There are many endings to this story.

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amo, amas, amant

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One:

She looks down at them, at these stupid boys that she used to think of as hers—the centers of her world—and heals them. She stops the bleeding and she accepts Sasuke's apology and there are no lingering shadows in her heart, nothing like resentment or anger in her tearful laughter.

Sakura meets Sasuke at the gate with Kakashi and asks him, again, to take her with him because she'd never stopped loving him in the uncomplicated way of a young girl and she still has the good grace to blush. He taps her forehead and she doesn't flinch and she doesn't wonder and she isn't bitter. She doesn't wake up in the middle of the night shaking with nightmares, with her shirt soaked in sweat and the wind howling through broken walls because her village stay lay in ruins.

Naruto becomes Hokage, she marries Sasuke, and they raise a child together. Naruto brings Hinata and their kids over for birthdays and dinners and play-dates, and Sakura looks at their smiling faces across her tidy living room and she is happy—so incredibly, incandescently happy because of how easy this all is, how easy and inevitable and meant to be.

Two:

But in reality.

In reality Sakura looks down at the two boys lying on the ground, and her mind stops and her entire world narrows to the green chakra around her hands and the bleeding bodies at her feet. Sasuke tells her that he is sorry, and she doesn't say a word—partly because she's concentrating so hard, funneling chakra from the dredges of her reserves, and partly because she doesn't know how to answer him.

There is silence as she finishes cauterizing the wounds, and Sakura feels like her tongue has grown huge and heavy, sticking to the roof of her mouth with all the words that she can't say. She thinks about crying once the healing is done, because that would give her something to do; Naruto and Sasuke know what to do when Sakura cries, it is when she is silent and unmoving that she confuses them.

Instead, Sakura pulls Sasuke to his feet and slings his good arm around her shoulder and Kakashi does the same with Naruto. The four of them stand there, and this is Team Seven again, this is everything that she has ever wanted. Sasuke is a hot, burning weight against her side and when she meets Naruto's eyes over dark spikes, she forces a smile.

He'd kept his promise.

Sakura sits between Naruto and Sasuke's cots; beyond the seclusion of the thin curtains, the rest of the medical tent buzzes with the sound of nurses and mednin, but in this corner the noise is as muted as the afternoon light spilling through the thick canvas, tingeing everything a soft gold.

Sakura feels as if everything beyond the curtains is moving at breakneck speed, while here in their corner time has slowed to a stop. She can't keep herself from staring at either of the sleeping boys, her eyes unblinking just in case she misses a flutter of the lashes, a slight movement of a hand. They breathe deep and slow, not quite in sync with the other, and in sleep they look younger than she ever remembers them being. It's intimate, her watching while they quietly heal in their dreams, and Sakura's fingers itch with the urge to touch their face, their hair, their hands.

This is no quiet, sterile hospital, and there are no apples for her to peel, but Sakura can do so much more for them now, and she keeps watch long after the sun has set.

Out in the field, Naruto and Sasuke fight their own battles, but here, while they're vulnerable in sleep, she will be their guard.

Sakura goes to see Sasuke in his holding cell without Naruto sometimes. Given their past history, the guards never let her inside, instead she sits on the ground, fingers clenched around the cold metal bars. She doesn't know what she is trying to accomplish, what she is trying to do.

The apology he'd offered, dying on the ground, hangs in the air during every visit. Sakura still doesn't know what to say. Sometimes, she wants to yell; mostly, she wants answers.

She seems to lose all her words around him, this dark haired man with the red, red eyes. But even if she could unravel her thoughts from her tongue, she couldn't give them to him here, surrounded by eavesdropping guards. It's funny, because even though they're sitting only a few feet apart, even though she thinks this is the closest to an understanding that they have ever come, Sakura has never felt further away from Uchiha Sasuke.

"Sasuke-kun." Why?

Sasuke moves, and the guards around them all shuffle and rearrange themselves, but he is only leaning forward, and then he is wrapping his hand around hers. Sakura stares at their intertwined fingers and tries not to cry.

"Sakura-chan, it's late. You should get back to the tents." Naruto's voice surprises her, and she wonders when he'd learn to be so quiet.

Sakura turns from her spot on the riverbank, and it's dark enough that she can only make out the white of his teeth.

"Come sit with me." Naruto hesitates for a moment, and Sakura has time to frown before she feels him settling next to her on the ground. Their elbows touch.

"Why are you still up?"

"Couldn't sleep, too restless." Naruto's answer is succinct, and Sakura hums in reply. She understands that, the need to keep moving and the need to be useful.

The night air is cool, and Naruto radiates warmth. Sakura struggles against the sudden desire to lean closer but soon gives in, her head sinking against his shoulder. She turns her face against his arm, towards the smell of grass and sunshine, but the blond stiffens underneath her. Sakura presses closer, daring him to move.

Naruto stays stiff but still, and in the heavy cover of darkness Sakura almost wants to ask him, what's next?

Because there are expectations now that Naruto and Sasuke have finally put their demons to bed, an expectation of where their story will go and who they'll be. But there is still war in her bones, war and loss, and Sakura doesn't know if she is ready.

"I don't know, Sakura-chan." His answer startles her, and she realizes that she must have spoken out loud.

Finally, Naruto stands, and she misses the heat of him almost immediately.

"But we'll figure it out together. Get some rest, okay?"

Sakura stays by the riverbank long after he's gone, and wonders when it'd become so difficult to talk to her closest friend.

Sakura dreams: she dreams of snow on the ground and her mouth against Naruto's ear; she dreams about her hand holding a kunai to a fan-emblazoned back; she dreams them dead on the ground, like Neji, eyes open but unblinking even as she pumps chakra into their broken bodies; she dreams that she is holding their hearts, one in each hand, rhythmically pumping them and knowing that if she ever stopped they would die; she dreams not of war but of the aftermath.

She dreams of a hand wrapped around hers, and the fingers are not long and pale.

They only stop the rebuilding to attend the funerals. Every loss is heavy, and Naruto always stands at the front of the crowd, she and the rest of Team Seven flanking him. Sometimes, there are looks and dirty hisses. Sakura usually draws Sasuke closer to her side, and Naruto silences anyone who dares to say anything too overt with a single look. No matter how damaged, no matter his reasons, Sasuke is their's.

The Uchiha never acknowledges the baited whispers, and Sakura knows he has heard far worse.

Sakura can see that Naruto blames himself for each and every death, and she wishes that she knew how to pound it into his skull that the only reason they are all still standing here today is because of him. He is always withdrawn during the funerals, but today, today he hasn't spoken a single word to anybody. Today they are saying goodbye to Neji.

The Hyuuga clan are gathered at the front of the assembled villagers, and Naruto stands beside Hinata as she addresses the crowd, her voice soft but steady. "Neji-san was more than just a branch member of the family…Neji-san was my cousin, he taught us that we could outgrow the hatred and indoctrination of our past history. Just like Naruto-kun, he inspired us to change and rise above ourselves by becoming more than the clan ever expected him to be."

Naruto smiles at the end of the speech, and even though Sakura is standing at the back of the muttering crowd, assembled with her team and the rest of the Rookie Nine, she can see the small movement of Hinata's hand reaching out and grasping Naruto's fingers. Sakura has a sudden vision of herself running through the crowd and up, up, up the podium and tearing the Hyuuga heiress away.

She blinks and it's gone.

Sakura watches Naruto and Sasuke bicker after a (one-armed) sparring match, and she thinks that there isn't a single thing in the world that can compare to this.

"Are you going to join them, hag?" Sai emerges from the shadows of the trees behind her, and Sakura shrugs. She doesn't want to interrupt the fight, because for the past few weeks, every time she has joined the two Naruto had made a hasty excuse to leave her alone with Sasuke.

Sakura doesn't know how to approach Sasuke on her own, but she's learned to pretend that everything makes sense. Sasuke isn't ready to tell her, and Sakura isn't sure she was ready to hear the answer either.

Still, she wishes that Naruto would stop leaving, because aren't they a team?

Sakura thinks again about the roles that they're all expected to play.

She finally corners him one day, sitting on the outskirts of the village perimeters hunched over a pile of half-sharpened kunai.

"You can't keep avoiding me forever, you know."

Naruto doesn't look up from his weapons. "I'm not avoiding you."

"Look at me."

His movements still, and it takes a long second for him to finally look up. When he does, Sakura is staggered by how intense the blue of his eyes are; she realizes that this is the first time in weeks that he has looked at her directly.

Again her dreams: snow on the ground, and her voice at Naruto's ear; her lips against his skin. She resists the urge to lean down and touch him.

And then he's looking away again. "I haven't been avoiding you, Sakura-chan."

Sakura isn't sure whether she wants to punch him or grab onto him—maybe both, in that order. Instead she sinks down to her heels and tries to meet his eyes again, and even she is aware that her voice is pathetically needy when she says, "Yes, yes you have! I don't know why, I just…we're still a team, aren't we? We're still friends?"

He looks at her again then, and the grin she receives is both familiar and not. "Of course! Team Seven is forever, Sakura-chan!"

Before she can stop him, before she can call him out, Naruto has gathered all his weapons and left. At the very least he'd had the grace to walk away instead of using the shunshin, but then Sakura realizes that's probably only because he couldn't form the seals with only one arm.

She should have grabbed him.

Sakura sees Naruto with Hinata sometimes, talking quietly around the village, and she can't help but remember the other woman standing up to Pein, her voice unwavering as she told Naruto to look at her, that she had been the one to love him all along.

Sakura is happy for them. She wants to be happy for them. She wants to forget snow on the ground and his voice in her ear and the tight feeling in her chest when she watched him overcome all the hate in his life to become the hero that he'd always wanted to be.

Sakura thinks about Sasuke and wishes that things were as simple as they used to be.

"You're leaving already?" Once again Sakura stands at Konoha's gates, and once again Sasuke stands in front of her, ready to leave.

This time though, she isn't alone, and she's grown enough to understand his need for both time and space: Sasuke needs it to disentangle himself from the lies and the hate and the bloodshed, to figure out who he'd been before the vengeance and the war. Sakura understands, but her heart still twists at the thought of him leaving so soon, only months after they'd gotten him back.

"I'll be back."

In those words is a promise, and Sakura finally trusts him enough to let him ago.

But Naruto.

"Stop running away from me!"

"Sakura-chan, let go."

She refuses, her fingers curling around the sleeve of his new prosthetic arm. "Just stop, tell me why you've been avoiding me, tell me what I did wrong."

Naruto still isn't looking at her, and she feels like she's choking on air. Her office at the newly reconstructed hospital feels impossibly small with the two of them in it, but Naruto fills the space like he always does when he walks into a room, and she's sick and tired of watching him go.

He avoids her question and says instead: "I have to go see Kakashi-sensei about some council business."

Sakura bites her lip so hard that she draws blood, but she doesn't let go. She knows she's being selfish, but just this one last time, this one last time…

"No." She cheats, enhancing the last tug with a little bit of chakra, and Naruto is whirling around to face her; his eyes are wild and suddenly Sakura is almost scared.

"What do you want, Sakura-chan? Can't you see that I'm trying to make this as easy as possible? Aren't you happy?" The with Sasuke is left unsaid, and Sakura wonders at what Naruto must have imagined happening every time he left her alone with the last Uchiha.

"No," she says again, and she's suddenly pulling him closer, and closer, until their faces are a hair's breadth away. His blue eyes are shuttered, and she thinks that he must not have forgotten that snowy day either.

"Sakura-chan…" He exhales her name across her lips and Sakura finally lets go of his arm to press her hands to his cheeks, her thumbs tracing the lines of his whiskers.

Sakura kisses Naruto.

Sakura kisses Naruto, and the world doesn't end.

His mouth is still against hers for a long heartbeat, but then he's moving, his chapped lips slanting over her own again and again and again. He steals whatever breath she has left in her lungs and she's only vaguely aware of his hands slipping down to grip her hips, the heat branding her. He jerks her closer to him and Sakura gasps, her lips parting in surprise. Naruto takes advantage and licks his way into her mouth, and she has one dizzying moment to register the fact that he tastes like dango before he's pushing her away.

Sakura stares at him, her heartbeat pounding in her ears, nd wonders when the world had narrowed to the rapid rise and fall of their chests and the burning blue of his eyes.

"I'm sorry," he mutters, and before she has a chance to compose herself, to stop him, Naruto is gone.

Sakura thinks about the roles that they're expected to play, and she wants to splinter them like she would a mountain or a tree.

She doesn't see him for a week.

Sakura dreams of large hands and broad backs and tan skin salty underneath her tongue. She dreams about snow on the ground and she dreams about confessions, and then Sakura dreams about blood.

Shhh, it's alright Sakura-chan, I'm here, you're okay.

In the morning, she wonders if she'd also dreamt him holding her through her nightmares.

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tbc

note: Surprise? I'm sorry, this is complete and utter trash because I haven't written anything creatively in an embarrassingly long time, but then the finale happened and I found out I cared way more than I thought I did, so.

Part two will be from Naruto's perspective, and how soon that will be up depends on how badly I'm going to fail my quant exam. As always, reviews and concrit are appreciated (yes, I know I'm rusty)! Thank you for reading.