Chapter One: Dead End Here

At 40, Sakura is like the divorced suburban mom with too many boyfriends alternating bi-weekly who smokes whole packs of cigarettes on her porch steps while contemplating about her mistakes from when she were younger.

In other words, she's still a fucking badass thank-you-very-much but her daughter would probably object otherwise, she knows.

Thinks that she's an embarrassment which is why she doesn't bring that boyfriend of hers over. Only takes Boruto to see the other parent among the two of them. The more pedigreed one. The infamous Sasuke-freaking-Uchiha.

And oh. Fuck him by the way. Fuck him and every single one of his holier-than-thou ancestors that thought they were the Shit and looked down on everyone that was like her.

Civilian that is.

Like what's so embarrassing about being civilian anyways? What's so wrong about climbing your way up the workforce without a bloodline limit or some super secret clan techniques? What's wrong with being the first in your family generation to become a ninja?

She climbed up to where she is through putting in the work just like everybody else and yet that 'civilian-born' title followed her all the way from beginning to the end and it even deemed her as 'less desirable' in Sasuke's eyes at one point in time.

An Uchiha? Marrying a civilian? (not a civilian, a civilian-born god damn you fuckers-)

It would be sure to weaken the bloodline they all said.

Well bloody fuck ME.

Anyways, she has a lot of regrets about how she's done things. Her one life, her one youth and she wasted it all on a guy who never thought her to be his equal.

And that was the crux of the problem you know? No matter how many achievements she's stacked up over the years, that man's misogynistic prejudice-faced ass was never gonna be the one to give her credit where credit was due. Not in a million years. She'll bet on that.

How could you even hope to love somebody you didn't respect?

Needless to say, he never cherished her either.

On that porch step she smokes and smokes and smokes until her vision is clouded up by a grey haze. For days, for weeks, for months until she finally hits a whole year and unsurprisingly gets diagnosed with news of her lung cancer that she decides she's not gonna bother fixing at this point.

But contrary to everything, she can finally 'see' clearly now.

When she wakes up after dying via coughing at the Konoha General Hospital and sees pink-ceiling, all she could wonder is who was the one to let her coffin down into the ground.

Because she wrote special instructions in her will for those roles to be designated to Sasuke and Sarada.

That way her unfilial daughter and that heartless ex-husband could 'let her down' one last time.

She doesn't get up, she pretends not to hear the banshee voice of her dead mother screaming to hurry up downstairs.

Sakura's glad to know that her parents are here with her in heaven but they really need to take it chill with this whole 'going to school' business.

So she rolls around in her childhood bed to face into the wall and closes her eyes; hoping that the action of it would somehow reduce the painful throbbing sensation in her brain.

The next time she wakes up, she's in the Konoha General Hospital again (she would recognize her workplace anywhere, having spent more time here than at her actual home).

So Sakura's left to wonder if she's actually not in fact, dead.

Maybe when she had her bloody coughing fit that time and blacked out, she was in-fact merely just passed out.

And then somehow she must've hallucinated the scene of her childhood room with her parents voices and etc.

She let her head fall back into the pillows with a sigh. So much for heaven.

But then she notices in passing the state of the room she was currently in and frowned. It looked like one of those old, decrepit hospital rooms that had yet to go under renovation.

...seriously, they put her in this kind of room after all that she's sacrificed for the hospital? Her time, her effort, her research, her breakthroughs in the field of medicine-

And not to mention she was also a patient too dammit! She expects better service than this for the amount of hefty hospitalization fees that are being drawn out of her bank account even as they speak.

Of course she knows that this isn't some hotel...but still...what about the comfort of patients? For christ's sake this room didn't even have a monitoring machine! Those were supposed to be implemented at every hospital around twenty years ago-

Wait, hold up.

'There's something I'm not getting here and it's something big. I can feel it.'

With her head no longer pounding (was that really a hallucination too?) she was able to think more clearly.

...but as intelligent as Sakura may be, never in a million years would she had been able to come up with 'time travel into the body of her child-self'.

That is, until her parents entered at that moment.

And that was how Mr. and Mrs. Haruno saw their daughter's mouth open and close, gaping like a fish until 'I need an extra strong shot of vodka' came uttered out of their eight-year-old baby girl.

When you come to live with a lot of regrets like she had, you tend to think and imagine the impossible.

So sure, she can admit herself to contemplating the idea of time-travel at one point or the other but now that she was actually placed in that very same position;

She didn't know what to do with herself, honestly.

There were vague ideas about what she wants to change...but even then, she realizes that it isn't really much.

The goal was simple-too simple almost: don't marry Sasuke.

-in fact, don't even go on and become friends with that full-of-shit motherfucker. And besides, there was no rule saying that just because you were in the same genin squad together you'd end up being some lifelong bffs.

"Sweetie, are you done preparing for school?"

Baby, she was done preparing for life. Let's get some things right in this turn around.

It's not hard to go back to school in her child body and get in the routine of studying, training and beating back her 'bullies' that were, really, little more than some playground brats.

No, it's not hard at all.

What sucks is having to sometimes bump into, or see in your peripheral vision the aged-down versions of your...co-workers? Former-friends?

The Konoha Twelve.

Once upon a time ago she would've thought that nothing would prevent them from having each other's backs. They went through a war together after all-

So naturally they wouldn't be like the generations that came before them, that forgot the bonds of friendship and camaraderie over time in favour of their own self interests.

They were-

Arrogant. So so arrogant.

To think that they were, the twelve of them-somehow above human nature.

Had not the previous clan heads all been classmates at one point in time? Comrades that once had each other's backs in the face of war? And yet all their generations could remember for as long as they could was their cold, cordial attitudes towards one another at clan gatherings.

The rest of the Konoha Twelve that grew up witnessing this sight from their respective clans had gotten the memo. To drift apart and disperse-slowly-when there was no longer a need for themselves to huddle together in the face of an immense outside threat.

Where they had all used to visit Neji's grave together on the anniversary of his death...the tradition was only being upheld by herself and Hinata at the time of her death in Sakura's past life.

At the very end of her life, she remembers having a superficial relationship with Ino for the fear of losing the other completely, and then Naruto, whom she rarely saw out of his office that he became more her 'Hokage' than her 'friend'.

It was not just Sasuke who betrayed her trust and expectations. In the span of when she was seventeen until fourty-one, her friends had broken her heart too.

'I trust our bond.'

'I trust you not to let me down or our bond.'

'I trust, I trust.'

Nobody told her it would be like this when she grows up.

So yeah, compared to how her life was as an adult, being a kid again was easy.

It was another sparring match with Sasuke and-

"Winner: Sakura Haruno!" Iruka announced...and then proceeded to scold her for walking away coldly without performing the seal of reconciliation.

Was it harsh of her to beat down a child you ask? Sure, but in the eyes of the world she was also a 'child'. So it's not like it mattered.

More than that though, she wanted for once, for a single moment in time to be the one that outshines both Naruto and Sasuke combined. And if those glory days could only be accomplished in this dingy academy before they all graduate and the boys inevitably catch up to her...then so be it.

And plus, it didn't help in Sasuke's case that she had as numerous grudges to pick on with the guy as there were stars in the night sky.

Looking as if she wasn't able to take it anymore, Ino marched over angrily in her direction, leaving behind her clique of fangirl cronies.

"You're hurting his face!" she exclaimed, the utmost frustration laced in her tone.

She glanced up at the taller girl with an arched eyebrow like 'so?'

Ino shook like a leaf trying to contain her fury but didn't look like she would throw out a punch against her, rookie of the year. As expected, she had always been somewhat of a scaredy cat.

So Sakura breezily walks past the other, but not before throwing off a comment.

"If he wants his 'face' to stop hurting then he should try winning for once."

And then, with her back turned to everyone, she walked out of the courtyard.

She's laying on the rooftop, skipping class again when she feels the other presence.

"What do you want?" she asks, clicking her tongue in annoyance.

Doesn't she think she's done quite frankly enough? It was the other's fault that they were stuck in this mess. Or any mess at all. And then her weak ass would retreat back and leave her to deal with all the bullshit consequences.

Sakura could hardly believe this was what an adult was supposed to act like. But in any case, they'd already established a long long time ago that she wouldn't become an adult like that. A person like her.

'I'm sorry.'

"Sorry, sorry. That's all you know how to say huh?"

There was silence on the other end but she could feel the palpable sense of guilt that the other felt. They were one afterall.

"...so what's next chief? Are you still gonna hide behind my back like the little bitch that you are? Whether it was your divorce or your child practically disowning you from 'before' you couldn't handle none of it so I had to deal with all of it." she growled, lifting herself up so that she was now seated.

When she could no longer feel the other's presence after that, Sakura knew that the damn old hag had 'retreated'.

"...fucking cunt. Dumb stupid ugly bitch. This is why your husband left you ya know?!" she shouted, huffing for breath at the end.

Then Sakura dropped her head into her open hands and muttered.

"Shit shit...come back already you stupid hag...what man was worth it for you to kill yourself...shit…"

A true love requires one to fall in love with their eyes wide open.

This, was Inner's story.

This shit right here gonna be Lit y'all.