Melancholia

Chapter 17

First thing Sakura knew when she woke up the next morning was that bruises were covering her body. She clutched at her head as she sat up. "Ugh my head is pounding. How did I even fall asleep in the first place after all that...?"

Upon thinking back over the previous night and looking at herself over in the mirror, Sakura felt irritation well up in her chest at both her mother and father, but also a sense of fear. She had never seen Mibuki get that angry before. Even still, she refused to apologize for calling Naruto her friend and defending him. That was something she would never take back.

She got up, sighing, once again, looking at her reflection. "I should probably do something to cover up these wounds so it's not as noticeable... I'd rather not worry everybody..."

Ignoring the wave of nausea that suddenly passed over her due to how little she had eaten, Sakura reached into her dresser and pulled out a concealer. She winced at the pain as she began to apply it, quickly finding herself frustrated when it only covered up so much. Well at least most of it didn't look nearly as bad, but some of the swelling was too obvious to truly hide and she wasn't an expert on this sort of thing, so she tried her best to tell herself that it was good enough to pass off as a simple accident, and could only hope nobody would bother questioning it.

After she started getting around to leave, she briefly wondered if she should do the same thing she did last time and leave from the window, but in the end decided to go ahead and face her parents, knowing the backlash would probably end up being twice as bad next time.

However when she got to the kitchen, she was relieved to find that Mibuki was gone. Then again, her dad was there which wasn't much better.

"I'm going off on another mission... I plan to be back some time this evening..." She said, lying about her reason for leaving. If Kizashi heard that she was going off to see Naruto at the hospital, then there was a chance he'd try to stop her from going.

Maybe if she was lucky he wouldn't try to talk much.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

"Sakura, about last night..." He placed a hand on her shoulder, causing her to instinctively grow tense due to the fear that he might try to hurt her like Mibuki had. Despite that, she stood her ground.

"What about it...?" She murmured.

"...Please, try not to be so mad at your mother. She did get a little carried away, but I promise she just wants what's best for you. She's just worried about you." He said, after a moment of hesitance. Sakura felt bile rising in her throat, tears welling up in her eyes.

She turned back and glared at him, causing him to pull back a bit.

"You really call that worried? Do you even know how much pain I'm in right now because of her? Why do you always defend the way she treats me, Tou-san?! If you truly cared about me, you would actually stand up to her, but instead you blindly excuse everything she does! Worse, you even side with her!" She snapped at him.

"Sakura-" he started to say, but Sakura quickly cut him off.

"No, just stop it, already! I'm done, okay?" She turned on her heel towards the door, wiping her eyes. "...I'll be back later..."

In truth, she still loved her mother, she really did, just as she loved her father, so she wanted to trust and forgive them both, no matter how much either one of them had hurt her. After all, they were her parents, and that was exactly why it frustrated her so much.

It was exactly why she so adamantly pushed away Ino's concerns like she had. A part of her wanted to defend Mibuki just as Kizashi had, despite knowing that it was wrong.