Chase

Trailing after her mother and father was one of the greatest privileges Sakura's childhood allowed. From the moment the earth breathed life into her, she spoke and smelled and tasted and thought shinobi.

Of course, she was also a little girl, and little girls dream about crystals and swans and castles and crowns. When they are of the age of dolls, they dream of weddings, and of children, too.

Sakura had the names picked out by the time she was eight. She'd planned to have a son first, with paper-white skin and a frightening smile. He would serve as protection for the daughters that followed. She would give him the title Isamu, for bravery and the redemptive power of courage.

Her second child would be female. She was to be called Shinobu, a word so close to shinobi that it would surely roll off of Sakura's lips with ease. Her eyes would glitter like water glistening, and her hair would be long and cascading, the color of a muddy creek.

Then there would be one more girl, a wild daredevil with a name so fresh she could have been plucked from a garden at birth. "Hina" meant green, but not with envy. Hina was supposed to be green with life.

Her final child would be another son, a boy made of pouts and cutesy smiles, but filled with a stern defiance. His name would be Hotaru, and he would be stubborn but sweet; the icing on her mother-cake.

Sakura was exactly like the other little girls, yet in the same fashion she was also astonishingly different. They dreamt only of their futures, but Sakura…she looked at the present too.

She reveled in the way her father watched her mother, the way he caught her hand whenever she walked by him and the way his silvery eyes twinkled.

She admired her mother's ability to pull something beautiful out of nothing at all, and more than that, she liked to watch the sun trace streaks throughout her hair, which was a soft petal-pink, like the border of sticky paper across the kitchen walls.

They danced through everyday tasks; each of them could turn something as simple as eating breakfast into a display of elegance. Her jealousy ran as thick as her love.

When her mother, in sturdy flat sandals and a nice linen skirt, showed up at the academy, Sakura was always acutely aware of how the other parents stared her down. She stood tall and still and pretty. Her smiles were like fleeting images of light on an x-ray machine.

Sakura's mother was the average mother, the housewife. The other moms wore green vests and non-constrictive slacks. They had no time to bother with jewelry or socializing or babying. Their offspring were mini-ninjas, and if they ever fell there was no fussing. It was understood that they would get back up again, eventually.

She followed in her mother's footsteps, trying not to fall, not to be made into an example. She tried, oh did she try, to be just like her.

Sakura was the only little girl who didn't let go of half her dreams when she turned twelve. She read textbooks and she studied hard, but senbon became fashion accessories, and her dreams of having a house full of children only grew and grew.

For a long time she believed that Sasuke would be her fairytale prince. He would be her husband, a father.

When he returned, gaunt and broken by Orochimaru, she bit her lip and swallowed and pretended not to look hurt that her dreams had just shattered.

Fin.