Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. I do own a computer, though.
A/N: I woke up two days ago and found Naruto (the fish, not the future hokage) belly up. I can't really say that I was surprised… he had been kind of listless for the last few days. He was one of those fish you can win from the carnivals (I actually won him at the one held at school), and had already lived much longer than most of the fish from there tend to last. But it's still sad.
Hinata (once again, the fish) seemed kind of lonely, so I got a new fish earlier today. Everyone, meet Gaara-chan!
Gaara (glares at Kitsuru): …chan?
Not you. The fish!
Oh, forget it. On with the story!
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It is easier to forget than to learn.
A medic-nin required years of training, in addition to Academy and training with her jonin-sensei and genin teammates. It required more hours of staying up late, more weeks of practice, more years of learning than any other type of shinobi.
Sakura knew this well. She knew this better than anyone, despite the fact that she had only begun her training as a medic-nin a few years ago. She had crammed so much time into so little, filling all of her waking hours with frantic studying and practicing, and averaging—at the most—four or five hours of sleep a night.
She had obsessed over it, even bordered on insanity at times… but that was something all shinobi suffered from, in a way—it was a fact of life that any and all ninja went completely insane eventually. Just look at the Beautiful Beasts of Konoha.
It is easier to hurt than to heal.
She had lost track of the hours spent reading scroll after scroll of techniques, theories, and jutsus.
She had lost track of the days she had spent at the hospital, her arms buried in another person as she frantically worked to keep them breathing, to keep their hearts beating, to save their lives.
She often wondered why she had chosen medical ninjutsu as her path.
Normal shinobi—if they failed and lived, then they could try again. If she failed, someone died. And, as she was only human, she had to fail.
It is easier to kill than to save.
She would never lose track of the times she had failed, when the heart monitors trailed off into one long note, when the life of the patient slipped from her grasp and to a place just out of reach.
She would never lose track of the tears the parents, the siblings, the spouses, and the children had shed when she told them.
She would never lose track of the times she cried, when nobody was around to see her.
It is easier to lose than to win.
To any ninja, a loss was terrible. They could be injured, crippled, even killed. But to a medical ninja, physical pain would have been a welcome change to the mental anguish they had to suffer.
Each time she saw the corpse of someone she hadn't been able to heal being taken away, she swore its glazed eyes were accusing her. She could have saved them, had she only been stronger, smarter, better.
Normal shinobi were just there—and then they were gone, taking with them a life. Theirs was a fleeting existence for the most part, and they could never dwell long on guilt, lest the distraction cut it shorter.
It is easier to destroy than to create.
It would be so much easier to walk away, to go back to being a regular kunoichi… but it was impossible for her to back out now.
She had tried.
She had walked into the hospital, determined to tell Tsunade-shishou that she was quitting… when a stretcher would roll past, and somebody would shout at her to help them. The injured person would look at her, eyes full of pain and hope, and she wouldn't be able to refuse.
She would see those she had lost, following silently after her wherever she went. Whatever she did, they saw. Their eyes were always watching her. She couldn't let them down.
But at times, what is easier is the hardest thing of all.
Whenever somebody told her that she had it easy, being a medic-nin, Sakura could only laugh.
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Eh… this sounded better in my head. Angst is not my forte.
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