Chapter Text
Only a handful of months after Sakura’s team is formed, it falls apart.
Now, team 7 wasn’t ever really together—not a proper team, like the rest of rookie nine. But they were still some sort of team, smushed together with wet glue and badly sticking tape.
But still, their team fell apart—for Sakura, that is.
After solidly failing the chunin exams, both Sasuke and Naruto decide they’re not strong enough, that they need to be doing more. Sakura had come to the exact same conclusion way back in Wave, but apparently when Naruto and Sasuke had it, they decided the only way to become strong was all alone.
Naruto ran off with a Sannin, and Sasuke was made Kakashi’s Number One priority. His apprentice, his only student. Despite the fact that Sakura was right fucking there, of course.
It really, really, didn’t help that only a few days before team 7’s break-up, Naruto and Sasuke decided to have a life-or-death fight on the hospital roof, still licking their wounds from Orochimaru’s sudden appearance.
In Kakashi’s eyes, he had made it to the scene just in time to stop his two prized students from skewering Sakura.
In Sakura’s eyes, he had been just a second too late to stop the blinding of her left eye and the severing of half her right arm’s nerves.
This, of course, he and the rest of Team 7 would know if they had bothered to come visit her in the hospital after that so-called “minor” debacle. Or if they had even just read her medical file.
But they didn’t.
Instead, Naruto skipped town with a Sannin, Kakashi disappeared with Sasuke to who-knows-where, and now Sakura was left all alone, struggling to adjust to her missing functions.
The first few days after leaving the hospital are the hardest. Her parents had died in the Crush while Sakura was chasing a boy chasing a rampaging beast, leaving Sakura with a village-issued apartment for genin. An apartment that absolutely was not up to any sort of standard.
This meant Sakura had absolutely no help readjusting to life with her new disabilities. Which resulted in many, many bruised hips and stubbed toes. As well as an uncountable amount of shattered dishes, because Sakura’s depth perception was horribly distorted.
(The scar now covering the left-half of her face was too horrible for Sakura to even stand looking at without throwing up. Sakura’s apartment no longer had mirrors, and if she had to go out, it was with bandages covering the entire left side of her face.
The Rasengan wasn’t an attack made to leave behind clean cuts, after all.)
Not only had Sakura lost her depth perception and half her vision, but her right arm was nearly constantly numb—that is, when it wasn’t sending sparks of pain up and down her spine.
Sakura could no longer throw a kunai. Could no longer do a push up. She couldn’t even write a single sentence anymore, not without her hand shaking vigorously and fudging whatever she was trying to scrawl.
If she had been the useless member of team 7 before, she was down right hopeless now. Tsunade-Sama hadn’t taken away her Hitai-Ate, for reasons Sakura couldn’t understand, but there was no way for her to continue on as a Shinobi like this.
After that thought had first occurred to her, Sakura felt a sudden, deep spike of jealousy for Lee. He had gone through damage even more debilitating than her, and yet now every morning she could hear him bounding around the village with the same enthusiasm as always. It just wasn’t fair.
However, soon after having that thought, Sakura pushed it back as far as she possibly could. None of this was Lee’s fault. It was her team that did this to her, along with Sakura’s own painful naivety.
Instead of stewing in jealousy over a boy who had been nothing but kind to her, Sakura instead decided to attempt to acclimate to her apartment in her new condition.
To say it wasn’t easy would be an understatement—as mentioned earlier, her depth perception was entirely fucked, leading Sakura to walk into many corners she swore were an inch further than they really were.
Cooking had become a painful task—literally. Her hand shook too much to hold a knife properly, and her arm became sore after only a few minutes of use. Sakura ended up relying heavily on instant noodles, despite the fact that they reminded her horribly of her blonde teammate, making her mildly nauseous every time she ate.
Sakura spent most of her time inside, curled up in blankets on her bed or couch. She had tried to pick up a book, something that always calmed her down Before, but her head hurt too much to focus and the words spun on the page. She didn’t try to read after that.
On her fourth day out of the hospital, Sakura ran out of food. When she first opened her fridge, she simply stared for a moment at the emptiness, before going back to bed. She didn’t have the energy to care if she was out of food.
But Sakura had never gone without food for more than a day before, and by the sixth day out of the hospital, her stomach felt like it was eating itself alive.
So, on her sixth day, Sakura shoved on a dark turtleneck and matching shorts, and stepped outside for the first time since the walk of shame to her apartment. It was bright, horribly so, unlike in her apartment where the blinds were always closed.
Sakura would have stayed inside if she could’ve, locked herself away in her room and burrowed under her blankets, but she needed food. Which meant a trip to the market.
She half-walked, half-stumbled through the streets. Not a single part of Konoha had gotten out unscathed by the Crush, but the civilian district had taken the brunt of the damage, specifically by Orochimaru’s snakes.
Absent-mindedly, Sakura wondered if there had even been an attempt to remove the snakes from the civilian district.
The thought made Sakura sick, so she resolutely decided to stop thinking about it, and headed towards the civilian market.
When Sakura was little, her Tou-San picked her up, up, up, onto his shoulders, so she could see the entire market. It made her feel huge, like she was on top of the world. Now, Sakura just felt small.
Nobody recognized her, at least, nobody stopped her if they did. After Sakura had begun to attend the Academy, her neighbors started to look down on her. The other kids didn’t want to play with her anymore, and their parents furrowed their brows as she passed them in the street. Now, no one even bothered to look her way.
Still, Sakura needed food.
It was a struggle to carry her groceries home, only able to rely on one arm. Sakura had tried to use her right to hold the lighter bags, but it spasmed, causing her to drop the bags on the ground. Instead, she had to carry everything in her left arm, which made the trip much longer. Sakura dreaded the next time she had to go out.
Suddenly, Sakura wasn’t hungry anymore. She shoved the food away in its proper spots, before going back to her bed.
What would she do now? Sakura couldn’t be a Shinobi anymore, but she still needed a job. After all, they would start charging her rent by next month, and groceries weren’t cheap. Her parent’s money had been automatically moved to her account, but it wouldn’t last forever.
Actually, taking a mental step back, how could Sakura stay in the genin apartments if she wasn’t a shinobi? Soon, they would notice she hadn’t been taking any jobs, and Sakura would be kicked out. Where would she stay then?
Sakura had no other family in Konoha, and the whole of her extended family was apparently off in Tea country somewhere. And Sakura knew she wouldn’t be able to survive on the streets—not in her current state, or her previous.
Which meant she had to get her own apartment before they kicked her out. Which meant finding a new job. A civilian, not-shinobi job. Maybe Sakura could take out a chunk of her parent’s money to pay the down fee?
She rolled over, pulling the blanket around her tighter. She could worry about that tomorrow. Right now, Sakura just wanted to sleep.
— — —
On Sakura’s seventh day out of the hospital, she sucked it up and headed down to the unemployment office. The lines were larger than she remembered being the last time she had passed, likely a result of the Crush, well, crushing people’s jobs.
Usually a shinobi would have to fill out miles of paperwork saying that yes, they did want to become a civilian, no, they weren’t going to go rogue, and no, they didn’t have any secret techniques that could aid the village.
On top of that, any genin would have to get the confirmation from their sensei that they weren’t fit for shinobi life, which wouldn’t exactly be something Sakura could get, considering she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of her sensei since that night on the hospital roof.
However, considering Sakura’s… ailments, it was safe to say that, paperwork or not, Sakura was no longer a shinobi. Tsunade-Sama had kindly allowed Sakura to hang on to her hitai-ate, a kindness not normally given to failed shinobi, likely out of pity.
Well, still, it was clear to Sakura that pity wasn’t going to keep her in the shinobi business.
So. Unemployment.
A few of the lines seemed to be leading into an area labeled “reconstruction.” If Sakura could have, she would’ve bolted straight towards one of those lines. But Sakura couldn’t, which was the whole reason she was here in the first place.
So, instead, she squeezed through the crowd to the back of another, unlabeled, line.
As she stepped into place, Sakura could feel eyes staring at the back of her head. Was it because of the mess of bandages covering half her face, or had they recognized her? Did they know she was a shinobi, that she failed her team, that they failed her?
It struck Sakura then, that that morning while she was preparing to step outside, Sakura had, on auto-pilot, put her hitai-ate on. Blushing, Sakura practically bolted out of the line—although not without bumping into a few people with the help of her fucked-up depth perception.
She had known exactly where she was going that morning—so why the hell had she put her hitai-ate on? Her face burned red as she stumbled away from the line, running towards the nearest alleyway.
Once Sakura was out of the vision of any other human being, she collapsed, hugging her knees to her chest and burying her face within them. It was like her brain had decided that actually, she hadn’t had enough humiliations recently, how about one more?
Weren’t Shinobi supposed to be observant? Yeah, right. Not her. Even now that she was half-blind, Sakura thought she would at least keep her keen eye for details, but apparently that was too much to ask for.
Grabbing the top of her hitai-ate, Sakura chucked it at the alley wall opposite her. She wished Tsunade-Sama had given her just a dollop less pity. Maybe then she wouldn’t have embarrassed herself in front of half of Konoha’s population.
God, what had she been thinking? Well, she hadn’t been thinking, but still.
Sakura felt her eyes burn with the familiar feeling of tears, and forced that feeling back. She had done enough crying during her shinobi career, despite it being a literal written rule not to. Sakura was done with tears.
What she should do is leave her hitai-ate there, suck it up, and get back in line. But there was a deep, nagging feeling in her chest at the mere idea of it, and it wasn’t just because she had humiliated herself.
Sakura wanted to be a shinobi.
She knew she couldn’t be. She knew there was no chance of it, especially now that she didn’t even have a team to pick her back up. But still, Sakura wanted.
If her parents were here, they would tell her to suck it up and get back in line. They had always told her that she wasn’t cut out for the shinobi world, that one day she would see how horribly naive she had been, and would regret it all.
Well, now Sakura saw very well how naive she was, and did regret it all. Happy now?
And yet, despite all of this, Sakura just… couldn’t. She couldn’t force her legs to stand and walk her back to the unemployment office. Because Sakura was supposed to be a shinobi. It had been her fate ever since she first learned what the word meant.
Sakura’s parents had told her she wasn’t fit for being a shinobi, and she hadn’t listened. Sakura’s bullies had told her she should just quit, and she didn’t. Ino told her she would never even graduate, but she did. Fucking Kakashi-Sensei told her she wasn’t even ready for the chunin exams, and Sakura took them anyway.
Now, Sakura was telling herself she wasn’t going to cut it as a shinobi anymore, and she was just going to listen? Like hell. Sakura was a stubborn, stuck-up, idiodic brat wearing a hitai-ate. And she was going to keep being that, as long as she got to keep wearing it.
With a renewed sense of vigor Sakura hadn’t felt since her team fucked her life over on that hospital roof, Sakura picked her hitai-ate back up, and tied it around her forehead. Then, she squared her shoulders, and walked out of the alleyway. Not back to the unemployment office, but back to the hokage tower. Where shinobi were supposed to go when they were out of work.
Her feet knew the path there well, and it almost felt like coming home as she walked in the entrance. The building’s smell of old Hashirama wood with a slight twinge of blood felt more homey than the expensive perfume smell her old house ever had.
After she made it inside, Sakura walked right up to Tsunade-Sama’s office. Surprisingly, nobody tried to stop her. This only fueled Sakura’s theory—the theory that Tsunade-Sama had wanted her to continue being a shinobi.
Any other Hokage would’ve taken one look at Sakura’s miserable form laying in that hospital bed and taken her hitai-ate. The third absolutely would have—and so would’ve Kakashi-Sensei, if he had been given the right. (If he had visited her at all.)
But Tsunade had looked Sakura right in the eyes and shoved that hitai-ate right back into her hands. It was only now that Sakura was realizing the weight behind that. After all, the fifth Hokage didn’t do pity.
For some reason, Tsunade-Sama had believed in her. And Sakura was going to prove her right. Even if Tsunade made Sakura turn right back around out of her office, she wouldn’t give up. She’d find someone else to take her on, even if she had to beg.
Sakura opened the door to the Hokage’s office. She didn’t bother knocking.
At first, Tsunade-Sama looked pissed when Sakura walked in. But, when it actually registered who had just barged into her office, she just looked pleased.
“Only seven days. You just won me a bet with Shizune, brat.” Well, that was an awfully good start. Still, Sakura braced herself for failure as she stepped into the room.
“Please, Tsunade-Sama,” Sakura bowed. “Take me on as your apprentice.”
The eraser-end of a pencil hit the top of her head. Thrown by Tsunade-Sama, even a pencil could leave behind an ugly bruise. In fact, Sakura had no doubt it would. She yelped, but didn’t rise.
“Straighten up, brat. No apprentice of mine is gonna bow to anyone, ya hear?” Quickly, Sakura obeyed. When she rose, she could feel a small grin breaking across her face without her permission. “And call me Shishou.”
“Yes, Shishou!”
— — —
While Tsunade-Shishou had fully accepted Sakura as her student, in order to actually become so on paper, Sakura first had to pass a test.
“Revive one of these fish using medical-ninjutsu. I’m giving you one week.”
So, everyday since their meeting in the Hokage’s office, Sakura came down to the hospital and tried to bring a fish back to life. It was much more difficult than her new Shishou had made it seem.
For one, the Tenketsu in her right arm were now permanently screwed up. Sakura would have known this if she had bothered trying to use jujutsu sooner, but she hadn’t, and now she had to figure out how the hell she was supposed to push her chakra through her right arm’s severed Tenketsu.
Of course, Sakura could always take the easy way out and rely solely on her left arm, but what kind of mednin only used one of their two hands to heal? Shishou had used both arms in her demonstration. Fucked-up or not, Sakura still had two arms, and she was going to use them.
…even if, as of right now, her chakra was only coming out through her left arm.
It was only on the third day of fruitless efforts that Sakura decided to sit down and meditate before trying with the fish. It was odd, sitting down on the cold tile floor that reeked of fish guts, but Sakura needed to see just how badly her right arm’s Tenketsu had been damaged.
In an incredibly familiar—and honestly calming as well—motion, Sakura slowly drew chakra from her core, and began to circulate it around her right arm. The Tenketsu around her right collar bone were perfectly intact, which seemed about right. It was only when she reached her shoulder that the true damage became apparent.
While Sakura’s entire right arm had been grievously injured, during the actual attack, her shoulder had taken the brunt of the Chidori. If one were to look at the scars Sasuke’s stray attack had left behind, this became very obvious. The twisting, lightning-shaped scar texture started smack-dab in the center of her right shoulder, and spread out from there.
Now, if one were to look at the scars left behind on Sakura’s Tenketsu system—as she is currently doing now—they would find a very similar imprint left behind. Tenketu coils straightened when they were supposed to, well, coil, and bent when they were supposed to be straight.
Sakura’s Tenketsu hadn’t been severed. They had been mixed-up. Elation coursed through her veins as she realized this. Her chakra wasn’t traveling through her arm because it couldn’t, but because Sakura had been moving her chakra wrong! Sakura had been relying so heavily on muscle-memory that she hadn’t even realized.
Now that she knew the truth, Sakura held onto the chakra she had been moving even tighter, and began to move it through the janky Tenketsu. And, to her shock, it worked. It fucking worked! Sakura audibly shouted in joy as her chakra made it through her shoulder and down to the tips of her fingers.
After her shoulder, the rest of Tenketsu in her right arm was just as messed up, but once Sakura actually tried, it took surprisingly little effort to traverse.
Just to be safe, Sakura moved her chakra back and forth through her right arm a couple of times, before resting it back in her core. With glee she hadn’t felt since the night on the hospital roof, Sakura jumped to her feet, and returned to the fish.
It exploded under her hands. And yet, Sakura could not wipe the smile from her face. It worked. Sakura’s Tenketsu had been mangled almost beyond recognition, but not beyond use.
While quite literally jumping for joy, Sakura misses Shizune-San’s proud figure retreating back into the hall.
— — —
While the next few days ended with Sakura washing fish guts from her hair, she finally got it on the fifth.
At first, Sakura was so excited by actually being able to use her right arm for jutsu again that she completely abandoned any delicacy, and simply shoved her chakra into the fish’s corpse over and over again. It hadn’t worked out well for her.
But, after two failure-filled days, Sakura finally calmed down enough to take a better look at what she was doing wrong. It was the color of her chakra that finally tipped her off.
When Sakura pushed her chakra into the fish’s Tenketsu, her chakra was a light blue color. But when Tsunade had done it, it was a gentle green. She was pretty sure chakra wasn’t usually that color, which means her Shisou was doing something to it Sakura hadn’t yet figured out.
Actually, now that she really thought about it, medical jutsu was always green, wasn’t it? Sakura had only needed medical jutsu performed on her three times in her life, and she could only remember two. The first time, Sakura had been an infant, fallen ill with a horrible fever. The second time, Sakura had been five, with a broken arm gotten from trying to scale a Hashirama tree. The third time, Sakura was twelve, and getting a standard post-mission check-up after returning from Wave.
During the last two occasions, the mednins who healed her had both used green chakra. Back then, Sakura had been too wrapped up in other things—like pain—to realize the oddity. Now though, she could clearly see that medical ninjutsu was inherently different from any other form of jutsu.
So what is it she was missing that would make her chakra change colors like that? Chakra was supposed to be blue. Any other color was either a weird clan-thing or a sign of deep contamination. (Sakura pushed the image of Naruto, covered in vile orange chakra, firmly out of her mind)
Well. Maybe if she just figured out what she was doing wrong with the fish, Sakura would know what to do right.
It only took many, many exploded fish—and a trip or two to the sink—for Sakura to realize what exactly the issue was.
To heal the fish, Sakura had to make her chakra enter the fish’s body, its entire body, and therefore enter the fish’s Tenketsu nodes. The fish’s Tenkeutsu nodes did not like having Sakura’s chakra inside.
When Sakura was just applying her chakra to the flesh of the fish itself, everything was fine and dandy. But, within seconds, she’d reach the Tenketsu, and the fish would explode. Thinking about it, this actually made perfect sense.
After all, her chakra and a fish’s chakra were two very different things. Hell, her chakra was already vastly different from any other human’s chakra, just by the notion that it was her’s.
Well. That’s the trick, isn’t it?
Any decent Tenketsu system would welcome no other chakra to travel through it but its own. It was a built-in defense mechanism that was extremely helpful, in most cases. It only really became an issue when one was trying to help the system, not hurt it, but the Tenketsu couldn’t recognize this and decided to blow up anyway.
So Sakura just had to make her chakra… not her chakra anymore. Or, at least, make it look like that was the case. Easy.
Before bringing it to the fish, Sakura covers her hand in chakra. She can just barely see a faint blue glow from where her chakra sits.
“Change,” Sakura whispers firmly to her hand. “You’re not my chakra. Change.” As she speaks, Sakura imagines the chakra shifting from blue to green on her hand. She imagines it as not her chakra, but simply chakra that she just so happens to be able to control.
Then, right in front of her eyes, it changes. The faint glow becomes more and more visible, until she can clearly see it covering her hand. And, as it does so, the color shifts. The light-blue becomes light-teal, before finally settling at a light-green. Amazed, Sakura brings her hand down to rest on the fish.
And, instead of bursting into guts, the fish bursts into life. Sakura lets out a victorious whoop, before grabbing the fish—somewhat awkwardly, as it did not want to be grabbed—and dropping it into the fish tank.
She did it. Sakura had actually passed Tsunade’s test. She was going to be taught by the Hokage herself. A bright beam of hope passes through Sakura, filling her with renewed determination.
Well, before she went and showed the Hokage her accomplishment, Sakura should probably try to heal a couple more fish. After all, Sakura had always been labled a paper ninja, and there was nothing they loved more than repetition.
Soon, Sakura’s healing a second fish, then a third, then a fourth, until the fish tank is full of fish gleefully swimming around, and her bucket is empty. Throughout the entire process, not a single fish is transformed into guts.
Grabbing the now-empty bucket with her good hand, Sakura bursts out of the room. She wants to tell her Shishou now.
Sakura narrowly misses running into multiple shinobi on the way up, and does end up smacking into a corner or two on her left side. Still, none of that dampens her excitement as she bursts into the Hokage—her Shishou’s—office.
“Shishou! I did it! I healed the fish.”
Tsunade jumps from her seat, and pushes aside an ANBU officer who seemed to be trying to speak with her. He seems very confused about the whole ordeal.
“Bring me to them,” her new Shishou demands. So Sakura does.
This time, as they pass through the halls, not a single shinobi dares stand in Sakura’s way. It's strange, but also exciting. She’s used to having to dodge through crowds, for only being noticed for her huge forehead and tacky hair. But now, the crowd is moving for her. And Sakura feels higher than she’s ever felt before.
It doesn’t take long for them to make it to the fish tank, where Sakura proudly shows her work. Just that morning, the tank had been empty, spanning menacingly across one the wall. Now, it looks much kinder, full of fish swimming joyously through it.
Tsunade-Shishou looks at the tank, then at Sakura, then back at the tank again.
“You… actually did it. In under seven days and with time to spare.” Tsunade looks back at Sakura, who nods happily. Something shifts in Tsunade’s eyes, then. For a moment, it’s like she’s looking at something brighter than Sakura could possibly be. Then, strong arms wrap around Sakura.
She's hugging her. The Hokage is hugging Sakura. She can't help but giggle as her new Shishou spins her around, wrapping her arms around the older woman’s neck.
“I did it!” Sakura shouts. “I did it!”
“Damn right you did!” Tsunade responds, resting her back down on her feet. “Meet me in my office at five tomorrow morning, and we’ll get you started on your apprenticeship.” Sakura, too excited to speak, only nods.
That night, Sakura cooks herself an actual, real, dinner. Well, compared to the stuff she’s been eating for the past two weeks, it's more like a feast. Afterwards, her belly actually feels full, not just satiated, and she goes to sleep with a smile on her face.
She’s the Hokage’s apprentice. She’s Tsunade’s apprentice.
For the first time in a long, long time, Sakura thinks her life might actually be going in a good direction.