maddening and fast thrusting but it seemed that I was quite wrong. After a moment Sasuke laid me down again on the same carpet after a moment and was on top of me with the same energy and surrendering than before and I trapped him there with my shaking legs encircling his waist and my heels pressuring him more and more into the union of our snaked bodies. There was fire running through my veins and tension building up in tidal waves. My lips sought out his and I kissed him fiercely as my hands went from clutching his shoulders to mess with his raven locks and his hands were running from my breasts to my waist desperately. Wandering hands without control on my body and mine were touching his while I nipped his neck and I caressed and scratched his chest like a freaking animal. I opened my eyes dizzily and watched the colors of the day finally dying away and the pale moon being present there high on the sky watching us going harder and faster and so close, and we were moaning and panting and our hips hitting harshly against each other and so close, and in an instant the pleasure was so much, so unbearably overpowering and impossible to stop and describe that it numbed my senseless mind in a cataclysmic hurricane of overwhelming blindness and relief.

Later when we were breathing heavily and in peaceful silence side by side I searched with my longing fingers for his and when I found them I took his hand on mine. When he responded after a brief moment tightening the grip he had of my hand I knew that everything was going to be ok once again. And a big smile appeared unwillingly in my lips.

Sakura POV

Five months had gone by since Rika visited me and I knew some of the truths of Sasuke's secret life. It hadn't been easy to confront him myself and much less when Tsunade-sama and Kakashi-sensei did it too after Naruto and Hinata, and me of course, talked with them about it all. I warned them to not be so insisting and judging in Sasuke's motives and to not question so harshly his way to do things. It was Itachi who we were talking about and I knew how much his circumstances meant for Sasuke. They understood. I knew that this was huge and he needed to talk about it or at least confront it but now it wasn't the right time. It was better to not give so much importance to not put Sasuke on the spotlight and scare him away. But Sasuke behaved nicely (glared all the while) and even when he was bothered by their reprimand and still upset with us for talking to Rika and opening our mouths about it he listened and followed Tsunade-sama's instructions concerning new tests to determinate new treatments, including new checks up of his health.

When I was alone with her and Shizune we discussed it and I knew that my former sensei and current Hokage was in the same line of thinking as me and Shizune figured out too. The information Rika shared with us was very important but at the same time gave us more idea of Sasuke's condition and his possible future and the idea was a grim, dark and heartbreaking one to entertain our already panicked and concerned thoughts. Rika was kind and loyal enough to send me some messages with some thoughts about Sasuke's sickness that her mother and she talked over. It was sad to hear from her that her mother was weakening in her own health but I prayed for both of them and their well being hoping for the best when I was dreading the sad end. Rika was very insistent in keeping her mother's name and existence away from anyone else that weren't her and Sasuke and that was the motive why I didn't dare to go back to their house and meet this talented woman. Tsunade-sama respected their privacy even when she was very intrigued and interested in her and she didn't insist because Rika's mother sent her a very long and descriptive letter explaining the strange, forbidden and powerful jutsu and her considerations about the consequences suffered by Sasuke for his failed performance at it.

Naruto and Hinata spoke to our friends and soon they didn't have Sasuke in their black list (again) and our interactions returned to the way they were before. Sasuke desisted in getting the divorce for now and we came back to our home and lived with our daughter in relative peace and immersed in our daily routines. We agreed in sharing the room for the sake of Miyu who was growing up (Four years and one month! And she was already going to school) and now she asked more concerning her surroundings and she understood the things better. Either way some nights Sasuke or I went home very late due to our jobs and to not bother the other we slept in the guest room. I wanted him to have the best rest he could get from our ninja lives especially when he was so busy that we didn't have him in home for some weeks due to some mission. I was glad he wasn't alone when he was out of Konoha and was accompanied by a team. I knew that he wasn't going to stop being in missions and I couldn't take that away from him at least not now when his health seemed good and he was medically controlled. He was going to fight till the end to be the shinobi he was.

Talking about our little family Miyu had her birthday party and this one felt for me a lot happier just because Sasuke was here and feeling fine and he helped me and my mother to prepare it. We received the wonderful news of Temari being pregnant again and the shock Shikamaru showed rendering him speechless for being so soon. Their little pretty boy was barely one year old. Gaara and Kankurou stayed some days just to be there when Temari announced in Miyu's party about having a baby to watch Shikamaru's freaked out reaction. Knowing about it brought bittersweet feelings to me making me remember my desire to have another child someday but knowing that it wasn't the best for us. In the party Sai and Ino announced too their own blissful news: they were engaged and they were going to marry in three months. She was very excited planning everything to be perfect and in the way she wanted and of course, she enlisted Temari, Tenten, Hinata and me to help her out besides her own mother who was thrilled with it as her father.

Things had turned strangely normal for Sasuke and I in home like it was before this incident occurred. It was hard for me to let go of the moment we had together in Kakashi-sensei's home but I knew that it was for the best and it was good for me to not cling into it. We were good partners in our house and we tried to be good parents and shinobi. With the exception of the fact that he didn't love me our life was nearly perfect. I knew it and all I said to him in that moment was true to me so I wasn't going to stay trapped in the same old thing when I had so much to do. From time to time I remembered our last lovemaking and my soul soared within my gelatinous flushed body with the sensations evoked by it. I knew why happened but still it was so fresh in my over thinking mind. It had been so different and so intense and we only made love one time. I felt like we were more lovers than a married couple and we had lasted much more than the other times, a fact that still amazed me and what could I say about the end? It almost gave me a heart attack and I was very close of having an astral projection.

Thank heavens I was still taking precautions to avoid a pregnancy because surely I would have ended probably with a child. I chuckled covering my blushed face with hands. I had never been so bold in the act. In our first time together mainly I let him lead the way and with every new experience between us I felt more confident and daring. Sure at our wedding night I had behaved more freely than before but this last time I felt this increasing urgency of merging with Sasuke so desperately. I simply couldn't put into words the way I felt and I knew that it was distinct from before but nevertheless I cherished every time we had spent together making love. Every moment was unique and priceless and the variety only made it better and made me wonder what else Sasuke was capable of in this. I had decided to not start again another encounter of that kind with Sasuke and to make a choice if one came along the way in our lives. I wasn't going to worry about that now and less when the people and the Council were witnesses of our reconciliation and my happiness.

I felt happy because right now for the very first time concerning our situation I felt hope. I guessed that it was due to finally having a clue of what occurred to Sasuke, having more information of his affected health and the fact of having a conversation of that kind with him after Rika's visit. That afternoon it wasn't only the sex that was different; I felt that all the things happened there were indeed different and I saw things under a new light with more prospects to trust and confide. I felt like there was some unspoken complicity between us and our behavior then. Maybe I was only imagining everything just because I felt so damn glad and good waiting with rational expectations for Sasuke's improvement and not so impossible total recovery and I had been able to read him a little and I felt so damn proud of it. So I smiled often and I didn't mind living with a man that didn't love me and only enjoyed having sex with me from time to time and I didn't think anymore in my sadness for not having another baby and giving Miyu a little brother or little sister, something she had asked of me in public when Temari announced her pregnancy making me to blush immediately and just smiled comically at her relieved that Sasuke was in the kitchen then. I just lived the moment feeling that things were going to be ok. I didn't want to be like I was before relating Sasuke and me and I just wanted to bask in the good things between us and let go of my old insecurities and sad wishes. I didn't want to keep fighting for things that I couldn't change making me hard and a pretender. I wanted to enjoy the sweeter part of it not minding the bitter part and just accepting that this bitter part was too a piece of my life and it was me the one deciding how to take it. Life is short, right? It is shortespecially to some people. People we love so much. Don't go there.

Like most things in my life, in our life, I should have known better than that. When was I going to learn?

Ino POV

I waved goodbye to the customer and sighed tiredly as I sat down behind the counter flipping through the pages of the bride's magazine Tenten brought yesterday. There were so many things to do before the wedding! I smirked happily taking some notes from the page dedicated to wedding dresses when I looked by the corner of my eye and through the crystal of the shop at Sasuke walking by with Miyu holding one of his hands. I put down the pen on top of my engrossed wedding planner notebook and I smiled happily watching them stopping in front of the other shops because Miyu demanded it. I chuckled at Sasuke's amazed and loving expression listening to his little daughter blabbering and pointing to things inside the shops with shining eyes and enthusiastic expression all over her cute face. I was glad that Sakura and Sasuke reconciled and clarified things between them and for the good vibe not only I could get from them now. And Miyu was such a beauty and cute little thing with wise eyes and smart brain so much alike physically to her father. I only wished I could have my own children in some time watching them together so entertained. It was such a delightful view to see.

I sighed utterly content and then I decided to go on with my business. I had a lot of things to do and let's just face it; Sai wasn't very good in them. I smirked inwardly. Oh, my darling husband wannabe... it's good that you're so freaking excellent in other areas…

I chuckled feeling naughty deep down for my not innocent thoughts when suddenly I heard a little child crying and screaming for help. I looked up again startled and watched stunned and with wide eyes at Sasuke lying unconscious on the sidewalk and Miyu by his side taking his hand and encouraging him to open his eyes. I got up immediately and shaking shocked and deeply concerned I tried to control the fear I felt for him and be strong for Miyu. She didn't understand and she was a little scared girl. She was pulling at his shirt asking of him something he couldn't do like a powerful mantra or heartfelt prayer.

"Wake up… wake up… Daddy wake up…"

I was freaked out and very worried guessing what happened to him but I didn't show it when I left the shop behind and I crossed the street running to where they were. Some people were gathering around them concerned and someone was calling for help to take him to the hospital. I knelt beside Miyu and I did a quick and general check up on Sasuke in my automatic medic nin mode. When I had seen the blood coming from his nose and his ears I understood finally what occurred.

Sasuke had a seizure again.

I was more than grateful noticing that he was indeed breathing, maybe barely, but he was. His heart was slowly and erratically beating. Why this happened when things were getting good with them? Dammit! They deserve some freaking peace and happiness!

"Help is coming."

One of the bystanders told me and I just nodded once trying to keep Sasuke's vitals alright with the flow of my healing chakra. I could hear Miyu sobbing and crying terrified and desolated and I took her in my arms hugging her gently. She still gripped Sasuke's hand on her little one and was still crying desperate and confused. I sighed deeply feeling my eyes blurring and my chest claimed in hard pain. I cleared my throat feeling it raw and not wanting to cry I comforted the little girl in my arms knowing she needed me now.

"It's alright, sweetie. Dad will be fine, you'll see. Shh… everything will be fine…"

When she looked up at me with tears running down her beautiful face and those big and disarming eyes my heart broke into a million of pieces. I smiled warmly at her trying to reassure her when I couldn't shake off the feeling of my words being delivered with an empty and dreary meaning.

Tsunade POV

I sighed preoccupied preparing myself before going out of the white room where Sasuke was lying motionless and silent on the bed. When he came to the hospital and I heard what occurred I run straightway with Shizune to meet him fearing the worst. Just a simple glance at his state told me everything before I put my hands on him and I worked to help him. That was all I needed then to comprehend the harsh reality of it but I didn't mean that I was going to give up, it only meant that I didn't have it easy and it was there were the main problem was.

I watched him saddened and deeply worried as I listened to the different medical devices keeping him alive and well. The beeping of the heart monitor was rhythmic just as the sound of the breathing machine was disheartening. I always knew that this was going to happen sooner or later and when Naruto, Hinata and Sakura told me what Sasuke did to be this sick I knew that the moment was coming already. I had made improvements with Shizune and Sakura for his treatments, that was true, and thanks to the girl named Rika and her mother's observations they were quick and hopeful but that didn't change the fact that Sasuke had already gotten very affected by this and probably time was against us unfortunately. I wasn't ready to lose but I knew the truth and I wasn't blinded by it. I was going to fight for his life till the end but I didn't know if Sasuke's condition was going to work nicely with me along the way. I hopefully prayed that he was strong enough to get over this but I couldn't shake off the pending doom looming over my head. This last seizure was the kind I dreaded so much and unluckily I wasn't so sure that Sasuke was prepared to respond to it. Watching him so quiet and still hurt me profoundly. His story, his clan's story, was a heavy burden that I felt my own as a Hokage even when I wasn't there when it happened and I felt useless knowing that I couldn't keep him out of danger despite my knowledge and experience.

Knowing that I needed to confront the people outside waiting for news I took a deep breath and I left the room closing softly the door behind me. I walked towards the waiting room and just entering it everyone got up immediately staring worried, distressed and hopeful at me. The eyes showing more the last emotion were the worst because they expected me to work a miracle and I knew that this didn't work that way and it made me felt totally helpless. Ino, Shikamaru, Naruto, Shino and Hinata were there too with Kakashi-sensei. I guessed that Miyu was with Sakura's mother. Gai, Kurenai, Iruka and Yamato were out on missions just like Chouji, Kiba, Tenten, Lee, Neji and Sai. Some were going to come back tomorrow and others days later depending the place of the mission where they were sent. I came over them with firm stance and I knew that I wasn't going to postpone the truth. It wasn't fair to anyone and less to Sakura. I braced myself wearing a true tired and deserved serious expression.

"Sasuke had a major seizure and right now he's in coma."

My gaze went from one to another but remained in my former student. She was crying discouraged in silence and her streaked pained eyes filled constantly with falling tears but she stood strong and controlling the maddening wish to cry her heart out. Kakashi put an arm around her shoulders trying to comfort her. The other kids were stunned into silence and I watched them understanding the words I said. Ino and Hinata's eyes brimmed with heavyhearted and sorrowful tears too and Naruto blinked rapidly avoiding his forming against his will. Shikamaru and Shino stood quietly with grim and sad expressions. He wanted to be strong for Sakura. Kakashi was speechless and his eye looked far away, distracted and visibly shaken and grieving.

"His chance to get over this is minimal."

I paused noticing the flinch of Sakura's tensed body and the way her trembling hands shot up covering her jaw and mouth and muffling her increased crying. Her shaking frame collapsed and her knees buckled under her weight but thanks to Kakashi's quick reaction he supported her holding her against his body. Her jade eyes reddened filling with new tears while the old ones fell over and over. I was heartbroken watching her pain. Naruto's reaction was more aggressive but equally heartbreaking. He growled frustrated and his contained tears finally fell and he punched the wall behind him with drifting and lost eyes and shaking. Hinata quickly went to him and quietly crying on her own she hugged him as we all heard her boyfriend sobbing out. He hugged her back putting his face on one of her shoulders hiding from our sight and from his pain. Ino cried silently too while Shikamaru put an arm around her shoulders reassuringly and Shino was on her other side in silent support to all of them. They all paled after listening to my last words. They knew what they meant. Just Kakashi remained controlled but it was pretty clear how affected he was by the way he hold Sakura in his arms. Are you trying to tell her that she will be fine if he dies?

"You have to do something! Save him! You're the best medic nin ever!" Naruto yelled barely looking up from Hinata's wet shoulder. He looked pleadingly at me with blurred blue eyes. "Please…"

Hinata shushed him lovingly and I sighed emotionally exhausted and stressed out. What could I say? I knew it so deeply that it was burned within my brain. His confidence in my capacity and abilities was disarming and overwhelming but I knew that he was just asking the same I ask of myself inwardly.

"I'll keep him here and I'll try everything I can to help him and make him to come back to us, I swear. You all can visit him but don't crowd him."

I took one of Sakura's hands in mine promising her sincerely that I was going to do my best. But somehow when she nodded terribly saddened, desperate and shattered and I looked into those puffy red eyes I knew that she comprehend the situation as good as me. She knew. She wasn't a medic nin for nothing and she wasn't my former student for nothing either. She believed in my promised effort but she knew the true and terrible possibility. I nodded once and I clutched gently her hand in sign of support. Shizune appeared looking the same as me and the others but trying to be seen professional and strong. I nodded to her in recognition and leaving Sakura and the others there I left feeling like a failure and angered for the reason behind it. One of my ninjas, to who I owed a hand to restore what was destroyed in the past, was dying on my guard and I couldn't do anything about it.

Sakura POV

I knew what the diagnosis was. I knew it when Ino told me about it. I knew. And while I was running to the hospital after coming back from a special little trip outside the village on a mission all I could think about was in the morning I left him after having breakfast together with Miyu, she in his arms smiling happily and waving goodbye to me, and he looking at me calm and collected with a little frown on his face that almost said "Be careful". And all I could think right now that I'm sitting beside his bed staring shocked and in a trance like state aching and with my heart tattered at his unmovable body resting there is that I should have kissed him and I should have told him I loved him even when I had swore to both of us to not do it again. I should have kissed him and I should have told him I loved him! And now look at me now, crying like a crazy in synchrony with the musicality of this white awful room, listening to his heart beating weakly and his difficult breathing, with my throat hurting and feeling a pain so strong in my chest that I thought I was going to die right there.

I cried and cried and I screamed into my hands pulling at my messy hair and wanting to demolish something just to feel anything else beside this hurting wound weeping within my soul and unbalancing my mind, this troubling anguish consuming me. I had been strong with my mother and my daughter, I even was it in front of my friends and my former sensei but here in front of him without anyone watching me, I could let go of the torture I was going through and forget for a moment about the world going on out there without me, without him, without the man I loved so much that had stopped to be in it. My eyes were very swollen and red but I didn't give a damn. I was pale and I forced myself to eat and sleep, I forced my body to function properly, but I didn't care. I did it just for Miyu. She needed me too. She was in the same mood as me as she knew what was going on with her father and I comforted her when I barely could comfort myself. I felt so guilty for not helping him before, for not discovering his connection with Rika and her mother before, for being so stupid and useless! My blouse was soaked in shed tears and I wailed like a dying animal with unforgiving desperation veiling me. This suffering was an unrelenting dismal.

I laid my head down on the mattress where he was static as a statue or more precisely inactive like a marionette whose strings had been cut taking with shaking hands one of his tightly. Please, Sasuke don't go away, don't go where we can't follow you. This mental, physical and emotional agony was too much to handle and I cried out and yelled against the bed bursting into tears harder than before. Tormenting days and long nights had gone by since he was here and now everyone in Konoha knew about his probably soon death and I had been so damn strong keeping myself together and hoping without a complete faith, showing the contrary to the people around me to give them the shining expectation I didn't quite feel. I knew our job as medic nin and I knew that Sasuke was more gone than ever. The darkening thought of someday being the one responsible to let him go was burning and hurting deep within me, tainting my sorrowful soul and hitting my already battered heart as my mind played tricks on me about a future without him.

"Please, Sasuke don't go away, don't go where we can't follow you, not in this form, not so soon. Please. Don't leave us…"

I couldn't talk anymore and I sobbed wildly trembling harshly on my seat with eyes half opened but so blurred by the tears that I was practically blind to my surroundings. I caressed the back of his hand in mine with tenderness shaking my head in a brusque attempt to convey a powerful "no" when I couldn't use my voice for it. I drained myself crying quietly back at home at nights as I was on bed and trying to sleep a little. I drained my energy with this endless torture of not knowing if being trapped there inside was hurting him in some way. Do you feel lonely, Sasuke? Do you notice that we come here to see you and talk to you? Do you feel abandoned there? Do you feel forsaken? Do you feel betrayed? Do you miss us? Do you miss Miyu? Do you miss… me?

I pulled forward a little still crying silently and hunching over his sleeping form. There had been times when I hated being a medic nin when Sasuke was related. Being one gave me the knowledge to comprehend the situation and see the possible outcomes. Being a medic nin made me someone supposedly prepared to try to fix this with experience gained and new information gathering. Being a medic nin was feeling so futile and unavailing. Being a medic nin didn't meant anything right now when I couldn't be the right and perfect one to save the life of the man I loved. Everything remembered me of him. Walking through the village in a nice stroll, going home feeling happy, staying at home simply relaxing. Coming to work to the place where he had spent some time in grave state. Leaving Konoha remembering how much it helped him when he couldn't stand being in the place where he almost lost everything important to him. Listening to the word "Sunagakure" where we lived temporary secure and calm. Lying on bed bringing back the memories of our loving encounters, of many nights were we just slept comfortably side by side. Staying at the guests' room door where he slept when we weren't sharing my room but back then I had been so tranquilized knowing that he was right there and I only needed to open the door to watch him and be confident of his safety. Even visiting Kakashi-sensei's home where strangely he didn't have that horrid carpet we used in our last time together was extremely painful. It didn't matter that I was a medic nin and I was prepared to deal with death. It didn't matter that I knew somehow that this was a possibility for him being as weirdly sick as him. Nothing mattered more than the inevitable fact that I was losing him and I couldn't do anything about it.

I didn't have those other feelings I had before when I thought he was cheating on me. Then the anger, jealousy and disappointment had helped me to focus in the hunting emotion of being betrayed and being nothing and lied to. I felt pain too, yes; I felt sorrow, sadness, despair. I felt them now too, and they were coming from another and more unavoidable and terrible source than then. Anger, jealousy and disappointment had kept me boiling and burning in intense and maddening mood and now there was just this gloomy resignation. There was just this grieving emptiness wanting to be filled up again. There was just this cruel acceptation of circumstances where we didn't have the final word. There was just this indescribable and intolerable sorrow, sadness and constant pain. There weren't any more theories about what was going on with Sasuke's body and mind. There wasn't any more doubt or hesitation on how to act and what to expect. The truth had come with a great prize that I had paid especially as Tsunade-sama, Shizune and Ino. As the medic nin we were. There wasn't any fighting to do for Sasuke against his enemies or circumstances. This enemy we couldn't defeat with any weapon we could create and use. This was pure and aching hopelessness in an impotent and unendurable waiting for a dreaded end that was going to hurt us deeply and it was going to tear me apart.

The word had spread around Konoha about Sasuke's condition. The Council didn't seem to mind a lot. Probably they were relieved that he was going to stop being a nuisance and living reminder of the wrong doings and misunderstandings of the distant and dark past. People already thought he was gone. I barely could survive living with the persons talking me about him trying to comfort me, to reassure me, to make me feel their respect. A major part of Konoha's population wasn't too keen in being totally sincere, that I knew deep down. Sasuke hadn't gained their respect and acceptation again after all we lived but at least they acted with courtesy enough to not show it to me and understand my situation. I didn't care less now and it had been gravelly difficult to just nod and answer vaguely and sadly smile, to thank the words and considerations. I had come all days to visit him and stay a long while with him. I talked to him about futile trivial things, about our treasonable memories together and about our beautiful and smart daughter, our dear friends and the unstoppable world outside these speechless four paled walls going in interminable circles of the great design. Some of them I brought Miyu just because she pleaded to me crying and preoccupied and I didn't have the heart to tell her no. When she watched Sasuke like this incredibly she only smiled calmly and talked to him taking his hand. Sometimes she cried while she did it. Other times she laughed telling him about something she thought funny in her child mind and with childish vocabulary increasing every each day.

She often was quieter than usual and I could totally understand. I hadn't laughed since the day he had the seizure and if I smiled my heart wasn't really into it. My darling girl was getting through it on her own and we both shared our sadness and frustration together. Sometimes she slept with me and we held each other through the night. I heard her sobbing and I embraced her comforting her little broken heart. Sometimes I was the one crying silently and she did the same for me. But I knew that I was the mother and I needed to be strong for her wellbeing. I couldn't get lost in this sensitive despair because my daughter needed me. So I sucked it up and I tried to remember myself that death was part of life and that it was inevitable at the mere end and that it was better for Sasuke if I let him go instead of keeping him trapped within a body that wasn't going to recover ever. I couldn't be selfish, I repeated myself constantly when I felt that the idea was mercilessly ravaging me. If I loved him I needed to do the right thing for him and for our daughter. I wasn't going to let him suffer just because I was a freaking coward and I knew it. Nevertheless knowing it didn't mean that I was ready to do it despite that probably I was going to be thrown into it.

I dried my tears with my trembling fingers and I stared with watered eyes at him. There was so much white all over, all around him, combining with his pale skin. I sobbed and I used one of my hands to cover my shaking jaw and lips while the other held still his tenderly. Breathe in, breathe out. I let out a deep exhausted sigh and I took his hand with both of mine after my aching eyes cleared a little. I brought it to my lips and I kissed his knuckles gently wearing a sad lopsided smile.

"Good night, Sasuke. I'll see you tomorrow."

The door opened quietly and I stood up and turned around facing Tsunade-sama. She smiled weakly with impressive saddened eyes and approached me slowly with serious stance. Being the beautiful and strong woman she was it didn't suit her looking so tired and down. This was the Godaime, the actual Hokage, one of the Sannin, the most talented and powerful medic nin known. And now her honey and wise eyes were staring at me serenely with such grieve and excruciating emotion. And the emptiness I felt inside was then filled up with wrenching and unspeakable torturous realization.

Sakura POV

"Your friends are right, Sakura."

I surrender to his arms holding me, his eyes seeing me, his hands caressing and touching my skin, my body. Now when I think about it I had the strange thought of wanting to have a piece of him with me. Maybe that's why I didn't say no and remember him about birth control and babies. I knew I would have him with me only that afternoon and sunset. Only for me. Without words. I knew it. That's why I didn't care if I could possibly get pregnant. If he was gone again… if I lost him forever… at least I would have a little reminder of him. And one of my dreams could come true.

I heard my mother behind me at the table saying as I cut some vegetables for the dinner. I could feel her eyes drilling into the back of my head as I felt the ones belonging to Ino and Naruto too. Thankfully Miyu was in the living room playing distractedly with Kurenai-sensei's son. I didn't say anything and kept cutting vegetables with part of my mind drifting in bittersweet and cherished memories. It was good that I was trained as a ninja when I wasn't putting all my attention at the dangerous matter at hand.

Sasuke stared softly and sadly at the little girl while he was carrying her and then he held her lovingly against his chest. Miyu put her little hands on his shoulders playing with his clothes and saying words without understanding and Sasuke rested his face against her little right shoulder carefully and protectively with a lost look in thoughts and feelings we couldn't figure out or understand. But he was calm like I had never seen him since his first return to Konoha months ago. There was peace in his previous troubled expression and the hint of a true and honest smile formed in his hidden lips soon when Miyu started to touch his face smiling and giggling happily. Finally, Kakashi said something that we all knew he couldn't say yet or perhaps never.

"This is your dad Miyu. This is your father, Sasuke Uchiha."

"You must stop visiting him for some days, sweetie." She continued with soft, worried and gentle voice. "You and Miyu-chan need it. You're both getting affected in a concerning way." She paused briefly. "You'll get sick and Miyu can't see you like that. It's just for some days, Sakura. Naruto and the others will keep visiting Sasuke."

I opened wide my eyes and my body tensed up and I couldn't find my voice. He had gotten so closer to me that I had his face at mere inches and I could take only one movement forward to take that damn kiss I had been craving for since I had treated him hours ago. The only thing that stopped me was to know that kiss wasn't related to anything romantic or at least felt at heart. That saddened me and made my lips to curve in a half smile full of melancholy. I was still gripped in the shock of having him so near and just in seconds, when I felt he had directed his perfect fingers to my hair and he had taken a big and green leaf from it letting it later to be blown by the fresh wind with a playfulness that amazed and moved me.

"That's right, Sakura-chan. Don't worry about it."

Naruto intervened and I could listen to the sorrow, preoccupation and pain in his voice. It amazed and ashamed me how I was capable of realizing that he was doing a great effort to be strong like me. He loved Sasuke almost as a brother and he was his best friend. If someone had fought so much for Sasuke like me or even more than me, it was him. I felt bad and crestfallen not remembering this unbreakable bond between both and not noticing that he was truly suffering too as Kakashi-sensei. All my friends and the sensei were suffering this uncertain agony for Sasuke too, but Naruto, Sasuke and I were Team 7, we had lived a lot together and we grew up together. We were a little perhaps dysfunctional family with Kakashi-sensei but we were.

"He... legally put you and Miyu as the legitimate owners of the actual heritage and properties here in Konoha of the Uchina Clan... he gave you and Miyu the power to use them as you want. And... He legally pronounced himself as her father. He changed her last name for it..."

I gazed with blurrier eyes at the paper that had written in big, clear and black letters the legend of "Miyu Uchiha" instead of "Miyu Haruno". I couldn't help anymore the tears and I started to cry shocked and affected with a hand covering my trembling chin and lips. Naruto took the papers from me seeing me so consternated. I was immensely surprised by all this, by all the care he had showed doing all this for Miyu and even for me being the mother of his daughter. He had tried to protect the both in his secretive and silent and maybe incomprehensible way. I felt really and deeply moved for realizing now the truth. The sadness and hope were asphyxiating my crushed heart and the pain and frustration I felt for not having him here burned my soul with the flame of the love that lives within me in its rebel path.

"You know it's true." Ino cut in and her voice spoke to me of her concern, empathy and sadness. All for me and Sasuke and it was so unfair to her and Sai when they decided to postpone the wedding for us. I tried to convince her that Sasuke wouldn't want that and neither do I but they did it anyway and somehow I was thankful to them. We weren't in a mood for something as precious, unforgettable and beautiful as a wedding and less if it was the one of my best friend and our daughter's godmother. "Please, Sakura, do what they suggest."

My lower and soft and pained voice cracked and I just go silent and leaned over him till my lips caressed his first and then touched them softly and caring, kissing him sweetly and being some sort of chaste kiss. I marveled at the feeling that the kiss stirred in me, from my heart exploding like a tide and I, trapped in the wave of my love pouring itself in that robbed kiss, dared to deepened it now in a surrendered and passionate kiss that tasted those wanted lips over and over forgetting for a moment everything and specially what could have happened if he woke up suddenly. But now it didn't matter anything and I kept kissing him without stopping and realizing in the back of my mind that this kiss was going to be the last thing probably that I would have from him and then I felt the tears again running through my face and the shaking of the restrained cries and feelings and that was what it made me to stop and stand up suddenly retreating my eager lips from his.

"I know you all are right." I finally said sincerely. I knew it certainly. "But I can't do that. I will feel like I'm abandoning him. I can't do that to him."

"Sakura…"

The sound of the knife chopping the vegetables was the only one for a long moment when no one said anything else. Some people could say that he wouldn't mind because he was already gone and just his physical body remained behind. But I didn't feel it that way and it scorched me the mere idea of thinking it.

"I know I'm not ok." I went on with cracking voice and trying to focus in the dull action of preparing dinner and not thinking in Sasuke's dark future. "I know that I'm not totally focused in my work and that I'm going directly to be a mess but I cannot find the courage to not visit him each day."

"Marry me. As your wife I can stand by your side and they'll leave you in peace. Our marriage will protect you better than anything and they'll have to fight against Miyu and me if they dare to try to do something to you."

"I'm the same old coward, naïve and stupid girl I've always been." I chuckled ironically blinking quickly to keep the insane and lame tears away. "I want to be strong, I know that death is part of life, I know that this was a high possibility for Sasuke in the end… and I just keep thinking about that if I don't go to visit him he'll somehow know and I don't want him to think that I didn't go because I thought that it was pointless."

"Sakura-chan, don't think that way! Sasuke would never think that! He knows you love him. HE KNOWS. He would understand your decision, believe me, he knows he's very important to you and he wouldn't blame you for taking some time for yourself and Miyu to recover energy and strength."

"You… didn't have to buy it for me and less one so expensive and beautiful."

I said with shy voice and for the first time I dared to look at him straight. Sasuke-kun was staring at me calmly and unreadable as always but seemed comfortable by my reaction, even amused and somehow glad. Good, he hadn't noticed. I lowered my green still shocked gaze to the ring once more.

"He didn't buy it." Kakashi-sensei said coming over with a happy voice. I turned to him confused. "He asked me, by a letter of course, to take it from the Uchiha's heritage, like Miyu's necklace. It belonged to his mother too. It seems to be an engagement ring that was passed generation by generation when an important wedding was going to happen. His mother disposed it for either Itachi or him if the time came. I only had to fix it for you."

Oh my God. I felt worse and ashamed of wearing it now that I knew the truth. It had to be priceless for him and a memory close to his heart. Why had he given it to me? To prove to everyone that this marriage was more real than they could guess?

"I can't take it! You don't need to give it to me, Sasuke-kun."

I started sadly and worried in even moving my finger and breaking it. My Uchiha surprised me again taking my hand in his and clutching it softly affecting me once more with the electricity and love he unleashed with his touch on me. I was stunned and shut up by that gesture of him, so unusual and wanted for me always in spite of everything.

"I know he wouldn't want me to bring Miyu to see him either. But I did it anyway. Maybe I did wrong."

Did I do wrong or not? How to decide between the tender wish of my daughter and the protective wish of my husband? I shook my head frustrated and concerned not really knowing the answer.

"Miyu has right to know what's going on with her father. Hiding things to her it won't help her and it will only make her feel rejected and lied to." Ino interjected honest and straightforward as always. "Sasuke has the right to want to protect her but this is not a casual situation. This is different, Sakura. We're talking about his death."

The place was filled with applause, smiling faces and expressions of appreciation and joy when we were presented to the Konoha's society as the Uchihas and Sasuke-kun took my face in his hands and kissed me as the tradition was. I answered his soft and burning kiss with normal eagerness (I couldn't forget my act not even in this situation even when I wanted to kiss him much more) and my closed eyes filled with unshed tears as I was paralyzed on my spot without daring to touch his perfection fearing everything was a lie, a dream. He caressed softly my cheeks with his thumbs after kissing me and for a moment his black serene eyes fixed on my jade emotive ones and I couldn't know what he saw in them and what he had showed me in his.

I heard my mother and Naruto's sharp halt in their breathing pattern when Ino spoke. They thought that it saddened or angered me talking about this so openly but in fact I was glad and proud of having a friend like Ino who didn't run away from the difficult situations and didn't go beating around the bush. I smiled softly knowing that she was right. Why do I always end feeling like the old weak, stupid and coward Sakura?

Sakura's eyes soon were blurred and she felt that her heart was exploding and soon it was going to get out from her shivering chest when he was covering all her trembling body with his fervent kisses and everlasting caresses stirring all kind of sensations never forgotten in her. Her hands fisted on the sheets as her pulse raced and the blood run hot and wild inside her veins. That little part of her brain was trying to talk to her logically asking her: what are you doing? But she didn't listen to, she couldn't when she was in the arms of the man she loved with all her soul in spite of the past and the things that still were in the middle of them both and less when they were so intertwined and rolling on the mattress in an equal fight for dominance.

"Stop being an idiot."

I chuckled and weakly laughed for the first time since Sasuke was in the hospital. Ino's sharp words and annoyed voice just made me to snap out of this depressed mood attacking and devastating me. I looked over my shoulder back at them and I smirked truly taken aback for Ino's appreciation. They stared at me and I didn't understand why they didn't relax or why their expressions were so drawn in traces of worry and sorrow.

Definitely something weird was happening today. And the truth was that I gave a damn.

Soon we were trapped in the heated and sweet kissing and I felt his arms encircling my body and motioning me to sit down on his lap. I didn't lose time and I did it not wanting to stop kissing those lips. When I opened my eyes and I stopped the kissing I immediately started to take off his upper clothing with his own help and we resumed our sweet passionate kissing and our arms snaked quickly around the body of the other covering slowly and softly the warm skin and our hands left soft prints wherever they rested and caressed. We remained like that immersed in the hypnotizing kissing and enchanting caressing for a long moment while our panting breathed inside the quietness of the bathroom.

I turned back to my duty knowing that my rational part and my mother and friends were right. But then I remembered my conversation with Tsunade-sama and I stopped leaving the knife and taking a deep breath with my eyes already tearful and my mind so exhausted, my body so foreign to me and my soul and heart constantly battling this darkness trying to grab me and keep me inside its empty wholeness. I had always knew it, right? And I knew what was going to happen and what I had to do. I couldn't be an idiot any longer like Ino said, I had to confront the biting reality and make the best for my little girl, getting the better from an atrocious and agonizing end. Stop being stupid for once in your life. Living like a robot won't do anything good for Miyu and the people who care about you. Not even for Sasuke. Because you know that he wouldn't want that. No, he wouldn't and I smiled afflicted by the recognition of knowing it true.

Then I noticed that I had lost my strength and bravery with every single damn step I took from my previous spot to here and now I was startled by my weakness confronting him. Were my anger and shook stronger than my happiness and relief? Should they be stronger? I opened my mouth to say what I wanted to say then but I closed it after my eyes locked with his and I was swept away by his cold serenity and powerful stance. He dropped his arms to his sides and remained there in front of me looking in my direction like if he was waiting for something. I was so messed up with myself that I didn't get what it could be till he blinked and closed his eyes for a couple of minutes before setting them on my face once more.

"Now the mute one is other I guess."

That was plain mockery and he perfectly knows it, I told myself inwardly and reddening in shame. I noticed another slight change in his face but I didn't care right now enough to really analyze it. I put my hands on my waist in a defiant and strong posture (according to me) and I glared at him with an expression that spoke of my longingly feeling and the truth despite all that I had in my mind and heart. I was sincerely and fully happy for this.

"I don't remember you being the quiet type, Sakura."

"Sasuke is deteriorating with each passing day." I could at last say. I locked my eyes on a distant point not really seeing anything and feeling my voice breaking into controlled but desperate sobs wanting to strangulate me remorselessly. "Tsunade-sama talked to me about it, she hadn't said anything giving me time."

"Time for what?"

Naruto's scared and worried voice hurt me ruthlessly because I knew that he was going to be devastated for hearing this. I knew somehow that Ino understood already what I was conveying with my vague and fragile words and mother too.

"Time to make a decision after she does the ultimate tests." I finally turned around again controlling my overwhelming shaking with great effort and keeping a serene and thoughtful expression. "Time to decide when to let Sasuke go."

I let out almost ripping of the words from my ruined brain that wasted my throat painfully. At the end I understood why they looked at me before concerned and sorrowful when I realized shocked and with my chin and lips trembling that I had been crying all the time and that they didn't ask me anything and just let me to vent out this killing suffering through useless but liberating tears. I was barely capable of watching them with my foggy eyes and I hadn't realized till now the fact that I was crying since the moment they started to talk. Naruto was gravelly stricken after listening to me and was standing there paralyzed and shocked with furrowed brow and shaking body like me. His eyes soon were bleary with heartfelt and aching tears and they fell like a cascade without stopping as he sobbed uncontrollably shaking his head violently in a steady and strong negation and his fists balled tightly. Watching him I couldn't hold myself together anymore. My shoulders trembled not obeying my debilitated will power and my hands shot up covering my face. I fell on my knees hard bursting into tears that didn't end. My mother with tears already in her wise eyes came over me immediately and she hugged me strong and soothing. She shushed me rocking me in her tight and warm embrace and I could see between my hazy eyes that Ino was doing the same for Naruto who was now sitting dejected and heartbroken on the chair. She hugged him sobbing and crying saddened and frustrated too trying to keep him firm in there as he cried out angered and downhearted.

"IT'S NOT FAIR, SAKURA-CHAN… IT'S NOT FAIR… WHY? IT'S NOT FAIR…"

No, it wasn't. But life is unfair. And was being it as it was leaving behind the team member we had come to love completely with truth emotion in our short lives in this lonesome, terrifying and dismaying way.

Sakura POV

The tests we were waiting to just accept the fact that Sasuke was ready to leave us all took some time. Ino and Naruto talked with our friends and Tsunade-sama with the other sensei and teachers about it but still we kept it between ourselves not wanting to leak the information to bad hands. After admitting it in front of my mother and my friends I felt that at last I could accept the fact that I was going to lose Sasuke forever and that my world was going to keep on turning and my life and Miyu's life will go on. I did a great effort to pick up myself from the deep cave of depression wanting to drag me in and to start doing my normal life. Whenever I felt discouraged just because a tiny detail back at home remembered me of him, like folding his clothes, I thought that Naruto was right in saying that Sasuke knew we loved him and I knew that Sasuke understood and wouldn't want to keep living like this when in fact it wasn't living. The other tests had showed his brain patterns stopping working and he didn't progress. I remembered that I wasn't going to be selfish and coward and I was going to do the best for him and because he would have wanted that. My eyes always got red and were full of unshed tears but now I was more prepared, relieved and calm to not cry and scream in painful agony. At least everyone understood why I needed to kept visiting him each day till the inevitable occurred. I wasn't going to lose a moment sharing with him the little time he had with us in this world. I knew I needed to talk to Miyu about it but I was going to wait till the Hokage gave me the confirmation in the results of the tests. I wasn't ready yet to break her heart and take away her optimism and hope till I knew for sure that she was going to lose her father.

Weirdly enough, Miyu had gotten in better mood while I was dying inwardly and fighting a daily battle of wills to live every day and pass every night. She still was sad and downhearted but she smiled at least lightly and when we spoke of Sasuke or listened to his name in others' conversation she didn't seem to think that Sasuke's recovery wasn't impossible. We all felt the hurting sensation of the final goodbye but she didn't. I was a little worried about it because I dreaded how she was going to react when I told her the sorrowful truth. Mother advised me to let her be and just wait for the right moment so I decided to follow her advice. I didn't give it much thought since then and I focused in being strong and there for her till one fine day when we were at Hinata's home with all our friends besides Kakashi-sensei and Iruka-sensei excepting Tenten, Lee and Neji who were out on a mission with Gai-sensei, and she stopped playing with her toys while we all were eating and trying to relax in the awful silence and the sad wave involving all of us and came over me with her preferred doll in her arms.

"Momma"

"What is it, honey?"

I asked her looking down at her adorably. She stood there in front of Temari, Shikamaru and me in her cute and pretty dress with those big black eyes shining curious and her peaceful expression.

"Daddy likes when you hold his hand."

I was startled as the others when I heard her sweet voice using that precise and clear sentence. I was stunned and with my eyebrows shot up in confusion and shock. I almost dropped the glass of lemonade I had in one hand. The others stopped talking around us. Miyu tilted her head at me confused too. I cleared my throat feeling my eyes burning and watering and I smiled calmly trying to no break like a porcelain doll right there.

"I think he likes it cause he's very lonely and in a dark place. I don't like dark places and I don't like to be alone."

She said that so easily like if it was common knowledge to all of us with saddened expression. I kneeled and hunched staring directly at her and now shaking and almost bursting into tears. I fought hard to find my voice when it was vibrating so strongly within my throat.

"How do you know that, sweetie?"

"I dreamt with him. He likes when you hold his hand and talk to him. He likes visits from anyone. I will be happy too if I wasn't alone all the time."

"I see." I paused feeling my heart pounding hard against my constricted chest and my breathing halting dangerously. "Do you dream with him a lot?"

She nodded vigorously with a happy smile and I knew that she believed it true, all that she said. But inside I was breaking again after putting my already broken shards together with glue made of will and strength knowing that it couldn't be true. By the corner of my eyes I watched almost blurrily at Shikamaru, Temari, Kakashi-sensei and Iruka-sensei's faces showing the same conclusion I got with understanding, concerned and sad expressions. I couldn't see the others' reaction because they were out of my range of sight but I guessed they looked the same. Smiling kindly with my soul weeping I caressed her dark hair.

"What else happened in those dreams?"

"I asked him if he wanted something and we will give it to him." She stopped with distant eyes like if she was indeed remembering this occurring. My heart throbbed painfully. "He smiled and said that he wanted sunflowers in the room because he liked them. They remembered him of grandma."

If I was startled, stunned and shocked before now I was out of my mind paralyzed there staring at my sincere and pure daughter's eyes. Naruto and Hinata approached us quickly looking baffled, surprised and caught off guard like me.

Sunflowers. Sunflowers.

That precise word jogged my memory strangely and I narrowed my hazy eyes deep in thought. Sunflowers. I almost lost my breath remembering why when my brain made a short circuit illuminating me. I hugged my daughter gently and kissing her forehead thanking her with all the love I could put in it. She laughed softly and I let her go watching her with foggy but controlled tearful eyes. I'm not going to cry and much less now. Sunflowers. Could it be possible?

She just nodded laughing at some photos and I took her entertainment to stand up and walk and watch the kitchen again with renewed interest and nostalgia. I went to the window over the sink and smile sad and thoughtful at the beautiful color of the afternoon outside. My distant and lost in reverie gaze was caught by something strange I hadn't seen in our backyard.

"When did you plant sunflowers in our backyard mom?"

"I hadn't. You know I suck at gardening sweetie."

"Hmm… that's weird."

I didn't say anymore seeing her in complete concentration and delight of watching the photos. I stared strangely and curiously at the pretty sunflowers planted under the old and big tree that was near my former room's window. Father had always wanted to keep that tree and mother and I adored it too. The only thing was that the tree was an easy way to get to the house through my window. The sunflowers were dancing slightly and slowly with the wind like the leaves and branches from the tall and strong tree.

Could it be…? I got up with Miyu in my arms and renewed hope and intense exhilaration. I turned to my friends who were still staring preoccupied and sad at my little girl and starting to stare at me confused and intrigued. Kakashi-sensei approached looking kindly at me.

"Sakura, maybe you should talk to Miyu."

I knew what he meant. He thought like I done before that Miyu was imaging her dreams with Sasuke because she needed it and it was her way of coping with the pain she felt seeing him always sleeping in the hospital. They all thought like me previously that she was creating this to help her understand what was going on but now I knew better and I wasn't going to let it go easily without confirming it. I shook my head with a soft and calm expression and feeling enlightened like I hadn't felt in so much time. He frowned worried as the others. I turned to Temari and Shikamaru and I offered Miyu to him. He took her silent but I could see that he got from where I was coming from. He knew that I found something in Miyu's words that was important. He nodded strong and serious. I nodded back and I turned again to the others watching the scene concerned.

"No, what I need is to…"

What I needed? An idea struck inside my brain like lighting firing up a stormy sky. But doing it was heartbreaking to me because I knew what it meant to Sasuke. However I needed to do it and give my little girl testimony of her shared dreams with him and out of the sudden I knew that was happening between her and Sasuke. Could it be possible?

"Kakashi-sensei, Iruka-sensei" I turned to them now looking desperate to see it with my own eyes. "Do you know exactly which house… is… it was… Sasuke's home at the Uchiha Compound?"

They looked strangely and worried at me but I furrowed my brow seriously. I needed this. They nodded with sorrowful expression.

"Take me there. I need to see something. Please."

Noticing my urgency and honesty they agreed immediately and I followed them after waving goodbye to Miyu and blowing her a kiss from afar. I felt Naruto, Hinata, Kiba, Shino, Ino, Sai and Chouji, on my heels walking quietly and still probably thinking me crazy. Nonetheless I was grateful for their support and trust in me. If this wasn't why I expected with my weeping heart claiming for hope then at least they were going to accompany me through the abysmal disappointment and stinging pain. I tried to not ask Kakashi-sensei and Iruka-sensei to run and I kept my pace fast and strong. My head was a whirlwind of hopeful and torturing doubt and pessimistic and punishing certainty. Was I a fool for giving this a chance? Was I so coward and selfish at the mere end for seeking for this and keeping him here in that excruciating state? What was I doing?

Soon my fighting mood and messy mind were distracted by the fact that we had arrived to the entrance of the Uchiha Compound. I didn't realize that I was so lost in thought to notice we had come quite quickly and in short time. The Uchiha Compound was somehow considered to be a little outside of Konoha but still close to be part of the village but at the same time not enough to be seen as a special part of it. After Konoha was nearly destroyed months ago the rebuilding of the village in some way had taken place with more distance from it like if the distancing was a symbol of something meaningful for Konoha, the distancing from the terrible past occurred with the Uchiha Clan. Standing there with the two sensei and part of my friends and watching the desolated and trapped in time gate, I couldn't help to feel devastatingly sad over it. It squeezed achingly my heart taking note that I didn't come by near this place before and that nobody had touched it since that dark and long happened night when so many lives ended within these walls. Did Sasuke come here to visit and remember the old good moments he lived here?

There was some sort of big announcement forbidding the entrance and the silence surrounding it was so eerily melancholic and mournful that it cut deeply through my heart. I wondered if the others felt a little part of what I was feeling. Kakashi-sensei turned to me and with his mere stare I knew what he was asking. Do you want to go on with this? Yes. I needed it and I wanted it. I nodded decided and overtaken by the tragically magnificence of the place I was going to enter. Iruka-sensei followed Kakashi-sensei and then the rest of us did it in a quiet and affected pace. I looked around as we walked down the empty and dusty streets facing the building of the abandoned compound. It was like visiting a forsaken little town and I marveled at it. There weren't only houses but some shops and stores and other kind of constructions. How many people lived here? If I entered into any of them would I find everything as the same it was years ago? I sighed trying to control the sad throbbing of my heavy heart. What Sasuke thought of this? Did he want to do something to this place that he gave to Miyu and me to inherit?

Kakashi-sensei stopped followed closely by Iruka-sensei in front of the biggest and more beautiful house among the ones withering away slowly in time there. It was logical that this one was Sasuke's former home when his father had been the Head of the Uchiha Clan. I took a deep breath knowing that I was very close of figuring out this unexpected and tricky clue. The sensei opened the main doors and we walked through the front big yard and they stopped asking me silently face to face what I wanted from here and why I had asked them to bring me to this precise place. I looked around with pensive and doleful green eyes. I wanted so much to enter the house and walk through the halls and rooms wondering if doing it could make me understand Sasuke's actions and motives and wishing with all my heart for it to be true. But I couldn't do it because I felt that I was here without his permission and I wanted it when he finally shared someday this with me. Perhaps it was silly or useless to think that but I simply couldn't do it. I was here for another reason and it was more important now than ever. I started walking on the front yard looking for a way to go to the backyard without entering the house and I was glad and relieved when I found a narrow hall on the left side of the homely building and I hurried my pace listening to my heartbeat ringing wildly in my ears and feeling it hitting against my chest. I breathed deeply knowing that I was followed close by people confused and intrigued with my behavior and I couldn't say anything to them when I was hardly bracing myself and trying to not tremble like a moron. What did I expect?

I stopped finally at the end of the narrow and vacated hall facing astonished and dazed at the even bigger backyard resting there in absorbing quietness just disturbed my nature. I felt my friends stopping too at my sides and back but I remained glued to the ground on my spot and softly shaking in overwhelming reassurance. I was watching mesmerized at the sunflowers dancing gracefully in the wind. I was hoping with all I was for it to be true but having it being it right now in front of me was overpoweringly relieving. I forced myself to breathe normally and I blinked with eyes already stinging and filling up once more. Sunflowers.

The garden wasn't big and didn't cover the entire backyard and it looked a little neglected and savage. I took unsure steps towards them planted there among other kind of flowers like roses and lilies and I reached out hesitant and fearing that if I touched one they were going to disappear and take away my lighting wish. I felt the petals between my fingers of the closest one after I kneeled down carefully and I chuckled between relief and sorrow.

"What's going on, Sakura-chan?"

Naruto ultimately asked me coming to kneel beside me with worried and confused voice.

They didn't understand. I looked at him actually smiling sad still touching the petals dreading that if I let them go I was going to lose this bittersweet confirmation.

"They are alike to the ones at my parents' backyard. They're the same." I took a brief pause distractedly drying my tearful eyes with the back of my other hand. "Miyu was telling the truth. I think somehow she's communicating with Sasuke in dreams. My mother didn't have a clue of who planted the sunflowers in our backyard. My parents are no gardeners, believe me. I didn't think in it again until Miyu talked about sunflowers. I'm not sure if Sasuke planted them and if he did I don't know the reason behind it but I can't shake off the fact that this mean something."

Was it you, Sasuke? Why? I couldn't picture him doing gardening but… what if I'm right? I fought back a damn destroying sob.

"That it could mean that regardless the tests' results Sasuke is still there and he could recover. That we just need to wait for him."

Kakashi-sensei said out loud what I couldn't say when I was fighting to not burst into tears of fragile joy.

"Wait, could it be true?!"

Naruto asked Kakashi-sensei looking as hopeful, joyful and relieved as I was feeling inside. Kakashi-sensei shared a short glance with Iruka-sensei and I could tell that they were thinking that probably I was right. They wanted to trust just like Naruto and I wanted their trust so much to confirm to myself that I wasn't seeing this looking for a way to not take a final decision and keep this aching suffering for Sasuke, Miyu and me. I needed someone to believe it to not think myself crazy and desperate for not letting him go even when if I didn't have their confidence I wasn't going to let Sasuke die either way, being stupidly lunatic or not.

"It could. I always thought Sasuke was stronger than most."

"There's no harm in waiting more time against all odds if your instinct is screaming something at you, Sakura."

I nodded speechless at Kakashi-sensei and Iruka-sensei letting out a relieved sigh. The determination written all over my face was plain proof of the conviction I felt for this and they saw it.

"We're starting to understand what happened to him." Ino interjected staring at me gently. "And we don't know if the results are related to the way his body and mind is coping with the seizure's aftereffects. I'm a medic nin and we both know that we must take decisions on irrefutable and logical data but if you have a strong reason to believe that Sasuke will come back… you should take it."

"I know. I wasn't going to let this go." To let him go. "You're right, Ino. Sometimes is more about faith than nothing and I want to have faith that Sasuke will react."

"He's stubborn; he won't give up so easily, that moron!"

Naruto cut in jokingly with hazy blue eyes and a funny smirk. Hinata smiled at me encouragingly from beside him. Shino and Sai nodded supporting me and Chouji gave me the thumps up gesture with a big warm smile as Kiba smirked with the same emotion in his expression.

"He's asking us to not let him give up." Kakashi-sensei added after I nodded at all of them grateful for their confidence in me and standing up with the help of Naruto. "And we won't."

He didn't say until there's nothing to have to give up but it was left unheard although I knew all of us got it perfectly. This wasn't a lost battle even when it seemed like one. I'm not ready to let you go, Sasuke, not when you're not giving up. And I'll stay with you till the end, not matter which one is.

"Then, I think is time to go."

Iruka-sensei said looking around with distant and nostalgic eyes. I nodded grabbing the sunflower by its large steam and facing them with a little and happy smile.

"Let's give Sasuke what he wants."

Kakashi POV

Sakura kept visiting Sasuke as always with Miyu. She talked with Tsunade and Shizune about what happened and even when they weren't as hopeful as us for Sasuke's recovery although they wished it to be deep down, they trusted in Sakura's decision to wait even when the last tests came back with negative results. Both wanted so much to believe it true but it was hard having the information they had about Sasuke's real condition. I guessed that it was just as Sakura said that sometimes we only needed faith against all odds and visible proofs. Every third day she brought three sunflowers that Ino got for her and she put them in a vase on the table in front of his bed. I wondered if the number three meant something for her or if she thought that bringing more will be annoying to Sasuke. I had seen her chuckling when she was taking out the old and dried up sunflowers and putting the new and fresh ones and I realized that she was thinking something alike it. Flowers usually are meant more for women than men. Maybe Sasuke told Miyu about them because he wanted to give her something for his little girl to feel good but I deeply thought that he told her about them because of what they meant to him and his memory of his mother.

I noticed Sakura being more joyful and normal than before and I knew that she really was hoping for her instinct to be undoubtedly true. She still held that lingering sadness and disguised pain painted in her stance and her expressions but she was trying hard to believe and wait. She smiled again not often like she did previous Sasuke's seizure but her smiles were at least sincere even being weak and little. Her eyes shone with the light of faithful expectation and she followed Miyu's lead in her more optimistic mood. I really wanted this to be true and to see Sasuke opening his eyes one day and returning to the world but with each passing day I wondered, as I guessed many of us, if it wasn't futile and wrong to let Sakura hope for it, and the only thing keeping me strong in the same shining wave as her was knowing that Miyu still said from time to time that she had met Sasuke in her dreams. I dreaded that Sasuke wasn't going to come back to us despite his mysterious communication with Miyu because I knew how much was going to break Miyu and Sakura's hearts and how much it was going to take for them to recover from the desolating death of Sasuke. And how much it was going to hurt us all, hurt me, to accept and resign the dark fighting force trying to grip and take him away from all of us when he had fought with all his might to overcome it and stay.

I sighed tired and thoughtful at his hospital's room taking the knob of the door softly. I could hear Sakura already there as all days with Miyu. I opened the door just a little and I poked my head inside quietly staring at the little girl sleeping on one side of Sasuke's bed. Sakura was sitting on the chair at the other bed's side and holding one of his hands with gentleness. They were so busy in their own world that they didn't notice me.

"I'm not going to fail you, Sasuke, even if I'm sad, I promise, even if the wait it's long and hard… I don't want to fail you, I'll be here with you till you come back to us, till you are ready to go on or leave us. Please don't give up and if you're prepared to leave… " She made a short pause and took his hand on hers to her lips kissing it lovingly. "Please, at least give us a goodbye."

I saw her shoulders slightly trembling and her frame weakly shaking and I listened to her restrained sobbing. I closed the door quietly and I realized that Sakura was prepared to face whichever path Sasuke's future took. Sure she was putting her hopeful faith in his recovery but by the other hand she didn't forget the other outcome of this terrible situation and I felt better and more relieved somehow knowing it. Nonetheless I was praying with all my heart for the chance of watching Sasuke overcome another horrible experience thrown in his so much altered life already. Don't leave me looking bad, Sasuke.

Sakura POV

Everyone kept visiting Sasuke whenever they could and cheered him up. Naruto even dared to dare him and threaten him and even mock him in that special and unique way he had and I could still hear the slight closeness to breaking of his voice when he was loud and joyful or pretending to be. He didn't show just like me that our strength to endure this desperate waiting was waning but our faith was prevailing against it all. Even if our hearts and souls were swollen in belief and hope we couldn't deny the fact that our bodies and minds battled against them in a cruel and crafty way. Thankfully the last tests hadn't resulted worse but that didn't mean anything good for Sasuke's condition at the mere end. Sometimes in my darkest times I wondered if Sasuke was going to spent the rest of his life like this and the only thing stopping me in thinking in a future deciding the fate of this incomplete and horrible existence was the fact of knowing somehow that if he kept appearing in Miyu's dreams was for something, it couldn't be not meaningful, right? And how could I think in letting him go when he was still present in that form in our lives? And then in my most hopeless times I wondered if I wasn't holding into something that maybe, just maybe, wasn't true just because I was selfish and coward and I couldn't let him go, the same old doubt for me.

After three months of going on like this and Miyu's dreams of Sasuke from time to time being more infrequent I started to lose my mind once again but faster and messier. I didn't know what to do. What if he was dying despite his effort to stay? What if we were forcing him when he gave up already? What if I wasn't doing something he needed to survive? I didn't want to lose my faith but right now this uncertainty was killing me slowly and cruelly and I didn't know how much I could cope with it.

"I love you, Sasuke. I love you so much." I started out of the sudden with his hand on mine as always. So pale, so cold, so still. "I know that I swore that I won't say it anymore but I cannot help it." I smiled with tearful eyes and a lopsided sad smile. I caressed the back of his hand. "You know, I think I have forgiven all that happened between us, the hurt, the misunderstandings, the pain and the things said and done, and it doesn't matter if it was me or it was you."

I sighed really tired and feeling depleted of my living energy and inner strength.

"I still want to know why it had to be that way but I already forgave. It doesn't matter that you can't love me like I would want you to. You decided to stick up with me for our little family and I can appreciate that and I know that makes you happy. And if it makes you happy it makes me too, I'm content and glad because now you are a great father for Miyu despite the limitations you had for your sickness and the doings and sayings that kept you away from us and I now you regret how you started your relationship with her. You are a good husband even when you don't love me, you respected me as your wife and you respected our home and did a life that makes Miyu and me proud."

I sobbed and some tears fell but I went on remaining strong and just there flickering like a candle on the wind.

"I'm sorry for not knowing how to help you, for not knowing how you feel or how you think. I love you. Never forget that, ok?"

Not being able to stay any longer without breaking in front of him, something I dreaded he knew somehow because he was able to communicate with Miyu still through dreams, I put his hand on the mattress tenderly and I got up leaning over to kiss his forehead.

"I'll see you tomorrow, alright?"

With barely understandable voice I left the room and the hospital behind me as the tears fell constantly from my exhausted eyes. I wasn't sobbing. I wasn't crying my heart out. I just kept walking under the evening sky distant and drifting away, wondering if this meant that I was defeated already. I hated myself for not being stronger and for not being enough to handle better this situation. I walked faster lonely and silent through the lively village thanking that nobody approached me or even noticed me. I felt glad being ignored. With my stinging and watering eyes looking down I didn't even know where I was going till I reached the gate of the Uchiha Compound without really noticing. It was raining but not heavily. I stopped at first frowning confused and startled. What was I doing here? I sighed profoundly not minding my already wet face where tears and rain mingled together. I stood there long minutes feeling somehow renewed with the rain falling on me. Why was I here? I narrowed my eyes feeling weirdly angered for some explainable reason. Balling my fists I entered the compound and I walked fastly towards Sasuke's old house with unwavering resolution until I found myself in the backyard with the sunflowers again. I clenched my teeth watching them silently with unreasonable fury and increasing madness.

"Don't take him away, please." I begged despite the way I really felt. "Let him have a nice and long life full of peace, love and hope." I interrupted my weak speech with foggier eyes. I opened my fists releasing some of the intensity firing me up. "Please, don't take him away from me… it's not fair, it isn't… don't let him have this dark end… please, help him!"

I didn't know what the hell I was now doing raising my voice and screaming losing the control of my body and already trembling without being caused by the cold and soft rain. I fell on my knees not knowing what I expected or what I was doing there but I chuckled feeling pity for myself.

"I've been angry with you. I blamed you for Sasuke's decisions that lead him to this moment." Was I talking to a dead Itachi? What the hell was wrong with me? "I blamed what happened here, the pain he still carries for it, the way it affected his life and his self. I blamed you in silence even when I didn't judge him for it, when I knew that what he did was wrong even with the best intentions at heart." I sobbed harshly hunching over my debilitating body losing will. "I blamed all of you for it deep down, at my heart of hearts, but I didn't acknowledge it and I buried it deep inside me. I'm sorry but I couldn't help it! It's so unfair… I'm sorry because I know you are not responsible for his actions and choices at the mere end but… I can't help the way I feel! This is such a mess…"

I laughed sadly basking in my useless misery. What a picture sure I was for anyone to see.

"What am I doing? This is madness..."

I started to laugh without really feeling it, empty laughs, until they transformed into desperate sobs and uncontrolled tears and consequential crying. Suddenly I felt someone approaching me and I turned finding surprised, concerned and highly ashamed Gai-sensei, Tenten, Lee and Neji there staring quiet, worried and saddened at me. They were soaked too thanks to this refreshing rain. Gai-sensei knelt down beside me grabbing my hands reassuringly.

"It's ok, Sakura. It's ok to have these moments. There's nothing wrong in venting out your anguish and pain."

He smiled warmly at me and hugged me trying to give me comfort in some form. I cried out finally releasing the stress this long and apparently useless waiting was causing me. I felt ashamed for being watched like this but I didn't care. There was so much aching numbing my heart and my mind. I hugged him back tightly and I cried as he shushed me fondly. Neji put a hand on one of my shoulders nodding empathic at me and Tenten and Lee watched me with understanding and kind expressions. I closed my eyes and stayed there till I couldn't cry anymore and I could find again the will and the strength again to fuel the faith that fought to no die within me ever.

The man stared caught off guard at the silent woman in their bedroom's door. He knew her well and not for nothing he had spent long years married and living with her under the same roof. He loved her yet and he was sure he was going to love her forever and just remembering how their relationship had debilitated and gotten weak due to the decisions their only daughter took was like a knife cutting through his heart. She looked at him softening a little her strong and serious expression and he found there his old wife ready to reprimand him for something. God, how much I missed it.

"You used to be more open and gentle with Sakura than me, do you remember, Kizashi?" She asked him with leveled voice and eyes drifting between the present and the past. He furrowed averting his eyes with a saddened shade shadowing them. "I was a little more nagging and annoying." She chuckled nostalgic. "I know that Sakura doesn't live the life we wanted for her, she chose differently and she is doing her life in her own way."

She made a brief and melancholic pause before she relaxed her tense frame and Kizashi wanted so much to take the pain she had in her eyes away with just a simple word, a sweet kiss, a soft caress.

"Sakura is suffering a lot. The boy she loves is dying. Can you comprehend that? I know I would be suffering too if you were the one lying motionless on a hospital bed. And I know you would be the same."

She approached him and took his hands on hers frowning worried and thoughtful.

"How long are you going to wait to let go and forgive her and yourself? Are you waiting for things to get worse? How much time are you going to lose and regret later when you could have been there for your daughter and your granddaughter?"

"Mebuki, I…"

"Shh. It's alright." She smiled sadly. "I know you have a lot to think about. But we cannot go on like this. This eventually will break us too. You know it, right? Is it so worthy for you, for you pride, to pay this cost? I love you, Kizashi and I'll be for you always. Our daughter is the union of that love. Can you see it just like that?"

The woman let go of his hands and his felt suddenly cold and empty. She left him going to the kitchen to prepare dinner and he found himself alone in their darkening bedroom musing about old memories filling up his eyes. And the worst was to know that his pride and hurt didn't let them to cry over the lost time spent away of his family and he didn't know if he was going to feel the same forever.

Kakashi thanked Gai for bringing Sakura back from the Uchiha Compound. Now she was taking a hot bath and musing over what transpired there and within her scarred mind and heart. Lee and Neji were preparing dinner quietly in the kitchen and Tenten was with Miyu at her room watching some TV show. Kakashi sighed concerned for Sakura's mental state. Gai was right in saying that she had reached a normal and understandable point where only despair, frustration and hopelessness were found. It was luck that took Gai and his team to be passing by the Uchiha Compound when they were coming back from a mission and they had seen Sakura entering it. Kakashi didn't know what could have happened with Sakura if they hadn't seen her and although he knew that she wouldn't do something restless or wrong it was better to know that friends were with her then. This was what he had feared and waited to occur when Sakura decided to confide in her instinct and Miyu's strange dreams with Sasuke and it didn't surprise him actually. But that didn't mean it wasn't painful to realize that he was right as the rationality of the situation demanded.

Sasuke's condition got into all of them deeply despite whatever relationship, memories or feelings they had for him. The boys and girls had grown up together and shared a lot of their lives and hard and difficult times. But he had been his former sensei for long time and just like Naruto and Sakura this was more heartbreaking and excruciating. They had tried to give Sakura time and support her through this not pressuring her or making her burden heavier and harsher. And he was sure everyone will keep doing it not mattering how all ended. He was so distraught with his melancholic thoughts that he didn't hear the doorbell and Gai going to answer it. He was coming back with Naruto, Hinata, Ino and Sai who seemed to catch up quickly the fragile atmosphere of the place. He smiled kindly at them knowing that Gai had told them about it and for a long moment they remained standing or sitting trapped in the straining silence. It wasn't until they heard Sakura's voice finally with a steady and normal tone talking calm and relaxed with Tenten in Miyu's room that they snapped out of it.

"So!" Ino clapped trying to cheer up the general mood. "What are we having for dinner now?"

They heard footsteps coming and they knew that Sakura, Tenten and Miyu were arriving to the living room. Kakashi who was closest to them could listen to their conversation that was about the little girl's achievements in school today.

"Ramen!"

Naruto shouted pumping his fists on the air excited. Kakashi knew that all of them were pretending to be seen as normal as any other happier day just for the sake of Sakura. They understood that she appreciated that instead of being pulled into the dark depression hanging over everyone's head. He caught by the corner of his eye that she stood there with Miyu in arms besides a laughing Tenten looking more herself and again hopeful and strong. That's my student.

"Don't even think about it, Naruto!"

Ino said with her hands on her hips staring disgusted at him. That was why Tenten was laughing of. Naruto faced Ino annoyed and confused.

"What's wrong with it? It's delicious!"

"Maybe for you, I'm not saying it that I don't eat it from time to time but you practically live only of them!"

"Again, what's wrong with it?"

Ino sighed exasperated and she looked at Hinata who was smiling funnily watching both. Sai was content with remaining a little behind Ino observing silent and lovingly intrigued at his blond and blue eyed girlfriend.

"At least when you marry Hinata you'll eat something else!"

"Hinata would cook me ramen if I ask her, right?"

He turned to her with innocent and pleading puppy eyes and hands linked like if he was praying and a big apparently for him coquettish smile. Kakashi and Gai chuckled while Tenten, Ino and Sakura rolled their eyes and Miyu clapped happy.

"Of course, Naruto-kun." Hinata answered sweetly making him to hug her gratefully and rub his face against her left shoulder like a puppy in fact. "There will be some days of ramen for you."

Ino huffed rolling her eyes knowingly and Sai put an arm around her shoulders tenderly.

"What is going on out here?"

Lee said poking his head through the half opened door. Sakura smiled amused at him.

"They're fighting over the dinner you're making."

Kakashi sighed secretly relieved watching her in the mood of everyone and he could see her gratefulness deep in the glistening of her jade bright eyes. Ino turned to Lee somehow tired for her talking to Naruto.

"What's for dinner, Lee?"

"Well…" He paused briefly averting his eyes as a red blush covered his cheeks. "Neji isn't very good in cooking… and me either… so it will be ramen I guess."

"Oh, yeah! Naruto wins!"

"WHAT?"

Listening to Ino's irritated voice and watching her tense frame being smoothened by a willing and patient Sai, Kakashi felt that this particular and hard and difficult moment had ended and he prayed for all of them to be stronger and more prepared when another one stroke threatening to break them all for good.

Sakura POV

Two other and long months went by without Sasuke opening his eyes. His medical situation remained the same excepting some unknown weakness that we didn't expect or understand all debilitating his strength but Tsunade-sama kept him well always. I didn't have another breakdown since that one at the Uchiha Compound and since then I felt ashamed and guilty for reprimanding Itachi and his parents, all the Uchiha, for Sasuke's current condition and for burdening my friends and the sensei. The shame and guilt were enough to keep me from falling into depression again in that dark way and I kept believing and waiting patiently gathering all the will power I could from my own fragilities to my strengths and the unwavering support and good wishes of them, totally grateful for their kind attempt to always make me feel better. When the second month was near to end the notice that Miyu wasn't dreaming at all with Sasuke affected me greatly but I forced myself, I obligated myself, to not despair and think positive even if death was inevitable. I thought and I made myself accept that if that was the case then Sasuke wasn't going to suffer anymore and wasn't going to fight a battle that he couldn't win and was only devastating him. But, what if death wasn't in the way? Not knowing what to do to help him react was killing me mercilessly. I felt I was finally prepared to whatever happened with him and I was going to be beside him all along the way not minding which one was.

"I wish I could know, Sasuke, how to help you."

I muttered pained in the silence of the darkened room. Soon was going to be night but I was at ease knowing that Ino and Sai had taken Miyu home and they were going to stay with her till I returned. I felt so tired and sleepy. I hadn't being sleeping and resting enough and really doing it these last months and I was feeling the consequences of it. I knew I needed to take care of myself better; mother was always seriously reminding me and she was right. I'll just stay another hour. I'll be home at dinner's time and I'll be with Miyu. Strangely Miyu wasn't discouraged by his father's absences from her dreams and had asked me to be brought home earlier today. She didn't mind that I stayed behind another couple of hours accompanying Sasuke. I sighed exhausted and watching him tenderly, sleeping so calm and so peaceful. He wasn't frowning or glaring. He wasn't looking serious or cold. He was just resting there with his relaxed body and his distant mind. The music brought by his heart beating and his soft breathing lulled me into relax and calm too. I blinked trying to not fall sleeping here and forcing my eyes to be open always but I felt that I was losing the fight. I'm always losing the fights lastly, the ones that I want to win. I sighed, chuckling funnily finding relief in my good mood. What else do I have?

The last thing I remembered being awake was of me putting my head on top of the mattress close to his chest and still with his hand on mine, closing my eyes that felt so heavy and annoyed from crying so much in these late months and going into dreamland in a first class ticket.

The only doubt I have in mind about the moment we shared naked in the middle of the forest rolling in the grass and trying to fuse with the other is why he did it. Why was he there and didn't run or ignore me? Why was he just staring longingly and tiredly at me? Why his expression softened and a little smile pop up in his face? He didn't love me. He doesn't love me. The one I have decided to pretend is dead and buried six feet under. I think I saw loneliness in those beautiful eyes of his. Oh God! How I loved those black eyes! I believe he was down in that moment. Feeling lonely. The loneliness can be a powerful weapon to make you do things you usually don't think doing. And that sharp loneliness in his eyes broke my heart into millions of pieces and I just wanted to let him know he wasn't lonely in the entire world.

Shadowing and cold mist was surrounding her. It felt so good to sleep like this, so deeply, surrendering to her body's demand of it, of welcomed and wanted rest, of needed relief without haunting and sorrowful worries…

Sometimes she caught him looking at her grown belly and touching it with curiosity and thoughtfulness. So that night she loved him even more than before and held him as she never wanted to let him go. She moaned and screamed and freely made him felt what she was feeling in her own pace remembering things he seemed to like the last time they were together making love. Between one time and another they just lay looking at the nocturnal sky in silence, he holding her and her with her head upon his chest and his heart pounding hard.

Even standing there in the middle of that mystifying mist was relaxing. So peaceful and making her feel so free and with hope shining through her like sunlight warming the frozen place within her battered heart…

How many times they played the same game without exchanging a word between them? How many times they rested side by side looking at the ceiling in quietness and she laid her head on his shoulder holding softly his hand in hers and he didn't reject that simple gesture? How they can be so peaceful then and later return to the same desperate and fierce passion to deliver once more their being to the other so easily? The emerald eyed medic nin could barely know. Her head was still swaying due to the little effects of the sake and Sasuke's answer to her question and it was just like in the wedding: a daydreaming, something she couldn't ever dream in having once more in her life.

Was this like dying? Was it like this when death was good to you and took you kindly in its hand and lead the way peacefully to the other world? Perhaps it was because although having her fresh eyes opened she couldn't see but she indeed felt something taking her right hand.

The way he had been with me while he was kissing me touched my heart deeply for his care and his surrendering and when we had stopped and we remained sitting on our bed and he rested without any intervention of mine his face against the nape of my neck I was sure than ever that something had happened this time. I remained quiet and surprised wondering about it between confusion, happiness and concern, sat down on his lap now almost turned to the front while he hugged me. Luckily for me he couldn't see my face straightly and I put my hands of top of his breathing deeply and smiling inwardly still wondering about what had happened. Had he somehow put aside his guard for a moment? Why?

Her fingers were softly clutched and a feeling made her flinch and caused her skin to tingle with some unknown and caring sensation. Without knowing why she gripped tenderly the thing holding her hand, feeling fingers like hers but rougher grabbing hers stronger.

I opened my eyes watching him on top of me keeping part of his weight off me with the help of one arm and testing and owning me with his other skillful hand. I looked into his eyes sweating as him, barely breathing like him, with fogged eyes like him, enjoying this like him, and I reached out at his face smiling and caressing his cheek and his swollen lips with tenderness. Mine sure looked the same, I could bet as hell they did.

Oh how much I love you.

He stared at my face, at my gleamed green eyes and he frowned looking a little confused and amazed. Why, Sasuke?

She blinked trying to see something in that melancholic and silent mist. She couldn't move to see down at her hand to observe what was grabbing into it but she could still feel those fingers firm and linked tightly with hers. She closed her eyes finding funny and curious that she didn't need to take a deep breath and she wasn't lacking oxygen to fill her ghostly lungs and the next time she opened them she saw blurrily the ceiling of her old room back at her parents' house and she felt the bed under her. She blinked several times to shake off the rest of the sleep away but her sight only got a little better. Foggy forms remembered her of her things on that room that belonged to her for so many years alone. She smiled inwardly feeling her body exhausted and the bed too cozy and comfortable to do anything else than staying resting and sleeping there. She turned her face to her side where she knew the window was and noticed frowning intrigued that it was totally opened and the curtains were disturbed by the fresh air from outside. She watched dreamily at the old and pretty tree close to it liking to see the strong branches and the dancing leaves hanging there and some being swept away from them. Father was right. It's a beautiful tree. She sighed tired and with narrowed eyes fighting to keep them opened and suddenly was aware that she felt her stomach swollen and heavy. She could barely lift her arms but she at last was capable of putting her hands on top of it and was marveled at the difference from always and the feel it gave to her. Oh, yes, I'm pregnant. I wonder if I'll have a girl or a boy. Something rumbled thundering within her mind and she remembered somehow that she knew it was a girl. How strange. She guessed she was fourth or fourth and a half months far along and caressed the delicate bump with tenderness. She felt the baby moving inside her delicately and she smiled happy with burning eyes. She couldn't keep the two hands on it and laid the right one on the mattress as the other hand kept caressing her belly distractedly.

Then there was another pressure on it and she felt that it was a hand. She blinked confused and barely staying awake and with her blurred sight noticing that there was someone with her in the room, silent and observant, sitting down beside her on the mattress. She felt the hand caressing her belly with care and softness and she fought hard to see who it was but all she got was undistinguishable features and a hazier form. She felt the back of the other hand caressing her right cheek with tenderness. Who are you? Focusing her weakening strength and finding herself hopelessly sleepy she narrowed her eyes and saw a pair of onyx eyes staring calmly at her and framed by black hair falling by the sides of a pale face. No, it can't be. I'm dreaming. You aren't here. She let out an exhausted sigh and then she succumbed to sleep without a chance to do otherwise. The feeling of the hand on her belly and on her cheek remained for minutes after she finally gave in into the velvety world of the unconsciousness of dreaming.

She felt the same and thought that she saw that presence other times when she was alone in her room sleeping or trying to wake up. In the months that came when her belly got bigger and she was more tired and sleepier. The baby moved especially when that other hand visited her and it felt the soft pressure and loving caress through the physical walls enclosing it. There was one time when she was able to wake up and sit down on the mattress and still in a dreamlike state she got up and went to the opened window and looked through it and down and observed the same hazier form with blurred features standing by the side of the tree and watching some kind of flowers with total concentration and devotion. Without having strength left to keep peeping on it she returned to her inviting bed and laid down trying to sleep once more. She didn't understand why she wasn't freaking out with someone unknown outside her house and visiting her and her baby but she knew that she shouldn't be scared. The next moment she opened her heavy eyes for the last time she saw the fogged presence coming through the window after jumping from one branch of the magnificent tree. And still feeling weird for the visit and the possibility of being someone evil she couldn't help to smile weakly and close her eyes confidently and feel at ease after the hands took their common place on her belly and her face.

Sakura POV

The same freaking mist surrounded me. I started fighting to breathe normally after the memories disappeared from my confused and alarmed mind. Soon I was sobbing and crying shockingly and realizing what all of them meant still trapped in that white and crazy mist. My hands were on my trembling chin and I tried strongly to get a grip on myself and understand what happened. Memories about Sasuke visiting me when I was pregnant… of him watching his work after planting the sunflowers in our backyard… of him being worried and loving our daughter despite what he said and did before and later… why? WHY, SASUKE? I heard myself in that weird and hypnotizing quietness crying and I fought harder to keep myself together. And intimate moments of us when I felt that he was getting some emotion for me. Then I was overwhelmed aware that the thing holding my hand was him and I had let it go when I started sobbing and crying my heart out like the big idiot I am. I lowered my lame arms and I balled my fists completely mad. I shook my head brusquely looking around and searching for him with wide freaked out eyes. How could I be so damn freaking stupid?! I walked some steps unsure and scared fearing the worst and then I felt someone at my back. I turned immediately desperate, ashamed and angered with myself, sobbing harshly and I saw him standing there in front of me with his serious and known expression, totally calm and collected. I almost lost all my energy when I saw him there with me and I guessed that probably it was a dream but I didn't freaking care. I've been secretly envious of Miyu for having the way to communicate with him and see him all this time and it made me feel like a bad person and a bad mother, a terrible one, but now I understood her optimism against everything and her undying hope and high expectation for her father's recovery.

"Sasuke…"

I took a step slowly and he reached out for my hand tilting his head. He looked so sick and exhausted. I didn't lose time and immediately took his hand and I let him to pull me towards him and soon I was on his arms only separated by damn stupid millimeters. I let myself be drowned and encaged by his dark beautiful orbs staring intensely at me and I kept my hands held together against my chest fearing that if I did a wrong movement I was going to lose him and then I dreaded the reason of this strange and unique moment. Are you saying goodbye finally, Sasuke? I couldn't help to think in that as I was already bursting into maddening and heartfelt tears of incommensurable pain and unstoppable sorrow. But he clutched my hand and I could do was to chuckle and smile honestly just for him not wanting him to feel bad for me. Here I am, for you, so, tell me Sasuke, will you return?

Sakura POV

I watched Miyu playing with her dolls and Naruto. Hinata was coming soon with Ino. Tenten was with Temari who was six months pregnant and expecting another baby boy. The boys were busy delivering their results from missions done this week. Kakashi-sensei had visited earlier as Tsunade-sama. I was sitting as always in my spot at the chair beside Sasuke's bed. I laughed observing them enjoying it joyful and entertained. Since that dreamy encounter I had with Sasuke I hadn't had another one. It was only one, a wonderful and marvelous one, but I hadn't been able to reach him again in that way. Our daughter stopped dreaming with him too. I tried to stay here and sleep like that time but it was useless and it angered and then frustrated me leaving only behind scorching concern and endless sadness. The worst part of it was not remembering really what happened after I saw him in front of me and I couldn't do it not minding how much I fought for it. At the end I decided that I'll just keep it close to my heart and burned into my memory forever not minding what occurred from that day till now. I still didn't know if Sasuke tried to say goodbye to me in that dream and I was pretty affected, heartbroken and depressed after waking up from it but then I calmed myself down and I remembered that I had asked him to do it if it was indeed the last goodbye. I cried myself to sleep quietly in my room at home wondering and agonizing over the answer I didn't get. I didn't say anything yet to my friends because I couldn't speak of it without bursting into tears that I couldn't control anymore. I knew that I needed to tell them what I found out but not right now when I was still so fragile and feeling so vulnerable from it. The only clues leading to hope that I had were that days had gone by after that evening and he didn't die or got worse. He remained the same as the last time and I thought that maybe it hadn't been a last goodbye but more like an expectant see you later. And I really didn't know.

And here I am. I chuckled inwardly gazing at Sasuke unmovable as always. What are you waiting for, husband? To come back to us, my love. Yes, my love, even if he wasn't going to call me his. Right now it didn't matter. I only wanted him to open his amazing and stunning eyes and be present in our world. I sighed contented with just watching him there and then I heard Naruto laughing his head off making Miyu to laugh too. I smiled happily at the comedian play they had and soft and unexpected as the wind I felt something grasping at my fingers. I had let my hand on the mattress beside his but I hadn't taken it yet like I always did. I turned to him slowly feeling stiff with tension and with my heartbeat hammering in my ears, wanting to burst through my squeezed chest, and listening to the halting of my normal pattern of breathing. First I watched at my hand and I saw surprised and trembling already with overwhelming emotion his fingers moving and trying to grab into mine with hesitance and weakness. I hurried up and took his hand linking our hands together and then I lifted my tearful and reddened eyes to his face searching for his black ones. They were half opened still exhausted and heavy with resting dream. He blinked twice trying to see well and Naruto approached us carrying Miyu in his arms. The true and open delight, happiness and joy he felt were overtaking and impressively touching. He smirked with watering eyes clearing his constricted throat. Miyu was smiling peacefully and lovingly at her father but like if he hadn't been sleeping from long torturing months. I fixed my blurred and overpowered by immense relief and undying bliss stare on him smiling kindly and gripping softly his hand on mine. Sasuke looked at us distantly with softened expression.

"Welcome back."

I simply said letting my tears of joy to fall and chuckling still startled by the event. Naruto laughed and nodded at him with his own tears escaping from his blue sincere eyes. And when Sasuke tightened his grip on my fingers I knew that we had won this struggling and hurting battle at last. We'll win the war someday, I swear. I didn't want to bring the darkness back to this miraculous moment. I swear to you that we'll win it not matter what.