Archive of Our Own ^beta

He can't…forget her

He cried out, hoarse and enraged as he threw the chair into the wall. He watched it shatter to bits and clatter onto the dirt floor as his piercing red gaze watched it all. His boy was burning, his head hurt, sweat beaded at his forehead. He grit his teeth and it was almost painful, hand almost pulling his hair out at the roots as he turned away from the sight before him.

Again, green flashed into his vision and he whirled around, frantically trying to find its source, to crush them, to destroy her.

He wanted her gone.

Yet once again, the green was nowhere in the small temporary room given to him by the snake bastard. He knew it was impossible for her to be there, he had made sure she could be here! So why does he see nothing but her green eyes, watching him from his peripheral vision. They do nothing, she does nothing. But watch him. Looking at him with that familiar expression of concern and all that damned unconditional love that he cast away.

He cast her away! Why does she do this to him!?

Sasuke howled, throat hoarse as he slams an angry fist into the rickety desk. His fist goes through a hole he makes and he feels the splinters pierce the thin skin of his knuckles.

'Sasuke….'

He screams again, pulled his fist out to grab the corners of the desk and chuck in the direction his mind supplies the vision of her thin form, her hands reaching out and her green eyes wide with fright. The shadows the dim light cast swallows the hair he know was still so soft even after the shit she went through during the chunin exam to keep him and the loser alive.

The desk clattered with a loud noise and his wide frantic eyes watches as the vision of her dissipates.

Sasuke breaths heavily, raggedly. His shoulder's slump and he thinks finally, finally she's gone.

But then there's a ghost of a touch, nothing more than a memory of small hands on his shoulders, pressing down and his body if forced to comply as he sinks to the ground in defeat as he hears her voice, the voice she used when she thought both he and Naruto were too out of it to hear when they collapsed from training. The voice she only uses when she thought she was secretly dotting on her stubborn male team mates.

That voice that make him cling to her so adamantly when she was out of it and he could be as spoiled as he wanted with no witness's.

'Sasuke, stop….please!'

'It's ok now, it's all over…'

'Are you ok Sasuke?'

'I'm worried; you're scaring me Sasuke…'

'I love you so much.'

Sasuke's hoarse cry was interrupted as he choked on a frustrated sob. He just couldn't forget her.

He can't…hate her

That moment in time when the raid on the base lead his old team mates and two strangers to that opening were he could look down on them felt as if time had slowed.

They were different, but the same all at once. Naruto still looked like a fucking pumpkin with legs, and Sakura….

He watched the way the earth crumbled at her feet or in her fists. The power that now surged under skin was familiar, yet wholly different, refined. She had taken her training seriously, whoever had been involved with it, because Kakashi hadn't had nearly the level of control she still exhibited in her chakra.

Their eyes met by chance and he watches in his slow motion perception as hers widened into disbelieve and something akin to worry or fear.

He hated that look in her.

He was supposed to hate her; had told himself for years in attempt to finally accept that he loathed her.

But watching her figure get smaller and smaller as he escaped brought those ties he's tried so hard to lock up tight to make his heart stutter.

That little part of him that made a vision of her as a thirteen year old girl his only voice of conscience, of reason flickered across his vision.

A ghost of an understanding smile flickered across the visions features before his head shook it away and he cursed.

He couldn't accept that he could not hate her.

He can't…kill her

This was the perfect chance. A once in a life time opportunity to once and for all rid himself of something so insignificant, yet so mind bogglingly annoying.

Sakura lay in a heap, muddied and cold. Her outstretch neck bruised purple and blue as her head bled from where it hit a rock when he flung her away before she could break his rib cage with her fist.

She was so still he thought she was already dead until he knelt down and focused on her chest moving up and down jus the slightest bit. He kept an impassive expression as he pulled out a kuni and gripped it in his hand and brought it to her bruised throat.

The bruises looked like his hand…

'Sasuke, stop!'

Sasuke's eyes widened, he flinched away from her and dropped his weapon. He got to his feet, backing away from her as he cursed her name. Red eyes watched her like a hawk until the obnoxious cries from Naruto could be heard in the distance. He clinched his fists and lamented he was being pathetic before darting off before her team mates could find him.

It was never Naruto, or Kabuto, or even Itachi who was the hardest to want to kill…no, it was always her, because he could never find a good enough reason to do it. He can't fucking kill her.

He can't…stop her

He doesn't know what took over when he grabbed the idiot before the attack could land a fatal blow, but he did and now here he was, standing over a bruised, tired Sakura who cradled Naruto's head in her lap. She looked up at him with those damned open eyes of hers, so easy to read and he almost flinched.

He turned away after a few words, needing to leave, but a hand grasped onto his pants leg and he froze, swiveling back to look at his once pink haired team mate.

"I won't force you to come home…But please remember…we will always be on your side Sasuke-kun. You don't need to hate us."

And somehow, those words shook him. Shook him more than Naruto's cries of friendship, or of Sakura's confession of love when they were younger. Sasuke felt his body stiffen as the look in her eyes washed over him. A sort of matured, unconditional love he had never seen, even at her most sincerest when they were children.

"Thank you…Sakura." And it was then he realized painfully, that he couldn't stop that horribly misplaced trust she had in him. That both she and Naruto had. Even though he felt too far gone in his quest to destroy the village that took his precious brother from him.

He can't…live without her

When the war was over, when he and Naruto lay in a heap, bleeding out from their wounds and severed arms it was Saukra that still came to their rescue. And just like when they were twelve and thirteen she was there, not with tears this time though, no, she was too head strong for that. Her eyes, tired and hallow as they were, were filled with determination to stop the blood from both their arms from killing them.

And it was there, that Sasuke realized, if she hadn't come, like she always did, Naruto would be dead. He would be dead.

Sasuke stared up at her with eyes clear, as if seeing her for the first time and realizing that if she was never there to deal with his and Naruto's shit he would have died far sooner. If she was never there to interrupt his path of vengeance on the rare occasion, if she had died at some point earlier on, like during their chunin exam…he would have been beyond saving, he would have ruined himself.

Sasuke…he owed his life to Sakura. She never stopped thinking he was worth saving, and even when he was so, so close to ending her so many times…it was always her voice he heard inside his head that stopped him from taking that one extra precarious step.

Looking at her now, battered, bruised, bloody, with a barely close hole in her god damned chest that he put there as she looked down at them with eyes watering. Sasuke realized, not only did he owe his life to her…but that he didn't deserve this life she'd always held of his.

He doesn't deserve this god forsaken love she has for him that both terrifies him, and makes him want to pretend they were genin again on that day he and Naruto trained too hard and they ended up fast asleep, both wrapping their arms possessively around her waist.

The last Uchiha remembered that day…for the first five minutes he had only pretended to be asleep, when he was asleep, Sakura wouldn't try to talk to him, and he wanted her to shut up and stop nagging them for pushing themselves to hard. And being the little shit that he was, and wanting a pillow, but not wanting to ask for one, he had taken over her lap. He had felt her grow stiff, but eventually, she had relaxed and with her hand in his hair, running through it just so, he had fallen asleep for real.

It was so obvious she felt something for him that he didn't understand…he still, honestly, didn't understand. He lost understanding of his emotions, or her emotions before he had even knew her name.

"Sakura…" he murmured and watched as she turned her bright green eyes onto him. His chest felt tight.

"I'm sorry."

She snorted, and then gave the kind of smile that would stay with him for the rest of his mortal life, it was that profound, that memorable, he felt like it was the most significant look she had ever given him in all their years of knowing each other.

And in that moment, he knew that while he didn't deserve her or anything she could offer him after this, he would try to be better, to change…because he doesn't think he could live without her and her smiles now.