Chapter 7
This wasn't her home, Sakura realized some time later. Yes, the building was the same, and her bedroom walls were painted in that same, obnoxiously bright pink color (contrary to popular opinion, she didn't actually like everyshade of pink), but that was it.
Her room was, upon closer inspection, missing a lot of furniture. Her clothes hung on a clothes hanger on a metal bar, the ones that didn't fit on the bar lying on a wooden table underneath it. There was no wardrobe or closet. The bookshelf – the one with all of the old books that her mother had hoarded decades ago and brought here when they moved into this house during her pregnancy – was still there, albeit missing a bit too many books, making that collection her mother had prouded herself in seem a lot more sparse.
Her bed turned out to be one of those couches that could be folded out, which was probably uncomfortable for the average person and even more for a child, but it was still like heaven for someone like Sakura, who had slept on the wet and sticky grass of the wilderness, or the rough stone of a cold cave for the last months of the war. By then, opening another camp had been out of question, and they had had to take shelter wherever seemed save enough as a hiding spot at the moment.
The kitchen and the dining room were also only sparsely decorated if the table and the two flower pots in the corners could even be considered as such. Even though Sakura had yet to have the chance to explore the house more (it would seem too suspicious, and she had already drawn too much attention earlier), she strongly suspeceted the other rooms to be in a similiar state.
There was also the matter of her dead father and, more importantly, Yūta, who was apparently her brother.
Was she in a parallel universe? If so, did Kaguya and Zetsu even exist? Was Akatsuki still a thing? Would she even need to fight at all? If the world wasn't going to end, there was really no need to go ahead and tray to save everyone, right?
Because then, Sakura would be just like any other person trying to keep their loved ones safe and she, just like them, wouldn't be able to predict any deaths, as she had assumed so far, with the time-travel and all.
Maybe the world wouldn't end after all. Maybe she'd live and die like anyone else, being subject to the unpredictability of the world once again.
She didn't feel particularily relieved by that, somehow.
Yet, that was only assuming the world outside had changed drastically. Her parents saving more money when it came to house decorations (aka being poor) wasn't such a huge change, compared to the possibility of Kaguya never having happened.
But she couldn't know that. Couldn't know what was changed until she came across it. (And then it would be too late.) This could be all that had changed, or just a fraction of the hundreds of differences that awaited Sakura outside of her home. Nothing could be the same as she remembered. Everyone she once knew could be a completely different person leading a completely different life. Like her parents who now had two children instead of one. Or her father, who would've still been alive. Her father who wasn't supposed to die before the fifth year. Her father, who she should have reunited with. Who she had wanted to–
But still.
At least– At least she was still Sakura Haruno. And that was what mattered.
Not for others, a cruel voice whispered in her mind. Not to them. You aren't the Sakura they know.
The voice was right. Even if she considered herself as the same person, others wouldn't. To them, she was an intruder, a stranger possessing the body of Sakura. She wouldn't be welcomed. She wouldn't be thanked for stealing this body in order to try saving the world. She would be looked upon with disgust and hatred for extending a life she had given up on.
And her dream–
Sakura had been wrong. Ridiculously wrong.
Her plans weren't unreachable or impossible. They were far and difficult, yes, but still in distinguishable distance. It was if her identity was found out–
It was then, that her goal, her dream, would be truly unattainable.
She couldn't let anyone know. Ever.
Later that night, Sakura finally did what she had been putting off for some time now.
Checking her current body's state.
She probably should've done that first and foremost, along with other things like making sure a world outside of her house actually existed (just in case, it really was an elaborate Genjutsu she was dealing with), or laying low (which didnt include crying amounts of tears that rivaled Taki's waterfalls, while cling to a random stranger-that-claimed-to-be-her-brother's arms).
But it was likely that she had had already thrown out all honor and duty of a shinobi by screaming the shit out of her lungs as soon as she woke up.
Because that definitely wasn't the stealthy ninja-thing that she was supposed to do, as a – you know – stealthy ninja.
Sasuke or Kakashi would've handled the situation a whole lot better than she did. (She wasn't sure about Naruto though). But it was Sakura who ended up in this shitty-but-maybe-great situation, so it was up to her to decide if she was doing the right thing.
At least, that was what she told herself.
...
She would've liked it more if she had been in this together with someone else.
So, Sakura didn't really want to check her chakra.
But she needed to do it.
Probably.
Sure, a "time-travel guide" didn't exist, but she was pretty sure that being aware of your current abilities was quite important.
She'd have to know what to work with in order to prevent the war.
20 minutes later, Sakura contemplated screaming.
Fuck saving the world, since her chakra pool was practically non-existent, her chakra pathways a jumbled mess of underdeveloped jack-shit, and her muscle definiton not even worth mentioning.
She was so fucking sure that it wasn't this bad last time around, no matter how little she trusted her memory of this time of her life. There was no way, she could've ever become a ninja with that, Sakura wasn't even sure if this body could support a henge, let alone a clone.
Not to mention the fact her body was severly malnourished and, unless the Sakura of this world had started dieting at age six (she couldn't even be sure if this body even was six years old anymore), it meant that her family in this parallel universe was poor as fuck (for clarification, she knew that the Harunos were somewhat poor over here, but not to this extent), and that wasn't going to help her in saving the world.
And, if she was already on that topic–
To goddamn hell with this world, because she wasn't going to fight Kaguya, or Pein, or Danzō, or Orochimaru with whatever this was, and if she didn't do it, no one would.
How was she going to 'save everyone' if her battle prowess didn't even survive the trip to here?
Yeah, forget hiding her identity, since she would need to be more worried about surviving until then.
Was that her punishment? Watching the world end while not even being able to do anything at all? Was she supposed to just sit there and watch?
Sakura threw her pen at the wall. She would've thrown the whole desk too, if she wasn't so fucking weak. So instead, she threw her notes with a half-baked plan off her desk, since apparently, they weren't going to work, because of this stupid change that had no effect on anyone but her, the one person that had time-traveled and could perhaps prevent the world from going up in flames, being trampled on by an ancient goddess, and then going down in a pile of ashes and debris.
Because of course Sakura wasn't going to have it easy with this whole ordeal, was she? That was just how this world was – and it was the same world, no matter how poor she was, or how many additional brothers she had –, since it just had to make saving it infinitely more difficult that it was already going to be.
Still, that wasn't a valid reason to downgrade her abilities, Sakura thought.
But who was going to prevent the world from ending if not her?
"Hah."
Sakura sighed and went to pick up her pen, scrambling for the sheets of paper that were scattered across the room.
Fuck.
What was she supposed to do?