She’d never been enough and even now, she wasn’t enough. When she’d been young, she’d offered so many things to him. She’d degraded herself by begging at his feet for a date. He should have been the one begging. She had offered herself to him but she was left in the cold with the words, “you’re annoying“. Thinking about all the things she’d done as an adolescence to get his attention made Sakura sick to her stomach. She’d degraded herself so many times. She’d offered him her love. She’d given him her heart, hoping, praying that he would take good care of it. But he had cruelly stomped on it with his taunting words. But she’d forgiven him because that’s how she was. She’d picked up the pieces of her heart, put them back together and once again offered it to him. It was a sick cycle. She couldn’t stop loving him and he couldn’t stop hurting her. What she didn’t notice was that every time he hurt her a scar would be etched into her heart. What she didn’t know was that the scar had become etched into her soul as well.

Naruto had kept his promise. He brought Sasuke back. They’d been broken and half-dead but her boys were back. She had hoped, forgetting and forgiving all his previous sins, that he would accept her this time. But he hadn’t. He’d ignored her, made her feel worthless, unneeded. All those years of training with Tsunade had been flushed down the drain with one sentence: “You’re annoying“. She’d believed him. After all he was a prodigy, always right. She’d believed she was weak. She stopped believing in herself. She’d given up on life. She’d given up on herself.

He’d found the perfect person to spend the rest of his life with. It wasn’t her. It was a village girl. Perfect and pretty. Everything she wasn’t. She knew he didn’t love the girl but every time she saw them together, another piece of her heart would chip off. She was too tired to put them back together anymore. She wondered if he found pleasure in seeing her breaking. She’d asked for a 3 month long mission a few months before the wedding because she didn’t know who she was anymore. In chasing after him, she’d lost herself along the way. She needed to heal her heart with the only medicine that worked anymore: Time. What she hadn’t expected was a red-headed puppeteer. Surprisingly he had turned out to be exactly what she had needed.

She was at the wedding watching the girl drink the sake. And for the first time, as she looked at him, there was not rush of butterflies or of an overwhelming love. There was just nothingness. It was nice. She could see everyone staring at her “discreetly” as if waiting for her to stop the wedding and kidnap the groom. She mentally snorted. Is that what these idiots truly thought of her? Did they really think she couldn’t survive without him?

She got up from her chair and congratulated them. She could see the shock in his eyes at the sincerity of her tone. The village girl bragged, not too subtlety about how she’s gotten him and she hadn’t. Sakura laughed on the inside. This girl thought she could reach him but in the end she would be just another broken shell. But on the outside she smiled and said yes, it was an odd thing when you fell in love with someone you never expected to fall in love with. She’d seen the jealousy in his eyes when he ahd realized she wasn’t talking about him. Good. He deserved to feel her pain for once.

She could see the smile in Kakashi’s eye as she turned around and walked away from the “lovely” couple with a real smile adorning her face. There was only one thought in her head as she walked, head high, through the wall of disbelieving eyes. Who needed Uchiha Sasuke when you had Akasuna no Sasori?

The guards ran into the Hokage’s office the next day, screaming about how Haruno Sakura had become a traitor. The Hokage merely smiled. He had been visited by Sakura and a smirking redhead as she asked his blessing, not as her Hokage but as her friend, to become a missing nin. The guard asked, stuttering, if they should send a retrieval team after her. The only answer they got was, “Don’t worry. Sakura-chan’s strong”.

you can’t break me.

I’m too clever for your lies, you see.

- A/N: What do you think? Please review. Yes, Sasuke’s jealous. He deserves pain after what he did to Sakura-chan. This is probably going to be my last drabble thing for a long time seeing as I have to focus more on my art now. I dedicate this to my beta Shocks19. I’m so amazed that an amazing writer like her would want to beta me. Thank you Shocks. I’m ready to get Brandon.