If someone were to go to many of Haruno Sakura’s acquaintances and dare to ask, “what do you know of Haruno Sakura?”
The answer would be hesitant silence.
“Annoying.” Would be one, and hurried compliments that don’t sound quite genuine would be another. There’d be hurried sentences rushing at the one who’d dare to ask, all of them trying to cover up the fact that nobody knows jackshit about Haruno Sakura.
Yamanaka Ino, though, Yamanaka Ino is… different. Yamanaka Ino has known Haruno Sakura before anyone else. Haruno Sakura has really low self-esteem, she’s sensitive, she’s awfully shy, she gets scared pretty quickly, and she’s really easy to pick on. Haruno Sakura is also kind, she has a really beautiful smile and laugh, Haruno Sakura is also vulnerable.
Haruno Sakura doesn’t like her name or her hair. Haruno Sakura wants to be a strong kunoichi to protect Ino.
In her eyes, Ino holds the stars. It seems silly, to the blonde girl, but it is something that holds true in the rosette’s gaze.
Haruno Sakura doesn’t like loud noises, she hates yelling so when the Uzumaki boy starts shouting around her, Ino glares fiercely because she knows how much Sakura hates it, and how much the poor girl wants to press her hands over her ears but she doesn’t because it’s rude, and Sakura doesn’t want to hurt the boy’s feelings — which Ino finds stupid because he’s stupid, and annoying. He’s also about to make Sakura cry.
(Haruno Sakura finds Uzumaki Naruto entrancing. His smile could rival the Sun. His bruises look like hers, but less…—)
Haruno Sakura doesn’t like touching anyone but Ino, and the rosette hates it if Ino doesn’t warn her before she touches her. Haruno Sakura starts shaking when she cries and sometimes, she has trouble speaking and breathing. Haruno Sakura is scared of her parents.
(One day, everything ties itself up together in Ino’s head, and she curses because she should’ve known — there was someone who had to know… but there wasn’t, because if they did, they would help her, right?)
Haruno Sakura is also disappearing. She’s dying. Ino knows that’s a little extreme, but when she sees Team 7 return after a particularly long mission outside the village, Ino can’t help but notice the way that her self-conscious once-upon-a-time-bestfriend wilts and withdraws into herself. Ino had made a lot of effort in building up Sakura’s self-confidence, but it all shattered long ago. (‘When you left,’ a voice inside her head – that sounds scarily similar to Shikamaru – supplies.)
Ino remembers when she was young, she caught wind of the news that Sakura had a crush on Sasuke. There was another rumour that the Uchiha likes girls with long hair, so when she sees Sakura sitting next to the boy, with her long hair cascading down her shoulders and her bangs tucked behind her ears, something in Ino rises.
After class, she confronts Sakura. Ino breathes like a feral animal, and doesn’t notice the way Sakura’s eyes widen and how her friend starts to slightly shiver. Sakura pleads with the blonde, she doesn’t have a crush on Sasuke, she doesn’t— “Ino, you have to believe me!”
Ino only remembers asking a rhetorical question. “Then why did you grow out your hair, you know he likes girls with long hair! I was the one who told you!”
Ino storms off, after declaring that their friendship is over and there is a rivalry that stands in place.
She doesn’t listen to the cries that rise from the rosette.
Ino remembers feeling a little stupid after that, but she was too stubborn to apologise and she was so convinced Sakura has a crush on Sasuke. When her pride did die down, a new wave of bitterness crashed over Ino when Iruka announced the names of the members of Team 7.
Ino’s done a lot of things right with Sakura, but she’s made more mistakes than anything. For example, refusing to reach out to Sakura when it looked like the girl really could use a hand. Sakura became a recluse, she was… she had withdrawn into herself and was shyer than her young self.
However, there was an underlying strength to her — Ino can admit as much when Sakura knocks her out during the Chūnin Selection Exams.
When Ino goes to seek her out after the exams, she finds her house in ruins. The debris is too great for her to comprehend, and Ino looks for a body. She doesn’t dig through the rubble, but she navigates her way through the remains of a cold household, and she doesn’t find anything.
There is no funeral, but Ino mourns Sakura all the same.
When Ino left her, she took the stars with her. When Ino left her, so did the light and Sakura’s life crumbled into darkness.
She really didn’t have a crush on Sasuke. He’s quiet, never loud and he never looks at her when she sits next to him. There are barely any quiet people in their class, and the seats next to them are nearly always taken up, and most of them don’t sit in the front row — but Sasuke did, and he didn’t mind when Sakura asked if she could sit.
Or at least, Sakura thinks he doesn’t.
“Can I sit here?” She asked, avoidant of eye contact.
“Hn.” Was his reply. Inner thinks he’s a little pretentious.
Sakura doesn’t have a crush on Sasuke. He’s good-looking, sure, but he’s mean. He looks down on her, he thinks she’s a good-for-nothing civilian. It’s a fair assumption, nobody knows how hard Sakura works. Nobody knows how she reads through scrolls at a lighting speed, and only has trouble turning theory into practice. Sakura painstakingly hides behind her meekness, she does not want to be special. Her mother would scold her, and her father…
“They don’t approve of me becoming a ninja,” Sakura had told Ino one evening. “But as immigrants, they can only live here as long as there’s a shinobi in the family, so I need to become a first-generation kunoichi anyway.
“Why don’t they want you to become a kunoichi?” Ino asks, because she is curious. Stubbornly so.
“The Haruno’s are merchants from the Land of Iron,” Sakura shrugs as if that explains everything. Ino guesses that it does.
Civilians.
And then, they’re probably more used to samurai.
When Ino leaves, she takes a part of Sakura with her and the girl withdraws into herself. It should placate her parents, but her nonchalant-ness only agitates them even further when they’re in a state of intoxication. Haruno Mebuki runs her hands through her daughter’s hair, before she tugs and hits. Haruno Kizashi kicks at her. The bruises are dark, and slowly getting harder to hide. Her blood is hidden in the crimson colour of her qipao, and Sakura is thankful that nothing shows. Nobody realises anything.
Sometimes, Sakura wishes they did, but they don’t — and that’s more than okay (but it’s not good).
Kakashi thinks she’s a vain, naive, civilian girl. Sasuke thinks she’s another fangirl (which, what? When? How?). Naruto has a crush on her, but Sakura knows that it’s more of a competition with Sasuke. (She tries to be kind to him, but he is loud and sets her nerves on edge even though she knows she is safe.)
She doesn’t speak —- she hasn’t, for a while.
Sakura doesn’t like Tazuna. The heavy scent of alcohol hangs heavy in the air, and it makes her shoulders stiffen and stand straighter than normal. The hair on the back of her neck stands straight, and her instincts watch out for any movements that could lash out at her, except she’s not watching to defend herself against them, but to be ready when it hits.
Sakura also thinks he’s lying. She is right.
In Wave, her knees lock together. The Mist nin manage to morph into her parents, but Inner pulls her back and tells her that she can hit them, otherwise they are going to kill her and her teammates. Sakura could care less for her life, but Inner tells her that if she dies or lets anyone else die she’s going to be an inconvenience.
Sasuke does most of the work, but Sakura helps.
When they reach their destination after agreeing to continue the mission. Sakura helps take care of Kakashi while he’s unconscious. She trains discreetly, and tries to help out the villagers. She forages with the children and shows them how to mash nuts and berries together, how to hunt small animals and cook their meat.
Tsunami takes a liking to her.
Sakura doesn’t like Inari. Or Tazuna.
Kakashi wakes up.
They train a little, it’s mostly chakra control. Stuff Sakura’s mastered already
Sakura’s progress is used as bait, as motivation for competition and Sakura sighs knowingly. She leaves to help the bridge builders because Kakashi only sends her off to “guard them” but it is more “don’t bother the boys” than “go guard the builders”.
Sakura helps out. She doesn’t like being still.
Zabuza returns with Haku, later.
Sakura tries, she tries so hard to help them fight against Zabuza but she’s useless and has to hang back to guard Tazuna but she never thinks “I am protecting the employer” but instead she thinks “I am not needed in battle because I am useless and weak, they don’t trust me and I get in the way.
After that disaster of a mission, Sakura trains. She already has the theory in her head, and she continues to fill in more and more theory. In her head, she’s got it all down but she needs to practise, it all comes down to doing it practically instead of rattling off words.
She trains discreetly. Her teammates don’t know, but sometimes, her parents do and they get angry. Sakura thinks of the blistering pain as resistance training. It gets bearable, at some point.
Then, the Chūnin Selection Exams happen.
The Chūnin Exams are another disaster. She doesn’t even want to think about it, about what happened in the Forest of Death. She hates that place.
She hates Orochimaru. She’s glad that Anko got to him before he could do whatever he wants to do with Sasuke.
Suna and Oto are invading Konoha. Sakura helps, or tries to, but then she’s running home because she's got parents here, and only ends up finding out that her place is in ruins. The corpses of her parents lie among the rubble. Sakura drags them to the pyre that the civilian district has set up in some corner. The dead are too many to bury, so they cremate them. The ashes fly away with the wind.
Sakura decides to disappear. She isn’t missed.
They start to forget about the cherry blossom girl.
The Slug Sannin, Senju Tsunade, is the Godaime Hokage. The rosette hears a lot about her.
She wonders if the Godaime Hokage is willing to accept another apprentice.
“Please, Hokage-sama.” The girl pleads. “Please train me. As of now, the world thinks Haruno Sakura is dead and I have no use out in the light. I will work hard to please you, I’ll do anything. I don’t have anything else, there is no use in bearing my identity as Haruno Sakura. Haruno Sakura is weak and incapable, but under you I believe that it’s not all that I will be.”
“Just what exactly are you asking me, girl?”
“Please train me, Tsunade-sama. At least enough to join ANBU.”
“ANBU? Are you insane?” Tsunade barks out a humourless laugh.
“Perhaps, Tsunade-sama.” She takes in a sharp breath. “But there is nothing left for me, it’s either ANBU or going down a path Konoha will never forgive me for.”
The implications are loud and clear. Tsunade leans forward in interest.
‘You’ve got some nerve, girl.” Tsunade smirks, humourless but interested. “Tell me, how good is your chakra control?”
For the first time in a while, a grin splinters Sakura’s face.
(Poinsettia bloom in the shadows.)
After a week or two of being under the mantle of Lady Hokage’s secret (second) apprentice, the young rosette goes to visit her old house. It’s finally caught up to her, her parents are dead, and she… she feels free. (Mildly, she remembers Tsunade’s anger when the story comes out tumbling from her lips.)
She has no name now. She lives in the dark. As far as the world is concerned, Haruno Sakura is dead and it should remain that way. It makes things easier.
(A memory comes to play.)
“You’ll be the most untraditional traditional ANBU ever,” Tsunade comments after she’s done taking a swig from her bottle. Shizune sighs, and the young rosette snorts. “This is madness, kid.”
“I know, Shishō. We’ve already established my insanity.” The young apprentice giggled. “But there’s nothing else for me to do, I’m not…” Not going back, she wants to say, but she doesn’t. Her Shishō hears it anyway.
“I know, kid. I just wish it wasn’t like that,” Tsunade sighs. “As of tomorrow, I’ll issue you for duty under ANBU, and try to protect your anonymity as much as possible, okay?”
“Thanks, Shishō,” the girl grins. “I reckon they won’t place me on a direct team.”
“I wonder if they’ll even take you in,” Tsunade snorts. “Some young kid suddenly asking to be placed among the ranks while refusing to reveal who she really is… it’s fucking insane. Nobody’s gonna trust someone with their lives if that person can’t trust them to show her face to them.”
“I’ll find a way to manage, really.”
“You always do.”
The young rosette snaps out of her reverie when she spots a familiar blonde standing among the rubble where the Haruno household once stood. She didn’t expect anyone to bother, really, least of all Yamanaka Ino.
She watches as Ino falls to her knees and cries out apologies, thinking they’ll be lost to the wind. They aren’t.
The rosette listens.
“Haruno Sakura is dead, Ino-chan, but she forgives you. She wants you to forgive her too, because she’s not coming home.”