a/n: Er, dunno if you guys signed up for this, but it actually has a plot? And it's getting underway after this chapter. Here's some filler that we need to get through before we can get to the fun stuff!
Summary: After Sakura's parents die during the Chuunin Exams attack, Team 7 makes the unilateral decision to move into Sasuke's. Without actually consulting him.
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Sakura comes back to herself over the course of three days.
She refuses to eat for the first day and a half, but eventually relents.
She thanks Naruto for handing her a bowl. It's the first words she's spoken since Kakashi picked her up off the shower floor.
Every night for three days, Naruto and Sasuke fall asleep on the couch, sandwiched on either side of Sakura as the TV fades into infomercials. The guest bedroom goes unused.
She manages sleep on the second night.
Kakashi checks in on them twice a day, but is more often kept away with essential rebuilding and reinforcement tasks.
Naruto, while not strictly required to stay over, has not left Sakura's side once.
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It's a week before Sakura's life comes into stark relief against reality.
Her parents are dead. She'll never see them again. In a random attack, in their own home, Mebuki and Kizashi were killed. They probably won't even get their names on the memorial stone. Sakura shivers and pulls her blanket closer.
Sasuke is asleep to her left, leaning against the armrest of the couch. His hands curl under his chin. Naruto is taking up more than his fair share of the couch, limbs flung wide, snoring quietly. She drapes the blanket over their laps too.
She can never go home again.
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Two weeks in, Sasuke comes home from buying groceries (quadruple the usual amount, Naruto can pack it away). He finds Sakura at his kitchen table, dressed for the day. The newspaper is spread out in front of her, folded over to housing ads. She taps a pencil against a pad of paper full of numbers and calculations.
His eyes are good, from across the room he can make out dollar amounts that match their usual mission earnings.
She flips over the pad as soon as she notices him. "A-ah! Sasuke-kun! I was just looking at apartments, so don't worry, I'll be leaving soon." Her voice bothers him, it's still wispy and wet, like she's perpetually out of breath and energy. "I know how you like your space and...um…"
Sasuke sighs, he'd missed her babbling, right? When he was worried? "You don't want to stay at your house?"
"Oh," she rubs the back of her head, it's a nervous tick and it tips him off right away. She's laughably bad at subtlety. "Well, you see, we rented the house and I don't think I could afford it on my own. I went to the bank-"
"When did you go to the bank?"
"-And we have enough saved for me to pay for the last few months of the lease, but I don't think I could afford it after that. Besides, it's so big, I don't need all that space and I don't want to go back there anyway," she smiles, though her voice cracks and her eyes tear up again.
Sasuke, who has never had to consider financial security, is unsure of the cost of such things. But he supposes that the salaries of three genin don't amount to much.
"Stay here as long as you need," he tells her, for lack of any concrete comfort. "You're not in the way."
"Oh."
Naruto bursts in suddenly. "I bought instant ramen!" He drops two bursting grocery bags on top of the newspaper.
"I just bought groceries."
"But did you buy ramen?!"
Sakura catches Sasuke's eye behind Naruto's back, her lips forming a silent 'thank you'.
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He didn't know that in allowing Sakura to stay, Sasuke had essentially invited Naruto into his life.
"Leave and never speak to me again."
But the thing is, Naruto has already made you instant ramen before you even realized you were hungry. He used his last mission bonus to buy six months of toilet paper and is totally willing to share. He went to the video store and got six movies, one of every genre so he was sure he'd have something everyone liked.
Naruto is an excellent roommate.
So Sasuke can't complain.
Well. He shouldn't. But he does.
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Team 7 falls into a routine. Life in Konoha resumes.
Naruto and Sasuke stop tip toeing around Sakura like she's going to break. It actually starts to feel like they're getting back to normal.
Except, somehow—and Sasuke would be hard-pressed to figure out how this happened—he has acquired two permanent roommates.
Sakura sleeps in the second bedroom now. Naruto has appropriated the couch. He just will not go home, no matter how many snide remarks Sasuke makes.
Sakura has offered to pay him rent. Naruto has not.
One day, Sasuke comes home to find his bed pushed to the far wall and a second bed crammed next to the window. Sakura and Naruto deny knowing anything about it, but the moron starts to sleep there all the same.
Sasuke gradually gets used to falling asleep to the sound of Naruto's snoring.
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It's not that everything's back to normal. Sakura certainly isn't. How could she be?
She's quieter now, more thoughtful.
It happens daily that she'll open her mouth to say something and shut it right away.
She cries a lot, but she hides it from her team. Tries to.
Sakura used to cry all the time. She's soft. She didn't used to be shy about doing it in front of anyone.
Now if she feels tears coming on she'll flee. There's a closet in her room. She likes to hide there. Or she'll take a shower and pretend the tears are just water, flowing down the drain with the rest.
The boys discuss it when she's not in the room. Sasuke is a strong proponent of pretending they didn't see or hear anything. "If she wanted help she would ask for it."
"What are you, stupid?"
Naruto is better at recognizing when to pop her tragedy bubble and bring her out into fresh air. He makes her laugh, sometimes so hard that she forgets she was ever crying.
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It's hard to determine where Sakura's newfound determination to improve comes from. She had an honest breakthrough in the forest of death. She showcased her power and mental strength fighting Ino.
If Sakura is one thing, it is vicious.
But during Team 7's first training exercise after the attack she dislocates Sasuke's shoulder.
She immediately regrets it; shrieking that she didn't mean to, imploring him to forgive her. It's grating.
The look in her eyes when she attacked him, he should have taken her seriously. It was like she didn't see him at all. The only thing that registered with her was that an enemy was in front of her and it was him or her.
She takes him to the hospital and waits with him all day.
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Team 7's tentative steps towards reforming themselves around a new center are a beginning.
Despite knowing each other for years, six months ago they felt like they had met for the first time. All three were different people then.
Now it feels like they have to accommodate a shift, they're putting their jagged pieces together and hoping they'll fit.
It's hard for Sakura to articulate to the social worker how things have changed. How she feels as if she has been made anew, ground into dust and compacted into something unknown by her personal tragedy.
Conflicting feelings of grief, numbness, happiness and guilt- more than anything else, guilt.
So instead, Sakura smiles pretty and play acts at sameness.
She doesn't know any other way to be.
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A lot of things were supposed to be temporary. Team 7's living situation, for one.
A power vacuum in the most powerful seat in the Land of Fire must be one of them.
It seems that the list of candidates is short.
Naruto bids his teammates goodbye at the gate. Sakura toes the dirt and hugs herself right. For so long, she took Naruto for granted, but she's leaned on him so much in the past month. It's hard to imagine what she'll do without him. At least she still has Sasuke. The boys nod at each other in silent agreement. Sasuke will watch over her in his absence.
Then Sakura does something she has never done before. She throws her arms around Naruto's neck. He always forgets how strong she is. He protests in a strangled voice.
"Come back safe, okay?"
"Sure thing Sakura-chan, me and the pervy sage can handle this no problem."
She pulls away and clasps her hands behind her back, rocking on the balls of her feet.
Sasuke steps forward, they bump fists.
"Boys," she says, exasperated and fond.
a/n: And with that out of the way we can proceed to PLOT. Hope you enjoyed, I love to hear what you guys think!