Chapter Text
“Waves are not measured in feet or inches, they are measured in increments of fear.”
-Buzzy Trent
At first, Sakura thinks that the star brightness of Sensei’s fist wreathed in crackling lightning has damaged her vision. She is watching Kakashi-sensei’s fight with the missing-nin closely in order to protect Tazuna the best she can, so she sees the exact moment that Sensei’s lightning fist goes through Haku. There’s a bright flash like the sun reflecting off freshly fallen snow before it fades into an afterimage of the tragically beautiful boy that Sakura chalks up to the effects of intense light on the retina. The image still stands out against the backdrop of the mist, a glow rather than the initial blaze of light. She later learns that Sensei’s lightning fist is actually called Chidori, named for the sound it makes rather than for its visual stimulus. Apparently, no one else is dumb enough to stare directly at it, or at least not anyone still alive.
It's the first time she’s watched someone die so she isn’t initially concerned that the gleaming spot in her vision takes the shape of the now dead boy. The academy lessons stressed that there are lots of different reactions to the shock and trauma of watching death for the first time and that the only wrong reactions are injuring your teammates or abandoning the mission. While her grip on the kunai in her hand is a little shaky from the gruesome sight and her stomach turns with nausea from the smell of ozone, heated metal, and charcoal, Sakura is not trash and her mind still feels clear enough to protect the bridge builder.
The mob dies, Gato dies- she feels only grim satisfaction rather than regret at his death, and finally, Zabuza dies. The number of flashes and glowing spots in her vision grows but her eyes are teary with worry over Sasuke, so she ignores the likely damage to her sight. There isn’t anything that can be done about vision damage so far away from the Konoha’s hospital and it is the least of her team’s problems considering that Sasuke looks like a pin cushion, Kakashi-sensei looks as droopy as he had right before he passed out last time he battled Zabuza, and even Naruto looks more subdued than usual.
Sakura only begins to become concerned about the spots when she sees afterimages of people she’s never met while they stumble through town on the way back to Tazuna’s house, but she brushes her increasing concern off. It’s only her imagination after watching so many people slaughtered in front of her today. If she walks a little closer to Sensei on the way back, he is either too out of it or too polite to tell her that if she walked any closer, she’d be a burr in his side.
As scary as watching her first death had been there’s nothing that unusual about her reaction. She convinces herself that if she works through the compartmentalizing techniques the academy taught before bed and talks with one of the counselors back in Konoha, if she’s still having trouble later, then she will be fine afterward.
Her cool bedroll causes her to shiver, but she slips into it without complaint, thankful that the earlier threat has been eliminated, and that her teammates are more or less okay. The compartmentalizing techniques come effortlessly, and she easily falls into a dead sleep. The hazy fog of her dreams coalesces into the figure of a woman in bed with long dark hair and eyes glassy with pain that dull shortly after being handed a tiny bundle. Then she drifts through the haze only to be drawn into being beaten black and blue before being jerked into a somber town square; knees scraping the hard-packed dirt, then white-hot pain in one arm and then both, blood pooling on the ground, a muffled shriek from the crowd.
She wakes up choking on a scream that’s lodged in her throat. For an impossibly long moment, she feels like she will never be able breathe again. Then the breaths come as frantic, gasping, unhelpful pants. There are hot tears streaking down her cheeks. She wipes those off before shakily standing and dragging her blanket closer to Kakashi-sensei on the other side of Naruto.
Sakura shuffles closer on her knees towards the jounin. The shock of his unruly silver hair is the only thing sticking out of his covers. He doesn’t move at all when she nears him, likely due to him sleeping off his near chakra exhaustion but even still his mere presence is comforting.
Movement out of the corner of her eye steals her attention. The man from her dream is standing in the doorway heavily bruised and dripping blood where his arms are supposed to be. He catches her eye before nodding and staggering down the hall on pain slowed footsteps only to disappear into Tsunami’s bedroom.
However, he isn’t the only figure in the room. There’s also the dark-haired woman. The lower half of her white nagajuban is drenched in blood like something out of a horror movie. The woman walks between Naruto and Sasuke, stops, and then kneels among them, her hair falling like dark silk over her shoulder as she brushes a tanned hand over Sasuke’s forehead and then through Naruto’s sunshine hair in clear fascination. Not a single hair on either boys’ head shifts as she touches them. The woman’s mouth moves, but Sakura can’t hear what she says.
“Not real. Not real. Not real,” Sakura chants to herself, her body frozen but her heart racing. Trembling, she brings her hands up, folds them into a ram seal, and violently interrupts her chakra.
Nothing changes, except now the woman is looking at her. She smiles at Sakura and maybe if the woman wasn’t vaguely see-through and you know, perhaps not covered in blood, it would be comforting. As it is, Sakura does not feel reassured.
Sakura wants to shut her eyes and pretend this isn’t happening, but there is a soul-chilling dread sinking into her veins that insists that if she closes her eyes, even to blink, the woman will take the opportunity to strike. It’s like being afraid of the monster in the closet, except there’s no closet to contain it and the terror of it has paralyzed even her blood.
The only thing anchoring her in the endless ocean of fear buffeting her is the warmth her Sensei is radiating next to her. She isn’t able to swallow the unrestrained terror, but the academy trained her to never look away from a threat, so she stays awake, staring wide-eyed at the woman until her eyes are gritty and too heavy to keep open, until she sinks under a wave of exhaustion so overpowering there’s no way to kick to the surface.