Naruto Tales: The Next Uchiha | SasuSaku, NaruHina, InoShikaTema, NejiTen +

Epilogue

QOTC

Wakana: Why do you read so much?

Kakashi: It helps me forget.

Wakana: Forget what?

Kakashi: There, it works.

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Epilogue

Here I am waiting

I'll have to leave soon

Why am I holding on?

We knew this day would come

We knew it all along

How did it come so fast?

This is our last night but it's late

And I'm trying not to sleep

Cause I know, when I wake, I will have to slip away

The night has run too fast for Sasuke and too slow for Obito. For what seemed like forever, Sasuke had been staring at the pinkette in her sleep. She was snuggling next to him, her head resting into his lap. He was sitting at the edge of the bed—stroked her silky hair like he always did, when he'd used to pick her up and swung her into the air, winding the strands of her hair through his fingers.

She had been full of innocence and wonders back then, dreamy. Now holding onto her was like clinging into a titanium, a bulletproof substance that was burned in iron and hard as steel. He observed her, and heard the beating of his heart under his ear as his hands smoothed her hair. So familiar... And comforting. "Did you know," he said, "that I used to wake up every morning, convincing myself that you'd be gone?"

And when the daylight comes I'll have to go

But tonight I'm gonna hold you so close

Cuz in the daylight we'll be on our own

Does everyone look ignorant when they're asleep? Because right now this could be the girl he had a deal with a few months ago, when she told him of how despicable it is of running away. What a pair they were—full of pride, threatened of everything that terrifies them, but fiercely bound, too, into getting what they want. Desperate, but managed to make it through. He thought of the hundred moments in the hideout, her first late night shift, the night she fell asleep, that time he had to transform into Naruto and carried her home. Always arguing over puportless things, bickering their differences, yet slowly falling in love.

He watched her shift. Guilt consumes him, taking note of her exhaustion. He thought of the million things he wanted to say out loud.

"Sakura,"he murmured, "you know sometimes I've kept thinking of the possibilities if I hadn't left Konoha."

Sakura, who was paralyzed under a genjutsu, started to panic. Don't listen to him. Don't you dare.

"You and that dobe probably didn't get all that trouble to bring me back." He says. "My brother could still be alive, I would have gladly protected you from Madara. But come to think of it, I wouldn't have fallen for you in the first place." He watched a tear shed from her eye, as it landed on his finger while caressing her cheeks. Trying to figure a way to comfort her.

"Did you ever get the chance to tell him? What you truly felt even before I came back?" He asked softly. The moon was glaring at him intently, as if every living and nonliving creatures of nature outside have awakened. To hear the bedtime story. "He always cared for you, Sakura."Loved, even, but he just couldn't get to it. The Raven had known the blonde for years he'd inclined to think Naruto would have taken the advantage of stealing her, the moment he was gone. It's not true. None of this ever was. Sakura wanted to urge him, but stayed at the very spot where Sasuke was stroking her hair. "I was so lost in hatred and revenge. Maybe one day you'll open your eyes to the dark and realize how cruel the world is." The moonlight hour was beginning to fade in the horizon when he stared back at the window. Then he talked. Like those times he would stare at the ocean and feel the waves tossing in their aching feet, the sand shrouding them beneathe the shore.