It was almost like the veil had been torn from her eyes – the rosy lenses she once viewed the world through nothing but shattered glass beneath her feet.
She stared at the human-torso-shaped target board, eyeing the areas marked in red, the sound of knives being thrown whistling in her ears as she looked at the targets and finally realised something. She was learning how to kill; how to end the life of another, just as her brother had ended the rest of their clan. It wasn't the glamorous life that Ino had told her of when they were both small children, blissfully unaware of the horrors of the world.
Naïve, the voice in the back of her head hissed, and Sakura only turned her gaze on the blonde girl whom she had once called her best and only friend. Besides her brother, that was. Sakura didn't want to think about that man though. Ino was her only friend in memory. The only one she wanted to remember. The only one not tainted by memories of blood and death.
Because she hadn't seen what she had – hadn't been there that night like she had. Sakura didn't know whether she was jealous of that fact. After all, whether she had been there or not wouldn't have changed the fact that her clan was dead.
Pale blue eyes met her own for a brief instant, eyebrows drawn together before that gaze averted with a soft huff, and Ino turned her attention back to her own target. Sakura pulled her own attention away from her once friend. The friend she had decided to turn her back on over a stupid boy. A hopeless smile curled at her lips. She really was stupid, wasn't she? A bark of laughter escaped her.
"What're you laughin' for?" Kiba asked from his target next to her own. "You're missin' the target more than me!" he jeered, and his little dog barked at her from his head. "Or are you laughin' coz you finally realised that Sasuke won't ever look at a girl like you?"
Sakura stepped back, blinking at the odd vehemence coming from her so-called classmate. The same boy who had such oddly bright eyes compared to her own, even with the hateful words spat from his lips. Words which probably would have hurt or made her so pointlessly angry if he'd said them before that night had rolled around. She blinked, the answer coming to her before the voice in the back of her could hiss something else. Kiba hadn't seen his clan massacred; hadn't seen the aftermath, nor had he been forced to watch it play itself over and over again like some sick home video while lying in a pool of cooling, congealing blood.
She blinked, wondering why she had gotten so riled up by the boy before – why she had always told him 'it's Sasuke-kun, Inuzuka-san!' as if to emphasize the difference in closeness, when she had probably spoken to Kiba more than she had her once crush. It wasn't like dog boy mattered much in the grand scheme of things. It wasn't like Sasuke-kun mattered in the grand scheme either. She was done with it – done with messing about over a boy all because she was too weak. Her gaze drifted then, blinking when she met cold black eyes and felt a glaring similarity and familiarity in that gaze before the glance was gone and Sasuke was focused back on his own target.
How could she forget that there was one other in her class who had the same eyes as her? There was a snort of derisive laughter in the back of her head. Maybe because you've been so busy trying to despise him? the voice murmured, and Sakura only sighed as she turned her gaze back to her own target, hating how very sparse of kunai it was, more so when she compared it to everyone else's. Weak, the whispered word came back to haunt her.
"So you're finally admitting it, Sa-chan," her brother said, and she gritted her teeth.
"Oy! Don't ignore me!" Kiba wailed from next to her, but she was already busy throwing the remainder of her kunai at the target, focusing more on her positioning, and her technique than she had before. After all, the first step to getting better was learning where she was going wrong and then correcting her actions until she wasn't going wrong – until she didn't go wrong again.
"And who taught you that, Sa-chan?" her brother asked, ignorant of the way the flames of her temper ignited at that. She wanted to shut him up, but she was far too weak to do just that.
So stop pacing out and do something, stupid, the voice in her head jeered.
"Collect your kunai now!" Iruka-sensei's voice came over the din in her mind, and the bothersome noise coming from dog boy beside her. He was as bad as Naruto, Sakura decided, striding forwards to collect her kunai from where they were, mostly scattered at the base of the target, many having fallen out because she hadn't thrown them with enough force.
Her eyes narrowed, body freezing when a hand closed around her arm. "You're actin' real weird, Sakura," Kiba muttered, a frown marring his face as he peered closely at her, ignorant to the way she slapped at his hand, trying to wrench it from her skin. She didn't like the feeling. She wanted that grasp gone. She could still feel the hand, the touch, around her throat, choking her and suffocating her, and she didn't like it one bit.
So rip off his arm, that voice inside her supplied helpfully, vicious and hungry as ever. Then no one will touch you again, and you would like that, wouldn't you?
She shook her head, getting rid of the bloodthirsty thought. There was a disparity in the way she moved and felt compared to before that night. "Because you're no longer trying to be that sweet little girl you were pretending to be before, Sa-chan," her brother explained, and her hands curled into fists, lips pulled back, baring her teeth.
"Release me, and cease you incessant barking, mutt," she hissed, wrenching her arm loose, anger and annoyance thrumming through her veins. All she wanted was to throw kunai and improve her aim and ability. Was it too much to ask for some peace and quiet whilst doing just that? She didn't want to hear it. She didn't like the noise and the hustle and bustle of the world around her. It was silent in the Haruno Compound, and silence was what she had become accustomed to by that point.
Stomping forwards to collect her kunai, she blinked at the weight which tackled her to the ground, yelping as she rolled over, baring her teeth at Kiba. "Call me a mutt again, I dare you," Kiba snarled, baring his own teeth.
Sakura brought her knee up, relishing in the wounded yelp that dog boy let out, even as a fist slammed into her cheek. Pain radiated from her face, and she punched up at him too, blood thrumming through her veins as she tasted the all too familiar copper of her own blood. But we don't want to taste our own blood, that voice murmured. We want his…
"Break it up you two!" Iruka-sensei's voice came over the ringing resounding in her own ears, and there was a part of her which wanted to listen; an ingrained habit which always made her listen to those of higher authority than herself.
Then Kiba punched her in the face again, and she lunged for the throat.
"Honestly, Sakura-chan," Iruka-sensei murmured, standing before her, a frown set on his face as he stared at where she sat on the edge of the cot. "What's gotten into you? Fighting another classmate on your first day back after you've been ill," he continued, heedless of the way her stomach tightened and tensed at those words.
"Illness…" Sakura mumbled, tilting her head as she stared past Iruka-sensei and at the wall of the so-called nurse's office. "Is that what we're calling it?" she asked, staring blankly at the white wall, fingers curling into tight little fists which itched to punch something. Already, she could feel an ache in her muscles from the exertion of that day. It was almost addictive, that feeling which came from muscles being torn and repairing themselves. The feeling which accompanied growing stronger. Sakura wanted to be standing at the peak of her strength then and forever.
"That was what was written on the note I presume your parents or your current guardian wrote to me," Iruka-sensei said, and Sakura felt her stomach clench, knuckles turning a bone white. "A family emergency, followed by a bout of illness…"
A choked burst of laughter escaped her. How didn't they know? Sakura could only wonder how long some people would go about under the delusion that more than one Haruno still lived. Her brother didn't count. Evidently he had turned his back on their once shared name. That was the only way he could have killed them all in cold blood.
"Sakura-chan…?" Iruka-sensei trailed off, looking mildly perturbed as she forced her lips into a wild grin. One which wasn't happy in the slightest. It was just a mess of teeth bared in a mockery of the grins and smiles which had once been so simple for her to give to him. "I am aware that there is something of a blackout on what exactly is going on in the Haruno Compound at this current moment, but it is evidently affecting you in your studies here… If you need more time off from the academy, then you only need to say so… I would rather have my brightest, most well-behaved student back a bit later than not at all…"
Sakura blinked, an icy coldness filling her chest, because the Haruno Sakura he was talking about was already dead. She had died amidst blood and moonlight, with a hand of her once beloved brother choking the life out of her. She was a weak girl with no motivation to get stronger, and she had been shoved into the fiery crucible to come out as something new. Something better. Or so you like to think, the voice said, because she hadn't changed as of yet in anything aside from goal and motivation.
"Give it time, Sa-chan, and perhaps mediocrity will be within your grasp…"
Her hands curled that much tighter, irritation pulsing in her temples. She hated the voice of him which haunted her so. The voice which hadn't been there when her precious brother had been there. The voice which haunted her as much as the eyes of her dead clansmen whenever she stood before the numerous graves which lined the graveyard in her clan compound.
Yet there Iruka-sensei was, expecting the old Haruno Sakura back. A girl naïve, weak, destined for deskwork, and so very stupid at that. Not that her stupidity had changed all that much. Her brother and the voice both attested to that much.
Sakura hated it.
"Do you really think it can all go back to the way it was before, ne, sensei?" she muttered, tongue moving without the input of her brain, heart aching, fury pulsing beneath her skin, and betrayal flooding through her veins. "That old Sakura is gone. She died the night—"
The hairs on the back of her neck pricked, a sudden swirl of movement behind Iruka-sensei making her lips click shut. A shadowed gaze bore into her from behind a porcelain mask, hair concealed under the black hood, but the lighting betrayed the painted animal mask. Sakura could only stare, the air around her feeling heavy, even as the shadowy figure lifted a finger to its lips. The meaning of it was obvious enough, and the gravity of the reminder that what happened to the Haruno Clan was an S-Rank secret – the highest possible ranking – sunk deep into her bones then.
She looked down at her knees, suddenly finding them very interesting to look at, even as that heavy presence disappeared without a trace and Iruka-sensei looked over his shoulder curiously.
Long ago she had once hung out with clan kids, and they were more in the know about the upper echelons of the village. Sakura swallowed, her throat suddenly feeling so very dry as she ignored Iruka-sensei's prattling until he left and the room was silent. She was alone once more.
Are you, now? the voice in her head questioned, and shivers rolled down her spine at everything that question implied. Because was she?
The Masks, as most of them at the academy called the highest ranking one could attain, were said to be the best at stealth and concealment. The best warriors of the village, excelling at many different disciplines of shinobi life. "You really think you'd be able to tell if one was in the room with you at the level you're at, Sa-chan?" her brother asked, and Sakura knew the answer to that was a big, fat no. Lips pressed together, hands shaking as she sat in that room.
ANBU.
That was what they were professionally called. And now she had some watching over her, preventing her from spilling a village secret. She swallowed, fingers crinkling the fabric of the bedspread she sat upon. ANBU were the cream of the crop; the best of the best, handpicked by the Hokage himself. Ones who hunted missing-nin… like her brother…
Sakura blinked, that familiar hunger in her bones stirring at the thought. Oh, the voice in the back of her head crooned. Have you realised it yet?
Nodding, she lifted her eyes from her lap, staring at the eerily silent room – because to make her brother's voice shut up; to become stronger than him – she would have to become one of them.
"You can't even manage mediocrity, Sa-chan," her brother hissed, and that familiar temper of hers stirred, and her hands curled into tight fists once more.
"Watch me," she muttered, eyes narrowed in a glare.
Spite is such a wonderful motivator, the voice murmured, amused as ever, laughter ringing in her ears.
Sakura stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her and making her way home from her first day back at the academy, all the while hating the sight of Kiba's relatively uninjured form as he ran home ahead of her.