31_days | [September 28] [Naruto] Straight On Until Morning

Title: Straight On Until Morning
Day/Theme: September 28: To name the sunrise in you
Series: Naruto
Character/Pairing: Haruno Sakura, mild SasuSaku
Rating: G

Sakura wakes up slowly, as she often does. She rubs her eyes with the back of her hand, then her fingers rub deep in corners, getting out the grit. Sighing, she turns over on her side, glancing at the digital clock in the grayish darkness. She closes her eyes again, as if contemplating going back to sleep. Then she opens them again and throws back the coverlet. Her legs swing over the edge of the mattress and the tips of her toes graze the floor before she puts her full weight on her feet. A faint wince of discomfort twitches across her face; a bruise from yesterday's training is giving her a dull and already fading reminder of her imperfections. She's cold, and shivers, pulling on a light pink robe.

Half-blinded by a brain still only half-awake, she stumbles across the hall into the bathroom. She almost steps on the cat. Murmuring, she nudges the animal aside with her leg, chiding him softly. He mrowrs in protest - he's hungry and she's there. A small smile cuts her mouth. She tells him "In a minute" before pushing the rest of the way into the bathroom. A moment later she emerges and he's still there, tail twitching, yellow eyes wide and expectant. To further his demands, his red bowl lies ostentaciously between them . Sakura dutifully leads the stubborn tomcat into the kitchen. She fills his bowl with dry cat food and then gives him two kisses between his triangular ears, scratches his chin as he devours his meal. She loves the animal because he is there, always there, every morning. His love for her remains as long as she feeds him as hers for him remains as long as he's there to let her.

"You're up early."

Sakura finishes with the cat and rises to greet the newcomer. It's her father.

His query is simple. "Mission?"

"No," is her soft response.

"Ah." He says no more and goes into his routine of starting coffee before padding back to the bedroom he shares with his wife. Sakura pilfers a bottle of juice from the fridge and heads into her room to dress before moving out the front door, giving her sleepy mother standing by the sink a token wave in passing as she heads out. She's not close with her parents. They don't know anything about their daughter and she knows most of this is her fault. She's never home so why should they? It's strange to think that she would die for them in an instant and she knows they would do anything for her. Yet if it came down to it, if perchance they were to come between her and anything else she loved, she'd leave them flat for it in an instant. It saddens her when she thinks about it too deeply. But, she tells herself, she has to tell herself, that they are her parents and they already understand. They love me and nothing can change that. It's how Sakura justifies her long absences and their not knowing her. It's how she has to.

It's on the east wall (naturally), the first place the light touches. It's also the coldest and she is glad she has remembered to wear her mother's old overcoat.

She didn't always do this. Once upon a time, Sakura woke up at decent hours, even when she was training with Tsunade. But ever since she turned sixteen, she's been keeping to odd rituals. All shinobi and kunoichi have their strange rituals. Sakura likes to think hers is healthy. She drinks orange juice while she does it.

She smiles at her private joke. Sakura makes a lot of jokes she never shares with anyone. The girl inside her head is tired of them but she's been silent for so long, Sakura's not sure she's even there anymore.

Sakura pretends she likes watching the sunrise alone. It's a lie, of course; she doesn't. She wants to ask Naruto to watch it with her but she never does. She doesn't know why because Naruto would do it. He'd hate waking up so early, he'd whine and complain - oh how he would complain! - he'd probably conk out again the minute he got up here, but he'd do it. Naruto is just that type of person.

But she doesn't. She knows why she doesn't. This isn't what she wants to share with him, not him. It would be cruel to do that to him. You're not supposed to ask someone to do something with you and then wish he was someone else. And Sakura knows she would wish he was someone else.

Sakura tucks her knees together tightly and exhales, her breath a fine mist in the cool morning air. This is the part where she cries but doesn't. She does cry, at night, when she can longer believe she's accomplishing anything by not crying. After all, she's always cried for him, about him. Some part of her thinks he's not worth so many tears, that she's being ridiculous. But she knows, she knows, he is. But she is being ridiculous, she admits. Sakura isn't arrogant enough to believe she is alone... She's silly enough to think she might be the only one in the world who holds on so hard.

Hold on like this, anyway.

Sometimes she wonders what it would be like to see him, that someone else, differently - or at all. And then she realizes that it's impossible to imagine such a thing. It's like this sunrise, in a way. The sun not coming up in the morning? It's like a bird being told she can't fly even though she has wings, a fish that she can't breathe water even though she has gills.

Sakura has flown without wings and breathed without gills. She's seen the breadth of sky and the darkest waters along the bottoms of the deepest seas. She's felt height and depth but only as someone with a single eye can. She lacks perception. Yes, she wants to share his pain - instead he left her with her own, cold, tiny and shivering. Oh she puts on a smile, that confidence, she's fooled enough by far and in between. The cracks are small and there. She knows Kakashi sees them and will never speak of them. She knows Naruto looks through them - or not at all. Sakura is alone. But, she tells herself, she's alone by choice. She's alone for him, that someone else.

He never asked her to wait, he would have preferred she left his memory lying in the shadows, perhaps in the grasses amongst the remnents of her pale pink hair. He would prefer to be described, if at all, in remember whens and past tenses, perhaps colored with a fond wisp of a faint smile. She knows he would rather she forget. If he thinks of her at all. Thought. If she matters to him at all. Mattered.

It hurts, to think of it. To be thought of like that.

Sakura palms away a stray tear, the heat of it carves a wet trail down her smooth cheek. She faintly sniffs and rubs her nose on her kneecaps, pretending it's because of the cold her eyes and nose feel the chilly bite of the air.

Something lands beside her on light feet. Sakura looks.

It's the cat. He's followed her. She frowns. He's never followed her before. "Hey," she murmurs, pulling a hand out from the warmth of her coat, fingers out, palm up. She beckons.

The animal's ears twitch at the sound of the girl's voice. His yellow eyes fix upon her with typical cattish disinterest, intelligent, fierce, watchful. "Hey, c'mere," she speaks softly. "I'm a lot warmer than the wall, don't you think?" He obliges her, rubbing his face and whiskers against her knuckles. A moment later she is moving, scooping him up in her arms and setting him upon her lap. She strokes his gray fur, scratches his favorite spots and rubs her cheeks against his soft coat. When he looks up at her, she looks down at him.

"I know when you look at me like that, it won't matter what you're thinking," she says, running her fingertips down his back and sides. "I know you'll be sitting right outside my door tomorrow." She closes her eyes. "I can give you what you need because I'm the only one who does. If I didn't, would you still sit outside of my door? What if this was all I gave you? A hug, a scratch between the ears? Would you still leave me dead mice on my windowsill? If Naruto fed you instead of me, would you only stay with him?"

The cat stares at her, his eyes wide and unfathomable. "Mrowr," he finally demures, quite loudly.

In spite of herself, Sakura giggles. She doesn't know why but she does anyway. A sliver of gold slices across her cheek and when she feels that faint tingle of warmth, she smiles with her whole body.

The cat purrs.