A/N: Because the angst that Naruto Gaiden has put me through is too much, I decided to write this even angstier plot. Sorrynotsorry.

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"Sasuke-kun?" Tears were rolling down her rosy cheeks, staining what once he thought what his to take. She was crying, standing aghast and useless on a field of dying flowers. The dry petals of each of them were fragile and ready to take off with the wind, with the right amount of force, just like the woman in the midst of it all. Heavy with immense strength but light as a plume with weakness.

Useless; pathetic; stupid, stupid, stupid.

He hears his name being whispered a second time, and then he's lifting his gaze from petite ankles and trembling legs, to slender thighs and tiny waist. But he doesn't want to stare into her eyes, "Sasuke-kun?" He doesn't want to, he doesn't need to do this.

Her green, deep sea of uneasiness and emotions–and fear and love and everything that he can't stand–would make him feel guiltier than he already is, were he to gaze at it. She's everything he can't stand.

The clear is ample and to the sides he can see trees, and soon, the sun is there no more and thunder roars in the sky. Although the clear is expense, the sky above them seems to shrink with every breath he takes, constricting his body in a feral embrace.

His head is pounding.

As his eyes go up and up and up along her body, he sees her hands. They're shaking, sweaty with nervousness and something he can't decipher. His eyes reach her stomach—covered by a red top which is strangely redder than usual, dirty with a darker colour imprinted on the right side—her chest, and stops at her neck.

"Why did you leave?"

And those words make his eyes drop to fragile ankles and trembling legs once again.

They're in a field full of lies and despair, and he only sees darkness even with the new sun radiating off her presence near.

"Sasuke-kun?"

He grabs at his hair.

No.

"Why did you leave me?"

She's crying, he can feel she's crying, can feel her sobbing into the lost abyss of his soul. She's taking steps. She's reaching to him. He can feel her getting closer; he can taste her scent.

No.

"Sakura," he spits, suddenly unaware of the close proximity and the scarce atmosphere. He closes his eyes for a moment when her lips brush against his neck, favouring the manner her hands are traveling up to his hair locks. He opens his mismatched eyes, still looking down, concentrating his vision on her stained collarbone.

"Come back, Sasuke-kun," she whispers, "I miss you."

He doesn't feel anything; he doesn't want to look up.

But her words choke in the dry air and he's tempted to, for a moment, "Sakura, stop," he has to bite back in order to stop feeling his fingers twitch with the inexplicable need to crush her skull in his rough hands. He's not a monster–he must control the urge.

"You killed her, you hear me?" He frowns, overly confused, "you killed our baby."

And then the flowers are there no longer and his eyes are pouring crimson and she's bleeding with blood that is not hers but of their little girl.

He lets his right arm drop to his sides, staring at nothing in particular.

No. It can't be. It mustn't be.

The previously flower field is now vacant of any flora; it's a deserted area now.

Sakura.

"Sasuke-kun?"

"Sakura."

"Stop it, Sasuke-kun, you killed her!" He didn't, how could he? He's not a monster, he's not. "You're killing me!"

He growls under his breath, his knuckles white. "Stop!" He yells.

"Look at me, Sasuke-kun," her hands are on his cheeks, and he can't hear her sobs anymore over the sound of his ears ringing.

His fingers twitch. He can't touch her.

He'll look at her. He'll look at those pools of soft, summer grass and smooth caresses. He can.

But when he musters up the courage to lift his eyes high enough to look, barely, at her chin, it's already too late.

He wakes up.

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"Sasuke-kun?"

With something close to a scream of agony, he almost doubles over and throws up on the fine carpet of the dimly lit room. Almost. Sakura is holding him, with her legs on either side of his hips, and her hands on his neck, chin, anything she can get a hold of with him trying to get out, trying to avoid her like a plague.

"It's okay," she whispers, caressing his hair, "I'm here."

He looks at her, genuinely confused for the first time in years, brow deepened upon finding the source of his torture, "Sakura..." He whispers.

"Yeah, I'm here," he can make out how she lifts the corners of her lips into a grand smile. For a second, he thinks it's probable that he may never know how she can stand this. Him. Nights of torture and days of suffering and pain. "It's alright, Sasuke-kun," she reassures him, calmly, "it was just another dream."

Nightmare, he thinks, is better fitting.

Then, just as he is beginning to calm down and his sympathetic nervous system is less active, a loud cry is heard from the room next door.

The system kicks in right once more. His eyes are soon wide, looking at his wife in alarm, "is that–"

"Yes, it is," her usually soothing voice is suddenly not so tranquillising to him for a moment, and he's more anxious than before as he doesn't believe her. The dream had felt so stupidly real. "I don't know how she slept through all of this, really, it was about time," she laughs off, shrugging herself from on top of him. He quickly grabs on to her waist.

"Wha–"

"You're okay," he whispers, bringing her closer to his form, covering his face with the aroma coming from her floral hair—of fields with colourful, alive flowers and laughter and children and love and everything that he admires. She's everything he admires. They both are.

He remains holding her close for a little more than two minutes, before letting go and watching her give him an apologetic smile, standing up to attend to their baby—alive, loved by his father and mother, alive, alive.

He stares at the space where she left, hearing the hushed, soft voice of Sakura, probably rocking Sarada in her arms while whispering sweet things the baby doesn't even comprehend.

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She returns an hour later, and, unsurprisingly, her husband is with his back to the door, and his eyes are staring at the closed window of their bedroom. Sakura sighs.

As soon she climbs on the bed, next to him, she inches closer to his back and starts tracing little symbols with no meaning on the bare skin with hopes of getting him to talk first.

"Um..." She's unsuccessful and fruitless and, after minutes, she gives in first, per usual, "was it the same dream?"

She's met with no possible answer. She knows what it means. "Hey, don't worry," she voices, confident, "nothing is going to happen. We are a family now, right?"

No answer is heard. She focuses on the wide, faded scars adorning his back. She tries to find other words to say. Tries to think about that dream.

The dream that makes her heart ache and his body burn with hatred toward his own thoughts—he doesn't want to explain, he never does, but he's told her that it's nothing countless times and she trusts him enough to believe him. It's the dream that has plagued him with guilt. It's a dream dreamt every night for the past week.

He leaves her; he kills Sarada; he hates her; she hates him.

That's all she knows from the quick, first seconds after he usually awakens in horror and perspiration, when he murmurs words that are close to incoherent about what had happened—and that's all he wants her to know.

He doesn't talk. His breathing is well paced and calm against her hand. But she knows he isn't asleep, she can feel his chakra out of control.

She's tired; this has happened enough times, she muses. So, in one last attempt at making him talk to her, she bites her lower lip, "I love you, Sasuke-kun," she breathes.

Very slowly, he turns around, then, and doesn't look at her verdant, worried eyes in the darkness of the room. He wraps his sole arm around her and rests his head on the pillows, his chin above her head.

She feels his hold tightening for a minute and then loosening gradually, and she understands—but also she doesn't, because they're supposed to be okay, right? Then why was he having nightmares of killing them all every night for the last week? Then why was he preoccupied with everything? Then why did he feel guilt for the smallest things? She sees it all the time now in his eyes, he can't fool her anymore.

He was happy when Sarada was born a few months ago, he was happy a month ago, he was happy two weeks ago. But a week ago—and now—he is not happy anymore, and she doesn't know why.

She dreams that night of unanswered questions and he dreams of a deep void he can't escape from.