Love, Sakura

Home is not a place you can leave behind; home is a thing you carry with you, as real as the travel pack on your back, and just as heavy.

Sasuke first discovered this when he abandoned Konoha. Only once he was away, surrounded by strangers, did he realize that the lilt of the Hidden Leaf was branded in his voice. At night he would lie on his side and dream of people best forgotten: Iruka-sensei, the Sandaime, the rookies, Naruto and Kakashi and Sakura. (Sakura most of all, but he didn't allow himself to read much into this.) He came to hate those visions worse than his nightmares. It hurt more, for some reason, to see the things he gave up than the things that were taken from him.

And later, as he traveled the world, Sasuke found pieces of home in the most foreign of places. He saw Naruto's spirit and Sakura's kindness in the hospitality of strangers. Bowls of ramen and copies of Icha Icha books and cherry blossom trees reminded him of those he had left behind for a second time.

Today he sits at a table in a River Country inn, rereading the last letter Sakura sent him. The paper is worn, the creases softened from many foldings and unfoldings. She wrote to him about the efforts to restore Konoha to its former glory, her work opening a clinic for children, how everything seems to be starting over, rebuilding and remaking, not unlike Sasuke himself. She signed it "Love, Sakura," and now he traces the characters that make up her name.

In his pack there are seventeen letters from Sakura, nine from Naruto, four from Kakashi, and he has read and reread all of them more times than he can count. Naruto's messages are nearly illegible, riddled with grammar mistakes, full of an unfailing optimism. Kakashi's are short, to the point, written in a hurry. But Sakura's letters are something else. Her handwriting is precise and feminine, and he can imagine the care she put into each sentence, can practically see it in every line of ink.

Sasuke is (was) ambidextrous, so he can write well with his right hand, just as fluently and neatly as he could have with his left. It was not his missing arm that made him wary to respond. Still, he wrote back, answered every letter diligently. All but this last, all but the one he holds in his hand now. He received it two weeks ago, when he was helping a family in the Earth Country build a barn.

There are sixteen letters in his pack from Sakura, and every one she signed with her name alone. Not this one, though. This one she signed with ink-and-paper love.

Author's Notes: So this is the first piece in a post-699 series I'm writing about Sasuke's return to Konoha. The summary is a quote from Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin. Also, many thanks to my lovely beta uchihasass for looking over this!