Chapter Text
"Hah... hah"
Each of Sakura’s breaths came in shallow hitches, echoing loudly in the empty world. The sun hung too low on the horizon, spreading beautiful shades of orange and dying violet across the earth.
A terrifying silence followed the sunset. No birds adorned the sky, and no insects chirped in the grass. Even the wind seemed to have died along with the world’s consciousness. Aside from her and Kakashi, who lay sprawled in a chakra-depleted stupor before her, it felt as though she were the last living soul on the planet.
Dispelling the Rinnegan’s genjutsu had been an agonizing crawl through her own mind. It was far more dense and suffocating than any genjutsu she had ever encountered. Sasuke hadn't trapped her in a nightmare of gore or loss. Instead, he had cast her back into the golden, hazy days of the Academy.
Why those memories? she wondered. Was it a final reminder of what he was destroying, or was it a sliver of a boy who couldn't bring himself to show her anything but the time before the darkness took him? That small, desperate hope, the belief that his heart wasn't yet a jar of ice, gave her the strength to stand.
She crawled toward Kakashi. A quick, clinical sweep of his vitals confirmed her suspicion: his chakra coils were stagnant, exhausted from the overextension of Sharingan during the war.
Her hand hovered over his shoulder, tempted to shake him awake, to find comfort in the voice of her teacher. But she stopped herself. In this emptiness, there was safety. No enemies were left to strike. Here, Kakashi could rest without the weight of the world on his shoulders for the first time in years.
As she pulled herself up, a sting flared in her chest, radiating from the exact coordinates of her heart, the same spot Sasuke had pierced her in his illusion. In those fleeting seconds before the darkness had claimed her, she remembered his eyes had turned colder. Even in the Land of Iron, he had been filled with burning hatred, but this... frozen, indifference, as if he had already cut himself from the world.
Her fingers trembled as she reached into the collar of her tattered shirt. Pulling the fabric aside, she stared down at her pale skin. There, resting directly over her heart, was a faint red line. It looked like a raw wound, yet the skin wasn't broken, there was no blood, no tear in the flesh.
She tentatively pressed her fingertips against the mark. The moment her skin made contact, a pain shot through her, forcing a sharp hiss from her lungs.
Confusion swirled in her mind, in every text she had ever devoured, the rules of genjutsu were absolute, it was an attack on the nervous system, a manipulation of the chakra flowing to the cranial nerves. It could make someone feel as if they were burning, or as if a blade were twisting in their gut, but the moment the illusion was broken, the body should remain unblemished. There was no recorded case of a mental image manifesting as a physical mark.
Her intuition began to form a plausible theory. This wasn't a wound inflicted by the genjutsu, it was her own body’s somatic response to the violence of Sasuke’s intent.
Human brain often struggled to distinguish between extreme psychological trauma and physical assault. When Sasuke had "pierced" her in the illusion, he had done so with such concentrated conviction that her central nervous system had revolted. Her brain had sent an emergency distress signal to the site of the "attack," causing the capillaries beneath her skin to rupture in inflammatory response.
It was a stigmata of rejection.
Her body had physically reacted to the heartbreak he had forced upon her. The red line was a manifestation of her own chakra trying to protect a heart that had been spiritually shattered. She was so attuned to Sasuke, so deeply connected to his every movement, that her body had accepted his murderous intent as a physical reality. He hadn't needed to touch her with a blade to leave a scar, his desire to be rid of her had been sharp enough to bruise the flesh.
She began to move. At first, it was a stumble, her legs protesting the sudden demand for speed. But as she crested the first ridge, the sound of the waterfall reached her, a distant, low roar that signaled the Valley of the End.
Despite the brand he had left on her, her body still moved toward him with the instinct of a moth to a dying flame.
By the time she reached the cliffs overlooking the statues of the founders, the sky had turned dark. And there, in the center of the devastation, she saw them.
Naruto creating several shadow clones that charge Sasuke with wild, uncoordinated lunges. Sasuke moved like a man underwater, his elegance gone, replaced by a labored grit. He wove through the clones, dispelling one with a heavy, leaden kick before slamming another into the dirt with a force that seemed to hurt him as much as his target.
Naruto’s main body attempts to strike from above. He slipped through Sasuke’s faltering guard and swung a brutal, wide-arched punch, sending Sasuke tumbling backward through the dust like a broken doll.
Sasuke crawled back to his feet, and the cycle began again. Punch for punch. Kick for kick.
The valley was filled by the raw, ugly sounds of the wet thud of knuckles hitting bone, the ragged grunts, and the animalistic growls of two men who had forgotten how to do anything but hurt.
Eventually, the strength to stand vanished entirely. They collapsed to their knees in the shallow, blood-tinted water. Even then, they didn't stop. It was a pathetic, heartbreaking spectacle. Naruto’s trembling fist collided with Sasuke’s forehead, while Sasuke’s hand buried itself in Naruto’s midsection. They were leaning on each other just to stay upright.
Sakura’s breath hitched, her chest throbbing in agonizing synchronization with every blow they traded. She wanted to scream. She wanted to leap from the cliff and throw herself between them. But her legs felt as though they had been fused to the stone.
Sasuke’s hand, still pressed into Naruto’s stomach, began to glow with orange light.
"This is one of the Rinnegan's abilities," Sasuke rasped. "For me, who has combined it together with the Uchiha... my clan's eye... victory is certain."
He pulled his hand away with violent jerk. Naruto lost his equilibrium, his strength fully siphoned, and he fell forward onto his elbows, gasping.
The chirping of a thousand birds that had haunted Sakura’s nightmares for months screamed through the valley, a high-pitched shriek blue lightning flickered into existence in Sasuke’s left hand. He loomed over Naruto, his gaze heavy with final resolve.
"Farewell," Sasuke spat, his voice cracking with the weight of the word. "My one and only... friend."
DEG.
One and only friend.
The words tore through Sakura’s body. A bitter ache settled in the pit of her stomach. She thought of the years she had spent agonizing over the empty space he left behind, the nights she’d spent training until her knuckles bled and her chakra reserves screamed, all so she wouldn't be useless. She had grown strong, she could shatter the earth with a single strike. But as she watched them, she realized that no amount of physical strength could force her way into that closed circle.
What am I to you then, Sasuke-kun? she wondered, her vision blurring.
If Naruto was the "only" one, then all those moments of Team 7 were apparently just friction to him. They were static he had successfully tuned out. She wasn't an enemy to be hated, nor a comrade to be cherished. She was simply... irrelevant. A ghost from a childhood he had outgrown and discarded.
Naruto had told her about the Sage’s sons, about the cycle of reincarnation. At the time, it had felt like a distant tale, but now, seeing it play out, it felt like a wall. A wall so high she could never climb it, no matter how much chakra she focused into her soles.
It felt pathetic. Shallow. While the fate of the shinobi world hung in the balance, she was standing paralyzed, nursing a wounded heart because of a sentence.
She had never expected her presence to carry the same weight as Naruto’s. She knew their bond was something ancient, a story written by the ink of fate long before they were even born. As a stranger who didn't share a past life or a cosmic destiny with Sasuke, she felt she had already lost a game she wasn't even meant to play. It wasn't that she wanted to win a competition, she just wanted to be a part of his world. She just wanted to be useful to the man she loved, but in the face of destiny, even her greatest strength felt like a whisper in a thunderstorm.
Then, the world seemed to slow. Sasuke’s arm began its downward arc, the Chidori aimed to end it all. A scream finally tore from her throat, her body shattering its paralysis, but Naruto wasn't finished, he intercepted the strike and drove a brutal upward punch into Sasuke’s jaw.
Sasuke was launched backward, a helpless projectile hurtling toward the vertical stone of the cliff.
Sakura moved before her mind could catch up. She saw the way Sasuke’s head lolled, his body too exhausted to attempt a mid-air recovery. He wasn't going to land like a shinobi, he was going to hit that wall like a piece of lead. It would crush his spine. It could kill him. And she knew, that if Naruto accidentally killed Sasuke here, Naruto would never forgive himself.
She dove from Madara statue, angled her body into a terminal fall, intercepting him just feet from the stone wall. She wrapped one arm around his waist, pulling his battered body against her chest.
With her other hand, she brought her thumb to her teeth, biting down until the copper taste of blood filled her mouth.
"Kuchiyose no Jutsu!"
The white smoke exploded against the cliffside a split second before impact. A thick, gelatinous layer of Katsuyu manifested directly behind Sakura’s back, coating the rocks in a protective, white slime. Sakura shifted her weight, pulling Sasuke into a two-handed embrace, burying his head against her chest so her own body would serve as the primary shield.
The impact make the air hammered out of Sakura’s lungs in a spray of blood. Even with Katsuyu absorbing the impact, the momentum of Sasuke’s body hitting hers, and hers hitting the slug, sent a shockwave through her skeletal structure. She heard the sickening snap of her own ribs, and a white-hot flash of agony blinded her as her head slammed back into the soft, jelly-like hide of her summon.
For a moment, they remained pinned against the cliffside by the phantom force of the blow, Sakura’s fingers buried deep in Sasuke’s clothes.
"Sakura-chan!!"
Naruto’s voice tore through the roar of the waterfall, raw with terror she had heard far too often since the war began. Down in the water, he was struggling to his feet, his blue eyes wide with the horror of what he had just done, and what Sakura had done to stop it.
The friction finally gave way, they began to slide down the rough stone wall toward the dark water below, the small portion of Katsuyu shuddered and dispersed into a cloud of white smoke. Sakura’s consciousness was blinking, she no longer had the strength to hold the summon. They tumbled toward the riverbed in a chaotic blur of limbs. Sakura twisted her body mid-air one last time, ensuring she hit the water first.
The impact vibrated through her skull. She lay submerged in the shallow current, the cold, icy water rushing into her ears and stinging the raw scrapes on her back. She could feel Sasuke’s warm body stirring frantically against her, his weight pressing her further into the water before he scrambled to untangle himself.
The shock in his eyes vanished the moment their gazes locked.
"You..." His voice was a guttural rasp at first, before it rose into a snarl. "Why are you here?!"
Sakura watched through a haze of pain as he loomed over her, his face a mask of primal fury. He didn't care that her body had just acted as his shield. He didn't care that the blood soaking into his clothes was hers. To him, her presence was a contamination of a duel that was supposed to be sacred between him and the only person he deemed worthy of his time.
"Always..." he hissed, his breath coming in ragged, hateful bursts. "Always interfering. Always in the way."
His hands trembling as they gripped the front of her shirt, shaking her as if he could dislodge her from his reality. "I told you to stay away! I told you this has nothing to do with you!"
Sakura’s head lolled back against the wet stones, her vision swimming. The red line over her heart burned, a physical manifestation of the rejection he was screaming into her face. She looked up at the blood-streaked face of the boy she had loved and a single, broken sob escaped her lips.
"I... I wanted to be useful," she hitched.
She wanted her existence to mean something to him.
"Useful?" He leaned closer, his eyes burning. "You're a weakness I already cut away."
He pinned her down against the wet stones, his hand clamping over her forehead. "If you want to be useful... then give me what's left. Give me everything."
He began to violently siphon her chakra, Sakura didn't fight back. She simply closed her eyes, letting the cold water and his colder touch take her into the dark.
"Sasuke, stop!"
The pressure on her skull vanished instantly. Sakura’s eyes snapped open just in time to see Naruto's foot connecting with Sasuke’s ribs in a splashing kick that sent him skidding feet away.
"Sakura-chan!" Naruto was over her in a heartbeat, his hands trembling as they hovered over her face. He touched the back of her head, and his fingers came away stained a deep, alarming crimson. "You're bleeding... can you heal yourself? Please, Sakura-chan, focus!"
She looked up at his whiskered face, his swollen eyes, and the terror he felt for her. She didn't have the strength to knit her own skin back together. She didn't have the will to save herself. Instead, she reached out, her shaking palm finding Naruto’s arm.
With a final heave of her spirit, she pushed chakra out. She gave him the last embers Sasuke hadn't managed to steal, the very scrap of life she had been holding onto.
"Sakura-chan, don't—!" Naruto pull away, his voice breaking as he realized she was sacrificing herself to refuel him.
"Sakura, get lost!!"
Sasuke was back on his feet, his left hand sparking with another Chidori. He looked feral, his hair matted with blood and silt, his gaze fixed on the two of them with a look of pure loathing.
Naruto seemed to understand. He looked down at Sakura one last time, a sad, determined smile ghosting his lips.
"This is the end," he said confidently. "I'll bring him back. I promise."
Naruto stood and sprinted away from her. As he ran, the air began to swirl in his palm, a sphere of pure, grinding will forming into a Rasengan.
They were like two stars collapsing into one another. When they finally collided, the impact was devastating energy that expanded outward, vaporizing the water and shattering the air.
As the shockwave roared toward her, Sakura closed her eyes, the red line on her chest burning one last time. She pray that when the dust settled, both of them would still have a chance to come home.
Who is she?
She looked down at her own arms, thin, pale. They were trembling slightly, no matter how hard she gripped the coarse fabric of the bedsheets, she couldn't make them stop.
These arms... what had they been through? She looked at her knuckles, noticing the faint, silver-white scars.
Every time she tried to reach back for a face, a voice, or even her own name, she found nothing.
Her limbs felt heavy, but they were numb. Her body seemed to have muting every ache, except for one specific point in her chest.
She hooked two fingers into the collar of her gown and pulled the fabric aside just enough to peek inside. She expected to see a bandage, a scar, or perhaps the purple bruised. Instead, she found something far more unsettling.
There, directly over her heart and slightly to the left, was a thin, vivid red line.
It was perfectly straight and as fine as a silk thread, appearing as though someone had drawn it with a needle-point brush using the crimson ink. It didn't look like an injury, the skin wasn't broken, and there was no scabbing or blood. Yet, when her fingertip brushed against it, the sensation was sting.
"Is this... a tattoo?" she whispered to no one.
She traced the air just above the mark, afraid to touch it again. It looked intentional, like a brand or a seal, etched into her skin in precision. The sudden sound made her flinch, pulling her gown tight over her chest to hide the red thread.
Standing in the doorway was a woman with hair the color of fire and sharp eyes hidden behind a pair black-framed glasses.
"Sakura," she said.
Sakura.
She repeated the name in her head. It was a beautiful word, sounding like the rustle of spring leaves, but it felt hollow, like a bell ringing from distance, she recognized the sound, but she couldn't remember who was pulling the rope. She didn't answer the stranger, her voice felt trapped behind the sudden thrumming in her chest.
"Sasuke will come. He’s on his way," the red-haired woman continued, stepping further into the room. She adjusted her glasses, her eyes darting toward the window as if checking the horizon.
Sasuke.
At the sound of that name, the red thread on her chest making another heat. Who is that? she wondered, her fingers digging into the mattress. The name felt like a gravity that anchored her to the earth even as her memories drifted away. She didn't know his face, she didn't know his voice, but her body reacted to him.
He had to be important, perhaps he held the answers to the void in her mind, and perhaps, he could explain why her skin bore a crimson mark that burned at the mention of his name.
Sakura cleared her throat. "I'm sorry," she whispered, her eyes searching the woman’s face for a shred of familiarity. "But... do I know you?"
"Hah?" She let out a short, incredulous breath, her hand dropping from her glasses. "We met back in the Land of Iron. You were... well, you tried to—" Her voice died in her throat as she caught Sakura's gaze. Her red eyes widened behind her lenses. "You forgot? You actually forgot?"
"I forgot everything," Sakura answered. "Even my name. I only know it because you just said it."
Karin’s face contorted into a mask of pure shock, her mouth hanging open for a fraction of a second. She looked as if she were seeing a ghost. Then, with a visible effort, she smoothed her features, the clinical coldness returning to her expression, though her fingers still twitched at her sides.
"I see," she muttered, her tone turning flat, though her eyes remained intensely focused on Sakura’s face. "I'm Karin."
"Nice to meet you, Karin-san," Sakura said politely, she bowed her head a little.
"Just Karin," she corrected sharply. She grabbed a nearby wooden chair, the legs scraping loudly against the floorboards, and set it down by the bedside with a thud. She sat, crossing one leg over the other, her fingers tapping on her knee.
"Alright... Karin," Sakura repeated, the name feeling strange on her tongue.
"How are you feeling?" Karin asked, her eyes scanning Sakura with a clinical sharpness. It wasn't the gaze of a friend. "Any dizziness? Nausea? Can you feel your toes?"
"Good, I think," Sakura murmured. "Except... for this." She reached up, her hand hovering over the center of her chest, her fingers ghosting over the fabric where the red line burned.
Karin’s gaze dropped to Sakura’s hand, and for a moment, the room grew uncomfortably cold. "Oh. That," Karin said, her voice dropping an octave. She looked away, staring intensely at the floorboards. "I can’t explain that to you. Sasuke knows better." She paused, her jaw tightening. "If he even wants to talk about it," she added, the last part so quiet it was almost swallowed by the sound of the wind.
"Who is this Sasuke guy?" Sakura asked. The name was a spark in her mind, a gravity she couldn't escape. "Is he... my brother? My boyfriend?"
Karin let out a cynical noise that seemed to catch in her throat. "Not a brother, that's for sure. He’s... you... Ugh! Just ask him yourself!"
She stood up so abruptly the chair legs screeched against the floor, nearly toppling over. She let out a long sigh of total frustration. "Look, let me just check your condition before I lose my mind."
"Oh," Sakura breathed. "You're a doctor?"
Karin rolled her eyes so hard they nearly disappeared behind her glasses. "Not a doctor," she snapped. "I’m a sensor. And a healer by necessity. Now stay still. If your internal pathways are as messy as your memory, we’ve got a long day ahead of us."
Sakura obeyed, she settled back into the thin pillow.
"Hah—what is that?" Sakura suddenly gasped, recoiling. She scrambled backward toward the headboard, her breath coming in short, panicked hitches as she stared at Karin’s glowing hands as if they were a pair of flickering lanterns. "What are you doing? What is that light?"
Shadow of pity crossing Karin's features before she caught herself. She masked it quickly, pulling her expression back into a flat, business-like calm.
"Look, I'm not exactly the type to sugarcoat things, and I'm even worse at playing nursemaid. You just need to trust me."
"That's... that's magic," Sakura's fingers twisting into the bedsheets. The glowing palms defied every law of the world she couldn't remember. It was a power that felt alien and overwhelming.
"This is bad," Karin muttered under her breath. She reached up, fixing her glasses, and glared at Sakura with an intensity that demanded attention. "Listen to me. Really listen."
She leaned forward, ensuring their eyes met. "This isn't meant to hurt you. I’m not casting a spell, and I’m not trying to burn you. I’m just going to check how much of 'you' is left inside this body."
To prove her point, Karin turned her hand inward. She pressed her own glowing, emerald palm firmly against the center of her chest. The light rippled across her clothes, illuminating the fabric, but Karin didn't flinch. She stood perfectly still, as the light hummed softly against her skin.
"Nothing happens, see?" Karin said. "It’s just energy. It's called chakra. You have it too, everyone does. It’s the thing that kept you from being dead while you were unconscious."
"Now," Karin continued, her tone sharpening again, "are you going to let me finish, or am I going to have to tell Sasuke how bad your condition was without even checking it? Because if I have to report to him with a 'maybe,' he’s going to get mad. And trust me, when he gets mad... he’s terrifying. You don't want to be the reason he loses his patience."
Sakura didn't like the way Karin spoke to her, as if she were a stubborn child afraid of the dark. There was a condescension in it that made her want to pull the blankets up to her chin and turn away. But more than the irritation, there was a growing seed of dread in her stomach.
The way Karin described this "Sasuke" didn't sound like a brother, or a husband, or even a friend. She spoke of him like a predator, something to be managed, avoided, or appeased. If he was terrifying, why was he come for her?
Karin pressed her glowing hands against Sakura’s chest, the warmth of the energy—chakra seeping into her skin. The sensation was like warm bath at perfect temperature, seeping through her skin and deep into her muscles.
After a long minute, the green light flickered and died. Karin exhaled, wiping a thin sheen of sweat from her forehead before she gave a curt nod.
"Everything's good," Karin standing up and sliding the chair back. She looked at Sakura with a challenging tilt of her head. "Have you tried standing yet? Your muscles need to remember how to carry your weight."
Sakura sat up slowly, clutching the edge of the mattress until her knuckles turned white.
"Karin," she began, her eyes searching the red hair girl’s face for a sliver of truth. "Why can't I remember anything? Where is my family?"
She thought of the tightening in her chest whenever Sasuke was mentioned.
Karin turned her back, suddenly preoccupied with tidying the small table of medical supplies. The clinking of glass vials was the only sound in the room for a long, uncomfortable moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was flat, drained of its usual bite.
"Sasuke is your family."
"Is there anyone else?" Sakura pleaded, her voice rising, cracking with the effort to remain calm. "A mother? A father? Friends? Someone must be looking for me!"
Sakura stared at Karin’s retreating back, she remained silent, her shoulders rigid.
"And what about Karin? Are we friends?"
Karin’s hand stopped mid-air, hovering over a roll of bandages. She shifted her neck just enough to look at Sakura over her shoulder, but she didn't turn around fully. The light caught her glasses, obscuring her eyes. "No".
The answer didn't surprise Sakura. Karin had been distant, and cold from the moment she woke up. If they weren't friends, then who was this woman?
"I don't have any other family?"
"I told you, Sasuke—"
"Karin, you can't even say what he is to me!" Sakura snapped, her frustration finally boiling over. "Why am I in this house and not a hospital? What happened to me?"
Karin flinched as if she had been struck. Her hand gripped the roll of bandages until the cardboard core crumpled. She spun around, her eyes flashing with a sudden, angry glare behind her lenses.
"You’re here because this is where he put you," Karin hissed, her voice trembling with strange emotion.
The defiance in Karin’s voice sparked a fire in Sakura’s chest, momentarily overriding the fog in her brain. She threw back the thin sheets, the cool air of the room biting at her skin. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, her bare feet hovering just inches above the polished wooden floor.
"I’m going to see for myself," she muttered.
She tried to stand, but her legs felt like water. A wave of vertigo crashed her, the room tilting violently to the left. Just how long had she been sleeping? Her muscles felt atrophied, her bones heavy and alien.
Panic surged as she began to tip forward. Her hand shot out, grasping the edge of the wooden table just before her knees could buckle completely. She hunched and panting, her arms shaking as she forced her body to remain upright.
"Careful, you idiot!" Karin snapped, she made a move to help, then stopped herself, her hands hovering awkwardly in mid-air.
Sakura ignored her, her gaze fixed on her own white knuckles.
"Where is he?" Sakura demanded. The name Sasuke felt like a hot coal in her mouth. "If he’s the only family I have, why isn't he here? Why hasn't he come yet?"
Her voice rose. The frustration of being oblivious about everything boiled her over.
"Why are you getting mad at me?" Karin shouted back.
"I just want to remember!" Sakura cried.
Driven by panicked need to find a single thing she recognized — a hallway, a photograph, a different view — she let go of the table. The sudden loss of support made her sway dangerously. She forced her heavy legs to move toward the sliding door.
The wood felt icy against her bare soles, and her vision blurred at the edges. She could do this. If she could just get outside, maybe the air would trigger her memory.
Her hand reached out, fingers trembling as they neared the wooden frame of the door. She was inches away from the exit when the last of her strength simply evaporated. Her knees buckled, the world spinning. She plummeted toward the hard wooden floor.
She braced for the impact, closing her eyes—but it never came. Instead, a strong, warm arm caught her by the waist. The heat of the person’s touch seeped through the thin gown, sending electric jolt through her nerves.
"Sakura."
The voice was low, melodic, and carried a chillingly calm resonance that seemed to vibrate in her blood.
Sakura’s heart hammered violently. The red thread on her chest didn't sting this time, it blossomed with deep heat. It wasn't painful, but it was intense, radiating outward until she felt as though she were glowing from the inside out.
Her gaze traveled first over a dark cloak that smelled of rain and woods, finally reaching a face that looked as though he had been God’s favorite, crafted in heaven, sculpted perfectly that felt almost painful to look at.
With a jawline as sharp as a blade and a pale, porcelain complexion. His features were defined the straight, aristocratic bridge of his nose, the high curve of his cheekbones, and the dark, silken fringe of hair that fell over his forehead.
But it was the eyes that truly felt divine. One was a bottomless void of midnight black, while the other was a ring of violet ripples, layered like a polished amethyst. His stare that made the room feel smaller, as if the entire universe had narrowed down to the space between them. He looked down at her with a gaze so intense it felt like he was searching for her soul.
"Sasuke?"
The name fell from her lips like a prayer she didn’t know she had been practicing, a word her mind had forgotten but her heart had kept in safekeeping. Looking at him, the fear that had consumed her only moments ago began to transform into aching sense of recognition.
Before she could process the words, he pulled her closer, his arm tightening around her waist as he pressed her forehead against his chest. She could hear the fast rhythmic thrum of his heart. He leaned down, his breath warm against her skin, and whispered the words into her hair, his voice vibrating with a depth of emotion he seemed to be trying to keep under control.
"You're awake."
"Sa...suke?" she called out, her voice muffled against him.
She was confused by the sudden intensity of his reaction. Karin had described him as a terrifying man to be feared, but the arm holding her now held her with desperate, possessive kind of relief. Sakura reached up tentatively, her hands hovering near his shoulders, caught between the instinct to push away a stranger and the overwhelming urge to cling to the only thing that felt real.
Eventually, her strength failed her, and her hands fell uselessly to her sides.
"Sasuke-san... too tight," she whispered, her lungs straining. "I can't... breathe."
Almost instantly, he loosened his grip. As he pulled back, the sudden loss of support made her knees give way. She began to slump, her strength completely spent, but he caught her before she could even stumble. In one fluid, practiced motion, he slid his arm behind her knees and lifted her off the ground.
He held her easily, as if she weighed nothing at all, cradling her against his chest. Sakura’s arms wound around his neck, her fingers curling into his hair.
He carried her the short distance back to the bed and lowered her onto the mattress with surprising gentleness. He pulled the thick blanket up to her chin, tucking it around her. Instead of walking away, he sat on the edge of the bed.
His eyes drifted away from her to find Karin. The red-haired girl was standing by the window, her gaze fixed stubbornly on the floorboards as she worried a strand of her hair.
"Karin," he said, his voice returning to that cool, wintery tone.
Karin looked up, her expression shifting into boredom and lingering annoyance. "She forgot," Karin stated flatly, leaning back against the window frame. "Everything. She didn't even know her own name."
Sakura watched him intently, expected the shock she had seen in Karin, or perhaps grief. But Sasuke’s face remained a frozen lake. He didn't look devastated, he didn't look surprised. Instead, the corner of his mouth tilted up—not in a smile of relief or joy, but a faint smirk that stopped well short of his eyes.
"Is that so?" he murmured, his gaze sliding back to Sakura.
There was something chillingly satisfied in his expression. It was as if her empty mind was exactly what he had been waiting for.
Chill raced down Sakura’s spine. The ache in her chest sharpened, a warning bell ringing in her mind. Instinctively, she pulled the blanket tighter and shuffled backward, putting distance between them. The man who had just held her with such desperate relief now made her skin crawl with fear.
"Who are you?" she asked, her voice sharp and defensive. Her eyes searched his, looking for a sign of the 'family' Karin had promised, but finding only a beautiful, terrifying stranger. "Why are you looking at me like that? How can you smile when I don't even know who I am?"
"Sakura, don't be scared," he said softly, though the command in his tone was unmistakable. "I'll always protect you."
He unfastening the clasp of his cloak. The heavy fabric slid off his shoulders and pooled onto the floor, Sakura’s breath hitched seeing his left sleeve hung empty from the elbow down.
That was why his hug had felt so lopsided, why he had lifted her with such specific, singular strength. Her mind raced with dark possibilities. Was it an accident? Was he born this way? The missing limb added edge to his already dangerous aura.
"Who are you?" she whispered again, her heart hammering so hard it felt like it might burst through the red line on her skin. She was terrified by the cold depth of his mismatched eyes.
He leaned in slightly, casting a long shadow over her bed.
"Your husband," he said.
Sakura felt the air leave her lungs, her throat tightening until she couldn't even swallow. She looked from his mesmerizing face to the empty sleeve, then back to his smirk.
It didn't feel right.
"No way," she stammered, shaking her head as she pressed herself further into the pillows. "Sasuke... Sasuke-san—"
Her words were cut short as his expression shifted instantly. The dark smirk vanished, replaced by a deep, sharp furrow between his brows. His entire aura turned cold frost.
"—kun," he corrected.
"Hah?" Sakura blinked, her confusion momentarily overriding her fear.
"Not -san," he repeated, his gaze narrowing as if the formal suffix were an insult he couldn't tolerate. "It’s Sasuke-kun."
Sakura stared, her mouth slightly agape. She felt a hysterical laugh bubble in her chest but couldn't let it out. Why did a suffix matter right now? Her world had been erased, she was trapped in a house with a man she didn't know, and he was correcting her grammar as if they were discussing the weather. How could a husband be so unbothered by his wife’s shattered mind that he cared more about how she addressed him?
"Does that really matter right now?" She looked him dead in the eyes, her voice cracking as she searched for a flicker of warmth or tenderness a husband should have. But there was nothing but a possessive, dark intensity shown in his face. "Are you... are you really my husband? Why aren't you worried?
"I was worried for three years," he conceded, his voice dropping to a low, silken hum that made the hair on her arms stand up. "That’s more than enough. Now that you're awake, worry is a waste of time."
His long fingers tangling in her hair, playing with a stray lock, twirling it slowly as he leaned toward her. His face drew closer, invading her personal space until she could feel the heat radiating from his skin. Panicked by the sudden proximity, Sakura jerked her head away, pressing her face into the cool fabric of the pillow.
In that frantic moment, she caught sight of Karin. The red-haired woman looked totally annoyed, her jaw set in a hard line as she watched the display. With an audible huff and a roll of her eyes, Karin turned on her heel and stomped out of the room, the sliding door clicking shut with a sharp, final thud behind her.
"Sasuke-san—"
Sakura’s breath hitched when she glanced back at him. His expression had shifted instantly, his brow furrowed in anger. After a tense heartbeat, he let out a heavy sigh and retreated, sinking back into his sitting position on the edge of the mattress.
"Did I... did I sleep for three years?" she asked. The thought of a thousand days of her life simply just gone, was impossible to wrap around her head.
"Yes," he replied without offering any comfort, nor explaining the illness or accident that had stolen her time. He just sat there, watching her with that unsettling, singular focus.
"Three years," she looked down at her hands, which felt too thin. "What happened to me? How did I end up like this?"
Sasuke adjusted his position, his dark eyes tracing the line of her jaw. "It doesn't matter," he said eventually. "You don't need those memories. You have me."
"That’s not right!" Her voice suddenly rose. The ambiguity of his answers was suffocating to her. "I need to know who I am! I need to know what really happened! You can't just tell me my life doesn't matter!"
"Sakura."
His voice wasn't loud, but it was so incredibly cold it effectively silence the words in her throat.
"I need to remember,"her eyes began to sting, the first hot tears blurring her vision.
She flinched as his thumb, feeling like chilled marble brushed against her cheekbone. He leaned in, his face inches from hers, and she instinctively closed her eyes as his lips brushed against her eyelids. The contact was light, almost reverent, yet it felt like he was marking her.
"Don't cry," His lips brushing against her temple, his voice dropping to a low vibration that seemed to bypass her ears and hum straight through her bones. "I’ll make Sakura happy. It’s only Sakura and me now. Understand?"
Sakura shivered, her head swimming in the intoxicating proximity of him. "At least... at least tell me who I am," she implored quietly.
He pulled back just an inch, his gaze tracking the movement of her throat as she swallowed.
"You're Uchiha Sakura."
The name felt weighted, and precious when it rolled off his tongue.
"Your parents... they live in a very far place. They cannot visit for now. You fell into a coma when you were seventeen. An accident."
"An accident?"
"In a war."
"A war?" Her eyes widened.
"It's over now. Don't worry about things that have already burned out," he replied.
"But what accident?" she persisted. "What exactly happened to me?"
"I said it happened in the war," his voice rose slightly, the calm mask slipping to reveal a flash of impatience that made her flinch. "The specifics of it... you don't have to know. The past is better off forgotten if it only serves to hurt you. Why go looking for pain?"
A painful past. Was that why he had smirked when he heard she had forgotten? Was it not cruelty, but relief? If her memories were filled with the agony of a world at war, then perhaps his cold satisfaction was actually a strange form of mercy. If he was telling the truth, it meant he was protecting her from a version of herself that was broken by trauma. It meant he loved her, didn't it?
Sakura looked at him, her chest tight. "Sasuke-kun..."
The suffix slipped out naturally. He was right; kun felt vastly more comfortable than san. It tasted familiar on her tongue, as if her muscles possessed a memory her mind had lost. It felt like she had spent years whispering.
"Hmm," he hummed.
"Were we... did we marry early because of the war?"
Seventeen felt so young, but she just knew, that in times of war, people clung to each other. They made promises in the shadow of death because they didn't sure if they would see the sunrise.
"Yes," he answered, his thumb grazing her lower lip in deliberate pressure, the sensation of his calloused skin sharp against her lip. Even so, his touch still felt foreign.
Maybe it's just because I've been asleep for so long, my body just needs to relearn him.
"Are we... were we in love?" she asked, her cheeks turning a sudden, burning pink. She felt shy under the weight of his mismatched gaze.
Sasuke didn't answer with words at first. Instead, he reached out and pulled her back toward him, guiding her head to his chest. He pressed his lips firmly against the crown of her head.
"Yes," he murmured, the word muffled but certain. "More than anyone."
Sakura let out a long, shaky breath she hadn't realized she was holding. A small, tentative smile bloomed on her face as she pressed her ear against his chest, listening to the steady thrum of his heartbeat.
"I'm glad."
Her arms trembled slightly from the lingering weakness in her muscles as she lifted them, but she forced them to move, wrapping them around his waist. She squeezed him tight, feeling his warmth. Despite the missing limb, she found that she fit perfectly against him, his one arm was strong enough to encompass her entire world, shielding her from the cold air of the room. His hug felt like a haven.
She closed her eyes, letting the scent of rain and pine woods consumed her. If the past was truly nothing but war and pain, then perhaps Sasuke was right. Perhaps the memory loss wasn't a curse, but a gift to leave the trauma behind. She didn't need to go looking for ghosts in the dark when she had this warmth right here.
She would start here, in this room, with this man who had waited three long years for her soul to return. They would build a new story, page by page, as a husband and wife who were starting over, bound by love that had apparently survived the end of the world.