She smiles a strained smile and nods.
“Of course I understand. I am fine with it. You know I love you. Why would I get in the way of something like that?” she says, still smiling, her cheeks hurt and her mouth tastes like copper, blood, and bile.
He hugs her, thanking her and saying how great of a person she is. How wonderful she is. How caring, understanding she is.
She just keeps smiling. She grinds her teeth to hold back the screams. She blinks every minute to hold back the tears. She clenches her hands into fists, nails digging into the soft skin of her palm, making them bleed.
He lets her go, still smiling. He is so happy, she can tell. All she wants to do is watch him cry. She wants him in pain, but she keeps her smile.
“Thank you so much, Sakura! I mean…” His smile dropped, but it didn’t help her feel better. She still felt bloodthirsty. Tearthirsty. Craving to watch him cry and scream in pain. Craving to see his blood fall to the ground. But like she said. She loves him, as a brother, as a friend. She would never fulfill her thirst. Her craving.
“I mean…I know you used to like him. I’m just so glad you got over that. ‘Cause…I-I think I…love him, Sakura. Can you believe it? Me! In love! With him! Isn’t it just so…ironic? How you were always chasing him, trying to get him to love you back, me always trying to win your heart and get you to go out with me, resenting Sasuke for taking you. And now, here we are, me in love with the bastard after finally bringing him back. I don’t know…it’s just so ironic.” He looks thoughtful for a moment, but then goes back to his foolish grin of happiness and sunshine.
“Well bye Sakura-chan! I got to go, see you tomorrow for training!” He gives her another hug then runs off, waving. Sakura waves back, smiling that strained, painful smile until he is out of sight. She waits another minute before letting out a short, painful scream and slamming her fist into a tree.
Tears slide like acid down her cheeks as she slams her other fist into the tree, enjoying with a sick pleasure the deafening crack and then the thunderous blow to the ground as the tree fell. She lets out a choked sob and turned to another tree, slamming her fist into the rough bark, not caring, beyond caring for anything other then hurting, then feeling, then letting her pain loose on the world.
Her knuckles are bleeding; her palms are dripping crimson with them. Tears slide down her cheeks, burning her, killing her. She wants something to block the pain with.
She still loves him. She loves him so much. Her heart screams, and she lets out another sob, punching mercilessly into the trunk of yet another tree. She is doing so blindly.
She doesn’t care anymore. She doesn’t care about self-restraint. She can’t hear anything besides the blood pulsing in her ears, down her hands and the sounds of trees falling around her, bark smeared with her blood. She knows that she shouldn’t be doing this. She should be more careful. She doesn’t want anybody to see her like this. But she just doesn’t care. How could she care? After all these years, of devotion, of caring, of trust, of…of…love.
‘Isn’t it just so…ironic?’
She closes her eyes tightly, and slammed her fists into the ground beneath her, hoping it would swallow her whole, take her and make sure she never came back. But she only felt the rumbling beneath her feet and soon the area in front of her was laid to waste, trees falling over each other, the land splitting into jagged pieces.
She looks away from the destroyed area and looks down at her hands. It is only now she remembers she forgot her gloves. She sees that the skin on her knuckles is torn at places, blood seeping through her fingers. Under her remaining fingernails, for two have been ripped off, she sees her blood has dried, making it look like rust. Her fingers are bruised, but not broken. She moves each finger, then her whole hand, frowning.
She wonders…why doesn’t it hurt?
Instead she can only feel her chest, her heart, bleeding, torn apart. She wonders, is it rust stained too? Or is it still fresh? Maybe a thick crimson? Or would it be bright red?
She can feel herself calming down. She shouldn’t have done this she thinks as she looks at the fallen trees, and split soil and roots. Then she hears it again.
‘I-I think I…love him, Sakura.’
She feels the anger boil up again. She feels sadness threaten to take over. How could he love him too? How could he do this to her? How long? How long had they been in…in…love?! Could Naruto say that he had loved Sasuke as long as her? Could he say that he would do anything. Anything. For him? Could he say that his only hope, only dream was to gain Sasuke’s love and affection?
Could he say with all honesty that he deserved Sasuke’s love?
Naruto doesn’t know what love is. He can’t. It just couldn’t be true. She feels tears start to well up in her eyes again; she looks down at her hands in disgust. She slams them into the ground again, enjoying the stinging pain that shot up her arms, making them shake. It makes her forget for even an instant what other pain she is feeling. The ground splits again, in the other direction.
She does that again and again till all the trees surrounding her are uprooted, some laying broken halves over each other. The only piece of soil left untouched is the ground beneath her feet, just enough space for her and her alone.
So she stands in the middle of destruction, trees dying slowly around her, warm soil being stirred around by the wind. The ground under her feet is tear stained, crimson drops landing next to each teardrop. Her hands stung and tingled, she could barely feel them and didn’t really care.
Her chest hurt, it hurt so much. A hole, a cut, a tear, a rip, a gaping wound. Whatever is was it hurt, it was stinging and bleeding, maybe it would drown her. Maybe she would drown on her blood and fall to the ground, surrounded by the dying trees and never have to heal. Never have to face her fears, never have to face the truth. Never have to know that…the love of her life, the one that meant so much to her, so much, the one she had devoted her life to was in love. And she couldn’t, wouldn’t, stop it. How could she ever even think of it?
No, the only way to stop the pain was to just give up and get out of the way. Either accept it or be a coward and just run away. She didn’t want to either. She never wanted to give up. She had used her whole life depending on Sasuke’s love and now, she was just supposed to give up?
She trembles, feeling shakily and weak. She looks through hazy eyes at the ground beneath her, stained with her blood and tears before watching the world grow darker and darker.
She falls back, her head hits the ground with a dull thud and right before she is gone she realizes she isn’t going to die. She’s just low on charka.
The next day she wakes in the hospital, her hands are bandaged and she is staring at a too white ceiling in a too white room, in only a thin hospital gown. She doesn’t feel any pain in her hands, just tired and weak.
She feels leaves in her hair and tear tracks down her cheeks and guesses they haven’t had a chance to clean her up yet. She wonders if they will ask questions. She wonders if…Naruto and Sasuke will visit her.
“Let me just see if she has woken up yet! I promise I won’t bother her! Come on you old hag! Just let me see her!”
“Shut up, brat! Fine, but only if you stay quiet! We’re still not sure what happened in the forest, but by all the destruction we thought she might have been attacked. She’s lucky she wasn’t killed. So just let her rest and be sure to keep your voice down!”
She sighs, hearing the argument. She thinks about pretending to be asleep. She doesn’t want to explain herself. She stares down at the crisp, clean bandages around her hands, the clean sheets, the almost glowing white walls of the room and lays back down, her head resting on the stiff pillow.
She can’t be a coward. She has to face him sooner or later. She wonders idly if she still wants to see him in pain, still wants him to feel like she does.
And finds that she still does.
“Sakura-chan?” a head of spiky, blond hair comes through the door, hesitant. Then blue eyes see her, widening and then lips break into a grin.
Does Sasuke like blonds?
“Oh your awake, Sakura-chan! I’m glad your okay! When I heard you were in the hospital, I didn’t know what to think!” Naruto exclaims, rubbing the back of his head out habit.
Or it his blue eyes?
“Oh yeah! Come on Sasuke! She’s awake!” He yells through the door, before walking over to her bed, grinning down at her. But she ignores him, bracing herself, trying to conjure up walls, steel and concrete walls that would separate her from the world so she wouldn’t have to see…him.
“Hn. Hey Sakura.” His voice. His hair. His eyes. His skin. His…everything. She feels her heart beat lift and the wound opens, bleeding new blood. She swears she feels it and she pulls the thin covers closer to her. As if to hide.
“So, what happened to you, Sakura? Did you get attacked?” Naruto asks, sitting at the foot of her bed. He looks so concerned. She almost wants to blame it on him. Say that she had been attacked right after he left, that she had screamed for him to come and help her, but he hadn’t come. That she had been horribly outnumbered. That it was all his fault.
But she shakes her head slowly, a leaf falling to the cold, tiled, white floor.
“I can’t remember. Just a lot of fighting and then…black.” She says dully, ignoring Sasuke. Trying to ignore the bleeding, the hurting. But she can’t handle it. She just can’t right now.
“Sorry guys, I’m really tired. I need to rest, but I’ll see you later. Don’t worry about me.” She says, giving them both a strained smile, not even bothering to hide the edge to her voice.
Naruto blinks at her, she can tell he is confused by her, but she doesn’t care. Sasuke looks at her for a long moment, but she doesn’t meet his eyes. She can’t. It hurts.
“Come on Naruto. She needs to rest so she can remember who attacked her.” Sasuke says quietly, before taking Naruto’s hand, gently leading him out.
As soon as her love touches the hand of his love, she knows where she stands. Naruto stares into Sasuke’s eyes and the nods, giving Sakura a wave and a ‘Get better soon!’ before following Sasuke out of her room.
She looks down at her hands, wrapped in white bandages. Clean and healed. Wrapped and better. Then she looks back up at the door.
She doesn’t let the tears out this time. She doesn’t let out her pain. She just sits in her hospital bed, staring at the closed door, knowing, just knowing, that she is cut from a bond that she had never really belonged to in the first place.
And that she is alone. Without love. Only hurt. Only blood. Only wounds.
But everything could be bandaged and healed, and scars were made so not to forget why you got them. So she just smiled faintly at the clean, crisp bandages and promised to never love again.
She would run out of bandages if she did.
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Chapter notes: Hi there! A Vampires Butterfly or Violet here. Okay...so you may hate me for this, but...I have worked my hardest to actually...feel so sorry for...Sakura, so sorry that you may cry. Or at least I hope you will. Probably not, but still. It took be forever for the ending! *cough* Anyhoo...Enjoy! With much love, A Vampires Butterfly ^.^
Chapter end notes: Hope you liked. Told you the ending was really hard. Reviews are wuved! With much love, A Vampires Butterfly ^.^