Epilogue

Cosmonaut

Sakura found out upon their departure that Naruto was never chosen to join them on Mars. He had asked her father to allow him to say goodbye the way he did. He lied to her in the end, to say farewell while pretending he would never leave her.

For months, she was inconsolable, but her anger was anchored to her grief, and if Naruto were there, she knew she would tell him that she would never trust him again. It wasn't true, of course, but for once she was helpless, with nothing she could do with all the fury in her and it was boiling her from inside.

She would not speak to her father for the better part of their first year on Mars, opting instead to spend most of her time with Sasuke and his family. She railed on her father on occasion, calling her father by name instead of title in the few times that they did speak. She would tell him the same things in so many words – that he had done her wrong, that he should have done more to help, that he was a liar. Every time she did, he simply told her he understood and did not ask for forgiveness because he knew she would never give it. He would never tell Sakura, but in the smallest ways he could, he only tried to treat Naruto like a man; he would never grow to become one but was one of the few that he met that deserved so much more than he was dealt. Though he could not say that Naruto faced the inevitable without fear, he saw in the boy that he did so with what courage and compassion he could afford, and he felt that he had lived with an unassailable dignity.

Her rage was quelled with time, but the feeling of wretchedness lingered.

Not more than a year later, she received word through Sasuke that Naruto, against all odds, was alive. Sakura did not know how to feel at first, having been lost in her passions for so long.

By special message from Hiashi Hyuga, a government minister and magnate of the Mars development project, to Itachi Uchiha, Sasuke's brother of the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, they were told that Naruto and his uncle were brought to Region B by special request of Hiashi Hyuga himself. Many officials were curious as to the reason why they would send such a mundane message to the Liutenant Colonel and no details were shared as to the motivations of their family in taking the pair with them, but Sakura suspected the involvement of a snow-white girl with shimmering black hair.

For the first time since knowing about her, she was glad that this girl was a part of Naruto's life.

They would not hear from them again for many years as communication systems between regions were on reserve for official purposes until resettlement was complete.

She completed her university degree at Northern University as she had told Naruto she would. As if inspired by his ramblings, she transferred from the medical department and instead completed her degree in astrophysics, then graduating a Master of Science at age twenty-five.

Soon after that, she married Sasuke.

Late on her twenty-seventh year, she had given birth to a daughter who had ebony hair like her father.

She was twenty-nine years old when the Mars government announced that they were finally opening communication lines between regions to civilians, and on the eve of her thirtieth birthday, she received a message from Naruto.

Though she knew she would not be able to sleep that night from excitement, she waited until Sasuke was at work the next day before reading it.

Naruto did not stand on ceremony and simply opened his message telling her he that he hoped that she was well, and healthy, and happy most of all (with a happy birthday inserted somewhere between those lines). He said that he thought of her often and that he was sorry that he didn't tell her he was going to be left behind. He told her that he could not stand a long goodbye, or a goodbye that made it seem like everything he knew and cared about was ending; that he had been ready to remain and pretend that the next few days were the same as any other, though they would be lived without her.

He recounted his last days on Earth, thinking that they truly would be his last days alive, and how he mostly spent them alone. That he slept in her room the night that she left and that he could smell her in her sheets. He said that when he closed his eyes, she was there too, like during the storm when they first loved each other with their bodies as much as their hearts and that it would always be a secret that he would hold dearly. He said that the world had felt frozen then, unchanging for days, and how it had been eerie for him but most of all painful.

He told her that he took care of the truck that she left behind until the very last because he felt that it had taken care of them as well.

He told her he missed her and hoped that one day he would be able to see her again.

He told her of how he was saved by the Hyuga family and how he and his uncle were whisked away at the last minute. He told her how he had reconciled with the father of the girl in the picture. That she would not leave Earth without him. That she had run away again, only this time to save him.

He was married to her. He had a son he was proud of. Still just a baby and yet he claimed that he would be scrappy like his father, get into fights just like his father. Additionally, he was apparently already as good-looking like his father, so Naruto insisted. Sakura imagined this boy would break hearts someday.

He complained that they lived in a dome and that there was no sunrise or sunset as it had been like on Earth. He told her where he lived and that he almost only ever ate bread. That there was farmland as far as the eye could see and that there was no longer any wonder that came with the rain when it was a scheduled occurrence.

He was a miner, he said, with big muscles, he claimed.

He said that he missed their afternoon rides through the countryside, talking about futures that were still hazy and how it had finally caught up to them.

He told her he cared for her and still did. He admitted that he never loved her flaws and that they had never been cute to him, but told her that he loved her because she always showed him who she really was. He said that their brief time together had been one of the brightest moments in his life. And that the story they had together was dear to him, but that he knew it had ended when he watched her leave on their last night under the same sky.

He said it didn't make him sad anymore.

He lamented the dreams that had faded from him, but admitted his own shortcomings. He said that he knew he may have envisioned too much, but Sakura thought then as the realization of their distance, floating in uncertainty, that she understood. There was never any certainty in his dreams, only the hope to be a better man.

At the end, he told her that he dreamt of her then and that he dreamed of her still and she, reading his words, was drunk on the familiar feeling of loving him.

Her heart felt full to bursting. He rambled like she remembered he did, and she would read it everyday in her head in his voice as she remembered it then. It must be deeper now, she thought, much manlier than it had been.

She kept the message hidden and read it in secret, over and over. It would be a whole year before she built up the courage to send him a message of her own to tell him everything she felt and everything she saw and that she dreamed of him too, more often than she would ever admit.

They kept in touch from time to time since then, a secret correspondence, fondly recounting their trials as friends, their silly fights and the worries they used to have, but seldom ever of their intimate arguments or of their secret rendezvous. Most of the things she recounted about their time together were ordinary, small, or mundane, but it was everything between them that gave it weight enough to leave their marks; like the freckles on her chest, or the scars on his skin.

Over time, the messages grew less frequent, but they thought of each other fondly still. Though she believed she was far too old to blush, the thought of him brought life back to memory.

Many years later, two months after her thirty-eighth birthday, she received a message from Hinata and noticed that she took his last name even on transmitted messages. There was no subject or title for the message and Sakura had been afraid to open it. She waited five days before finally deciding to see what the message was about, hoping that this was not about the messages she sent to Naruto. Though there was nothing explicit about them and most of the content was relatively innocent, she knew if she read those words from another woman to the man she loved, she too would be livid.

It was nothing of the sort, but as soon as she read it, she wished it had been as trivial as she thought it would be.

Hinata sent the message to her to inform her that Naruto had died. He was involved in a mining accident which resulted from equipment failure. It took eleven days to recover his body.

They had a wake recently and his casket remained closed. Few people were there and she said that she wished Sakura was there to mourn with her because she knew how much she had meant to Naruto.

Hinata also told her that Naruto wasn't just leaving behind a son – his second child was a daughter who had not yet been born.

This was the first great loss that Sakura had ever experienced.

In her grief, she locked the memories they shared together deep inside her heart; their days in her truck, their stormy nights, and afternoons in the marshes. She mourned him with their friends and though they were never together since their last days on Earth, his absence was a presence that wouldn't leave her. In her private moments, even until old age, Sakura would continue to grieve in secret.

She would think on him often and would regularly dream she was in a forest with him, young as they had been the last time they saw each other, carried on his back, surrounded by trees she could swear were taller than the sky. Other nights, she was holding his calloused hands while watching the sunset at the edge of a still dying Earth. But on the best nights, she dreamt only of him, watching him drift in space enveloped by the faint light of distant galaxies.

Now he traveled the stars in his own way.