Chapter Text
It is sunny out today; the sky is a vibrant, shocking sort of blue, and there isn’t a single cloud in sight. The air is cool but not cold, and the breeze that runs along her exposed hands feels the same.
It’s refreshing. It’s a good day to be refreshed: this is going to be a long, grueling journey, all bumpy roads and tired days. But northern Fire Country will be good for them: good people, good food, and good money.
It’ll serve as a distraction from . . . recent events.
Boxes surround her feet—all full of ready-for-import snacks, teas, home goods, lists on lists on lists of inventory, complete with a good chunk of rations for the road. Business will be good in the month they will reside in the Land of Iron.
The other merchants (their husbands, really) load boxes and children alike into their caravan.
Her husband and his closest friend stand to the side under the shade of a Konoha-green gazebo, taking turns at talking off the ear of the poor chunin at the front gate as they wait for the genin team assigned to them. The man has weapons strapped to his belt, a hitai-ate tied around his forehead, and scars littering his tan hands.
She frowns.
He’s ten years older than Sakura, and only one rank her senior. The thought only serves to push her further into the thoughts she’s been trying to escape for months, and she grits her teeth.
Mebuki has never understood the appeal of being a shinobi. And—with as much respect due to the Hidden Leaf’s finest, she will never understand Konoha’s collective obsession with power—why civilian children are even allowed into this awful, clan-centric system defined by pissing contests and psychological grievances.
She’d thought that her daughter’s—Sakura, her only child, the light of her life—dreams of becoming a kunoichi would be short-lived, the way her sweet obsession with embroidery and her (admittedly chilling) fascination with human anatomy had been.
The Academy was another means to that end. Her daughter would move on, find a new hobby every year of the next ten, and meet a good man. Someone of the Haruno family’s social standing, or higher, maybe even wealthier. Someone who could take care of her.
She exhales, momentarily turning her focus back to Konoha, wondering absently whether the genin team will ever show up.
A young girl approaches her, a year Sakura’s junior, barely twelve, and the youngest daughter of another member of their merchant party, and smiles politely, elegantly, before bowing her head.
“Mebuki-san, it’s time.” She offers her forearm, leading Mebuki to the second caravan’s entrance, tightening her grip as she climbs in.
The girl’s hands are soft, unmarred by kunai callouses and dirt under her fingernails. She is violently, desperately forced back into thoughts of Sakura and what she should have been.
Mebuki had assumed that her daughter would be no match for the Academy children, and who could blame her? These kids had been born to be soldiers; to be clan heads; to be power incarnate; to fulfill legacies and destinies and desperate dreams. She had thought that Sakura would bite off more than she could chew, that it was ill-fated from the start.
Haruno Sakura graduated at the top of her class.
It’s not to say that Mebuki was not proud of her daughter. But she is of the simple belief that there are more important things to life—settling down, getting married, having her grandchildren, being safe—than waiting to be better than the unsurpassable.
Sakura is in for a world of hurt, and Mebuki will not stand by and enable it. They have had countless fights over it, in the months since Sakura has graduated. Her daughter leaves the house before anyone else stirs, now, and gets home well after everyone has been pulled into uneasy slumber.
It’s been weeks since she’s stopped waiting.
It is at least fifteen more minutes before she hears footsteps, rustling, and the chunin’s mildly annoyed, “Kakashi, the updated missive.” Papers rustle from outside, and she has to stifle the, admittedly, unbecoming sigh that threatens to burst out of her mouth.
But then she thinks about it.
Mebuki’s breath catches in her throat. Hatake Kakashi, she thinks, mouth suddenly dry. She’s argued with this man over her daughter’s wellbeing more than once.
He is her teacher. He is also deeply against moral correctness, and has failed to see how her thirteen-year-old daughter is not ninja material, that he is wasting his time with her.
If anything, their arguments have only strengthened his resolve.
An apologetic chuckle sounds out as Hatake-san’s one eye scans the inside of this caravan. There is no recognition in his visible eye as his gaze falls upon Mebuki. He looks back out at the chunin. “Thank you, Kotetsu.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the direction of his voice shifts, and Mebuki peers out of the opening. “You three, stay out of trouble.”
“We will!” Uzumaki Naruto is not a pleasant sight for most, but his earnesty is enviable. He grins, brighter than the sun itself. “We got this, for sure!”
Sakura’s voice pierces its way through Mebuki’s thoughts, so sweet and soft and Sakura, as she steps forward, dressed in an ensemble of dark red pants and its matching sleeveless top, nothing like the dresses Mebuki had sewn her last year.
Sakura turns to the caravan’s occupants and recites, well-rehearsed, “He’s right. As shinobi of the Leaf, we will do all in our power to protect you.” She offers Mebuki an acknowledging nod and nothing more.
Mebuki bristles, but she keeps her composure despite the anger bubbling up into her throat. She’s not meant to be thinking about Sakura right now. As soon as they get to the Land of Iron, she won’t be.
Her daughter pays no mind to her struggle, instead looking pointedly at her left. “Right, Sasuke-kun?” Mebuki’s frown is driven deeper at her daughter’s tone.
Pointed, arguably rude, and so unlike the Sakura she raised. Especially to someone of such high status.
“Right.” The last Uchiha rolls his eyes at her as he comes into Mebuki’s view, voice devoid of any feeling.
“I want you all in formation,” Hatake-san calls out, loud and authoritative, and all three of his students turn to him. Sakura whispers something at her teammates, too quiet to make out, and Sasuke tries to stifle some kind of laugh. Naruto doesn’t even make any cover-up attempt, giggling boisterously and openly. The sound makes her head hurt worse.
The Uchiha boy shoves at him and spares the caravan one last, quick glance before he stalks off. Naruto and Sakura hurry to keep up with his pace, and Mebuki closes her eyes and leans the back of her head against the linen wall.
The caravan begins moving, the slow clop-clop-clop lulling her into some sort of tired resignation of the circumstances.
. ✦ .
Sakura tightens her grip on her backpack. It is a two-day trip to the Land of Iron at typical shinobi speed, and with the amount of merchants, something like twelve, thirteen, plus their wives and children, and all of the cargo, it could take a week just to get there.
She does not want to be here. But this is of her own doing. She’s known about this trip for at least two months, long before Kakashi was handed a well-paying C-rank and long before Sasuke and Naruto jumped at the idea of leaving the village for a glorified, paid training trip.
Sakura could have spoken up at any time, and Kakashi-sensei had given her an out once he’d seen her parents, whispering, “We can hand this off if you’d like to.”
But she didn’t take it. She considered, sure—she had hesitated, and Kakashi-sensei had looked so understanding that all she could do was stand there, near Konoha’s gate, right out of her father’s line of sight and say, “It’s okay. Don’t worry.”
This is her own fault.
Kakashi-sensei’s fleeting thumb rubs a circle into her shoulder, sparing her a moment of reprieve and an eye-smile as he walks past her. It’s reassuring, kind, and so very loving—and she is reassured, for just a moment. And then she spares a glance back to the caravan her mother resides in, to where her father is chatting away to one of his friends.
Suddenly, it’s not enough.
Naruto can tell. She knows he can because he’s been talking up a storm, even more so than usual, making a point to point out every “cool” rock he sees, every single bug that crosses their path and half-whispers, half-yells that, “Sasuke’s hair looks more like a chicken butt today than usual, don’t you think?”
Sakura lets out a little surprised laugh at that, and Sasuke scowls from his place at the front of the party.
Ten months ago, she would have smacked Naruto upside the head for thinking something so rude about their teammate—but, well, having lives risked on each and every side without hesitation . . .
It tends to shift one’s priorities.
Especially when one of her boys likes to talk to her, and the other only supplies both Sakura and Naruto with a harsh, quiet kind of fondness most days.
And she loves Sasuke, really.
It's just not what she needs right now. She needs sunshine incarnate, brightness itself blinding her from the reality of this stupid situation. Naruto checks all the boxes.
It’s not that she doesn’t like being around Sasuke, still! That's really, really not it, no matter how it might sound. He spends half his waking hours arguing with Naruto about stupid shit, like alternating the work it takes to finish a D-rank or something equally as dumb, but he does pull his weight in training and missions and in their . . . personal affairs (read: half-unwilling team sleepovers, orchestrated by their dearest teacher).
Sometimes he's just a stupid boy, all ego and arrogance, but—
Sometimes, he’s small too. They’re all young, but sometimes, Sasuke lets down his stupid overconfident act and talks about things that bother him—only ever the small things, when she knows for a fact that there's so much more— but he still never fails to look like he's had lemon concentrate forced down his throat whenever feelings come up.
But Naruto sits, and listens, and even though it’s ill-executed, his affection is real and earnest and loving—and it is enough for Sasuke, for now. It’s enough for her, too, when she and Sasuke are pulled away from Naruto’s sunshine by sleep’s hand; it’s enough for her when she wakes up somewhere that feels like home.
“Sakura,” Kakashi-sensei calls, breaking through her contemplation. Everyone outside of the caravan turns to look at her—mostly middle aged men she’s grown up seeing in her parents’ shop, or who ask, “How’s the academy?” or tell her that she’s such a pretty girl in a tone of voice that never fails to nauseate her.
She watches her father stiffen, his back going rigid.
Despite this, she is a shinobi, and shinobi do not hesitate to follow orders.
Naruto whines that he’s going to have to walk alone now as she catches up with her teacher, standing stationary near the front of the party as the merchants trudge on, and something ugly and protective makes its way into her heart when their eyes fall onto him, instead.
It’s only been five miles, and it’s already noon.
She’s starting to feel sick about it.
They resume their pace, side-by-side, as she catches up to him. Sakura turns around just so Naruto can watch her roll her eyes at his protests, then turns back to their teacher with a smile that she hopes looks more innocuous than it feels. “Yes, sensei?”
Kakashi-sensei huffs out a laugh. So no, then.
“I want you to scout ahead for a place to set up camp tonight. At this rate, we should be ten miles from here by then.” He gestures out to the forest with one arm, the other clutching the map of their path, marked out neatly.
Sakura’s eyes widen as she takes in the order, Kakashi-sensei’s knowing look, and the way her eyes begin to burn a bit. He presses his hand to her shoulder and hands her a map, his finger pressed to the approximate area.
She is quiet as she murmurs, “Thank you, sensei,” and has to force the steadiness of her voice. His hand on her shoulder does not help her case.
“Of course. My cute little students shouldn’t be so stressed on this kind of mission, should they, Sakura-chan?” His response is even quieter, but gets louder as he continues with his orders: the type of clearing she should expect, what she is looking for, and how to call for attention if it’s needed.
Sakura relays his directions back to him, and he nods, satisfied with her understanding. “Naruto will go with you,” he orders, turning back and gesturing for her teammate to follow.
They bid Kakashi-sensei and Sasuke goodbye for now, and Sakura deigns to grab Naruto’s wrist, pulling him forward instead of acknowledging her father’s suddenly pointed tone and the way something in her chest twists at it.
They only run for about twenty minutes before slowing down into a more manageable pace—not because they’re tired, but because Naruto had started wondering aloud, his thoughts indecipherable against the wind in her ears.
“Do you think there’ll be a pond, or something?”
Sakura thinks about it, raising the map to her eye level. “There’s a river somewhere over there. It’s kind of far from where Kakashi-sensei said we would stop tonight, though.” She inspects the map further, then looks back up at the dirt path, envisioning their route. “Why?”
“Nothing, really.” Naruto shrugs lightheartedly. It’s obvious that he’s grasping for conversational straws now, which is probably the most un-Naruto thing he could ever do. Does she really seem that off? “I just noticed that a lot of those guys who were walking were drinking a lot of water.”
“I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Sakura murmurs, guilt twisting a corner of her mouth down.
Naruto pouts at her, mouth shaped in a perfect upside-down-U. He reaches out one arm to shake her shoulders back and forth, and drops his head on her shoulder, whining, “Sakura-chaaan, what’s wroooong?”
He shakes her harder, and Sakura laughs, louder than she intends to. The only thing keeping them upright is chakra flowing through her legs and sticking her to the ground.
She doesn’t push him off, but her shoulders shake with each giggle, and he ends up letting go anyway. When she opens her eyes again, he’s grinning again—she thinks that there’s no other expression that looks right on him. “Naruto,” she manages through the giggles, “I’m okay now. Thank you.”
“. . . If you say so, Sakura-chan!” It’s obvious in his eyes that he doesn’t believe her (Naruto is an awful liar in general), but he does trust her, so he drops it.
She smiles wider, and he mirrors it.
But the sun is lower in the sky now, and they have an order to fulfill, so she tugs on his arm and continues along their path.
They reach the river, eventually. She thinks that it’s one in the afternoon, now, and part of her is pleased with the timing they’d managed.
The river is too far from the path and the foliage is too dense to get everything and everyone through, anyways. Sakura frowns. Naruto had a point earlier—at this pace, their next stop near water was at least two days from here.
Civilians aren’t used to the kind of conditions shinobi face. Their first training trip had been a punch to the gut for her when they’d run out of water for a day and a half.
She can’t imagine what people four times her age and half her skill level would think about any kind of water shortage. But knowing her mother, her father, the nature of those people, it would be . . . bad.
Water ninjutsu is an option, but protocol and logic state that they need Kakashi-sensei’s chakra as high as it can be—just in case. Plus, her ninjutsu is passable at best, and the only water ninjutsu she knows takes far too much chakra for a too-small amount of drinkable water.
“Sakura?”
“Mm?”
“D’you think this is a good spot?”
Sakura looks up. She’d been blindly following Naruto as they made their way back to the path, too lost in her own thoughts to really process their surroundings; the types of plants and lack of animal-related noise the only exception to that.
It’s unbecoming of a proper shinobi.
“Hey,” Naruto says, reaching out to touch her arm. He squeezes gently, obviously trying for an encouraging smile, but Sakura can see the blatant worry in his eyes. Naruto wears his heart on his sleeve. She hopes that he always will. “You sure you’re okay? You’ve been . . . sad.”
Sakura chokes back a frustrated sob, and she presses the heels of her hands into her eyes until the burning goes away. She feels Naruto tug on her arm, guiding her to sit down in the grass, and she cries more.
His hand sits awkwardly at her back, and she can hear him shifting. “D’you wanna talk about it? It—could help,” he murmurs into her ear, like it’s a secret, and she is so, so grateful for him. Part of her feels guilty, though. Naruto is—he’s Naruto, who’s grown up being ridiculed and harassed by grown-ups who are too scared of Kakashi-sensei to pull anything in front of him, but have no fear of her or Sasuke.
(The last time some old guy spat something awful at Naruto, Sasuke had broken his nose. Sakura hadn’t been too far behind. Kakashi-sensei paid for dinner and dessert that night.)
Naruto doesn’t have a family, and here she is, sniffling into his shoulder because hers wants what’s best for her. Sakura pulls her knees into her chest, resting her temple against Naruto’s shoulder. He pats her back reassuringly, like he knows what she’s thinking. “My mom is . . . mad at me right now.”
“Why?” There is no judgement in his tone, no condescension, and Sakura wonders, absently, why she’d hated him for so long.
“She—” Sakura swallows. Her chest aches. “She doesn’t want me to be a shinobi. My dad’s on her side now, too, and every time I go home it just gets worse.”
He’d hit her, the last time she tried to come home for dinner.
It was only once, and her face was left unmarked from where his palm connected. But he’d yelled, awful and loud and too much, that she could never be a ninja if she couldn’t even block that.
Part of her thinks, begrudgingly, that he’s right.
“That’s stupid. They’re stupid,” Naruto presses, voice still soft. Well, soft in Naruto terms. “No offense. But you work so hard, Sakura! You do! You couldn’t even run as fast as me when we first started, and look where we are right now!”
She sniffs and looks up at Naruto, then around. “This is a good spot,” she says. It’s open and wide, the ground is covered in a lavish mix of clover and grass, and they are surrounded by tall, thick trees. There are dry patches, ideal for building fires, with big rocks and tree stumps scattered around.
She can’t sense any foreign chakra, and Naruto would have said something if he had.
She’s sure that this is a typical campsite on this route.
It’s a good spot.
“Sakura . . .”
“It’s going to be okay. I’ll be okay.” Naruto still doesn’t look convinced, so she insists, “I just need to get through the next week, and then we’ll be free of them for a month.” She tries to smile at him, but her cheeks are still hot and tears are still streaming down her face.
“Okay,” Naruto gives in, before his eyes go so wide that they look like they’re about to bulge out of his head.
He stands up suddenly, and Sakura startles at it, flinching back so fast that she coughs on her own sniffly phlegm. “They’re here?! Why didn’t you say anything?!”
Sakura laughs despite herself. “You dumbass,” she admonishes, shoving at him. There’s no bite to it. “Did you think I was just—having a really bad day? Why did you think I was thinking about it?”
He flushes bright red, waving his arms around exaggeratedly. “I didn’t—I thought—um, I—”
“Naruto.”
“I got nothing,” he mumbles, still pouting.
Sakura sighs, but it’s more fond than sad now. “We should get back to the others now.” He pulls her up by the hand, and something in his eyes asks if she’s sure. “Soon,” she corrects, and Naruto grins, ever-blinding.
. ✦ .
It takes two hours before Sakura and . . . that boy return.
In their attempts to pass the time, Mebuki walks in tandem with her husband and two of their friends. They share similarly concerned looks, murmur about the latest woman to join their trip, and glance pointedly at Hatake-san.
After a while, he glances back. The twinge of annoyance in his regard of them is not obvious, but it’s certainly there, and she resents him for it.
It takes over an hour before her husband finally takes any sort of action. “Hatake-san,” Kizashi says, voice gruff and harsh, “Hasn’t it been too long since Sakura left?”
Hatake-san’s tone is clipped but polite, and the way that his eye crinkles at her over his book feels offensive. Too impersonal. “They’re traveling far, Haruno-san. Don’t worry too much.”
“But—does she even know where to go? What were her orders?”
His speech is insincere and recited: “Haruno-san, I see that you are concerned about my student’s safety. I respect your initiative to be involved, but I can promise you that Sakura is more than capable of handling herself.
“My apologies, Hatake-san,” Mebuki interrupts, “but Sakura is only thirteen. I feel . . . uneasy having her alone outside of the village.”
“She isn’t alone. Naruto is with her, and I know for a fact that he is a reliable comrade.”
That does nothing to soothe Mebuki’s worries. “Hatake-san,” she pleads.
The jounin turns to look at her, and his tone is akin to what you would use to soothe a hysterical child. “Sakura is legally an adult and is more than capable of holding her rank. This is her workplace, Haruno-san. Please do not interfere with our mission.”
Words escape her, but the frustration does not.
In the wake of her silence, he makes a flurry of hand-signs. He is gone in the next moment.
When Sakura flickers back into existence, a blur of orange in her fist, she almost exclaims her relief.
Her daughter looks through her.
Instead, Sakura's attention (precious as it's become) falls immediately to Hatake-san. Kizashi rubs circles into her hand with his thumb, but it does nothing to soothe the ache in her chest, the pain seeping into her bones.
“Kakashi-sensei!” Sakura smiles, nudging her teammate’s arm with her elbow. “We found a good spot. The plants there look edible, but I think I should check that book you have." Her grin grows softer, shyer, the way it always does when she wants to say something. For a moment, Sakura hesitates, and Mebuki assumes that her thoughts will be left to roll around in her own mind, untouched by her teacher and her peers. "There’s a river fifty feet west of the clearing, and there’s enough kindling around for tonight. I think.”
“Maa, I’m sure it’s fine. You did well, both of you.” Hatake-san places two hands on their respective heads, putting extra time into ruffling up Naruto’s hair.
He squawks, shoving his teacher’s arm away. “Kaka-sensei! C’mon, stop that—ow! I thought you said we did good!”
Sakura giggles, light and airy and free. It’s the happiest Mebuki has heard her in months. “Sensei,” she admonishes, and she knows that it’s meant to sound disapproving, but the smile in her daughter’s voice is so evident that it nauseates her.
“Alright, alright.” Hatake-san sighs, long-suffering and unbearably fond. He begrudgingly lets go of Naruto’s head, clicking his tongue and shifting his focus to the sky. “Formation two,” he calls out, mostly to the Uchiha boy, and the kids shift accordingly, instantly.
It’s terrifyingly automatic, how Sakura goes through a multitude of hand signs the moment her teacher speaks. It’s only terrifying, how she’s gone—then not, suddenly standing at the back of the party, Uchiha Sasuke at her side.
Still, time passes quicker, now that she knows that her daughter is safe.
Sakura’s happiness is much more reserved when it’s just her and Sasuke, Mebuki notes, but it’s just as real. It’s softer. There is less push-and-shove, as there had been in her and Naruto’s dynamic, but there is also less laughter, less unadulterated joy. Sasuke looks up at her, from time to time. There is something harsher in his eyes when he does.
She watches her only child, pressing her head back against the wall.
Mebuki has transferred back into the caravan, and her bones ache with an unfamiliar exhaustion. The chill in the air was starting to nip at her skin, and her feet were already beginning to ache, to blister in the too-tight shoes she’s adorned herself with. So they had stopped, momentarily, and Sakura had stayed in her place next to her Uchiha counterpart, and he’d whispered something to her, and she’d smiled, and her gaze deliberately strayed from her mother’s struggle to climb.
(With here, Mebuki-san, take my hand, has come a burning, deep and raw inside of her chest.)
“It’s approaching nightfall,” Sasuke states, a frown piercing through the blank slate of his features. “Sakura. How much further is it?”
“We should make it before it gets dark. But there’s some other okay places around here, too.” Sakura gazes around their environment thoughtfully, and all Mebuki can think is that each tree they’ve encountered has looked the exact same as the first five.
Sasuke makes an approving noise. “Did you use that chakra seal Sensei mentioned?”
Her daughter smiles in that sheepish, shy way she used to, and Mebuki finds herself longing to see it more. “Naruto marked the spot.” Sasuke’s eyes narrow at that, as though he’s thinking.
He sounds resigned when he speaks next, like he’s found the unsavory answer to some idiotic puzzle. “. . . How many?”
The casual mischief returns to Sakura’s demeanor, and some part of Mebuki grieves, because this girl is hardly recognizable past her appearance, past Mebuki’s own flesh and blood.
“You’ll see!”
Sasuke sighs in Sakura’s direction, and she rolls her eyes, just a little. He glances up at Mebuki, eyes sharp and cold as they make contact with her own. It leaves an uneasy chill behind, running down her spine and through her bones.
“Aren’t you cold?”
“It’s the nice kind of cold,” Sakura answers her teammate, and though Mebuki isn’t looking anymore, she can still imagine the expression on her daughter’s face. Soft and considerate, never having the intention to accept help.
“It’ll only get colder from here. You don’t have sleeves.”
“I know, Sasuke. I packed warmer clothes. We should be worrying about Naruto.”
The wall stares back at Mebuki as Sasuke clicks his tongue. “He brought that stupid jumpsuit and nothing else, didn’t he?”
“Probably multiple sets,” Sakura replies, contemplative. “It is his only opportunity to wear it without Kakashi-sensei getting on his ass about it.”
One of the women turn to look at Mebuki when Sakura curses.
Unladylike, unprofessional, unbecoming of a bride, her mind supplies.
The frustration stays true in her chest, softly squeezing at her heart. She doesn't have the energy to be angry anymore.
“He’s still going to get on his ass about it,” Sasuke decides. “Sensei’s finally going to throw all of them out.”
“Naruto’s going to throw a fit.” Sakura sounds pleased at that, and Sasuke just laughs before they lapse back into a warm silence.
Sakura does not flinch at it; she does not withdraw into herself; heavy tears do not make their way down her face.
It is unlike her. Sakura hates silence most days.
(When their arguments dissolve into nothingness, Mebuki has to pry away her daughter’s fingers from her arm as she looks up, red faced and hysterical.)
Maybe she has never known her daughter at all.
Mebuki closes her eyes and breathes.
Breathes in. Breathes out.
She doesn’t know what to do with all of this.