Invisibility | SasuSaku (Post-War / Blank Period Angst)

Naruto © Masashi Kishimoto

A few days had passed since the battle against Kaguya and Madara finally came to an end.

Haruno Sakura walked alongside Kakashi, heading toward the village gates to send Sasuke off on his journey. He said he wanted to see the world with his own eyes and pay for his past crimes. But if Sakura was being honest with herself, she didn’t want to be there. She would have preferred to stay at the hospital, buried under medical scrolls, rather than stand at the border of Konoha to watch him walk away.

Ever since she woke up from his genjutsu, the dream she had chased since childhood felt completely broken. She knew the truth now. Sasuke didn’t harbor any special feelings for her. To him, she was just a annoying, delusional girl living in a fantasy.

“Are you really going, Sasuke?” Kakashi asked, his single visible eye fixed on the young Uchiha.

“Hn,” Sasuke replied, his voice flat. “I need to see what the world looks like. And I have to atone for my sins.”

“Can’t you just stay here?”

The words slipped out of Sakura’s mouth before she could stop them. Her chest tightened.

“I mean... can’t you find a way to atone while staying in the village with us?”

“No.”

“Oh. Then—”

Can I come with you?

The words stuck in her throat. She bit her lip and forced them back down.

A faint smile touched the corner of Sasuke’s mouth. “Mata kondo na.”

Until next time.

He reached out, his index and middle fingers tapping her forehead. The quick touch sent a sharp, painful jolt through her chest. Without another word, he turned on his heel and walked out into the open road.

Sakura stood frozen. She slowly raised her hand, resting her fingertips against the spot he had touched.

It wasn’t a promise to return. It felt like a boundary line—a gentle way of telling her to stay behind. He was leaving her in the aftermath of a war that had torn everything apart, offering just enough to keep her quiet while he disappeared into the horizon.

She lowered her hand. The afternoon sun reflected brightly off her forehead protector, throwing a shadow over her eyes. She was done trying to figure out his silence. If he wanted to walk away, she wasn’t going to chase him anymore.

“Let’s head back, Saku—” Kakashi started to turn, but stopped when he saw a single tear fall down her cheek. “Are you crying?”

“It’s nothing, Sensei. I’m just a little sad.” Sakura quickly wiped her cheek with the back of her hand and forced a smile.

Kakashi patted her head gently. “He’ll be back before you know it.”

“Yeah,” she whispered.

I don’t even know what I want anymore.

Do I actually want him to come back?

I just know I can’t go back to being that weak, pathetic girl who does nothing but cry.

I can’t go back to wishing for a fairy-tale ending where the prince finally looks at me.

Because there is no happily ever after for us. Sasuke-kun will never love me.

So...

I have to let him go. I have to move on.

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Invisibility © Akina Takahashi

Do not copy or publish it on another site without Author’s permission

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Konoha, Two Years Later

Sasuke kept his word. He had finally returned to Konoha.

His dark hair had grown out, casting long shadows across his face, and his jawline had hardened with a rugged, seasoned maturity. He looked like a man who had walked through the fire and come out tempered.

Naruto, now sitting in the Hokage’s chair, had practically ordered Sakura to be the one to receive him at the gates. Naruto had that naive, hopeful look in his eyes—the one that suggested this reunion might magically bring back the old Team Seven, and with it, the old Sakura.

It was almost laughable. Did Naruto honestly think that annoying, loud-mouthed fangirl was ever coming back?

In the old days, when she was weak and useless, she had been content to exist solely in the shadows of the two demi-gods beside her. But she had bled, sweated, and broken herself to stand on her own two feet. She had proved her worth to the entire village. She had made a name for herself, bringing honor to a family that didn’t boast a legendary shinobi clan name.

Family...

A dull, familiar ache flared in her chest. It was still hard to believe that her mother and father were gone, killed in the chaotic crossfire of the White Zetsu invasion while she was away on the frontlines.

She missed them so terribly it felt like a physical sickness. She missed her father’s awful, corny jokes that used to make her roll her eyes, and her mother’s sharp, nagging voice telling her to clean her room.

Deep down, a terrifying realization had taken root: everyone she loved would eventually leave her. And she was absolutely terrified of reverting to that fragile girl who could do nothing but weep at gravesites.

So, she had built a wall.

She retreated behind a thick, clinical barrier, refusing to let a single soul catch a glimpse of the bruised, bleeding heart underneath. Not Ino, not Naruto, and certainly not the man currently walking through the village gates. She channeled every ounce of her remaining spirit into her medical work, using her chakra to heal others because she couldn’t figure out how to heal herself.

As Sasuke’s silhouette came into view, Sakura felt her pulse spike. A chaotic storm of emotions threatened to tear through her carefully constructed calm.

Breathe, she told herself, her hands clenching into tight fists at her sides. Just breathe.

But it was so hard. Sasuke was here. He was actually standing in front of her.

A part of her—the ghost of the girl she used to be—wanted to sprint across the dirt, throw her arms around his neck, and sob into his chest. But a cold, invisible hand seemed to grip her shoulder, keeping her rooted to the spot. She stood perfectly still, her emerald eyes fixed on him in an unreadable, glassy stare.

Sasuke’s dark gaze collided with hers.

A flicker of surprise passed through his dark eye. He had expected... more. He had prepared himself for the inevitable onslaught of her tears, the desperate warmth of her arms locking around his waist. He had even, in the quietest, most private corners of his mind during his travels, wondered if she might kiss him.

But there was nothing.

“Hello, Sasuke.”

Sasuke’s breath caught. Sasuke. Not Sasuke-kun.

The suffix that had defined his entire childhood—the small, endearing cadence she had used every time she spoke to him—was gone. Just like that, she had stripped away the familiar intimacy, leaving him with a name that sounded flat, distant, and completely formal.

Sasuke stopped a few paces away. The faint smell of rain and wild cherry blossoms drifted between them, but neither made a move to close the distance.

Sasuke watched her through the dark fringe of his hair, his jaw tightening. He took in the shift in her posture, the clinical distance in her eyes, and felt an unfamiliar, cold weight settle into his stomach.

She’s changed, he thought.

But then, a bitter wave of guilt followed, swift and sharp. Of course she had. After everything he had done—after the years of silence, after abandoning her at the gates, after walking away from her tears—did he truly expect her to be waiting with open arms? He had no right to expect warmth. He deserved this coldness.

“Sakura,” he replied, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. He kept his arm tucked beneath his poncho, his posture rigid.

“You’re back, then?” she asked. Her tone was light, conversational, and entirely detached.

Sasuke’s brow furrowed slightly. It was a terrible attempt at small talk. “As you can see.”

“Right.” Sakura offered a small, awkward chuckle, her eyes landing on the dark cloth wrapped securely around his forehead. “Nice hat.”

Sasuke stared at her, genuinely baffled. “It’s not a hat. It’s a turban.”

“Ah, ha-ha!” Sakura rubbed the back of her neck, the laugh high and entirely hollow. “Sorry! It’s just... your style has gotten a bit eccentric.”

“Karin gave it to me.”

The name hung in the quiet air between them. Sakura’s polite smile froze for a split second before returning, wider and brighter than before. “Oh! You were traveling with her? How is she doing? Honestly, I’ve always wanted to be better friends with her. We actually have a lot in common, don’t you think?”

Sasuke didn’t answer. He just stared at her, a sharp, physical ache blooming behind his ribs.

Her cheerfulness was loud, but it was completely empty. He would have preferred her anger. He would have preferred it if she threw a punch, screamed at him for leaving, or wept like she used to. But this polite, stranger-like courtesy was agonizing. It reminded him of Sai’s early days with Team Seven—a mechanical, lifeless imitation of human warmth designed purely to keep people at arm’s length.

Sakura forced her voice back into a professional register, clearing her throat. “So... what brings you back to Konoha?”

“Is it wrong for me to return to my own village?” Sasuke asked, a defensive edge creeping into his quiet voice.

“I didn’t mean—”

“I’m keeping my promise,” Sasuke cut her off, his dark eyes locking onto her face with sudden intensity.

Sakura blinked, taken aback. “Eh?”

“The forehead poke. Mata kondo na,” he said, his voice dropping low. “I thought you understood what that meant.”

Sakura looked away, her fingers twitching slightly against her side as her pulse raced. She forced a small, careless shrug. “I thought it was just a polite parting phrase. I didn’t think you meant it as a real promise.”

Sasuke’s gaze darkened. “Hn... maybe not to you. But that gesture meant something to me.”

“Sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Stop apologizing,” Sasuke snapped, his frustration slipping through his usual composure. “It’s annoying.”

Sakura flinched, stepping back slightly.

Seeking to diffuse the tension, she gestured toward his travel pack. “Ah... here, let me carry your bags,” she offered quickly. “I can bring them to the Uchiha estate and help you clean up. It’ll make things easier.”

“I don’t need your help.”

The rejection was swift, flat, and final. Sakura immediately withdrew her hand, her throat dry.

“Right. Just an offer,” she said softly, stripping away the rest of her forced cheer. “My shift at the hospital is over, and... there’s no one waiting for me at home anyway. So I figured I had the time.”

Sasuke’s brow knit together. “Where are your parents?”

He remembered her father’s eccentric hair and her mother’s loud, assertive presence. They were civilians; they should have been in the residential district.

Sakura let out a short, breathy laugh, scratching her cheek. “Oh... you don’t know? Well... yeah.”

“Hn?”

“They were killed during the war,” she said, her voice completely flat—devoid of pitch, drama, or inflection, as if she were reading a medical chart. “The White Zetsu infiltrated the village lines. They didn’t survive.”

Sasuke froze.

The ground beneath his boots felt suddenly uneven. Her parents were dead? Since the war?

Nobody had mentioned it—not Naruto in his infrequent letters, not Kakashi during their brief updates. But a sickening realization hit him a second later: it wasn’t that they had hidden it from him. It was that he had never asked. He had been so wrapped up in his own solitary path of atonement, so consumed by his own quiet burdens, that he had never once stopped to ask how the people he left behind were surviving.

What chilled him most was her complete lack of affect. She spoke of her family’s death with the same detachment she used for routine hospital reports. For a fleeting second, he caught a flash of devastating grief deep within her green eyes, but before he could reach for it, she locked it down completely.

“Sasuke?” her quiet voice pulled him back.

He couldn’t speak.

Sakura reached into her hip pouch and pulled out a scratched, worn headband with a deep, jagged line slashed through the Konoha symbol. His old rogue protector.

“Naruto told me to keep this safe for you,” she said, holding it out with a small, quiet smile.

“Aa...” Sasuke reached out, his fingers brushing hers as he took the cold metal.

“I actually told Naruto we should just get you a new one since this one is so beat up,” Sakura said, looking toward the main avenue. “But he got sentimental. Said it had too many memories.”

Sasuke barely heard her. He was staring at her profile. The soft, rounded cheeks of her girlhood were gone, replaced by the clean, defined lines of a grown woman and a master medic. She didn’t need Tsunade’s imposing presence to carry authority; her calm, controlled aura did that on its own.

A sudden, dark thought struck him: While I was gone... did someone else stand by her? Did another man hold her while she mourned them? Is that why she looks through me now?

“Let me,” Sakura murmured, interrupting his thoughts as she reached out to take the fabric back.

She stepped into his space, closing the gap until the scent of hospital disinfectant and mint faint on her skin mingled with the dust and rain of his journey. Sasuke stood perfectly still, his breath catching as her warm fingers brushed against his temples to tie the cloth.

As she adjusted the material, her eyes naturally drifted downward to his left side. The black cloak draped flat and empty against his hip where his arm should have been.

Her fingers stilled against the fabric for a fraction of a second.

Sasuke caught the subtle pause. Through his long bangs, he saw her eyes cloud over with an intense, quiet pity.

He hated it.

The impulse to reach out with his remaining hand—to grab her wrist, pull her close, and demand that she drop this lifeless mask—surged through him. But the empty weight on his left side anchored him to reality. He was half a man, scarred and marked by his own sins. He had brought her nothing but misery for years; he had no right to demand anything from her now.

“There,” Sakura said, stepping back to break the heavy silence. She forced a bright, brief smile. “Though I have to say... it really doesn’t go with the turban. You look ridiculous.”

Sasuke couldn’t bring himself to return the banter. He felt completely exposed, standing on the edge of a deep divide he didn’t know how to cross.

“Well,” Sakura turned toward the village center, her shoulders dropping back into a posture of professional duty. “Let me take you to the Hokage’s office.”

“Hn.”

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Invisibility © Akina Takahashi

Do not copy or publish it on another site without Author’s permission

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“WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN FOR THE LAST TWO YEARS?! WHY DIDN’T YOU WRITE TO ME?!” Naruto’s voice rattled the windowpanes of the Hokage’s office the moment Sasuke and Sakura crossed the threshold.

Sasuke winced, his brow furrowing as Naruto screamed like a lunatic. Beside him, Sakura immediately stepped forward, raising her hands to appease her hyperactive blonde friend. “Easy, Naruto. Just calm down.”

“Step back, Sakura-chan.” Naruto marched right past her, his hand flying out to grab the collar of Sasuke’s traveling cloak. His blue eyes burned with a mixture of hurt and fury as he stared directly into Sasuke’s stoic face. “Do you even care about us? At all?”

Sakura froze, her hands dropping to her sides as she stood paralyzed by the door.

Sasuke didn’t pull away. Instead, a mocking smirk touched his lips. “It seems becoming Hokage hasn’t changed you in the slightest. Still as loud, idiotic, and annoying as ever.”

PUNCH!

Naruto’s fist connected sharply with Sasuke’s cheek, sending a dull crack through the room. “Stop deflecting, you bastard!”

“Hey! Stop it, both of you!” Sakura shoved her way between them, her voice cracking with rare agitation as she grabbed Naruto’s arm. “Naruto! Apologize to Sasuke right now!”

“I won’t!” Naruto yelled back, his chest heaving as his anger began to dissolve into raw, aching vulnerability. “How hard is it to send a single summon? A scrap of paper? Do you have any idea how much I worried about you over these last two years, Sasuke? I don’t even know how to say this to your stubborn face, but you are my best friend. Is it really so wrong for me to want to know if you’re still alive?”

Silence fell over the room.

Sasuke slowly straightened his collar, the sting on his cheek completely ignored. He looked at Naruto’s desperate, honest face, and then his eyes drifted to Sakura, who was watching him with wide, tense eyes.

“Sorry...”

The word was quiet, barely a whisper, but it left Sasuke’s lips with a heavy weight. It was the first time in two years either of them had heard him apologize.

Sakura let out a quiet breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Stepping forward, she took Sasuke’s hand and Naruto’s hand, physically forcing them to clasp together. “Sasuke apologized. Now it’s your turn, Naruto.”

Naruto rubbed the back of his head, looking sheepish. “Yeah... sorry about the punch.”

“Hn.”

Knock, knock.

The sharp rap on the door broke the remaining tension. Sakura immediately opened it to find Shizune standing in the hallway, looking frantic.

“I’m sorry to interrupt Team Seven’s reunion, Sakura-san,” Shizune said breathlessly, “but Tsunade-sama needs you in the operating room immediately. It’s an emergency.”

“Understood,” Sakura said, her professional instincts kicking in instantly. She spun around, bowing slightly to Sasuke and Naruto. “I have to go.”

She paused, her eyes lingering on Sasuke’s traveling pack. “I’m sorry, Sasuke... I won’t be able to help you unpack at your estate like I offered earlier.”

“I don’t need your help,” Sasuke replied, his voice slipping back into its usual flat cadence.

“Right,” Sakura murmured, giving a stiff nod. “Let’s go, Shizune-senpai.”

As the door clicked shut behind them, the office felt suddenly cold.

“She... changed,” Sasuke muttered, his eyes remaining fixed on the empty doorway.

“Yeah,” Naruto sighed heavily, sinking back into his chair. “It started right after the war ended. Honestly, Sasuke, I hate seeing her like this. She’s like a hollow doll. She smiles, she laughs, but none of it ever reaches her eyes. It’s like watching Sai when he first joined our team.”

Sasuke walked over, quietly sitting on the sofa across from Naruto’s desk.

“She’s been wearing that mask ever since her parents died,” Naruto continued, his voice dropping to a somber whisper. “Even when she buried them, she didn’t shed a single tear in front of anyone. Not even Ino.”

“Hn...” Sasuke closed his eyes, his chest tightening as he recalled the chilling indifference in her voice when she had delivered the news of her parents’ slaughter.

“And do you want to know the worst part?” Naruto looked up, his blue eyes filled with a deep, aching frustration. “She begged Kakashi-sensei and me to keep their deaths a secret. She specifically made us promise not to tell you until after you had left the village.”

Sasuke’s eyes snapped open, his Sharingan threatening to manifest from sheer, sudden shock.

Why?

“She didn’t want their deaths to become a chain,” Naruto said softly. “She knew that if you found out her family was gone, you might stay out of pity. She didn’t want to hold you back.”

Damn it.

Sasuke’s hand clenched into a tight, trembling fist, his fingernails biting painfully into his palm. A surge of suffocating guilt rushed through his veins. Even in her deepest, darkest hour of grief—when her entire world had been reduced to ashes—she was still protecting him. She was still sacrificing her own comfort so he could run away and play the solitary wanderer.

“You did this to her, Sasuke,” Naruto said, his tone devoid of its usual childishness. “You broke something inside her, and now she’s locked herself away where no one can touch her. You have to bring her back. It’s your responsibility to make her smile again.”

Sasuke stared down at his clenched fist. The skin across his knuckles was white, strained to the point of splitting. “Give me one good reason why I should be the one to step in.”

“Then why do you keep looking at her like that?!” Naruto exploded, his hands jamming into his pockets as he took a harsh step forward.

Sasuke stiffened. A sudden, razor-thin cold ran straight down his spine. “...Like what?”

“Like you’re scared to even stand in the same room as her!” Naruto snapped, his eyes narrowing as he glared at Sasuke’s rigid posture. “Do you have any idea what she looks like these days? She walks around smiling at everyone. All the damn time. And not once—not once—have I believed it.”

Sasuke turned his face away, his gaze fixing on the dark ceiling beams above. A bitter, ugly smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“She never blames you, Sasuke,” Naruto spat, his voice dropping into something lower, rougher, and far more dangerous. “Do you know how much I hate that? After everything... she still doesn’t blame you. You know what the worst part is?”

Sasuke said nothing. He couldn’t. His throat felt full of glass.

“She still worries about you,” Naruto continued, the blunt truth cutting through the quiet room like a blade. “Even now. After every single thing you’ve done. She asked me yesterday if you were eating properly.”

A heavy, suffocating silence fell between them.

Naruto looked at him—really looked at him—and finally asked the question he’d been holding back. “So tell me. If you don’t care about her... why do you look like you’re about to fall apart every time she walks away?”

Sasuke didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

Naruto stared at him for a long moment, waiting. When no reply came, he let out a harsh, frustrated breath, turned on his heel, and walked out, leaving the door slightly ajar behind him.

Sasuke remained entirely still, staring up at the dark timber above.

In his chest, the truth clawed its way to the surface.

Every single person Uchiha Sasuke had ever dared to love had been torn from his hands. Mother. Father. His entire clan. Itachi.

For an Uchiha, love was not safety. Love was a target. Love was blood and ashes.

He had pushed Sakura away to keep her safe. He had convinced himself that distance was mercy—that if he treated her with cold cruelty, if he called her feelings a pitiful fantasy and made her hate him, she would stay away from his darkness. She would live.

Yet seeing her now—cold, hollowed-out, wearing an empty smile like armor—the truth shattered his neat little justification.

He had failed twice.

He hadn’t protected her from the world. And in his desperate attempt to spare her, he had become the very thing that broke her.

Sasuke lowered his gaze back down to his trembling hand.

This hand had killed. This hand had protected. This hand had reached toward Sakura a hundred times, only to pull back and shove her away again. He had called it sacrifice. He had called it protection.

But looking at the hollow ghost she had become because of his silence... it looked painfully similar to cowardice.

“...You’re right,” Sasuke whispered to the empty room, his voice barely audible over the sound of his own pulse.

He was terrified.

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Invisibility © Akina Takahashi

Do not copy or publish it on another site without Author’s permission

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Sakura dragged her feet through the midnight dark of the village streets. Her ankles throbbed with every step. The emergency surgery at the hospital had dragged on for six straight hours—a precise, exhausting chakra-sculpting procedure to mend a ruptured liver. It had drained her own chakra down to a thread.

Thud.

She shut her front door, kicked off her medical sandals, and tossed her medical pouch onto the floor without looking.

Her mouth opened out of reflex. The memory of a long-dead childhood routine rose in her throat. “I’m home...”

Only silence answered.

No mother waited in the kitchen with a bowl of warm miso soup. No father sat in the living room to break the quiet with a terrible joke. The silence hit her like a physical weight, leaving a cold, hollow ache in her chest.

The house was freezing. The lights were off.

Sakura didn’t bother reaching for the light switch. In the dim silver moonlight filtering through the blinds, the living room was a mess. Laundry sat unwashed on the floor. Dishes piled up in the kitchen sink. Medical books and scroll maps lay scattered across the tatami mats, smelling faintly of dried ink and parchment.

She had no strength left to clean it. On her rare days off, she stayed away from the house entirely. Sitting alone in the dark forced her to face the heavy ghost of her parents’ absence. Half the time, she simply slept on the leather couch in her hospital office, preferring the familiar smell of disinfectant and the distant hum of nurses in the hallway.

She forced herself up the stairs to her second-floor bedroom. She shut the door, leaned her back against the wood, and slid down until she sat on the cold floorboards.

Tears leaked silently down her cheeks. She didn’t cry out. She just sat in the dark, pulling her knees tight against her chest to shield herself from the draft. Through a crack in the window, the autumn wind carried the sharp scents of ozone and pine—a sudden, familiar smell that made her whole body tense.

“Please... not again... no more, Sasuke-kun...” she whispered to the empty room. Her eyelids grew heavy, and sheer physical exhaustion dragged her asleep.

The taste of copper filled her mouth. The sky above was a bruised, dark red.

The air rattled with the roar of Naruto’s Kurama-chakra clashing against a Susanoo. The sound was muffled, as if she were trapped underwater. She couldn’t move her arms. Her legs felt like stone.

“Is she actually happy living in a fantasy world of a first love that will never happen?”

No, Sasuke-kun. I—

“I honestly don’t understand how she can still love me after everything I’ve done.”

The icy red glow of a Rinnegan locked onto hers. A sudden, phantom shockwave slammed through her chest. Her heart felt as if it were being crushed, her lungs collapsing as the genjutsu took hold.

“I feel absolutely nothing for her. I see no valid reason why she would hold onto those feelings.”

Stop it... please...

“Sasuke... even when you fell into the deepest darkness, she never stopped loving you.”

Kakashi-sensei, stop talking. Please, just stop...

“I don’t care.”

Sakura sat up with a start. Cold sweat soaked her shirt and clung to her neck. She gasped for air, her chest burning as if she had just surfaced from deep water. She pushed her pink hair away from her wet forehead. Her right hand trembled violently.

That nightmare again.

It wasn’t just a dream. It was a memory playing over and over in her head ever since the day the Fourth Shinobi World War ended. She thought she had learned to live with the memory, but tonight, the phantom pain in her chest felt sharp enough to cut.

Because Sasuke was back. He was inside the village walls right now.

Sakura wiped her eyes with her sleeve and forced her breathing to slow down. I am not going to cry, she told herself. Crying solves nothing. It never did.

Yet the cold ache in her chest felt exactly like the shock she had felt when his Rinnegan trapped her at the Valley of the End—the same emptiness she felt every time she walked into her quiet, empty house.

It shouldn’t matter that he was back. She had stopped chasing him. She was different now. She was a Sannin’s apprentice, the head of the medical department, an elite kunoichi who stood on her own feet. Sakura had promised herself long ago that she would never again be that weak girl who could only watch his back from behind.

She walked into the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, and grabbed her coat from the hall. A walk in the night air was the only thing that might calm the ringing in her ears.

The biting cold hit her the moment she stepped outside. Sakura pulled her coat tight around her shoulders and buried her chin in the collar. The smell of wet dirt and winter frost filled the air, sharp enough to slow her thoughts.

She wasn’t a young girl at the Academy anymore. That blind devotion had burned out in the war.

You can build a wall to protect yourself from the world, she thought, watching her breath turn into white mist under the moonlight. But how do you protect yourself from your own memories?

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Invisibility © Akina Takahashi

Do not copy or publish it on another site without Author’s permission

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Sasuke had not known a single night of peaceful sleep since the day he turned his back on Konoha.

Perhaps it was the residual weight of his sins. Perhaps it was a quiet, profound restlessness he refused to name. He walked aimlessly through the muted village streets, the heels of his sandals clicking softly against the dirt. He had forgotten how thick the silence was here—how different it felt from the wilderness, where danger was an ever-present hum.

His path was uncalculated, yet his feet guided him past the markers of a life he had tried to erase: the training grounds, the shadowed silhouette of the Hokage Monument, and the distant outline of Naruto’s apartment. A sharp, unfamiliar tightness settled in his chest.

Then his steps faltered at a familiar fork in the road.

To the left lay the path leading deeper into the residential district—toward Sakura’s home. An invisible barrier seemed to drop in front of him, locking his joints. His eye darkened. He could not force himself down that street. Turning sharply on his heel, Sasuke redirected his steps toward the outskirts, heading for the main gates.

Before long, his boots came to a halt at the exact spot where his journey into darkness had truly begun.

The stone bench stood unchanged under the moonlight—a quiet monument to a weeping girl and a midnight betrayal.

Sasuke sat down, resting his hand on his knee at the exact spot where he had laid her unconscious body before turning his back on the village. He leaned his head against the wood, closing his eyes. The night sky above was dusted with silver stars, cool and vast. The darkness offered a brief reprieve.

Then, the faint, light crunch of gravel caught his attention.

He did not need to open his eyes to know who it was. Her chakra signature was unmistakable—dense, perfectly controlled, yet frayed at the edges with sheer physical exhaustion.

Sakura kept her gaze fixed on the ground, her hands buried deep in her coat pockets. Fate, it seemed, possessed a cruel sense of timing. She looked up, and the breath hitched in her throat.

Sitting on the bench, framed by the silver moonlight, was Uchiha Sasuke.

Her heart slammed against her ribs, but her face smoothed into an unreadable mask. The sight of him on that bench threatened to drag her back to that night of ultimate vulnerability—to the pathetic girl who had begged on her knees. She refused to let that girl resurface.

Before she could filter her thoughts, the question slipped past her lips: “Are you planning on leaving again, Sasuke?”

The omission of the -kun suffix was sharp, stark, and quiet.

Sasuke’s eyes flicked open. He noticed the missing honorific instantly—a subtle shift that felt like a quiet door closing between them. He suppressed a strange, unsettling flicker of discomfort in his chest.

“No,” he replied, his voice a low gravel.

“Oh. I just assumed you were.”

An uncomfortable silence stretched between them, heavy and suffocating. Sasuke watched her stand in the cold, her body rigid, her green eyes completely guarded.

“Why are you out here this late?” he asked softly.

“Can’t sleep,” she answered flatly. She took a single, measured step forward and sat on the opposite end of the bench, leaving a wide, deliberate space between them.

“Why?”

Sakura’s brow furrowed slightly. Sasuke did not pry. He never had.

“Nightmares,” she said, her voice carrying a dead, hollow flatline that made something tighten uncomfortably in his chest.

“What kind of nightmares?”

The words left his mouth before he could stop them. An instinct—sharp, urgent, and demanding—drove him to ask. He needed to measure the damage. He needed to know what lived inside her silence.

Sakura’s expression turned to stone. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

The dismissive wall she erected hit him with unexpected force.

“Hn,” Sasuke grunted, looking down at the dirt.

His mind drifted back to Team Seven. The Sakura of his memories had orbited around him, her eyes bright with unreserved admiration, her voice constantly calling his name. She had been open, loud, and fierce in her devotion. Along with Naruto’s loud mouth and Kakashi’s lazy presence, she had been the light that kept his darkness from completely devouring him.

The night was suffocatingly quiet. Away from the flickering lanterns of the rebuilding village, the sky over the training grounds stretched out like black velvet, punctured only by the cold, distant prick of stars.

Sasuke did not look at the sky. He looked at her.

He had spent years learning the architecture of silence, but the silence sitting between them now was not the comfortable quiet of comrades, nor was it the volatile tension of enemies. It was empty. A hollow, desolate space where Sakura Haruno used to bleed light.

She sat on the wooden bench, hands resting flat on her knees. Her posture was straight—too straight. The relaxed, vibrant cadence of her youth had been systematically stripped away, replaced by the rigid, utilitarian stillness of an operative awaiting orders. The wind stirred the pale pink of her short hair, bringing with it the crisp scent of wild mint and antiseptic, but beneath it lay the faint, bitter tang of dried blood that no amount of scrubbing ever truly washed out.

“Sakura.”

“Hm?” She kept her eyes fixed on the distant horizon, refusing to turn. Her answer was a polite murmur, meant to dismiss rather than invite.

Sasuke didn’t move, but the dark eye uncovered by his bangs narrowed, tracking the micro-adjustments in her frame. The faint, almost imperceptible hitch in her collarbone. The way her fingers curled just enough to white-knuckle the fabric of her pants before forcing themselves to loosen again.

“Why did you change?”

He needed to know. He needed to understand when the girl who used to cry open tears for him had learned to bury her soul so deep he couldn’t reach it.

“What do you mean, Sasuke-kun?” Sakura asked, turning her head at last. She offered him a small, perfectly practiced smile—the kind she handed out to wounded soldiers in the clinic to keep them from panicking. It didn’t reach her green eyes. They remained dull, reflecting the starlight like glass over a stagnant pond. “Everyone changes. Naruto did. Kakashi-sensei did. You certainly did. It’s only natural.”

She brushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear, her tone light and conversational, as if they were discussing the morning weather rather than the rotting core of her spirit.

“Don’t do that,” Sasuke growled, stepping into her space. The shadow of his tall frame fell over her, but she didn’t recoil. “Don’t pretend with me.”

He leaned in, his dark eye locking onto hers with intense focus, dissecting every flaw in her carefully constructed facade.

“You don’t laugh anymore,” he said, his voice dropping to a low whisper. “You don’t yell at Naruto when he’s being an idiot. You don’t look people in the eye when you heal them. You walk into a room like a ghost, and you leave before anyone realizes you were there. You look...” He swallowed hard, the word scraping against his throat like glass. “...empty.”

For a fraction of a second, the polished mask shattered. Sakura’s breath caught—an audible, ragged sound in the quiet night—and the green in her eyes flared with sudden, raw agony before she shut them, hiding it away.

When she opened them again, the smile was gone. What remained was a cold, desolate truth.

“Because I’m a shinobi,” Sakura said softly. A faint, humorless curl touched the corner of her lips. “The old me was weak. She lived in a fairy tale, chasing after ghosts and crying because the real world didn’t fit her fantasy. She didn’t understand what it actually costs to keep people alive.”

She stared directly into his lone Sharingan, her voice entirely level. Efficient. Empty.

“So, I corrected myself. Do you understand, Sasuke?”

He understood, but the sight of it was agonizing. He did not want this. He did not want the girl who had once burned with such bright, unconditional warmth to turn into a cold, emotionally detached mirror of his own broken youth. He would have preferred her to scream at him, to draw a kunai, to hit him—anything would be better than this polite, distant indifference.

Beside him, Sakura pulled her coat tighter, suppressing the tremor in her hands. Every time she looked at his profile, her mind superimposed the image of his Rinnegan, the sound of his cold dismissal at the Valley of the End, and the memory of her home standing empty after the war. She had spent years bleeding for him. She was done.

She shifted her weight to stand up, wanting nothing more than to escape his presence. But as she moved, Sasuke spoke the exact word she had dreaded.

“You’re annoying.”

Sakura froze.

The word carried the weight of every past rejection, ringing sharply in the quiet night air. A bitter, self-mocking smirk pulled at her lips, and she let out a short, hollow laugh.

“You’re right,” she said softly, tracing a loose strand of hair away from her face. “I really am annoying, aren’t I? I always have been.”

Sasuke’s breath caught in his throat. He stared at her, horrified by the empty laugh that escaped her lips.

That wasn’t what he meant.

The phrase had slipped out as a defensive reflex—an instinct to push her away because her coldness was unnerving him, because he knew that getting close to him brought nothing but danger and tragedy. He had used the word as a shield, just as he always had. But looking at her vacant expression, he realized with sickening clarity that she no longer saw it as a shared secret between them. To her, it was simply a truth she had finally accepted.

“Sakura—” he started, his voice rough, his hand twitching beneath his dark cloak as if to reach across the bench.

“Anyway,” Sakura interrupted smoothly, stepping away from the bench before his hand could move any further. “Don’t forget we have a briefing at the Hokage’s office tomorrow at eight sharp. Kakashi-sensei asked me to remind you.”

She offered him a brief, polite nod—the kind reserved for any ordinary colleague—and turned toward the shadowed street.

Sasuke remained on the bench, watching her figure disappear into the dark. The silence returned, heavier than before, carrying the lingering scent of wild cherry blossoms and cold rain.

“Hn,” he muttered to the empty night, the sound swallowed completely by the dark.

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Invisibility © Akina Takahashi

Do not copy or publish it on another site without Author’s permission

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The next morning, precisely at eight o’clock, Sasuke and Sakura stood before the Hokage’s desk. A heavy, suffocating silence gripped the room as they waited for the Seventh to speak.

“Do you know why I called you here, Sasuke?” Naruto finally broke the silence, his blue eyes uncharacteristically dark.

Sasuke crossed his arm over his chest, his expression impassive. “I don’t know. And I don’t care.”

“Watch your tongue, Sasuke,” Sakura reprimanded him cleanly, her tone firm, precise, and entirely devoid of personal warmth. “You are speaking to the Hokage.”

Naruto blinked, caught off guard. The Sakura he knew would have either nagged Sasuke out of affection or tried to mediate the space between them. She certainly wouldn’t have used his official title to draw a line in the sand.

Sakura adjusted her medical pouch, her gaze fixed strictly on Naruto. “Let me guess... does this have something to do with Kaguya?”

Sasuke’s eyes narrowed as his gaze shifted to her profile. Kaguya was gone. He and Naruto had sealed her away in her own dimension, permanently.

“You’re spot on, Sakura-chan,” Naruto sighed, unrolling a detailed intelligence scroll across the wooden desk.

“Explain, Naruto,” Sasuke said, his voice dropping an octave. “Kaguya is dead.”

“Our ANBU scouts detected an anomalous chakra signature in the forbidden forests beyond our eastern border,” Naruto said, pushing a sealed glass containment vessel forward. Inside lay the preserved corpse of a miniature, deformed creature—its grotesque eye and skin texture bearing an undeniable resemblance to the Ten-Tails. “A reconnaissance team managed to recover this.”

Sasuke’s visible eye widened slightly. “This is...”

“We have to move fast,” Naruto said, his gaze locking onto his rival. “Sasuke, I need you to track the source of this chakra and find out who or what is cultivating these things. With your Rinnegan’s space-time ninjutsu, you’re the only one who can navigate alternate dimensions.”

“Hn.”

“And Sakura-chan,” Naruto turned to her, his tone shifting. “I need you to go with him. Sasuke needs a high-level medical ninja in case things go south.”

Sakura’s face did not twitch. Her posture shifted into a rigid, military stance. “You should assign Ino for this deployment, Hokage-sama. Her sensory reach is better suited for multi-dimensional tracking, and my schedule at Konoha Hospital is fully booked with administrative reforms.”

Sasuke’s remaining hand tightened beneath the dark folds of his cloak. He hadn’t expected her to leap at the opportunity, but he hadn’t anticipated this cold, bureaucratic rejection either. She wasn’t even looking at him. She was treating a high-priority S-rank deployment like a piece of misfiled paperwork.

“It has to be you, Sakura-chan,” Naruto pressed, leaning over the desk, his eyes pleading. “We don’t know what kind of cellular degradation these creatures cause. This isn’t just tracking; it’s a volatile biological threat. You’re the best medic-nin in the Five Nations. If Sasuke’s Rinnegan chakra gets depleted or compromised in a blind dimension, you are the only one with the precise control required to keep him alive.”

The explicit mention of his reliance on her caused a sudden, silent shift in the room’s atmosphere.

Sasuke didn’t utter a word, but his chakra signature—a razor-sharp, freezing aura that usually forced people to step back—subtly flared. Driven by an instinct he didn’t care to analyze, his energy reached outward, a silent, unseen tide seeking her presence. The moment it brushed against the familiar periphery of her warm chakra, the jagged edges of his signature softened.

Sakura felt the gentle graze of his chakra against her own. For a fraction of a second, an ancient, sharp ache throbbed in her chest. She knew his strength was legendary—that he was a god on the battlefield. But right here, within these four walls, her mastery over life and physiological restoration made her his absolute equal. He possessed the power to shatter dimensions, but she held absolute authority over his survival.

Closing her eyes, Sakura consciously pulled her warm, green medical chakra tightly back into her core, severing the contact before their signatures could align. She refused to let his silent presence draw her back into the loop of unrequited expectations.

“Understood,” Sakura said, opening her eyes. Her voice dropped into a flat, professional cadence that left Sasuke feeling strangely cold in his own skin. “I will prepare the necessary medical seals and meet the Uchiha at the main gate at dawn.”

“Good,” Naruto said, letting out a breath he seemed to have been holding. “The mission begins tomorrow. Keep each other safe.”

“Hn.”

“Understood.”

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To Be Continued

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Author Notes:

Hi everyone, Akina here🤍

Thank you so much for reading Chapter 1 of Invisibility. Writing this first step back into the Blank Period felt both heavy and deeply personal.

If I’m being completely honest, I have always loved the dynamic between Sasuke and Sakura. To me, they’ve always felt like two profoundly wounded people trying to navigate what it means to love and be loved again. I see this kind of dynamic so often in real life—two people who care deeply about each other, yet somehow keep hurting each other without ever meaning to.

The biggest lesson I’ve learned while writing this story is that to love someone without attachment—with truly unconditional love—you have to heal fully first. Wounded people rarely hurt others out of malice. More often, it’s an unconscious reflex to protect themselves. And the tragic irony is that we so often end up hurting the people we love the most.

Here, Sasuke is a lone avenger carrying the unbearable trauma of losing everyone he ever loved—his parents, Itachi, his entire clan. He built walls to survive. Yet Sakura loved him anyway, even when he was at his darkest and pushed her away. Her capacity to love was so vast that it eventually reached him—but by the time he finally turns back to see her, Sakura is too heartbroken to accept it. She denies it to protect what’s left of her heart. She just wants to be invisible so she doesn’t get broken again.

I’m curious to know your thoughts as we start this journey:

When Sakura chose to hide her parents’ death to keep Sasuke from staying out of pity, do you see that as an act of profound love... or an act of self-protection?

The emotional journey between them has truly only just begun. Today’s chapter was about returning; the next chapter is about what happens when two people are forced into the same space while pretending to feel nothing.

This story will always be FREE, and I will update it every two weeks on Friday at 8:00 PM Japan Time.

If you’d like to support my writing, I also have Akina’s Chapter Zero where supporters receive each chapter three weeks earlier, along with bonus content like character journals, deleted scenes, and behind-the-scenes writing notes, you’re always welcome to join Akina’s Chapter Zero and connect with me via tumblr: akina-takahashi.tumblr.com

If not, please don’t worry at all! Every chapter will always be free right here. Akina’s Chapter Zero simply helps me keep writing while giving supporters a few extra things to enjoy. Whether you’re reading here or supporting over there, thank you so much for being here and reading along with me ❤️

PS: Tell me WHY you picked your answer in the comments! 👀 I read every single one.

See you in the next chapter!

With love,

Akina