Author's Note: The reason I keep updating this story is that I already wrote the first five chapters. I just am putting them up one at a time. After I've posted the first five, it will take me longer to update. Thank you to those who commented!

Sakura and the Prince of Flowers
By Miss Angel Maxwell

Chapter 3: "An Ending Is Still An Ending"

For the party, Sakura selected a gauzy red dress to wear and pulled her hair back off of her face with a red lacquered barrette. She swallowed nervously and stared at her uncomfortable red shoes before taking the final step up to Tenten's house and knocking on the door. The hostess, hair in stylish buns and decked in her loveliest Chinese dress, welcomed the anxious nin into her home but then quickly disappeared back into the dense crowd of guests in search of her much desired teammate, Hyuuga Neji. A quick overview of the hazily lamp lit room confirmed what Sakura had been dreading. Virtually every guest at the party was a young shinobi and they had divided themselves into couples or their three-person teams, huddled closely in intimate conversation.

The elegant platinum blonde swoosh of Ino's hair made her easy to find in the crowd, and as soon as Sakura spotted her she offered an apprehensive wave to draw her friend's attention. Ino was thoroughly engaged in a dialogue with her big-boned partner Chouji, but the arrival of her friend temporarily stole her attention. Her eyes brightened when they met with Sakura's and she waved back with a broad grin.

"You actually came!" she exclaimed with exaggerated surprise. "Well, don't just stand there, come join the fun!"

Being a third or fourth wheel in somebody else's tightly bonded team was not exactly Sakura's idea of fun, but she walked across the room to join Ino, holding out hope that the mood of the party would change and there would be more social mixing of the teams. When Sakura reached her side, the young woman had already turned her back and was once again deeply engrossed in her conversation, which Shikamaru had now joined in as well. From the snatches of banter Sakura was picking up on the sidelines, she could tell the teammates were reliving one of their recent missions, though some details were probably being exaggerated. (She truly doubted that the portly Chouji had outrun six waterfall nin for twenty miles.)

"I think I'm going to go mix," she finally sighed, realizing she would never be an active part of this discussion. "Maybe I'll catch up with you later, Ino."

"Yeah, that's cool," the blonde replied breezily, not even turning to look at her friend as she spoke. "If I don't see you again tonight… then… tomorrow…" Her words trailed off and Sakura stalked away, growling slightly under her breath.

Winding her way through Tenten's party guests, never lingering near anyone long enough to pick up more than a few words of conversation, Sakura couldn't have felt more conspicuous. Even clutching a colorful beverage in her delicate fingers didn't make her feel any more a part of the festivities. As she made the circuit around the room, she saw Hinata's team enjoying themselves. Hinata was giggling delightedly as she watched Kiba toss hors d'oeuvres to his large dog Akamaru on whose back he was perched, very unlike the shy waif she was ordinarily. Their other teammate, Shino, meanwhile was trying to distract the dog from performing his stunts, aided by several of his six-legged friends.

A thought infiltrated the pretty young ninja's mind as she witnessed everyone else's revelry: if Sasuke and Naruto were here with her this would actually be a really fun party. But they had ruined everything. Suddenly, Sakura's chest felt as if it was being squeezed from all directions, she was sweating and she couldn't get any air into her lungs no matter how deeply she gasped. She actually thought she might throw up. Making brilliant use of her speed as well as her elbows, the young nin zigzagged her way to Tenten's back door and plunged headfirst into the cool night air.

She bent over for a minutes, desperately gulping up lungful after lungful of sweet air, and as she was staggering about she stumbled haphazardly into something tall and hard. A tree? No, it was a person.

"Careful there, Sakura," he said. "Don't hurt yourself."

Craning her head upwards, the bewildered girl found herself looking upon a tall, lanky boy with perfectly cropped black hair and large saucer-like eyes twinkling beneath remarkably thick black eyebrows.

"Eh? Lee?" she uttered. "What are you doing out here? I mean… why aren't you inside at the party? She's your teammate."

Rock Lee scratched the back of his neck, smiling awkwardly. "Yeah, uh, Tenten kinda told me I was getting in her way… You know, with her trying to put the moves on Neji… Told me to make myself scarce. Everyone else is just hanging out with their teams so I came out here. I was actually about to head home when you ran into me… literally."

It was a rare phenomenon, Sakura realized, that she was seeing her friend Lee in anything other than his green jumpsuit and orange legwarmers, a look he had copied from his mentor, Master Gai. Tonight he was clad in khaki pants and a sharp green shirt that buttoned up in the front. She couldn't repress a small smile, not because he looked bad, because he didn't, but simply because it was such an unusual sight, Lee in normal clothes.

"Hey, what about you?" he added. "Why aren't you inside hanging out with Naruto and Sasuke?"

Sakura's jaw slackened. "Are you totally clueless?" she asked without any hint of sarcasm. "Don't you know? Naruto and Sasuke have been gone for a week on some top secret mission."

"Oh," a baffled Lee replied. "Why didn't you go with them?"

At this point, Sakura was getting rather irritated by Lee's naïveté. "Because they left without telling me!" she barked. Lee flinched visibly and she relaxed her tensed body. "I'm sorry. It's not your fault… I just assumed everyone knew already."

The area behind Tenten's house was grassy but lacked any tall plants, so the light of the full moon bathed the entire scene in a luminous glow. A few feet away there was fallen tree that would make an ideal bench, so Sakura sank down onto it with a heavy sigh and Lee took a seat next to her. Behind them, the party was nothing more than a dull distant roar.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked softly.

"No," she muttered miserably. "It's bad enough that I haven't stopped thinking about it all week… I don't need to talk about how the two people I trusted the most betrayed me and insulted my abilities as a ninja."

"Well maybe it's not what you think," her friend comforted. "Maybe they're not even on a mission. Maybe they're off planning a surprise party for you."

Sakura snorted loudly at the ridiculous platitude. "Lee, that is by far the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say," she stated bluntly. "What kind of party takes a week to prepare?"

"Um, a really really good one?" he answered with a grin as Sakura shook her head, embarrassed for him. "Okay, okay… That was a pretty bad line," he admitted. Then his voice became more sober. "But the situation isn't necessarily as bad as you assume. Don't you think it's possible that Naruto and Sasuke are just trying to protect you?"

"I don't need to be protected," she snapped. "I'm just as good a ninja as they are. They should treat me like their equal, instead of like…"

"A girl?" Lee finished tentatively. Judging by Sakura's silence, he had gotten it right. "I hate to break it to you, Sakura, but men are not always rational when it comes to the opposite sex. We tend to do outrageous romantic things in order to protect the girls we love."

Hearing that four-letter word, the girl snapped to attention, her face taking on a slightly pinker shade. She did not miss the fact that Lee had just tacitly acknowledged that Sasuke and Naruto both really did love her. But there was another thought that came to mind as well. Sakura just couldn't help remembering the time when Lee himself had rescued her from the sound team during their first chuunin exam years ago. She turned and looked him in the face. He was blushing too. Then Sakura realized that perhaps Lee had never gotten over his old crush on her. And it felt strangely good. At least there was one person who still wanted her.

"Things were just going so perfectly before this," she eventually said, ending the awkward silence. She sighed and looked down again. "I feel like I've been cheated out of my happy ending."

"Ending?" Lee asked, puzzled. "At seventeen? It's kind of sad if you've already reached the ending at age seventeen, don't you think?"

"You… you know what I meant, Lee," Sakura defended, though her voice was starting to wobble. "Everything was just going so well with me and my guys. We were a team."

"You still are," Lee reminded.

"But it's different now," she went on. "Back when we were kids, we were all put on the same team, but I knew I wasn't on the same level as them and it made me feel so inferior and even jealous. But I trained hard under Tsunade's guidance, and I finally became their true equal… and they recognized that. Now… Now, it's like I'm twelve years old again… and feeling like a token member of the team…" Much to Sakura's surprise, there was a tear gliding slowly down her cheek, nothing like the furious deluge she had produced when she first heard about her mates' treachery, but a single melancholy trickle. She was even more caught off guard when her non-teammate friend brushed the offending droplet from her face with a simple stroke of the back of his hand.

"Just remember," he said warmly. "Whether happy or sad, an ending is still an ending. And what comes next? Nothing. Endings don't really matter much. It's everything that happens before them that's important. And I think you, and Sasuke and Naruto, and even myself… we all have a lot of happy times ahead before we reach the ending. So don't get bogged down when life gets a little rough, okay."

"I stand corrected," Sakura said with just a hint of sarcasm. "That's the stupidest thing you've ever said." But she was laughing, and that meant everything in the world. "Hey, Lee," she added as she stood up and dusted off her dress. "Would you mind walking me home?"

"I thought you didn't need protection," he said wryly.

"Not for protection," she answered with a smile. "Just for companionship."

"It would be my pleasure," he said. Then he offered his hand in a most gentlemanly way and added, "May I say that you look really amazing tonight."

"Why thank you, sir," she replied with mock formality. The two friends continued to talk as they walked hand in hand through the moonlit streets of Konoha, Lee wearing khaki pants and a green button-up shirt, Sakura wearing a gauzy red dress and a long lost smile.

To be continued…