Collide

All he'd wanted was some groceries.

Asuma is walking home. His pace is leisurely, his muscles are sore from training, and a bag of vegetables hangs off of his arm. The ANBU overhead have captured his attention. He doesn't sense killing intent and they aren’t moving fast enough for there to be a real emergency. He wonders, absentmindedly, what prank Naruto has inflicted upon his poor guards this time. Suddenly his legs collide with someone half his height and he jolts to a stop.

“Shit!” she exclaims, in English, dropping her scrolls on the ground. Pink hair falls into her eyes as she bends down to grab her research. It gives Asuma a moment to wipe the surprise from his face. He hasn’t heard anyone speak English in over 20 years.

“Sorry” he says softly, in a language no one else should know, so that only she can hear him. It’s a test. He needs to know this isn’t a mistake.

Her green eyes go wide with shock and recognition and meet his dark gaze before darting away. It’s all the confirmation he needs to know that she's is just like him. A ghost, alive again in a world that isn't hers.

Just like that, everything changes.

She steels herself and meets his gaze again. It feels like it goes on for ages, this moment in time, their eyes locked together, too stunned at the irrevocable knowledge to even breathe. In reality, it’s barely more than a second, an imperceptible encounter to passers by on the busy street. The girl breaks the stillness first. She smiles wide at Asuma, displaying her missing tooth.

“Sensei! You bumped into me, that means you owe me!” when she speaks Japanese, her voice is innocent and young, her girlish mannerisms well practiced. But Asuma knows she is far older than this child’s body.

“Well, I suppose I do.” He murmurs, only just snapping out of his reverie in time to play along. He has a million questions. He asks none of them.

“You have to play with me at the park tomorrow! Kaa-san says I need more friends.” As she speaks, she gathers the last of the scattered scrolls back into her arms.

“Well alright, young lady, but only if your mother says it’s ok” he responds with a stiff smile.

“See you tomorrow, sensei!” she shouts before taking off running.

That night, Asuma gets stupendously drunk with the other jonin. He’s so silent Kurenei pokes his beard to check if he’s Kakashi in a henge. Afterwards, he doesn’t go home, walking in endless loops through the village despite his aching legs. It makes sense, of course, that he wouldn’t be the only person in the universe to have died and ended up in this strange place. But he’d been alone for so long he’d given up on ever meeting a fellow ghost. He doesn’t sleep, he can’t think and can’t stop thinking. He just moves. He haunts Konoha all night.

Sakura eats dinner quickly. She regales her parents, in rapid, messy words, with stories about her day. She’d met a dog, she’d gone to the library and found the newest addition to her favourite fiction series. She’d bumped into a ninja who’d promised to meet her at the park tomorrow. When her parents give each other a glance that children aren’t supposed to understand she pretends not to know they doubt that anyone will show up tomorrow. Her mother even comforts her preemptively, reminding her that shinobi are very busy people.

Sakura ignores them and excitedly runs up to bed, pretending not to listen. But silently, she does worry. Who even is he? Does she know him? She can’t quite place him in her strange dreams. Is he a spy? Who’s he a spy for? How much does he know? Will someone come after her now? She berates herself for being so careless.

Most of all, she worries he won’t show up, and she will be left navigating this strange world, this fictional world, a voice in the back of her mind whispers, alone. Too much is coming she thinks. Too much to handle all alone. She’s small and has no allies strong enough to keep her safe. All she has are her parents, who are kind and caring and wonderful, but who treat her like a child. She isn’t a child, she thinks, or she shouldn’t be. She knows they won’t prepare her nearly enough for the death she dreams of. She will find this ninja, she swears to herself, and she will make him teach her to be strong enough to survive.
Her body is too young to fight off sleep, no matter how anxious she is. She dreams of dying.

When the sun rises, the ghosts realize, almost simultaneously, that Sakura had never specified which park to meet at. Sakura is 27 and angry that she didn’t think this through and she is 5 and the park by the civilian markets is the only one she knows. It had never needed a name before.

Asuma solves this problem by visiting every park in Konoha. He starts his search at dawn, which is far too early for Sakura’s parents to let her leave the house, and is on his fourth visit to the park near the civilian markets when he spots a little dot of pink among the crowds.

He leaps down in front of them, landing neatly. Mebuki is as tense as a mother in a city of mercenaries. He makes sure to relax his posture, unoffended by the gesture. If shinobi got mad every time one of their own saw them as a threat, they’d be too busy fighting civil wars to ever worry about other hidden villages.

“Haruno-san, Haruno-san, Haruno-chan” He acknowledges the family, with a gentle smile.
“I believe I owe your daughter a favour”.

“Sarutobi-sensei! Our sincerest apologies, our daughter mentioned she’d run into a shinobi, but we didn’t realize it was someone as esteemed as you. I’m Mebuki, and this, unfortunately, is my husband Kizashi” the mother splutters, before taking on the stern tone of the clan head she isn’t. She’s unsure of what it means to have the son of the Hokage visit her daughter for a playdate.

“Yeah, we’ll be honest, we didn’t think you really existed! Our little Sakura has quite the imagination” Kizashi’s tone is a lot less reverent than his wife’s, which earns him a sharp elbow in the ribs from Mebuki.

“Well, I’ve been recently reminded of the importance of nurturing the flames of youth” at that, Sakura’s parents wince in unison, “and I thought someone as studious as your daughter might like to learn a kata, if that’s alright with you, Haruno-san.” The lie tumbles out of his lips easily, nobody would talk to Gai long enough to discern that he hadn’t actually talked to Asuma in months, they’d both been so busy on missions, and were never close anyways.

“Yay!” shouts Sakura. “A kata! I’m going to be a real shinobi!”
If she’s only pretending to be a child, Asuma muses, she’s doing a very good job of it. He might have miscalculated. His stomach starts gnawing on itself.

“Be careful she doesn’t run you ragged, Sarutobi-sensei” says Kizashi playfully “Sakura trains more intensely than some jonin.”

“I don’t know where she gets the motivation” adds Mebuki, “I certainly wasn’t so… dedicated at her age”

“Obsessed would be a better word” Kizashi laughs, before being cut off by another sharp elbow to the ribs.

Without any political value, Sakura doesn’t need a guard, especially in a hidden village, where all it would take is a scream to have at least a dozen shinobi rushing to defend her. It doesn’t take long for her parents to leave her in the care of a distinguished jonin and go on with their day.

It isn’t hard to lure Sakura to a more secluded area with the promise of seeing a real ninja training ground. He wonders if it’s childish trust or adult curiosity. She watches intently as he puts up visual and auditory wards. Asuma isn’t skilled enough in sealing to make them himself, but always keeps a few standard-issue tags in his pouch just in case.

“Do you know why I brought you here, Sakura-chan?” Asuma’s voice is rough and clumsy, his first language atrophied from years of disuse.

“Because I invited you! And because you’re supposed to teach me a kata. Hey, how come you can speak my secret language?” Sakura answers, also slipping into English.

“Right, uh, ok” stutters Asuma, struggling to find the right words. He’s never had to tell a five year old she was dead. He’s never had to tell anyone they were dead before. He tries to remember what it was like being five, in this strange world. “Do you have strange dreams? Of another world?”

“Yeah! There’s a weird world, and a big city and a lady!” that could be any dream, but her voice is sickly sweet, and her eyes are cold. It’s enough to give Asuma the suspicion that she’s acting after all. The chance that he’s right, that he might not be alone is enough for him to take a leap of faith.

“What if,” his palms start sweating, “what if they aren’t dreams, Sakura? What if they’re memories?”