I saw the storm, felt the wind begin to change
I saw the sky rip wide open
I looked away, hid my face from the world
Ran away from everything
But now I'm back for more
-Through It All, Spoken
Surgery.
In the moment of anger and desperation, she didn't realize how much damage she truly did to her arm. Bones stick out of broken arms all the time, right? The medics lecture her about how injuries can cause permanent damage and that it's reckless to train unsupervised at her age.
Considering she's seen the injuries of an ANBU mission gone wrong and watched the medics bring back people from the edge of death, their warnings fall flat. She understands that they're trying to help her by scaring her, however, so she nods along with wide eyes. She's pretty sure that half the consequences they list off are made up, and she has to bite her lip to keep from calling them out on their poorly thought out scare tactics. Hopefully biting her lip will add to her scared and ashamed facade.
Her parents have her left hand tucked between their hands, offering her words of comfort as the doctors prepare for her operation. While she's not afraid, she appreciates the display of love and concern from her family and it leaves a warmth blooming in her chest.
"They said it'll be quick," Sakura says, becoming the one who's doing the consoling rather than being consoled. "Just put the bones back in place, hold it together with screws and chakra, and wrap it up so it stays while I heal."
"You're so brave, honey," her mom says, giving her hand a squeeze.
She doesn't know how much of a coward her daughter truly is.
Sakura doesn't want her to know. She doesn't want either of her parents to know what sort of disappointment and murderer she is at heart, so she keeps quiet and holds onto them for as long as they stay with her before the surgery.
She wakes up slowly, the anesthesia trying to keep her in darkness. It pulls at her with invisible anchors, luring her with the ocean of bliss it provides. The beauty of surgery is the deep, dreamless sleep it gives the patient.
The tragedy of surgery is that the anesthesia wears off and gives way to the pain of injury and the reminder that recovery is a journey and not instantaneous. (Also, sometimes people die in surgery, or the surgery doesn't accomplish what it is meant to. Those are probably the actual tragedies.)
The painkillers are working, but they aren't enough to assuage the deep ache left throughout her right arm. This is her own fault, but her reaction to the hurricane of information and emotions that Ino dropped on her could have been worse.
He steps back once. Twice. Sight is a concept of the past. Blindness isn't his future. He doesn't have a future.
The fall doesn't kill him. Hitting the ground does.
She groans as she forces her eyes open to face the bright hospital lights above her. But the light isn't as blinding as she expects. Rather, it's filtered by the red tint of her goggles. She fumbles and runs her uncoordinated fingers over her face until she feels their surface with her left hand, the IV embedded in its back continuing to feed her medication.
Her hand is pulled away by another, larger hand and set back onto the bed.
"Sacchan, sweetheart," her dad says from beside her. "Best to leave those on for now."
She turns to look at him, sitting in a chair pulled next to her bed. That suggestion sends fear through her. "Why?"
While she never thought she'd be the one questioning the wearing of her beloved goggles, why does she need eye protection in a hospital? Has it happened again? Is someone after her eyes, willing to pluck them straight from her sockets as she struggles to fight under the effects of poison?
"You were having some pretty bad nightmares when you fell back asleep after surgery. Since you kept scratching at your eyes, we put your goggles on. Then, you stopped." He pauses for a bit of a laugh to escape. "You always have been different. Even enough to have security goggles instead of a security blanket."
"Goggles are more practical," she whispers. She doesn't have the energy to raise her voice more than that.
"You got me there, Miss Practicality. Must be a ninja thing, huh?"
Even with her surgery completed, her dad looks worried and a little sad. His words, while he tries to keep them light and joking, are spoken in a more subdued tone than she's used to hearing from her father.
"When can I go home?" she asks.
"They want to keep you overnight to make sure everything is okay. So, tomorrow morning you should be discharged."
She scrunches her face up. "The hospital is the natural enemy of a shinobi."
There's a silence between them where she expects laughter. Unless she's more drugged up than she originally thought and didn't say that part out loud.
"How long have the nightmares been back?" he asks.
Sakura pauses before answering, but she figures that since her parents do their best to love and support her (which is not how she'd describe her parents as Shisui) they deserve the truth. "They never really stopped. I just stopped crying about them."
"Listen, Sakura," her dad says, "I think you should try talking to somebody again about those nightmares. You were trying to claw your own eyes out because of them. That isn't normal, and your mom and I are worried."
"Didn't help last time," Sakura says.
Though part of that might be because I can't tell a shrink the whole issue that's bothering me without sounding as insane as I feel at times.
Her father's face falls, but he says, "Would you try one more time?"
She doesn't want to. Even the thought of being hauled to another set of therapy sessions twists her stomach into knots that are weighed down by the secrets she needs to keep. There isn't any help for people like her and Ino.
"I guess it won't hurt."
The smile her dad gives her tells her that she's making the right choice to soothe her parents.
If only that could ease her worries, too.
"You can talk to your mom and me, too," he says.
"I didn't want to keep waking you up in the middle of the night."
He leans forward and runs a hand through her hair. "Sacchan, we're your parents no matter what time of day it is, how old you are, or how great of a ninja you become. You can wake us up anytime you need a bit of comfort, and you know we'd like to do what we can for you. We'd do anything for you."
Sakura blinks back the tears stinging in her eyes. "I know. I love you both so much it hurts."
And it does hurt. She never had this overwhelming care directed at her as Shisui. It's welcome and foreign at the same time, but she savors these moments where she is not in a clan cursed with hatred. Rather, she's in a family blessed with love.
Her dad gives her a large, genuine grin. "I love you, too, honey."
Her arm is heavy (and itchy beneath the cast) as it rests on top of the table she's at in the academy classroom. Today, she chose a seat near the back not only to keep an eye on Sasuke, but to also keep the eyes of her curious classmates off of her arm. It doesn't stop them from talking about her, however, and as normal academy students (and very much not full-fledged shinobi), they don't know how to whisper. Even though they should. Seriously. Shinobi 101 here.
Maybe she just has high standards overflowing from her past life.
"How does a civilian have a training accident like that?"
"Maybe she shouldn't be here if she can't even throw a proper punch."
And hah to that one. As if they haven't seen her spar. Funny how one incident can erase someone's memory in regards to her skills. (She makes a mental note to not hold back as much in her next spar with the student who said that.) She has thrown and willingly taken multiple punches in spars for the sake of her image not appearing too prodigious.
A lifetime ago, she was in the middle of a war at this age, not gossiping about classmates like such frivolous matters were more important than learning to survive.
A moment of jealousy and the decision to hold back his instincts, reign them in and force himself to remain in place. He should know better, but he's still just a kid, too, damn it! It's when the moment passes and he's too late that he outgrows pettiness.
And tears of blood run down from blazing red eyes as they twist into a new pattern.
It's tough to reconcile that this time she can participate in childish activities because war isn't taking childhoods away anymore. Not right now, at least.
But when will it happen next?
She needs to ask Ino when the Fourth Shinobi War she mentioned is supposed to start. Or how to prevent it. Or both. Both would be good.
Iruka comes in, sets his materials for the day on the table in front of the room, and clears his throat to silence the chatter of the children. It does little to silence the thoughts tumbling around in Sakura's mind.
Despite the weariness in his eyes, there's a kind smile on his face as he glances through the room to see who's present today. When he looks at her, Sakura notices the quick flicker of his attention to her right arm propped on the table, though he's certainly been informed of the situation considering her absence from class for a few days. He must make a mental note to himself for he gives the most minuscule nod before moving on in his check of attendees.
It all happens in a moment, but it's enough to tell her why Iruka is a Chunin academy teacher rather than a Jounin instructor. He's kind and caring to a fault when working with students and hasn't mastered controlling his expressions yet. He wouldn't be able to send his team through the rough missions that make or break a shinobi without betraying his worry or trying to take too much of the burden upon himself to the point that his team would not receive the full benefit of the experience from those missions.
Is it bad to have that softness as a shinobi?
"Sakura, be careful, okay?" Iruka says. "It's tough to learn how to throw shuriken with your non-dominant hand, but it'll be a good skill for you to get used to while your right arm heals. In fact, most shinobi will train themselves to use both hands in preparation for injuries or unforeseen hindrances."
Sakura nods along, hoping that she looks focused and properly concerned about the danger of relearning weapon usage to become ambidextrous. Yes, at her age most students haven't drilled the muscle memory required for fighting equally on both sides yet.
They will realize that any shinobi who values their life will learn to fight through any impairment battle might inflict.
"I put you on the end to minimize the risk to other students since the most common error is to release the shuriken late and it goes wide," Iruka continues.
"Yes, Iruka-sensei," Sakura says.
She admires his dedication to student safety, even if she doesn't need his help or advice.
From elsewhere in the line-up of students she hears a shrill voice call out Sasuke's name and say something about how amazing he is (or whatever, Sakura mentally blocks out the majority of fangirling she witnesses).
Iruka hears it, too, for he heaves out a long suffering sigh. Before he leaves to handle it, he gives her a half-smile. "Be careful and call me over if you need help, okay?"
"I will," she says, knowing that she won't need it.
He leaves and she adjusts her goggles, which are rather difficult to put on by herself in the morning. They're bulkier with one red lens that stretches across the bridge of her nose to cover both eyes. More popular in lands with a lot of snow, she's told, but she's never cared for fashion. A blend of comfort and practicality is all she needs.
At least her mom was happy that morning to help her put them on, a task she did carefully and with a kind smile before helping Sakura tie her hair back in a ponytail.
She hits the target on her first try with her left hand, but she can do this practice exercise in her sleep. Her reflexes are still refined from the knowledge of her past life and the brutal training she's put herself through in secret to make sure she's at the top of her abilities. To make sure she can protect her precious people in this life rather than do more harm to them. Rather than hinder them.
She's careful in her aim, however, and hits the edge of the target. A respectable hit for someone not used to throwing with that arm, but nothing too extraordinary.
She hears a groan from beside her and sees Naruto's shuriken on the ground.
"Sakura-chan, how did you hit on your first try with a broken arm?" he asks. Naruto had rushed to take a spot at the target next to hers, not that any other students cared to take it from him.
Ino has taken a spot close to Sasuke, but not too close to scare him off. Though, she sees Ino keeping an eye on her, too.
"Beginner's luck?"
Naruto gives her a look that tells her he doesn't believe that, and she sighs. "It doesn't matter which arm you use, the concept of throwing shuriken is the same."
She takes another shuriken and throws it at her target, hitting a little closer to the center this time.
Naruto tries to imitate her movements. While he doesn't hit the target, it's still an improvement. His jaw tenses as he grits his teeth together. "I'm going to get this, believe it!"
"Sure, sure," Sakura says. When she can get away with it, she does her beloved sleight of hand tricks. One shuriken between her fingers becomes three, and then goes back to one. The slide of cool metal over her skin grounds her to the present. "You do need a certain level of accuracy to graduate from the academy, you know."
She sees him turn pale from the corner of her eye and grins.
As annoying as Naruto can be, giving him shit is pretty fun.
"Why did you do that to yourself?" It's Shikamaru who asks her, to her surprise. He's slouching with his hands stuffed in his pockets. She can tell that he doesn't want to hang around after class like this, but has been forced to by somebody else.
"It's not like I did it on purpose."
He raises one eyebrow, but doesn't question her. "Whatever. Ino wanted me to give this to you. If you two could deal with your issues so I don't have to play messenger, I'd appreciate it."
He hands her a container and leaves, and Sakura is quick to find out what Ino couldn't give her herself. Wallowing in her self-hatred as Sakura knows she is because Ino has always been too hard on herself and too willing to take on burdens that don't belong to her.
Tea. Quality tea from the look of it.
Because after all, Itachi's soul lies within Ino.
While Sakura isn't as much of a tea aficionado as Ino, she enjoys a good cup of it well enough to appreciate this olive branch. Not that it's needed. She isn't angry at Ino. She understands.
There are plenty of other people more deserving of her anger. People who will feel her wrath when she's older and more prepared to deal with them.
Danzo sits at the top of that list, a Bloodline Limit stealing bastard. He should be called a clan killer, not Itachi. The problem is his status as an elder, possession of one of Shisui's eyes, and his shadow army, ROOT. Too much influence, power, and freedom have been placed in the hands of a man who is corrupt deep in his bones.
It's going to take a lot of planning, but she has time. Ino likely has some more information that'll help, and a reason to want him eliminated more than Sakura does.
And, after all, they do make a pretty good team.
One long talk with plenty of tea and sweets should be enough to get them back on track.
When she catches Ino's eyes and gives a slight nod that is, to her relief, returned, she knows that Ino realizes the importance of their next talk as well.
Whatever happens next, they'll face it together.
A/N: I thought this would be the last chapter before a time skip to academy graduation, but then it took on its own life and scrapped that plan.
I'm glad so many of you are enjoying this. I never expected it to be so well received.
