title: 7:31
prompt: SASUSAKU MONTH ON LJ! 2012
rating: T-M
summary: o17: When they were young, everything was good. That is, until Sasuke left.
REVISED 6.30.14
.o17.
Younger
It seems like everything was alright when we were younger. Every day was a good day, and every friend we made stayed a friend.
That is, until we got older and everything fell apart.
Sasuke was probably the main reason for us realizing that we couldn't stay young forever. I think that the moment Sasuke decided to leave us as a broken team—the night he walked out of Konoha—was the night that everything shattered. We were no longer whole. We weren't young anymore.
Sakura, especially. She grew the most after Sasuke left. The day after he abandoned us, she was in this kind of deep depression that was so bad she couldn't even cry. She just trailed her feet, talked in a monotone voice (and that's only when she felt that she had to talk), and was literally a walking ghost. The color drained from her face. She didn't have that usual spark she always had whenever the team was together.
I, too, have changed. No longer am I just the joking Naruto who makes a fool out of himself and doesn't take things seriously. When Sasuke left, I vowed to myself I would bring him back. Not just for me, but for Sakura. I didn't want to see the girl I love go down into a deep spiral like this.
I'm almost seventeen now, and Sasuke hasn't come home yet. We've seen him many times, with Sai—our "new" team member. He'll never be Sasuke, and he'll never replace Sasuke. But he's still our team member, and we cherish him…even though he can be a dick, literally speaking. It's an inside joke.
And Sakura—well.
She's not a fangirl anymore. She doesn't squeal over the most useless things, care about just her looks or her hair, and she trains hard. In fact, she's gotten so strong that she's scared off half the ANBU team. Including the leader. She got back her spunky personality, although it hasn't been the same before Sasuke left. Still, she's doing really well for herself.
It seems like only a short time ago that we were all young, innocent, and naïve. We thought nothing bad would happen to us, because, after all: we're ninjas. We make sure nothing goes wrong. That's what we do.
.
a few years back
.
"Sakura-chan!" I would yell as I ran up to Sakura, sitting next to Sasuke and fluttering her long eyelashes.
"What, Naruto?" she would growl angrily at me. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
I sighed. "With him? Ugh, Sakura-chan, you have poor taste in men." She rolled her eyes and kept trying to have Sasuke pay attention to her. He seemed deep in thought, his elbows resting on the Academy's desk while he folded his hands.
I took a seat next to her, trying to make small talk. "So, uh, how was dinner last night?"
She stopped flirting with Sasuke to turn back to me. "What do you mean, how was dinner last night? What are you, a stalker?" the tone of her voice was harsh, but I brushed it off.
"I mean…did you enjoy it?"
She groaned and turned away from me. Seeing how persistent she was in trying to attract Sasuke, I decided to give up that day, because I obviously wasn't going to get her from talking to the "pretty boy" to talking to the "weird stalker who asks people how dinner was last night."
And then, when we found out we were all in teams…
Everything changed again at that point.
.
.
.
We fought. We laughed. We cried. We bonded. We grew.
The team was the surrogate family that I never really got to experience. Sakura-chan, teme, and Kakashi-sensei…they're my friends. My family. I trust them. And Sai's the newest edition to this pack, but he's fitting in really well.
Anyway, we would all train and spar with each other, and usually I would train with Sasuke because if I paired up with Sakura, I wouldn't want to hit her, and if I paired with Kakashi, then Sakura would be stuck with Sasuke, who might not go easy on her.
So I always paired up with Sasuke. Not that I minded. I wanted to punch his face in half the time, as a sort of "fuck you for stealing my girl unintentionally" and "I love you, man, so this is how I'm showing affection."
Sometimes, I would win. But most of the time—dare I say it—he usually won because he was so concentrated on training and revenge and brothers and all that jazz. Well, he got what he wanted, didn't he? And he regrets it now.
I'm not going to say I told you so, because that'll make me feel like a jerk and it won't do anything for anyone. However, I'll tell you this.
Things have changed. People change. But somehow, we try to make it work. I know for a fact that Sasuke genuinely cared for Sakura: not just as a team member, like the rest of us. He told me vaguely during the heat of a mission, and he showed it in his eyes and his actions, even if he tried to hide it. She was something more to him than an "annoying fangirl who trails him around constantly."
I'm not going to tell her that. I think she's smart enough that she should have figured it on her own. Hell, I'm stupid as shit but even I can understand through the denseness of my brother. Gee.
And although the present isn't probably the best that we all want it to be, we're working hard to change it so that we play our cards right and row our boats to shore.
But secretly?
When we were younger, everything seemed okay.
THEN EVERYTHING CHANGED WHEN THE FIRE NATION ATTACKED