She's dead, the mutter-whisper as thick as pudding, she's dead. She cannot block out the wailing cries; they crowd and swarm and overwhelm with surprising ferocity. Her arms sting with their cuts of grace as she tries to shield her face from the pin-needle sharp teeth.
And then the weak voice from within that joins the piteous chorus: I didn't know it, it wasn't my fault! It's been too many years, too many times to suddenly be gone
And still the stronger voice that drowns out the hideous whine: Good, good, this is all good. She's gone now. Nothing more to worry about. Finally, we have won…
And the small voice again: No, no…this is only the beginning of the end. Soon they will come asking questions…it'll be all your fault. What will you do then? What?
A snarl from the larger voice: Shut up! Your fear disgusts—
The small voice insisting: My fear is what has kept us alive!
She stands from the sidelines, peeking tip-toed over the chalk-lined boundaries, watching the fight between me, myself, and I. It has been since eternity; she knows it will never stop—it's gone on too long to end so abruptly, so weakly.
Still, she isn't sure which one to listen to (she's lost track of who's winning).The numbers have gone awry in her head, all logic murdered in the realm of two people who are, after all, of the same soul, but who could never hate anything more than they despise the other.
She wonders as she listens to the bickering, can you be wrong and right at the same time? Can you hate and love yourself all at once? Can you be someone you are not while still being the person you half-are? Or is it too far past to turn back…?
She is jolted awake by a hand on her shoulder, a cold snowflake touch, heavy and careful. She turns and gazes into an alien face, a face too tired to be forgotten, too familiar to be cherished. She is almost as tall as him, now (either she's grown a lot, or he's shrunken tremendously). He used to be so much more – what happened to looking up?
Kakashi smiles faintly at her, the mad-tired smile that never fulfills its task. His touch makes her cringe; her muscles tense like a wild-cat, and she wants to slap away his hand, demand his reason for touching her. What does he want?
He seems to somehow sense this (or maybe it's because he's not as stupid as Naruto and can actually see what's in her eyes) and casually removes his hand from her shoulder, tucks it into his pocket, next to that orange book of his.
"Yo, Sakura. What have you been up to lately?"
She must be cautious. Kakashi knows too much, and conceals it too well.
"Nothing, Kakashi-sensei. Why do you ask?" She adds an emphasis to the honorary (the dear sensei of long ago) without knowing why. It gives her a certain satisfaction she cannot comprehend and she doesn't bother to question it. She'll take anything, these days.
Kakashi barely flinches at the title, at the nostalgic uselessness of it—but she still catches the slightest quiver of a jaw. Her eyes have grown keener over the years, her blindness softened and receding.
"Hm, well." Kakashi scratches his head, the mop of silver upon it. His eye crinkles for the first-last time (she isn't quite sure which) into the cloudless crescent moon. She hates liars—and Kakashi is the biggest one she knows. He still thinks he can fool her, keep her safe with that sad excuse of a reassurance; well, she thinks, to each their own!
Even Kakashi has his own fairy tales to live.
"You've heard?" he asks, his voice dropping several octaves lower. His gaze has turned suddenly somber, the grey metal of an approaching storm.
She blinks innocently, all bright eyes and childish smile, all ballooning hopes. "What?"
I fear you're facing the dead, Kakashi.
He stares at her for a moment, as if trying to figure out how to open a locked box he has stumbled across in a forgotten desert. "Sakura—"
He breaks off. For a moment she panics that he's seen through it all. Has he, with that lost eye?
But, she then thinks, that's impossible!
Even Kakashi is blind in places he doesn't know.
She smiles harder, telling her cheeks to ache pink and her eyes to sparkle green. Hide it all beneath the ache and the fake sparkle…
Kakashi frowns. "I'm surprised you haven't heard yet, Sakura…after all, she was one of your closest friends." Her heart jumps at this. Closest friend?
She takes the luxury to ponder Kakashi's definition of friends, and wallows joyously in the vast difference between hers and his.
"But that doesn't change the fact itself…" he pauses. "I'm sorry I'm the one to tell you this, Sakura."
She keeps her eyes pinpointed on him, purposefully luminous, purposefully vulnerable. She allows her eyebrows to crease the slightest bit to add to the whole effect.
"Ino is dead," he says quietly.
She allows a moment to pass.
And now comes the careful, cataclysmic crumpling of the smile; the slow and frightful widening of the eyes. Remember, she tells herself, do not over exaggerate—that is as bad as no emotion at all. She blinks hard to encourage tears.
"What?" she numbs the word with a fermented numbness she has kept sleeping, thickening in the pit of her stomach for years, so that the word comes out as a marvelous frog-croak she didn't quite know she was capable of.
He watches her, and she knows his gaze.
"Kaka—you—" she swallows hard, shivering and not understanding why. But it doesn't matter, if it makes the act more convincing. "This—Ino—"
And then she throws herself in a sudden flurry into his arms, into the insufficient warmth of his cold. It scares her more than anything has before; she is appalled but cannot show it. This was not part of the plan, not part of the act. Then why? She hates his traitorous touch, the shards of his broken-glass promises. He'd promised so much to her and given her nothing; and here she leeches and sucks the meaningless-ness out of his words, thrives shamelessly upon it.
Coming back to the nest at nightfall.
She begins to cry. It is a silent weeping she has perfected, just like the Cheshire smile she treasures for its deadly charm. The feeling of tears tickling the bridge of her nose is delectable because it hurts so much.
The tears she cries are for his fairytales.
-
"Sakura," Tsunade beckons. "I've been watching you for the past few weeks."
Sakura grows cold and thinks of empty glass-crystal bottles and finger-printed doorknobs. A small smile forces itself onto her lips.
"Yes, Tsunade-sama?"
The golden-haired woman stares. The pink-haired woman swallows without showing it and still smiles.
"Sakura," says Tsunade.
She forces herself not to look away from the intensity, from the window-mirror, double-sided. She can scarcely separate the reflection from the illusion.
The gold eyes detect lies, but the green eyes have learned this from poisoned patience. The green eyes know and have grown smarter, have changed their ways. Tsunade is frightening to those who do not know her. But to those who take the time to learn her secrets, she is nothing but a scary mask with cracks all on the inside, spidering out.
"You have changed."
Sakura looks calmly out to a blank sea, quivering just beneath the surface.
"Have I?"
One more swallow, she permits herself.
"I think you already know what I'm talking about," says Tsunade, measured.
Sakura isn't sure whether to nod or shake her head. Instead, she does nothing but blink.
"I think you're ready."
Sakura snaps to attention, uses her last swallow, and says nothing.
"Sakura, you've been learning for two years now. What I've been teaching you is basic. All healers know the techniques you've learned; anyone could have taught you what you know." Tsunade stands from her chair and walks to the window, surveys the nameless faces on the streets, the lives she must keep safe until she betrays herself one cloudless night.
"I think it's time we made you my apprentice," Tsunade says.
The far-off call of a fish vendor rings in her ears. 200 yen a stick. Fried fish.
"Pardon?"
"It's time I started teaching you, Sakura."
Dusk quickly falls; the sky is burnt orange and red through rice paper curtains.
Tsunade turns and her imposing figure blocks the furious light. The shadows reap harvest all around and Sakura feels their scythes curving against her cheek. She bites her lip.
"I expect you to be prepared. I'll warn you ahead of time; it's not going to be easy. We will begin tomorrow, four a.m. sharp."
Tsunade circles around back to her desk, the clicking of her heels sharp and pointed.
She sits back down and spreads her palms gently on the wooden surface. A large inhale, as if this is a final decision and there is no turning back now.She looks to Sakura, and something inside there is pleading, begging. Please.
"Don't disappoint me, Sakura."
-
Wow, I feel like I've been away forever. ;; It's hard for me to start writing again (especially fanfiction, whcih used to be the only think I could write). I look back at my old writing from just a few months ago, and I think, "Ick." Yeah. I still have a long ways to go on the road of the literary. :3 Until then, bear with me.