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Her hands grip her kunai with sweaty fingers in white-knuckled fists that barely leave callouses, because Sakura's never been good with failure and every time she misses dead-center feels like an individual failure every time. Her legs tremble by the fifth lap when everyone else runs ahead of her, her head spins as she drops out then, because it's better not to try than to realize that it's never enough even when you do. She feels like glass every time she wakes up, feels closer to breaking every time she enters the gates of a place that was supposed to harden here, was supposed to ground her, was supposed to give her something to hold on to beyond a fleeting sense unjustified pride that makes shame curl further in her gut every time.
Pride and shame - they're meant to be opposites, aren't they?
Pride and shame, perfect and flawed, overachieving and average, so painfully average - they're all meant to be opposites. And yet it seems, for her, they always come in pairs, one sneaking in where the other is like two sides of one coin.
Sakura looks at the world that welcomed her, that shined on her, that shunned her, that ignored her, and she wants nothing more than to disappear.
Sakura looks at the world that she was never meant for, like jagged pieces fitting just a bit wrong, never quite right, and wants nothing more than to break, to destroy, to mark, to create - anything to remind everyone, to remind herself, that she exists.
Disappearing, existence - they're meant to be opposites. She's never quite sure which one she wants.
Sakura is born to parents who ruffle her hair as she reads books well past her age and comes home with ink-stained hands filled with paper of neat characters, fine lines and curled in just the right places. Sakura is born to parents who listen to the preschool teacher gush about how smart and well-mannered she is and gush about it too, who always forget to ask why. Sakura is born to parents who are proud, but she's never been sure if it's really of her.
She joins the shinobi academy for so many reasons, and the one she only ever admits to herself, laying awake under the cracking tiles of her bedroom roof, is that.
She one she admits to Ino, one day, back before glares behind backs and envy that grew over them both like acidic, poisonous vines, behind the veneer of a simple crush, is this: Sakura wants, for once in her life, to fail at something she can work towards. She wants to feel that same sense everyone else seems to as they get older, as memorization and grazing the material suddenly isn't enough, as she's shot down in spar after spar, as her legs and arms ache, as the weapons feel too cool and too heavy in her hands.
She wants to understand what true failure is; not the kind that makes her retreat to her books and her records and her rapid-fire mouthing in class that leaves her classmates giggling behind palms in a way oddly reminiscent of childhood playgrounds and a girl with slightly too-big shoes and a very much too-big forehead, but the kind that lets Ino laugh off losing to Shikamaru on the rare occasion that he actually tries but narrow her eyes and purse her lips as she fixes the very thing he used against her. She wants to understand the type of failure that leaves Naruto at the bottom of the class but still able to beat at least half of them in spars through sheer stamina alone. She wants to understand the type of failure that lets Sasuke come to class with bandaged hands day after day and only get better, only seem to get better, every time.
At the time, Ino doesn't seem to understand it. Sakura doesn't think she ever really does.
Maybe that's why she had her 'crush' in Sasuke, actually. Maybe she wanted to badly to understand what true failure felt like she mistook it for love.
It doesn't work. It never works. She trips and falls and scabs her knees and hides on the sidelines of spars. She learns katas and does exercises to the bare minimum, because you can't fail if you don't even try. She raises her hand as high as it will go and rattles off everything she's got from spending her life buried in books and scrolls, away for people and away from reality, as far away from reality as she can get.
The boredom that always seems to be there, like a parasite, sucking the air out of lungs and refusing to let her breathe, lessens, sometimes, when she reads and takes in things the history teachers don't always ask for, probably wouldn't like.
It's only later she realizes she was just scratching the surface of what's there to know, what's there to hide, what's there to find.
And still, it helps. The neat lines and circles of 100s on her papers, ever single paper, drowns out the average, average, always average of everything else. Covered in papers with full marks and scrolls of obscure history from hundreds of years ago and bruises from where she pinches herself too hard, sometimes, to to remind herself she's there, she exists, Sakura can pretend that's all there is in the world.
Just her and the comfort zone she joined a death wish to escape.
Her parents smiled when she brought home high score after high score and gushed about how smart she was.
Her parents indulged her when she blabbered on and on about Ino, accepting but never understanding why she talked more about her than any lesson from the academy, than any story from her books she pretended were real so she wouldn't have to look through her curtain of bangs and face the real world.
Her parents screamed and sobbed when she joined the shinobi academy. She'd forged her father's signature.
She parents felt as if they were behind a glass screen, something separating them for so long, so they could see but never touch, never really understand each other, and she'd never realized when it started but could still remember days it was a bit different, just a bit.
What did we do to hurt you, her mother would cry, a ripped family photo in her hands as Sakura made her way towards the opened door, one hand nearly breaking the doorknob and the other white-knuckle tight around her duffle bag strap.
She doesn't know how to say I don't know, even then, so she lets the words hand in the air as the door slams behind her, a finality and a wall that's never crossed, a wound that never heals, years later.
It's her fault, she knows. She's just never sure what to do about it.
Sakura is assigned to a genius of a sensei, with the nickname 'friend killer' and a mask that covers most of his face, Sakura is assigned with two teammates, light and dark, genius and dropout, bound together in a way she never will be.
Sakura is assigned to a broken shell of a man, to a sensei who sees them all as shadows of once-was and doomed to follow in their footsteps. Sakura is assigned with two teammates who eventually become one and then none, shadows of each other, geniuses in their own right, with godlike powers inherited and given and eyes that can trap people within another world and foxes with flaming, neverending chakra. Sakura is assigned with desperate boys, reaching out for each other with everything they have, until Sasuke is gone and Naruto chases him anyway.
Her teammates are strong. Her teammates are actual geniuses, who take failure and mold it, shape it into strength, however that strength may be. Her teammates have the ability, the importance, the power to do that, and she's just there, in the background, always in the background, always standing behind their excellence in her own painful mediocrity, destined to forever hang behind them.
Her teammates were born gods and have only had to grab hold of it. Sakura is born to a no-name merchant clan with no kekkei genkais or family ties to get her to places and has to pull herself up hold by hold, rock by rock.
And she fails. At the start, at least.
Maybe, she muses, pretending that the bitterness doesn't taste far too right in her mouth, that's why Kakashi-sensei never bothered with her. Maybe she was just too much of a shadow and never tried hard enough to be anything more. Maybe failure was too hard to try for her, and maybe he didn't know how to deal with that, because maybe he's never felt her sort of failure either.
He's felt their failure. Maybe it's why he tried with Sasuke.
After all, why bother with the civilian girl? The weak, bothersome civilian girl, who stops at her limits and cries over teammates and who couldn't even defend her team alone when it came down to it. The civilian girl who didn't try, couldn't try, because failure is suffocating and leaves her gasping, begging for air that never comes, but it doesn't matter when it's between life and death. Because there's no point trying with someone who never had a chance anyway, and maybe Kakashi-sensei saw that even before she did herself.
Maybe he was right. He probably was right.
That doesn't make the burning in her chest, the bitterness in her throat that rises up and begs to be spat out, the clenching of her fists, happen any less, and she wonders if it makes her a bad person for it.
Later, she'll look at Sasuke, and she'll wonder what makes you so special? What makes you worthy of his attention? What makes you worthy to be Naruto's guiding point? What makes you worthy of all their praise, all their faith, all their everything?
What do you have that I don't?
When Sakura is small, her fingers still chubby with baby fat and her eyes still innocently wide, is the first time her masks form.
They are ugly, walls of rot and decay built on crumbling foundations, but they work. Shyness and softness keeps Ino coming, keeps her friendly, keeps her there even as her blue eyes turn from pride to rage at Sakura's other new mask: the one that is polite, the one that is kind, the one that knows to keep quiet and let others talk because no one likes a know-it-all.
Her teachers smile to her own faked ones, brittle like glass and painted on with careful impressions, a false confidence in her voice as she says exactly what they want, lines up right with her test answers and right with the textbooks they lecture over and over until she can recite them in her sleep. Her eyes are always tilted just a bit down, her voice low when she speaks with them personally, perfectly polite and demure. The image of a perfect student.
Inner laughs at that, her voice echoing around Sakura's brain like a drum, as if reminding her, every time, of the way her screams inch up her throat, leave it raw and dry even without being released. To scream, to scream, to scream- does she even want that? Does she even want to scream so loudly the whole world hears her, so everyone can see, can realize, so she can do something?
Or does she just want everyone's heads to turn towards her, everyone's eyes on her, whispers still lasting, so there's some way to confirm she still exists?
But.
Her first mask is not those given to teachers in classrooms, or to classmates to feel some semblance of acceptance, or even to Ino, when she was desperate enough to have done anything for a friend.
Sakura's parents stroke her hair and remind her of her intelligence, so she gives it to them.
Sakura's parents sigh and tell her she's so smart, she's so far above her age, honey, why should you doubt yourself? And they're right; why should she?
Why should she when her hands shake as she writes sometimes, leaving splatters of meaningless ink across pages littered in between answers only Iruka-sensei ever asked about? Why should she, when her former best friend turns away from her, her posture perfect and marked with a determination she doesn't understand, a determination that gets her the second spot in their entire year? Why should she when she looks at her teammates, gods taught by a god, destined to leave her by the wayside?
She shouldn't, of course. So, she doesn't. And she doesn't. And she doesn't. And every time they smile, the ruffle her hair, they remind her she's getting older, isn't it time she stopped this ninja business now, and she almost wants to scream then, too, a loud, painful scream that would rip through the house and let them know exactly what she's thinking in that moment, hiding her clenched fists behind her back at their indulgent smiles, their gentle and blunt suggestions, everything-
They don't take her seriously. They've never taken her seriously. They've never understood why she became a shinobi at all, and they've never bothered asking why.
How did we hurt you, her mother will ask one day, later, and her answer of I don't know, unsaid but obvious, had never felt more true until then.
Later, she will look at Sasuke, and she will wonder, They saw everything. They saw your anger, your pain, how you hated them - I saw it - and they came after you anyway - I came after you anyway. What makes you worthy of that? What makes you worthy of that? What makes me not?
Later, she will look at Sasuke, and it isn't until later she'll wonder just how many masks Sasuke, too, wears.
Her breath comes out in puffs in front of her, white and cold like the snow all around them, a tiny cloud in front of her face that only ever shows up in the coldest of Fire Country winters; enough to turn her lips up, just a bit, at the sight, that Shikamaru had commented looked like cigarette smoke and Ino had yelled at him about it. Even now, they're still grouching, sniping at each other with dry, cutting sarcasm from Shikamaru and snappish remarks from Ino, all while Chouji looks in serenely from the background, providing commentary by way of chip munching from a bag he somehow snuck on the mission despite Asuma's explicit orders as to not do that as they left.
She won't be the one to tell. Honestly, kudos to Chouji for sneaking it past the guards, though she doubts they actually care.
The snow around them continues to fall, white onto white creating huge mounds, making existing ones even larger, and she wraps her coat around herself just a bit tighter, warding off the cold with the sheet of dyed cotton, the same grey and white the blends her in neatly with this place. It reminds her, weirdly, of Kakashi-sensei's hair.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Ino grouches, though there's none of the animosity, like lightning cackling between them the way there was on the rooftop those weeks that seem like a lifetime ago on the hospital rooftop, with her teammates shooting towards each other at top speed, each of the top, most power, most damage-dealing jutsu in hand at each other, ready to main, to injure, to-
Did they want to kill each other, then?
The fact that she can't tell, can't understand, is rather indicative on it's own.
"Do you want a list?" Shikamaru grumbles back, his eyes shifting around their surroundings, likely looking for anything too off, too normal, out of ordinary or trying too hard to be ordinary.
After all, trying too hard to blend in is it's own brand of suspicious.
"That would be helpful, actually," Chouji smiles innocently, crumpling up his now-empty chip packet as Ino smirks at Shikamaru, her lips pulled just slightly up.
"Like, categorized and labelled. Bullet points with elaborations and all. We need an actual list, Shika - maybe then we can figure what the issues are and what's just your shitty personality."
"My shitty personality? You're really one to talk, huh-"
If Sasuke had stayed, could Team Seven have been like this? This easy camaraderie between all of them, not just Naruto and Sasuke, forever in the center, in the middle, the focus of something she's always just a bit to the side of? Snarking and sarcasm that's happened enough to be routine, and not a rarity? Competence enough to be trusted on a mission alone - and with an extra teammate all three don't have much experience including in team strategies yet?
"Do not mention the fruit salad incident, I swear to god-"
Or maybe everyone is destined to break apart eventually. Maybe it's all like firewood, whole and huge them burning, turning to ashes and crumbling, fading to grey, to powder from solid. Maybe everything eventually burns out and all we're left with is the memories she isn't even sure how many are genuinely pleasant.
"Okay, that's it-"
Or maybe it's not that. Maybe it's that Team Ten all stand in the same circle, all complete it together. Maybe it's because all three round out the team, all three make up for each other's weaknesses and capitalize on each other's strengths. Maybe it's because Team Ten are a team meant to succeed together, not meant for two gods to carve their own paths and her, mortal, foolish, useless, to get lost in the grass.
Why, she wonders, as Naruto runs himself ragged for a person who obviously doesn't want to return.
Why, she wonders, as Kakashi's training sessions go from little to none.
Why, she wonders, as Naruto leaves, a grin on his face and cheer in his step. He's going to travel. He's going to see the world, he's going to train, he's going to reach out and grab the godhood he's been destined for with a iron grip. She can feel herself smile as she imagines it: Naruto, Jiraiya behind him, running towards a light uncatchable for anyone but him, a speed and stamina unmatched by any (thanks to the demon in his stomach), his hand out, reaching, reaching, reaching for-
For Sasuke. Always for Sasuke.
Why, she wonders, when Kakashi doesn't try, not even now, when she's the only one left. Why, when he has no other choice, is she still second?
Maybe it's because impressions always carry weight, and fondness from whatever missions they've had together doesn't translate to a belief she has any chance at all. Maybe it's fear, prediction, prediction she's going to crash and burn or plateau as her teammates continue to soar higher and higher, and maybe he just isn't ready to see that happen again. Or maybe he sees no value in wasting his time on someone he's already deemed a failure.
Why, she wonders, her hands tapping the dark wood of the librarian's desk softly. It's smooth and cold beneath her fingers, hard and grounding in a sea of complexities she has no idea how to even begin unravelling, in the clusterfuck of situations and resentment that has become Team Seven it doesn't seem like anyone else is interested in fixing, either, so neither is she.
Why indeed.
"Oh, yes?" The librarian is familiar, now - an elderly woman from the genin corps, close to retirement by now, she's sure. Her dark brown hair has begun to go salt-and-pepper grey, dotted with flecks of age, and her eyes have wrinkles around him, well-worn with age; both smile and frown marks. She smiles kindly as Sakura looks up at her - still up, for despite her kind presence the woman still towers at least a foot over her short, five-foot-one self - with her hands playing with the hem of a shirt she'd made herself from one of her old dresses, because she'd felt weird about just wasting them.
"Excuse me..." Second, second, second...
"Can you tell me where I can find the books on genjutsu? I checked, and they don't seem to be in the library's main section..."
At least there's something she can fix. And failure, right now, is no longer an excuse for not trying.