i. The End

It had all begun that night in the old house by the sea. Ghosts were haunting Sasuke again and abandoning hopes of sleep, he had wandered into the creaking hallways to escape them. He padded across the wooden floor boards, listening to the house sigh and groan around him as the coastal breeze rattled its thin walls.

They had been stationed here for almost a week now, and he still hadn't grown accustomed to the metallic tang of brine and fish that permeated the air, filled his lungs, and sat heavy on his tongue. The fishing village was far from Konoha, and he felt himself missing the familiar smell of undergrowth and pine. However this place felt especially foreign tonight. Ever since he had woken to Sakura's stricken sobs on the bridge dazed from blood loss, he had felt a degree removed from reality, the edges of him blurred and unclear.

Shock—that's what Kakashi had called it, but giving it a name was not a cure. Despite the horror and violence he'd been exposed to so early on, yesterday had shaken him. Or perhaps it shook him because of it. The pileup of bodies, the animal groans of the dying, the blood—all of reminders of the massacre. Maybe that was why the ghosts had been creeping into his dreams tonight.

The pain, however, created a sharp dividing line between the past and present. The three punctures at his neck, each a long finger deep, pulsed and wept blood into the bandages, blistering hot as if he'd just been branded by iron, but a reminder nonetheless yesterday had happened— a permanent part of his reality.

As he contemplated on whether to continue on his likely fruitless search for peace or return to his lumpy futon on the floor, a sudden scream shattered the quiet: it was Sakura.

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It was just another muggy summer afternoon in Fire Country: big clouds, blue skies, and open grassland as far as the eye could see, the brown landscape unbearable still in the stifling heat. Sakura had been on her way to a routine border patrol, wilting beneath the white-hot sun. She was cursing the luck of her draw for getting such a terrible assignment during the hottest time of the year, when she spotted the figure wading through the waist-high grass not a hundred meters away. The distance had made it difficult for her to recognize him at first, but when she did, she froze.

Uchiha Sasuke.

He had paused as well—a dark, thumb-sized smudge in the distance.

Sakura stared. The cicadas screamed and the dead air hung hot and heavy around them.

It had been six years since that night he had left her on the bench beneath the tree: four years since anyone had last seen him, and two since she had last heard he killed his brother. They had all been hopeful Itachi's death would mean Sasuke's return home, but he never came back.

Even now, Naruto would disappear from the village for weeks, chasing rumors about their missing teammate, his best friend, and alway returning empty-handed. Whenever Sakura met him at the gates, she could never help but search for any cracks in his expression, for signs that he had given up, but his blue eyes were always rock-steady: he would bring Sasuke home, and when Sakura saw, she'd inevitably feel a twinge of guilt.

So, when Sasuke appeared after all these years, she grabbed her kunai, desperate to cut down the shameful little garden of doubts she had allowed to grow in her heart. She moved without thinking, afraid that he'd disappear, that her last chance at seizing the old dream of happily ever after would melt away beneath the white-hot sun.

One thing led to another, and then they were standing amongst craters in the earth—all her handiwork because she had missed many times. An impassible valley lay between them, but she refused to admit to it.

Sakura's scraped her sticky bangs away from her forehead, her breathing ragged, the hot air sawing her throat. Her thoughts slipped to the painful stitch in her side, her cracked rib—focus. She needed to focus.

The heat was getting to her, but she had to focus.

Sasuke stood just a few yards away, the closest she'd been to him in years, yet he had never felt so far away. The slash on her neck—too close to her jugular—stung too much as blood poured out from the gash. The boy from her childhood was gone, and in its place stood a stranger whose blank eyes she did not know. Throughout the fight, the evidence had been steadily mounting, and the truth began to loom over Sakura, casting its dark shadow over her: she wasn't fighting to bring him back, she was fighting for her life.

Meanwhile, Sasuke stood across from her without a glimmer of sweat to show despite the heat and their battle. Only a thin line of red marred his pale cheek—a lucky knick with her kunai. He looked at her, and Sakura suddenly thought of Sasori's wooden puppets: empty husks with human faces.

A blast of hot wind tumbled past her, kicking up clouds of dust, bringing more discomfort than relief. Sasuke pulled his sword rasping from its sheath, and just as the sun licked the blade's edge, he disappeared like blown out flame. There was a cold kiss on her shoulder. Something flopped to the ground by her foot. Sasuke reappeared behind her. It's all too sudden, too abrupt to follow, like thumbing through a flipbook that's had too many pages torn out.

Sakura didn't move—he had been far too fast, but something had changed. Her eyes slid down to her shoulder and she stared at the gristly wound. In the dirt below lay her severed arm.

"What..?"

The world slowed. Her blood throbbed. Horror hung over her, suspended by a thin thread. The thread snapped. One knee came crashing down, then the other. From the outer belts of her consciousness, pain built up like the swell of an incoming wave. Her green eyes roved wildly, unsure where it needed to be looking. The arm at her shoulder or the arm on the ground? God, why was there was so much blood?

A calm voice broke into her thoughts. Close the wound…you need to close the wound before you go into shock.

She barely had enough chakra left.

Barely enough is still enough.

She could die.

You will die if you let yourself bleed out. Close the wound, Sakura, the medic in her commanded.

So she dug deep, scraping the bottom of her reserves to gather what little chakra she had left. Her brows knitted together in a mixture of concentration and pain as she molded it into the wound. As the raw flesh disappeared beneath a pink cap of newly grown skin, darkness began the hem the edges of her vision. When the last of her chakra left her fingertips, the sky and clouds spun above her like a bright blue pinwheel. Her eyes slid shut. When she opened them again, she was on the ground.

"Still so naive." Sasuke's voice came from directly overhead. It was the first time he had addressed her.

A wave of nausea rocked through her and she shut her eyes. Sakura felt as if the world had tilted forward she was about to slip off the edge.

"It's your fault for still being so weak, Sakura." His flat tone was empty of mockery, and that made it all the worse.

"Fuck you," she mumbled, but the words hit him like thrown straw.

She saw a burst of light behind her closed lids; the cry of a thousand chirping birds screamed in her ear. She looked and saw the tip of Sasuke's blade hovering above her face. Blue sparks jumped along its edge like strikes of wild lightening: chidori. The hair on her skin prickled in the charged air.

She looked past the sword's length, searching Sasuke's face for a teasing grin, or even just an arrogant smirk—anything except for those hollow eyes cut into that blank expression. He raised the sword over Sakura with both hands, the tip poised perfectly over her heart.

"Sasuke-kun—Sasuke-kun, please—"

"Too weak," he repeated, and the blade came plunging down.

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Sakura woke up screaming. Her eyes opened to darkness, and the remnants of her cries trailed off of her tongue, her chest rising and falling as if she'd been running for days. She sat up and pressed a hand to her sweaty forehead. Terror bubbled up within her, and she squeezed her eyes against it, trying to force it down, but a sob managed to slip out anyways. She was going to be sick.

"Sakura?" Someone grabbed her shoulder.

"No!" She blindly knocked the hand away, unable to get her bearings in this whirling mass of darkness.

"Ow—hey!" The hands locked around her again. "What the hell's wrong with you?"

Panic surged inside of her and she thrashed like a trapped animal. "Stop, please," she begged.

"Sakura, Sakura! You need to calm down." Someone shook her hard. "What happened? What's wrong? Hey look— look at me!"

The command pierced through her blind panic, forcing clarity back into her eyes. The blurry face before her came into focus. It was Sasuke.

"Sakura," he began but couldn't finish. Sakura's punch struck him like a gunshot, and he flew across the room as if he'd just been thrown. He slammed to a backbreaking stop against the wall, and before he had a chance to fall to his knees, Sakura was on him. She rammed her arm into his throat, crushing him against the wall.

"You," Sakura snarled, the hatred dripping from her bared teeth like venom. Sasuke gagged for air, clutching at her forearm, but she only pressed harder into him. Her green eyes crackled, and she wished she could burn him alive with the heat of her anger.

Spots swarmed before Sasuke's vision. The first blow had knocked the wind cleanly out of him, and Sakura had closed off his windpipe before he could take another breath. At this rate he'd pass out, but her arm wouldn't budge despite his fierce effort.

"I can't believe you tried to kill me!" She was screaming at him, but her voice sounded far off and muffled to Sasuke's ears.

He watched from a distance as tears flowed freely from her eyes. He wondered with a touch of annoyance what she was so pissed about, floating further and further away into the back of his mind. Wasn't he the victim here?

A black curtain began to fall across his vision when the pressure disappeared from his throat. His lungs ballooned with the sudden rush of air, and the explosion of oxygen to his brain sent him reeling. He crumbled to his knees gasping, clutching at the wooden floor as it spun out beneath him like a lopsided top.

He glanced up, dizzily noting that Kakashi had finally made his entrance. Their teacher had managed to separate his two students and looked more bemused than upset that Sasuke sounded like a broken squeaky toy.

"Everything okay here?" He asked in what Sasuke thought was an inappropriately blasé manner. Of course things weren't okay, for fuck's sake, Sakura had just tried to crush his trachea.

"Fine," Sasuke rasped and fell back into a sitting position.

Meanwhile Sakura gaped at their teacher with brows furrowed in confusion. "Kakashi-sensei?!"

"In the flesh," he replied good-naturedly, though he didn't loosen his grip on her wrist.

"You," She sniffed and dragged the back of her arm across her eyes. "What're you doing here?"

"Funny, I was just about to ask you the same thing, Sakura."

She opened her mouth, prepared to tell Kakashi how she had been on her way to the border for a mission when she had run into Sasuke. How she had tried to take him home by force, but that it was all lost cause because Sasuke was a lost cause. He had cut her arm off in cold blood then plunged his sword into her chest and-

Suddenly, her free hand suddenly went searchingly to her chest. The wound was gone.

She looked down and then noticed her arm in Kakashi's grasp. It then occurred to her, belatedly, that she still had both limbs attached.

"Sakura, what's going on," Kakashi said, and this time the tone of his voice expected an answer.

"I…" Her eyes darted frantically around the room. Tatami mats on the floor. A sleeping pallet. The open window revealed it was nighttime. Where was she? How long had she been out for? She stared at her arm, still not quite able to believe it was still there.

Was she dreaming? Genjutsu? She checked: no.

"Hey, what's going on?" Sakura turned at the familiar sound of Naruto's voice. The blonde stood in the doorway, rubbing his eyes sleepily.

"Naruto?" Sakura asked, the hysteria straining at her seams.

"'Sup Sakura-chan," Naruto raised a hand in greeting before using it to stifle a yawn. "Was that you screaming earlier? Did the boogie man get to ya or something?" He spotted Sasuke on the ground, and a devilish little grin cut across his face. "Oh I see, bet you saw Sasuke's ugly mug on the way to the bathroom, and it scared the shit outta ya."

"Lay off, dumbass," Sasuke scowled, though he greatly preferred that explanation to the truth-he'd die in shame if Naruto ever found out that their female teammate had done him in.

Sakura just continued to stare at Naruto, and when the blonde finally noticed her expression, he quickly traded in his smirk for a concerned frown. "Hey, you okay? You kinda do look like you've just seen a ghost."

And maybe Sakura had, because just three days ago, when Naruto had seen her off at the village gates, he had been a head taller than her with a chest broad enough engulf her in a crushing bear hug. Now, he stood before her dwarfed by the doorframe and with a pipsqueak voice to go along with the rest of his pipsqueak self.

Within the gloom of that moonlit room, slowly—bit-by-bit like the waking sun—the truth began to rise within her. Kakashi must have sensed something wrong because he let her arm go and took a step towards her.

"Sakura?" He asked again, this time more gently and with a touch of concern.

She suddenly turned on him, and Kakashi hesitated when he saw her eyes, wild and frantic. He'd seen that same expression on the drowning.

"Kakashi-sensei, what's today's date?"

"March 24?"

"And—and the year?"

"Rabbit?"

Sakura did the math. Seven years.

"No way." She fell to her knees.

Startled, Kakashi automatically reached for her and Naruto bounded over to her side in alarm.

"Sakura!"

"Sakura-chan!"

But she was deaf to their calls. The walls of her world had shrunk to contain nothing more than the dark haired boy before her. "Sasuke-kun…"

"What," he snapped, irritated by the dumb look on her face. Had he seriously been at the mercy of this? Before he had a chance to bolster his distaste with a scowl, Sakura lunged forward, locking her arms around his neck.

Sasuke visibly recoiled from the touch, his expression pulled between surprise and disgust. He made an effort to squirm out of her grip, but she ignored it and pressed her head into his shoulder.

"Hey—!" He began testily, but he never got to finish.

"I'm dreaming," Sakura muttered into his skin, and something in her voice gave him pause.

"This—it must be a dream," Her voice broke over the last word. A sob scraped out of her throat, and all three males went rigid with fear.

"Sasuke, you ass!" Naruto instinctively shouted.

Sasuke's hands shot up in the air, claiming innocence. "What?! I didn't do anything!" He resisted the urge to tack on a "she started it" at the end.

Kakashi stood over his students and rubbed the neck of his head uncertainly. This was exactly why he hadn't wanted to be a teacher in the first place. He knew how to silently kill a man forty-three different ways, but the "provide emotional support" ability wasn't part of his skill set. And now here he was with a crying girl on his hands, wondering if this was what incompetence felt like. Who knew being a well-calibrated killing machine could come with a weakness as pathetic as tear ducts.

Kakashi grimaced internally. Well, here goes nothing. He dropped down into a crouch and tried to scrounge up the shriveled up remains of what little empathy he had left.

"Sakura, is—uh, everything all right?"

She didn't answer, and he helplessly looked on while she kept her face hidden again Sasuke. He could too clearly imagine the silent stream of tears flowing down her face. Behind him, he sensed Naruto fidgeting uneasily while Sasuke pointedly glared him down. The unspoken agreement was that he, Kakashi-sensei, as the responsible adult, would be able to resolve this whole mess. Kakashi wished there was an option two to this scenario.

Beneath his mask, Kakashi's lips pursed as he made to one of the most difficult calls in recent memory.

Forgive your sensei, Sasuke. I will admit that I am worse than scum.

"Well," Kakashi chirped, trying to lighten the heavy atmosphere as he placed an awkward hand on Sakura's head. "I guess I'll be going then. If you need anything, Sakura, remember I'll be in the room down the hall."

He then turned around to shepherd Naruto out of the room with him. Meanwhile, Sasuke's eyes looked dangerously close to popping out of their sockets.

Sasuke held out a hand as if to stop them. "Wait, where the hell are you guys—"

Halfway out the door, Kakashi looked over his shoulder. "Don't worry Sakura, Sasuke will stay with you until you feel better."

Sasuke wanted to throw something at his teacher's smiling face, preferably something sharp and dangerous.

He reached out with a hand as if to hold them back. "Wait a sec!"

"No fair! I wanna stay too—" Kakashi slid the door shut on Naruto's protest.

Sasuke stared stupidly at the closed doo. It didn't require much genius to figure out that his teacher had just offered him up as sacrifice, turned-tail, and ran. He dropped his arm and tipped his head back against the wall. It hadn't even been a whole day since Haku had turned him into a human pincushion, and now here he was with a new bruise on his jaw and his shirt soaked in tears. The cherry on top to this terrible day would be if Itachi came swinging through the doors with Kakashi and Naruto's head on a pike.

A wet snuffle at his throat returned his attention to the situation at hand. His shirt felt wet against his skin, alluding to a heavy stream of waterworks, but Sakura had remained relatively quiet; only her trembling shoulders betrayed her muted tears.

He wondered what had frightened her. A bad dream maybe? Spiders? It's not like he really gave a damn, right?

Sakura shook out another stifled whimper, and his lips twisted, the sound cutting deep into his chest and dredging up old specters he still struggled to lay to rest. Sasuke knew fear and pain well enough, so he placed a hand on top of Sakura head. "Just let it out."

The words let loose a rockslide in Sakura, and the sobs tumbled out, both afraid and relieved. The sound shook something in Sasuke, and he pressed her closer to him, trying to hold it steady. Sakura cried all the harder for it.

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