In Eternity I Found You

A/N: The fate of a lot of side characters will be left open to interpretation. I guess this is SasuSaku, although the focus is not romantic and they don't really do anything. Slight NaruSaku except not really. NaruHina although there's like one sentence on it.

Basically Sakura dies and wakes up in the afterlife and meets Sasuke. Very contemplative story, without much of a plot.

Team 7 might seem OOC, but they're all either old or dead or both. That's gotta change your personality.

Disclaimer: All Naruto creds to Kishimoto. Song creds to T-Swizzle, "Holy Ground"

Sakura was dying.

She never really thought it would be this way, not at all. Like her fellow shinobi, she was guilty of delusions of grandeur; honorable deaths that must be so because sacrifice and bravery and a tragic ending somehow softened the harsh edges of a kunai in your stomach.

Even though it never really felt that way when you watched others go down in a spray of blood.

But here Sakura was, barely over 50, a retired kunoichi dying of consumption. Had it been 10, 20, 30 years ago, she would've cried from the unfairness of it all; so much of the world to see, so many things to do. But the gray streaks in her hair and the lines around her eyes told the outsider that she did not want to see anymore of the cruel, cruel world and all its suffering her once-young, idealistic mind wanted to change, but the truth of the matter was everyone killed and everyone believed they were the good side but they were all wrong and she just felt so, so tired…

A soft knocking came at her door.

"Come in," she said, green eyes not turning away from the ordinary building some distance from her window she had been staring at fixatedly for about half an hour. She was propped against her old, worn-down chair, blankets draped over her thin but not yet frail figure.

"Sakura." The figure behind her lightly sat down on her bed.

"Hokage-sama." She said, not turning her head. "Forgive me, I'd bow but I've found I cannot get up from this chair without using all of my energy." A small sigh escaped from the lips of her visitor.

"Sakura, how long have you been sitting there? You should rest in your bed." Without warning, strong arms encircled her body like a mother carrying an infant, and lifted her as if she was a feather and gently laid her down on her bed. In her younger years, she would've knocked out the teeth of anyone who dared to treat her like this, like some sort of damsel in distress, but right-now she was too bone-weary to protest. She was dying, for heaven's sake.

She did not utter a word as her blond guest carefully draped bed sheets over her frame. Sakura almost laughed at their current situation; she certainly did not picture her old age like this, that was for sure.

Blue eyes met her green ones. Blue eyes that had laugh lines and were calmer in their later years, but still full of the spirit and good nature she'd found solace in many a nightmare-filled and grieving nights. They were now creased with worry.

"Naruto-kun, I'm dying." It was a slip of the tongue, but she knew that if she said "Rokudaime-sama" or something it would feel way too much like she was legally registering her death.

The Hokage opened and closed his mouth several times, and ended up saying a simple, "I know." His eyes were sad, but they were an almost-soothing sadness, thankfully not like the shell-shocked horror or deep grief Sakura had seen a few, terrible times in her life upon Naruto's face.

"I'm going to die in my sleep tonight." She said it in all seriousness, but to her mild indignance, her old friend laughed. "I have a pretty accurate feeling about these things, excuse you, Hokage-sama. I'd make a bet, but I don't think I'll be alive to see it through."

"Hush, I believe you." He raised a hand to tuck a strand of wayward hair behind her ear. It was a platonic gesture, but Sakura felt a tiny tinge of regret that it wasn't more. It could have been, once upon a time. But Naruto had led a full life without her but instead a dark-haired Hyuuga by his side, with children and now grandchildren too. She was happy for him, she really was. And she'd been sad for him too, when Hinata died in childbirth (that night their usual roles reversed and Sakura discovered the comfort in comforting others) and little Uzumaki Kai, barely in his teens, sacrificed himself on a mission trip.

The thought that she could've had this happiness too, shared in Naruto's life as more than his closest friend sometimes left a bitter taste in her mouth. But Sakura knew she would never have loved the endearing blond as fully as he deserved, because always, always, always, a cocky, sullen black-haired young man resided in the back of her mind. Whether or not she wanted him there.

"Naruto, please give all my possessions to the village; weapons and medical books don't do much for a corpse, but will for a town. Tell little Sakura to be good and thank Kami-sama she has blond genes instead of pink-hair genes everyday. And don't you dare neglect the civilian schools like some of our past Hokages did; goodness knows they learn more in there than the Academy does. Oh, and the hospital's running low on new students these days. Tell those idiotic male genin that medicine is not a 'girls only' field, just that females tend to be smarter and egotistic males comfort themselves with such lies." The blond's eyes were filling up with something suspiciously like tears, but Sakura felt nothing but an overwhelming peace. Or maybe it was the tiredness again. "I will miss you, Naruto." She said softly, grabbing his callused hands with hers.

"I will miss you too, Sakura." He bent down to kiss her forehead, a hot tear splashing onto her cheek. Her heart began to ache, but she reprimanded herself. He's the only one you'll be leaving behind, and he's far from alone. There is no need to grieve.

She closed her eyes.

It must've been only a second before she opened them again, because Sakura felt like all she'd done was blink. She was still lying down, and what felt like morning sunlight was beginning to blind her groggy eyes.

Am I still alive? Much to her exasperated amusement, she felt a twinge of disappointment at the possibility. She had gotten just a little more cynical and bitter as consumption wasted away at her body but… okay if she was honest with herself, circa age 50 Sakura was not exactly a joy to be around.

But then she saw the endless trees stretched around her, their leaves entangled above her head to give the light a green filter. The afterlife is just a giant forest? She'd imagined it to be a tad more exciting. She propped herself to her feet, and zeroed in on what sounded like rushing water in the eastern direction.

"I'll just follow that brook or river or whatever it may be downstream, and go from there." She muttered to herself. This was what people usually did when they woke up in strange forests, as far as she remembered from novels she read.

She walked for a good 10 minutes, before the little stream came into clear view. It was picturesque, the type mushy poets wrote about. Vivacious taste of spring and all that.

Sakura bent down to feel the water, and stilled at the reflection that met her. Slowly, she brought up a hand to her face.

Smooth as if she'd died a teenager. Her finger drifted to her temple, and her suspicions were confirmed; the knotted scar from the Third Shinobi War was gone. For the first time, she looked down at her body. Lean and fit, the body of someone in their golden years, their 20's, not an aging old lady dying of consumption. Er, make that dead of consumption.

She looked down at her clothes. She had a very hazy memory, but they were definitely not the ones she'd died in. It was a simple-cut dress, in the exact shade of red she used to wear before Konoha gossip started condemning a certain pink-haired woman for dressing a tad too young for her age. Well, she'd missed this color immensely, so who was she to complain?

"Well… now what?" she said out loud. No one and nothing answered. Evidently, this forest was completely devoid of animal life. Or so it seemed, because Sakura distinctly remembered that forest could not flourish like this one did without some sort of bugs. But then again, this was the afterlife.

She was struck with a sudden panic. What if she was doomed to wander alone for all eternity in this place? Was this the hell she'd been condemned to? It was a sort of old running joke that all shinobi went to hell, but there were a hell lot of things they did that warranted such a fate in the afterlife.

Sakura was so caught-up in her musings she did not notice a figure approaching from the opposite side of the brook until they/it was beginning to emerge from the shadows. Suddenly struck with a most uncharacteristic fear of the paranormal, she closed her eyes and began to pray fervently that it was not a goblin or a ghost or anything but a nice, normal human. Although it was a pretty dress, her outfit did not seem to have any hidden weapons.

She shut her eyes tightly, even as the figure got closer and closer, their/its footsteps making a soft rustling noise on the ground. They/it came to a stop, right before the brook. Sakura crossed her heart.

"What are you doing, Sakura?" a deep, masculine voice intoned with amusement inquired. She stiffened. The voice rang a bell in the back of her mind, but she could not place it. But it did not matter, for this stranger was laughing at her. And forgot the proper suffix after her name too. But did she dare to open her eyes? Maybe it was a goblin after all, just waiting to eat her. Yep, she knew it must be. Not opening MY eyes.

"State your name, O Being One." She tried to say with as much dignity as possible. Her eyes were squeezed shut and the O Being One had a quite unusual urge to burst into laughter.

"Why don't you open your eyes? Then there won't be any need for that."

"I'm not that naïve, O Being One." She heard an oddly familiar sigh from across the brook, but still kept her eyes tightly shut. Who knew what tricks supernatural creatures had up their sleeves; she was not one for taking chances.

But maybe… no do not even think of thinking that. She forcefully repressed the rising sensation in her stomach, carefully wiping her thinking slate blank.

She was left no time to recover from the pure shock as the figure moved from the other side of the little river to just behind her in a split second.

The déjà vu began to overwhelmed her, and the dreadful yet anticipating feeling in her stomach swelled up again.

"Remember this, Sakura?" the voice murmured. Her fists clenched.

Sakura might sometimes wallow in a pit of denial, but she was no fool. Some truths, no matter how unpleasant, had to be faced.

She turned and took the tiniest step back, and in the span of an eternity she opened her eyes to the blackest black, beautiful eyes she'd tried her entire life to forget. To say she failed was an understatement.

And then she punched him.

"Is that how they say 'hello' in the real world these days?" Sasuke's voice was seething with sarcasm, and Sakura bit back a self-satisfied smirk. She'd never have been able to land one on him like that, back in the day. And having retired missions years and years before she died, the sweet crunch of her enemies' bones as she landed her strength-specialized attacks had not been heard in years. And she missed it like hell.

"My bad, I thought you were a goblin and acted in self-defense." She said innocently, as she applied healing chakra to the flowering bruise on his eye and cheek. He grunted a disbelieving "hn", and they settled into a silence that was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable. Sakura's mind badly wanted to think about... things, but decades of practice abled her to repress it all and focus on her healing.

In a span of time much too short, she was done. Now what? Sakura found her social skills had all but left her. So she did the first completely implausible thing that came to her mind; she ran away.

Or rather, she just crossed the brook and stopped before she made a complete fool of herself.

In a second, Sasuke was after her; he reached out a hand, but Sakura emitted such killing intent he stopped and dropped his arm to his side. Sakura smiled twistedly at the irony of it all. What I would've given for you to chase me like this a lifetime ago…

"Kindly stay on the other side, please." She managed to mutter out, her back still to him. After a moment's hesitation, Sasuke obliged without as much as a grumble. It was odd; this man never blindly listened to orders. But here he was, granting her admittedly childish requests.

"Why are you doing this?" she said, carefully not looking at him. In the corner of her eye, she watched him casually stuff his hands in his pockets, assuming the graceful yet bored stance of his youth. And from the tiny bit she'd observed, he was in his youth. Or at least appeared to be. He was dressed in a simple black shirt and pants, making him look almost innocent. Which was more misleading than a quiet Naruto. And unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), the afterlife hadn't removed any of his easy grace or beauty.

"I could ask the same of you." Was his elusive reply. She gritted her teeth; she was going to wrestle answers out of this man, if it was the second death of her. She'd waited an entire lifetime for this. Never mind that this was the last scenario on earth she'd imagined as the afterlife.

"Why did you seek me out? Or did you just… accidentally stumble upon me?" He paused.

"Let's walk and talk." He replied, and motioned downstream. "There's somewhere we have to go, eventually." Sakura breathed out slowly through her nostrils, quilling her rising impatience.

"Fine then, as you wish."

"So…what's at the end of this stream? Do you know?"

"A place." Sakura rolled her eyes.

"You've always been so specific and helpful, I'm grateful to Kami-sama that you're the first person I encountered in this disorienting place. Yep, you are the most helpful guide ever."

"You got more sarcastic. Was life unkind to you?" Sasuke cast a side-glance at his companion, whose mouth hardened slightly.

"Not more or less than any average ninja." But I took it harder, because everyone was gone. Including you.

"How/when did you die?"

"In my fifties. Consumption." Sakura tilted her head. "Did you not know?"

"Hn? In the afterlife, time passes in a very different way than on earth. And we know nothing about what's happening there, except the bits the newly dead tell us."

"Ah. Specifics about what's at the end of this stream?" she inquired. It better not be some sort of kami judge person, because she'd actually prefer roaming this forest with Sasuke to that. Which should say a lot.

He slowed down fractionally. "People. People you know, and people you don't know." The answer was elusive, but Sakura drew in her breath anyways. Kakashi-sensei. Tsunade-sensei. Okaa-san and Otou-san. My classmates.

As if reading her mind, Sasuke added, "All the people you grieved for your entire life." An unreadable smile crossed his mouth. "This is the best part about death. It makes up for the otherwise boring existence."

For the first time since she'd… died, Sakura looked at the man walking on the other side of the brook. There was something different in his attitude. Well, he wasn't sneering at her like his genin days, and he wasn't trying to kill her like his missing-nin days. The confidence in his stride was still there, although it no longer spoke of arrogance. Something… was Sasuke actually… relaxed? Happy?

"Sasuke, are you happy?" She blurted out, and immediately regretted it. Surely this closed-off young man would never answer such a probing question. Which was why his plain, straightforward response shocked her.

"Yes, I am."

There are a great many things human beings say that they would've been better off not.

But there are still more things people never say, that end up consuming them from the inside.

Sakura had an overflowing amount of the latter, a lot of them dealing with Sasuke. But he'd gone and died at the hands of Madara before she had a chance to say any of them. It should've been a comfort that he'd switched his path before he died, but nothing really eases grief but time.

But here he was, in all his Sasuke-ness minus the angst and anger, and she could say those things.

Yet Sakura found she could not find a single one important enough to fill this silence.

She came to a stop, and turned to face the infuriatingly attractive young man across the brook. He mimicked her actions, looking at her questioningly.

"Sakura?" His voice saying her name sent shivers down her spine, but she'd grown accustomed to it.

In a flash, she crossed the river and came face to face with Sasuke. He looked evenly back at her.

"I-" I love you? Miss you? Misunderstood you? No, those were not the right words.

"I forgive you."

As Sakura was to discover, death washed away all the past life's anxieties and grudges and hatred, because to carry that load through eternity could kill a person a second time.

They walked onward, down that windy little brook, silence wrapping their newfound ease.

There would be endless time later for the talking.

And right there where we stood, was holy ground.