Chapter Text
The dark waters of unconsciousness were familiar to Sakura, the feeling of sinking under wave after wave of pain and that impossible bone-deep heaviness. When there’s darkness all around there is no way to tell what direction to swim to reach the surface, so why swim at all?
Lately, though, the darkness had been showing cracks. Rays of light reached through the nothingness to show him which way was up.
Guiding him home.
In this moment of suspended dark, that light came in the form of the whiff of chalk dust and fresh spray paint fumes that permeated every one of the Furin classrooms, a reassuring scent that barely made its way past the blood clotting in his nose. The warmth of a blanket draped gently over his chest, which screamed with every hitched breath that disturbed his ribs. It was a familiar agony that told him more than a few of those ribs were broken. Voices, too, shone more rays through the dark. Muffled, strained, and as-yet-unrecognizable as they were, some part of his heart knew they belonged to his schoolmates, his allies, his friends.
Who was speaking? Sakura’s head ached—everything ached—and he was almost reluctant to think at all. Opening his eyes—moving in any way—was going to suck massively.
Hovering at the surface between waking and the dark, Sakura focused for the moment on just listening. The voice was quiet and angry, he realized, cold fury flattening the words. It took him a while to put a name to it, to match it with the bright, easygoing leader he had come to know.
Umemiya?
Sakura had never heard him so furious.
Another voice, sharp but subdued in a way that clashed with his usual gravely loudness, rumbled an indistinct response.
Hiragi?
Hiragi was angry too. What had happened? Was there some kind of danger? Had someone attacked the town?
Had Sakura lost a fight?
Behind their voices, the school was silent in a way he had never heard it before, save for a distant pattering of rain. It must be after hours, he thought. So what are they doing here? What am I doing here? And when did it start raining, anyway?
The rain beat against the room’s window somewhere behind Sakura. He tried to remember what had brought him here, but the darkness threatened to pull him under again. He focused back on listening, devoting all of his temporarily reduced brainpower to deciphering his seniors’ clipped sentences. He was so focused on the mere act of listening that it took him a few seconds after Umemiya next spoke to register his words.
“Sakura can’t stay here at Furin,” Umemiya said.
Sakura’s breath turned to ice. Had he heard right? No, Umemiya wouldn’t—he can’t mean—
But Hiragi seemed to have heard the same words as him. He sighed heavily. “I suppose, but shouldn’t we ask Sakura what he—”
Umemiya—calm, measured Umemiya—cut him off. “Does it look like he’s capable of responding?” he snapped. After a moment of tense silence, he, too, sighed. “Besides, I’d hardly trust his assessment on this. Would you?” Not waiting for an answer, he continued, “It’s not up for debate, Hiragi. You know I’m right. He can’t stay here.”
No. No, this can’t be right. Frost unfurled in Sakura’s chest, spreading icy fingers that clawed at his ribs. This is a nightmare. It has to be. I just have to wake up! Underneath the blanket—hadn’t it been warm only a moment before?—Sakura was so, so cold.
He tried to speak, to protest, to move, to do anything at all to stop this nightmare. Why now? he wanted to scream. Why, when I just let myself think I could stay, why?
His frozen, half-conscious body woudn’t obey, and the nightmare played on.
Hiragi sighed. “That fight never should have happened. Sakura never should have—”
In a flood, Sakura remembered.
Sakura couldn’t sleep. He had tossed and turned for hours, flung his comforter halfway across the room, and wished over and over that the cloying, humid air would just break into rain already. With a groan he dragged himself to his feet, into clothes and shoes, and out his front door.
Above the street lights, gray clouds loomed low, pressing the night air into a suffocating layer that was barely better than the stuffiness of his room. Those clouds had been menacing Makochi all day but had refused to give anyone the relief of rain. Sakura cursed them mentally as he chose a direction at random and began to walk.
It was late enough—early enough?—that no one else was out. He turned left, right at the next block, and left again without thinking, only focused on moving in an attempt to shake the infuriating restless discomfort from his skin.
Belatedly, he looked up at the street signs at the next intersection. It had—somehow, unimaginably after all that had happened, after all that had changed—barely been two weeks since he had arrived in town. It would be embarrassing to get lost because he had been wandering around in the dark.
Despite his fears, the intersection was familiar after all. Sakura smiled. His feet had taken him more than half of the distance towards Furin automatically.
A cat’s angry yowl shattered his thoughts. A man swore, “Damn cursed beast!”
Sakura was running toward the sound before he even registered it, his instincts already honed to head straight for any disturbance or danger. As he rounded the next corner he saw a man looming over a cowering black and white cat he had cornered at the end of the street, his leg drawn back in preparation to kick the terrified animal.
Sakura skidded to a stop between the man and the cat, crouched low to block the impending kick with his forearm. He fixed a glare on the man.
“What do you think you’re doing beating up a cat like that?” he snapped. “What kind of person does that?”
The man stumbled back in shock, but his wide eyes quickly narrowed with anger. As Sakura straightened from his crouch, the man snapped, “What the hell does that have to do with you, kid?”
His lip curled in an expression Sakura knew all too well. Disgust.
Sakura crossed his arms. “I’m from—”
“Furin, yeah, I could tell even without the uniform,” the man sniffed disdainfully. “I’ve lived in this town for years, kid, long before those students’ little ‘reform.’ What right do you have to tell me what I can or can’t do on my own damn street?” He waved at one of the houses behind him.
Sakura blinked. This man lived in Makochi? Every resident Sakura had met since he had come here, without exception, had been kind. Agonizingly, obnoxiously, incredibly kind, even to someone like him.
He spared a glance at where the cat had huddled behind a torn trash bag that threatened to spill broken bottles onto the street. It watched them warily from the shadows, waiting for the next attack. That kind of everyday cruelty, so common everywhere else, just wasn’t supposed to exist here. It wasn’t allowed to.
He grit his teeth, his fingers curling into fists, and glared back at the man. “So what if it’s your own damn street?” he snapped, “nothing excuses what you were doing!”
The man scoffed, dismissing him with a wave. He fixed his eyes on the cat behind Sakura and took a menacing step forward. Sakura raised his fists in warning. The man laughed scornfully. “What are you gonna do, kid? What would your precious leader say if he heard you beat up a poor old citizen like me?”
Sakura froze.
What would Umemiya say?
Within Makochi, Sakura had so far only fought with the gangs of troublemakers who wandered in from outside the neighborhood.
“Anyone past this point who causes pain, who brings destruction, who holds evil in their heart…”
Until now it had always been obvious who that oath included. On one hand, this guy was the definition of an evil-minded troublemaker. On the other, he was technically part of the town. Did this man still count as a part of what Sakura had sworn to protect?
The man grinned smugly at Sakura’s hesitation.
Sakura crossed his arms. Who knew what Umemiya would say? Umemiya wasn’t here to ask. But Sakura thought he could guess what sort of thing Umemiya would do in a situation like this.
“I don’t have to beat you up to stop you, old man. You don’t even deserve that effort. Who wants to fight someone who beats up animals weaker than him, anyway?”
Fury flashed in the man’s eyes, but Sakura turned his back pointedly, crouching down to peer at the cat that cowered behind him in the shadows. He could just barely see it through the darkness. Its tail was fluffed up and its wide eyes flashed with reflected light. When he raised a hand toward it, it hissed and flinched back. He paused, holding his hand still for a moment before gradually turning his palm up and reaching forward ever so slightly.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, “you’re safe now.”
The cat crept forward and gingerly sniffed at his fingers. After a long moment, it pushed its cheek against his hand. He curled his fingers to scratch the patch of white fur under its chin. It leaned into his touch. With its face now tilted toward him in the glow of a street light, Sakura saw it looking back at him with mismatched eyes. One black, one gold.
The cat jolted back with another hiss. A sharp crackle behind him was Sakura’s only warning before pain slammed through him from his neck to his toes. His muscles locked in an immobile agony that went on and on and on.
It ended like a knife cut. He went weightless as every clenched muscle relaxed and he collapsed to his side with a crash into the mess of discarded bottles that had sheltered the cat moments before. He gasped, trying to force his lungs, his hands, anything to move but he could only watch through blurred eyes as the man snatched up a bottle and smashed it over his head.
His arms moved then—too late—flung up to protect his head. Blood blended with tears to block his vision. A kick to his stomach crushed the air from his diaphragm just as he was finally able to take a breath. He curled up, arms still over his head, and wheezed. A heel stomped into his side. Again. Again. Again.
He caught the man’s ankle, his body finally obeying his brain, but fire raked along his forearm and the foot was wrenched from his grip. Blood—his own blood—splattered across his face for a second time as he cried out from the pain of the cuts the broken bottle had gouged into his arm.
A rough hand wrapped around his neck and squeezed. Sakura clawed against it, blinking the blood and tears from his eyes to meet the man’s murderous glare. He raised the handheld taser that had caused Sakura so much pain before. “I belong here more than someone like you ever will!” he spat over the crackle of the taser.
Sakura thrashed against him, bending one leg as far as it would go against the screams of his broken ribs and kicked out, shoving the man back hard enough to break his grip. The man hit the concrete wall behind him with a sharp thunk and slumped to the ground, unmoving.
Breathing—finally breathing again, Sakura rolled onto his hands and knees, broken glass biting into his palms and back through his thin t-shirt.
Movement flashed in the corner of his vision and he flinched back, ready to—
It was only the cat, white patches turning it into a disjointed ghost as it stood at the other end of the street. “Damn cursed beast,” the man had called it. It stared at him for a moment, mismatched eyes meeting his before darting out of sight.
“Wait,” he tried to say. He tried to stand. He failed to do either as blood dripped down his arm to puddle in the dark water that swallowed him whole.
Caught in the flood of memories, the pain from Sakura’s injuries flared anew in every muscle and nerve. Behind this pain, ice burned cold in his veins.
He was being kicked out for defending the weak, for defending himself.
Furin’s number one rule was to protect the town from cruelty and evil, and that’s what Sakura had been trying to do. But he had fought one of the residents, he had fought and he had lost and now Umemiya wouldn’t even give him the chance to explain what had happened or why he had done it.
Umemiya had assumed, just like everyone always assumed, that Sakura was at fault, that Sakura was the one to blame.
That Sakura didn’t belong.
“It’s my fault,” Umemiya was saying, with a bitter note that Sakura would have never expected to hear from him. “I should have expected—”
“You couldn’t have known,” Hiragi protested.
“I should have known.” Uemiya all but hissed. “Some people don’t deserve second chances.”
Sakura no longer knew what was keeping him frozen, unable to move or speak or defend himself. Was it the pain and his partial consciousness, or was it the betrayal that froze him in place?
It was almost funny. He couldn’t remember the last time he had gotten close enough to anyone to feel betrayed.
Hiragi remained silent for a long moment. “Shouldn’t we talk to the residents?” he asked at last.
“They’ll agree. Give them that credit. They know some people just don’t belong in Makochi.”
Is that what they would think? Kotoha, Granny Sato, everyone who had cheered for and praised him and cared for him, would they really all agree? Umemiya knew them far better than Sakura did.
“Talk to the others, please. I’ll need to address the other students to explain what happened, but that can wait,” he groaned, “I hate addresses, I never know what to say,”
“I’ll call Nirei and Suo, too. They deserve to hear about this from me. And Kaji, I should tell Kaji. He went and got attached to Sakura no matter what he says. I wouldn’t want him to do anything rash.”
Umemiya hummed in agreement, but there was something absentminded about the response.
“Don’t worry,” Hiragi assured him, “the students’ll understand even more than the residents. They’d be out for blood once they hear about this.”
Umemiya sighed. “Thanks for handling that. I’ll follow you in a moment. I just…”
There was a rustle of fabric—Hiragi’s hand on Umemiya’s shoulder.
“Take your time. Just don’t go overboard. I know you’re mad—at him and yourself—but remember to put your anger somewhere useful.”
The door opened and closed, leaving just Sakura and Umemiya in the room.
A hand touched Sakura’s shoulder but it wasn’t warm like he had come to know hands to be. Umemiya’s hand was like ice where it brushed Sakura’s neck, bringing out goosebumps across his skin. He would have shivered if his body had let him.
“I'm sorry for this, Sakura,” Umemiya murmured. The anger had emptied out of his voice, leaving only disappointment that stabbed into Sakura’s stupid, vulnerable heart. “Sometimes I put my faith in the wrong people.”
His hand moved to brush Sakura’s forehead, so cold it burned. It lingered on the left side of his face. The discolored, abnormal, cursed side before falling away.
Umemiya’s steps receded, the door slid open and then closed once more.
Sakura was alone.
As if a spell had broken, his body finally unlocked from its stunned paralysis. He twitched his fingers, then blinked his eyes open. Light stabbed into his eyes and he squinted against the pain. The motion tugged at a bandage adhered to his temple.
He forced his arms to move, bent his leg to push himself onto his side, and almost rolled off the trio of desks he had been laid on. A shock of adrenaline jerked him upright and barely saved him from a painful meeting with the floor. Black fabric slithered off of him to puddle on the floor by his feet. He gripped the edge of the desk, knuckles white as he sat curled into himself and forced himself to breathe, breathe, breathe through the fire in his ribs, his arm, his head.
A white bandage wrapped neatly around his forearm, fresh red blood showing through in dark slashes. A sticking sensation at the side of his neck betrayed another bandage there. When he shifted his shoulders he could feel that his back was littered with smaller bandages.
Damn Furin, damn Umemiya, being compassionate even as they decided to exile him. Damn them because he couldn’t hate them even for this.
He hadn’t done anything wrong, he knew that. The problem all his life had never been what he did, but who he was. Cursed beast. That people always assumed the worst of him was ingrained in his very existence. Even if no one in Makochi had done so in the beginning, even if he had just begun to think that maybe, for once, it would be different here, one constant never changed: Sakura was still Sakura.
Hiragi would break the news to Suo and Nirei and they would accept it because in a contest between Umemiya and Sakura there was no question of who would win in their hearts. Sakura tried to imagine the disappointment, the pity, the shame in their eyes as they turned their backs on him, but they had never looked at him that way. All he could remember were their smiles, their laughter, their earnest trust.
His vision blurred. Those memories were real, they were his, all the more precious because he had no others like them. He refused to give them the chance to replace those memories with something broken. He wouldn’t have his last memories of them be of rejection.
Voices rose and fell again outside of the room. Forcing himself to his feet, Sakura stumbled to the window and wrenched it open. Rain blew inside, pelting against his face and shoulders in frigid drops. He dragged his protesting legs over the window ledge and dropped to the ground below, pain lancing from the soles of his feet to his head.
He gasped and steadied himself against the wall, blinking back the darkness. He set his jaw and pushed himself upright, stumbling, walking then running toward the wall that bordered the campus.
He refused to look back.