Wedding-Colored

Klayter McCabe

000

When Sakura was a little girl, she dreamed of crystals and diamonds and the color white. She and Ino would sit and giggle together, and Ino would bring flowers from her parents’ store that weren’t fresh enough to sell anymore, but were still beautiful enough for two little girls. Tucked away in the fields just inside the walls of Konoha, they would lay in the tall grass underneath the sun and toss their fantasies back and forth.

Young kunoichi start out with very different ideas about the lives of shinobi than boys do.

Ino’s dreams, Sakura remembers, never faltered. They were always strong and true and full of Ino being faster than everyone else, her kunai hitting the target first, full of post-battle ceremonies in which the Hokage showered her with honor.

Sakura’s dreams were different.

If thoughts about the blood of her enemies crossed Ino’s mind, they never did Sakura’s. She looks back on it now and wonders how she could possibly have imagined her life as a shinobi and managed to leave out all the death. Her fantasies were formless, and usually rode on the tail of Ino’s fervent dreams.

This changed at age seven, when, chasing Ino through the woods and trying not to lose her faster friend, Sakura stumbled on a boy she didn’t know.

She saw him first and hit the forest floor, using all of her meager shinobi skills so that she’d be able to jump out and scare him, but he was too busy focusing to notice her presence.

He was throwing shuriken.

Sakura hadn’t gotten to try that very much yet (her mother didn’t like it when she brought home Ino’s weaponry to practice with), but even she could tell that he wasn’t that great. He was short – maybe shorter than she was – and pale, with dark hair that made him look even whiter when the sunlight came in through the leaves and gleamed off his skin. He was sweating.

Sakura watched him throw them, watched his face as he grew increasingly frustrated with himself, and had to resist the urge to walk out and correct his form. She’d spent enough time watching Ino, after all, to know that you didn’t flick your wrist like that.

Then the boy threw a shuriken down near his feet and made a stupid noise that was half-yell, half-growl, half-whine.

Sakura’s breath caught in her throat.

Then Ino was at her elbow, whispering, “Why’d you stop chasing me?” and Sakura only shrugged. Ino tilted her head and followed Sakura’s gaze.

“Who’s he?” she whispered.

“I dunno,” murmured Sakura back, wracking her brain for some glimpse of him from anywhere before. “Maybe he’s in Yamada-sensei’s class.”

“Oh.” Then both of them fell silent. The boy looked as though he was about to start to cry, and every tendon in Sakura’s body pulled with the desire to let him know that she was there.

Then someone was behind them, was just there, and Sakura was too terrified to think straight, because that chakra wasn’t the kind that belonged in Konoha. She felt Ino freeze beside her, and it was the first time in her life that she thought she knew what dying was going to be like.

Then the person stepped around them with quiet footsteps, as though he was walking across the forest floor without stepping on any of the dead leaves.

“Sasuke,” the man said quietly, and the boy turned around, scrubbing furiously at his eyes with the back of his sleeve.

“Aniki!”

And if every hair on the back of Sakura’s neck and on her arms hadn’t been standing straight up, she would have recognized that tone of voice. She’d given up, she’d made that ugly noise, she’d worn that exact same expression every time she’d lost to Ino and watched Ino try not to look disappointed.

She knew this boy.

The man was saying something else, but Ino was tugging on Sakura’s sleeve, and she let her best friend pull her away.

“Who was that?” she asked, when she was sure they were far enough away.

“That,” said Ino, proud to have the knowledge, “was Uchiha Itachi. My dad says that when he grows up, he’s probably going to be our new Hokage.”

Sakura licked her lips. “I don’t want him as Hokage.”

Ino shrugged and tried to look tough, but then let it slip. “I don’t either. He’s too scary. I like Sandaime best.”

“Yeah.” Sakura nodded. “So who do you think the boy was?”

“Just his little brother. Sasuke? I think he said Sasuke.”

“Sasuke,” Sakura repeated. And starting there, her shinobi dreams began to change.

000

The next year, Uchiha Sasuke was put in Sakura’s class, and this marked the first time in her life that someone besides Ino came first in her thoughts.

Sasuke didn’t talk very much, but sometimes if she said “good morning” when they were the first people to class, he would smile back at her. He never played boys-chase-the-girls at recess, so Sakura stopped playing too.

Ino, who played girls-chase-the-boys and called flying tackles “kisses,” gave Sakura the silent treatment for a week when she announced that she had better things to do at recess.

Sakura noticed, gradually, that she wasn’t the only person who watched Sasuke. The Uzumaki boy did, too, when he wasn’t busy pulling stupid pranks with the boy from the dog clan, or sleeping during tests with Shikamaru-kun.

Then, in the middle of that year, there was the Uchiha Clan Massacre, and Sasuke was absent from school for a month and a half. Sakura tried to find out where he lived, but the entire Uchiha district was closed down, and Sasuke was hidden in case his brother came back to finish the job. There were long memorial services for all the dead, and it didn’t seem quite real to Sakura, because the only one of them she’d known was Sasuke, and it couldn’t be that just one man had killed all those people.

Then she remembered what it had been like in the woods when all Uchiha Itachi had had to do was walk up behind her and she’d thought that she was going to die.

She was glad that he wasn’t going to be Hokage.

When Sasuke came back to school, she thought at first that he was a clone decoy and the real Sasuke was still tucked away somewhere, because the boy in Iruka-sensei’s class with her wasn’t a real boy.

When she said good morning to him at the beginning of class, he didn’t even seem to realize that she was there.

For the next few years she only saw him laugh or smile once, and that was at Naruto. It wasn’t a nice laugh, but, with one failed henge, Naruto had produced more emotion from Sasuke than she had in months of trying.

In her sleep, her shinobi dreams finally began to take shape, and they were not pleasant.

Sometimes there was a man who at one point might have been Itachi, but who had grown to be everything bad in everyone, and in Sakura’s dreams, he sometimes killed every person in Konoha.

Sometimes he wore Sasuke’s laugh, the cold one directed at Naruto.

Sometimes there was Naruto there, stupid scar-cheeked Naruto from class, and he watched her and tried to make her laugh and opened his mouth to ask her on dates but couldn’t ever find the words.

Sometimes Naruto had red eyes, and she didn’t know why.

Mostly, in her dreams, there was Sasuke. She had fantasies about protecting him on the battlefield, and then drawing him out and making him flesh again. One of her favorite daydreams was of the two of them in a small kitchen with a great big window facing the sunset, and she could make out only Sasuke’s silhouette. She handed him a bowl of rice, and he said “thank you” and then they ate in silence.

She thinks now that, for a ninja, that kind of daydream showed an impressive lack of ambition.

Ino would have laughed: the kind of laugh that Sasuke used on Naruto.

And somewhere, in the end, mixing up Ino and herself and Sasuke and Naruto and who was who and when, she finally got the picture. It wasn’t until after Sasuke and Naruto were made her teammates, and she saw a side of Sasuke that would never be domesticated enough to serve dinner to, and a side of Naruto that was as bright and strong and true as any Hokage could ever hope to be. It wasn’t until after she fought Ino, finally fought Ino, and held her own.

With a terrible twist in her gut, Sakura realized that Sasuke wasn’t hers.

She was closer to him, she knew, than almost anyone in Konoha. But considering that her competition was Naruto and Kakashi-sensei, she didn’t stand a chance. When Sasuke looked at Sakura, he usually saw her standing there, and that was more than he gave most people. But he didn’t always. There were too many times she’d offered him smiles only to have him look right through her, looking for something past the line where the trees met the sky.

Naruto, Sasuke always saw.

Kakashi-sensei, Sasuke always saw.

And those times when he pretended not to see Kakashi-sensei or Naruto, neither of them stood for it. Sakura fell silent and dropped her head and allowed herself to stay invisible, but Kakashi-sensei had more than once thrown Icha Icha Paradise at Sasuke’s head to get his attention, and Naruto had no problem yelling and punching and in general making a complete ass of himself just to make Sasuke look up and call him stupid.

Sasuke wasn’t hers. Not ever. And now that he’s gone, she has her final proof.

Sasuke thanked her, before he left. For just a moment when he saw her standing there, he looked surprised, and like something hurt him. And then he killed it, because killing things is what Sasuke does. He thanked her, knocked her out, and laid her out unconscious on a park bench and kept walking.

Naruto was also left unconscious in his wake, but Naruto has the scars to show for it. Naruto could point to any number of the marks on his body and say, “this is where Sasuke saw me, and this is where Sasuke saw me, and this is where Sasuke saw me, and this is where he was kinda pissed about it.”

Sakura has no such marks. Is it stupid for her to be so jealous of someone else’s scars?

Sakura has no doubt that wherever he is right now, Sasuke bears Naruto’s marks, too. If he were so inclined, Sasuke would be able to take off his shirt and point and say, “this is where the moron got lucky, and this is where I was a little bit too slow, and this is where he cheated with fox claws, and this one here barely even counts.”

Naruto left his marks with fists and kicks and – knowing Naruto – probably teeth. Orochimaru left his mark in swishes of black that stand out almost... almost pretty, against Sasuke’s paper white skin. Uchiha Itachi left his marks everywhere, in Sasuke’s eyes and head and even the way he carries himself when walking. Sakura doesn’t know what marks Kakashi-sensei left, or where, but she has no doubt that they’re there.

And that leaves only her, really. Her and all the rest of Konoha, who saw Sasuke and the something in him, but were not seen back. Sakura left no mark on Sasuke, not that she can see.

She closes her eyes against the shattering of her crystal wedding-colored dreams and tries not to feel so bitter.

000

End “Wedding-Colored”

000

October 12, 2005