Sakura isn’t sure what went wrong. One second they’re walking through the woods, Naruto chattering away, and the next, Kakashi is dead.
He’s dead and his blood is on her face.
Her hair is stained red.
And Sakura is grinning, because she’s eleven, and facing down a serial killer by herself while defending this grown man, and she read all about scare tactics in school.
Naruto is slumped against a tree, blood drip drip dripping down his face and over the crest of his baby-soft jaw. Sakura wishes she could pull back Sasuke, but he’s fighting Tazuna with a feral desperation, and Sakura sees the moment it happens.
She sees the moment that Sasuke dies too.
His chest split open by the massive sword and red red red
There’s a scream and Naruto is suddenly back on his feet and his eyes are glowing the same red as Sasuke’s body and maybe Sakura should do something but she’s frozen.
She’s frozen.
Sasuke is dead and she can’t move.
She has to move.
Sakura throws herself off of her bedroll with a pant, knees slamming on the floor with a vicious thud that makes the others wake immediately.
After that experience, none of them had slept well.
Sakura had barely- just barely- managed to get her wits together enough to stumble to Sasuke’s limp, crushed body, and she still isn’t sure what she did or why she did it, but her hands glowed the same green as the grass stained with blood under him and he awoke, his heart beating into her hands as she pumped it through his ribs.
Sasuke doesn’t remember what happened, and Kakashi wasn’t there, but Naruto describes it as her looking possessed. Like her ghost from a past life had taken her over.
Sakura doesn’t know what to think of that.
There’s a creak and Naruto’s pushing his bedroll against hers, and with a loud, heaving sigh, Sasuke does the same.
He shouldn’t be breathing.
He is.
And it’s because of Sakura.
If only she could remember how.
Kakashi is watching them from the corner, his black eyes gleaming in the lamplight and his hair the same silver it always was- except for when his body was sliced open open open- and Sakura takes a deep breath.
“Wanna talk about it?” Naruto mumbles, laying back down.
After the experience, he’d gone quieter, more serious. Sasuke thinks he finally realized what being a Shinobi means. Sakura thinks he’s traumatized.
Sakura thinks she’s traumatized too.
Maybe Sakura thinks a lot.
“Not really,” she sighs back, glancing at the new bruises on her knees without care. It’s not like Sasuke hasn’t gone through worse.
She glances at Naruto’s head- the bandages wrapped around his ears from the cut- and frowns slightly. Why couldn’t she remember how to fix it? She so desperately wanted to.
She turns back around and Sasuke catches her eye, studying her for a moment.
He doesn’t say anything.
He rarely does now.
Sakura thinks that talking is overrated anyways, when their bond is so drenched in blood.
It’s okay. She’s around them. She’s okay.