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The Uchiha Restoraionn: chapter 5 - Dream Lover
By Kristen

Some people were afflicted with the curse of bad timing. Uchiha Sasuke was one of them. When he was about eight years old, he arrived home late from kunai practice to find his clan murdered at the hands of his own brother. Had he come home a bit earlier, there was a chance he could have been killed as well. He probably would have been better off. Had he come just a bit later, he might have not witnessed his brother standing over the bodies of their parents with a murderous glint in his eyes. Had he not seen that, he definitely would have been better off. During Team 7’s first survival training mission, Sasuke had taken leave from his fellows and when he paused just a moment to have a short conversation with Sakura, the last of the exercise’s time whittled away. It wouldn’t have made a difference, but at the time, he had been rather mad at himself. The first time he confronted Itachi, he had been far too weak. If the battle had just taken place a few months down the line, he would have been far better off. Instead, he sought Orochimaru for power, created more private demons, wallowed in extra hells, and grew no stronger.

Case in point, the latest bit of bad timing involved Sasuke leaving the village for a high profile escort mission, projected length undetermined, a mere three days after a large and sudden self-discovery, two days after the plan to complete his remaining ambition was implemented and the day after he came home after training in Area 42 to find his wife curled up on the couch, grading students’ worksheets.

Now, teaching being a time-consuming profession, Sasuke had seen Sakura grading papers plenty of times before. Most often, she did so when Sasuke and Naruto were playing Go. Sasuke wasn’t very good at board games, but he was still better than Naruto, who didn’t seem to have a grasp on the game at all. He always vowed to beat Sasuke at it someday (Sasuke assumed this was a hold-over rivalry from the days when he had been a better ninja) and Sakura wisely chose to stay out of it. Though she still hung around at these times, she did something productive with her time, rather than stare at the two and wonder why they bothered.

What made this particular situation bad timing was the simple fact that now Sasuke had living, breathing, willing female flesh with which to take the first step of clan restoration, and he was leaving. Sasuke muttered something he was sure Sakura wouldn’t catch, but she stiffened slightly anyway, clearly trying to seem as though his presence didn’t affect her. While he didn’t blame her for acting strangely, he wasn’t so dense as to not understand what he was putting her through, Sasuke did find himself annoyed by it. Her moods seemed to fluctuate between glowing and pretending he wasn’t there. Being ignored was not something Sasuke was used to, nor was it something he on the whole enjoyed getting from people who usually paid attention to him.

What it boiled down to was he couldn’t find his comfort zone anymore. Yesterday evening, Sakura had been too close, smiling at him and talking about moving her belongings into the house over the coming week. She told him about the kids ditching her class, but didn’t seem upset by it. She was happy. Too happy. What had she been doing?

He hadn’t spoken to her this morning. Why she felt she had to retaliate against his just not having anything to say, he’d never understand. But as it stood, she was being too distant. She hadn’t greeted him nor looked at him, but she wasn’t being subtle about it. Sasuke could tell she was doing it on purpose.

It was actually one of the many ways life was strange: he could want Sakura to shut up for the longest time, and she would not. But when she was silent, he was uncomfortable and wanted her to say something. The best solution to this problem, as he saw it, was to leave. If she was going to take away what he liked about her, which was that he felt at ease around her, then he wouldn’t argue. If there was no comfort to be found here, then it was to be found else where. Being a ninja, Sasuke did notice Sakura watch him pass into the adjacent room. He paid it no mind. So what if she was mad at him now? She’d be happy enough to see him when he returned from his mission. That was just the way it was and no amount of disagreements had ever changed that.

“I kinda freaked you out yesterday, didn’t I?”

Oh. So she was speaking to him after all. He turned around to face her. “Not particularly.”

“Okay. I thought I might have.” She laughed nervously. “It’s just that yesterday I was in such a good mood and you seemed to be in a bad one.” She paused, watching him. She could read him. He didn’t like that. “So anyway..you’re leaving tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

Whether or not she intended to mask her growing frustration with him didn’t matter. Sasuke could tell her patience was beginning to ebb and soon enough he would probably be in for another of her mood swings.

“You know, you never gave me any feedback about moving some of my stuff here.”

That, again. Pick a topic and stick with it. “Do what you like.”

“Do you want me here or not?”

“That’s a foolish question,” Sasuke muttered. He supposed he shouldn’t have said it aloud, but was done was done.

“Not to me, it isn’t.” She sighed. “Once, you told me that not having parents made kids grow up lonely. I didn’t get what you were saying then because I didn’t know about…”she trailed off, but began again, clearly trying to spare him some pain. “But now I think that what you were really saying then is that you were lonely. I’ve never been alone the way you are, but I still know what loneliness feels like. I don’t want you to be alone.”

Perhaps her words were meant to move him. As it stood, he was rather unphased as nothing she had said was news to either of them. She fought him tooth and nail when it came to his solitude for as long as he had known her. He’d fought back just has hard, not wanting to be alone, but not wanting to let anyone get close after what happened to the last people he had loved and respected. He had far too much to fight for than to let anyone win the battle against his will and his hatred. And though that wasn’t the case anymore and had not been for some time, Sasuke was never ready to surrender. He didn’t think there could ever be someone who was so much an ally that they could never be his enemy, so to admit defeat in a battle of wills was unimaginable. How could he face them when someone inevitably turned coat, if the weakness of caring hung in the air?

Sakura had been his enemy before, and though he knew he had made her such by abandoning the Leaf Ninjas, what should happen if he conceded to her now, that he didn’t want to be lonely, and they found themselves facing each other in battle? He’d rather die than lose her, than lose Naruto, than lose their somewhat insufferable mentor. How many ways could that be used against him?

He wondered briefly if that was how his parents felt when Itachi came to kill them, that they would rather die than raise a weapon against him..?

To admit defeat now was to clear a road for betrayal, to give her a weapon to use against him that he would not be able to counteract.

Suddenly it hit him that he should not be thinking this way about his wife. To be a wife was to be a partner to the husband for life. They had bound themselves together as allies and on top of that he had chosen her for her loyalty and his faith in her. She was the woman who would bear his children, raise and nurture them. He had dedicated his life to the ambition of restoring his clan, pulled her into the most important thing in his life. What could it mean other than his faith in her was limitless? He could never have a greater ally and as such to take part in petty, stubborn arguments and stack his pride against her like a weapon… That was him betraying her.

“If I didn’t want you here, I wouldn’t have brought you.” The statement didn’t reflect that he believed she would come on her own, so he added, “Or waited for you.”

She smiled at him and moved closer, placing her arms loosely around his waist. Sakura kissed Sasuke softly on his mouth and being that she was his wife, he returned it.

~*~*~

There was no ground beneath him and no sky above him. Looking into the distance, he saw nothing, just a place with no being and no end. He was there, in his normal Chuunin clothing, standing solidly on something that existed only under his feet. He was alone.

Sasuke had never been alone in this place before, there was always someone else there to talk to him, to blame him, to make his hatred stronger or his loneliness more intense. He was almost pleased to see that nothing was there to greet him, but even if his own negative thoughts didn’t manifest themselves as something outside of himself, they were still there, in the back of his mind, even when not conscious. They could do just as much damage there as anywhere else.

He turned around for no particular reason. Had he not made the motion of turning with his whole body, the change within his line of sight probably would have been the same.

Sakura, as she had been when they were first assigned to the same team, long hair and all, was seated on a chair that didn’t exist, gazing at his 12-year-old self in adoration. Sasuke expected his younger incarnation to start railing at him, but that didn’t happen. Neither child seemed to be aware that anything, or nothing, such as the case was, existed outside of the brooding boy.

Sasuke, the one who was nineteen and Chuunin and could call himself an adult if he wished or a non-adult and no one would contradict him, noticed Sakura’s long hair for the first time. Of course, he’d been aware that her hair was once longer than it currently was, but it had never been a source of concern for him. Naruto, he remembered, shouted his horror at Sakura’s short hair when he awoke in the second Chuunin exam. Sakura had been heavily injured, and he, Sasuke had woken with the curse seal for the first time, in a mindless rage and eager to destroy. That someone had hurt Sakura was just an easy excuse; he could rip apart the person who had done that to her.

The scene before him changed, both children were standing now and Sakura’s hair was short. Her arms were around him loosely and half of his body was flecked with black designs. The marks of the curse traveled up his arms and legs, retreating into Orochimaru’s mark. The two sunk down onto a ground that wasn’t there, existing side by side. She was injured; one of her eyes was only half-open. Though the backs of both phantoms were facing him, he remembered.

Scenes of his life continued and Sasuke supposed this was his version of dreaming about a woman. There she was, letting him lean against her, tending to his wounds, telling him that she loved him with all of her heart. With a smirk, as though it was some great joke, the vision of himself told her she was really annoying.

And next, of course, came Sasuke-sama…the one who lead those who left their villages for Orochimaru. The myriad of deeds they committed didn’t play before him…this wasn’t about them. Though, he had to admit, he didn’t know where his own mind was going with this. Had he stayed asleep for longer, he may have found out, but Sasuke was jolted awake by a fellow Leaf Chuunin, amid scores of screams and flying throwing blades.

His chakra flowing into his feet, Sasuke leapt into the tree he’d been sleeping beneath. From his new vantage point, he could see that most of his teammates who were on the sleeping shift were dead, killed quickly, quietly and cowardly. He himself had been rammed into by a corpse.

With red eyes, the Uchiha survivor lit his enemies a flame, leaping from branch to branch, kunai and caltrops falling in his wake. The daimyo’s representative spotted, Sasuke dove to the ground.

The Hokage, with a genius mind hidden in the leaves and behind a lazy eye, had, of course, been correct.

The escort was an ambush.

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