Archive of Our Own ^beta

As Sasuke carries on with his travels, he discovers there are many, many dimensions to explore. Too many for only one man to inspect, for sure, but he’s never really as much as considered seeing them all in the first place.

Some are strange, baffling, where Sasuke recognises nothing. They are filled with alien creatures or uncommon technology, mechanisms he doesn’t understand and dangers he never would have suspected that existed. These worlds are either devoid of colour or nearly too vivid, too bright to look at, and, as inconvenient as it is to admit, it startles him every time he finds himself in one of those.

There are also worlds he knows more about; vast deserts, sizzling hot and terribly dry under the sun; deep blue oceans that seem endless, only limited by the skyline; desolate mountain tops and cities teeming with life, colourful crowds and tall, concrete buildings, islands, forests, landscapes he’s never seen before but is vaguely familiar with, venues he could get lost in if he wanted.

Sasuke never stays too long in these ones.

Some of them resemble one another –  Hidden Villages exist in each one; shinobi live and fight and die and survive. He feels almost comfortable in these ones, traveling from one place to another, sometimes recognising the names or titles or terms, even though he realizes their meanings differ from what he knows, even if ever so slightly.

And then, at last, there are dimensions that are his.

Not all of them are happy places and surely none of them are ideal, but Sasuke has a few of his personal favourites.

There’s a dimension where the massacre of his clan never happens. He watches his other self live a life in a house full of people, among his brother and his parents, aunts, cousins; watches this other Sasuke as he celebrates his eighth birthday, then fifteenth and twenty-first, never alone. In here, Itachi never betrays anyone, doesn’t have to make this horrible choice – instead, he trains with Sasuke, teases him, goes on missions and marries a pretty girl who gives him a son. In here, Sasuke smiles more and it suits him, for once. He becomes a jounin, then joins ANBU, and eventually marries, too. His wife, a member of his own clan from the day she was born, is beautiful and strong and her name is Aiko. Her eyes are dark, just like his.

This marriage is the only thing he doesn’t like about that dimension.

There’s a place where Naruto’s parents are still alive; where the fourth Hokage makes it out of the battle, where he doesn’t have to seal Kyuubi in his own son’s little body, sparing him the burden of the demon’s presence for the rest of his life. Namikaze Naruto is a part of a small, albeit still pretty ordinary family and he’s as loud as ever, but nowhere near as miserable. He’s not as strong in this world, but a great deal happier, and Sasuke decides it a fair – a bit enviable – exchange.

There’s a world where Orochimaru never combats Sasuke in the Forest of Death and never gives him the cursed seal. This other Team Seven, the team that belongs in this particular reality, does encounter some impediments, but they are very different from what Sasuke remembers himself. They fight their battles, winning more often than losing. Sakura doesn’t have to cut her hair, saved from dozens of bruises and many awful wounds he still recalls with clarity; Sasuke doesn’t brim over with violence, doesn’t shake with pain, focusing on calculating their every move instead, and Naruto keeps pushing them all forward with his certainty and stamina until they reach the tower, exhausted but successful.

There’s one where he falls in love with Sakura at the age of ten. She breaks through all his facades with sheer power of her feelings, shy smiles and gentle touches, and he lets them heal him, slowly mend his shattered spirit back together. Sakura talks to him, tells about every little thing she finds worth mentioning, until, eventually, all hesitant words and tentative trust, he opens up to her, too. They hold hands, their fingers intertwined, as they walk down the streets of Konoha, ready for everyone to see; sneak kisses in the shadows of the forest around the training grounds when Naruto and Kakashi don’t look. Sakura’s hair is long in this world, and they get married when they’re both only eighteen.

Sasuke enjoys this one.

Not all of them are good, but not all are bad, either – the dimensions mix, ghastly next to peaceful. There’s one where Sakura’s eyes are grey instead of crisp green and she wears her forehead protector tied around her arm; one where wars don’t exist anymore, hovering in the history like a memory of a nightmare. There’s one where he isn’t a ninja but a civilian; Sakura works as a nurse in the hospital and they rent a tiny apartment on the outskirts of the village. One, frightening, where Itachi kills him, too, in the massacre; one where he pierces Sakura’s chest with his chidori, her blood on his fingers, neither Kakashi nor Naruto swift enough to stop him – this dimension he exits as quickly as he can. There’s one where he leaves the village, never to come back.

And then there’s one where he never leaves in the first place.

In this world, when Sakura begs him not to go, her voice breaking in the air of the night, he turns around to look her in the face instead of knocking her out, and that decision alone is enough to make him stay. Sasuke watches his other self as he stares at the tears on Sakura’s cheeks, watches the look on his face as she hugs him, tightly and needy, watches him deciding to stay; realising she’s right. In this dimension he and Naruto fight side by side to protect the village they both love and he discovers that he didn’t have to leave to possess the power he craved.

What he sees in this reality rattles him, shakes more than he’s willing to admit and he can’t help but feel betrayed for a split second. Leaving the village was his deliberate decision, one he made himself, but now, when he sees everything he could’ve had – he and Sakura have three grandchildren in this world, and are lucky enough to grow old together – it doesn’t feel like it anymore.

Because he sees this life with his own eyes now, sees how happy it is, filled with domesticity and warmth instead of suffering and isolation; it feels like something that slipped out of his reach before he even got a chance to experience it, given this other Sasuke instead.

For a moment, he aches for this different future, one he saw but one that was never his; envies this different Sasuke who was spared so much pain and so many mistakes.

Then, he decides it’s high time to go back home.

---

Sakura waits for him, just like she always does.

It’s a cold, full-autumn evening here in Konoha when he arrives, crosses the gate not sparing a look at the guards even though he can feel their eyes skimming over his silhouette. He’s not in a rush – it would be pointless since he’s been away for so long either way. The familiar streets of Konoha in front of his eyes make him feel slightly restless, though, all of a sudden, make his pace quicker and moves nimbler and it’s a thing he doubts he’ll ever get used to.

The lights are on and the door is unlocked when he enters.

Sakura appears in the hallway just as he’s slipping his shoes off and as she walks closer, her steps light, barely audible on the wooden floor, sparks of astonishment flicker in her wide eyes, nearly lost amid something else, something that’s always been in them. Her hair is messy, clothes slightly rumpled and Sasuke doesn’t know what she was doing – if she’s just came back from the hospital or woken up or simply finished reading some old scroll, now abandoned on the couch – but he knows that whatever it was, she was not expecting him.

No wonder. He didn’t tell her he was coming at all.

“Sasuke-kun, you’re back!” she smiles brightly albeit still a little incredulously at him, taking his hands in hers as soon as she gets within reach distance. Her thumbs brush over his knuckles in an affectionate gesture before she flinches a little. “Oh, your hands are freezing cold.”

He merely hums in response, not really knowing himself if it’s a greeting or a reply to her observation, half expecting her to let go, but she doesn’t.

Sakura just looks up at him, as if taking in the sight, and her expression melts from soft into something deeper that Sasuke’s nearly reluctant to name.

For a second, he wonders what it is that her crisp green eyes see in his black ones.

“It must be really cold outside, huh?” she asks then, her gaze softening even more, slender fingers curling around his. Sakura’s hands are almost as warm as her eyes are.

 “Chilly,” Sasuke answers.

At that, Sakura does let go of his hands, eventually, but only to take a step closer and wrap her arms around him, as if wanting to share her warmth, let it seep into the marrow of his bones. He feels the traces of her imposing strength in the embrace, mixing with the tenderness, and wonders how it is possible that these two features can blend together so well.

He puts his only hand on her back, where the crest of his – their – clan stands out.

“I brewed some tea,” Sakura says, her voice muffled. Sasuke feels the words on his neck. “The pot’s in the kitchen.”

She doesn’t let go of him yet, though, just hugs him tighter as if making sure he’ll stay right where she needs him to be.

“I missed you,” Sakura mutters into the fabric of his shirt eventually, after a few seconds of silence.

He has an answer on the tip of his tongue, but it never leaves his mouth.

Sakura doesn’t expect a response, though, he knows, and as she steps back a moment later, she only blinks at him – a confirmation of her words – then heads to the kitchen to pour him a cup of tea she’d offered.

As he follows her, he stares at the crest of the Uchiha emblazed on her shirt and can’t help but wonder if this other Sasuke, the one that never left her, would tell her that he missed her, too, if it was his dimension.

---

The memory of what he saw nearly haunts him – in a way nothing ever has before. It’s different from anything he sees or dreams about that entails the massacre because those are still memories, no matter how terrifying or twisted or bent by his own mind. It differs from his many qualms, too, since they are simply a reflection of a reality, owned by him alone, never to become anything else.

He hates to admit, even if only to himself, that it’s the sensation of being lost – a taste of which he’ll never forget but had hoped to let go of – confuses and throws him off the most. The images he saw seem to have gotten imprinted in his mind; no matter how many times he blinks, trying to get rid of them, they are still vivid right in front of his eyes. Sasuke doesn’t know how to deal with them since they are neither a lie nor the truth, and even though he cannot fully define them, they still manage to take something away from him every time they echo in his head.

After all the dimensions he visited, this one – his – seems not to belong to him anymore, because it’s missing something and Sasuke can’t pinpoint what it is.

The house is the same and he knows the streets of the village, the buildings and the landscape, the faces of Hokage sculptured in the stone, but people seem irritatingly odd, out of place. He keeps wondering, now that he’s aware of all these different routes his life and the fate could’ve taken, now that he’s seen so many of them and this one, particular, where he stayed instead of leaving, one that got stuck in his head for some bizarre reason.

Sasuke Uchiha has always been quiet, though, so no one notices. Naruto ignores the silence as usual, filling it with his laughter and ramble instead; Kakashi’s eyes merely crinkle and it’s the only way to tell that he’s hiding a knowing smile under the mask, familiar with the quiet; people on the streets avert their gazes, likely to find him too strange, if not intimidating; nobody really pays attention, not able to tell that something’s out of the ordinary at all.

Nearly nobody, because Sakura’s smart and her mind is sharp like the edges of her kunai.

His wife is also very patient, and it’s a feature of hers that he respects – appreciates – a feature that’s always been incorporated into the variety of her qualities but only started to stand out to him after the war. Sasuke supposes that it must’ve deepened during her training under Tsunade’s supervision, during hours of training, countless surgeries and days of treating wounds, healing and mending; it’s not more than a guess, though, since he wasn’t in the village to see for himself at the time and never really asked after coming back, not sure how to as much as phrase the inquiry.

So Sakura lets him take his time and waits.

Sasuke’s not someone who shares his thoughts easily and unforced, and he’s not really planning on doing that this time, either, but she would know.

---

Something gnaws at the insides of his chest, though, and, as Sasuke finds himself sitting on the stairs in front of his house one evening, days after coming back, he can’t help but feel frustrated with the disability to pinpoint the feeling.

He never really cared much about things like that, simply because he never really needed to. The Uchiha might have been viewed as cold and level-headed by other people in the past; always composed, never fickle. Sasuke’s always known the truth, though, because the flame that used to burn in every member of his clan still circulates in his own blood. It died down when he finally managed to come to terms with all his actions and get used to all the qualms, but it never burned out completely, turning from engulfing conflagration into glowing embers.

His emotions has always been raw and powerful, clear, except now, and he’s so unfamiliar with the sensation it nearly makes his skin tingle.

Sasuke exhales, inhaling next, hoping that the cold air of the night will help him clear his head, disperse the fog of irritation clouding his mind.

It doesn’t.

He nearly misses the sound of the door behind his back opening.

“Sasuke-kun?”

He would turn around if Sakura’s voice broke the silence around, but it didn't, somehow blending with it instead, so he doesn’t move.

Sakura does, though. The stairs creak quietly, the sound barely audible, as she goes down, then sits next to him, close enough for Sasuke to feel the warmth of her body. She has an oversized sweater on, and even though he can’t really see well enough to be certain, the darkness surrounding them to blame, it seems big enough to be one of his, which is likely. She hides her hands in the sleeves of it, fingers curling around the fabric.

A part of him expects her to say something – remark upon the temperature here outside, conspicuously low since he can see white puffs of their breaths in the air, say something about her day, encourage him to come back inside – and only realises that when she stays quiet. Her gaze is not on him, eyes looking at something in front of them both, then up at the stars.

It’s when she sighs, not quite unhappily, when he snaps, speaking up, not really knowing what it is that he wants to say, but needing to say it nevertheless.

“Sakura.”

She blinks, still peering at the sky.

“Hm?”

He’s never been too skilful at putting what he feels into words, but again – Sakura’s patient. She’s known him long enough to comprehend just what kind of person he is; sometimes, he feels, she understands him better than he does himself.

The thought’s strangely satisfactory.

So he draws in a breath, gathering all the thoughts, images and memories, placing them in the back of his head, translating into words until a sentence forms on his tongue – not excellent but tolerable, he decides; good enough.

“Have you,” he starts slowly, the words tumbling past his lips, his voice slightly hoarse and not smooth enough for his liking, “ever thought what would happen if I’d never left?”

That makes her flit her gaze at him.

“Never left?” she repeats, surprise ringing clear in her voice. That was not what she expected to hear. “Never left when?”

He fixes his gaze on the palm of his hand, the scars impossible to be seen in the poor light.

“Back then,” he says.

And Sakura knows what he means because she stiffens for a split second, only a barely audible “Oh” coming from her mouth, mixed with the exhale. He turns his head a little, enough to be able to catch a glimpse of her with the corner of his eye, just in time to see her threading her fingers through short, pink hair, then resting her chin in her palm. A small frown forms between her brows, but it’s not the one he associates with concentration.

“I…” she says, but seems to change her mind in the middle of the thought. “Why are you asking?”

He narrows his eyes, swallowing.

“I saw something,” Sasuke responds tersely. Sakura nods, letting it slip, even though they’re both aware the answer like that is not really enough for her.

She’s smart, though, he thinks. Most likely, she’s already figured something out on her own by now, connected the dots, because he may not tell her much about his travels – not about the ones into any other dimensions – but if the way she licks her lips, shifting next to him, is anything to go by, perhaps he doesn’t have to.

“Yes, I have,” she admits, looking at him, her voice gentle but not apologetic. Sasuke doesn’t know what answer he was expecting, but this one makes something tighten behind his sternum. “I have, many times. Maybe more than needed.”

He nods, a short, precise movement, then averts his eyes, focusing on the palm of his hand again.

That’s all he needed to know, he tells himself. This answer is as good as any. He got what he wanted; he got the truth and –

“It’s okay, though.”

Sakura’s voice cuts into his train of thought, and she moves closer until their shoulders bump, then leaning to catch his gaze. He finds himself looking at her again before he can as much as think.

“It was your choice,” Sakura says, shrugging. It’s not what he expected to hear. “You did what you thought was right… or at least necessary at the time. I understand that. It took me some time to come to terms with it, but I understand.”

He can feel her fingers around his palm. Sakura’s grip is as firm and soothing as ever.

“So whatever it was that you saw, Sasuke-kun” she continues, “and wherever it was, I don’t really think it matters that much. You left the village, that’s true, but you… you came back.” Sakura tilts her head, and he exhales. “You always come back.”

She sends him a small smile, the curve of her lips barely there, somehow shy, and her eyes glow.

“Besides,” Sakura says after a second and gestures at the pitch-black night around her with one hand as traces of yet something else gradually appear in her voice, “look at us. Our lives haven’t really been the most peaceful so far, to say the least, but… We live in a beautiful house, in a place we both hold dear. There are so many people who care about us. There’s a place we know we can come back to after a long day or someone we know we can talk to. We are alive and…we are together.”

A second passes, and she blinks at him, still smiling a little coyly.

“So I don’t know about you, Sasuke-kun,” his wife says, squeezing his hand in her smaller one, “but I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s definitely a happy ending. And it’s definitely enough, don’t you think?”

When he leans in and kisses her, her breath warm against his lips, he thinks that he should’ve known that she’d worked him out ages ago.

Sakura’s always been an incompressible thing to him, after all.

She sighs, still smiling into the kiss, then places her hands against his chest, relaxing, and Sasuke realises that she, again, is right.

There may be hundreds of different dimensions out there, with thousands of different versions of him with completely different fates. There might be worlds better than this one, ones where his whole family is still alive, where his brother is the Hokage, where he can stay with the people he loves and is not forced to carry a burden too great for him. There might be worlds that are worse, so much worse; where he’s always alone and never finds peace, where he’s full of hatred and pushes everyone away, harms and destroys anything around him, only to destroy himself in the end.

This world, though – this world is his. In this world, the massacre of his clan broke him and he left the village, craving the power he needed for revenge, and his life used to be lonely and painful but not anymore. In this world, he managed to find peace again, even after it had been so brutally taken away from him. In here, he fell in love when he wasn’t ready but built a family when he was. He has a home to come back to, and Sakura’s eyes are green, her hair is short and gaze is even warmer than her hands. In this world, she loves him.

In this world, he –

So as Sakura pulls back from the kiss, still smiling, her eyes bright and big, Sasuke decides that it is, in fact, enough.

It’s so, so much more than enough.