At the end I did write a second chapter.
Hope you like it!
"Why must we love where the lighting strikes and not where we chose?"
—Theodore Sturgeon
She listens to his short tale and many possible answers come to her and pool in her mouth, waiting for her to make a choice and say one of them.
'Why did you say you love her?' she wants to ask 'Do you really feel like that?', 'Do you realize how she must feel now?', 'Didn't you think of the consequences?'
She listens to his short tale and all these questions beg for an answer, but when she takes air and opens her lips, the inquiry that comes out instead is:
"Do you remember when you say you loved me?" Sakura says.
Naruto makes a sharp, silent intake of breath and she wants to turn her head and look at him, but her gaze is transfixed on the dark, stone celling of the cave.
He surely remembers, she thinks, just as she remembers every time he claim his love for her, both with words and with actions. Maybe she asked him this, now, because she wants him to remember, to think about what he said to Hinata and make him wonder if he did mean it.
How selfish of her, Sakura thinks.
"I wonder…did you only say that because I loved Sasuke and you simply didn't want to lose to him?"
She has thought about that long and hard. Naruto was so childish when he first try to conquer her affections and it seemed, back then, that seeing her fixated on Sasuke just made him try hardest, so she thought maybe that's why he likes me, because I don't like him.
But she was childish too, childish and immature and selfish, ignorant of Naruto's hardships and feelings, deliberately belittling him and his affections. And when she grew up, when she grew older and wiser and a little less selfish,
[but only a little, she thinks bitterly]
it became obvious that his love for her was real, solid and strong. Why did he fall in love with me? She would ask herself, when I was egoistical and arrogant and cruel.
But why does one fall in love, anyway?
"But is real this times, isn't?" Sakura continues, impassive and certain, like she's revealing an universal, plain and unique truth to him "Hinata is a great person; honestly she's almost too good for you."
Even now, she thinks, she can't stop telling him that he's not good enough. But in true, she thinks, maybe Hinata is the only one that could be worthy of Naruto's love. Hinata, she knows, has always love him deeply, unconditionally, unapologetically.
And Naruto, Sakura knows now, deserves someone like that.
"Yeah but…" He starts and make a small but significant pause.
Sakura can almost hear the words he doesn't say, can almost hear another declaration of love dragging out of his heart. And she can almost hear herself say: No. Small and gentle and painful, but still a plain, direct rejection.
Because she knows, now, that she doesn't deserve his love.
"…but she left me to be with Toneri." He finishes.
It's almost a relief, listen him say that. And it's almost like a knife in her heart. But it's okay, she thinks, that he can say this and just this, that he can say this is about Hinata and not about Sakura. It's okay, because she doesn't deserve him.
"You're such an idiot. It's obvious she had a reason she couldn't reveal to you" Sakura says.
She sighs, so quite he doesn't hear her. She sighs and looks at the ceiling with something like melancholy and yearn, but she's not so sure what she longs for, not anymore.
"When a girl falls in love and it's true love, her feelings don't change that easily, honestly they can't change. I understand… "Sakura whispers, with words she didn't know was holding in the cage of her heart, and closes her eyes, hoping that she won't cry "…just how she feels."
Of course she does. She has love Sasuke for so long it would be strange to not hold him dear in her heart at this point of her life, but the years passed and she became a little older, a littler wiser and little less selfish, but just a little and not enough, never enough to be worthy of someone so pure and truth as Naruto.
Just as she loves Sasuke, Sakura loves Naruto. And the rational, selfish part of her tells her the choice is obvious. Go with Naruto, a part of her whispers, go with him that will love you until the world ends, in spite of your mistakes and in spite of your flaws, go with the one that has always seen you and see perfection.
But Naruto, Naruto that has suffered so much, that has been so selfless despite his situation, Naruto that is a good, righteous man, Sakura thinks, knows, can assure, doesn't deserve the half-assed love she can offer him, he doesn't deserved a heart that will always long for another.
So she closes her eyes and lets exhaustion take her, away from the world of the awake and away from her thoughts and away from him.
She has to be selfless now, Sakura thinks, and let him be with someone that can take care of his heart. She owns him that much.
Sakura's character eludes me and I think it must show on this small piece. To be honest I really don't understand why she stays, let's say, loyal to Sasuke after all the shit he does (then again, Naruto suffers of the same flaw but that's a discussion for another day). Its very hard to me to see and understand Sakura in regards to Sasuke.
That said, what I think I kinda get about Sakura is that she has always try (especially in the first part of the series) to fulfilled a determinate kind of feminity that isn't true to her. I think that's the reason we have Inner Sakura in the first part, because she was trying to project an image of delicacy and indulgency and keeping inside all her anger and frustrations and stuff she considered not adequate to a woman. In the second part she seems to have reconciled this two parts of her, but that kind of shit stays with you some way or another and I think that, taking that into account, Sakura would think she's not a good woman for Naruto, because a woman, a good one, "has" to be loyal and faithful to just one man and Sakura cannot be that woman. Or something like that, that's my interpretation of the character anyway, you're free to disagree with me.
This was hard to write.
I hope you liked it! Thanks for reading every comment will be appreciated!