title: burns like a thousand stars

author: The Scarlett Ribbon

summary: theirs is a story that hasn't finished yet. Sasuke, Sakura and life during the war.

rating: K

prompt: conversation

burns like a thousand stars

Sunset blood orange, heart stops – and silence.

It's eerie, almost. The quiet. She doesn't have time to process it because that silhouette in the trees, oh, Sakura would know it anywhere and even though the last two days have been nothing but mud and blood and death screaming in her ears, it's not enough to stop that old, badly patched fault line from cracking open and ripping her heart to shreds.

All her bones tremble, feet halting. Her heart is in her throat and on her sleeves, ready and waiting. Already the phantom press of his hand reaching out to crush it between his fingers makes the world spin, just for a moment.

And Sakura laughs, sharp and bitter – almost a sob, rising in her chest. All this, and he hasn't even looked up yet. And for the first time, there is a part of her that really doesn't want him to; a part of her that is small, and mean, and still dreams of his cartwheeling corpse eyes, blood-red mania spinning into her nightmares.

Sasuke takes one more footstep before the wheels of the Sharingan slide up and over to where she stands between the trees, and she cannot move, cannot look away –

"…Sakura."

She can't stop her eyes from drinking him in hungrily, because Sakura – Sakura is a glutton for punishment and despite the part of her that wants to run, run and never look back, she cannot drown her most masochistic tendencies and the hope that somewhere under the skin, there remains some semblance of the boy she knew in his skeleton of bleached white bones.

"What happened?" she demands, and he looks down at himself, at the blood that covers his front like a crimson bib. His sword, that thin blade she's watched him charge with the chirping of a thousand birds, is still dripping.

"I killed Kabuto," he says levelly, and she realises that's not the answer she wants.

What she really wants to do is scream at him; scream and cry until there is nothing left, and no more tears to shed. How could you do this? How could you do this to me, Sasuke-kun?

She focuses on the splash of blood against his pale, sickly skin because she cannot bear to look him in the face to see what expression lies there. His stoic expression used to cut her open, but now she wonders if seeing that hate-induced mania distort the features of the boy she loves for a second time would be worse.

"What are you doing here, Sakura?" he asks, and if there is rage barely supressed in the sound of his voice, there is just the tiniest trace of curiosity too.

Please, please, let there be curiosity, she prays. Please. Anything other than hate.

"No," her voice is shaking, "I mean, what happened? What happened to you, Sasuke?"

She thinks of the injured shinobi and his love letter, that moment that changed all her perceptions, made her remember what she should never have forgotten.

"He must be a really great guy, if you're in love with him!"

"What, no assassination attempts?" Sasuke asks, and it stings, god – it's like a punch to the chest, and it makes no sense given what he's done, but somehow she knows the real traitor here is her.

She takes a breath, and another; tries to hold back the crescendo crashing in her chest.

"Tell me there's a reason," she begs, because this is the crux of it, the thing that matters. "Tell me you're not the villain everyone tells me you are. Tell me you haven't just gone off the deep end because all the darkness you sought turned around and poisoned you."

She can't read him, not anymore, not like she used to. There was a time when Sakura could look into his eyes and see the whole of him, everything there was.

"After all that, they didn't tell you?" his voice is a tired drawl.

Numbly, she shakes her head. Naruto needs her, she knows, but Sakura still loves Sasuke to the depth and breadth of all the oceans she's never seen, and walking away without an answer is impossible. Turning her back on him is impossible.

"Please," the word is whispered, but Sasuke is too sharp of hearing to miss it. "Tell me what happened to make you like this. Help me to understand."

He stares at her for far too long in silence. "I don't have to tell you anything," he says slowly, and then, almost an accusation, "You didn't care about answers before."

Her thoughts spin in frantic circles, because she's not sure how to make him understand the circumstances that led her to a bridge with the intention to kill without making excuses. That is one thing that he could never abide.

"I know," she admits, licking her chapped lips, mouth uncomfortably dry. "But you joined Akatsuki, Sasuke. What was I supposed to think?"

When he doesn't reply, Sakura continues. "I spent three years telling myself that – that you were still my friend, that you were still you, but I hadn't talked to you in so long…I had to start reading you by your actions, because that was all I had to go on, and Sasuke…You started acting like a villain."

And I still don't know why.

The effect of that last word is immediate and rather frightening. Sasuke is stalking towards her, hand raising that thin blade and Sharingan flashing before she knows what is happening. He is shouting at her, his every word punctuated with rage. Sakura doesn't retreat and he towers over her, sword mere millimetres from slicing her open.

"I am not the villain here!" he screams at her. "Look at your precious Konoha – you ask the Hokage what they did to my clan!"

But he doesn't do it, and that alone is enough to make her cling to the fragile threads of hope she's been nursing for weeks. His eyes are red and hypnotising and she doesn't look away.

"I'm not asking them," she murmurs, because this is what it comes down to in the end. She's made enough mistakes to see things clearly, and despite everything he has and hasn't done, Sakura remembers who Sasuke is, and she is determined to have this conversation. "I'm asking you."

Because Sasuke is not a monster, and only something very terrible could have driven him to the edge of madness.

She can tell by the way he stills that he understands. His hand loosens its grip on the sword he carries, and as the fury in his face ebbs away, Sakura cannot help but think he looks tired in ways that she hopes she will never know. Without it, his face is stripped down and oddly vulnerable; Sasuke looks more like himself in that moment, than he has in years.

With the small space between them lit with the colour if a distant, smouldering sunset, Sasuke tells her the real story of the Uchiha massacre.