More or Less [NaruSaku]
Title: More or Less
Author: Kit Spooner
Pairing: Uzumaki Naruto and Haruno Sakura
Fandom: Naruto
Theme: # 16 - Invincible/Unrivaled
Disclaimer: The characters and situations portrayed in this story are the sole property of Kishimoto-sensei and the assorted corporate types who’ve bought the rights. I’ve merely borrowed them for a brief time.
Notes: Angst~! Wallow in it~! [It's been a few months since I posted a kiss and I'm too lazy to rifle through and see if anyone's taken my pairing. If someone has, then just tell me and I'll just post these in my own fic journal whenever I write them.]
1. The day after Sakura turns eighteen, she cracks and splinters and finally shatters.
Fortunately she’s curled in upon herself, huddled against Naruto’s nightstand, so the pieces don’t fly far. Naruto gathers her shiver-shaking body - all edges and angles and uncomfortable silences - up onto the bed to tuck her against the heat he constantly radiates.
He doesn’t mention either Sasuke or Kakashi and he falls asleep spooned against the hard ridge of her spine, like a muscle-and-bone barrier against the knowledge neither know how to deal with.
2. With the sunrise comes the official news: the last of the Uchihas and the Copy Ninja are both dead - each by the other’s hand.
Naruto and Sakura already know this, so they don’t join the inquisitive crowds that begin gossiping in the streets mid-morning. Instead Naruto makes breakfast.
“Beef or miso?” he asks his best friend when she finally staggers barefoot into his kitchen, leaning heavily against the doorframe, eyes not quite focusing.
“What?” she rasps, her throat raw from the weeping and screaming that carried her through the night.
Naruto mumbles, “Never mind,” and pours boiling water into a number of cups of instant ramen. It’s his comfort food and he can’t quite think of a time when he’s needed comfort more.
Sakura picks her way through half a cup of beef ramen, simply because she can’t stand the disapproving stare that Naruto gives her when she tries to evade breakfast. Naruto slurps down six cups himself. Then they stare at each other across the tiny table in the corner of Naruto’s kitchenette.
3. That afternoon, Naruto calls up Ino and asks her to gather up all of Sakura’s things from the Uchiha compound and bring them over to his apartment, since he thinks Sakura won’t be going anywhere for a while. Ino is surprisingly calm over the phone, though Naruto suspects it might have something to do with the presence of Chouji and Shikamaru, who he can hear talking quietly in the background.
Naruto feels a brief, vicious stab of jealousy just before he hangs the phone up. Ino has her team with her, all of them - Ino, Shika, Chou, and they’re stronger for the formation.
Three is a special number, sturdy and invincible, like a tripod.
A two-legged stool topples without the third leg.
4. It is about a week after Sakura moves in with Naruto that they stop crying themselves to sleep every night.
Their days have also slipped into a routine. Naruto wakes at the crack of dawn - something he could never quite manage when he was younger - and takes a perfunctory shower. Then he pulls pants on and hauls Sakura out of bed and into the shower, sometimes in a very literal sense. There are even days when instead of bathing, she’ll simply huddle, near-catatonic, in the shower stall, until Naruto strips her and bathes her himself.
It’s something he would have never dreamed he’d hate doing. His younger self would have given both arms to simply see his candy-sweet Sakura naked, never mind touch her in such an intimate way. On these mornings, Sakura doesn’t even weep, she simply stares, her gaze caught far into an impossible future, the future where Sasuke returned, whole in body and mind, where she was mother to the next generation of dark-eyed Uchihas.
Still, it’s something that fascinates Naruto, even while he dreads it. Sakura is beautiful in her grief. Over the years since Sasuke’s final betrayal, she’s stopped taking care of herself. Her hair is very, very long and generally tangled, as it sometimes goes uncombed for days. Her training regimen was upped, to keep her busy while she waited fruitlessly for Sasuke’s return, and she’s whipcord lean, bony and angular where she was once sleek and slim. Naruto’s aware enough of her to know that if not for her beautiful hair and delicate, heart-shaped face, she could pass for a boy, with her hips narrow and her breasts small.
He’s diligent and gentle in his ministrations and she occasionally remembers to thank him afterwards. She realizes, even in the depths of her desperate, aching sorrow, that he is the only reason she’s still alive.
He realizes that taking care of her is the only reason he hasn’t left Konoha.
5. Sakura and Naruto finally return to the Uchiha compound nearly three months after the deaths of Sasuke and Kakashi. Sakura has gathered her courage and Naruto is here to help her do the final clearing of the property before it’s parceled off to the as-yet unnamed heirs.
“Why did you start living here?” Naruto asks her as he helps her catalogue the linens in the main house.
Sakura is startled by the directness of the question, but only a little. She finishes folding a pearl-gray kimono, the rough skin of her fingertips catching a little on the slick embroidery, before she answers. “I was the closest thing to a wife that Sasuke was ever going to have,” she replies quietly, mouth twisting into something resembling a smile. “I knew this, even Sasuke knew this, in those few lucid moments I was able to speak to him, those years ago before the end of the Akatsuki. Before he . . .”
Before his mind was lost completely to the curse seal . . .
“He wanted me to take care of his affairs,” Sakura finishes, sliding the kimono into a cardboard box. “Sasuke . . . wanted to keep everything tidy for when he came home.”
They fall silent, both staring at the dust glittering in the air stirred by their breaths.
“He loved you, you know,” Naruto assures her after a while, not entirely sure whether it’s for her benefit or his own.
This time her smile is bittersweet, but genuine, green eyes gleaming through her dusty, tangled hair. “He loved you too, Naruto.” Her bony hand slips into his and squeezes tightly, so hard he wonders at the force of her affection. “He was going to marry me and ask you to come live with us.”
Naruto’s gasp is loud in the dusty expanse of the main house and he nearly chokes on his next breath. This is definitely not what he’d been expecting.
“We would have been . . .”
“A family,” Naruto finished in a hoarse, strangled voice.
6. They are out on a mission a few months later when the Uchiha scion’s will is finally read by the Hokage herself. When Naruto and Sakura return from their reconnaissance mission, they’re called into Tsunade’s office to discuss the will’s ramifications.
“It’s all yours,” she begins.
Sakura’s stare is hollow and blank, and Naruto’s is full of a confusion that’s so numb it’s hard for Tsunade to look at him.
“The Uchiha brat left everything to you two,” the Hokage clarifies. “You can divide it up amongst yourselves.” She sighs. “Hell, you can paint the whole compound purple, burn it to the ground, sell it, whatever. But it’s yours. The lawyers are gathering all the paperwork as we speak.”
This time it’s Naruto who bursts into tears, great wrenching sobs that shake his too-lanky form. Sakura pulls him close and rubs soothing circles on his back. Then she makes eye contact with her old mentor.
“Thanks, sensei,” she says quietly before leading a still-weeping Naruto out of the Hokage’s office.
7. In the end, most of the Uchiha district of Konoha is razed to the ground and cleared. Naruto argued against this, but after Sakura forced him to spend a few days among the abandoned buildings and shops, he finally agreed that he didn’t care to share space with so many ghosts.
The properties are slowly being auctioned off, so as not to flood the market. The younger generation of Konoha ninjas, those too youthful to remember the Uchiha massacre in any detail, flock eagerly to the inexpensive building space, ready to construct new lives for themselves.
Rock Lee and Tenten purchase a lot near the place where the main Uchiha house still stands. Ino bullies Chouji and Shikamaru into helping her purchase one as well.
Naruto and Sakura decide, after several days of screaming arguments, that they won’t get married. It brings too many issues into question and in the end, neither wants to compete with a dead man.
They do, however, move into the dead man’s house.
Sakura ruthlessly pulls down as many of the Uchiha fan symbols as she can, but Naruto manages to keep her from doing too much damage. It’s one thing to tear down the bright banners and the carved mantle decoration. It’s something completely different to unscrew all of the drawer pulls, or to pry up every painted tile in the bathroom.
At night, they sleep in Sasuke’s bed with Sasuke’s sheets, sometimes dressed in Sasuke’s night clothes.
Sometimes, Sakura turns to Naruto with a faintly smouldering look and peels his pajamas and boxers from his unprotesting body, taking her time and her fill of him. Naruto lets her because he loves her more than anything in the world and he doesn’t know how else to handle the situation.
When she’s done, he holds her close to him and kisses the place where the wings of her clavicles meet at the hollow of her throat, and brushes her shining fall of hair back from her beautiful, not-as-sad face.
They aren’t whole, and both know this. And they don’t fit together perfectly; there are too many jagged pieces and broken wounds for this ever to work the way it does in stories.
But the ghost of a boy lies between them and somehow, he eases the sharp edges and they fit in some strange, wonderful way.
And if they aren’t invincible anymore, no one notices, least of all the three of them.
Author: Kit Spooner
Pairing: Uzumaki Naruto and Haruno Sakura
Fandom: Naruto
Theme: # 16 - Invincible/Unrivaled
Disclaimer: The characters and situations portrayed in this story are the sole property of Kishimoto-sensei and the assorted corporate types who’ve bought the rights. I’ve merely borrowed them for a brief time.
Notes: Angst~! Wallow in it~! [It's been a few months since I posted a kiss and I'm too lazy to rifle through and see if anyone's taken my pairing. If someone has, then just tell me and I'll just post these in my own fic journal whenever I write them.]
1. The day after Sakura turns eighteen, she cracks and splinters and finally shatters.
Fortunately she’s curled in upon herself, huddled against Naruto’s nightstand, so the pieces don’t fly far. Naruto gathers her shiver-shaking body - all edges and angles and uncomfortable silences - up onto the bed to tuck her against the heat he constantly radiates.
He doesn’t mention either Sasuke or Kakashi and he falls asleep spooned against the hard ridge of her spine, like a muscle-and-bone barrier against the knowledge neither know how to deal with.
2. With the sunrise comes the official news: the last of the Uchihas and the Copy Ninja are both dead - each by the other’s hand.
Naruto and Sakura already know this, so they don’t join the inquisitive crowds that begin gossiping in the streets mid-morning. Instead Naruto makes breakfast.
“Beef or miso?” he asks his best friend when she finally staggers barefoot into his kitchen, leaning heavily against the doorframe, eyes not quite focusing.
“What?” she rasps, her throat raw from the weeping and screaming that carried her through the night.
Naruto mumbles, “Never mind,” and pours boiling water into a number of cups of instant ramen. It’s his comfort food and he can’t quite think of a time when he’s needed comfort more.
Sakura picks her way through half a cup of beef ramen, simply because she can’t stand the disapproving stare that Naruto gives her when she tries to evade breakfast. Naruto slurps down six cups himself. Then they stare at each other across the tiny table in the corner of Naruto’s kitchenette.
3. That afternoon, Naruto calls up Ino and asks her to gather up all of Sakura’s things from the Uchiha compound and bring them over to his apartment, since he thinks Sakura won’t be going anywhere for a while. Ino is surprisingly calm over the phone, though Naruto suspects it might have something to do with the presence of Chouji and Shikamaru, who he can hear talking quietly in the background.
Naruto feels a brief, vicious stab of jealousy just before he hangs the phone up. Ino has her team with her, all of them - Ino, Shika, Chou, and they’re stronger for the formation.
Three is a special number, sturdy and invincible, like a tripod.
A two-legged stool topples without the third leg.
4. It is about a week after Sakura moves in with Naruto that they stop crying themselves to sleep every night.
Their days have also slipped into a routine. Naruto wakes at the crack of dawn - something he could never quite manage when he was younger - and takes a perfunctory shower. Then he pulls pants on and hauls Sakura out of bed and into the shower, sometimes in a very literal sense. There are even days when instead of bathing, she’ll simply huddle, near-catatonic, in the shower stall, until Naruto strips her and bathes her himself.
It’s something he would have never dreamed he’d hate doing. His younger self would have given both arms to simply see his candy-sweet Sakura naked, never mind touch her in such an intimate way. On these mornings, Sakura doesn’t even weep, she simply stares, her gaze caught far into an impossible future, the future where Sasuke returned, whole in body and mind, where she was mother to the next generation of dark-eyed Uchihas.
Still, it’s something that fascinates Naruto, even while he dreads it. Sakura is beautiful in her grief. Over the years since Sasuke’s final betrayal, she’s stopped taking care of herself. Her hair is very, very long and generally tangled, as it sometimes goes uncombed for days. Her training regimen was upped, to keep her busy while she waited fruitlessly for Sasuke’s return, and she’s whipcord lean, bony and angular where she was once sleek and slim. Naruto’s aware enough of her to know that if not for her beautiful hair and delicate, heart-shaped face, she could pass for a boy, with her hips narrow and her breasts small.
He’s diligent and gentle in his ministrations and she occasionally remembers to thank him afterwards. She realizes, even in the depths of her desperate, aching sorrow, that he is the only reason she’s still alive.
He realizes that taking care of her is the only reason he hasn’t left Konoha.
5. Sakura and Naruto finally return to the Uchiha compound nearly three months after the deaths of Sasuke and Kakashi. Sakura has gathered her courage and Naruto is here to help her do the final clearing of the property before it’s parceled off to the as-yet unnamed heirs.
“Why did you start living here?” Naruto asks her as he helps her catalogue the linens in the main house.
Sakura is startled by the directness of the question, but only a little. She finishes folding a pearl-gray kimono, the rough skin of her fingertips catching a little on the slick embroidery, before she answers. “I was the closest thing to a wife that Sasuke was ever going to have,” she replies quietly, mouth twisting into something resembling a smile. “I knew this, even Sasuke knew this, in those few lucid moments I was able to speak to him, those years ago before the end of the Akatsuki. Before he . . .”
Before his mind was lost completely to the curse seal . . .
“He wanted me to take care of his affairs,” Sakura finishes, sliding the kimono into a cardboard box. “Sasuke . . . wanted to keep everything tidy for when he came home.”
They fall silent, both staring at the dust glittering in the air stirred by their breaths.
“He loved you, you know,” Naruto assures her after a while, not entirely sure whether it’s for her benefit or his own.
This time her smile is bittersweet, but genuine, green eyes gleaming through her dusty, tangled hair. “He loved you too, Naruto.” Her bony hand slips into his and squeezes tightly, so hard he wonders at the force of her affection. “He was going to marry me and ask you to come live with us.”
Naruto’s gasp is loud in the dusty expanse of the main house and he nearly chokes on his next breath. This is definitely not what he’d been expecting.
“We would have been . . .”
“A family,” Naruto finished in a hoarse, strangled voice.
6. They are out on a mission a few months later when the Uchiha scion’s will is finally read by the Hokage herself. When Naruto and Sakura return from their reconnaissance mission, they’re called into Tsunade’s office to discuss the will’s ramifications.
“It’s all yours,” she begins.
Sakura’s stare is hollow and blank, and Naruto’s is full of a confusion that’s so numb it’s hard for Tsunade to look at him.
“The Uchiha brat left everything to you two,” the Hokage clarifies. “You can divide it up amongst yourselves.” She sighs. “Hell, you can paint the whole compound purple, burn it to the ground, sell it, whatever. But it’s yours. The lawyers are gathering all the paperwork as we speak.”
This time it’s Naruto who bursts into tears, great wrenching sobs that shake his too-lanky form. Sakura pulls him close and rubs soothing circles on his back. Then she makes eye contact with her old mentor.
“Thanks, sensei,” she says quietly before leading a still-weeping Naruto out of the Hokage’s office.
7. In the end, most of the Uchiha district of Konoha is razed to the ground and cleared. Naruto argued against this, but after Sakura forced him to spend a few days among the abandoned buildings and shops, he finally agreed that he didn’t care to share space with so many ghosts.
The properties are slowly being auctioned off, so as not to flood the market. The younger generation of Konoha ninjas, those too youthful to remember the Uchiha massacre in any detail, flock eagerly to the inexpensive building space, ready to construct new lives for themselves.
Rock Lee and Tenten purchase a lot near the place where the main Uchiha house still stands. Ino bullies Chouji and Shikamaru into helping her purchase one as well.
Naruto and Sakura decide, after several days of screaming arguments, that they won’t get married. It brings too many issues into question and in the end, neither wants to compete with a dead man.
They do, however, move into the dead man’s house.
Sakura ruthlessly pulls down as many of the Uchiha fan symbols as she can, but Naruto manages to keep her from doing too much damage. It’s one thing to tear down the bright banners and the carved mantle decoration. It’s something completely different to unscrew all of the drawer pulls, or to pry up every painted tile in the bathroom.
At night, they sleep in Sasuke’s bed with Sasuke’s sheets, sometimes dressed in Sasuke’s night clothes.
Sometimes, Sakura turns to Naruto with a faintly smouldering look and peels his pajamas and boxers from his unprotesting body, taking her time and her fill of him. Naruto lets her because he loves her more than anything in the world and he doesn’t know how else to handle the situation.
When she’s done, he holds her close to him and kisses the place where the wings of her clavicles meet at the hollow of her throat, and brushes her shining fall of hair back from her beautiful, not-as-sad face.
They aren’t whole, and both know this. And they don’t fit together perfectly; there are too many jagged pieces and broken wounds for this ever to work the way it does in stories.
But the ghost of a boy lies between them and somehow, he eases the sharp edges and they fit in some strange, wonderful way.
And if they aren’t invincible anymore, no one notices, least of all the three of them.