A leaf of cartography, an inkwell upturned… He’d stained the land, he’d blotted out the verdant life around him.
SasuSaku Month 2018, Day 4: Burn
Rating: K+
A/N: No content warnings for this fic, and I apologize for being a whopping twenty-four days late! For whatever reason, this one took forever and a half.
Jukebox: "You Are the Moon“ by The Hush Sound
Sakura had been wandering through the secluded training grounds, eyes downcast; her troubling ruminations as much to blame as the glare of the sinking sun. There was something about the place that kept her coming back, something reassuring…. Ever since the start of the chunin exams, she had been unable to quiet her mind. Sleepless nights strung together, wakeful worries interwove: she couldn’t shed the net tangled about her.
And through some frayed string of fate, she found the object of her rumination that evening. She caught him in a moment of weakness, shortly after he’d fallen to Sabaku no Gaara and the beast within him, a time near the cruel anniversary of his clan’s demise.
And he was sending up flares.
The gradual transition to twilight was the perfect showcase for his fireballs, their red flames churning upward to lick at the weary sun in spite, in envy.
They were her beacon, drawing her into the trees.
Under the canopy, the woods were dense and shadowy green—just as they should be. Yet with every stride, the foliage grew more glaucous, the acerbic smell on the air strengthened, it burned…. And she began to hear the silence as she went deeper. There was no chirping, no scurrying. No cicadas humming their nightly crescendo, their exaltation of the rising moon. Not even cries warning of her intrusion. Just the sound of her footsteps and breath and the heavy quiet… Her instincts, however, beckoned her onward.
And all at once, she found his fury.
It could have been beautiful. Perhaps it was….
She saw downy dandelion parachutes suspended in spring; she saw windswept sakura petals, lilting and languid at the height of hanami….
Yet she knew she stood in summer. Her hands leapt to cover her mouth, her heart.
Fine motes cast a strange veil to compound the dusk. Tufts of ash drifted sedately, buoyant on the dense air; wispy embers, flickering orange and gold, floated along the heated murk. Below, the incinerated terrain hissed and sputtered in despairing protest.
A leaf of cartography, an inkwell upturned… He’d stained the land, he’d blotted out the verdant life around him.
The unfurling fumes thwarted her attempt at a calming breath, turning it into a muffled wheeze against her palm. Her fingers tightened at her collar, steaming with perspiration; she shook her head, repelling the flecks as they sifted down. One footfall disturbed the chalk of the forest floor; the next created a small cloud. Uneven as they were, her steps took her through the ruin, the temperature climbing as the sun fell, until she stood a few feet away from the boy she loved. The origin of the blaze…
Her tiny frame trembled faintly in the wafting grey, in the orange glow of smoldering coals. She could feel the heat of his destruction radiating into her skin. And she knew she should look him in the eyes, but she couldn’t—not when his gaze had been so blank, so hollow only moments before…. He’d just stood there, among the scattered cinders and flames, the brittle charcoal, the blackened remnants of a vernal woodland. He could have been a child witnessing his first snowfall, dazed, unable to fathom it all. He hadn’t said a word. Perhaps he’d been unable.
“S-Sasuke-kun,” Sakura began hoarsely, sure in the need to break the silence, to tell him…yet so uncertain in the method, in the phrasing. “The day we became genin…” she trailed off, unable to deny her eyes the scene around him.
The burnt foliage above had come apart at the seams, falling so bright in the maturing darkness. Spores seeking to take root, nascent sparks popped and rocketed skyward to compete with those descending from the treetops. Flurrying and whirling, they clashed. Yet it was a futile rivalry, for even fire was failing: the last of the withering flames lusted after the unburnt traces at his feet; blindly, they reached and stretched and groped the scorched earth for virgin kindling to burn, to consume….
But there’s nothing left….
The notion tugged her from her odd reverie, sent a shiver to shake her spine. She’d seen enough. Sakura bit down on her lip. The grainy dust—the arid, acrid taste of smoke and wrath—lingered on her tongue as her lips parted.
The weight of her words and the pain in the memory sucked the remaining oxygen from the haze around her, forcing her to speak too quickly: “That day, you told me solitude is the worst sort of pain! I-I see it so clearly now, Sasuke-kun! I…” She felt weighted, so heavy. Her short hair shielded her face as she hung her head lower, eyes closed to the irritants and toxins around her. “I…” she tried again, in a whisper, “I didn’t back then, I had no idea…” Her voice was stronger: “But I think, maybe now, I understand what the pain of loneliness is. I have family and friends…but…”
She tentatively lifted her head to search for his eyes in the dim. She found them, dark and distant…and waiting. Hers shone and stung with tears to be—from the intensity of his regard; from the airborne debris of the sudden gust. The sparks floating around them flared and billowed on the wind. It whipped their hair, it reanimated the once-settled charred remnants…. Watching the displaced pall subside around her still feet, she waited for the words to come.
When they did, they were frail, fraught: “You feel so far away….”
Come back to me, hung unspoken.
Recovering herself, Sakura quietly cleared her throat and took a soft step forward. She kept her tone gentle, free of judgement: “It-it breaks my heart, Sasuke-kun, seeing you…like this.”
Eyes now keen, now wary on hers, he was still panting from the exertion of forging his own inferno. Singes dotted the skin around his mouth, where he’d exhaled fire. Like hers, his inky hair was dappled. Trickles of sweat streaked through the fine layer of grey on his face, stripping away the corruption, to reveal slivers of the boy she recognized, the boy she loved. She examined the rest of him and found myriad of scorch marks. He’d been reckless. His dominant arm hung forgotten at his side, the last vestiges of electricity convulsing through his fingers. So reckless…
She clenched the fabric of her dress; she felt her skin cool and prickle, felt the tiny hairs stand on end—like his current had somehow reached her.
Burning through your chakra like this—you could have killed yourself! You could have…
Despite the chill gripping her body, a drop of her own perspiration slid from her temple to her chin. The feeling, though slight, was enough to break her train of thought. For the briefest moment, she wondered if he saw anything in the vein of clarity it left on her…. The droplet disappeared into the dust, and her mind centered.
Somehow, she knew it was time for honesty. Somehow, she knew he needed to hear it:
“Because…you mean everything to me. Everything.”
The words had nearly caught in her throat, suspended like the ash in the sweltering air. I will not cry, she told herself. I won’t weep for him. He’s never wanted that, he never will—and he deserves more than my tears.
As tentative as it was instinctual, her hand reached out for his shoulder. Eyes flitting between his and her target, she braced for an adverse reaction the moment she made contact, she expected it. Though he stiffened, he didn’t swat her away or shrink back: he just stood there and allowed her featherlike touch; watching the dust settle to further mute her bright hair, questioning her with his dubious silence.
Her eyes rose from his shoulder to scrutinize the three black tomoe etched into his neck, as they so often did, and she silently cursed the Snake. Beyond the singes, the malicious, black mark was the only blemish on his body—the only visible manifestation of his suffering! Unless, of course, he set the coal of his eyes aflame…
And she’d seen the frightening power of both.
Is that what you were thinking, Sasuke-kun? …Is that why you did this?
The fingers at the red of her collar clamped down, she moved to bite her lip again—but she stopped herself. She couldn’t give in to such a childish habit when she’d come this far, when he was listening. Determined, the verdure of her eyes returned to his.
“You don’t have to be alone, Sasuke-kun,” she spoke soothingly, careful to avoid a patronizing tone. “You’ll always have me.” As a shy smile formed around her last word, she felt blood rush to her flame-flushed cheeks. Sakura ignored the sensation and forced her lips to loosen: this wasn’t the time to give in to girlish whimsy; she’d make her body obey. She bent her elbow to step solicitously closer, close enough to smell the earthy scent she knew to be his through the miasma. One hand on him, the other on her heart, she swore: “Always.”
I love you so much…with all my heart, she thought, but I don’t think I can tell you that, not yet.
She gingerly traced his shoulder, nails collecting the fine, gritty precipitate there. She could feel the dexterity in the muscle, the power in the sinew…. And he didn’t flinch under her light touch, he didn’t avert his eyes. She moved nearer, preparing to see alarm or revulsion appear in his expression, until her forearm was flush against the length of his bicep, only a few inches of smoke separating the rest of them. She couldn’t breathe for fear of dispelling the moment, her chance to reach him….
A branch snapped behind him, coils of red outlining its remaining leaves, faux fireflies swarming and twinkling in its wake. The fallen limb rippled through the powdery soot at the forest floor, sending it aloft once more.
Yet neither noticed, their senses entirely focused on the other.
Close to Lost
Published
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