Eternal Lines
The house reeks of opium. It always does, now. When she was young, it used to smell more of candles, the thick, waxy floral scents giving her headaches. Her mother always favoured the ‘louder’ scents. Maybe that’s why she keeps the windows shut as she smokes.
The stench seemingly circles Sakura, twirling around her and clogging her senses in a way only it can. Her mother lounges in her bed, dull pink hair fanning around her as she coughs harshly before taking a desperate drag of her cigar.
“Sakura, my daughter,” she coughs, “Come here.”
Sakura does, obedient as she is. She settles beside her mother’s bed, swallowing harshly. She’s kneeling next to the futon, hunched over her mother’s withering form.
“Sakura, how long have you been a genin, now?” Her mother asks, pressing a weak, thin hand to her daughter’s hair.
“A month and some, mama.”
She nods, “Have I told you of where we came?”
“Yes, mama.”
The woman doesn’t hear her. She never heard much of what Sakura said. All her mother cares for nowadays is what could’ve been and her opium.
“My mother’s mother was a Clan Lady. My own aunt bore the current Daimyo, for shit’s sake. We… we are important, Sakura. It was our Clan Mother who brought the first spring. There is a reason I named you for the blossoms.”
“I understand, mama.”
“Do you? Those damned Senju and Uchiha, they don’t get it. We Haruno’s should be worshiped in this village. But all they value here are their damned Shinobi.” She hisses, eyes alight.
Sakura cowers, trembling. Her mother’s never been fond of Konoha. From the moment she arrived, already thin from the opium, and they hadn’t recognized the name Haruno, the Village became nothing to her. She is a woman of wants, self-obsessive and so very desperate. She has lost everything but her entitlement.
“Promise me, Sakura. Do not forget that we are the spring. We bring the earth alive with our touch. Before that bitch Tsunade and her damned healing jutsu, the world came to us for healing. They came to us for our salves and our teachings.”
Sakura nods meekly, wincing as her mother tightens her grips on her hair. The woman takes a drag of her cigar and speaks, the smoke floating right into Sakura’s face, “You will bring glory to the Haruno name, or you will do our line a favor and die.”
Sakura nods, unsure of what other option there is. Her mother’s voice takes on a mocking tone as she says, “Lovely little Haruno Sakura. If your grandmother wasn’t such a cunt, you would’ve been the little princess of our clan. Princess Haruno Sakura of the Eternal Line.”
Sakura nods along to her mother’s rambling. She doesn’t want to call her mother delusional. She doesn’t want to deny all of her words, it seems needlessly cruel, but her mother’s always been outlandish with her stories. She details extravagant kimonos and ornate headpieces custom ordered for her, and Sakura… Sakura can’t picture her mother in that regalia.
She cant imagine the addiction riddled woman to be decorated in such beauty, not when she pawned the first gift Sakura got from a friend. It seems so off from what Sakura knows, a distant mirage compared to what she can touch and feel.
With a sigh, Sakura watches her mother’s voice trail off, slumping in relief when the woman falls asleep. She stands, tucks her mother in, and leaves.