Chapter 1 –
The neighborhood was just like those on the front cover of magazines: clean cut grass, smooth sidewalk, cute white house with a picket fence to match. It was the exact opposite to her old house. This house was freshly painted for their arrival, while her old house was probably being torn down to make room for a new shopping complex.
But that wasn't the reason she moved. No, her stepmother, Tsunade, had gotten promoted from her little hometown hospital to the large and wealthy city of Konoha. However, the stubborn old woman wouldn't leave their little hospital without a nice place already paid for them and her assistant, Shizune. Konoha's council readily agreed; apparently they had heard of her impressive prowess in the medical field and they needed the best of the best in their hospital.
A teenager with unique pastel pink hair and apple green eyes struggled with hauling her luggage over the stone pathway, although she was grateful that their new house had one so she wouldn't have to walk over the dewy, fresh cut grass coated evenly over their new front yard for the whole neighborhood to see. Finally managing to lug her large bag over the uneven walkway, the slim teen fished through her jeans for the house key she was given and, after pulling them out, unlocked and opened the door. When she walked in, she was very surprised.
Sitting on her couch and watching TV were two other teenage boys around her age. Both had on the same uniforms as the other mover men, although one had an orange bandana around his neck. The one with orange was leaning forward, eagerly watching the football game with frenzied excitement easily seen in his child-like blue eyes. The other was leaning back and seemed to be bored, but his obsidian eyes betrayed his interest.
They both must have heard the door open, because the duo turned around, the blue eyed, blonde teen looking guilty and the black eyed, black haired teen appearing indifferent. He even had the nerve to look annoyed.
"Ah, uh, y-you must be t-the buyer, uh, Tsunade-san (a polite way to address someone)? I-It's not w-what it l-looks like, I swear! I-I was j-just checking to see i-if the TV was working right," the blond stammered nervously. "Heh, i-it's, uh, it's working just fine, see," and he patted the edge of the flat screen gently, if not lovingly.
"'Tsunade'," the rosette stated angrily, "How old do you think I am?"
The blonde looked as if he was about to go off into another stuttering dialog when the black haired one slapped a hand over his mouth. "Idiot, shut up," he growled before turning smoothly toward the irritated girl, "Ignore Naruto, he's a moron. He and I are part of the moving team, temporarily, of course."
"Of course," she muttered sarcastically. "So, who are you anyway?"
He smirked, "I'm Uchiha Sasuke. You?"
"Haruno Sakura. Now, from what I can see, you're all done moving our furniture, so you're free to leave. That means you can go now."
"Sakura, what are you doing?" Said girl whirled around and came face-to-face with her stepmother, Tsunade.
The pale blonde woman was standing in the doorway, her honey brown eyes glaring darkly at her adopted daughter. Her ugly mood was probably due to the fact that she had two large boxes under her arms and was trying not to drop them. Sakura took one of the boxes from Tsunade and asked, "Asking the movers to leave. Why?"
The older woman scowled even more, "Your standing in the middle of the doorway with the door wide open, girl! Letting in all the bugs; and we hadn't even lived here for a night!" Then she shouldered her way in and saw the two teens in her new living room and began to snicker, "Oh, I see. Getting it on with these two young men, now, are you?" The wicked amusement she got from this situation was obvious. She had always thought that the pretty young girl never put herself out there enough.
"Tsunade!" The green eyed teen squealed, blushing bright red. She wouldn't deny that the two boys were attractive, Sasuke being a bad boy with his black hair and obsidian eyes, and Naruto being the poster boy of adorableness complete with sunny blonde hair and clear blue eyes.
The latter of the duo grinned broadly and boasted, "Ha! I bet she likes me more that you, teme (an insulting way to say 'you')!"
"Dobe (loser)," the Uchiha snorted in disbelief, "She obviously doesn't, seeing as you were caught using work time to watch the game."
"In case you forget, you were right there beside me!" Naruto exclaimed.
"Hey! Both of you, would you mind?" Sakura shouted at both of them. Her temper was running even shorter than usual and her normal politeness was lost in her tiredness. Having to move into a new house at ten o'clock at night tended to do that to a person.
Sasuke smirked, "Not at all, Sakura," he practically purred. It was plain that he was used to getting what he wanted, when he wanted. Too bad for him that Sakura was stubborn. Very stubborn. And when she was irritated, she didn't handle sarcasm very well.
However, before she could rant on about how much of a jerk he was being, and in her own house, his phone began ringing loudly. The pink haired teen recognized it was a popular metal song. When he pulled it out of his pocket, her mouth nearly hit the floor. Instead of being an old and cheap phone, like she was expecting, it was the brand new touch screen cell phone that had to cost about four hundred dollars, at least! Certainly not what she expected from a low-level mover. Sasuke merely glanced and then glowered at it.
"I have to leave. Mother needs me to come back home. See ya at school, Naruto." He was about to leave when his friend stopped him.
"Uh, a-actually, I, um, I need a ride home." When Sasuke gave him an 'are-you-kidding-me' look, the blonde hurried to explain. Tsunade and Sakura were simply watching from the doorway, the former amused by the idiocy of the other blonde and the latter peeved that she wasn't currently sleeping in the bed she had been fantasizing about since early that morning.
"M-Mom and Dad took my license because, well, you know."
"No," he growled out, "I don't. Enlighten me."
"You should know, teme, you were there with me in the car!" His desire to be loud finally got the better of him as he shouted in the black haired teen's face.
Sasuke's annoyed visage cleared and he smirked in amusement, "Oh, so they found out about that, eh? Che, dobe."
Sakura's natural curiosity got the better of her, "What did they find out?" She blurted out.
The pale boy glanced toward her and replied, "Dobe, here, crashed his car into three mailboxes after running a stop sign."
"W-What!" Sakura cried out in shock. Tsunade had left a few minutes ago after Shizune had called for her help in moving something. "H-How are you not in jail right now!"
Naruto grinned broadly, like a child that had a secret he was dying to share, "My father is an important government official. The cops just gave me a warning."
"Doesn't matter what the cops think," Sasuke pointed out, "It's what your parents do that matters."
"True," Naruto agreed. Sakura was shocked. She had always played by the rules her entire life; doing something against the law was unthinkable to her. Her friends back home weren't as stiff as her, but they wouldn't break the law. Maybe steal some cookies from their mothers when they weren't looking, but nothing serious.
"How can you just ignore what the law says," the rosette tried to make them see her intention. "It's there for a reason!"
"We don't ignore it," the Uchiha pointed out," It was an accident and the cops know about it, but they don't want to arrest Uzumaki-san's son. Dobe just got his license, too." Naruto nodded in agreement, before he realized what Sasuke had called him. Again.
"Teme! Don't call me 'dobe!" The blonde shouted.
"Then stop being one!" Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, it wasn't Sasuke who yelled this, but Tsunade. She was holding one end of a very large box and Shizune, the petit, black haired, grey eyed assistant who was more of an aunt to Sakura than anything else, held the other end. "Now," she growled irately, "if you two are done, please get out of my house before I call the cops on you. And I'll make sure they'll arrest you this time." Her voice held the clear threat.
Naruto gulped in the face of a woman's anger, "Uh, sure thing, Tsunade-obaa-san (A polite way of addressing an elderly person).
'Oh, man. Tsunade's gonna kill him,' Sakura could already envision his demise at the hands of Dr. Tsunade. The fact that she had problems with accepting her age didn't help. She almost felt sorry for him.
The doctor's face darkened in fury and she gently set down the box and then began to advance upon Naruto, who was beginning to look petrified. He realized his mistake much too late. "What did you call me?" She roared in anger. Poor, adorable Naruto was trying to plead with her, using all of his resources to avoid her wrath. Mostly by using his puppy eyes. It wasn't working. Sasuke was just standing there, watching him. He seemed amused at the blonde's plight.
"Do you think we should help him?" Sakura asked Shizune, who had managed to climb over the large box that held all of Tsunade's personal doctoral equipment and joined her adopted niece in watching Tsunade trying to strangle the blonde who was making use of his superior agility and speed.
"Um, I'm sure she'll stop in a minute or so," the small woman said uncertainly.
"She seems more – oh, what's the word?" Sakura mused, "Oh, unpredictable! She seems more unpredictable lately. Do you know why?"
"I was going to ask you," Shizune admitted, "but I thought it was because she's been really stressed lately. She is being thrust into an entirely new hospital and you know she doesn't really like new places. She only took this one because we need the money."
"Yeah," the teenager sighed, "Well, I better make sure she doesn't maim him or something. We only just moved here; I don't want everyone in the neighborhood knowing that my mother has homicidal tendencies."
"He'll be fine," a smooth male voice murmured in her ear. The startled teen jumped and spun around to see Sasuke invading her personal bubble with a smirk, "he has that effect on mist people. Everyone's used to it by now."
"O-Oh, ah ok," Sakura flustered, not used to close contact with a guy. Shizune, not agreeing with Tsunade about their adopted teen and her desire to get her some guy attention, pulled Sakura away from the raven haired boy, tossing him a glare.
"If you don't mind, please take you friend home," Sakura had to admit; the petit woman could be intimidating when she used the voice she had to use on Tsunade to get the stubborn woman to work on her dreaded paperwork.
"Hn," he grunted, grabbing his blonde friend by the collar of his shirt when he ran by in a panic and dragging him, quite literally, out the door and into his car.
"Yeah, that's right, you better run, you little brat," Tsunade, out of breath, yelled after him as the Uchiha drove away.
"Ok, so now that those two are gone, can we go to bed, please?" Sakura begged, giving her stepmother her best pleading look.
"Of course we can," Tsunade laughed, as if the idea of otherwise was unfathomable. Sakura felt relived a tad too soon, however. "Right after we talk about the new school you're going to."
"Aww, come on, Tsunade," she beseeched, "We're both exhausted, why don't we talk about it in the morn-"
Her stepmother cut her off abruptly by clamping a hand over her mouth, "No, Sakura, I'm not going to let you talk me into doing this tomorrow," the blonde warned. Seeing as she was in a nearly homicidal rage earlier, Sakura decided to listen to her and nodded meekly. "Good," Tsunade beamed happily. The other two women exchanged exasperated glances at her mood swings. At least she wasn't on her period or she might have thrown a chair through a window like last time. The honey eyed woman took the green eyed teenager and sat her on the couch.
"So, what school am I going to?" Sakura inquired, trying to get it over with as soon as possible.
"It's called Konoha High School; we actually passed it on the way here. Didn't you see it?"
The rosette snorted, "Of course not, I was fast asleep. Like I wish I was now," as if to add to her point, she yawned.
Tsunade glanced at her in worry, "You've been sleeping a lot lately, Sak. It's not like you. Is something wrong?"
The genuine worry in the doctor's eyes almost made the teenager say something, but she didn't. There was no way she could tell Tsunade about her dreams, otherwise she might have to back to the police forensic sketcher and then the physiatrist. Just like when she was seven. She crossed her fingers behind her back and replied with a fake smile, "It's nothing, Tsunade. So, when do I start going to school?"
The change in subject worked, because the blonde's eyes brightened significantly, "Well, normally, you wouldn't be able to because the principle doesn't let in last minute students. But, he's an old friend of mine, so you are starting in a few days, with everyone else."
Sakura smiled. That was great news, because it meant that she wasn't going to be behind in her studies. Students who want to go to medical school can't be a year behind.
"That's awesome! So, can I go to bed now?" the apple eyed teenager asked again. Even if she was happy that she was going to go to school on schedule, it didn't change the fact that she was about to fall asleep in the couch.
Tsunade smiled, "Sure, Sak. Go on." Without another word, the rosette stood up and dragged herself up the stairs. When the teenager was out of sight and she heard the sound of a door closing, the blonde's smile fell and she sighed.
Shizune stood behind the couch and asked worriedly, "Do you think she's having the nightmares again?"
"I don't know but it looks like it," Tsunade sighed again.
"B-But why?" The black haired woman cried out quietly, trying not to let Sakura hear them, "She's been doing so well for the past few years. What could have caused a relapse?"
"Maybe the stress of moving stirred up some memories," the older doctor suggested, "but I don't know. It could be anything."
Shizune glanced fearfully toward the stairs, worry for her niece freezing itself in her stomach and clawing its way up her spine. She had never really heard what Sakura saw when she was seven and living with her first foster parent, but knew that the couple was now dead and that Sakura, her sweet, innocent little Sakura, was now psychologically scarred and several trips to the therapist had finally made the terrible nightmares stop. Until now.
The black haired woman could only hope and pray that when Sakura settles down, the nightmares will stop.
No one seemed to come to the conclusion that it was where they were that was causing the nightmares.
Sakura's childhood community.