❛ i can feel this heart inside me and i conclude it exists. i can touch this world and i also conclude that it exists. all my knowledge ends at this point. the rest is hypothesis ❜

she’s given up too much, worked too hard, for them to take it away from her now

kishi took away sakura’s development, i’m bringing it back

She’s just a girl when Sasuke decides to leave, still nothing more than a child, really, and filled with a child’s sense of fear over things she can’t understand. Sasuke is the constant: he’s the force in her life that she revolves around, the meter by which she gauges her accomplishment. If Sasuke doesn’t think that her being one of the only student’s not to cheat on the Chūnin exam is exceptional, then that’s that, and she forces herself to wipe the slate, and start clean.

The problem is that she’s not a girl anymore, and certainly not some starry-eyed genin who doesn’t know any better. The seal on her forehead is proof of her strength; her fists have destroyed armies, and her spirit has been hammered and forged until it could only have rung true. She’s not Sakura Haruno, the shadow of Ino, in love with a boy who could barely deign to learn her name: she’s Sakura, apprentice of Tsunade, the greatest medical-nin alive, the strongest of Team 7. She’s fought and scraped and bled for her titles, and she won’t let them push her back into obscurity.

Sasuke’s goodbye reeks of dismissal, of putting her back in the place he thinks she belongs: on the side, away from the action. He might very well have to atone for his mistakes; he might very well cross the world over to cleanse his soul of sin. But she’s not the little girl who wept her grief for all to see, and pinned waiting for him: she won’t wait for him now.

“I thought you’d be waiting for Duck Head,” Sai informs her the next day, when they gather in the office of the Hokage. Kakashi looks impassive and Sai is smiling that sardonic smile as always, but Naruto’s head comes up, his eyes seem to sharpen on her face, and she doesn’t want to put a name to the expression in his gaze, but it looks remarkably like hope.

She snaps her gloves over her hands with a brisk, efficient motion. “Now, why would I do that?” She asks coolly. 

It doesn’t matter if Sasuke comes back tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that. It doesn’t matter if he returns in a week, or a month, or a year. He will return – of that, they are certain – and if he looks about for Sakura, he won’t find her, waiting at the gate, her hands demurely clasped in front of her, shy and quiet as the perfect woman.

If he looks for Sakura, he’ll find her where she belongs: on the battlefield, commanding armies, never looking back to see who might be watching her, but looking forward, knowing she is on her way up.