"Sakura."

At the sound of his voice, she startled, but did not turn. She sniffled angrily and dug the heels of her hands against her traitorously teary eyes.

"Shino-kun. I didn't expect to see you here." He sat down on the ground beside her. Sakura had retreated to her old team's training ground when she had heard that Sasuke had evaded being retrieved, nearly managing to kill several of their peers in the process.

"I just returned from a mission with my father. I heard about Uchiha."

"Yeah." She felt the tears start to well up again. "It's such a mess. I can't believe he would do something like this!"

Shino didn't respond, but his silence registered his opinion easily enough. He hesitantly held out a hand to take hers and she let him, relishing the solid lifeline of his presence. Everything that had happened since the Chunin Exams was jumbled up into a giant ball of confusion in her head and her heart.

"What are you doing, wandering around here at night?"

"I could ask you the same thing." She knew he would be here, knew he would leave. She just didn't want to believe her own feelings.

"Go home."

"Why won't you talk to us? Why are you always silent?"

"Stop concerning yourself with what I do. It's none of your business." His answers were flat, with no inflection.

"We're your team, Sasuke! We can help you. Did all our time together mean nothing?" She was mad at him, mad that he could throw away everything that Team 7 could achieve together. "I know about your clan, but revenge … it won't help anyone."

Sasuke was silent for a long moment. "I'm different from you. I tried to the missions, the team, I thought it was my path. In the end, my heart is set on revenge. That is my path now."

"So you've decided to be alone, again?"

His shoulders tensed. "I can't be like you or Naruto." He walked forward.

"Wait! If you leave, I'll … I'll scream!" She had no other recourse, even with her extra training there was no way she was able to take on Sasuke seriously.

He shunshined behind her and she whirled around. His eyes were curiously bright. "Sakura. Thank you."

Sakura buried her head in her hands, forgetting that she was still holding Shino's. He shifted closer, pulled by her action.

"We were never going to be enough for him, Shino-kun. I thought …" She took a deep breath, trying to stop her voice from quivering. "I thought that maybe now that I stopped hounding him for a date and he and Naruto were getting along better that we could be a real team. We had fun together, sometimes, the three of us."

"His need for power is selfish and overwhelming, Sakura. Don't place blame on yourself."

She gave him a watery smile. "I have a lot of blame to hand out. He gets his fair portion, don't worry."

They sat quietly for a moment, Shino holding back a wince every time she clenched her hand around his. "How is Naruto?"

To her horror, Sakura felt a fresh wave of tears threaten behind her eyes. "Sasuke nearly killed him, Shino-kun. It's only thanks to the Godaime that he and Choji are alive. The whole retrieval team failed to contain their opponents." She looked at him. "How could he cause such misery when he knows how it feels?"

Shino lifted a shoulder gracefully, at a loss to comfort her with anything but cold logic, so he tried that. "He is emotionally compromised at a basic level, Sakura. I don't think he is particularly empathetic to anyone."

Sakura sagged, hating the truth of his words. "I know you're right, but it hurts to hear. To know that we just didn't matter, not when it counted."

"I'm sorry I was not here for the mission."

She squeezed his hand lightly. "In a way, I'm glad you weren't. I would be even worse off if Sasuke had hurt you too."

"But if I had been there, the mission would have been a success."

That surprised a laugh out her, rough as it was on her throat after hours of crying and yelling at the sky. "I can always count on you to say the right thing, Shino-kun." He was pleased, though he did not quite understand why she laughed at his serious intent.

Sakura let go of his hand to stand and stretch, muscles tight from the tension she had held onto throughout the day. She smiled at him as he stood as well and said, "Do you want to fight? I need to hit something."

Shino was surprised at her offer, but not inclined to turn it down. "I would not say no to a spar. Are you sure you are up for it?"

She wiped her eyes one last time and then scoffed at him, coming to stand in a familiar taijutsu pose. "Crying and fighting, that's kind of what I do, Shino-kun."

He nodded and shifted his stance. "Ah, that is more true now. Before it was mostly crying and attempting to fight."

She tossed a punch at him that he blocked with a forearm, though it stung even more than usual. His kikaichu buzzed unhappily within. "Always have to bring that up, huh? We all have to start somewhere, you know." His responding kick barely glanced off her side and she flipped to recover. "Not all of us are naturally talented like the great Aburame Shino."

He took a painful blow to the shoulder so that he could get closer and sweep her legs out from under her. "It's called practice." She fell to the ground and rolled backward, one hand punching the ground in anger.

"One day I'm going to get you good, Shino-kun."

"I look forward to it." He was being entirely honest. After correcting her taijutsu form with more practice that she had nagged out of her sensei and the constant sparring she did with him, Sakura was improving in leaps and bounds.

She straightened and sighed. "I don't even know if I have a team left to work on getting better with." She rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck painfully. "I heard that Jiraiya-san was going to take Naruto away for training. I doubt I could get Kakashi-sensei to focus on me now that his favorite student is gone."

"We have a very formidable kunoichi in our village right now who is excellent at taijutsu, you know."

"What?"

Shino nodded. "The Godaime. She is exceptionally powerful. Why not ask for her help?"

Sakura laughed, sounding only a little hysterical. "You want me to march up to the brand new Hokage and just request that she spend some of her precious free time training me? I have nothing to offer in that exchange."

"Maybe she could recommend a new teacher for you even if she does reject the idea."

She looked thoughtful. "I heard that her chakra control is impeccable and I know mine is pretty good. Maybe she'll take me on as a medical student and I could learn taijutsu elsewhere."

"Regardless of her answer, you still have me."

Sakura moved close to poke at his flushed cheek. "Cute. You're a good friend, Shino-kun. Thank you." She looked at the fading sun and yawned, exhausted from her emotional day and their short spar. "Do you want to come with me to the hospital? I should visit Naruto and the others again."

He nodded and she grabbed his hand again, lacing their fingers together. He stood stiffly, unsure of what to do with his arm now that she was attached to it. She just smiled at his impassive face and pulled him forward, saying , "Let's go."

Note: Dialogue between Sakura and Sasuke is slightly modified from the original in the anime. It wouldn't do to have her confess love when I had already established her dying crush in the previous story! Still, she's upset that he left, but no man will keep Haruno Sakura down.