Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Sakura Haruno was registered as an orphan the moment her mother held a kunai to her eight-year old throat. The moment Sakura feels the cool metal touch her skin, she knows what she has to do. The madness in her family has spread to her mother and she closes her eyes.

She knows what she has to do. Papa had taught her what to do a long time ago.

She closes her eyes, whispers that she loves her Mother and plunges her fingers deep into her glaring silver eyes. It's over before her mother knows it and as her small pudgy fingers reach inside the eye sockets she can feel the life sputtering out of her. Sakura feels oddly empty.

Papa taught her what to do.

When it's done, she holds in the sobs and calmly walks out the door of her civilian house. She makes her way to the Hokage's office, hands bloody and face set in stone. When Sakura reaches the Tower, the ANBU guard takes one look at her, grabs her by the collar and whisks her inside.

Sakura doesn't worry about her being in trouble. She knows that other families, they have different customs. The Hyuuga have family meetings and talk about how to celebrate events together. The Uchiha have celebratory traditional dances that the men and women dance at the village festivals.

In her family, a kunai across the neck is a pledge of death.

When she sinks in a bow in front of half of the Uchiha clan, the main clan members of the Hyuuga and the Hokage she knows she is in trouble. When the Hokage asks her what has happened, she gives an odd little toss of her hair and smiles.

Papa had always taught her it was best to hide your grief and never, not ever to flaunt it.

"My mother asked me to kill her, Hokage-sama." She states.

Minutes pass by, Sakura is not sure. She sees the Clan families look nervously at each other and the old Hokage presses his lips together, trying to hide his shock.

"Where is your father, child?" The Hokage finally asks and it's Sakura's turn to be shocked. She thought everyone knew where Papa had gone.

"My Papa was killed by Mother. I think he's lying in the backyard. But don't worry, he taught me what to do." She reassures them. She does not understand why the entire office looks haunted and distraught at the news.

She had taken care of the monsters.

"Why did your mother kill your father?" This time it's a young boy, about thirteen or so, with long black hair and shiny onyx eyes who asks.

Sakura bares her teeth and stands straight, looking him directly in the eye. She knows from Papa that when she does this, she looks more animal than human.

Accordingly, he takes half a step back and re-assesses her.

"In my family, a kunai across the neck is a pledge of death." She says and no matter the type of cajoling she gets, she will not answer anymore.

Sakura is escorted out and she cranes her neck to hear the rest of the discussion in the office.

"Hokage-sama, is she not stable?"

"She cannot be kept in the village – what is she?"

"Who is she?"

"Hyuuga-sama, Uchiha-sama, what do you know about the civilian clan called 'Haruno'?"

She hears a collective gasp and Sakura knows that they have remembered what her Mother was. The ANBU beside her stiffens and holds her arm rougher. Sakura nearly smiles, the smug kind that grates on everyone's nerves, but she remembers that Papa said it was important to keep calm and not to show arrogance.

Her heritage is not a good thing.

Sakura spends the next hour drilling that into her head.

ACk! I keep having so many ideas that I just need to write and well, here we are. :) Hope you enjoy! Tell me your thoughts if it pleases you!