Every day, they would go down different paths. After training, missions, ramen with Naruto or any other rare occasions when they'd be together. They would always walk down the same main street and at a small fork off to the side, Sakura would always go down one road and Sasuke, the other. Each path led to their respectable homes, but whilst Sakura daily strolled up and down that cheerful street with that one beautiful cherry blossom tree in the park, Sasuke walked through his dim street and into the lonely Uchiha manor.

It was ironic, really, that Sasuke would say that he was walking down a different path. A different one from her or Naruto. Or maybe it was coincidental, rather than ironic. Either way, Sakura had found it strangely funny that he had said something so literal and had been unaware of it. Sasuke couldn't have been thinking of that fork in the road when he said it. Could he?

It was this train of thought that brought Sakura to do what she did those days after. A little less then a week after he had left for Sound; down his own 'path', she walked down hers. She walked down her side of the forked road, but did something unusual. When she had reached her residence, she didn't stop. She walked right past the familiar door, moving a bit further down that road. Then as if her legs had a will of their own, she stopped, turned on her heel, and walked back home.

She did this everyday, and with every improvement or accomplishment she'd made after Sasuke left, she walked a little more down that path. Apprenticing under Tsunade? More long strides down the road. Every new jutsu and every triumphant spar helped her walk further along her path.

And she kept doing this until one day, she couldn't see any houses alongside the road. Or any more road in front of her, she noted. She looked around to see where this path had ended and was surprised to find that beside the path that she had previously come from, there was another darker one slightly covered in forest shadows. The path that Sasuke had always walked down.

So, the two paths meet in the end.

And silently as she turned around and started her long trek back, she hoped that he was walking down his path, too.