Chapter Text
The Long Road
She pulled her hair over her shoulder to continue the braid. The rhythm was familiar to her fingers: pulling hair from the edges of a part and layering it across a middle part, gathering the strand to the far side of another chunk, and repeating. She tied the braid off at the end and threw the chunk of plaited hair back. She stared at a picture, yellowed with age and beginning to fall apart at the edges, and refused to think too hard about the beautiful little girl with thick black hair and eyes like onyx pools. Behind her, Musutafu was just beginning to stir. She stared out through the window of her apartment and into the streets.
Individuals days had long since lost meaning for her. What was one more day, one more year, one more decade...time was unimportant. She had cultivated patience to hold the madness at bay. How many years had it been since Sarada...She shook her head, as if she could physically jar the thoughts loose before they had time to cement themselves into her mind. She had done her mourning, cried her tears. And she had replaced sorrow with rage and cold tolerance.
She donned a black skirt, a red blouse, and a set of low heels. Across the crimson of her shirt fell a necklace with a broken shard of green crystal surrounded by silver beads. It was useless now, but it reminded her of her master, of everything she had lost and ever memory she had to redeem.
She was coming for him.
And she wouldn't be stopped.
She slit her wrist with a dagger and closed the wound just enough to prevent the bleeding.
Time had no meaning. So she gave it meaning on her body.
Nedzu stood before the class, neatening a sheaf of paper, and motioning at the door as it opened.
"It is my great pleasure to introduce a guest instructional coach. Her name is Haruno Sakura and she'll be with us through the term. I expect you all to treat her with respect."
She sat her purse down and put on her best smile and reminded herself that Tsunade had taught her being a ninja was just as much about lying convincingly as it was learning ninjutsu.
"Hello, then."
"And just what the hell are you here to teach us?" Bakugou sneered.
Nedzu opened his mouth to scold the student, but Sakura beat him to it. She shrugged off her jacket, threw it across her chair, and replied, "I'm here to teach you the basics of fighting, avoiding injury, and tactical supports."
"To that end," She continued, "I'd like all of you to go change into your track suits. We'll be practicing outside today."
As the students shuffled out of the room, she thanked Nedzu and then quietly waited for him to disappear down the hall. She changed in her own office and tried not to think about how close it was to her tiny cubicle in the Konoha hospital. She stripped off her shirt and didn't linger on the hundreds of scars that crossed her body in pearly lines and jagged pink edges. She pulled a long-sleeved shirt over her torso and stepped into a pair of sweat pants. She stared into the mirror on her desk and smeared another layer of makeup over the purple mark on her forehead.
Satisfied that it was well hidden, she stepped out of her office and into the hallway.
"Hello, there!"
She spun on the voice and shoved back the instant hostility she felt. She extended her hand as a matter of courtesy.
"I'm Yagi Toshinori. I teach Foundational Studies here."
"A pleasure. I'm Sakura. I'll be teaching the Tactical Studies course for the semester."
"I don't believe I've seen you in any of the agencies."
"I'm new to the area. Hired on contingency."
"It would be my honor to pair with you for a class sometime."
She nodded noncommittally and turned around. She didn't tell him she had been watching him for sometime. He was the way...her way to the end.
They finished running the track and lined up for their hand to hand session. She couldn't help the flash of contempt she felt for them...the pathetic way they traded blow after blow without ever learning from it. They reminded her disgustingly of herself. She had been so weak. She flexed her fist and felt the scab on her wrist strain to hold the sides of the ripped flesh together.
Patience. Patience. You're so close now.
She called Yaoyorozu to the front of the class and demonstrated a better way to catch a punch. She reached out to touch the girl and she was drowning.
Flashes of Sarada, flashes of teaching her, of holding her wrist to show her the best way to defend herself, crashed over her. She couldn't keep her head above water. She was floundering. She felt the cracks in her mask widening. She balled her fist hard. Felt the skin split. Hot, grounding blood flowed down between the sleeve and her skin and pooled warmly in her fist. She took a breath.
"That's much better. Just like that." She let go of Yaoyorozu.
She clenched her fist hard, letting the white edges of her fingernails bite deep half-moons into her palm. Pain pulled her back into her body. She took another breath. She slid her bloody hand into a pocket before the crimson trails could betray her. She excused herself to the bathroom while they took a break.
The bathroom door slamming behind her did nothing to break the haze. The water splashed so frantically across her face that her arms burned with the effort did nothing to clear away the miasma.
Pain.
Kakashi's voice echoing from the back of her memory, memories that were fading and getting more gray with every passing day and slipping faster and faster away from her, was a punch in the gut.
She was covered in blood. She didn't know if it was hers or an ally's or an enemy's. She was covered in a slick crimson skin so thick that she was choking on the iron stench. Her hands were shaking so hard that she couldn't form the healing ball of chakra. Her breath was rapid and shallow, hitching in her chest and threatening to pull her under with the sensation that she couldn't breathe.
He had leaned downand told her, "Pain is your friend. Use it."
She didn't know what he meant until that night when she drew the edge of a dagger across her skin and felt the pain.
She watched the blood run across the tile of her floor and felt like she could breath.
She formed the edge of chakra in her hand and raked the invisible blade hard across her thigh. The pain was deliciously cold and swept away the fear, the uncertainty, the memories that had been bubbling underneath the surface all day long. She let herself bleed for a moment before she sealed the wound.
"I'm coming for you," She told herself, "I'm coming for you and I'm going to end this."
She dismissed her class, packed up her bag, and returned to the tiny apartment. She sat down in front of the TV with a glass after glass of sake and watched a video she had stolen from a local station earlier in the year and copied. She watched All for One rip a hole into All Might's stomach and watched his chest pulse through his shattered ribcage. She watched his lungs inflate helplessly, pushed up against shards of bone. And then she pause the video, her bloody fingertips trailing over the images as she glared hard at the figure All for One cut on the screen.
"I'm coming for you, Orochimaru."
TBC