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Konohagakure is a village of greens and blues and reds. Green for its leaves and lush hilltops, blue for its unfamiliar skies, and red for the spilled blood it was built upon. Sakura's hair and Naruto's eyes did not make the village seem as miserable as he had hoped.
---
Otogakure was a bleak land of grey and white. He had been restless when he arrived at Orochimaru's lair all those years ago. He feels more restless now, as he sits under Konoha's bright sky and watches its scheming colors with distrust. Sound in Otogakure had been the quiet chimes of silver and steel. The sounds were what soothed his restlessness. Here, he finds no reprieve from wondering thoughts.
The three of them sit under the great crown of the tree where they had once conversed with Kakashi as young genins. Sakura's laughter is bright and cheerful. The sound of her mirth does not abate Sasuke's restlessness. It does not antagonize him either.
She has Naruto's smile.
Sasuke watches her with a skeptic's intrigue.
Naruto watches her as one would behold spring's first blooms. They say Naruto endears the village to him, but Sakura delights him in all she offers as loyal companionship.
She is charming, the villagers say, quick to anger and never one to forget a slight. It was true. She forgave him for his wrongings, but Sasuke remembers her anger and spite and the months of cold indifference they had shown each other before Naruto brought their feud to a stalemate. It had taken more than a moon before she had allowed him into her bed.
No, he contemplates. It was no forgiveness, but a truce.
A truce to ease Naruto's worries. An indefinite moratorium set upon the blood-price she would have sought as vengeance's due if it weren't for her dearest friend.
Sisters are not as merciful as lovers. They are not as forgiving as mothers, either. He and Sakura have fought more these few months than they had almost a decade ago, over the smallest things. Naruto fucks him more than he wants to fight him. They brawl as though they are wild bulls aroused by mating's call.
Despite their brutishness, they are gentle with Sasuke when he lies with her for the first time. He is a strange study, and yet so familiar. Sakura cradles him in lover's embrace as he licks his hand clean of her spend.
"You left us first," she spat. Her hands are firm and unrelenting against his warm flesh. Her hoarse voice hardens his cock once more. Sasuke rolls his hips into her slowly and moans into the nape of her neck. "Why should he forgive you? Why shouldn't I refuse you?"
"Sakura," Naruto says, softly. She ignores him.
He knows Sakura hates her vulnerable familiarity with him, and that Naruto enshrouds himself in the intimacy it brings forth.
When he does not answer, she has her fingers entangled in his hair, pulling it to bare the pale flesh of his throat. His back arches as Naruto presses his lips to the soft skin and carves his teeth into the throbbing pulse. "Pretty slut," she rasps at him. He shivers and moans and hearkens to the grief in her voice. "Spreading your legs for the Hokage in less than a year since you've returned from your criminal ways."
If he is the Hokage's whore, she is the Hokage's consort. Yet she gathers him to her, as her equal and beloved.
She has a sister's touch. She holds him as Itachi had held him in faithful devotion when they were children. She does not tear him apart as his brother had. The grief emboldens and arouses him. She shivers when he spends his seed in her with a vulgar groan.
He thinks of his child. Would they have Sakura's eyes? Or that of his forsaken brother's?
He hopes the child will have Sakura's fierceness and Naruto's vivacity. He hopes the child will have nothing of him.
---
A year later his daughter is born, and Sasuke is unsure of himself.
It was not because of his newborn child or his wife, but what he was in search of beyond Konohagakure. Naruto had fought him and then wept in his arms when Sasuke had told him his intentions.
"I will return in a few moons."
He lies. He does not know when he will return. He claims to leave the village in search of redemption. All three of them know that is another one of his lies. He never held any love for the village that had forsaken his people.
Sakura has accepted their lot. Naruto cannot make himself, even though he understands.
“Sasuke,” she curls her fingers around his hand.
She calls to him as though he is a prophet and pariah, with rapt reverence and innate longing, with the lonesome burden of holding two motherless boys in her arms. Naruto and Sasuke are closer to the gods than they are to men. Sakura does not find as much burden in their godliness as she did in their prosaic tendency.
Naruto cannot bear to let Sasuke go, for he was as much a peregrine as Sasuke felt when he walked the streets of Konohagakure. The former carries in himself an abomination he holds dear and claims as a hearted companion. The latter reminisces about a people of wonderment who are long dead, with only a name and a pair of blood-stained eyes left of their charred remembrance.
Sakura gave herself to them in return for their devotion, and to cleave them to one another in their moments of loss, when their grief became too unbearable to hold them together. She wears a mantle soaked in their blood and tears and broken promises.
Her palms are scarred and calloused. Sasuke knows she will no longer run after him. She is wearied as he is, as Naruto never was. It was not in Naruto's nature to yield.
“You are many things, but you aren't a liar.” The tendons of her neck shift and tighten. The expression on her face is not as easy to decipher. Eight years it had taken them to find common ground. “Find what you are searching for and return to us.” She leans forward to peck Sarada on her cheek, who lies asleep in his remaining arm. “This marriage is not meant to shackle you to the village. I will let you go if that is what you desire. And our daughter. She will always know who her father is and that he loves her very dearly."
This is no hoard-hold, he thinks. If Sasuke were to leave now, Naruto and Sakura would not stop him.
They will grieve about it behind closed doors and never speak of it afterward. They were no longer children, running after one another to find belonging and purpose. Sarada will be taken care of, and loved by all who know her, and he will be allowed to visit her whenever he should desire, whenever his daughter calls upon him.
Madara's love for Hashirama made him blind to the injustices his clan had suffered under Senju's rule, and it was far too late when he realized his err. He abandoned the village and his sworn brother had killed him for it. Tobirama's reign as the Hokage made it so they could not rebel without suffering great repercussions. Father tried to placate the council so they would offer him a seat at their side and they had refused. Mother desired him to wed Lady Kushina's unborn daughter to mend the remains, but she and her husband, the Yondaime, died and the engagement contract was abolished. Then they had planned a coup in a desperate attempt that ended in his clan's exsanguination.
Now. Now Naruto offers him power freely and still gives him the choice to leave. Sakura marries him to grant him Konoha's protection but does not desire anything in return if he is unwilling.
Yet, he desires and wants. He desires and wants them as he has never wanted them before. But he will not stay. He cannot walk past his clan's empty compound and bear the oath of loyalty towards the village that had forsaken him. If only they would come with him.
If only—
Konohagakure was their home. Naruto found belonging here despite how they had treated him as a pariah. Sasuke had only found belonging in them. They will not abandon the village.
He lowered his eyes, unwilling to let her see him so vulnerable. Yet she embraces him with a mother's aptitude and does nothing more. She knows he has no affinity for words. Neither does she—not anymore. Not after the gaping pit of time lost between them. It is easier to listen to Naruto than to each other. It is easier to loathe each other than it is to loathe Naruto.
She holds him as Mother had, gently as though he could wither away at the slightest touch. Her lips are soft when she kisses him. It is a wonder how he does not weep at her touch. He had sought a father in Orochimaru, desperate to find comfort. His master had turned him away with bruised kisses and solemn acknowledgments of his prowess. He saw himself in Sasuke. He saw his failures and weakness in the form of a motherless and clanless boy.
Before sunrise, he leaves to wander the streets of Konoha alone.
When he returns in the evening, he finds Naruto asleep in their bed. He and Sakura lay naked over the sheet, their legs curled around each other. There is dried spend glistening between her thighs. His head lays on the gentle rise and fall of her bosom while milk seeps and trickles down her tits. Her nipples are dark, bruised and sucked.
The white musk glistens on Naruto's lips, and stained tears follow his red cheeks. Sakura strokes his head, but her green eyes never leave Sasuke's face as he maneuvers himself toward the bed.
Sarada slumbers in her cradle beside the bed. They must have put her to sleep before proceeding with their nightly activity. How vulgar.
When he hovers over their bareness, he hears Naruto murmur his name. He trembles and turns his head towards the wall. Perhaps, he shouldn't have returned. Maybe he ought to force Naruto out—
It is her hand that cups his face. "Sakura," he says, quietly. "You mother us too much." His finger feathers over a taut nipple and flicks it. She quivers under his touch.
"Two motherless boys," she sighs, beckoning him with her hand. He crawls to her quietly, lying on his side to watch Naruto. "I don't find it burdensome to coddle you," she continues, bringing him to her right tit. No, she fears losing them, he thinks. She fears the spaceless gap between Naruto and him threatening to swallow her whole.
He suckles at her, in between pressing soft kisses to her stretched-mark belly and Naruto's plump lips. He does not awaken.
"He hates me."
"He loves you," she corrects him. "He will not make you choose." Then why does he feel guilt? She hums under her breath and gasps when he gives a harsh suck. "You can't hurt him again. I won't let you."
"I know." His palm touches the scar Karuma left behind. Naruto had made her his by blood. Sasuke had made her his by seed. She had made them her creatures by her devotion. "This is no abandonment. I will return."
"And we'll wait however long it takes," she tells him, earnestly. "We waited for you for eight years. Naruto never lost hope. We can wait more if need be."
They were shinobi, but there was peace now. He bore no loyalty to the village, but he did to Naruto and Sakura, and his daughter. He promised he would return.
When Naruto roused in the hour of the wolf, curled between them, he wept and kissed the dark-haired man who lay awake at his side.
Sasuke licked the dried milk from his lips and the salt from his eyes and spread his legs for the man who carried in himself an abomination. Kushina's son weds a charred man in the way of tears. Kushina's son weds a charred man in a grieving remembrance.
Pleasure and pain entwined together until he could not distinguish one from the other. Blood and tears were a beloved's markings as much as they were of a shinobi's.
Sasuke yields himself to his beloved.
---
He leaves at dawn.
"A kaiken."
Sakura smiles brightly at him. She has Naruto's smile, a charming and brutish thing. The gift pleases her. It pleases Sasuke to know she is pleased with him and what he offers in nuptial courting.
"A wedding present," he says quietly. She looks up at him curiously. Her eyes are as bright as the sage emeralds mined in the mountains of Iwagakure. He will bring a jewel from his travel that matches her colouring.
"It was an ancient tradition in my clan," Sasuke continued. "To gift the bride with a blade forged by the bridegroom himself."
She handles the blade from his hand with care. "It is beautiful, Sasuke. Thank you."
A shinobi's hands she has, all calloused and scarred. The fingers that feather over his palm set his skin ablaze. He reaches to tuck a strand of hair behind the tip of her ear before he tugs her to him till they are mouth to mouth, chest to chest. Two hearts that beat as one.
She bites at his lower lip until it bleeds. The sting is as pleasurable as her teasing gaze. The mourning on her face does not abate, but she understands. So she holds him instead. She holds him in mother's care, sister's devotion, and lover's adoration as she had held Naruto in those thirds. She holds him in the way those whom he had lost in death once held him.
"I will return," he tells her, in faith's love concealed in a solemn vow.
"Soon," she calls to him, in hope's yonder.