Take It or Leave It

Sakura closes her trunk with a thud, and wipes a drop of sweat off her forehead. She takes a couple steps back from her car and sighs. The boxes stacked up in the back seat are depressing. An answering sigh from Naruto sounds from her side, and his arm slings around her. "Are you sure about this, Sakura-chan?"

She doesn't dare to turn and meet his eyes, knowing he'll see just how unsure she is about this decision. Before, when she'd called Naruto to come help her load up her things, it had seemed best, but now? Seeing her entire life boxed up and stacked inside a car? She's not so sure. He doesn't force her to answer, and instead squeezes her shoulders and then half-jogs back to the side door and into the house.

Sakura follows to see him hefting the last box off the kitchen table. He shoots her a strained grin before he brushes past her to cart the box off to his jeep. Sakura moves to the sink, grabbing a glass and filling it from the tap. She drinks it down without stopping, before collapsing into a kitchen chair. She fiddles with the glass, and wonders yet again if she should leave a note.

But what can she possibly say? Dear Sasuke, I'm still in love with you, but living with you is killing me?

Dear Sasuke, Sorry I started screaming at you last night? And sorry that I got angry when you didn't yell back?

Dear Sasuke, I don't know if this is the right decision, but I felt I needed to do this for both of us?

Dear Sasuke, Sorry I'm so annoying?

Aki rubs against her leg, and she sets down the glass in favor of reaching down and scooping the cat up with one hand. The tabby mews, most likely sensing that something is about to change. Sakura scratches the cat between her ears. "There's food and water in your bowls," she says softly. "And you've been with Sasuke longer than me, so you better take care of him."

The door slams and Naruto pops into the kitchen. He stops at the sight of Sakura with Sasuke's cat, something he's seen many, many times. He leans against the doorframe and crosses his arms. "You know, I don't really know how you put up with the bastard, but you've done an awesome job. I don't get why you gotta leave. I mean, whatever you want, I'll go with it, I just don't get it."

Sakura almost starts to cry then. Almost.

She chokes it down just in time, and forces out a weak smile. Naruto will know it's fake. "There's only so much I can do, Naruto. I give and give and give and I'm getting to the point where I just feel empty. There's nothing for me here anymore."

It hurts to say these words, but she can only be so selfless.

Naruto face is grim, but he nods and turns around to leave. She appreciates the thoughtfulness. This is it. Her last few moments in this house.

She stands, and sets Aki on the floor. She glances around. It isn't that much different. Her magnets are gone from the refrigerator; her apples removed from the fruit bowl. How long will it take him to realize she was gone?

Probably not long at all, if she's being realistic.

The question is how will he react?

She reaches to the notepad on the counter, but drops her hand. There's no point; there's only one message she can leave, and it'll only piss him off. So with nothing else to do, she sets her spare keys on the counter and follows Naruto.

I'm sorry.

She crashes at Ino's. It's temporary until she can get settled into a new, hopefully cheap, apartment.

The first day is surprisingly easy. Ino's pounding out a term paper, and Sakura, already feeling guilty for intruding, watches movies on her laptop with headphones until exhaustion from lifting boxes all day settles in and she falls asleep.

The second day is what it gets hard.

Ino comes home with a brilliant smile, happy after turning in her paper, and demands that Sakura enjoy some girl bonding time. The romantic comedies and chocolate come out, and the two curl up in Ino's bed to giggle. Sakura appreciates the attention, but she feels slightly awkward. She still doesn't know if she's sad or angry. She might be in denial. It's only after she moves to her futon to sleep and checks her phone for messages that the facts settle in. Day two, and Sasuke hasn't called or texted or in any way tried to contact her.

It's not surprising. She ended it, after all.

It's over. It's really over.

It takes a long time to fall asleep.

Days three and four are spent at the hospital, and for once, Sakura is grateful for her thirty-hour shift. She loses herself in patients and tries not to think about anything that involves Sasuke.

Day five is spent crying.

The days start to blur together after that, as Sakura really comes to terms with what she has done.

"Sakura," Ino says one evening, watching her friend highlight apartment listings in the classifieds, "are you sure this is what you want?"

Someone has been chatting with Naruto.

Sakura lets the newspaper fall and faces her best friend. "Of course I'm not sure. Maybe I've just made the biggest mistake of my life; I don't know. But I couldn't stay there anymore, Ino. I couldn't."

Ino drops onto the bed and turns her head to look at Sakura. "I don't understand. The two of you seemed so good together; you were like your own personal fairy tale come true. What happened to that?"

Sakura flops down to the bed as well, propping herself up on one elbow. "Things were good, for awhile. But… it's different now."

"It can't be that bad, can it? I mean, bad enough to leave?"

Sakura sighs. "Let's put it this way. You know Shikamaru?"

Ino blinks. "You're serious. Yes, I do believe I'm acquainted with my boyfriend."

Sakura chuckles and continues. "Shikamaru acts like a relationship is too much of a hassle, right?" Ino nods. "But at the end of the day? He comes in and talks to you. He tells you what's going on in his life and whines and complains and lets you in. With Sasuke… He just doesn't talk to me about anything. Stuff with his family is really bad right now and whenever I asked him about it, he'd either pretend he didn't hear me or call me annoying and nosy. So I stopped asking. And after that, we started just going through the motions. We'd go out to dinner and make small talk, but that's all it was. He shut me out."

Ino sits up. "You know, sometimes things get funny with Shikamaru. We go through little spells that feel really weird and off, but then with just a little time, things get better than ever. Do you think maybe you guys were just in a funk? It doesn't have to be over, Sakura; maybe you two just needed some space."

Sakura drops from her elbow down to the bed, slightly curling into herself. "No. I can't do it anymore, Ino. This has been going on for way too long. It was killing me. It was absolutely killing me."

Ino nods slowly, and leaves the room.

Sakura cries herself to sleep again.

The next couple weeks are spent finding a small, but tidy apartment. After signing the lease, she once again recruits Naruto's jeep and arm power.

She spends most of the second move sitting on the floor of her new apartment watching Naruto bring everything in. She's tired and irritated, probably due to the consistent lack of sleep since leaving. She can't get used to sleeping without Sasuke's arm around her at night. Naruto took one look at her face this morning and sent her inside to rest.

He brings the boxes in with insulting ease, and when he's done, drops her pillows and blankets on her head as he settles next to her in the maze of boxes and assorted furniture.

"So," he says with a grin, ruffling her hair like Kakashi used to do back in grade school. "How are you doing?"

She scowls and smacks the back of his head. Damn snoop.

"Hey, hey, hey!" he exclaims, "I just moved your whole damn apartment; the least you could do is answer a simple question without ripping my head off!"

She hits him again, slightly harder this time. "I would have helped, but someone picked me up and dropped me on my ass in the entry way! Way to show a lady some respect!"

"It was for your own good!"

"Like hell it was for my own good! I'll determine what's good for me, thank you very much!"

Her words, too forceful for a playful rebuttal, echo through the apartment. Naruto raises an eyebrow. "I just hit a nerve, didn't I?"

Sakura groans, and covered her eyes with her hands, shaking her head frantically.

"Sakura." Naruto's voice has taken on a serious air, which means he's about to turn her emotions upside down. "You know Sasuke loves you."

Sakura words come out slightly muffled from behind her hands. "You make it sound like that's all there is. We love each other, and that's that. Life will be perfect."

"That's how it should be!"

She jerks her head up. "But that's not how it works! Dammit, Naruto, if he really loved me, he'd say it! And I've never heard those three words from him. Ever. If he loved me, he'd have said it when I asked him to. But he didn't. I begged him to; told him I needed to hear him say it, and he didn't. And I still love him, and I still want to be with him, but I can't go back to someone who doesn't love me the way I want him to and I'm so sick of thinking about all this; just make it go away!" She's close to tears again.

Naruto gathers her in his arms and they sit there.

Once her breathing smoothes out, Naruto squeezes her a bit. "I don't really know what happened between you and the bastard before you left, but he's not exactly full of sunshine lately."

Sakura peeks out from behind her hands. "What?"

"Really. Not like he's ever shitting rainbows or anything like Lee, but lately? He's been evil. He made two interns cry this week. He misses you." He nudges her with his hand. "Think about that, kay? I hate seeing the two of you like this."

Sakura hates the part of her that feels hope.

On day eighteen, she flips through her day planner, and suddenly realizes that the month is missing its customary purple stars that mark her period. She slams the book closed and walks to the kitchen to pour a cup of orange juice. She refuses to even think about it.

On day twenty-three, she comes home from her shift completely famished, and scarfs down everything she can find in her fridge. She promptly throws it up. After rinsing her mouth and brushing her teeth, she buys a pregnancy test at the drugstore and feels herself grow very cold at the sight of two faint lines.

On day twenty-six, she leaves her primary physician's office feeling sick, realizing that yes, life really is a bitch.

She's pregnant.

She picks up a bottle of prenatal vitamins on her way home. She doesn't know what else to do. There's no one to surprise with the happy news.

She initially refuses to even think about the fact that this baby within her is Sasuke's. She temporarily removes that from her mind. Business has to come first or she will go insane. So she shoves those thoughts deeper and deeper where they can't hurt her, and picks up the phone to start making arrangements.

First, she phones the hospital to discuss how her pregnancy will affect her residency. The typical maternity leave is six weeks; Sakura finagles eight because of her single marital status, but still accepts that only the first six will be covered by disability insurance. She's grateful anyway. They promise to try to accommodate her needs when she returns, and suggest she talk to some older doctors about childcare. She has nine months to plan this. Luckily, it will be cheap, one huge perk of her chosen profession.

Once she has that step completed, she sits on her bed, and tries to think what the hell she's going to do now. She's six weeks along. That means that there is a something inside of her that's still smaller than her fingernail; something that will become her baby.

Sasuke's baby.

She stumbles back to the bathroom to throw up again.

She stares at her phone for close to an hour that night, but can't convince herself to pick it up and call Sasuke. She can barely handle this herself right now, let alone face telling him. For now, just until this stops feeling like some very bizarre dream, she's going to keep this to herself.

Sakura struggles over the next couple weeks. She's tired, bloated, and moody, and having to stop by the restroom between every patient is not helping matters. She can't keep food down, and she has no one to help with her random cravings for watermelon. She hates the heartburn, she hates how achy her body feels, and she even hates how none of her bras fit anymore because of how her body has changed in such a short time.

She still tells no one. Naruto floods her inbox with text messages and voicemails, trying to get her out of her sudden funk, but Sakura responds that she's too tired from long shifts and wants to catch up on sleep. Once Naruto sees her, he'll know something's up and the secret will be out.

In a way, she's not lying. She's never been so tired in her entire life. Her co-workers notice, and she thinks that they've put the pieces together in their minds, because she's suddenly the one who always gets the extra comfy bed in the corner of the break room. Someone puts a Tupperware of sliced watermelon in the fridge. And she knows she's become truly pathetic when Karin of all people takes on extra patients to give Sakura a couple more hours of sleep.

Week nine begins, and Sakura wonders what the hell she is doing. She is nearing the end of her first trimester, and she has yet to inform Sasuke of the fact. Hell, she can still barely admit it to herself. She knows this makes her a horrible person.

But she doesn't know how to tell him this. She's the one who left. What right does she have to reappear and tear his life apart?

But Sasuke's always wanted a family. He told her once, back when they used to wake up together on Saturday mornings, when he'd hold her and murmur into her hair. He wanted a chance to redeem his family name by creating a home different from the one he grew up in. He wanted children who were never afraid to laugh.

Something about that memory calms her down. Something about that memory makes her press her hands to her stomach and think, oh so briefly, about a baby with black hair and green eyes.

She holds on to that thought like a talisman when she calls him. The phone rings twice before being sent to voicemail.

She tries again.

On the third try, she leaves a message, asking him to return her call because she has something important to discuss.

Two days and seven tries later, she knows he hates her.

She doesn't even think. She gets off from a twenty-six hour shift and lets instinct take over. She knows she should be going home to sleep because she's a danger on the roads in this state, but instead she pulls into Sasuke's driveway. His light is on.

She knocks on the side door, and takes a moment to wonder what the hell she's going to say. Before she can compose herself, the door opens and there he is. His eyes are dark, his expression unsurprised and indifferent. Sakura opens her mouth and out tumble the words, "I'm sorry I left without saying anything, and I'm not here to try and come back or anything because you ignored all my calls, and that's never a good sign is it, but I really really need to talk to you about something really really important, so can I come in?"

She looks up at him, and tries to beg him with her eyes to understand.

He says nothing.

"Sasuke." It's the first time she's said his name since leaving. "Please. We really need to talk."

His eyes narrow. "You left."

"Sasuke, please, let me explain—"

"You left with no explanation. I have no desire to receive one now. I believe I heard everything I needed to hear from you the night before you left."

"But Sasuke, that's not why—" The door closes in her face. Softly. He doesn't slam it, and in his own way, he has told her that he's done. She left. He's done.

Sakura refuses to take that. She beats her fist against the door and cries out loudly. Sasuke doesn't like attention; if she makes enough noise, he'll open the door solely to avoid talking to concerned neighbors later. "Sasuke, damn you, open the door! I'm going to talk, and you're going to listen! Sasuke, I know you can hear me! Open it! Now!"

She goes on, slamming harder and harder with more and more profanity, but there is no response. Eventually, she stops.

So this is how it's going to be.

She wonders if this time, she should leave a note saying what she wants to say.

Dear Sasuke, We're having a baby.

Dear Sasuke, I want it to be a boy, with your hair, and my eyes.

Dear Sasuke, I don't still don't know if we can work as a couple, but I can't do this alone.

Dear Sasuke, I'm still in love with you, and now I need you. I genuinely need you.

But he'll hate these two words she really wants to say even more.

She sighs, and then turns to return to her car. Before entering the vehicle, she turns back to what used to be her home. "I'm pregnant," she whispers. The tears start to roll down her cheeks as she gets in her car to drive away.

Notes

Last of the five fics I wrote for SasuSaku month over on LJ. Theme was Alternate Universe; Prompt was Hello/Goodbye.

This one will be continued. I've started working on the second chapters of both this and Blink but I really can't promise when I'll be able to finish them; undergraduate classes start Monday and I haven't even finished my syllabi yet... Yeah... See y'all at fall break?

Enjoy, and don't forget, reviews make my day!

SJ