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The Book of Love	By : TheChieftain Category: Naruto > Het - Male/Female Views: 3193 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the series of Naruto (which belongs to Masashi Kishimoto), nor any of the canon characters and I definitely don't make money with this either. I'm just someone that wants to fill in the blanks properly.

Chapter List
- 3
- 4
- 5
Perihelion
"It's pathetic...that you would wait for me this long."
Sakura looked up at Sasuke from her seat. They sat beside each other at a makeshift bar made from the rubble of the previous building. Both were still considerably injured, with Sasuke donning bandages on most of his visible body and having his left eye closed. Sakura herself was walking with a cane, too weak to walk on her own after essentially using up three year's worth of chakra. Strangely enough, things had progressed fast in what was essentially only one short week and a half.
The war had been won, and the world awakened from the Infinite Tsukuyomi. With everyone now aware of the great feats of Team Seven, they would literally let them have run of the town, much to the glee of Naruto, who immediately would whisk himself away from the group for most of his time thereafter. Kakashi, who was due to become Hokage as Tsunade had stepped down was also nowhere to be seen.
Had Sasuke any other choice of person to interact with, he most likely would have made it, but considering that he was still yet not forgiven for his crimes, people were apprehensive at best about him being in the village. As one of the four heroes of the world, the title and glory would only grant him so much leniency after all that he'd done.
He didn't deserve to be sitting next to her.
Sakura held the cup of tea in her hand with a fist and gripped it tighter as she heard him. "You know, you didn't have to come here. Asking me to talk to you...honestly, I should have known better." It was difficult to discern why the woman had been acting so oddly, ever since he had finished his battle with Naruto. She was...different, somehow.
Sasuke stayed silent momentarily, swishing the alcohol in his own cup before setting it down. It was strong enough that Sakura could smell it from where she sat- he knew because she immediately complained. He'd never had the stuff before, and seeing it now before him, he had second thoughts. "...I had something to tell you." The cup was pushed away from him, untouched, much to the ire of the bartender that had broken rules to give it to him.
"Huh?" This caught the kunoichi's attention, and she immediately leaned over. "What is it?"
There was a hesitation, as Sasuke brought the cup closer to him again, eyeing the liquid inside with careful contemplation. "I wanted to talk about Konoha's progress. Things have been going well and-"
Sighing, Sakura stood up from her chair and began to walk away from the building, leaving Sasuke to foot for the bill. Before he was able to check for his wallet however, the bartender predictably immediately told Sasuke to get out. Looking back to the cup, he quickly took a swig of what was inside before walking out behind Sakura. It was definitely strange behavior from her.
Sakura stopped about two destroyed buildings down from the bar and turned around to face Sasuke, a deep frown etched on her face. "Sasuke," she couldn't exactly outrun him normally, so in this situation it would be hopeless. It would be better to just explain. "What you're talking about...those are buildings...monuments. People don't recover so easily. I thought you of all people would know that."
This immediately struck with him, and Sasuke would stay silent for what seemed to be an eternity. He knew that she was watching him, and he finally opened his rinengan eye to her. She needed to see all that he was. "Sakura," he started out, only to stop the moment Sakura raised her cane up towards him.
"Look...I'm not the same girl from the academy anymore. I'm a woman now, so you can't seriously expect me to just accept every single thing you say and do!" She took a wobbly step forward, with one hand over her heart as the other firmly placed the cane on the ground. Her eyes were fixed onto her feet, unable to look the other in the eye. "I've been to hell and back for you, but that doesn't mean-"
I'm leaving." These words were enough to immediately catch his attention, and at the pure shock that suddenly overcame her, he somehow felt vindicated.
"What?"
Sasuke ignored the question completely and simply continued from where he had left off. "I understand that you and your parents are looking for a place to stay. Kakashi and Naruto promised that the Uchiha district would be among some of the first buildings to be rebuilt." There was a hint of unease at the "favor" the two were doing for him. In some ways, he knew that Kakashi probably did nothing more than rubber stamp the idea. "There would be a lot of empty homes. I don't think I'll be staying too long here so you could take residence there while I'm gone if you need to."
The medical-nin had still not gotten over the initial reaction. "Wait. you're not staying?!" She could feel the wooden cane cracking under the force of her first.
"There's a lot of the world that I haven't seen yet, and that I need to see again with new eyes. I need to redeem myself, and atone for what I've done up until now."
Sakura took a few more steps towards him, until she was essentially in his personal space. Unable to lean up towards him, she merely looked up with an intensity that seemed unrivaled by many in her eyes. "And you don't think that you could do a lot of good here at home? Shannaro, you just got here and you're leaving just like that?!"
He remained generally unfazed by her reaction. "People need you here more than ever. I'm not, so before I take my place back in Konoha, I need to do this."
"And I need you now more than ever," the pink haired kunoichi protested his excuses, her voice getting louder. It caught the attention of several people on the same street, and they would stop to stare. "You can't possibly take me with you?"
Sasuke remained silent for a moment, glancing down at her. Her eyes always seemed to glimmer when she looked at him. It was a strange thing he noticed about her. His attention then turned to the people, which seemed to be expecting something from them. It was when he made eye contact with them, sharingan activated,that they would begin to wall again. It was expected that Sakura would cause a scene at this. "You haven't changed a bit."
"Huh?"
"You're the same as when we were both genin. As when you were in the academy and before that as well. All you did was reveal your inner nature." Sasuke felt his left hand burn at that moment, only to look down and remember it was not there anymore. "What you did...what you continue to do...you were capable of all that already. So if you so choose, you are capable of waiting just a little while longer." And with that, Sasuke would turn around. Now he felt the burn in his throat, and he knew what he was feeling was real. His head was starting to pound.
"If you do, I promise that next time we meet, I'll take you with me."
. . .
Once again, he opened his eyes.
The wind picked up as Sasuke took a stance. His red eye would glow in the dark, bright enough to slightly illuminate the rinnengan that was left in the other. He lowered his head, eyes still fixed on the woman. She had played him for a fool for too long...and somehow he didn't even notice for a second that something was off! How could something like this have happened?!
He put a hand on his head and pulled his hair back. 'Focus, Sasuke. Focus!,' he thought to himself hurriedly. These were mistakes that he made fresh from the academy when he didn't have the power he had now! If he hadn't been so distracted, he might have avoided this situation entirely! The thoughts came faster and stronger than he could will them away, and so he only barely had enough time to block the first move made by Yuki. His right eye was spinning.
There was a clang between the metals- his sword against her kunai. However, before she had time to move, he'd kick her away, letting her hit the ground harshly.
The woman coughed, and the soft sounds of dripping against the floor would sound. He knew then that she wouldn't last much longer.
"This will end now." Sasuke readied his sword for the final blow, ready to end the months of torment that she's placed on the lives of the innocent. Of course, not giving up so easily, Sasuke would once again end up on the defensive, as Yuki begun to push herself to attack with all she had left.
Each move, each movement of the muscle became known to him, and immediately Sasuke knew where to place his blade. Though he was blocking, he was letting her get weary on her own, knowing that the moment she lowered guard out of exhaustion, he would have his clean shot. This would not take long.
The murderer fell on her knee, dropping her kunai before essentially collapsing. Her body rose and fell with her breaths, and through the stray rays of moonlight, he could see the reflection of blood pooling up beneath her.
"I wonder...how much chakra you used up trying to fool me into believing you were dead. How much you spent trying to fight me in a transformation. Had you not been a coward, you wouldn't have ended up like this."
It was clear at this point, that she had resigned herself to her fate. "Shut up," she said, looking out into the darkness. When there was a stillness and silence in the air, she would smile and shut her eyes. "You wouldn't understand how hard things were. Being discriminated...seeing your friends suffer...I was able to make something of myself and earn their trust but they..."
Sasuke wouldn't falter as she spoke, keeping the sword raised, but shut his eyes in acknowledgement. "I'm sorry."
"I know you are. I can see it in your eyes."
Opening them again, he looked at the one below him carefully, and grimaced. There was another moment of quiet between them as the Uchiha raised his blade. "Too many people take advantage of compassion."
"Perhaps if they didn't, there would be a lot more of it."
"Yeah." Sasuke impaled the woman, hearing scream pierce through the otherwise barren felt as the blade cut through organs and bones, causing what would be fatal damage to someone that deserved nothing less. Of course, his eyes told a different story.
Yuki begun to leak water at that moment- a slow trickle that surrounded the steel and ran down the side of her body- before immediately bursting into water. It was another mistake.
Looking up to the broken roof, he could see small banks of snow having accumulated. Flakes slowly fell through where they could, some falling on Sasuke himself. He heard her voice calling out one last time.
"Sorry Sasuke Uchiha, I'm not going to let myself die just quite yet..."
She was gone, and he had let her get away. His eyes and hands would begin to tremble at this. How could he make such a foolish mistake, one after another?! "Dammit..." He had doomed them all. There was no chance at this point that he could help. They wouldn't let him. "Dammit, dammit..."
Sasuke screamed as he speared through the ice that had formed from the water below him.
Sarada pulled her first from the abandoned building before her. Her father pulled her away from the building before it ended up crumbling into pieces. He narrowed his eyes at the rubble that would remain in it's aftermath before looking to his daughter. "Your reaction to the story was more than over-dramatic." He couldn't fault her for possibly damaging people. Both of them knew no one had been in there.
"Over dramatic?! Shannaro...you..." The genin seemed to be trembling at the thought of the story. She'd put her fist up before letting it open and throwing her arm to the side, as if to reject the notion that she was doing anything irrational. "You closed your eyes! Even someone like Boruto would understand that you can't just close your eyes in the middle of a fight like that! And you knew she was dangerous too! Why didn't you just...just..." There were so many amazing things she had seen her father do, and yet he had done everything wrong.
The man could not give her an answer to the question. There were too many reasons...too many things he had failed to do so that he could give her an answer to the question. Instead, he would kneel down to her level and place a hand on her shoulder. When she would look to him, she would be met with his eye, one just like her's but unafraid and full of regrets.
All her attention back on him, she looked deep into his eyes, something which made her very anxious. There was too much she didn't want to know about the look that he was giving her. With it, it would be her that became filled with fear.
"This is merely a story. If you can't take that much, then you should just give me your headband right now. You should not be a shinobi."
Sarada was taken aback by this statement, and frowned deeply at the idea that she should be stripped of her headband just because she reacted as she did. Was she supposed to be a weapon devoid of feelings? Follow every single rule down to the last detail? Looking into her papa's eyes, she wondered if he ever cried on the battlefield...if he ever broke or failed...
Of course he had. She could see it in his eyes. There was too much weakness in them for both of them. "Are we just supposed to follow the rules of the shinobi then? Did mama follow them perfectly? Did you...?"
It was an odd topic, Sasuke's beliefs of the shinobi rules. He didn't make top marks on paper like Sakura (though he was best at everything else), and with time away from the village, most of these rules fell from his memory banks. However, there was one particular rule that gave him all he needed to know. "To be a shinobi means to struggle. The rules of a shinobi...you can't follow them all. Some will save your life, and some will kill you from the inside." He would continue, unblinking. "If you don't follow the rules however, you risk becoming something worse, however. From the words of Kakashi: 'Those who don't follow the rules are scum.'"
"Huh? The Sixth Hokage said that?"
Sasuke took a moment before remembering that Kakashi had been the Hokage for a time. Not that he was there for most of it. "He said many things...though I suppose that you can ask him yourself tomorrow."
There was a rumbling in the distance, though Sarada was quick to ignore it. "Huh? Why?"
The Uchiha patriarch activated his sharingan at that moment and walked in front of Sarada. "Because that was Kakashi's old home you just destroyed."
"Wait what?!" Her eyes opened wide at this, as she felt as though her heart would sink so far beneath her that it could burn up in the Earth's core. "N-No way...I..."
"Your mother was also watching us."
"WHAT?!"
Looking back through his left eye, he made sure that he would be alert to the rumbling that slowly begun to grow louder. Her arrival was now imminent. "You knew that she arranged for us to speak. That part would seem obvious, wouldn't it?"
The sharingan began to change shape in Sasuke's eye as a heavy miasma filled the air as the figure of the woman would come from the sky. She had leapt far and came in very quickly. From the chakra that begun emanating from his body came a purple humanoid skeleton that shielded the area itself from the impact. He knew that she was not aiming at them, but before Sakura could and and strike the ground, it was the ribs that were struck, with the one against the fist cracking immensely. Still, it held enough so that Sakura could realize what she was dealing with.
"Sasuke..." She seemed slightly in shock that he would stop her from expressing her wrath. Of course, he'd never had to stay around the village long enough that it became something he had to do. Sakura had always been quick to anger and lash out unnecessarily, but was essentially harmless when around him.
He would cease the moment that she landed on the floor and stood calmly on the ground before the two. He walked right up to her with a stern expression. "Responding to our daughter's actions with more of the same? We don't need you destroying an entire block. Enough damage has been done already."
As she watched her mother nod at his scolding, Sarada frowned and looked to the floor. Her mind was somehow elsewhere, as she pondered her father's words. "To be a shinobi means to struggle..."
Was this why she felt so strange?
A month's worth of time passed before Sasuke would see the gates of Konohagakure. Between that night in the building and today, even more would happen to drive the man back to his home, though of them, he would most likely speak to no soul. His past as an avenger would never help him to atone for anything...it couldn't. How could one heal and fix lives with weapons and violence. No matter how efficient, blood would only beget more blood in it's place, and it was only now that he'd actually begin to put words and thoughts into action.
Walking past the bushes and trees, he stepped right back on the paved path that would lead into the village. At the gate stood a dog watching guard, who barked immediately at the sight of him. Sasuke paused, as it blocked the only way inside, and looked towards the booth. In it, a man would be asleep, and Sasuke, immediately recognized him. "Kiba..."
It was only when the dog would run into the booth and pounce on the man that he'd wake up with a yelp. "Augh! Akamaru, what's the big idea, I-" Sharp eyes caught sight of wild ones, before they would widen at the sight of who it was. "Sasuke? You're back?!"
"I'm only here to pick up a few things. Supplies and..." He trailed off into thought, looking down to the floor. It was very clear in his mind who he had to see first. If he didn't do it immediately, it was very likely he wouldn't do it at all.
"Well...I guess I have to let you in, not being a criminal and all. You can thank the Sixth Hokage for that one. He put in a pretty damn good word to you!"
Sasuke didn't react to anything the other had to say on the matter and simply began to walk past the booth. He had given him entrance- anything beyond that was essentially wasted time and energy. Especially considering that he barely ever spoke to the Inuzuka to begin with. Instead he would make his way through the path that lead in and out of the village.
Passing the bench, he took a winding turn and almost immediately got lost.
In what was only the span of two years, Konoha had turned into an outright city. He couldn't even say that, seeing as he had seen the village in it's entirety just a few short months ago when he stopped a meteor from destroying it! Or at the very least, he glanced at it. Had he not looked carefully enough? Either way, it was impossible to actually navigate, to the point where he was almost tempted to ask directions.
The people had also seemed to change, as people wore particularly flashy clothes with wild hairstyles in various shades of neon colors. While some regular civilians walked among them, most of the people that were out at this time seemed to be in a hurry to either find a place to drink or a place to party. It was entirely bizarre, especially considering it was only slightly past sunset.
Screens that flashed, and the echos of a news bulletin rang into his ears as faded gibberish. He paid no mind to the talking, and so it muffled his understanding any of it. However, the fact that he could hear anything at all was bizarre to him. As a young genin, he relished the silent walk from the village gates and towards his home. The silence gave him the clarity to think and reflect upon the many things that weighed on him. Now however...he was lucky if he could hear himself speak, let alone speak.
That didn't stop him from hearing a very familiar voice however.
"OIIIIII, SASUKE!"
He quickly turned around to this, only to see Naruto, once again having changed his outfit. Strangely, Sasuke barely noticed that it was winter...it had been snowing ever since he'd left the village, something which he had assumed to be the work of the woman that got away. "Naruto..." The brightest thing on his man's person seemed to be a red scarf, which immediately caught his attention. "It's not cold enough for a scarf yet."
The man in the black jacket held his scarf with both hands. "Says you, poncho-man! Who're you to tell me what I can and can't wear now, huh?" He grinned widely, taking what was told to him in jest before putting a thumbs up. Clearly he was more than energized. "So, you're back, eh? Gonna stay for good now right? Mission accomplished?"
The Uchiha shut his eyes. "No."
"No?!" Naruto repeated the answer in an incredulous tone. "How in the world could you not be done?! How much of the world do you need to see before you'll be done?!"
When he opened his eyes, Naruto could see how irritated that the other was becoming. "This isn't about traveling the world, loser! You know exactly what this is about. I would assume Sakura told you the details when I left and that you remember them."
There was a slight hesitation. "Yeah but..." Naruto's voice became more leveled, his eyes casting down as he spoke. It was clear there was a lot on his mind, not all things that either of them wanted to hear. "Things are changing, Sasuke. We're all changing."
"Nobody changes."
"Everything changes," Naruto replied, raising his voice slightly. "Everything. The village...our lives... all of us. You're the only one that's not here to change with us. How long are you going to be trying to chase after redemption that's never gonna come?! You literally helped save the world and the village twice! If that won't redeem you, then what in the world will?!"
Sasuke stayed quiet throughout the speech, looking right at the fellow genin. It was strange, how much sense Naruto made. It almost made too much sense. Still, he knew it wasn't true. He knew what he needed to do and why he was doing it, and once he was finished, he would find his place, if there was a place left, back in the leaf village. "I'm not staying," he said with conviction. "And nobody changes. Buildings...monuments...those things can be rebuilt, painted, changed. People don't recover, don't change so easily."
Naruto became quiet at this, looking back up to Sasuke's level. It was strange to both of them that they now stood evenly.
"Is Sakura still living with her parents?"
The blond had to give this some thought before recalling. "Uh no, I think her parents moved out of that place you offered them. Too spooky or something like that. Anyways, they went back to their old place once it got rebuilt and renovated. Sakura's still living at that place."
The brunette seemed slightly surprised. "She's still living in the Uchiha compound?"
"Well, yeah, makes sense, don't it? Lots of place...pretty awesome view from the very back of the village outskirts...I mean, the police station and the prison are nearby but Sakura says that only makes her feel safer."
Deciding that the conversation is over, Sasuke immediately started to walk off, taking a few steps before entirely disappearing.
"HEY-" By the time that he got that much out, the other was gone without a trace. "Man, that guy...geez." Looking up towards one of the larger screens on the building beside them, he would see the Hokage, speaking on a talk-show about the final film adaptation to the Make Out series.
"...when I saw the previews, I was just blown away! I definitely expect great things from this movie, especially..."
Naruto found himself grinning at this, before shaking his head. "I guess maybe some people don't change." The jinchuriki turned around and walked back the way he came, taking a left before the winding road back out to the front of the village, heading back to his own home. He checked his phone, clicking out of his text messages with Kiba before attempting to find his former teammate on his phone. He stared at Sakura's name and the picture of her Ino had taken of her at his wedding. It was strange how she smiled...in a way, it looked like she was looking through people. He could remember her vacant yet longing eyes on that day. It was enough for him to simply hold down the red button until the phone completely turned off.
"It doesn't mean you can't change though, Sasuke...for her sake."
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The Book of Love