Great Expectations

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Author's Notes: Somehow this turned into a (slight) LeeSaku, although that wasn't really the original plan. This also turned out really fluffy when I had meant for it to a sadder piece. Anywho, I'm rather fond of it nonetheless and will greatly appreciate your thoughts.

When people hear that she's refused his advances, no one is really surprised. That outfit, they said, that hair. Even in the Leaf Village his skin-tight jumpsuit was too green by half, and his straight-edged bowl cut was so horrendously shaped that it made his head look like some sort of oversized mushroom. Those saucer-large eyes were probably not a sight one wanted to wake up to in the morning, and those too-bushy eyebrows could never quite stand on their own without conjuring up in the viewer's mind two very hairy centipedes. Everything about him was just too boisterous, from his jarring appearance to his even more unruly personality. Lee, they said, was just too "Lee".

"That bushy-brow," Naruto said one day as he returned from training. They had agreed to meet up at her favourite restaurant, as Sakura had pointedly refused to eat ramen for the third day in the row. "The stupid outfit he wears… today his pants split right down the middle just as he was about to kick me!"

She had laughed so hard that her soda had come back up through her nose.

When she confided in Ino that Lee had asked her out for the twenty-seventh time and told her Naruto's story, her best friend only snorted. "Serves him right," she said, tossing back her hair. "Going around in clothes that tight – who needs to see his scrawny self?" Her eyes glinted mischievously. "And even then there's not much down there to see!"

Ino laughed heartily but Sakura merely blushed, glad that Ino hadn't asked why she remembered the number of times he had asked her out before.

In truth she could see the physical things that everyone else could, right down to the tiny hairs above the bridge of his nose that, save for the bushiness of his eyebrows, would surely have given him a unibrow. He was supremely skinny and outrageous in his likes and dislikes, his strange values in seemingly unimportant things. At first his appearance had served to gross her out so much that she had flat out refused to be anywhere within ten feet of him lest his bad fashion sense rub off on her. She found the sight of them side by side too comical; she was too well-dressed and sensible while he was too heinous and zany. Sakura was willing to admit that she could be relatively vain. She wanted her boyfriend to be the kind of guy that every girl would turn to stare at and be jealous of.

But when Sasuke left, some part of her left with him; the vanity and childishness that had been in her before had disappeared. With the world reeling, she was increasingly grateful for Lee's friendship and loyalty. Eventually, even his stupid "cool" poses didn't irritate her so much. He was kind and sweet (in his own unique way), and after these past few years she really thought that she could maybe, just maybe, grow to like him.

They say much anguish comes to those who dream too greatly; Sakura has never been passionate about anything in her life. Always she had been the perfect student by excelling at everything although she couldn't claim to be the best (Sasuke took that title). She used to be fond of her great marks and derisive of Naruto's antics. When it became time to start their lives after the Academy she was at a standstill. Of all the possibilities, which direction should she choose if she didn't like any of them best? It had never occurred to her that later she would be jealous of Naruto's vision, of his dedication to something he placed before himself. Every option was as good as the next in her talented neutrality.

Sakura wonders what it's like, having a dream.

Perhaps she had had too wholesome an upbringing by shinobi standards to warrant any kind of vengeance or mark to prove. She had both her parents, she had never been through any wars, and no one close to her had died to leave on her heart a lasting scar. She was almost secretly grateful for Orochimaru's failed attack as it served to give her direction, had driven her to ask for Tsunade-sama's guidance. She wanted to be the best at this, needed to be the best at this, yet every time she turned there was someone else with a lifelong dream so desperate that she couldn't help but feel how utterly displaced she was in this world of inscrutable focus.

Sakura knows she can never like Lee because he dreams as greatly as anyone.

She knows this as she watches him train with Naruto, their bodies thudding dully against each other in a battle of brutal strength. Sweat drenches both their bodies but they both refuse to quit before the other. Sakura knows that Lee hasn't fully healed and that he shouldn't be training at all but he would never listen to her even if she told him to stop. Naruto's dream shines even brighter than Lee's, buoyed by his unique circumstances and almost universal support. The chain around his neck sparkles in the dying light of the evening.

And her thoughts will turn to Sasuke as they always do when she thinks of dreams, of his darkest and brightest desire. If her dream had been similar, how far would she be willing to go to achieve it? She has never experienced that burning need, that craving to accomplish a sole purpose that gnaws away in the pit of one's stomach. She cannot understand his reasons yet she always makes his excuses by saying that perhaps she doesn't have the right to judge. But as she thinks of Sasuke's pale face, his marked body, being possessed by Orochimaru, Sakura thinks she understands for the first time what it must feel like to long for something with her entire soul.

When Naruto and Lee finally collapse from exhaustion she is there to perform her mop-up duties. She can never resist telling them off for being idiots, but they will both grin at her as she throws a towel at each smiling face and tells them that they would have to pay for everyone's meal if they were late for dinner (as Chouji was also attending, this was no small threat). Her stomach does a strange sort of flip as Lee gives her the thumbs up but she walks away before she can dwell too much on what it could possibly mean. She had already lost one teammate to his ambition and her chances of losing the second one were pretty high as well. The last thing she needed was to care about someone that could just as easily be taken away for nothing more than a dream.

But perhaps these are great expectations, she thinks, as she turns down Lee's advances for the twenty-eighth time. In the world they inhabited, it would be nearly impossible for her to find a guy to fit those specifications. As she looks into Lee's shining face, noting that those stray potential unibrow hairs had disappeared, she thinks that perhaps when Sasuke is home and Lee is whole again, they can give it a try.

end