"She's been missing since last night. We have to figure out what happened!" Naruto's voice carried throughout the little office and beyond the walls, his frustrated tone amplifying his every word. "How has no one seen her leave, either? I've asked everyone and nobody knows where she is, not even her mom and dad. How do we know she's okay? We need to go find her right now!"
There was a pause amidst his passionate rant, hanging on after his sharply punctuated words. As if in response, the sun that had been warming the floors of the Hokage office through the high windows faded with the clouds that shivered over the skies, cooling the room.
Naruto's ardour was no less heated as he shoved impatient hands through his choppy blonde hair, gesturing out at the no-longer-sunny day in his intensive frustration. "We have to postpone the funeral thing. Making sure Sakura is okay is more important than anything else."
Shizune behind the Hokage desk was shaking her head, shuffling the papers on her clipboard in a mildly anxious manner as she listened to Naruto. The unfinished paperwork scattered over the desk before her glared up at her in black and white text with countless blanks needing filling in, following headers relevant to Tsunade's imminent retirement; paperwork that needed attention, while Naruto was demanding it.
While Shizune had unnecessarily apologised multiple times already to both him and the rest of Team Seven sans Sakura that stood behind him, he was dissatisfied; her repeated confirmations that that no one here had heard from Sakura either and that they were doing their best to find her wasn't enough.
She sighed, shaking her head. "Absolutely not, Naruto. We can't postpone. That would be a diplomatic disaster, what with so many visitors here from all the other villages for both the funeral and the spring festival afterwards. Maybe if this had happened a week ago, but now that everyone is here and it's starting within the hour—"
"We won't do it without her." Naruto's blue eyes shone fiercely in the low light of the room.
Kakashi and Sasuke stood on either side of Naruto in a grim silence. Ever a silver-haired shadow slouching in a casual manner that hid his strength, Kakashi leaned beside the shut door to the office, his dark eyes solemn as his gaze switched between the others watchfully. Sasuke stood just within reach of Naruto at his other side, a tall slash of blackness himself with his raven hair and bitter calm, a long cloak draped about his shoulders. In the heart of the room and radiating energy regardless of his mood or somber clothing, Naruto was similarly dressed in all black as the others were in respect for the upcoming funeral.
He was already going off again, ignoring Shizune's tired, mirrored frustration as he continued to wave at her angrily. "We're partly doing this whole thing for her. I want her to be there, and here in general, and aren't you worried about her at all?!"
"Of course I am," Shizune cut Naruto off with a razored tone unusual for her. She stood from behind the desk abruptly, sending a stack of unfinished pages fluttering around her. "I care about Sakura as much as you do. I want to be sure that she's well, too. But she's not a child that needs rescue, Naruto. It's barely been one night she's been missing and she's more than likely totally fine. You're overreacting."
"He is," Sasuke interjected in tentative agreement with Shizune, "But I do agree that it's important that we know where she is. Sakura isn't herself right now." Sasuke exhaled softly as he adjusted a sleeve and shot Naruto a look. "One of us should have been paying closer attention to her whereabouts instead. She threw off the Anbu squads tailing her too easily."
Frustration continued to knit Naruto's stressed features together as Shizune nodded towards Sasuke. "She really hasn't been herself since, well," she grimaced, "since Madara."
The room fell quiet for a moment as the weight of her words settled.
It was a long pause before Shizune continued, all their expressions matching in a grim shade. "I can at least tell you we have another couple of squads out looking for her." She glanced at Naruto, watching for any sign that this might placate his frustration. "They're instructed only to tail, not interfere with her, and to report if she's sighted. I have every confidence they'll get back to us soon. They've already been looking for her all night after realising she had escaped their notice."
Sasuke scoffed. "Sakura has managed to give them the slip any time she doesn't want to be watched. She managed it all year as she ran around with Madara under our noses. Why would they be able to keep up with her now?"
"I wouldn't underestimate the Anbu," Shizune defended with a scowl.
"I just want to know she's okay. I wish we had been able to talk to her sooner. I just want…" Naruto's voice shifted from a whiny tone into an emotional one, causing all eyes in the room to flicker back to him as he hung his head in sorrow. "I want her to know I'm sorry."
"We'll get a chance," Kakashi contributed, only for Naruto to lift his head, that fierce, anguished look back in his eyes. "What if it's our worst fear and Sakura has abandoned Konoha, sensei? Going rogue and leaving the village behind like Sasuke did all those years ago? What if we are what drove her to leave?"
Shizune looked between the three uncomfortably, shuffling the scattered papers and returning them to the right order with subtle embarrassment that she'd had a small outburst. Sasuke was grimacing, looking out the windows like he didn't want to be here for this conversation any longer; Naruto was running his hands through his hair, his teeth bared in an anguished expression as his questions hung in the air for a moment.
"We don't even know if she's really missing," Sasuke tried after the long pause, his features pinched with irritation masking his stress.
Kakashi interjected with his answer he had brewed quietly throughout their argument, his tone flat and almost cold in the surety of his words. "If Sakura has chosen to leave, then we should respect that it's what she wants."
Naruto and Sasuke paused, turning towards Kakashi as he regarded them stonily. "You're right she's no longer a child. Sakura is as strong as any one of us, and after all she's been through…" He eyed both of them significantly, "...after all we as a team and as a village have put her through — Sakura would be justified in leaving."
They stared at Kakashi, shocked.
He glanced away from them, watching as distant cherry trees shifted in the spring wind, the thousands of buds upon their branches readying for the day they would bloom. High above in the clear blue skies, the subtle imprint of the twin moons waited on the horizon for the time they could rise again and dominate the stars.
After a heavy pause, Kakashi shut his eyes, exhaling softly through his nose. "I wouldn't fault her for not saying goodbye. I wouldn't blame her for any of it… and neither should you."
Naruto shook where he stood, seized and rattled by his frustration and roiling emotions, all the guilt and torment he felt stamped boldly across his features. His angry stare switched between Kakashi and Sasuke. "So what, we just let her go? Just… not even try to stop her? What if she never comes back, and we never even get to talk to her again?"
He balled up his fists, clearly remembering Sasuke's own exit from the village as he pointed back outside where the sun continued to try and peer through from thickening clouds. "I never gave up on Sasuke when he left. I'm not about to give up on Sakura either."
"No one's asking you to give up on anything. We don't even know if she's left for sure," Sasuke reminded Naruto again, who ignored him in favour of directing his anger more at Kakashi in a slashing gesture. "I know we've wronged her but that's why we should never just let her go! We have to make her see that we're sorry. That we know we should have trusted in her sooner — and that leaving is the wrong way. I don't want her to be an exile. I had something I wanted to tell her that would change everything today! And she's so much more beloved in Konoha and all the villages than ever now. Now that the war is over and everyone understands about Madara—!"
"If leaving is what lets her heal after we killed Madara in front of her—" Kakashi returned, his words whipping guilt across Naruto and Sasuke's expressions, "then we let her go without question."
They could hear the rest of what he had to say in the echoing silence that followed, having no need to be voiced. Sakura had been traumatised; and in the past so had Sasuke before he'd chosen to abandon the village and follow the path he had felt was the right one. Leaving then had been what he'd needed to figure out his future, and while Naruto had fought it, it ultimately hadn't been his choice to make. It was all eerily similar to what might be happening with Sakura now; which was entirely Kakashi's point.
It didn't matter how much Naruto didn't like it: but even while the whole of their team understood this, including him, he made a bitter scoff, turning away. "I won't go on with this today. I don't care."
He ignored Sasuke as he stepped neatly between them, his somber expression watchful as he intervened before the argument worsened; Naruto was preparing to leave, his fists gripped tightly at his sides and that determined, unstoppable look in his eye. "The funeral thing can wait," he was declaring, "I'm going after Sakura with or without you guys."
"She won't come back with you. She might even fight," Sasuke protested with more intensity than before, his stress becoming less subtle in lines between his brows and the shadows around his eyes. "Chasing her down assuming we can just drag her back here won't go well. We have to plan this if we're actually hunting her down. And we need to be certain first that—"
"I'm not trying to fight her!" Naruto's voice broke, and as his face fell into his hands he hunched over, a hand slamming against the shut door hard enough to leave the wood cracked beneath his palm. He shook his head, his face hidden in his palms. "Why don't you guys get it? Our friend is missing. We don't know if she's all right… she hasn't been all right at all since the war, and I just wanna make it right. I want to find her and fix everything. I just…"
"There's nothing we can do to fix what we did, Naruto." Sasuke's hand was resting on Naruto's shoulder. He looked with Kakashi now at the distant trees beyond the windows, his pale features just as drawn. "It's way too late. The thing she'd want us to do to fix it is impossible. We'll never be able to unseal the new moon, just as it would be a bad idea even if it was possible."
"So she'll never forgive us?" came Naruto's heartbroken question, "Sakura will hate us forever?"
"It will take a long time." Kakashi leaned back against the wall with a long sigh. "You have to understand and accept, both of you, that there's a chance she might not ever be able to forgive all that we put her through."
Naruto wiped at his eyes. "I've told her I'm sorry. I'll tell her again a thousand times. I'll do whatever she wants… I just want her to be our friend again. All I want is for us to be happy, and for everyone to be at peace. I…"
The three of them stiffened: they sensed a fourth presence, just behind the office door where they stood, and in the suspension of their surprise there was a quiet but confident knock.
They didn't answer. The door opened anyway, revealing the very subject of their concern.
She was a slender shadow, wrapped in a dark, simple yukata with long black gloves over her hands; her face was as pale as snow beneath her short pink locks, and with sharp, cold green eyes Sakura looked between her estranged teammates, keeping her distance from them just beyond the opened doors as she spoke. "I'm ready. Let's go."
She ignored Naruto and Sasuke's twinned, stunned greetings, allowing Kakashi to stride beside her and lead the way forward through the Hokage tower, leaving the other two to follow. He passed her a casual, subtly relieved glance that was tinged with gratefulness that she had come after all.
Sakura's responding smile was so small it was almost unnoticeable, a slight upward curve at the corner of her pale lips.
"You're alive," he commented, one brow raising in mild humour.
Sakura's cold tension eased somewhat as she gave Kakashi a short bark of a laugh, relieved for any lightness to the otherwise unbearable tension between herself and her teammates. "I hate the papers," she chuckled a little brusquely, "One night away from home and the world thinks I've gone full rogue-ninja. Yep—" Sakura joked, making a dramatic sweeping gesture, " —off to the Akatsuki with me! Full revenge time. I'm taking Orochimaru's old goal and making it my own. Down with Konoha."
Her sarcasm fell short on her teammates, who paled at her words ringing too close to what they'd worried about; especially with each remembering too well that Madara's blood stained their hands.
While the concept of turning on the village was ridiculous to Sakura now that Madara was as alive and as well as he was, she dually realised in a sudden jolt that she had to keep up the image that she was still like a grieving widow. She nearly clapped a hand over her own mouth not just in quick embarrassment at her joke in poor taste but that she'd said it within the Hokage tower, in earshot of watchful Anbu that dotted the winding halls, their glittering eyes following her wherever she went.
She had to be more careful with anything she said, either in public or near her teammates, Sakura was recognising, and for more than a few reasons; the most vital one being that she had the image of a grieving sort of widow she must continue to maintain.
She briefly shut her eyes with the strangest understanding that she must hide her recent joy. She must pretend to be devastated, still.
Showing her healed, deeply-rooted happiness from all the events of last night and this morning would cause great suspicion in all who noticed her mood change. They would easily suspect that her shift would be related somehow to Madara… damaging their current solid belief everyone shared that he was sealed away for eternity in the second moon.
Sakura's expression tightened anxiously as she continued to walk in terse silence with Kakashi and the other two that shadowed her closely; she tried to avoid the stares of people that parted from their path in the halls, ignoring what felt like every stare within a mile that was pinned to her.
She must not allow any suspicion that Madara had been freed. Not if she wanted to keep their hard-won freedom. She was a bad liar, and a worse actress, but she would do her damndest to maintain her image of grief if it meant she would protect his secret.
Sakura snapped her mouth shut, clearing her throat and focusing on her footing as she walked with Kakashi, visibly switching between moods as she attempted to wrest control of her normally expressive face.
The awkwardness among the four of them was quickly interrupted by the bouncing yellow-orange annoyance right behind her as he poked at her shoulder. "Hey, Sakura!"
She ignored him: there would be no talking about this right now. She wasn't ready.
Sakura pretended she didn't know Naruto was there at all as he tried to catch her eye, bouncing from side to side with boundless energy like a puppy. He hurried after her alongside Sasuke, who was ever his opposite; striding in silence and calm, his shadowed, mismatched eyes burning into the side of Sakura's face.
Sasuke's silent attention bothered her twice as much as Naruto's did. Having managed a sculptured, utterly stony expression, Sakura kept her features set and her eyes firmly forward as they all made their way down a narrow stairwell to the ground floor.
She had to consciously reign in a softening about her expression as she remembered Madara carrying her off somewhere around here, long ago when he'd abducted her from the Hokage office right in front of Naruto, Tsunade and Shizune — his stolen prize, slung over his shoulder, doing her best to stifle her laughter at his brash thievery. The memory warmed Sakura's heart, and her tight features twitched slightly as she avoided smiling in remembering it, her expression faltering between stony and something like a pained look as she actively hid what she was feeling.
She continued to feel the stabbing of Sasuke's intensive stare, and couldn't help but to steal a glance backwards, feeling increasingly uneasy.
The moment she connected eye contact with him, she recognised the truth she'd known but hadn't thought about until this moment. It was a strike across her mind, a name slapped over her thoughts and cancelling out the rest, the mystery she hadn't solved. Indra.
While Sakura turned back around and resumed an unaffected, unbothered look on her face, she was anything but that beneath her forged facade especially with such an unwelcome reminder. The revelation pulled at her stomach in strings of dread and recognition.
She could feel it in Sasuke's presence now that she'd recognised it, just as she felt it in Madara's; like a strong echo but in the intangible sense of being that she knew to her bones. With the connecting revelation of the fleeting conversation she'd had with Madara and their subsequent walk in their skins, it was still sinking in for Sakura that he was a reincarnation of Indra — and so was Sasuke.
The same man, iterated twice in new souls. While she didn't know much about Indra other than that he was ancient, powerful, and one of the sons of the real Sage of the Six Paths, this subject fascinated her. She found it difficult not to glance back at Sasuke in her burning curiosity to view those similarities rather than just sense it. She wanted to look at him with new eyes; she wanted to ask, but did he and Naruto even know…?
Sakura found herself uncertain: neither had ever brought it up, but that didn't mean they were unaware. She wanted to know a great many things; but she kept her mouth tightly sealed as she walked, maintaining a wooden and unaffected look on her surface as Sasaki once managed to be. Lifting her head, her ice-crusted features were uncracked by the constant heys and pssts and prods of her name behind her from Naruto in his urgent wish to talk.
She knew he wanted more than anything to patch things as soon as possible. She had overheard their conversation.
While there was a push in her heartbeats in response, Sakura subtly shook her head, more for herself than anything: there was a multitude of hardened layers over her heart, encasing her completely. Made up of every moment and bitter memory of her experiences and feelings of betrayal, frustration, heartbreak, and trauma, Sakura would need more than a conversation to be able to break out of her thick protective shell and begin forgiving them. While she was softened by discovering Madara alive and being able to save him from death, considerably shortening the distance between now and the day she'd forgive her cherished teammates, it was still most certainly not now; not today… not any time soon.
She just wasn't ready. Sakura shut her eyes in a terse expression of subtly pained tolerance as Naruto continued to bounce behind her, poking her again and again. "Sakura, I know you can hear me! Sakura, where have you been? Let's get ramen after the funeral. I wanna talk, me and Sasuke want to say a lot of things. Sakura, are you listening?"
"Leave her be," came Kakashi and Sasuke's dual reply in her stead, and Sakura's surprised gaze flickered between them both in a quick glance. Sasuke held her eye for a moment, and feeling a jolt upon seeing his familiar mismatched eyes she looked away from him immediately afterwards, pressing a hand over her heart.
The moment threw her mind back down the hall of thoughts she had been wandering before, and Sakura's eyes were haunted as she watched her feet, determined not to look at him again. Sasuke and Madara had always been somewhat similar, sharing a clan as well as happening to both have a single Rinnegan and Sharingan; but sensing a new level of similarities between them considering Indra as well as the fact that they were, in part, the same soul—
It made sense to Sakura now why she'd pursued Sasuke so doggedly for so long, and then had been able to shift her attentions to Madara. She exhaled almost in weary understanding of herself.
Indra's image strode across her mind, pausing to smirk at her, and Sakura blinked at him in her thoughts, confused again. There it was again; the deep sense of familiarity as she viewed him in her head, yet the surface-level oddity of thinking of him as an acquaintance, a stranger.
Who am I? Sakura was disoriented, almost unsteadied as she walked, her own question stunning her. She'd played the part of disguising herself as Indra's wife as Madara had described her but she'd felt familiar, too; enough that Sakura felt she should know who she is, like she was missing a major link in the puzzle. It was intensely frustrating, being one that was generally skilled at solving puzzles.
"Sakura?"
It was Sasuke's voice that broke Sakura from her revelation, and she swerved towards him like he'd attacked her, her wide eyes searching and uncertain. He stood just within reach, his arms folded and eyes narrowed upon her with subtle concern hidden by a mask of annoyance. "What's wrong with you?" he asked. "It's like you were frozen in time for a second."
It was so easy to see it. There were echoes of Madara and Indra in Sasuke's face, in the sharpness of his mismatched eyes and the sweeping dark of his presence. She could hear them in the related, younger tenor of his voice. Power and confidence rippled in the cut edges of his frame, and Sakura wondered how she hadn't seen such a plain truth months, even years before. In a decade, he'd look so much more like Madara, especially if he ever allowed his short hair to grow longer; his features were hauntingly similar, just lacking some age lines and definition. Sasuke possessed both Madara and Indra's cold, arrogant poise and frightening power as well. He couldn't be a kind of derivation of them both more clearly; a new iteration.
What did that mean for her?
Sakura took a step back from him, her rattled mind revealing her uncertain expression, her hands clasped tightly together. In a sudden rush, Sakura turned away from him, hurrying along ahead past Naruto's pestering and Sasuke's heavy stare to walk again beside Kakashi once more.
More questions and comments arose from her teammates behind her that she bit back any response to, and upon noticing the pained, restrained look upon Sakura's face Kakashi shot a look behind her so acidic that it effectively silenced them for the moment.
Kakashi caught the grateful glance Sakura spared him as he returned his attention forward, some of the stress easing from her expression. Her passing hand squeezed briefly over his arm in a subtle confirmation of her gratitude: he was so much more understanding of her than she'd ever given him credit for before the end of the war.
Together, the four emerged out into the gray light of the day, striding as one down the heartline of Konoha towards the cemetery across the village. What sun still managed to shine through the clouds slashed a golden shade across each of them, striking in their contrasts against each other: Sasuke in all of his dark and Naruto a sunny opposite next to him, like night and day astride each other at once; Kakashi as silver as the spring rainclouds, the thin sun cutting his tall, lanky frame in shades of hushed colour. Beyond their strikingly different faces, each matched in their dark, somber robes for the funeral.
Each of them drew every eye in the street, faces turning and breaths pausing from those who weren't already attending the event across the village. While all knew better than to interrupt the famous and reunited entourage as they made their way onwards, many quietly followed from a safe distance, unwilling to let them out of their fascinated sights.
Sakura drew the most stares, having become the most famous among the already widely-famed Team Seven. She herself was just as striking a sight as the three around her, walking with them in the public for the first time since last year.
With the stories of her miraculous feat healing thousands in the final battles of the war, some viewed her like she was something akin to a goddess of life, their breaths held where they stood around street corners or followed from afar. Sakura's image confirmed their fervent convictions; convictions based on her legendary feats they'd heard from so many others and read in the papers that now praised and lauded her on a daily basis.
She was stunning. The sun shone across her cherry-blossom locks around her pale, elegant features, and while her face was subtly shaded with weariness and stress, her loveliness translated both between her visage and her slender figure as she moved with a fluid, practiced grace. Curvaceous but slender, slight but strong, Sakura was every bit the picture of the legendary healer that those watching her already saw her as.
Others knew her as the opposite, the way they viewed her more awed and intimidated than fascinated: she was a goddess of war, just as clear in everything about her they could see and sense.
Her figure cut a sharp contrast against her teammates as the four of them moved onwards; she strode with steel surety in her every step that was both authoritative and graceful. There was might obvious in her lithe figure that was both feminine and strong at once, only adding to the beauty in her shape and in her pale features. What made Sakura even more attractive as well as frightening for onlookers was the dangerous confidence written across her in every way; confidence she possessed not just from knowing her own strength, but earned from each thing she had gone through in the last year. She had earned such a powerful poise from every strife, every stress, every fight and conflict, each failure and victory alike. It was a confidence reinforcing her intimidating aura from her experiences, and Sakura walked with an almost sinister, visible knowledge that she feared nothing and no one.
She commanded the dual image of a protector and a warrior at once, and where all the eyes trailing after her were once curious or judgmental, they were now admiring.
While Naruto, Kakashi and Sasuke each were powerful on their own, Sakura was at least of the same strength at this point, something she needed not mention aloud as she'd once tried long ago at the start of the war. There was no need for her to tell them she had caught up to their level, and without the boosts of kekkei genkai, tailed beasts, Uchiha eyes, or the blood of a powerful clan.
The reality of this made her more intimidating. Strong as Sakura already was alongside her incredibly overpowered teammates, what if she ever did gain possession of any one of those things?
Each ignored the soft clicks of lenses both from journalists standing openly in the street and from those hanging out of windows and alley mouths. News attention was expected, both as the team made their way to the funeral they'd arranged as well as during the main event. The streets were nearly empty already as it was; the vast majority of the Konoha population was already awaiting them where the funeral was taking place.
The subtle looks Sakura cast out over occasional rooftops and side-street shadows wasn't for journalists. Each glance was a silent question, left unanswered, just as she knew they should; but she looked anyway as she moved forward with her teammates. While she certainly felt Naruto and Sasuke's digging attention that bored through her back and squeezed at her heartbeats, she continued to ignore them carefully.
It was after a few more click-flash-clicks that Sakura recognised she was still clinging to Kakashi's arm, seeking the understanding, silent comfort he offered as he walked with her. She removed her hand from him like she'd been burned, hugging herself instead. The glances she tossed around rooftops and alleys were twice as frequent now, a pearl of sweat dampening the back of her neck.
Madara was nearby, just as he had told her he would be. Sakura could feel his presence in the prickling across her skin, the warning her body had given her about his imminent proximity from the very start; she had always had a good sense for if he was close or not. She could feel it in her teammates' subtle unease as well — something she knew was unconscious for them in their tension as they didn't yet know he really was alive. They were uneasy like she was, but without quite knowing the reason, and Sakura continued to glance around the further she and her accompanying team went, watchful and silent.
She hadn't spotted him yet, still looking for him even while she was already standing at the head of the vast crowd at her teams' side, facing the collective attention of thousands.
There were so many people in attendance that it was difficult to distinguish faces: a living sea of black, each dressed in the traditional dark colours of mourning and their heads of hair and every shade of skin the only splashes of colour across the spread of so many. The many hundreds filled the cemetery and flooded out to every side: civilians and shinobi alike from all of the villages, from every clan and community, even a multitude of Union cultists Sakura could recognise in a huddled side-group among the thousands she and her team stood before. She could even spot some who perched in trees among Anbu details, watching down from the skies, comfortable in the shady crooks of branches and familiar tree canopies in favour of jostling among the huge crowd.
To the side she saw her parents, standing with some of her friends; across, she saw Tsunade, and to Sakura's mild shock Orochimaru beside her, a living shadow more than ever with his black silken hair and pale face above dark formal robes. Tsunade looked weary, but she stood with her former teammate with a visible sort of relaxed tension, subtly grateful to be in the finally peaceful company of her old friend.
Sakura's stare lingered, noticing her own adopted team near Tsunade and Orochimaru, and the moment she made eye contact Karin waved cheerily in a mood opposite from the heavy, grim one everyone else wore. While Sakura didn't wave back as Suigetsu and Jugo also beamed at her, she did smile just slightly, acknowledging them with a slow blink.
Her sweeping, searching eyes moved further across the crowd. She avoided Ino's sharp, pleading gaze as soon as she felt it, a pang of guilt accompanying the feeling of not being ready to talk to her weighing down her heart. Near Ino in Sakura's peripheral vision she spotted the rest of her childhood friends; Tenten and Hinata, both weeping once more for Neji's loss, among all of the rest of them, gathered together with quiet hands and murmurs comforting and understanding.
If she kept looking she felt she'd see everyone from the whole of her life. It was difficult for Sakura to believe so many had come to this funeral. It felt like all the world was gathered here in somber mourning, the opposite of when all had last met when in war.
Sakura was the last to bow her head beside Naruto, Kakashi and Sasuke, her gaze flickering again across the sea of faces before she inclined her head and shut her eyes respectfully.
"Thank you all for being here today," Naruto had begun beside her, his voice rolling out across the vast sea of people. "We wanted to hold a proper funeral for all of those lost in the fourth war. For everyone… no matter what side they were on. For everyone who died, we're here today to honour their memories."
He gestured backwards, and Sakura startled slightly, having not noticed it before as she had been searching parts of the crowd: the familiar stone of engraved names behind her that had been in Konoha for as long as she could remember, but twofold: she knew the other beside it well. With a breath caught painfully in her chest she recognised the Union's Loss Stone where it now stood behind her and before the many beyond her; bearing hundreds of names, with her very own writing at its top.
Uchiha Madara. Sakura looked back down at her feet, unable to take another breath. That night she had knelt and written his name, like confirming for all that he was dead… the unbearable grief she had felt as her world had crumbled down around her…
She tried to pay more attention. Naruto had already extolled the bravery of many sacrificed in the war, giving Neji a touching speech, and naming many other beloved fallen in language simple but earnest and heartfelt. He was almost finished with the speech Sakura was quietly impressed he'd made and was certain he hadn't planned beforehand, given off the cuff but with enough genuine feeling to still be appropriate. "We grieve not only for all the dead, but we also look up to the memory of the guys who came before us — our ancestors, our old Kages, and stuff. We are here to respect not just one of our dead Founders, old man First Hokage Senju Hashirama, but both…"
Sakura's eyes widened upon her feet, her vision already blurred with tears she couldn't help but to shed upon being reminded of her previous grief in sharp tandem to everything else. She shut her eyes with understanding and not quite regret upon gleaning from Naruto's words that the Edo Tensei Kages must have finally disintegrated some time after the war had ended, returning their souls to the afterlife.
"We honour Uchiha Madara too."
The crowd hushed; this was not expected. Naruto was unflinching as he went on, his hand rising in a gesture to the skies that had begun to warm with the early evening, the sun starting to set in hazy orange hues. "Madara fought for what he believed in, with everything that he had. He wanted peace, just like us, but lost faith in us as a people because we couldn't stop fighting each other. We couldn't stop the cycle of hatred." Naruto's face tightened as he spoke, his shadowed blue eyes somber. "He, too, should be mourned. He was another one of us, and we could have returned that faith in the shinobi world to him and to so many others if we had just broken that cycle of hate sooner. He wouldn't have done the bad stuff he did, and neither would all the shinobi on both sides of the war. There wouldn't have been so many people killed. We could have avoided his and all these other deaths…"
Sakura felt Naruto's eyes as she felt thousands of other stares shift simultaneously to her as soon as Madara's name was brought to life.
It was in this moment where she wasn't trying to look like a bereaved widow that she became the very picture of it. Avoiding the mass combination of their attention, her head was deeply bowed, her eyes shut, the tears that streamed down her cheeks only just visible in the amber light of the setting sun. Loose locks drifted around her haunted expression, her shoulders hunched, and she stiffened slightly as she felt two different hands graze over her arm in comforting gestures; Kakashi and Naruto both, with the weight of Sasuke's eyes another touch she could sense in her returned, remembered grief.
"From this day onward we will follow the path of love, united. We as the whole shinobi world will break free from hatred." Naruto's voice carried across the sea of people, and after a long pause that somber note moved among them in a deep hush, a pause to pursue his declaration.
There was no applause… not at a funeral; but the spreading murmurs of assent and respect moved through the crowd instead, the glint of resolve across several thousand eyes, the grim, determined response of a grieving mass that agreed in silence.
Naruto bowed his head. In a unanimous shift, so did the onlooking many in attendance, and the moment of silence and respect that followed stretched on for a pause as heavy and meaningful as eternity.
It was so quiet Sakura's teammates heard the patter of her fallen tears upon the ground at her feet. Her lost tears were soon dried by the warm spring wind that billowed out between them, flickering the hair around their drawn expressions and pale faces.
She didn't know how long it was before they were speaking again. Sakura barely registered in her deep immersion into the silence that Tsunade had appeared near them and had been speaking until Naruto interrupted her with a look both determined and guilty at once.
She registered Tsunade had been announcing the spring festival to take place throughout Konoha after the funeral, which all were welcome to partake in, and now she was amidst a major announcement she had been waiting to make to the whole public.
"...And with my retirement I will be naming my nominee for the next Hokage, which will be, of course… Naruto—!"
"No." Naruto stepped forward, his guilt-tightened expression becoming ever more determined as he turned. "It should be Sakura."
His declaration rang out over the crowd. Tsunade turned her head sharply towards him, her amber eyes bright in the light of the setting sun and switching uncertainly between Naruto, Kakashi, and finally Sakura, who had frozen where she stood.
"Sakura will be the next Hokage!" Naruto shouted, a fist thrown into the air, and then with his exuberance came cheers from the crowd that became a great, pushing roar of approval: not just from the Konoha side, either, but from many of the villages, becoming an approving roar from hundreds that deafened her teammates on the stage, leaving all of them but Naruto stunned as the shinobi world upheld his call for her to be the next Hokage for Konoha.
Sakura lifted her head, her shocked eyes wide upon the crowd. She had taken a subtle step back, her uncertain hands clasping each other, sweaty beneath her gloves. Hokage—?!
This was when she spotted him, at long last. Standing apart from the crowd to the side where the woods swallowed the border to the village, he was leaning up against a far tree, cast in shade: Madara, his intense stare burning through her from far across the crowd. He wore a subtle, crooked smile, and he had begun to clap slowly beneath the mass percussion of the crowd, holding Sakura's wide-eyed gaze with dark approval.