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Moira: noun
1. (among ancient Greeks) a person's fate or destiny.
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Sharp rocks dug into the base of his spine, but he didn't move. Icy blasts of winter air might ruffle his hair, beat about his unprepared body, and shake the red ribbon of her hitai-ate clutched in a bloodless hand, but still, he did not move.
The characters that made up her name (Haruno Sakura, such a small name for such a big personality) were hard to see against the darkness of the memorial stone. Her grave marker in the civilian cemetery was no better. In fact, it was worse in his mind. She'd been reduced to a handful of strokes and the image of a cherry tree in bloom. It was a clumsy, cliché play on her name that she'd secretly hated in life.
She deserved better.
It was a common thread quietly laced through her too-short life, her ninja career, and even in death.
Now he felt like standing atop the Hokage monument and screaming it to the stars, to the entirety of Fire Country, to the whole world.
Haruno Sakura deserved better.
She deserved a teacher who paid attention to her and made sure she survived to adulthood.
She deserved a team where she could stand as an equal, not constantly be overshadowed by a pair of squabbling boys trying to one-up each other.
She deserved her childhood friend back. She shouldn't have lost her in the first place, over a stupid boy who never looked twice at a girl.
She deserved a man who would genuinely love her for who she was, not a boy who called her annoying and left her unconcious on a bench.
She deserved a team that would stay, not the dysfunctional mess Team Seven had all too easily become.
The village, her beloved Konoha, had taken everything that made Sakura Sakura, (the way her pink hair crinkled and curled in the humidity, her flashing green eyes that could strike fear into the hearts of even the bravest of shinobi, her enormous heart and love for the people of the village, the sheer ferocity she could turn on an enemy, her jaw dropping strength, the rough calluses peppering her fingers and palms, and the softness of a young woman hidden under that rough, brash surface) and reduced it to a name, yet another shinobi registration number to be recycled, just another drop in the bucket of Konoha's great war machine.
And it wasn't fucking fair.
In time she would be forgotten, her name on the memorial stone worn away by weather and the passage of time.
Uchiha Sasuke would never forget.
A/N: Maybe someday I'll write more happy Naruto fics than angsty ones. But today is not that day. ETA: I changed this from a standalone one shot series to a multi chapter story. *finger guns away*