Hello, hello, my fellow writers! I suppose that I do not need to inform you that this is a Naruto fanfiction, told from the viewpoint of Haruno Sakura. I do hope you enjoy; the idea struck me as a simple and doable solution to her...conflict...in my story, and especially plausible with the resources and abilities that the ninja presented in Naruto possess. It's sort of a drama, romance; I'm sure I'll manage to fit in some comedic elements, but they won't be just rampant throughout. Sorry, if that inconveniences you. Haha...
The story that follows is really more of an introduction to the actual plot. Just to see what everyone thinks. Please, comment, rate, etc etc. Bring down the axe! I can take it
Disclaimer: I do not, in any way, shape, or form, own the characters, plot, or whatever else there is that makes up the ahhh-mazing anime of Naruto. Those belong to Masashi Kishimoto.
Anyways...enjoy!
I never expected him to, you know, just...come back.
Sure, he may return for his own twisted, half-baked reasons, but...
I never saw it any other way.
He'd completely severed all ties with this place.
This place didn't exist for him anymore.
We were nothing.
I was nothing.
His memories of here, and then, and whatever warped feelings he experienced here
were nothing.
His heart had chosen its path, that's what he told me on that day, those years ago.
It is gray in my memory; whether the weather was actually disagreeable that day, or that's just how my own mind chooses to remember it;
my heart told me it was gray, so I remember it as such;
really, I just think my soul
was gray.
Was it raining?
I can't honestly testify. I think so...but that could have just been my tears remembered in the form of rain, as my aforementioned inner darkness was remembered in the form of
Gray. Fog. Dark. Shadow.
I swear there was a chill,
as he turned away
that one last time.
I thought I had known Love for him during my childhood leading up to that moment. And I had. Maybe not the love I thought...maybe not the passionate, school-girl wishful romance I had assumed; it was the idea of romance itself I had fallen in love with. I didn't get it then. I still don't now.
But what I did experience on that day,
for the first true time
was Loss.
As he walked away, into that ugly gray..whatever it was, twilight, dusk, I had no concept of time;
I knew I had lost something.
I wasn't sure what, though I was pretty fucking sure
I was going with him
without actually leaving.
He took me away from here
from this place I knew
or thought I knew;
from my friends
from my family
from breathing.
And only then, after waking up on that fucking bench
that had been so cold
and so lonely
did I begin to realize
how much I really hated him.
Hate is another one of those feelings like Love
so Strong
so Unbreakable
So people think.
Well, they can both crumble,
that's for fucking sure.
And they have this annoying habit
of putting themselves back together again
once the sun has started to shine back through the holes inside you,
So they block out all the light
and you're all alone in the dark with those feelings
Again.
And you just want to...
forget.
After he left I became like a sort of shell. You know, that annoying cliched metaphor you hear so much; about becoming a hollow of your former self. It's surprisingly accurate; give the imaginative sucker who came up with it some credit. I was, of course, devastated for months after; it wasn't until the breaking of the following year did I begin to recover, and then the 'anniversary' rolled around, and the raw feelings I'd only managed to hide popped back out again.
I hadn't said "Marco" yet,
but Polo came to play anyway.
As can be assumed, my friends and family all tried their hardest to cheer me, and for the first few weeks I loathed them all for it. Why were they trying to be happy? Why was the world still spinning? Couldn't they see Sasuke was gone? Or did that little detail just manage to escape their minds, buried in their fake smiles?
But soon I began to appreciate their efforts, though they had no effect. Sasuke was still gone. I was still alone. That was the reality. Like I said, though. I didn't feel for him what I thought I did all those years ago.
After the loathing stage, I descended into the self-hatred, moping, wallow-in-my-own-misery phase. I had driven Sasuke away. It was all my fault. Everyone hated me. They all had a right to. So, when a ray of sunlight was finally able to penetrate the Gray, the Shadows, of course I sprung at it as if it were the life-saving oasis in a desert, and embraced this new opportunity.
This new opportunity I speak of is not conventional; in fact, I had never even known of its existence until I happened to stumble upon it accidentally at work.
I had been putting in a late night; Tsunade, of course, had slacked on her paperwork and convienently left it for me to sift through. I remember having just given up on my last stack of papers, and instead directed my attention towards cleaning up a little so it would look like I at least did something before I headed for home, for once glad that Lady Hokage had a tendency to get drunk. A lot. I could slip out quietly; she'd never know. Until I had to face her hungover wrath the next morning, of course. Ah, well. All positives had their negatives. It also helped to take my mind off of you-know-who.
Moving and shifting things this way and that, I had paused to dump a heap of month-old memos (probably still unread. Now that was some good village running, right there. One-up, Lady 'Kage! Isn't sarcasm fun?) in the trash bin, but the stack felt heavier than usual. Even for Tsunade, that was a lot of memos to ignore. Setting the papers back down, careful not to mix them with this month's memos and things, I quickly found the source of my weight problem: a good sized book had found its way into the pile, hidden expertly by papers and even an old candy bar wrapper.
"What's this..?" I asked myself, sort of lame, now that I think back on it. Anyways. I scooped up the book and opened the cover, curious as to why the outside didn't have a title; the title page simply read "Forbidden Medical Jutsu" in the Lady's familiar scrawl.
Scanning over the pages, I'd heard of some of these before; the jutsu Tsunade used on herself was included as well. Heh. Shame, shame, Hokage.
One caught my eye, though; a specific jutsu I had never even caught wind of before, in a passing conversation or from the Lady or anyone. The 'effects' box that described what the jutsu did as a whole to the patient drew my eye, and I began to read:
effects: Patient will have no mental record of the chosen memories hidden;
works best with a few memories rather than the whole human Memory.
Memories cannot be erased completely; jutsu will simply block them from the patient's consciousness and everyday life.
They will go about the rest of their days as if the erased events never happened, though some cases have reported severe
deja vu if ever encountering a situation or experience similar to those erased.
I stared at the page for a second, blinking, wondering why this particular treatment seemed so significant to me. What would I want to forget?
And then, of course, I dropped the book as those memories smacked me right in between the eyes, bombarding me from all sides, inside and out; I could almost actually feel them pelting my body until I was worn down, for the millionth time, reduced to the floor. Yea, well, I was tired of that.
I'd been tired of it for a long time. Now what could I do about that?
Peering down at the page once more, as if for guidance, I marveled in my own stupidity. Which, of course, I blamed on my broken heart. I'd blamed lots of things on that lately. I had painful memories. (Understatement..) I wanted so, so desperately to rid myself of this torture. And the solution was right there in front of me, practically begging me to embrace it.
Next thing I knew, I was hurling myself at the Lady's door, unknowingly crying with relief that I had found salvation. I was going to forget; I didn't have to forgive, or feign happiness, or any of that anymore. I could forget; I could forget!
I pounded on her office door frantically, not caring about the hole I put in it.
"Tsunade! TSUNADE! OPEN THIS DOOR!"