Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

She is silent, fading away slowly from the world of men. Sakura sits and watches as the world closes up.

There was a niche for her once. It was available many years ago, waiting for her to fill it, to grow into it. It waited to nourish her, to let her grow into her own and thrive.

Ino tried to push her along into it, with her brave but kind words. She seemed to subconsciously know that some higher power had picked her to try to let Sakura assume her rightful place.

But there's no more room for Sakura; no more room in the world. She waited too long to assume her niche, and finally when she tried to, she discovered it wasn't there anymore.

She couldn't move fast enough, not to save Naruto, not to salvage Sasuke. Not enough to keep them home.

They are gone, and to her, it feels like all the life has gone out of Konoha with them. When Sasuke left, Naruto quit smiling with his heart. He only smiled with his mouth; his eyes were always sad. When Naruto left, Sakura quit smiling altogether. Her skin seems less bright, her hair more dull; her eyes are less lively. She seems a faded picture, worn with age and battered with trials, once bright, but now yellowing and cracking at the edges.

Her friends speak to her, still play and strive to laugh with her, but they don't really see her, anymore. They see not Sakura, but Sakura's shame, Sakura's failures, and try not to think about it. But it's there, all the time, looming like some storm cloud on the horizon.

They see a pitiable being, a being who has lost her niche, her assumed position, and strives fruitlessly to regain it. They see the futility of it, and avert their eyes for the very shamefulness of it all.

Sakura seems dead inside, numb by her failure. But she's not.

When she cries, she cries and wails, hoping that someone will take pity. But no one sees it, they see only her wan smiles, and nothing of the sudden glitter on her newly pallid cheeks.

When she screams, she howls, and her ravening cries rise so that the bats in the night sky shudder away from it. But nobody hears; nobody sees or hears anything but her failure, and they don't want to listen to her screams.

Everyone wants to move towards the future, and Sakura stands in the middle of the river of the past and the future, the waters raging all around her while she is standing still.

They move forward, her comrades, and she, like a record caught repeating itself because it has been played too often, repeats again and again and again.