Title: We All Fall Down.

Author: Dilemmalicious

Pairing: Heh. Sasuke/Naruto/Sakura! Three great tastes that… Um. Right. A threefer.

Rating: This chapter is full of plot development. I can hear you yawning.

Spoilers: I've seen up to Ep. 136, but am behind on the manga, so… I'm wildly assuming Sasuke will make it back from the dark side of the jutsu.

Blithe Disclaimer: I join the rest of crass fandom in apologising to the owner and creator of Naruto for what I write.

Nota Bene: This fic was started on Monday evening, when by some shocking chance England actually won the Ashes. Whoo! (my apologies to the Australians, but at least we didn't win just because of rain.) For the Americans in the crowd, can't really explain it except that it's cricket, and rather like the Boston Red Sox win. London had a parade, with our heroes in a double-decker bus. Booyah. So, yes, the title is a bad joke. Ashes, Ashes, we all… Yep, author's lame sense of humour strikes again…

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It had been months since the last time all three of them had had a chance to be together. The wars had faded back to a menacing rumble in the distance again, but there ha been numerous missions calling for ninjas of all ranks to help repair and rebuild the battle-scarred nations. Sakura's healing skills were taxed to the limits, sending her to an exhausted sleep in hotel after hotel for weeks on end. Naruto and Sasuke had found themselves the major demolition taskforce for the Fire Country, both being more than capable of pulling down cities whether the cities were on the brink of collapse or not.

Oddly, the two found themselves healing people much like their third teammate. Sasuke proved to be a quiet support for the grieving, knowing innately when something was a treasured object instead of mere junk. Those who had found themselves teetering between sides, families torn between nations, and children forced into hard reality through loss discovered in the taciturn Uchiha a sympathetic listener. His advice, based on his own betrayals and thirst for revenge, were succinct but a healing balm. Naruto, on the other hand, appeared to village after ravaged village like a banner blazing, bright and wild. He brought back fun, joy, and the re-establishment of merciful normality. And together… The blond would knock down condemned buildings with great glee and the showiest moves he had, then shout wrathfully at his companion who would do the same with one gentle push and smirk. The never-ending, always amusing, and visibly affectionate bickering between such obvious opposites made people slowly start to smile and remember what pre-war life was like.

And then they were all ordered home. Rest, the Godaime said to Sakura. For fuck's sake, she said to Naruto and Sasuke, chill out. Sasuke sulked, Naruto whinged, and Sakura left to sink blissfully into the tidy world of non-ninja parents with exotic things like bath salts and home-cooked meals.

Two hours later, Sakura started feeling stir-crazy.

Who knew? Months, hell, years of high tension training, on the battlefield learning, and fighting against enemy ninjas ranked well above her own nominal genin rank, and suddenly the so-called normal life was... small. Confining. Her pretty little room, with its girly colours and boy-band posters met an eye well-used to sizing up hotel rooms for tactical flaws. Her home. It wasn't safe. Two windows on one wall, one on another, a door on a third! And the canopy bed! What the hell had she been thinking? Dreamy, check, romantic, double-check, capable of concealing a dozen ninja without the use of any genjutsu or ninjutsu whatsoever, triple-check and underscored no less. Her cute fluffy bunny slippers had no traction and she'd slide right out of them if she needed to climb a wall in a fight. And there were a million clues that could tell an enemy exactly how to break her in an interrogation...

Suddenly, the barren apartments of her teammates and team-leader made horrifying sense.

Sakura folded gracelessly onto the large poufy beanbag-chair that held the only strategically safe spot in her room, and stared. The rose-coloured glasses that she'd worn for years, and had never spotted, had come off and there was no way to regain them. She put her head in her hands and cried.

--

A couple of hours later, after tea and a long talk with her mother, Sakura walked to the training grounds to do some serious thinking. Apartment hunting was partly on her mind, although she was reluctant to spend her hard-earned mission money without a great deal of thought. Most of her, however, was looking at herself with this new and startling vision.

She'd been blind.

So much for being the smart one, she scoffed at herself. The best thing that had happened to her since graduating had been her placement with Tsunade. The Godaime had given Sakura a focus, a direction for her strengths. Kakashi... Kakashi had been waging an uphill struggle against teenage girl hormones, and seeing as from what little she knew, the Copy Ninja had been slaughtering people as an ANBU at that age and not exactly dealing with the opposite sex, so really it shouldn't be any wonder that the man panicked and shucked her off. Best thing he could have done, although she'd resented it at the time. Admittedly, she was mad then for the wrong reasons.

Sasuke.

Oh hell, she'd been big-time blind about him. She'd spent hours trying alongside half the girls of Konoha to show Sasuke that they could heal him, could restore his family, be the perfect Uchiha wife. Ha. If she really wanted his attention, all she ever really had to do was kick his ass instead of admire it. Now, however, she'd have to do something really radical to make him change his mental impression of her. The times she had gotten the kind of acknowledgement she'd wanted from the taciturn son of a bitch had all stemmed from the moments when she let her inner self show. That inner Sakura had been coming out more and more during her training with Tsunade, and Sasuke hadn't seen her fight since he'd returned to the Leaf's forces. Hmm.

Sakura's lips curled up in a rueful smirk, as she reached their old team meeting point and leaned against the bridge.

All her shrilling about Naruto getting in the way of her love was just jealousy stemming from the fact that Sasuke paid attention to the other boy. And why? Because of the entire damn village, Naruto never saw the raven-haired boy as 'the Uchiha'. He only saw Sasuke. He fought Sasuke. Challenged Sasuke. Even amused Sasuke, although seldom intentionally.

Walking up the side of the tall tree with blithe ease, she sat and let the dappled light flicker over her as she thought about her other teammate.

Naruto.

She'd done him wrong, not in the things that she had done, more in the things she didn't do. He eventually told her about the Kyuubi, and it explained all the strange anger and dark looks she's seen directed at him, that vile distaste that everyone in her generation had unfortunately picked up on and shown the blonde boy. No, he never begrudged her that. What she felt bad about was the times when she'd seen past the noise and seen -Naruto-... and had done nothing. Or worse.

Now that she thought about it, the Sandaime seemed to have known what he was doing, putting the three of them together. At the time of Sasuke's betrayal, she'd felt the weak one, the odd one out. The two boys had gone from strength to obscene strength, while she had trailed behind them. Sasuke had his Sharingan bloodlimit, Naruto had the Kyuubi, and she had been the first in generations of her family to wear a hitai-ate. Then Tsunade came... and she felt like a mis-cast actor badly playing the Godaime's role in the great Sennin Ninja soap opera, with Sasuke as the angsy genius version of Orochimaru, sans the stark raving urge for immortality, and Naruto as the wild, ebulliant version of Jiraiya, thankfully minus the perversions. The numbskull was seriously thick on the whole sex thing, despite his Sexy no Jutsu, Jiraiya and Kakashi. Someone somewhere must have arranged for a miracle.

Brain, dammit, stay on track…

No. Wait.

Sakura nibbled on a tress of the soft pink hair she'd been trying to grow out again, and narrowed her eyes.

Mis-cast. There were more than a few people that had compared the three of them to the Sannin. The Sannin themselves had observed the parallels. Jiraiya had been especially alarmed by Naruto following a path similar to his own attempt at rescuing Orochimaru from insanity. But Naruto…

Naruto had succeeded. There was one massive blow against parallels. And Sasuke, while on a quest for power, hadn't been able to kill Naruto even when the blond was helpless at his feet, even with the greatest power possible to his bloodlimit just an easy strike away. And she herself had never, even at her darkest moments of self-doubt and grief, run away from her chosen path as Tsunade had done.

What was the difference? So many similarities… what made Team 7 comeback together when the great Sannin had fallen apart? Three people.

The awkward 'boy loves girl who loves boy who loves the other boy, although damned if genius ninjas can admit such things.'

Sakura had, regretfully, figured that parallel out after a very drunk Godaime told a story about the Sannin during their chunnin exam. It hadn't taken much hard thinking for her to see Sasuke's love for Naruto after that story, once she'd recovered from the sheer revulsion of Orochimaru and, gah, Jiraiya getting it on. Tsunade made it a seriously brain-scarring…

Green eyes widened with realisation, and she spat the damp curl out of her mouth.

The Sannin were repulsed by their attraction for each other. Each of them fiercely resented it, and thus split apart. Even now, Tsunade and Jiraiya were on the most cautious of terms. The three hadn't gotten what they'd wanted, and had ran from it. Ran from their responsibilities, whereas Sakura, Naruto and Sasuke…

Came back together. Naruto loves Sakura loves Sasuke… but Naruto loved Sasuke enough to risk it all for his return, Sakura loved Naruto enough to place all her faith in him, and Sasuke loved Sakura enough that on his return he saved her.

Love.

Hot damn.

Sakura jumped off the tree with the energy of someone who's finally figured out an incredibly tricky problem and wants to dash off and tackle it right away.

Love. So damn blind, the three of them. They were like a tripod. One leg off, and you all falls down. Right now, one leg was off-kilter, hers, but now she knew… Sakura cracked her knuckles and grinned at the blue sky. She'd fix it. First, she had to get them to see her. Really see her. As an equal for once. And then…

…and then she'd win them both. And they'd win her and each other too.

And she knew just how to do it.

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Additional comments: Had a horrid month, and vanished off the planet, sorry. I've this, two other naru/sasu stories, and a Saki fic for Asuka Kureru (whose work I bloody well adore)… none of which want to get beyond a couple of pages each, despite my having all the stories pretty much wrapped up in my head mentally. I need a co-conspirator, er, nag, er, pal? Anyone up to dealing with me? I'm mostly nice, if dreadfully forthright.

And adding to the first this fandom is springing on me, this is my first go at a threesome. Ack. This chapter is pretty much Sakura's, the next one will pull in the lads. I've often felt that poor Sakura gets the short end of the stick in the series, and even more so in fanfic… so for once, dammit, she's going to instigate the fun. It'll be worth it just for the shocked expression on Sasuke's face, if nothing else.

-d.