Chapter Text
For the people of Konoha, Sasuke—that criminal emancipated from his hatred and punishment, released from living the rest of his life in the solitude of a prison—constituted a subject of whispers and gossip. Parents discussed this matter while conversing before sleep, fearful of failing in their task of educating their children and turning them into something akin to the mythical young man. The children themselves spoke excitedly at the mention of the village chief and, upon choosing an enemy in their games, presented Sasuke as the perfect candidate. Black, lanky hair, almost glued to his skin; dark eyes, two alleyways with neither light nor exit, and a disquieting presence, the monster that stalked them on sleepless nights, all of it becoming the image that had enveloped the tale of the last Uchiha.
In recent years Sasuke had set foot in the village several times, counted, from the shadows and in a fleeting manner. He left as soon as he entered. Impossible to track, the only one informed of his presence received him with a smile and a few words of encouragement. He observed him from his chief’s seat, with dark circles under his eyes, the blonde and curly hair barely disguising the passage of time that Sasuke had begun to notice on his face. He spoke to him in a low voice: about his children, his wife’s new dish, and about Sasuke’s own wife.
The man pretended to read the papers on his friend and chief's desk every time he heard Sakura mentioned.
His wife, who managed to achieve the title of Konoha’s best medical ninja, had been reduced to the surname of Uchiha, and a daughter, whom the man had not seen in five years since her birth. He remembered his wife vaguely, young, with pink hair and cheeks of the same color. Her green, tearful eyes pursued his conscience. It rarely happened, during the blossoming of the cherry flowers, or at night, when his mind wandered in search of solace for the sins committed.
In moments like that, Sasuke excused himself with his own sacrifice: he had given Sakura what she had wanted since they were children. He had granted her his surname, his body, and a reciprocity that, not having known how to pretend, he had left behind, escaping the village with the excuse of missions. The arrangement, fair before his eyes, with Sakura obtaining the right to call him her husband, and Sasuke the opportunity to restore his clan with the only woman who had refused to discard him, had ended as a reward for the pink-haired girl who had waited for him for so many years. Sasuke had opposed that idea at first, an unethical and unnecessary occurrence. Uniting paths with a woman had presented itself as a burden, and her supposed beauty, a contradiction to his own judgment. He had related it to his missions, teachings, and the lack of an exemplary family, until, in his meditations, he realized the true reason, which only contributed to the decision to marry Sakura that Sasuke had ultimately made.
“Sakura looks quite sad, you know? You could, I don’t know, visit her, she’s your wife after all…” Naruto had told him during one of his visits, the last one, before disappearing from the radar again for several years.
“It’s not rational,” Sasuke affirmed. He looked out the window, past his friend, the mere mention provoking the urge to leave.
“You’re a lost cause, truly,” the blonde sighed, resting his head on one of his hands and observing the black-clad figure before his eyes. He narrowed them and, failing to find an evident solution, let out a sigh that denoted his weariness with the matter. “At least tell me if there’s anything you want to tell her, I don’t know, wasn’t it her birthday recently? Really, Sasuke…”
“There isn’t,” he denied, refocusing his gaze on the pile of papers on his friend’s desk and, upon seeing him yawn, unable to bear staying in that room any longer, wanting to escape that conversation and the sight of the strongest man in the village, subjected to dark circles and tired smiles, he decided the time to leave had come. “I’m leaving,” he declared.
Turning toward the door, he stopped before exiting. His feet, glued to the ground, urged him to stay, to say something that would silence Naruto’s constant insistence on softening him toward his wife. The silence that settled between them, sustained by the night and accompanied by the moonlight, helped to restrain Sasuke’s impulse and desire to open his mouth. The scene in which he heard his own voice as he excused himself, explaining his reasons hesitantly and defending the little humanity he had left, felt far from pleasant. Admitting, despite everything, that the title of terrible husband and absent father had been attributed to him due to his insensitivity and ignorance was easier for him. He opened the door, letting the shadow of his cloak follow him and Naruto’s eyes, blue and bright in his memory, bid him farewell in quietness.
Slipping away into the night and leaving the village, a simple task for a ninja of his caliber, should have taken him a couple of minutes. The dust beneath his feet and the moon rising above his head served as his witnesses: the only company that did not seek to torment him with reality. His feet, however, disobedient, stopped when he spotted the outline of a familiar house. Years ago, Sasuke had cursed his own body, which had decided to defend Naruto more than once, to stop himself from killing him, or to serve as support against his will. His hands and feet constantly betrayed him, interposing themselves to protect children who only hindered his missions or, this time, guiding him to slide toward the balcony of the house where his wife should’ve been sleeping.
Before allowing himself a glimpse, he looked at the moon, searching for the answer in that silver and cold light falling over the city. He wished to be like the stars, distant and out of reach. He wondered, for the umpteenth time, if his mother was watching him from there, scolding his inability to stay by a woman’s side, or if his father, that strong and pragmatic man, was proud of Sasuke’s capacity to set aside his feelings in order to preserve the clan. Amidst this, he preferred not to think about his brother, who had sacrificed himself to save the village of Konoha, knowing that he, Sasuke, was incapable of sacrificing himself for something as simple as a marriage, a woman, and a daughter.
Sasuke took a look through the window glass, recognizing the symbol of his own clan, and pink hair, loose over the shoulders of a woman. She had gained weight. The silhouette Sasuke carried in his mind was replaced by this new image, her back turned, holding under the meager light of the living room a being with whom they both shared blood. He observed her and, upon noticing that Sakura was about to turn around, he jumped from the balcony, slipping away into the streets. The determination of his steps brought him to the village exit. As he started his way out, his accelerated breath pushed him to the comprehension of a certainty he had been hiding inside for five years:
He refused to see his wife’s face, which must have changed as much as her silhouette seen from behind, and his daughter, whom he didn’t even know if he had the right to claim as his own.
During nights like that, when his body moved by habit among trees and his mind knew the destination of his mission, Sasuke’s thoughts began to swirl inside him. The encounter with Naruto and his reckless visit to Sakura seemed to have worsened the effect this time. His thoughts spun, interspersing memories of his adolescence with the tranquil life he had left behind by deciding on solitude. The trips between his missions, where time and his surroundings favored his capacity to begin analyzing his life, sometimes incited him to absurd ideas. Suddenly, finishing a mission and returning to a home where he was expected presented itself as tempting but, when the moment arrived, devoid of fights, excitement in his body from combat, and strategies to occupy his time, the idea vanished as soon as he set foot in the village of Konoha for a new report.
Having to confine himself in a village with people who saw him as a dirty, bothersome, and cruel crow, along with the calmness of a house that would force him to waste his abilities, and the constant memory of his indifference towards his wife, seemed like irrational options. He sometimes thought he could do it, if only to educate his daughter, discarding the option the next second, lacking family memories that weren't stained by the ravages of war. He had spent time around children, saving them from trafficking rings or fulfilling specific assignments, but none of these cases could compare to the matter of raising his daughter. Sasuke had grown up surrounded by hatred, stripped of his will when he was still a child and forced to fight a war not so long after.
Evoking his parents before the tragic massacre served him little. If his life prior to the event were examined, composed of the constant search for his father's approval, the scarce displays of love he had received from his mother and brother, whose sacrifice had shown him as much love as hatred, would be incapable of substituting all that damage that had permeated him. He refused to pity himself, and yet, he tried to ignore his supposed family due to his own weakness. For this reason, he eventually came to the conclusion that teaching Sarada, his daughter, to be a good person, could be achieved by a woman like Sakura, who had presented patience, love, and perseverance toward Sasuke for so many years.
Sasuke had recognized in Sakura's firmness that which had led his brother to sacrifice his life for the village. He had seen her shed tears and interpose herself for a feeling she had declared as love before the altar. Her hands, which had healed dozens of ninjas Sasuke had sworn to exterminate, had taken his, and, with a smile, the woman had declared her feelings. Sasuke, incapable of understanding the woman and what she saw in him, had nodded in silence at that time. Aware of the situation and the titles that had been imposed on him after the war, Sakura's determination seemed somewhat stupid to him, and yet, he had responded with apparent reciprocity.
He had known Sakura for most of his life. In his situation, having committed to resurrecting the clan, it would have been irrational to waste the opportunity of someone still willing to bear his offspring and the surname of his clan. Due to this, he accepted the marriage, mending the years he had ignored the young woman, thus paying the debt that Sakura had deposited with him by declaring her feelings.
The first day after his wedding, Sasuke had fixed his eyes on the ceiling, staring at it until the sun was high and, afterward, he had turned his face until he found his wife's. He reviewed her features, fine and attractive, as Naruto and a couple of other young men had remarked in their time. He thought about how fragile her body looked, like that of any woman he had seen before and had finally had the opportunity to touch the previous night. He had held it between his fingers, which had sunk into the opposite skin. The tale of pleasure he had read in books seemed exaggerated to him, and the texture of a woman’s essence had paralyzed him as soon as he got to feel it. Guided by Sakura's voice, he had ended up joining her, despite the rigidity of his own body, which had been excused with his inexperience in the matter. As he moved, he had not known how to identify whether the urgency to pull away and the inability to breathe should be attributed to bodily pleasure, which, in his memories, had been replaced by moans he found too high-pitched, hands exaggeratedly thin, and a body whose viscous and repulsive warmth had led him to postpone any further encounters with his wife.
After that first night, Sasuke thought that, should the matter of divorce arise, he wouldn’t blame Sakura, granting her and himself the liberation from that marriage that he had accepted, and that he lacked the right to dismiss in guidance of his own desire.