Postmortem

Sakura sat crossed-legged on the floor of the hospital. There were empty chairs on her left, but she refused to move into one. She simply sat and stared at her hands folded in her lap. There was activity around, as nurses and janitors entered the room just a few steps to her right, intent on cleaning it out for another patient. Their conversations entered one layer of her mind—they were talking about magazines and chocolate and hitting a bar after work. The other layers of her mind were blank. Her hand gripped her wrist so hard it hurt.

She listened to the commotion occurring down the hall with the same detachment that she heard the nurses giggling about a cute new intern. She heard the shouts and screams and yells, and somehow, deep inside, she knew what was happening. But she still couldn't muster the energy to react.

Someone skidded to a stop in front of her and she lifted her head to look at him. Some details stuck out—a smudge of dirt clung to his cheek, his upper arm was bleeding, his hair needed to be cut. His eyes showed more emotion than she'd seen in years.

"Where is he?" His voice was raw; she wondered how close he was to snapping. "Where is Naruto?"

Uchiha Sasuke, Konoha's missing-nin returned, and Sakura could barely find any room in her numbed mind to care. She couldn't care. There was nothing left for this man.

She dropped her head and went back to staring at her hands.

She heard a whisper of cloth, and then Sasuke's hands gripped her shoulders. "Answer me, Sakura," he warned, in a voice that would have once had her scrambling to form frantic apologies. "Where is he?"

In response, Sakura raised her head and looked at him, really looked at him. She looked at the man she loved, the man she and Naruto worked so hard to bring home. This man had tried to kill Naruto. But he'd failed. They'd all failed. He was home, but he too late.

As she looked at him, she hoped he looked at her, and saw his answer in her cold eyes.

His grip on her arms slackened.

"Go away, Sasuke." She flipped her head so her pink hair acted as a curtain between them. "Just go away."

She thought he would. His feet, visible in her peripheral vision, scooted back, and she waited for him to bolt. But instead, his hands returned to their vise around her arms and he hauled her to her feet.

He shook her, and she allowed it. She shouldn't have, but part of her was accepting it as a penance for not being able to save Naruto.

"What did you do?" his breath was hot in her ear and his too-long hair tickled her neck. "Why didn't you save him?"

One layer of her mind accepted his anger, and in a way, justified it. She'd failed Naruto. Sasuke's words were nothing she hadn't screamed into her own mind during the past few months.

The other layers bridled with fury. The chakra flowed into her arms with barely any thought, and she shoved him, hard enough to crack the far wall with the impact of his body.

Because Sasuke hadn't been there. He didn't sit next to Naruto and try to offer solace as the blonde shinobi's body fell apart before their eyes. He didn't go home at night crying because there was absolutely nothing anyone could do. Nothing but sit and watch and wait and pray for some kind of miracle that never even came. He didn't have to fumble out a goodbye around tears and anger and gut-wrenching pain. He didn't stay with Naruto until Tsunade unclasped fingers from a hand that no longer squeezed back.

"I did everything I could, Sasuke, and it all amounted to nothing," she snarled, clenching her fists. "So don't you dare judge me. Don't you dare. Especially when you weren't even here to say good-bye." She almost shouted the last word, and he flinched where he stood, hunched against the drywall.

She saw the weakness, and pressed on. "Why did you even come back? Why, after all this time, did you come back? Did you hear he was sick? Come to pay your last respects? Why even bother? Did you think he'd appreciate seeing you on his deathbed when all he wanted during his life was for you to give up your stupid, stupid pride and come home?"

He came at her with the speed that once awed her. Her reflexes fired quickly enough to slightly deflect him, but she still took a clip to her shoulder. She sent chakra to her fist and aimed for his head—a cheap, and potentially dangerous shot, but she was past caring. He caught her wrist with a grimace—she thought she heard a crunch of bone—broke her momentum and twisted her in to face him. She allowed it, and met his eyes. There was no fear in her now as she faced this man's greatest potential threat; she almost hoped he'd use it on her, so that maybe, just maybe, she could escape her reality.

Maybe she'd never wake up.

The barely subdued rage in his eyes almost convinced her that she'd get her wish. But as he stared her down, she felt him ease. Maybe he saw something in her—her desperation, her grief, her pain, just something—that gave him pause.

His forehead furrowed, and his grip lessened. His words came out in a deluge, like a mantra. "I was going to come back. When he was made Hokage, I was going to come back. I couldn't before, I just couldn't, but I believed in him. I thought he could change everything. I was going to come back. I was." Maybe he told himself that on the way there, over and over, trying to lessen his guilt.

She pulled herself from his grasp. She was suddenly very, very tired. "Well," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "You're a bit late."

He looked at her, and all she could feel was pity. Pity for him, misguided and angry and so full of bitterness. Pity for herself, a woman who no longer had anyone to comfort her. The man who was more family to her than her own blood, who always held her through her tears was likely being fitted for his funeral shroud. And the man that she could have turned to, once, that she should have been able to turn to now, would only offer her more bitterness. They were kindred spirits now.

She turned to leave, and saw the ANBU lined up in the hallway. She was taken aback, and wondered why they hadn't interfered long before, but perhaps Shishou requested they allow her some closure.

She walked down the hall, and they flowed in to surround Sasuke. He didn't fight back.

She glanced back, and glimpsed him, limp despite the ANBU's rough handling. It was almost wrong to see him so defeated. She almost went back when she saw that tears were slowly sliding down his face.

The sight made her choke, and she fled before he could see her own tears, finally forming in her eyes. It figured that he would help trigger them.

She stopped in a hallway, and, not caring about the startled whispers around her, crouched close to the wall and sobbed.

She had nothing left now. Nothing.

Notes

So, I got engaged this week and my birthday is tomorrow, and so I post... this?

Third of five fics written for SasuSaku month over on LJ. The theme was Free Choice; the Prompt was Clan/Bloodline Limit. It's interesting to read this, and compare it to Requiem because of the similar subject matter. It's fun to see which aspects of my writing have changed over the years, and which have stayed the same.

Anyway, thanks for reading! Give me an early birthday gift and leave me a review!

SJ