[Closed]

[sucker_punches]

Who: Naruto (couragetodare) and Sakura (sucker_punches)
When: After this.
Where: In the Ruins on the edges of the city.
Format: Paragraph.
What: Sakura returns with no memory of Anatole; Naruto makes a beeline for her anyway.
Warnings: Nnnnno clue. Will update as necessary?

Comments

[couragetodare]

Naruto hates waiting too. He's been waiting twenty-two days, nine hours and as of this moment, forty-two minutes. It's hardly an expansive stretch of time in the grand scheme of things, but to someone waiting and waiting and counting every moment and hoping and grieving and wanting every person in Anatole who failed to save Sakura to hurt in some form or another, then twenty-two days can be a long time indeed

[sucker_punches]

He looks even worse in person, in the light. Sakura frowns when he comes into view. Naruto looks haggard, older, and the stubble is just odd on his face. At first sight, he is almost unfamiliar, almost another eager stranger who knows her far better than she knows him. She almost wants to back away from him like she wanted to back away from them. How strange that she wouldn't run from battle, but for a moment--just a breath, really--she considers running from a friend.

But she knows she's being irrational, except for all the ways in which she might not be. She doesn't know what happened before in this place, and he does. The urge to fly, though, that is irrational, she's aware. Aware too that that probably won't stop the way her heart is beating too hard, because it has been ever since she woke up

[couragetodare]

One year ago, Naruto doesn't know if he would have been able to recognise the strain in the smile that crosses her lips. Now he sees it as plain as day - as plain as she's standing there unmoving - and he thinks briefly of how things have changed for them. (Or him now, if she doesn't remember.)

He can't go back. He wouldn't know how to even if he wanted to and he doesn't want to, but when she speaks, says what she says, voice clipped and... and... accusing, he almost falters at how much it wounds him. But then, it doesn't matter. She's been displaced. She's in a strange place and she's dealing. Naruto knows it. And then it occurs to him that even this is familiar, her way of dealing, that there's comfort in the accusation beneath her remark because she's alive. She's here to say it and it reminds him of back home when they weren't so close and he laughs

[sucker_punches]

That laugh bewilders her. Sakura doesn't see at all what there could be to laugh at right now. She finds no humor in the situation, and wonders if this, too, is something she's missing; one more thing in an apparent multitude. A year of her life she can't account for, isn't even certain she's lived. Someone obviously lived it, whether it was her or someone in her stead--herself, someone else, who knows, it's all so damned confusing--but the last thing she remembers is dying on another world.

She almost asks him what's so funny? but then Naruto's approaching her, and she has to step on the urge to back away again

[couragetodare]

All things considered, the rational part of him is surprised she doesn't lay him flat with a punch after she pulls away. That surprise is weighed beneath other things however, things like the dull swell of resignation, the sharper twinge of sorrow. She doesn't remember. She definitely doesn't remember. She wouldn't react quite like this if she remembered; an unwanted kiss would result in a smack in the mouth or upside the head. He shouldn't have kissed her. The whole motion has freaked her out he can tell.

He shouldn't have. But he couldn't not. She tastes the same, feels the same, is real and now he knows it, really knows it and is glad. There's no regret, but there is some apology.

He takes a step back to give her more space, hands out and lowering them slowly. You don't remember, he almost says, but Sakura is smart, once she gets past the shock she'll probably put two and two together anyway. What was he doing