What if Sasuke and Naruto had hit Sakura that day on top of the hospital and Kakashi had been too late to sop them? Only the prologue takes place during the first part. The real story takes place during Shippuden.

I listened to Missing, My Heart is Broken, and Bleed by Evanescence while writing the prologue.

Disclaimer; I don't own anything.

She watched from the door to the roof of the hospital as Naruto and Sasuke got geared up for another fight. Naruto was saying something about Sasuke needing to wear his forehead protector and Sasuke countered that he didn't need one. Their faces became angrier and angrier with every new word uttered and they appeared less and less like the boys she knew. They looked demented, and dark. Shadows masked their boyishly handsome faces in unappealing ways. The duo looked more like small demons than the teammates she'd grown to love and care for. She'd put her life on the line for these boys once before, and even though they'd done the same countless times more often than she, Sakura would do anything to save them, even if it was from each other and at the risk of her own life.

"Chidori!"

"Rasengan!"

Both pumped chakra into their one hand. The situation had just gone from bad to worse in no time. They ran, full speed toward each other, ready to attack. Both had red eyes. Blood red eyes, set to kill.

Sakura couldn't let them do that. She had a split second to make a decision. Would she really do-before she could second guess herself, she was already running.

"Stop!" she yelled.

She knew both would regret their choice, but she was more sure that Naruto would die if he really did kill Sasuke. They wouldn't miss her. She was holding them back, she knew it, they knew it, and everyone else did too. If she wasn't on their team anymore, they could be stronger together. They would be better off without her. She had always been the weakest link. It was time to say goodbye. They'd thank her for this, eventually. They would get a new teammate, a strong one they could grow with, and then they would be fine. They'd be the best team ever made. Naruto could be Hokage, Sasuke could marry a girl and rebuild his clan, kill his brother. In time, they'd all forget about her.

"I can't stop it!" Both Naruto and Sasuke thought at the same time in a panic.

When she reached them, she could see that both of their eyes had converted back. Naruto's were clear blue, like the morning sky, except they were very scared, and on the verge of tears. His tan skin, so covered in bruises, were the traits that made him Naruto. That and his whiskers of course. He was her day. When she looked at him she saw the morning. She looked at Sasuke, with skin pale as the moon and eyes as dark a midnight as the sky. He was her night. His dark eyes were shining. He was scared too. He was never scared before. Sakura felt good to know that he was liked her enough to be scared for her. What he and Naruto were going to do to her. She forgave them. She was right in between them now. She tried, in vain; to redirect their hits, to try and make it so they wouldn't hit her, but it didn't help, she ended up just holding on to their wrists. She had barely any time left, so with her last few seconds, she smiled at them and said, "I forgive you."

Then spots of pain erupted on her body and there was nothing.

Kakashi was only a second too late. It was something he would regret for the rest of his life. He was always late to events that didn't mean much, but he had impeccable timing when it mattered. He arrived soon enough to move their attacks only minimally, so that Sasuke, instead of blowing her face off, only burned the left side. The attacks were moved far enough that the wind and fire attacks didn't combine and turn Sakura to ash, but the Rasengan was the stronger of the two attacks, and it had caught the left side of her face, not her nose, as was the original point of impact. The damage wasn't as bad as it would've been, but the left side of her face was badly wind-burned. Sasuke's Chidori just barely missed her, skimming past her leg, but the heat of it, still got to her. It didn't completely char her midsection, as it would have if it had met it's original destination, but burned her right leg from toe to naval.

Kakashi didn't waste any time consoling the boys. He caught Sakura right after she hit the ground with a sickening crack. There was blood spilling from the back of her head, and Kakashi wasted no time explaining anything. He scooped Sakura up and disappeared.

"No…"Naruto gasped, tears rushing down his face like a waterfall as he crumpled to the ground. He'd just killed Sakura. She couldn't survive something like that, especially being hit twice at the same time. No more smiles and joking with Sakura. No more sea green eyes and exotic pink hair. The first girl he'd ever cared about, taken away, and by his own hand! He couldn't control himself. He couldn't stop himself. He really was an evil monster. He'd killed his parents and now he'd killed Sakura too. He'd spent his entire life trying to get people to see that he wasn't the monster that had killed the villagers, but he really wasn't any better than the Nine Tailed Fox.

"I didn't mean it!" Sasuke shouted at the top of his lungs. She was no longer just a fan girl. She had grown to be his friend; a part of his team that had protected him through many things, and cared for him no matter how many times he called her weak and useless. She'd put their lives before hers. A fangirl would never do such a thing. Doing this meant she wasn't obsessed with him, at least, not some imaginary idea of who he is, but she actually cared for him. He immediately regretted that he hadn't been kinder to her. In the end, he'd repaid her kindness with death. He'd been too weak to stop his own attack. Too weak to do anything but let it happen. Just like his brother said, he was weak. He was nothing.

Both eyed their wrists where Sakura's nails had dug in. There was blood on the floor, a lot, and more dripped in spots on the way to the door and down the steps.

"Are you going to make yourselves useful, or sit there and pity yourselves?" Kakashi asked from the door.

Naruto and Sasuke looked up.

"Sakura…?"

"In surgery. She's fighting. There's a lot of damage, and it's going to be a long fight, but she's tough. What she needs from you all right now is support to pull through, otherwise, she'll give up on the fight. Now, go round up everyone and get them here. She's gonna need a lot of backup."

In a matter of minutes everyone was there. Hinata, Shino, and Kiba, Shikamaru, and Choji, Neji, Lee, and Tenten, Gaara, Temari, and Kankuro. They all sat in the waiting room. Ino couldn't hold herself together and was in the bathroom crying. As soon as she'd found out Sasuke and Naruto had done it, she'd attacked them full force. She kicked at Sasuke and punched at Naruto. Shikamaru and Choji had to pull Ino off, and even then Asuma had to help them. Her last words before she'd left were that she'd never forgive them for what they'd done. Hinata looked as detached as Neji usually did. She sat with her hands folded, back straight, and her head up for once. She looked deadly serious as if she didn't have enough time to be shy and blush when someone was in the very next room; someone she knew well was dying, and she also was one of the few to realize that Sakura's parents where nowhere to be seen. Lee paced back and forth, unable to keep his body from moving. He had to do something; otherwise, he'd be in the same state as everyone else.

They waited in the room for what felt like hours before anyone came to tell them anything, and everyone's attention lifted from their own musings when Kakashi stepped into the room everyone occupied. He looked tired, with dark circles around his eyes, akin to what Sasuke and Naruto had on their faces, except for different reasons. Kakashi's eyes were bloodshot, and his hair was messier than usual, but he looked relieved.

"She's alive."

The tension in the room dropped like a piano. Lee stopped walking, everyone sighed in relief. Naruto looked up, his tears having dried an hour ago and looked at Kakashi with such hope that he almost felt bad for the kid.

"Can I go-"

"She doesn't want to be seen." Kakashi interrupted the boy quickly. He kept his eyes trained on everybody, making sure nobody would move and try and get past him. She'd been frantic at the mention of anyone coming to see her. She'd gone hysterical the moment he'd walked into her room. He didn't think it would be best for anyone else to go in. Even now the only person allowed in Sakura's room was Tsunade, and that was only because she refused to leave no matter how much Sakura didn't want anyone near her.

Instead of waking up in a hospital bed, she woke up in a bed with no clothes on and bandages wrapped around half of her body. She was hooked up to monitors with her arm hanging off of the bed.

She couldn't see anything out of one eye, and what she could see was a disaster. Her leg was wrapped up, but the bandages were bled through, big blotches of red covering the left side sporadically. Burns were the hardest to heal because there's not much to be done. There was nothing to be sewn together, no kunai to be removed. She couldn't feel any pain in that area, the nerves had been too severely damaged. All they could do was try cool her body down so she didn't go into shock and hope her body could take care of the rest.

She could evaluate the extent of her own injuries. If she was to bend her leg, her skin would crack, and she would be at risk for infection.

She reached a hand up to her face, patting the bandage there and her heart dropped. Her face was done for. It had to be.

The bandages were loose so that the wound could get some much needed air and Sakura quickly undid them, and then pressed a hand to her face, feeling the texture. It was no longer a smooth surface. It felt rough, like the calloused hands of a carpenter. Her skin was always clear and smooth. IT had been a stretch for her to cut off her hair, but if Hinata could look adorable with a short haircut, then why could she, but her face...that was the only thing that she and Sasuke had going for them. It couldn't have been her annoying personality, or her long hair, since that was done for too.

She patted her face, and found that the wound extended farther back, slightly into her hair, which was much shorter. She felt around the back of her head and felt stitches across the back of her skull. Her hair had been shaved off in the back.

This whole thing was her fault. If she was strong enough, she would have been able to redirect their attacks and she wouldn't be here. How stupid could she be? Of course they wouldn't kill each other. They were friends, even though they hard a hard time acting like it.

She ignored the pain and got up, feeling the stretching and then crack as the injured sin on her leg split with every step. She watched detachedly as more blood seeped through her bandaged legs. She was slightly dizzy, and her eyesight was fuzzy, but she didn't let that stop her slow but determined voyage to a mirror.

What she saw made her cry.

The whole left side, save for her eye, was pink. It wasn't a blushing pink, but the kind of pink you see when you scrape yourself and you see the pink wetness underneath all the skin you took off. The are around her eye was more red, as if the wind of the Rasengan had penetrated and done more damage around her eye. The skin was slightly swollen. Her leg was another story, she found as she unwrapped those bandages. The more severe parts where red and blistering. Tsunade-shishou told her that it would scab up, but once the scabs peeled off, that side would never look the same. It wouldn't be smooth and a creamy white, but pink and rough feeling, like carpet. Her leg, by far, was the worst of all her injuries. It spread around more of her body and hurt more than anything she'd ever known. There were cracks where blood was slowly oozing out and plopping to the floor like the tears slowly falling from her face. The side of her face hurt from the movement, and the small salty tears, which was just another outward sign of her own weakness.

She stopped crying. Not gradually, but suddenly, sucking in a breath and composing herself.

Sakura was no longer the beautiful girl with long pink hair, flawless white skin, and green eyes. She was…changed now. She was tougher, she felt. She'd done what she felt needed to be done for the welfare of her team. If they'd used their attacks on each other, both would've surely died. They were friends first but rivals at the same time, and they would've don't anything to prove that the were stronger at that time. Sakura felt very accomplished that not only had both of her teammates survived, but she was strong enough to survive both the Chidori and the Rasengan, original techniques. It was a step in the right direction to becoming stronger. But what else could she do?

She was too attached to Sasuke that was for sure. He was strong, and he didn't care for anybody. Maybe she should be like that too, and then she could get stronger. She could experience things and gain skill then she could come back and join the team. They would be proud of her. She could train harder and work on making techniques just like they did. An original technique that nobody else knew about.

No matter how weak they all believed she was, nobody could deny her intelligence. She had too many distractions here, mainly Sasuke, and she couldn't learn anything if he was always there on her team to learn with her. She'd just end up embarrassing herself, or trying to show off in front of him and then ending up looking like even more of a fool in his eyes.

She had to leave.