Watch:

Verb) look at or observe attentively over a period of time.

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Canon divergence, Shippuden Era

WARNING(S): Implied/referenced character death, angst, coarse language, enemies with feelings

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"You shouldn't be here."

Her voice was so soft she could scarcely be heard, yet he turned his head her way as she took her seat in the treetop, feet swaying lazily back and forth.

Sakura didn't spare him a glance even as he took a step closer. Her visage was set, lips pressed into a grim line and eyes narrowed on the horizon. Her hands, though relaxed, still rested at her sides in a silent warning: try anything, and we fight.

Sasuke almost wanted to laugh at the sentiment; her skills were hardly comparable to his own in any formidable way. The path she walked was a more innocent one, of home and safety and friends and love - and he was molded in the darkness, empowered by it and steeped in potent hatred.

He had flourished. Yet so had she.

He could see it in the ways her alert gaze swept across the forest floor, in the way she quickly, quietly, cast a genjutsu about the area and went to work setting traps to deter unlucky shinobi aiming for a quick and easy kill. He could see it even now in the way she spoke to him with no ounce of affection or longing, voice cold and flat as if she were speaking to just another enemy to defeat.

What had happened to her since his departure? A part of his heart, one still stubbornly clinging to existence, mourned at how his sweet, innocent teammate had shed that persona. He immediately stamped it back down.

"You shouldn't be here," she repeated slowly, each word emphasized with a weight that she never used to carry for him.

"Aa," he finally responded, just as quietly as she.

Sakura didn't answer his goading, didn't stoop to get angry at him for 'using sounds' like she would have five years ago.

Instead she heaved a silent sigh through her nose, and finally turned her head to look at him.

Her eyes granted him no reprieve - internally he tensed as soon as they locked gazes, sensing the latent anger kindling within. Her hood still shadowed most of her face, but her soft pink hair fell about her neck, a familiar sight that seemed so solemn now that they were finally within each other's radius.

He had chosen his side.

The diamond she bore on her brow glowed faintly in the shadows, a soft mint that called to mind her own master's incredible healing. It thrummed with power, pulsed with a chakra so strong it subconsciously tugged at his own. Unconsciously, he pushed back against it - and her eyes narrowed in warning, fingers twitching at her holsters.

She chose hers.

"Why are you here now, Sasuke?" She questioned scant louder than a murmur. "To taunt me? To kill me, as your master killed mine?"

Why are you here?

He could not answer.

At his silence, she scoffed a laugh. "I should know better. Forgive me of expecting any answers out of you. You've never been one to grant me even that."

His own brow furrowed in irritation. "Don't substitute my words for your own, Sakura. You know better than this."

"Do I?" She challenged, her body scooting across the limb as she turned fully to face him. "I'm not sure I ever did."

"In fact, I never knew you, or Naruto," she continued sardonically. "I never knew the pain of loss. I knew neglect, I knew bullying - but I never knew the kind of loss you did. I never knew you."

Flashbacks echoed across his mind; flashes of Sakura, young and timid, hiding behind pillars and poles and just watching. Always watching. Her young, innocent gaze burned even as he remembered now.

"I never knew what it was to lose someone who loves you..." she paused, swallowing. Her eyes did not water. "I never knew... not until my master died."

The Slug Princess, Orochimaru had sneered in disdain once. Head full of dreams, heart full of fire - yet there was never enough room for bravery. She died a coward, he'd claimed - and a fool, for believing for so long in a Will of Fire.

It seemed painfully ironic, now - Tsunade's face had reminded him so much of the Sakura he knew. Stubborn and defiant until the end, never once giving up hope, never once willing to lie down and die. It had truly panged emptily in his heart when Orochimaru killed her; the lack of any remorse on his master's face gnawed at that tiny piece of his heart that remained, whispered, is this what you want to become?

Do you truly want to kill the last of your bonds?

Four years ago, he'd have confidently said yes, without any shred of doubt in his mind. Five years ago, he'd have wavered, unsure of himself and his motives, but eventually might have said no.

If he'd said no... would Tsunade still be alive? Would his heart not feel so frozen and empty?

"I don't love you anymore," Sakura stated, a flash of pain in her eyes as she reached for where her heart should be under her robes. "I don't."

Her words rung hollow. Did he believe them? Did she?

"You killed the last of my hope with Tsunade." Her voice, trembling, a whisper, made him take a step closer.

"She was weak," he heard himself spit. "Her faith was hollow and shakable. It's no wonder she lost so readily to Orochimaru."

The pinkette's eyes burned with an anger so hot he could feel it even down below, a flash of heat against the cool of the night.

"Do not speak of her that way," she snarled, and there it was; there was the hot-tempered Sakura he knew. "You would know nothing of faith, Sasuke. Not with how easily you gave it up."

"I was a fool," he snapped back, hands clenching. "I foolishly clung to dreams and hopes and it shadowed my eyes to the true nature of this life. You hang on so desperately to your pitiful Will of Fire and allow it to blind you to reality. Had I stayed - I would have been just as weak as you still allow yourself to be."

"Do not," she said quietly, firmly, "call me weak."

"Are you still scared to hear the truth?"

"Nothing scares me more than seeing the monster you've become, Sasuke!" She exclaimed.

In one movement, she leapt from the branch and landed before him. Her eyes blazed with a deep fury as she raised a hand and stabbed a finger into his chest. The dull pain ebbed away just as quickly as his surprise at seeing her move so fast.

"Did our year as a team mean nothing in the end?" She questioned. "Don't answer. I don't care to hear any excuses of weakness or complacency. You had a life with us, Sasuke - you had a better life. Naruto adored you - he always wanted to be just like you! Cool, calm, collected, powerful - not a day goes by that he doesn't mention how desperately he wishes he knew where the two of you stand. He doesn't just want to fight you - he wants you to let him in!"

"Naruto is an idiot," he spat.

"The only idiot here is you!" She shouted, poking him again. This time, it stung a little more - she must have used chakra. "Damn it, Sasuke, has that horrid snake brainwashed you so deeply that you reject even the idea that you might have been happy in Konoha?!"

Her tirade abruptly stopped with a choked gasp from her throat as he snatched up her hand into his, fingers clenching down tightly around hers in an almost crushing grip.

Their lips met, a bruising kiss full of frustration and power, and an indignant squeal rippled through her throat that he ignored in favor of yanking her hair through his fingers and pulling her closer.

She beat on his chest with her free hand, each blow more painful than the last - and all at once he let go of her with a sharp grunt as pain exploded between his legs.

Sasuke crumpled to the ground with a hiss through his teeth as Sakura stepped back, eyes wide and full of emotion.

"How..." her voice trembled with something. Anger? Fear? "How... dare you?"

"How dare you?" She shouted, cracking her knuckles. "Orochimaru really has brainwashed you, if you honestly believe that's going to work on me!"

"You would not..." he grunted slowly, "... have reacted if your words were true."

She stopped short, mouth open, and he could practically feel her taking a mental step back as she slowly closed her lips and stared at the ground with shaking fists.

"I don't love you anymore," she spat, almost as if trying to convince herself. "You helped kill my master. You killed the only woman who has ever said she was proud of me and meant it. Not even Kakashi-sensei treated me that way. How dare you take away my last sense of happiness?"

"Life is far crueler than I," Sasuke retorted as he slowly staggered to his feet. Luckily the flash of nausea and white-hot agony between his legs was almost abated. "If it wasn't myself, or Orochimaru, it would have been something else."

"God forbid you feel even a shred of human empathy for a miserable idiot like me!" She barked a laugh, turning away. "Just go. Go and I'll forget I even saw you. I'm sure the last thing you want is for the Leaf to ignore you, right? Now that you've succeeded in your goal."

"What the Leaf does or doesn't think of me, I don't care." He walked closer behind, until he could see the prickle of goosebumps on her legs. "My ultimate plan is to kill the snake. If they have any sense of self-preservation, they'll leave me be."

Sakura's entire body tensed in quiet surprise. He could almost hear her questions, even as she turned her head slightly in response. "Wh... what?"

"He's of no use to me anymore," he replied simply, voice flat. "Now that I've succeeded in killing Itachi, I have no need of his training or promises of leadership within Oto."

"Why..." she swallowed, turning even more so that they were eye-to-eye. "Why are you telling me this?"

"You assumed that I wanted Leaf's attention," he answered, gaze burning into hers as he stepped even closer. "You also assume that granting you closure is far beneath me. What's given you that idea?"

"Are you kidding?" She scoffed, gaze flickering between his eyes and lips and back. "You've always hated me. You always had some criticism of how I acted, how I trained, how I even held my weapon - and even on the night you left you had nothing to say except that I was annoying. How could I ever think otherwise?"

Sasuke let out a long, quiet sigh through his nose. Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, he leaned in - and ignored her tensing figure as he began to whisper.

"Ninja learn to read beneath the underneath, Sakura," he spoke, her name rolling off of his tongue in a pleasant way that he'd all but forgotten it could. "After all this time... you still don't..."

"Stop confusing me," she spat, raising a kunai knife to his neck. "What is it you're trying to say?"

"For as book-smart as you are, you are really naïve," he grumbled as he pulled back just enough to stare her in the face. "I didn't need to pull on pigtails to get my message across when we were genin."

She blinked, staring back at him, uncomprehending.

Shaking his head, he stepped away. He ignored the subtle, barely-there clenching in his heart as she visibly relaxed.

Turning, he said, "Tell that idiot that the next time we meet, I'm kicking his sorry ass back to your pathetic excuse of a village."

A shout raised itself in her throat, an indignant, angry thing - and then she stopped short, realizing what he'd just said.

Her lips curled into a wry smile, and she chuckled. "You two never stop, do you? Neither of you are killing each other on my watch. I'll see to it that I get to you first."

An almost invisible smirk surfaced on his hidden face, even as he teleported away in a puff of smoke.

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A/N: Let me know what you thought!