AN: As is my style, repetition, symmetry, AU. This was written before the latest chapters of the manga came out, and I'm too lazy to change it.
SPOILER warnings for the chuunin exams and later.
Oh, and I don't hate any of these characters. In fact, I love them dearly and love to explore their many facets. They just came out this way this time.
Disclaimer: Honestly? Me, own Naruto? Wow, I'm flattered. But no, sorry, that's some other guy. Japanese, male, likes baseball. Clearly not me.
Team Seven is Broken
Team Seven is broken, and it is Sakura's fault.
The team was supposed to have four members, but it really had three ninja. Kakashi, Sasuke, and Naruto each had their own strengths, their own contribution to the team. Sakura's only contribution was pining over Sasuke. She did nothing to get them through Kakashi's sadistic test, nothing to get them past Zabuza, nothing to get them into the Chuunin exam. She still believed in the fairytales about the damsels in distress, the princesses rescued by their shining knights. She was always being rescued by her teammates, always watching their backs as they ran towards danger and their dreams. Until the middle of the second part of the Chuunin exam, she was a liability.
Then, when her team was attacked and her teammates were helpless, she rose to the challenge. She stepped up to the role of a kunoichi. Even if it would take time to overcome her lack of strength, her neglected training, her vulnerable mindset, she had become a ninja.
Team Seven briefly mended.
Team Seven is broken, and it is Kakashi's fault.
Kakashi played favorites. Sakura failed to pass the preliminaries into the third round, so he ignored her entirely. Despite passing the preliminaries, Naruto was passed off to whichever jounin he could con into the job while Kakashi trained the sharingan-user. Sasuke could benefit most from his tutelage, he thought, and Naruto and Sakura would be alright. So the latter two were left to make hospital visits and train alone while the other half of their team went unheard-from for nearly a month.
They did not even make it back in time to see Naruto's match. Sakura saw it, and was amazed, but Kakashi did not even ask about it when he finally arrived. For all his admonitions about teamwork, he failed to even pretend to care about two of his teammates.
Later, he let Naruto go with Jiraiya without a fuss. Then he was too busy being unconscious and taking missions to worry about fixing what he had unintentionally broken.
Team Seven is broken, and it is Sasuke's fault.
Kakashi saw how Sasuke was getting, saw how the curse seal affected him, and tied him to a tree. He talked about revenge being pointless and appreciating the friends he had. He left his student tied up to think about his words. Sasuke escaped and dismissed it all as the words of a man who wanted to control him.
Sakura caught him at the gates and pleaded for him to stay. She cried as she told him she loved him, and was pleased when he admitted to caring about her at least a little. Then he appeared behind her and knocked her out, so she couldn't stop him.
Naruto reached him at the Valley of the End. He argued passionately, and when words failed he argued with his fists. He demonstrated his own strength and power and used every weapon in his arsenal (literal and figurative) to convince his best friend to return. In the end, all he got for his trouble was a hole in his chest and a scratched forehead protector.
Naruto and Sakura finally retrieved Sasuke and brought him back to Konoha three years later. Sasuke never said thank you. Even so, Team Seven was one again.
Team Seven is broken, and it is Naruto's fault.
He was always reckless. He said things to get his opponents riled up and charged into fights without thinking. He never left his teammates behind and never thought ahead. He took mission after mission and never complained. He was proud to be serving his village, proud to be a ninja and not a monster.
It was supposed to be a routine C-class mission, like the one Team Seven had taken to the Land of Waves so long ago. He went alone, confident he could handle whatever threat came up.
He was wrong.
They recovered his body four days too late, surrounded by over a dozen enemy nin. His name was carved on the memorial where Team Seven had started.
Team Seven is shattered, and they know they cannot be mended.