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You have been reincarnated into the universe. You realize this slowly, like it's just another obvious fact of the universe (even though something tells you it isn't.) The sun comes up in the morning and it sets at night, ninja are awesome, mochi is delicious, and you are Haruno Momoka.
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Mama’s hair is the color of bread dough. She looks at you funny when you tell her so, but the bread she bakes for you is soft and warm and full of all the best things in the world. It’s a nice compliment. You don’t have the words to explain this yet. Mama smiles tiredly at you when you poke the dough and insist on calling it aa-cha .
Daddy’s hair is the color of the cherry juice stains you get on your nice white sundress. It’s a purple sort of pink that isn’t really covered up by Mama’s dying it a brilliant red color. Mama looks upset by this, but Daddy just laughs and tells her it’s proof that Harunos breed true. Pink never comes out once it’s settled somewhere and it can’t ever really be forgotten, in sundresses as in people. Mama stiches a ruffle over the stain and you press your fingers against it when Daddy leaves the village on busy-ness. You miss him a whole lot but it’s okay.
Nee-chan's hair is pink. So, so, pink. Pink like the carnations and roses and peonies at Mama’s favorite flower shop. You don’t know why this makes you upset, but it does. People’s hair shouldn’t be pink. On adults it’s weird, on 5-year-old big sisters it’s unnatural. Mama points out that your hair is pink too, but it’s not the same. Your hair is lighter and a just a tad more coral. (You’ve never been to the sea, how could you possibly know what coral looks like? You just do.) If the lights aren’t very good and you’re squinting, you can almost pretend it’s blonde. The rest of the time Mama braids it so you don’t really see it enough to care.
Mama says your hair might darken over time; she pulls out a picture of herself when she was young to prove it. It’s old and Mama doesn’t look happy in it, she talks about a war, but her hair looks brilliant and pale and you have to admit that sometimes hair changes as you grow older.
It’s unlikely, though, that your hair will ever be like Sakura’s. Hers was never as light as yours in the first place, and yours has more ‘very-ants’ in it anyways which meant even if some bits darkened not all of it might. Daddy says that’s funny because Sakura means cherry blossom and Momoka means peach blossom and they both have pink flowers, but peach trees are special because they sometimes have more colors than just one kind of pink.
Nee-chan blushes shyly when Daddy talks about things like that. She likes that she’s Sakura because it means beauty and she wants to be beautiful, and also because cherry blossom trees were the most important trees in Daddy’s hometown. You think it’s sad. So sad it hurts. So sad you cry yourself to sleep some nights, just thinking about nee-chan and cherry blossoms.
Because cherry blossoms mean beauty, but they mean a goodbye sort of beauty. They don’t last, and when they’re gone there’s no fruit left behind for people to enjoy. Ephemeral, quickly dying, easily crushed. It’s not a strong thing to want to be.
You’re glad you’re a peach blossom instead. Peaches mean longevity and truth and warding away evil things. (And fertility, Mama jokes and pokes you in the belly. She wants lots of grandchildren out of you. Daddy agrees, but he has a weird sort of look on his face and makes you promise not to start too early on the fertility stuff. Peaches mean virginity, he says. You don’t understand what that means.)
He and Mama joke about adding a plum tree to the garden, but your garden isn’t very big so you don’t know where it would fit. They go to the hospital to see if anyone can find them a plum tree. The morning after they come back, Mama starts crying over the umeboshi in the breakfast rice. Nobody talks about plums anymore.
---
Daddy leaves on busy-ness and when he comes back it’s not through the front door with a smile and a kiss like always. A mean looking man shows knocks on the door and Mama calls him “Shinobi-san” and nee-chan shushes your questions while Mama starts to cry.
Mama frantically packs up her purse and goes to the hospital. You can’t help but remember the last time Mama and Daddy were at the hospital. Shinobi-san stays at the house, but he looks very uncomfortable having two pink-headed civilian girls to look after. You ask him questions. He answers. Nee-chan doesn’t like the way he talks and you can understand that, he doesn’t talk like Mama and Daddy do, but he talks about things that make sense to that little part of you that says things you shouldn’t know.
Bandits kill people and steal their things. This is just true. Nee-chan asks why people would do bad things, but you understand. Morality is subjective. Needs must. Or maybe they just like killing. There are a lot of reasons for bandits to do what they do. Nee-chan cries at the thought.
You tell shinobi-san he reminds you of the giant stingray they pulled out of Naka River after it killed 3 people. The words don’t come out like you want but he gets the point. Nee-chan is horrified and makes you bow very deeply to apologize. Shinobi-san says it’s not needed. He looks very pleased with you.
Mama comes home with Daddy and Shinobi-san leaves. Daddy is all covered in bandages but he kisses the top of your head when you go to hug him and everything’s okay.
Nee-chan asks Daddy about the bandits. Daddy says he would be dead if it weren’t for Shinobi-san and his team. Mama says it’s ridiculous they let Daddy get hurt at all, especially with all they’re paying. Daddy says it can’t be helped; the village is still understaffed after...after that happened. Mama sighs her unhappy sigh.
After thinking about it for a long, long time, Nee-chan declares she’s going to be a kunoichi. She’s going to protect people like Daddy and make sure everyone gets home safe all the time. She’s going to be the best ever and all of everyone’s problems are going to go away.
Daddy doesn’t like the thought at all of his sweet little baby being a ninja, but Mama points out it’s easy enough to transfer schools and that she isn’t going to have much time to mind both Sakura and you for a while.
You know they’re talking about money and you know all the things Mama isn’t saying too. Being a ninja is dangerous. Much more dangerous than busy-ness and bandits. Being a ninja makes you dangerous too. You think about stingrays. About the people a stingray might kill even if it didn’t mean to. About men, old like Daddy but still unsure what to do with crying little girls.
Ninja die all the time and even when they don’t, they’re not the same as they could have been. Haruki-down-the-street is 15 and a ninja and his father yells at him that he never comes home anymore and that he doesn’t care about his poor mother. Haruki-down-the-street waits for his father to stop yelling and hands over a thick, thick envelope from the doorway, never crossing inside, and disappears down the street. You wonder why he’s called Haruki-down-the-street, but you suppose it’s probably because nobody ever sees him except for those nights with his father yelling and he’s just standing there down the street. Nobody knows where he lives, nobody sees him around town.
It might also be because his father sometimes yells that Haruki is “not a Kawaguchi anymore,” and that he’s “dead to the family,” but you don’t like to think Haruki-down-the-street's father means any of those things so you don’t think about those times much at all.
---
Nee-chan gets enrolled in the Academy. Mama takes you into her new job at the records office once Daddy starts going on busy-ness again. She reminds you to be extra quiet and extra nice to the people there, and you are. She reminds you not to ask strange questions, and you consider it.
Graciously, you keep most of your opinions and curiosity about stuff to yourself. It’s not that hard to do because there’s not to say or do at first. Mama lets you read the records sometimes and they’re boring because you can’t read well yet but when you look at the words your eyes stay on the page and that’s new so it’s interesting. (It’s not new, but it is. You don’t know why you expect the words to fall out of your head like it’s a three-story window, why remembering the shape of the characters gives you such accomplishment, but you do and it does.)
There’s a woman with half her leg missing and gruesome scars all over her body that sometimes comes in with lots of files from another department and sits down to parse them all out everywhere and bring new ones up. She’s obviously the one Mama doesn’t want you asking questions to, but every time she comes you pull up a chair and help out running the files places.
She doesn’t like you doing this, but you only sneak occasional glances at her leg and it makes the work faster so she lets you. Very practical.
Nee-chan complains to you about the girls in her class and about kunoichi lessons and about how much she hurts all over. She doesn’t complain to Mama, who looks more tired by the day. She teaches you how to read when there’s nothing else to do and when she starts learning the shamisen you badger her to teach you that too.
She hates learning the instruments. You hate learning the instruments. Nobody likes learning instruments. You always wished you had properly learned them, though, so it makes doing the practices easier. You pester Sakura to borrow a children’s violin from her kunoichi teacher. Violins are cool.
Your show off how much you can read now, but the lady with only a leg and a half doesn’t seem impressed. She just nods and gives you appropriately more work when you help her out.
---
Concentration and 'expanding the mind' teach your body to produce more yin chakra. You've been doing a lot of concentrating and mind expanding recently, and you realize something in you is changing. Yin chakra helps you process information faster and remember more things. You start thinking about all the parts of you that don't add up, remembering things you have no way of explaining why you're able to remember them. It’s not immediate, but it's there.
You practice the shamisen and the violin and you read the books nee-chan brings from the Academy and you think.
And you grow.
There are a lot of things you don’t know yet, there are a lot of things you only half remember. You are Haruno Momoka and you are a peach blossom and you have no desire to change that, but being Haruno Momoka has always been a surprisingly complicated thing and you’re realizing that more and more every day.
It doesn’t matter who you were or what happened, it matters what’s happening now. Your sister has started talking about a girl called Yamanaka Ino, she’s started wearing a red ribbon, and that means there’s so much happening.
You’ve thought about what you would do in this situation. Of course you have. You can’t think about what you would have done, though. You’re still a child and you don’t know and you know too much and oh god, what are you going to do?
Before, knowing too much gave you some sense of confidence. You were smarter than you had any right to be and even when Mama thought you were odd, she praised you for it. Now you know enough to realize how weak you were, are, have been, will be.
The warmth of Daddy’s kisses on your head lingers, even though it's several weeks now that he's been away on business. You’re weak, it's true. Still, you’ve got a chance at something, you just have to think, think, think.
A lot of stories like yours say they knew they couldn’t change the Uchiha Massacre. That they were too young. They didn’t want to end up being interrogated. They didn’t know how. Maybe those were good reasons. Maybe there were more reasons you couldn’t remember yet. Who knows?
All you know is that you could try. You are a tiny 4-year-old pink haired child, you are conspicuous as hell and you don’t know the basics of stealth, but you could try.
So you tell Mama you want to join the Academy.
---
When Mama walks you in to register you for the Academy you tell the person with all the papers you’d like to join the upper years. You can write and you’re smart and you’re not very good at taijutsu yet but Mama was apparently a genin once and she’s been teaching you some stuff since you asked so nicely and really, it would let her work more.
The instructor hears that and looks at your last name like it’s a puzzle. Haruno isn't a name he expects to put forward for advanced placement. He doesn't seem to like the idea of it. So it's weird and stupid, but it's still fortunate that Mama’s the one bringing you in. She says the forms don't have Daddy's signature because Daddy’s out of town and the man makes a face like he’s drawing all sorts of wrong conclusions. He marks your clan with a question mark instead of ‘none’.
Later another instructor checks your writing and book-learning and shamisen. You get put into nee-chan's class and she looks very embarrassed. You’re not sure if it’s because you’re so clearly her baby sister or if it’s because you’re so bad at target practice. Maybe both. Ino-chan keeps the bullies away from her, though, and you can’t help that you’re not as experienced as everyone else with the rest of stuff. Throwing kunai and shuriken is surprisingly hard.
Uchiha Sasuke’s in your class and you approach him once to eat lunch with him, but he’s not very sociable. Even though they’re calling you precocious you’re clearly not a prodigy and clearly nowhere near his level. You suspect he doesn’t respect you because your aim isn’t very good.
You make a point of practicing every day after classes until finally, instead of walking home alone or with his brother (who appears at the gate like a mirage and only for a second whenever he picks Sasuke up), a different boy waits at the Academy’s swing-tree in Uchiha colors.
You dash over. “Uchiha Shisui-sama!” you call. He looks over and Sasuke looks over and nee-chan looks over and you’re a little winded when you stop in front of Shisui. That's embarrassing, but you don't let it stop you. “Ano, I have something to tell you.”
“Alright,” says Shisui. He smiles at you indulgently, if a bit confusedly.
Of course he does, you're a child. He doesn't know any better. You're a child with abysmal kunai skills and you got winded running from the training posts to the swinging-tree. You're an idiot. This was not a good idea. (You're going to do it anyway.)
You can’t help but figit and look around. There's no way for you to tell if anyone is watching, but it helps to ease your mind anyway. Shisui peeks playfully around too, perhaps to look for your parents, but you're sure he would be able to sense people around much better than you so it's still a comfort that he looks. You beckon him closer and he leans down so you have his ear.
“Danzo has replaced his arm with a tree. The root is rotted through,” you whisper as low as you can. It feels horse and unreal in your throat. “He's trying to take your eyes. All of them. He doesn't care how.” Then you hug him. You’re glad he doesn’t try to hurt you because he certainly could have. He's a beautiful, smiling teenager but he's also a jōnin and beneath his shirt you can feel he’s all coiled muscle.
It's comforting. He's much more qualified to handle this than you are.
You step back and he lets you. His face stays in that same indulgent expression he started with, but you can see his eyes are red and swirling now. You don’t look away, as if somehow that might make him trust you, and you say in a more normal voice - a more childish tone, “But Daddy would say you’re too old for me. So even if you like me back, we can’t.”
You stick your tongue out at Sasuke, who had leaned over curiously to listen, and run along towards nee-chan. She's playing with Ino and they're both staring at you oddly so you tell them very firmly that Uchiha Shisui is the prettiest person that ever has been and that his hair is curly, which is the best thing ever because it would look so very cute in pink.