Chapter Text
Throughout the course of her life Haruno Mebuki has been many things. And yet, there is still only one constant shared between them all.
Bloodshed.
She's a killer; a murderer, a war-criminal, a raging machine and a pale-faced boogeyman. She is many, many horrible things and none of them are kind.
Her life is bathed in a washed-out hue of pink, her soul a water-logged carcass left to stain a pristine Uzu beach. All she has is knives and kunai, sharp lines and sharper edges, red scrolls and redder hands. She is Haruno Mebuki, soldier of the Leaf and the last man standing, and she would rather be dead than alive.
She misses Setsuki and Chamei. She misses warm embraces and warmer hands and Asaki's hair ruffles and- and---
Mebuki hates it all. She hates this village; this stupid belligerent village that sends children to die, that forces her to love people that they were only going to kill later on. She hates the way they mark her as an overwhelming success, even though she can't look in the mirror without wanting to claw her own eyes out.
Success.
Success.
In all her years, she'd never thought that she'd grow to despise the word 'success'. She is Haruno Mebuki, the star jewel of her graduating class. Three years too young to graduate, too small by half, but she'd gone and done anyway it with a proud smile, bloodied hands, and torn fleshed lodged between her canines.
She was a success, and back then...
She'd thought that would've meant that she was strong; powerful. She'd thought success meant safety. She'd thought a lot of things, really, like how strength meant power, and power meant making sure the ones you loved are safe. Success is power, and power is safety.
She'd been wrong. She'd been so wrong. Success is power and power is a tool, one wielded by those above you with no sympathy and little remorse.
Now, she is Haruno Mebuki. She is strong, she is powerful, and she is nothing but a weapon to be pointed at the enemy. She's somewhere between the age of twenty and twenty six, time losing all relevance, and the only thing success has gotten her is death, trauma, and a head-hunter bounty so high that she doesn't know whether or not she's going to survive the year.
She is Haruno Mebuki, elite jounin of Konohagakure, and the Third Shinobi War is the best thing that's happened to her in years.
There is a strange calm in the violence; in the unerring knowledge that no matter what she had for breakfast or how the weather is, she's going to come back to camp soaked in red.
The front-lines are her calling; the place where she thrives in. She doesn't have to kill anymore children, there's no more babes to choke or wives to poison. There's no seduction missions, no grey areas to dance around. There's no morals and there's no rights or wrongs, just battle; endless glorious battle.
The front-lines didn't have grey areas between the splotches of black and white-- it was all red stains and instincts and violence and that was something she understood.
So, when they point her at an encampment and say 'kill them,' Mebuki does, and she does so mercilessly. The earth bends to her will and Chikara feasts on the corpses of Iwa-nin and allies that get caught in the crossfire.
Surrounded by the smog of burning bodies, ruptured earth and the taste of blood as addictive as alcohol, she feels nothing.
She feels nothing when she looks down at the broken body of a Konoha shinobi, crushed beneath a boulder of her own making. All she feels is a vicious sense of satisfaction because, if life has taught her anything at all, it's that everyone's an enemy.
There's no black and white; right and wrong. There's not a single idealistic bone in her body that doesn't think Konoha didn't take everything from her. Konoha is that slimy rat in the corner of the bar, all twig limbs and hidden weapons, luring you in with pretty promises before tearing them all away. It's for us, Konoha coaxes, you'd do it for us, because we'd do it for you.
So, no. There is no love lost between Mebuki and what the Konohagakure rats think of her. She'd rather leave them all to rot than help them- but...
Iwa.
Iwa is the country that threw the kunai. Iwa is the judge, jury and executioner. Iwa is the one who took away her life; her sole purpose in this gods-awful world. Konoha is the rat, but Iwa is the killer; the glorified murderers that ripped her team away from her, that slaughtered her family.
Family is everything to Haruno. Family is everything to her.
She'll do anything to avenge them, anything to make sure that the world remembers their names. She'll carve them into the earth, into the stone of Hokage mountain itself, so that every day the world would have to confront the people they'd left to die. If she could, she'd rend the world itself in half, cut the oceans in twain and collapse the ancient forests of the world. She'd end them all just for the slightest hint of vengeance.
But she can't.
Haruno Mebuki is many things. She's a sinner and a killer, a martyr and a pariah. She's had bloodied hands for as long as she could remember and yet-- and yet.
Not even she is strong enough to escape the Village.
Instead, all she can do is this. Kill the Iwa vermin, make them suffer as she had to; as they had to. She'll do anything to make sure they never recover, she'll be whatever kind of dog Konoha wants her to be; a bloodhound or a mastiff, a wolf or a hunting dog. She'll do anything, whether that's playing the role of a loyal mutt or a raging leviathan, so long as the world suffers.
Mebuki will do anything so long as every. Single. One of them. Pays.
So, she kills. She kills, maims and slaughters. She paints her face with their blood and she tells Kushina and her little lover to fuck off because Kushina's meant to know what it's like, what it's like to lose everything around her. She's meant to be the one person, the only person, who understands what it felt like to be left hollow on the beach, washed pink with bloody water and nothing left to lose.
Kushina was meant to stay. Kushina was meant to- to stay with her, not that fucking Namikaze. She'd promised it'd be them against the world, and that they'd always win so long as they were together.
Promises were always such sweet, childish, fickle things. The ache in her chest is bone-deep as Mebuki is left alone again, with no one to blame but the world itself.
Whatever.
It doesn't matter to her. It doesn't change anything at all. The Hokage will still point her in the direction of a camp, hope she dies, and accept that she refuses to die until the world dies with her with a languid indulgence before it's repeated all over again. Hatake hates her, Namikaze just seems disappointed, and that Uchiha thinks she's insane.
Uzumaki's sad eyes hurt the most, but Mebuki keeps telling herself that it doesn't fucking matter.
Doesn't matter if it was theirs or the enemy's-- blood was all the same in the end, she knew, even if those righteous idealists wanted to think otherwise. Blood is blood, red is red, and it didn't matter which flag it came from, so long as it's dead. They're all equally to blame for her fate, they're all playing the victim in the role of the puppeteers. She's sick and tired of their heinous prattle and, whether it's by Ursyla's will or her own, they're all going to pay.
The war comes to an end with the Yellow Flash's slaughter of Iwa's forces. Many tales take flight from then on, of a man with pale skin and paler hair, tearing the sky asunder and stealing power from Lightning itself. They speak of an all-powerful man, as close to a god as humanity can get, with wind and cloud and all the speed of a rushing hurricane.
They don't speak of Haruno Mebuki. They don't speak of red hands, the shaking earth and the pillars of smoke that rose from hell itself. Countless serving Konoha-nin will go to the Yamanakas, begging to forget about the snow-capped mountain with a mouth full of stars and eyes that herald the void.
If Minato is the storm, then Mebuki is the abyss; all-consuming, terrible and inevitable.
•••
How odd, she can't help but think, that my mind chooses now to wander into such a grim past.
Mebuki jolts out of her wandering thoughts by the gentle touch of her husband's hand, his gaze locked onto the tiny bundle secured in her arms. "Look," he awes, calloused fingers gingerly brushing over the pink peach-fuzz on their baby's head, "Look at how perfect she is, Mebuki."
Perfect?
She lets herself have a moment to take in the cooing babe, feeling the ice surrounding her heart melt bit by bit. Pink hair, viridian eyes and a soft face. She never realized how small babies looked before, not until now where she's holding one against her chest. Lovely chocolate skin, so similar to her father, and the relief of that hits her like a typhoon.
Her child looks nothing like Konoha. Her child looks Kumo-born and the beautiful coloring makes it obvious. She never knew that flowers and chocolate could be such a beautiful combination until seeing her daughter's peach-fuzz and squishy cheeks.
"Hello," Mebuki whispers quietly, voice horribly hoarse and tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. "Hello there, little love."
The baby lets out a gurgling laugh and, just like that, Mebuki decides she'll die for her.
"I'm going to cry," Kizashi announces proudly, tears already dripping down his puffy face. "I'm going to cry and it's awful."
"Shut up," Mebuki sniffles snottily, leaning forward to press a kiss to the swaddled bundle's head. "Shut up, or else I'm going to cry."
Kizashi just lets out a muffled whimper, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pressing a hand to his baby's cheek. She immediately starts gnawing on his thumb. "Look at her g-go," he says wetly, "She's going to be just as hungry as you when she grows up."
"Sakura," Mebuki says suddenly, "Sakura is going to be the best of us both when she grows up."
Mebuki's not too sure what she's feeling, but it's warm and it's soft and it's the same sense of bliss she gets when she locks eyes with the green-flecked irises of her husband. He looks proud, soft and so incredibly in love that it makes her heart beat hard and fast.
"Sakura," he repeats quietly; committing it to memory. "Sakura is going to have the world."
The losses she's faced; the memory of iron on her tongue and corpses following her like a reaper-- it all seems nothing in the face of her family.
Family.
She hasn't had one of those in a long, long time.
She quit being a shinobi years ago, but her ears are still as sharp as they've always been.
People don't like having a Kumo-born in their walls, after all.
It's after, when her husband disappeared-- went on a mission, Mebuki tells herself, repeats to herself, night after night after night, staring at the wall and at the endless bills piling up on her desk. He went on a mission and he's going to come back, she just has to wait, he said to wait for her, so by Ursyla she's going to wait.
But. Regardless.
It's after, when her husband has been gone for a week, two weeks, a month, three months, that she acknowledges that she's fending for both herself and Sakura alone. And, in a place as xenophobic as Konoha, it's not particularly easy.
Pure-bloods are everywhere. Nara, Aburame, Yamanaka-- Uchiha. They linger in all corners of the districts, self-righteous superiority falling their every step as they stare down their noses at the world itself. Maybe she's biased, because she's never really liked this awful village for years now, but she hates the clans the absolute most.
Uchiha is, of course, the greatest bane of them all.
'Police Force' her ass. She's seen how they act in the Shade Districts-- all violent fists and calm red eyes and 'please come with me to the station' as they drag bruised and battered whores after them. They'd tried to take her with them once, after a stall-keeper had made a fuss about Sakura being a thief when she'd only poked at their shiny wares.
Sakura was barely two years old, for Ursyla's sake.
It's only by luck and by her reputation alone that they hadn't been taken in for 'questioning'. The officer was young, just a boy really, who barely even came up to her shoulder. But all Uchiha boys know of the tale of Haruno Mebuki, their kin-killing demon, and they're appropriately afraid.
He let her go because he didn't want to die.
Smart boy.
There are, of course, others from Konoha that are far kinder than their clan cohorts. The demon-jailer, for example. He reminds her almost too much of Kushina, with his dimpled smiles and those bright eyes and the loud 'Believe it!'s that echo down the Shade District walls.
Boisterous, bright and jovial. Mebuki really hopes that doesn't get him killed one day.
The Uzumaki is a sweet kid, just like his mother, really. And his father, she begrudgingly admits. He's a bit... loud, if her daughter has anything to say about it. She can tell, because Sakura always flinches away and hides whenever he joins the Shades' bonfires during the solstice.
After all, the Shade District is the only place the poor kid doesn't get the shit beat out of him. Comes with the territory, she supposes. The Shades' were almost disgustingly accepting of all types of people-- well, they were forced to be, really. The very second that Kiri took out Uzushio, outsiders were...
Outsiders weren't welcome, to say the least.
The Shades wasn't even originally planned by the village architectural group, it's the reason why there's no maintenance in the area. Even the Red Light District gets more care than they do, and that's meant to be the poor part of Konoha.
The worst part of it all? They can't even leave. Everything in this village involves money. You need money to secure a meeting with the Hokage, need money to hire a lawyer and exit rights out of the village, money to buy the exit rights. Money, money, money. Things that the rich don't need to think twice about, but them? The poor?
Ha. We could all rot for all they care.
A quiet huff leaves her, low and soft, because it's not as if they'd let her leave anyway. Too much knowledge and information, too much experience with the Village's system and just too much sensitive information. They'd be dead within hours.
Mebuki guides her daughter carefully through the Summer District market, eying the gaggle of kids tiptoeing around them with quiet distaste. Their blue eyes stick to Sakura's soft umber skin, a stark contrast to their own tanned white, faces scrunched up. When the children chances a look up at her, she flashes a sliver of her teeth and hastily urges her daughter away-- hurrying down the road back to their home.
The Summer Districts' adults always were too stuffy and egotistic for their own good. Nice to know they passed that trait onto their kids.
Awful termites, someone really ought to teach the whole lot of them some damn manners.
In the end, all Mebuki can hope is that Sakura stays away from the ninja business.
“Mama! Pay attention!”
Mebuki blinks slowly, a quiet,” Ah?” escaping her lips before her green eyes caught her daughter’s viridian hues. Oh right, her daughter's trying to talk her way into the academy- again. “Sorry sweetie, I’m just a bit out of it today; what were you saying?”
She loves her daughter but honestly, this is the fourth time this week alone.
The six-year-old eyes her mother suspiciously, pouting slightly before she cautiously continues. “Mama," she starts off saying, as serious as a chubby-cheeked toddler could be. "I, Sakura Haruno, am gonna become the bestest ninja this side of the nations!” She accentuated this request- demand, really- with wild hand movements and her trusty jazz hands.
Ursyla, she's so cute. The only reason why she hasn't said yes is because the Academy isn't even open for registration until tomorrow. And because she doesn't want her daughter's life to be ruined. And because she doesn't want her precious child to get torn to pieces and put back together, as a godless tool for a place that hates her for no reason--
Calm yourself, Mebuki takes in a deep breath, letting it out slowly, this is her life. Not yours.
Leaning back into the comfort of the couch, Mebuki quirks a judging brow. “And? What else do we say in this household?”
Sakura pauses for a moment, squinting in thought before her eyes lit up in recognition, “Peace, love, and take out the trash every Tuesday?”
Lips twitching up into a fond smile, Mebuki reaches over to ruffle her soft, pink locks. "No, the other thing, honey."
Snapping her fingers in realization, Sakura pumps her fist and practically yells to the gods. "I'm gonna make my own den and make a pack and then I'm gonna take care of them forever and ever and they're gonna love me and then I'm gonna kick massive ninja butt!"
Close enough.
Mebuki opens her arm and Sakura leaps into the invitation with all the force of a bright pink tornado. Laughing merrily, the woman shakes her head and heaves out an exaggerated sigh. “Well, looks like I have to sign you on this year, huh?” The woman savors the warmth of her child, sighing contently as she rests her head on top of her head.
Sakura giggles, wriggling around a bit to snatch some papers off the table before proudly holding up the registration documents to her face, “I get to be a ninja!”
Swiping the documents, the mother shoos her daughter off to fetch a pen. “It means, you have a chance to become one, dear. Harunos are notoriously terrible at being ninjas. Part of that's my fault, I'm pretty sure.”
Running back into the lounge, Sakura hands Mebuki the pen before bouncing around the room. If Mebuki wasn't the one that birthed her, she's sure that she'd be part bouncy-ball with how much she's jumping off the walls.
“Pshaw, I’m proud to be a Haruno! Plus,” Sakura dives back towards her, landing on the couch next to her mother with a grin. “Weren’t you a ninja, mama?”
Laughing, Mebuki lets her daughter nestle against her side, bemoaning the fact that she just had to choose the side that didn't have an arm on it. “Yes, I was. Though, I was more of a battering ram than a ninja. I still have the weapons, too, they just weren’t very, eh... shall we say conventional?”
Sakura stares at her blankly, having no idea what that particular word meant, but knowing that weapons were cool. “Can I look at them, mama? Can I touch them? Please, please, pleeeeease?”
“No.”
“Aww,” Sakura deflates. “But…”
Mebuki shakes her head sternly, keeping the amused smirk off her lips as she remembers what she was like at that age. “You’re too young to touch the dangerous stuff, Sa-chan. Once you get to learn weapon handling, I’ll introduce you to them. Not a second sooner. Do you understand, Sakura?”
Sighing, she nods. “Hai, okaa-sama. I understand.”
“Cheer up, Sa-chan, ” Mebuki says as she signs off the last signatures with a flourish, “You begin school in a couple of months. And that means…”
I have to make sure you live, some piece of her snarls, I have to make sure that you're strong, powerful; more than I ever was.
Sakura gasps, starry-eyed. “Dango every Thursday?!”
“…Not quite, but!" Mebuki reaches over to ruffle her daughter’s hair, "This means we can train.”
Sakura pauses, nearly beginning to vibrate with her excitement, before beginning to look as affronted as a six-year-old could get. “But… aren’t we training already?”
It's not enough. Not anymore.
Mebuki forces herself to guffaw. “Gods above, no! Those weren’t even warm-ups compared to what’s coming!”
“Oh…” Sakura pales, her umber skin losing its hue in her fright, “…W-Well, Ino will be happy to know I’m joining her in the academy, at least.”
Humming along absentmindedly, Mebuki waves her daughter away. “Go wash up, Sacchan. It’s late enough as it is. I’ll tuck you into bed soon.”
Sakura flies off the couch with an exuberant round of nods, running off into the bathroom to brush her teeth while the rickety floorboards creak underfoot. Looking around at the debilitated halls of their home, the mother idly ran her fingers through the wild blonde locks of her hair.
Standing slowly, feeling her bones click and pop in protest, she makes a mental note to ask Brynjar to take another look at the house-- it's starting to turn into winter, and she needs to make sure the house can stand the coming frost.
Sighing, she left the papers lying in a pile on the three-legged coffee-table. Mebuki goes through the usual routine; triple-checking the windows, boarding the door, shutting off the power so nothing sparks during the night. Simple, tiny things. Things that could get you killed in the Shades, or would just lead to a very unpleasant start to the morning.
Better safe than sorry, after all.
Mebuki's chakra whirls in her hands as she reactivates the chakra-traps under the window-sill. “Sakura," she calls out knowingly, "If you’re not in bed by the time I’m in your room, I can and will hide my stash of biscuits!”
There's a telling thud, a panicked yelp that leaves her rolling her eyes, then an echoing, "I'm moving, Mama!"
A few more thumps reverb in the old rickety house before Mebuki stands. Clapping the dust and age-old ink off her hands, her feet automatically carry her to her daughter’s room. Pushing on the weather-worn door, Mebuki snorts at the girl swaddled beneath a veritable ton of fur-lined pelts. Tucking Sakura in, she kissed her lightly on the forehead with an affectionate glimmer in her eyes. “My pride and joy.”
Exhausted viridian crescents grin back, “Your future butt-kicker pride and joy.”
Mebuki ruffles her pink locks fondly. “Cub.”
Sakura begins to nod off with a quiet mumble, “Den mother.”
Lingering for a few moments longer, Mebuki doesn't bother to fight the urge to fondly brush her fingers through her daughter's hair. The last thing she has left of her husband, and the one thing she knew she'd die for in order to protect. The last love she'll ever want.
Her little light.
"For you," Mebuki promises quietly, "I'd give the whole world."
Maybe she doesn't need to tear the world apart for it to remember the ones she loves. Maybe she just needs to let them grow.
Mebuki loiters for a while, soaking in the peace and serenity of the Autumn nights. When she finally stands, it's a good hour later- coming onto midnight, with the moon nothing but a blinding sliver of light.
She sweeps out of the room with the ever-silent steps of a phantom. Mindful of her sleeping child upstairs, she unlatches the cellar door and descends into the basement. She can't help the prayers that filter out of her mouth as she kneels on the murky cobblestone floor, digging old boxes and ancient crates. Yearning fingers brush against old picture frames and treasured weapons from a decade long-lost, a decade bathed in blood, viscera and a darkness so deep it might as well have been ink.
She can't help the nagging fears that threatened to still her fingers as she unearths ancient jutsu and sharp steel and rumpled scrolls. The 'what-ifs' fly around in her head like a nagging gnat, leaving her fingers shaky and weak. Sakura is an innocent girl, cheerful and sunny and bright. She's soft and gentle and excitable, and she can't possibly be ready--
No.
No, this isn't her choice. This is her daughter's choice, and she'll be there for her no matter what happens. Mebuki takes in a deep calming breath, holds it in her chest, then lets it whistle out of her nose. She stays still for a couple seconds longer, holding onto that tender peace for as long as possible, before shoving her hands back into the mess of shinobi gear.
Her hands never stop shaking.
Mebuki can't stop the tiny hiss that whistles out of her clenched teeth as her fingers brush against something razor-sharp. With more care than before, she sifts through the wreckage and carefully grasps the edge, pulling free a circular slate of steel.
She stares into the glinting chakra enforced steel, peering into the depths of choking memories as she called the century old energy to the surface of the shield. Ghosting her fingers along its razor edge, Mebuki stared contemplatively into its mounting brilliance; the chakra painting the basement a swirling mass of green, blue and yellow.
She smiles lifelessly, staring at a faint bloodstain that she couldn't get rid of no matter how much she'd scrubbed.
“A ninja with a shield… what a joke that was.” She laughs bitterly, shaking her head.
Mebuki sighs, rising to her feet as she tosses it away; away into the corner where she knew that thrice-damned scroll was. Heading back towards the cellar door, she resolutely ignores the urge to look back and continues up the steps with a case of chakra-weights and training gear.
“By Ursyla's eye, I hope she has better luck than me.”