Author's Note: I do not own Naruto nor do I profit from my writing. Also, to clear up any future questions, this does not follow the time line currently going on in the manga. It split off on a different tangent some time after the reunion at Orochimaru's lair and before Itachi's death. So yeah. Rated M for later more explicit content. Read, review, and enjoy!
Chapter 1: The First Kiss
For as long as Naruto could remember, he had loved a girl by the name of Haruno Sakura. It was an honest love, first fuelled by a young boy who did not understand the full meaning of the word. When he first saw her in the playground—her pink hair tied back by a giant red bow and her cheeks adorned with the summer sun's kiss—he had no idea that she was the woman who would fill his life with inspiration, joy, and overwhelming sadness.
Naruto's memory wasn't the best, so he could not remember exactly what had drawn him to Sakura in their early childhood. Perhaps it was the way her face lit up when she spoke to someone, or the gentle way she caressed a flower blooming in the field. Whatever it was, he was hooked. For life.
In retrospect, there really was no reason why he should have liked Sakura, at least during their time at the academy. He hung on every word she said, but she regarded him with disdain and contempt. She only had eyes for another, but this only seemed to encourage Naruto further. Growing up in the manner that he had, Naruto was used to having to work for something. Nothing was handed to the spawn of a demon. So he handled the situation as he would any other problem. He worked and laboured and slaved for her attention, constantly complementing her, admiring her from afar, and all together doing his best to be a ray of sunshine in her world. Of course, when this proved ineffective, he had no choice but to work and labour and slave again.
When it became time to select genin teams, Naruto prayed to Kami—or whoever it was that ran things up there—to pair him off with Sakura. He got what he wanted, but it came with a price. He would have to endure and somehow force her to overcome her infatuation with their other teammate, Uchiha Sasuke. What a sick twist of fate. But he took it all in stride. This would only make him stronger.
The next year was a blur of blood. Naruto barely had time to notice how his puppy love had evolved into a protective instinct. He took shots for her. He dealt blows for her. He trained harder for her. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered how her scent had changed as she had entered adolescence. The change had sparked a reaction inside of him, and he viewed her in a new light. He noticed her pale skin and sinewy form as she pranced across the battlefield with natural grace and beauty. But then a mission would come along, and his thoughts would be put on hold so he could continue his fight for her. His entire team had grown closer due to their shared experiences, and while Naruto was still determined to crush Sasuke in the contest for Sakura's heart, he regarded him as a brother instead of an enemy.
And then everything changed . . .
The weight of their relationship shifted considerably when she asked him to do her a favor. A small favor really. All he had to do was beat some sense into his friend—her love—and drag his sorry ass home. He had his own reasons for bringing Sasuke back, but Naruto knew he would be lying to himself if he said that he didn't do it for her. He just knew that once he did this for her, once he brought her the thing she wanted most, Sakura would understand the depths of his devotion to her and finally reciprocate his feelings. Naruto ignored the obvious. He ignored the fact that she was still in love with Sasuke. He didn't allow himself to think that she had asked him because he would do anything for her. Because he was convenient and easily controlled—though these thoughts plagued his mind as he grew older. In spite of everything, he was determined to succeed.
But he failed . . . several times.
Naruto almost welcomed their three year separation. Though he was sure that Sakura harbored no ill-will towards him, he imagined that he could still feel the weight of her disappointment over the many miles that separated them.
But once they were reunited, Naruto could not imagine how he had managed to be away from her for so long. He drank in the sight of her, admiring the changes she had undergone in his absence. When they trained together, Naruto would sometimes catch himself staring at her for longer than was socially acceptable. He strove to become a master of stealth to conceal his obsession. Sometimes, when they stretched after a rigorous day of training, Naruto would purposefully position himself slightly behind her so that he could memorize the curve of her backside or gaze uninterrupted at the soft swell of her breasts underneath her shirt. However, Sakura was not completely oblivious to his peeping, and he left the practice grounds with a broken nose—which Sakura always refused to heal—on more than one occasion. It was all worth it. He stole these perfect images away in his mind, bringing them up when his hormones made it necessary for him to relieve himself.
In the next few years, his love for her changed once more. He regarded her with a sense of awe coupled with a desperate physical want that he could never satisfy by just merely thinking about her. And yet, Naruto could never find the courage to express his feelings directly. But they permeated every action that he made so thoroughly, that he had no doubts as to whether or not she knew.
He remembered always being with her. They would train together. Eat together. Walk together. Talk with each other about endless subjects . . . except one. A void stretched between them, filled with all the things left unsaid in regards to their lost teammate. Naruto wanted so badly to close the void, to seal it up and pull Sakura close to him and tell her that she would never have to worry about that bastard Sasuke because he was there for her and wasn't that all that mattered? But he never managed to tell her.
They spoke Sasuke's name only when he was the target of their many missions, which always failed. Sakura began to give up hope, but Naruto never broke his resolve. He threw his whole self into his training once again, determined to become stronger, adamant in his belief that if he brought Sasuke back to Konoha, he would earn Sakura's heart. Ironically, this fixation with training caused Naruto to concentrate on little else, including Sakura. Their friendship waned and continued in this fashion for months until they stumbled into each other by accident and fell back into sync as if nothing had disturbed their bond.
Naruto could have kicked himself. He had known that he needed to get groceries for nearly a week, but had constantly put it off, secretly hoping that some angel would realize his plight and deliver a basket full of goodies at his door so he wouldn't have to trek down to the market. Unfortunately, this never came to pass, so after he had finished his daily training session, he marched to town in a huff. He absolutely abhorred doing such mundane tasks, but his stomach and cabinets were empty, and he refused to starve.
After picking up some milk and bread, Naruto stuffed his bag with as much ramen as he could afford to buy and made a bee-line for the checkout lane. In his haste, he neglected to effectively watch where he was going and accidentally clipped someone on the shoulder. The bag tumbled to the floor and spilled its contents across the aisle.
"Shit," he muttered under his breath as he looked at the bag. Trying to uphold the rules of courtesy, Naruto turned towards the unidentified person he had bumped, who was squatting over their own fallen bag of groceries. "Sorry," he began and bent down to assist them. "I wasn't watching where I was go—oh, hey, Sakura." The pink-headed girl looked up from the floor, looking about as surprised as he felt at the unexpected meeting.
Her green eyes blinked owlishly at him until she finally seemed to register what had just happened. "Naruto . . . oh, yeah. It's no big deal. I wasn't paying attention either." She waved off his apology and turned her attention back to her bag.
A few silent moments passed as they picked up the scattered items. Naruto tried to appear calm on the outside, but he was a nervous wreck on the inside. He couldn't believe he had bumped into her. Of all the clumsy things to do. And to make it worse, he hadn't even noticed her! He would have walked right by without as much as a 'hello' if he hadn't been so reckless. As he handed her the final item, Naruto smiled and said a little awkwardly, "So . . . how have you been? Haven't seen you in . . . Um . . . "
"A couple of months, yeah," Sakura finished for him and accepted the last item from him. "I've been alright. Busy with the hospital. How about you?" she asked, a genuine inquiry behind her gaze.
He paused for a moment, caught off guard as he always was by her eyes. As he snapped back into reality, he quickly busied himself by picking up his packets of ramen and stuffing them in his bag. "I'm good," he said. "I've been training a lot."
Sakura laughed softly, as if that were to be expected, and then proceeded to help him. A few seconds passed before she stopped in her work and examined one of the packages.
"How much ramen do you need?" she asked incredulously and shook her head. "I swear, Naruto, you're going to kill yourself one day. Either that, or gain a hundred pounds."
Naruto scoffed in disbelief and defended his abnormal love for the packaged noodles. Though he could not help but feel that they had had this conversation before, Naruto eagerly welcomed it. It helped re-establish some of the normalcy that had been lost between them. Before long, he found himself walking down the aisles with her, chatting about various things that had happened to them since they last saw each other. They reached the checkout lane in no time, and he felt disheartened by the fact that their time together had come to an end.
As Sakura laid out her items for the cashier to view, Naruto rocked back and forth on his heels, anxious and fretful at the same time. "Hey . . . how about you come over for dinner? I've got plenty of food to go around," he baited her and waved one of the packages for her to see.
Sakura laughed lightly and began to count her bills. "Well, you sure know how to treat a lady," she joked and handed the cashier the money. For one painfully agonizing moment, Naruto thought that she was going to reject the idea. He dropped his eyes to his feet and was about to mumble that he, too, had been kidding, but Sakura spoke before he had the chance. "Sure, why not? It'll be fun. Like old times."
As the night continued on, Naruto had a hard time imagining how he had gone so long without spending time with Sakura. Her laugh and smile were contagious. She spoke and moved with the same mysterious grace that she had always possessed, and Naruto was immediately hooked once again. They passed the hours at his apartment talking, just like they used to, until the sun disappeared from the sky and Naruto had to struggle to stay awake. It had been a long day of training, and if he had been following his normal routine, he would have hit the hay a good while ago.
After finishing one of her stories, Sakura yawned and glanced at the time. "Oh God, is it really that late? I should get home before my parents start to wonder where I am," she said and stood from her place on the couch. After much insisting on his part, Naruto finally managed to convince Sakura to allow him to walk her home.
He carried her bag in his left arm while she walked by his right side. His hand twitched more than once from the desire to intertwine his fingers with hers or wrap his arm around her narrow waist. To distract himself from the mesmerizing way the moonlight danced across her cheekbones, Naruto struck up another casual conversation. They discussed their current training schedules. Sakura congratulated him on being promoted to a chuunin, even though she admitted that she had heard it through the grapevine about a month earlier.
"You heard, and you didn't say anything?" he asked in mock disbelief, appearing appalled by her lack of manners.
"I never saw you! God knows you're always out there training for ridiculous amounts of time," she defended herself in a small huff.
"Aha! So you knew where I was, but you couldn't come congratulate me?"
Sakura rolled her eyes and waved the comment away. "It doesn't matter. We were both in the wrong." Naruto opened his mouth to protest, but one menacing look from Sakura rendered him speechless. He supposed he could take some of the blame. After all, he knew that she was stationed at the hospital most days, and he had never sought her out to tell her.
They walked in silence for a few more minutes until Sakura's house came into view. A sombre expression reached Sakura's face, and she slowed to a stop when the house was still one hundred yards away. Naruto stopped too, and tentatively set the bag on the ground. He could feel the sudden shift in mood—the set of her eyes, the set of her mouth—and found it a bit unsettling.
"Naruto . . . " Sakura murmured, her voice barely above a whisper. He turned towards her, a concerned look on his face to let her know he was listening. "You really are training all the time. Almost obsessively," she paused here, as if expecting him to disagree with her. When he did not, she looked straight ahead and continued, "All this training that you're doing . . . is it still to bring Sasuke back?"
Her question hung heavy in the air. Naruto felt a pang of emotions in his chest at the mention of their teammate's name. He felt sorrow and guilt and anger and loneliness. But more than anything else, he felt disappointed that Sakura would even have to ask about his intentions. "Of course it is. I haven't given up yet, Sakura. And I never will!" His tone was gruff, determined, and almost twice as loud as her soft whisper.
She did not mirror his passion. Her face remained passive and her eyes looked far beyond at something she could not see as she nodded to herself, as if she were expecting to hear such an answer. "I see . . . " she mumbled in reply. Naruto furrowed his brow and tried to see her face more clearly, but when he moved to the side to try and face her head-on, her face shied away from his prying eyes. After an uncomfortable silence, she turned to face him. Her green eyes were round and luminous in the moonlight, and any anger that Naruto still felt at the recollection of Sasuke quickly melted away as he stared down into them.
A small smile pulled at Sakura's lips, but aside from that, her face was unreadable. "I know it's been awhile, but . . . do you still remember that promise you made me?" she asked quietly.
Sadness filled Naruto's heart. How could she think that he would forget? "Of course I do," he answered just as quietly.
Her expression did not change, but he somehow felt that his answer had upset her. He couldn't understand why. "Is that why you fight, then? Do you fight for that promise?"
As Naruto stared down at her eyes—weak and vulnerable in comparison to her hard expression—he felt a surge of emotions rise up in his chest. He had always loved Sakura; he knew this, but now he wanted her to know as well. She needed to know just how deeply he cared about her. "I fight for you," he answered. "I always have. I'd do anything for you, Sakura." And, just because the moment was so perfect, he leaned down and pressed his lips against hers. She didn't move. Naruto held it for a few more seconds. His hand caressed her cheek and he breathed in her scent for as long as he could, but when it became apparent that she was not going to return his actions, he pulled away.
His eyes fell to the ground as he stepped away from her, ashamed and yet proud of his forwardness with her. When he took his chances and looked up at her, Naruto saw her watching him carefully. A deep sense of melancholy emanated from her. Finally, she turned her head to gaze without seeing down the street.
Sakura was quiet for a long time. Every second they stood there, Naruto felt more foolish and more heartbroken. For the life of him, he could not read her face. That fact alone frustrated him more than anything he had ever encountered. Just when he was about to apologize, Sakura began to speak. Her words were so soft that he barely caught them. "Maybe I'm not the one you should be fighting for."
Her words left him in a daze. He stared openly at her with a burning question in his eyes. What did she mean? Was she telling him to move on to someone else? He could think of no other answer . . . but he knew Sakura would not be so cruel. Not to him. He felt anxious and hurt, but he did his best to appear patient and unaffected by the whole situation. After Sakura was finished pondering her silent thought, she resumed walking, slowly now, and Naruto hurried to pick up the bag and follow.
They walked to her house in silence, Naruto's eyes focused on anything but Sakura and Sakura's eyes focused straight ahead. It was painfully awkward for Naruto, but when he glanced at Sakura from the corner of his eye, her mind seemed to be so far off that he doubted if she even noticed the silence. Once they reached the house, Sakura opened the door and took the bag from him with a word of thanks, setting it down inside the house before standing in the doorway. He mumbled a quick 'don't mention it', stuffed his hands in his pockets, and focused his complete attention on his shoes.
After another beat of silence, Sakura let out a soft sigh before placing a hand against his cheek. Naruto looked up sheepishly and was relieved to see her smiling gently at him. She was herself once again. "Don't look so down. It doesn't suit you," she smiled again, but it faltered. "We should see each other more often. I think it would do us both some good." She let her hand fall back to her side and waited patiently for his response.
Naruto did his best to return the smile, but it was hard to concentrate when he could still feel the ghost of her hand on his face. "Yeah, we should. Definitely . . . well . . . good night, Sakura-chan," he waved as he turned to leave, surprising himself by adopting the old suffix.
If Sakura was similarly surprised, she did not show it. "Good night, Naruto," she said and closed the door.
Naruto brooded for the first half of his walk home. He couldn't believe he had been so stupid. He never should have tried anything with Sakura. He knew it wouldn't get him anywhere. And then she had said that thing about not fighting for her. Who else was he supposed to fight for! He loved her, for Christ's sake! He would go to hell and back just to make her happy. Did that mean nothing to her? And she had shown no emotion towards him. Hell, even a slap to the face would have been more welcome than her silence. She had disregarded the kiss completely, as if it had never happened. But it did happen. It happened and now he had to suffer the shame that accompanied it.
When his emotions had simmered down, Naruto tried to re-examine the whole situation, in case he had overlooked any minor details that could prove useful. All he could think to note was how sad—almost depressed—Sakura had been. His own heart fell in response. He hadn't meant hurt her; he only wanted to express how he felt. Apparently, that had been the wrong decision.
After much reflection on the night's events, Naruto thought that maybe he was being too pessimistic. She had not flat-out rejected him. True, her silence was disappointing, but it was not 'no.' Perhaps her silence meant that she just needed time to think about it. For all he knew, Sakura could have still been in love with Sasuke. The thought alone set him on edge.
Her words were still a mystery to him, so he decided to ponder them at a different time. He focused, instead, on their goodbye. She had not ordered him to leave or even been awkward about it. Instead, she had touched his face and asked to see him again. This, more than anything, gave him hope. Sakura had been very deliberate with her movements. By those two simple acts, she had told him that she was not angry with him. She had touched him to let him know that she still trusted him and that she did not think he had taken advantage of her. Her words had made it clear that she did not want this to come between them. On the contrary, she wanted to see him more. She had said all of this without even mentioning the kiss, and Naruto loved her for that. By not mentioning it, she made it clear that she did not wish to discuss it. He couldn't blame her.
As Naruto lay awake that night, something occurred to him. He shot up in bed at the revelation, his mind racing to keep up with itself. Sakura's words finally made sense to him. How could he have been so blinded! She had not meant to spurn him. No, no. It all made sense. He shouldn't be fighting for her. This wasn't her battle. This was his. How could he be expected to bring Sasuke back when his whole heart wasn't dedicated to the task? It was impossible.
Naruto fell back onto his bed and buried his head in his pillow. He would do it. Starting tomorrow he was starting over. He would build up his strength until he was skilled enough to become part of the ANBU Black Ops, and then he would hunt Sasuke down, break every bone in his body for all the pain he had caused him, and drag him back to Konoha. That would be for the best. It would make Sakura happy, but more importantly, it would make him happy.
The very next day, he would march over to Tsunade's office and deliberate the terms of Sasuke's return. Once he found terms that were suitable, he would train as if his life depended on it. Then and only then would his heart be relieved of this burden and be set free to pursue Sakura in the manner that it wished.
Three years later, he was closer to his goal than ever before.
To be continued . . .