Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

What they never tell you about ghosts, is that it is not just the scorned and regretful that are left behind the veil to wander ceaselessly. Never tell you about the dead children that cannot go on because there is so much left unfulfilled, about teens that watch their friends gradually move on from their deaths, or suicide victims that only notice how much they impacted life when they’re dead. 

They don’t tell you about the murdered who watch their killers live free. About the ninja that fell in battle and stand watch over the village uselessly, because what can they do now? They can’t go home. They can never go home. ANBU, whose names are never carved into the memorial stone on undercover missions, lives sent to the wind and forgotten. They don’t tell you about the people who cannot move on no matter how hard they try, no matter how much they do.

But Sakura knows the people that everyone else forgets. 

Sakura will always know.

Because she is the only one who can remember them now.

They walk the streets, follow her home from school, and hiss at kids when they throw rocks at her with laughter and insulting names. They tell her jokes and ask her to pass on messages. They teach her jutsu and tell her stories.

They are her friends when nobody else is.

❦❦❦

Sakura had always been odd. It was a label that was dragged alongside her everywhere. She was called it as though it were her name. Her pink hair was odd. Her bright, viridian eyes were odd . The way her veins lay stark and obvious beneath her pale skin was odd.

She was odd because people could not explain the aura that followed her. 

It was easier for people to dismiss her oddities as a lonely child playing by herself when she was younger. It was easy to say that she had an abundance of imaginary friends and an overactive imagination. That when she spoke to herself, she was playing around.

It was harder to convince themselves when she started the academy, and children would avoid her out of fear .

It used to bother Sakura when she was small, the way that classmates would move from her desk in class when she sat in the only open seat, forcing themselves into a two-person bench to get as far away from her as possible. It used to bother her how her peers would make fun of her pale skin and call it creepy how easy it was to see her veins and give her names like “ Yōkai” and “ Yūrei.”

When her parents were ordered recommended to bring her to a specialist in fear she was having some kind of psychotic break brought on by lack of friends, Sakura learned to keep to herself. 

Shadows were thicker than Nara’s around her, faint whispers of voices lighter than wind followed like hissing snakes, occasionally an empty child’s laughter would echo after her. Once, an Inuzuka was asked what she smelled like, and the response was “ Fresh soil and funeral flowers. ”

Sometimes when disgusting whispers of insults followed her, ( “Konoha and its cursed children.” ) People that Sakura hadn’t even heard speak ill of her would end up in the hospital.

The dead did not appreciate insults toward their friend.

❦❦❦

Sakura is eight and angry.

She had always found the memorial stone to be a place of quiet contempt.

Names were missing, she knew. Names of children in masks they shoved off into war because they were promising, children that they couldn’t honor on the stone because they were ANBU and they were too young for it, and Konoha was the friendly village . Names of adults and teens and everyone in between who were sent on suicide missions they knew they wouldn’t come back from but went through with anyways because it is for the village.

Spirits would smile softly at her when she would rant about the unfairness of it all to them and pat her head with cold, cold hands only she would ever be able to feel and whisper, “ Thank you, Sakura-chan. ”

And Sakura didn’t want to be thanked. She shouldn’t need to be thanked for remembering them, for being angry that they don’t have the same respect for fighting for the village that the people on the stone do, for being mad that they don’t even have a gravesite .

Then the Uchiha Massacre occurs, Sakura gains dozens of new spirits she can see, and the village does nothing to remember them. There is no monument raised in their name. There is nothing left at the Uchiha Compound to remember them. They don’t even give the damn boy that survived it all anything but three days off from the academy.

They don’t even help him clean the blood from the compound. The place he lives in. The place his whole family was murdered in.

Sakura is eight when the Uchiha clan dies. She is eight when the seat beside her in class that had been empty for so many years is filled by a boy with nearly as many ghosts following him as Sakura. 

She is so angry, that her academy classmates complain about how cold their classroom always is, how they swear they can see their breath if they look close enough. Sakura is so furious that darker and darker spirits find themselves drawn to the pink room in the Haruno house where a girl sleeps, emanating wave after wave of pure hate.

Sakura is eight when her circle of spirits gains demons .

❦❦❦

Sakura is ten when she meets her first ROOT ghost.

A pale-haired boy who says his name is Shin. He tells her stories of Danzo and his brother and tells her stories of horrible murders disguised as missions that he had been sent on under the assumption that the Hokage was aware of everything Danzo was doing. 

In return, she helps him differentiate between things that Danzo had led him to believe were normal and things that weren’t abusive manipulation tactics taught by a sick old man. 

He disappears shortly after she turns eleven.

He doesn’t pass on, and it makes Sakura worry about his implications about ROOT and what Danzo has done to them even after death.

❦❦❦

When Sakura is eleven, a nice kunoichi teaches her everything she knows about Medical ninjutsu. 

She is twelve when she finishes her training, and Rin gives her a bright smile that crinkles the purple rectangles on her cheeks when she completes the night before she’s assigned her team.

“ Good job, Sakura-chan .” Her voice is soft, and Sakura’s eyes widen when her skin begins to fleck off into nothing, a faint glow starting to leak from the places her skin used to be, “ Watch over Kakashi-kun for me if you get the chance, will you? ”

It's one of the few passings that Sakura cries over.

❦❦❦

“Team Seven: Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura, and Uchiha Sasuke.”

Sakura is twelve, technically friendless, and although she is the best kunoichi in her class, people still find excuses to insult and make fun of her. But that is nothing to her. Sakura is the pupil of some of Konoha’s most dangerous shinobi, shinobi that were killed in fear of their prowess if they were to defect.

Her green eyes trail to the raven-haired boy beside her and the blonde behind her in their own time before shrugging and rolling her eyes when Naruto begins to complain, and Sasuke makes a face in distaste.

They wait for hours , and the most annoying part about it is how most of the time is spent in a one-sided argument between Naruto and Sasuke. To anybody else, Sakura would seem to have been watching the clouds outside the window for the last three hours, when in reality, she’s been watching in mildly disguised amusement as the younger demons that have taken to following her around rearrange their faces into terrifying amalgamations to make the others laugh.

One of them screeches, and Naruto’s words pause for a second in confusion as a chill passes down his spine when it uses his shoulders as a springboard to crawl on the ceiling with a warbling cry that Sakura knew to be a giggle.

The door cracks open, and an eraser drops onto their sensei’s head with a soft thunk and puff of chalk dust. The childish demons on the ceiling hang from their feet and point and cry out at the man, and the ghosts in the corner of the room roll their eyes with fond amusement or scoff as he stands there for a moment with a deadpan stare at the three genins in the room.

“My first impression of you all is….” He trails off, looking for the word, “Hateable. Meet me on the roof.”

He disappears. And with a sigh, Sakura is already halfway up the stairs to the roof when her teammates register the order.

“Kakashi-senpai was always a bit of a troll.” Uchiha Shisui says as he pops into existence beside her, his empty eye sockets still leaking blood that drips on his soaked shinobi grade clothing and mixes with the water that seeps onto the floor and disappears as he moves up step by step, “Wah, Pinky-chan you got lucky ~.”

She raises an unimpressed eyebrow at the spirit, and he gives her a bright smile full of mischief and laughter, “Hatake Kakashi?” She mumbles, her voice barely echoing in the stairwell, and she can hear her classmates begin to stumble up the first set of stairs. 

“Yep.” He pops the p, and Sakura wipes the water on her cheek away with an experienced hand, “He was my ANBU leader, so he’s powerful, y’know? He was always fun to have on missions outside of them too.”

Sakura can hear Naruto’s voice echo up the staircase, getting closer by the second, and she stops in front of the door to turn to the dead teen with a slight twitch of her eyebrow, “Go ahead, ask.”

His empty sockets stare at her, and Sakura never had asked if he could see without his eyes now that he’s dead, “Why didn’t you shunshin?” He pouts exaggeratedly, “Are my skills too hard, Pinky-chan? Is Shisui-sensei not good enough for you?”

“Hm.” She rolls her eyes fondly and turns her attention to the boys at the bottom of the staircase she stands at the top of with a twitch of her lips that could have been the beginnings of a smirk, “Where’s the fun in that?”

His sharp laugh echoes in her ears even when his spirit disappears from her side, and Sakura pushes open the door when her potential teammates reach the halfway point.

Chapter Text

“Introduce yourselves, likes, dislikes, and your dream for the future.”

Demons gather at the foot of Hatake Kakashi as he introduces himself, clinging to his legs and draping themselves over his shoulders, whispering sentences in his ears that she can barely distinguish from the static that coats their words. 

N o t f i t t o b e a s e n s e i. F r i e n d - k i l l e r K a k a s h i. Y o u r f a u l t, y o u r f a u l t. Y o U ’ l L G e T t H e M k I l L e D.

A whistle quietly leaves her lips, and she tunes back into the living just in time to hear the ending of Sasuke’s ambition . Sakura’s eyebrows raise, and she puts her hands in her pockets, leaning back on one foot to look lazily at her potential team.

“Haruno Sakura. I like quiet spaces. I dislike many things, but if I had to choose one, it’d probably be… disrespecting the dead.” She tilts her head to one side, cracking her neck absently to disguise the way she leans out of the form of an overexcited demon launching itself off the edge of the roof behind her, “I don’t have a dream.” 

Kakashi raises what she assumes to be one eyebrow, “None at all?”

“None that don’t count as treason.” A ghost calls from the edge of the roof, blood dripping from his ears and the gaping hole in his chest, laughter on his tongue as he points it out. His fellow spirits laugh out their agreements, and the demons that had been so focused on whispering and taunting the Hatake begin to screech in delight. “Ne, Sakura-chan?”

Her eyes flit to the boy, and her eyes glint in quiet agreement. Thinking of unmarked graves and missing names, of bloodied hands pleading for her before she could speak properly, of tossed rocks and jeering comments. Her gaze returns to the man before her, “None.”

Hysterical laughter fills the silence, but only for Sakura.

❦❦❦

“Sakura-chan.” Her mother greets when she arrives back home, giving a light kiss to her forehead, “How was your day? Did you meet your team?”

Sakura gives a soft smile that she reserves only for her family and nods, “It was good. I have another test tomorrow to see if we’re fit to be genin.”

“No doubt about it, Sacchan!” Her father calls from the kitchen, “You’ll pass with flying colors, I’m sure.”

A bark echoes from upstairs, and her parents look to the window with sighs, “I still don’t know how Hana-san keeps that dog a secret from the rest of the neighborhood.” Her mother shakes her head, and a grin twitches on Sakura’s lips, “Are we the only ones that hear it?”

Sakura chuckles and presses a kiss to her mother’s cheek, “I don’t know, Mama. I’ll be down for dinner; I have some scrolls I’d wanted to read.”

An exaggerated sigh, “Of course, of course.” The woman makes her way to the kitchen as Sakura begins her way up the stairs, and she can hear the cry of laughter when her father yelps.

Opening the door to her room, a light shade of pastel pink she had chosen when she was four coating the walls greets her. Demons hang from the ceiling and bang on her window and its sill loudly. A few children sit on her bed with a deck of cards she’d left out, making up a nonsense game as they go and giggling about the rules. A mangled cat sits idly on her desk, broken tail swinging loftily from side to side as it naps, and a dog Sakura had lovingly named Zonbi when she was younger and couldn’t pronounce things correctly barks excitedly as she shuts the door behind her.

Half of the dog’s skull is caved in, and there are patches of bloodied fur where his skeleton shows through. With each body shaking bark, bits of drool slip from the part where his jaw is missing. But Sakura ignores the scene he makes with years of immunity and drops to her knees to pet the excited dog.

“Hello, Zonbi, hello .” She coos, voice pitching just a bit higher, “Did you miss me? Huh, huh? Did the mean Uchiha not pet you? Oh, you poor baby .” Zonbi yips and flops over onto his side with a faint crack of bones he no longer has, and Sakura rubs the belly that he proudly presents to her, expertly avoiding the exposed bits of shattered bones.

“Excuse you?” Shisui yelps in an offended tone, popping into existence in her desk chair, the cat opening an eye lazily before returning to her nap when she sees it's just the eyeless boy, “I give him all the pets.”

Sakura ignores him, continuing to coo at the dead dog, “Aw, what a fucking liar he is, huh?” Her tone is still light and playful, octaves higher than her speaking voice. The children on her bed giggle, and the demons cease their insistent banging on the window.

“Sakura-nee! Sakura-nee!” The pinkette looks up from Zonbi, meeting the seemingly untouched form of seven-year-old Ito Maki, “Play, go fish with us!”

Six-year-old Ito Mai and nine-year-old Nakamura Shinju look up at her with pleading eyes, “Please, please, please!”

Sakura pretends to think about it, lifting her hand to her chin in a thinking pose, scrunching her eyes closed tightly like she needs to try hard, “Hmm.” Their giggles make her smile, “Okay, but only a few games. I wasn’t lying when I said I wanted to read some scrolls.”

“Yatta!” Maki cries, raising her hands in the air triumphantly, giving just a glimpse of the broken ribs beneath her dirty shirt. Her little sister copies her with a giggle, identical wounds peeking out from under hers as well. 

Shinju ruffles their hair quickly while they’re distracted, and her bloodied and bruised hands come back to her lap before they can complain. Hand-shaped bruises that circle her neck shifting in and out of view as she ducks to the side to avoid the same treatment from the only living girl in the room.

“Alright.” Sakura says to the trio of corpses, “Who goes first?”

❦❦❦

The next day, the bell test isn’t super unexpected to Sakura. She’d spent the last eight or so years of her life being tested by dead ninja, and one of those with Kakashi’s dead teammate. So she’d expected something about teamwork from him. 

The thought of Rin still stings. Because the only things Sakura could find interesting about the man with his porn book in his hands and the nonchalant way he beats Naruto’s ass into the ground is the way the demons attached to him seem to glint with bloodthirsty grins when she nears. And Rin-nee had made him seem so cool, but all Sakura sees is an old man with a mountain of issues on his shoulders. 

It was pretty amusing how he sent Naruto into the stream though, even if she had nothing against the blonde, he was just so loud, and the transparent kitsune-looking aura that wrapped around him sometimes was such a headache to deal with.

Sakura sighs and begins making her way through the woods to find the Uchiha to at least try and convince him to work with her and Naruto to get a bell. Just because she didn’t care whether she passed or failed didn’t mean she’d just drag the boys down with her.

“S-Sakura.” Her green eyes trail to the side where Sasuke sits with what seems to be dozens of kunai sticking from his body, blood leaking from the wounds sluggishly, “Help… me.”

A snort escapes her before she can stop it, and she flares her chakra like a cracking whip, the boy disappearing in a flurry of burnt leaves. Her eyes trail to the trees in search of Hatake, and the demons give him away with their gurgling laughter. Sakura shunshins in the general direction. She remembered Sasuke heading with a wink.

❦❦❦

She appears before the boy with her hands in her pockets and pink hair swirling with her speed before idly settling on her shoulders. Sakura can’t entirely hide the way her lips tick up in amusement at his predicament, but she can force her laughter into a slight clearing of her throat.

Shisui has no such self-restraint. Sakura is sure that if the boy had eyes, he would be in tears. He’s laughing so hard. “ God, my stomach hurts .” He wheezes, water dripping from his lips as he chokes.

“Well, looks like you’ve got yourself into quite the pickle.” She comments, and Shisui leans against a tree to try and catch a breath he doesn’t need. “Need some help?”

The boy scowls, and Shisui’s wheezing laughter is making it that much harder for Sakura to take the situation seriously, “…Yes.” He growls, and Sakura gives a bright smile in response.

Her hands flicked through simple seals, and she opened a wider hole around him so he could pull himself out. Eyes casually slipping over the boy next to him as he leans into Sasuke with only slight chuckles, “Now that both you and Naruto have seen how useless you are against a war vet jounin alone, can we find him so you two can pretend you have common sense?”

Sakura doesn’t get an answer, but Sasuke’s brooding scowl and the way he almost smacks into her with the speed he turns around is response enough.

❦❦❦

They return to find the blonde already tied to a pole, and before Kakashi can even start speaking, Sakura sighs like the weight of the world had just fallen onto her shoulders, “You couldn’t wait just a bit longer? I spent like ten minutes trying to convince this guy to work with you.”

Sasuke’s seemingly permanent scowl deepens, and Kakashi begins listing what they did wrong.

“Sasuke, you wrote them off as nothing, Naruto, you tried to fight me alone, Sakura, you let Naruto try and fight me alone.” The girl shrugs in agreement, and the man takes out a kunai, “Sakura, kill Sasuke or Naruto dies.”

Everything stills. The demons that weigh the white-haired man down begin to growl from deep within their chests; Shisui appears beside her with a reassuring grip on her shoulder that soaks a bit of water into the sleeve of her shirt. Ghosts that follow her around for something to do that Sakura had learned to tune out begin to flicker between pale, black-eyed, nightmarish amalgamations and their usual corpses.

“What.” It isn’t a question that leaves her lips, but a frosty statement, one that scrapes against her throat on the way out, and her green eyes focus on her sensei with a cold, calculating look that seems to scream, how far into repeating that can you get before I remove your head from your shoulders?

“This is something that can happen on a mission.”

Pressure lifts, Sakura’s dead gaze regains light, and Shisui’s grip tightens once before it disappears. The corpses around her return to their places, some disappearing to wherever they had been before Sakura’s unintentional summoning. The demons do not return to their hissing, however. They keep their beady little eyes focused on Sakura, waiting for an order that she won’t give.

“This is the memorial stone.” Kakashi continues, and Sakura’s anger is reignited for just a brief second before she shoves it down as far as she can, “Konoha’s heroes are carved into this, people who were killed in action. Some of my most precious people are here on this stone.”

Sakura seethes quietly.

“I’ll give you one more chance after lunch. Don’t feed Naruto. Whoever does will be disqualified.”

Sakura huffs as she pops open the bento, not even thinking twice about picking up the chopsticks and shoving them in Naruto’s face, “Eat.”

“But Kakashi-sensei just said-“

Sakura rolls her eyes, “Maa, Naruto. I don’t care about being disqualified, you guys want to be ninja more than I do, and it's obvious, so I was gonna give somebody else a bell anyways.”

The blonde looks at her in awe, “Really?”

“Oh, you poor, poor boy.” Shisui coos, leaning against the pole that holds him up, “Don’t go there. It’s a deep dark path. Once Sakura’s got you in her sights, you can’t escape it.”

Rolling her eyes, she feeds Naruto about half the bento before noticing the other boy hadn’t opened his. She turns to Sasuke with an eyebrow raised. “Well, Uchiha? Aren’t you gonna eat?”

The Uchiha in question stands and gives Naruto some of his bento, a deep sigh escaping him, “I ignored the order not to eat this morning.”

A scandalized gasp, “Sasuke- kun , no!” Her voice pitches in a dramatic imitation of their classmates, “But sensei said-“

Surprisingly a snort escapes him, and it startles him enough that he drops his chopsticks. The three of them share looks before dissolving into laughter; Sasuke’s quiet and subdued, but they’re all the same.

The scene Kakashi returns to is empty Bentos, Sakura cutting down Naruto, and Sasuke leaning into his palm with a not so malicious scowl in place as Naruto rants about something or other.

“You pass!”

Chapter Text

It seemed Sakura was the only one who knew what D-ranks entailed. Her teammates seemed to expect something different each time, and she’d gotten used to the grumbling and whining that takes place each time that Kakashi-sensei tells them about their newest chore.

The pink-haired girl found that the “dreaded Tora mission” that the chuunin at the missions desk laughed about when he handed it to them that morning was her favorite by far. The dead cat that had taken a liking to lounge around in Sakura’s room in the sunlight, one that she’d taken to uncreatively calling Neko-chan, draped herself around her shoulders, broken tail flicking back and forth with a light click-click of dislocated bones. 

Tora stared up at her with keen eyes, the bow on his head twitching with each flick of his ear, his undamaged tail flicking in time with Neko-chan’s. Sakura raises an eyebrow and crouches to be closer to the living feline’s height, “Maa, Tora-chan….” She mutters, head tilting to the side with a slight smile as Tora copies the action, “Let’s take you back to the old lady, ne?”

LIfting him into her arms with little to no effort, the usually vicious cat squirms in her arms for a moment to situate himself before settling against her chest with a rumbling purr. Sakura wants to laugh at the gawks she gets from fellow shinobi in the village as she makes her way back toward the home of Tora’s owner, but the urge disappears when the whispers of the civilians reach her.

“Makes sense it would be Haruno. First the team with that abomination and now the demon cat? Evil seeks out that thing, it seems.”

Neko-chan’s glowing green eyes snap to the woman who spoke, and Tora’s follow soon after, two hair raising hisses leaving them as one. Sakura’s eyes flicker to the woman long enough to watch the color leave her face. 

She returns her eyes to the front to watch where she’s going, bringing a hand to rub down Tora’s spine gratefully, allowing Neko-chan to run her dry tongue on the side of her cheek and ignoring the shocked cries as the woman stumbles.

Sakura hums a tune as she weaves through living and dead alike that makes the spirits on the street laugh when civilians step out of her path fearfully. Pink hair stark against the toxic green of her eyes, veins prominent beneath her pale skin, everyone from the civilian district knows of the Haruno girl whose tears are said to land those in the hospital with nearly irreparable wounds.

The demons at her heels cry out with laughter at each flinch, and Tora continues to purr in her arms.

❦❦❦

“Okay, yeah, that’s just wrong.” The ghost of a Nara who refuses to give Sakura his first name shudders, “Y’know I almost didn’t believe what I heard on the street about you and that demon cat but….” Shadows continuously drip from his hands, blood staining his chin from where he’d once choked on it, his thumbs sit in the pockets of his mud-covered shinobi grade pants comfortably, and he gives her a deadpanned look of greeting she’d come to expect from him.

Sakura doesn’t stop petting the cat as she walks to the old woman’s house to drop him off, but her gaze flickers to the side to acknowledge him once.

“Yo.” He says in his comfortable monotone, taking one of his hands away from his pocket to give her a sarcastic two-fingered salute, “You do know that thing is the mission sensei’s give when they think their genins are too cocky or something, right?”

Sakura rolls her eyes, skipping up the steps and using the hand that was petting Tora to knock on the door instead, “I have Tora-chan, Shijimi-sama.” She calls out boredly, raising a false smile to her face when the woman opens the door with an excitable demeanor, practically smothering the cat in front of her.

Quickly shaking off the woman’s thanks, Sakura wastes no time in heading back to the mission’s desk to wait for her team. Nara walks in step with her, black eyes shifting to and from different objects in the village and pointing out ones that had changed or appeared since his death.

“Y’know, I should visit Konoha more.” He hums, tugging the shadow of a man who sneers down at Sakura as she passes just enough to send him careening into the stall to the side of them, “Visit my family. It gets real boring out there fucking with nukenin when they all start to avoid the places you haunt .”

An amused smile ghosts her lips for a second before she pulls open the door to the mission’s office, giving the chuunin at the front desk a bland smile as she informs him of the completed task.

He raises an eyebrow but says nothing as he begins to fill out the paperwork, and there is nothing left for Sakura to do other than wait for her team to return to the office.

But Sakura doesn’t have to wait for more than twenty minutes before a violet-haired woman that makes the chuunin on duty cower for a second at her mere appearance enters the building. Usually, Sakura wouldn’t be interested, but the oil black snake figure wrapped around the woman’s neck intrigues her immensely.

“Give me a mission, Nishi-chan.” The stranger croons at the cowering man, and Sakura smothers a laugh.

“That’s Mitarashi Anko.” The boy beside her says, leaning comfortably against the wall and enjoying the way people shiver as they pass too close by him, “She’s got a sadistic streak.” He shrugs, and Sakura wonders if he’d ever had the chance to meet the woman before his death or not.

Suddenly she’s eye to eye with the slimy demon draped over the woman’s shoulders, and at this distance, Sakura can see that it seems to be emerging from the side of her neck. Raising her gaze to meet the woman’s curious gaze, she blinks in mild confusion, face as blank as ever.

“Ne, Pinky-chan, why go pink for a shinobi career?”

“I like being underestimated and ogled at.” Sakura deadpans, face unchanging.

A laugh startles out of Anko, and the chuunin stares at them with wide, horrified eyes, before turning back to his paperwork like that would keep him from acknowledging the scene playing out to his side.

A grin breaks out on the woman’s face, and Sakura’s eyes are dragged to the snake just briefly when it copies the expression with an imitation of a smile with paperwhite fangs and glowing yellow eyes. She smirks, “Oooh, I think I’ll keep you, Pinky-chan.”

The Nara gives a brilliant smile of bloodied teeth, “Oh, Anko-san, don’t you get it?”

Sakura’s eyes flash before she gives a shallow bow and a blank smile she’d once learned from Shin, “Please take care of me, senpai.”

“Sakura’s the one that’ll be keeping you .”

❦❦❦

Sakura talks to Anko-senpai for about thirty minutes before her team arrives at the Mission Desk. 

“Sakura-chan.” Kakashi’s voice calls out, and her green eyes trail to the demons that hang from his shoulders with ear-piercing screams before meeting the only eye she can see, only to find her sensei’s attention on the woman in front of her, “And, Anko-san.”

“Ne, Sakura-chan, did you find Tora?” Naruto asks, completely ignoring the staring contest the man is having with Anko, “Sasuke-teme and I didn’t have any luck, and Kakashi-sensei said that he couldn’t find you.”

The Nara pops into existence just in front of her sensei, eyes trailing the living man’s face with a flat expression, hands in his pockets, and a bloodied senbon between his teeth, “Is that so?” He hums, his shadow curling around Kakashi’s with a dangerous edge, “Like he wasn’t watching those two with a keen eye.” A scoff leaves his mouth, and he gives one firm tug on the shadow that almost makes the man stumble forward before returning to Sakura’s side.

“Yes, I did.” The civilian confirms, ignoring the demon’s cries of laughter and the dull sting that comes with the knowledge that Kakashi hadn’t bothered looking for her, “I came to wait for you after completing the mission.”

Sasuke nods, and her sensei finally speaks again, “What’re you doing with my cute little genin, Anko-san?”

“ Your genin?” The woman questions, head tilting to look at Sakura’s deadpanned expression and the grin she gives the pink-haired girl has a manic edge to it, “ Ah, no wonder the poor girl’s been waiting so long.”

Kakashi’s eyebrow raises, “So long?”

This time, Sakura is the one to answer, “I’ve been here for fifty-five minutes, Kakashi- sensei .” The title escapes her lips with a mocking edge unintentionally, and she relaxes minutely when the ghost beside her gives a feral smile behind the bloodied senbon. 

“D-ranks are so boring anyway.” Naruto interjects, bringing Kakashi’s attention to him in an instant, “It’s no wonder Sakura-chan finished it so early. We need something fun .”

Sasuke shrugs, but Sakura can see the boredom in his gaze as well, and she guesses that Kakashi does as well, “Maa, we’ll report to the Hokage then.” Ignoring the fact that Sakura will be the only one able to report about finishing the mission, the silver-haired man begins his way to the Hokage’s office, “Goodbye, Anko-san.”

“I don’t like your sensei.” Nara purrs, tossing his arm over her shoulder and ignoring the way that people begin to step out of her way subconsciously while she trails after Kakashi as he leads her teammates up the stairs and toward the door to the Hokage’s office. Thinking of how the tracker-grade former ANBU said he hadn’t been able to find her with a dead gaze, a familiar feeling of disappointment welling up inside of her.

She hums, green eyes flickering with quiet resentment, “Me neither.”

❦❦❦

Their first C-Rank sounds simple enough, but Sakura keeps her eyes peeled regardless, too many lessons from dead ninja telling her that a paranoid shinobi is a living shinobi. The Nara had departed with another two-fingered salute and words of checking his family once she’d reached the gate. 

Honestly, Sakura didn’t think that her first mission outside the village would be guarding a drunk bridge-builder as she watched the demons that cling to Kakashi run a mock with garbled laughter while they mess with the young ones that follow her around. Still, beggars can’t be choosers and all that. 

Two of the demons that followed huddle before a puddle ahead of them and begin to howl with laughter as they poke and prod at it. Sakura’s green eyes watch the iridescent water become blood red for just a moment before her group gets close enough that two nukenin appear from it.

Kakashi is seemingly torn apart right before them, but Sakura has seen the aftermath of barbed chains, and no matter how strong these two chuunin seem to think they are, they didn’t have enough to tear through the man the way they did.

Sakura vaults herself over their prone and shaking charge, placing herself between the man and her enemies, demons nipping at their heels excitedly as she crouches in front of them with her eyes on the chain connecting them. 

Naruto seems to be frozen beside Tazuna, staring at the space Kakashi had once stood, and it hits Sakura that normal children did not grow up seeing the aftermath of failed missions and murders and growls frustratedly when Sasuke throws himself at one of the men with reckless abandon. 

Their sensei left them to fight these two on their own. The man is racking up more and more reasons for Sakura to dislike him.

A barbed chain is sent toward the bridge-builder behind her, and Sakura knocks it out of the air with a well-placed kick, digging the edge into the ground and running head-on at the missing-nin on top of the chain. 

Once she reaches the end that’s connected to the man’s glove, Sakura doesn’t hesitate when she comes down on the man with a kunai, watching from the corner of her eye as Sasuke knocks out his counterpart. And standard procedure says to keep them alive for interrogation.

But they only need one for answers.

With practiced precision, Sakura draws her kunai across the pale expanse of his throat in a lightning-quick movement, twisting her form up and over the stranger as he chokes. Using his head as a balance for one hand and digging her fingers into his hair to drag him backward by the scalp as her feet hit the ground in tandem with his back. Knocking the air from his lungs,  making him choke harder on the blood as he fruitlessly inhales. 

Releasing her grip on his head, Sakura flicks the blood off of her hand and kunai thoughtlessly, storing it away in her kunai pack with a subtle nod at the demons that foam at the mouth at the sight of the nin’s slowly flickering spiritual form.

The man that Sakura had just killed, dressed in a dirtied uniform with rusted chains seemingly emerging from bloodied palms, appears above his cooling corpse, a forever bleeding slit across his throat. Sakura meets his eyes just once before his muffled screams are swallowed by the demons that consume his newly created ghostly form. 

Cracking her neck, Sakura turns back around to assess her team to find Kakashi standing with Sasuke’s opponent slung over one shoulder and conversing with her teammates. Gritting her teeth, the girl exhales her anger and comes to stand next to the jounin.

“Ah, have you finished with him, Sakura-chan?” He turns his attention to her briefly to give her an eye smile, 

Sakura blinks, looks at the unconscious nin over his shoulder, and then looks back at him, “He’s dead.” Kakashi blinks back at her with surprise evident in his eyes, and she responds with that blank, fake smile.

“Sakura-chan!” Naruto sounds appalled at the information, and Sakura turns to him with a look of confusion at his seemingly betrayed look, “Why would you do that?!”

Involuntarily, a snort escapes her, “Sorry, sorry.” She waves away the disgusted, shocked, and indifferent looks it receives, “Why would I- Naruto-san, we’re shinobi. We kill for a living. He attacked us with lethal force. I returned it.”

Naruto’s eyebrows furrow, “I guess that makes sense… But--” 

 “Don’t worry, Naruto-san.” The demons, full and satiated, bloody maws filled with contented feral smiles, crowd at her feet. Blood stains the pale skin of her hands, she remembers the easy way that the man fell with her hand in his hair with his quickly sapping strength, and gives Naruto a slightly more genuine smile than the one she’d given his sensei, “You won’t have to worry about me hurting you.”

Chapter Text

Sakura’s team is quiet for ages after the announcement that she’d killed a man and that Tazuna lied to Konoha about the parameters for the mission. They cross the river in silence, and it is to this scene that Shisui appears. 

He whistles in surprise, “Damn, Pinky, who died?” He stares through Kakashi with his empty and leaking eye sockets, “Ryo told me how disappointing senpai has been.”

Sakura’s green eyes slip to the side where Shisui sits between Kakashi and the drunk as they begin speaking of where the mission will end, barely blinking at his appearance but tilting her head to the side just slightly in confusion.

“Who the fuck is Ryo?” Shisui articulates for her in a high-pitched imitation of her voice, and the pink-haired girl bites the inside of her lip to keep the smile off her face, “Nara Ryoichi. Shadow-bastard with the drippy hands and the...the fucking blood all over his chin. He was literally with you like, two days ago.”

Shore arrives as Shisui completes his sentence and quickly falls a bit behind the team as Tazuna leads the way to his house, “His name is Ryoichi?!” She repeats, a smile on her face as Shisui looks at her blankly, enjoying the way his form flickers in between tangible and intangible as he processes.

“ You didn’t know his name .” He realizes with a whisper, “Oh, fuck. I’m gonna die for a second time.”

Amusement bubbles in her throat, and the demons around her echo with the laughter she doesn’t allow herself to show just in case the team ahead of her turns to her in suspicion, shrieking with gaping maws and bloody teeth. Naruto’s body flinches minutely, and a ghostly orange form of a fox flickers around his state for just a second.

“He’s gonna beat the absolute shit out of me.” Shisui whines, kicking a rock straight into the skull of one of the demons trailing behind Kakashi and winking an empty socket at it when it shrieks in delight, “Anyway, who died? Your team is here. The client is here. I mean, you’re covered in blood, but nobody here is dead; why are we separated?”

Her response is simple and quiet, “I killed a man.”

Silence. Shisui stares blankly for a moment before he speaks, “That’s it?” He snorts, “That’s what they’re so pissy about? Kakashi-senpai had killed hundreds before he was ten. You’ve actively killed at least seven people by now.”

The demons drag their feet through the dirt around her, the familiar scent of blood filling the air, and Shisui whistles as Kakashi shouts for them to drop to the floor. An enormous sword skimming over Sakura’s head as she crouches to the ground carefully, slicing cleanly through Shisui’s neck.

“Ah, I’ve been beheaded.” He deadpans, catching his head as it falls forwards into his awaiting hands, quickly settling it back atop his shoulders as a man appears upon the handle of the enormous weapon.

“Shisui shut the fuck up,” Sakura whispers sternly, biting back a laugh, looking up at the bandaged stranger above her, “This is serious.” 

The demons surrounding her cheer and scream. They cackle with high-pitched gurgles; some of them crackle with newfound energy from the dead man’s spirit they devoured hours before. 

Small disfigured creatures hang from the ends of the sword with elongated claws, dangling almost limply and responding with cries of their own, these deeper and guttural, vibrating Sakura’s bones from the inside out.

The stench of death exudes from the blade, painting the standard silver with transparent shades of drying blood, the bone-white bandaged handle covered in rippling shadows of the dead, and Sakura isn’t a sword person, but for a moment she craves .

“Sakura!” Kakashi yells, no doubt to tell her to move toward the team, 

But the man looks down to meet her gaze from his perch with cold brown eyes, “Don’t move, girly.” 

Shisui raises an eyebrow at him, standing next to her and dripping water onto her blood-crusted top. Nara Ryoichi swirls into existence just beside them, his normally impassive eyes narrowed in suspicion and his dripping shadows already reaching out to the man in preparation. 

“Momochi Zabuza, Demon of the Mist,” Kakashi says, his voice hard and his eyes still on Sakura, who stands crouched in a comfortable position. To him and her teammates, Sakura is sure that she may look at the sword with fear when in reality, she stares at the new demonic forms that follow the nukenin before her with curiosity.

“Just hand over the old man, Sharingan no Kakashi.” Zabuza tuts, stepping off the handle and onto the forest floor, a few feet before Sakura and causing her eyes to trail from the still dangling and chittering beings to the living man, “I’m feeling lazy tonight, let’s make it easy on ourselves.” He grins beneath the bandages, and Sakura can’t help but imagine bloody fangs matching the ones of the demons that follow him.

“They’re so dramatic.” Shisui sighs, disrupting Sakura’s attention on the quarrel in front of her, “ Demon of the Mist, Sharingan no Kakashi . There’s no need to announce each other’s titles.”

Ryoichi turns to the younger ghost beside him, raising an unimpressed eyebrow, “Like you were any better, Shunshin no Shisui .”

“That was different. There’s no use in wasting my sage-tier commentary and quips on the living while I’m dead. These aren’t even good.” He yawns, taking a step forward and appearing beside the proclaimed Demon of the Mist in less than a second, leaning his soaked frame closer to the man, his typically playful expression void of emotion, the pale face of a dead boy starker than ever, “I’m getting bored.”

A slight smirk pulls at the corner of Ryoichi’s mouth, and Sakura shunshins to the man assigned as her sensei between one breath and the next, watching with a detached sort of interest as the sword that was stuck in the trunk of the tree comes plunging into the dirt where she once stood.

The beasts attached squeal in delight as they crash into the ground with splatters of stretched flesh, restoring with wild jitters, cackling as their bones reform from their previously shattered state. The demons that accompany Sakura gasp and jerk with enthusiasm of their own at the display, trembling with excitement.

Ryoichi hums, and Sakura sighs as a fight begins between the two living men, rising from her crouch to stand in front of their client with slouching shoulders that betray her boredom. Shisui watches the fight with that same void look on his face, hands in the pockets of his pants and eyelids half-closed over the mess that used to hold his Sharingan. 

Demons dance between the ninja as they fight, and Sakura’s eyebrow twitches upwards just slightly as one lands on elbows and knees behind Kakashi, acting as a springboard for another that grips the back of his flak jacket and yanks . Hatake goes crashing to the ground, and before Zabuza can use it to his advantage, the demons hanging from his sword screech with delight and swing from the blade to swipe their elongated claws over his eyes, mist filling the field.

Ryoichi gives a ferocious smirk, sinking into the mist with ease as the men continue to fight in the low visibility, Shisui following with a sharp laugh.

Sakura bites back a smile.

Chapter Text

The mist disappears to show her boys sparring with elated smiles on their faces off to the side of where Kakashi’s trapped form sits in the center of a water prison, demons biting at his ankles from the ground mischievously and whining when they can’t reach through the chakra enhanced water bubble.

Her lips tremble in an attempt to contain giggles, and tears fill her eyes with the effort it takes to hold back the amused smile that tries to emerge at the scene in front of her. For a moment, she’s so focused on not laughing outright at the man who was supposed to protect them that she almost misses the exchange.

“Only those who are dangerous enough to be in my bingo book are worthy of being called a ninja.” The mist thickens again,

She hears Naruto hit the ground somewhere to her left,

“You’re just a kid.” Zabuza’s clone taunts him,

“You three!” Kakashi yells from his prison, “Take Tazuna and run. You have no chance against this guy! He can’t leave me, and the water clone jutsu won’t last after a certain distance, run!”

For a moment, Sakura is tempted to do just that, just to spite the man that’s ignored her in favor of the others on her team. But her teammates don’t move, so Sakura maintains her stance in front of Tazuna.

Her boys pause their spar to turn to the scene, and Shisui looks appalled by his former leader’s predicament. Ryoichi throws his head back and laughs until tears leak from the corners of his eyes, doubling over, clutching his stomach, and coughing around the blood that it brings.

Don’t laugh, don’t laugh, don’t laugh, Sakura repeats; Haruno  Sakura, don’t you dare laugh while the missing-nin explains his traumatic graduation exam—

“A real ninja is someone who has hovered between life and death numerous times.” Zabuza taunts, “You don’t deserve to be called ninja.”

The playful demons that had busied themselves with taunting the men all freeze and turn to Sakura with wide and gleeful eyes, “ D e s e r v e, d e s e r v e, d e s e r v e.” [1] They giggle, “ D e a t h, d e a t h, d e a t h .” [2]

Sasuke strikes out, but Sakura’s toxic green gaze remains on the nukenin, eyes trailing the thin trickle of blood that leaks from beneath his eye. Analyzing the man even as he begins another fight with the Hatake, the senbon sinking into his neck doesn’t shock her, but as she watches the man drop to the ground, seemingly lifeless, her fingers twitch with a fleeting thought.

“He’s dead.”

Liar .

❦❦❦

The village of Wave is not a shinobi village. Sakura had known this even before they’d crossed the water into the village’s borders, so why did it have the spiritual capacity of one?

Men, women, and children alike walk the streets in bloodied rags. Sakura’s eyes trail after a pale girl clinging to the skirt of her mother’s dress with translucent fingers, permanent tear tracks streaked through the dirt and decay that covers her childish face. 

A teenage boy trips over his feet and groans when his head remains on the ground even as his body picks itself up, frustration emanating from his form like it was the only emotion he’d ever felt.

The shivering form of a young child leans against a building with chattering teeth, a forever crying ghost of what Sakura could only assume was once his father whispering words that the boy cannot hear.

One after the other after the other, Sakura’s eyes find more and more spirits clinging to those who still breathe, sweep over bleeding bodies with chunks missing and decayed faces, and linger on each person whose appearance was sliced and beaten beyond recognition.

And her blood boils .

❦❦❦

Tazuna’s grandson has a ghost.

A man with rope burns on his arms and the bit of his legs visible from beneath his fisherman’s pants, his purple arms telling her that they’d had no circulation at his time of death. The rest of him is pale, and he flickers between what she assumes was his form at the time of death and the ghastly form with black ooze dripping from sharp teeth and glowing white sockets. 

She sees a photo of the same man, colored and alive, smiling with an arm around Tazuna’s daughter, a hand in a laughing child’s hair.

Shisui and Ryoichi flank her, effectively keeping her teammates away from her with the cold that emanates from their bodies. Attention focused on the unstable spirit before them. 

Sakura ignores the living. It is a habit she’s had since she was a young child; it led to her peers and adults labeling her as absent-minded and someone who would inevitably die in the field because she couldn’t keep her head out of the clouds.

But the boy emanates hate like Sakura when she had been old enough to know what the memorial stone stood for, emanates hatred like Sakura when she learned of ROOT and had experienced her first passing.

So as her team speaks to Tazuna and his daughter, as they pull their sensei into a room to rest away from his chakra exhaustion, Sakura makes her way to the boy with a mangled man hanging over his shoulders.

“What’s your name, kid?” She sighs, crouching across from him with blood still staining her clothes and skin, unworried of showing him something he’d yet to see when he lived in a place saturated in ghosts the way Wave is.

The boy glances up once and eyes the blood staining her skin for just a moment before returning his attention to the scorched bandana in his hands matching the nearly pristine one on the man’s head, “…Inari.”

“What d’you have there, Inari-san.” She doesn’t bother giving him the childish honorific. She had a feeling that he might just take that bandana and attempt to choke her with it if she did.

His jaw tenses, “It’s my dad’s.”

The spirit fluctuates and makes a pained sound as he rapidly glitches between the poltergeist and a dead man.

“…What was his name?”

Anger, pain, grief, a heart-wrenching sadness that pulls at Sakura slips from the boy as he clutches the simple fabric to his chest.

His voice is nothing but a pained whisper, “Kaiza.”

Kaiza screams, and his form dissipates in a flurry of black, the familiar thick, black liquid trailing from her right ear to the middle of her neck in burns that she quickly hides with a henge. 

“Thank you, Inari-san.” She whispers back, a slight smile that she usually reserves for only her friends, “I’ll be sure that this ends here, alright?”

The demons cry in delight, and Sakura’s viridian eyes seem to bleed black for a moment.

Chapter Text

Kakashi expected many things when getting his genin team; he expected a brooding, angsty teenager, the living embodiment of all his mistakes, and an aloof girl too shy to interact with any of her classmates. What he got was a brooding teenager, the living embodiment of all his mistakes, and Haruno Sakura.

Haruno Sakura was… odd. She was a huge contradiction, absent though calculating. She never seemed to pay attention to their missions or anything he said but could recite any lecture he’d given down to the last syllable. Her manner of speaking wasn’t one that he’d often heard from the children living in the civilian district, wasn’t one he’d often heard from twelve-year-olds at all, and watching her pass his test with skills that hadn’t been noted in any reports during her time at the academy, was worrying.

“Maa, Naruto. I don’t care about being disqualified, you guys want to be ninja more than I do, and it’s obvious, so I was gonna give somebody else a bell anyways.” She had said, completely genuine, seeming not to care whether she passed into official genin or not. 

“I’ve been waiting for fifty-five minutes, Kakashi-sensei.” She had said, standing beside one of the most feared jounin in Konoha, barely reaching Anko’s elbow. A ghostly figure of pale skin and pale pink hair.

“He’s dead.” She had said to him with that same blank smile he’d only ever seen her give. 

Kakashi wondered if the girl had any emotions left to feel. Her behavior was familiar in a way that the Hatake didn’t like. Friendly, like infiltrating ROOT and teaching Tenzo that being a shinobi does not mean being a soulless, emotionless husk. Familiar like the nights in ANBU headquarters forgetting I am not only a tool, I am not only a tool-- Pull away the mask, strip him of the shadows utilized by man to reveal the monster that hides beneath called human .

She was vacant through most of their ride to shore, and it is only when Zabuza has him trapped in a water prison that he sees any flash of emotion. Tears fill her eyes, her lips tremble, and Kakashi thinks she is still a child.

He announces Zabuza’ dead’ although he does not believe it, and he can tell with the way her unsettling green eyes flash with something that may be anger that she does not believe him either. 

He doesn’t have a chance to say anything about it before he’s unconscious, so he may never know if it was.

❦❦❦

Kakashi wakes in a stranger’s home in the middle of the night, all but one of his genin sleeping, and he is not scared of a green genin with too-pale skin and too-green eyes. But the way she stares into space, arms loosely hung around her boney knees, can only be described as unsettling.

Her head tilts to the side, eyes never straying from the staring contest with the wall, even as he shuffles into a sitting position, “It’s rude to stare, Kakashi- sensei .” She says, her voice dripping in the ever-present tone that calls him out as a fraudmistakefailure , “Did you know it takes approximately 15 hours to succumb to acute chakra exhaustion without medical attention?”

He does not expect the question, “...Yes.”

Sakura’s head tilts to the other side; a strand of pale pink hair obscures her vision for less than a second before its back behind her ears, “Mmm, did you know that there is a 0.03678% chance that number decreases by 4 hours each time one pushes themselves to acute chakra exhaustion?”

“Yes, Sakura-chan, what are you getting at?” Mentally, Kakashi adds medical knowledge to the list of things not in Haruno Sakura’s file.

“Acute chakra exhaustion leaves an imprint on the chakra coils, not unlike a scar.” Almost luminescent verdant eyes stare through him, her attention torn from the wall to assess him, “Your chakra coils are scarred so thoroughly throughout your entire system that medically, they classify you as dead.”

Kakashi sits in silence, blinking at her dumbly for a few seconds.

“What?”

“Your chakra coils are those of a dead person. Specifically those of the 32% of active shinobi who die of acute chakra exhaustion.” Sakura repeats as she idly tilts her head back and forth to an eerie tune under her breath, “I guess if anyone were to cheat death this way, it would be you.”

She freezes, and three long scratch marks rake down the side of her face, and her eyes leak an inky black substance like tears. A deep sigh escapes her as Kakashi goes to defend them both from an opponent he cannot see, “Goodnight, sensei .” She whispers, suddenly beside his makeshift bed of sheets and a pillow.

The world goes black.

❦❦❦

Kakashi wakes in a stranger’s home in the middle of the day, all of his genin can be heard outside, and he is not scared of a green genin with too-pale skin and too-green eyes.

There were many things Kakashi expected when getting his genin team.

He did not expect Haruno Sakura.

Chapter Text

Sakura had met many poltergeists in her twelve and a half years on this earth. The space in-between ghost and demon, the form of pure unadulterated anger and pain. The old lady that used to teach Sakura about plants and just how much nightshade to add to a sugar cookie before it would be detectable became one shortly after her son died. 

Sakura had witnessed children lose themselves under the pressure of their murders, scream, and scream and scream until their broken bodies became masses of black ooze and too many teeth.

Demons are beings with too many limbs and estranged vocals that speak their own language and release their anger upon the world with reckless abandon, feasting on anguish and death. And once, Sakura was afraid of what they were, had looked at the creatures that surrounded her bedside and thought this was a curse .

Months later, she met her first poltergeist. Sakura witnessed a child stretch and bubble, watched as pale bloodstained skin seemed to burn away into horrors unlike anything she’d ever seen. 

Poltergeists are unpredictable. They hold no motive and lash out aggressively at whatever they can get their hands on. Claws and teeth tear at anything unfortunate enough to have enough energy similar to the veil they can touch.

It results in gashes along the wooden floors of your home, doors slamming in the night with nary a draft, broken glass, and thrown objects. Anything in the overworld they can interact with is at risk of destruction.

Unfortunately for Sakura, more often than not, she is the brightest source of veil energy they can use to relieve themselves of angerpaingrief .

So here she sits, moonlights her only light, back to the wall as she loosely holds her knees to her chest with pale limbs. Gaze locked onto the vibrating form of shadow-black ooze and too-sharp teeth.

Dozens of pale white eyes blink at her in tandem. Its arms dangle until its claws barely scrape against the floor. Even as it hunches over to avoid the head hitting the ceiling above, it stands as tall as three of her stacked atop each other. 

There’s movement at the edge of her peripheral, and the eyes snap to Kakashi’s form with a low keen. A foot scrapes against the wooden floor as it turns in his direction.

Sakura tries to keep the attention on her throughout the entirety of their conversation, but her sensei continues to ask questions and bring the creature’s attention back to himself. She continues to rattle off facts of chakra exhaustion over the sound of hundreds of voices speaking in a language she cannot understand. Tells Kakashi that he is a medical anomaly who should not be alive.

And eventually, Kaiza lunges.

Three long scratch marks rake down from her temple to just below her chin on the left side of her face, and her eyes begin to leak an inky black substance like tears. A deep sigh escapes her as Kakashi goes to defend them both from an opponent he cannot see, “Goodnight, sensei .” She whispers, shunshining to his makeshift bed of sheets and a pillow.

Using a pressure point that Ryoichi taught her, Kakashi is out cold again, still too weak from his chakra exhaustion and confusion to stop her. Standing from the crouch at his bedside, Sakura looks up and up at the towering form of Kaiza’s poltergeist form with glowing green irises.

“Kaiza-san.” She says quietly, “Let’s not ruin your wife’s house, please. Let’s go outside.”

After a moment of silence, the hulking form, and the pink-haired girl vanish into the night.

❦❦❦

Sakura reappears in the woods to the side of Tsunami’s home with the enormous silhouette of the poltergeist. 

“Kaiza-san, I know you’re angry-”

The being roars in her face, another claw taking an angry swipe at her and tearing a hole into her shirt, skimming her skin enough to leave angry red lines from shoulder to hip. 

“You know nothing.” Hundreds of whispers overlap one another as Kaiza hisses at her, “NOTHING.” [1]

Sakura doesn’t wince, even as the demons that followed her from the house repeat the words in their gurgles and growls, dragging more from the depths of the trees. 

Spirits linger at the edges, intimidated by the influx of terrors or the towering poltergeist in front of her; Sakura does not know. But either way, they stare in fearconcernawe as Sakura tries to talk him down. 

“Inari-san wouldn’t want to see you this way, Kaiza-san.”

“T H E Y K I LL ED M E. H E WA TC H E D, TH E Y WA TC H E D, T H EY WOULDN’T  LE T TH E M LOO K A W AY .” The echoing voices caw in screams of many, whispers and bellows that stretch across the swaths of trees that they stand in, “M Y F AM IL Y. M y b O Y. ” [2]

Slowly, the multitude of voices begins to dwindle to one as the sizeable encompassing mass of darkness begins to melt away into the pale ghostly form of Kaiza. The man collapses to his knees in the clearing of the forest, demons cawing and giggling as he sobs, “My poor boy, my wife, they made them--”

Sakura kneels before him, gentle hands resting on his bleeding shoulders, “I know.”

The thing about ghosts is people don’t know about the murdered who watch their killers live free, about the people who cannot move on no matter how hard they try or how much they do.

But Sakura does, and Sakura listens .

“What can you tell me about Gato, Kaiza-san?”

So Kaiza tells her.

❦❦❦

The following day, Sakura sits at the edge of the room when her team wakes, eyes cold as she stares through the open doors leading into the woods from the side, the rising sun casting shadows upon the ground that seem to creep along the floors from her. 

Demons croon beside her, all of their focus on her, soft coos and grumbles the only sound they emit as they watch with rapt attention as Sakura stirs in quiet anger. The ones that usually stand vigilant beside Kakashi with whispers of his failures and taunts of his mistakes give big toothy grins full of rot and blood in her direction, feeding off her resentment. Tons peak through the trees at her with their disfigured faces and broken bodies, and Sakura sits still as they grin.

“Sakura-chan?” Naruto asks, voice groggy from sleep as Sasuke stirs into a disgruntled sitting position on the other side of the room, “Is it morning already?”

For a moment, Sakura says nothing, eyes still on the rising sun in the distance, until she finally hums in confirmation, “Yes.”

“Did you even sleep?” Sasuke questions her as he stands to stretch himself into awareness.

The girl finally turns to look at them, the golden light of sunrise almost making her unnaturally pale skin seem human less stark against her veins, “Sasuke is on bridge duty today. Naruto and I will stay around the village.” She picks up her pack of weapons, strapping them back on her hip where they belong as she heads toward the door, “Get up soon. Tazuna-san said he’d be leaving early this morning.”

Naruto and Sasuke watch her leave quietly before looking at Kakashi’s still sleeping form on the floor as he twitches into near consciousness. 

Only minutes later, when Sasuke leaves with Tazuna, Naruto notices she never answered Sasuke’s question.

❦❦❦

Over the next week, after Kakashi wakes up, Sakura alternates between watching over Tazuna and the bridge builders and scouring the village for further information on Gato from the living during the day. She spends afternoons at Tsunami’s redirecting questions from her team about where she disappears too, playing into the label of absent-minded, however unintentionally, with each mention of “ The water down the way passed the rocks is clearer, I like to go there to watch the fish .”. Her nights are spent in the woods with the dead, children that tell her that if parents couldn’t afford the taxes, the price was their child. She speaks with teenagers who describe how they were cut down for being unfortunate enough to try stealing an extra bit of food for home when Gato was passing through.

“Mm.” Ryoichi starts one day, sucking on his bloodstained teeth as he walks backward in front of her, “I found Gato’s ‘hideout.’” He says, putting air quotes around the last word.

Sakura raises an eyebrow, “Oh?”

He leads her to a clearing, an obnoxious building in the center that screams of dirty money, “It’s quite pathetic.” The thugs standing outside the front door sit facing each other with a deck of cards between them. 

The twelve-year-old eyes them with blatant amusement, “Impeccable security.” 

The ghost beside her returns her amusement with a snort, disappearing from view and reappearing paces in front of her over the shoulder of one of the men, looking at his hand before doing the same to his opponent. 

“Pretty sure lefty’s winning.” He reveals, setting a shadow-dipped arm on her head as they stare at the men playing cards, “I never really understood poker before I died, though. I was more of a shogi guy myself.” 

“Of course you were.”

A teasing smirk is sent her way before he begins making his way toward the building again at a leisurely pace, “Gato’s office is at the top floor of the building, the door at the end of the hall with the obnoxious smell of alcohol and cigarette smoke.” He waves behind him in her direction without looking back at her, “I’ll see you when you’re done. I want to see whether or not I can convince these lousy excuses for security that they’ve been playing with a cursed deck this whole time.”

Sakura rolls her eyes fondly before shunshining her way beyond the guards into the first floor of the building, her eyes scouring the entirety of the floor before she stands from her crouched position, flipping a kunai in one hand. At the same time, she makes her way up the stairs without a care in the world.

The demons at her heels froth at the mouth as they tear through the place with reckless abandon, and Sakura watches with lazy eyes as the wood they claw their way through begins to rot and mold astonishingly fast. A small purple blob of a demon with twelve eyes and too many teeth caws up at her in a chattering series of noises not unlike that of dying birds. Sakura raises one eyebrow briefly as she takes in the request before sending it toward the end of the second-floor hallway with a well-placed kick, lips twitching when it cries out in delight. 

Humming to herself, she opens the door to Gato’s office, green eyes locked onto the drunk, unconscious man with his head on the desk. She kicks her way through the empty sake bottles, picking one up by the neck of the bottle to toss into the air a few times in place of her kunai. “Mm, feel free to tear down the building. Leave the money untouched though, ne?”

Screams and shrill wails are her response as the demons flood into the workings of the building in slimy forms of sludge, rotting the beams and wood that hold the place together, tearing into the metal with jagged teeth marks and scattered claw indents. 

Closing the door behind them with a push of her foot, Sakura flips the sake bottle one more time before bringing it down onto Gato’s head with the loud crash of shattered glass.

Startled into a sitting position, the rotten old man shoots back into his seat, sending it toppling backward with his weight. Sakura catches him by his cheap tie, keeping the chair standing only on its back two legs, and stares into Gato's beady, fear-blown pupils from behind his skewed sunglasses. 

His breathing is ragged, but as he takes in the form of the little pink-haired girl holding him, his lips begin to twitch, and his rattling heartbeat begins to steady. “What do you think you’re doing, girly?” He chuckles, ignoring that she’s holding his entire body weight with one hand, “Come to make some quick cash?”

Her eyes narrow into slits, lips curling back into a snarl as she remembers little Nakamura Shinju back in her room, freshly dead, crying, and confused with fingerprints on her neck and tears in her academy grade uniform. Sakura tears the tie from his neck with a harsh tug and lets him fall to the floor with a loud bang.

Gato coughs, the wind knocked out of him from the shortfall, and Sakura stares at this pathetic thing of a man on the floor before her, taking her kunai back out of her pack. She slams her heel into his chest to keep him on the ground as he tries to sit up. 

“I came to end a sorry excuse for a human.” She spits and drags her kunai across his throat with practiced precision, not taking her foot off him until he finally chokes out his last breath, blood seeping onto the floor and into her sandals. She pulls the safe from behind the wall with a grunt and throws it out the nearest window.

Gato flickers into being once more in front of her, his new ghostly figure stained with blood and a single small footprint in bruising colors on his chest. He only has enough time to see Sakura’s angry eyes flash black once before she whistles, and demons emerge from the floors with cackles.

“Make it last.”

She ignores the screams behind her as she follows the path the safe took out the window, taking an expanse of rope out of her pack to tie to it and drag it along behind her. Ryoichi falls into step by her side, following her to the forest edge, watching with vicious pride as she flies through a fire jutsu and sets the building alight.

Smoke billows into the sky as the hideout finally collapses, the fire accompanied by the damage the demons caused too much for it to continue standing.

She doesn’t spare it another glance, even as the smell of burning flesh reaches her nostrils from the forest as she makes her way back into the never-ending swath of trees.

❦❦❦

Sakura sits on the upper branch of a tree boredly, her legs idly swinging back and forth in time with the safe she hung from the branch above her, humming near silently in time with the quiet hum of voices just ahead of her.

Sighing with a roll of her eyes, the girl gives up on waiting, “Ne, Zabuza-san.” She calls out, raising an unimpressed eyebrow when the large sword from before is in front of her face for the second time during her mission to wave, gently batting it aside to avoid cutting herself; Sakura makes eye contact with the missing nin above her. 

“You’re one of the genin from before.” He realizes, eyes narrowed in on her relaxed form, “What are you doing here? How did you find me? Where’s the rest of your unit?”

“You ask too many questions.” Unimpressed, Zabuza inches his sword closer to her, and Sakura rolls her eyes again, “I brought you the money from Gato. He won’t be able to pay you anymore, considering he's dead. I found you by paying attention to what my teammate says about pretty boys and sounding familiar even though he’d never met them before, and my genin team is still watching over the bridge being built.”

He blinks down at her in surprise.

“If that’s everything, I need to get back to my team before they assume I somehow got myself killed going for a walk along the edge of the waterfront.”

She’s gone before he can speak another word.

❦❦❦

The mission passes without much fanfare after that, and Sakura says nothing of her self-assigned mission to her team, watching vigilantly over the bridge builder and his family until the bridge is finished.

The day before they’re scheduled to leave, word reaches the village of Wave of Gato’s death,  and they all gather at the edge of the new bridge. Sakura witnesses ghosts shimmer and crack into golden light with relieved tears dripping from their cheeks and watches the broken form of a little girl smile up at her laughing mother before fading into the night with the sound of joyous giggles of a child. Sakura watches Kaiza, broken, bruised, and bleeding Kaiza, lean down to hug his unknowing son one last time with tears on his smiling face as he looks up at her. “ Thank you, Haruno-san .”

Inari stares out at the celebrating villagers, his crying mother, and his joyous grandfather before turning his wide eyes up to the kunoichi standing beside him, her calm green eyes watching contentedly as the blanket of fear and death that covered the village of Wave begins to dissipate with each relieved tear.

“Thank you, Inari-san.” She whispers back, a slight smile on her face that she usually reserves for only her friends, “I’ll be sure that this ends here, alright?”

Tears gather at the edges of his eyes even as he gives a big smile, “Thank you, Sakura-san!” He bows down, and the girl in question startles to look down at him questionably, “For keeping your promise.”

A small smile grows on her face, “You’re welcome, Inari-san.”

Chapter Text

When Sakura and her team arrived in Konoha once more, after a rather boring recount of their mission to the Hokage, saying how the main tormentor of Wave was found dead in the collapsed remains of his home, safe missing, and what seemed to be tooth marks within the metal beams that had been used to hold it together. 

Their small scuffle with the missing-nin is mentioned enthusiastically by Naruto and Kakashi off-handedly mentions that the three of them did do a good job in taking care of the client while under pressure. 

Sakura says nothing about her involvement in the death of the man who wrought terror upon the village of Wave, or her personal meeting with the missing-nin who had tried to kill them weeks before. 

They’re paid a B-rank for their brief encounter. 

❦❦❦

“I’m home,” Sakura calls into the house with a sigh, pulling off her shoes with a tired smile when her father trips into the room from the kitchen covered in flour, what seems to be rice in his singed and slightly smoking hair. 

“Sacchan!” He cries with a grin, trapping her in a hug with a bright smile, “My sweet cherry blossom has returned! Ah what a joyous day, this occasion must be celebrated with take-out!”

“Did you set yourself on fire again, Tou-san?”

Kizashi pulls away to pout at his daughter, “Sacchan—“ he whines, “I didn’t!”

Her mother comes down the stairs with a fond smile on her face, “You’re smoking, dear.” She points out as she pinches the glowing ember in his hair to prevent another fire from starting, “I could hear the clanging from all the way upstairs.”

Sakura relaxes fully for the first time in weeks, a fond, soft smile pulling at the edges of her lips as her parents begin to playfully squabble back and forth. Letting her father hold her in his arms for a moment before pulling away with egg and flour in her hair, now just as dirty as him. 

Kizashi looks down at his daughter to see the ingredients have been transferred to her own pink hair and laughs briefly, “Ah, like father like daughter I suppose.” He looks back to his wife and gives her a mischievous grin, “Well, only two out of three Haruno’s isn’t good enough, now is it.”

Mebuki puts her hands up to keep him away, already laughing, “Kizashi don’t you dare! I just showered earlier today!”

“ By the Sage , you’ve showered? Sakura, we must mark this day down as one of history!” He lunges after his wife as she attempts to put the couch between them, “You can’t run forever fair maiden! You shall be mine! It has been foretold!”

A delighted laugh climbs its way out of the girl’s lips as she watches her mother begin to cry out dramatically in response, “Sacchan, save me! There’s a bandit in our home! A swindler !”

“Swindler? I am nothing but an honest man, fair lady!” He chuckles, picking her up by the legs and throwing her over his shoulder, keeping an arm around her thighs to secure her, he spins to face Sakura again, “Quickly, young one, flee! I’ve got her distracted!” 

Sakura runs up the stairs to the sound of her parents' joyous laughter and the teasing whines of her father as her mother pounds mercilessly on his back.

She opens her bedroom door to three children with their feet up in the air as their heads hand upside down off the edge to look at her, a dead dog sitting idly with his remaining ear drooping drowsily by her pillow with a mangled cat content to sleep on his rotting skull.

“Sakura-nee!” Shinju cries sitting up fast with a smile on her face, the Ito sisters on either side of her following with excited grins, “You’re back!”

Sakura quickly tosses her stuff to the side just in time to get an armful of three girls tackling her to the floor, quickly followed by the excited yaps of Zonbi as he licks at her face with his dry tongue. Neko-chan meows in discontent at the loss of her personal mattress, broken tail clicking in annoyance as she swings it from side to side.

“I’m back, I’m back!” She laughs, pushing Zonbi’s face away from hers lightly, hugging each girl to her chest tight enough to squeeze but not enough to jostle any broken bones, and she gives them a happy grin when they finally let ehr stand to give Neko-chan a pet to apologize for waking her, “What have I missed?”

The girls begin to tell her how they’d made another card game and that Shinju taught Mai and Maki some new words from her medical scrolls, how they’d missed her, and that the village was so boring without her.

Sakura listens to it all with a smile on her face.

Maki perks up, “Oh!” She rushes to the corner of the room where Sakura’s desk sits, pulling open a drawer with heavy concentration and pulling a card out of it to bring to her, “Welcome home, Nee-san!” She and the others announce with big smiles.

The simple card had a stick figure drawing of a girl with pink hair holding a sharp kunai in one hand with smaller, faceless stick figures behind her.

Another smile blossoms on her face, pulling at her cheeks so hard it hurts, “I’m home.”

❦❦❦

Sakura had almost forgotten the animosity of the villagers in Konoha during her mission. She’d gotten used to the kind smiles of the shopkeepers in Wave, the soft hands of Tsunami as she would patiently answer her questions as she helped with dinner, and the way Inari would stray just closer to her than her teammates.

Sakura had gotten used to being tolerated, maybe even wanted , by people who had no relation to her. She’d been comfortable being seen as a protector and not some monster who walked the streets to torment the people of the village. 

Konoha was quick to remind her.

It began during take-out with her family the day she returned from her mission. The servers had smiled at her parents but stared at her with cold eyes. They hid it pretty well, but it didn’t escape her mother’s notice when each waitress conveniently tripped near their table and sent drinks and food sprawling over Sakura and her side of the table.

It's safe to say that they left rather quickly after.

Now, Sakura patiently listens to a little girl, between the ages of six and seven, explain that she couldn’t find her mother when a rock hits the side of her head just behind her ear, dragging across the skin harshly from the throw, and Sakura blinks as she brings a hand up to the throbbing area. 

It comes back covered in blood.

The girl in front of her covers her mouth with her hands and gasps in shock.

“Hey, Yōkai !” She turns to look behind her where a boy from her class who failed the exam stands with a couple of his friends, another stone in his hands, “Are you talking to yourself, freak?! Or are you trying to make another deal with the devil? Huh?”

“She’s talking to me, you big jerk!” The girl cries, fists clenching hard at her sides.

Sakura looks back at her blood-covered fingers and scowls, giving the little girl a soft smile before she uses them to help push herself into a standing position, turning to face them while maneuvering herself in front of the spectre. Effectively keeping her from getting hit by any rocks, Sakura doesn’t want to see another child find out that way.

They mock her and call her names with each rock, and Sakura keeps the same dead-eyed stare at them as they do, keeping the girl from moving in front of her with gentle movements and soft words even if it encourages their taunting. Finally, when her nose is bleeding and her knuckles are bruised from batting as many rocks away as she could, the boys leave Sakura alone, with the sun low in the sky.

She sniffs aggressively, wiping away the blood on her face with a grimace, kneeling down to speak to the child again, a calm smile on her face as she heals her nose with a glowing hand, “Can you show me where you lost her?”

The girl nods even as she watches the blood drip from Sakura’s hands onto the dirty alleyway floor beneath them.

She’s led deep into the Red-Light District, the residents easily separated from the visitors by the way they watch her make her way through their streets. Citizens from the red-light district move out of her way with small nods of their heads, they let her pass with quiet apologies and gratitudes, while the citizens from outside watch her with disgusted expressions she’d come to expect, spit at her feet as she passes and growl insults her way. 

The girl releases her hand and points down the alleyway to the end against the brothel, “That’s where I saw her last, Miss.” 

Sakura smiles at her once more before asking her to stay put while she looks for any sign of her mother. 

The child doesn’t question her, she’s content to nod and sit down with her back against the wall at the end of the alley, idly drawing in the dirt by her feet instead. 

At the other end of the dead-end, next to the back door of the Lotus Inn Brothel, Sakura finds the broken and bloodied form of a small girl between the ages of six and seven, glistening tear tracks down the sides of her face and blood dripping down the front of her chin, a gruesome slit across her throat. 

There’s a man standing over her body, an older woman pinned against the wall with whimpers leaving her lips even as he presses his forearm into her throat, fat tears rolling down her own heavily bruised cheeks. 

“P-please!” She whispers, voice hoarse, “Just— kill me! Kill me, please!

The man growls, “Where the fuck is my money? Huh?! I pay for your miserable little brat; I let you live in my house. I let you eat my food—“

Sakura yanks the man from the wall with a growl, throwing him onto his back, the woman falling with a cry against the ground, clutching her neck with broken, heart-wrenching sobs.

The man claws at Sakura’s leg as she leans down to press her foot against his throat, making sure he gets a good look at her bloodied face before she releases an ear-piercing whistle.

Demons claw their way out from the soil and drop from the roofs with rattling calls and hair-raising cackles. 

“Hold him down.” She commands, turning her attention to where the woman sits holding her dead daughter’s body.

“My baby- My sweet baby girl.” The stranger sobs, pushing her hair from her pale face and kissing her forehead shakily, tears never stopping, “I’m so sorry, baby. Mommy is so sorry.” She looks up when Sakura lightly kneels next to her, a bruised hand resting on her shoulder gently, “Shinigami…” 

Sakura takes in the woman before her, her dark hair tousled from pulling, face bruised from reckless beatings. Sakura could see indents on her face from the brick wall behind her, blue eyes rimmed in red, and clothes covered in blood. 

“Kill me.” She pleads, “Please, please kill me.” Her voice is broken and hoarse, barely above a whisper, and Sakura closes her eyes and swallows back tears, “I can’t live without her. Not my baby.” 

Sakura pulls a kunai from her pocket, quickly and effectively pushing it through her heart without hesitation. Holding back tears as the woman smiles at her with bloodied teeth, “Your daughter is at the end of the alleyway.” 

“Thank you.” She whispers as Sakura yanks the kunai back out.

 Once the spectre of the mother disappears, it is just Sakura, two dead bodies, and a man left in the alley. Wiping her eyes quickly, Sakura turns to the man, demons of all sizes clutching limbs with glee, looking at Sakura with excited gazes.

Her gaze hardens, and when her lips pull back in a scowl, her teeth glint like razors in the shady lights of the Red-Light District, “ Tear him apart .”

Nobody from the Flower District of Konoha flinches when the cries of a dying man echo from the alley of the Lotus through the streets; they barely acknowledge it at all, even as visitors begin to ask questions. 

“A soul was reaped tonight.” Is all they say, “It is a fool’s move to anger a Shinigami.”

Chapter Text

The weeks that follow Sakura’s return to the village with her team easily fall into a familiar pattern. Wake up in the morning and greet the dead that haunts her room, eat breakfast with her parents and listen to them speak fondly of their jobs in the civilian district, head to train with her team and fulfill D-Rank missions around the village with an occasional C-Rank transporting trade between Wave and Konoha, and spending her nights fulfilling requests of the dead that linger in the streets of the village.

It is on the morning of one of the rare break days Kakashi allowed team 7 that Ryoichi comes to her with information.

“Sakura.” Ryoichi greets as he appears by her side with no warning, half-lidded eyes focused intently on the side of her face as she walks through the streets, “There are ghosts from Sand wandering about.”

Sakura’s eyes glint dangerously in the light, and she turns her head ever so slightly to look at him, “Oh?”

“The Kazekage’s children are here.” Shisui appears on the other side of her, not bothering to greet either her or Ryoichi with his usual playful remarks, and the blood leaking from his empty sockets seems to stand even starker on his pale face. 

She glances once at Shisui before stretching her arms over her head and slightly behind her back, “Lead me.”

To the naked eye, Sakura disappears.

❦❦❦

The first thing Sakura notices when she arrives is that, for a moment, she cannot separate the living from the dead. The air is filled with the smell of rotting flesh and stale blood, the volume of their cries makes her ears ring, and Sakura rolls her head from shoulder to shoulder to stretch her tensing muscles. She closes her eyes and tries to center herself.

Shisui puts a cold, wet hand on her shoulder, leaning down, so his lips sit beside her left ear, “71 of the people here are dead. The living in the center. Kankuro, the boy with the painted face, and Temari, the girl with blonde pigtails, are the Kazekage’s children. Your teammates and the Hokage’s grandson are here. A few meters away is the Kazekage’s youngest, he has red hair and a demon's shadow.” He informs her calmly, helping to separate the breathing from the crowd of corpses that stand before her.

She responds with a small, grateful nod and opens her eyes, and steps into the fray, being sure to keep just out of range of the bodies so she can focus on the problems she can hear from the living.

In the center of people, only Sakura can see, is one of the Kazekage’s children holding the Hokage’s grandkid up by the oversized scarf he wears. Naruto stands in front of him with a hand holding tightly to the wrist of the Sand nin. Sasuke watches with his usual look of indifference and steps behind their blonde teammate. 

Temari stands in the same position at her brother’s side, but her eyes remain on Naruto as he manhandles Kankuro into releasing the child.

“Ne, Naruto-san, Sasuke-san.” She greets as she waltzes in, glancing at the boy in Kankuro’s grip, “ Esteemed grandson. ” Her voice is only slightly mocking as she speaks the title, feeling just a bit nauseous at acknowledging any family of the Third Hokage, but it's enough to get the Sand nin to drop the kid like he’s on fire. 

Naruto opens his mouth to speak, but Sakura watches with interest as the swaths of corpses move frantically to get out of the way of the enormous shadow of a tanuki. At the source stands a boy paler than his siblings with red hair and a huge gourd on his back.

Her eyes trail to the space behind his head where a red ghostly figure of the tanuki stands, sharp claws digging into the redhead’s shoulders and causing what seems to be translucent grains of sand to spill from the holes like blood. Its eyes glow menacingly, and there’s a glimpse of bloody teeth as it contorts its body to mimic a hunch to whisper in his ear.

“Temari. Kankuro.” His voice quiets the rush of voices only Sakura could hear, though it was barely louder than a whisper, “Don’t cause trouble.”

Fear floods their eyes in an instant, and Sakura watches with a detached sort of interest as they try to explain themselves as they jump apart to allow him to walk between them as he marches forwards. 

Her gaze continues to follow him even as they disappear down the street and around a corner. 

“What are sand nin doing in Konoha,” Sasuke asks, though his voice doesn’t tilt up for a question, and the pink-haired girl pulls her attention back to him as the spirits begin their ruckus again.

To the others, Sakura’s eyes seem to cloud, their usual toxic green dimming into a sickly color as her eyes flit from empty space to empty space, but Sakura watches with rapt attention as demons begin to crawl out from the cobbled streets with bloodied hands. Some even burst from spilled skin of the spirits that had been surrounding them, pulling blood-curdling screams from raw throats.

Sakura cannot hear the conversation that the boys in front of her start, all of their words are lost in the sea of screams that echo through the streets of Konoha, and she blinks hard to focus again. 

“-an? Sa-“ She sees Naruto’s lips move and pushes her focus on the boy who now stands in front of her, “-chan? Sakura-chaaan?” He waves a hand in front of her face, “Hellooo?”

“Hm?” Shisui and Ryoichi crowd beside her to keep the others from touching her, trying to reassure her over the screams.

He gives her a weird look, “A-e -ou o-ay?” Words fade in and out, and Sakura shakes her head harshly to try and get rid of the persistent ringing as the wails climb to a higher pitch.

She doesn’t bother saying anything, just brings her hands to her ears to block it all out and flickers to her doorstep.

She ignores the slick feeling of blood on her palms when she pulls them away to open the door.

❦❦❦

Even hours later, Sakura sits with her hands over her ears, curled into a ball on the couch in her living room, focusing on her breathing as her skull pounds in time with her heartbeat.

“Sacchan, we’re home!” A muffled yell makes it through the slim barrier her hands provide, and an involuntary whimper slips from her lips as spikes of pain shoot through her ears into her head.

There are quick footsteps, and Sakura opens teary eyes when gentle hands cover her own, finding the worried face of Mebuki in front of her, “Sacchan?” Her lips move, but Sakura can’t focus enough to attempt to hear through the ache.

“Loud.” She cries, voice cracking and hands pressing harder into the sides of her head as he own voice reverberates through her skull painfully.

Mebuki’s face falls into a sympathetic and worried expression, running her thumbs under the girl’s eyes to wipe away the tears that escaped before standing to grab Kizashi from wherever he is in the house. 

Shisui sits in front of her now, his cold hands slipping over her hands in place of her mom to attempt to add another barrier, and he gives her a small, sad smile when more tears slip out of her eyes in response. 

When her eyes opened again, though Sakura didn’t remember closing them, her father was gently pulling her hands away from her ears and replacing them with his own, the familiar feeling of medical chakra soothing the sharp pain and bringing clarity to her thoughts once more.

She berates herself for being stupid enough to forget something so simple, and her father frowns at the scowl on her face, “Sacchan, what’s wrong?”

She sniffs and wipes her eyes frustratedly, “I feel dumb that I didn’t think to heal them myself.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Mebuki kneels down to be eye to eye with her, “It’s easy to forget things when you're in pain. I once had to heal your father on the field when we were genin for a simple kunai to his calf even though he’d had more experience than me.”

“Sakura.” Kizashi says, tucking her hair behind her ears to get a good look at her face, “You’re still only twelve; you may be a genin and an adult in the eyes of the law. But you are still a child . You can’t be expected to have all the answers.”

“But this was so simple! I didn’t have a concussion; I wasn’t on the field-”

“You weren’t.” Mebuki interrupts, “Which is why it isn’t a big deal. You were in a safe space, you weren’t in any immediate danger. You weren’t on duty, so this lapse in judgment isn’t a big deal.”

Shisui ruffles her hair lightly from behind the couch, “You were overwhelmed, pinky-chan. Don’t beat yourself up, and I’m surprised you lasted as long as you did in that crowd.”

“I should be better.” Sakura insists, thinking of the girls sitting in her room whose injuries were much worse than inflamed eardrums, of a little girl with a slit throat and a mother with the pattern of bricks etched into her face, “If I can’t heal something like this, then how am I going to heal anything worse?” Shisui’s face, eyeless and body forever dripping with water, the blood encrusted on Ryoichi’s chin sear themselves into her head.

Kizashi cups her face gently and makes her look him in the eyes, “You shouldn’t have to heal anything worse than this, Sakura. Not yet. The moment you do is when we’ll have failed you as your parents. You’re a child. I can’t stress that enough.” He and Mebuki share a glance, and he lets his head fall with a small sigh, “We’ll train you further in healing for the next few weeks on top of your genin training, alright? How does that sound? I know that we may not be as good as that girl you told us about, but we aren’t slouching either, you hear?”

Sakura giggles weakly and wipes her eyes one last time before allowing herself to fall into her parents' open arms, “Okay.”

Mebuki kisses her on the forehead and smooths the back of her hair down lightly, “Never be afraid to ask us for help, alright? You’re a very smart girl, but we worry.”

“Of course, kaa-san.”

Chapter Text

Sakura is told she’ll be joining the chuunin exams the morning they begin by Ryoichi and that Kakashi had told her teammates about the exams after their confrontation with the Kazekage’s children.

“Uzumaki and the Uchiha are already on their way to the first task.”

It’s then that Sakura notices that the last time her teammates had seen her was with bleeding ears and cloudy eyes. That in the week that followed, neither of them had asked if she was okay. 

No one in her team had mentioned the exams during their training sessions. Sakura had already expected something like this from Kakashi, who she already knew was unsettled with her and didn’t particularly like that she was in his genin team if the way he treated the boys compared to her was anything to go by. 

But, somewhere deep within her chest, beyond the strange ache that began when Ryoichi told her about the exams, Sakura acknowledges that she had actually wanted to be a team with Naruto and Sasuke at one point. 

She had hoped to be friends.

“Ah.” The word echoes in the silence of her room, the ghosts of dead children that normally haunt it watching her quietly with innocent faces painted dark with what could be anger. Zonbi sits at attention at her feet, red eyes almost glowing with intelligence as he waits for her to speak. “Where’s the first task?”

“The Academy.” Shisui appears by her side, a serious look on his face. “You’re not going to like what I just heard.”

❦❦❦

“Sakura-chan!” Naruto greets when he finds her already at the entrance of the academy, waiting for them, the same look he gave her when she was surrounded by screeching corpses on his face, “You made it!”

Sasuke follows just a step behind the blonde, “Hn.”

“Yeah.” Her voice is quiet, and her eyes stare at them blankly for a few seconds before she turns back to the front doors of the academy, “Let’s go.”

As they make their way up the stairs, Sakura leads the boys beyond the genjutsu covered door on the second floor and greets their sensei at the real one, nobody mentions that Sakura wasn’t expected to be there at all.

Perhaps the room of chuunin hopefuls was supposed to be intimidating, but Sakura looked around at it all with unimpressed eyes, more focused on the way that Shisui swipes his arm through the head of unsuspecting individuals with an amused smile on his face. 

“Sasuke-kun, you’re late!” The familiar voice of Yamanaka Ino calls out as the girl hops knot Sasuke’s back, ignoring the grimace on his face when she does. Ino removes herself from the boy with a look of cool indifference at Sakura’s gaze, “I see that you haven’t changed at all, billboard brow.” 

Shisui is at her side in an instant with an affronted look on his face as he stares at the small blonde, beginning a lecture full of insults she can’t hear. Sakura’s teammates only give her a glance and say nothing. 

“What’s going on here?” Shikamaru and Choji come up from behind Ino, “Are you taking this troublesome test too?”

“Hey, it's the idiot trio.”

Shikamaru scowls, “Stop calling us that!”

Shino, Hinata, and Kiba come in from the side. 

“Rookie Nine, huh?” Ryoichi snorts, dark eyes focused on Shikamaru with an emotion Sakura can’t recognize, “What a lame title.”

“Hey, quiet down.” A pale white-haired boy interrupts the squabbling pre-teens, “You’re all rookies, right? You’re going to take the test while you’re this young?”

“Who do you think you are?” Ino snaps, 

The teen raises his eyebrows, unbothered, “I’m Yakushi Kabuto. Take a good look around you. Everyone becomes aggressive during these exams.” He points out the groups around them, but Sakura doesn’t take her eyes off the boy in front of them, “But I guess you’re all just rookies who can’t tell left from right.”

The demons standing unseen throughout the room laugh in his face. 

“Alright, settle down, degenerates!” A scarred man and nin that Sakura assumes are chuunin and maybe even jounin appear at the front of the room, “Sorry to keep you waiting, I am Morino Ibiki, and I will be your proctor for the first part of your chuunin exam.”

❦❦❦

The first task is easy, and Sakura idly hopes that one of her teammates will give up during the last question and even contemplates pulling them out herself as a form of petty revenge before discarding the thought altogether.

Seeing Anko come through the window and announce herself as the proctor for the second exam might be worth sticking around, though. Sakura’s eyes watch the oil-slick snake on the woman’s neck and tilts her head from side to side in a little game as it copies her movements slowly and jerkily.

Its only on the way to the second stage that Anko notices her, a somewhat manic grin forming on her face when she catches sight of the familiar pink-headed girl. 

“Pinky-chan!” Shisui watches Anko with a face that isn’t too different from the chuunin at the missions desk when Anko arrives to ask for a mission, and Sakura’s lips twitch just slightly into an invisible smile, “Trying for chuunin, eh?”

She hums, her ROOT-grade smile in place already, “I guess you could say that. My team is really the ones who are trying .” Sakura could see the way that Sasuke’s jaw clenched out of the corner of her eye, “How have you been, senpai?”

The walk to the Forest of Death was a quick one, made even quicker by the blatant discomfort of her former classmates in being so close to her on the way there. But being avoided was something Sakura had become used to, and being avoided was always better for the overall health of the people around her.

❦❦❦

“I’ll carry the scroll,” Sasuke announces quietly at the gates; Naruto makes a noise of protest, and Sakura interjects before another argument can break out between the boys.

“What’s our plan?”

Naruto shrugs, Sasuke is already focused on the forest beyond the gates, and it's like the bell test all over again. No teamwork, no communication, and this time there is no Kakashi to make the boys focus and save their asses when something goes wrong, no sensei to fix the mistakes they make because they won’t fucking listen .

“Grab a scroll and make it to the center, easy, ‘ttebayo.” And Sakura looks at him blankly for a moment, turning to Sasuke, who just nods along like that’s simple enough.

Incredulity is obvious in her voice, and Sakura looks between the two of them repeatedly with disbelief on her face, “No. We need an actual plan, you could die in these exams.” She chances a glance at Shisui behind Sasuke’s shoulder, who looks down at his cousin in painful disappointment. 

“Don’t worry, Sakura-chan!” Naruto says, giving her an almost condescending smile, “There might not be fish to watch or villagers to talk to, but Sasuke and I can protect you through the forest!”

***

“The Academy.” Shisui appears by her side, a serious look on his face. “You’re not going to like what I just heard.”

“What is it?” She asks, beginning to walk toward the Academy, eyes flickering by the sneering faces of the members of the village with ease.

Shisui hums, an angry lilt to it, and Sakura pauses her steps. Turning to the eyeless teen curiously at the sound, her eyes widen at the ripples of black that bubble up and down his arms beneath his skin. 

“Shisui?” She asks, worried at what could have possibly made him angry enough to show signs of a poltergeist.

“He thinks you’re useless .” He spits, pinpricks of the glowing red of sharingan shining in his empty eyesockets for a moment, “Kakashi. Your team was talking about how little they saw you during the Wave mission. Naruto called you creepy and weird because of the ghosts last week. Sasuke called you stupid.” He gave a bark of humorless laughter, “It was like watching a gossip session.”

Ryoichi bites down on the senbon between his teeth harshly as he clenches his jaw, and Sakura…

Her eyes burn, and Sakura realizes that it's tears a second after Shisui stops speaking. Perhaps it was stupid of her to believe that a genin team would mean friends in this Sage-forsaken village, to believe that a handful of D-Ranks, weeks of training sessions, and a trip to another village were enough evidence--

But Sakura is twelve.

Sakura is twelve and commands demons like the common guard dog. 

Sakura is twelve, and her only friends are the bloodied, mangled corpses of those Konoha had thrown into the fire and left to burn. Her friends are children killed in the middle of the night and ninja who forgot their names because they wore masks so often in life they forgot to live even in death. 

It was foolish to believe that would ever change.

She straightens her shoulders, clenches her jaw, and continues her walk to the Academy.

***

Sakura’s mouth snaps shut with a click, and she licks her teeth in frustration instead of snapping them in the blonde’s direction. 

The gates open, and she follows after the Uchiha and Uzumaki without another word.

Chapter Text

There had already been an abundance of dead flooding the streets of Konoha before the chuunin exams, people covered in bloodied sand with rotting fissures in their skin, crushed skulls, and flattened limbs with dust for bones. If there’s one thing that Gaara’s ghosts all had in common, it was evidence of being crushed to death.

But as Sakura parkours from tree to tree in the forest of death, the dead begin to gather in hordes of mangled forms of things that were once human while they lived, but what Sakura was most focused on was the black oil-slick snakes that hung from each of them.

Sasuke aims for the ground, and Naruto follows after him, has been complaining about how badly he’d needed to use the bathroom for the last twenty minutes, “It won’t even take me that long, just wait here for a minute, teme!” The boys’ feet hit the ground with deep ‘thuds,’ Sakura’s own virtually silent in comparison.

“I’ll continue carrying the scroll once the idiot has finished his business,” Sasuke announces, rolling his eyes, before reciting some poem from their time during the academy and sending Naruto off without even being sure he knew any of it.

The remaining members of team seven sit quietly as Sakura keeps vigilant watch of their surroundings, not willing to die for a stupid test for Konoha, listening to how Ryoichi and Shisui tease each other a few feet away.

Pitch-black eyes surround her on every side, and garbled words escape the ghosts before her in place of words as though they were demons. Her eyes trail over each set of almost branch-like, white claws where hands were supposed to be, watching in silence as the disfigured form of a child gurgles at a demon in front of it.

“Sakura,” Shisui says suddenly, empty sockets staring into the forest to her left, the droplets of water that eternally drip from his form slowly evolving into streams as though he was standing under a showerhead. The blood that trails down his face thickens into a near sludge, and his skin ripples restlessly as he points ahead of him toward the trees Naruto had disappeared into.

Emerging from the trees is a monster in Naruto’s skin.

A thick, sickly muddy-orange liquid seeps from its fingers like honey, and she can see it usually stands taller than the boy it pretends to be by the way the skin of Naruto’s back protrudes grotesquely behind him. The skin around Naruto’s smiling face seems to be pulled in different directions, giving it a sinister edge that Sakura doesn’t think Naruto is even capable of. One blue eye protrudes further forwards than the other as though being used as a stopper to keep whatever actually sits there from seeping out.

One of her kunai is sailing for its head just as it begins to speak, and the disfigured spirits around her that had wailed and gurgled in small voices before all seem to freeze when it bats it aside with one hand and chuckles in a low tone. 

“ Pity .” The voice seems to hiss, the body splitting down the center in an explosion of gore to reveal a woman, the whites of her eyes a pus-yellow. The shadow figure that had tried to hide in the disguise of Sakura’s teammate stands tall at her back. Clawed crow-like feet tear into her shoulders, and the thing hanging to the body was one of the largest demons Sakura had seen.

Leather-like skin, a dark purple-ish brown underneath the low sunlight peeking through the leaves, stretched tightly over shifting impressions of screaming faces. Spindly arms dangle from its sides and allow their fingers to brush against the forest floor. 

While Sakura had been staring in an almost fascinated horror at the being clinging to the person before them, Sasuke had been explaining that Naruto was too much of an idiot to remember the password at all. 

The demon cackles as the woman swallows her scroll entirely.

❦❦❦

The dozens of small demons that trail behind Sakura wherever she goes watch gleefully as she dodges the countless numbers of weapons sent her way. They laugh whenever the large entity hanging onto the shoulders of her enemy spits acid at her feet just before she lands. 

Her boys try to divert its attention to them, fighting with its large hands and taking swipes at the eyes they can reach every time the woman moves closer to one or the other. Shisui shouts insults and shunshins from place to place with glowing red sockets in place of the black pits she’s come to know while Ryoichi tugs harshly at the shadows of the demon and its charge chaotically, growling with a show of sharp bloodied teeth as the shadows that drip from his hands expands up the entirety of his arms.

Sakura doesn’t stop moving, even as Sasuke barters with their scroll in favor of their lives. 

“Kuchiyose no Jutsu.”

A giant snake appears beneath Sakura’s feet, sending her rocketing straight upwards as it brings itself to its maximum height before striking downwards toward Sasuke.

She goes flying forwards when the momentum is stopped suddenly by the arrival of Naruto, whose shadow she can see has tripled in size as she flies over the head of it, but the image is ripped away abruptly as the woman slams a seal on him and tosses him after her violently.

‘CRACK’

Sakura gasps harshly in pain as her spine slams into the bark of a tree, and she can feel the wet and bloody hands of her favorite Uchiha and Nara moments after she crumbles to the ground.

“Who are you?!” Sasuke shouts, sounding miles away, and the girl blinks rapidly as she tries to bring air into her lungs.

She can’t breathe.

“My name is Orochimaru.”

Blood begins to fill her mouth, and Sakura fears that she may choke on it as she continues to unwillingly gasp for breath desperately. 

Faintly, she hears Sasuke begin to scream. 

The cacophonous laughter of Orochimaru and his demon is the last thing Sakura hears before the world disappears entirely.

Chapter Text

The oddest thing happens the moment Haruno Sakura’s consciousness fades. 

As a snake tries to slither his way into the depths from which he came, the unseen enlarged, and gluttonous demon who rests upon his shoulders begins to shudder and shake violently. Orochimaru’s vision begins to fade in and out at the edges.

The demon makes a guttural retching sound, and the dozens of smaller ones crowd around Orochimaru and block his path as he sways from side to side in frustrated confusion. Growling, he pushes himself toward the tree with sluggish movements, being restrained by invisible imps.

Another violent shudder crashes through the demon, and a low keening noise is made before it implodes, sending Orochimaru face-first into the tree across from him at astonishing speeds. 

Laughter echoes through the forest as the branch beneath him begins to wither and rot, and Orochimaru’s yellow eyes flit from place to place as shapes begin to form in his blurry vision. Unintelligible whispers surround him, and there’s childlike laughter as he’s pushed around. The man growls and swipes at the hazy images.

Nothing.

“Show yourselves!” He barks, spinning in circles, trying to catch a black blur out of the corner of his eye. His breathing is ragged, and the sound of his unnaturally harsh heartbeat pounds in his ears; panic, unlike any feeling he’d ever felt before, clouds his thoughts and reasoning. “SHOW YOURSELVES!”

Spit gathers at the corners of his mouth, wide eyes glancing everywhere around him with shaking pupils, and his breath is so loud .

He looks like a wild animal.

Surely his heart is beating too fast , a voice whispers in the back of his head; it’s  beating too hard. It will beat right out of his chest. He’s going to die here, he’s going to die of fear. It’s too close, it’s going to kill him.

Orochimaru whips his head around. What’s  going to kill him? There’s nothing here. He reminds himself, Nothing. All that’s in the forest is him and three unconscious and possibly dying genin.

But that can’t be right. He’s surrounded on all sides, and fear is choking him. The trees are closing in on him, and he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, hecan’tcan’tcan’t —

CRACK .

Orochimaru’s chest caves on one side as three of his ribs shatter within his body, and the man chokes on a cry as blood floods his mouth soon after.

The oddest thing happens the moment Haruno Sakura’s consciousness fades. 

As a snake slithers his way into the depths from which he came, a demon short, a punctured lung and three broken ribs in its place. With a heart full of untold fear and eerie echoes of children’s laughter following him as he disappears

The still form of Haruno Sakura jerks, air filling her lungs as the ember of life ignites behind her rib cage once more.

❦❦❦

When Sakura’s eyes open again, the sun has dipped beneath the horizon on the far edge of the forest of death. Her head aches, her limbs are stiff when she rolls herself onto her stomach, and dried tears are crusted to her dirty cheeks.

“Sakura,” Ryoichi’s relieved voice shatters the silence, and the living girl looks up into the blank eyes of her friend.

“Orochimaru,” She croaks in response. “Where-“

A damp hand rakes itself through her hair, “He escaped.” Shisui pulls out a scroll from behind him, “A team made its way through here earlier; they tried to loot your unconscious body.”

Ryoichi motions to what remains of three sound nin in the trees, bodies torn in half with bite marks littering the remaining skin, smiles carved into their young faces, “The demons didn’t like it.”

Cries and growls fill the air as the aforementioned creatures voice their agreements. A small orange-tinted slug-like imp with bulging eyes and moth wings slides itself along her side like a cat, gurgling as though it were drowning.

“Ah.” She pushes herself to her feet, stretching and cracking her neck with a wince as she steps toward the unconscious forms of her teammates. “Is there a hiding place near here?”

Her boys help to hide Sasuke and Naruto in the roots of an overgrown tree, keeping a close eye on her as she sits down between them shakily. And closes her eyes when a wave of dizziness sweeps itself through her.

“I have to get to the tower.” Shisui and Ryoichi clench their jaws and clamp down on their protests as she gives them a look with her toxic green eyes, “We obviously have some serious security issues that need to be addressed.”

Shisui and Ryoichi reluctantly agree to keep people from finding Naruto and Sasuke until she can bring someone to retrieve them from the hiding spot, and she can feel their eyes on her until she exits their range. 

Once she reaches the tower, the exhaustion that’s been pulling at her since she woke up on the forest floor begins to pound like a hammer within the headache she’s had for the last three hours she’d been flickering through the forest.

“If you do not possess Heaven, gain knowledge and be prepared. If you do not possess Earth, run through the field and seek strength. If you open both Heaven and Earth scrolls, dangerous paths turn into safe ones. This is the secret of something something. It shall lead you on your way.”

Sakura sets them both down on the ground and clutches the ends before flicking them harshly and popping both scrolls open at once.

Iruka-sensei appears from them, “Haruno-san?” He asks, looking around the room, “Where are your teammates?”

“We were attacked by Orochimaru in the forest, the two of them are unconscious with unknown seals on their persons, and I would like to request team seven be pulled from the chuunin exams.”

That’s when Sakura finally allows the headache to lull her into an exhausted sleep.

❦❦❦

They refuse her request to be pulled from the exams. 

“You made it to the tower within the time limit, Haruno-chan.” A proctor tells her, “It would be disgraceful for a Konoha shinobi to back out now. Insulting even after passing the second exam. You don’t want them to think you’re scared of the other villages, do you?”

A familiar anger burns beneath her rib cage, claws at her lungs like fire on dry wood. “Oh, because the Kage’s will have such confidence in Konoha when they hear that Orochimaru made it passed its ‘ impenetrable walls. ’”

He laughs and pats her head like she’s some kind of dog on his way out, “Don’t worry, Haruno-chan. Everything will be taken care of.”

The man does not see the way the walls begin to rot and peel as he exits.

❦❦❦

A day after Sakura had made it to the tower and Jounin had discovered her teammates and brought them as well, is the morning of the one-on-one matches.

“First of all, congratulations on passing the second exam.” Anko shouts into the room, “There were twenty-six teams when the second exam started; six passed.”

“Hokage-sama will now be explaining the third exam. Listen up!”

When the old man explains that the chuunin exams are to replace the battles of war, it does not surprise Sakura. She had been told much the same by dead teenagers and children that died in them years and years ago, had learned what it meant to be a ninja of Konoha.

Escape one battle and fall into another.

“The strength of a nation is the strength of the village. The strength of the village is the strength of the shinobi.” Sakura’s eyes flicker between faces of the dead that stand in the crowd with scowls on their faces, “Shinobi are what represent the village and their nation. A good shinobi is a tool of the nation they serve.”

Sakura thinks of children in masks they shoved off into war because they were promising, children that they couldn’t honor on the stone because they were ANBU and they were too young for it, and Konoha was the friendly village . Thinks of adults and teens and everyone in between who were sent on suicide missions they knew they wouldn’t come back from but went through with anyways because it is for the village.

Kabuto forfeits the exams before they even begin, and none of the jounin try to stop him.

There are no words about disgracing Konoha, no words of insulting their guests, there are no lectures on embarrassing the Hokage in front of people from the other villages.

And Sakura seethes.

❦❦❦

Sasuke is the first matchup, and Sakura watches as the stranger begins to sap chakra from the boy disinterestedly,. Then an oil-black snake emerges from the side of his shoulder where the mark Orochimaru gave him sits, and Sakura is focusing much more intently.

They exchange harsh blows, and Sasuke begins to move faster than she’d seen him before, the snake maneuvering itself around his neck and hissing something into his ear as the fight takes itself to the air. Sasuke’s eyes flicker between black and red and when Sakura blinks, the Uchiha’s opponent is on the floor.

“The winner is Uchiha Sasuke.”

The snake flicks its tongue at her before disappearing into Sasuke’s skin again.

❦❦❦

The rest of the matches leading up to hers, Sakura doesn’t bother watching. Instead, she idly converses with the dead surrounding her, giving a dead-eyed gaze to those who stare. Shisui and Ryoichi place bets on her former classmates, bored out of their minds but keeping wary eyes on the ninja crowding the stands. 

“The winner is Kankuro of Suna.”

Sakura blinks, turning her attention from the ghost who’d been telling her just how she’d lost a majority of the left side of her face back to the living below as Choji is pulled out on a stretcher.

Haruno Sakura VS Yamanaka Ino

Shisui and Ryoichi share a look before they turn to her, and Sakura raises an unimpressed eyebrow.

“Sakura-chan.” Shisui’s eyeless gaze meets hers, “Kick her ass.”

A smile pulls at the side of her mouth, “I have a better idea.”

***

When Sakura was six, fresh in the academy, friendless and bullied by other civilian-born children for her pale skin and forehead. Before she fully understood that the people she could see with bloodied faces and pale visages weren’t just what those her age called imaginary friends. Sakura had a real one.

Yamanaka Ino was bright, she was kind. She never called Sakura names because of her prominent veins, never made fun of her forehead or her pink hair. Ino gave Sakura a ribbon that contrasted her already pale skin to make it seem lighter and put her forehead on display, she treated her friends like she could see them as well.

They turned eight.

Sakura talked of masked children, she spoke of the dead within the village, of things that her friends said that made her so angry. Sakura told her of disfigured creatures who spoke in sounds she couldn’t speak but understood all the same.

And Yamanaka Ino, the only living friend Sakura had ever made, the piece of sunlight Sakura allowed in her dark forest of thoughts. The same Yamanaka Ino, the innocence she allowed in the throngs of sin that taught Sakura secrets that got them killed in the silence of night…

Ino called her creepy.

She told Sakura that she had a friend now, and didn’t have to keep making them up, that they were eight now and Sakura should stop being so childish.

And when Sakura didn’t, when she tried to explain that they were real , that they were there .

Yamanaka Ino told her father.

And Haruno Sakura spent three months in Konoha’s psych ward, surrounded by dead children beaten to death because they saw and knew things that nobody else could explain.

And Yamanaka Ino never spoke to Sakura again, except to insult her.

***

Standing across from the blonde now, Sakura watched as the girl looked around her mockingly before asking, “Are any of your friends watching the match, Yūrei? ”

Demons hiss behind her, they beg her to tear the girl to pieces, to ruin her. So, Sakura gives a humorless smile, turns to the proctor, and does.

“I forfeit.”

The cacophonous laughter from the dead overpowers anything that the living have to say about her decision, and the absolute baffled and furious expression on Ino’s face makes her laugh herself as she heads back up the stairs to the stands.

Chapter Text

The first thing that Sakura notices when she returns to the stands, amidst the laughter of the ghosts who surround her, is the condescending and calculating gaze of Hatake Kakashi. 

“Maa, Sakura-chan.” He bends slightly to meet her eyes, and her fingers twitch to claw at his for just a moment, “Why forfeit? Don’t you want to become a chuunin?”

“My team was attacked by an S-rank missing-nin thirty hours ago, both of my teammates had seals placed upon them, and my heart stopped for two minutes. I asked to be taken out of the exams twenty-nine hours ago.” Her voice is monotone, and her eyes blaze as she stares down the jounin in front of her, “So forgive me, sensei, if I don’t want to beat the shit out of an old demon.”

She doesn’t bother staying for the rest of the preliminaries, but she can feel Kakashi’s gaze on her the whole way to the stairs toward the exit.

❦❦❦

The day after the preliminaries, team seven’s training ground is empty, bar a single note with Sakura’s name on it that explains she’ll be left on her own for the next month while Naruto and Sasuke train for the finals of the chuunin exams.

The morning air is crisp and bites at her skin as she holds the note tightly in her fingers, and Sakura chews on the inside of her lip silently as she reads over the lines written in Kakashi’s messy handwriting over and over again.

The words never change. Sakura has, once again, been left by her sensei in favor of Naruto and Sasuke. She hadn’t expected anything different, but the feeling of abandonment claws a hole in her heart anyways.

“Excuse me, Shinigami-san.” A gentle voice calls and Sakura lifts her head from the paper to the geisha in front of her, dark bruises covering the entirety of her body, “If I could have a moment of your time?”

The note is left on the ground of training ground seven as Sakura follows the woman into the Red Light District, already planning what to do for the month of free time Kakashi had given her. 

❦❦❦

Over the next month, Sakura collects . 

Collects favors and information, collects demons who’ve spent their time tormenting brothels and broken apartments, but above all, she collects believers.

However unintentional, Sakura is given the equivalent of high D-ranks and low C-ranks every time she steps foot beyond the well-kept cobbled streets, and into the sullied alleyways Konoha hides behind market stalls and souvenirs. 

What was once a well-spoken and spread secret of the red light district bleeds into the well-lit and richer parts of the village, whispers of the shinigami that walks the earth with the people, awaiting the moment to pass judgment. Larger demons begin to arrive within the walls of her home, they laugh with glazed eyes and bloody maws as they move from her path when she walks through the streets. 

The day before the final matchups for the exams, Sakura meets the first person outside of the Red Light district to call her a shinigami.

“S-Shinigami-sama!” A voice calls through the crowd, and the people of the Red Light district collectively create a path for a child in the tell-tale expensive silks of a merchant family, “Please… my family was ambushed by bandits two days ago, they took my sister.”

Sakura’s eyebrow twitches upwards, “That is not my jurisdiction.”

“It was just outside the gates, my father can’t get a meeting with the Hokage to ask for help! Please… ” His voice shakes as he breathes raggedly, no doubt having run, only Sage knows how long to find her, “The chuunin exams, no shinobi are available, there’s no one to ask to assign it as a mission, nobody to pay to help, you’re my last chance, please .”

And what else can Sakura do but accept?

So, on the day of the finals, while the rest of Konoha and their guests sit in a stadium and watch the soldiers they bred from infancy face off against each other for a title, Sakura is miles from the front gates of Konoha. Demons led her through the thick foliage of fire country with bloody smiles, the spirits of Shisui and Ryoichi following just behind her. In search of a blonde girl who’d just had her ninth birthday, the daughter of a merchant from Tea country, whom the Hokage couldn’t be bothered to search for during the importance of the other Kage arriving for the chuunin exams. 

It doesn’t take long to find the group of bandits that the boy, Nagisa, had described to her. All she had to do was follow the screaming, and for a moment, Sakura couldn’t explain why no one else had come to help, and then she saw it.

Nagisa’s sister, the little blonde girl who Sakura had been asked to find is in a tight ball on the forest floor, screaming and sobbing.

“Looky boys, we’ve already got a new plaything.” A voice jeers nearby, but Sakura’s attention doesn’t move.

Nagisa’s sister’s body is strung by her feet from a tree branch. 

Her elegant green silk cheongsam is torn in half, so only a bit of her torso remains covered by the fabric; her pale skin is a myriad of black-purple bruises, Sakura can see the lumps where her ribs have been broken. Crusted, half-dry blood still drips from her mouth and into her nose. The whites of her blank eyes are bloodshot, her face is purple, and stands out against the white skin of her arms. 

There’s a warm hand on the skin of her arm, a caress that makes her stomach turn, and Sakura finally turns her stinging eyes to the bandit in front of her, a cruel smirk on his face as he touches her. 

Slowly… gently … Sakura grabs his hand in her much smaller and frailer one and brings it toward her face. 

She tears a chunk of his wrist out with her teeth, and as he screams in pain and begins to make moves to claw at her face, Sakura spits the flesh back into his face and whispers through bloody teeth.

“ Leave no one alive. ”

The screams are loud enough to hurt her ears, but Sakura does not worry.

They obviously cannot be heard from the gates of Konoha.

❦❦❦

The first thing that Sakura does when she enters the gates of Konoha once more, a new ghost in tow making friends with demons, is kill a man. She doesn’t have time to assess his hitai-ate, to comprehend what is happening in the village, even to set Naomi’s body down before the demon that had been stuck to his shoulders lunges for her throat next. 

“Shisui, Ryoichi, deal with the demons; if it's a shinobi, don’t bother trying to extract them.” She flicks the blood from her kunai and adjusts her grip. “If the host dies, it isn’t my problem.” The demons around her nip at her ankles and caw, and Sakura glances down at them once before rolling her eyes, “You have until I call, don’t waste it.”

“What about me?” Naomi asks quietly, pale fingers clutching the fur of a demon like a collar on a vicious dog as it squirms in excitement.

Sakura glances back at her over her shoulder, “Find your brother. And find me when this is over.” 

Once Sakura is alone, she makes her way to the Red Light district with the corpse of a child in her arms, killing whatever shinobi unlucky enough to try and take her by surprise on the way. She doesn’t stop until she’s inside the crude shrine left to rot after the Yondaime’s death. 

She doesn’t have time to pay respects, not when there are demons within the village her family resides in, while there are unknown demons that prowl the streets that allow her to find purpose. So instead, Sakura sets the small ( too small, too young, why is it always children-) body before the statue of the very shinigami that reaped the soul of the Yondaime Hokage. Sakura pulls her overshirt from her body to cover Naomi’s bare legs and bows her head once before heading back into the heat of battle outside.

She begins making her way to the civilian district immediately, focused on making sure her parents are alright. Sakura cuts down whatever shinobi tries to get in her way, not even bothering to check what village they hail from. 

“ Shinigami-sama! ” A voice cries and Sakura’s head snaps to the side, where a geisha sits cornered, a shinobi standing over her with a malicious smile on his face, a Sound hitai-ate tight against his forehead. 

Sakura growls and flickers in front of the woman, catching the tanto by the blade unflinchingly, even as her hand bleeds around it. Clenching down and pulling the man forward with all the strength she can muster on the slick blade, made easier by his shock at her unexpected appearance, Sakura jabbed her fist into his throat viciously. Yanking the tanto from his grasp as he choked, Sakura flips it to hold it at the handle with her uninjured hand and hacks it into his unprotected side. 

The Sound nin swings for her head, and she ducks back and kicks up with her leg, catching him in the chin and causing him to stumble a few feet back. 

Sakura takes the brief moment to glance back at the geisha and jerk her head toward the Hokage monument, where she knew there to be the evacuation zone, “Cut around near the edges of the walls, don’t go through the center of the district.” She instructs harshly, turning back to the recovering nin across from her.

“Thank you Shinigami-sama.” The woman says breathlessly, and Sakura doesn’t bother to look back at her again as she flees. 

“ Shinigami-sama , huh?” The Sound nin mocks, voice rough from her shot at his throat earlier, “You think yourself a death omen, kid?”

Sakura already had his tanto shoved through his throat by the time he finished speaking to her and looks up at him through her lashes with a blank face, “Yes.”

The splatter of blood as she tears the blade out sideways does not faze her. 

❦❦❦

Sakura does not escape the Red Light District until the early hours of the morning, and then she grits her teeth and keeps the same civilians that mocked her from dying. Telling herself that this village is what her friends had died for.

A part of her whispers that maybe if she saves them, they’ll stop treating her like a monster.

When the invasion has finally ended, when the sirens quiet and there are no more foreign shinobi for Sakura to cut down, Sakura follows the cries of demons to her neighborhood. Finally arrives at her house.

But there is no house left standing.

Sakura’s heart is in her throat .

Before she can blink, the pink-haired girl is in front of the remnant of her home. She can’t call out because her heart is still beating against he vocal cords and stopping any sound before it can escape. And Sakura had never been so scared in her life. Not when she met her first demon or when she had her first kill.

Everything is silent.

In the center of the rubble are two figures, side by side. She collapses to her knees beside them, frantically searching her father for a pulse first… A long moment passes, and Sakura’s heart drops until ‘thump-thump… thump-thump..’

A relieved breath chokes on its way out, and she placed her fingers against her mother next.

…Nothing. Sakura presses harder, hands glowing with medical chakra, scrambling to her mother’s side to check any pulse point she can reach. “Please, oh please, please, please… ”

There is a slick feeling beneath her fingers that she refuses to acknowledge.

Sakura’s hand remains on her mother's throat, looking around the rubble, “There’s no ghost. No ghost, no death, she’s fine, you’re fine.” She whispers shakily, “It’s over, it's over, Mom, please. Kaa-san, please. ”

There’s a flicker in the corner of her vision, and Sakura squeezes her eyes shut, shaking her head from side to side so hard she gets dizzy.

“Sacchan?” Her mother whispers, but there is no vibration beneath her fingers, so it can’t be her mom. It can’t be her mother.

“I NEED A MEDIC!” Sakura screams, eyes still closed tightly, “ PLEASE!! PLEASE, I NEED A MEDIC! ”

Her words echo across the desolate streets she grew up on.

“Sweetheart,” A cold, dusty hand wipes away her tears, “Nobody is coming .” Her vision is blurry, and her lungs hurt, but there before her is the bloody, broken, ghostly form of her mother kneeling before her. “Nobody is coming.”

“Someone has to come.” She cries, “I can’t do this. Not you. I can’t--”

Mebuki smiles softly, sadly , “Brave little kunoichi.” Cupping her face with both hands, she absently wipes some of the blood from her face, “Cherry blossom. You’ve done so well .”

A sob escapes, “I haven’t, I haven’t .” She holds onto the hands only she can feel desperately as her entire body shakes, “I wasn’t fast enough. If I’d just got here sooner-” Sakura heaves a breath, clutching at her mother's wrists, “And I’ve killed. I’ve killed for years, so many you’d hate me, even before I was a shinobi. I hate this village. I hate the Hokage; I-I’m so angry all of the time . Kaa-san, I collect demons like trophies, and they feed on my kills .” She whimpers, “I’m not brave . I’m tainted .”

Mebuki pushes some hair out of her daughter’s face gently, “Sakura, sweetheart, this isn’t your fault. None of this is your fault.” She cradles her face gently, tear tracks on her dusted cheeks, “And I love you. I will always love you . I don’t care who you kill, who you hate, what you can do, or what you can see. I don’t care if you want this village to burn to ashes or if you want it to flourish. I care about you . I’m sorry that I haven’t told you that enough.” 

“Please--” Sakura chokes, “Please don’t go.”

“You are the greatest thing to have ever happened to me.” Mebuki glances down at her husband with a soft look, “Do make sure Kizashi doesn’t burn the next house down, will you? Make sure that the two of you look out for each other.” She smiles once more at her daughter, tears in her eyes, golden light already shining through her wounds like sunlight through cracked blinds, “I love you.”

“ Kaa-san, Kaa-san, please, please don’t go. I can’t do this. ” Mebuki’s image disappears in a burst of golden light, and Sakura’s breath stutters. Her hands fall from where they held her mother’s, suddenly cold. 

She stares blankly at the space she once was before the tears begin to fall from her eyes faster than she could wipe them away, takes one last full breath before breaking .

Her screams are heard throughout the entirety of Konoha.

❦❦❦

Inside the broken remains of a shrine that hadn’t been used until the “Konoha Crush”, behind a statue made for the one whom their Hokage gave his life to, in chipping pink paint are the words, May She who walks with Demons have mercy on those who mock Her. May She have mercy on those who are blind to the truth. But May those who scorn her learn that it is foolish to anger a Shinigami.

And as the screams of a grieving, broken, pink-haired child echo through the streets, for a brief moment, the statue’s eyes glow a bright white.

Chapter Text

Sakura doesn’t know how long she sits in the rubble crying over her mother’s cooling body, but she forces herself to stand on shaking legs and stumble her way back to her father’s side. Her hand makes its way to his pulse point once more, and she could have sobbed in relief at the presence of his still-beating heart as she runs a diagnostic jutsu. When she finds the swelling in his head, she almost bursts into fresh tears. Instead, she pulls him into a sitting position, breath stuttering with each inhale in an effort to keep down the tears, and for a moment, she just sits in a crouched position beside him, letting his head lean onto her shoulder. 

Tears burn behind her eyes, but Sakura swallows them down with a deep breath and closes them. Clenching her jaw, Sakura puts her father into as best of a fireman’s carry as she can, trying her hardest not to let his free hand drag against the broken ground as she marches herself in the direction of the hospital.

Every street she passes is littered with corpses, ninja, and civilians alike, and occasionally she comes across demons digging their claws into the dead nin, indiscriminatory of the symbol on their hitai-ate. She doesn’t pay much attention to them if any at all.

When the hospital finally comes into view, Sakura’s shoulders ache, and she can only wonder what the people see when she arrives. The creepy little Haruno girl soaked in the blood of nin, odd green eyes puffy and bloodshot, blood and dirt cleared from her too-pale face only where her tears had fallen, with the unconscious body of her father thrown over her shoulders. 

There are people in every seat. Some are even sitting on the floor, and the room is filled with the smell of blood and the sound of hundreds of voices crying and groaning. 

She can’t tell how many of them are alive.

“I need a medic!” Sakura calls out, exhausted, “I don’t know how long he’s been unconscious, there's swelling in his brain, and I don’t know what to do.”

Doctors and nurses rush to her with a cot so she can put him down. They question her while they run their own diagnostic, and Sakura answers them all with a shaking voice, rushing alongside them as they bring him toward an operating room. A doctor stops her outside the doors as they bring her father in, and she watches desperately through the windows until he’s out of sight. 

“Do you know him?” The doctor asks calmly, and Sakura can only nod, still facing the doors, “Are you Haruno-senpai’s daughter?”

Sakura clears her throat and finally turns from the doors, “Yes.”

The doctor, whose name tag reads ‘Kanako’ , gives her a serene smile, but Sakura can see the worry in her eyes nonetheless. “We’re going to do everything we can for your father, okay? Can you trust us for now?”

Naomi appears before her, taking in the sight of the hospital with her bloodshot eyes, the demon she’d left with cuddled in her arms with a gurgling purr. “Shinigami-sama.”

“I…” Sakura glances at the door, echoes of her own voice calling out for a medic as her mother bursts into cracks of golden light in her ears, turns back to Kanako, and swallows, “... Please, don’t let him die . ”

Kanako’s eyes soften immensely, and she gives Sakura another smile, “Of course.”

Sakura turns to the dead girl in front of her and clears her throat, following after her as she leads her back to the shrine.

❦❦❦

Sakura follows Naomi as she leads them through the depths of the red light district, where Nagisa and his father are hiding out in the Lotus, speaking with merchants and stall owners from the market. A handful of prostitutes from the Nightingale that were no doubt working when the invasion hit sit together on the opposite couch, tea in their laps as they speak quietly. Kids are sitting huddled in a corner together, and it is obvious which of them has shelter every other day and which do not.

When the doors to the inn shut behind her, it is the children that notice her first. 

“Shinigami-sama!” A boy from the corner of children gasps, and the rest of the room’s attention quickly turns to her, a blanket of quiet settling over the room as the people from the district stand to bow in greeting, but Sakura will unpack that later. 

“Nagisa.” She begins, “Will you follow me, please.”

The boy clenches his jaw and nods, grabbing his father’s hand and pulling him along behind him as he heads toward her. His father, a tall man with a thick black beard covering his face, stops him.

“What? Nagisa, who is this?” He looks down at her with an exhausted kind of confusion, and she can see the way Naomi looks up at her father with a broken kind of sadness as he speaks out of the corner of her eye.

Sakura, covered in dirt and blood and tears, looks up at the man whose already given up on ever finding his child, “My name is Haruno Sakura. Your son asked me to find your daughter.”

There’s a flicker of hope in his eyes, “My girl, is she…?”

“I’m sorry.” Sakura whispers, and his face crumples in grief, “When I got there, she was already…” Nagisa’s eyes fill with tears, and she can hear his jaw click as his father collapses to his knees beside him. “I can promise you that the bandits who did this can never hurt anyone ever again. I brought her home with me; she rests in the shrine at the edge of the district.”

The man looks at her and asks, “Take me to her?”

❦❦❦

“What you see in here, you will never be able to unsee.” Sakura says just outside the shrine, “It will break you and haunt you for the rest of your life. I’m not sure you’ll be able to recognize her. So please, if you want to remember Naomi the way she was when she was alive if you don’t want to taint that with the aftermath of her death, don’t come in.”

The father, Tanaka Sho, nods. Nagisa looks beyond her at the entrance to the shrine in determination. They enter, and Sakura leads them to where Naomi’s body lay before the statue of the Shinigami, Sakura’s shirt set across her legs. 

Sho kneels beside her, brushing her matted hair out of her face gently, “My sweet little girl.” He whispers, tears thick in his voice, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. ” 

On the opposite side of the body, the ghost of Naomi kneels as well, face parallel to her father’s own. Her lip quivering as she brings a hand up to her face where he’d touched. “ Papa. ”

Nagisa collapses next to his father and leans, so his forehead rests on his sister’s stomach, “I…” His voice fades out, and his body trembles, “I love you, Nomi. I love you so much.” He whispers, and Sakura turns away.

“You did so well, sweetheart.” Sho whispers, “You must have been so scared, and I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there. But, I couldn’t have asked for a better daughter.” He caresses her cheek and plants a kiss on her forehead, “I love you. And I will never stop loving you, so you can rest now. You can sleep peacefully, okay? Me and your brother have it from here, don’t you worry.”

Naomi sniffs, “Can you… Can you tell them something for me?” Sakura nods. “Tell Nagisa… Tell him that just because I’m not there to remind him doesn’t mean that he can skip out on doing his chores. That I lied when I told him that his stupid stuffed monkey got lost, and it's hidden in the cabinet under the stairs at home behind the boxes of winter clothes.”

As Sakura repeats the words, fully expecting anger and the grieving family to lash out at her for lying to them while they cry over the body of this girl, she instead sees Nagisa lift his head and smile as he sobs.

“Tell Papa…” Naomi smiles a small broken smile, “That I’ll be okay. It doesn’t hurt anymore.” Sho, the hulking merchant man, crumbles and sobs. Naomi kisses her brother’s cheek and her father’s forehead, “I love you too.” Golden light begins to flake at her bruised skin, and Naomi turns to Sakura last. A large grin covers her face, her eyes close around her tears, and her nose scrunches in joy, “Thank you, Shinigami-sama.”

And then it is only Sakura, a corpse of a girl who died too young, and her broken family left.

❦❦❦

When Sakura returns to the hospital, she wants nothing more than to curl into a ball and cry. She wants to scream and break things because her mother is dead, her father could be dying, and she is alone . For the first time in years , there is no ghost at her side. No demons are lurking in her shadows. It is just her, dead-eyed and filthy, in the hospital waiting room, surrounded by strangers.

“Maa, when there’s an opening, I have genin that need to be looked over.” Kakashi’s voice grates against her ears, and Sakura turns to the front doors to see rookie nine spread out behind the silver-haired jounin.

Of course, it's Ino that spots her first because Sakura is nothing but the world’s punching bag today. The blonde brings everyone’s attention to her and Sakura… Sakura is just numb as the girl gives her a searching look with a hand cocked on her hip.

“Where were you, Yūrei?” Ino asks, “Because you obviously weren’t at the finals fighting the enemy nin like everyone else. Were you hiding?” As she questions her, none of her former classmates say anything. She can even see some of them watching her in thinly veiled disgust at the notion she hid while their home was under attack. Sakura bites the inside of her lip until it bleeds, “Did you run home to hide with your parents while we fought?”

Her blood freezes in her veins, and Sakura breathes in sharply,

“Haruno-san?” A haggard doctor steps out of the operating room, and Sakura’s words die in her throat.

“Yes?”

He looks tired, his gloves are covered in blood, and his glasses slip halfway down his nose. "Your father…”

“Is he alive?” She turns to him desperately, “Please, tell me he’s alive.”

The man puts a hand on her shoulder gently, “He’s in a coma while his brain heals, but he’s alive.”

“ Oh, thank god. ” Her knees go weak for a moment as relief floods her veins, “Can I see him?”

“Of course, follow me.”

She forgets everything else as she follows the doctor to her father’s room.

Chapter Text

What once was does not always become what now is. The earth changes and evolves, and creatures rise and fall; it is how it has always been. This is a fact that the being knew well. They watched the earth evolve and create as humans became. Observed in fascination, the Otsutsuki deem themselves celestial and seal a woman, because she will always be just a woman to Them, within the moon.

The being has been given many names, but none resonate with Them as much as the ones Shinigami and Jashin . They claim souls that follow the name they'd given Them, and one day, a boy is born with a soul so weak that they expect him to die the very night of his birth.

He does not.

The boy grows, and Jashin (because He is not the same as the one the humans' named Shinigami . Jashin is merciless and bloody and does not care for anything but the strife the humans can cause one another for His amusement.) watches as the village ignores the silver-haired boy as he grows. He watches as hate fills that weak soul until it almost bursts with white-hot fury.

A village in Yugakure is single-handedly decimated by a teenager with a soul built to be bloodstained and held captive by what the village considered pacifism.

Jashin claims without prompting. He claims without the boy even knowing his name. In doing so, Jashin does something He'd never done before.

He makes a Champion.

The boy ( Jashin's, Jashin's, Jashin's ) is drawn to his worshipers, takes to the religion they'd created with grace, and Hidan can no longer die.

His Champion wreaks havoc upon the earth, preaching his name, and Jashin becomes more than before. Before Jashin was an aspect, a persona, but Now, with Hidan at hand, Jashin can reach beyond what the being could before. Jashin, when the being took His name, could create , could take, could influence the living from wherever it was He resided, and He could speak .

Jashin could whisper in His priests' ears, throw them from the very edge of enlightenment, and nobody could hear Him as clearly as His Champion.

Shinigami falls behind.

It continues to claim souls and guide the dead, but passively, the being does not swap between names like they once did, too caught up in exploring Jashin's new abilities.

And then, Shinigami is summoned . Since that jutsu was first created, Shinigami walked the human plane for the first time.

It makes a deal and seals one of Otsutsuki's creations into the Summoner's own child. The Summoner's soul is to claim, but the contract, the agreement is not completed. The Summoner offered his soul to It and then was killed by the fox instead. 

The agreement is void, and yet Shinigami does not release the creation to continue wreaking havoc upon the village of Konoha. (The Jashin part of the being whispers that It is a god, It can take what it is owed, and there are no consequences for the divine.) 

Shinigami does not claim as Jashin had years ago. It does not lay claim on the boy tainted by the Otsutsuki's creation. Does not create a Champion. It flickers through the decimated streets and is seen by humans dying in the rubble. 

At the very edge of the destruction, where shinobi dutifully collect bodies of the dead and injured, It hears the weak wailing of a tiny human.

A pink-haired babe is in the rubble of a home, encased between two larger, bloodied humans. It hovers above it, watching the face scrunch in distress, and Shinigami can hear its tiny heartbeat slowing ever so quietly. 

Green eyes open, and there is silence. 

Shinigami expects many things. The dying child reaching a tiny, bloodied fist toward Its face is not one of them. Shinigami reaches back, and the baby grasps a bony finger in its fist with as much strength as it can muster. 

So Shinigami does not claim as Jashin had years ago. It does not wait for this child to grow and tear the village apart. It does not claim at all.

Shinigami gives.

Gives the child life and strengthens its fading heartbeat. It provides some of Its very essences, just to see what happens.

13 years later, Shinigami learns that It may not have claimed Haruno Sakura like Jashin had claimed Hidan. But the girl is still Shinigami's, the girl still belongs to It in the same manner.

And when she lays the corpse of a child at a shrine dedicated to It, when she wails over her mother's body, Shinigami gives again.

It gives her Its name.

Chapter Text

Sakura sits in the hospital room quietly, content to listen to her father’s steady breathing and the sound of his heartbeat. Her eyes stare listlessly at the wall across from her seat at Kizashi’s bedside, her shaking hands holding tightly to her dad’s as blood begins to dry and embed itself to her skin. 

As the sun begins to dip beneath the horizon once more, marking the end of the first day after the invasion, Sakura is no longer alone.

“Sakura! I--” Shisui stops abruptly, “What… What is…?”

She doesn’t look to the side where the dead boy now stands; her tired eyes remain fixated on the empty space in front of her, “Where were you?” She whispers, moving her gaze to where her hands clutch at her father’s.

“Sakura…” A wet hand goes to rest on her shoulder, and Sakura raises her eyes to look at Shisui in the empty sockets where his eyes would be, “Sakura, what happened .”

Sakura gives a bitter and broken laugh, filled to the brim with hatred and malice, “ I put the village first. ” She laughs and laughs, bloodied hands coming to her leaking eyes to furiously wipe away the rust-stained tears, “ I put the village first , I killed the enemies, I saved the villagers who hate me. And in doing so, I killed my fucking mom. ”

Shisui kneels in front of her, gripping her wrist gently as she starts to claw at her face while she speaks between broken laugh sobs.

“I put the village first.” The shadows within the hospital room flail like burning limbs in the face of her distress, “Because you died for it. Ryoichi died for it. A-And that had to mean something, right?” An unhinged gargle-like laugh crawls out of her throat, “Surely… Surely if I could save this village, I could prove some kind of worth to the dead children in my bedroom? Maybe even prove my worth to the living? ”

The shadows creep closer, slithering up her legs like vines. 

“What a fucking joke.” Tears fall faster, and the unhinged grin that had taken residence on her lips trembles with her voice as she whispers, “The first thing Ino did when she saw me covered in rubble and the blood of enemy nin was accuse me of hiding. Kakashi was there. The rookie nine was there. Naruto and Sasuke were there.” Her eyes close with the force of the broken grin she gives, “And nobody said a thing.”

A moment of silence and Sakura’s shoulders shake as she finally sobs.

“ Nobody said a damn thing. ”

❦❦❦

Sakura wakes with Kizashi’s hand still held in hers, back aching from the position she slept in. Her fingers twinge in pain as she forces herself to let go. And she leans down to place a gentle kiss on her father’s forehead, “I’ll be back later.”

Shisui moves to follow, but Sakura raises a hand silently, and he droops a bit in hurt. 

“Oh, calm down, you big baby.” She teases lightheartedly, the tired smile on her face not quite reaching her eyes, “Watch over him for me, please.”

“Oh.” Shisui perks up again, puffing out his chest exaggeratedly in pride, “Of course!”

With a slight grin to Shisui and a wave at the woman behind the desk as she leaves, Sakura takes a moment to look at the sunrise when she exits the hospital. How the warm colors painted across the horizon bounce off the crushed buildings on every street as she walks, hums noncommittally when she passes demons running wild in the destruction, yet to be called off by her.

Ah , she thinks, that can wait until after I’ve showered .

Sakura quietly opens the door to the Lotus Inn and taps the bell on the front desk before setting her hands in the pockets of her bloody shinobi-grade pants to wait.

A teen girl steps out from the Employees Only door behind the desk and freezes when she spots her, “S-Shinigami-sama!” The startled exclamation causes muffled scrambling and swearing from the door behind her, and the girl moves with a squeak as workers of the Lotus come pouring out.

Sakura blinks and raises a hand in a half-hearted two-fingered salute that doesn’t quite make it past her cheekbone, “Hi.”

“What- What can the Lotus do for you, Shinigami-sama?” A lanky man with ‘MANAGER’ written in all caps beneath his name on the tag he wears moves to stand across from her on the other side of the countertop. 

“I’d like a room, please.” She scratches off some crusted blood from the back of one hand, “I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying, but put me down for a week, susceptible to change.”

The manager, ‘Kenichi’ the tag also reads, nods frantically, writing things down in the large book on the desk. “Of course, of course.” He scrambles and turns to look at the wide-eyed employees behind him, scanning them before pointing at the girl who first exited, “You! Show Shinigami-sama to the penthouse.”

“Y-Yes, sir!” The girl stumbles out from behind the counter, and Sakura puts up a hand to stop her, raising an eyebrow when everybody freezes. 

“There’s no way I can afford the penthouse suite.”

“A-Afford?” Kenichi asks, and a voice like Shiui’s cackles in her head as the man continues, “We’re not going to let the Red Light’s Goddess pay to stay in the Lotus!” . ”

She blinks once. Twice. “...The what?” 

❦❦❦

That is how twenty minutes later, Sakura finds herself in the largest room of the Lotus Inn. Which is more like an apartment than a room, with three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, two bathrooms, and a balcony overlooking the red light district.

Sakura cleans herself of the sweat and blood from the last two days in the master bathroom. Wrapping herself in the pristine white robe hanging off the back of the bathroom door securely before dropping to her knees to wash her clothes as clean as she could get them in the tub.

She chews her lower lip and scrubs as hard as possible without tearing new holes into the cloth, watching in mild disgust as the water runs murky red-brown for several minutes. Once the water begins to run clear again, and the only thing left on her clothes is stained, Sakura sets them out on the balcony to dry in the morning sun.

Looking over the edge out at the forgotten part of the village, where children starve, and greedy men kill for a bit of sex, Sakura watches as people set up stalls in the market district and pretend not to see when ratty children snatch things from the baskets with inexperienced hands. 

When she was much younger, Sakura witnessed a child snatch something from a market stall in the civilian district. The old man running it had screamed at the small and obviously malnourished child and had even raised his hand in threat before the child dropped whatever it was they grabbed in favor of running.

It was a measly apple, a single one from the dozens that the man had been selling that day.

But here, Sakura watches children seize entire boxes of dango, bags of vegetables, and cartons of water. Sakura watches the people who own the stalls look the other way, watches a man even pretend to drop something and crouch to pick up nothing when a girl trips in her dash to leave.

It soothes her that if there was one thing in the village she helped protect, it was this.

❦❦❦

Once her clothes are dry, Sakura heads to the shrine on the district’s edges. Unaware of the eyes on her as she walks the streets of Konoha’s seediest streets within daylight for the first time in years. 

When she passes the threshold and stands before the statue of Shinigami, Sakura releases a sharp whistle. Demons bleed through the walls, drip from the ceiling, and crawl up from the mossy cracked quartz beneath her feet with warbling cries and wet groans. 

“This is me calling you off.” She speaks into the mass of writhing, slimy bodies full of too many and not enough limbs, “Dismissed.”

The shrine empties just as quickly as it had filled. And once Sakura is alone, she drops to her knees before the statue, where Naomi’s body had lay just days before, and stares at the weathered stone depicting this being.

Sakura didn’t know if the Shinigami could be considered a god or if it was the embodiment of death. Sakura didn’t think that anyone prayed to the Shinigami. She knew that for the first few years of her life, the first few years after the Kyuubi attack, people would come to this shrine to leave offerings for It in hopes that they could keep It placated.

People said that the Shinigami had wandered the earth even after claiming the soul of the Yondaime, that It must have also decided to kill those waiting for help beneath the rubble. They said it must have wanted to feed after being away from the living world for so long and began to create shrines and traditions to keep anything like the Kyuubi attack from happening again.

Staring up at this god’s long-forgotten statue and the broken and defaced space around it, Sakura wonders…

She wonders if the Shinigami had sent the invasion as a reminder.

Sakura doesn’t know if the Shinigami could be considered a god or if it was the embodiment of death. But she sits kneeling before this forgotten statue, grieving and angry and so tired . 

She closes her eyes, raises her hands in prayer, and the world goes white .

Chapter Text

Her arms are locked in place. Palms pressed against each other in prayer as a blinding pain, unlike anything that Sakura had ever experienced before, spreads from the ends of her toes to the tips of her hair. It fills her lungs, spills from her lips in half-choked gasps, lodges itself in her throat, and strangles the screams before they escape. 

It carves a space behind her ribcage and drags itself to settle between her shoulder blades. 

?ɘno ɘlɟɟil ,boϱ ɒ ƨɘʞɒm ɟɒ⑁w wonʞ uoγ ob [1]

Her ears rang like the aftermath of an explosion.

?ɟuo bniʇ oɟ ⑁ƨiw uoγ ob [2]

Sakura feels her throat vibrate as she speaks words she cannot hear.

.boϱ ɒ ƨɘʞɒm ɟɒ⑁w ƨi ɿɘwoᑫ [3]

She doesn’t know if she’s blinked. She can’t tell how long it’s been.

?ƨƨɘbboϱ ɒ ɟuᗺ [4]

It feels like hours until finally--

.boold ʇo nɿod ƨi ƨƨɘbboϱ A [5]

--It stops.

She gasps for air, trembling arms barely able to catch her from face-planting into the marble floors. Sakura’s back burns between her shoulder blades. She slowly brings a hand to brush over as close to the spot as she can, hissing in pain.

Her fingers come back, covered in blood.

Bringing her hand back down, Sakura blinks at the-- clean --marble floor. What used to be covered in rubble and moss is now a pristine white marble, with small seals carved nearest the base of the statue.

Sakura-- gasping, pained, and bleeding Sakura-- looks up at the statue of Shinigami from the ground with blurry eyes. When her vision clears, instead of the previously depicted form of a long-haired Demonoid figure with tanto in its mouth, set in the center of the once long-forgotten building is a much different depiction of a god.

Before her, in intricately carved obsidian-black stone, is an image of Sakura herself.

Long hair pulled up delicately, feet bare, eyes closed, and hands held in front of her in prayer. Beads wrapped around the palms of her hands, dangling from her arms and swaying in an invisible wind alongside the long sleeves of the kimono draped over her. A pair of skeletal wings are extended out behind her, holes torn in them and dripping with some kind of silver substance.

Sakura gapes, mouth opening and closing as she tries to understand what just happened, what any of this means. 

Shinigami-sama , voices echo, goddess of the red light district . 

Sakura supposed they weren’t just names anymore.

They were titles .

❦❦❦

The moment Sakura arrives at the hospital, sitting at her father’s bedside once again, freshly dried blood staining where her shirt sits on her shoulders. Shisui stands resolutely beside the doorway, arms crossed and feet spread wide.

“Tou-chan,” Sakura mumbles, forehead resting against the hand held between her own, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” Exhausted tears burn at the back of her eyes.

“Sakura.” Kizashi says, tucking her hair behind her ears to get a good look at her face, “You’re still only thirteen. You may be a genin and an adult in the eyes of the law. But you are still a child. You can’t be expected to have all the answers.”

Mebuki kisses her on the forehead and lightly smooths the back of her hair, “Never be afraid to ask us for help, alright? You’re a very smart girl, but we worry.”

“I need you.” She whispers, hot tears slipping down her cheeks, “Mom’s gone, dad. I can’t-” Sakura takes a deep, shaky breath, “ Please. ”

Her only response is the beeping of the heart monitor and Shisui’s cold hand on her head to ground her as she silently sobs.

Chapter Text

The Hokage’s death is announced three days after the invasion. 

Sakura stares at the gaudy coffin they’d built for the man, the mass funeral filled with swaths of civilians and shinobi alike. Those from the Red Light District wear bright earrings and bracelets that they hide behind, placating smiles and condolences to the masses, directing attention away from the way they slight the Hokage in death. 

Sakura herself wears a pristine white ribbon at the end of her long braid, ignoring the stares from the people dressed in black as she stares dead ahead to where Danzo speaks.

“…As Hiruzen left no successor to precede him in death, I will be taking the mantle of Hokage temporarily. “The old man says, voice strong despite the feeble appearance he puts on in front of the village, “Uzumaki Naruto will venture in search of Senju Tsunade, the one that your Esteemed Third Hokage had in mind to take up the position, with Jiraiya of the Sannin.”

Everything around Sakura seems to stop for just a moment, as all the ghosts in the vicinity slowly turn to stare at her as she processes the news that Shimura Danzo will be the stand-in Hokage as a genin searches for someone no Konoha nin has seen in over a decade.

The demons follow suit, with loud cracks, as their own heads snap to the side to face her with big, eerie, bloodthirsty grins on their malformed faces.

Nobody living sees the way her eyes alight with rage.

❦❦❦

The fourth day after the invasion, the day after the Hokage’s funeral, and the news that Danzo would be the standing Hokage, Sakura sits at her father’s bedside once more. Listening idly to Shisui as he tells her of missions long forgotten when he suddenly freezes, head snapping to face the window facing the Red Light District with his empty sockets.

“Shisui?” Sakura stands, releasing her father’s hand from her in between her own as she steps up to stand beside the ghost, “What is it?”

Shisui is silent for a moment, blankly staring somewhere she can’t see, before he speaks, “I think…” His brows scrunch together as he shakes his head in confusion, “I think it’s Itachi.”

Her gaze jerks to the window as well, “…What?” When she turns back to Shisui’s figure, he’s already gone. Blinking at the space he was for a second, Sakura takes a deep breath in and releases it in a long sigh; she turns back to the prone body of her father and gives him a light kiss on the forehead. “I’ll be back, Tou-san. It wouldn’t surprise me if Shisui is the first to find out how to die twice.” 

With a fond roll of her eyes, Sakura is gone in a blink.

When she opens her eyes again, she stands on a rooftop with a birds-eye view of the elusive Uchiha Itachi and a tall, sharp-toothed man with pale blue skin as they make their way through the empty streets of Konoha. 

Shisui stands next to her, staring intently, even with his missing eyes, at the forms, hands in his pockets, as he asks, “Why do you think they’re here?”

Sakura shrugs, following their silhouettes intently with her eyes as they trudge toward the edges of the Red Light District. Her head tilts to one side, a humorless smile tugging at the edge of her mouth as dozens of demons follow, getting rowdier and rowdier as they get closer and closer to where the Red Light and civilian districts meet.

“Do you know where the brat lives?” The blue-skinned man asks, a giant sword strapped across his back, hands in his pockets, as he glances around the village with a bored gaze. 

Itachi doesn’t glance his way, “I have an idea. The chances they moved him in the years I’ve been away are slim.”

Sakura follows alongside them on light feet across the rooftops and whistles lowly when she catches a glimpse of Sasuke up ahead. Briefly, the thought of warning him of Itachi’s presence crosses her mind.

Sakura notices that the last time her teammates had seen her was with bleeding ears and cloudy eyes. In the week that followed, neither of them had asked if she was okay. 

“He thinks you’re useless .” He spits, pinpricks of the glowing red of sharingan shining in his empty eye sockets for a moment, “Kakashi. Your team was talking about how little they saw you during the Wave mission. Naruto called you creepy and weird because of the ghosts last week. Sasuke called you stupid.” He gave a bark of humorless laughter, “It was like watching a gossip session.

“What a fucking joke.” Tears fall faster, and the unhinged grin that had taken residence on her lips trembles with her voice as she whispers, “The first thing Ino did when she saw me covered in rubble and the blood of enemy nin was accuse me of hiding. Kakashi was there. The rookie nine was there. Naruto and Sasuke were there.” Her eyes close with the force of the broken grin she gives, “And nobody said a thing.

“ Nobody said a damn thing. ”

Sakura does not intervene when Uchiha Itachi and Hoshigaki Kisame happen upon Uchiha Sasuke or when Sasuke is caught in a genjutsu.

Sakura does not intervene when Hatake Kakashi befalls the same fate after the missing nin discover that Uzumaki Naruto is no longer within the walls of the village.

Sakura absently follows to see that the intruders do, in fact, leave the village. The next morning, when the masses of Konoha hear of the incident.

Sakura doesn’t say a damn thing .

❦❦❦

On the sixth day after the invasion, Sakura is called to the Hokage’s office.

“Sakura.” Shisui’s voice is calm, but she can see the way his skin ripples as though something pushes to escape the cage provided by his flesh, “I’m coming with you.”

“Take care of Tou-san, please. I’ll be back soon.” She gives him a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes, anger sparking behind her irises, “This shouldn’t take long, Shisui. A mission assignment at the least, and at the most, it’s a temporary team movement while Uzumaki is out since the rest of my unit is out of commission.”

Shisui takes a deep breath that he doesn’t need and sits as he releases it from deep within his waterlogged lungs. Eyelids closing around empty holes, the dead boy covers his mouth and nose with both hands, “Right.” He whispers, “Right. Okay. Stay safe.”

When she arrives, there are two unknown Konoha genin that scream of ROOT that let her in, and Sakura hopes beyond hope that she is not being placed into a ROOT unit. Nausea and malice claw at her insides and attempt to crawl up her esophagus when she enters the office for the first time since the aftermath of the wave mission months ago.

She doesn’t remove her gaze from where Danzo sits behind the desk across from the door, at the tallest point in the village beyond that of the monument that can be seen from the window. Rot clings behind his bandages, and maggot-like demons crawl over the top of them. Black, blood-like ooze drips from behind his hidden eye,

For a moment, Sakura’s body alights with rage so potent; it made everything she’d felt before then feel like barely a whisper, looking at the seeping bandages that hid the eye of her first friend behind it. Then the laughter of the demons crowding the desk and crawling over the Hokage’s ( because Danzo was the Hokage, the man she hated most now representing one of the things she resented more than anything, and oh, isn’t fate so funny ) body brings her back.

“Do you know why I called you here today?” The old man asks, setting down the pen in his hand to sit on the desk, folding his hands beneath his chin as he looks down on them from his position.

The nausea-malice combination from earlier returns with a vengeance as she looks into the eyes ( because she knows he has two, and one of them is not his -- ) of the Hokage.

“I called you here because you have shown something that the rest of today’s genin lack in spades. Something that allowed Konoha to emerge victorious in the wake of Suna’s betrayal. Do you have any clue as to what that could possibly be?” Sakura keeps her eyes on the man as he speaks, “That something that the majority of your generation has shown to be too weak to accept and utilize is ruthlessness .”

Danzo’s one visible eye glitters with a vicious kind of satisfaction, “Did you know that you had the largest kill count during the invasion of those who graduated the academy within the last five years, young Sakura?” Danzo asks, focusing solely on her.

The sound of her name on his lips makes the demons around her squeal in delight at the pure hate that she locks within the flames lit behind her ribcage, “No. Hokage-sama.” She grits out, voice carefully blank, utilizing any and everything she learned from Shin when he was around.

The glint in his eye doubles, “Then it is with pride as Konoha’s standing Hokage that I thank you for your service to the village. Regretfully, you were not recommended for chuunin during the exams. However, in light of your actions during the battle that was the invasion, you will be receiving something that Konoha has not done since the end of the Third Shinobi War.”

Her shoulders tense, and Sakura’s wide gaze remains on the man as he speaks the very thing she feared when she received the summons to the Hokage’s office.

“Congratulations on your field promotion, Haruno Sakura, chuunin of Konoha.”

“...Thank you, Hokage-sama.”

The smile he gives makes the hate locked away rattle in its cage, “Dismissed.”

Nobody notices the way that doorway begins to peel away with rot as she leaves, but Sakura can hear the cackles of the demons at her heel as they rake their claws along the sides of the hallways lightly.

❦❦❦

Sakura awakes on the morning of the seventh day after the invasion to a chuunin vest waiting for her in her chair beside her father’s bedside when she arrives from the Lotus. The cage she had so carefully constructed to hold her burning hatred shatters so intensely that the demons at the other end of the village gurgle in delight.

And within the Red Light District, the closed eyes on the statue depicting a young, winged, and praying girl open to show a blinding white light.

Chapter Text

Something in Sakura calls her to the shrine the same day she finds her chuunin vest waiting for her, and she is shocked to find that it is not empty.

A young child, holding a tattered and well-loved stuffed toy of a cat in her arms, stares up at the statue in open-mouthed awe. Moving about the rest of the room, scrubbing graffiti from the walls and sweeping the floors, are people of the Red Light District. A small group of children crowd around text painted in pink on the far wall.

“They’re trying to figure out what it says but none of them know how to read.” Ryoichi announces, appearing beside her in an instant, the ever-present blood dripping down his chin a brighter red than usual, seeming almost fresher in a way. He glances at her out of the corner of his eye, crossing his arms over his chest, “I’m sorry about your mother, Sakura.”

A flash of pale, dead eyes, a lifeless hand caressing the side of her face. Whispering soft platitudes of “ none of this is your fault. ” And there is a hole in Sakura’s chest where her heart should be. Half of it lies in a hospital across the village, and the other lies six feet beneath the ground, cold and dead.

“I should have gone straight home from here.” She hums, absently, numbly .

Ryoichi blinks at her and shrugs, “Maybe.” His tone is as matter-of-fact as always, “But even you could not have stopped a building from collapsing.”

A bitter smile, “No.” She acknowledges, the empty space in her chest cold and aching, “But I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering anyway.”

Sakura steps away from Ryoichi, and makes her way to the other side of the shrine to the group of children arguing in front of the pink text on the wall.

“No, idiot, that character is definitely ‘ ro ’.” A boy says pointing to the kanji,

The little girl at his side looks at him like he spat in her face, “You’re the idiot, that’s ‘ ru ‘.”

The character is actually ‘ ni ’, but Sakura saves herself the trouble of explaining katakana to a group of children who won’t remember any of it come tomorrow. 

“May She who walks with Demons have mercy on those who mock Her. May She have mercy on those who are blind to the truth. But may those who scorn her learn that it is foolish to anger a Shinigami.” She reads aloud quietly, causing the children to jump and turn to her with wide eyes at the sound of her voice. Sakura glances down at them before returning her eyes to the text with a smile that is more of a humorless bearing of teeth than anything, “That’s what it says.”

Something in her cackles at the passage with a vindictive sort of glee, but Sakura shoves it into the back of her mind and locks it behind a dark door.

“Shinigami-sama!” One of them gasps, and suddenly, all eyes are on her. 

One woman startles so badly that she drops the broom she was sweeping with. Ryoichi snorts, offering Sakura a smirk and a small shrug of his shoulders when she gives him a deadpan stare in return.

The people in the shrine, adult and child alike, bow in greeting before her, and that dark door in the back of her mind purrs .

Sakura adds another lock and bows back, shallowly, because the last time she had tried to return the bow properly in the Lotus, Kenichi had almost had a heart attack and taken out three other employees with his flailing.

“Thank you.” Sakura says, eyes on the space before the statue where she had kneeled just days ago as she speaks, “For taking care of this place.”

A part of her hopes, that this shrine, this place that was left unattended and forgotten for so long, remains in the hands and hearts of nobody other than the Red Light District. That the people who showed Sakura that not the entirety of Konoha was filled with rot continue to be the only ones to touch this place that once had intent to worship a being that discriminates against none. 

Another wishes that it had stayed forgotten by everyone. Even her.

Because there is a statue of her in the middle of a once rotting shrine now, and Sakura does not know what that means. People now call her the goddess of the Red LIght District, they call her Shinigami as though it was the name she was born with, and Sakura is twelve. 

Sakura is twelve in a Shinobi Village, and maybe that means that she was never allowed to be a kid, not really, but she is still young. She is still a child nonetheless, despite the way the village desperately tries to pretend that those who graduate from the academy aren’t.

The child with the well-loved stuffed cat looks at her with wide eyes, the children she’d read for look at her in wonder, and the adults look at her in reverence and the world continues on, uncaring of Sakura’s questions, uncaring of her fear and worry .

(The world continues on, and does not answer her questions of why. Why is she this way, why can she do these things, why was she built to be torn to sunders at every waking moment )

The world continues on regardless. 

So must Sakura.

❦❦❦

Two weeks after the invasion, five days after her promotion, Sakura receives her first summons to the Hokage tower as a chuunin. Shisui at her side, as she comes face to face with his killer once again. He is still and silent at her side, but not in any way that alludes to him being afraid of the man in front of him, he is still and silent in a way that is dangerous, threatening. 

Demons scuttle across the walls behind her, nails grating against the wood as they drag themselves along, manic gurgling giggles after every step. One hangs upside down above the door frame and watches Danzo with one enlarged, pus-yellow pupil, clicking and tilting its head to follow every movement the old man makes. 

“Young Sakura,” She hates the way he says her name, “Your first mission as a team leader will be a C-rank double-escort mission to the land of Honey. You’ll be leading team ten, the client will be at the gates waiting tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, Hokage-sama.”

“Dismissed.”

She disappears without another word.

And it isn’t until Sakura reaches the end of the alley leading to the Red Light District from the direction of Hokage tower that she allows herself to lean against the wall of a building and laugh humorlessly into her hands.

Shisui kneels beside her, Sakura wonders when she’d sat down, and sets a cold hand on her shoulder in semblance of comfort. 

A C-rank mission that will last a week at the very least , leading Ino and her team.

What a joke.

❦❦❦

She finds team ten at one of the many training grounds, and Sakura raises an eyebrow when she spots Ryoichi leaning against one of the trees, watching them.

Sakura’s eyes flit over where Sarutobi Asuma stands with his arms crossed talking down to the prone form of where Shikamaru lays with his hands behind his head staring at the clouds boredly, Choji nods along absently while crunching on the packet of chips in his hand, and come to rest on where Ino sits reading a magazine.

Ryoichi rests an arm on top of Sakura’s head and leans to the side, following her gaze to the blonde, “She’s not very impressive.” He says, and green eyes turn to him as he surveys the training ground, “None of them are.”

Sakura pretends she doesn’t see how his eyes linger on one person in particular, and steps forwards into the clearing.

“Team ten.” Asuma’s eyes turn to her first, followed by Shikamaru and Choji, and Sakura sees the way that Ino deliberately finishes the section she was reading before she deigns to give Sakura the grace of her attention. “You have a double-escort mission tomorrow morning to Honey.” She says as she pulls the scroll out to showcase it in proof. 

( She wouldn’t put it past Ino not to believe her otherwise. )

Asuma steps forwards in a move to be handed the scroll, and Sakura twirls it in her hand once before putting it back in the inner pocket of her chuunin vest, “Sarutobi-san is not the leader for this mission.”

“Who is, then.” Ino demands, and Sakura ignores her,

“You’re expected at the gates by 07:00 tomorrow morning.” She bows so shallowly that it can barely be counted, and shunshins away.

Ryoichi’s snort of amusement and Shisui’s laughter echo after her, and a small smile twitches at the corner of her lips even as she settles in the chair next to her father’s hospital bed.

❦❦❦

The next morning Sakura arrives at the gates by 06:00, weaving her damp hair into a tight braid, leaning against one of the surrounding walls and gazing upon the civilian district with sharp eyes as the sun rises above the sleeping village.

Ryoichi twirls rusted senbon between his fingers, elbow resting on one knee as the other leg dangles freely from his spot on top of the wall above her. Shisui on his other side kicking his feet like a young child, leaning back on his hands with his face pointed toward the sky.

Just as she finishes tying off the braid, Sakura hears a familiar choked off bark and her head snaps to the side with wide eyes as Zonbi plows into the side of her legs with an excited click-click-click of his broken tail as it wags. A breathless smile breaks across her face and crouches to bury her hands into his matted fur.

Shisui drops down from above, using her head as a rest as he faces the dog, “Damn, where’s he been?”

The mutt yips and huffs at her face as she scratches behind his torn ears, slobbering all over her as she laughs, mumbling at him in a high-pitched voice, “Oh my sweet baby boy, hello, hello! Where have you been? Huh, huh?”

“SAKURA-NEE!”

The desperate shout is all the warning she gets before she’s knocked down with the surprising force of three dead children, she cradles each of them close to her to keep them from hitting the ground with her before she even processes what is happening. When she shoots back into a sitting position to look at them, Sakura thinks it might be one of the fastest she’s moved. 

In front of her with wide smiles are Shinju and Maki, Mai crying loudly into Sakura’s shirt as she clutches desperately at the older girl. The pinkette brushes her hand over the back of her head soothingly, eyes refusing to stray from the children in front of her. 

Sakura is so incredibly relieved to see them she thinks she could cry herself, “Where have you been?” 

Shinju pats Zonbi’s head tolerantly as he settles himself into her lap, and Maki pushes herself into Sakura’s beside her sister to snuggle closer to her as she responds, “I dunno, when the house went down everything went white.”

Mai finally calms herself, and nods quickly, wanting to contribute to the conversation as well, “Yeah, yeah! Sakura-nee there was white and it was all ‘waaa shiny’ and then poof Zonbi-chan and Maki-nee and Shinju-nee and Mai-chan were somewhere else.”

Sakura blinks at the girls in her lap and pats them on the head in thanks for their explanations, but turns to Shinju for her input, knowing the oldest of the three would probably be able to tell her more.

Shinju’s patting slows, and she looks at Sakura hesitantly, her other hand coming to scratch at the bruising around her neck nervously as her eyes flitter to the side.

“Shinju-chan?”

Quietly the girl confesses, “I think we were leaving, like Rin-nee-san did.” Suddenly the girl’s lips tremble and she looks at Sakura with wide eyes, “But Sakura-nee wasn’t there! If Sakura-nee isn’t there, who's gonna play cards with us? Or hold Mai-chan when she’s sad?”

Sakura’s eyes widen in shock, and she looks down at Maki and Mai to find them already looking at her with serious faces.

“Mai-chan doesn’t wanna go without Sakura-nee.”

“Me either.”

Shinju nods resolutely, “So we didn’t.”

Sakura is speechless, they forewent passing on just because they couldn’t be with Sakura? It was unheard of, unfathomable even, and she turns to Shisui in her shock for assistance to find him already looking down at her with a cheeky smile.

“What? You think I’m still here because I want to watch an old psychopath torment children?”

Her head snaps up to where Ryoichi sits, still twirling that senbon between his fingers and he resolutely avoids looking at her when he mumbles, “I didn’t stick around just to fuck with missing-nin.”

Sakura’s smile is the brightest one in weeks.

❦❦❦

At 06:55 the rest of her unit finally arrives, Sakura’s tears long gone and a light feeling resting in her chest even after she’d sent the girls and her beloved dead dog to her hotel room. 

Sakura is not surprised to see the scowl that paints itself onto Ino’s face when she sees her. 

( We used to be friends once. )

“Well, Yūrei, who's the leader taking us?” Ino demands, flipping her ponytail over her shoulder with one hand on her hip as she waits for her answer. 

( Was that a lie, Ino-chan? )

Sakura turns to face the three of them with a raised eyebrow, an amused glint in her eyes as she leads them to where their client pulls to a stop just outside the gates.

“You must be the ninja my wife hired. My name is Yoshida Hikaru and I’ll be the one driving for most of the trip, my family is still asleep inside the caravan,” An older man steps down from the driver’s seat and gives them a polite bow as he introduces himself. 

Sakura bows back, a polite business smile on her face, “Hello, Yoshida-san. I am Haruno Sakura, chuunin of Konoha and the leader for this mission,” She can feel the resentment emanating from Ino, and the demons cheer at the taste of it. “Yamanaka Ino, Nara Shikamaru, and Akamichi Choji will be assisting you to your destination as well.”

Hikaru blinks in surprise, a flash of recognition flickering through his eyes, and this time when he bows it is much deeper, “My family and I will be in your care, Shinobi-san.”

Sakura wonders which name he’d recognised but doesn’t dwell on it as he returns to his position at the head of the caravan, and when Ino shoulder-checks her on her way passed to guard along the side as they begin moving, Sakura pretends she didn’t even as Shisui and demons alike glower at the blonde.

( Did you hate me then, too? )

❦❦❦

Hikaru’s wife and son, Rin and Chikara as they’d introduced themselves, woke about an hour into their trip and filled the silence with idle chatter and questions and about half-way through the route to their first stop, Chikara ends up on Sakura’s back as he tells her about the trip that led his family to Fire Country.

It takes practically a third of the time to reach the river that separates Fire Country and Wave by caravan than it did when escorting Tazuna, and she receives a nod of greeting from the old sailor at the helm of the boat as he helps move the caravan and the horses pulling it onto the sturdy pull-along.

When they arrive on the other side, the difference from Sakura’s first trip to the small waterside village is stark . Where before, Wave had been saturated in ghosts of those killed by Gato or his men there was the occasional loved one who’d decided to stay even after the fight on the bridge. Where there had been starving children in dirtied clothes, there was laughter as those same children ran through the streets chasing after one another.

“Ah, Hikaru-san!” A shopkeeper calls out as they pass by a stall, and Sakura peeks around the side of the caravan to see the speaker as he greets her client, Chikara’s head resting on top of her own, “On your way home already? I feel like it was just yesterday that I saw you come through here last.”

Hikaru smiles back at the man, “A month feels like yesterday to you?”

“Well, once you reach my age everything feels like yesterday.” The stranger sighs, closing his eyes and nodding as though he were a wise old man who’d just given sage advice, 

“Katio-san, I’m twelve years older than you.”

“And the fact you’re not dust never ceases to amaze me, Hikaru-san.”

Hikaru raises a fist in mock-rage as they continue to pass by, and Sakura looks back over her shoulder at Kaito as he laughs after them.

When they reach the village center, a small head peeks over a counter top of a market stall and gapes at Sakura in shock, “Shinobi-sama!”

Both of Sakura’s eyebrows raise at the choice of honorific that the little girl shouts at her, and many of the Wave residents turn at the shout as well, but faces light up when they see just who the girl had meant when she’d called out. 

When they finally stop, waiting beside the caravan as Hikaru heads into one of the shops, Shisui laughs from his spot on the roof of the caravan as the villagers begin to come up specifically to greet Sakura.

Ino has a look of almost disgusted confusion on her face with every person that greets and converses with Sakura as they walk, rotation putting her on the same side of the caravan as her.

Chikara, who’d finally moved to sit in the caravan once again gives Sakura a curious look, “Does everyone know who you are?”

Sakura shakes her head at the child, giving another smile to a villager that greets her as they pass, “I did a mission here once, is all.”

“Like you actually did anything, everyone and their dog knows all you did was sit around talking to your imaginary friends and look at fish the whole time.” Ino snorts, arms crossed over her chest, “Taking all the credit for things your team did.”

Shisui hops down from his spot atop the caravan, and Ryoichi watches with a raised eyebrow from his spot next to where he’d been sitting as Shisui slowly and deliberately sticks his hand through the side of Ino’s head and wiggling his fingers on the other side. The body-wracking shiver that Ino gives makes Sakura bite the inside of her lip to keep from laughing. 

An stern voice pops up from behind Ino, “Sakura-san was the nicest person from the whole group of shinobi who came that day. None of them came into the village to ask what was happening, not even the adult on their team.” A little old lady hobbles her way over, cane in hand as she looks down on Ino when she reaches them, and Sakura can see Shikamaru and Choji watching from the other side of the caravan, “It’d be best not to speak of things you don’t know about, girly.”

Red creeps into Ino’s cheeks, “Are any of you sure she was even talking to you? She’s crazy.” She blurts, turning to stare at Sakura with pupiless eyes, “And everyone in Konoha knows it.”

***

The black mass of eyes and teeth and blood and bone that loomed over the man’s back was real.

“Sakura-chan look at me.” 

She couldn’t. She knew that if she looked away something awful would happen.

“Sakura-chan, you’re sick.” The man explained, “The only people in the room are you and me.”

It grinned at her with several bloodied maws.

It was real, right?

The man sighed, and wrote something down on his clipboard.

That night, her arms were encased in gore, and Sakura screeched and moved to claw it off. Two men who’d been waiting outside of the room for something like this to happen, grabbed her by the arms and held her back as she thrashed and screamed while the thing slithered its way toward her face. Her thrashing became more intense when it began to creep toward her eyes.

One of the rotting children who stood watch by the door on the inside yanked on one of the men’s arms hard and Sakura didn’t waste the opportunity to tear the thing off of her face.

She’s not crazy.

The blood under her nails was not her own.

***

The woman waits for anyone to dispute the claim, then looks Ino up and down, “Your name, girl.” She turns to look at the boys peeking around from the other side, “You two as well.” 

“Yamanaka Ino.” She states proudly.

“...Nara Shikamaru.”

“Akimichi Choji.”

The old woman hums, and turns to meet Sakura’s blank gaze, “Your last name was Haruno, yes?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

A smile twitches at the corner of her wrinkled lips for a fraction of a second before she turns her cold eyes back to Ino, “Yamanaka Ino, Nara Shikamaru, and Akimichi Choji of Konoha.” She repeats their names back to them, and the three of them nod, Shikamaru more hesitantly than the others.

Sakura watches the woman step into the circular pavilion in the middle of the village connecting each road to the village, and Ryoichi barks a laugh when the woman stamps her cane into the center stone three times. The three knocks of wood against stone was not able to be heard above the hustle and bustle of the village center, but the residents of Wave turned to the center of the village nonetheless. 

The chatter doesn’t cease, the marketplace continues to be just as lively as it was beforehand, and the old woman doesn’t say anything or make any other movements besides the three knocks, but the demons that follow her cackle and scream.

When Hikaru returns from inside the store, Sakura can feel the eyes of the village on them as they attach the caravan to the pull-along and push it back onto the water heading toward Honey.

There is an echo of three knocks in every chuckle of the demons.

❦❦❦

It takes another day to reach Honey and seeing as a majority of their trip was on water there was little worry of being ambushed by bandits, and Sakura didn’t dare bring civilians closer to the Bloody Mist than the very outskirts of Water Country. 

They part with the Yoshidas after two days of travel, and Chikara hugs Sakura’s legs as a thank you while his parents give them each a polite bow.

(She tries not to think about how the bow toward her is much deeper.)

The second client, the one that qualifies the C-rank as a double-escort, is an older man in his late 50s with demons nipping at his heels when he arrives who introduces himself as Sakamoto Tsukasa. Ryoichi tells her he’s a representative from the Fire Daimyo’s court.

(Something in her chest hisses and spits at him with a burning hatred.) 

Sakura doesn’t like him.

❦❦❦

The time it takes to cross back into Wave is halved without a caravan to take on and off the water with each stop, and they make it to the docks only 52 hours after they’d left with the Yoshidas. This time, the trip through the village is different. Every face she sees is friendly and welcoming when she passes by, but when she turns away, the gazes become cold and calculated when aimed at the genin she travels with.

“The old woman put your unit on the village shit list, kid.” Ryoichi smirks, slinking along to her left with his carefree slouch, “It’s an old Water tradition, for an Elder to declare individuals enemies of the people like that.”

Shisui slings an arm around her shoulders on her right with an amused smile, “The only reason they’re allowed within the borders of Wave is because they’re with you.”

“And because they don’t want to make an obvious slight against Konoha.” Ryoichi adds, and gives her a sly look out of the corner of his eye, “But trust me, if they have any other missions through here they won’t be purchasing anything from Wave.”

Sakura raises an eyebrow in Shisui’s direction, and he moves to walk backwards in front of her so she can see his face while answering her unvoiced question, 

“You were the only one to question the villagers about what was happening with Gato, Pinky-chan. Hatake and the genin watched over the bridge, sure.” He shrugged, “But they didn’t watch over the construction because it would help Wave. They watched over the construction because it was a mission.” A demon tries to trip him up and Shisui gives a little skip over it with finger-guns in her direction with a bright and cheeky smile, “You watched over the village because you wanted to help.”

❦❦❦

They finish the double-escort two days earlier than Sakura thought they would, and the fact that none of her teammates wanted anything to do with her throughout the entire mission was probably to thank for it.

The trip to the Hokage’s office is quick after they make it past the entrance gates and drop off Tsukasa, and Danzo awaits them at the office

On the other side of the desk are two of the Sannin and Uzumaki Naruto.

Sakura barely blinks before stepping forwards and handing over the mission scroll, “Double escort C-rank assigned by interim Hokage Shimura Danzo, no complications to or from the land of Honey. All clients and shinobi alive and accounted for.”

The glint that the man always seems to have when Sakura is around is back, and she hates it. Shisui growls on her left, and Ryoichi clenches a senbon between his teeth, “Very good, Young Sakura.” He glances to the genin behind her, “Team ten.” The chuunin at the side of his desk hands them each an envelope with their allotted pay and Sakura can feel the stares of the three others in the room. “Team ten, you are dismissed.”

Sakura keeps her eyes on Danzo as the man gestures for the chuunin from before to shut the door behind the genin.

“You’ve returned just in time, Young Sakura, the rest of your team is just about to be awoken by our brand new Hokage. Shall we leave?”

“So they didn’t immediately wake up the two people from the torture genjutsu as soon as the person who can do it arrived?” Shisui asks, voice as dry as Suna, “Yeah, cool, okay.”

Sakura bites the inside of her lip to avoid smiling, “Yes, Danzo-sama.”

❦❦❦

Honestly, it's very anticlimactic. One minute they’re asleep, and the next they’re awake.

The snake in Sasuke’s seal wraps itself tightly around his neck like a noose as it flicks its tongue out at her in greeting, and Sakura blinks back.

Kakashi is as annoying as ever, but Sakura can see the shadow of regret that creeps into his iris when he gazes at Naruto. 

“Ne, since the two of you are awake now, I’m gonna go.” Sakura says once the adults decide to leave the team alone. 

“Sakura-chan, you haven’t seen any of us in a month and you already want to leave?!” Naruto exclaims, 

“Maa, Sakura-chan that’s not very nice.”

Sakura looks between Naruto standing in between them to Kakashi and Sasuke sitting in their hospital beds and with a dead gaze and says, “I mean, it’s not like you died.” Shisui snorts and Ryoichi barks out a laugh, “And I just got back from a mission.”

They all seem to finally realize what Sakura is wearing, and Sasuke looks furious as he asks, “What is that?”

She glances down at herself and deadpans, “Have you ever heard of a jacket.”

“You know what I meant.” He growls, and Sakura rolls her eyes in response, 

“Whoop-dee-doo, Sakura got a promotion, can I leave now? I have things to do.”

“ You got a promotion?”

“Sasuke-kun there’s no need to-” Kakashi starts, 

“You can’t even tell when something is real or not and you made chuunin?” He scoffs, “What, are they just handing out promotions to crazies now?”

( There’s blood under her nails. )

She smiles with no mirth, “Must be.”

( It is not her own .)

❦❦❦

Sakura prowls the streets of the Red Light District that night.

“Shh sweetheart, really you should be flattered.” Sakamoto Tsukasa purrs at a shaking girl Sakura recognized as nine-year-old Sasaki Rei, “It’s a big compliment to get attention from a guy like me, I promise I’ll be gentle.”

**TW**

Sakura remembers the day Shinju finally led her to her body.

Remembers how it had been left to rot in an alley dumpster, bare. 

How she could see the handprints double the size of her thighs on Shinju’s wrists and hips even when half of her had begun to decompose. 

The dried blood between her legs.

The way Shinju stared blankly down at herself, and whispered,

“ I didn’t want to. I was so scared. I begged him to let me go. I begged him to stop. I cried that it hurt. He told me to shut up and wrapped his hand around my neck and then, ” How she had turned to her, “ then it didn’t hurt anymore. ”

Sakura remembers returning home, locking herself in the bathroom where no one, alive or dead, would bother her.

She cried until she vomited.

**TW END**

She honestly couldn’t tell you what happened.

One minute Sakamoto Tsukasa is alive, and the next his head is separated from his body, hanging by the hair in her hand like a war trophy and the taste of blood on her tongue.

Sakura turns back around to the girl, covered in blood with a severed head in her hands, and the girl trembles as her knees give out. Sakura releases the head with a sick squelch to wrap her arms around the girl.

“I was so scared, Shinigami-sama!” She sobs, covering her eyes with one of her arms, “I told him I didn’t want to! I begged him to let me go!”

( For a moment, Sakura can hear another girl’s voice overlapping this one. )

“I know.” Sakura whispers, voice cracking, “I know.”

Rei’s mother sobs when her daughter is returned to them by Sakura, and her father drops into a full dogeza, voice rough with tears as he thanks her.

❦❦❦

The village puts out an APB to find the one responsible for the death the next morning.

Rei’s father comes forward as the killer and the actions that lead to Sakamoto Tsukasa’s demise are released, and many citizens of the Red Light District come forward with similar experiences.

Sasaki Ryuu is sentenced to death despite it.

The man gives the crowd a smile empty of regret, “May Shinigami-sama grant me unhindered passage into the beyond.”

His head is sent to the Fire Daimyo.

Chapter Text

In his memories, there is a woman with blonde hair and eyes greener than Konoha’s forest. She sighs at him with a smile pulling at pink lips and teases him about something he can’t hear.

He thinks she is the most beautiful being he has ever seen.

( Who is she? )

There is an echo of laughter. He thinks one is his.

He knows the other belongs to her.

( He knows he could listen to it forever, and never get tired of it. )

❦❦❦

In his memories, the woman hands him something small and delicate. He looks down at what he holds in his arms, and sees only a smudge of petal pink.

( It is the most important thing he has ever touched. Something more precious than anything. )

Another voice joins the echo, young and bright. He thinks he knew it once. He cannot remember who it belongs to.

( His heart aches and he does not know why. )

❦❦❦

A girl with petal pink hair asks, “ Did you set yourself on fire again, Tou-san? ”

With embers in his hair he pouts and responds, “ Sacchan, I didn’t. ”

The woman says, “ You’re smoking dear. ”

There is a trilogy of laughter and the smell of smoke.

❦❦❦

His name is Haruno Kizashi. He works as a medic. He lives in Konoha. He has a wife whose name he cannot remember. He has a daughter whom he calls Sacchan. These are the things he knows.

He thinks that he has lost something incredibly important to him.

( There is smoke. )

( His wife cries. )

❦❦❦

The blonde woman, ( His wife. His wife. His wife. ) stands before him draped in expensive silk, cheeks painted red with exhilaration. There are tears running down his face that she wipes away with a lovesick smile. 

This is his wedding day.

Her name is Mebuki. Kizashi loves her with every molecule in his body.

❦❦❦

Mebuki hands him something small and delicate. He looks down at what he holds in his arms, and in them is a babe with petal pink hair. She blinks up at him with forest green eyes.

They name her Sakura.

She is the most important thing in his life.

❦❦❦

Someone outside yells that the village is under attack just before the scent of smoke reaches them. Mebuki clings to him in worry.

“ We have to meet Sakura at the Monument. ” He shouts, clinging to her just as much.

The ground shakes.

A snake larger than the outer walls tears through the street, whipping its tail into every building it passes.

The house comes down.

Everything goes black.

❦❦❦

( A grieving, broken scream haunts his unconscious mind. )

( It sounds like his daughter. )

❦❦❦

His eyes open. He can’t feel his body, he can feel his heart beat harshly. Can hear it on the monitor beside his bed. 

( It stutters .)

A head of petal pink hair lays at the side of his bed. There is no sign of his wife and he knows, that she is dead.

“ Sa…kura .” His throat is on fire, and his daughter doesn’t stir. Her chest moves up and down slowly with every breath she takes.

( It stutters. )

She’s alive.

He wonders if Mebuki knew that their daughter was alive, before her death.

He tries to flex the hand in hers, and it doesn’t even twitch.

( It stutters. )

His eyes linger on her. His petal.

His greatest achievment.

( There is a trilogy of laughter in his memories. )

He hopes Mebuki got to know she was alive.

( It stutters. )

He wishes that he could hug her, tell her that everything was going to be alright. Tell her how proud of her he is.

He wishes he could tell her that he would have found a way to burn the world to ashes if she had asked.

( It stutters. )

He prays that she will be happy.

“ Sor…ry, Sacc…han. ” A weak smile pulls at the corner of his mouth, a sardonic and painful thing. “ My beau..tiful petal. ”

( It stutters. )

He hopes Mebuki knew. But its okay if she didn’t.

( It stops. )

He’ll tell her himself.

❦❦❦

Time is a funny thing.

One minute, Haruno Kizashi is comatose. The next, he is awake.

One minute, Haruno Kizashi is alive. The next he is dead.

Time is a funny thing.

One minute, Haruno Sakura has a reason to stay in a village she holds no love for. 

The next she does not.

Chapter Text

surprise Shawty, this fic is now being rewritten because this version is... so incredibly messy omg, and normally i wouldn't be one to write a note like this announcing this (which i should probably do anyways lol)

but i wanted to let everyone subscribed to this work (thank you btw ily <3) know instead of them just... never receiving an update and thinking it was thrown into the void lmao, also sorry its been six months since y'all last heard from me my grandma died and then my aunt McKilled herself ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

anyway as you can see this is now in a new series titled fics so raw their still breathing instead of the many shades of sakura series, and the rewrite is now in that series under the og name "nyctophilia"

there should also be a link at the bottom in the "works inspired by this one" section, as well as;

• Dead Men Tell Tall Tales by an_OH94
• Monsters Born and Made by IonCoffin

Which you should definitely read they are just muah chefs kiss.

i don't know how to end this note (announcement???) so i guess i'll see you on the flip side