Disclaimer: I own nothing related to Naruto.
It wasn't supposed to end up this way.
It really wasn't. Sasuke was supposed to come back to the village—whether he chose to or was dragged by his hair didn't really matter—and that would have made everything better. Naruto was supposed to be the hero. He was supposed to knit back together Team 7, no matter what.
He wasn't supposed to be the village's downfall. Sakura wasn't supposed to come back to the Hokage Tower after a brutal S-class mission to find a kunai in the chest of Tsunade-sama. And Naruto at the end of it.
But she did. She did.
And when Naruto turned around so quickly it could only be caused from the nine-tails' powers, his eyes red and glowing, he smiled at her. Smiled. Like how he did when she came back from missions long after she was supposed to return and when she said yes to going out to get ramen with him and how he had looked up at her, battered and broken after she had begged him to bring home Sasuke-kun and failed. Like she was the best thing in the world, the most precious.
"Sakura-chan!" he said, and Sakura saw the beginnings of fangs peeking out at her. "You're back!"
He walked towards her, arms outstretched. She couldn't look away from Tsunade-sama, this woman who had taken Sakura under her wing all those years ago, trained her, loved her in a way Kakashi-sensei never did. In a way nobody ever had. Blood was dripping out of her mouth as she sat there, face hidden, slumped in her chair, kunai sticking out of her chest right over where her heart was.
Sakura couldn't breathe, couldn't think. It didn't make sense. This was Tsunade-sama. Hokage, war veteran, medical prodigy, untouchable.
She didn't get caught unaware. She didn't die from a frontal wound like that, so easily avoidable. Massive strength, healing skills out of this world. It didn't make sense.
Naruto wrapped his arms around her and Sakura was limp, bodiless. She felt the squeeze from his hug, so notable, so Naruto. She could smell his shampoo, the kind he'd been using ever since they were all children and stupid and impressionable. She could smell the ramen he'd undoubtedly spilled on his orange clothes earlier. She could feel his blonde, soft hair on her cheek where he leaned down to hug her, always so much taller than her.
"Naruto," she whispered, choked. "What . . ."
They had to alert someone, she thought distantly. They had to tell the village they were under attack, that this was war. They had to do things, adult, shinobi things that were required of them. They had to—
Naruto made a concerned sound. He tilted her head up, his hands—his warm, familiar hands—on both her cheeks until she met his eyes, still so red red red.
"Sakura-chan, you're so pale," he cooed. "Have you eaten yet? How was your mission? Are you hurt?" The questions came at her in his most concerned voice, but there was something darker underneath, something that had been growing ever since Team 7 broke straight down the middle.
Oh, Kami.
"Tsunade-sama," she whispered. "What—I don't understand—"
"Ah," Naruto murmured. "That."
"Yes, that," Sakura nearly screeched. Then she noticed the blood on Naruto's wrists, down to his . . . hands.
The hands that were on her face. Something wet and warm was trickling down her jaw.
"Oh, Sakura-chan," Naruto purred, and Sakura felt his nails—claws, her mind told her—dig into her skin, not enough to break through but enough to make her focus on him. "So much is going to change. There's a new world coming."
And then he tilted his head down and kissed her.
Something broke in her, and Sakura understood this was how Tsunade-sama died: fully aware and disbelieving.
Naruto was familiar—so, so painfully familiar—and so good. He did not break, did not bend. He was good in the way only the pure of heart could be, who could be hurt and damaged but still got back up, to say dattebayo! and eat way too much ramen.
Until he didn't.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
The village crumbled, just as Naruto planned.
The village elders didn't even try to stop it. They saw Tsuande-sama, dead and defeated, this matriarch to the village, this strong-willed icon of power of the Land of Fire. And they applauded.
Naruto was everything they wanted. Powerful, useful, needing of a guiding hand and easily manipulated. The nine-tail vessel who was more malleable than his mother and father had been, needing someone—a parental figure—to help him along.
Naruto was named Hokage. There were whispered questions, but this was Naruto, after all. The strange and cursed little blonde haired boy who was going to be the savior of the ninja world. War was on the horizon—they all knew it. They needed a strong leader, and who were they to judge the nine-tail vessel?
The shinobi did more than whisper. But the problem with ninja was that they were trained nearly from birth to not question, to take orders and missions from the Hokage. Who the Hokage was didn't really matter all that much. Root was a perfect example.
Sakura wanted to scream. Her mentor was dead and the only person who seemed to care was Shizune, but no one knew how Tsunade had died. Not really. It wasn't a secret that it was by Naruto's hand, but no one wanted to listen to the details. They knew, but they . . . didn't at the same time. Sakura could stand up on Tsunade-sama's head monument and scream it to the world and no one would listen. That was the problem with people: they only heard what they wanted to hear. And that their most powerful Hokage was evil wasn't what anyone wanted to hear.
But she had tried. She'd done just that, planned to scream loud and make people listen.
Naruto had caught her halfway there. They'd fought and Sakura found she couldn't make eye-contact with him. Not with this blonde haired, blue eyed boy she'd known ever since she was a little girl and he'd regularly confessed his love to her.
No one noticed how his blue eyes sometimes had flickers of red in them. No one noticed the sudden tempers that resulted in bloodshed.
It was stress, they said. It was pressure of the oncoming war. He was still strong, still the most powerful shinobi since the founders had been alive. All was well.
Sakura fought with Naruto all of five minutes before she made a mistake. Because she was strong and more gifted than Naruto had expected—how could he when they hadn't really sparred together in years—and she took him off guard from the very beginning. But she couldn't make any kill shots. Because even though he'd killed her mentor, Sakura couldn't bring herself to kill him; wasn't strong enough for it.
He caught her fist in his hand and instead of throwing her into the nearest tree like she expected, he pulled her towards his body, taking all the force she'd put behind her throw, stopped all her momentum and wrapped both arms around her until she couldn't move, could barely breathe.
And he just held her like that. Like she was a little girl throwing a temper tantrum and not like a grown woman in grieving over her mentor, trying to comfort her even though he was the murderer.
Naruto made shushing noised, cooing noises. He petted her hair and smoothed his hands down her back and shoulders, trying to work out the tension coiled in her muscles from their fight. It was then Sakura realized she was crying.
"Why?" she kept on repeating, murmuring through her tears. "Why? Why?"
Why Naruto? Why not Sasuke, who she could understand would do something like this? Why the one person she'd never even thought to be weary of?
"Shh, Sakura-chan. It'll be alright. You'll see. I'll make everything better. No more fighting, no more orphans of war. Shh. You'll see."
She almost believed him.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
She was put on mandatory leave by order of the Hokage.
What that meant was staying under the careful watch of Naruto. She sat in the Hokage's office, watched him sit at the desk he'd killed Tsunade-sama at and in the chair she'd stopped breathing in, signing scrolls and briefing Anbu and handing out orders.
She watched him kill every single one of the elders.
He did it in that very office, right in front of her, and Sakura wondered if he was planning to kill everyone in power in that room.
"I don't want any secrets between us, Sakura-chan," he said when all she could do was stare up at him from the floor, where she'd rushed to one of the elders' side after having a kunai sliced across their throat, trying and failing to heal them. They didn't even warrant a killing jutsu from Naruto.
He smiled down at her, a spray of blood on his face from where an artery had been struck. Sakura was covered in blood but she was so used to it anymore that it barely even registered.
He swung an arm around, over the dead bodies of the elders and over to the glass window behind where he sat at that damn desk, where he could see out into the whole of the Village Hidden in the Leaves.
"I want us to be happy," he said, rubbing the back of his head, and that movement almost broke her heart all over again. So familiar, so warm. "And that means nothing kept from each other. That's why I wanted you to see this, just like Baa-chan."
Sakura didn't say anything.
He kept talking like it was an agreement. "And that's why you should know Sasuke-teme is dead."
She sucked in a breath, let it out in a shaky whisper.
"Orochimaru killed him, took his body like a . . . like a fucking puppet," Naruto growled, and it was inhuman. His hands clenched, power crackled in the room like a living thing.
He whipped back around to face Sakura, and there was a curl to his lips that Sakura didn't recognize.
"So I killed him," he said flatly. "He was in Sasuke-teme's body, you see."
Ah.
Sakura did see.
"Why Tsunade-sama?" she whispered.
"She was in the way." He shrugged. "Wouldn't listen to me. Never listened to me. No one ever has."
His eyes flashed red for just a second, before fading back to his blue blue blue pools of innocence and love. So much damn love in those eyes, and Sakura realized that had been his downfall.
He smiled tenderly at her. "But you do. You listen to me. You listened to me when I said I'd become Hokage one day. Not at the beginning, I know, but after training you did."
She had believed him, utterly and completely. Naruto could make anyone believe in anything, especially himself.
Now there was blood staining the carpet.
"You listened to me when I broke down and you listened to me when I failed to bring Sasuke-teme home, even though I promised." His smile faltered. "Even when I failed you, Sakura-chan, you kept on believing in me like no one has."
He took a step towards her, away from the window, away from the Village Hidden in the Leaves.
"You believed me when I told you to stop fighting me, that everything would be better than before."
He reached a hand out to her. Her grip tightened on the body in her arms, dead and blood pooling out on the floor.
Naruto closed his eyes for a moment and grinned at her, big and goofy and with a hint of fang. "I'll make sure to do just that. For us. I promise." He punched the air. "Believe it!"
Sakura let out a sob.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Kakashi was the next to die.
Naruto didn't do it in front of her that time. No, he just handed out the order on a suicide mission that no one would ever come back from. And Kakashi knew it and didn't fight the order. Because Kakashi was the definition of a veteran, even though he was only in his late thirties. He was the definition of a fraud of the living, a walking dead man who wanted nothing more than to finally die in battle like he so believed he should have more than a dozen times in the past.
Naruto did, however, let her see the body. Kakashi's body, though Naruto didn't call it that. It was The Body. Nothing more, nothing less.
He stroked a hand over Kakashi's dead, cloth covered cheek. Even in death his face was covered. Why Naruto had sent out a team to retrieve his body wasn't lost on her.
No secrets.
"Goodbye, Sensei," Naruto said softly. Sakura was cold. Not 'Kakashi-sensei.' A body didn't have a name.
Sakura watched as Naruto carved Kakashi's name onto a memorable stone and she almost screamed. Kakashi would never want his name on one of those. Wouldn't want to be like his dead teammates.
But Kakashi was just another person who didn't believe in Naruto.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Naruto stood over Pein's body—bodies—and cried.
"No one believed in you either," he whispered. Sakura was covered in blood and grime and bodily organs and felt absolutely nothing.
She watched as tears streamed down Naruto's face.
Sakura stepped over Hinata's body and wiped them away from Naruto's cheeks, because he was still Naruto. Still blue eyed, lovable Naruto, except when he wasn't.
His eyes flickered up to hers in surprise and delight and something else—happiness? excitement? hope?—and there wasn't even any red in his gaze.
Sakura almost believed it could last when he leaned down and kissed her, his breath warm on her face for just a split second before he blocked out the heat of the blazing sun and replaced it with the warmth of himself.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Naruto did as he promised.
Madara was dead, there was no strange dream world, the people rejoiced even as every village besides Konoha was left without a leader, and Sakura wondered if Tsunade-sama would hate her.
No one questioned how all the villages' leaders died. Madara was the villain. The Uchiha founder. The immortal. The tainted one with glowing red eyes.
No one questioned or noticed—Sakura could never decide which—why Naruto's eyes sometimes glowed red as well.
And when they began rebuilding and Naruto was The Hero he always wanted to be, Sakura was happy. Or pretended to be. She could never decide which.
Naruto informed her they were going to get married.
He asked her, of course. He stuttered and wrung his hands and got down on one knee when they were alone and there were lit candles everywhere and he had a gorgeous ring, one that fit perfectly on her finger. She felt like a traitor.
But how could she say no? Here was a man who had killed every person in the shinobi world who could ever even think of standing against him, and what was she? She was the one person he would never let go, never let die. She'd seen what he did to the people who'd tried to take her away from him. Watched him tear the men and women who'd dared attack her during the war apart, eyes glowing the deepest crimson she'd ever seen—redder than blood, redder than the sun Madara had conjured—with fangs and teeth sharp and unforgiving.
But she was under no pretense she could ever say no to this man. She wasn't scared of him; what could he do to her? She didn't fear death or pain. He'd already killed everyone she'd ever loved. What was left?
She thought she loved him as she said yes and let him slide the ring onto her finger with shaking hands, grin wide and so damn happy on his face. She decided she did, despite everything, when he wrapped his arms around her tight and hoisted her up into the air, laughing and crying with happiness that he never tried to hide with her. He never tried to be strong with her. He'd tear others to shreds for her, sure, but she realized in that moment what it meant that he didn't hide himself from her, that he trusted her inexplicably because she'd given him the one thing he'd always needed.
Sakura realized in that moment that Naruto might hold the shinobi world in the palm of his hands, but she held Naruto in the palm of her hands.
And for the first time in a very long while, her smile wasn't so forced.
Author's Note: Uh . . . I'm sorry?
So. This happened. I was listening to some music and wanted to write something so I sat down and this happened. No planning whatsoever. It just wrote itself, I tell you. I've been doing nothing but physics all day and maybe that's what put me in this mood. It's late, guys. I think I'm sorry?
I am indeed still accepting prompts. I have one more on my list, so give 'em to me. PM me here or on my tumblr. Or other angst-y oneshots may happen. And do you really want that to happen? ;P
Please REVIEW!