Hero

By Agent Malkere

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. Sad but true. If I did, I'd have more than just a box of miscellaneous loose change to my name.

Sakura was never meant to be a hero. People had been telling her that all her life. A girl with hair as pink as her namesake wasn't meant to be a hero. A damsel in distress maybe or a sidekick at the very most but never a main character. Never a hero.

So Sakura, being the obedient young girl that she was, did what she was expected to do and what was acceptable for her to do. She crushed down her rather frightening temper until the impulses where just a loud, rude inner voice that shouted her real opinion where no one else could hear. She grew out her hair and wore pretty dresses because that was what damsels were supposed to do, weren't they? They were supposed to wait demurely with impractically long hair for their Prince Charming to come and rescue them. The fact that she later heard a rumor that Sasuke liked girls with long hair was just an added bonus – her hair was already well on its way to reaching her waist. She'd chosen Sasuke to be her Prince Charming because he was handsome and dark and mysterious and the first time she had met him, when they were both very, very young, he had smiled at her. He had the skills and the talent to save her.

Her one act of defiance was joining the Academy because she was fairly sure that damsels weren't supposed to know how to throw shuriken and kunai and just the right angle to break a person's neck. But even then, Sakura focused all her energy on studying the theoretical side of the shinobi world and left the taijutsu to her classmates. Being smart was acceptable, but a damsel wasn't supposed to be able to save herself.

It was in Wave Country in the middle of a bridge that Sakura discovered that she didn't particularly like to be saved. She stood in front of her team's client, the bridge builder, a kunai clutched in her hands. Shaking because Naruto and Sasuke were trapped in a dome of ice mirrors, and Kakashi-sensei was locked in a fierce battle with a missing-nin who was supposed to already be dead, and if any of her teammates failed, she would be their client's last line of defense, and she didn't know what to do. She was scared and helpless and completely useless because their client needed someone who at least knew how to be a sidekick and all she'd ever learned to be was a damsel. Damsels were meant to be saved, they couldn't save anybody else. And when the heroes were too tied up with fighting to do any rescuing, the damsels just died because that was all they could do. So when Sakura cried at the end of the battle, she didn't just cry for the two men she had just seen die. She cried for herself, too, because in her mind's eye, she saw the corpse of a pink haired girl in a red dress, who hadn't known how to save herself, laid out next to them. And a teeny, tiny part of her, so small she wasn't even aware of it, cried in defiance, because crying was the only thing that damsels could do that heroes couldn't. When she got home from that first ill-fated C-rank mission, Sakura stared into her bedroom mirror for nearly an hour wondering what business a damsel had being on a team of ninjas. And deep down inside of her that barely there speck of herself that had cried in defiance before began to hate her long, silky hair. Another, more prominent part of herself wondered who she would be if she didn't have to be a damsel anymore.

When Sakura gripped that kunai in both hands in the Forest of Death and slashed her long, pink hair short and free of her enemy's grasp, it was the most liberating feeling in the world. Her head felt light and free. She hadn't realized just how heavy her hair had been until it was gone. For the first time in quite possibly her life, Sakura felt in control because Sasuke and Naruto were unconscious and vulnerable and the only one who could save them was her. She was sick, sick of being a damsel. She was sick of needing to be saved. She was sick of being weak. She was sick of being what other people told her she was, told her she had to be. And to be quite honest, cutting her hair off was a relief because it meant she didn't have to pretend anymore. She was dirty and bruised and bloody. One of her eyes was half swollen shut and her hair was a choppy, ragged mess. But she was standing on her own two feet. And in the back of her mind, she thought that maybe, just maybe, she could learn to be a hero, too.

Sakura's mother was horrified when Sakura finally stumbled home from the chuunin exams after tying with Ino in the elimination round and she saw the remains of Sakura's beautiful pink hair. Her father declared that it was shameful for a woman to have such short hair. Sakura just smiled because it was her hair and she had realized that she could do whatever she wanted with it. And quite frankly, long hair just wasn't going to fit into her slowly reforming plans for the future.

The very first time she saw Tsunade, Sakura knew she had found her role model. Tsunade was Konoha's first female Hokage, and she was a veritable force of nature. Sakura jumped at the opportunity to train under her because if anybody could teach her how to be strong, it was Tsunade.

It was in a moment of weakness that Sakura made Naruto promise to bring Sasuke back, and she hated herself for it. She was working on learning to be strong but she was still too weak to help bring their wayward teammate back and twelve years' worth of habit is a hard thing to break. She vowed to become the best med-nin Konoha had ever produced when Kakashi returned to the village soaked to the bone with an unconscious, half dead Naruto on his back and no Sasuke. Because fighting battles and being strong was all well and good, but Sakura would do anything to take away the pain on her teammate's and sensei's faces, even if it was only their physical pain. She didn't care if the med-nin was the member of the team that the others were supposed to protect – she'd find a way around that. With medical ninjutsu, Sakura could save her teammates' lives in her own way. In a small way, it would be also something only she could do. A valuable skill that only she would have. Something precious that was all her own.

Sakura would forever treasure the expressions of Naruto and Kakashi's faces the first time they saw her break almost the entire training field with one strike of her fist. Inner Sakura, who was really more of Outer Sakura by then, cheered at their wide, shocked and slightly traumatized eyes. She wasn't a damsel anymore – she was standing on her own two feet strong and proud.

No, Sakura was never meant to be a hero. She had pink hair and a gentle voice and liked to wear at least some version of a skirt as part of her uniform. But on the day of the final battle with Sasuke, when Sai was unconscious and Yamato was half buried beneath a pile of rubble, one arm broken, unable to move and Kakashi was literally pinned to a tree with a sword rammed straight through his shoulder into the trunk behind him and Naruto still on his way, Sasuke made one very big mistake. He looked at Sakura and assumed that he knew her. Looked at her and saw the same little girl just beginning to learn how not to be a damsel that she had been when he left Konoha. He assumed that she was still standing because the others had been protecting her. And they had, but because she was their teammate, not because she was weak. And Sakura may have decided to step back and let Naruto be the one to finish things off with Sasuke – no matter how it ended – but she'd done that so that Naruto would be able to keep that promise that he'd made both to himself and her so many years ago. And besides, she'd only promised herself to let Naruto finish things off, as in, let him have the final blow of the battle. She'd never promised herself that she wouldn't beat the tar out of Sasuke first. And if Sasuke's left leg was entirely useless because she'd severed all the tendons in it by the time Naruto got there, so much the better.

The expression on Sasuke's face when she brought half a cliff down on top of him and then sent him flying over a hundred feet with one well-aimed punch was priceless. Because Sakura may not have been meant to be a hero, but that certainly hadn't stopped her from becoming one.

A/N: Feedback is always welcome! I love to hear what people think! This was inspired by a comment made by Kishimoto in an interview that Sakura was never meant to be a hero or even a main character. Hope you enjoyed and thanks for reading!