.

.

The moon shone bright and full, giving Sasuke a clear view of Konoha, even in the middle of the night. Things were much as he remembered, but it all felt smaller somehow, like he'd outgrown his home during his time away.

A light was still on in the Hokage's office, so he went straight there. If Tsunade was the kind of leader who worked until one o'clock in the morning to care for the village, then she might understand what he'd done, and why. Regardless, he'd accept whatever punishment she saw fit to mete out.

Sasuke stopped when he came to a bench, the very one where he'd laid Sakura the night he'd left. She'd looked so fragile there, perfectly still in sleep, her blushing hair spilled across grey stone.

"Sasuke?"

Sakura. He knew her voice, would know it anywhere, anytime.

Sasuke turned around, and there she was, like she'd been summoned by his thoughts alone.

"What are you doing here?" Sasuke asked.

"Sometimes I…" She gestured toward the bench, then shook her head. "It doesn't matter why I'm here! What are you—when did you come home?"

Sasuke couldn't do this, not right now. "I need to speak to the Hokage. I'll explain later."

He wouldn't, and from Sakura's frown it seemed like she knew as much.

"Don't lie," she said. "And please don't run again."

Sakura strode over to him and grabbed his arm before he could make himself move away. That sent a shock through him, both her boldness and the sensation of her skin against his own. It had been so long since he'd been touched without violent intent.

Then Sakura stumbled backward, looking at her open hands, her left streaked red from the blood on his arm.

It wasn't his own.

Sakura's voice trembled in the darkness when she said, "Sasuke. What did you do?"

.

.

His justice had been carried out like this:

Homura had fallen like a coward, begging for his life like a blubbering child before Sasuke had killed him. Koharu hadn't even woken up before he'd slit her throat. Only Danzo had put up a proper fight, but Sasuke had won in the end. The Council's seats had been occupied by the weak and venal, old shinobi steeped in old ways, and they had died just as they had lived.

Konoha deserved better, and so had his clan.

Sasuke had exacted the vengeance he'd been seeking for half his life, wrought it in blood and steel. It was done, justice borne on the edges of his katana and his kunai. And he had nothing left to do but wait. Something would come next—it always did—but now that he'd fulfilled his purpose, what happened to him no longer mattered.

.

.

The water at Sakura's apartment was scalding, and Sasuke bowed into it, hands pressed against the tile wall. He'd always preferred his showers too hot. This might be his last one, so Sasuke closed his eyes and let the water wash him as clean as it could, savoring every moment.

He shouldn't be here, but Sakura had said, please, Sasuke, and he'd been too tired to deny her. Now he was dirtying her shower with the Council's blood.

"Sasuke? You've been in there for a long time. Are you okay?"

The water was only lukewarm now, and he'd barely noticed.

"I'm still here."

That was what Sakura was really trying to find out: whether or not he'd left the water running and squirreled his way out of her bathroom window.

Sasuke used her soap to finish cleaning up, and it left him smelling of eucalyptus. His skin was blank and pale, the evidence of his crimes wiped away, like chalk from a blackboard.

Sakura had set clean clothes on the counter for him, and Sasuke frowned at the familiar spiral on the orange shirt. These were Naruto's clothes. Maybe the idiot had finally caught Sakura's attention, perhaps even found his way into her bed. It wasn't a ridiculous assumption; they weren't children anymore. Sasuke pulled on the dark grey pants, but he couldn't bring himself to wear the shirt. It would feel too much like he was trying to be Naruto, which was as impossible as it was stupid.

He found Sakura sitting on the floor in her living room, back against the couch, drinking tea. There was a cup for him on the table. It wasn't quite hot anymore, but she probably hadn't expected him to take such a long shower.

She gaped, then blushed a ferocious red when she saw him. It pleased something petty in Sasuke that the sight of him shirtless could fluster her so much.

Sakura snapped her mouth shut, her gaze fixed on the mug in her hands. She spared him a glance when he sat on the floor at the opposite end of the couch, but she didn't say anything. If Sakura was waiting on him to open up to her silence then she'd be waiting for a very long time.

When she finished her tea, she finally asked the question again: "What did you do?"

He could hear the hollowness of his own voice, every bit as unrepentant as he felt, when he said, "I killed the Konoha Council."

Sasuke told her everything, the truth about his clan, and what the Council had demanded of Itachi. And that he'd never feel sorry for this. Tsunade could order his execution—and she very well might—but he'd go to it without one ounce of remorse. What he'd done was more than fair. Three lives for a hundred. Blood for blood.

Sakura watched him while he told his story, her eyes wide and breath short. Sweet, gentle Sakura, who'd thought she could save him. She'd never understood; by the time they'd met, there was nothing left to save.

Sasuke expected her to be horrified, maybe even disgusted by him. But when he finished speaking, she only said, "I understand."

She couldn't possibly, but it was kind of her to try. And unexpected.

"You think I did the right thing?" he asked.

"I don't think it's right to kill three people while they sleep, even if they've done terrible things. But…"

Sakura's brow furrowed, and she was somehow just as pretty frowning as she was when she smiled. Not that he needed to be thinking about that. Dead men didn't have the luxury of wanting anything, least of all a girl.

She put her mug on the table, sat on the floor next to him, and said, "What you did wasn't good, but a lot of things we do as shinobi aren't good. Death is part of what we are, what we're for, and if anyone has ever deserved to die, they did."

The strangest urge to touch her overtook him. Her hair, maybe, because he wanted to find out if it felt as soft as it looked. Or her hand, so elegant and strong. In another life, one in which Sakura hadn't become a kunoichi, she might have learned to play a piano rather than wield a kunai.

"You've changed," he said. "Before I left, you never would have believed that."

Sakura's smile was rueful. "I had to change, because my world did. Everything shifted the moment you left me on that bench."

He'd wondered, sometimes, whether or not she'd moved on after he'd left. If she'd forgotten him, or simply held him in a different part of her heart. One where she could keep going without giving up on him entirely. There was nothing in him worth believing in, right from the day they'd met, but Sakura had never understood that. It seemed like she still didn't.

"What's next?" she asked. "You didn't run, so does that mean you're turning yourself in?"

"Yes. Tomorrow."

It should have been tonight, but now he couldn't imagine giving up this thread of moments, strung together from moonlight to sunlight by Sakura.

She nodded. "I'll speak to Tsunade on your behalf. Make her understand."

That would never work, but Sasuke wasn't cruel enough to steal her hope. Tomorrow would do that on its own.

Sakura slid her hand closer to his, where it rested on the floor, until their little fingers touched. It was such a small thing, the slightest connection, but Sasuke felt the warmth of it all over his body. Slowly, tenderly, with more care than he'd ever done anything, Sasuke laid his hand over hers. It wasn't too much to ask, a taste of human contact the night before he lost his freedom.

Sakura's breath caught, the sound of it loud in the silence between them. Sharp, like the blade of a dagger. Soft, like her skin against his. That was Sakura all over, a contradiction of gentleness and strength that he'd never been able to figure out. And it was only just now, at the end, that Sasuke realized how badly he wanted to understand the mystery that was Haruno Sakura.

.

.

His confession went like this:

He told Tsunade what he'd done last night, and Sakura tried to soften the blunt truth to her teacher. Yes, the Council was dead, murdered in their own homes. But here was the reality of their crimes. So, really, it should have been done a long time ago. Why did it matter if Sasuke's hands had done the job, rather than an executioner's?

He stood back, let Sakura speak, and waited for the Hokage to pass judgement. He'd take it, whatever it was. But he hoped in distant way, mostly for Sakura's sake, that Tsunade would have mercy.

And she did.

"You're under house arrest until further notice," she said. "I don't want you darkening any doorstep in Konoha unless I say otherwise. Nobody knows you're here, or what you did. I'll cover it up, and after a few weeks, you can come out of hiding."

Sasuke watched Tsunade closely, waiting for the catch, the punishment. This was more than mercy. This was exoneration.

"Why are you letting me go? I thought…"

"You thought I'd execute you. And I might have, under different circumstances, but Sakura vouches for you, and Naruto would bring out the Kyuubi before letting anyone hurt you." Tsunade shrugged. "Besides, they were plotting against me, all three of them, to put Danzo in my place. Really, you did me a favor, and I don't make a habit of killing the people who help me."

Sasuke looked to Sakura, whose eyes were full of tears. They were even greener when she cried.

"Thank you, shishou. I can't—" Sakura wiped at her wet cheeks. "I can't tell you what this means to me."

Tsunade waved toward the door. "Get out of here, both of you. Sakura, take him to your place, where you can keep an eye on him, and be careful going through the village."

Sasuke took on the face of a random farmer he'd once passed in the lands around Oto, somebody utterly unrecognizable to the people of Konoha. It felt strange, walking through this place in the light of day. The home he'd loved, then suffered through, then abandoned. It was different now, being somewhere that he'd lost so much, now that that loss had been avenged.

He let the jutsu go as soon as he walked through the door to Sakura's apartment. It felt familiar already, more of a home than he'd had in years. There was no good reason for that, except maybe that he knew Sakura as well as he'd ever known anyone. This was her territory, and it felt familiar simply because it was hers.

"Would you like to rest?" Sakura asked. "We stayed up all night talking, and you had… quite a time before that."

Sasuke almost smiled. Quite a time. That was the most euphemistic thing he'd ever heard.

"No. I'm not tired yet."

Escaping certain execution had been surprising enough to jolt him out of his exhaustion.

He helped Sakura make breakfast: steamed rice, miso soup, and fried salmon. They shared it at her coffee table, eating quietly. Something about it reminded him of breakfast with his family, except the silence was more comfortable with Sakura than it had been at his childhood meals. That feeling struck him again. The rightness of being here, a place that could pass for home.

After breakfast, they washed the dishes. Sasuke was in the middle of drying his hands when Sakura threw her arms around him. She buried her face against his shoulder, trembling, quiet but crying.

"I was so afraid," she whispered. "What if—?"

Sasuke cut across her. "Don't do that. The what ifs don't matter. I'm safe, thanks to you, and I'm going to stay that way."

Sakura nuzzled his throat, and he could feel the wet of her tears there, a gentle mess that he didn't mind at all. When he reached up to run his fingers through Sakura's hair, he felt far more nervous than he had in Tsunade's office, waiting to hear whether he'd live or die.

Sakura. The girl he hadn't allowed himself to love, but even as a child, Sasuke had known it would be easy. If he'd had a simpler destiny, one in which he could focus on living rather than avenging the dead, loving her would have taken no effort at all. He had his vengeance now, and if he wanted, maybe he could have Sakura too.

She leaned back, looking up at him with glassy eyes. "I'm sorry I cried on you. It's just that I… I still…" She shook her head. "Never mind."

Sasuke cupped her cheek and wiped away her tears with his thumb. Sakura froze, her lips parted, surprise written all over her. Sasuke could feel his pulse throbbing in his throat, heartbeat running wild in his chest. This wasn't the sort of thing he'd ever allowed himself to have, least of all with the girl who weakened him more than any other. But it didn't have to be weakness. Sakura was so strong, and he'd lost so much. Her strength could help him rebuild, if he let himself welcome it.

It should have been difficult, really. After all the rules he'd held fast to for so many years, kissing Sakura shouldn't have been so easy, but it was. Kissing her felt like the most natural thing in the world, something he should have done every day since she'd told him she loved him.

.

.

Making love went like this:

First, kiss after kiss. Soft, each one gentling the painful history between them. Here was the night he'd left, kissed better. And there, the time she'd wrapped her arms around him in the Forest of Death, begging him to fight the darkness inside himself.

Then, she tugged at his shirt, and he slid his hands beneath hers. Desperation drove them to yank, pull, and unbutton, undressing each other with all need and little grace. Sasuke felt no nervousness to be laid bare before her. This, their nakedness, the two of them alone together in Sakura's sunlit bedroom, it was inevitable.

And finally, he carried her to bed. Their kisses had given him a taste of what could be, but when their bodies came together, it felt wholly new. Desire that could tear him apart, intimacy that could stitch him back together. Sakura moved with him, saying his name over and over. It almost hurt, pleasure honed to such a sharp edge, but nothing had ever felt so good, and he never wanted it to end.

He could do this forever, he thought. Love Sakura until the moon crumbled and the stars burned cold.