Three
The man peered down at her with cold eyes, and a bloodthirsty smile. Sakura’s glare was fixed down on her lap as she sat in front of him in a perfect seiza. He stood tall in front of her, his hand on her shoulder burned her skin even through the kimono. His fingers dug into the skin, and pressed the bruises that lay there.
Sakura held in her hiss of pain.
‘I heard you’re going to be a shinobi, eh?’ The man whispered. Sakura wondered if he was really her father. Weren’t fathers supposed to love their daughters, or was it normal for all fathers to behave this way? ‘Tell me, girl. You really want to become a killer? You want blood on your hands?’
‘I want to protect,’ Sakura hissed, though her sentence remained incomplete as the man's hand came to grip her jaw and squished her cheeks together to silence her.
The man barked out a humourless laugh.
‘Who will you protect? Who can you protect?’
Sakura did not answer his questions, though she was not given a chance to as his hand came down on her, and the loud thwack of his slap echoed in the room.
‘Look at this,’ the man whispered. ‘Look at all of this, girl. All of this blood, that is your fortune, your punishment.’
Sakura looked on, dazed.
‘All of it is on you,’ he said. ‘This is the path of a shinobi, ruthless killers the lot of you.’
‘I-I didn’t kill them,’ she whispered in her horror.
‘Oh? But you did,’ he whispered back in glee. ‘They’re dead, dead, because of you.’
The stench of blood rose high in the sky, and Sakura couldn’t even cry as the crimson sank into the ivory fabric of her qipao.
His hand came around her neck, and pushed her head down, down into the blood on her hands, down into the sea of red, red, red—
‘WAKE UP,’ a voice that sounded scarily similar to her own bellowed inside of her mind. Sakura’s eyes shot open, and her chest heaved with laboured breaths. ‘Good, I’ve been yelling at you for hours, Outer.’
‘Thanks, Inner.’ Sakura closed her eyes for a brief second, but opened them once the image of crimson pools began to show itself on the back of her eyelids. She wondered if she was imagining the stench.
‘Come on, it’s almost time to go,’ Inner grumbled. ‘We need to make genin, do it for Mama.’
‘For Mama,’ Sakura whispered out-loud, and gave a firm nod to herself. She rose from her bed, and grimaced at the sweat that lingered on her skin. She needed to bathe.
Sakura packed lunches for both her and Naruto. It was difficult to get by, for the both of them, but Sakura had started doing odd jobs while she was in the academy, and that was enough for her to get by, though just barely. Life without her mother was difficult, but Sakura managed and was accustomed to it. It helped that nature was so friendly towards her, and Sakura had learnt enough to plant vegetables in their small garden. Sakura missed her old friend, the willow tree in the backyard of their old home.
She set off in the early hours of the Sun, after she had ensured her home was safe enough to leave behind her sleeping Mother.
When Sakura got there, she was the only one present. Sakura hummed in the quiet safety of the training ground, an old Kiri tune on her tongue. She continued it in her head, as she sat down to meditate.
‘Sakura, just because that man was from Kirigakure,’her mother reprimanded her gently. ‘Doesn’t mean that you will hate that part of your heritage, okay?’
‘...Yes, Mama.’
The old tune was about the ancients, the travelling legends. Sakura remembered how she admired those who gathered in the heart of the village to dance on the first night of Summer Solstice. Her mother had pushed her towards the crowd, and Sakura soon found herself dancing among strangers. The dancers laughed heartily, and guided her around the bonfire.
The memory was bittersweet. She knew Kiri had changed much, and she had not stepped foot in her second home for years. Too dangerous , her mother told her. She hadn’t asked again, after those words.
Sakura had spent part of her childhood detesting part of her roots, though her Mother guided her to cherish it. She didn’t know how to feel about it now, for the most part.
Kiri… Kiri was her father ’s home. Her absurd hair colour, her sharp teeth — it all came from her father. Not to mention her pale skin. (The Sun rarely ever did make it past the mist of Kirigakure.)
Konoha was her mother’s home. Her eyes, the shape of her lips, her nose, those came from her mother. Not to mention her ability to “speak” to nature (and vice-versa).
However, Sakura had yet to find “home” in either of those places. Kiri did not know her, those she knew Kiri, and Konoha detested her for being from a place she had never thought of as “home” and for the way she loved a boy that could rival the Konohian sunshine.
Everything about her was a mish-mash of both cultures of Konohagakure and Kirigakure. It was strange, really. It even extended to the way she fought; everything was a bastardised, hybrid version of Konoha and Kiri. Her kenjutsu was the bastard of Konoha and Kiri, though her taijutsu lay more in Kiri’s origin. Her showcase of ninjutsu never extended beyond the basics taught in the academy.
However, Sakura had hidden her practices for quite a while. Nobody knew she picked up a sword before she could either talk or walk. Nobody knew she learned to dance before she could walk, nobody knew that Sakura had spent her life in halves — nobody noticed when she was in Kiri and left for Konoha, nobody noticed when she was in Konoha and left for Kiri.
Sakura had grown up being taught to keep secrets, so was it really much of a surprise to know that her teachers thought of her as canon fodder , a human meat-shield for two yet-to-bloom prodigies? Sakura knew what her teachers thought of her, an intelligent civilian girl, with barely any skill or talent in the practical area.
A paper ninja.
To some extent she even agreed with it, but if anyone had bothered to spend enough time with Sakura, they knew all of it was a farce. Sakura knew what her teachers thought of her because she had carved that image, she made sure she was perceived in a certain way.
She played the long-game, but not even she knew what she played it for, or who she was even playing against.
All in due time.
(Sakura opened her eyes to find her two teammates bickering. She sighed.)
All in due time, indeed.