Still With Me
Sakura was a girl in the team numbered 7. The team had three children: Naruto, Sasuke and her, under the command of their handler, Hatake Kakashi. He was a jounin, Red Code, ANBU and all things shinobi but he was never a teacher. He didn't know how to deal with two orphaned boys and a civilian girl. The last girl he dealt with had been skewered into oblivion.
They each had their roles being pawn and castle and bishop, their planned fate rolled out by the generals of wars. Like all things were, Sakura and her team mates' successes or demise had been calculated out by the day. None of the plan ever really survived the thousand of misfortunes they faced though.
When she was fourteen, lost and angry, left behind in a village that felt like catacombs closing on her, Haruno Sakura feared she would see her team again.
She did want to have them with her like before, but she wanted them to be unbroken, whole and together. If she wanted them then, together again, all she would get were boys who limp with heavy hearts and speak with hiccupping grievances. It hurt more that way, knowing they could be together, but they could never stay together.
The pink haired girl feared she would see them again—she won’t ever be ready for confrontation of all of them at once.
Or maybe, in the end, she did not fear seeing Team 7, rather, she feared the idea of facing little Sakura. Little Sakura who was not okay and did not get the rights to be okay because her boys were coughing up the ashes from the fires they chased (she was drowning in the well she did not dig).
On her first round at the hospital, three minutes after seeing her first patient’ death from a failed emergency response performed not by her, Sakura realised something.
The man suffered a traumatic array of injuries, head smashed into brain matter, fingers bent like a puppet and eyes blown out of proportion from a B-rank gone wrong. The kunoichi did not cry like the nursing students on rotation or flinched like the doctors in that case. This should not worry her, though. In fact, it was a relieving moment for Shizune who told her that it made her a great practitioner. She was clinical in a clinical setting. It was impressive for a sheltered teenager who parents never died in a massacre or sacrificed on top of no altar. They said she was born to be a doctor, so that was what she became.
Tsunade was not as happy with the calculating look and curious questions about the human cadaver lying on the stretcher and she didn’t say why. The Godaime stopped hearing questions at one point. But Sakura never stopped asking.
Fourteen years old Sakura feared she was losing herself. She'd look three years back and saw herself caring, loving, giving. Not the kind of pink-rose loves or chocolate-sweet givings, but the routine of showing emotions. Naturally, one would get tired. So she was numb for many months, and that numbness saved her the pain of dying from hypothermia. She was still dying, but there was nothing to feel. Until one day, the burn of hot coal washed over and seeped into the skin and she felt something again. This time she screamed, the room was too hot. This time the girl did not drown in a well, she heaved herself up with drenched clothes and started chasing the fires that burnt her boys.
Team Seven spent a year and a half in each other’s company before they disbanded. Officially. If one counts the time things really ended, Sakura would argue it would be as far back as the Forest of Death, or even the day they were established. She was sure they would agree. Kakashi saw them as walking corpses, anyway. For him it was better to assume the dead were waking than waiting for the living to die.
It was too short of a time for them to learn Sakura’s fears (it was never horrors in the flesh or ridiculous worries). Not quite enough time for them to wonder about how the blood that ran in Sasuke's veins made him what he could become (dead-star, murderer, arsonist, clown—). Or any time at all to talk about the bile in Naruto’s throat, the vile things that could spew out from his mouth if he had just stop the charades.
The time they had was too short. This proved to be detrimental.
Sakura acknowledged she had too few memories of them. It was up to the sophists to debate if what she remembered were all that actually happened. The flashes of colours and blurs in an abstract painting sometimes only appear black and white. That bell test, the race, the camps, the waves and the kills—
They weren’t worth to be fond of remembering.
But that was all the four men cell got. All they got in those one and a half years.
If it had been just statistics like how their papers presented, their achievements and track-records can not be undermined. Two A-ranks, counting the Land of Snow, a dozen B-rank and below, The Chunin Exam, at least eight hospitalizations, six birthdays and a lofty two hundred-and-one ramen meals, Team 7 was impressive in many parts yet remained dysfunctionally pathetic all the same. Case files that never got the chance to collect dust.
In the end, they all feared what they cut off to die would erase the times they had, but they did it anyway. Tore the string of fate into scraps and let it detangled into split strands. At one point, Hatake would leave the daylight and try to forget the three children they gave him; Uchiha would leave the team photo upside down and never picked it up again; Uzumaki would leave his calendar unmarked for birthdays and anniversaries; Haruno would leave her house cluttered to the point of disbelief because no one was going to crash there on lonely nights anymore.
There were no town, no cluster of neighbours, just a small clay structure that can withstand extreme precipitation. A little out of Ame’s territory but not for the patrols to flag it as unusual.
The room Nagato offered her was not extravagant. It was very practical and hidden.
The floors were not made of tiled patterns like in Konoha or smooth wood like in Tea, instead, it was just like the way she imagined Orochimaru’s lab to be like. Ground flat soil, clean with airways and not too damp, perfect conditions for developing biochemical experiments without fear of moulds or fungi. There was bright white lighting and seven places to hold candles.
Tall, rolled tatami mats in the corner were leaning against the long workbench. A bed made from bamboo was her designated sleeping spot with some sort of thick woven fabric, native to Wind, as a blanket. Near the bed was one of the few windows, earth-coloured flaps pulled down.
Sakura waved her hand and asked time to give her things. Woods. From the trees in the nearby forest just East of Amegakure’ borders. It materialised in rough branching logs and she told it to be sanded, sliced and pressed. Life was taken out of it in seconds, grainy surfaces became polished planks unfolding into a shape that mimicked the sides of the ground. The forces of space and the pressure of dimensions being broken created the tension needed to deform matters and rearrange molecules.
Like boards, but interconnected yet completely separate, weaved by threads of two different trees into a tapestry of perfectly laid down flooring. No nails, only a large rug of wood.
It was cold beneath her soles. Sakura walked forward.
The climate was not too moist, rain from Ame aside. Winds weren’t usual and not as strong as the ones in the Suna sand hills. She chuckled and took out the three storage scrolls from her thigh holster. They unfurled themselves, spreading across the newly made floor. The white was of ageing book pages, a little oxidised in some parts but primarily pristine in condition.
A collection of parchment laid there, thick and unused. The kunoichi put them in a neat pile, neater than what she could bother sorting herself into. Glasses and tubes placed safely on top of cloth pieces.
The last decoration, or the only one, to her abode was the old picture inside the red rimmed frame. She looked and wondered what happened to the girl in that photo. Nothing of a drama, just a tragicomedy written by a moribund playwright. A story with no endings, a script with no purpose. A piece for absurdism, tribute to the meaningless of life. Sakura had hoped her play was a place where blue skies weren't painful, green forests weren't carnivorous and all characters are treated fairly, avengers getting their revenge, the sinned getting their atonement.
She felt like someone should have filled the silence with a remark, maybe a cruel comment. But it was stupid, who would say silly things when only she was in the room?
Too much thinking, now.
Sakura sighed and laid on the ground, hands fiddling, reaching out for Dark Chakra. It slipped out, liquid and airy at the same time, then wrapped her fingers in its darkness like a clasp of a gentle lover.
Sleep claimed her, for she was still a mortal, only cursed.
Sakura did not want two of her in a timeline, it created a paradox.
No duplications of an individual can co-exist—the fabric of the universe can not hold parallel entities in the same net of space-time, it will make a tear.
Space-time is only sturdy because things can either be or not be. She made it fragile because she was neither of that.
Sakura, the original one (if there was one at all), can not continue to exist in her supposedly past timeline. It was no use contemplating who belonged to which one, she just had to assume that this new timeline was a replica of the old one and move on with it.
This then led to an issue: if in the case that this timeline’ Sakura did not end up time travelling, then she needs to be eliminated before time collapse on itself; if in the case that this timeline’ Sakura ended up time travelling but was eliminated before she even got to, then the 'future' Sakura would cease to exist.
It was a dilemma with little way out of it. There was a gamble to be taken.
This 'past' Sakura either get to live or die, and it won't be her choice. The pink-turned-black haired girl would choose something. It was a bet to guess which situation will happen and Sakura was the child of drunken luck and lost gambles.
In this exact instance, she chose the lenient option for it would be the last nice thing the world deserved.
Sakura decided that she must kill herself. It was not out of the need for sacrifice—her entire life had been a series of the act forced upon her anyways—but more for a sense of returning a gift. A gift laced in poison, but the sentiment is felt, of course.
Life was given to her, without being asked for and while she always questioned why that is, it was both a hideous yet beautiful thing to be alive.
The flame put things into crumbling cinders, but it was prettier than any light man can create.
The girl thought about how kinder she was and reasoned if there had been someone in her head telling her otherwise she would have listened. Sakura couldn’t care less, she just made a decision. This decision, alone, made her kind.
She did not mind being kind.
“I wonder if she had known, would she have left so soon?”
“Whatever do you mean?” He didn’t look up, not that he was uninterested, but more that he was tired. Tired of seeing, now also hearing, about so many things. He didn’t say this, though, Nagato didn’t say this. He listened.
“Sakura must be killed. She will be. I will do it.”
“Would that solve the issue you made?” He asked, too far gone to choose his words.
“I won’t be sure. The Haruno Sakura native to this timeline is still in Konoha. But she'll leave early, too early.” She felt time rippled. It was quivering. This timeline is already rotting away and she had done nothing but existed.
A stone was placed wrong. A planet went astray.
“How early?”
“By a minute. She will die.” It didn't matter how large the difference is between her timeline and this one. In this case, if this timeline' Sakura do something odd or a fraction too late or too early, it will send everything into a ball of unravelling universe in response. A tiny decision or act of free will can have a cosmic impact.
“...I see.” His head bobbed, the purplish rings spun faster than Sharingan and he motioned his scrawny palm up over the bleeding eyelids. “I see.”
Missing-nin or not, Sakura acted on accord.
The defector slipped past the gates at 0129.
Sakura took the route ANBU usually took for missions, a small human-size hole on the side of Konoha’s North gate. It was much less complicated, given she was never ANBU herself so there was no tattoo to fuss over. With much spying and drunken conversations, there was no information she was excluded from. All she had been was the kid on the bench who never came, and they do not beware her.
It didn’t take long to reach the Cotton Village.
The two Akatsuki members' chakra flared from a corner near the borders, it was not discreet at all, this was concerning for her. They were never her opponent, one breath wrong and she'd be finished.
Sakura didn’t cover her chakra as she approached a dark alleyway snuggled between a closed shop and an izakaya. Two strong flows of chakra knocked her over; the energy screamed and growled in uncontrolled fury, they spreaded like ink on wet paper. Two silhouettes appeared at the end of the alleyway on a roof. A giant white bird circled the sky like an apocalypse coming true.
Deidara barked a weird laugh as the last glimpses of moonlight fell over his shoulders. Sasori looked like he was done dealing with the job but made no move, staring her down like she was the one who killed his parents.
“Hello.” She said, a little too shy for what she wanted her first impression to be.
“We’re departing immediately to Ame.” As she scrunched her face up confusedly he deadpanned, “Should be there before midday.”
Ame, which is eighteen hours of nonstop running away.
They could never run at a speed like that.
She doesn't think she can even imagine how the puppet master ran, his heavy wooded body made it look like a deformed creature resulting from one of Orochimaru's experimental bred between human, a scorpion and a weird bug.
From what she has gathered on missions near Ame, Sakura knew they usually take two days and a camp. Maybe she understood it wrong and they meant midday tomorrow instead of midday today.
She perked up, realising something, “I almost forgot we can fly! Of Course that made sense.” Then embarrassingly lowered her head. She must have sounded stupid.
It was a weird feeling to be on a bird. The Hokage's apprentice sat down and leaned in to brace for the wind.
She didn’t know how to feel. There were sparks of grievances for the village that discarded her team and her like any other failure, they did that out of systemic settings, but they did that nonetheless.
She wondered when they’d notice her disappearance, maybe in a month. She was a nobody, nameless and talentless. Her kills were unnumbered, her achievements unrecorded. It is the nature of civilian born shinobi. She lived behind the back of her higher birth comrades. Her blood bled for them, her blood bled so their flowers could bloom from dried famine soil.
She dwelled on things.
It took them exactly four hours and fifty nine minutes to reach Ame borders.
The rain poured in buckets, it drowned down any noises a good shinobi wished to detect. They were unceremoniously thrown down by the birds but landed gracely nonetheless. The two men approached the guards, the red clouds of their jackets shown out like a proud badge. She trailed behind a little, her pace far enough for people to think they aren’t a party.
“Akatsuki-sama.” One guard regarded Sasori and Deidara, “Konan-sama wishes to meet you at the gate. She will be here shortly.” They wore ankle-long cloaks with matted wet hair and awkward looking wet weapon pouches hanging.
Sakura looked at her own outfit. It wasn’t her combat outfit. No one would be stupid enough to escape the village in a crimson qipao and pink elbow guards, especially if there are unnecessary symbols on it. Anyone, civilian or not, will recognise the red swirl of Uzushio that embedded every Leaf’s shinobi’ garments.
So she wore a black top and jounin pants she stole somewhere. She covered herself with an ominous looking black coat that reached her knees, bargained for a cheap price at the weekend market the summer she turned fourteen and wanted it for Sasuke-kun as a gift.
“Your affiliation and intentions?” A voice pulled her back.
“Er–” She almost reacted and squirmed away when he lifted his sword to her chin. “I have business here, that’s all.”
“State your affiliation and intentions.” The man repeated, his face terrifying. Two other guards walked closer and scanned her with scrutinising eyes, his stance spread and threatening like he would advance and slid her neck the moment she dared blink.
“No affiliation and uh...diplomatic intentions?” It was more similar to her asking them what she could say than answering the question.
Deidara and his laugh again.
She huffed when two more weapons inched closer to her face. She worked her sentence again, “Akatsuki invitation and intention to integrate into the organisation.” There went her last shot.
Suddenly the men dropped down to their knees in a bow. Their weapons clattered on the ground.
“Haruno. A pleasure.” It wasn’t them that spoke, though. A flying figure lowered in front of her eyesight.
Amegakure no Tenshi.
The Rain’s Angel.
The purple-haired woman gestured for Sakura to follow deep inside the core of the village. The small houses and buildings looked steady enough to not fall apart like her neighbourhood would after a storm. The people here are familiar with rain as much as she was with leaves. As much as Suna was with sand or Mizu was with fog and bodies of water.
The medic halted to a stop when Konan turned her head, “We’re here.”
It was a building with a dome shaped roof of concrete. The corridors were dimly lit. It didn’t feel moist considering the rain outside and how wet people are inside. Her hair stuck to her face and she can feel the droplets on her eyelashes. It looked more like she had just jumped inside a lake and emerged rather than being out in the rain for ten minutes.
Sakura made a sorry noise and used a D-rank wind release to dry off her dripping clothes while Konan watched in interest.
They stopped in front of a draped door. The curtain divider was thick and didn’t have much of an artisan touch to it that omitted the atmosphere of the most important building in a ninja village.
She entered with the Akatsuki kunoichi. There was tatami mat for floors and surprisingly traditional decorations, or lack thereof with only vintage looking candles and ten cushions. The zabuton was placed neatly in two rows across from each other. In the further end was a zabuton that sat facing the two rows. She presumed it was for whoever their unknown Leader is.
A lean man with red hair appeared from nowhere, not shunshin, not hiraishin. Sakura tensed.
The man took the seat on the special zabuton and levelled her with a look that spoke of equal authority and regards. His eyes were as sharp as one would be, greeting a useless sheep into their house.
He asked, then, kinder and softer: “If you knew the stars would fall to earth, would you have left so soon?” It almost sound like a woman was speaking. Perhaps it was.
Sakura couldn’t have blinked before the world meld into unfamiliar black nail polish and wildly red lips. Black hair were tinted pink before her eyes, and she felt time as if it was a corporeal object.
Time was feathery and colder than early mornings in Konoha Central or the hands of her former comrades' reluctant helping. Time was frosty not unlike that one winter when it snowed where she lived.
It was palsying and her slammed head was silent screams of how it was freezing freezing freezing freezing freezing freezing freezing freezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezing f r e e z i n g freezing freezing freezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezingfreezing-
The figure smiled at her one last time and tucked her bangs into place. Whispers were made the same way her mother used to do it, and death was cradling her like a baby, “I don’t believe in a road beyond,”
It was warm again in a flash, and she saw a beautiful kunoichi, red lips and her village emblem crossed out, the hand signs for 'Kai' in front of her. On top of her. “-but I dream you’re not alone.”
Haruno Sakura died at fourteen years, three hundred and sixty days old with her (other) self as the killer.
Time buckled on its knees and broke into a fit of laughter. How amusing was the girl who killed herself.
No one was there to witness.