A/N: Finally! This story has come to an end, at last, and I'm so relieved I finished it relatively fast (in my standards, pfft). Please review your thoughts on the ending! I feel pretty good about it, but hearing other people's constructive thoughts never hurts. Thanks for sticking with me on this mess that is totally weird and not canon and also heartbreaking :)

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Ino stared at her from across the table.

The establishment felt cozy; the tables, the floor, and the walls were all of a fall-themed brown, and the windows were tinted of a light yellow, making the small, familiar café that they would always frequent have a christmas feel to it instead. Still being summer, there was only one couple in the back of the place and one old, civilian man at the bar. And them.

Sakura didn't touch her coffee when the waitress brought it, and neither did Ino. They even forgot to say their customary thanks to the customary waitress that already knew their names.

Everything was suspended in space and time around the blonde, and the clock stopped ticking for the same amount of seconds that Sakura's heart stopped beating.

Ino stared at her from across the wooden table, and then she finally blinked, snapping back into reality and taking a sip of her dark, bitter coffee.

It was easier to take a sip of warm, homemade coffee and hide behind her long, blonde bangs than face her best friend's shocking admission. It wasn't even the admission itself that brought her to hide, it was the face she was sporting. As if it pained her a thousand times to the moon and back to say that she had helped the only man she had ever been in love with in every way possible, in a field she was extremely well-versed in, only for everything to come crumbling down as if she hadn't done anything at all.

Sasuke was crippled. He was already crippled before, in a way, with only one arm. But now, he only had use of one of his four main limbs. Only one out of four.

Ino felt at a loss of words, and it seemed like Sakura understood, because she got up and quickly excused herself to go to the bathroom. It was that time that Ino took to think things through.

What was someone supposed to do when they only had one arm to move? Sasuke was one of the most extraordinary ninjas in the world. Along with Naruto, he was faster and stronger and so much more powerful than any Shinobi ever. They could almost be considered Gods, for their regenerative powers and strength gave them the appearance of immortality.

But they weren't indestructible. Nobody had killed Sasuke, but Ino thought, right there on her seat with a solemn semblance that hid her fears, that the man was destroyed anyway. Destroyed by the idea, the reality, that he would never walk on water again, or walk along trees, or run from the clutches of the enemy. He would never feel that rush of adrenaline again. The only thing he could really do was throw shuriken and kunai—and what good would that do if he couldn't even dodge incoming attacks? Ino knew that he could perform jutsu with one hand, but Sakura had mentioned that his fingers were so messed up he couldn't get some seals right.

The more she thought about it, the more she felt for Sakura. That woman had only loved him unconditionally from the start, and she didn't deserve this. For starters, Ino knew he didn't deserve her love, and he never would, but Sakura didn't deserve to suffer so. It probably pained her right now, and would probably pain her more when she visited him later on in the day.

Ino wasn't about to let that happen. She was her best friend, and she was going to help.

When Sakura came back, Ino set to work.

"I had to assist a patient's surgery the other day," she started, taking her time to let Sakura assimilate every and each one of her words. "He had his whole right leg compromised," she lowered her eyes to the table's surface and moved her coffee around with a spoon. "He was diagnosed with lupus a few years ago, and you know how that goes."

Sakura didn't see where this was going, but she nodded nonetheless, knowing exactly the treatments for that. "Amputation or death." Her friend sighed, thinking back to her patient.

"I wish there were other alternatives. Most patients choose death. Death, Sakura, over having one of their limbs missing. Thankfully, my patient had his leg removed, and he's doing okay now." Ino looked up from the table to gaze up at her best friend, and she blinked her cotton blue eyes at her in sorrow. "I can't possibly begin to understand how he must be feeling."

Sakura knew she wasn't talking about her patient then, but about Sasuke. She bit her lower lip when she knew it was true.

"You only told me what happened. How did you find out?" Ino hesitated when asking, wanting to know the story behind his legs, but fearing the answers at the same time. Thankfully, Sakura spoke soon after she asked, her voice composed and calm.

"He stopped feeling his legs a week ago when I found him at his apartment barely conscious. When he fainted, I immediately scanned his body for anything that might have led to that. It was a shock sensing..." She took a deep breath, steadying herself by gripping her mug tightly, betraying her surface-deep, false sense of calmness. "How the cells in his legs were dormant—dead and unresponding. I stopped the spread, so it stopped at the knees."

Ino took a few seconds to ask anything again, mostly because she didn't want Sakura to feel bad or break down. She knew when her friend was on the edge of breaking down, and, today, she was just about there. It was evident in the way her lips pursed, her eyes blinked rapidly, and her hands gripped the mug tightly.

"How is he?"

But she still asked. She still asked because Sakura had been the one to break the news to her anyway, and she wouldn't have told Ino if she wasn't ready. After all, she had spent more than half a year dealing with the secret, and she had only told her now because the changes in Sasuke would be too noticeable to let them pass. Everyone would find out eventually.

Sakura finally looked up and locked eyes with her, and she felt chills at the emotion expressed in those jade eyes.

"Mostly unresponsive. I've been visiting everyday, but he's probably still assimilating that everything is going to change drastically from now on," she said. "He refuses the wheelchair I had one of my friends in the tech department do for him—specifically for him."

They shared an understanding look, and Ino reached for Sakura's hand above the table, where Sakura met it halfway with a light squeeze.

"How are you?" She asked in a softer tone, moving her thumb over Sakura's knuckles, careful about the question's response.

And Sakura didn't burst out in tears because her eyes still felt very swollen from every night after that fateful day, but she was still candid.

"I feel like shit, so I can't fathom how he must be feeling right now," she said. "I wish I could take it all away. I wish- I wish I could erase this whole thing and start anew. I..."

Taking a deep, calming breath, Sakura blinked at Ino, her eyes turning from sad to anguished in mere seconds.

"Ino, his birthday is in two weeks. No one should spend their twenty-first birthday like this."

Ino was once again at a loss of words, but she tried to sound convincing when she said, "He won't be alone this time. He has you."

Sakura had the strength to scoff at that.

.

They went through Sasuke's birthday in a flash. He only allowed Sakura and Naruto to be present. Sai didn't get to be there, but Sakura understood how they were not really that close anyway; they were only just starting to know each other. But not even Kakashi got to be there, the man who had helped him develop his lightning style and sealed his curse mark and taught him most of what he knew to this day—Sakura doubted the man even knew of his current predicament.

It was a very, very private gathering, and Sakura tried, throughout the whole evening, to look at Sasuke's face instead of his unresponsive legs, almost failing, and it proved to be easier when Naruto was there talking his ass off and distracting them both.

They ate his favourite meals at his apartment. Naruto had tried to carry him to the dining table, but Sasuke had threatened to pluck his eyes out for even thinking about it. He also refused the wheelchair again, so they had all eaten in his room.

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It was the month of August, and Sakura tried again, as every other day, to get him on the damn wheelchair. But with a different approach to the situation this time, since pleading clearly didn't seem to work with him.

So, right when she finished checking over his system for any abnormalities, she stood from the bed and looked him down, like he was a little kid in need for persuasion.

"Are you going to use the wheelchair today?"

Sasuke gave her a look, and he tensed his jaw before simply uttering, "No."

Sakura would have left it there on any other day—she would have sighed and nodded and gone off with her day—but she wasn't going to now.

"You're doing nothing here, Sasuke-kun. You're disintegrating, passing the time on your bed. Your bones are not getting enough vitamins, your skin is paler than ever, and your muscles will soon enough lose their strength. Do you really want to throw all the years of training away?"

"It's not like I have a choice."

"Yes, you do, you have a wheelchair. There's nothing wrong with using one, Sasuke-kun. I even got you the first electric wheelchair designed by Konoha because of your arms," she sighed, dropping herself at the foot of his bed, sitting down and looking up at the ceiling. When he said nothing, she closed her eyes. "You can't stay there forever."

He turned his head toward his window and muttered, "Watch me," with no interest whatsoever, as if lost in his own world of dark, jumbled thoughts.

She got up slowly, taking steps toward the end of his room and moving the wheelchair right next to his bed, right next to him. He wasn't even sparing her a glance because he was so, so terribly convinced that she wouldn't lay a hand on him in a million years. But she was done with his stubbornness; denial only ran for so long. If he thought she wasn't going to force him, he was wrong.

She gathered strength in her arms and slipped one arm under his knees and the other under his back, and lifted him with ease. A terrified look crossed over his features before he started pushing against her with all his might, being unable to do anything else, not being able to do much due to his low levels of strength—which was perfectly understandable for someone who hadn't got any sunlight, exercise, or enough food for the past weeks. She wanted him to improve, to get better, to thrive again.

"Sakura, let me down."

His voice reached her ears like velvet to the touch, but his tone was menacing, dangerous, threatening like on the verge of lashing out.

She heard him perfectly clear, and so she looked at him with a little smile that screamed of revenge out of the corner of her eye, not really paying attention to him but to the wheelchair she was approaching. "Make me."

And right after she spoke, she placed him gently on the chair, positioned his numb feet on each of the footplates, and stepped back, truly looking at him for the first time since she picked him from the bed. She was about to clasp her hands together and smile at him, tell him that it wasn't that hard to do that, tell him that the wheelchair was made for these things, but her blood ran cold before she could do any of those things.

The sight of a tear rolling down his cheek quickly made her halt any possible movements.

Sasuke was crying. Sasuke was crying and she made him cry and he never cried in front of anyone but now he was crying and-

She immediately approached him and bent down to pick him up again, and she put him on the middle of his bed gently, so gently that she didn't feel him move at all. Now the tears were falling from the sides of his eyes onto the bedsheets, rolling with gravity, and in his eyes shone an emptyness she was familiar with, but didn't want to see ever again.

"I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, please, forgive me, Sasuke-kun," she apologised quickly, rushing through the words and stumbling over them. "I didn't realise you weren't ready because it's almost been a month and I don't even know how you manage to go to the bathroom at all and I'm pretty sure you haven't showered in a long time so I just wanted to help-"

He interrupted her and said, "You've done so much to help me as is, Sakura," with a hint of pain, torment, in his voice, raspy and real. His tears didn't ellicit any sound from him, and his shoulders didn't shake, but it was still so painstakingly, goddamned real. Sakura wanted it to be all a bad dream.

He looked up to the ceiling and took in a shaky breath, closing his eyes when the words fell from his mouth, sounding more like a statement than a question. "Don't you ever get tired?"

Instead of feeling insulted and hurt, she smiled through the constricting pain in her chest. Her gut was closing in, but she swallowed hard one time and spoke.

"Of course I feel tired. I am tired, but I'll never stop."

Never stop caring; never stop trying to help; never stop loving.

And then he opened his charcoal eyes and looked at her, and he did something that had her searching desperately for air—because there was none, there was not enough, and she felt like she was suffocating.

He lifted his right arm, and with the faintest of touches, traced her cheekbone with the knuckles at the back of his hand—with the part that wasn't crooked and ugly, something Sasuke would say from time to time.

Sakura stayed glued to her spot on the bed next to him, and his pained eyes never left her own startled ones.

And then he dropped the hand as quickly as he had lifted it, and looked back at the window, away from her form.

He stayed quiet from then on, so Sakura took the cue to leave.

The next day, she didn't have to use the key to enter his apartment. He opened up with his own hand right before she got there, and when she entered all she saw was a retreating Sasuke in a wheelchair, the electric sound of the controller fading as he entered his kitchen with ease. Sakura felt her heart skip a beat, and then she got inside.

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August was ending when Naruto came bursting in Sasuke's apartment, a panting Sakura behind him, clutching at her knees. "Naruto, why did you make me sprint all the way here? You know I just got from a mission!"

"I'm sorry Sakura-chan! But we have to do this!"

"Do what?" Sasuke prompted from the living room, a quirked eyebrow present. Naruto had opened the door with the copy he had, and Sasuke had been trying to get something to eat before they came bursting in—not that he was going to tell them he couldn't reach his top drawer to get a stupid box of cereal.

They each stopped their bickering as soon as they heard his voice, and Sasuke locked eyes with Sakura for a few seconds longer than any friend should. But a part of him was glad she'd finished her week-long mission unscathed, even if she only had had to retrieve some herbs and make a deal with a neighbouring village. He knew she was capable of protecting herself, but now he would never be able to protect her anymore.

His gaze hardened. He turned around and moved to the kitchen before they could speak again.

"Hey! Where are you going?" Naruto followed and invited himself inside, dropping himself on top of a space on the kitchen counter.

Sakura closed the door and entered the kitchen as well, and looked at the opened cabinet all the way to the top of his wall. She got the only cereal box that was protruding from the shelf, knowing exactly what had been happening before they got there. "Have you eaten? I'll make you breakfast."

Sasuke nodded when she turned her head back to look at him. Her high ponytail swayed when she turned back around to prepare his bowl of cereal and milk, and he noticed she was letting her hair grow.

Naruto exclaimed he wanted cereal as well, interrupting Sasuke's observations, and then a pan was thrown his way.

"Wha- What was that for?"

"Make your own damn cereal, idiot! You have two hands."

"No fair, Sakura-chan! You're already making Sasuke's, so make mine."

"You dragged me in here and I couldn't even get to shower, so now you make your own food."

Sasuke sighed as the conversation went on and on, back and forth like an infantile chat from grown adults.

When there were three bowls on the table after much confrontation, they all started eating, and Naruto broke the peace in between bites.

"So, Sasuke, we're gonna take you outside, 'kay?"

Sasuke almost spat his mouthful of cereal on his face.

"What?" He managed to croak out. Sakura, on his left, looked as dumstruck as him.

"What do you mean?" She asked.

"We're just gonna take him out, Sak. He could use some sun and some air. I think he needs it."

"I'm not a dog," Sasuke muttered under his breath, seething at the blonde for wanting to take him out, as if he owned him.

It was Sakura who made him want to spit out his food, then.

"I think Naruto's right, Sasuke-kun. And we know that's not a common occurence." Naruto smiled brilliantly before he realised what that last statement meant, and he protested loudly, but Sasuke was only paying attention to her voice. "You need to get outside sometime, and it's so early that no one really is out anyway." She glanced at Naruto. "Let's go to the training grounds. Is that what you were thinking, too?"

Naruto swallowed his mouthful and looked back at her. "Mm? Oh! Well, I didn't think much past taking him out."

"I'm not a dog, loser," the dark-haired man reiterated, throwing the closest object to him at his face: a balled-up napkin. The damange was very low, but the price of watching the blond seethe was very high.

"Geez, I'm not into that kind of fetish, Sasuke!"

"So you're into a kind of fetish?"

"S-Shut up!"

Sakura massaged her temples slowly, only thinking that they were going to help Sasuke get outside and have some air seep into his lungs, apart from the air he already got from his windows everyday.

They got to the training grounds with no trouble—only that they took much, much longer than usual because the wheelchair wasn't as fast as they wanted it to be, but they were sure Sasuke knew that more than anyone, so they didn't comment on it.

Sakura lied down on the recently cut grass. It didn't matter if she got dirtier when she was dirty to begin with. Naruto sat next to her and looked up at the sky.

And Sasuke sat a few steps ahead, right hand gripping the metal hand rest of the chair, eyes taking everything in. His senses were overwhelmed by the different stimuli, and he suddenly thought that he had missed this so much. He had forgotten how it felt to be outside, right in the open, with no care in the world.

"Help me get on the grass," he said, softly, more to himself than to any of them. But they still heard him, and Naruto still picked him up and put him down in between them.

Sasuke looked at their content faces before laying down. The branches and leaves on top of them shielded them from the potent sun, but some rays of light still managed to filter through and touch his skin in a soft embrace. Sasuke welcomed it. He welcomed the sun, the breeze, and the soft talking between his teammates.

He welcomed the way Sakura, on his right side, intertwined their hands on the ground, and how Naruto, on his left side, clutched at his shirt at his hip. They would always be Team Seven. Sasuke knew, so he closed his eyes and drifted into the late hours of noon with them.

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Sakura was checking over him with her healing chakra while sitting in front of him. His legs were spread out in front of him; he was sitting down on the sofa sideways, his back resting on the armrest. Sakura was sitting on a little space he left for her in between his side and the sofa's backrest, almost right in front of his immaculate face.

She knew there had been no changes since the last week she checked his condition, and that could be due to the change in diet, the light exercises she was making him do, and the weekly meetings with Naruto at the training grounds, but she didn't let go of her chakra just yet—so she could look at him a little longer from up close, if she was honest with herself.

He had come back a year ago, had fought with Naruto for not being able to attend the blond's wedding, and she had suspected something was wrong from then on, from his inability to get up at the blond's punch.

From then on, things had moved pretty quickly. When she wasn't busy at the hospital, she was busy trying to control his condition. There was no point in reversing anything now because it just wasn't going to work. Her only goal now was to contain the disease so it wouldn't get worse—no one needed any more of that, she thought.

Things had been hectic during the past year, both in his life and hers.

She hadn't had any sort of time to really look at him, admire him, love him. All she had done was take care of him and make sure he didn't drop dead one day in front of her unsuspecting eyes.

So, now, she really took her time to look at him. His long eyelashes, the straight nose, the thin but tempting lips, the long bangs framing his face. She made sure to take every feature of him whole.

His eyes were closed as she worked on him like any other day, and she wondered, for a finite moment, if after all this time and all this pain she could finally take a step forward, because she felt all her steps had been backwards in the past year. All her steps forward had backfired. She wondered if she could focus on them now. She wondered if there was still a them now—surely his feelings hadn't changed that much about her, right?

She wondered if she could close the gap between them, and if he would let her. And then she wondered the question that set off the answers to all the pondering: what would she have to lose? It would certainly not hurt them. Sakura knew a little about rejection, and Sasuke would just dismiss the incident as if nothing. She would still visit him everyday, and he would still open the door for her every time.

So she moved forward slowly, the space between their bodies closing in. She closed her eyes before she could think any deeper into this, and pressed her lips against his softly, hesitantly. Her chakra faded gradually, and the hands that were hovering on the side of his head were now touching the skin there, moving across his cheeks gently.

There was no noticeable, outward reaction from Sasuke—she would have believed that if she was anybody else, but the side of her body was touching his, so she felt him tense up, and her lips were touching his, so she felt his breath hitch just as much.

She moved away shortly after moving in, only because he hadn't shown any signs of reciprocation. She opened her eyes, half-lidded with held-back desire, but open enough to show disappointment.

There was a pensive, conflicting look on his face for a second too long when she was about to apologise, but then he was the one closing the short gap between them, tasting her better now that they were both responding. She moved her lips against his with fervor but with a gentleness that he took. He took and took from her, like it was second nature, like he had been waiting to kiss her for years, and she gladly welcomed the thought. His hand touched her back and moved to her waist. Her hands moved from his cheeks to his hair and chest.

And then they were parting, breathing heavily as if they had battled for hours. Sakura had the urge to smile, giggle, and throw her hands around him all at the same time. She couldn't entertain the thought for much longer, for she opened her eyes from the still-short distance between them and looked at him.

He looked like he was in pain, his features contorting slowly to something that let her know he was hurt, so she woke up from the cloudy haze she had let herself fall into and readied herself to let her hands glow again.

"What's wrong? Where does it hurt?"

The questions seemed to make him snort dryly, without any trace of humour, and he shook his head slowly while looking away from her, brow furrowed and lips pursed.

"I didn't think you'd still..."

After knowing him for so long, she knew exactly what he meant to say. He didn't have to spell it out for her.

He thought she didn't love him, that she had moved on for some reason, that she didn't still want to spend her life with him. Her slight blush leftover from their first kiss left her face and was replaced by a frown that matched his own.

"Of course I do. What made you doubt it?" He didn't have to say it to her this time either for her to comprehend. It was only a flicker of his eyes toward his useless legs, and she hardened her eyes immediately in understanding. "Why would that change me? You know me better than that."

It looked like someone had slapped him across the face, for he widened his eyes and turned his head away, hiding his face in a veil of unruly bangs. "I don't want you... to live with this for the rest of your life."

That ellicited something else from what had been expecting. She smiled, then, unaware of the level of seriousness in his tone, as though he was kidding around. "Is this your way of proposing? Because it's horrible, try again." She started to chuckle but he looked so serious that she eventually had to stop.

It was like time stood still before he finally talked.

"You deserve something more, Sakura. I used to wonder if I was good enough for you, because of all the terrible things I've done—that's one of the reasons why I went on my redemption journey. But now," he roamed his eyes over his legs and willed them, for a second, to move, but it was to no avail. "Now I definitely know the answer to that."

"You don't get to decide that. That's my decision to make, Sasuke-kun, not yours," she said, noticing how he shifted slightly, trying to get away. She wasn't about to let him, so she turned his head with two hands on each cheek, to look at her again. If he didn't want to, she didn't care. He had to look at her when she told him.

"I'm in love with you," she felt his breath catch in his throat. "Before the war, I had moments when I thought I didn't harbour those feelings anymore, but I was fooling myself. I think I've never stopped, and I don't think I ever will. So if you want me," she looked away from him, her eyes watering against her wishes. If he rejected her now, it would hurt her more than if he rejected her after a kiss, that's for sure. "You have me. You'll always have me."

His silence prodded her to look at him once more, and she spoke again out of pure nervousness.

"You're still the man I love, no matter how many changes you go through," she smiled softly, caressing his cheeks with her thumbs. "Got it?"

"I can't protect you," he spat the words out as if he hated the sound of them leaving his mouth. She sighed, glad that this is what was troubling his mind, and not the idea that he might not want this for them anymore.

She moved the bangs from his face, moving her fingers through his hair, looking right at him as she smiled.

"I'm a tough girl, Sasuke-kun. I can protect myself."

He wasn't responding, but he was looking at her as if for the first time.

And then, after one simple nod, she felt him give in. She felt him surrender and break down his evasive walls. She felt him grab the hair at the back of her neck to guide her forward. Forward and forward, until he kissed her again.

Sakura thought that meant they had a chance.

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