daylight so violent
rating: t
genre: H/C, romance
pairings: shikasaku
POV: Sakura
other notes: written for ShikaSaku Week Hanami 2018 Day 1: Shadows/Light
word count: 2,504
Sakura withdraws gracefully from the spotlight. If, in fact, she was ever really there are all.
(She was, of course, but it was never on her own behalf. It was only ever because of the people she could be connected to, all those impossible legacies that were never hers to bear, only ever hers to stand witness to.)
Sakura withdraws to her lab and the hospital and the anonymity of her jōnin vest.
Respected, for her service and her skill, but just another face in a crowd, just another set of hands holding blades.
Once, she thinks she would have mourned this. Would have raged. Would have thought it unfair and so far beneath what she was owed.
Sakura knows now that the world owes her nothing. It never has.
(That's why she steals what she wants and holds it fiercely until the world gives up on taking it back or it shatters in her hands.)
Sakura falls down into anonymity.
And it is relief.
She itches, now, when there are eyes on her, when her back can't be against a wall, when she is out in the open and unsafe.
She knows what to call this, but it's hard to distrust her paranoia when she knows now, all too well, what the cost for not paying enough attention is.
Konoha released monsters into the world and left them to roam free, secure in their superiority and their ideals of goodness and mercy.
It almost cost them everything.
It almost cost the whole continent everything.
Sakura knows now that the only true promise of safety is godhood, and despite what men like Madara and Orochimaru thought, men cannot become gods.
She knows this, because she's put her hands through men who thought that they were gods and they bled the same colour as every other human being she's split open and taken to pieces.
(Tsunade touches fallen soldiers and, with a single spark, brings them back to life, gasping, their souls hers to hold. Men cannot become gods. Women, however… Sakura is undecided.)
Tsunade-shishō is the only person who looks at her—looks right at her, returning her from wraith to girl again—and asks if she is sure.
"You don't have to," Tsunade-shishō says.
And Sakura thinks of Naruto, bright enough to outshine the sun, the future's promise writ blinding across his brow, all the Village's hopes cradled in his palms, his childhood dreams so close within reach.
And Sakura thinks of Sasuke, so broken that he doesn't know how to stand still anymore, who will never set foot in the village again (even for Naruto), but who, even now, is wandering with Naruto's promise of a brighter future for them all as the wind at his back, under his wings.
Sakura thinks of the weight of legacies and the cut of the Hokages' faces where they march across the sky.
"No," she says to Tsunade-shishō. "I don't. But this is my choice."
And she smiles.
(Sakura is wondering why Tsunade-shishō looks so sad as she looks at Sakura smiling.)
It's only her choice if she makes it now.
If she waits, it will rush onwards, overwhelm her—an inevitability.
Sakura steps out of the spotlight and neatly into the shadows.
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.
.
Only later, Sakura wonders if it should have been so easy to slip out of her skin and leave her name behind.
Probably not, but then again, Sakura never wanted to be herself to begin with.
.
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.
"Sakura-chan," Kakashi-sensei startles. "I haven't seen you in a while."
Sakura waves. "I've been busy."
Kakashi-sensei's gaze darts over her. Six months ago, and Sakura wouldn't have noticed.
But it's been six months now and her bicep no longer itches.
Kakashi-sensei's mouth opens a fraction on a sigh and his eye gets even droopier. "Stay safe," he orders.
Sakura darts forward and drops a kiss on his cheek before he can avoid her.
It's the only thanks she knows how to give him.
(As her lips touch the scratchy fabric of his mask, branding him, she wonders if she means it as a thanks at all. The heat of her will linger, and that will be a reminder, a haunting, a curse.)
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.
"A research position?" kāchan asks, her hands freezing on the tongs as she reaches to serve herself.
Sakura nods.
"Oh, thank the gods," tōchan blurts out.
Sakura turns her gaze to him, her father who loves her and who wept when she walked into her childhood home wearing a jōnin vest.
He takes her hand. "Now we know you'll be safe."
Rice turns to ash in her mouth and Sakura swallows it down with a smile and a gulp of water.
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"Shikamaru," says the Rokudaime, "meet Rat. You'll be responsible for overseeing ANBU and other dark ops branches. Rat will be one of your liaisons."
Shikamaru's dark eyes sweep over her, considering.
"Anything else I should call you?" he asks her.
The porcelain is as cold as bone against her pursed lips. "Rat is the only name that matters."
"Ah."
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.
"Why do you do this?" he asks her one night, scrolls of plans and numbers and movements spread all around them.
Sakura pops another grape into her mouth and relishes the way the skin bursts when she bites down.
"It needs to be done."
When he stares at her, she has to look away for the sadness there.
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.
Sakura's lab is shiny, all sharp metal surfaces.
She hasn't had a real conversation with Naruto, an honest conversation with Naruto, in seven years (in ten years, in seventeen years), and so she thinks it's nostalgia that he funds her research so well.
Nostalgia, and the fact that Sakura's lab does some of the most groundbreaking research in medical advances and chakra studies on the continent.
Not, of course, that anybody knows that.
That's the whole point.
But the Konoha hospital is revolutionary and the shinobi ranks are healthy and their veterans are taken care of and the population is thriving under the Nanadaime's reign.
All is as it should be.
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.
.
Ino's face is curving, her smile all softness and joy as she watches Sai bouncing their daughter on his knee, laughing at something Chōji has said.
All around them, children are running and their friends are safe and happy.
Sakura clutches at her glass of water and tries not to flinch at every sudden uptick in screaming, reminding herself that it's in excitement and not fear.
"I never thought we'd make it here, y'know?" Ino says, marvels.
Sakura looks around at this future she is ensuring.
"I know," she says.
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.
The sheets on her bed are musty and the cot in her office at the lab holds a perfect imprint of her body for her to slip into and close her eyes for a few hours.
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As she stares up at the Nanadaime, his speech washing over her, Sakura thinks that she might have been jealous, once, of the way that Shikamaru stands so securely at Naruto's shoulder.
Sakura had never felt, not once, as sure of her right to be there as Shikamaru is every time she sees him.
Now she just feels respect for the work Shikamaru must do.
Sakura doesn't know for sure, of course, as she spends very little time around the official business of running the village, but given what she remembers of Naruto, Shikamaru must be responsible for much of how well Konoha is prospering.
Not that Sakura doubts Naruto's abilities: he's an excellent commander, an excellent leader of men, who cares about every person under his protection and who loves with all his heart.
But Naruto was never much of a political thinker or an administrator, and for all his instinctive understanding of people and their motives, and for all his dedication and hard work, Sakura cannot imagine that the particularities of trade or clan relations come easily to him.
(All Hokages, Sakura knows from studying under Tsunade-shishō, have their strengths and weaknesses. And all Hokages must know how to surround themselves with people who cover for those weaknesses and turn them into strengths. If Naruto is good at one thing as Hokage, Sakura suspects that it is inspiring loyalty in talented people who would fight and live and die for his dreams.
He was, after all, so adept at it before.)
Respect is cool and dry under her breastbone.
(It aches in bad weather.)
Sakura doesn't wonder about the dark circles under Shikamaru's eyes. He's too far away for her to notice them, if they were even there in the first place.
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Sasuke's staring at her strangely, his eyes swirling, but for all the supposed wonder of them, he doesn't recognize her.
He's trying, she thinks, but he has no idea who she is.
"You'll get my reports to Naruto, unopened and quickly." It isn't a question but an order.
Sakura nods. "Hai, Uchiha-san."
She pretends to herself that she isn't offended by his doubt.
She's a professional.
She is very good at her job.
Sasuke nods and disappears into the forest.
Sakura lets him go, the scrolls heavy in her hands.
Behind her, the compound is still burning.
"Taichō?" Bear-san asks.
Sakura nods. "We're going home."
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Men bleed so easily.
Sakura learned this at age thirteen, sometime between standing with a dead fish under her hands and retching into a bush as Lee held back her hair, Tenten grimly slitting the throat of an enemy dying by inches, Gai-sensei's face solemn and hard as he crouched in front of her.
"The Village sees your sacrifice, Sakura-chan, and thanks you for it."
When Sakura strides through dark hovels or lit streets, plains and forests and beaches, men dead and dying at her hands, she wonders if the Village knows.
(They don't, of course. That's the whole point.)
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"Stop killing yourself."
"I'm one of the most talented healers on the continent. I'm very hard to kill."
"Yeah," Shikamaru snaps, "well, you're just as good at killing, and I'm not so keen on figuring out which ability of yours is going to win out."
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.
At some point, Rat became Sakura again.
It was a mistake.
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.
Walking through the village is an exercise in dodging.
When she tries at it, she can be less than a ghost.
(One day, someone will reach out to touch her and they will fall right through. She'll have stopped being real.
One day, she will be able to rest.)
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.
"We missed you at Inojin's birthday" reads the back of the photograph that's been shoved into her mailbox.
Sakura pins it to the wall in her office and pretends that doesn't ache.
She's too good of a healer for her to be carrying pain around that she doesn't know how to fix.
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.
Shikamaru doesn't flinch at the blade she has pressed to his neck.
"I could have killed you," Sakura says.
Shikamaru scoffs, rolling his eyes. "You say that as if you didn't know I was here the moment you got in a two-block radius of your apartment."
Sakura goes to roll off his thighs but Shikamaru puts his hands to her hips and anchors her back down into his lap.
It's no weight at all but Sakura sinks for a moment.
He's warm and alive underneath her and she wants to tuck herself under his chin to sleep.
She stands up and stalks to the other side of her living room.
"What do you want?" she demands.
"Sakura," he sighs.
And Sakura flinches.
She doesn't remember the last time he said her name.
Or, well, that name.
"Would you rather I call you Rat?"
She flinches further still and then snarls, pulling herself up to her full height, her hands aching for the way they're curled into fists.
He has no right.
No right to bring that here.
That's a secret that no one knows.
No one, except the two of them and Tsunade-shishō who gave her the name and Kakashi-sensei who gave it to Shikamaru for safekeeping.
Sakura turns and goes to walk out the door.
She doesn't want to put him through a wall: her apartment building and the surrounding area won't survive if she starts fighting with Shikamaru.
And everything will be for naught if she ruins the Hokage's second-in-command.
"You need to stop running away from the truth, Sakura. You need to stop lying."
Sakura punches him in the face, and hates him for letting her.
Shikamaru laughs and spits out blood onto her floors.
It's so dark in here but the moonlight turns his blood to silver pools.
Sakura runs.
The shadows curl around her heels, but Shikamaru lets her go.
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.
Kabuto's head makes a satisfying squelch when she drops it on Shikamaru's desk.
He doesn't flinch. He just stares at the face and the growing puddle of blood for a good long moment.
"Is it enough?" he asks, finally.
Sakura falls to her knees, the sudden lack of weight too much.
And she cries.
Nothing is fixed and nothing is over. But she is done.
She is done.
She is finished.
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.
"The war was over," she tells the shadows of Shikamaru's bedroom.
She pretends that she can't see the sliver of him that is catching the strip of moonlight slipping through a crack in the curtains. She pretends it's just her and the comforting shadows.
"The war was over, but there were too many people still out there who thought that they could play god and make the world in their image. And I couldn't have it. Not again. And everyone else just wanted to forget."
"We wouldn't have let them be forgotten."
Sakura ignores the shadows whispering.
"Under shishō we were too tired and under sensei we were too busy rebuilding. And Naruto is too forgiving. He would have given them a chance and they would have taken that chance to hurt us when we least expected it. Never again."
"It wasn't your decision to make."
Sakura looks him in the eye, pitying.
She is Haruno Sakura.
She is a shinobi and healer.
It has always been her duty to destroy and remake.
She is the student to Hokages and the teammate to legends.
It has always been her duty to see to it that they survive another day, whatever the cost.
She is a holder of the Will of Fire.
It has always been her duty to ensure that she leaves behind a world better off than the one she was born to.
"Someone had to make it. And I learned when I was twelve that I was disposable."
Shikamaru makes a terrible sound, like Sakura's cut something out of him.
And then he kisses her.
He tastes like iron and salt and everything she thought she'd given up.
"Never to me," he swears to her.
Maybe one day, she'll learn to believe him.
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.
Sakura takes Shikamaru's hand, and steps out of his front door, into the sunshine.
