"Sasuke was always a prideful person. In his skills. In his abilities. He didn't know the meaning of modesty. He certainly never displayed it. It was one of his many flaws."

"How is pride a flaw?"

Sakura eyed the boy that had spoken. He gave off the same aura she sensed from prodigies. And his posture screamed confidence. "You're top of the class, aren't you." She said. The boy nodded, stunned.

"Sasuke was too. He felt himself so far above the rest of us, superior because of his clan, his bloodline, that he didn't work well on a team. Sasuke was too independent. Because of his pride he readily angered when Naruto or I would learn something faster than he did, and then he would struggle on his own, too stubborn to ask for help.

"A lot of Team Seven's misfortune could have been avoided if he asked for help even once." Sakura sighed heavily. Maybe if he had asked for more training he would have been strong enough to stay in the village.

"That pride also made it hard for Sasuke to assimilate back into the village."

Sasuke kicked a pebble down Konoha's empty street. His meeting with the Hokage had taken many hours and night had fallen. In the end, the last Uchiha would have an ANBU guard on him for a year. Tsunade didn't feel the need to restrict him to the village. By claiming that Sasuke was still a gennin because he had not taken or passed a chuunin exam since his first one, he would only be able to do simple D-rank missions around Konoha.

Naruto threw his arm over the dark haired man's shoulder. "Ne, don't worry about it Sasuke. It's just a rank. It won't stop me from becoming the Sixth Hokage. I'll be the first ever gennin Hokage!"

Sasuke scowled at him.

"There will probably be a chuunin exam soon." She offered. "With all the losses from the war, every village is going to need to fill in their ranks."

"Yeah, teme! We can take it together."

"Aa. Team Seven taking another chuunin exam. Hopefully there won't be an invasion this time."

Naruto's laughed echoed down the street. Sakura smiled happily, pleased that Sasuke was joking around and actually wanted to be a part of Team Seven again.

"You didn't know? Sakura-chan's a chuunin. She has been for over a year now. Ne, Sakura-chan, are you going to try for jounin?"

Naruto's question was innocent. Sakura hadn't really thought about the jounin exams. They were unique to each village, not open to all like the chuunin exams, and they were only held once a year in Konoha. And to be quite frank, she was afraid what type of exam her sadist of a shishou would design; she thought dodge rock was an acceptable training method.

However, anger flared in Sasuke's onyx eyes.

"Why was Sasuke so angry? It was just the chuunin exams. Did he really expect you to sit around the village and do nothing while he ran off to get his revenge?"

Sakura rolled her eyes fondly. "Sasuke said for years that he had broken the bonds he shared with us. But our team wouldn't let him, and he truly didn't want to lose them. Team Seven wasn't just teammates. We were family. All of them orphaned with tragic pasts, and I balanced them being the normal girl from a civilian family.

"I think Sasuke always planned to return to Konoha. And he expected us to be waiting at the front gate to welcome him back. I suppose he thought we would pick up where we left off. But with the news that I was a chuunin. . . his pride reared its ugly head."

The rosette quieted as she recalled how he took to ignoring her. Not even a day back in the village and Sasuke reverted to their gennin days. "Sasuke trained obsessively after that. Mostly with Naruto and Kakashi. Not once did he ask to train with me. He refused to be treated by me in the hospital. His pride was breaking our team apart again, and we had only just glued the pieces back together

"Kakashi started hiding behind his porn, placating Sasuke occasionally. Naruto was being run ragged between taking over some of Tsunade's duties in preparation to be Hokage and trying to spend time with both of us when Sasuke refused to be in my presence. In the end I decided to pull away, distance myself from my team. I took extra shifts at the hospital and was soon spending more time there than I was at home.

"The next time I saw Sasuke was three months later."