It was…more of an itch, really.
There's no trace of the rattling chains, stretching shadows or moaning, weeping specters that litter her mother's bedtime stories. There are no dark spaces in her home she'd learned to fear. No strange odors or oddly oozing slime from the ceilings.
There were certainly no looming, despondent wretches crouching under her bed in the deepest hour of the night, wheezing rotted breaths through stinking teeth in widening mouths.
But the ghost is still there.
A forgotten, only mostly invisible thing. As if everything had been moved half an inch to the left, leaving Sakura blind and stumbling in the familiar.
When she'd been really little, Sakura knew it only as a name that went unspoken. A name she still remembers bleating out in joy when her memories were still fuzzy and she couldn't grasp her soup spoon yet.
When she got a little older, she saw it in the fleeting, anguished look crossing her mother's face while she's brushing Sakura's hair before bed. In the hesitance of her father's shoulders whenever Sakura asked to go play outside on the swings, or with the neighbor's children, or visit her sisters at the market stand.
The answer was always no, but she asks anyways.
She's five when she finally asks Suzuna who Momo is.
The name came to her in a whisper…or maybe a dream. But it's enough for her to feel it following her down the hallways, slithering across the walls and creeping up the steps to her room.
Momo is never far from Sakura.
She asks Suzuna first because she's the oldest. And also Misa's still at work.
Some part of Sakura felt silly saying the name. Because…who would be named just Momo of all things…and maybe it had just been all in her head. But then her oldest sister stumbled with the knife over the cutting board.
A jarring, grating noise—sharp metal on heavy wood—filled the thrumming silence.
Sakura blinked, surprised.
Suzuna's shoulders heaved once, twice…going back to dicing onions as if Sakura had never spoken at all.
Momo, Sakura mouthed to herself, fingers memorizing the name leaving her lips. Her brow crinkled and curiosity hooked her navel, tugging on her spine. For the first time in her life, Sakura felt the ghost in her very fingertips—one more pull and she would unravel it.
But Suzuna's spine was ramrod straight, eyes flinty, and no matter what Sakura asked next, her questions are left lingering in the small kitchen.
Dinner than night was somber.
Her mother's eyes were wet and red. Her mouth held a slant that suggested her thoughts, if spoken, would not be kind. Misa looked pale, the bags under her eyes bruising purple and blue, obscuring her usual sunshine.
Her father's haggard face was rigidly blank. The swathe of indifference coating him was so icy, Sakura had wondered if his kind humor was simply her imagination. Suzuna just stared at her noodles, knuckles white on her chopsticks.
They didn't look at Sakura once.
That night, Sakura went to bed thinking Momo might be the kind of ghost in her mother's stories after all. The kind waiting behind wooden walls to drag icy fingers down her spine and stretch rotting mouths wide enough to swallow her whole.
The next morning, her mother kissed the top of her head before work. Her father made her giggle at the funny faces he pulled making breakfast.
But their silence sat in her chest like a heavy stone. Sakura decided to swallow any thoughts of ghosts, or names, or questions, unwilling to risk it again.
All is well.
For a while, Sakura is able to will it away.
But, like a peach pit in unturned earth, she feels its presence in her gut until she can't ignore its growth anymore.
The next she asked about Momo, she was seven.
She asked Misa this time.
Misa never had the heart to ignore her for very long; the large pools of green too innocent and adorable for her to resist.
They're crouching in the vegetable patch, up to their hands and knees in dirt. Sakura had just finished scolding Honey for laying eggs in the lettuce they were planning to eat tomorrow for lunch.
The chicken still clucked indignantly when Sakura asked casually, the same way she'd ask to have another dango stick, "Who's Momo?"
Misa dropped the trowel onto the eggplants.
For a moment, Sakura hadn't dared breathe. Misa had always been the graceful one, the pretty one, the one whose steps were soft enough to be mistaken for a breeze. She'd never been clumsy, not even once.
Sakura wondered, for a split second, if she would get her answer today.
But when she looked into her sister's face, Misa's lips were white. Her dark brown eyes were too wide, stricken, and she shook her head like it was all a bad dream.
Misa's answer was tremulous, "Go…check if Honey has enough feed for tomorrow."
Sakura swallowed the bitterness on her tongue and did as told.
That night, skin still warm from the sun, Sakura waited for the silence to fill her home. For the avoiding eyes, screeching tension and shrill scraping of chopsticks over ceramic bowls.
Instead, her mother folds her hands in her lap, "Sakura."
A flicker of uncertainty welled in her stomach. For a moment, a single glancing moment, Sakura thought her mother might…hit her the way the neighbors hit their kids.
She was not at all prepared for what came out of her mouth.
"You're going to be a shinobi."
Sakura choked.
Spit spilled down her chin, rice spewing into her soup.
Kizashi moved instantly, thumping her back to clear her throat, "Easy now, easy Sa-chan."
"Wha—what?" Sakura wheezed.
All thoughts of Momo and the silence are banished.
Suzuna looked at her as if on the verge of tears. Misa stared at the bridge of Sakura's nose, unblinking.
"Mama, why?" Sakura's voice was small and slightly raw.
Mebuki flinched, just enough that her father took over quickly, continuing seamlessly.
"You have a chance to be enrolled in Konoha's Shinobi Academy in the spring. You'll join after the holidays, in January."
She felt dizzy.
Sakura's fingers were sweaty. She could barely clutch at her chopsticks. They clink on the table mat and she nearly cried when there was no gentle rebuke that followed.
"But…why?" Sakura croaked.
Suddenly, it is all about Momo and the silence and her questions.
"Is it because of—of—"
The words rotted like syrup on her tongue, thick and sickly sweet.
She'd never dared ask so directly.
"—of Momo?"
An iron curtain descended over her mother's face. Any lingering pain, sorrow or worry is wiped away. Only a vast, echoing blankness remains. It is the way she looked at strangers, and Sakura's heart ached.
"Enough, Sakura." This time, her name is spoken the way ice cracks in the dead of winter. "We don't talk about Momo."
Sakura's cheeks felt hot and itchy. Her eyes blurred with tears.
The meal ended in silence.
This fic is a love letter to my favorite character in the entire world, Haruno Sakura. Do I love her as she is written? no,,but how can i love that which has been desecrated by careless writing? i love her beyond her crappy origins into the version of herself i imagine she could be. the end.