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“Violets contain ionone, which short-circuits our sense of smell. The flower continues to exude its fragrance, but we lose the ability to smell it. Wait a minute or two, and its smell will blare again…No scent is more flirtatious. Appearing, disappearing, appearing, disappearing, it plays hide-and-seek with our senses and there’s no way to get too much of it.”
from A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman
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“They would write books about this fight,” the thought came ridiculously, unbidden to her mind.
Rasengan, two chidori, the speed was insane and all that was visible were sizzling streaks of chakra.Sakura knelt, helpless, a kunai jammed painfully in her thigh.Kakashi was soon thrown next to her, panting for breath.He began muttering something indiscernible, and she still had the sense of mind to know that his fight was over, and dragged both of them under a nearby tree.
“…It’s between them now…” he rasped
“It’s always between them,” even in her panic, there was a trace of bitterness in her words. Kakashi looked at her, more with understanding than surprise.
They were shouting now, she could hear them through the blood in her ears.
“You were my best – my only friend, Naruto.”
“Then why are you doing this?! Come back to us!!”
“I can’t, it’s too late now. I’m too far gone.”
“No!! Sasuke, you bastard! We need you! Sakura, Kakashi – I need you.”At this the Uchiha froze, the chidori screaming in his fingers, and Sakura held her breath.
Then –
“Dammit, Naruto!!” Saskue roared, his voice distorted with confusion. His eyes were wide and protruding, the commas of the sharingan spinning wildly.
She had always wondered if Sasuke had loved Naruto – loved Naruto. But that didn’t matter in this moment.She didn’t have time to worry about it now, because the next second, chidori ripped through rasengan, and it was over.
He had always lived loudly, but when it came to dying, he did it softly, almost gracefully.His body fell in an eerily slow arc; his eyes were still open, a muted blue now.He lay motionless in his own blood, the grass and dirt beneath him rapidly becoming stained a dark red.
Sasuke still stood before him, his face finally displaying flecks of emotion. It was ugly, a contortion between satisfaction and disbelief.
Sakura wrenched the kunai out of her leg with a shriek, and would have leaped at him with it if Kakashi had not pulled her back.
“Sakura stop, you have to stop.” He pressed a pressure point and the knife dropped from her fingers. His voice was clear and low in her ears. “Look, he’s already gone.”And he was.
She closed her eyes and let loose a piercing yell.
“Doushite?! Why us? Why him? Oh, Kami, why?!”
Kakashi picked her up and she immediately began beating her hands against his chest, as though this was his fault, and he almost fooled himself into thinking it wasn’t.He limped back to Konoha, trying not to think about Obito, and how deaths on his team came so easily; he tried not to think about how he’d failed them again. But that was hard to do with Sasuke running in the wrong direction, Naruto’s blood decorating the underbrush, and Sakura screaming to God in his arms.
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“Saaaakura!! Hurry up!”
“Just wait a moment, Ino-pig!”
“But Sakura, the violets! People need their violets! Oh, Sakura watch out! No! Don’t hold it like that! They’re expensive…delicate…imported! Oh for the love of – be careful”
Sakura rolled her eyes and continued to the back of the store, balancing two immense pots of European violets in both arms. She had started working at the Yamanaka Flower Shop last spring.Initially, it had been to help Ino with the orders when her parents had both fallen sick.But later, when she moved into an apartment and started a life on her own, she welcomed the extra money.
That had been over a year ago, and her life had fallen into a nice pattern since then.Wake up, have tea, go to Ino’s, then Tsunade-sama’s, and back to Ino’s before she turned in for the evening. She had long given up the life of a fighting kunoichi, opting for a more sedentary life as a medic nin.It was her way of plugging up the black hole in her memories. It was also a nice change for some whose adolescence had been filled with such excessive violence.
“Sakura, watch out!!”
But it was too late.She hadn’t seen the ninja standing in front of her, blocking the doorway, which was odd, because he was dressed in the most flamboyant shade of orange.
The pots crashed to the floor, and the violets lay motionless in their own dirt.
He lay motionless in his own blood.
“Oh fuck! Sakura, theviolets! What the hell!”
“No…” she stood frozen, disbelieving. Her hand moved to touch his straw colored hair, but stopped midway, shaking.
“You’re dead, …Kakashi and I saw you dead…” he reached out and grabbed her hand, unable to watch it linger helplessly in the space between them.His palm was large and calloused, and almost feverishly warm.She couldn’t stop staring at it and he couldn’t stop looking at her.
“Dammit, Sakura! We’ve got to get these repotted right away, this is no time to be flir – Holy – no fucking way… ” neither of them noticed when Ino sprinted out of the store to find Shikamaru, Chouji, and who ever else would believe her.
“You can’t be alive…I saw you die…you’re dead…”He pulled her closer and stopped her with one word.
“No.”
She stared at him, up at him – he was taller than her now – her mind working to register what he had said.
Then she punched him.
“Holy fuck, Sakura!”
“Naruto no baka!! What the fuck is wrong with you?!” with an immeasurable amount of strength she slammed him against the wall. “Do you know how long it’s been?!” her cheeks were flushed with rage.
“If you were fucking alive, you should have the fucking decency to tell us! And forget me, do you know the sort of hell, Kakashi’s been going through?” she punched his stomach. “I – you fucking bastard – five years…been alive – ” her anger was making her incoherent.She stopped, chest heaving.
Then –
“So you missed me then?” he smirked.
Sakura shrieked and launched herself at him again. But before she could blink he was gone. And then she was pinned against the wall, and his lips were on hers. She fisted her hands to punch him again, but he had already pulled him above her head.
So she kicked him in the shins. At this, he growled and pressed his entire body onto her. When she gasped under his weight, he slipped his tongue past her lips.
And then her body reacted beyond her will.
Sakura had once read about catharsis through kisses. This is the first time she felt it.
Her anger, his regrets; her sorrow, his longing; his need and hers…Everything had been suppressed, kept in check, fermenting for the last five years like some heady wine threatening to spill over; and this was the bursting point.
She struggled for control of her hands again and this time he relinquished. Immediately, she buried them into his hair and tugged him closer.His hands slipped beneath her thighs, and he pulled her legs around his waist. His lips left hers and went to her jaw, then hollow between her neck and shoulder. Her scent was soft, like flowers, but completely distinctive from the hundreds lining the shelves of the store.
“Gods, Sakura, you have no idea how long I’ve wanted you…” his eyes were spilling to red, and he growled again as the feral desire within him surfaced.
She didn’t know when she had stopped loving Sasuke…she didn’t know if she had stopped loving him.She wasn't sure what Naruto meant to her yet, only that they had both gone through hell and back, and they both deserved – needed – this.
But not yet, not here. She didn’t know if she had been waiting for Sasuke, or Naruto, or someone else altogether, but she knew she didn’t want her first time to be in a flower shop.
“Naruto, stop.” He immediately released her and let her feet gently drop to the floor.
“I’m…sorry, but I can’t, not yet.”He seemed to understand.Although his body was still tense with need, his eyes held the same sort of empathy he had had as a child.
“It’s all right.”
They stood like that for several minutes, foreheads pressed together, and his breath was fast, warm, and alive against her skin. The violets were hopelessly scuffed beneath their feet.
“You never visited, or, or even wrote…” she finally spoke.
“I’m sorry.”
“Naruto, what happened.?”
“I’m so sorry…I don’t know, really. I woke up a few days later, alive, but just barely, in this little house in the woods. And Jiraiya was there, and he didn’t say anything. We started training again a few weeks later. I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I should have written, or something.”
“Well why didn’t you?”
He buried his face in her neck and muttered something.
“What? What the hell is wrong with you? You thought no one would care?” she shoved him off of her. “You think you don’t mean anything to us, to me? And what about Iruka, and Kakashi? And Tsunade?”
“…She knew...”
“What?!” she looked like she was going to punch him again.
“Sakura, please, just listen. Jiraiya and her are old friends, you know that. And it was really risky for us to tell anyone else” he was speaking quickly now, “…because if…he knew I was alive, then he’dcomeafter me again. And I couldn’t come back here, that would bring him and possibly Orochimaru’s entire army to Konoha.” He stopped, and the silence was suddenly less comfortable.There was no need to ask who he was.
Finally –
“Naruto…did you…love him?”
He looked at the purple flowers under his feet and ran a hand through his hair. “I – I don’t know, possibly. Yes. It’s confusing…I’ve loved you for so long,” she almost blushed at his frankness “but what he and I had was something else entirely.”
Sakura could now hear shouts in the distance (“Ino, what the fuck? He’s dead!”). But her mind was racing. “It’s not a surprise, really, when you think about it,” and she tried not to think about it, about how the boy she had loved had probably been in love with the man she possibly loved now. Then she remembered something else.
“You said that if he knew you were alive, and if you came back to Konoha, he’d come and kill you. But, you’re here now…does that mean…”
“…Yeah…” he turned away and dropped to the ground, apparently immensely interested in the torn violets. But she could see their petals becoming darker as his tears splashed onto them. “He…I think he realized what was happening with Orochimaru, and tried to fight it, tried to keep him getting control. But he couldn’t…he…his mind was eventually destroyed.”
Sakura bit back a sob; Naruto was crying openly now.
“I should have saved him, Sakura! I could have…oh Gods, can you imagine the way he died? I loved him, Sakura, I should have…oh Gods…”
She didn’t try to comfort him; it was impossible to say “I know how you feel,” when she didn’t or “It’ll be ok,” when she knew it wouldn’t, at least not for a while. So she let him press his cheek to her neck and cry.
He stopped soon, and lay shaking in her arms. She could hear Kiba’s barking shouts (“Uzumaki, if you’re alive get your ass out here!”) and slowly pulled Naruto to his feet.
“We should go. Ino’s out there, and she’s gonna kill me for ruining her new flowers.”
“…Yeah, all right,” he swiped at his eyes, and was soon smiling again. “He’s hardly changed all” she took comfort in that.
“Hey, is that Kiba? Kiba!!” Naruto ran out to hug him, and immediately got punched in the nose.
“What the fuck?!”
“That’s my line, Uzumaki, you bastard!”
As Sakura walked out, she felt the soft petals under her bare feet. The violets were hopelessly crushed, and yet she could still catch their fleeting scent.
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A/N: this was originally a one shot, but several people have asked me to continue. whether or not i do ultimately depends on me, but of course the decision will be greatly influlenced by your opinion =D
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Table of Contents
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Chapter notes: Spoilers: nothing really, but it's kind of a spin off from the "zomg sasuke goes crazy" arc
Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto-sensei
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A/N: Read the quote!! It’s important…otherwise you won’t get the title ^^