Triumvirate
"There are three things I believe in," Sakura had said the day Sasuke returned, "my mind, my hands, and my heart."
All three things had failed her at least once. Her mind had let her fall behind as a ninja in the infatuation of her youth, her hands once had no strength to save things, and her heart had allowed itself to be broken.
No one questioned why it was she still believed in these things that'd let her down. But if you'd asked, she'd tell you, "Because if I only believed in things that had never failed me, I'd be left with nothing to believe in."
In her sad, lonely world, Sakura had no one, no thing to rely on but whatever her body could take, whatever her hands could create. That was her way—her system of life.
So she'd started to grow up, in that halting way that girls do—because girls have a method of hiding things that hurt and breaking things that disappoint them. She'd built up her mind by building up her heart, she'd built up her heart by building up her hands, she'd built up her hands by building up her mind, and suddenly, there was only her that existed.
Her and her need to fightfightfight for something that maybe she didn't believe in, but couldn't leave either. There was no need for anything else.
Someone had asked her why it was that she closed her eyes when she dealt the killing blow to an opponent. Sakura had rocked back on her heels and laced her fingers behind her back, not looking at the person who'd asked. "When I look into people's eyes, I can see myself reflected back. If I don't look into the people's eyes that I kill, I don't have to see my reflection. They don't have to be people anymore."
Things cease to exist when they can't be seen.
Sakura, at the age of sixteen, smashed every picture frame in her home, save one that was made of tarnished silver and had the picture of three smiling genins and one smiling jounin. She threw all of her ruined pictures out the window and watched silently as they fluttered away, carried by the wind. She nailed her last lone picture frame onto the back of her apartment door.
It'd stayed there unnoticed for several weeks until Ino came over to drag Sakura out for socialization.
"What's that, Sakura?" she'd asked, eyes widened in surprise. "I thought you got rid of all your photos. Why do you still have this one?"
Sakura glanced briefly at the picture of 12-year-old Team 7 before she'd grabbed her jacket, dragging Ino out with her.
"Because I need a future, not a past."
That was the last time the picture had been mentioned.
Sakura worked hard, harder than most ninjas, because she knew her work was to save people. The thing about healing for her was that when she worked on cures, people weren't people anymore. People could be solutions, experiments, puzzles, hosts, but they could never be people. It was easy to forget that these things she worked on were people, because she was precise, her work was precise, her hands were precise. People were not precise.
She could forget that she was working on something living, breathing, someone who probably had a family, maybe a little dog, three daughters, two sons, a life, and if she screwed up, there was always the next experiment to work on, so she could fix whatever she'd broke.
And Sakura never met with the deceased's family. She couldn't look onto the faces on the daughter's whose father she'd killed or the mother's who son she'd wiped out of existence. Even if she had tried to save them, the fact that they were dead served to wipe out any excuses she tried so hard to rationalize with. It was pretty hard to escape the truth when it was unchangeable.
Once, Sakura had gone drinking with Ino as her partner, which wasn't the best idea during normal circumstances. Sakura got drunk. Ino hadn't. Sakura had killed her patient. Ino hadn't.
As soon as the pink-haired woman had gotten sufficiently inebriated, she'd began to talk. "See, the deal with being both a medic and kunoichi is that I kill a lot. And then I save a lot. So, I kill. I save. I kill the people I save and then I save the people I kill. And pretty soon I get to wondering why insanity seems like a better option." Sakura had laughed desperately, knocking over her mug of beer in the process. "Isn't that funny?" she cried, tears streaming down her face and hysterical giggles bubbling out of her mouth. "Isn't it?!"
Ino carefully picked up Sakura and carried her home. Because it wasn't funny.
It really wasn't funny.
And then Sasuke came back, and shook the notquitesteadybutgettingthere foundation of her world, bringing with him his darkness and hatred.
He came to her door that very night, and she responded the only way she knew how.
"Will you forgive me for all that I've done?" he asked.
She'd looked at him with careful consideration, silent and analytical. "Sasuke," she'd said slowly, "there are three things that I believe in. My mind, my hands, and my heart. They may have let me down before, but they're strong now. They'll never fail me again. But you… you'll just keep failing."
She'd turned back into her apartment.
"I no longer believe in things that keep failing."
She shut the door.
Because, maybe, she wasn't okay now. But she was gonna be.
She was gonna be.
A/N: Heh heh. I kinda forgot to edit my story Hoola Hoop before I posted it. Ooooops. But yeah, got this one up, right? A little Sakura introspection?