Chapter Fifteen

Sakura knows that Sasuke is the love of her life; she just isn't his—a harsh reality that has taken her years to accept, so when he says this, says he loves her, she doesn't know what to think.

Sakura shakes her head. "You're drunk."

He cups her cheeks, tilts her face up, making her look at him. His eyes are glassy, lips slightly parted, as if he's on the verge of another confession. She can feel his hands trembling. He's scared. Sasuke, always so calm and collected, is standing in her living room, shaking and vulnerable and nervous.

"I mean it," he says, and his voice sounds stronger now, more sober.

She wants to believe him, she does, but one drunken admission is difficult to trust in the face of so much contrary evidence.

"Tell me again in the morning," Sakura says. "Then we'll talk. Okay?"

Sasuke nods. "Can I stay with you tonight?"

She runs her hands down his chest, feels the hardness of his muscles through his shirt. "I don't think that's a good idea. You're not yourself right now."

"Just to sleep," Sasuke says, and he looks so weary that Sakura can't turn him away.

"All right." She takes his hand and smiles softly. "Come to bed."

Even in the shape he's in, Sasuke still folds his clothes and sets his shoes neatly by the door (if a little more sluggishly than he normally might).

Sakura falls asleep in his arms for the first time since last summer, and when she wakes in the morning she feels better rested than she has for nearly a year. She yawns, stretches, and turns over, only to discover that Sasuke's side of the bed is cold and empty. He's gone.

Maybe this should hurt, but she's too unsurprised to be disappointed.

She makes herself move, goes to the kitchen for a glass of orange juice—and finds Sasuke sitting at her table, fully dressed, his head in his hands. He looks up when he hears her, and his eyes are blank, unreadable.

Sakura's heart beats faster, thumps almost painfully against her ribcage. Sasuke didn't leave. He's still here.

"How do you feel?" she asks quietly.

"Fine," he says.

She takes a seat in the chair across from him. "There's no justice in this world," she says. "If I drank like that I'd be sick as a dog the next day."

"Hn." He props his elbows on the table, laces his fingers together, and rests his face against his hands. The movement is so familiar, so much the Sasuke she knew when they were at the Academy, that it almost hurts to watch.

She waits for him to say something, anything, but he doesn't. So she asks, "Do you remember last night?"

Whether he blacked out or not, this is the perfect opportunity for Sasuke to get out of dealing with the consequences of his actions, and she half expects him to take it.

Instead, he says, "I do. I remember it all."

She tries to gauge his mood from his expression, but there's nothing there. Sasuke has made an art of shutting people out, of concealing what he thinks and feels. Sakura's not going to learn anything from watching him; she's going to have to listen, if only he'll talk.

"Is it true?" she asks. "Do you love me?"

Silence settles between them for one moment, two, and for some reason all Sakura can think of is that stupid game she used to play as a child, plucking the petals off of flowers to determine whether Sasuke-kun loved her or not. It feels like she's been playing for a long time, going back and forth, waiting to see which petal she would land on in the end.

Then Sasuke says, "Yes."

She bites her lip to keep from smiling too widely.

"I shouldn't have told you last night, not like that," Sasuke says, and he sounds almost apologetic. "You deserve better."

"I don't care," Sakura says. He loves me, she thinks, Sasuke loves me. That's all that matters.

She stands up, walks around the table, and holds his face between her hands. He leans into her touch, and it's such a simple display of honest affection that it gives her hope, makes her braver. Sakura is afraid to ask, but there are things she needs to know. "So what does this mean for us? What do you want from me?"

"Everything," Sasuke says. "I want everything."

They spend all day in bed. First making love, then making up for lost time. Just kissing, holding, talking. After so many months without Sakura, every touch feels like a gift, and for the first time in a long time Sasuke is content.

She brushes his hair out of his face, traces the line of his jaw. There's something soft but sad in the way she looks at him. "You can't hurt me again," she says. "If you do, it'll be the last time. You know that, right?"

"I do," Sasuke says. "Things will be different this time. I'll be different."

She lays her head on his chest, over his heart. "I'll hold you to that."

Hunger finally drives them to the kitchen, but they're both feeling too lazy to cook, so they cut up the fruit Sakura bought from Mr. Yaguchi yesterday morning. They sit on the counter half-naked, side by side, sharing a plate of apple slices.

"Sorry there aren't any tomatoes. I wasn't expecting you," Sakura says. "I guess I should keep them around from now on, huh?"

He nods and bites into another piece of apple, and it's crisp and sweet on his tongue. "I'd appreciate that."

After they eat, they go back to bed. When Sasuke sees her tangled up in the sheets, pale eyes heavy-lidded, pink hair spread across a pillow, he's suddenly overwhelmed by his need for this woman. To have her, to love her. He wants to tell Sakura these things, but he doesn't know how. So instead of speaking, he taps her forehead with his first two fingers.

"What was that for?" Sakura asks.

"It's something my brother used to do to me when we were children," he says. "I didn't understand it at the time, but now I think it was a way to show he cared."

"Sasuke..." She reaches for him, takes his hand. Her grasp is warm and strong, like the rest of her. "Thank you."

He kisses Sakura, and she kisses back, pulls him on top of her. "Again?" he asks, and Sasuke can feel a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. Sakura wraps her legs around his waist and whispers in his ear, "Am I wearing you out, Sasuke-kun?"

He presses her into the mattress, sucks at the soft skin of her neck until she whimpers and a purple bruise blooms beneath his mouth. People will see it and know he marked her, will know that she's his. Good. He has had his fill of secrets and subterfuge.

Sasuke makes love to her less tenderly than he had this morning. Now there's something desperate in the way they come together, an impatience in his grip on her thigh, in his thrusts. Sakura is rough too, her short fingernails digging into his back. The scratches sting, and no doubt there will be ten parallel welts running down either side of his spine by the time this is done, but Sasuke doesn't care. She feels good, so good, and he gets caught up in the sound of her moans, her pleas and promises. Somehow he keeps control, slips a hand between her legs, touches her in the way that makes her unravel. And she's beautiful all the time, but she's breath-taking like this: eyes closed, nipples peaked and back arched, mouth open on a cry.

After, he's trembling, panting, barely able to hold his weight atop her. Sasuke brushes his lips across her forehead, her cheek, her pink mouth. He wants to kiss her everywhere, claim her body all over again, but when he dips his head to her breasts, Sakura laughs, grabs him by his hair, and says, "I need a break."

Sasuke rests his head on her chest and smiles against her skin. "I thought you were gonna wear me out, or did I hear you wrong?"

Sakura slaps his back, just hard enough to sting a little. "You're an ass, you know that?"

"You love me anyway," he says. "And you'll keep loving me, won't you?"

Forever?

Her breath catches and her heart beats faster. With his cheek pressed against her breast, he can feel these things. "Always," she promises.

Sakura is his, his alone, for the rest of their days. Just as Sasuke is hers.

The thought is still frightening, and perhaps love will never be an easy thing for him to either accept or give, but if the last year has taught Sasuke anything, it's that he needs Sakura. She is like air, like water: an element he simply cannot do without.

They decide to tell Naruto and Kakashi at Ichiraku the next day. Their sensei smiles beneath his mask and says, "It's about time."

Naruto grins at Sasuke. "Finally pulled your head out of your ass?" he asks.

"Shut up, dobe," he says, but Sasuke can't put much heat behind it, because his friend isn't entirely wrong.

"Hey everybody!" Naruto shouts, and a hush falls over the restaurant as people turn to stare at the Hokage. "Your ramen is on me!"

A cheer goes up, and Naruto puts his arms around Sasuke and Sakura. "So when's the wedding?" he asks.

"Naruto!" She punches him on the shoulder—"Ow, Sakura-chan, that hurts!"—and glances at Sasuke, looking flushed and anxious.

Naruto's question doesn't unsettle him in the way Sakura probably fears it might. It makes him uncomfortable, but only because he knows he doesn't deserve her. Not yet.

The news about Sasuke and Sakura spreads around the village after Naruto's display at Ichiraku. It takes all of twenty-four hours before Ino comes knocking on Sakura's door, nosy and demanding, asking questions. When did it happen? How? Is he good in bed? Is he bad in bed? How serious are things? She gives short, succinct answers, hoping to get the interrogation over with as quickly and painlessly as possible.

"Stop trying to short-change me," Ino says. "I deserve details."

They're sitting on a ratty, old blanket on the roof of Sakura's apartment, sunning themselves and drinking not-sweet-enough lemonade (and that's what she gets for putting Sasuke in charge of adding the sugar).

"And why, exactly, are you entitled to information about my love life?" Sakura asks.

"Because we're friends." Ino sips the lemonade and winces. "Ugh, sorry, but I don't think I can drink this."

"You don't have to apologize. It's pretty awful." Sakura sets her own glass aside, and it's a shame, really, because Konoha has been hellishly hot for weeks and a cold drink that doesn't turn your mouth inside out would be refreshing right now.

She and Ino lay down, side by side, holding hands loosely, lazily. Sakura closes her eyes against the bright summer sun and listens to the sounds of birds singing and people negotiating the space on the street below.

"How are things between you and Shikamaru?" Sakura asks.

"Great, except that I can barely get him to help with chores around the house."

"Then you should kick his lazy ass," Sakura says. "That, or stop cleaning."

"Eww, do I look like I want to live in a hovel?" Ino asks. "But kicking his ass, that I could do."

They laugh, and then Ino says, too-casual, "Oh, by the way, you're invited to my mother's wedding."

"Your mother's what?"

"Wedding," Ino says again, slowly and carefully. "It's that celebration of two people becoming celibate together for the rest of their lives."

"Since when is your mother getting married?" Sakura asks. "I knew she and Tetsuya were serious, but I didn't realize he was husband material."

"Yeah, well, neither did I," Ino says. and if there's a trace of bitterness in her voice, Sakura decides that it's wiser and kinder not to point this out. "Anyway, you're invited, and since you can bring a guest, I guess Sasuke is too. Or are you guys not at the going to formal events together phase yet?"

"I don't know. I guess I'll talk to him and find out," Sakura says. She and Sasuke still haven't been on a proper date, and regardless of all his promises that things will be better this time, she's nervous to ask him to go on one with her.

"So, how are you doing?" Ino asks. "I mean, you've loved Sasuke for forever, so getting together has got to feel good, right?"

Sakura can't help but smile. She's been doing that a lot lately, grinning for no good reason except that she's deeply, beautifully, recklessly happy. "It feels like… like coming home after a long trip."

"Oh. That's a little underwhelming."

She laughs and lets go of Ino's hand just so she can swat her arm. "Well, it also feels like the most incredible sex of my life."

Her friend snorts. "Not like that would be hard to accomplish, considering that the bastard is the only one of your loser boyfriends to ever even get you off."

"Taro was never my boyfriend," Sakura corrects.

"Whatever, it's not like Sasuke's got a lot of competition," Ino says in that playfully confrontational way she sometimes has. "But if you say he's good, I'll take your word for it."

Sakura has a horrible thought, and she sits up to ask, "You didn't talk to your mother about this, did you?"

"What, your sex life with Konoha's most brooding ninja?"

Sakura sighs, puts her hand to her face. "No, Pig, I mean did you tell her about me and Sasuke being together?"

"Of course I did, Forehead," Ino says. "Something this juicy, I had to."

"Well, thanks a lot. She's going to tell my mother before I have a chance to."

Ino laughs. "What do you mean 'going to'? She already told her."

Sure enough, when Sakura visits her parents' house later that day, her mother and father pull her into a fierce hug, and Okaasan says, "I'm so happy for you, sweetheart."

Otousan laughs and ruffles her hair, the way he used to when she was a little girl. "You've got to bring Sasuke around to dinner one of these nights."

"Only if you promise not to ask him a hundred questions," Sakura says. "He's a very private person, you know."

Her mother sighs. "We're not going to do anything to make him uncomfortable. We just want to get to know him a little better."

"And I promise not to make any jokes," her father says. "Even though his hair is really asking for it."

"Otousan!" Sakura can't help but laugh. "You really don't have room to talk about anyone else's hair."

Okaasan insists that Sunday night would be the perfect time to get together, but Sakura shakes her head. Sasuke might say he wants everything from her, but she doubts that he's ready for this, to be welcomed into a family.

There's something on Sakura's mind. She's quiet throughout dinner, and when they go to bed she seems distracted, less responsive when he touches her. Reluctantly, Sasuke stops kissing the soft swell of her breast and asks, "What is it?"

Sakura looks away from him, then back, and when she speaks her voice is nervous, hesitant. "Ino's mother is getting married. I'm invited to the wedding, and I was wondering if you'd like to come with me."

Sasuke barely knows Ino and hardly likes her—he cares little for anyone outside of Team 7—and he's not once met her mother that he can recall. He hates crowds and finds formal events as purposeless as they are tedious, but he can see the way Sakura's body has tensed, how she's holding her breath, waiting for his answer. For some reason this is important to her, and that alone is enough to decide the matter for him. "I'll go," he says.

Sakura smiles, kisses him, and says, "Thank you, Sasuke-kun."

And this is how he ends up attending a wedding where he knows neither the bride nor the groom. Half the guests give him a wide berth, either too reverent of the war hero or too disapproving of the war criminal to speak to him. This isn't new, though, so Sasuke isn't bothered by it.

Ino's mother wears the traditional white kimono, Tetsuya the expected black. They share sake and exchange quiet vows that Sasuke can barely hear from the back of the shrine, and within twenty minutes the whole ceremony is over.

As he and Sakura walk to the reception site (one of Konoha's better inns), he says, "This is the first wedding I've attended in sixteen years."

She slips her hand into his and asks, "Who was getting married at the last wedding you went to?"

"My cousin Saiyuri," Sasuke says, and he remembers her smiling face like it was yesterday. (He also recalls what Saiyuri looked like with a kunai wedged between her empty, dark eyes, all the light of life extinguished from them, but Sasuke pushes that ugly memory away.) "Her husband was a Nara, though, and after we got home the only thing my father had to say was that no children of his would marry outside the clan."

"Oh." Sakura frowns and says, "I don't suppose he would have approved of me then."

"No, he wouldn't have," Sasuke says honestly. "But my mother would have loved you."

Her smile is soft, and a dimple awakens in her right cheek. "You really think so?"

He nods. "And I believe you would have liked her too."

"Would you tell me about her?" Sakura asks.

He considers this request, then says, "My mother was kind. She always told me that she was proud of me, and she never let me think she loved me less than Itachi." Unlike Otousan, he could have said, but Sasuke lets Uchiha Fugaku's failings as a father rest. Whatever mistakes the man made, he paid for them many times over. "I look like her, but I didn't inherit much from her beyond that. She was gentle. Forgiving." Of all the members of their small family, she was the one who most deserved to be spared, but lately Sasuke doesn't quite wish that Okaasan had lived instead of him.

"You're gentle with me," Sakura says. "Maybe you have more of her in you than you think."

"Maybe." He leans over and presses a kiss to her forehead.

She blushes, then says, "I used to fantasize about you doing that. In my daydreams you always found my huge forehead charming."

"Is it big?" Sasuke asks, somewhat puzzled. "I never noticed."

Sakura laughs, a sound that he thinks he could hear every day for the rest of his life and never grow tired of.

At the reception, she pulls him onto the dance floor and says, "You'll spin me around and hold me and kiss me, because that's what dates do at weddings, and you are my date, aren't you, Sasuke-kun?"

"It seems so," he says.

Dancing with Sakura isn't precisely a hardship. She has a kunoichi's grace, and watching her move in time with the music is as intoxicating as it is frustrating. He can smell the citrus scent of her new shampoo, and he's just on the verge of suggesting that they leave early, when Ino approaches and says, "Hey, Sasuke. Can I cut in?"

She takes Sakura by the arm without waiting for his answer and starts dancing with her. Ino says something a moment later that makes Sakura smile. She looks joyful, beautiful, radiant, and Sasuke can hardly believe that after everything he's put her through, he still has the love of a woman like this.

Sasuke doesn't move in with Sakura all at once. His things drift into her apartment, piece by piece, until there are more of his possessions at her place than at the spartan flat he once called his own. Sometime between summer and autumn, Sakura gives him a key, and sometime between autumn and winter, Sasuke breaks his lease. By spring, he asks if perhaps she might like to move somewhere larger. A house instead of an apartment, perhaps.

"Why? Don't you like it here?"

"I do," he says, "but it's a little small."

"There's plenty of room for just the two of us," Sakura says.

"But it's not always going to be just the two of us," Sasuke says, with such blase confidence that Sakura thinks she must be mistaking his meaning.

"How many, um, extra rooms do you think we might need?" she asks.

His smile is so subtle than anyone besides Sakura would have missed it. "One or two," he says. "What do you think?"

"Let's go with two," she says. "Just to be on the safe side."

They find a three-bedroom house on the southern outskirts of the village, and for the most part Sakura adores their new home. She only misses the noise and liveliness of her flat on nights when Sasuke is gone, when she suffers the wide silences that echo the emptiness of her cold bed. He stays in Konoha much more than he used to, but Sasuke still often takes assignments that send him far from the Leaf. He's a wanderer, and it isn't always easy to love a man with an itinerant heart.

The night before Sasuke leaves for another long mission, Sakura asks, "Where are you headed to this time?"

"Snow," he says. "I shouldn't be gone more than two weeks."

She tries to smile, to think of all the things she'll have more time for in his absence. Sakura has been waiting on Sasuke, in one way or another, for so many years that she's grown used to the loneliness it brings. But her waiting is made easier by the promise of his return. Because no matter how far he strays, Sasuke will always come back to her.

Sasuke remembers the old Konoha like this. The smell of breakfast cooking in the morning, suffusing the home he shares with Otousan and Okaasan and Nisan. His mother's smile. His father's voice. Itachi poking his forehead as he says, "Maybe next time." Later, the resounding silence of a barren house. Cobwebs in the kitchen, because Sasuke can't make himself clean, can't even make himself get up off the floor. And then Team 7: Kakashi, Naruto, and Sakura.

The old Konoha is dead, but the new Konoha is alive, and Sasuke knows now that what he remembers isn't as important as what he discovers every day.

Still, he will never forget his father's lessons. How to sort truth from lies just by watching the subtle shifts of expression across a man's face. How to tell from the dawn whether it will rain tonight. How not to think, but know, where a shuriken will land when you throw it. But for all his gifts of perception, it took Sasuke twelve years to see Sakura, and he wonders if maybe he spent his time studying the wrong things.

Perhaps he ought to abandon Otousan's teachings, but Sasuke is still learning to look forward instead of back, and he finds a certain comfort in the simple act of watching, playing games of sight. This is the rich blue of a robin's egg. This is the gold of summer sunlight on the Naka River.

This is the green of Uchiha Sakura's eyes when she is happy—a color he sees often these days.

Author's Notes: Warning, ridiculously long notes ahead.

So, this is the end, and I really hope that it's one you guys enjoy. Thank you so much for all of your support throughout my writing of this fic! Favorites, follows, and especially reviews just make me ridiculously giddy.

In Times of Peace may be over, but I have a couple of new Naruto projects in the works, and I certainly hope some of you will stick around to read them once I start posting. I'm going to do a quick plug for each story, just to give you all an idea of what will be coming up.

Children of War will be a Minato/Kushina prequel fic that follows Naruto's parents from the age of nine to the day the Kyuubi attacks Konoha. Among other things, I'm going to try to explore the complications of using child soldiers during wartime. In this story, Kushina struggles with being taken from home and becoming the Nine-Tails jinchuriki, while Minato quickly moves up the Konoha ranks despite coming from a civilian family. I should state up front that, because of Minato's dysfunctional home life, this story will include depictions of/mentions of domestic abuse, rape, and forced abortion, so it may not be for everyone.

The Valley of the End is a SasuSaku and NaruHina story in an alternate Konoha in which Madara won the battle at the Valley of the End, and then became the First Hokage instead of Hashirama. It is set during the regular Naruto timeline, but the world looks quite different, with the Uchiha in charge of the village. It will be Team 7-centric, and the point-of-view characters are Sasuke, Sakura, and Naruto. This story will feature some forbidden love SasuSaku, Sasuke as the son of the Fourth Hokage, Naruto with parents who are alive, and a Sakura who is an equal and a rival to her male teammates.

I should also mention that this line— "He's a wanderer, and it isn't always easy to love a man with an itinerant heart."—was undoubtedly influenced by windsilk's incredible SasuSaku story, constellations, which everyone should go check out immediately.

Last but certainly not least, I want to thank my betas, tall-girl-in-a-small-world and uchihasass. You ladies have been a tremendous help throughout this process, and I can't wait to work with you on my new projects!