Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
1
It wasn't hard for anyone to see why Sakura followed Ino around like a loyal puppy. Ino had adopted Sakura, the little girl from the failed clan, the timid little girl who couldn't throw a straight shuriken, the shy little girl who hid her face behind her bangs, into her own world, without any pretense or callousness.
Ino and Sakura became known as the inseparable duo, the pair of friends that would never stretch ties of loyalty no matter what came between them, two strong friends.
Ino… She took care of her own. Ino always made sure her friends weren't hurting, and Heaven help the idiot who decided to bully young Sakura, as Ami had found out when assaulted by a stalk of aconite; the girl hadn't died, but had been sick for days because she'd accidentally swallowed some of it.
To Sakura, in those early years Ino was both an older sister and the girl who could do no wrong. Ino would always be there, Ino would always be her best friend, Ino would always protect her, Ino would always look after her, and Ino would always be a part of her life.
It was a red cord that bound them together, not of romantic attraction or sexual love, but of purely honest love, the bond of blood sisters who were stronger because they did not actually have the same blood in their veins, but clung together out of affection and not out of duty.
Then, Uchiha Sasuke came into their lives.
Sakura believed that she was in love with the boy. He was perfect to her; he could be anything she wanted him to be because she did not know him. He was her glorious summer, her dream given flesh.
Sakura and Ino's friendship fell apart when Sakura discovered that Ino too pined after Sasuke. Sakura cut off ties with Ino, furious at that seeming betrayal, and vowed to have nothing more to do with Ino, severing the red cord.
What Sakura never knew was that Ino had liked Sasuke much longer than Sakura had even known his name. Ino actually knew Sasuke from the summer he had worked in her family's flower shop, and knew Sasuke's flaws and liked him despite his flaws. What Sakura never knew was that Ino had kept her feelings quiet because she knew of Sakura's, and had put more value on her friendship with Sakura than on her feelings for Sasuke.
But Sakura would never know that, and happily did she sever that bridge, plunging her life and Ino's into the midst of winter.
2
Even though Sakura loved Sasuke, she never knew him.
In those early days when she pursued him, she was chasing after the dream of a shadow, tacking on every characteristic she had ever dreamed of in a lover onto him, so Sasuke would fit her fantasy.
Sakura had loved a shadow, a shadows that was the absolute antithesis of Sasuke's true, dark heart. Sakura had never known the powerful inner workings of the dark, the way Sasuke's nightmares twisted him, until he didn't see her. He didn't see Team Seven, didn't see Konoha, didn't even see life. All he saw, was himself, Itachi, and a blood bond broken.
But still, Sakura's fantasy persisted.
That is, until Sasuke finally began to reveal the cracks in his warped, damaged mind.
Sakura began to see the truth and didn't accept it. She continued to see in Sasuke everything she had ever wanted, and didn't see the truth of his darkness, of his lust for power and his willingness to sacrifice anything and everything to get it.
In retrospect, Sakura isn't sure what possessed her to beg Sasuke to take her with him, the night he left Konohagakure behind for the Snake sannin, heading for a dark, twisted world that had no place for the light or Team Seven.
She had put all her cards on the table, displayed every last ounce of devotion she had, willing to follow him into darkness, willing to become a shadow of herself, just as Sasuke had become so many years ago.
And Sasuke repaid her devotion by plunging her into physical darkness, to leave her there until the morning came.
In truth, the night Sasuke came as close as he ever would to loving her was the night Sakura realized that Sasuke was out of her reach. That he had never been in her reach, that she had been grasping at smoke.
As the years past, Sakura pursued him, letting her broken heart weep tears behind her. Sakura produced a new desire.
She no longer wanted to be Sasuke's woman. She wanted to see him again, to settle once and for all if anything she had loved about him had been real—
—Or if the night sky had been a simple darkness when she thought it full of stars.
3
Naruto had always reminded Sakura of summer, verging on autumn. When the green things were beginning to die, and the lonely hearts were wilting away because of the hiding sun. Listening to Shizune talk about her opinion of seasons made Sakura compare Naruto with the dying days of summer, the last glory before the fall.
Naruto had been the last of a dying age, when the nin believed they could do anything and would go to any lengths to prove that they could do anything. It had been in that dying age that shinobi had had impossible dreams, and had strived to reach for that one remote star where they would find happiness.
The impossible dream of Uzumaki Naruto had been to win Haruno Sakura's heart. And he had almost had it.
Sakura had spent years of her life never knowing that the man she could have loved, truly, honestly loved, was right in front of her, waiting for her to open her eyes and see him.
Instead, Sakura had spent her life spurning her suitor, chasing her shadow lover, and never realizing that the light was walking right behind her, waiting for her to turn her eyes away from darkness.
When he had come back, Sakura had realized just how wrong she had been about Naruto. He had lived three years with a terrible burden on his chest, lived his whole life just being a part-time occupant in his own body, and somehow, he had managed to keep from cracking under the strain.
Naruto was, by far, stronger and better than Sasuke had ever been. And Naruto was better known to Sakura than Sasuke ever would be.
She had always "loved" Naruto, but Sakura had come as close to loving him as she could before she realized that the world just didn't work the way she thought it did.
In a bizarre reversal, Sakura came closest to loving Naruto the day he went out of her reach, walking comfortably arm in arm with another girl.
4
In the daytime, Kakashi was just her sensei.
At night, it became…more complicated.
Sakura wasn't sure what had driven them to her bed and later to his. There had been no introduction, no warning, no foreplay, no nothing before they plunged headlong into each other. They had been alone together the first night, him drunk, her feeling awful about each other, and things went from there.
She had been just barely fifteen with an unformed body and a child's straight, slight torso, Kakashi nearly thirty, but age didn't mean anything to a shinobi where life was so painfully short and children were not children. It wasn't like Kakashi had been her "first", anyway; Sakura had already been sent on two seduction missions before the night she silently drew him back to her tiny apartment and in to her bed.
It wasn't perfect, not by far. When Sakura and Kakashi looked at each other, they saw shadows of people either long dead or long gone, and Kakashi couldn't rid Sakura's face of Rin's likeness, nor could Sakura ride Kakashi's of Sasuke, not even when she was lying under him in the inky blackness, the only sounds their heavy, ragged breathing and the city sounds outside.
It wasn't perfect, but it was something else. They were able to act normally around each other when the sun was out, and Sakura constantly wondered if she had any future with the man who was nearly twice her age and would always see another woman's shadow over her body.
But when the moon came out, neither one of them worried about that anymore. All they were concerned with was each other, and the contours of their bodies in the darkness.
5
For whatever reason, the Konoha Twelve (what was left of it), took to Karin right away. Kiba summed it up pretty well when he said, "Any girl who can make Morino Ibiki pull that sort of face is alright in my books. Any girl who can make Morino Ibiki run from the room she's in has balls."
It was only Sakura and Naruto who really grew closer to the red-haired girl though. And neither because of her connection to Sasuke.
Naruto liked Karin because she was the first person who had figured out he was the host of the Kyuubi no Kitsune and didn't tread more softly around him afterwards. He liked her because she made him laugh.
As with Sakura, there was more to it then that.
Karin was…like her. A frail, broken girl who hid all of her uncertainties behind a demeanor that was anything but insecure, just to keep everyone from seeing her softer side, because both of them were so used to having their softness exploited.
Sakura visited her in the hospital, often; she had insisted on handling Karin's treatment herself, to the raised eyebrow of Tsunade once she came out of her coma and found out. No one questioned it, though.
Karin's body was riddled with scars and remnants of past fights, past pains. The bite scars were, she self-consciously explained, were there because of a kekkei genkai she had inherited form the Kusagakure clan she belonged to (1), and was clearly a source of shame and embarrassment to her, so much that she hid her bare arms under the hospital bed sheets as much as she possibly could.
They were, to Sakura, the marks of a healer who had given of herself constantly, more than she, Ino, Shizune or Tsunade ever had or ever would. Karin had her flaws, and they were, with any human being and especially with Sakura, copious, but unthinking selfishness wasn't one of them.
There were some things that gave two human beings a stronger bond than anything else could ever imagine, and for Sakura and Karin, the tie was Sasuke. The only good thing Sasuke had ever done for either of them was to throw them in each other's paths.
For the first time in her life, as Sakura sat on the chair beside Karin in her bed, smiled and laughed with her, Karin's wide crimson eyes fixed on her face, Sakura had a reason to be grateful to Sasuke. And for the first time in her life. Sakura was able to take comfort in the snowy days of winter.
1: Karin's Heal Bite ability is, to my mind, so bizarre that it has to either, A) be the result of experimentations done on her by Orochimaru, or, B) more likely, be a kekkei genkai. No other shinobi (at least in the canon) has been shown to have such an ability.