1 – Into the Unknown
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters, just the story.
6 WEEKS AGO
"Hello Sakura-san. I hope you're doing well. I just wanted to check up on you."
"We really miss you here Sakura-san. Even the kids are asking about you."
Haruno Sakura sits on a park bench, panting harshly, tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. Her lungs are burning and her quads aren't doing any better. Worse, there's a gnawing pang in her stomach that tells her she needs to find something to snack on soon at least. She hasn't run like this since she was back in med school. Maybe her route has more downhills than she's used to, but gods did she need this.
Her smartwatch vibrates against her wrist.
"Hey Sakura-chan. It's Shizune. I was wondering if you wanted to meet up sometime for some coffee and cake?"
And again.
"You're welcome to come back any time you know."
She should stop looking at the notifications; she's never replied to any of them. Each one feels like a dull stab to her chest, but the least she could do is read them. They've become fewer and farther in between and she hasn't decided yet if that's what she prefers.
Sakura pauses to just breathe, immersing herself in the sound of birds chirping and the cold breeze that signifies approaching rain. If she could stop time and stay there forever, she would. But that's just a pipe dream.
So Sakura stands up and heaves the exhaustion building up in her gut. And if she sounds just a little bit pained, that's fine. If she wants to run and run to nowhere, that's okay too.
Out here, it's just her. And she expects nothing from herself anymore.
xxx
Grief is different for everybody.
For Sakura, it's a gossamer blanket.
It's been a month since Suisen passed away on a cheery, summer morning. She remembers rushing out of the operating room when they called the time of death, and being surprised at how bright it was outside.
It was stupid, she hadn't honestly expected overcast skies and heavy sheets of rain. She hadn't expected the world to stop and feel the way she felt.
But she'd been livid anyway.
Today is another day.
The pain isn't as raw now, but she still feels it with her. She'd wake up, go about her day, breathe, and she'd be reminded all over again that something, someone is not there. It is a part of everything she does— not in an obtrusive way that prevents her from leaving the bed. Just a light weight that makes her stop every now and then to remember…
Like a gossamer blanket.
The guilt on the other hand, is a different beast altogether.
Sakura used to think she was so smart, so good at what she did. She had all the right answers and there was no problem she couldn't eventually work out. Then all of that self-assurance sharpened like blades and turned against her.
She had been wrong, pure and simple. And day by day, she pays for it with the inability to make decisions without second-guessing herself. What if she's wrong? What if she makes a mistake? When people like her make mistakes, there are dire consequences. So she's decided to stop being 'people like her.'
And it surprised her how easy it was to do.
It's not like she has the right to be so affected anyway— not when she killed a child.
xxx
Her dad is gone by the time she gets back home.
Even if he is the more understanding of her parents, that actually made it worse. He believes in her so much, ever since she was a kid. He patiently played the part of pretend patient to her pretend doctor and he bought her all those second-hand medical tomes way before she even got into med school. Sakura just doesn't want to see that belief erode more and more.
Her mom on the other hand—
"Have you had lunch yet?"
Haruno Mebuki sits at the dining table, back straight, with her fingers carefully interlaced. Her mother shouldn't look intimidating, but she does. It's the set of her mouth, Sakura thinks. Straight, with deep wrinkles on both ends. And the steady green eyes a shade darker than hers.
She looks like a woman with a mission, and if Sakura knows her mother, the mission is probably her.
"Yeah, I have." Even if she hasn't yet. Aside from some doriyaki she bought along the way home, she hasn't had a decent meal all day. As a used-to-be doctor— no, as a someone who grew up with T1 diabetes, she really should know better. "I'll just be up in my room."
"Sakura, can we talk?"
Time contracts for a single second, and then it expands again.
Sakura can feel that exhaustion roiling around in her gut again, except it's mixed with dread this time. Alright. She lowers herself on the chair opposite her mother and steels herself for the conversation she's been avoiding for weeks.
"When are you going back to your program?"
Sakura recoils before she could catch herself, even if she knew what was coming. Of course her mother would go straight to the point.
"I don't know."
"What are you planning to do until then?"
Sakura winces and looks away. "I don't know."
"When will you know?"
Her eyes glaze over to the assortment of colorful notes on the fridge. To-do-lists, old pictures and a calendar stuck to the once-pristine hunk of metal by colorful magnets. Her mother is still going on about how long she worked to be a doctor and she asks if all those sleepless nights she spent studying was all for nothing.
Sakura grips the hem of her shirt and wonders if she just stayed quiet, will her mother give up on trying to pry answers she doesn't actually have? It's not like she hasn't thought about this. With aimless days stretched out before her, it's hard not to. She's pushed it to the back of her mind, shamelessly using her grief as an excuse but fuck, what is she going to do now?
More than ever, there in their tiny kitchen with her mother's litanies ringing in her ears, Sakura is smothered by the terrifying unease that only instability could bring.
No, she knows fuck-all what she's going to do.
But she does know one thing… she's not going back.
"Sakura, we're just worried about you and this—!"
"I'll go get the groceries, okay?" Sakura practically lunges for the to-buy-list on their fridge. "Text me if you remember anything that's not in here."
"Sakura!"
She is back out the door before her mother can finish shooting all the words out of her arsenal.
xxx
Get into the prestigious Uzumaki Mito School of Medicine right after graduating. Slave away for four years on her premed and two more on her clinical.
Become a doctor. Finish her internship, residency, become an attending. Help a lot of people along the way. Take care of her parents the way they took care of her.
That was the plan and it had been simple enough. Sakura knew it would be back breaking, but she's never shied from hard work or giving above and beyond effort before. Aside from her smarts, her mulish stubbornness is all she has.
Gods, she was almost there— she was there. Finishing a year earlier than she set out to and getting to intern for the premiere internal medicine physician and general surgeon in the country? It was more than she ever hoped for.
And then, a year and a half into her program, she got assigned to a bespectacled little kid with a smile as golden as the sun.
Suisen wanted to be a teacher, like her dad.
She wanted to go back to school and learn how to make chocolates for that cute, older boy she liked.
Not all plans pan out, Sakura learned.
xxx
"G-good afternoon Sakura-san!"
"Hey Hinata!" She rubs her dirty sneakers all over the welcoming mat. "Sorry for the mess."
The sweet owner of the café always called out to her in that lilting voice of hers whenever Sakura came in, even if she was wet as a dog and tracking mud all over their white vinyl.
It's packed inside the Jishin Café, probably more so than usual because of the rain. Sakura looks around for a place to sit and is delighted when someone stands to leave from one of the counter seats. In her haste to get there before anyone else, she bumps into the man who's just about to leave.
"Will you watch where you're going."
"Oh shit, I'm so sorry, I—" she looks at the wet mess she's made of the man's previously spotless dress shirt.
"Save it."
The dark-haired man, whoever he is— she didn't really get a look at his face, panicked as she was about his shirt, strides away from her and out the café before she could apologize more.
"Well that was rude," Sakura mutters to herself and her mood plunges a couple of notches. She plops down on the counter just as Hinata presents her her usual café au lait. "Y-you're a little early today."
"I was going to go get grocery but it started raining. I decided to duck in here until it stopped instead." Sakura grimaces at the memory of the awkward conversation with her mother. "Can I get some of your custard dango too?"
"Bad day?" Hinata fixes her long, dark hair back into her low pony-tail.
"I guess so."
Sakura had never spent a lot of time in the fancier side of Konoha before she started working in Kato Medical City. Everything in the sprawling Senju ward is shiny and spotless and built to intimidate, except this little out of the way café with it's warm brick walls and pots of lavender. It's the only place she's truly felt comfortable in.
But why has she been going there almost daily?
She sneaks a look to her left, out the floor-to-ceiling windows, up to the bleached white rooftop of the best hospital in Konoha.
To be honest, she might break out in hives if she ever came across anyone she worked with over there. She isn't that close but it's not like Hinata's little café is a complete unknown either. Even now she can see a couple of blue scrubs and some baby catchers with their heads together in a corner.
Sakura tugs her hoodie to cover more of her glaringly pink hair.
Even though she's already given up… she'd wanted to be there for so long that maybe if she stayed nearby, she'd get inspired and she'd be able to figure out what to do next.
Right.
All she's gotten so far is a dango-addiction that her unemployed lifestyle won't be able to support.
Silly, naïve—
"Sakura?"
An older man with long hair tied into a ponytail approaches her and she is filled with a strong sense of comfort. It is the scar across the bridge of his nose that she'll always remember, and the warmth of his grin.
Just like Naruto's.
"Iruka-sensei!" Sakura hops down from her seat to hug the man. "Aren't you a long way from school?"
Umino Iruka was her favorite teacher back in elementary. He was also the caretaker of her childhood best friend, Uzumaki Naruto. She spent so many afternoons in Shinseikatsu, the orphanage where they stayed, trying to tutor Naruto. Not that it ever amounted to much. He had inexplicably strong charisma and could make anyone follow him to the ends of the earth— but damn, he was dumb as a brick.
But if Iruka is here, did that mean— Sakura whips her head around hoping she wouldn't see a head of messy blonde hair.
"Oh, Naruto's not here. But I was just visiting him actually, he had a meeting up in the Uchiha & Hyuuga." The sleek, stygian tower in the middle of the ward? What's Naruto doing in a corporate setting like that?
"That's too bad." Except it's not.
"Do you mind if I sit beside you?"
"No…" Yes.
They pass the time in silence, with her picking at her dumplings and him giving an order from the chalkboard menu. She knows the questions are gonna come, they always do when you meet someone you haven't seen in ages.
Oh hey, how are you?
So what do you do now?
"Would it be too much to ask if you could come by the orphanage to check on one of the kids?"
Sakura pauses mid-swallow and starts choking. "W-what?"
"I'm sorry!" Iruka apologizes as he pats her back awkwardly. "I just thought, since you were already a doctor— I'll pay!"
"It's okay. It's not that; it's just that—"
I'm not a licensed doctor yet?
I'm probably never going to be one?
I'm a fail—
"I just wasn't expecting the question Iruka-sensei… How is everyone there?"
"Oh, everything's good. The kids you knew then are gone, but they still send me letters from time to time. We've got new ones, fortunately or unfortunately," Iruka smiles wistfully. "It's actually one of them that I wanted you to check on. Asahi, the sweet bugger. Wait, I think I have a picture."
The kid Iruka-sensei shows her on his phone is nothing short of adorable. A little grimy, a little goofy. Sakura could eat him all up, especially his dimpled cheeks. But what she notices most of all is his smile.
"He looks a bit like Naruto, doesn't he?" The boy has messy dark hair and warm, brown eyes— a far cry from Naruto's sunny blondes and blues, but they both have the same infectious grin on.
"That's no surprise since Asahi idolizes him. Wants to be a public defender just like him when he grows up."
Sakura smiles at the thought of her best friend. He always liked playing hero, cape and all, like the swashbucklers and friendly robbers they used to watch on Sunday mornings at her house. She doesn't know how the knucklehead pulled it off but he did it.
Naruto chased his dreams and he succeeded. This kid wants to be the same.
All her fears come rushing out of their box the second she even considers agreeing to look at the kid. She'll miss a symptom, make the wrong diagnosis, potentially harm this kid further. But her fear of being aimless forever pushes everything else back in the box.
Besides, it's just one kid. And it is something to do, right?
"Alright." Sakura says, steadier than she's been in a while. "I'll swing by tomorrow Iruka-sensei!"
A/N: I feel like my writing style has changed, and I'm not sure if that's for the better. Tell me?