Chapter Text
"You can only move as fast as
Who's in front of you
And if you assume
Just like them
What good will it do
So find out for yourself
So your ignorance
Will stop bleeding through
You can breathe today."
— "Breathe Today" by Flyleaf
The shears were entirely unsuited for delicate work. They were meant for kitchen twine and hefty fabrics, but as Sakura gripped the handles in the darkened atmosphere of her bedroom, they felt like the only honest tool she owned.
On the floor beside her desk lay a ruined photobooth photo - a picture she had taken with her team, now with Sasuke completely cut out of the frame. The rough line where his shoulder used to be curled upward in the cool night air. Down the street, at the edge of the marketplace, he was likely still walking with Ino. She had seen them together that afternoon, their shoulders brushing, Ino's loud, bright laughter bouncing off the storefronts while Sasuke offered that rare, quiet half-smile he had never once given Sakura.
It hadn't just hurt; it had made her feel utterly transparent. A hidden script written into the margins of Team Seven, meant only to watch other people grow, other people fight, and other people fall in love.
"You're trailing behind us, Sakura," Kakashi's voice, mild and dismissive, lingered in her head.
"Leave it to me and Sasuke!" Naruto's boisterous, well-meaning pity.
She caught her reflection in the vanity mirror. Her long, pink hair (grown out solely because of a rumor that Sasuke preferred girls with long tresses) framed a face that looked entirely too soft. Too helpless.
"No more," she whispered. The sound of her own voice surprised her - flat, calm, and entirely empty of its usual frantic hope.
She gathered the thick length of her hair into a fist, pulling it taut against the nape of her neck. She didn't hesitate, finally squeezing the shears.
Snip.
The sound was shockingly loud in the quiet room. Mass of rose-colored locks slid through her fingers and hit the tatami mats with a soft, dull thud. She cut again, blunt and uneven, hacking away the vanity, the useless pining, and the pathetic girl who definitionally existed only in the shadow of Uchiha Sasuke. When she was finished, her hair was a raw, choppy halo, barely dusting her jawline.
She looked at her hands. They were trembling, but not from grief... from a beautifully violent surge of autonomy.
Sakura didn't wait for morning, she swept the hair into a neat pile, threw on her standard red cheongsam top, and bolted through her window into the cool Konoha night. She ran toward the Hokage monument, her chest burning, driven by the terrifying realization that if she slept on this anger, she might wake up a coward again.
She bypassed the regular administration entrance, scaling the rooftops until she reached the balcony of the Hokage's private office. Through the glass, she could see the silhouette of the Fifth Hokage, surrounded by towers of paperwork and an empty bottle of sake.
Sakura pushed the window open, stepping inside without permission.
Tsunade's amber eyes dashed upward, instantly mapping Sakura's flushed cheeks, hard breathing, and the violently uneven, freshly shorn hair. The Hokage's lips twitched into a small, dry smirk. "Have you lost your mind, Genin?"
Sakura dropped to her knees, her forehead hitting the floorboards with a sharp crack.
"Lady Tsunade," Sakura said, her voice flat and resolute. "I am excellent at chakra control. I am the smartest kunoichi in my graduation class. And right now, I am completely useless. I want to be your apprentice. I want to learn medical ninjutsu, and I want to learn how to hit hard enough that nothing can stand in my way. Teach me, and I promise I will never waste your time."
The silence in the office flattened everything. Sakura kept her forehead pressed to the wood, her heart hammering so hard against her ribs it felt like the only sound left in the room.
Then, the slow creak of Tsunade's leather chair broke the quiet. A pair of sandals stopped inches from Sakura's head.
"Stand up," Tsunade commanded.
Sakura stood, her chin high, meeting the legendary Sannin's gaze. Tsunade reached out, her thumb catching a stray, poorly cut strand of pink hair near Sakura's ear.
"Medical ninjutsu requires absolute discipline, flawless mental fortitude, and a willingness to walk through hell while keeping everyone else alive," Tsunade said softly, her eyes narrowing as she read the naked desperation in the girl's face. "If you cry, if you whine about a boy, or if you slack off for even an hour, I will throw you out of my hospital myself. Do we understand each other?"
"Yes, Lady Tsunade."
"Good. Clean up your hair. You start at dawn."
Sixteen months later, Sakura did not have time to think about boys.
Her life was consumed by sterile gauze, the copper tang of blood, grueling chakra-exhaustion training, and the brutal discipline of Tsunade's training. Her body was leaner, her hands calloused, and her mind was a finely tuned encyclopedia of human anatomy and poison compounds. She had grown into her short hair, which was now kept in a practical, chin-length bob that stayed out of her eyes when she was sewing up a torn artery.
Tonight, however, she was working a different kind of shift. The Uchiha were celebrating the Kagari-bi - the Bonfire Festival - a traditional autumn celebration meant to honor the clan's ancestors and the element of fire that defined their bloodline. Because the event involved massive, ceremonial blazes and the entirety of the village's military elite in one crowded space, the Hokage had mandated a medical detail on standby. Tsunade had personally sent Sakura, dryly claiming it would force her to sit still and watch a crowd instead of a surgical table.
The compound, usually insular and reserved, was transformed. Towering bronze braziers lined the main thoroughfares, sending dense, sweet columns of pine smoke into the starlit sky. Paper lanterns painted with the red-and-white fan crest cast a warm, crimson glow over the crowds of clan members dressed in dark, formal kimonos.
Sakura kept to the edge of the main courtyard, holding a small plate of dango she hadn't touched, her eyes automatically scanning the crowd for signs of heat exhaustion or alcohol poisoning. Sasuke was somewhere in the cluster of people, surrounded by eager younger cousins, but she hadn't looked for him. The old pull was gone, replaced by a strange, hollow indifference; her focus tonight was purely clinical.
Suddenly, the festive atmosphere broke.
At the western gate of the compound, a sudden explosion of wood and timber blasted across the stone courtyard. Shouts of alarm rippled through the crowd as a pair of Uchiha police force members came staggering through the smoke, carrying a third man between them.
"An ambush on the border!" one of them yelled, his voice strained. "The patrol took a direct hit from a wind-cutter trap! The femoral artery is severed!"
"Get him to the hospital!" someone shouted from the crowd.
"No time!" the officer barked, collapsing to his knees as the wounded shinobi slid to the cobblestones. "He's bleeding out now! He won't survive the transit across the village!"
Before the civilian Uchiha could panic, a streak of dull cherry-blossom pink parted the gathering crowd.
Sakura dropped to her knees beside the bleeding shinobi, her formal kimono instantly soaking through with dark, hot blood. "Clear the area! Give me room!" she commanded, her voice ringing with a fierce certainty that stunned the surrounding clan members into compliance.
She didn't wait, ripping the man's pant leg open and exposing a torn, pulsing wound that was spraying crimson onto the stones. He was already slipping into shock, his skin pale and clammy.
Ten seconds until total exsanguination, her mind calculated with cold clarity.
Her hands flared with a brilliant, concentrated emerald light. She plunged her fingers directly into the wound, using her pure chakra to physically clamp the severed artery shut. The man convulsed, groaning in agony.
"Hold him down!" Sakura snapped to the nearby officers. "I need to perform a cellular bridge synthesis here, or he loses the leg and his life. Keep his airway clear!"
She tuned out the whispers of the crowd, the crackle of the festival braziers, and the smell of roasting food. Her world narrowed down to the pulse directly at her fingertips, the steady drain of her own chakra, and the meticulous stitching of microscopic tissue.
"You're doing fine," she muttered under her breath, a habit picked up from Tsunade, though her voice was entirely steady. "Stay with me."
When the green glow finally faded, signaling the artery was stable enough for transport, Sakura let out a slowly controlled breath. She stood up, smoothing down her blood-stained outfit, her posture completely devoid of the tentative girl she used to be.
"The hemorrhage is contained," Sakura ordered, her voice slicing through the stunned silence of the onlookers. "He needs to be moved to the emergency ward immediately for a blood transfusion. Move him carefully, now!"
The officers scrambled to obey, lifting the casualty onto a makeshift stretcher and rushing him toward the gates.
As the frantic crowd parted and shifted around the commotion, Sakura wiped a streak of sweat and dark copper blood from her forehead. She looked up, her gaze sweeping across the courtyard, and froze.
Separated from her only by the roaring flames of a festival brazier, Uchiha Itachi stood watching.
He was off-duty from his ANBU responsibilities, dressed not in his flak jacket, but in a high-collared midnight-blue yukata that hung loosely over his broad shoulders. The fabric was slightly parted at the chest, revealing the sharp lines of his collarbone and a hint of pale skin. His long raven hair was tied loosely at the nape of his neck, the heavy bangs framing his face and casting slight shadows over features that were almost devastatingly handsome - imposing and aristocratic. He exuded an aloof, sophisticated air, standing with an easy, fluid grace that spoke of absolute confidence.
Through the dancing, erratic heat of the flames, her gaze found his and held.
Itachi's black eyes, unawakened by the Sharingan but impossibly deep, were fixed entirely on her. His appraisal carried a powerful magnetism - a fixed gaze that seemed to strip away the chaos of the festival around them. In the crimson light of the bonfire, his expression remained utterly blank, a flawless mask that revealed nothing.
Sakura looked back at him, her medical instincts usually so adept at reading micro-expressions completely useless here. Perhaps he was judging her technique? Questioning why she was even here, kneeling in the dirt of his clan's compound? Or was he simply looking through her? There was no warmth, no hostility, no hint of a smile - just an impenetrable focus that left her entirely uncertain. Between the endless demands of the Uchiha clan and his grueling schedule in the ANBU, he typically viewed the world through a lens of pure utility, watching people break or falter without personal investment. But as his gaze remained fixed on the pink-haired girl standing defiant, drenched in blood and holding the entire courtyard captive with her presence, his expression stayed perfectly blank, leaving her with no way to guess what was happening behind his eyes.
With a final, exhausting breath, Sakura pulled her eyes away from his. She had a patient to monitor and a report to deliver. Turning her back on the bonfire and the unreadable Uchiha prodigy, she walked away, disappearing into the shifting crowd.