Forgotten Dream

Chapter III: Now You Know

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto. I do not own Sasuke. I do not own Sakura. I hate that.

A/N: Yay, my little symbol thing appears! That makes me happy, now I don't have to come up with a new way to indicate switching perspective. (Scratch that; I just replaced it, which is why all the chapters are being replaced at the moment. If you notice any typing errors, please do not hesitate to tell me. I edited this myself, so if something was typed wrong, I may have just not noticed it because I knew what it was supposed to say.)

Sasuke lay in his hospital bed, full of defeat. Sakura didn't remember him, Naruto didn't remember him, and the two of them were possibly dating. Joy to the world. Now all that he needed was for Itachi to come back to life, and everything would be as awful as it could possibly get. Sometimes he really hated his life.

Sasuke sighed in despair. What could he do? Was there anything that could make them remember again? He doubted it; he couldn't even think of anything that would have caused them to forget in the first place. The only thing it seemed he could do was to wait, and become their friend a second time, so that something like Team Seven might be able to happen again. Sasuke did not miss the irony of the idea that he was the one so obsessed with recreating Team Seven, when he was the one who had destroyed it in the first place. The world had a cruel sense of humor in that way.

He could do it, though. He could become their friend a second time, maybe even be as close as they had been in their Genin days. But even if he did, the ache in his heart would never go away. The ache of all the happy memories they should share, that Naruto and Sakura no longer possessed, for one reason or another. He could do it, though. He would have to. Because there was no possible way that Uchiha Sasuke could survive loneliness like after his clan had been wiped out a second time.

The turning of the door knob jolted him out of his reverie. He straightened his back, refusing to appear broken even at a time like this. Most likely it would be another nurse, coming to check up on him and probably fangirl him in the process. That hadn't changed in all the time he'd been gone. Or it could be Sakura, refusing to take his word for it that he was fine alone. Secretly (well, perhaps not so secretly) he hoped it was the latter. One of the things he didn't expect was that it was Hyuuga Hinata. Sasuke gaped at the Hyuuga heiress, who fumbled with her fingers as she awkwardly glanced at anything but him.

"Hinata," Sasuke addressed her calmly, letting none of his shock at her appearance now make its way into his voice. The shy kunoichi looked up at the sound of her name, her eyes full of fear.

"H-hello, S-Sasuke-san," she stuttered. Sasuke had already begun to form his signature smirk before his brain processed what she had said. The muscles of his face froze in shock midway through forming the expression that many (rabid fans) have come to associate with the young Uchiha. She had addressed him by his name. She had known who he was. Shock and hope made their way onto his face as he gazed at her. Hinata turned her head to face the ground, obviously made uncomfortable by his scrutiny.

"Hinata, how do you know who I am, when even Naruto and Sakura don't seem to know?" If possible, Hinata became even more fidgety at his question, and her already difficult to understand stuttering became almost unbearable.

"W-well, S-S-Sasuke-san, i-it's just-"

"Hinata," Sasuke cut her off (rudely), "Tell me without stuttering." The shy Hyuuga gulped at the fierceness in his voice, and then she did the impossible. Hinata spoke without a single stutter.

"It was three years ago, Sasuke-san," she told him while looking at the floor. Sasuke had meant for her to look at him without stuttering, but he decided not to push his luck. He was asking for information, after all, not a miracle. "Exactly three years ago, when Naruto-kun and Sakura-san told me what they had asked Tsunade-sama. While she was reading several old books in Gondaime-sama's library, Sakura-san found mention of a ritual, designed to make people forget pain, events… or people. They asked Tsunade-sama to perform it for them, so that they could forget you. They had just gotten back from the mission where they found you. It destroyed them. I don't think you fully realized what you did to them then, Sasuke-san, but even Naruto-kun could barely smile anymore. They asked for a release from that pain, and they found it."

"So… they did it…?" Sasuke asked, almost afraid of what she would say. Hinata nodded.

"Exactly three years ago, to the day, on the night of the new moon, Tsunade-sama, Naruto-kun, and Sakura-san preformed the ritual in the forest surrounding the village. I was with them. Everyone, every single person in Konoha, would forget that there ever had been such a person as Uchiha Sasuke. Your birth records and anything else that they could find written about you had been destroyed beforehand, so that there would be nothing left behind to remind everyone. For Konoha, it was like you had never been born." Like you had never been born… the words echoed mockingly in his head, reminding Sasuke what he had done to the people of this village. It had been easier for them to forget that he had ever existed, than to go on living with the knowledge that he had left them. Suddenly, he remembered the original question that had brought up this uncomfortable topic.

"Hinata, if the ritual was designed to make everyone forget, how is it that you still remember me?"

"I was their final hope," she said with ethereal calm. Hinata really could sound otherworldly when she wasn't stuttering. "I was the one person who would bear the memories of you in others' stead, so that if you ever came back, there would still be someone who remembered you, and a chance that things could go back to the way that they were before you left."

"So you know everything that happened?" he asked. Hinata smiled sadly in confirmation, and Sasuke felt a flash of pity for the young girl. She was the same age that he was, only seventeen, and yet she was isolated from all her peers by her memories of a person none of them even remembered the existence of. It must have been hard on her. He smiled forlornly at her to show that he too knew the pain she was feeling.

"Here," Hinata told him, reaching into the pocket of her coat and pulling out a pink book. "This is Sakura-san's journal, from the year that the four of you were Team Seven. She told me to give it to you, if you ever came back. On the last page is something she wrote to you right before her and Naruto… Don't worry, I never looked."

"Thank you, Hinata," Sasuke told her, allowing a tinge of sadness to make its way into his voice. He felt that if the normally quiet Hinata had managed to bear the burden of two and a half years of Naruto and Sakura's pain and grief over losing him, she at least deserved to know his true feelings on the subject.

"I-I just hope that N-Naruto-kun and Sakura-san are able to remember again," she told him sadly. Her stutter was back now that her task of informing him had been completed, and Sasuke couldn't bring himself to shout at her again. She deserved to be allowed to stutter, at least, after all that she had done in the hope of someday helping him. Instead, he smirked at her. Hinata bowed, and left the room.

Sasuke turned his attention to the book in front of him. It looked so small, so innocent. And yet the words it contained would change his entire life. If Sakura's final words to him had been filled with the grief of parting, it would surely drive him to tears, and only increase the ache in his heart that was a longing for her presence by his side, like it had been in the good old days of Team Seven. Yet if her words were ones of anger, fury at him for what he had done, he didn't think that he would be able to bear the guilt. Why was it that he needed to look, when whatever Sakura had said, it could cause nothing but pain to him now? For Sasuke's feelings about reading the journal could only be accurately described by the word need. Written between these two covers, were the last words Sakura had ever wanted to tell him. It would tear him apart worse than anything she could say to go on not knowing what it was she had been so desperate to tell him. He needed to know what she had said.

Slowly, deliberately, Sasuke opened the journal, and flipped to the last page…

A/N: I absolutely had to make that a cliffhanger ending. I mean really, it was just screaming 'cliffie'! The next update will probably be in just a few days, though, so I won't make you suffer too long. Probably a week, at the latest. I'm not making any promises, though, in case I have to break them and then have everyone at my throat. One of the great truths of the world: hell hath no fury like deprived fans. As Kishimoto-sama has probably learned by now, from all the weeks that the manga didn't publish a chapter.