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Teamwork 3 chapter 9 : Aftermath part 3, rough draft complete
This is one chapter that is going to need MASSIVE poking and prodding, so that I can make sure everything makes sense, the emotional rollercoaster has an effect (and not the "where the fuck did that come from" or "i can't visualize that" type) and no sub-relationship overshadows the other two. But I can't take a step back and do that right now, and I've been having such a hard time with this scene that I want to post it NOW NOW NOW so I can feel that, that's it, it's written (at least the bulk of it! tweaking doesn't count) and I can relax and take if off my OH MY GOD ASUKA YOU HAVENT DONE THAT YET YOU HORRIBLE PERSON YOU list. Also known as to-do.
... Um. Yes.
So. Rough draft. Yeah. I'll likely edit this post if anyone offers crit or I notice horrible stuff myself later on, but if you want the polished, edited, fixeded version, better if you wait for when I put it on FFnet. Shouldn't be too long now -- aaaand I just jinxed myself, didn't I. DX
Chapter 9 Part 1 (Naruto). Part 2 (Sasuke).
On the way to Naruto's hospital room they saw the kunoichi, the one who summoned wolves, and Sakura thought, 'she's faster than me but she'll be expecting posturing and glaring first,' and started calculating angles to box her in. She could see it unfolding in her head, keep walking like she didn't care and at the last second when they passed each other she would slip her hand free from Sasuke's and lash out, just one strike. She could break boulders. A ribcage should be fine.
Zenko didn't say a thing, barely looked at them, just one quick glance and then nothing. They crossed paths and kept going, ignoring each other.
Sakura still wanted to double back and strike. From the front, from behind -- whatever.
Kon blamed Naruto for his teammate, but she blamed them for Naruto, and when it came down to it she didn't care about how unfair that blaming game was, how unbalanced the losses were, it was sad and it sucked that Maneki had died and she would kill them if they came near Naruto again, if they tried to make it one inch worse for him.
She couldn't stand -- Naruto, broken, she couldn't stand that.
Sasuke's fingers were clenched tight in between hers. She wondered if he could tell what she'd just planned -- if maybe he'd been about to hold her back. The flash of resentment surprised her a little bit, and then on second thought didn't.
She was furious at the world for hurting Naruto, but underneath that she was also furious at Sasuke. When she let herself she could still feel his body shuddering on hers as a blade stabbed through.
But she couldn't be angry at Sasuke for protecting (the baby) her, so she was trying to push it out of her mind. Otherwise she would punch him in the face and yell, 'what were you thinking, how could you do that to me'. She knew she'd have nightmares where he died right on top of her, trapping her powerless, suffocating her under the weight of his corpse.
Sasuke's hand in hers, not letting go. It would have made her giddy just two days ago.
She loved Sasuke same as always -- she wouldn't have gone half-crazy with hate for Itachi and fear for him if she didn't -- but now he was injury-free and if there hadn't been Naruto to worry about she wouldn't have wanted to see his face very much right at the moment.
She gave his hand a last squeeze and slipped her fingers free. They were coming up to their bedroom, and she could see Kakashi-sensei in the corridor, leaning against the wall that faced the door. A Konoha ANBU with short dark hair and a dog-like mask stood beside him, discussing she didn't know what. She'd be curious about it later, now all she cared about was that Kakashi wouldn't have been here if the debriefing wasn't over.
"He's inside?" Sasuke asked. He glanced at her. "I'll be along in a minute."
She nodded an acknowledgement and pushed the door open, a little puzzled. Whatever it was Sasuke wanted to tell them, maybe he wanted to tell Kakashi first...
Naruto was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring down at a change of clothes he'd probably been in the middle of packing. On second look it wasn't really a change of clothes, because he'd been shirtless during the whole battle; it was just underwear, a thigh holster, and freshly washed, knee-torn pants. She could still see scorch marks and faint bloodstains here and there.
She didn't know what to say to him. She knew what she wanted to say, but 'I'll kill anyone who puts that look on your face' would be the opposite of helpful, especially with how much she meant it right now.
"Hey, Sakura-chan."
He met her eyes, gave her a tired half-smile, and just like that, her anger flagged.
"Hey," she replied quietly.
She walked around the bed, took the pants from him. "I don't think they can still be rescued, you know. Did you empty the pockets?" She draped them over her cast and checked quickly, feeling through the cloth. Nothing to fish out. And there was the wastebasket.
Now the bed had a free spot for her to sit on.
"You okay?"
She stared at him, and laughed a little, and it hurt in her throat. Why was he the one asking her that? How silly was it?
"... Sakura-chan?"
"I'm fine. How --" It was hard to ask that directly. Maybe because Naruto didn't like worrying her, or looking weak, and he didn't react well to her showing she had noticed. "How are you?"
He dredged up a smile. She could tell he was about to wave off her concern and try to pretend he was just fine, and she couldn't keep her expression from shifting to offended. Naruto stared at her for a second longer and broke eye contact, the smile turning even more awkward.
"Eh. Been better. ... Sorry."
She attempted to smile back. "Sorry for what, you big dummy?"
Naruto gave a self-deprecating shrug. "Making you worry."
"I'd rather be worried than lied to."
She froze with the words barely out of her mouth. She hadn't meant to say that, hadn't meant to snap it almost, and now he stared at her with shocked blue eyes, and the wrong fox-pupils didn't divert from the hurt in them.
"--no, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I just... Naruto, I notice when you're not alright. Okay? And -- and I always want to help, but I can't help if you won't let me." Quietly, she added, "And that hurts a bit."
"Aw, shit." Naruto rubbed a hand over his face, his eyes.
Sakura bit her lip and looked down at her hands, tangled together on her lap. Like Naruto didn't feel bad enough, she had to bring that up.
"To be fair, Sakura, you do the same thing," Sasuke said as he pushed the door closed behind him.
Startled, she jumped, stared at him. She hadn't noticed him come in.
"I guess we don't talk much," Sasuke concluded in a quiet, thoughtful voice.
Sakura didn't expect Naruto to snort out a laugh, though it wasn't a happy one, more like ironic.
"S' funny coming from you. You don't talk at all."
"I don't smile and pretend it's all peachy either."
Naruto paused. "Yeah, that you really don't."
It didn't have much of the bite it should have; it didn't end in a long tirade on how Sasuke was always pissy even when he was fine, and if they had to pretend, it was better to pretend to be happy than pretend to hate the world because he was scared a smile would split his face in two. Still, Sakura felt the grip over her guts unclench slightly. He'd tried to banter. He was getting better. (Or better at putting up a front. But wasn't it good that he was starting to care enough to try to hide? Wasn't it?)
The half-smile on Naruto's face fell as he looked back at Sakura. She tried not to flinch as she noticed his pupils again.
"I'm sorry, Sakura-chan. It's not like -- I just -- I hate it when you're worried, and if you can't do anything then I don't want to bring it up anyway. I'd rather you were happy."
She stared at him for a second, and then she extended her arm, bumped her fist against his chin like a very slow-motion sucker punch. She wanted to be angry at him. At any other time she might have been, because he just didn't get it. She might have tried to explain that she'd rather be sad with him than happy on her own, but she was sure Naruto would stare at her in utter bafflement, because in his stupidly self-sacrificial brain it likely wouldn't make sense. But when she saw him exhausted and hurt, trying to stuff it all down for their sake, she couldn't even really feel her own frustration.
"I really don't want to talk right now," Naruto said quietly.
A pause, as they all looked down at the floor. Sakura sneaked a glance at Sasuke. She was all out of ideas.
He took a step toward the beds, but before that he breathed in, deep, bracingly. She blinked. Sasuke's body language was usually subtle, but as she watched him from the corner of her eye, it was almost blatant, and not because she'd gotten used to read him. The tense shoulders, the slightly bowed head -- anyone could have told. He stepped between the beds and instead of joining them on Naruto's he sat on his, with the aisle between them, and that was pretty usual for him but...
She slipped Naruto a quick glance. He was frowning at Sasuke, puzzled.
"... I..."
Sasuke paused there, as if he couldn't find his words. Sakura turned in her seat so she would face him more, though the aisle was big enough that he was out of arm's reach.
"Sasuke-kun?"
"You don't have to talk," he said abruptly to Naruto. His hands were gripping the edge of the mattress. "It's more of an announcement. Not a discussion." A pause. A rasp, sudden, shockingly raw, "It's not up for discussion."
Naruto straightened up, dead serious.
"It's about Itachi, isn't it," he said, not even like a question.
Sasuke didn't answer, but then again he didn't need to.
She'd seen Itachi for longer than Sasuke had -- oh, a whole minute more! -- and he and his brother hadn't even talked -- or had they? She thought she remembered Itachi's voice, as Sasuke's body trapped her on the ground, but she'd heard it all garbled, deafened by terror. She'd expected Sasuke to hurt for a good long while afterwards, of course, the wound the massacre of his family had left opened again, but she hadn't really... it had barely been thirty seconds at most, that couldn't be enough for more than a reminder, a refresher course on why Itachi was evil and a monster and needed to die. Not enough for a brand-new trauma.
This, she could tell, this would be huge.
"You remember the day I told you he was my kill?"
Naruto flinched, a horrible grimace twisting his face with pain. "The day I ate that guy?" he said, voice shaking. Sakura flinched. "Yeah, weird enough I remember, fuck you!"
Sasuke shook his head no, cut him off with a hard gesture of his hand. "Shut up! It's not -- let me finish."
Bile rose in her throat at the memory of that day, maybe two, three years ago -- a genjutsu-type missing-nin, the mission supposedly B-rank on paper but so very much not in real life. He'd made Naruto believe they were all dead, and it had... done things to -- Naruto was exaggerating, he hadn't eaten the man -- just. Bitten. (A lot.) She tried to stuff the memory away, glared at Sasuke for bringing it up when the thing with Kyuubi was still so recent.
She could probably blame that day on Kyuubi as well. Back then her only choice had been to push it all on the genjutsu user and weird aftereffects and try to forget it, because she'd known it wasn't Naruto, just couldn't be.
Sasuke raked his hand through his hair, and then looked up, and Sakura's gut tightened painfully, her protective anger forgotten. Oh god, those eyes. Oh, hell.
"I changed my mind."
Naruto seemed struck as dumb as she was.
"--What?"
Sasuke's eyes. All that pain.
All that grief.
"I change my mind. He's -- I still want to kill him. It's still my duty. It's still my --"
"--Sasuke--"
"Shut up and listen, it's not a discussion. He's still my brother, but if you get the chance -- don't stop on my account."
She was off the bed now, standing before him with her hand clenched on his forearm. "Sasuke!"
He didn't even seem to notice her leaning in his space, or her tight hold on his arm. "I want to kill him, but we need him dead more. Do you get it? We need him dead, he needs to be dead, right now, he'll kill the baby, he'll kill you both and I can't -- I can't. Alright? So -- I don't care who kills him anymore, he just needs to be dead!"
Naruto caught his shoulder and yanked him up, shaking and growling as he pressed a hand to Sasuke's mouth. "Enough, that's enough, I get it. I will. Promise."
"He needs to be dead," Sasuke said, dislodging Naruto's hand with a quick shake of his head. "He needs to be dead more than I need to kill him."
Sakura hadn't cried earlier but she felt tears rise again and this time she didn't stop them.
"Oh," she whispered. "I'm sorry."
Sasuke let out a bark of crazy-edged laughter and she winced. "What the fuck for, isn't that what you wanted, isn't that what everyone wanted--"
"You still love him," she said.
Sasuke was silent for so long that she thought he wouldn't answer, that he couldn't answer -- that he would just pretend she hadn't said it. She wished she hadn't, but it was so horribly true.
"I don't know how to stop," he said, very quietly.
Naruto choked on something that couldn't decide between a growl and a wounded whimper and yanked him into a tight, almost brutal hug.
Tears rolled hot and wet down her face, soaking into the back of Sasuke's shirt. God but she was so tired of it all. Being attacked and hurt, and watching over children she wasn't good enough to heal, and fighting people she wasn't good enough to fight, and failing to protect, and having her life saved at the cost of someone else's, and Naruto breaking, and Sasuke breaking --
She couldn't break as well, she needed to be strong for them. She had to take up the slack for once and be the rock for them to lean on.
She failed. She cried and cried, and the guilt from setting them off only made it all worse. She could feel them both trembling, entangled as the three of them were. She could hear them gasping for air in between not-silent-enough sobs. It was horrible.
People would probably have wise things to say about crying it out -- that it was good for them, that they couldn't let it all fester, that they needed to air it out at some point, but those people didn't know a thing. It just felt like another failure, it wasn't a relief at all. It was just exhausting.
At some point they stopped, gradually, mostly because their bodies didn't want to keep going. They broke apart, almost by accident, as they sank to the floor and sat, Sasuke slumped against the side of his bed and Naruto in the corner. Sakura leaned her shoulder against the side of the other bed. From the corner of her eye she saw them gazing away, anywhere but toward each other. It looked like defeat.
"... Shit." Sasuke rubbed his palm across his face. "I didn't plan to make this into such a circus. A quick announcement..."
Naruto snorted halfheartedly. "Yeah, not happening."
The hospital beds were so high it made like a little hiding place between them. Standing she couldn't have reached from one mattress to the next with her arm, but three pairs of legs in there, that should have been another story. But both of her teammates had their legs drawn up, almost to their chest, so that no one accidentally touched.
"So." Sakura bowed her head for a second, looking for inspiration. All she saw was her cast, resting across her stomach. "We need a plan."
"For?"
She had no idea. She bit her lip. "... Things."
"Training," Sasuke said.
Naruto nodded vaguely.
Silence again.
"It's because of the baby, right?"
Sakura and Sasuke blinked at Naruto.
"You and Itachi. You and -- you and the baby."
Sakura opened her mouth to protest Naruto's words, but then she realized she couldn't. The baby made them stop being just a team, something Sasuke could dismiss. It made them a family. She clenched her fingers into a fist, out of Sasuke's line of sight.
He didn't say anything, for a second, two, ten.
"...I guess."
"Get married," Naruto said, staring ahead with grim stubbornness. "Soon. Before shit happens. 'Cause afterwards..."
Sakura bit her lip. The marriage -- oh, they'd planned it, had even mentioned it to her parents. But it had always seemed to belong to 'later', a nebulous and faraway time. Later, we'll marry, and there will be the baby, and it was like something a little out of time, out of danger. It wasn't. They weren't.
"What if," she whispered. "What if you're her father, Naruto?"
She saw them both flinch. "We've talked about that before!" Naruto retorted, meeting her eyes this time around. "It doesn't matter, okay? It's -- he or she -- she'll be ours anyway. We've talked about that."
"Not a lot."
"It was enough! We understood each other, right? Right, Sasuke?"
Sasuke was watching her, utterly unreadable. "Have you changed your mind?" he asked. His voice was as blank as his face.
"No," Sakura whispered. "I want to be your wife. But I want to be Naruto's wife too, and it's not fair to make you marry me when I could be having his child -- when you could -- when you could have your children with someone else."
She saw them both stiffen. Naruto's hand reached for hers, squeezed. She squeezed back, even though he was this close to giving her a second cast to balance out the first. He'd be a great husband.
"You want family, Sasuke. You want lots of them, and this one might not even be yours, and I want to train and fight with the both of you, this child might be an orphan by next year because I won't let the two of you fight alone -- who knows when there will be time to have more, and there's so many clans who would be glad to --"
"Shut up."
"--I don't want that, I don't want to see you marry anyone else but--"
"I don't want anyone else to be the mother of my children!"
Oh.
She bit her lip to keep it from trembling. Naruto's thumb was rubbing her knuckles back and forth, back and forth.
"We'll -- I don't know." Sasuke raked his hand through his hair, waved it in a meaningless gesture, let it flop back down. "Teach you kagebunshin so you can have several pairs of twins at the same time. Clone them in a lab. I don't know. I don't care. Until Naruto somehow turns himself into a real, functional woman and lets me knock him up, you're it. Shut up."
"Oi!"
Naruto kicked out, his leg crossing the empty space between the two of them like they hadn't spent the last, oh, ten minutes, pretending it was the Great Suna Canyon. Sasuke kicked back. Kick, kick, push and kick, legs tangling together as they squabbled like children, like always, and she couldn't help but laugh. God help her but she wanted them both. Just like that, being competitive and ridiculous and completely absorbed in each other.
She turned her cracked arm outward, fingers uncurling toward Sasuke's side. He paused, looked at her. She waited, apologies in her eyes, hand offered.
Naruto wriggled his foot free from where Sasuke's knee pinned it and sneaked in a stealth kick, digging his toes in Sasuke's thigh. Sasuke turned back to him like a striking snake, eyes narrowed in challenge, and slipped his legs past Naruto's guard to pin both of Naruto's legs back down.
But even as he proved his mastery of techniques and holds on Naruto, he still reached back for her hand.
She didn't think she would ever be able to explain to any outsider how and why the sight of the both of them so absorbed in trying to outdo each other in utter stupid managed to put such a fond smile on her face.
They weren't right yet, playing it up for an audience of two, attempting to convince themselves along with each other and her, attempting not to notice all those things that still waited nearby, crowding them. Their mock-competition stopped too soon, not enough insults and offense. But at the same time...
At the same time, when they stopped fighting their legs were so entangled it would be a miracle if they could get up in time to defend from an attack. Sakura shifted her weight on her folded legs, her feet, so that she could, and she squeezed their hands.
"Okay, so. That plan?"
... Um. Yes.
So. Rough draft. Yeah. I'll likely edit this post if anyone offers crit or I notice horrible stuff myself later on, but if you want the polished, edited, fixeded version, better if you wait for when I put it on FFnet. Shouldn't be too long now -- aaaand I just jinxed myself, didn't I. DX
Chapter 9 Part 1 (Naruto). Part 2 (Sasuke).
On the way to Naruto's hospital room they saw the kunoichi, the one who summoned wolves, and Sakura thought, 'she's faster than me but she'll be expecting posturing and glaring first,' and started calculating angles to box her in. She could see it unfolding in her head, keep walking like she didn't care and at the last second when they passed each other she would slip her hand free from Sasuke's and lash out, just one strike. She could break boulders. A ribcage should be fine.
Zenko didn't say a thing, barely looked at them, just one quick glance and then nothing. They crossed paths and kept going, ignoring each other.
Sakura still wanted to double back and strike. From the front, from behind -- whatever.
Kon blamed Naruto for his teammate, but she blamed them for Naruto, and when it came down to it she didn't care about how unfair that blaming game was, how unbalanced the losses were, it was sad and it sucked that Maneki had died and she would kill them if they came near Naruto again, if they tried to make it one inch worse for him.
She couldn't stand -- Naruto, broken, she couldn't stand that.
Sasuke's fingers were clenched tight in between hers. She wondered if he could tell what she'd just planned -- if maybe he'd been about to hold her back. The flash of resentment surprised her a little bit, and then on second thought didn't.
She was furious at the world for hurting Naruto, but underneath that she was also furious at Sasuke. When she let herself she could still feel his body shuddering on hers as a blade stabbed through.
But she couldn't be angry at Sasuke for protecting (the baby) her, so she was trying to push it out of her mind. Otherwise she would punch him in the face and yell, 'what were you thinking, how could you do that to me'. She knew she'd have nightmares where he died right on top of her, trapping her powerless, suffocating her under the weight of his corpse.
Sasuke's hand in hers, not letting go. It would have made her giddy just two days ago.
She loved Sasuke same as always -- she wouldn't have gone half-crazy with hate for Itachi and fear for him if she didn't -- but now he was injury-free and if there hadn't been Naruto to worry about she wouldn't have wanted to see his face very much right at the moment.
She gave his hand a last squeeze and slipped her fingers free. They were coming up to their bedroom, and she could see Kakashi-sensei in the corridor, leaning against the wall that faced the door. A Konoha ANBU with short dark hair and a dog-like mask stood beside him, discussing she didn't know what. She'd be curious about it later, now all she cared about was that Kakashi wouldn't have been here if the debriefing wasn't over.
"He's inside?" Sasuke asked. He glanced at her. "I'll be along in a minute."
She nodded an acknowledgement and pushed the door open, a little puzzled. Whatever it was Sasuke wanted to tell them, maybe he wanted to tell Kakashi first...
Naruto was sitting on the edge of his bed, staring down at a change of clothes he'd probably been in the middle of packing. On second look it wasn't really a change of clothes, because he'd been shirtless during the whole battle; it was just underwear, a thigh holster, and freshly washed, knee-torn pants. She could still see scorch marks and faint bloodstains here and there.
She didn't know what to say to him. She knew what she wanted to say, but 'I'll kill anyone who puts that look on your face' would be the opposite of helpful, especially with how much she meant it right now.
"Hey, Sakura-chan."
He met her eyes, gave her a tired half-smile, and just like that, her anger flagged.
"Hey," she replied quietly.
She walked around the bed, took the pants from him. "I don't think they can still be rescued, you know. Did you empty the pockets?" She draped them over her cast and checked quickly, feeling through the cloth. Nothing to fish out. And there was the wastebasket.
Now the bed had a free spot for her to sit on.
"You okay?"
She stared at him, and laughed a little, and it hurt in her throat. Why was he the one asking her that? How silly was it?
"... Sakura-chan?"
"I'm fine. How --" It was hard to ask that directly. Maybe because Naruto didn't like worrying her, or looking weak, and he didn't react well to her showing she had noticed. "How are you?"
He dredged up a smile. She could tell he was about to wave off her concern and try to pretend he was just fine, and she couldn't keep her expression from shifting to offended. Naruto stared at her for a second longer and broke eye contact, the smile turning even more awkward.
"Eh. Been better. ... Sorry."
She attempted to smile back. "Sorry for what, you big dummy?"
Naruto gave a self-deprecating shrug. "Making you worry."
"I'd rather be worried than lied to."
She froze with the words barely out of her mouth. She hadn't meant to say that, hadn't meant to snap it almost, and now he stared at her with shocked blue eyes, and the wrong fox-pupils didn't divert from the hurt in them.
"--no, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. I just... Naruto, I notice when you're not alright. Okay? And -- and I always want to help, but I can't help if you won't let me." Quietly, she added, "And that hurts a bit."
"Aw, shit." Naruto rubbed a hand over his face, his eyes.
Sakura bit her lip and looked down at her hands, tangled together on her lap. Like Naruto didn't feel bad enough, she had to bring that up.
"To be fair, Sakura, you do the same thing," Sasuke said as he pushed the door closed behind him.
Startled, she jumped, stared at him. She hadn't noticed him come in.
"I guess we don't talk much," Sasuke concluded in a quiet, thoughtful voice.
Sakura didn't expect Naruto to snort out a laugh, though it wasn't a happy one, more like ironic.
"S' funny coming from you. You don't talk at all."
"I don't smile and pretend it's all peachy either."
Naruto paused. "Yeah, that you really don't."
It didn't have much of the bite it should have; it didn't end in a long tirade on how Sasuke was always pissy even when he was fine, and if they had to pretend, it was better to pretend to be happy than pretend to hate the world because he was scared a smile would split his face in two. Still, Sakura felt the grip over her guts unclench slightly. He'd tried to banter. He was getting better. (Or better at putting up a front. But wasn't it good that he was starting to care enough to try to hide? Wasn't it?)
The half-smile on Naruto's face fell as he looked back at Sakura. She tried not to flinch as she noticed his pupils again.
"I'm sorry, Sakura-chan. It's not like -- I just -- I hate it when you're worried, and if you can't do anything then I don't want to bring it up anyway. I'd rather you were happy."
She stared at him for a second, and then she extended her arm, bumped her fist against his chin like a very slow-motion sucker punch. She wanted to be angry at him. At any other time she might have been, because he just didn't get it. She might have tried to explain that she'd rather be sad with him than happy on her own, but she was sure Naruto would stare at her in utter bafflement, because in his stupidly self-sacrificial brain it likely wouldn't make sense. But when she saw him exhausted and hurt, trying to stuff it all down for their sake, she couldn't even really feel her own frustration.
"I really don't want to talk right now," Naruto said quietly.
A pause, as they all looked down at the floor. Sakura sneaked a glance at Sasuke. She was all out of ideas.
He took a step toward the beds, but before that he breathed in, deep, bracingly. She blinked. Sasuke's body language was usually subtle, but as she watched him from the corner of her eye, it was almost blatant, and not because she'd gotten used to read him. The tense shoulders, the slightly bowed head -- anyone could have told. He stepped between the beds and instead of joining them on Naruto's he sat on his, with the aisle between them, and that was pretty usual for him but...
She slipped Naruto a quick glance. He was frowning at Sasuke, puzzled.
"... I..."
Sasuke paused there, as if he couldn't find his words. Sakura turned in her seat so she would face him more, though the aisle was big enough that he was out of arm's reach.
"Sasuke-kun?"
"You don't have to talk," he said abruptly to Naruto. His hands were gripping the edge of the mattress. "It's more of an announcement. Not a discussion." A pause. A rasp, sudden, shockingly raw, "It's not up for discussion."
Naruto straightened up, dead serious.
"It's about Itachi, isn't it," he said, not even like a question.
Sasuke didn't answer, but then again he didn't need to.
She'd seen Itachi for longer than Sasuke had -- oh, a whole minute more! -- and he and his brother hadn't even talked -- or had they? She thought she remembered Itachi's voice, as Sasuke's body trapped her on the ground, but she'd heard it all garbled, deafened by terror. She'd expected Sasuke to hurt for a good long while afterwards, of course, the wound the massacre of his family had left opened again, but she hadn't really... it had barely been thirty seconds at most, that couldn't be enough for more than a reminder, a refresher course on why Itachi was evil and a monster and needed to die. Not enough for a brand-new trauma.
This, she could tell, this would be huge.
"You remember the day I told you he was my kill?"
Naruto flinched, a horrible grimace twisting his face with pain. "The day I ate that guy?" he said, voice shaking. Sakura flinched. "Yeah, weird enough I remember, fuck you!"
Sasuke shook his head no, cut him off with a hard gesture of his hand. "Shut up! It's not -- let me finish."
Bile rose in her throat at the memory of that day, maybe two, three years ago -- a genjutsu-type missing-nin, the mission supposedly B-rank on paper but so very much not in real life. He'd made Naruto believe they were all dead, and it had... done things to -- Naruto was exaggerating, he hadn't eaten the man -- just. Bitten. (A lot.) She tried to stuff the memory away, glared at Sasuke for bringing it up when the thing with Kyuubi was still so recent.
She could probably blame that day on Kyuubi as well. Back then her only choice had been to push it all on the genjutsu user and weird aftereffects and try to forget it, because she'd known it wasn't Naruto, just couldn't be.
Sasuke raked his hand through his hair, and then looked up, and Sakura's gut tightened painfully, her protective anger forgotten. Oh god, those eyes. Oh, hell.
"I changed my mind."
Naruto seemed struck as dumb as she was.
"--What?"
Sasuke's eyes. All that pain.
All that grief.
"I change my mind. He's -- I still want to kill him. It's still my duty. It's still my --"
"--Sasuke--"
"Shut up and listen, it's not a discussion. He's still my brother, but if you get the chance -- don't stop on my account."
She was off the bed now, standing before him with her hand clenched on his forearm. "Sasuke!"
He didn't even seem to notice her leaning in his space, or her tight hold on his arm. "I want to kill him, but we need him dead more. Do you get it? We need him dead, he needs to be dead, right now, he'll kill the baby, he'll kill you both and I can't -- I can't. Alright? So -- I don't care who kills him anymore, he just needs to be dead!"
Naruto caught his shoulder and yanked him up, shaking and growling as he pressed a hand to Sasuke's mouth. "Enough, that's enough, I get it. I will. Promise."
"He needs to be dead," Sasuke said, dislodging Naruto's hand with a quick shake of his head. "He needs to be dead more than I need to kill him."
Sakura hadn't cried earlier but she felt tears rise again and this time she didn't stop them.
"Oh," she whispered. "I'm sorry."
Sasuke let out a bark of crazy-edged laughter and she winced. "What the fuck for, isn't that what you wanted, isn't that what everyone wanted--"
"You still love him," she said.
Sasuke was silent for so long that she thought he wouldn't answer, that he couldn't answer -- that he would just pretend she hadn't said it. She wished she hadn't, but it was so horribly true.
"I don't know how to stop," he said, very quietly.
Naruto choked on something that couldn't decide between a growl and a wounded whimper and yanked him into a tight, almost brutal hug.
Tears rolled hot and wet down her face, soaking into the back of Sasuke's shirt. God but she was so tired of it all. Being attacked and hurt, and watching over children she wasn't good enough to heal, and fighting people she wasn't good enough to fight, and failing to protect, and having her life saved at the cost of someone else's, and Naruto breaking, and Sasuke breaking --
She couldn't break as well, she needed to be strong for them. She had to take up the slack for once and be the rock for them to lean on.
She failed. She cried and cried, and the guilt from setting them off only made it all worse. She could feel them both trembling, entangled as the three of them were. She could hear them gasping for air in between not-silent-enough sobs. It was horrible.
People would probably have wise things to say about crying it out -- that it was good for them, that they couldn't let it all fester, that they needed to air it out at some point, but those people didn't know a thing. It just felt like another failure, it wasn't a relief at all. It was just exhausting.
At some point they stopped, gradually, mostly because their bodies didn't want to keep going. They broke apart, almost by accident, as they sank to the floor and sat, Sasuke slumped against the side of his bed and Naruto in the corner. Sakura leaned her shoulder against the side of the other bed. From the corner of her eye she saw them gazing away, anywhere but toward each other. It looked like defeat.
"... Shit." Sasuke rubbed his palm across his face. "I didn't plan to make this into such a circus. A quick announcement..."
Naruto snorted halfheartedly. "Yeah, not happening."
The hospital beds were so high it made like a little hiding place between them. Standing she couldn't have reached from one mattress to the next with her arm, but three pairs of legs in there, that should have been another story. But both of her teammates had their legs drawn up, almost to their chest, so that no one accidentally touched.
"So." Sakura bowed her head for a second, looking for inspiration. All she saw was her cast, resting across her stomach. "We need a plan."
"For?"
She had no idea. She bit her lip. "... Things."
"Training," Sasuke said.
Naruto nodded vaguely.
Silence again.
"It's because of the baby, right?"
Sakura and Sasuke blinked at Naruto.
"You and Itachi. You and -- you and the baby."
Sakura opened her mouth to protest Naruto's words, but then she realized she couldn't. The baby made them stop being just a team, something Sasuke could dismiss. It made them a family. She clenched her fingers into a fist, out of Sasuke's line of sight.
He didn't say anything, for a second, two, ten.
"...I guess."
"Get married," Naruto said, staring ahead with grim stubbornness. "Soon. Before shit happens. 'Cause afterwards..."
Sakura bit her lip. The marriage -- oh, they'd planned it, had even mentioned it to her parents. But it had always seemed to belong to 'later', a nebulous and faraway time. Later, we'll marry, and there will be the baby, and it was like something a little out of time, out of danger. It wasn't. They weren't.
"What if," she whispered. "What if you're her father, Naruto?"
She saw them both flinch. "We've talked about that before!" Naruto retorted, meeting her eyes this time around. "It doesn't matter, okay? It's -- he or she -- she'll be ours anyway. We've talked about that."
"Not a lot."
"It was enough! We understood each other, right? Right, Sasuke?"
Sasuke was watching her, utterly unreadable. "Have you changed your mind?" he asked. His voice was as blank as his face.
"No," Sakura whispered. "I want to be your wife. But I want to be Naruto's wife too, and it's not fair to make you marry me when I could be having his child -- when you could -- when you could have your children with someone else."
She saw them both stiffen. Naruto's hand reached for hers, squeezed. She squeezed back, even though he was this close to giving her a second cast to balance out the first. He'd be a great husband.
"You want family, Sasuke. You want lots of them, and this one might not even be yours, and I want to train and fight with the both of you, this child might be an orphan by next year because I won't let the two of you fight alone -- who knows when there will be time to have more, and there's so many clans who would be glad to --"
"Shut up."
"--I don't want that, I don't want to see you marry anyone else but--"
"I don't want anyone else to be the mother of my children!"
Oh.
She bit her lip to keep it from trembling. Naruto's thumb was rubbing her knuckles back and forth, back and forth.
"We'll -- I don't know." Sasuke raked his hand through his hair, waved it in a meaningless gesture, let it flop back down. "Teach you kagebunshin so you can have several pairs of twins at the same time. Clone them in a lab. I don't know. I don't care. Until Naruto somehow turns himself into a real, functional woman and lets me knock him up, you're it. Shut up."
"Oi!"
Naruto kicked out, his leg crossing the empty space between the two of them like they hadn't spent the last, oh, ten minutes, pretending it was the Great Suna Canyon. Sasuke kicked back. Kick, kick, push and kick, legs tangling together as they squabbled like children, like always, and she couldn't help but laugh. God help her but she wanted them both. Just like that, being competitive and ridiculous and completely absorbed in each other.
She turned her cracked arm outward, fingers uncurling toward Sasuke's side. He paused, looked at her. She waited, apologies in her eyes, hand offered.
Naruto wriggled his foot free from where Sasuke's knee pinned it and sneaked in a stealth kick, digging his toes in Sasuke's thigh. Sasuke turned back to him like a striking snake, eyes narrowed in challenge, and slipped his legs past Naruto's guard to pin both of Naruto's legs back down.
But even as he proved his mastery of techniques and holds on Naruto, he still reached back for her hand.
She didn't think she would ever be able to explain to any outsider how and why the sight of the both of them so absorbed in trying to outdo each other in utter stupid managed to put such a fond smile on her face.
They weren't right yet, playing it up for an audience of two, attempting to convince themselves along with each other and her, attempting not to notice all those things that still waited nearby, crowding them. Their mock-competition stopped too soon, not enough insults and offense. But at the same time...
At the same time, when they stopped fighting their legs were so entangled it would be a miracle if they could get up in time to defend from an attack. Sakura shifted her weight on her folded legs, her feet, so that she could, and she squeezed their hands.
"Okay, so. That plan?"
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(Anonymous) 2010-06-29 04:12 am (UTC)(link)I am still reading, but there's one thing that bothered me and I want to get it down before I forget. It's a little thing, but-- when did Sakura get on first-name basis with team summons? (In her interior monologue, at least. I mean, Sasuke obviously knows their names cause he had some interaction with them, and I wouldn't be surprised if Naruto learned their names just to beat himself up more about them, but I don't know when Sakura got the chance to be introduced? Did it happen off screen, or am I just forgetting something. -_- I'm sleepy, that's probably why. It just seemed a little out of place for Sakura to start calling them by first names (especially when she hates them right now).
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Also, more letters to type. u.u;
I don't know, they don't have family names so it's not like she can use them to keep emotional distance (people from the naruto world seem to have no problem using their first names with just about everyone they meet, actually, it's rather strange from a japanese POV. then again, konoha is not japan... I digress.) and she needs to call them *something.* It's not a great way to do it but I'm not sure there's really a best, less confusing way. *ponders* I'll try to read over and see what I can tweak, thank you for the comment.
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Sakura's the medic while Sasuke's the supposed tactical planner type, but in this series she wants to learn more politics and stuff and basically improve herself so that she can help protect the boys mentally as well right? I remember reading a conversation with her and Tsunade a few chapters back...?