Snapshots :SasuSaku:

The first time she noticed him, they were just classmates.

It’s her first day of classes at the Academy since she made friends with Ino the previous week, and to tell the truth, Sakura is more than a little nervous.  She ties her hair back out of her face with the ribbon, just like the blonde girl had instructed; her mother looks slightly surprised at the change, but comments on it favourably. (‘I like being able see your pretty face, dear.  I don’t know how you managed to throw your shuriken while trying see through all that hair…’) As she walks down the street, she feels like everyone is staring at her and her huge, now completely visible forehead; by the time she reaches her classroom, she wants to tear the ribbon out and disappear into the shadows once more.  She bites her lip hard and one hand starts to rise when suddenly--
‘Hey, Sakura!’
Ino is waving at her from a seat near the front of the classroom, smiling widely, honestly glad to see her.
‘Come sit with me, I saved you a seat!’
At this Sakura beams and starts forward, but halfway there, her eyes are drawn to a boy sitting alone across the room.  Dark, unruly hair falls into equally dark eyes, which are focused almost unblinkingly on the open book before him.  A slight frown of concentration pinches his face, his eyebrows settled low over his eyes, his mouth turned down, but it is not nearly enough to alter the fact that he’s the cutest boy she’s ever seen.
‘Hey, earth to Sakura!  What’re you looking at?  Come on!’
She blinks on realising that she’s come to a stop, and hastily scrambles down the rest of the stairs and slides onto the bench next to Ino.
‘You’re such a space case,’ the blonde sighs teasingly, but before Sakura can explain herself, Iruka-sensei is telling them to open their books to a certain page.
Throughout the lesson, however, her eyes keep slipping sideways to fix themselves on the dark-haired boy.
Why have I never noticed him before? she wonders, then stifles a giggle.  Probably because of all that hair.
I wonder what his name is, she thinks, wishing she had the courage to introduce herself to him, or at least ask Ino.  But she’s still far too shy to do such a thing, so she resigns herself to never knowing—
‘Uchiha Sasuke, please explain the strategy mentioned in the third paragraph on page 148.’
To her astonishment, the dark-haired boy stands and does so, his explanation flawless and delivered in quiet, terse sentences; then he gives a small, stiff bow and drops back into his seat, looking somewhat bored with the whole ordeal.
Sakura smiles, feeling a slight blush touch her cheeks as she sneaks another glance at the boy.  ‘Sasuke, huh?  Uchiha Sasuke…’

(They would be so much more in years to come.)


The first time he looked at her, he thought she was just another girl.

She eats lunch outside with Ino and her friends, seated on the grass in a circle.  She can’t help that her wandering gaze lands on a boy (it just so happens to be Sasuke) perched in a tree, eating alone.  She doesn’t realise that she’s staring until he glances her way; she gulps at the unexpected eye contact and looks away quickly, though her gaze creeps back to him every so often.
He doesn’t look her way again.

(She’s nothing like the others, he’ll realise one day.)


The first time they touched was entirely accidental.

She drops one of her kunai, and he bends reflexively to pick it up; small hands meet over cold steel, and a warm blush as pink as her namesake blooms over the cheeks of the young girl.  Big green eyes dart up, hoping to meet deep black, but already he is looking elsewhere: at the target before him.

(She dropped her kunai a bit more often afterwards, but only when she was around him.)


The first time she talked to him was nothing special.

Survival exercises.  That seems to be all Iruka-sensei is interested in these past few days, a fact that Sakura bemoans as she crouches in the deep shadows at the base of a particularly large tree to catch her breath.
She sighs and brushes her sweaty fringe out of her eyes, leaning back against the rough bark of the tree as she digs into the bag on her hip for her water canister.
Ever since she and Ino became rivals nearly a month before, the blonde girl had seemed to take a particular pleasure in making Sakura look bad whenever possible, especially during their exercises.
‘Sasuke-kun won’t look at you twice if you keep dropping your kunai, forehead-girl!  ESPECIALLY since he’s going to be SO busy watching me wipe the floor with you during our survival training exercises!’
‘Talk all you want, pig, I won’t lose to you!’ she had growled in reply.  It had sounded good at the time, but Sakura knows that the truth of the matter is that Ino really is better at most things--survival exercises included.
Today’s exercise is one of Sakura’s least favourites, something like a shinobi version of dodge ball, only instead of a wide open gym, the exercise was held in thickly forested areas, and instead of a ball, the opposing team throw kunai and shuriken.  What Sakura dislikes, however, is that scuffles often break out--the wooded area makes it difficult for Iruka and the other two sensei to keep an eye on everyone--and, as one of the less popular children, she is always a clear target for bullying.
She’d just tilted her water canister back, just wet her lips, when the canister is suddenly knocked out of her hand; she jerks back in surprise, slipping on the crumbling bark of the large root behind her and falling backwards as water splashes in her face and down her front.  The empty canister drops to the ground with a hollow clunk; she sits up and wipes water out of her eyes to find a group of girls standing over her, smirking down at her, and Sakura’s eyes dart to the red armbands that clearly mark them as members of the opposing team.
‘Aww, lookit the little baby that we’ve caught napping,’ one of them sneers, taking step towards her, and Sakura has never wished for Ino’s proud, confident presence more.
Without warning, a spray of shuriken fly through the air, marking a clear boundary line between Sakura and the other girls.  Kunai soon follow, landing precisely where the girls had stood mere seconds before, but they’re already bolting away at full speed, not even pausing long enough to sneer at Sakura one final time.
A moment later a dark form drops from the branches above, and Sakura can do nothing but stare as Uchiha Sasuke silently retrieves his weapons, tucking them back into pouch and holster; her eyes fix themselves on the yellow armband he’s wearing, and she clutches her own self-consciously.  He turns to stare down at her impassively, though with perhaps the barest trace of disgust, then wordlessly he reaches down and pulls her to her feet, scanning her quickly for injuries.
‘Thank you,’ she says as he releases her hand, unable to keep herself from blushing at the contact.
Sasuke’s eyes narrow a bit at this--this is precisely why this exercise is one of his least favourites, having pathetic teammates is so irritating--and he snorts, ‘Don’t let your guard down like that, or we’ll lose.’
‘Oh…right,’ she nods, but the Uchiha boy is gone already, his passage through the dense trees scarcely a whisper.
The pink-haired girl presses her clenched fist (the hand he’d held of course) to her chest and grins like a fool before stuffing her empty water canister into her bag and taking off after him.
She can’t wait to tell Ino about this.

(Nothing special, but it meant the world to her.)


The first time she really embraced him was during the chuunin exam.

She is injured, bruised and bloodied and unspeakably weary after watching over her teammates all night, and he is full of rage, killing intent pouring off him in waves; and still she throws herself forward at him, flinging her arms around him, knowing full well that he could break them in an instant, then turn and kill her if he so chose.  But when he turns to glare at her out of the corner of one red, black-flecked eye, he freezes, because she is crying for him, and somehow those tears manage to cool the awful fire burning just beneath his skin…this time.

(The first of many one-sided embraces.)


The first time she told him she loved him was the night he left.

He feels a flicker of surprise when he sees her standing there, though he doesn’t allow it to show.  He stops for a moment, but then passes her by without looking back.
‘Go home,’ he says.  ‘You meddle too much,’ he says.  ‘I’m not like you,’ he says.
‘I love you more than anything!’ she sobs in reply, and this gives him pause.
Other girls had told him that they loved him, but he’d brushed them all aside.  They didn’t even know him.  They hadn’t spent any time with him.  They couldn’t love him.
But Sakura…
Sakura did.  Sakura had.  Sakura…
…Sakura, innocent, fragile Sakura, doesn’t deserve to get dragged into this awful mess with him.  This revenge is his goal, his burden, his destruction, not hers.
‘You’re annoying,’ he says, turning back to smirk at her (to get one last good look at the first person to really love him in years) before starting forward once more.
She threatens to scream; he can’t have that, of course, and there’s one more thing that he still has to say.
Before she knows it, he’s behind her.  He sees her stiffen, hears her quiet gasp when she realises this (just a second too late, had he been an enemy), but she doesn’t turn; she’s waiting to see what he does.  She trusts him, he realises, but even that can’t stop him now.
‘Sakura…thank you.’
It is the most he can bring himself to say, and he can only hope that she understands.

(She thought those words were the most powerful in existence; it hurts to learn that even though that might be true, it doesn’t matter in the end.)


The first time he admits how he really feels for her, it is already too late.

‘I’m sorry, Sasuke-kun…’
He stares in horror at the scene before him, drops to one knee at her side, not caring that his clothes will be stained with blood and dirt and whatever else because of it.
‘Tsunade-shishou taught me that…medic-nin have to avoid…getting injured at all costs, but…when I saw him coming for you, I couldn’t help it…’  
He fumbles with her bag, tearing through it in the hopes of finding something, anything to stop the bleeding, even though a mere glance at the wound is enough to tell him that there’s absolutely nothing he can do.
‘Sakura, stop talking and heal yourself.’  The words sound clipped and angry, but really it’s worry that drives him to snap at her, though he winces a bit at his own tone.
‘Can’t…not enough chakra.’
Her voice is already weak, far weaker than he can stand because she is supposed to be strong and loud and annoying, dammit, and yet she has the nerve to smile up at him and keep talking in that faint, awful voice.
‘I’m sorry…that I can’t heal you…I know you’re hurt…’
‘I’ll live,’ Sasuke mutters, then chokes on whatever else he was going to say, because he’s faced with the reality that yes, he will, and she won’t.
Her hand twitches; instantly his own darts out to clutch at it tightly, and her smiles widens a bit more.
‘Sasuke-kun, I…still love you, you know…ever since…that day at the Academy.’
He swallows hard and nods, forcing himself to maintain eye contact, because he owes her at least that much for taking that attack and saving his life, and maybe if she can read his mind he won’t have to say the words that are caught in his throat.
‘…‘S cold…Sasuke-kun…’ She shivers in the near-stifling heat of the summer night; without thinking, without removing the blood-soaked cloth he was using in a vain attempt to slow her bleeding, Sasuke scoops her up in his arms; her own arms slide around him, and she leans her head against his shoulder and breathes a quiet, satisfied sigh.
Her eyes drift closed, and Sasuke finds himself watching the shallow rise and fall of her chest, dreading the inevitable moment when that movement will stop.
Her breath has slowed, coming in quiet, erratic gasps, when unexpectedly her eyes open again.
'Sasuke…kun…thank…you…’
The corners of her mouth quirk upwards, her eyes drift closed again, and her last breath escapes her in a faint sigh.
Sasuke stares down into her still face, eyes wide, then his own face twists in pain and anger and a dozen other emotions that are all too familiar.  He wants to hate her for how peaceful she looks now, but nothing could be farther from the truth; it’s too late to say the words now--such small, simple words, yet somehow so very hard to say--but there isn’t a power anywhere strong enough to keep him from thinking them.
So he holds her close, fairly crushing her his chest, and buries his face in her sweaty, dirt-streaked hair to hide sudden, unexpected tears, clutching her body to his own as the last traces of vibrantly red life drain from her, his arms locked around her tightly, fully returning her embrace--the first time he’s ever done so.