AN: woo! my first sakukarin.
about four years ago i wrote a tumblr post about a soulmate au based around the fact that the first time karin and sakura interact is when karin is bleeding out and almost dead. so! here she is: that fic.
this one is gonna start fairly early but mind the rating. they will both eventually grow up, there'll be adult situations, etc. etc. etc. already, there are some pretty hefty implications about what karins mark will mean, based off of her current circumstances
reviews, favorites, and subscriptions are appreciated!
Regardless of when the men from Kusa come, Karin's mom never refuses them.
"Several squads encountered members of the Kaguya clan during a morning patrol," one of the men announces. There are two this time, though Zosui almost always comes by himself and comes alone. "The survivors are on their way to the hospital now."
Like Zosui, the men don't wait long. They never do. As soon as Karin's mom nods, they begin to run back to the village, and Karin's mom smooths down her dress and hurries to keep pace with them.
She leaves Karin to finish bringing in the laundry by herself, swiping her shawl off of the line and wrapping it around her shoulders before hiking up her long skirt and running after the men.
"I'll be back soon, Karin," she calls over her shoulder. "I'll try to be quick about it."
Her mother says this every time she leaves, but sometimes she's lying. It's annoying, because Karin can always feel when people are lying, which her mother knows, but it only works when people know they're lying.
When Karin's mother says she'll be back soon, she thinks she's telling the truth, and there's nothing to let Karin know the difference.
"And that just isn't fair," Karin complains, trying to fold a blanket that's nearly three times her size. She tugs it down from the line, and it drapes over her like a shroud, muffling her voice when she repeats, "It just isn't fair at all."
The laundry basket is filled within a matter of minutes. Her mother wears thick clothes, lots of knitted sweaters and shawls, and they take up a lot of space, even when Karin carefully folds them.
She's waddling back into their shared bedroom with her basket when she's hit by a burst of pain so sharp and so sudden that she drops the laundry and crumbles to the floor.
It's the worst pain she's ever felt in her short, six-year life. Her entire chest burns, hotter than the stove in their kitchen that leaves blisters on her fingers.
Karin screams, but screaming doesn't help. She cries out, Mom, and help and please and I need you, and that doesn't help either.
She cries, but there's no one else home to hear her.
Karin's senses reach for the cornsilk-thin strands of her mom's chakra, but the pain flares brighter, hotter, so deep that it touches her birdlike bones, her gasping lungs. Her focus shatters before her senses can even make it beyond her room.
She cries out again, but her screams are muffled into the floor.
She's alone, and something terrible is happening. She's alone, and she wants her mom. She cries even though crying makes the pain worse, cries because it hurts to breathe and because it hurts to not breathe.
"Please," she whimpers. She buries her fingers in the dirt as if new pain will somehow take away all of the other pain. "Mom, please."
.
.
.
Karin has no way of tracking how much time passes before she's finally able to roll onto her back and breathe, until her breaths finally come slower, come smoother. The pain doesn't last forever, but it feels like it does.
Her bed is inches away but it might as well be miles. The thought of even moving an inch makes her dizzy. Thinking at all makes her dizzy.
She tilts her head toward the open door of her hut and sees that the sun is still bright, still high in the sky.
It's still day, but her mom still hasn't come home.
Karin's shirt is soaked through with sweat, and in a numb, disoriented way, she slowly realizes the laundry will need to be done again—both she and it have been rolling around in the dirt for who knows how long, and both are in need of a second wash.
Karin breathes again and loosens her grip on her shirt. Her fingers twitch with ebbing tension, and the bones in her hands creak. Dust turns to smears of mud when she wipes the tears from her face.
Karin is six, and all she wants is for someone to hold her. Someone to tell her it's going to be okay.
Until her mom returns from the hospital, she can only hold herself and hope her mom's visit will be a quick one.
She wipes her eyes, sniffs until her nose stops running, and lies on the floor waiting for her mom.
.
.
.
Karin waits on the floor until the sun begins to droop and the air cools, but her mom still doesn't come.
Enough time passes that she's able to sit herself up and pull herself together and look herself over.
The pain was so hot, so deep, that she expects that her skin will feel shriveled and dry like dead bark on a tree. Crisp, maybe, like something that's been burned.
It's not. Her chest is tender and warm, but there's nothing else wrong with it. Nothing is broken or bleeding or blistered, though with the way it had felt, she thinks it ought to be. When she peeks down the collar of her shirt, there's something etched into her skin, blotchy and dark like a birthmark.
She knows innately that it's her soulmark, the shadow of the soulmate she'll meet one day, burned into her skin in the exact spot where her soulmate will one day touch her for the first time.
Her initial frustration quickly gives way to the novelty of it. It's weird, but weird in a good way—the mark feels soft and alien, like the belly of a salamander she once caught playing in the puddles behind the house.
It's hers, and it's hers alone, and Karin can't say that about too many things.
Her mom's own soulmark is a lot less noticeable, though it hasn't stopped Karin from noticing it a lot over the years. There are three tiny dots on the back of her hand that had once been the tips of her father's fingers, tapping her to get her attention.
Her mom's soulmark is the closest Karin has come and ever will come to meeting him.
When she finally hears the front door creak open and shut, Karin stumbles to her feet, her vision darkening for a few seconds when the blood rushes to her head. She regains her balance and scrambles to the kitchen where her mom is unbuttoning her shawl.
Her mom's eyes are half-lidded and sleepy, and she doesn't acknowledge Karin beyond a nod when she rushes into the kitchen.
Karin doesn't mind; sometimes her mom is just like that.
"Mom, look what happened!" Her collar doesn't stretch low enough to show off all of her mark, and her mom will be upset if she ruins the collar of one of the only shirts she owns, so Karin pulls the hem of her shirt halfway up to let her mom see her soulmark—a solid, dark handprint in the middle of her chest. "It's right next to my heart!"
It's quickly become one of the most exciting things Karin can ever remember happening to her, but her mom doesn't react to it. She stands there and blinks and stares at Karin's soulmark like she isn't really sure what to say.
Almost a minute passes without her saying anything. Her mom's mouth opens and closes, and one of her hands drifts over to her forearm, holding it protectively against her chest.
"Mom, did you hear what I said? I got my soulmark!"
Her mom shifts her weight from one foot to the other, swaying for a moment, as if she's about to lose her footing and collapse. Karin immediately drops her shirt and holds her hands out—it's happened before, and if Karin isn't there to catch her, she might hit her head, which would be bad.
She grabs the front of her mom's skirt to help steady her and tries again. "Mom? I finally got my soulmark," Karin prompts, because sometimes after returning from the hospital, it takes longer than usual for her mom to understand what Karin says. "It's a handprint!"
Her mom finally seems to snap out of whatever she was thinking about and gives her head a shake. She pushes her hair back from her face and it sticks, like she's sweaty.
"Let me—show it to me again, Karin, okay?" she asks, getting down to her knees, suddenly focused.
Karin gleefully lifts up her shirt again for her mom to see. Her mom's eyes droop, like she's starting to get tired again. Or maybe she's confused.
Karin can't blame her for that—compared to most others, Karin's soulmark is weird. It looks like a fairly large hand, because it's large enough that it takes up most of Karin's chest. It's hard to tell what that really means, though: soulmarks never grow or change, which means the mark will look exactly the same from this moment until the day Karin eventually meets her soulmate.
Most are black until then, but Karin's is a little off color, too—it's a dark grey, almost black, but there's a cloudy shading to it, like the color leaked a little bit first.
She wonders if that's supposed to mean something.
Karin's mom absentmindedly runs her fingers over the grey dots on the back of her hand, which usually means she's thinking hard about something.
"For now, let's keep it covered up, okay?" she finally suggests, gently tugging Karin's shirt back down.
"All the way covered up…?"
Karin rests her hand over her shirt, over the mark, and feels her hand come into line with it. Her hand isn't a perfect match, but one day her soulmate's will be—they'll fit together perfectly, like how the clouds fit into the sky, or the patterned stitches in her mother's shawl.
"How is my soulmate supposed to find my soulmark if I keep it covered up, though?"
Her mom goes quiet, and the silence lasts long enough that Karin begins to wonder if she intends to answer at all. She finally snaps out of the thought and sets her hands on Karin's shoulders, gripping them so hard it almost hurts.
Still, her mom doesn't say anything—she just stares at her, her eyebrows knitting tightly together as her eyes grow wet and watery.
"Mom…?"
Instead of ever answering her question, she finally pulls Karin in for a hug, her body going limp against hers. "I'm so sorry, Karin."
Her mom squeezes her harder, tight enough that Karin jokingly gags, but her mom doesn't seem to find it funny—she only holds her tighter, burying her face into Karin's shoulder.
For a moment, her entire weight falls onto Karin. "If only… if your father were here…"
Gingerly, Karin pats her mom on the back. "It's fine, Mom…"
Really, she doesn't know if it's fine—she has no idea why her mom is sorry, or why she's talking about her father. Karin's father is somewhere between a ghost and a god, someone her mom only talks to when things are really, really bad.
The pain had been bad before, and for a moment Karin is annoyed because her mom wasn't there to see it, and she wasn't there to help her when she needed it the most. She isn't apologizing for that, though. The pain is gone now, and Karin only wants to think about the good things. She wants to talk about her soulmate, and she wants to keep looking at her soulmark, even if it's in a really weird place.
She wonders if this is why her mom is upset. If her mom thinks it'll be harder for her to find her soulmate, and if she's afraid to tell her.
Her mom finally loosens her grip and heaves a long sigh. "I'm going to rest now. Just for a little bit," she says. Her knees wobble when she stands, and her hands shake as she pushes strands of hair out of her eyes.
She'd had her hair neatly combed when she left the house, but now it looks dirty, like she was running and sweating.
Karin wrinkles her nose. "I think maybe we should both take a bath first."
"When I wake up," her mother says, continuing as if she hadn't heard, "I'll make us both something to eat, okay?"
"Okay."
Karin knows better than to rely on it. Her mom is always like this when she comes back from the hospital, and sometimes that means she promises things she doesn't mean.
Karin's mom goes to take her nap, and she doesn't wake up until the next morning. When she does, she's slow and heavy, and she shuffles into the kitchen without so much as glancing at Karin.
Though she ought to be mad that her mom is practically ignoring her, Karin patiently waits for her mom to go tend to her garden before she once again pulls up her shirt to look at her soulmark.
Her soulmark is one thing that will never, ever leave her, and it's hard for her to ignore it the way her mother seems to want her to. Karin's mom walks in just as Karin is trying to twist her own wrist to press it against the shadow of her soulmate's. It dwarfs her hand, though, and her fingers barely cover the palm.
Karin slowly pulls down her shirt, and neither of them mention it again.
From then on, Karin resolves to only ever look at her soulmark when she's alone, when she knows she won't be caught. Her mom's eyes linger on her for weeks after, though, watching as if she knew.
Karin tries harder to hide it.