Space to Breathe - [ Sakura Haruno ]

CHAPTER 14

Sakura nodded slowly, stepping forward to take the chunin vest from the new Hokage.

"You two were the only genin worthy of becoming chunin," Shikaku explained, looking between his son and the pink haired girl.

Things had changed since the chunin exams though. Sure, Sakura was still proud of her achievement, but before she'd been determined to prove others wrong for it. When she proved them wrong not only in the exam but in the invasion too, she'd been so happy.

But then she received that news, and it all felt like it'd been for nothing. Her mother was gone, the one person she wanted to prove wrong more than anybody else in the world, who she cruelly ignored for something as simple as worrying far too much about her daughter's future.

So was her father, the man she most wanted to hug after she managed it, to go to a nice barbeque place like they used to and celebrate. Like they had when she graduated, like they had after her first C rank mission.

Shikaku spoke for a few minutes longer about their responsibilities as chunin, but Sakura mostly tuned the man out. Once he was done, Sakura left with a shunshin, rather than walking as she usually would.

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Arriving at her family home, Sakura walked inside. She had been living there like a ghost since her parents death, but now she really took it in.

Her mother's shoes were still sat in the doorway. Sakura nudged them to the side as she walked in, leaving her own to join them.

Walking further in she glanced at the empty sofa, her father's thick blanket laid on top, a book on the coffee table clearly half read by her mother.

Then she moved up the stairs, finding her parents door open as usual. Walking inside she saw the bed, neatly made on the morning of the invasion and never to be touched by Kizashi or Mebuki again.

Moving again, this time to the bathroom, she gazed upon the various soaps and lotions her mother would try to make her use, to make her smell like a proper lady rather than a soldier. She succeeded for a while, but after the Wave mission Sakura refused vehemently.

She moved her gaze to the wall in the hallway, then. Falling to her knees as she takes in a photo hung there.

A picture from her last day at the academy. Kizashi smiled wide, a hand on Sakura's head with Mebuki stood beside them with a small smile, unable to resist the humour of her husband's antics.

She loved them, Sakura understood then. It felt like something she should have known already, and to some extent she had. But, seeing what she could never have again, Sakura sobbed. She missed her father, and even her mother.

She sat here for an hour, watching the photo and wishing, hoping to wake up from the bad dream her home had become.

But it never came, and she couldn't mope around forever, so she stood up and wiped at her eyes.

Returning down the stairs and into a room she rarely entered, Sakura looked around her father's study.

It wasn't massive, but it was filled with things. From books and scrolls covering every shelf, to his small store of coloured inks he'd use to paint landscapes Sakura had always found too abstract to understand.

Sakura smiled as she looked down and found a stack of thick papers, each with a different drawing done in the vibrant colours Sakura's mother had got him every time she left on a business trip.

She idly scanned through them, noticing the age of the later ones. They ranged from just a few weeks old to multiple years. Eventually she reached the bottom of the stack and tears fell again.