Sakura returns to her life as an academy student with little fanfare. No one even notices that anything's different. She avoids staying after class to prevent the sensei from trying to "talk" to her about her parent's death. She lets none of her school friends know that anything is wrong with her, and she moves into orphan housing.

For a few blessed weeks she thinks that she can continue living her life the way she had before.

And then the semi-annual evaluations happened.

She'd never had to worry about them before, for all that she knows how the bottom levels of the village hierarchy are set up and how many different types of specializations are needed to keep their village running smoothly, she never worried about what exactly she'd do when she graduated. She thought she'd have time to figure that out.

Her paper grades were actually perfect all across the board, and while her physical scores weren't fantastic, they were consistently just below or at average. She had good aim, decent reflexes, flexibility in spades, but no real stamina, speed, or strength.

She had set herself up to be a solid paper ninja, one who'd serve several years in the genin corps before being internally promoted to a desk job in intelligence, like Iruka-sensei had suggested to her earlier in the year. Not exactly a show stopping career, but a decent and respectable one.

"Haruno-kun, you do know that six months after you become a full-fledged kunoichi, your orphan benefits will stop, right?"

And then Iruka-sensei had forced her to re-evaluate her entire life plan.

"What."

Iruka-sensei then had the nerve to look apologetic as if he hadn't just ruined all of the plans she'd made for herself since she first entered the academy.

"I'm sorry, Haruno-kun, but once you are given your headband, you are officially an adult. You'll be making your own money, and the village can only afford to keep giving you the orphan benefits for so long once you are legally an adult. The six month period exists so that you can get experience to work higher level missions, or get promoted."

To Sakura it sounded a lot more like:

"Sorry you're parents are dead, once you become a ninja that we pay and send out to kill or be killed, your dead parents are no longer our problem and we don't feel sorry for you anymore."

The anger bubbles viscous and hot in her stomach and she wants to scream death and destruction at him, but she pushes her anger away, just like she always has. She bites her lip, to keep herself from screaming at him.

"I see. And what do orphans normally do in these situations, Iruka-sensei?" She keeps her voice light, like she's having a conversation about the weather or what vegetables are in season.

"Normally, they either join one of the specialist corps, to start earning the bonuses. Or they train to pass their first or second chunin exams."

Sakura nods to show that she's listening, not entirely sure that if she said something it would come out appropriate.

"You have great chakra control and a mind for puzzles, Haruno-kun, and I can get you in contact with someone from Intelligence and the Hospital." He leans in closer to her, lowering his voice. "Now, normally, you'd have to wait until you graduated, but since we're only a couple of months away from graduation and your grades have always remained fantastic, even after the situation with your parents, I'd be willing to let them waive the requirement."

Sakura struggles to keep her face neutral at the mentions of her parents death and manages only to fix him with a flat look telling him that the subject is not up for discussion.

It must be very effective because Iruka-sensei pales slightly. He continues quickly, "You would have to attend some remedial strength and stamina training to raise your chakra levels, but I'd be willing to supervise that several times a week."

"I'd be interested in that, Iruka-sensei, thank you for your time."

She leaves the room with contact information for Intelligence and the Hospital, as well as a schedule for remedial training with Iruka-sensei three times a week after class, feeling ten years older and her throat sore from not screaming at the unfairness of her life.

She realizes that she's on the younger side of being 12 years old and she's never even had one in her life, but she can't escape the feeling that she really needs a drink.

Instead of getting a drink and no doubt falling into alcoholism like her wayward emotions are telling her, Sakura chooses to go home and go through her father's stories, recorded in dozens of journals, and illustrated with delicate brush strokes by her mother.

She has apparently not have enough emotional upheaval for the day.

She pulls out her favorite, the sharp edges of the journal having long since been made soft by repeated readings, and lets the familiar words and images wash over her.

She can hear her father's voice starting the tale, soft but strong, taking on the accent of a faraway land,

My great great grandfather was one of the greatest storytellers of his time, travelling over land and seas and telling his tales in exchange for the tales of the lands he travelled to. He was so prolific that by the time he was of my age (twenty two years) he'd had several hundred volumes of tales and songs from his travels, that he'd return home in the winter to store at his family home.

It was on one of these trips home, as he was travelling through a town north of his, Dalnacreich, to hear the tale of the mother of a changeling child that was said to live there, that he met my great great grandmother.

She was a traveller also, but one who stuck to the hills and valleys of their homeland and only rarely ventured outside to the countries surrounding it.

According to him it was love at first sight. They returned to his home shortly, and were wed in the winter.

My great grandmother was born that summer with hair as red as her newborn skin and eyes green like grass, looking like nothing but the spitting image of her mother.

They went on to have twelve children, nine boys, and three girls, each child the spitting image of their mother.

But it was only as the children got older that my grandfather realized there might be something different about his beloved bride.

His eldest son died in a caravan accident when he was only six, but afterwards, his eldest daughter was never the same.

She'd wake up the rest of the family in the middle of the night with howling screams several times a month, and he would go into town the following day and find out some tragedy had struck. First it was the fisherman's son, and then the blacksmith's daughter, and then one of her own brothers.

He knew something was wrong, and he had his own suspicions, so he laid a trap for his wife. He went to the blacksmith one day and requested a new cooking pot, made entirely out of iron.

He replaced the pot on their stove with the iron one and let his wife make them dinner.

His wife and children became extremely sick, and the sound of his daughter's screams filled the house for days as everyone lay sick in their beds.

It was only then that he realized that while he had confirmed his suspicions, he had hurt not only the love of his life, but also his beloved children. He told his wife what he had done as she lay sick on their bed. And she screamed and cursed him and came clean.

It was true, she was a Bean Sidhe, whose wail foretold of coming death and she and her children were weakened by the iron pot she'd unknowingly cooked in.

She'd wanted to tell him, but she loved him too much to risk him leaving her.

And he forgave her.

He forgave her and she smiled at him.

And then she screamed.

She screamed and screamed until her scream fell off into a death rattle, and she was gone.

When he went to go tell his children of their mother's passing, he found them all dead, all of them except his eldest daughter, who lay in bed, still sick and feverish, but alive.

And he nursed her back to health, for seven days and seven nights, until she woke up on the last day, healthy and hale, and all he had left to remember his wife.

He was never the same after the death of his wife and children, but he dedicatedly attended to his daughter for the rest of his life, and shared the story with her husband who shared it with his children and so on and so forth, so no one would ever make the mistake that he made.

Sakura closes the journal and turns off the lights, well aware of parallels to her own life, and unwilling to acknowledge them.

She dreams of dismembered limbs and dusty pink hair stained thoroughly red with blood and of her father screaming at his attackers in a language he'd sung her to sleep with that she'd never understood.

She dreams of giant nine-tailed foxes crushing souls and spines between teeth as big as houses and scarecrows releasing their birds to feast on the bodies of their kills and a boy made out of black fire recreating himself in Amaterasu's image.

She sleeps soundly.

So Sakura trains because she has to, because she wants to not die, and (she'll never admit this) to spite a village that would make an orphan and leave it be.

She's struck with the sudden realization that Konoha is not kind to her orphans, and she can almost feel the last of her innocence curling up and withering away.

Living in a ninja village is just a constant exchange of favors. Iruka trades in favors (he has the most, he's trained the past five years graduating classes) and on a cold day in December, Sakura finds herself at the gates of the Nara compound.

She's never had reason to be in this part of town, her parents choosing to live in a civilian home, and the old growth of the forest is more impressive to her than even the opulence of the Hyuuga.

She looks at the trees, some the size of her, and others towering over her by dozens of meters. For all the she tries not to think of her parents in her day-to-day life, she can't help but feel that this is a place her father would have told stories about. On the edges of her vision she almost see shadows beyond the trees larger and more vicious than any deer the trees might grant shelter.

She feels vaguely as if she is encroaching upon their territory, as if she needs to ask permission. She scoffs for a moment, resolving to walk past the forest to the main house.

But part of her thinks of her father and how you only get the one warning before you end up dead or worse. Every culture has their own fair folk, and you never want to make them angry.

So she takes a detour into the forest, not realizing that there are eyes, human eyes, on the bright beacon of her pink hair, watching her go into a part of the forest that some of the Nara don't even don't dare go into.

so we get into sakura trying to get back to the way her life was before and iruka-sensei correcting her assumptions, because she's almost a legal adult and will have to provide for herself. she reads one of the more important stories that her father recorded (what happened to the no doubt hundreds of journals from the rest of her family? we'll find out later). she's having weird ass dreams. again. and ignoring the very obvious conclusion. again. i really hope you all get where i'm going with this, because i'm not gonna actually punch you in the face with what's going on with her until later on. her faith in konoha is shaken. and not to mention on her way to talk about her intelligence training, she gets distracted by the nara's creepy forest.

so... i think this is a good starting point.

also if anyone's interested, all of the chapter titles are either the names of tropes from tvtropes that have to do with the contents of the chapter/are foreshadowing. so there's that.

if you want to follow me on tumblr, my username there is morallyunequivocal.