Authors Note: FanFiction screwed up my formatting by showing line breaks. It should be fixed now
Whenever Naruto imagined this moment it was next to his friends. They were supposed share a big group hug and cry tears of happiness. Sasuke was supposed to ask Sakura out and she was supposed to say yes. Out of all people, these two deserved a happy ending most. But neither of them got it. They were both dead.
They were both dead. Thanks to him. He killed them both.
They told him that the pain will fade away. But it didn't. It stayed there, a painful reminder of what happened. Another reminder was his missing arm. A reminder of his mistakes
From the time that Sasuke joined Obito and Madara in the war, Sakura wanted to die. And she got what she wanted. She died with her lover's hand pulling her heart out of her chest. It was a perfect day, there could be heard birds chirping. But she chose to die. She died with a smile on her face, whispering loving words to her beloved.
But she didn't die. Or at least she thought so. If being dead doesn't mean being stuck in a cave.
She thought that if she closed her eyes, she would find herself in heaven. Or in hell. She did too many bad things to be in heaven. But it didn't matter. She was still alive.
The moment he felt her heart in his hands and heard the chirping of a thousand birds, Sasuke knew he deserved to die. His friend, teammate, lover, his sun. He killed her. He killed many people, but none hurt as much as her. Not even the other former comrades. He knew he deserved to die. He did too many bad things to be forgiven.
But. He didn't die. He was alive. And he didn't deserve it.
He didn't deserve to not die. He made peace with death the moment he heard those words from her. The moment he saw her smile. The moment her life faded away, he made peace with death.
When Sai died, Ino gave up on hoping that the war would end. She gave up on ever seeing her friends. She gave up on everything. She just went on with scanning minds of helpless shinobi with her clans jutsu. It was slowly killing her from inside, but she was okay with it. She went on, until the day she heard about Sakura, until she heard what happened.
She broke down. Her mind couldn't stand the stress anymore and broke down.
Hinata was there, but she was lost. She was broken beyond repair. She didn't even notice that the war ended with them winning. Nothing mattered anymore.
When she heard of the First, Second and Third Shinobi world war, she never thought that something like that could really happen. No, Hinata didn't believe that people could kill each other like they did in a war. But they did. In retrospective, she should have known that if people could kidnap little kids during piece, they could do much more during war.
But nothing could have prepared her for what happened.
She was on the battlefield that day, she saw it with her Byakugan. She saw what Sakura did. She saw her death. She knew that she did it to end the war. She knew that she sacrificed herself.
When he saw Hana die in the war, it broke his world. As much as he said that he hates her, he never imagined that out of all people, his big sister would die in front of him. Shinos death got to him even more. He was the closest Kiba had to a family at that point. What made it worse that he never saw his dead body. Shino was wiped off the face of Earth with a simple Katon jutsu.
He never knew her that much, but Sakuras death got to him as much as to everyone else./p
His excuse to not going berserk or at least breaking down was that he saw more of his beloved die during the war, but Akamaru knew, that inside, he was mourning.
Even if he called his siblings scary, he loved them, and he never imagined life without them. Kankuro was sometimes scared of his siblings and he sometimes ran from their wrath but without the ever-pestering Temari and cold-blooded Gaara his life felt empty. He did not mourn his father Rasa nor his uncle Yashamaru. But he mourned his siblings.
When he heard about her, he didn't think much about it.
He thought that she was just another simple soldier that died. But when he heard that thanks to Sakura the war ended, he changed his thoughts about her.
Neji waved off many things as destiny or fate. But when Lee practically sacrificed himself by opening the Eight Inner Gates and taking out Black Zetsu he couldn't wave it off as destiny. Same went when his sensei Might Guy died the same way as his favorite student: by opening the Eight Inner Gates and taking out Kisame and Itachi.
But her sacrifice was considered destiny by him.
He was there, that day. He, like many other, knew that someone would be dying when he heard the chirping of thousand birds. But he never imagined that it would be Sakura dying.
She was never a strong kunoichi. TenTen may have been the top kunoichi in her class but that truly didn't mean anything. No, being the top kunoichi in her class didn't prepare her for the horrors of war. Nothing could have prepared for not hearing or seeing her teammate Rock Lee or her sensei Might Guy.
In the same way, nothing could have prepared her for never seeing her again.
She was injured in battle the previous day and was healed by her that morning. That evening, Neji came to her to announce the Godaime Hokages top apprentice death.
Until his father was killed, Shikamaru called everything a drag and never took anything seriously. When Temari died his little happy life broke. He was planning on confessing to her after the war was over. He wanted to take her out. He loved her. But her death didn't break him, no, it made him only want to save more lives.
Same went with her death.
He knew how she died. He reached out with his shadows and tried to stop her. He could have saved her. But he didn't. He knew that this was her way of saying goodbye.
When the Fourth Shinobi War ended with the sacrifice of Sakura Haruno, the world was overjoyed. They thought that everything would go back. And it would. Someday, in the far future, the world will go back how it was before the war. Heroes were remembered by memorials and a special memorial was built for all the shinobi who made an impact.
But nobody remembered her.
Nobody remembered the girl that gave up her life to save the world. Nobody remembered the girl that died by her lover's hand, just to save the world.
When one story ends, another one starts