Disclaimer: I do not own the Naruto verse. Alexander and Hephaestion are historical figures, and no matter how much I wished I could have them, they are their own too.

Greyscale

"_have you ever had", she asks quietly – because some things cannot exist beyond the shadow and the soul. "Have you ever had someone else's name written on your skin?"

"_yes." It's such that everyone does. It's us, and he cannot see why she asks.

"_has your name ever been absent?"

Yes, he wants to say. Many times, because there had been many loves; but only one was true. Only one had his name on her wrist. Yes, he wants to say. Sometimes his name wasn't there but there still was a spark – not a fire, no. Never the fire he kindled with her. She has his name in the hollow of her wrist.

"_never without a good reason."

She scoffs, turns away. He waits. (He is impatient; but today he can wait. There is a goal to be obtained and she will give in first. She was always most impetuous.)

There is a sliver of satisfaction when she turns back to him. She has removed the leather band from her wrist and his heart skips a beat.

Hephaestion

He thinks he cannot understand.

.

She learns in a book (because that's what she is good at; books and knowledge and really not much else) who he is. Hephaestion, closest friend of Alexander the Great and so thoroughly in love with him that there never was more of an Achilles and Patroclus than the two. (Except that Alexander married Roxana and Hephaestion never stopped loving.)

She doesn't understand. (He died so long ago – how could he be anything even remotely like her soul mate?)

.

There's anger in her veins. (How could they?) Her body thrums with adrenaline, rage choking up her throat because she is not – she cannot be – Hephaestion. She is not a romantic tragedy, she is not the Juliet to some long lost Romeo and she is most definitely not going to die alone wishing for a man who never loved her.

There is anger in her veins and vitriol on her tongue and rage in her eyes. There is beauty in her steps. (She is unbroken and unconquered and if dying proud is dying alone then she will live with her head held high.)

The earth quakes in her anger, the ground shivers under her feet – she is angry and anger is the storm. Nothing can vanquish the hot white rage she has been given. She is Susanoo. A Fury.

Trees flatten before her fists, boulders crack under her touch and still she wrecks, because wrecking is being alive and she destroys to ascertain who she is. She is Sakura Haruno (she is Rin Nohara and Tsunade Senju and Mito Uzumaki and the same soul on repeat) and she will not be washed away in the tides of the world. Hephaestion died alone and was made lonely by love but Sakura Haruno refuses to bear the name of a forlorn man on her skin.

.

She has swapped her arm for a wooden limb. It's a present from Kankuro in Suna, a little something he has given her because he is like her and refuses to let the words on his skin become the darkness in his eyes. Sakura smiles and learns to use this new appendage, marvels at the clean and smooth expanse of her wrist and tries not to regret the arm she chopped off when madness became too great. (She is far more than a lover.) For a few months, she is happy. The limb is painful, but Sakura would rather be in pain than jilted and she welcomes the tide of apathy. Her hands shake but she refuses to bow. She relearns all of her lore and although the wooden fingers are beautiful and dexterous, she wonders if it is time for her to regrow her arm. If it might be gone for ever.

One day, she sees the marking on the inner blade of her thighs. Something unfurls in her throat, a little bit of spite which takes over her soul and wrecks her apart until she is only anger and rage set ablaze. How dare they? Sakura wants to rip the world apart.

(She will do it with both hands.)

.

There is love on her skin. (Sasuke's breath that fans against her collarbone and Sakura thinks she has lost her mind.) Her world sparkles when he touches her and there's fire running through her veins and Sakura believes, oh how she believes, that this is it. This is her. (She is not Hephaestion. It's a promise.) There are colours rippling through her sights, the green of the leaves in the wind, the red of polished fingernails, the purple of plum lips, the pink of her hair, the blue of Sasuke's clan, the yellow of Naruto's legacy. She thinks she has come alive, she thinks the frost has melted and as Sakura learns how to use her flesh hand again, she thinks the name seared in her skin doesn't have to mean anything.

She's bright green, like life and hope and spring. Her world has erupted in a flurry of colours, the brown of the earth and the lavender of the fields and the orange of summer flowers blooming before their time. Sakura thinks the world beautiful again.

And then there's Sasuke and Naruto, naked in his bed – and incomprehension. (No. This does not happen. This is not like it.) The world fades back to grey. (She is cold and barren, the earth scorched by passion and drenched by rain and Sakura thinks that summer is fleeting, summer is too short for her to prefer it to autumn.) Autumn is rusted garnet and dried blood, orange in that decay tone that suits her, suits the downfall of her love and of her team mate and orange, Naruto orange like their youth; it's gone. It has shattered.

.

And then, she understands.

.

Sakura is not Hephaestion. (She is Roxanne.)

Wife of Alexander the Great, first spouse from a barbarian clan and never loved but always there. Pregnant because she could and Hephaestion not, treasured because she represented an ideal more than for the person she was and she is Roxanne. She is fire and passion and wild, all trapped and locked by marriage, forced back inside herself until she dies, dies from the overturn of energy and the rage and the anger. She is the patch up, the façade to the world – but that is Roxanne.

Now Sakura knows. (She is not Hephaestion, doomed to love and be loved in return yet never own it. She is the opposite. She owns love, owns his bed and his ring, and yet she doesn't love nor is she loved in return. She is scorn and anger and pent up emotions that are sent bubbling in a fit of rage. She cracks the earth open and wrecks apart the worlds.)

Sakura Haruno refuses to be a toy of fate. (She is a shinobi of Konoha, a Kunoichi in her own right and Sakura refuses, refuses to be a toy to her heart, a plaything to her emotions.) She is Haruno Sakura, apprentice to the Godaime and a pupil who has survived her Master. She is one of the only two medics allowed on the front lines in the world because Sakura has mastered Creation Rebirth and she will not die, not bow down to love, not give in and surely never give up.

Sakura is a Kunoichi of Konohagakure no Sato. (She is too precious to leave, too important to go but too determined, too hurt to stay. She lingers in limbo.)

.

Sakura meets a boy. (A man, really.)

He's got a shy smile and a gentle touch, holding her close as if he were afraid to break her. It's annoying and flattering at the same time, because Sakura can easily snap him in half if she wants, but Sasuke has always treated her like that; unbreakable, and without the will to be gentle. It makes her stomach move and do flips when he holds her, like she is precious, and when she tells him, one day, that she won't break if he holds her a little more roughly, his reply makes her heart flutter. (I'm sorry; it's just that, normally, beautiful things are fragile.)

He isn't the blue of Sasuke's clan or the bright yellow that characterises Naruto. He's more grey, more muted taupe rather than bright green like she is. He's quiet and gentle, he's soft in his touches and rough in bed and always, always caring.

He's also fourteen years older than her.

(Genma. Shiranui Genma.)

Sakura should know better.

.

I don't think we are working out. I know that it doesn't matter, but your name is not on my wrist and I think I want it, that unending love, the feeling of being complete. I think I want a soul mate.

Sakura figures she ought to be glad that Genma told her, rather than finding out like she did with Sasuke and Naruto. She smiles, smiles even when her thigh throbs with the name and curses in her mind as she tells him she understands, tells him thank you for the love and the care and time and hopes that he will find who he loves. Genma is relieved.

He's going out with Raido the following month. (Sakura feels something in her break.)

.

After dark blue and taupe, Sakura tries soft lavender.

Hinata is far more broken than she is, stronger as well for all she stands before her clan each day and pretends she isn't in pain. Sakura admires her, admires that, and from this admiration she finds time to spend with the young Clan Matriarch. Hinata is soft spoken and kind, she understands what it feels like to have a name on your skin that burns and Hinata's touch soothes her ache.

She's soft peach skin and warm hands, supple body and curves and dark, dark hair so sleek Sakura thinks it a rainfall.

Sakura doesn't love Hinata, and neither does the Hyuuga love her. They fit though, like pieces of a puzzle being thrown together and like friends adding another dimension to a good relationship. They fit, in between soft giggles and hot kisses, fit like siblings and lovers and friends. There is no all-encompassing-burning love with Hinata, no blinding-burning-biting hunger to be and live and die. There's just them, soft summer days and cold winter nights, gentle crimson autumn and the spring, Sakura spring and the season of her name.

Hinata leaves her in Spring. Sakura thinks it doesn't hurt as much as the first time, and they manage to remain friends – even when the Heiress marries Naruto.

.

Sasuke and Naruto, Night and Day, Sun and Moon – they have gone and exploded and, whilst Hinata loved and loved and forgave, Sakura has grown and ached too much. She isn't as strong as the heiress, and when Sasuke comes back, red roses and warm hands and embarrassed silences, Sakura shuts the door in his face.

She refuses to hurt again.

.

It's Shishou that helps her most. (Sakura's twenty six, recognises that she is alone when all around her have loved, and she can see more clearly day by day her death in the field, away from Konoha and home and warmth.)

There's a night with too much sake, drunken slurs that speak of high tolerance and pain, pain in spades, flowing swifter and stronger than the alcohol between them.

Tsunade has three names on her skin. Two are level, forming a sort of triangle and she is one of those people who got two shots at love. (Dan, on its own – and then, below, side by side; Orochimaru Jiraya) Sakura understands. (She supposes that, were she not to have the ghost of a man on her skin, she might also have had her team mates' names on her lips.) Tsunade had two shots at love, but she lost both and something in her in incredibly bitter, incredibly broken by the thought that this is her, her fault and her choices and her mistakes that meant those two beautiful, beautiful chances flew her by and she feels like such an idiot for losing.

Sakura learns that pain is easier to drown when someone is drinking with you. Tsunade is not a lover; she's seen too much of Sakura, too much of the pain and the anger and the loss, but Tsunade is a mother and a friend and a mentor; a confidante. (Sakura is a friend and a daughter and an equal, and she thinks it is one of the most beautiful gifts she has ever been given.)

The world softens, pastel tones slither through the grey and although she keeps blue and orange out, Sakura welcomes taupe and lavender back into her palette. They are pretty. Melancholic, of course, but pretty. Soft. Gentle. Home.

She thinks honey is the most beautiful of all.

.

Sakura learns accuracy, in order to bring colour back into her life. Shishou shows her.

(Uchiha blue is different to baby blue and pastel blue and turquoise and navy and ultramarine – and whilst the former hurts, all of the other are beautiful.)

The sound of the wind in the trees is psithurism, the one of rustling grass is fizmer and there is a world opening to her. It's all in the details. Sakura learns that she doesn't have to be the hero of her own story; that being the sidekick, the villain or even the silent observer can be just as fun, just as fulfilling and she evolves. She changes, grows and morphs into someone who has nothing to do with the word on her thigh. Her name is Sakura Haruno. She is thirty, a medic and a healer and a friend. She is soft touches and gentle smiles.

.

He is grey. Perhaps it's why Sakura takes a chance on him, because he's grey and grey fits into her world, slips in and settles without her seeing.

At first it's just training together. He's forty four, old and stuffy and perverted, but Sakura has got years of fondness to look past that. He's quite young in his mind, childish and amusing and he makes her laugh, makes her warm from the inside. He doesn't hold her like a porcelain doll, nor does he grab her as if she were unbreakable. He's the same. Always the same. She's a woman.

At first it's just training, and then it's lunches before training, dango after training and when he starts to pay the bill (sheepish and wearing that god damned mask – but pays, and she knows what it means) Sakura thinks that, maybe, she's going somewhere.

There are dogs barking when she gets home, wagging tails and soft paws and eager tongues licking at her germ-free face. There's his quiet warmth in the kitchen, the silent knowledge that whilst, perhaps, she doesn't love him with the fire of soul mates, she loves him regardless. He's lost his own and hers was dead long before her birth. Sakura knows that, if one of them is to leave, it won't be him – and for someone who's been left behind three times before, it's something important. It's something vital and burning and she doesn't fear when she comes home. He's there. Always, with that orange paperback (not Naruto-orange, but Icha-Icha-orange, Orange with a capital 'O' because it's become a shade of its own) and takeaway because he can't cook for shit and a surviving Mr Ukki in the corner. Sakura comes home, home after a day at the hospital or on mission or with the Godaime and there is someone home. There's someone by her side.

(If she feels the burn on her thigh, the longing for a man who lived long ago and never knew her, then Sakura tucks it all away firmly.)

Kakashi's hands are warm on her skin when he pulls her closer. His bed is creaky and small, but hers was burnt in a fit of rage and futon aren't really his things any more. There's a ragged, shuriken patterned duvet, dog hair all over and she even suspects a few Icha Icha underneath the bed, but Sakura doesn't mind. It's all home.

.

He's grey, and whilst her world is blooming in colours and coming alive again, she treasures the silver shine of water, the fluffy clouds in the sky, the heavy thunder birds that amass in the monsoon. She treasures flashes of kunai in the night, shinobi plate with the Konoha symbol on it, simple platinum wedding band on her ring finger.

She treasures them all, treasures and loves him, but because Sakura is selfish – has always been more selfish and weaker than her team mates – she goes first. Kakashi doesn't follow her, and for this she is glad. (Sakura loves him enough that she wants to see him happy, even after her death.)

She meets a man by the name of Hephaestion, wherever souls go to die. He doesn't have a body any more, but when she shows him the memory of his name on her thigh he smiles and apologises. It's not her name on his skin.

Alexander

Sakura smiles, jagged and broken, shrugs and goes on her way. She doesn't mind – not any more. For all that her world is in bloom, yellow and orange and red and green and blue and violet, it's the greyscale that she cherishes most.