Without Sasuke, the walk back to the Uchiha District felt almost unbearably lonely to Sakura. After every mission, they would walk home side by side before saying goodbye and entering their respective houses, and she would carry that warm, fuzzy glow inside her all throughout the evening.
When dusk fell, she would occasionally glance through her bedroom window as the lights blinked on and off in each room of Sasuke's lonely home while he went about his nightly routine, and she would only slip into bed once every light had gone out, comforted by the quiet certainty that they would wake at the same hour the following day.
But no more.
Sakura checked the mailbox as she trudged up to her house. It was stuffed with circulars advertising supermarket specials, and curiously, there was also an unmarked envelope addressed to her. Opening it, she discovered a letter from Killer Bee, complete with a short rap in her honour and an invitation to the grand opening of Kumogakure's new civil rights museum.
"So, is this what you were up to, Bee?" Sakura muttered to herself as she tore up the letter and invitation to shreds without bothering to read past the first rhyme. "Ditching the invasion force to post a letter to me? How brave of you to disobey the Raikage's orders..."
Sakura was certain that the moment she stepped into Kumogakure, Bee's guest or not, A would tear her to shreds and scatter her to the four winds… just as she had just done to this letter.
"What the…"
Sakura couldn't quite put her finger on it, but something about her house felt off. Maybe it was the way the door had been taken off its hinges, or maybe it was the way her corner bedroom window was boarded up.
"Oh, you're back, Sakura-chan!" her dad called, waving at her. "You're a strong girl; gimme a hand with this, would you?"
Sakura rushed to hold up the door, while Kizashi produced a screwdriver and four screws. He went down on his knees and began screwing in the door hinges.
"What happened to the house, dad?" Sakura asked. "It almost looks like someone kicked in the front door."
"Well, that's because that's exactly what happened!" Kizashi's voice called from somewhere out of sight, beneath Sakura's bustline. "Just the other day, right after you appeared in the sky, sweetie. Whoo-wee, were we ever surprised when that happened! You know, the neighbours from across the street even came by to ask if it was really you."
Sakura's heart leapt into her throat.
"And then?"
"And then some masked fellows, the ANBU, I think they're called? They kicked down the front door, shocked us and the neighbours half to death, really," Kizashi rambled on. "They asked us where your room was, and… sweetie, where are you going!?"
Sakura dropped the door and jumped over her father. She ran up the stairs two steps at a time to her room, and she clapped her hands to her mouth and gasped.
It looked like someone had taken an axe to her bedroom. Not even a single floorboard or piece of furniture had been spared; her bed and her wardrobe were in pieces, her clothes were torn and strewn about haphazardly in piles of broken wood, and…
"Tenpuramaru!" Sakura shrieked.
Her pet goldfish lay dead on the ground, his fishbowl lying in pieces around him.
Tears streaked down her face as she sank to her knees, feeling more lost than ever. While she didn't have particularly fond memories of the ugly fish himself, she did treasure the memories of the day she had won him at a goldfish-scooping stall.
It had been right after Team 7 had vanquished the boss of those foreign invaders from overseas, who had come to the shinobi continent searching for Gelel Stones. The rescued villagers had invited them to the autumn harvest festival, and she had had fun with Naruto and Sasuke… it was the first time she had seen Sasuke smile again after his first rematch against Itachi in Shukuba Town.
"I thought you'd at least live to see Pain's invasion," Sakura sobbed, cradling the lifeless orange fish in her palm. "Damn it, even Jiraiya's outlived you, this is pathetic…"
Sakura's eyes widened in realisation.
"No, no, no!"
The treasures she had collected over her many adventures! Most importantly, the Gelel Stone she'd hidden under the floorboards was gone…! And so was the scroll containing the demon Mōryō, which she'd transformed into a frog!
Whoever had done this now had… no, she knew exactly who had done this.
"Sakura, dear, is that you?"
Upon hearing her mother's voice, Sakura stood up and looked behind her.
"Oh, this?" Mebuki said, tilting her head. She was holding a bloody steak to her blackened eye. "It's nothing, really… I got into a little scuffle with those ANBU fellows when they started tearing up your room… dear? Is everything all right?"
No, everything was most certainly not all right.
Home was supposed to be safe. That's why Sakura went on all these missions, to keep her home, the Hidden Leaf, safe. Strangers were not supposed to go rooting through her things without permission, stealing her precious treasures, killing her pets, andHITTING HER FUCKING MUM!
Danzō trying to kidnap her was one thing; Sakura was mild-mannered, she could live with that.
Now that she thought about it, she did remember getting pricked by a mosquito that day, so maybe that was how Orochimaru had obtained her DNA, through his backdoor deals with Danzō… so, helping Orochimaru create a clone of her without her permission, which had almost resulted in war… fine, war had been averted after all, so she could also live with that, even though she wasn't happy with it.
Then, Danzō had sicced Itachi on her, and she had been forced to resort to the Susano'o to protect herself, at the cost of temporary blindness… but her vision had fully recovered within a few days, so she could still live with that.
But this?
Danzō had gone too far, this time. Forget impeaching him with Shikamaru's help; she would not be satisfied until she had twisted off his head with her own two hands. Her Uchiha blood was boiling, screaming for revenge.
Sakura stormed down the stairs past Mebuki, strode past Kizashi, and plopped down in the lotus position on the front steps. She closed her eyes, and blue make-up appeared around them as she entered Sage Mode. She cast her senses across the village and even hundreds of kilometres beyond, and…
She opened her eyes.
Danzō was nowhere to be found within her sensing range, but she had detected a sensing barrier deep underground on the opposite side of the village, far from the Uchiha and Hyūga compounds. Its primary function seemed to be cloaking any chakra signatures contained within it, which would be enough to evade the senses of most sensor-nin searching from the outside.
But to Sakura's Sage senses, the barrier appeared as one vast, suspicious, bubble-shaped void, a hollow in the net of consciousness she had cast, where her senses were simply not permitted to pass.
Deep down, Sakura knew the smart thing to do would be to wait until Danzō appeared within her sensing range, to avoid alerting him in case he was not home right now, and if she wanted to be truly smart about it, she knew she ought to stick to the original plan…
But Sakura was not thinking rationally any more.
"Earth Style: Startling Earth Escape!"
Before her parents' bewildered eyes, she sank into the ground.