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our daughter came home bruised
Her arms buckle after exactly eleven minutes and fifty seconds and she hates herself for it. Dark blue sandals step into her field of vision that grows more blurry and distorted every time he makes her try again.
He always makes her try again.
“Two.” he says with that void voice of his and she knows he’s displeased, “Where’s your drive? You mean to tell me you couldn’t wait another ten seconds?” Pale green eyes slowly wander up the man’s torso and halt right before his single visible eye. She doesn’t want to meet it. It never fails to make her flinch.
As if he’s read her thoughts – and she doesn’t for one moment think he isn’t capable of doing so – he drops into a low squat which automatically lets her stare into the blank dark grey iris. Predictably, she flinches.
“I’m sorry, Captain.” escapes her mouth without a prompt.
“I can see that you are, Two.” Her captain’s eye crinkles into the facsimile of a smile and she doesn’t trust it to be genuine. That’s a mistake she won’t make twice. “However.” he continues with barely enough emotion necessary for a human being, “Being sorry isn’t enough. Being sorry won’t prevent you from being killed out there. Being sorry doesn’t help. Am I clear?”
She swallows down bile.
“Am I clear, Two?”
“Yes, Sir!” she says with unwavering tone.
“Good. Up. Another round for you.”
The genin obeys.
Dear Mom, dear Dad
Sensei has decided to take us on a training trip. I’ll be away for the next month. Don’t worry about me, though! Sensei may be a harsh at times but he’s fair and I learn a lot from him!
Love you, see you soon!
Yours, Sakura
(She'd never written a note.)
Two hasn’t seen her teammates in three days.
She hastily wraps her shin with gauze her Captain has given her before he left her all alone in the middle of the forest to fend for herself. A tear escapes one of her eyes as she huddles farther into the blanket of leaves she had to make in order to not shiver from the cold at night. There aren’t any things lying around that she could use to build a fire.
(The Academy didn’t teach her about any of this.
Or maybe it did and she was too preoccupied with her dear Sasuke-kun Three to care about it at the time.)
She misses One and Three like lost limbs. Sometimes she listens for One’s very optimistic but quiet mutterings and feels her heart constricts when the only sounds she can hear are those of the forest. Sometimes she wants to hide behind Three – who isn’t her crush anymore but a warm and familiar body... a teammate... her family – but she’s alone and her body’s temperature is on the verge of being dangerously low and all she wants to do is to break down and cry for days in her bed at home.
She can’t break down. She wanted this. Right? It was always her dream to become a shinobi, a kunoichi, and now she’s living her dream.
(Only... at this point, it’s clear it's more of a nightmare than the glamouros vision she had of her life on the battlefield.)
Two feels herself become stronger the longer she’s alone in this forsaken forest but she craves human contact like her cracked lips crave water that’s safe to drink.
She closes her eyes for a minute or two but they instantly snap open when a sound like footsteps come nearer. With baited breath, Two readies a kunai and listens for the noise. There! Leaves rustle on the ground, just beneath her base on the thick branch of the Hashirama Tree, and her heart hammers in her chest.
“Two?”
Her eyes widen. Is that... is that One she hears?!
Two bites her lip before a broad smile can spread. She needs to keep her caution. Paranoia is your friend, Captain had told them right after they became Team 7.
“Two, where are yoooouuuu?”
Tears start to well up behind her eyes and she has to hastily blink them away. Bitterness floods her mouth. A soundless sob courses through her hungry frame. She curses this goddamn exercise. She curses her Captain. She curses her Sage-damned hope.
Hope gets you killed, echoes through her mind.
“Kai” she thinks.
The apparition of One leaves her alone as it vanishes like a mirage. Alone in the darkness. Alone in the cold. Alone with her tears and the hurt that pulsates through her heart.
Is this even the third day?
Something’s wrong with Kakashi-sensei.
He acts all nice and kind but Sakura feels like every bit of this facade is the calm before the storm. She doesn’t know yet what the storm will be but she’s... maybe she’s a bit afraid.
Ino-pig told her about her sensei – Sarutobi Asuma – and she didn’t talk about him like he’s dangerous. Sakura’s probably just overreacting. Probably.
Still. She asked Ino-pig if Asuma-sensei has weird eyes.
“Weird eyes? No, pretty sure he isn’t, like, a Hyuuga or something. What’s that about?”
“Oh. Nothing. I’m just...”
...scared shitless of the one person I have to trust most , she almost says.
“...Well, Kakashi-sensei has a sharingan.” Sakura says instead. Because that’s interesting, isn't it? Her non-Uchiha sensei having an Uchiha dojutsu. That’s scandalous. Ino-pig soaked it up and didn’t question her. She should have.
Sakura knows there’s something wrong with Kakashi-sensei.
The next time they see each other, they’re naked.
“Captain’s a pervert. He reads those neon orange books. I’ve seen him with them around Konoha before he became our sensei.” One whispers to them as a blush forms on his whiskered cheeks.
Three and him are trying to conceal their privates with their dirty calloused hands and Two feels herself bleed from down there. She hasn’t been allowed period products. It’s inconvenient but she, luckily, doesn’t experience cramps or mood swings. It’s just blood, she tries to placate herself.
The three of them are sitting in a cage made of iron bars. To get out of here, they’ll have to show each other their entire body.
(On a logical level, Two knows why they’re doing this. On missions, there’s no place for modesty and a single second spent avoiding looking at exposed parts could make the difference between life and death. Still... she’s never seen a naked boy and she sure as hell didn’t want her first time showing Three her body to be like this.)
A gust of cool wind rattles through the bars. If they don’t hurry up, they’ll spend the frosty night without their clothes in here. Captain was adamant about them seeing... stuff, which means that if they don’t succeed today, they’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning when the sun stands high enough again.
Three flicks his now shoulder-length messy dark hair out of his face. Although he’s usually pretty stoic, he’s now also sporting a light dusting of pink on his cheeks.
“Right.” he says quietly. They’ve learned to lower their voices. (One was in desperate need of this lesson.) “Who’s going to go first?”
“The one who’s asking.” One replies rather cheekily.
Two stifles a snicker at the following poisonous glare Three sends the other boy.
She, ever the diplomatic part of Team 7, proposes when her teammates fail to decide: “We could all do it at the same time. On count of three?”
Three snorts at the unintended pun but he nods. One follows suit after a second.
“Right. One... two... three!”
All three genin let go of their private areas. An awkward silence follows. One stares at Two in awe as she parts her legs and crusted blood is sticking to the insides of her thighs. (He doesn't seem to mind it.) She swallows when she notices that a... uh... problem is making itself known with One. She feels... odd... about being the person who’s responsible for causing that. But. There’s also something about it that causes her own parts to pulsate. One blushes brightly and hastily turns to inspect Three instead while Two is happy pretending One hasn’t made her to lose her cool.
Three frowns at Two’s vagina. There’s no other way of describing it. The boy’s eyes are downright intense but their gaze lacks something that was definitely present in One’s. His penis doesn’t even twitch at the sight of Two. She tries not to let herself feel disappointed at that but it’s... it’s difficult not to. Maybe her crush on Three isn’t as gone as she’d have liked it to be.
One’s erection decides it likes both because looking at Three hasn’t done anything to make it subside. (Which is. Mildly interesting. Two thinks of the maybe not so accidental kiss the two of them shared at the end of their Academy days.)
Three finally shrugs slightly and moves to inspect One.
Two almost thinks that something’s going to happen now.
But nothing happens.
“Nothing’s happening.” Three says after a while, “I don’t know why.” He sounds vaguely uncomfortable and lost. As if it hadn’t previously occurred to him that something should happen in the first place.
“Maybe it’s just us?” One asks.
“Maybe.” Three doesn’t sound so sure.
“Could it be that you’re simple... not interested? In anyone, I mean.” Two suggests. She hadn’t known people like that existed – there’d only ever been people who like girls or boys or both in her mind. She’s never heard of someone who doesn’t like either that way.
Three snaps his attention to her. “I... I think that’s it.” he says slowly, carefully.
“Well.” One jokingly states, “We should ask Captain to give us different nicknames. Two for me, One for Two and Zero for you.”
Three crosses his arms. “That’s not funny.” he says with a twitching mouth corner.
“Nah, that’d get confusing real quick because there’d be two Twos.” the girl deadpans.
One blinks. “Oh.”
“Oh, indeed! Congratulations, Team 7. You’ve successfully conquered your most vile opponent yet – Teenage Hormones.”
The three of them instantly cover up again as their Captain appears out of nowhere.
“Seriously? And here I thought the shame has left you for good. Well, well, one can’t have everything. Here you go.” Nonchalantly, their Captain throws the key to the cage right into One’s face, who catches it just in time with a splutter.
A bulging black nondescript plastic bag lands in front of the iron construct.
“I’ve taken liberty to replace your old grimy clothes for new ones... good job, Team 7.”
For the first time since their team assignments, Captain’s smile seems real.
Two’s so depraved of praise that it feels like the warmest thing she’s ever seen.
Kakashi-sensei told her to pack for a day or two.
As Sakura’s assembling her mission provisions, she stops just as she’s about to put a small water bottle into the beige pouch. It would’ve been the last item on her list.
She huffs out a laugh. “What am I doing here?” Sakura asks herself and swiftly shakes out whatever’s in that pouch.
“Look underneath the underneath.” Kakashi-sensei told them.
Sakura packs for a week and it’s still not enough.
Things refuse to get weird between them.
No, scratch that.
Things don’t have the time to get weird between them.
With their new clothes came a bath in Captain’s manmade – clean! – lake, a hearty meal they didn’t trust for approximately half an hour until One caved, took a bite and it turned out to be harmless actual food and tampons for Two, which she profoundly thanked the man for...
Even though it’s his fault that she didn’t have her own with her.
Their Captain then sits them all down around a campfire and informs them that they’ve absolved exactly half of their training they’d get before being thrown into the chunin exams.
“The Council wants you to succeed, Sasuke.” During their time at the campfire, they’ve switched to their civilian names. (It makes Two Sakura feel like a girl again. Although she knows she’d never be the same girl she’d been before.)
“Just me?” the Uchiha asks sceptically.
“Just you. If it were up to them, Sakura would end up as cannon fodder and Naruto would forever stay in-village due to his furry prisoner.”
(One Naruto had whispered them his secret one night. Kakashi-sensei apparently had super hearing or something.)
“Wow.” Naruto comments. His loud exclamations have evolved into very sarcastic remarks. Sakura’s eardrums are still thankful for that change.
“You didn’t single Th... Sasuke out, though. You train us as well. Isn’t that technically against your orders?” Sakura inquires numbly with her legs drawn to her chest. The revelation isn’t that much of a surprise but every time she’s confronted with Konoha’s Council’s obvious disregard for her, she feels kind of nauseous. Konoha’s supposed to be the Nice Village but she isn’t noticing much of that. Not when it comes to little unimportant civilian-born Haruno Sakura.
“Of course it is.” Kakashi says, “I just don’t give a shit. You know why? Because, once upon a time, I also was supposed to end up as fodder. My father was the White Fang – you may have heard of him due to the fact that he allegedly single-handedly caused the Third Great Shinobi War. You can guess just how eager they were to get rid of me due to my heritage.” He eye-smiles.
“That’s...” Sakura tries but fails.
“...stupid.” Naruto finishes for her. “They’re all about how heritage matters until it doesn’t, huh?”
“They’re hypocrites.” Sasuke says, “Remember: Mental health also matters... up until you’re a kid whose entire family has been murdered.”
Kakashi-sensei chuckles lowly. “Yes, you now get the gist of how things are done in Konoha. Anyways, I decided to train you all because I want you to succeed. What the Council wants doesn’t matter, as long as their plans don’t interfere with mine.”
“What exactly are your plans for us, Kakashi-sensei?” Naruto bravely asks.
The elite jonin makes sure to catch their eyes before he says gravelly:
“I want you to survive.”
Again and again, she’s pitted up against Sasuke. It’s cruel.
Not because he’s her crush.
But because she finally sees just how defenceless she is against his attacks.
He’s a shinobi.
She’s...
What is she?
Two is back to being Two and Two, currently, is rendered mute.
One is missing his olfactory sense and has his hands bound behind his back.
Three is blind.
They’re fighting against a horde of venomous snakes. It could be worse, Two thinks as she taps Three to signal he should duck. The boy takes her up on it, narrowly missing another strike. One calls out quiet directions – he has a mild difficulty telling left from right, which doesn’t make this any easier but he tries his best and (mostly) manages to steer them to the correct path.
It’s their second to last test before they migrate to ninjutsu and genjutsu lessons.
Two’s chakra is itching for the change and thus, she focuses on her surroundings as much as is humanly possible. She uses taps and touches but also light claps and stomps to get her points across and when there’s something that isn’t conveyable by using signs, One tells them in hushed whispers that are barely above inaudible levels.
(He used to be a loudmouth.
Then again... Two used to be a weak fangirl and Three an obsessed avenger with superiority complex.
Things change.)
A swift notion made by Three’s kunai-wielding hand slashes the serpent’s throat open. The boy barely winces as the spray of blood splashes across his face. You really get used to that after a while, Two muses to herself and is consecutively drenched in the foul liquid as well when her own kunai rips another animal apart.
She’s been feeling more and more like an animal herself, as of late.
She doesn’t mourn her human self.
“From this point onwards, you aren’t children any longer.
You are shinobi.
As such, your identities become obsolete. Your gender does not matter. You have no preferences. You have no likes, other than loyalty and your team. You have no dislikes, other than traitors. You have no family and no friends, only your team.
You have no names. To distinguish yourself as an individual from the rest of your team, you will be referred to as a number. Your number does not mean anything. Your number is not better or worse than your teammates’ due to it being higher or lower. Your number is not a representation of your worth.
That being said... Naruto. You will be known as One.
Sakura, you will be Two.
Sasuke, you are number Three.
To make things a little more even, you will call me Captain instead of sensei or Kakashi.”
Her head hasn’t thought in way too long. It’s caught in a semi-permanent hazy state that comes with becoming
something else
something dangerous
something wild
It is therefore refreshing to be left with a staple of genin to high chunin level reading material with logic puzzles thrown in between and to be told that, tomorrow, they’d proceed with their chakra training.
One is halfway draped across Three’s lap while Two leans against the latter’s back. Each one of them has their own little paper tower and they work diligently on them. Pens fly across passages. Murmurs of Three and occasionally Two explainining concepts to One can be heard but, other than giving brief info, they don’t dare to solve One’s exercises for him. Captain’s ears are everywhere. Captain’s eyes are burning holes into their skulls. Captain’s nose is so sharp he could smell a deceit from miles away.
(It’s not that it's forbidden for them to cheat. It’s that they can’t. Not yet.)
They
breathe in synch
think alike (which is scary because One used to be Dead Last and now he’s keeping up with Rookie of the Year and Top Kunoichi... sometimes, he needs longer still but the time of his thinking periods has been drastically reducing)
find comfort in each other’s presence
function as if they’re connected in a way that no-one and nothing, not even greater distances, could disturb
are One plus Two plus Three – which equals Six and then there’s Captain, who is their plus one to make Seven.
It used to be like this:
Naruto was loud and boisterous, always going on about how he’d become the Hokage one day, believe it! (But nobody ever really believed it because he couldn’t do more than one single thing, over and over.)
All Sakura cared about were her looks and Sasuke-kun. (Even when taking care of her looks got on her nerves and Sasuke-kun’s constant rejections hurt.)
Sasuke wanted to kill his brother. That was it. He was supposed to be nothing but an avenger on his quest to bring death justice to the murderer.
It’s not like that anymore.
For her, the chakra conductive paper turns into earthy sludge. One’s gets torn in the middle and a tiny part of the corner is singed. Three’s, accurate to his number, simultaneously crinkles and catches on fire, then extinguishes itself by becoming wet.
“I have never seen an Uchiha with a water affinity.” Captain says way too gleefully. No doubt his unorthodox teaching methods are at least a little bit responsible for Three’s equally unorthodox natures.
“And you, Two...” the man hums thoughtfully, “I wonder...”
“Sir?” Two asks when he doesn’t continue.
Captain shrugs. “It’s an odd thought but the last time someone with equal water and earth affinities had your level of chakra control, he went on and founded our village.”
Two stares down at the mess she produced and swallows a disbelieving laugh that wants to tear out of her throat.
“My civilian name would fit.” she says with a tiny smile.
And hope blooms in her heart like cherry blossoms would soon bloom for her.
(This hope wouldn't kill her.
Because she isn't expendable.)
parents press their faces into their daughter’s shortened hair
“What did that bastard do to you?” her father asks, all choked up and teary and desperately unsure
her mother sobs and sniffs and doesn’t say much because words fail her
the girl called something or another bares her sharp teeth
and says: “He let me live.”
our daughter came home bruised
but she came home