Chapter Text
She stops liking the feel of her chest after Sasuke makes her believe he's thrust his arm though it. Of all the things he's done gone and fucked up in her life, she didn't expect her chest to be one of them.
Sakura's never paid much attention to it. She's on the smaller side considering Ino and Hinata, and her shishou, but it's not something that ever bothered her before. She's a kunoichi; her body is a tool, a weapon, one that she must take care of and one that she must use. There's little time for insecurity. Besides, Ino and Hinata had to spend a fortune on bras that didn't fuck up their backs. Sakura is fine on the itty bitty titty committee, thank you very much.
Until Sasuke, in his infinite wisdom, decides that it's a good idea to put her under a genjutsu so real, she can physically feel the way his fingers dig into the tissue of her breast. Then past the ribcage, through muscle and bone and sinew, and out again on the other side.
Sakura's a medic. She's seen worse injuries. But she's never felt one quite that real. Genjutsu were a bitch and a half; they were all in your head, but that was their power. Perception is reality, and when someone fucks with your perception, they fuck with your reality.
Which is why Sakura is having an incredibly difficult time living in her own skin. It's strange, to feel alien in her own body. She's always been taught that there was no time for self consciousness. Her little diet phase when she was in the academy was the most obvious indication of how little attention she paid to that bit of advice from her mother.
It isn't that she doesn't like the feel of her own skin. It isn't that she doesn't like her breasts. She just finds it - kind of hard to look at them, to deal with them. Whenever she has to put on a bra, she's suddenly stuck in that moment, with Sasuke's fingers tearing in through her flesh, breaking her bones like tissue paper, like nothing. And then she's hyperventilating. Which is - the opposite of how she should be spending her time.
So Sakura does the reasonable thing. If she's having a difficult time touching her breasts, she'll bind them. Kunoichi did that often during the Warring States Period, and on until standard athletic bras were invented. Binding wasn't always healthy; it was easy to crack a rib, puncture a lung if the binding was done too tight. But as time went on, and development in women's fashion became, well, a thing there was little need for binding as it was practiced in the olden days.
She figures that if she brings it up at her counseling sessions (free and mandatory for all shinobi and civilians after the war, bless her shishou) and she starts circumventing the awful flashbacks that come with putting her hands on herself, she'll be killing two birds with one stone.
She heads to a kunoichi clothing supply store and rifles through the bra selection, ultimately coming up short. Nothing is exactly how she wants it to be; the fits aren't right, the colors are too loud, and so on. Not to mention how difficult it is to try things on when the entire problem is the fact that she doesn't want to touch herself.
She's about to scream and go to the training grounds for a good old fashioned rage quit when a kunoichi a head taller than her with a sympathetic look in her eye sidles up beside her.
"Need any help?" the woman asks.
Sakura looks at her shoulder where a name tag that reads 'Tsuyu' is pinned.
"Ah, yes, Tsuyu-san," Sakura says, flushing at being caught pre-tantrum. "None of these are working. I need a bit more, uh compression. All around."
Tsuyu hums and begins flipping through the racks of things that Sakura has just given up on. Then, the taller woman takes a step back and looks her up and down.
"I think maybe you need a proper fitting, so that you can get something custom," the woman says. "You're already on the smaller side, and the stock that we have for people of your build is kind of limited at the moment."
Sakura nods; of course. The war is over, so people are stocking up on everything they lost during it. Tsuyu gives her a shrug that says 'what can you do?'.
"Okay, Tsuyu-san," Sakura says. "But I'll warn you, I'm a little - defensive about my chest."
Tsuyu smiles at her in a way that says this woman has seen it all and then some.
"I'll be careful, Miss - ?"
"Sakura," she supplies.
Tsuyu nods.
"I'll be very careful, Miss Sakura. You wouldn't be the first jumpy kunoichi we needed to fit, and I doubt you'll be the last."
The fitting, by some miracle, actually isn't so bad. Tsuyu keeps up constant chatter as she uses her tape measure to gauge the width of Sakura's shoulders, the full length of her arms and torso, and her bust. She hardly notices the older woman get even close to her chest though Sakura is fully aware of the fact that Tsuyu is in her personal space.
"Like I said," Tsuyu says, giving her a cheeky wink, "I've had lots of practice."
Sakura lets herself smile in a relieved sort of way while Tsuyu jots down her measurements, then disappears out of the private dressing rooms into the stock room. She returns not even two minutes later with three bundles under her arms.
"These are close to your exact measurements," Tsuyu says, "but they aren't perfect. Try them out for a week or two, see how you like the fit of each of them. Then, come back and we'll go from there."
Tsuyu hands her the bundles, and Sakura is almost vibrating with excitement. Tsuyu leads her to the cash register, with her clipboard still in hand.
"Once you tell me which fit you liked the best, we can have something made custom for you and we can have the custom ones exchanged for the off-the-rack stuff, okay?"
Sakura forks over her money to Tsuyu with the most grateful expression she can put on her face. She gushes her thanks, and Tsuyu waves kindly at her as she bolts out of the kunoichi supply store back to her apartment to try on her new clothes.
They're weird! Really weird!
The first one is too lose around her ribs; she feels like her breasts will get squished down like pancakes and flop out beneath the fabric. The second one is also weird, and much too tight around the shoulders.
The third one isn't just right, but it's the closest to right that she feels. It's plain and black with a little Konohagakure leaf stitched in white on the left shoulder. It's comfortable around her back, and she practices breathing heavily in it like the instructions on the packaging told her to.
It's her first binder. And it's really, really comfortable. It pinches a little under the arms, but she's dealt with worse. What matters is that she's flat as a washboard, and when she hugs Naruto when he comes home from a sparring session, she doesn't feel anything.
She doesn't feel anything. His chest presses against hers and there's no squish. No ghost of a feeling of a fist hurtling through her chest. It's just - not there anymore.
So of course she bursts into tears and Naruto trips over himself to figure out what he did to make his roommate cry. She waves him off because he hasn't done anything wrong, but he produces a tub of her favorite mochi ice cream from the groceries he picked up on his way back in penance.
Sakura puts two spoons under the warm water and splits half the pint with Naruto, feeling really, really comfortable in her own skin.
Orochimaru kind of hits her out of nowhere. Not literally speaking, but the thought of him.
He's on lockdown in a particular compound in the village, the location of which only Tsunade as the Godaime and Kakashi as the Rokudaime are allowed to know. Tsunade and Kakashi both were more apt to correct mistakes; they didn't feel as fond of Orochimaru as the Sandaime did, and it shows in the way the Snake Sannin is imprisoned, without the ability to create ninjutsu, sequestered in the village to die.
It was a prison sentence, and one that was probably too kind for him. But that's not what Sakura's thinking about.
Her shishou is a little day drunk. This is not a particularly uncommon occurrence. What is uncommon, is the way her mimosa loosed lips drawl about how Jiraiya had thought Orochimaru was a girl when they were children.
"His first crush was on Orochimaru," Tsunade drawls, her hiccup turning into a summery laugh. "When he found out Orochimaru was a boy, Jiraiya was pretty pleasantly surprised to find out that he was an equal opportunity harlot."
Her shishou barks out a laugh at her own joke, and Sakura giggles, pleasantly tipsy herself.
"He could do this weird thing with his own pheromones too," Tsunade says, eyes suddenly bright. She wrinkles her nose, "Not Jiraiya. Orochimaru. Snakes can do that, he could, too. So he'd dress up like a woman sometimes for honeypot missions and he'd fiddle with his own biology to just make himself more like a woman. Batshit insane!"
Her shishou plops her chin in her hand and groans.
"He never told me how he did it, the bastard," she grumbles. "He's a miracle of science without all his fancy demon resurrection bullshit, and he doesn't even share the wealth with his best friend, who's entire job is studying biology."
Sakura carefully steers the rant towards more pleasant topics, like the unreasonable party the Godaime threw once the war was over and an appropriate time had passed before pissing on Shimura Danzou's grave wasn't frowned upon.
She doesn't think much of Orochimaru and his curious pheromone changing ability until the next day when she's fitting on her binder.
Orochimaru had looked incredibly like a woman the first time she had seen him, in the Forest of Death all those years ago. Even when he pulled off the woman's face, their features were still primarily the same. The biggest difference were the paler skin and his purple clan markings.
Sakura had only seen him once, and that was during his trial for crimes against the village. And even then, despite his strong jaw and sharp cheekbones, his hair had been done up in a ponytail that left plenty of bangs to sweep his face. He looked softer, almost feminine.
She remembers Haku, too, from even further back in her history. How Naruto had been convinced they were a girl, and then a boy, and then they were all a little unsure about the false hunter nin.
Sakura remembers the pink swell of Haku's lips, clearly coated in some kind of paralytic poison they were immune to. How the poison shined like a faint lip gloss. She remembers Haku's layered clothes, how she had never been able to deduce whether or not Haku had breasts.
Sakura looks at herself in the mirror, her short hair pulled out of her face in a high tail not unlike Shikamaru's, her bound breasts, and her baggy sweatpants. She purses her lips, puts her hands on her hips and examines her reflection.
The idea occurs to her, and she steals out of her room and into Naruto's down the hall. She picks quickly through his clothing, nabbing a pale blue shirt that's probably Sasuke's, and a pair of navy chuunin issue cargo pants.
She heads back into her room and dresses slowly, keeping her back to the mirror as she does. She binds the hem of the cargo pants with white tape the way Kakashi-sensei does, then slips on a pair of blue unisex shinobi sandals instead of her usual black boots. She leaves the shirt loose over her waistband so no attention can be drawn to her chest. She hesitates with her hand over her chuunin vest; maybe? It only functions to further hide her breasts, so she shoves it on, too.
She leaves her hitai-ate on the red ribbon Ino gave her a lifetime ago. Then, she reaches her hands up, and tugs her bangs back into the ponytail so that her whole face is visible. As an afterthought, she grabs a blue bandanna from her dresser, one she uses when she works out or needs to keep her hair out of her eyes, and slaps that on, too.
When she turns around to look at herself in the mirror, she only recognizes herself part way. There's a little dissonance, and it's one she recognizes from the way she looked at Haku, and the way she looked at Orochimaru.
She looks at herself in the mirror and thinks, 'Okay. Yeah. Yeah, this is - I can do this.'
She doesn't know what possesses her to go outside.
She's killing time, she knows she is, but she doesn't mind. It's strange. Like, really strange. Liberating, almost. And it's not because people don't recognize her, but it's because of the way she's treated now.
Kunoichi demand respect. They have to. It's twice as hard for them in the shinobi world, so they're harder to survive. It's more common for a kunoichi walking down a street to have a path cleared for her by shinobi and civilians who know better than to get in her way.
Sakura had that effect on people, and she knew it. People didn't bump into her. They gave her a wide berth. The boys on the other hand, could get fucked.
Sakura has seen a couple dozen of instances wherein the more unassuming boys like Shino or Kiba or Shikamaru, hell even Sai and Chouji, will get jostled as they moved in the streets. And it wasn't really out of disrespect, it was just that men were the face of the shinobi world. They were a dime a dozen. Eventually, you stopped noticing them. Kunoichi you noticed, and you immediately got the fuck out of the way.
So the first time some random civilian bumps against her shoulder, then apologizes and continues on their way, it's jarring. And it's actually kind of cool.
It happens three more times. Rebuilding the village is difficult work, and it's all hands on deck all of the time. Sakura's picked up some carpentry skills herself; she's good at moving huge pieces of boulder and rubble out of the way, but she's also become deft at building houses, which is so peculiar. But she keeps busy. All that of course, is to say that everyone's got some place to be. Everyone is part of the rebuilding effort.
But it's so jarring! So different than the way she's treated when she's presenting as a kunoichi. And she kind of really likes it.
She's ducked into a shop, peering at honing oil and ceramic whetstones when an older man jostles her. The movement is abrupt the way only a civilian can move, and it jostles the two stones she's been weighing out of her hands and onto the ground.
"Oh, my apologies, shinobi-san," the old man says as the stones clatter to the floor. "Let me get that for you."
"Oh, no," Sakura says, quick to stop him. "It was just a mistake. Let me get them."
She crouches down to gather the whetstones into her hands and stands back up, looking them over for any damages. When she's satisfied the drop hasn't damaged the merchandise, she waves them lightly in her hands.
"See? No harm done," she says.
The old man gives her a jovial smile and inclines his head lightly to her.
"Still, I am very sorry for bumping into you. I was just rushing about, wasn't I? I'm happy I didn't cause you too much trouble."
Sakura shakes her head and says, "No, sir, it was no trouble at all."
"Yes, well," the older man says, "I'm grateful for that."
He inclines his head towards her vest, and then his smile becomes softer in a sad way, and his voice comes out grateful in the way that Sakura's patients are grateful when they come back up after surgery.
"Thank you for your service," he says. "We are all in a great debt to brave young men like you. Thank you, shinobi-san, and have a pleasant day."
The man beats a smiling retreat, but Sakura stands there in the weapons shop for a minute too long, brain working overdrive on what should be a very simple problem. That really isn't even a problem.
"Sir," she says, turning over her shoulder, but the man was already gone.
And as the door clicks shut behind him and he disappears into the crowd, Sakura wonders what she was even going to say to him. That she was a kunoichi? The Godaime's second apprentice, and a woman?
Her mouth shuts on her protest because - well. Maybe she isn't.
It falls on her head like a ton of bricks, the fact that she isn't a girl. Or maybe she is. Definitely is, but also isn't. Maybe? Probably. Sort of. Yes.
She purchases honing oil and both of the stones because she's going on autopilot, trying to figure out what exactly had been so strange yet - also kind of really nice about that old man mistaking her for a boy. And how oddly nice it is for the people on the street to jostle her like the boys are jostled.
Sakura gets home pretty quickly, fumbles with her keys, and steps in through the front door. Naruto is home, just bringing a hot mouthful of instant noodles to his lips when she steps inside. His eyebrows furrow.
"Is that Sasuke's shirt?" he asks. He looks from the top of her head to her feet. "Are those my pants?"
Sakura opens her mouth to deliver a beautiful explanation of the situation, about how it began with a binder, and had culminated in curiosity and an experiment. She's even planning on including a treatise on her blossoming gender identity, and how the rigid roles of the binary cage everyone from experiencing life within the shades of gray between woman and man.
Instead, what she says is, "I think I'm a boy."