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In Times of Peace	By : SouthSideStory Category: Naruto > Het - Male/Female > Sasuke/Sakura Views: 3794 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Two
When they set out in the morning the sky is overcast, grey with the promise of a summer storm. Warm rain begins to fall within an hour of leaving Konoha, and before long Sasuke is soaked. His high-collared shirt sticks to his neck and back wetly, and he resists the urge to pull it away from his skin. The sun never fully rises, hidden behind a wall of dark clouds, and the mud slows their progress. By nightfall they’ve only just reached the River Country.
Lightning branches across the sky, brilliant and purple against black, illuminating a small border town. Kyobetsu is its name, if memory serves.
They stop beneath a tree and Sakura wrings out her dripping hair. “I feel like I’m in Amegakure,” she says. She wants to rest here for the night, he expects, but she won’t be the one to suggest it. Sakura is stubborn that way sometimes.
“Let’s find an inn,” Sasuke says. “And get out of this rain.”
Kyobetsu is barely the size of Konoha’s training ground six, so it only takes a few minutes for them to find the town’s single minshuku. The building is small and traditional, and Sasuke takes a moment to remove his shoes before stepping on the tatami-matted floor. Sakura does the same, but they still drip muddy water with every step. An old woman behind the front desk looks them up and down, scowling at the mess they’ve brought with them.
“How much for two rooms?” Sakura asks.
“We only have one left,” the woman says, and she frowns more deeply. “Are you married?”
Sakura gives a bright smile and says, “We’re brother and sister actually.”
If she has the wits the kami gave a goose then this woman knows they’re lying. But she just huffs, names a price, and takes the ryo Sakura offers her. Then she gets out from behind the desk and leads them upstairs, opens the sliding door to their room, and waddles off.
The space is plain but clean, with wooden walls, a low table, and a single futon. Sakura drops her shoes in the middle of the floor and goes to the bathroom. He hears running water inside and the heavy-falling rain outside. Bone weary and dirty and cursing Naruto for not having the patience to wait and go to Suna himself, Sasuke undresses, hangs his wet clothes over the back of a chair, and opens his pack to find something dry. He pulls on his night shirt and pants and settles himself beneath the covers. It would be more gentlemanly to offer the whole futon to Sakura and sleep on the floor, but Sasuke is too tired to give a damn. They can share.
He falls asleep easily and slips into a red and black world. A boy again, he wanders familiar streets littered with the dead. Auntie Shizu. Uncle Hayato. Cousin Itsuki. Kunai everywhere, stuck in the walls and stuck in the bodies. At home he finds his father draped over his mother. Otousan and Okaasan, still and lifeless no matter how he shakes them. And big brother is there, crying crimson tears, reaching for Sasuke’s face, for his eyes. He runs from the house, runs for his miserable life, a coward, screaming--
“Sasuke! Sasuke, it’s just a dream.”
Hands are gripping his arms, shaking him. Before Sasuke is even properly awake he has her on her back and he’s reaching for a katana that isn’t there. It’s dark, too dark to see properly, and he can barely breathe under the weight of this suffocating blindness.
“Shh,” Sakura says. “It’s all right.” And he realizes that he’s trembling, crying, tears sliding down his face and dripping from his chin. Hesitant, gentle, Sakura cups his cheek and wipes away the wetness there. Her cool touch against his flushed skin startles him, but he doesn’t pull back. The contact is comforting, calming, and he leans into it without much thought. “It’s all right,” she says again. “Just a dream.” And that’s true, but the nightmare feels as real as it did when he walked through it as a child.
Sakura strokes his face and utters soothing nonsense. He’s not really listening to her words, just the cadence of her voice. Grounding him, pulling him back to the reality of this rented room. Lightning strikes, and for an instant the woman beneath him is painted in shades of grey. With a crash of thunder she disappears back into darkness, but Sasuke can still feel her. Warm breath and soft body, careful medic’s fingers carding through his hair.
It’s unwise to let his friend coddle him like this and probably unfair to her--he knows well enough that she loved him once. But then, he’s often weak where Sakura is concerned, and Sasuke has always been selfish. Too selfish to push away solace when he needs it this desperately.
He lets her wrap her arms around his back, lets himself relax into the embrace. Sasuke’s heartbeat slows and Tsukuyomi colors fade from behind his closed eyelids. Memories of the long dead give way to the shadowed present. A minshuku in Kyobetsu where rain still pounds against the tile roof and the window shudders in its frame. He rests against Sakura, buries his face in the pillow beside her. Her hair is silky and he half expects it to smell of cherry blossoms, but it doesn’t. Just the cheap hotel soap she used earlier.
“Sasuke-kun,” she whispers. “Are you okay?”
Sasuke knows that if he answers his voice will come out broken. So he says nothing.
One of Sakura’s hands drifts beneath his shirt. Slips from the base of his spine to the nape of his neck.
What am I doing? He hasn’t leaned on another person for comfort since he was a child. Since before his family was massacred and his world turned upside down. Sakura’s words, her touch, they feel good--too good, really, because he can’t think straight while she’s running her fingers up and down his back like that.
He’s reminded, oddly, of the night he left Konoha. The silent stillness of his bedroom as he packed his things. A golden moon hanging full in the sky, crickets chirping their evening song. Walking by the swing Naruto used to haunt. And Sakura, meeting him on the only road that led out of the village. He’s never asked her how she knew where to find him, how she knew he would be abandoning Konoha, and he probably never will. Sasuke remembers her confession, the way she begged him to stay. He knew he couldn’t do that. Still, he lingered by the stone bench where he laid her, looked at this girl he was leaving behind, and part of him--a weak part--wanted to pick her up and take her along as she’d asked.
Now Sasuke pulls away, rolls onto his side away from Sakura, breathing hard. He wipes his face with his sleeve and tries to pretend he’s in his own bed at home, alone. It’s no good, though, because he can still feel the warmth of her body next to his on this narrow futon, and he hates that he wants her to hold him. But Sakura doesn’t speak, doesn’t reach out. So Sasuke closes his eyes and lets the sound of the summer storm lull him back into an empty, dreamless sleep.
In the morning they speak politely to one another, unfamiliar and formal. Sasuke and Sakura leave Kyobetsu at sunrise, just as the rain stops, and they do not talk about the night before.

This village is barren and windblown and hot. The sun beats down on them from a cloudless sky, a great expanse of wide and unforgiving blue. Sasuke wipes the sweat from his brow and follows Sakura. She leads him along a half-dozen winding streets, past brown buildings that look too alike for him to tell them apart. How she can navigate the sand and sameness that is Sunagakure, Sasuke doesn’t know, but she seems to find the Kazekage’s tower easily.
A tall kunoichi with golden hair greets them in the foyer. She bows to Sakura and says, “Haruno-san. It’s an honor to finally meet you.”
His teammate blushes. “Um, thanks. And please call me Sakura.”
The kunoichi says, “I’m Ayane, Kankuro’s wife.”
“Oh, congratulations. How is Kankuro?”
“Very well.” Ayane steps closer and takes Sakura’s hand. An overly forward move, Sasuke thinks, but his friend doesn’t pull away. “I feel the need to thank you. You saved my husband’s life from that traitor Sasori’s poison, and if it wasn’t for you I never would have met him.”
Sakura’s flush deepens to a pink that rivals her hair. “There’s no need to thank me. Kankuro is a friend, and I was glad to help.”
Ayane smiles and says, “Come this way. Gaara-sama is in his office.”
They follow her down the hallway and up a flight of stairs. Sasuke leans nearer to Sakura and says, too softly for their guide to hear, “Maybe she should have married you instead of Kankuro.”
Sakura laughs quietly. “You’re just jealous that I’m getting all the attention for once.”
“Hn.” As if he cares what some Sand shinobi thinks of him.
Sasuke can’t afford to consider the opinion of foreign ninja. War hero or not, his brief affiliation with the Akatsuki ruined his international reputation--particularly in Kumo, where a one-armed Raikage still holds a grudge against him. And even in Konoha plenty of people still think the Fifth Hokage should have executed him for his crimes instead of pardoning them. It’s almost funny, because now he gets a taste of what Naruto suffered all those years as the village pariah. Except Sasuke knows he’s earned every bit of Konoha’s hate.
Gaara looks much the same as he did six years ago. Pale, composed, every inch the military king that he is. He sits behind a wide desk cluttered with books and scrolls and a lone potted plant. It speaks to the privilege of this place, because the Kazekage’s simple fern might be the only green and growing thing in this village. A row of round windows line the walls of the office, and through them Sasuke can see the golden sun setting on golden Suna.
“Kazekage-sama,” says Sakura. “The Hokage sends his regards and apologizes for not meeting with you in person, as planned--”
Gaara stands and says, “I received a messenger hawk from Naruto this morning. He said to expect the two of you.”
“Oh. Of course. Well, Sasuke and I are ready to discuss the renewal of our alliance whenever you are.”
“Tomorrow at noon,” says Gaara. “Ayane will bring you to the council chamber when it’s time.”
“Thank you, Kazekage-sama.” Sakura gives a small bow. Sasuke doesn’t bother.
Then Ayane leads them down to the second floor, to a pair of comfortable rooms, much larger and better furnished than the one the Kyobetsu inn provided. (Sasuke tries not to think about the night before. How he cried like a child and clung to her, broken and desperate.)
“I’m not ready to sleep yet,” Sakura says. “Let’s go out and find something to do.”
Maybe he should just turn in early and get a good night’s rest, but Sasuke isn’t tired, and Sakura can be compelling when she’s in a certain mood. All girlish exuberance that reminds him of their genin days. So she pulls him along to a restaurant (no ramen, they agree) and then to a bar where Sasuke drinks shochu. Sakura orders a peach sake and downs cup after cup of the hot liquor. After a bottle he expects her to be slurring and sliding off her seat, but she is a neat drunk, nearly prim in her inebriation. The only difference in her, really, is that she smiles more easily and says what she’s thinking. Under the influence of rice wine she’s almost like the Sakura he remembers from childhood. Honest and open.
Her legs cross and uncross, slender, white, and within reach. He’s had just enough shochu to want to grasp her thigh, but too little to actually do it. She leans closer to him and says, “Tell me something, Sasuke-kun. I’ve been wondering for a long time.” Sakura takes a breath, hitched and nervous, and her fingers tangle with his beneath the bar. “Why did you tell me, ‘Thank you’? What did it mean?”
He doesn’t have to ask the occasion. “That was ten years ago,” Sasuke says.
“It was. But I think you remember.”
Instead of answering, he asks, “Would you really have come with me?”
She smiles and bites her bottom lip, because yes, at thirteen, he was more important to her than her family, than her village. “You know I would have.”
“But not anymore,” he says.
And she agrees, “No. Of course not. You aren’t planning to go anywhere are you?”
Sasuke laughs, short and sharp and without much humor. “So Naruto could hound me across the world and try to drag me back? No thank you.”
Sakura shakes her head. “That isn’t why you won’t leave again,” she says. “You’ll stay because you love Konoha. Because it’s home.”
And because it’s what Itachi would want.
That last sits between them, known but unsaid, and for that he’s thankful. Because it’s difficult just to think of his brother, and even harder to hear his name spoken aloud.
“You’re never going to answer that question,” Sakura says. She stands, surprisingly steady on her feet, and gives him a quick kiss. Fleeting love pressed to the corner of his mouth. Over before it’s barely begun, but the warmth of her touch lingers long after she says, “Goodnight, Sasuke-kun.”

Sakura wakes with a headache throbbing in her temples, behind her eyes. She downs half a glass of water and showers and wishes that medical jutsu could cure a hangover. Last night comes back to her in fits and starts. Drinking with Sasuke. Talking with Sasuke.
Kissing Sasuke.
Sakura would like to think she’d drunk enough to excuse that, but she knows she didn’t.
She digs her formal clothes out of her pack. A blue dress with the Haruno crest on the back, short-sleeved and long enough to brush the middle of her calves. A quick look in the mirror shows dark circles beneath puffy eyes, damp hair, a pale face.
Sasuke knocks--she knows it’s him by the way he raps his knuckles against the wood, three sharp strikes, impatient. Sakura opens the door, and he looks so put together that she feels even more a mess.
“Morning,” she says.
He’s neat and handsome, wearing a traditional white shirt that opens in the front. Sasuke says something, but she’s too busy staring at his uncovered chest to catch it.
“Sorry, what was that?”
He gives her an unimpressed look. Maybe because he knows what distracted her, or perhaps just because he doesn’t like to repeat himself. “I said, let’s get something to eat.”
“Oh. Yeah, sure.”
They find a little restaurant close to the Kazekage’s residence, and Sakura eats plain, simple food: steamed rice and miso soup. Sasuke orders tamagoyaki and a number of rich side dishes, and the smell is enough to make her sensitive stomach roil.
“Overdid it last night?” he asks, so smug that she’s tempted to dump her bowl of miso over his beautiful head.
“No,” Sakura lies.
“Hn. All right.”
After that, breakfast becomes a mostly silent affair. Without Naruto to bully him into speech, Sasuke rarely has much to say. This does not bother Sakura, who is now used to long stretches of quiet between conversation.
She takes small, careful bites of rice and looks out the window to see Suna in the late morning. Sun so hellishly bright and hot that she is glad to be indoors. Rounded, bronze colored buildings that look like nothing so much as sandcastles grown large. Shinobi, civilians, and children, all wearing the light layers that are common here.
They return to their quarters just before noon and Ayane comes to get them a few minutes later. She leads them downstairs to the council chamber. A large, dark room decorated with the statues of the Kazekage and little else. Only two chairs are left unoccupied at the table, and she and Sasuke take their seats.
Kankuro is barefaced. The last time Sakura saw him this way he was lying flat on his back, poisoned and near death. Now that she can see him both healthy and without make-up, she appreciates for the first time that Kankuro is a handsome man, in a gruff sort of way. He smiles when he sees her and says hello. Temari nods a cool greeting. Gaara’s other councilors do nothing, and in that nothingness their mistrust of Konoha, this alliance, and the Hokage’s envoys becomes apparent.
The Kazekage says, “Let’s start,” and so negotiations begin.
They talk about trade between the hidden villages. The upcoming chunin exams, which will take place in Kiri this year. The Wind Country’s border dispute with the River Country, and how the Kazekage expects Konoha’s support if it should come to blows between Suna and Tani ninja. Sakura assures Gaara that the Leaf will assist the Sand in any martial conflict. Sasuke sits and listens and says nothing.
Some envoy you are, Sasuke-kun.
After the alliance is formally renewed, terms spelled out in a contract for both the Kazekage and Hokage to sign, Gaara invites them to dinner with his family. Sakura had hoped to leave Suna this afternoon, but one does not turn down a request from the head of a hidden village. Even if he is a personal friend.
A few hours later, she and Sasuke meet Gaara, Temari, Kankuro, and Ayane in the dining room. Servants carry in the courses, and they are so sumptuous that she is glad her hangover dissipated in time for her to enjoy them. How the cooks got their hands on so much fresh fish in the middle of the desert, Sakura doesn't know and doesn't ask.
Gaara looks at her in that careful way he has. "How is fatherhood suiting Naruto?"
Sakura smiles. "Very well. Little Kushina has him wrapped around her finger already."
"He's going to spoil her," Sasuke says.
"And you wouldn't do the same?"
"I wouldn't," he says, so simply but firmly that Sakura has to believe him.
"There are worse things you can do to your children than spoiling them," Gaara says.
She can't see how anyone at this particular table can disagree with that sentiment. And indeed, no one does. Sakura takes a bite of rice and keeps quiet while talk turns to Suna matters. Gaara and Temari argue about whether or not her genin are ready to go to Kiri for the chunin exams. Ayane brings up a conflict between two of the village's oldest clans, the Himemiya and Ohtori.
Kankuro asks for Sakura to tell how she and Chiyo defeated Sasori. "I've never heard the details," he says. "I'm curious about how you took the bastard down."
He's never heard the details because Sakura has never shared them with anyone, and the other two people who could have told the full story are dead. She prefers not to even think about that fight.
“It isn’t really good dinner conversation--”
Temari laughs. “We’re all shinobi here. I’m sure it won’t turn anyone’s stomach.”
Then Sasuke says, “Tell us. I’d like to hear how you killed one of the Akatsuki.”
And I’d like to hear how you became one of them, Sakura thinks but doesn’t say.
It's been years since she faced Sasori, but she remembers it like it was yesterday, and the words come easier than she expected. She tells them about destroying Hiruko. Then the Third Kazekage. The horror of Sasori's body, that mechanical abomination, forever youthful. Chiyo's ten puppets and her grandson's hundred. Sasori's deception and the katana Sakura took in the stomach. (She does not tell them about the pain of that injury, or the way poison burned like fire in her veins. She does not say that there are still nights when she dreams of the puppet master, of dying slowly on his sword, and wakes in a cold sweat.) And finally, Sasori's death, the way he fell lifeless in the embrace of his own creations, models of the mother and father that he had lost.
When she grows quiet, it is Gaara who speaks first. "Chiyo was a remarkable kunoichi, and so are you, Sakura." He bows his head. It is not lost on her what it means, for a Kazekage to honor a foreign ninja in this way. "Thank you for sharing your story with us."
“You’re welcome.”
On the way back to their rooms, Sasuke says, “You almost died for a woman you barely knew.” His tone is level, any inflection of emotion absent. If he thinks her brave or foolish or kind, Sakura can’t tell it by his voice.
“Yes,” she says and doesn’t offer any more than that.
Sasuke’s brow furrows, and she supposes that for a man like him, utterly selfish in his actions, such a sacrifice must make no sense.
She hopes, sometimes, that the day will come when she and Sasuke finally understand one another. She hopes, but doesn’t count on it.
Cold darkness falls across the desert, and Sakura is afraid to go to sleep. Certain that she will see puppets and swords behind her closed eyelids. She lies awake, staring up at nothing. Aware of the soft cotton sheets, the enveloping black and echoing silence of the room around her. She turns on her side, pulls the blanket over her head, and wills herself to relax and slip into slumber. But it’s no good, and she spends the night turning from side to side. Trying to forget the feeling of steel sliding through her body, of poison killing her by inches. And Chiyo dying to give Gaara a second life.
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In Times of Peace