Notes: Okay. It's a little depressing. But it gets better. I'm still working on my Naruto stuff, here. I just love Sakura and Sasuke, honestly...
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"You have a difficult path to walk," the old woman said, gently releasing Sakura's palm. "All of you."
"But…" Naruto prompted, seemingly restraining himself from yelling out in sheer anticipation. "How will it all end? When? What's going to happen?"
The fortuneteller looked up from the bones on the table. Two eager faces faced her, one framed in long pink locks and eyes the color of new leaves. The other, clad in an orange suit, was observing the bones sideways, brow furrowed in concentration. There was another as well, in a dark blue shirt. He leaned against the wall, a little away from his companions, his dark eyes studying the wall.
She sighed very slightly. "That I cannot tell you, young ones. But rest assured—it will end happily."
At that, Sasuke simply drifted out of the tent, and Naruto followed after a word of thanks, yelling after Sasuke. Sakura found herself lingering at the fortuneteller's tent, looking at the woman with lingering questions in her eyes.
The old woman smiled. "Go with your friends, kuinochi."
Sakura grinned at her, and dashed away, trying to catch up with Sasuke and Naruto. That night, she looked up at the sky, and watched a shooting star streak across the sky in a brilliant flash of light. And she believed that everything would turn out happily.
Three years later, Sakura still remembers that evening like it was yesterday. She remembers what it was like to believe that the world was bright and happy and that no matter what, Team 7 would emerge unscathed from whatever life had to throw at them.
When she regains consiousness on that cold stone bench, she doesn't feel like really doing anything. There are no more pleas to plead, no more tears to cry, and nothing left to believe in.
Rest assured, it will end happily.
The words echo in her mind, and Sakura wraps her knees to her chest, and buries her head in her lap. She tries to pretend that it's Sasuke's arm around her shoulders and his voice whispering, instead of the icy fingers of the wind.
Sakura loves Sasuke, because she had believed in a happy ending with him, such a long time ago.
Sakura hates Sasuke, because he taught her that there were no such things as happy endings.
When they meet again, two years from then, he falls into her arms, bruised and battered and bleeding from too many places to count.
Sakura loves Sasuke, because somewhere along their line, "tragedy" and "happily ever after" became one.
And truly, she wouldn't have it any other way.
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You will be loved if you review. And Naruto is not mine.