Oak Leaves and Sakura Blossoms (Ranger’s Apprentice/Naruto)
When Naruto had told her of a mystical seal which would provide her with refuge, Sakura was fairly certain that this wasn’t what he had meant. Yet Naruto was dead along with Sasuke, Sakura was alone, hunted by the forces of the usurping Sixth Hokage who had killed her mentor at her weakest.
Waking up on stranger shores wasn’t the plan – and neither was acquiring some tagalongs intent on finishing Danzo’s orders even though their route home had been cut off.
(or; in which Sakura escapes to Araluen a short while after the aftermath of Pein’s attack on Konohagakure and finds herself as a Ranger’s Apprentice, King Duncan assumes she’s foreign royalty, whilst Crowley is reminded of the joys of having an apprentice once more.)
chapter one • run, run, little rabbit
Her footfalls were soft, near silent, as she ran through the forest, and for a good reason. Pursuit had long been behind her, and she had long since acquired the instincts of a rabbit being hunted. Though perhaps that wasn’t quite the right turn of phrase, Sakura mused to herself. Rabbits, after all, were usually caught. She wasn’t about to be.
Teeth ground together, and Sakura reminded herself of what was awaiting her on the other end of her journey. She was going to find that strange seal and she was going to survive. It was what she wanted, what Naruto had wanted, and vaguely she wondered if it would be what Sasuke would have wanted. Not that she could ask him. He was as dead as Naruto, his body hung up on the gates of Konohagakure as a reminder of what happened to traitors, even if they belonged to great clans.
“As long as you don’t die, my ideals will live on with you,” Naruto had told her soberingly, seeming to have aged some fifty years after his fate was made apparent. He hadn’t screamed and kicked when taken to have the Kyuubi extracted, Shimura Danzo having somehow found a new, younger, compatible host who could be moulded according to his whims. Instead, he had walked with his head held high, evidently assured in her promise to him that she would live.
“I’ll kill him,” she had promised, and they had both known whom they spoke of.
Instead of nodding and ranting about the maniac who was going to kill him because he couldn’t be controlled, Naruto had made her promise something completely different. “Sometimes the best revenge is living well…” The smile his lips had formed when he said those words was something engraved into her brain. It was something which made her despise Shimura Danzo to the very fibres of his existence. “Don’t become another Sasuke, Sakura-chan… Find it – find that seal we spoke of, and live.”
A shaky breath escaped her as she ran on, the taste of salt and fish heavy in the back of her throat. Uzushiogakure wasn’t far. Her escape from it all wasn’t far, because that was what that seal could be. Even if it just blocked the passage of others. Even if it transformed her appearance into something completely different. It wouldn’t matter so long as she kept her last promise to the one person who she once had left to care about in those walls.
::
The boat looked like something which was about to fall apart, but it was the only vessel willing to travel across the seas and the ever treacherous whirlpools which had once made Uzushiogakure so difficult to find and reach. It stunk of fish and brine, the scent something Sakura was fairly sure was stuck in her nose permanently as it had been ever since she had arrived at the fishing village on the coast.
Walking across those seas would have been suicide, especially since she didn’t know the exact distance it was to reach the island of Uzushio, nor of any refuge in between where she could rest and recover her chakra on the way. Not to mention she would have been visible to any trained eye pursuing her. Hunkering down in the shelter of a dilapidated fishing vessel was the safest option if she wanted to reach the ruins of Uzushiogakure without much kerfuffle. If she wanted to make it there alive. Her teeth clenched together, the creaking of the vessel she was aboard masking any sounds she made as they cruised over the waves.
Fingers curled into fists, part of her feeling so infinitely small and helpless. She hadn’t been able to save Tsunade. She hadn’t been able to bring back nor save Sasuke. She hadn’t even been able to help Naruto who had been probably the dearest to her at the time of his death.
Lives were slipping through her fingers like sand, and Sakura could only morbidly wonder if her own life would be next.
PREMISE: Sakura in Araluen. Or a seal transports her to the shores of a new world after Danzo's coup actually succeeds, and she struggles to adapt to life as a Ranger's Apprentice while fending off remnants of her past with her chakra which has mysteriously gone missing. Featuring Crowley and Sakura being chaotic gremlins together while Halt drinks his coffee in the background.