Comic Book Love
Sakura was a good little girl. Better than most.
She ate sweets but only on occasions. She allowed her mother to comb her hair each morning, and if they were both in a pleasant mood, she even allowed her mother to tie ribbons into her braids.
Sakura was the type of girl who couldn't be bothered that her parents weren't able to afford all of the 'in' clothes.
Sakura was the type of girl who never looked twice at a pretty face in the crowd. To Sakura, there were boys and girls, and each were the same.
…But when Sakura was six and she and her mother were waiting by the gates for her father to return from a mission, she saw someone else waiting.
"Who's that boy?" She asked.
And it was Uchiha Sasuke, standing alone with a shuriken pouch at his hip, his clothes stained with grass and wet with perspiration.
When Sakura was six, she decided that she wanted to be a kunoichi.
-
By the time she was eight, Sakura was near the top of her class. (After all, Shikamaru and that Naruto kid could hardly be taken seriously. They were no real threat to her.)
By the time she was eight, Iruka-sensei had stopped helping her with her aim and began complimenting her loopy penmanship, regularly stopping class to comment on her orderly folders.
Chouji ate, Shikamaru slept, and Naruto pulled pranks. Sasuke-kun completed his assignments quietly, and Iruka-Sensei used Sakura as an example to the others.
For a while, she believed that Sasuke actually listened when Iruka-sensei spoke about her, when he said nice things.
Just after she turned nine, (a big girl age, she'd boasted) Sasuke-kun left school for a month.
-
When she was ten, he hated her.
She was petty and annoying, he told her. Ten year olds weren't supposed to care that classmates don't have parents, he said.
That was her cue to leave Naruto alone. What she didn't know was that there was another hint there, hidden.
Wanting to please her Sasuke-kun (had she ever wanted anything else?), Sakura sits at the back of the class until graduation.
-
At twelve, she was loud. Louder than Naruto.
Everyone told her so. It was bad enough she was on a team with the kid, but worse that everyone had to rub it in.
At twelve, her hair was long and her lips were thin but always curved into a cantaloupe smile. At twelve, she was just young enough to pretend there was no wrong in the world, and at the same time just old enough to realize she was living in denial.
At twelve, Sakura loved Sasuke and was looked after by Kakashi, and Naruto was a leftover piece of the puzzle.
-
When she turned thirteen, things began to change.
When she turned thirteen, her cherry locks had been shorn, and the ends curled inward. Her eyes grew greener, deeper, more experienced.
When she turned thirteen, she watched her two boys (because, Naruto mattered) become angry. She watched them nearly kill eachother, and she watched one of them (her Sasuke, Sasuke-kun) emerge angrier than before. She watched him walk away.
Sasuke slipped through the gates while Sakura lay unconscious.
-
In Sasuke's absence, Sakura learned.
She had always been studious, book smart, but in Sasuke's absence, Sakura learned, and—when she saw her reflection in the water, by the bridge—changed.
Sakura changed.
-
On her sixteenth birthday, Sasuke returned.
By then, she was tall. Her hair had grown out once again (she finally felt strong enough to wear it that way), and its vibrant color had faded a bit, softening into the palest of pinks, like the newest splays of cherry blossoms against a landscape.
The rookie nine were gathered to celebrate. Naruto bounced around yelling falsehoods about how he'd always known his buddy would come back, and Neji scowled, and Shikamaru told Ino how troublesome he thought the entire ordeal was, but Ino was too busy clinging to Sakura to listen.
She should have stopped them—made Naruto stop talking, pushed Ino onto a barstool—but she didn't. Instead, Sakura tasted her first sip of alcohol. (Even though good girls aren't supposed to drink.)
It was on the same night that she took a walk alone; the first night stroll since Sasuke left.
Nobody was surprised when Sakura woke up sprawled across the bench where she'd woken so many years before to find nothing but loneliness.
-
They are all seventeen by the time Sasuke is officially charged with treason, and Sakura walks away from his trial with thoughts in her mind hidden behind glass that had never been there before.
She thinks about little Uchiha offspring with green eyes and long black hair, some of them tugging at her leg and others running at targets with kunai in hand.
Somehow, the glass shatters, and Sakura moves on.
(Because good girls are supposed to do just that.)
Because there will never be any children.
Because—and she has to remind herself over and over again—she doesn't love him. Can't.
Good girls don't love bad guys.
Fin