Sasuke & Sakura : Nightlights

🔽 Destiny 🔼

Inside the chambers, he catches her before she can crash to the floor because she has had enough shocks for one lifetime. Yet, once more, the ground is shifting underneath her feet and she is as helpless to stop it as the day she was told that Sasuke will die.

But Naruto is whispering soothing phrases in her ear and she wants to cry now. After months of strange emotions and piercing numbness, she wants to cry.

He is always taking care of her. Even when he is gone from this world, he is taking care of her. And she cannot collect any more thoughts than that, because she has finally, finally submitted to gut wrenching pain even with dawn just around the corner.

And he is there again, reminding her of his presence. She can feel the chill she has come to associate with him and she clutches her stomach because her sanity now depends on it.

Naruto is instantly on his knees beside her, the pain of his best friend's loss refreshed in his blue eyes, but there is something else too. He is angry. And this time she understands it. But she is not in control of herself anymore than she has been since that gravely unfateful day.

She somehow finds herself back in his car. He is sitting beside her like a solid wall of strength and she knows its selfish but she needs to draw on that strength because despite everything, she still cannot find hers.

Then, Naruto does something. Something that Sasuke would have done and she loses her breath and finds it in that one breathtaking moment. He reaches out and puts his palm across her belly and softly tells her that this is where he has placed his essence. This is how he is going to be with her till the end of her days.

She feels a chill, but her body is working. Her tattered body, covered in blood and glass stills and she turns, placing her palms on the ground and pushes. She pushes till she is on her knees again, pushes till she is standing again.

Of course he will take care of her. He always has and he still is.

Once she walks through the doors of their bedroom, she locks it behind herself, because Naruto is insistent upon not leaving her alone and she learns that he has been going back and forth here for quite some time - she could not seem to remember before this but now that she really strains her mind, she remembers waiting for the man to leave till she was alone again.

Alone with him.

At the thought, she glances up. And there she finds him, leaning against the wall, dark hair matting his beautiful face, a divine smile upon his lips and onyx eyes glinting at her - just like the first day they met. A knowing look is in his expression now, though.

He does not speak, however. He never speaks. Now that she is ..more sane.. she wonders if all spirits keep silent or just him and decides soon that she does not care, because she has just discovered that he knew all along. Her palm flies to her belly and she gazes at his form, still leaning, though the lack of movement of his chest does not go unnoticed by her. It has stopped unsettling her too much.

You knew, she accuses. This whole time, you knew.

He nods and adopts a boyish look that is only very Sasuke-like and it makes her heart flutter and she loses it. She demands an explanation, but he only looks on at her. She does not care anymore that Naruto is outside, but wonders if Sasuke can even hear her. He has never answered her directly before and he is not doing so now.

There is no knock on her door this time, for the blonde man breaks right through, blue eyes concerned, frustrated and angry. Sakura freezes. He stilll leans against the wall nonchalantly though. Perhaps, he is a hallucination and she really has lost her mind to grief, thinks she, as Naruto opens his mouth to scold her.

He freezes in his tracks too then, his eyes following the same as hers, stopping at where her dead husband is leaning. The color drains from Naruto's face, understanding dawning in his eyes as he looks straight at the spirit of his best friend.

He is stuttering his name and now, hers. This whole time, he breathes, which is much more than what Sasuke can do right now and promptly, tears fill his eyes.

You were with me all this time, she finally speaks again, softly though, voice on the edge of breaking. Was it for this? She rubs her stomach.

He smiles a little wider and Naruto gasps beside her.

You wouldn't let go, he finally utters, gently, as if he understands.

Her eyes go wide as saucers, because he has never spoken before and with a sinking feeling, she realizes, he will never again. She watches his sparkling eyes lower to her stomach and a wide smile carves itself upon his face as he meets her gaze.

She instinctively clutches her belly again as tears brim, for she knows now, that he must go. He has taken care of her - not just in life and death, but even after. She needs to let go of him. He must go. I'll be okay, she promises, as much to herself as to him.

He nods and extends an arm forward. She feels his intended touch against her right cheek in the form of a cold and gentle caress of a breeze. His eyes move to his best friend, who has finally sobered. He does not speak, but an understanding passes between them - one that exists between old friends and Naruto tells him, I'll take care of her.

He gives them one last smile - a peaceful acceptance and calm in it - and just like that, the room is empty again. This time, she knows, he is really not coming back. Her tears fall fast and hard and she collapses against Naruto, who cannot seem to hold his own tears very well.

Five months later, she holds a beautiful girl in her arms. She is a hauntingly beautiful reflection of her father and they decide to call her Sarada. Her tears are of joy today and though a dull ache of his absence remains in her chest, he has given her something to look forward to and someone to love and cherish as she did him.

She has walked on glass, rolled naked in it and stood back up to get here. She pulls the piercing fragments from her skin and tosses them aside, wipes the blood from her skin and where once she saw darkness and misery, she sees a sun rising.

With Sarada in her arms, Naruto by her side and Sasuke's memories in her soul, she takes her first step toward it.

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