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I’ve been waiting a lifetime for you, Cherry.
Those were the words lazily scrawled on Sakura Haruno’s heart. They were supposedly the first words that her soulmate would say to her. The handwriting was unfamiliar, though beautiful to look at. Everyone was born with their soulmate’s first words to them on their body. The location depended on the person, but had significant meaning to their relationship with their soulmate. Some people’s marks were on their shoulder, simply because the first time they met their soulmate they had accidentally shoulder checked them. Or on their foot, because they had followed their soulmate through every path. It was a truly unique thing to each and every person.
Sakura had no clue in the world why hers was on her heart, but she figured it was a sign that her soulmate would have her heart. Maybe even be a real charmer, and send her heart racing all the time.
Though most people tended to find their soulmate by age sixteen, the universe seemed to have a backup protocol in place, and on everyone’s eighteenth birthday, they got their soulmate’s name and birthday. Like the first mark, this was also on a place that had meaning to their relationship.
Soulmarks were a very private thing to most people, only shown to the closest of friends and family. Luckily for Sakura, her soulmark was in an easily hidden place. She had only ever shown Ino, her team, and her parents.
At seventeen years old, Sakura Haruno, international war hero, had still yet to meet her soulmate. She honestly had given up on even trying until her eighteenth birthday. She figured that she must have been one of the unlucky ones whose soulmate lived in a different village. It didn’t happen often, but it wasn’t completely unheard of. Some days it felt like everyone around her had met their soulmate.
Sasuke and Naruto were of course soulmates, but it took them a long time to work out their differences. Honestly, Sakura missed those days a little, because now they couldn’t keep of off each other. In a shocking turn of events, Ino and Sai were soulmates, and had found each other in the war. Even Tsunade had finally gotten together with Jiraya, though Sakura had no clue what changed her mind.
But, Sakura had resigned herself to waiting for her birthday, even if it pulled at every fiber of her very being. She would be patient for her soulmate, and hoped in turn that her soulmate would be patient for her.
“Hey Sakura-chan!” Naruto called out from across the street, breaking her out of the daze of her mind. Sakura waved at him, crossing over to go give him a hug. Like always, Naruto was warm and felt like home. “What are you up to?” He asked, breaking away from her to give her a brief kiss on the crown of her head.
“Oh nothing, really. But I was picking up some dango for later.” She told her teammate, hoping that he wouldn’t remember why she wanted dango. It was a tradition she had followed for years, getting Dango on the night before her birthday. Her parents had started it when she was a child, and even without them there anymore, she kept it going. She couldn’t remember if she had told Naruto about that, but she was praying that she hadn’t. Not that she didn’t love him, he was one of her very best friends, but this year she wanted privacy for her birthday.
“What for?” Naruto asked, grabbing her hand and walking with her to the stand.
Sakura thanked her lucky stars that he didn’t seem to recall why. “Just a craving for it, I guess.” She told him, only feeling a slight bit of guilt. She hated lying to anyone, but she would come clean tomorrow, after she had time to process what name she had.
Naruto chattered away as she picked up her dango. Sakura was quiet for the most of it, still feeling a little lost in her head. Nervous anticipation churned through her gut, leaving her to feel almost shaky. To his favor, Naruto picked up the slack that she left in the conversation, sensing that she wasn’t feeling talkative. He walked her all the way to her door, saying a brief goodbye and leaving her with a kiss upon her cheek.
Sakura was proud of the man he had become, knowing that he could see something was wrong with her, but also giving her space to work through it. The difference between him now and him six years ago was almost comical. His intelligence in every way had grown, making him into someone that she was delighted to know and have in her life.
Once the dango was in the fridge to save, Sakura walked into her room, flopping down on the bed. Today had been a long day, and she could’ve sworn she was being stalked by a crow before she had met up with Naruto. She was exhausted, and figured that now would be the best time for a nap. She set an alarm for right before midnight and promptly went to sleep.
—
The ring of her alarm was shrill, but did its job to wake her up. For a moment she was disoriented, the flashes of a war dream still in her mind, but it didn’t take her but a few seconds to get back into her body. The same nervous anticipation returned, only this time in tenfold. Sakura could hardly sit still with excitement towards the name she would know in only a few minutes.
She quickly got up and slipped a blanket over her shoulders to go retrieve her dango from the fridge. Perched on her couch, she watched the seconds tick by until finally it was midnight. She ate her dango shakily, enjoying the rush of nostalgia it brought, and trying not to focus on the tingling feeling on her right palm. It was bad luck to look at your soulmark before it was fully formed, and Sakura didn’t want to take any chances.
Five minutes passed before the feeling stopped. The room was illuminated by candles and Sakura took a deep breath in before turning her hand over to look at it.
Shisui
October Nineteenth
The handwriting scrawled upon her palm was familiar from all the hours spent looking at her chest. Shisui . It was a pretty name, obviously masculine. Sakura had never met a Shisui before. Never really ever even thought of the name, but it sounded perfect. And October Nineteenth sounded like a perfect day.
Sakura felt giddy knowing that she had someone out there. Of course she knew she did before, but this new information just made it feel all the more real. Knowing his name, his birthday, his first words to her, it was the most she had ever known about the other half of her soul.
Unable and unwilling to wait, she shunshined right into Naruto and Sasuke’s apartment. Naruto squealed like a girl as she startled him from his place on the couch. “Guys! I got my soulmark!” She told them, bouncing up and down with excitement. “Look!” Sakura ordered them, flipping her hand so they could read the name and the date scrawled on her palm. Naruto took one glance and wrapped her in a massive hug, sweeping her up and twirling her across the room. It seemed that her excitement was contagious, although Naruto had never needed much cause for excitement. Sakura just laughed along with him, feeling like her life was finally beginning. Sasuke, of course, was just sitting on the couch, although he did have shock written all over his face. Sakura just felt herself laugh harder at the idea that she had finally managed to catch the aloof Uchiha off guard.
Sakura broke out of Naruto’s hold and jumped onto the couch with Sasuke, flopping down into his lap. He caught her silently, further proving her success at catching him off guard, as he didn’t even groan in pretended annoyance like he usually did. “Sakura, show me your hand again.” Sasuke told her, but his voice was deep and serious, and she could feel all her excitement from just a moment ago start to drain away. She flipped her palm over to him again, her stomach slowly dropping to her feet. Sasuke looked like he had been gut punched, his breath starting to come in shorter almost wheezes.
“Sasuke, what’s wrong with my hand?” Sakura asked, her voice betraying the wave of anxiety that had just come over her. He had a look of pure devastation written across his face, his hand slowly coming up to trace the letters on her palm.
Even Naruto had quieted, and they all sat in stark silence as Sasuke processed through the words on her hand. The apartment, previously so lively and bright, felt devoid of happiness now. “I’ll be right back.” Sasuke told her, gently lifting her to instead sit in Naruto’s lap, his voice just as devastated as his expression. He disappeared in a twirl of leaves, and Sakura looked up at Naruto in shock.
“Naruto? Do you know what’s going on?” Sakura asked, feeling her anxiety grow every moment Sasuke was gone.
Naruto just shook his head, holding her tightly, as though to shield her from whatever Sasuke would bring back. Sakura chanced a glance down at her palm, wondering if there was something she had missed, but it remained the same as it had been ten minutes ago. Every second that passed felt like ten years, but Sasuke returned quickly, something clutched in his hand.
He was silent as he handed her an envelope, and Sakura felt like she had been gut punched as she took in her name written on the front. It was the same handwriting as her marks. Her hands shook as she carefully opened the envelope, pulling out a letter.
—
Sakura,
I hope this letter will eventually find its way to you. Assuming that it does, I’m so sorry. My name is Shisui Uchiha, I’m eighteen years old as of last week, and I wish I could’ve gotten the chance to meet you. What I’m about to tell you is a secret that I probably shouldn’t put into writing at all, but I’ve never cared much for rules, so I am anyways. Once again, If you are reading this, then I’m so sorry, because that means I’m dead. I really can’t put into words how sorry I am about that. As I’m writing this, I know I will die in about twenty minutes or so, but until then, I want to think about you and what we could’ve been.
My family, the Uchiha, have been planning a coup. They have been for a couple of years now. I was never a part of this, but I knew it was happening, and I’ve tried to stop it. In the last war, I watched my best friend and teammate Kaori die in front of me. This unlocked a special little feature of the sharingan called the Mangekyou. It comes with a lot of new things and abilities, but my point of this is that it gave me an ability called Kotoamatsukami. A real mouthful, I know. It allows me to go into people’s minds and manipulate them with false experiences, making it seem like it was their own free will. This is a very powerful ability, and if it were to fall into the wrong hands, I cannot even imagine the level of death and destruction. Which brings me back to why I’m writing this letter in the first place. Because of the Uchiha coup, the council ordered me to use my ability to influence the head of the clan, Fugaku, into stopping the coup.
One of the elders, Danzo Shimura, asked me to meet with him tonight to further discuss the actions I would be taking tomorrow morning. But he is a traitor of the highest caliber. He is a traitor to the village and mankind itself. I have never seen such pure evil in a person before. He has managed to take my right eye, and I have fled before he can take my left. I cannot let him have both of my eyes, I fear that he would use it to end humanity in itself. So to prevent that, shortly after writing this letter, I’ll take my left eye out myself, and I’ll leave it to my best friend, Itachi, in hopes that he could keep it out of the wrong hands and perhaps save our village and clan from the coup.
Now that you know what’s going on, I want to apologize again. Because in order for my plan to work, I have to die as well. It’s the only way to keep Itachi away from the suspicions of Danzo. I wish it didn’t have to be like this, but Danzo is nearly impossible to kill.
I feel a heavy grief for the knowledge that I will be leaving you, My Sakura, alone for the rest of what should have been our lives. I go to my death with only the regret that I was unable to ever meet you. But even if I never met you, I still love you. I have since I was old enough to understand what was written on the back of my neck. And I fell in love all over again once I learned your name and birthday, Sakura, March Twenty Eighth. I yearn to meet you, but I know its simply not in our cards for this lifetime. My mark gives me hope that maybe we find each other in the next, if you believe in that kind of stuff. Honestly, I wonder what will happen to your mark when I’m gone. Will it change? I guess I won’t know. I’m running out of time so I’ll have to finish this up quickly.
My sweet Sakura, please know that I am sorry to leave you here alone, but also know that I love you more than anything, and that you were my only hesitation and regret in this situation. I hope I can see you in the next life, seeing as this one just isn’t the one for us.
Love,
Your Soulmate Shisui
—
The force of Sakura’s sobs ripped through her as she finished the letter.
—
Sakura went on in her life to devote all of her time and energy to the hospital alongside politics. Sasuke allowed her to change her last name, and she became Sakura Uchiha, in honor of her fallen soulmate. She never quite recovered from the knowledge, and became a completely different person. She never really laughed or smiled truly after her eighteenth birthday.
Through politics and her time at the hospital, Sakura made sure that nothing like what happened to Shisui would ever happen to anyone else. She built a house on the edge of the very cliff Shisui had jumped off of, and spent every morning talking to the sky pretending that it was him.
Though it had become less taboo to date outside of soulmarks, Sakura never took that step. She remained single throughout the seventy years of her life. She never really saw the appeal of anyone who wasn’t her soulmate. The world didn’t hold much appeal for her either, and she lived her days purely to get to the next. Sakura lived alone for the majority of her life, but took care of her friends children often, finding comfort in being around people who didn’t know of her great tragedy.
Sakura Uchiha died in her sleep at seventy two years old.
And woke up in a white room, suddenly eighteen again.
“Hello?” Sakura called out, confused on where she was. The last she remembered, she had laid down in bed and was trying to fall asleep, wrapped in a blanket salvaged from Shisui’s old house. The room she was in was obnoxiously white, with no deviance of color. She heard footsteps and turned around, shocked by the increase in mobility that her body was capable of. Sakura was met by the sight of a man with curly dark hair, and pale skin. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen, and as Sakura glanced down at herself, she saw her own eighteen year old body.
“It’s you, I lived an entire lifetime waiting for you.” Sakura told Shisui, eyes lighting up with contentment, and she knew exactly what words would leave his mouth next.
“I’ve been waiting a lifetime for you, Cherry.” Shisui told her, arms opening up to catch her as she leapt at him.