Last Waltz
Mentioned SasuSaku. At least it was Sakura she lost to. There was no shame in admitting defeat to her. Karin-centric.
It was a little sad, Karin supposed, but it wasn't like she didn't see it coming. She had already known a lot about Sakura, though Sasuke never really spoke of her, or at least refused to talk about her at all. That in itself, however, spoke volumes about how he felt about her, the pink-haired girl with emerald green eyes, who still managed to look beautiful even as she cried, her face torn in half with heartbreak and distraught. Karin remembers that day when she first laid eyes on Sakura; remembers how she hated herself for wanting to reach out and brush her tears away, to tell her not to cry, to touch her hair the way no one ever touched hers. She never recalled ever being comforted as a child, but she did remember thinking to herself that perhaps the ability to feel compassion came from nature and not nurture, though she still wasn't so sure. It was an odd thing to debate with herself, but Sakura's face, so pretty and so sad, had struck a cord with her for a long, long time afterwards.
So it didn't come as a huge surprise when she'd heard the news from Orochimaru that Sasuke had taken the pink-haired kunoichi for his own. Orochimaru had remarked that Sasuke made a good choice - she was strong, she had surpassed her master, and she wasn't hard on the eyes. They'll have strong children, he'd said.
But Karin knew there was more to Sakura than any of those qualities. She barely knew the girl, only that she was monstrous on the battlefield but sweet and kind-hearted away from the chaos of war. Karin highly suspected that it was because she was easy to fall in love with - she didn't have to try and make people feel for her, and Karin was a living example of that. She fought to keep her heart hard, like steel, only to fail and succumb to the sight of the other girl's tears and the sound of her trying valiantly to keep herself from sobbing.
Turning back to her work, she let herself smile. A bittersweet smile, more sweet than bitter, but a smile nonetheless.
"Looks like you've got better taste than I do, you jerk," Karin told the Taka picture on her desk. She smiled at it fondly for a minute. Then, finally, she cleared it off her desk and stowed it away.
At least it was Sakura he fell in love with; there was no shame in admitting defeat to her, pink haired and beautiful in both strength and spirit.