Chapter Text
Autumn in Konoha smells like leaf rot and damp air; a kind of scent that hangs heavy in Sasuke’s nose no matter how far he strays from his native village, coffin strapped resolutely across his back. The broad, waxy leaves of Fire country go redder than their native land’s namesake as the year marches on towards Naruto’s birthday, and like the shadows that draw long all around him, Sasuke feels his chest start to ache with the loneliness. He likes the copses that dance with golden leaves best, the last Uchiha decides one sunny September morning, and if perhaps that is because of the friend their color reminds him of then he simply does not dwell on it. Inversely, he is forced to acknowledge that night as he keeps watch over Hebi’s prone forms, in the spring he most likes those groves of trees that riot with pink flowers.
(He definitely does not dwell on that).
By the time the worn down soles of Hebi’s sandals cross over the Land of River’s border, Sasuke almost cannot breathe for the smell of leaf rot in his nose. Lush forest sprawls out across the Eastern edge of the country, gone orange and gold in the watery October sunlight, a canopy of warm autumnal colors above their weary heads. It’s a quiet morning, each member of the ragtag team holding their breath in against the mid autumn chill as they wait for the sun to offer some substantial warmth. Sasuke tries to focus on the dew that collects atop the straps of his sandals while they walk, uses the clammy sensation of toes wet with a night’s worth of respiration to ground himself against the too-pervasive smell of decomposing leaves. It doesn’t work well enough to beat back all of the visions, and so he resigns himself to the memories as they wash over him (late autumn chill biting at his fingers, a navy blue sky contrasted against the fluorescent yellow of Konoha’s streetlamps, Sakura’s eyes still beautiful even washed out by the harsh yellow cast).
Those same memories follow him into sleep that night, curling around the edges of his vision as Suigetsu takes up his watch. Konoha’s proximity makes the fine hairs on his forearms stand up, and every inhalation brings unwelcome memories with it as Sasuke tries to focus past the flashes of pink hair he keeps seeing in his peripheral (just ghosts. Old olfactory memory). They prowl around the edges of his too-sharp vision that night as Sasuke sits up alone with the last few embers of their campfire, resentful manifestations with eyes the same color of green as spring leaves.
When Sasuke dreams, it’s in those same colors: petal pink, the particular bright green of waxy Konoha leaves bursting back into life, ivory skin. These visions he welcomes with open arms, finds that the best sleep comes with those nights where his mind allows a brief, shampoo scented reprieve (he tries, and fails, not to overanalyze the fact that he remembers what her shampoo smells like). They’re far better than the alternative, at least: nights spent bathed in Mangekyō colors, or quiet shades of grey and purple as he holds a blade’s edge to the only throat he’s ever wanted to bruise with his lips.
Familiar leaf rot and any unwelcome memories tied to the scent of it grow weaker and weaker as Hebi’s path winds away from the Land of Fire, until Sasuke can almost breathe normally in the Land of Silk. Earth country is uncharacteristically full of foliage at its’ Southern border, and as Hebi ascends the ridgeline dividing Earth from the Land of Caves the only sounds that punctuate the passage of time are the snap of loose linens whipping back and forth in the unsettled alpine air and the crunch of scree beneath their sandals. As they approach the head of the pass they will descend into Earth the wind picks up in intensity, grabbing at loose clothing and dirty hair alike to drown out any sound at all besides its roar. Sasuke likes being up at elevation like this, enjoys the feeling of too thin air filling his tired lungs (relishes the way he feels so far removed from all of the horrors he’s experienced at sea level like this). When they reach the head of the pass the only smell that hangs high and bright in Sasuke’s nose is that of the snow that has already begun to dust the peaks above them. The last Uchiha inhales deeply, and thinks that he has finally escaped the too familiar smell that’s haunted him across the continent (or one of them, at least).
He is proven wrong when the scent of leaf rot and fresh rain wafts up to him on cool mountain air just hours later as they begin their descent. What feels like ancient, Genin memory swells up with the scent, and Sasuke is reminded of days spent pouring over maps of the Shinobi Nations. To the northwest lies the little nation of Sakura.
Sasuke wonders if she was named for the country, or if the similarity is just happenstance.
Bodies, he has come to learn, remember things: memory stitched into the fibers of lean muscle and hidden away within osteons, the kind of memory that follows where he goes. It isn’t worth fighting, the way Sasuke cannot escape the green of his teammate’s eyes, or the way it had felt to share sleepy autumn mornings stretching safely out of the rain beneath towering oaks with Sakura and Naruto. When he closes his eyes at night, weary to the bone and aching for the comforting smell of green tea on an overcast day, Sasuke dreams of soft lips speaking against his temple. There’s no point in wondering as to who the lips belong, only one person has ever wound their way against his ribs in such a way as to live in his dreams like this.
(The last Uchiha tries not to focus overly on the fact that he had threatened to kill her).
Now, as he leans against the slick wall of some dilapidated (forgotten) monument a few weeks after their descent from the mountain pass and its sharp, cold air, Sasuke inhales the smell of not-quite-right leaf rot and lets a kind of sadness he really only entertains when he toes the line between sleep and wakefulness take hold. They’re deep within the Land of Frost, dangerously close to tree line, where the cold-beaten mountain conifers curl in on themselves in an attempt to weather winter winds, and the misty spaces between trunks seem to swim with spirits unseen. Sasuke thinks he’d rather like these silent forests with their cold mist and still air if it weren’t for the incessant feeling of being watched, or the way the heavy air trapped beneath their boughs presses cool silence against his eardrums.
It’s too easy to think, in the quiet.
In his head he has told her a thousand times: spread the tragedy of his family out on the baked sandstone between them and watched as Sakura’s face went soft in that way it did only for him. In each iteration of this same, fanciful dream, Sasuke’s admission is met with cool hands against his cheeks, and Sakura’s mouth tastes like freshly brewed green tea when she kisses him.
It’s a luxury, to consider that he might be the one to recount the reason for his family’s death to her. If Sasuke has done one thing over the last three years of his life, it’s relinquish his claim to any level of luxury. So he leans against the mossy monument with the weight of Sakura’s attempt on his life in the thick, curling mist and reasons that he cannot fault her, for wanting to kill him with that knowledge tucked under her belt.
He doesn’t pause to consider that she might not yet know at all.
It’s Suigetsu who finds him like that, uncharacteristically quiet as he joins his de facto leader in unspoken vigil. The silence they share stretches out between the trees for what feels like miles, lit only by what little light breaks through the incoming fog from their campfire.
Sasuke is sure the shorter man is only here to seek some respite from their female teammate, doesn’t care to let himself consider the fact that he might actually appreciate the company a little anyways (certainly doesn’t care to let himself consider the myriad ways this new team of his so echoes the one he’d left behind along with the smell of autumn in Konoha). The two men stand in silence for the better part of an hour, shoulders drawn up against the late autumn chill as it begins to rain.
(Sasuke doesn’t sleep that night.)
War smells like this: pulverized sandstone charged by his Chidori as it clings to his blade, the heavy iron of blood ground into cracked earth. When it’s over, all Sasuke can smell is petrichor, his own blood where it leaks onto the granite beneath him, and Sakura’s shampoo as she bows low over his chest, hands alight with green chakra.
Sasuke’s reintegration into Konoha is a faltering, nonlinear process. It starts with the transition from summer to autumn, leaves turning from green to gold along with the tension draining from overworked muscles. He spends his days adjusting to life without an arm, and his nights shoulder to shoulder with the rest of Team Seven at Ichiraku’s. By the time the trees have begun to drop their leaves, Sasuke has added new pillars to his routine: evenings spent waiting across the street from Konoha Hospital for Sakura to exit the too-clean double doors, and nights spent with blankets that smell like her around his shoulders as they sit up on her roof late into the night.
His first night back within the mossy walls of the Uchiha compound Sasuke cannot breathe past the scent of gravesoil in his nose and throat. It’s so oppressive that he finds himself sitting on the stoop of his childhood home, head bowed and shoulders steadily slumping as the light rain characteristic of Konoha in early autumn begins to fall. Sasuke counts the seconds between breaths and erratic heart beats, tries to focus on the way the rain feels on the nape of his neck; anything other than the weight of the phantom stares that bore into his back. The rain increases in intensity, drumming a casket rhythm into the worse for wear shingles of his childhood home, and Sasuke continues in silence to try and soothe himself through the almost-panic.
It doesn’t work.
When Sakura finds him the next morning, it is ashen eyed and shivering in watery dawn light.
“Sasuke-kun,”
Sasuke feels some long forgotten knot of tension release at the endearment.
“Let’s go home.”
And so Sakura Haruno leads him along soon to frost paths out of his family’s grave and into the cloistered warmth of her living room.
Sakura’s apartment smells like coffee, freshly cut flowers, and the faintest trace of antiseptic from the hospital. It’s a warm, homey kind of scent that sings a low counterpoint to the sharp scent of hard frost that rushes in every time one of them opens the door. It’s been a day and a half since Sakura had found him on the doorstep of his childhood home, and in those thirty six hours Sasuke’s shoulders have only just begun to relax down and away from his ears.
When Sasuke kisses Sakura for the first time, he closes his eyes and remembers the weight of the waterfall he had stood under in Kiri. Stepping out from underneath the spray and into warm, golden sun had felt the exact same way as this (except nowhere near as good, or so long a time coming). Sakura’s fists, so powerful and well trained, curl tightly into the loose fabric of his shirt, hitching the hem across his stomach a little higher along with the breath in his throat as her lips open up beneath his tongue. It strikes him that though he would never like to spend so long as another four years building up to a kiss with her again, perhaps this was worth it.
Her fingers thread through the damp hair at the back of his neck, and Sasuke knows there’s no doubt to it at all.