((AN: This is a story that I originally began writing on AO3. I've decided to cross publish here, since I realize a good portion of the fandom never migrated that way. I'd say I really began to hit a stride with this story around Chapter Eight, which is really where the canon divergence begins. I hope you enjoy!))
When compared to the other members of her team, everyone told Sakura Haruno that she was the smart one.
It was a nice enough statement, and given the denseness that the boys seemed to exhibit regularly, she wouldn't necessarily call it an untrue one. While the boys would rush into situations with bravado, never considering consequences, she was the one who sat back and…
Well, she could try to claim that she was analyzing the situation for the best possible course of action, but that wouldn't be quite true. The truth was that she was a coward, afraid to act for fear of not being able to do well enough, for fear of failing, for fear of death. Even in times when she had roused herself to action, she found herself grossly inadequate compared to these boys who didn't seem to have had any fears at all in their natural lives. So, yes, it was smart that she sat back and stayed out of major combat. It was smart that she let the boys take the heat, and the damage, and do the dirty work while she stayed out of the way. In any other team, she probably could get away with this for the majority of her career. She could learn support tactics, aiding the go-getters, never truly putting herself in danger's path…that was smart for someone like her. She was no Uchiha. She didn't have any special bloodline that gave her jutsu beyond her comprehension. She certainly wasn't Naruto either, and though she couldn't say whether she considered the Kyuubi a blessing or a curse on the boy (though she leaned towards the latter), what she could say was that it gave Naruto a considerable advantage over other ninja their age in terms of chakra and endurance. No, Sakura was neither of those two. She was the smart one…and all that meant, really, was that she was the weak one.
So maybe it shouldn't have come as a surprise to her that Sasuke had so easily been able to disable her when she'd tried to stop him that night. She'd barely even posed a challenge. All she'd threatened to do was scream; she couldn't even have threatened to tie him up and drag him back to the village if he tried to go. She hadn't been smart, then, she'd been a stupid girl who'd been so overcome with emotion towards the boy that she loved that she'd been unable to act as a true shinobi ought to. She'd allowed him to escape, into the hands of enemy shinobi that had proven too much of a powerful distraction to allow Naruto to catch up to Sasuke in time.
Sasuke was gone, many of her friends wounded, and Naruto…
Well, Naruto was off taking steps to improve himself. He'd taken his failure in stride, as he typically did, and used it as an excuse to train and get stronger. She had heard enough about Jiraiya to know that the sage would likely train Naruto well. Naruto would get stronger and return and…well, she wasn't really quite sure what would happen after that, but knowing Naruto he would try to find Sasuke and bring him home. And he would succeed, wouldn't he?
It's what she would have thought, before the failure of the last mission. Naruto and Sasuke had beat many odds, to complete the mission in the Land of Waves, to push their way through the chuunin exams…who wouldn't have believed in their continued success? Sakura wasn't dumb. Even if they were just beating the odds, they were consistently beating the odds, so it was smart to assume that they'd continue doing it, even if, in the latest case, they were turning their own odds against each other.
She wasn't surprised Sasuke had gotten away. Just massively disappointed. Disappointed in him, disappointed in Naruto, and disappointed in herself.
She could move on from this. Request transfer onto another team and continue to sit in the shadows, supporting, watching, never really moving forward. She could sit back and wait for Naruto's return this way, and when the time came she could aid him, try to beat the odds once again… she could even attempt to get some supplementary training. She was smart enough to get into the medical core if she tried, or she could even ask some of the older chuunin to teach her a thing or two. That would probably be the smart thing to do. And she was the smart one of the group.
But smart moves didn't beat the odds. So Sakura decided that it was time to do something really, really stupid. And that night, Sakura decided she was going to break into the Konoha Archive Library.