You don't get to decide what I can or can't deal with.
It was already affecting you during the labyrinth, wasn't it? That was irresponsible of you. What if something had happened, or you'd gotten worse while we were searching? You put us both in danger.
（ abruptly, she's a maelstrom of little hurts. she's never quite managed to stop being that girl who had lost the two people she was closest to, almost overnight. first sasuke, gone to orochimaru, leaving her standing near the city gates and then naruto leaving with jiraiya... the loneliness had swallowed her whole. even knowing, rationally, it wasn't as bad as what both of them had been through... when it's a pain you haven't learned to live with, it becomes the centre of your world.
tears blur her vision and are vehemently rubbed away as she continues: ）
You're such an idiot! What would have happened if the disease progressed too far to be helped? Would you have even told me before then? Or would you have just left the city and never come back and made me search for you until I found your corpse?
（ why don't you understand my feelings? she types once, and then deletes. no, her mentioning her love for him has always been the thing to push him away. she's smarter now. but it doesn't mean she doesn't feel it, that desolate, wailing grief borne of constant disregard and dismissal. can you mourn something you've never had?
except — it's not even about romance anymore. she just wants her friend. they were that first, weren't they? once upon a time. ）
[He endures the words, unsure whether he was anticipating them or if he thought Sakura might simply end the conversation. It is... complicated, and without the buffer of Naruto now between them, he's standing on uncertain ground.
He's hurt her, and he's never seemed to know how to stop hurting her. Or even how to mend the existing wound. It feels like a dark, dragging pressure — one he's come to recognize as guilt.]
I was aware of the danger and my own state, that's why I brought you with me. But it was irresponsible not to give you that information so you could prepare yourself in kind. At the time it was less important than finding Naruto. I didn't want to distract you.
Currently, there's still no cure. I've looked. I am already outside Stygia. I don't intend for you to have to discover me that way. I would have told you [hesitation, like a wall] at the end.
[There's honesty he's still shielding about his reasons for this, but having hardly come to terms with it himself, he cannot take it anywhere near her now.]
（ the offense is almost palpable through text alone. maybe they're both lucky this wasn't done in person, the encroachment of her shadow is hard enough to hold back like this. it breaks over her like a surf. ）
I am not a child! Do you somehow think I can't worry about you both at once? Stop saying you're doing things for my benefit, that's just a convenient excuse for a man that's never cared once about my feelings.
（ it's a cruel thing to say, but in the moment it feels so viciously good she's not even sorry. ）
We're equals, Sasuke, and I deserve to be treated as such.
（ does she get another phone if she breaks this one, tune in next week to find out. ）
Go to McCoy. I don't care if there's anything to be done or not. Either that, or I'm coming to find you, and I guarantee you'll appreciate my approach a lot less than his.
[She's never spoken to him this way, which is his first clue that there might be darker influences at work — but the possibility stands at odds with so much time and distance between them. Perhaps he simply doesn't know Sakura anymore at all. Since he left Team 7 and Konoha behind, she was freed to become someone else. A woman of her own standing and not another little girl chasing little boys who didn't want them. He had wanted her to forget him completely, but somehow she could not, whether dragged along by Naruto's explosive force or her own fantasy.
The closest he'd ever felt to Sakura was when she had tried to end his life.
We're equals. For a moment, he hears the old, familiar answer in his own thoughts: 𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐞? On the battlefield they are not, and for most of his life that was all that mattered to him. Becoming strong enough to kill Itachi or die in the process. And he achieved it, and now he has all the power in the world — and no other seeming purpose. Not like Sakura with her clinic by the docks. Not like Naruto, all of Konoha on his shoulders.
Wherever Naruto has gone, he should be there too. If he has died, then Sasuke should die too. He doesn't see what other point there is. Why cure himself? Why not simply give in to this world's crushing force?
（ of course he'd ignore everything she's saying and change the topic to whatever suits him in the moment. it doesn't even occur to her it might be something born of concern. the boy who protected her in the land of waves, in the forest, from gaara — when was the last time she saw a glimmer of him at all? she'd been so hopeful at the valley of the end, that morning the sun was rising and blood was on the air, but then he'd spent a year locked away, and then he'd left.
atonement was just an excuse, wasn't it? if he'd meant it, he would have stayed and worked where it mattered. ）
Are you hoping I haven't so you can justify my behaviour as the influence of my Shadow? It isn't. I'm furious with you.
Maybe you did. I asked Naruto as you suggested, but he said no.
[What else should he say? And then he was gone. And I kept seeing him everywhere, and he was blaming me for it. There's no point to making Sakura pity him.]
（ he needs to stop asking her that question. every time he does it makes little tendrils of foolish hope blossom somewhere in her chest, twisting around her lungs like ivy, choking out breath. it's only sheer luck, she thinks, that she's not being affected by hanahaki too. but if not luck, it does make her wonder if at some point, when she wasn't looking, those feelings... did they stop...? she's lived alongside her love for him for so long, she doesn't think she'd know what to do with herself if it wasn't there anymore.
but it's becoming harder to say if what she loves is man or memory. ）
Yes. After Naruto went missing, before we went looking for him... I thought it would be prudent to have the additional stability of that bond to help. I knew I would be vulnerable if we couldn't find him.
[She was always more practical than Naruto, so it doesn't surprise him to hear that she's found someone to trust in this world.
... Would he have asked her? Even Sasuke isn't certain — caught still in that spiraling grief at his friend's disappearance, he thinks it would be fine to let Oblivium consume him. But his Shadow is a problem for others, too, as he's now seen. He doesn't know.]
（ being honest with him has never gotten her desired result. being vulnerable has only gotten her hurt. she's not ready to give up yet, and so after a long period of silence, she types a tentative message. her response is weariness wrapped up in so many things that have been festering for years. old wounds, badly healed. ）
I want you to care.
To be jealous, or angry, or something. You've always been indifferent to me. I'm sorry I'm not as good as Naruto is at understanding you, but I want to be. You're never going to let me, are you?
[His response comes at length, after a struggling period of thought. He wonders how much Sakura knows about the Curse of Hatred. How, even after everything that happened with Naruto, he still doesn't know if he can trust himself to feel anything for anyone. Especially here — a world designed to exploit those weaknesses, feed upon them.]
I wouldn't have asked about the soulmate bond if I didn't.
Naruto doesn't always understand me either. And I don't know how to make that easier for him. When we fight, sometimes that feels like the only way we can communicate.
Where you and I stand, it's changed so much. [Do you still love me?] I can't tell whether my actions and words toward you will help or hurt. It seemed better to keep my distance.
（ she reads that over several times, almost as if the words are written in a foreign tongue she can't hope to comprehend. they don't resolve into sentiment until some time after her third pass, and then her mouth presses into a thin, unhappy line.
(it's what she wanted, isn't it? something from him, she'd said.)
so why does she feel guilty and rotten for having gotten him to admit to it? she should feel elated. instead, there's a leaden feeling in her belly and she's beset by a cold that cleaves to her marrow, eerily reminiscent of the claustrophobic pressure of his chakra when he'd used genjutsu to drive a fist through her chest. ）
'Seemed better' to you. Did you ever think about asking me? The whole time we've been in Stygia I've been trying to tell you, we're still teammates and I care about you.
I know I wasn't...
（ that gets sent, though it's an obviously unfinished text. hard to see the enter button when your vision is blurred from tears. moments later, a second follows: ）
I wasn't always kind to you. I didn't think about what you wanted or needed. I was selfish, and I didn't take the time to understand your pain. For years, I thought there was something wrong with me, because I would have given you anything, done anything for you if only you'd stayed and it wasn't enough. But I recognize now that I was making my feelings your responsibility. It wasn't fair of me. I didn't know what I was asking of you back then.
Sasuke, I miss my friend. I miss the person who helped me and protected me. We used to smile together, right? The three of us. We used to joke and laugh, and look out for one-another. I miss that. I've been missing that for more of my life than I even had it.
If you won't, or can't accept my feelings, I'll live with that. But can we just not be strangers to each other after all this time?
[Reading over the message is difficult. The emotions are difficult, tender and soft-hearted sentiment expressed in what Sakura tells him now, so changed from the years he's lived only on cold fury. He was not looking for an apology or explanation. He had not thought he felt any particular way about how Sakura had treated him. It should be reversed. If she wasn't kind, then wasn't he far worse? Why couldn't he return her feelings? Anyone else in the world would want the attention of a pretty, smart, capable girl like her. There was something irrevocably broken in him, and he had naively believed that killing Itachi would fix it.
It's not her fault.]
Both of us were children then. You shouldn't blame yourself for not knowing. I don't hold anything against you. At the time, all I could see was Itachi. I didn't care about anything or anyone else.
Sakura, I don't know if I can be that person again. It doesn't mean that I'm unwilling to try. [Hesitation, in the span of a moment.] Your feelings aren't something I can return, and even if I could, there's a serious risk that I will hurt you again. It is part of the reason I left the village — I don't trust myself. Naruto knew it, and he said he would stop me if I tried...
It's worse here. I've already attacked two civilians without provocation. I don't know if finding a soulmate will help, or if it will only open that person to the same risk.
（ her immediate instinct is to argue, to promise all the love in the world the same way she used to. to swear that it's not about hurting her or not, that she'll help him learn to trust himself again — but intellect calms instinct, and finally — ）
I'm not asking you to be that person again. We've both changed too much to go back. If there was mourning to be done for who you used to be, I've already done that years ago. The only direction for us now is forward.
（ even the thought of finding him and killing him had meant setting certain things aside. she isn't like naruto, who can drag anyone back from the howling precipice of madness. she made her choice then, and she'd make it again now if she had to — the difference is, she wouldn't be so foolish next time, overestimating her own skill while underestimating his. she'd thought that sentiment might get her close enough to kill him, but his cold disregard had shocked her, even then. ）
As for soulmates, I think it helps. At least, it helps more than it hurts. But I understand the concern of being at risk and not wanting to endanger anyone else. Do you have anyone else you could see yourself as being compatible with? I don't believe there's anyone here capable of matching you in combat like Naruto, but it could at least be a stopgap to buy us time.
And I can get stronger, too.
（ she's not going to offer herself as a soulmate candidate — everything between them is too fraught, too tangled. it might legitimately make it worse for both of them. but the one thing she can do for him that would help is train — she's been on equal footing with them both before, she can do it again. the clinic at the docks still takes less of her time than the hospitals in konoha — she's been devoting her free time to reading, mostly, but it's an easy pivot to throw herself into more than just skill maintenance. ）
[The first part of what she tells him brings a strange, acute relief — to have cleared some lingering vestige of tattered uncertainty between them, some play at pretend he couldn't manage. It's as he felt with Naruto, too, but he's not certain his friend understood that. The fact he has changed. They all have.]
Then we'll move forward. If I survive this, we can train.
["if i'm not dead soon" a cool and chill thing to say casually]
I'm not opposed if it would mean control over the corruptive nature of this place, but there is no one compatible that I've found. [You think he's made friends? Well — there was someone, possibly. But he's since destroyed whatever trust might have begun to take root between him and Laurent.]
（ selfishly, perhaps, she doesn't want to answer that question. the only reason she decides to, ultimately, is because she knows he's suffering for lack of a like bond, and not because he's simply asking out of curiosity. there's so much she could say, but she won't betray d's trust, either. ）
It's someone who's helped me since arriving here. Who's been kind, and steady, and I felt I could trust. We have similarly aligned interests as far as helping others and our feelings on humanity. We'd discussed the possibility briefly, due to a misunderstanding. They thought I was offering, when I was speaking in general hypotheticals, but once Naruto...
（ pragmatism, as sasuke had thought, was the thing that had driven her — but she thinks she might have chosen him anyway, given time. the disappearance of their friend had just forced her hand, that was all. ）
It's not overwhelming. Truthfully, I don't even find it to be all that obtrusive, though I suppose it could be with a more exuberant person. But it's still a new bond, so I might learn more in time.
[Kindness, steadiness, trust. Features desirable in anyone, but especially a person close enough to share such a bond — it's good that Sakura has found it. His curiosity is brief but sharp as he wonders who it could be; it isn't any of his business, in the end.
Doing the same for himself feels impossible. The only person who had shared that interior world of vulnerability had fought with bloody fists for years to reach it. And after everything, Naruto hadn't wanted him that way either.]
I see. That's good.
If you discover more about the connection with time, let me know. Any information is useful at this point with so little known.
（ she almost leaves it at that. but this conversation has stripped her defenses to the marrow, and she feels raw all over. he has to feel at least as badly as she does. more, maybe. this has required more vulnerability of him than of her. he's sick and hurting, so shouldn't she...?
she takes a deep breath, and puts her anguish aside. friends, she'd said, and meant it.
it's easy to think of it just as offering comfort. she's dedicated her life to providing succor to those in need, and she doesn't think she's ever met anyone who could use that tender touch more than sasuke. ）
It's okay, you know? If it's him.
You don't have to say anything. Just know I want you to be happy, whatever that looks like for you.
So... it's okay.
（ it's not. but it's an easy lie, and one she thinks she could mean in time, if her guess is right. ）
[It's a conclusion he dreaded Sakura might reach, then hoped it could be forgotten. Something else left unspoken. This is what he was taught, after all, by his own family before him. The hardest truths are better hidden, especially when they evoke that dangerous emotion. What causes them to risk losing all sense of reason — the very attachment he'd tried to eviscerate from himself only to fail.
He wants to say, You're wrong, but he thinks that now he would be lying. How is it okay? is almost his demand instead, fear drumming like a second heart, aware that happiness was never really an option.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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You've had enough to deal with. I'm not the only one affected.
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It was already affecting you during the labyrinth, wasn't it? That was irresponsible of you. What if something had happened, or you'd gotten worse while we were searching? You put us both in danger.
（ abruptly, she's a maelstrom of little hurts. she's never quite managed to stop being that girl who had lost the two people she was closest to, almost overnight. first sasuke, gone to orochimaru, leaving her standing near the city gates and then naruto leaving with jiraiya... the loneliness had swallowed her whole. even knowing, rationally, it wasn't as bad as what both of them had been through... when it's a pain you haven't learned to live with, it becomes the centre of your world.
tears blur her vision and are vehemently rubbed away as she continues: ）
You're such an idiot! What would have happened if the disease progressed too far to be helped? Would you have even told me before then? Or would you have just left the city and never come back and made me search for you until I found your corpse?
（ why don't you understand my feelings? she types once, and then deletes. no, her mentioning her love for him has always been the thing to push him away. she's smarter now. but it doesn't mean she doesn't feel it, that desolate, wailing grief borne of constant disregard and dismissal. can you mourn something you've never had?
except — it's not even about romance anymore. she just wants her friend. they were that first, weren't they? once upon a time. ）
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He's hurt her, and he's never seemed to know how to stop hurting her. Or even how to mend the existing wound. It feels like a dark, dragging pressure — one he's come to recognize as guilt.]
I was aware of the danger and my own state, that's why I brought you with me. But it was irresponsible not to give you that information so you could prepare yourself in kind. At the time it was less important than finding Naruto. I didn't want to distract you.
Currently, there's still no cure. I've looked. I am already outside Stygia. I don't intend for you to have to discover me that way. I would have told you [hesitation, like a wall] at the end.
[There's honesty he's still shielding about his reasons for this, but having hardly come to terms with it himself, he cannot take it anywhere near her now.]
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（ the offense is almost palpable through text alone. maybe they're both lucky this wasn't done in person, the encroachment of her shadow is hard enough to hold back like this. it breaks over her like a surf. ）
I am not a child! Do you somehow think I can't worry about you both at once? Stop saying you're doing things for my benefit, that's just a convenient excuse for a man that's never cared once about my feelings.
（ it's a cruel thing to say, but in the moment it feels so viciously good she's not even sorry. ）
We're equals, Sasuke, and I deserve to be treated as such.
（ does she get another phone if she breaks this one, tune in next week to find out. ）
Go to McCoy. I don't care if there's anything to be done or not. Either that, or I'm coming to find you, and I guarantee you'll appreciate my approach a lot less than his.
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The closest he'd ever felt to Sakura was when she had tried to end his life.
We're equals. For a moment, he hears the old, familiar answer in his own thoughts: 𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐞? On the battlefield they are not, and for most of his life that was all that mattered to him. Becoming strong enough to kill Itachi or die in the process. And he achieved it, and now he has all the power in the world — and no other seeming purpose. Not like Sakura with her clinic by the docks. Not like Naruto, all of Konoha on his shoulders.
Wherever Naruto has gone, he should be there too. If he has died, then Sasuke should die too. He doesn't see what other point there is. Why cure himself? Why not simply give in to this world's crushing force?
...]
Have you found a soulmate?
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atonement was just an excuse, wasn't it? if he'd meant it, he would have stayed and worked where it mattered. ）
Are you hoping I haven't so you can justify my behaviour as the influence of my Shadow? It isn't. I'm furious with you.
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Because it will help you survive in this place. [If he isn't around.] Naruto said it should be someone special, but I disagreed. It's a tool.
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I'm pretty sure I'm the one who told you that in the first place.
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[What else should he say? And then he was gone. And I kept seeing him everywhere, and he was blaming me for it. There's no point to making Sakura pity him.]
So do you?
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but it's becoming harder to say if what she loves is man or memory. ）
Yes. After Naruto went missing, before we went looking for him... I thought it would be prudent to have the additional stability of that bond to help. I knew I would be vulnerable if we couldn't find him.
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... Would he have asked her? Even Sasuke isn't certain — caught still in that spiraling grief at his friend's disappearance, he thinks it would be fine to let Oblivium consume him. But his Shadow is a problem for others, too, as he's now seen. He doesn't know.]
Good.
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I'm satisfied to know you have one and won't be suffering as acutely from the corruption of this place.
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I want you to care.
To be jealous, or angry, or something. You've always been indifferent to me. I'm sorry I'm not as good as Naruto is at understanding you, but I want to be. You're never going to let me, are you?
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I wouldn't have asked about the soulmate bond if I didn't.
Naruto doesn't always understand me either. And I don't know how to make that easier for him. When we fight, sometimes that feels like the only way we can communicate.
Where you and I stand, it's changed so much. [Do you still love me?] I can't tell whether my actions and words toward you will help or hurt. It seemed better to keep my distance.
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(it's what she wanted, isn't it? something from him, she'd said.)
so why does she feel guilty and rotten for having gotten him to admit to it? she should feel elated. instead, there's a leaden feeling in her belly and she's beset by a cold that cleaves to her marrow, eerily reminiscent of the claustrophobic pressure of his chakra when he'd used genjutsu to drive a fist through her chest. ）
'Seemed better' to you. Did you ever think about asking me? The whole time we've been in Stygia I've been trying to tell you, we're still teammates and I care about you.
I know I wasn't...
（ that gets sent, though it's an obviously unfinished text. hard to see the enter button when your vision is blurred from tears. moments later, a second follows: ）
I wasn't always kind to you. I didn't think about what you wanted or needed. I was selfish, and I didn't take the time to understand your pain. For years, I thought there was something wrong with me, because I would have given you anything, done anything for you if only you'd stayed and it wasn't enough. But I recognize now that I was making my feelings your responsibility. It wasn't fair of me. I didn't know what I was asking of you back then.
Sasuke, I miss my friend. I miss the person who helped me and protected me. We used to smile together, right? The three of us. We used to joke and laugh, and look out for one-another. I miss that. I've been missing that for more of my life than I even had it.
If you won't, or can't accept my feelings, I'll live with that. But can we just not be strangers to each other after all this time?
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It's not her fault.]
Both of us were children then. You shouldn't blame yourself for not knowing. I don't hold anything against you. At the time, all I could see was Itachi. I didn't care about anything or anyone else.
Sakura, I don't know if I can be that person again. It doesn't mean that I'm unwilling to try. [Hesitation, in the span of a moment.] Your feelings aren't something I can return, and even if I could, there's a serious risk that I will hurt you again. It is part of the reason I left the village — I don't trust myself. Naruto knew it, and he said he would stop me if I tried...
It's worse here. I've already attacked two civilians without provocation. I don't know if finding a soulmate will help, or if it will only open that person to the same risk.
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I'm not asking you to be that person again. We've both changed too much to go back. If there was mourning to be done for who you used to be, I've already done that years ago. The only direction for us now is forward.
（ even the thought of finding him and killing him had meant setting certain things aside. she isn't like naruto, who can drag anyone back from the howling precipice of madness. she made her choice then, and she'd make it again now if she had to — the difference is, she wouldn't be so foolish next time, overestimating her own skill while underestimating his. she'd thought that sentiment might get her close enough to kill him, but his cold disregard had shocked her, even then. ）
As for soulmates, I think it helps. At least, it helps more than it hurts. But I understand the concern of being at risk and not wanting to endanger anyone else. Do you have anyone else you could see yourself as being compatible with? I don't believe there's anyone here capable of matching you in combat like Naruto, but it could at least be a stopgap to buy us time.
And I can get stronger, too.
（ she's not going to offer herself as a soulmate candidate — everything between them is too fraught, too tangled. it might legitimately make it worse for both of them. but the one thing she can do for him that would help is train — she's been on equal footing with them both before, she can do it again. the clinic at the docks still takes less of her time than the hospitals in konoha — she's been devoting her free time to reading, mostly, but it's an easy pivot to throw herself into more than just skill maintenance. ）
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Then we'll move forward. If I survive this, we can train.
["if i'm not dead soon" a cool and chill thing to say casually]
I'm not opposed if it would mean control over the corruptive nature of this place, but there is no one compatible that I've found. [You think he's made friends? Well — there was someone, possibly. But he's since destroyed whatever trust might have begun to take root between him and Laurent.]
Your soulmate. What made you choose them?
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It's someone who's helped me since arriving here. Who's been kind, and steady, and I felt I could trust. We have similarly aligned interests as far as helping others and our feelings on humanity. We'd discussed the possibility briefly, due to a misunderstanding. They thought I was offering, when I was speaking in general hypotheticals, but once Naruto...
（ pragmatism, as sasuke had thought, was the thing that had driven her — but she thinks she might have chosen him anyway, given time. the disappearance of their friend had just forced her hand, that was all. ）
It's not overwhelming. Truthfully, I don't even find it to be all that obtrusive, though I suppose it could be with a more exuberant person. But it's still a new bond, so I might learn more in time.
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Doing the same for himself feels impossible. The only person who had shared that interior world of vulnerability had fought with bloody fists for years to reach it. And after everything, Naruto hadn't wanted him that way either.]
I see. That's good.
If you discover more about the connection with time, let me know. Any information is useful at this point with so little known.
no subject
（ she almost leaves it at that. but this conversation has stripped her defenses to the marrow, and she feels raw all over. he has to feel at least as badly as she does. more, maybe. this has required more vulnerability of him than of her. he's sick and hurting, so shouldn't she...?
she takes a deep breath, and puts her anguish aside. friends, she'd said, and meant it.
it's easy to think of it just as offering comfort. she's dedicated her life to providing succor to those in need, and she doesn't think she's ever met anyone who could use that tender touch more than sasuke. ）
It's okay, you know? If it's him.
You don't have to say anything. Just know I want you to be happy, whatever that looks like for you.
So... it's okay.
（ it's not. but it's an easy lie, and one she thinks she could mean in time, if her guess is right. ）
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He wants to say, You're wrong, but he thinks that now he would be lying. How is it okay? is almost his demand instead, fear drumming like a second heart, aware that happiness was never really an option.
Instead he says nothing.]