15a/n: posted first on tumblr ( /uchiharvno) but here, have a halloween treat! keep in mind, the structure is nonlinear.
belated happy halloween!
[290]
The nightmares started after they went into the haunted house.
Sakura wakes up in a cold sweat, gasping for air and clutching tightly at her chest, for the nth time that week. She never remembers what happens in the nightmare, just that she wakes up filled with dread and genuine fear, feeling like someone is coming after her.
She cries herself back to sleep because it feels so real.
[310]
Sakura is different in the days after it happens. She's quiet, withdrawn, always spacing out. But still, Ino chooses her to be her partner for the chem project and walks with her to her house. They walk side by side, already discussing the details of their project. As they near their destination, Sakura lags behind a bit while Ino speeds past the empty house right next to hers.
Sakura looks up at it with almost a sort of longing, and Ino rushes back and grabs her by the wrist as though she is pulling her into safety. She visibly shudders. "Haven't you heard yet?" Ino asks. "A murderer used to live there."
[286]
After weeks and months of deliberation, the two of them finally enter the haunted house.
Sakura comes prepared, with a Bible and a bottle of holy water in her backpack, a rosary wrapped around her wrist, and a flashlight in her hand, even though they've decided to do it in broad daylight. Sasuke looks at her incredulously when she zips up her bag after showing off her 'survival kit.'
She sticks close to him, close enough to touch without really touching. If Sasuke minds her hovering, he doesn't bother letting her know. He turns the knob and, predictably, it's locked so he resorts to hurling his shoulder against the door until it breaks open. Sakura blinks dumbly.
"Oh," she almost sounds disappointed, "that's pretty normal. I thought it would just creepily creak open on its own."
He only rolls his eyes at her but motions for her to get behind him as they step into the house. She frowns as she looks around. The house is normal. Just old, dusty, and looted. The hairs on her arms don't raise and her senses are not particularly overwhelmed by some sort of presence. The more she looks around, the more their paranormal investigation just feels like breaking and entering.
"Upstairs," she says, braver now. She stalks past him and climbs up the stairs. She opens the door to the first room she sees and finds it empty, then she moves to the one across it, also empty. She steps into the light that's coming from the window and turns around to face Sasuke. "This is it?"
He frowns, deep in thought. He continues looking around for a little while longer. "There you have it, I guess, Haruno," he shrugs. "Ghosts aren't real."
She groans, rolls her eyes, and adjusts her backpack on her shoulders, before stalking past him. "Let's just go, I have homework to do."
They exit the house, laughing at their own ridiculousness. And just as Sakura reaches behind her to close the front door, it slams shut right on their backs, hard, bringing about a heavy gust of wind. The two of them freeze, eyes wide in shock as they turned to look at each other.
"Holy shit," they both gasp.
[300]
She keeps pebbles in her study desk's drawer for nights like these when she can't sleep, haunted by something she doesn't know. She takes a handful and slides her window open, starts throwing pebbles at her neighbor's window. It takes five before he opens up and they both lean against the windowsill, looking at each other. Sakura almost forgets about the nightmare, the loud noise, the blood, the pain, when she sees him.
She has always thought that Sasuke Uchiha was beautiful, from the moment she saw him in the summer when her family had moved in next-door. But he's an entirely different sight to behold at night, under the pale moonlight. He's dreamy and serene and she tries not to stare too much because they're friends.
She inwardly berates herself for ogling then realizes that he's oddly quiet even for himself. "Sasuke-kun?"
He meets her eyes tiredly, like his nights are as sleepless as hers. "I'm having nightmares, too."
[271]
It's an unlikely friendship that blooms between them. Sasuke likes to loiter at the house's empty yard because nobody ever comes to bother him there and, being the new girl in the neighborhood, Sakura's curiosity is piqued by the rumors that surrounds the haunted house.
She bounds down the steps of her own home and sits on the ground next to him, as is their usual. He doesn't have a notebook for doodling this time, just rests with his head on the tree's trunk with earbuds in, uncaring of the world around him. He looks so peaceful like this and she thinks she might be falling a little in love with the boy next door.
There are leaves in his hair and she reaches out to take one off, when he stirs awake. He frowns at her and she giggles. "Hey, Sasuke-kun," she says, eyes shining. "Go inside the house with me."
[304]
After sleepless nights turn into sleepless weeks, when she starts feeling something suspiciously like actual PTSD and he starts looking worse for wear, she manages to convince him to go back into the house. They're being haunted in their dreams and they need answers.
Sakura braces herself, but the interior of the house is as normal as it had been the first time.
"In case we die here," she says, turning to him just before she ascends the stairs. "I just want to let you know that I've had a crush on you from the moment I met you." Blushing furiously, she turned away before he could say anything.
They explore the rooms upstairs once again, searching every nook and cranny, but there is nothing. They move to the backyard which is just an overgrown mess, then the living room that's as empty as the whole house. She's at her wits' end when they're back in the foyer. "What is it about this place?" She pulls at her hair and Sasuke sags against the wall, just as exasperated.
Maybe the house isn't haunted, they are.
"This is probably not a good time to bring this up, but… about what you said earlier… I like you, too."
She's broken out of her thoughts by his words. The corners of her mouth curls upward as if in reflex and when she looks up at him, she sees that he has his back to the kitchen and the light filtering in through the windows hit him just right, illuminating the boyish smile he had on right now.
She steps forward, unable to help herself. She wants to taste that smile, feel his lips on hers, run her fingers through his hair, and it's so damn macabre to think about making out in a place like this−then something catches her eyes. Markings on the edge of the wall he's leaning against. She squints her eyes as she looks at it and he takes a step back when she tells him to move.
It's a growth chart, she soon realizes. She follows the horizontal pencil markings and learns that, at age seventeen, Sasuke was almost the same height as Itachi.
Her heart drops. She gasps. She feels her knees shake. "Sasu… ke…?"
She turns to look at him and his eyes are wide as he reads his own name on the wall, his face pale in pure shock and horror. His hands fly to his head and his face twists in confusion and anguish. "You didn't know," she whispers, as he drops to his knees.
He cries, albeit without tears, and when he starts screaming, the house starts quaking. And then all of a sudden he was gone and she was running out of the house on wobbling knees. She stops and turns back just as she reaches the sidewalk, covers her mouth as she swallows a loud gasp, a strangled cry. She feels her knees give in.
Sasuke lives in that house−and she doesn't understand how she never noticed, how her perception was so skewed that she didn't realize her bedroom window looked out to the haunted house itself.
[310]
Ino tells her about the murderer.
Sakura knows about this, but she doesn't have the details. It's why her mother had been hesitant to send her to the public school in the first place; there had been a school shooting just at the beginning of the year. And Sasuke had been one of the victims.
The shooter had been his brother.
[206]
"The house right next to ours is haunted," was what Sakura's father had said while they were loading up the moving truck. Naturally, she wanders off to said house right after unpacking her things and getting settled in, and she looks up at it almost in dismay. It looks like a house, a perfectly normal house whose occupants just happened to move out. She huffs and she's about to walk the five steps it took to get there when he catches her eyes. He's quite hard to miss, wearing all black in the blazing summer heat, sitting at the foot of a big, old tree on the abandoned lot's yard.
He's cute.
"You're not one of the ghosts haunting this house, are you?" she jokes lightly.
He looks up at her, acknowledging her for the first time, then scowls. "Do I look like a ghost?"
She laughs. "What's your name then, if you're not a ghost?"
"Sasuke."
"Hi, Sasuke-kun. I'm Sakura."
[365]
Sometimes she sees him from the corner of her eye, no longer by the foot of the tree but from somewhere in the house, the windows upstairs, the room right across from hers… but he disappears when she turns to look at him, when she wants to see him, when she misses him.
One night, she'd tossed and turned in her sleep, restless. She picked up the biggest pebble in her drawer and threw it at Sasuke's window. Glass shattered. He still didn't show.
