Porcelain
a story for 12-Fics by Shelby
Pairing: slight SasuSaku; Sakura-centric
Genre: angst/drama/romance
Theme #1: Hunger
Rating: High T – sexual themes/language
Warnings: drugs & anorexia nervosa
Summary: Sakura was breakable. Like porcelain. Running through a field of daisies in a size 0 sundress; dead on heels. Sasuke had needed her.
---
Hungry. She had been starved.
A pale sack of bones, dull jade eyes spoke of jealousy, craving a model's mirror image.
---
"Wow Sakura! You look so-oo skinny!" Ino smiled, commenting on her weight. A dank, dull locker room; a pointless high school gym class. Two high school juniors, both sixteen, one blonde, the other, a ridiculous pink. Sakura tied her sneakers and walked out, wondering if she should feel as happy as she should at those words.
---
A diary, red and childish, with flowers all over. Sakura wrote in it each and every day, tried to write about all the things she had forced herself to eat. How she hated the feeling of food in her mouth, hated chewing and swallowing.
E-a-t. Even the word made her toes curl. Because if she did, she wouldn't be so-oo skinny anymore! And then, she would be ruined.
---
Her whole life, Sakura wanted to be a model.
She desperately wanted to have the clothes wear her, not to wear the clothes; to project with graceful muted elegance and poise a beautiful fashion designer's trademark piece; to be perfect.
Skinny meant perfect, and she was willing to be the way they wanted, willing to cry and scream and hide the secrets under a tiny red dress, to match her signature pink hair and wear 7 inch heels on the runway and not trip once.
---
Her mother barely noticed at first, didn't notice the first ten pounds. She wished she could find some way to fix this, fix everything, wanted her daughter to be happy and normal and f-i-n-e.
The beginning five pounds, and her daughter begging, pleading her to sign up to try out for a new modeling agency called SUNA Models, the perfect company for her. So how could she say no?
The next fifteen, shed off like an extra skin, Sakura didn't need it; she wore heavy sweaters instead, posed extra hard for the cameras at the tryouts, studied even harder for lost time for finals.
And with the twenty-five, she began to notice It, even despite the happiness in her gaze, the jumping up and down when she was excepted, she had really gotten an agent! - the gauntness in her figure, the pale tone of her skin, her knobby elbows and knees. She was scared.
Fine. A simple four-letter word that could never embrace them.
---
When they had first met, it was platonic.
But it had slowly grown into something almost tangible, and Sakura couldn't care all that much about school sometimes, because in the place in her brain that she had, there was now his name, two handsome syllables, Sas-uke, her Sasuke.
Gorgeous, a model in his spare time, as was his father and brother.
Sleek black hair; pale white skin; charcoal-gray eyes; a perfect figure.
There was something deep inside her that screamed, gnarling fingernails and hair made of snakes, screaming, He's naturally beautiful, goddammit it's not fucking fair!! You're so stupid not good enough fat fat fat fat -
But at least when he kissed her, touched her, made her want him, the voice died away.
---
A flashbulb, blinding her eyes.
Sakura tried to be happy.
But happiness was much harder than she imagined.
--
"Want a . . . favor?"
A tiny, tiny question with a much wider meaning.
Sasuke, he was kind to her, had always been sort of nice, even though really he was too 'cool' for nice and talking and everything else -
- but no, he's not really nice, never calls and never comments on the pictures for the new photo shoot you just did, he never even says you're skinny -
-He looked out for her, had put in a good word about her talent to the director, Tsunade-something-
- did he really? No, he was lying, you're such a fucking idiot, so stupid, ug-ly, not good enough, UGLY -
- So she trusted him, took the tiny white bag and walked behind a concrete wall to a scuffed tile floor, and fell there, feeling it, ignoring the voice on her own.
---
Weeks, weeks of endless fun with Sasuke, when he let himself have fun.
At least he was a little gentler when they shared some heroin, didn't thrust as hard when they had something to drink with it; delicious chocolate martini, a screwdriver - it was glorious to feel so loose, who gave a fuck! amazing.
"What do you want to do now Sakura?" Sasuke would ask, and it would be take-your-pick, let's-have-some-fun, go out to a club, where he would sit silently and drink, and she would take him into a corner and kiss him roughly, loving the feeling of his skipped shave and how he touched her breasts.
---
They began to see her. Skinny. Sick.
Dead on heels.
"Pretty sad. I've seen them all before. In and out, just like that," the assistant producer said as they decided to give her a sharp, painful axe that will split her in half, crack her white pale skin and leave a terrible scar, a permanent stain.
---
He loves me, he loves me not.
Take the crack, take a shot.
Needle in the arm, needle in the leg.
But in the end, I'm going to beg.
---
He had needed her. Sasuke had needed her. It was . . . stupid. Superfluous. Pointless to a sad, pitiful degree. It was more like he had needed her presence than her at all.
Ugly pink hair (but admit it, it looked so damn right on her), green eyes, such a tiny, nice figure . . . .
And maybe he still needed her, beyond everything else, Sasuke thought as they told him to tilt his shoulders back a little and relax, just get with the feeling of the shoot. Maybe he just needed to clear his head.
---
Sick, pretty little thing. Bag of bones, collapsed in a heap in her bathroom tub, claw foot basin the color of her skin.
There was one memory, and Sakura was thinking of him – who?
Oh, yeah. Sasuke. Liar, the biggest liar ever.
But she had liked him, right?
---
Sakura was dreaming, pleasant, gentle dreams, of going to Kerr park and remembered the grill cooking, she was nine and her green eyes were just the color green and meant nothing, she was hungry, wanted some french fries, she just wanted . . .
Nothing. She couldn't want anything now, but maybe that had been her last happiness.
---
A million shots; an old, broken camera; fancy, useless lens.
Flipping over them, and a nice little piece written for her in the SUNA magazine. A short-lived career; a Hallmark to independent young adult modeling; a fresh face gone, in less than two years.
Frozen in time, prancing through a field of daisies, the scent of perfume clinging to a pretty size 0 sundress, white, as white as her skin, a picture of nature that would eventually die.
---
End.