disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: to Chloe, who might actually be my soul animal? We're not sure. Happy Christmas, my gorgeous girl.
notes: this is some seriously depressing shit.

title: miseria cantare
summary: Three days before Christmas, Uchiha Sasuke left Konoha. Again. — Sasuke/Sakura.

—

.

.

.

.

.

The sky was white that morning.

Sakura looked out the window of her tiny apartment, and realized that it was one of those mornings. It was a crispness in the air—cold but not kind, and it tasted it almost like regret. It was three days before Christmas.

It was mornings like this that Sakura liked to visit her bench.

She slipped out the window to the fire escape and clambered down with only her lab coat on, fingers scrabbling against the frosted metal. It was freezing cold but Sakura paid it no mind.

There were more important things than the cold.

She tucked vibrant pink strands of hair behind her ear as she hit the ground, and she hurried along, puffing out steam. I'm a little teapot, short and stout—

The streets were empty, that early in the morning. Sakura trudged through the fine layer of snow that had fallen overnight and tried not to shiver like an introvert with the thin fabric of her lab coat drawn tightly around her frame. Around a corner, down a side street, another corner then another, and her bench and Konoha's gates came into view.

And there was Sasuke, with a winter coat and a pack over his shoulder, walking away.

Sakura stood there, utterly flabbergasted. For a moment, she couldn't think of anything to say at all. And then she found her voice and her rage and a lot of other things.

"Are you serious, Sasuke?!" she called. "Are you—are you actually serious?!"

He turned around, fluid, drawing kunai as he went.

But Sakura didn't even move. She just stood there, slowly shaking her head and trying to comprehend everything that he was trying to do. Because she couldn't—she couldn't even comprehend. She just couldn't.

"Go away, Sakura," he said. He sounded tired and sad and Sakura was having none of it.

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared, eyes narrow and green and furious. "Oh my—I can't believe this. I really, really can't. I just—you're serious about this. After everything. I just can't—even—I can't believe you!"

"Hn."

She took a long breath to start arguing, but then she stopped. She looked at him and all his darkness. He was still Sasuke-kun, after all.

Maybe it would always be inevitable. Maybe she would be destined to chase him forever.

But Sakura was tired of chasing a dream.

She put her hands up. "You know what," she said. "Go. Just go. I don't care anymore, Sasuke-kun. I'm done caring. So go."

"Sakura—"

"But just so you know," she cut him off, "one day, you're going to wake up and realize that we could have been great. You and me and Naruto—we could have been great. But we're not. So go. I don't care anymore."

She sent him a hard stare and dared him to contradict her.

But he didn't.

And so Sakura laughed, tough and sharp and bitter.

And she turned around, and walked away.

fin.