Apparently I will always love time travel and will gravitate towards it no matter what. Now that I am back to reading Naruto and Harry potter fanfics, I can now get back to my own fanfics and stop procrastinating. This is just a short thingy to get myself into writing. How about Sasuke going back in time?

please don't be too hard on me, it has been sooo long, I swear.

There was a girl in his room.

There wasn't supposed to be a girl in his room. Not again, not after Sakura. But this wasn't a normal girl either, she carried a sweet lavender scent that reminded him of home—children running and screaming, an expressionless older brother whose mouth would twitch just so—

There wasn't supposed to be a girl. But it wasn't a girl, it was a woman who stood in his doorway and floated across the room with the stealth of a well-trained shinobi albeit a retired one, although no one truly escaped the corps. Not even an Uchiha. He knew who it was instinctively, thirty years later and he could still recall that scent with perfect clarity. It was pathetic. It was emotional. It was as if he was the dobe or the mutt. It was his mother.

In books when people wake up in a strange place, they always have that distorted moment when they don't know where they are.

That never happened to Sasuke.

He knew where he was, how could he not? He spent his childhood in this room brooding about his brother not training with him and then later about his brother and the dobe and revenge and then even later, he burned it all down, starting in this very room, a way to show that he was more than a clan name, more than what his brother and the council made him to be. He did it for her.

He had done a lot of things for her. His second ravenous fangirl, his second annoyance right after the dobe. His second kiss, his second rescuer from the darkness that he vaulted himself into when he was only thirteen. She was always second: in school, in jutsus, in maturity. But Sakura would always be his second love. The one that lasted and bloomed instead of withering away. The perfect middle balance to their three-man team had somehow became the single most important person to him, number one in his heart in a special place that not even the dobe could touch. It was here, that she would always loudly boast that she was second. "First love withers away to be replaced by a new love. Everyone knows that the first love will never work out!" and it didn't. Even he was proud to say that it had only taken him two tries to find the heart that completed his. For her, he had ignored his duty to his slain clan and instead cheered her on for any passion she wanted to pursue. Her career came first and Sasuke was happy to be the one that came in second for her.

He really came in third. Wasn't that a kunai to the heart, seeing his wife with another man. he should have seen it coming, he was not Sakura's second or third or fourth love, he was her first, and like all first loves, her love and passion for him had withered away. His only comfort was that he had not had a child with her and that the divorce was quick and relatively painless. In the end he had kept his monetary gains and his house, he had kept everything in the divorce that was rightfully his. Except his heart. It had seemed that when she left him, she had taken his emotions with him and left behind only apathy and a small flame of bittersweet fondness for the girl who was second in everything but his heart. That was why when his mother sweetly called for him to wake, he didn't react in any way that did not befit his once moniker 'ice prince of Konoha'.

"Sasuke, you begin at the academy today, you wouldn't want to be late?" soft flint eyes peered down at him, "And to think Itachi woke up extra early to walk you to the academy…" his mother ran a hand through his hair. Closing his eyes, he allowed himself this one sign of affection.

"Hn."

"Come on sleepy head, the birds are up, the kunai's sharpened, and the Hokage is at work. Konoha is welcoming you to a new day and it's time to greet it back."

"Hn."

"Konoha is saying 'hi', time to wake up".

"Konoha doesn't speak".

"But you do". Giving a soft groan of reluctance, Sasuke attempted to remove himself from the covers. Stumbling and flailing, he barely saved his ass from meeting the ground. This body wasn't aged to forty-two nor did it come equipped with all of the grace that came with his life-long training. Groaning even louder, he knew he had to train all over again just not to fall on his ass or worse his face and soon so the dobe wouldn't see, he definitely wouldn't let him live it down.

The dobe. He was going to see him again. After twenty years. Fuck.

This time Sasuke groaned loud enough for the shinobi across the complex to hear him.

The dobe. Sakura. Itachi. Kakashi-sensei. Orochimaru.

Fuck.