It starts with those eyes. Those beautiful blue eyes. They were the saddest eyes she's ever seen. And he's on the swing by himself, unmoving.
He's only five years old, but his eyes seem as though they belong to someone much older. So she runs to him, and gives him the biggest smile she has.
He's surprised, and when she gives her name, he suddenly doesn't know his. She asks him to sit properly so she can push him on the swing but he remains still for a while, until she nudges him to move. So he does as she says, with a priceless look on his face.
"Won't your parents be mad if they see you with me?" he asks.
She says she doesn't have any. When he asks why, she says they were killed in a war, right after she was born. She swings him until he asks her to stop. She holds the ropes tightly and pulls them towards her to get them to stop faster. The sun is setting, and she doesn't want to go home. Why would she? There's nothing to go home to. So when he asks her if she wants to go to his house, she's ecstatic. And he takes her hand and sprints home, ignoring the hateful stares and surprised faces. He ran so fast that they had become a blur.
Her face is burning by the time they get to his house, she doesn't know if it's from running or because she's nervous. And she looks at all of the doors, wondering which one belonged to Naruto. And to her surprise, it was the rattiest door, with writings on it, full of bad words and hateful comments, and she thinks that no one their age should know these words, let alone have to come home to them. But he has on a blinding smile, and she thinks he can't read yet, and takes a breath for the sake of both of them, but her heart still hurts for him.
She comes face to face with a worn little kitchen table, a loud and dusty refrigerator, a tattered sofa with paint splashed on the bottom that has probably seen it's days, worn curtains with moth holes on them, and a small bed in the corner with worn and dirty sheets, so much so that she couldn't tell if they were originally white turned grey or if it was an intentional pattern.
She looks back at the door and realizes he doesn't have a lock. She looks back at him and sees him standing on a chair grabbing the only two sealed bowls on the top of a dusty shelf.
"I only have pork or beef flavored left, so which one do you want?"
He's holding them up with his tiny hands and she grins because she's only had ramen once in the short span of life she had lived so far. They eat after the boiled water has cooked the ramen thoroughly and it is somewhat cooled. He speaks of nothing at all, and all she can give are random facts of the shinobi life she had read through the big books she has at home, and he seems fascinated none the less.
When they have nothing left to talk about he asks her if she wants to stay and watch TV. She agrees, but when he turns the knobs to the channels, it's not working, and the screen remains with static.
"We can go to my house and watch TV."she offers, and she had no idea he had a bigger grin than the one he had recently given off.
She tells him to take his clothes so he can sleep over, and he scrambles to find the things he wants to take. He settles for a worn teddy bear that he pulled from under his bed and a set of pajamas that seems two sizes too big. She's already opening the door for them to leave. And it was her turn to run with him trailing behind.
Her house is a bit bigger than hers, she thinks, or it might be that the bare and clean floor makes it look bigger compared to his completely cluttered one. None the less, he looks amazed. She's already grabbing the tiny steps she has to grab one of the juice boxes she had left on the counter. She hands it to him and he seems as though he had just recieved a winning lottery ticket. She can't help but smile and grin while she goes to the TV and turns it on. And while they watch cartoons and he's poking the straw through the top of the juice box she just gave him, she suddenly feels that she wouldn't mind if he were to stay forever, and she doesn't know why her heart skips a beat, but she doesn't mind.
XXXX
She punches the kids who make fun of them, and she's swinging wildly as Naruto is crying and bleeding. She grabs a large stick and swings it at the older kids, telling them to go away or she'll tell her mom, they don't know that she's bluffing, so they run. She drops the stick and hugs the boy, who is only a few inches shorter than her. She calms him down, saying that she won't let anything happen to him. He has a hard time sniffling and she grabs the hem of her shirt and asks him to blow it it. She sees the snot and blood and she feels bad.
"Let's go home."
And he didn't know when her home became home. But there they went, hand in hand. When she finds the key in her pocket, she opens the door for both of them. She tiptoes over a kitchen drawer to find a pink lunchbox with bunnies on the front and asks Naruto to sit down. "I'm not hungry right now Sakura-chan." he says in a small voice, but once she opens the box, he realizes it's not food in there, but small medical supplies. She places the small box on the table next to him. She takes out her small steps and gets a rag with warm water in a bowl to wash his face from the blood. When she turns back to face him with the bowl in both hands she finds him peeking over from the couch.
"Is it going to hurt?" he asks in his tiny voice.
She doesn't respond for a while.
"Yes" she finally says after a while, and she places the bowl next to the lunchbox with medical supplies. She positions a chair to face the one he had recently been sitting in and turned to the still-hiding Naruto.
"The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can eat ramen!" she says with a grin, and he's sprinting towards the chair.
XXXX
She's only seven years old, but the old woman was nice enough to give her a small job at her local grocery store. She piles up the fruits and cans in a particular way to make it look neat and organized. Being the neat and organized person she was, she didn't disappoint. She worked to keep the small house her parents left, and to keep a bit of food every week for her and Naruto. Being at the young age they were, it didn't take much to satisfy them, as their tastebuds were naive to any particular kind of taste.
She had to skip days from school a couple of times for the sake of keeping her job, but the times she was absent, she made up for by studing with the books from the academy opened so she'd be able to read while piling up the items. She encourages Naruto to go for both of them, and asks him to take notes, he usually only comes home with a couple of barely inellible sentences on a crumpled peice of paper, but she only needs to read a few of the words to find them in her books.
XXXX
One day she's on her way home from the gocery store, and she sees his hair almost blurring past her. He running, he has the scarf she gave him as a birthday gift, and the green goggles he usually wore. But he's holding someone else's hand. Her smile twitches before she realizes that he's holding onto Hinata Hyuuga's hand. And she realizes he's not going home yet, because they're not facing the street where Sakura's house is. She looks down at the small pint of ice cream she has for dinner for both of them, and she's running home to make sure it doesn't melt.
XXXX
He's only talking about Hinata now. The Hyuuga heiress, and her beautiful pearl-like eyes, her pretty pink cheeks, her shy habit of twidling her fingers. She finds herself agreeing with everything he's saying. And on the days Sakura's at the academy, she catches him staring and Hinata wears a red face while trying not to meet his gaze yet smiling softly to herself. "Naruto pay attention." she catches herself whispering while she stares down at her notes and realizes she only has a blank paper in front of her.
XXXX
She's staring at herself and she's noticed Hinata's chest has grown a bit in the past few years. At eleven years old she would have expected to have looked the part, but she didn't see much change. She noticed this on a hot summer day, where instead of wearing her usual bulky sweater, Hinata had worn a shirt that clung to her body comfortably.
Naruto had been blushing the whole time while talking to her, as she was blushing and playing with her fingers. Sakura noticed she didn't have any of the features he had liked about Hinata. She has green eyes, not those gorgeous pearl eyes he talks about so much, he likes her beautiful porcelain skin, and she has pale skin that seems a bit too rough for her liking. Hinata has a chest almost fit for a thirteen year old, and she still has the build of an wight year old. She has beautiful well trimmed short raven colored hair, where she had choppy short hair that she trimmed herself.
"Hurry up Sakura, let's go!" Naruto rushed past her as he sprinted for the academy.
Sakura merely shook herself off and headed for the academy as though she didn't have her first epiphany.
XXXX
She knew Sasuke had a troubled past. Of course he was never one to bring up anything. When she had attempted to ask he simply stared at her before calling her "annoying." They weren't very close, but whever Naruto invited Hinata to Ichiraku's she would be left alone with Sasuke, and when there wasn't small talk, which was most of the time, there was silence, and a whole lot of it. So she didn't try. But it didn't take long for it to become a ritual for them, they would sit in silence, and he would simply carry on what he was doing.
She knew that there was a tremendous amount of tension in that silence as well, it was almost suffocating, but being the kind person that she was, she let it take her as well and continued to stand next to him. It had only been by chance that she had caught him leaving the village. She knew there was no way he could stay, because it was going to be as Orochimaru said in the chuunin exam, he was going to go to him whether he wanted to or not.
"You shouldn't go." she began. "We care so much about you in the team, and you know that, we need you here. Naruto will be so devastated when he hears you left."
At the sound of Naruto's name, he paused. "... I don't care." he simply said before continuing to walk.
"... At least be safe. Don't be so reckless." she said, knowing there was no way anything she said could comfort him.
"Thank you."
And he's gone.
XXXX
He doesn't cry when she tells him that he left, because he says he knows what it feels like to be alone. He didn't have anyone growing up. And it hurts her like hell, but she agrees. He slings an arm around her shoulders.
"We'll get him back. Don't worry Sakura, it's a promise."
And she knows it's true. But suddenly she didn't know if he was doing this for them or for her specifically.
XXXX
This was it, their first grand festival is coming up. The Sakura festival. It had actually been a while since the village had decided to celebrate any festival this big. She's taking a deep breath before she wants to ask him. It's only going to be a few months before Jiraya takes him to train. She won't see him for a while, but she knows it'll be worth it when she sees him again. She's been waiting all year and she finally has a day from work to finally ask him out.
"Sakura! Sakura!" she hears him call.
He's bursted through the door in uncontrollable energy, the same he's been throughout the-
"She said yes!" and he's ecstatic.
"Huh?" she can't seem to comprehend.
"Hinata said yes! She's going to the festival with me!" He's suddenly rummaging through the piles of clothes he has in the corner of his room in their apartment.
She didn't say anything for a while. She realized it's been a while since he's looked this happy since Sasuke had left.
"That's great!" she's plastering on that fake smile, the one that those all knowing eyes of his can't detect. She's suddenly helping him decide what to wear. And she keeps looking even when Naruto stops to take a shower, because he knows she'll do him the favor of helping him find a suitible outfit for the festival.
So she does.
XXXX
He's hugging Hinata by the waist before he leaves, and she's hugging him around his neck, and they've been that way for a while. Jiraya's trying to contain a perverted smirk by covering his mouth in a child-like fashion. Kakashi is back to his book while she stands next to him. She sees Naruto walk up to her and stands in front of her.
"Take care of yourself, yeah?" she says as he hugs her the way a comrade would another.
He quickly detaches himself and gives her a blinding grin as he nods and goes back in for an even quicker hug before running off to follow Jiraya, who had already turned away. And she's watching him walk away. There was nothing else to do, and nothing left to say. Or at least, that was how she felt. The whole time she stared at him though, she felt Kakashi's ever-observant eye on her.
She's walking away as though she didn't have a care in the world once the village doors close. But as soon as Kakashi's body turns the other direction and he's no longer in sight, she's running as fast as she can. She runs all the way to the Hokage tower to come face to face with the fifth Hokage herself, who put down the paper work she had been reading as she glared at her for bursting through the door in such a rude manner. She doesn't wait to catch her breath and says what she wants to say all in one go.
"Please make me your apprentice."
To Be Continued
*So many spelling errors but I wanted to post it ASAP so I can finally work towards updating. Sorry! Next one will be thoroughly reviewed before being posted. -_-"
Hi everyone! I know it's been a hell of a long time but I've been super busy and I haven't had a drive to write lately. Anyways, this story has been piling and piling in my head since the Manga ended. I've always been an SS fan but suddenly, now that it happened, it's not really driving me to write anything about them, I'm sorry to say. So for the sake of wanting something new I came up with this! It's going to take place in an alternate past for a bit before we go into the way present, and then a bit ahead of that. Be ready for some really depressing reads though. :/ Let me know what you think! NOOO FLAMES! I'll try to upload weekly so you guys get a new chapter. I have a LOT of plans for this one and I have some ideas jotted down. Thanks so much for reading and have a good day/night! ^-^