Another path

Realisation

She was only now realising just how true the words of the blue eyed one always were. How much she used to admire her. How much it stung when her sky blue eyes held nothing but despise for her.

***

A teenage girl was crying. It was more in fury than in sorrow.
She always lost. No matter what, she couldn't best her. In any way or shape, her supremacy was absolute. It was driving her crazy. It clawed at her heart and made it suffocate.
The pinkette reminisced about that former teammate. Blond hair and cold eyes that gave her the aura of a ruler. And yet here she was, desperately trying to win.
To dethrone her, both in her mind and the others.
The pinkette realised she wanted their friends to love her more than her rival. Even if it meant they had to hate the blond. If they acknowledged she was better, stronger... Then it would prove she's not hopeless as they thought she was.

They fought for the blond even when she was no longer by their side. They rejected the pinkette even when she was standing right with them. She had been ostracized once more. And she knew why : they loved the blond more than her. Why was it always like this...
Little bit by little bit, her life fell apart. She dived headfirst into work, finally finding a subject she could be good at : medicine. That required intelligence, the only thing she had for her. But her teacher was angered by her opinion of the blond. That same teacher the blond had saved and brought back to the village to lead it years ago. Of course they disagreed with her opinion !
But the pinkette was far too gone to back down. It didn't hurt that she no longer had real friends. What hurt was that they wouldn't acknowledge her. They wouldn't do the one thing she expected from them ! And she finally realised that might be why they didn't want to acknowledge her. Because that's all she wanted from them. They were tools to fulfill her ever wavering self-esteem. Their sole purpose in her mind was to make her feel good. And she knew deep down that was the problem. As much as the pinkette wanted to pretend, it was obvious she wanted the others make her feel appreciated while the blond wanted for the others to feel appreciated.

Once again, as she trained with her new teammate and the one she had always known, she realised how much their path were opposite, like they were going in their own direction without looking back.
And whether they were walking on a line or a loop would determine if they would ever meet again.

***

A young woman was crying. It was empty, she didn't actually mean to. The tears kept flowing down her cheeks when she realised she had lost. Once and for all. They knew. They knew who the other one was. And they still accepted her. They accepted and cherished a Kitsune more than her, a human being. Her heart was exploding inside her chest.
There was nothing left. The Kitsune had won. Despite her best efforts, the human girl hadn't been able to take her place. She was still crawling on the ground, insignificant compared to her rival.

She felt numb. Nonexistent. Empty.
Void of all emotions...

What could she do ? At that point, her defeat was obvious...
It then dawned on her that nothing had changed : she had merely come to accept this fact. The human couldn't compare to the Kitsune. She never stood a chance against her.
She had deluded herself this whole time...

And yet...

And yet she couldn't let go. The emotional turmoil inside her heart wouldn't still, it kept raging, never resting. Hatred kept leading her forward, almost against her will. The strings dictating the movements of her limbs were no longer in her hands. She had lost. Everything and anything.
She was reduced to this pathetic state where she was enslaved by her emotions, something she couldn't quite comprehend. Something that remained out of her grasp.

She didn't want to. She hated this.

She kept trying. She kept barking, breaking, screaming

GOD WHY DIDN'T ANYONE ACKNOWLEDGE HER !!

Was she...

Was she even here to begin with ?...
Was she... someone ?

The human girl, as all humans, knew deep inside her soul that she did exist. But why would no one acknowledge it ? That she was an individual beyond what she showed ?...

She realised that she had actually become so shallow that there was nothing beyond her actions. Not when she wasn't even in control of them.

The dormancy she had set herself into had slowly but surely eroded her goals and will, eventually destroying the core that justified her behaviour.
Nothing was left.

She was lost.

Why... did it not hurt as bad as she thought it would ?
She expected their gaze to become unbearable. She expected their voices to be deafening her. She expected their skin to feel cold.
But she still stood. As alive as can be.

How ?

Could it be...

The human girl realised she still had a glimmer of hope. Something she held onto with the last bits of her strength. Something whispering courage to her heart.

More than her friends...

More than her teacher...

More than him...

It had always been the Kitsune's acknowledgement she had longed for.

She wanted to stand side by side with that girl.
She wanted her blue eyes to gaze at her with compassion and pride like they used to.
She wanted to see that hair swaying in the wind again.
She wanted to know she was there.
She wanted to feel safe.
She wanted to feel appreciated.
She wanted to feel competent.
She wanted to feel loved.
She wanted to feel needed.
She wanted to feel alive.

And only that Kitsune could do that. Because only her had ever been able to see past the mask, the make-up and the act.

The truth was, in any way, Suzuka stood above Sakura.
And it was because Sakura acknowledged it that she both admired and loathed Suzuka.

Suzuka had become everything Sakura would never be.

Suzuka was the reflection of what Sakura could once have been.

Eventually, Sakura realised than more than Suzuka, more than the person her teammate had become, the one she hated the most was the person she had herself become.