(3 years ago)
Sakura reached out one hand to shake Tsunade Senju's, and held her diploma in the other. Her cheeks hurt from all the smiling, but she couldn't help it−she couldn't fucking stop smiling. She felt exhilarated as she turned to face the audience. She spotted her usual people; Naruto and Gaara, Minato and Kushina, Fugaku and Mikoto, Ino, and−her heart fluttered at the sight of him−her husband,Sasuke.
Everybody else clapping for her were only clapping out of courtesy. They didn't know her, but someday, she swore they will. Her heart leapt at the thought of it.
One of Sakura's earliest memories were of the scent of blood and gasoline. The flashes of a wreckage and a woman she called mom, bleeding in the driver's seat. The taste of blood spurting out of her mother's stomach and the salt in her own tears. The feeling of helplessness as paramedics tore her away from her mother's pale and limp figure.
Her eyes were still open, wide and dead−it was an image forever embedded in her memory. She remembered the incident in vague, unclear fragments, but her mother's lifeless eyes were always as clear as though Sakura had looked into them just moments ago.
She remembered all of this with detachment. Like she was someone from the outside looking in. Like she wasn't the girl crying in the passenger seat. Like it wasn't her mother bleeding out right under her fingers. She remembered all of this without any sort of emotion. Sometimes she wondered if she had been in shock at the time of the accident. Oftentimes she wondered if she was still in shock.
She stepped off the stage and was catapulted into the arms of her loved ones.
Tsunade had asked her once if she was so passionate about being a surgeon because of what happened in her childhood, her inability to save her mother. But at the time all she could think about was herself, because she felt she didn't know her mother enough. She thought of her father walking out on her, of entering the foster system, of growing older and older and more and more undesirable for adopting parents.
"No," she had answered. "I want to be a doctor to save me. I want to prevent someone from becoming another me. I don't want anyone else to lose their family and go through the life I did."
She embraced her adoptive parents and her in-laws. She remembered foster parents who coddled her too much, always looking at her as if she was a broken bird they'd picked up off of the sidewalk. She thought of mothers who drank too much and fathers who stared too long and foster siblings who couldn't care less about her. She wouldn't be where she was if Minato and Kushina hadn't found her, and for them, she was thankful.
Naruto and Ino tackled her. With all the lei around her neck and a giant bouquet of flowers in one arm and her diploma in her hand, she almost toppled over. It was all thanks to Gaara that she didn't, supporting her whole weight with his hand on her back, where it remained while the trio took their glorious time. These people were more than she could ever ask for, more than she could ever dream of.
When she'd kissed and hugged everyone there was to kiss and hug, she found herself in the arms of her husband. She looked up at him and saw a smugness in his face and pride in his eyes. She remembered nights when she would wake up from vivid visions from the accident, in cold sweat. Sometimes he would be there and sometimes he wouldn't. She much preferred when he was. He has always been that something to take the edge off.
"I'm proud of you," Sasuke murmured into her ear.
"Me too."