VERY IMPORTANT: I need beta readers for my Naruto fanfics badly, so anyone interested in applying please see my profile for the application. The incentive is you'll get to see chapters A LOT earlier than the rest of my readers.

Sasuke wanted to smash her skull against a rock. Rip her hair out in painful agonizing grips from her scalp, cut her until she was scoured and begging for grim mercy.

From the day she had defeated him so casually, Sasuke hadn't had a single day pass by without his thoughts wandering towards his mysterious teammate. The girl that everyone avoided because of her 'creepy background:' apparently her parents had been found decapitated around her sleeping body when she was just six years old. Her entire body had been covered in their blood but she hadn't had any cuts herself.

For the first time in his life Sasuke found himself interested in someone besides his immediate family.

Because he wanted to kill her. Sasuke kept telling himself, every time she defeated him: again and again, he challenged her to duels after lessons or missions with Kakashi.

And every time he was handed his imminent defeat by the girl.

Never before had anyone besides his brother been so able to usurp his entire definition of himself. Power. He'd always identified with it. Deep rooted and natural raw power.

Be the strongest.

That's what he was.

That's what he'd always been.

Until Sakura stole this identity from him.

And he was determined to get it back from her.

The next five years passed like the blink of an eye for Sakura Haruno.

She knew he was stalking her. Every day and every instant. Always secretly staring at her from the corner of his eye while they were being mentored by Kakashi or when they were dispatched on missions.

She could always feel his eyes prickling the back of her neck like invisible needles.

But she didn't care.

He could stare all he wanted. He could watch all he wanted.

It still wouldn't give him a chance in Hell of defeating her.

When they turned eighteen and simultaneously graduated from Kakashi's tutelage, they were each given different recommendations to take in regards to their life's dream: Naruto obviously the steps in which he would need to undergo in order to become Hokage; Sasuke, that which would eventually lead him into his brother's current esteemed position of heading the ANBU, and Sakura-

-she wanted to leave Konoha.

No matter how much Kakashi tried to dissuade or suggest something else and how much Naruto pleaded, the pinkette stayed resolute in her decision. She wouldn't even tell them where she was headed, just that she was heading out at the end of the month.

Though the boy tried to hide it, Sakura could tell her decision had a deep impact on Sasuke Uchiha as well.

Far more than he even knew himself.

But Sakura didn't care.

He could hate her or revile her. Or obsess over her.

Nothing anybody said or did could change her mind on this.

She had to leave Konoha to keep her promise.

As soon as she made her declaration, the Uchiha who always prowled through trees following her wherever she went, seemed to vaporize now whenever she stepped within twenty feet of him. He avoided her like she was the walking plague. In grocery stores, the ramen shop, the public bathhouses, as soon as she stepped on coinciding community grounds, she felt the distinct departure of his unique chakra signature leaving the area.

Honestly, she liked this much better than the years he'd spent following her.

She could finally have her peace. Everyone in the village avoided her and she'd always liked her privacy this way.

Most people were nuisances anyway.

Naruto was perhaps the only person who was actually amicable to her but the boy was dim-witted and as such did not hold Sakura's respect.

She didn't care for his kindness and usually was only too glad to see his parents come into the picture, pulling him away and scolding him for hanging out with the "Haruno girl."

The day of her departure came and Sakura headed off right at midnight, wanting to spend the night traveling to gain camouflage from potential bandits. But right as she stepped into the mandatory departure path that left Konoha, a fierce grip closed around her right wrist -a hand connected to a lean lithe arm originating from within the shadows of the street.

Her head turned upwards and faced, not at all to her surprise, the grim austere expression of Sasuke Uchiha glowering down at her.

"Stay."

It was a singular order.

Sakura's response came out in the same form and tone: "No."

She threw his grip off.

This seemed to snap something inside the young man. Before Sakura knew what had happened, she found herself drawn tight within the man's hold: one hand pinning her wrists behind her back while his other palm wound tightly through her pink locks.

"Listen to me you little bitch," even in all the times he'd dueled her -competed against her and frustratingly lost, she'd never heard him speak to her this way, "I will not let you leave."

He emphasized this last statement with a fierce tug on her hair, forcing her head angling back. Sakura's scream was only half born because as soon as it started it got silenced by Sasuke's searing lips as they pressed fiercely over hers.

Her eyes widened into his kiss and tried squirming away but the resistance just made his pressure increase further and for an unknown reason, she couldn't summon any chakra right then. Unable to push him off, Sakura's teeth pushed against the back of her lip painfully because of how much she refused to yield her mouth open to him.

Sasuke found this infuriating but he refused to relent, he only continued ravaging the outside of her mouth, nipping and savoring the feel of her lips until he was sated and breathlessly parted from her.

He looked into her face. Her mouth was red and swollen but her expression didn't seem any bit disturbed by his assault. She seemed just as composed as she always was, albeit now with eyes set in flint. Cold and furious.

"You done? Can I go now?" she asked him and the second after those words left her lips, Sasuke found himself, for the first time in his life, on the verge of hitting a girl outside of shinobi duels.

He stopped himself only just by the skin of his teeth.

"Dammit, Sakura…" he seethed through red veined eyes, sunken with dark rims from nights of obvious sleep deprivation. "Since the day you told us you were leaving, I haven't spent a single night without thinking of ways to keep you here, to make you stay…and the only thing you have to say to me-"

"How any of that my fault?" Sakura threw back, interrupting him. The fact that he'd stayed up nights thinking of her didn't exactly surprise her. She'd known for a long time now how he really felt about her, even if he'd only just recently acknowledged it to himself.

It had just never remotely interested her enough to want to confront him about it.

Sasuke Uchiha was, all in all, just a nuisance to her.

"Did I ask you to pine for me? Did I ask you to stalk me for the last five years?" her brazen declaration over what he'd thought had been surreptitious lurking brought a jaw dropped expression across the man's perfect face.

Sakura scoffed at his look, undermining his affection. "You're pathetic, Sasuke."

This time he did slap her.

The act sent her spiraling to the ground, her forehead grating for a second against the asphalt pavement for a brief moment. In the back of her mind, Sakura had already deduced the specific trap Sasuke had used to hinder her chakra right now.

Slowly, she turned to look back at the Uchiha. He was bristling. His entire face was flushed pale in his horror and shame at what he'd just done, but the lines of his fine jaw was still fixed in a seething tenor.

Dammit. This girl…

Sakura picked herself backup while wiping away the blood on one side of her lip. Her forehead was bleeding pretty badly but it barely phased her. "I don't care what you want, Sasuke, I'm leaving Konoha, tonight."

He was on her again, in a second, gripping her by her shoulders and shaking her. "Dammit, no you're not!"

"And how are you going to stop me? Ivarik's Trap last only for 24 hours, Sasuke. I should have noticed how the air around here is thicker than anywhere else in Konoha. What form of my DNA did you use to form the jutsu, Sasuke? Some of my hair? Some skin samples?"

She guessed it was her hair, as it was easily attainable from any of her discarded training clothes. But it didn't honestly matter, Ivarik's trap could only restrict her chakra for 24 hours, then she would be back to normal and even be immune to the trap for the next 6 weeks. It was built this way specifically to prevent abuse of this mechanism by Shinobi since it was main used only in academic settings.

Sakura wondered why Sasuke hadn't chosen a more detrimental trap, ones typically used during wars to strip the enemy of their offensive power for weeks on end...

The man's grip tightened on her shoulders as he shook her once more, cutting off her thoughts.

"Dammit Sakura, don't you understand what I'm saying to you?" he asked her and the kunoichi just sent him a wide-eyed incredulous look, daring the always proud man to say what she already knew.

Though Sakura didn't care about him, she still wanted to see if he was actually capable of swallowing his pride for once in his life.

"What Sasuke? What are you trying to say?"

The man felt again a deep surge to slap away that smug look from her face, and he hated himself for wanting to do this, for what she had changed him into. This...mess of unrestrained, disorganized and...unprepared slew of emotions. He also hated himself for caring about such a callous, selfish and unfeeling girl...but at the same time…he couldn't stop himself.

"I like you dammit!" Sasuke seethed through gritting teeth, before biting his lower lip. "I always have, alright?! Since the first time you defeated me and every instance afterwards, I haven't been able to stop thinking about you, Sakura! I want you to stay with me, Sakura…please."

She could tell this was the first time he had ever pleaded with anyone, ever in his entire life.

But Sakura wasn't in the least bit moved. She'd seen how callous he was towards his fangirls, towards his admirers. How neglectful he always was towards them and she found him even more deplorable now that he was using their same methods to win her over.

"Stay with me, Sakura," the man reiterated when he faced her silence, which he took to her considering his offer. "I shouldn't have hit you earlier –you made me so angry -but I know that was no excuse. I'm sorry. I promise I won't do that ever again. I promise I'll make you happy-"

"I highly doubt that," Sakura interrupted callously. The look her eyes was a mix of annoyance and impatience, like she was dealing with some bothersome child. A cruel condescending smirk spread across her photogenic lips, overtly mocking and undermining his confession.

Sasuke felt his world shatter around him as he heard Sakura's condescending laugh before him.

"I wouldn't let you stay with me if you were the last shinobi alive," she spoke while maintaining contemptuous eyes. "You want to know what I think of you, Sasuke Uchiha?"

The man could only stare at her with wide an astonished disbelieving, slack jawed expression.

"You're annoying."

And that was the last Sasuke saw of Sakura that night, because the rosette had yet again bested him.

Somehow, someway, she'd managed to not only break free of his trap but also in knocking him unconscious for the rest of the night.