Left – To be a lion in a forest of dragons. Sakura-centric.
Probably depressing. And thoroughly unedited. You have been warned.
(You all know I actually like Sakura, this is just a play on her character.)
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The best lose all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity - Yeats
(The above is the quote I shall take completely out of context.)
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"I want to hunt down and kill a certain person."
"I want to make everyone recognize me!"
"I w-want my family to be p-proud of me."
The cheerfully prepared words die in her throat. She slumps in her chair and adjusts her pink bangs.
"Otou-san says I will be able to protect my friends." Everyone smiles gently at him.
"I want to be the next head of the Intelligence Division!" It's said with childish pride.
"Geez, it's so troublesome but I gotta do it." No one cares, he's a genius anyway.
"What about you?" Iruka-sensei asks with his kind smile. "Why did you want to be a kunoichi, Sakura?"
She doesn't have anyone to kill. People recognize her as much as they're expected to. Her family would be proud even if she donned an apron and worked as a potato-peeler. Her only friend is Ino and Ino would laugh at the thought of being protected by her. This is the farthest thing from troublesome, because reading about jutsu theory and practicing with kunai is fun and she doesn't understand why no one understands.
"I just … thought it would be interesting."
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There are four types of shinobi.
The First. Their innate ability certifies them a place in the minds of history. They are the ones who grasp onto their widespread legacy with two-year-old hands already stained with the scars of kunai practice. There is no need to say more. Everyone knows all there is to know.
The Second. They are failures from the start. But sometimes they go on to fail so resoundingly that maybe, maybe someone will remember who they are.
The Third. They start so low, scraping rock so utterly and unforgivably solid that they can plant their feet down onto it and lift themselves up where people can see them and reach out their respectful hands. They begin their journey up a desolate well with arms bloodied from scrapes against the wall and unspoken curiosity pressed to the front of their minds. Later, they wretch their rightful place from the Firsts.
The Fourth.
(Sakura can't think of any examples, because they rarely have names to remember.)
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One month of being on a genin team and Naruto is already injured, the idiot. He sits inside on his hospital bed and Sasuke lounges in the bedside chair pretending he doesn't exist while simultaneously trying to gauge the extent of his injuries.
Sakura stands outside the hospital room door, hands raised for a knock but unable to actually perform the stupid action. The hall is thankfully empty.
Or maybe not.
"Sakura," a lazy voice drawls from behind her. "How long are you going to stand there?"
She turns to see Kakashi leaning back against the wall (how did he get there?) with his book in one hand. Despite his posture he hasn't ceased to be intimidating. Sasuke scoffs at him and Naruto yells freely but she's seen the way he moves when he momentarily releases his mask, not the one that covers his face but that one that surrounds his body. So this is a jonin.
"Um … is this Naruto's room?" She questions shyly, eyes downturned. "I didn't want to disturb a random patient."
"Yes, that's his room. Are you going to go in?"
"Yeah. But … his clothes were outside. Are you sure he isn't naked, Kakashi-sensei?" Of course not. He would be wearing a hospital robe.
"Want me to check?"
She nods hesitantly, keeping up her pretense, and moves quickly out of the way as he comes to push open the door and stick his head inside. From his distance, he smells of murky paper. More like a librarian than a killer.
"Oi," he drones into the room. "Do you have clothes on under there? My other cute student is acting shy."
"Yeah, of course!" Naruto's rough voice emanates from inside. "Why the hell would I be in here naked with the teme? Come in, Sakura-chan!"
Kakashi's head emerges from beyond the door. He lays hand on her small shoulder and steers her in, "go yell at him along with Sasuke, he needs someone to pound some sense into him."
She steps into the room and feels the door close behind her, but suddenly her interest is concentrated outside and she turns to stare thoughtfully.
It's the first time sensei's spoken so many words to her.
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Kabuto, Sakura thinks wryly with the little knowledge that life's handed to her, is a Second.
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(Temari is not.)
Temari is the daughter of the Kazekage. Despite her cold demeanor she interacts easily with everyone thrown her way, never intimidated, never scared. Maybe it's the result of growing up with a psycho killer for a brother.
They meet at the chunin exams, near the Naka River beside the training grounds. Sakura hugs her knees to her chest and looks out at the surface of the water, remembering how easy it had been to stand over it. Her first time at the exercise had been a quaking, unsteady success, but a success nonetheless.
Sasuke had fallen directly into the lake and emerged spluttering a minute later, teeth-clenched in the air saturated with his teammates' laughter.
Her nails make white-crescent shaped marks in her skin as her hands tighten. She was better at something than Sasuke-kun but it doesn't matter and even if it does, she knows she'll laugh uneasily and assure him that he would always be perfect.
(Chakra control didn't help her to defeat Ino, after all.)
"Oh look, it's you," a gravely voice calls. Sakura concentrates on her reflection in the river because she sensed the girl approaching, another skill useless for everything but self-protection.
"You're supposed to be in the hospital, right?" Temari says again. The Kazekage's daughter's presence is suffocating, like a veil of unattainable power standing behind her.
"I was released," she lied. "They needed my bed for the people with worse injuries." She could always go back later. No one noticed one missing little girl.
"Yeah, it's kind of a death fest out there, especially with those Kusa kids. They're just tearing each other to pieces aren't they?"
"Um … is it that bad?"
Temari shrugged, and Sakura watched the other's girl's reflection in the river. "Kid, you don't know the first thing about 'bad'." Her grin was almost feral, "come to my country one day, and I'll show you how our chunin exams work. They say that if you don't lose a teammate, you're not trying hard enough."
With that the girl walks away and Sakura silently marks her as a First.
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The First, Second, and Third have one more characteristic that she's forgotten about, the only thing the Fourths are ever exempt from.
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When Konoha falls to pieces, Sakura is still nursing the shallow injuries of her match. She's sitting in her newly emptied hospital room, holding her injured elbow with one hand, wondering if the sand-covered monster she sees in the distance is something from her dreams.
Later, she realizes that no one will come to release her from the hospital because all the medics are out trying to bring people back to life. So she slips out of bed in her shapeless blue hospital gown and makes her way out of the ruined building barefooted, trying to ignore the cuts of shrapnel stinging her heels.
The sand-monster sits atop a building under the harsh noon sunlight, waving a lumbering tail that strokes up clouds of dust around it. Sakura sees Naruto in the distance, yellow-hair more vibrant than the sun itself. She watches as her idiot teammate leaps right towards the creature, careless, exasperatingly reckless, like the completely hopeless (lovable) fool he is. A brief fire lights up in her eyes and she wants to punch him again.
It dies down when she sees the creature turn towards him, because he's an idiot and stupid and Naruto and he's her teammate. But from the distance she can't do anything as it strikes at him with one giant claw while he's halfway through the air, and she knows with horrified certainty that it'll meet it's mark.
(It would have met its mark if there weren't a presence that jumped in front of him right before he was shredded to pieces. Another genin who took his place.)
Hinata, Sakura tells herself blankly, would have lived to be a Third.
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One month later is when Sakura is finally released from the hospital. They don't need the beds for others, because others are already dead and the medics decide to focus on those that have a chance of living. Her living presence in the empty hospital makes them feel like they've maybe succeeded a little.
Konoha is different when she walks out of the building. She's spent the month talking to anyone who comes by, gathering as much information as she could not to fight but to protect herself from the new world.
(Orochimaru is also a Third, a hopeless Third who has clawed his path upwards in life and in a cruel, twisted way she respects that.)
The first place she visits in the memorial, because she's still not sure how many people are truly dead. On the way she sees Temari and her psycho brother standing in the street, delegating tasks to a group of shinobi with Suna hitai-ite.
Sasuke would pull out his kunai and strike from afar. Naruto would land brazenly before them and demand a fight. Sakura carefully slinks past them, but that's ok because it's why she's alive and they aren't.
The memorial is much larger. She walks unsteadily into the clearing and approaches the stone, letting glasslike eyes scan over its carved names. She lifts one finger, gently traces 'Ino', and then 'Naruto', and 'Hinata', and 'Shikamaru'. 'Kakashi' isn't present but she remembers seeing him in the aftermath, walking with a limp that probably wouldn't ever go away. Sasuke rests by their new Kage's side. He's ecstatic with power but she knows he's nothing more than a prideful plaything.
All the Firsts and Thirds are under the ground and the Seconds are long forgotten and now's a world left for her to learn to live in.
The unfamiliar sensation strikes her thoughtlessly, and Sakura brings her fingertips up, up to her face, feeling the sudden curve of her own mouth.
Why … am I smiling?