Disclaimer: Naruto Uzumaki is nobody's slave.
Sakura was indeed in a dark mood as of late. While she still had comparably nothing on Sasuke, who had been reduced to a spiteful training recluse, she still could hardly look at her fellow villagers without feeling a wave of disgust.
Her teammate had been decided dead by the council two days before some of the townspeople with less scruples raided her former comrade's apartment. There were those who refrained from such activities, of course, and several parties who even felt this was an injustice, but for whatever reason they allowed it to go on. Within the span of two hours, it was if Naruto had never existed.
It wasn't that she didn't have something to remember him by, of course. Between the memories and the fact that she had gone out of her way to retrieve the Uzumaki's staff during their return trip, she couldn't really say she had needed anything from that room, but the whole spectacle had unnerved her greatly.
The ending of the whole fiasco hadn't helped to undo the damage to her world view; she had never seen Iruka so angry. Irritated, yes, but not so angry that he resorted to threatening to burn down a building if he was ignored while simultaneously leering and laughing without mirth. Needless to say, the grudge-bearing crowd had left after that, but a majority of Naruto's apartment was empty, now.
She stepped onto his floors for what would be the last time, as the city had decided to grant that complex to someone else. The remains of what he had gathered in his twelve years of life were gone, but dust traces indicated that they were moved from places of honor on his shelves or neat piles in corners. Here and there, an empty ramen cup or a snack wrapper would blow in the wind seeping through a destroyed window. The scene was bleak.
Sakura didn't know why she had gone into the abandoned house, much less why she had brought it upon herself to see if there was anything left behind. She wasn't a packrat or scavenger, but the thought of something with high sentimental value just being thrown away disturbed her.
Her foot stepped on a loose floorboard, and Sakura didn't hesitate to lift it. What greeted her eyes stole her train of thought.
Where did Naruto get erotic magazines?! she had to wonder, despite the fact she found her hands rifling through the pile until she felt something with a very different texture at the very bottom. With gusto, the kunoichi removed what seemed to be a picture frame and a few envelopes.
The picture wasn't anything she hadn't been expecting, but it made her heart ache. The Iruka in the picture was grinning mischievously, pushing Naruto's headband over his head and messing his hair like a brother would.
That mystery aside, Sakura placed the frame into her bag. She would probably set it on Iruka's doorstep later. She didn't want to be around when it was discovered, to be sure.
The envelopes were a different matter. They were, for whatever reason, sealed and unlabelled. With all her self-control, she shoved them into her bag without opening them. Those she wouldn't give to Iruka, she decided. She would hide those from the eyes of the world until judgment day(or the day she couldn't take the suspense anymore).
The young Haruno spent a few more minutes in the room, just checking for things she had missed before making her way back outside.
The walk back to her house was uneventful, though she did feel inclined to stop when she ran into her rather bedraggled sensei outside the pub, reading his book intensely. There was something she had been meaning to ask him.
"This is indeed grave, Kakashi." Sarutobi chewed on his pipe without so much as looking up from the papers in front of him. Iruka, who was situated close beside the old man, lurched uncomfortably in position.
Kakashi, for his part, stood in front of the desk like a puppy about to be reprimanded.
"We shall have to be more careful with our assignments as a village. This can't be allowed to happen again."
Kakashi bowed slightly before the hokage, "Sir, what about the council..? We all know that Naruto was more than an average genin."
The hokage sighed. "You are correct, Kakashi. The council will have to convene to decide what is to be done, whether or note we search or even allow this incident to leak. The kid provided us with some political leverage, shunned though he was."
"What will happen now?" Iruka asked from his place in the chair, face drawn painfully straight.
The hokage straightened himself and stood up. "We shall continue business as usual as if nothing ever happened," he ordered with a hint of remorse, "and Team 7 shall await a replacement for the member the lost."
"You're leaving Kakashi in charge?!" Iruka suddenly snapped out of his carefully-regulated trance. "After he-"
"Silence, Iruka!" the elderly man bellowed, immediately silencing the now trembling academy instructor. "-I know how you may feel about this, but Kakashi cannot be held responsible for your little friend's demise!"
Kakashi remained standing in the center of the room and watched as Iruka bowed in the Fire Shadow's gaze. "Go home, Iruka. Get some rest."
The ponytail Iruka sported on the back of his head bobbed only slightly when the young man gave his reluctant assent and left Kakashi and Sarutobi in the room together alone.
"You may leave also, Kakashi. I will contact you when the council is adjourned." the hokage paused,"-and I'd advise you to steer clear of Iruka for a while."
He didn't need to tell Kakashi twice.
"Yes, sir," the Hatake echoed out of habit before departing the depressing scene.
Kakashi sighed and turned the page. He had indeed been contacted with the council's decision, and had been spared any consequences of his actions. As if to make him feel worse than he already had, the council announced that Konoha would begin to prepare for the Chuunin Exams, something that Kakashi had intended for his students to be involved in.
The visible eye on the elite ninja's face trailed across the page. He had read the same three paragraphs a full five times now, but hadn't really been taking in any of it. No amount of forbidden passion could fill in his sense of self-inadequacy, but the appearance of being engrossed did drive away most would-be conversationalists. Sakura, however, wasn't one of the discouraged.
A feminine set of fingers impeded his view of the page. Kakashi groaned and looked up, knowing those appendages well.
"What do you need, Sakura?" he asked, pulling his book into his vest where she could not witness it's contents. The last thing he needed was her needling him about that right now.
"N-nothing… I was just wondering if you'd heard anything about Naruto's replacement."
"Not a word," Kakashi muttered, cocking an eyebrow at her. "Anything else?"
The pink-haired girl shook her head. "No. I guess I'll see you tomorrow, then."
"Ah. See you," Kakashi agreed, waiting for her to leave his range of vision before bringing back out his potential escape in a hurry.
Mrs.Haruno had just finished preparing dinner when her daughter walked through the front door. There was a quick greeting called to the woman from the other room, which she returned before beckoning her little girl to the kitchen.
Sakura heard her mother's telltale 'surprise' voice, but she wasn't very enthused. The last time her mother had used that tone, her mother had sewn her the ugliest dress she had ever laid her eyes on. This being said, it was with very low expectations that she met her mother in the next room.
"Look what I got for you, Sweetheart!" her mother cooed, causing a spark of indignity to spark in the young girl's soul. She would have opened her mouth to inform her mother for the eightieth time that she wasn't a baby when her mother's gift scurried loudly in its cage.
Slowly, Sakura looked on the table, where her eyes were greeted with a spacious bamboo cage. Inside it was a orangey-brown creature with a puffy tail. The younger Haruno's eye twitched.
"A… squirrel?" she asked skeptically, approaching and inspecting the creature to see that it had some sort of plant-like attachment. On impulse, the girl reached into the cage to remove and look at it, pleasantly surprised that the rodent didn't flee from her touch. If anything, it seemed enamored with her.
"Isn't it cute, Sakura?" her mother asked, unaware of the scene that was about to unfold with the leaf in her daughter's hands.
At first, Sakura didn't believe her eyes at all. The leaf had begun to decompose, and some of the symbols had smeared, but she could still make out the message. Bewildered, she stifled a scream with her hand.
'I'm still here.'-Naruto
Author's note: I didn't update yesterday, some of you may have noticed. I took my ACT instead.