Everywhere she went, every corner she turned, there it was; that word.
“The most important thing for a shinobi is to be a tool for achieving their village and country’s goals. Emotions are unnecessary things. You must kill what makes you human, and battle your enemies as though you are merely a tool.”
She still knew, and could recite to this day; the one hundred principals of shinobi conduct, or more so; the rules that shinobi lived, and died by. They had so easily been absorbed by her, as soon as she had heard them. Children being taught how to kill their emotions at such a young age, and there she sat, memorising all of them with utter obedience.
Now, she realised they were all rules made to be broken.
Shinobi Rule Number Fifteen: a shinobi must never show weakness.
Shinobi Rule Number Twenty Five: a shinobi must never show their tears, no matter what the circumstance.
How many times had Sakura broken that same rule, on that vast bridge where the essence of her childhood had been cast away when bright, apple-green eyes fell upon the horrible blood mattering his blue shirt, and for a moment, nothing felt the same. It had come fast, the emotions. (—another rule broken.)
Shock. Disbelief. Acceptance and finally, emptiness.
To a child like her, the world couldn’t function properly without his presence. Without him, she had no goal. It was strange, how cold his dead flesh had felt underneath her stiff fingertips. Sakura was actually… feeling the way she imagined him to feel towards her, as a response to her undying infatuation.
But nothing had come in her way. That’s why she had lived by her own rule, “Live a life full of love!”
Why hadn’t she known this before? Death was inevitable in the shinobi world. It was like hate, she couldn’t avoid it. It was everywhere, surrounding her. Dangling over her head in the missions she went with Team Seven. Lingering near her when her team slept peacefully in the forest. Sakura was looking at it. She was experiencing it. She didn’t want to believe—How do you fight it? Hate and death, it was a complete package in her world.
“…I don’t hate you.” Blank, frozen emerald, rose slowly. “If you had asked me ten years ago… my answer would have been different.” Something had been taken away from her then, but she had gotten it back. “But, Haku-san.”
A soft breeze blew past them, and only then did Sakura allowed herself to break down her walls. The walls that she had built while coming to this place, there hadn’t been a single soul who had the pleasure of seeing her like this. The inner turmoil had been carefully place aside, in a dark corner of her mind where the ghosts of her past were haunting, where Sakura Haruno of Team 7 was residing. Bit by bit, her expression grew dimmer and dimmer by the second.
“It’s true, I did once resent you. On that bridge, you had taken something away from me, something so precious, it hurt to even begin to comprehend the possibilities of it happening. My… Nakama. The people I had grown up with, people I’ve seen every single day. If we had met again when I was still a child…”
A shaky breath, she could feel the tears coming but with strong will, she held them back. There was no way she would break those rules now. She had learned, she was strong. Sakura was getting better at this. Lips pressing firmly together, and once again, “Don’t reflect on the past. It doesn’t determine who you are in the future.”
——She wondered if her tears were able to reach him now.
