A/N: Written in honour of Shippuuden 27.
As long as you're alive, you never really stop learning, and fighting Sasori taught Sakura a few things.
"Heh. You're a pretty tough kid."
She learned that she really had become strong, that Tsunade had trained her well, and that she was far more powerful than most people gave her credit for.
"It's okay, Sakura…Sasori was made into what he is by the twisted, misguided teachings of the Sand Village."
She learned that sometimes even the most corrupted, evil people had reasons for becoming who and what they were, reasons that, in their minds, made perfect sense (and she understood pain and separation and helplessness and loss far better than Sasori would ever have guessed--their methods of fighting it had been vastly different, as had the hands that guided them in doing so, but both had sought strength and some means of protection from similar experiences, should they come across them in the future).
"If I had to choose, I'd say I'm a human who couldn't completely become a puppet, I guess."
She learned that, whatever sort of monster they had become, part of them was still completely and undeniably human.
"This body feels no pain…My heart is as my body…Things are much simpler this way."
She learned that living by oneself, loving no one, feeling nothing…in the end, a life lived in such a manner was no life at all…
"…Sasori saw through my last attack, but for some reason, he didn't try to dodge…"
…And death was a welcome change from loneliness and isolation.
But Sasori taught her another lesson. Or rather, he reminded her of one she already knew:
The worst wounds of all were not of a physical, material nature--the most powerful medical ninjutsu the world couldn't touch them or ease them a whit. And the most painful thing in the world was not death.
It was feeling unloved.
(And even a puppet with just the barest scrap of humanity left could still feel that much.)