and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Part One

She pours her love into ink and paper. Letters carefully crafted, each character labored over, as she searches her heart for the right words. Sakura reports on matters small and large in Konoha, the other rookies, Kakashi and Naruto. She asks how he is and where he is, but refrains from writing the question that matters most: When will you come home?

Sakura isn't counting the days—she isn't—but it has been two years, nine months, and one week since Sasuke left Konoha. And still, she has no idea when he'll return for good. Or if he will. Sometimes it's hard to believe that he ever plans to.

The hawk waits patiently for her to finish her letter. She reads it and rereads it, praying that the hopelessness beneath her yearning isn't evident, then attaches the missive to the bird's foot. Sasuke's hawk carries her words away, and if there's anything she should take back, it's a little late now.

Sakura wonders how long she'll have to wait for a response. Sometimes it's only days, but there have been stretches of four or five weeks between Sasuke's letters. There's no rhyme or reason to it, no way to predict when she'll hear from him again.

August fades into September, September into October. The hot summer air cools to autumn's chill, Naruto turns twenty, and still, Sakura has not heard back from Sasuke. At first she's worried, but then she asks Naruto if he has received word from him lately, and her friend says, "Yeah, I got a letter a couple of weeks ago. He's near Suna now, I think."

After that, Sakura stops worrying and tries to quit caring (an impossible feat), because if Sasuke can't take the time to sit down and write to her, then he doesn't deserve her attention.

Seven years. That's how long she's been waiting for Sasuke to come home and stay. Letters and promises and sweet memories are all she has to cling to. But these things, Sakura finds, are not enough. Not anymore.

It starts on a cool winter's day after training. She and Naruto lie side by side in the grass, sweating and breathing hard, hands almost but not quite touching. She complains about Kakashi trying to foist his paperwork off on her (again), and even though it isn't the least bit funny to Sakura, Naruto laughs. He looks boyish and carefree, blonde hair tousled, blue eyes bright with humor, and for a moment she thinks of how beautiful he is. The feeling is both foreign and familiar, one part ache to two parts affection, and it isn't until later that night, as she tosses and turns in bed, that Sakura realizes exactly what it was: longing.

She looked at her best friend and wanted him. Not unlike the way she wants Sasuke, except that it is gentler, less pointed and less painful. A subtler kind of desire. The sort that warms you all over but doesn't steal your breath.

The next day, Sakura takes a sixteen-hour shift at the hospital, just to keep away from Naruto, but when she returns home he's sitting on her doorstep. It's one of his more charming quirks that, even though he's a ninja who could get into her apartment without breaking a sweat, Naruto would rather sit on an uncomfortable concrete stoop in the middle of November than invade her personal space without permission.

(Sasuke isn't half so polite; in the weeks after the war, she once returned from a graveyard shift to find him asleep on her little loveseat, long legs stretched out so that his feet hung off the armrest.)

Naruto smiles at her, stands, stretches-and she does her level best not to notice the way his shirt rides up, exposing a span of bare, tan skin; her level best is not very good.

"Hey, Sakura-chan. Wanna do something?"

"It's ten o'clock," Sakura says, even though hour of day or night has rarely kept them from spending time together.

"Ichiraku is still open," he says, grinning in the way that lets her know he's mostly joking.

She rolls her eyes, steps past him, and unlocks her door. If it were any other evening, she would invite him in, so that's exactly what Sakura does now.

They sit on her living room floor, watch a scary movie, and eat double chocolate chunk ice cream straight from the carton.

"She's gonna die," Sakura says around a fudge piece, pointing her spoon decisively at the television.

"Which one?" Naruto asks.

"The pretty one with the fake blue braid."

"How d'you know it's fake?"

Sakura snorts. "Nobody's naturally that color."

He laughs at her. "Says the girl with pink hair."

"Woman with pink hair." She raps his knuckles with her spoon just hard enough to make him say, "Ow, Sakura-chan!"

Naruto frowns and asks, "How come you're meaner to me than you are to everybody else?"

"Because I know you'll love me anyway," Sakura says.

Naruto blushes, scratches the back of his head, and looks away from her.

I'm stupid. She didn't even think of how he might take that. "I'm sorry, I only meant that—"

"It's okay," Naruto says, and he waves away the rest of what she was going to say before Sakura even knows what it might have been.

Sakura's heart has often been confused, but never divided. No matter how conflicted her feelings for Sasuke left her, she has always cared for him with an unrivaled singularity that refused to fade. This is as true now as it was when she was thirteen, but distance and despair have worn her down. She misses warmth, affection, touch, closeness. Most of all she misses Sasuke, but he's gone and might never come back.

The love of her life hasn't been in her life for years, so what kind of love is that, really?

"Sakura?" Naruto asks. "What's wrong?"

She's sitting beside him on the roof of the music school (a physical manifestation of peacetime if ever there was one). They've been drinking from the same thermos of hot tea, an intimacy that Sakura doesn't care to give too much thought.

Maybe she should lie, but Naruto is the best friend she has in the world, and Sakura finds she wants to talk to him.

"I was thinking about Sasuke," she says. "Wondering if he'll ever come home."

"Course he will," Naruto says. "This is his place, just as much as it's yours or mine. He'll be back."

"But when?" Sakura asks, and she can't help it if anger colors her words. "It's been three years since he left to find redemption. Like redemption is a thing you can pick up off the ground if you just search for it in the right place. After everything he's done maybe—" She stops herself, because she's hurt and furious, and if she keeps talking she'll say something she doesn't mean.

Naruto frowns at her, his kind face serious and concerned. "You're afraid he'll never get what he's looking for. That you'll be waiting on him forever."

"Yeah," Sakura says, and she hates that her voice catches and her eyes sting. It's not fair to Naruto to cry about this in front of him. Her pain has caused him enough suffering over the years. So she sniffs, takes a steadying breath, and makes herself smile. "You're probably right though. He'll be home someday. I just have to be patient."

"It's okay to be sad," Naruto says. "You don't have to pretend you're all right if you're not, yanno?"

How is it that he can see straight through her so easily? Is she that transparent?

Sakura leans her head on Naruto's shoulder and asks, "I can't fool you, can I?"

"No," Naruto says, "but that's okay, 'cause I can't trick you either."

She smiles. "Maybe that's part of being friends. Real friends, anyway."

"Yeah, maybe."

She can hear the melancholy that has slipped into his voice, so at odds with Naruto's usual sunny attitude that Sakura asks, "Why are you sad?"

He's quiet for a long moment, then says, "Remember when you told me you loved me?"

Of course she remembers. Out of all her mistakes, this is the one she's most ashamed of. "I do love you, Naruto, just…" Once, she could have said that the bond between them was one of friendship alone, but she isn't sure that it's so simple anymore.

"Just not the way you love Sasuke," he says.

This is true, but not in the way Naruto thinks. Her affection for each of her teammates is equally fierce, if fundamentally different. Her feelings for Sasuke seem as old as time. Inevitable, unyielding, and she knows with certainty that she could wait for him for a hundred years and still love him as much then as she does now. It's not like that with Naruto. He's a breath of fresh air, their friendship more sustaining and fulfilling than any other relationship she's ever known. And of late, despite trying to push it away, Sakura has begun to feel something more for him. Desire that, frightening though it is, makes her hopeful, because she knows that Naruto's is a love that always gives and never takes.

Dear Sasuke,

The night before you left Konoha has been much on my mind recently. The memory or your mouth on mine and your hands on my skin warms me, even now. Our first kiss, awkward and a little fumbling, but as perfect as a thing can be. We fit together like our bodies were made to touch, but when I asked you to make love to me, you said we should wait. You promised to come back, that you would see me again soon.

Well it's been three years, one month, and two weeks. I tell myself I'm not counting the days, but this is a lie. I count the hours, the minutes that separate me from you. Every moment apart is measured and found lacking.

Still, I don't feel alone. I see Naruto, my parents, Tsunade-shishou, Ino, the other rookies, TenTen, and Lee. I fill my hours with hospital shifts and missions and small pastimes. I'm teaching myself to sew (poorly) and learning to play the harp (horribly). Maybe my talents are limited to the ninja arts, but these little pursuits make me smile, so they're worth it.

You should see Konoha. The rebuilding efforts continue, and it's almost like the greenery that springs from ashes, stronger for growing out of devastation. Naruto and I are always fussing at Kakashi to fund some new park or clinic. He pretends to be irritated and browbeaten into greenlighting these projects, but to be honest, I think he likes any excuse to help the village.

Life goes on without you, Sasuke. Sometimes knowing that makes your absence easier to bear, and sometimes it makes it harder. Naruto remains confident that you're coming home, but then, his faith in you has always been unwavering, undoubtful. Not like mine. My trust is harder to earn and harder to keep.

Tomorrow will be the 1,140th day since I last saw you. I realized this morning that I cannot remember the sound of your voice, and I cried in the shower because I know this is only one of many things I have lost to time. I wonder if the years will chip away at my love for you, pull it apart piece by piece until it is only a memory torn in too many directions to matter. I would rather give it up than see that happen.

I miss you dearly, Sasuke, but I've decided to stop counting the days. To stop waiting.

Sakura

She gives Sasuke one week to answer. Seven days pass, and when she receives no response, Sakura packs a box with her most cherished items: the photograph of Team 7, her twelve-year-old self smiling like an idiot between two scowling boys; a shirt Sasuke left at her apartment, grey with the Uchiha crest on the back; and a thick stack of letters. Forty-nine messages written on everything from fine stationery to plain paper (and even one sturdy napkin).

Sakura puts the box at the top of her closet in the hope that shutting her love away in the dark will help her forget about it.

Except it's hard to forget when Naruto comes over for breakfast and asks, "Where's our team picture?"

Sakura shrugs, like she doesn't know and doesn't care (when neither is true).

She prepares a simple meal for the both of them, just steamed rice and miso soup, but Naruto goes on and on about what a good cook she is.

She watches him eat, sloppily as always, and even though she'll never say so, Sakura knows this is because he never had anyone to teach him table manners. There was a time, when she was a different girl, spoiled and snobbish, that she would have looked down on him for this. Now she finds his messy enthusiasm a little sad and a little charming.

"I'm a better person because of you," she says.

Naruto looks up from his bowl, cheek rounded with a mouthful of rice. For a moment he just sits, frozen. Then he swallows, shakes his head, and says, "You don't need anybody to make you better. You've always been good enough. More than good enough."

"How can you say that?" Sakura asks. "I was a brat to you when we were kids."

"I was a brat too. So what?" He laughs and runs a hand through his hair. "Did you know I once pretended to be Sasuke so you'd kiss me?"

Sakura smiles and nods. "I didn't realize it at the time, but later, after I got to know you and Sasuke better, I figured that's what happened."

They finish eating, wash the dishes (she scrubs, Naruto rinses), and curl up on the living room couch together. There's not quite enough space between them to be strictly friendly, and Sakura is too tired of lying to herself to pretend this was accidental.

I want a fresh start. I want to love someone who can love me back.

"Naruto." He looks at her with sky blue eyes, and it surprises Sakura, how not-nervous she is when she says, "You never did get that kiss."

She leans over and closes distance between them.

Author's Notes: Well here it is: my NaruSaku / SasuSaku fic. I should say that this story is not meant to be canon-compliant, although it will follow canon very closely in some ways. I expect it to be about five parts long, but I've been wrong before. (Usually I underestimate the length of my projects and one-shots turn into huge, sprawling multi-chapters.) Originally I intended to tell this fic from Sakura's, Naruto's, and Sasuke's points-of-view, but once I got into it, I realized this is really Sakura's story and so it will most likely be told from her perspective alone. Please review if you enjoyed this. I'm about to leave for my honeymoon so if my blog is quieter than usual for the next week, that's why! Also, the passage at the beginning is from the E. E. Cummings poem I drew the title for this piece from.