(no subject)
Title: Maybe Somewhere
Fandom: Naruto
Characters: Sakura
Word Count: 519
Rating: G
Summary: Sakura can't think of nothing.
Author's Notes: I don't write anything involving this series very well, so I figured that this was a good chance to practise.
On summer nights when the rain falls heavy, Sakura goes out for walks.
Which is to say, she sneaks out her window (teenage shinobi maybe be shinobi, with the glory and honour of the title and all that, but they are teenagers first and foremost and have parents and thus curfews) and goes to the civilian parts of town to get some alone time. She has nothing to fear on the streets. Her hitai-ate automatically grants her protection, because no one is going to harm a defender of the village, and people know her face, however vaguely, as the Hokage's student. (If they think it's strange that she's walking around without an umbrella, getting drenched, well, all shinobi end up insane sooner or later, so why not her? And Sakura doesn't mind being thought of as crazy. It's better than being thought of as weak.)
She avoids shinobi neighbourhoods. They have few open spaces, someone's always throwing a party, and people come and go at all hours, undeterred by little things like weather (and decency).
Sakura doesn't think about anything on those walks. Or, at least she tries-she overthinks things by nature. The trick, she discovered, was to concentrate on something above all else. The rushing of the rain in her ears. The thunder; the lightning as it arced across the sky. The feel of wet grass on her of her neck. She can never get it right. Something always creeps into the back of her mind when she's not paying attention.
When she reaches the old Nidaime Memorial Park, Sakura collapses in the middle of the only field in all of Konoha. The overabundance of free space is why no one comes to this place. The rest of the parks, memorial or otherwise, are heavily wooded. Civilians and their architects seem to have inherited a milder version of the agoraphobic shinobi mindset, though public areas are spacious so that visitors from other countries don't get uncomfortable.
The wind picks up, and she shivers despite herself. But she's not cold. She's not really anything at the moment. She has to recite the seven chakra points in the human body most susceptible to damage and how to fix them to Tsunade in the morning (which she knows by heart, because there's nothing she's better at than book learning) and then make the rounds at the hospital, where she has recently graduated from the level of bedpan cleaner. She's not worried.
It hasn't rained in weeks, and the grass is parched and prickly on the backs of her arms. She takes the irritation-like lying on a bed of nails, only not-and makes it the special focus of the night.
But maybe somewhere the grass is soft. Maybe somewhere Naruto and Sasuke are feeling the same rain on their faces (which, given her knowledge of climate patterns, is unlikely) and feeling just as stupid for being out in the middle of what has just turned into a thunderstorm. Maybe somewhere the three of them are together. And maybe somewhere…
Maybe somewhere she can get this right and isn't thinking.
Fandom: Naruto
Characters: Sakura
Word Count: 519
Rating: G
Summary: Sakura can't think of nothing.
Author's Notes: I don't write anything involving this series very well, so I figured that this was a good chance to practise.
On summer nights when the rain falls heavy, Sakura goes out for walks.
Which is to say, she sneaks out her window (teenage shinobi maybe be shinobi, with the glory and honour of the title and all that, but they are teenagers first and foremost and have parents and thus curfews) and goes to the civilian parts of town to get some alone time. She has nothing to fear on the streets. Her hitai-ate automatically grants her protection, because no one is going to harm a defender of the village, and people know her face, however vaguely, as the Hokage's student. (If they think it's strange that she's walking around without an umbrella, getting drenched, well, all shinobi end up insane sooner or later, so why not her? And Sakura doesn't mind being thought of as crazy. It's better than being thought of as weak.)
She avoids shinobi neighbourhoods. They have few open spaces, someone's always throwing a party, and people come and go at all hours, undeterred by little things like weather (and decency).
Sakura doesn't think about anything on those walks. Or, at least she tries-she overthinks things by nature. The trick, she discovered, was to concentrate on something above all else. The rushing of the rain in her ears. The thunder; the lightning as it arced across the sky. The feel of wet grass on her of her neck. She can never get it right. Something always creeps into the back of her mind when she's not paying attention.
When she reaches the old Nidaime Memorial Park, Sakura collapses in the middle of the only field in all of Konoha. The overabundance of free space is why no one comes to this place. The rest of the parks, memorial or otherwise, are heavily wooded. Civilians and their architects seem to have inherited a milder version of the agoraphobic shinobi mindset, though public areas are spacious so that visitors from other countries don't get uncomfortable.
The wind picks up, and she shivers despite herself. But she's not cold. She's not really anything at the moment. She has to recite the seven chakra points in the human body most susceptible to damage and how to fix them to Tsunade in the morning (which she knows by heart, because there's nothing she's better at than book learning) and then make the rounds at the hospital, where she has recently graduated from the level of bedpan cleaner. She's not worried.
It hasn't rained in weeks, and the grass is parched and prickly on the backs of her arms. She takes the irritation-like lying on a bed of nails, only not-and makes it the special focus of the night.
But maybe somewhere the grass is soft. Maybe somewhere Naruto and Sasuke are feeling the same rain on their faces (which, given her knowledge of climate patterns, is unlikely) and feeling just as stupid for being out in the middle of what has just turned into a thunderstorm. Maybe somewhere the three of them are together. And maybe somewhere…
Maybe somewhere she can get this right and isn't thinking.