Characters: Sakura-centric, Team 7.

Genre: General

Song: Fighter - Christina Aguilera

Description: On Sakura, and how some flowers grow tall and beautiful on burnt soil.


Sakura would be lying if she said she was happy.

She's not. Not all the way, anyway. There are times when she is, of course. Times when she smiles and laughs freely and with no shadows to chase away her gladness. Times when she forgets who she is and where she is and why things aren't whole.

But those times pass, and the hole in her heart reminds her what she's missing.

She's the only genin flying solo at the moment.

Ino's team is still fully intact, and even if she's learning medical ninjutsu with Sakura and much of their time is spent together, Sakura is forced to watch and wait while Ino heads off on countless missions with Shikamaru, Chouji, and Asuma-sensei.

She knows why she must stay. Kakashi-sensei is in ANBU and Naruto is studying sage jutsu with Jiraiya-sama and Sasuke-kun is…well, he's off somewhere making all the wrong choices. She knows that she's waiting but she's not useless anymore. She knows that all this time she's spent in Konoha has been put to good use, and with Tsunade-shishou and Shizune-sempai, she's becoming a superb kunoichi. She's grateful, she really is. Chunin. Chunin. It seemed so long ago when that was just a pipe dream.

But it's impossible to chase away the melancholy that settles in when she watches Ino's team leave through the Konoha gates. They move fluidly, like a family. Familiar with each other, joking around and teasing each other and arguing. It's hard to tune out the ghostly echoes of "dobe" and "teme" and she is always forced to remember what it felt like to stand between her boys the way Ino stands between hers. Like she was immortal. Special. No one could touch her, and she was needed.

So she doesn't tell anyone how much it aches to know that those times are long gone for her. She tells no one about her burgeoning loneliness, even popular as she is among the villagers and her comrades and friends. She tells no one about the hole in her heart, and she watches Ino's team leave from the shadows.

There are no tears in her eyes as she bids them farewell, silently wishing that her boys were back so they could go on missions, too, so they could be the envy of lonely people as they left four-strong and solid. Instead she smiles bravely, and reminds herself that there's a reason for all of this. There's a reason this is all happening.

Someday, they will come back. All of them. She believes that, truly. She has to.

So Sakura waits. And Sakura trains. And Sakura learns. And Sakura grows.

And won't they be surprised.


Her parents don't understand her.

It comes to a head one day, one hot summer day when she staggers home nearly in pieces. Her arm's dislocated, she's bleeding from a hundred different cuts and a heavy bruise over her eye makes it difficult to see, and Kaasan and Tousan don't understand why she's smiling.

"Get in here, Sakura," sighs Mebuki, tired of having to clean her daughter's wounds and tolerate the way she smiles. Sakura knows her mother can't understand the morbid joy she finds in her training. She knows nobody can.

She lugs herself into the bathroom without any help, sits on the edge of the tub and starts piecing herself back together while her mother prepares the bandages. She's low on chakra, but that's normal for the end of the day. She's got enough to shove her shoulder back into place and to heal some of the deeper cuts. Everything else should be fine on its own.

Mebuki's got tears in her eyes as she dabs ointment to a gash on the inside of her arm.

"What's wrong?" Sakura asks softly, like she doesn't already know. Like she doesn't already see the way her pain is interpreted by her parents, who have only ever wanted her to be happy.

Happy in a way she can't be anymore, now that she's a kunoichi in every sense of the word.

"What's wrong?" Mebuki counters, her eyes narrowing into furious slits. "My daughter's come home for the umpteenth time looking closer to death than she did the day before, and I am tired of this blood all over my bathtub. What are you training so hard for?"

"I know you can't understand it, Kaasan," she says quietly, serenely. They've had this talk a thousand times. Sakura can't begrudge her parents their disapproval, but it doesn't change anything. It doesn't change her mind, or her resolve. It only pushes her further.

"This is your purpose now, is it?" Mebuki says stiffly. She ties the bandage too tight around her arm, but Sakura doesn't flinch. "To push yourself past your limits like you've got anything to prove? Your whole life, contingent on the decisions of three men who left you behind?"

It stings worse than the ointment healing her wounds, but pain is a teacher, and Sakura knows she's still got much to learn.

"You're throwing your life away, Sakura. Throwing away the life your father and I gave you, and for what? They aren't coming back. You're clinging to a childish daydream where Naruto returns and Sasuke returns and Kakashi-san takes you all on fun adventures again, but those days are over. And your continued obsession with that boy…" Sakura knows that in the Haruno household, Sasuke-kun's name is that boy screamed in differing trebles of revulsion, "…you're missing out on life, Sakura, waiting around for him! He doesn't love you! He doesn't care about you! And that is his fault, but you're wasting your life pretending like he's going to come back here and be with you!"

"This isn't about that!" she protests, fighting back for the first time. She hates the way they speak about Sasuke-kun, but more than that, she hates the way her parents constantly misinterpret her motive. This isn't about him. This is about her. And Team 7. And everything. "I don't have any illusions about Sasuke-kun, I know who and what he is! This is about me."

And Mebuki explodes.

"What do you have to prove?" she demands, irate. Blonde hair whipping back and forth as she paces around the bathroom, brittle hands clenched into iron fists. "If not for them, what is this all for? I won't bury my daughter, Sakura. Do you understand me? And you're working yourself to death. Do not ask me to lay my only child in the ground because you wanted to prove your strength to people who don't deserve to see it anyway. Do not ask me to."

As Sakura packs up her things that evening, she wonders if this is how Sasuke-kun felt, at the end.

Like nobody could understand him or the way he thought or the way he was, so he had to leave. Not in anger or hate, not in bitterness or regret, just because it had to be done. Because the people who loved him couldn't relate to him.

"I love you with all my heart!"

Sakura meant it that night. She knows Sasuke-kun knew she meant it. But she didn't understand him, and he knew that, too.

Her mother protests her move, but her words fall on deaf ears. Her father just stands and shakes his head because his little girl's all grown up at age fifteen and neither one of them can reach her anymore. And Sakura can't bring them anymore pain.

She's starting to understand Sasuke-kun more and more, she realizes, as she locks herself inside the tiny, one-bedroom apartment near Hokage Tower.


She comes to the memorial stone for all the wrong reasons.

Not because she has anyone to mourn there. Not yet. Maybe the Third Hokage, but besides that, she hasn't had to bury any loved ones, not yet. She's one of the lucky ones.

Still, though, she mourns. She mourns the death of what could have been, if things were different, if life was fair. She mourns her boys, who are thousands of miles away and who probably don't even miss her.

And she mourns her teacher, who's thrown himself back into ANBU, and she misses him badly. This is where he spent so much time, so this is where she feels closest to him.

She also hates him a little bit.

Because he trained Sasuke-kun personally, didn't he? And he focused on Naruto. And Sakura?

There was nothing in him for her. No secret jutsu he could trust her with, no important task on a mission. Guard the client, Sakura. Good chakra control, Sakura. Stand back, Sakura; we'll take care of this.

To think she used to enjoy that. To think she used to feel some overinflated sense of self-importance, because she was the one with the most crucial job. She was the one who had to protect the client.

(Of course, it was years before she realized Kakashi-sensei only wanted her out of the way. Years before she realized just how great a burden she had been for her teacher and her boys.)

Sakura misses her sensei and she's also frustrated, because he left her with nothing.

And she's also grateful to him, too.

Because she woke up at last. She realized back then, at thirteen, that she would have to find help on her own, that it wasn't going to come to her from the great copy-nin. She realized back then that she needed a teacher who could devote time to her.

She's grateful she found Tsunade-shishou. Grateful that Kakashi-sensei couldn't find anything in her worth cultivating, because she found someone who did.

(But she misses him anyway. Because in the end, he taught her the most important lesson of all:

To never abandon your teammates.)

Too bad she was the only one who listened.

Too bad he broke his own rule.


Sakura eats ramen at Ichiraku's once a week.

She comes alone, never with others, and she sits on her usual stool. This is where she comes to feel closest to Naruto.

Bizarrely, she is angriest at him.

Sasuke-kun left and he took her heart with him and she's so angry about that. Because it isn't fair. His decision – selfish and impulsive – was the catalyst that led to the destruction of their team. Because once he left, then Kakashi-sensei was out, too. He went back to ANBU and he's in ANBU now and what incentive did that give Naruto to stick around?

Naruto left, too. Of course he did. It's been two years already.

And she's angriest at him. Because he's supposed to be there. In Konoha. With her. Her friend, her eternal annoyance. Constantly demanding dates from her in his artless way, even knowing that her heart belongs to his best friend. Smiling too wide at her, talking too loud, eating too quickly. Protecting her, and loving her the way nobody else ever has or ever could.

She keeps her face completely clear as she eats her ramen, but inside, she practices what she's going to scream at Naruto when she sees him again.

"You should have been here! You should have stayed!"

"I expected it from them, but you?"

"I thought you loved me. I thought you cared about me and this stupid team."

"HOW COULD YOU?"

But every week, she eats his favorite flavor of ramen and glares at an empty stool until her eyes hurt. Because Sasuke-kun left and Kakashi-sensei left and that didn't destroy her, but Naruto left, too, and nothing is fair.


"D'you want to get dinner sometime?" asks the good-looking chunin captain lying on the bed. He tilts his head and smiles at her. He's very handsome. A good shinobi. Loyal and strong; he's made her laugh every day he spent in the hospital, recovering from a knee operation.

She returns the smile but none of his affections.

"Thank you, but I'm going to have to pass," she says, as politely as she can. Because she knows from experience that when you let someone down, it has to be gently.

(Remembering Sasuke-kun's style – knocking her out and leaving her on a bench – doesn't bring her heartache anymore, just anger.)

"Look, Sakura-san," he begins, like he's going to change her mind, and she looks at him because you should always look someone in the eye when you break their heart, rather than the back of their head, "I know about…like, your team and all."

Oh, does he? She sighs. Everyone thinks they know, but they don't.

"And I know you were really into Uchiha Sasuke and everything…"

In the end, that's all anyone knew about her.

"But…I don't know. I just think…I'm gonna come right out and say it. He doesn't deserve you."

"That's very kind of you, Nakamura-san," she says quietly, activating her Mystical Palm Technique to examine the healing tendons in his knee. Evasively.

"You're so great, Sakura-san. You're so pretty and smart and nice…Uchiha's an idiot for ever leaving somebody like you."

In the end, she's grateful to the good-looking chunin captain lying on the bed. Because he tilts his head and smiles at her. He's very handsome. A good shinobi. Loyal and strong; he's made her laugh every day he spent in the hospital, recovering from a knee operation.

(Too bad, though. Too bad you can hate the way somebody treats you, hate the way somebody leaves you with nothing and no one and not a single promise, hate the way somebody takes away all your options and you still have the strength to love them. To love them and to wait.)

She doesn't have any place she can go to feel closest to Sasuke-kun, but that's okay, because he's the biggest part of her heart. So she takes him with her everywhere.


Her skin is shredded.

Sakura eyes her hands curiously, almost in wonder. She can't feel the pain anymore. Numbness has set in. She should stop soon.

Her knuckles are bloody and her chest is heaving and there's no leather left to her gloves to cushion the blow, but there's also a smirk on her face. A smirk that twists pretty pink lips into something triumphant and dangerous, as she looks out across the training field.

Or rather, what used to be a training field, before she and Tsunade-shishou took it over.

Her mentor wears an identical smirk. One of pride, and satisfaction. She stands off to the side with her arms folded across her impressive bosom, surveying her apprentice's work with tacit approval. The dust hasn't yet settled on the scene. It will take hours to clear the field of wrecked tree trunks and shattered boulders, but for a few seconds, she will allow her student to enjoy this terrible wreckage that she created with her bare hands.

And enjoy it, Sakura does.

She takes a minute to enjoy what she's accomplished, even with so very far to go. She's fifteen now. Fifteen, and with strength to rival her beauty, and with courage to eclipse all of it. She's a medic-nin, now. She's got talent that not even her boys can touch, and she's useful, and she's the furthest thing from dead weight. She's a kunoichi now. She's made it. She's here.

Slowly, summoning nonexistent energy to her exhausted limbs, she raises herself up to her full height. She hasn't seen Naruto or Sasuke-kun for years now, but she knows they'll be much taller than her. Still, she carries herself well, always has, since Tsunade-shishou stomped that frightened, failing little coward out of her in a few quick, ruthless training sessions. She has much to thank her mentor for.

Much to thank Naruto and Sasuke-kun for. Without them leaving, she doesn't think she would ever have had the strength and the courage to get the help she so desperately needed. She'll thank them, too, when they come home. (She knows they will.)

And her smirk widens, because there's another person she owes this success to.

Herself.

Because she fucking earned it.


note.. because i'm tired as shit of the manga, and sakura is constantly underrepresented. i'm bored, okay? with the whole hashirama/madara thing. and the whole all-encompassing naruto and sasuke extravaganza. I LIKE SAKURA. MORE SAKURA.

ugh.

LOVE YOU.

xoxo Daisy