Someday You Will be Loved

A/N: A little side to Someday You Will Be Loved, giving the story of Sakura’s mother. Because I think it’s tragic and haunted and beautiful all at once. Even though Rika is dead, she is one of my favorite original characters.

So take it how it is, and enjoy a little more information on SYWBL and the life that Sakura, there, has lived.

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“Interlude: Possession of Your Heart”


“Once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl. Her name was Kazedama Rika, and she broke the cardinal rule of her family: she fell in love. You see, she had always been a flighty girl, more interested in philosophy and life and love than the realistic aspects of life. And a shinobi, well, that was the type of hero she lived for. She married Haruno Souta, a shinobi and therefore her family’s enemy, in secret, running off in the middle of the night with her young husband. It would be almost a decade before they found her and the full consequence of her actions finally hit her…”

Kazedama Rika was born into a family of crooks, criminals, yakuza that would steal from their own children if it brought them what they wanted. She grew up always watching over her shoulder, learning to fight and kill and lie to get what she needed.

She hated that life.

As a little girl she had dreamed of heroes, of handsome shinobi that would wisk her off to live far, far away from her evil family and their evil friends. A man who was strong and good would take her somewhere, and start a family with her.

She met that shinobi one day.

Haruno Souta was in Niigata for a low-level mission, sent by his Hokage to kill some nukenin that had supposedly been working for her family. And she was sent to kill him, the man that threatened her family in a circumspect way.

They fought, ran about each other in circles for days. Neither could get the other pinned down long enough to carry out orders, and finally they met on even ground. The warehouse was her family’s, used for storing merchandise that the public didn’t need to see.

He stepped into the light, and stole her nights away.

She had found the shinobi she wanted in a man who couldn’t kill her, who lived for her strength and the fact that she could slit his throat at any minute. He was a good man, a man offering a life she had always wanted but was too afraid to grab for herself.

She fled into the night with him.

The marriage had been short, quick, hidden from her family and everyone except her dearest friend. The baby would come before she knew it, and leaving before she began to show was important.

Konoha was all she had imagined, the perfect place to raise her budding family. The streets were sunshine and laughter, not the dark grit she had grown up with. Souta possessed her heart, she possessed her child, and Konoha now had her life.

Then, a few years later, her husband never came home from a mission. It was accepted and expected, and the mourning was altogether bleak but filled with smiles for her growing daughter. Her daughter who was trying to be a shinobi just like her father.

Sakura had the Kazedama hair, her father’s eyes, and her uncle’s love of wit. She was such an eclectic mix of honor and revelry that sometimes it hurt Rika’s heart to see her, knowing that everything could change in a second.

She kept her brother’s visits a secret, until one day her daughter came home a little too early to find the man who looked so like herself—so witty and charming with the same nose—sitting at the kitchen table.

There was cursing, and fighting, and a promise of Haruno blood. Rika worried, all the while telling her daughter not to.

He flitted out of memory until it became obvious that she would die the same way her father had, such a curious disease, and he came back to her lovely little life, claiming his niece for the Kazedama legacy.

No.

Guardianship was signed over to Tsunade, the woman who had been so strong and sure and had molded her blooming daughter into a woman—so much like herself when she was younger. Rika and Sakura, twins of different generations.

“I will possess you, always, Rika. You know that.”

They were the last words flitting through her mind in the hospital room, when he finally lay everything about her husband’s mysterious death on the table, about her generous benefactor early on in Konoha, and about her daughter’s future.

She was scared.

She was defeated.

She was anxious.

Had the life she wanted, the life she loved, only served to cause her daughter to take her place? Had she condemned her progeny to the fate she escaped? What kind of mother was she?

“I love you, kaa-chan. Saku-chan loves you.”

Her beautiful daughter, so young and innocent still. She could remember teaching her to walk, to talk, to defend herself. What had she done?

Tsunade promised.

Kakashi stood by, silent-strong.

“She will be our own. We swear it.”

Could the Hokage protect her from these men, these people who would kill and lie for anything they could get? She wasn’t sure anymore.

Her last days were filled with questions and memories, wisps of smoke through the dreaded haze of the medication. She watched for her daughter—so strong and sure and Rika all over again—but she was out trying to rescue her own handsome shinobi hero.

She died alone, with only the memories of her life and the promises of the past to keep her company.

“You see, Reno, my mother never thought life would catch up. She was a feather on the breeze, living her fairytale life. She had the shinobi hero, she had her beautiful princess baby. But in every story there is an evil dragon to conquer, and the Kazedama dragon was bigger than any of the tailed beasts. And when the hero didn’t slay the dragon, it returned with sorcery, a curse upon her lovely little fairytale. Because you can never escape blood, blood sentenced her to living the rest of her life waiting and watching, always wondering when the dragon would spring out to grasp her in its claws…”