Chapter Text
When Sakura wakes up in her twelve-year-old body, she screams, loud and desperately. She screams and screams and screams because – fire everywhere, death everywhere and she couldn’t breathe and it’s just so painful.
Death comes quicker than you wish and Sakura Haruno does not drift away peacefully. A medical-nin is trained to avoid getting injured in any way, because if they are injured, then there would be nobody to heal the other members of their team. Sakura, who mastered the Strength of a Hundred Technique, fights in front lines and the medical tents.
No medic ninja shall ever die until they are the last of their platoon, and Sakura keeps healing until there is no one left to heal. She keeps fighting, because beneath her lies women and men who fought valiantly but now lay slain. Each dawn she awakes for them and faces the storm.
(Several years have rotted away and she has never felt so alone.)
She wanted to fight until there were no enemies left, but in the end, she ended up with deep gashes in her legs, arms and neck. Six broken ribs and a collapsed lung. Severe intra-abdominal bleeding. A crushed spleen. Perhaps a subdural hematoma too, she had certainty hit her head hard enough to earn one.
The accumulation of those injuries could have killed her given enough minutes,but Uchiha Madara was impatient and cut her head off.
Huh.
How odd that she could still scream without a head.
Her hands touch her neck, head and body, all still attached together. She continues creams, because it’s not her body. It has none of her scares, her muscles or her efforts. Screams and screams and screams because something – everything was wrong.
“..ku!”
“..eeti-….poor…Sak-“
She died, so why is she breathing? Could she just…stop?
She wraps her hands around her neck, infusing chakra and then –
Sakura closes her eyes and sees Naruto there on the front line. Full of life, shining so brightly, that she and everyone else hung on to him with everything they had. Sakura’s eyes are too foggy to see the light, her mind too cluttered to think right, but Naruto is a force of nature that is impossible to ignore.
Bang!
Then, screams.
Bang!
It was such an awful sound.
Naruto yells loudly, “I'm not gonna run away, I never go back on my word!” drowning out the sound of death and pain for just a moment. God, how she loves him for it.
Sakura wakes up again, but at the same time, she doesn’t. Sitting on the bed, Sakura breathes purely out of reflexes and observes the world, confused. She doesn’t know how much time has elapsed, her perception feels strange. Much like her mind. She sees things that are not there, because she shouldn’t be there. The same scene plays each day. Her (not) mother helps her eat her breakfast, sometimes she would also clean Sakura’s body, slowly as if afraid any sudden movement would make her screech in terror (it would). Then her (not) father sits her in a wheelchair and pushes her around outside the garden for a couple of hours, so she can benefit from the fresh air or something.
It didn’t feel real, so Sakura didn’t respond. She hopes that if she ignores the oddness around her, it would just fade away. That she would just fade away. She feels calm only when she is back in what appears to her room, under several covers, safe from everything.
Sakura rocks back and forth when the routine changes. The door to her room opens, slowly, as if the person on the other side hesitates to enter. A young girl arrives, with long (pretty) blonde hair worn in a ponytail and kind eyes.
It takes a moment before Sakura’s eyes manage to focus, to identify what the lines and shapes and colors before her mean. The name is on the tip of her tongue, but it won't come out.
The girl stands in the doorway and watches her for a moment that seems to stretch on forever. Then, softly, the blonde says, “….billboard brow?”
Sakura blinks a few times. Finally, she whisperers: “Go away” in a weak tone as she slowly turns the other way and cuddles under her sheets. It was the first words she had said since – since dying.
But, Ino never liked being ignored, so she tries again, less careful, “Hey…I thought I already explained that trying to hide is stupid when you have a billboard brow.”
It was a poor attempt at humor, lacking Ino’s usual fire when insulting Sakura, far too half-heartedly. And yet, it sounds so real. Sakura shifts slightly and peers out at her through her sheet. Ino rewards her with a smile, a strange mixture between uncertainty and smugness colors it. Her old friend makes her way to the bed, sitting down at the edge. Close enough for Sakura to feel her presence, close enough to touch.
“You look ridiculous,” Ino says, “Absolutely ridiculous, Sakura.”
Ino visits her every day after that. She talks a lot, even though Sakura rarely responds. The blonde complains about her lazy teammates, her sensei and the weather. Sometimes she gushes about the newest fashion or cute boys she has seen. Ino laughs and jokes, Sakura just nods his head, thankful that Ino’s voice is drowning the sound of the war – of Sakura’s death. She is graceful Ino keeps coming, but she doesn't quite realize it before Ino stops.
For two weeks, Sakura lies on her bed, getting more agitated by the minute, anxiously waiting…waiting and waiting. When Ino finally returns, Sakura throws her pillow at her. Then, her books, pens and anything she can get her hands on. Much like her first day in this prolonged death, Sakura screams. Only this time her words are actually formed, cruel and callous words. She calls Ino a traitor, a villain, a liar, and a hundred different cursing words so terrible that twelve-year-old girls shouldn’t know them.
Ino pets her head and sings her meaningless songs, cuddling safely under the bed sheets… and Sakura eventually falls asleep.
The next day, her room is filled with Orchids, Tulips and Carnations.
“Ino…I’m so sorry,” Sakura looks down, not able to meet Ino’s eyes.
Ino does not hesitate in forgiving her, “Me too, I didn’t think the mission would last this long.”
Biting her lips, Sakura strives to be worthy of that forgiveness, that endless kindness Ino keeps giving her. She forces a smile, “I’m the one who overreacted…pig.”
“Who're you calling a pig, you billboard brow?!" Ino grins immediately.
As the days and months pass by, Sakura grows accustomed to the odd state of being. She was still in the process of dying, she thinks, but things were different now. Before things had been… complicated … painful. Now, Ino was here, and Sakura remembers the way Ino's hair shined through the sunny day, and remembers how being with her washed away her fears. Sakura is dying and she is grateful her mind is conjuring up Ino.
It is in this state of contentment that reality came crashing back.
Sakura’s (not) mother came to her room. “Sweetie, I need you to get dressed now,” she says, looking more anxious than Sakura ever remembers seeing her. Her (not) father is not there, and the smell of fire and blood fills the air.
Sakura’s breathing starts becoming more rapid. “Mother… W-What’s going on?” she asks her. Her mother smiles as she touches Sakura’s head. I love you , she mouths as the sound outside becomes louder and louder. Mrs. Haruno looks so gentle, so caring (so real). Sakura wants to nestle in her arms and be held like a child. Wants comfort and warmth, so badly she almost cries. She can’t remember the last time she cried in her mother’s arms (maybe when Sasu- he left?).
Sakura is in the process of dying – but she dies again, much earlier than her first life, when Orochimaru invades the village.
The roof of her house collapses upon them.
Sakura navigates through masses of rotting corpses carelessly piled atop each other. Their flesh was torn, wrecked and twisted; looking more like squashed insects than fallen humans. The foul, rotting stench of decay festered in the air, almost making Sakura’s stomach lurch and beckoning flies to cautiously hover in midair nearby.
Where is he? Please, please God, let him be alive.
The third-time Sakura wakes up in her twelve-year-old body, she is a little bit calmer, a little more rational. She brings her shaking hands together and whispers, “Kai,” and she says it again and again. She is still twelve, weak and in her childhood bedroom.
When she finally leaves her room, still scared and confused, her mother sends her a concerned glance, her father smiles absentmindedly - and suddenly Sakura wonders if she has the chance to make things right. She can save her parents and Ino and Sai - she can save the village, save the world, save Naruto.
Then she remembers a red moon and a lie cast upon the world. This could not be real. She would not allow herself to be enslaved in a dream, no matter how sweet it is. If there is even the slightest chance that she could still fight and kill her enemies, she would take it (even if I’m alone?).
She had to march on, because that was what soldiers did. Naruto would want her to fight (Naruto is gone, everyone is gone), so she had to.
There are several ways to combat genjutsu, the illusion technique dissipation wasn’t working, but maybe pain would. The Infinite Tsukuyomi is a powerful, powerful genjutsu and breaking it will not be easy. Sakura knows how the body works, knows how to heal, and how to break.
(The weapon of the mind, chiseled hard by blood, death and war)
“Sakura,” her mother says, “you okay sweetie?”
“She probably just worried about the Genin exam, isn’t that right?” her father says, as he looks up from reading the paper. He looks younger than she remembers, happier too. Once, before the war, he had joked that he had aged twice as fast this last year (because of her?).
Genin Exams. Sakura blinks. Oh. She was not a genin yet. Good, she is not certain if this fabricated world follows the same rules as her, but leaving the village is a lot easier without the Missing-Nin- stamp.
Pain is the way out, and the moment Sakura puts some distance between her and disturbing elements, she experiments.
Kunai-stabs probably wouldn’t do anything, Sakura knows this, but she tries anyway. Being crushed alive didn’t break her free either, so she avoids similar stuff. First, she tries to see if simple sensations like fire or acid are enough to shock her out of this illusion. Then she tries more creative methods: ripping off her own nails, poison that scalds her genitals, heating up a softer metal until it is liquid, putting it in a bowl, and then pouring it inside her own ear canal. It burns off the flesh inside her ear, making her deaf and disfigured on that side. Gouging her own eyes out. Unfortunately, while she is knowledgeable enough to avoid dying of the infection, she is in too much pain to fight off the bear. Note to herself, being eaten alive doesn’t work either.
The inferno is extinguished, leaving behind a dark residue that infested the soil with blood and sorrow. No longer could the clangor of the kunai be heard and the shouting of the slaughter was silenced; a hush rested over the crimson-stained field.
In the midst of the mass destruction, slaughter and ruin, a lone boulder stretches defiantly towards the sky. And beneath it, a body, still; as in death. Naruto lies like a doll over the ground, limbs at awkward angles and head held in such a way that he cannot be sleeping. That figure, once the sun of Sakura’s existence, is now an abandoned shell left to rot in the open.
She steps closer and barely notices her own sanity dissolving into the surrounding darkness.
A man, with blood and chaos swirling in eyes, regards her. He does not move, almost as still as Naruto. His sword is dripping with blood and he looks a little annoyed that Sakura is here, interrupting.
Then again, Sasuke always looks a little annoyed when he is looking at her.
The fourth-time Sakura wakes up on the eve of her Genin exam, she feels furious.
(I built shrines in my eyes to you)
And this time, it was not herself she intended to kill.