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“I heard they’re calling us the Neo-Sannin now,” Naruto says. His ramen bowl is placed down with a firm clink, jolting Sakura out of her thoughts. The whole table wobbles as he takes his seat roughly, without a care for other items that teeter, and Sasuke has to steady the entire ledge with his one arm. “Isn’t that insane, like it’s so-” He snaps his fingers, a lost scrunch to his brows, “-what’s the word?”
“Pretentious?” Sasuke supplies, bland. He hands Sakura a pair of chopsticks, and she accepts them, mute.
“Yes!” Naruto’s eyes are bright, almost glowing blue in the lowlight of Ichiraku. “So pretentious.” He sounds pleased, though, so Sakura rolls her eyes.
“I’m glad you found your vocab word of the week, Naruto,” she drawls, snapping her chopsticks open. “Is there any reason you’re bringing that up now?”
“I dunno, I guess I just swung by Kakashi-sensei’s office, and the receptionist was like, ‘more people dropped off money for you as a donation’ and I was like, ‘why would they do that,’ and he was like ‘probably because you saved the world,’ and then, he was like ‘I’m just going to put it in the vault like always,’ and I was like ‘huh which vault???’ and-”
“You have a vault?” Sakura questions, incredulous. She’s never heard of this.
“Yeah!” His hair bounces as he shakes his head, flickering gold. His hands are loose around his chopsticks, and he must be really taken by this encounter because the steaming ramen in front of him is still untouched. “It’s not like we went on a mission or something to get the money—they’re just giving it to us.”
“Why shouldn’t they?” Sasuke’s pale, thin fingers are a work of art as he twirls the noodles around his chopsticks. “We did save the world.”
He laughs, a thin veneer of sheepish discomfort built into it. “Isn’t it weird, though?” He sounds more like he’s trying to gauge their reactions. “That they’re acting like we’re gods, or something.”
Sasuke narrows his eyes. “Hn?”
“Like—did you see the old Uchiha compound—trigger warning, I guess, Sasuke-”
“Shut up, dobe-”
“You shut up, teme-”
Sakura sighs, exasperated. “Both of you shut up.” She’s a little gratified when they do. It’s likely because she’s seated between them, and she’s proven that she’s more than willing to smack them if they misbehave in public. “And what do you mean, at the Uchiha compound?”
“Trigger warning,” Naruto jibes.
She elbows him, continuing on, “I haven’t been up there in a while.” She hasn’t been anywhere in a while other than the hospital, the Tower, her apartment, Ichiraku, and a couple clinics past Konoha’s walls. After Tsunade-shishou left again, Sakura has been overwhelmed with work, work, and nothing but work.
And no one’s told her about any vault she has, either, she thinks in her mind. Her jaw is clenched, she realizes, and has to put in effort to be relax again.
“There’s something like a shrine for Sasuke, like hand-written cards and money again and like blessings and shit,” the blonde explains. He finally begins to eat his noodles, slurping loudly, and Sasuke and Sakura exchange a look of exasperation. “I guess-”
“Swallow before you speak,” she chides. Her teeth gnash together, grinding, and it’s going to give her a headache to keep doing this, so she stops.
“Oops, sorry.” Muffled by the food. But he does as she says, the bump in his throat rocking as he gulps down nearly half his bowl in one go. “As I was saying, I guess people are forgetting the whole—” a vague, wild, gesturing hand, “y’know, traitor thing.”
“Trigger warning,” Sasuke deadpans. And Sakura elbows him, and then Naruto again because he’s grinning.
“Both of you are hopeless.”
Sasuke stabs at his broth, bored. “Anyway, to your earlier point, we are gods, in case you forgot,” he states, then adds, “Usuratonkachi.”
Naruto squawks, indignant, jostling the entire table again, but Sakura-
Automatically, she twirls a slick, glistening noodle in her broth, staring into the oily surface, thinking. Cards, money, blessings—tries to think of what she got. Getting.
But no, after the war, she has faded into Konoha’s backdrop. Straight back to work with not more than a thank-you. Even though she fought right up in the frontlines with them. Even though she saw more of Naruto’s insides than anyone should see, pumped his heart back to life—she gave him life in that moment, forcing his arteries to spark back to life, repairing his entire chakra network after Kurama’s extraction left every ending strewn out in the open. If he’d died, then they’d all be Kaguya’s puppets, right now, and he’s alive because of her.
And she sure as hell kept Sasuke alive during the war. She’s kept countless people alive, brought them back to the brink of death, argued for recovery resources with both her stubborn teachers. Argued to work more hours to get the hospital back up to par. She's done more for this world than the two of them ever could.
But no one cares about her. No one cares about what she deserves.
She deserves more, she thinks, a fissure of anger running through her, and her grip tenses, and she startles when her chopsticks break with a loud crack. And like a bitter intrusion as she stares at her hand, she thinks, she's a better person than either of them will ever be.
But, that—that flickering self-righteousness-
She knows it. And there, to the soundscape of her idiot teammates arguing, she takes a deep breath, placing the snapped wooden sticks down. Quells the rage within her, the black and white self-aggrandizing.
Because what else can you be amongst literal gods reincarnated? All she is is a self-inflated shadow, and if she opens her mouth, even thinks of voicing the thoughts she has, she is a bad person. They’ll laugh, or go silent, and Sakura deserves that even less.
Her nails dig into the flesh of her hands, and she takes another deep breath, exhaling deliberately, teeth grit together. She's going to get a headache. And when she feels like she isn’t going to spit out the vitriolic, seething clash of demands within her, she slaps both of their shoulders lightly.
They both hiss as if she punched them into a mountain instead, and she arches a brow, crossing her arms. Daring them to fight. And she wants to—she wants to wrangle their throats for one blinding moment, but that isn’t right, so she purses her lips.
“Eat,” she says, clipped. Places a hand on Naruto’s shoulder, nudging him towards his bowl, and sends Sasuke a familiar scolding look. “If you’re going to cause a ruckus, do not do it here of all places.”
“Ugh,” Sasuke mutters, and she rolls her eyes again.
But he does as she says, as does Naruto, and they do fear her. Even if it is only like this, in a domestic environment. Even if they’ll never take her seriously on the field or in a spar. For this moment, she is the authority, and it’s enough of a platitude for her to put up a more gentler version of her.
They finish their meals in relative silence, interrupted by Naruto’s slurping, or Sasuke’s sad attempts at small-talk, or Sakura’s sad attempts of changing the subject. It’s quiet…gives her time to stop effervescing anger and allow it to cool to a familiar, silent bitterness. Manageable.
As the three of them slip out of their seats and into the setting sun, it is still in silence. Until Naruto—of course—breaks it.
“It’s still kind of pretentious, don’tcha think?” he asks. But the new sparkle of the idea must have faded because he seems more thoughtful as he considers it. “To think we’re some sort of—I don’t know—people to be idolized?”
“They’re only calling us that because we’ve been trained by the Sannin,” Sasuke says immediately. “You’re thinking too far into it.”
The space between his brow crinkles. “But the way they’re treating us is different.”
Treating you. Sakura sighs. “What does it matter what they call us?” She says like her tongue isn’t burning with sourness. “Neo-Sannin, Team Seven—we’re still us.” They’re still them, and she’s still her, and it infuriates her that no matter what, no one will ever consider her as good as them, but that’s not the point. That’s not the point.
It isn’t.
She feels almost distant from herself. “And the way they treat us isn’t the point, either, because we’re here to do a job, and we’ll do it anyway.” She forces herself to take in her surroundings, face hot.
The streets are still busy, chattering civilians and shinobi off-duty, or people getting off of work. Streetlights blink alive slowly as they walk. The wind is barely a breeze, and she wants to press her hands against her cheeks in an attempt to cool them, but that would surely be the thing that indicates that she’s not fine with any of this.
Naruto bumps their shoulders together, knocking her back into her body. “Neh, Sakura-chan, you’re right.” His grin is almost beautifully bright, hair like the silken sand on a calm beach, and it is exhausting her.
She smiles back, insincere at best, but neither of them know the curve of it well enough to call her out.
Sasuke grunts in agreement after a moment of deep thought, then shoots Naruto a look. “But you have a vault?”
“I have a vault.” He throws his hands up into the air, skirting around a couple without looking. “It’s insane.”
Sakura brushes a strand of hair behind her ear and reminds herself of where she is. “That is insane.” She tries for a smile again, and this time, it doesn’t even feel like a lie.