"I won't bore you with the details. Your sensei will cover the war in depth in your last year. Truth be told, I didn't care about Madara's plan to trap the world in a genjutsu. At really down times during the war, when all I was doing was burying comrades and desperately racing to save patients, I wondered if Team Seven would be together in that imaginary world."
"But why did you fight if you weren't trying to stop Madara?" one girl asked.
Sakura smiled wistfully. "I fought to protect Naruto. Even if I didn't care if Madara's vision came to pass, he would have had to kill Naruto to do so."
Many of the girls aw'd and cooed, thinking that Sakura was only fighting to protect the man she loved. The pinkette quickly corrected their assumptions.
"The first lesson Kakashi-sensei taught Team Seven was to never abandon a comrade. Team Seven had closer bonds than any other team. We were more like a family for the short time we were together. Dysfunctional, but a family. It was the reason Naruto and I refused to give up on Sasuke. And it was our bonds that helped Sasuke see that revenge would only bring him pain."
It was the second time Sakura nearly lost someone she loved.
The first had been Kakashi-sensei during Pein's invasion of Konoha. He had actually perished that day. Only Naruto's talk with Pein had brought him back to her. But for the longest time she could only cradle the cooling body of her sensei as tears ran down her face.
This time she nearly lost Sasuke. Even if she was unsure of her feelings for the man, after all, he had tried seriously to kill her, Sakura refused to lose a member of Team Seven.
They could not lose Sasuke after they just got him back.
She hadn't wanted to believe that Sasuke could possibly side with Madara, that he was in cohorts with the enemy to destroy their village. Sasuke had lost himself on his path for revenge.
"Why wouldn't I want the village destroyed?" He had replied when Naruto demanded to know why he was doing this. "Look what Konoha did to my brother!"
Sasuke's righteous fury had confused her. She hadn't been filled in on the dark and dirty secrets of the truth of the Uchiha Massacre until much later.
For what seemed like eternity to Sakura, caught up in this grudge match between Naruto and Sasuke, she feared that Sasuke would see them all burn.
And then Sasuke did the unexpected. Breaking away from his fight with Naruto, he had slid his Sword of Kusanagi into Madara's heart all the way up to its black hilt.
"Itachi sacrificed everything for Konoha. What made you think I would ever destroy the village he gave his life for? You shouldn't have trusted me."
"Yes, we Uchihas are quite prone to betrayals, aren't we?"
It only took Sakura a second to understand the ancient Uchiha's intention. But she couldn't prevent Sasuke being pierced by the familiar wooden beams Yamato-taichou wielded.
"You can't stop there!" the class complained. "What happened to Sasuke? Did you save him?"
"Saving Sasuke wasn't easy. It took a team of six medical ninja to repair the internal damage he suffered; the number of times he flat lined that night. And even then he had been left with a few scars. I exhausted myself that night. Ended up spending three days in my own hospital.
"Sasuke was brought back to Konoha. After years of chasing after him he was finally coming home. Lady Tsunade cleared him of all charges, after gleefully telling him that he would be restarting his career as a gennin. Team Seven celebrated. We thought that all our troubles were over, but they were only just beginning."