[Fic]: Milestones
Title: Milestones
Summary: Sakura is two-and-twenty and still doesn't know who Sasuke is. But she can still try.
Disclaimer: Disclaimed.
Theme: Post-canon
Prompt: Warmth
Medium: Fanficiton
Genre: General/Friendship
Rating: K+
Warning(s): Present tense? Sasuke's pale wrists?
Comments: Late submission is extremely late. This is the shortest thing I've written to date and I'm surprisingly happy with it. I spent a ridiculous amount of time making sure Sasuke came off pretty. I hope I've succeeded? :D
Much love to Astronauts for her warm, encouraging words and to danikos_realms for her extremely quick, thorough, and efficient beta work. You guys are lovely.
Winter in Konoha is a cold, unforgiving season. The wind whistles an untamed tune and ice adorns the boughs of trees; snow crunches under people’s feet as if it were broken glass. Cracks burst across the carved faces on the Hokage monument. Noses redden. Teeth chatter. Color gains a new meaning. Under the neon streetlights, couples exchange warm, foggy breaths.
It’s a little past seven, when Sakura ducks her way into Ichiraku, grateful for the lanterns hanging from the wooden beam above her head. It’s empty, except for a single man.
The first thing she notices about him is the traditional haori and hakama he’s wearing. It’s expensive - black, red and gold - and the colours look severe and out of place in Ichiraku’s homely setting.
It suits him a bit too well. Sasuke doesn’t look his age; maybe he never did.
Sakura stops short upon seeing the wide red arc of the uchiwa against his back; she remembers why he is wearing the ludicrously formal attire in the first place.
She never understood the rigid clan traditions very well - it’s one of those things she’ll never understand, with her plebeian background - but she knows it’s customary for clan leaders to be present at the Snow Festival. Sasuke is supposed to be there, too, later tonight, by the Hokage’s side.
“Where’s Naruto?” she asks anxiously, and immediately regrets it. She presses her lips together and clamps her tongue between her teeth. She doesn’t want him to think his company is unwanted, but she has also never been a very good liar and the truth is this: without Naruto around, Sakura feels a little lost around the one person who has ever really mattered.
Sasuke’s the constant around which Sakura and Naruto both have woven their lives, for so long now, thread after inconsequential thread. Ten years the three of them have grown up, but it feels like it’s still Naruto, who doesn’t seem to have grown up at all, that is millennia ahead of her in all the ways that matter.
Sakura is two-and-twenty, and she still doesn’t know who Uchiha Sasuke is.
Is it because she stopped caring? She looks down, scrapes her boot across the pavement under the pretense of dislodging crushed snow, counts the heartbeats in his silence, until he answers. “He won’t be long,” Sasuke says, unconcerned.
He casts a long sideways look in her direction, from under mildly lowered eyelashes, then sighs. He nods towards the eastern square of the village, where the mountains are giant black tents against the night-sky and the festival lights drift about like thoughts on rainy evenings.
Sasuke, then, lifts the small sencha cup in his hand and takes a calm sip of his tea, a gesture so naturally elegant that it startles her out of her reverie. His long sleeve slides shyly down to reveal white skin, drawn taut over bone and blue webs, beautiful against the golden trim of his haori, and Sakura’s mouth goes dry.
Sakura looks east, too. The skyline is a grimace. The night is quiet, but if she concentrates hard enough, she can hear the roll and ebb of traditional music in the distance. She wonders if Naruto is somewhere over there now, standing over a raised dais, swathed in laughter and melody, radiant and fierce against the stark monochrome of the season.
“His speech was supposed to have ended an hour ago,” she murmurs, annoyed. The cold pricks uncomfortably at her eyes, when a rush of wind dances around the entryway, and she draws her coat closer around herself. “To think I just ran all the way here from the hospital…”
“He’s probably been swallowed by a mob again.” Sasuke looks vaguely pleased by the idea - she can never tell.
“Probably,” she agrees, anyway, smiling reluctantly despite herself. This - Naruto -they can agree on.
For a moment afterwards, neither of them knows exactly what to do. Sasuke seems content to not-quite avoid her eyes, and pretend nothing’s wrong. Above them, the burnt light shimmers from paper lanterns, settles on her head like a faint cajoling pressure, and suddenly she isn’t grateful for its warmth anymore.
Two steps and she would be by his side, close enough to touch. She tries to direct her thoughts elsewhere, but can think of nothing but the space, and how much she would like to have it now, but not between them. This is what she is increasingly aware of: between them, distance is a variable, dependent only on time and her own perception of it. Today, it adopts a larger value than usual.
“Are you just going to stand there?” he asks after a lazy, measured beat, his gaze already drawn back to the green-tinted liquid swirling restlessly inside his cup.
Sakura figures that’s as much of an invitation as she’s likely to get from him. Exhaling, she takes a seat next to him, before she can convince herself to do otherwise. Sakura is two-and-twenty, and still doesn’t know who Sasuke is. But she can still try.
“No, I wasn’t planning on leaving either.”
Summary: Sakura is two-and-twenty and still doesn't know who Sasuke is. But she can still try.
Disclaimer: Disclaimed.
Theme: Post-canon
Prompt: Warmth
Medium: Fanficiton
Genre: General/Friendship
Rating: K+
Warning(s): Present tense? Sasuke's pale wrists?
Comments: Late submission is extremely late. This is the shortest thing I've written to date and I'm surprisingly happy with it. I spent a ridiculous amount of time making sure Sasuke came off pretty. I hope I've succeeded? :D
Much love to Astronauts for her warm, encouraging words and to danikos_realms for her extremely quick, thorough, and efficient beta work. You guys are lovely.
Winter in Konoha is a cold, unforgiving season. The wind whistles an untamed tune and ice adorns the boughs of trees; snow crunches under people’s feet as if it were broken glass. Cracks burst across the carved faces on the Hokage monument. Noses redden. Teeth chatter. Color gains a new meaning. Under the neon streetlights, couples exchange warm, foggy breaths.
It’s a little past seven, when Sakura ducks her way into Ichiraku, grateful for the lanterns hanging from the wooden beam above her head. It’s empty, except for a single man.
The first thing she notices about him is the traditional haori and hakama he’s wearing. It’s expensive - black, red and gold - and the colours look severe and out of place in Ichiraku’s homely setting.
It suits him a bit too well. Sasuke doesn’t look his age; maybe he never did.
Sakura stops short upon seeing the wide red arc of the uchiwa against his back; she remembers why he is wearing the ludicrously formal attire in the first place.
She never understood the rigid clan traditions very well - it’s one of those things she’ll never understand, with her plebeian background - but she knows it’s customary for clan leaders to be present at the Snow Festival. Sasuke is supposed to be there, too, later tonight, by the Hokage’s side.
“Where’s Naruto?” she asks anxiously, and immediately regrets it. She presses her lips together and clamps her tongue between her teeth. She doesn’t want him to think his company is unwanted, but she has also never been a very good liar and the truth is this: without Naruto around, Sakura feels a little lost around the one person who has ever really mattered.
Sasuke’s the constant around which Sakura and Naruto both have woven their lives, for so long now, thread after inconsequential thread. Ten years the three of them have grown up, but it feels like it’s still Naruto, who doesn’t seem to have grown up at all, that is millennia ahead of her in all the ways that matter.
Sakura is two-and-twenty, and she still doesn’t know who Uchiha Sasuke is.
Is it because she stopped caring? She looks down, scrapes her boot across the pavement under the pretense of dislodging crushed snow, counts the heartbeats in his silence, until he answers. “He won’t be long,” Sasuke says, unconcerned.
He casts a long sideways look in her direction, from under mildly lowered eyelashes, then sighs. He nods towards the eastern square of the village, where the mountains are giant black tents against the night-sky and the festival lights drift about like thoughts on rainy evenings.
Sasuke, then, lifts the small sencha cup in his hand and takes a calm sip of his tea, a gesture so naturally elegant that it startles her out of her reverie. His long sleeve slides shyly down to reveal white skin, drawn taut over bone and blue webs, beautiful against the golden trim of his haori, and Sakura’s mouth goes dry.
Sakura looks east, too. The skyline is a grimace. The night is quiet, but if she concentrates hard enough, she can hear the roll and ebb of traditional music in the distance. She wonders if Naruto is somewhere over there now, standing over a raised dais, swathed in laughter and melody, radiant and fierce against the stark monochrome of the season.
“His speech was supposed to have ended an hour ago,” she murmurs, annoyed. The cold pricks uncomfortably at her eyes, when a rush of wind dances around the entryway, and she draws her coat closer around herself. “To think I just ran all the way here from the hospital…”
“He’s probably been swallowed by a mob again.” Sasuke looks vaguely pleased by the idea - she can never tell.
“Probably,” she agrees, anyway, smiling reluctantly despite herself. This - Naruto -they can agree on.
For a moment afterwards, neither of them knows exactly what to do. Sasuke seems content to not-quite avoid her eyes, and pretend nothing’s wrong. Above them, the burnt light shimmers from paper lanterns, settles on her head like a faint cajoling pressure, and suddenly she isn’t grateful for its warmth anymore.
Two steps and she would be by his side, close enough to touch. She tries to direct her thoughts elsewhere, but can think of nothing but the space, and how much she would like to have it now, but not between them. This is what she is increasingly aware of: between them, distance is a variable, dependent only on time and her own perception of it. Today, it adopts a larger value than usual.
“Are you just going to stand there?” he asks after a lazy, measured beat, his gaze already drawn back to the green-tinted liquid swirling restlessly inside his cup.
Sakura figures that’s as much of an invitation as she’s likely to get from him. Exhaling, she takes a seat next to him, before she can convince herself to do otherwise. Sakura is two-and-twenty, and still doesn’t know who Sasuke is. But she can still try.
“No, I wasn’t planning on leaving either.”