Stumble [Rewrite]

Reminder

Sasuke had never been scared of Sakura before. Ever since she threw him onto the ground and knocked his pride back into its place, she was a friend he wouldn't trade for the world. Sakura was tough. Smart. Stubborn. Kind. Invincible.

But she had no reaction to killing that man with her bare hands. Team Kakashi- the students, at least- thought themselves to be a family who were just as close as the ones they had at home. Though when Sasuke thought to their lives outside from being a shinobi, Sakura seemed to know everything about him and Naruto. The same couldn't be said about her.

Her favorite color?

Red.

Her favorite foods?

Mochi and anmitsu.

Her favorite book?

Anything on medicine.

What about her home life? What's it like?

Well, uh...

What does she want to do when she's older?

She never—

Who's her hero? What's her dream? Why does she always look tired? Why's she in therapy?

I d—

What is she afraid of?

I DON'T KNOW!

Sasuke kept walking in the unusually quiet aura of his team. A day had passed since the incident and only now he realized that five years later, Sakura was still a stranger no matter how many times she said she loved them. He glanced back, seeing both her and Kakashi reading their own books as they walked, then sidled up beside Naruto.

"Hey, dobe. You still worried about yesterday?" he asked. Naruto must have been too deep into his thoughts to notice the insult and pursed his lips.

"I'm not worried about nothin'," he mumbled. "Sakura-chan's still Sakura-chan and that's not gonna change. It's... I didn't know she could kill people like that. Didn't you get scared?"

It wasn't that he was afraid of the dead body left to the side of the path. His father drilled the responsibilities and consequences of their profession into him and his older brother from a very young age. Sasuke understood that death was all a part of the job and was as inevitable as the sun rising up every morning.

But did seeing it in action for the first time scare him?

"A bit," Sasuke admitted with a shrug. "But what can we do about it? It's not like that's the only time she's going to do it."

Naruto ducked his head, nodding slightly. Out of everyone he new, Sakura was on that list of people he'd love for the rest of his life. She was the last person he should've been afraid of. He'd known her for five or six years now and had shown time and time again that she'd stand up for him no matter what. Especially that time when she yelled at their old sensei!

Bottom line, he shouldn't have acted the way he did. Most people didn't like it when others were afraid of them.

Naruto hand clenched the front of his jacket right above his belly button.

He knew that better than anyone else.

::

"What will you do if they start to fear you?"

Sakura turned a page of her book on poisons. "You sure have been a chatterbox since we left the village. What's up with you? Sick and suffering from delusions?"

"Fear," he restated, ignoring her jab, "is a very impractical concept. It makes people shy away from doing what's right and masking what they want to think. I don't know the full extent of your potential, but from what I've seen it's not something to be taking lightly. You're strong."