She blinks and then they were gone.
Not went-to-the-store gone, not moved-out-of-sight gone, it was there-now-is-not.
Dead.
She was picking flowers like she normally did only she wandered a bit too far and didn't notice how the sun dipped lower from its place in the sky but she couldn't help it for she was searching for a specific flower, the flower that she was going to find that day no matter what. She was a bright child and devoted much of her time looking at different flowers, learning their meanings and what they could be used for then show her Okasan all the knowledge she had on them.
She had thought that when she got home her Okasan would scold her, "Sakura you've got dirt everywhere." She'd fuss at her face with a cloth to get some of it off then she'd sigh and ask, "did you get anything good?" Then Sakura would have shown her Okasan the beautiful blue violet flowers that she picked, their aconite Okasan, she would tell her with a proud smile.
She was not expecting to come home to a silent house and a smell that reminded her of the time she sliced her knees and palms up will learning to climb a tree, a musty copper scent that she knew immediately was bad bad bad. Her small feet made little sound on the carpet floor as she made her way to the kitchen, she was not prepared for what she saw.
Her parent's bodies lay side by side each other on their backs with their blood mixing together in what was like an ocean to Sakura. There was so much blood, she never knew that a person had that much inside them, it's too much for her to fathom. She has a fleeting thought that her Okasan would have a fit if she saw this mess, would probably cruse that she just cleaned then as fast as the thought was there it left leaving her with the horrific fact that her parents were murdered.
She walks one foot at a time until she is standing in between them at the base of their feet, she drops to her knees uncaring that she is getting blood on her, her parents blood her mind reminds her.
"Otou-san?" He is pale more tile white then his normal honey glow, she reaches down to hold his hand and finds it still warm. His green eyes – the same ones she has when she looks in the mirror – are half closed as if he's just going to sleep.
She heard a slight noise to her other side, a sharp breath in, and she quickly turns to see her Okasan is still breathing. She grips her hand in hers, "Okasan, Okasan, Okasan." It is a prayer that falls out of her mouth in little whispers.
(She was going to tell her Okasan all about the aconite flower, how it was also called wolfsbane and how it means be cautious and oh she should have known)
Her Okasan's eyes are open and she looks at Sakura all sea blue to her pale green. There is a faint twitch in her fingertips just a brush of a squeeze and she half says or maybe half exhales "Saku-" then she is gone too with the time it took Sakura to blink and she is left alone with only soft sobs to keep her company with her parent's ghosts.
(|||)
That's how they find her; covered in blood sitting next to her parent's corpse's in her empty house with their cold dead hands in hers. They move in quietly around her but she knows they are there, she can feel the floor boards echo their movements the second they were in the house. She thinks them odd with their porcelain masks shaped in different animal's likeness, they are more doll like then human to her.
(She remembers a flower by the name of iberis with pretty white petals, also referred to as candytuft an odd name for they mean indifference)
Someone with a weasel like mask picks her up and brings her outside to the front lawn where there is other people, they set her down on the ground and she struggles to resist the urge to hold on to them. They are alive and warm and not cold with death. Someone else puts a blanket around her and then a man in a red robe is standing in front of her.
He tells her that her whole clan in dead but does not give her any details as to what happened.
(they won't ever tell you because you're just a dumb little kid her mind seethes)
She does not say anything just sits there thinking about her uncles and aunts and cousins and all the other Haruno's that were there and then in a blink their all gone. In a hushed tone he says I'm sorry for your loss. Sakura looks up at him from underneath her wet pink lashes and her dirt hair his face is old and tired and sad.
She is the only one that survived and that's probably only because she was out picking flowers which she just remembers are still in her pocket. She reaches down and pulls out a daisy from among the other green steamed plants, holds it out for the man who told her that everyone she has ever known is dead and says, "Daisies were the first flowers that I knew the name of because they were Okasan's favorite." He slowly reaches down to take the now blood-stained plant and when he does she speaks again, "Thank you for telling me." She bows because her Okasan taught her that was the polite thing to do then wraps herself tighter into the blanket and makes herself small.
Sakura is alone and she wished that whoever killed her family had also killed her as well.
(|||)
The following days are a blur, she supposes that she was taken away and brought to the hospital to be looked at after she passed out on the ground. From the stiffness in her body she thinks it must have been a long time unconscious.
She's in the Konoha hospital in a room by herself in a white bed. She can hear feet scuffle down the hallway outside her room but no one comes in. she can hear someone say, "it's such a shame what happened to that clan. Their gonna have to have such a big funeral for all of them."
Sakura assumes that they are talking about her and thinks about telling them that she too feels that she is among the dead before she once again fades into a dreamless sleep.
(|||)
She is wrong she discovers when she wakes up again. They were not talking about her they were talking about the Uchiha. It seems that during the three days that she spent asleep in the hospital that Itachi Uchiha, the heir, was put under a jutsu that compelled him to kill his clan. He murdered about half of his own family before he was subbed.
Sakura learns through listening to the gossip that the nurses say while she pretends to be asleep that she knows one of the survivors as a raven hair boy in her class at the academy.
As the sun works its way down the sky to sleep she gets a visitor. It is the same man with the red robes who told her that her family is dead. Now out of shock she recognizes that the man is the Hokage.
She slowly sits up on the hospital bed and watches as the older man walks to stand by her feet. "I see you're awake now." His voice rumbles over the stillness and she nods at his question. "When your well and discharged you will be place in the orphanage" he says in a gentle tone, "you can remain in the academy if you wish."
Sakura does not want to go to the orphanage where there will be other children in a small building and with not enough adults watching every moment of everyday. No, she will not go so she asks the Third if she can remain of the Haruno compound, she is old enough to take care of herself and does not need to be taken anywhere.
It takes a little convincing for him to give in, he is a busy man and a predominate clan has just been half massacred – what is her small clan compared to the grand Uchiha? – he does not have time to waste on arguing with a pink haired girl. Besides he looked at her academy records and she is the top of her class, a genius in her own right and she will do fine on her own he tells himself.
