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gotta get that message home;
the message
by dear aerith;
and i love you please,
come home

It was the first day of Team 7.
Half way to the designated place, he had been ambushed by at least ten girls, thrown at with boxes of chocolate by at least three of them, (and he didn't even like chocolate) and got at least fifteen love notes. It was the most ridiculous, shameful display he had ever seen. This is bull, he thought irritably, as he angrily had to drag a bag of notes to the trashcan before heading off to meet Kakashi, that class-idiot Naruto, and that annoying fangirl. Things were definitely looking up, he thought bitterly.

"Hey teme, you're late." Naruto's whiny, scratchy voice added to the migraine as he grunted, walking past him to the corner of the roof. "Shut up, loser." He grumbled, as he tried to ignore the clearly obvious scooting of that pinkhaired girl, blushing and twiddling her thumbs like an idiot. I thought I lost them on the streets. Guess there's one left, he thought exasperatedly, as she gushed aloud, "Ano, Sasuke-kun I'm really exc-" She began, but with a POOF, their sensei appeared, holding a book and already beginning to make excuses. Massaging his temples, Sasuke tried very hard not to set either of his teammates on fire, let alone Kakashi, whose laziness was starting to piss him off.

Do we really need to introduce ourselves? Unless they have short-term memory, we've seen each other in class. And do I have to introduce myself? There's no point. Bullshit. He thought crossly, as if on cue, the pinkhaired girl raised her voice, clasped her hands self-consciously to her chest and wriggled like a worm in her spot. "I'm Haruno Sakura and my interests are..." Sasuke didn't miss the furtive look in her green eyes, and either she could sense his mood radiating off of him like electric sparks, or she was just stupid, but she looked away quickly, trailing off as she sheepishly blushed herself into silence.

And we made progress, he thought after the whole ordeal with scathing sarcasm, the dark-haired boy ignoring Naruto who was babbling like some crazy idiot, Kakashi, who was trying to make some sort of idiotic excuse, and he didn't even want to think about the obnoxious Sakura, who kept lingering around like some sort of shadow. Speaking of-

"Sasuke-kun?" Just like that, Sakura had been behind him the whole time? Had he even noticed? Her sandals shuffled awkwardly, the girl fidgeting so much he wondered if she was ill, the way her fingers trembled as they laced themselves into her bright cherry-petal hair. She really was unique, he'd give her that, but it only made her that more annoying. Still, what was she doing here?

"Hn."

And just like that, Sakura sheepishly bit her lip and smiled up at him.
"Um...I was wondering, would you like to have dinner? You heard sensei, we'll be getting up early tomorrow and you should get some -"

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"Not interested. " He said boredly, not even waiting for her to reply, he turned on his heel and thought her an idiot for asking. Instead of pleading, crying, or doing some other weird shit most of the fangirls would have done, this fangirl was silent (thank god) but then-

"Ah, okay! Maybe tomorrow!"

Florred, he found himself staring with a raised eyebrow, clearly annoyed.

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The shadows were everywhere in his house, the streets were emptied out, and there wasn't a single breath to be heard. He felt like he could swallow the entire place up with a gulp and it would disappear. Better yet, he could disappear with it, if not for the reminder of cold hands and a mocking voice in the back of his head.

(But deep down the boy wanted to return to simpler times, where he could be praised, where food was always on the table, where the lights were on at night and a mother was always right down the hall. Where father was on his way to seeing his potential, where big brother didn't lock himself away and where he felt love. Where the streets were full, where there were voices.)

Now there are none.

Opening the screen door, he checked the fridge only to blink a bit surprised at the basket of tomatoes waiting for him within.
Even more, the crumpled note at the bottom, a bit smeared by the dampness of the fruits but the letters were clear, simple, and readable.

Sasuke-
I love you every day!

There was ice at the back of his neck. Who had managed to sneak into his house like this? Another fangirl? Honestly, how irritating.
Tossing the note into the trash, he eyed the tomatoes thoughtfully.

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And took a bite.

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Uchiha Sasuke was thirteen years old when the first note came.
And every day after that, they never ceased to arrive.

"Teme where are you getting these letters?" Naruto muttered, frowning some as he glanced at his backpack. Sasuke let out a groan as he sat beside Sakura, and Naruto, taking out a rather crumpled up sheet of paper. "Is it my turn to watch?" Sakura asked out of the blue, and they all glanced at her with a slightly raised eyebrow. Long-haired Sakura, prideful of her strands and her brain, wasn't the best fighter. Frankly, she couldn't fight period, Sasuke thought flatly, and if she expected to be a good watcher then..she could forget it.

But still, Sakura seemed intent on doing so, and with a sigh, Sasuke grunted. "Whatever. Just don't stray too far. It'll be a pain if we have to watch you and Tazuna." He muttered, and he could see a part of Sakura's forehead crease, there was a sort of fierceness in her eyes as she managed to offer a weak smile. "I appreciate the concern, Sasuke-kun. I'll be back soon." And Naruto turned his head to glare at him. "Teme! What the hell was that for? Sakura-chan can handle herself?" And he managed to snort slightly. "Hn." But Sasuke didn't watch Sakura's shoulders slump and sag, or the way Naruto went back to the old letters in his backpack.

"I get one everyday, without fail." He said tonelessly, glancing up at the slightly rainy sky, tossing one into the river. Naruto scowled. "Bastard, you should find who it is!" But Sasuke shook his head. "..You realize how hard that would be right? Close to impossible." He muttered, thinking of the girls stalking his steps back in Konoha with a shiver. He wondered vaguely if it was Sakura, but she would have told him something like this flatout.

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A few days later, (a letter in each day),
Sasuke lay on a bridge in the cloudy sky covered in needles.
Weight pressed on his chest and as he sank into the black, he heard someone call his name.
It was that annoying voice, choked and stammering. He vaguely remembered that it hadn't been raining
the last time he had seen light but now it was pouring on his cheeks and he couldn't move.

Opening his eyes blearily, he realized with utmost certainty that Sakura was leaning over him, sobbing, tears wide in her eyes and the color of them muted, graying and his chest hurt. Grunting, he muttered, "You're heavy, Sakura." And just like that, Sakura started to sob more, pulling him up against her and weeping into his shoulder. Scowling, Sasuke realized he couldn't move to push her off, but at the same time this complacency didn't bother him as much as he thought.

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Sakura always hovered nearby over him that night. Naruto too, he thought begrudgingly, as Kakashi helped dress his wounds, as Tazuna shook his head staring down at him. "That girl loves you something fierce, kiddo." And Sasuke grunted, (that needle was deeper in than he thought) as he simply closed his eyes and said in response,

"She's annoying."

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Later that night Sasuke checked his backpack again. The letters had been emptied out, save for one slightly crumpled piece of paper, the paper was watered out a bit, like it had been dropped in a puddle. The same clear handwriting greeted him.

Sasuke-
I love you every day!

As if the writer knew, Sasuke began to fold it, only to see in smaller print:

But I really love you today.

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"This is so annoying."

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(another note floating in the river)

With the Chuunin exams underway, Sasuke figured he should get some supplies for their mission, only to find that he had bumped into Sakura in the store. He stared at her tousled pink hair, her light eyes, how her still trembling hands reached to pull some of it down as she beamed at him. "Sasuke-kun!" She sang, turning to wave her backpack close to him. "Shopping too, right? I got some tomatoes for you! I think they might be good later..I mean for the first few days. Now where's the ramen.." She muttered, before turning sheepishly. "U-Um not for me, for Naruto..don't worry he's still stupid but..I don't want to hear him going on withdrawal and that'll affect the mission..now where are those books that Kakashi-"

A pause.

"They're that way." He gestured to the aisle behind him, a few ways down there were books. The look on Sakura's face shouldn't have been so bright, so jubiliant. She looked as if he had given her the world, and with a beam, she happily cried, "Thank you Sasuke-kun! You're so helpful!" And she bounced down the street towards them.

Sasuke felt like his eyes were burning, even if the sun was behind him that day.

Sasuke-
I love you every day!

Without fail, it appeared in his shopping bag. Looking at the adoring eyes around him, he wondered which girl and realized that was impossible to do when all of them were giving him that creepy gooey-eyed stare. Like lovelorn, sick patients in a hospital, like he was the doctor and the cure all in one. Somewhere in his mind someone told him that Sakura didn't look at him like that.

Somewhere in his mind someone told him that Sakura looked at him more like she was the doctor.

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Sometimes the letters were different. When he awoke in the Forest of Death trembling and ashen, he remembered a warm hand. Cold was the air around him, but somewhere, he felt someone was fighting. Someone was wanting him to pull out. Even as he screamed in pain, Sakura didn't let go of his hand. She was so annoying then. But he didn't want her to go away. Because she was warm.

When he awoke, he couldn't remember a lot of things. Less could he actually feel much except take note of a few facts. Sakura was bleeding, her lips, her nose, her apple-eyes. Sakura's hair was short, and what was left lay in bloodied strands on the ground. Or the way her knuckles were caked in dirt and blood, and he realized that Sakura could maybe fight after all.

Sasuke-

I love you every day!
Be strong!

There were bloodstains on the paper.

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"Did you get another love letter, temmeee?"

Naruto asked him once out of the blue. But Naruto was strong, and he was so much lazier.
Who needed letters over power? Power that could make him disappear? Make Itachi disappear?
Besides he remembered the letters by heart now. He remembered the four words,
they were as consistent as Sakura's obvious crush.

"Doesn't matter if I did or not. They say the same thing anyway."

.

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As if to challenge him, the note he unbiddingly read before he went to bed said,

Sasuke-

I love you every day!

..

:).

And for once he was grateful for the shadows because they didn't see the emotion or the warmth pooled in his chest
beneath layers and layers of ice and bone.

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Day after day, he got letters. Every day without fail. He didn't know why he got them. It was borderline stalkerish, borderline absurd. A line of privacy invaded countless times. And yet..and yet-
When was the last time he had read those words? So stubbornly written over and over again? His mind dismissed it as a stalker, a fangirl who went beyond the call, but he recalled how they got to him. Like that one day when Kakashi returned from visiting Sakura who had taken on Gaara of all people. The letters had been scrawled and messy, like the hand had trembled.

Instead of laughing, Kakashi only smiled some, that smile that made his eye turn to a half-moon. "Someone is very stubborn, ne, Sasuke?" And placed it in his hands, where Sasuke threw it into the trash, more angry that Sakura was in the hospital because he was too weak to save her ass like he always did.

Eventually though, Sasuke lost sight of the letters. Naruto was strong now. Too strong. And he had been lenient, he realized. Complacent. Kakashi wasn't even showing him half the power the Sharingan should have been able to bestow. A bit of resentment was even in him, that he, a non-Uchiha, could weild it better than him. Or how Sakura, who had nearly drowned, instead of simpering and running to him with her arms, had been saved by Naruto instead.

There were so many what-if's and possibilities that Konoha couldn't expand. He had been in the warmth too long. That sickly sweet warmth that made him remember how his home used to be, and he realized that he was trailing farther away from the goal. To disappear.

So with this in mind Sasuke pressed his hand to the back of Sakura's neck. Silencing the cries, cutting off the string that connected him to something warm. He wondered why he had been so upset, as he lay her on the bench like a dried-up flower, her face still streaked with tears.

Sasuke-
I love you every day!
You are strong.

The letter was buried at the bottom of the backpack like that last month's worth of messages.
A few days later, Sasuke cuts off the final string and leaves Naruto alone in the rain.
There is a note in Naruto's pocket, instructions to give this to Sasuke.

He might have wondered if it was her if he could find his heart, but he didn't need it anymore.

So he threw it away.

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two years later

"Aww, Sasuke-kunnn...some little bitch wrote you a letter! But it's so creepy! It's only four words!" Karin's voice was something he usually droned out, the same way he had Naruto's voice or Sakura's eyes when they had met last. There was a word he'd describe to use them, but he didn't remember it. "It's the same as the one before yesterday, Karin." Suigetsu muttered with a snort. "Or did you forget the bird that was hovering around here yesterday with it in it's talons?"

Juugo, who was usually quiet, managed aloud, "Did it say where it was from? On it's leg perhaps?" And Karin rolled her eyes. "Who cares who it's from? Sasuke-kun wouldn't waste his time bothering with some stupid letters, right Sasuke? " But he was more focused on locating this bird.

After a week's worth of letters, Sasuke had made camp with his team, and saw a shape hovering in the sky.
Without a second glance, he watched it land at his feet and slit it's throat.

The note was the same, he supposed boredly, not particularly feeling anything.
Was he supposed to? In more 'frivoulous' days he might have thought something of it, but instead,
it merely said the same thing,

Sasuke-
I love you every day.
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They kept coming though. More birds. Instead of killing the first, he just let them come. There was no point. He couldn't trace the source, even if he wanted to. Besides, he didn't have to read them. It was ridiculous. What a childish thing to do. This in mind, he felt the trail getting warm. Itachi was around.

And so was the truth.

Somehow the ice that had become his armor, his strength, turned into a sick, black fire inside his chest after that moment, when his brother lay at his feet and told him how things were, how horrible, how wicked true ninja were, how worthless Konoha was, how everyone was laughing stupidly oblivious to everything. To what his brother had done. This time?

He did kill the bird. He slaughtered it.

The letter remained intact in blood-smeared purity. He ripped it to pieces, feverishly throwing it into the fire that didn't compare to the black flames inside his chest. Konoha would fall. They were unworthy, hypocrites. Liars. As he walked ahead to scout, he felt thrill in the kill, the blood, was warm (he forgot the first warmth he had felt since that night, the one with lily white skin) and he didn't realize that a letter hadn't appeared today. Then again he was close to Konoha..would any risk sending one to a criminal so close to his home?

But instead, no, instead, there was Sakura, standing between the thicket of fresh spring grass, in the shadow of the trees, eyes fierce, savage. Determined. She looked feverish, sick like he felt, but he ignored that fact. Sakura was a nuisance, a fly that had needed to be crushed. And after all, he had a long list of elimination to do, didn't he?

They were laughing..

"Sakura. I don't remember you being this stupid. Why are you here?"

He mused.
But Sakura instead, only looked at him with those sick eyes,
and said,

"To deliver a message."

And she charged. Sakura's fists were formidable, if he had been the same boy he had been years ago, but he wasn't, and with this in mind did he dodge each blow, peppering her body with his own, marveling that blood was darker than her red-red shirt, and he wondered if this was the source of that irritating warmth she had given him all those years ago.

"If words won't reach you, I have to tell you!"
She said to him, the earth splitting beneath her feet, as she began to run to him again. It was almost slow, how he was drawing his blade, and in all honesty, he knew that Sakura had grown somewhat, so this shouldn't have been something she couldn't have noticed.

(But her fists were loosening and her arms weren't taut like a string, no, they were outstretched in the final instant, and Sasuke didn't feel the burning then, he felt the warmth on his skin, the tickle of something soft against his face, and realized vaguely that Sakura hadn't stopped. )

And his sword hadn't moved it's position. So why couldn't he see it?

"I..I..wanted to tell you, " Sakura continued, and in her annoying voice, (yes he remembered that word, he used to say it all the time, all the time-), she took a breath and he watched the dark red on his gloves, his sleeves. Now he could see it. So Sakura had seen it, he thought distantly, since the world had become white and garbled and he didn't know why. She had seen it and it saw her and they met together against his chest sword moist and red on the ground, where Sakura looped her lily white arms wet with blood around his neck, and sighed a wet sigh as flowers and metal touched his nose. Somewhere he felt the crinkling of paper as her gloved hand reached into his robe pocket and placed it on the spot his heart would be. And she spoke, her voice wet and still so bright and happy. It shouldn't have sounded so happy,but this was Sakura, Sakura Sakura-

And she whispered six words.

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"Sasuke, I loved you every day."

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I listened to Never Be The Same - Fight Inside- Red
A Message - Coldplay.
I feel like this is what will happen. :( Sasuke is a jerk.

Please please please review! I worked really hard. :(;;
Oh and be sure to give me a prompt for Keep Breathing Darling.
I'm not sure why I wrote this, but I kept thinking of this while reading recent manga chapters.

Review! c: