Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She hated the color red.

Red like blood seeping out of deep gashes and mattering pale lips.

Red like fire, painting the sky, engulfing her like a prison, burning her alive.

Red like those eyes , staring down at her, a sword piercing her gut.

Red like the moon, engulfing the sky, looming over them like a predator staring down at his prey.

Red like her lips, smirking, mouthing those words that would haunt her forever. 

I will find you.

I will find you.

Run and hide, I will find you.

Cover and hope, I will find you.

Pray and cry, I will find you.

Stand up and fight, and I will kill you.

And you will remember me.

You will fear me.

You will quiver before me.

Forever, I will haunt you.

In your dreams, in your steps, in your sight, while you breathe, while you bleed, while you live, 

I will haunt you.

Forever.

Red, red, red, red, red, it was everywhere. 

She looked away, but it was still there. 

Even here, in death, it haunted her.

Red, red, red, red, red.

Why couldn’t it leave her alone? They had won, hadn’t they? She was dead. Everyone was dead. 

Just leave me alone.

She didn’t know how long it had been, how long she simply existed in that strange place that was everything and nothing at once.

How long red had haunted her, how long her hands felt sticky with blood, how long she still heard those words, how long she still smelled the smoke.

Minutes felt like seconds, seconds felt like days, days felt like years, years felt like minutes. 

A long time passed before she felt something else.

Something like rain, soft and gentle, passing over her skin, over the blood, washing it away, bit by bit, cleaning her slowly, washing the pain away until she didn’t feel like ripping her tainted skin off her bones anymore.

Something like the warmth of sunbeams passing over her skin, engulfing her in a gentle numbness, warming her skin after the rain cleaned it.

Something like earth, warm and steady under her, grounding her, supporting her.

And after the sensing, the hearing came.

She heard the soft thuds the rain made when it came down around her, or the sound a drop made when it fell into water. 

She heard the chirping of birds and the rustling of leaves in the wind.

And she smelled, the fresh, rich smell of earth, of flowers, of grass and the salt of the sea in the air. 

And she breathed, in and out in and out, ragged and broken at first, and smoother and smoother over time, until she appreciated the fresh air that filled her lungs. 

And just like that, bit by bit, she came to life again, she learned to feel, hear, and smell again.

And then finally, after minutes, seconds, days, years, she opened her eyes.

The first thing she saw was blue. It chased the red away, filling her eyes with a soft hue. 

It was the sky, she realized, wide open, like a comforting blanket.

She spent a long time staring at it, watching the sun wander over it, bright and big.

Even when the blue faded to pink, orange, and gold, (but never red) and darkened until only the white of the stars shimmered through the black. But she could still see the blue.

And she watched the sky, watched the wandering sun, and moon, and watched the sky change colors countless of times.  

Maybe she could stay here, under the sky, satisfied in simply watching it change.

Maybe…

And the days passed, the sun rose, moved, and disappeared again behind the horizon, and the moon rose, moved, and disappeared behind the horizon too.

Rinse and repeat.

Rinse and repeat.

One day, a bird flew over the sky. 

It was pretty, pitch black with kind eyes and a beak reflecting the sun.

It landed not far from her, watching her from those black eyes. It croaked once, then she watched it fly away.

Was this the afterlife? The place you went to after you died?

She didn’t believe in stuff like that. Heaven, hell, paradise… Things like that didn’t exist. 

(She knew she would go to hell for all the things she did.)

So… was this the afterlife? 

No. No, she refused to believe that. There would be Naruto and Sasuke in the afterlife. And Ino. And Tsunade-shishou.

Well, if this wasn’t the afterlife… Was she still alive, after all?

Had they captured her? Brought her back to life to torture her? To let her watch how they burned her friends` corpses?

She tried to move, to fight back, to do anything , but her limbs felt like stone.

She tried to lift her head.

Ruins. That’s what she saw when she looked at her surroundings.

Houses with broken walls, stones scattered all around. 

Dark orange rooftiles spread all over the place, thrown around like pebbles. A broken fountain, murky water swimming around in the pool.

Uprooted trees, their heavy trunks falling over the broken houses, dead leaves littering the ground.

A little shop, vases still on display in the broken window, door ripped out of the hinges and thrown away. 

Fine pottery are the words painted in big orange letters over the window. There are cracks in the stone. The letters already started fading.

An entire house fell down next to the fountain, massive white bricks gathering into a single pile. 

A hand is poking out from under the rubble. She dreads to see the body it belongs to. 

She had been here before, months ago even, when there were no leaves on the ground, and the trees had been so old that the wood crumbled away under her touch. When Plants had started to grow in the cracks, growing rampant in the ruins. When the hand under the rubble was nothing more than white bone.

She spots the barely recognizable swirl etched in the fountain’s stone.

Uzushiogakure.

Uzushio had been a beautiful village, she thought while she explored the fallen buildings. White walls, red tiles that shimmered in the sun, beautiful fountains made from white marble, small shops selling all kind of things from jewels to food to weapons. 

She eyes the rusty Kunai scattered over the ground, most likely coming from a merchant’s cart. The merchant lies a few feet further, slumped against a house’s wall. His clothes are tattered, his eyes empty. There is no pulse under her fingers, just cold skin.

 There are many corpses in Uzushio. Most of them are Ninja, with the Uzushio spiral on their Hitai-ate and on their blue flak jackets. 

She’s wearing one too.

Sometimes she sees foreign Ninja. An Iwa Nin with their brown attire or a Kiri Nin with their pointy teeth and grey jackets. The attackers didn’t even care enough to retrieve the corpses of their fallen ninja. 

These are the one who did this, she thinks. She should hate them. She can’t bring herself to care.

There are civilians, too. Men and women wearing rich, flowing clothes, full of colors and foreign patterns. Their jewels had been taken, ripped from their cold necks, wrists, ears. 

There are children, too. Some died together, curled around each other, or with their parents, clutching their clothes with dead hands. There are so many of them. They look so small.

Some have blonde hair, or black, or even blue, but most of them have flaming, red hair she has to look away from. (It wakes too many memories.)

Uzumaki red , she remembers Naruto telling her.

“Kaa-chan had red hair.”, he smiled sadly, tugging at his own yellow strands.

“I kind of wish I had it, too, y’know?”

These are all Naruto’s relatives, she thinks. All Uzumaki.

That girl over there could’ve been his cousin. That man with his stomach cut open maybe his uncle. They have the same shape of eyes. 

The houses look even worse. 

Some of them seem untouched, everything at its place, books still open on the table, clean dishes in the sink. The bed is made, sheets spread carefully over the futon. 

In others it’s not so clean and tidy. 

She finds corpses sometimes, citizens murdered brutally in their own houses. A woman and her newborn. A father and his sons. The door his kicked in, tables and chairs thrown out of the way, plates and glasses lying broken on the ground. Most shelves are empty, scrolls and books ripped out of them, the enemies stealing all they could. 

That’s why Uzushio was attacked in the first place. The art of sealing. The Uzumaki especially were famous for it.

Was it worth it? , she thinks as she looks over the corpses. Then she screams it, over the sea, as loud as she can, even if she knows no one can hear her. 

Was this worth it? 

She gathers the people of Uzushio, every man, woman and child. She lays them next to each other on a big place next to the river that flows through the village. She lays a storage scroll next to each. In it, she seals everything she might think was important to them. Their Hitai-ate. Their flak jacket. A necklace or a hairclip they wore. A delicately crafted knife. 

Sometimes she even has names.

From Uzumaki Yuna , reads a letter clutched between a woman’s fingers. She looked young, barely twenty. It looks like a mission report.

Yukimura Tenko is written on the handle of a Tanto. The man it belongs to has long white hair.

Hiobara Iroma. Yukimura Fuuka. Uzumaki Enya. Uzumaki Rema. Uzumaki Natsuki. Uzumaki, Uzumaki, Uzumaki…

 She writes the names on their scrolls. Most of the time though, she has no name for the corpses.

She is currently inspecting a small house by the river when she stops. 

It’s a beautifully crafted mirror. The frame is made of gold, and the glass is clean and spotless.

And inside, she sees… herself. 

She’s wearing a dark blue flak jacket. Like an Uzushio Nin. Her hands are gloved, and her skin is pale. There is a deep gash in her jacket on the right side, as if someone had slid their Kunai deep through it. But there is no wound, not even a scar. Just smooth skin. 

There is an Uzushio Hitai-ate wrapped around her right biceps. The swirl looks different from the Konoha leaf.

And her face…

Her eyes are still green and sharp, blinking at her from the mirror. Her lips are still pale like the last time she saw them, her forehead still unusually big.

And her hair is red. Blood red.

Forever, I will haunt you.

In your dreams, in your steps, in your sight, while you breathe, while you bleed, while you live, 

I will haunt you.

Forever.

Red fills her vision, chasing all other colors away until everything she sees is red. 

It clings at her hands, is splattered over the bathroom walls, runs down the floor in rivers.

Forever.

Blood seeps out of wounds, stomachs, throats, wrists. 

Forever.

Red matters blonde hair, red swirls to life in those hateful eyes, red paints the sky, red fills the moon until it stares down at her.

Forever, it says. You didn’t forget, didn’t you?

A sly, evil smile. You’ll never be free again.

She snaps. 

The mirror shatters under her fist, the glass exploding and the shards flying out.

Pain flares in her knuckles. She ignores it.

She stumbles outside, out of the bathroom, out of the house, and further, and further away, away from her foreign reflection. Blood clings to her knuckles. She plunges her fist in the rives and scratches, and scratches, but it won’t go off, it won’t go away.

She closes her eyes, tries to blend it out. It doesn’t help, it’s still there.

Her eyes snap open again, desperate to see something, something other than red, anything -

Blue.

The sky is blue. 

There are no clouds today. Just the endless, wide blue.

Without realizing it, she calms. Her breathes even. Her heart slows down. Without looking down, she raises a hand and heals her bruised knuckles. The aching stops. When she looks down, cautiously, the blood had disappeared. 

She breaths out slowly. 

She knew that Uzushio had been small, but this? This was about a tenth of Konoha’s population, she thinks as she overlooks the countless bodies laid down before her.

It was hard to think that the outcome of the third shinobi war had been heavily influenced by the fall of this village.

Then again, she saw all the seals etched carefully in the marble stones and white walls. She saw the giant complicated constructs drawn over the Uzukage tower and the former hospital.

In the fourth war she and Naruto had drawn the exact same patterns so many times that she could recognize them everywhere.

Those seals were the finest art of Uzushio, of the Uzumaki Clan, and their greatest weapon. Sakura could do seals that exploded on touch, that could seal a person’s chakra away or freeze it completely, stasis seals that warped the victim’s nerve system, or cut off the oxygen in their blood, seals that stored huge amounts of chakra, storage seals that could hold food for years without it going bad, and that was just a few of the possibilities sealing provided. 

And the seals of Uzushiogakure? Those were at least ten times better.

And they had to pay for it , she thought as she looked over the dozens and dozens of bodies laid out in front of her.

An entire village, civilians and shinobi alike, murdered for their knowledge.

After they had failed to seal Kaguya in the fourth war, the shinobi alliance had decided to retreat.

Many had died, including the Raikage, and the alliance was left without a leader.

They had been so close. 

Sasuke, Naruto, Kakashi, herself and Obito battling the ancient goddess. 

Obito had been close to dying himself. With the extraction of the Juubi and the Rinne tensei it was only a matter of time until his life energy would give out. 

Sakura herself had had a hard time keeping him alive. Kakashi had multiple wounds and his Sharingan was gone. Only Naruto and Sasuke still had been in a halfway good shape. 

The battle was going well so far, by the little she could see. 

But Kaguya seemed more annoyed than scared, playing with both of them as if they were annoying flies. 

Then she snapped.

“You will no longer distract me from my goal. I am done fooling around.” , she said. 

It only got worse from there. Naruto and Sasuke were struggling to keep up, even with Obito and Kakashi’s help. 

And then, Sasuke died. 

Without Indra’s Ying chakra the sage had given him, it was impossible to seal Kaguya. 

They fled.

To Earth country at first, the mountains protecting them from the Zetsu clones for a short period of time. It worked for a month, then black Zetsu had showed up in the middle of the Kage tower and slit the Tsuchikage’s niece’s throat.

He had Sasuke’s eyes.

He wreaked havoc, killing a few other important personalities before he disappeared again. 

Zetsu clones came next, disguising themselves as civilians and killing everything and everyone they could reach. Iwagakure’s population was decimated before they could stop them. 

They moved to Suna after that, evacuating the civilians to prevent a slaughter. They had nothing to do with the war, after all. 

It didn’t help. They were ambushed on their way to a safe bunker. No one survived.

Naruto and Sakura threw themselves into the sealing arts, and after a month, they were able to erect a barrier able to block out Kaguya and the Zetsu. Suna became their base, from where they strategized and discussed their plans of action. 

Huge shinobi troops were sent out to eliminate the Zetsu, strategically planned to be the most efficient they could be.

Their numbers sunk daily, while the Zetsu clones’ number never seemed to dwindle. For every clone they killed, two more took his place.

After nearly a year of strategically eliminating the clones, Kaguya attacked Sunagakure. The Kazekage died to make their escape possible. 

They fled to Uzushio next.

When they came there, they hadn’t had time to bury the bodies properly, too busy keeping themselves alive than taking care of the dead.

But she had seen the way Naruto’s gaze lingered on his dad relative’s bones, the blue vests hanging of their arms and ribcages and the familiar swirl marking their foreheads.

She would have never guessed that one day she’d end up being one of them.

She still wasn’t sure how this had happened. 

She definitely died, that she was certain of. Her last memories had been a hand ripping past her ribs to enclose her heart, and then, darkness. 

And the first thing after had been the sky of Uzushio. 

She wondered how long she’d stared at it, after waking up. Weeks, months, maybe?

The bodies looked relatively intact, far from the pile of bones she saw the first time around.

Uzushio’s destruction had to be at least a month away, meaning that Sakura had to be in the middle of the third shinobi war right now. 

She looked at the countless bodies she had piled up, dead eyes staring back. 

(Green eyes swept over hundreds of bodies, placed on tables, their variously colored flak jackets ripped and torn apart.

Some looked like they were sleeping, eyes closed and bodies unmarred, while others fared far worse, missing body parts or faces mutilated to be nearly unrecognizable. 

“How many?”, she asked, voice numb.

The woman beside her averted her eyes. “Nearly a thousand.”

She hummed in agreement, the sound echoing in the empty morgue. 

She lost count of the time she had stood here, catalogizing the bodies of the fallen Shinobi. 

They needed to be identified and their names to be noted down. Before the war, they would have stored the body into a black scroll, made for this specific purpose, but they couldn’t afford the risk of Kaguya using their DNA to revive them with Edo Tensei. 

It had been hard, to see the bodies of Shinobi and Kunoichi you talked, laughed, and ate together with, sometimes just hours before, laid out here for her to look over.

Her eyes swept over the motionless face of the Iwa Kunoichi that lent her a soldier pill a week earlier, over to the young Kiri Nin that asked her out nearly a year ago. He looked far too young to be here. 

She recognized others, too. A Konoha Chuunin, well into her thirties, with deep wrinkles around her eyes. She had two sons, twins. They liked to help out at the hospital. She wondered if they would still come now that their mother was dead.

A brother and a sister, both Chuunin from Konoha, with long, dark brown hair typical of the Hyuuga Clan. Their empty white eyes stared up at the ceiling, their foreheads clean of the cage bord seal still marking them just days ago. The sister had always dreamed of starting a family on their own and having children. The brother had a boyfriend, an Anbu operative. He did not know about his lover’s death yet. 

The pink-haired woman breathed in and out deeply. The first time she had to do this she had mourned deeply over every fallen Shinobi, dreading having to inform their families and friends. 

She still did now, but after years of war and exposure to death, her feelings were numbed. 

She stripped her gloves on. 

“Let’s start, Shizune. We don’t have much time.”)

She gently lifted a man’s forehead protector from his head. His read hair was sticky with dirt and rain. His skin was too pale, a stark contrast to his fiery red hair. 

(She avoided looking at it.)

Gloved hands separated the metal plate from the cloth, searching for the numbers engraved at the back: The Ninja registration number.

She noted it down carefully and replaced the forehead protector over the man’s head.

One down, dozens more to go.

Haruno Sakura died with a snarl on her lips and a hand ripping her heart out of her body. It didn’t matter for her. She was the last one left. There was no reason for her to live on anyways.

Her body was dropped, carelessly, and she fell to the ground like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Sakura could feel her life slowly fading away, like the blood seeping out of her chest.

Her eyes caught a glimpse of yellow. 

Naruto was sprawled out right next to her, his head facing to the side. His mop of messy blonde hair dirtied with mud and blood. 

Sakura tried to lift her hand, to touch him, but it won’t move, her limbs feeling far too heavy.

Wait for me , she wanted to say, don’t go without me.

I’ll see you again soon. Just wait for me.

When she woke up, she expected to see blue eyes smiling down on her, maybe even familiar black ones, and she would have been happy to see her team again, her two idiots, even when they were all dead and their world was burning.

Instead, she woke up in an unfamiliar body, in a destroyed village that was not hers, and in a timeline that she had no idea how she even got in.

Was this some kind of gift? A second chance? A chance to prevent the future?

She wondered why she was still alive, breathing and moving, when others had a much better chance to change anything than her. Naruto should have come back, or Obito, or maybe even Sasuke.

(Okay, maybe not Sasuke.)

Time-travel sounded too absurd to say it out loud, it was impossible, should be impossible, but here she was, alive and breathing, in the middle a war that should have ended more than fifteen years ago.

Why am I here? , she wanted to scream, to shout out at the sky. 

Why couldn’t you just let me die?

She wanted to cry, to sob, to break down and strong arms to hold her, to promise her everything would be alright. 

She didn’t.

Instead, she walked amongst bodies, people that would have been her blood relatives, in a dead village.

The sun was setting.

The bright blue of the sky was already starting to darken into black, and the outline of the moon could be seen over the clouds.

It had been nearly a day, a day of dragging corpses out of their destroyed houses and lining them up one next to each other, displayed like wares, and noting down their data. 

A day after she woke up, a day full of seeing red hair everywhere, together with the blue of Uzushio flak jackets and the swirl etched onto their hitai ate.

A day had passed, and she was tired .

Tired of looking at a corpse and averting her gaze because she couldn’t stand the red spilling from their head over their faces, backs, shoulders. 

Tired of seeing Naruto’s face everywhere she went, tired of looking at children’s bodies and wondering how old they were, if they had deserved their death, and asking herself what they would have been had Uzushio not been destroyed.

In the war she hadn’t slept much. With Tsunade occupied with her duties as the Hokage, the leading of Konoha’s medical division fell upon her shoulders. Shizune helped, but she was Tsunade’s advisor and couldn’t spare much time away from her. 

Injured Sinobi came to the hospital almost constantly by that point, and good medic-nin were a rarity. After a few months she was suffering almost constant chakra and physical exhaustion. Sleep was a luxury she couldn’t afford, not with all the people that counted on her. She could go weeks without sleep, and had to, sometimes.

But now, her limbs felt numb, and her eyes felt incredibly heavy. 

Maybe, maybe she could rest, just for a bit. She was safe here, there was no one to guard against.

Just a few minutes and then she would continue.

Just a bit…

Sakura watched her teammate as he trudged through the ruins.

His eyes looked heavy with grief and exhaustion, far from the happy bright blue she remembered from their Genin days.

Sakura couldn’t blame him. She too felt an indescribable sadness watching the ruins of what was once Uzushiogakure. 

The white marble walls still looked beautiful, with their intricate seal patterns, shining in the sun, even when they lied broken and tattered on the ground. 

Uzushio must have been a truly beautiful place, the medic thought.

A sharp intake let her turn around. Naruto stared at the ruins of a small house with a grief-struck expression.

“Naruto?”, Sakura walked up to him. Under the rubble, barely visible under the stones, lied a skeleton. It wasn’t the first one they saw, but the size made Sakura gulp. 

The skeleton was far, far too small for an adult. No, these were the remains of a child, barely ten years old, with civilian clothes.

One hand seemed to stretch out to them, calling for help that would never come. 

“Naruto…”, she tried to comfort her teammate.

Naruto shrugged her off, shoulders tense. “It’s a child, Sakura! A child!”, he hissed.

Sakura’s eyes darkened. She gripped her friend’s arm tightly. 

“I know.”, she said. 

“It’s a child”, Naruto said again, eyes still fixed on the skeleton. “A civilian child . They weren’t a Shinobi. They didn’t fight in the war. And still-“

Naruto snarled, angry and frustrated. He breathed in harshly. When he spoke again, his voice was weak, and vulnerable. “They didn’t deserve this. None of them deserved this.”

Sakura carefully drew Naruto into an embrace. He didn’t complain when Sakura closed her arms around him, even when he didn’t. He rested his forehead on his friend’s shoulder.

“Why didn’t Konoha do anything?”, he asked quietly.

“Uzushio was their sister village. They should have buried them, they should have made sure they wouldn’t get forgotten .”

Sakura didn’t answer. Naruto needed someone to rant to now. 

But she hated it, too. She had seen the devastated houses, books filled with centuries of knowledge ripped out of their shelves, family heirlooms and precious gold and jewels taken right of their owner’s corpses. The medic wondered how much of it was taken by Konoha.

She would trust Danzo to have taken the chance to erase Uzushio out of existence.

The next day, Naruto and Sakura buried the citizens of Uzushio. They couldn’t risk anyone finding DNA or resurrect Edo Tensei corpses with, so they had to burn them. 

They burned the remains of the attackers too, even when Sakura hated the thought of Uzushio’s destroyers having the same burial.

But at this point, she didn’t even care anymore. They were dead. It didn’t matter anyways.

The next day, she made sure to check the Kiri and Iwa nin’s tongues. 

Just to make sure. 

An hour later, she stormed out of Uzushio and punched the ground hard enough to form a crater worthy of a Bijuudama.

At least fifty of them had a black seal tattooed on the back of their tongues. 

She made sure to seal their corpses away, storing them as evidence. If she ever met the Hokage, the two of them would talk .

Sakura stared down at the remains of what had been two small children.

They were huddled together, grasping each other’s hands. 

They weren’t the only ones. 

The medic counted nine Uzushio children, nine kids, nine Uzumakis that made it this far, that fled the war and the fights, only to die of hunger and thirst, enclosed in their city’s bunker.

How long had they waited here, for everything to end, for their parents to open the doors and get them out? How long had they hoped and waited for help? 

Sakura was shaking. She breathed in and out deeply. In and out. In and out.

They wouldn’t be forgotten. She would make sure of it. 

They will remember every one of them.

Her eyes fly open.

The Bunkers…

How could she have forgotten the bunkers.

She had to save them, she had to save them.

Please , she begged when she ran over the ruins of Uzushio, jumped over the rubble and broken tiles.

Please let them still be alive.

The bunkers were the last line of defense against potential attackers. At the downfall of Uzushio, the children and civilians were told to go hide in them, and to wait for the worst to pass. There were three of them, one right under the Uzukage monument, one on a tiny island in the sea of Uzushio and the last one carved in the cliffs behind the city, the ones looming over the sea. 

The first two had been destroyed or forced open in the attack. To open them, you needed Uzumaki blood, and Kiri and Iwa had plenty of that at hand. 

However, they never knew more than two existed. 

The last one, the one she was desperately running to, went overlooked by the Ninja. 

Only for the children inside to die of hunger and thirst.

At least, in her old timeline.

But not here.

Not in this life , she promised herself, not while I can prevent it.

There.

Right there, behind the towering cliffs, far, far behind Uzushio in the stone. The faint outlines of a door.

She pressed her palms deep into the cold stone, searching for the faintest bump, the slight outline of the seal she knew was there.

Finally, her fingertips brushed against a line carved in the black stone. 

A circle, a small Kanji, a wavy line.

This it. The seal to open the bunker. 

With shaky hands, she drew a Kunai and dragged it over her arm in a clear stroke, leaving a red line where blood bubbled to the surface.

Uzumaki blood.

She pressed her arm over the seal, and watched the red liquid run into the cracks and carved lines, until she could see the entire seal clearly.

The lines, circles and Kanji seemed to be drawn like the flow of water, everything connecting and grasping into each other. She could see connections and mechanisms she had never seen before, intricate seals and patterns that had never made sense to her.

“I don’t understand how you are so good at this”, Sakura laughed. Seals that only seemed like undescribable gibberish could be analyzed and taken apart by Naruto in seconds. Lines and Kanji that seemed like children’s scribbles made sense in the blonde’s eyes. Sakura remembered when they were both in the academy, and Naruto struggled to memorize different Kanji. She had belittled him, calling him an Idiot and a dead last.
She could only shake her head at her former self.

Naruto smiled, his fingers tracing the intricate patterns gently. “I guess it’s in my blood.”

Her eyes jumped over the patterns, revealing the underlying mechanisms more and more. The lines grasped into each other, complementing pictures and symbols. The Kanji seemed to glow under her bloodied touch, slowly shifting and changing until they formed an indescribable picture. And suddenly- it all made sense. 

The runes glowed, bright blue, like the waves of the ocean, and slowly the stone crumbled under her hands.

She inhales. She exhales. And she steps into the darkness.

Chapter Text

When Uzushio was attacked, Hitoka was scared. 

It had been a normal day. It should have been a normal day .

Uzushiogakure was still recovering from the losses of the third shinobi war. She could see it in the tired faces of Nakami-san and Teruchi-san, the old couple with the Ramen shop. She could see in in the new wrinkles on Tatami-sensei’s face. She could see it in the nervousness of the people of Uzushio. 

But they were recovering. Resources and supplies were no longer scarce and meager like old times. Children ran through the streets, chasing each other without a care in the world. The Uzukage visited the streets again, greeting old friends and colleagues and chatting with the common people. Uzushio was mending its wounds.

It all came crashing down when a merchant in plain clothes turned without warning and pushed a Kunai through the Uzukages’ back. Hitoka remembered everything crystal clear. The widening of his blue eyes, the surprise, the betrayal. The shock of the civilians when blood poured down his white robes. The triumph on the merchants’ face when the Uzukage fell.

And then- and then chaos broke out. Before the people could even comprehend what happened, enemy nin invaded Uzushio from all directions. The seal, the seal placed over Uzushio by Uzumaki Mito herself, had been broken. 

Enemy nin clad in brown and blue flooded the streets from all directions, poured from the roofs of houses, from the inside of buildings. People Hitoka had seen herself, had talked to, had trusted turned out to be well-placed spies against her village. 

It all happened too fast, too well-planned.

She turned and ran, away from the slaughter, away from the falling corpses and foreign hitai ate, not caring where she went, but she wanted it to stop .

She heard voices, talking to her, but she felt as if she was underwater.

A cold hand slapped her. She looked up and stared into familiar blue eyes. 

“Tatami-sensei”, she breathed out, relieved tears building up in her eyes.

“Pull yourself together”, her sensei snarled, blood spilling onto her teeth from a gash over her mouth. “Hitoka.”, she said, grasping her pupil’s shoulders tightly. Her eyes bore into hers, grounding her to reality.

“You are going to go out there and behave like the damn Shinobi that you are. Find Fuki and Hidao. I want you to take as many civilians as you can and bring them to the bunkers.”

The bunkers. Hitoka remembered them. Under the Uzukage tower, on Tsuruki Island and under the ash cliffs. 

If Uzushio will ever get attacked, it is the priority of the Genin to evacuate the children and civilians of the village to the bunkers and wait there for further instructions.

That’s what it said in the textbooks. Hitoka remembered. 

“Hai sensei!”, she nodded, steeling herself. She was a proud chuunin od Uzushiogakure. She would not fail.

Tatami-sensei’s eyes softened. She pulled Hitoka into a tight embrace. Her voice sounded choked.

“I love you. I’m proud of you. Of all three of you. Never forget that, okay Hitoka?”

Hitoka nodded against her sensei’s shoulders. “I love you too, sensei.”

Tatami-sensei pulled away and looked into her face. She seemed to search for something, or maybe she seemed to memorize it. She clasped Hitoka’s shoulders, her blue eyes sharpening, becoming the eyes of a shinobi.

“Go.”, she said, her voice commanding. “And don’t look back.”

And Hitoka didn’t. 

(it would be the last thing Tatami-sensei ever said to her.)

She ducked out of the alley, running and running until the howling of the wind blocked out the anguished cries of ally and enemy both. She ignored the corpses, willed herself not to look at them to closely. It didn’t matter. She didn’t recognize any of them.

( Natsuki-nee. Fuyaki. Takeushi. Sarumaru. Ayaki-senpai. Haru-nii-san. Yoka-baa-chan. Jiren-oji-san .)

Blood flooded the streets like a thick red river, her feet threatened to slip. She searched through alleys and streets, expanding her senses, searching for familiar features. 

There.

She willed her legs to go faster, move quicker, until she saw a familiar blonde flash of hair. Hidao, her teammate, facing off against a much bigger, and much, much stronger looking Iwa Shinobi. Hitoka could tell that the latter was not taking the fight seriously, toying with the chuunin. The girl moved without thinking, and before she knew it, the Shinobi was on the ground, a Kunai sticking out of his neck. 

Hidao looked sick. His left arm bent at a weird angle and his flak jacket was covered in blood.

“Thanks, man” he said, trying to catch his breath as his limbs trembled in exhaustion and fear.

“No problem..”, Hitok said, steadying her teammate and checking his arm in concern.

Hitoka averted her eyes from the fallen enemy. Don’tthinkaboutitdon’tthinkaboutitdon’tthinkaboutit

She gulped. “Tatami-sensei told me to move the civilians to the bunkers.” Her voice sounded too high for her ears.

Hidao nodded, stepping over the dead man. “I’ll go find Fuki. You go to the ash cliffs and I’ll go under the Uzukage tower.”, he said, his light green eyes finding hers. 

Hitoka swallowed. Her eyes burned with unshed tears. “Okay”, she said. “See you.”

And with a nod, they separated. I’ll see him again , she told herself. I will .

(by the time she reached the bunker, Hideo and Fuki were already dead.)

Hitoka flew through the city, searching for survivors. 

A little girl crying over her mother’s body. Two boys lying in a bed in their home, huddled under the covers. A dying father pushing his infant daughter into her arms. A toddler running through the streets, crying and screaming. 

She barely registered the way to the bunker. She remembered cold steel in her hand, foreign hitai ates, fights, and, in the end, victory. She did not look at the people she killed. Everything felt foggy in her head. She remembered little hands clinging to hers, and she remembered comforting words coming out of her mouth. She remembered screams, blood and tears. She remembered corpses and chaos. 

But only when she passed stone walls and the seal came to life behind her, engulfing her in darkness, did she allow herself to cry.

Days passed, still no signs of change. 

The children at least had calmed down. They seemed to know that something was going on, but they didn’t ask questions. Looking back, Hitoka didn’t know how she had made it through the weeks in the dak without breaking down. And, if she would have been alone, she probably would have gone insane. But the kids needed her. For them, she had to be strong. 

The days became weeks and the supplies were dwindling, slowly but surely. 

At this point Hitoka didn’t see the point of fighting for survival. 

(she didn’t pick up on a single chakra signature outside these walls.)

No one would come for them. 

She might have tried to use Jutsus, chakra, seals, anything , to break out of the bunker, but chakra was energy and energy could not be afforded to waste.

(And even if it could, Hitoka didn’t know if she wanted to see what was behind that door.)

Maybe it was better if they all died in here. The last Uzumakis, and they would die shamefully, trapped in the dark. Hitoka always thought she would die in combat, sacrificing herself for her friends maybe, but now she would perish in a lonely cave, miles and miles away from any civilization.

Hitoka lost count of time after a while. It was hard, trapped completely in the dark, without a source of light or a ray of hope that she would ever make it out of here. 

But even when Hitoka had given up, the kids didn’t. Hitoka didn’t have the heart to tell them that no one would be coming for them.

“Toka-nee, are you a shinobi?”, Yume asked.

Hitoka smiled, holding the hand of the tiny girl. 

“Yeah. I’m a Chuunin now.”

“That’s so cool! When I’m older, I want to be a chuunin too!”

A silent tear rolled down Hitoka’s cheek. 

“I bet you will.”

“Onee-chan, when are they coming back?”

“…soon.”

“When we get out of here, do you wanna go eat ramen with us?”, The mention of ramen made the boy’s stomach growl loudly.

“of course, Masaru. I’ll buy you all the ramen you want.”

“No one’s coming.”

It wasn’t a question. 

“No.”

Hitoka pulled Reo into a hug. She could feel his ribs against her skin.

It was quiet. 

That was unusual.

The kids were asleep.

Hitoka didn’t know if they were waking up.

Her head felt heavy.

She was thirsty.

And hungry.

So, so hungry.

It was cold.

Had it always been cold?

Hitoka was tired.

She wanted to sleep.

“Don’t give up, Hitoka!”

Fuki watched her form the shorelines, her naked toes digging into the sand. 

“It’s not that hard! Just concentrate!”

Hitoka waved her arms, her control thinning.

“shut. Up.”, she growled, trying to keep her control over her chakra. 

Hideo was watching her, just as soaked as her, but grinning like an idiot. She was the last of them to master the water walking technique.

The sea was agitated, the wind howling in her ears and the waves shattering her control over and over.

Hitoka looked helplessly at her sensei, standing effortlessly over the waves. Tatami-sensei shrugged. 

“At this point, it’s just about practice. I can’t help you.”

Hitoka pouted and focused on the water beneath her feet. The moment she got used to the water, another wave came and her balance shifted. She couldn’t keep her chakra steady. The waves just kept coming and coming, getting bigger and bigger. 

She slipped, her feet sinking into the water. 

“No! Don’t go!”

Fuki?

“Don’t come here!”

Hideo?

“Don’t give up, Hitoka!”

Tatami-sensei…

Hitoka fought and fought but the water was cold and numbing, and the surface seemed so. Far away…

The darkness seemed to be pulling her, slowly, sucking at her legs and hindering her movements. The light disappeared bit by bit and the black nothingness pulled her in.

“Hold on! Just a little!”

I can’t. I can’t…

“Please fight for a little longer!”

Darkness creeped up in her vision. Her limbs stopped moving. Her eyes closed.

I’m sorry. Hideo. Fuki. Tatami-sensei.

I can’t fight anymore.

“Wake up!”

A hand grasped hers. Pulling her up, up, up. The darkness faded, replaced by light. She could see the sky. 

She broke the surface.

Hitoka’s eyes opened.

( “See? I told you, you could do it!”

Hitoka stood proudly atop the water, her control not wavering even a little bit.

“I’m proud of you, Hitoka.”)

Chapter Text

“So you don’t remember anything?”

She looked at the girl in front of her. Barely a teenager, but already wearing the blue chuunin flak jacket. Her red hair was pulled into a high ponytail and her yellow, falcon-like eyes reflected the campfire. Her cheeks were hollowed and her clothes hung from her frame like an oversized blanket. The older woman could almost see her younger reflection in the girl, red dress, pink long hair and spite twinkling in her eyes. 

But Hitoka was nothing like her younger self, and most likely never would be. Her face was tired and sunken in, her hands wearing callouses and scars from years of training. This girl was not a genin fresh out of the academy, she was a trained shinobi that had survived war.

“Not really. I do have knowledge, but no memory of getting it.”

That was as true as it would get. She didn’t know how she came here, fifteen years in the past, she didn’t know who she was before she died, or who she should have been as a Ninja of Uzushiogakure. Her body was the same, green eyes, and big forehead, only her hair was a vivid blood red. Like the girl in front if her. 

She wondered who she had been before she died.

“Are there… others?”

She looked up and met the girl’s gaze. Her eyes looked too hopeful. She wanted to lie to her, tell her everything was alright, Uzushio won the assault. 

She didn’t.

“No. We’re… we’re the only ones left.”

“what’s your name?”

She flinched. 

“… Sakura.”

Haruno Uzumaki Sakura. She looked at the sky, the sea, the earth. You belong here , they seemed to say. This is home . 

Sakura didn’t know if she ever could go back, to a village without the calming sound of the waves against the shore, with leaves obscuring the blue sky. She didn’t know if she wanted to. 

On the second day, the children woke up. They had the energy of a grown man and ate like two. “Sakura-nee!”, they called her, without a care in the world, too young to understand the horrors happening around them. They ran through alleyways red with blood, without knowing who had lied there just days before. And even if they did, they never mentioned it. 

Sometimes Sakura saw Masaru stare at a destroyed house or a broken fountain, lost in thought, but he never said anything and Sakura never asked.

Hitoka started helping her move the bodies. It was hard on her, and Sakura could see it. 

She recognized every single one of them.

(“That’s Uzumaki Natsuki. She is- was an Anbu operative working for the Uzukage. Her house is right around the corner.”

“I recognize him. Haibara Fuyaki, a teacher at the academy.”

“Saito Takeuchi. A chuunin working at the mission desk.”

“Uzumaki Sarumaru. A Jonin-sensei.”

“Uzumaki Ayaki. A genin in my age group.”

“Tsumori Haru. A cousin of mine. He wanted to enter Anbu.”

“Uzumaki Yoka.”

“Nao Jiren.”

“Haibara Kai.”

“Uzumaki Chisato.”)

Hitoka helped her make a scroll for every single one of them, sealing their belongings and personal information inside. They didn’t include important clan scrolls or heirlooms. Most of them had been taken anyways.

-

The proper burial for a citizen from Uzushiogakure was to burn the bodies and scatter the ashes from the ash cliffs in the sea of Uzushio. Sakura wondered if the founders of the city had known about the edo tensei and the importance of DNA residue, or if it was just a coincidence.

At dawn, Sakura, Hitoka and the kids scattered the ashes of the citizens of Uzushiogakure into the sea. The wind was blowing, and the waves swallowed the black ashes brought to them by the gusts. 

No one said anything. Hitoka was crying, silent tears rolling down her cheeks. And if Sakura was too, well, only the wind and the sea were her witnesses.

They brought the scrolls to the Uzukage tower. Surprisingly enough, it was the only building remotely intact. Hiroka led them underground, past giant stonewalls and doors with intricate seals. In here, everything was untouched as if the fall of Uzushio never happened. Rows upon rows of scrolls, books and relics, aligned neatly next to each other with a fine layer of dust. 

“Only the Uzukage or the royal family had access to this.”, Hitoka told her. “But I don’t think anyone would mind now.”

They brought the scrolls into the deepest corner of the underground chambers, aligned them on rows and rows of deep red shelves. There were too many. Most scrolls were painted with the red Uzumaki spiral. Some had a turquoise, flower resembling shape. 

(“It’s the Tsumori clan symbol.”, Hitoka said. They were watching the kids play along the shorelines. Yume and Kimiya were chasing each other around in circles, their laughter ringing through the air. Kimiyas grey-blue hair resembled his sister’s, but Yumes hair left side of her hair was red. 

“Their father was the clan head’s advisor and close friend, while their mother was an Uzumaki.”)

There were more symbols, a purple feather, a green eye and two golden swords, but they were few and far between, the different colors peeking out underneath the red. Still, each of these clans was at least as big as one of the three big clans in Konoha. Sakura wondered what they had been like.

They took everything sealed away under the Hokage tower with them, old dusty scrolls the size and length of a full grown man, beautifully crafted weapons that seemed to glow from the inside out, strange artifacts that they both didn’t know the use of, tons of intricate sealing tags, jewelry decorated with ancient seals, and rooms full of other scrolls and mysterious items. The woman almost felt guilty shoving scrolls upon scrolls into a storage seal, but no one would be ever using them again, and she didn’t want enemies to find the Uzushio secrets.

Once they were done, the rooms felt unsettlingly empty.

“Let’s go.”, said Hitoka.

“…Yeah”

Well, Sakura couldn’t say that life became easier , but it became… bearable . The kids helped a lot, of course. Yume was bright, Kimiya was loyal, Reo was… angry, Yutsumu was quiet but gentle, Yasuro and Itsumi were full of energy, Chia was cute, Masaru was caring and Hitoka was probably the only one keeping them all together. It wasn’t much, but it helped. And they helped each other. 

Word of Uzushios demise must have reached the outside world by now, but whether because of guilt, fear or something else entirely, no one ever stepped foot on Uzushios lands. Sakura knew that Uzushio was destroyed when she herself had barely been born, still far too young to comprehend the wiping out of an entire village. The elemental nations had almost stood on the edge of another war, but the Hokage knew that they would lose. Iwa and Kiri were already a force to be reckoned with, and the Raikage wasn’t really friendly towards Konoha either. Suna was technicaly an ally, but they were still bitter about their heavy losses in the war, and without Uzushio’s support, Konoha was likely to be razed to the ground. Not wanting to upset the brittle peace, the Hokage chose to do nothing. It must have been a difficult decision to make.

Sakura knew that she had to leave Uzushio behind sooner or later. Someone was bound to check on the state of the fallen village , and she’d rather be out of the ruins by then. So soon after the attack, it was best for her group to lay low. 

(Even if it was painful to leave the city after it had given her so much.)

Besides that, their supplies were dwindling down, and the ruins of their home was hardly the place to raise a gaggle of children and toddlers. Hitoka was the only Ninja besides Sakura, the others having barely started the academy. Making money for a living would be hard, but Sakura has been through harder. 

So, after a month had passed, before anyone could realize that there was still life in Uzushio, as small as it was, Sakura and the Uzumaki children left Uzushiogakure.

Sakura couldn’t help looking back once they passed the city gates. The stone pillars were cracked and the red paint was flaking off, but the gate still stood proud over the ghost of a city. 

I’ll come back , Sakura promised. And deep down she knew that Uzushio listened.

“Sakura-nee!”, the woman turned around. The last Uzumaki children were waiting for her. Hitokas eyes were tired but filled with mirth. Yume and Kimiya were waving over to her, giggling. Reo was holding Chia and Yutsumu was frowning impatiently. Yasuro and Itsumi were already running forward, followed by Masaru. Smiling for the first time in a long while, Sakura followed them into the woods. 

And this time, she didn’t look back.

Keeping care of nine energetic children was harder than Sakura thought. Hitoka was the oldest of them, and also the only fully trained Shinobi, even if she was already a Chuunin at only twelve.

Masaru was the second oldest with eight years. He was calmer than the rest of his family and constantly busy with keeping his more… rambunctious cousins in check. 

After him came Reo. He was maybe the angriest six year old child that Sakura had ever seen. He was loud and rude and mean, but Sakura knew that he cared about his family. Somewhere deep deep deep down. 

Yume and Kimiya were five and one years old respectively. They were siblings, although only half-Uzumaki. Yume was a kind and sweet girl, while Kimiya was shy and clung to his sister most of the time. The twins Itsumin and Yasuro, both four years old, reminded her of Naruto so much that it hurt looking at them sometimes. They were loud and boisterous, running headfirst into danger without thinking and with the attention span of a squirrel.

Yutsumu, three years old, was the quietest member of the group. With his pitch black hair, he stood out from the Uzumaki red, though he insisted he was also an Uzumaki.

Chia was the youngest one, barely one year old. Sometimes Sakura worried she would hurt a being as fragile as her without meaning to, even if she had assisted more births than she could count back in her old life. Chia looked at her with so much wonder and curiosity, unknowing of all the things Sakura had seen and done. The woman doesn’t know if that was a good or a bad thing.

Travelling with a group of children that were so blatantly Uzumaki that you could might as well scream in into people’s faces was obviously too suspicious and dangerous so soon after the fall, so they had to wear disguises. Sakura and Hitoka were the only ones who could do a henge, so hair dye had to do for the younger ones. Soon all of the children were spouting muted black and brown hair instead of the eye catching red.

Sakura didn’t really know what her goal was when they left Uzushio. There were so many things she needed to take care of that it hurt just thinking about it. But for once, she thought while she watched the kids chase each other along the road, she thought she was allowed to let herself live a little. And just like that, she found herself with nine hyperactive Uzumaki children travelling through the land of hot water. 

“Sakura-nee! Teach us Ninja stuff!” 

Sakura couldn’t hold back a smile as she looked down on Yasuro and Itsumin. The twins were so full of energy that even she had trouble keeping up with them sometimes. Since they had found out she was a Shinobi, Sakura had to deal with them begging her to train them from dusk till dawn. Instead of being annoyed though, she thought their antics were adorable. 

“Hm.”, Sakura pretended to consider. “Why would I do that? I’m not getting anything in return, am I?”, she smirked.

Yasuro’s small face constricted into a pout. “That’s not fair, dattebayo!”

Sakura had to suppress a twitch at the familiar verbal tic. It had been quite a shock hearing it for the first time after so long. She guessed it really did run in the family.

Itsumin butted in before Sakura could finish that particular train of thought.

“We can show you our seals! Ori-sensei said we’re pro-dee-gees!”

Sakura seriously doubted the two could show her seals she hadn’t personally toroughly dismantled before, but she chose to indulge the two a little. 

“Alright”, she grinned. “If you can show me a seal I don’t know, I’ll teach you a super cool Jutsu, okay?” 

The two boys cheered, immediately running off and sticking their heads together, furiously whispering. In the near future, Sakura would regret ever underestimating an Uzumaki’s creative thinking, even more an Uzumaki who saw her as a challenge .

But that was in the future, and right now Sakura was blissfully unaware of the chaos she had unleashed with these two. 

“Nee-san!”, she turned around and saw Masaru stretching his arms out. “Up!”

She smiled and lifted the young boy on her hip. All of the Uzumaki children had taken to call her Nee-san or a version of that honorific sooner or later, and Sakura didn’t really mind, even if the prospect of being seen as a responsible older figure by a bunch of children that depended on her scared her slightly. 

(However, she would be lying if she said she didn’t see them already as her family.)

“Nee-chan, look!” Sakura was interrupted in the midst of skinning a rabbit by two familiar voices. While they packed enough supplies, it was still better to hunt in the surrounding woods for fresh food. 

The woman looked up and was met with two pairs of amber eyes that were twinkling with mirth. Itsumi was wagging a parchment of paper in her face. “We’re done!”

Curiously Sakura took the paper. On it was drawn… an intelligible mess of scribbles. It looked like a blind dog had somehow taken a pencil and drawn on (more like stabbed) the paper in random places. There was no sense of structure or even the outline of characters, it just looked like a giant mess of lines and circles. However, there was the unmistakable thrum of chakra woven into the lines, telling her that this mess was in fact a seal, and it was, in fact, working.

But for the life of God Sakura couldn’t figure out a single component of that seal.

“Congratulations”, she said dumbfounded, handing them their seal back. “I have no idea what that is even supposed to be.”

The twins laughed in triumph, shouting and pumping their fists. “Come, we’ll show you!”, they dragged her along to an empty clearing and promptly planted the ground. 

Before Sakura could say anything at all, how it wasn’t safe to test out random seals just like that and how it was better not to draw any attention on themselves in case it was an explosion tag, there was a puff of smoke and the earth the seal was placed on just… disappeared. There was a perfectly circular crater where the seal had been.
Sakura had to stare at it for a god minute before she reacted. The twins were giggling at her.

“How…?” , Sakura mumbled. 

To be very honest, seals like these were probably the kind of seals Naruto would’ve come up with and would’ve experimented with if he was thaught from a young age and didn’t discover sealing in the midst of a war where every single mistake cost lives. Messy and absolutely stupid but somehow still working regardless.

Sakura was shaken out of her musing by Yasuro tugging on her sleeve.

“Ne, Sakura-nee, do we win? Can you show us cool Jutsu now?”

Sakura looked at him, then looked back at the crater. Then looked back at the twins. Under the combined force of their puppy eyes, Sakura crumbled like a soggy piece of paper.

Half an hour later, Hitoka stood next Sakura who was sighing in front of a burning forest. 

“To be fair”, the younger girl began, “Why did you think it was a good idea to teach them fire jutsu , of all things?” 

Sakura just groaned and dropped her head in her hands. “I’m never teaching them anything again…”

Sakura did end up teaching them an equally powerful water jutsu.

(“If you want to start fires that badly for the love of god please learn how to put them out…”)