Last Hope

Pairing: Sasuke/Sakura

Summary: When in the end, we're all just waiting to break. Or to be broken.

Notes: A modern AU wherein both are famous idols. Just wanted to parallel Sasuke!canon's character of always leaving behind Haruno in the mess of things and quietly making his reappearance. Also, this drabble-ish writing style is something I've always wanted to pull off, I hope I managed? Reviews are appreciated. :)

It's a stupor of lights: red, blue, green, multitude of uproar left to right, the music takes you to places of delirium - she finds a sense of impossible peace in such a riot and of all things, she doesn't expect to be finding him here.

Here, when he once told her he wants to leave the city for good because it gives him nightmares, because he doesn't fit in, because he doesn't deserve having fans supporting his career. She thinks he's smuggled some pot to be confessing this at 3 am in the morning, on the roof deck of her apartment.

Yet about several weeks after he just disappears.

It takes her another minute to realize she's stopped dancing, her limbs falling to her side, mouth hanging. He's back?

"Hey."

"Hey."

Awkward exchanges are never her kind of haunting.

-x-

However little of words get exchanged as the night deepens, her kisses around his lean body says how have you been, nostalgic touches at parts where she doesn't seem to even remember but the familiarity surely fools no one.

She hates him. You're an idiot, starting a hell lot of chaos around here, leaving all of us. You knew better. But Sakura knows he doesn't. Or he does, but refuses to admit it. She's not sure which is which – he holds too much of himself up to bear certainty. Sasuke never planned to kill the person people thought he was, as if his existence could be an accidental virus and the coding just happened to fuck up.

She decides she's too tired to crawl out of his arms at 4:09 am, like how she used, like how she usually did. The sheets, hers she's come to realize, off-white, starts smelling like him and Sakura knows she just can't have that. Not when he's going to leave again.

-x-

A call. Three rings before Sakura's holding her breath and waiting for it to go away.

She answers, hears him explain things. I just didn't feel like staying anymore. It wouldn't be fair to be asking you to come with me, either.

Asshole.

Takes eight months to reveal the truth, one night in her apartment, and seven glasses of tequila (which she honestly think doesn't factor in that much) Sakura thinks he's selfish. Selfish ass for not admitting, too concerned for his self-image right until rumors start blowing way above their heads.

Eyes still deadpanned, she drops the call, cleans up the table, and fixes enough makeup to cover bloodshot eyes. Her manager leaves three messages to have her back at the dorm immediately. Filming. Photo shoot. Some other damn thing that went back to normal after he left.

(How can he keep lying to her like this?)

-x-

Sakura takes the subway, bundle of pink hair tucked underneath her hoodie, eyes behind sunglasses that hid half of her face. She likes commuting; strange as it is for someone whose face is all over posters and billboards in town (cue in Yamanaka Ino's notorious pet name billboard brow for her, way too fond of it, really). Fans hardly give a nod or two without recognizing her. Maybe she looks different on TV. Maybe fatter because the camera adds ten pounds. Shakes her head, Sakura, this is not the time.

Her bag weighs a lot today, though. Lipstick, BB cream, cell phone, some nifty pamphlet about some French airlines, and then his mix tape for her birthday. She still has this? The universe allows her to have this in here for the past year? Yet she's never bothered to play it more than once. They're just lousy old songs from Europe, something called punk rock and jazz, Uchiha Sasuke's favored taste in music. Expected from someone who had so much Western influence, his older brother after all, is a music producer in a foreign country.

Too repetitive to be creative. Too original to be something she's heard of before. Maybe she'll like it. She decides she can try.

She plays it on her Walkman through the one-hour travel.

-x-

She once made him a love letter, pulling down the curtain on hidden emotions and he replied in the same sweet manner, how for once unrequited became returned - perhaps every poet would dare admit how it's such a phenomenon indeed to see two people in love, when after a forever or two, it becomes pointless.

When in the end, we're all just waiting to break. Or to be broken.

-x-

Sasuke meets Sakura the first time, backstage on a movie set when he lands a major role in the Japanese adaptation of Love in the Time of Cholera, while she, a debuting star, a rookie, a mishap in the world of glamour and cheap cocktails, waited for something to work. They don't.

A supporting role, barely even two minutes in the actual run of the film. She can't choose, she's only starting this career path.

Her shoelaces, as cliché as how any love story contradicts nonfiction, happen to be untied, and before the camera starts rolling, Sasuke notices. Bends over, ties it for her. No exchange of words. Except for blushes, when she finds his eyes, those deep eyes. A wolf's first love, unsteady heart rates and glowing smiles, jaw-dropping exuberance.

They exchange numbers in the after party, the movie a real hit; eventually, when it is winter and less heat to pass around, they decide their hands will have to be enough to spark some warmth.

-x-

She's too rushed and he's too slowed down, and sometimes these things are important when you're building bridges. The way that she wants to be waited on, the way he doesn't like to chase or the manner in which neither one purposely lowers their pride for the other. Screw you. They've never crossed, damned bridges made of sticks and stones and unfulfilled promises, burned before halfway.

Sakura regrets, but it's not a department she wants fixing either.

A Sunday looms over them after a week of his surprise return. Sasuke tosses a coin into a wishing fountain and smirks when it lands nearest the nearly nude sculpture. Approving of the act, she gives him a good pat, grinning.

"Good shot."

Silence ensues. They let it because it demands presence.

"Can we go back?" He asks, unable to look at her.

Sakura shrugs, not unkindly nor dismissive. "Yeah, sure. I'm getting kinda hungry too."

He says nothing, like he usually does, choosing always to be quiet unless spoken to. Hand steadily holding hers. There's no one here, just some senior tourists, in their 60s or 70s, who assume the extinction of fame and idols. No one seems to react at their coming, but disguises are always safer lest some sneaky reporters track them down. Sasuke, who has been unseen for almost an entire year in the media, in particular, will be in another juicy issue if he lets this one loose.

"I meant, when it was easier? When you didn't have to have model appointments every month, and I didn't have to fly to places and die of overwork either? When it was still okay?"

We certainly aren't, Sakura almost spurts, but replies with a hushed nod.

Maybe they're like the characters in the story unraveled when they first met. Just some dream, some strangers holding on to whatever it is, unreturned calls, denied affection.

"It's better this way."

She takes her hand out from his grip, holding herself. It kills. Both of them, she knows. She can't think of a way that can ever reverse the things said and done, and the things unsaid and the ones never done.

Because he's still going to leave, anyway. She doesn't allow that to weaken her already diminished sense of happiness.

He boards the first flight the following morning back to Paris, with no Sakura to say any more goodbyes.

She thinks it's time to change her sheets before it causes a panel of hysteria.