Written on a whim.
(Disclaimer: Naruto is not mine.)
Good Girl
When Sakura is born, she is labeled as a good girl. She cries no more or less than a healthy baby should, and when she passes that stage, becomes a quiet and obedient little girl.
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When she is four, she realizes why her mother smiles proudly. A boy is screaming in the streets, tears running down his red cheeks, ears deaf to his mother's yelling to stop that right now Tatsuki!
When she notices her daughter's wide eyes, Sakura's mother leans down and pats her daughters head. My little baby wouldn't do that, now would you? she teases.
Sakura shakes her head dutifully, and her mother laughs.
That's right; good little girls like you don't do things like that.
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At five, she meets Him.
He is tall and pale and strong and nice.
Reaching down, he brushes her bangs apart and touches her newest bruise, blotching across her uglystupidweakcrybaby forehead.
Why did you let this happen? He asks, fiddling with her hair.
Forgetting what her mother said about talking to strange men, she repeats her mother's mantra. Good girls don't fight. This is different, she thinks. He is different.
He laughs and she smiles timidly. Only weaklings don't fight. He looks down at her. Are you a weakling Sakura-chan? She doesn't remember telling Him her name, but that's alright, because He is different.
I don't want to be. She says, and is glad she says it, because it makes Him smile.
-
The next time the girls try to hurt her, she isn't a weakling. She bites and rips and tears and breaks and scratches and bruises and yells until she pays them back for everything.
He sees and smiles. She is glad she wasn't a weakling that time.
-
She stays glad until she gets home. Her mother is there, and angry.
Sakura has bruises again that night, but it's okay because she is used to it and He is happy.
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At six years old, nothing is right anymore.
He is gone, and so is her mother.
She remembers walking into the kitchen and staring.
Her mother is on the floor, bleeding and broken and slashed and torn and dead.
But she smiles and tells ANBU-san that it's okay, because He is different.
-
She meets Ino when she is crying because He has left.
Ino is nice and pretty and smart and a good girl and reminds her of Him because she brushed her bangs aside and made her a not-weakling.
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When she is seven, she understands.
She understands why He left.
She understands why she has to make Ino leave.
You can't be a not-weakling when you depend on somebody else.
-
She latches onto Ino's fears and begins to like Uchiha-kun.
She knows that Ino will latch onto Uchiha-kun too, because she isn't a not-weakling and needs to have somebody to depend on, and if she can't get Sakura back, she'll take Uchiha-kun.
Sakura doesn't care, because to her, Uchiha-kun is just a temporary shadow of Him, but she'll be nicesmartpretty because she's a good girl.
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By the time she is ten, she is a not-weakling-in-disguise.
She doesn't want anybody to know yet, because He is the only one who she'll be a not weakling for.
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At twelve, she is angry.
She is angry, because He chooses Sasuke-kun.
(She forces herself to call him this, even in her mind, so she won't slip up)
She is angry because He chooses Sasuke-kun and Naruto and Kakashi-sensei and not her, his not-weakling.
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She is even angrier when Sasuke-kun knocks her out and she misses her chance at finding Him again.
But as always, she waits, because she is a patient, good little girl.
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If she is angry at twelve, then by fifteen she is freaking pissed off.
She learns to smash and tear and rip and live harder.
And then she learns and studies how to clean it all up, because she is, after all, a good girl.
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At sixteen, she meets a man who lives even harder that she thought you could, and a person she hates.
Ne, ne, why do we have to fight? They ask. Tobi is a good boy, and Flower-chan seems like a very good gi-
He is dead before he can finish, because she hates that term.
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By eighteen, traitorous, stupid, stupid Sasuke is back, and Sakura is at the end of her rope.
She is sick of waiting and be a patient, good little girl.
She walks to the gate, and finding her dear 'teammate' there, paralyzes him and sets out to find Him.
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After thirteen years of waiting, she decides to screw being a good girl and be the not-weakling she hid away.
After thirteen years, she sees Him again.
He is still strong and pale and nice.
Well.
Nice to her at least.
At nineteen years old, Sakura finds her way back to her Orochimaru-sama.
I was bored, and this idea was bugging me all day.