Authors note:

Hello loyal readers/followers as well as anyone new who has happened to stumble upon my work! After a lengthy hiatus I've decided to return to write a sequel to my first Naruto story, The Turning Point. I've been thinking about doing this for a while and it's mostly been inspired by the end of the original Naruto series and all of the wonderful followers and reviewers of my writing who have encouraged me to return.

For anyone who has not read my original story, I would strongly recommend doing so as I will be making references back to events that occurred within that work. You can find the story in my bio under Published Stories.

Disclaimer:I will be using components of the Naruto manga/anime in my story but with a Sakura-centric focus. This means that certain events, dialogue etc. may be changed to suit my Sakura story arc. I intend to do as much original writing and storylines as I can, but this is just an FYI as I have received reviews in the past questioning this. I do not own Naruto.

Homecoming

A Sequel to The Turning Point

Summons

Naruto sat at his small dining table in his apartment, bent over a crinkled piece of paper attempting to fix the messy and smudged results of his hurried writing. "Dammit it was fine a second ago and now look at this mess!" he exclaimed, running a hand through his blond hair.

Its been five whole years since I've seen her. So much has changed.

Naruto sighed and reached for a fresh piece of paper, picked up his pen and began the message again. Although his physical appearance had changed, Naruto's domestic habits remained the same. The blond ninja had grown taller, muscles and definition underneath his shirt were obvious. The slight chubbiness that had surrounded his face had been replaced with a strong jawline. His eyes, still ocean blue, contained a depth and understanding that could only be obtained with the passing of time and the opening of the mind to new experiences.

His personality had changed in a way. He was less prone to loud outbursts and passionate displays of his sexy jutstu (though he had a new rendition of that tucked away for a rainy day). But his sunny disposition remained, full of positivity and determination. His goal to become Hokage was stronger than ever and his wish to unite the shinobi world through his unique Ninja Way had held fast.

Naruto smiled as he thought of all the experiences he had over the last five years. Training with Jyria, the grief and sadness he had felt when his perverted sensei had died and the friendships he had with Kakashi, the remaining Rookie 9, Granny Tusnade and the rest of the village.

Despite all of this, they still remained in his thoughts. The hurt he had felt when he read through Sakura's letter, the painful realisation of abandonment and anger when he arrived at the Hokage tower that morning and it was confirmed they were gone. The determination to train harder, to get stronger to achieve his dream and hopefully, maybe, eventually, see them come home.

Lady Tsunade, seeing Naruto struggle in the months after his teammates departure, could hardly lie to his face when he happened to witness her sending correspondence to her student using her personal hawk. His pleas wore her down and every few months or so Naruto had permission to write to Sakura.

The first few months Naruto wrote in earnest to Sakura, detailing all of the goings on in the village, his training and general day to day life. Determined that she would reply and that a back and forth consistent exchange of letters would eventuate, he was crestfallen when his letters went unanswered. That was until one day when he came home to see a slightly dirty envelope with his name elegantly written on the front on his dining room table. Next to it sat a tawny colored hawk who squawked, proud of its successful delivery.

Sakura's part in their communications were short updates, never disclosing her location exactly but always taking about the information she was gathering, briefly touching on the sights she had seen and providing thoughts and opinions on the village gossip that Naruto had shared with her.

Their communication from that point forward was relatively consistent. An unanswered letter from either party on occasion was not unexpected, both lives were taken up with matters of importance, but when Naruto's letters went unanswered for some months he grew concerned. Had something happened to the hawk that delivered her letters? Or the unthinkable, something critical had happened to Sakura that prevented her from responding.

Naruto persisted, sending letter after letter with no response. His first indication that something serious had happened occurred when Tsunade had informed him that she too had not heard anything from the missing ninja.

Finalising his letter, the blond ninja cleared away the remaining papers and sealed the envelope. Maneuvering carefully around the tawny hawk Naruto attached the letter to its leg.

Will she even receive it? All of my other letters have gone unanswered who's to say this situation will be any different? Will she read it or just throw it away? Most importantly, will she come?

Naruto tried to push these doubts aside but they floated through his mind, a further reminder of the disconnection and emptiness he now associated with the memories of the former Team 7. Pacing the room, he glanced at the hawk who ruffled its feathers and lifted its foot examining the important package. Its eyes locked with Naruto's and it seemed to reassure all the ninja's concerns with a solemn affirming look. The hawk would ensure the message would get to Sakura.

Opening the window in his kitchen, Naruto motioned for the hawk to leave. The great bird stretched its wings and flew out and upward into the blue sky. The blond ninja watched it fly off out of the village and let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding.

Sakura Haruno watched as her messenger hawk circled lazily a few meters in the air above her head before dropping to land neatly beside her. Sakura sighed when she saw the folded-up letter attached to her bird's leg. With the angle of the setting sun she could clearly see through the paper and immediately recognized the style.

"Naruto, messiest handwriting in Konoha from what I can remember" she remarked, undoing the string. The hawk ruffled its feathers, seemingly in agreement.

A light wind blew through the valley below her and Sakura was reminded of the beauty that the outskirts of Fire Country had to offer. Admiring the setting sun atop a magnificently tall mountain, evoked a sense of freedom and peace in the young woman. The wind reached her hair and blew long pink strands around her face and shoulders. Sakura removed the hairband on her wrist and tied her hair up into a high pony tail before regarding Naruto's letter once more.

This is interesting timing considering my location is the closest I've been to the village since I left.

Shaking off the thought, Sakura decided to bite the bullet and opened the letter. Scanning through its contents quickly, she was unsurprised by the message. Feeling frustrated Sakura was quickly reminded of the other letter on her person. Sitting in her lap was an official letter from the Fifth Hokage and her teacher, Lady Tsuande.

Sakura snorted in amusement as she compared the two items. Tsuande's letter was officially requesting her presence as an identified allied shinobi of the Village Hidden in the Leaves to assist in the upcoming war. It also included a personal note from Tsuande with a request to meet in person in the outskirts of the village in a few days. Sakura had also had to perform a series of hand signs to unlock its invisible messaging.

Naruto's message on the other hand was messily scrawled, near indecipherable. No seal or security. Sakura shuddered to think what might have happened if it had fallen into the wrong hands. Her hawk bristled next to her as if it had heard her thoughts, it stared at her with indignance at the very idea that it would allow a message to fall into enemy hands. Feeling guilty, Sakura reached into her pack and fished out some cured meat. The hawk grudgingly accepted the peace offering.

Sakura stared off into the valley below her, both letters felt like lead weight and her previous buoyancy had gone. Naruto's letter had confirmed it, the situation was undoubtedly serious.

"This is a strange feeling. When I left the village at fifteen, determined as I was, I had no idea what awaited me. The things I would bear witness to, the experiences I would have. Now I'm twenty and the shinobi world is on the brink of war" Sakura remarked quietly to her hawk, who regarded her carefully before attempting to steal more meat out of her hand. "Not that this is really your priority eh?"

Laughing despite herself, Sakura relented and gave the greedy bird the rest of the meat. The hunt for her parents had been strenuous immediately after she had left the village, unlike anything she had experienced before. Sakura was quickly exposed at a young age to all types of human beings and their motivations, desires and regard for a life. It was a shock at fifteen to find the world was not as she had thought it would be and despite the maturity she had displayed for her age, she was still wide eyed and naïve with her expectations.

Reflecting now she realized one of her biggest mistakes she had made was assuming that people would be willing to provide her information about the whereabouts of her parents and also assuming that this information would be easy to come by/correct. Sakura had lost count of the amount of times she was led down the proverbial garden path by the information of others, but she relentlessly followed each lead until the end.

As it happened, the end was unexpectedly simple. There was no fanfare, no death-defying battle whilst her parents (bound and gagged) looked on with a mixture of fear and pride etched across their faces as their daughter fought for their lives (this was how she had imagined it at fifteen). Nor was it a chance of sheer luck whereby she had found her parents hiding out in a nearby village, alive and well.

Sakura had entered a small town in the Land of Earth to replenish her supplies, scavenge the area for information and then move on, depending on the intelligence she was able to obtain. She was seventeen and had been searching for her parents for two years. She rarely stayed long in a town preferring the quiet and control she had of travelling through the wilderness on her own.

Really it had been a case of circumstance and luck that led her to find out the fate of her parents. For example, it just so happened to be the second week in the fortnight. Sakura used ninjutsu to change the color of her hair every other week but setting foot in the town her cherry blossom pink hair stood out prominently against the earthy tones of the land.

It was her hair that allowed her to be recognized by an old woman in the village. That the led to their conversation, the letter, the unmarked graves and the earth-shattering realization that her parents were dead. They had been dead for some time, she was too late and there would be no saving of anyone.

Sakura shook her head as if trying to remove the memory. Now wasn't the time to delve back into that headspace. Maybe I'll reach a point where I can sift through the details and focus in on the whole narrative, after all it was everything that happened afterward that led me to this point.

The sun had almost disappeared below the horizon, the valley was bathed in a stunning mix of pink and orange. Sakura shifted slightly and watched as her hawk flew suddenly into the nearby forest, no doubt on the hunt for something unseen by the human eye.

It's true, if I hadn't discovered the fate of my parents in that small town in Earth Country my path would have been very different. I never would have discovered my hidden power, I never would have met all of the healers, skilled doctors and talented ninja who taught me and trained me to reach my full potential.

Sakura sighed and re-read both Naruto and Lady Tsunade's letters. It seemed logical that any talk of war and destruction would bring to mind him. The way they had parted company all those years ago at the village gates, left her feeling bittersweet. In the years that followed she caught herself wondering about him and where he was. When she was at her lowest and loneliest she found herself imagining what things would have been like if they had both stayed.

Not long after her sixteenth birthday she began to hear the whispers and his name floating around. It was like an itch she couldn't scratch properly and Sakura had taken to collecting as much information about him as she could. She recalled with vivid clarity the day she put all the pieces together and the numbness she felt wash over as she realised the boy she fell in love with at fifteen, was a monster.

It was after she discovered the fate of her parents that she subconsciously followed the path of his destruction. Sakura matched each destroyed village, displaced family and broken leadership with healing. She worked until her hands were scraped and bleeding, helping villagers rebuild their homes and their infrastructure. She volunteered for hours in large hospitals, local doctors' surgeries and even in small cramped tents with hardly any medical tools. She helped establish facilities for these villages where required completely free of charge. She trained medical students with varying degrees of experience.

Sakura gave her entire essence to fixing what had been broken. Looking back on it now she realized she was attempting to address the overwhelming guilt she felt for what he had become. She was also riddled with guilt for the fact that she had left Naruto to take on the task of retrieving their former teammate from the darkness he had fallen into.

Bits and pieces of information she was able to obtain on her travels, led her to understand that the blond fox ninja from Konoha was determined to never give up on his former teammate. Sakura had sat in restaurants listening to ninja much older and more experienced in the craft than, her jeer at the idea of Naruto supporting an official S-Rank ninja

For many months she tried to make herself believe that he was too lost, too far removed from the boy she once knew to warrant any kind of attempts on her part. But no matter how hard she tried, Sakura could never be convinced that the boy (now man) she had loved was entirely lost.

I hope we're able to meet up one day in the future Sakura. It would be nice to see you again and to try to be together. I mean more than friends. I think it will be easier when we have achieved our goals

I'd like to see you again in the future too Sasuke, I think we could be good together someday

Naïve promises made at fifteen still haunted her. She had no idea if Sasuke had achieved his goal of killing his brother or not, but his actions now were contrary to what she had known of him. It stood to reason in her mind that Sasuke had fallen too far to be able to pull himself out of the hatred and vengeance. Poisoned and manipulated at such a young age into thinking this was the only solution, it wasn't altogether unsurprising that this was the outcome.

Naruto's declaration to bring Sasuke home was not unexpected by Sakura either. Even though she had heard about it through the idle gossip in the villages, Sakura doubted Naruto's resolute nature when they were younger had changed with age.

She had completely ceased communication with Naruto and had minimal communication with Tsuande after the fate of her parents had become known to her. It was nothing personal, she just needed to distance herself from that part of her life for a while. When she went to write to Naruto again, Sakura had felt embarrassed about how much time had actually passed between them and she found herself with nothing to say.

"Now I have letters from both of them asking me to return" Sakura muttered, feeling an uncomfortable weight settle on her again.

So much was broken. Her bonds with the former Team 7, her concept and idea of what a home could be, the promises she had made at fifteen and the events her travel had afforded her to see, altering her perspectives. Returning to her former home to defend it would only lead to complications in mending what Sakura doubted could be fixed.

Since she had received Lady Tsuande's letter with the request to meet in person, Sakura had been tossing around the pros and cons of doing so in her head. Shunting them back and forth like beads on an abacus. Naruto's letter only intensified these thoughts.

Every positive had a negative and Sakura knew the easier and safer way to play it was to side with the sense making negatives. The negatives encouraged her to stay out of it all and continue on her way – travelling to different countries, helping villages who needed it and to put her past behind her. It would not turn out to be a good thing if she were to return in the long run.

But Sakura also gave weight to the positives and the argument for returning to help defend her former home. It was the honorable thing to do, her sensei was requesting it of her, she didn't want to let Naruto down again and her parents would have wanted her to return to defend the home they all once shared.

It was completely dark now and fireflies had begun to light up parts of the valley. Sakura welcomed the cool night air, it had been a scorching day. Placing the two letters in her pack carefully, Sakura stretched out in the grass and placed her hands behind her head. It was a cloudless night and the stars were out in full, coating the inky sky like diamonds.

Her heart clenched as she recalled the many missions she had spent with Team 7, staring up at the same sky watching the stars twinkle. Kakashi's nose was always buried in his perverted books but he would often make the time to point out constellations or shooting stars.

Naruto would gaze up in wonder at the universe silently which always drew Sakura's attention, her teammate was rarely quiet. One night after Kakashi had turned in and it was just the three of them, Sakura asked him why it fascinated him so. Naruto explained that he always wondered if his mother and father were up there watching over him. Sasuke, who was lying next to Sakura, spoke up and said he often wondered the same thing too. Sakura recalled a moment of peace settled over the three of them and they were content to lie in silence looking up at the sky for hours together.

Frustrated, she rolled on her side and tried to stop herself romanticizing old memories. Things were different now. Her eyes were drawn to her pack lying next to her and the letters within them. Despite everything a decision had to be made.

That's it for the first chapter back guys!

Please drop me a review and let me know what you think. I'll do my best to keep my updates consistent for you all as well.