EDIT: This is my second attempt at posting this story because for whatever reason ff kept deleting my cover image after 10 minutes or so. Not that it's important but it bothered me.

And I would have only lost two reviews from bot/scam accounts anyway, which was more of a bonus actually, they're annoying as hell xD

It was almost an understatement to claim that Sakura Haruno had been obsessed with Sasuke. From compulsively keeping track of his day to day schedule so she could align her own with his, to religiously living by what she believed to be his likes and dislikes. Her teachers would silently shake their head each time she'd fawn over him during their practical lessons, careful to run a hand through her well-tended pink locks instead of minding her own progress. It was truly a shame that such a brilliant young mind was lost to an unhealthy, and most unrequited crush.

So it was with relief that her teachers marked the day she walked into class, past Sasuke without even glancing the boy's way and stopped competing for his attention all together. If she spend most of her time staring at the blackboard with dull, unfocused eyes, well... her marks were perfect and she always answered the questions thrown her way more than correctly, there were worse students to have in class.

"Full marks, as always Sakura. Well done."

She tried not to look bothered when Iruka interrupted her mental recreation of a complex, foreign-chakra triggered, gas-tag trap she had once seen utilized during the fifth shinobi war, to place a reviewed test on her desk. There wasn't much else she could do during the lessons she already knew, that is, without drawing attention to herself. So she resigned herself to scanning her eidetic memory for things of interest, she might be able to teach herself outside of academy hours. Not that it had been very fruitful so far.

It was thanks to many months of practice that she came back to the present, as her twelve year old self, without even a blink to betray her mind had wandered somewhere else.

"Thanks you, Iruka-sensei!"

Her smile was a combination of shy and grateful, with just a hint a of smugness hidden in the corners. Something she believed young Sakura would have displayed back then.

The chunin nodded her way before moving on to the next student, who sat a row behind her, his tone a lot less charitable. "Have you studied it all, Kiba? This won't do if you plan to pass your exam and-"

She tuned out his lecture, it wasn't meant for her anyway, and tried to summon the exact memory of 'old Sakura' she had been revisiting before. New and old, carefully separated in the privacy of her mindscape. It had been six months ago, when Sakura's memories of years in the future had slammed into her consciousness just as she was getting ready for bed. Young Sakura had barely had the presence of mind to turn around and release her screams of agony into her pillow, nearly knocking herself out with the lack of air supply.

She had spend the rest of the night compartmentalizing the influx of, admittedly, terrible images crammed into her head and shoving them into a corner for later review. The training she had received in the academy to deal with traumatizing events, had just barely managed to keep her sane. Even so, the next day she had emerged from her bedroom a different person, not quite the old Sakura -as she had only been able to send her memories through time- but no longer innocent young Sakura either. She wasn't sure what that made her, new Sakura perhaps, but she knew that from that day on her life had changed forever.

It had taken her weeks to untangle the full scope of what she had been given, and many weeks more to form a plan of action. Even now... with months of painstakingly trying to train herself up, with frustratingly little results, she had to wonder.

Even with all the time and training in the world...

Would she ever be enough?

So here it is, another idea that hatched in my mind. I used to be obsessed with Sakura-centric fanfiction as a teen. Particularly where she would actually... well, mean something to the story. It's time I tried my hand at the concept.

This will be based purely on my memories of Naruto, I will not be re-watching the whole thing, so apologies for any irregularities. Just scratch it up to this being an chapters will be longer, but also they will take time... A thing I'm still short on.