CONTENT WARNING: MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH
AN: I wrote this for the prompt "things you always meant to say but never got the chance," requested by a tumblr anon.
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On the Vine
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After she retires, Sakura keeps a garden. Her aching knees protest every time she weeds, but that's a gift in and of itself. Not many shinobi survive long enough to get arthritis.
Sakura's flower garden could rival Ino's, but it's the tomatoes that have made her locally famous. Never mind that she was the Fifth Hokage's protege, the Sixth's student, the Seventh's teammate, a kunochi powerful enough to punch a god in the face, and the director of the hospital for fifty-odd years. No, it's her tomatoes that impress her neighbors.
To be fair, she does give them more attention than the rest of her garden, and they are delicious.
Sakura plucks six plump, red tomatoes off the vine. Two others tempt her, but they're not quite there yet. A little more time, and they'll be perfect.
Sakura puts down her basket and sits in the grass beside the tomato patch. A little more time. What she wouldn't give for that. She knew Sasuke for only a few years, really, just a drop in the bucket of a life lived well.
Her pink hair has been snow white for longer than Uchiha Sasuke existed. How ridiculous. How absurd.
She has saved the world once and Konoha more times than she's bothered to count. There are surgical techniques and antidotes named after her. She has two children, five grandchildren, great-grandchildren on the way, and three students with families of their own. A statue of her and Chiyo stands in Suna, and one of Team 7 sits in the Konoha village square. Haruno Sakura is a name known from Leaf to Mist to Rain to Sand, because she's lived enough for ten people.
And yet something is missing. Something has been missing for a long, long time, and there is no fix for it.
People like to say grief shrinks over time, but that's not true. It stays the same forever, and because of it, part of her stays the same forever. The piece that belongs to Sasuke will be seventeen until she dies.
There are so many things she wishes she'd said, but nothing can be done about that.
So Sakura does what women do: she stands up, she holds fast to her basket of memories, and she carries on.
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AN: I can't say that I expect anyone to enjoy this story, but if you appreciated it I'd love to hear from you in a comment. Don't worry, I'll be back with some less heartbreaking SasuSaku soon!