The squad finished practice later than the football team on Friday, which meant all of the girls were in a hurry in the locker rooms. It was Friday night and they all wanted to get out of there. Sakura took her time and then went to the Physiology lab to collect a lab that Dr. Tsunade had graded earlier that day.

By the time she'd found her report in the messy stack on one of the desks, the rest of the school was already deserted. Ino had left immediately with Shikamaru, the two of them were going out to dinner, and the rest of the football team was long gone.

Sakura headed toward the main doors and pushed them open only to be hit by…Raindrops.

It was drizzling, and the dark clouds above indicated that it was going to be much more than a light shower.

God, if only she'd listened to Ino. But no, she'd decided to walk to school this morning (stupidly assuming that if it was sunny in the morning, the weather would be fine for the rest of the day), and now it was about to start pouring and she didn't have a car or anyone to give her a ride.

She sighed, pulled her jacket tighter, and started to walk determinedly down the steps.

"Sakura, wait."

She turned around. Sasuke was standing at the top of the steps, still in his jersey; his hair was damp with sweat and rain but she cursed him because he was still so attractive. Why did that have to happen?

"What is it?" Sakura asked reluctantly. Why is he here so late?

He came down the steps to face her. "I need to explain…Why I left."

What?

"Wait. After all this time, now you're going to explain what happened?" Sakura raised her eyebrows skeptically, but deep down she was shocked. Or maybe not as shocked as she should have been. "Any particular reason? Like…Why now?" Especially at this specific moment? Because it couldn't be more random.

"Naruto's the only one who knows. I didn't tell you because I thought, well…"

"You thought I'd be the same as before." She sighed.

"I was going to tell you when you were boxing that time." He said with narrowed eyes.

"Did I have to pass a test first, or something?" She rolled her eyes and started walking away, even though something made her want to stay.

"No." Sasuke said in that quietly angry way he had. "I realized something when I was in Oto. But you wouldn't even listen to me until now—"

"Right. Because you were so eager to tell me when you first came back." Sakura said, though she was more exasperated than irritated.

"You'd made up your mind about what you'd hear."

"That's a gross misconception." Well, not really. He had some of it right.

"Just let me explain. If I don't, nothing's going to change, is it?"

"Why do you care if anything changes?" That was an honest question. Because she didn't know why Sasuke continued to approach her. It wasn't like him at all, and even though she knew he'd changed, what made him care whether they were really on good terms?

"You have a right to know." Sasuke said simply, and Sakura didn't know what to say, because there was too much going through her mind.

Where was my right to know when you left? Where was it when you came back and refused to explain, in this same parking lot?

Does it even matter anymore?

The rain was starting to come down harder. It pounded down on them, soaking her clothes immediately.

"Look, Sasuke, you're going to need to be a bit more specific." Sakura said, hating the way she sounded but not regretting what she was saying. She started walking toward the road.

"Let me drive you home." Sasuke said, more an order than a question (that was one thing that hadn't changed).

"I can walk." Sakura said, not stopping.

"Come on." Sasuke said firmly.

"No." She said.

"Sakura. It's pouring."

It wasn't like she had a choice, really. And something made her want to take up his offer.

"Fine." She gave in with a sigh and followed him to his car.

Sasuke's car was clean and organized, as she'd expected. It felt extremely strange, just sitting in the passenger seat. Sakura put on her seatbelt and stared out the window, turned slightly away from him.

The rain started coming down even harder as they pulled out of the parking lot. There was a silence between them that Sakura wished wasn't uncomfortable. Sasuke drove slowly down the road, seemingly unfazed by the rain (or the atmosphere). Sakura wondered what he'd say, or if he'd actually meant to explain anything to her.

"I went to Oto because I thought it was my only choice." Sasuke said out of nowhere, and Sakura turned toward him slightly, eyebrows raised. She wasn't going to let herself say anything, no matter if she disagreed. She could look at this objectively now, couldn't she? They were both different, and clearly neither of them had the same opinions (or even way of thinking?) that they'd had back then. She wasn't going to protest if he said it was his only choice, because…Well, she wasn't that girl anymore. And that was that.

"I had to find the people who killed my parents. And if I was stuck in Konoha, going through high school, it wasn't going to help anything. Orochimaru gave me the chance to get the real police training I needed. I just needed to get revenge, somehow.

"It was the only thing on my mind, all the time."

It consumed you, you mean. Completely and totally consumed you. Middle school Sasuke had been dark and angry all the time. She'd realized that much later when she looked back on those years more clearly.

"I tried to push it away for years, but I couldn't let it go. I had to find them, the gang that did it." Sasuke's eyes were narrowed. "And when Kakashi didn't let me transfer to the Police Academy, there was only Oto left. It was the only way I could hunt them down. Or at least, I thought so. So I cut everyone off and left, because I needed to do it. If I didn't cut off everything, there was no way of going forward. Otherwise there would always be strings attached." He said it bluntly, not showing any emotion.

There was a tiny, tiny part of Sakura's brain that had always been stuck at the bus station, and it was violently objecting to everything Sasuke was saying. How could he talk about what he'd done with so little feeling?

But the rest of her brain was seeing it objectively, and despite Sasuke's rashness…Sakura knew exactly what it felt like when emotions made decisions. She knew what it felt like to be torn apart inside. And she could see, clearly, why Sasuke had left.

She'd seen it for a long time, actually.

Sakura was the only one who hadn't needed a true explanation (not that the others had necessarily gotten one), and yet she was the only one who hadn't taken him back.

But she'd been telling herself for months that it wasn't even him anymore, it was her.

"I threw myself into it and didn't think about anything else. And then at the beginning of last year…I left. There were a couple of others who came with me, I guess we were friends. We traced down the gang members who I knew were responsible. There were four of them."

There was clearly a lot of backstory that Sakura didn't know; she'd never known much about the people responsible for the Uchiha Fire. But she didn't ask; it was Sasuke's story to tell.

"We found them after a few months. Everything about the academy in Oto was corrupt, but the training paid off."

"So, what, you were trained to be a ninja or something?" She looked at him skeptically.

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "No. But we had to go through some of their hideouts and get past a lot of people. It took some skill. But eventually we found the four of them, on the outskirts of Taki." He looked ahead darkly.

Sakura was hit with a sudden thought and couldn't help bringing it up. "Did you…Kill them?" Was that why he'd come back to Konoha?

Sasuke shook his head, but Sakura sensed there was a lot of emotion underneath it. "We found the place where they were buried."

Sakura felt a jolt. "What happened?"

"Itachi found them first. My cousin." Sasuke was looking straight ahead, emotionless. "He'd left a message for me. Telling the whole story, and telling me not to come find him. He's a wanted criminal, for complicated reasons. Now he's on the run. I don't know what he's doing, but we were never that close. He knows how to survive on his own."

Sakura knew very little about Itachi Uchiha, though his name was familiar. But Sasuke's whole story was so surreal.

"By the time we got there, the gang didn't even exist anymore. So it was all over." Sasuke said, still looking out the window.

"But not for you." Sakura said.

Sasuke glanced at her, surprised.

"You keep underestimating me." Sakura remarked, watching the lights flash by through the window.

Sasuke frowned but didn't say anything to that. "I thought I was satisfied. But there was just…Nothing."

There was a pause. Then, "Look, Sasuke. It's not as if I really care anymore, but you always had a choice. There were people here who cared about you." It was hard for her to say, because there was still so much that lingered behind those words, from so long ago.

And that's when he surprised her. "That's why I came back." He looked at her. "And I kept thinking about what you'd said to me at the bus station. You said that no matter what I did, it wouldn't fill any holes."

Sakura remembered that all too well. But she was shocked that he did.

"And you were right. I realized that. I learned a lot in Oto." Clearly he'd learned a lot, and not just about fighting and police tactics, or whatever he'd gone to school for. "But after I did what I'd set out to do…I didn't know where to go. The four of us were set to go back to Oto. We'd left without telling anyone so we didn't know what was going to happen. I'd always hated it there, but it wasn't like I had anywhere else to go.

"And I started thinking about Konoha again. I tried to cut it out completely, but it was always there. The more I thought about it, the more I realized…It was the only place I wanted to be. Nothing was the same in Oto." A corner of his mouth slid upward. "But for some reason I thought nothing would've changed. Which was clearly stupid."

Sakura wanted to say something sarcastic in reply, but she didn't. Well, we've already had the conversation about how completely wrong your thinking was, in the parking lot that first time. Instead she just sighed. "You know that no matter how much changed, Naruto never gave up on you? No matter what you did."

"I know." Sasuke said, and Sakura couldn't read what was in his tone.

It was hard to believe that it was Sasuke saying all of these things to her, even after everything that Sakura had learned about him. Sasuke who never showed real emotions or felt anything, let alone talk about what he felt.

Sasuke wasn't looking at her, just staring at the road ahead as drops of water ran down the windshield. They were almost to her house.

"Look, Sakura…We're both completely different people now." Sasuke said.

"You think?" Sakura asked quietly.

"Do you want to start over?" Sasuke asked after a pause, surprising her once more.

Sakura didn't respond for a moment. Because now she didn't know what the answer to that question was. Even a few days ago, she would've declined immediately. Do I really want to go back on everything? Is starting over even possible?

"You mean…Just a clean slate? Like we don't know each other?" Can I really just put aside everything that's happened? Go back on everything I said I wouldn't be? I told myself I'd never do that. But something made her want to start over with this new Sasuke. Had she been wrong this whole time, to think that cutting him out of her life this year was the right decision?

Sakura had thought that if Sasuke came back, things would shift back to how they'd been so long ago. She'd thought her middle school self would always be there, that she'd never be able to get past it. But now she wasn't so sure. Because Sasuke was right, they were completely different people.

"We don't know each other." Sasuke said seriously.

What if it's not really going back?

This wouldn't work if either of them were the same, deep down.

But Sakura was sure that they weren't. In fact, she'd rarely been more sure about anything.

"...Okay."

Sakura got out of the car to realize that the rain had almost stopped. Though it was late, the sun was peeking through the clouds near the horizon.

She expected to hear Sasuke's car start as she was walking up to the house, but it was silent. Sakura was confused for a moment and she almost glanced back at him, but then it hit her: he was waiting for her to go inside.

After she closed the door, Sakura couldn't help watching his car out of the window, when he drove away a minute later.

Something had changed, and no matter how conflicted her mind was, she couldn't help thinking it was for the better.

A/N: Things only go up from here.