Author's Note: Thanks to TheRYU for my very first story review! Thank you for your compliments! This shall be a multi-chapter fanfiction. Well then, as promised, here is the second chapter of Killing the light.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters from Naruto. I do own this plot, Haruno Midori, and Haruka-sensei.


Chapter Two: When Darkness Is All You See

By: Crescent Matrix

Kakashi watched his only female student in slumber, her bandaged chest rise and falling. Beside him, Naruto fumbled with his fingers in worry, occasionally scratching his head in sudden frustration. In his other side was Sasuke, unmoving, arms crossed, and in his rigid contour, yet clenched eyebrows viewed upon his features. Kakashi raised a hand and ran it through his hair. It had already been two days since the rest of Team Seven found the corpses of the remaining Harunos, well, corpse, anyway.


"Oi, sensei! Where's Sakura-chan then if she wasn't this... this... burnt ash?" Even before Naruto's humorless charade, Kakashi had already known that Sakura ran away, and in his gut, he could feel that something was wrong, or at least, something wrong will happen.

'A bad omen, this rain brings.' he thought. Not answering his confused students, he started to sprint towards Sakura's path, his students, though puzzled, followed him anyway.

"Kakashi-sensei, where are we going?"

"To Sakura, dobe." Sasuke answered for him.

"Hey! Shut up, teme! I wasn't asking you!" Naruto flashed his eyes angrily at Sasuke, then back to Kakashi's backside. "Did something happen, sensei?" Sasuke, too, expected an answer from the ever so silent man.

"The thunder." was his only response. Suddenly everything clicked, to Sasuke anyway.

"The thunder? Kakashi-sensei, you're spouting nonsense again! I mean, what's the connection between thunder and Saku--- oh..."

"You only figured it out now, dobe?" Sasuke said mockingly to Naruto. Naruto glared at the boy beside him, almost losing his footing from the wet branch he leaped upon.

"Of course I remembered Sakura-chan's scared of thunder! And don't call me do---"

"We're here." Kakashi spoke up. The threesome looked at the white-painted house where the Harunos resided. The gate was swung open, tread marks on the muddy ground around stepping stones, and the white door was wide open, water and mud trailing its steps.

"Kakashi-sensei, I think I smell blood." So did he, he could very well smell the scent of crimson permeating in the air. With a realization reaching the borders of distress, the three rushed into the house where they, in very much shock and despair, found the bodies of the Haruno women lying in their own pools of blood. Hurriedly, they neared the masses of flesh, checking for a pulse. Kakashi gently took his female student's hand and placed two fingers on her wrist. The heavens must have answered his hopes because suddenly, he could feel the pulsations, although, only slight.

"S-She... sensei... Sakura-chan's mother... she's..." Naruto's words trailed into silence as Sasuke simply shook his head to Kakashi's direction. "H-How about S-Sakura-chan? Is she...?" Naruto's sapphire blue eyes were hopeful, though his face seemed strained by the cold soaking into his skin.

"She's still alive." Kakashi let out a breathe he didn't know he held, and Naruto, to his relief, reached out to Sakura's chest towards the kunai, but his hand was gently pushed away.

"Sensei...?" Naruto looked at him questioningly.

"It'll be worse if you took out the kunai without the help of medical chakra. We will leave her to the doctors. For now, Sasuke, find a blanket of some sort. We need to bring Sakura to the hospital. Naruto, find a large plastic bag to keep the rain away while we carry her. The rain will make her temperature drop more." With these things said, the two boys rushed around the house, looking for the necessary things.

A few minutes later, Kakashi, Sasuke, and Naruto left the house carrying Sakura in a white blanket. Kakashi's clone was left inside the house tending to the corpse of his female student's mother. Four of Naruto's clones held long wooden sticks holding up the four sides of a stretched plastic bag over their heads. Soon enough, Sakura was safely in the hands of the hospital.

"Hatake-san." A female doctor came out of the Intensive Care Unit that contained Sakura.

"Haruka-sensei, how is she?" Kakashi asked the doctor named Haruka. He had already sent Naruto and Sasuke home, stubborn as Naruto was, when he got tired of watching them try not to shiver (of course, their attempts to look calm and collected failed miserably). He himself had already changed into drier clothes by his quick drop in his apartment. The dark orange-haired woman's face was molded in worry, as if hesitating what she was to say.

"Your student is fine, Hatake-san, though may I ask, do you know what happened?"

"No, ma'am, but the rest of my students and I thought they were being targeted. When we got to the Haruno residence, we found Haruno Midori, Sakura's mother, already... dead." The word seemed to leave a bitter taste in his mouth. "My student was found bleeding heavily with the kunai in her chest."

"I see." A pregnant pause in between words caused Kakashi to be nervous. Of course he cared for his students. They were, after all, his first students, the kids he was passing on what was taught to him by his own teacher, his own friends, by his own life. "Hatake-sensei, are you aware that Sakura's finger prints were on the kunai?" Kakashi's brow was raised. He could clearly recall that Sakura's hands were quite near her chest.

"She may have been in a genjutsu during the attack."

"Yes, perhaps that would explain it. Anyway, about her mother's case, that hole we found in her torso, it was made by a large burst of chakra. The thing is, the chakra blast, if it was a murder, would have originated from the outside, pushing the skin inwards. But in this case, it is not so. Studying her corpse, the skin on the front was torn outwards while the skin at her back was still intact. It was Midori's own chakra that killed her." Kakashi nodded his head to her as she explained this. He knew for a fact that while civilians couldn't use chakra doesn't mean they don't have any. It was simply dormant inside of them and grew more so when they grew up. He also knew that Haruno Midori was no ninja, reading from Sakura's files.

"An internal build-up of chakra? There would have been symptoms of that showing. That and a build-up of chakra of that size would have been immediately detected, especially with the annual check-up for the civilians." Symptoms of having a build-up of chakra would include a piercing pain where the build-up was, having a hard time breathing, as well as frequent vomiting, nausea, headaches, and such. Of course, it was common for chakra build-ups to occur in the stomach where chakra originates; if chakra build-ups do occur, that is, which is rarely since chakra build-ups can be immediately sensed, most especially in a village that trains ninjas, and remedied.

"Yes, that is correct. I shall ask Sakura about her mother once she awakens. As for this analysis, I will inform Hokage-sama of this."

"Haruka-sensei! We have an emergency!" A nurse in her snow-colored uniform came running towards the two.

"Of course, right away." Haruka said to the nurse, and then she turned to Kakashi. "She will be awake in around two days. You are allowed to see her as long as there is no noise. Well then, goodbye, Hatake-san." Kakashi then raised a hand at her retreating figure, then he went inside Sakura's room and simply just watched her sleep, waiting for her to wake up from her nightmares.


She opened her eyes, a bit blinded by the brightness of the light. She felt really tired, as though she hadn't slept at ll. Her vision, still hazy, faded back into the darkness. 'I'm still alive, huh?' was her only thought as she fell back to her slumber.


"It's ironic, isn't it, Sakura?"

"...Inner...?"

"Who else would it be?"

"Ah... what's ironic?"

"You, wanting to die but didn't. Mother, I think she had no reason to want to die, but she did anyway."

"..." Memories flashed before her. Tears threatened to fall from her jade pools. And then, she laughed, and the tears fell.

'I'm not supposed to be alive. Inner's saying the truth. I'm useless to the world... Mother... She's of more use to the world than I am. Truly how ironic... It wasn't supposed to be this way...' In her mind, she cried, she laughed, and then, she snapped.

"IT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THIS!! I'M SUPPOSED TO BE DEAD! I'M THE USELESS ONE! IS THIS ENTERTAINING?! I'LL GIVE YOU ENTERTAINING, YOU STUPID, STUPID, STUPID FUCKING CREATOR!!" she pointed to the empty sky.

"It's no use getting angry at Kami, Sakura-chan. He doesn't exist, or at least, we never believed in him anyway, did we?" Sakura could only look blankly at her Inner. Inner sighed and approached her spiritual sister. "It's gonna be okay, Sakura... we're gonna be okay..." Inner embraced her sweetly like a dear sister would. And somehow, deeper than the unfeeling look in Sakura's eyes, she hoped it would be, too.


"Kakashi-sensei! Look! She's waking up! Sakura-chan's waking up!" she heard Naruto's voice in the background. Groggily, she opened her eyes, blinking till her blurry vision became steady.

"N-Naruto...?" she asked out weakly. Her chest felt painful and more so when she tried to sit up.

"Sakura-chan! Sakura-chan! You okay?" His voice was loud, and it got louder as Naruto approached her. Sakura gave him a weak questioning smile and then looked around where she was.

'Ah... it looks like it's snowing in here...' Sakura had always liked the color white. It just looked so blindingly pure and innocent, like the snow. Her eyes turned to the other spectators in the room, her eyes passing through Kakashi, onto a woman wearing a lab coat, and her sight finally landed on Sasuke. 'He came to see me...' She smiled to herself. "Hello... everybody..." she managed to croak.

"Now, now, everyone, I will only leave you five minutes, alright? After five minutes, you must leave while I check on Sakura's vitals." Haruka said and she left the room, swishing her coat.

"Sakura-chan! Sakura-chan! What happened to you?" asked Naruto, his face full of concern. Sasuke merely leaned towards the two to show that he was also interested in what Sakura had to say.

'I can't just say that I tried to kill myself, can I? They might as well put me in a nut hospital if I do that...' Sakura bit her lip in frustration. Her head started to ache a bit and she fell back on her pillow. 'What am I supposed to say?'

"Naruto, Sasuke, I know you are both excited about Sakura-chan being awake and all, but don't stress her out, okay?" He got a grunt and a series of 'buts' as a response. Sakura was glad for her teacher's intervention. A sigh escaped her and went unnoticed as she continued to listen to Kakashi. "Now then, why don't you two go for a spar in the training grounds? It's still quite early." Sasuke 'hn'-ed at this as he went up to leave the room followed by a sulking Naruto.

'Why'd sensei have to make Sasuke-kun leave?! ...but then again... I'm kind of glad...' she smiled to the air. "Sensei, how many days have I been... asleep?"

"Around two days. How are you feeling?"

"I feel fine, though my head hurts a tiny bit. Nothing serious though!" she laughed softly. Silence. "Sorry, sensei..."

"For what?"

"I'm supposed to be a ninja, right? I'm supposed to be strong..." her voice trailed to a whisper. Tears started to form again in her eyes. 'Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry.' she repeated it in her head like a mantra.

"Sakura... what happened?" Somehow, somewhere in her mind, Sakura knew that Kakashi had an idea of what was going on with her.

'I feel like an open book to him... I guess senseis are supposed to be like that... but... it's harder to pretend everything's normal... that everything's just fine...' her lip quivered, biting her tears back. "I-I... I felt something bad was going to happen... I-I went home and saw my mom... and... s-she h-had a big hole... there was so much b-blood... and then.... I-I can't r-remember anymore..." Big fat drops of liquid fell from her face, to her cheek, and then to the pillow. She closed her eyes, turning her face to her pillow. 'I... don't want to think about it...' She could hear Kakashi sigh and the door swinging open.

"Hatake-san, the five minutes are up." Haruka came back again, holding a clipboard of hospital data. Hearing this, Kakashi stood up to leave, but before he reached the door, he turned his head to Sakura.

"Take care, Sakura. Do get better soon. We miss you out there." Sakura buried her face further into her pillow.


"Sakura-chan, you okay? You lost against Kakashi-sensei again." Naruto asked her, hovering over her beat form. It had been a month since she was discharged from the hospital. Kakashi was nowhere to be seen as their daily meeting was over. Sasuke, however, was at a distance, nearing the two.

"Yeah, I'm fine Naruto." she said as she got up. 'Didn't have to humiliate me in front of Sasuke-kun, the evil sensei...'

"You always lose, Sakura." Sasuke's cool voice filled her ears. Ouch. That must have hurt.

"Well, duh, she's supposed to, teme. Kakashi-sensei's a jounin, after all." Her face paled. That didn't make her feel any better.

"She even loses to us during our sparring sessions, dobe. She's weak." She clenched her teeth.

"Hey! She beat me... er... a few times before! And she is not weak! We just happen to be a little bit strong! I mean, we're boys, she's a girl---" Naruto continued to rant, counting in his pause as he searched in his memory, to no avail. But Sakura can account for the many times she's beaten Naruto: thrice. And those could only be counted as a lucky shot, using his stupidity as one's advantage, and using her sexuality over him. Sakura even ignored Naruto's sexist comment. It was true, not wholly true, but usually true nevertheless.

"I­­­­---" she started to interrupt. In her outburst, the two arguing boys looked at her. "I am going home." Ever so swift, she ran towards home, tears running down her face and blood dripping from her bitten lip.

It started to rain. Fat drops of water hit her skin. She had stopped running and started walking aimlessly around Konoha's streets. Her head bowed low, she looked at the kitten beneath her feet. "You're all alone, too, aren't you?" Sakura scooped up the orange-furred kitten with her hands and looked into its eyes. It seemed to lean nearer to her because of her warm body. "I can't bring you home... Mom is allergic to cats." Her mind turned blank at the thought of her mother.

Mom. Mother.

The life pouring out of her, surrounding her, leaving her.

She can see it over and over again, the scenes replaying in her mind.

Weak she was called.

Lost she was.

Self-hatred burned in her.

She could no longer hear or see anything other than the screams, the cries, the disappointment on their face, the sadness, the despair, the hatred... her hatred...

She hated herself... her weakness... her fear... her hands shaking... her eyes crying...

And then everything just stopped... she looked into her hands... her hands full of blood...

Blood.

Her hands were full of blood. Blood was dripping from her hands to her arms, to her clothes, to the ground, soaking everything. The smell was nauseating. It was getting hard to breathe by every passing moment. She felt like throwing up. Feeling the squelching flesh in her hands, she looked at her hands, both horrified and terrorized. In her hands was the limply body of the orange kitten she had just found, held, and in her moment's despair, killed.


Author's Note: Well, how did you like it? Feel free to give constructive criticisms, and please do review. I know you are reading this. Well then, the latest I would update would be next week Friday. I do so hope to have good outlooks on this. It may be a bit slow, but I hope you would enjoy it anyway. Ciao then, everyone.