Chapter Text
Sakura Haruno has always felt hungry.
Not in a literal sense —
Well…it felt one in the same sometimes....
—But mostly, it's a hunger deep within her that seems to seep from her soul. Like there's a hole there that she hasn't figured out how to fill yet.
An emptiness.
An ache of loneliness.
A wistfulness, a longing, a yearning for something she can't quite place.
She's always felt a bit….like she's been misplaced. Like something about her life isn't right, that she's not where she's supposed to be. Everything felt a little too much like a puzzle whose pieces wouldn't click together properly. Each piece holds a different person she's met or place she's been fond of, yet still creates a jagged sketch instead of a seamless painting.
She's traveled for much of her life. Her father hailed from a long line of traveling merchants who are revered in many of the civilian and shinobi villages alike, meaning they spent much of their time bouncing from place to place. It's been the only way Sakura has ever known, yet each time they settled in a new place and met new people, she felt more discontented. Nothing ever truly felt like home.
Each time they settled, it was long enough to feel a sense of normalcy at their new house, but short enough to never really feel true comfort. Never enough to chip away at the growing hunger in her belly.
She aches to stay somewhere.
To call somewhere home and mean it. She wants to know her neighbors' names and what the inside of their houses look like. She wants to have a pet and paint the walls of her bedroom.
Next town Sa-chan, Papa promises, it'll be the last one.
But the next town comes and goes like the rest.
And she's still as hungry as she's ever been.
She wants to be able to have things, more than just what she can fit in her bags. She wants to line the walls of a room with pictures and trinkets. She wants to go to school — real school, not just lessons from Mama. She wants to have study groups and make friends. She wants to not feel guilty for wanting more than just her parents. She wants to find the trees that don't feel wrong, the ones that feel like her home, because she knows they're out there. She wants —
Sakura is nine and a half years old, and she wants to be a shinobi.
Sakura is nine and a half, and she's staring at her mother as she's screaming over her father's torn body. Crushing him to her chest, staining her blonde hair with blood….turning it as pink as hers when the water won't wash it out all the way. Sakura cries as she curls up next to a tree and watches her mother hold her head underwater in a river that bleeds red, and the leaves reach down to wipe her tears away.
And she swears she'll never let someone she loves get struck down again.
Sakura is almost ten, and they take refuge in Suna.
And the hunger increases tenfold in the barren land.
The village is kind to them, in their own way. They let them cremate her father and put him away in a nicely sculpted jar that Sakura wraps in a blanket and stores in her bag. Because Mama won't touch it, she won't even look at him…or her for that matter. Mama doesn't do much of anything, really. She cries, and Sakura holds her, crying with her. She screams, and Sakura still holds her, but can't cry anymore. She stares off through the window, no longer crying or screaming or talking at all, and Sakura tries to get her to drink some water.
"Please Mama, you have to; it's been too long…you'll get sick."
She doesn't move or shower for days, and Sakura tries to wipe her sticky face with a cool washcloth. She's angry, and Sakura gets angry back as the hunger rips at her chest. She lashes out, and Sakura is holding her cheek as blood spills through her fingers.
She's holding her tight, crying apologies and promising she didn't mean to and—
"Mama's sorry petal… I promise I didn't mean to do that. I don't know why I— please I'll never—"
—and Sakura forgives her, because Papa is gone and she's angry too, so she understands.
Sakura has been ten for some time and she's stepping foot into Konoha for the first time, and suddenly she's found the trees that feel like home.
But she can't be happy because she's being dropped off with an aunt she's never even heard of, and Mama is giving her away.
She's getting everything the hunger in her stomach has ached for, but it still doesn't chip away because she'd spent a week covered in her father's blood and watched her mother wither away for months. And now—
A woman with long blonde hair and a mismatched blue and green hakama looks as angry as Sakura feels when Mama drops her bags at their feet. Her aunt looks down at her with sorrowful eyes that are framed by furious brows, and Sakura feels the hunger so violently that her throat grows tight and she thinks she might vomit.
Papa is dead and Mama is leaving.
She's leaving because she's scared after what happened, and Sakura does not forgive her.
Her fingers shake as Mama still refuses to look at her, and Papa suddenly feels heavy in her backpack as she reaches those fingers out to grab Mama's hand, only to be met with a painful feeling in her chest as her mother pulls away.
And Sakura hates her in that moment and takes back her forgiveness for the scar on her cheekbone. She tells her that, watching as her blonde hair falls in front of her face and her fists clench against her stomach in anguish. Her aunt, Fugu, is angry with her—for her—and Mama is begging them to understand.
"Fu-chan…I have to. I can't—it's too hard; please understand. I mean, this is what we do right? Our family? You ran, and Na-chan did too. This is how we handle this. It was only a matter of time before I—"
Mebuki laughs at the sound of her own words — a dry, cynical laugh that sounds painful and flowing tears are soaking the edges of her excuses.
And suddenly Sakura wants her to stop begging because —
"You're a coward, Mebuki. That was different, and you know it! You have a child—"
—Fugu-san is right. She's a coward, and it makes Sakura's stomach hurt to even look at her. So she turns and walks into the house. And when Mama begs for her to hand over the urn in her bag, she does not look back. Her father deserves better than to be carried by a woman who would abandon their child because of her own fear.
Sakura sits at the dinner table with her aunt that night, nose tickling against the trails of cigarette smoke in the air. She eats until her stomach can hold no more and then cries on the back porch as she lets her aunt hold her for the first time.
She's angry, and the trees scrape against the house.
She's devastated, and the wind wails with her.
Her stomach churns from the amount of food she ate at dinner—
—and she's never felt hungrier.