Content warning: This chapter contains self-harm. If you find the subject of self-harm triggering or upsetting, please discontinue.


"Stay still." The harsh order hurts more than the hand in her hair, wrenching her head to the side. She's just tried to bite him. His knee wedges between her legs, forcing them open, but she's more worried about his other hand, now. He has it wrapped around her throat, choking her and keeping her from screaming. If she couldn't even breathe, he wouldn't have to worry about her finding her voice. Still, she tries. She has to, she has to be strong if she wants to make it out of here; she has to be strong to survive.

"G–t off!" Sakura can see blackness fuzzing the edges of her vision. If she doesn't get him off her soon, she never will. All she needs is one chance to get out from underneath him. One chance to wriggle her wrists out of the already loosening chakra-suppressive ropes. She can feel her wrists are bleeding from how much she's scraped them together, or against the ground, but it's worth it. She can feel the bonds are weakening. But if she doesn't get away from him, he'll notice soon, and she'll have lost her chance.

"No one else wants you. You've vied for attention for years, but no one gives a useless girl with a victim's complex a second look, do they, Sakura?" God, she hates the way he says her name. It's like it burns his tongue. He lowers his right hand from her hair and down to her stomach, where it lingers for a second. Disgust roils in Sakura's chest with deep, cold water that flows into her veins. She knows why he's doing this. She knows what the man needs. and he knows she's the only one who can give it to him.

Sakura hails from no great clan; her genes are weak, it'll make it easier for his own to be prominent. Her body is strong, she'll carry the child well. Maybe, she thinks, it's also because he knows she wouldn't tell anyone. Not about this, not about him. No one would believe her. She was an expendable kunoichi, and he was a weapon of war. They brushed incidents like this off constantly. Sakura has been there, she's seen girls come into the hospital covered in glaring, obvious marks and wounds. Sakura has cleaned blood and semen off women who are either inconsolable and hysterical, or frigid and numb.

Sakura has squeezed the hands, smoothed the hair, and held girls to her chest to let them cry handfuls of times. Then, when she's out of the room, she knows that the report and rape kit will vanish, brushed under the rug, and then the rug burned. Out of countless incidents, one or two men are imprisoned. Sakura has seen all those girls leave the hospital ashen with terror. Each girl had received threats. Each of them had orders not to speak up about the crimes committed against her.

Sakura has zipped them up in body bags, some of them with their notes still clutched in their hand. She's thankful it isn't her who has to deliver those to the families.

With renewed rage in her heart, the gelid waters turn into fire in Sakura's veins. Her blood boils and her muscles bunch. With her legs, she kicks out, her knees are weapons and her ankles are shields. Once she gets him back, she kicks him outright to keep him back. "Don't touch me!" she screams. She screams, she screams and she screams. Her voice echoes around her as she tears her bloodied wrists out of the rope.

Then she's running, she's running and she thinks it might be nice to keep running, all the way to the edge of the cliff.

And then, she won't stop.


Sakura awoke with a scream in her throat and the sheets tangled around her body. Damp with sweat, she bolted up and clawed at the sheets, yanking them away from her body and freeing herself. She could feel her heart racing with adrenaline, to the point that her muscles were twitching. That memory was still so fresh in her mind. It terrified her that it might never lessen, that it would never get easier with time. That day was painfully vivid, even in just a nightmare. Resting her head in her hands, Sakura's body wracked with a sob. Tears were now beginning to mingle with the sweat on her face.

The memory was an acid; it had leaked into her soul and permanently scorched into her. Sakura wanted to reach inside of herself and yank it out, and she didn't care if her entire beating heart came with it. The distraught woman still clutched her head in her hands. Quiet, inarticulate sounds tumbled out of her mouth, lips atremble and eyes filling with fresh tears. She found it miraculous she'd yet to dehydrate herself, she seemed to be doing this quite a lot lately. From deep within the recesses of her mind, places that Sakura wished she could lock away and never face again, came malicious words. Words that had come to haunt her.

You overreact so much. Do you have any idea how many people have it worse than you? It didn't even go all the way, you can't say you were a victim. What about all those other poor girls who had it worse than you?

A choked sound darted from the confines of Sakura's chest, where she could feel her lungs shrinking. Each breath was becoming harder to take. Inside of Sakura, everything was collapsing, and she wasn't sure how she would ever build herself back up. Reality was rushing through the cracks like a destroyed dam, ruining everything and soaking it with gasoline. Now, all Sakura had to do was to light the match and watch it all burn.

Stumbling from the bed in a weary haze, Sakura knocked into the desk, bruising her hip. With furious hands, she wrenched open the drawer. A couple of weapons clattered onto the floor from the violent way their drawer dislodged. Sakura ignored them in favor of a kunai sitting further in, glistening and imposing in the dim moonlight. Sakura didn't hold it delicately this time. It was a snake, deadly and ready to strike at any moment no matter the provocation. It sat in her shaking hand, gripped tight as she raised it to her right arm, not faltering for a moment.

Her hand had done this before.

The blade gleamed with humor, amused at Sakura's desire for it to cut open her flesh. But, cut open it did. Sakura could hear its laughter as thin trails of blood twisted and turned down her arm, until they dripped off her wrist and onto the floor. Sakura sucked in a weak breath, a flickering sting traveling from her wrist and all the way along her arm. As the blood bloomed from each shallow cut, it bled Sakura dry, taking all the torrential emotions with it. The blade was cold, almost frigid, and the chill worked its way into Sakura's system and into her heart.

It always ended like this. She would find solace in the blades, in breaking open her own skin. The brief pain never failed to bring Sakura back down to reality, to rope her in from wherever she had drifted off to. Sakura had to feel! She had to feel things, to remind herself she was real and alive and that feelings still existed. She needed something, and when she found pain, it had burgeoned into an addiction whenever she needed to feel. Pain became Sakura's vice, one of her only bridges back to reality and to herself, one of the only things she deserved. Perhaps if she hurt herself, no one else would have to. Perhaps if she did this to herself, everyone else would see the monster that she saw in the mirror.

When Sakura felt pain, she had no room to feel anything else.

Sakura couldn't tell how long she stayed there on the ground. The knife had fallen to the floor ages ago, forgotten. Now, she stared down at her arms, where a few fresh lines had just ceased bleeding. They crossed over old ones, ones that were white and slightly raised on her skin. A teardrop fell from Sakura's face and onto her arm, stinging one of the cuts. Foolish. She was a foolish, foolish girl, and the worst part about that was knowing it, but not understanding how to make it all stop. All these scars were like a beacon of warning, warding other people away because she was a ticking time bomb.

Now numb, Sakura stood up and took the kunai to the bathroom to clean the weapon off and replace it. The wounds on her arm burned something fierce as she moved, her skin stretching and causing red liquid to well up from the cuts again. With a hiss, more of annoyance than pain, Sakura decided she needed to wash the cuts. As the pink water swirled around her skin and then vanished down the drain, Sakura began to get her bearings back. The cold water snapped her out of her daze and she glanced down at her arm, where marks littered it. "Fuck," Sakura cursed, turning the water off and pulling her arm back to scrutinize it. She hadn't thought this through at all, not in her state of mind. She could barely remember how to breathe, much less anything else.

How was she going to hide this?

Sakura couldn't heal them. She had tried to heal her own cuts many times in the past, but the results were always catastrophic. Something in Sakura snapped, it wavered, and she only ended up hurting herself even worse. Every time she tried to heal the marks, to close them and erase them, it resulted in the permanent scarring that now marred her arms, macabre and ugly. Sakura's fist clenched and she slammed it down on the counter, only using enough caution to not completely shatter it. It was defenseless against her anger. Just as she, too, was defenseless to it.

Once, long ago when she was just about fourteen, Sakura had sought Tsunade to help her heal her arms. Tsunade had always looked at Sakura with a sickening mix of pity and repulsion after that. Sakura hated that look and she had sworn she'd never see it on someone else's face ever again.

Sakura rifled through her dresser until she came across a light jacket. Konan, Sakura thought. Konan must have provided her with clothes. At least enough until Sakura could get more, herself. Perfect, it would work just the way she needed it to. The cloak was too loose, it showed her arms every time she moved; this jacket clung to her and hid her flesh from view. It hurt, it rubbed against the cuts and irritated them, but that was the price Sakura had to pay and she would live with it. It was still somewhat cool outside at times, she could get away with it. No one here had any right or reason to question her, to begin with.

Sakura crawled into her bed with the weight of all her scars. Faintly, she could hear her inner-voice buzzing in displeasure, upset with Sakura's lapse tonight. Sakura shut her out (why could she not shut the other voice out?) and rolled over, shuffling beneath the sheets. In the moment, her habit had relieved her pain. Yet, it was only a temporary fix, and the backlash was almost as strong. Sakura didn't know how to admit to her problem, how to confess that something was wrong at all. Her entire life stood on a foundation of pretend, of imaginary smiles and lies spun of red. Sakura only knew how to be strong and go on, as if everything was okay.

Even when nothing was.