"Truth is not relative, our understanding of it is."

Teacher's Pet

by Blue Jeans

Contrary to popular beliefs - or in this case, just Ino's loud opinions - Sakura did not spend all her time studying medic-ninjutsu under Tsunade's tutelage. She didn't just learn to dodge either. Ninjutsu, taijutsu, and even genjutsu had never been skills that Sakura had a claim to being anything more than average on, and for the majority of the three she wasn't even that. In almost all areas, even the one she was supposed to have an affinity for, she was woefully lacking in her jutsu knowledge and level.

It was a handicap of having civilian parents and years of caring only about boys and fitting in.

Two years did not mean she would catch-up in all three departments, not when she was also learning medical jutsu and dodging a heavy variety of projectiles from Tsunade. She had improved her chakra control to new levels and gained unimaginable strength, but Sakura also trained herself in other ways too. She mostly asked Shizune for help, as Kakashi was never anywhere she could locate him at and Tsunade had a village to take care of. Sometimes, if Shizune was too busy, she would be put in with another group under another Jounin teacher, or even handed into Iruka's care again. Sometimes she would be given a scroll and it would take her twice as long to figure out the frustrating moves without someone to show her and correct her. But she did it and she learned.

In the end, it was being placed with other teams that made Sakura feel the most burdensome and the most awkward. Teams were essentially designed for a three-man cell and she always felt like an extra wheel whenever working with another group came up. Granted, it taught her quickly how to adapt to others and it was a vital skill that all medic-nins needed to learn, but she was always the intruder. She was always left to feel like the one looking at what she had lost and stumbling to regain some illusion of it back. She was, in the end, always alone.

She had not lied to Sasuke when she said that if he left she would lose all that was important to her - she had just never realized how important Naruto and Kakashi had also become in her small world. She never thought that she would miss anyone else or hurt as bad because of anyone else. Naruto's bandaged face that she could not say goodbye to except in a promise, and Kakashi's sudden and silent disappearance, all that had hurt her as much as Sasuke's whispered thanks when he had left her behind.

She had been too weak, even then, to incite a reaction past insults and barely heard gratitude.

So, driven by those memories for two years, she killed herself in training. And when there was an iota of free time, she would pillage the libraries and dig deep into the files concerning anything related to Orochimaru that she could find. What she did find mostly disturbed her. Her shishou's former teammate was almost cruel in his experimentations, most of what he did and what he discovered, were classified. How he was able to even get away with half of it made Sakura doubt her own village for quite a few months! She still filed away every scrap of information she could find, piecing together the broken puzzle with whatever she could get with her authorization. Akatsuki came up quite a few times and the question marks left in the wake of their abilities made Sakura uneasy. But, she hoped that even these little things that she did would one day make her useful to her important people.

Sitting on the roof that day, looking in the direction of the forest, Sakura wondered where her teammates were now. Sasuke... Naruto... Kakashi... She went over each of them in her head. Those precious memories when they had laughingly ate at Ichiraku's ramen stand. Naruto always insisted on seconds whenever he had Miso-ramen, his favorite flavor from what she had observed. Sasuke wasn't always cold and had once even reluctantly admitted to how lame Kakashi's excuses were getting. This small confession had happened unexpectedly by the bridge where they had been waiting for their teacher to show up and Sakura smiled, remembering the similar expressions that were on both her and Naruto's face. Kakashi had always been too kind to her. At the gates of Konoha, with his perverted book in hand, he had ruffled her dirt-smudged hair and assured her that she did good this time, too. Even though, in the end, all she ever really did for missions were keeping the boys from killing each other. That time they tried to see what lay beneath Kakashi's mask and the more painful moment on the roof-top, when she couldn't even stop the two from trying to take each other's heads off... How could she possibly rewind and take back those times with these weak hands that couldn't save a civilian? She hadn't even been on the battle-field when it had happened.

Not useless, Sakura snorted at the mantra that had gotten her through the physical and mental anguish of the last two years, watching her efforts falling to waste. She had been lying to herself and no one else. She had also been so assured that she was different now, but was she really? Was she still that girl who had been unwilling to face the facts till it walked away? Almost two years of medic training and every waking hour spent on getting stronger, what had that all led up to? Surgeries that ended like this, teammates that abandoned her without pause...?

She was still so weak.

"You're annoying," Sasuke had told her countless times, almost fondly in the end. While Naruto had always treated her better, she sometimes thought he acted as if she were a civilian girl and not a kunoichi worthy of respect and a wise amount of fear. Kakashi protected her too, so much so that he never relied on her. Her previous teacher never saw potential in her like he did her other teammates. Kakashi had always counted on Naruto or Sasuke to compensate for her lacking. She knew this now, looking back. If her ex-Sensei had believed she was worthy, he would never have given up on her and left like that when there were no one else but her remaining. If Naruto had thought she was strong, he would never have taken all the responsibility for failing to bring Sasuke back. If Sasuke had truly found her worthy, he would never have left, or at least, he would have taken her with him. It should have never been just Kakashi and Naruto out there in the wilderness, fighting to bring Sasuke back. And if either of them had ever viewed her as a teammate, they would have berated her for being absent. All she got was pity and guilt when they faced her, and that had hurt more than anything else. She should have been there every step of the way but not even Naruto yelled at her for being a coward, for not being the Sakura he knew the way he did when Sasuke failed to be brave.

"Am I just going to sit here and cry?" Sakura demanded to herself angrily, tears falling onto those useless hands of hers despite her words. "Are you just going to remain a burden, forever?" She clutched her hair harshly in anguish, wishing the pain would stop her helplessness.

The village bustled beneath her and the wide world that laid outside, just beyond the gates and passed the quiet forest, gave no answers. Sakura put her fisted hands to her eyes and was unable to stop the falling of tears. "Idiot, idiot, idiot!" she harshly berated herself since no one else would. "Stop it! It's not going to bring them back. Crying isn't going to bring anyone back nor make anyone acknowledge you!"

"If you want to train, if you want to be stronger, then don't look at me like you have lost your will to fight."

The will to fight! Sakura looked up sharply and the scenery before her did not change. "The will to fight," she repeated to herself out-loud, fist hitting her thigh as she straightened and willed those words to power.

Tsunade had asked her the same question half a year ago, before her Chuunin exam. She had just been taught the basics of Tsunade's strength and was told that she would only pass her shishou's new test and learn the skill if she could crush the large boulder in Practice Arena 8. Used to 100 percent success rate on all forms of exams, even under Tsunade's intense lessons, Sakura had been overconfident that she would succeed. This would just be like tree-walking, she had thought, once the concept was explained and demonstrated to her.

When Shizune came to get her for lunch around noon, the other had found Sakura slumped over the dented boulder with her one arm broken in six-places and the other barely healed. It was countless, how many times Sakura had repaired her own arms that day. "You haven't done it yet," the dark-haired kunoichi noted dispassionately as she studied the somewhat scathed rock and then the roughed up girl on the ground. Sakura was more than skilled enough by then to deal with the damages of her body but she did not move from her place by the boulder. "Are you not going to heal that?" Shizune asked her quiet form, the same way one would casually ask a stranger about the weather. "Or, are you giving up?"

Sakura looked up sharply then, annoyed at the cool expression on Shizune's face. Ton-ton chose that moment to oink and strolled over to the boulder with a look in those beady eyes that made Sakura cringe ever so slightly. "If you're not, then why are you not training?"

"It's painful," Sakura finally said with angry frustration.

"Did you think it would be easy?" Sakura froze at Tsunade's voice. Her shishou stepped from the shadows of the trees and walked to stand beside Shizune. Ton-ton nudged Sakura's thigh before turning back to her owner. It was the accuracy of Tsunade's words that struck Sakura to speechlessness. "If it were easy, would I be one of the legendary Sanin to have such a skill? Would not Kakashi have taught it to you by now?" Sakura had looked away in guilty annoyance. At that time she was still bitter at Kakashi for abandoning her without a word and the mere mention of him made her depressed. Not that Sakura was anymore over it now, but at the time, it stung ten-times more when his name was mentioned. She honestly didn't believe for a second that he would have actually taught her anything unless it happened to coincide with teaching the boys as well. With both Naruto and Sasuke gone, he hadn't stuck around long enough to even tell her goodbye. "Are you giving up then? Is this the extent of your will to fight?" Tsunade's words pounded their way into her skull and still managed to sound trite.

Sakura seethed and her arm lashed out, fist smashing a spider-webbed pattern into the boulder behind her. "No, Shishou," she had gritted out in both pain and rage. Her arm roared in agony as blood fell from her clenched fist and dripped into the dirt. Sakura's face did not show even a hint of the pain she was getting to know so well. "I haven't even scratched it." Despite her words, she had only really healed four of her six fractures and this attack had thoroughly aggravated what she had not yet healed. It also managed to break newly aligned bones and tore newly regenerated muscles. But, up until then, she had not even been half as successful as in that moment of rebellion and the elation that followed was as great as the physical discomforts, neither of which was evident on her face.

Tsunade smiled at her then with a look Sakura had never been given before by her teacher. For a moment, Sakura thought, her shishou wasn't looking at her at all. Maybe, even if briefly, she had reminded Tsunade of someone else. The moment passed as Sakura slowly rose to her feet.

"Sakura, are you running low on chakra?" Shizune finally asked. There was a hint of worry in the crease between Shizune's brows now that Sakura had regained her earlier determination. Shizune had always been the one who was kind when Tsunade could not afford the luxury.

"Don't underestimate me," Sakura changed the subject without blinking. "I have another arm, after all, and I'll have this boulder in pieces before sun-down!" She promised instead, her words making Tsunade tilt her head as Sakura gave the crumbling boulder another good smack.

"Good," her teacher finally said with a smirk and that was enough for Sakura even though Sakura's hand felt raw and swollen again. "I'll have Shizune bring you a bento later then. Dinner's on me if you actually manage to do what you say. If not, she'll eat in front of you and you get nothing until you do exactly what you say, understood?"

Sakura blinked, a little disturbed at this since it suddenly reminded her of an earlier lesson from another time when she had been someone else. However, in the end, she settled on grinning instead, still avoiding the urge to heal the bruises emerging on the back of her hands. There were more important things to use her chakra on than pain and bruises, and until every body part of her is broken and useless or until she succeeds, she wasn't going to stop.

"As long as it isn't Miso-ramen," she answered evenly, turning her back on both women. "I prefer tempura and anko dumplings, thanks!"