#maybe im being overdramatic here lol but long hair was always an expectation for me and for the longest time I was so proud of

[erumai-maadu]

Sakura comes home after the second stage of the chunin exams with her hair short and her face set with grim determination to be stronger.

Her mother is distraught, eyes the choppy bob critically, before letting it go and telling her that it'll grow back quickly. She's young, after all, and her hair has always grown quickly.

But Sakura keeps trimming it, never letting it grow back out to the length that she was so proud of before. She feels freer without it, somehow. Her head is lighter, no longer pulled down by the weight of thick hair and people’s expectations.

It doesn't matter any more when people eye her bruised knuckles, the scars scattered on her body, the eyebags from long shifts at the hospital.

Short hair is more practical for a shinobi, after all. At least, that's what she tells her mother. They've never met the Hyuuga, so it doesn't matter if it isn't necessarily true.

Besides, Sakura isn't Neji, with his impenetrable defenses. She's a brawler with fists that punch through rock and shatter bones, and she cannot afford for someone to grab the hair that would whip around in the devastating blasts left in her wake.

Sometimes, she can still feel the Sound shinobi's hand in her hair, the burning pain in her scalp. Lee and Naruto unconscious on the ground and her weak, useless body trembling in fear.

Other nights, she feels the cold wind, a gentle pinch and a murmured "thank you" on the back of her neck. She sees Naruto's wide smile, a promise to bring him back to her, back to the village. Naruto and Sasuke with their backs to her, always in front, always walking away, leaving her behind.

Sakura trains with a savage ferocity that few can match. She needs to be better, always moving forward, so that some day, she can overtake Naruto and Sasuke.

There are times that she wakes up with a scream caught in her throat, hand reaching for a kunai pouch that isn't there. She gets up and sneaks out, runs to the mountains behind Hokage rock and pummels the rocks until her fists are bloody and her fears are assuaged. The weak little girl died in the Forest of Death, cut out of her along with the long pink locks she discarded.

The weight that was holding her back is gone. She will not be left behind. Never again.