Her Name - Sakura Character Study
Uchiha Sakura often regretted her name.
It wasn't the sort of regret that kept her up at night. Those were reserved for life-changing moments in her polaroid, such as Pain's attack, when Sakura had rested the village's weight on her shoulders, trying her best to support her shishou, as a green apprentice medic.
It wasn't the toe-curling, blush-inducing, tears-welling sort of embarrassment she felt when she first confessed to Sasuke and was met with little more than silence.
There was another sort of regret, deep in her heart, that barely felt like a whisper. It was like the breeze blowing on grass. A sort of sated, muted regret, one that she felt hard-wired to forget, that she had never named.
Although Sakura had worn the emblem of her clan throughout her genin and chunin years, it was little more than a formality as the Haruno clan had never been associated with flashy techniques or hereditary assets.
When she had flipped through its genealogy in her academy days as a ninja, it seemed utterly irrelevant. The only weight it carried was Sakura's pride. She had made it her own.
For years, although it had become her trademark, it was also a morsel of her civilian upbringing that carried over every mission she took, every human life she saved. A reminder of where she had come from; a token from her parents. She was a culmination of all that came before her.
People would stare at her back for hours in tents as they watched her perform surgery with her hand-molded chakra scalpels.
When she traveled on missions after the war, civilians and officials alike would sometimes recognize her. The flash of red passing by. Haruno Saskura.
She supposed it was a bitter irony to miss something that, in a way, she had never owned. The Haruno name had been little more than a slip of the mind, a creation that she had made hers by circumstance. A surname that was given to her and ended with her.
And now that she didn't wear it anymore, she wondered if it existed at all. Was it hers to begin with? Its existence was, or was not, dependent on her remembrance of her past. Without her to carry its burden it was as fickle as the wind.
When Sakura's mother died, her name had been chiseled into stone. Haruno Mebuki. Haruno-san had been well-loved in her neighbourhood, always welcoming neighbouring kids into her home, a radiantly beautiful woman with a heart just as golden. She had raised a wonderful family and an accomplished daughter.
Immortalized, the name finally carried the weight of its holder.
In the same way, Sakura had given up her name to become an Uchiha. Most days, the crest on her clothes was accompanied by an incredible sense of pride as she stalked the empty roads of the compound. Unlike her own, it was a gift drenched in history and blood.
It had been the dream of young Sakura to carry it.
But with a new name, she often felt like many connections severed and had to be rebuilt. People who did not recognize her, or refused to. No longer Haruno-sensei, but as Sakura Uchiha. She supposed there was a difference that was deeper than how people addressed her. To her it had always felt the same, but perhaps there was that nagging voice that told her she knew this; something after changing her name would always be fundamentally different. For better or worse.
Sometimes it seemed as if Sakura's maiden name had neither existed before nor after her.
