Ah, yes... just a bit of random angst. Please don't flame my pairings. After Sakura X Nami, SakuXHaku is my favorite pairing. Enjoy!
"Um… Hello, Haku…" Sakura whispered, suddenly unnerved. It was one thing to consider doing this, and quite another to be actually doing it.
The slight, pink-haired young woman, now just barely sixteen, knelt on the hillside, staring at the two graves there. One was marked by a huge, rusting sword, but the other… the only thing that separated the overgrown plot from the rest of the unkempt undergrowth on that hill was a small wooden cross.
Sakura looked balefully at the cross. The last time that she had seen the young boy who now lay underneath her was four years ago… four years ago today.
She felt a cold, wet kiss upon her cheek, and, tearing her hazel-green eyes away from the grave marker, glanced up at the low gray sky. It was snowing.
Suddenly, regret and nostalgia became far too much for her to bear. Sakura buried her face in her hands and sank to her knees, half-frozen tears watering the wild lilacs that blanketed the grave.
"I-I don't know if you remember me," she sobbed through the tears, "but I… I remember you…so well. You…almost killed Sasuke. Gave me the first taste of loss. D-do you remember how I wept for him, mourned him? Yet… h-he l-lived. Well… he's dead now. Dead to me, anyway. And I won't cry for him any more."
Sakura was unable to say more, focusing all her energy on calming her shaking body, her trembling voice. She had come with something to say.
"Y-you see…" she stopped. No, she couldn't stutter, not now. She needed to say it. "I never really knew you, but… the memories… of your spirit, your love, your devotion to the man who used you as a tool…yet your kindness and gentleness, too. The way you were so calm and sweet around Naruto in the forest….it all made me realize something…
"If you had lived, I think you were I boy I would have liked to meet.
Sakura laughed bitterly, a sound more like a sob then an expression of merriment.
"Isn't that odd? I think I love you."
She pushed herself to her feet and brushed the dirt and snow from her knees, then took something from her hair and laid it on the grave. A single sakura blossom.
Then she walked away, down to the village by the sea; this, like so much else, now only a swiftly fading memory.
