Naruto stared intently into Sakura's eyes, firm and serious, all semblance of his previous mirth stripped away in an instance.
"Naruto…why?" Sakura nearly choked, feeling tears and dread bubbling to the surface.
The boy sighed, taking his hands off of her, turning half away. "I have a feeling that…your head's not where it's supposed to be…"
Naruto glanced back at Sakura, a placid expression on his face. He turned away from his companion, pacing, before turning back, slowly returning to his position, hands on his hips. All the girl could do was watch and listen, holding her hands over her vulnerable-feeling heart.
"Why, Sakura, did you join the Academy?" Naruto tilted back his head, seeming to peer down at her somewhat.
Shaking, she stood there, eking out meaningless gasps and pieces of words.
"Likely friends, yeah? Joined up because some of the girls were doing it? Later on got sucked into pursuing some guy or another, something along those lines?"
Sakura hung her head low, blurry wetness barely hanging on to her eyes. Her shoulders quaked, and she clawed at the fabric of her dress, close to breaking.
"I'll make this clear, Sakura- you can't keep on like that. We may be just doing little exercises and training, probably some cute D-ranked jobs- but we won't last once we get to the real ninja work, if we keep on with our mindsets from the Academy."
Naruto sighed again, turning away from his increasingly distressed teammate. "I've been assigned to a team before, you've probably heard. I saw something I didn't like, but was too wrapped up in my own world to worry about anybody but myself in that situation."
The boy swallowed, shaking a little himself, now. "I ended up with two badly injured, likely permanently damaged comrades as a result. I lost my team - and my opportunities as a ninja - in a matter of hours."
Naruto gritted his teeth, letting out a low breath as he turned to face Sakura again. Seeing her in evident distress, he decided to change tack, walking closer to the girl.
"Sakura…I don't need you to change as a person. I don't want you to turn into something you're not - something fake or fragile. What I want – what the team needs – is a shift in your priorities. That's it."
The boy stepped closer, putting his hands on Sakura's shoulders again, squeezing them gently. Dropping her hands to her sides, the girl sniffed.
"That's it, huh?" she said, a slight warble in her voice.
"Yeah..."
"Naruto," Sakura began, raising her head slightly to look at the blond, showing her reddened green eyes.
"Yes, Sakura?"
Gritting her teeth, Naruto's female teammate reached up and slapped him- hard "You idiot!"
With that, the young kunoichi-in-training broke away, running off toward home, leaving her supposed date stranded on the border of his neighborhood.
Naruto, sighed, touching the mildly burning part of his face, turning toward his own home, walking back slowly as a small rainstorm broke out, soaking the boy within minutes.
Although his place was only a short ways a way, it was a long walk home.
When Sakura got home, she was immediately questioned on where she had been. She mumbled that it was a long day and that she had to go lie down.
With that, she quietly entered her room, shut the door gently, and flopped onto her bed, grabbing the biggest pillow she could find and hugging it tight.
She wanted to cry – badly. Just to take the ache away a little.
It's not like he was trying to be mean or unkind but…
Ugh.
Sakura turned over to stare at the ceiling, letting her gaze wander over its comfortingly simple expanse. Stupid Naruto.
She had thought she'd known what he was on about, she'd thought he was very interested in her – even though, well, her obvious flaws. He barely seemed to remark on her forehead, her figure, her style… He just seemed interested in her…
Over the course of the date, she'd fought the terrible temptation to jump on him and kiss those smiling lips of his, as he laughed and joked and talked. He had shown her a simple, nice time, never leaving her with a dull moment.
And then he just ruined it for her by saying it was all just business. After all that. Stupid Naruto.
Stupid stupid Naruto.
Big fat idiot Naruto, with those stupid goggles.
Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupi-
Naruto came home to a fairly silent apartment, save for the pitter patter of raindrops on the building. Letting the Weasel out to let it enjoy being free to move about, Naruto walked over to the couch he'd managed to buy with most of his remaining job pay and just fell onto it with a plop. He kicked off his sandals and rolled himself bodily into it to get comfy – and so far it was pretty comfy.
This team thing was looking to be a bit of trouble…
He was plenty willing to make concessions, participate is whatever tasks suited his instructor's whimsy, even socialize with these simplistic…children…
But just from how things were seeming, he'd actually done the reverse of helping the team situation and made things worse, somehow. He had some idea why Sakura had reacted the way she did, but ultimately it was her own fault for reinforcing her bad habits of prioritizing, and what he'd just addressed her on was likely the source of most – if not all – of her outrage.
Still…it would probably come down to Sakura randomly deciding to change her mind before any resolution could take place. Trying to advise or communicate with the girl would just exacerbate the situation right now…
At this point all Naruto could do was ignore the problem and hope it would go away while he tended to the practical parts of his role.
Would that he could do something about the issue, but until an opportunity to somehow annul his guilt in his teammate's eyes, he couldn't do anything.
Would that that evening had never happened.
Women were such a bother…
Okay, yeah, we have a quick resolution posted at a time earlier than the crack of doom.
Hip hip hoo rah
Apologies for the brevity again, but I'm saving up my creative juices for the small doozy I'll be undertaking with GREAT PROMPTNESS as soon as I finish here
As a general side note, I'm sending out an advance stfu to all the Sakura-bashers out there: You people are unbelievable. The stories I've read, the scenes that I've read, the sheer brutality that I've witnessed dumped on the keyboard toward one single fucking character…
To put it in perspective, there was one fic- NaruHina, mind you- where Naruto successfully brings back Sasuke from the Valley of the End fight. In it, he gets to the gates, everybody's happy, and Sakura decides to take him aside- the woods somewhere, I think- and has sex with him. Very quickly turns out the following scenes or so that Sakura's trying to pin rape charges on him, leading to a whole mess with the council or whatever. When Tsunade stomps that down, Sakura is immediately incarcerated for some reason, and it's explained that she would have been executed, but apparently she's pregnant with Naruto's child - after, like, a day – and thus must be kept alive. But it doesn't end there folks- oh no, it doesn't. Next comes a long scene or two where the interrogation/torture division has their fun, one guy stripping Sakura of her skin and pouring acid on her exposed flesh, having a medic nin on standby to patch her up so the same thing can be done to her again. All done to the tune of some particularly nasty-sounding metal song, copypasted into the fic. And everybody else is so righteously smug about this so morally upright comeuppance, living their lives out with remorseless joy.
It's shit like that makes me strive to break the mold and actually write an honest-to-God anti-fanon fanfic. I want no part of the sorts of monstrous, evil sort of mob mentality that goes on in this fanbase. Sasuke's not an emofag, Sakura nor Ino are shrill, stupid banshees, Kakashi's not a bigoted bastard, the village isn't run by civvies, and the nine tailed fox will not occasionally double as a father figure/lover for Naruto. I refuse to indulge this fanbase masturbation. Come for my work as it is, not in expectation of more of the same; there are hundreds of thousands of fics like that to choose from here, I have no inclination whatsoever to add to that, as I have previously explained.
Readers, please keep reading. People who're watching this, favoriting this- review already. If one reader can review most of my chapters in one readthrough, I'm sure the rest of you can at least do one or two in passing. Seriously, I still have more followers for this story than reviews, let alone reviewers. The excuses to not leave some sort of comment are dwindling, `cause I'm regularly updating, every day, well ahead of schedule now, and throwing as many curveballs and plot twists as I can hope to come up with.
So enough with the silence, people. Stand up and let your voices be heard. Your commentary and support will fuel my updates, perhaps even so far as to influence the plot of the story in chapters to come