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There must have been no small amount of giggling occurring when the fates had tied her soul to that of another. If not laughter, then it must have been cruelty, because Sakura’s soulmate sign was perhaps the most painfully ironic bond signifier in all of Konoha. Sakura, with her trademark pink hair, hair that had been the source of no small amount of childhood taunting, hair that she’d been named after, had hair whose color she could not see.
Colorblindness. And of course, not just the generic black-and-white monochrome that was the most common presentation of sight-related bond signifiers. Dichromatic vision. And of course, out of the three primary colors, she could see blues and yellows, but reds were beyond her. Just her fucking luck.
She’d dreamed often as a child of having a different kind of bond, something simple and straightforward, a string of fate, or a name on her wrist, or hell, she’d have even settled for one of the delayed ones. A shared dream when she turned 18 would have been worth the excruciating uncertainty of waiting for a bond sign if it spared her the goddamn jokes! But at 14, she was a legal genin of Konoha, and she’d made her peace with her lot. She wore her hitai-ate on her red (or so Ino told her) hairband with pride on her too-large forehead, and she’d knock the teeth out of anyone who gave her shit for it.
Still, she couldn’t deny the twinge of jealousy that she had to push down every time yet another person she knew found their soulmate. Their Academy class was highly unusual, not only due to the concentration of clan heirs in it, but also in the sheer luck they seemed to have with finding their destined other half (or third, as it was in the case of their generation’s Ino-Shika-Cho, which was its own special headache considering they were all clan heirs). In fact, at the age of fourteen, Sakura seemed to be the last one who still hadn’t found her partner.
Presently, however, her soulbond was the last thing on her mind, because destiny be damned, she was a teenaged girl trying very, very hard to not make a fool of herself in front of the very pretty and very scary Suna genin who was standing in front of her. Her gaze was so solidly fixed on her shoes that she didn’t realize she was being spoken for an embarrassingly long moment.
“Hello? D’you just not speak or something? We just need directions to the foreign guest lodgings.”
Her gaze still fixed on her shoes, she managed to squeak out something almost adjacent to directions and heaved a sigh of relief as the kunoichi and her team departed. It was short lived, though, because of course it was.
“Oh my god, Sakura, could you have been any more awkward?! It’s not like you don’t have any practice talking to pretty girls, we have almost normal conversations all the time!” Ino flipped her long blond ponytail over her shoulder and looked at her best friend exasperatedly.
Sakura flushed, glaring at Ino. “Like you’re one to talk! You and Chouji and Shikamaru were a literal train wreck last year and you’ve known each other since you were babies. Forgive me for being caught off guard by a stranger talking to me!”
Ever the hypocrite, Ino brushed her words off and bulldozed right over Sakura’s very valid point, grabbing her by the wrist and dragging her along to wherever it was they were going. “We’re going to go get some ice cream, it’s way too hot to be gossiping out here. Anyways, on account of me being fantastic and perfect, I can tell you allll about your new crush. That was Temari of the Sand. You saw that massive fan of hers, right? She’s primarily an elemental release user, she uses it to control her wind ninjutsu. Total badass, if she doesn’t make chunin during these exams I’ll shave my hair off.”
Sakura raised a brow at Ino’s confidence but didn’t say anything. Yamanakas played with their cards close to their chests but they were almost never wrong when it came to intel, and her best friend hoarded knowledge like a dragon. Although-
“The Kazekage’s daughter?! Kami, break a girl’s heart why don’t you.”
Any small hope of catching the Sand kunoichi’s eye during the exams was quickly quashed. Plenty of people fooled around with others before finding their soulmate, and for all she knew her bond was platonic, but even if she had plucked up the courage to talk to a pretty girl there was no way in hell the daughter of the Kazekage would look twice at a weak civilian born like her.
“Hah! You’re putting the cart before the horse, Forehead. Try looking somewhere other than your shoes if you talk to her again, and then you can worry about her dad!” Ino snickered into her hand, but it wasn’t malicious, her eyes shining with mirth.
Sakura elbowed Ino fondly, and got hip-checked in return, the two of them devolving into petty arguing for the rest of the day, Sakura’s crush now old news. She’d be lying if she said her heart didn’t still skip a beat when she saw the distinctive fan for the rest of the exams though, her eyes always seeming to seek the Suna kunoichi out, even as Temari never once seemed to notice her.
And then fucking Orochimaru showed up, and Sakura had no time to think of pretty girls as her goddamn teammates did their best to get killed by an S rank missing-nin, and then she narrowly beats out a genin from Kumo in the weed-out round after the Forest of Death and then Team 7 experiences a month’s worth of the most grueling training they’ve ever gotten in their lives in preparation for the third stage of the exams, and Sakura is too tired most days to even remember her own damn name. Which is to say, her infatuation with a girl she’s exchanged all of 10 words with is put on the back burner, at least until she watches the way that Temari moves in her match against Shikamaru, at which point it comes back in full force as she sees the vicious grin on the other kunoichi’s face as she fights.
(Sakura knows it’s an entirely one-sided obsession, but she still can’t help but feel betrayed, just a little, when Suna invades.)
~~~
Life goes on. The Hokage dies and is replaced by Senju Tsunade. Sasuke abandons them, seduced by the promise of power, and Sakura holds Naruto as his heart breaks, the red string tying him to his soulmate now hanging frayed and slack. The sakura trees lining the streets of Konoha bud, and then bloom, and Sakura still can’t see the color of the flowers that are her namesake. She trains under the Slug Sage, gains approximately four inches of height and thirty pounds of muscle, and has her first kiss at sixteen while still riding the high of her promotion to chunin with the tall blonde kunoichi who’s been assigned as her mission partner.
She does not think about Temari for a long, long time (although her dreams are haunted by a vicious smile and the scent of yucca that she can’t quite place).
Until she does, because she’s 17 and a jonin, and Kankuro is thrashing on the operating table, doing his best to die while she’s doing her best to stop him. His heart stops and Sakura snarls and wraps her chakra around it, using half of her attention to keep it going through sheer force as she manually filters the poison out of his blood with the other half, because every second lost here is another second that she’s delayed in following Naruto out into the desert to help him face off against the S-rank nin that her idiot teammate seems to magnetically attract. Her patient seizes and despite all her training Sakura’s stomach almost drops into her shoes, but then his heartrate levels out again, his body relaxing back onto the operating table and she wipes sweat off her forehead, her bangs plastered uncomfortably to her skin. She closes her eyes and breathes, once, twice. Then she’s peeling her gloves off and stalking out the door, nodding at the medics who’ve been on standby outside the operating room as they scramble to attend to Kankuro, newly stabilized but still in need of monitoring.
Suddenly lightheaded, she shuts her eyes and leans her forehead against the cool hospital walls, a wave of dizziness washing over her. Sakura lets the silence wash over her, collecting her scattered thoughts as she mentally prepares herself for the second half of her mission. Of course, like all calm moments in her life, it doesn’t last long until the yelling begins and she almost groans.
“And I’m telling you- he’s my BROTHER, I don’t give a fuck what the elders say, sensei, I’m not going to sit on my ass and do fucking nothing while he’s missing and Kankuro is in the HOSPITAL!”
She rounds the corner only to find herself in the middle of a heated argument, the tall man who’d welcomed their team, (Baki, her mind supplied) facing off against Temari, the blonde kunoichi seemingly an inch away from violence.
“Temari, I know how badly you want to fight, but with both of your brothers’ lives at risk, we can’t risk losing you as well. Suna can’t afford to be without a Kazekage.” The calm, measured tone of the taller man only seemed to infuriate Temari sooner, her slender hands gripping her fan so tightly that Sakura can hear its chakra-reinforced wood creak. For a moment, she just stares at the planes of the Sand kunoichi’s face, her blue eyes narrowed in anger and full lips downturned in frustration. Her mouth is suddenly very, very dry.
Get your shit together Sakura!
“Uhm.” She almost jumps as she feels both of their gazes snap to her, staring at a particularly interesting floorboard as she delivers her news in a rush. “Kankuro-san is stable, he’ll make a full recovery given some weeks of rest and care.”
Sakura doesn’t wait for a response before brushing past them, almost wilting in relief as she rounds a corner and feels their stares slide away from her as they turn back to each other, their argument rising in intensity as she rushes off to the quarters she’d been assigned to so she can grab her supplies. After all, the Kazekage was still unaccounted for. She had a mission to complete, and that came before all else. She could be as much of a useless lesbian as she wanted to be off the clock, once all of this was over, and wasn’t that a motivating thought.
~~~
Sasori was fucking terrifying.
She thought she’d known fear before, but this? This was something entirely new. No longer was she a genin, hiding behind Kakshi-sensei as he fought against Zabuza, or running away from Orochimaru. No, this time she couldn’t run or hide, this time she was the one expected to go head-to-head with an S-rank missing nin, and not only that, but she was expected to win.
However, she wasn’t that little girl anymore. Sakura was a jonin of Konoha, student of the Slug Sage, and failure here was not an option. She reminded herself of this, even as her legs shook with exhaustion from battling Sasori’s army of puppets, fighting seamlessly besides Chiyo as though they’d been comrades for years, rather than two strangers from different villages and different generations. Sakura was powerful, and she methodically whittled away Sasori’s army with a grim determination as Chiyo engaged with her grandson directly. And then- there.
She was behind him in less than a second, shattering the armor of the puppet that shielded Sasori, victory just in her grasp, and-
Sakura was a fully-recognized medic nin of Konoha. Shinobi with limbs dangling off of their bodies, civilians mauled by long-forgotten explosive tags, she’d seen it all. At 17, Sakura was more familiar with death and violence than she was with the back of her own hand. The hospital’s trauma ward, T&I, ANBU, she’d done her time with them all, and there was no man-made horror left that was beyond her comprehension, or so she had thought. And yet, it took everything in her to not dry heave as Sasori revealed his human-turned-puppet body, gleefully showing off the blankness of his wrist where his soulmark had once been. The removal of a soulbond- shredding your literal soul- it wasn’t something that was supposed to be possible. However, Sasori had long since ceased being a man, well before he’d ever made himself into a puppet, she reminded herself, no matter how impossible his actions seemed.
As if he could read her mind, Sasori tilted his head in amusement, the stillness of his body out of place in the ruins of their battleground. “Our leader is powerful beyond anything you could imagine. Removing a soulmate bond is nothing for him, the same way you are nothing to me.”
Had she been anyone else, Sakura’s nausea would have cost her the fight. She wasn’t anyone else, though, she reminded herself, as she landed the final decisive hit on Sasori.
She was the student of the Godaime Hokage, she reminded herself, as she forcibly restarted Gaara’s heart. Sakura was a jonin of Konoha, goddammit, and she wasn’t going to be the one to explain to Temari why she let one of Suna’s honored elders go through with a life force transferring technique before even attempting basic resuscitation protocol.
“None of our people are dying today,” she snaps, turning to where Naruto and Chiyo were still arguing over whether or not to risk performing the jutsu. “He’s alive. In awful shape, but he’s alive.”
She could feel them gape at her as she turned and brushed dust off of her torn and dirtied skirt, choosing to ignore their shock in favor of squinting out over the sand dunes to where she knows Suna awaits. Their enemy was powerful, perhaps the most powerful threat that Konoha had ever seen in its relatively short history. That was fine. In that case, she just had to be stronger.
~~~
Sakura’s Bingo Book page has added a few zeroes to her bounty and now has her marked as a S-class threat. It’s not quite the “flee-on-sight” that Kakashi-sensei has, or the “diplomatic immunity” status that Tsunade-shishou’s rank as Godaime grants her, but Ino insists that they celebrate anyways, and it’s this chain of events that has her stumbling back to her family’s home well after dark and more than a little tipsy, only to find her parents waiting for her disapprovingly in the living room. Sighing, she just thanks the spirits that she’s not sober for this conversation and sinks into the armchair that’s been designated as “Sakura’s” since she was six years old.
“It’s just,” her mother says with no small amount of concern, “everyone else your age has already found their soulmate.”
Her father winces, cutting in to redirect away from what they all know is a deeply sore subject for their daughter. “Darling, we just worry that you work too much is all. We hardly ever see you anymore! We know that your work is important, but just try to make time for other things in your life, okay?”
Sakura can’t escape fast enough. As she bounds up the stairs to her room and away from that deeply awkward conversation, precise in her movements despite her drunkenness, she wonders what having a soulmate would even look like for her anymore. When she was a child, it had been simple. Sakura’s life had been simple, so the thought of a soulmate had slotted in neatly next to “getting good grades” and “hanging out with Ino”. Then again, she isn’t sure if she wants simple anymore. She’s long since outgrown that, the girl who she used to be now an ill-fitting disguise. The respectable young men her mother hopefully introduces her to at dinner parties (that only seem to occur on her days off) barely get more than a mumbled pleasantry before she’s off again, at the hospital or training with Naruto or getting drunk with Ino.
Even despite her annoyance, her lips twitch upwards in a smile as she drifts off to sleep in her childhood room. The average person does not, in fact, meet their soulmate before the age of 17. Yamanaka Ino, who has two soulmates that she met before she even turned 1, is an outlier and should not have been counted.
~~~
The messenger hawk finds her a week and a half after what Sakura is now calling the “Kazekage Rescue Mission”. Its beady eyes bore into her from its perch outside the windows of the Hokage’s office, making itself known the way that all messenger hawks were trained to do with a tiny flare of its chakra. Accustomed to the cycle of the Hokage’s endless paperwork, she lets it in without a second thought, going through the motions of checking it for any threats before it flaps in to settle on her shoulder. What is unusual is that the letter, bearing the seal of the Sabaku family, is addressed to Sakura. With a shrug, she opens it anyways, a sheaf of paper and a tiny sealing scroll falling out. Not many things are confidential to her, being the Godaime’s apprentice, especially given how frequently her mentor likes to shove her paperwork off onto her and Shizune, so she reads it then and there.
Haruno-san,
It was my intention to thank you personally before you left for Konoha, but my duties left me unable to see you off and so this letter will have to suffice. The magnitude of the debt that Suna owes to the Leaf cannot be overstated, but more than that, you saved the lives of the last of my family, and for that I am eternally grateful. Your strength does your village proud. Know that you will always have allies in the Sand.
It’s nothing compared to what you’ve done for us, but I’ve enclosed below some samples of poisons that you may find interesting-I understand that Konoha does not have ready access to many of these compounds and thought you might benefit from samples to study. I’m no poisons master myself, but I am curious to see what you’ll make of them.
Sincerely,
Sabaku no Temari
There’s an emotion blooming in her chest that she can’t quite put words to as she puts down the letter and unseals a handful of tiny glass vials from the sealing scroll. Handing samples of their own poisons over to a shinobi of another village- it’s a gesture that most nin would balk at, and yet there the row of vials sit, freely given and labelled carefully in that same spiky handwriting. Perhaps not all shinobi would appreciate a gift such as this, but Sakura’s fingers itch to poke and prod at the compounds in her lab, her mind already racing with possibilities and chemical formulas. She tempers her excitement though, because no matter how much of a shinobi she is, her parents had drilled manners into her well before she’d even held a kunai.
And yet, despite the hundreds of bland, diplomatic letters she’d written on behalf of Tsunade, the words don’t come. Shizune finds her there an hour later, on her fourth failed draft, and Sakura can’t quite explain the flustered blush that rises to her cheeks as she flees tactically retreats from the Hokage’s office, sealing scroll and letter in hand.
Get a grip, Sakura, it’s not like you haven’t dealt with this before!
Families of patients stumbling over their words in gratitude, respectful nods from other shinobi she’s gone on missions with, Sakura has no lack of recognition now. She’s come a long way from the unremarkable girl she once was, but she can’t explain why Temari’s praise acknowledgement affects her so much.
It’s because she’s another powerful shinobi of our generation who you didn’t grow up with, she thinks firmly, I would’ve had the same reaction if it was anyone else like that.
Four hours later, her retreat from the Hokage’s office yields fruit, as she loses herself in teasing out the secrets of one of the vials she’d chosen at random and sends her pages worth of notes and questions off with another hawk to Suna without a second thought. Her parents would have been horrified if they’d learned that she hadn’t even sent a formal thank you note, but the unexpectedly quick response from Temari has a dry amusement to it that makes Sakura think that the Sand kunoichi likely doesn’t mind.
Their correspondence becomes something of a constant for Sakura, even after she’s exhausted all there is to be learned from the poison samples. Temari’s bluntness and sharp wit are a much-needed anchor for her as the Akatsuki grows more and more bold, the threat of another war looming on the horizon.
~~~
“Good lord, Forehead, and you’re sure she’s not your soulmate?” Ino says teasingly, spinning out of the way of another of Sakura’s kicks. It’s not a true spar, if Sakura was actually trying Ino would have been flat on the ground before they even started, but it’s an old tradition of theirs. They go through the motions of fighting, a push and a pull so practiced that they could do as easily as breathing. Team Seven may be Sakura’s genin team, but there’s no other person in the world that Sakura is as in-sync with as her childhood best friend. Ino’s question gives her pause, though, the slightest interruption of their dance that she knows won’t go unnoticed. She takes her time to respond, her conclusion surprising even her.
“She might be. I’m not sure.” She responds, and Ino stops fighting to look at her best friend slack jawed.
“What do you mean you don’t know?! Sakura, don’t you just need to make eye contact to be sure?! For the love of everything that is good, both of her brothers owe you their lives and you can’t be sure if you’ve looked her in the face or not?!” Ino’s voice progresses in volume until she’s properly yelling, and Sakura winces as she steamrolls on. “And worse-imagine the mess if she isn’t!”
“It wouldn’t be the end of the world,“ Sakura cuts in before her best friend can work herself into any more of a frenzy, “and even if she isn’t, maybe my soulbond is platonic.”
Despite having regained her composure, Ino rolls her eyes. “We both know that if your soulbond was platonic, we’d have ended up being bonded.”
“Such arrogance, Pig. We both know that it obviously would’ve been Naruto.” At the affronted look on her best friend’s face, her poker face shatters, and she snickers. Naruto is dear to her the way that an annoying sibling would be, but their relationship was painstakingly built over time and held together with the help of some shared trauma. Her and Ino on the other hand fit together so seamlessly it felt like breathing. Despite her teasing, Ino’s words ring true. She knows her soulmate isn’t going to be platonic, and yet that still defines nothing for her.
Sasori rejected the concept of soulmates so much that he’d severed his bond entirely. Tsunade-shishou’s soulmate died in the last war, and Kakashi-sensei is so secretive about his that she’s not even sure if he has a bondmate. Sasuke left the village despite his bond to Naruto, and while Sakura’s parents are deeply in love, she’s not sure if that’s the kind of relationship she wants either.
Sakura like it when things are simple. She likes cause and effect, equations that balance, she likes when two plus two equals four. Soulmates aren’t like that. They’re messy and complicated and if she thinks too hard about the fact that she can’t imagine what the color red looks like her head hurts. She knows that she’s missing an entire third of the colors that the world has to offer, and yet she doesn’t feel less for it. Temari, with her cutting barbs and practical nature… she makes Sakura feel more. And maybe that’s the missing piece, bondmate or not, they’re all just people. People who live messy lives, with no straight answer, and she doesn’t know what she wants out of a soulmate but what Sakura does know is that she wants Temari.
There’s a war brewing, and Sakura has yet to find her soulmate, but she keeps a box of letters under her bed anyways (they smell faintly of yucca.)
~~~
Sakura is 18 when she punches a goddess in the face. To be fair, she hadn’t fought Kaguya alone, but damn did it feel good to be able to land the finishing blow. Then she punches Sasuke in the face (albeit with less lethal force) and then leaves her two idiot teammates to kiss and make up. She weaves past the tents in the Allied Shinobi Forces camp, and steps into the Kazekage’s tent with her head held high. She gets as far as two steps in before realizing that she doesn’t know what the hell she’s going to say, before her train of thought gets derailed entirely by a pair of piercing blue eyes.
“Uh. Uhm. Wow.” Sakura blinks, and then blinks again, harder, as some part of her brain rewires itself. Temari blinks back, her jaw going slack as her gaze flickers over Sakura. She knows in the back of her mind somewhere that they’re surrounded by other people, but that seems to fall away as she drinks in the sight of her bondmate’s face with the startling realization that she’d been too anxious in their prior meetings to look anywhere but the ground.
“Your hair.” Temari says, and her voice is so lovely that Sakura feels weak in the knees.
“I wouldn’t know much about that,” she blurts out. “Bond manifested itself in colorblindess. Can’t-couldn’t, see reds.” With a start, she realizes that now she can, her hands shaking as she unties her hair and grabs a chunk of it, staring at the richness of its color pooling over her hands.
At some point, Temari had gotten very close to her, a hand reaching out to touch her face before hesitating. Sakura leans into it, the reality of her soulmate, of Temari being real and in front of her instead of just words on a page. And then she’s laughing, her other hand coming up to cradle Sakura’s face in both hands as she leans down to press their foreheads together, and says, “Of all the things in this room, the only thing that stayed the same color is your hair. Until now, all I saw was shades of red.”
Fate. What a fucking joke.
Instead of lingering on how her soulbond was some kind of cosmic punchline, Sakura closes her eyes and kisses her soulmate instead, blocking out color and focusing on the warm press of Temari’s lips on hers.