The first thing she could taste was blood. She couldn't see the sky, the bodies around her; the screams and exploding of landmines around her were but a distant noise.

Sakura Haruno was just barely living. She had just finished training under the Godaime Hokage so that she could keep up with her idiot teammates, so that she could keep her promise to Naruto. Dear sunchild Naruto, the boy who was her brother- he would've moved the world for her if she had just asked. He was coming home in three days- I should've loved him- he's the one I should've loved. Sorry Naruto, maybe in the next life.

She wanted her mom and her dad- the three of them curled close-

At age three, Sakura was small and quiet and lonely, but she was brilliant too. Mebuki had never met a child who would so easily rip through the piles of books that lined the crook of her father's study, just by the far window that overlooked the civilian sector of the village which was shrouded in sunlight and warmth.

She leaned against the frame and stared at her tiny daughter who, just last week, had begged to enroll in the academy. Her heart was heavy- she didn't want her daughter to be a killer, some soulless husk of a monster devoted to the village. She didn't want that life for her daughter.

Kizashi strolled past her through the door frame to his daughter.

There was an obvious tension that sparked from the topic of the academy, they spent that night and the next and the next arguing into each early morning and they hadn't slept in the same bed since.

"Daddy!"

Sakura gently put down the book on the window sill and shot into her father's arms with a bright smile. The duo laughed as he spun her around the air, loop after loop until they were dizzy and had fallen, curled onto the floor. Tiny pale hands reached out to the door frame, wiggling fingers attached to those large, bright sea glass eyes, red cheeks covered in freckles, the lopsided smile.

"Mama! Mama!" her daughter called from the floor, breathless and leaning side to side in her father's arms.

Mebuki lips curled up at the look on her daughters face and made her way toward the crumpled pair. Stealing a glance at her husband with his endless optimism written on his face, Mebuki felt for the first time that everything was going to be alright.

And wrapped in longing that Sakura could never get back-

She wanted Ino. Her eternal rival, her best friend, the ribbon in her hair, the lipstick smeared on her cheek.

But they weren't here right now.

Now her story was ending all wrong- she didn't get the guy, she didn't have his children like she desired, she wasn't going to survive the next five minutes. Sakura was a shinobi statistic by dying at the ripe age of fifteen.

It didn't help to breathe- Sakura's could hear the rasp of her throat as she tried to take shallow breaths and cataloged her injuries. Pierced lungs, caved ribcage, organ failure- the list went on and on. There was nothing she could do. I can't heal this much. I'm useless even now.

So I guess I as much a cry baby in death as I was in life, she thought morbidly.

Eyes set forward, tears pooling and falling down her numb face, she saw the sky. The colors dancing together in a dust of orange, pink, purple as the sun sank through the tree line.

I don't want to die alone, she thought. She wanted to die old and gray in her bed, surrounded by her loved ones. Please, please, don't let me go- not like this.

It was hard to accept that a once beloved team member- her precious Sasuke, the boy she had poured her soul and heart into- would tear through the village, his once home where the people whom loved him thrived, where I would have done anything for him and put the blade of his sword through her.

If I ever get another chance, if I ever take another breathe- I'll never let this happen again-

The sky was fading and she couldn't fucking breathe goddamit- please, please not like this-

On the edge of her vision, just barely visible, a tan hand reached for her as everything went black.

Sakura Haruno died as the daylight faded into night.