Work Text:
Sakura had enjoyed making crowns of wildflowers since she was a child.
Encouraged by the academy for improving dexterity she had made crowns of buttercups, buffalobur and anemone, or created circlets from nekonomesou with sprigs of suitopi and ume and even the occasional kiku. Alone in the solitude of the civilian fields on the Hokage hill when the bullying at the academy was too much to bear, she'd count the types one by one.
Even after Ino got involved and the words hurt a bit less, the urge to pick the odd plant and braid it around her thumbs never fully left, Sakura thinks bitterly, plucking a stem of a daisy from the dusty brickwork to ruffle the petals under her fingernails as she struggles to compose herself. The daisy sags in her fingers, limp petals darkening at the approaching shadow.
"Giving up?"
Sakura peeks up from where she's been crying at the side of the Hokage Tower, a mortified flush crawling up her neck at the sight of Shizune above her. Perhaps she's here to discourage her. Bit late, Sakura thinks bitterly, since she's got the hint already, crushing the petals in her palm and feeling like a three-year old civilian lost at the weekly market. Tsunade hadn't even laughed her out of the office this time, which probably would had been easier to deal with. To think Sakura had entered with such a strong feeling she'd be accepted as an apprentice this time.
Except instead of finally caving, of finally acknowledging Sakura as someone worth time and effort, the Hokage had said nothing.
Instead, Tsunade had looked at Sakura with the type of blurred face that slides right over the world and back into the head to peer at the ghosts inside. Had looked in and shaken her head without a word, wrapped up in the spirits that soaked the rim of her sake cup.
Sakura is sure she can compete with many things, but she knows spirits aren't one of them. Not when her father had made the same face after they came back from her aunt's funeral, gaze catching on her hair with a dulled sort of dread.
Sakura's aunt had had the same long, soft pink locks, piled up on her head in thick whorls like roses and kept in place by ornamented pins showcasing her wares and wealth. Each time she visited Sakura had admired the way they clattered like old songs when she threw back her head with a loud laugh, brushing over her plush kimonos like a lover. There was something powerful in that, in those adamant pins, and Sakura had never quite been able to imitate it whenever she tried, leaving her hair to tumble down instead of tangle.
The official report said she had bled out slowly in the raid while on the road, having killed three men with her wickedly sharp pins before succumbing to the rest, slitting her own throat over suffering the consequences of capture. Her body was burned at the site, too expensive for genin to recover, and they'd prayed around the embalmed flowers on her charred hairpins instead.
When Sakura returned from the Chunin Exam with her hair sheared and springing forth in rabid strands her father kept his eyes on Sakura's neck for weeks, a lost acceptance brewing behind them like tea leaves had been left stewing behind his pupils for too long.
Sakura can't compete with whatever ghosts Tsunade wraps herself in, spirits like those and her aunt's which rest on the breeze like laurel wreaths, intangible and unstoppable from floating in and out of thoughts. If she could, Sakura's teammates wouldn't have abandoned her to pursue them. Naruto for the mirage of a young Uchiha boy far ahead, and Sasuke with hundreds of red-eyed whispers close behind his vengeful footsteps. The less said about Kakashi the better, with his mile-long sighs and flipping pages, wandering away with a pat to Sakura's head as she's left to tree-climb again and again on her own. Was there even a point to being a ninja when no one was wiling to teach her how to be a better one?
So after twenty-five tries Sakura had finally accepted the mantle of uselessness thrown on her shoulders and tried not to cry. Succeeded, at least, until making it outside, before Shizune's shadow had touched her shoes.
Shizune crouches down, smile mild and level with her sight line. "You know, you could have learnt from any medic in the hospital with that chakra control. A high percentile is a pretty big deal, and the smarts coupled with it matter far more than that. Seeking out the best of the best is an obvious move - except you visited Konoha General once for an inquiry without signing up for a single introductory lesson. All drive, no follow through. Why?"
A chill runs down Sakura's spine, and she stands in the very empty area. She doesn't know Shizune well enough to brush off the suspicion of a clone. "How do you know that?" she demands, prepared to palm a kunai.
Shizune raises an eyebrow. "I practically run the hospital and you're surprised I have access to the logs?"
"Oh." Of course. Against her will, Sakura feels the hotness return to her eyes. Any good ninja would know the difference between a real person and a genjustu or clone, she thinks miserably.
Shizune waves away Sakura's embarrassment. "Caution is key in our profession, don't be ashamed for it."
"But if I was better -"
"-except you're not." Shizune sighs at Sakura's renewed burst of tears, shuffling over to awkwardly pat her shoulder. "No, not - it wasn't an insult."
"It wasn't?" Sakura sniffles.
"Listen to me, Sakura." Shizune tilts up Sakura's chin and forces her to make eye-contact. "You're not better. You failed the Chunin Exams, have not even a B-rank to your name, and lack the proper physical fitness for any self-respecting ninja. You are, however, trying to become better. Do you know what type of ninjas think they're better without acknowledging the importance of self-improvement?"
Sakura hedges a guess, rolling the crumpled petals over her thumb. “Stupid ones?”
"Dead ones.”
“Oh.” If Sakura had felt small before, she feels like a grain of dirt now.
Shizune sighs, and gives Sakura a strong tap on the cheek. “Last I checked, you still have a pulse.”
Sakura looks up at the kunoichi, digging her fingers into the earth. “So I haven’t failed?”
“Not yet. You still have a mind with the capacity to learn, muscle with the capacity to strengthen, and are at the lucky age of being able to grow easily if tended to in the right direction. You have all the components at your disposal, Sakura. It's entirely up to you how you use them.” Shizune plucks the flower from Sakura’s lax grip and offers it back to her with a grin. “Now tell me, what is it you really want to learn?"
"I don't want weakness." Sakura's eyes flash. "I don't want mistakes."
"That," Shizune smiles, "we agree on. How many plants can you identify? Start alphabetically."
Desperate to be of use, to speak up, to prove, Sakura takes a deep breath and begins.
***
It begins with compression bands, pressing against the growing rashes on her arms and woven with poison ivy.
It begins with distilled water and thick charcoal tablets to protect her teeth if she throws up from the intensity of venom.
It starts mild with buttercup roots, with daisies, with a single sting from an imported (stolen) baby scorpion from Kaze no Kuni's deserts. Sakura breaks the fever in three days and shivers for the rest of the week.
Three steps into Konoha General afterwards Shizune passes her needles full of concentrated copperleaf on top of nine medical texts.
She soon learns to distill water with chakra to avoid the hassle of ferrying back and forth to the pharmacy, and if Sakura gains more techniques from the library in the process (being an official apprentice after a three week probationary was a sweet, sweet, song with the swish of unrestricted texts) it's only a plus. Shizune won't let her synthase her own poisons yet, but that won't stop Sakura from prepping. And perhaps Sakura's a little lonely, in the dusty corners of restricted sections, but she's focused, trawling through scrolls like a tree starved for water, burrowing deep into the texts for hours at a time.
***
It progresses to two millilitres, then five, then fifteen, thirty.
Sakura exchanges her red dress for a sleeveless turtleneck, clan circle stitched into the pockets of her combat trousers brimming with test tubes, fabric breathable and soft against the frequent epidermal hives. She tags along with whatever teams she can find for missions, cycling through the genin corps and not being anything short of professional with Rookie Nine when they're sent out of the village. None of them can look her in the eye regardless.
The first time she uses a small dose of cicuta gas on a target to paralyse them it nearly backfires after the small glass ball tangles in her short strands of hair, if not for a lucky blast of wind keeping it off of her face. Shizune nearly laughs herself sick at the report.
Sakura vows to lace her kunai with venoms and start growing out the pink locks so she can braid them back with ninja wire slick with rhododendron oil. At least until she can get wind chakra down enough to control where her poison goes anyway.
Her father is quiet the first time Sakura’s mother braids the curling strands with wire. Mebuki places a soft hand on Sakura’s tense shoulders when he vanishes without a word, and promises once her hair is long enough she’ll teach her how her aunt made roses. The next day, Kizashi placed her aunt’s handwritten notes in Sakura’s hands. They may be civilians, but they are civilians in a ninja village. They will not have their daughter add to the ghosts in the house already.
***
It continues to fifty millilitres, seventy, one hundred, soon two.
Earth chakra soon becomes a friend in her cultivation of Training Ground 44 as she maps out the roots of the land. Sakura reconditions herself, Shizune pushing her through Tsunade's training regime, muscles cycling chakra and balancing the poison in her blood. She pricks herself with bougainvillea thorns, tops her new eating plans with autumn crocus and loquat seeds.
When she unthinkingly ups those without consulting Shizune Sakura experiences her first minor heart attack.
Curled on the floor at the end of a dusty afternoon, Sakura hits her chest in a series of brutal thumps and jams the antitode into her thigh. With a wash of shaky healing chakra she smooths away the scarring. It is not the last time she will go into cardiac arrest.
It is the first success she smiles at, blood tapping out a victory drum in her capillaries.
***
Sakura sees Kakashi only once, five months into her apprenticeship.
Though she had continued to show up at the training grounds like a pathetic little bur sticking to his jonin vest, waiting endlessly for a man who only turned up for a minute to give lackluster advice, since the apprenticeship Sakura simply hadn't had the time to hover more than an hour in the mornings before sloping away. Kakashi hadn't tried to seek her out.
To catch him now, with his arms full of sagging rhubarb that could be poisonous if he cared a little less in how he cooked them, has Sakura reel.
The monthly civilian market is in full swing and Sakura had been haggling for glass from Sand, hands tapping out prices with a grinning merchant underneath a cloth as they wrestle for a compromise. She will get that glass for more test tubes if it's the last thing she does, and no glass is as smooth as the types from Suna.
If Naruto was here (and it's less stinging, more wistful, these autumn days), Sakura's sure she could get Gaara to send some by the crateful. Since the failed invasion Suna had been piling its merchandise through the gates, keen to revitalize relations and a lagging economy where possible.
Despite the patrotic snobbery of other shinobi here, like most civilians Harunos never turn away a deal from another merchant. A small stall of foreign glassware is as easily shattered as a local dango one in the end. There's a reason the Haruno circle is to encompass all, when a kunai doesn't care for the lack of hitae-tae on the end of it. Sakura may be the first shinobi in the Konoha branch of her family, but she is a Haruno first. Her fingers do not freeze as Kakashi wanders up to her, and Sakura shakes the merchant's hand a couple seconds later before adding in a generous amount of coloured glass sticks to her order, thinking of her cousins in Cha No Kuni who could mold them into their tea-ware.
"Kakashi-sensei?"
"Don't mind me Sakura-chan." Kakashi's eye closes in a mockery of a smile. "Having fun doing little D-ranks are you? I thought you would have handed in your hitae-te. Playing ninja is tough work for a girl."
Sakura tries not to think about how the hitai-tae rests as clearly across her neck as the injection bruises in her shoulders, focusing on the withered leaves of rhubarb any civillian worth their salt would know Kakashi's been ripped off on. The glass merchant gives a rare frown beside her, and Sakura pettily rejoices in knowing that whispers will spread until Kakashi won't get good civilian wares for a long while. Sakura debates telling him about Shizune, about her progress with poisons, about everything. But Kakashi doesn't ask, doesn't look at her, and Sakura does not deal with ghosts.
So Sakura says nothing, counting out the glass rods that spill slices of colour across the stall. The silence stretches itself out awkwardly, and Sakura wonders if she ever stood a chance with this man if all he saw was a girl playing ninja and not a civilian reconditioning herself into a killer.
Kakashi readjusts his shopping, idly flicking a page of his erotica as he turns away. "Well, don't let me keep you from your chores."
Fuming Sakura almost storms her way home right then and there, until she catches sight of one of the Haruno pop-up-stalls across the street. Hairpins dangle from the roof, delicate kanzashi flower petals swaying in the wind.
"That's right," Sakura smiles at his back, sweet as honeybush, "I won't."
***
Sakura carefully unravels the aged scrolls on a staff-room table in the hospital, a fresh bouquet shuffling awkwardly in her hands.
The antique writing is crisp and precise, full of botany sketches so detailed it's hard to believe they weren't pressed specimens. "I've never heard of the Sekanji Clan in Konoha."
Shizune sighs next to her, checking through the notes of Sakura's recent toxicology compendium on the efficiency of chakra-engineering wisteria petals to increase their poison production on command. "They're long defunct.”
“Defunct?”
”The Inuzuka took their stores after finally crushing them in a raid back in the Warring States Period. If only the War had been a little more bendable, people a little more giving, how much more could have been achieved. At least what we have is well preserved. This level of peace is as much of a privilege as it is a conditional to our resources. Remember that Sakura. I take it you stopped by the Yamanaka for supplies?"
Sakura grimaces, squeezing a white bell-shaped flower. "Sure did."
Ino's face when she had asked for a fistful of lily-of-the-valley had been curiously benign, peppered with that glint of where-have-you-been-what-are-you-doing.
The way it had then creased when Sakura had requested for water hemlock to surround the bouquet as if it wasn't lethally seizure-inducing had been... intriguing, Ino shouting a series of -where-have-you-been-to-think-this-was-a-bright-idea-what-the-actual-fuck-are-you-doing-Sakura before bombarding her with tips.
They have a cyanide-laced drinking contest coming up next week and Sakura is going to win or die trying, dammit.
"Then what are you waiting for?" Shizune raises an eyebrow. "You've made it a year into this apprenticeship. Or do I have to walk you to the distillery section of Konoha General's labs myself?"
To say Sakura books it there (breaking a door or two) is an understatement. Shizune chuckles at the pollen dust Sakura leaves in her wake, wondering if Sakura will spot the new chunin vest in on the table before the rows of test tubes.
***
Kakashi stops turning up at the training grounds. Sakura stops looking for him.
***
Chunin jacket barely scuffed Sakura storms in, slamming the door behind her hard enough to splinter and slumping into her go-to wheelie chair in the lab, spinning across the room. "Why aren't I improving faster!"
Shizune doesn't look up from where she's measuring out yew sends to crush in the mortar. "Mission with Kakashi didn't end well then I take it."
Sakura runs her hands over her wire-wrapped braid, winding the pink rope up into a lopsided bun and holding it in place with a senbon. "Not in the way that counts. Everyone still looks at me like - Kakashi-sensei - Kakashi, he won't even listen - he won't even look me in the eye. "
And it had hurt, that.
The mission was simple, a sabotage. Sakura knew she had excelled at proving that she was more than ready to be considered in the next stage of her apprenticeship and officially out of genin protocols and ready for solo missions. Asuma had been an unwaving pillar of support in his approval, passing her with flying colours. Kakashi had merely shrugged, saying that if Asuma said she seemed ready Sakura was ready.
Even through her thick leather gloves she used for the strongest of poisons on her person (not that they effected her, but opponents didn't need to know that), Sakura still felt the bite of her kunai in her palms. Ino had hovered by her on the way back, loudly grumbling at how unfair it was that Sakura had progressed so quickly up the ranks, but it rang hollow among the branches.
"Sakura." Shizune goes to put a hand on her shoulder. Sakura looks down, rolling the leftover yew seeds she'd unconsciously snatched up in her palm.
"He didn't even know you were my sensei. It's been nearly a year training with you and he didn't bother to find out who I was apprenticing under. Except if I was more explosive like Naruto, like Sasuke even, maybe - maybe-"
"Sakura. Listen to me." Shizune crouches down and takes Sakura's palm because this girl needs this, this shinobi, this fifteen year old, needs to hear what she deserves. "Knowing another's style means knowing another's weakness. This will not be a case for all shinobi, but it will be a common pattern, especially for those who might feel at a disadvantage. Between going into a fight against someone who can be taken down after neutralising their one-trick-shot and a brawler street style, vs a kunoichi I know nothing about, I will choose knowledge each and every time.”
“But-“
“- Even with Copy-Nin Kakashi, I will still scope you out first on my radar if I have doubts about a one-hit-kill. Remember that Sakura. There are three categories to knowledge: knowing what you know, knowing what you don't know, and not knowing what you don't know. And the biggest threat, without fail, is almost always the last one. Would you say many people know of your strengths? Your weaknesses?"
"They...don't? And," Sakura hazards at Shizune's encouragement, "that's good."
Now, at last, they're getting somewhere. Tsuande may not have had enough time and Kakashi may not have any care, but Shizune has plenty in spades. "That gives you an advantage. That gives you strength."
Sakura grins and Shizune grins back, offering her a hand to stand. Sakura goes to take it, and both blink in surprise at the sight of a budding seed slipping out of her palm and onto the floor, tiny leaves swaying joyfully in the sterile air.
***
Tsunade's chin slips where she's propped it up on her hand.
She slaps down another silencing seal to the one Shizune requested alongside clearing the ANBU from the room. "Run that by me again," she demands.
Shizune rubs a hand to sooth Sakura's barely-controlled hyperventilating back. "Your grandfather might have a successor."
Tsunade moves her head towards Sakura's shivering form, moves her gaze back to her desk where the cheerfully budding yew tree sits, and downs two sake bottles in a row. Pokes the yew tree, takes a breath, downs three more. "That explains your badgering of me at least. My grandfather was always a bit of a stubborn shit. Tobirama-Oji always said it was the Mokuton in him. Guess he was right."
Sakura shakes her head. "I can't have the Mokuton, I can't. That's what powerful people have. And I'm - I've never been - civilians don't make the history books."
Tsunade stops poking the yew tree, raising an eyebrow. "The Forth Hokage did."
"And he was the only one who lived long enough and was lucky enough to." Sakura counts the stitches on the Haruno circles on her trousers. "I'm not -it's impossible. Genetically, realistically. We ran the bloods in the lab and there’s no Senju DNA. No civilian makes an exception a rule. No civilian stands out and stays alive."
Tsunade shares a look with Shizune and it burns over Sakura's head. The Hokage bangs a fist on her desk, yew tree rattling, forcing Sakura to look up. "Listen here, girlie. You may not think it, kami above knows why if not for your backwards genin sensei, but I'd say your last mission report of killing a target in a second flat with breeze of ricin powder is hardly screaming flimsy civilian to me. So what if you have a flashy power-up now?" Tsunade asks bitterly. "Hashirama still died. The Senju still died. If you think that living is a weakness, you better take a hard look at yourself."
Sakura swallows thickly. Shizune makes a gesture and Tsuande tsks before spinning to face the window, newly adopted yew-tree cradled in her hands as her once-apprentice speaks to her own. "Sakura. Listen to me. Tell me the value of the most important lesson I've taught you."
"To quantify your components and manipulate them to achieve their full effect," Sakura answers with a slight wobble.
"Precisely. You have your components, Sakura. Earth, Water, chakra control. It's up to you when it comes to how you use them."
***
In the end, it's not the Mokuton the way people worship it, which is an odd relief.
Sakura is not Hashirama: she can't grow forests of trees on wastelands or impale a throat with a splintered fingertip. Well, she might be able to do the second with enough practice. But for Sakura plants don't die, and that's enough.
Her affinity and deep knowledge of plants, her complete assimilation with them, is what brings them to life over any shove of perfectly balanced chakra. She is no Senju. She is, however, a Haruno. Sakura is determined to make that name enough in its own right by shinobi standards.
Tsunade introduces her to a fellow shinobi called Yamato for further instruction. Though he doesn't appear keen to be nice to her, Sakura completely baffled as to why, there's an unshakable camaraderie in knowing its not just you with the burden of nature’s green thumbs. They may have more differences then similarities, sure, but no one can understand dealing with the sheer weirdness in waking up with plants tangled in your hair after sleeping with a window open to a fruiting tree, or being followed by bees during pollination season.
Their Mokutons don't work that similarly either, Yamato's being far closer to the First's than Sakura's engineered mish-mash, yet by month four there's a close enough mutual respect for them to know they'll have each other's backs. They keep it under wraps and Sakura never uses it on a mission, the less known of her the better.
***
It takes a year to properly perfect sprouting seeds on command, but Sakura is no quitter.
Tsunade supervises her perusal of Senju-Clan scrolls, and though she's not quite a mentor, she is a guidance. The Hokage even offers her a spot on the Senju Clan compound, and though Sakura would be a fool to turn down a haven of chakra-laden botany, she makes a small flat her primary residence.
Ino fills the space with herbal pots and her laughter, and it isn't long before Shikamaru drops by to prod her brain on herbal medicine and Choji queries her on which plants really aren't edible. She bumps into Tenten when scoping out scrolls on security seals, and like dominoes the rest of Rookie Nine fall through her door with an ease Sakura never thought she could have without the backing of a shinobi clan.
In the meantime, Sakura tentatively sends a heavily censored letter to Chiyo through her glass-merchant contacts to Suna and is thrilled when the poison master deigns to reply. It is no friendship, but Sakura's groundwork with the local civilians and better grasp on Suna culture than most warms an otherwise frosty relationship.
It is through these general discussions on easily accessible synthetic toxins that Sakura decides to complete her poison mastery and specialization. When Tenten and her complete a seal noted by Chiyo (a long-defunct feudal era trap to trigger a slow release of gas over an explosion in thanks to passing a single-use Konoha herbal antidote for Kankuro's close call), they dance in glee over the tin-box kitchen with its sprawling basil and thyme, shrieking when a blackberry bush explodes out of the floor from a cluster of seeds that had been wedged in a tile.
Sakura's place becomes a breathing forest, and despite her skills remaining undocumented the kunoichi is hardly surprised when she ends up dealing with a blank-masked intruder. Ever polite thanks to Shizune Sakura offers them tea, and at their rather violent refusal in the confines of the columbine strangling them she places a cup by their feet and indulges in her own belladonna-infused chamomile brew.
A little joke to herself, her choice of specialisation, that a woman can be as lethal as she is beautiful and that a kunoichi is easily both. She makes a mental note to add more covert ops to her A-rank requests after depositing the body at T&I before the seizures prove too much for the poor nin. If only they had taken the antidote brew she offers all her guests.
When ANBU send a request of their own the next day Sakura laughs at the one photograph she has of Team Seven until an iron tang curdles under her tongue.
If Tsunade asks it of her she will do it but otherwise Sakura has too much to do, and decontaminating herself enough for other shinobi to live in close quarters and share food with her is a hassle. Savouring her laced tea with the palate of a killer Sakura hums to herself, breathing in the sent of blackberries. It really does taste better with blood congealing on the side of the cup.
***
Naruto returns. Sakura avoids him until she can't. The look of admiration on his face is enough to soothe any worries that she isn't enough for yet another ghost-wrought person in her life, and she hugs him back just as tight, relieved that the Kyuubi will counter any belladonna residing in her sweat. She catches a glimpse of white hair bristling past, and resolves to drop a word to Jiraya before he gets punted out of a bathhouse.
It takes all of two seconds for Jiraya to dismiss her until Sakura makes sure he can't, weaving roots through his sandals.
It takes two hours in the Hokage's office to convince him to merge their respective webs together. After all, Jiraya won't be around forever, and it wouldn't do for her own contacts to go to waste.
***
"I think you ought to have these."
Sakura blinks back tears as her father gently places a set of ornamental hairpins into her palms. There's enough there to look like a wedding set, flowers of all shapes and sizes peering out with petals a masterclass of smithing. The brass metal orbs at the top and in each flower center would be perfect for storing liquid poisons and antidotes, points wickedly sharp.
"Are you sure?"
Kizashi gives a watery smile back, and enfolds her fingers over the metalwork. "It's what my sister would have wanted. She'd be so proud of you and your bravery, Sakura, always was, even if you don't remember much of her."
"I know she would laugh over us sobbing over her like this."
Kizashi lets out a breathy chuckle. "She really would. Look after them for her." Kizashi presses his forehead to his daughter's. "Take her with you on your journeys, and make sure to bring her back home."
***
Sasori's face when the seeds embedded into his joints explode into thorny bushes makes all the sleepless nights storing pouches on her person and in the trailing silk pods of her kanzashi worth it.
In another life, they could have been colleges, comrades. Sakura watches his wooden body splinter into the rocks and wonders if she could have ended up like that, drifting into the desert with barely a soul to mourn, throat split and gaping like her aunt's.
With Chiyo's blessing she plants a desert rose bush on the battleground once they finish burning the body, the foliage spiraling out of the scarred earth. And then Chiyo is gone before they can revel in the somber victory much longer, and Sakura can only dust her robes with wolfsbane powder to keep her as lethal in death as she was in life.
When Gaara gifts her with a caravan of scroll-stored glass Sakura blinks back toxic tears at the scorpion contract tucked on top, pocketing it next to her heart.
***
The jonin promotion comes quickly after that, and Sakura indulges herself in a thick sage green haori of shinobi silk. The Haruno Clan symbol on the back is stitched by their best craftsmen, creating a wreath of belldonnna flowers and berries twining through the proud circle.
Tsunade blinks a little hard during her next mission report, ghosts finally cleared from her eyes. "Now those are Senju colours that have been earned. You know, I would have taken you on if you hadn't run off that day."
Sakura pauses from her check-in on Tsunade's botanical child, yew needles healthy and strong. "I'm glad you didn't."
"So am I." Tsunade strokes a branch of the yew tree taking up the corner of her office like an enlarged bonsai. "Say, what do you think of putting another tree in here? It's good to see greenery when I'm stuck behind this damn desk all the time. I've ended up exchanging sake bottles for water spritzers, it's ridiculous."
Sakura tilts her head, considering. "How about a money plant?""
The Hokage snorts. "To restore the money I've lost?"
"To give you good luck."
Tsunade huffs. "If you weren't Shizune's old apprentice, I'd punt you through the window for that."
"You'd get a terrible rash on your hand," Sakura jokes.
Tsunade laughs uproariously. "Congratulations on your promotion, brat. Next time I see you it better be with a pot to keep Nawaki here company."
***
To say Sakura is less than pleased with the re-creation of Team Seven is a generous understatement.
Naruto is incandescent, naturally, and at least Kakashi knows better than to make her call him sensei or talk to her much at all, preferring to glance at her out of the corner of his eye. Yamato is a relief, despite his closeness to Kakashi explaining a lot about his initial coolness to her. Their new addition, Sai, is puzzling to say the least. No one quite sure what to make of him, posture screaming of those blank masked nins who kept getting caught in the sticky sage around her windows.
"I think I shall call you Zasso-chan."
Sakura frowns quizzically, tuning out Naruto's loud indignance. "Weed? If you wish, though not in the field. And knock the -chan, we are professionals here."
Sai inclines his head. His smile could make a porcelain dolls seem human. "Very well."
Sakura can't say she is keen on this recovery mission. Like plants, people have cycles. If you cut off a branch you can't graft it back on without scarring. A venemous plant always holds toxins, because it is in its nature. In Sakura's opinion, Sasuke never wanted to purge that poison from his soul, so there's no point trying to force it out. Everyone but Naruto can tell, even their socially-inept newcomer.
It had taken time, but once Sakura had the epiphany during yet another drinking bout with Ino that her crush was to follow in her classmates footsteps over actual interest, his defection had barely taken up a second in her brain. Romance isn't on Sakura's radar, not really, preferring to care for her plants and her poisons. Maybe that will change in the future, maybe not, but at her toxicity levels Sakura isn't in a rush to find out, content with what she's got. Besides, she's got other interests, keen to have a sit down with Sai once she catches his calligraphy skills to see what he can do with her botany sketches.
Later, the campfire long set up, Naruto snoring away and Yamato out on watch with Sai, Kakashi sits next to her on a nearby log. "You never were my student were you?"
Sakura focuses steadily on the flames, how the twigs straighten out from where the heat has made them curl. "There was never a point where you let me become one."
Kakashi tilts his head up to watch the sky. "I suppose you're right."
Sakura stands abruptly, irritated at his woeful self-pitying. "You need to stop smothering yourself with ghosts, Kakashi, before they suffocate you more then they already have."
"It's a bit too late I think."
Sakura keeps her agreement to herself as she walks away to take watch. "Good luck telling Naruto that."
***
Sasuke sneers before them, resplendent in his arrogance.
Sharing a nod with Yamato, Sakura maneuvers herself into position by Naruto, dragging a foot in the dust to deposit ricin seeds as she draws out a long dagger slick with strychnine.
It only takes one charged footstep from Sasuke thirty seconds into combat to make them explode, popping in a series of toxic fireworks. His face when he realizes his muscles are beginning to spasm is a picture she ought to get Sai to paint. Seeing him correct the spasms with electric charge is a piss-take, mind. Guess Sakura will have to show him what she really can do. He should know better than to ignore the unknown shinobi in the equation.
Sakura ghosts a hand over her hair, grinning as foxglove blooms grace her head and angel trumpets peek out behind her ears in a lethal crown of dark pinks and burnt yellows. A further handful of ricin seeds smoulder in her wake and Sakura grins, the scent of cherry blossoms pervading the air as powdered wolfsbane floats fatally beneath it. Her aunt's hairpins rich in machineel sap dance on the breeze in gleeful whispers, a scorpion skittering onto her shoulder. She licks her lips, coating them with belladonna, twirling oleander blooms between her fingers.
Time to prove that sakura is a poisonous flower in its own right.