Webbed Leaves

She has always been stuck in closed spaces.

The girl with ridiculous pink hair. The girl with forehead as big as the Hokage mountain.

The girl who became a shadow trailing Naruto and Sasuke. Invisible.

Till she screamed and shattered and made them see.

*

Kakashi-sensei.

Sensei.

At times she had to catch herself from calling him just 'Kakashi,' a familiar taste scorching her throat. She had forgiven him, of course. They all were entitled to their ghosts, even if the casualty was an easily forgotten little girl bursting with drive and desperation.

But she couldn't forget. No matter how much she tried.

*

Sometimes, she wished he would see her for what she was. Broken in some ways that couldn't simply be healed. That didn't need to be healed.

She wasn't his same old Sakura-chan.

Not that she ever had been.

Sakura-chan. Despite everything, there still remained within him an impenetrable armour of innocence. Still a pigheaded, naive dreamer.

Both bitterness and envy tugged at her heart.

She loved Naruto. How couldn't she, with the way he was?

And yet...

His goodness as blinding as his smile. Sometimes, she felt suffocated.

Strangely enough, she found herself growing more comfortable with Gaara during her trips to Suna to help rehabilitate their medical facilities. He recognized his demons. She recognized the familiar battle.

It didn't come naturally to them. They had to choose. Always.

Perhaps it wasn't strange at all.

*

The meetings were numerous, torturous and exactly the same. Grow roots at least if there was to be no immediate flowering. She could plainly see the guilt and fear in their hearts, couched in self-righteousness.

But she had never expected him to concede to their demands.

He felt soul-weary, after all.

He didn't ask her for her hand. That was perhaps the most expressive apology she could have expected from a man like Sasuke.