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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 Three
Konoha seems impossibly bright after the dull, dun colors of Suna. All green life and vividly painted buildings. Sakura is glad to see her village, even if it does still look too-new to her eyes.
She spends her first day back at the hospital, the second training her genin brats, and the third cooking with Ino. Sakura chops up four different kinds of mushrooms and negi while her friend measures out soy sauce and sake.
“Still fucking the bastard?” Ino asks.
“His name is Taro,” Sakura says. Not that it will do any good to correct her. The year she’d dated Hideki, Ino refused to call him anything but “the chunin.” As if Sakura needed a reminder that she outranked her boyfriend. Hideki certainly couldn’t forget. He’d hated that she was a jounin, a war hero, apprentice to the Fifth Hokage and friend of the Sixth, and a far better ninja than he could hope to be. When she found out he was cheating on her with a civilian she broke his nose, and that was the end of that.
“Give me those mushrooms,” Ino says. “Anyway, you should dump him.”
“I can’t dump him; we’re not dating.”
Her friend snorts, takes the mushrooms from Sakura and puts them in a pan. “Call it whatever you want, just drop him.”
“I don’t want to. The sex is good.” For once.
Hideki’s prowess in the bedroom had been no more impressive than his skill in combat. They’d dated eleven months, but he never made her come.
And Kenji, her first--well, she had slept with him just the once. She’d been tipsy and the war was over and she made her last, failed attempt to get Sasuke's attention. So she went home with Kenji, but it hurt and he wasn't gentle and he wasn't Sasuke. Sakura waited until he was gone to cry. Kenji complained that she was bad in bed to his Anbu buddies, and so half the village knew Haruno Sakura was frigid by the end of the week. From the careful way that Naruto and Sasuke looked around her in the days afterward, she knew her teammates had heard too.
Ino might be pushy, but she is not cruel, and she never brings up Kenji.
Now she sautees the mushrooms and says, “I know you. Fucking around might be enough for some women, but you’re not that cosmopolitan. You need to find a man more faithful than the chunin and more loving than the bastard.” Ino pops a shiitake mushroom into her mouth. “Hmm. Needs more time. Oh, and check on the rice.”
“I already did, while you were busy lecturing me, Pig.”
“It’s a lecture you should pay attention to, Forehead.” Ino gives her a superior look, the same kind she has been sending Sakura’s direction since their Academy days. “If you aren’t too busy lounging around my kitchen, get me some sake.”
She rolls her eyes and pours a cup for her friend. (Sakura’s last hangover is too fresh in her memory to want any for herself.) Ino drinks it and says, “Fine, I’ll stop giving you perfectly reasonable advice, if that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want.”
“Then we’ll talk about something else. How was your mission with Sasuke?” Sakura doesn’t like Ino’s smile. It’s sly, like she thinks she didn’t change the subject at all.
Sakura shrugs. “Fine. Not exactly action filled. It was just a trip to Suna.”
“Uh huh. And did the last Uchiha act like a jackass or an actual human being?”
Sakura considers and says, “I think he was somewhere between the two.” A jackass part of the trip, certainly, but he was friendly enough with her for the most part, and their night in Kyobetsu--that was as real as she’d ever seen Sasuke. Much as she hated to witness his pain, Sakura couldn’t forget the way he’d let her hold him. Vulnerable and unguarded, allowing himself to take comfort in her arms. Until he pulled away, of course.
“You’re blushing,” Ino says, gleeful. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened.” Nothing she’ll ever tell anyone. That moment, the two of them tangled together on a rented bed, is private.
Ino pours chicken stock over the mushrooms and adds harusame noodles and diced negi to the broth. Then Sakura takes over and stirs the soup as it heats. “So how are you and Shikamaru?” she asks.
You’re not the only one who can meddle, Pig.
Ino looks away, clearly a little annoyed. “We’re fine.”
“Getting married yet?”
“We’re not even together, Billboard Brow!” Ino’s cheeks pinken and she leans against the counter, arms crossed over her chest.
Sakura laughs. “Give me the salt, sake, and soy sauce when you’re done sulking.”
It might be true that Ino and Shikamaru aren’t officially a couple, but the two have been living under the same roof for years. They’d started sleeping with each other shortly after the war ended, and a few months later Ino quietly moved in with her teammate. Both deny dating, but anyone with eyes can see they’re in love.
“Budge over,” Ino says. “I’m going to finish this up before you ruin it.”
Sakura steps aside and lets her friend season the soup with the remaining ingredients. “So how’s your mother?”
“Fine,” says Ino. “She’s seeing someone. Really good guy named Tetsuya.”
Surprised, Sakura smiles. “That’s great. I know you’ve been hoping she’d start to go out again.”
Ino stops stirring and says, voice small, “Does it make me a bitch that I kind of don’t like Tetsuya? I mean he’s nice and everything, and he treats her right, so that’s all that should matter, isn’t it?”
“I guess,” Sakura says, carefully. “But it’s okay to feel however you feel, and that doesn’t make you anything but a daughter who misses her father.”
“Yeah, sure.” Ino sniffs and dabs at her eyes, mumbles something about the steam getting to her.
She looks away, gives her friend a moment to collect herself without an audience. Sakura knows she is lucky, but sometimes she forgets just how fortunate she is to have escaped the war without losing any of her teammates, parents, or sensei. The greatest trauma she’s suffered isn’t the loss of a loved one. It’s being left behind, again and again, by the boy she has loved for half her life.

This is the green of freshly cut grass. This is the green of the Naka River that once flowed through Uchiha land. This is the green of Haruno Sakura’s eyes when she is happy.
Sasuke still plays these little games of sight and perception. He thinks of it as habit, but it might be closer to nostalgia. Some fragment of his childhood that hasn’t been tainted by death and ruin. Now he answers his door, and when he sees that it’s Sakura, Sasuke starts comparing greens without even thinking about it.
“Hi,” she says, smiling.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
She falters, smile slipping away as quickly as it appeared. “I just thought, since we’re both between missions at the moment and I don’t have my genin today, it might be a good time to train.”
If she isn’t teaching her students this morning that’s entirely Sakura’s prerogative, but he doesn’t say as much. “Sure. Let’s go.”
Sasuke chooses training ground eight, one of the smaller, wooded areas, hilly and pockmarked by numerous ponds. “Anything but forty-four,” Sakura says. A stranger might think she’s joking, but Sasuke knows better. She means every word.
Sakura walks a little ahead of him. “Do you want to start over there by--”
He unsheathes his katana--blunt-edged for sparring--and almost gets his first strike, but she jumps out of the way just in time. Sakura pulls a kunai and says, “That was a cheap shot.”
“We’re shinobi, not samurai.”
She comes at him, and the fight begins in earnest. Sasuke is able to nimbly evade her attacks--he’s always been faster than her. But he can’t afford to let her land even one hit. With her chakra-infused strength, that’s all it will take to get him down. He dodges, jumps backward, and right before his feet touch the ground, it opens up beneath him. Sakura aimed her last strike at the earth, and it split apart while he was in the air. He barely lands beside the crater instead of in it. Sasuke feels the sharingan awaken in his right eye, and suddenly he sees everything with perfect clarity. Sakura’s movements seem slow now, slow enough to maneuver around easily.
Sasuke catches her hand signs--tiger, dragon, monkey, snake, horse, ram--but he doesn’t know this technique, so it doesn’t matter if he can see the seals. A wall of water rushes in his direction, something like a small tsunami, and even as he jumps up, grabbing for a tree branch, he knows that it won’t be high enough. Water rushes into him, and the coldness is as jarring as the force behind it. He’s pushed to the ground, battered against the earth by the jutsu. Soaked, Sasuke picks himself up, stands amidst the little river Sakura has created, and barely misses being pummeled by her.
“Where’d you learn that?” he asks, and tosses a few shuriken. “I’ve never seen you use that jutsu before.”
Sakura bats the throwing stars away with her kunai like they’re nothing more than bothersome flies. “It’s my elemental type. I know a lot of water ninjutsu you’ve never seen.” Then she laughs and says, “And I’ve been studying with Kakashi-sensei.”
If Sakura has been working with the damn Copy Ninja, there’s no telling what she’s picked up.
Sasuke rushes her, fast, and brings his katana down in a sweeping arc. She deflects the blow with her kunai, steel screeching against steel, and tries to drive her free fist into his ribs, but he sees the movement long before her punch can land, and he steps around her, behind her. Grabs her hair and pulls her neck back. He brings his sword to her throat so the cold, blunted edge presses against her skin.
He’s won the first round. For a moment, Sasuke holds her in place. Fingers clutching that soft hair, his body pressed against hers. He can hear her harsh breathing and the frustrated noise she makes in the back of her throat. “Let me go, Sasuke!”
He lowers his katana, releases her, and steps back. Sakura turns to face him and says, “That damn dojutsu. It’s not fair to use it.”
“If this were a real fight I’d be using the Sharingan.”
“Oh, come off it. You’re not going to try to kill me again are you?”
That irritates him. “Well, I don’t know, Sakura, are you going to try to stab me with a poison kunai?”
“Maybe,” she says, so flippant that for a second he has the absurd desire to laugh. “And besides, when am I ever going to see the Sharingan in a real battle?”
Never is, of course, the answer to that question, because every Uchiha besides himself is dead.
Sakura covers her mouth, like she wishes she could recall the words that have already left her lips. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why are you apologizing?” Sasuke sheaths his katana. “Do you really think anything you could say might hurt me?”
“I still shouldn’t have said it.” She walks toward him. Wary but gentle, the way you might approach a startled animal, Sakura reaches out and places her hand on his arm. She feels warm against his wet skin, and Sasuke realizes that he wants this. He has been craving contact ever since that night in Kyobetsu, though he isn’t sure why. Maybe because she was a pretty girl who grew into a beautiful woman, and it’s simply been too long since he had a good fuck. He doubts there’s more to it than that.
Sasuke pulls back. “Don’t touch me,” he says.
But Sakura steps forward, frowning, and grabs him by both arms. She says, “It was fine for me to touch you a few days ago. You let me hold you. Do you remember that, Sasuke?”
How could he forget? He sobbed in her arms, and she comforted him. Calmed him by caressing his face, his back. “Of course I remember.”
“You liked it,” Sakura says, now quiet, almost shy, and she isn’t wrong. “You liked me touching you. So why push me away?” She runs her hands up to his shoulders, over his chest, and it takes every ounce of his self-control not to lean into her.
For a man who is always supposed to see what’s coming, Sasuke is having trouble predicting anything where Sakura is concerned.
“Stop it,” he says, more harshly than he meant to, and now it’s her turn to pull back.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I thought--I thought you wanted me to--never mind.” Her voice breaks. She turns and walks away from him.
This is the green of Haruno Sakura’s eyes when he has made her cry.

Sakura throws a handful of shuriken. One, two, three, they strike the dummy exactly where she intends. Throat, heart, and liver. She tries to forget her own stupidity by practicing her aim.
What was she thinking? She knows how private Sasuke is, how guarded and possessive of his own space. Sakura knows, and still she touched him. Why had she done that?
Eleven years, she thinks, is a long time to be in love with someone.
Time has worn it down to a dull hurt, gentler than the sharp ache she remembers from her early youth. She wants to be rid of it, this suffocating affection that leaves no room for lesser loves. Sakura gave her virginity to Kenji and her commitment to Hideki and her body to Taro, but none of them has ever come close to her heart. And she understands with the simple certainty borne of knowing a hard truth that no man besides Sasuke ever will.
Sakura lies down on the ground and looks up at the sky. Forget-me-not blue streaked with feathery white clouds. She smells the green summer scent of mown grass, feels the tickle of the recently cut blades against her bare shoulders and the backs of her legs. Somewhere nearby, a mockingbird sings its borrowed song. It is a beautiful day to wish for a fresh start.
She stays this way until Shino arrives with his students in tow and asks if she is done. Then she stands, brushes grass and dirt off of her combat clothes, and leaves training ground seven to people who will actually use it. Sakura goes home, showers, changes into her medic uniform, and heads to the hospital. Her shift isn’t supposed to start for another three hours, but even during peacetime there is always work to be done.
Today her patients include: an old shinobi who dislocated a shoulder while sparring; three burned chunin, fresh from a mission that went south; a pregnant civilian, five months along, in for a routine checkup; and one of her own genin.
Hachiro’s mother says, “He fell out of a tree and broke his leg.” From her tone, Sakura can tell that Hyuuga Yuzuki is disappointed.
“How did you do that?” Sakura asks, a little surprised that Hachiro, whose balance is normally impeccable, sustained an injury this way.
He looks down and says, “I was practicing my chakra control, sensei. I almost got to the top of the tree, too, but then I lost my footing.”
Yuzuki shakes her head. “Unbelieveable. Why didn’t you have your Byakugan activated?”
Hachiro fidgets, and the nervous motion of his hands reminds her of a young Hinata. “I did,” he says softly.
“I’m gonna take a look,” Sakura says. “And I’ll get you all patched up. How does that sound?”
Hachiro smiles, if weakly, and lets her examine his leg. Sakura focuses her chakra to her hands and then uses it to feel through skin and muscle to the bone beneath. “It’s a hairline fracture to the fibula,” she says. “This won’t take five minutes to fix.”
Her student is the best patient she’s had all day. Quiet and uncomplaining, he sits perfectly still while Sakura mends his leg. “You’re tougher than the squad of chunin I healed earlier. Two of them cursed at me and the other one cried.” Of course, they were suffering from second degree burns, but Sakura doesn’t mention this.
“It’s a good thing you weren’t practicing walking on water,” Yuzuki says. “Or you might have drowned.”
If she opens her mouth one more time I’m kicking her out of the room.
“There, all done,” says Sakura. “Try walking and tell me how it feels.”
Hachiro scoots off of the exam table and takes a few careful steps. “Most of the pain is gone, but it’s still a little sore.”
“That’s normal. It’ll probably be tender for the next few hours, but after that you’ll feel as good as new.”
“Thank you, sensei.”
“No problem.”
Sakura can’t help but think that if she’d chosen to teach her genin this morning instead of sparring with Sasuke, Hachiro never would have tried running up a tree on his own.
“Meet me at training ground ten tomorrow at noon,” she says. “It sounds like you’ve almost gotten the hang of it, but I’ll help you fine tune things, okay?”
Hachiro nods, and Yuzuki takes him home.
Sakura doesn’t have a favorite among her students--she learned from Kakashi what not to do in this regard--and she sees something of herself in each of them. Saito has the perfect chakra control and collected disposition necessary to master medical ninjutsu, and she plans to begin teaching him a few simple techniques over the next few months. Izumi, a first-generation ninja, exhibits the same kind of hell-bent determination to prove herself that Sakura felt during her apprenticeship with Tsunade-shishou. But Hachiro reminds her of herself in the worst of ways. He struggles more than his teammates and has to work twice as hard to do half as well. Hachiro is the weak link in his three-man squad, and he knows it. Just like Sakura once knew.
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In Times of Peace