Seven: Relive


Sakura was gritting her teeth so hard that her entire head ached.

Bloody to her elbows, wrist-deep in someone's mangled torso, her vision started to blur. At first she hardly noticed as the world around her took on the look of monochromatic crimson watercolour; at first she nearly appreciated the softening of the world around her. Then, as the tears spilled with the gentle coaxing of her eyelashes, Sakura sudden realized that she couldn't do this anymore.

The war between Wind and Earth was taking its toll on Sunagakure. All day, every day, the walking dead staggered into the hospital, dragging their comrades, sometimes even pieces of them, unwilling to let go of their friends, of their families. Sakura couldn't even speak to them anymore, these shattered lives. Even if they would listen, she didn't know what to say. Empathetic by character, Sakura's feeble offering of comfort amounted to nothing in their anguish, and as such she found herself with little value here in Suna. All she could do was try to put them back together, setting bones and staunching weeping wounds, and even that seemed like it was worth so little.

The only face she had recognized in all this time was Kankuro; still hooded and painted, even his frightening visage was some comfort to her. Every once in a while he brought in the dying, or rallied the wounded, or spoke to the other doctors. He never spoke to her, though. He had been one of the first casualties she had treated, his flesh sawed clean through to the bone, winding designs carved right into his femur by razor-sharp wire still tangled in tendon and ligament. It had taken a long time to treat him. Too long; dozens of wounded had died while she focussed only on this familiar face, on this non-lethal wound. Kankuro wouldn't forgive her. His every glance was cold, accusing, resentful.

The boy beneath her hands breathed his last.

Sakura staggered back from the table, feeling his thickly clotted blood drying on her skin, flaking off with every twitching movement of her fingers. Assistants moved in to remove the corpse; Sakura couldn't even look at his dead face, his slack expression, his staring eyes. She wiped at her eyes with her shoulders – practically the only clean spot on her entire arm – and took a deep breath, her exhalation shuddering. She was trembling.

"Somebody help me!" A male voice was shouting, trying desperately to be heard over the cacophony of sobs, pleas and stern orders. Sakura turned, slowly, as if in a daze; a man was elbowing his way to the front of the crowd, a young child – too young, maybe only four or five years old – wrapped in a black jacket and hanging limply from his arms. "Somebody please, do something!"

Sakura stood there and watched him in his panic as he pleaded with the orderlies, quickly becoming belligerent, shouting accusations at them, swearing at them, struggling to push past. He saw her, then, standing in front of that empty table, and bolted for her. She backpedalled away from him, two staggering steps, and then he was setting the child down on the table. His eyes were wild with desperation and his voice was high and garbled with hysteria.

"My daughter – please, she's dying! Do something!" And then he was sobbing, helpless, heartbroken.

Sakura turned to the bundled up figure, inhumanly still in the chaos, her stained hands reaching to open the jacket. Her heart lurched to life in her chest – dead for so many hours already – and leapt into her throat, strangled her. A tiny face, so serene, eyes closed as if she were sleeping. Her blonde hair had been tied up in pigtails, though one of them was starting to come loose. Sakura knew she was dead before she even opened the rest of the jacket, before she saw her torso – torn wide open, skin, flesh, bone charred and blackened, still slowly oozing coagulating crimson despite the stillness of her heart.

The man – the girl's father, she assumed – was on his knees, screaming and sobbing. There were attendants at his side, lifting him to his feet, leading him away, while another gathered the tiny corpse in her arms and carried her out.

Sakura's heart felt like it was going to burst. She leaned heavily on the table, her fingers clenching tightly around fistfuls of the abandoned jacket – heavy and damp and saturated with gore – and struggled to breathe, to settle her violently twisting stomach, to swallow the tears and the bile that threatened to rise within her. She was suffocating, here, in this forsaken hospital; she was deafened by the screams, blinded by the wounds, made insensate by the pain.

This war was killing her.

Voices shouted at her, questioningly, as she fled. The doors were heavy as she burst through them, throwing her into an awkward stagger out into the street. The surprisingly cool night air struck her like a punch in the face. She dropped the jacket – not even realizing that she had been carrying it in the first place – tripped over it, skinned her knees on the rocky terrain, and was suddenly violently ill. Her empty stomach tied itself into excruciating knots as she coughed and heaved and wretched, spitting bitterness into the sand, sand that blew into her eyes, stuck to her hands, ground into her knees.

All she could smell, could taste, was blood. She felt saturated in it, felt like she was drowning in it. She feared that she would never be clean again.

Someone said her name, far above her. She didn't – couldn't – respond. Shuffled footsteps, closer; a single crutch thudded into the edge of her vision. Sakura glanced up then, her vision sluggishly climbing up the crutch to the shoulder it supported, then to the face. Kankuro; still painted, still hooded, still severe.

"Sakura," he drawled. "Let me take you home."

His words weren't unkind, though they were curt. He held out one hand – there was blood under his fingernails and in the creases of his palm – and when she didn't take it, he caught hold of her upper arm and started to drag her upright. She relented without argument, unsure if she even had a voice anymore. She was still trembling; Kankuro put something over her shoulders. That black jacket, surprisingly heavy, damp and now sandy; a funeral shroud for the dead and dying children of Suna. Sakura wondered if Kankuro was being kind or cruel when he wrapped it around her.

Sakura wasn't staying very far away from the hospital. As they traversed the streets, Kankuro kept silent, his asymmetric footsteps steady. Sakura refused to look at him, refused to look up at all. Every few steps she heard voices calling out in the darkness whilst the faint keening echoing from the hospital faded mercifully, studded by sporadic footsteps rushing past into the night. With every step that jacket weighed more heavily on her shoulders. Her footsteps began to drag. When she stumbled, Kankuro offered no assistance.

They arrived at Sakura's apartment, and after holding the door open for her, Kankuro turned abruptly without a word and shuffled away. Sakura didn't watch him go, instead setting herself single-mindedly to the task of ascending four flights of stairs. She was in a daze as she stumbled down the corridor, pushing open the door she never locked – not that she had any possessions of her own within, anyway – blind and deaf to the world around her. The door closed behind her. Silence rang harshly in her ears. She shrugged that awful garment from her narrow shoulders and made for the bathroom.

Running water was a luxury that Sakura couldn't afford in Sunagakure, out in the middle of the desert. The water in the washbasin was cool, though hardly refreshing, as she sank her hands into it, watching the water turn rather rapidly to crimson. She took up the soap and began scrubbing at her hands, her wrists, her arms, with a sort of absent viciousness. Her skin was raw and sore by the time she had finished, but she was clean. Water had sloshed out onto the floor, onto her clothes and her feet, had soaked her chest – water now so filthy it was opaque.

She pulled away from the basin, refusing to look at herself in the mirror. She knew what she would see, anyway; defeat, horror, illness, exhaustion… failure. She paused, staring at the bed – the bed that she had been unable to sleep in for god knows how many days already – at the room, so bare it looked unlived in, so inhospitable she felt like she didn't belong. There was nothing for her, here, in this room.

There was nothing for her, here, in Sunagakure; in Wind.

She wept when she thought of home.