Sorry for the late update! I've been...suffering writer's block (slacking). I made some minor edits to Chapters 1 and 2, and will update with Chapter 4 in a couple of days.
Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed/favorited/followed! You've all made me very happy :)
Also thank you to everyone for reading this story!
Chapter 3
The sun is a vindictive ball of heat and careless humor. Sadistic rays beat down upon clay shingles, dusty paths, stiff robes. One beam lightly caresses the faces of a line of caskets as they are laid down one after another on soft grass, lowered into the earth, buried. A heavy golden blanket slowly burns into the backs of mourners, a mass of black against the green, delighting in the salty trails of sweat and tears. One young tendril of light cruelly shines into the Hokage's eyes like an act of subversion, laughs as he closes his eyes and puffs into his pipe.
The rest of the city is quiet. Many doors are closed, window shades drawn. The market air is tense and withdrawn, and the usual flood of leaping shadows amongst the rooftops has thinned into a trickle, an occasional flicker.
A house stands silent in the stillness. Heat and sun fail to penetrate its brittle walls, its empty rooms. She sits motionless on her bed, blankets piled around her, puffy eyes dry with the withered stains of crusted salt.
Sometime in the past forty-eight hours her tears have slowed and thickened, leaving her face sticky and body dehydrated. The locked box below her bed burns her through the mattress and she is glad, because every other part of her is freezing.
A note lies unfolded on the dusty floor, announcing a funeral. Sakura lies back on her pillows, closes her eyes. Waiting. Not for a vision of her parents to burst through the door, or a messenger to announce that it was all a mistake-she's not stupid, or delusional. In fact, Sakura almost prefers believing her parents dead now than to harbor a futile hope to be later squashed even more harshly. No, she is just waiting. For something to happen, for something to pull her out of this room that holds little more than a numb timelessness to her now. This emptiness. This darkness. Traitor. I love you.
Kaa-san.
Tou-san.
She hasn't been to the Academy for a week. An echo of a command floats through her mind in a listless breeze, don't skip, but she isn't even sure if she cares. What is a broken promise to a broken man? Traitor. Sakura-chan.
A knock on the front door. Firm.
Steady.
Terse.
Sakura slips out of the covers, tugs at a few wrinkles on her white nightshirt and steps over the funeral notice, out the bedroom.
A cat mask, a messenger. "Hokage-sama would like to speak with you." A pause. "Now, if you are available." The woman crouches down. "Would you like to change first, Sakura-chan?"
Sakura-chan?
"No." Her voice is cracked from disuse. Sakura coughs, reconsiders.
"One moment please, shinobi-san." Retreating back into the cool darkness of the house, she washes the tear stains from her face and dons a simple black shirt and matching short. She ties back her bangs, and stares into the mirror until the last bits of emotion drain from her face. She isn't yet sure how she should face the situation yet, and until she figures it out the best thing to do will be to wear a mask. She doesn't want anyone's pity. Closing her eyes, she turns away from the mirror.
The woman is leaning against the porch railing.
"I am sorry for keeping you waiting, I should have invited you inside." The woman seems a bit taken aback at her appearance, and faces her silently for a moment before shrugging. "It was no problem at all. Ready?"
"Let's go."
She needs some answers.
Sarutobi Hiruzen is not having a good week. First he gets news of two failed missions and the loss of a good spy, and now he has seven dead Uchihas and a traitor's orphan on his hands. And if that isn't enough, the political situation with the Uchihas is looking no better than before-in fact, the whole fiasco is looking worse than ever for obvious reasons. With a deep sigh, he looks away from the window and reclaims his seat at the desk.
There is a knock on the door. "The girl is here."
"Let her in."
The pink-haired child is not what Hiruzen is expecting. There are no waterworks or angry screaming. The girl slips inside quietly, dressed impeccably. Aside from the chillingly somber aura and the empty green eyes, the girl is hiding her emotions exceedingly well.
"It is an honor to meet you, Hokage-sama." The child dips into a polite bow.
"Oh no need for formalities, child. Please, sit down." He gestures to the single chair he'd had the front desk bring in earlier expressly for this purpose.
As the girl calmly takes the seat, Hiruzen examines her beneath the wide brim of his hat and worries, just a little. It is not the child's fault that everything had turned out the way it did. But he was also uncertain as to how to broach the subject with her. Haruno Sakura's file had detailed a quiet, shy but good-natured girl, slightly below average in terms of physical abilities and top of the class in theory, but otherwise quite unextraordinary. The file did not mention anything along the lines of stoic apathy and an unnervingly precocious gaze.
"How have you been doing Sakura-chan?" Sakura-chan.
"Well."
Hiruzen watches the girl's stare grow colder, although it does not seem to be a deliberate change. He clears his throat.
"I just wanted to meet with you to talk about living arrangements." The girl's focus immediately zeroes on him with disturbing intensity. "I've look through your family records, and it seems that you have no relatives in the city able to take you in."
The girl nods as if she already knew. "Because of your situation, we can either send you to live with your closest relatives-"
"I am not leaving Konoha." Green eyes are flashing. Hiruzen blinks.
"Alright, then how about moving in to one of the empty apartments near the Hokage Tower?" For orphans. Where we can take care of you.
"No." The girl is so very calm, and icy. Very icy. "I will be staying in the house my parents owned and paid for every square inch of, which is now my house." She folds her hands demurely in her lap, fingers trembling. "And I do not know what you mean by 'my situation'. How is my situation anything special? Is it because my father is a 'traitor'?" The word tumbles awkwardly from her lips, unfamiliar, wrong. She presses her lips together.
Oh. "No of course not Sakura-ch...Sakura. I merely meant the lack of possible guardians for you here." He wonders who told her about her father's...status already, and frowns. To burden the shoulders of one so young…
He sighs. "It may be dangerous living by yourself in the village. I just want to make sure you are always safe, Sakura."
The girl relaxes, somewhat. "I know how to take care of myself, Hokage-sama. My parents went on missions often….I can cook and clean and do most household tasks."
Hiruzen considers her for a bit, and steeples his fingers. "Fine. But I would like you to check in with one of the shinobi here at least once every other day, deal?"
The offer finally seems to soften the child a bit, because her lips gently curve into a ghost of a smile.
"Alright."
Hiruzen smiles back. "Now then," braces himself, "would you like to know what happened?"
The Hokage is holding something back. Not just a small detail either-he is keeping something very big from her. It makes something cold curl in her gut.
In any case, he had given her little more than a bare-bones recounting of the event: a retrieval mission, her parents had been captured, her father had blabbed. Most likely he had been….interrogated. She isn't sure what interrogation entails exactly, but the word still makes her sick.
"Your mother's name has been etched onto the Memorial Stone." A hero.
Sakura stands. "Thank you, Hokage-sama. You probably have more important work to do."
"Sakura." A gentle sigh. "They left you something."
The girl's eyes widen slightly. Hiruzen opens his top right drawer and pulls out a pair of kodachi and a scroll. "From your father, I believe." They had done extensive tests looking for traps or jutsu performed on the materials before deeming them safe to give back to the child.
She stares immobile at the objects on the desk, an indescribable look on her face. "Take them." He drops them into her hands. "Don't...think so badly of him, Sakura." He pauses. "Both of your parents were good shinobi."
The girl bows, and slips out as silently as she came in. Hiruzen sighs again, and pulls out his pipe. It's been such a long day.
Sakura walks unseeing back home, kodachi clutched to her chest with numb fingers, heads straight to her bedroom. She doesn't examine at the swords, doesn't even glance at them as she unlocks the box beneath her bed and flings the cover open, throwing the blades beside the stuffed rabbit nestled within before re-locking the case and shoving it back into the darkness. Doesn't even think about them.
She wants to do the same with the scroll, but Sakura has never been able to resist scrolls. With trembling fingers, she slowly unrolls the stiff parchment, only one thought bouncing through her head, the shadow of a promise: 'I'll bring you a present.'
"What a stupid promise to keep." A choked whisper.
It is a beginner's genjutsu scroll. A note falls out from the folds in her father's spiky handwriting.
Your Academy report said you have a lot of genjutsu potential! Practice hard Sakura-chan! Make us proud. I love you.
A sob.
"Idiot."
The tears come.