Sakura Haruno didn't have a favourite colour.
That's not to say she hadn't ever awarded the title to the many worthy choices available but they hadn't ever lasted so long as to chase her vexing inconstancy away.
She had been envious of those able to stay faithful to their first most choice; the ones who could eagerly exclaim to new friends their most favoured colour and remain parroting the unchanged answer.
In true childhood fashion, she had decided it in honour of her hair that that had been bestowed the lace pink shade of her namesake.
When she had started at the academy it remained the finespun pink of gossamer dreams and suger sweet kisses, shadowed only by the unavoidable confrontations of her bullies.
Then came Ino who chased away the grey trodden petal her skies had coloured and heralded the rise of a new dawn, a new Sakura, all with a valiant scarlet ribbon encasing the newly forged sisters.
Red she had decided, felt like friendship and steadfast heartbeats, it felt like a much anticipated horizon and it became the anchor on which she would upheave her newly brightened world.
The closed (but still slightly open her heart whispered traitorously) chapter of her friendship with Ino signaled the washing out of her crimson velveted life, and despite the alluring obsidian lurking behind smooth as glass corneas, she viewed the world in only caverns of violet hued cosmos.
Purple was the only shade of childhood she would allow herself to linger on (she ignored the visceral voice taunting that Ino lived in shades of purple and the splash of crimson decorating her forehead protector, looked awfully reminiscent of a certain friendship laced ribbon), it spoke of secretive rendevous to magical hideaways, her own paradise surrounded only by paper flowers, well loved stuffed toys and the cosmos she dearly beheld (again the voice didn't relent, pointing out that she had brought Ino into the sanctity of her haven).
Sakura found it hilariously ironic that she could unwaveringly claim a favorite flower but never a favorite colour.
She pondered what that said about her; maybe a woefully indecisive girl unfit for the comfort of stability? Maybe.
Purple remained a constant, fading only when lace pink shards rained across the forest floor, a hurricane in pink heralding a beast roaring to tear the world asunder.
A tempest unhindered by natural weather; kept in place by the castor's will, when Ino and her tied in the chunnin exams she wondered which colour raged victorious. Sakura pink or cosmo purple?
Either way it didn't matter; after all both were two halves of the same soul.
Unsurprisingly, amaranthine bled back onto cosmo petals, leaving a sunburst orange stain in its place.
And orange was notoriously hard to get rid of.
Naruto had always been sunshine smiles and ever blue skies, but his earnest declaration to bring back their wayward teammate had alighted tangerine sparks within her heart; reminiscent of the autumn lush that seasonally painted Konoha's great oaks at the end of every spring.
Despite Naruto's religious fervour in drowning himself in the blaringly unsubtle shade, it possessed a magnetism not unlike that of a blazing hearth.
It was a shame she thought, that orange was such an underrated colour for all its warming magnificence.
But sunrises only lasted so long, even (or especially) the ones that hymned promises as easily as sun rays.
The loss of a sunrise, though saddening for the loss of serenity also signaled the rarely witnessed but always glorious burn of the sun reaching its zenith.
Before she had been warmed by the fleeting orange promise of the sun, now she found herself basking in the star shine of its golden radiance.
And she owed it all to Tsunade shishō who had stoked the will of fire slumbering within her, teaching her to chase the surprisingly elusive light of the sun and eventually nurturing a supernova reflecting the gold hidden in her shishō's hazel irises.
This golden glimmer of resolution became the mountain peak on which she would admire her newly leveled reality.
After all, gold was a treasured rarity, so it was only expected that she carve it into her milk softened bones and interweave it amongst spider threaded neurons.
But gold was also adorned on crowns and molded against jewels. Used to glorify trophies and praise the worthy.
It enchanted on lookers with the beauty of the sun but reminded them of its soil ridden roots. A precious metal indeed. It was the spoil victors would hope to receive.
But it did little to protect its wearer, serving only as a cursed target for the desperate and the sinful.
Bronze had no such dilemma. It shielded its wearer, glinting victoriously in battle for there was no nobler weapon than one of bronze.
So it held true that she would encase her heart in it's safety, bronze walls held taut against vermillion threads.
A cacophony of wooden dolls began dancing, orchestrated by their masters whims, arching their swords with malicious vigor yet hollow to all.
A marionette on a string.
A puppet on a thread.
She trusted Chiyo obaasan to lead her into battle, gave her body willingly but she was too smart not to realise the implications of her defeat, a foreboding future stared back from empty puppet eyes and dead hands clutching unfeeling weaponry.
The taunting clicks of puppets manoeuvring, bending and positioning, acting out a violent (she was in the mood to romanticise her tradgedies) Kabuki, the only audience witnessing the act, being the dueling puppeteers and the sole breathing performer.
When the sun shadowed the puppets at just the right angle, she caught bronze; bronze army against bronze elites.
Red and White. Startling colour against the absence of colour. Grandchild and Grandparent.
And Sakura? She was the curtain call. The pre-destined end to a tragic beginning.
Sasori of the red sand died in a hollow puppet embrace and Chiyo obaasan chose the golden sand as her spirits final resting place.
And Sakura, disciple of the slug princess Tsunade mourned the master puppeteer Chiyo.
The bronze she carried in her chest would transfigure into gold in memory of her victory against Sasori and ache lead from Chiyo obaasan's sacrifice.
But weapons forged of bronze were of rarity for ninja, silver possessed a more sinister gleam after all, molded precisely for assassins of the night.
Steel dragons raced across the heavens; pantomiming wicked endings and pure beginnings.
Silvered lightning fractured the heaving firmament, illuminating the all too clear madness lying wickedly within unburnished irises.
From the newly reaped wounds, the skies began bleeding rivers upon rivers, perhaps attempting to drown this tainted world in rivulets of purity.
The harsh crackling of voltage willed to life, assaulted her eardrums in beautiful rapture, focusing her attention onto beating mercury wings in place of the usual cobalt.
An anomaly brought to existence by the refracting columns of white thundering the skies in resonance with the steel of kusanagis blade.
The sharpness of the sword, challenged only by its wielder's will, bled symphonies as it cut the charged air between them landing precious millimeters from her neck.
The physical distance (though little) between her veins and his sword became nonexistent when he inched closer; the steel now caressing skin and (she wondered if he had cast a genjustsu) the quicksilver of the blade dripping into her veins, poisoning her with its metallic brilliance and seeping its way into the chambers of her rapturously pulsing life organ.
She wondered sardonically, if he were to suddenly carve her heart out of its cage, what colour it would be; human vermillion or silver monstrosity?
Either way she didn't care. As long as it was held by his hands; clasped tightly in his fist, her heart could be stripped of its attachment to her for all she or it cared.
Surviving was something she had always cursed and excelled at.
In the hours after her encounter with Sasuke kun, with the moon peeking in through an errant tent flap, she would muse; that although she was no longer witness to the tumultuous wrath of nature, neither in the heavens nor in her could've been lovers eyes, she could recall the addicting mercurial poison circulating her arteries with dizzying clarity.
She doubted she could ever forget such intensity, the crazed look in his eyes mirrored by her heart.
She housed the poison willingly, treasuring it a keepsake.
Then the war to end all wars happened. A goddess hellbent on power resurrected and a murderous tree on rampage.
With the orange sun on her left and the blue moon on her right; a devastating eclipse was wrought into existence.
It was of no consequence that her two idiots orbited and reincarnated over and over again, two parallel lines that she would connect, she would put an end to the cycle even if it was the last fucking thing she ever did shannaro!
Civillian born Sakura Haruno of Konoha punched out the rabbit goddess Kaguya with the strength of a mountain and magnitude of an eclipse; inverting the spectrum and decimating the restrictions of colour on her soul.
Some would look at her candy floss mane and remark on the obvious.
Others who pride themselves more perceptive, peer at the forest of her eyes in (so they think) crystal comprehension.
Even more look to the colour staining her companions; purple for Ino, orange for Naruto and blue for Sasuke.
She didn't have a favourite colour, despite her propensity for red hued clothing and petal pink hair, her world was dripping with saturated pigment but she couldn't claim a shade for herself, not anymore.
Because she was Sakura fucking Haruno and her incessent inconstancy was what intrigued her to life.