Chapter 1: Milk

The sun set on the horizon, casting the path and the buildings into brazen shades of gold. Despite the beauty of the scene before her, however, Sakura was otherwise occupied.

Hours had passed since the retrieval squad had departed. And though she had long wiped away those tears and had even managed to finish the grocery errands her mother had rudely barked at her on her way out (didn't she care that Sakura was absolutely miserable?), she could no longer ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach that had been present all afternoon.

Weak, the Voice snarled in her head. Weak, weak, weak!

Sakura scowled.

Since the events of a few hours earlier, the Voice—that insidious force that had helped Sakura shove Ino out during the Chunin exams—had been unusually active. And while she was no stranger to it whispering outrageous things, it had never been this vocal.

Righteous indignation alone kept her back straight as she continued her trip back home. Weak? Sakura had done absolutely nothing wrong; she had tried convincing Sasuke with her deep love for him, and when that had failed, there had been no other option. She couldn't hurt the boy she liked, kunoichi or not.

Fighting and scars and blood had never interested her beyond what was minimally required to beat Ino. It was because of Ino, really, that she had decided to become a kunoichi in the first place. Sakura couldn't really remember ever having had conscious preoccupations with the shinobi lifestyle until meeting her. In the name of competition, nonetheless, she had risen to the top in their academics tests. With regard to taijutu and the more physical aspects of their training, though...well, she had more or less resigned herself to letting Ino take the prize-not unlike how she was content now to let Naruto take up the mantle of bringing Sasuke back.

Sakura couldn't let her muscles get too big, after all. She couldn't let her body get scarred, because that's not what a lady was supposed to look like. Brawling and getting dirty were all well and good for boys, but a decent girl simply didn't demean herself like that. She was happy, in fact, to let Ino win in that particular arena. Incidentally, her mother had made her peace with Sakura's lifestyle with compromises like these, and her father-a civilian merchant-had yet to say anything otherwise.

And who needed taijutsu anyway? Sakura was good at being a kunoichi. Her Academy teachers told her so. She had about an average amount of chakra, they said, but she also had excellent chakra control, which would make her a good medic-nin if she ever chose it—

Why don't you make your precious Sasuke-kun bleed yourself? Pretty, pretty blood, I bet he has.

Sakura paled in revulsion at the Voice's words. "You are violent and crazy!" For as far as she could see, the road was abandoned. Still, she lowered her voice. "I would never do that to Sasuke-kun—or anybody!"

You're not going to be able to keep me locked away forever.

Oh, yes she was, Sakura thought vehemently to herself.

Her toes stubbed against a rock in her path, and she heard a tearing sound below her. Scowling downwards, she saw that her sandal had gotten caught and torn. She bent to her knees to try and fix the sandal. If she could grab that loose end and make a make-shift knot over here…

The milk bottle lay forgotten at her side, attention devoted to the sandal she was attempting to salvage. The sooner she fixed it, the sooner she could make the rest of the trip home and spend the rest of the evening crying into her pillow. Biting her lip, she grabbed both ends and stretched them toward each other to tie.

She paused when she heard footsteps.

"What's that?" Sakura whispered, heart pulsing rapidly in her chest. Fingers shaking, she stood up from her kneeling position.

Years later, Sakura would think back to that night. She would think, mainly, about how quickly it all happened—how protracted build ups and prolonged suspense were attributes of stories and kabuki, not real life.

Because in real life, Sakura encountered none of those things.

"Look what we have here."

From the park's bushes on either side of her stepped three grown men. Civilians; they wore no hitai-ate. But they were lean and muscled, with a look in their eyes that made her hand go straight for her pouch. Her stomach churned when she realized that she had left it at home.

"Pink hair," one of them rasped, inching closer. "That's rare, isn't it?"

"What do you want?" Sakura demanded. Her mind fumbled to understand what was happening before her. She had walked this path so many times without a problem. Why now?

The third man stepped forward. By the way the other two gave way for them, it appeared that he was the leader. He was the biggest of the three, with black hair and wide, dark eyes.

"I'm a ninja," Sakura warned. "Don't come any closer."

"Really?" the third man drawled, white teeth flashing. "Don't look it."

Sakura's heart plunged into her stomach. No Kunai or shuriken. If they stepped closer, she would—she would have to fight them hand-to-hand.

When the first man laughed nastily and made a grab for her waist, Sakura darted back. She saw the second man move from behind her, but wasn't fast enough to avoid it. He fisted her hair, thick, calloused hands scraping and drawing blood from her scalp to restrain her.

Sakura twisted—ignoring the sharp pain of hair being ripped from her scalp—to send one leg flying high. Her foot landed squarely on his face, but her strength must have been nothing compared to his mass, and he only staggered back.

"You little bitch," he snarled. Lunging forward, he punched her right in the stomach. Sakura's mind went blank with the pain. Thick, cloying liquid dribbled from her mouth.

No. No. This couldn't be happening. Everything had just been so-

"Don't damage the organs," the third man hissed. She felt his hands wrap around her arms.

Organ traffickers, she processed in terror. Beginning to cry now, she scrabbled wildly against him, nails flying like claws as she searched for his face. She heard him curse behind her when her nails raked against his cheek. Another hand reached his eyes, and he dropped her reflexively.

When the next came at her, she was more prepared. She feinted to the side like she had been trained at the academy and lashed out with one hand, pushing fingers through his eyeballs and into his head. He released a scream and crumpled to his knees.

One down, the Voice growled in her head, Two more.

But unlike the first, the second man managed to catch her arms. The third man grabbed her legs, neutralizing their maneuverability as easily as the man holding her arms.

"Get off!" Sakura screamed.

"You've been more trouble than I anticipated," the third man chuckled darkly.

"Help! Help!"

She felt the man behind her bend down, sniffing her hair and grunting at the scent of her shampoo. "Hey, she smells good…What do you think?"

"I think it's only fair compensation, given what she's done to our friend over there."

Sakura's eyes flew open in primal panic at the implication laden in their tone. Wilder than ever, she raged against their hold on her. She could no longer see through the tears in her eyes, the world a blur. Why couldn't she fight them? Why wouldn't Sasuke-kun help her?

She felt hands begin tearing at her clothes, and she screamed, loud and high. "No, no, no…let go! Please, please, help! Sasuke-kun!"

He's not here, the Voice roared.

"Help—help me," Sakura choked out, limbs twisting, "Kakashi-sensei! Kakashi-sensei!"

They're not here, Sakura-chan, the Voice told her remorselessly, mockingly. Sakura stilled at the Voice, suddenly numb to the hands at the Voice's unbelievable coldness. Without warning, it was like her consciousness had been transported to another plane, where it was only her and the Voice. A colder, monstrous version of herself with sharp teeth and terrifying eyes gazed back at her in her mind's eye, smiling slightly. The creature's mouth opened:

If you want this to stop—

Sakura's jaw tightened, breath heaving.

—LET ME OUT!

It was a deafening, primal roar, so guttural that she could feel its force vibrate through her bones.

After that, Sakura knew only darkness.

Chapter 2: Sedation

She woke to find herself staring without comprehension at two dead bodies.

Milk…she could smell its sweet sourness in the air…

Liquid, coating her hands. Not milk.

A groan sounded to her left. Nerves frayed, her head snapped painfully to its origin. The first man, the one who had attacked first, stirred. Blood streamed from his closed eyes as he fought to get himself to his knees. He whimpered, hands searching around him for the other men. When he encountered dead weight, he let out a horrified groan.

A loud choking noise emerged from Sakura's throat, her eyes bugging in terror and revulsion as she understood what had happened. Her hands snapped to her neck and left inadvertent, morbid handprints. She couldn't breathe. She abandoned the destroyed milk and fled, sprinting as hard as she could.

She stopped only when her stomach could no longer keep down its contents. When she straightened, despite what she had expended, the thick, cloying scent of copper clogged her nostrils. She could feel it, the slickness on her face, dripping down her chin.

When she had reached up to wipe her mouth, she had coated her face in blood. Their blood.

Sakura sobbed, wanting the stickiness to vanish from her fingers.

Had she killed them? No, not her. She couldn't have. But—but if not her, then who? Who else could have done it?

Her heart pounded in her chest.

Oh god—oh god, she had done it. It had to have been her. Couldn't have been anyone else.

She gasped for breath. She sank to her knees and wiped her hands furiously in the ground. What had she done what had she done what she done—

Salty tears mixed into mud in the dirt below her. Eventually, some still-rational part of her realized she needed to get home before her parents noticed anything amiss. Because if anyone found out—

No one could ever find out. Not her mother . Not Ino. Not Sasuke-kun.

Somehow, she mustered the strength to pick herself up, to force her limbs into motion before the first rays of dawn. She stumbled home and scrubbed and scrubbed until her fingers were bleeding.

When she woke up the next morning, she remembered something vaguely about cold water and bleach and a painful throbbing in her hands. Her father read the newspaper and her mother sipped her coffee and complaining about the milk she had forgotten to pick up again and Sakura…

Sakura was a convulsing, bleeding mess—oozing red and puss and tissue and bone. An open wound.

Sakura was no stranger to death. She had been there when Gato and Zabuza and Haku had died—she'd smelled the stench of burning, rotting bodies before. But she had never killed anyone.

She could hardly have imagined until that point what a distinction that would make.

Unsurprisingly, as she had resorted to in the past to cope with more mundane sources of stress (her mother's nagging, Sasuke not liking her, etcetera) she developed a routine to ward off insanity. She dragged herself home. She took a cold shower to wash off again the blood from her skin and hands long after its visible disappearance (she knew it was still there, in the lines of her hands and skin). Then, she grabbed a handful of sleeping pills and went to bed.

Two weeks later, the retrieval squad returned. A day later, Naruto announced that he was going to leave Konoha to travel with and learn from the legendary sannin Jiraiya.

The announcement weighed heavily on Sakura's chest as she exited Shikamaru's hospital room, leaving Ino alone with her teammate. Without the weight of the flowers she had been carrying, her hands began to tremble uncontrollably.

They stilled momentarily when she caught sight of a tall figure leaning nonchalantly against the corridor outside of Naruto's hospital room.

"Kakashi-sensei," Sakura burst out in dazed shock. She tried to cover it. "H-how are you?"

Dark eyes rose slowly to survey her.

"Neither especially good nor especially bad," Kakashi returned evenly. The book remained in front of his face.

"Oh." The following words tumbled out in a rush, chinks in her tenuous calm. "I was wondering when we were going to start training again." Was her voice higher than usual?

The book finally lowered. Sakura blinked.

Why did the suggestions of smile on his face look so… fake, she thought with sudden discomfort. Were his lips even curving beneath the mask? She felt unsettled, suddenly painfully aware that she had never had anything resembling a rapport with Kakashi, which even Naruto had been able to boast.

"I believe the Hokage has disbanded Team Seven, as two thirds of our team has left or will be leaving Konoha."

Sakura stared uncomprehendingly. "Are—are you saying you won't be teaching me anymore?"

He inclined his head, eyes crinkling further. "Precisely so. The godaime has decided that I return to my ANBU duties full-time."

The hair rose on her arms.

She would have missed it if she hadn't been looking at him so closely. Just for an instant, there was the minutest change in his demeanor. She couldn't explain it, except that the hair on her arms rose.

(And, perhaps,she had the sudden sense that the man before her wasn't the one she thought she had known).

Her voice was small when she found it. "Who's training me from now, then?"

Kakashi's gaze landed somewhere above her head. He gave another fake, little smile, eyes crinkling above his mask. "I'm sure you'll find someone. Gai is always eager to take on another student."

Sakura felt her fingers begin to tremble again. She shoved them under her armpits in a futile attempt to still them. She had killed—She—she needed to be taught how to—

"Wait," Sakura tried desperately, "I'm sure you could train me when you're not on missions. I don't mind waiting around. I can practice when you're gone—"

He was pretending to smile. He had to be. How else could his eyes be so cold? "To be honest, Sakura-chan, given your skillset and temperament, I would advise you to pursue becoming a medic-nin. I would bother the hokage about that—they say she's the best."

With a nonchalant wave, he vanished, leaving Sakura by herself.

A medic-nin waits for the injury, the Voice snarled. If you had waited to be hurt in the park that night, you know what would have happened. I want other people's pretty, pretty blood—I can't get it if you're dead.

Sakura flinched as the Voice echoed in her head.

The hokage.

In the madness of the next week, through nights she couldn't sleep and mornings she felt sick and lunches where couldn't meet anyone's gaze, she latched onto those words like a starving man glimpsing food. She needed something. She needed someone. (To give her directions and to tell her how to train and what to wear and how to move on-)

When the dark-haired woman at the front desk saw her a week later, she didn't look surprised. She smiled at Sakura. "If you're here to see Tsunade-sama, she's on the door to the right."

Sakura moved to the instructed door. Pushing it open, she reached a circular room with a panoramic view of Konoha. Sitting in front of the large window was the Godaime. Tsunade looked up from a thick stack of papers with a menacing scowl on her face.

"Haruno Sakura," the woman noted coolly. "How may I help you?"

Sakura paused, suddenly overwhelmed. She could feel, with uncomfortable sensitivity, the tendrils of hair plastered to her neck.

"I…I want you to take me on as your apprentice," she strangled out.

"Want?"

"I need it," Sakura returned immediately, desperation seeping into her voice and rendering it sharp. "Please."

The Hokage planted both hands on her desk and stood up with sudden force. "Even if I were inclined, it would be far from easy. What I have achieved in medical ninjutsu has taken me what has been a lifetime for most shinobi. To be my successor in the hospital—"

"I don't want that."

Shock registered on Tsunade's face, eyes widening. Then, her gaze narrowed. "Then what do you want from me?"

"Training in taijutsu. Ninjutsu." Sakura said softly. "Some medical ninjutsu as well."

Teach me to fight so that the Voice leaves me alone, she thought. Teach me to fight so that they do too in my nightmares.

Tsunade examined her harshly and demanded, "Why not accept the title?"

"I—I don't think I have the right…temperament." Letting herself into a hospital room with civilians, into surgery when she had killed like—like that…It made Sakura want to vomit, the very idea of her being someone's doctor.

The Hokage's jaw tightened, and she leaned back, crossing her arms. "On the contrary," the woman told her, "I've been told you have the perfect temperament. Excellent chakra control, academically strong, non-confrontational tendencies. You prefer to avoid fighting, isn't that right? And frankly, your taijutsu and other ninjutsu have not developed much beyond your Academy days."

Sakura didn't know what else to say. So she said nothing.

"The other old fools on the council would have been thrown out of this office for sheer impertinence." Tsunade gazed at her in silence for a moment. Then, unexpectedly, she sighed.

"Alright, I'll take you on."

Before she could even blink in disbelief, Sakura was unceremoniously booted out of the office and told to return at five the next morning.

To her surprise, the hokage kept her word. The next day, Tsunade drew up an official contract stating that she had taken Sakura on as an apprentice. Later, she heard that she had declared Hinata her protege in the hospital.

For a while, Sakura felt like she was stuck in a daze. It had all happened so anti-climatically-so...easily-that it took some time for reality to sink in.

The Hokage started them both on medical ninjutsu, but separately. Sakura's lessons were purely fundamental; Hinata's were likely far more complex. As days turned into weeks and weeks into months, she started to wonder how the soft-spoken, reserved girl was doing under such an intense scrutiny. Sakura, for that matter, was having difficulty. Perhaps because it had been a long time since someone else had catered their lessons specifically toward her. Or—she was forced to acknowledge—maybe it was because Sakura had never truly been interested in being a shinobi before or meeting anyone else's expectations.

"Place your hands above the fish," she was instructed for nearly one week straight.

"Okay," Sakura responded, usually nervous.

"Apply chakra."

"I am."

"Not correctly."

"I—I'm sorry—"

"No point apologizing. Pull your hands away. Try again."

"Okay." A pause as she shifted.

After failure followed what usually seemed like a random question: "What is the most standardized chakra point on any antigonia?"

To which she responded with the requisite answer (she had always been good at memorizing): "The vessel beneath its eye."

It was always the missing piece.

"Enter the chakra system through there and then feel the rest out."

"…Ah."

"Master this, and then it won't take you long to learn how to can scan a human."

It was grueling. It was demanding. It was everything Sakura wanted.

But it wasn't every day, because the hokage was a busy woman. And the most disappointing part, was that no matter how much she occupied herself during the day, the nightmares didn't stop.

After she completed basic medical training, Tsunade started to take her out to the training fields three times a week.

The first time she saw her mentor shatter a boulder with her muscled, human arm, Sakura's jaw dropped. She didn't even feel the slivers of rock as they sliced her skin.

For weeks, she worked hard, training for hours outside of her scheduled time with Tsunade, to learn the same monstrous strength. If she had been stronger that night, she wondered in a growing frenzy, would it have gotten as far? Would the Voice have needed to have taken over? Would she have had to kill those men? Would she have these nightmares now? (The what-ifs were incessant.)

The Voice, in turn, was derisive about what it perceived to be insufficient diligence.

Lazy bitch.

Sakura clenched her teeth until blood flooded her mouth, moving through katas in her backyard even despite the pain, no matter what it said.

If you can concentrate chakra in your fists to make your punches stronger, what else do you think can do?

The Voice was a satanic presence, whispering dangerous, insidious things to her when she was exhausted, weak, and desperate to be more. And though she had promised herself to never, ever listen to it again, promised to convince herself so strongly of its non-existence that she would forget it was there entirely, it had driven her nearly mad.

With sweat and tears and a migraine that threatened to split her head from its insistent raging, Sakura inevitably gave in.

She ended up in the hospital the next day, waiting for Hinata to attend to her.

"How can I help you today, Sakura-san?" the Hyuuga heir asked quietly, veins protruding around her eyes as she scanned Sakura.

"I was…experimenting with concentrating chakra in other parts of my body."

Hinata's eyes widened. "As your attending physician, Sakura-san, and because Tsunade-sama wants me to handle all your injuries for my training, I must warn you that what you are doing is extremely d-dangerous. Even one instant of distraction and you could risk permanently injuring yourself."

Sakura nodded evasively at that. She knew that the chakra paths were thickest in the hands and feet, making it easiest for concentrating chakra there, while other locations were narrower and therefore riskier. It hadn't been rationality that had led her here. She tilted her head back as the cool sensation of Hinata's chakra began working on her legs.

In the middle of her work, Hinata paused and asked with slight hesitance, "H-how is Naruto-kun?"

Sakura opened her eyes and spotted the slightly pink tinge to the other girl's face. It reminded her of Sasuke (the-way-he-left), which reminded her of—

"He writes to Iruka-sensei regularly," she answered stiltedly, "Iruka-sensei fills me in whenever we run into each other. You should visit him."

"Oh," Hinata murmured, gaze falling shyly. "I couldn't do that."

"From what I've heard, he's doing fine."

Hinata nodded and then pulled away to lift her clipboard. She marked some things down and then looked back. "That's all, Sakura-san. No more training for today, but you should be fine by tomorrow."

"Thanks," Sakura said, sliding off the hospital bed. She left the room and made her way to the hospital entrance.

The hot summer sun beat down on her as she stepped outside. Her old short-sleeved qipao dress, unfortunately, would have fared better in the hot weather than what she was wearing. But Sakura had turned fourteen and grown several inches over the summer, also outgrowing the dress. Keeping in mind what was sustainable for the amount of money she was currently making, she now wore the standard issue black pants and black short-sleeved shirt common among shinobi along with a grey flak jacket.

Without the recourse of training to occupy her mind, she searched desperately for something to do.

Ultimately, she decided to make her way to the archive library.

She flashed her ID to the chunin stationed at the desk, who waved her in without looking. She was a familiar face here; if training grounds had been Sasuke and Naruto's territory, this had previously been hers. At first, she traced her old path without thought, heading towards the upper most floor without much consideration. As a genin still, most of the library's contents remained inaccessible to Sakura.

But she paused half way to her destination. Because today, of all days, the desk stationed in the front of the third landing was conspicuously empty. In the back of her mind, she wondered if it had anything to do with the curvaceous redhead Sakura had seen around the jounin on previous visits.

She didn't think about that for very long, though, when she realized what she was feeling: a vague sentiment, an echo of something she wanted before, childishly, selfishly. She had always wanted to know what was there.

After a blink, she moved.

Spurred by a burst of curiosity, probably for the first time in months, Sakura left the stairs for the long lines of scrolls. She found kanji indicating the categorization of shelves for the floor. Her gaze paused at the sign erected near the back-right corner.

'SUMMONING SCROLLS'

Sakura's eyebrows rose.

Tsunade had a slug summon. The hokage had talked about it the previous day, fondly, as though it were a companion rather than a weapon, something to confide in rather than simply weaponize...

If she were to pick a scroll here, Sakura thought abruptly. If she made a contract with a summon...it would be bound to her. Like the slug was to Tsunade.

Sworn to secrecy, even.

And then, maybe, she could finally say the words (I killed them) with no one else the wiser, no one to look at her differently, no one else to ever know-

Urgency gripped with sudden ferocity.

The shelf of scrolls towered above her. How tall, she could not say. The scrolls themselves had been shrunken down in order to all fit within the racks. Unlike other sections of the floor, the library hadn't bothered to place special barrier jutsus here. Strange.

Sakura snapped out a hand to touch one of the scrolls. She hissed almost instantly, dropping it as a burning sensation coursed through her hand.

So the scrolls themselves prevented unwanted user? Fine. One of them, out of the thousands there, had to accept her.

Scowling, Sakura passed her hand over more scrolls. In minutes, she finished scanning all the racks she could reach from the floor. Her gaze moved upward. With a quick glance to make sure the desk was still empty, she directed chakra toward her legs and began walking up the tall shelf to access the higher levels.

At each new level, Sakura crouched and passed her hands over the scrolls. Welts, red and livid, criss-crossed her hands now from the thousands of scrolls she must have touched.

Just as she began to contemplate leaving, however, her hand passed over one scroll without any pain. Blinking, she touched it again to make sure she had not imagined it. Her hand felt exactly the same as it had before.

Without thinking much of it, Sakura grabbed the scroll. She slipped it into her flak jacket and flipped off the shelf, landing silently on the granite floor once again. She made her way down the staircase and then swiftly out the entrance.

Back outside, heart pounding and feeling vaguely delirious, Sakura sprinted to the edge of the village to a lone training ground she knew teams rarely visited. While the Voice's chilling laughter echoed triumphantly in her head, she pulled out the scroll silently and tilted it to read the etching on the end of the wooden roller: 烏

Crow, Sakura mouthed to herself with slight surprise.

Rolling it out, she found out that the scroll was far longer than she had initially thought.

There were instructions, she followed them. She bit into her thumb, signed her name, impressed her bloodied finger prints into the paper, and made the hand signs: boar, dog, bird, monkey, and ram.

She slammed her hand down into the ground.

For a moment, nothing happened—then smoke burst forth from the scroll and blocked her vision. When the smoke dissipated, she saw the profile of a lone, normal-sized crow, sitting right where her hand had made contact with the ground.