TITLE: (i promise you that) we're marching on

RATING: t

SUMMARY: grief doesn't end in a moment. it's a slow and steady march into the future. sakura discovers this in the aftermath of the fourth shinobi world war.

WARNINGS: major character death

Naruto is the first to go. Even though Sakura hates it more than she thought it was possible to hate a thing, she's also grateful. He doesn't see anyone else on their side die before he does. When he dies, he dies with a smile on his face, thinking that he's saved everyone precious to him, helped unite the Five Great Nations, and ended the threat that Madara and Obito presented.

"Sasuke?" he asks as Sakura works hard to try and heal all the damage to his body.

Sakura glances over to where her other teammate lies. "Tsunade-sama has him." She doesn't say that he'll be fine, because she can't bear to lie to him, even if it'll help ease some of Naruto's concern.

"Good. I'm glad you're both okay," he murmurs. He glances over to where Kurama is sitting a few feet away and grins. "You guys'll be okay, right? People should listen to you more after this."

The Kyuubi makes a dismissive noise and rumbles something that doesn't make it past the sound of blood rushing in Sakura's ears. She feels more than she sees or hears Naruto laugh and speak. And then his chakra flickers out. A moment later, Sasuke follows him, choking to death on his own blood a few feet away.

Kakashi manages to hold out until they get him to one of the hospital tents. Even though Sakura is exhausted and low on chakra, she pours everything she has into trying to save him. But his repeated use of Kamui and his fight with Obito—not to mention his earlier use of Chiyo-baasama's resurrection jutsu on a not-quite-dead Naruto—prove to be too much for his body.

"Sakura—"

"Shut up, sensei."

She refuses to listen to any apologies or reassurances. Even with tears forming in her eyes, she grits her teeth and pushes just a little more into her medical jutsu because this has to work. It has to.

"Make sure someone looks after my pack and their contract, will you?" Kakashi asks.

For a moment, Sakura thinks he's talking to her, but then she feels a hand on her shoulder and hears a voice from behind her. "Of course," Gai says.

The chakra around her hands dissipates and Kakashi's eyes close. Gai's hand carefully steers her away from her sensei's body, towards an empty chair. He squeezes her shoulder in what she supposes is a reassuring gesture, then disappears.

Hours or minutes later—she's not sure which, the empty numbness of shock makes it hard to tell—Sai's face enters her field of vision. He looks faintly confused even as tears streak down his dirt-stained cheeks. "Yamato-taichou is out of surgery. Tsunade-sama says he will survive."

One little bright spot of good news for their team. Three of them will survive this war. Three of them won't.

Sakura feels her face scrunch up as that thought repeats itself over, and over, and over again in her head. She's the last one alive of the original Team Seven. Three of her most precious people are dead. She couldn't do a thing to save them.

It's not until she feels Sai's arms come around her awkwardly that she realizes she's crying. Loud, gasping sobs tear their way out of her. Her entire body trembles as she clings to one of her last remaining teammates and lets the grief wash over her.

During the slow trek back to Konoha, Sakura volunteers to be the one to tell Konohamaru. He deserves to hear it from someone who loved Naruto too.

The shinobi are greeted by loud cheers from the villagers when they enter the gates, and Sakura can't help but think of the reception Naruto got when he defeated Pein. They're all tired and worn, but small smiles cross faces all throughout the crowd of ninja. They may be grieving, but there are things to celebrate.

Sakura almost feels guilty for having to grab Konohamaru and drag him away from the crowd. He takes one look at her face, the sad and apologetic expression, and starts shaking his head. "No. No, he can't be—"

"I'm so sorry," Sakura whispers.

Tears well up in Konohamaru's eyes. He's trembling almost violently and she—she reaches out to grab him in a hug before she thinks the better of it. If only to stop the tremors from taking root in her. His hands clutch at her flak jacket and he buries his face in her shoulder. The breath in his chest hitches and stutters before he lets out a keening noise, starting to sob.

She holds him as he cries and wishes idly that she could feel that anguish again instead of the blankness her grief has settled into for the time being. Being numb isn't something she knows how to deal with. All she does is put one foot in front of the other. No determination, hardly any feeling at all.

But at least she's still moving.

Naruto is given a hero's funeral. He's named Rokudaime Hokage posthumously. "He defeated one of the greatest threats we have ever faced, and he acted like a Kage," Tsunade says. "He deserves this."

His name, along with Kakashi and Sasuke's, are carved into the new memorial stone. All Sakura can think about is their first day of training as Team Seven. There's a slight spark of fondness that ignites somewhere in her chest, but it's not enough to bring color back to the dull gray her life has become.

She moves in with Ino and finds herself slowly drawn into Team Ten's world the way she was when she took the Chuunin Exam with them. They're all shouldering losses as well, but they look out for her. They make sure she's eating and not working too hard, and distract her when she needs a distraction. They make her smile.

Sakura doesn't really think about their reasons for bringing her into their fold. At least, not until one night almost two weeks after they make it home from the war when Ino sneaks into Sakura's room somewhere around three in the morning. She crawls into bed with Sakura like they're kids again and this is just a sleepover.

"Thanks for staying here, Sakura," she whispers.

"Thanks for offering me your spare room," Sakura returns. "It was weird at home. My parents—they know about what happened, but they don't really get it. You know?"

Ino nods and smiles sadly. "Yeah, I know."

They slip into silence. It reigns long enough that Sakura thinks Ino may have fallen asleep. But then she says, out of the blue, "Do you remember that first night you stayed over at my house? When you met my parents for the first time and thought my dad was my mom from the back because he had such great hair?"

A small, embarrassed squeak escapes Sakura. "I wish I didn't!" Ino laughs quietly, as her best friend covers her face with her hands. After a moment of staring up at the ceiling from between her fingers, Sakura keeps talking. "Your dad taught me how to throw shuriken properly."

"Mmn. I remember," Ino says.

"He was a good man." The words feel awkward on Sakura's tongue. Not because they're untrue, but because they don't feel like enough. It seems like such a trite and paltry thing to say.

But Ino just reaches for her hand and squeezes. "I miss him a lot. Him and Shikaku-ojisan. But it's—it's easier when you're around. For all of us, I think. Having someone around that's not as close to it makes it a little easier to bear."

There's nothing she can say in reply to that, so she squeezes Ino's hand. It's a while before either of them fall asleep, but when they do it's with grateful hearts and thoughts of burdens shared and eased.

A couple of weeks after the funerals, she helps Gai clean out Kakashi's apartment. It's the first and last time she's ever there. The next day, she starts sorting through Naruto's things by herself. That's when the dam finally breaks for once and for all.

It's his drawer full of instant ramen of all things that does it. It's such a silly thing and so Naruto that it makes her heart ache. Sakura ends up on his bed, curled into as small a ball as she can force her body into, crying quietly.

It's three in the morning when she wakes, head aching and cheeks tacky with dried tears. She looks out at Naruto's half-boxed apartment and thinks, He wouldn't give up.

She sits up slowly, stares at his bedspread. He loved me, she thinks. He would want me to be happy.

He wouldn't give up.

Grief doesn't end in one moment. It's a slow and steady march forward into the future. But those thoughts are her first steps. Two months later, she takes her next ones when she asks Tsunade for a solo courier mission away from Konoha. Her boys found themselves away from Konoha. And while she's loathe to leave Sai, Yamato, Konohamaru (who has taken to hanging out with her at the hospital at the most inopportune times), and Team Ten, she thinks that maybe it's her turn.

Tsunade smiles sadly and hands her a scroll. It's the first of many.

In the aftermath of the war, the Five Great Shinobi Nations and many of the smaller ones are doing their best to honor the Shinobi Alliance and those who sacrificed their lives so that the world might have a chance at real peace. No one knows how long it will last, but the Kage and Jounin Commanders are committed to trying.

It gives Sakura a chance to see the world. She becomes a regular visitor in most of the Hidden Villages, running messages from the Kage back and forth from place to place. She finds friends and friendly acquaintances everywhere she goes and slowly finds her footing again. And as she finds her feet, she also finds teachers.

It starts in Suna, on an ordinary afternoon. She's sequestered away in Kankuro's workshop during one of the hottest parts of the day, analyzing a new poison he's developing while watching out of the corner of her eye as he tests the mobility of a new puppet.

"How do you get them to stick so completely?" she asks. "The chakra strings, I mean."

The look Kankuro shoots her is a little confused, but mostly amused. "Why? You want to join the Puppet Corps?"

Sakura rolls her eyes. "Of course not. I was just thinking it'd be nice to have something I could use to haul long-distance combatants in range of my fists."

Kankuro laughs and shows her a the basics of how to move people with chakra strings. That's the beginning of her education.

In Kiri, she learns the basics of kenjutsu by sparring with a few people and getting a little sliced up. In Iwa, she learns her chakra nature—lightning. It makes her laugh a little and think of Kakashi. Kumo is where she finally learns the basics of using lightning-based ninjutsu. She'll never have the stamina to use lots of ninjutsu, but it's fun to learn and experiment with.

She picks up a few genjutsu in Ame, and a few more in Kusa. They're all basic ones Konoha already knew about, but they're still interesting. When she gets back to Konoha from those trips, she talks with Kurenai and learns a few more.

She and Kankuro start trading letters regularly, talking about poisons and toxins and other interesting ways to kill people. Temari shows her how even the most delicate looking fan can be turned into a weapon if used properly, even without wind natured chakra.

One afternoon when she's in Kiri, Mei comments on how long Sakura's hair has gotten since she last saw the girl. Somewhat self-consciously, Sakura reaches up to touch the ends and smiles. "Ah, yeah. It has. I'm thinking I should cut it short again."

"That's a shame," the Mizukage says. "You have such beautiful hair."

"Thank you, Mizukage-sama," Sakura says demurely as she stares out over the village. "In all honesty, some days I wish I could keep it long. But it's not all that practical."

She glances over at Mei and realizes just what she's said and to whom she's said it. No one would look at the way Mei dresses and think practical.

The Mizukage laughs as heat rushes into Sakura's cheeks. "That depends entirely on what you consider practical, Sakura. Long hair and beautiful clothing can have their advantages, if you know how to use them right."

The missive for Tsunade doesn't get written until the next day, but Sakura's grateful for the change in plans that afternoon. It's enlightening and freeing, in a way, to talk with Mei. And it's with a small, proud smile that Sakura buys some hair ties once she's back in Konoha.

When she's home between missions, she makes sure to check up on her teammates and friends. If there's room in her pack, she tries to bring home little bits and bobs for people. Once it's a pretty scarf from Kumo that reminded her of Ino. Another time, it's two small stone sculptures of deer for Shikamaru. Sometimes she brings back recipes for Chouji, or artsy things for Sai.

He gives her a perplexed look the first day she barges into his apartment and forces a hand-bound sketchbook into his hands. "What is this?"

"It's a souvenir," Sakura explains. "When civilians go on trips, they sometimes bring back trinkets for their friends and family. I had a little extra space in my bag, so I thought you might like this."

Sai stares down at the sketchbook, a slow smile pulling at his lips. "Thank you, Sakura."

She grins. "You're very welcome, Sai. Can you pass the salt?"

So begins a tradition. The first day or two after a mission, Sakura camps out in Sai's apartment, spending time with him. Sometimes they spend it in silence, each of them occupied with their own tasks while still enjoying the other's company. Sometimes they spend the entire day talking about anything and everything. Either way, both of them are grateful that the bond between them isn't weakening with the dismantling of Team Kakashi.

That's not the only tradition that starts, either. Games of shogi with Shikamaru become a regular thing when she's in town, though she never wins. Sakura swears she gets closer to it every time they play, but she's also pretty sure that smile of Shikamaru's is as mocking as it is fond.

She somehow gets roped into sparring with the remaining Team Gai at least once a week while she's in town. Gai catches her unaware as she walks down the street one morning, and somewhere amid all the boisterous energy, he manages to wrangle her into a training session. Sakura's glad he does. She never works so hard as she does when she's improving her taijutsu with Lee or dodging the endless barrage of Tenten's weapons.

But it's a little odd to her that Gai would even ask in the first place. When she questions him about it one day, he smiles at her a little sadly and says, "Kakashi asked me to look after you."

Sakura's brows come together in a thoughtful frown. "I thought he was asking you to look after his dogs."

Gai laughs. "That too. But you and your team were as close to family as he had. You were as much pack, if you'll excuse the term, as his ninken."

The thought makes warmth spread through her even as it dampens her mood the way thinking of her team always does. It also makes her a lot more patient with a certain honorable grandson of the Third.

After the war, she sees a lot more of him than she ever thought she would. Konohamaru makes a point of barging into her apartment with loud cries of, "Nee-chan!" whenever she's around. It makes Sakura roll her eyes, but she shares with him some of the stories she brings back, and basic techniques she's learned. When he starts getting himself into worse and worse scrapes while trying to become stronger, she teaches him some simple medical ninjutsu.

As it turns out, he naturally has good chakra control and picks up on things almost as quickly as Naruto did. It makes Sakura fairly certain he's going to end up Hachidaime Hokage—if he can keep himself alive that long, that is.

A year and a half after the war, Sakura is promoted to jounin. No one is shocked. In truth, everyone's a little surprised that it took so long for her to get promoted. But when anyone asks Tsunade about it, she just smiles ruefully and shakes her head.

"I offered it earlier, but she wanted to wait," she says. "She wanted to make sure she was ready to let go of the past first."

She never takes on a genin team. It's not that she doesn't like kids, or doesn't have anything to teach. It's just that she's too busy running all across the world, and that's no way to train genin. Besides, she's got her hands full with Konohamaru.

He becomes a chuunin about half a year before Sakura becomes a jounin. And once she's promoted, he demands that Sakura take him on as her apprentice. Sakura laughs in his face.

"Me? Take an apprentice? You're kidding, right?"

It has less to do with him and more to do with her. He understands, but still goes grumbling to Tsunade, who also laughs in his face, but for completely different reasons. And then she promptly assigns Konohamaru to tag along with Sakura on her next courier mission.

They go to Suna and Sakura despairs. Konohamaru has all the self-control Naruto did. Which is to say, very little. It's amusing, until he picks a fight with Temari and gets his ass kicked. He holds his own for the first little while, but she's got years of experience on him. Not to mention that Konohamaru hasn't quite figured out how to engage long-range fighters yet.

Kankuro laughs so hard he cries when Sakura gives him the play-by-play at a casual lunch in the Kazekage's office. Gaara smiles a little from where he sits behind his desk and asks why she isn't taking him on as a student.

"What?" Sakura's so taken aback by the question that she forgets her manners for a moment. She frowns down at her rice and mulls the question over in her head. "I don't know. I guess—I guess I don't want to take Naruto's place."

"I think," Gaara says slowly, "He would be happy that you are looking out for his friends."

Sakura gets hardly any that night. She's too busy thinking about what Gaara said. It leads her to contemplating just what the future holds for her. It's not like she can be a courier all her life, right? She's taking other missions now, but she's got just as much of a reputation as a diplomat as she does a healer and combatant. With a start, she realizes that she doesn't know what she wants out of life. It's a thought that occupies her mind all the way back to Konoha.

"Hey, Ino-Pig?" she asks as they wash dishes together one night after dinner. "What do you want to do with your life?"

Ino glances at Sakura out of the corner of her eye, completely unsurprised by the question. "I want to be good at my job. I want to have a family someday. And I think I'd like to have a genin team eventually. Why? What do you want to do with your life?"

"I want—" Sakura starts. And then she pauses, frowning. "I want to make them proud," she says finally. "And I want to enjoy life and everything it has to offer, the way they can't now."

With a soft smile, Ino reaches over to flick Sakura's seal. "You already do that, Forehead."

It gives her even more to think about. It's another night without sleep. But as the sun starts creeping up over the horizon, Sakura finds her resolve. She marches over to Konohamaru's apartment and breaks in. It's five-thirty in the morning when she rips the blankets away from him and throws open his curtains.

"Listen up! This is how it's gonna be!" She grins and plants her hands on her hips. "I'll take you on as an apprentice on the condition that you promise me two things."

Konohamaru grins and nods excitedly. "What? What do you need me to promise?"

The grin on Sakura's face softens as she ruffles her new student's hair. "Enjoy every moment of life you can, and never go back on your word. That's my way of the ninja, and if you're my student, it's going to have to be yours as well."

They make it official on her twentieth birthday and leave for Kiri the next morning.

She starts with medical ninjutsu. Konohamaru will never be the greatest mednin out there, but it helps with his already impressive control and will come in handy in the future. From there, she passes on the secret of her strength. They spar every morning, working on their taijutsu, and she teaches him diplomacy, history, and tactics every evening.

He finds her working on her secret project one afternoon when they're in Kumo and demands that he be allowed to help her with it. Sakura's skeptical, but it turns out that he actually has some good ideas. Soon enough, Sakura's finished the ninjutsu she's been working on since she first learned her chakra nature in Iwa.

It's on their way home from Kumo two years after they start working together that she gets her first chance to test it. The missing-nin they run into are chuunin level at best, but she's not going to pass up the opportunity to give it a shot. Chakra strings shoot out of her fingers, attaching themselves to major nerve clusters along her enemy's body. It takes more concentration than she hoped it would, but she sends lightning-natured chakra zinging down the strings, yelling out the name of her jutsu as she does.

The man drops like a lead balloon.

Konohamaru finishes off his opponent with a well-placed barrage of shuriken, then turns to give Sakura a weird look. "Claw of White Lightning? Really?"

She smacks him upside the head, scowling. "When you make your own techniques, you can name them whatever you want. Until then, you don't have any room to talk about what I name mine."

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever, nee-chan."

When she turns in her mission report to Tsunade, the Hokage raises a slim eyebrow at her. "Claw of White Lightning? That's a little sentimental, don't you think?"

Sakura doesn't verbalize anything, but the slight embarrassed flush on her cheeks says everything she's refusing to.

Tsunade sighs and smiles. "Kakashi would be honored. Flustered, but honored." She picks another scroll up off her desk and tosses it at Sakura. "Since you and Konohamaru aren't injured, I'm sending you out again in two days."

It's an A-ranked infiltration and retrieval mission. Sai comes with them, and it goes surprisingly well. Neither Sakura nor Konohamaru are really suited for stealth, which makes her wonder why, exactly, Tsunade sent them of all people on this mission. When it all goes off without a hitch, she just shrugs and assumes that she's trying to get them to stretch themselves.

A few weeks later, they're sent to flush a large group of bandits out of a town to the north. After that, they take down a few high-ranked missing-nin. And then it's back to the normal courier missions, protection details, and occasional tussle with riff-raff making things hard for people around Fire country.

It would be something Sakura forgot about after a while, if it weren't for the calculating look the Raikage gives her when she presents him with Tsunade's latest missive. Or the way Mei smiles at her and says how her shishou must be so proud of her hard work. (She glances over at Konohamaru at that. He shrugs, just as confused as she is.) When Gaara makes a comment along the lines of how Konoha was very lucky to have her, she knows something is up.

The three day trip back to Konoha from Suna is filled with discussion between her and her student. Konohamaru takes great delight in coming up with increasingly bizarre reasons for why they could be saying things like that.

"Maybe they think you're an alien from the moon and are jealous of the way Konoha's got an awesomely powerful and hot alien babe for one of their jounin," Konohamaru says as they enter Tsunade's office.

Sakura rolls her eyes and opens her mouth to retort, but Tsunade cuts her off.

"Or maybe I'm getting ready to offer her a job."

That makes both Sakura and Konohamaru both freeze in shock. Tsunade smiles and rests her chin on her hands. As the implications of what she's saying set in, the pair go slack-jawed.

"Don't look so surprised, Sakura!" she laughs. "You were trained by one of the Sannin and impressed everyone with your strength and healing abilities during the war. Then you continued to learn and improve after you became a well-known powerhouse. You surpassed me a while ago."

Sakura's mouth opens and closes a few times as she tries to finds words. "You want to make me Hokage?"

Tsunade nods. "You're smart, well-respected, and qualified. The other Kage can work well with you. And, frankly, you'd be damn good at it. Plus," she adds as she rifles through the papers on her desk. "Shikamaru likes you. He won't sigh and whine if you're who he has to work with. It'll be great."

To say that she passes through the rest of her day in a shocked daze would be an understatement. She goes home to the apartment she shares with Ino and sits on the couch, thinking, until her roommate comes home with Shikamaru and Chouji in tow. That's when she snaps out of it.

She's up and across the room in two strides, grabbing Shikamaru by the shirt and shaking him. "Why didn't you tell me?!"

Shikamaru just laughs, the bastard. "She ordered me not to! What was I supposed to do, risk Godaime-sama's wrath?"

"Yes!"

He pries her hands off of his shirt and smirks at her. "Has she told you when it's happening?"

Sakura sighs and runs a hair through her bang. "There's no set date yet. She says she wants to put be through Hokage boot camp first." A scowl crosses her face at the thought. "If it's anything like what we did when she first started training me, I'm not sure I'll survive."

She does survive, but she spends the better part of the first month exhausted. It's a lot more office work than she was expecting, and while she's good at it, it makes her wonder why she accepted the job. She still gets to train with Konohamaru every day. She still gets to exercise her skills and muscles, but she misses her courier missions. Misses feeling the climates change as she moved from country to country. Misses foods that aren't around in Konoha. Misses the feeling of freedom.

"It gets easier," Tsunade tells her one night over sake. "You'll always miss it a little bit, but this job... It's more rewarding than you know, Sakura."

One of the things she does like about being in Konoha so much is getting to visit the cenotaph on a regular basis. She swore to herself in the first weeks after the war that she wouldn't turn into Kakashi. She wouldn't end up so attached to the past that she sometimes had a hard time seeing the future. But it's nice, in a strange way, to be able to look over the names of the people she loved and think of them watching over her. It's nice to be able to look up at the mountain every morning and see Naruto's face grinning down at her.

"I hope you're happy looking down at us today," she says one morning. Dawn is just starting to seep over the horizon and the morning dew wets her feet. "I like to think you'd all be proud of me for coming this far. For doing this."

Her fingers trace Naruto's name, then Kakashi's, then Sasuke's. Footsteps come up behind her and she doesn't need to turn to know that it's her wayward student. "Jounin trials are in a month. You ready to take them?"

"You know I am, Sakura-neechan," Konohamaru says. And she does. He's been ready for a while, truth be told. But they've enjoyed traveling together too much to let go of their little arrangement. "You'll still teach me stuff when you're not dealing with paperwork, right?"

Sakura laughs. "You know I will. And you'll learn a lot out there on your own, too."

She stands, brushing lint off her pants, and smiles back at Konohamaru. He grins and slings an arm over her shoulders—something he's taken great enjoyment in doing ever since he grew tall enough to do it—and kisses her on the cheek. "Don't be nervous. You'll be a great Hokage. And Naruto-niichan would be proud of you."

With a smile, she ruffles his hair. "He'd be proud of you too, Konohamaru."

They walk to her office together, taking their time and talking the whole way. It's not about anything important—just gossip about what friends and teammates are doing. They eat breakfast with Tsunade and Shikamaru, taking some time to finalize the details of the rest of the day.

At noon, Sakura stands proudly on the balcony and looks out over the people who have congregated on the streets in front of her. She sees Hinata, Kiba, and Shino standing together. Konohamaru grins up at her from where he stands with Moegi and Udon. Shikamaru is slouching behind her, but Ino and Chouji are standing right in the thick of the crowd, smiling so big Sakura thinks their cheeks must hurt. She sees Gai and Lee crying off to one side, and Tenten shaking her head at her teammates. Sai and Yamato are hidden in the shadows behind her, now her loyal guards, and their presence is a comfort.

Sakura's heart swells. She loves these people. And she loves this village. As much as she knows she will miss traveling, it's in this moment that she realizes how much she missed Konoha when she was away. In this moment, she knows how happy she's going to be staying here for the foreseeable future, watching the village change and grow with her.

It's six years to the day after the war ended. Naruto would have turned twenty-three today. She looks to the mountain, to his face. She feels Tsunade's proud smile at her back. It's probably a trick of the breeze, but she can almost feel Kakashi's hand on her shoulder and hear Sasuke's small, amused, "Hn."

A smile slowly spreads across her face. Her head bows, the hat casting a shadow across her face for a moment before she takes it off and holds it up in front of her, much the way her shishou did at her inauguration.

"From today on, I will proudly govern the village of Konoha as the Nanadaime Hokage!"

The village cheers. But it's the smiles of her friends, and the pride she can imagine on her teammates' faces that bring tears of joy to her eyes.