This was one of those ideas that passed by and hung out for a while, and I was like, "Yeah, sure, I'll write that." And now it's left and I can't even remember where the original inspiration came from. I just get these melancholy phases, I guess. There's something super nostalgic about writing pre-Shippuden fanfiction these days.

Tea Party Gardens

The way the sun filtered down through the leaves, speckling the grassy forest floor with bright spots, was almost magical. It was one of Sakura's favorite things about this place. Her secret spot in the woods that she used to retreat to before she had friends.

She really hadn't been away for that long. Her mind knew it couldn't have changed that much in such a short time, but she was seeing it through new eyes now. Her heart fluttered as she pulled back the final branch, revealing the small boulder in the center of the clearing.

Her new friend was being unusually quiet, watching with wide eyes and bated breath. The air of anticipation didn't let them down. As Ino stepped further into the clearing ahead of her, Sakura let the branch fall back into place behind them. With the path leading back to civilization obscured, it was like the little clearing was its own world.

"Wow…" Ino's first reaction was a simple whisper. "This place is amazing. How did you find it?"

"Oh, I was just walking through the woods one day." She tried to downplay the discovery with a casual tone, but her face was flushed with pleasure, her smile wide. She'd been nervous about revealing this place to the cooler girl. A part of her had imagined Ino would take one look around and turn back to Sakura in confusion, wondering what the big deal was. But she'd taken the plunge anyway, and Ino had been right—sometimes she just needed to have more confidence. This reaction was totally worth it.

Ino had pranced over to admire some white and blue flowers blooming at the corner of the rock. Sakura figured she probably knew exactly what they were and the best soil conditions for growth and all that too. Sakura joined her, placing one hand down on the surprisingly flat top of the rock.

"I'd come here to get away from… well, everything." She gestured vaguely to the sky, but Ino nodded like she understood. "It's a good place to just think."

"This rock is, like, the perfect height to be a table. You could use it for anything."

Sakura's head bobbed up and down enthusiastically, losing herself for a moment. "Yeah! Sometimes I pretend to host tea parties, with the mossiest squares of earth as little cakes!"

She cut herself off, eyes sinking to her shoes as the blush rose in her cheeks. She'd done it now. Seven was far too old to be having make-believe tea parties. Ino must think she was a baby. This whole outing was a bad idea. Her new, soon-to-be ex-friend was probably scheming up a getaway plan, wishing she'd never come…

But when the other girl did respond, it was with a shy hesitance Sakura had never heard from her.

"Yeah… And if you place the flowers just right, it looks like the frosting decorations you see on those fancy cakes at the bakery."

Sakura looked back up to see an equally pink flush to her friend's face. Her hands were clasped behind her in an uncertain manner—that looked totally foreign on her—to Sakura's eyes anyway. In her new group of friends, Ino Yamanaka was unquestionably the leader. She was the cutest, coolest, and most confident girl in their year. She didn't hide out in secret clearings in the woods and have fake tea parties like a toddler would.

And yet… That's what they did. Once the initial awkwardness passed, they staged the best tea party Sakura had ever had. (And her dad used to get really into them. Before she'd decided she was too old for such things.)

There were giggles and heads dipped close together and faux proper gestures. The clearing morphed into a castle dining hall, a fancy café, whatever their minds could dream up. It was magical.

After the two girls left the clearing for the day, they would never bring it up again. At first, there were just weeks at a time when they never had a moment completely alone. And then enough time passed that it would have been weird to call back to it even without an audience.

Later, Sakura would realize that the esteemed Ino Yamanaka simply had insecurities of her own. It was a lot of pressure to be the one people looked up to—something Sakura wouldn't understand for a long time. But a smaller appreciation for it was not quite so many years off…

…

Sakura breathed the early spring air deep into her lungs, her footsteps slow. She had been fourteen for almost exactly a week.

Her training with Lady Tsunade was proving fruitful… but exhausting. (Her hair had grown out again before she'd had the time to notice.) It meant she was going on very few actual missions these days. Which left her available to take on informal ones in her limited free time. That was how her dad saw it, anyway.

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes… albeit out of fondness. Her parents were such dorks. It annoyed her sometimes, but she'd begun to appreciate their cheesy mushiness in recent years. In another household, her father pulling her aside and slipping her the money to go pick up some flowers for her mother might have been an indication that they'd had a fight. Sakura had no doubts that he simply wanted to do something nice.

The knowledge brought a smile to her own face as she slowed her pace and ducked into the Yamanaka family flower shop. She breathed in the soft floral scent, entirely relaxed. Whatever tension may have arisen between Ino and herself in past years, this place had always been a neutral zone—welcoming, even. And in any case, things had been good between the two girls for a while now. Since Sasuke had left… Well, in any case, she was a little disappointed to see Ino's mother behind the counter.

She did her best not to let it show, though. Mrs. Yamanaka greeted her fondly and helped her decide on and organize an arrangement.

She went with roses, as they were meant to be from her father, and even the most uneducated in the language of flowers knew they symbolized love. She supplemented these with various colors of ranunculus, which Sakura used to mistake for roses, until Ino had swiftly set that straight. Mrs. Yamanaka suggested tweedia as a good, tiny filler flower, and frowned when Sakura asked her to throw in some peonies and tulips too. Why not? They were in bloom, and her mother certainly wouldn't view the bouquet being overcrowded as something to critique.

It was just being wrapped in the final ribbon when she asked, if only to be polite, "Is Ino training with her team today?"

Mrs. Yamanaka's stern little huff surprised Sakura's mind away from the melancholy path it automatically turned to meander down whenever she thought about 'teams' these days. "They better not be! She's got the boys out back in my own personal section of the garden. And it better look exactly the way I left it once they've gone!"

"Right…" Sakura resisted the urge to laugh a little. She'd heard that exactly tone from Ino so many times… Usually when she was lecturing the exact boys in question. "Maybe I'll go say hello before I leave."

Ino's mother nodded her approval, and Sakura slipped through the backdoor, leaving her bouquet behind the in the best possible hands. She knew the gardens quite well and easily navigated through the rows of plants.

Through a path nearly completely hidden by tall bushes at the back, one would find the quaint little section of garden that Ino's mother reserved for her own personal use. Here, the layout was designed with aesthetics rather than efficiency in mind. Only Mrs. Yamanaka's personal favorites were grown here. And there were other additions, purely for decoration. One such piece was a small table, made of iron but painted white. It had been crafted with a crisscross design pattern on the tabletop, with gaping holes in between—not the type of table you could use as a surface to write or draw on. Typically, it was used to showcase a large planter with the kind of plant that spilled over the sides, tendrils draping all the way to the ground maybe…

Today, three folding chairs had been dragged over, (just barely being low enough to fit under the table) and fancy teacups and white plates holding slices of chocolate cake were balanced precariously on the uneven surface. Huddled around the table was Team Ten. It was perhaps the most comical part of this whole equation. It didn't help that the table was so small, but they'd all been getting taller lately—and in some cases, wider—as well. She could see from here that Choji's thighs kept brushing the underside of the table, and one wrong move could send the whole arrangement flying. Ino, too, had tucked herself in too tightly to really breathe deeply—or perhaps as a safeguard against indulging in too much cake.

Sakura wasn't sure what made her hold back and not go out to greet them as she'd originally planned. But she clamped down on her giggles and suppressed her chakra so they wouldn't sense her either. Just… watching.

Shikamaru's was the first voice to stand out. She saw him shift uncomfortably at these seating arrangements multiple times, trying to find a place to rest an arm down. Finally accepting defeat, he grumbled, "Aren't we a little old to be having tea parties?"

Choji, who had ignored the silverware Ino had carefully lain out, a slice of cake in each hand, answered before she could. "What do you mean? This is great!"

Ino raised a teacup daintily to her lips, taking a sip before she deigned to answer him. "You're a chunin now, Shikamaru. You might be sent out as a spy at some fancy party. You ought to know how to act." She sent a sharp look at Choji, who didn't notice. "Think of it as more training."

A scoff exploded out of him seemingly before Shikamaru could stop himself. "Yeah, cause that's what I need. More training. You'll have to set up a meeting with Asuma and my dad—see if you fit into their schedule."

His voice had an exasperated, long-suffering sound to it… but Shikamaru's usually did. One did not have to watch long to see the easy familiarity among them all. Their tones may not have been warm and fuzzy, but they didn't need to be. That fondness was understood.

Her feet tore her away from the scene before she let herself really think about it. Her smile froze a little but remained on her face as she walked back down the path and into the flower shop. She gracefully accepted the piece of cake Mrs. Yamanaka had packed up for her. She cradled the plate to her chest with one hand and grabbed her bouquet of flowers with the other. She walked back out into the busy village streets. And finally, the smile dropped.

No one ever would have been able to eavesdrop on a scene like that with her team. Not even when they were getting along. Now her team didn't even exist.

That closeness. Those casual happy moments. She literally dreamed about those things these days.

Sakura was hardly paying attention to her surroundings by the time she passed the bookstore. She almost walked right into the person strolling outside, book held up in front of his face. Luckily for her, he was used to navigating this way.

"Woah!" slipped out of her as she stumbled a bit. She'd seen him just in time and prepared for a collision but was thrown off-balance when he gracefully side-stepped around her before that collision came.

"Careful," Kakashi cautioned in that casual, detached tone. It was so familiar, it almost made her tear up.

"Kakashi sensei!" she exclaimed, her smile returning. She wasn't even sure when she'd last seen him, though they'd both remained in the village. Since becoming Lady Tsunade's apprentice full-time, Sakura had officially left Kakashi without any students of his own. He'd been back on missions more appropriate for his level. He probably didn't have much free time to begin with, but she never saw him out in the village like this when he did.

"Sakura," he said, sounding pleased as he realized who had almost run into him and lowered his new book. "How have you been?"

"Good!" she enthused, cringing internally as she heard how much she sounded like her mother when Mrs. Haruno ran into an old friend. "Lady Tsunade's been keeping me busy! You?"

She thought she heard a soft chuckle from underneath that mask. "I could say the same."

There was the briefest of silences where they both acknowledged that they'd once been too close for more empty pleasantries to be anything but awkward… but also that they'd been apart too long to have the time to truly catch up. The only logical conclusion was to continue on their separate ways, back to their now-separate lives. The realization brought a surge of emotion from somewhere inside her. It was just too sad.

It was sad that they no longer knew what was going on in each other's lives. Sad that her simple, carefree childhood had slipped away almost before she'd realized it was happening. Sad that Kakashi had lost his team for a second time.

As he was turning away, raising a hand for an equally casual goodbye, Sakura took a sudden step forward, thrusting the plate of cake out towards him. He had to fumble for a second to clutch the plate to his own chest—quite like the way she'd been carrying it—to save it from crashing to the ground. Sakura could tell she'd surprised him—something she wasn't sure she'd ever accomplished before.

"Here! This is for you!"

"For me?" The surprise was showing openly in his one uncovered eye. Seeing his guard down urged her onwards.

"Yes!" (She really needed to dull down the enthusiasm; she was starting to sound a little insane.) Sakura hurried to explain, almost truthfully, "Ino was having some sort of gathering… Her mom sent me home with an extra piece, but Dad's planning some big dinner for my mom, so… Here! I want you to have it!"

He blinked once, possibly waiting for his mind to catch up to her words. "Oh. Uh, thanks."

"Right. Well, see you later, sensei!" She whirled around and speed walked away, outrunning any of the awkwardness that would have ensued. She didn't know if Kakashi even liked chocolate cake. She hoped the feelings behind the gesture got across.

Her steps slowed back to a normal pace as she turned a corner and inhaled deeply. As she put time and distance between herself and the previous moment. It reminded her that there was time. Time to recover from and remedy the past. That's what they were all training for. Even if they'd had to go their separate ways to do it. They were all striving for the future. And hopefully… one day… Looking back wouldn't be quite so sad.

Review please!

I don't own Naruto.

Oh, and merry Christmas, I guess.