Part 1

Otousan goes on a mission alone and comes back with a girl in tow. She's wearing dirty, ragged clothes, and her pink hair looks like it was cut with a knife. She might be pretty or she might be ugly, but Sasuke can't tell because her face is so bruised. Blue and purple color her swollen left eye, her cheek, her jaw. There's a shallow cut across her throat, like someone tried to slit it. Okaasan fusses over the girl and goes to help her take a bath.

"Where did she come from?" Itachi asks.

Otousan frowns. "A little border town to the north. Sound shinobi slaughtered her parents, her whole village. The only reason she's alive is that they left her for dead."

"Is she going to live with us now?" Sasuke asks.

"It's only temporary," his father says, "just until we find a home for her."

Okaasan takes the girl to the hospital. An hour later she comes back with her injuries healed, but she's still blank-faced, inexpressive and silent. Sasuke tries to talk to her, to ask her name, but she just looks at him with empty eyes and says nothing.

On the fifth day of her stay with his family, Sasuke finds their guest sitting outside beneath the apple tree, drawing a skylark perched on a low-hanging branch. The little brown bird preens itself, and as she watches it, he sees the girl smile for the first time. She is, Sasuke decides, beautiful this way, her blush-colored hair falling around her face and green eyes bright with contentment.

He sits next to her and feels the freshly cut grass, still wet with morning dew, beneath his palms. For a long time, he doesn't say anything, wary of upsetting her. She continues to draw and allows him to watch as her pencil brings the skylark to life on the page. Curiosity finally gets the better of him, and Sasuke asks, "What's your name? If you don't wanna say it, you can write it down."

She bites her lip, tears out a fresh page from the notebook, writes for a moment, folds up the note, and hands it to Sasuke. He opens it and finds a single word, a name for this girl who has lost everything: Sakura.

One week turns to two, turns to three, and Sakura is still with them, and still mute. One morning, before breakfast, Sasuke stands at the kitchen door and hears Otousan and Okaasan arguing in quiet voices about how much longer Sakura can stay.

His mother says, "You know that I've always wanted a daughter, and here she is, a girl who needs a home. So why shouldn't it be us to take care of her?"

Otousan sighs. "She might not want to be anyone's daughter, Mikoto. Besides, we don't know the first thing about caring for a child who can't talk."

"Fine then." Sasuke can't see it, but he would bet all the ryo in his pocket that his mother is crossing her arms. "You find a home that you think will treat her better than we will, a home where Sakura will be better loved than by us, and she can go."

His father grumbles something too low for Sasuke to hear, and his mother laughs.

"Then you concede?" she asks.

"You're a shrewd woman," Otousan says. "I'll need to keep an eye on you in the future, wife."

"You can watch me as much as you like, but when I want something, I always get it," Okaasan says, and there is a smile in her voice. "I caught you, remember?"

"Vividly," Otousan says.

Sasuke hears kissing sounds and backs away from the door, as frightened as if he'd come across a viper's nest. Then he hurries to Sakura's room to share the good news.

They will sit side by side and pass notes back and forth that look something like this:

Sasuke-kun, when is your birthday?

It's July 23rd. Why?

Ha, I'm older and wiser than you!

Older doesn't make you wiser, you stupid.

Here she narrows her pretty green eyes and sticks out her tongue at him. But on July 23rd she wakes him up with a kiss on the cheek and gives him a present just the same.

Sasuke-kun, what did you do at the Academy today?

Nothing special. Why are you always asking me that.?

Because I want to be a ninja.

Sasuke tells his parents, and they take Sakura to the Academy the next day. Iruka-sensei tests her raw abilities and proclaims her more than ready to begin classes. She starts out with the little ones, and between that and her inability (or refusal) to speak, the older students pick on her. At least, they try to. Most of them end up with black eyes for their trouble, and the ones Sakura doesn't lay low, Sasuke punishes during taijutsu training.

Sakura is smart. Better than he is at calculating numbers and understanding the ethical dilemmas that Iruka-sensei poses. She moves to the upper class within a few months—nearly unheard of for a ninja-in-training. And when the time comes, she graduates with him. Accepts her hitai-ate with the proudest smile he's ever seen on her face.

Sasuke-kun, I'm glad you finished at the top of our class. You deserve it.

Thank you, Sakura.

Passing notes is all well and good, but Sakura doesn't always have pen and paper at hand when she wants to communicate something. Once they're in the field it becomes a problem, because when time is of the essence, she can't say what she means to, can't warn her teammates if she sees trouble that they missed.

Surprisingly enough, it's Naruto who comes up with a solution. "If we can use hand signs to make a jutsu, why can't we use our hands to make words?"

So the three of them meet after training every day and practice a secret language, a system of signs known only by Team 7. Sakura is quick to create the words most meaningful to her: a punch for fight, a tap at the hitai-ate for shinobi, and a hand over her heart for love. It takes months to develop a vocabulary large enough to say more than simple sentences. But it's worth every hour to be able to speak to Sakura while looking at her instead of a piece of paper, to meet her eyes and make her smile by signing a joke (usually at Naruto's expense).

Today she's sitting on her bed, legs crossed in the lotus position, reading a medical text she must have borrowed from the Konoha library. Sasuke takes a seat next to her and asks, Why do you read that stuff? It's boring.

She rolls her eyes and says, It's only boring if you can't understand it. And then, with a smirk, You stupid.

Sasuke reaches over and tickles her ribs, a reprisal for calling him dumb. She falls back onto her bed, writhing as he tickles her, mouth sealed shut, and signs, Stop! I give in! He decides to relent—in a moment. But when he tickles her this time, she doesn't stay silent: a laugh escapes her, feminine and high-pitched, and it is the most beautiful sound Sasuke has ever heard.

Sakura covers her mouth with her hand, her eyes wide and white with fear. Her breathing hitches, grows too fast, and soon she's sobbing, tears spilling down the sides of her face onto the sheets. At first, Sasuke doesn't know what to do. In the three years he has known her, he has never seen Sakura cry.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't think." Sasuke wraps his arms around her, lets her sob onto his shoulder. Sakura fists the back of his shirt, holds onto him like he's an anchor in a storm until she's cried out. She wipes her red eyes, sniffs, and signs to him to get off of her. Sasuke hurries to give her space, and she sits up, says, I'm sorry I lost it. I know it must seem silly to you, crying over a laugh.

Often Sasuke would respond by signing, but right now he wants her to hear his voice. "I don't think it's silly at all. I'm sure you have your reasons."

Wary as a wild animal, Sakura backs a little away from him. She looks out the window and says, My mother hid me under the bed and told me not to make a sound. I didn't cry, didn't scream. Not even when they cut Okaasan open from her navel to her neck. Let her bleed out on the floor, holding her own insides in her hands. I watched her die and didn't say a word. I was always a dutiful daughter: I did as I was told and stayed silent.

But they found me anyway, and then I screamed.