Sakura twisted and turned. Her sheets felt like they were suffocating her, sweat collected behind her neck and she rubbed it off with a grunt. It was hopeless.

Her bright green eyes revealing to the world that she was still wide awake instead of sleeping. Although dreams were the last thing on her mind. Not that she minded, she could sense that nightmares were what waited for her tonight.

Instead, Sakura pushed the covers off her, letting it land with a thud on the floor. She curled herself into a ball around her pillow starring off into what she wished had been a sky full of stars but was instead met with a hollow grey paint job. She grabbed the blade hidden from under her pillow and held it tight to her chest.

"I want to forget," Sakura proclaimed, hoping someone – anyone was listening to her cry of help. "I've already forgotten everything else…please, dear kami, help me feel better."

A tear trickled, momentarily blinding her vision and swirling her view into fields of blues and greys. She felt transported back to that night; the one right after her parent's murders. The night that felt like a dream as if she had been stuck in limbo from having just lost her family to being saved by a new one.

In a moment of weakness, she had peeked through the cabinet she had been stuffed into.

She had seen her parents fall to the floor, a knife from her father's hand-rolled towards her and Sakura had reached out to grab it, but someone had grabbed her wrists and stopped her. She had been caught.

Sakura's bottom lip trembled but not even a squeal came out when she attempted to scream. She had been so scared that her voice had fled her; she didn't have the guts to speak because she knew she was next.

Eyeing her parent's body on the floor, a part of her was ready to join her family into the afterlife. But a voice inside of her shook violently knowing she needed to live for her parent's sake. Their deaths would not be in vain.

Just like that, she had a reason to fight. A determination to make it through this night and the next ones.

What she didn't expect was for this said someone to hand her the dagger and stuff her tiny hand back into the safety of her little coven. She almost wished she had peeked up to see her murdering savior. To this day she still didn't know whether she wanted to kill him or thank him for sparing her life.

She had stayed in the cabinet for the rest of the night, too scared to venture out as screams continued letting Sakura figure out that there was more than just one killer; it had been a whole group.

She had proved her theory true when she counted their footsteps she had come to a total of nine assassins moving about the now quiet motel. Sakura had been quieter than a mouse, too afraid to fall asleep as the night had turned into two.

She had heard them exit at what she assumed had been dawn. She couldn't really tell from where she sat cramped in her little space. It also didn't help that the courage she had found hours prior to the fight had evaded her and she didn't dare come out wondering if someone was waiting for her outside.

Somehow, she had managed to lose consciousness and she wondered if it had been because she lacked nutrition or energy. Maybe both.

And then standing before her had been a boy. Possibly just a little older than her, but a boy like herself nonetheless. The child she had once been wondered what he was doing there at the motel where her parents' bodies were now nowhere to be found. She wondered if the killers had burned them.

Another thought also occurred in her, wondering if he had been hiding like her too. If he had also lost his parents. He had fueled her with the curiosity to talk again. To ask why he wasn't affected at all by the blood splatters all over the floor and the knife shaking from the tremble in her hand.

"Y-you're not s-scared?" Sakura asked, her puppy green eyes wide and she was sure she looked like she'd gone through hell with her hair plastered all over on one side. She had been amazed at the boy hovering over her.

His own face covered in shock, but he wiped his emotions away in the blink of an eye. She couldn't quite remember the exact specifics of his face; there had been something obscure about it preventing her from recalling the memory in exact detail. All she could remember was his eyes. She had never seen such vibrant eyes that were the opposite of her own.

While hers reflected light, he seemed to absorb it in swirls of red and black. There was so much raw emotion a girl at her age had yet to understand. Traces of love and pain filled his eyes to the brim and Sakura couldn't peel herself away, no, she instead got closer to him. It was captivating to watch.

"Teach me how to not be scared," Sakura barely whispered among her trance.

"I repeat, do you copy?" A small voice coming from the boy's ear broke Sakura from completely leaning in and she backed away instead.

Then the boy had run. He had run far, far away from her.

She had called him back, called him to not leave her behind. To take her with him but he continued running. The feeling of loneliness had settled in her after that and she realized just how alone she truly was.

A few hours later, it was nightfall once more and Tsunade had found her in the stuffed in the cupboard right where she had been left. Little Sakura felt it was the safest place to stay in and she didn't have the guts to walk away from the place where her parents were stolen from her. Tsunade had seen herself in the girl's eyes, something so like her own and Sakura recognized it too.

Those three nights would never escape Sakura as she shifted on her bed once more; the night of hell, purgatory, and heaven as she liked to morbidly joke.