[AU: Sasuke + Sakura] When defense is paper-thin
[a few years before this thread]
[He never thought it would hurt this much.
He thought it had hurt back then -- two years ago, when they'd been warned that this day would eventually come. But even then, even on the worst days, there was always hope. Now there's nothing but a sore sense of being hollow -- how he can hurt when he feels empty, he doesn't even know, but he doesn't stop to think. About the pain, about anything. Not even the fact that his mother's probably worrying right about now, wondering when he's going to come home -- Sasuke left before the sun had even risen this morning, having never fallen asleep since their return from the hospital the night before. Neither of his parents tried to stop him. He was glad for it, or as glad as he could be, considering.
That was hours ago. The sunlight in the broken windows says it's nearly noon; almost seven hours that he's been here. Doing nothing. Not thinking, barely moving -- hardly daring to even reminisce as much as he wants to, because he's so close to breaking and that would be the last push.
...No, he's already broken. He's just struggling to keep all the pieces in one place.
And if that means spending a day -- a week, if he could -- in this forgotten place -- an abandoned schoolbuilding, the hangout that he and Naruto and Sakura have known as long as they've known each other, a place that Itachi went to to find them when they stayed out late in younger days --
then fine.]