A.N: If dark fluff hasn't already been created, it has now :)

But I think that weird things can bring all of us comfort in our own lives, so why should characters be an exception?

Please review! Even if it's flames, it's winter here… so I'm bloody cold… Seriously though… please critique!

Set between Part 1 and Shippuden.

Disclaimer: I can't even speak Japanese. How do you expect me to write/create/own a hugely successful manga/anime in it?

oooooooo

Life is Sweet

Today is grey. The concrete skies squat over Konoha, grumbling and drizzling showers. Occasionally the wind picks up and shrieks softly, but the clouds are holding back from the storm everyone sees coming. The morning is dark and cold, the world is holding it's breath, waiting.

Sitting on the end of the bed, Sakura regarded her alarm clock blankly.

6: 59

Her feet feel like icicles, but Sakura makes no effort to reach for her shoes, carefully laid out near the door. She is mildly aware of the fact that she's holding her breath, but she makes no effort to suck in the air her lungs timidly ask for. Finally, the clock ticks over, eerily silent in her apartment.

7:00

Green eyes flickering like the cruddy lightbulbs that barely light her place she pads over the freezing floor to take her shoes, already dressed. The cool black leather doesn't provide any warmth. She could've gone out wearing nothing, and it would've had almost the same effect. But nothing ever does provide what you expect it to, so Sakura merely sighs as she exits her matchbox apartment. Closing her front door with a quiet click, she pointedly ignores the jeering mailbox which perches empty beside it.

The street is bustling with activity, children dragging their feet to school with their older counterparts pushing them aside to get to their jobs. The people of Konoha are already buzzing about the new day. Two women bustle past Sakura, and she dimly hears a snatch of their conversation, their laughter lancing through her like needles. "So, I said…" "You didn't!" "Oh yes I did, and then she said…"

Sakura swallows and lets them by. The laugh lines around their painted mouths hurt the most. Laughter, friends, teammates. On days like these, it feels as if they've all passed her by. Days where the world fades to grey, and even the bright fruit in the stalls seem muted. A few metres ahead one of the bags the women are carrying hit a bicycle. Their conversation carries on unperturbed like a stream, as a lemon sails through the air and lands at Sakura's feet. For a moment, Sakura stops, staring at it. The soft yellow of it against the pavement is comforting. Glowing, even. The small lemon is like a tiny gold ember, burning out in the greyness of the street. Slowly, Sakura bends down and picks it up, rubbing the waxy skin between her fingers. Who does their groceries at seven in the morning?

"Excuse me! Ma'am I think you dropped this –"

But the women have melted away, taking their laughter with them. A schoolboy bumps into her from behind, and absently Sakura slips the lemon into her pocket. Subtly, the world seems a tiny bit brighter, and the oranges in the fruit stall across the street seem to perk up in response. Sakura walks the rest of the way to the hospital with a small smile.

Today is a Saturday, so Sakura is supposed to have the weekend off. Time to hang with friends, wander around Konoha to fill the space. But everyone she could find an excuse to see is probably preoccupied anyway. Sakura never bothers to check. There's always an awkward element when she meets up with friends. Their own teammates made her feel lost, and sent a keen longing through her. Sasuke… Naruto… yes, she even missed him! The knucklehead always knew how to break a silence. Not to mention the fact that he was excellent for stress release…

The smile that had lingered on her lips grew wider, and Sakura lifted a hand to hide it bashfully. It was mean to smile in the terminally ill ward. The patients here had made that bluntly clear the first day she'd come. And ever since Sakura had come every Saturday, meeting the patients whose hope was even more battered than hers. The time was 7:30, so she began with Kimiko, so she already knew would be awake.

Kimiko was 24, and had cancer. She was cagey about which type. At first, her husband had come to visit her. But as the months wore on the pressure on him built and built until eventually he stopped coming. Kimiko had received the papers for divorce from the nurse two months after his last visit. He had met someone else, and had determined that 'sick' was not his type. Kimiko wasn't bitter though. She had already resigned to her fate.

"Sakura?" Kimiko's pale face stretched into a smile, the papery skin just about ready to tear. At the moment she was better than usual, her cheeks were flushed with a ghostly pink and her scalp was clouded by a dark fuzz of hair. Kimiko's question was only a formality. She was the only visitor Kimiko got anymore. Cancer so suddenly in a woman so young was a tragedy too big for any of her people to handle. "Hey Kimiko!" Sakura pushed through the door, taking a seat near the bedside.

In the hospital, Sakura felt a twinge of guilt whenever she visited. Shouldn't she, couldn't she visit these fastly fading people out of the goodness of her heart? But instead she has motives. Motives and reasons that coil in her gut like snakes, rearing their ugly heads every time the sharp smell of hospital bleach slapped her in the face. Because she wasn't here out of kindness. No, Sakura wasn't hat noble, though she dearly wished that she could be. She was here out of loneliness, a desperate desire to see that things could always be worse.

The first time she'd come, it had been with Tsunade. Together they had stridden down the hall, Tsunade's sandals clicking fiercely against the linoleum. "I want you to see Sakura, that as a medi-nin that there are always people you can't save." That had been a depressing way to start a Monday morning. But like a magnet Sakura was always drawn back to the suffering, the total hopelessness that spread through this ward far faster than any cancer could. Sick, wasn't it?

"What's new?" Sakura asked, hands clasped in her lap. Kimiko sat up. Deep down, Sakura felt that Kimiko, heck, everyone here knew her true reasons for coming. And the fact that she was still accepted, still welcomed by relieved smiles was a double-edged sword. How horrible it must be to be desperate enough for insincere sympathy. "Oh, nothing really. He thought it would be funny to send a lemon. Make lemonade, you know?" Kimiko's eyes wavered, tears glimmering like lost jewels in the corners. "He" always meant her husband with Kimiko. Because for her, there was and never would be anyone else. Sakura reached out and took Kimiko's hand. No words were spoken, because Kimiko's imagination built up greater expectations and comforts than Sakura ever did.

There, on the bedside table was the lemon. Slightly smaller than the one in Sakura's pocket. Its pitted skin caught all the shadows in the room and swallowed them, sending them out again as a buttery yellow that reflected in the shine of the tabletop.

From Life.

Two words, neatly scrawled on the side of the lemon, Kimiko's dark eyes closed, a single tear squeezing out of one and slipping down her cheek. For a moment it lingered on the sharp angle of her jaw before finally falling into the vast expanses of the bed sheet. Lost forever. "Kimiko I…" Sakura's mouth opened and closed. Suddenly, Kimiko barked out a laugh. "I'm dying, and to him it's just another fucking joke."

Sakura simply squeezed Kimiko's hand, unsure of what to say. "He never was that funny anyway." Kimiko mused, eyes flicking to the lemon in disgust. "His stupid jokes, never even close to the reason that I –" Just in time Kimiko stopped, dropping back against the pillow. "You can have it Sakura." A million words flew through Sakura's mind. What would she do with a lemon? Two lemons really. The one from the street was still in her pocket, nestled against her leg. Probably wondering why she'd kept it in the first place. But the laugh, that pained, sharp laugh lingered in her ears. How could she ignore that? "Thank you." Sakura murmured, picking up the lemon and cradling it in her palm, the writing turned away into the skin. Kimiko closed eyelids only flickered in response. Carefully, Sakura pushed it into her pocket, fingers brushing against the lemon that was already there.

Kimiko had always been scarily susceptible to falling asleep, so Sakura released her hand and left the room, the two lemons burning like little stars in her pocket. The rest of her morning was robotic, holding hands, being there to cry on. The guilt and loneliness crept in on the sides, but something held them at bay, giving Sakura a spring in her step that hadn't been there for a long time. Anyone else would have been reprimanded by the stern nurses, but that day, Sakura was allowed to bring sunshine to a place that always seemed drenched in rain.

Eventually time drifted to five in the evening, and Sakura was shuffled out of the ward and onto the street. Fewer people were out now, children were home and the walk home was almost empty. The closed shutters of the fruit stalls were like sleeping giants, dark lumps in an evening that was already darkening underneath an ominously rumbling sky. Turning the corner Sakura was finally at the building she lived in. Long ago it had been painted a bright cream, but in the creeping darkness it was washed out and tired.

More out of ritual than anything else, Sakura started up the steps and stood across from her letterbox, eying it up. Naruto had written a few times at first, but gradually the time between each had grown and grown until finally they'd stopped altogether. But there was always a slim chance. Sucking in a breath, Sakura crossed the space between her and the box. It was only a metre away but she could've sworn they were a country apart…

Ok, ok ok, Sakura plunged her hand in, already expecting the worst. But instead of brushing cold, laughing metal Sakura's hand touched something smooth and wide. A parcel? Opening the lid of the box that had mocked and disappointed her countless times, Sakura peeked into the gloom. There, sitting in the bottom of the box as if it had every right to be there… was a lemon.

At first, Sakura's mouth twitched.

Then a giggle escaped.

A moment later, Sakura was on her knees, tears sliding down her cheeks as she laughed and laughed, shaking her body violently.

The sky cracked open and rain poured down, drenching Sakura to the bone. It roared and battered her, but still over the rain Sakura laughed. She wasn't sure anymore whether the wetness on her face was tears or teardrops, or even why she was laughing. But for another full minute, Sakura's body bucked and writhed on the hard landing as she let it all out. All the pain, the loneliness and guilt. Washed away by the harsh hard rain.

Inevitably her breath gave out and Sakura stood, uselessly lifting her hands over her head in an effort to shelter herself and violently shivering in her soaked clothes. Every once in a while a small giggle would hiccup out of her chest, but Sakura simply grabbed the lemon from her letterbox and sloshed her way inside. It didn't matter who had sent it. If it had even been sent at all. Sakura could think of a million ways this random lemon had come to be in her letterbox, none of them logical of course. It just was there. And that was all that mattered.

As the rain screamed and scratched at her windows, Sakura towelled her hair and redressed, laying out the lemons tenderly on her cramped kitchen bench. There they were. Three lemons, three golden lemons that battled the darkness relentlessly. The writing on the middle one had smudged into a black smear from the water. Frowning, Sakura picked it up and tried rubbing it off, but to no avail. The middle lemon was dark; the ink cloaked the yellow within, choking it. The lemon to the right rolled against the middle one must've been the one that'd been in her pocket the longest, as it looked slightly pinkish. Was the dye in her clothes running now? Dammit. But the last lemon, furtherest to the left was the same as it always had been. A bright, obnoxious yellow that blared out against the monotone of her dark blue bench. All of them huddled together, pushing out the gloom of her apartment. Three lemons. Three small lemons that she had absolutely no use for.

For a few seconds Sakura stood there, stumped. Finally though it came to her. From beneath her sink she pulled out a dull grey pot. Pulling out a match she lit the stovetop, marvelling at the spiked blue flames for a moment before turning on the tap and filling the pot before heaving it onto the element, putting on the lid to boil. Next, next came the sugar. Opening a tiny cupboard, Sakura pulled out her small bag, carrying it carefully due to the split down one side of the rough brown bag. Placing it beside the pot, Sakura turned and leaned against the bench, a smile bubbling up onto her face, followed by a quiet low laugh.

Because for once, Sakura knew exactly what to do.

.