A/N: So the complaint I got about this chapter beforehand was that it wasn't realistic. In my opinion though, fanfiction really doesn't have to be realistic in the sense that you could see it happening. It's more about what you would like to see happen. Regardless of that, I'm trying it this way to see if it's a little easier to swallow. I also think that this it's a better set up than the way I had it before. Anyway, you can be the judge. Lastly, shout out DiggestBickTM for wording help as well as allowing me to bounce ideas off of.
Chapter Two: Before She Cheats
Sakura was usually a very observant person. She had to be given her decision to become a ninja in general and specifically a medic nin. However, when Sasuke was involved she let her guard slip dangerously. How could she resist? He was her first love. It was one of the reasons why she had no idea that she had been caught by Naruto. Instead the cherry blossom blissfully indulged in her "quickie". Once finished, the Haruno sadly watched Sasuke dressing to leave. It was always the worst part of these little hook ups.
'I just need an easy way to get rid of Naruto,' the green eyed nin thought wistfully. 'Then I could work on being Mrs. Uchiha.'
It wasn't that the pinkette had any real romantic attachment to the blond. He could never hold a candle to Sasuke for all his trying. It was more that she was concerned about her image. It was bad enough that a few people were giving her the side-eye because they knew how she was fooling around. She didn't need the social ostracism of outright choosing the known defector over the lovable, but dumb hero. It was a miracle that the ramen lover hadn't picked up on it, but he suffered from the same thing she did: a weakness for the first.
Seeing that the snake-summoner was all dressed, Sakura made quick plans for their next meeting and bid her dream lover goodbye. She then showered and proceeded to tidy up the mess that was left behind from her romp with Sasuke. The pinkette giggled at the still hot and fresh memories of her tryst with the Sharingan user and believed they would make her anniversary date with Naruto somewhat bearable.
A knock on the door brought the cherry blossom back to reality. She quickly answered it expecting it to be Naruto for their date, but found one of the hokage's messenger chūnins instead.
"Tsunade-sama wants to see you at your old training ground as soon as possible," he said.
The girl nodded in understanding, scribbled a note telling Naruto what was going on, gathered her things, and quickly made her way to where her shishou was. When she reached the training ground, Tsunade was leaning against a tree reading what looked to be a letter.
"Took you long enough," the blonde woman said, straightening herself and putting the letter aside.
"What was it you needed, shishou?" Sakura asked.
"We'll be sparring. It's been a while."
The Haruno acknowledged the hokage by getting into her stance. The Senju stood patiently waiting for the younger woman's attack knowing that the pinkette was thinking of the best plan. After a few minutes, Sakura charged the brown-eyed woman only to be knocked aside rather harshly. What had once been the younger medic was now a log and the real girl came at the slug sannin from the right. Tsunade lazily blocked the girl's series of punches and kicks. Getting bored with the girl's attempts to land an effective blow, the Senju threw the cherry blossom into the tree she'd been resting on beforehand. The tree cracked at the force of Sakura's body connecting with it.
"Is that the best you can do? I thought I trained you better than that," the Godaime quipped going back to her relaxed stance.
"You said you wanted to spar, not fight no-holds barred," Sakura grunted.
"I've never gone easy on you, honey. Why do you think that would change now? Also I figured you'd want to get this over with quickly. Don't you have a date this evening?"
The Haruno didn't reply as she got back in her stance and took a deep breath. She charged again, managing to evade two left hooks and then a right. The slug summoner was starting to get bored again when Sakura connected with a critical blow to the older woman's abdomen. There was enough power behind the strike to even knock the older medic back a couple of feet. The pinkette didn't waste any time celebrating the small feat; if her shishou wanted a real fight, the girl was going to make sure she didn't disappoint the sannin.
The blonde chuckled to herself as the younger medic landed a good hit on her. There were plenty of reasons to be proud of the pinkette's growth, but there were still lessons that the girl needed to learn. The two traded heavy blows for a few more minutes before they jumped away from each other to regroup.
"You're really not in a hurry," the buxom woman stated as she rolled her neck. "You'd think you'd be more excited about your anniversary.
"I left Naruto a note. He can wait," Sakura responded nonchalantly.
The cherry blossom didn't have to say any more than that. The Senju heard the younger medic's complete indifference loud and clear. It made ending the "sparring session" that much easier. The sannin charged her student. Sakura held her own for the most part and when she saw an opening to get the edge, she went for it.
What the Haruno didn't know was that the brown-eyed woman had purposely left herself open to an attack. When the green-eyed nin did exactly as the older woman expected, Tsunade turned the tables and connected a vicious kick to the cherry blossom's ribs. Sakura let out a growl of pain as she felt her ribs fracture. The girl leapt back to heal herself and was surprised to find the older medic allowed her to do so.
"I'm in about as much of hurry as you are, honey. Go on," Tsunade said answering the unspoken question.
"Are you toying with me?" The Haruno narrowed her eyes.
"You should have learned a long time ago that all my games have a purpose, but if you're finally ready to end this, let's go."
Sakura finished healing herself and got back into her stance. She wasn't going to charge this time. Instead the pinkette quickly gathered chakra to her fist and punched the ground. The brown-eyed woman simply stepped back a couple of feet to avoid the devastated area and made quick work of the debris that was launched at her at high speeds. Just as the Senju was destroying the last chunks of debris, the green-eyed medic nin aimed to take down her shishou. Much to the younger woman's chagrin, her attack was dodged and she narrowly missed catching an elbow to the face.
As the cherry blossom bobbed to miss the elbow, she quickly found herself on the defensive. Tsunade was coming at her with an unending barrage of punches and kicks. The pinkette was effectively blocking and dodging as needed, but that wasn't how she was going to end this battle. The slug sannin wasn't giving her any openings to go back on the offensive and without an opening, the girl would be bobbing and weaving until the hokage tired out. Unfortunately, that should have been the second thing the younger medic was paying attention to. The first was that her shishou had backed her into a tree.
When Sakura realized she had been cornered, she panicked. In the split second it took her to realize she had clearly lost track of her surroundings, Tsunade kneed the cherry blossom in the stomach and hit her with an uppercut. Winded and slightly dizzy, the pinkette tried to get herself out of her precarious position by trying to shunshin a way. The hokage wasn't having it. The older medic nin grabbed the pinkette by the hair and slammed the younger medic's head into the tree. The green-eyed woman's head was now bleeding and she was holding onto the tree as if it could save her.
It didn't. The Godaime grabbed the Haruno and threw the younger woman across training ground. The Senju walked casually to where her student landed. Sakura used her older woman's leisurely pace to try and right herself. She halfway managed to stand only to have the blonde woman punch her in her healed ribs. The cherry blossom growled in pain, sinking back to her knees. The green-eyed woman was then knocked completely to the ground by Tsunade slamming her fists into the younger woman's back.
The Haruno laid on the ground, thinking about how she could at least escape this sparring session on her feet. She wanted to try healing herself again, but was sure her shishou would put an immediate stop to that. She didn't have any great ideas that didn't start with healing herself though. The younger medic just had to do something to avoid spending her night in a hospital bed due to some misguided boredom the buxom woman was apparently suffering from. There wasn't a single reason the pinkette could think of why the blonde woman had asked to spar or why she'd gone so far in the spar.
The Senju, for her part, stood above the cherry blossom, waiting to see if the younger woman would make a move. She could clearly tell the green-eyed woman's wheels were turning, but the said green-eyed woman wasn't getting anywhere fast.
"Since it looks like you're close to giving up, why don't you guess the point of this?" Tsunade suggested as she squatted down beside her student.
"You're avoiding paperwork," Sakura answered snidely.
"Wrong!" the hokage sing-songed with a sharp backhand to the younger medic's face. "Care to try again?"
"Why? So you can hit me again for not knowing?" the Haruno bit out.
The slug sannin grabbed the green eyed woman by the hair and tossed her into the air. Satisfied with the height the younger medic had reached, the brown-eyed woman popped into the air to spike Sakura to the ground. The force of the younger medic's impact was enough to make a crater several feet wide and at least two feet deep. The Godaime did this a couple more times, largely out of spite. When the cherry blossom landed for the third time, the Senju waited for dust to settle before approaching the pinkette's final crash site.
"Anything smart to say now?" Tsunade asked.
Sakura only managed to whine in pain.
"The primary reason I asked you out here is to point out that you're not as clever as you think you are." The blonde woman squatted down beside her student again and quickly assessed the girl's injuries. "Secondarily, I wanted to ask you why you thought you could lie to me, let alone yourself, about how you feel about Sasuke. I told you, straight up, that if you still had feelings for him; simple lust, pure romantic love, or anything in between, you should own up to that instead of toiling in a relationship you didn't actually want."
The sannin then set to picking and choosing which of the green-eyed medic's injuries to heal.
"You assuredme that you were "over" Sasuke; Prattled on about how it could "never work between the two of you" and "Naruto was just a better choice". I took you at your word because you hadn't given me reason not to. When the rumors started and I confronted you, you fed me the same garbage, as if I couldn't see the forest from the trees. So what could you possibly say to defend yourself that doesn't make you sound cowardly or unfeeling?"
The hokage waited for an answer while Sakura tried to come up with something. The Haruno didn't have a response that would satisfy the older woman and she knew it. In a last ditch effort, the green-eyed woman aimed to kick Tsunade in the face and make a run for it. The Godaime grabbed the younger woman's ankles and shook her head.
"Nothing, huh?" the sannin asked as she unceremoniously snapped the pinkette's right ankle.
The cherry blossom howled in pain. The blonde woman repositioned herself and punched the younger woman in the stomach. That quieted the younger medic's wailing.
"Let me read something to you.
Sakura,
When I told Hinata that I couldn't love her honestly in a romantic sense, she told me she hoped that the person I felt romantic love for would show me half the respect I showed her and be good enough to deserve me. I believed wholeheartedly that you would. I ignored any reason you couldn't have lived up to my idealized version of you and continued to believe there could be no one else for me but you. I put a lot of faith in our relationship over the last two years as a result; defended you against those who believed you to be phony and abusive, took the abuse believing I just wasn't being a good enough boyfriend, and continued to only have eyes for you despite everything. My reward for all that was watching you beg for Sasuke's cock like a five dollar whore on our two year anniversary. It took me until that very instant to realize that everything that I had hoped for between us was a lie. I regret that now. I regret alienating my friends because I couldn't see that they were truly trying to protect me. I regret being naïve enough to believe you actually didn't want or love Sasuke anymore. Above all the things that I regret, I regret ever liking you, ever meeting you, and ever laying eyes one you. But hindsight being twenty-twenty, I really should have known better. I was warned, wasn't I? I was just so hopelessly in love with you though. I couldn't fathom the thought of you two-timing me with anyone, let alone with that endlessly brooding shitbag. So I'm leaving the village for a while, not that you'll ultimately care that this situation and circumstances you never cared to understand, have pushed me into the darkest emotional place I've been in a very long time. That's okay though, isn't it? You get to keep lapping up the tiniest pricks of affection that that asshole bothers to lavish upon you and believe it's actually love. I hope you don't grow to regret that decision if those insignificant tidbits stop being enough for you or if he ever does to you what you've done to me. I'm sure that won't happen though, because he totally doesn't act in a fashion that's only beneficial to him or betray people who've done nothing but support him, right?!
Anyway, here's to hoping you end up with some kind of disease because a filthy slut deserves as much for her trashiness,
Uzumaki Naruto," Tsunade finished putting the letter away again.
Sakura weakly groaned. All she could think was 'how?' How had she allowed herself to be caught by Naruto when he'd remained oblivious for this long? How had she missed Naruto's presence when she'd been careful enough every time before? How was she going to spin this so that she didn't look so terrible in the midst of things? The how questions continued in the younger woman's mind until her shishou's voice broke in.
"What about now?" the blonde woman asked standing.
The Haruno looked up at Tsunade resigned to whatever was going to happen next. In light of the circumstances, what could she do? There still wasn't an answer she could give that would satisfy the older woman and said older woman had made a point of breaking her down pretty effectively to teach her a lesson. The green-eyed medic couldn't really say she'd properly received the message, but it didn't matter anymore.
The sannin, seeing the resignation in her student's eyes, kicked at the defenseless younger woman in disgust.
"Can't even pretend to be sorry can you? It's just 'oh well' to you at this point? Never mind that you could have avoided this situation by simply owning up to how you felt. Doesn't matter who you've hurt either does it? You got to take the easy way out. You didn't have to do any real dirty work, just be sloppy enough to let the gaki catch you in the act."
Tsunade yanked the pinkette up by her hair and threw the girl into another tree. As soon as Sakura connected with the tree, her world thankfully went black. Once more the Senju picked up the green eyed medic, but instead of throwing her again, the brown-eyed woman placed the pinkette on her shoulder.
"I can only hope that your heart doesn't end up broken by the Uchiha and that if there is a next time, you'll be woman enough to be honest with yourself and the person who's interested in you," the buxom woman muttered as she made her way to the hospital.
