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Sakura's memories of her mother are pink-and-purple; cotton dresses and bruises and teeth stained with lipstick. Milkweeds woven into her hair, a drink that made her think of home. The colour of the patterns stitched into their old couch cushions.
Sakura remembers her father through gifts. Flowers when he'd missed her graduation from the academy. A music player, loud enough that she couldn't hear when things got bad. Gifts for her mother, too - cheap jewellery to match the mottle of her arms. A box of chocolates every time he would stumble home late, sex and booze and pitiful remorse clinging to him. Jars of trinkets, of apologies, twice a year. March 28th and October 15th. Sakura's birthday, and the day he convinced her mother to leave for Konoha.
Sakura knows her mother didn't hate her. Knows her father didn't. They might not have even hated eachother. She thinks that makes it worse sometimes. Thinks, if they just hated me and that was that, I could be done with it all.
She didn't tell the boys when they died. Partly because they had never talked about family before, and she wasn't sure she could start now, and partly because they were already chasing eachother across the continent. The Konoha Crush is a name that makes her laugh a bit when she thinks about it. Neither of her parents were crushed - not by falling buildings or enemy nin or giant fuck-off snakes of any of the things liable to kill them at the time. Her father died of smoke inhalation, passed out in their living room as the house burned around him. Her mother was cut through the stomach like some fucked-up impromptu laparotomy, like a pig for slaughter, by a chūnin who saw the colour of her skin and the cut of her clothes and the rush and death and who panicked. Sakura thinks that the chūnin had held a door open for her once, when her hands were full of shopping bags and books.
She's smart enough not to stay in the shell of her old home, and proud enough not to ask for a place to sleep from a friend, and so she finds herself shuffling in the line for emergency genin accommodations. The fluorescent light above flickers once, twice and returns to its quiet humming. There's a cold wind blowing through, but she finds herself sweating amongst the bodies and the thermal energy and she rolls her shoulders, unsticking her shirt from her back. The boy in front of her cracks his neck. She wonders if those stories you hear about people trying to crack their necks and accidentally snapping them instead are true. She remembers the sound of a sand-nin's arm fracturing from the force of a kick.
Sakura forces her eyes up to the wall, plastered with month-old posters and advertisements. Together we can prosper! a genial Hiruzen Sarutobi proclaims. Above him, a faceless ANBU is saying that with your help we can keep our neighbourhoods safe. report lawbreakers to the nearest on-duty shinobi. a secret kept could be a life lost. There's an ad for shinobi life insurance, offered to the slim group of ninja who believe they'll live long enough to have people to leave money for, and understand that they'll die soon enough that the insurance won't leave them in the red. A poster for a yap-n-yarn group that meets Thursdays.
She feels someone tap her on the shoulder and fumbles her weapons pouch. A hand catches it - familiar. Nails too bitten to be Kurenai, Iruka or Ino. Fingers too pale to be Asuma or Gai and past that she's not sure she knows anyone else with good enough reflexes to catch it and enough sentiment towards her that they would.
"Kakashi-sensei." She doesn't bother to turn around, just grabs back the pouch and ignores the flush of embarrassment that comes from fucking up in front of her sensei, again. He clicks his tongue and props an arm up on her shoulder, head resting in his palm. His elbow digs into her clavicle, and she considers the consequences of kicking his shins. Before she can decide, he sticks his head into her peripheral and blinks owlishly.
"I'm hurt you didn't ask for my help," he comments. It's bullshit. She doesn't ask how he know they were dead, why he didn't say anything, aren't you supposed to be my fucking teacher? Just stares at him a few seconds.
To his credit, he looks slightly chastised, and he pats her on the head absent-mindedly before dumping Bull in her arms with vague instructions about walks and then swanning off. She neither knows nor cares what he's up to, but recognises the dismissal and waddles out of the line, cradling Bull and trying not to bump into anyone. Sakura makes great effort to avoid the eye contact that everyone seems to want to be making. The message is clear nonetheless. Seriously? It's been three hours and you're giving up your place in the line like that? Also your dog is stupid, fuck you.
Roaming the streets at midnight, even with Bull by her side, is not an activity Sakura feels inclined to partake in, so she settles on the steps of an ice-cream shop that's still open and pats Bull absentmindedly. They're serving a new flavour, some tasteless pun about the Third's name. It feels too witty for the slight to be accidental, but she figures the owners can play the sad, grieving civilian when asked about it. She thinks of immigrants and orphans and decides that she will not be the one to say something.
Kakashi sticks an ice-cream cone in her hand and takes over Bull petting-duty. The flavour he's chosen is the new seditious one being advertised and she wonders a little about child soldiers too.
"ANBU are considered the most loyal in the village," she fishes.
"Loyal to who?" he muses, which is another can of worms she doesn't want to understand yet. "And I'm not ANBU."
Anymore, he doesn't say. Ice-cream drips onto her fingers. She licks it up and pauses for a moment, focusing on eating and figuring out what to say next.
"Loyalty is very powerful." Loyalty collars powerful people. It stops events like the Crush, like the Uchiha massacre, from happening. If you're not loyal, Kakashi, who is collaring you?
"When a river runs a course long enough, it becomes the only path it knows," he tilts his head towards the sky, "and perhaps the river is sentimental, too."
She considers the memorial stone, Gai. His familiarity with Uchiha techniques and the similarities between Naruto's face and one carved into a cliff.
"I've never asked who your sensei was."
He sucks in a breath and his eyes flick towards that cliff face, barely visible in the dark. She thinks of the way he stumbles over Naruto's name sometimes, the way he knew Naruto's favourite ramen.
She thinks of Kakashi’s loyalty to the Third, of the horrifying titbits Naruto will sometimes drop about his childhood. Thinks about the way the Third paid for his apartment and the weekly teatimes they had.
"Some might consider sentiment a bad trait for a river," she settles on. Men in positions of power may consider Konoha's loosest cannon interacting too much with its biggest time bomb not a wise move.
He hums consideringly, eyes flicking to hers.
"I think I disagree," she finishes. I'm sorry. To both of you.
"And what can a child do against the force of a river? Especially one travelling such a well-worn path." I know. It doesn't matter.
She purses her lips to respond but he taps a pile of papers sitting next to her, steals her ice-cream from out of her hands and vanishes into the night. Stacked neatly are the documents to an apartment with twelve months of pre-paid rent. It's in a good part of town. She wonders how many desk jockeys he menaced to achieve that. That thought shouldn't soften her heart as much as it does. Kakashi's put himself down as a second contact; his signature is a fucking henohenomoheji. Hashirama's wooden balls. Her heart swiftly un-softens.
Tucked near the bottom of the pile is a note. Saturday, furniture. I'll pay. If you're bad at decorating bring support. She considers the route from her new apartment to the Yamanaka compound, tries to remember whether Ino has Saturdays free or not and resigns herself to the unholy experience that will be Kakashi and Ino interacting. Sakura wipes ice-cream-sticky hands on her skirt, checks the shitty hand-drawn map Kakashi had done with directions to the apartment and heads towards a new address, keys jingling in her pocket.