Days after her funeral, he visited her grave. Her parents visited on the weekends and two others replaced the flowers every morning, and so he stopped by during the evening with a bundle of white lilies.
"I got these from Ino, I hope you like 'em," he said as he set them down. He stared at the grave, uncertain, before sighing and laying himself down on the grass. He was never that much of a conversation starter, even for the living. Asuma's visits were full of whispered sighs and hypothetical games of chess and checkers.
"I know we weren't really friends, but, umm," he sighed. "I don't know, it's just nice to pay your respects."
He leaned further into the grass. Maybe he shouldn't have come here. There were four other people who visited this grave out of the fifty friends Sakura knew. Maybe he, a part of that silent and forgetful fifty, should have saved the ten he used for those flowers (as the fifty did).
But the ten was gone and the flowers were plucked and he had no plans nonetheless so why not spend it at a dead girl's bed staring at the darkening clouds? He made himself comfortable. Dinner was not for a few more hours.
The sky was darkening and the clouds were dimming down until the stars could peek through, thus ending his cloud-watching fun. He sat up, eyes locked onto the new grave, and sighed.
a great friend, comrade, and hero
It was the generic subtitle, carved into the graves of any shinobi without a spouse, a clan, or a title to remember them by. Sakura died so early yet so valiantly, she was a medic, a life-savior, an apprentice of a Sannin; she was kind and generous and a person more than the ambiguous title of a great friend, comrade, and hero. But maybe she died too early, lived too short on her path to honour--maybe, if she had lived another day more, the Hokage would have remembered something more memorable to etch on her grave.
Shikamaru got up and left because even then, if she lived for another day or year, it would likely not change a thing. Stone is stone and days go dark and Naruto's memory of a dead friend is that of a fragile, falling call.
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empathy (rewritten 2019)
Fanficthe fourth shinobi war is over. konoha, among the other villages, have settled into a peaceful era of recovery and nonviolence. but years after the war and years into their recovery, on a spring march day, sakura haruno decides. and the journey of h...
