Chapter Text
Kakashi didn’t know what to make of her.
He’d been gauging his teams condition, assessing their levels of fatigue and excitement, their nerves, when he’d felt it. Upon Hayate’s request, the remaining participants had proceeded up to the second floor to spectate, and Kakashi, who had been slouching against the far left wall since the speeches, idly surveyed the genin as they advanced up the staircase.
He’d felt the cold draft against his neck the moment the last of them had settled on the parapet. It was bitter and frosty and brushed his skin like falling snow.
Kakashi frowned under his mask. A quick glance at the large windows fixed above the hand seal statue confirmed that they were shut. A wider survey of the greenery beyond the glass, complete with vibrant flora and viridescent leaves, confirmed that it was still midsummer. And yet, the cool air had crept under his flak jacket to breathe ice against his nape; tearing at the flesh like winter wind.
Kakashi wasn’t particularly superstitious but he was a shinobi. Instinct propelled him to pursue suspicion. A shift in temperature was nothing if not a forecast; and the arctic air settled like premonition in his chest.
Kakashi swept the room in a broader search, foraging for any indication of amiss. A missing piece, one that he wasn’t even sure existed, cut and carved in the shape of his conundrum.
Each time he dived, he came up clear. The only tension he could feel was in the furtive glances the genin sent one another; sizing each other up with narrow eyes as potential competition. The room was wholly intact and as far as ordinary went, this was it. The cool draft had gone as fast as it had come and it hadn’t so much as rattled on the doors to signal its exit.
There had to be something. Kakashi pushed himself off the wall, intending to scout the length of the room when he saw the flickering. The dancing lights forced his eyes up towards the large electronic board behind Hayate and he immediately zeroed in on the clock.
The time. The numbers on the board flickered back and forth, back and forth, like a capricious game of push and pull. Each time the clock inched a minute forward, it jerked back as if the counting seconds repelled one another. It was an unsteady cadence, a sporadic beat with untimely rhythm and Kakashi watched as it teetered precariously between the two numbers like a seesaw, unsure of where to land.
It was strange.
Kakashi turned away from the board and shot a quick glance at the Hokage. To the unobserving eye, he looked occupied and distracted, engrossed in his conversation with Anko and Ibiki, but the look he levelled Kakashi with betrayed his trouble.
He could feel the rigidness in Hayate’s posture as he continued to instruct the two rookies that would be going up against each other. Even the other jonin instructors, who had been advised to join their teams up in the gallery, lingered on the ground floor perturbed and vigilant. The alarm bells had been rung and they hung around, waiting to answer it.
He hadn’t so much as blinked when he felt it again. A biting breeze, flickering lights, and then, as if clawing into life, a somber pulse of energy that materialised out of nowhere.
Though quiet, the chakra pulse was spirited and vivacious. Foreign. It desperately knocked on the walls of the chamber as if it were trying to escape. Almost instantly, the genin quietened and the easy clamour ceased. The tension in the room sky rocketed and Kakashi, who felt the familiar rush of adrenaline coursing through his skin, stiffened.
He hadn’t even noticed her come in. Not that she’d used the front door.
She’d just appeared. As if she’d travelled by wind and formed from air. Nothing, no sign or cue, to say she was coming. Nothing to tell them she was here.
When she emerged from out beneath the statute, nursing a cloudy and guarded expression, Kakashi thought two things.
His second thought was that, objectively speaking, she was very pretty.
Despite the cut on her rosy lips and the grime on her porcelain skin, the features on her face were soft. Her cherry blossom hair brushed delicately against her shoulders and her verdant eyes were a startling shade of green.
Naruto, who had been peering over the railing above him, looked bewitched and a resounding woah sounded from the upper portion of the room.
If Kakashi was being completely honest, she didn’t look like much of a kunoichi. Anko at least thought as much as she brushed her off as an inexperienced shinobi. It was a reasonable judgement, he thought. If it weren’t for the kunai holster strapped to her thigh and the pack fastened to her obi at her back, she could have passed for a civilian.
But Kakashi knew better. Her expression was fierce and her jade orbs were sharp and calculating. The black fingerless gloves and the ripple of toned muscle around her arms was a clear indication that she was a fighter. Close range at that. And that seal.
What Kakashi found far more interesting was the small diamond seal that rested in the centre of her forehead. He’d definitely seen that seal before. But where?
His first thought was that she looked a lot like his student, Haruno Sakura.
The same pink hair and green eyes. The same striking expression of determination. Even her clothes, a red and black ensemble complete with white trimmings, looked like a short, revamped version of his own student’s outfit.
And though she looked frighteningly similar, she was still so wholly different. She carried herself with unyielding strength and confidence. She looked apt and capable. She was undoubtedly a very experienced and skilled kunoichi and Kakashi felt almost ashamed to admit that it was something he didn’t see in his own Sakura.
And despite it all, she carried parts of his Sakura like pieces of a relic. It felt like someone had taken his unsure little genin and aged her up a decade but that couldn’t make sense.
It certainly didn’t make sense until he heard her explain, with surprising proficiency, the workings of time-space jutsu. He’d spent their interrogation of her piecing together his conflicted thoughts and feelings, stringing sense with the impossible but she’d given him the answer before he could even voice his suspicions. We’re talking about years.
He hadn’t expected her to call to him like old friends. Like family. His students were his students and though he held unwavering affection for them, he’d only known them for a few months. His tasks entailed building them up to be soldiers and hardened men. And yet, she’d called to him like she’d known him for years.
Her voice tugged on old memories of dead friends and names of passed people he ran from. For a second, she almost sounded like her and the emotion it had evoked was harrowing and haunting. An emotion that Kakashi kept concealed. Tucked away in the closet where he hid all his skeletons.
“That’s because I am her.”
Almost immediately, the air around them exploded with shock and confusion. Murmurs of disbelief echoed off the walls of the chamber and Sakura, who had been watching from the upper gallery, felt her jaw slacken in surprise.
“What?”
The teams that had been surveying the scene with her looked thunderstruck. The revelation had rendered even Naruto speechless. He looked dumbfounded and rather dizzy as he whipped his head, to and fro, between her and the older Sakura. “That,” Naruto whispered sharply, pointing to the older woman once he’d snapped out of his stupor. “Is Sakura-chan?”
Sakura thought that it was one thing to look like her. Lee had commented on it lightly and while Sakura noted the similarities between them, she little entertained the suggestion that she might have a long lost older sister who oozed the same springtime of youth as her.
But to be her?
Sakura blinked, gaping. “Me?” She stammered disbelieving, “That’s me?”
She felt sick. Her stomach churned unpleasantly and she wasn’t sure whether it was from the bubbling fear or mortification. Apprehension roped around her neck like a lasso.
She could feel the pointed stares on her skin. Could see the heavy looks tossed between them to compare. She felt like she was under a magnifying glass, as small as a molecule under the scrutiny of her peers. It felt as if her entire life had suddenly been put to the test. Her goals and ambitions. Her talents. All of her inadequacies painted in neon colours.
Her uncertain future hung in the balance like a question mark. A million crossroads with a million outcomes. But this woman and all that she represented was so definite. So finite. Strong or weak. Accomplished or wasted. She either was or she wasn’t.
Would she be everything she wanted to be? And what if she wasn’t?
Beside her, Sasuke’s jaw tensed and Sakura saw the flicker of surprise on his face before it settled into something more painful. His dark eyes simmered sorrowfully and when he caught her staring, the look he shot her was icy cold.
Sakura felt her heart plummet. What had she done wrong?
Before she could even think to question it, Ino shuffled close to her. “Forehead,” She hissed. The sharp elbow to her ribs was enough to interrupt her musings. “Holy shit.”
“Impossible.” Baki muttered faintly. He looked around incredulously and laughed. “So now we’re supposed to believe this woman is a time traveller?”
They shuffled uneasily but Sakura saw herself step forward, exuding a quiet confidence that she didn’t recognise in herself. She pleaded calmly. “Believe me,” She sighed, threading her fingers through her pink locks. “I’m finding it rather hard to believe myself. There’s just no other explanation.”
Sakura noted that she hadn’t grown her hair out again. The locks weren’t long by any means but they were longer, softer and significantly cleaner than the mop of mess atop of her head now. Suddenly feeling insecure, Sakura attempted to smooth down her choppy hair, curtesy of her kunai, with her palm. Could this woman really be her?
“You could be posing as one of the participants to infiltrate the village,” Baki hissed. “Thought you might reap some sympathies by masquerading as their own.” He assessed her head to toe but the older Sakura only narrowed her eyes at him, unfazed.
“And show up in the middle of the exams? Years older?” Kakashi retorted. He met Baki’s withering scowl with a raised eyebrow. “Lousy attempt at infiltration if you ask me.”
“Does her face tug on your heartstrings, copy-ninja?” Baki jeered.
“No more than mine tugs on yours.” Kakashi quipped cooly.
Baki began to protest but Hayate, feeling the rising tension, rushed to interrupt. He looked tired and wane but his eyes were alarmingly sharp. He shared a glance with Kakashi before turning to Sakura bemused. “Kakashi’s right but Baki does have a point. I’ve never heard of a time travelling jutsu.”
Above them, Sasuke pursed his lips. His sour mood was palpable and he dodged Sakura’s questioning glances with ease and indifference. Instead, he stared over the threshold and found himself looking directly into the eyes of the person he most desperately sought to avoid. There was no escape.
“Teme, can you believe it?” Naruto whispered in wonder. His face was the perfect picture of astonishment and he rocked back and forth excitedly. Sasuke’s frown deepened and he felt a hot flush of rage against his skin. Frankly, he couldn’t.
The possible existence of time travel had ignited a flame in him and he felt the lick of anger course through his chest like fire. It couldn’t be true.
He felt like fate was toying with him. Taunting him. The prospect of second chances was just there, a mere fingertip away, and yet he could not reach it. The universe was laughing at his misery and it had come, in the shape of this woman, to gloat the choices he did not have and to remind him of his own pitiful past.
It couldn’t be true. If it was, his parents wouldn’t be dead. If it was, his clan might be alive. If it was, his brother wouldn’t have done the unimaginable.
It was an incomprehensible reality. The possibility of time travel. Granted to a person who needed it the least.
Sasuke’s expression hardened and he shot Sakura another scathing glare. He knew his anger was misplaced, that by all means she too was a victim of destiny, but there was a deep incurable ache in his chest and fury demanded that he lash out on the only person he could.
“Why do think, of all people, they’re impersonating you?”
Denial. His senses reasoned that there was a fair chance that she wasn’t lying.
No.
He wanted, needed, it to be untrue.
And though he tried to wish the image away, he recalled her glance from earlier. It was brief and fleeting but overfamiliar to the point of intrusive. Why did it feel like she knew exactly what he was thinking? Why did he feel so violated, so angry, that she might be privy to his muddled emotions?
The logical part of his brain told him that he knew it was her. Though desperate and inconsolable his pain was, poking at Sakura’s self-doubts and weaknesses could not conceal the truth.
This woman was Sakura. It was a fact he could not deny. His teammates hair, cut cleanly by blade, was a testimony to her strength. That too, he could not deny.
“You bastard!” Naruto cried indignantly, “It’s not her fault!”
He shoved Sasuke hard but the damage had been done and the blow struck Sakura hard beneath the ribs. She looked crestfallen and her eyes flashed with hurt. Sasuke ignored the stewing regret in his stomach and looked away.
“We could confirm it with a blood test.” Older Sakura offered and the Hokage looked thoughtful at her proposition. “If I am who I say I am, our blood reports will come up the same.”
She sounded so sure of herself that Sasuke was mildly taken aback. It was strange reconciling his teammate Sakura with this version of her. So anchored and steadfast. No moment of hesitation or deliberation. Sasuke quietly thought she was rather impressive.
“There’s no need.” Neji said plainly and Sasuke snapped his head to look at Hyuga questioningly. He heard Naruto mumble under his breath about stupid geniuses and know it alls and rolled his eyes even if he did agree. “She’s telling the truth.”
“How can you be sure?” Sasuke asked before he could help himself and Neji glanced at him briefly. The muscles around his cloudy eyes were taut and the veins beneath his skin bulged with the exertion of the byakagan.
“Their chakra signatures are identical.” Neji gestured between older Sakura on the stage and younger Sakura situated to Sasuke’s left. When he saw the quizzing looks, he explained, “Chakra paths are a bit like thumbprints. They’re completely unique and impossible to copy. Even clones have slightly different chakra paths so you can somewhat distinguish them from the original.”
Neji looked around and shrugged, “The only person that has the same chakra signature as you is, well, you.”
“And you’re certain?” Asuma asked.
“There’s no doubt.”
“And we’re to take the word of a child?” Baki seethed but the Hokage raised his hand to silence him.
He looked contemplative and Sakura held her breath, afraid of what he might say. She felt like he was about to pass or fail her on the biggest exam of her life and it wasn’t even her who was testing. And though her chest still stung from her earlier conversation with Sasuke, she hoped that the Hokage would find favourably for her older self. She wanted to ask her questions. She wanted to know more.
What was she like in the future? What about her friends and family? What about Sasuke?
“We’re to take the word of a valuable member of the Hyuga clan.” The Hokage decided and Sakura exhaled in relief. He turned to her older self with twinkling eyes and Sakura felt the tension within the room dissipate. “Welcome Sakura. We honour you as our guest.”