A/N: Because I'm fucking angry. I'm tired of people who believe they're entitled to anything, people who think I will atone for my beliefs, and especially the pieces of shit that believe I could cry at their funerals. Fuck them. Also, I'm tired of resolutions and static characters, so fuck it all. The title is what it is because that's what I'm listening to. Specifically, Mumford & Sons. Now, read.
She placed the peeled and cored apple slices on the small grey table beside his bed, swiping a band-aid from one of its drawers—exactly where they should be.
Her hands shook so badly from being near him, her thumb had a small cut from her sharpest kunai.
Ino said forgiveness was a two way street.
Ino was usually right—at least, she thought she usually was.
Sasuke never seemed to adhere to the logistics of rules. He never gave a fuck about how things "should" be.
With Sasuke, forgiveness was a one-way road that lead to a dead end, and who was at the end of it? Himself, of course.
In a self conscious gesture, Sakura tucked a piece of hair that wasn't out of place—everything was exactly where it should be—behind her ear. Sasuke watched her with dark eyes hidden behind bandages. He hasn't healed yet. She knew he could still place her face in this room amongst cold surgical steel and sheer curtains and sunlight.
The crisp smell of apples gave her away.
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folk music
you wanted my attention, but denied me your affection
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She tried explaining it to him. She did, really.
"How could you do it? It's Sasuke. I thought you loved him. I thought you cared about Team Seven!"
She couldn't talk to Naruto. She could laugh with him, hug him, watch the stars with him, draw strength from him to stand the fuck up from the mud-slicked ground, take her tanto and shove it into the gut of the nearest enemy while it poured rain and she had forgotten the reason she wanted to keep fighting because fuck it, she was tired and hungry and selfish and—
She just couldn't talk to him.
He understood, definitely. It wasn't a matter of comprehension or confusion. He understood her motives and reasoning and the pain in her heart, but none of it mattered.
He didn't care.
In the midst of retelling glorious stories of blood and gore that made you remember the rotting stench of your best friend that was there for you when you needed a team to take the Chunin Exam with or fix your hair as blood dripped from your scalp rotting on the ground behind you, the Yamanaka Clan being left without a definitive leader, everyone always manages to forget they don't actually know the hero who swooped in and "saved them all".
They all manage to dismiss their own efforts.
It makes her stomach churn because no one can really preach about teamwork but then decide to "carry all of the burden" on his own. Naruto believes he's a Messiah and maybe he is, but his word is not law, at least not to her, and she still sees him as the doofy kid that pretends to be a booger hanging from the Hokage Faces.
He will never be the "Child of the Prophecy" to her—especially when he admonished her so harshly after the war was over, after everyone praised him and Sasuke and they had leaned on each other as they stumbled to her medical tent, engrossed in conversation as Shizune healed them.
A foolish part of her used to believe Sasuke wouldn't allow himself to be healed by her senpai, but that part in her was charred and the roasted ashes flew away in the wind, along with the piece of her heart that said maybe things will be different now... maybe I'm gonna matter.
Whatever.
She thinks of none of it anymore, now she's just angry. It's the only thing she feels as she sees Naruto barge into her office and hears him excitedly ask her if she has seen Sasuke that day.
With a smile plastered on her face, she tells him of a silent visit with a plate of peeled and cored apple slices.
Naruto always rejoices and she can feel another part of her die a little more...
The part that thinks she can do anything with Naruto at all.
Sakura does not believe the dead deserve unadulterated respect.
That is bullshit.
If you die with mud smeared on your name by the many you've damned, you deserve nothing. If you were a criminal, a rapist, a murderer—like they all are—you deserve nothing.
She is ready for the flames—or maybe nothing at all, because she has given up on believing in a place where only bad people go to suffer—that may swallow her once she leaves the earth.
Sakura is unsure how she should react to Kakashi's name being on the new memorial stone of the village, dedicated to those who "fell" during the Fourth Shinobi War.
Naruto talks to the scratch in the stone while Sasuke bows his head, probably thinking apologies, but never saying them aloud.
Sakura is sure of what her reaction should be, but unsure of what her reaction will be.
Kakashi has done nothing for her except give her a team.
She doesn't visit.
The clan heads are ruling Konoha as they groom Naruto for the Hokage seat.
Tsunade's ashes are in an urn made of jade on top of her fireplace.
Sakura drinks in the evenings—sometimes with Shizune, most times without—and stares at it.
Shizune calls it "torturing herself". Sakura doesn't call it anything.
It has been a three months since the war and nothing has changed.
She still mourns the only teacher that ever gave a shit about her.
It is an impulsive decision that she decides to stab Sasuke, so unlike the first time she felt the need to kill him.
It just happens one night when she should be drunk from the amount of sake she's downed but she's not because she's been drinking since she was thirteen but she actually is—she just won't admit it.
And she won't admit that maybe it wasn't so impulsive, either.
Her legs feel like lead as she walks up to the mammoth restaurant Ichiraku's has turned into and she stops right in front of the man she's looking for.
He won't apologize to her. He won't. He refuses and reminds her of something she is not compliant to call a mistake anymore.
"You tried to kill me, remember? Twice. I was just defending myself."
"Remember how you wanted to end humanity?"
He is silent to that and she stands in front of him in the center of Ichiraku's.
It is lovely how he throws that word in her face.
"Defend". It's a noun. One that is synonymous with protect.
How fucking precious.
Just as he used to defend her—protect her. Break the arms off of other ninja for her and—for a second—deflect Juubi clones for her.
People love to forget all Sasuke has done, all that he would've gladly partaken in to destroy them and make them suffer the most their bodies could handle as they screamed for mercy to their home. They had no problem gracing him as a hero, as if he had ever looked for their gratitude.
As if he ever gave a shit about anything, but his fucked up clan.
And now there was Naruto, who defended Sasuke in ever sense of the word.
Naruto stands at Sasuke's side and tells her to stop her to "stop it, Sakura-chan! Calm down so we can talk about it".
She sinks a kunai into his side—it was neither deep nor a life-threatening spot.
The sound reminds her of walking through mud and playing in the rain with Ino or training in it with Tsunade.
Naruto stares at her in disbelief as she gets the last word.
"I just needed to prove to myself that I could do it. Get to the hospital before you bleed out."
She relishes in the feelings battling to be shown in Sasuke's eyes—shock, appall, and betrayal.
The last is the sweetest of all.
They find her pacing herself on the road out of Konoha the following afternoon.
She notes that there isn't a bench anymore for what must be the thousandth time.
"Sakura-chan, please don't go! You don't have to be this way! We can work everything out and be a team again! I promise I'm not mad!"
His persuasive smile and bright eyes don't call out to her and for a second she wishes they were dead.
A minute passes and she still wishes they were dead.
Naruto rushes behind her and tries to pull her over his shoulder, like cargo.
After the smoke dissipates, Sasuke points out he's holding a log.
Sakura does not care how Naruto yells in frustration and how he yells his anger towards her for the world to hear—words that would hurt if she didn't realize she hated him so much. Sakura does not care to see how Sasuke sees her clearly from her perch on a tree only feet away from Konoha's gate.
She doesn't care how his hand lays on the healing wound she gave him just hours before she packed a bag with Tsunade's ashes, a storage scroll, and soldier pills.
His eyes coax her to stay for the minute that passes between them until she speeds out of Konoha.
The air feels good in her lungs and she tries to still her pounding heart.
She doesn't want to heal.
Still angry.
R/R/Favorite/Whatever, or just don't.
xx mm.