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They’re both healers. That was the first thing Karin ever learned about Haruno Sakura. They’re both healers, but Sakura worked for hers. Sakura fought for her skill, trained for it. Sakura’s probably never had anything taken from her in her life. She’s never been covered in scars, life seeping out into the bodies of people who hate her. The first thing Karin learns about Haruno Sakura: She is a healer.
She can’t heal me, Karin thinks, and that’s the end of it.
.
In the bathhouse Sakura’s lounging, her pale arms smooth and flawless, and her legs, like freshly made paper, crossed knee over knee. Karin looks at the untouched skin and hates herself for being jealous of it. She likes to pretend she loves her scars. They crisscross over her body like embroidery, like lace, plush pieces of skin sewn in. She likes to pretend they’re meaningful, because she lived. She was tortured and abused and the world wanted to kill her, but she lived. She survived.
Sakura’s never had to survive like that. Not really. They both fought in a war but Sakura never had to survive.
Karin tells herself she does not hate her for that. She’s happy for her. She doesn’t want the rest of the world to experience what she did. Sometimes when things are bad and she’s somewhere between sobbing and screaming Karin does hate the world for that, hates that not everyone has to experience pain like that, hates that not everyone wakes up dirty and shaking and violated and howling, hates there are people who have never experienced that, who will never feel like that. People who go through their lives clean and whole. Who would Karin be if she wasn’t broken and dirty? Would she be like Sakura, beautiful and smart and strong and perfect? Would she be like that?
Impossible to say.
“Karin, come on,” Sakura’s saying from the warmth of the bathing pool. “Come in the water! We don’t bite. And only Ino ever gets naked.” She adjusts her towel around her chest as though to cement this statement. Karin’s eyes dip to the hint of soft skin before she remembers herself and pointedly turns away.
“I’m alright here,” she says. She doesn’t know why she’s even here. Sasuke kept saying some shit about bonding with Konoha, integrating into Konoha, whatever whatever. Maybe get to know your cousin, Sasuke said. Karin almost hit him for that.
“Come on!” Sakura urges. “We can talk about medical ninjutsu, or say mean things about Sasuke-kun!”
Karin finds this offer does tempt her. Sakura’s a genius with medical jutsu. All the knowledge Karin has—except her chakra, except the bite—was learned hastily, usually on one of Orochimaru’s experiments, just Karin alone in a room with a kid her age, mouth so warped they can’t scream and body so wrong she doesn’t even know where to start.
But she doesn’t really deserve to talk to Sakura about that and she doesn’t really want Sakura to see her arms. Sakura’s a girl Karin could be if she weren’t a monster. Karin doesn’t want to touch her, doesn’t want to break the image or shatter the glass of the picture frame. People like Sakura, people who have never screamed for hours or cried for just as long or bit their lip on halfway hysterical laughter or dug their nails so deep into their palms they bled or scratched so harshly at their body they only stop when the skin goes from solid to raw and wet—Karin doesn’t belong with girls like that.
She’s sick and broken and Sakura isn’t. Sakura’s all unstained pale skin, a smooth canvas, smiles that she means and eyes so green it’s no wonder she’s as whole as nature untouched. Karin has scars in ridges like mountains over her. Karin has valleys and hills built into her rough skin.
No one ever sees Karin bathing at the onsen. She makes sure of it. Sakura seems to find this suspicious, but in a way Sakura has always suspected her of something. Sakura looks at Karin like she’s something foreign, an interloper, a threat. It makes sense this beautiful whole clean girl would look at Karin and see something that needs to be expunged.
“I’m good, thanks,” Karin says.
Sakura scoffs. “Spoilsport,” she accuses.
Karin wants to die. She doesn’t. Instead she tucks her arms across her chest primly, stands up, and leaves.
.
When Karin was little she used to sit in the hut she shared with her mother and count the cracks and stains on the ceiling. She was doing that when it happened. She was lying on her back on the floor, staring up at the ceiling and counting the cracks and stains when the door opened and a Kusa nin walked in.
“Stand up,” he said.
“What's going on?” she asked. She stood up. She had to. He told her to and he’s strong and she’s weak so she listened.
“You're coming to the hospital,” he told her. He reached out, as though to grab her arm and pull her away, and something about it felt final and terrifying, like she’d be done done gone, so she flinched backwards away from his arm, ducking away towards the table where hopefully she could go back to lying on her back on the floor and counting the cracks and stains on the ceiling.
His face twisted.
“You’re coming with me,” he told her again, angrier and panicked and not exactly desperate—hungry. He looked hungry and she recoiled a little further but he grabbed her arm and yanked her up and didn’t let go. He didn’t let go when he dragged her through the village and he didn’t let go when he pulled her up the tiny ramp into the hospital and he didn’t let go when they crossed the threshold of the hospital doors.
When Mama first told Karin she worked in the hospital, Karin had asked, “So, as a medic nin?”
“Sort of like that,” she'd said.
“Oh,” Karin breathed. “Oh, that sounds so cool!”
Her face darkened just briefly, just one hint of a shadow before she smiled again. “It isn't,” she said. “I’d much rather be home with you!”
Karin wanted to ask why they were there but she couldn’t find the words. The hospital was one of her least favorite places to be. He pulled her past a couple rooms and in one of them a dead body was covered by a sheet, the lights off and one scarred hand, covered in bites, hanging over the side of the gurney.
“Isn’t this where my mother works?” Karin managed to ask, her voice shaking and her arm bruising under his hand. He didn't answer at first, just dragged her forward, eventually tugging her through a pair of double doors. The war victims inside looked absolutely horrible and when they saw her they looked absolutely willing to eat her alive. “Is my mother here?” she asked. It felt like the echo of her words was tingling against the hollow places in her chest.
He stopped. Let her go. Slowly turned his neck to stare at her over his shoulder. His mouth moved.
“She has expired,” he said.
Expired.
“You are her replacement,” he added.
Expired?
Karin blinked.
Expired...?
The hand, bite marks indented across it and curling up the wrist like some kind of rash, flashed in her mind suddenly and she thought, very firmly, No.
There's a look in his face and she felt caged within it. He rubbed tiredly at his eyes and she scrambled out the doors, legs moving fast enough she thought maybe they were running without her, leaving her behind, and—
Bite marks.
Karin stopped.
She walked into the room.
The body in the room was covered in bite marks and the sheet covering it didn’t come up to hide all of them. Red hair and white limbs poked out from under it and she walked towards the corpse. She fell on her knees and took the body's hand in her own because it wasn't—it couldn’t be—
Expired.
It was.
She was covered in bite marks, some scarred over and some still with blood on them. Karin didn’t want to look at her arms or her legs because the bites coated them. Everywhere. Karin felt something hot on her face. She realized she was crying.
Someone took her arm and Mama’s body got further and further away. Karin reached for her and missed, pulled the sheet off instead, and she saw her face. There were teeth indents all the way up her neck to her cheek and her skin was starting to peel and her eyes were staring straight up, glossy and shining, as though there were still tears somewhere in them.
Karin threw up. Yellow bile came from her mouth and smeared on her chin. The hand on her arm pulled her up and through the hallway.
Expired.
Karin looked up at the nurse dragging her, looked at the woman’s brown hair. It was up in a tight bun with small pieces free to frame her heart-shaped face. Her eyes looked like they could be kind. They returned to the double doors and the nurse opened them and the injured Grass shinobi inside looked like they could eat Karin alive.
The tears on her face were starting to dry. The warmth of them was fading. The hand on her arm was leaving tiny, finger shaped bruises imprinted across pale skin. Bloodied bandages littered the floor and the nurse pushed her forward. She stumbled and almost tripped. Please don’t leave me here, she wanted to say. Please don’t leave me here! They killed Mama! Please!
The nurse left. A woman dressed like a medic nin took Karin and offered her forearm to a man on a bed. He looked like he's about to die. He looked at Karin with eyes all hungry.
The man on the hospital bed leaned forward and his mouth dropped open. His eyes, a light brown, glanced up, examining and accepting Karin’s state of being, and he looked very young. He bit into her skin and drew blood and Karin thought he looked like a monster. She was vaguely aware of someone screaming, and the entire world was starting to shift in shade, starting to darken, like the energy of the village was growing darker and darker and darker—
Karin was vaguely aware of herself screaming. The medic nin clapped her hand over her face, silencing the noise, and the man who looked near death a moment ago sat back, wiping his mouth. He smiled. The medic nin motioned with her hand, and the man stood and left. A new patient took his place. Karin stared into his face and he leaned forward and he bit. She screamed into the medic nin’s hand and the second man leaned back got up left another patient took his place. The woman leaned forward and she bit and Karin eventually stopped screaming.
.
Karin doesn’t have a shower in her tiny apartment, but she times out her bathing times very carefully to avoid being seen. Sasuke tried halfheartedly to get her and Suigetsu and Juugo to stay with him in the Uchiha compound, but after Suigetsu and Juugo both refused, she sure as hell wasn’t gonna take him up on it. She likes Sasuke, really, but she’s getting kinda sick of him. He mattered to her because he was the only thing she had to cling to once but she’s fine now. She’s better now. She doesn’t need to cling to anything now.
It’s over now. It’s done. Besides, with all her scars and all her anger and the glasses perched on her nose, Sasuke never would have been able to love her anyway. She’s never thought of herself as particularly pretty. The only thing interesting is her coloring. Dark red hair, spiked up against straight and falling down long. Equally colored eyes. Pale skin to contrast. Her skin is clear enough, the lines of her jaw not unattractive. But Karin’s got brands up and down her body, scars painted across her skin, and she hates all of them and they are never going to go away. The skin is perched, bridged, curving upward and inward according to the countless sets of teeth that've pierced it and that’s forever.
She thinks her eyes are striking and her hair is striking and she has clear, even skin but she isn’t pretty the way a whole girl could be. Konoha is full of whole girls, and Karin’s never going to be pretty like that. She’s seen Sakura. Sakura’s beautiful and strong and whole.
Karin will never be like that.
But it doesn’t matter. It’s over now. The war’s over. She doesn’t live in Kusa. Orochimaru’s redeemed now.
(Karin still remembers what they did. She still remembers what they did to her in Oto. She still remembers being an experiment, being cut open and bitten again and again and screaming and begging and stretching her sensory ability until she must’ve have been looking halfway across the world and that still wasn’t good enough and she screamed more. But Orochimaru’s redeemed now, so when they make eye contact in the grocery store, Karin tries not to flinch.)
It’s over now. All of it’s over now and she’s fine. She doesn’t need Sasuke to cling to, doesn’t need anyone. It’s done. She’s fine now. She’s fine now, and that’s why she only bathes between three and four in the morning. All of Konoha might suspect her of something but she didn’t spend a week sneaking showers at Sasuke’s place and watching the bathhouse for nothing. It’s never locked, but from two to five, nobody’s there. She’s seen people walk in around five thirty and she’s seen people leave around two, but there’s a safe spot, and she always puts herself firmly in it. If a day feels badly she can take a glance around for chakra signatures.
Today feels auspicious. She puts her clothes on one of the shelves and puts her glasses gently on top and when she sinks down into the warm water she breathes out a sigh that moves through her entire body. After she’s all clean and she’s standing in front of a mirror without her glasses on, so she’s just a vague feminine shape, a mild blur, she wraps herself up in a towel and closes her eyes. She starts to hum while she brushes through her hair.
She wonders what she looks like without her glasses. Karin wants to think she looks softer or kinder.
What do I look like without my glasses?
Sasuke would say, What? if he even answered at all.
Juugo would say, You look nice, but you always look nice, because he’s always kind to her no matter what her face looks like.
Suigetsu would say, Ugly, and then she’d yell at him for it and he’d yell back and she’d pretend she wasn’t laughing.
No one ever sees Karin bathing at the onsen. What would someone say if they found her in here? Everyone in Konoha suspects her of something. Everyone in Konoha watches her like she’s done something. She thinks if someone were to come in, see her brushing her hair, singing softly to herself, eyes closed and arms exposed, body hidden only by a towel, maybe they would say—
“Got you!” Sakura’s voice crows and Karin’s eyes go open. She drops her hairbrush. It clatters on the floor. “I finally caught you taking a bath!”
Karin whirls around and Sakura’s laughing, triumphant. Karin takes several blind steps back, hip bumping painfully against the sink, and when Sakura reaches out to steady her Karin throws her hands out, smacking her away, and—
Her towel falls. Karin can’t see Sakura’s expression. She hears the gasp.
Karin’s too blind without glasses to see anything past herself and she glances down at her own body, at the terrible awful scars, the teeth marks on the swell of her breasts and the shadow of her ribs. She brings a hand up to her neck, to her collarbone, as if she can somehow hide the path of bites going up her body. She’s like a spooked animal, curling away, recoiling, heat gathering in the corners of her eyes.
“Oh, Karin,” Sakura says, and Karin hates her, hates her the way she’s been admiring her and hates her more for the way Sakura’s kind and whole and doesn’t wake up in the night screaming and Sakura pulls Karin’s body against her own, naked flesh pressed to Sakura’s soft clothes.
No one ever sees Karin bathing at the onsen. If they did, she always imagined they would say, Got you.
It turns out she was right.
Sakura pulls away and holds Karin’s face, hands on her cheeks, and Karin hates that she’s fucking crying. Who cares if Haruno Sakura sees? Who cares? So Sakura’s strong and beautiful and smart and whole and now she knows Karin is none of those things—who cares? Who cares?
“Karin—”
“I know, I know,” Karin croaks. “I’m ugly. It’s horrible. You can let go of me now.”
“No,” Sakura says, quietly, softly, kindly. “I’m sorry I snuck up on you.” You’re sorry because of what you saw, Karin thinks. You’re sorry because you had to see something horrible. “You’re not ugly, though,” she adds pointedly and Sakura’s beautiful and smart and strong and whole and Karin can’t breathe. “I promise if you bathe with us we won’t make fun of you.”
Sakura’s thumb swipes over Karin’s face and wipes away her tears. Karin’s too shocked to keep crying. Sakura leans forward so their foreheads press together, close enough that Karin can see those green, green eyes. “You look really pretty without your glasses on, too,” she says. “So you don’t have to worry about being embarrassed when you have to take them off.”
Karin can’t breathe.
“Okay,” she manages to squeak. Sakura grins and it’s three forty seven in the morning. Sakura grins and Karin’s been pretending admiration was jealousy but Sakura’s smart and strong and whole and beautiful and Karin’s really never been that great at medical jutsu but just Sakura’s smile could probably heal any disease. “Yeah, sure,” Karin says. Sakura pulls back, trails her hand down Karin’s scar stained arm until she reaches Karin’s hand. She squeezes. Karin’s abruptly very aware that she’s naked.
“I actually am here to take a bath, though,” Sakura admits, a bit sheepishly. “Mission ran late.”
“Okay,” Karin says dumbly. Her face feels hot. Her cheeks are still a little wet from tears. “I’ll go in with you. I can—wash your hair?”
Sakura says, “Sure,” and Karin washes her hair and Sakura washes Karin’s back, scrubs lightly at all the ridges inked into her skin, the scars on her shoulder blades and down her spine.
“Thanks,” Karin whispers.
“Any time,” Sakura says.
.
Later Karin remembers what Sakura had said. You look really pretty without your glasses, too.
She gets contacts.