Sakura starts with Sasuke's shirt, digging under her bed until she finds her sewing kit to patch tears in it that are large enough for her to fit several fingers through. There are enough of them that earlier she'd contemplated throwing the shirt out altogether but, at the very least, sewing it back into shape gives her something to pass the time. She's already doused it several times with peroxide to wash away the last traces of blood and it hangs on the open door in their bathroom, drying.

She sets her sewing kit on the bed where Sasuke is resting, his dark hair fanned out down to the tip of his nose. It's been a while since he's let her cut it but, if she can convince him to take the time off, maybe it's something the two of them can do tomorrow.

She hesitates a moment, because the village is in danger and Naruto is in danger, but times like these, where they're alone with no disruptions, are few and far between. It's selfish, that she wants to have him to herself when the whole world rests on his shoulders, but it's something she could never help. She brushes away the thought and turns around to take his shirt off the hanger.

It's still a little but she turns it inside out anyway, counting out at least a dozen holes and straightening it in her hands to find the spaces where they align, where he'd been stabbed all the way through.

Sakura swallows a lump in her throat and says, "We're lucky you were still able to make it back after all of that."

When she glances over her shoulder, Sasuke hasn't so much as budged.

His eyes blink open after a few moments, slow and still sore from overusing Mangekyou Sharingan, but he doesn't respond. He probably doesn't see it quite the same way.

Sakura doesn't press him further.

Instead, she lays his shirt out on the bed, smoothing it out to get a feel for how much cloth she'll need to cover it, and props open the lid of her sewing kit to find black thread and discarded scraps of black cloth, something that will hopefully blend in with the dark colors he wears.

She eyeballs a length of thread and snips it, then shuts her sewing kit and moves it to the foot of the bed to make room for herself.

If she has enough scraps, she'll patch his cloak and his vest as well. If Sasuke still isn't ready to talk by then, it'll help keep her hands busy.

Sakura pulls back the covers and looks to him to gauge his reaction, but he doesn't protest. While she slides into bed next to him, Sasuke stares up at the ceiling, arms folded over his chest.

If he had the choice, she knows, he would have already left again out of guilt, injuries be damned. It's been a long time since he's come to her injured, even longer since she had to insist on him spending the night to heal.

Longer still since he's agreed.

He's in no shape to leave, even if he wanted to. It's been hours since she dropped to her knees in the middle of the street to heal him, hours since she carried him back to their house in her arms, his blood smeared up to her elbows. Knowing the replacement rate of chakra, his system still probable has more of her chakra in it than his, chakra he shouldn't be using for anything other than getting better.

It's okay to rest, she had told him after Shikamaru finally left, speaking as both his wife and his doctor. You told them everything you know. There's nothing more we can do right now except recoup.

He didn't exactly want to hear that, had scowled and winced while she helped him out of the clothes he'd worn and into something a little more forgiving, but he was weak enough and practical enough that he relented. She can seal every wound and rebuild every torn muscle in his body but some things just can't be rushed. The regrown muscles in his stomach and arm are taut and awkward and Sasuke is in no condition to leave the house, let alone fight again, until he's had a chance to adjust.

At times, the rustle of cloth and the soft glide of her needle are the only sounds in the room and after a while Sakura works up a comfortable rhythm. A short burst of chakra keeps the thread straight, helps her thread and re-thread the needle between each tear, centers her stitches until she pulls the seams shut. She hums as she works, a mindless tune she's either heard from the hospital or her mom, nothing substantial but enough to fill the quiet between them.

She's had twenty years to get used to Sasuke's contemplative silences, years to accept that there will be times when she and Sasuke share the same room and he'll be somewhere else entirely. That, when it all becomes too much for him, he'll retreat into himself, into a place where she isn't able to follow.

It could be any number of things, most likely everything at once, but she still wonders what has him so twisted up in his own thoughts. If it's worry for Naruto. Anger at himself. Fear for the village. Old memories he's buried so deep that she rarely catches more than a glimpse of them.

Sakura knows that, eventually, Sasuke will come back to her. He always does.

Sasuke turns over in bed, facing towards her, and she reaches for her scissors, cutting a new line of thread with a quick snip. "I'm almost done, I think," she says, smiling even though his eyes never even drift away from her hands. "One more, I think, and then it'll be good as new."

She does her best to drop small comments when she can, to pull him out of his inner-monologue before he drowns in it, but again he says nothing.

Nothing is maybe a bit of a stretch, she thinks, because he has spoken but it's sparse—a mumbled thank you when she had earlier brought him dinner on a tray, when she broke open his chopsticks and handed them to him. A hissed I'm fine when he tried to sit up to eat and batted away her hands when she tried to help, followed by a blushing sorry to soothe the hurt when her eyes dropped down to the floor.

"You probably spend a lot of time stitching your own clothes, huh?" She isn't so much asking him as airing another thought, but it's a soft thought. A human thought—Sasuke with a needle between his teeth or knees, threading his needles one-handed, alone in the wastelands he's been investigating. If there's a jutsu for that, she thinks, he'd be the one to have learned it.

"Hopefully I'm doing it the way you like—it's how my dad taught me, after all." Sakura smiles, remembering the hell she'd put her wardrobe through when she was still regularly leaving the village. How Mom had stared, mouth agape, after she'd returned home after fighting Sasori, how Dad had immediately gone pale, looking back and forth between her and the torn shirt she carried, searching for the impression of bandages or scars.

She lets out a small laugh at the memory, and sees the corner of Sasuke's mouth twitch into something softer. "My dad certainly saw his fair share of stitches." And so has Sakura: she's patched countless rips and tears in Sasuke and Sarada's clothes, fixed stabs to the gut and tears at the knees, has bleached Sarada's stubborn white shorts more times than she can count.

It was Sasuke's clan before it was their clan, but Sakura has sewn each crest they wear on their backs by hand, brought them all together under her needle and thread.

Medical, psychological, or sartorial—Sakura has yet to find tears she can't mend.

Down the hall, a door clicks open and Sarada's quiet footsteps roam through the house. Sasuke blinks, and his eyes swivel towards their closed bedroom door. Sarada pauses halfway down the hall, the floor creaking when she rests back on her heels. At the last minute, though, she turns back to her room, and her bedroom door clicks shut again.

"She was asking about you earlier," Sakura tells him, and Sasuke rolls onto his back again. His eyes close, heavy already with more kinds of guilt than she can imagine. His chest falls when he breathes, a shuddering breath with nothing more to accompany it. "She knows you just need some time. She just worries about you. Naruto, too. She's worried about the both of you."

He nods, a slight tilt to his head that would otherwise be imperceptible if she didn't already know to watch for even the slightest movements. Still too early for words.

"She'll understand. She knows what Naruto means to you."

Sarada is the proof of their love but Sakura is the tie that binds father and daughter—the thread that pulls the two of them back together. Sasuke understands Sarada in a deep, instinctive way that's buried in their bones, written into their genes, but there's more to them both than their genetics; he isn't there to see Sarada's messy morning hair, to kiss her goodbye before her missions, to bandage the scrapes and bruises on her elbows and knees she earns in long training sessions. He knows the broad, general strokes of Sarada's personality, but he isn't there to catch the finer details.

Sakura is.

Sasuke has missed far too many of Sarada's springs and summers and falls but, in the dark on cold nights, when Sasuke teleports home just to slip into bed beside her, Sakura can weave together the disparate threads of their family, can bring her husband back into the fold.

It isn't perfect; his absences are long and she spends more time sleeping alone than with him. He keeps a few pairs of clothes at the house, enough to almost fill a single drawer in one of their dressers, but in the weeks between his visits their creases become well worn and firm. Their routine has grown worn over time; he'll hold her tenderly until the morning but, inevitably, be gone before Sarada awakes. Gone, with no way to predict when she'll see him next.

Sasuke spends too much time away, but he always comes back to her.

At the end of it, she'll still be waiting for him.

When Sakura ties off her last thread and snips the excess thread, he reaches over to touch the seams of his shirt, running his fingers over her neat little crisscrossed stitches. His lips crack, and he drops his hand. She waits a moment to see if there'll be more, but isn't surprised when there isn't.

For once, she has the time to wait for him. She folds the shirt in her lap, smoothes out the wrinkles.

Sakura glances at the clock. "It's starting to get late." She can patch the rest of his clothes tomorrow, can let him sleep in and sneak off to the kitchen to share an easy breakfast with Sarada.

"Some sleep would be good for you." Not only that but, as rare as it comes, she always sleeps better with him next to her, feeling his heartbeat under her hands. Far too many nights are restless and sleepless, tossing under the covers and wondering when Sasuke will come home next. How long he'll stay. How he'll come to her.

Some nights she doesn't sleep at all but for dreams of him, dreams where he's stumbling back to her in the dark, injured or dying but having no other place to rest than her arms, no other safe harbor. Her reality today had been for years a nightmare.

She isn't quite sure if it's better to see it finally pass, even if they've both come out of it intact.

Sasuke is more than able to take care of himself but she'd be lying if she said sometimes she doesn't daydream about quitting her job, passing off her duties to some other med-nin so she can leave the village and follow Sasuke, to explore the continent like they did before Sarada was born. To spend every night next to him, going from cheap, rundown inns to hastily pitched tents to borrowed futons in seldom used safe houses, uncomfortable as all hell but unable to care so long as they were together.

Even if they didn't have Sarada, she thinks, she could never do it.

Sasuke needs a home to come back to and, no matter how far Sasuke travels from it, how long he spends away from it, he's somehow always able to find his way back to it. Back to her.

"We'll bring Naruto home." She knows they will: her faith in their team bond is unshakable. Sasuke doesn't flinch anymore when she covers his hand with hers but he used to. Gentleness and love haven't always overlapped in his life but—even if it means agonizing slowness and endless patience, she's determined to change that. "Everything is going to be okay. Hope and hard work have gotten us a lot farther before."

Sasuke starts to nod but pauses mid-tilt. "Yeah." He sighs it, lets it hang in the empty air between them for several seconds. "We will."

He tries to rise again, but doesn't seem to mind this time when she holds his shoulders steady to help. It's better, she tells herself, if he doesn't strain the muscles in his abdomen she'd only healed hours ago.

It's also better because she gets to hold him.

"I've got you," she says, and he leans forward to prop himself up on her shoulder, letting out a frustrated sigh. His head bumps hers and, feeling bolder, she smoothes the hair out of his eyes, tucking it behind his ear.

Naruto is gone and the village is reeling. There is no Hokage and Sasuke is still injured, is out of action for a few days at the very least but, just for tonight, he is her husband and she is his wife and anything else can wait until the next day.

"Thank you, Sakura," he whispers.

He reaches over and his thumb slips over her forehead seal, his eyes dark, finally looking up to stare into hers.

She sighs, almost nervous. "Ah…" How is it possible to be nearly fifteen years married to a man and still feel flustered when he touches her?

"Thank you, Sakura," he repeats. His fingers skim her cheek, her jaw, and finally her chin.

Sakura waits, and Sasuke comes back to her: his lips press against hers, light and soft and when she laughs into the kiss her shoulders feel a hundred times lighter, her heart a hundred times fuller.

He mumbles against her lips and the words vibrate against her teeth. If she could eat them, they could feed her forever. "Thank you, for everything."