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discoabc · 7 years

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Extra: Soulmark AU

A/N: Well this took entirely too long to write lmao. So by request this is the soulmark AU extra! Note that this extra is heavily focused on platonic soulmates (and I cannot stress the platonic part enough) so whilst in this AU people do get romantic soulmates, it isn’t really featured much in this. I think you’ll also be able to tell how I lose steam as this extra goes on and it is kinda disjointed but I hope its okay regardless haha. I had a lot of fun imagining/scouring the internet for inspiration for the soulmarks people have even if I don’t describe many of them.

Soulmate: a person who is perfectly suited to another in temperament

Sakura Haruno is aged three when her marks first appear.

She’s sat in the kitchen drawing a picture of her family when a burst of colour suddenly explodes from the middle of her wrist, stretching and twisting across her skin. A surprised gasp that quickly turns to one of understanding and excitement bursts from her mouth, pencil dropping onto the table as she clutches at her arm.

Her young green eyes dart across the marks, nose practically pressed up against her skin as she tries to take it all in as quickly as possible. A bright red swirl is in the middle, followed by a burst of fire that turns into thin, spidery silver lines, and finally into thicker, darker curves.

There is a burst of deep, passionate emotion that rumbles inside of her and she lifts her head away, lips trembling as her fingers now trace the symbols lightly, carefully. Over and over again she has been told the significance of these marks by her parents. Her soulmates, romantic and platonic alike, people of whom she is destined to care for. She’d been immediately enamoured with the idea, her own destined people, and to now finally see the first glimpse of who they are…!

Her fingers reach the red swirl and her gaze hovers there, another emotion unfurling in her mind. But this is not one of joy or excitement. It is a confusing one, a foreboding one, and she leans back in her chair, smile slipping away as the bewilderment twists into realization.

Sakura Haruno is aged three when she realizes who and where she is.

And that she is severely and inexplicably screwed.

She covers the marks as much as she can. Wears long sleeves, winds bandages, cloth, anything to stop her eyes from ever meeting the marks she once looked so forward to receiving. It is not uncommon for people to cover their soulmarks, mostly done for the sake privacy and very, very rarely to make a point about their lack of belief in them

It is not that Sakura does not believe in soulmates herself. Granted, she is so far from a romantic individual, preferring to lean towards snarky, sometimes scathing cynicism. But she can swallow the idea of soulmates with only the slightest of discomfort. How can she not when she has been reborn into a world of prophecies and fate and god like figures?

No, the issue lies in that she believes it.

And that is why she covers them. To avoid the sickening feeling that rises in her throat because Sakura isn’t a starry-eyed child anymore, she is a terrified woman in a terrifying world and her soulmates are slap bang in the middle of the whole deadly mess.

Her parents never say anything about her decision to hide her soulmarks away from prying eyes, her own included. But, then again, they aren’t even around enough to notice their small daughter forcing her way through paragraphs of text as she desperately tries to find a way out. Simply running is not an option, not with the dangers that face her as a mere civilian and fate itself against her. So she throws herself into research, fervently searching for a solution.

Until the day she finds one. A book that mentions a way to remove soulmarks and their pull on people for good through use of a jutsu. A jutsu ranked too highly for someone with no training to either see the details of or even hope to master.

Sakura Haruno is a desperate woman with no other choice.

The cherry blossom trees are blooming on the first day of the Academy. Children are racing around each other, marks brandished proudly where possible and grins too wide for their faces. For many this is where they will meet their first soulmates with friendships forged in the fire of intense training and force fed senses of camaraderie.

Sakura constantly fidgets with the ends of her sleeve, pulling it further and further down her arm every time she catches a glimpse of whiskers or that red and white fan. She pretends whenever she does this that her marks don’t burn.

“You’re weird,” Ami tells Sakura the day the kunoichi classes start, her two friends looming by her side and hanging onto her every word. “And you’ve got a big forehead! Billboard brow!”

It is hard to care for the insults of children so Sakura doesn’t.

Ami does not take it well. “I bet you don’t even have any soulmarks! That’s why you haven’t shown them, isn’t it?!” She declares with savage words she has no way of knowing the true weight of.

Oh, Sakura thinks bitterly, fingernails digging into her palms, oh I wish.

Instead, she smiles at the girl, heavily aware of how Ino (with marks running proudly up her exposed calf) is approaching, already ingrained sense of justice demanding she step in. “I think your purple hair is really pretty.”

Ami flushes a deep scarlet.

(Later, when her actions lead to Ami pulling Sakura into a friendship she was not looking for, she notices the purple haired girl has a soulmark of a cherry blossom just below her collarbone.

Sakura only knows who three of the four marks on her arm belong to. But, even so, she knows that the dark swooping curves do not belong to Ami.)

She tries to ignore her two nearby soulmates, she really does (because the less she sees them, the less she comes to know them as real people, the less guilt she’ll feel when she leaves this all behind for her own self centred desires). However, it is so difficult when one is so loud and the other is so loudly spoken about.

Sakura finds out from the boy’s own shouts that Naruto’s marks are all across his stomach. He lifts his shirt a few times to show to everyone - often leading to a lecture from Iruka about how inappropriate it is to remove clothing like that in a classroom - and she cannot help but stare at how many there are.

She has four different marks upon her skin, an average amount, perhaps a little higher than average. Naruto however has ten, twenty, thirty, too many to count in such a short time. It's an insane number, one that of course the titular character of this universe she doesn’t want to be in would have. The pride and joy in his eyes that he has so many mixed in with flickers of deep, deep hurt are obvious, and even more clear are the reactions of the adults to it.

A fluke, Sakura hears one say, the man eyeing Naruto with a combination of disbelief and something close to fear. Why would he have so many?

It trickles down from one generation to another, Sakura realizes when Ami scoffs and declares that she bets they’re fake, that he hasn’t got any and he’s drawing them on.

Sakura feels something twisted and dark then, worse than the time her ‘friend’ sneered that she bet Hinata had no soulmates.

It is from Ami that she finds out where Sasuke’s marks are. They’re on his neck, a startlingly familiar place that Sasuke tends to rest his hand on when he is distracted. No one seems to know how many he has, nor have they seen them, however, everyone knows that there is a weasel there made up of red and black lines.

Sasuke’s proud of that mark. Proud enough to break the Uchiha’s usual wall of privacy and tell people about it whenever he can. The marks pertaining to family members are rare - soulmarks are almost always of those who do not share your blood - and yet somehow Sasuke still got that weasel.

A few years later and Sasuke isn’t so proud of that mark anymore.

Time ticks on. Days become weeks, weeks months, months years.

She passes the genin exam with startlingly average grades in all but taijutsu. Sasuke passes with seemingly effortless ease. Naruto fails and yet shows up regardless to the team placements with headband gleaming proudly on his forehead and Iruka wearing one with a cloth a slightly different colour to usual.

(“I’m sorry,” Iruka gasps out again, tears streaming down his face. “You must have been so lonely.” From Naruto’s position, the blonde can finally see the red swirl that pokes out from the top of his chest. Hope presses painfully against his skin, concentrating on the mark that resembles a scar and looks at times almost like a dolphin. “I should have told you years ago but I couldn’t see past my own stupidity. God, you must have been so lonely…!”

Naruto thinks back to all those days where he’d clutched angrily at his stomach, eyes burning because there were so many marks, so many soulmates, but where were they? Where were they when he was sat all alone in his apartment in a village where no one even acknowledged he existed? His thoughts then spin back to red swirl and dolphin scar and he can’t stop the tears from flowing.)

Sakura thinks, hopes that she might've cheated fate, fists clenched tight as Iruka reads out the team placements. Her grades aren’t good enough to be put on team 7. She’ll join an average team with an average jōnin teacher and then she’ll learn that jutsu and leave. It’ll be fine.

“Team 7: Sakura Haruno, Sasuke Uchiha and Naruto Uzumaki!”

Sakura Haruno is a terrified woman.

It is that terror that has pushed her all these years, forced the lid down on all her emotions for the sake of maintaining that mask of averageness so that her goals can be reached. It is what made her join the Academy so she can get the skills needed to survive as a civilian, to get that jutsu which will free her from a fate she does not want. It is what makes her keep her arm covered at all times.

Sakura Haruno is a terrified woman.

But she is an angry, bitter and tired one too.

In the end it only takes one final push from the last soulmate she knows the name of.

It is an irrational reaction, brought on by the sheer audacity of their words to her (You might as well give up on life since you won’t ever try at anything) and the fact that it is one of her supposed soulmates saying this to her. Sakura knows the latter shouldn’t matter when she’d spent the majority of her life working towards removing the marks that bind her to them but she’s been brought up on tales of her destined people and how they’ll always be there for her and care for her and that’s. The. Final. Straw.

She almost feels the silver lines crackling like electricity as her attack burrows into Kakashi’s arm (“Clean through the bone,” Kakashi will later relay to the Hokage in amusement, neither remarking on the coincidence that right on the break, surrounded by a sparse few other marks, is a single cherry blossom flower).

For a few moments she’s vindicated by it all, like she was when she hissed at Ami to shut up whilst Hinata fought back her tears. But all actions have consequences and the payment for that short victory is steep. Too steep.

Less than twenty four hours later she is stood before the Hokage in his office with Kakashi’s grip tight on her shoulder and no possibility of escape. Almost a decade of planning, of careful acting, of soul-crushing hard work entirely undone in an act of pure fury that took under than five minutes to do. “Tell me why,” Hiruzen orders her after he has neatly underlined the stupidity that has led her to this situation (better than what your Academy results proclaim, good enough to break Kakashi Hatake’s arm, entirely unaverage).

Regret makes her eyes sting however it is angry terror that makes her cry, forces her to speak. Her left hand clutches at her right wrist as she spits out words that should have her struck down for treachery, nails digging through the fabric of her arm warmers and into her marked skin. It is not a gesture that goes unnoticed or unpitied. For Hiruzen Sarutobi may be known as the God of Shinobi and a kage more accustomed to war than he ever was peacetime but he is also a father, grandfather, student, mentor, with a pale white scar of a snake on his back amongst others.

This is the first time Sakura truly sees not the ruthless Hokage but an old, tired man in robes and a hat designed for someone far younger.

There is no further punishment administered.

“Am I a prodigy?” Sakura asks without thinking later than day in the dango shop after Kakashi has finished informing her of her need to prepare to become a chūnin soon. He pauses, the answer that has already formed in his mouth momentarily halted as his thoughts are thrown back to a time so long ago.

Am I a prodigy? It is a question he remembers asking when he was younger than the girl sat in front of him in more ways than one. His father’s response had been one of pride mixed with another emotion and Kakashi has understood for a while why but it is in this exact moment he knows it more than ever.

(The little cherry blossom flower on his arm makes a bit more sense now he has a person to connect it to.)

It is a lie to say that team 7 are the epitome of teamwork despite what their jōnin instructor preaches.

They’ve been a fractured mess from the beginning and has only gone downhill ever since. Sasuke and Sakura are too full of anger, one of the more violent kind and the other born from frayed nerves and terror. Naruto is too desperate for validation. And Kakashi has been a broken man ever since Sakumo Hatake finished the job his fellow villagers started and can hardly fix himself, let alone anyone else.

The T&I mission is almost the breaking point, narrowly avoided by Sakura’s own terror that refuses to let things escalate beyond furious words and Naruto’s own hunger for acceptance. But the balance is frighteningly precarious that it is nearly unbelievable when the Hokage gives them the C-rank regardless (though that only persists in making things that bit worse as Sakura knows a test when she sees one and the grip her fear has on her tightens).

Bitterly, Sakura thinks as she readies herself for the mission, that maybe her soulmarks don’t actually matter. That they were intended for the original Sakura instead because she cannot see how she will come to care for her teammates so much.

But the black curves she knows do not belong to that Sakura. So she grits her teeth and pulls her arm warmer over her marks again

The mission starts off well. Perhaps that is what should have alerted them all to how it was not destined to end that way with team 7’s ability to ruin all they touched.

Their clients are friendly, entertaining, beautiful. It makes sense when it comes out that they were women of the night, enough sense that it embarrasses Sakura in her inability to spot it coming from a mile away. It makes even more sense when two of them openly state their relationship with one another, both casually showing their soulmarks that represent their partner to Naruto when he cannot muffle his surprised gasp.

From then on the blonde fires off constant questions about soulmarks to the gorgeous couple, eyes sparkling in awe and slight jealously Sakura cannot relate to. As they’re approaching the Land of Waves, Naruto, after more of his excited interrogation, suddenly becomes more subdued. “Can soulmarks ever be wrong?” He asks quietly, one hand absent mindedly falling to his stomach.

Yoyotose and Matsubito glance at one another, then back to the boy. “No,” the blonde woman replies softly, smile gentle. “They’re never wrong.”

Relief and joy spreads across Naruto’s face and, out of the corner of her eye, Sakura spies Sasuke’s expression twist wretchedly into something between hate and distress, his nails digging into the skin of his neck.

It goes wrong fast. So, so wrong.

Tazuna, Gatō, the Demon Brothers, Zabuza, Takasago.

Sakura has always known the fragility of life (it is why terror sinks its fangs so deep, why she wishes to sever the red string of fate as soon as she can), however, it is different to see it in person. To see Takasago die less than a meter away, almost instantaneously, and right after she has killed another man too.

Death then comes blindingly close when she is all but forced to charge headfirst towards Zabuza because the only other option was to simply stand there and, after her arm has been ripped from its socket and Kakashi is lying there on the ground, unconscious, something in Sakura breaks.

It's all his fault, she thinks as she yells at Naruto, shoulder shrieking with pain. It’s his fault that she almost died, it’s his fault Takasago did die, it’s his fault she’s there in the first place, it’s his fault the sight of her marks makes her stomach turn (because it is the red spiral which made her realise where she was and who her soulmates were meant to be).

She passes out in blinding pain and unsatisfied anger, burns and soulmarks feeling as though they’re on fire.

When she wakes again she feels even more terrible, stumbling out of the tent she awoke in and crouching down next to the fire beside her only conscious teammate. Sasuke’s hostility to her is muted, noticeably so, though she does not catch the full extent of why.

(Memories are pressing against his mind, incurred by the shadow of death that has been hanging over them for hours now, and his neck itches in that familiar way. A way that makes him keep his fists balled by his sides so he doesn’t scratch his skin bloody and raw like he did when he was seven.)

“They said Zabuza killed Takasago,” he tells her, asking a question he already knows the answer to.

“Well, they’re not lying.” The response sounds almost blasé but really it is far from it.

Sasuke twists his head to look over at their clients. “...They all had her soulmark.”

Sakura glances over at him and, from her angle, she realizes she can finally see the weasel he used to boast so proudly of. The red and black lines are like that of brush strokes, reminding her of traditional scroll paintings. She then spies how the lines of the tail flow into a familiar red spiral, and, beyond that, a faint cherry blossom.

Her gaze darts away quickly.

They stay. They stay and Sakura hates it, hates it enough that the terror engulfs her and Kakashi has to pull her to one side to stop her from hyperventilating.

He makes her tell him what is wrong and as the words spill from her mouth, chest tight with fear, she thinks in the further corners of her mind that this is a twisted version of what her younger self imagined would happen with her soulmates. That they would talk about what was bothering them and work their way through it. And that is what’s happening.

Except what’s wrong is that she’s going to die and she’s not getting soft, comforting words in response, she’s getting cutting ones that are intended to rip her from her fear and deal with the reality rather than cowering from it.

(Meanwhile Kakashi thinks about that mark on his arm again and why it is there, seeing the faint image of someone else standing in Sakura’s place.)

So they stay. They stay and Sakura hates it a little less.

“It's all my fault.”

Naruto breaks on the second day. It is painful to watch, painful in a way that Sakura didn’t expect it to be - not that she was expecting it because Naruto has always reacted to emotional duress loudly, defiantly, angrily. Never like this, never quietly with smothered tears and body curled up in on himself, as if to take up as little space as possible.

“No wonder everyone in the village hated me. I’m the monster who messes up everything and you probably hate me too because I’m a monster and- and I bet it’s true too that my soulmarks are wrong ‘cuz I-I shouldn’t have them, I know I shouldn’t-”

“I don't,” Sakura cuts him off before she even feels the weight of the marks on her arm. “Naruto, I don’t hate you.”

“You...you don’t?” He’s so confused and relieved that Sakura wonders why her opinion of him matters so much. She is not the person he should be impressing, vying for friendship with, feeling overjoyed about when she doesn’t hate him.

(She doesn’t know that part of the reason why is the faint cherry blossom on his stomach, tucked away beside the roaring flames and pale dolphin scar.)

Haku and Zabuza are strong. Stronger than them all.

But Konoha has survived this long not out of pure military strength but out of sheer, overwhelming numbers. So team 7 wins not out of raw skill of their own but out of the appearance of their allies.

Sakura watches Zabuza die at the hands of men that were once his allies too whilst saving the life of the boy that is meant to be his tool. She then watches Haku fail to kill Gatō where he stands, catching glimpses of a mark resembling a demon on his wrist.

“Please,” Matsubito begs that night when Kakashi briefly stops her from comforting the young boy. “He’s just a child who has lost someone he loved.” Her hand touches her collarbone where her marks lay scattered, amongst them a single fan and a flower than looks almost made of ice.

Gai pulls Kakashi’s arm away, hand resting purposefully on his bicep as he lets the blonde woman rush over to Haku and hold him in her arms. “Wouldn’t you have wanted that back then?” Gai asks Kakashi in a voice so soft Sakura thinks she imagined it, like the flash of silver just above the top of his green jumpsuit. A silver the same as the cobweb of fine lines up her arm.

Kakashi turns towards where Sasuke and Sakura are both watching the scene unfold and they both duck their heads even though it is clear the man has seen them. “...Perhaps you’re right.”

“I often am, Kakashi, I often am.”

Team 7 leaves on their mission on the verge of shattering, cracks deep and irreparable.

Team 7 returns from their mission as smashed, tiny pieces that are slowly being put back together.

Sakura sits on her bed after she returns home from the hospital, staring at her uncovered arm at the marks of the people who are meant to be her soulmates. She still doesn’t quite see it, still doesn’t want to see how they will possibly become the people the younger Sakura dreamed of caring for. But the foul taste in her mouth at the sight isn’t so bad anymore and the symbols on her skin aren’t as heavy as they used to be.

Naruto’s red spiral. Sasuke’s burning fire. Kakashi’s sharp lightning.

She then blinks and brings her arm closer to her face, nose practically pressed up against her skin as her eyes dart across the mark she doesn’t know the owner of. The dark, sleek curves that are clean and elegant compared to the rest of the symbols.

Huh, Sakura thinks. They kind of look like antlers.

A/N: A second a/n oh wow this is getting crazy over here. I know it kinds cuts off sharply but I was running out of steam so thought it best to end there sorry OTL

ANYWAY, I have many thoughts and feelings for this soulmark AU that might mean I make a continuation/side stuff to this so do yell at me if you have any interest (though I am very self indulgent so I’d probably make it anyway as people scream at me to stop). I’m still in the middle of exams btw so main fic is gonna take a hot second before any updates happen :)

#extras #soulmark au #YA BOI SHOWING UP AT THE END THERE #and for anyone reading the tags: the person Kakashi was seeing instead of Sakura was his young self #had a line explicitly saying it but it was TOO GOOD so I had to save it for the main fic #honestly tho Shikamaru my dude can you show up in the main fic so I can write how you fit into Sakura's life Kay thanks #I bet there's so many grammar mistakes but I'm v tired let me rest now and edit tomorrow

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