"You look…" the girl squints at her. Her eyes are shiny and cold like beetles. She is taller, fuller, but not prettier. Sakura knew even then—they were never prettier. Her lip curls, "Like a rotting peach."
Ami brands her the first day: a damaged, flailing little civilian who can't run to save her own life.
...
They hate her.
Sakura hadn't known what hatred felt like before the Academy. She'd learned it all quickly. It's a scouring look, eyes hot and blazing, like lava pooling under the surface of a volcano.
The girls tell her she isugly, ugly, uglyand when Sakura tells her mother this as they prepare dinner one evening, Mebuki laughs so hard she starts to sob at the kitchen table.
The kitchen knife glitters. Sakura watches a sliver of spring onion roll away, off the edge. The smell of broth is all that fills her head. The evening sun shines through the window and the shadows seem to stretch wider. Longer. Gaping.
Mebuki, even sobbing, is beautiful.
Her mother is caught in something Sakura cannot understand. She cannot touch Sakura without purpose; even then it is fluttering and brief like the press of skin on skin is burning. Kizashi hides it better, and he is slowly coming to joke with Sakura again. The attempts are awkward and dull.
She thought it would change with the Academy, and it did. Her parents are not assharpbut the days of laughter and endearments has ended. Their distance rips into her like knives and she wishes for something of theirs to cut deep enough to bleed. Suzuna is the one to stroke her hair at night, and she whispers that it is not her fault. Misa tells her to keep working hard and it will all be well.
Sometimes Sakura feels she's already dead when her parents look at her.
And maybe this is what they fear. What they know will come to pass. Ami said it best: she will die quicker, faster, an expenditure. Sakura has read enough to know this too. No secret jutsu for her. No extraordinary knowledge or legacy to fulfill.
She hears Uchiha Sasuke, a bright curious little boy who loves tomatoes and blushes at her when she looks at him for too long, brag about getting his Sharingan soon.
I'll work harder,she wants to tell them, scream at them,I won't dishonor you.But the moments pass too quickly, and the words get stuck on her tongue like soggy, clumped breadcrumbs.
The urge sits in her bones, steady and thrumming:I won't be another ghost.
"Sakura," Mebuki heaves, dark eyes stuck in something unknown and far away.
Her mother wipes away the wetness on her cheeks. It is strangely clumsy, uncoordinated; Mebuki made blowing her nose look graceful.
Sakura is captivated.
Her mother's fingernails are chipped. The palms of her hands are calloused and dry. They peel too easily and bleed often. Too many times, Sakura had watched Kizashi wrap them in cloth and tinctures, eyes hot and dark, pressing kisses to the fingers in the dead of night. She'd never caught the words they whispered to each other, heated and swift; she'd never tried for their rapture and grief scared her.
"Sakura," Mebuki calls again, reaching out to her and gripping her by the chin. Her calloused working hands dig into her skin. Sakura can still smell the fresh, overturned earth on them. "You will be beautiful," the word is torn from her mother's mouth like a curse, "for as long as you live."
"Mama," Sakura says, uncertain. She doesn't know how to speak to Mebuki when she gets this way. It is like feeling in the dark; terrifying and far too intimate.
Misa comes into the kitchen, sudden and violent. Her sister looks tired and wan. The days at their father's shop are tiring and long. The lingering smell of tofu wafts into the air.
"Mama? Sa-chan?" She asks, dark honey eyes flickering between them like a question. "How are…"
Mebuki bursts into action, running her hands over Sakura's fluffing hair in quick, flinching movements. Her face is wiped, all determination, duty and drive.
"Misaki will cut your hair again after dinner."
Sakura sags, Misa's lips turn white and thin and everything begins again.
…
The Academy continues as it always does.
Sakura's muscles build with the stretches and running. She is sweating and raw and the only one breathing hard.
Ami laughs at her,how civilian you are Sakura-san.
Her class is mostly Clan kids, born for violence and strength. Ami's parents, like the rest of the children, are jonin. Sakura is the only civilian-born kid.
She overhears her sensei, a deeply unpleasant man who stares at her like she pollutes the air just by breathing, snarling about it one evening after class.
Sakura stays longer because she is not allowed to go home alone and Suzuna's work ends at eight each night. She uses the time to practice her kata, complete her homework and read the books she finds at the library.
She's going to the bathroom when she hears them.
"—it is almost pathetic how hard she tries, Iruka."
Something shuffles in her classroom. The lights are dimmed and weak in the hallway. Sakura stops, curiosity getting the better of her.
"I've seen her and I think she's doing very well for someone who has no frame of reference at home," Iruka-sensei's voice has always been nice. Sakura wishes every day she'd been assigned his classroom. He smiles at her in the hallways and it makes her feel less alone. "It is commendable."
"It's bad enough she's a civilian kid, but a working class one too?" Sakura's heart stops dead in her chest. It lurches to her stomach at his next words, "I could've worked with a merchant class one. But this? Haruno-san's basically cannon fodder."
"Mizuki!" Iruka-sensei's voice whips, loud and subjugating but Sakura barely hears it.
Cannon fodder.
The door opens with a slam. Iruka-sensei's face is tight, furious and it drains of all color in the split second he sees her.
"Haruno-san—"
Cannon fodder.
Sakura stares at him, unblinking. Her hands fist at nothing. She is weightless, unmoored, floating.
He knows she's heard them. Knows that she knows he knows she heard them.
It is a quiet eternity: they are frozen, gazing at each other in respective horror and dull realization.
Sakura had always thought Ami was the cruelest person she knew.
Cannon fodder. It cuts her to the quick, heart gaping open wide enough she wants to check if she's finally bleeding.
"Good evening Umino-sensei," she finally speaks. She doesn't think she can look him in the eyes just yet. "I am just waiting for my sister to finish work."
"Haru—Saku—"
"Please excuse me."
Suzuna picks her up not ten minutes later. Sakura is sitting on the steps just outside the entrance and cannot muster a smile in response to her eldest sister's flushed grin.
"Sa-chan?" Suzuna asks only once, just before they reach home. "Is everything…well?"
Her sister has stopped them just outside their door. She crouches down, gentle hands curling over Sakura's shoulders. Suzuna is beautiful too, just like Mama and Misa.
Sakura has always known so, but now in the dull light of the moon she stares into her sister's face andlooks. Long, honeyed blonde hair curls past her chin like vines. Her eyes are a terrible, wonderful shade of aquamarine. Her lips are full and red and her skin smooth. It is darker than Sakura's, by birth and by exposure.
They'd been stared at the whole way home.
Cannon fodder, Sakura thinks.
"Do you…" she starts to ask. Suzuna's face creases in worry.
"Yes?" her hands start to dig into her collarbones.
I will honor you,Sakura had promised to everyone, to herself.I will not become another ghost.
Shinobi are strong. Silent. They do not cry. They do not feel.
Sakura blinks. Swallows. Then she gives a grim sort of smile, like a snapping rope.
"It is nothing."
"…alright."
…
The next week, Inuzuka-san is the one to punch her in the mouth. It is an accident. They are not supposed to dorealdamage to each brown eyes swell with horror and he flutters around her in apology.
Flat on the ground, Sakura feels something pooling in her mouth. When she spits, it comes out red like poppies.
"I'm so sorry Sakura-chan!" Inuzuka-san is almost in tears.
Ami giggles are shaky on the sidelines, taken aback by the sudden violence.
Sakura shakes her head.
"It's okay."
Her blood, mottled and soaking into the dirt, out for all to see.
She has an odd, creeping urge to thank him.
Instead she bows, ending the spar.
I bleed. I hurt,Sakura thinks, mouth curling into a strange grin. Her lips pound in hurt.Let me be fodder then.
...
Everything changes in the spring.
Enjoy my lil guyssss and let me know what you all think!