The following day I awoke before my alarm went off. I stared blearily at the digits, '3:30'. It took a long time to realise that, yes, I had become the sort of person where waking at this time was normal.

I was feeling nauseous, but nowhere near the level I had during the previous morning. When I checked in the bathroom mirror, there was a small amount of flaking blood on my forehead that wiped away easily. I couldn't tell if it was an after-effect of the previous day or new; the pink marks looked identical to how they'd been the last morning.

As the room and my body seemed to be staying exactly where they should, I was perfectly happy to accept this.

It wasn't long before I was seated in front of Kizashi-san at the table as we both nursed cups of coffee. He was a little more chipper in the morning than Mebuki-san, but he still spent more of his time reading the morning paper than talking. It must have been a habit from such a long time of waking before anyone else.

"Um," I began. I kind of wanted to try calling him otousan, 'father', but I was worried that he would think the old Sakura was back. I didn't want to give him false hope. "Um, Kizashi-san."

"Hmm? Spit it out." He grinned. "But not the coffee, if you please."

"What… why did I become a ninja? What were my goals?" I twisted my hands around for a moment before forcing them to still.

"Ah, I guess you wouldn't remember, huh?" He scratched his chin. "I couldn't say. It surprised your mother and myself, that's for sure. You were such a quiet, shy kid." He snorted. "Can't say it ended up bad for you. You were only in the ninja academy for a week or so, met that Ino kid, and it all snowballed from there."

"What do you mean?" From the looks of it, kids started school here when they were five or so. I couldn't even remember myself at that age.

He shrugged. "You got confident. Hopeful. I told your mother, it was almost like reverse stage-fright with you. You'd spend most of your time all quiet and shy, people-pleasing, I guess. But as soon as anything big came up, you were a little typhoon." He reached over and ruffled my hair. "Come to think of it, just telling us you wanted into the ninja academy might have been the start of that."

"Confident… and hopeful?" I tested the words out, trying to find how they might relate to me. If Sakura and I were so similar, they should. But it didn't sound like me at all.

"What, you're calling your old man a liar?" He raised his eyebrows. "You haven't changed a bit, either. I bet if something were important enough to you, you'd march right down to the Hokage himself to demand it. And if that didn't work, you'd tear the whole city apart to make it happen." He laughed.

I opened my mouth to protest but hesitated. When it's important. It was all too easy to imagine a scenario like that. If it would affect the people I cared about…

[Fat-Brain, what is all this crap?]

I looked around the dining room table where I had piles of books, notes, and electronics. Honestly, things had gotten a lot messier than I intended. But that didn't matter right now.

[Try these out!] I signed, passing her a set of earphones. [I think I got the balance right!]

She sighed and smiled, plugging in the earphones. [And here I thought you were studying.]

I ignored her and brought up a music video. [Tell me how much you hear this time.]

She snorted as I hit the play button. Several seconds passed before her eyebrows shot up. [W-O-W] she spelled out slowly. [What did you do?]

I shoved my neuroanatomy book in front of her. [Trying to trick your brain better!]

She grinned. [It's still hard to hear it, but more clear.] She reached over and ruffled my hair. [Is this why you're getting into bio-med? Are you going to be an audio-engineer for the deaf?]

Suddenly, a high-pitched buzz came from one of the earphones. I reached over and yanked it out; the last thing I wanted was to hurt her ears even more. I smiled at her sheepishly. [Not the main reason.] I hesitated. [Maybe I should get better at physics. Electronics are hard.]

"Eh, Sakura-chan?"

"Hmm?" I hummed, pulled from my reverie.

"I asked, well, why you were asking. Did something happen?"

I ran my hand through my hair. He and Mebuki had been so supportive. It wouldn't be right to completely leave him in the dark. "It's just… Tsunade-sama said my personality would be the same as it was before this all happened. And after everything that happened, I just got to thinking that-" my breath caught. I twisted my hands together. Deep breath in, slow breath out. "That I don't know if being a ninja is so great. I don't- I don't want to hurt people, you know?"

Kizashi let out a slow breath and put his hand over mine. "How long have you been worrying about this?"

I ducked my head. "I think the whole time. I think I was just avoiding thinking about it. But after everything else, I couldn't forget it anymore." I swallowed thickly. "I'm not supposed to talk about what happened, and I don't want Mebuki-san to know, but… We were attacked. And the man that attacked me..." My breath was coming in shudders now. "I killed him."

I heard Kizashi rise to his feet as my eyes stayed firmly on my lap. He walked around the table and put his hands on my shoulders.

"Was he going to hurt you?" he asked quietly.

"Yes," I breathed. "He was going to kill Sasuke. And me."

His hands squeezed my shoulders gently. "Then the only difference being a ninja made was that you could protect yourself and your friends, wasn't it?"

I had been holding back the burning in my eyes, but against my will, the tears started rolling down. "How could I have done it?"

"When you're frightened, Sakura-"

"No, I mean," I reached up hastily to scrub at my face. "If I were strong like Sensei, maybe I could have stopped him without killing him. But I don't know how."

Kizashi pulled me into his arms as my body began to shudder. "I don't know," he said softly. "I can't teach you that. But you're my daughter." I could almost hear the smile enter his voice. "I already told you, didn't I? When it's important, you know how to find your confidence and hope." He leaned back and snagged a towel from the table.

I accepted the proffered cloth and wiped my face and nose. Finally, my eyes rose to meet his.

He had a strange, sad smile. "Whatever it is you need to do, you'll find it. And that's a promise from your father."

I smiled back shakily, another voice echoing in my mind. "I will. You… you can believe it."

As I was getting dressed later, all I could think was that it was a good thing I'd had this conversation with Kizashi today. I would have my first day of therapy, later on.

It was with some trepidation that I left my house that morning, but fortunately, there were no errant boys on my front doorstep. Perhaps they'd finally calmed down and realised I was not on the brink of enemy attack every second of every day.

Even with my talk with Kizashi, I still left the house far earlier than I normally did. Well, as long as we're having difficult conversations… I stopped into a local bakery and bought a box of red-bean buns. There was a certain farmer I needed to thank.

I had almost been expecting the farmer to still be asleep when I arrived, but I found him by the outer entrance shovelling soil into a wheelbarrow. It made sense, in a way; working earlier in the day probably helped to keep him from overheating in the afternoon sun.

"Um, hello," I called out weakly. I gripped the bakery box more tightly.

The old man swiped an arm over his brow and squinted. After a brief pause, his face split into a wide, toothy grin. "Well hello there, young lady. Glad to see you're feeling better." He brushed the dirt off his hands and threw his gloves into the wheelbarrow.

"Um, thank you." I bowed, thrusting the box out toward him. "They said you saved me. I got you these. Thank you."

He chuckled softly and I peeked up toward him. His expression was warm. "I just did what any'd do in that situation. But if it makes you happy, then you're welcome." He accepted the box and peered inside; his face lit up further. "Red-bean buns, huh? Why don't you sit down with me and share 'em?"

I gave him a small smile.

It was a short, companionable breakfast. He teased me a little, saying that it was normally clients that felt the need to thank their ninja rescuers. He laughed at my spluttering and assured me that he had no qualms about the role reversal. "These things, they're scary when they happen. So it's always a good thing to have a nice little story about what happened after, isn't it?"

I chewed thoughtfully. "I guess that's how people get brave, isn't it? That way next time something bad happens, you remember that it won't last forever… or something."

"You got it, kid." He grinned. "I always told my grandkids, it's not becoming an adult that makes life easier, it's experience."

I smiled and shrugged. "And experience is just desensitisation."

He burst out laughing.

The conversation wound its way to medical supplies and he told me of a few local shops that would have good med-kits. It'd be a good idea, no matter where I was heading in my ninja career. I was quietly furious with myself for not thinking of it sooner. I'd have to remember to pick one up before I went home that evening.

The whole conversation only lasted about fifteen minutes, but there was a sense of relief from speaking with him. It hadn't been difficult or unpleasant, but somehow the thought of coming had kept being pushed to the back of my priority list, and I'd felt more awkward about coming the more time went on.

By the time I left, I felt lighter on my feet. I started toward the training field, but after checking my watch and finding it still ridiculously early, I veered toward Naruto's house to check on him and see if he wanted to walk together.

I hadn't forgotten my promise to visit him regularly, plus I had another matter I wanted to discuss with him.

"Sakura-chan!" he exclaimed, throwing the door open. He'd answered on the first knock. "Come on in! Oh man, it's good to see you. Missions have been so boring without you, and training without you and even the bastard sucks. Lee is such a pain to train with," he rambled, half-dragging me inside.

I couldn't help but smile. "Good to see you too, Naruto."

"Do you want coffee or tea or something?" he asked, already rummaging around a cupboard.

I kicked off my shoes and walked in after him. "Tea is good. I already had coffee with my father, and I think I'm finally getting used to waking up before the sun."

"Ugh, it's the worst!" he exclaimed. He dumped some water from a kettle on the stove into a mug and in seconds I had a cup of tea pressed into my hands. He must have already had the hot water ready.

I smiled at the mug; it was shaped like a koi fish. "Thank you."

He ushered me into the one available chair, before sitting atop the table and drinking from his frog-shaped mug. "At least Neji got us back home early yesterday," he grumbled. "When we went to take a mission with Lee, it took forever!"

"Sasuke said something similar. How come it took so long?" I asked, genuinely intrigued. I'd been wondering often how the missions had been going without me. If I was being honest with myself, I felt a little left out.

"Well first, the old man listed off a whole bunch of missions, right? I guess since Lee was there and his team has been doing missions more, we were allowed to do more or something."

My mouth twitched at him referring to the Hokage as 'old man'. "Yeah, that's how I figured it works."

"But like, he told Hokage he wanted the hardest and longest mission so he could show off being a leader or something!" he groused. "And I don't mind doing a hard mission, 'cuz they're usually super easy, but we ended up with this crappy C-rank where we had to hand out messages to all of the outposts!"

I raised my eyebrows. "I'm guessing there's a lot of them?"

"Like forty!" he agreed. "And he kept running off without us, and sometimes he'd go to the wrong place!" He grinned. "Man, Gai-sensei got so mad at him! I thought they were just huggy all the time..."

It was genuinely difficult to imagine Gai-sensei being angry, but the mental image I came up with was not pleasant. "Yikes." I put my chin in my hand. "So what was the mission with Neji like?"

He scoffed. "Almost worse. He just asked the old man for whatever mission was the most important." He rolled his eyes. "Neji's really full of himself, it was so annoying. He kept bossing us around for every little thing, even just normal stuff like remembering to protect the cargo. Like we'd forget something like that." He made a noise of disgust.

"Protecting cargo?"

He shrugged. "Yeah, we were just delivering some medical stuff to one of the towns. We ran into some bandits but the fight only lasted like five seconds." He frowned.

"How disappointing," I drawled.

"I know! And like, I have shadow clones so I can fight and protect cargo at the same time! He doesn't need to tell me that!"

I smiled. "At least it was more interesting than your mission with Lee, I guess."

Naruto shook his head. "Nah, not really. I mean, with Lee we had that whole thing with explosives."

I blinked. "Come again?"

He shrugged. "Yeah, I guess someone infiltrated the messaging system and was trying to send people exploding notes or something, that's one of the reasons the mission took so long."

I was beginning to wonder, between my interactions with Naruto and Ino, whether having heavily skewed priorities was simply a ninja thing.

It took some prying to get some semblance of a full story out of him, but before long we had to leave for training. I continued pestering him on the road.

"So, do you think if Neji was on the first mission, he'd have been able to find the letters with exploding notes faster? He has that Byakugan thing."

Naruto huffed. "Neji wouldn't have wanted to open the letter even when Sasuke said it had weird chakra in it! He's such a stickler."

"He wouldn't have to," I pointed out. "Byakugan."

"Sasuke found them fast enough anyway," Naruto argued. "Besides, the only thing that slowed us down was Lee."

We argued all the way down to the field before I realised I'd forgotten that I wanted to ask him something. "Hey, Naruto, wait." I snagged the back of his jacket as he had begun running toward the others.

"Huh? What's up?"

"Have you ever visited Sasuke's house?"

He scratched his head. "Uh, no. I figured he'd get mad if I tried, and he's a jerk anyway, so why would I bother?"

I released his jacket and began twisting my hands together. "It's just that, do you remember how I said I'd visit both of your houses? When I went to visit him, the whole area was empty." I chewed on my lip for a moment before saying, "He said his entire extended family was killed, and he still lives in the compound where they lived before. And his house is empty too, he has no decorations or practically anything, and he eats nothing but food bars, and I made him get a cat but I don't know if that'll be enough-"

"Sakura, hey," Naruto cut me off, patting me on the shoulder. "Yeah, I can see why you're worried, but this is Sasuke you're talking about."

"I know," I said, "He's really tough and all, and I guess minimalistic living isn't bad in itself, but… I told him he should have you move in with him, but he refused."

Naruto's face morphed between several expressions before deciding on a grin. "So you got him a cat instead?"

I smiled back weakly. "I guess I got a little overbearing. But he seems to like her! He named her Sarada."

Naruto huffed out a laugh and grabbed me by the elbow, pulling me toward the field. "C'mon, we're gonna be late! And don't worry so much, okay? It'll probably just make him cranky. I'll talk to him later, so don't waste your time freaking out about him." He rolled his eyes.

I felt my shoulders relax as I followed him into the field. Naruto was right. Sasuke would probably be just fine, and worrying wasn't going to help in any case.

Note: Sorry for the delay. I was trying to cram too many scenes into one chapter.