Sakura was not what she could call a therapeutic speaker. She liked to talk, sure, and had never been particularly shy about making her thoughts known, but when it came to her deeper feelings, she was not the best at speaking through them. How could she share in words the thoughts and ideas that were so deep inside of her? Sometimes it felt like her thoughts were her truer self, masquerading in a cloak of flesh and hair. How could she pull those out and share them with the slightest expectation of understanding, much less agreement or, further fetched, support?
It was a process she was practicing more and more, despite her reluctance to share those innermost thoughts; interacting with the crew of the Normandy had necessitated it. In Konoha she could flub her way through painful conversations, usually there were tears involved, or sometimes say nothing at all. It was easier to forego words when all the people around her shared the same culture.
So when Grunt offered to spar with her, even without 'Krant' Shepard around to mediate, she took up the offer readily. Sometimes it was easier to talk with her fists than words, anyway. She and Grunt had an understanding about the battlefield that transcended words. Sad, though, that their understanding was not further developed in actual battle, but one of them tended to be redundant when the other was around.
The clawed fist caught her hand like a door catches a battering ram. He caught the second fist in much the same way and squeezed both appendages tightly. She was not using her full strength- neither of them wanted a hole in the hull of the ship- but at least with Grunt she could stop pulling some of her punches. Anything less would have insulted him.
She was about to employ her feet in a rather flashy acrobatic maneuver and fully free her hands, when Grunt grinned and whipped his arms behind him. She was pulled right along, stopping only when his massive skull collided with hers. Aside from the general non-comformity to human physiology, namely the projections common to most krogan foreheads, the skull was damned hard. Stars burst into her vision, and a moment later she fell to the floor boneless, blinking to tell the difference between the electrical hardware and the spots still dancing in front of her.
Grunt's spotty face appeared before hers and as he leaned forward, grinning widely. She groaned, wheezing a laugh, and lifted a hand to her forehead to assess the damage.
"No blood, Squishy," he offered, then extended his hand was well. How could there be no blood when her head was splitting in two?
Sakura had barely slipped her fingers between his when she was hauled off of the floor, starting the dizziness all over again. It did not help that he slapped her on the back with as much enthusiasm as he had head butted her. Regaining her foot, she established that she was going to have to keep an eye out for the head butt in the future. Endeavoring to end the fight, she did not return his backslap with an equally congratulatory punch to the face, but instead waved him off and took a few steps toward the elevator.
Shepard had allowed them use of the shuttle bay when they wanted to "rastle" as he called it, whatever that meant, but right now the couch in the lounge was looking pretty good. Her hand was glowing green when she finally made it to the elevator. Once inside, she pressed the button for her destination and leaned against the back wall.
"Damn krogan," she muttered, trying to assuage some of the pain. Truly, she was not bleeding, but she did not know how he had managed it; that hit had been like a chakra punch, bone against bone, big forehead to big forehead.
She was in the middle of contemplating it when Joker's voice broke over the comm, "Hey Sakura, can you come up to the bridge? I want to show you something."
"Can it wait, Joker? I just got head butted by Grunt," she replied, feeling some of the pain release under the application of Shousen.
"Come on," he needled her, "That's like a love tap. Err." His voice broke off into a hesitant pause, even though a crackle over the line told her he was still holding the comm open. "You guys aren't like… dating or something- are you?"
"What?" she demanded. Then quickly followed with a, "No! Joker, be serious!"
"All right, all right, calm down. Just youngest members of the ship and all."
"Joker…"
"Pushing each other on the playground."
"Joker."
"Head butts of love."
"Joker! Stop talking!" She could practically hear his grin over the intercom as she glared up at the ceiling. What kind of notion was he playing with? Dating Grunt!
The doors opened to the crew's quarters and she quickly pushed the button to close them. Forget rest. The headache could wait. The greater pain was the one in her ass right now. Sakura knew he was joking, pulling her leg, teasing, whatever he wanted to call it, but she was going to show him just what it meant to push each other on the playground. She was going to push him through the floor.
Her finger mashed for the next floor up and she waited, her anger at a slow, steady simmer. The doors opened, and she expected to see the normal CIC layout, including personnel, but just beyond the Galaxy Map, there was an extra face.
Joker was hobbling toward her. There was a smirk on his face that made her expression flatten in annoyance.
"Aren't you supposed to be flying the ship?" she asked. "Or more importantly, waiting for me to come and deliver certain death?" He only grinned, coming even closer to her, ushering her back into the elevator.
"Come on," he said, pushing her very gently into the elevator. She allowed it, and did not remind him, again, how very lucky he was to have Vrolik's.
"But I thought you wanted to show me something?" she asked, letting go of some of her annoyance in light of curiosity. He had said come to the Bridge, hadn't he?
"I do. Let's go," he said, settling in next to her. He pushed the button to direct them back down one floor, and she sighed.
"Fine, but no more stupid jokes!"
"Yeah, I'm not agreeing to that."
Sakura released a slow breath and tried to remind herself that she had been through worse than this. Personal teasing about her forehead aside, there had been living with Naruto as a teammate. He had pulled more pranks than a little bit of light teasing. Come to think of it, Joker reminded her of Naruto a little. Striving to be more than he had been born to, something inside of him that other people thought limited him, constant joking, and lots of raw talent… Perhaps the similarities ended there. She did not know the pilot well enough to say. All analogies broke down eventually, anyway, but it was nice for a moment to remember her friend at his best and to know there were others like him out there.
She glanced up at him, and he met her stoic expression with a grin. "Oh, what, you're still mad? Ha, you'll be fine. Lighten up a bit." She shook her head, not bothering to correct his misassumption.
She matched her pace to his once off the elevator. It was not difficult, even with his slower pace. He still had a solid head of height over her, and his legs, though hobbling, were longer. They were about even in pace when walking normally. They veered to the left, straight toward the observation deck, and Sakura wondered what Samara had to do with what they were about to see.
But when the doors slid open, Samara was not present, and Joker simply made his way to the large window. Sakura watched from a distance as he pulled a vibrant yellow marker from his pocket and uncapped it. He glanced to his side, expecting to see her and then turned around slowly, beckoning her forward.
"Come here, you're supposed to be looking."
She stepped forward more boldly as he placed both hands against the glass window, the marker caught in the fingers of his right.
"What am I looking at?" she asked, besides the millions of blue and white and yellow specks beyond her. For a moment she was transfixed, wondering how she could have ever hated being on the Normandy. Even in the cramped quarters, and bad food, and sometimes smelliness of the other occupants, this view more than made up for her discomfort. Seeing it, she could understand a little bit more of why people had gone to space, why those few on earth in her day had wanted to go at all. She applauded them in the privacy of her heart.
"So, a few weeks ago, you were talking about not feeling right because all the stars look different." His eyes were still scanning the sky ahead of them. She waited, looking from him back out into the sky.
"Yes?" she prompted.
"EDI and I got to talking. She did a lot of the calculations, actually, but we came up with something for you since we've got a little bit of downtime while the IFF installs."
"For me?" she asked curiously, feeling a bit of shame at her former annoyance.
"Generally that's what people mean when they want to show you something," he intoned. Before she could respond, though, he added an excited, "Ah ha! There it is!" His hands were slow, but only because of his ailment. She could see an excitement in his eyes as he used the marker to leave a vivid, almost neon, dot against the glass.
The young woman watched with patience as he added several others to it. They looked a bit randomized as he added the last one, seven dots total, in a shape that was somewhat familiar, but…
"What is it?" she asked after a moment, trying to match the enthusiasm on his face, but effectively killing it with her question. He slumped even further, sadly possible, and then turned back to the window. To the dots he added straight lines, connecting the top set in an uneven quadrilateral. He did the same with the bottom dots, leaving two somewhat, but not completely, mirrored geometric shapes.
It was even more familiar now, like the edges of a dream that she could not remember if she had imagined or actually dreamed. As she took another step forward, she shifted slightly to the left. Even amongst all of the millions of stars beyond the glass, seven of them stood out, cemented in her mind by the aid of Joker's sketch. She shifted her focus back to the yellow markings and then back once more to the stars beyond.
She gasped suddenly in understanding, a hand lifted to her mouth. Her eyes cut to Joker, who was grinning in self-satisfaction.
"Annnnd, she gets it."
Sakura grinned, too, and turned back to the observation window. Reaching forward, she wiped her hand over the markings, even as Joker protested, "Hey, I just drew that!" It smudged and smeared for a few moments, but she was persistent. Finally, the window, hazy with marker residue, presented her an almost untarnished view of The Hunter.
The Archer, as her people knew him.
Orion.
"Oh, Jeff, thank you," Sakura breathed, one hand pressing to the glass. It was right there, all seven familiar stars, the first constellation she had learned by sight and without the aid of star charts. Even the Big Bear had not been as helpful for her in locating other stars. In Team 7, she had laid beneath those stars carefree, unknowing and blissfully naïve about the world, thinking it was as hard as it would ever get.
She turned back to him, smiling a watery smile and said, "Thank you."
He returned the smile with an easy, kind expression, and nodded, "No problem, Sakura."
Looking upward, she added, "And thank you, too, EDI."
"It is my pleasure, Sakura."
The young ninja nodded and then carefully kneeled on the floor. Not quite proper seiza, but she was not trying to impress anyone.
"Do- do you want some company?" Joker asked, sounding nervous, and a little uncomfortable. Glancing up, she grinned at him and shook her head.
"No, I'm OK. Thank you, though. Very, very much."
He left after that, twirling the yellow mark in between his fingers, but Sakura did not see him go. Those stars had been with her all the days of her life, had guided her on more than one occasion, and she had taken them for granted in a way that she had never thought she would have to repent of… but she was tired of holding onto anger, especially anger at herself, for things she could not control.
Looking at them as she sat on the floor, it just affirmed how very far away they were, a much smaller cluster from this vantage point than when she had viewed them on earth.
Naruto had had always lived with one foot and one hand in the future. Sasuke had lived with his entire self in the past, and Kakashi had tried to live a life that balanced both.
Would she do the same? Hold onto the past so tightly that there was no room for the future?
Sakura stretched her fingers against the glass, envisioning all that she could hold in a hand emptied. There was not much in this world that she knew, but she was learning every day; there were challenges and struggles and exciting things and lovely things. Konoha… Konoha was most likely gone. The whole world was different now, beyond anything she could have imagined going into that box.
It was not a question worth pondering whether or not she would have gone into it if she had known how things would turn out. She would have, for duty and honor, and because… Because being here, now, on the other side, she was alive. She wanted to live. Even now.
"But not just live," she thought as she stared at the Hunter, at those stars that surrounded it. How much could she hold in a hand that was made to be empty? There was only one way to find out.
The Archer = The Hunter = Orion.
My favorite constellation, and the inspiration for all of these stories, actually. I love driving at night and being able to catch a glimpse of his belt. From there, the rest is easy. And truly, it is the only constellation I can find without some searching, including the Big Dipper (or the little one for that matter.)
Thank you to my reviewers, XionNight, reality deviant, and Rc1212.
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