3rd January 2008

Rating: T

02. Pride

I was proud of this girl. I am not easily impressed, and the first time I met her I was left in despair. The brunette would go far, but that went without saying. The blonde at least had the drive to do the same. But the girl? I though she was a waste of time, more concerned with how her hair looked than her teammates safety – although her insipid attachment to the brunette was more of a hindrance than a help.

But time changes everything, and it certainly worked its magic with her.

Her vanity disappeared, she stopped uttering words of love and romance and she became a critical part of every team she was thrown into. Her willingness to blend into a team and work together with others puts the other two to shame. She has no illusions of striking out on her own and defeating enemies single-handedly, but that's not to say she has no drive or ambition. She simply knows her limits and knows exactly how to get a job done, and usually that means swallowing your ego and accepting help.

I was proud of this girl. In three short years she far surpassed my low expectations – everyone's low expectations – and became one of the finest kunoichi this village has ever produced. She's probably the most eligible female in Konoha, and I know eyes watch her wherever she goes and that poor boys fall to stuttering pieces when she deigns to acknowledge their existence, because not only is she a worthy ally, she's also beautiful and kind and capable of a sweetness that belies the fiery temper that hides beneath the surface. She has remarkable patience, but she doesn't take shit from anybody.

Apart from him.

I was proud of this girl. I was, when I watched her during those long months of endless missions to retrieve the lost member of our team. She cared about him still, but her wild, out-of-control obsession was gone. She took her job seriously, and her motivation for wanting Sasuke back was for the village's sake. For Naruto's sake. The first time I saw her smash her fist into Sasuke's pretty face, I thought that this was a girl who would never let anyone push her around.

But I was wrong.

Three years after Sasuke's return, it happened. Out of the blue, Sakura came to my door and told me she was going to marry Sasuke. She had my blessing at first, because I thought perhaps their love affair had been private. But as I watched over the proceeding weeks, I grew uncomfortably aware that I had missed nothing between them. There was nothing to miss.

He barely looked at her. They never held hands. They never even embraced. He criticised little things about her, and had anyone else said the same to her, she would have knocked them unconscious. But because it was Sasuke, she smiled and accepted it, like perhaps she deserved it.

I'm not proud of this girl anymore. She's disappointed me more than anyone else ever has. I thought I saw a strong-minded woman bloom from a silly, whimsical bud of a girl, and I thought that she was too smart, and too self-aware to fall back on bad habits. The week before the wedding, I felt I no longer recognised her. All I heard from her was talk of love and romance and wedding dresses. She didn't care about her job. She didn't even care about the village. As long as she had Sasuke, nothing else mattered. There are a hundred better men in this village for her; ones who wouldn't neglect her or mistreat her, but she's so caught up in the fantasy that she doesn't notice. I don't think she ever will.

She does, however, notice me, because I avoid her. I don't look at her. I criticise her form during practise, and say the things to her that Sasuke so casually drops, and she looks at me, hurt, as if I've betrayed her. It's clear that only Lord Sasuke can treat her in such a way.

"Why are you being so mean?" she demands, throwing down her kunai halfway through our session two days before her wedding. "This isn't like you."

"Stop wasting time," I tell her shortly. "Pick up the kunai."

She doesn't comply, even though if I was Sasuke she would be obeying like a meek mouse. But then, if I was Sasuke, she never would have rebelled in the first place.

"This is about me marrying Sasuke, isn't it?" she demands. "You've been weird since I first told you about it. What's the matter with you?"

I narrow my eyes and wait for some vapid accusation of jealousy. Someone so wrapped up in the ideology of romance probably saw the world in shades of powder pink and throbbing red, where everyone acts upon feelings of love and variations thereof.

"Maybe if you pulled your head out from Sasuke's glorious ass for two minutes, you'd see for yourself," I say shortly.

She's speechless, and though her eyes are wide, she remains blind. "What the hell…? Do you think I'm not going to take my work seriously or something? Because I'm getting married?" she snaps, surprising me. "You're a crusty old man who hates love and romance – no wonder you despise me now. You're jealous that I have Sasuke and you have no one!"

"You're an idiot," I say bluntly. Because she is. "I'm not jealous of you. I'm jealous of-"

I have to cut off my own words because my mouth is running away with me, which is something it rarely does. I feel tense and angry, and when I'm like this I say things I don't mean to say… as in I say the things I really mean, even though I may not realise it till its out and I can't take it back

I know what I meant to say.

I'm not jealous, I tell her. I'm just worried she's lost sight of the important path in life. I can tell she doesn't agree, and that she doesn't even believe me - which is fair because I've begun to stop believing it myself, even though it is still semi-truthful.

The real fact of the matter is that… I probably am jealous, despite what I've been telling myself ever since Sakura announced she was getting married.

"Don't bother coming to the wedding," she says. "You're not welcome anymore."

That's not how I wanted this unplanned encounter to end. I catch her arm, ready to apologise because I'm not really like Sasuke and I don't like upsetting her. She's stupid, young, and wrong, but I love her and I hate seeing her hurt. That's the whole reason why I hate seeing her with Sasuke. With anyone else, I might be happy for her… but not him. Never him.

She refuses to look at me and stares resiliently off into the trees as if I'm not there, despite my firm hold on her arm. Her eyes are swimming with unshed tears and I know whatever I do or say next will make them spill.

"I'm sorry," I say.

Her chin trembles. She blinks. Tears gush down her cheeks.

I don't know how else to make her understand, so I do exactly the wrong thing. Instead of sitting her down and explaining to her that she could do better – that she is not the kind of girl who could take such passive abuse from a man for the rest of her life without going nuts and killing him eventually – and hoping that she may absorb that fact before it was too late…

Instead of doing what I should have done, I dragged her against me, caught her face between her hands and pressed my mouth to hers.

My mask gets in the way.

I tear it off after the first fumbled kiss and attempt to catch her lips again, but by now her senses have caught up and she's fighting. She's kicking and scratching and with one hard bite she draws blood. I release her as the metallic taste fills my mouth and leaks down my chin.

She's beautiful when she's angry and rumpled like this with my blood on her lips and staining her teeth. But not as beautiful as she is when she's beside Sasuke, acting more like a possession than the strong, independent woman she was briefly. Because beside him is where she's happiest.

"I love Sasuke," she says in a low, trembling voice. "How dare you try to ruin that for me!"

She spits on the ground and wipes her mouth as she backs away. "Don't come to the wedding. Don't even come near me ever again!"

I was proud of this girl once. But not anymore.

I'm not proud of myself much these days either.