Chapter Text
It had been a thing of dust and dead, rotting flowers, she remembers; languishing in her stomach, undulating, heaving over her lips, out of her chest, onto the floor. The silence was killing the air in her chest, her ribs tight,throat dry and too-hot-cold fear slipping down into her larynx and then the skin-shaking fear, fear, fear, fear, red in her eyes.
And all she could see was red.
It glistened on her fingers. She could feel it dripping down her chin. She closed her eyes and waited - the chidori and the rasengan were two holes where her heart used to be. If she could, Sakura would’ve giggled.
Red really was her colour, wasn’t it?
She keeled over suddenly, and there was a keening noise- a high, maniacal sound like a wounded animal, paroxysms of shivers leaving her trembling on the floor. It took her a while to realise it was her. She braced her arms on as though they would keep her up. The pain had gone numb now and there was a spinning in her head. Tsunade-shishou stood over her. She was screaming. Why was she screaming? Sakura wanted to ask her to stop. She had a headache, eyes swimming with a kaleidoscope of colour. Strange, how suddenly she lost her grip on reality. Or perhaps not so strange, what with the blood puddling on the ground.
The concrete was hard on her back. There was black on the edges of her vision, crawling ever-closer.
…
She comes to a short while after Tsunade has exhausted herself. She can see Shishou hunched over in the chair beside her, long blonde hair hanging limp over one shoulder. The hospital room is dark, the window shuttered, but Sakura can still make out a bouquet of flowers on her bedside table. They’re bright orange. It hurts when she swallows the lump in her throat. She catalogues it subconsciously. Probably from all that screaming.
Her hands go to her chest. The tissue and organs are there, she confirms- they’ve been regrown , rebuilt from where there were none, but when she unravels the clean bandages she’s met with a mess of red, jagged edges and exposed ribs. Whole organs and bones have been repaired. An insane, almost impossible occurrence, but the skin above them is in tatters. It’s numb with some kind of salve that smells like Acmella oleracea - a strong, heady scent that makes her lightheaded. Sakura touches one of the exposed bones, curious. It is hard and rough under her fingers. Her nails are broken and her palms have been plastered.
She looks at the ruins of her body and can’t help the thought that she’ll never have any chance of having tits after this. She huffs a laugh through her broken vocal chords that devolves into a fit of half-hearted, hacking coughs.
She’s tired, so tired.
Shizune enters. When she sees Sakura awake, she freezes. gapes. Sakura smiles and awkwardly re-wraps her bandages. Shizune’s chakra is almost none, dwindled down to a drop. She must have helped. When Sakura thanks her, though, she scowls and tells her to ‘shut her pretty mouth and lie back down on the fucking bed’, so she does and proceeds to get lectured about why jumping in front of the two homicidal idiots was a terrible idea and that Kakashi would have been able to separate them had she not got in the way and why do you think it’s okay to risk your life like that, you little shit? You had me worried for a sec.
But Sakura is busy wondering when she had begun to see herself as disposable. As being of less value than others, but hell - she is, isn’t she.
She can heal a few minor wounds, sure. She is passingly clever. She can sing. She can cook and clean.
But that’s it. That is all she has.
Enough to count with her fingers and have another hand free.
…
Naruto visits later that day. He peers around the doorframe and can’t look her in the eye when he speaks - can barely choke out the words. I’m sorry.
She’s sorry, too. She worries that he’ll never smile at her again, never jostle her shoulder or steal from her perfectly made, neat bento. He’s watching her like she’s some kind of broken porcelain doll.
His clothes are less bright than before, more black and less orange. Sakura scowls and beckons him over to her bed, taps the mattress beside her.
“Come here, idiot.”
He obeys. She wipes the tears from his cheeks. Fixes up his hair until it’s as spiky as usual.
“It’s okay, Naruto.” Sakura raises his hand to her heart, letting him feel its rhythm. “It’s alright. I’m still here, aren’t I?”
The beating she’d been planning can wait for later, she decides. They sit in silence, her arm draped over his shoulders until Jiraiya drags him off to train - whatever new thing he’s learning today.
Sasuke doesn't check on her. It hurts, but she can see now how little he cares for her so she stays silent. Kakashi comes, though. He sits beside her bed and watches her sleep and listens to her breathing and sometimes screams his tears silently into his hands when he thinks she’s not looking. On one of these days, she sits up in the grey sheets and watches him silently.
She knows it’s not that he cares for her overmuch - he’s always been more invested in Sasuke and Naruto, but he feels like he’s failed his duty. She tells him it’s alright, just like she did Naruto but with less surety. Reaches one hand out to pat his shoulder but runs her fingers through the smoke his Shunshin leaves behind.
She sighs- she doesn't blame him, can’t blame him, knows now how stupid she was; It’s an all-of a sudden knowledge in her head, an understanding. She had potential but didn’t have the will to reach it. She hopes Kakashi doesn't hate himself, knows he probably does. But all you can learn to do is deal and deal and deal, cope and cope. That’s what he’d said when she’d asked him if he ever felt sad, anyway, and she’s coming to learn it’s true.
Sakura doesn't like this coping thing. She wants the way she feels shaky and scared to stop.
Sakura lies back down and goes to sleep. She doesn't dream. She hasn’t dreamed since that day on the rooftop. She’s glad. She doesn't get the nightmares anymore, about the forest and Orochimaru. It feels like forever ago, lost in the blood and the screams of the rooftop.
When she wakes she runs her hands over the bandages on her chest. The skin has grown over, but there is an immense, puckered scar covering her chest. Shizune said that she’ll be out of hospital soon. Tsunade is still resting, her chakra-depleted body not fit for anything else, so she hasn’t seen her since the first day in the hospital about two weeks ago.
She can’t fight the thought that she doesn't want to leave. The calm hum of the chakra signals in here, the echo of laughter, the united front and kind eyes and strong hands- it feels more like home than her mother’s large, empty house ever did. And there’s another reason, one she tries to push back into a corner of her mind. The one time her mother had entered the hospital, she hadn’t entered the room. She’d stood outside the closed door, but Sakura knew by the perfectly measured clack of her heels on the floor that it was her. She had bowed to Shizune and thanked her, ever polite, ever calm, but she had said something that had made Sakura’s lungs constrict and all of the air to leave her in a big whump of terror and hatred, voice cheerful but there had been a waver in her tone.
She had expected something like this, when Mother realised that she wasn’t just playing at being a ninja; that she could die.
“You don’t need to worry about Sakura returning to duty. She won’t be returning to her training.” Mother had said. Sakura had wanted to scream. No, no mama, I’m going to be a kunoichi, I’m going to be a ninja, I will protect Naruto and Sasuke and Kakashi, I will work for the village and be a good person and show everyone that me, a civilian born, can become something, I will- but all that exited her mouth was a strange choking noise she had cut short.
Sakura can see it. Marriage. She knows it will be marriage. The easiest of shackles, holding her tight in chains.
Today she just waits and keeps her expression meek and blank and smiling as she leaves. Tsunade has dragged herself up to see her off so Sakura presses her tears into her shishou’s haori, tightens her arms around her waist. Tsunade smells like yuzu and cherry blossoms, the familiar scent calming her as usual, but leaving her throat tight because this might be the last time she speaks to her. “Thanks, Shishou.” Her voice comes out muffled, shaky before she pulls away and steels herself, pointedly ignoring Tsunade’s worried glances. It’s better if she thinks she’s okay, Sakura decides. The Hokage already has too much on her plate to have to stress about her.
Shizune, however, isn’t thwarted so easily. She looks down at Sakura and frowns before wrapping her arms around her, one hand over her pocket. “You have any problems, you come to see us, yeah? You’re a ninj - citizen of Konoha and it’s our duty to look after you if you run into trouble.”
Sakura nods. A warm feeling curls up in her stomach. “Thanks, Shizune-senpai.”
Her mother tugs at her arm. “Hurry, love. Let’s get you home.”
They bump into Asuma and his team on the way back. She tries to smile at Ino but it goes all wobbly at the edges and suddenly Mother is shoved aside and her friend’s arms are around her. “They didn’t let me visit you at the hospital, Sakura, you’re okay. Thank the kami, Sakura, come here.”
Sakura catches Shikamaru in the corner of her eye. He’s frowning, tilting his head at her. She looks away. Pulls back from Ino, who surveys her with wide eyes. “You really- Tsunade, she fixed you up well.”
“Yeah, of course she did.” Sakura forces another smile. It works better this time. “Sorry, gotta go.” She doesn't offer a reason, and they notice but let her leave anyway.
When she returns home, her mother cleans her and bathes her and puts her to bed.
There’s a new kimono in her closet.
Sakura wants to cry.
…
Tanaka-san arrives at 6:30:00 pm exactly. His hair is brown and slicked back, and he has an unsettling smile. He wears a blue shirt and black pants. He is the heir to a civilian business empire that rivals Mother’s.
He is ten years older than her.
Sakura is wearing the new kimono when she bows to him. Her smile is curated and polite, precise like cut flowers. There are kunai hidden in the holder Ino had bought for her 14’th birthday last year. There is a strange terror surging beneath her skin; a resignation that there is nothing she can do to stop this, nothing she can do to save herself from this sudden, strange thing that has happened all at once.
“Hello, Tanaka-san.” Her voice is steadier than she had expected it to be. “It is lovely to meet you.”
He has to lean down to speak to her. “Sakura-chan. It’s my pleasure.”
All those lessons at the academy on resisting interrogation help her hide her flinch. She curtseys ( fucking curtseys, her honour screams ) and leads him to the table, trading pleasantries that taper off when he notices her bordering-on-indiscrete disinterest in new stock for the stores and ‘an influx in customers’. Oh, she’ll be polite, but she will make it clear that she knows that her mother is selling her . When she thinks of having children she feels ill. Her terror grows, strangling her, so she stares into her food while her mother smiles and panders and , ‘Oh yes, Sakura made this all by herself’, and ‘I’m truly sorry for the sudden nature of this, I know you’ve wanted to meet her for a while but she just got out of hospital yesterday - no, no she’s fine, they patched her up well. She is no longer entertaining that folly, don’t worry. I do believe she has finally seen sense, yes. No more being a Shinobi.’
She endures dinner because she is a shinobi and shinobi endure.
He gives her a gift after- a pink, glittering stone set into a ring. She knows what this is. There’s no getting on one knee, no loving smile, no warm arms as she’d always expected. Just a cold stone that isn’t even her colour; her colour is red , like blood, but this is just the pink of sakura blossoms: pale and delicate, a reminder of everything she isn’t.
She stares at it.
She can’t breathe.
Her mother comes up beside her, watches his back retreat. “Sakura.” Her tone is hard. It is iron. She used to admire it but now it makes her want to scream.
“Sakura, I’m so sorry.” There is a hatred in the woman’s tone, a self-hatred so strong that Sakura cringes away from her touch. She manages to slip the ring onto Sakura’s finger anyway. Her hands are cold despite the summer heat, nails filed until they resemble smooth - edged seashells.
“I know how hard this is going to be, love. But I will not see you dead, Sakura. I will not see you dead. I will not see you with that hollowness in your eyes like that damned teacher of yours because fuck me I just care too much. ” Sakura says nothing. This isn’t saving her, this is a betrayal. It was supposed to be them against the world. She wonders when she stopped believing it. A long time ago, when her old kindergarten artworks were taken down and replaced by skillful watercolour paintings.
She sinks to the ground. Sakura follows her. Her skirts rustle on the doorstep. She absentmindedly wonders whether she should push the door closed.
“I thought you would die.” Mother’s voice is hoarse.
Sakura knows. She had thought she’d die too. She hadn’t really cared that much. Poor Haruno Sakura, with her too-thin arms and bulbous forehead. She would not have been missed, not really. Her toes are sticky-warm on the tiles of the genkan. The cicadas are suddenly loud, too loud, echoing inside her head. Suddenly the words slip over her lips because she can’t stop them anymore.
“I hate you.”
Mother nods. She begins to cry. Big, choking, heaving sobs. Red-faced, floor-drip crying, face crumpled like a failed origami project. Arms curling like she’s trying to pull herself back together. It’s pitiful, like watching a dog beg for it’s master’s forgiveness.
Sakura doesn’t care.
She turns away and goes upstairs to bed, feet thumping heavily up the stairs.
There’s a strange hollow feeling in her stomach like nothing will ever be okay again.
