WARNINGS: graphic violence, underage sex, PTSD

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The Silence of the Stars

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He hears about the captive before he sees her. His father tells him that Tsunade's daughter has been apprehended, caught by Itachi while she was healing villagers on the border of their lands. She wandered too close to Uchiha territory and now she's paying the price.

Sasuke expects a golden girl with the Senju matriarch's rounded figure, but Sakura doesn't look much like her mother. She's slight and green-eyed with blush-colored hair that falls in an uneven fringe around her chin, like maybe she cut it with a kunai. (And he learns later that this is precisely what happened after Itachi grabbed her by her long, pink ponytail).

Senju Sakura is brought to Nanmoku with her hands tied behind her back, her red dress covered in mud and blood. There's a cut on her cheek, dribbling crimson down her face, maybe sliced open by the kiss of a shuriken.

Sasuke gives little thought to the girl herself, but he wonders whether this will end his clan's war with the Senju. Surely Tsunade won't dare attack the Uchiha when his father holds her precious daughter in his custody.

But three days later, Tsunade refuses their terms. She puts the welfare of her clan over that of her only child. There's a meeting to determine what to do with the Senju girl, and at fifteen, Sasuke is just old enough to attend. His clansmen bicker over whether to kill her or keep her captive. In the end, it's Father who decides. These meetings are nothing but a formality; Uchiha Fugaku always has the final word. He says Sakura is no use to them dead. She will be a servant in his household until she's needed as a bargaining chip.

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Sakura hates everything about Nanmoku, from the weather to the people. She misses home, misses her family and friends and the freedom that has been stripped away from her. She was once the most promising kunoichi of her generation. Now she's a servant, relegated to scrubbing floors and washing laundry.

Uchiha Fugaku looks at her like she is the dirt beneath his shoe, Mikoto is kind if distant, and the younger son, Sasuke, is completely disinterested. She's been in her captors' hands for over a month before he speaks to her, and then it's only to give her an order.

Nanmoku is much further to the north than her home village. By March, winter still lingers in the air, and no matter what she does, Sakura can't seem to get warm. She turns sixteen—her first birthday away from Rokagita—alone yet surrounded by enemies.

She respects her mother for not bending to Uchiha Fugaku's terms. For putting the safety of the Senju above one girl's well being. But Sakura also resents her, because it isn't fair that she has to suffer for the welfare of her clan.

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His father and Hyuuga Hiashi spend three summer days negotiating the alliance between their families. On the last night, they seal it with a marriage pact. Sasuke is to wed Hiashi's elder child, Hinata, in two years. It's a fitting match, he supposes: the weaker daughter for the weaker son.

He has no interest in courting his bride-to-be, so Sasuke retires to his room with the excuse of a headache, only to find Sakura there, making his bed. She doesn't startle when he opens the door; she is a kunoichi after all, no matter that she's spent the last few months sweeping floors and cleaning baseboards.

Sasuke watches the way she moves. There's a certain grace to it that recalls a dancer's poised symmetry. And she's pretty (more than pretty, really), a fact which he has been steadily trying to ignore since she arrived.

"I'm done," she says. "I'll get out of your way."

Maybe because his father just promised him to a stranger, or perhaps just because he has noticed her beauty—whether it's his business or not—he catches Sakura by the hand and says, "Wait."

She looks at him, animated for the first time since he met her, wearing an expression that suggests there's a curious nature hiding beneath that mask of indifference. Sakura tilts her head and looks up at him, careful and guarded.

"Do you need something?" she asks.

"No," he says. "Nothing."

Except he's still holding her hand, and for some reason he doesn't want to let go.

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Sasuke watches her. He hasn't touched her since the night he was engaged to the Hyuuga girl, but his dark eyes follow her whenever they're alone. There's a heat behind these looks that she'd have to be a fool to misunderstand. He wants her.

She'd like to say she doesn't want him in return, but that's not entirely be the truth. Sasuke is a handsome boy, and the more she sees of him, the more she appreciates. He's taciturn, but when he speaks, it's to say something important. He can be rude, but he isn't unkind. He's loyal, ambitious, powerful. Enemy or not, it's difficult to keep from admiring him.

On a warm Sunday afternoon in August, Sasuke invites her to abandon the dirty dishes and join him in the library. She waits for instructions, expecting him to have some task for her, perhaps dusting or sweeping, but instead he holds out a book.

"I'd like you to read to me," he says, "but only if you want to."

"Why?" Sakura asks.

Sasuke shrugs and says, "You have a nice voice."

Sakura feels herself blush, but she takes the book and says, "Okay."

This is how the habit of spending time with Uchiha Sasuke begins. Sometimes she reads to him, and other times they play shogi, or discuss simple matters. He's intelligent, well-spoken, and thoughtful, a pleasure to talk to, and soon these meetings become the highlight of Sakura's days. She wakes in the morning, wondering whether she'll be able to see Sasuke. Of course, these opportunities only arise when they have privacy, when his parents are out and about Nanmoku, occupied with clan business.

It's only a matter of time before he knocks on her door in the middle of the night. When he does, Sakura lets him in, despite the fact that his family is asleep upstairs, only one floor away.

"What are you doing here?" she hisses. "If you get caught—"

"I won't. There's a clone in my bed, sleeping as we speak, and we're going to be quiet," Sasuke says.

He looks around her room, frowning. Sakura supposes this is because her cramped quarters are a converted closet, and even if there was room for them, she has no personal effects to brighten the small space.

"I had a room ten times this size in Rokagita," she says. "I grew up with things every bit as fine as yours, so you can stop pitying me."

"I don't pity you," Sasuke says. "I just…"

"Just what?" Sakura asks. She steps closer, puts a tentative hand on his arm, and tries not to notice the strength of the muscle beneath her fingers.

"I hate that you've lost so much," he says. "Because of my family."

"You shouldn't feel guilty. You're the only person in this village who treats me like a person." Sakura hesitates, then takes a deep breath. "And I think I can call you a friend."

Sasuke's smile is soft, almost gentle. "Of course."

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He kills three Senju shinobi: two men and a kunoichi. There's another ninja, a little boy who can't be older than eleven, but Sasuke lets him escape. Maybe it makes him weak, or maybe it makes him strong, but he doesn't have the heart to take a child's life.

Sasuke washes his hands in a nearby creek, watches the redness of blood fade to pink in the water, then disappear downstream.

He was nine when he made his first kill. In the seven years since, Sasuke has lost count of the shinobi he's slaughtered. Many were Senju, but others were Yamanaka, Inuzuka, Akimichi. Some even came from his cousin-clan, the Hyuuga. At the end of the day, it makes no matter what their names are, because those who face him don't survive.

He returns home as the sun is setting over Nanmoku, and his first thought as he walks through the gate is to wonder where Sakura is.

Sasuke changes out of his bloody gear, takes a shower, dresses in clean clothes, and looks for his friend. He finds her on the floor of the library, reading a thick-spined novel, feet tucked up under her lotus-style. Sakura smiles when he opens the door and says, "Sasuke-kun, you're back."

He wonders whether she would still be smiling if he told her that he butchered three of her kinsmen this morning. What if those shinobi were close cousins of hers? Would she hate him if she knew who he'd killed just hours ago?

Sasuke pushes these thoughts away, takes a seat next to her on the floor, and says, "I am."

She rests her head on his shoulder—a bold move, but not an unwanted one. This close, he can smell of her shampoo, and breathing in the clean scent makes his heart beat faster.

Sakura whispers, "I missed you," so quietly that he almost doesn't catch the words.

"I missed you too," Sasuke says.

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Gendo, Fugaku's second cousin, lost his younger brother in a battle against the Senju. Now he's demanding Sakura's life, saying that her execution will serve to injure Tsunade and avenge the Uchiha boy's death. Fugaku refuses, because she may yet have some value to them alive, and he sends Gendo away to nurse his grief.

Sakura knows all of this because Sasuke is invited to every clan meeting, and he always reports back to her about anything involving her welfare. She's certain this must cost him dearly, because he is proud and loyal, and repeating private clan business to an enemy is the sort of betrayal that could get him expelled from Nanmoku.

Except Sakura doesn't feel like Sasuke's enemy, not anymore. And he must feel the same way, or he would never have called her a friend, or gone behind his family's back to keep her informed.

He's making a habit of visiting her at night, sneaking into her room while his parents sleep. It starts out innocently enough, just whispering into the early hours of the morning, safe from prying eyes. But as the weeks pass, talking turns to gentle touches. Sasuke cups her cheek, runs his fingers through her choppy pink locks, holds her shoulders between his strong hands. Sakura finds herself returning the affection. It's all simple caresses at first, feather-light and fleeting, but she grows bolder as she gets more comfortable with him, and her touches start to linger.

Tonight, they're lying together on her uncomfortable little cot. He's playing with her hair, looking at her with an intimate intensity that's almost too much. Starlight steeps the room in silvered shadows, and Sakura can just make out his handsome face in the darkness. She touches his jaw, his neck, his sharp collarbone, fingers barely sweeping across the warm surface of his skin.

Then he leans nearer, closing the subtle distance between them, and presses his lips to hers. They kiss softly and slowly, until they don't. Sakura tastes mint tea on his tongue, and she wonders whether he'll be able to tell that she slipped a little rice wine from his parents' stores earlier this evening. If he notices, Sasuke doesn't stop kissing her to remark upon it.

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His father and Hiashi agree that Hinata should be fostered in Nanmoku until the wedding. She arrives on a cold November night, escorted by three of her cousins, dressed in a purple silk kimono that brings out the luster of her long hair. Even with her strange, blank-eyed dojutsu, she's a remarkably pretty girl. Hinata's beauty is soft and subtle, but it doesn't much matter how lovely she is, because Sasuke is too infatuated with Sakura to care.

Even so, in the weeks to come, he finds that he can talk easily to Hinata. She's quiet and thoughtful, she listens attentively, and they have much in common. She understands what it's like to carry the weight of great expectations, to fail a stern father, to be the disappointing child.

"Do you love her?" Hinata asks, voice so gentle that he almost misses the question.

"What?" he asks.

"Sakura," she clarifies. "Do you love her?"

Sasuke frowns. "Why would you ask that?"

Hinata gives him a timid smile. "It's okay if you do," she whispers. "I love someone else too."

"You do?" he asks, too surprised by this to correct her, to say that he's not in love.

"Y-yes," she says. "That's why my father sent me here. He wanted to separate us."

"I'm sorry," Sasuke says.

"Me too." Hinata fidgets, looks away, and says, "I miss my home. I miss Naruto."

Sasuke would like to say something comforting, but he doubts there are any words in the world that could help her at this moment. So instead, he puts his hand over Hinata's and gives her fingers a gentle squeeze.

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Sakura dreams of her kills: the impossibly bright red of fresh blood, the smell of death, the feeling of holding a man's neck between her hands right before she snaps it. When she wakes, she reaches for Sasuke, his name on her lips, but he isn't there. Sakura sits up, turns on the lamp, and rocks back and forth, clutching her knees to her chest. She grounds herself by focusing on a simple object in the room—her clock—and describing it to herself in detail.

I'm a murderer, Sakura thinks. No wonder she's stuck here in Nanmoku, a servant to her enemies. It's no less than she deserves, for taking so many lives.

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Sasuke finds Sakura braiding Hinata's long hair, the girls giggling together like school children. He clears his throat to announce his presence, and they both look over their shoulders at him—his wife-to-be and the girl he'd rather marry.

Sakura smiles and says, "Hello, Sasuke-kun."

"I was wondering if I could borrow you?" he asks, feeling absurdly like he's interrupting a private moment.

"Sure," she says, "I'm almost done here." Sakura ties off the end of Hinata's plait, gives the girl a kiss on the cheek, and says she'll see her later.

Sasuke leads her to his room and says, "You and Hinata seem to be getting close."

"I like her," Sakura says. "She's kind and sweet. And she understands—about us I mean."

"You don't talk to her about that, do you?" he asks.

"Of course not," she says, sounding a little irritated. "What did you want with me, anyway?"

Sasuke kisses her, puts one hand in her soft hair and the other at the small of her back, and pulls her close to him. She wraps her arms around his neck and kisses back hungrily, makes a needy sound that puts him on edge. This is stupid, Sasuke knows; his parents are downstairs, just two floors away. If they get caught, who knows what might happen to Sakura. They should stop.

They should, but they won't.

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The wedding is one month away when Fugaku and Mikoto throw a party for Sasuke and Hinata.

It's an exercise in torture, helping Hinata get ready. She looks so beautiful in her blue kimono, fair skin flawless and dark hair pinned high on her head. Her figure is as full as Sakura's is modest, and she has to wonder if Sasuke likes that better.

"You look beautiful," Sakura says, once she finishes Hinata's makeup.

"So do you," she says. "N-no wonder Sasuke can't look anywhere else when you're in the room."

Sakura pulls at the ends of her hair. It falls well past her shoulders these days, and Sasuke seems to enjoy playing with it.

"He'll have to look at just you soon."

Hinata stares at her hands, her cheeks pink even through her makeup.

The party is a sedate affair, just Hyuuga and Uchiha clansmen drinking and talking about the war, the war, the war. It's almost boring to Sakura now, because she has no choice but to view it from the sidelines. Powerlessness has made her complacent, and she barely has the energy to care anymore.

Sasuke and Hinata stand together, speaking quietly to one another. Sasuke looks handsome in a blue only slightly darker than Hinata's. They make such a pretty pair, guaranteed to have beautiful children.

Sakura won't be his wife. She's nothing but a captive, and even though Sasuke wants her now, the world they live in won't allow that to last much longer.

She slips away with a bottle of sake and drinks herself sick. When Mikoto finds her, she orders her to go to her room, but she's at least kind enough not to tell Fugaku.

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Sakura shies away from him as his wedding approaches, and Sasuke can only take so much of it before he has to confront her.

"You're the only one I want," he says. "And I think you already know that."

Sakura looks around as if she's afraid of being overheard, even though his parents are out of the house right now.

"But you're marrying Hinata," Sakura whispers. "You're still killing my family, and dirtying the house I have to clean, and you're marrying another girl. We can't—I can't keep doing this, Sasuke."

She isn't wrong, and there's nothing he can say to fix any of it, so Sasuke kisses her.

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Sakura meant to end this fragile thing that's been unfolding between them, but instead she only lets Sasuke take it further. He picks her up and carries her to his room, lays her on the bed, and starts stripping her out of her green dress. She helps, and once she's naked, they see to his clothes too.

Morning sunlight streams through the window, exposing both of them to each other, giving no shadows to hide behind. It ought to shame her, she thinks, but Sakura can only be thankful, because Sasuke is too beautiful to look away from.

He doesn't know what he's doing, and neither does she, but they figure it out together, how to touch and taste until they're both panting from want.

When he rubs between her legs, stroking her in focused circles right where she needs it, Sakura says, "I love you, Sasuke-kun."

He doesn't say it back, but she can find it on his lips when he kisses her, feel it in his touch when he makes her come.

Then he's on top of her, joining their bodies, and it doesn't hurt the way she's heard first times sometimes do. She feels full, connected, their breaths ragged and almost in sync. Sasuke rocks into her, his thrust deep but careful, then again, and each movement makes her gasp. They kiss as he takes her, and each time their bodies meet she feels herself rising higher, closer to a bliss she's rarely been able to capture on her own. But it's a nebulous sort of pleasure that he's giving her, brutal and tender but indistinct.

"More," Sakura whimpers.

She doesn't even know what she's asking for—harder, faster, deeper?—but Sasuke seems to, because he gives her all three.

He comes before she has a chance to, his moans quiet and staggered, spilling inside her, and Sakura wants to cry. It feels perfect, seeing his mouth open on cries of pleasure she gave him, but she's painfully close and now so far away.

But then Sasuke reaches between them and touches her again. It only takes a minute and she's there, the pleasure he'd already primed spilling over with just a few strokes.

It's good, amazing even, but it's nothing compared to the hope that steals over her when he touches her cheek, something soft in his gaze that Sakura recognizes. It's the same love she feels for him, reflected right back at her, and she'll never get tired of basking in it.

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They lie together after it's over, holding hands. His nakedness feels starker now that his need is spent, but it's worth dealing with to see Sakura bare under the golden morning light. She's perfect all over, and he doesn't think he could ever tire of seeing her this way.

Sakura sits up and climbs on top of him, straddling his waist, naked as the day she was born. It's such a pretty sight that he doesn't catch what she says at first. Then it registers.

"What?" he asks.

"I said we should run away." She looks down at him with as much seriousness as he's ever seen from her. "It's the only way I'll ever be free again, or that we can be together."

Sasuke rolls them over, so that Sakura is on her back beneath him. "You want me to betray my family. You can't ask me to do that."

She blinks, then pushes at his chest. "Then what am I supposed to do? Stand back like a flower on the wall while you marry Hinata? Clean up after you both for the rest of my days, and change your babies' dirty diapers?"

"No, of course not," Sasuke says coolly. "But… we can talk to my father. There are worse ideas than having his son marry the Senju heiress. He wants peace, and maybe it could work."

Sakura stares up at him, her eyes very green and wide. "You want to marry me?"

He glances away, hot embarrassment rushing over him. "Well I just said that didn't I?"

She throws her arms around him, and they don't talk for a long while, too busy kissing.

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Sakura is at the market, buying fresh fruit: tomatoes for Sasuke, apples for Fugaku, strawberries for Mikoto, pears for Hinata. If she takes special care with the tomatoes and chooses a bruised apple, who's to say she did it on purpose? She pays the vendor for his produce, hoists the brown paper bag onto her hip, and heads back toward the Uchiha house.

People in Nanmoku rarely stop and stare at her anymore, but Sakura feels someone's eyes on her just the same, and it doesn't feel like a friendly gaze. She clutches the bag to her chest and walks faster. Her mother always told her to trust her instincts, and her gut is telling her that someone has been watching her all morning.

A man grabs her by the arm, and the grocery bag hits the ground, fruit spilling across the street. His grip on her tightens, and Sakura has to remind herself that striking someone from the Uchiha Clan could get her killed. So she simply jerks her arm out of his grasp and asks, "What's your problem?"

"My brother is dead," he says, voice empty, but his expression is full of hatred. "Your family killed him."

Gendo, Sakura remembers. Fugaku's cousin, who wanted her executed. This must be him.

She dodges his kunai a heartbeat before it would have taken her in the belly. Gendo is fueled by fury, he's bigger than her, and his eyes flash red with the sharingan, but no one is stronger than Sakura. When he goes for her throat, she dances around the kunai and lands a chakra-infused punch to the left side of his face. His cheek caves in beneath her fist, and he falls to the ground, dead.

She went for the killing blow without thinking, without considering the consequences, because this is what she has been trained to do.

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He gets the news from Itachi. Sakura has been arrested and jailed for murdering Gendo.

"She wouldn't do that," Sasuke says.

Itachi looks at him curiously. "Of course she would. She's a ninja."

"You can't tell me she was unprovoked," Sasuke snaps, too angry to think better of what he's saying. "I won't believe it."

"Gendo attacked her first," Itachi says smoothly. "Everyone who saw the fight agrees on that. It's not going to help her much, though. The elders are intent on seeing her executed for this."

Sasuke doesn't care that she killed his cousin. Gendo was a hot-headed bully, and if he tried to hurt Sakura then he got what he deserved. No one else will see it that way, though.

There's a clan meeting that night, and Sasuke sits in the back while the men and women in attendance berate Father for allowing Sakura to live in the first place.

"For a year, you've treated that girl like a prized pet instead of an enemy," says one of the elders. "Now one of our own is dead. The answer is simple: hang her."

His father scowls, and the wrinkles lining his face grow more prominent. "If we kill Sakura, Tsunade will retaliate. There's nothing simple about this."

"So what, you'll spare her life again?" asks Yuka. "She's a danger to our people."

"I didn't say I would spare her," Father says. "I agree that she's too dangerous to keep alive. The threat she poses now outweighs her value as a hostage."

No, Sasuke thinks. I won't allow it.

He almost speaks up, but all of his clansmen are nodding, agreeing to the execution of a seventeen-year-old girl who only defended her life. He looks around at these people, his family, and he doesn't recognize any of them.

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Sasuke finds her leaving the jail through its backdoor.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

"Escaping," Sakura says. "Please don't stand in my way, Sasuke-kun."

He scowls, grabs her hand, and pulls her along behind the flower shop. "I was coming to break you out."

Sakura grins, even though her life still balances on the edge of a knife, because Sasuke came to rescue her. She doesn't need rescuing, of course, but it matters that he wanted to try.

Her smile doesn't last long, though, because this is it. The thing she's been dreading, even when she didn't have any idea how it might come about: the moment she has to say let Sasuke go.

"I'll miss you," she whispers, and there isn't any time, but she'll risk her neck if she has to, waiting for him to say it back to her.

"I—" Sasuke looks around. "This isn't goodbye. I'm coming with you, and we need to go."

Sakura wants to throw her arms around him and kiss him, but it won't be long before the guards she incapacitated wake up. Then the whole village will be on high alert, thousands of sharingan on the lookout for a rogue Senju kunoichi.

Sakura came to Nanmoku more alone than she'd ever been in her life, but she leaves with Sasuke beside her.

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He's a traitor. This is all Sasuke can think as he and Sakura run away, but the truth is that he's betraying a clan who made him a murderer, deserting a life that threw him into war at the age of nine.

When he and Sakura finally find five minutes to rest, she says, "My clan is just like yours. And I don't know that my mother would treat you any better than your family treated me."

"So you don't want to go home?" Sasuke asks.

Sakura wipes tears from her eyes before they can fall. "No. I don't think I do."

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They head west, until they come to a land where it never stops raining. The cities they cross are industrial, all rusting factories and wire-strung streets, but the villages are small, agrarian. Sakura chooses a nameless little hamlet to lie low at, a place so isolated that no one there has even heard of the war.

"Can you imagine?" Sakura asks that night, once they're tucked into a warm bed at the town's only inn. "A whole life of peace."

"No," Sasuke says. "I can't."

They lie side by side, listening to the storm together. Lightning flashes, filling the room with purple-white for the space of a heartbeat. Thunder rolls a moment later, rattling everything that isn't tied down.

Sakura turns onto her side, facing Sasuke. "Do you regret it?"

He's quiet for long enough to scare her, but she's glad he took time to consider her question, to give her only a well thought out truth when he says, "No. I'm going to miss them, but—you're more important."

Sakura takes his hand in hers, and this time when she says she loves him, Sasuke says it back.

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Sasuke becomes Jin here, and Sakura is Setsu. They find a small farm and learn how to raise crops and livestock, all of it bought and paid for with his father's money. Things are simpler here, in this village with no name, where only the hardiest of people and plants can stand straight under constant storms.

Jin and Setsu are already husband and wife, so there's no need for a wedding. It's almost startling, how easily they slip into married life: kisses first thing in the morning and last at night, sharing their worries and hopes, making love—and eventually life—together.

Sometimes he thinks about the family and the war he left behind. He wonders if his parents are still alive, whether Hinata ever ran away with that boy she loved, and how Itachi is doing. But then he'll look at his children, or kiss the woman he married in love if not law, and he sets that curiosity aside.

His wife finds him sitting on the porch on a warm summer evening, watching dusk settle over the farm. It's a rare clear night, and the stars are beginning to peek out, as quiet as the life he lives now.

The children are inside, and he can hear Ryudo bossing around Kiyoko and Kenta.

"Jin-kun," she says. "Are you okay?"

He's been Jin for so long that he never fails to answer to it, but still, sometimes he misses hearing her call him by his true name.

"Sakura," he whispers, and then she understands.

Her smile is warm, gentle but sad, when she says, "Come inside, Sasuke-kun. It's getting cold out here."

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fin

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AN: Endless thanks to disliike (over at tumblr) who donated to my friend Mer's GoFundMe in exchange for this fic! Please consider supporting Mer and her wife, Kat, on their journey to becoming parents through IVF. If you would like to send me a prompt in exchange for a donation, please privately message me. I'm currently writing 500 word min. drabbles for $5, 1000 word min. oneshots for $10, 1500 word min. oneshots for $15, and 2000 word min. oneshots for $20! :)