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Chapter Text

“No medic ninja shall ever die until they are the last of their platoon."

Sakura never thought she would end up following that rule.
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Sakura woke up covered in blood.

Except Sakura had been killed last night – ambushed – and that meant she wasn’t supposed to wake up.

But Sakura was an expert at death and its aftermath by now, and so she did what she always did after taking a lethal injury: took stock of her body.

With a shaking arm (why does it look so odd?) she did a basic medical check. The results made her head spin, and she studied the room around her to confirm she wasn’t in a genjutsu.

Bathroom. White tile, small shower, lots of lotions stacked around. The floor was tacky with dried blood. The sink only had one toothbrush and two orange pill bottles. The air was dank and stale, but realistic considering the state of her injuries. She could hear the faint sounds of Konoha foot traffic and general chaos outside her door. She licked her upper lips and tasted salt – sweat or tears? There was a dull knife lying on the floor beside her.

It was too detailed to be fake, but that didn’t change the fact that her body wasn’t her own. Because this body’s only wounds were two deep cuts on the wrist, not usually consistent with a ROOT assassination, and her chakra levels were those of a child. Or an eleven-year-old genin with a below-average chakra pool but excellent control.

She grabbed the porcelain sink above her head and hoisted herself up with a bloody grip. She was incredibly lightheaded, probably from the blood loss, and it reminded her to seal up the cuts on her wrist. It wasn’t a difficult procedure, but it drained her. She ignored that in favor of studying the mirror.

She saw Sakura. Not her, but Sakura, the Sakura that she used to dream of as a child. This Sakura had long, beautiful pink hair. Her makeup was immaculate, though she could see black bags under her eyes. Her brows were tweaked, eyelashes elongated, and her ears were covered in golden, dangling jewelry. Her forehead was as large as a billboard and

Empty.

She shouted “Kai!” multiple times to no avail. Sakura poked at her forehead and sensed no pocket of chakra waiting for her. There was no storage of chakra anywhere in her body. She no longer had her seal.

She studied the bathroom once more to find a weapon and only found a woman’s razor. She dismantled it and hit the blades along her body. A cursory inspection of the pill bottles revealed medications for depression and insomnia. Sakura knew she had the same problems, but she had refused medication for them. Shinobi didn’t use medication.

Behind the mirror, she found Band-Aids, more razors, pads, and the like. No soldier pills, or sutures, or high-grade painkillers like usual. She closed the mirror before opening it again and looking at it critically. The dimensions were off when comparing the inside to the outside. She rapped the back of the cabinet and, as she expected, discovered a small cubby hole containing a single note.

“Laying low for now. Snakes have keen senses. Will wait for more news.”

She recognized it as her own handwriting, or a version of it. More flowery than she was used to. Also not encoded, which put her on edge.

Back in the mirror, she studied her clothes. A dress – red, short, and better for dancing than fighting. Her legs and arms had little to no muscle definition, and her only visible scars were the ones on her wrist.

It was the body of a civilian. A dead civilian, really, but Sakura wasn’t too worried about that part.

She took a step to the door when she heard the sound of paper crumpling. Lifting the bottom of her foot she found a small monitoring tag, the kind she would have used on her patients in the medical tents to watch them from afar. She was able to trace the chakra signature of the person on the other end to an area outside of building she was in, but she couldn’t pinpoint it exactly. Tags like these were mostly made to be a one-way street.

It wasn’t a hospital tag. She knew that. And she also knew that it would be very hard for her to have made those deep cuts herself with a blade that rusty. So Sakura hadn’t died, she had been killed. Fair enough, given the state of Konoha these days, but that didn’t explain her body or her chakra.

On top of that, there were few shinobi strong enough to stand a chance of killing her, and those who could wouldn’t stop at a few measly slices on the wrist and a tag. Sakura was nigh immortal these days. They should’ve gone for the head.

Except she wasn’t immortal without her seal and now half of her body’s supply of blood was lying useless on the bathroom floor. Whoever tagged her wasn’t right outside the door, which meant she had a small window of opportunity to find food.

She created a clone, or tried to, but her chakra and blood levels protested. Left with no other options, she simply tore the tag off (along with a few levels of skin) and dumped it in the sink.

Sakura masked what little chakra she had and poked her head out of the bathroom.

It looked like she was in a typical Konoha apartment. A civilian one, based on the fact she couldn’t pick up on any traps or seals. There were a few scattered pictures, mostly of Sakura when she was younger, sometimes with her family and one with Ino.

Except Sakura had burned all her photos and lived in standard shinobi housing. And her apartment was full of traps.

A stalker? Possible, but the pictures were all in frames and placed around the apartment naturally, no effigies or shrines in sight. There were medical textbooks on the shelves, floors, and counters. Looking through another doorway, she saw there were some on the only bed on the apartment.

The kitchen was small. There were unwashed dishes in the sink and a mug of tea – still steaming – on the countertop. Sakura used to love tea, she remembered, but coffee had been better for her thirty-six-hour work days. She drowned the tea in seconds and moved on, vowing to have more after securing the apartment.

She cautiously moved towards the window in the bedroom and looked out to see -

To see Konoha, but not. It was big, bigger than it should be. Civilians were laughing on the street, and it looked like there was a police force roaming around openly instead of skulking on rooftops and in alleyways.

The police force all had black hair.

Sakura burst out the window and scrambled to the rooftop of the building. She was conscious of the other end of her monitoring tag but now the need for information outweighed the danger of one lazy assassin. If she couldn’t trust the streets, she still had one thing to center her. The heart of Konoha. Hokage Rock.

Except Hokage Rock had four faces, ending on Minato, Naruto’s dead dad. No Tsunade, no Danzo. It was wrong. Was she in the past? It wouldn’t explain her body, however, or the recent appliances in her kitchen.

“Kai,” she shouted, but nothing changed. Could it have been the Sharingan? Danzo himself might have come to kill her but she doubted it - he was a coward, through and through. But there was no one left who had those eyes. The Uchiha were dead and burned.

She knew the Sharingan, though, knew it well. She would have seen the signs of its effects on her. So what else?

One of the Uchiha down below looked up, did a double take, and hopped to the roof in record time. Sakura had been totally exposed in her bloodstained outfit as she had gaped at the Hokage Rock. Amateur as always, Rat.

She didn’t recognize the Uchiha on her rooftop, no surprise, but the concern radiating off of him made her think that he knew her. He had the classic Uchiha looks, with some especially high cheekbones. He was expressive, uniquely so, and he flashed across the roof to study her arms and steady her as she swayed at his arrival. She hadn’t actually gotten to that food, had she?

She thought the care in his face was honest, as was the panic in his voice as he cried her name, so she decided to play the victim to find out more about him. She swooned in his arms, only half faked, and allowed him to carry her.

She tried recalling her childhood memories when she followed Sasuke around in loving worship. Didn’t he occasionally get picked up from the academy by a cousin with high cheekbones and a sunny disposition? He was young but already so talented, so fast. Older than Itachi, she remembered.

What was his name? Shino? No. Shinto?

They flew into the apartment through the open window and he lowered her onto her bed with a careful amount of slowness. The juxtaposition was confusing, but she wasn’t confused as her mysterious Uchiha was as he flitted through her rooms looking for bandages.

Shang? God, no.

“What happened, Sakura? Did you – did you try to heal? Is Orochimaru doing something to you in the hospital?” He was in the bathroom now, and probably had a clear view of all the blood. If he found the tracking tag, he didn’t have an outward reaction. That’s right – most Uchiha were either in the police force or in ANBU, right? So either way, her mysterious friend was trained.

Not good for her. What would he do once he discovered who she was – who she wasn’t? She was Sakura by most definitions, yes, but she doubted she could act out a role she didn’t understand in front of a trained shinobi.

He was in front of her in an instant, a reminder that he was more dangerous than she could likely handle with this body. He wiped down her arms in silence but stopped short at the healed cuts.

“Wait, Sakura what did you do-“

She slapped a hand over his mouth and at the same time he turned to the window. They both sensed the same thing:

Kabuto. Heading fast to her apartment. Probably the other end of her tracking tag. His chakra wasn’t as putrid or mutated as it had eventually become but she could still recognize it.

He was supposed to be dead - she clearly remembered killing him. But the Uchiha clan was also supposed to be dead and one of them was standing in her apartment so...

So she couldn’t dwell, just deal. She just had to deal with this. The Uchiha (Sora?) had already lept to his feet. “I need to-“

“Leave. I’ll distract him.” She tried to sound soft, calming. It came out in an old woman’s croak.

“Was he the one who-“ A kunai was already in his hand, but Sakura forced his wrist down. He looked surprised at the strength but put it away. Protective, apparently, but still smart.

She didn’t fancy their chances against Kabuto when she was half-dead and allied with an Uchiha she didn’t know. On top of that, Kabuto and her had the same annoying ability to get stabbed and get back up again, which meant any fight with him was a fight of endurance; she had no chance of lasting after losing all that blood. Besides, dueling to the death in the middle of Konoha wasn’t a great way to stay quiet and get her bearings. “I don’t remember, but I can deal with it.”

Well, she thought she could deal with it. She was hoping. Her ally gave a decisive nod, cloaked his chakra so completely she couldn’t sense him from two inches away, and disappeared.

Kabuto was climbing the stairs. Sakura raced to her closet and threw on the closest jacket she could find that wouldn’t put her at too much disadvantage in a fight. She went back to the bathroom and stuck the knife, what looked to be the only weapon in the apartment, to the inside of the jacket with chakra. If she needed it quickly it would be there. She closed the door behind her but the scent of blood lingered.

Taking stock, she had the knife and any medical textbooks on the ground, as well as her own two hands. Her Uchiha might be around, might not be, but she had no guarantee he would be on her side if she slipped. Niceness before knives, then.

She heard a knock and composed herself, throwing on a smile. The knock meant he was going for a guise of friendliness, his usual methods, and she would return it in kind. She opened it a crack, face held back enough to dodge any kunai or senbon thrown in. Kabuto looked worried and confused for a second before kindly smiling, hands thrown up in a classic sign of surrender.

She tried not to glare and sent out another pulse of chakra. She pinged a few shinobi on the ground, but no one she recognized.

Kabuto motioned to come in and she let him with a smile. He perused her dirty floor and sniffed at her shut bathroom door. His smile never faltered. “Ahh, Sakura-chan, I know things might be a bit awkward between us, but I hope there are no hard feelings! In time, I have no doubt you’ll be welcomed back to work.”

Work? Uchiha said something about the hospital, she remembered, and it would explain the medical texts lain haphazardly. But why was Kabuto comforting her about being let go? So, she was fired from a hospital that Kabuto and Orochimaru worked at?

She shook her head slowly. Whatever this was she, she couldn’t understand it. Too much was wrong. A genjutsu, or something even worse? The environment was fully realized, every detail as real as the next, and her head felt completely clear.

The only other explanation she could think of was an alternate universe. A world different from her own in too many ways. Like, for example, the attack of the Nine-Tails on the night of Naruto’s birth.

If that never happened, or it had been contained, it would explain Minato being Hokage instead of being dead, the village being full and clean, the Uchiha clan surviving. Danzo had orchestrated the massacre under Sarutobi’s nose, but it’s possible Minato was able to prevent the incident.

If Danzo was dead or neutered it would explain Kabuto’s presence as a hospital worker in Konoha, but she couldn’t rely on Danzo’s death anytime soon. Her enemies always had a way at coming back in the most inconvenient moments.

But if Minato was alive and Orochimaru was working for Konoha, that meant no Tsunade. Her shishou would have had no reason to return to the village. Sakura would have never had her teacher, would have never learned from the most talented Sannin.

So she was fired from the hospital, friends with a mysterious Uchiha, and writing hidden notes about snakes. Orochimaru?

And did her Uchiha find the note? More importantly: was he supposed to?

So, alternate world. At least she had a working theory, but she still didn’t know how to deal with Kabuto or Uchiha.

She was distracted by her thoughts when Kabuto mockingly knocked on her forehead. “It’s unlikely for you to be so heartbroken. Missing more than the hospital? Why don’t I take you out to lunch to cheer you up,” he teased. Was this how Kabuto acted when he was genuine? Because it was exactly the same as how he looked when he was lying his pasty little ass off and she hated it just as much.

“Look, Kabuto-san,” Was that what she called him? Safe enough, regardless. “I understand you’re trying to be kind-”

“Trust me, it’s really no hardship to take a pretty girl out to lunch, and my only motivation isn’t necessarily kindness.”

Sakura threw up in her mouth, just a little bit. She was ready to refuse again when Kabuto’s eyes sharpened on the wrists of her jacket and he took a small sniff. Medic-nin always knew the scent of blood, didn’t they?

“Look, Kabuto-san, if you insist I won’t say no again. Just let me get ready.” Sakura gave a fake giggle and retreated to the bedroom. She couldn’t find any more weapons so all she did was put on a solid pair of boots and brushed her hair a bit more. If all she had was a knife she would make it work, she just wouldn’t be happy about. She sprayed an outrageous amount of perfume around and hoped it was enough.

Kabuto was smirking when she opened her door - either because he could tell she was covering up the scent of blood or because she said yes to lunch. Either way, he was a creep and she wanted this to end quickly. The walkout of the apartment and then the building was silent, Kabuto walking slightly in front of her. It was curious that he didn’t perceive her as a threat but it worked out well. Every shinobi’s greatest weapon was the element of surprise.

Still no sign of her Uchiha.

The market outside of her apartment building was bustling, full of food stalls and children. Elders sat playing shogi, vendors shouted their wears, and color burst from every corner. Sakura couldn’t remember the last time Konoha had been alive like this.

For a moment she was lost, eleven again, happy enough to burst. She had so much love in her heart for her family, for her village, for Sasuke. She was thirteen again, abandoned but hanging on, knowing her life wasn’t over. Fifteen, stronger, a page in the Bingo Book, her mentor and her best friend by her side. Seventeen, in the ruins of her village, Naruto dead at her feet and Sasuke gone. Eighteen, alone. Nineteen, dead.

Kabuto was silent as she stared at Konoha for what looked like the first time. She tried to reign it in, but she hadn’t seen a miracle like this since Naruto had died.

All the sights and sounds and smells were too strange to be familiar to her anymore. Maybe this Sakura could have lived in this Konoha without pause but not her. Not after her friend had martyred himself for a city already lost, leaving her to live alone in his tomb.

“Beautiful,” she whispered, sincere for what felt like the first time in years. Kabuto stopped for a minute as well, turning to see what she found so enchanting among the ordinary streets he had always known.

“You’ve lived here all your life, Sakura-chan,” he said. His voice was mild but she knew he was suspicious. She didn’t care.

“Does that mean it's impossible to appreciate it, Kabuto-san? What a terrible way to live.” If she turned her back to him this could have been a dream.

This is why Sakura had never gone missing-nin. Konoha would always be special, her only love. The village could be dark and messy and destroyed but it would be hers.

Kabuto sighed faintly in her peripheral. “You do like making my life difficult, don’t you Sakura-chan?”

She turned at that, and in her peripheral, she saw a flash of silver. Her hand moved on instinct to the knife hidden at her back but the kunai wasn't aimed at her - it was aimed at the throng of civilians around him.

The elders who had been fussing over their game of shogi were now pointing at screaming, one man holding his punctured leg and making pained noises. The weapon was lodged in his thigh, perilously close to the femoral artery.

Just what was Kabuto’s plan here? Fuck it - she wasn’t going to let an innocent bystander die for the sake of one of his games. She was already on the move to the bloody civilian with the knowledge that she still had an Uchiha following her in case Kabuto tried anything more.

The civilian was rushing to take the kunai out and she grabbed his wrist in a vice to stop him from being hasty. Her knees crashed into the road as she knelt, rough texture scraping the skin bared by her dress. So fucking impractical.

The old man, probably called Goro according to the surprised shouts of his friends, was obviously untrained. His shaking arms and wet eyes spoke of a life relatively free of surprise kunai attacks, which would only make healing him that much harder. People unused to pain were equally unused to chakra healing, leading to plenty of struggle and frustration on all ends.

“Sir, if you pull that out right now you will bleed to death. Let me handle this.” Sakura lost track of Kabuto as the crowd surged around her. That was a problem for her Uchiha (don't pretend he's your ally, Rat) who had arrived with aplomb to corral the riled-up crowd. With the extra room, she was able to focus on a diagnostic.

The kunai wasn’t poisoned and the cut wasn’t jagged or tearing anything internally. A slow pull should work, as clean as possible, and then a massive burst of chakra should staunch the bleeding with the jacket as support. Did this body have enough chakra? It would have to - Sakura could draw blood from a stone for her patients.

Goro didn't know this, didn't know her. His panicked wiggles were interspersed with interogation. “Where’s a doctor? Are you a doctor?”

The bystanders offered no support, simply crowding around in a big circle and making vague exclamations of “Get help!” or “Save him!”

There was a clap of thunder and the street went silent. Her Uchiha was standing on a table in a full police uniform. “This woman is a medical professional,” he shouted, “Please give her some room and some quiet.”

She gave him a thankful nod and he gave her a small smile back. Too intimate - who was he? She couldn’t focus on that now.

Sakura put on her best calming voice and started cutting at the clothes around the man’s wound. “Sir, please stay calm and still. I’m going to numb the nerves in your legs just a little so this won’t hurt a bit. My name is Sakura and I’m here to help.”

The familiar glow overtook her hands, drawing a gasp from the crowds around her. She carefully laid them on the man’s legs. He froze and then relaxed.

“Okay, I’m going to take the kunai out, and I need you to be absolutely still. Can you be still for me, Goro?” Sakura had taken to treating all her patients, whether they be civilians or even ANBU, like children when healing them. Most people became senseless when injured and it was really the only way to wrangle them. Some of them didn’t like being patronized to, but they found it hard to complain with their lives in her hands.

Inch by inch she dragged the weapon out. He was still, fingers trembling ever so slightly, but Sakura couldn’t notice at a time like this. One hand on the kunai, one hand on the leg, she healed the internal damage left behind from the weapon, avoiding the artery to the best of her ability.

The process took about two minutes in total, and by the end, the man was really no worse for wear. Kunai injuries were as common as a cold in Konoha and twice as easy to take care of. His pants would be difficult to clean, of course, but that’s what life was sometimes. A spider had crawled up her leg while she had been concentrating and she brushed it off. The street was a lot quieter now, had been close to silent during the healing.

Sakura sent out a pulse of chakra but she couldn’t sense Kabuto. Was he searching her apartment? Did she clean the blood?

Her Uchiha hopped down from the table and helped her up from the ground. He leaned in close, wary of the people around her. “Kabuto?”

“Most likely, but you won’t be able to prove it.”

“Of course not, why should my job be easy?” He chuckled and then gently picked up her hand, studying the blood that wasn’t hers for the first time today. “Good job, back there. You’re getting better at this.”

She flushed unexpectedly. She couldn’t help it, really, because it had been so long since she had been around people who cared for her. But this Uchiha cared for the Sakura who used to be her, not really her, and the thought made her rip her hand away.

The crowd suddenly pushed a little-redheaded boy to the front, a kunai pouch on his leg. The supposed culprit, then, or whoever Kabuto found easy to frame. She tossed the bloodied kunai at the boy and he managed to catch it with minimal fumbling.

“Please don’t tell me you’re tossing around kunai in the marketplace, Menma,” her Uchiha scolded lightly. The small bump to her shoulder let her know that he realized Memna was Kabuto’s fall guy, he just couldn’t publicly do anything about it.

“Well, maybe, but I totally didn’t throw it at that man, you know! I was throwing it at a spider to protect Hana-chan!” He exclaimed. A black-haired girl with white eyes burst through the crowd to hold Menma’s hand as she nodded in agreement, body shaking with the motion. All eyes were on the two of them.

Which was good, because Sakura was experiencing a bit of a crisis. All she saw was Naruto standing in front of her, refusing to be guilty for any prank he pulled. Naruto, always trying to protect someone, anyone. Naruto and Hinata, walking side by side trying to save the world. Hand in hand. Together until the end.

Red hair - Naruto’s mom had red hair, didn’t she? And if Minato was alive and kicking, it stood to reason she could still be alive as well. She could have had more kids than Naruto. Naruto could have a little brother, friends with Hanabi Hyuga, who practiced kunai throwing in the marketplace with the same foolish attitude.

Kyuubi's flaming ass, she couldn’t handle this. The scars on her wrists itched and she only had one knife on her. Her hands were covered in blood and had been since she got to this place. This Konoha was a nightmare even if it was leagues ahead of her own.

It was a nightmare because a shinobi’s greatest weapon was information and now Sakura was completely in the fucking dark.

She didn’t speak. Couldn’t speak. She let Uchiha lead the farce of a little interrogation, letting the Hokage’s son away with a slap on a wrist. The crowd dispersed and Sakura was frozen.

Kabuto slid back through the crowd and gave her and the Uchiha a once-over. “Ah, Sakura-chan, you handled that pretty well! It’s amazing,” he grinned sleepily, hands waving. The crowd dispersed slowly, some helping the old man stand up and patting her on the back. The street would be back to normal in a few minutes, Sakura was sure.

He gave the Uchiha a smirk. “And protecting the streets as best as you can, Shisui. You’re doing well in your new job.”

Shisui. A recent policeman. Transferred from ANBU? Sasuke’s cousin. Her ally. She could work with this.

Now Sakura was sure Kabuto had disappeared to check her apartment. He would have found the blood in the bathroom, but the only real reason he would have thought to check is if he had known there would be blood in the first place.

So Kabuto had slit her fucking wrists then and tried to make it look like a suicide. That, or he arranged for it to happen. Fan-fucking-tastic. He realized she survived when ripped the seal off. He caused the kunai incident for a distraction, then, and to possibly test her healing abilities.

He wanted to know why she had survived the attempt, to see if she had done it herself. She knew how Kabuto thought after studying his journals and experiments, and he would have no qualms about killing a citizen just to see how advanced she was in using medical chakra.

Now she needed to know why he tried to kill her. She didn’t know much about the Sakura of this world, but she doubted she caused too many waves. She didn’t have the power to.

Something to do with the hospital, perhaps? Any place where Kabuto worked was sure to be full of shit, and if she had discovered something in the hospital it would explain why she got fired and then got murdered.

And if she was investigating the corruption from the inside, it would explain why she had a policeman buddy.

Kabuto could have also used her firing as a probable motivation for her “suicide.” All of Kabuto’s actions always had three motivations and twelve contingency plans, and she doubted that changed from her Konoha.

So, Kabuto was evil. Now she had information. Sakura could work with that too.

“Thanks, Kabuto-chan,” she squealed, “I learned from the very best.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust at the blood on her hands, wiping them on a napkin she plucked from the table. She didn’t look at the policeman by her side.

Kabuto’s smile only grew as Sakura fawned over him and she could feel her Uchi- Shisui tense beside her. Why did he have to be so obvious about it?

She didn’t have to feign her chakra exhaustion and begged off their lunch date in favor of a nap and a package of instant ramen. Kabuto offered to come back to her apartment and watch over her, disgustingly enough, but the reappearance of Menma and Hanabi stopped any further offers. Thank god for small, annoying little favors.

A tug on her elbow prompted her eyes downward to the Naruto look-alike, tears in his little blue eyes. Carbon copies of Naruto’s eyes, really, and it felt like another punch to the gut.

“That was so cool Sakura!” He was shouting, of course, but it was sweet. “You should come by the house again and prove to my big brother that you’re so much cooler than him! There’s no way he’s the best shinobi!” His nose wrinkled and Sakura giggled at the sibling rivalry. She wished her Naruto could have had a little brother.

She played nursemaid with the kids, patching up odd little abrasions and papercuts, long enough for Kabuto to realize she wasn’t going to her apartment with him. He gave a jaunty way to her and Shisui before heading off.

“Why don’t I escort you, miss? I don’t want you falling over and getting hurt.” His tone was light and Hanabi blushed. A heartbreaker Uchiha, just what she needed. Menma noticed his friend was being distracted from his antics and dragged his friend away, screaming something about a rematch at Shisui.

She chuckled under her breath. The Uzumaki would never love the Uchiha, apparently.

Shisui was also laughing as he so gallantly placed her elbow in his grip and walked her to her apartment. Both were still on alert for Kabuto, but either he had gotten extremely good at chakra masking or he had left.

Sakura, in the absence of anything other to do, starting to come up with a plan:

If the hospital was fucked then her first step would be to find Tsunade. After that, she could start on where this universe’s Danzo was and kill him. Then she would kill Akatsuki. Find Obito, find Orochimaru, find Madara, find Hanzo, find anyone who had ever hurt her family. Easy enough.

She would also dismember Kabuto, just for her own piece of mind.

A tug on her elbow prompted her eyes to Shisui, telling her to unlock her door. She really must be tired if she hadn’t noticed.

She opened the door but Shisui stopped at the threshold. Careful, then. A good trait for a shinobi.

He grimaced before leaning in close. “Things are escalating. Stay away from the hospital for now. I’ll think of what to do next.” His breath was hot as it fanned against her cheek and his eyes were worried.

Sakura had to decide now whether or not to trust him. Sakura hadn’t trusted anyone since she had burned Kakashi’s body, so the answer should be obvious.

Except Sakura had died anyway. Had been murdered by her own village, even though she had been prepared, even though she hadn’t trusted anyone.

So Sakura took a breath, grabbed his hand, and thought about what Naruto would do if he were still alive.

“I have a plan, Shisui.”

He started, grip on her hand tensing.

“I’m going to find Tsunade.”

She just wouldn’t trust him with everything else.

Chapter Text

The first time Sakura saw Itachi, she didn’t scream. She wanted to, felt it rising in her throat like bile, but she held it in with the same force of will she used to make her first kill. She couldn’t scream, because this Itachi had never murdered his clan and become a terrorist and the old Sakura would know that. Would trust him. Would partner up with his cousin for some unknown, probably not nefarious purpose.

Still, even now Sakura trusted the ever-unknown Shisui to Itachi. Even standing on opposite sides of the weapons store she could tell he was dangerous, and Sakura would never trust anyone that had the ability to hurt her.

Tenten was also in the store with them, sharpening some kunai, but she didn’t seem to recognize Sakura. She offered no friendly wave, no kunoichi discount. It had been jarring to realize that she couldn’t rely on her previous interactions to guide these new ones. If Sakura didn’t know Tenten, it’s possible she hadn’t even made it to the Chunin exams. Hadn’t faced a legendary Sannin and lived, fought Ino and tied. It was bizarre here.

So the first time Sakura saw Itachi she didn’t scream - but it was a close thing. Here, Sakura was the interloper, the snake in the grass. Itachi, along with the rest of the Uchiha, had a name that weighed more than she did. Any move against him would have her killed.

With all of her training - kunoichi to jounin to ROOT - she didn’t react except for a stiffening of the limbs and a surprised blink. She was trained to be better than screaming at someone just because they were supposed to be evil (and dead). She had faced dead shinobi before and lived to tell the tale.

So things had been under control -

before Sasuke entered the store.

Fuck

Sasuke, tall and beautiful and deadly, no lines on his face or madness in his eyes. She would never use the word innocent to describe her estranged teammate, but in this universe, it would almost fit. She could love a Sasuke that looked like this, she thought, and she had so long ago.

Sakura, very bravely and very gracefully, disappeared behind the sword rack. She grabbed the nearest pointy edge and rammed it into her hand just to check but no, Sasuke was real and yes, he was talking to his brother peacefully in a store. She had to stop lying to herself about this being a genjutsu. It had been a full night and day since her rude awakening, and as far as she could tell she was here for the long haul.

Sakura healed her cut quickly and wiped off the sword as much as possible with her shirt. Still, seeing Sasuke hurt more than any sword wounds she had ever sustained - except for maybe the ones from Sasori. The fight with Sasori had been a real bitch.

Sakura debated just leaving quietly, avoiding any chance of confrontation, but she couldn’t find any weapons in her house besides kitchen knives - no kunai or senbon or exploding tags. With her chakra the way it was (fucking weak) she needed weapons more than ever. So she stayed.

Sakura took another look, just to check, of course just to check, and found herself staring at the boy she had loved so long ago.

The last time she had seen him, though, there was no love between them. Just the aching void vengeance left behind. He had left her, left Konoha, and had gotten nothing for it but an early death and an unmarked grave somewhere in the Lightning Country. She had burned Itachi and Sasuke together, the last of the Uchiha, a tragedy to the end. She hadn’t wanted their eyes to remain, wanted to destroy them utterly, but Danzo had several generations of Sharingan still in his possession. It had barely mattered.

She could still feel the dirt under her fingernails. She had used an Earth Jutsu to dig the graves but she had lain down the last few feet of dirt herself. It was the only goodbye she could give. The bodies might have been ash but they still deserved a final resting place.

He had asked her, begged her and, well, she was in love. What was she supposed to do but listen? In the end, he wanted a death beside his family more than a life beside his friends. Sakura was beginning to understand the sentiment.

“Stop staring at me.”

Sakura was ripped back into the present moment.

Weapons store. Tenten behind the counter. Sword in her hand. Wound healing. Wrists itching. Hair brushing too low against her chest.

Sasuke was glaring at her from across the aisle, scoffing at the look on her face. Itachi was standing behind him, as pensive and unreadable as ever.

She shook herself and gave him a smile, practiced and fake. She had smiled like this hundreds of thousands of times - she had perfected it the same way every kunoichi had to perfect a smile. She showed her teeth, wrinkled her eyes, and acted like a girl in love. She had a lot of practice in the area.

She expected Sasuke to frown, of course. It was probably the same across every universe: Sasuke was an unsmiling bastard to everyone unlucky enough to interact with him. Let him think her annoying, irritating, unremarkable. Let him treat her like the Sakura Haruno was never reached chunnin, never amounted to anything. Who she was before would become the best armor she could use now.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said with a giggle. It fell a bit flat in her throat. She couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed. Well, it likely wouldn’t matter.

Except Itachi was there and Itachi was frowning. ANBU Itachi. Genius Itachi. Overprotective Itachi. Killer Itachi. Itachi who she had to avoid no matter what.

“I was lost in thought again.” She giggled, again. It sounded better, more natural. Look at me, she said, a dumb little girl, an idiot in love. Look at my smile and not my trembling hands, look at my big eyes and not the knife strapped to my thigh. Look at what I want you to look at.

But Itachi and Sasuke knew how kunoichi worked, were raised by and beside kunoichi, and they didn’t take the bait.

She couldn’t rely on past history or inside jokes, she couldn’t attack or run, and she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t tried to work them just a second ago. She had gotten cocky, thinking she could play them. Whoever Sakura was before was close enough to Shisui to make him trust her, but that relationship didn’t extend to the rest of the family. Not even her old teammate.

Fucking Uchiha; they always threw her off, made her weak. Even when they were dead.

It had only been a month working for ROOT, a month after Naruto had fallen, when she broke into the records room and found Itachi’s file. Found the real reason for the massacre. She cried like a fucking child in the base of killers and liars. She cried for Sasuke, who hated and killed his last bit of family. She cried for Itachi, a child given a choice that would damn him for life.

So Sakura was understandably jarred looking at the two of them now, undeniably close and alive. It was stranger than Kabuto, then Tenten, then her fragile chakra. It was another reason this Konoha seemed so much better than the one she left behind. Another reason she didn’t belong here.

She stopped smiling, forcing herself to be genuine. She could still do this. They didn’t know her, not really, and she could still use that.

“Okay, you got me, I’m having a bad day Sasuke-kun,” she demurred. Her voice was low and she brushed her bangs off her forehead with her still-shaking hands. I’m weak, look at me, fragile and breakable and not a threat in the least. I couldn’t possibly do anything to threaten the great Uchiha family.

Itachi looked to her and seemed to soften. “Is this about what happened yesterday?” He wasn’t smiling, of course, but he was as polite as she remembered, even more so now that he wasn’t pretending to be a terrorist. She still couldn't look him in the eye.

Yesterday. The marketplace. The old man and the kunai. Hero Sakura, rejected from the hospital, managed to save the day.

Sakura laughed, faintly, because he was right, it was about yesterday for all the reasons he wasn’t thinking.

“It was crazy. I can’t stop thinking about it and I still feel panicked. I had no idea what I was doing.” Too truthful by half, but Itachi looked kind and Sasuke looked like he was already bored and she would have said anything to make them leave. She would dance naked or trash the store or play with her own entrails just so she wouldn’t have to look at the two brothers any longer. She had left that day, that battle, behind years ago but now she was still there.

Sakura, for one second and one second only, wished she hadn’t healed her wrists. She gave herself that second, revealed in the despair she was allowing herself to feel, and then boxed that shit up.

She had a job. She would die when she was done.

Her other hand twitched towards her knife, a response to all the adrenaline in her system. Sakura normally would have taken care of her enemies by now, but this really wasn’t normal and they weren’t her enemies. Both brothers glanced down and their gazes stuck. The blood. Fuck.

“Mishandle a kunai?” Sasuke drawled, amused with some amount of sharpness in his eyes. Jesus, in the time he was dead she had really forgotten what a bastard he was. She missed it and hated herself for missing it.

“Yeah, well, you know me.” That was a safe response, right? She was hoping his answer would be “yes,” because then it would at least make one of them.

Sasuke reached inside one of his many pockets and withdrew a bandage. “Do something about it, and stop bleeding over merchandise you’re not going to buy.”

Yeah, he had worked with Kabuto. Same beautiful bedside manner. She laughed, almost uncontrollably. This was the first time he gave a shit about her in so long and it wasn’t even for her.

“Save your bandages, Sasuke-kun. I’m sure you don’t want to waste them on somebody like me.”

She couldn’t stop laughing. This boy still brought out every single one of her emotions like no other. The bandage hung in the air between them, a white flag. Sakura had been fighting for so long. She couldn’t stop now.

She wiggled her fingers at him, the cut on her hand healed before they had even seen her.

“You healed it yourself, then? Impressive,” Itachi said, appraising her in a new light. In his mind, she was one step closer to a medic and one step farther away from a one-time fluke.

But Sasuke got angry, for some reason, grabbing her wrist in a crushing grip that had to have been fueled by chakra. Sakura reflexively grabbed the knife from her thigh and struck at his hand. He dodged but she managed to graze him before she darted away. She couldn’t go brute force, not without her seal, so she needed distance.

Except Sasuke wasn’t going to attack again, wasn’t reaching for his sword, he was staring at her like she was the crazy one, like he hadn’t just grabbed her. She lowered the knife a bit but her grip was as tight as before.

Tenten had come by to see the commotion, of course, armed already and severely pissed off. “What the hell is going on here?”

Itachi, the only one calm in the situation, drew her back to the counter, muttering in a low voice. That left Sakura, armed, with Sasuke, wounded.

“Did you do it again?” he asked. His voice was low, dangerous, and he looked like he was ready to tear her apart. She had no goddamn idea what he was talking about. She decided shaking her head was the safest option but he just seemed to get angrier. “Don’t lie to me, idiot. Is that why you came here? Is this because of yesterday?”

“I came to a weapon’s shop to buy weapons. That’s all I want to do.” She pitched her voice low, soothing. She didn’t know this Sasuke, didn’t know how he knew her, and she was a bit scared. Itachi didn’t seem to think they would kill each other, though, and that was a comfort.

“That’s the fucking problem, Sakura. I can’t believe you would insist on being an idiot like this, especially now,” he hissed. He was holding his cut hand loosely, and it was an old instinct to take his hurts and try to make them better. He let her grab his hand and heal it, chakra dim and warm, but he kept hold of her hand when she was done.

“Why would you do this again?” He asked.

And it hit Sakura like a fucking freight train. Why Kabuto choose to stage her death as he did, why healing chakra came so naturally to this body, why Sasuke reacted to her bleeding and healed hand. What Shisui had been talking about when looking at her bloodied wrists.

Because it made sense, didn’t it? It made perfect sense, everything fitting together neatly. Sakura wanted to be a medic. Sakura didn’t have a teacher. Sakura learned how to heal to only way she knew how - by herself. She had done the worst thing a medic could do.

Because once someone starts, it's hard to give up. It’s the perfect practice, right? No one has to get hurt but her. Slowly, you lose the pain, the feeling, the fear. Tsunade had warned her time and time again never to go down that path.

But Tsunade wasn’t in this Konoha.

Someone had found out, obviously, Sasuke or someone who told Sasuke, and they stopped her from being a shinobi for it. A shinobi who hurt themselves more than their enemies was as useful as a sword without a handle: no control and all sharp edges.

That’s why she had “quit” being a shinobi - it was a kinder story to tell. And that meant that if Kabuto had succeeded, no one would have thought it strange. No one would have thought twice about the weak girl who couldn’t help but hurt herself more than she could heal.

With sudden clarity, Sakura realized that even civilians in Konoha had weapons in their homes. Not Sakura, though, she had nothing but blunted utensils. Did she remove the temptation herself, or was it someone else’s decision? And then how exactly did she get that knife?

No matter what, she had to deal with the Sasuke problem first. He was still holding her hand, gaze dark. Was he worried or annoyed? Probably the latter.

“Sasuke, I didn’t relapse or whatever you think. Why would I do that in a public store? No, I just wanted to look at some weapons and I was too clumsy. It’s been a while, you know.” She winked, smiled, drew her hand back before she could think about how long it had been since he had touched her kindly. Years. A lifetime.

Sasuke looked away, frowning. Well, the wink had probably been a bit much. Whatever, she would work with what information she had, and all she had right now was that Sasuke probably didn’t want to kill her. It was a great foundation for a relationship.

“Look, Sasuke, I know what I did was wrong. It was the worst thing I could have done. But healing that man in the marketplace, just thinking about it makes me what to do things the right way.”

He glared. Opened his mouth. Closed it with a snap. Looked at his hand where she had cut him, entirely healed, no scar remaining.

“You still want to become a medic?” His voice was a bit disbelieving, yes, but she could work with it. In fact, telling him (and by extension Itachi) was perfect. She was laying seeds within Konoha that gave credence to her quest to find Tsunade. If everyone believed she was seeking out the legendary Sannin to become a better healer it wouldn’t look suspicious in the least when Sakura brought her back. This was fucking perfect.

“More than anything,” she said, looking at his face and blushing. He looked uncomfortable. Some things never change. “And I know I was let go by the hospital, but I have a new plan.”

“And that is?” Itachi was back, Tenten by his side. She looked less angry, more interested. She was glancing at Sakura, and her hands and her knife, a wary look on her face. Sakura, with great effort, put the knife away. Itachi kept his eye on where it had disappeared on her body. She had cut Sasuke and he wouldn’t forget that.

Well, time to do this with an audience then. “I want to find Tsunade and ask her to train me.”

Sasuke fucking laughed at her. Typical as shit. Tenten was holding it in, points for her, but Itachi did look like he was taking her seriously. That could be a bad thing - if he started to consider her a threat, she would lose the only card she was holding.

She grinned, scratched the back of her head, and blushed. A cute little genin chasing her dreams, even if she was nineteen and also an assassin. Semantics.

Sasuke gave her a look of complete derision, which she found more familiar and comforting than his previous expression of worry. “You think you can find Tsunade and convince her to train you?”

“Well, why not? Anyone could find her easily enough through her gambling debts, and I think she could take me on given the right persuasion. I’m from Konoha but no longer a shinobi, which means I’m comforting but not truly representative of what she left behind. On top of that, I already of some measure of experience in healing, excellent chakra control, and enough dedication to track her down. I think I can do it.”

Well, Sakura hoped she could do it. She knew it would be easy enough to find Tsunade, Naruto had done it, but she didn’t know if Tsunade would take her on or return to Konoha with her. And Sakura was still debating telling Tsunade the truth of her circumstances. It ran the risk of Tsunade thinking she was crazy, but if Tsunade ended up believing her then she would have a stalwart ally by her side. They could return to the village, fix whatever was happening in the hospital with Kabuto, and then Sakura could fuck off to live in the woods or under a waterfall. Perfect.

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. “And if you can find her, how do you expect to get to her with the skills of a genin?”

Itachi quickly brushed his brother back and stood in front of him with the ease of a man who has had to cover for his brother’s rudeness many times. “What he means, Haruno-san, is that you might consider asking for an escort and hiring a few shinobi.”

“I’m not going to make this a C-rank. I can go on my own. I don’t have any obligations here to hold me back, and if I’m not even a shinobi than the Hokage can’t declare me missing-nin.” She shrugged. Looking at the two Uchiha looking at her in disbelief (and Tenten no doubt listening in the background) Sakura decided that buying weapons just wasn’t worth it. Not right now at least.

---

She ended up in the Hokage’s office a week later.

She had more memories here than she could count, painful and sweet and heartbreaking. Tsunade and Sarutobi and fucking Danzo. But instead, Minato Namikaze was in the chair, his wife Kushina by his side. Sakura didn’t know how to feel, staring at the man who had chosen to seal a demon in a newborn and had been her teacher’s teacher, but she didn’t think it was good.

Sakura was glad Naruto and his brother weren’t in the room. Seeing Naruto after all this time, after what happened - she didn’t know if she could keep her composure. And the little one was just annoying, so there was that.

Itachi was in the room, she could tell, hidden in the rafters and wearing an ANBU mask. She pretended not to notice him, but she could tell he was somewhere between amused and concerned by her request.

“You want to find Tsunade and bring her back? Really?” Kushina asked. She was staring at Sakura like they had never met before, which might have been true.

Sakura so far hadn’t gotten much more information about her team days other than she had been on a team with Sasuke and Naruto but she had not become a Chunin like they did, leading her to eventually stop shinobi work entirely. Certainly an illustrious career.

In her own world, the exam had been the kick in the pants to apprentice herself to Tsunade, but if Naruto had never been tasked to find Tsunade after the death of the Third Hokage, then she really would have nowhere to turn.

Sakura was truly a flower that bloomed in war. Only in hardship did she become the strongest Kunoichi in the world, a brilliant front-line medic that could heal with one hand and kill with another. This Sakura apparently wasn’t anything at all. In the end, it would be smarter to lay low, but Sakura was tired of being smart. She wasn’t in ANBU or ROOT anymore, she didn’t have to worry about her own Hokage killing her, and she missed her shishou more than she could say.

Sakura was on uneven footing with everyone in Konoha due to a past she had to part of, but Tsunade and her had never met in this universe. Now, Tsunade would only know her, not the weak Sakura who had been ignored. Sakura would do anything to start fresh, even draw undue attention to herself.

“I do. I want to track her down and see if she will take me on as an apprentice, and as a loyal citizen of Konoha I would request the permission of my Hokage.” She bowed low, etiquette she had been forced to learn for Danzo. She could physically feel the surprise of the people in the room, bar Itachi who was never surprised by anything, but she kept her head down. It was in Minato’s hands now. Either she got his blessing and went with grace, or she would go on the journey more quietly and return with some degree of resistance.

Before he decided, the door behind her opened explosively. Fucking Naruto, she knew, without a doubt, along with two other chakra signatures as powerful as the ANBU agent above her. With her luck, it would be Sasuke and Kakashi - all the people she was trying to avoid in one room together; ANBU agents were at the ready to destroy her if she made one slip, and escape was not an option.

“Sakura-chan? What the hell?” Naruto exclaimed off to the side. To rise or not to rise? The Hokage hadn’t given permission yet, which was a convenient excuse to hide the fact that she would burst into tears at the sight of her old friend and teacher. And also Sasuke, who she at least knew was still a complete asshole.

“Haruno-san, please lift your head, there’s no need for such formalities between friends,” Minato eventually said, embarrassment seeping into his voice. A weak Hokage then, another reason for Sakura to fetch Tsunade.

She lifted her head only to find Naruto had joined his parents behind the desk and that Kakashi and Sasuke were now leaning against the walls on opposite sides of the room. Kakashi was inscrutable but Sasuke was openly sneering at her. Joy.

Naruto was, for want of a better word, young. Blond-haired, blue-eyed, familiar whisker marks on his face with his heart on his sleeve. He was beautiful, carefree, unhardened by war. By death. This Naruto had a family and a village that loved him. She hadn’t seen Naruto in so long, she thought, and she had never really seen him like this.

“Hokage-sama, if this is a bad time I will leave and come back at your convenience. However, I ask you to take my request seriously. I have already compiled information about Tsunade’s last known whereabouts and habits, as well as information about her apprentice Shizune. I am determined to make this mission a success and bring her home.” Sakura brought the file out of a sealing scroll and lightly dropped in on the desk, far away enough from the Hokage that the ANBU wouldn’t worry. No need to alarm any Uchiha, though she doubted that they thought she was any threat.

She was still poor little genin Sakura, weak and directionless, in love with any boy that crosses her path. Chasing dreams after being fired from her last chance.

Naruto was the one to grab the file, flipping it through it so rapidly that she doubted he read a word. His face became shocked as he realized exactly how much information she had compiled but the library, old records, elders in the village, traveling merchants, and her own experiences. Sakura never forgot her beginning as a paper ninja.

Credit where credit was due, however, because Shisui had also been a gigantic help. He had access to records she didn’t have a change in hell in seeing, and after the confrontation with Kabuto, he seemed to support her plan whole-heartedly, even as he did grow tenser around her. He was catching on, she knew, but his resources would serve her for now.

“Sakura-chan this is incredible! How do you know so much?” Naruto exclaimed, still flipping through the dossier that weighed about as much as an academy student. He looked at her with a new appreciation mirrored by his mother standing beside him.

“Well, a good mission requires good information. I did a lot of research in the past week, and it will all be worth it if I can track her down,” she laughed, scratching the back of her head. Sasuke scoffed, she heard, but she could tell that Kakashi was getting interested. Him and the ANBU agent still silently staring at her.

It must have been out of character; Sakura had only learned the true value of preparation after joining ANBU. Team 7 had always been punch first, immediately get beat down and have Sakura heal you. After she started to work alone she realized that was a good way to get killed.

Old Sakura would never have known that, though, but it’s not like she could take the folder back.

“Sakura-chan this is so cool! Let me take the mission, dad, c’mon. I can bring Jiraiya, just the two of us like old times. Thanks so much, Sakura-chan,” Naruto gushed, stars in his eyes and voice booming across the room. Sakura did not flinch. She was better than that.

Ok, Sakura did flinch. Naruto had never tried to exclude her like that before - they were a team. Even as Konoha felt apart around them, even as Sasuke turned traitor, even when Tsunade died they were a team. Not anymore.

She wanted to hit him like she would before - that’s how they talked. But now he was the son of the Hokage, a stranger to her, and she couldn’t touch him.

“Hokage-sama, I am requesting this mission for myself. In the front of the file, I have listed the reasons she may respond well to my request.” She bowed again to hide her face, her emotions spilling out like they only did around Naruto. She never had this problem alone. “If asked by the son of the Hokage and her old teammate she may run due to her skittish nature and her well-documented hatred of Konoha. However, I have shown the potential to be a healer and my status as an inactive genin makes me a non-threat entirely. There is a chance she will take me on as an apprentice and return with me.”

Her voice was flat, calm. She forced her hands to relax. Sakura was professional, was the best goddamn shinobi in the world, and she wasn’t about to lose her chance to find Tsunade due to a Naruto that wasn’t even her friend. She put up with a lot of shit but she would not go down this road without a fight. And Sakura always won her fights. Well, she always survived them, at least.

Kakashi made a noise behind her, something questioning. She didn’t look. (She did.)

He looked good. Less burdened than she remembered. Same mask, same hair, same orange book in hand. Same familiar eye patch, which didn’t really tell her whether Obito had given Kakashi his eye or not. If Obito was running around with murder on his mind she would have to deal with that sooner rather than later,

Back in her Konoha, her relationship with Kakashi been complicated. He had failed her as a teacher, but he had made a good partner when she needed one. They had been the last two members of Team Seven standing.

Now they were all in one room and it was both better and worse.

He caught her eye and winked. She tried not to react, but she couldn’t stop the flinch that shook her. Ghosts all around her, each more deadly than the last.

“Ah, well,” Kakashi said, still staring at her, “Apparently she did help heal someone last week in the marketplace.”

Sakura turned away and went back into a bow. She couldn’t trust her own face not to reveal her secrets.

“Ah, yes, my son told me about what happened. You really saved him.” Kushina sounded like she was smiling. Naruto dropped the folder, judging by the thump, and started to furiously whisper about “That’s who he was talking about?” and “No way it was Sakura-chan!”

It hurt, but he wasn’t wrong. From the outside, the old Sakura had been a failed shinobi and a fired medic. She had few friends, few allies, and no influence in Konoha. Who was she to save lives?

“I believe that the panic I felt helped me access my chakra like never before,” Lie, lie, lie in a room full of killers. “And I think that training with Tsunade can help me more than staying in Konoha would. Especially given that the hospital let me go.”

The scars on her wrist burned. She could feel them itching, rubbing against the bandages she wrapped around herself this morning. Sakura had been killed in the worst way possible. And no one would have cared, not her old team and not her village.

Sakura was angry. Sakura was going to drag Tsunade back here and then tear Kabuto apart with her bare hands, would destroy his heart using the techniques she had stolen from him in the last world.

This Sakura had died, alone and bleeding out and terrified. Barely a shinobi. Betrayed. It was made to look like she was a dishonorable coward. No fucking more.

Sakura dared to look up, met the Hokage’s eyes with a burning glare. “I will do anything to take this mission, Hokage-same. I wish to help Konoha anyway I can and bring its princess home. Please let me do this.”

It had been so long since she had felt that famed “Will of Fire” burn within her but now she did. She felt it from her long hair to her blank forehead to her weak arms to the scars on her wrist. She was burning alive in front of the most powerful people in Konoha and she knew she could burn them down with her. She could take down this tower with one hand behind her back and laugh. She was Sakura Haruno and she wouldn’t die again.

Kushina and Naruto visibly gaped at her changed mood, sensing her chakra filling the room. She stopped trying to control it. Kakashi was tensed up, as silent as ever but hands out of sight, most likely gripping a kunai or two. Sasuke was silent, remembering the cut on his hand. Wounds she caused and healed. Sakura was a walking contradiction, one Sasuke was just discovering.

Itachi, still in his mask, landed on silent feet behind Minato, but the Hokage was smiling broadly. Sakura thought she might just be able to respect the fourth Hokage she had never had a chance to meet.

“You certainly have changed from your early days, Haruno-san. I can tell that sending you on this mission can only be a good thing, though I know Konoha will miss you dearly.” He smiled at the end but Sakura could only grimace. No, no it would not.

She turned her grimace into a smile with little effort, realizing that he had agreed to her request. She would find her shishou and save the hospital and kill Kabuto and prove herself as the strongest shinobi in both worlds.

“Thank you, Hokage-sama, I can leave-”

“But you won’t be going alone, of course.” He continued, smile fixed firmly in place. Right. Of course. She gave a short nod but it didn’t look like he was looking at her anymore. “Would bringing back the old Team 7 work? They could deliver you and let you talk to Tsunade in peace. You might not know this, but Naruto can be quiet.”

He and Kushina laughed at Naruto’s outraged yells but Sakura was more focused on what he had said. Team 7? Fuck that. Fuck Minato. Fuck her life.

Calm, calm, calm.

Sasuke chopped Naruto in the back of the head and accepted the mission. It started a fight between them, but she knew Naruto would agree to come with. Just like she knew Sasuke was wondering what the fuck was up with her.

Kakashi had crossed the room, picking up the folder Naruto dropped. He hummed as he flipped through it, more carefully than Naruto, and also voiced his assent.

It was happening, then. For the first time in years, for the first time in either universe, Team Seven was back together again for one last mission. And they were strangers.

Chapter Text

Sakura didn’t sleep the night before she left for the mission. Instead, she paced, obsessed, planned ahead, and made contingency upon contingency. Sakura was scared for the first time in a long time, for the first time since she laid the last of the Rookie Nine to rest, for the first time since Danzo took office and Sakura realized the only thing she could feel was tired.

Sakura was tired, before, pissed off on the good days. It was difficult to feel anything. But now, here?

Sakura, younger Sakura, hadn’t appreciated being weak when she was young. Who would? But being weak meant your enemies didn’t care, didn’t try, didn’t notice. Sakura was able to kill Sasori of the Red Sands because he thought she was weak and she hadn’t stopped there.

The only problem was, being weak only worked when Sakura knew what made her enemies strong. And now she didn’t, not really. She knew war-torn versions of her comrades, whose skills were sharp and whose bodies were broken. She didn’t know how to fight them anymore.

And she wanted to, a little bit. Because here was a perfect world, a better world, a world where her teammates were happy and Konoha was safe, and yet the old Sakura had still suffered. Still died. Even in a fucking utopia, she couldn’t find happiness.

So yeah, Sakura was angry about what happened to her, whether the old her had committed suicide or whether she had been murdered. Either way, why hadn’t anyone cared?

(But in her mind Sakura wondered if maybe it had been her fault. See, old Sakura had been the first to die here out of anyone, and this Sakura had been the last. Maybe she had dammed the other Sakura by daring to live when the others couldn't. Maybe if she hadn’t agreed to fight under Danzo this Sakura could have been happy. But she would never know for sure and she couldn’t ask anyone around her).

Sakura was old, older than she should be, and bitter. She would never be normal or fit into this Konoha. But if she knew one thing would remain constant in any world, at any time, it’s that Tsunade cared. Cared about Sakura and cared about Konoha. So she would find her teacher, befriend her again, maybe challenge her to a drinking game or two, and save Konoha all in one mission.

Then she could be done. Sakura was still so tired.

-

Sakura didn’t want to admit it, but she has had worse things happen to her. It just didn’t feel like it, standing next to the gates of Konoha, Kakashi a silent presence on one side and Naruto on the other.

No, this definitely felt worse than getting stabbed, burned, poisoned, and torn apart. Just seeing them without them knowing anything about her past hurt more than sewing herself back together had felt (and that had really hurt).

And, to top it all of, Kakashi had shown up earlier than Sasuke. This universe was a goddamn mess.

“Hey, hey, Sakura-chan! It’s been too long, huh? Years, right? I didn’t even know you were still a kunoichi, ya know,” Naruto said, hands flying everywhere and grin fixed firmly in place. But for all he was acting friendly, Sakura had the sense they hadn’t been close friends in this world for years. Maybe they’d never been close, which really was just great.

“Once a shinobi, always a shinobi. Even if it has been a while.” Sakura didn’t look for his reaction, already predicting the embarrassment he would show, but instead subtly looked at her old teacher. This Kakashi was about as expressive (not at all) but she could sense he was paying attention.

Sakura was confident in her ability to fool her old teammates, but Kakashi was smart. He would eventually be able to tell she was different, and that was dangerous.

Was that why he showed up early - to test her? To protect Team 7 from an unknown quantity? He didn’t seem suspicious, still holding that little yellow book of his.

If it came down to it, he would attack first with the kunai on his thigh, aimed for the throat. By the time she blocked it, he would have already moved, leaving a clone in his place. It’s possible he would go underground, even likely given that this Sakura had never shown any particular amount of strength. Would he reach up directly or go behind her and attack with a jutsu? Regardless, destabilizing the ground would be her first priority to get him off-center. She could attack him directly, letting his attacks hurt her and then heal them off, and that would give her a good opportunity to get close and go at him with a chakra scalpel. But she would be in trouble if he used his Sharingan. She could pull out her exploding tags at that point, but she had so few, and she was hopi-

“Maa, Sakura, do I have something on my face?” Kakashi asked lightly. Shit, she had been staring at him.

“Only your mask. I was just wondering why you got here so early.”

“Ah, yeah, about that…”

“I dragged him out of bed, Sakura-chan! Now if only that bastard wasn’t late,” Naruto trailed off, scuffing the ground with his shoe. So Kakashi told Naruto where he lived in this world? Back home, he had only told her after they were the only two members of Team 7 left, when he felt she would be in too much danger sleeping in a house alone.

But it didn’t matter how much he tried to protect her. He died first and she died in the forest. She missed him. She wanted to tell her Kakashi that he had been right, that she had been attacked in her house, even if it really wasn’t. She wanted to tell him that she missed him, that she forgave him for being a shitty teacher even if he didn’t forgive himself, that in the end they really had worked well together.

She wanted to tell Kakashi so many things, and he was standing right in front of her and worlds away. A world and six feet of dirt, really.

Sasuke finally showed up five minutes later, Itachi and Shisui by his side. Sakura couldn’t understand why this world’s Sasuke wasn’t as happy as Naruto: his family was alive, his brother was by his side, and he was well-respected in the village. Maybe he was like her, in a way, someone who needed war to live.

It was a sobering thought, mostly cause she fucking hates him, but she wasn’t blind to the similarities.

Itachi and Shisui were two steps behind Sasuke, carrying his bags and gently reminding him of survival tips and whatnot. It was weird, seeing him babied after she had looked up to him for most of her life because he was so strong. If not an Avenger, what was he?

He looked at the rest of Team 7 that was already assembled. His skipped over her, nodded at Kakashi, and smirked at Naruto. The usual, then. She was glad the dysfunction remained true in both worlds or she really would have difficulty adjusting.

“Sakura-chan,” Shisui greeted, “You look practically radiant this morning!”

She did not. Her hair was short again, cut last night by a civilian hairdresser who had lamented over her “looking like a man” the entire time. She was wearing black with one red ribbon as a final callback to her old outfit. Her gloves were chakra-conducting and had cost all of the savings in her account. She looked like she was going to war.

Shisui had told her last night he was going to try to follow her on this mission, making sure Kabuto didn’t try anything. She had no idea why he thought he needed him along with the rest of Team 7 but she couldn’t deny she wanted him there. Even if they didn’t know each other, even if she was still lying to him about almost everything, he was kind to her.

He cared about her, or about the old Sakura, or maybe both. It had been a long time since someone had smiled at her like Shisui did, like he was just simply happy to see her.

“Uchiha-san, you’re much too kind. In fact, you’re looking prettier than I do!” She smiled sweetly and then smiled again for real at Suishi’s choked laughter. It was good idea to plant the idea they were flirting - if worse came to worse and she and Shisui were caught on the mission together they could try to pass it off as some youthful love affair. She seemed empty-headed enough and he seemed flirty enough to make sense.

“Sakura-chan, please, please call me by my name before you depart on your epic and awe-inspiring journey! What if Tsunade-san kidnaps you and you’re never seen again? What if you save Suna from a giant monster and they name you the newest Kazekage? What if-”

Sakura couldn’t help it when she burst into loud peals of laughter. It echoed through the morning streets, more noise than she had made in years, and she was helpless. This wasn’t like her small breakdown in the weapon’s store - this was actual joy. Goddamn, she missed being happy.

No one had joked in her Konoha. Not the civilians, not the councilmen, and not the shinobi. She had read somewhere that the first casualty of war was fun. And like every other casualty, it stayed dead.

God, that was sad.

Regardless, Shisui looked enchanted from where he lay on the packed ground, on his knees and fake pleading with her. In fact, he looked like he had never seen her laugh before. So this Sakura was also sad, even when they were friends. Important to remember.

She helped him up, still giggling, lifting his entire body with one hand. She was too happy to remember to hide. “Now, Uchiha-san, I must be really nervous about this mission if I found your joke that funny.”

“Do you want backup? I’ll protect you!” He waggled his eyebrows at her and winked, another step to their cover. Or maybe he just liked flirting in front of his stiff cousins, who were both getting increasingly annoyed as the exchange went on.

Itachi was better at covering it up, of course, but she knew he was on to her somehow. There was no chance he knew the whole truth but he knew she was off somehow and he didn’t appreciate her flirting with his cousin before going on a mission with his brother. Itachi, like her, would do anything to protect what he loved and she was starting to get in the way of his mission. She would have to make sure Sasuke didn’t even cough while he was gone.

Kakashi was a silent presence behind her. She had never once thought that her sensei behind her could be a threat instead of a blessing, but things changed. Sakura changed.

He was on the same level of Itachi when it came to detecting potential threats and falling into that category never ended well. But he didn’t see her in the weapons store, hadn’t really seen her since she was a young girl, most likely. She could work with that.

“Oh, Sensei, please! Could we bring Shusui? He’s so cute, so much cuter than Naruto!” She wrinkled her nose in fake disgust and pulled Shisui into a hug, turning away from Itachi at the same time to face Kakashi. The lovestruck expression was easier to make than ever, making Sakura think that this version of her was A. actually in love or B. also a giant fucking liar.

Naruto squeaked in protest in the background as Sasuke shot her a disdainful look but Kakashi merely snorted in amusement. Good, or bad? Shusui seemed content enough to be used like this, also adopting a pleading expression, but he was also tense besides her.

Kakashi stepped away from the pillar he had been leaning against and came closer, close enough to see the facial expressions behind his dammed mask. He studied her, eyes crinkled in faked amusement, before making a put-upon sigh and patting her on the head.

“Unfortunately, your sensei is getting too old to adopt any more children, even one as cute as Shisui, You’ll just have to settle for us, Sakura-chan.”

He probably knew something was up then, but not all of it. And he didn’t look like he distrusted Shisui, so even if he was caught following along Kakashi wouldn’t hurt him. Would he attack her if she acted to off?

Without hesitation, meaning if things started heading in that distraction she would have to find a way to separate from the group entirely.

Well, Sakura had learned that she had always worked better alone regardless. She had learned to live without a team and grown stronger for it, and she had faced worst odds than an Uchiha, the Kyuubi container, and Kakashi of the Sharingan.

Well, maybe not. But she would learn to.

Sasuke, apparently fed up with a circus act that didn’t revolve around him, picked Shisui up to separate him and Sakura and then threw his cousin at Itachi. “Leave us alone and stop encouraging her stupid behavior. Let’s just get this joke mission over with.”

Shisui picked himself up and started complaining to Sasuke but Sakura still felt Itachi’s and Kakashi’s eyes on her. The same question arose in her mind - should she tell them? Could she? On one hand, less chance she would be treated as an enemy all the time, but there was also a chance that she would be thrown into the bowels on T.I., never to be seen again. Or someone higher up would hear about it, the same someone who arranged her murder, and would try again. And Sakura for all her strength was not infallible, especially with this undertrained body.

No, she had to keep quiet and explain herself in a different way. She just didn’t know how. What could adequately explain the sudden and all-consuming change she went through except for what actually happened?

Fuck. Long ago Sakura had been a paper ninja, able to plan and plot well enough to get herself to the top of the class. She could still do that, given time and privacy, but she had a feeling Kakashi would be keeping both of his eyes on her in the near future. It's what she would do when faced with an unknown quantity.

So she didn’t have a convincing lie, not yet. She would think of one, probably, hopefully. Maybe if Kakashi left her alone long enough for her to think. She didn’t think he would.

“Are we gonna go yet? I want to find Tsunade already!” Naruto yelled in the background. It broke the tension that had surrounded the group and soon enough it seemed like they were going to go. Before they passed through the gates, however, Sakura felt her pocket grow heavier, almost as if someone too fast to see had slipped her a letter.

-

Sakura had decided covering up her ability wasn’t worth the lost time, so despite the fact that it gave her chakra control away, she kept pace with her three teammates. She could tell that everyone, even Naruto noticed, but she just gave a grin and said she had done some practice in preparation for the journey.

Camp that night was silent, broken up by Naruto and Sasuke fighting over who caught the most food or who made the best tent. She ignored it and crawled in her tent early, confident in the fact that she would be left alone until her turn for watch.

In the privacy of her tent she was confident enough the open the letter. She tested it with her chakra first, waving her hand over it and waiting for a spark, but it wasn’t trapped. She settled in her bedroll and opened it, still slightly bracing for an acid spray. Nothing.

Well, not nothing.

“Dear Sakura,

I promise I’m only coming into your tent to talk!
I’ll be the one in black.

Shisui.”

She snorted against her will. What kind of shinobi left a paper trail like that just to confirm an already agreed upon plan? Maybe one who was trying to make her laugh, and she didn’t know what exactly to think about that.

Her tent jostled and Kakashi came through the front flap. In a second he took in her sleeping bag, her weapons laid out neatly waiting to be counted and cleaned, her armor, her scrolls, and the silencing seals drawn on the tent. He probably expected flowers or fairy lights or something.

“Ah, Sakura-chan, I hope this isn’t too inappropriate,” he grinned.

“Of course not, sensei, it’s been too long since we talked!”

“You’re right. In fact, I can’t even remember how long.” His hand drifted to his headband covering his Sharingan, So, they were doing this now, here. Private enough without her teammates, but if a fight broke out they would be immediately involved.

Then out of his jacket he pulled out a crow. “Mind explaining this, Sakura-chan? Getting midnight visitors on a mission is pretty naughty. I expected better from my adorable kouhai.”

The crow pecked at Kakashi’s hand before jumping out and landing next to Sakura. It squawked disapprovingly but was forced to jump when Kakashi threw a kunai at it. Sakura blocked it with a kunai of her own, hating that fact that the tent really only allowed her enough room to move on her knees.

Next, a senbon was thrown, then a knife, then three kunai at once. Sakura did her best to block all of them, but the small space meant that the last kunai thrown would either hit the crow or they would hit her. It wasn’t really a decision.

They lodged themselves in her upper right arm, not poisoned and sharped enough that she could barely feel it. Kakashi reared back, almost as if he hadn’t expected her to move in the way, and with a rush of wind, the crow transformed into a very angry Shisui. The tent was getting pretty fucking crowded.

“What the hell, Kakashi?” Shisui shouted, trying to launch his own senbon. Sakura, who was quite tired of being in the middle of a firefight in a tent the size of a small broom closet, decided to also take those to her other arm. Also not poisoned, thankfully.

“Can we stop?” She shouted. With her right arm she dug out the senbon, healing as she went, and then with her left, she dug out the kunai, She rotated her arms to get rid of the stiffness but it was mostly her shirt that was left worse for wear. She didn’t put on armor to go to sleep and that was probably a failing on her part.

Shisui and Kakashi both managed to look contrite and suspicious at the same time, probably because a ninja was always suspicious in some way, shape, or form, and once again Sakura was left with the question of what the fuck she was going to do. Shisui knew more than Kakashi but that didn’t mean he didn’t harbor his own suspicions about her sudden change. Kakashi was already pulling off the covering over his eye. Both were looking at her like she was a mix between an ally and an enemy. Like how her teammates in ROOT and ANBU looked at her. Like Naruto looked at her after she had finished burying the last of the Uchiha line. She didn’t like the look all that much.

The look disappeared quickly and was replaced by a frantic search for bandages that Sakura endured for all of five seconds before she chopped the two of them in the heads.

“They’re healed, okay, now can we discuss why my tent has turned into a fucking war zone?”

“I want to know why your dear ‘Uchiha-san’ followed us on this mission, and I want to know why the hell both of you are trying to pass off a foreign shinobi as my former student.” His voice was deadly and the way he was looking at the two of them had Sakura ready to bodily protect Shisui.

“This is Sakura,” Shisui insisted, palming some more senbon. Even she could hear the doubt in his voice, and she knew that she was about to find herself allyless caught between two of the deadliest shinobi in Konoha with backup for them right outside her door. Fighting wouldn’t be an option and she would never be faster than Shisui. So, talking it was. And considering both men had a Sharingan that could detect all her tells, it seemed like she would have to tell the truth.

“I’ll explain everything, but if the two of you keep fighting then not all three of us will make it out of this tent.” Her palms were up and open, her scars peeking out from beneath her bloodied sleeves.

Kakashi snorted but minutely relaxed against one of the tent poles. Shisui awkwardly crawled out from behind her to sit next to him, granting her a little ease without an enemy at her back. She could tell they were both primed for a fight but their experience as ANBU agents meant they valued information over action, thankfully.

She didn’t want to think about the expression on Shisui’s face, between betrayed and broken. It wasn’t easier to deal with the absolute distrust in Kakashi’s expression but it was something she was more used to dealing with, so there she focused.

“I’ll start with this. Three weeks ago, I was an elite ANBU agent, trained by ROOT, working for the Hokage himself. Two weeks ago I was killed in action and found myself waking up in an unfamiliar bathroom with unfamiliar wounds.” She revealed the extent of her scars, the ones she had neglected to fully heal even when she got her new chakra under control. She left them as a reminder - she couldn’t forget the Sakura who came before her.

“I healed them and noticed both a monitor tag on my ankle and a dead man at my door - Kabuto.”

Both Kakashi and Shisui raised their eyebrows at Sakura for calling Kabuto a dead man but didn’t react beyond that. They were both incredibly still (don’t think dead) and Sakura was doing her best not to think about escape routes. She was failing.

“I found myself in a Konoha I don’t recognize, confronted with past actions I have no memory of. I found myself an ex-shinobi, a failed medic-nin, and with slit wrists. I concluded that-”

She hesitated. What she was about to say sounded crazy and she honestly didn’t know how to get it out. She could barely put it together in her own head, how was she supposed to explain it to strangers?

Shisui touched her wrists then, almost a guilty look on his face. She let him study the scars and decided to forge on.

“I concluded that I am not in my Konoha, just another Konoha, with another Sakura who died at the same time I did, albeit in different circumstances. Except when I came here I could do what your Sakura couldn’t - heal my wounds. I somehow ended up in a different world, a different timeline, with all the same players but a very different history, a different Hokage, a different everything.

“I want to find Tsunade because as far as I can tell the circumstances around the old Sakura’s death are beyond suspicious: the monitoring tag, Kabuto arriving directly afterward, the fact that she committed after trying to apply for a hospital job-”

“Then what do you think happened?” Kakashi asked, knuckles tight around his weapon, eye spinning wildly. She couldn’t tell if he believed her or if he was humoring her but either way he sounded interested enough.

“I think Sakura found something going on in the hospital, something wrong having to do with Kabuto, and she was murdered and made to kill herself. Maybe the scene was staged or maybe a Yamanaka got into her head. Either way, she wasn’t meant to survive.”

Shisui made a stained sound and seemingly collapsed on the floor then, still holding on to her wrists.

“I can collaborate with that much. I was working with you - or her - to get access to the hospital. Then she got fired and I thought you changed because you were scared or because -” he stopped abruptly.

The tent was silent, a loud silence, for a minute before Kakashi pinned Shisui to the floor, kunai to the eye. “If what everyone has said so far is true, does that mean you got a civilian killed doing your dirty work, Shisui?”

For a second, the tense scene around her faded away, until nothing was in her head but the echo of “civilian.”

Civilian. Nobody. No relation or history. Kakashi, her failed sensei, her stalwart partner, her last ally, called her a civilian. And Sakura knew, of course, that this Kakashi wasn’t hers, didn’t belong to her, didn’t know her, but it ripped through her heart like a fist regardless.

In this world, she truly had been nothing. And maybe that was kinder, in a sense. Sakura was strong, stronger than everyone else it seemed, and it meant that she was the one forced to survive them all. Forced to remember. Even now, she wasn’t dead.

She was too good at introspection these days.

With a pinch to the ribs, she brought herself back and shoved Kakashi’s weapon away. Shisui was still lying prone on the floor but the blood from the cuts she received to her hands dripped on his face and made him flinch. She didn’t bother healing them before turning to Shisui and helping him up. He flinched away from her touch minutely and she flinched right back.

Kakashi wiped the blood off onto his parents and did not apologize in the least for pinning Shisui. “Explain everything about this ‘mission’ the two of you had been on.”

“What I’m about to tell you is top secret-”

“I’m loyal to Konoha!” Kakashi practically snarled, weapon once again raised.

“Are you loyal to whoever killed Sakura? Our Sakura?” Shisui pressed. “I’m loyal to my village, to my Hokage, but something is rotten in the hospital. I only know because the police force continues to get reports of missing children, orphans and urchins, from the surrounding provinces. Some genin, even.”

He sat up then, rubbing his eyes with tired hands and smearing the blood on his cheeks. He saw the stain on his palms and flinched. “There’s been suspicion for some time about how Orochimaru runs the hospital, about the councilman in charge, Danzo, and I wanted to see if I could get a way inside.”

“So you went to a civilian?” Kakashi’s voice was biting, and Sakura could tell how emotional he was by the way he was turned to Shisui and away from her, a potential enemy.

“Sakura has, fuck, had medical experience and enough kunoichi training to lie. But, more than that-”

“She came to you, didn’t she?” Sakura asked softly, mind awhirl. It made sense, in a way. Sakura would always want to best for Konoha, would always fight even without weapons.

“Yo- she did,” Shisui said, “And she was pretty insistent about it. I don’t know why she came to me though, why she chose me instead of Itachi or Sasuke. Maybe if she ha-”

“It’s simple, really. Sakura knew Sasuke would never take her or her accusations seriously, and she also knew telling Itachi meant Sasuke would find out. However, she still needed to go to someone in the police force she knew wouldn’t be involved, so you were the clear solution. Trusted by her old team and teacher but not too close to any of them. You were perfect for her.”

Sakura waved her hands to demonstrate, appreciating the logic of the other Sakura. Shisui would have been the best choice and she could see why she trusted him. He was good and kind, a rare thing for a shinobi and an invaluable trait in a partner.

Waving her arms around meant her hand bled again and Kakashi tossed her a roll of bandages, still barely looking in her direction. She ignored them and healed herself again.

“So,” Kakashi drawled dangerously, “You sent a civilian to spy upon one of the legendary Sannin, one who you’re accusing of treason, without any backup?”

“She thought up the plan! She said if we had too much contact that the operation would be compromised!” Shisui shouted defensively.

“It was anyway.”

Shisui once again turned away at Kakashi’s comment. Sakura rotated her arm, looked at her wrist, and decided that this tent was getting a little stuffy.

“So she died. Let’s find out why.”

“And you’re her, but from another world?” Kakashi turned to her, the attention off Shisui.

“Basically, yes. I'm Sakura Haruno, born March twenty-eighth to Hizashi and Mebuki Haruno. Blood-type O, second in my genin class, known as the rookie nine, and part of Team 7. I was a paper ninja, first and foremost, best friends with Ino Yamanaka before we split over our mutual infatuation with Sasuke Uchiha. My teacher was Hatake Kakashi but he dismissed me and my lack of motivation in favor of training Sasuke to use his Sharingan and Naruto to control his massive amounts of chakra.”

She shrugged her shoulders defeatedly. “In this world, I decided to become a medic-nin and was forced to become my own teacher, trainer, and victim. I was discovered and summarily dismissed from the genin corps. I had few friends around Konoha. I must have discovered something wrong in the hospital and went to Shisui about it, only to be killed for my efforts. That’s what I know.”

Kakashi made a complicated expression behind his mask and drummed his fingers on his book. “You could have discovered that by spying.”

Sakura shook her head. “You were my teacher and Shisui was my partner. You can tell my chakra signature is slightly different but still the same at its core - you know I'm Sakura, just not the Sakura you knew.”

“And you expect me to believe you were in ANBU?” he questioned, shifting to the side. She could tell he was in full interrogation mode now, and her answers now would either save her or put her in a torture cell. She did notice, however, that he didn’t mention ROOT. She filed that away for later.

For now, she nodded and traced on her upper arm the tattoo all ANBU agents received. “Codename was Rat.” Kakashi raised his eyebrows. “I wasn’t well-liked, I suppose.”

“And how did a medic-nin end up in ANBU? Assuming you were a medic-nin.”

“In my world, I was trained by Tsunade. I was more than just a medic-nin.”

Shisui pounced up from his defeated sprawl on the floor, still reeling, to stare intently at her forehead. “Did you have the seal?”

She nodded and tapped at where it had been. “I did by fifteen after training for a few years.”

Kakashi stared at her intently. “Fifteen? After only a few years of training?”

“I was a good student, and Tsunade an even greater teacher. She made me who I am.”

“And that’s why you want to find her,” Shisui said, staring at her bloody hands, but Sakura shook her head.

“I want to find her because your Sakura died trying to fix whatever is happening in Konoha and I know Tsunade is the only person strong enough to finish what you two started. Especially if it's against a Sannin.”

Shisui nodded and opened his mouth, probably to ask about her training or her seal, but was interrupted by Kakashi shoving him to the floor and stabbing three senbon into Sakura’s heart.

Chapter Text

Her first thought upon being stabbed in the chest with a couple of senbon is “Man, I’m glad he didn’t use his hand.”

Hands are always the messiest, she’s learned, hard to clean and even harder to forget.

Her second thought upon being stabbed in the chest with a couple of senbon is “Well, this is Kakashi.”

And that’s the crux of the matter, really, because Sakura was expecting to be killed days ago, weeks ago. In her Konoha, an interloper like herself would have been discovered and dismantled within hours. So, when telling two ANBU agents point blank that she’s wearing old Sakura like a meat suit, she expected the attack.

She was pleasantly surprised, however, when the three senbon in her chest didn’t touch her heart. Kakashi had gone nonlethal in his approach, meaning this was possibly just a test of her healing capabilities. Sakura had undergone worst tests.

So, with Shisui’s shocked exclamations in the background and Kakashi’s stare penetrating into her forehead, she pulled the senbon out and healed herself, just like the other day in the marketplace. She could feel the hit to her reserves now, after a day of traveling and an unexpected night of healing, but Sakura was unparalleled in her ability to ration to the smallest amount of chakra possible to heal a wound. As Tsunade put it, she went beyond chakra control to just being plain stingy. It had been funny at the time.

She tossed Kakashi’s senbon back at him (which he lazily blocked with his book) before patting her chest solidly enough to show it’s newly healed state. “Happy now?”

“Maa, you really were a student of Tsunade, hm?”

Shisui then delivered a solid kick to Kakashi’s stomach, folding the older man in half. “You tried to kill her for a stupid test?”

“If it’s any consolation, Uchiha-san, they weren’t actually lethal.” She tried patting him consolingly on the shoulder but it seemed like he was still tense. She tried to picture an ANBU agent not being used to violence before she realized he wasn’t used to violence between teammates, friends. Konoha was a village where teamwork was everything and Kakashi was the poster child for it.

But this Sakura wasn’t Kakashi’s teammate. This Sakura took Kakashi’s teammate’s life, body, and soul and paraded it around. This Sakura wasn’t just a stranger to Kakashi, she was an enemy.

So Sakura wasn’t mad. Sakura remembered the fourth shinobi war, the dirty trenches, and the bloodstained shinobi, remembered seeing old friends and enemies jerking their way across the battlefield, puppeted around even after their death.

Sakura was controlling Kakashi’s teammate like a puppet, and in his shoes she would have done much worse than throw some nonlethal senbon.

“If she’s being honest, it wouldn’t hurt, and if she’s not, we could easily take her to Torture and Interrogation. Which is still an option,” Kakashi drawled as he unfolded himself from the floor. He was stuck between serious and ambivalent, too shocked by Sakura to decide upon a persona.

So Sakura got it, she did, but she was also angry, the kind of angry special to being stabbed in the chest. So, with a charming grin, she turned to Kakashi and said “Extra credit!” before taking a chakra scalpel to his Achilles Tendon.

He was up with a curse, face twisted into a snarl, but just as quickly as she had cut him she healed him right up, still grinning.

Shisui from his spot in the tent looked very unhappy.

“Maa, I deserve that, don’t I?”

“Don’t you want me to show off the full extent of Tsunade’s teachings?” The tent was silent for a moment, each occupant wondering who was going to get stabbed next, before Sakura started rooting around for her notebook. She undid the seal she had layered over top of it and opened to the next blank page, pen in hand.

“So, Shisui, tell me about what she, or I, was investigating in the hospital. I have some idea based on my own world but I need to know the details for when I talk to Tsunade.”

So Shisui told her. It wasn’t pretty. By all accounts, Orochimaru was the perfect head of the only hospital in Konoha, turning the once unorganized building into a well-oiled machine. He was efficient, he was committed, and he was good at what he did. The bureaucratic oversight was done by Councilman Danzo, who used to advise the Hokage but was mysteriously given a new position by Minato.

According to Shisui and the records in the Uchiha police department, several missing persons cases all lead to the hospital. On top of that, some workers reported discrepancies in drug inventory - those same workers were soon fired and refused to talk to the police again. Danzo had neatly consolidated power around the hospital and any rich citizens who helped fund it, making it so even Minato couldn’t see deep into what went on within the hospital. All in all, it was exactly what Sakura feared it would be.

Shisui’s report finished within about an hour, all of it recorded by Sakura and most likely memorized by Kakashi. She tapped her pen against the paper, thinking hard before she was interrupted by Kakashi taking the notebook out of her hands and studying the page.

“ROOT mentioned again. What exactly is it, then?” He asked, nonchalantly flipping through the earlier pages. She tore the notebook out of his hand and whacked him over the head unconsciously, a move she often repeated in their time as partners together. They both froze, staring at the journal between them before Sakura cleared her throat.

“In my world,” she said carefully, parsing out what to reveal and what to keep hidden, “Danzo retained his position as one of the most powerful men in Konoha and used that to form a secret offshoot of ANBU called ROOT, almost exclusively filled with children he took, brainwashed, and experimented on in order to make them perfect soldiers.”

Shisui startled next to her. “You were a part of that?”

“After Danzo became Hokage every shinobi was subject to his whims and orders. ROOT was his personal army and we were all made his soldiers.” She practically spat out the words. She remembered the cold underground hallways, the empty dorms they were forced into. She hadn’t a part of ROOT for long before her inability to be controlled was covered and she was killed, but it was long enough to make her stomach turn. There was no place farther from Konoha than ROOT, buried in her village’s own heart.

Kakashi was stone-faced during her tirade but Shisui looked almost sick. Once again, Sakura thought him too kind by half in a world where a heart is a blazing target. She liked him all the more for it, liked him how she loved Naruto’s infallible goodness. Sometimes, being kind can be a shinobi’s greatest weapon. It’s almost never enough.

“How could an organization like that exist without us knowing?” Shisui whispered and Sakura thought:

Well, it was mostly white noise going through her head. The giant toad summons in the room - the Uchiha Massacre. Possibly the most important difference between the two worlds. How was she supposed to explain it? Could she?

She decided no, not now. Probably never. It was one part her being unable to explain it and one part wondering that if telling Shisui the truth could destroy him. She couldn’t imagine how he would react knowing he gave his life to save his family and Danzo destroyed them anyway. Sakura was many things, make into a weapon and a murderer and a liar, but she wasn’t cruel. In the mornings she would wake up, look in the mirror of an apartment that didn’t belong to her and never would, and told herself she would be better. Would at least try to be what this Konoha deserved. So no, she wasn’t going to tell Shisui until Danzo was already in the ground.

“He had too much power in my world,” she concluded would be the best truthful workaround, “And he was very good at using it.”

“So now he’s using what he has to build an army out of experiments in the hospital with the help of Orochimaru and Kabuto,” Kakashi finished for her.

“Bingo.”

Kakashi chuckled then caught himself and she had to mentally catch herself as well. The two of them were really the last ones standing when all was said and done, and that meant they knew each other better than anyone. Or they did. The two of them in the tent were the last ones left, an unmatched set, a Sakura who knew her partner too well and a Kakashi that forgot his student entirely.

Shisui ground his fists into his eyes in frustration. “Goddamit, how long has this been going on?”

“We can’t really know. Maybe since he started working for the hospital. Maybe since Orochimaru was appointed the head,” Sakura shrugged. Kakashi started twirling a senbon between his fingers distractedly, searching his own memory for anything he could dig up about ROOT or Danzo.

“What I don’t get,” he eventually said, “Is how the real Sakura found out before even the Hokage.”

Sakura and Shisui both paused to consider it before Sakura’s gaze was drawn back to her wrists. “Kakashi, was it common knowledge among shinobi why Sakura was dismissed from the genin corps?”

He picked up on her train of thought immediately. “No, but Orochimaru was the one she originally asked for training.”

“And I’m assuming she had to go to the hospital when she hurt herself more than she could heal.”

“So,” Shisui interrupted with dawning horror, “Danzo actually came to you knowing you someone with a skill for healing-”

“But no formal training, and no longer a shinobi of Konoha” Sakura concluded. “Perfect to work in the hospital and perform illegal experiments.”

“And Sakura immediately went to Shisui about it and tried to act as a spy inside the domain of the best liar in Konoha. And that’s why she was killed.” The senbon Kakashi had been holding was thrown into the ground with such force that it buried itself. Sakura couldn’t even see the top of it.

And there’s was Kakashi’s infamous sense of guilt. Over Sakura’s fate, over her time as a genin all those years ago, and over the fact that in her time of need she didn’t trust her old sensei. On one hand, Sakura was worried for Kakashi, she couldn’t help it, but on the other hand, she knew that this guilt would cement him as one of the most formidable allies she could find. She would get her partner back, even if it was just a shadow of him.

“Shit,” Shisui swore viciously. vocalizing what the other two occupants in the tent were too trained to say. “So, now Tsunade then. You think she can fix this?”

“And how did you meet Tsunade in your ‘world,’ Rat?” Kakashi asked. Sakura inwardly flinched at the name but accepted the reasons for why it was given and decided it wasn’t worth fighting about. He didn’t want to see her as Sakura, maybe couldn’t, and so reducing her to just another nameless ANBU was how he was going to cope. Far be it from her to judge his methods.

But she did find it funny that Kakashi could barely say the name ‘Sakura’ at all, either calling her a civilian or reducing her to an agent. Then again, Naruto would sooner give up on his dream of being Hokage than Kakashi would stop being a village full of issues.

“She became Hokage when I was twelve and I asked her to be my mentor. That’s how I met her. And she was one of the strongest, bravest, most honorable shinobi I ever knew. And she is the one person I trust to destroy Orochimaru, Danzo, and Kabuto.”

“Was?”

“Most everyone from my world is a ‘was,’” Sakura said softly. Shisui reached for her hand then, barely brushing the top of her palm. She tried to grasp his hand but her fingers wouldn’t answer and eventually, Shisui drew back.

Kakashi also seemed softer, more of a tired soldier than a wary ANBU agent. “You were the last of your team?”

“I was the last of every team in the Rookie Nine. I was the last truly loyal shinobi in Konoha.”

Shisui gasped. “How?”

“It’s the price of immortality, I suppose, and that’s what the seal grants to a user strong enough.”

“But you did die. That’s how you’re here.” Kakashi was blunt and Shisui hit him for it but Sakura appreciated the clinical tone. It wasn’t easy to talk about her own death.

“I had used my seal full up just weeks ago trying to save Suna. There had been an incident with some missing nin and a jutsu that nearly buried the village. Danzo didn’t care for his allies so I went alone to save as many as I could.”

“Could it have been done deliberately to deprive you of your seal?” Kakashi wondered aloud. Sakura shrugged in response - the world had gotten beyond fucked up in her last few months, and while she wouldn’t put it past Danzo to destroy Suna for his own ends she also wouldn’t put it past anyone else. When Gaara and his siblings died the power vacuum in the sand village was vicious and the entire region was destabilized.

Shisui punched the ground. “How could someone like that every become Konoha’s Hokage?”

“He murdered anyone who could oppose him and bought the civilian citizens, those left of them, with a combination of money and fear.”

“And what’s stopping us from taking this to Minato now? Why haven’t you?” Kakashi looked poised to throw some more senbon at her but she didn’t break.

“There’s no scenario, no world, where Danzo doesn’t have contingency upon contingency. Without solid proof and a Sanin on our side we won’t have enough to take him down.” She pressed the advantage by looking to Shisui who was nodding along. He was part of this, he must have had some inkling to the power Orochimaru and Danzo held. Kakashi was not as happy.

Sakura snorted. “You’ve already trusted me with something impossible, why stop? Konoha will always be my priority, no matter what. Not the man wearing the Hokage’s robes but the village. What it stands for. Who stands with it.”

Her hands were shaking again, she noticed, and she clasped them together. Shisui let out his breath in a whoosh, chuckling slightly. He turned to Kakashi and they did a bit of silent communication, the kind earned through years of partnership. Sakura did her very best not to feel bitter. She, as always, failed.

“Okay,” Kakashi finally said, “We’ll find Tsunade. I’m assuming you’re telling her?”

“Yes. She’ll know if we try to pull something over on her.”

“Okay. Once we tell her, we’re revisiting this conversation.”

Sakura’s sigh of relief almost made her collapse. This was a better outcome than she could have expected, honestly. Shisui gave a small laugh, the kind one makes after experiencing an adrenaline high. She gave a grin in return that only made him laugh harder. She hadn’t experienced that kind of teasing in a while and, hoping she wasn’t too rusty, threw his own letter at him.

“What kind of secret ninja,” she said, laughing, “Tries to sneak a secret message about a secret meeting past a shinobi with the Sharingan?”

Kakashi whack Shisui upside the head and the poor man let out a wounded yelp.

“Kami, Shisui, how are you a police officer, much less a shinobi?” She kept laughing but petered out after she noticed the tent hadn’t laughed with her. Instead, Shisui was looking at her in curiosity and fear.

“Who was your Shisui, Sakura?” he asked. Sakura didn’t know how to respond so she just shook her head no and tried to change the subject.

“Isn’t your shift coming up, Kakashi?”

Kakashi nodded and turned to Shisui, giving him the eyebrows again. Shisui nodded then turned to look sadly at Sakura again. “I’ll follow you in crow form for now. As far as Konoha is concerned, I’m on an extended visit to some outer towns to talk about the disappearances. So, you know, I’m not lying.”

Sakura nodded, still not trusting her voice, and in a flash, Shisui was gone with one parting touch to the hand. That left Sakura and Kakashi alone, something she both would kill for and something she would die to avoid. It wasn’t going to be fun, basically.

“Rat, why did you ask Tsunade to be your teacher?” He finally asked, positioned to be out of the tent in seconds if he didn’t like her answer.

“You know why,” was all she could say, but as he nodded and moved out of the tent she couldn’t help calling after him. “I forgave you for it.”

He didn’t reply.

-

She woke herself up the next morning three hours before dawn. It was cold, as summer mornings are, with the sense of impending rain hanging over the small camp. She took time to put on her clothes - black, nondescript, and which covered every inch of her skin - before she forced herself to face the outside world.

In the confines of a tent, nothing had to be what it was. Sakura could be home, or in the past, or maybe in a future where the world is a kinder place for children with dreams. Where young girls don’t have to burn their friend's body in the woods or in a trench. Where she never learned to be so cold.

But outside the tent, she saw Naruto and the fantasy was forced to end. He was sitting in front of the campfire, a luxury they would soon not have during the nights, and looked like he was concentrating intently on a kettle. It was odd for him to be making ramen at the end of his shift but she didn’t want to draw attention to herself, so instead she just quietly sat down across from him.

That seemed to have the opposite effect of what she had been going for and the instant he realized she was there he was up with a shout.

“Sakura-chan, when did you get so sneaky?” He mimed crying, or maybe he was actually crying, and sat back down again in a huff.

The kettle started to steam but didn’t whistle, confusing Sakura until she caught the edge of a seal. It was silenced as to not wake anyone else. It was kind of Naruto to do that and unexpected as well.

Her Naruto was kind, of course, all kindness and heart even to the end. He turned his humanity and compassion into a shield and a sword, could have saved the world with it in any other scenario. Her Naruto was kind enough to make her cry, but he was loud about his kindness. His kindness was over-the-top, something seen coming from a mile away, and so unsubtle in its approach it was charming.

So the silencing seal surprised her. What surprised her even more is when Naruto poured the hot water into a mug, stared at it intently until the tea inside steeped, and then handed it to her with a sheepish grin.

“I forgot milk and sugar, but I remember you bringing tea to training sometimes, and I thought it would totally get you ready for the mission!”

Sakura - who was an ANBU agent, who survived a war, who took three senbon to the chest last night, who looked in the eyes of dead men and smiled – started to cry. Silent tears because nothing could make her scream out loud anymore, but tears nonetheless. She didn’t even grab the mug she was too surprised because this was Naruto, her best fucking friend, her hero, giving her tea when he didn’t even know her, not really. Her Naruto had fought for her, with her, had bandaged her wounds when she ran out of chakra healing him, had died trying to give Konoha the Hokage it deserved. But she couldn’t remember if he had ever made her tea.

So Sakura grabbed the mug and cried and Naruto panicked in the background and she couldn’t find it in herself to be composed. She was a world away from year and what felt like a decade away from happiness and she hadn’t cried in so fucking long so she cried now, in some small throwaway camp in the middle of the forest. She cried because she missed her family more than she could say and even in this mirror of her reality she would never really get them back. She cried because she really did like tea.

“Thank you, Naruto. I’m excited to be on this mission with, with you.” Her voice only marginally cracked, something she was proud of. Naruto was staring at her with concern, eyes broadcasting every emotion, before he lunged around the fire to give her a big hug. The force of his affection nearly made her spill her tea but a hand pressed against the mug and offered a counterbalance. Naruto had planned to be so enthusiastic then, but still wanted her to have her tea.

Was it his parents that allowed him to be so consciously kind? That gave him tools he never had before? Was it his parents that gave him kindness he could turn on and off, so dismissive in the Hokage’s office and so sweet in camp?

Sakura didn’t know. She didn’t even know if she cared. Naruto had made her tea. Shisui trusted her. Even Kakashi knew the truth and was still going to find Tsunade. Naruto had made her tea.

She would give herself this cry. She really hadn’t slept in the past few weeks, or years, and she deserved it.

Naruto rubbed the back of his head in the familiar way he always did and gave her the same smile he always gave. “You’re welcome, but if you’re so happy I can make you tea whenever, Sakura-chan!”

“Really?” She asked, smile teasing the edge of her lips. Naruto’s ability to say impossible things and believe in them wholeheartedly was something she had missed.

“Yeah, believe it! I know we haven’t talked a lot cause I’ve been training hard to be the Hokage but you were so cool the other day! I bet you could be like the Vice Hokage if you wanted to be!” Sakura laughed at that and she couldn’t even tell if he was choking. But he was nice and the tea was warm and the morning was quiet. Sakura had never had so many nice things happen at once in the longest time and she was going to treasure this, goddamnit. Because Naruto wouldn’t lie to her, not in this universe and maybe not in any universe. Naruto wouldn’t interrogate her in a weapon’s store or try to kill her to prove a point – Naruto trusted her. And she knew it was dangerous for him to trust so easily, knew he shouldn’t, but Sakura reveled in it. Though she could stay in this Konoha once all was said and done if that meant she could have her best friend back.

Sakura gave herself plenty of allowances that morning, until the tea ran cold and Naruto went back to his tent. Sakura let herself be happy.

Then she got back to work.

-

They traveled for four days on the way to Tsunade’s most likely whereabouts. It was silent for the most part, for which Sakura was thankful, but she could tell things weren’t really perfect.
Kakashi and Shisui had another few meetings in her tent trying to hammer out a general plan, but the conversations weren’t as productive as they could have been given Sakura’s reluctance to reveal too much detail about her world and Kakashi’s reluctance to acknowledge her existence. It was getting pretty fucking annoying. Shisui was trying at the very least, but she had a feeling he was wary of her as well.

He should be, she knew, but it still hurt.

Third night, third meeting, he had asked her what she planned to do when they won. Never if, with Shisui, always when. Kakashi then gave her a look, almost the first time he had looked at her all day, and in an instant their language was formed. Because Sakura was more like Kakashi than ever before - a child soldier, carrying remnants of dead friends - and both of them knew that Sakura didn’t have a plan for after. Or, more accurately, she did and it involved dying or leaving forever.

And then Shisui saw the look and understood what it meant because despite everything he really was an ANBU agent, and then he got angry because why would Sakura waste her life like that anyway? And then Kakashi got pissy and started yelling because she wasn’t Sakura, and then both started yelling at each other and Sakura left the fucking tent.

So it could be better. (Kakashi, despite being one of the fastest ninjas alive, did end up with bird shit on his uniform the next morning, and Sakura laughed so hard that even Naruto told her to be quiet. Sasuke was silent in such a way that everyone knew he was silent and it was for a very important reason.)

Team Seven was left in a surprisingly quiet mission until the small village of Jecho rose out of the forest. It was a small place, surrounded by woods and bisected by a river; it subsisted mostly on trade and travelers, which meant the three biggest buildings in town were the inn, the brothel, and the gambling den.

They stopped about 500 feet from the perimeter, hoping Tsunade wouldn’t sense Naruto’s monster chakra, and tried to come to an agreement about who would go in and who would stay behind.

“I’m going!” cried Naruto.

“No, I’m going, idiot,” snarled Sasuke.

“We’re both going!” cried Naruto, and on and on and on until Sakura wished Kakashi would throw a chidori her way instead of some measly senbon.

Sakura sent a pulse of chakra to Kakashi and caught his eye, hoping he would work with her as an operative if not a person. He tapped his finger on the edge of his book - twenty five. She would have twenty five minutes then, to find Tsunade, before Kakashi would lose control of the boys. She could do that.

Her substitution with the log twenty feet below was seamless, and she was confident enough in her shadow clone to be a believable Sakura. One who was quiet, didn’t talk, didn’t fight.

She was in the town, chakra masked and hair up, not thirty seconds later. Another half a minute after that and she was in the casino. No time to waste and all that.

The building had one floor and was about as big as Sakura’s childhood home. There were only a few tables and from first glance Sakura could tell Tsunade wasn’t here. She released a heavy sigh before letting her hair down, unzipping the front of her shirt a bit, hiding her weapons, and sauntering over to the barkeep.

He was young, mostly staring at the waitresses walking around, but seemed confident enough behind the bar to make Sakura think this had been his job for quite a while. With any luck, he had seen Tsunade pass through and maybe even heard her drunkenly ramble about her next destination.

“Sake, please,” she asked, bending over the bar just a bit. He took a peak and winked at her before turning around and sighing.

“I’m afraid we’re out, miss. Can I get you anything else, something fruity, perhaps?” His hand moved to touch hers on the table and she giggled at the contact. Her other hand toyed with an empty shot glass on the bar as she pouted.

“Did my sister drink it all up again?” She collapsed on the bar in exasperation and she knew she already had him, plus every other patron of the bar, hooked. “Tsunade always drinks too much and never leaves anything behind for me!”

“You mean the bust- beautiful blond who was in here a few nights ago?”

“The same.” She pouted again and leaned back on her bar stool. She had about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes left before she could report it was a bust and she wanted as much information as she could find. “Hey, do you know where she’s going? We’re supposed to travel to Suna together for a wedding but she always breaks off on her own to gamble and now I need to find her.”

The barkeep looked a bit skeptical but another flash of cleavage won him over. She loved civilians. “Well, I heard her say she was planning on staying till the end of the week, but she split town when some ex-boyfriends of hers showed up and she hasn’t been here since.”

Sakura froze for a millisecond before smiling again. “Oh Kami, which one was it this time?” She giggled again, waved her hand, took a sip of the fruity drink he ended up giving her and immediately purged it from her system. At least it didn't taste poisonous.

The barkeep smiled when she drank and started to make another one. “It was two guys, actually, both in some dorky cloaks - black with red clouds. Weird, right?”

“Oh,” she said, staring directly at the crow on the building across the street, “That is weird.”

Chapter Text

Sakura went through the seven (eight? nine?) stages of grief in quick succession when she realized the weird guys in cloaks were most likely Akatsuki. The next five minutes were a fun game of multitasking as she tried to both questions the absentminded bartender and stave of her panic attack at the same time. She had more success with the latter. She realized the man would give her nothing, which meant the next logical step would be to stop at the inn and see if she could tell which Akatsuki members it had been. Unfortunately, she was waylaid by Shisui dropping down from the rooftops and pulling her into an alleyway, a move that nearly made her take his head off. She thought she saw a flash of red out of the corner of her eye as she was pulled away and rechecked her masked chakra.

“I think I have some ba-” he began before she slapped a hand over his mouth. His eyes were darting around and she could tell he had seen what she had.

“If it’s that members of Akatsuki are apparently after Tsunade as well, I already know.” Shisui gaped at her before sheepishly scratching at the back of his head.

He leaned in closer, peeking around the corner. “I guess I should have expected you to be good at espionage.” He glanced back and gave her a thumbs up before scouting again.

“I’m passable,” she said, checking the rooftops, “But the Fourth Shinobi War involved more open attacks than hidden espionage, so that’s what I became really good at.”

Shisui started and turned to her, forgoing stealth in his shock. “Fourth?” Sakura winced, realizing that she shouldn’t have given that much away. She shrugged her shoulders, probably not the best response, but the quickest and quietest ones.

She felt a massive chakra signature heading down the street, one she would recognize in her sleep, and made the hand signal for camp at the shell-shocked Uchiha. He was already running right next to her, and once again she was forced to marvel at his speed.

She didn’t feel a pursuit, nor did she hear anything that might suggest they had been spotted, and she let herself hope. She still took the most winding path back to camp as she could and Shisui followed her lead. He was tense when they ran back to the forest and he split off from her about halfway back. They were going to have a long conversation tonight, she could tell.

Getting back to the tree where her clone was provided her with no difficulty, and she decided to be open about going on ahead to the village. If they knew Tsunade wasn’t there, Naruto and Sasuke probably wouldn't investigate for themselves, and that meant no chance of them running into Akatsuki members. Sakura didn’t know if this Akatsuki wanted to hunt the tailed-beasts but she wasn’t going to take any chances.

She dismissed her clone before hopping to the tree and met Kakashi’s raised eyebrow with a shake of her head. Naruto and Sasuke rounded on her immediately but she raised her hands in fake surrender before the yelling would start. “She’s not there.”

“Excuse me?” The following conversation went about as well as could be expected, but Kakashi had the decency to pretend to be on her side when she started tapping out “enemy” in code on the tree branch. He ordered everyone back to camp to plan their next move but lingered a moment with Sakura.

“Enemy?”

“Two Akatsuki members in town asking after Tsunade. Identities unknown. Shisui might know more,” she reported. Kakashi tensed for a second before nodding and running back to camp. When they got there, it was to Sasuke and Naruto wrestling a bit away from the still lit campfire, apparently having gotten into an argument in the ten seconds the group was separated. Kakashi tasked them with hunting for food and whatnot before covertly but quickly ducking into Sakura’s tent, where Shisui was already waiting.

“My barkeep only knew about the cloaks,” she started, “Do you have any idea what members are hunting her?”

“An idea has to why now would be good as well,” Kakashi commented lightly. At odds with his tone was the fact that his porn book was gone and his posture looked ready.

Shisui wasted no time. “One apparently had blond hair and an abrasive tongue, and the other had red hair and a creepy stare.”

Kakashi cursed. Sakura knew Kakashi cursed because she heard him do it, saw his hand clench, but she couldn’t really tell what he said. In fact, she didn’t even know what Shisui said. She heard a rhythmic clicking in her head, and she couldn’t help but think that in the right light her tent almost looked like a cave.

The thing about Sasori, more than any of her other opponents, was that he was really the first ninja to kill her. She could think of some unfunny joke about kunoichi and their first times, but every time she thought of Sasori she thought of the sword going through her chest. She thought of him lunging forward. She thought of Sasori “letting” Chiyo kill him after the poison master saved her life.

Sasori was her first real opponent, the first time she really fought back against the world. It was one of the most intense fights of her life, even to this day. No one involved was a reincarnated god or had a bloodline limit that transcended reality or some bullshit. It had been three ninjas in a cave (or two, or two hundred, depending on what was counted) fighting to the death. She still remembers Sasori saying she would be a fine puppet. She was horrified.

Then, in no time at all, she made herself Chiyo’s puppet. Ninja had no right to be scared. Ninja had no right to own themselves in a fight.

And Sakura had never said it, not really, but Sasori acknowledging her by the end of it all was one of the worst things he could have done. Now she was a real kunoichi, a real threat, and hiding would do as much good for her as it did for Tsunade. The best ninjas are the ones who are never allowed to be invisible, and the day she walked out of that cave and Sasori didn’t was the day people saw her.

Now, all these years later, after being stabbed more times than she could count, she could admire Sasori. He killed his kage, and she wishes she could have done the same. He was his own master by the end of his life, something Sakura had never achieved. She was always serving Konoha, and when it died she served its ghost. Sakura was incapable of controlling her own strings.

Sakura was roughly torn out of her cave by Kakashi shaking her shoulders. “You know Deidara and Sasori?”

“Know them?” She laughed, feeling off, feeling like a cross between a murder victim and an evil mastermind at the same time. “I killed one of them.”

That was, of course, when Naruto was thrown into the side of her tent.

Sakura, who now realized that she was entirely remiss in not warding her tent against her allies, did her best to tear a rip in the fabric to let Shisui escape. She practically leaped across Kakashi’s lap to do so, which was unfortunate considering he was trying to shove Naruto out of the tent at the same time. In the midst of all this, Shisui flashed out of the hurricane, right into the trap of Sasuke’s waiting arms.

Shisui gave a yelp but recognized his own cousin quickly enough to not make an offensive move. Sakura found herself in a tangle of limbs with Kakashi and Naruto, possibly creating the least graceful moments in all of their lives. They all tried to subdue each other, but the lack of actual malice meant most of their practiced moves were off-limits. Elsewhere, Shisui had managed to tackle Sasuke to the ground and was now fending off his younger cousin’s ire.

Kakashi and Sakura eventually substituted themselves out for the two logs around the campfire, only to find Naruto already there - apparently it had been a clone, albeit a sturdy one. He grabbed the two of them by their collars and started the shake, ranting the whole time, the same as Sasuke. Neither of them were very happy that their teammates had been keeping secrets and that there was a hidden ANBU agent trailing them.

So they had planned this then, which was impressive, and something she should have accounted for. Sasuke never left the village young, never betrayed their team, of course Naruto and he would know how to work together. They were always partners, even across sides of a war, and they would always work better together than they ever had with her.

Sasuke used a minor fire jutsu to escape the sheepish Shisui and glared at his two team members. “What the hell is going on here, and why does a civilian know before I do?”

“And me!” Naruto added. Sakura glanced to Kakashi hoping to get a signal as to how he wanted to place this considering he probably knew the two of them best, but he had already dragged out a porn book. Nonchalance, then?

Shisui was making some covert hand signals, but the sign language used by ANBU was constantly changing over time, which meant it also heavily differed over universe. She could only guess at a few, most likely “lying” and “team,” before Sasuke slapped his hands down roughly. Shisui allowed the abuse and sent a beseeching look to Kakashi, who discreetly noticed and then obviously ignored it. Sakura snorted against her will and Shisui’s wounded sound before disengaging her collar from Naruto’s hold.

“So,” she started, before realizing she wasn’t really going anywhere. The thing was, by the time Sakura had gotten good at lying and killing (gotten good at being a ninja, basically) both Sasuke and Naruto had been dead. She couldn’t recall ever having to go on a mission with the two of them that involved her lying. That was pure ANBU, pure ROOT, and she didn’t know if she was capable of toying with her original teammates.

Because Sakura could fight gods and monsters and herself all damn day but she was never really going to be anything more than a weak little genin when it came to her teammates. Always on the sidelines, always letting them take charge. And here and now, with her palm more calluses than skin, she didn’t know if she could touch them, much less hurt them. “So,” she said, and she didn’t say anything else.

Shisui was beside her in an instant, trying to comfort her, some remnant of his relationship with the other Sakura. She moved away, but she could never be as quick as Shisui, and she still felt the phantom touch on her shoulder. Kakashi also managed to disentangle himself from Naruto and only clasped his book with one hand. He was preparing for something, but she couldn’t tell what. She hoped it wouldn’t involve launching more weaponry at her; with Akatsuki involved, Sakura had to begin storing and conserving as much of her meager chakra supplies as she could.

Shisui, hands grasped into her fists after Sakura stepped away, put on a charming smile. “Looks like the mission parameters changed, little cousin, and it’s going to be me, Kakashi, and the Tsunade expert from here on out.”

Sasuke growled at Shisui but Kakashi stopped him with one look. “Shisui’s right, things have changed, and I’m sending both of you back to Konoha.”

Naruto was visibly hurt by all this. “But Tsunade’s my family! And if it’s dangerous, Sakura won’t be able to protect herself,” he cried. With things at camp heating up, Sakura did another chakra pulse, but still detected nothing in the forest around her. However, once again, she underestimated her older and alive teammates, and Naruto caught her in her act.

“What are you checking for, Sakura-chan?”

“And don’t give me some ‘it’s classified’ bullshit, sensei, Sakura’s a civilian and I’m a jounin!” Sasuke bit out. Despite his apparent rage, Sasuke also started scanning the area around camp.

Sakura was stuck at an impasse. The question remained: could she take on two members of the Akatsuki - both stronger than their known iterations - with only Shisui and Kakashi as backup? The two of them were powerful, yes, and they would have a medic on their side, but Sasori was almost immortal and Deidara had a bomb for a body. The safest bet would be to include Sasuke and Naruto in the fight, but that meant she either didn’t fight or she would be forced to reveal her battle prowess, something not easily explain to her teammates that saw her get booted from the genin corps.

Not to mention, if the Akatsuki had found Tsunade, who probably still had a crippling fear of blood, and Shizune, who was a poison expert and not a fighter, they would have to defend the two of them.

Sakura needed time to think, pages to scribble on, and probably the ability to see into the future. This was Tsunade, her shishou, and Sakura couldn’t fail her. Not again, and especially not here.

So could she trust Naruto and Sasuke to fight in her place, or could she trust them to keep her secret? That was the choice she had, really, and she didn’t want to make it without confirming with Kakashi and Shisui. Except now she couldn’t because all three of them had underestimated Naruto and Sasuke and fallen for their stupid trap. Amateur to the last, Rat.

She tried to speak again over the yelling. “How about-”

“Great idea Sakura, let’s let the two boys pack!” Shisui grabbed both her and Kakashi and sprinted to the treeline, managing to carry the both of them without a hitch. Wasn’t just speed, then.

Naruto and Sasuke both tried climbing the tree after them (well, Naruto actually just performed an eight-feet vertical leap) but Kakashi silenced them with a stern “That’s an order!”

Sakura hurriedly carved some silencing seals into the bark before the conversation began and turned around to see her two partners doing the same. She giggled, nervously, but truer than her laugh had been before. Shisui also noticed and chuckled, but Kakashi merely put away his kunai and his porn. At least he was taking her seriously.

“You think we need to other two to face the Akatsuki agents,” he stated without preamble.

Sakura nodded and started fidgeting with her fingerless gloves. “The way I see it, Akatsuki’s been hired to hunt her down now of all times because for the past week I’ve been publicly gathering information on her. Being visible about it helped my case with the Hokage, but now I see it probably means Orochimaru knows.” She couldn’t help the mountain of guilt rising in her at the thought of leading Akatsuki to her shishou.

Shisui cracked his knuckles as he thought over what she said. “It’s probable,” he said, “Considering everyone knows Tsunade’s the best medic out of the Sannin. Orochimaru’s more of a scientist.”

“So if Tsunade came back, he would lose his position,” she concluded, daydreaming about ripping out the man’s tongue and choking him with it.

“And,” Kakashi drawled, “They know that the girl who is onto Danzo’s conspiracy is now hunting down the one woman capable of taking down the head of the hospital. They know you’re onto them-”

“So their orders are probably to kill both Tsunade and me.” Silence fell over their group as they considered Danzo’s angle.

Shisui let out a grunt of frustration and glanced down at the camp. Naruto and Sasuke had packed everything up efficiently and it looked like Naruto was now laying down traps. “He couldn’t possibly want everyone on the mission dead - Naruto is the Hokage’s son!”

And then Sakura had a terrible thought, a terrifying thought. Because Danzo wanted to be Hokage - he always wanted to be Hokage. And Minato loved his son - he always loved his son. And if Minato’s son died on a mission with an Uchiha child and one of the most powerful and trustworthy ninja Konoha had to offer, the entire village would be thrown into chaos. Danzo and Orochimaru could make a perfect opening.

So Danzo could very well want them all dead, and now Sakura’s managed to set Akatsuki on her best friend’s tail the second time in her second world. .

“You’re wrong, Shisui,” she said, and her voice was strong but her hands were shaking. She was shaking apart. “Danzo would do anything for a chance at power-”

“And the ultimate power in Konoha is the Hokage’s seat. Killing Naruto would only help destabilize the Fourth.” Kakashi’s voice was low. He looked at her, a glance, and a nod was all he needed to know that Danzo was the Hokage that had gotten Sakura killed. Which meant his plans went far beyond a hospital. Which meant the three enough wouldn’t be enough to stop him, even if they did get Tsunade.

The tree started shaking and Sakura looked down to see Naruto leaping up the branches. “Two chakra sources - coming in five minutes!” he shouted. Sasuke was already staring westward with his Sharingan out, looking for the danger.

The three of them lept for the tree and gathered in a huddle. Shisui braced to run in the opposite direction, ready to be a hidden weapon, before Sakura caught him.

“Sasori and Deidara are a puppet master and a bomb expert, respectively. Sasori most likely has command over three hundred puppets by now, and he does have a puppet for a body. He’s functionally immortal until his heart is pierced.” The tension in the camp was rising drastically as the clock ran down. “Deidara’s tricky as hell and can make powerful bombs at will. His left eye makes him immune to genjutsu, even the Sharingan, and he can make his body a bomb as a last resort. Sasori killed the Third Kazekage and uses his body as a puppet. In my world, Deidara was able to kill the Fifth.”

Everyone in camp turned to stare at her in shock and Kakashi made the fastest recovery, giving a firm nod and sending Shisui off. Sasuke and Naruto were less accepting.

“Sakura-chan,” Naruto said. He floundered for a minute, a minute they didn’t have, before shaking his head. “Sakura-chan?”

Sakura knew what he was asking and neither she nor Kakashi knew what to answer with. In the pause, Sasuke fell into a fighting stance.

“I am Sakura,” she finally said. “But there are some things you don’t know about me.”

“Like how you have intel on Akatsuki members, know my cousin, and the fact that you’re talking about a different ‘world?’” Sasuke scoffed but his gaze was sharp. Now even Sakura could feel the chakra signatures of the approaching mercenaries.

Kakashi put away his book and removed his eye patch, adopted eye spinning away. Sakura briefly wondered about the Obito of this world before locking the thought in a box.

“She’s on our side,” Kakashi finally said, “And we’re going to need all the help we can get.”

Chapter Text

When Sakura was younger, young enough to let her parents swing her between their arms when walking down the street, she used to think ninjas were so cool. Who wouldn’t? They got to run on rooftops and handle all sorts of pointy knives and they could even disappear.

She saw a lot of ninjas in her first few years of growing up, shinobi forced to keep the peace inside of Konoha in the absence of their police department. They weren’t meant to be seen, of course, but the nice ones would wave at her, would flip around to amuse some kids. Mostly genin, the younger ones, but she distantly remembered jounin like Genma playing peekaboo in the park and petting dogs. The only version of therapy they were willing to accept, most likely.

Konoha was built on the backs of its shinobi, both clan and clanless, and they only way to consistently fill up the ranks was to make it every child’s dream. Soldiers were soldiers, no matter how young, even in Konoha.

Sakura didn’t feel cool standing in the remains of their camp, left as the obvious bait. Naruto’s chakra still coated the area like a thick storm but that could also be used to their advantage, covering for the two Uchiha in the trees and Kakashi hiding beneath the ground.

She knew the sight of her would throw Akatsuki off - pink hair, soft skin, fat tears. They would never see her as a threat even if she tried to pull a knife on them. But a knife wouldn’t work on Sasori or Deidara anyway, tricky bastards that they were. This fight was going to be tough, might destroy the forest around them, and more likely than not end with someone getting hurt. Should she save her strength to heal her team? Could she, facing against these enemies?

Worst comes to worst she could drag her teammates to Tsunade for healing, killing two birds with one punch.

Sakura did her level best not to think about the last time she was caught in a fight, did her best to forget how exhausted her reserves had been, how sluggish her limbs. She had always been a bit of a shit sensor compared to others and she barely noticed when two full squads surrounded her.

None had been masked. They planned to kill her or die trying on their Hokage’s orders. They did both, in the end. Sakura had lost her temper - badly - had raged like a tempest against those agents who had come to kill her. She had used every bit of her power tearing them to shreds and died from her wounds still snarling like an animal. Viciously satisfied and wishing she had just enough energy to get to Konoha and tear out Danzo’s throat with her teeth.

The fact that she had bled out in both worlds wasn’t lost on Sakura, and the number of times she had revisited both of her deaths was only equal to the number of times she revisited the deaths of all her friends. But a part of her didn’t want to think about her old world, couldn’t, because that might mean going back, and she would never do that until she ensured Konoha’s safety.

All the wrong people had died in her world but here they were alive, they were here for Sakura to protect. Here was a Konoha she could still believe in. No part of her wanted to go back.

But if she lost focus during this fight she might just end up going somewhere worse.

When Sasori and Deidara entered the clearing they weren’t masked either, just wearing their idiotic oversized coats. They melted out of the shadows into the clearing languidly, already cocky. The worst part was they had good reason to be. Any and all Akatsuki were dangerous, and she knew Sasori and Deidara actually made for a pretty killer team. In any other world, they would have nothing to fear.

In any other world, Sakura wouldn’t have to fight and lie every day for a village that betrayed her, but now they were all in this world together and Sakura wasn’t about to leave a job unfinished.

Sasori was scanning the treetops, looking for the source of all the chakra, but Deidara was looking exclusively at her. Made the whole thing worse by whistling. “Well, your boobs are too big to be the Hokage’s brat and too small to be that old lady we’re looking for.”

At least that meant they didn’t have Tsunade yet. It wasn’t the first time an enemy taunted her just using the fact that she was a woman but she let herself blush this time, Deidara wiggling his eyebrows at her.

“Don’t bother with the bait. Let’s just get this over with.” Sasori slapped Deidara’s arm and didn’t bother looking at her as he reached inside his robe for a scroll. Was he double checking the parameters of the job? Confirming she was the target? He gave it a glance and then destroyed it.

Sakura let out a giant sob, reaching out with her hand to the bomber. “Please, it’s the Hokage’s son, I’ll let you have him, just let me go!” Behind the bangs that covered her eyes, she glimpsed Shisui and Sasuke moving into position behind Deidara now that he was focused on her. Naruto was probably still at a distance, providing cover with all the energy he was putting off.

When this was all said and done she would have to ask Shisui why Naruto was still the Kyuubi container if Kushina was alive and well. Maybe there were still problems with the birth even without Obito fucking about? Either way, it served her well now.

Deidara spat in her general direction and giggled when she flinched away. Sasori, apparently tired of the diversion, waved his hand. The chakra strings on his fingertips were sharper than any blade Sakura had ever seen and cut off her outstretched hand like it was made of paper.

‘So’, she thought as her mud clone exploded, sending clumps across the clearing, ‘this is how things get started.’

Sasori let out an outraged yell as the dirt hit his head and Deidara was already throwing bombs into the forest surrounding the area. Shisui dodged between the smoke, faster than even the air around him, and went to cut off Deidara’s arms with his sword. Sasori blocked, his own puppet arm reinforced by chakra, and Shisui turned into a flock of crows and escaped before the two Akatsuki could retaliate.

Kakashi and Naruto both appeared on the scene, her mentor coming from below and Naruto flying in, landing a Chidori and what looked to be a mutated Rasengan on the forest floor, separating the two mercenaries on either side of a chasm.

“So it really is the Konoha’s demon container we’re hunting, then. It’d be interesting to try and make a puppet out of him.” Sasori raised his arms and the sky filled with his dolls, hundreds of them cracking their joints and readying their weapons.

Sakura, from her position still in the trees, saw no sign of the third Kazekage yet, which meant Sasori still wasn’t truly concerned. And, she conceded, it didn’t appear he needed to be with over three hundred other puppets surrounding him. Numbers wise, they were fucked.

But Sakura just needed to be fast enough, small enough, invisible enough to get to his heart. Shut him down and everything fell apart. She had more than enough strength to crack his shell, the trick was getting past his guard.

Deidara let out a loud whoop at the appearance of Sasori’s army. “I hope you don’t mind if I damage your merchandise, but these guys are kinda pissing me off. What’s up with being so quiet, yo? You think you’re better than us?” He tossed out a few more bombs and moved to engage Naruto up close.

Naruto dodged neatly, eyes boggling at the flying bodies around him. “Just who are you guys anyway? And what do you want with Tsunade?”

A clone of Kakashi’s ripped Naruto away from a barrage of spears at the last moment. Shisui and Sasuke started to fly between the puppets in the sky, dismantling them with weapons and fire, but it seemed to make no difference to the sheer numbers.

Likewise, Deidara was playing with Kakashi now, having small explosives that moved like bugs crawl up his legs whenever he got too close. Naruto was having no luck either, battling a large clay tiger that he was unable to hit lest it blow up in his face.

It was a shit show, one that would probably drag on for five hours unless Sakura did something. First step would be Sasori, ridding them of their army and throwing Deidara off. Sakura didn’t know how she would fare against Sasori as weak as she was, even weaker than when she last faced him, and without many tricks up her sleeve.

She had no poison on her given she was barely able to grab bare essentials for this mission and she doubted a clone would work twice - Sasori would recognize the chakra signature again.

She could go underground but Deidara might have had his explosive bugs burrow into a minefield to make sure Kakashi didn’t pull the same trick twice, which meant going underground would either kill her or severely ruin her element of surprise.

She considered waiting for one of her teammates to pull out one of their more bombastic moves or a giant summon before she realized that they wouldn't know most of that shit. They'd probably never been in the middle of gigantic battlefields throwing around the forces of nature.

Sasuke was a jounin, which meant he would probably focus on the quieter moves. And there was no way in hell he got any giant snake summons from Orochimaru. Which meant this might be a case of Akatsuki being stronger than they were in her world while her team is slightly weaker.

It made sense, it just pissed her off. Made keeping Naruto and Sasuke around worth it, especially for when Sasori whipped out his trump card. But then what advantages did they have for certain?

Just Sakura, and the fact that she knew more about Sasori than he had probably told anyone else. She knew his grandmother, his parents, his puppets, and where he kept his beating heart safe. Sakura might not be able to get close enough to tear through his chest, but his grandmother would be. She might not have Chiyo fighting alongside her now but she didn’t need her old partner - just her face.

Whether or not Chiyo was even alive here and now didn’t matter, she just needed to surprise the bastard. The henge was easy enough; she hadn’t know Chiyo for long, but the woman and her grandson had left lasting impressions on Sakura.

The tricky part was Chiyo’s chakra strings, one of the only ways to make her disguise believable. She had looked into them, once upon a time, knowing that she had the chakra control necessary, but ultimately decided they went against her preferred fighting methods. But she knew the theory well enough and had even dealt with throwing chakra scalpels, something similar. Could she link her chakra scalpels into a chain, forming a string? It was possible, but something she would only be able to use with planning. That meant she could make a flashy opening move at least, but she wouldn’t be able to wield them in battle like Chiyo had been able to.

Regardless, she wasn’t about to hide in the bushes any longer and risk Shisui or the rest of her team getting hurt. With that thought, and an eye where she stepped, she waddled onto the battlefield and with a grand motion sliced through the strings connecting about thirty of the puppets surrounding Sasuke, letting them clatter to the ground.

And Sakura’s hunch about Deidara was correct because as they landed the ground erupted, destroying the dolls and ensuring Sasori wouldn’t be able to reconnect his strings.

Sasori, and all his puppets still in the sky, froze at the sight of his grandmother. Deidara even took a break from his and Kakashi’s slap fight to gawk at Sakura as she picked her way across the wreckage. It was as if time stood still in that moment, the way it sometimes does during battles. As if the results of this confrontation could change the world entirely, as if the gods were just now playing their cards.

Sakura knew this feeling, both hated and loved it in equal measure, but she didn’t pause. She marched her way to Sasori, fingers still twitching, scowl in place, and didn't bother to look at the surprised Uchiha.

“I should have known you would be the one causing this ruckus, grandson.” It was a strain on her throat to rasp as hard as she did but all her thoughts were on Sasori’s face. Its usual expression of indifference was rapidly shifting, eyes flitting between his grandmother and his enemies.

Whether he called her bluff now or let her get closer was pivotal to her play but Sakura was getting ready for anything. If the puppets blew whatever mines were in this area when they landed she could disappear below and safely backtrack to her hiding spot as long as Deidara didn’t send any nasty surprises after here. It was likely he would leave things to Sasori, given his respect for his partner, but playing Sasori’s emotions like this would probably enrage him enough to bring out his dead Kazekage, which meant she wouldn’t be safe anywhere.

But Sasori wasn’t lashing out, wasn’t doing anything. Sakura remembered Chiyo saying she had recluded herself for years after she lost her grandson, meaning this would be the first time he saw her in a decade or so. She sniffed in disdain at the two Uchiha suspended between puppet strings, balancing between the dolls. They didn’t make a move either, content to see this play out. If there’s one thing shinobi craved more than death it was information - drama. They wanted to know everything, always, which meant there were no distractions from Sakura’s performance.

“And just what are you doing here, old woman?” Sasori sneered and lashed out a wooden tendril from his back, spikes oozing poison. Sakura sidestepped neatly, the same way she remembered Chiyo doing so. Chiyo did bare minimum dodging, both to preserve her energy and to keep an eye out for the next projectile.

“I’m hunting that idiotic slug brat, same as you.” With each move, Sakura got closer. The idea was to get close enough to strike without him having time to pull out his Kazekage puppet. By cycling chakra through her legs she could propel herself forward with the same force she would use for a forest-destroying punch, making her almost as fast as Shisui in small doses.

She wouldn’t need to keep it up; Sakura knew that with her chakra reserves she would stand no chance with a one-on-one or Sasori or most of his tricked-out dolls. She had one chance to strike, one chance to use her knowledge to kill. If she failed, well, she could always try to release Kurama and see where the chips fell then.

Sasori couldn’t leave this fight alive, no matter what.

She could see Shisui in the background, quiet as a ghost, flitting over to where Deidara was still staring at his partner in no small amount of amazement. She realized he was leaving Sasori to her, and the amount of trust he was displaying almost threw Sakura to the ground.

She couldn’t recall the last time anyone had trusted her like that in a fight, not someone she cared about at least. Danzo was more than happy to use her as a weapon, but now Shisui was trusting her as a teammate. As a partner. As someone strong enough to hold their own.

“Man, what the fuck is going on here Sasori?” Deidara called from across the battlefield.

Sasori didn’t turn away from Sakura once. “I don’t know, but it’s pissing me off.”

“You’re losing your eyesight in your old age, boy.” She let out a cackle and took another step forward. Off to the side, Kakashi replaced himself with a clone. She felt the familiar substitution, a move he had used so often in their partnership that she knew it as well as her own chakra, and readied herself for his interference. He had to know it was her, but whether or not he helped was up in the air - it really depended on how much he hated her.

His clone leapt across the battlefield, hopping on rubble to ensure he wasn’t caught on a mine, and Sakura thought she knew what his game was. His approach gave her enough time to fake her chakra strings with scalpels again and she was able to neatly cleave him in half from a distance. The clone lasted, long enough to make a corpse instead of poofing into thin air, making the whole thing seem real. He had gotten better at this little trick.

“Konoha dogs,” she spat. “I’m surprised you couldn’t handle it on your own, boy.” A glance to the side showed Naruto was angry but not exploding at the seams, which meant he was also in on the trick. Deidara was laughing hysterically, hopefully fooled, but Sasori just looked thoughtful.

He just had to believe it for a little longer. Just believe it.

One of Sasori’s puppets wobbled in the air, hesitating between the two of them. Sakura was only ten feet away now - just ten. “And what do you want with me, grandmother?”

His voice still sounded scornful, he wasn’t hooked yet, but it was enough.

Sakura didn’t bother with a one-liner, didn’t drop the disguise for a dramatic reveal, didn’t tell Sasori all she knew. Sakura didn’t owe him anything but a quick death and a shallow grave.

She pushed in her heels, looked him in the eyes, and lept.

And she was right: hands through the chest are the messiest. From over his shoulder when she was pressed against him almost cheek to cheek she could see his heart still pulsing in her fist, the final vestiges of his humanity fighting against her. He didn’t choke, didn’t move - with the heart removed, his puppet body shut down entirely.

Sasori was dead and she had killed him all by herself with nothing but a henge and her hands.

Across the battlefield, Shisui and Kakashi swept past each other and through the shocked Deidara in a flash of lightning. Kakashi went through his heart and Shisui went straight for the neck.

All the constructs, the clay animals and the puppets hanging overhead, crashed to the earth like meteors. Shisui grabbed her across the waist on his way by, the other hand on his bloodied sword, and moved her clear of the blast zone. Kakashi had done the same for Naruto, and Sasuke was already far enough removed from the action to handle himself.

The clearing was decimated, dirty, probably still filled with bombs, but it was quiet now. It was over.

And that’s when things got difficult for Sakura.

It was Sasuke who started yelling at her first, garbled exclamations, hands flying. It was almost funny, in a way. She had only ever seen Sasuke react emotionally when it came to his family or Naruto, never really her.

But now he was grabbing at her clothes, fingers tangled up in the real fabric of her shirt past the henge she still wore. “Who exactly are you?”

Shisui grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him off while Naruto stood stock-still in Kakashi’s arms. Sakura consciously unclenched her body, trying to calm down from the adrenaline high of battle, only to hear a wet plop as the heart dropped to the ground from her relaxed fingers.

Opps.

Kakashi raised his eyebrows at the sound but Sakura didn’t flinch, merely dropped the henge and wiped her hands on her pants. It was going to take forever to get clean enough to face Tsunade now.

“Sakura,” Naruto began haltingly, “Why…..” He trailed off. Naruto had never been one for extreme violence, for killing without compromise, but that had never done Sakura any favors.

Sasori, Deidara, and any Akatsuki members posed a risk if Danzo was funding them to hunt down Tsunade. They didn’t have the luxury of mercy against the enemies they were facing now.

“Let’s sit down,” Kakashi suggested, already on the ground with his nose in his book. She had expected him to abandon her for this conversation, but his part in her ruse against Sasori meant she wasn’t angry with him. He didn’t trust her, not really, but he did rely on her to get the job done. He helped her, even if he hated her, and that meant she wasn’t going to burn that stupid porno. Yet.

Shisui forced his cousin to the floor and practically sat on his lap to keep him there. Sakura delicately kneeled in front of the heart, making sure Naruto couldn’t see it, and pulled up the sleeves of her shirt. The sight of the angry red lines on her wrist, still so glaring against her unmarked civilian skin, brought Naruto to his knees.

Sasuke started violently, grabbing her wrist and practically yanking her across her lap - or, more realistically, he tried and failed to move her, and only succeeded in pulling himself over.

“I knew it! I knew you were lying before,” he crowed, pulling himself back up.

Naruto reached a trembling hand out to her other wrist, the most hesitant she had seen him since Sasuke’s death so long ago. “Sakura, what happened?”

“I died. I died and then Sakura died and I took her place. And now we’re here.”

-

The hours after she explained what happened passed in silence. Naruto and Sasuke were processing, possibly grieving, and there was also a deep sense of betrayal between the two cousins. Sasuke never loved her, not in any world most likely, but he was the possessive sort and hated the thought of Shisui working with his old teammate.

She didn’t know how he felt about her death. She didn’t want to care. She did.

Naruto was pouring over the notes she took down when Shisui was detailing the investigation into the hospital. The other portions of her journal, the ones describing her world, were under separate seals.

She had never seen her friend so silent, so solemn, but she wondered if this was some strange kind of grief. He was mourning a girl who was his friend but not, who died without staying dead. It was no wonder he didn’t know how to react.

Kakashi had searched the bodies but there were no notes, nothing to indicate what their orders had been or where Tsunade had gone. Just a scrap of green fabric lost in Deidara’s robes.

“Some professionals don’t keep notes with sensitive information around,” she said, elbowing Shisui. He gave a flash of a smile before dropping it when some of the blood got on him. Her entire arm had gone through Sasori so most of her shirt was covered in the gore. She hadn’t even noticed, so used to being covered in blood because of her work as a medic. The healer always has the bloodiest hands and all that.

Kakashi and her teamed up to do a complicated maneuver that basically flipped the forest floor. The result was messy but if they had gotten it right it meant the Akatsuki and their “art” was buried about ten feet underground. No way to recover their bodies or the bodies of Sasori’s puppets.

It was difficult on Sakura’s end to muster up the chakra after everything that had happened and difficult on her mentor’s end to connect with her well enough to perform the jutsu together. It was also obvious how uncomfortable he was with how comfortable Sakura was working with him. It was an awkward ten minutes.

The travel to the nearest stream didn’t take long but Sakura was flagging. She hated feeling weak like this, hated feeling so young and helpless again, but there wasn’t much she could do in this situation. She had used so much chakra today and she thanked whoever could be up there that no one had gotten seriously injured besides a few scrapes on Naruto that healed themselves.

They hadn’t managed to recover their camping supplies which were most likely destroyed in all the explosions. Rather they were forced to lie on the riverbed beneath the sky.

Rough terrain and pebbles everywhere but it could be worse. They put enough traps around to satisfy their paranoia and tried to rest.

Shisui popped up from around a tiny campfire he had made, “Do we know where Tsunade would have run to away from Akatsuki?”

“Opposite direction of Konoha?” Sakura hazarded, but it didn’t feel right. Where would Tsunade, gone so long in her self-imposed exile, go when faced with danger like the Akatsuki?

If they had let slip to her they were also hunting Naruto then it’s possible she would try to warn Minato out of her own sense of justice. She wouldn’t let him get hurt just for an old grudge, something she had proved in Sakura’s world.

But did the Akatsuki tell her? And were Deidara and Sasori the only ones assigned to follow her or were there more members on her trail that Sakura didn’t even know about?

Fuck, even Naruto didn’t have this much trouble finding her when he was twelve.

But she had something Naruto didn’t have - Kakashi and his Ninkin.

She grabbed the fabric scrap from Deidara she had held on to - in her clean hand, thankfully - and shoved it in Kakashi’s face. “If this belonged to Tsunade could your Ninkin track her down?”

Kakashi hummed and picked up the scrap of fabric between his thumb and forefinger before sniffing it himself. “Smells like alcohol. Probably hers.”

Shisui let out a yelp of excitement and the flames danced in their firepit. Even Naruto rose from his funk to do a little fistbump.

Kakashi halted all celebration with a single raised hand. “My dogs are asleep. We’ll try in the morning.” He tucked the fabric into a pocket in his uniform and went back to reading his book, departed from his immediate surroundings.

Sakura was ready to stand up beside Shisui and Naruto to raise a little bit of hell, ready to call Kakashi a lazy bastard like she’d done so many times before, when she realized why exactly he was being a lazy bastard.

He knew she was exhausted, was pushed beyond her limits. He was giving her time to rest.

She caught Shisui’s eyes and tried to send a message via telepathy to let this go, knowing she really did need the rest to find Tsunade. Shisui just kinda looked confused and made weird motions with his eyebrows, so, not that close a partnership yet.

Well, if they weren’t going anywhere and she didn’t have any other clothes to change into then the river was her only option. She stood up and stretched, cracking her back after she had hunched it, and started stripping her weaponry so she wouldn’t get it wet.

“I’m cleaning off, cover me while I’m gone.”

“But Sakura,” Naruto shouted, red in the face, “You can’t just get naked in the river! What if there are perverts?”

The thought of any pervert first getting past the four shinobi around her and then daring to peak at her sent her into a fit of laughter. Then again, around Jiraiya, Naruto would have to deal with perverted behavior quite a bit. Gross.

“Naruto, if someone tried to peek at Sakura I would worry more about them,” Shisui said with a laugh. Sakura smiled at him but was thrown out of her mirth when the fire jumped up.

So Sasuke had finished sulking then.

Even Kakashi sat up and Sasuke stood up and pointed a finger straight into Sakura’s throat. “So we are going to talk about your fight with Sasori then?”

Sakura didn’t back up in the least, stepping forward and forcing Sasuke to almost back into the flames. “I told you that I was a shinobi-”

“So am I, but you don’t see me ripping people’s hearts out of their chest with my bare hands!”

The sheer irony of the statement, of Sasuke daring to say that to her face, almost had her backhanding him into the fucking stratosphere. Instead, she laughed, long and loud and without any trace of joy.

How was she supposed to tell him? Should she? She wanted to, wanted to tear it out of her mouth and shove it down his throat so he would be forced to carry the weight she had held for so long. Sasuke had torn her into pieces so many times, with his words and his hands and his twisted sense of justice, until there was almost nothing left of her except a shell for Konoha to control.

She would never win with him, not really, not anywhere. She would never be anything to him but a problem.

Naruto dragged Sasuke away from her with a muttered “Bastard!” and a worried glance in her direction. The whole camp was staring at her, of course, and unless she wanted to do a deep dive into the Uchiha massacre and Sasuke’s subsequent murder spree she would have to find something else to talk about.

After all, why shouldn’t they demand her traumas after everything else they had taken from her?

Sakura forced herself back from the edge of bitterness and came up with the next best thing to tell them. “Sasori, the other one, we had fought when I was fifteen. I was separated from you guys, trapped in a cave with just his grandmother - a poison expert from Suna named Chiyo - to fight with me.”

The river was so close but she couldn’t leave just yet. They were still looking at her, still waiting for her to pop out and say, “Hey, no, it’s okay, I definitely don’t kill people. I’m still the cute girl you ignored for years whose only failing is being too weak to fight!”

They would rather her be weak than vicious, dead than victorious. Or maybe she was projecting; it had been a long day.

“The fight was close, really close. He did have a puppet of the Third Kazekage and he was able to use all of the man’s abilities. I managed to trick him, using an antidote for a poison I let him hit me with but-”

But she was weak. But she wasn’t enough, not without Chiyo. She couldn’t possibly fight him on her own.

“But he got the better of me. Ran me through with his sword. If not for Chiyo I would have died.”

She left then, walking towards the river and whatever judgement her teammates would pass. She had done what she needed to today and she would do it again, but if her teammates found it more comfortable to think she was acting out a revenge scenario then she would leave them to it.

She didn’t need their approval or their friendship, just their skills. She would find Tsunade and fix Konoha and then she could leave them all behind, content with the knowledge that she had saved them. They would probably be happier without her anyway.

And she would be okay with that. Her heart had handled so much already - she was about to let this break her.

Chapter Text

It was midnight. It was midnight and she had snuck out of camp. It was midnight and she had snuck out of camp to dig up the bodies so she could burn them because otherwise she would be looking over her shoulder for the rest of this fucking mission.

It was midnight and she was afraid.

Afraid using this chakra now meant she wouldn’t have any reserves tomorrow, afraid her campmates would wake up and declare her absence as traitorous intent, afraid she would keep digging and digging and digging and find nothing at all.

So she turned that fear into a spade and used it to dig until the bottom edges of Sasori’s clay bones caught on her hands and tore her nails. She dug until she could grab Deidara’s ridiculous hair

(don't think of Ino)

and chop his head off. She knew they were supposed to preserve the bodies as proof Akatsuki was out there and hunting Tsunade but she couldn’t trust an enemy until she had destroyed them herself.

And even if the bodies stayed dead, well, there were so many terrible things one could create out of a corpse. So she lit the fire herself, stretched herself thin for an area genjutsu, and couldn’t find the energy to flinch when Sasuke entered the clearing.

Just her luck she was traveling with three nin possessing the ability to see through genjutsu and it was still Sasuke who came to talk to her.

Because Sasuke was complicated, was a tangle of emotions she wasn’t strong enough to pull apart. Traitor, deceiver, terrorist - what did it matter when he was the boy she loved?
Maybe Sakura now could have understood her Sasuke in a way she couldn’t have when they were both young, but in this world, they were so far apart it was hard to even see him: Sakura had seen her world fall apart and she still didn’t run like Sasuke had.

What did this Sasuke know of loss, of violence? A distant cousin killed in an away mission, an aunt taken too soon by illness? This Sasuke was so young and, in a way, weak. Tragedy didn’t necessarily make you stronger, but surviving it did.

Then again, that’s what her Sasuke had thought of her so long ago, so-

She wasn’t going to unpack that.

“This isn’t a good look for you,” he said, leaning against one of the trees on the outskirts of the clearing. His arms were crossed, tone dismissive, everything she had grown to hate about nin who had looked down on her so long ago.

She sneered at him, covered in dirt and soot. Her hands were bloody, destroyed, and she didn’t know if she had enough energy to put them back together.

Fuck.

“It’s better for dead things to stay dead,” she said. The clearing was destroyed by now, dirt and rubble tossed in every direction. No one could look at this and not see a massacre. Was it a massacre? At what point does her crusade stop being self-defense and start being-

She wasn’t going to unpack that.

Sasuke unslouched and walked strode to the ashes, eyes spinning red. Regular Sharingan, which didn’t really mean jack shit. The Uchiha were dangerous, always. Living weapons with the eyes of theirs, and it was hard to think of them as anything else when the only Uchiha she had known were Itachi and Sasuke.

But now she knew Shisui. Now she knew Shisui who was too trusting for his own good, too foolhardy to even be a shinobi. Too caring by half, too foolish by miles. He trusted her for some forsaken reason, believed in her. Weapons weren’t allowed to do that, were they?

Her hands were fucked up, she knew, but she hadn’t realized until Sasuke had gotten close enough to yank them towards his face and study the full extent of the damage. His features briefly tightened, hands grasping around her wrists, and Sakura wondered why she was letting him do this.

She had always let him get away with so much.

“Do you realize what you’ve done?” He wasn’t shouting, which surprised her, but he was angry. His chakra flared up, coiled around the clearing like a snake, but his guard was turned outward. He was trying to protect them, not attacking her.

He pulled her up, up, up out of the dirt as she stumbled over loose pieces of stone and bone that hadn’t burned. “Sakura, why aren’t you healing?” He spat it at her, pulling her away from the clearing towards the tree line. Sakura didn’t understand, why did he want her to heal? Why did he care?

Why did she let him grab her?

Why wasn’t she healing?

It was by the time Shisui came running through the trees to meet them that she realized, oh-

She was having a panic attack.

Shit.

She should be breathing, she knew, and she should be fighting back against whoever grabbed her. But her arms were weak for some reason, her muscle definition evaporated, and she couldn’t feel her chakra, just an empty pulsating void.

Her hands, her hands were wounded and there were men looking at her. Two, black hair, red eyes, dangerous. They were yelling, or one of them was, but when she tried to open her mouth all that came out was air. She couldn’t talk, she couldn’t hear, she couldn’t fight.

Hands came to her hair, curved down to her cheeks. She opened her eyes and saw black, black eyes, kind eyes, steady eyes. Her hands were bleeding everyone, fingers bent and distorted like the legs of a dead spider.

But when he pressed her hand to his chest it was gentle, quiet, the whisper of a sensation on her palm as she could feel his heartbeat down her arm into her own chest. Steady. She knew how to be steady, how to breathe, how to break down each process of the body into individual components. It was easy,

in

out

in

out

Shisui. It was Shisui who was holding her hands, mangled, and her face, sweaty and red. He was in pajamas, and she thought it sloppy not to sleep in a uniform but she thought it was probably sloppier to have a panic attack in the middle of a mission.

Shisui’s mouth was moving but he wasn’t talking, just breathing with her, easy. To the side, she saw Sasuke, eyes alert and chakra flared, still facing outward. Her weapons were at a pile near his feet, not all, but enough, and she hadn’t felt him disarm her. It was for the best though. Sakura wasn’t in control. Sakura wasn’t fit for the mission.

Her breaths were still even but her pulse was racing. Not fit for the mission. Not fit for the mission. What the fuck was she supposed to do if not the mission?

“Sakura, hey, Sakura, I know you know how to breathe. Just keep going for me,” Shisui coaxed. She hated how soft his voice was, how it took her all the way back to the day she landed in Konoha and nearly bled out. She had been so weak since coming here, and being weak meant she couldn’t help anyone.

Sasuke fumbled around in his pockets before pulling out a roll of bandages like he had in the weapons store. She had forgotten he had done that but now she wondered why he carried them. The Sasuke she knew was never afraid of being injured because he knew there was nothing in the world that could touch him.

Shisui turned when Sasuke got close but shook his head when his cousin tried to approach. He grabbed the bandages instead and also pulled a canteen out of his pocket, hands finally drawing away from her. She missed it, in the spaces of her heart where she allowed herself to be comforted by simple things like gentle hands and kind smiles.

She tried to talk, words weak. “I needed to. I needed to.” She closed her eyes, tried to make a fist but groaned when her hands protested. Fuck - she needed her hands.

“It’s better for dead things to stay dead,” Sasuke said off to the side, and Shisui did a full-body flinch. Sasuke whipped his head around to stare at him, crouching defensively and Sakura felt a twinge herself about what could make Shisui act like that.

Shisui sighed deeply and their looks and let out a chuckle that conveyed almost everything but humor. “I really am a terrible partner, aren’t I?” He shifted, settled back on the balls of his feet and looked to the skyline. "I should have known this might happen."

Sakura, who found herself trusting Shisui even when she didn't understand him, did her default when it came to comforting someone nowadays and tried to clasp his shoulder with her hand. The contact coated blood all over his skin and caused her to lurch forward with a pained wince, nearly knocking into Shisui’s chest as Sasuke lunged forward to balance her.

His grip on her arm didn’t make her seize but it was close. The only thing stopping her, really, was the sound of Shisui wheezing from where he was on the floor. “Is that you trying to be nice, Sakura-chan?” He started to giggle, of all things, moving himself up to a standing position and offering his hand to grab Sakura’s wrist to help her up too. She accepted it, content with the fact that Uchiha would always be manhandling in whatever world it was.

Sasuke backed a few feet away with everyone standing but he still looked annoyed as he picked up the bandages and canteen, dropped and forgotten. “We need to deal with her hands and with what she was doing to the bodies. And then you need to start talking,” he said with a glare to his cousin.

Sakura grimaced, nodding. He was right, in his own terrible way. Sasuke was good at cutting through bullshit, something he and Naruto had in common, and he wasn’t going to let go of this.

But he talked about her hands first, and not what she had done. He carried bandages in his pocket and guarded her when she was down. He disarmed her instead of putting her down, which would have been the safer option. The smarter option.

And what was she supposed to do with that, exactly?

“I don’t know enough about first aid to help with that - none of us do.” Shisui looked at her hands again, studying them from different angles like he was hoping that seeing the damage would end up fixing the damage.

Sasuke scoffed. “She knows how to fix it - isn’t that the point?”

“She doesn’t have any chak-”

“Naruto will give her some, now let’s go.” And with that simple proclamation he left, content with what had happened even while Sakura was still a bit shell-shocked. She had known, of course, that Naruto could transfer some of his overwhelming chakra, it’s just that she had never needed it.

She needed to stop thinking like that. She needed to stop assuming things and working based off that when all it did was fuck her over.

The rest of the trek through the forest was quiet until Shisui stopped her a few feet from camp. “Can you talk, Sakura-chan?”

That was typically where Sakura would say Yes, Fuck You, but she did her best now to offer a nod. She could talk, she knew, but she didn’t know if she wanted to. What was there to say? I’m going crazy and that’s the one thing I probably can’t fix?

Shisui grimaced at her silence but led her to the campfire, newly lit by a now conscious Kakashi, and sat her down with a level of gentleness he had only used back when he thought she was the real Sakura. His Sakura. Someone’s Sakura, instead of just her by herself.

Naruto was passed out on the log next to her but blearily offered her his hand. He waved it around aimlessly when she didn’t take it before landing it on her thigh with a slapping sound and a rush of pure, unfiltered chakra.

Sakura nearly stood up with a shout, the energy coursing through her foreign and strange. It was stronger than her own, fiercer and wilder and brighter than anything she had ever felt for a long time.

Using it was like corraling a hurricane with nothing but her hands, beating against the wind and the rain with no power or direction. But she knew power like this, held power like this in her seal, commanded it to her will and reshaped the world with it on a whim. Sakura was the hurricane, and so he took the force Naruto gave to her and shoved it towards her hands until the bones popped back into place and even her fingernails grew back.

There were 27 bones in each of her hands and she felt every single one of them fall back into place. And then, when she was healed, when she had the power of a demon burrowed deep into her heart and a world to unleash it upon, she pulled Naruto’s hand off her leg and dropped it back onto his chest. He had barely twitched - it had only been a minute or two.

Could she talk?

Kakashi, silent till now, let out a sigh. “Ma, I was waiting for all this to catch up to you, but I really didn’t expect this.”

Sakura, against her will, let out a snort. He was right, after all. Danzo had wanted her dead because she couldn’t turn off her emotions, couldn’t forget all that had happened. She should have known this would all fall apart - she had just hoped it would be when Konoha didn’t need her anymore.

“The bodies are burnt. The area’s wrecked, but nothing that should indicate us directly,” Sasuke said from a few feet away. He hadn’t sat down, of course, but he didn’t look angry anymore. Just tired. He had put the bandages away at some point, and Sakura should stop thinking about them so much but for some reason she couldn’t and she didn’t know why.

Kakashi looked at her but it was Shisui who answered. “I think Orochimaru’s experimenting on bringing the dead back to life - she made the right call.”

Kakashi swore, stopped, and then fell backwards off the log with a sigh. Sasuke muttered a curse before his eyes flared and he looked off into the woods.

“Did she tell you that?” Sakura asked. Most of the movement in the clearing stopped but Shisui didn’t react, merely turned to her and nodded.

“She had suspicions, but nothing confirmed, and there wasn’t any evidence besides some bodies being checked out of the morgue. This was a month ago or so, before Sakura was moved to working underneath Kabuto directly, and we both agreed that would have to wait until we stopped him experimenting on live subjects.” He sighed, long and low, before looking off, eyes troubled but still a comforting shade of black. “We didn’t want to believe it was real - how could we?”

“The dead should stay dead,” she muttered. “But that wasn’t always true in my world.”

Sasuke turned back around. “So why didn’t you tell us? Why’d you sneak off and destroy yourself trying to get rid of the bodies?”

Kakashi leaned forward at that, glancing between her and Sasuke. “How did you know she snuck out, huh?”

Sasuke, flushing a color that was unfortunately still handsome, scowled at his teacher before glaring very hard at the ground in silence. It was Naruto, eyes still closed, who spoke up from the dirt. “He was tossin’ and turning so I told him to go apologize to Sakura-chan for being super uncool about her awesome fighting skills.”

Shisui broke into peals of laughter and Kakashi conveniently found a book to hide his entire face behind. Sakura, for her part, didn’t know how to react.

The bandages.

The guarding.

The way he led her back to camp to help, not to turn her in.

When was she finally going to bury her Sasuke and let this one live, she wondered? Had she ever been capable of seeing him for who he was and not who she thought he was? Love and hate were so close together, and Sakura had always been foolish when it came to her heart.

She hated being wrong but she wasn’t foolish enough to try and deny it.

“That is very cute, my students,” Kakashi managed, finally upright, “But we still need to ask Sakura why she went off on her own.”

Shisui went silent beside her as well. He didn’t feel interrogative like Kakashi did though, he felt protective. Like he was on her side. It was ridiculous because he knew who she was, saw her worst parts in such a short amount of time, and yet it was like he still cared.

And Sakura could lie and there was a chance it could work. She could fake her way through it, say it was a tactical choice or some bullshit, pretend she didn’t trust them, blame her panic attack at shock setting in from her injuries.

She could use Shisui and Naruto and Sasuke and Kakashi to do what needed to be done and then she could leave forever; she would allow herself to become a natural disaster in some far off land, destructive and uncontrollable and spinning out until there was nothing left to it.

But there was a reason Danzo had gone to so much trouble to have her killed and it was never because she was particularly good at being his kind of shinobi.

“I panicked because I was scared, and I lost control because I forgot who I am now and where I’m going.” She stopped before she went further - there was no justifying a break like that on such a big mission. She was a liability to them now, a mistake. But if they knew now then they could reach a safe distance before she exploded. They deserved a warning, a countdown.

Shisui, movements too slow for him by half, took his hand and clasped it around her shoulder. “Well then, it’s a good thing Sasuke and I were able to help, huh?”

Naruto inched his way forward on the ground and pressed his face into her calves. “When Kakashi-sensei freaks out he just disappears and reads Icha Icha.” The mumble was quiet but accusatory, and across the fire Kakashi shrugged charmingly.

Sasuke snorted before started for his tent, dragging Naruto along by the ankle. “Glad we figured it out, let’s actually get some sleep now.”

“Hey wait,” Shisui interjected, hand still warm on Sakura’s skin, “You never actually apologized!” Sasuke was already halfway into his tent and didn’t stop his retreat at Shisui’s words.

It was finally Kakashi standing up that made Sakura stop staring and start shouting. “I need to be taken off this mission, I’m a liability-”

“Naruto,” Kakashi explained with book in hand, “Has been a liability since he learned to walk. We’re shinobi, we work around it.”

“Why,” she broke off with a curse and stepped away from the fire. Her hands - healed but still tacky with blood and grave dirt, left trails across her face when she rubbed her eyes. “Why are you doing this? I’m not your Sakura.” I’m not yours, she thought, starring into the woods so she didn’t have to look at Shisui or Kakashi or the boys’ tent. She wasn’t theirs, they weren’t hers, and they shouldn’t keep her around.

Taking a shinobi who couldn’t control themselves on a mission was as stupid as starting a campfire in a dry woods, bound to get everyone burned.

She felt Shisui stand up behind her, a safe distance, far enough she could escape if he lunged. Well, not with his speed, but she recognized the gesture for what it was.

“Sakura, it doesn’t matter how long I’ve known you, I know enough to know you’re a good shinobi, one who would fight and die for Konoha same as me. I have your back, and I trust you to have mine.”

He was gone after that, always too quick. If she could get her hands on him she would strangle him for being so stupid, so careless with his life. How could he just care like that, trust without reservation? It was driving her insane, and she didn’t know what to do.

When she turned around it was just Kakashi and her around the dying fire. “Please tell me you’re not going to say something like that,” she said with a grimace.

He shook his head and chuckled, but she could tell he wasn’t amused. A bottle of water was tossed her way and she caught it without looking away from his face, where his one visible eye was studying her intently.

“I do believe that we have a common goal, at least.”

“And if I lose control again?”

“Then I’ll be prepared for it,” he said. eye crinkling at the corner. With a jaunty salute and a whistle, he turned his back towards her and sat down, dismissing her as he took watch.

It was for the best, she knew, that he didn’t trust her.

She mechanically wiped herself clean for the second time that day, trying to rid herself of the dirt and skin and ceramic and bone and ash.

It was for the best.

Chapter Text

Sakura was trying to ignore the way Kakashi’s Ninken obviously hated her but it was a bit difficult. Considering they were the lethal extension of a shinobi’s will you would think they would be more subtle in their dislike but, alas, she awoke another morning to find a steaming pile of shit in front of her tent.

Kakashi, of course, thought the entire thing was hilarious. Sakura had retaliated by shoveling it in front of his tent but that had little effect besides making the entire camp smell like shit - which did little to endear her to Sasuke or Naruto. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything else to focus on as they spent day after day tracking Tsunade, hoping they were quick enough to save her from assassins and her own gambling habits. It was just dog shit in the morning, running all day, and slinking off to her tent at night as she grasped at whatever sense of solitude she could find.

Now who was paranoid for carrying extra supplies in scrolls in case anything happened to their campsite? Well, all of them apparently, as they had all managed to carry extra bedrolls or tents on their person. She hadn’t thought they would do that, hadn’t thought they would be prepared like her, but maybe she just liked thinking the worst of the team.

Because she wasn’t supposed to like Team 7. She wasn’t going to befriend Sasuke’s dead-not-dead cousin and she wasn’t going to put her trust in a team that had never trusted her. Sakura was strong now, right? More than strong enough to do this on her own.

And she knew, of course, because Sakura was cursed with knowing herself before anyone else, she knew that she was avoiding the conversations she needed to have about Sasuke’s family, about Konoha’s history, about the number of shinobi wars that were fought for n o t h i n g.

But how do you explain a world? How do you fit the bodies into sentences, the destruction of her life into chapters of a story? She was never an author, could never tell tales like Jiraiya, could never draw something into being like Sai. She was Sakura, and she dealt with bone and blood and what she had in front of her. She wanted to be a medic-nin because being a medic-nin meant being real, meant saving the person in front of you in a concrete way, not assassinating someone from the shadows and believing it would be good for your village in some far-off day.

Sakura knew what was real and wasn’t even when confronted with genjutsu, which meant she knew this world was real and she had to deal with it. She just didn’t want to.

Call her childish for retreating into her tent again, for ignoring the campfire and eating cold rations. Call her childi-

“You’re being childish,” Kakashi called out from the campfire. Shisui laughed from what she could hear but Sakura wasn’t going to check. She was going to stay inside her tent because she knew that talking with them wouldn’t help-

Sasuke poked his head through the tent flap with a sigh, “You need to talk to us eventually, and this lone warrior routine is impacting the mission.”

Sakura’s hand missed grabbing Sasuke’s hair by inches as he unpoked his head and Sakura had no choice but to follow him. He was going to harp on her for the “lone warrior” routine? Sakura knew that their worlds were different but she would have bet her left arm that he was being hypocritical regardless. And how dare he come into her tent and accuse her of “impacting the mission?” Sakura was avoiding them so she wouldn’t cause problems!

Naruto cheered and she tumbled out of her tent in a rage, raising what looked to be a teacup in celebration before shoving it in her grasping hand. She took it with reluctant grace, still dazzled by Naruto’s overwhelming kindness after all these years, and was prompted by Shisui’s hand to take a seat in front of the fire. Sasuke managed to look both bitchy and successful as he took his own seat next to Naruto and started drinking from his own teacup, happy to ignore Sakura now that his task was done. She glared anyway, but then felt bad when she accidentally made eye contact with Naruto’s infectious glee.

Sakura liked what she knew was real: the bodies she could heal with her own two hands, the sake she shared with Tsunade after a long day of work burning down her throat, and Naruto’s endless propensity for goodness. He was one of the only shinobi she knew that never had to remind himself to be human.

The tea was good, which meant Shisui was probably the one to make it. The rest of Team 7 took “hopeless” to a new degree when it came to caring for themselves, but from what she had already seen in this world Shisui was proficient in this as he was in all things. The Uchiha way, maybe, or maybe just another tactic to flirt with pretty girls. He certainly looked carefree enough, sitting next to her in camp and stirring some soup over the fire.

Sakura hated risking the smoke, and she knew Kakashi did too, but she could see the seals Naruto had plastered around the surrounding trees in order to hide their presence. She still didn’t feel safe regardless, probably never would knowing Akatsuki was on their tail, but she wasn’t going to begrudge the boys some comfort after what may have been their first clash with S-ranked enemies.

Jinchūriki or not, she doubted Minato would have made a habit of sending his son into extremely dangerous situations. Hell, this mission was supposed to be a glorified fetch quest for a drunken aunt, not a race against mercenaries that could decide the fate of Konoha.

She noticed from the glares that Kakashi’s Ninken were out again. They lazed about the campfire or on their master’s lap as he read his little green book; Akino, the one with the classes, seemed to have forcibly made a seat out of Sasuke and Naruto on the log across from her.

Akino noticed her looking and turned to make eye contact so Sakura did the very mature thing of gulping the rest of her tea down as quickly as possible so she could leave. Her incredibly dignified escape plan was foiled when Shisui took her moment of distraction to pour some soup into a bowl and hand it to her with the most pitiful and beseeching expression he could make on his face.

“Aha!” Naruto shouted, “Now you have to eat dinner with us. We made your favorite and everything.” Trapped by social convention, she thought wryly, but she wasn’t going to reject the gesture even if she wanted to.

Was she so starved for kindness that she would risk her mission to get close to shades of her old friends? Did she even have the right to call them shades when Sakura was little more than a ghost herself and they seemed so full of life and hope?

Maybe that’s why she wanted to run away: she didn’t know why they wanted her close. They could use her skills and knowledge without making her soup, surely, and the lengths they were going to still felt far from trying to atone for her other-self.

Sakura would like to think she used to be good at reading people and she probably had been. But once you see the inside of a shinobi their emotions start to become less important than the real cuts and guts.

Her mind was going in circles again.

She took a cautious sip of the soup - it wasn’t her favorite. She took another sip and smiled anyway. Shisui, who had been staring at her ever since she had taken his offering, released a mournful cry at her fake expression.

“It’s sweet corn soup! You told me you lo-”

Silence fell over the camp, interrupted by the snuffling and snoring of the dogs. She took another sip of the soup.

“My favorite food is ramen!” Naruto shouted, stomping the tension down and doing a little dance on its grave. Sasuke snorted and flicked him in the ear; it wasn’t a play, they weren’t pretending, but it was a familiar routine where they both knew their parts. Sakura could remember her role like it was yesterday, like she could call Naruto an idiot right now and have it all make sense.

Here is where she would fit if there was a place for her.

There was never a place for someone like Sakura. Most of the time she was okay with that.

She absently flicked her hand down to pet the sleeping Bisuke, snatching it back as he tried to bite her. “I don’t think it’s possible to find any version of you that doesn’t like ramen, Naruto.”

She got a grin (blinding) in response. Shisui, on the other hand, jumped up like he had been electrocuted and rushed off to his pack before returning with a notebook and an eager expression. Sakura took another sip of soup and looked away with as much grace as a person drinking sweet corn soup could muster.

Kakashi, who now had an empty soup bowl next to him (even though Sakura knew she hadn’t seen him even grab dinner) seemed amused at Shisui’s antics, though he seemed he always defaulted to amused when it came to dealing with Sakura’s general situation. He was well-adjusted like that.

“I realize now,” Shisui began with a flourish, “That I have been remiss in getting to know my new friend!” He jotted something down real quick before flashing Sakura the notebook, letting her see for herself the messy handwriting on the page titled “Cool, New, Sakura Facts!” Underneath the title was the first bullet point:

"Sakura’s favorite soup is NOT sweet corn!!!!!!"

The laugh that escaped her was something she would deny for the rest of whatever life she had. He snatched the notebook back with a cocky grin and a wink.

No, she didn’t blush.

She didn’t.

Fucking Uchiha.

“Don’t you think it’s a bit dangerous to record that kind of information?” She said, hiding behind her soup as she knocked back the bowl and finished her dinner. As she lowered it again she saw Sasuke raise his eyebrow out of the corner of her eye and she wanted to disappear back into her tent all over again.

How did they make her so fucking soft so quickly? She was one of the most powerful shinobi of her generation! She killed Sasori less than a week ago with her bare hands and now she was singing Kumbaya and talking about favorite foods with everyone.

Fucking Uchiha.

“Don’t worry Sakura, Obito made the seal on this notebook to burst into flames if anyone but me opens it.”

Sakura grew very still very quickly and she didn’t know what her face did without a soup bowl to hide behind. Maybe she should invest in pornos - a perfect disguise in a disgusting package.

She knew why Kakashi’s eye was covered up, had seen him in action, so she had assumed Obito was either dead or a traitor to Konoha. But she was never going to fucking learn, was she? The second she thought she knew something, that she had a handle on the situation, it would always come back to hurt her.

Kakashi’s dogs woke up in unison, something she knew was possible but never got less weird, and gathered around a very intent Kakashi. No more book, no more amused glances - now he was as focused on her as he was when he tried to kill her.

She didn’t have enough chakra to survive an attempt like that again, she knew, but she could count on Shisui’s help now that he wasn’t hampered by the confines of her small tent.

It was Sasuke who made the first move, though, slapping a hand over Naruto’s mouth and silencing Shisui with a glare. “So we’re going to have that talk, then?”

Kakashi’s dogs burst into motion, running to the edges of their seals as they paced the perimeter of their camp. The fire around them seemed to shift as Shisui flipped the pages of his notebook, seemingly going beyond the amount of pages the binding should be able to hold, before landing on a new page.

Naruto bit at the meat of Sasuke’s palm till he jerked it away with a shout and gave Sakura a mournful look. “We were really going to wait till you were more comfortable, we promise! But Kakashi and Sasuke really, really want to know.” He started cleaning the remains of the soup dinner before putting on what looked to be a small pot of milk. “It’s okay, though,” he continued with a grin that only looked half-forced, “I’ll make hot chocolate and then it will be like we’re just hanging out.”

The thought of “hanging out” while she discussed anything related to Obito, or the Kyubi attack, or the Uchiha Massacre was enough to jolt her out of her anxiety. She had to calm down, she knew.

Calm down.

“I assume you know what you want to ask me,” she said, super fucking calmly. In her mind she went through the most tactful ways she could talk about her past, wondering if she should obfuscate or lie or leave the conversation entirely.

How could she look at Shisui and tell him he killed himself after Danzo took his eyes? How could she look at Sasuke and tell him his brother had slaughtered the entire Uchiha clan? To tell this Sasuke that, the one who joked around campfires and let dogs sit on his lap, to tell him that would be like burying him all over again.

But could she lie? No more than she could abandon Konoha.

Kakashi took his eyepatch off, staring into her eyes with one of his own turning hypnotically. She met his stare head-on, bravado in the face of her old teacher when all else failed. She had Shisui, she reminded herself; she had Naruto and the hot chocolate he was made in defiance of the tension.

Kakashi tilted his head. “You know how I got this eye, then?”

Sakura nodded and he hummed. “Then I assume you know about the mission that led to Obito giving me his eye.”

Sakura nodded again, glancing around the campfire. Shisui wasn’t writing, instead picking at his fingernails and scooting closer to her on the log. It was Sasuke and Naruto who actually reacted, staring at Kakashi in naked interest. It was possible this was the first time they were hearing the story.

“In my world,” Sakura started, as delicate with her words as she was with a scalpel. Careful, she thought, careful and calm. “In my world, Obito didn’t make it back to Konoha after the mission.”

Shisui was nearly touching her now, enough that she could feel how tense he was. Kakashi was as relaxed as ever as he considered her and her words.

Naruto finished adding chocolate to the pot and placed his hand on Sasuke’s now stock-still thigh almost as a reflex. With the other, he started to stir, keeping a keen eye on the conversation.

It was Sasuke who broke the silence, interrupting whatever standoff Sakura found herself in with Kakashi. “Obito won’t go out in the field again, maybe, but he’s one of the better seal masters in Konoha. He even managed to teach idiot Naruto,” he added as an afterthought, swerving out of range of Naruto’s spoon as it swang wide.

Sakura took a moment to imagine Obito happy, as a teacher and a friend, but it was off in her head, too disjointed. But she was happy for him here, even more so knowing that he was a teacher to Naruto, a cousin to Sasuke and Shisui. A friend to Kakashi, who had precious little of them.

“And Rin?” is what came out of her mouth, almost against her will. Kakashi’s eye twitched (the red one, of course) before he got it under control.

“What happened to Rin in your world?” was eventually what came out of his mouth. Which was good, right? It probably meant she wasn’t dead here.

Naruto laughed nervously as he started to pour the hot chocolate into various mugs. “You know, in this world Sakura-chan, you had begged Rin-sensei to teach you.” Kakashi gave him a look that swiftly shut him up but Sakura gave him a counter-look to make him keep going. Naruto ended up stuck in a limbo it seemed, staring back at forth at Kakashi and Sakura as he overpoured chocolate into one of the mugs.

Sasuke slapped him out of his worry with a quick hit to the back of the neck before grabbing and passing out the mugs. Kakashi was too busy glaring at Sakura to grab his so Shisui ended up with two in his hands.

“I can assume that your Sakura has asked Rin to teach her before Orochimaru but was turned down?” Sakura shot at Kakashi. There was little doubt in her mind that Kakashi had talked to Rin before the other her had asked for an apprenticeship, and it was possible that Kakashi had even told Rin not to accept her as a student. Deciphering his reasons for that, however, would take all the time she didn’t have, so she shoved that thought away for when there wasn’t an audience.

Shisui seemed to agree, as he knocked back one hot chocolate before turning to her with a grin too happy to be believable. “Enough about Kakashi, what about me, Sakura-chan?”

She dodged the arm he tried to throw around her and tested her own drink. It was good even if it was too sweet.

This was the perfect moment to return to her tent, she decided, putting her cup down with relish. Shisui appeared on her other side before she could blink, swiping her cup out of midair and putting his full cup in her empty hand.

Sakura was too good to gasp but not good enough to stop her glare as Shisui ruffled her hair with no shame. “If you don’t want me to, I won’t write it down Sakura-chan, but not telling me is really freaking me out.”

His jovial tone didn’t hide the worry in his eyes or the way he seemed desperate to keep her out of her tent. “It’s not that,” she said when she couldn’t find any better words. “I think you knowing would hurt more than guessing.” She took another swig of the hot chocolate, grateful that even in his panic Shisui was still being nice to her. How could she repay that with his death?

The hand on her head moved to her shoulder and squeezed. “I’m a shinobi, Sakura-chan. You should at least know that by now.” The rest of the camp was quiet and it seemed even the trees were silent as Sakura looked at her hands and considered her words.

“Danzo killed you,” she said, staring into the fire. The hand on her shoulder tensed but didn’t let go, resting there as Sakura tried to get the words out. Calm, she thought, just be fucking calm. “Danzo killed you long before I could ever meet you.”

“How?”

“He….” Stay fucking calm, she thought. It’s okay, it’s preventable, he’s still alive. “He used Izanagi against you and stole your right eye.”

The fire rose, hit the treeline, and went out as Naruto practically jumped on Sasuke to stop him from rising up. Shisui beside her had stopped breathing, which was a fair enough reaction, and Kakashi had retreated so far he had pulled his book back out.

There was noise now, at the very least, Naruto and Sasuke wrestling around the embers of the fire, legs brushing her and Shisui’s prone forms. His face was turned away but she thought his eyes might be red.

Is there any point in stopping now, she wondered? Or would it be kinder to take the plunge?

“Danzo,” she started again, not waiting for the boys to be done but knowing they would listen. “He feared an uprising from the Uchiha, thought they would wipe out the clan. He took steps to stop them.”

“Steps?” Kakashi asked as every dog around the clearing turned their ears towards Sakura.

“Itachi was coerced into wiping out the Uchiha bloodline in exchange for Sasuke’s life.” Her voice didn’t shake, she thought. Even when Sasuke tackled her and pinned her against the ground with a sword at her throat halfway through the sentence her voice didn’t shake.

Calm, she thought, staring into Sasuke’s eyes which were now red, tears turning his Sharingan murky but no less dangerous. “Tell me you’re lying,” he snarled, heedless of Naruto behind him or the loud barking of dogs that was steadily getting closer. “My brother would never do that to me.”

“Your brother did it for you,” she whispered, throat brushing against the point of the sword. Her right hand was on the knife in her belt but the left was lifted to grab at the exposed blade. “The Uchiha were planning an uprising, and both Danzo and the Third would have killed the whole family if it came to open warfare. He was trapped by them and all he could do was save you.”

She couldn’t see anything in the camp but Sasuke’s agony, his face twisted as he thrust the sword into the ground next to her neck and his weight sagged against it, his body now fully on top of her. Sakura, who was not prepared for this level of physical intimacy that didn’t seem to carry any deadly intent, dropped the knife and tried to pat him on the shoulder.

It was Shisui who eventually lifted him off of her. cradling his younger cousin in his arms. Shisui, who looked just as shocked but would have pushed past any trauma to care for his family. Naruto was absolutely covered in Kakashi’s dogs when she turned to look, face buried in Pakkun’s fur and shoulder’s shaking only slightly.

Kakashi was the one who surprised her when he stepped over the fire and grabbed her hand, bloodied by the sword, and lifted her up. “Well, Sakura-chan,” he said, eyes very much not crinkling at the corners, “Now I see why you didn’t want to talk about it.”

She was tired, she knew, tired and hurt and not calm in the least, which is why she allowed herself to move forward and plant her head on his chest. His fake little “oomph” of surprise didn’t make her move in the least, and not even his hand patting the top of her head made her flinch.

“Kakashi-sensei,” she sighed, “Would you believe me if I told you that wasn’t even the end of it?”

Sasuke cursed and kicked at her ankles, forcing his head out of Shisui’s loving embrace. Shisui gave Sakura a small smile and shoved Sasuke back into the cuddle. “You mean like why the Uchiha were revolting anyway, Sakura-chan?” he asked.

“Do you want me to keep going tonight?” She stepped away from Kakashi and over to Naruto’s log, knowing that if she had to continue it would be him that would suffer most next. To her surprise, Pakkun cleared a spot for her on the bench and even jumped on her lap. The Ninken matches the shinobi she thought, or maybe they were just being overprotective until Kakashi decided she was okay.

It was cute, dammit, and she hated thinking of this version of her sensei as cute.

Sasuke once again clawed his way out of his familial prison and fixed a glare on her that no one believed. “I want to know everything - now.”

“Ah ah ah, what do we say first?” Shisui teased, tone forced but fondness genuine as he stole Sasuke’s sword and spirited it away somewhere hidden.

“I want to know everything now, please?” he bit out.

“No, dumbass, you need to apologize for pointing a sword at Sakura when she’s finally talking to us!” Naruto shouted. His tight grip on the dogs made him about as fearsome as Sasuke looked while being hugged by his cousin but Sakura appreciated the defense. She just didn’t know if he would feel the same way if she kept talking.

Sasuke turned to her, eyes furrowed but back to their regular color. He grabbed at her hand, which she honestly expected would happen given the apparent Uchicha propensity to just grab people, and pulled out his trusty roll of bandages. “I’m sorry,” he said, not very sorry at all, “But that doesn’t mean you should just start grabbing at swords when you know your chakra is gone,” he finished with a grumble. Sakura wasn’t surprised at the mood swing, he probably just did her favorite thing to do when faced with an extremely stressful situation: compartmentalized.

She almost made a joke about how good a medic he was, about how Tsunade would want to take him on as an apprentice and not her, but the stark figure Kakashi cut as he relit the fire with a small breath reminded her that she didn’t get to make jokes, not on this mission.

Maybe, she thought, maybe there’s a world where Sakura is happy. Where she makes jokes and her teammates laugh, where she drinks her hot chocolate and helps clean up after dinner with some Ninkun nipping at her ankles. Maybe, maybe, maybe not.

Shisui stared at her, mirth gone from his eyes. They were no longer red but she knew that spoke more to his self-control than his emotional state. Shisui needed answers just as much as anyone else, which means he dreaded them just as much as well.

“The Uchiha Massacre was one of the worst crimes ever committed by Konoha,” she began, hands back to her lap and all eyes upon her. “But the family really was planning to revolt and Shisui and Itachi were unable to stop it peacefully even when they tried with the Third’s help.”

“But why?” Naruto asked in a small voice like he knew, like he recognized why Sakura was only mentioning Sarutobi and not Minato.

“It’s complicated, but on the night of Naruto’s birth there was an incident with the Kyubi, one that nearly destroyed the village.” Sakura’s hands were shaking, why were they shaking? Point a sword at my throat and her voice wouldn’t change a pitch but now, now she felt weightless. She couldn’t hear anything but Naruto’s labored breathing next to her and she wanted more than anything for him to interrupt, to be loud and obnoxious, to be the Naruto she knew was real.

“Minato and Kushina gave their lives to stop the rampage, and when all was said and done there were many villagers who thought the Uchiha orchestrated the whole thing. Danzo took advantage of the tension to gain power knowing that while Sarutobi was Hokage-”

She stopped. Took a breath. Picked at the bandage Sasuke had wrapped around her hand. The bandage was real. The fire was real. Her world wasn’t real, not anymore.

“Danzo knew that while Sarutobi was Hokage he could do whatever he wanted. So he did.”

The clearing was silent, Naruto vibrating next to her with almost enough force to tear the log apart from underneath him. Fuck, did he have a good relationship with Kurama? Did he even talk to the beast inside him in this timeline when he had many outside sources of support? What would happen if he lost control?

But that wasn’t even the worst of it, she realized, as the dog in her lap lifted his head and growled. Every person in the clearing, even Naruto, raised their head as one and turned to the intruder who had just burst through the wards.

Standing there, green robe hanging off her shoulders and purple diamond prominent, Tsunade pointed an accusing finger at Sakura; the sake still her hand splashed out of its cup, landing in the campfire with a sizzle that Sakura knew more than anything meant Tsunade was real.

“What the fuck is she talking about?”

Chapter Text

It had been one of those nights where Shizune had left the office early. She finally managed to pin down a date on her schedule, one she had been forced to move further and further back for weeks, so it was with no small amount of determination that she had thrown herself out of Hokage Tower with a stern reminder to Tsunade and Sakura to finish off whatever paperwork was left.

Tsunade had promptly broken out a bottle of sake and dragged Sakura away from the inventory reports she was reading. The hospital was lacking just about everything it needed and had the funds necessary to buy, at max, some bandages. It was ridiculous and something Sakura was trying to change to ease the burden on medic-nin and civilians alike.

But not that night. No, that night Tsunade had locked the doors and windows, sent ABNU off with a jaunty wave saying Sakura was all the babysitting she needed, and shoved all the papers off her desk. The two of them spent the night toasting the weirdest injuries they had healed and arm wrestling on the old Hokage desk. It had broken, of course, leading to a very drunk summoning of Yamato.

Sakura and her shishou had fallen asleep on the floor of the office as the sun was rising. Shizune had burst in three hours later to berate them but Tsunade was still unconscious so it was only Sakura that got scolded. She hadn’t minded, of course. She knew her shishou had needed a break as much as Shizune, as much as all of her friends did as they tried to stop Konoha from falling apart with just their hands.

At the time she knew that sometimes happiness wasn’t a matter of deserving so much as a matter of necessity. She allowed herself late nights and full cups without hesitation.

Sakura doesn’t know if she’s gotten smarter or dumber with age. All she knows is that even if she did need a night of rest she wouldn’t have the time.

But she isn’t thinking about that night as Tsunade thunders her way across the clearing, taking command of the world as only a Hokage could. No, Sakura is doing something worse.

She’s thinking of how to fight.

It’s a shameful instinct but a necessary one, taught to her not by her old world but this one: Minato and Kakashi and Sasuke. This was a world of threats dressed in dreams and Sakura was done being fooled by fantasy. So even if she loved her shishou, even if she wanted nothing more than to fall at her feet and beg for her to remember her, Sakura was instead picturing the best way she could subdue her old hero.

Blood wasn’t a safe bet, not really: Tsunade was even stronger than she gave herself credit for and she wouldn’t be felled by something as simple as fear. No, the real trick was to target Shizune.

Sakura could sense the woman hanging around the edges of the clearing, smart enough to realize she couldn’t just storm into the camp like Tsunade could. Like Tsunade did, planting herself on a log and giving the pot of hot chocolate a disdainful glance and a sip. “So, what the fuck?”

Sakura was betting in her head who would break the silence first, Naruto or Shisui, and was therefore understandably surprised when it was Kakashi who stood to attention with no book in hand. “Ahh, Tsunade-san, here to thank us for taking care of your little mercenary problem?”

Tsunade gave a dismissive snort and waved her hand at the idea of being hunted by a mere group of S-class missing-nin. “I’ve been giving them the slip for months now - lost them entirely a week or so back.” She took another sip of the chocolate before slamming it down. “Now someone get me an actual drink.”

Sakura moved on instinct at the command she had drilled into her head years and years ago. Her hand was already going to her ankle where she hid her sealing scroll when she was stopped by her shishou’s piercing glare.

“Genshu, right?” Sakura said as she unsealed the bottle that she had bought days before she left for the mission. She knew it was creepy - she also knew Tsunade only bothered listening to other people when she was good and drunk. The most productive council meetings during Tsunde’s reign had been when she was hammered; coincidentally, these were also the times where Shizune and Sakura managed the administrative work.

The bottle she held now wasn’t the same quality her shishou liked to drink but it was of the same alcoholic content: a blistering and undiluted 20%. It was tempting enough that Tsunade snatched it from her fingers without reservation, taking an immediate swig that demonstrated Tsunade’s lack of fear when it came to poison. Perks of being the most powerful medic-nin in the world.

Tsunade gave a hearty sigh and took another swig before putting the bottle down between her legs. “So, pinky, you seem to have done your research. Village still gossiping about my bad habits?”

“Something like that,” Sakura replied. The cut on her hand - and damn was she getting into a bad habit with that - was already healing without any conscious use of chakra. She turned to Kakashi and tilted her head and he obliged, pulling out the scrap of green fabric they had gathered off of Sasori’s corpse.

He tossed it at Tsunade’s feet with a dramatic flourish that he would never admit was on purpose. “Those little pursuers you ‘lost’ were Akatsuki: Sasori of the Red Sands and the bomber Deidara. We took care of them for you.”

Shizune’s gasp was audible across the clearing even if she was still hanging back in the woods but Tsunade didn’t flinch at the news, merely turned to look at their little party with new eyes.

“Two Uchiha, the son of the Hokage, and the Copy Nin taking down two S-class nin? I’d believe it, perhaps, but only if you have a good explanation for your tag-along.”

Sasuke gave a snort at that, still huddled between Shisui and Naruto, but Sakura wouldn’t look at them. No, Sakura was looking at Tsunade and wondering if she had the chakra necessary to jump through the campfire and punch her old shishou through a tree. After all, Tsunade was a teacher who loved practical demonstrations over all else.

But no, she couldn’t. Sakura was weak right now, so weak Tsunade would laugh at her for even trying. If Tsunade knew just how little chakra Sakura had she would never believe that Sakura had once been her student, had once displayed a purple diamond on her forehead.

She had to convince her with words.

“My name is Sakura Haruno and I’m from another world.”

Best to be direct, after all.

Tsunade looked at her, snorted, took another drink, looked at her again, then started full-belly laughing at an alarming volume. Shizune dutifully crawled out from the shadows to support Tsunade’s back so she wouldn’t fall over the log with the force of her mirth.

Glancing around at her teammates Sakura was met with no small amount of dismay. Shisui was at least trying to be helpful as he started to flip through the pages of his journal, likely as a way to find proof for Sakura’s claims.

“Auntie!” came the cry from Naruto, “She’s telling the truth! Sakura is crazy strong and she knows a bunch of weird stuff and she tore out Sasori’s heart like it was nothing! And Kurama says she smells funny but in a good way.” He gave an emphatic stomp to the ground to prove his point before jabbing a finger at Sakura. “She’s the one who started the mission in the first place so you gotta believe her!”

Sakura carefully filed away that tidbit about Kurama so she could panic about it at a later date. For now, her attention was wholly taken up by Tsunade standing to her full height and grabbing Sakura’s chin with a firm, unyielding hand. “And what would a girl from another world want with a washed-up drunken gambler?”

If Tsunade wanted to, she could break Sakura’s jaw before anyone at the campfire would be able to stop her. If Sakura wanted to, she could rip Tsunade’s heart apart by just saying a few words. The night was going about as well as Sakura thought it would.

Sakura made furtive eye contact with Shisui before braving Tsunade’s glare again. “Orochimaru is using the hospital to supply Danzo with a legion of child soldiers and resurrected corpses. Only you or Jiraiya can stop him.”

Shisui moved over to Shizune and showed her the open pages of his notebook that detailed the accounts of missing children and misplaced morgue records. Damning evidence found through the old Sakura’s spying and Shisui’s access to the Uchiha police force. Shizune gave a critical hum as she skimmed the information, turning pages rapidly as her face filled with dawning horror.

Tsunade turned as well, Sakura’s jaw still firmly captured, and it only took a nod from Shizune to have the Sannin fuming. “He’s been doing this with MY damn hospital?”

“For years,” was Shisui’s solemn response. Sakura’s chin was dropped as Tsunade took another big swig from the bottle.

The blonde thundered around the fire as Kakashi’s ninken scrambled to move out of the way of her wrath. “But what,” she spat, “Does this have to do with the tourist or the mercenaries?”

Kakashi gave a rueful chuckle as he stretched his arms over his head. “Mah, that’s where the story gets weird.”

Shizune sputtered at him, “That’s where it gets weird?”

The fire leaped higher as Shisui encouraged it to grow and grow, a reminder that they’d most likely be up all night trying to explain this to Tsunade. Sakura watched it reach higher into the sky and wondered once again if it would have been easier to just assassinate Danzo quietly without disclosing the truth of her circumstances to anyone.

It would have been near impossible, but a suicide run would have been less difficult than trying to get the most stubborn kunoichi alive to believe that her student from another world traveled all this way just to make Tsunade come home. It was a farce, worse than even Jiraiya’s novels.

Sakura almost wished Kakashi would leap across the fire and shove his hand through her heart again if only to put a stop to the awkward conversation but it appears he “trusted” her enough to not try to kill her anymore. Asshole.

“There was a Sakura Haruno who existed in this world-”

“We were working together to investigate the hospital when she started working there,” Shisui interrupted.

“But then she was found and apparently murdered,” Kakashi added, giving another look to Shisui that indicated he had not forgotten what happened to his old student even if they were on a mission.

Tsunade’s head whipped around at the back and forth before she got dizzy and sat down with a huff. “So a ghost from another world took over her body?”

“No,” Sakura said, trying to illustrate with her hands the clusterfuck that was her apparent resurrection. “I’m a Sakura Haruno from another world where I knew you. I was killed as well. Maybe at the same relative time, if we’re believing that the two streams of reality are running parallel.”

“Yeah, that.” Sasuke spat on the ground. “She also apparently knew members of the Akatsuki, which is how she killed Sasori of the Red Sands by impersonating some old lady.” He shifted forward on his log as he said this, picking up the scrap of green fabric on the ground. “They might have been sent after you by Orochimaru.”

“Or Danzo,” Sakura added, “Though we think this world’s Sakura was killed by Kabuto under Orochimaru’s orders. Staged like a suicide in her apartment.”

There was a small silence again at the news as Shisui and the others once again were forced to confront that the Sakura they had really known was gone. She couldn’t even begin to understand what weird disconnect they must feel knowing that the girl they knew was murdered even as her body continued walking and talking.

Tsunade, for better or for worse, had no such connection to either Sakura and didn’t flinch at the death of a girl she had never known. “And what proof do we have that you’re not just crazy and pulling this story out of your ass?”

“The other Sakura permanently resided in the village and has for years. There’s no way she would have known Sasori or his grandmother,” Sakura replied, trying not to wither under her shishou’s familiar glare of disapproval. “But you know Chiyo, right? She always called you slug-girl in my world and I doubt it’s any different here.”

Tsunade scoffed at the old nickname and crossed her arms. “So, what, you just mentioned the name and Sasori stood there while you killed him?”

Sasuke gave a muttered “I wish,” quietly in the background. Naruto whacked in on the back of the head and gave Tsunade an embarrassed grin. “Uh, it was a bit messier than that auntie.”

“I’m a medic, kid.”

Sakura gave a small sigh of relief as Naruto took control of the conversation like he was naturally good at, explaining the battle with huge expressions and hand movement for emphasis. It was funny the way Naruto could even make a life and death fight sound like a fun adventure. The more he described Sakura’s strategy, though, the more Tsunade frowned before draining the last of the bottle of Sake.

Of course Sakura had another one ready which garnered another glare from the older woman. Tsunade accepted it after a minute and sighed heavily enough to remind Sakura of their longest days in the Hokage’s office together. “But why are you picking up on this weird conspiracy if you’re not the Sakura from here?”

“I might not have lived in this Konoha but that doesn’t mean I’m not still loyal to my village.”

“How idealistic of you,” her shishou drawled. Tsunade made her way over to Shizune and finally took a look at the notebook for herself, racing through the pages. “But this conspiracy also puts you at odds with Konoha. I doubt this is you just doing your duty.”

“It isn’t duty, it’s selfishness. A God Complex.” Sakura laughed and unspooled the bandage around her healed hand. She tossed it into the campfire and watched it burn as she once again was forced to expose every soft underbelly she was taught to hide. It felt like Sakura was constantly tearing off pieces of herself just so she would be allowed to help save the people she cared about. “My friends are dead in my world and they’re alive in this one. I can make sure they stay that way.”

Tsunade studied her by firelight, cataloging all the truths she could wring from Sakura’s appearance. She knew she was a mess even if she hadn’t truly looked in a mirror since her first day here. It was too much of a mindfuck to see her own eyes in a body that looked so terribly different. She didn’t want to look at her face, at her forehead, and know all her progress was lost.

“Are you planning on pretending to be the other Sakura for the rest of your life?” She asked after a few minutes. It was clear the tilt of her mouth and the light in her eyes that Tsunade knew the answer before Sakura even said it.

For all of Sakura’s pain, for all of her lamenting and worrying, Tsunade had seen a hundred similar nin in her time. Maybe a thousand. Tsunade had been on hundreds of missions and spent countless hours in the hospital so it didn’t surprise Sakura that Tsunade could spot dysfunction a mile off the same way she would spot a broken arm. It felt like she had the words “flight risk” flashing above her in neon lights.

So Sakura shook her head and Tsunade laughed, really laughed, and offered up the bottle of sake.

“You’re too young to play the martyr, kid.”

“I think it stops becoming play when I actually die. Twice,” she mumbled. The burn of sake down her throat felt like love in the worst of ways, inflaming old wounds she forgot were open. Sakura had never really said goodbye to her shishou, hadn’t had the time in wake of the attack on Konoha.

She remembers, now, the first official mission given to her by Danzo. He looked like an ancient mural in the Hokage’s robes, a snarling trickster god from ages past. Just hours after Konoha literally burned to the ground, hours after Naruto and Hinata had sacrificed themselves without looking back, Sakura was alone with the new Hokage. Kakashi in a coma, Tsunade in a casket, Shizune burying herself in the hospital knowing it's all she could do - Sakura was the one who had to climb up to the office and stare the devil in the face.

“Find Sasuke,” he crowed. “Find the rest of the Uchiha line and bring me their heads.

“After all, you are now the strongest kunoichi of them all.”

Another drink and the memories washed clean, Danzo’s face fading even has his words still echoed.

Sakura had always admired her shishou for her strength, deified her for her power and authority. But now, looking at Tsunade slump in the firelight, Sakura realized how little glory there was to be found in “being the strongest,” and how tired Tsunade must have been when she was forced into the Hokage’s seat.

No wonder she ran. No wonder Sakura also wanted to run when all this was said and done.

“So what exactly do you want me to do?” her shishou asked as she gestured for the bottle of sake. Sakura handed it over with little resistance (after taking yet another bracing drink).

Shizune also moved now, pulling out her notebook and pencil and sitting by Tsunade’s side. Shisui flashed over to her side and copied her position exactly, maybe as a joke or maybe as a way to show he was taking this equally as seriously. Shizune gave him a Look when the Uchiha moved closer but didn’t tell him off, maybe recognizing his solid dependability under all that projected ridiculousness.

Sakura weighed the options in her head, wishing she had a chalkboard or something to illustrate everything going on in Konoha as she saw it. “So we know Orochimaru is head of the hospital and he’s working directly with Danzo, who’s part of the council, and the Akatsuki.” She stood, turned, and stopped with a glance to Naruto. “Is Sarutobi still alive?”

“Gramps? He acts as an advisor to my dad sometimes,” he responded with a shrug.

Kakashi turned to her with what she could assume was a grimace. “Do you think he’s working with Danzo?”

“He won’t be working against Danzo, no matter how much he cares for Minato.”

“And what makes you say that, tourist?” sneered Tsunade in defense of her old teacher. The skepticism was evident in her voice and a glance around the fire showed Naruto felt the same way. And Sakura couldn’t help but also doubt her own words: what guarantee did she have? She was acting on assumption after assumption, something she had done countless times before, but now she was leading some of the most prominent members of Konoha with her.

But she couldn’t say that part out loud.

“In my world, Sarutobi acted as Hokage for an additional twelve years. During his reign he allowed Danzo to create Root, let Orochimaru go free as an open enemy of Konoha, failed to stop a massacre that killed almost the entire Uchiha clan, and allowed Danzo to remain on the council even after he tried to assassinate Sarutobi.”

Yeah, that would work.

There was a lot of sputtering after that, Naruto and Sasuke doing their familiar routine of one of them yelling and the other yelling louder to shut up. Kakashi and Shisui already knew some of this so there wasn’t as much shock on their faces - the most interesting part was Tsunade’s reaction.

Nothing.

Shizune’s frantic pencil was the only sound on their side of the campfire, the same familiar rhythm that Sakura had heard millions of times before. “Orochimaru turned missing-nin in your world?”

“Shortly after Minato was named Hokage, yes.”

That got Tsunade’s attention, her shishou rising from the log and breaking the empty bottle of sake at her feet. “If Minato was named Hokage then why did Sarutobi serve an additional twelve years?”

Naruto also rose at the question. There was a quiet rise of energy in the air as Naruto turned to her; his whiskers almost seemed to glow on his face, a constant reminder as to the power held in one young man’s body. Sakura could bitch and moan about how hard it was being the strongest for the rest of her life but she would never understand what it was to be a jinchūriki.

And Kurama apparently liked how she smelled, which was perhaps an even greater reason to avoid Naruto losing control at all costs. It was perhaps a bit childish for Sakura to try to avoid the truth of her situation but she couldn’t afford to be distracted from her current mission. However she ended up in this body - and if it had any connection to the tailed beasts - were questions she could answer later.

“Minato did become the Yondaime in my world but died shortly thereafter, leaving Sarutobi to take up the mantle again.”

“You said he and my mom died because of Kurama and me, right?” Naruto asked, standing roughly two inches away from Sakura’s back. She told herself not to turn around and look, not to act like he was a threat to her, but it was becoming more difficult by the second. Tsunade’s fingers started to tense, her shoulders rolling back, and Sakura knew she wasn’t the only one preparing for a battle. A perhaps entirely one-sided battle depending on how strong Naruto was in this world and how well he worked alongside Kurama.

But there, lying next to the log and discarded by Sakura at Tsunade’s dramatic entrance, was a mug of hot chocolate. She bent down at a snail’s pace feeling the inferno growing on her back and grabbed it.

Turning around and handing it to Naruto wasn’t the scariest thing Sakura’s ever done but it was the most awkward. She ended up shoving the cup into Naruto’s chest until he finally raised his arms and took it from her.

“Remember an hour or so ago when Sasuke pointed a sword at my throat?” she asked his near expressionless face. The problem with telling this story was that Sakura didn’t even need to, not really, because the way Naruto was acting meant he had already guessed what happened, or something close to it.

Naruto nodded but made no other indication of having heard her. “I just don’t want you to do literally the exact same thing, okay?”

Naruto nodded again; it wasn’t much comfort.

“On the night of your birth, there was an outside force that took control of Kurama and caused him to rampage. It wasn’t yours or your parent’s fault - from what I can tell, Kushina and Minato died sealing Kurama in you after it was forcibly ripped from Kushina.”

“But you know what that ‘outside force' was, don’t you Sakura-chan?” Kakashi called from behind her. She couldn’t spare him a second thought though, not with how Naruto’s energy was still building and twisting around him, his eyes and whiskers and hair and teeth now glowing and inhumane in the weak light.

The mug dropped, hot chocolate spilling all over her and Naruto’s legs as the demon container almost seemed to grow in height, towering over her with his fury. “You know how to take control of Kurama?” he shouted.

Sakura did not backpedal so much as she gave herself a tactical amount of breathing room. “I don’t know the exact details of the night - most of the records were lost.”

Tsunade slinked around her left shoulder to put a calming arm around Naruto. The force of her side-hug was more than enough to settle him down even as the fury on his face remained. “But you know more than you’re telling us, kid,” her shishou accused.

“Listing all I know from my world would leave us in these woods for days,” Sakura bit back. She knew she was asking them to take her word, she knew they were going on faith, but it didn’t mean she appreciated them tearing her apart for their own paranoid curiosity.

If Obito was still in the village then she had no idea where Madara was or if Madara was even around. The story surrounding him was murky at best and one she had never really been privy to how exactly he had come back to life - whether he was just a weapon wielded by Kabuto or some grand mastermind.

Given that she had been busy stopping him from tearing through the entirety of their allied forces it hadn’t mattered at the time. Motherfucker had been throwing meteorites around.

But even if she could guess that their worlds split when Obito was saved on Team Seven’s fateful mission she still couldn’t give any concrete details on a history she hadn’t lived. All she knew was Kakashi still ended up with a Sharingan but Rin never died.

But her team, if they were her team, were focused on the fact that Sakura did know something so of course she should share it, damn the repercussions.

She had to stop getting angry at them for not being perfect. She had to keep hoping they were at least better.

Reality was driven through her skull when Kakashi gave her head a resounding chop. “We’re not asking for much here, Sakura-chan.” His hand gave her head a little patronizing pet after, as if to dull whatever sting she might feel from his rebuke.

The situation somehow got worse, though, when her shishou nodded in agreement.

What happened on Sakura’s face after that was a mystery to her but acted as enough incentive for Naruto to calm down a bit, so, small mercies. Now that the conversation had probably hit its lowest point she felt comfortable unsealing the last bottle of sake hiding under her breast band and downing half the bottle herself, oblivious to Tsunade’s offended sputtering in the background.

Wiping the back of her mouth with her hand, Sakura grimaced and belched. “It would be hard to put into words exactly how little some of the events in my world matter. I can only guess where the timelines diverged, but if I’m right it was a decade or more before I was born and it had nothing to do with Danzo or Orochimaru. Those are the problems we’re facing right now.”

The bottle was snatched from her hand in seconds and Tsunade started working on the other half of it with a fury. Naruto broke her hold on him and surged forward, hands grasping at the front of Sakura’s shirt and lifting her feet off the ground. “But if there’s something out there that affects the nine tails then I deserve to know. I need to know.”

With Tsunade distracted it was Kakashi’s turn to watch the kids; he darted behind Naruto to lift him by the back of his shirt. Sakura dropped to the ground and backed up a few feet keeping a wary eye on the two.

Shisui and Sasuke ended up flanking her, two dark pillars of silence on either side. Well, one pillar of silence and Shisui.

“Eh, Sakura-chan, you know I’m on your side here-”

“Great opening,” Sasuke muttered.

“But you do seem to be hiding quite a bit of relevant information,” Shisui finished without shame. Despite the situation, Sakura did find herself appreciating how he approached it at least. It was a far cry from Naruto’s rage or her former teachers' condescension.

She sighed and plucked absently at the ruffled hems of her shirt. “Aren't the shinobi of Konoha taught to operate on a need-to-know basis?”

“Right! Well, the fact that we don’t really know you means we do need a bit more to go on.” He chuckled at his own joke but it didn’t cover the edge to his voice or the sharp lines of his face as he studied her. Tonight he had received more information that he knew what to do with, all devoid of context. She could understand the frustration even if she had little sympathy.

Sasuke, who she noticed had his sword again, gave a huff of anger. “At this point, we’re going to stand around all night and decide on nothing.”

Sakura nodded, eyes turning towards Naruto and Kakashi. The aura surrounding the blonde had diminished in the past few minutes but his posture remained tense even as Kakashi wiggled his around by the collar like a disgruntled cat.

Tsunade had retreated after finishing her drink to sit next to Shizune, a separation Sakura felt keenly. It seemed no one around the fire trusted her enough to start making concrete plans.

But getting into detail now would only make them want more information and better explanations that she wouldn’t be able to give. She turned to Tsunade, frustrated, and spat, “What would it take for you to believe me?”

“What was your connection to me?” her shishou asked after a pause and a quiet look with Shizune.

Sakura hesitated for a second but chose to walk closer and away from her little huddle with the two cousins. “You were my teacher, for a time.”

Tsunade clicked her tongue and stood to inspect Sakura fully. This close, Sakura could almost feel the sheer power Tsunade kept circulating through her body. The control her teacher had over her chakra was nothing short of god-like and a detail that was lost to the more impressive moments of her punching apart mountains.

And, Sakura realized with a jolt, it was a technique she was replicating at the moment with her own depleted pool of chakra. Her power constantly thrummed under her skin, even now working to ease sore muscles and heal minor scrapes.

Tsunade crossed the distance and gave her forehead a gentle poke; it was the exact spot where Sakura had once proudly displayed her Strength of a Hundred Seal. “And exactly how good of a student were you?”

Sakura didn’t flinch from the contact but it was a near thing, the touch such a stark contrast from the bruising grip Tsunade had subjected her to earlier. “It took me three years under your tutelage to form the seal. I was sixteen.”

Shizune gasped, or maybe it was Shisui, but Tsunade’s expression didn’t change even as her finger started to dig harder and harder into Sakura’s skin. It wasn’t her shishou’s full strength which meant Sakura was able to prevent the skin from breaking but she was still forced to reach her foot back in order to brace herself.

“This body is quite weak, and I doubt it could even train to be a field medic.” Had Tsunade’s eyes always been so cold? It left Sakura with a familiar sinking pit in her stomach, one she had felt all those years ago when facing Orochimaru as a child in the chunin exams.

Sakura was a girl facing down titans.

One breath. Two. Sakura was a girl who had already faced down titans and spat in their faces. Sakura had a goddamn celestial body thrown at her.

Decision time then: how to respond to Tsunade in a way that would make her respect Sakura without making her hate Sakura. And with all the alcohol gone that left only one solution: practical demonstration.

“Do you want to spar?”

--------------

They found a suitable enough clearing five miles from their camp and in the dark of the night they made their preparations.

More seals and safety precautions went up, Kakashi’s ninken complaining of overtime as they were once again asked to patrol the perimeter. Sasuke had decided to stay back at the campfire to help Naruto calm down some which left Shisui, Kakashi, and Shizune to supervise their match.

Shizune was less than happy with the events taking place but was swept along with Tsunade’s near feral enthusiasm at the thought of a good fight. Or a terrible beatdown, depending on who you asked.

Kakashi and Shisui were vacillating between pissed and worried even as they tried to be quiet about it. The Uchiha was especially cloying with his concern having already set up a mini triage unit at the edges of their arena for him and Shizune to fret in.

Kakashi was declared the official referee and stood in the middle of the clearing on a large boulder with book down and Sharingan spinning. What he was going to use it for was a question Sakura didn’t care to answer. Her old teacher, her old partner, either saw her as a threat to Tsunade or someone who needed protection from her. Both options left a sour taste in her mouth.

But this wasn’t about Kakashi.

Tsunade stood twenty feet away from her, green robe a small beacon in the moonlight. She did a few experimental stretches, body loose from the alcohol she had consumed before the camp and the sake that Sakura had given her.

Of course, her being drunk wasn’t going to be enough to save Sakura. She gave a few experimental stretches herself, estimating how much time she had before her chakra would run out and her body would become physically exhausted. The prognosis was shit, really, She could possibly absorb one hit from her former teacher but even that depended on how serious Tsunade took this spar.

But this wasn’t about Tsunade.

No, this was about Sakura proving exactly how close she was to her Tsunade, her shishou. And there was no better way to do that than showing Tsunade exactly how much Sakura had learned in her grueling years of training.

So she gave Kakashi the thumbs up and braced herself with no ninjutsu or tricks up her sleeves.

Tsunade was on her in an instant, body launching with fist outstretched and blond hair blooming behind her. Her body seemed to grow in size, muscles expanding and distorting her figure to a monstrous degree. If Sakura had still been there for the blow it would have torn her left arm clean off.

But Sakura dodged and grabbed Tsunade’s arm, managing to use Tsunade’s momentum to spin her in mid-air. Her teacher was launched into the line of trees at the edge of the clearing. Tsunade disappeared in an explosion of bark of woodland creatures. detritus coating the outer edges of their arena.

Sakura took a few steps back and shook out her arms. Throwing Tsunade like that took up a significa-

It was instinct that braced her stomach even as her mind went white with pain. She flew across the battlefield and probably would have kept going until she reached Konoha if not for the fact that Kakashi caught her prone form. Her stomach caved so far inward she thought it touched her spine, organs left displaced and aching.

The impact felt like it reached her minutes after the initial hit as she spat blood all over her sensei’s mask. Sakura knew without even having to check that healing the internal damage would use up the rest of her chakra entirely and leave her unconscious; she made the very smart, tactical decision to not do that, instead choosing to scramble out of Kakashi’s arms.

The wound was debilitating, yes, but not impossible to overcome. And if Sakura fainted now she would have proved nothing.

(And, a quiet part of her mind screamed, you’d be at the mercy of these strangers. No, Rat, these people would kill you in your sleep the second you let your guard down - you either fight or find a good hole to crawl into and hide.)

Standing, Sakura found Tsunade standing a few feet away and appraising her with hooded eyes. “You’re at your dumbest when you’re overthinking everything, kid.”

Sakura spat into her hand and wiped the blood on the back of her pants. “You’ve said it before.”

“Eh, maybe you were a bad student.” Tsunade blew a few errant strands of hair out of her face and heaved a great sigh. She didn’t look any different than she had at the start of their fight - hadn’t even chipped a nail. “C’mon, I’ll heal you.”

Sakura braced her feet and raised her hands, daring Tsunade to come over to her. Kakashi cursed behind her but didn’t call the fight, something she would have to thank him for later.

Tsunade, though, smiled. Walking forward, she and Sakura started to circle each other as they studied each other’s stances. Wary of her stomach, Sakura let Tsunade make the first move. Her shishou was relaxed with her steps, lackadaisical in how she approached the injured girl. As Tsunade crossed the distance between them with a deadly grace, Sakura was once again reminded of Orochimaru attacking her in the Forest of Death - slinking around the battlefield and striking when the mood hit him. Seems even the Sanin couldn’t forget their teammates so easily.

The blow came a second later, a strong uppercut that would have destroyed whatever ribcage Sakura had left. It didn’t, of course, because the first and most important lesson Tsunade had ever taught her was how to dodge.

The next few moments were more of the same: Tsunade striking with enough force to kill and Sakura swerving the blows. Any hits she returned were ineffectual and ignored by the blonde woman, mosquito bites when compared to Tsunade’s mountain-shaking blows.

But Sakura had all the time in the world to dance in the moonlight, so dance she did. Tsunade’s blows grew stronger and faster in her frustration, destroying the ground around them and dislodging Kakashi from his little referee spot. He stayed close though, wary eyes never leaving Tsunade as she continued her assault.

A blow Sakura landed on her shishou’s side left her open, Tsunade’s knee quickly snapping to her injured stomach and leaving her gasping on the ground. Above her, Tsunade’s fist raised and descended like a crashing wave, obliterating the very air around it as it descended towards Sakura’s head.

She couldn’t dodge this one.

She didn’t need to.

As Sakura expected, Tsnuade’s blow landed inches away from her left ear. Tsunade’s face slackened at Sakura’s stillness and shit-eating grin, which allowed her to sweep her teacher’s feet out from under her with a leg lock.

Tsunade fell hard in one of the craters she had been steadily creating over the battlefield; all it took was one last-ditch burst of chakra for Sakura to slam her foot down on Tsunade’s stomach, sending her plummeting further into the Earth.

There was silence. Then, the muffled sound of Tsunade screaming obscenities from the bottom of a hole. Sakura had enough presence of mind to give Kakashi one last thumbs up before she fell unconscious.

Chapter Text

If Sakura were to regret anything about her spar with Tsunade, it would be the end: passing out from exhaustion validated all of Shisui's aggressive mother-henning tendencies. She woke up five hours later with him crying dramatically at the side of her cot, Shizune the one doing the actual work to heal her stomach and rib cage.

It was shameful, the way Sakura's body curled towards Shizune's cool touch. Her healing Chakra was just as familiar as Tsunade's - softer, with a subtle touch, but still powerful enough to piece together Sakura's bones and cartilage. It was shameful, the way she dropped all her defenses for her old friend because for Sakura’s first few waking moments she allowed herself to imagine it was out of kindness and not duty that Shizune treated her.

But Shizune’s gaze was impersonal, her mouth pursed in concentration. The only crack in her professional mask came from the occasional glare she sent Shisui’s way.

“Shisui,” Sakura rasped out of a throat that felt far too constricted, “Would you mind shutting up?”

Shizune giggled above her as Shisui froze in place, his expression a curious mix of relief and genuine anger. He backed up a tad, fingers flexing around nothing, and tried to fix his mussed hair and teary face.

“Sakura-chan, how are you feeling?” His tone was flat, off somehow, and she wracked her brains trying to find where she had heard it before. The apartment, maybe, when they really had been strangers? Back when he had found her covered in blood.

She pushed it to the side and took stock of her body. Prognosis was halfway to fucked, with Shizune valiantly trying to get her back to baseline.

“I’m fine.” This was true. “Give me a few soldier pills and I’d be down to spar with you.” This was untrue but she felt stronger for saying it, for putting the words out there, for letting them know she wasn’t weak.

When Shisui’s hand came crashing down next to her head, a blur of black faster than Tsunade’s, she shut her mouth quickly enough that her teeth smashed into each other. Shizune picked her hands up and held them over Sakura’s body, a protective medic-nin any hour of the day, but Sakura knew she wasn’t in danger the same way she knew she would survive last night.

His hand was nearly buried to the wrist, a finger’s length away from her ear, and with Shisui hunched over she couldn’t see his face through the curtain of his ridiculous Uchiha hair. Still as a corpse, the fastest Uchiha finally stuck to one place.

“Then tell me, Sakura, were you planning on getting hurt?”

She nodded - she didn’t see a reason to lie. Sakura always got hurt, always, and planning for it meant that she always knew how to get back up.

Shisui’s form twisted, a vacuum of space twisting inward as he turned himself to a crow and flew away, communicating a deep sense of frustration through the flap of his wings.

Shizune remained silent, helping Sakura to lean against a tree in order to drink some water. From across the field she could see Kakashi, Naruto, and Sasuke trying to dig the unconscious Tsunade out of the hole in the ground. Shizune told her that her shishou had mysteriously acquired another bottle of sake and had drunk herself unconscious in the early hours of the morning.

Of course, Sakura knew it was only so she didn't have to do the actual work of digging herself out.

Her team was struggling, it seemed: having failed to rig up a pulley system, they had since resorted to tossing cold water in the hole and yelling to make Tsunade wake up. Sakura took another sip of water and made herself comfortable. They were going to be here for a while.

---

Tsunade crawled out by herself an hour later after the rest of Team Seven had remade their camp on whatever stable parts of the field were left. Shizune had passed out soon after, exhausted after healing Sakura and dealing with Shisui's capricious mood.

He hadn’t returned yet, but when Sasuke asked her where his cousin was, all she could say was that he went scouting.

She was left buzzing after the spar and the feeling of her bones being knit back together, so she chose to do some morning stretches instead. Sasuke joined her, as taciturn as she had known him as a child, with Naruto still snoring beside them.

If not for the presence of Kakashi, it would have felt like so many mornings when Team Seven had met on that little bridge and did their level best to ignore each other.

She shifted into a Triangle Pose, right hand brushing lightly against her ankle and left reaching towards the sky, as she tried to imagine what it would be like to go back, really go back to her Konoha, instead of fumbling her way through this absolutely insane parody of her life.

Or maybe her life was the parody. Maybe if she took a step back she would realize how ridiculous it was that the two most powerful children in the village were isolated orphans, given no instruction or care. They were simply handed off to the next traumatized orphan they could find, one that would be able to put down the Kyuubi if the need had arisen.

At what point did she realize her childhood made no sense? That her team was doomed to fail one way or another, not due to any one particular member, but because of the tyrants in charge who lit the fuse and let them explode?

At what point did she realize that she was the sacrificial lamb of her generation, a lonely little civilian girl who no one would miss if Kakashi let them die on a mission or Naruto flew into a rage and killed them all?

She drew back up, took a breath, and shifted to her left leg. It didn’t matter that Tsunade seemed to be the only Hokage she had known that hadn’t wanted her dead - Konoha was Konoha was Konoha. The thought of giving up on it or the people inside would kill more of Sakura than Danzo ever could.

She was a medic. There was an infection in her village, in her home, and she had a duty to root it out and burn it. Whether Konoha wanted her to save it or not was immaterial.

A breath. She drew out of the stance and fell into the Warrior Pose, the sound of Tsunade’s snores acting as her timer. She put a list of today’s goals in her mind:

- Establish Tsunade’s trust in her and the Team
- Plan their approach and discuss potential allies in the village
- Talk to Naruto privately about Kurama
- Talk to Kakashi privately about Obito (maybe)
- Talk to Shizune privately about whether or not Tsunade will remain in the village
- Pass out

Easy enough as far as these things went. The hardest part would be putting together a plan. Sakura’s go-to would be for Tsunade to stroll into Konoha’s hospital to rip Orochimaru’s heart out, any explanations coming later.

Tsunade might even go for it depending on how drunk she was when they reached the village - she just wasn’t sure Kakashi or Shisui would agree. Not to mention it left Danzo in the wind and forewarned about their assault. Slimy bastard probably had a dozen little bottle holes strewn about and under the village.

The ideal situation would be to get the two Sannin and Danzo away from the village. The fight could commence from there without much fear of collateral damage, and the fact that Minato could teleport meant they would have the Hokage for backup if need be.

But how to lure the worst men in the world to an abandoned field so she could murder them in private?

Explaining it to Sasuke and Kakashi didn’t help much either. All they knew for sure was Danzo wanted control of Konoha, so how could they convince him to leave?

“Well,” Sasuke said, “We could tell we abandoned some unwanted, suggestible children in the woods.” They were lying on the ground now and eating some ration bars Shisui had packed for them. His comment almost made her spit out the granola (or granola-adjacent) bar in her mouth to avoid choking on her laughter.

“Are we going to make Naruto pose as the child?” she mused. The aforementioned blond was also eating breakfast as he lay on his back and threw out his own ideas. So far his only suggestion had been “Tell my mom the truth and get out of her way.”

Kakashi popped out from somewhere, probably eating his own food in privacy, to park himself on Naruto’s stomach with a sign. “We could use my Ninkin as decoys, Sakura-chan, but you’re going to be the one to ask them.”

Sticking out her tongue was an instinct at that point, almost as much muscle memory as her stretches were. But no, she couldn’t use muscle memory as an excuse in this body. It was all her brain.

(Maybe her heart.)

Her teacher, or partner, or reluctant ally gasped in surprise and left in a poof, trading places with a log that landed on Naruto’s exposed stomach; the food in his mouth launched upward, landing on Sasuke’s head with an audible splat.

The air next to him grew a few degrees hotter. That’s all Sakura registered before she relocated to stand near her teacher and the unconscious Shizune, two bastions of silence.

Tsunade, still nursing her hangover, looked at her teammate’s flaming spectacle 20 feet away and gave a despairing sigh. “This is who you got to save the village?”

“Funnily enough, dear Sakura-chan actually tried to leave on her own to find you. I wonder how that would have gone?” Kakashi’s voice was mocking and Tsunade’s snort of laughter in response didn’t help much.

She took a breath instead, another internal check of her body giving more positive results now that she had some food in her. The problem was that in the time span she had her body would never really improve - growing her chakra pool to what she was used to would take years.

For now, she was weak, she was pitiable. For now, she had to get hurt and get back up, again and again. Fine.

“We need to head back to the village soon,” she said, completely level and not at all annoyed. “Akatsuki won’t allow their quarry to escape after we already killed some of their members.”

Tsunade snorted again. “Who cares if some red-robed pansies come after us? You already took down two of them even without me.”

“Which means they won’t underestimate us again.” Sakura huffed and looked back at Naruto and Sasuke - they were deep in conversation now, heads bowed together. Were they talking about her plan or about her? Was this about Kurama’s apparent reaction to her? Her hands and feet ached at her stillness but she knew running up to them would only make her look worse.

Trust. What a terrible burden.

Shizune made a few grumbling noises in her sleep and Tsunade laughed. “Even after all this time she still doesn’t know how to sleep quietly.”

“You should hear yourself snore,” Sakura shot back without thinking. Tsunade looked up and she almost looked angry before she untensed her shoulders and gave a languid hand wave.

“Maybe your shishou snored, but I assure you-”

Her assurance, as bullshit as it was probably going to be, was cut off by Shisui’s reappearance. His hands were full of fruit and medicine for some reason, which he haphazardly threw in Tsunade’s direction. He didn’t look at Sakura at all, and she would have called it juvenile if not for the way his face still carried that terrible expression from this morning.

Kakashi caught an apple and began to cut into it with a small knife. “What’d you hear?”

Shisui gave a huge sigh and flopped against the ground, the picture of exhaustion. “I went to an open-air market a few clicks west of here. No sightings of Akatsuki, but there were whispers about a blond woman who liked to skip out on her bill.”

Tsunade filched one of Kakashi’s apple slices and shrugged. Sakura slammed her fist onto her palm in victory and resisted the urge to say “I told you so.”

“This proves we need to leave as soon as possible,” was her more diplomatic attempt.

“Shizune needs time to rest up,” Kakashi responded, handing Sakura an apple slice like a little apology. Tsunade gave an empathic nod next to and patted her sleeping apprentice on the head a couple times, hard enough for Sakura to flinch in sympathy.

Shisui was still on the ground, but the way he held himself let Sakura know he wasn’t asleep, just silent. Again. Sakura mentally revised her list for the day and added “Talk to Shisui.” If she was lucky, maybe she could get Sasuke to talk to him while she ran fifty feet in the opposite direction.

“Okay, so we leave in a few hours. We should discuss what we’re going to tell Minato and-”

Tsunade snatched another apple slice and tossed it at Sakura. “First, you and I need to have a discussion, kid.”

Sakura nodded slowly and revised what information she had in her head that Tsunade specifically would want. Details from her tenure as Hokage? An explanation for why Orochimaru was missing-nin in her world?

“About what?”

Tsunade stood, picking Shizune up and placing her in a more comfortable position on the bedroll before covering her student with her green robe. “Let’s walk and talk. Kakashi can watch over the camp.”

“Maa, you won’t get rid of me that easily, Tsunade-san. We’ll leave Shisui in charge.” Kakashi gave a cheeky little kick to the Uchiha before standing himself, hand gesturing to let Sakura lead the way.

Her first thought was no. Her second thought was Fuck No. Were they going to kill her? They didn’t kill her last night, had even gone out of their way to fix her, but she couldn’t imagine any other reason as to why the two of them wanted her alone in the woods.

But saying no meant they would know she was scared, would know she wasn’t ready for them. So instead she smiled, nodded, ate her apple slice like a good little student, and walked into the woods with two of the most dangerous nin in the world at her back.
____

Tsunade stopped them a mile or some from camp at a little clearing. It looked exactly like every other clearing in this godforsaken forest, a place Sakura was starting to hate the longer she stayed.

She whistled a bit as Tsunade pulled Kakashi off to the side in the least subtle way possible, whispering in his ear. All he did in response was shrug before leaping up into the nearest branch. “I promise to be quiet. An impartial observer, like I was last night.”

"You really think we’re out here to fight again? Or are you worried this was all some elaborate assassination attempt on Tsunade’s life?" Sakura kept her tone light and just on the left side of incredulous. She couldn't exactly act like she wouldn't worry about the same thing in his position.

He didn't respond from his branch, just flipped another page in his smut book. The cover was a faded blue, pages yellowed with age, and all she wanted to do was shake the tree so hard he had to look at her.

But she didn't want this Kakashi to look at her, she wanted her Kakashi, whose favorite run of Icha-Icha had green covers.

Tsunade finished stretching and perched herself on the cleanest log around, clearing her throat dramatically. "You ever think he could be worried about you, considering the last Sakura in his life ended up dead?"

The pages above continued to flip at a steady pace - Kakashi always dedicated thirty seconds to a text page and forty-five to an illustration. She and Naruto had timed it way back when in their genin days, back before they even knew what was inside the books.

"I'm not her," was all Sakura could find to respond with after a few seconds.

Tsunade lifted an eyebrow, her expression a mix of impatience and pity. "You said you were Sakura, pinky."

"But I'm not the right one."

Thirty seconds, another page turn. Tsunade's expression didn't become any more bearable for Sakura to look at so she cast her eyes back to camp, a cornered animal looking for a way out.

She always did feel so young when it came to her teachers. The two of them had built her, had forged her, and that gave them all the power they needed to destroy her.

From on high came an apple, nearly hitting her in the head, and another flip of the page. She bit into it for lack of a better option, the taste waxy on her tongue.

Tsunade hadn’t stopped looking at her. “And what makes a Sakura right?”

Sakura took another bite before answering, swallowing down her instinctive response along with the apple. “It’s not complicated,” was what she said instead. “This was the world the other Sakura was born into. Therefore, I don’t belong here.”

“The other Sakura was killed, right? After flunking out of being a genin. Seems maybe she didn’t belong here.”

Another turn of the page. Another bite of the apple. She tried not to think about the empty apartment, the bloody wrists, and failed.

Tsunade took her silence in stride, fully reclining on the log and taking a sip from a bottle she pulled out of her sleeve. “It’s just curious, that you seem so hellbent on saving a world that you say you don’t belong in.”

“I told you before --”

“And I’m sure your reasons make sense in your head, but from the outside, it’s a bit crazy.”

Sakura squeezed the apple so tight it fell apart in her hand, juice flying across her face and her wrist. Another page turned above her and she realized now why Tsunade wanted to talk to her alone.

This was supposed to be a fucking therapy session.

“Tsunade-san,” she said carefully, the title ash on her tongue, “I will never pass a psych-eval. I am still fit to carry out the mission.”

Her teacher hummed, thoughtful. “And after the mission, you…”

Sakura nodded. After the mission she left Konoha. After the mission she ran until her legs gave out. After the mission she would return to this forest and burn it all down with herself at the center.

“It would be safest if the information in my head was no longer available,” was the kindest way she could say it. Tsunade nodded with mock importance and took another swig.

“You,” she finally said, “are scared shitless.”

“Not scared. Prepared.”

Tsunade laughed at her response, full belly, and offered her the bottle. She had to let go of the apple to take it, the ruined core landing with a wet splash beside her. The alcohol went down with as much finesse as acid and Sakura’s body reflexively spat it back up. Tsunade laughed again and so Sakura braved another swig even as her tongue tried to retreat down her throat to escape the flavor.

She took a long swig, then another. The fact that Tsunade hadn’t demanded the bottle back worried her - either it was acid and her teacher didn’t want it, or Sakura looked so pitiful that her shishou thought she needed it.

Sakura drank as much as her stomach could handle and went back for more before her teacher snatched it away. She knew she looked a mess: injured, apple juice all down her wrist, and alcohol all down her front. She felt as stupid and as lost as she did in that apartment weeks ago and the burning shame made her want to grab the bottle again.

But no, Sakura was better than that. She had stopped drinking entirely when Tsunade died, unwilling to risk intoxication in a village run by Danzo, and she just had to cling to that fear to center her again.

Sakura was scared. Sakura was always scared. Sakura just couldn’t let anyone else know.

Tsunade finished off the drink with a pleased sigh and went straight for Sakura’s jugular with the same nonchalance she reserved for sprained ankles and the common cold. “But why do you care about a village that killed you twice over?”

The pages above her turned - he must have been halfway through the book. Sakura fiddled with her hands but only ended up getting both of them covered in sticky apple remains, smelling sweet and rotten in equal measure.

“Because Konoha is worth saving.”

“Even with the murders, and the corrupt hospital, and the way you were rejected from the genin corps, an-”

A flash of blue - Kakashi’s novel slammed into Tsunade’s forehead. It fell into her lap, open to a particularly lewd illustration, and she tossed it to the side with a huff.

“All I’m saying is that you’re never going to ‘fix’ Konoha. It’s always going to have child soldiers and shitty elders starting wars they have no part in. Konoha will kill you again if you let it.”

Kakashi landed on the forest floor with an audible thump, posture tense. “Maa, Tsunade-san, it sounds a bit like you want all of us to go missing-nin.”

“I just don't want to walk back into Konoha with a target on my head and a bomb in my pocket,” her teacher drawled, still utterly relaxed in a way that felt insulting. Sakura wondered if Tsunade felt threatened at all, but her teacher was really the antithesis to the copy-nin - she didn’t need techniques, just her mind, and her own brute strength.

Tsunade always used exactly as much force as she thought the situation needed and there was nothing Sakura or Kakashi could do if Tsunade decided that she needed to bring a battering ram to Sakura’s mental state.

“I’m not running --”

“Because you don’t know how. You don’t know how not to fight. When you woke up in the other Sakura’s apartment, you were terrified. You don’t know how to live outside a war, so you threw yourself into the nearest one available.”

The clearing was silent. Sakura stood up, wiped her hands on her shirt, and walked back to camp, Kakashi’s and Tsunade’s eyes on her back the whole way.

Chapter Text

They traveled in silence after they packed up camp, the most interrogative silence Sakura had felt since her meetings with Danzo. Everyone was waiting for her to come forward, it seemed, to drop a perfectly formed plan in their lap. Or maybe they were still in that same therapy session Sakura ran away from, everyone just waiting for her to answer the question.

What was the question again?

Why are you doing this, Sakura? Why are you running through the woods with strangers at your side ready to throw your body on the same blade, again and again? There must be easier methods of suicide, surely, but Sakura rarely ever took the path of least resistance.

Her parents didn’t want her to be a nin. Tsunade didn’t want to be her teacher, her team didn’t want to be her team, Konoha didn’t want to be better - she always kept pushing. Chiyo had called her a stubborn little thing once - old woman must have been a prophet on top of everything else.

They ran straight into the night until the group found themselves within a few miles of a nearby village, an eclectic town that built its houses among the treetops - Eda, it was called. Allies of Konoha but too small to really be of notice, until Sakura had discovered how well versed Eda residents were at traversing the forest around them. She, Kakashi, and Tenzo had spent an unforgettable weekend simultaneously getting drunk and swinging off vines; Tenzo had even gotten married, according to local custom, and had managed a divorce just as quickly. Kakashi wept at both ceremonies.

She cut the story down quite a bit while relaying this to her new team while Shisui scouted on ahead. Eda wasn’t supposed to be dangerous, but there was always the chance that the Akatsuki were there first or Tsunade had left some truly impressive debt behind.

“So how come I’ve never seen them at the Chunnin exams, Sakura?” Naruto was an endless font of conversation across from her after their self-imposed quiet game. Despite their day-long run he was shaking with excess energy, jostling the branch he and Sasuke were resting on.

“It’s cause they’re not really a village, so they don’t have nin.” Tsunade drawled on her own tree, fanning herself with one of Kakashi’s books.

“Or the other way around,” Shizune rebutted. “They don’t raise their children to be nin, so they’re not considered a village.”

She was visibly tired unlike the rest of the group, on par with Sakura at the moment, but she still had her scholar’s attitude about her. Shizune always wanted to know more - it’s why she was more than happy to babysit Tsunade on her travels.

She rarely took her bias with her to her studies, which made quite a few council members mad when she started analyzing the traditions of Konoha with a more critical eye - then Tsunade would destroy another 500-year-old table and Shizune would be forgotten, given the freedom to continue her work. The two of them really were a well-matched pair.

And they were waiting for her response, impatiently staring at her vacant expression.

She pinched herself awake. Her body was exhausted, had been since Sakura had taken up residence all those weeks ago, and just the thought of a nice night in a nice village had her drooling. She was even too tired to hate herself for her laziness.

“Eda doesn’t produce nin because their culture values pacifism nearly above all else. Their leader isn’t chosen by being the strongest but by being the most clever - they’re tasked to navigate the woods and evade capture from their peers in order to be considered worthy.”

Kakashi gave a considering hum beside her. Initially she had bristled at him sitting so close, but knowing how close she was to toppling over she understood why. Still, his proximity hit her right in the vulnerable places between her heart and her brain. The last time she had been here, it was a different Eda and a different Kakashi, and nothing in the world would have bothered her about sharing a branch together.

Naruto did a little jump - a bit like a frog, which amused Sakura and Tsunade both - and his eyes started twinkling. “Do you think we’ll be able to try something like that? It sounds awesome!”

Sasuke went through all the motions of looking annoyed, but it was obvious he was also interested in the answer. No doubt he wanted to race Naruto specifically, another match in their endless little game.

“Maybe you can come back and give it a try, but we’re currently running for our lives here.” Sakura’s tone was a bit too fond than the situation called for, but scolding the two of them was as comforting a memory as sharing a drink with her old shishou. Besides, she could probably blame any sentimentality on her exhaustion.

They continued to pepper her with questions while waiting for Shisui to arrive, Shizune dropping off on Tsunade’s shoulders before too long. The sun was just breaking over the treetops by the time Shisui made his entrance, dramatically dropping on Sasuke’s shoulders in bird form before transforming. They both nearly fell and Naruto gave no support, too busy laughing hysterically.

His report was thorough - the village was in the midst of a local festival and so there were plenty of merchants that had stopped by, bringing with them plenty of guards. There were an alarming number of nin, missing or otherwise, staying in Eda, hands only kept off their blades by a promise.

“We won’t call much attention to ourselves, then, considering how many nin are swarming around,” Shisui finished with an optimistic note. Sakura firmly disagreed - even if the Akatsuki weren’t there, there were countless other mercenaries who could have been hired by Orochimaru or Danzo. The whole village could turn collateral if a fight broke out.

Tsunade gave a considering sip to her bottle before she realized it was empty, choosing instead to swing it into the tree trunk. “I say we go.”

“We don’t need alcohol that badly,” came Sakura’s muttered remark, something that immediately got Tsunade to drop the drunk act and move straight into pissed-off territory. Even Kakashi stopped feigning indifference to give her a sideways glance, which twisted Sakura’s gut in a mix of anger and shame.

Tsunade’s voice was level when she spoke, and the forest around them grew silent as it leaned in to listen. “Look, kid, even if you were as powerful as you said you were, that doesn’t change the fact that right now your body is falling apart. You need rest if you want to make it back to Konoha, and if it turns out Eda is dangerous, I suppose I’ll have no choice but to use my decades of experience to defend myself. Now, let’s move.”

---

Sakura was still so put down after her clash with Tsunade that she barely resisted when they all put on henges and rented two adjoining rooms at the inn. Their cover was that of a family but the intricacies were lost to Sakura, who was fading fast. Her ribs were unionizing against her, it felt like, and her feet were joining in on the betrayal.

Kakashi took all the boys on a field trip around the market with promises to bring back food and exotic liquor, leaving Shizune to get some real sleep and Sakura to receive a real beatdown. In the name of healing, of course.

The inn they were staying in spanned about three great oaks, connected by bridges and branches that swayed with the wind. The villagers seemed to sway with it, completely comfortable so high off the ground. The rooms had hammocks, of course, though Tsunade was able to secure a flat cot for Sakura after some threatening glares.

Through some slats in the floor you could see the forest floor, a dizzying sight that had Sakura lying down gratefully even if she was uncomfortable with the vulnerable position.

Tsunade didn’t seem to mind either way, bustling around the whole room as if to mark her territory before slamming herself on the ground beside Sakura. Her shirt was ripped open with the perfunctory indifference of a doctor, hands roaming up and down her ribs. She didn’t have any significant cuts, but Sakura could tell that there was something seriously wrong internally that Shizune had only been temporarily slow.

Tsunade actually chuckled as she scanned Sakura’s body, something that looked like respect and pity in her eyes, like Sakura was some half-dead mongrel that had managed to do a trick unexpectedly. “You really were a fool for picking a fight with me, kid. You have more attitude than your body can handle.”

“This mind will use this body however it needs to,” Sakura muttered. She was doing a lot of that around Tsunade - like she was still that child testing the boundaries of her scary new teacher. How did she even want Tsunade to respond? They could never have the relationship they once had, so Sakura should just keep it professional - detached.

But this body, it was too small for her. All this pain she carried, all those twisted feelings she had no name for - she didn’t have room for them in her head. They were stuck on the tip of her tongue and on the pads of her fingers: every word and action was tainted with her sentimentality. Where did all her training go, her masks? How long has it been since she had acted so stupidly human?

Tsunade snorted a little and got to work, her hands stark green against the black bruises on Sakura’s chest. Sakura lowered every defense she had, but she couldn’t stop her level of awareness: Tsunade might not have cut into Sakura, but her shishou still had a terrifying amount of control over her insides right now.

“Tell me, is this how you convinced me to teach you the last time around?”

“I took camp outside your office and wouldn't leave until you agreed to be my teacher. Of course, I had to prove I was good enough to be your student by enduring a number of ‘practice’ spars.” Sakura smiled at the memory of all the bruises she got after that fight. Masochistic, maybe, but it was the first time she could remember someone taking her seriously like that. Tsunade thought she could handle it, and so she did.

There was a burning sensation in her gut, a quick flash of heat that had Sakura tensing before she forced herself to relax. Tsunade placed a cool hand on her forehead and grinned. “And I’m sure you were the model patient back then as well?”

“As much as you were the model doctor,” Sakura retorted, because this was a rhythm she knew well. Tsunade was giving what comfort she could, which meant the next part was going to hurt. “Let’s get on with it.”

“Don’t be cheeky,” was all she heard before -

Heat lanced through her side, from the small of her back to her right shoulder, twisting around every rib and pulsing to the beat of her heart. It hurt so much more than Tsunade’s actual punch, and Sakura thought she could find some poetry in that if only she had the space in her brain to think.

She bit down on the corner of her pillow to contain her whine, high and panicked like a wounded animal. Tsunade talked her through it, loud enough to drown out the noise, complaining about how long Kakashi was taking to bring back their breakfast.

“It’s gonna be lunch at this point,” was what Sakura tried to say through the pillow. It came out a mix of nonsense and drool, which pulled a laugh out of her teacher. The pain was fading, though, or maybe spreading out instead. Less concentrated, but still there hovering in the back of her head.

Tsunade leaned back with a sigh, cracking her neck with steady fingers. “You know you have to at least make it to the village to save it, right?”

Sakura grumbled but didn’t open her eyes, using whatever chakra she had left to do a diagnosis. She was fine, by a certain definition, but she would be on the verge of terminal if she got hit again. One more fight and she’d be gone - which meant she had to wait for the right fight.

“Being in this body,” she cursed and made a blind grab for whatever bottle she was sure Tsuande held. Her shishou batted her away easily. “I can’t do anything. It’s not right, it’s not-”

“Fair?” Tsunade asked, not the least bit sympathetic. “So you’re not strong anymore - that’s just what it is. I’m the strongest nin in the world and that hasn’t made my life any easier. Hell, I still got kids like you mouthing off to me, no respect whatsoever.”

Sakura caught herself laughing a bit at that, but the pain was too insistent to brush to the side so easily. “If I’m not even strong enough to fight, how can I fix things?”

“Same way you took care of that Sasori brat, probably. You’re smart, kid, but you think yourself into some real dumb circles. Now get some sleep.”

And Sakura did.

---

She woke up to screaming and the smell of strawberry jam. The boys were back and were playing what appeared to be the most confusing game of mahjong Sakura had ever seen. Tsunade and Shizune were sharing a hammock and a cup of tea between them, flipping through her and Shisui’s notes.

Kakashi was sitting closest to her and she could see his hand best - he was going for all pairs, which made Sakura think he was leaning into the whole Copycat thing a bit too much. Naruto displayed every tile in his hand and kept beseeching his opponents for tactical advice, though only Shisui seemed to help.

When she sat up someone shoved a breakfast wrap in her hand, covered in some big edible leaf. She bit into it without fear, devouring the whole thing in seconds. Kakashi shifted to the side and in front of him she could see a steaming cup of coffee. She lurched forward, graceful as a newborn calf, but managed to take a few precious sips without spilling the whole thing.

It was like this for all of Sakura’s friends and patients, scrambling to eat after they exhausted their chakra. It made for a harsher kind of hunger.

It was nice, though, to wake up to someone who cared enough to get food for her. She drank her coffee silently, doing her best not to break down in front of everyone for the third time on this mission.

No wonder Tsunade was trying to therapize her every chance she got.

Sasuke called on Shisui’s tile, earning a glare from his cousin. Naruto tried peaking around the corner to view all of Sasuke’s hand but was foiled by a palm to the forehead, though Sakura could tell from Sasuke’s discard pile that he was going for high risk, high reward hand. It was luck that would see him through now, luck and the foolishness of his opponents.

“What’s the word around town,” she asked after her drink was gone. Naruto immediately launched into a thrilling narrative about a monkey stealing his wallet and then swinging away, something Sakura listened to with half an ear. She corrected his move in the game absent-mindedly, before elbowing Kakashi to make him get on with the real report.

“There are agents from Suna, Kumo, Iwa, and countless unaffiliated nin wandering around. So far the festival has been kept peaceful, but it’s not like Eda has any way to enforce their rules, really.”

“Any rumors about Tsunade or Naruto?” She stopped Naruto from discarding a tile that would let Shisui win, something that earned her a half-hearted glare, before searching around for more food.

Kakashi handed her a bowl of miso soup, which already looked a bit empty. “There’s been a suspicious lack of chatter about the whole thing, no talk of Tsunade or Akatsuki.”

“People are scared?”

“Or just smart. No one wants to be the poor sap who lights this bomb,” Shisui cut in. He was in the process of destroying the hand he had built, playing defensively so as to not let Sasuke win. Sakura never understood the urge - she played to win every hand.

Sakura gave a considering hum and watched as Naruto went to discard the very tile Kakashi needed to win. Should she say something? No - an all-doubles hand was a beautiful thing to see and a hard thing to achieve, and Kakashi had given her the soup.

Kakashi won with much aplomb, throwing his hand down to the sound of Naruto wailing about his lost money. Shisui gave a sigh of relief and fell backward, landing on a well-placed pillow.

“So how long are we staying?” Sakura directed her question to Tsunade, who was right when she scolded her earlier. Sakura might have some useful knowledge, but Tsunade had been the strongest for so much longer than her - she could probably handle an itinerary.

Tsunade rolled her neck and swung the hammock with her foot, the picture of nonchalance. “This might be our last opportunity to rest and talk before we hit Konoha, and I’m all for taking a chance to rest while we can. I mean, who’s gonna find us among all this rabble?”

Sakura and Kakashi shared a commiserating look, neither of them happy with tempting fate like that. “Ma, we take a day to plan and see where that takes us, right?” Kakashi suggested, going out of his way to pull out a dirty novel so they could all see he was no longer part of the conversation.

Everyone gave their agreements, happy not to fight, and started rearranging themselves around the mahjong table. Sakura had a brief moment to wish for a board or something of the ilk before Shisui stood up and pulled out of his sock a scroll that contained an entire chalkboard. “For Planning!!!” was written on the top in bright red chalk.

Sakura didn’t know whether she was allowed to laugh or not, but Tsunade and Shizune had no such compunctions, bursting into high-pitched giggles. Shisui didn’t seem to mind in the least, busy arranging the multi-colored chalk he brought.

“You really think of everything,” was what she came up with instead, a bit teasing and a bit thankful. She stepped up herself to the chalk before picking the bright pink color, something she was sure was meant for her.

She started a few lists on the board: Enemies, Unknowns, Allies. Under enemies went Danzo, Orochimaru, Kabuto, and the Akatsuki - though that was hardly comprehensive. Under allies, she wrote Minato, Kushina, and left the rest blank. Shisui quickly bustled in to write Itachi and Mikoto, though no one else from the Itachi family. Sasuke nodded at his cousin’s choices but didn’t add anything of his own, something Sakura wondered about.

Kakashi threw up Obito, Rin, Tenzo, and Gai, which had Naruto teasing him for being popular. Jiraiya also got thrown up, no matter Sakura’s personal distaste for the man.

Sarutobi went under the unknown list, alongside the Uchiha Police Force and the council. No one knew how far the rot had spread, and there was no investigation they could do now.

Thrown up all over the board like that, the truth staring them in the face, it was an impressive sight. Daunting, especially to Sakura still barefoot in her sleep clothes. Still, she was in the room with some of the most powerful people in the five kingdoms - she just needed to put them in the right places.

“Tsunade will be given access to the hospital once we make it to Konoha - no matter how Orochimaru feels. If Jiraiya is in the village he can go with you under some old friendship guise.”

Tsunade muttered about her acting too damn cynical for her age but didn’t interrupt.

“Shisui goes with Itachi and Sasuke into the police archives at the same time, while Naruto and Kakashi head to the Hokage’s offices and debrief Minato. If we can get as many pieces moving as quickly as possible we might be able to overwhelm Danzo - forcing him into making a direct counterattack and revealing himself.”

Naruto nodded alongside her little speech, but mostly because she was letting him talk to Kushina. Sakura had a feeling that Naruto was used to his mom saving the day - hopefully it worked out like that this time.

“Are you going after Danzo yourself, Sakura?” Shisui asked, his face pinched in worry. Sakura wanted to be offended that he thought she would do something so foolhardy, but she also knew that her first choice would be to do exactly that.

“I'm going to investigate the orphanage in Konoha and talk to the children there, see if they have any information on Kabuto or Root. Besides,” she added while looking at Tsunade, “I’m not going to help by fighting.”

Shisui gave an obvious sigh of relief behind her and started jotting down notes on what they should search for specifically during the mission. Shizune sidled up to him, happy to work with someone so organized, and starting the most frustrating aspect of a ninja’s work: planning.

Sakura volunteered to go pick up lunch under disguise, desperate to explore Eda for the second time around and got Sasuke and Naruto foisted onto her as babysitters. It was a bit nostalgic, being considered just one of the kids with her team, but mostly it meant her quiet walk was not so quiet.

The market was breathtaking, regardless - an endless pathway of shops and restaurants resting on platforms or even in hollowed-out trunks. The canopy above provided some dim light, but the whole village was lit with lanterns of different hues for the festival. It was a chaotic, colorful mess that Sakura wandered through, hand grabbing onto Naruto’s wrist as to not lose him in the crowd. Sasuke beside her was radiating some serious “Fuck Off,” vibes, managing to avoid most of the crush through his sheer irritability.

Even now, Sakura thought it was kind of cool.

There was a kebab shop she liked the smell of, though it seemed to be a bit out of reach of the lantern light. Sakura was about to decide not to risk it, she was fine just eating some more leaves, but Naruto had never let fear get in the way of his stomach. He charged along the branches, teammates in tow, before finding a ramshackle looking grill being supervised by an even more ramshackle cook.

She was bare-chested except for a blacksmithing apron, hair tied up in some convoluted bun, and wearing a pair of glasses that had no lenses. She didn’t take their order, just looked them in the eye and slapped something on the grill, humming to herself all the while.

Naruto had absolutely no problems with this chain of events, content to try and swindle a few coins from Sasuke’s pockets while the other stoically looked in the distance. It was an interesting enough diversion, which is why Sakura doesn’t blame herself too much for not noticing the group of people appearing behind her until the others did.

The kebab chef rang a bell and pulled off one of the older skewers, practically shoving into the chest of Gaara, Suna’s Fifth Kazekage. He was flanked by Temari and a strange tall woman Sakura had never seen before, who smiled a bit too wide for her liking, all three standing in the shadows - just like Sakura suspected would happen, given her luck in dark alleyways.

Gaara took a small bite of kabob and nodded, a signal for the tall woman to drop a few coins on the counter that the kebab chef ignored. Naruto was overjoyed at this series of events, diving into conversation with the trio headfirst while she and Sasuke eyed them warily. He didn’t have any care for the disguise he was wearing, but it hardly mattered given the connection he and Gaara shared. Besides, Sakura suspected Gaara had left Suna to look for them from the get-go.

There was no such thing as a good coincidence, Sakura learned, which meant this was not going to be a congenial lunch with friends - especially not if the tall woman didn’t stop smiling at her like that.

Their orders came eventually, Sakura receiving a kebab that was perfectly suited to her tastes. She also tipped, even if she doubted it made a difference to the chef either way. Gaara led them further into trees away from the crowds, and Naruto didn’t hesitate to follow which meant Sakura and Sasuke also came along.

“I couldn’t count on both hands how many important meetings I’ve had in these fucking woods,” she muttered to Sasuke, which caused both him and the tall woman to laugh. Sakura shot her and her ears a glare.

Gaara stopped when he felt like it, a good fifteen minutes spring from their room in the inn, before fixing Sasuke and Naruto with an iron glare. “Is it true you managed to take out Sasori of the Red Sands?”

Naruto ignored Gaara's tone, which sounded a bit too angry for Sakura’s anxiety levels. “Oh, we fought him, but it was Sakura who managed to kill him!”

And then he pointed right at her, and she was left staring into the eyes of an angry jinchūriki yet again with no option of fighting.

But she didn’t need to. Tsunade, this Tsunade, called her smart, so that’s what Sakura would be. And, worst comes to worst, she’d seen Gaara die a couple times before - how tough could he be?

Chapter Text

“You killed him?” Gaara’s voice was flat as always, but the disbelief was visible in the set of his shoulders and the upturn of his eyebrows. Sakura refused to feel offended over the whole thing, but beside her she could feel Sasuke start to bristle - even his hair was standing on end in apparent indignation.

“It was mostly because of Kakashi and my teammates, no big theatrics or anything!” She tried softening herself, shrinking a bit behind Sasuke and waving her hands. There was no logical scenario where Sakura could kill Sasori and so she had to make it seem like it didn’t happen at all. Did Gaara even know her in this universe, or was he just staring at a small, pink slip of a girl claiming to have killed the most notorious Suna missing-nin without context? No wonder he was pissed - back in her universe, Gaara had a strong, personal hatred for people who tried to lie to him (which was almost everyone, given his profession).

She started to explain it as she imagined Naruto would, throwing in more explosions than completely necessary, but the trio from Suna weren’t looking at her -

They were looking at Naruto, dead silent, with the most confused look on his face she had seen since he tried to play mahjong this morning. Sasuke “helped” by slapping a hand over his mouth but that only made the whole thing more obvious.

The energy around Gaara started to darken - jinchūriki coming out to play after their obfuscation. Naruto and Sasuke both straightened up, which caused Temari and the other Suna nin to tense up, which made Sakura pretty sure that bomb Shisui was talking about was about to go off. She hoped the kebab lady was outside the blast radius.

Sakura stepped in the middle of everyone, pulling on every bit of medical training she had to not raise her own hackles. “The actual details of the mission are classified, but I can assure you that both Sasori of the Red Sands and Deidara the Bomber were killed by us that day.”

Gaara’s eye twitched, but it was the strange tall nin who responded, stepping up into Sakura’s personal space. “So, you admit that you lied to the Kazekage’s face about details concerning a Suna agent?”

“I’m quite sure he’d be considered a missing nin by now, which means Konoha had just as much authority over him as you - whoever you are.”

A blast of vicious wind knocked Sakura back, tumbling over her own tired feet into Naruto’s chest. Temari thrust herself into the conversation, hair flying in every direction. “That piece of shit had Suna property on him, which means it’s a Suna issue.”

That sounded personal - incredibly personal, and Sakura started dreading the answer to the question she had been asking herself this whole time: where was Kankuro? She couldn't imagine a reason for him not to be with his siblings unless he was dead; it was possible Kankuro had been killed all those years ago instead of Gaara and Sasori was able to escape with his body, but she had no way of asking that didn’t look suspicious as hell.

“The weird puppets, you mean? We burned and buried those,” Sasuke cut in. She elbowed him in the side at his insensitivity, and didn’t that just bring back memories, and he cut off with a huff.

Temari and Sasori both startled at that, honing in on Sasuke. “You destroyed everything?” Gaara asked, aura still radiating menace. Sakura took an instinctive step back, but there was nowhere to go - she was boxed in on all sides by dense foliage and silence - the kind of silence that only happens when the forest senses a predator within its midst.

Naruto stepped in the middle of everyone, eyes wide, and deftly sidestepped the tension in the air like a true golden-hearted idiot. “We can show you where it happened if you want, Gaara, but Sakura thought it was safer to burn all the stuff from battle.”

Fucking kama on a stick, Naruto had it out for her. Never would she have imagined not wanting proper credit for her actions, but Gaara’s unnerving stare had her reconsidering a lot of things she thought she knew. But contradicting her teammate, and Gaara’s friend, would only make her look even worse.

“We weren’t sure how close other members of the Akatsuki were - we still don’t. Covering our tracks was standard procedure.” She continued to look as non-threatening as possible, which wasn’t too hard with her injuries. Temari was already looking past her, thankfully, but Gaara was still staring at her like she was hiding Sasori’s heart in her back pocket. But no, she burned it with the rest of the trash - sorry.

The shinobi Sakura still didn’t have a fucking name for bent her head quietly, whispering something in Gaara’s ear that caused him to stop glaring holes in Sakura’s head. Naruto came up behind her shoulder, dragging Sasuke with him, and created a huddle on their side. “Do you think Gaara’s angry with us?”

“Obviously, idiot, or he wouldn’t be trying to bite Sakura’s head off,” was Sasuke’s caustic reply. Sakura agreed with him - Gaara always ran hot, even if it was hard to tell behind his blank expression, and right now he wasn’t happy with the answers he was getting. Given Sakura’s luck, he was going to keep asking anyway.

“What’s the name of the other nin with him, not Temari?”

Naruto blushed at that, whole body from his toes to his whiskers turning red. Sasuke scoffed and looked away, which told Sakura quite a bit about the drama the strange nin was involved in but not her name. She snapped her fingers to get their attention but both were too busy not looking at each other to look at her.

Of course they couldn’t even get their shit sorted out in this universe - what did she expect from the wonder duo?

Fine, she would ignore the strange shinobi and her stranger teammates to get this sorted. Gaara was still staring at her and she thought she could almost feel the jinchūriki behind his gaze dissecting her. But wouldn't she do the same? Sasori had plagued Suna for years, had battled with the strongest of their Kazekages, and now he was defeated by her, a stranger.

I had help, Sakura wanted to say, me and your grandmother were good friends in a past life. It would probably go over as well as any other excuse she had to give.

“Kazekage-san,” she started before Sasuke slapped a hand over her mouth, an action so audacious she didn’t know how to respond for what felt like three whole minutes.

“If you need further explanation, you can ask our team leader,” his tone was curt and she noticed he was once again edging himself in front of her.

All of Sakura’s childish dreams were coming true in the one moment - Sasuke going out of his way to protect her! - but all she could feel was mild annoyance. Not even at him, but herself. She didn’t have the authority to even talk to the Kazekage considering she wasn’t actually a nin, so deflecting to Kakashi was the smartest decision.

But was she really willing to sit back and let someone else take care of this for her? Judging by the unflinching focus in Gaara’s gaze, still firmly fixed on her, she didn’t have a choice.

Temari harrumphed at his tone and shared some unspoken communication with her team. Naruto was full of energy beside her, hopping on one foot and trying to catch his friend’s eye while at the same time doing his best not to look at anyone too hard. Sakura was just happy no one had started throwing punches yet.

Gaara held up a hand and everything stopped, even the wind. Even so far from his desert home, the Kazekage of Suna knew how to command. “Your Copy Nin will not give me the answers I require. She will.”

Sasuke’s hair started to rise again and she felt his fiery temper rise to the surface, the very air around him getting hotter. Goddamn Uchiha’s and their protective instincts, but at least Shisui wasn’t here to make the situation even more fraught.

Naruto exploded beside her, jumping into the middle of everyone and physically blocking Sakura from Gaara’s sight. “Lunch! We need to pick up lunch for everyone and then we can talk.”

The strange nin raised one eyebrow perfectly, a skill Sakura had never been able to pull-off. “Exactly how many Konoha nin do you have in your traveling circus?”

Sakura snorted. “I’m sure you already have an idea, don’t you?” The other nin winked at her - something else Sakura wasn’t very good at - but didn’t respond to her goad.

She could tell everyone in their little huddle was starting to get antsy, unused to sorting their problems out through quiet conversation. Hands twitched towards weapons, feet pointed out, out, out. Their lives were about action, not structured debates or half-spoken conversations.

Action. Sakura needed action, and more than that she needed to have a discussion with Gaara about whatever the hell his jinchūriki was thinking. If she could get Naruto in on the conversation, all the better.

Because what did she know about her journey here? What did she know about her death? She hadn’t recognised the assassins who had come for her, hadn’t had time to question them either. And there were so many of them - was it possible one had been a demon container? Could they have cast a strange jutsu without her noticing?

Before that: the disaster in Suna that had wrecked the village only a month after Gaara had been mysteriously killed by strangers who came from a distant kingdom. Was any of it connected - all of it? She had thought ignoring it would be best, but now she was facing two jinchūriki who seemed to know more about the situation than her.

You can’t run from this one Rat, can you?

But maybe she could in Eda, killing twelve birds with one stone. She just had to aim true.

“Gaara-san, Naruto, I think we should head back to Kakashi. Sasuke and the rest can grab some food,” she said, shouting with her eyes that this was the right plan.

Temari quite vocally disagreed, clearly uncomfortable with leaving her brother and her Kazekage alone with an unknown element, but one glance from Gaara silenced her protests. Sasuke, likewise, started to fume silently in the noisy way that only he knew.

But she knew the jinchūriki would agree: they had answers she needed, and they had questions she needed to answer. And Gaara would never feel threatened by a civilian like her and a bleeding heart like Naruto, so she doubted he would hesitate to be alone with them.

She felt well enough despite her injuries, so a jaunt in the woods wouldn’t undo too much of Tsunade’s good work. At least, that was the excuse she was going to give her shishou.

Details were hashed out by the Suna party - who was going where, when, how they could be reached, etc. Sasuke grabbed her by the elbow and got uncomfortably close to her ear (again, all her childhood dreams coming true) and muttered a low threat about sending Shisui after them if she took too long.

“You’re that angry?” she joked, but his face was serious. He gave her elbow an extra shake, shared a loaded glance with Naruto, and then led his Suna duo back in the direction of the kebab lady. Sakura felt the loss of him keenly, more than she would have thought, and she realized how foolish she was to stay behind with just Gaara and Naruto at her back.

She hadn’t talked to Naruto since she had revealed the events surrounding his birth in the other world, not one-on-one, but he knew she had information on how to manipulate a jinchūriki. If he told Gaara and the both of them teamed up against her, well

She might have been overestimating herself when she said it wouldn’t be too difficult to take down Gaara. She might have been underestimating how angry Naruto could be at her, fooled by his wide smiles and warm hugs.

But she couldn’t show fear, not in front of these two predators. Not when she was planning on leading them on a merry little chase through these woods, away from Eda in case things got messy.

She took a second to stretch, to check that her legs and calves could carry her the distance she needed. Naruto and Gaara were together already, flashing to each other's sides in seconds. How close were they in this world? Was Naruto Gaara’s first real friend and confidant? Would Naruto’s friendship with Gaara supersede any connection he had to Sakura, old or new?

If she started thinking of them as enemies, they would realize and respond. They were still allies, teammates, and they would give her time to explain herself. The little Shisui on her shoulder told her to trust them, to believe that they were all working towards the same goal of peace; the little Kakashi on her shoulder told her that she was liable to lose her heart and her head if she let her guard down.

“Let’s say, about three miles from the village? If you catch me I’ll tell you everything first - if not, I get to ask some questions.” Her tone was light, but she could feel herself bouncing on the balls of her feet. There was no way she was fast enough, but she could be smart enough.

She thought she could distantly hear Tsunade yelling at her, telling her this was not what her advice meant, but Sakura was a student who always put a creative spin on the lessons she learned.

Naruto jumped at the opportunity, of course. “Friendly” competition and a chance to release some pent-up energy was too good a chance to pass up for him. Gaara took longer to consider, likely assessing how pathetic she looked and what kind of questions she would ask, but he nodded as well.

He was dressed more like an ambassador than a shinobi: his robes were elaborate and brightly colored, but he had his familiar container roped to his back. Depending on how fine his control was and how fast his sand, this little competition of hers might last all of five footsteps.

No, little Shisui said, think optimistically: he might not use his full strength in case he wanted to preserve his nice clothes. Even little Shisui didn’t sound too sure about it though.

Details were hashed out easily enough. There was a pond about 3.1 miles from Eda that they would all race too, avoiding any big displays as to not alert anyone in the village. They would all mask their chakra as well, which meant tracking came down to physical senses. Considering her competition was half fox-demon, this put Sakura at a significant disadvantage.

Naruto was the one who lobbied for her to get a head start - ten seconds. Sakura almost tried arguing it down herself before she realized that she needed all the charity Naruto could give. Gaara, for his part, didn’t look like he cared either way. He had already decided in his head he was going to win, and ten seconds hardly changed that.

The only thing left to do was to make sure they didn’t start a war: Naruto sent a message through his frog summons to the team, which would hopefully get there just after the race actually ended. Neither side wanted their village to intervene and yell at them for trying to cause a diplomatic incident with a foot race.

Sakura, however, was planning on something that would make her team even angrier than that. She was, she thought morosely, betraying them in a deeply personal way for no reason other than a needless competition that she proposed.

And it wasn’t strategic, even though she could claim it was. Knowing what Gaara’s demon told him let her decide whether or not she had to tell him the full truth of her circumstances. She tried practicing that line in her head but it wouldn’t have fooled Tsunade even if her shishou was blackout drunk.

The real reason Sakura was doing this was simple: she was angry. She was fucking furious. She had worked for years and years to build herself up into someone strong and capable only to fail, and now she has the chance to save her village but she was stuck in a body so pathetic it could barely get up in the morning.

No chakra, no muscles, no endurance. She couldn’t do anything, and Gaara looked at her and knew that immediately. He might be wary of the fact that she was an unknown quantity, but Gaara didn’t feel the least bit threatened by her or her shaking hands.

And Gaara had never known the old Sakura, the one who lived with this weak body for years and years to earn all those pitiful glances. He looked into Sakura’s eyes, into the soul that she carried with her across death, and he still thought she was pathetic.

So maybe she wanted to prove him wrong, and Naruto too. Maybe she was tired of Sasuke, Shisui, and even goddamn Kakashi acting so protective of her now even after seeing her kill Sasori.

She wanted to carve a bloody diamond into her forehead, to make everyone finally see just what she was capable of - but no, that was crazy. And so was the race, but she had a plan for that. A messy, shortsighted plan that would probably lead to yet another therapy session.

If anyone asked, she would say she got the idea from Naruto: when all else fails, overwhelm and confuse your opponents. She didn’t have nearly enough power to make a dozen shadow clones, but she thought she could trick the foxes into thinking she was in two places at once.

She carried dozens of small blades on her even in the peaceful marketplace, and now more than ever she thanked herself for her paranoia.

She had ten seconds - how much blood could she spill?

The idea was simple really: cover her many weapons in her own blood before scattering them in the forest and healing her cut. It was a lot harder in execution, after her ten seconds ran out and she was running and cutting and throwing and performing substitution jutsus and running and jumping and cutting and dodging -

She heard shifting sand to the left but she saw a flash of red to the right. She dropped down, landing on a lower branch and sprinting through some foliage. Not her brightest idea, given that it meant she felt the sand around her ankle before she had the chance to see it. She dropped a tag behind her, not looking to see how close the Kazekage was to catching her, and the area was soon invaded by a pungent, black gas (an idea also stolen from Naruto).

She gave an almighty lurch forward, ignoring the dense foliage and the angry jinchūriki and the almighty t u g on her ankle until she heard a terrible snap and she popped forward, swinging wildly on only one good leg just doing her best to get away.

But Sakura had one more advantage over the boys and it was this: she had run through the woods around Eda before, and she had swung through them as well.

(It was the first night Sakura and her team were in the village, but Tenzo had already wandered off to help construct a new school building. Given his jutsu he was the most obvious candidate for the job, but Sakura suspected it was also because of the beautiful school teacher who had done the asking. It left Sakura with just Kakashi for company at the local bar, but this was one of those nights where he wasn’t feeling too effusive. She chatted up some locals instead, and one of them joked that the people of Eda were so fast they didn’t even need legs to run. She, of course, wanted him to explain whatever the hell that meant, and he replied by taking off his left shoe and then his left leg - a wooden prosthetic up to the knee. He handed it off to his friends and gave her a jaunty salute before flipping over the balcony into the treetops around them. He did a few circuits around the bar, flitting in and out of sight as he navigated his way through the forest by jumping from branches and swinging from some extremely sturdy vines. He wasn’t running, he was flying, and the fact that he only had one leg didn't slow him in the least. Even Kakashi stopped brooding long enough to be impressed, so Sakura finished her drink, finished his drink, and challenged him to a race. And she was first - first to fall to the forest floor, Kakashi a few seconds behind her. All the locals had laughed, but their next drinks were free. Eda was that kind of village.)

Sakura leapt, more hope than energy fueling her step, but she was still surprised when she actually managed to grab onto something. The next few moments came to her with surprising clarity - she was an animal free from its trap that just needed to get out. She threw more tags behind her, more weapons, but she also needed her arms to swing.

She just didn’t have enough limbs to do what her mind needed them to do, and even worse than that, she hadn’t seen Naruto at all yet. Which probably meant he had rushed ahead with his clone army and was now puppy guarding the lake like an asshole, because that’s what he always did during their training exercises as children.

She spared a moment for her ankle: broken, not sprained, which meant she definitely did not have enough chakra to heal it. Swinging it was, with only desperation to keep her going.

The forest around her was so all-encompassing that she couldn’t see sky or ground, just green. Everything was green except for the spot of blood on her knives and the distant flash of neon orange in the distance.

How had his parents never stopped him from wearing a bright orange jumpsuit?

Her distraction cost her, and she landed the next jump on her broken ankle. She crumpled like paper and tipped sideways, right into the waiting arms of Naruto.

No - Naruto’s clone, which meant Sakura had no problem with slapping another stink tag right on his face before cutting his arms and leaping. The concentrated gasses would hopefully knock him out but not kill him, which meant the real Naruto didn’t get to know where she was.

She kept getting lower, however, which meant there were less things to swing off of. Her pace slowed but she could see the end in sight, a small glance of blue in a sea of viridian. She got sloppy and wasted a few more tags behind her. There were small flashes and crackles behind her, but they were far enough from the village that she didn’t feel too bad.

She dropped to the ground entirely for the last few yards, abusing her broken ankle so badly that the medic inside of her was crying. If any of her patients had done something like this for a bet she would have slapped them over the head. Well, Tsunade would probably do it for her.

There was no pain. She was too distracted by the hot puff on Naruto’s breath on her neck, the terrible prey feeling of being closed in on all sides. She dropped the second she made the clearing and Naruto, who was a bare inch behind her, did some impressive acrobatics to flip over her without crashing.

Gaara stepped into the clearing a few feet away, unruffled except for a truly ghastly black eye that Sakura was pretty sure she didn’t cause. At Sakura’s glare Naruto shrugged his shoulders but apologized. “Sorry, but he didn’t have to break any bones, yanno?”

“It was a joint effort,” she said, partially because it was true but mostly because she didn’t want Gaara to glare at her any harder. It was impressive, the force of his ire, and Sakura knew that Gaara wouldn’t forget her little demonstration. She didn’t match what he saw when he looked at her, which meant he might want to do more than give her a broken ankle.

But all he did was give her a nod before folding himself neatly onto the ground. Out of his robes he pulled out a third of her bloodied and discarded weapon supply, which he dropped in front of her with an appraising look. Naruto dropped the rest, probably gathered by his clones, and hit her with something that looked like disappointment. It rankled her. She deserved it.

“Sasuke and Shisui-san are going to be sooooo angry, Sakura.”

“Damn Uchiha,” she muttered. He laughed, clear and bright as a bell, and she knew then that he wasn’t too angry with her, that her secrets didn’t destroy whatever care they had cultivated over the course of the mission. She smiled at him and laughed herself. It worked well enough to distract from the pain climbing up her leg. She might have done more damage running than Gaara did with his sand - joint effort indeed.

Gaara harrumphed in the same tone of his sister and raised his eyebrows. Right, she got the first turn.

“Naruto said Kurama smelled something different about me. Is the same true for you and your…” she didn’t know how to finish politely so she didn’t.

Gaara nodded to himself, eyes closed for a few seconds as he had his silent conversation, before he returned to analyzing her. “What do you know of the Tailed Beasts?”

Naruto tensed up beside her, gazing at her with wide-eyed intensity. His focus was even more unnerving than Gaara’s.

“Beings of pure chakra, split from each other at the beginning of time by the Sage of the Six Paths. Now they reside in demon containers, though the name ‘demon’ doesn’t mean they’re mindless beings of evil, just of power.”

Thankfully, that explanation didn’t seem to piss off either of the jinchūriki with her. Naruto leaned back on his hands and hummed to himself, trying to put his thoughts in order.

“Well, us jinchūriki all recognize each other, yanno, and I guess it’s cause we’re made of pure chakra like you said. Well, Kurama says he recognizes you too.”

Gaara nodded without adding anything else, which did nothing to calm Sakura’s racing thoughts. Was that all they knew? What did it even mean? She wasn’t a jinchūriki, she was sure, but that was all.

She didn’t get to think about it though before Shisui, Kakashi, and Temari all crashed their way through treetops. They landed without a sound, all three racing over themselves to find out why their teammates were all sitting in a circle on the ground like school children.

Shisui, of course, got their first. He took in the bloody weapons, all still on the ground, and her ankle that was purpling at an alarming rate. Kakashi took it all in the second after, and the two of them shared a glance as heavy as a corpse. When she looked at him, Shisui didn’t meet her eyes.

It was Kakashi that leaned down next to her ear, a useless gesture given the superior hearing of the jinchūriki, and it was Kakashi who stabbed her through the heart yet again.

“Sakura, you’re no longer capable of continuing the mission.”

Chapter Text

Sakura had, on some level, been bracing herself for this since the mission began. Since Kakashi ran her through the chest, showcasing without words at all that he could never consider her a friend, an ally. She was bracing for this sudden fall, the loss of air, which just made the impact all that more painful.

She had been taught as a child not to tense on landing because that always led to the worst injuries; Sakura had never been good at freefall.

She took the blow the way she was taught to – silently, like a good girl. Kakashi helped her up with a hand on her elbow, standing closer to her than he ever had - he considered her a flight risk.. Once she was upright she practically collapsed onto Shisui, who took her weight without hesitation or question. Kakashi stayed for a second to make sure she was secure, touch lingering long enough to make Sakura want to burst through the calm façade and just start biting, before he turned to Naruto with a terrifying smile under his mask.

Through this all, Gaara had not looked away from her. She gave him friendly wave with a wink for good measure. “It was an informative talk, Kazekage-san, and a fun race." Gaara was a stone-idol in front of her, refusing to react to either her curt dismissal or her dismal state, but he gave her a solemn nod and a searching look before submitting to Temari’s tender ministrations. She mentally put Gaara on her docket to deal with later and nearly froze in place.

How was she going to deal with her list? Sakura couldn’t foresee a scenario in which she just gave up on Konoha because fucking Kakashi told her to, and that was a little bit for her own piece of mind, yes, but mostly it was for the other-Sakura, who was kicked off her team and still refused to stop trying to save them. Didn’t Sakura owe it to her to see things through, when it seemed like barely anyone else in this world gave her a second glance?

Who would remember little weaking Sakura if not her?

The obvious answer was Shisui, who transitioned her carrying her bridal style outside of the sight of the Suna contingent. While it rankled to be picked up like a princess, the fact that Shisui had the piece of mind to try and not embarrass her in front of Gaara made her choke up a little.

But while his grip was just as supportive as Shisui always was to her, his face hadn’t changed from an impassive mask since he had seen Sakura’s injuries and bloody weapons. No – he had been acting like this since her spar with Tsunade, since she destroyed her hands in the woods after the battle with Sasori. It struck Sakura that she was playing fast and loose with a body that wasn’t hers to destroy. She was tearing apart the body of his friend right in front of him and trying to justify it in her own head, like she had any claim to it.

But didn’t she? Fucking confusing, the whole thing was, and not for the first time Sakura spared a thought for “Inner” – that little voice that used to stand so far apart from her, inside her, that always seemed so much more prepared for things.

But then one day Sakura got a real teacher who could give her instruction outside her own head, and she became strong enough to save herself in emergencies, no second thoughts or alter egos required. She never confronted Ino about what exactly was in her head during the Chunnin trials and Ino apparently lost her memory of the fight, and Sakura only felt close enough to Tsunade to ask when Inner was already gone; she just forgot. Let her go. Maybe she shouldn’t have dismissed her past so easily.

The jinchūriki were the only people Sakura knew that had independent entities in their head advising them what to do, and now the Tailed Beasts seem to be recognizing her in turn. Shit, Sakura had another mystery to add to the docket, didn’t she? Maybe she could ask Shisui if this Sakura ever talked about Inner, but that would require Shisui talking back to her.

She had to apologize to him for wrecking the rental property, dig up any information she could get about the previous tenet, and then she had to get the fuck out of Eda. Her team wasn’t going to work with her, that was obvious at this point, so her options were to try to beat them to the village and solve everything herself (doubtful) or to hire some mercenaries of her own.

That presented its own set of problems vis-à-vis money and her lack of a Bingo Book, but those two things were easy to solve compared to the rest of the shit she had to do. She also considered the difficulty of escaping, given her injured ankle and how tightly Shisui was holding onto her now.

Her only hope was that the Kazekage would distract her team long enough for them to put her in a room and forget about her. She gave herself a little shake for the overly melodramatic wording.

Tsunade might treat her, might not, but there were doctors in Eda and soldier pills. Overdosing on chakra and drugs to heal herself wasn’t ideal, but Sakura was entering the sprint portion of her one-legged race against fate, and she needed any advantage she could get.

Shit, she should be writing this down.

Shisui gave her a warning shake before teleporting the rest of the way into the hotel room, a disorienting sensation that never got easier when you were the passenger. It was just Shizune in the room, and the look in her eye nearly sent Sakura tumbling out of Shisui’s arms and through the window.

Shizune was disappointed in her. She looked at Sakura like she was a foolish little gennin trying out signs and seals too advanced for it, a child in over their head who would be back in again for treatment the next day.

Shisui put her down gently and moved to take vigil in the middle of the room. Sakura, for a lack of better things to do, decided to break the silence like Naruto would, brazen and unafraid.

“The ankle is broken, some bones are possibly crushed, but there are no longer any open cuts.” Shizune nodded at her self-diagnosis. The older woman unwrapped her leg with a soft touch, healing chakra carrying the same level of non-threat even to Sakura’s paranoid senses.

Shisui still didn’t say anything.

Sakura decided to take the plunge into a difficult conversation, completely inured to Shizune’s presence. Shizune had been there for the majority of Sakura’s most awkward conversations, nearly all of them starting because of Tsuande, and Sakura knew in her bones that Shizune’s discretion was a trait shared in this world.

“Shisui, I owe you an apology. This body belonged to your friend and I’m abusing it when I don’t have the right, considering I didn’t even know your Sakura. I apologize that I’m mistreating it-, her in front of you.”

There, that was a good start. Sakura got through it in one breath, no muss no fuss, and no-

Shisui burst into flames. His hair did, at least, but he kept it controlled enough that all Sakura felt was a little toasty. Shizune didn’t even turn her head.

Shisui turned on her, eyes blood-red, and pointed an accusing finger that she would look back on as ridiculous. “Are you saying you’re sorry because you don’t think you have the right to hurt that body?”

Sakura nodded, confused as to why he was so angry if he understood what she was trying to say. She had rarely ever taken part in a conversation where she was the emotionally dense half and she found she didn’t like the situation.

“And you don’t see any problem at all with repeatedly damaging herself to the point where you need constant medical attention?” He got closer but stayed crouched on the ground so he didn’t tower over her. How could an Uchiha be polite, even when yelling?

No, pay attention, he made a legitimate claim. “I understand that I’m putting an unnecessary strain on Tsunade and Shizune for their healing chakra –“

Shisui did a little karate chop in front of her face, stopping her mid-sentence. “Sakura, are you being obtuse on purpose to torture me? I’m trying to say I don’t like you hurting yourself because I don’t want to see you hurt!”

There was a tear in her eye and it had to be because of the pain. Here she was, proving everyone right, exploding on the spot and then crying about it five minutes later. She didn’t deserve to be on this mission, to serve Konoha, and to have someone like Shisui look her in the eye and act like he cared.

“But, the mission requ-“ was all she could get out before Shizune twisted her ankle back into place. She spasmed in pain, doing her level best to forget this was exactly where she was with Tsunade earlier, and then passed out. The last thing she remembered were Shisui’s red eyes, looking far too pained for such a dangerous man.
----
She woke up, again, even hungrier than before. Two intensive healings like that in one day would do that to a person. Shizune was asleep beside her, snoring on top of an open notebook page, and Sasuke sat perched in the corner like some angsty gargoyle. His eyes opened when hers did, and when she sat up he unfolded himself from his position to hand her a glass of water and another kebab.

“They actually brought food back?” She asked with her mouth stuffed. Sasuke smiled from behind his impassive mask, something Sakura learned to pick out when she saw him interacting with Naruto, but his face quickly smoothed as he whacked her over the head.

“Shisui is still angry-crying.”

“I tried to apologize!”

“And that’s what made him angry, dumbass. You apologized for the exact wrong thing.” His tone was condescending like days of old, but the look he gave her was one she had never seen before except on Naruto’s face, when they went to “retrieve” Sasuke from Orochimaru for the first time. He wanted to help her because he thought she was already too far gone to see she was damaged.

No, that was more melancholy bullshit. She and Sasuke could talk like normal adults, no tears or karate chopping or flaming heads. “I didn’t do it for fun.”

“So leading Gaara and Naruto on a race through the treetops was a tactical decision?” His voice was drier than the Suna climate, and it made Sakura feel thirteen all over again.

She ignored that, like she was ignoring the pain in her ankle or her panic about not knowing what the rest of the team was doing (did they already leave her behind?)

“Things were getting dicey with Gaara, so I took a route of unorthodox diplomacy.”

“You deliberately hurt yourself, again. You made drastic decisions without consulting anyone else, again. And, it seems like you did it all just so you could ask Gaara a question that Naruto would have answered for free. Did I miss something?”

She could have slapped him. She settled for glaring instead, which he brushed off like someone caring for an angry kitten. Sometimes she missed the days when Sasuke was just trying to kill her.

It was so much easier when people were trying to kill Sakura, cause all she had to do was not die. She could get bruised and broken and torn-open like a dissected frog on some uncaring medical student’s desk, but none of that mattered as long as she got back up again.

Now when she gets back up people yell at her for getting knocked down.

But that was uncharitable. Now people yell at her for knocking herself down – but wasn’t that the preferable option? That way she knew when to brace for impact. But bracing for it just made things worse, and now Sakura was thinking herself into stupid little circles while Sasuke stood in front of her all smug like, content with the knowledge that he won the argument.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Well, time to fight fire with fire and Sasuke with Sasuke. She just had to get defensive and angry.

“I just beat out two jinchūriki without chakra and without dying. I killed Sasori with my bare hands and sparred with Tsunade. At what point will you finally admit I can handle myself?”

“You got through those fights because everyone saw you as so weak that they had to take pity on you.”

She did slap him that time. He didn’t even do her the honor of trying to dodge, just let her hit glance against his solid stone cheekbones before giving her a condescending look. Was she ever really in love with this asshole?

Her stomach growled again and he handed her another kebab. It made her angrier that he wasn’t getting angry, wasn’t fighting with her, but she knew why. He just spelled it out: she was too pathetic. She took a bite of the kebab and goddamn him, it was tasty. Fighting wasn't going to yield results, so she just had to hope he was charitable enough to answer her questions.

“What are we telling the Suna contingent about me?”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, you look like Naruto.”

Sakura made gross chewing noises in retaliation and Sasuke shook his head and gave up. Mission success! “Your run was good for something, actually, because you were weird and freakish enough to justify a mission like this.”

She snorted, because that sounded about right, and it also made her terrible decision-making look like foresight. “So we’re telling Gaara that I’m a freak of nature looking for Tsunade to cure me, and the connection to the Tailed Beasts and killing Sasori was all coincidence?”

“Sasori has been a thorn in Suna’s side for decades, even before Gaara took up the fancy hat. We’ll let him take credit for killing Sasori and he’s giving us a grace period before we tell him the whole truth.”

Fuck, that’s brilliant. Sakura said so out loud and Sasuke’s forehead scrunched up in annoyance. “It was Naruto’s plan,” he muttered like she had a knife to his throat. She laughed.

“You future Hokage is well-versed in diplomacy, it seems.” This made Sasuke even grumpier.

Sakura finished her kabab in silence, knowing that Sasuke had already gone past his preferred amount of conversation for the day. She tried sensing out where the rest of her team was, something she should have remembered to do when she first woke up, but she couldn’t sense them in the hotel and she wasn’t strong enough to go beyond that.

Shisui was still a problem, however, and she doubted screaming and passing out in pain qualified as a good end to their conversation. Sakura had to be discreet about it through.

She coughed, shifting around in her bed. “So, your cous-”

“He’s taking a breather.”

She swatted him for interrupting her. “A breather?”

“He exploded like some over-excited toddler, so now he needs to calm down before he burns this whole place down.” Sasuke turned to her, eyes firmly fixed on her own. She hoped she wasn’t blushing, but she could blame it on reflex. “He’s angry at you. He doesn’t care that you’re hurting a body that doesn’t belong to you, he cares that you’re hurting yourself because he cares about you and the other Sakura.”

Sakura didn’t notice how his voice stumbled at the end, or at least she pretended not to. They were all dealing with this pseudo-necromancy in their own ways and arguing semantics wouldn’t bring the other Sakura back.

No, now she had to focus on the truth: Shisui did care for her. She couldn’t logic or mindgame her way out of it - Shisui was the type of person who could be the fastest shinobi alive and the kindest friend in the village. It was easy as breathing for him to wear his heart on his sleeve and to dodge when needed, but he had just kept on letting Sakura hurt him, huh? Ridiculous man, and now she felt responsible.

Another apology, then, trying to ignore that her little journey of personal growth was keeping her away from the people who needed her in Konoha. She hadn't spared them a thought when she was off to the races, just like how she hadn't spared a thought for Shisui.

Being alone had been so much easier. Following orders, well, that had never been easy, but it involved a lot less heartfelt conversation and more time actually working.

But no, fuck, she had to be an adult about this. Trying to scoot out of an actual conversation by claiming they’re on a time limit didn’t mean much when she was immobile anyway, and it’s not like they could leave without dealing with the Suna trio. If they got word that Orochimaru was bringing people back from the dead and that Konoha potentially had a shadow army, not beholden to any peace-time contracts, they’d have an international incident on their hands and more than one Tailed Beast tearing their way through Konoha.

No running, no hiding, no porn book to bury her head in. Sasuke had given her space for her little freak-out but he volunteered quickly enough to grab Shisui for baby-sitting duty. Sakura was amazed he made it that far into an emotional conversation, but she also knew that Sasuke would go to impossible lengths for family, and in this life there was nothing stopping Shisui from taking his younger cousin under his wing. It was sweet, sweet enough that it covered the sting of what Sasuke used to be to her.

She wasn’t alone for more than thirty seconds before Shisui flashed back into the room, feigned nonchalance not covering the worry lines on his face. The grin she gave him must have been some approximation of human because he sat down on the floor with her, poofing two hot teas out of a small seal.

She teared up for the second time that day. It just wasn’t fair - he was an Uchiha who still brought gifts for the people he hated? Not for nothing, Sakura once again tried to shake herself out of whatever dream she landed in.

Nothing changes, except for the creases on Shisui’s face deepening at her little mutter of “Kai.” The tea was good too, which felt more unfair, and it reminded her of the hangover cures she and Tenzo drank by the gallon after his wedding and divorce ceremony in their Eda misision.

She shouldn’t think about Tenzo, or her past life. It was selfish, the same kind of selfish that destroyed her ankle and caused Shizune to pass out healing her and Shisui to burst into fucking flames and-

Putting it aside. She took another sip of tea.

“Shisui, I want to apologize again.”

Shisui flinched in front of her, which was probably fair. She held up a placating hand. “Better, this time.” Tea. Breath. Count to ten and just do this one thing right. “I did something selfish and self-destructive, which was bad for your Sakura and for me.”

She hated that her voice almost trailed off in a question at the end because Shisui definitely caught it. He sighed, all world-weary for some guy in his mid-twenties, and gave her his cup of tea when he noticed she was finished with hers. The people in this Konoha really had some neurosis about feeding each other, apparently. Not that she was going to turn down good tea, even if it did feel fairly patronizing. Then again, she was crazy.

Shisui still wasn’t talking, which wasn’t ideal. Maybe he did carry the Uchiha curse, because the one time Shisui managed to keep his mouth shut was exactly when they needed to have a conversation. He was just staring at her drink tea, hands fidgeting with some bracelet. Bright pink, which told Sakura all she really needed to know. “Can you tell me about her - your Sakura?”

He started at that and his hands finally stilled. His eyes drifted a bit as he collected himself, and the look on his face when he spoke reminded her the of all the makeshift funerals she held with her fellow shinobi: quiet grief, because there wasn't any other option.

“She was louder than you, that’s for sure. A bit dorkier, I guess, but just as brilliant. Hated her forehead, for some reason I could never get out of her. Stubborn, too, even when she was scared.” He paused, a look of deep self-loathing crossing his face for a split-second. Even when fighting the Akatsuki, Sakura had never seen him look so vicious. “She was scared at the end. I kept telling her to back out, but she wouldn’t. Couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t? I thought the operation was her idea.”

Shisui chuckled a bit at that. “Yeah, and it was her own self who kept her involved, I think. She said she had some little voice in her head that kept her going in ridiculous situations.”

Sakura spat her tea out, because it turns out being on the receiving end of two miracles of medicine left her a little looser with her expressions. Shisui full-bodied cackled at her for that, and his glee was enough to convince her she was forgiven for now. The idea made her giddy, that breathless joy that had come when Tsunade took her on as an apprentice or Kakashi had agreed to be her partner.

Giddy. Sitting here, talking about the life that Sakura stole, and she was giddy.

She sobered quickly, but she didn’t want to ruin this little connection she and Shisui seemed to have forged. “I had a little voice in my head too, and it got me through my genin years. I called her Inner, and she was mostly a crazier version of me.”

Shisui laughed again. “You know what's weird? My Sakura, the other Sakura I mean, she said her voice was a real hardass. Super paranoid, but apparently she was the one thing that got Sakura through sticky situations in the hospital.”

That stuck Sakura as kind of odd, since her Inner wasn’t paranoid in the least, and she wondered why a Sakura in a kinder world would develop a tougher internal voice and then

Sakura

remembered.
-----
Sakura woke up in a soft bed.

Except Sakura had been killed last night – ambushed – and that meant she wasn’t supposed to wake up.

She floated for a bit, hovering at the edge of some higher thought as the body around her stumbled it's way out of the bed and into the bathroom. Sakura could tell she wasn't piloting herself, she was just stuck watching. Watching as chubby little arms opened the door, watching as she walked into the bathroom of her burnt-out childhood home, and watching as the body finally turned to face the mirror. Sakura saw herself at five years old, face full of baby fat and eyes crusted with sleep, and when she tried to open her mouth and scream all that came out was the yawn of a tired child.

Chapter Text

Tsunade once told Sakura that the ancient philosophers equated expertise in fields from medicine to combat to knowledge of cause and effect. “To know something truly,” she said, “is to know what made it that way.”

Sakura had never agreed, not really. She told her shishou she didn’t need to see the knife to know how to close the wound.

Her shishou would laugh at her gall for talking back, would pat Sakura on the head, hands forceful but eyes so sad. “Sakura, don’t you understand by now that the knife is the wound?”

She understood. Now.

---

Life inside the head of her childhood self wasn’t so bad, all things considered. Sakura figured out quickly that she didn’t actually do anything quickly - or by any stretch of time at all. Her ability to grasp reality was loose and floaty, and most of her information came instead through the thoughts of the younger Sakura.

Pinkie, she called her, because Sakura was selfish enough to want to keep her own name even after she had died wearing it. Not that Pinkie had to worry about such a thing - she barely heard Sakura at all until she was in the academy. Before then, Sakura could only influence split-second decisions, helping her catch a falling plate or avoid a rampaging cat.

At the academy, Sakura and Pinkie finally met each other for real. Pinkie started to think, really think, looking inward and interrogating what she found. Sakura introduced herself as “Inner” because she knew it was an explanation that would be accepted and promptly got to work. Pinkie couldn’t be a child for too long, not if she wanted to end up like Sakura. She would have to get stronger, but more than that she would have to get smarter.

She had Pinkie learn everything. The girl was a paper nin through and through because of Sakura’s quest to get a handle on her surroundings. The world around her was strange, all the facts of her life shifted slightly to the left and upside down, and for the first few years Sakura didn’t bother drilling Pinkie with battle maneuvers or healing chakras.

And Pinkie was fine with it, for the most part. She considered Inner to be a formidable study buddy and little else, more focused on Ino’s approval and Sasuke’s dramatic hair style during. Pinkie was light, bouncy, in a way that Sakura found hard to interact with for too long, falling into the persona of drillmaster to make everything easier.

But she was kind to Pinkie, she was sure. Late at night when the world would freeze around them, only the light sound of nin jumping over rooftops to disturb the peace, Sakura would tell Pinkie that she was destined for strength, for endurance. She told Pinkie that even if Konoha burned around them they would survive and build it back up again. She told Pinkie that she would survive because her Inner was looking out for her, no matter what.

It was a service Sakura could take too gladly. It was all for Pinkie - all to make sure she was better than Sakura ever got to be.

And did she spend some nebulous hours analyzing her situation, her own time with Inner? Yeah, basically all Pinkie’s prepubescent years were devoted to Sakura’s unending silent scream.

She couldn’t understand why her own Inner didn’t say anything, why her parents never said anything, why no one had just looked her in the eyes and told her the truth. She couldn’t understand why Sakura always had to get hurt to make someone else’s life easier, even when that life was her own.

Sakura couldn’t understand why she wasn’t allowed to rest.

Then Pinkie’s puberty hit, and it was all hands-on-deck, existential crises left to simmer in the back of the stove. Whether Sakura liked it or not, she was now partnered with Pinkie for the rest of the girl’s life, and Sakura wanted nothing more for it to be longer than her own had been.

She helped Pinkie in the final year at the academy, but she always had to be aware of the limits that other people’s expectations put on her. If Pinkie started showing moves she couldn’t have learned from her nobody parents or neglectful instructors than some prying eyes might look at them too closely. No, Sakura treated Pinkie’s education like any other covert op, trusting no one and keeping all her cards up her sleeve.

Pinkie was still placed on a Team Seven when she graduated, a sad inevitability that Sakura tried not to think about too hard. She couldn't befriend anyone in this Konoha, only watch as Pinkie fumbled her way through relationships. And fumbler she did: her emotions left her distracted, constantly, unable to tear her eyes from a relatively well-adjusted Sasuke just within touching distance. Sakura paid more attention to the progress of her team - Sasuke was growing leaps and bounds outside of their “team meetings” because of his family, and Naruto captured all of Kakashi’s attention as his bratty godson. No, Pinkie was on her own, batting her eyes at Sasuke while Sakura thought herself into circles.

She taught Pinkie in secret at night, pouring over books and scrolls so late that Sakura had to force the young girl to study despite her exhaustion. Pinkie, at the graceful age of twelve, didn’t like it all that much; she hated that Kakashi ignored her, that Sasuke never invited her over, that Ino spoke so positively about her own teacher. She hated Konoha for assigning Kakashi to be their teacher when it was obviously a conflict of interest,

Pinkie hated Sakura for being a tyrant, a heartless drillmaster who filled her with anxiety and a sense of wrongness, giving her all these awful fears with no way to fight them. She would pound on the walls of her bedroom, beat at her own breast with her fists and scream “Save me! Teach me!”

Sakura was a weak thing, but more than that she was a fearful thing, and she didn’t like living in this pitiful body anymore than Pinkie.

Their real forays into medicine started.

Not everything, not all at once, but it was becoming obvious that Pinkie would be going into the Chunin exams with little to no special skills. And considering it seemed like Konoha wasn’t going to experience a terrorist attack at the hands of their current head of hospital, it looked like her teammates would pass and leave her behind.

Medical chakra, no matter how underdeveloped, would catch eyes during the exam. As long as she could pull that out in the Forest of Death and handle herself in a spar, Sakura thought they could still skate by. Pinkie fell into the plan with enthusiasm Sakura had rarely seen, immediately heading off to find a fish that she could dissect.

The animals sufficed, for a time. Sure, Pinkie freaked out her mother and sure, Sasuke’s older cousin found her crying and covered in fish guts at the side of the river one night, but Pinkie was clever and determined enough to flicker her chakra green long before Sakura ever did. But dead fish weren’t shinobi, and she couldn’t dissect an animal to get Chunin status.

It was Pinkie who suggested practicing on herself at first. Sakura had thought of it, the potential gain at just the cost of a few measly cuts, but she had never allowed herself to bring up the suggestion to the younger girl. Sakura had crossed many lines, but she hadn’t wanted to cross that one.

Pinkie made the hard decision for her, as stubborn and intractable as Sakura dreaded she would be. She made the first cut herself, too quick for Sakura to try and wrestle her hand away, and with that their lessons began.

She didn’t want to keep going after the first time, but Pinkie did. Here’s the truth they both knew - if Sakura wanted to stop her, she could. She could try and wrestle control of the body like she sometimes did during spars, and she could save the young girl from herself.

But Pinkie wanted to learn, needed to become stronger. Maybe that drive was Sakura’s fault as well - maybe she was the cause and the effect, the knife and the wound. She told herself that the cuts would heal. She told herself that she had survived worse, and Pinkie would too.

Small cuts hidden behind clothing still stank of blood. Kakashi tried speaking to her about it once, porn book disallowing any eye contact, and it was Pinkie who decided to deny everything. Kakashi dropped the conversation - it was a day before the Chunin exams, and he had more important students to worry about.

Pinkie passed the written portion, of course. The Forest of Death posed little challenge without a deranged Sanin lurking around, so she got by with little fighting and only the opportunity to heal a sprained ankle that Sasuke received. Her healing chakra had bucked against his own for a fearful minute, Pinkie unable to acclimate to a patient that wasn’t herself, but it settled after some steady breathing under Sasuke’s unblinking stare.

He thanked her, which Sakura hadn’t expected, but his voice sounded pitying when he did so. Pinkie didn’t notice.

Pinkie had the bad luck of going against Rock Lee in the very first round of fights. She and Sakura did their level best with a genjutsu, but Maito Gai had been able to shock him out of it with bellowed words of encouragement. Pinkie’s thoughts were consumed with companions to Kakashi, even as Rock Lee knocked her out with a blow to the back of the head, apologizing all the while.

Sakura didn’t interfere in the fight. She could have won, perhaps, if she had gone for the fatal blow with a kunai at the very beginning of the fight, but Sakura didn’t want Pinkie to deal with the fallout afterwards any more than she actually wanted to kill a young boy.

They did not make Chunin. Kakashi came to her front door to deliver the news, patted her once on the head, and left. She did not see her former teammates at all. Pinkie blamed Sakura for not helping her in the final fight when she needed her most, but Sakura distracted her with the thought of a new teacher. Strength left no time for grief.

There were few medical nin who worked outside the hospital, but Kakashi’s friend Rin was in the village on maternity leave at the time of the exams. Sakura was in awe of a woman she had never met - Rin was this Konoha’s pioneer in the medic nin field, leading countless missions of her own despite higher level shinobi deriding medical personnel in the field. She was Pinkie’s best hope without directly fetching Tsunade herself, and all they needed was the chance to prove themselves.

Rin turned them down before they even asked the question. She advised Pinkie to leave the shinobi and the medic nin life entirely, because no successful career could be built on such self-destructive habits. In her head, Sakura laughed in disbelief at such a ridiculous statement. Pinkie cried, and then she spat at Rin to congratulate Kakashi on his successful Chunin mission with his new teammate. She left before she got a response.

Pinkie railed at Konoha some more, spent time punching holes on the top of Minato’s head in Hokage Rock. Sakura tried to focus her anger on the people who specifically screwed them over, of which there were many, but Pinkie would retort that Konoha was the broken system that put those awful people in a position of power over her with no recourse. Sakura would not respond, and Pinkie would get angrier.

They applied to work at the hospital, but were rejected. Sakura was secretly happy, not wanting to spend any time around Orochimaru, but Pinkie needed a teacher outside her own head, and more than that she needed bodies to practice on.

Sakura got drastic. She led Pinkie down the worst streets in Konoha, the ones that wouldn’t see an Uchiha patrol in any world, and started offering their services as a door-to-door vet. The green chakra emanating from her hand was worth more than any credential to most civilians, and so for nearly three weeks Pinkie practiced on dogs, cats, hogs, and lazy uncles who wouldn't go to the real doctor.

The practice was good, but talking to people in Konoha was better. Both Pinkie and Sakura felt content with the work in front of them, learning how to heal everyday maladies and how to relieve deep-seated pain. Pinkie dealt with her first patient to die in front of her - a grandmother who had been terminal but too stubborn to leave home. Sakura had shown Pinkie how to deaden the nerves just a bit, just to give her a few minutes with her family and without pain.

It was a touching moment, before Kabuto arrived.

Hands above his head, smile inches above his actual expression, he begged the family’s forgiveness for arriving too late. He volunteered, as kind as the sweet summer breeze, to take care of the body for them.

No no, the family said, everything is fine. We were able to handle the living ourselves, and now we will handle our dead.

Then Kabuto finally set his snake eyes on Sakura, her hand still hovering above a heart that had beat for the last time, and the truth of the world fell into place around her. Sakura knew in her rebroken bones that this Konoha was no utopia, and this Kabuto was the reason why.

Pinkie, however, lit up. She attached herself to Kabuto without hesitation, euphoric at the idea of talking to someone else, someone kind. He listened to her stories, to her questions, to her gripes with Konoha - he had an answer for everything, and at the end of their long walk back to the hospital he offered her a special internship, working just with him.

Sakura rioted, pressed to the edge of the skin that confined her and begged Pinkie just to listen and turn around. But what justifications could she give - that she had once known Kabuto as a villain, a murderer? She had never told Pinkie the truth of her circumstances and her untimely death, nor did she want to.

Her own Inner hadn’t said anything to her, and Sakura had to believe it was for the right reason. So she allowed the internship to happen, treated it like another covert ops mission in her head, even if she couldn’t decide if Pinkie was working with her or against her.

For the first few years Pinkie just worked with Kabuto. It was, much to Sakura’s chagrin, a lot like her years under Tsuande’s tutelage without the extra combat practice. Kabuto was a relentless teacher, giving Pinkie a library’s worth of books to read and essays to write, forever insisting on perfection even before practice. Pinkie flourished under her taskmaster, the only teacher besides the voice in her head to pay her any attention.

They managed to steer clear of nearly everyone in those years, the only nin Pinkie kept in contact with being Ino for monthly coffee dates. Kakashi, her team, even her parents fell to the wayside when Pinkie and Sakura entered the hospital, staying for days on end in the labyrinth of hallways under the main building. The same rooms that Sakura used to run by Shizune’s side were now Pinkie’s solace as she tried to find quiet in order to read her entire textbook out loud - twice.

Their grasp of the theoretical grew in leaps and bounds, even going beyond some of Tsunade’s lessons, but that came at the expense of their body and chakra. Sakura didn’t have time to force Pinkie to keep up an intensive physical routine, and that meant they also didn’t have time to do basic chakra exercises like water walking.

In some ways, Pinkie didn’t change much from the girl who failed the Chunin exams. Sakura started to wonder if she was maybe playing her cards too close to her chest.

Work at the hospital was good, no matter Sakura’s gripes, no matter how fearful she still was when Pinkie left her back to Kabuto. Work at the hospital was good and Ino was still talking to her, even if they only ever talked about nothing, so of course an Uchiha had to come and ruin everything.

---

Sakura and her stolen body were unconscious for eight hours, Shizune told her when she startled awake, a brittle quality to her voice. In that time her team had left to return to Konoha, the Kazekage had returned to Suna with Temari, and the lovely Hanako-san had agreed to stay behind and assist with her recovery.

Hanako. Sakura rolled her name around in her mouth and still no recollection of her came. It was only a distraction for the other thoughts in her head, pounding at her skull like damned prisoners.

Her spinning head made her weak, almost too weak to even sit up and drink the soup Shizune was offering. She got up, because that’s what Sakura’s supposed to do, but she was still so out of it that she didn’t realize she was shirtless until some of her soup dripped onto her chest.

Shizune had been looking for any more wounds Sakura forgot to mention. She didn’t think about it. She drank her soup.

Sakura had trained this body well to run on auto-pilot when Pinkie would pull all-nighters to study - instinctive motions of the hands to feed or the feet to pace. Sakura had been a college student in a much younger body and she taught Pinkie all the terrible tricks to staying awake for 56 hours straight.

The memory came to Sakura swift as a blink, between one bite of soup and the next, then descended into the dark morass at the back of Sakura’s mind. More memories of her time in Pinkie’s head, she guessed.

(A part of her whispered that memories wouldn’t pulse and ache like that. She told herself that when Pinkie died she got to move on, got to escape their fucked up little cycle instead of decaying in the back of her own skull while her killer ran the controls. She told herself not to poke at it unless she wanted to fall into another coma.)

She finished her soup.

Hankao came back with dinner a few hours later, more than happy to spoil Shizune with fatty festival foods and fresh tea. Sakura feigned sleep during their conversation, which dropped into flirtation often enough to make Sakura question Hanako’s reasons for staying behind.

She closed her eyes. In her head, there was a whiteboard. On the whiteboard, in pink marker, she made her lists. Causes: Sakura drilled Pinkie too hard. Sakura isolated Pinkie from her peers. Sakura had considered Pinkie as a means to an end, as a way to achieve her own selfish catharsis, to the point where she didn’t even think of the girl as Sakura, deserving of her own life and respect.

Effects: Pinkie was dead. Sakura finally took control of the body, and now she was out here reaping all her consequences in bloody swathes.

There were a few years missing there, vital years that covered their partnership with Shisui and their investigation into Orochimaru, but that didn’t change the facts. Sakura had acted as a Rat, as the ROOT agent Danzo always knew she could be molded into, and she had used all her skills to manipulate herself. Manipulate a child, who had died just as unceremoniously as any of ROOT’s victims.

Leaving Sakura with questions no one else but Sakura would know, because no one else could ever understand how she became what she was - a chain of Sakura's, an infinite regress of painful cause and effect that culminated in bloody wrists and stained knives. There were no answers to find that could fix what she had done. Her confession meant nothing at all.

In the background she heard the sound of a bottle being opened, a drink being poured. Hanako said she liked to draw as a hobby, do you think I could sketch you Shizune-san? There was a girlish giggle, the whisper of ink across parchment. Sakura went back to her lists.

Konoha was still in danger, a danger Pinkie died to prevent. Sakura was scum, but scum could still complete the mission placed in front of them. All she had to do was escape Shizune and Hanako, race back to Konoha in her injured state, avoid all the people she could count on for allies, and kill a Sanin.

All her thoughts came to one sad conclusion: she needed a miracle, an intervention from the gods who had so clearly cursed her.

A man crawled in through the window.

Hanako went through the floorboards before anyone in the room could react, Sakura opening her eyes quickly enough to see the woman punted down into the foliage below. Sakura’s eyes focused on the foot first, then the scythe, and then she saw the rest of him: Hidan, another Akatsuki weirdo, came to ruin her day. The oxygen in the room, the very space around them, seemed to fly past them through the open window. There was nothing but the danger he presented and no way to get around it.

Tall, was the immediate thought. There was little space to maneuver around his bulk, and any space not taken up by bare muscle was filled with the sharp edges of his scythe. His eyes glowed red, a sickly shade in comparison to the Sharinigan, but that didn’t prevent the shudder that went up her spine at his gaze.

Shizune had instinctively gotten closer to Sakura, ready to protect her patient from any incoming natural disaster, and so of course Sakura had to repay the favor by knocking the woman out. Hanako might survive one of Hidan’s kicks, but if he turned his gaze to Shizune the medic was a goner. No, the attention had to be on Sakura, because Sakura had a plan. A terrible one, a ROOT one, but a plan.

“Praise Jashin-sama,” she cried with conviction, “for respite from these heathens.” The words tasted like blood on her tongue. Her fingers felt like blades tearing through her clasped hands. She considered that agony was just as good as piety for Hidan’s god, and congratulated herself for her method acting.

Sakura had studied Hidan and Jashinism quite intently in her previous life, hoping to gather the ins and outs of other methods of immortality. Her ability to outlast her opponent in battle was integral to her survival, so she was understandably wary about any cult that could produce animals like Hidan.

She had found a few other priests of Jashin, killed them as well, but none of them had the same monstrous regeneration as the scythe-wielding member of Akatsuki. On a darker day, not too long before she was executed, Sakura had considered putting Hidan back together and letting him loose on Danzo - she really couldn’t ask for a better distraction.

And now here he was, crawling through her window. Jashin be praised indeed.

Hidan did a double take at her prayer, his ridiculous weapon already half-raised to cull her and Shizune like wheat. He grunted in annoyance from being distracted from the kill and bent down to study her, red eyes a new terrifying shade of zealous compared to his indifference before.

“And what would you know about Jashin-sama, little girl?”

Sakura shifted Shizune off her lap and crawled over her to take a place between him and the table, body protesting every move. She busied herself with pouring out some more of the sake Hanako bought for her unfortunate date, gracefully ignoring Hidan’s laser focus on her exposed chest.

She couldn’t hear Hanako making a sound below them. She finished her drink in one gulp and sent a quick prayer to a kinder god before turning again to Hidan.

How could she convince him that she was also a believer? She had information to leverage, of course, but by all accounts he would get bored and kill her if she tried to play mind games with him.

Realistically, she thought in a distant way, hurting Shizune would quickly convince Hidan of her religious affiliation. But no - that was too calculated for Jashin’s brand of cruelty anyway. Her only bet was to give him a target, one he couldn’t pass up even while hunting Tsunade.

Danzo. Orochimaru.

Kabuto. Now there was an idea.

“Jashin-sama has a job for you, Hidan, one that won’t be paid with the filthy money your partner worships,” she said, vicious smoke pouring from her mouth even as her brain went into overdrive trying to remember every detail she had ever unearthed about this wretched man. Hated money, loved suffering, didn’t die, didn’t shut up. Shikamaru’s report on his confrontation with Hidan had been as informative as it was heartrending, and she used to keep a copy of it on her to remember the lazy boy who liked to nap under clouds.

Focus! Hidan huffed at her, yanking her forward by the hand so violently that Sakura felt her wrist shift out of place. She almost thought he was about to toss her straight through the window. She followed the forceful momentum of her body and gave him a light laugh. Jashin was about suffering, right? Well, Sakura knew how to speak that language. “That weak display dishonors yourself and Jashin-sama - either kill me or listen to what I have to say.”

The scythe rose behind his shoulder, just out of the corner of her eye, and swung faster than it took for all of Sakura’s breath to leave her body in one frantic exhale, burying herself a scant few inches from her hip. Hidan collapsed on the floor where he stood, heedless of the broken glass on the ground and limbs sluggish like a complaining toddler, before actually starting to whine. “And why the fuck do you know so much, huh?”

“I have access to knowledge only given to the gods,” she tried to give a knowing wink. He scowled at her. The worst part was it was true, actually, given that Sakura’s existence seemed to be one big glitch after another, cheating in the cosmic sense. It might not be fair, but, well, fuck it.

He got close to her - too close - body lunging across the floor just so he could reach around her for the bottle of sake left on the table. She thought she felt the brush of teeth on her neck, a whisper of his cloak’s fabric against her chest, a sensation not alike when she ran from the jinchūriki in the forest.

Sakura was playing games with gods, but at least she was at the table. She still had the hand dealt to her and the tricks up her sleeve.

“If you know it, then it’s not only known to Jashin-sama, fucking idiot,” he laughed, taking a swig of the bottle. He gulped the whole thing down in seconds, an indulgence she didn’t consider too holy, and immediately crawled over her again to search the empty table anew. She allowed this to happen, unflinching. Sakura was a holy messenger right now, and Hidan couldn’t touch her.

She had to bluff, like any good priest. “What would you do to a man who stole from Jashin-sama?”

Hidan froze in his search, limbs locked around her body like a cage. He pushed her down with a thoughtless hand, forcing her to recline on the table, but still she did not flinch. This was just foreplay, and she could handle that fine as long as he didn’t get a drop of her blood.

“Impossible,” he growled, eyes glowing. She noticed that he took care not to touch her too much, however, which meant at least some part of her act was working. Now for the grand finale - standing applause or a decapitation to follow. Cause and effect.

“There is a man ripping people from Jashin’s eternal embrace, bringing them back to life as mindless puppets to do his bidding. Too afraid of death, of his own suffering, he fights a coward's war with souls stolen from a God he does not worship,” she spat the words directly into Hidan’s incredulous face, watched as his face slackened with confusion and then twisted into a righteous fury, and felt the world fall into place around her. Her play was made, plan written in blood and pink marker.

Chapter Text

Sakura didn’t have a plan, per say, for how she would get Hidan into Konoha. She didn’t even have a traveling itinerary, which would cause her mother to break into post-mortem hives – except her mother wasn’t dead in this world, just traveling. Merchants, her parents were, saved from a Sound Invasion that never was. Still completely absent from Pinkie’s life post-Chunin exam.

It was for the best, really. Pinkie never seemed to miss them with Sakura always looking over her mental shoulder and Kabuto giving her a new home in the underbelly of the hospital. Sakura hadn’t seen them since the day she woke up bloodied in a bathroom, and even before that Pinkie hadn’t seen them for years.

She still itched for an itinerary. Sakura’s mother had coped with a dangerous world by planning her business deals and traveling routes obsessively, a neurosis passed onto Sakura much like her bright pink hair. She would probably have to get rid of that too.

Shizune would wake up even if poor Hanako didn’t and she would immediately report Sakura missing. If she was lucky, Shizune would assume Hidan kidnapped her. If not, and Shizune remembered Sakura was the one to knock her out, then she and Hidan had to hustle faster than Shizune’s warning message to Tsunade.

Which wasn’t going to be easy given Sakura was heavily injured and had just kicked the nearest medic unconscious. Smart shinobi she was, Sakura made the grand decision to partner with a man who had never used a healer’s kit in his over-extended life. He certainly didn’t make up for it in bedside manner.

“Is this a fucking joke? I could go faster missing both my legs!” Hidan crowed, twenty feet ahead of her and halfway up a tree. He was twitching quite a bit, compulsively turning his head to make sure they weren’t being followed, and Sakura’s slow pace had him practically vibrating in place with unspent energy. A bit like a psychotic Naruto, really.

Sakura heaved herself forward another few feet and gave Hidan a rude gesture in lieu of an answer. Her companion shouted a few more curse words and decapitated a nearby owl with a swift kick to the head as he waited for her to catch up. Sakura was unfortunately impressed by both his speed and precision, something she hadn’t expected from Hidan.

The body fell on the path right in front of her so she took the time to pick it up and store it away, happy that she could plan out her dinner for tonight at least. Hidan gave a disgusted noise and finally dropped to the ground, creating a dust cloud that coated the both of them.

“He’s gonna come after us, yanno. I mean, of fucking course you know,” Hidan continued, caught in a conversation with himself, before descending into some resentful muttering – something about how a pink-haired slip of a bitch like Sakura didn’t deserve a direct line to Jashin-sama when Hidan was obviously his most faithful and bloodthirsty priest. Sakura agreed with him – he was much more devoted to his freak god than she was.

But she did kinda have a direct line to some sort of divinity – the Tailed Beasts recognized her, she could remember herself coming back from the dead and being “reborn” in Pinkie’s head, only to pull the same trick again when Pinkie died. Whatever Sakura was - Shinobi, Medic, ROOT – it was becoming increasingly hard to ignore the fact that she probably wasn’t human.

Which. Well. Fuck. Sakura’s life had been entirely defined by her proximity to the unholy and divine - Kakashi the Copycat Nin, the last Uchiha, Tsunade of the Sannin, and multiple Tailed Beasts and their hosts. Sakura was a mere mortal among gods and legends, which influenced every stage of her training.

When she was young she revered her teammates for their inhuman strength, and was left in awe of Kakashi’s grace and skill. As she got older and realized she couldn’t rely on a nonexistent relationship with Sasuke for strength, she became jealous. She threw herself into her training with Tsunade, packed every punch with a seething anger that she was left “normal” while the world itself was shaped by the people around her. She became a medic because that took skill, smarts, and training that no shinobi was simply born with.

She called herself the strongest not just because she was, but because she believed that she had somehow earned it more than the others. It was unfair, maybe, but Sakura grew to look at Naruto and Kakashi not as allies to revere, but instead as benchmarks she would push herself too through her own power, her own blood and determination. Because Sakura saw herself as the ordinary one, the useless one, the girl who had nothing and built up from that.

And Sakura had been wrong the entire time.

What a shitshow waiting to turn into a breakdown. She forcibly shut those thoughts down, because even if Hidan was disgusting he wasn’t wrong - his Akatsuki teammate, the only person Hidan deigned to mention outside of his religious obsession, would be on the hunt for them along with Tsunade. Their only hope was that they were ranked low on his list of priorities.

“Kakuzu is more likely to go directly after Tsunadae and then attempt to meet with you after the mission is complete. He has a special hatred for her family line,” Sakura replied between heavy panting. She hoped her physical ineptitude covered up the fact that her “Holy Proclamations” were just her best guesses.

Kakuzu was a problem, a big one, and he was stronger and smarter than Hidan in almost every single way. Just as immortal but with half the crazy, he was more than capable of decapitating his teammate if he got annoyed. Hidan could just be put back together again, but Sakura didn’t exactly have that luxury at the moment.

So what to do if they did meet before Konoha? Kazuku didn’t have any secret grandmothers she could pull out of her pocket to confront him with, and having five or six hearts meant she didn’t have any convenient “heart attack” jutsus she could utilize with her low chakra stores.

She had to get creative. More than that, she had to get brutal. Something to think about when she wasn’t about to lose a lung and a pint of blood.

Hidan ran forward, barely listening, before stopping some fifty feet ahead of her, mocking her by doing some heavy breathing of his own. “Why the fuck would Jashin’s holy messenger be so goddamn slow, huh? Some fucking mouthpiece that can’t even fix herself.”

Sakura covered her flinch by leaning down and pretending she had a stitch in her side. She actually had a few, courtesy of Shizune’s exemplary medical work, and she took some time to check on those as well. She was only wearing a breezy linen shirt and a colorful skirt she had lifted from poor Hanako’s luggage, and she hadn’t taken anything from Shizune’s medical supply bag except for a few bandages, a bottle of Tsunade’s good sake, and some soldier pills. Dumb not to take the whole thing when she so obviously needed it, but the thought of leaving Shizune completely bereft in a foreign land was utterly repulsive to her.

Sakura found comfort in making a worse decision for a good reason sometimes. Showed she still had a line she wouldn’t cross, showed she still had some kind of agency even in this suicide run of hers.

(The voice still whispered, of course: Silly Rat, and when you’re too injured to make it to Konoha, it will be your fault. Shizune will live long enough to see her mentor and best friend crucified by nigh-immortal enemy Shinobi all because you wanted to feel like a good person for a few seconds. Does the pain help, Rat, or does it just distract you from every other poor decision you’ve made?)

Either Sakura was incredibly lucky or incredibly unlucky, but Hidan’s grating voice did manage to drown out her inner Danzo for a second.

Inner Danzo. What a terrifying thought.

“C’mon Mouthpiece, pick up the fucking pace! I could have sacrificed at least three heathens to Jashin-sama by now.”

“Jashin-same cares not for the quantity of sacrifices but for the quality of their suffering,” she recited with no small amount of self-importance as she took a few more laborious steps. She had learned that little tidbit from a fanatic who had lived secretly in a small fishing village for years, killing the odd stray traveler or homeless civilian every five to ten years. His restraint was nearly as impressive as the trophy room/slaughterhouse he had kept in his basement.

Sakura had enjoyed burning the whole thing down.

Hidan scoffed at her rote reply and dropped down from the treetops, nearly landing on her head. Despite his uncaring attitude and brash nature, he hit the ground without a sound and without leaving an impact in the dirt. “Quality sacrifice - like the busty bitch with the drinking problem? Heard she had a healing thing.” His voice turned near pornographic when he mentioned Tsunade’s healing quality, probably imagining all the time he could spend taking apart another near-immortal.

Sakura gave him a swift elbow to the gut in response, a blow that took him by surprise and knocked him into a nearby tree. He laughed as he made an impact and bounced back with enough speed to impress Shisui.

She continued her trek, one plodding step after another, feeling more like a nagging housewife than a Herald of God. Maybe her mother would be proud after all.“Jashin-same has delivered unto us-“

“A sacred task – I fucking know already. But why does following Jashin-sama’s will have to be so fucking boring this time?” he whined. Sakura snorted a little at his petulant tone and downturned head, another Naruto classic he pulled off with a jarring ease that left her seeing double.

“Well, if you always had fun worshiping Jashin-sama, then you wouldn’t really be worshiping him, would you?” Sakura had two seconds to revel in her own heretical cleverness before Hidan swung his scythe at her head, displacing the air and a nearby tree trunk behind where her neck had been, Considering his speed she knew that he had given her that time to react - either out of pity or reverence - but that was a finite resource.

Yes, it was a bad idea to play around with a wild animal. Yes, she was endangering her only route back to Konoha and saving Tsunade. And, yes, she might actually be pissing off a real god.

But it was fun. No more masking her fury, her bite just to make others comfortable. She could be brash instead of meek, overplaying her strength instead of feigning weakness. Nobody played with fire because they were scared of getting burned – it’s because they were looking forward to it.

Besides, surviving Hidan meant keeping her teeth sharp and her knives sharper. He wouldn’t carry her around if she was a deadweight, but he might match her pace if she kept him interested.

And keep pace he did, constantly jogging around her or darting off to the woods to chase some bear cubs. He was louder than a full merchant caravan when he wanted to be, and he had this lovely habit of suddenly going completely silent just to fuck with her.

By the time they stopped for a meal Hidan had started swinging faster, cutting her two second grace period to half a second. Each time he made a pass at her Sakura caught the underlying challenge – are you strong enough to speak for my God?

Realistically, no, but Sakura was running on hope and bullshit by the time they made camp and she was allowed to collapse. Hidan wandered off into the woods – fucking again – and so she practiced the very niche skill of lighting a fire and cooking her dinner while completely prone.

She based her technique off her lazy former teacher, but thinking about him and how this version had so callously dropped her off in some random village made her so angry that she ended up burning her meal – Uchiha style. Then she started thinking about how Shisui and Sasuke had agreed to leave her behind, and she ended up burning Hidan’s portion too.

He was unhappy.

“-ING USELESS THAT SHE CAN’T WALK OR COOK – BARELY A WOMAN MUCH LESS A PRIEST OF HOLY JASHIN-SAMA, UTTERLY IMCOPETE-“

She found herself thankful that his vitriol drowned out her own self-loathing, and he was kind enough to yell from a few feet away while she picked at her burnt owl and puttered away at her wounds. In fact, the more healing chakra she used to put herself into working order, the quieter and curiouser Hidan got, tearing into his meal and staring at her wounds with abject fascination.

“Never had to do this sort of thing the hard way, I guess?” she teased as she set about realigning the bones in her ankle again. Sakura was looking at a noticeable limp for the rest of her life – or until she had enough chakra to break the whole thing and put it back together from scratch. Damned inconvenient either way, and it made her dread the next few days they would have to spend traveling.

Hidan raised his eyebrow at her question and stuck his entire arm in the fire, fingers cracking and peeling with the heat. He held himself there for an uncomfortable moment, content to stare down at Sakura as she was forced to watch him immolate.

Sakura had seen people burn before; she was from Konoha, after all. For a Village Among the Leaves they certainly had their share of pyromancers.

Sakura had burned people before. She wasn’t good with fire jutsu, really, so she had to take her time. Had to stand and watch and smell and hear as Sasuke and his brother crumbled apart, together, in the sad little graves she had dug for them.

Sakura knew that as a medic sometimes the best thing to do, the only thing, was to cauterize the wound. But no matter how well-intentioned the fire, burning flesh always smells the same.

Hidan laughed at her, eyes already rolled back in pleasure. “Isn’t this the hard way?”

Sakura looked closer in shameful fascination: Hidan’s flesh was still trying to rebuild even as it burned. The fire wasn’t strong enough to completely melt the flesh and so new skin was still reaching and pulling its way to cover up burned skin – only to then melt and fuse on top of it. The entire arm seemed to bubble and undulate as it simultaneously healed and decimated itself in twisted layers.

Healing that he had no control over – healing that propagated and expanded aggressively like a tumor. When he finally pulled his arm out of the flame it looked utterly deformed. Hidan gave a rakish grin and then started the grisly work of peeling, removing the layers of excess skin. It seemed impossible that his body had produced so much from what looked like nothing, but Sakura also knew that Hidan couldn’t bleed out, so it was true that his body would spontaneously create to survive.

Hidan seemed to find some religious significance in the “cleanse” of his, and he stopped looking at Sakura to more fully concentrate on the sight of his arm tearing up his own flesh. He didn’t move his mouth but she heard the prayer (and a lot of squelching).

When he finished the camp was silent. Sakura grinned, all teeth, and looked him straight in the eye. “You make it look easy.”

---

Life inside the head of her teenage self was awful, and having gone through puberty twice (that she could remember) she felt a new well of sympathy for Kakashi and Tsunade. Pinkie was a monster, growing and bleeding and crawling out of the skin of childhood in the pursuit of some nebulous “growth” that Kabuto promised.

Pinkie moved out of her parents house entirely, securing an apartment closer to the hospital at a mere fourteen. Her training as a genin gave her some legitimacy as an adult, and Pinkie’s parents didn’t care enough to contest it - they even helped pay for the first few months rent.

Sakura was offended more than anything else - Pinkie was a goddamn rocket, twice as brilliant and determined as Sakura was at her age. The fact that Kabuto was the only person in the village that could recognize her worth was a huge indictment of Konoha itself, one both Pinkie and Sakura thought about at length.

It was why Sakura never fought too hard to get Pinkie out of the hospital: she was safer training with her enemies than she was living untrained and ignorant of future danger. Sakura repeated it plenty of times and told herself Pinkie would feel the same way if she knew the truth.

Sakura didn’t plan on telling her the truth.

There were thousands of reasons to keep her silence, some more strategic than others, but the core of it was this: Sakura didn’t want Pinkie to be scared. Forcing Pinkie, a child, to think about life after death, dimensional and time travel, the failure that her own Inner turned out to be - she didn’t want Pinkie to live her life knowing she was destined to be some kind of specter living in the head of her younger self.

It was weird. A bit like Purgatory - not something she thought Pinkie would look forward to.

So Sakura called herself Inner, allowing Pinkie to think up her own rational explanations for the ever-faithful voice in her head. She gave her little hints in school and when training, but nothing that would ever make Pinkie too paranoid.

Which meant that when Shisui Uchiha finally dropped into their shared life, appearing in a flurry of leaves and crow feathers, Sakura couldn’t fully convince Pinkie to trust him over Kabuto.

Pinkie wanted to toss him in the river the second she saw his eyes, wanted to forget about shinobi and clans entirely to retreat into her medical labyrinth. Pinkie felt safe, more than that, felt talented, under Kabuto and she didn’t want an Uchiha messing that up.

It was Sakura who was selfish, as always. She pulled and she yanked until Pinkie stumbled into place and let Sakura puppet her into a botched mission from the get-go, firmly landing her in the crosshairs of both her boss, her boss’s boss, and her boss’s boss’s boss. Kabuto, Orochimaru, Danzo - all would be weighing the potential value of her labor vs. the risk of keeping her alive if she started digging for Shisui.

But Shisui was a lifeline for Sakura, a definitive thread she could pull until Danzo’s rotten web unraveled. Pinkie wasn’t strong enough for a revolution yet, but anything was possible with an Uchiha in the pocket, especially when he was the quickest shinobi alive.

Pinkie didn’t like him until he revealed he was disobeying direct orders from the police to drop the investigation. She grew to admire him because he was able to fight back against the bullshit Konoha bureaucracy, even if he was still fighting for Konoha’s fate. Sakura managed to keep Pinkie cooperating with the investigation by “gently” pushing that narrative that even if Kabuto was a good guy, she didn’t know Orochimaru the same way.

Shisui was sweet, which was maybe the worst part. He was sweet and Pinkie didn’t allow herself to believe it, confident it was all an act from the Uchiha playboy. But Sakura could tell even from the backseat that Shisui was a painfully honest kind of liar. He cared about them - her - and it killed him to put Pinkie in danger.

Pinkie hadn’t noticed at the time, her attention completely shot by Sakura banging on the walls on her skull for weeks on end, but there were always crows following her around and escorting her home. She almost began to worry it would be too obvious to Kabuto.

Maybe it would have been, eventually, but it was Sakura who blew the whole thing up.

It was simple, in a sense. Sakura had forced Pinkie into the battle between Shisui and Kabuto, and so it was no one but Sakura’s fault that Pinkie chose a side. When Sakura really thought about it, it was also her fault that Pinkie chose the side she did.

After all, Kabuto had been nothing but a mentor to her, a light in the dark, a kind taskmaster compared to the obsessive voice in her head. Pinkie loved Kabuto, plain and simple, and as she learned more and more about the plans Orochimaru and Danzo had for the village, Sakura could begin to feel Pinkie changing.

It was slow, at first. Pinkie would still pass information over to Shisui when requested, would still muster genuine horror and the miles and miles of missing persons lists, but she stopped taking Sakura’s advice, started bucking when she tried to take the reins.

She grew distant from everyone else as well - no more Ino, no more parents, no more walks in the village even. She shrunk her world into the basement of the hospital, sleeping in stolen bursts on a dusty cot and slinking into the nurse's breakroom for some morning coffee. Her apartment was used sparingly, kept for appearance and storage more than anything else.

She continued to work as a spy with a new fervor, combing through any experiment records she could get her hands on. Sakura and Pinkie knew Kabuto caught onto their research at some point, but he seemed to tolerate their curiosity with a benevolent patience. He started monitoring Pinkie constantly, of course, but Sakura couldn’t convince her to remove the tags or curses. Why would she? Pinkie trusted Kabuto, and more than that, she wanted him to trust her for real.

Sakura got the picture.

It was impossible for her to accept at first, and then it was so obviously possible she was angry she had deluded herself for so long. Sakura had worked for Danzo, Sakura had been pulled into ROOT - she knew what kind of monster she was. But she had let herself believe she was forced into those things; the world was broken, she told herself, and it was the only option to stay in Konoha and help save the village.

Pinkie wasn’t in hell. Pinkie still had parents, an apartment, and her teammates were still alive. Pinkie’s apocalypse was all in her head, and because of that she was choosing Danzo.

Kabuto. Same evil. Pinkie saw their work as revolutionary - necessary. Konoha itself was a diseased, tree founded on rotten roots, and the whole thing had to be burned and made anew. Konoha had done nothing but chew Pinkie up and spit her out, and she saw that only the strong were capable of fighting back.

Pinkie wasn’t an Uchiha, but she could be medic like the strongest Sanin she knew. Like Orochimaru.

And so what if people got hurt? Pinkie had learned that training hurts from the monster in her head, the one that had driven her entire life.

Sakura got the picture. It was a painful realization,

Sakura started screaming, violent and helpless and echoing and endless and over and over and over and over and over again. Pinkie seized in the middle of an interview with the hospital administration and was subsequently removed from the room and fired.

It was a lucky break, all things considered. The weakest, most vulnerable moment of her life - and her worst enemies were indifferent towards her. Mercy wore many masks, and all that.

Pinkie came to on the steps of her former home, Kabuto frowning gently above her, wishing her a speedy and relaxing recovery. At her apartment, far away from the job she no longer had at the hospital.

“I’ll pull some strings,” Kabuto said with a wink and a chilling kiss on the cheek, “You’ll be back with us soon.”

Pinkie went home in a daze, face planted on her kitchen floor and howled for an hour or two, harmonizing with the racket in her head. Eventually the two of them calmed down, picked themselves up, fell on a bed instead.

A few days passed. They wandered from their bed to the bathroom, from her apartment to the little market on the street below. Civilians gave her a wide berth, due either to her stench or her killing intent, and she had just enough cognizance to grab the bare essentials for food. She bought a real knife as well, plans hazy in her mind to kill Orichimaruo or Shisui or Kabuto or SOMEONE.

Sakura realized she was failing to cope around the same time Pinkie started to get angry.

Pinkie knew it was Sakura who had caused the seizure and therefore ruined her life, again. Sakura was furious because Pinkie was now set on getting closer to Orochimaru in order to support his operations, not stop them. Pinkie argued that Konoha’s morals were written in sand and changed to suit the needs of the powerful. Sakura pleaded with her to recognize that she didn’t need a village to realize experimenting on kidnapped orphans was cartoonishly evil.

Pinkie grew serious, got even angrier instead of scared. Shouted that she didn’t have to listen to some random, overbearing voice in her head, that she stopped living with her mother for a reason. Said she knew Ino would help her remove the tumor, if Pinkie asked, and Sakura could do nothing at all.

Pinkie said she was going to tell Kabuto and Orochimaru everything about Shisui and his investigation. Killing him, she said, would make Orochimaru forgive her for Sakura’s fuckup.

And Sakura knew this was her fault; she had turned Pinkie into this weapon, this bullet of determination and sheer will that would eventually tear Konoha apart. Pinkie had the potential to be the smartest medic nin to grace the Five Kingdoms with Orochimaru as her teacher and Danzo as her patron.

Sakura couldn’t change her mind, couldn’t heal Pinkie- she didn’t have the time, the brilliance, the heart of Tsunade. All she could do was make it worse or make it stop.

Mercy wore many masks. Konoha didn’t deserve the monster Sakura created. Pinkie didn’t deserve whatever painful death her coming war would bring.

Pinkie started to fight, limbs jerking, the sudden realization that Sakura has never tried so hard to take control until this moment -

and then there was the bathroom, the knife, the wound and the blade that caused it.

Pinkie died.

Sakura wasn’t that lucky.

Chapter Text

Sakura woke up the next morning to Hidan whispering in her ear, a litany of disgusting confessions he was apparently trying to pass on to Jashin. She feigned sleep for a minute or so while he did this, safe in the knowledge that he wasn’t really seeing her - he was seeing a vessel for his god. If Hidan had bothered to pay attention to her, he might have noticed her brain leaking out of her fucking eyeballs.

She took ten seconds, thirty, a minute, and then she slammed her open palm into Hidan’s exposed stomach and gave him a heart attack. She needed him down and out for just enough time to scream and start a pot of coffee.

The predetermined act of violence gave her a small amount of satisfaction: it proved she could still catch one of the most dangerous shinobi in the world off guard, it demonstrated her agency in a very literal way. It was also her most base instinct as a nin, as a weapon, so maybe she was just deluding herself in order to excuse senseless violence. More senseless violence, that is.

She killed Pinkie. There was no way she could look at it, the scope and depth of two lifetimes, and not come to the conclusion that Pinkie’s animosity towards Konoha and inclination towards joining Kabuto was Sakura’s fault.

So then what was she doing this for? Why was she brewing an extra cup for some immortal, immoral, insane psycho in the middle of the woods with some half-baked plan to “save” Konoha while walking around in the body of her own murder victim?

Trying to save Konoha killed Pinkie, and it’s certainly not what she would want Sakura doing with her body. Every action since she had woken up in that bloodied apartment had been a desecration, a crime. An insult.

She thought about the bathroom, how cramped it had been. How empty her apartment was when Pinkie had long since began to think of the hospital as home. An inglorious final resting place for a girl who had lived her whole life trying to make something of herself.

Sakura drank her coffee boiling hot and took comfort in burning the roof of her mouth.

Hidan woke up at some point during her ruminations. Brushed over the heart attack, which he barely felt, in exchange for breakfast. If he noticed her haunted look or shaking hands he didn’t care enough to comment, and so they resumed their journey normally, if normal meant listening to Hidan wax poetic about his favorite sacrifices.

Sakura distracted herself by trying to think of all the ways she would fix herself if she were subjected to Hidan’s loving torture. When taking her limited chakra into account, it was all about dragging as much use out of the body as possible, regardless of what long-term damage it left. The trick to keeping her down, then, would be to overload her system with damage or to paralyze her before trapping her. It was as fun a thought exercise as it was self-flagellation, but it did keep her feet moving underneath her.

Where was she going?

Thinking logically, she had two options: save Konoha or not. She had already achieved the first part of her plan - recruiting Tsunade - and now her teacher was headed to Konoha armed with all of Danzo’s secrets, five sharingan, and one demon container. Realistically, Konoha was “saved” from Danzo and Orochimaru whether or not Sakura returned to the village. The only thing she could change was the amount of collateral.

Orochimaru, Danzo, and Kabuto were all extremely tricky to kill, and it was more than likely that at least one of them would slip away once Tsunade made her intentions known. Bringing in Hidan would help on that end, but Sakura was fooling herself if she thought she could control the damage he caused.

Her duty was completed. Konoha knew of the threats inside its walls and all of Sakura’s teammates would tell her to rest. Rest, fight, or run. What did she want?

There was the usual pain that came with that question, the reopening of the wound she had nursed since she was young. What did she want? For Sasuke to love her, Naruto to respect her, Kakashi to acknowledge her. What did she want? Her friends to be alive, her village to be a home instead of a grave, her hands to be clean of all she had done in the name of a broken ideal. What did she want?

Sweet corn soup handed to her by a smiling Shisui. Naruto making her tea and Sasuke carrying bandages. Tsuande repairing her ankle with a wry grin and an open bottle.

But more than that, more than love and friendship and loyalty - Sakura wanted to feel safe. She had been at war for her entire life, and her war would never end until she was sure her enemies were taken care of.

Sakura would kill Kabuto, Orochimaru, and Danzo. She would burn their bodies and scatter the ashes in the wind. She would see with her own two eyes justice served and then

Then she could tell Shisui the truth. Then she could contend with Pinkie’s wishes. Then she could think about what Sakura wanted.

Now she had to walk.

---

"Look, I'm in charge here. I am Jashin-sama's mouth and you are-"

"His hands, I know."

"More like his asshole, with all the useless shit that comes out of you. Now will you listen?" Sakura was making traps as they wandered closer to Konoha to occupy her hands - smoke, small flames, paper spikes. Little things that always manage to turn the tide of battle when people forget to look for them.

It was easy to forget in their modern age of gods and monsters, but being a shinobi used to mean being quiet and clever and annoying. Barrage your enemy with traps and illusions until their frustration boiled over long enough to strike.

Did Orochimaru remember what it felt like to be scared, powerless, panicked? Sakura would make him remember with every weapon at her disposal, with the most promising one being Hidan.

If only he knew how to shut his mouth. In fact, the problem with Hidan wasn't that he was a belligerent asshole to work with, but the fact that he actually seemed to like Sakura; he liked engaging with her at the very least. None of Shisui's suspicion or Kakashi's hostility - instead, Hidan seemed to think of her as a partner in crime much like Kakuzu, but infinitely more valuable because of her supposed faith.

He kicked and he screamed when she annoyed him, and he was still "training" her by trying to kill her on an hourly basis, but he stayed. He kept pace at her injured crawl, gave her half the food he managed to hunt, even threw rocks at her to wake her up from a screaming nightmare. An interesting kindness, to be sure, but miles ahead of him just slitting her throat.

So yeah, practically perfect in every way. If you ignored his fucking mouth.

"Blah, blah. fucking yak on. I know you need me, which means I know Jashin-same needs me, so stop playing the frigid bitch." The fact that they were now close enough to Konoha to make patrols a realistic threat did nothing to lower his volume. He took great joy in leaving an obvious path, bushwhacking their way with his gigantic scythe and proselytizing all the way.

But even a nonbeliever like Sakura could smell heresy bait past all the bullshit, so she threw one of her completed dung traps (thank you again, Naruto) on the back of his neck. She hoped it dripped all the way down his ugly robe. "Please, tell me exactly what the mighty Jashin-same needs from a mere mortal."

Hidan just laughed, content with any reaction he got from her. He was a needy little thing under all the murder/torture. The less holy she acted the more he seemed to like her, which made about as much sense as a mass-murdering priest in her opinion. She was hoping the teasing put him in a good enough mood to talk about legitimate strategy instead of shouting over her at the top of his lungs.

He had done that for two hours the night before, seemingly just for fun.

But the closer they got to Konoha the more Sakura worried about their plan, or lack thereof. She estimated that Tsuande and the others had reached the village by now but she was banking on the fact that they wouldn’t tip their hand for a few more days. They would want to coordinate with Minato, Itachi, and Rin most likely before attaching Orochimaru and Danzo.

That left Sakura a small window to deal with Kabuto, one she intended to take advantage of. She would see him dead before he had a chance to run away like the coward he was.

And she had a great plan to draw him out of the village, one she was quite proud of. The only problem was it relied on Hidan’s complete and utter cooperation. She knew from old mission briefs and her own research that Hidan's ritual involved sharing injuries between himself and the sacrifice. As long as he got a drop of Kabuto's blood in Hidan's mouth, Sakura had a surefire way of injuring him without having to get too close. As long as Hidan agreed.

Well, time to divert a river with just her hands.

“Have you ever met someone who could heal like you?” She asked nonchalantly, confident he wouldn’t mind the drastic shift in conversation. Hidan had the interesting habit of restarting conversations they never had in the first place, just moving straight past the introduction of the topic to insults about her nonexistent point of view. She couldn’t get him to stop lest she lose her supposed omnipotence, so she learned how to completely improvise a debate platform, all the while dodging his punches to the kidney.

It was enough to make her miss Kakashi.

Hidan groaned a bit and made a big show of counting off his fingers. “Kakuzu was pretty hardy, and he had four hearts. Sasori never got permanently injured either-”

“It’s cause his body was a puppet. One human heart, which was easy enough to crush.” The bravado was entirely to sell her act as a devotee to Jashin-sama, and NOT because she was proud of herself for how the fight went down. It had been a deceitful, bloody tactic. One she had pulled off nearly drained of chakra and without any actual battle plan.

Maybe she was proud of herself. Fuck, was she allowed to be proud of her ability to murder a man, or did that just make her a gruesome offspring of ROOT? Wrong. Focus. Killing in the moment was necessary, and her methods were expedient, relatively painless, and posed no threat to her teammates. She had faced the man who had come to kill her and kicked his ass.

Sakura made her decision to stand and fight - and frankly, she learned the chest punch more from Kakashi/Sasuke than she did from Danzo. She wasn’t allowing herself to brainlessly follow a master or a village any longer, but she also wasn’t allowing herself to do nothing and get killed.

She was making the decision to kill Kabuto, Danzo, and Orochimaru. Some people deserved to die, and Sakura had already proved herself effective at killing much stronger opponents with limited resources. It’s what she told Pinkie - she didn’t need a village to recognize evil when she saw it, and she didn’t need a master to push her to finish the job.

She had no master. Well, besides Jashin-sama, praise be, etc.

Hidan did a spit-take at her words, turning around and spraying water all over her chest. He stopped dead in the road and started poking her right on the sternum, eyes alight with that familiar fervor. “You’re the one who offed him and that blond asshole? Was it good? Was it bloody? Don’t hold out on me, sweetcheeks.”

Sakura gagged slightly and shoved past him. The nickname was horrendous, but she couldn’t exactly complain about his reaction. He didn’t doubt that she killed Sasori, he just wanted to know how so he could have a wet dream about it later. Was she so starved for positive affirmation that she would take it with a side of creepy pervert? No wonder Pinkie fell for Kabuto.

“I didn’t kill Deidara, that was the Copy Nin and Shisui Uchiha. Sasori was easy though - relied too much on his toys like all the boys do, and it left him weak.”

“What were the positions though? Describe it to me: from the front, cowboy, do-”

“If I tell you, will you shut up and listen to me?” She could hear him behind her, hell she could feel his eyes on the back of her neck. To be the object of his focus was a dangerous thing, she knew, considering that spot was usually filled with a death god. Did Jashin truly favor Hidan even with all his vile disrespect, or was Hidan naturally powerful and using the lens of Jashinism to understand it?

Another problem for another day. She just had to bank on the fact that Jashin wasn’t going to smite her anytime soon even if she was leading his most devout follower around by his nose.

She sighed and tried to find a way to describe the fight that would interest Hidan without exciting him too much because she could not handle that right now. “Look, Sasori has this grandmother-”

“I thought he was an orphan?”

“His parents are dead but his grandmother isn’t.”

“Then why didn’t she just take him in?”

“Long story, they’re both kinda assholes. But he loved her, or at least respected her, so I henged into her.” Hidan let out a little noise of disgust at her subterfuge. Least ninja-like shinobi she’d ever worked with for sure.

It was quiet behind her, a breath of utter stillness, before Hidan's hand tried to force its way through her spine to her heart, almost as if he heard her thoughts and took offense. She hopped forward half a step ignoring the twinge of her injured ankle and kept going. “He was surprised enough to let her get close, and then the only problem with using enough strength to burst through the front plate of his puppet.”

“Well at least it was from the front. He scream?”

“He died instantly,” she said loudly, covering the sound of his disappointed groan. No love lost for his terrorist buddies, then, though they were probably just mercenaries in this universe. “But we have more important prey to focus on than a dead boy playing with dolls.”

“The asshole stealing from Jashin-sama?”

“One of them. His name’s Kabuto and he can heal from almost everything, and now he’s learning to reverse death itself. Both of us will be needed to fulfill Jashin-sama’s will and take him apart.”

Hidan let out a howl of excitement and bounded forward, almost childish in his excitement. He jumped up and down and gave a few experimental swings of his weapon. “We should blow him up - no, we should deglove him like a fucking cat, and then watch as he fixes himself so we can do it again. Jashin-sama better not have given us a time limit.”

Sakura couldn’t help but laugh a little. Guess she found the point where devotion ran out and bloodlust took the reins. As long as he didn’t run too wild, or else she might have to keep him on a child leash until they finished the job. “Jashin-sama doesn’t need you to worry about the logistics of it all.”

“All that thinking shit if for you sweetcheeks, I’ll just worship how I know best.”

“The biggest problem right now is that an entire village of shinobi stand between us and our sacrifice, so what we need to do is draw him out. I think chopping your head off should work.”

---

Chopping his head off did work, thank you very much. All it did was a video posted to Ninstagram of Hidan getting decapitated and walking it off for Kabuto’s interest to be piqued. They were in a small fishing hamlet a few hour’s trip from the village walls and Sakura made sure to post the video on some of the more disgusting forums she remembered Kabuto sharing with Pinkie.

The evening after the video went live she felt him hovering outside the boathouse she and Hidan had planned their ambush in. The wait had been long and aggravating, Hidan complaining the whole time about his role as bait and her not revealing the whole plan. The closer they got to the sunset the more excitable and vicious he got, vacillating between outright rage and a sick sense of anticipation.

Sakura had done her best to take the whole thing in stride, rationing out energy to lay various traps around the small room and to manipulate the dock to suit her needs. She had also done her best to scare away any nearby residents, wary of them getting caught up in Hidan’s sacrifice or Kabuto’s calculations.

But all the stalling and planning did little to prepare her for when Kabuto actually arrived. The evening quieted down, the sky took on a reddish tint, and in the back of her head Sakura heard a small voice rejoicing.

He was here.

Seconds after she felt him at the edge of her sensing range he was in the doorway of the boathouse, familiar glasses flashing in the moonlight. He took in the cramped space at a glance: Hidan, standing on a rickety row boat and grinning profusely, and Sakura standing next to him at the end of a leaning dock. There was little else in the room to speak of besides the rows and rows of fire charms on the walls. Insurance, she mouthed.

“Sakura, are you trying to make me jealous by bringing another man to our second date, or is this some kind of gift? If so, you know me well.” He looked utterly calm facing the two of them, smile perfectly fixed and hands elegantly moving through the air. She hated it, but a part of her knew that his hands always moved when he talked, that he wasn’t a fan of swimming or waterwalking for a reason he never disclosed.

Hidan grunted and shifted a bit, disgruntled at the lack of screaming terror he had come to expect in his victims. “You weren’t gonna mention the two of you are ex’s?”

Sakura ignored him for now. “The girl you know died weeks ago in her apartment bathroom. All that remains is a disciple of Jashin-sama.”

That got a reaction out of Kabuto, a near imperceptible flash of surprise that put him on the back foot. The second was all Hidan needed to act, hooking Kabuto round the waist with his scythe like he was a poor performer on stage and yanking him onto the dock.

Sakura was pretty goddamn proud that Hidan had waited to act until she dropped the codeword, though the warm fuzzy feeling in her stomach actually came from the chakra scalpels Kabuto launched at her as he was rushed forward, his eyes winking at her even as wounds opened up around his midsection.

She took the blow like a true devotee, latching on to his chain and using it to hold Kabuto in place as Hidan leapt forward to catch a single drop of blood in his mouth. She sensed a sudden rush and release of tension, a tight cord binding itself between the two near-immortals she was caught between, and under the waves of violence she caught Hidan’s voice rising in prayer, as close and quiet as a confessional.

She ignored it and triggered the line of paper traps that wound up Hidan’s legs, corners splitting and lacerating the skin in an instant. Both he and Kabuto collapsed where they were and Sakura took the opportunity to place herself and Hidan in the boat before separating from the dock by a few meters.

Hidan was fully in his element, clawing away at his own skin and singing in a language that cut the air itself. Kabuto, left on the dock, began to stand up despite the constant renewing injuries, hooking onto the wounds on Sakura’s stomach and launching more chakra scalpels to reel the boat back in.

Sakura didn’t give him the opportunity. With a desperate lunge across Hidan’s prone body, tearing the skin on her stomach in a way she didn’t want to imagine, she slapped her hand against the back of his neck and severed his spinal cord. In the next instant the explosive tags she had placed on the legs of the dock went off and the entire thing, Kabuto and all, fell in the water.

Hidan yelled, an inarticulate sound of betrayal and rage that made Sakura nearly fall off the boat. In the corner of her eye she saw Kabuto start to twitch underwater, eyes flickering rapidly as he worked to repair the damage.

Hidan tried to bend his neck and bite at her hand to little effect. “I can’t fucking feel anything! This doesn’t fucking count! He isn’t suffering for Jashin-sama!”

Sakura, who had never had someone yell at her for not hurting them enough, couldn't even take a moment to revel in the irony. Kabuto had managed to keep control of chakra scalpels past the paralysis and yanked, flipping the dingy and sending her and Hidan underwater.

The scythe came with them, floating past Hidan’s still unresponsive fingers straight into Sakura’s hands, milliseconds before she was reeled in like a fish to Kabuto’s side. His fingers were taut with pressure and anticipation, but he wasn't removed enough to dodge Sakura flipping the scythe and using it to impale him on the sunken boards of the dock. Straight through the chest, between the fourth and fifth. She saw his hands twitch once more and realized with a sinking heart that he still had his hooks in her stomach, but before he could take action she saw the flesh of his right wrist rend and tear off, creating a swirling vortex of meat and carnage.

Jashin be damned, Hidan was trying to deglove the man with his own teeth.

Kabuto yelled, garbled and cut off by the sudden mangling of his left arm. Hidan had recovered from the spinal cord injury just enough to twitch his limbs near his mouth, but if Sakura waited much longer he would make a full production of it.

And while she did want to see Kabuto wriggle in pain just a little bit, she wasn’t ready to fully turn to Jashin’s hedonistic sadism. Sakura was an effective killer, and that meant she got the job done before she drowned in some stranger’s boathouse.

Underneath her, Kabuto used his legs for leverage to raise his body higher on the scythe, for what end Sakura did not want to know. She took a page from his book and used chakra scalpels to hook Hidan’s shoulder, causing him to shudder in what she hoped wasn’t pleasure. She pulled, allowing herself to imagine for one second that this was a regular mission and she could be as strong as she would like, while snapping the handle of Hidan’s scythe with her foot. He came rushing forward and met the first blade with his neck.

His head went bounding past, bubbles and explicatives rushing out his mouth, while his torso got caught up on the second and third blades of the ridiculous weapon. Underneath her, Kabuto’s body jerked and then fell completely still, head gently floating off.

She grabbed it with one hand, grabbed Hidan’s head with the other, and kicked her way to the surface, trailing blood all the while.

One down, two to go.

Chapter Text

Konoha is Konoha is Konoha. Sakura has no more to say about her home that she has not already confessed to the empty space in her head where Inner used to be. What was her home, ultimately, but the graveyard she had been raised in?

So melodramatic. Ah, she understands her version of Sasuke so much more now, even if the similarities leave a bitter taste under her tongue. But wasn’t she also on a hopeless quest for vengeance, seeking what was already lost to her and abandoning her village in the process?

Well, if she was doomed to repeat the mistakes of a cursed twelve-year old boy, at least she had company.

She pulled out Hidan’s head for a distraction, barely noting how he bit at her fingers.

“Bitch! Liar! False prophet!” He spat, eyes wild. She rotated a bit till she was holding him by the hair in front of her face and blew him a little kiss. He tried dodging it best as he could considering he had no neck muscles, and then yelled when he couldn’t. “You ruined my ritual! You disgrace Jashin-sama!”

“What you want out of a ritual sacrifice and what Jashin-sama wants doesn’t always align, Hidan, and you should be grateful I’m not taking offense to your obvious doubt.” This, this was nice. Nothing in her mind but the next step in front of her and the next blow in their verbal spar. Sakura was walking back home - and her feet were dragging considering the still-healing wound in her side - and she wasn’t thinking about it at all.

Kabuto was dead. His head, torso, and limbs were all in separate little scrolls she had packed up next to the scrolls which contained Hidan’s body. Kabuto, as vile as he had been, was an obsessively smart planner: on his body were a multitude of storage scrolls ideal for carrying bodies, or body parts, long distance with minimal damage and decay. He had set them up all polite for her as well, so she only needed a small amount of chakra to activate the already thorough seal work in place.

It was almost enough to make her smile.

The forward team (her team that LEFT HER not thinking about it) hadn’t struck yet if Orochimaru was content to let Kabuto leave the village. Sakura might have accelerated their timetable, however. She would never match Kabuto’s pace back to Konoha, and as the days went on his boss would get more and more paranoid.

But still, Sakura felt confident she made the right decision in drawing Kabuto away from the village: he was a vicious, slimy little thing that never knew when to stay down. He was never the most powerful on the field, but goddam was he annoying when he wanted to be.

That healing factor of his was a killer, and she had a terrible premonition that if cornered he would play dead only to strike from behind when Tsunade or her team turned their back. It’s a strategy Sakura herself used one or two times to devastating effect. Possum 1, ninja world 0.

But Sakura could be twice as nasty as Kabuto when needed, so it was her responsibility to do so. She was just taking care of the problems she created when she influenced (hurt, ruined, KILLED) her other self.

“Where the fuck did you go? Hello!” A glob on spit landed on her right cheek.

Right - no more thinking. Just talk to your pet cultist and no matter what, never stop walking forward. “Kabuto’s masters won’t go down as easily as he did - haven’t you ever tried planning ahead for a fight?”

“Gahhh, now you’re acting as bitchy as Kakuzu. ‘Try to use your head, Hidan, stop being awesome, Hidan!’” His acting chops left a lot to be desired, but it was enough to distract her.

She tied him to her belt by the hair so she had her hands free to eat. More ration bars, joy. She did another internal systems check with her chakra, with all signs pointing to bad. The scapels hadn’t done much external damage, Kabuto was too precise for that, but his aim had been to debilitate her and he had done a cracking job. Each step hurt even discounting the damage to her ankle, and she would be useless in hand-to-hand.

On top of that, all her meager chakra was split between keeping her stable and creating a small store on her forehead. Too little too late at this point, but she had always felt more level in combat with that small pressure above her eyes.

But she still had Hidan and his body, and she was reasonably sure that he would go for the bigger target in the fight instead of back at her. Hopefully. Probably.

Another bite of the ration bar. Another step in front of her. “Be happy. The next guys we need to kill will be twice the hassle. Might even get to see a Tailed Beast in action.”

Hidan let out a considering whistle. “Promise?”

“Well, you’ll see his mom at the very least,” she teased with her mouth full, finishing off the rest of her meager lunch. She had always wondered what Kushina and Minato would have been like in battle, discounting the one time she saw them as zombies, and she hoped it was as glorious and destructive as her Kakashi and remembered it as.

Nothing but the best for Danzo. Speaking of, how many Sharinigan did Danzo have this time around? If her team had taken her with them, if they had trusted her to gather information, she could hav-

No.

Another step.

“Fucking again, girl, where are you going?”

“Careful, keep yelling and I’ll seal you awa-” she cut off abruptly, picking up Hidan’s head again. “Actually, where do you go when I seal you away? Are you conscious - can you sense your other limbs in the separate scrolls? Does it all lead to one bigger pocket dimension…” she kept muttering to herself, fingers twitching with excitement.

Hidan was many things: insane, grotesque, a hazard to all life on the planet - but he was also one of the only beings that could be sealed away and come back with no lasting damage. The opportunity to discover more was even enough to distract her from her destination.

Her companion yawned in boredom and smacked his lips. “I dunno, it’s fucking white. I guess I feel my limbs but I can’t make ‘em do anything.”

“What’s it like going in, or coming back out again?”

“Fucking painful, is what it is. Don’t remember much either - I get shoved it, my head shrinks, I see a bunch of white, and then I wake up and come back out when you wanna fucking bother me. I can’t even feel Jashin-sama’s loving pain when I’m in there.”

“Well, if you were completely separate from Jashin-sama you wouldn’t stay alive in there - sealing living matter tends to make it less living. So his blessing must follow you through.” Sakura hummed a bit, dropping Hidan’s head and pulling out a notepad. With a pink marker she had carried with her all this way she made a couple of notes:

- She traveled across worlds, but didn’t remember much of the journey
- The Tailed Beasts sense her energy, and are also known for talking to their hosts on what Naruto called “a glowy headspace” separate from the real world
- Hidan’s immortality and connection to Jashin-sama kept him alive even when sealed away to a “white” pocket space

It felt good to write it down, even if she had no fucking clue what it all meant. It also served as an unwelcome reminder as to how much Sakura didn’t understand the God she was playing with - but she wanted to. Purely for intellectual reasons, of course.

She couldn’t help but think that if Jashin’s blessing followed Hidan into a sealing scroll, would his ritual do the same?

A sudden displacement of air above her and Hidan’s yell were the only warning she had of someone above her in the treetops.

Sakura dropped to the ground, nearly crushing Hidan’s head beneath her hip, just in time to avoid whatever idiot bandit that wanted a piece of her. A quick spin (which definitely tore the stitches in her side) allowed her to get a good luck at her combatant as he dropped to the forest floor: Itachi.

Not a bandit, just her fourth least-favorite Uchiha. She would have preferred the former.

Okay, Sakura, assess the situation: you’re heavily injured, carrying one and a half dead bodies (one of which is still spitting insults), and you’re potentially labeled a traitor to Konoha. There’s no way to outrun Itachi, to fight him, or to fool him.

For one brief moment, seduction crossed her mind, but it would be difficult to set the mood with Hidan’s head around her waist. All that’s left to her is lying through her teeth and hoping for the best - the shinobi way.

“Uchiha-san, you scared me,” she gasped, arranging herself on the ground to both showcase her injuries and hide the decapitated head slightly out of view. She shoved a quick handful of dirt in Hidan’s mouth, knowing that if she tried to use her hand he would just bite it off.

Itachi stared at her impassively, eyes black and placid as a moonlit lake. Most people were disconcerted by the gaze of an Uchiha, but right now it was the best Sakura could hope for. If he had his Sharinigan out, well, she would probably already be dead.

The path was silent for a few seconds, Itachi more than content to wait her out. She could hear the steady grinding of Hidan’s molars, chewing and chewing and chewing some more, which meant Itachi definitely heard it.

How should she approach this? She hadn’t gleaned much from their conversations back in the village all those weeks ago. She did know, however, that in any world took a very proactive, very lethal approach to protecting his brother, which meant he wasn’t considering her a threat yet.

She tried to appear more dainty, a feat ruined by Hidan finally spitting out the last of his dirt. “Finally, a strong opponent - get the fuck up girl, Jashin-sama is calling.”

Itachi raised a meticulously groomed eyebrow. Sakura grabbed a large rock and super daintily knocked Hidan unconscious with it.

“So, Itachi-san, how much did Kakashi and Tsunade reveal to you about my real mission?” With her other hand, Sakura grabbed some trail mix to shove in her mouth, to show off just how cool and unconcerned she was. A few soldier pills subtly mixed in for good measure and she was ready to rock.

(Rock, in this instance, meaning she could loosely patch up that hole in her abdomen in case she needed to make a quick escape, with just enough chakra to release Hidan for a chaotic diversion. Unlikely to succeed, but Sakura always felt anxious without an impossible plan rattling around her head.)

“My brother explained your circumstances to me, but neglected to mention why you would abandon your medical escort in order to convert to Jashinism and travel with the same mercenary who was hunting Tsunade-san.” His voice was dry, but she thought she could detect a curious lilt to it. Not that she could blame him - any other shinobi would have burst out laughing when they saw the infamous Hidan’s head being carted around by a half-dead (or twice dead?) girl. “My cousin was quite distressed at seeing the video with you two.”

Sakura couldn’t stop herself from wincing with guilt. Shisui didn’t deserve to worry about her like that, and he definitely would have known she was luring Kabuto to her location. Should she show Itachi Kabuto’s head now? No, best to hold on to it. Fuck, she couldn’t think when he was just staring at her!

Hidan was going to wake up any minute now, so with slow movements she took out her scrolls and sealed him away. No distractions when talking with an opponent of Itachi’s caliber.

“I’m impressed you found me so quickly. Here to escort me back to the village?”

“You already have an escort, Haruno-san.” His face gave the impression of a wink without moving at all, fucking Uchihas, and from the distance Sakura heard a smug bark. Kakashi’s ninken - of course he had left them behind to spy on her. Considering she couldn’t even sense when a Jonin was about to drop on her head she wasn’t surprised she hadn’t noticed the summons.

Her charming smile twitched again, so she shoved another handful of trail mix in her mouth so she could think. If Itachi had been updated then he knew she had a reason to kill Kabuto, but that didn’t mean he had to like how she went about it. She hadn’t notified anyone, hadn’t asked for permission, and hadn’t really planned ahead on how Orochimaru or Danzo would react.

Fuck. Put like that, no wonder Kakashi thought she needed a babysitter.

But it didn’t matter if Kakashi, or Itachi, or even Tsunade doubted her. People always doubted Sakura, and she did her best work when they glanced right over her. Kabuto was dead, his body and all the evidence it contained was in her possession, and Hidan had turned from a hunter into a potential ally (also safely in her possession). It was a good day’s work for any jonin, especially ones who could barely stand up without keeling over.

She mentally did a fist-pump. Go Sakura! (and Hidan)

“Is there a reason you’re sparkling, Haruno-san?” Itachi asked, still standing completely still where he had first landed. Lucky for her, the amusement was back in his voice, probably due to the fact that she had been silently giving herself a pep-talk for the past 45 seconds.

Her old team was used to that kind of thing, and even this team had gotten used to her disappearing in her melancholy. It was nice to sparkle again, to feel excited, even if it was about a premeditated murder she had committed against instruction. “Apologies, Itachi-san, it seems I simply have an excess of energy.”

“Taking more than two soldier pills within a six-hour period can have that effect.” It almost sounded like he was chiding her, and she half-expected to see him waggle a finger in her direction. “Was this excess of energy also the reason why you decapitated Hidan and killed Kabuto?”

Sakura was gearing herself up to say something incredibly clever that would no doubt turn Itachi to her side entirely when two alarming things happened at once: Kakashi’s ninken gave a howl of pain in the distance and Itachi turned, red eyes already spinning.

She quickly got up, swallowing another soldier pill and readying herself to pull out Hidan’s ridiculous scythe. Even as exhausted as she was, Sakura could funnel enough chakra in her arms to wield the monstrosity, and traveling with Hidan for the past week or so had been enough to give her the general idea of how to wield it.

Itachi gestured for her to stay behind him as Bisuke, Kakashi’s best tracker dog, bounded out of the woods onto the path. He quickly situated himself in front of Sakura, growling softly as a tall, shadowed figure followed him out of the woods.

“Fucking Kakuzu, I knew it,” she muttered, and Itachi tilted his head to acknowledge her words. With his tall stature, glowing green eyes, and ridiculous black cloak, the mercenary certainly made for an imposing figure, but even at a distance she could tell the man was hardly concerned with finding an Uchiha blocking his path.

Itachi didn’t waste time feigning nonchalance, positioning Sakura fully behind him and pulling free his weapons. “Head back to Konoha with the ninken, Haruno-san, and I will follow behind.”

Kakuzu, now about twenty feet away, snorted at Itachi’s confidence. He was probably visualizing all the dollar signs hanging over Itachi’s head - the eyes of an Uchiha of Itachi’s caliber would be enough to buy the missing-nin a small nation if he were so inclined.

Sakura ignored both of them and started pulling out the scrolls containing Hidan, unlocking them and raining body parts down on the forest floor with meaty thuds. “If we kill Kakuzu with Hidan, he’ll help us in Konoha with our own problems.”

“I never fucking promis-” Hidan’s head cut off with a dog-like squeal as she smashed it onto his neck. Bisuke, Itachi, and Kakuzu all stopped in the middle of their staring contests to give her an incredulous stare (though in Itachi's case it was more of a minute head twitch).

Kakuzu started laughing in the distance, monologuing about retrieving Hidan and collecting a bounty on all their heads, but Sakura wasn’t listening all that hard. Reconstructing Hidan was a novel experience to her as a medic - reattaching all his parts was more about leaving room for his body to heal itself rather than getting involved herself.

He was still spitting mad, of course, but Sakura could tell from the way his eyes wandered between Itachi and his old partner that he was more entranced by the thought of a strong opponent than he was concerned about her “betrayal.”

He was an annoying, bloodthirsty cultist, but Sakura was starting to love the simplicity of his thought process. “Uchiha-san, Hidan was an asset when dealing with Kabuto, and he has the most information of anyone on how to deal with Kakuzu.” Hidan, currently getting his legs reattached to his torso, gave a grunt of acknowledgement.

Itachi did not look reassured, especially with Kakuzu still talking in the background about something or the other, and he performed a quick fire jutsu to give them some cover. It was a testament to his insane ability that Sakura could feel the heat from where she was solving her human jigsaw puzzle but the forest itself didn’t catch on fire.

“Kakashi won’t like it,” Bisuke muttered between them, giving a patronizing sniff to one of Hidan’s hands. Itachi hummed in response, still keeping a watchful eye on their enemy, but Sakura wasn’t exactly waiting for permission.

Kakuzu wasn’t someone she was particularly focused on, but leaving him behind only invited further trouble later on. Besides, feeding Hidan a steady diet of ultra-powerful shinobi was still the only way she knew how to keep him around and nominally on her side. It only took about thirty seconds total to reassemble her pet project, and thirty seconds after that he had adjusted enough to stand up on his own.

Their little motley crew of four stood in tense silence for a few seconds, wary of Hidan as he did a few warm-up stretches, but Itachi and Bisuke were worried for nothing. After checking that all four limbs were functional, Hidan immediately launched himself through the flames to tackle Kakuzu, filling the forest with the smell of burning meat and the sound of tearing flesh. He laughed all the way.

Bisuke gave a nervous bark and Sakura unconsciously gave him a scratch behind his left ear, which she knew was his favorite spot. Itachi sighed - an honest-to-kami break in his perfect composure - and turned to face Sakura head-on with his eyes still spinning.

“I sense you make a habit of disobeying orders, Haruno-san.”

Sakura smirked and finally pulled out Hidan’s scythe, which stood almost twice as tall as her. “I have my own mission, Uchiha-san. Are you here to stop me or help me?”

Itachi sighed (again!) before shifting to what she recognized as a two-person ANBU formation, focused on quick attacks and little defense. “You’ve given my cousin and my brother gray hairs, Haruno-san. Now I understand how.”

Hidan’s body was abruptly thrown back through the wall of flames, Kakuzu following behind and using it as a shield. Hidan’s head was split in two from the ears to the chin, and what was left of his mouth was still trying to shout verbal abuse.

“He has more than one heart, Uchiha-san, and he’s skilled in both taijutsu and ninjutsu,” Sakura murmured, giving a few experimental swings of the scythe and digging deep grooves into the dirt beneath. “He’s reportedly immortal, though I don’t have a good grasp on the mechanism he uses to revive.”

Kakuzu, still standing on the back of Hidan’s smoking wreckage, laughed loudly. “Children like you could never understand what it takes to be a mercenary shinobi, but your ignorance will not save you now.”

He disappeared from view, flashing in and out of the treetops in an attempt to confuse them, but Itachi’s eyes kept careful track of where he was. Sakura left him to it and quickly picked Hidan off the ground, setting him on his feet and healing his mouth enough to talk.

“Praise Jashin-sama, go kill him!” She patted his shoulder and he tried to bite her hand off for the second time that day, but after a half-hearted attempt he threw himself back into the fray, tackling Kakuzu, who a second ago had been locked into a fierce hand-to-hand battle with Itachi.

The Uchiha leaned out of the way without a second to spare, staying upright as his opponents sprawled on the forest floor, Hidan madly swinging at Kakuzu.

Bisuke, who had climbed up Sakura’s back in the chaos and was now acting like an incredibly heavy housecat, snuffed in her ear. “Shouldn’t we be giving the madman fighting for us his weapon?”

“His body is a fine enough weapon for now, but the same can’t be said for me,” Sakura replied, ghosting off the main path and crouching in some foliage. Her sneaky ninja skills were only slightly hampered by the giant, impractical weapon in her hands. Itachi waved her away with a minute twitch head and jumped back into the fray himself, dousing both mercenaries with searing hot flames.

She had a few seconds to think of a plan, and it was a good one too: kill Kakuzu. The overall details were still coming together, and the strange tentacles crawling out of Kakuzu’s back complicated things a tad, but overall it was still solid.

Her resources were as follows: a scythe, a cultist, a dog, and an Uchiha. Given enough time Kakuzu would die eventually, but time was the one thing she didn’t have.

She was racing against the rest of Akatsuki and Kabuto’s theoretical pace, trying to get back to Konoha before Orochimaru realized his top operative was dead. On top of that, the longer Itachi kept his eyes open the weaker he would get, and on top of THAT Hidan was bound to start swinging at everyone involved when left to his own devices long enough.

So Kakuzu had to die - and stay dead - relatively quickly. Hidan and Itachi could potentially get it done on their own, but as unlikely allies they were hindering each other as much as they were helping. And given what happened in the past few days, neither of them would be inclined to take her advice in battle on how to work together.

Case in point: Itachi had just lit Hidan on fire, again, and Hidan responded by trying to bear-hug to Uchiha, turning his back on the flaming, writhing mass of Kakuzu. Tentacles sprung after him, thrusting through his back and bursting from his chest, latching onto Itachi’s neck and face.

The Uchiha substituted himself with a mud clone before collapsing the whole mess into the ground - one of Kakashi’s moves, if Sakura wasn’t mistaken - trapping Hidan and Kakuzu’s extra limbs under the dirt.

She knew a cue when she saw one. With a burst of chakra-fueled speed she leapt out of the foliage, swinging wildly at Kakuzu’s collapsed form. In a move she should have expected given his partnership with Hidan, he neatly caught the blade with his own teeth and wrenched it out of her hands.

She screamed “Lightning” as she rolled away with the momentum, and not seconds later she felt the familiar crackle in the air as Itachi lit up the metal scythe and the man hanging onto it, jaws locked with the current running through his veins.

Well, that should have taken care of at least one of his hearts. She scrambled upright again in time to see….something. The burnt husk of Kakuzu shifted and shimmied around, a mass on his back disappearing into his chest, and as he spat out the scythe a rotten red lump came with it.

She thought she could hear Bisuke dry-heaving in the bushes.

“Hidan, it’s time to start praying!” She screamed, punching downward and disrupting the Earth around Kakuzu as he stumbled to his feet. Hidan was already moving, of course, teeth bared and grin feral, paying no mind to the burning flesh still falling from his bones. He collided with Kakuzu in a magnificent scrum, air around them growing heavy with ritual, and when Kakuzu tried to scramble away he was met with Itachi’s blade.

The two stumbled into the middle of the path, right where Sakura had drawn Jashin-sama’s ritual symbol less than five minutes ago.

Frenzied laughter joined the chorus of violence being conducted, Hidan wantonly ramming himself into every sharp edge he could find. Kakuzu’s back exploded outward, four masks whirling and grinning, but Bisuke had been kind enough to fetch Hidan’s scythe back for Sakura.

She swung low - Kakuzu dodged, and he was forced to pull Hidan with him if he didn’t want his tendons to be slashed. His partner was not a very polite passenger, however, and he took the opportunity to brute force his hand through Kakuzu’s chest, which resulted in a bloody mess and broken fingers.

Itachi grabbed Sakura by the back of her shirt and pulled her clear as he unleashed a goddamn flaming tornado, picking up the two mercenaries and slamming them into each other within the tight circle. Would both of them standing in the same place annoy Jashin-sama or impress him? Hidan was never clear on the semantics of the whole thing given his loosey-goosey approach to faith in general.

“Itachi,” she whispered, formality forgotten as she watched him control an S-class fire jutsu in the middle of Konoha’s outer woods, “I have a stupid plan.”

“I don’t doubt it,” he muttered in return, but she interpreted the slight tilt of his head to her as a willingness to listen.

“How easily do you think you could dismember Hidan?”

Bisuke, who had toddled up to stand behind her and marvel at the carnage, perked up and seconds later came back with all the scrolls that she had taken Hidan out of earlier. She grinned and gave him another scratch behind the ear.

Itachi let go of the jutsu, dropping the entangled ball of Kakuzu and Hidan straight down to the floor. Everytime Kakuzu tried to crawl away from his partner he was pulled back in, and attempts to drag Itachi or Sakura inward were met with scythe and sword. He let out a howl of rage, and the masks sprouting from his back starting unleashing jets of elemental damage.

A gust of wind shot straight between the two of them, and only a minute shove from Itachi saved Sakura from losing her right arm. As it was, a deep cut opened on her face and shoulder, and she noted with regret that Kakuzu had managed to give her an asymmetrical bob cut. Somewhere, Ino was screaming.

Bisuke managed to dodge the wind blast only to park himself in the middle of a scalding jet stream, yelping in pain as the fur burned off his back. Sakura, knowing she would feel bad about it later, used the pole-end of the scythe to whack the dog into the surrounding woods and out of danger.

Itachi had managed to create four or five clones, all with swords capable of hacking at the lines that connected the masks to Kakuzu, but from studying Sasuke obsessively in her childhood Sakura knew that the Uchiha was quickly becoming exhausted.

Hidan was in his own little heaven - or Hell, depending on what he preferred - hacking away at himself and Kakuzu. He had already gotten a start on Sakura’s plan, having ripped off his own right foot. He was attempting to shove it into Kakuzu’s mouth but was mostly mashing it into his opponent’s face with finesse. Truly, their fight was an example to shinobi everywhere.

Sakura took a move from Kabuto’s book and sent out a chain of chakra scalpels, pulling at the flesh of Kakuzu’s thighs and sending him to his knees. Hidan gave out an unsettling sigh at the sensation which almost made Sakura wish it was just a regular cry of pain.

With Kakuzu down, Itachi, the real one, stole his own wind jutsu and blasted him from the tree tops, severing both of the mercenaries' right arms. Sakura darted in, pulling herself forward with the chain, and slipped underneath the fray to slap Hidan’s arm in a sealing scroll. She got a knee to the abdomen and what felt like all of her left ear sheared off, but it was worth it to see what happened to Kakuzu’s arm.

There was an unsettling twist to the air, a brief burst of static and a small vacuum that sucked all the wind, before the limb twisted into itself and disappeared with a bloody sploosh.

The clearing was silent for a moment as they all absorbed what happened, broken by Hidan’s hysterical laughter. “That felt fucking amazing!” He started screaming his prayers as he began to rip off his feet and legs.

Kakuzu, now free of his grapple, attempted to grab Sakura’s head and rip it off single-handedly. Bisuke jumped between them, as fast as his master, and managed to bite off a few fingers before receiving a quick punch to the stomach, visibly distorting the poor summon’s internal organs.

Sakura was stuck, fingers grasped uselessly on a scroll and Kakashi’s beloved dog, unable to do anything but stare into Kakuzu’s glowing eyes and brace herself. Nothing but malice stared back at her, and even as his left leg fell out from underneath him -

Sakura blinked and found herself perched on the treetops. Below, right where she had been crouched, was Itachi, Mangekyou Sharingan spinning. Kakuzu abruptly froze where he was, completely still as more and more flesh was separated from the bone.

Hidan, recognizing his victim was no longer conscious of the pain, gave an inarticulate cry of rage. Itachi decapitated him with barely a glance sideward and Kakuzu’s head followed suit.

Sakura dropped (landing gracefully on her stomach like a real ninja) before sprinting back to the ritual circle. She didn’t know if Kakuzu could regenerate, and she didn’t want to hear Hidan bitch again, so she sealed his head first.

The empty gap in space and time that swallowed Kakuzu’s head was no less unsettling the second time around.

But he was dead. Really and truly dead. The masks flying around fell to the forest floor, and she and her remaining companions all collapsed where they were. Itachi’s eyes closed, blood dripping down his face, and let out one last sigh.

“Haruno-san, you truly are a mystery.”

“You don’t need to flatter me - I’ll heal you anyway.” She gasped, crawling over to where her companions lay. Itachi let out a chuckle, seemingly against his own violation, and tried to stand on faltering legs. Sakura pulled him back down easily enough, resting his head on her lap for easier access to his eyes. Ino would be screaming at that, too, most likely.

Well, so much for storing chakra. Everything she had she used on Itachi and Bisuke, blood from her shorn ear steadily dripping down onto her patients. Oops.

Just before she fell unconscious, Itachi’s eyes opened, back to the comforting black she had loved as a child. He frowned in consternation at her and her glowing green hands, but approval was the last thing on her mind.

She managed to choke out a quick “Seal Hidan’s body,” before the whole world turned black and she fell face first on who was now her second favorite Uchiha.

Chapter Text

Sakura must have exhausted herself at the hospital last night, her chakra stores practically screaming at her with their emptiness. Like she didn’t work her best with the least. She was at the point where her chakra could still be pushed to mend a broken bone even knowing it would be a mistake, so she wasn’t going to panic. Wasn’t the first time, wouldn’t be the last time, and the external chakra she could sense monitoring her system meant Tsunade was keeping an eye on her - the lack of actual healing was most likely another pointed message about how Sakura shouldn’t exhaust herself nightly for the hospital.

By Jashin-sama, though, she was fumbling around with it, foreign chakra sluggishly crawling up and down her veins, like it was getting lost on familiar roads Tsunade should know by heart. She was a stranger knocking on the walls inside of her, clumsier than Sakura could remember, clumsier than she should be-

- but Tsunade was dead, Shizune was dead, Sakura was dead and gone and no one was here to heal her when she was sleeping and if someone was here when she was sleeping she needed to WAKE UP AND FIGHT

and Sakura’s eyes flew open, body only still thanks to the steady hands on her shoulder. Above her were the trees of her favorite purgatory: the fucking woods. An endless wash of green leaves and blue sky, only interrupted by the glowing red eyes staring intently into her own.

Sakura opened her mouth to say something funny - probably along the lines of “I never thought I would wake up to an Uchiha like this,” or something similarly droll to show just how cool under pressure she was - but what came out instead was a wracking cough and an unintelligible “Guhaawah?”

Itachi seemed to understand her at the very least, using gentle hands to lift her up and settle her mostly upright. From this position, she could tell they were in a small campsite not too far from the battle; she could still smell the burning flesh of the two Akatsuki. Missing from the campsite was Bisuke, which worried her, and Hidan, which terrified her more than she wanted to admit.

She tried again: “Wheeeeeeeeeeech?”

Fuck.

Itachi huffed a breath - maybe a laugh - and helped steady her when she started to tilt again. “Bisuke is on his way to pick up reinforcements now. He’s quite angry at the moment, given that he can walk and you cannot, Haruno-san. Hidan’s body is sealed in separate scrolls, and I was not able to find much left of Kakuzu’s body.”

Oh, she loved a man who knew how to get to the point.

He shoved another ration bar at her which she swallowed in quick and efficient bites - even if he had to hold her own hand up just so she could feed herself. She didn’t find it humiliating, having helped so many of her patients before, but it was disconcerting to have Itachi of all people be so gentle. Even now having fought beside him it was hard not seeing her fellow Konoha nin in double vision - at one moment in the same leaf headband she had trusted in two lifetimes, at the next moment in the same cursed black cape she’d always been afraid of.

Actually - “Did you find Kakuzu’s Akatsuki cloak?” She asked through a mouth of dry granola. Itachi used his other hand to lift up his jacket and she saw a burnt edge of fabric, red clouds vibrant as blood, hanging from his belt. She finished her snack in one bite so big she had to chew with her mouth open (a mature trick she picked up training with Naruto) and gave him a thumbs up.

So, that was now four members of Akatsuki neutralized, as well as Kabuto. She gave herself a small round of applause before collapsing on the dirt again. Itachi had laid out his own overcoat to act as her pillow, and she used all the force of will she had remaining to not think about resting her head on the Uchiha fan. “When did Bisuke head out?”

“Forty-five minutes ago, approximately five minutes after you healed us and fell unconscious. I didn’t imagine you would wake up before reinforcements arrived - I could sense your healing chakra moving through your body even after you had passed out from chakra exhaustion.”

His tone wasn’t accusatory but Sakura knew his interrogation had begun. Hell, Sakura was impressed at his restraint, because from the second he had encountered her on the road she had been acting the opposite of whatever Sakura he knew in Konoha. Even if he did know the truth of her circumstances, any nin walking around with the severed, talking head of a Jashinist priest was suspect. And if that nin could use the same healing techniques of Tsunade after only meeting her weeks before - dangerous.

By Jashin, it felt nice to be dangerous.

Even so, she didn’t feel like explaining herself, not when she knew she would have to do it all over again when the calvary came riding in. All she had done since coming to life was answer questions and kill assholes - Hidan was fun to travel with because half the time he didn’t give a shit about what she had to say.

Still, without Hidan trying to kill her every morning as motivation to get out of her bedroll, she realized what a rare pleasure it was to be horizontal and not moving, and that she hadn’t been this relaxed since she had fallen unconscious in Eda. Fuck it, if she was asleep then Itachi wouldn’t be able to bother her with his piercing gaze and patient hands.

Her instinctive refusal to sleep near someone she didn’t trust reared its head, but Itachi had already proven trustworthy enough to watch her sleep for forty-five minutes. Choosing to be afraid of him now did nothing for her - and realistically, with her injuries, fighting Itachi awake would be as effective as fighting him asleep.

He gave her a pillow. It was his fault if she felt comfy.

“Itachi,” she mumbled, halfway to drowsing already and interrupting what was probably a very important question, “I’ll tell you later. Don’t let Hidan try to kill me too early tomorrow morning.”

Then she was off, asleep before he had the chance to complain.

------

Sakura woke up surrounded by all the people she had let down and die.

Oh, and Shisui. And some ninken. That was nice.

There were at least eight and a half pairs of eyes focused on her face, too many to focus on at once, but there was only one thing on her mind. She looked up, straight to the sky, and saw a blessed roof over her head. Shannaro - she had made it to civilization.

Then she looked to her left out the window and saw the towering oaks of Nara forest, wherein she promptly vomited off the side of the bed and onto Kakashi’s shoes. Which were much closer than she would like - she wasn’t even on a real bed, just a medical cot everyone was standing around.

Her teacher, or her friend, or her attempted-murderer did some weird face contortions behind his mask, a subtle but all too-human response. “Glad to see you’re awake, Sakura-chan.” The way his eyes crinkled meant it was impossible to tell if he was being sarcastic or not, so Sakura just assumed he was. Standing around watching other people sleep was Kakashi’s ideal form of socialization.

“Itachi?” She croaked out, instinctively flinching when Tsunade came up from behind her to support her back.

There was a polite cough from behind Shisui, and from a darkened corner arose Itachi - eyes a calm black and no longer bleeding. Everyone from her makeshift team was good then - or, almost everybody.

She looked at Itachi and raised her eyebrows, curious to see how much information he had revealed about her unusual travel companion. She couldn’t see any of Hidan’s spare body parts just lying around, nor could she see any of the sealing scrolls she was using in the room. If they took him away then she lost the only weapon in her arsenal she could conceivably use to escape from Konoha if need be.

And in the Nara forest, where no one would hear her scream, she felt naked without any kind of trump card. She had gone rogue in escaping from Eda, had gone against every order given to her as a shinobi, which meant she relinquished any protection she had.

Not to mention the fact that she knew she was the one to kill their Sakura - she forced the girl to play as a double-agent with Kabuto and then killed her when Pinky decided not to follow the orders of the disembodied voice in her head.

If Kakashi figured it out, if Shisui even suspected - it would be over. They would lock her away, pick her brain apart to find whatever secrets they wanted, and they’d forget about her.

Just like how Shikamaru did with Hidan in her world. No one would find her in the Nara forest, no one would look for her if Shisui and Itachi told them not to, no one would care that she tried to save her village and failed and failed and failed again-

Tsunade sent a burst of chakra through her sternum that forcibly got her breathing again, a method Sakura had employed herself when fellow shinobi started panicking on a mission or in the battlefield. Being familiar with it didn’t make it any more comfortable to feel her teacher reach her hand, grab Sakura’s lungs, and make her inhale.

Itachi raised one of his immaculate eyebrows to remind her that he saw her wake up in the exact same way less than a day ago and that this was all going into the future interrogation (Sakura was pretty fluent in the silent speech of the Uchiha.)

“It’s been twelve hours since you fell unconscious in the woods. For the second time.” His eyebrow climbed even higher, apparently attempting a tactical retreat from Itachi’s forehead to his hairline. The thought made Sakura giggle.

Eight (and a half) pairs of eyes immediately grew more concerned. The hut, barely a room, was filled to the brim of bodies made weapons, all focused on her. The sheer number of faces made it hard to focus on one in particular - or was that her concussion? Dark shadows in the corners hinted at another figure, she thought that was an amphibian by her elbow, and all together it was the most people she’d been around at once since was murdered.

It got hard to breathe again, but the thought of Tsuande forcing Sakura out of a panic attack only made her more anxious to avoid it. All she wanted was to jump out the window to find some fucking quiet, but barely a glance to the open sky had Kakashi covering the exit. Naruto and Sasuke were by the door, she was pretty sure that was Shikamaru’s father next to Itachi, and Tsunade was still covering any backwards retreat with an immovable hand to her back.

She was cornered, she was surrounded, she couldn’t escape and she was in the woods of the village that was going to kill her, to slaughter her all over again because she couldn’t follow orders, because she couldn’t obey, because she was a failed shinobi and the only person on her side was a crazy murder cultist and she couldn’t even remember where she packed him.

Sakura started crying. It felt pretty decent, all things considered.

Shisui reacted before the first sob even left her mouth, flashing to Sakura’s left and handing her an honest-to-god handkerchief embroidered with the Uchiha fan. The act of undeserved kindness combined with an item so random she never could have imagined it outside her wildest girlhood romantic fantasies was enough for Sakura to get herself slightly under control - well enough to speak, at least.

“Shizune, and the Suna nin Hanako, they survived?” Foolish, to wait so long to ask, and even more foolish to ask with Tsunade’s hand still pressed against her back, in perfect position to grab her spin and twist. She felt it tense and tried to focus on where the hand was rather than what it could do: right between her Thoracic and Lumbar vertebrae. The thought was not comforting.

Itachi saved her yet again with his heroic act of answering her question clearly. “Hanako shattered the bones in her right leg when she landed - Shizune’s been in Eda for the past few weeks to help with her recovery. The official story Konoha released to Suna is that Hidan mistook you for Shizune and captured you in order to track Tsunade down.”

Okay, well if Shizune wasn’t dead then Tsuande wasn’t going to murder her yet - fantastic. “And Hidan is…?” She did everything she could not to look at Shikimaru’s father, but hoping didn’t stop Shikaku from stepping forward.

“At the moment, Hidan is still sealed away and in my possession. I understand you’ve been conversing with his severed head?” Nevermind, Itachi was moving down on her list. Funny, it seemed she liked the Uchiha best when they were quiet.

But nothing could be worse than Hidan in the custody of the Nara’s in the Nara forest - exactly where Shikamaru had buried him the first time around. Not to mention she didn’t actually have any method of control of him besides pretending to be the high priestess for his murder god, something that was becoming less and less effective with each ritual of his that she usurped for her own ends.

Letting him out in Konoha now, without a real plan to get to Danzo, would just end with Hidan throwing himself at Tsunade or, she shuddered at the thought, Minato himself. But keeping him in the scrolls, which were apparently in the Jonin commander’s possession, meant she didn’t have any allies in the village besides all the people she had already disobeyed.

Okay Sakura, think of a silver lining: you exploded Kazuku’s head by ripping open a hole in time and space.

The thought did make her feel slightly better. At least, it made her feel stronger, and that was pretty much analogous to “better” in her head. And she could still salvage this, because no matter how Itachi spins it Sakura did very much use Hidan to kill Kakuzu.

“Hidan is working under the assumption that I’m a fellow worshiper of Jashin sent to point him to the most worthy of sacrifices - Danzo and Kabuto, specifically. Kabuto is -”

“In pieces, scattered between various sealing scrolls? We found his head, along with his everything else, as well as Kazuku’s body.” Kakashi interrupted, giving her a disapproving look that she happily realized did nothing to her. Oh yeah baby, Sakura had grown past the need for her teacher’s approval - let’s throw a fucking party. Not that teacher, at least.

Kakashi’s comment was a bomb in the quiet of the hut. Naruto started yelling, Tsunade started lecturing, Itachi wouldn’t stop staring - the small hut they were in was inundated with stimuli and accusations from people who were so much taller than her. Control. She needed to be sensible and in control.

They were angry. She had gone rogue and killed a Konoha nin, though Shisui knew just how guilty he was. And if they knew half the things he and Pinkie had talked about that she had never reported-

Not yet.

“So now what - kill me or contain me?” She asked, doing her best to look like she was in complete control of the situation and not doing everything in her power just to breathe properly.

The seconds of hesitation after the question was asked had her reviewing every escape plan she had - because if they tried to trap her, to tie her up until the adults dealt with her mess, she was going to explode through her extremely loose facade. No, if they wanted her gone, they would have to kill her. Those were the consequences for killing a Konoha nin under most Hokage’s rule and Sakura was counting on it. She would tell them the truth behind their Sakura’s death, goad them into killing her in a rage, anything to avoid capture.

Prison in Konoha was cold and it was isolating, stories and stories of a concrete, labyrinth underground that most citizens would never know about. Sakura couldn’t imagine a worse fate than being alone with her thoughts, given all the good it’s done her in the past.

She wasn’t even leaving the job half-done, necessarily. Tsuande was in Konoha with full knowledge of Orochimaru’s illicit activity: there, fullstop, end of mission. It was obvious that going out of her way to kill Kabuto and the other Akatsuki members wasn’t the most tactical decision in the eyes of her team, but it did remove a lot of the more dangerous pieces from the board. Hell, if Pein tried invading again he would be missing half his roster because of Sakura.

“I did the dirty work,” she wanted to scream, “So throw me out and burn me with the rest of the trash.”

She didn’t, however, because that was childish and they were already looking at her with pity. Little wannabe ninja Sakura who can’t handle the stress without self-imploding - she could see it in their fucking eyes.

The silence took up all the room in the hut, pressing against the overflow of bodies in the room as they stared and let her huff and puff and spiral into yet another panic attack.

Shisui, who had the grace to sit on the floor beside her cot instead of looming over her, squeezed her elbow. She handed the handkerchief back to them and when their eyes met, his were thankful. She did one right thing at least. And further proof Shisui was the smartest Uchiha - of course Kabuto was a bastard! One breath, two. He put a sealed water bottle in her hand, which was holy compared to the streams she and Hidan had been drinking from.

Shikaku raised his hand as some sort of cue and Kakashi retreated to stand in front of the window again. The room cleared at Shikaku’s command fits and starts - first Naruto and Sasuke ambled out with mutinous looks in their eyes, then Shisui with a wink and a flurry of feathers, and then Tsuanade eventually removed her heavy hand from Sakura’s back. She got up to leave with Mikoto fucking Uchiha, who peeled herself out of that dark corner. The toad by her side gave her a once-over and disappeared as well - did Minato have frog summons? Jashin willing it wasn’t from Jiraiya - one pervy leer and she’d add a dead Sanin to her already extensive list of crimes.

And even if it was only Minato’s, that meant the Jonin commander, the Hokage, and at least part of the police force were aware of Sakura’s situation. A secret like that was bound to get out, and no where would be safe for her, not even the Nara forest. The smartest move, and the one was them shaking out all her secrets and then burying her in the woods for her bones to be feasted on by deer.

Weird, carrion-eating Nara deer. They existed, probably.

Focus. She was conscious, she was functional, she was hungry. There were a few granola bars left next to her bed as well as water, which meant they weren't trying to starve her out. She ripped one out and started chewing - when was the last time she had eaten real food? Didn’t matter - at this point, her body had become so acclimatized to eating bland protein bars during high times of stress that the familiar distinctive flavor of nothingness actually helped stave off yet another panic attack.

Still too many people in the room: Itachi, Kakashi, Shikaku, and the murderer. Considering everyone in the room had killed quite extensively, it was ridiculous how she still felt the guiltiest.

Sakura took advantage of the food she shoved in her mouth and tilted her head at Itachi, carefully selecting him as the friendliest in the room. Friendliest to her, at least: she still didn’t know about this Itachi to feel anywhere near confident, but they worked well together in the battle. He trusted her insane plan, gave her the space to pull it off, and most likely carried her all the way back to Konoha.

She shoved down the panic response that shot from her skull to her fingers and toes at the thought (SEARCHED YOU UNCONSCIOUS CAN'T REMEMBER CAN'T PROTECT) because even at her most hysterical she could tell she made it out of those woods in one piece. He was a bit like Hidan, in a twisted way - he was so far removed from the Itachi in her world it was like talking to someone she had never met at all. And it’s not like this Itachi ever had a reason to give a shit about Pinkie - she got kicked off Sasuke’s team unceremoniously and kept Shisui’s dirty little secret for the years following.

So, Itachi. Black eyes, blank expression: the classic Uchiha patented apathy-no-jutsu that used to infuriate her. Now she could fool herself into finding some care behind his expression.

“I was able to bring you back to the village but encountered a number of ANBU patrols on high alert - apparently the Akatsuki had managed to murder Orochimaru’s prized pupil on their way to hunt Tsunade.” He sighed, a quiet and human sound, before throwing a glance at Shikaku that could have been teasing or actually accusatory.

Shikaku tipped his head against the wall and threw his hands in the air, the perfect picture of a scolded classmate she once had. “Orochimaru and Danzo have managed to twist your Tsunade rescue mission into a shadow war being planned against our village by the Akatsuki and everyone else - killing Kabuto did nothing to help. If Minato or I tried to stop them from hunting down the nin who killed their fellow shinobi we’d be drawn and quartered by the Council.”

At the mention of Kabuto’s death all eyes swung once again to Sakura. She shrugged, which she swore almost made every man in the room laugh before they went back to being assholes.

Kakashi, of course, decided to take the reins of the conversation. “I have to admit, Sakura-chan, even those of us who know your story are still a bit lost as to your sudden religious conversion and ensuing violent streak.”

Sakura snorted against her will - inability to control emotions was a frequent side effect of chakra exhaustion, the little voice in the back of her head shot at her - and tossed the rest of the food in her mouth. She gave herself time to chew and swallow, watched all the while, and tried to consider different responses she might have.

Anger because he fucking abandoned her, exasperation because HE SHOULD HAVE KNOW what she would be forced to do if she was left behind in Eda, and sorrow most of all. Her Kakashi wouldn't drop a teammate like excess luggage, especially not in the middle of a forest teeming with terrorists.

Her Kakashi had watched his childhood friends die in front of him, one after the other, until his life became consumed with the idea of becoming strong enough to never let it happen again. Her Kakashi would have called the stranger standing in her room fucking scum - and then he’d say the exact same thing to her.

Exhaustion won. She collapsed back down and let her eyes settle on the relative comfort of the ceiling; architecture would never look at her like she was a poisonous bug found in the children’s playroom. “Playing politics is exactly what Danzo and Orochimaru want - they’ve survived because they’ve decided how and when to fight. They win,” her voice broke and she tried to pass it off as a coughing fit. “They win, eventually, because they know the best way to beat a shinobi is to pick your own game. Surprising them, breaking their rules, it’s the only way to catch them off-guard.”

That was probably the best excuse for her erratic behavior she’s given yet. Knowing the inhabitants of her little sickroom, though, nothing except a handwritten letter from Harashima himself would have been a good enough reason to disobey direct orders.

If Pinkie were in the front seat she’d take this as another obvious mark against Konoha, a village that created child soldiers so obedient they would walk right into Danzo’s hands if he had an official enough seal. If Pinkie were in the front seat, she reminded herself, Shisui would be dead and Itachi would be an even worse enemy to her than his days as a missing nin.

If Pinkie were in the front seat, maybe Sakura could take a nap.

Moving on.

When she picked herself back up again, spite moving through her veins faster than blood, Shikaku actually had the grace to look considering. Itachi looked less convinced than she would like, and Kakashi stared her down the same way he looked at Sasuke on the roof years ago, proudly proclaiming the only thing he wanted out of his life was to kill his brother and avenge his family at the ripe old age of eleven.

Sakura was getting fucking tired of pity.

The facsimile of her old teacher wiped his completely dry forehead and put away the book he had barely glanced at. “Even if we do trust you have good intentions for Konoha, it's obvious by now you'll never listen to orders or work in a team."

Her eyes flew back to the ceiling. Even if we trust you, he said, even if. Had she not killed Sasori in front of his eyes? Had she not been instrumental in actually getting Tsunade to agree to come back. Jashin be damned - she fought by Itachi’s side against yet another member of Akatsuki only twelve hours ago!

Sure, she could admit it might be reasonable of him to be worried about the murder cultist she paired herself off with, but that was obviously the only solution to him FUCKING ABANDONING HER

Calm down. Deep breath. Think of how ridiculous Hidan looks every time he goes off on an angry tangent. No matter the pain, the cruelty, the confusion - she would never allow herself to look as idiotic as Hidan did.

Tsunade always had the same issues when she was dealing with the Council - they would pay her any and every petty insult under the sun then point to her reaction as proof of her “inability to lead logically.”

So, logically, the best result to piss them off in kind would be for Tsunade to act completely calm, to turn the tables and make them look like squabbling children. Tsunade had practiced her “I’m the Hokage and I’m holier than thou“ expression thousands of times to herself, and then to Sakura after enough prodding. It was a good look on her.

Sakura could only hope it looked half as impressive when she did it. "Is it so unbelievable that it would take methods outside of protocol to fight a threat entrenched in Konoha's bureaucracy?"

Kakashi released another world weary sigh that was also quite similar to Tsunade’s. "You're not undertaking this mission with any particular strategy or philosophy- just blind rage you justify in the aftermath.”

“Fuck off,” she retorted. The words flew out of her mouth quicker than she could stop them and her and Kakashi were equally taken aback in the aftermath. Well, off to the races then. “We didn’t have a choice but to kill Sasori after he and Deidara tracked us down, and Kakuzu was the exact same.”

“And the race with Gaara? The trap you laid to lure Kabuto out of the village?”

She didn’t have a better reply to that question than “I had to do it myself because I don’t trust you.” Sakura had the sense not to say it aloud, but by the look in Kakashi’s eye he got the gist of it.

There was something in his gaze that could have been called regret but he hid it soon enough in feigned indifference. “Either way, Sakura-chan, the entire village is now on high-alert, and given that the last time you were seen was with Hidan right before Kabuto was killed, well. No one has directly accused you, but…”

Shikaku picked up on Kakashi’s dramatic tail off. “Orochimaru will suspect, if not outright know, you’re involved. Until it’s taken care of, the Nara forest is the safest place for you in the village.”

Shit. No - not shit, because this at least meant she was in somewhat close proximity to Hidan. Given all she’s learned since she woke up, having him near was the closest thing she could get to comfort.

So she had Hidan, Team Seven wasn’t actually going to kill her, and Orochimaru might not even know she’s in the village at all. And she really only had that one panic attack, so things were on the up and up.

She did her best not to look at the window again but Kakashi and Itachi had both turned into damned mind readers. They shared a significant glance and it was Itachi who took a step closer to the bed.

"There will be a mix of shinobi and Kakashi’s ninkin watching you during your recovery. I won’t condescend and say this is just for your own protection, Haruno-san. ” His tone grew more detached the longer he spoke, a strange mirror to the hand he laid upon her shoulder. She shook it off with a quick movement and rolled her eyes.

“Saying you won’t condescend to me also comes off as condescending, Uchiha-san,” she sniped with little heat. Out of all three men in the room, Itachi would be her first pick. Shikaku would ask too many questions and Kakashi and her would end up burning the forest down if left alone together. “Wait - am I living in this hut?”

The question came from her voice but it was all her mother’s influence, one Sakura thought she had long outgrown after slumming it as a shinobi. Still, the hut was tiny, it didn’t look like it had more than one room, the floor was dirt and the roof was little better. All of it an uninspiring brown that didn’t have any furniture besides the medical cot she was lying on. She couldn’t believe it, but she missed the goddamn woods outside Konoha.

Shikaku surprised her with a small laugh and shook his head. “You can sleep in here or you can use some camping supplies if you’d rather a tent, for some reason. Tsunade recommends staying in bed for another few days or so."

Sakura tossed the idea around in her head. She had sped up the time table herself by killing Kabuto, but it's also true that Orochimaru and Danzo would be similarly limited by their double-lives. Tsunade and Minato would be able to put an amazing amount of pressure on Orochimaru in the hospital in the upcoming days if they played their cards right.

But now she had more information about the hospital that Shisui did, bur no real way to show it unless she wanted to reveal the truth. And while that particular truth might be good to start a fight to the death, it wasn't exactly conducive to team building. Thanks to those memories, though, she knew Pinkie had started to keep extensive notes about the experimentations going on in the hospital that she managed to hide. Both of her lives had been spent in that building and she knew it like the back of her hand. How hard would it be to sneak into the basement for a minute or two? A few more hours of bed rest might actually let her plan this operation out, and those notes could be used by Minato and Tsunade to sway the old farts in the council.

“I'd prefer a tent, please,” she sighed, dreaming of a space sized for one and canvas walls she could write on. “Who’s on first watch?”

To her dismay, it was Itachi and Shikaku that left. Kakashi didn’t seem too happy about it either as he snapped his book open, and then she realized why. “Thanks for setting up my tent for me, Kakashi. I wish I could help, but..”

"Doctor's orders." He tossed the porno behind him with a sigh and leapt out the window after it. Bisuke sauntered in the room the second Kakashi crossed the threshold and gave her shoulder an affectionate nudge. Looking out, she could see every other ninken swarm Kakashi as he attempted to gather the canvas.

In the peace left in the wake of that halestorm wakeup call, she congratulated herself on seeing the mission through. Tsunade was back in Konoha, Akatsuki had been suitably handled, and Sakura knew one thing for certain: she wasn’t exactly human and she never had been, but it made her all the more suited to killing self-appointed gods. Now to plan a little heist.

Chapter Text

Sakura has lived a life of stark black outlines: before and after joining Kakashi’s team, before and after her team decided to fuck off without her in some nebulous quest for revenge or growth, before and after she decided to get off her ass and make something of herself, before and after her village burned down and the corpse of it started puppeting her around on blood-red strings.

There is something so comforting in the delineation, in the ability to look back and break everything apart on her own time, not erasing the memories but putting them on her own goddamn timeline.

And of course there are memories she erased: her parents' heads bowed on the dinner table every time she left for a mission at the ripe age of eleven. They were always gone when she returned, as if running from the village on some trader’s caravan would help them avoid the death notice they had been waiting for ever since she joined the academy. She almost wishes, looking back, that her parents had been crueler. Had told her no, full stop, when she begged to join the academy. Or given her up at the ripe age of seven, let her join all the other little orphan adults given their own apartments and forgotten about until they could be used.

Instead her family was constantly in a half-life, living in the same house as if they were all already dead. None of it made her love them less, but it’s hard to say whether or not they loved her at all by the end of it. Didn’t matter, regardless, when they got buried under the rumble like so many others after Pein’s invasion.

All of that to say, the hospital was more her home than any cozy two-bedroom smack down in the middle of the civilian quarters, and it was more Pinkie’s home than any barren apartment kept for appearances. The sterile surgery suites above, the constant din of the lobby, the scars on the walls from every traumatized shinobi patient fighting whatever they could get their hands on, and the disgusting labyrinth of secrets below - it was all known to her. She could walk it blindfolded and half-dead and still know exactly where to find the sutures.

The biggest issue was double-vision: her and Pinkie had both memorized the blueprints from toe to tip of the building, and those blueprints clashed with each other terribly. Orochimaru has been fastidious in remaking the hospital in his own image in Konoha, and Sakura had the grim work of excavating the relevant building plans from the minefield of Pinkie’s memories. Sakura couldn’t help the feeling that she was willingly walking into a haunted house.

Ghosts or no ghosts, it had to be done. No amount of bureaucratic leanings or arrest warrants filed by the books would be enough to part Orochimaru from his dirty secrets, and Sakura was confident that there were no other operatives in Konoha who were capable of taking them by force and guile than her given Pinkie’s previous work history.

Was she proving Kakashi’s point by continuing this mission without telling anyone or asking for express permission? Yes, yes she was. Was she falling deeper and deeper into Pinkie’s mindset by cleaving herself from any and all support systems because she was convinced they were either hilariously misinformed or actively working against her?

Yes, yes she was. She was coming to the unfortunate realization as she sat in her sagging tent that evening, oh so helpfully set up by Kakashi, that she was developing a bit of a God complex. Trying to justify it by saying she only wanted to help save Konoha from itself wasn’t doing much to refute the point.

She knew on some level ever since the Pinkie revelation came to her that she wasn’t the hero she thought herself to be when she first set herself up on this frantic mission. She could concede even in her lowest moment that allowing Orochimaru to continue experimenting on orphans was, like, comically evil, but it wasn’t like assholes hadn’t gotten in the way of other assholes before.

Am I the asshole, she asked herself, doing small core exercises on the dirt floor of her little campout. Touch the toes, twist the wrist, generally undo all the fucking damage she’s been putting herself though in the name of peace and penance. The small daily stretches she performed every day since she was four and given her first blunted shuriken gave no clarity, unfortunately, except to remind her that all of Konoha was filled with assholes who treated human lives like expendable throwing knives and that there was no real good point of comparison.

Maybe this was why she was drawn to Hidan - by any metric he was worse than her, and he didn’t care either way. No ham-fisted mortality speeches to justify his wanton killing and reckless abandon - he was on a mission from his god, and explanations were extraneous and wouldn't be understood regardless. It was an easy way to go about business as long as you were strong enough to back it up, and strength had never been a problem for Hidan.

It was for Sakura. It had been a few days since she had awoken in the Nara Forest, about twelve hours since Tsunade had snuck her way in to give her another checkup, and it was obvious her body was so weak that not even Danzo would have thrown her a mission.

Well, he might have as a way to get rid of her, but Sakura was kinda hoping she would survive this mission. Maybe not in the long run, but she would never give Orochimaru the satisfaction of finding her dead in his own evil lair. If Sakura couldn’t defeat her enemies she was damn sure going to be an inconvenience to them.

Her problems were thus: she was constantly being watched by shinobi stronger than her, being held in a forest she didn’t know how to escape, and she had no supplies that would help her undertake an incredibly dangerous stealth mission. Her “heist,” as she had so optimistically called it, was about as achievable as Gaara being voted “Best and Most Mentally Stable Boss” by the Suna Shinobi unit.

She exited her tent to do some standing exercises. Sometime in the last two hours, Kakashi had been relieved of duty and Shikimaru had taken his place, napping peacefully on Bisuke. Apparently the ninkin had volunteered to be her constant watchman, even when Kakashi was off duty, and she tried to not let it warm her heart just a little bit.

Being supervised at all hours was draining and harsh, but Sakura couldn’t help but think Bisuke was here out of kindness more than suspicion. Wishful thinking, but he was a good ally to have, and much more sensible than his master.

Shikimaru blinked at her as she started her routine but quickly closed his eyes again. A wandering deer stepped forward, entirely undaunted by the two humans and the dog, and gave Shikimaru’s ear an affectionate lick.

Dear Jashin, it almost felt cute. Sakura, confident that Shikimaru was studying her despite the appearance of closed eyes, managed to fight down the part of her heart that wanted to tease him as she always had, usually with Ino by her side.

She lost that privilege when she traveled between worlds, and probably double lost it when she became an extraneous work assignment for him. No matter where, or who, she was, Shikimaru hated work and always would.

Thankfully, Sakura didn’t need her brain just to touch her toes and do some (light and incredibly slow) lunges. She couldn’t count on her fingers the countless number of times she and Ino had sparred together while Shikimaru napped and Chōji cheered them on. In the wake of Sasuke’s defection and Naruto’s “Super Cool Super Secret Mission!!!!!!!!,” Sakura saw more of Team 10 than she did Kakashi.

Small blessings, then, that it was Shikimaru and not his father. She had little to no interaction with the Jonin Commander before his untimely death, and being around him now would not be conducive to healing or secret planning. Better the super-genius you know, and all that.

Know a version of.

Not for the first or last time, Sakura idly wondered if this whole experience would break her brain before long. She was resurrected in a new dimension, against her will, and potentially in a recurring cycle of Sakura’s being chewed up and spit out into the next poor Sakura’s brain. By all accounts, it was bullshit of the highest degree and something she had never seen even a hint of during all her time as a shinobi, which featured its own fair share of bullshit Tailed Beasts and mass resurrection spells.

Life, it turned out, meant a lot less than she thought it did when she was a child. Now it barely seemed to mean anything at all.

Shikimaru let out a big cartoonish yawn and shifted so he was seated against a nearby tree. His lazy eyes tracked her silently for another few minutes as she tested out her reach, seeing how eye she could kick above her head before her stomach wound gave its rattling cry, and he tossed her a bottle of water when she was done.

Ino should be here. If she was, Sakura wasn’t confident she could keep herself from spilling all her sad little secrets. Shikimaru, on the other hand, was someone Sakura had delighted in confusing even when they were friends. They had always “competed” to be the top of the class, but where Sakura had thrown herself headfirst into textbooks and old mission scrolls to even halfway comprehend the world of shinobi she was desperately trying to force herself into, Shikimaru napped during class, content in the knowledge that this world was his birthright.

He never had to try to be smarter than her, he just was. He never had to prepare ahead of time, he had been raised in this world from the day of his birth. His name justified every door he walked through, and the brilliant mind he worked so hard to hide was enough to cover all his bases.

There was a small, shriveled part of Sakura that always hated him, in a way that she could have hated Sasuke if he wasn’t part of the most publicized and widespread tragedy in recent history. Could have hated Ino, if she wasn’t her only friend in the whole wide world, right up until the point she wasn’t, then was again, then

She died. Same old Konoha, same old story. But now she was in a new Konoha, and there was a new Shikimaru sniffing around the active crime scene she claimed as her body.

“You had lunch yet?” He asked with perfected nonchalance. She drained the water bottle he gave her and tossed in the direction of her tent, shrugging. No, she hadn’t had “lunch,” but she was still choking down those familiar ration bars like they were poorly written erotica and she was the copy-cat nin.

He shifted around a bit and pulled out two of the most adorable pink bento boxes. Even without opening one, she knew in her heart they were made by Chōji and would taste better than anything she’d had so far in this lifetime. It was an animalistic desperation that overcame all her better instincts and had her throwing herself down next to Shikimaru, nearly disrupting Bisuke’s nap.

“You should be working under Morino-san with interrogation skills like these,” she joked, making childlike, or Naruto-like, grabby hands at the lunchbox. Shikimaru very nearly flinched backwards in surprise before regaining his practiced composure, popping open the lid and passing her a pair of chopsticks.

She didn’t hesitate to dig in, confident that when they decide to kill her, it certainly wouldn’t be through rice balls. And, if it was through rice balls, she could confidently say it was her preferred way of being killed. Gotta keep things in perspective the second (third?) time around.

Shikimaru opened his own lunch, tossing some carrots cut into the shapes of shuriken to the wandering deer, and pushed some food around before nailing her with his gaze. “My father hasn’t told me much about why my old classmate is recovering on our family grounds instead of the perfectly functional hospital down the road.”

Sakura finished her rice ball slowly, savoring the pickled plum in a way only a starving woman could, and considered her options. Shikimaru didn’t like to act like it, but he was a gossip-starved teen girl as bad as Ino in her heyday, and depending on how much his father warned him against her, she might be able to trade some secrets. What she needed above all else was current information on the hospital - was it running as normal, was Orochimaru overseeing the day-to-day operations, how many guards had been stationed after Kabuto’s death? Getting those details out of her genius classmate was going to be tough, but anything he let slip was better than going in blind.

“Well,” she said softly, measuring the distance for her opening salvo, “Is the hospital down the road really ‘perfectly functional?’”

Shikimaru sighed and gave her another once-over, taking note of the bandages on her hands and peaking out from underneath her nondescript robes. She was, by any amateur medical assessment, a complete mess.

He popped a salmon roll in his mouth, no doubt savoring the fish that Chōji was always able to serve perfectly fresh, and closed his eyes. “Things do get difficult when one of the managing operators of the hospitals is seemingly killed out of the village with no apparent motive.”

“And I imagine Orochimaru must be working overtime with the Council to discover what happened to his beloved employee…”

Shikimaru’s eyes snapped to hers and Sakura knew her tone had been too sharp at the end, too self-satisfied and mocking. But, well, who could blame a girl for taking pride in her work?

He tossed a wad of wasabi at her and she smacked it out of the air a bit too harshly, causing Bisuke to pop his head up and stare at her. Shikimaru tracked every movement with an intensity he kept carefully rationed in his daily life. “It would be hard, watching a close friend get killed by a man like Hidan, for no reason at all.”

“Hidan has never hidden his motives - you can hardly get him to shut up.”

“You would know, having traveled with him all this way.” Shikimaru didn’t blink as they volleyed back and forth, and Sakura had the uncomfortable realization that she wasn’t going to win whatever battle they were fighting. All the information in the world didn’t mean much if you didn’t know how to ration it out, how to trade it for what you wanted, and whatever skills Sakura had at conversation had rotted on the journey with Hidan.

Or, likely, before she even woke up here. She can’t recall too many conversations she’s had in the past month or so that didn’t end with her crying, running away, passing out, or challenging someone to a fight. She decided a tactical retreat was the smartest play here, and went back to stuffing her face with real food for the first time since the festival in Eda.

Shikimaru acknowledged her pointed silence with a raised eyebrow but didn’t pry further; there were unlimited benefits to having such a lazy interrogator that Sakura didn’t take for granted. It was a kindness on Shikaku’s part, even if he didn’t mean for it to be, to have an old classmate like Shikimaru here with her. Despite the role of his family in the village, despite his life being dedicated to the ideals that put children on the front lines of a war, Shikimaru came out the other end of his education still soft enough to care. Sakura had seen how that care had flattened, had calcified in Shikimaru’s heart during the war, but it was still close enough to touch here.

Or maybe he was that good at deceiving her. Always an option in Konoha.

But walking down that path would have her paranoia eating her alive, and she needed it carefully contained to maintain functionality. If Sakura wasn’t functional, she might as well not be alive.

No - madness and paranoia again. She ate another rice ball and focused on the feeling of real food in her stomach, letting it center her. Even if Shikimaru was getting everything he needed from her, even if he found a way to actively read her mind, she was still eating a real lunch with no one trying to punch her head off her shoulders. She would appreciate the end result, no matter the motivation.

Another sigh had Sakura flinching back minutely, giving space for Shikimaru to stand up and stretch his arms. Bisuke rose as well, wandering close enough to lick what remained in his bento box. The trees above her echoed with bird calls, and between blinks, Shisui touched down on the forest floor.

“My turn!” he called, joyous and loud in the relative safety of the Nara territory. Shikimaru wandered off with only a parting smirk in her direction, content with whatever intelligence he was able to glean from their short conversation. It was a worry Sakura could only put to the side when faced with the full power of Shisui’s exuberance.

Sakura stood as well, not liking how he towered over her, and gave him the most genuine smile she could muster. She wasn’t exactly thrilled that Shisui had left her along with the others in Eda, but his loyalty to Konoha was a complex beast, and expecting him to directly disobey Kakashi and Tsunade on a mission was a losing game. Besides, she had been lying to him for so long, as Pinkie and as what was left of Pinkie, that she knew any animosity would be hypocritical.

Sakura didn’t know if she would be able to fully trust anyone in this world or the next, but she enjoyed spending time with Shisui, and that was enough. It had to be.

“It’s good to see you again,” she said, feeling warm from the lunch she had and the honesty she was able to show him. It also helped, of course, that Shisui was exactly the person she needed for her self-assigned mission to break into the hospital.

Shisui grinned, a sun rising even higher in the sky, and jauntily turned in a loose circle, body bursting with energy. “Let’s go for a walk, Sakura-chan! Tsunade recommended doing small stress tests for your ankle.”

Bisuke barked in agreement and pushed at her calves, and all three of them meandered further into the woods, trees so dense they started to block out the blue above.

The Nara forest was different than the woods outside Konoha - the trees were older by a significant margin, trunks full enough she could lose sight of her companion if Shisui circled around them, and it seemed empty of most wood life except for the birds and the ever-mysterious deer that looked at her with intelligent eyes. The Nara had the most land in Konoha by a large margin but very little property, and it was a ratio they were proud of and guarded fiercely.

It was a good thing, Sakura mused aloud, that Orochimaru wasn’t hiding his operations on Nara grounds, or they would never be able to catch him. Shisui laughed, flitting in and out of the scenery ahead of her, and Bisuke gave her a respectable snort of amusement. If she was being graded on her ability to act like a human, she was most certainly passing.

She sneezed, and Shisui flashed to her side, familiar handkerchief at the ready, and Sakura allowed herself to laugh at the improbability of it all. “I used to dream of receiving something like this,” she whispered, fingers pressing on the stitched Uchiha fan with a reverence she had saved for girlhood dreams of marriage. Shisui waved his hands and a second one appeared, stitching just a bit more sloppy, and pressed it into her other hand.

“You can keep this one, if you want. I made it myself.”

Sakura searched his face for the joke but couldn’t find one, his ever smiling mouth a still line of contentment. “You practice embroidery?"

“Aunt Mikoto’s suggestion, when I was younger.” His voice grew wistful, and they both stopped walking for a second as the breeze shifted. “It was a good test, to see how fast I could move my fingers while still being accurate. I must have stabbed through my fingers with a needle a thousand times.”

Sakura, in a bold fit of daring that would have Ino practically screaming, took Shisui’s hand in one of her own, twisted it to see if she could catch the scars on his fingertips. He allowed her exploration with a lazy grin, utterly calm at her touch. It drove her insane, sometimes, how he trusted her against all reason.

And then, as a shaft of light finally wiggled its way through the treetops, Sakura found the near invisible pinpricks on his fingers, a constellation of previous mistakes and persistence, healed but not erased. She smiled, as quick and fleeting as that singular ray of sun, and she could have sworn Shisui’s breath caught.

She shoved whatever emotion that elicited within her down, down beneath where Pinkie was buried, down beneath her memories of the ROOT training she was forced into, down to the little dinner table with her parents’ bowed heads: down to a place where she could ignore it. Shisui didn’t have any real feelings for her, and if he did, she didn’t know, because if she knew-

If she knew she would use them against him, so she didn’t know. She couldn’t know.

Sakura started walking, any direction, both of his tokens still clenched in her fist. Shisui followed without hesitation.

“Do you still embroider?” she asked, hoping to fill the silence as Bisuke’s significant looks in her direction grew just a bit louder.

He laughed, whatever moment that passed between them forgotten. “It’s a good way to relax after a mission, and a cheap way to give gifts in a family as large as mine.”

“Are you trying to tell me an agent of the Konoha Police Force is underpaid?” She mocked, the reminder of the Uchiha Family being alive and well buoying her mood.

Shisui chuckled (she was doing really well in this conversation!) but didn’t reply for a minute. The pain in Sakura’s ankle made its way up to her brain, and Bisuke could tell, judging by the way he started herding them back to the camp. Shisui took the change in direction in stride, but slowed down his initial pace and started leading Sakura down the path with as few stones as possible.

Too much kindness in one afternoon almost made her scared. It was hard to remember any bright spot in her life that hadn’t been torn away from her eventually. But real humans, healthy humans, reacted to kindness with gratitude, so that’s what Sakura tried to do, even letting Shisui grab her arm to help her over a jutting root.

“Do you have any hobbies?” He asked, picking up the conversation.

She hummed and gave it an honest thought, knowing that “Hunting Mercenaries” and “Joining a Cult” were not answers he appreciated. “I loved learning medicine, especially under Tsunade-sama.”

“But isn’t that just training?” He asked, in a tone that indicated he knew how he would answer that question. She shrugged, because he was right and she didn’t feel like arguing. She couldn’t recall if she knew anyone that kept their hobbies past childhood, really.

Naruto’s pranks were turned into clever battle plans, amazing twists and tricks he pulled out on missions. Ino’s passion for makeup and hairstyling became a part of her life as a female shinobi, standing out in all the right ways while male agents faded into the background. Even Chōji’s love for cooking was turned into his career, helping run his family’s restaurant, then helping to spread and divide rations during the war.

Sasuke, much like Sakura now, never even pretended to have anything on his mind but the mission.

The rest of the walk was spent in silence, fabric twisting between Sakura’s fingers as she considered her next step. Tell Shisui her plan or lie? Ask him for help or use him without his knowledge? Play her cards or hide under the table?

It was an impossible question to know the answer to, but one she needed to answer before Shisui left and another guard replaced him. They were always changing the lengths of time any individual stayed with her and there wasn’t a steady rotation, designed to keep her guessing during her arrest. If Shisui left now, there was no telling the next time she saw him, especially if things heated up in the village and he was called to help.

Could she trust him? She had so far, as much as she could, telling him how she woke up and what she planned to do in broad strokes. He had been breaking the rules for years, investigating the hospital and then following her on the trip to find Tsunade, but he had listened to Kakashi when they left her in Eda. He followed his emotions in a way Sakura had rarely seen outside of a hammered Tsunade, but he was able to flash away from most consequences that followed him.

As far as she could tell, his greatest regret was that the consequences caught up to Pinkie, instead.

She could use that, digging up the grave in her own head to steal what was left. Pinkie was her, and Sakura had always known she was a thing to be used, a tragedy waiting to be exploited. And Shisui might feel bad now, but maybe it would be better when he finally found out that it was actually Sakura that got to Pinkie in the end. He would have someone to hate other than himself.

Camp was undisturbed when they got back, and Bisuke took it upon himself to build the fire as the afternoon fell into evening. Sakura pulled Shisui to the side to have a private conversation, hoping Bisuke would assume it was a continuation of their personal chat in the woods. She didn’t know if it would fool the ninken, but there was no reason to be obvious about it.

Shisui was happy to let Sakura drag him away to her tent, ambling in without complaint and taking an interested look at the inner canvas, where she had been sketching the layout of the hospital's basement from memory. There were countless floors down there, some Kabuto had never shown Pinkie, some that even Kabuto was barred from. Of the levels she did know, she was confident she could pull some information, and relatively certain she could get down there quietly.

Shisui whistled, short and impressed, lightly tracing the lines of the morgue on the sub-basement with his finger. “I expected you wouldn’t want to wait, Sakura-chan.”

“There’s no time to wait,” she replied firmly, “And unless my estimations are off mark, Orochimaru is too busy with politics above ground to be creeping around his secret basement labs.”

Her companion hummed but didn’t refute her, as much of an answer as he was comfortable giving, and Sakura mentally slotted it in place. It was hard to gauge the council’s response to a high-ranking shinobi’s death outside of the village during peace time, but if she knew Danzo, he would do whatever he could to slow the bureaucratic process until he controlled the flow of it entirely. He would want Orochimaru’s help for that, and their political scheming was nothing but an opportunity for her now that she wasn’t overly concerned with the current Hokage holding on to their seat.

She didn’t have a problem with Minato, necessarily, but he wasn’t Tsunade by a long shot.

“You can’t go in alone,” he finally said after a long pause. She gave him time to weigh his words, trying to guess what he would suggest. It was unlikely given his reticence that he would come with her, but all other potential options would have the same initial distaste for disobeying orders that Shisui had.

In fact, the only other person in Konoha less interested than her in following the rules was Hidan, and he was still scattered among sealing scrolls held by a number of different Shinobi. That was how she would contain him, at least, though she shuddered to think that Shikaku had already found a more permanent solution.

He was her murder cultist, dammit, and it still rankled that they had taken him from her so easily.

Bisuke barked outside, a warning Sakura could only guess was meant for Shisui about the shift change, and he released a heavy sigh. “If you’re willing to show me this, it makes me think you’re willing to work with me.”

“I’m not working against you, Shisui. You know what I want: Danzo dead, Orochimaru dead, and Konoha free of their influence.” It was a bit embarrassing, how transparent she was, but shinobi were trained on how to detect and deflect lies. Sometimes the truth was her best weapon.

“Tsunade-san is coming by for dinner, and she’ll tie you to the tree before she lets you ruin her hard work on another mission.” He tilted his head, thinking deeply about something, before coming to some sort of internal agreement. “Go with the next person on rotation.”

“Do I have to guess who it is?”

“Who they are, if they both listen to me. Just trust me, okay? And don’t go off alone, Sakura-chan, not again.” He tilted her head and looked into her eyes, as intense as a Yamanaka prying into her skull, and she found herself agreeing just so he would stop looking at her with that pleading expression. He was too dangerous in just the strangest of ways.

She handed him back one of the handkerchiefs but kept the other, tucking it into the folds of her shirt. “Would you believe me if I said I want to trust you?” she whispered, tracing the threads in the fabric that now rested above her breast.

Shisui’s answering smile shook her so bad she scrambled over him to bolt from the tent, hands clasped to cover her cheeks. Bisuke stood at a respectable distance away from their meeting but close enough to give her a loaded glance when Shisui gracelessly followed her out, wearing a smug face to cover the worry she could still see him carrying.

He left without much fanfare when Tsunade arrived, larger than life and carrying enough Hot and Sour soup to have her nose running from yards away. Dinner was a quieter affair than lunch, Tsunade running through her medical diagnostics in silence, air thick in the pale hours before night.

Sakura had broken whatever chance she had with this Tsunade when she left Shizune in Eda to follow Hidan, and it wasn’t going to be as easy to mend as a femur. Sakura told herself she was fine with it: Tsunade hating her was nothing compared to Tsunade dying for her, dying for the village, and there was no point in regretting the decisions she already made and would make again.

A few days of dedicated rest and done wonders for her body, and the training Sakura had forced upon Pinkie when she was younger meant this body still had exceptional chakra control. With Tsunade’s assistance, frosty or otherwise, her ankle was strong enough to hold her, maybe even to run on.

And because she had Tsunade to help heal her more glaring injuries, she was able to tuck some energy away for a rainy day, a pocket that she might be able to hold onto instead of blowing all her energy on one battle after another.

The evening that followed was the most peaceful she had experienced in weeks. She dutifully sipped at her soup as Tsunade pulled out a deck of cards and challenged Bisuke to a game - she didn’t deal Sakura in, but she allowed her to hold Bisuke’s cards and consult with him on what to play. She and the ninken trounced her former teacher with little fanfare, and Tsunade spent the rest of her shift sulking on the other end of the campfire. Her master had always been a sore loser, especially when no bets were on the line, and the nostalgia burned as hot as her medicinal soup.

As the night wore on, she settled on her guess as to who the mysterious night shift shinobi would be that would help her. The only thought she gave real consideration was Naruto and Sasuke: they were her former teammates, they knew the truth, and their position in the village meant they would only be given a light slap on the wrist for rule breaking instead of a full banishment. While neither could be considered the quietest in their chosen profession, she had seen enough from the battle with Sasori to know she could rely on them in a scrap.

She used what remaining hours she had to lightly stretch (Tsunade gave her quite the side-eye but made no comment) and to practice her arguments. She also started making a list of all the possible shinobi that Shikaku would trust to guard Hidan’s different body parts, just as a back-up. Hidan wasn’t just an annoying, loud-mouthed tool in her arsenal, he was also a living monster in the same way that Sakura was starting to think she was, and she wanted to poke more into his connection with his god. Jashin-sama, just wait for me!, she shouted in her head, and ignored the carrion birds that cawed in response.

Sakura was getting very good at ignoring things for survival’s sake.

At around midnight, with no sign of Sakura going to sleep, Tsunade picked her up and unceremoniously tossed in the tent before leaving herself shortly thereafter. Sakura gave herself two hours of rest, practically decadent, before crawling out of her tent to give Naruto and Sasuke the best sales pitch she could muster on a few hours' notice.

Instead, she was greeted with a grim-faced Kakashi, and the face of a woman she had only known from Pinkie’s memories, had only seen in faded photographs her Kakashi and kept squirreled away in their old shared apartment.

The face of a clanless woman who was placed on a team with two prodigies from famous bloodlines, a woman who made herself into a healer so talented she couldn’t be ignored.

For the first time in her life, Sakura met the woman who had haunted her teacher for decades, who could have shaped Konoha’s medical industry, who chose death instead of a war that happened regardless.

Standing in her camp, next to that disapproving, masked bastard she knew so well, was Rin Nohara.