Last in the Wind – Haruno Sakura

"It was hot today. The sun beat down mercilessly on our faces, our shoulders, our backs. It made it imperative that we finish the cleanup from the battle with the fox if we were to avoid contamination of our water supply. And we did. It's cruel, that we are reduced to referring to the burial of our friends as simple "cleanup", and yet that is the necessity. This is the path of the shinobi."

Sakura laid down the pen and regarded the fresh blisters and barely-healed scratches decorating her hands. They were still graceful, but no one would call them beautiful now. The stars were barely visible through her window, obscured by a veil of mist that would have been welcome and more during the day. The heat had barely lifted, though, and she absently pushed damp hair out of her eyes before returning to the rough paper in front of her.

"Should I explain about the fox, about my teammate and friend? Iruka-sensei told me I should write down how I feel, if I can't talk to anyone about it. I think he feels worse than I do; Naruto was … Naruto was like his kid or something. I wish I could do something to help, but I… I …"

Sakura shook her head. It was more difficult than she expected, this business of articulating her emotions onto dry, impassive paper.

"The fox… after Naruto died, and it returned, we fought it. Of course we fought it. Sasuke was the one that actually beat it; no one really knows exactly what he did. I know he was copying Kakashi-sensei. I don't know how I know this, I just know it. Even though he was blind, I could see the Sharingan in his eyes, and his chakra had the same feeling that swept over us just after the fox attacked us and Kakashi-sensei… lost.

"Anyway, no one saw enough of what he did to really understand it, and since no one else here has the ability to copy a jutsu, we can't analyze it either. All we know is that it took all the strength he had.

"And that the fox is gone.

"We've prepared for it, of course. If it decides to come back again. I don't think it will, but I don't know anything.

"The village is a mess. A lot of it was burned, or damaged in other ways. Everyone who is able to move at all is helping to put things back together, but only the shinobi bury the dead. There are so many of them. I don't even really react any more when I see a face I know. I don't know if it's good or bad; right after the battle, when I found Shikamaru, I sat down and cried. We weren't even close, but somehow it was almost worse than when Sas…"

Sudden tears blurred Sakura's vision. Her grip tightened around the pen until it cracked in her hands, ink leaking across her skin in a mockery of the blood that had been there days before. Blinking the wetness angrily out of her eyes, she returned to the paper.

"I found Lee-kun today. He… I didn't feel anything. I couldn't. There was nothing there. Only another grave to dig. Ino carved the name onto the stone and that was more real to me than the body in the woods.

"I think I should feel bad about that, but I can't."

The pen snapped in half, and Sakura pulled her hand back in just enough time to avoid ink spilling over the pages. Instead, it spattered her face and clothes. Swallowing the knot in her throat, she stood and calmly walked into the bathroom. The fresh bright blue came off her skin easily, running in spirals down the drain, but her dress refused to come clean no matter how hard she scrubbed.

She took it off, standing in front of the sink in her underwear, working furiously at the spots of darker color. It was suddenly very important that the dress – a twin of the one she'd worn at the age of twelve, when she first became a ninja – be clean and bright.

Her efforts were futile. She knew it. She looked up, into the mirror. Her green eyes stared back at her, dominating a face flushed with effort under matted pink hair, and as she watched, they filled with tears again.

"Bastard!" She didn't know who she was shouting at, nor was she aware she had broken the mirror until she felt the blood slip down her clenched fists. Shards of glass decorated the sodden cloth of her dress, left haphazardly hanging over the edge of the sink. The floor crunched under her feet as she fled the room, only to stumble on the floor just beyond the threshold.

"How could you leave me like that? How could you do it?" She slammed the floor with one hand, driving particles of glass deeper into her fist, welcoming the physical pain. "Why was it you and not me? You were always better at fighting than I was, Uchiha Sasuke!"

Sobbing, she pulled her knees up to her chest. Hot tears slipped over her face to land on the floor. "…he didn't do anything… none of us did anything… Why did Naruto have to die, anyway?" She pulled herself into a sitting position and swiped the tears away. Faint pain across her cheek told her she'd scratched herself, but she didn't care.

"He didn't do anything to deserve that! What did you DO that to him for, Yondaime? This is all your fault! You sealed the fox into him in the first place!" She was screaming now, not caring who heard. Energy temporarily exhausted, Sakura slumped down, forehead cradled on her arms. "I had a family. I had a family. Damn… you…"

It hurt. She hurt. The numbness had fled with a vengeance, replaced by a searing pain. A few moments ago, she would almost have given anything to be able to feel. Now, she wanted nothing more than the emptiness back.

She closed her eyes, feeling her eyelashes cling together.

"What am I supposed to do now?" It started as a whisper, but her voice gained strength. She sat up slowly, staring fixedly at the shadows on the far wall. "What am I supposed to do, now that my friends and family and teacher are gone? They're dead and they won't ever come back! Not ever! Is this the life of a damned shinobi? I don't want it!" She pulled the forehead protector out of her tangled hair and hurled it at the window with all the strength she possessed, and shouted. "Do you hear me? I don't want it! Give them back!" The band of cloth and metal hit the frame beneath the window and bounced off, skittering over the floor to end up somewhere in darkness. She buried her face in her hands, voice sinking almost to nothing again. "Give them back…"

It couldn't last forever. She alternately cried, shouted, and lay utterly still, but the pain began to ease slightly, its edges masked by pure emotional and physical exhaustion. She didn't know how much later it was when she dragged herself off the floor and pulled the glass splinters out of her hands. Moving mechanically, as if she were weighted down, she shook the glass out of her dress and swept it off the floor. The dress she wedged in the trash, pushing it down as far as she could. She never wanted to wear anything like it again.

The water in the shower felt cleansing; she let her mind go blank under the spray. Blood and dirt swirled down the drain, washing everything away.

She found, in the back of her closet, simple dark blue pants and a matching shirt. The color – so close to the clothes Sasuke had habitually worn – sent a muted pang through her yet again. She put them back and opted for black instead.

The sky had begun to gray in the east when she returned to the pad of paper with a fresh pen. She took a deep breath and sat down.

"I survived. I guess it… I don't know why, but I did. I have to keep surviving. There aren't many shinobi left in Leaf Village, so everyone we have is precious. The other shinobi villages might see us as weakened…no, they will see us as weakened, because we are. We have to convince them, and everybody else, that we're still strong. We have to do whatever it takes."

It still didn't sound quite right. She chewed on the end of the pen for a moment, and then added, "We're part of the whole; each of us is necessary to the others." That wasn't quite it either. "I need the others, and they need me. Now more than ever."

Resolutely, she set the pen down, and looked at the sky. Eggshell pink – true dawn – brightened the horizon. "It won't be easy." She nodded. Her forehead protector glinted at her from underneath the table. She picked it up and looked at it for a moment. It was dusty and dented. She brushed it off, and tied it across her forehead. "I'm Haruno Sakura, dammit. A Leaf shinobi." She nodded. That felt right.

The door shut firmly behind her.

owari