If he really thinks she's that same girl who cried for him that night, he's gravely mistaken.

A/N: Little concept I made for Sakura. I've accidentally fallen in love with her :)

Ode to fortitude

by Alex

The first thing Sakura sees in the battlefield is him.

Only him, with red eyes and onyx wheels spinning and purple flames towering above him like she's never known him before.

(He's all she'd ever seen, anyway.)

Sasuke moves in a way that she doesn't even know him anymore. She doesn't know him anymore; He is strong and distant and Sakura is weakness and that's all she ever is.

Sakura is female.

Sakura is weak, and she is female, and no matter how much she works she can't catch up to them even though her muscles burn and her fists flare. Because Sakura is a nobody.

And she is still a nobody when she stands frozen in the battlefield, wisps of hair catching the wind when he jumps down. He jumps down and she hasn't seen him for so long she sees him land twice.

(Sasuke is the wind and she is the flower because he has swept her away.)

Sasuke doesn't speak to her, but she knows that he knows that she wants to speak to him.

He speaks through his eyes.

It takes Sakura a while to accept him because after all, he killed his own brother, he killed his own kin, and he is killing her.

(He kills her so much in the inside that his hand goes straight through her heart, sparks of blue light numbing her soul. Sasuke is the last person she sees).

Because everywhere is Sasuke. Every nook and cranny is Sasuke, and she can't stop seeing him, because she can see him even through Naruto, in the way his smile isn't as bright as before, or the way his blue eyes have lost their focus.

(Sasuke is killing them all in the inside and she can't forgive him.)

Maybe she can. Maybe she is so weak and she is so female that she can forgive her killer simply because she loves him. Maybe she is so fragile, that she cannot tell friend from foe because her eyes have been clouded by the sheer everything of him.

Maybe she is just a girl.

(And being a girl is all she ever feared.)

Maybe she should forgive him because she knows what he's been through, so now she can't help but think how pathetic and how lucky she is that she isn't him, with a clan and a family and a brother that kills him over more than once because he sees it everyday.

(The sharingan is red because it stores all the blood drawn by the hands of the Uchiha.)

Still, Sakura wants to scream at him because she's such a girl, and with one look he has wooed her into him again, like all the other times. Like when she raised a kunai at him and he sent her away with a flick of a finger. Like that time where he left her to stare and watch him fight just because she is a girl, and girls shouldn't fight, and they should send their strong, muscular men to defend their meek, fragile bodies.

Like that one night when he left her just after she told him how she felt. Because Sasuke is a shinobi and that's all he ever was.

Because he couldn't bring himself to accept her feelings. Because she is a weak, pathetic female, and he is better than her, stronger than her, faster than her, in any way imaginable.

So when Sakura sees him again, her mind flies her back to that night, where she was left cold on a bench in the middle of the night dreaming of him because she just wants to see him again.

Because he is responsible for stealing her heart and ripping it to pieces where she can't put them back together because he has left with them too.

Because she is responsible for breaking Naruto because she let him promise something he can't do.

Because even she would put infatuation over the people who really care for her.

Because she is responsible for Naruto leaving and Shikamaru crying and Hyuuga Neji with a hole straight through his gut.

Sakura doesn't know what to do with her boys.

(Because she loves Naruto and she loves Sasuke so, so much she can't bring herself to see them fight.)

And she can't help but feel a little jealous when she sees Ino with her team, with their bonds and their shadows and their legendary dynamic which they can't afford to have. When she sees Hinata under the careful protection of her teammates because they love and care for each other so much, where they have grown up together to embrace their clans, where they would let her fight when she fights because they know she can fight and they believe in her.

Her team is nowhere near any of theirs, and she fears they will never be because they didn't grow up together.

Her team is gone and has been sent away with dreams and realities to the four corners of the earth. And she knows this because Sasuke comes from a deceased clan and Naruto's father is Hokage and she is just Sakura. Sakura the girl, Sakura the meek because she can't even bring herself to kill her own teammate.

Because Sakura is a weak, pathetic female.

And Sasuke tells her this the first time he sees her again in a year, in the middle of a war where everyone dies, and Naruto is dying, and he is killing her. Because he leaves her to watch him when she is at her best, and pressures her when she is at her weakest.

Where she is left alone again, with green chakra glowing wildly and monstrous strength capable of crushing mountains put to absolutely no use when Sasuke half-heartedly decides to leap ahead so quickly so she can't comprehend when exactly he did. Because once again, they have overtook her, and they are so far ahead of her she can't catch up. She won't catch up.

But she'll have to catch up if her teammates need her to.

(She isn't done with him yet. This isn't the last time. Sakura is Cherry Blossom because she has bloomed and she will show him what it really means to be a kunoichi.)

(When they think they're done with the enemy she approaches steadily, with slick lines sealing her forehead and a purple mark that says she's very tough, way tougher than they think.)

(Smashing rocks, whipping the cracks in the hardest earth into oblivion with the rigged lines of her fist, approaching deflty and blowing enemies away like stardust.)

Because if Sasuke thinks she's still that same girl from all those years ago, he's mistaken.

(She has joined them now. She is female. She is Team Seven.)

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Until then!