Author's Note: This is my Itachi-inspired Sakura because who doesn't love the Uchiha brother.

"Life is born, life dies but sometimes, life can be saved."

Five-year old Sakura Haruno was a curious little thing. Her large ruby eyes glowed with an apathetic curiosity as she observed the people around her. The village street bristled with life, people shouting, laughing; friends enjoying their moments together; mothers with their newborn babies with eyes filled with happiness.

Sakura was a curious little thing. She observed how the civilians of Konoha beamed with respect and awe as they glanced at the shinobi wearing their headbands proudly. Yet at the same time, Sakura tilted her head in wonder, some glared at the ninja passing by their stores with barely held contempt and shadowed fear.

Humans are strange beings.

Sakura knew the dangers associated with shinobi life. Her own mother had died on the night of October 10th even when she had been safely placed in a shinobi hospital. Her father never forgave the shinobi who failed to protect her civilian mother from the Kyūubi attack.

Eyes observing the living people around her, Sakura slowly walked towards her home, residing in the outskirts of the village. The bristling life of Konoha citizens quietened down as she closed on her apartment building. The street she lived in was filled with greenery, and beautiful tall trees. Yet the silence that followed her home only brought a hollow emptiness in the child as she silently entered her room through her windows. Entering through the front door would only alert her father who was passed out on the couch with glass bottles around him.

Even at the age of five, Sakura had correctly diagnosed her father as clinically depressed. After her mother's death, her father was never the same. He gave up on his shinobi training after passing his genin exams, and his contempt for everything related to his previous career only brought out explosive outbursts whenever Sakura inquired about his shinobi career. As long as Sakura never mentioned anything related to shinobi, pretended to be a good civilian girl, and stayed out of his immediate sight, her father did not take out his frustration and madness out on her as much.

Her long pink strands swallowed her small frame as Sakura opened the large scroll that she had hidden under her floorboard. Her father might in fact injure her beyond redemption if he ever found out about her independent shinobi studies. She had already finished all the books used at the academy, and was now reading about advanced taijutsu. Sakura was not bad at taijutsu, at least she did not think so since she had never sparred with anyone before, but her keen intelligence warned her how it might become her future weak spot due to her small and slightly malnourished frame.

She could cook just fine of course, it was one of the first things she had to learn in order to not starve after her father passed out in his room and left her alone with no one to look after her. However, ever since her mother's death, he had barely continued working and the only money they received was from the Konoha funding given weekly to citizens who had lost their family members and individual properties. She never knew how her father managed to use up most of the money on alcohol, leaving her few ryōs, if he remembered, to buy her own food. The pink-haired girl, instead of buying herself food, saved up the money just in case he stopped giving her money at all in the future as he descended further into depression.

She managed to scrape by though, from the kindness of Konoha civilians who took pity on her and allowed her to take free fruits and some vegetables whenever she passed by all alone. It was not news to the civilian proportion of the village that Sakura's father was grieving for her mother. Only no one seemed to have noticed the extent to which his grief cost him his sanity and logical thinking. It seemed as if her father could barely look at her without remembering her mother's death and his anger at the shinobi who failed to save her.

"It is for the best," Sakura muttered offhandedly to herself. While her father failed at being a father, she realized that he was suffering. She was too young to remember her mother, but Mebuki Haruno was her father's lover and partner for most of his life that her loss had utterly shattered him. He was not a good father, Sakura knew, but she could not afford to lose him from her life entirely and forced into the orphanage.

He was not a good man anymore even, but he was still her father, and Sakura, for whatever it's worth, understood that her father was in pain. She could not forgive him at times, especially when alcohol poisoned his mind and he took out his ire on her by using her as his punching bag, seeing the shinobi who'd failed Mebuki rather than his own daughter he was supposed to protect.

Yet, even then, Sakura loved her father. Humans are fragile, she had understood as she saw the shadows and tears painting her father's eyes every time he leashed out on her.

Humans are fragile, and her father was broken beyond repair perhaps, but Sakura could not stop loving him even then.

The five-year old child closed her scroll and breathed in the fresh air coming from the outside. The orange hue of the sunlight enveloped her small frame as Sakura stood up facing her window. There was a burning fire inside of her. Sakura could not identify exactly what it was but she longed, so dearly, to be free from the shadows of her home. She imagined her kind father, the shadows of his former self, and wished, almost desperately, for the security of having loving parents. Her face was slightly hallowed due to starvation and neglect, but the fire in her eyes burned as brightly as the hottest flames.

"When the tree leaves dance, one shall find flames. The fire's shadow will illuminate the village, and once again, tree leaves shall bud anew."