I don't own Naruto (it's sad, but it's the truth... ㅠㅠ). I just edited it a bit and reloaded the chapter! But I hope you like the story!
Life is war. It's nothing you can end on sheer willpower. No one really wins it at the end because both sides have to endure losses. An never-ending cycle full of hatred and grief, sorrow and death - that's what life is. It was unforgiving, and each time she thought it was over, it just started to begin once more. At least it was this kind of impression she got. There was no place for love or life at all. Or hope. Hope is not something you should spend your time on. All you can get from it is despair and hopelessness. She was sick of seeing blood and death every time she closed her eyes, but she couldn't avoid it.
The young girl stood up from her wooden bed slowly, crossed the room and went to the window of her bedroom. The moon was shining brightly on the desk standing next to the window. It contained each and every one of the letters he wrote to her for all those years, including the last one she got from him three years ago. If someone would have made her recite the letter, it would had been no problem. By now, she knew it by heart... as often as she had read it since it had arrived via the eagle they used to communicate. She sighed, looking out into the clear and dark sky, the stars sparkling in their not definable rhythm as if to tease her or even send her a hidden message from him.
It was a quiet night in the Village of the Hidden Leaf, a quiet and peaceful one, and it wasn't the first time that the dark-haired girl would wish for such kind of peace in her own heart. But ever since the letters from her friend stopped abruptly, shortly after she had graduated form the Academy, she had a growing feeling of restlessness, as if a ring was of steel was clamping around her heart with more pressure with each passing second. It wasn't the first time, she wanted to tell her parents about it, but she just didn't.
"What shall I do - or better, what can I do?" The famous question kept spinning through her head, wherever she was, whatever she did and no matter what time it was. Like just now. She knew she was called a genius and that the whole village thought she must have inherited such amount of talent from her parents - no wonder, with her father being one of the most celebrated heroes in the whole ninja world and her mother being the heir of the Hyuuga clan. But nearly no one was really interested in what she was thinking, or who she was in real. Not what Uzumakki Akemi was really capable of. But this wasn't important now. She didn't know the reason for it, but she wanted to search for him. Ever since she heard that there were weird attackings going on in Sunagakure, the attempted murder on the latest Kazekage, and the regular massacres in the surrounding villages and countries - including Konohagakure, though they didn't have to count too much losses yet - she had the strong urge to take the matters into her own hands and start research about all of those happenings. There was this strange feeling in the pit of her stomach that going there would start solving her problems...
"Akemi, can't sleep yet?"
The called person nearly went through the roof, when she heard her mother's soothing voice behind her. "Mum, you scared me!"
Smiling, Uzumaki Hinata put a hand gently on the shoulder of the child. The last ten years didn't go past her without showing their blessings. She married the love of her life, started a new beginning as the wife of the Godaime and one of the head doctors in the Konoha Hospital. Instead, she stopped going to missions and cared more then ever for her family. So, the expression on the face of Takara's mother was full of worries, when she saw her daughter standing at the window and staring into the dark sky again.
"Are you still waiting for some answer from Yoshio?"
Akemi knew lying wasn't an option, so she simply nodded. "I just don't understand, why he stopped writing all of a sudden, Mum. We were laughing and joking one day, and the next day he is just... gone - as if he had never existed. Did I do something wrong? Why doesn't he answer anymore?" Hinata could feel the wild swirling and confused emotions behind those words, and those were the kind of days she just wanted to pull her into her arms and tell her that everything would be fine, that there was nothing to be worried about. But as she looked into the eyes of the girl next to her, she didn't saw the innocence of a pure ten-year-old girl in them. She saw the wounds of the soul, caused by the never-ending missions combined with danger and death of enemies and comrades, and seeing the girl desperately clutching after the existence of the one and only steady person who had been firm as a rock in her whole life apart from her family was heart-breaking. And saying the following words wasn't easy for her, but she had to do it - for her sake.
"Sweetheart, I know it's hard, but you know the life of the shinobi, and perhaps..." - "No! He is not dead, I just know it!"
She knew her mother would react like this. Every time, she tried to talk to her parents about Yoshio lately, they tried to change the subject or they wanted to persuade her into forgetting him. When she went to her father and asked him, to give her a mission to search for intel about him, he nearly went berserk - and for the first time of her life she even got slapped by him. Everything she would hear from her parents relating to her friend was something like "You have to forget him" or "You know the life and the dangers of being a ninja" et cetera et cetera. But this was so untypical of her parents.
Of course she grew up with those stories about her father, saving the world and ending the Fourth Great Ninja War, together with his best friend the famous Uchiha Sasuke, who was deceased by now. She remembered how she had always asked her mother to tell her bedtime stories about how the famous Uzumaki Naruto would try to retrieve his friend from the darkness of the path he chose to take. But the same person who had been just a bit older than herself right now and who risked everything just to rescue one soul would do nothing, absolute nothing when a friend of her was in danger. Instead, he would try to stop her in repeating history. But why? Shouldn't he be proud of his older daughter? And her mother, didn't she risk her own life more than once just to save her father? It didn't make any sense to her. And all of this thoughts crossed her mind during those few seconds, so instinctively, she didn't know any other way than to react except shouting the said sentence and running out of the room and to the rooftop, crying. But while she was running upstairs, she knew one thing for sure: "If no one is going to help me, then I will do it by myself!" What she didn't know, was that this would be the one decision that wouldn't only turn her life, but the one of the whole ninja world upside down...
Please R&R! Even though it doesn't seem like it now, it is in fact a Sasuke & Sakura fanfic! I'm going to upload the next chapter as soon as I can, if anybody is interested. Sorry, if there are some grammar mistakes, but I just don't have a beta reader! =D