disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: to that darling dear anon who was harassing my best friend. you know who you are, cunt. :)
notes: I stayed up all night and watched the sunrise.

title: listen to the sirens
summary: In a disposable plastic society, Konoha's underbelly is the last place anyone wants to be. — Sasuke/Sakura.

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Once in a while, Sakura thought that everyone should lose their minds.

But now wasn't the time.

Now was the time for soft lullabies to dying girls, and whispered stories, and promises that everyone knew where false. But comfort was the only thing that children understood, and when they cried through the night, Sakura did the only thing she knew how to do. Comforting children had never been part of the job description, but she was good at it, and the other nurses seemed to find relief in it.

She slid through the halls in a kind of stupor, wandering in the way of ghosts, a cadenza in cerulean scrubs. No one said a word, and let her do her rounds.

She collapsed in the staff room three hours later, exhausted. Sakura dropped her head into her hands and rested her eyes.

"Want some coffee?"

A gentle hand on her shoulder had Sakura glancing up, and the first glimpse of long dark hair, pale eyes, and a kind smile cheered her immensely. Hyuuga Hinata held a cup of steaming coffee under her nose, and though it was thin, it was welcomed.

"Thanks," Sakura soughed. It escaped her and withered into the air much as the steam was, and she was so tired.

"New patient?" Hinata asked, because that was the only thing that could have caused that sort of exhaustion in Sakura's normally indomitable cheer.

"Yeah," she murmured, and dropped her head to the table. "I went off on him, too."

"On the patient?"

"No, her guardian—father, I think? I don't know. He was there. I…"

"Went off," Hinata repeated. Her face was neutral, gentle-eyed, and Sakura knew how much work it had taken her to deal with the stutter, to not allow it to control her—Sakura remembered how long it had taken them to become friends.

Her fingers shook.

"Yeah," she said. "I went off."

Hinata sat down beside her, and folded her hands in her lap. "Then maybe you should go apologize?"

It was a question but it also wasn't. Sakura knew that sometimes her friend phrased things a certain way to get her to do a certain thing, or maybe to make her feel guilty—which was a uniquely Hinata type of thing, because at least Karin had the sense to know that Sakura felt guilty for almost nothing.

Except, apparently, yelling at her patient's fathers.

She crossed her arms on the table and dug her face into them, grumbling about ungrateful patients and ungrateful friends and how it was so unfair—but sometimes being in the wrong was easy, and Sakura had never been the type to want to stay wrong.

And Hinata always made a sick sort of sense.

Sakura pushed back from the table with a huff, pink hair in her eyes. She brushed it away, impatient—it was too long, and past crushes on beautiful boys who might or might not have liked long hair were not things to dwell on. She wasn't a little girl (well, maybe a little, but she wasn't dying and that was saying something because everyone was dying), and she could do this.

Hinata smiled at her, really smiled, on her way out.

Sakura had the distinct impression that she'd just been played.

The walk back to the room 2021 wasn't as long as Sakura would have liked. She touched the door, stopping abruptly, wondering if maybe she shouldn't just leave.

It would be easier.

Easier wouldn't help the feeling in her gut heavy like lead. She knew that. And so she pushed through, and opened her mouth to apologize as fast as she could—

And found a little girl alone.

Laboured breathing and eyelids drooping, she perked up at the sound of the door sliding open.

"Papa?" she asked.

"No, honey. It's the nurse," Sakura murmured, dropping back into the caregiver-protector woman she knew the best—that woman wasn't cruel, and didn't say things to hurt just because she could. She sat down next to the little girl, and the seat was cold beneath her.

(He'd been gone for as long as she had been. The dislike was palpable on her tongue.)

"Papa said he would come back… but maybe not…" Midori murmured.

"He'll be back," Sakura assured her.

"Mama said that, too."

Resentment.

Sakura knew that feeling well; it came off the girl in waves and though her she sounded weak, her eyes were sharp and dark grey and so very, very young. And it was thick and potent and toxic, and Sakura wondered when the world had got so old and so ill that a seven-year-old could see it.

"Where is your mama?"

The girl shrugged too-thin shoulders, her collarbones poking out through the pale blue fabric at sharp jutting angles that made Sakura wince and look away. No child should be like this, and it killed her—why was trying to do this, again?

"I don't have a mama anymore," she said.

"Oh," Sakura said.

"Can you read?"

"Yes."

"To me?"

Sakura nodded. "What do you want to hear?"

There was a pile of books tucked under the night table—all old fairy tales, writ in another time when the world was a little bit cleaner. The girl pointed at the one with a cracked blue spine and aged yellow pages; hungry-eyed and wanting.

"That one," she said.

Sakura smiled a little at the loopy title. The Little Mermaid.

"This doesn't have a happy ending. Are you sure?"

The little girl set her jaw and stared stubbornly at the ceiling. "I don't really like happy endings."

And that was that.

Sakura opened the book, and began to read.

/ / /

Half an hour later, the sound of the door sliding closed startled her. Sakura, completely engrossed in the tale, blinked up and found that not only was her charge asleep, but that her charge's father was standing in the doorway, looking something like horrified.

(Or maybe just annoyed—Sakura had a sneaking suspicion they probably looked the same.)

"Hello," Sakura said mildly.

He said nothing, frozen in place as he stared at her.

"What, haven't you ever seen a nurse before?" she asked, suddenly impatient. She'd come to apologize, and the best he could do was gape at her like she was one of the junkies down by the tracks begging for change? No, absolutely not.

"How is she?"

So he was going to ignore her completely. Sakura supressed the urge to stick her tongue out at him—she wasn't twelve years old, and she'd dealt with more annoying people in her life. She was a professional. She'd thought she'd be past this already.

(He seemed to rub her the wrong way. It was probably the privilege; Sakura had known so many like him and hated so many like him and—wait, she'd already had this conversation with herself. Deep breath, Sakura.)

Rude or not, it was his daughter lying immobile in the stark white hospital sheets.

"The morphine kicked in ten minutes ago. She's not in any pain," Sakura murmured. She dropped her eyes and tugged at the frayed hem of her shirt. He probably wanted some privacy to collect himself—the muscle twitching in his jaw told her as much, and she kept her gaze down.

The twitch in her peripheral vision was movement as he strode away from the doorframe, a flash of dark clothing and pale skin in sharp contrast to the muted beige of the walls.

He reached down to touch the top of his daughter's head, achingly gentle.

"I'll just—" Sakura mumbled, and began to slip out of the chair.

"Don't," he said.

Sakura blinked at him. "Uh?"

"Do you want to get a coffee?"

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tbc.

notes2: I am not drunk enough for this fandom, omg.