Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s a day the same as any other for Sakura. She’s waiting for her mom under the tree in front of her school. Ami stomps over with her cruel grin and shouts, “Hey forehead girl!” Sakura feels rage start to rise. A day like any other. It’s almost comforting in its consistency.

The familiar nickname claws at her like always. Nobody could like you, forehead girl. Too ugly for friends. Stupid-looking, stupid, useless silly girl. She clenched her fists and tries to ignore the thoughts, but Ami is in front of her, teeth bared in a childish grin. Her anger swirls, clogging her lungs. Good girls don't fight, she reminds herself, desperately, with one sharp panted breath. She presses her back firmly against the tree behind her.

“Just gonna sit there, forehead?” Ami taunted, grinning, her teeth sharp and very present and Sakura suddenly found herself wondering whether it would hurt if Ami bit her. Animals bite. Humans don't, Sakura reassured herself, but she pressed back harder against the tree. She thinks about white teeth.

Ami took a step closer, her grin still just as wide, a touch of victory in her eyes. Her friends cackled at her sides and high-fived each other for a joke Sakura had missed.

Sakura glared to the side and hunched down but tucked her fingers into fists against the tree. Her hands still shook and she kept her knuckles pressed into the bark.

“Nothing to say, idiot?” Ami grinned again and grabbed a hunk of Sakura’s hair, yanking it twice when Sakura didn’t answer. Sakura glared at the kids on the other side of the yard playing tag and tried to ignore Ami’s taunts through the panic and rage threatening to take over her thought. Don't do it, Sakura told herself, but her fists pressed harder into the bark and she couldn't sit still as Ami spewed insults through a smug grin. Her leg twitched.

“Really, you’re not even going to try—”

Sakura cut Ami off with her fists. Her left hand grabbed Ami’s arm hard, digging her fingers in, and her right fist caught Ami in the jaw, snapping her head back.

“Ugly bitch!” Sakura snapped, using the word her mother said was only for insulting people where they can’t hear you or when you want a fight. Her voice was tiny and high-pitched, but she spat the words out hard and clipped their ends sharp.

There was a pause, silence for a moment, as Ami jerked back against Sakura’s hold on her arm. Not for the first time, Sakura angrily cursed the fact that she was 5 and Ami was 7 and miles taller and bigger. Then, in a rush of motion and a broken yell, Ami’s friends descended on Sakura and dug their nails into the skin of Sakura’s hand and pushed Sakura back against the tree. A foot cracked into Sakura’s shin, a hand slapped her across the face, another hand grabbed her hair and yanked her head back into the tree. Sakura’s legs gave out and she slid down to the ground, where someone smashed her face into the dirt with a foot. The girls standing above her laughed, and all Sakura could hear was the buzz of anger in her ears.

“Seriously? She tried to take on ninja? What kind of idiot is this girl…” someone murmured above Sakura, giggles punctuating her speech. Sakura felt dirt scrape her face as the foot keeping her down shifted, and felt stinging where her skin would bruise and where dirt was scratching into her scrapes. In a moment, her anger deserted her and she was left with overwhelming frustration and humiliation. Tears climbed past her attempts to keep them back and she turned her face further into the dirt so that Ami and her friends wouldn't see her cry. She heaved an arm up from under her to cover her face and jerked back as it brushed her aching nose.

“Is she crying? From that? God, that's so lame. No fun at all,” someone far off to her right commented before breaking into giggles. A new foot nudged Sakura’s ribs, then jerked back.

“Sakura! What are you doing? Get up!” A familiar voice snaps. “Rolling in the dirt like some animal… That's a brand-new dress, you know. If you damaged that you're paying for a new one, and you won’t get anything else until you learn to take care of what you have. Ungrateful child.” Haruno Mebuki stomped over and dragged her daughter up by the arm, ignoring the muddy tear tracks down Sakura’s face.

The girls standing off to the side whispered excitedly and giggled. Ami gingerly poked at her cheek and flicked her eyes over Sakura’s injuries. Sakura let her head hang and hid behind her hair, staring at the dirt that matted it. Her mother’s fingers dug like talons into her upper arm and she straightened instinctively as her mother cupped her cheek to move her face up. Her expression was expectant. By now, most of the schoolyard was in a loose circle around the scene, and Sakura nervously glanced around.

“Yes, mother. I won’t ruin it,” she murmured.

“Were you getting into fights again? Let this be another lesson, ladies don't get into fights. Just look at your face. You’ll ruin yourself.”

“Yes, mother.”

Sakura’s mother shot Ami and the rest of the girls in the schoolyard a narrow look.

“If any of you ninjas had proper manners, the world would be a much better place.” With that, she renewed her grip on Sakura’s arm and stepped primly away, Sakura dragged behind her. Giggled and whispers followed them.

From a couple streets away, Sakura heard an explosion of laughter as one of them said something funny. No doubt, they were making fun of her. She wrapped her free hand around her stomach and dropped her shoulders. Her mother’s hand didn’t leave its vice grip on Sakura’s arm until they had passed over the threshold of their house.

It had always been a point of discontent within the Haruno family that the closest civilian school is right next to the Ninja Academy. Her mother tolerated living in a Hidden Village with thinly veiled disgust—if it weren’t for Kizashi’s iron hold over the courts of law in Konoha, Mebuki would be long gone. Sakura, on the other hand, could not imagine living anywhere else. She spent her lunches watching the ninja kids through the slats of the fence between the two schools and imagining herself as a fierce kunoichi.

In the grassy front yard shared by the schools, she was anything but that. Her bright pink hair painted a target on her forehead that screams “tease me!” for everyone to see, and ninja children aren't exactly encouraged to grow up politely. Sakura envied them as much as she hated them. She sat under her tree and took the verbal lashings, tok the slaps and sometimes kicks, and felt her mother’s secondhand disgust pointed at herself.

Mebuki assigned chores and took away privileges as punishment for fighting back against bullies. “Ladies shouldn't fight,” she murmured, as she watched Sakura sit on the kitchen floor to clean her own scrapes. Haruno Kizashi only muttered darkly at Sakura's bruises and skinned knees before turning back to frowning at his newspaper.

“You really shouldn’t let those ninja come near you, Sakura,” Mebuki said. “You never know what they want with you. Hire a ninja and you’ll need ten more.” She paused and tapped her fingers on her arm. “The laundry’s been piling up, Sakura. Could you do that for me? I’ve got so much work to do with cooking and cleaning up after you, fixing all the damn clothes you ruin, and dealing with this family’s expenses. I’m already exhausted from my shift. Do this one thing for me?” Mebuki asked, smiling at Sakura, her gaze unyielding.

Mebuki’s eyes swept the room and landed on the dirty dishes left out on the table. “Could you do the dishes too? Make things easy on your mom.”

Sakura nodded, and wondered how her mother would feel if every day she were pushed down and sneered at in the schoolyard. Would she preach pacifism or would her fists curl tight and her throat vibrate with the force of keeping her anger down? Sakura felt like she had a wall behind her, pain in front of her, and her parents holding her fists to keep her from freeing herself. She did the only thing she could. She stood with barely a wince at the sting of her scrapes.

“Yes, mother,” she said. Maybe if she were a ninja, her mother would be so scared of her that she’d leave her alone. Sakura froze, standing before the dishes on the table.

“Mom,” Sakura said, whirling around. “I’m going to enter the Ninja Academy.” She stood still as her mother froze where she was opening a cabinet, and the air began to freeze, heavy and cold. The sound of her father turning newspaper pages in the kitchen stopped and silence reigned. For a long moment, Sakura’s fear swelled up and her hear desperately pulled towards the door, but she clasped her shaking hands together and stood her ground.

Slowly, Mebuki headed to the kitchen table, deliberately not looking at Sakura, and sat with controlled and smooth movements. Sakura scrambled to the table and nearly tipped over a chair as she tried to pull it out. Her father folded his newspaper with precise movements, his gaze locked on his hands where they smoothed wrinkles from the folds.

“What brought this about, Sakura?” her mother asked, slowly.

“I’m going to be a ninja,” Sakura repeated. Her parents shifted uncomfortably.

“Now Sakura,” her father began. “Ninja risk their lives daily for their job. They’re required to fight and lay their life down if their village demands it. They’re disposable tools for the village, and often just stupid tools.” He scowled. He worked in law and had handled so many different complaints from civilians about ninja fights and property damage that he could barely stand to look at a ninja.

“Sakura.” The corners of Mebuki’s eyes were tight and the corners of her lips were tipped down. “Sakura. You- I- ladies don’t fight.” The phrase was well-worn and faded. To Sakura, the words meant nothing, but the shame usually accompanying them came nonetheless and Sakura looked down, somehow expecting the jeers of the girls from the Ninja Academy to reach her even here. “I’ve raised you to be a lady, and you’d disrespect me like that?”

“Those—those girls,” Sakura started. “They’re ninja.” She glanced up with careful eyes, looking at her parents. She didn’t want to insult them to their face, so she needed to use her other reason to want to be a ninja. “They kick me around and make fun of me and—and I want to be able to… I want to be able to make them stop.” At her parents’ wide eyes she hastily shook her head. “I don’t want to hurt them! I just want to let them know that I can do as well as they can in Ninja Academy. I’m just as good as them! I want to be able to protect myself.”

“Sakura, honey, you shouldn’t start something as life changing as Ninja Academy just because of some bullies…” her mother hesitated. She stood up and wrapped her arms around Sakura from behind, kissing the top of Sakura’s head. “You’ve been growing into such a lovely young lady. You shouldn’t spoil that with this ninja nonsense. This is how you get yourself killed and disgrace your family’s good name!” She rocked Sakura from side to side, hiding her face in Sakura’s hair.

“Mom, I want to protect Konoha,” Sakura said, hoping she didn’t sound as desperate as she felt. She reached up to grasp her mother’s arms and hold her there--hungry for that little bit of comfort. If I can protect Konoha I can protect myself. “I want to do something big, mom. I don’t want to be scared all the time. I want to be able to help people.”

Her mother sighed and stopped rocking Sakura. “You can help people without hurting others. You could become a nurse like me. You could go into law like your father. The ninja system… it eats kids alive, and I’ve been trying to keep you safe, trying to push you towards a safer path. It’s such a huge decision to make at such a young age.” She sighed again above Sakura. Her chin dug into Sakura’s scalp. “You’ve always been such a strong-willed girl.” She let go of Sakura and stepped back, looking at her husband.

He sat slouched in his chair, his eyes sharp and cold. He met Sakura’s gaze and she wanted to wilt. He had never been the most supportive father, but he’d never looked so sharp before. His stare made something in Sakura ache.

“I don’t like this.” He hesitated, tapped his fingers on his folded newspaper. “I’m a believer in free choice. She’s right. You’re a determined little bugger, despite our best efforts. It’s your life, your decision.” His cold eyes were still drilling into hers and she nodded firmly. I won’t let myself be kicked around. “Don’t make a mistake, Sakura. Ninja life is dangerous. You can be killed. You will lose everything to Konoha. Keep your wits about you—none of us want to lose you.”

Sakura felt like a great pressure has been lifted off her and she nodded exuberantly. “Thank you! Thank you! I’ll be good! I’ll work hard so I can be the best ninja.” She smiled big and hopped up to hug her mother, not noticing her mother’s shuddering exhale as she put a hand on Sakura’s shoulder. She spun to quickly hug her father as well, before she skipped up the stairs to her room.

Her mother moved to sit and rest her head on her husband’s shoulder. The kitchen was silent.

Sakura started at the Ninja Academy in the fall. She flounced through the doors on the first day wearing a brand-new red dress and a determined smile. There was a persistent feeling in the back of her mind that nobody took her seriously, but she doggedly ignored it in favor of books and lessons and all the knowledge she could find. It was all lovely through her first year, full of theoretical knowledge of chakra and taijutsu and lectures on ninja history and politics. There was a whole world beyond the walls of Konoha that she has never considered. She felt tiny all over again under the scope of what she had to learn, but this time it was an inspiring feeling. She soaked in knowledge, devouring books and assignments happily.

Outside of the classroom, Ami and her friends found Sakura every day at lunch and after school, pushed her and spat poisoned words. Inside of her mind Sakura raged and quivered but outside she sat still with her lip between her teeth and did nothing.

“Forehead girl! Ugly bitch!” the girls jeered. They were eight years old and learning new words to express their disgust every day. One girl kicked Sakura’s thigh.

Another sighed. “She’s getting boring.”

“What do you mean, boring?” Ami scoffed. “Look at her face! That forehead shows her ugly little bitch emotions to the whole schoolyard! She’s almost pissing herself!” The girls laughed so hard that a couple of them collapsed to their knees, dirtying their colorful dresses.

Good girls don’t fight, so Sakura only sat. Her mother had said that if Sakura held herself above them and pretended not to care, she would win. The girls jeered. Sakura pushed her emotions down, down, into a tiny ball that she could control. Anger went down easily. Fear remained, diffuse and involuntary, coloring her eyes and posture so that all of her bullies could see, no matter how high she kept her chin. The bullying got worse, but she did not fight back.

In class, Sakura relaxed. Her classmates only knew her name because of her top-five scores, and when she disregarded all attempts to speak to her, caught in a fearful haze before she could get any words out, they began to ignore her. In class, she was happy. Her confidence in her skill lasted until her second year at the Academy, when they had their first taijutsu practical and her theoretical experience was useless.

She was down with her face pressed into the dirt again and she heard someone snicker. Rage rose, smaller and more muted than it had the last time she was here, and she… deflated. She couldn’t be angry. Good girls don't fight, she knew, but her red dress was stained brown and her hair was in snarled knots and a spar was basically a controlled fight. Her mother had let her go to ninja school, to learn how to fight, but could she let her mother down and actually learn? She was let up and she and her opponent made the Seal of Reconciliation. Sakura returned to the line and waited her turn to fight again. She smiled slightly, involuntarily as anger slowly spread through her, adrenaline flooding her arms and fingers, making them shake as her turn grew closer.

It felt as if her mother hovered behind her, gaze disapproving, but that only made Sakura angrier. Who was her mother to decide if she could be angry? If she wanted to scream, throw a fit, throw a punch, she would! Under her burgeoning anger, her frustration at being so weak her usual fear was inconsequential.

“Are you really that eager to get beat down?” someone sneered, and Sakura shoot her audience a slightly malicious grin. Energy was rising in her and the curl of anger in her chest sang and whispered in her ear, telling her that someone was going to go down and it was not going to be her. Her fists clenched tightly. The teacher eyed her with some amount of concern but called for her to enter the ring anyway.

Her opponent was a skinny girl with brown hair tied back in short pigtails. They made the Seal of Confrontation and the girl fell into a stance that Sakura had never seen before, but Sakura remained unconcerned. She couldn’t focus, floating high above the ring with her heart beating fast and her stomach felt coiling tight. She was so ready, but she couldn’t quite recall where she was.

Sakura spent the next five minutes getting beat down again. She rushed her opponent recklessly, hit hard and fast, bruising her knuckles, but her anger and adrenaline made her uncoordinated and spacy, and she forgot all technique in the haze. She fell on her back, the trees above her spinning. Someone snickered.

“What kind of form is that? Little civilian couldn’t take being beat once and forgot how to fight?” Sakura could see the girl speaking from where she lay. She didn't move and didn't react; the adrenaline had receded and she felt like someone had scraped all the emotions out of her, reaching the bottom of the bowl and leaving scratched marks. The Seal of Reconciliation seemed the most humiliating gesture she could make.

That night, her mother grabbed her arm and slapped at the dirty spots on Sakura’s dress and yanked at Sakura’s tangled hair. “A mess! A mess!” she snapped. “I thought you were going to the Academy so you’d stay out of trouble! No, Sakura, don’t give me excuses. You know better.”

So Sakura kept her head low, glaring at her her classmates more than usual and avoiding Ami and her friends as much as possible. Everywhere I go I'm the weakest, she thought bitterly. Her theory grades remained high, but her new practical grades swooped down to join the rest of the civilian kids. Whenever she was caught by Ami, the teasing took a sharper edge as Ami insulted both her looks and intelligence. Sakura sought out the corners and shadows of the schoolyard when they were let out for lunch or after school. With short-clipped grass, open and exposed, the schoolyard was not someplace she wanted to stay.

A couple of weeks after her first beatdown, after a day of being humiliated by Ami in the most public places possible, school let out and Sakura picked a direction and ran. She sprinted, and it only took half a mile for her lungs to feel useless and her legs to lose all feeling but she told herself, it's all in my mind. I have enough air. My legs aren't tired. I can be strong. The books in her backpack bumped against the ridge of her spine and she ignored the familiar feeling of a bruise forming. She ran past buildings she couldn't remember and down streets she'd swore she'd never seen before, fighting to keep her thoughts quiet, off of the Academy bullies and off of the pathetic burn in her lungs and legs and the lightness in her head. Sweat began to gather on her back and forehead and it condensed into rolling droplets as she approached the market square. Sakura just had time to recognize that she was approaching from the direction opposite the Academy before she dropped to her hands and knees as her legs gave out and she frantically sucked in air.

Sweat dripped from the ends of her hair as she stared down at the sidewalk. Only one mile. Any of the other Academy kids could have done better. Around her, the market bustled and people brushed against her as they moved in and out of the square. Nobody looked at her past a quick glance, used to ninja strangeness. She was anonymous and it hurt. Everywhere she went, she was boring enough that nobody cared.

Despite her eye-catching hair, Sakura knew she was nothing special to look at and no one special to know. She was not a ninja, flashy and confident and strong, opponents falling around her. She was the bullies’ fallen opponent, shy and dirty and just forgettable enough to hurt without fear of a teacher’s reprisal. Sakura planted her hands on the sidewalk and pushed herself up, and although her eyes were blurry and her head spun she forced her muscles to work and pull her feet under her. She stumbled sideways and barely caught herself on a wall.

There was determination written in the creases of her eyes and the downward scrunch of her eyebrows as she moved forward. Her legs started working properly as she kept walking. She moved slowly, muscles trembling and her backpack weighing heavily on her back. She had to improve.

Chapter Text

Sakura stared herself down in her bedroom mirror.

“I need to improve,” she told herself. Her reflection glared back with sweaty hair and dirty clothes.

“First, I need to shower,” she amended.

She almost collapsed when she lifted her leg to step over the edge of the shower, her tired muscles giving out, but she caught herself and managed to survive the water-slicked shower floor to emerge clean again. She pulled on her comfiest clothes and fell backward onto her bed.

“Okay, I have to plan,” she said aloud. “I suck.” She frowned. She sucked in many ways, in fact. In class they were mostly learning about ninja laws and political structure, nothing about health and fitness. They ran around the schoolyard and did pushups, sit-ups, and pullups, but the allotted times weren’t very long and they were expected to know and push their own limits, without encouragement from the teachers. Sakura hated the fact that she was weak, so she never pushed herself. As soon as she reached her pathetic limits she was reminded of how horrible and useless she was. If she didn’t put in effort, she could at least pretend that was the reason everybody else had passed her by.

She sighed. “Looks like it’s sweaty, gross endurance training time.” She wrinkled her nose and pulled her legs up to her chest.

Running would help, even if she didn’t know any other exercises to add to that. It would be nice if there were routes she knew of that would keep her from running into any of her classmates. It would be mortifying for any one of them to find her when she was weak and filthy from exercise.

She rolled over and muffled her voice with her comforter. “Just book learning for now. I can do that. Maybe I can find something to make running—or any exercise—more interesting. I can actually exercise... later...” She scrunched her nose and sighed again. “I have no idea where to find a library.”

She almost did what she’d always done and buried herself in her stuffed animals and blankets, where the world couldn’t reach her, but she knew she couldn’t. She couldn’t fail here. She had decided to become a ninja and to grow strong, to not be seen as weak. How could she expect to gain respect from her mother and her classmates if there was nothing about her to respect? Step one, easy, is to find out where she can start. She left her bed and her house, looking for Iruka-sensei.

The streets were almost empty but Sakura knew the offices at the Academy almost never were. Even when school was not in session the instructors and other staff were buried in administrative work. She easily found Iruka in his office, adjacent to his classroom, and stood planted, forcing her mind into confidence, in the middle of his doorway until he looked up.

“Sakura? It’s been a while! Come in.” Iruka smiled, surprised, when he saw her, but his voice was just as warm and kind as it always was and Sakura was immediately at ease. She sat on the edge of the chair closest to the door and returned a tiny smile.

“Could you tell me about all the libraries in Konoha? Maybe just mark them on a map and tell me what each one focuses on, please? I have a kind of… project that I want to work on and I have no idea where to start,” she asked. Her fingers picked at a loose thread on the seam of her dress, and she consciously stilled them.

Iruka smiled again and dug through a drawer. “Give me a second,” he muttered as he made quick marks with a pen on a blank map and turned the paper over to scrawl down short summaries of the libraries. Sakura stood up and took it from him when he offered it to her, glancing at the numbers clustered near the Hokage Tower and the Academy.

“Thanks, sensei!”

“No problem. Is that all?”

Sakura froze. Maybe he thought her silly for wasting his time for such an insignificant request? She eyed the clock on his wall—it was late and he would want to be getting home soon. “That’s all, sensei,” she managed to whisper without meeting his eyes.

“Glad I was able to help,” Iruka sighed. “Sorry to kick you out, but I’m already behind on grading.” He smiled, even kinder and softer than before, and Sakura felt her anxiety retreat in the face of his gentle, honest kindness. She carefully relaxed, bid him goodbye and thanked him again, and left. Iruka was already buried in another stack of papers, left hand worrying the scar bridging his nose, when she closed the door behind her.

She leant against the wall beside the door and allowed her heartbeat to slow to its normal pattern while she skimmed Iruka’s list to pick out the library he had marked as containing materials for Academy students and genin. It was located right next to the Academy and Sakura wanted to slap herself and set her brain right. She settled for groaning quietly and rolling her eyes. She should have seen that before, and even if she hadn't, that should have been an obvious location.

“Note to self: observation is important,” she muttered and pushed off from the wall. The walk to the library took a grand total of thirty seconds and Sakura felt much, much stupider. There was even a big sign out front: “Konoha Ninja Library #3: Academy and Genin”.

The library was quiet and the woman wearing a chuunin vest at the checkout desk didn’t even glance up as Sakura entered, though she moved to make a mark on an official looking scroll. The main room was small and square, with smaller study rooms branching off of it, each with desks and chairs. Each isle was clearly labelled by category, and the one labelled “Taijutsu and Physical Training” seemed most promising. When Sakura stepped into it, the tall shelves blocked out the rest of the library and sound retreated.

She ran her eyes over the haphazard stacks of books and scrolls piled on the shelves. They didn’t seem to be further organized within the “Taijutsu and Physical Training” designation. As she tiptoed down the aisle with soft, quiet feet, she let her fingers trail across the spines of books. Most of them seemed useless to her, and many of them were old enough that they were probably obsolete.

The aisle released her with a pile of scrolls and books in her arms. In a study room, Sakura dumped her haul on a table and sorted and skimmed the texts, settling on two that give concrete, doable advice. One that she discarded mentioned using chakra control exercises in conjunction with physical training to maximize time usage, but the book scorned the method as too distracting for proper physical training. Sakura was interested, despite the book’s dismissal—it seemed best to have something complicated to distract her mind from the horrible feeling of weakness she got when she worked out.

She slipped back into the aisles to hunt for scrolls on chakra exercises.

It was dark outside when Sakura emerged from the library. By that point, the chuunin librarian had been eyeing her impatiently, wanting to clean and lock up. Sakura had ignored the librarian and sorted through her scrolls on chakra exercises for another half hour. Most of them had ended up detailing the same principles and exercises again and again, so Sakura only had three clasped in her arms. Standing in front of the library, she stretched out a leg and winced. Her muscles were starting to feel sore and she felt a flash of regret for her impulsive run before it was replaced by tentative pride. The ache reminded her that she had tried and that felt better than anything.

The streets were unfamiliar in the dark and Sakura realized she had missed her curfew. Her parents must be frantic. The world dimmed in front of her and her breaths came short. The ache in her muscles grew and suddenly began to hurt. Her parents would be mad to find that she was out so late. She dug through her mental list of excuses and came up with nothing. There was nothing. They would be mad. They would be so mad. Sakura slunk into a nearby alleyway and slumped against the wall. She pulled in a short, shaky breath and felt her heartbeat speed further. It felt like her heart was trying to break her ribs and escape her frail body. She pulled in another breath, and another, and another and slowly her heartbeat calmed as she focused on breathing over thinking. She ran through her mental list of excuses again and again found nothing. She would have to admit fault. A plan, even one that left her facing punishment, was a reassurance and her heart finally began to calm.

Sakura finally sucked in a deep breath and felt her sore lungs stretch until they couldn’t. She held her breath for a second before she exhaled and counted the scrolls in her arms. Three. She pressed her tongue to the backs of her teeth. She took a smaller breath and identified what she could smell. Garbage, smoke, parchment. She listened to the sounds of Konoha at night. A cricket chirping, the footsteps of civilians on the road, a tiny flutter of fabric as she saw a ninja pass between rooftops.

“I’m going to be in trouble,” Sakura told herself, and pretended that she was okay with that. “I’m going to be grounded.” She paused and breathed again. She'd be grounded. So what? “I can work on chakra control exercises inside. This will work. I will be a ninja. My parents will understand.” She glanced down both ends of the alley, worried that someone had seen her minor freak-out. No eyes looked back, so Sakura edged onto the street. Nobody looked at her strangely, and, reassured, she set off toward home. The ache in her legs slowly began to subside.

She stretched a leg far in front of her as she walked, feeling her muscles move. “Sorry I’m home after curfew, I got distracted…” Sakura tried. “No. Sorry I’m home after curfew, I was at the library and…. No, that just sounds like I’m making excuses…” she tried again. “Sorry I’m home late, I was at the library and lost track of time. Better, but still not good.” Here, she had to pause, take a deep breath and stamp her foot so hard it stung and made her stop thinking. Her house in its civilian neighborhood seemed miles away, and yet too close. As she walked, the few civilians out on the streets grew fewer and as they left the streets grew darker. When Sakura reached her house, it was a comforting island of warm light and familiarity and Sakura almost forgot that once she entered she’d be scolded.

She entered and in a flurry of movement her mother was there to scold her. Her mother enveloped her in a breathless hug, too tight, and her father hovered worriedly. The scrolls in her arms made a pitiful shield, yet she still tried to duck down and retreat behind them.

“Oh my god, Sakura, we were so worried! You’ve never missed your curfew before and if you were any later we were going to call the Hokage Tower and see if they could help us find you if you’d gotten into trouble or were lost or hurt or oh, Sakura, so many horrible things can happen to you when you’re out so late on your own, didn’t you think! You're only seven! Oh, Sakura, Sakura, Sakura, oh, Sakura,” her mother sobbed and renewed her tight hold on Sakura. After a minute, Mebuki's tears slowed and anger replaced her fear. She pushed her daughter away to grip Sakura’s arms tightly and hold her at arm’s length. “You’re grounded for the next week, and if you break curfew again after that, you’re grounded for another month. There are horrible people out there, Sakura. Some ninja… god, Sakura, I don’t want you around them.” She pulled Sakura in for a hug again and rocked her back and forth. “Sakura, oh, Sakura, you worried us sick, Sakura, my lovely daughter.”

Sakura couldn’t breathe.

Sakura’s father lightly placed his hand on his wife’s arm. “Come on, love, give her some space. I’m sure she was just as scared as you, being out in the dark all alone.” Mebuki slowly released Sakura, trailing her hands over Sakura’s shoulders, and Sakura stood still, unsure of what to do. Her breath returned to her with an ache in her lungs.

“Here, Sakura, let’s go up to your room,” her father offered. He took his hand off of his wife’s arm and took Sakura’s hand. Together, they went up to Sakura’s room, and Sakura set her scrolls on her bedside table before collapsing onto her bed, settling herself into the arms of Lavender, a giant stuffed turtle. Her father stood awkwardly in the doorway. He never entered Sakura’s room if he didn’t need to.

“You’re a smart girl, Sakura. I know you understand how worried we were. Where were you?” he asked. His face had the careful blankness of a lawyer fighting to remain impartial.

Sakura hesitated, even though this was her father and she has always trusted him with everything before. She knew he hated ninja, though, and that pulled her words back down her throat.

“I was at the library,” she mumbled, playing with Lavender’s forefoot and staring at her hands as they moved. “I wanted to find some things in the Academy student section and I lost track of time.” She didn’t watch his reaction, looking instead at her hands.

There was a pause that dragged through the thick air.

“Just remember to watch the clock next time, okay Sakura?” her father finally said. There was emotion in his voice, but Sakura couldn’t identify it and she forced herself to leave it be. She didn’t want to know.

“I will, dad,” she said. She glanced up at him and gave him a weak, loose smile. “I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.” He smiled back, firm and reassuring.

“I know.” He entered her room to ruffle her hair. “If you’re going to be a ninja, at least be a good one. I’m proud of you for giving your all. That’s the only way you’ll survive.” His smile had quickly vanished and as Sakura looked at him she saw the sadness pushing at the corners of his eyes and the tilt of his lips. His skin was wrinkled and there were streaks of grey in his hair; to Sakura he had never looked older.

“Ninja are cutthroat,” he said. “To survive, you have to be just as cutthroat, just as wily. Do it right.” Or don't do it at all, he didn't finish.

Watching his fear, for the first time she felt it herself. She’d entered the Academy to prove herself, but she had quickly found out that the ninja world isn’t kind. Maybe she shouldn’t have gone. She knew she was shy and nervous—those traits might kill her ninja career.

I still need to try, Sakura thought. Her father was looking out her window. Sakura followed his gaze and saw the blur of a jounin instructor and their students upon the rooftops. Even after night had fallen, the ninja world continued to run.

“I’m going to get ready for bed,” she said softly, and rose from Lavender’s comforting embrace, passing her father as she left the room. When she returned from the bathroom, her father was gone and her bedsheets were smoothed, Lavender tucked under them and her other stuffed animals arranged in a neat semi-circle around her pillows. She walked out to say goodnight to her parents, distractedly trying to keep her footsteps as quiet as a real ninja. There was an uncomfortable air as they told her goodnight, their voices softer than usual. Sleep came quickly after that.

Chapter Text

The routine of the next morning didn’t change, and Sakura struggled to keep up her new mindset. She woke with the sun from her window in her eyes. It was early and she had plenty of time to be at the Academy in an hour. Today her previous determination was almost gone and she felt like fading into the background, so she searched out her darkest clothes. There wasn't much to find, as her mother always insisted on the red dresses that she considered ladylike and pretty, but Sakura found a stretchy pair of leggings hidden in a drawer and a plain burgundy t-shirt in another. With them on, she still didn't look like a ninja, but now her hair was the only thing that would make her stand out in a crowd of civilian children.

Her parents didn't comment on her clothes, but Sakura could see them glance at each other over their coffee. She ignored the shrinking feeling in her chest and the desire to pull one of the red dresses over her head to avoid it. Breakfast was quiet.

“I’ll be back as soon as school is over, mother, father,” Sakura said softly as she pulled on her boots. They were still new and the leather creaked as she stood. She hefted her backpack, heavy with the weight of her school books and her library scrolls, onto her shoulders. The door creaked behind her and as she started walking she heard her parents start a soft conversation. About me, she thought, pausing for a moment to try and make out their words. She couldn't hear anything distinct, and ahead of her the streets on the way to the Academy were clear. She walked away, shoving down her worries and wishing she had darker clothes.

Class progressed slowly. They were learning about chakra and its properties and applications. It had been made clear that they wouldn't be using chakra for jutsu until next year, but Iruka had hinted at chakra control exercises in the near future. The chakra lesson was short and they moved on to studying the different nations and their differences in ninja training and government. Being from a very civilian family, Sakura was fascinated with the odd and seemingly uncivilized forms of government and training. Kiri’s graduation exam made her shudder and Suna’s monarchist kageship made her frown. She found herself dismissed for lunch after hours that felt like minutes, very glad that she lived in Konoha.

Ami and her friends were in the class across the hall from Sakura’s. They sat at the back of the classroom so they could gossip and hang back to catch Sakura when class let out. They had ambushed Sakura for almost a week straight when she’d tried to wait them out. Now, Sakura hid in the middle of the crush of students racing for the doors. Her hair made her an easy target, but that didn't matter once the taller upper-year students joined the crowd.

The crowd pushed Sakura out of the double-doors at the end of the main Academy hallway into the bright sunlight of the Academy backyard, where the students dispersed and left her to find a quiet spot alone. A tiny patch of grass tucked between a Hashirama tree and the Academy wall was the best spot Sakura had found yet. She was able to press her back against the wall and her feet against the tree, her backpack and the tree neatly blocking her from being seen from almost any part of the Academy yard.

Sunlight wound through the tree branches to graze her skin and she tilted her head back and calmed herself, turning her concentration inward. She rummaged in her backpack and pulled out a scroll on meditation and how to integrate chakra into it. Today in class, their teacher had skimmed over the theory of finding your chakra but had left the details and practice for later. Thankfully, Sakura had a scroll detailing just that, and it was the perfect time for some experimentation. She skimmed the text to be sure she remembered and gently laid the scroll down by her side, open for reference, before taking a deep breath and closing her eyes.

It only took her a second to find it. “Ah!” Sakura’s eyes flashed open and her fingers twitched. She blinked and looked at her chest. That must be her chakra, swirling in her chest with an almost physical feeling. Now that she knew it was there, she felt it even when she wasn’t focusing; it ran under her skin to her fingers and back and down to her feet and up to her head and— wow. She stared at her hands. They didn’t look different, but she could feel the chakra moving in a way that almost made her believe she could see it.

She focused on her fingers, moved her attention with the flow of her chakra, following it as it looped around her bones and up her arm. Once she reached her eighth gate area, near her heart, she lost the thread of chakra she had been following and frowned. At her flash of frustration, her chakra flow responded and sped and spiraled in to her center. Sakura tried to calm it again but she had lost her focus and the lunch break was nearing its end. She pressed her back into the wall and tangled her hands in her shirt, using the pressure to smooth her chakra into a semblance of calm.

She released her breath and loosened her hands and laughed. “Why would they say this is hard?” she mumbled with a smile. Her chakra was as natural and as present as the earth beneath her and she can’t imagine that just two minutes ago she couldn’t feel it there. She stared at her hands again and imagined the chakra she could feel as a visible glow winding around her fingers.

Her stomach grumbled, interrupting her peace, so she dug through her bag for what her mother had given her. The only lunch her mother had packed was a salad—appropriate for a figure-conscious lady—and Sakura finished the container in under a minute. Her stomach was sated, but barely. Would the librarian have snacks she could eat?

There were shouts and laughter in the yard as her classmates shoved out a final burst of energy before the bell called them to stop their games. One of the teachers came outside and the shouts died out, a distinctive quiet rippling over the yard.

Iruka called her class to assemble around the practice posts, and Sakura’s chakra immediately coiled tight and nervous in her chest, making her aware of how nervous she was and compounding that nervousness. Her hands were sweating as she stood up and dragged her backpack over to the pile of bags.

“All right, class, three laps around the whole field,” Iruka shouted over the last subsiding murmurs. “If you cut corners I’ll make sure that my kunai catch you!” Iruka smirked for effect “Off you go.” Sakura dragged behind the last of the class as they took off, prompting an encouraging look from Iruka.

She breathed, making sure that her breath was steady. Steady lungs, steady heart, steady run. Her feet picked up, hitting the ground in a comforting rhythm as she blocked out the rest of the yard so that she could focus on her feet, her breath, the beat of her steps. She pulled up an image of a book on running in her mind for distraction.

When running, the body requires more oxygen than when resting. Although it may feel like quick breaths will provide this to the body, breathing quickly increases the stress on the heart and lungs. Breathe slowly and you will find you feel more in control of your heartbeat and your run.

Her feet hit the ground again and again, until her bones began to ache. She almost couldn't breathe as her lungs grew tired.

The hands should move from hip upwards; they should never reach behind the hip on the downswing. Move your left arm forward as your right leg steps forward, and your right arm with your left leg. The arms counterbalance the movement of the legs and provide stability. Remember to keep balance in your actions and step evenly.

She ran until her body automatically followed those around her and began to slow to a walk, and it took all her concentration to keep her wobbly legs underneath her.

Do not collapse at the end of a hard run; that restricts blood flow to your hard-working muscles. Walk until your breathing returns to normal and drink water, then you may sit or relax.

Iruka noted her time before turning to the incoming kid—she had beaten her previous best time by a solid half minute, even with her lungs aching and her legs numb. For the first time during physical block, Iruka turned back to her and his patent I’m-so-proud-of-you smile was directed straight at her.

Her wave of happiness carried her through the rest of the lesson and her defeats under her classmates’ fists. She would be okay. She could train through this weakness and become a ninja.

So she started a routine. Every day after school, she ran for a mile, even if she take a walking break in the middle for the first week. She ignored her sore legs from previous days’ runs. Every time she ran longer, ran quicker, and felt her breaths and heart steady into the pace, pride filled her lungs like she was drowning in it.

Her usual run started in a narrow alley close to the Academy and wound through alleyways and flashed briefly across main streets, with their abundance of pedestrians that Sakura avoided when she could. It curled back around to end at the Academy library, where she hid herself away in a study room to memorize everything she could about ninja. The chuunin at the desk barely glanced to check if she was there anymore before yelling for her to leave so the library could close.

In the mornings, her parents saw her come down to breakfast wearing a dusky green shirt with half sleeves and standard black ninja pants that she gone out and bought on her own with her stash of birthday money and they exchanged a quiet glance. She ate full meals, and her mother had given up on trying to get her to eat tiny portions “like a lady.” Sakura came home from school with more scrolls squished in her bag every day and her skin was always slightly tacky with sweat. Gross, but Sakura ignored it. She had things to do.

The one thing Sakura couldn't bring herself to change was her hair. It made her stand out, yes, and it had been used as a handhold in spars many times, yes, but it had taken her years to grow it out to where it was and it was beautiful. She didn’t want to cut the only thing keeping her pretty anymore. She tied it in a secure ponytail high on her head and hoped that she wouldn't find a reason to chop it off in the future.

In the library and at home, Sakura had books and scrolls as her constant companions. She poured their knowledge into her brain and trapped it there, repeating it to herself when she was stuck, bored, in class, to make sure she remembered. The scrolls about chakra were her favorites. Now that she had found her chakra, she eagerly learned the common exercises: leaf sticking and its cousins tree climbing and water walking. These were easy now that she consistently meditated enough to be aware of her chakra at all times. The hardest part of the exercises was getting the tiny tendrils of energy to maintain their solidity once she sent them out of her feet to latch onto the tree or coat the water. Once she figured that out, learning that it just took strong force of will and even more awareness of her chakra, the next step was also easy—chakra strings. They were her favorite skill so far, and she loved to subtly flick her papers toward herself with a minor application of chakra. She tried not to let others know what she had figured out how to do, happy to have something that was just hers.

The one weakness her chakra strings had was that once they left her body, her chakra warped and she couldn't reabsorb it. Often, the strings would destabilize themselves and disappear. With concentration and force of will, she could maintain control over it, but she didn't have fine enough control to keep it at the same frequency as the rest of her chakra. The external chakra would burn her when she tried to draw it back into her coils. Her strings were still too thick to recklessly throw around while she lost chakra after their use. She worked to thin them and reduce the chakra warping, and that consumed her lunches for her second year of the Academy.

Her third year, she figured she ought to diversify and moved from a determined perusal of all the books in the Chakra section of the library to a more limited selection all the books in the Genjutsu subsection of the Chakra section. Genjutsu, really, was just another extension of the chakra control techniques Sakura had already been doing. Genjutsu often required more chakra than chakra strings, as area of effect genjutsu required a chakra “shell” to bend light and create fake images. Those genjutsu were fairly easy to break with a quick release of your own chakra to upset the genjutsu caster’s control over their chakra. A good enough caster could maintain their control by constantly micromanaging the frequency of their chakra so that it remained in sync with the chakra in their body and the genjutsu didn't destabilize.

Sakura found this all unnecessarily complicated and much preferred the genjutsu that slipped inside the target’s brain or sensory organs to disrupt their functioning or subtly alter emotions or perceptions. If done right, they were almost undetectable and could cause the target to slip up just enough that someone could subdue them. They did require detailed information about organ structure and extreme chakra control, but Sakura’s strongest skill was memorization and she'd been working on her control for years. It wouldn't be too hard to pick up a couple of these genjutsu.

The third type was essentially a modified area of effect genjutsu; it was just as chakra intensive and if performed poorly, just as easily noticeable. The caster coated their whole body, or the specific part of themself that they wanted to change the appearance of, with a thin coat of chakra. The chakra shell could be manipulated to change someone's appearance. Humans were hard to visualize perfectly, so it was easy for the genjutsu to appear just off enough that someone noticed. This type was harder to break than the usual area of effect genjutsu, but they had to be more exact. There was usually no letting the brain fill in details when human faces were involved.

Sakura’s attempts at area of effect genjutsu failed horribly. She didn’t have enough chakra for them, and trying to hold a detailed image in her mind was too difficult. There were set illusions and hand seals that helped to relieve the mental burden, but Sakura wanted to understand what she was doing more than she wanted a ready-made common illusion. Maybe when she was older she’d have the chakra and focus, but not right now.

She worked at a couple genjutsu that slipped inside a target's ears until she could perform them in her sleep. There were no others like them in the Academy section, but with a strong and complete knowledge of anatomy, Sakura could create her own. She added that to her to-do list. It was getting very long.

In the Academy, they started learning to use their chakra. Sakura had been keeping up her meditation and chakra control practice as well as figuring out genjutsu, so everything they did came as easy as moving an arm. They didn't even do anything past the leaf sticking exercise. Their instructors warned them off elemental manipulation until their jounin teachers worked with them on it, and Sakura considered and discarded the idea of trying it out on her own. She really didn’t want to ruin her chakra coils by messing up. Iruka had told them some horrifying stories about what happened to people who messed up badly: burnt from inside out, pulverized internal organs, irreversibly turning body parts to stone, permanently frying nerves, and other disgusting deaths. Plus, she still had plenty to learn about what she could already use. Better to stay away from the deadly stuff.

Many of their Academy lessons were becoming practical. Her class had finished history and village knowledge and was moving on to other styles of taijutsu and physical conditioning. The basic Konoha Academy style that they’d been learning for three years was crushed out of them then smashed back into them every other week as instructors rotated. They introduced weapons to the Academy style, then to every other style the instructors were trying to teach them.

Their teachers warned them: “Ninja are soldiers. They kill.”

Iruka, the kind soul that he is, felt that this statement needs a qualification and further explanation. “ANBU take most of the assassination missions sent to the village, but general corps ninja still kill,” he said. “It’s an unavoidable part of our lifestyle. Most of you, right now, would be incapable of killing someone because you lack the emotional training. We will address that later this year and throughout your next three years, but know that killing someone with your techniques and your hands is very different from discussing killing someone in a classroom.” The usually loud and energetic class was quiet that day, but by the next they seemed to have forgotten.

Sakura didn’t forget. She had joined the Academy to get away from Ami and the other bullies and to prove herself, and it had worked. She hadn’t seen Ami for two years and she felt stronger now. In spars where chakra was forbidden, she snuck out thin chakra strings to move her opponent’s feet slightly out of position or to move a punch to the left a couple centimeters. She’d been told ninja cheat and play dirty, so she did. Now she was told she’ll kill. She was nine and learning how to kill.

That night at home, with her legs exhausted from her run, now a solid ten mile course around the village perimeter, she laughed to herself. She was nine and learning how to kill. Her parents knew about ninja and hated ninja and didn’t want her to be a ninja because she was nine and learning how to kill. Honestly, it had never occurred to her before now, but when she considered that position, it seemed obvious. She could use her chakra strings to strangle someone without rope. If she could make them sharp instead of dull, she could use them to slit someone’s throat or cut off limbs. If she used genjutsu to make a target feel comfortable in her presence, she could have them dead before they thought to break the illusion. There were more options than just that, more ways to kill with only two basic techniques. If she added in everything she knew how to use, taijutsu, weaponry, and soon the three standard Academy ninjutsu, there were so many ways to kill. Her parents were seeing her want to become a killer, seeing her be proud of becoming a killer, and Sakura could understand why they wouldn’t want that.

“Mother,” Sakura asked. “Do you support me being a ninja?” Her mother looked up from the stove and dried her hands.

“Sweetie,” she said. “Honey, I have never not supported you.”

“Even if I might die?”

“I know…I know Konoha always needs more ninja and it’s amazing that you want to dedicate your life to protecting our village, but that’s it. If you become a ninja, your life is the village’s and it can take it as it sees fit. But I will support you.”

“Even if I kill?”

Sakura’s mother pressed her lips together and sat at the table next to Sakura. “Even if you kill.”

“Mother…. I’m sorry I’m a ninja. I don’t want to worry you.”

Sakura’s mother smiled, and it caught the tired lines around her eyes and mouth and pulled them deeper. “I know you don’t, Sakura. Thank you, but don’t be sorry. Everyone chooses a path, and living in a ninja village one of the most obvious paths is a ninja. I don’t blame you.”

Sakura rubbed her palms together in circles, sinking into the feeling of the smooth slide of skin and trying to distract herself from her worry. “Mother, I’m lonely.” It was an admission to herself as well as her mother, and Sakura wanted only to curl into her blankets upstairs and hide.

Sakura’s mother hummed and smiled before she reached to pull Sakura into a comforting hug.

“Sakura, baby,” she whispered and kept humming. “It’ll be alright. You’ve always been such a smart girl, you know that? So smart and so shy and alone. But ninja, Konoha ninja especially, work in teams and that’s going to be you. You’ve got to step outside your comfort zone sometimes, okay? Let people in a little.”

Sakura gripped her mother’s shirt tightly. “What if I don’t want to? The only people I know at the Academy are Ami and her friends and I don’t want to talk to them.”

“Talk to someone else, then. You’re smart. Use that to meet people.” Sakura’s mother disentangled Sakura’s hands from her shirt and stood up. With her hands on Sakura’s shoulders, she said “I believe in you” and patted Sakura’s cheek as she returned to the kitchen.

Without her mother’s arms around her, Sakura felt cold and even more alone. Now that she had admitted it, it was easy to see that her past two years at the Academy had been spent using books and training to fill the time where she should have had friends. She had years to make up for her loneliness, so she let herself be childish and retreat to her room to wallow in self-recrimination. She wanted to make something change so that she didn’t need to feel so lonely and small, but she had a weekend to work it out, and she wanted to rest.

Using the weekend as an excuse, Sakura stayed in her room and moped, using her chakra strings to act out mini dramas with her stuffed animals. She was snuggled into Lavender’s giant, comforting arms, awkwardly controlling both Dahlia and Rose, still unpracticed with using two strings at once.

“You betrayed me!” she imagined Rose yelling.

“My love,” Dahlia said. “I could never hurt you! Everything I do is for you!”

“But you did hurt me!” Rose cried. “You might not have meant to but you did! And now I’m alone…” Sakura guided Rose to wrap her stubby teddy bear arms around her stuffed stomach.

Dahlia threw herself flat on Sakura’s sheets. Her polar bear snout was pressed into Sakura’s sheets and her voice was muffled when she apologized.

“I’m sorry Rose. I am really sorry that I hurt you and it won’t happen again.”

Sakura frowned as she mostly failed to smush Rose’s mouth into a smile with only her chakra.

“It’s okay.” Rose touched Dahlia’s head. “I’m not ready to start our relationship again as it was, but I don’t want to lose you.” The stuffed bears touched paws and Rose pulled Dahlia up into a hug.

Sakura put both strings in one hand and put her chin on the other. The one string she’d switched shivered and leaked chakra as it destabilized, so Sakura, tired and bored, gave up. Dahlia and Rose collapsed against each other as Sakura let her chakra strings disintegrate into blue light and her silent soap opera ended.

“That’s a good use for your ninja tricks,” Sakura’s father said from behind Sakura, in the direction of the doorway. “If being a ninja doesn’t work out you could work as a puppeteer.”

Sakura didn’t know if she was imagining the reluctance she heard when he mentioned her career as a ninja. “I guess,” she said and forced out a tiny giggle, turning to face him. “Does mother want me in the kitchen?”

“Yes,” her father said. Sakura nodded and walked out of her room and down the hall and stairs, knowing that he still stood at her open bedroom door, watching her with that odd expression.

Chapter Text

Monday came quickly. Sakura had managed to make one step forward over the weekend. She acknowledged that she has a new fear: not being a good enough murderer and getting murdered because of it.

Monday came, and her class was filled with whispers. Sakura didn’t have friends to consult, so she sent a flicker of chakra to her ears like her books had taught her and she listened.

“The Uchiha,” her classmates whispered.

“They’re all dead. The clan head’s oldest son did it—”

“Poor Sasuke, all alone with nothing in that empty—”

“—gone before the ANBU caught him. There are rumors that he was ANBU himself though, so—”

“—still say good riddance though. My mommy doesn’t lie and she says that the Uchiha controlled the Kyuubi and they’re the reason—”

“—Sasuke to come back! I can comfort him so he won’t be so alone and maybe finally—”

“—leave Sasuke alive? Could he not kill his brother? He killed everyone else there’s no reason for—”

Sakura pressed her back firmly against her chair and felt her throat close with the press of fear against her heart. A real-life lesson to make sure she remembered: they were killers and they killed and died. That was the cycle her village lived and thrived on, uncaring, not sparing her classmates, not sparing her.

She updated her training schedule during Iruka’s boring lecture on chakra control, something she managed to pay attention to for only a minute (a minute filled with repetition of concepts Sakura had learned when she was six). She emptied her lunches of training to allow socializing, though she dreaded speaking with any of her classmates even more now their only topic of conversation was the death of the Uchiha. The class was filled with whispers despite Iruka’s attempts to quiet them.

“Hello—” she tried.

“—the Hokage will release the reports?” the girl chattered on to her friend.

“Do you….” Sakura asked, trailing off as the girl didn’t react. She gave up and turned to find someone else. The interaction repeated itself with other girls in her class and Sakura retreated. Maybe she’d been right to keep away from these people.

Her afternoons filled with training displaced from lunch. She tightened the kata and techniques they learned at the Academy and devoured every book and scroll she had access to in the library. Her chakra control exercises became less confined to set time frames; she tucked one of her smaller stuffed animals, Peony, into her right pants pocket and kept a chakra string attached to the tiny tiger, acting out mental conversations with him even while she used other strings to arrange her papers or subtly trip up one of her classmates.

“Hello,” Sakura said to Shino, who she sat next to at the back of the classroom. He nodded to her. She considered this a nice progression in her social life, which at this point consisted of being ignored for days, and returned to memorizing a scroll on Kiri’s native plants and animals.

“Hello,” Sakura said to Ino at lunch. She wasn’t really expecting to be acknowledged; Ino floated above the social life of the rest of the class and Sakura was used to being brushed off. She had tagged Ino as “will hold a conversation even if I cannot,” and this guess held true as Ino maintained a steady stream of chatter throughout lunch, happy to continue talking without prompt while Sakura struggled to understand an unnecessarily grandiloquent book on the politics of Iwa’s formation. Ino knew everyone, and it took a couple lunches, but through her, Sakura felt that she had met everyone in her class and beyond. Maybe she could do all her socializing through Ino and not have to speak a word.

Her third year passed and she maintained a solid average-advanced placement through that year and the rest of her years at the Academy. Honestly, she didn’t care. The Academy lagged behind her studies and half of the theoretical knowledge it tried to teach them was useless, designed to prepare failed genin for grunt work. Sakura did not plan to be a failed genin.

The graduation test came fast and passed without issue. Sakura walked out with her head spinning from one of Iruka’s I’m so-proud-of-you smiles, the ones that still caused her chest to ache with pride like she was seven again. It hadn’t quite sunk in yet that she was out. She was out of school and almost officially a ninja, a legal adult. There were still papers to sign and tests to pass, but she was almost there.

“I’m home,” she called, loosening the wraps on her calves to slip her boots off.

“Welcome home, Sakura,” her mother responded from the kitchen. She poked her head out and her face folded into a strong smile when she noticed the forehead protector hanging from Sakura’s hands. “Sakura! You graduated! Congratulations! I’d hug you but my hands are covered in flour. That’s a promise for later.”

“Thank you, mom. I’m going to be in my room.” Sakura smiled back at her mother and danced Peony out of her pocket and into her palm as she stepped up the stairs.

Her room was calm, her stuffed animals a nest on her bed with books and scrolls tucked between them and piled on her table. Sakura stood in front of her mirror and held the forehead protector up to her forehead. Boring, she thought. Will probably fall into my eyes at some point. She held it against her left bicep. Feels restricting. It looked and felt right against her right thigh over the wraps to hold her kunai pouch. She tucked its backing cloth under some of the wraps and tied it. Her stance was the same, she didn’t feel more experienced or powerful. She looked the same. Annoyingly bright hair and eyes, boring face, boring body, boring clothes. Plus forehead protector.

Her new scroll on different types of knives, their common regional types, and the basics of their usage seemed a much surer path to survival than preening over a tiny change and Sakura settled into Lavender’s arms to read. She did have several hours of relaxing free time to fill before she got her team and final test.

After their long lunch break, the classroom was chaotic. Energetic Academy graduates spilled over the desks and filled the air with noise. Sakura waited patiently in the back of the classroom, without a book for once, watching them. She watched Ino walk through the door, the rest of the Sasuke Fanclub following, and watched the commotion the entrance caused. She watched as the mob of Sasuke’s fangirls accidentally shoved Naruto so he fell face-first onto Sasuke's face. She did a quick scan to make sure that none of the other girls were watching before she giggled a little to herself. Ino screeched for just long enough to uphold her reputation as Sasuke’s Number One Fangirl before joining Sakura in the back of the classroom.

“Sakura,” Ino sniffed, delicately tipping up her chin. She only managed to hold onto her haughty air for a few seconds before she hid her face behind her hands and giggled. “Oh my god. Did you see their faces? Naruto turned looked like he was going to throw up and Sasuke’s face looked like it was painted red, oh my god.”

Sakura frowned. “If you keep throwing them at each other one day they’re both going to explode in a bloody mess and we’re going to be down a Rookie of the Year and a village idiot.”

Ino stared at Naruto and Sasuke for a couple more seconds before she giggled again. “Aww, they’re both still blushing but they’re still sitting next to each other! So cute.”

Sakura side-eyed Ino warily. “No. You’re not going to try to set them up. They try to destroy the Academy every time they see each other. Setting them up would involve them being closer and therefore causing more destruction.”

“You’re probably right,” Ino sighed. “It would be so cute though….” Sakura grimaced and felt a little like throwing up. Naruto and Sasuke were in no context cute. She had to admit that maybe… with both of them blushing and sullen she could see it. Still not cute though. Still the biggest assholes in the Academy.

The class didn’t quiet or settle when Iruka entered and he had to yell, inaudible under the din, for a solid five minutes before the class acknowledged him. He began a droning speech, pausing occasionally to yell at Naruto, and Sakura listened for a few seconds before deciding he was repeating information that she’d memorized years ago. She twitched her fingers to thread chakra into shapes that only she could feel. She formed a flower flat on the surface of the desk, spinning it lazily. With a push, her chakra twisted from a simple daisy to the complicated folds of a rose. Sakura played with it for a few minutes, frowning as it refused to cooperate and look like a proper rose. When it was decent, she twitched her fingers to peel her chakra rose up off the desk and bit her lip as she knotted and twisted her chakra to fill out the flower in three dimensions. With a tiny pulse of chakra, it began to glow faintly. Sakura fit a minor genjutsu over it to change the blue glow of her chakra to a pale pink. Ino glanced over.

“A pink rose,” she said.

Sakura hummed and adjusted a few of the petals so they fanned out more. Ino reached out to poke it curiously and Sakura’s control over her chakra failed as the rose burst into pink light.

“Hey!”

“Sorry,” Ino said sheepishly. “It looked really pretty though…”

From the front of the classroom, Iruka took on a tone that indicated he was imparting great wisdom and it was best they listen. “Remember what I’ve taught you. The way of a ninja is hard, but through hard work you can succeed and serve the village as best as possible. Now, until you reach chunin you’ll be working in four-man teams with two other genin and your jounin instructor. I’ll call out your teammates and your jounin instructor will come collect you.” Iruka glanced around, trying to glare the unruly class, mainly Naruto and Kiba, into order. He gave up. “Team One…”

Sakura remembered the names and some details of her classmates thanks to Ino, but she was still only really familiar with Ino and through her Shikamaru and Chouji. She had never talked to anyone other than those three and Shino. Six teams were called before Sakura heard her name, and all of them were filled with the Academy students that even Ino never bothered to talk to.

"—Team Seven will consist of Uzumaki Naruto Uzumaki, Haruno Sakura, and Uchiha Sasuke.”

Sakura groaned and fell forward so that her forehead hit the desk with a thunk. It would have been bad enough for only one of that pair to be on her team but having them both is asking for murder to be committed.

"I—" Ino said and turned to Sakura. "—am so sorry."

"You just finished riling them up too," Sakura mumbled, folding her arms over her head on the desk. She dared to glance at her new teammates from under her arms. Predictably, they were arguing. She let her arms cover her face again.

Ino was placed on a team with Shikamaru and Chouji and was suitably bitchy about it.

“I know that I’ve known we were going to be a team since forever but do we have to be a team? Do we really?” Ino lamented, dramatically throwing an arm across her eyes.

“At least you and your teammates can work together,” Sakura muttered, still hiding her face in her arms. “Mine try to murder each other and I’m pretty sure Naruto doesn’t even know who I am.” From his seat by Sasuke, Naruto was looking around the classroom with a confused expression.

“Holy shit, I think you’re right.”

“I’m going to call in the jounin instructors now,” Iruka said. He opened the classroom door and team by team the classroom emptied.

“Um,” Iruka said when he reaches Team Seven. “You guys will have to wait. Sorry.” He looked more angry than apologetic.

“Ooooh. Someone’s in trouble,” Ino sing-songed. Sakura let out a stressed breath and pressed her face harder into her arms.

Another instructor called for Team Ten and Ino stood.

“Well. Good luck,” Ino reassured, although it sounded more like a question.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Sakura replied, muffled by her arms. Soon, the classroom had emptied and the only sound was Naruto’s babble from the front. Sasuke’s brooding felt like a tangible thing weighing down the mood of the others in the room, though Naruto’s ranting pushed it back somewhat. Sakura was at least glad that she was not one of Sasuke’s fangirls; forcing Sasuke to deal with a squealing, attention-grabbing girl would likely drive him away from displaying any semblance of teamwork and trust.

“I’m sorry and I hate to leave you alone, but I really need to get to the missions desk,” Iruka said from the front of the room where he was shoving papers into his bag. “Your instructor might be a couple hours late.” He muttered something that looked suspiciously like “goddamn asshole can’t even be bothered to make a good goddamn first impression,” but Sakura might just be projecting her thoughts onto her poor lip reading.

“Bye Iruka!” Naruto yelled, bouncing in his seat.

Iruka smiled fondly and patted Naruto’s head. “Bye, kiddo.”

“Make sure my classroom is still here tomorrow,” Iruka said, looking at Sasuke, then Sakura. Sakura lifted her head enough to smile and nod politely. Sasuke didn’t look like he had noticed that Iruka existed.

When Iruka left, Sakura pulled out a book and buried herself in it. She breathed out and relaxed as Naruto’s noise faded into the background and she focused. If she hadn’t had something else to distract her she was sure it’d only take five minutes for her to snap and wrap several layers of duct tape over his mouth.

Their instructor took, in total, three hours to make it into the classroom, where he promptly fell victim to one of Naruto’s milder pranks. Sakura regretfully raised her gaze from her book when Naruto broke the reluctant silence he’d fallen into and fell out of his chair laughing. Their instructor had paused in the doorway with a cloud of chalk dust settling around him and clinging to his hair, though it looks like his hair had been grey even before it had been chalked.

“Hmm, how shall I put this?” The man in the doorway asked. “Based on my first impression, I’d have to say…I hate you.”

If he’s trying to look intimidating, the chalk dust all over his face isn’t helping, Sakura thought incredulously. Based on her first impression she’d say that he didn’t look respectable or powerful.

“Meet me on the roof in five minutes.” He disappeared in a puff of smoke and the room was frozen, silent, for a second until Naruto scoffed.

“He doesn’t look strong!” Naruto yelled. “Is that really our instructor? Maybe that bastard there deserves someone weak like that, but I’m the future Hokage and I deserve a better instructor! Maybe the Hokage himself!” Naruto’s yelling devolved into something incomprehensible, involving a lot of pointing at Sasuke, who still looked dead to the world, so Sakura took the opportunity to grab her bag and leave the room.

“You’re late,” her instructor said when she stepped off the stairs onto the roof.

“Sorry,” Sakura whispered, looking at the place where his left eye, covered by his forehead protector, should be, instead of the eye that she could see. Even though he didn’t look particularly judgmental, she still wanted to turn back into the stairwell to avoid his gaze. He was an instructor, and she didn’t want to disappoint him, powerful or not. Taking the next best option, she wedged herself between a tree and a wall with her back to the wall. It reminded her of her lunch hideout.

Naruto and Sasuke broke the silence between Sakura and their instructor with panting breaths and heavy footfalls.

“I win!”

Sasuke scoffed. “No. My foot went through the doorway before yours.”

“Nuh-uh! I won! You can go suck—”

“Not now, children,” their instructor interjected, his visible eye closing in what could charitably be called a smile. “Now is the time for introductions! So sit.” He flapped his hand at the steps across from him, just in front of Sakura’s tree. Naruto glared at Sasuke and mouthed an insult, but Sasuke ignored him and took a seat on the steps, immediately lacing his fingers together and assuming his brooding pose. As Naruto finally sat down, with a lot of wiggling and tapping of feet, their instructor continued.

“Now, I’d like you all to tell us a little about yourselves.” There was silence.

“Like what?” Naruto asked, his feet tapping out an odd syncopated rhythm.

“You know. The usual. Your favorite thing, what you hate the most, dreams, ambitions, hobbies. Things like that,” their instructor responded, his eye tracking the flight of a sparrow as his words trailed off.

“Help us out here, sensei. You go first. Show us how it’s done,” Naruto said, switching from tapping his feet to tapping his fingers.

“Hm,” Sasuke grunted. It might have been agreement?

“Oh…me?” Their instructor pointed to himself and raised his visible eyebrow. “My name is Hatake Kakashi. I don’t feel like talking about my likes and dislikes. My dreams for the future are none of your business…. But anyway, I have lots of hobbies.” There was a moment of silence as he stared blankly at the sky before focusing on his prospective students again. “Now, it’s your turn. Starting with you on the right.”

Naruto glanced around. “Oh! That’s me!” he laughed. “My name is Uzumaki Naruto! What I like is instant ramen! What I like even better is when Iruka treats me to ramen at Ichiraku’s ramen stand! What I hate is the three minute wait after I pour in the boiling water! My dream is to one day be a better ninja than the Hokage so that all the villagers will finally have to acknowledge my existence!”

Sakura stared openly at him for a second before remembering herself and looking at the ground again. So far she had picked up two personality traits from him: loud and likes ramen. She pitied him a little. Did he ever get bored with himself?

“My hobbies are…pranks and practical jokes, I guess,” Naruto finished. He adjusted his forehead protector and smiled widely.

“Next,” Kakashi said.

There was a moment of silence before Sasuke spoke.

“My name is Uchiha Sasuke. There are plenty of things I hate, but I don’t see that it matters, considering there is almost nothing I like. It seems pointless to talk about “dreams.” That’s just a word, but what I do have is determination. I plan to restore my clan, and there’s someone I have sworn to kill.” Sakura pressed her back against the wall behind her. It was one thing to know that in her future she would bring death; it was another thing to make bringing death one’s plan for the future. She didn’t know that she liked Sasuke, even ignoring his sullen demeanor.

“And finally, you hiding back there.” Kakashi flipped an idle hand in her direction.

Sakura could feel the blush rising hot in her cheeks and she breathed like Ino had taught her to. Calm, she told herself.

“Uh. I’m Haruno Sakura. My favorite thing is...well, favorite person, is Ino. I hate, umm… I hate bullies. My dream is to become strong for what I love. My hobby is reading.” Her face steadily heated until it felt like it could boil water. She’d grabbed for the first things she could think of and they sounded stupid.

“Okay,” Kakashi said. “We all know each other now. Training begins tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir!” Naruto shouted, with a grin so wide Sakura could count all of his molars. “What will our duties be? Our first real ninja mission! Wow!”

“Survival training.”

“We did that in the Academy!”

“Well, this survival training will be you guys trying to survive fighting me. It will be the test that determines whether or not you become genin.”

“What!” Naruto shouted. “We already took the stupid Academy test. We’re genin!”

Sasuke scoffed in what might be agreement, his expression broodier than usual.

Okay, neither of them have bothered to read about village history outside of assigned schoolwork. Sakura sighed. Kakashi eyed her.

“The test has a 66% fail rate. We meet at 6am in training ground 3. Don’t eat breakfast before the test or you’ll throw up,” he said, before giving them a two-finger salute and disappearing. Sakura stared at the leaves that slowly swirled to the ground where he had been.

She tipped her head back to rest against the wall and ignored the boys squabbling about who was going to pass. Training ground 3. That one was tucked behind the left side of Hokage Mountain and because of the memorial stone it housed, it was more often used as a site for mourning than training. She had passed through it a couple times on her runs. The stream running through it was fast, a little turbulent, and good for practicing water walking on. Open field, three training posts, the memorial stone. It was surrounded by thin forest. It wasn’t really ideal for traditional survival exercises, but it was good for sparring, fitting Kakashi’s sadistic version of survival exercises well.

Naruto and Sasuke were gone, without telling her goodbye. She stood, brushed off her clothes, and did a quick check of the Academy yard, both visually and with her tiny, inaccurate chakra sensing range. She didn’t find anyone, so she pulled herself over the railing and walked down the Academy wall with a practiced application of chakra. Now that she had a team and they were almost officially genin and ninja, she supposed she could stop being so shy about the skills she had picked up outside of the Academy, but habits were hard to break and she could imagine the ruckus Naruto would cause. Sasuke would be annoying about it too, in his quiet way. She had seen how he treated those that dared to catch up to him in class.

Today, when her run took her through training ground 3, she stopped, did a few cool-down stretches, and explored. It was as she remembered. She didn’t find any traps or hidden dangers, though it would be easy for a jounin to thoroughly trap both the field and forest in an hour or less.

She sighed. From just looking at the training ground, she had no idea exactly what to expect. Just controlled sparring? An actual free-for-all fight? Something else?

The stream rolled under her feet when she stepped onto it and slipped into a stretch. Her body folded easily as she shifted through stretches into a string of Academy kata. With so few clues, it was easier to train than think. Her kata ended and she ran again, on top of the stream as it wrapped around the side of the village.

Chapter Text

They failed Kakashi’s test horribly.

“The real purpose of this test was to determine whether or not you all could work together as a team,” Kakashi helpfully informed them, several hours too late. “You failed horribly. As soon as you heard that there were only two bells, and therefore only a maximum of two of you could pass, you split up and worked against each other. None of you considered that it might be easier to get a bell if you teamed up with even at least one person?” Nobody moved.

“Okay,” Kakashi sighed, though he didn’t look at all sad to have condemned them to return to the Academy. “Naruto failed the worst, I guess, so I’m going to leave him tied to that post without lunch. You other two can eat. Don’t feed Naruto. I’ll be back.” He disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

Sakura was shaking, her heartbeat quick and her stomach aching. She tried to steady her hands as she reached for one of the bento boxes Kakashi had left, not wanting Sasuke to pick up on her unsteadiness.

Naruto’s stomach rumbled and he wiggled in his bindings. One of his hands twisted awkwardly in an attempt to reach one of the knots.

“You could—” Sakura started, but cut herself off. An easy replacement technique would free him, but would anger Kakashi. Kakashi already hated them enough.

Sasuke glanced over at her after she spoke and caught her right as she dropped a chopstick with her shaking hands. His glare intensified and her face flushed hot red. She waited until he looked away to take a deep breath and slowly pick up the chopstick.

“Ah.. so hungry,” Naruto whined. He had given up struggling and hung limply in the hold of the ropes around him. He looked pitiful with the tight ropes revealing how skinny he was, pressed flat against the post. Sakura furtively checked the area—a quick visual scan, a quick chakra check. She didn’t find anybody, but she didn’t doubt that Kakashi could hide himself from her if he wanted to.

“Here,” she offered quietly, holding a piece of carrot up and praying for her hands to stay steady. She determinedly kept her eyes from scanning the treeline again. Naruto gaped.

“What? No!” he yelped, suddenly squirming enthusiastically again. “I can become a ninja without failing you! I’ll just go back to the Academy like Kakashi said and I’ll graduate next year! It’ll only delay my Hokage plans by one year!”

“It’s okay. There’s no way we can pass now anyway,” Sakura reassured. She pushed the food closer to Naruto’s mouth. “I was a bad teammate during the test. Let me be nice now.” Sakura glanced at Sasuke as Naruto continued to argue. Help me .

Sasuke grunted from Naruto’s other side and reluctantly held out a bit of rice. He didn’t glance at Sakura, but she felt that he’d seen her desperation. Maybe he wasn’t as horrible as Sakura thought he was.

“Here, idiot. If Kakashi throws something else at us you can’t be distracted by hunger. It’ll make you even more weak.”

Maybe he was as horrible as Sakura thought he was.

Naruto quit whining and began to make a shaky sniffling noise; Sakura whipped her gaze back up to him, concerned. A tear slid down Naruto’s cheek as his body twitched and shivered, trying to contain gross sobs.

“You- you guys!” Naruto wailed. He wiggled in a sad way.

“Just eat the damn rice, Naruto,” Sasuke snapped. Sakura quickly scanned their surroundings again. Again, nothing. Sasuke looked mortified at Naruto’s display of emotion, his face away from Naruto, towards the trees and his body turned as if to run.

Sakura’s outstretched arm was beginning to ache when Naruto finally opened his mouth, the single tear quivering on his chin. He accepted the vegetables Sakura was holding for him with only a minor grimace. Sasuke hurriedly shoved his rice into Naruto’s mouth and turned away sulkily.

For a second, there was peace, and Sakura let herself relax and let go of her Kakashi worries, but then a threat of chakra snuck into the clearing, spreading itself wide and encasing the area in a genjutsu. Sakura felt her heartbeat pick up—she recognized this chakra and how it tangled with the air and snared her own chakra, despite its instinctive resistance. Kakashi was here. Another genjutsu —  she cut her panicked thoughts off. What does he want to show us this time? Her chakra churned and flared and she desperately tried to quiet it. She didn’t want to ruin Kakashi’s plans. Plus, she was curious.

Kakashi appeared in an illusory cloud of lightning, thunder loud behind him.

“You all…” he roared, looming so large and frightening that Sakura flinched and in her panic lost all control of her chakra. It hummed agitated under her skin as she clenched her jaw and failed to regather it. “...pass!”

The sky cleared and the miasma of fear in the clearing dropped out of the air quick as a stone. Sakura could not breathe through the sudden burst of anger that replaced it. All that combat for nothing? Fear for nothing?

Naruto screamed excitedly and wiggled so hard one of his ropes snapped. “We passed! We passed!” he cheered.

“We meet here tomorrow morning at 6 am. Don’t be late!”

Naruto wiggled harder, but nobody spoke. Kakashi stared at them. They stared back. Kakashi shrugged and vanished with a swirl of leaves.

“He didn’t let me out!” Naruto wailed, although the fraying ropes were slipping with every second he kept up his enthusiastic wiggling.

“Sasuke—” Sakura started, gradually releasing the tension in her fists and jaw. She cut herself off when she looked to where Sasuke had been and found him gone with Kakashi. It was a struggle to keep herself calm. “Okay. Here.” She carefully approached Naruto. “I’ll undo them for you.”

“Thank you!” Naruto twisted around and grinned at her as the ropes easily unknotted and fell from her hands, assisted by an invisible coat of slick chakra.

“You’re welcome,” Sakura responded. She shifted awkwardly and reminded herself to breathe deeply. “I’ll just… bye, I guess?”

“Oh, bye, Sakura!” Naruto waved enthusiastically at her as she timidly held up a hand and made her retreat. “Bye!”

Sakura’s mother wasn’t home when Sakura cracked the door open. The floors and counters smelled of cleaner, a citrus scent with an oddly sweet undertone that saturated the house. Sakura shed her shoes took a deep breath before collapsing onto the couch to review her supplies. She was only a couple kunai down, and everything else was arrayed perfectly as they had been when Sakura left the house. The familiar scent of the cleaner calmed her and she tipped her head back—  

“Haruno Sakura.”

Sakura flung herself forward off the couch, her loose kunai pouch in hand, and whipped around. She hit herself in the face with her ponytail.

“You startled me,” she told the ANBU perched on the back of her couch, letting out a conscious breath and loosening her grip on her pouch. Her head felt light from the scare, and she had to discreetly slip her kunai back into the pouch as she straightened from a defensive crouch.

There was a second of blank silence. “You are expected,” the ANBU informed her. They extended a hand.

“Expected?” Sakura asked, her hand drifting back towards her kunai pouch. It was rare that Konoha had an infiltrator, especially one targeting random fresh genin, but it was rarer that anyone with enough authority to command ANBU on a messenger mission waited expectant of a fresh genin. Had she done anything illegal recently? She couldn’t think of anything.

The ANBU was suddenly in front of her, close enough that she should have been able to feel their breath.

She gasped and had a kunai out instantly, her pouch clanking in her other hand as she shook, but the ANBU merely shoved their hand past her shaky defense.

“You are expected,” they repeated.

A pause—Sakura tense, the ANBU impassive.

Sakura quietly sheathed the kunai and secured her pouch on her thigh, taking a second to settle herself. She took the ANBU’s hand. The world streaked away in a forceful body flicker.

As buildings solidified in Sakura’s vision, she had only a moment to take in a gasp of air before her escort pushed her through a set of steel doors set in grey, nondescript walls into a pleasant, if rather dingy, office. She was dragged over to the reception desk before she could take in the office too well.

“6438456. B361. 1315. Lord Danzo. Haruno Sakura,” the ANBU reported, clipping the words impatiently. The decor in the office was almost appallingly diverse, when Sakura dared a glance. Sleek, white furniture occupied the corner of the room, contrasting horribly with the fading, flowered wallpaper and grimy, maroon carpet. Sakura couldn’t pick out anything revealing what kind of organization this was or any marker that could have indicated an address. The ANBU tugged her head around to face the reception desk, dragging her by her ponytail, and she had to clench her jaw shut to keep from snapping her teeth at him. She focused her curiosity on the ANBU instead, but found no defining characteristics. Eyes hidden behind the mask. Brown hair in a bland hairstyle. Only slightly shorter than usual height. Something else. Lord Danzo? That was a familiar name, but not familiar enough for her to place a name and position to.

The receptionist was exceptionally slow, and the ANBU next to Sakura projected impatience amazingly, despite lacking facial expressions and remaining unmoving.

The receptionist looked up from his computer. “Affirmative. Apologies. The system is slow today.” Sakura’s ANBU tilted their head.

“B361, 1315,” they repeated, a snap in their voice.

The receptionist restrained a flinch and checked over the data on his screen. “Affirmative.” The ANBU nodded and turned away.

Sakura found her anger at her rude treatment fading in the face of such strange interactions. As the ANBU marched her towards a dingy white door labeled “Consultant, Amari Hiroichi”, she started to glance back at the receptionist, but found a warning hand on her ponytail and snapped her eyes back to front.

The hallway behind the consultant door stretched on and split into long, tangled, passageways reminiscent of a dimly-lit maze. Sakura and her guard marched for minutes down random, unmarked turns before the ANBU jerked her to a stop beside a bare wall and repeated a sequence of numbers, one hand on a brick.

The brick came out under their hand and the wall folded into itself to admit Sakura and the ANBU behind her. Behind them, the bricks replaced themselves and Sakura, the ANBU, and a man who was presumably Danzo were enclosed in a bright white room, half occupied by a long, sterile white conference table.

“Lord Danzo,” the ANBU murmured, dropping into a kneel, into reporting position. Why couldn’t she remember who Danzo was? “Mission 9923b complete. Haruno Sakura entered her residence at 1307 and willingly accompanied Operative Cheetah to 041 B361. Haruno Mebuki expected to return to the Haruno residence at 1415.” Danzo nodded dismissively and the ANBU—apparently Operative Cheetah—remained in report position, one knee on the floor and face upturned.

Danzo turned to face Sakura, his bandaged right eye entering her view. In the harsh, impersonal light of the room, the bandages seemed to be made of the same material as his pasty skin and he looked alien, looming silently over Sakra, pushing her heart rate higher.

“Take a seat, Sakura,” Danzo ordered, leisurely making his way to the head of the table with silent footsteps. He seated himself without a sound and turned his expectant gaze to Sakura. Sakura winced as her feet tapped faintly on the ground and her chair screeched as she pulled it out.

“I would like to offer you a mentorship position within my organization,” Danzo began. “You have several desirable qualities that I noticed during your Academy tenure, and I had Cheetah conduct a brief assessment of your skills.” He made a short gesture with one hand and Cheetah spoke from where they had remained kneeling, only having moved to continue facing Danzo.

“Haruno Sakura exhibited proficient reflexes and reaction to danger upon surprise testing. Her threat assessment was adequate and she follows orders easily. She is sufficient,” Cheetah reported. Sakura bristled and frowned. Adequate? She’d worked harder than most of her classmates for years to reach her current skill levels. Cheetah rose to stand at attention in the corner of the room after a signal from Danzo that Sakura had missed.

“Team training generally leaves time for clan or personal training, and although no one in your Team 7 has a clan to train them, your instructor is Hatake Kakashi and will likely give you that time nonetheless. He is notoriously lazy.” Danzo clasped his hands in front of him and leaned forward. “Both of your teammates have inherited advantages that you have not, and to stay on their level, Haruno Sakura, you will need the training my organization can provide.” He paused. “You are, as of 1227 today, of legal adult status and do not require parental permission to accept my offer. Will you?”

Sakura nervously folded the flap on her kunai pouch back and forth. She should have done more research on internal politics. She took a steadying breath. Just like talking to the teachers at the Academy. Easy. “What is your organization, Lord Danzo?”

Danzo’s face changed expression for the first time, almost reaching a smile. “It is called Root,” he answered. “A subset of ANBU.” ANBU was trustworthy. Moreover, ANBU was strong. Here, she would be weak again.

Sakura took another quick breath and without pause said, “I’ll do it.”

Danzo nodded like her response had been an expected outcome. “Get out of your chair,” he ordered. “Kneel. Shirt off.” Sakura breathed carefully at his tone of voice and complied with effort but without question.

As soon as her knees touched the floor there was a new person in front of her, blank-masked, with a brush and ink in hand. She didn’t flinch, but it was a near thing.

“Open your mouth.”

She did.

The blank ANBU sealed her with ruthless efficiency, clicking the brush on Sakura’s teeth but never misplacing a drop of cold, bitter ink. The seal spiralled out of her mouth in branching patterns like lightning, across the whole of her frozen face and over her bare shoulders, and with one last flick of the brush, one last vertical line up the back of her neck, the ANBU stopped the spread of ink. Sakura didn’t dare move.

The room remained silent and still for a tense minute while the ink dried and the chill faded.

With a finger in Sakura’s throat that made her gag, the ANBU pulled the seal back into its dormant state on the back of her tongue.

“You are to report for training at 1900 tomorrow. Maintain your secrecy regarding your training with more rigor than before. Haruno, Cheetah, dismissed.”

“Yes, Lord Danzo,” Cheetah replied. Sakura nodded, the seal heavy in her throat. Cheetah wordlessly led Sakura home, and this time their hands did not near her ponytail even when her eyes wandered.