empathy (rewritten 2019)

第七班

うちはサスケ

Love, a word he never understood. A word that rolled off his tongue as foreign as a stranger's name, a word so real in the eyes of his dying brother against the bloodied rock, a word so elusive in the far cries of the girl on the bench. And the less he could understand it, the less he could understand why she, of all people, could cry for him one year and applaud him at his wedding the next.

Sakura nearly died for him, for love. A pathetic gesture of standing before a deadly thunder, unmoving in that murderous face of his, holding a kunai that wasn't meant for him. Kill her and you can come with me, he'd told her, and as blind as she could ever be, she unsheathed that kunai, staring down at his redhead with only the love in her eyes.

And even as his brother died, bleeding onto him a final gesture of love, he still couldn't understand. How could love be so powerful, when Itachi had thrown it away for what he called power, when Itachi told him loving was weak, when he told him he had to throw everything away for another pedestal higher. And in the end, when his death told the simple truth, Sasuke still could not understand why love was beyond what one could ever say.

But now, staring at his wife on the porch, braiding their daughter's raven hair, he could understand. Love, in the tiniest ways like love on the forehead and love on his wife's lips and love, in the grandest of ways like leaving for a better life and dying by the hands of it. And, though weeks after her death, he could understand Sakura's love, and how Sakura had loved him the same through all the years, but loved him in a way that let him go. Yet maybe, in the end, love was the only way she could go. Perhaps if he'd showed that he cared, maybe then...

"Come on," Karin smiled, hand in hand with Sarada. "Let's go in and eat dinner, okay, Sasuke-kun?"

うずまきナルト

"I don't want you to live on believing only you were responsible for her death. A handful more believe that whatever importance they had in their life, they killed her. That a simple word or some look or some action or some childhood drama killed her. I want you, only you, to know something."

"Tou-san, Tou-san, look!" Himawari cried, her hand out in front of her. "Look, I got a papercut!"

She grabbed him by the robes and pulled him down to her height, a frown on her face. "Oh, a papercut?" He chuckled and looked her finger over. "Nothing something like this can fix. And, there! All better?" He pressed his lips against the cut and smiled as her frown broke to match his.

"Yep! Thanks, tou-san!" And she ran back into the compound, laughing as she bumped into her mother.

Hinata slid the porch door open, setting a glass of water beside him. "Magic healing powers, huh?" She giggled as she took the seat beside him. "She's been nose-deep in those books you got her the entire morning. I tried getting her to take a break, but, she's so stubborn, like you."

Naruto took her hand and squeezed it tight. "Books, huh? She's gonna learn everything she needs before she enrolls in the Academy," he murmured.

"Book smarts aren't gonna take her far, though," Hinata added with a chuckle and Naruto couldn't help but think of a March Twenty-Eighth, some time months ago, now an old newspaper stashed in some forgotten records. A laugh now faded, he looked off into the horizon from the porch, and squeezed her hand once more.

"She's gonna do great things," Naruto whispered. "I'm gonna buy her more books if that's what she wants."

It was a week after the Cherry Blossom festival by then. It ended with a drunken talk from Keiko and Naruto walking home to his wife and kids, sober by the time he reached the house, and kissing his two kids goodnight by the cheeks.