Fanfic: Life is a Waving Feather (Gen)
Title: Life is a Waving Feather
Fandom: Naruto
Characters/Pairings: Sakura, Naruto, Kakashi, Hinata, Ino (mostly gen, but can be seen as pre NaruSaku with a focus to Naruto-Sakura-Sasuke’s relationship)
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Possible spoiler up to chapter 484. This is also my first Naruto fic and un-beta-ed at that, so if there are some mistakes, I’ll be very grateful if you'll let me know :>
Word Count: ~3700
Notes: One of the promised V-Day drabbles, only obviously this is not a drabble. Written for foxarashi who gave me this prompt: Naruto/Sakura - bittersweet :”)
---
Everyone thought they were inevitable.
There was always something special about Team 7. The boys, both notorious in their own right, and the one ‘lucky’ girl, stuck in between and lacking and smart enough to know that she needed to grow lest they left her behind. Many doubted that she could, but when Sakura evidently did, no one was truly surprised. She was swept by the same wave which lifted her two friends; it was inevitable.
After the betrayal, parallels were drawn, comparisons made, and even Tsunade looked at the girl she had taken under her wings and saw much of herself in her, in nights spent bent over scrolls and days building bridges between muscles and chakra, one by one. Sakura never once wondered if it would be enough-what she did, what she had done and would continue doing. He deserved all her best and she lived knowing this, believing that one day she would make him turn around and see her.
And then Naruto came home and he was moulded steel instead of a brittle branch left alone on the wayside. There was a certain look in his eyes which turned his promise from empty words into clear-cut faith, that they would be able do it this time, the two of them, together. Team 7 was a woven story of three, with Kakashi-sensei holding the fringes together. The absence of one did not make it flawed-the absence of one was the absence of all, of the story itself.
Sakura smiled at him in return and felt the bravest in the world.
.
But when three became two, they still existed.
---
“You are twenty-five.”
Her mother spoke it like an accusation, as if the count of her age was an offense instead of a blessing. Far too used to this line of argument, Sakura glanced up from her breakfast to acknowledge her mother's words-she was, after all, twenty-five-but said nothing.
“Most girls of your age are already married,” she added, as if she did not say it every morning. Coming home from a mission alive was supposed to be a cause for celebration. Sakura had stopped wondering why her mother could not simply be grateful at that. ‘I will not marry,’ she did not say, mostly because the memory of her mother crying-I will never die in peace if you don’t-was forever imprinted in her mind.
Their dining table was round; sitting opposite her, her father never contributed to the discussion. He had married her mother young, both of them not yet twenty, but the hastiness of youth and the uncertainty of a looming war had written their decision in ink thicker than blood. A little, they had probably thought, was better than none at all.
When her father had lost his right leg as one of casualties’ tally, so had ended his path as a shinobi. But he never stopped dreaming, and Sakura didn’t think she had ever seen him prouder than he had been on the day she had enrolled into the academy.
“Ino has been married for almost a year now,” her mother was still speaking-lamenting, coveting, Sakura could put endless names to the tone of voice she used. “I’m not saying your career isn’t important, dear, but what about your future? Say, I haven’t seen Naruto around lately. Hasn’t he come back from Lightning Country? When will he be back?”
She sighed and explained, for the thousandth time, that in their line of work, that kind of information was impossible and even if it wasn’t, the sensitivity of the mission would not allow it to be shared. Maybe tomorrow. Next week. Next month.
“Even with you?”
Sakura rolled her eyes in exasperation and returned to her breakfast. If her mother was still determined to think that there was something between her and Naruto after so much remonstrance, then so be it.
Across the table, her father looked at his daughter indulgently and smiled.
.
When three became two, they buried their dead friend together under a shower of brilliant sunlight, so bright as if reminding them, mocking them: the rest of the world did not mourn.
---
The smell of blood was now a familiar, everyday presence-on her hands, palms and fingers both streaked with red, not to mention in whatever room she walked into. It remained that getting used to something and liking it were two different things.
She missed the long missions sometimes; the smell of forest after a heavy rain and thick green grass under her swift feet; the cool water from a stream up in the mountains; the scent of wind laced with saltwater or early dews. But it was her choice to stay in the village-an obvious choice. She prepared young medic nins for their duties ahead and made her skills available as much as possible in the hospital in case of emergency. It was, she always thought, only appropriate.
She had two desks in her office, one for consulting and meeting purposes, the other buried under research papers and books. Sakura was essentially a neat person, but research was a messy, demanding business. As she pored over scrolls and old medical reports, the world beyond her door vanished.
-a specific amount of chakra directed to the tip of the fingers-
-only fire, anything else didn’t work as good-
-the pupils dilated, but as death approached-
“Sakura-chan.”
She nearly jumped out of her chair. Naruto was crouching on the windowsill, just outside her periphery, brightening his face the same sunny grin which had not changed throughout the years. For a moment, Sakura was torn between scowling and smiling back at him.
“Would you stop doing that?”
Naruto unfolded his limbs and jumped in, making too much noise in the process. “You looked so serious, Sakura-chan.”
She rolled her eyes and slipped her scribbled notes under heaps of unread scrolls. “I was working. Come here.”
Once, Naruto had been the only shinobi in the whole village who had absolutely no need of her expertise. Now he bent his head, eyes closed, and Sakura reached behind his neck, her fingers locating a familiar stream of chakra.
Like every other time, she found herself overwhelmed by the maelstrom whirling inside his body-and each time, she would remind herself, this was what Naruto had lived with his entire life. The bond between his Wind and the Kyuubi’s Fire was a frontline ravaged by incessant battles, both sides constantly trying to overwhelm the other. She expected no less; it was the Nine-Tailed, and it was Naruto.
Gently, a third presence but not an intruder, her chakra carved a flowing path. Water curved with every rift and ripple, smoothing edges, easing tension sharpened by a long, hard mission. Naruto’s control had slackened with the slow seep of weariness. The Kyuubi roared, snarling at her presence, but within the cage he could do very little. It was Naruto who gave her more trouble at this point, his chakra lashing and cutting-eyeless, mindless.
If only he is Fire-
She staggered one step back and Naruto caught her elbow, a look of panic across his face. “I’m sorry, I should have-”
“Not your fault,” she murmured, giving his arm a reassuring squeeze. “Let me try again.”
“But-”
“Be still.”
He frowned, but otherwise remained silent throughout the rest of the ritual-a guilty, repentant silence. Sakura could not help but wonder how bad he actually needed her help, to succumb that fast.
Her hands still shook when she had finished, but his blue eyes were clearer, and she smiled.
.
When three became two, Naruto roared his anger and grief at the gold-burnished sky as she shed silent tears.
---
“I heard someone has returned.”
The Seventh Hokage sat behind his desk in a careless slouch, partly hidden by menacing towers of papers. Her monthly hospital report-the result of three hellish nights of no sleep last week, Sakura remembered ruefully-lay unopened at the corner of his desk.
“He didn’t come and see you?”
Kakashi’s visible eye regarded her solemnly. “I’m hardly more important than his sleep.”
Sakura grinned, a habit she had picked up a long time ago, and shrugged. “It’s Naruto.”
“It’s Naruto,” he agreed.
.
When three became two, there was no more Team 7.
---
The thing she remembered most about Hinata was she nearly always blushed.
It had not taken Sakura long to figure out the reason-or the fact that the reason was always with her the few times they ran into each other. She had thought nothing of it for the longest time, content to watch but not to see. In her eyes, there had only been Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke; nothing else mattered.
But Hinata looked at her straight in the eye when she extended her congratulations in the party, pretty in a white wedding kimono but losing none of the steel which had made her the head of Hyuuga Clan, and said, “I wish you all the happiness too, Sakura-san.”
Sakura couldn’t pretend that she didn’t know what it meant.
.
When three became two, only the other nine mourned with them.
---
The fault, Ino told her over tea, dango, and holiday gossips a week later, was not hers.
“Face it,” she challenged, “you’ve practically dated every eligible guy in the village. You’re pretty and smart and they’re obviously interested in you, so why couldn’t any of them last more than three weeks?”
“There was that one time-
Ino waved her hand impatiently. “Fine, once, but it came to nothing in the end, so it still didn’t count. You told me yourself that most of them never even went past the second date.”
“Obviously I’m not interesting enough,” Sakura said dryly and got a reproachful glance for her trouble.
“Be serious.”
“Or maybe I’m destined to be alone. Who knows.”
“Sakura,” Ino’s voice was suddenly solemn, her eyes intent, “what happened ten years ago-”
“I’m not what happened ten years ago,” she snapped. “I’m not a damn page in the history book, Ino. If none of them can see that, then I’m better off alone.”
Ino was smiling and the gentle, understanding look in her eyes suddenly made Sakura feel small. “I know, but that’s because I had known you long before ten years ago happened and made you a legend. Do you even realise what you look like to their eyes?”
Sakura nearly laughed, bitterness a cruel taste in her mouth. “A legend.”
“You must admit that it can be intimidating.” Ino paused, fiddling with some leftover sticks. “And in my opinion, your relationship with Naruto doesn’t help.”
Sakura stared at her, incredulous. “We’re good friends.”
“Really good friends.”
“And nothing more,” she insisted with a frown.
“Which makes me curious, by the way.” Ino was now looking at her closely from under a thick pair of lashes. “Why aren’t you dating him?”
It took Sakura a long time to come up with an answer-and that, the only one she could come up with.
“I can’t.”
Ino’s mouth thinned into a firm line, but she said nothing.
.
When three became two, her inner self disappeared.
---
They had a funeral at least once a month.
Her job courted death in daily basis. Despite her best efforts, there were always times when she arrived too late and found only an empty shell waiting to be carried home, far beyond her aids. Even at the hospital, when she looked into their eyes and told them that it would be alright, she told lies as often as truths.
The village undertaker was an elderly man with an inexpressive face and a solemn voice. Funerals for shinobi were a straightforward business and he took them as such. The preparations, the procedures were all simple, practical, be it a cremation or a burial. A loss was a loss everywhere, but in a village which chief purpose was to foster children into killers, a loss should remain only as a loss; a funeral she had attended in the Wave Country had shown her the difference.
Today it wasn’t a shinobi, but the owner of a stationary shop, an old woman who had led a long and quiet if unexciting life, and died as naturally as flowers would wilt at the change of each season. Sakura had donned her formal black dress, high-collared, the pressed edges reaching her knees. As she stood watching the fire danced against the dusk-glazed sky, she wondered if she had seen one too many losses-to stare at death in the face and feel nothing but the strong heat licking her face.
She knew the old woman, had attended to her a few times at the hospital and laughed at her funny stories. But grief did not come to her the way it had used to; it was a blunted kunai. She consoled the bereaved family with statistics from her notes, if varnished with a little white lie at the surface-no pain at all, her passing had been peaceful, she had never seen a smoother one. They swallowed her words with the eagerness of a sinner seeking atonement from the nearest, most likely source. She gave it to them not because the dead was less important than the living, but because the living must continue living.
The undertaker nodded in acknowledgment when they passed each other on their way home, carefully not meeting her eyes. Sakura returned the courtesy. She didn’t raise her face until she finally reached Ichiraku, back in the warmth of everything familiar and safe.
“Sakura-chan, finally!”
Naruto was sitting on one of the stools, waving at her to approach. The smell of ramen unwound her stiffness and she found smiles and repartees readily as if they had never deserted her. Ichiraku was a place where only good things happened.
He chattered away about four things at once while they were waiting for their order. Sakura was content to listen-perhaps with the eagerness of a sinner seeking atonement from the nearest, most likely source, and the irony did not escape her. He did not mention the funeral, or the fact that he knew about it. Only his presence and their being here said as much.
“A special extra for the lovebirds,” the old ramen seller said, putting two enormous bowls before them; there was a twinkle in his eyes that set Sakura’s teeth on edge.
Naruto was not blushing, only shaking his head with a laugh and a wave of his chopsticks. “We’re not dating, Oji-san.”
The old man looked genuinely confused. “Why?”
I can’t. We can’t.
“We’re not,” Naruto said stubbornly after a pause, chasing all the unspoken away with another blithe laughter, tendered even more by a childish pout.
She heard them all the same.
.
When three became two, Sasuke let go of their hands; it took them much longer to let go of his.
---
It was not the fact that Kakashi was standing in her office with an opened scroll in his hands which told her about what happened; it was the way he stood, shoulders slumped but heavily wrought with tension, head bowed as if in defeat, and she knew.
Anger caught up with her almost as quickly. Sakura strode into the room and slammed the door shut, feeling the tremor wash over her.
“You have no right,” she hissed, her voice shaking with rage.
Kakashi let the scroll fall back onto the desk-a copy of The Study of Sharingan, with her notes scribbled on the periphery. He looked at her with a single tired eye, murmuring sadly, “I should have known.”
“You know nothing,” Sakura snarled.
“As I’ve discovered.” He closed his eye, as if seeking solace in sightlessness, perhaps denial. For the first time, his name finally made sense to her; he did look like his namesake, an old, weather-beaten scarecrow which had stood too long under the onslaught of birds and rain and sun.
“Why are you doing this?” he finally asked.
She took a deep, quivering breath. “Personal research.”
“Why?” His solemn eye pierced her, probing. “We have no Uchiha left and I don’t think you’re doing this for me.”
“It happens to be my own business, Hokage-sama.”
Kakashi shook his head slowly, the motion thick with pain. “Don’t chase a ghost, Sakura,” he said quietly. “You will never catch up with it.”
“I know,” and yet she said it only because she could. Kakashi knew it too and he might have smiled behind his mask, another smile which had Sasuke all over it, like hers, like Naruto’s-but she would never know. His eye found a framed photograph on top of her filing cabinet, a picture of the beginning; she had not looked at it for years.
“I was hoping that you could be the one with more sense,” he admitted. “Naruto only knows how to run away when it comes to grief.”
Bitterness turned into cruelty and she nearly laughed. “Then why don’t you do something about it?”
“Indeed, why.” He sounded resigned, a misplaced sentiment, a wrong one; Sakura didn’t want to be the only one angry in the room, it made her feel oddly vulnerable. “Maybe I’m running away too. Hiding behind mountains of paperwork and excuses.”
“We are not-” she was shaking, her fists aimless. “We should not forget him. He is a part of us.”
“Yes, but I don’t think we should carry him for the rest of our lives either.”
Sakura would have punched him across the face-except she knew that Kakashi was right.
.
When three became two, they tried their hardest to make it three once more-and they tried and they tried and they tried.
---
It was an obsession.
Love could not survive long without reciprocation-and Sasuke had been worse than dead when they had met for the last time ten years ago. The attack on Konoha, everything they had ever known, everything that made them who they were, had sealed the nail on the coffin.
It had taken Naruto ten days to kill him. She had expected neither to survive-and perhaps a tiny corner of her heart had dared to wish for both, but never one without the other.
.
When three became two, she thought she had forgiven him.
---
“It will be exciting this time,” Naruto told her, stretched out on the sun-warmed roof above her room, watching the stars blinking down at them. “The last one was so boring.”
Sakura rolled her eyes. “Says the person who came back all tense and wound up. You didn’t even protest much when I tried to help.”
“Hey, at least I wasn’t hurt.”
“I’m sure you were.” She could still see the way his chakra worked if she closed her eyes, stitching flesh and patching skin; there was something really morbid about it, but also weirdly appealing, so different from the slow mending of her ways. “But of course the wounds were already healed by the time you returned.”
Naruto laughed, somehow a mechanical sound instead of amusement’s earnest child. “You’ll jinx it, Sakura-chan.”
“At least then you’ll learn your lesson.”
“Maybe not.”
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”
“That’s mean!”
She grinned. “It will be a good lesson on caution.”
He did not answer immediately-and when he finally did, she could hear the change in his tone from the first syllable. “Actually Kakashi-sensei said that I should take someone with me this time around.”
Sakura tensed, but kept her voice nonchalant. “That bad?”
“For precaution, he said.”
“Then maybe you should.”
“Yeah.”
Neither of them spoke again until it was time for him to leave.
.
When three became two, the living were left to stare at each other’s faces, pale and hope-starved.
---
She hardly slept for the rest of the night.
This was one of those times in which Sakura wished that she had punched Naruto. The offer had been there, at the tip of his tongue, and yet he had hovered at the brink but never taken the actual plunge. The old Naruto would have fired the question, insecurities be damned.
But then again, the old Naruto had not killed his best friend, would not have, under any circumstances. The old Naruto would have picked both options-village and friend and most likely the weight of the entire world, blind to consequences-instead of sacrificing one for the other. The old Naruto would have died trying.
The eighth time the toll of the clock downstairs startled her awake, Sakura made her decision. She got up, dressed herself in clothes she had not worn in years, and then wrote a note for her parents, leaving out most of the details except the fact that she was going for a mission. She left with the first light of the day warming her face.
As always, she found Kakashi standing before the memorial stone, ever black and mute and deaf to questions and prayers. The stone could well be ageless, but the man waiting for its answers was not-and neither seemed to care.
“I want to go with him.”
Kakashi did not answer, did not even look at her; instead he said, “Do you know that you are the only girl in the whole world that he won’t date? That he cannot date?”
It was a fact and she knew it, but spoken by her former teacher, the reality made her wince. “I’ve noticed.”
“I said the same thing to him,” he sighed heavily. “For you, he too is off-limits right?”
Sakura’s lips tightened. “It’s more complicated than that. Sensei-”
“Deal with it, Sakura.”
She automatically raised her hand to catch the small scroll. The shape and weight were familiar enough to remind her of missions, each sorted and ranked, each a testament of their teamwork; she could almost feel it again, a child’s hope flaring in her breast.
The stone still stood mute, a witness of all things and nothing at once.
“What about your ghost, Kakashi-sensei?”
He smiled, the crease on his mask now more pronounced than ever. Sometimes it made Sakura wonder how he could have changed in so many ways, and yet stayed exactly the same in other ways. It always seemed wildly contradictory to her.
“When you come back, maybe you can tell me how you did it.”
“I will.”
With a promise and determination whispered past her lips, Sakura took her leave.
.
When three became two, life went on.
---
Epilogue
His eyes widened when he saw her through the thickness of branches and leaves. She landed smoothly at his side, grinning, and felt the weight in her heart shift a little.
“Sakura-chan?”
There was uncertainty still in his voice, in his crooked smile, but at least it was a step in the right direction.
End
---
End Notes:
1. I took some liberty with the element of Sakura’s chakra and made it Water because Wind < Fire < Water HELL YEAH
2. Yes, I know that Kakashi is the leader of team 7. The ‘three became two’ thing is only to force the focus of the entire fic to Naruto-Sakura-Sasuke’s relationsip, although some of Kakashi’s are definitely in there too.
3. Thank you for reading and please leave a comment if you have one :)
Fandom: Naruto
Characters/Pairings: Sakura, Naruto, Kakashi, Hinata, Ino (mostly gen, but can be seen as pre NaruSaku with a focus to Naruto-Sakura-Sasuke’s relationship)
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Possible spoiler up to chapter 484. This is also my first Naruto fic and un-beta-ed at that, so if there are some mistakes, I’ll be very grateful if you'll let me know :>
Word Count: ~3700
Notes: One of the promised V-Day drabbles, only obviously this is not a drabble. Written for foxarashi who gave me this prompt: Naruto/Sakura - bittersweet :”)
---
Everyone thought they were inevitable.
There was always something special about Team 7. The boys, both notorious in their own right, and the one ‘lucky’ girl, stuck in between and lacking and smart enough to know that she needed to grow lest they left her behind. Many doubted that she could, but when Sakura evidently did, no one was truly surprised. She was swept by the same wave which lifted her two friends; it was inevitable.
After the betrayal, parallels were drawn, comparisons made, and even Tsunade looked at the girl she had taken under her wings and saw much of herself in her, in nights spent bent over scrolls and days building bridges between muscles and chakra, one by one. Sakura never once wondered if it would be enough-what she did, what she had done and would continue doing. He deserved all her best and she lived knowing this, believing that one day she would make him turn around and see her.
And then Naruto came home and he was moulded steel instead of a brittle branch left alone on the wayside. There was a certain look in his eyes which turned his promise from empty words into clear-cut faith, that they would be able do it this time, the two of them, together. Team 7 was a woven story of three, with Kakashi-sensei holding the fringes together. The absence of one did not make it flawed-the absence of one was the absence of all, of the story itself.
Sakura smiled at him in return and felt the bravest in the world.
.
But when three became two, they still existed.
---
“You are twenty-five.”
Her mother spoke it like an accusation, as if the count of her age was an offense instead of a blessing. Far too used to this line of argument, Sakura glanced up from her breakfast to acknowledge her mother's words-she was, after all, twenty-five-but said nothing.
“Most girls of your age are already married,” she added, as if she did not say it every morning. Coming home from a mission alive was supposed to be a cause for celebration. Sakura had stopped wondering why her mother could not simply be grateful at that. ‘I will not marry,’ she did not say, mostly because the memory of her mother crying-I will never die in peace if you don’t-was forever imprinted in her mind.
Their dining table was round; sitting opposite her, her father never contributed to the discussion. He had married her mother young, both of them not yet twenty, but the hastiness of youth and the uncertainty of a looming war had written their decision in ink thicker than blood. A little, they had probably thought, was better than none at all.
When her father had lost his right leg as one of casualties’ tally, so had ended his path as a shinobi. But he never stopped dreaming, and Sakura didn’t think she had ever seen him prouder than he had been on the day she had enrolled into the academy.
“Ino has been married for almost a year now,” her mother was still speaking-lamenting, coveting, Sakura could put endless names to the tone of voice she used. “I’m not saying your career isn’t important, dear, but what about your future? Say, I haven’t seen Naruto around lately. Hasn’t he come back from Lightning Country? When will he be back?”
She sighed and explained, for the thousandth time, that in their line of work, that kind of information was impossible and even if it wasn’t, the sensitivity of the mission would not allow it to be shared. Maybe tomorrow. Next week. Next month.
“Even with you?”
Sakura rolled her eyes in exasperation and returned to her breakfast. If her mother was still determined to think that there was something between her and Naruto after so much remonstrance, then so be it.
Across the table, her father looked at his daughter indulgently and smiled.
.
When three became two, they buried their dead friend together under a shower of brilliant sunlight, so bright as if reminding them, mocking them: the rest of the world did not mourn.
---
The smell of blood was now a familiar, everyday presence-on her hands, palms and fingers both streaked with red, not to mention in whatever room she walked into. It remained that getting used to something and liking it were two different things.
She missed the long missions sometimes; the smell of forest after a heavy rain and thick green grass under her swift feet; the cool water from a stream up in the mountains; the scent of wind laced with saltwater or early dews. But it was her choice to stay in the village-an obvious choice. She prepared young medic nins for their duties ahead and made her skills available as much as possible in the hospital in case of emergency. It was, she always thought, only appropriate.
She had two desks in her office, one for consulting and meeting purposes, the other buried under research papers and books. Sakura was essentially a neat person, but research was a messy, demanding business. As she pored over scrolls and old medical reports, the world beyond her door vanished.
-a specific amount of chakra directed to the tip of the fingers-
-only fire, anything else didn’t work as good-
-the pupils dilated, but as death approached-
“Sakura-chan.”
She nearly jumped out of her chair. Naruto was crouching on the windowsill, just outside her periphery, brightening his face the same sunny grin which had not changed throughout the years. For a moment, Sakura was torn between scowling and smiling back at him.
“Would you stop doing that?”
Naruto unfolded his limbs and jumped in, making too much noise in the process. “You looked so serious, Sakura-chan.”
She rolled her eyes and slipped her scribbled notes under heaps of unread scrolls. “I was working. Come here.”
Once, Naruto had been the only shinobi in the whole village who had absolutely no need of her expertise. Now he bent his head, eyes closed, and Sakura reached behind his neck, her fingers locating a familiar stream of chakra.
Like every other time, she found herself overwhelmed by the maelstrom whirling inside his body-and each time, she would remind herself, this was what Naruto had lived with his entire life. The bond between his Wind and the Kyuubi’s Fire was a frontline ravaged by incessant battles, both sides constantly trying to overwhelm the other. She expected no less; it was the Nine-Tailed, and it was Naruto.
Gently, a third presence but not an intruder, her chakra carved a flowing path. Water curved with every rift and ripple, smoothing edges, easing tension sharpened by a long, hard mission. Naruto’s control had slackened with the slow seep of weariness. The Kyuubi roared, snarling at her presence, but within the cage he could do very little. It was Naruto who gave her more trouble at this point, his chakra lashing and cutting-eyeless, mindless.
If only he is Fire-
She staggered one step back and Naruto caught her elbow, a look of panic across his face. “I’m sorry, I should have-”
“Not your fault,” she murmured, giving his arm a reassuring squeeze. “Let me try again.”
“But-”
“Be still.”
He frowned, but otherwise remained silent throughout the rest of the ritual-a guilty, repentant silence. Sakura could not help but wonder how bad he actually needed her help, to succumb that fast.
Her hands still shook when she had finished, but his blue eyes were clearer, and she smiled.
.
When three became two, Naruto roared his anger and grief at the gold-burnished sky as she shed silent tears.
---
“I heard someone has returned.”
The Seventh Hokage sat behind his desk in a careless slouch, partly hidden by menacing towers of papers. Her monthly hospital report-the result of three hellish nights of no sleep last week, Sakura remembered ruefully-lay unopened at the corner of his desk.
“He didn’t come and see you?”
Kakashi’s visible eye regarded her solemnly. “I’m hardly more important than his sleep.”
Sakura grinned, a habit she had picked up a long time ago, and shrugged. “It’s Naruto.”
“It’s Naruto,” he agreed.
.
When three became two, there was no more Team 7.
---
The thing she remembered most about Hinata was she nearly always blushed.
It had not taken Sakura long to figure out the reason-or the fact that the reason was always with her the few times they ran into each other. She had thought nothing of it for the longest time, content to watch but not to see. In her eyes, there had only been Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke; nothing else mattered.
But Hinata looked at her straight in the eye when she extended her congratulations in the party, pretty in a white wedding kimono but losing none of the steel which had made her the head of Hyuuga Clan, and said, “I wish you all the happiness too, Sakura-san.”
Sakura couldn’t pretend that she didn’t know what it meant.
.
When three became two, only the other nine mourned with them.
---
The fault, Ino told her over tea, dango, and holiday gossips a week later, was not hers.
“Face it,” she challenged, “you’ve practically dated every eligible guy in the village. You’re pretty and smart and they’re obviously interested in you, so why couldn’t any of them last more than three weeks?”
“There was that one time-
Ino waved her hand impatiently. “Fine, once, but it came to nothing in the end, so it still didn’t count. You told me yourself that most of them never even went past the second date.”
“Obviously I’m not interesting enough,” Sakura said dryly and got a reproachful glance for her trouble.
“Be serious.”
“Or maybe I’m destined to be alone. Who knows.”
“Sakura,” Ino’s voice was suddenly solemn, her eyes intent, “what happened ten years ago-”
“I’m not what happened ten years ago,” she snapped. “I’m not a damn page in the history book, Ino. If none of them can see that, then I’m better off alone.”
Ino was smiling and the gentle, understanding look in her eyes suddenly made Sakura feel small. “I know, but that’s because I had known you long before ten years ago happened and made you a legend. Do you even realise what you look like to their eyes?”
Sakura nearly laughed, bitterness a cruel taste in her mouth. “A legend.”
“You must admit that it can be intimidating.” Ino paused, fiddling with some leftover sticks. “And in my opinion, your relationship with Naruto doesn’t help.”
Sakura stared at her, incredulous. “We’re good friends.”
“Really good friends.”
“And nothing more,” she insisted with a frown.
“Which makes me curious, by the way.” Ino was now looking at her closely from under a thick pair of lashes. “Why aren’t you dating him?”
It took Sakura a long time to come up with an answer-and that, the only one she could come up with.
“I can’t.”
Ino’s mouth thinned into a firm line, but she said nothing.
.
When three became two, her inner self disappeared.
---
They had a funeral at least once a month.
Her job courted death in daily basis. Despite her best efforts, there were always times when she arrived too late and found only an empty shell waiting to be carried home, far beyond her aids. Even at the hospital, when she looked into their eyes and told them that it would be alright, she told lies as often as truths.
The village undertaker was an elderly man with an inexpressive face and a solemn voice. Funerals for shinobi were a straightforward business and he took them as such. The preparations, the procedures were all simple, practical, be it a cremation or a burial. A loss was a loss everywhere, but in a village which chief purpose was to foster children into killers, a loss should remain only as a loss; a funeral she had attended in the Wave Country had shown her the difference.
Today it wasn’t a shinobi, but the owner of a stationary shop, an old woman who had led a long and quiet if unexciting life, and died as naturally as flowers would wilt at the change of each season. Sakura had donned her formal black dress, high-collared, the pressed edges reaching her knees. As she stood watching the fire danced against the dusk-glazed sky, she wondered if she had seen one too many losses-to stare at death in the face and feel nothing but the strong heat licking her face.
She knew the old woman, had attended to her a few times at the hospital and laughed at her funny stories. But grief did not come to her the way it had used to; it was a blunted kunai. She consoled the bereaved family with statistics from her notes, if varnished with a little white lie at the surface-no pain at all, her passing had been peaceful, she had never seen a smoother one. They swallowed her words with the eagerness of a sinner seeking atonement from the nearest, most likely source. She gave it to them not because the dead was less important than the living, but because the living must continue living.
The undertaker nodded in acknowledgment when they passed each other on their way home, carefully not meeting her eyes. Sakura returned the courtesy. She didn’t raise her face until she finally reached Ichiraku, back in the warmth of everything familiar and safe.
“Sakura-chan, finally!”
Naruto was sitting on one of the stools, waving at her to approach. The smell of ramen unwound her stiffness and she found smiles and repartees readily as if they had never deserted her. Ichiraku was a place where only good things happened.
He chattered away about four things at once while they were waiting for their order. Sakura was content to listen-perhaps with the eagerness of a sinner seeking atonement from the nearest, most likely source, and the irony did not escape her. He did not mention the funeral, or the fact that he knew about it. Only his presence and their being here said as much.
“A special extra for the lovebirds,” the old ramen seller said, putting two enormous bowls before them; there was a twinkle in his eyes that set Sakura’s teeth on edge.
Naruto was not blushing, only shaking his head with a laugh and a wave of his chopsticks. “We’re not dating, Oji-san.”
The old man looked genuinely confused. “Why?”
I can’t. We can’t.
“We’re not,” Naruto said stubbornly after a pause, chasing all the unspoken away with another blithe laughter, tendered even more by a childish pout.
She heard them all the same.
.
When three became two, Sasuke let go of their hands; it took them much longer to let go of his.
---
It was not the fact that Kakashi was standing in her office with an opened scroll in his hands which told her about what happened; it was the way he stood, shoulders slumped but heavily wrought with tension, head bowed as if in defeat, and she knew.
Anger caught up with her almost as quickly. Sakura strode into the room and slammed the door shut, feeling the tremor wash over her.
“You have no right,” she hissed, her voice shaking with rage.
Kakashi let the scroll fall back onto the desk-a copy of The Study of Sharingan, with her notes scribbled on the periphery. He looked at her with a single tired eye, murmuring sadly, “I should have known.”
“You know nothing,” Sakura snarled.
“As I’ve discovered.” He closed his eye, as if seeking solace in sightlessness, perhaps denial. For the first time, his name finally made sense to her; he did look like his namesake, an old, weather-beaten scarecrow which had stood too long under the onslaught of birds and rain and sun.
“Why are you doing this?” he finally asked.
She took a deep, quivering breath. “Personal research.”
“Why?” His solemn eye pierced her, probing. “We have no Uchiha left and I don’t think you’re doing this for me.”
“It happens to be my own business, Hokage-sama.”
Kakashi shook his head slowly, the motion thick with pain. “Don’t chase a ghost, Sakura,” he said quietly. “You will never catch up with it.”
“I know,” and yet she said it only because she could. Kakashi knew it too and he might have smiled behind his mask, another smile which had Sasuke all over it, like hers, like Naruto’s-but she would never know. His eye found a framed photograph on top of her filing cabinet, a picture of the beginning; she had not looked at it for years.
“I was hoping that you could be the one with more sense,” he admitted. “Naruto only knows how to run away when it comes to grief.”
Bitterness turned into cruelty and she nearly laughed. “Then why don’t you do something about it?”
“Indeed, why.” He sounded resigned, a misplaced sentiment, a wrong one; Sakura didn’t want to be the only one angry in the room, it made her feel oddly vulnerable. “Maybe I’m running away too. Hiding behind mountains of paperwork and excuses.”
“We are not-” she was shaking, her fists aimless. “We should not forget him. He is a part of us.”
“Yes, but I don’t think we should carry him for the rest of our lives either.”
Sakura would have punched him across the face-except she knew that Kakashi was right.
.
When three became two, they tried their hardest to make it three once more-and they tried and they tried and they tried.
---
It was an obsession.
Love could not survive long without reciprocation-and Sasuke had been worse than dead when they had met for the last time ten years ago. The attack on Konoha, everything they had ever known, everything that made them who they were, had sealed the nail on the coffin.
It had taken Naruto ten days to kill him. She had expected neither to survive-and perhaps a tiny corner of her heart had dared to wish for both, but never one without the other.
.
When three became two, she thought she had forgiven him.
---
“It will be exciting this time,” Naruto told her, stretched out on the sun-warmed roof above her room, watching the stars blinking down at them. “The last one was so boring.”
Sakura rolled her eyes. “Says the person who came back all tense and wound up. You didn’t even protest much when I tried to help.”
“Hey, at least I wasn’t hurt.”
“I’m sure you were.” She could still see the way his chakra worked if she closed her eyes, stitching flesh and patching skin; there was something really morbid about it, but also weirdly appealing, so different from the slow mending of her ways. “But of course the wounds were already healed by the time you returned.”
Naruto laughed, somehow a mechanical sound instead of amusement’s earnest child. “You’ll jinx it, Sakura-chan.”
“At least then you’ll learn your lesson.”
“Maybe not.”
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”
“That’s mean!”
She grinned. “It will be a good lesson on caution.”
He did not answer immediately-and when he finally did, she could hear the change in his tone from the first syllable. “Actually Kakashi-sensei said that I should take someone with me this time around.”
Sakura tensed, but kept her voice nonchalant. “That bad?”
“For precaution, he said.”
“Then maybe you should.”
“Yeah.”
Neither of them spoke again until it was time for him to leave.
.
When three became two, the living were left to stare at each other’s faces, pale and hope-starved.
---
She hardly slept for the rest of the night.
This was one of those times in which Sakura wished that she had punched Naruto. The offer had been there, at the tip of his tongue, and yet he had hovered at the brink but never taken the actual plunge. The old Naruto would have fired the question, insecurities be damned.
But then again, the old Naruto had not killed his best friend, would not have, under any circumstances. The old Naruto would have picked both options-village and friend and most likely the weight of the entire world, blind to consequences-instead of sacrificing one for the other. The old Naruto would have died trying.
The eighth time the toll of the clock downstairs startled her awake, Sakura made her decision. She got up, dressed herself in clothes she had not worn in years, and then wrote a note for her parents, leaving out most of the details except the fact that she was going for a mission. She left with the first light of the day warming her face.
As always, she found Kakashi standing before the memorial stone, ever black and mute and deaf to questions and prayers. The stone could well be ageless, but the man waiting for its answers was not-and neither seemed to care.
“I want to go with him.”
Kakashi did not answer, did not even look at her; instead he said, “Do you know that you are the only girl in the whole world that he won’t date? That he cannot date?”
It was a fact and she knew it, but spoken by her former teacher, the reality made her wince. “I’ve noticed.”
“I said the same thing to him,” he sighed heavily. “For you, he too is off-limits right?”
Sakura’s lips tightened. “It’s more complicated than that. Sensei-”
“Deal with it, Sakura.”
She automatically raised her hand to catch the small scroll. The shape and weight were familiar enough to remind her of missions, each sorted and ranked, each a testament of their teamwork; she could almost feel it again, a child’s hope flaring in her breast.
The stone still stood mute, a witness of all things and nothing at once.
“What about your ghost, Kakashi-sensei?”
He smiled, the crease on his mask now more pronounced than ever. Sometimes it made Sakura wonder how he could have changed in so many ways, and yet stayed exactly the same in other ways. It always seemed wildly contradictory to her.
“When you come back, maybe you can tell me how you did it.”
“I will.”
With a promise and determination whispered past her lips, Sakura took her leave.
.
When three became two, life went on.
---
Epilogue
His eyes widened when he saw her through the thickness of branches and leaves. She landed smoothly at his side, grinning, and felt the weight in her heart shift a little.
“Sakura-chan?”
There was uncertainty still in his voice, in his crooked smile, but at least it was a step in the right direction.
End
---
End Notes:
1. I took some liberty with the element of Sakura’s chakra and made it Water because Wind < Fire < Water HELL YEAH
2. Yes, I know that Kakashi is the leader of team 7. The ‘three became two’ thing is only to force the focus of the entire fic to Naruto-Sakura-Sasuke’s relationsip, although some of Kakashi’s are definitely in there too.
3. Thank you for reading and please leave a comment if you have one :)