A/N: Ooh, first fic. I'm sort of inexperienced at this, so I appreciate criticism!
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There are some things Sakura will never forget, and others she will never remember. Days spent doing menial labor for ungrateful customers, chasing runaway pets, picnicking on the training field, stalking Kakashi to peek under his mask. Sunlight in Naruto's smile, giggling over boys with Ino, Tsunade praise the first time she managed to summon a slug.
And of course, Sasuke-kun. Teammate. First love. Husband. Only love.
Sakura remembers him very well.
As a rule, ninjas generally don't think too much. Complete the mission, get paid, get ready for the next one. Few have the time, the energy, or the sanity to ponder existential questions. Life is life, and it's there whether it's understood or not. The people who are dead or gone…they are not life. Thinking about them breaks you, wears you down.
Everything can be forgotten, decides Sakura. In time.
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Sasuke had never been able to say it.
Of course, it hadn't mattered to her, because she was a newlywed and blissfully happy. If he couldn't say it in words, he was making as much effort as he could to show that he loved her: let's start a family, Sakura; I want to stay together with you; I can't think of anyone else I'd rather have.
She agreed to give up field work and took a position at the hospital instead. Ken had come a year later, with dark hair and green eyes. "They're beautiful," Sasuke had said, even though it meant Ken wouldn't have the Sharingan, "just like yours."
Sakura had nearly exploded with joy. She had been a foolish, romantic girl. Growing into a woman had not rid her of either trait.
It was the closest thing to a direct expression of love he had ever given her, and it reaffirmed her conviction that someday, he would be able to actually tell her he loved her.
They had been happy.
Then she came home one day and the ANBU were there, silent as statues in her living room. They brought her in for questioning, but wouldn't inform her about what had happened. When she did learn that Uchiha Ken was gone, she had punched through the walls of the interrogation room and left to rescue her son.
Someone was waiting in the complex, the room that Sasuke had barred when they first moved in and asked her quietly, in a subdued tone, never to go into.
Itachi didn't turn to face her. He pointed to the corner of the room, where her son lay. Sakura ran to Ken, stroked his feverish, red, bloody face and doing what she could to heal his wounds. She suddenly understood why Tsunade hated blood.
When Sakura turned around, Itachi was gone and Sasuke, just back from the day's mission, was running towards her, a team of medics trailing in after him.
But it was too late by then anyway. When Ken opened his eyes, they were black and there were three tomoe spinning in them; his chest would bear the scar that said HATE for years.
Shizune helped Sakura look over Ken. "It must have been a powerful sealing jutsu," Shizune said. "It looks like Ken's body isn't rejecting the foreign tissue."
"So he can use the Sharingan now?"
"It'll take a while. He'll still have to learn. But yes, the pathways will eventually build up in his brain."
The next day, Sasuke disappeared.
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Sakura used to these fantasies- when she was little they would be simple ones, like maybe her forehead would suddenly shrink and everyone would be her friend again. Or she would become a really awesome and pretty kunoichi and a handsome shinobi would rescue her from a horde of enemies.
Then she met Sasuke, and she'd dream of Sasuke kissing her forehead, her hand, her lips; she'd dream of going on dates with him and being married someday. And in the foolish, romantic way of little girls, she thought her dreams would come true.
A few years later, they changed. Now her dreams were of learning more skills and becoming powerful and rescuing Sasuke and marrying him. Okay, so that part hadn't changed.
She had been one stupid little girl.
Summer: the chunin exams take place. Sakura patches up little kids with limbs blown off, with gaping holes in their chests, little kids that paint hospital beds red. Every year, the violence and the competition get worse and worse.
She gets promoted to medical director, a position she's wanted for some time now. Sakura visits Kakashi's grave on the anniversary of his death and is surprised when she doesn't see Naruto. She finds him in his apartment, grieving for two deaths.
"Sakura-chan…did you ever think about what life would be like if- if there was no war? If no one left, and no one betrayed anyone? If we didn't have to see anyone die young…"
Naruto's voice cracks. On the table is a photograph taken a week ago of a grinning boy with short brown hair and one arm slung around Naruto. Hoshi, Naruto's student for four years, died in his first mission as a chunin yesterday. Sakura has seen the kid's mangled body. She understands. If Ken were to…
"It happens," says Sakura, a little coldly because if she sympathizes then she's going to cry and if she cries then how will she write tonight's stack of letters? And she'll be the one to deliver them, too, because the Sixth, senile old man, passed a law saying that all death letters had to be delivered in person to the recipients. And she'll have to stand coldly by while the families of the deceased alternately scream and cry, and coldly say, it happens.
"…you're right." Naruto gulps down half a glass of beer. Sakura clucks disapprovingly.
"This is unhealthy." She begins to pick up the bottles and cans strewn about the floor and dump them in the garbage. "Naruto, we're ninja. You can't drink yourself into oblivion every time someone dies." Then again, he's been doing better. During the last war, when he wasn't a sadistic Kyuubi-powered killing machine, he was an emotional wreck.
"I know. But it's just…he just became a chunin. He was sort of like a son to me." Hoshi had been fatherless and something of a prankster, the same way Naruto had been when young. A lonely kid, desperate for family, desperate for affection. Sakura walks over and pulls Naruto down onto the couch, then lets him bury his head into her shoulder and hold her tightly.
Do you know, Naruto? The real reason why you can't become Hokage isn't because of the Kyuubi- no, everyone's still wary but they trust you. It's because you're too kind.
Sakura's hardened heart wavers, and she steels it back into submission.
"Pull yourself together," she murmurs to him. "You're on duty tomorrow."
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They say you can see a person's soul through their eyes.
Sakura doesn't like looking at eyes. Especially dark ones, which are murky and unclear and terrifying to be lost in. Especially red ones, which remind her of-
So she forces herself to stare at them and drives herself to get rid of this stupid phobia. Sakura's determined when she needs to be. I will move on, she chants to herself.
Maybe it will even work.
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Sakura's office rests in the west wing of what used to be the Uchiha complex. After the Hokage's tower was destroyed at the end of the war, the administrative department of Konoha needed a place to stay. Someone proposed the idea of renovating the abandoned complex, untouched since the massacre fifteen? Twenty? Twenty-five? (All the records were destroyed) years ago until all the debris could be cleared and rebuilding could start.
All they needed was Sakura's signature.
"It was supposed to help me move on," she tells Neji quietly. Neji is a good listener, a better kisser, and very hot; the perfect boyfriend. Never intrusive, never jealous, never unwilling to lend a hand, an ear, or a shoulder for support. "I thought that if I worked here it wouldn't seem like a home anymore. And Sasuke-kun was gone and I knew by then that he wasn't coming back."
"But you still feel attached to this place." Sometimes, Sakura wonders if Neji knows things about her that she doesn't know herself.
She leans on the windowsill and stares out at the city. It's dusk, so the light blue sky crumples into the horizon line, making way for darkness. "This room used to be a study. I was going to turn it into a nursery. I was going to try to get a job as medical director and use that money to buy furniture. It would have been perfect."
"Sakura, I've entered into an arranged marriage." Sakura blinks at his unexpected comment and turns around to face her lover of three years. Neji looks almost guilty, although she can't be sure, because he's wonderful at hiding his emotions. That he shows any emotion at all is probably Naruto's influence.
"With who?"
"The daughter of an influential Lord. It may not be love, but I have met the lady and I believe our marriage will be stable."
"Oh…well, I'm happy for you." Sakura smiles brightly. She wonders if she will be invited to the wedding. She wonders what she will say to the bride. Have a fun life with my boyfriend, you bitch.
"Sakura, are you alright?"
"Oh, I'm fine. Just a little surprised. Neji, I did…think you were perfect too."
He smiles wryly. "Perfect, maybe, but never enough to equal Uchiha. I was similar to him. That was why you liked me, wasn't it?"
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"It's because he's a bastard," Naruto proclaims. Sakura smiles at the sight of her friend in a white apron covered with a flower pattern and frills. They usually cook and eat dinner together with Ken in Sakura's apartment. Once, Ino had regularly joined them, but the wild girl has since settled down. Occasionally they still have Lee, Hinata, or Iruka over.
"Can you pass me the butter?"
"Here. All he knows how to do is run away," Naruto continues grumbling. His face is set in a frown today. "I say he should just come back, but then he just leaves. Not even a fight. 'You don't understand,'" mocks Naruto harshly.
Naruto's work as a hunter-nin frequently brings him to strange and dangerous places. Occasionally, then, he still chances upon Sasuke, who despite having left the village a second time, is still Naruto's beloved brother and best friend.
But in Sakura's mind, Sasuke is dead. Has been dead. Has never existed at all. So Sakura does not tell Naruto he was lucky to have spoken to and seen Sasuke.
"Stop," Sakura says firmly. "You're too soft, Naruto. What's done is done."
Ken yells to let them know he's home, and a minute later comes running in, clamoring for Uncle Naruto. Naruto picks the boy up and swings him around and asks him how the day was.
"I want some better missions," complains Ken. "I learn a lot of jutsu but I never get a chance to use them because I have no one good to fight against! My team just holds me back. Where's Hoshi-sensei? I haven't seen him in a week!"
"Well, I'll fight you," Naruto says, grinning. "Tomorrow you have a day off, right? We can have a picnic and you can show me your skills."
"But Uncle Naruto, do you really think you can beat me?"
"What? You don't think I can?"
"…you're old."
They sit and talk like a family until much later, when Sakura sends Ken to bed. She catches Naruto staring at her thoughtfully. "You've been running away too," he says. "Why?"
"You don't understand-" and Sakura pauses.
"We're not just ninja, you know. We're brothers, parents, uncles, children, friends. Wives, in your case." When he's not making ridiculous faces or squinting- when he's calm- Naruto looks wise. Sort of. "He ran from the future, and you run from the past."
Sakura looks away. "Stop. He's dead. Let it go."
"He says that he misses you and Ken. That he loves you."
"Tell Daddy I miss him too," says Ken, who has somehow sneaked out of his bedroom and now stands in the kitchen doorway.
Sakura doesn't say anything. She raises her gaze to the ceiling. Naruto stares at her face and later he will swear that day, he saw her heart reflected in her eyes and refracted through her tears: I knew you were going to be all right, he will say.
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So maybe Sasuke does kill Itachi. Maybe he comes back. Maybe he remarries Sakura and tries to make up with Ken. Maybe they eventually become happy.
Maybe he doesn't.
"I don't think I could really forget him," Sakura tells Naruto. "I knew that when Sasuke-kun ran off to join Orochimaru. Even though he betrayed us, he was always our Sasuke-kun. Our teammate. Our friend. And now, he's still your best friend and my husband."
Ken is old enough to take care of himself now; Sakura quits her job and becomes Naruto's partner. They hunt Uchiha Sasuke.
There are some things that cannot be forgotten.