Drops of Day
Where two people stand, there were once two children. One ran while the other chased, and today she has caught him.
They're fifteen and his attention is finally on her. He should run and she should follow, but they're both too startled (too tired) to do anything.
He's standing a few paces in front of her, and she's bent over in the dirt, exhausted. For a while they only stare at eachother, afraid to ruin the moment (so long), and silence spreads its long arms, squeezing them closer.
The wind sweeps over the hillside and flips her hair up, and a flash of movement catches her eye. There is black all around her and then white, then the metallic gleam of a sword in the sunlight.
Her fists clench as she sinks to her knees and his voice floods her ears like some sort of forgotten lullaby. (He was so beautiful once…)
A breeze drifts past once more, and blades of grass stretch upwards lazily.
All Sakura can focus on is keeping her feet rooted to the ground, but her head becomes too heavy a load and her body threatens to tip over.
Swallowing, she steadies herself and wonders why Sasuke's sword is the only still thing for miles.
-
She wakes up on the village's border, caught between a glimmering lake and the open gates, and after he slips away it takes a year to track him down again.
When she finds him, Naruto and Kakashi are there and it's an accident again because their efforts had always amounted to nothing before, and why stop the chain now?
Before, they had met as ex-teammates, but now they are rivals taking position on the battlefield. His sword is there, taunting her again, and she thinks this is the only thing that keeps her from knocking him flat. (It's strangely comforting to see one of her boys with a weapon at his side.)
Kakashi's sharingan makes a sudden appearance and Naruto's cries fill the empty air.
She blinks, and when her eyes open Sasuke is fighting them off as if they're the very devils plaguing his dreams.
Sakura remembers lying in the middle of her three boys as they slept, and the perfect pattern that their heartbeats made with eachother when they joined; the pretty picture that the moon painted along their night-shaped shadows.
In the quickest of seconds before she opens her eyes, kunai in hand, she imagines (wishes) that they're all caught somewhere in the past.
…But time pushes forward, and she learns to hate the boy she once loved.
-
After another failed retrieval, Sakura takes to sitting by the vast blue waters that remind her so much of a certain blonde's hopeful eyes. She believes that if she sits for long enough, she'll become inspired to continue on.
Fins of fish puncture the surface from just below, and when they jump out, droplets glitter off of their slick scales like sweat trickling down her skin.
The sun bears down on her and she thinks of the hospital shifts she should be filling.
When goodness can tempt her no longer and the view from the lake dies in a beam of golden light, its beauty lost (drowned out), she contemplates leaving the confines of the village walls that had always kept her safe.
After missions lose their tenseness and the words in textbooks begin to blur together, she knows she must take action.
She waits until the day winds down, and then she packs.
…Because Konoha has nothing left to offer her besides Naruto and Kakashi, and she can't take them with her.
Because it's dark and there's no one to stop her and she needs Sasuke to know that it's okay, and she misses -loves- him still.
(Because Hate is of light and day, and Forgiveness is meant for the dreary, lonesome nights.)
Fin.