Darkest Before Dawn

A/N: This story was started when I was 13 years old and ended when I was 15 years old. Please try to understand all the mistakes and misgivings as things I didn't understand when I was younger, and in the future I will be going through these chapters trying to rectify those mistakes. Thank you for understanding!

August 4, 2018

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Sometimes, I envy Naruto and Sasuke. Whenever they cry, feel pain, break down... they have people to fall back on. People that will never leave them. Their families.

   Naruto's father is the Fourth Hokage, Minato- a man respected by everyone in Konoha. If not his father, then he had his mother to turn to. Kushina, a beautiful red-haired woman with a fiery spirit and the person Naruto probably got his personality from. It didn't matter if he held the Kyuubi inside. Nobody could ever hate the Fourth's son. Nobody could ever hate Naruto Namikaze.

   Then there was Sasuke. He had an entire clan of skilled ninja at his back. If that didn't help, he'd always have his older brother, Itachi. It was no secret that Itachi loved his little brother, and would stop at nothing to ensure Sasuke's safety. He complains to me sometimes, saying that he's always coddled, always worried on.

At least he had a family.

   Me, I have nothing. When I was five, my parents went on a mission and never returned. Days later, I was told that they were found deep in Grass Country- dead. It was expected for me to be transferred to an orphanage or foster home, but I declined. I didn't want to be taken care of by anyone else besides my parents. Hokage-sama allowed me to live alone and off the funds my parents had saved for me in the future.

   It was lonely the first few nights. Sometimes I would wake up from a nightmare and run around the apartment trying to find my mom or my dad. Then I would remember. They were dead. Gone. And they wouldn't come back. I would crawl back into bed, wrap myself in my sheets, and cry myself to sleep.

   When I turned eight, I stopped crying myself to sleep. In fact, I stopped crying over every little thing, then joined the Academy. Through my years studying to be a shinobi, I had always been the smartest one in class. But it didn't matter. I was an outcast who didn't make any friends save for Ino Yamanaka, Hinata Hyuuga, and Naruto Namikaze.

   The year I turned twelve, I graduated the Academy and was placed on Team 7 with Naruto, Sasuke Uchiha, and Kakashi Hatake. Kakashi-sensei didn't focus on me, of course. He focused on the son of the Hokage and the second son of the main Uchiha household. A year passed, we were made chuunin, and I was alone once again.

   Naruto trained with his father's old sensei, Jiraiya. Sasuke trained with Jiraiya's best friend, Orochimaru. Me... nothing happened with me. When my so called teammates had left me in the dust, I had done the only thing I could do.

   My name is Sakura Haruno.

   And I left Konoha.