Sakura knew that Sasuke had mentally hit his breaking point: she knew he was going to desert Konoha, which is why she was the only person waiting there for him when he left the Leaf Village. 

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I appreciate the insight this scene gives into Sasuke's and Sakura's characters and their relationship. While the dialogue could perhaps have been written more eloquently, the clumsiness of Sasuke's and Sakura's attempts to explain their deepest feelings seems realistic, seeing as they are merely 13-year-olds and besides that, Sasuke has always had trouble expressing his emotions and Sakura has not been good at explaining her feelings well either.

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Sakura is upfront and to the point with Sasuke. She doesn't hold back her frustration with him or in pointing out what is wrong with their friendship. Through tears she demands, "Why don't you ever tell me anything?" She demands to know why he is so silent and keen to hide so much from her, tearfully questioning, "why can't you just...let me in?"

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Interesting dialogue from Sakura, since up to this point if there's anyone Sasuke has shown to be willing to confide in, it's Sakura. He told her that he is first and foremost an avenger, he told her he'll prioritize that above everything including his own team, he told her about the time his someone (Itachi) made him cry, he told her the true reason for participating in the chunin exams, he explained to her his motivation and reason for living. At this point, if there's anyone that Sasuke is letting in, it's Sakura.

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Yet still Sakura isn't satisfied with where their relationship stands, because she realizes that even despite the things that Sasuke is telling her about his feelings, there is still a plethora of things he isn't telling her.

 

Sakura keeps trying to approach him as a friend and help him through his pain and struggles, but he keeps rejecting her help, and she is frustrated by it. She's tried giving him space, she's tried offering support, she's tried stopping him, she's tried letting him do what he wants, she's tried listening to him, she's tried giving him advice. She's tried to do her best to help him, but Sasuke is incredibly stubborn and keeps rejecting her help, and it frustrates Sakura, because she cares about protecting and helping her friends, but they won't allow her to do that.

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In short, Sakura knows Sasuke is purposely pushing her away and there are sides of him he refuses to let her see, so she asks him why, and the meaning behind her words is clear: Why are you shutting me out? Why won't you let your friends help you? Why won't you trust me?"

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Sakura leaves the question as an open-ended one, giving Sasuke space. He can say he hates her, but it allows him to constructively criticize her too, just like on day one of Team 7 when Sasuke told her she was annoying when she made fun of orphans for being misbehaved due to lack of parents. That may be why Sakura references that memory herself, turning the conversation to reminiscence on the team's first day when Sasuke got mad at her. Perhaps it's her way of saying that if there's something wrong with her, she can change, just like how she realized what a brat she was back then and changed for the better once Sasuke pointed out what a jerk she was being.

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As for Sasuke, despite initially telling Sakura to mind her own business and leave him alone, he stays put and he patiently listens to every word she has to say, and then returns her revelation of her feelings with an admittance of his own feelings. It is anything but disinterested; Sasuke is engaged and interested in what Sakura has to say, which is why he allows precious time to slip by while he and Sakura have yet another serious discussion/argument. He shows consideration and interest in her opinions and feelings, when he could have easily ignored her and walked away.

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The reason for Sakura's failure to persuade Sakura to stay was largely her approach. While she understood a lot of things about Sasuke (like he was unhappy, he was suffering, revenge was really important to him, he was shutting her and his friends out, etc.), there was still much that Sakura didn't understand about him. The major problem with Sakura's approach here, aside from that fact that her attempt to persuade him to stay was a touch immature and self-absorbed at points (she is still a kid, after all), is that she tried to appeal to his sense of happiness.

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Sasuke will be happiest if he remains on Team 7, so he should stay, Sakura reasons. Sakura spells it out for him just like Kakashi did: revenge won't bring him happiness. And Sasuke knows it too.

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The problem? Sasuke doesn't care about personal happiness. And this is what Sakura (and Kakashi) failed to understand.

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Sasuke is motivated by purpose. In his mind, the reason why one exists and why one should be allowed to exist is because they have a purpose; without that purpose, they may as well be dead. Purpose trumps happiness every time in Sasuke's mind (which is why even as an adult Sasuke is a workaholic who puts his job above spending time with his family, because purpose trumps doing the things he actually wants to do).

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Sakura and Kakashi both made the "mistake" of appealing to Sasuke's desire for happiness, and as a result they both failed to convince him to stay. They tried offering Sasuke something he wanted, but the problem was it was something he didn't feel he deserved or should have (his survivor's guilt emerges again).

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This is why when Sakura tells him that life will be fun and happy if he stays with Team 7, Sasuke's reply is, "I knew it. I'm not like you people...I'm on a different path from the rest of you."

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Sasuke is recognizing the barrier between his relationships with other people: he's not happy, and he's not looking to make himself happy either. In fact, considering his survivor's guilt, he thinks he deserves to be miserable, because why should he be allowed the joys of life that his fallen clanmates were denied?

 

This highlights the nature of Sasuke's loneliness, which is different from the nature of Naruto's loneliness. Naruto's loneliness stems from an actual depravation of social interaction and lack of bonds due to the village purposefully and cruelly ostracizing him. On the other hand, the nature of Sasuke's loneliness is quite different. Sasuke is surrounded by people vying for his attention (people praising his abilities, people challenging him due to his prestigious reputation or clan affiliation, fangirls wanting to win his heart, etc.). When it comes to friendship, Sasuke has the pick of the litter; he has access to just about anyone if he truly wants to be their friend.

 

Sasuke's loneliness stems not from a lack of attention (the way Naruto's loneliness does), but from a psychological/emotional gap between him and everyone else. The trauma, survivor's guilt, and C-PTSD that Sasuke incurred from the night of the massacre left him psychologically isolated, stranded on his own psychological island, alone and separated from everyone else by a deep and wide gap he doesn't know how to bridge. In fact Sasuke doesn't think it's possible to bridge the gap at all. While we finally get a mental picture of how isolated he feels in his soliloquy at the end of Naruto in Shippuden episode 478, this Part I moment with Sakura marks the first time Sasuke tries to verbally explain those complicated feelings to someone, attempting to put complex emotions into words. But Sasuke isn't always the best when it comes to discussing deep emotions and his innermost feelings, so perhaps his explanation of the psychological gap he feels between himself and every other human is not the easiest for viewers (or Sakura) to comprehend. But Sasuke is trying, which is why he says he's "on a different path", and follows it up with the final and alarming, "I could never be like you or Naruto".

 

This is where all of Team 7 went wrong: Kakashi failed to persuade Sasuke to stay, then Sakura failed, and then Naruto failed. Each of them caused Sasuke to waver and seriously reconsider his life's purpose, but each ultimately failed because they cared about happiness, not what one's purpose in the universe was, which was the issue Sasuke was grappling with. Sasuke told Kakashi that he could never possibly understand, here Sasuke tells Sakura that she could never possibly understand, and in a few hours he will go on to tell Naruto that he could never possibly understand. Each team member attempts to persuade Sasuke to stay, and each gets a cold rejection. Actually, Sasuke's rejection of Sakura was the least cold and blunt of the three, considering that he didn't wish harm on Sakura like he did with Kakashi (cruelly questioning what would happen if he killed every one of Kakashi's friends) or with Naruto (attempting to kill him); Sakura was the only one Sasuke didn't want to hurt or wish pain upon, and the only one he openly expressed gratitude to for being there for him all that time on Team 7.

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Anyway, when Sasuke says that "I'm on a different path from the rest of you", he further finalizes and emphasizes that point by following up with "I can never be like you or Naruto". Sakura is motivated and moved by what is fun and happy, and she withdraws from things that are unhealthy and bring unhappiness and pain. Meanwhile, Sasuke is motivated by purpose, even when it brings him unhappiness and pain, he'll plunge into it nonetheless if he feels he is doing what he's supposed to. Because Sakura fails to understand Sasuke's core motivation, Sasuke feels distance from her, and recognizes that she (like everyone else), can't truly understand him and doesn't get him. She's asking him to be something he never can be: someone who does what makes him happy, even at the cost of ignoring his purpose. Sasuke further marks this psychological (he believes unbridgeable) gap between them by telling Sakura that he is on a different path than the rest of Team 7. In other words, Sasuke runs on a different track in life that Team 7 couldn't possibly understand or follow.

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Interestingly, Sasuke follows this up with admittance that his time on Team 7 had started to lead him to believe that he could have it all: happiness with Team 7 and achieve his purpose of revenge. But no, Kakashi had told him he could have either one or the other, but not both, and Itachi's Tsukuyomi torture had told Sasuke the same thing: if he didn't start taking his purpose as an avenger seriously and stop playing ninja with Team 7, he was merely wasting his time and would never get strong enough to defeat Itachi. Sasuke's team was a distraction to his purpose and goal, since he wasn't receiving the training he needed, and his relationship to Naruto and Sakura was detracting from his focus. So much time was spent on them that could have otherwise been dedicated to his ninja training. And with Team 7 trying to stop his unhealthy and self-destructive behaviors, they were also becoming an emotional obstruction to his goal. With Kakashi pushing Sasuke to make a choice between revenge and Team 7, Sasuke chose revenge, revealing his obsession with revenge that Sakura had already been aware of from their previous argument and that she had been trying to combat before it came to a snapping point: Sasuke point-blank tells her that revenge is "all I've lived for".

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Sakura gives Sasuke a warning, eerie in its accuracy: she tells Sasuke he is choosing the lonely path. Unfortunately, Sakura starts to lean towards making this moment about her (perhaps in part because of her limitations of knowing what is going on with Sasuke internally; she is confused why he is choosing this path when he seemed happy on Team 7). Sakura offers Sasuke the path of friendship and tries to talk him out of choosing what she dubs "the lonely path". She knows the road to hatred is a lonely and friendless one, and that's not the future she wants for Sasuke.

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It's a pretty intense moment, where a normal 13-year-old girl tries to talk a massacre survivor out of choosing self-destructive choices that will lead only to his painful demise through a trial of misery, suffering, pain, and loneliness that's end road is death (Orochimaru wants to kill Sasuke, after all). Sakura tries to turn Sasuke against such misery by promising to do whatever it takes to make it up to him. She promises to make every day full of happiness and fun if that's what Sasuke needs.

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After her attempt to warn Sasuke against the harmful effects of revenge and cajole him into staying in Konoha by persuading him he'll be happier in a life surrounded with friends than in a life surrounded by enemies, Sakura changes tactics and says that she'll help him get revenge.

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It's a better approach than Kakashi's had been, since where Kakashi dealt in absolutes that Sasuke wasn't yet ready for, Sakura offers a compromise: if Sasuke can't bend on revenge, then she'll bend towards him a little. She knows that Sasuke needs to let go of his unhealthy obsession with revenge, but if he can't manage that at the moment, then she'll help him achieve revenge. She's saying he can have both Team 7 and revenge if that's what will make him happy, and that they can make things work. The one thing she doesn't want Sasuke to do is to cut his ties with his team, choose an unhealthy lifestyle of crime, and keep shutting her out.

 

Even so, that change of tactics doesn't work (Sasuke is unbelievably stubborn), so Sakura finally plays her last card, the only thing left that she can think of to use to persuade Sasuke to not cut himself off from his friendships and lose himself completely to the darkness of hatred and revenge: she offers to accompany him.

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She'll do anything to keep being his friend despite his attempts to push her away, because Sasuke clearly needs serious help and no one but her is interested in giving it (considering Kakashi's and Naruto's lack of concern over Sasuke). Sakura wants Sasuke to know that she sees his struggle and that she wants to help him out of his pain so that he can be happy once again. While this is going to be an unpopular opinion, I admire Sakura's resolve to help a friend having a severe mental meltdown and how adamant she is about helping Sasuke out of his psychological damage.

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Sakura gets a lot of hate for offering to go with Sasuke, as fans complain that she cares more about her obsession with Sasuke than about her village.

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However, imagine you are standing on the roof of a tall building with your best friend and the person you love most in this world, and the person intends to jump and commit suicide. The only thing to stop them is your ability to talk them out of it. How would you go about it? Would you possibly make desperate, extreme promises (even ones you may not keep or want to keep) to stop them from killing themselves and to keep them in your lives? Would you say anything in the moment to stop them, and even resign yourself to extremes in order to save that person?

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This is basically the situation Sakura is in with Sasuke. If Sasuke goes to Orochimaru, she'll most likely never see him again and he'll probably die. So don't you think Sakura might be inclined to make reckless and desperate offers to Sasuke in order to persuade him to not become a criminal and to not make self-destructive and harmful decisions? Let's also not forget that she's only a girl and barely even in her teens.

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Some fans act like this scene proves what a horrible person Sakura is because it shows that she'll stoop so low as to become a traitor and turn against her own comrades all for Sasuke's sake. This is an overreaction. It's not like Sakura was going to become Orochimaru's pupil and help the Sannin murder innocents because she's a mindless "do anything for Sasuke" drone. She's not trying to betray her village; she had no intentions to help Orochimaru destroy her homeland or whatever horrible things people head-canon into the story about Sakura's character based on this one line. What she is doing is trying to stop her comrade from killing and hurting himself, to the point where she offers to go with him to pursue revenge, if that's what it takes. Sasuke already knew that Sakura was too gentle, too kind, and too caring to help hurt other people, and that she would never make it at a place like Orochimaru's criminal empire, another aspect to why he says, "I'll never be like you and Naruto". Sasuke has a harsher, more ruthless, and more callous side than his teammates do. Sakura's intentions were in the right place. She was motivated to leave Konoha and stick by Sasuke's side because she's a kind, caring friend who doesn't want a teammate to walk out of her life forever because he made a bad, self-destructive choice. Much like Naruto's later resolution to Sasuke in the Land of Iron to always stay with Sasuke whether in life or in death, Sakura has resolved to never leave Sasuke alone and friendless if she can help it. Sasuke has friends, and Sakura wants Sasuke to know it. If she can stay by his side and support and aid him as a friend, she will.

 

There are criticisms about the scene I find unfair, the first being that Sakura was stupid and unbelievable for comparing her pain of losing Sasuke to Sasuke's pain over the loss of the Uchiha clan. Sakura never actually did compare her losing Sasuke to Sasuke's loss of his own family, she just declared that Sasuke was more important to her than any of the rest of her friends or family, and the loss of him in her life would be the most severe blow. Sakura's statement that "without you, Sasuke, I will be very lonely", causes Sasuke to reflect that he feels the same way, as seen by how he flashes to Naruto and Sakura. Naruto and Sakura have become the two forces pushing away the loneliness in Sasuke's heart, and without them in his life, he will be very lonely too. So in this case, Sakura is only saying what Sasuke is feeling; they are both feeling the same pain of the loneliness that looms ahead of them. But Sasuke's already made up his mind: he's chosen the lonely, hateful path of revenge above his friends, and no one can sway him from that course now.

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Sakura's phrasing perhaps is clumsy, but the feelings behind her words are not. What Sakura is doing is using empathy. Empathy is correlating your own experience/feeling of the event to postulate what someone else may be feeling. After all, the biggest limitation of human communication is that emotions cannot be shared. Emotions can be explained, but as we all know, there's a huge difference between saying what you are feeling and feeling what you are feeling. It's a difficult gap in human communication, since it's hard to convey what you are feeling to another person in a clear manner.

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Thus, Sakura is using the skill of empathy (interestingly a skill she attributes learning from Sasuke when she says "remember how you showed me what it feels to be lonely?") to relate to her Uchiha teammate. She doesn't understand the magnitude of what Sasuke suffered from losing his clan. But the pain she'll feel over losing Sasuke does help her to understand at least some of what Sasuke must be feeling over the loss of his clan. So I don't feel like it's that horrible of a thing to say, certainly nothing worse than Kakashi had said (since Kakashi also tried to pretend that he understood Sasuke's pain when he actually had no clue).

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Sasuke tells Sakura that they are each starting on a new path, and "they're just different, that's all". This highlights Sasuke's feelings on his desertion: Team 7 is over, his time in Naruto's and Sakura's lives is over, he wants to cleanly cut himself out of their lives, and he wants Sakura to move on, forget about him, and stop feeling pain on his behalf.  Sasuke wants Naruto and Sakura to forget about him altogether so that they can move on and find happiness in their own lives, just lives without him in it. It's why Sasuke criticizes Naruto for shelfing his dream of being Hokage in favor of trying to save Sasuke in Shippuden, and it's why Sasuke tells Sakura that their paths in life are diverging and should not meet again: Sakura should forget about him and find her own path. Sasuke is closing a chapter in Team 7's life and opening up a new life for himself, and he advises/wants Naruto and Sakura to do the same. However, Sasuke severely underestimated how much Naruto and Sakura cared for him, so things didn't go how Sasuke expected in regards to cutting ties with his two teammates. Sasuke isn't the only stubborn member on Team 7; Naruto and Sakura refused to find a path in life without Sasuke on it because they wanted their lives to include Sasuke.      

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Then Sasuke calls Sakura annoying. This time, Sasuke doesn't find her annoying because she's rude, but because she's an emotional obstacle to his life's purpose. He calls her annoying because he does care about her, so much so that Sakura's pull on him causes him to waver in his resolution to pursue revenge. Even though he'd resolved to desert Konoha in pursuit of revenge, Sakura's influence on him is so great that she makes him want to reconsider his choice. Sasuke finds this emotional attachment to his friend annoying, as he is trying to cut himself off from things that distract him from his true purpose: revenge.

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Sakura especially had been trying to hinder him from pushing himself too hard, protesting when he was going too far and hurting himself in his pursuit of revenge. Sakura wanted Sasuke to take things in moderation, recognizing the unhealthy impact his obsession with revenge had on him and how it was taking its toll on Sasuke, both physically and mentally.

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By the time Sakura confronts Sasuke on his way out of Konoha, Sasuke finds her gentle love and caring nature a nuisance because it reminds him of what he's losing. It shakes his resolve somewhat, though not enough to break his resolution to achieve revenge. Sasuke has grown up alone for so long that he'd nearly forgotten what it's like to be cared for and loved by someone. Now that his bond is tying himself to another person, he finds the pull and responsibility to another annoying because it is hindering him from avenging his clan.

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Arguably, perhaps Sakura's love also reinforces Sasuke's feeling of inferiority and weakness. Sasuke had acted as Team 7's protector for so long, assuming responsibility for his two teammates' safety. Now that Sakura thinks she needs to help him, perhaps Sakura's fervent desire to help her comrade is merely another reminder of his own personal shortcomings as team leader and protector. Formerly Sasuke was accustomed to being the one that his two teammates depended on; perhaps Sakura's willingness and desire to help him only further reminds him of how pathetic and helpless he's become, or how useless to the team he is now. Perhaps he finds that reminder of his weakness annoying. Sasuke isn't yet used to the co-dependence that Sakura is offering him.

 

Additionally, Sasuke, accustomed to being misunderstood, is likely annoyed by how well Sakura understands him. He can fool everyone else, but not her. In that moment, she saw to the heart of his true inner turmoil.

 

As of note about the "you're annoying" line is that Sasuke uses this "repeat/recall" communication with Sakura throughout his life in several instances, as we will see. By drawing Sakura's attention to a memory of their earlier interaction at a specific point in the past, Sasuke is drawing parallels between then and now. It's an interestingly symbolic communication style, but not surprising from a convoluted personality like Sasuke's, who is introspective and thoughtful. By calling Sakura annoying (like he had on Team 7's first day), his is indirectly telling Sakura that he does remember that day when he got mad at her, even though earlier in the conversation he lied when he said he didn't.

 

There's also the symbolic bookends to Sasuke's chosen phrase. Sasuke and Sakura's relationship on Team 7 started with the "You're annoying" line, but with his desertion, Sasuke is symbolically ending their relationship and their team by reiterating the "You're annoying" line.

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A lot of fans seem to think that Sasuke was an open book to Sakura in this scene, but I don't find this to be the case at all. From Sakura's perspective (the perspective of someone who doesn't have the bird's eye view of the story's events and characters like we viewers are privy to), Sasuke is behaving very cryptically in a confusing and contradictory manner, saying one thing and then refuting that a moment later by contradicting himself. Sasuke's behavior was confusing, wishy-washy, and all over the place. If Sakura got the wrong message from this conversation (which I personally don't believe she did), then it's because Sasuke was not sending any clear message - he was sending lots of mixed signals.

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Contradiction #1: Sasuke tells her that what he does is none of her business...but then proceeds to clearly explain his feelings and reasons for his actions to her.

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Pretty confusing that Sasuke stops and listens to Sakura when he if he doesn't want her meddling or interfering with his life or if he's uninterested in her input. Clearly he's interested in what she has to say, because he patiently waits as she explains her feelings, and then returns her vulnerability by sharing his own feelings with her. It's a contradiction to, "it's none of your business".

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Contradiction #2: Sasuke says he doesn't remember his encounter with Sakura when he snapped at her for being annoying...but later backtracks and proves that he does.

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Sakura asks Sasuke if he remember the first day of Team 7, when he got mad at Sakura for making fun of Naruto for being so misbehaved. Sasuke's reply is that he doesn't remember that. Yet later in the conversation he proves that he does remember that day because he uses the "you're still annoying" line. By recalling the "you're annoying" moment, he's using his repeat/recall communication, and by using the descriptor "still" annoying (in the English dub version) and saying that she hasn't changed, he's referencing the moment that he had earlier denied remembering. So in this moment Sasuke is a liar, saying he doesn't remember that moment with Sakura when he actually did.

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Contradiction #3: Sasuke calls her annoying one moment...and then thanks her the next moment.

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It's major mixed signals when you tell someone they're annoying one moment and then sincerely thank them the next. Sasuke's gratitude is genuine and heartfelt. It's interesting that he chooses to thank Sakura, in total opposition to what he is trying to currently do, which is to sever his ties to Team 7. It seems that Sasuke's heart is in conflict with his head, because while he has chosen to desert Konoha because he believes that is what he should do, his expression of thanks to Sakura indicates that staying is what his heart really wants to do.

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Sasuke didn't have to express gratitude to Sakura. That fact that he took the effort to express his thanks to Sakura and took the risk of leading her on (when he really wanted her to cut ties with him and forget about him) speaks volumes about how important Sakura must have been to Sasuke. Sasuke isn't one to waste time with pointless trivialities, and he's not one to waste a show of affection on someone if he doesn't mean it.

 

This single "thank you" betrays Sasuke's external façade. He acts like he wants to cut all ties with his team, but making "thank you" his final parting words to Sakura indicates a desperate desire to let Sakura know what she meant to him, since he believes this is his last chance to do so. Since he expresses gratitude to her for caring and worrying about him and loving him - it seems that his feelings for her run deep. And since Sasuke voices his feelings instead of keeping them to himself, it emphasizes the importance of his words. It gives the appearance that leaving Sakura behind without letting her know what she meant to him doesn't sit well with him - otherwise why should he bother with the thank you at all?

 

There's a reason Sasuke deserted his team in the dead of night: he wanted to avoid any run-ins with his teammates, afraid that his feelings and affection for Naruto and Sakura would overpower his desire for revenge and cause him to lose his resolve altogether. If faced with them again, he might not have had the courage or willpower to go through with his decision to choose revenge over Team 7.

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After the argument, Sasuke knocks Sakura out so that she won't alert other shinobi to his desertion, but he makes sure to thoughtfully set her on the stone bench nearby.

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