Riding Waves

Rescuing Sasuke

     Recovering from a traumatic experience takes time, as Sarah found out from a young age. Her sessions with Inoichi Yamanaka quickly resumed after the encounter with Itachi and Kisame. Despite the fact that she survived, Sarah still felt bad about what happened to Kakashi.

     He took on Itachi's genjutsu himself, is currently under mental duress from the whole encounter, and is still laying in a hospital bed right now as she speaks. Despite Sarah's previous assumptions about him, she now has a newfound respect for her teacher.

     She managed to stir Sasuke away from his clans Curse of Hatred temporarily, advising him to attend more therapy sessions and not push himself further into training. Sarah knows that Itachi is a huge trigger for her male teammate, one that could've made him spiral had she not stepped in.

     "You're traumatized Sasuke. What Itachi did to you is not right. No matter how many therapy sessions you go to you'll never be able to fully recover from the trauma of that night."

     "How are you able to overcome it?" Sasuke asked her.

     "It's hard," Sarah responded, "I'm still not over from everything that happened to me...and I don't think I'll ever be able to overcome it. Healing isn't linear, Sasuke, it takes time..."

     "I hate him..." Sasuke gritted his teeth, "I fucking hate him..."

     She understood how he was feeling. For the longest time she absolutely hated everyone who contributed to her suffering. Even if they're all dead now she still remembered everything that had happened to her. Eight years of her life, down the drain.
  
     Recovering from trauma is hard. She still has to deal with the effects of it to this day.

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     "Sarah-chan! You're back from the hospital!" Naruto said as he let go of Sasuke.

     "Yeah but my apartment was taken from me by the Hokage along with my experiments."

     Naruto grimaced, "Experiments?!?"

     "Well that explains the markings on your arm," Sasuke pointed out.

     "That's from something else, but yes I did run experiments in my apartment. Most of them were relatively harmless..I guess? I mean..I couldn't exactly practice healing in a hospital at the time.."

     "Harmless? Your whole arm is bandaged up! You spent three days in the hospital recovering from being poisoned!" Naruto exclaimed.

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     "You're not damaged Sarah, you're just traumatized." Sasuke responded.

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     She was glad people were able to step in before it got worse. Now she still tests out poisons on herself (a bad habit she still gets reprimanded for), but it's in moderation and someone's always nearby watching her. Kakashi isn't pleased but he doesn't need to know where she keeps her secret stash at.

     Sarah chuckled at the thought of Kakashi finding her stash of poisonous herbs. He wouldn't even know what half of them are (he would probably just take them and make her attend more therapy sessions). Even if they all had their vices Sarah knew she could count on her teammates to protect her.