don't touch my hand and call it love
you said it was over, and then cried and cried; you were gone before i said goodbye.

epilogue.


It's two weeks after the fact when someone slides into the empty seat across from her at the teahouse.

"How are you holding up?"

Sakura spins the wooden stick between her fingers, slightly sticky from the dango that's now in her stomach. "Everyone keeps looking at me, you know? And not like they used to. They look at me like—like they pity me, or something."

"That's because they have nothing better to do. You, however, are far too busy to be worried about how people look at you. There are people who depend on you."

"Is that what you told yourself when Asuma died?" Sakura looks at Shikamaru, whose face is weary and long since done with everything life has to offer. He smiles wryly at her, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes.

"Sort of. I still do. What's the point in wallowing in the past when you still have to prepare for the future, right?" He lights a cigarette and takes a long drag; Sakura refrains from lecturing him about all the health risks that the tiny stick of death does for him.

"It's weird," she says. "Because I know something bad happened to me. But…I can't feel the damage of it."

"Weird is always better than painful, I'd say."

"Yeah," she laughs, "you would."

"I'll keep hanging in there if you keep hanging in there, okay?" The words echo in her mind from somewhere, but she can't place when exactly.

She nods, and taps her dango stick to his cigarette. "Okay."

"Hi." Sakura smiles, meek, when Naruto opens the door. "Can I come in?"

Her best friend opens the door wider, like a promise of I will never shut you out, and she steps into his familiar smelly apartment, timidly toeing off her shoes.

Silence falls between them as they awkwardly stare at floorboards and feet, until Naruto blurts out, "Tea!" and scrambles off to do something related to that. Sakura laughs, because that's Naruto alright—and takes a seat at his kitchen table because that's the only place where anyone can sit, really.

On the table (aside from the open carton of milk and two empty ramen containers), there's a picture frame, sitting as though it was placed there thoughtlessly. There are familiar faces in the picture: herself, for one, with a softer smile and longer hair. Kakashi, still looking the same as he does today; Naruto, this little ball of pranks and energy and desire to make the world see.

And another boy, dark and grumpy and for all the world looking like someone she'd hate being teamed up with, features so porcelain that he might break on the battlefield.

Uchiha Sasuke, everyone calls him, but the name means nothing to her.

Naruto explained what happened to her to the best of his ability; that his clan had been slaughtered by Uchiha Itachi (she knew this, vaguely), and that Sasuke had defected from Konoha to find him and kill him. That Sasuke had, even if it was only for a short while, been a part of Team 7, and they loved him and wanted him and they were devastated when he threw them away. That Sakura loved him to the moon and back, would bend over backwards for him, spent far too many nights crying over him.

("Me?" she had laughed then, pointing at that brooding face in the picture. "Over him? C'mon, Naruto, I wouldn't love someone like that. He's damaged. That would only hurt me in the end." The look on Naruto's face when she said that. Never did she think he'd be upset over her claiming she didn't love someone.)

Naruto explained the past year like it was a story—and to Sakura, it was. She can understand what happened, in theory, but knowing it—feeling it is different. Knowing the man she apparently loved wiped all traces of him from her memory does not make it hurt because she simply does not remember what is gone.

And it's hard. Because it's like Naruto has nothing to say to her anymore. As if the strongest bond between them had been Sasuke, that they were joined by their love for him—even though for her, she could remember slowly befriending the class clown, learning to trust him in the chuunin exam, spending so many missions together and staying up all night underneath skies of all kinds, talking about yesterday and today and forever and ever and ever. She remembers his goofy grins and pleased slurs of Saaakura-chan, and all he can remember is Sasuke and everything they lost.

In ways, she supposes, Naruto must have lost her too.

"Here," Naruto half-mumbles, sliding a cup of tea across the table for her. He used to never make tea for her when she visited; tea is a formality, one that they had discarded years ago. "What's up?"

She holds the cup in her hands, feeling it slowly heat her skin. "Nothing, really. I just—I wanted to see you. Is that okay?"

He doesn't answer for a long time. For a while, they sit in silence, the steam of the tea curling into the air between them and disappearing into nothing. And then: "Of course it's okay, Sakura-chan. I just needed some time, I think. I kept on thinking—I don't know. That I'd be able to do everything, you know? That it'd be easy. But nothing about Sasuke has ever been easy.

"I think I just needed time to get over myself, and stop being depressed that I failed again." And then it's back, the blinding smile that she loves him so much for. "You don't remember, but you spent the last year shouldering everything because I couldn't do anything when Sasuke didn't remember me. Now you don't remember him—and it sucks, but that's okay. Because now it's my turn. And Sai says that this memory jutsu can only be undone by the one who did it, so as long as Sasuke is still alive, there's still hope. It's not like the bastard is easy to kill, anyway."

And oh, there it is, Naruto finding hope in a hopeless situation. Maybe there's more to them than Sasuke after all.

And so they drink their tea, and they talk about all the hundreds and millions of things she does remember.

The knock sounds tentatively, hesitantly. "Come in!"

Sakura already has a blank form ready when Sai steps into the room. She smiles at him warmly, like she always does when she greets him, and he smiles back, a little awkward.

She hasn't seen him since—well, since then. She wants to ask where he's been, but she suspects it has something to do with him being the catalyst to this entire situation, or something like that. But since she can't remember, she doesn't feel the same resentment towards him that Naruto feels. (But he'll forgive Sai, she knows—because he always does, and he has always believed in love more than he will ever believe in hatred.)

They mostly go through the motions of his annual checkup in silence. Sakura doesn't know what to say that'll make him feel better, and Sai—well, technically, Sai doesn't know what to say, ever. But when she has a stick in his mouth, pushing his tongue down to check his throat, he says, muffled and ashamed, "I'm sorry."

Sakura stops, and takes a step back. He closes his mouth. "You don't have to be," she says. "Well, I mean, you should. You kind of made a mess. But it wasn't—it wasn't out of malice, you know? You didn't do it to spite anyone. You just wanted to help. At least—that's what I got out of it, anyway."

"I just—" He struggles to express himself. "You and Naruto always talked about how important he was to you. And he was never going to come back on his own, so I just made it happen through other means."

Sakura takes a long time to orientate herself in the situation. It's hard to speak from the point of view of a person who knows and loves Sasuke. "I think what we learned from this," she says, "is that we should never keep secrets from one another. Right?" Sai nods, and remains quiet. "And anyways, if Sasuke really is the way everyone describes him to be, maybe I'm better off without him. He sounds like a terrible person."

"Don't." His voice is razor sharp. "Don't say that. You love him. You loved him."

"I don't anymore."

"He loves you too, you know."

"He has a funny way of showing it." She sighs. "Look, it's just—you're not Sasuke's 'replacement', or whatever it is that you think you are. To me, you're far warmer and far more compassionate and selfless than Sasuke has ever been and that means more to me than whatever it is I've forgotten. Because you stayed for us. You sacrificed for us. Naruto doesn't see that right now, but he will, I promise."

Sai stares at her, a touch of wonder in his eyes. "I haven't known forgiveness until I knew you."

She shrugs. "There's nothing to forgive."

"But—regardless, thank you."

Sakura beams, and holds out her arms for a hug. "Come here." And Sai does. He closes the distance between them in three strides, and he's against her, two warm bodies standing close. Her arms wrap around his thin frame, and he sinks until his forehead presses against her shoulder.

Neither of them say any more, but she hopes that he can tell in the way she sighs against his hair. That it's okay. That it will always, always be okay.

"The Sakura from before. The one who loved Sasuke." She pauses. "Was she better?"

In the distance, Naruto and Sai spar, although it seems like Naruto is taking it way more seriously than he should. Sitting beside her in the shade of a tree, Kakashi hums. "I don't think any one side of person is better than the other."

"What do you mean?"

He takes a moment to think about it, and sets aside his book in the process. "With both you and Sasuke, despite your memory loss, you two still remained you. You can strip people down until they have nothing left, but at the end of the day, they're still them. Sasuke was still the same revenge-driven boy when he was twelve. And you're still the kind, but sort of beastly girl that you've always been." Kakashi smiles, his single eye crinkling in affection. "It's a little sad that Sasuke took himself from you, but he doesn't make you, you know?"

Sakura doesn't answer for a long time. She watches Naruto and Sai spar, and doesn't feel like she's lost anything. There are holes here and there, yes—holes that she realizes afterwards, oh, Sasuke was here with a faint melancholy, but it doesn't—can't possibly compare to where Sasuke hasn't been. Sasuke wasn't on those missions with her, Naruto, and Sai. Sasuke wasn't there on her nineteenth birthday, helping her home when she got so drunk that she could barely see straight. Sasuke was just never there.

"You don't remember this, but Sasuke is very important to us." She peers over; Kakashi has already picked up his book again.

"I know that. No one forgets to tell me that."

"What they do forget to tell you, though, is that you're more important. The sky can fall and it could be a split second decision between you two, and it'll always be you." He flips a page and says no more. Sakura smiles.

Eventually, things calm down. Sakura retrains her muscle memory to grab only one mug in the morning, not two. The foreign scent in her sheets disappear once she washes them. There's a mark in her bedroom doorframe from a shuriken from a time she doesn't remember, and she labels it Sasuke and moves on.

Because that's how life works: it goes on. If anything, that's the one thing Sasuke knew above everything else. Things can only go forward.

One day, she replaces her doorframe and the shuriken mark is gone. And she thinks this dark and brooding stranger would be proud.


A/N: In my head, Sasuke will always love Team 7—and it will never matter that he does. And in my head, Sasuke will never be good enough for Sakura, but she will always settle for less because she loves him. In another world, she'd know that she deserves more, and by that, I mean in a world where Sasuke doesn't exist to her. So! I made that world for her.

I don't remember what I wanted to convey with this story, but it's been a wild ride. I adored with all my heart the unfaltering, consuming love that Sasuke and Sakura shared because it's what I want for myself (and had, for a short amount of time). Everything was so beautiful it hurt. Everything was so sad it hurt. It hurt so good.

Character development went bonkers, forwards and backwards throughout this story, but you decide if they've grown or not. :)

Thanks so much for supporting this story! (And by the surprise you guys reacted with at the last chapter, maybe I am still a mildly competent writer YAY.)