A/N: I haven't written a SasuSaku fanfic for many years now. After reading Naruto 699 and 700, I felt that a childhood dream had come true. I have been relentlessly supporting SasuSaku for eight years now, and it becoming canon resulted in a great moment of inspiration that went into this fanfic! Please enjoy and review.

i. prologue

She ran. Her feet hammered the ground, her heels stinging from the force, as she ran like she had never run before, heart pounding and head spinning and lungs on fire. She gasped for breath, the pain searing through the side of her stomach, but she didn't stop. She couldn't stop.

He's here.

He's home.

She couldn't grasp the reality of it. She wouldn't, until she saw for herself the realisation of the wish she had wished for so long now.

She felt him before she saw him, as she rounded the corner into the road that led up to the village gate. Something shifted in the air, a pleasantness underlined with building anticipation, permeated still with a sense of trepidation … she didn't know what to expect.

"Sakura, huh?"

The way he said her name, the way he had always said it. The raven-haired man that stood before her seemed familiar yet distant, a stranger she had always known. He looked past Naruto and directly at her, eyes expressionless, the ghost of a smile etched across his face as he allowed Naruto to pull him forward, towards her.

She let the air out of her burning lungs in a whoosh. Her head throbbed, a whirl of intangible thoughts swirling in her mind, as she took two steps forward. She was unsure of what to do.

He raised his one hand (the other was still missing, she realised faintly) and extended it towards her. She offered her own, palm open, uncertain. But his went past hers, upwards, until two fingers pressed gently into her forehead. Undisguised affection flowed through the motion, opening a floodgate of memories of a similar gesture passed between them exactly one year ago.

"Good to see you, Sakura."

ii. epilogue

There were times when he would laugh, laugh so fully and so wholeheartedly that, for a moment, she would forget he was Sasuke Uchiha. The happiness would erupt from the core of his being, flowing through his entire system so freely that his face would glow. The peace in his eyes would overtake the shadows she had come to associate with those inky orbs of his, and she would catch a radiant glimpse into the boy he used to be before that fateful night years ago that had caused him so much pain and suffering. In moments like these, she would come to understand why she had loved him so relentlessly, why she had waited so long. In moments like these, she would fall, again and again and again.

There were other times when he would collapse into her, sobs racking through his entire body, his very bones saturated with the aching intensity of grief, as the gravity of the things he had seen and done would pull him into twisting oblivion. She would hold him to her, a man anguished and weakened and haunted by his past, and tell him over and over that he needn't be alone anymore. These were the muggy nights that found them both broken, two kids who had grown up too fast, hearts and souls hardened by war.

They eventually found solace in each other, gradually warming the stone coldness in their hearts, letting the scars on their souls heal in the solitude of their own small world. In time, Sasuke and Sakura would learn to live with themselves, make peace with their sins and their pasts, and come to find the contentment in each other and in those around them that had evaded them all these years.