Prologue

"Everyone who tries to leave, has to go through this road"

"I know what happened to your family, but revenge can't bring you happiness"

"Please, stay with me and if you can't, take me with you!"

"Sasuke, if you try to leave I'll scream and, and then-"

"Sakura… Thank you"

"NO!" she screamed, her voice piercing the silence of the night. She breathed heavily, fighting back the tears. Surveying her surroundings, it became clear that, once again, she had been dreaming. It had been the same dream for the best part of the year and it always ended in the same way: failure.

"Sakura" her mother called from outside the bedroom, "are you alright?"

"Yes" she replied, "it was just a dream, that's all."

Except, it wasn't just a dream. It was a manifestation of her guilt. She had allowed Sasuke to leave the village and knew that anything that happened to him afterwards was partly her fault. She was also aware of the burden she had placed on her other teammate Naruto, who was had left the village himself with Master Jiraiya, enduring some of the toughest training imaginable in order to keep the promise she made him make.

Sakura reached over to her bedside table and picked up the photo of Team 7 that she had left there. The picture conjured up feelings of both joy and sadness, with more recent events souring her precious memories of the best time of her life. She felt tears form in her eyes, but fought them back. She promised herself that she was not going to cry about this. Not anymore. Naruto would not have to bear this burden alone. She had made her own promise to help, to bring Sasuke back with her own two hands. Things were changing; she wasn't that helpless little girl anymore. She was training under Lady Tsunade, one of the Legendary Sannin and the current Hokage. She had to be strong, had to live up to her master's high expectations. Sakura Haruno was not going to be a dead weight anymore.

With that decided, she lay back down to try and get some more rest. Any day training under the Hokage is tiring, but going through it with barely any sleep would be worse. As she lay there, she snuck one more glance at that old team photo and drifted off to sleep dreaming of the day when they would be reunited once again.