She'd thought she was all over it. She watched him self-destruct on the battlefield, burn up under his own power and hate in some last-moment effort to rectify the things he'd done, and she thought…after all the years that followed, she'd finally moved on beyond the point in her life and world that was Sasuke Uchiha.
Sakura Haruno had grown up beyond her childhood dreams and infatuations.
When the jutsu misfired, she'd thought she was going to die, and it was a shock in itself to be standing in the long-abandoned Uchiha compound instead—unharmed by time and Pein's attack.
"Sasuke dear, you've forgotten your lunch!"
She'd stumbled when she turned toward the voice and a little blur of energy nearly bounced off of her leg in his rush to turn the corner she stood said something, and she thought it might have been an admonishment for her standing in the street in an awkward place, but she missed whatever he was saying through those wide, dark eyes.
They didn't have all the pain and hate and rage, they weren't even physically the same eyes. They were still the eyes she remembered. The ones a little girl had once stared at and sighed until he'd dropped a basket on her head to get her to stop.
She thought it was a genjutsu for a good long while, but once she managed to confirm reality (using a few particularly creative techniques), she'd been distracted from that point making up plausible excuses to be in the village and coming up with housing, then looking for ways home. She didn't exactly have all that much time to skulk around the Uchiha compound and make friends with the doomed residents.
She tried to tell herself that the Uchiha were a distant memory she'd long ago let go of with Sasuke, anyway. She couldn't change time, couldn't dare. She told herself it was best not to get involved at all.
He was always smiling when she'd see him run by. He was almost always running by chasing after that older brother of his. She didn't mean to get dragged in: it was just she had a spare lunch when he lost his once, and she'd seen where Itachi slipped off to train when Sasuke lost track of him. It was just when she watched him practice with fake and then real shiruken she remembered the youth who'd aced all of the shiruken tests in the Academy. It was just when she delivered something to the Uchiha from the hokage while they were at dinner and Sasuke tried so hard to keep up with his brother's eating, she remembered two young genin getting sick trying to compete over how much they could eat.
It was just when he ran down the street shouting after his brother demanding a piggyback ride, when he'd beam so proudly, chest puffed out when he talked about how cool his brother was, when she caught him practicing his fireball jutsu, she remembered the days of Team 7, and all the dreams and painful memories she'd thought she'd long ago thrown away.
She'd thought she'd moved beyond Sasuke Uchiha and all the pain and happiness he'd always caused her.
"Sakura-chan!" He looked to be smiling so hard it had to hurt, but he showed no sign of it through his manic giggling as he ran up to her. "Sakura-chaaaaaannn guess what? I get to go to the Academy this year!"
Her pen dropped, and she stared blankly down at him for a moment or two. "What?"
"Mother said I get to go the Academy when Summer ends!" She tried to focus on his chatter, but her concentration shifted after those words.
The Academy…was it already that time? It was fuzzy in her memory now, but it couldn't have been long after he joined that he…
She summoned a smile and turned her attention back to him. "You should celebrate! Has your brother come up with anything? You should make sure he does."
Maybe she'd never really moved on at all. Choosing to forget wasn't the same as moving on, it was just…pretending. Maybe she should stop that.