Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
She comes home one night, tired and aching from running after Tora, from tearing her curls away from sticky toddler hands, exhausted from keeping Naruto from punching the owner of cabbage shed they rebuilt twelve times.
She comes home one night and her heart skitters in her chest, the breath punched from her lungs as she sees her there, lying on the floor, motionless.
Her eyes are half-lidded, the brown peeking out from pale lids.
Her chest isn't rising.
"No…" Sakura gasps out, "No, no, no. A-Akiko-sama—Akiko!"
Sakura scrabbles forward, her eyes open and wet, her mouth gaping, unable to form anything but guttural, screaming sobs.
(She's seen this before—"Sakura, my girl, my baby—Sakura please, please…help me…"—in pale blue eyes and choking screams, in dirty, bloodied bathrooms, the room of death—she's seen this before and now, now, now, now—
She cannot.)
Her screams wake up Lady Manami and it takes two hours to drag her away from the cold woman on the floor, her rage so palpable it nearly scorches the room in residual chakra.
She comes home one night and Akiko-sama isn't there to greet her.
Not today.
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