Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Puppet in Pink

9. Little Things We Ponder

"Take these treasures, earth, now that no one

Living can enjoy them. They were yours, in the beginning;

Allow them to return..."

-Beowulf

"Mommy! Daddy! Wait for me!" A little girl, long blonde hair pulled up into a ponytail, ran clumsily after her parents. Her mother and father stopped and turned around, laughter bright in their eyes.

"I'm almost there!" She yelled to them happily. "I'm almost ther-" She tripped over a rock and hit the ground with a thud. "Mommy! Help! Daddy!" she wailed, hugging an injured knee.

Alarmed, the parents rushed over to their daughter, picked her up, examined the scrapes on her legs.

"It...it hurts," the blonde-haired girl sniffled.

"That's all right. It'll get better," her mother cooed.

"But what if it doesn't? What if it doesn't get better, Mommy?"

"Don't worry, it will."

The girl wasn't convinced.

"How about we go to the new ramen shop that just opened? That039;ll make you feel better, won't it?"

"Yay! Ramen shop! Ramen shop!" The blatantly joyful sound of the toddler's voice, and the muted laughs of her father and mother, echoed through the street long after they were gone. Green eyes watched from the darkness of an alley as the group headed away.

The short, pink-haired child looked away. The sun was almost setting. Mommy will hit me if I come home late again... She shifted the weight of her school bag to her other hand and sifted through the trash can one last time, looking for any scrolls she might have missed. The scrolls were her treasures. The only things she owned that were truly hers.

She thought about the little blonde girl and her parents.

Was that what it was like to have a normal family? Could you cry without being crushed? Could you say no, and still live to see the next day? Why isn't my mommy like that? Why?

Maybe she just didn't deserve a mother like that. Maybe that girl was a nicer girl than Haruno Sakura. Maybe that was why. My mommy wouldn't be mean to me without a reason. She's only mean to me because...because I'm a bad girl.

She's only mean to you because she's got the bottle in her hand...

The sun started to dip perilously below the horizon. Shouldering her school bag, the girl brushed the dirt off her dress. Mommy will be mad if I get my dress messy. She hurried out of the alley on short toddler legs.

Maybe if I'm a good girl, my mommy will turn into a nice lady like that other girl's mommy. Maybe if I listen and do as she says, she won't hit me anymore. Maybe...maybe it doesn't matter what I want to do. She opened the door of the small house and timidly stepped inside.

If I just keep doing what Mommy wants, I'll live to see the next sunrise. If I just keep doing what Mommy wants, I'll live to see her last.

Sakura shuddered. Her memories were assaulting her. Every minute of stillness, every time she stopped to rest, there they were. Each time she fell short of what her scrolls demanded, she heard the voices echo in her head. Girls aren't strong, Sakura...

But...had she really been so naïve as to think that her mother would ever change? What had made her think that her mother would ever be like the parents of her classmates? What made her hope that she would have, someday, a "normal" family?

The pink-haired girl allowed a bitter smile as she threw herself into her exercises. She hadn't been lying completely in telling Naruto that she trained to stave off nightmares. It was just a matter of what kind...

"Aww, Kakashi, can't we take a break from all this training crap and have a mission sometime soon?" Naruto whined.

Sasuke silently agreed. Training was beginning to frustrate him. Before, he was sitting comfortably in an uncontested seat at the top of the team. But now...his eyes strayed to the pink-haired figure nearby.

It'd seemed like his teammate was always one step ahead of their training requirements ever since she'd returned from her month's absence. In many cases, she seemed miles ahead. Training, previously a breeze for him, was starting to take on the feel of a latent threat. A threat to his pride. A threat which suggested that...maybe he wasn't "the strongest" anymore.

Sasuke knew as soon as he thought it that this feeling was unfounded. So what if Sakura had made a few improvements? He didn't sense a chakra increase, and her aura, though almost frighteningly gloomy, was if anything lower than her "normal" energy level...

At least he was still the strongest one. Or rather, that was what he told himself. What he wanted to believe...

Kakashi sighed. "I'll have to ask Hokage-sama," he said in lieu of an answer. It went without saying that Sakura's loss was the main reason why Team 7 had been less active as of late. They hadn't had an official mission since the Zabuza incident nearly three months earlier. Even if Sakura's skills had improved slightly, her one redeeming quality -her sharp mind- was not entirely "there". But surely the boys deserved at least a D-rank mission. They had been surprisingly cooperative, given the circumstances...and Sakura didn't have to come if she didn't want to...

Yes. That decided it. He would ask the Hokage after they were through with the day's training.