Prologue
Sakura has always been a strange child. Kizashi wishes that she was a bit more normal. They love her, she is their little girl, their light, everything they didn't know they needed until she came into their life, but he doesn’t get her fascination with being a shinobi.
Why choose to be a shinobi, when Mebuki and him could provide everything, she asks for?
They were wealthy merchants, their connections spanning the entire fire country and even beyond. Yet, their strange little girl chooses to become a tool for the village.
Yes, a tool.
Many would think being a shinobi is an honourable career.
They would be wrong. Kizashi knows better.
The great masses only know how much Konoha wants them to, no more and no less. The only way to get and hold knowledge is to be powerful, which the Haruno clan has in loads.
Shinobi are tools, made to serve and give and give until they can’t anymore, and even then, they must keep on giving to the village they serve. They must sacrifice their whole self, and for what?
Nothing.
Most shinobi die and are forgotten. Perhaps not by their friends and family, but what does a memory serve, when their life is lost. And so many lives have been, since Konoha was built.
A prime example is the White Fang. A ninja on par with the Sannin, driven to suicide. Or maybe even killed by the village which he seeks to protect. Who knows? He certainly doesn’t. It isn’t well to dwell on things long gone, but they serve as a precedent. A worrying precedent, what happened once might happen again.
Kizashi doesn’t trust Konoha, but he trusts his daughter.
She is so small, only six and yet she decided she wants to be a ninja. Her gaze is determined, utterly serious in her decision, unlike other children. Kizashi trusts her mind, even sharper than his. Her intelligence unseen in the Haruno clan before. They were always too clever, too sharp, too perceptive but his little girl is the one that exceeds them all.
He wonders what she sees in the shinobi world that makes her think, that it is worthy for her. But Kizashi knows he won’t get an answer to his question. The question which she did not want to answer. She just shut her mouth and glared at him as if it was a preposterous question to make.
Hah, she definitely took her stubbornness from Mebuki.
Kizashi didn’t know her why his daughter refused to share her opinion with him. Even though he has tried to be so open to his daughter, teach her as his father did him. Teach him about the way of the Haruno; the merchants who traded more than wares, something far more valuable. Information.
Of course, he didn’t tell her all of it, what makes a true Haruno. Sakura is only six after all, but he was trying to teach her critical thinking, knowing people, their quirks, their expressions and what they meant. Their intentions, be they good or bad, analysing and dissecting parts of the whole to find what makes them tick, their motivations, dreams, everything.
She will need it in the future, whether she is a shinobi or a civilian. He knows what he would prefer, but it is not his choice to make.
He wonders if he is a bad father. One who tried his best, but still a bad father, whose own daughter won’t talk with him, explain her decisions and why.
But at least, he knows the might of the Haruno won’t allow her to be touched politically as long as he is alive, but what about when she becomes a genin.
What then?
There is so much danger in being a shinobi. He can control information all he wants, have blackmail on all of Fire Country, but still not enough.
A mission gone wrong and his daughter wouldn’t return home.
Kizashi wishes with all his heart that she changes her mind. And yet her determined expression comes to mind, small body taught with tension, round green eyes fixated on him, as if trying to make him understand.
He knows that will never happen, but even Kizashi is allowed to dream sometimes.