Sacrifice and Surrender

6: Support

Hikari Shimura was used to putting on a smile and acting like the 'naive little girl' she was supposed to be. But Hikari wasn't a child anymore, and she was beginning to feel like she was suffocating as she acted like it. Her father had died from the terrible disease when she was little, like many of her clan, and her mother had lost a lot of her own life force from all the clan's troubles that followed.

When Hikari first came to Konoha, she was immediately amazed and taken in by everything she saw. It was so full of life, so full of energy. There were so many people she'd never seen before. It was the first time in all her twelve, almost thirteen, years that she felt like she was... home.

She helped her mother and the other clan ladies settle into the village at first, taking care of the children and getting to know the town. She was praised for being such a bright and happy child, so dependable and diligent. The praise was always nice and taken with a smile, but it was the moments stolen alone that she treasured. She found a tree by the hospital and sat on its branches, hidden from view by the foliage. Not many too many people passed by the hospital, so it was a nice place to rest and be alone.

She was getting restless by then. She was thirteen and didn't know what to do. Most of the boys in her clan were already learning advanced jutsu, but she was being shut out, subtly at first, by being pulled from training to do some more menial housework and 'womanly' tasks. It was becoming glaringly obvious. It wasn't until she saw the Hokage, and his brother, and Lord Madara one afternoon and overheard what they were saying about the girl in a coma.

She asked her mother if she'd heard anything, and her mother, who rarely associated outside the clan, told her no and to ask other villagers. So Hikari did. She found out there were a lot of rumours. People said crazy things, about how she was some kind of goddess that appeared in a ball of chakra during a battle - the Uchiha and Senju men who were apparently there swore up and down that it wasn't a lie, and Hikari wasn't sure if she believed them or not. Or how she was a witch who enchanted the Uchiha clan, which most people found ridiculous. 

But the thing that Hikari heard about the most was that the girl's name was Sakura, and that she was a hero. Sakura was a strong kunoichi, so strong she apparently defeated Lord Tobirama Senju in a battle during the festival, and that she was beautiful, kind, and powerful, and the Uchiha clan mourned that she had fallen into a coma.

Hikari made a decision after the next clan meeting when she was informed that she'd be required to act in the service of the clan within the households. She didn't want that, to be confined to a house just because she was a girl. She didn't want to be that kind of woman, not that she thought it was wrong or horrible, it just wasn't what she wanted for her life. She wanted to be a shinobi, like Sakura. So Hikari grit her teeth, wiped her false smile, and walked right into Hokage Tower and knocked on the Hokage's door. It was the most nervous she'd ever been, but he seemed to listen to her through all her mutterings and stammering and anxious thoughts. And... to her immense surprise, he understood. He looked at her in a way that she'd never been looked at before: he actually saw her, he really looked at her, not just as a 'little girl', but as a person.

So it was with the blessing of the Hokage that Hikari was able to defy her clan's order and begin to work in the hospital. Medical jutsu had always been a fascination of hers, and she knew that she had enough chakra control. With the right kind of training, Hikari knew she'd be able to figure out a way to use her medical training to stand alongside the other great warriors of Konoha. Like Lady Sakura. It took a while for her mother and clan to accept her disobedience, but the Shimura were so small now that disowning anyone would be pointless, and going against the blessings of the Hokage would look bad for Lord Yori.