What a Shinobi Is
I
What Fear Is
Leaves whirl around Kakashi-sensei with a breeze and, once they disperse and fall back to the ground, he is gone.
"Sakura."
Her heart speeds inside her chest at the soft way he called her name. She readily swirls around to meet the cool dark shade of his eyes.
"Sasuke-kun?"
Time freezes around her and there's only red in her eyes, red and the sharp glint of blades deep in yielding frail flesh.
"Sa…Sakura… help me… please…"
Her muscles are locked inside her flesh and her hands can't raise past her thighs, can't move through the rocking shudders in them.
They're empty and they're useless against so much red.
She thinks of calling Kakashi-sensei but he was the one to hurt Sasuke-kun. How could he? Isn't he their sensei? Isn't he supposed to protect them, not kill them?
A scream tears through her throat, raw and foreign to her own ears. Her knees finally give out.
Sakura bends over, long hair cascading down in front of her face, she spent an hour getting it pretty, but she doesn't bother getting it out of the way.
Her throat burns with her retching, only bitter gnawing bile marking a path up her chest and falling in small putrid droplets on the grass. It wouldn't have been this painful to throw up if she had had breakfast.
Tears pend at the corner of her eyes, they blur her vision. All she can see is the red of Sasuke-kun's flesh sliced with kunai, the red in the grass, imbibed and marked there. His crumpled face, distorted in agony when Sakura only knew it as smooth glowing porcelain. His twisted mouth as he whispers her name with so much fear and so much despair that Sakura could never sooth it.
The retching stops but her heart is still battling inside her chest. Its beats are sharp stabs against her ribs, every fast breath a wet rasp in her lungs. Her body is still faint with fear, the tremors shuddering up her spine until Sakura lets herself fall to the side, hair a bundle of mess over her face.
She doesn't care, she should have it cut short so it's not in the way every time she will throw up.
Sasuke-kun's image is still branded behind her eyelids.
Sakura thinks of all the things she likes best. She thinks of sunsets across the Hokage Mountain and thinks of the sweet taste of dango with the even sweeter company of friends. She thinks of Kaa-san's gentle massages as she brushes her hair and Tou-san's protective hugs after waking up from a nightmare. She thinks of reading her favourite book with the soft breeze of the park and going shopping around the merchants' stands. She thinks of Iruka-sensei's classes and his kind smile when he delivers her a perfect grade.
She thinks of Sasuke-kun's dark eyes and his shiny raven hair, the way he walks and the tiny smirk he sometimes has at the corner of his lips, she thinks of the warm flutters it sends in her stomach.
She thinks of all the best most beautiful things in her life and Sasuke-kun is still bleeding, his face is still deformed into those wide horror-filled eyes, and the blood is so so red, so so sticky inside her mind, so so terrifying. It slithers through everything, it soaks into her lungs and her memories, it gurgles in her throat. She can barely breathe with how it smothers all of her.
What if he needs her? Yes, he might need her, the hospital is far but maybe she can carry him there. She will carry him until her legs buckle under her and there's not a drop of chakra left in her body, and still she will carry him some more.
Or is he already… is he already… is he dead?
The word shakes through her and makes everything crumble.
Sakura is terrified of looking to the side and seeing Sasuke-kun's broken red body again and still she raises herself in shaky knees, her trembling fingers burying in the soil as she pushes against them. She's terrified that seeing it again will pierce it deeper and forever into her.
Still she raises herself, throws her hair behind her shoulders and drags herself in small shuddering steps.
It's with a wave of relief that she sees that that sight of Sasuke-kun is no longer there, it's with a wave of relief that she sees that there's no blood staining the grass. The relief doesn't last and it doesn't wash away the mark behind her eyelids.
Sakura is alone in the clearing and she sits back on the grass, her eyes closed while tears run down her cheeks. There's a soft breeze ruffling her hair and clothes, there's the gentle warmth of the morning sun, and everything feels like blades scrapping and tearing through her flesh.
It had been genjutsu, she realises later when she sees Sasuke-kun alive and not broken. Somehow it doesn't sooth the panicky fast shudders of her heart against the cage that is her ribs.
Every small change in the air makes her muscles twitch and her palms sting every time she wraps her fingers around the smooth handle of a kunai.
They passed the test. They are Team 7 now, Hatake Kakashi is their sensei, and Sakura is a genin, a shinobi of Konohagakure.
She regrets it. She hates it. She is terrified of it and every time she picks up a kunai it hurts as if it's burning into her flesh.
Still Sakura smiles and her heart still flutters when Sasuke-kun stands a little too close beside her on their missions.
Her eyes never stay on Kakashi-sensei and the low drawl of his voice prickles into her ears. She's grateful that he doesn't pay them much attention during missions or outside of them. She's even more grateful that he barely acknowledges her presence on their team and she doesn't beg for it like Naruto, even like Sasuke-kun in his proud concealed way.
Sakura hates sleeping now. During the day she can pretend the image isn't there, even as its shadow lurks and makes her lips a little more stiff and her fingers less precise, but at night it haunts her with nightmares and drowns the world with Sasuke-kun's red red blood.
She wakes up with a scream in her throat, sheets drenched in sweat and her ears still ringing with the sound of her name as Sasuke-kun whispers it with nothing but despair and a plea she can't placate.
Sakura has longed for the sweet sound of her name in his voice and now she hates it.
Kaa-san holds her on the first night it happens as she cries into the soft cushion of her chest. She doesn't tell her parents of the blood stuck to her vision and she learns how to not wake up screaming because her parents worried eyes - scared, Sakura had never seen them scared - pierce just as deeply.
She is weak.
Every day she ties her hitai-ate around her head and fixes her long soft tresses with a smile to the mirror of herself. Every day she meets their team and she fights the dread piercing a hole in her stomach. Every day she lets her eyes linger in the smooth porcelain face of Sasuke-kun and his cool beautiful dark eyes. Every day she smiles.
She hates trainings more than she hates missions. They never have to pick up heavy kunai in D-ranks and during trainings her fingers always shake with the impulse of shaping the release sign and her tongue of whispering a soft "kai" at every rustle in the air.
Whatever precision and skill she had in the Academy deserts her now. Kakashi-sensei doesn't seem bothered by it, he never corrects her or admonishes her as he does with Sasuke-kun and Naruto.
Sakura would have hated it before, but now she's glad, she's glad when he doesn't care if she learns nothing and if she can't pick up a single kunai from her pouch. She's glad when he is the one to pull her away from the path of a blade or to detour it with one of his own.
She is weak and maybe then she won't have to go out to the field where there's blood around every corner.
Sakura is weak and she doesn't have the strength to be strong.
Heyy! This is just a small piece, about 5 chapters, something written on a whim. I decided to share it because why not?
So here it is.