Work Text:
Sakura is five years old, and the other village children won't stop making fun of her.
They make fun of her hair, pink and stupid and too bright for her stupid face. They insult her forehead, big and wide and white like an unmarked canvas, even when she covers it with her bangs. They smeared dirt over her cheeks and on her clothes and push her when she tries to walk past them. They call her names and look at her like she's less than the dirt under their feet, if they look at her at all instead of like she isn't there, a thing -
And she is five, and has never known kids who do not act like this. Her mother works when she can find it, but times are hard even five years after the Kyuubi attack, and jobs outside of the reconstructive efforts are rare. No one has use for a civilian ex-merchant, even one from the once-famed Haruno clan. Her father has better luck, but not much, because he was born outside the village, outside the whole damn Land of Fire, and no one trusts someone that could be an enemy infiltrator. So they cannot afford daycare, and her only interactions with kids her age are the ones where she comes away with tears in her eyes.
She learns at the age of five how to walk without being seen, how to tilt her head in just the right way to get the bullies to leave her alone, how to dress so they don't notice her as much. She learns six different ways to walk home from the park, and to never take the same way twice in a row. She teaches herself how close she has to be to an adult to make them leave her alone and how to hide in plain sight.
She tries to tell an adult exactly one time. After, she never tries again.
- -
She is seven, and attending the ninja academy.
They are designing flower arrangements for art class, and the sensei has sent them outside the classroom to pick the wildflowers that grow on the hills. It is a test in many skills, and Sakura knows that they won't just be judged on beauty, but also on what types of plants they were able to find and how a kunoichi would be able to use them for taking down an enemy nin.
There aren't many flowers where the sensei is standing, probably a test to see how far the students will venture to complete their assignment. Sakura can see Amy and her entourage of brightly-dressed brats on the prowl for someone to make miserable, though, and so she stays close to the bare-but-safe hillside with Marumi-sensei.
A bad grade is better than Amy in a good mood, and the pink-haired girl can see her getting angrier by the second, because people have started getting smart and no one travels in less than groups of three. Angry enough to try to mess with the popular blonde girl that Sakura sometimes imagines talking to, who is picking white flowers without a care in the world, just separate enough from her friends to make easy prey. Amy is a civilian, and should know better than to try to mess with a clan heir like the Yamanaka. Sakura pointedly doesn't watch as the young bully is taken down.
And yet despite all of her precautions they catch her after class. Amy is trying to re-assert her dominance. Sakura knows because it is in every psychology book she could get her hands on at the library, and some books on dogs, too. She bows her head and shuffles her feet and lets the insults wash over her. No one is coming to save her, she thinks, because no one cares enough to try. Amy pushes her into a stinking puddle, rubbing gutter slime into her hair, smearing it over her cheeks and mouth, and Sakura is absolutely still.
Somehow, she has gotten her hands on a pair of teacher's scissors. Not the small, blunt edged ones used by the students but the kind that are razor-edged and almost as long as Sakura's forearm. Amy holds them to her throat as two other girls hold her arms, keeping her still. She doesn't know what Amy is doing – for a moment she thinks desperately that Amy is going to kill her, because she looks so angry and how much farther is killing her body when she's already attempted murder on her spirit? - but the scissors move from her neck to her hair. Over the roaring in her ears she can hear Amy saying something about her hair, and then one of the girls pulled the thin strands taut.
And then her pink hair is laying in scattered lines around her, in muddy clumps and she is so scared she could choke.
Amy pats her cheek condescendingly, and her friends release her arms.
She is left sitting there, hair falling and fallen around her knees, tears dripping down her face. The scissors have left her nearly bald, the cut patchy and uneven, but it is the things not so obviously seen that hurt the most.
When she goes home that night, her parents don't say anything. Sakura isn't sure they even notice.
- -
Sakura is ten, and she doesn't look in the mirror anymore.
Her hair has been kept short by necessity. Sometimes she wished she could grow it longer, because even if she knows it isn't safe she wishes the dark haired boy would look at her. Every time she lets it grow beyond her shoulders, some of the girls corner her somewhere and shears it, though, so she contents herself with keeping it healthy instead. She hates it, because it is another choice taken from her, one among hundreds.
Her skin is pale from too much time out of the sun, instead of the healthy golden glow of most of her classmates, because staying away from the training grounds is one of her better ideas, and the library never turns her away. Consequently, she knows more useless information than most of her classmates combined, including a memorization of period plays and four hundred proper ways to serve tea. She spends more time skulking in places with jounin and chuunin adults than is probably healthy, but they don't seem to mind. They don't expect anything from her, and she doesn't trust them, and the other kids don't go near her with them around. Being pale and weak is a small price to pay.
She dresses in muted grays and reds, hints of green showing through. Her clan crest blazes white on the back of her wine red shirt, the only note of light in her ensemble. Bright reds get you noticed, Sakura knows, naturally drawing the eye, so she avoids her clan colors. That hurts the most, because her clan is dead – this is the memory of what was once a great force, taken from her mother during the last Great Shinobi War. A survivor of a dead clan, red-and-white lost in the sea of murdered civilians. But she knows what will keep her safe is better than what will make her mother proud. The disappointed stares still cut her to the bone.
The person who looks out of her mirror is too old, with broken-bottle green eyes and faded pink hair and a forever kind of frown. She is a washed out reflection of the person that she could have been, like someone took a brush and scrubbed the color right out of her, the happy and the sad and the angry. Her reflection is strange, and ugly, and not ever what she expects it to be, though it is the only one she ever sees.
Looking in the mirror, Sakura knows everything they say about her is true. How can it not be, when she can see it staring her straight in the face?
- -
She is twelve, and waiting for her Jounin sensei.
Her fingers shake as she is left in the classroom alone with her team. She is terrified.
Neither notice. They are intent on each other. The blonde – Naruto, whom she knows is kind, who would not hurt her but is too dangerous to be around because everyone else hates him – is bugging the black haired boy – Sasuke, who’s family is dead, who’s equally dangerous to be around for entirely different reasons – who is ignoring him.
More than anything she just wants to disappear, because this is dangerous and she is afraid. Ami and the other girls had cornered her during lunch because Iruka hadn’t been there and she hadn’t been fast enough to find another open classroom, and they’d been worse than usual. The bruises are already blooming black under her clothes, and the stink of mud, trash and rotting foods lingers around her in a cloud. Trash, they’d said, laughing, suits you perfectly. Even a trip to the locker room shower hadn’t dispelled all of it.
Time passes. She takes out a book because she knows it will make them leave her alone, and immerses herself in the history of the Wave Country. It is interesting, even if she’ll never actually need it. Sakura can’t shake her awareness of the two, though, her senses screaming danger danger at her. She doesn’t trust them, and without that she can’t feel at ease enough to simply concentrate on her book.
Idly, she wonders where their sensei is. Her parents’ hours have only increased since she was little, and she knows there isn’t anyone waiting for her at home, but she has chores to complete. She needs to go repair her bento box; Ami had taken the extra she carries around with her as a decoy and trashed it again, though most of the food had been salvageable.
Naruto has started pacing, rubbing his hands together, and Sasuke is staring out the window ignoring both of them. Sakura sighs; she is horribly distracted. The incident with Amy had taken up the entirety of the lunch period, and she hadn’t had the chance to eat her back-up bento. Breakfast was hours before.
She wants to say something when she sees the blond drag a stool over the door, already able to predict his actions. She doesn’t, the words sticking in her throat like bile, burning. He wouldn’t listen to her anyways, she consoles herself, because he’s too stubborn to listen to reason. It’s a thin excuse.
“This will show sensei,” he mumbles, giving a foxy grin. For a hazy moment, half her mind still lost in the pages of her book, she wonders if he could be a kitsune taken human form. It would suit his trickster nature, for all she knows that it’s a flight of fancy. There’s no more fox in him than in her or Sasuke or anyone else.
“Please don’t,” She mutters into the off-white pages. Sakura knows that the boy will ignore her, and she’s too annoyed at their tardy sensei to try to convince him further.
Her stomach feels like it’s shrivelling up against her spine, she’s so hungry. She’d kept putting off eating it because she’d been hoping that their sensei would show up and she’d be able to go, but that hadn’t been the case yet, and Sakura only has so much patience.
She sets aside the book and pulls the bento from her pack. The pink box is the normal size for a ninja of her age, which is half as large again as a normal bento, and stocked with the type of food that Sakura can make herself. The three-tiered masterpiece is one of the only things she actively keeps from Amy, because eating it is one of her few daily joys.
It, of course, immediately draws the attention of her two new teammates.
Naruto darts from the door to the desk, buzzing with excitement. “You have food!” Sakura can’t stop the urge to jolt back, not surprised but wary at his proximity to her and her food.
Sasuke looks at them and pretends he isn’t hungry.
“Yeah.” She stares at the blond for a few seconds, trying to hint that he should definitely back off. He doesn’t get the hint, and Sakura doesn’t want to give up the only happy moment in her day.
Finally she sighs and gives in. She just wants to eat. “You can share, I guess. Just don’t eat everything!”
The first tier is finger foods, nuts and dried fruits pressed into little sectioned off areas, edamame beans in their pods, and apples cut into thin slices. The apples have gone a little brown, but other than that it looks perfect, delicious, orderly. Naruto looks incongruously excited at the thought of fresh fruit, greedy hands immediately making for the apples. She doesn’t stop him - the edamame are her favorites, and she cares only a little for the apples.
“Would you like to join us, Sasuke-san?” Sakura offers. It would be a good way to get a head start on teamwork, at least. She’d often observed and read how sharing a meal brings people closer.
The boy grunts, but moves closer, takes the seat next to Naruto so that all three of them are squished into the same bench. He claims the berries for himself, popping them one by one into his mouth.
They finish the first tier in perfect silence between them.
Sakura pulls off the cover to the second part - an insulated bowl of miso soup, two tamagoyaki with different stuffings, and four octodogs - and slips her eating utensils from her kunai pouch. Ami was more likely to destroy her utensils if they were out in the open, and she’d taken to hiding them in better places where the girl and her lackeys couldn’t get to them when she’d first started bringing her lunch from home.
Sasuke takes the miso soup, and Naruto the octodogs. Sakura contents herself with the tamagoyaki, even though she truthfully prefers the soup. Now that she’s invited them to eat with her she’s not sure how to tell them what she wants to eat.
“What’s your name, anyways, pinkie?” Naruto mumbles, concentrating intensely on the octodogs.
Sasuke scoffs. “Weren’t you paying attention at all, dobe, when they did the team assignments? Her name’s Sakura.”
A silence falls again between the three of them, but the spell of disconnect between them had been broken. It does not last.
“...I’ve never spoken to you two before,” Sakura murmurs, pausing between bites of egg-bacon-garlic-y goodness. “It’s weird to think that I’m going to be part of your genin team for however long and I barely know your names.” She doesn’t meet their eyes - it’s an underhanded bit of manipulation, a dig for information. It makes her feel a little guilty, a little dirty, but she comforts herself with the thought that she’s a ninja now, and therefore it’s totally acceptable.
“How can you not know me?! I’m Naruto Uzumaki, and I’m going to be the next Hokage! Believe it!” The blonde boy grins. His canines are sharp like an Inuzuka’s.
“Dobe.” Sasuke mumbles, and then, “Sasuke Uchiha.” Under his words there’s a soft incredulity, like he can’t understand how she couldn’t know his name.
Of course she knows his name. She knows everyone’s name. “I’m Sakura Haruno. If we’re going to be part of a team from now on, we should introduce ourselves?”
“Like what?” Naruto says, voice pitched too loud for the empty room. She hides her wince. Sasuke is seemingly unaffected.
Sakura shrugs. “I guess just things we should know about each other?” She shrugs. She’s never actually had to introduce herself to a potential friend with any real success. The process is foreign to her. “What we like? And don’t like, and...” She doesn’t know what else to suggest.
“Hobbies and stuff!” Naruto catches the tail end of her sentence. “That’s a great idea, Sakura-chan!” He bites off a octodog leg, chewing loudly.
“Um, okay...” the kunoichi looks between the two boys, unsure. “I’ll go first?” Naruto nods excitedly, mouth stuffed with hotdogs. Sasuke slurps his soup and feigns disinterest. “I like reading and cooking. I dislike Ami and her friends, bullies, and hiding. My hobbies are hanging around the ninja bars listening to gossip, sneaking into the higher level areas of the libraries, and trying out new recipes. Now your turn.” She tilts her head at Sasuke and stuffs a bite of egg in her mouth to stave off talking.
“I like tomatoes, training, and getting stronger. I hate a certain man. My hobbies are getting stronger.” She thinks that’s really weird, but she doesn’t question it. Sakura hates Ami and her friends. She wonders if something like that happened to Sasuke, too, even if she can’t see the younger boy getting bullied. “Your turn, dobe.”
“Haha, dattebayo! I like ramen, and Iruka-sensei, and pulling pranks! I hate boring lectures and getting caught and the three minutes it takes for ramen to cook! My hobbies are pulling pranks and training!” He grins at the end of his little speech, giving them both a thumbs up.
“Quiet! There’s no need to be so loud, Naruto-san!” Sakura herself barely raises her voice above speaking level. She’s had practice in being quiet, if not calm.
“Dobe.”
“Hey! Don’t call me dobe, teme!” Both boys growled, standing from their chairs to glare across her at each other.
“Stop fighting!” Sakura snaps, standing herself. She plants one hand on each of their chests, pushing them apart with all the force she can muster. “Both of you stop it! We’re going to be a team pretty soon, and that means we’ll have to start working together! Work out your issues on the training field, don’t just go starting fights with each other for no reason!” She moves her hands from their chests to their shoulders, forcing them down to sit again on the bench. “Good.”
They’re still glaring at each other, but there’s not much she can do for that. They’ve finished the second tier, at least. She set aside the divider with a sigh, the click of the pink lacquered tray on the wood of the desk comfortingly familiar. The last layer is a bed of white rice with a dark purple pickled plum in it’s center, three serrated edged mint leaves pressed flat around it.
She passes around the two pairs of disposable wooden chopsticks that she keeps in her weapons pouch, next her own pair, which are pink with little yellow daisies. She’s had her utensils broken more times than she can count, by other’s design and by accident.
They split it almost-evenly between them. Naruto and Sasuke squabble quietly over the plum until Sakura snaps at them to just split it, and then laughs quietly at their disgusted faces. It was clear that neither had truly wanted it as much as they did not want the other to have it, and their pettiness is funny. She snags one of the mint leaves, chews it as the boys sputter from the taste of pickled plum.
Flavor bursts on her tongue, fresh and sweet and strong.
The boys laugh, and Naruto flicks rice at Sasuke’s scowling - no, pouting, cheeks puffed out and brow furrowed just that little bit - face.
Sakura smiles.
She feels, for the first time in many, many years, a glimmer of hope.
CHAPTER 2
Their sensei shows up just as Sakura is packing away her empty bento, the eraser perched above the door hitting his head with a muffled thump and a puff of chalk dust.
Sasuke sighs and Naruto cackles. Sakura stifles her own giggles when she looks at him, eyes following the chalk dust settling on his shoulders in white specks. It looks a little like dandruff.
The man smiles, mouth covered by a mask but his left eye crinkling in a way Sakura recognizes. “Hmmm...how do I put this? My first impression of you is...I hate you.” Sakura chokes on her intake of breath, and Naruto’s laughter cuts off completely. “Meet me on the roof in five minutes.” He disappears in a puff of smoke.
“Bastard,” Naruto mumbles. Sakura tilts her head in agreement and follows Sasuke up to the roof. She doesn’t say anything when Sasuke takes the long way, because she’s not sure if he’s doing it on purpose or if he just doesn’t know there is a faster way up to the roof.
They trudge up the stairs and take seats on the steps on one side of the roof. Sometimes it’s used as a stage,or a hang out by the students, but most of the time it’s blessedly empty. In one corner of the it she can see where she’d hidden a knapsack of emergency things where Ami wouldn’t look for them, hidden by shadows and the awkward way the buildings come together. She stalwartly doesn’t look in that direction.
Their sensei is already there, reading a little orange book. He tucks it away into his breast pocket at they take their seats, which is less comforting than perhaps it should be because Sakura knows exactly what kind of book that is. Icha Icha Paradise has its own little corner in the Shinobi library (the one she isn’t suppose to know about, but she isn’t that good at following the rules when they limit her reading options), and she’s gone there once before deciding that goal of reading the entire library or not, she isn’t interested in those.
“Yo,” he says. They stare at him. He scratches his fly away silver hair, lazy eyed and loose-limbed.
“Well?! Say something!” Naruto finally cries out, frustrated with the silence. Sasuke says nothing, but Sakura can tell he’s think the same thing as the two of them - that their sensei should hurry up.
“Yeah, yeah,” their sensei says. “So, let’s introduce yourselves.”
Naruto demands a demonstration, though they don’t learn much of anything from it. “You first, fishcake,” Kakashi demands.
“My name’s Uzumaki Naruto and I like ramen and pranks-“