Just to be clear, this is the age of each kid in this chapter:
-Sakura: 12
-Ace and Sabo: 10
-Luffy: 7
"Come again?" asked the pinkette calmly, blinking too many times as a result of her confusion.
"Haki" repeated Garp without any trace of annoyance or impatience.
Her silence was loud enough of an answer for the old man.
Garp wouldn't be seen that often around Mt. Colubo this early of the day, but this time he had come asking only for Sakura to follow him for a 'private training session', making a cold shiver run down over her boys' spines at the wicked smile the marine had over his face when saying that sentence.
This training, though, was starting very differently for what she was used to after years of knowing the old bastard.
"The thing you asked Bogard years ago was Haki. That's how you can sense me… among other nice tricks"
Well… Sakura supposed that this gave her some vague answers (the bare minimum) but now she had more questions piled up, which Garp didn't seem bothered at all to acknowledge to the best of his ability.
"And are you going to elaborate about this haki thing or…?"
"Don't you dare sass me, brat!" scolded the old man with a well placed 'fist of love' on top of her head. This was way too common to even feel annoyed at this point, so the girl simply let the throb of the bump stay there. "What was I saying? Ah, right! So… at first I wasn't sure it would be wise to teach you about haki when you're so young and still under training… depending too much on it can be a hindrance in the long run if you don't grow your own strength first"
The old man paused for a brief moment to let his words sink deeply for the sake of making her understand that this was actually a serious training and not his usual nonsense of trashing her around the floor. Sakura nodded while her eyes focused on her grandpa, finally ready to learn more.
She needed to get strong.
Sakura had half a mind to smack all three boys down for their idiot idea about eating at a restaurant from Goa Kingdom, but the serious and heavy face Sabo seemed to carry let her control that impatience of her to acknowledge the fact that there was some context missing among her siblings that got them all worked up.
"You can't lie in front of Sakura-nee! Spit it up!" as always it was Luffy the first one to call out the elephant in the room, making the green-eyed teen look at Sabo curiously with a curved pink eyebrow to let them know that she was listening.
The silence seemed to just get longer and the blond only grunted in defiance as his simple response to them until Ace grabbed him by his ratty neckerchief, promising him death if he didn't speak up now.
It was actually an amusing sight.
The fact that the blond kid was from a noble family didn't surprise Sakura at all, her other brothers reacting the exact way she expected from them; with not a single care about it. It was just the same as when she learned about Ace's father, with the same outcome and complete acceptance from them because… well, they were family. The pinkette already imagined that the nobles and royalty were shit in this world, but hearing how it went for her little brother made her blood boil in revulsion.
"We will sail one day!" said Sabo with renewed youthfulness, looking at the horizon that the hill gave as a perfect view. "We will travel this world, away from this country and be free! I want to write a book of anything I see and if I have to study to prepare myself for that voyage, then I will! Let's be stronger and be pirates!"
Sakura laughed at that, still aware that her brothers never stopped at the idea that maybe one day she would want to join them as a pirate doctor and while she never corrected them, the girl still had her mind set into just being a traveling doctor, craving a little the peacefulness that it could bring sometimes such line of work.
But she wasn't going to burst Sabo's excited speech, actually feeling proud of how set her boy was about his dream.
'Naruto would have adored all three of them' she thought with melancholy, a sad small briefly over her face that she managed to hide quickly.
It didn't take long for the other two dark-haired boys to follow, both proclaiming their dreams of becoming pirates for the sake of their freedom and building their own path in life… Well, only in Ace's case, Luffy had seemed to only want to scream to the wind for the sake of it and managed to make all three of them expect something else besides his thunderous 'I'm gonna…!', at which they just laughed in good-heartedness.
"And you Sakura-nee?" asked her Ace, an expectant smile over his face that only got joined by the other two boys who were just as curious.
"Hmmm…" she genuinely pondered about this, not sure what to answer since she never got a long-term dream that she could fulfill, only goals to finish that somehow always stayed half the way. "I suppose that I wanna experience life at its fullest… and be strong enough to get the chance to see you guys finish you dreams"
Her words had the desired effect of making the three kids blush furiously, already embarrassed at how their older sister just coddled them sometimes.
That had been the day of their promises, along the cementing of their siblinghood through the sake cups.
Sakura doesn't remember feeling this content with life for once.
Days pass easily and while her brothers had decided that they were better off on their own in the jungle, Sakura stays with Dadan simply because she knows that, as the older sister, she can't overprotect them for the rest of their lives if she still wants them to grow strong too as the promise they had made.
"Those damn brats running off just like that!" what she hadn't expected was that the older woman had actually looked sick worried about the kids away from her sight. "Why can't they be as well-behaved as you, Sakura-chan? They just can't give me a rest, can they?!"
The pinkette imagined that this rant had mostly to do with the traps the boys had set around the new tree-house, the teen already aware of them each time she visited because she knew how to look out her steps.
Most of the time is spend by Sakura visiting the three kids when she gets the chance, often for the sake of making sure that they weren't too hurt or that they were eating good, at which the boys would only complain about her 'mother-henning' without a pause but never asked her to stop. It became the usual routine and eventually they simply got used to Sakura popping unannounced and out of the blue.
Until one day she only found two boys instead of three.
'Uh? Sabo isn't here?'
The instant the blonde was missing from the group was when something heavy sat over her stomach, suddenly uncomfortable at the missing member of their small family and the grim faces on the two boys along the sad silence that hung over them.
"What happened? Where's Sabo?"
The two dark-haired children refused to meet her eyes, Ace wearing an angry frown while Luffy looked ready to explode and burst into tears.
It didn't take long until the dam broke and the younger kid spilled all about what happened at Gray Terminal and how Sabo had been forced to go back with the nobles to save the two brothers from both army and pirates alike, all while clinging his whole body in a needy hug and covering the shirt of the older girl in snot and tears.
The fury Sakura felt was tangible and heavy over the nervous eyes of her boys, the two of them gulping heavily at the sight of a genuinely furious older sister that they had never witnessed before.
"Stay here. I'll be back" was the angry order the girl gave to her siblings, already running off to Goa Kingdom in search of their missing brother without even listening to the worried shouts of Ace and Luffy as she got farther and farther away.
"Come one, Luffy! We can't let Sakura go alone!"
"But Sakura-nee said to stay here" the straw hat boy pouted, not really sure if he wanted to disobey the pinkette. The scarred boy will never follow orders of anyone no matter the situation, but his big sister had always been smarter and scarier than anyone Luffy had met so far.
"She is always helping us! What kind of pirates will we be if our big sis is always defending us?!"
With that being said, a new conviction shone in the dark eyes of the boys who ran off after Sakura, but instead of following her to the upper districts of the kingdom, they went for the bastard that had a hand in this mess.
They will take care of Bluejam before he could be a threat to their sister and Sabo again.
The pinkette had found Sabo rather quickly, the kid clinging over the cloak of a man who Sakura couldn't see his face thanks to the shadow casted over the hood of it.
"Sabo!"
"Sakura-nee?!"
She didn't waste any time healing the boy, not caring if a stranger saw her healing ability while holding the kid to make sure that he wouldn't disappear from her sight.
"We need to get you out of here! Before any of those army guys see us"
But unlike what the girl expected, the blond boy shook his head vehemently, so much desperation and worry laced over his voice and face that it broke the young teen's heart. Someone this young should never look like this.
"You need to go! If I try to escape, they still will try to get me back!" said the boy in such a heart-broken cry that it only made Sakura tear up too.
He was asking her the impossible.
"I can't do that, Sabo" she answered with a tremble on her tone, angry tears welling up on her green eyes all while the stranger stayed with them as their only witness. "You're my little brother. I can't just get up and abandon you"
"You don't get it! The nobles… all of them… They will burn down Gray Terminal!"
A horrible sinking feeling seized up her heart, suddenly making the silence among them too heavy at the confession of the blond kid.
'Luffy! Ace!'
She was already used to those two never listening to her, already aware that they still would try and follow her even when she had been clear about her order… but that had been when she thought that her brothers would still be in the relative safety of the scraps and trash of Gray Terminal.
If the place was about to be burned down then…
Sakura found herself between the rock and a hard place, risking leaving Sabo here so she could go and help her other brothers too. The decision was hard and horrible, but the blond took the last word for her without giving any chance to come up with a better plan.
"You go! I'll find a way to go back to you all! I promise!" the despair was thick on his words, tears and snot over his face while he tried to push her away from him.
And at the lack of a better solution for their predicament, the pinkette only managed to mutter a quiet 'I'm sorry' between the tight hug she gave to comfort her little brother, unable to look her sibling in his eyes when she got up and ran away.
She hated feeling once again powerless; It broke her to the core and tore the strings of her conviction as easily as a knife over weak flesh. This tasted like failure to do the one thing she knew siblings were supposed to do.
Just as Sabo had said, the Gray Terminal was completely covered in fire, making the whole place an actual hell to walk through with all the smoke and heath that welcomed her. It was a horrible sight and even worse when she saw a few bodies being eaten by the flames on the way to find her two knuckleheads among the destruction and chaos that this garish place had become into.
In an unexpected twist, the tall figure of Dadan was the first thing to greet her eyes, the woman coughing and looking everywhere in search of something.
"Dadan!" she screamed in relief to find the woman there, already imagining why she was there. As much the woman wanted to deny it, she had always cared for her and her brothers.
"Sakura-chan!"
"Sakura-nee!"
The young girl let a relieved and almost crazed laugh at the sight of Ace too in company of the ginger woman, beaten and scrapped… but alive.
The death of Sabo marked a before and after in their lives.
The effect it had was notorious and made their once happy and easy-going existence an awful and festering void that swallowed the three children of the bandits' cabin into different states of grief and stillness that just made everything feel stale (lifeless).
Sakura couldn't even bring herself to eat properly in her attempt to try and get Luffy to eat the humongous amounts of food he would always wolf down, but it all always ended with the girl hugging her little brother to try and comfort him in his pain, never meeting eyes.
When Dogra had delivered the news, the pinkette had absolutely denied the information, her own mind jumping again and again at the promise that Sabo made to her that he would try and find a way back to them.
He had promised.
But just as fast as the realization settled because this was real and Sabo was actually gone, Ace, as the usual hot-head of them, immediately went for the rage as his default emotion when confronted with the truth.
Sabo was dead.
"You were supposed to bring him back!" Ace screamed in fury, already tossing Dogra away and seizing her up as her next objective. Sakura could barely pay attention to his words because of all the blood that had rushed to her ears.
Her little brother was dead.
"You are the strong one! Why didn't you bring him back?! Why?! This is your fault!"
That last part managed to reach her, shaking her whole being like a tree in a storm and suddenly the tears just flowed free and constant because he was right. Ace was right and it was her fault that Sabo was dead.
"Shut up!" screamed Luffy, but even his anger wasn't as strong as his grief over his trembling voice. "Sakura-nee is crying too! You made Sakura-nee cry!"
That seemed to break whatever hazy rage the boy appeared to feel, now aware of the broken and lost stare his older sister possessed at that moment, realizing with horror what he had said and, worse of all, to who. He just wanted to punch something, anything, to trash and scream because it wasn't fair, he needed to make someone pay… and now it dawned over the freckled boy that this was the very first time he had made Sakura cry because of it.
"Sakura… I wasn't… I don't…"
The heavy hand of Dadan stopped any half-assed attempt of the boy to apologize, now staring up at the angered face of the woman that not long ago had saved his life just as he had done for her before Sakura found them in the fire. It hurt how hard the older woman had smacked him down the floor but he refused to say anything, already accepting this as a weak punishment for what he had said to his big sister.
"You aren't even thinking clearly, boy! Lashing out at people that love you and wanting to take revenge from the world!" she pulled him up by his shirt now, looking at him hard and making her words cut deep. "You'll only get yourself killed like this! This unfair world it's what killed Sabo! What can you even do like this now, huh?! Your father died and made a change in this era! So until you get to the same level as him, you can't go and die as you please!"
Dadan let the boy fall to the floor, her scowl still present while giving the orders of tying him up, all while Luffy cried miserably and clinged to Sakura in search of comfort, but not even that managed to make her react. The girl appeared more like a statute and her eyes looked just as lost.
"Let me go! Let go, bastards!"
"I'll let them untie you once I'm sure you will not do something stupid!"
"Shit! Shut up Luffy! Stop crying like a damn crybaby! Sakura-nee, I'm sorry!"
It had been just a few days after that ordeal and not a single moment had been back to normal.
Normal actually sounded so far away now.
The pink-haired girl had barely reached out to anyone and had stayed in a stoic state of silence, barely acknowledging anyone around and functioning to the bare minimum in an already learned routine. Ace himself had tried to get a read out of her and apologized for his words but not even that had worked… until the dark-haired boy decided that this was his last resort.
"Big sis…" his only indication that she listened to him was the small tilt of her head. "This is a letter from Sabo… I already read it but… you should see it too"
"Ace, Luffy.
I'm sure you weren't hurt in the fire. Sakura-nee always makes sure to save us even if we never ask her to, so I'm sure she managed to help you both at the end. I feel a bit sad that this will be the one time I break a promise to her and I'm sorry about this too, but by the time you read this I'll be…
Out at the sea.
A lot of things happened, so I decided to set sail way ahead of any of you guys. My destination will be anywhere but this country, very far away. That way I will become stronger and be a pirate!
Let's be the pirates with the most freedom than anyone else, so we can meet up again someday. The four of us. I know that Sakura-nee still doesn't want to become a pirate, but maybe one day you two can make her change her mind! To be out there somewhere in the wild, free ocean… I'm sure one day she will like the idea and we will meet!
Oh, and Ace… I always wondered who was the oldest between us. Three eldest siblings and one younger brother. It may be strange, but this bond between us is my biggest treasure.
Luffy may still be a weakling and a crybaby, and you always said that we can't depend on Sakura-nee always protecting us if we want to be strong… but he's our little brother too! So when Big sis isn't around, make sure to take care of him for me!
I trust you!"
Sakura had cried herself to sleep in the company of Ace. Both siblings holding each other at their shared grief, but finally managing to cross the one bridge they had gotten stuck at.
Thank you for reading!