A/N: Takes place post-timeskip (2-3ish years after Sasuke leaves) LeeSaku and some might say SasuNaru. This wasn't meant to be slash but I guess it may have some implications? Whatever, I'm not much of a slash writer (although I adore those two!)

As always, read, review, and make my day!

Disclaimer: Naruto's not mine although I wouldn't mind having him…or Sasuke…or even Neji (irrelevant, I know).

x

x

x

friends forever—don't say a word—we made a promise and I promised to keep it

x

x

x

It is a guilty thought perhaps but she cannot imagine a life with Sasuke here anymore.

Sure, if he was still here or if he happened to come back, Sakura would still care for him and probably forgive him, no matter how great his crime. She would still cry for him, and still readily die for him because that was the kind of tie she still felt bound her to him, strengthened by words and things and ideas called friendship and love.

Never mind that love was a tricky and ambiguous word because her love for Sasuke had changed over the years. Once it had been a childhood crush (when she wanted to beat Ino to him at any cost) and then it had become 'love' (when she realized that she could very easily die for the seemingly heartless boy without thinking twice about it).

Despite what people may have said or thought about her, or still think and say about her, Sakura is much stronger than she seems and she knows this. She also knows when the time comes to stop an invisible and impossible 'love' fromholding you down because many of the things she learned over the years have told her that moping about heartbreak and loss never got a kunoichi anywhere in life.

They are tough and bitter lessons, not like the life she was once used to, but she understands them all the same as the days go by and she feels herself age. It's not a depressing sort of aging either, it's more like a growth, and a very satisfying one because she had often felt she waited her entire life to grow into something significant.

Along with those lessons and realizations come realizations about her own self because Sakura is blooming. She also knows that she doesn't 'love' Sasuke anymore and unlike how it was when he first left, she is not lying to herself anymore and it's a good feeling.

Who could have imagined that Sakura would fall for the boy with the fuzzy eyebrows and the odd haircut instead? She couldn't believe that she had once scowled at his looks. For all that counted now, he was the handsomest man alive, more capable of love than Sasuke could've been anyway—the sort of accepting love that Sakura had always sought for—and with him, she always felt she could be herself.

Besides, beauty wasn't written on a person's face or hair. It was etched within one's character and soul. It took Sakura far too long to see that and she regrets not seeing it in Lee earlier on, not dating him while Sasuke was still here. I'd show him, she sometimes thinks.

It was almost funny when she thinks about it. She had been so caught up with Sasuke-kun that she had barely grown herself all the while he had been here. His departure, however, made Sakura stronger, both physically and as a person overall.

Sakura has come to realize that green fields and flowers, leisure and ease, were not the life of a ninja. They may have been the past for some of the lucky ones but they were nowhere to be seen in the future. In many ways, Sasuke's leaving—Sasuke's betrayal of Konoha rather—had shown her this. It taught her many things like not to fall for someone who never thought much of you to begin with and it also let her change, move on, and wake up to what was real in this life.

Still, she doesn't voice the thoughts, not to anyone, except maybe Lee once or twice and in vague, indirect words.

She knows it hurts Naruto and so she'll never say it aloud, especially when the blond Genin is in the vicinity. She'll never tell him that a small part of her is somewhat glad that Sasuke left.

And yes, it still hurts Naruto, and it will never stop hurting Naruto, she knows. Even if Sasuke comes back with both his hands and feet in tact, and even his mind—if they could be so fortunate—he will never be the same in Naruto's eyes. Maybe because who Naruto misses is the boy as he was before he was tempted by Sound. Naruto misses his friend and his rival, the boy he sparred and bickered with, the boy he fought alongside and against, and—although he'd never say it aloud—the person whom he cared about the most.

She recalls his promise sometimes: his promise to her that he would bring Sasuke back, and although she had absolved him of it so, so long ago, his promise still shines in his eyes as strong as ever before if not stronger. The promise of a lifetime.

He has a reputation for keeping his promises and she hopes that he may be able to keep this one too—not for her sake but for his own—because she knows a truth and he knows it too but they never say it aloud: no one loved Sasuke as much as he did, as much as he still does.

And besides, a promise was a promise.

x

x

x

fin.