tiny tiny pieces

...

michi to you all

i think you know what i mean

1. You are Haruno Sakura. One day, you will catch up to Uchiha Sasuke.

i merge into the sea of people

and melt away into nothingness

He's attractive.

He's always sitting alone by the fence, avoiding your best friend Ino and that clever but cunning red-head Karin. He seems like he's watching, but you're not sure what he's looking for. Certainly not you, though. His top two buttons are always undone. He has some sort of thing for your other best friend Naruto. He has a sketchy family history, filled with coup d'etats and too much power, but he never brings it up. He never brings anything up.

His aloof attitude makes the girls swoon. He avoids people but they seem to flock him all the same, as if the distance is alluring. Even surrounded by a million people, you bet he feels just as alone as you do, standing in an empty classroom with its pristine white walls and straight desks and you.

(One of these things are not like the others. You know this too well.)

He looks like he's older than the rest of the class. Large Adam's apple, broad shoulders, deep voice. He looks like a grown man, while the rest of them are small and childish. You take solace in the fact that despite the swirling abyss of mystery others see in his eyes, you see a scared little boy. You see a child, just like when you look in the mirror at your own plain reflection.

Sometimes, you can't help but feel a little special, being one of the only ones that can really see him for who he really is. You also can't help but feel envious, because Naruto sees him too. And Naruto is not afraid to reach out of his barriers. You know Naruto is helping him, because Naruto helps people. You just wish Naruto could see that you maybemaybe need that sort of help too.

You're a little afraid that you're falling for him. But at the same time it's fitting, someone as sequestered as you falling for someone as elusive as him. All the other girls like him to, so, as it always seems to be, it doesn't really matter how you feel.

He doesn't notice you.

(You can't blame him. Nobody really notices you, even with the shock of pastel running down your dress-shirt clad back. You don't even notice yourself, sometimes.)

You sit at the back, not stuttering like Hinata but nonetheless quiet and painfully reserved-unless, of course, you have to elbow Naruto in the nose for saying something stupid involving your body parts or ramen. Naruto has a habit of saying stupid things, just like you have a habit of not saying anything. Naruto also had a habit of just being stupid in general.

(Naruto's the only one that you show yourself to, in your sporadic bouts of uninhibited violence. You love Naruto. Naruto may be faraway, but the bright rays still manage to overcome the distance, piercing through your thick blockade. You love Naruto, and he's the only one that can reach Naruto. Therefore, you feel like you are in his debt.)

He sits off to the side, gazing out the large windows; so close but miles away.

(You have a dream that you're in a race and you just can't catch him, no matter how hard you think you're trying. Normally it takes all of your willpower to lift yourself out of bed, but after the vivid images burnt into your eyes you don't mind getting the hell out of there. Sometimes you see him when you close your eyes. You blame it on the fact that he's always there but never here, but you're pretty sure you'd be a hypocrite for calling him out on it. He's haunting your thoughts and dreams like all the other ghosts that follow you and haunt you and make you scream bloody murder in the supposed sanctuary of your fairy princess pink bedroom. You think that's what he's like; just a ghost. Sometimes, you're half convinced he's just a figment of your imagination.)

He's the top student. You are number two by the slimmest of margins.

You don't think he sees you at all. You have 99.99% of the same classes but you don't say anything so he doesn't see you. He doesn't see how much you loathe yourself and the ridiculous walls you can't help but build around yourself and the masks you wears.

(You don't know what you're protecting. You feel so empty; there's nothing inside but hollow space. Sure; it's a defence mechanism, but it's a futile one at best.)

But you see him. You see how much he loathes himself (except for when he's offering a hand out to Naruto; he looks like he thinks he knows what kind of person he wants to and likes to be). You see him for the faraway boy that he is, distant from the world you pretend to love. You see him try to ground himself by beating the shit out of whoever he wants, whenever he wants, trying to convince himself that he has control over something in his life.

(You stopped trying to maintain control a long time ago. You're ahead of him in that. It's probably the only thing you're beating him in, but you are not proud. There is nothing to be proud of.)

Naruto is picking fights again. Naruto is too bright; too intense and vivid and, when angry, you're pretty sure you're suffocating in the storm of fiery passion. You try to talk it out-try and make Naruto see that it's all hurting you, but it's not good enough. It's one of the rare times you're being honest but Naruto's just not listening and it's raining and you're crying and you're dripping and fading and why can't anyone ever hear what I'm saying!

(I'm crying out for help, here! I think I maybesortakindareally want to kill myself. Please hear me. Please, please.

Help me.)

And Naruto goes and fights him. It's ripping you apart into tiny tiny pieces, and you can't watch so you run to the grass and get sick by the black and barren cherry blossom tree. As usual, nobody notices.

You feel like you're disappearing. Retching out pieces of your soul you can't get back.

(Suck it up, you bite at herself angrily, spitting the acidic bile out of your mouth. It's not like you had much of a soul in the first place.)

Later, you find out what happened from some babbling classmate with brown hair and brown eyes. He and Naruto got attacked by a group of burly older kids, angry by default and much too brash. They teamed up and they beat the crap out of the seniors and he helped Naruto up and it was soo dramatic! Because these two lost and lonely boys trying to find themselves in a sea of nothingness is totally the same as one of those stupid romantic dramas that Ino likes to watch.

(Personally, you can't stand them. You're not too sure why, but there were times when you had to run to the bathroom and shock away the panic attack with the splash of icy water. You may be the (second) smartest person in your class, but you do a lot of things you don't (can't) understand. Like why you use blunt paperclips to etch Nirvana lyrics all across your abdomen, like an spiderweb made of teenage angst, until you are red and bloody.)

Naruto finally has a good friend. A brother. Someone to hold on to. Someone important. You feel like you should be happy for Naruto (and for him. You can't ever forget about him), because Naruto of all people deserves to be happy, but all you feel, all you can see, is that you mean nothing now. Never have, never will, you are nothing.

(You dig your nails deep into your palm, until your skin snaps and blood is dripping to the pavement, to ground yourself; keep yourself from floating away like those helium balloons you think you used to love-after all, nobody would reach up to grab you. You do it to feel something. Anything. Please. Tell me, do I exist?)

You watch them stand on the hill. Ino likes to stand beside him (he's so hot! Don't you think he's hot? With that hair, those eyes, you can't say you don't want him!) with her standard pleated skirt hiked up a good four inches and her long pony-tail blowing in the light breeze. He's standing tall and calm at the front of the pack, staring at the sunrise with the faintest smile on his lips. He's realized something tangible and profound. You can see it in the way he's standing, the relaxed confidence that's rolling off of him in waves (if you ever have to drown, that's what you want to drown in). Here he is, beating you again and again, finding stability and solid ground before you can even pull your oxfords and knee-high socks on.

And that's when it hits you-no, you're not in love with the boy (with his shirt rolled up to his elbows, dried blood on his porcelain forehead. You think about how you've always hated your own, long and wide and just so stupidly large), but you understand him. You want him to understand you. Know you, for who you want to be. You want to lift up your shirt and show him the web of pain carved into your skin and for him to read the story branded on your stomach. You want to look at his bruised and bloody knuckles for what they really are, not just a symbol of violence and masculinity but the ache and blisters that surround his heart. You think maybe you do want to love the boy. You think that maybemaybe you want him to love you back. It hits you like a four-ton truck going 100 miles an hour and leaves you flushed and breathless, and for once in your life you know what to do. You reaches out, and although he's still physically quite a ways away, you don't think you've ever been so close to him.

(You don't think you've ever been this close to anybody.)

You let the pink strands flutter away (along with those choking inhibitions and expectations, along with all that you know you aren't) like the butterflies and fairy tales you've always tried so hard to believe in. You're not asking for a movie anymore, not now. Ino will lecture you about how you had such beautiful hair what were you thinking how could you do such a travesty! (And Ino will have a point. It took you two long years to grow it out, and less than two minutes to decide you wanted it all gone, but at this point, you are beyond regrets.)

Naruto will whine about how he loved to run his fingers through your thick locks. (And you, admittedly, enjoyed the contact. You're not entirely comfortable with being touched-in fact, you're not comfortable with it at all, but there's a sense of security Naruto's ministrations bring. You trust Naruto, sometimes-most of the time-more than you trust yourself.)

But you will smile and say that you are more than 10 (12, 15, 20, does it really matter?) inches of hair.

You are Haruno Sakura. One day, you will catch up to Uchiha Sasuke.

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AN: SO this will be an anthology of sorts of Sasusaku-centric fics losely based of off different songs. This particular one is based on the ending but not the special. Some may or may not be continued, depending if you want it. If you have any suggestions, just tell me and I'll take a listen and see :) PLEASE REVIEW OR I WILL CRY. Maybe. But still. Pretty please?