Disclaimer: I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I don't own Naruto!

Author's Notes: Once again, a big thank-you to my patient readers I'll definitely try to update more frequently.

Never Forgotten
By: JDArc

Kakashi trained his eye on Sakura as she walked out of the room with Kazuki and Tsunade, and restrained the massive longing within his crying soul to chase after them. The helplessness he felt when watching Sakura walk away, still very much alive, tore through the protective wall he had built around his heart over the past five years, ripping his heart's tender flesh into a bloody pulp of mangled tissue.

It was then that he realized that death was much more benevolent.


Chapter Three: A Photograph

Kazuki and Tsunade conversed in friendly tones in the living room on the bottom floor of the house that had once belonged to the Haruno family. Their voices grew more distant as Sakura wandered up the creaking staircase, and somehow she found herself moving into a room at the end of the 2nd story hall. When an odd sort of sensation crept into her, she knew immediately that she had found her former bedroom, even though no memory of it arose in her mind. She gazed around at the neglected walls, dust clinging to nearly everything in sight. Walking to the windows, she pulled back the worn drapes, and the afternoon rays entered the lonely room for the first time in years, and she turned around to observe the room again, hoping that a little light would change the decrepit atmosphere.

A metallic reflection nearly blinded her, and squinting, she found the source in the form of a leather-bound hardcover book with a gilded lock embedded into the cover. She walked toward the desk, dusting the tome with the quick swipes of her hand, and upon lifting it into her arms, she discovered that the lock was broken, allowing her easy access to whatever lay inside. She turned to the first page as she sat down at the desk, a child-like version of her cursive meeting her shocked eyes as she looked over the first page. Flipping through the rest of the pages with excitement, she realized that this was her diary from long ago, and by the look of it, it was definitely one that she had updated every single day with devotion. She shifted back to the first page, enthusiastic to see her own personal recorded history of her past.


June 1

Dear Diary,

I have finally found a boy to like! Sasuke-kun is SO cute, and he's going to be such a great ninja when he grows up! He has really dark hair! Although he's got long bangs that cover his eyes sometimes, the back is always up in spikes, and when the light hits his head at the right angle, you can see that his hair is really a dark blue! His eyes are dark like his hair, and when he looks my way, I feel like my heart is going to stop beating! He's strong, but really quiet, and now, it will be my goal to get him to like me back! I can't wait to tell everyone, especially my best friend Ino-chan!

Hugs,

Sakura


A sad smile found its way onto her lips, and she assumed by the tone of the entry, that "Sasuke-kun" had been her first crush.

"Sasuke-kun," she whispered outloud, her hand tracing softly over his carefully inscribed name on the page as if touching the faded ink would bring back memories of her childhood.

"Are you starting to remember?" A voice called out to her, startling her out of her reverie, and she slammed the book shut as she jerked her eyes to the doorway where Tsuande and Kazuki stood.

"No, I haven't, Tsunade-sama," Sakura admitted honestly as they walked into the room, and Kazuki reached out to touch the book in her hands, but she pulled it back, shaking her head. "I'd like to read this to myself first, Kazuki-kun." She flipped the pages between her fingers again, looking down at the blur of words. "I've just read the first entry, and apparently it was my diary from when I was still here-" As she spoke, a picture tumbled out from the pages, swaying from side to side as it drifted to the floor, and she bent down to pick it up. Flipping it over, her eyes grew wide as she gawked at the image imprinted on it.

It was a close-up of two teenagers, a boy with dark-blue highlighted hair and a girl with pastel pink hair, both of whom were caught off-guard in mid-embrace, the redness of their cheeks displaying their embarrassment as they gaped at the photographer that had taken them by surprise.

"That's me," Sakura whispered in awe, immediately recognizing herself, and as she studied the other figure she let out tiny gasp. "T-that's t-that guy, the one from your office, Hokage-sama!"

"Uchiha Sasuke," Tsunade confirmed with a nod.

"Sasuke-kun," Sakura said quietly, letting his name roll of her tongue like sweet honey. "The first diary entry mentioned him…"

"Can I have a look at the photo?" Sakura looked up at Kazuki, handing him the snapshot, and as he cradled it in his hands, Sakura scrutinized him with narrowed eyes.

"You look like him, a little bit," she remarked, and he lifted an eyebrow at her before staring at the picture with dissatisfaction.

"Not exactly," he stated firmly, handing back the photo.

"Well, besides your blue eyes and brown hair, you really do," Sakura teased, smiling at him, and he huffed out his chest indignantly before crossing his arms in mock anger, but when Sakura gently grabbed his hand in hers, his expression softened, and he returned her smile with a small grin of his own. However, when he looked at Tsuande, his smile vaguely faded, and his eyes became troubled.

"Tsunade-sama," he began, "what exactly was Sakura's relationship with this Uchiha-san? From this picture and from his reaction today, it seemed, well, as if they were…lovers." The insecurity creased his brow with lines as he gripped tightly to Sakura's hand, and Tsunade-sama smiled gently at the couple.

"You needn't worry, Kazuki-kun," she replied. "What had happened between Sasuke and Sakura ended a bit before her memory had been tampered with. If it would reassure you, Sasuke is set out to marry his fiancée Kinomoto Naoko in a few short months." Kazuki let out a small sigh of relief and relaxed physically, his shoulders drooping a bit as he let go of the tension in his back.

"So there was no one before Sakura was…?" He let the sentence fade out, and much to his disbelief, Tsunade-sama stiffened considerably.

"It would be a lie if I said there wasn't," she answered, and Kazuki paled, his grip on Sakura's hand tightening. Sakura winced slightly as she wiggled her fingers free from his grasp, attempting to encourage the blood flow. However, the Hokage's words chilled her slightly, and she shuddered.

"Who?" Sakura asked and her voice wavered, almost as if scared to hear the answer. "Could it have been one of the men who had burst into the room-" Tsunade nodded briefly, cutting Sakura off from the rest of her sentence.

"Hatake Kakashi," Tsunade replied softly. "Kakashi-sensei was your…fiancé, Sakura-san. You two were to be married as soon as you had completed your mission." She paused, not wanting to reveal too much too soon, and she walked toward the window to gaze outside to the bustling street below as her words slowly began to sink.

"Kakashi-sensei?" Kazuki repeated. "Which one was he?"

"He doesn't particularly like to reveal his face, so he conceals it beneath a mask of black cloth," Tsunade responded slowly, and anger seeped into Kazuki's tense face, contorting his handsome features into that of rage.

"The man who tried to attack me is Kakashi!" he yelled loudly. "But he's much too old for Sakura-"

"Love knows no bounds, Kazuki-san," Tsunade stated, turning back to look at the couple before focusing her gaze solely on Sakura. The young woman seemed to have been shocked into silence as her eyes were round and large, her mouth forming words but no sound fell from her lips. "I know this news is rather alarming, and it does put you in a sort of bind, Sakura-san." The Hokage smiled mournfully, her eyes cheerless. "Kakashi-sensei hadn't looked at any other since your disappearance. Despite his rather casual demeanor, he took the news the hardest out of the rest of your team, and although he seems to be nonchalant in most matters, he visits the memorial religiously everyday."

"Memorial?" Sakura choked out, finally able to control her vocal chords.

"The memorial which this town holds dear," Tsunade explained. "It's a stone with names carved on it, the names of the village's heroes, those who have been killed in action-"

"And my name is on there?"

"Yes." Sakura shuddered again at the news, and she felt tears building as her chest tightened. She breathed heavily, trying to contain her sobs, but when Kazuki began to rub his hand in circular motion across her back, the tears sprung forth, and Sakura jumped from her seat away from him.

"B-but none of this makes any kind of sense!" she cried out, thrusting her fists to her eyes to angrily rub her tears away. "I'm not a kunoichi! I don't know anything about fighting or training or anything of the sort! I've only lived in the Country of Lightning's Hidden Village of the Cloud, and although I can't seem to remember anything save for the last five years, my being a ninja makes absolutely no sense-" The sound of whirling shuriken immediately caught her ear and she broke off from her speech, and in a wave of sudden déjà vu, she raised her hand in time to catch two shuriken, twirling them casually on her fingers. Sakura let out a gasp, matching that of Kazuki's, and they stared at each other for a few silent moments, Kazuki battling with the fact that maybe he didn't know Sakura as well as he had thought.

"If that doesn't prove your training, I don't know what does," Tsunade declared, her eyes narrowing as she watched the younger woman gape at the weapons she had prevented from slashing into her neck. "You are part of the Kunoichi of Konoha, and you are a Jounin. You trained with Uchiha Sasuke and Uzumaki Naruto under Kakashi-sensei, and you had faithfully served your village for most of your life. It is a reality you must accept even if you do not remember it. To deny your past is to deny part of yourself, Sakura-san. And to rediscover your past is why you came back, is it not?"

"Yes," Sakura whispered in defeat, and tiredly, she removed the pack she had carried on her back, and placing it on the bed, she dug through its contents to pull out a headback protector, the Konoha symbol shining proudly in the fading light. "When I'd found this in the bottom of my trunk carefully folded inside a silken scarf, I had asked Kazuki about it. I had no idea why I had a headband protector, especially one from Konoha."

"So what exactly happened, Sakura?" Tsunade inquired gently. "Do you remember of how you came to live at the Country of the Cloud?" After a moment of silence, Sakura nodded slowly.

"The only thing that I remember was that I had awoken one regular day to find myself in a hospital bed," Sakura began, her head bowed slightly as she searched within her memories. "It wasn't much of a glorious morning, but then again, in the Hidden Cloud Village, there are few days in which the sunlight truly penetrates through in the early mornings. Of course, I was frightened, not knowing why I was being hospitalized, and when a nurse finally came by to check up on me, she was more than pleased to find that I had at long last woken up. I had asked her of what had happened to me, and although she said that the doctors didn't know the details of the situation, they knew that by looking at my injuries, I had been attacked and rather viciously, too.

"Then the nurse began to ask me questions about my background and familial relations, and I realized for the first time that I couldn't remember anything besides my name. I panicked and became rather hysterical. I didn't know if my family was worried about me or even if I had family at all. That's when Kazuki walked into the ward, carrying a bouquet of fresh flowers, and at first glance, I knew he was familiar somehow, but I couldn't place him, and that was when the nurse informed me that Kazuki was the one who had brought me to the hospital in the first place."

"I had to calm her down before she could do anything to hurt herself any further," Kazuki continued when Sakura paused to take a breath, and although she was considerably grateful that she was interrupted, her expression was dark at bringing back unwanted memories. "Sakura looked at me as I walked into the ward, and she jumped out of her bed and into my arms, begging for an answer as to who she was. I couldn't say anything at that moment, so I just tried to comfort her and get her to calm down, and she did eventually, crying herself to sleep. I didn't tell her of what happened except that she had been attacked." He looked away guiltily. "I hadn't thought to tell her of how I really found her until she discovered her old headband protector."

"But Sakura said that the nurse had told her that you had brought her to the hospital," Tsunade pointed out. "How exactly did you find her?"

"I'm also a shinobi for the Hidden Cloud Village, and I was returning from a mission that had sent me to the Country of the Wave," Kazuki answered. "On my way back home, I stumbled upon Sakura lying on the ground in a puddle of water, and I realized that she had probably crossed a river that was a several yards away. Her clothes were soaked in her blood, and she was hardly breathing. I knew that if I didn't do anything, she would die, and I couldn't allow that to happen."

"But you ought to have noticed her headband protector," Tsunade cut in. "Why did you not try to contact our village-"

"She was wearing no headband protector when I found her," he argued, flushing slightly with emotion. "If I'd known where she was from, I would have taken her back to Konoha!"

"How is that possible she has it now if she hadn't had it when you first came upon her?" Tsunade narrowed her eyes, her suspicion steadily creeping into her system. "She was on a mission, and she wouldn't have taken her headband protector off without reason to-"

"Like I said, I do not know, Hokage-sama," he declared, though Tsunade had a sneaking suspicion that Kazuki wasn't telling her the entire truth. Sakura looked back and forth between her fiancé and Tsunade, the tension rising and thickening around them.

"Let's speak of something else, please, Hokage-sama," Sakura whispered quietly. "Please." She looked out the window to see the slowly sinking sun beginning its decent beneath the horizon. "It is my first night back-" She cut herself off as if suddenly startled, and she turned urgently to the elder woman. "You said this house once belonged to my family, but where are they now?" Tsunade, caught off-guard by the sudden changing of subjects, was unable to hide the sadness that immediately seeped into her gaze, and she turned away, incapable of delivering the news face to face.

"Your parents were murdered, even before that fateful day you left for your last mission," Tsunade informed slowly, glancing quickly at Sakura only to catch the glimpse of horror on the younger woman's face.

"W-what exactly happened?" Sakura asked, her voice quavering with shock, but Tsunade shook her head silently, her eyes darting over to Kazuki before landing on Sakura once again.

"I cannot risk revealing a few of Konoha's secrets with foreign shinobi in our presence. Gomen nasai." An awkward silence fell on the trio, and after a few minutes, Tsunade turned to leave. "I must get back to my office. There are still quite a few files that I must go over before I retire to bed. Please, Sakura-san, come by my office tomorrow morning. There are still many things that we have not yet spoken of. " With that, Tsunade walked out of the room, and before another word was spoken, she disappeared in a cloud of smoke just outside the door.

The tension in the room left along with her departure, and Kazuki collapsed on the bed with one huge sigh. "What a creepy woman," he muttered, closing his eyes as he folded his hands beneath his head.

"No, not really," Sakura defended, though not forcefully. "She's just concerned." She walked back to her desk and sat down, flipping through her diary once more. Almost as if it were calling to her, she drew out the picture of Sasuke and herself caught in an embrace, and she studied it intensely, as if gazing at the picture would bring back the memories she so desperately wanted. She traced over the image of her younger self before her fingertips ran over the image of Uchiha Sasuke, and she blushed, remembering her reaction to him earlier that day. She was attracted to him without any doubt, and it was no mystery that she was probably so attached to Kazuki because physically, he reminded her so much of Sasuke. Was her sudden attraction to Kazuki when they had first met a sign of her mind trying to grasp onto the past? she thought to herself. She knew it was a possibility that swayed more into the territory of fact, and gazing at the picture once more did nothing but confirm her theories. They both look way too similar, Sakura sighed inwardly.

"Staring at that picture again, are you?" Kazuki called from the bed, one of his eyes opened to observe her, and Sakura couldn't help but notice the twinge of jealousy in his voice. He tried to appear nonchalant, though her fascination with Uchiha Sasuke was something he felt he should worry about. He had worked so hard for their relationship to work, and he had given her all he had to prove how much he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. He groaned inwardly, knowing that if she did begin to remember her former life, their relationship would enter a more weighty test. Looking at her now, he couldn't ignore the tell-tale blush that covered her cheeks when she gazed at the old snapshot, and he pulled his lips into a frown.

"Maybe looking at it will jolt a memory out of me," she commented lightly before she sighed and left her desk to lie next to Kazuki on the bed. She curled against his body as his arms went around her, and he planted a gentle kiss on the crown of her head. "I know you're worried, Kazuki," she continued, and he tightened his arms around her.

"I am," he admitted. "Didn't you hear Tsunade-sama? You already had a fiancé even before you left this village. Hatake Kakashi, she said." He gulped, attempting to steady his voice. "With your memories, certain old feelings might also arise-"

"I'm not going to just leave you," Sakura sputtered out, alarmed. "Is that what you think?"

"I'm afraid it might happen," Kazuki grumbled, and Sakura lifted her hand, stroking his cheek as his eyes automatically shut at her touch.

"We've been through so much together, Kazuki-kun," she whispered. "I'm not about to throw away what we have."

"I don't want to lose you, Sakura," he confessed. "I love you."

"I love you, too, Kazuki-kun," she murmured back, and although they shared a kiss only a second later, Sakura couldn't help but question whether or not she had done the same thing with Uchiha Sasuke only a few years back, and as the guilt slammed into her conscience, she shut her eyes tightly and clung to Kazuki, devouring his lips with ignited fervor, trying to do anything but think of the man with the piercing black eyes and midnight blue hair, the man who had haunted her thoughts the moment she had set her eyes on him in Tsunade-sama's office.

Depsite her frenzied efforts, Sakura could not dispel Sasuke from her mind, even when Kazuki began to quietly strip away her clothes.

TBC…