A/N: This is just a drabble, a sketch if you will just to get me back into writing again. Gawd, i missed this. And this still needs to be revised...sigh...
All the standard disclaimers apply.
"It's Somebody Else's Problem."
Ford Prefect
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She has grown up around death, its inmost tips and suggestions. The scars of battle, the haggard look about her mother's bed, where she tussles and turns at night, where she cries so softly, ever so softly so she can't be heard; the sometimes empty chair, the patch on the roof that's never fixed. She plays along and pretends its not there, it couldn't be there, and returns her mother's beaming smile.
She knows blood better than anything, the smell and look of it whether from a cut or bullet wound. Her stomach is hardier than most for all she's seen of this, cuts and bruises, mangled limbs from nameless shinobi, and sick children: "poison" she reads on their charts. This is where she grew up after all, the clinic, and a hospital just like any other. The scent of alcohol and disinfectant, the spotless tiles and bright lights are home to her. Home to them.
Is it normal for a child to grow up on this: blood, stitches, medical terminologies and imagined sickness? She can't sleep some nights when she wakes up to find her mother gone and her father passed out drunk on the couch, the smell of beer and cigarettes still strong, his snoring even stronger. His mouth is half open and she imagines his snore, the loud horn like sound, bursting open his wounds and the sound carrying away his blood and flesh,his weigh, his life.
There is little truth in Sakura's life anymore, little more than statistics and medical texts, the bits and pieces that could not be made whole. She knows now that right and wrong are merely words in her life, they are not choices or labels to define and act anymore. Yet she still believes, still hopes that maybe somewhere it still exists.