Work Text:
Et quand vient le soir / And when the night comes
Pour qu'un ciel flamboie / For the sky to be on fire
Le rouge et le noir ne s'épousent-ils pas ? / Aren't black and red marrying each other?
{Ne me quitte pas – Jacques Brel
Soulmates are a complicated thing. Everyone meets theirs, it's a fact of life as sure as the warmth of the sun on a summer day. But it remains that to meet your soulmate, they must first break your heart. That, more than anything, makes soulmates a complicated thing.
Haruno Sakura is born in spring, 89 years after the founding of Konohagakure. On her forearm, like on every baby before her, is the words her soulmate will say to her that will break her heart. When he first reads them, her father starts crying. Her mother stares blankly at the baby's grinning face and feels like punching something.
Haruno Sakura is three when she learns to hate her words and what they represent. She's barely three, and hidden deep in the darkest corner of her heart is a promise. She is going to kill Sasuke, whoever he is. On that day, Inner starts laughing, and she never really stops.
Growing up a civilian girl at the Academy is painful and hard and far from rewarding. But Sakura sets her jaw and curls her fists and pushes forward. She meets Uchiha Sasuke and Inner stirs and crosses her arms and waits. So of course, Sakura stubbornly decides to like him. Inner is strong enough to hate him on her own. The darkest corner of her heart starts to rot.
When she's assigned to a team with that annoying boy and the one she swore to kill, Sakura puts a stop to it. She takes to wearing a long-sleeved qipao and fastens bandages around her forearms to keep the sleeves in place. It, of course, has nothing to do with her soulmark. That night, Sakura punches Inner in the face and decides that Team 7 is going to work.
Four years later, when Naruto comes back from his training and swears again to bring Sasuke home, Sakura knows that there is no going back. Her heart is a dry and withered thing and the rot has spread far too much. She doesn't want Sasuke home. He already broke her heart and he's not even her soulmate. What right does he have to come back, only to steal the most precious thing in her life?
But Naruto is grinning his blinding smile and Sai accepts her hugs with shudders and broken sighs and she's going to make this team work even if it's the last thing she ever does. In four years, her bandages have never left her arms. She's never seen Naruto's either and doesn't pry, because it's rude and he's her best friend.
Sai, on the other hand, literally wears his heart on his sleeve and doesn't give a flying fuck about it. He's on the floor of their apartment, painting her nails a bright orange that kind of makes her want to cry. His crop top is on the couch, where her tanktop and bra also rest.
(it's a weird thing, what they've got. It's not romantic, and yet she feels in love. It's not platonic, and yet she yearns for the intimacy. It's weird, but they're roommates who sleep naked in the same bed and sometimes Sai cries in her arms, his cheek pressed against her breast and she wants to rip Danzō's spine out with her bare hands—)
Her eyes trail to his pale shoulders, before going down, down, where the words are etched into his skin like cockroaches invading the white canvas. Sakura stops breathing, unable to turn her eyes away. It's there, it's never been hidden and Sai probably doesn't care but it means so much. He sees her looking and tilts his head. She knows he never tried to see hers, and the bandages are the only clothing she wears at night. Time is frozen where trust lays here, between Sai's fingers and Sakura's nails, naked and baring its throat.
Using her free right hand, Sakura gently unravel the long stripe covering her skin. Sai's eyes never leave her face. When the bandages fall to the ground, she swallows and angles her forearm just so. Sai slowly bows his head, like he's waiting for her to tell him to stop. She doesn't. Finally, his eyes find her words and he reads in silence. His fingers start shaking and he drops the nail polish. The orange bleeds on the tatami as he wraps his arms around her.
"I'm sorry."
"Yeah. Me too."
"I can kill him, if you want."
That, more than anything, are the words that finally make her cry. Inner curls up in her brain and stops laughing. For the first time in thirteen years, Inner goes to sleep.
"Do you want to go to bed?"
"Yes. Let's do that."
So Sai carries her to their futon and presses her against him with a whispered promise of chaos and maiming. She loves him so hard she might break something. The words on his skin are a guilty comfort she does not want to acknowledge. He sees her looking again and indulges her when she bends to kiss his skin.
I don't believe you, they say, a fairly common mark and yet all the more hurtful when she knows someone will say this to her- whatever the hell Sai is to her. She falls asleep with his breath on her neck and her lips on his forearm.
It's the year 105 after the founding of Konohagakure and Pain attacks three days later.
After that it's a blurry of fighting and healing and Inner is chanting in her head. Her words are forgotten under the blood matting her bandages and she hangs on to what's left of the Team 7 she fought so hard to keep together. Pain leaves a levelled village behind and Kakashi died and Naruto bled determination and hope onto the soil while Sakura and Sai did what they did best, while never being enough.
They crash, and they crash hard. Team 10 is the one to pick up the pieces when Konoha rebuilds, out of kinship or pity or compassion, maybe. Sakura simply hopes it's not pity. She curls up against Chōji and they watch the fire burn the corpses, too many to bury. He hands her his bag of crisps and she stuffs her face without a care in the world. She feels hollow.
Sai and Shikamaru are somewhere around. Her teammate promised to paint him new shogi pieces if he brought him adequate wood chips. Ino and Naruto are a pile of laughing limbs, making out like teenagers behind a tree. (because no matter their age, they all stopped being teenagers long ago and she feels old and tired and broken and she can't find the glue to put herself together)
Sakura closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. When she opens them again, it's the Fourth Shinobi War and she watches the headquarters explode from afar. She barely thinks before she's running towards where she can sense Shikamaru's and Ino's chakra. Somewhere on the way, Sai joins her and they reach their friends at the same time.
Ino is sobbing, her hands clenched in her green jacket. Shikamaru is sitting next to her, his pale face a blank mask of emptiness. Sakura goes to her oldest friend, wrapping her in a hug and gently rocking her back and forth. She watches from the corner of her eyes Sai kneeling next to Shikamaru and whispering something that sounds like comfort.
"You should focus on Ino, I know my dad made it out."
Sakura tenses up and shifts her entire focus on the situation while she keeps shushing soothing nothings to Ino.
"You've seen it—"
"Nah, I was talking to him thanks to Ino, I know he got out in time."
"Shikamaru, stop."
"He must be on his way now, the lazy bastard."
"Listen to me."
"Or maybe he took a nap. I wouldn't put it past him."
"Shikamaru, he's dead."
The young man freezes, his eyes lost somewhere in the rubble around them. Agonisingly slowly, he turns to look at Sai.
"I don't believe you."
Sai's breath hitches and he unconsciously looks down at his forearm. Shikamaru's jaw is set but his eyes follow the same path.
"It's you," Sai whispers. "It's you."
Sakura tucks her face in Ino's neck and tries to give them privacy. It's not her problem anymore. In her arms, her friend is still crying.
Fucking war. She can't hear what they're saying anymore, both of them talking too low. Sakura puts a bit of distance between Ino and her to ask how she's doing, when all hell breaks lose.
Something explodes a couple of meters away from them and they're sent flying. Sakura coughs dirt and blood and frantically begins to look for her friends. She spots Ino's hair behind a huge rock, but Chōji is already running her way, so she turns around. The dust hasn't settled yet, she feels like she's drowning in the metallic smell of blood.
Someone shouts for a medic and Sakura sprints to the origin of the sound. She doesn't recognise either of the shinobi, but her palms instantly light with green chakra. She frowns, trying to ignore how her heart is beating in her throat. Inner is roaring inside her head, telling her to go look for Sai and Naruto.
The wound is deep but clean and she yells back to Inner that Naruto is too far away and Shikamaru will take care of Sai. She doesn't believe either of those things, but she's helping, those people need her and she won't abandon them. Not now.
Sakura doesn't abandon anyone after that, not when Naruto's heart is beating in her palm, not when Katsuyu is emptying every last chakra store she has left, not when she heals Neji enough for him to stay alive until this is over, not when she puts her hands on Obito's shoulders and swears that she will make it work.
She's betrayed (again) by Sasuke and she feels his hand ripping through her chest and Inner is vomiting blood (or is that her? She can't tell the difference, everything hurts, why did he do that, didn't she try her best?) and she's falling, failing. Sakura feels hollow again but this time, it's the hole drilled in her chest that's pumping the void in her veins.
She somehow expects to wake up, to realize that it's all a genjutsu, Sasuke would never do that, right? (right.)
But she doesn't and she keeps spilling hemoglobin, almost certain to be crying except it's sweat burning in her eyes and she is done crying. So she sucks it up, borrows chakra from Gaara and patches herself up. It won't last long, the wound is too deep and she's already lost too much blood. But it will be just enough. So she takes one last look at the battlefield, hoping to find a familiar pale face, and when she can't find it, she hauls Kakashi up and starts to walk. They have a couple of idiots to find.
And idiots they do find, though they're missing some of their pieces and she cackles almost maniacally at the shape drawn by the spills. This is Team 7 alright, hurting each other deep and sticking together with drying blood and sheer stubbornness. She's almost surprised not to see Sai appear next to Kakashi to complete the picture. But he's not here (is he even alive?) and she leaves her old teacher behind to join the morons on their rock.
They're bloody, covered in bruises and scratches, and smiling like they just found a ladder to the moon. Sakura falls to her knees next to them, her hands already glowing green. Sasuke's only eye falls on the hole in her jōnin shirt and he starts to choke. The panic on his face would make her laugh, if she had any energy left for petty things like defending her life when an asshole almost took it.
"Hey, bastard, whatcha looking at?"
Sasuke swallows. "I thought— I don't understand, I..."
"Yeah, you almost killed me," Sakura says with a bitter smile.
"What? What do you mean? Hey, Sasuke, explain!"
"I didn't want to- I thought I got you in a genjutsu."
Sakura chuckles, red beads at the corner of her lips. "I guess you got it wrong, buddy. Happens to the best of us."
"Sakura-chan, what's this all about?"
"I'll tell you later, Naruto. Breathe, will you? I'm trying to fix you."
Naruto laughs, happy and without a care in the world for his missing arm.
"Hey, Sakura, you'll never guess," he says, excited.
"Try me," she indulges, because she might as well go all out and forgive them for the scare, they won't let a small thing like concern for her feelings stop them from acting like assholes anyways.
"Sasuke is my soulmate!"
She doesn't realize it until Naruto's scream echoes in the valley, until the blood filling her mouth starts to spill on her chin, until a thunderous crack covers everything else. Her arm is embedded to the elbow in the rock, millimetres away from Naruto's face.
In her head, Inner is howling.
The feral growl that escapes her throat only fuels her rage, the red haze tainting her vision suddenly blinding. She extracts her arm, ripping the flesh in her haste. The meat of her forearm is a mangled mess of skin, muscle and blood. The bone has snapped and some of it stays stuck in the hole. Sasuke stares, transfigured, and Naruto looks at her like she's gone mad. (maybe she has. She must have. She had no idea how much this moment would hurt)
On her left forearm, the damning words are gone.
A spark of consciousness tells her they won't die from their wounds anymore, and it's enough for her. She spits the red saliva and gets up, turning her back on the pain and the betrayal, on this Team 7 she once swore to make work. (when she was twelve and naive and already hating Sasuke for stealing her soulmate even before she could meet either of them and plagued by a monster in her head whispering murder and torture)
She leaves her soulmate and his behind, taking Kakashi with her. She has people to find, people to save, and a broken heart to mend.
Sakura finds Shikamaru first, as safe as can be. He looks lost, a haunted shadow on his face she's never seen before. She entrusts Kakashi to him and goes looking for survivors, allies she might be able to give a chance at recovering. That's how she intended to spend the next hours, but then a Kiri medic sees her arm and the next thing she knows, there is a pile of hunter nin tackling her to the ground while the medic heals her.
The man is good, not great, but good enough to fix her bone and stop the bleeding. The flesh and skin, he has to leave alone, not confident in his ability to put it back the way it should be. His eyes linger on the place her soulmark should be, but he doesn't say a word and asks the hunters to let her up. Sakura watches them, those men and women used to tracking and long chases, and she wonders.
"Would one of you accompany me? I'm looking for someone."
A huge woman, towering thirty centimetres over her, takes a step forward.
"Sure, I can help. We would be dead meat if it weren't for you, girly. We owe you that at least."
"Yeah, no kidding," a man snorts. "I saw you punch that bitch in the sky. Wouldn't want to be in your way. And if it was me with that kind of injury, I would be pissing myself and crying for my mom, so there's that."
Sakura can't help it. She bursts out laughing and claps the man on the back, who staggers and takes an involuntary step forward under her unchecked strength. He grumbles about it but accepts her thanking him before she takes off with the Kiri woman.
"I'm Haruno Sakura, by the way."
"I know who you are, Haruno. I'm Awa Nami. Who're you looking for?"
"Konoha nin, pale skin, dark hair, dark eyes. He's a dōton user, average chakra reserve."
"Do you have anything that belongs to him?"
Sakura frowns, before going through her weapon pouch. "Here. That's his, though he hasn't touched it in a while."
Nami takes the spare brush Sakura has started to keep on her all the time, in case Sai broke or lost his during a fight. She does a complicated thing with her hands, which Sakura doesn't watch. She knows about secret techniques and village confidentiality, she's not about to look a gift horse in the mouth and anger the woman who wants to help her.
Nami looks up from the brush and takes a left turn. Sakura follows, silent and alert in case she spots someone she can help. Soon, the hunter stops and points to a large chunk of earth.
"Your boy is over there, slightly injured. He's not alone."
Sakura bows, her hand clasped on her stomach. "Thank you, Awa Nami. I'll be sure to tell my people about you."
"And I, about you, Haruno. Good luck."
She vanishes and Sakura sprints towards the chakra signature she can now recognise. And there he is, cradling his wrist to his chest while trying to patch up a Kumo boy whose dark skin is getting paler by the second. Sakura drops to her knees next to him and presses a green hand to the boy's ribs, putting them back together and fixing his lung on the way.
She feels Sai's eyes on her, taking in the hole in her shirt and the reopened wound underneath, the state of her left arm that she lets lie on her side, the blood on her chin, new trails dripping from her nose. Sakura stays silent and finishes healing the boy. When she's done, Sai points him in the direction of the camp, but doesn't move. Sakura doesn't either. They sit here, back pressed against the chunk of earth and side by side they look at the night sky.
"If the offer still stands," Sakura says in the dead silent, "I would love to see you kill Sasuke."
"Tell me."
"He put a hand through my chest, thinking he was only inducing a genjutsu. Also, he's apparently Naruto's soulmate."
Sai's head falls on her shoulder and she lets out the breath she hadn't realized kept her feelings in check. Softly, she starts crying, light tears washing the grime from her tired face. And there she thought she was done with crying.
"On the bright side, it won't be hard to hide his body around here."
"I made friends with Kiri hunter nins, I'm sure they'll agree to give us a hand."
Sai shifts and she looks down, only to find him wiping away a few tears.
"Why are you crying?"
"I think I'm experiencing empathy. It's very unpleasant."
"I'm glad," she smiles, and lets her head rest on his hair.
The stars are beautiful. Inner is sleeping again, an amusing snore echoing in Sakura's mind. Her chest hurts, and if the warmth is anything to go by, she's bleeding again.
"Hey, Sai."
"What?"
"I think I'm going to pass out."
He's instantly on his knees, laying her down on the shattered ground. The metallic taste is back in her mouth, slipping through her teeth to taint her lips with bitterness. What a sight she must be. She chuckles, only to choke on the blood. Sai is ripping her shirt apart, leaving her half-naked in the dust.
"Tell me what to do."
She laughs, because it took her three years to master healing and she has perfect chakra control. And yet.
"Focus your chakra on your hand. Imagine it's- it's water, okay, and you want to clean a wound. So the water needs to go over everything and take back the dirt and the blood, y-yeah? Well, that's the gist of it. Your turn, pretty boy."
Sai stares at her, and there is something wrong in his eyes, something heavy and deep that she doesn't want to see. So she closes her eyes and takes a breath. She can feel his chakra gathering around his hand and he only wavers a little before swiping it over the bleeding skin. She screams at how raw the chakra is, how it feels like he's yanking her skin away. But it's enough, like pouring alcohol on a cut, and she breathes a little better.
"Now, I'm going to pass out, but you did g-good, you did great. Just find me a medic in the next hour and I'll be f-fine."
She doesn't hear his reply.
Sakura wakes up in a Suna hospital. Given how far away it is from the battlefield, she assumes they put her in stasis, which explains how good she feels. She sits up, checking herself up and finding no trace of the hole except a scar. Her arm moves fine, but the skin is rough and ugly. The words came back as soon as they had a canvas again, just like they would on anybody else. She wishes they didn't.
Sakura looks around her, finding six other patients in just this room, all fast asleep. She decides she's well enough to get up and leaves the room. She finds a nurse soon enough, who frets over her before admitting that she is, in fact, well enough to leave the hospital entirely. Sakura knows they must need the space, and she's frankly glad to let them have it, but the nurse insists on letting the head medic know. So Sakura sits on a chair in the corridor and waits. She doesn't expect the blonde hurricane to barge in and almost tackle her to the floor.
Later, she'll pat herself on the back for not punching him on reflex.
Sai and Sasuke are trailing behind, the latter joining Naruto on one side of her, her old teammates looking like nothing happened if it weren't for the missing arms and the sheepish looks.
"You'd be a great medic, Sai," is the first thing she says. He looks at her with a frown, before his eyes widen slightly, an easy smile settling on his face.
"I'll leave that to you, Ugly. Though next time, you should treat yourself before Kumo boys who could have been fine for another couple of hours."
She laughs lightly, pleased to see the gentle understanding in his eyes. Naruto sits cross-legged next to her on the ground, a serious look on his face.
"Sasuke-teme explained what happened. I'm sorry we didn't notice."
She shrugs. "You had other things on your mind."
"Sakura, I put my arm through your chest!"
Sasuke looks murderous. She didn't expect that.
"Yes, you did. It was an asshole move, Sasuke." Inner is cackling in her head. "I don't really mind, though."
"What do you mean, you don't- you can't be serious."
"I'm always serious," she says, crossing her eyes on purpose.
Sai sits by her side, doing his best not to laugh. Naruto looks at her like she's mad, again, and Sakura can't resist. She rolls her eyes back and starts laughing maniacally. Sasuke slumps in front of her, closing the weird circle they've formed in the corridor.
"Gods, you're touched in the head."
Actually, no. Her other personality just decided to stop messing with her head and just enjoy the ride. She hasn't once been in tune with Inner since she appeared, all those years ago. It's exhilarating.
Naruto shifts, before clearing his throat. Sakura turns to him with a raised eyebrow.
"Should we- maybe we should talk about the other thing."
"Oh please, do tell. What do you wanna talk about?"
Naruto makes a vague gesture. "Well, you know. The thing."
He's trying not to look at her forearm and absolutely failing. She grits her teeth.
"Oh, you mean the thing. The thing where I followed you all my life, supported you and accepted you. The thing where I jumped when you told me to and ran after Sasuke when he decided to fuck off to wherever the hell he went. The thing where I loved you both and tried to make this work, even when you tried to kill each other on the top of a hospital? The thing where Sasuke almost killed me not once, not twice, but five fucking times, and yet I stand in the same room as you two with a smile? The thing where you're my soulmate and I'm not yours? That thing?"
She knows her hand went through the floor approximately at the second word that left her mouth. Sai is watching her with pursed lips, clenching his fist around a brush.
"You know what, fuck you. I'm done. I've done my best and it wasn't enough. Now I'm tired, I'm hurt, and I don't trust either of you. I'm going home."
She rises, Sai automatically following her lead. Sasuke reaches out for her, before catching himself and retracting his hand.
"Sakura," he tries.
"What?"
"Konoha is gone. The refugees are staying in Suna for now."
She laughs again, bitter and angry, and she can somehow taste the metal in her mouth again.
"You misunderstood, Sasuke," and she reaches for Sai's hand, who abandons it to her. "This is what home looks like."
Sakura tightens her grip and leads Sai away. They've barely turned at the corner when she starts sobbing. She has to stop until Sai steadies her, before they can walk again.
"Gods, that w-was so much harder than I expected."
"I'm taking you to Kakashi."
"Is h-he okay?"
"Severe chakra exhaustion and chronic absence from medical check-ups, but that's about it."
"Good, good. How are you?"
"You're aware that making me talk won't solve your problems, yes?"
"Shut up and distract me."
"I'm fine. Completely recovered, though your healing advice made a mess of my chakra network for a while."
"Ah, sorry about that."
"I don't mind. It helped you, didn't it?"
She leans against him and tries to regulate her breathing. "Yeah, it did."
"Then I really don't mind."
Sakura takes a deep breath as they walk outside the hospital, into the busy street. "Did you and Shikamaru talk?"
Sai sends her a strange look. "Why would we?"
"I heard you, after the headquarter attack."
"Ah."
"Yeah. Congrats, pretty boy."
"Thank you. We have tea together, sometimes. He's teaching me shogi. I'm adequate at it."
She raises a brow. "That's it?"
"Yes, we believe to be platonic soulmates."
"Oh."
Sai leads her to the new barracks, where the refugees are staying. He shows her Team 8's, who are sharing with a couple of younger chûnin. The next barrack is theirs and Kakashi is waiting for them. His ninken are gathered around him and he's reading a battered copy of Icha-Icha. He closes the book when they enter and slowly rises, fatigue showing in every gesture.
"I'm home," she says softly.
"Welcome back, my cute little student."
He wraps a careful arm around her shoulders in a half-hug and she smiles at him.
"Let me show you around," Sai finally says, leading her to through the first two rooms (one for Kakashi and one for Gai), then the kitchen they share with the next barrack, and finally the last room.
"It's ours."
"There's only one bed."
"Of course."
Sakura looks at him, really looks, and can't help but want. But the bed is calling to her like nothing before in her life, so she falls back on it and stares at the ceiling until Sai climbs and lies next to her.
"I love you, Sai," she blurts out before she can chicken out.
He slowly turns his head towards her and smiles. He kisses her jaw, gently, then the tip of her nose, before tucking his head under her chin. She wraps her arms around him. Inner gets up, puts her hands on her hips and shakes her head with a wicked smile. Sakura returns the smile with a wink. Inner waves, and disappears.