E is for Eloquence

Characters: Sasuke Uchiha & Sakura Haruno

Rating: K+

Pairings: well…

Disclaimer: Yeah, I totally own them. That's why I have to write fanfiction about them. Sure.

Summary: After yet another near-death experience, Sasuke reconsiders his priorities.

Sometimes the universe probably really, really hated him, Sasuke Uchiha mused.

There he was, lying beat and broken in the dust of an almost deserted battlefield where he should have died, too.

He had done everything he ever wanted; he'd defeated his brother (which was a mistake), killed Danzou (the two other old people would die soon enough; either because they were old and spiteful or because the current Hokage and those to come would eventually lead them to suicide), gotten rid of Madara (who'd twisted the truth, naturally, and would have gone down even without Sasuke's help, who simply wasn't meant for the heroic kills) and even had his rematch with Naruto (a draw, satisfyingly enough).

And now he was supposed to die here. He wanted to die here, damn it. He'd done everything right, he'd seen the dark tunnel, the light at the end, the flashes of his past life, felt the life draining out of him with his blood, felt his heart pumping out every last drop of it.

Hell, he was even as far as admitting that yes, it could have gone better, he would have rather stayed in Konoha and never get involved with all this and that yes, ignorance and incompetence sometimes really were a bliss, and yes, going after his brother would have been a lot easier if he just had stayed and waited for him to come and get Naruto, and yes, Naruto was stronger than him, not in a fighting power kind of way, but in any other way, and yes, he would rather have spent his life being his friendly rival instead of who he eventually did as more lives could have been saved and so on and so forth.

He would have been happy to die with these conclusions.

He wasn't quite ready to live with them.

Finding out that any and all choices you've made within seventeen years were absolutely wrong and had disastrous consequences for you and everyone around you, well. At least he was dying when he did.

But no. The universe hated him.

So he was back in this black tunnel, the light disappeared, until he was pretty sure all he saw was the back of his eyelids. His heart was still pumping, damn, but the blood stayed in his body.

Wait, now he did see the light again. But wasn't that supposed to be white instead of, like, green?

He opened his eyes.

More green. Green light. Green clothes. Green eyes… Hold on a second.

Green light meant healing. Yeah, that made sense.

Green clothes meant Medic-Nins, or at least during this war it had. Still nothing spectacular.

Green eyes were unusual. Out of all the people he knew, very few of them had green eyes, and only two this exact shade of green. And one of them had no pupils and wore rather heavy make-up slash bags under the eyes due to lack of sleep.

This was not the case here.

"Sakura?" He breathed, his voice raw and husky. Probably something had been broken in his throat.

"Shush, I'm not done yet." She responded, still focused on his wounds with skill and professionalism he didn't quite remember her having.

"Here to finish me off?" He asked her, ignoring her instructions. She made an exasperated noise but kept her mind on the task.

Sasuke let her work in silence for a while, more questions arising each second. Then he decided, well, what was left he could lose by asking them?

"You don't want to kill me anymore?"

"Alliances change. So do motivations. And I'm especially fickle."

"You're a medic?"

"Apparently."

"You saved me."

"Stop making me regret it."

That actually made him shut up for a second. So not only was she a medic now, but feisty, too?

"Did you save Naruto, too?" He asked after another minute of silence.

"He didn't need it." Ouch. That hurt.

"How so? It was a draw."

"He regenerates even faster nowadays. You just seem to fall apart."

"Why did you save me?"

She gave another exasperated groan.

"You helped taking down the world's biggest threat, okay? That makes one think you might be useful, or something."

"Yes, but why you? You're hardly the only medic left alive, right?"

"Well, once upon a time we originated from the same village…"

"So now you're the only capable medic of Konoha. Congratulations."

"Could you just shut up?"

The green light had vanished. Now she was staring at him angrily, and he couldn't help but notice her blush.

He also couldn't help but notice he was enjoying this new, feisty, flustered Sakura. Who now started ranting.

"Seriously! When did you become so talkative, anyway?"

He shrugged as much as he was able to.

"I don't know. I sort of died several times over. Makes you reconsider things."

"Whatever!" She exclaimed. "I liked you a lot more when you would just grunt instead of talk and then continue to brood in silence or something!"

"Why?" He asked, tying to rise to his elbows and giving her what he had experienced to be the smirk that made female heads turn everywhere. That actually made her back off a little. "Am I making you uncomfortable?"

"I… You… You… You are exasperating!" She exclaimed, her face now a shade of red horribly disharmonizing with her hair. He cocked his head.

"How very eloquent."

And when she gave him an angry roar, previously saved for Naruto, and her fist connected with his face, knocking him out again, he went down with a smirk.

Totally worth it.