Note: Introspective-ish SakuSasu, starting during the timeskip, and progressing to an indeterminate point in the future.
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All That You Can't Leave Behind
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It takes a strong woman to survive being a kunoichi. It takes a strong kunoichi to survive being in love.
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The thing is, even when the person who you loved betrays your village, would kill your comrades (or you), without a second thought, sometimes getting over them isn't that easy.
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Sometimes Sakura wonders if you can never stop loving somebody.
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One year after Sasuke's defection, Sakura resolves to move on. She wants to find someone nice, smart, and talented. She wants to flirt with him, and have him actually flirt back. She's so tired of one-sided hugs and conversations, and she aches for a healthy, normal relationship. Where one of the participants isn't a prodigy who is too internally conflicted to find it in himself to care for someone else.
For once, she doesn't want all the emotional baggage. There had been so much history between herself and Sasuke, twisted, complicated, painful. Words left unsaid, and those that hung in the air between them, almost tangible in the tension they created.
Sakura makes the mistake of assuming, that after years of loving Sasuke, when she decides to walk away, it will be an easy and painless process.
At first, it is. He isn't around, physically, after all, and she throws herself into her training with Tsunade-shisou in an attempt to bury the ache inside her, and to force herself to forget that she misses him.
The memories are at every corner, though. The ghosts of their past selves haunt the meadow they used to train with Kakashi-sensei, and there are times when Sakura closes her eyes and she can swear she sees the infamous log, not desolate and bare, but with a screaming blonde genin tied to it, while a girl with long pink hair and a boy with black hair and eyes kneel beside him, glaring up at their cheerfully uncaring sensei.
On the anniversary of the night Sasuke left her unconscious on the cold stone bench outside of the East Gate, Sakura forces a cheerful smile, and asks Ino if she knows any nice single guys.
Ino materializes after Sakura goes off-duty at the hospital one day with a shy, brown-haired young man who has just made chuunin. Ino makes cheerful introductions, then after practically shoving Sakura and Akihito together, she runs off, obviously very pleased with herself.
Akihito is sweet, sensitive, caring, gentle, a little shy, and above all, normal – everything that Sasuke was not. Ino, Tenten, and generally all of her friends are in agreement that he is good for her, because she needs to forget.
One evening, after they had been seeing each other casually for about a month, Shikamaru stops by the hospital just as Sakura is getting ready to leave. He gives her his typical lazy nod. "Take a walk?"
A little surprised, Sakura falls into step with him nevertheless. After a little bit of small talk, however, Shikamaru cuts right to the chase. "He's going to ask you to go steady with him soon, you know."
Sakura blinks, and stammers a little.
Shikamaru sighs and closes his eyes, as if he had anticipated the reaction perfectly. "Just thought you should know."
With that, he forms a few quick handseals and disappears in a puff of smoke, leaving her standing alone in front of her house, feeling more than a little bewildered.
The obvious decision would be to go out with him; Sakura rationalizes, as she is getting ready for bed that night. He is good for her, and he should be all that she ever wanted in a boy. She thinks about it all night, tossing and turning the hours away.
At last, past midnight, she allows herself to really think, without that ever-present barrier in her head. So she withdraws it, tentatively, and lets the memories come rushing back.
Sasuke isn't here, she discovers with a pang, but he's still a big part of her life. And she doesn't know if she's ready to walk away from him, from her memories, and to give up on him for good. Loving him is part of who she is, a part that she has kept locked away for a long time now.
The next morning, when she trains in the clearing while waiting for Tsunade-sama to show up, Sakura realizes that she can't enter into a relationship with Akihito, while her heart still clearly belongs to someone else.
Despite herself, her eyes fill up with tears and her vision clouds red with anger and frustration, and she punches her first crater into the earth.
There is something she has with Sasuke, stupid, damaged, broken, beaten, twisted, confused Sasuke that she just doesn't have with anybody else.
That night, she meets Akihito for dinner, at his request. Her tears of earlier that morning have been replaced with a fragile, surreal kind of calm. He asks her to go out with him by the end of the night, and clear-eyed, Sakura tells him what she had come to terms with earlier – that she can't be with him, because she still loves somebody else.
Brave words aside, Sakura closes her eyes, so that she doesn't see the hurt in his.
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Sakura would be lying if she said she isn't scared by the fact that she will never be able to have a successful relationship until she gets over Sasuke.
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Another morning. Sakura gets dressed in her customary outfit, but this time, she hesitates for a moment, before walking to a small box on her dresser. She opens the box, and, returning to her mirror, pulls on first one, then the other, black chakra-enhancing glove.
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Chuunin exams, final stage. Sakura faces the Rock-nin across from her, standing straight and tall. Shiranui Genma declares the start of the match, and as her opponent lifts his hands to make the hand signs of the rock cascade that is supposed to crush her to death, Sakura draws her right fist back, and slams it right into his chest.
He flies across the entire stadium, and lands against the concrete barrier on the opposite end, with a sickening thud. He slides to the ground in a boneless heap, and doesn't get up.
Genma declares Sakura the victor of the match. It had taken a little less than a minute.
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Sakura faces Tsunade over the desk. For once, she is standing alone, without Naruto by her side.
"I have to go," Sakura says, her fists clenched, and a defiant expression in those green eyes.
Tsunade takes one look at her, and knows. There is no reason to keep her back from what she's been waiting for, fighting for, for the past few years.
"You have my permission," Tsunade says, bowing her head slightly.
Sakura is gone before the words finish echoing around the room. Not to rescue one teammate, but two.
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He is barely recognizable by the time she finds him. She heals him on the field, using every bit of the medical knowledge the Godaime had taught her to piece his broken, battered body back together.
The first thing Sasuke asks her, his voice ragged, is why.
Sakura gives him a tight smile. "There are some things you can't leave behind."
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Semi-autobiographical. The first part, anyway. (And yes, it is supposed to have an open-ended conclusion. Life is a work in progress, and relationships are continuously evolving, so I thought I'd portray that here. Besides, the closing statement portrays what had been driving Sakura all that time…)
Reviews appreciated!