Chapter 9

Naruto's grand plan to get Sakura back on Team 7 will come to him any day now. He's sure of it. They can't just not be a team anymore. That would be crazy. In the meantime, it's kind of been a good vacation. He gets to sleep in every day, he hardly ever needs to see Sasuke's stupid face. On the other hand, he never gets to see Sakura. She's not talking to any of them. It doesn't matter what he says or how he pleads. She won't open her door when she's home and she won't tell him where she's going when she leaves.

As he takes the long way home from hanging out with Chouji and Shikamaru, he turns over the problem in his head. He just needs to try harder—maybe do something nice for her. He'll treat her to ramen! The thought of it makes his stomach rumble and the phantom scent tickle his nostrils.

He opens the front door to the apartment and nearly trips over his own feet.

Sakura is standing at the stove, ladling broth into two bowls. She smiles tentatively at him before biting her lip. "Hi."

"…Hi."

Awkwardly, she gestures to the kitchen table, which is already set with chopsticks, spoons, napkins and glasses of water. "I made ramen."

He can see that. It smells amazing.

In a daze, he drops into the chair kitty-corner from hers. She sets his bowl in front of him and he glances between it and her, then back again. He doesn't touch it. He wants to know what's happening. She's being her normal self, someone he hasn't seen in what feels like forever.

Sakura seems to sense his apprehension. "I'm really sorry Naruto."

"You don't have to be-"

"Yes I do," she swallows, "I want to make sure you know that I wasn't angry with you and I shouldn't have shut you out like that. I was mad at Kakashi-sensei and Sasuke-kun and a bunch of other stuff, but I shouldn't have taken it out on you. You were just trying to be a good friend."

He shrugs, honestly it wasn't much different than when she'd yell at him before.

"It's not okay and you didn't deserve that." She takes his hands and so many feelings well inside him. He tries to think of the last time someone said they were sorry and meant it. He can't recall. "You're a really good friend." Naruto's face heats and he demurs. No one's ever said that about him either. He's torn between tears and smiles, so he splits the difference.

Wow.

He sniffles. "Thank you Sakura-chan. And this looks awesome!"

Forgoing the chopsticks, he tips the bowl directly into his mouth. And coughs.

"Oh my god."

"Good? I made it a little spicy…"

"Sakura, I'm so sorry, I really appreciate the thought but this is terrible."

.

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It's the only apology she owes and Sakura is satisfied with that. She never dreamed it would be difficult, but everything went over so easy with Naruto that she almost feels guiltier now than she did before.

Getting what she wants from Sasuke will be way more difficult. She has no hopes for an apology, but she'd settle for some semblance of understanding. And it would take her entire arsenal of everything she's learned about him since being put on the same team. The most important of which, is this:

If you want Sasuke to understand something, you have to beat it into him.

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Sasuke does not apologize. The last time he was made to, he was eight years old and his mom threatened not to let him play with Itachi until it was done. There hasn't been anyone in a position to make him do anything for a long time. From age eight to twelve he has been beholden to no one.

Now he's doing things like buying groceries for three and making sure he buys the lactose free milk so that N aruto doesn't hog the bathroom excessively. He's taking into account people's feelings. He has roommates.

He tried to reason with Kakashi.

Naruto was going about it all wrong. You can't change someone's mind if you don't engage with them. Instead of not showing up, Sasuke was belligerent right to his face. Hopefully he took some of it to heart. Maybe he even talked to Sakura. Stranger things have happened.

He wouldn't say he's sorry… but he hates the way things are now. Everything is much better when Team 7 is together.

It's more efficient, he tells himself. He needs sparring partners, he reasons.

He misses them, he refuses to admit.

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He's so predictable; it's easy to ambush Sasuke while he's training.

Sakura lands directly behind him while he takes a breather between kick exercises. He doesn't turn around. He does that annoying thing where he keeps his back to you but says your name like he knew you were there the whole time—tool.

"What do you want?" he tries to be intimidating but to her ears he just sounds apprehensive, like he's priming himself for being yelled at.

"I wanna talk."

He whirls half around, "Seriously?"

"No," she goes for the knees; manages to knock him over, but can't dodge the elbow he jabs into her side. Sakura rolls to the side, coughing. "I came to," another cough, "kick your ass."

She can't believe her ears, he actually snorts at her. It makes her blood boil. "PREPARE YOURSELF YOU JERK!"

Sasuke rolls his eyes and takes a reluctant defensive stance. Nobody moves for a long moment. "Well? Come kick my ass," he mocks.

Sakura isn't stupid. She knows in an all-out fight she's no match for him. Yet. He's got the Sharingan and Chidori on his side. But she has boiling, undiluted rage sublimating into pure adrenaline.

His first punch lands on her shoulder. "Ow!"

"Seriously?!" He fell for it!

"NO!" She takes advantage of his exasperated pause and grabs his fist and twists, throwing him over her shoulder and onto the ground. She bends at the waist to glare into his eyes, "Take me seriously," she warns, "Or I'll take you down."

"Fine." He windmill kicks, sweeping her legs out from under her. He jumps on her, pinning her to the dirt. "Are you coming back to training or what."

"Why? Do you miss me?" She hooks her knee around his thigh and flips them, holding him down by her forearm against his neck.

"You wish." He flips them again. "Give up yet?"

"Never," then she bites his wrist so hard that he shrieks.

"SAKURA, WHAT THE FU-!" with a sharp thrust of her palm she bloodies his nose and scurries back ten feet.

This isn't what she came here for, but it sure is satisfying.

He comes at her again, and kicks her in the gut, sending her flying into a tree trunk. Winded, she slides to the dirt among the roots. "I don't need you, you know. You can retire for all I care. You and Naruto."

She grunts and spits out a wad of blood, "Keep telling yourself that."

"I was right and if you can't handle your emotions, that's not my problem."

"My emotions?" How did she never see what a sanctimonious ass he could be? And such a hypocrite. "You don't get to lecture me about handling my emotions and not getting angry. You're the angriest person I've ever met and you almost killed Naruto."

She attacks with taijutsu, punches and kicks that would be bruising if she could only land a hit. He dodges but doesn't counter. She can see the frustration in his features and it vindicates something in her to know she's getting to him.

"I get to be mad at the world. I get to be mad at Sound and I definitely get to be mad at you. You didn't invent loneliness okay? We're all sad. We're all angry. We've all lost things. The difference between you and me is that you have somewhere to direct your anger." She goes for another kick, only to find her leg tangled up in razor thin wires. She can see the other end held in his fist. He tugs and more of them tighten around her arms. Their sharpness forces her to be still.

"There is literally nothing I can do," fuck, she's crying now. "There's no one to get vengeance on. Nothing I can achieve that will erase it. What happened to you was awful. You lost your whole family and I only lost my parents… but they were all I had. I'm sorry that you had more to lose. I don't know what to do now. Everything feels different. All I know is that you, Naruto and Kakashi are all that's left."

"My brother did it." His voice prompts her to look up. He glares at the floor and his fist loosens around her bonds. "I don't know what it changes, but it was him. I hate him so much and I will kill him." He cannot admit that he loved him once. That would humanize him in ways that 12-year-old Sasuke is not prepared for. "I don't know what I would do if I didn't have that," he admits. "You still think you want to be like me? I'm going to kill my own brother. Does that scare you?"

She will not be baited. "I'm nothing like you," she lies, "And you don't scare me," she lies again. "You don't have to be nice, but you do have to respect me."

He considers her for a moment, then his grip loosens the rest of the way. The wires drop and he holds out his fist. She bumps it with hers and the move feels at once foreign and cathartic.

"I'm still mad at you."

Sasuke rolls his eyes, but his lips twitch. "I'm mad at you too."

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The nurse at triage takes one look at the two of them; Sakura with her criss cross of cuts, Sasuke with his crooked nose and sighs. "Can't you take care of this yourself?"

Sakura beams, "Of course! It's not for me. He's so pretty, it'd be a shame if I disfigured him permanently. Hearts would break all over Konoha!"

He shoots her a cutting glare but doesn't argue. He's a little vain too.

The nurse looks unamused and gestures for them to sit.

Sasuke plans to sit in silence for the next seven hours while more important injuries are taken care of, but Sakura makes it impossible. She might be trying to punish him by being as annoying as possible. She talks about Naruto and Ino and that stupid firefighting turtle show. And he definitely doesn't care that this feels almost normal.

"What are you doing here?"

Sasuke snaps out of ignoring Sakura to stare at the Godaime Hokage, standing imposing and tall over them as they sit in a pair of cheap plastic folding chairs. "It has nothing to do with the Magekyou," he is quick to reassure.

"Not you," the Hokage says drily, "It's very clear what you're here for." Then she pinches his nose between her glowing green pointer and thumb, then twists.

He shouts at the crack, but the pain quickly subsides. He rubs his nose and dried flecks of blood come away, but it feels like the correct shape.

"Sakura."

"Shisou!"

"I hope you didn't come in for those scrapes."

"No ma'am."

"I'll have no apprentice of mine embarrassing me and wasting a doctor's time."

"Of course ma'am."

"I'll show you how to fix them yourself up tomorrow, after that you'll have to start coming to training with injuries or else we'll have nothing to do."

"I could always bring him," Sakura offers, jerking a thumb in Sasuke's direction.

"Sure you could, but if you fuck up you could blow a leg off. That might be the wrong kind of motivation. Now scram."

"Yes ma'am!" Sakura giggles and grabs Sasuke's arm, dragging him outside.

"You made me listen to you talk about Ino's haircut but you didn't mention that?"

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Earlier…

Kakashi scooches closer on the roof and bumps shoulders with Sakura, who's been staring at her swinging feet for several minutes now.

"I'm tired of being mad, I don't want to feel anything anymore."

"You don't want that."

"Yes I do. It hurts all the time… I just want to be strong. Like you. I don't want to cry anymore."

Kakashi stares out at the sunrise and feels the ancestral guilt of a hundred generations of shinobi, all the teachings that led a 12-year-old girl to think it was wrong to mourn. "I don't want you to be like me," he admits, "I want you to be better. I want better for you."

Her tired smile rewards him, golden light reflected warmly. Maybe he can do right by these kids.

He's not doing too bad.

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a/n: I'm back! Hope you enjoyed this chapter. I've been thinking a lot about how 12-year-olds act and respond to things. I'm trying to capture their age and immaturity. The way they can try to have a reasoned conversation but end up kind of talking at each other, as is the case with Sakura and Sasuke.

And to the person who got eight chapters in so that they could cuss me out about how 'unfeminist' I've been writing Sakura; You Need To Calm Down. Portraying female anger and sadness is transgressive and a female character who does no wrong is not the pinnacle of feminism, it's just bad storytelling. And I couldn't even tell what your problem was because your review was all asterisks ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I love knowing what you think and I'm receptive to constructive feedback, my inbox is always open for chats and you can find me as fiercyy on tumblr 3