Chapter 14
The gray, rough paint of the walls was showing signs of neglect and starting to peel. Her father had put it up years ago, as was obvious by the clearly unprofessionally done work. The living room was bare, she concluded yet again. The empty vases in the corner had hypnotic engravings on them in a darker shade than the rest of the beige body of the vases. A wandering merchant had sold those to her mother once.
There were holes drilled into the walls all over the room with varying spacing between them, indicating what kind of hung-up decoration could have used to fill those places; Paintings opposite the table and next to the couch, a board to store jars on below the sink.
Just above the door that led to the kitchen, one still had a nail sticking out of it. A clock used to be there. Should be there.
The house was accessorized with monotonous colors and sparse decorations. From the walls to the vases to the missing paintings and clock.
But she knew that the sad, grayish color of the walls was a remnant of what used to be a soft rose and that the vases had always been decorated with bright and colorful flowers. She knew that there had been one huge painting of the beach of a beautiful, faraway land and one depicting a city full of bright rooftops and pillars shooting up to the sky.
She didn't just know it; she remembered it.
After all, it was the house she had lived in for more than a decade, once upon a time. Everything, this whole house, was filled with things she knew and was familiar with.
Yet, everything was different. Slightly different. Something was always missing.
Her wrist ached. It had become duller and more bearable, compared to the throbbing, sharp pain that had had her mind spinning earlier.
Perhaps she shouldn't have undergone the first step of the process so soon. The process of manifesting the Byakugō seal. Her body was that of a child, which meant less pain tolerance. And the first time, back when she had been thirteen and greedy for power, it had left her unable to move for three hours. Even afterwards, her limbs had been numb and her head dizzy.
"That's the price of creating a seal so close to your brain, Sakura." Tsunade had said that day.
At least she didn't lose coordination of her body this time, Sakura mused. Truth be told, that had been the worst part of it, though she hadn't admitted it in fear of being called naive— (because how to maintain calmness when captured and how to free oneself was taught in the second year of the Academy as one of the core lessons of the third chapter. And Sakura should at least be able to deal with not being in control of her body in a safe environment, right? If that upset her and made her panic, how was she supposed to protect the others and bring Sasuke-kun home? How was she supposed to make Shishō proud? So she clenched her teeth and remained quiet, because anything else would make her weak and childish.)
[Earlier]
The thing they didn't tell you about the Byakugō was the beginning.
It was a seal, after all. Concentrating chakra on one small, diamond-shaped point wasn't going to do the trick. Though it was exactly that for the latter part of the process, which also took the longest time. But just accumulating energy was not enough. There was a precise procedure one had to follow for the Byakugō seal to be allowed to form in the first place.
The seal had to be sketched. Or, rather, etched.
Simple paint was too easy to smear and ruin years of work. Worst case, if the user had already accumulated high amounts of chakra, the energy that is set free could permanently damage the brain. Hence the danger of a seal on the forehead, as Tsunade had lectured her once.
For the drawing of the seal, chakra would be molded into the shape of a fine needle that engraved the symbols through layers of skin into the skull. Only that way could the seal be properly and without risk of damage—to the seal, of course, since such a procedure assumed the user to be able to heal any damage to the body—be sketched.
To thirteen-year-old Sakura's surprise, the outcome had made concentrating the chakra greatly easier than usual because the distance between the pathways and the skull was shorter and less complicated to cross than the distance needed to reach the surface of the skin when, for example, healing.
The cost of those perks was unimaginable pain, a sensation unlike any other, and having to stop herself from flinching away or trying to end the suffering as the very bones in her body were being etched with the complicated seal that the Byakugō was.
"That's what power means, my apprentice. Nothing comes without a cost. You told me once that you wanted to become stronger. You won't give up that easily, am I wrong? Will pain make you throw away this opportunity when you could become that much stronger?"
"No, Tsunade-Shishō. Never, Tsunade-Shishō."
Tsunade had patted her shoulder then. "That's my girl. Now, off you go. Get some rest. Tomorrow you can start with the fun part."
Back then, she couldn't have imagined going through it again; experiencing that again. But Sakura wasn't thirteen anymore.
She had goals she had to fulfill. Goals that were so far away right now that they seemed unreachable. However, if there was one thing Naruto had taught her, it was the fact that everything was possible through trial and error and with just enough unyielding determination.
(Almost everything.)
Her chosen placement for the seal had been her inner wrist. Left wrist. Other candidates had been her thigh, her chest, or her hip, but those turned out to be unsuited for one reason or another. But it was mainly because of the thickness of the flesh and muscle inbetween her chakra needle and the bone, or because the area she'd have available for the engraving was too small or not dense enough. There had been a reason why the forehead had been chosen by Mito Uzumaki, the founder.
And, worst-case scenario, if her changes to the formula backfired on her, Sakura would be able to cut off her hand and move on. She couldn't do that as easily with her leg, for example.
But, as Sakura had concluded, the Byakugō was simply too noticeable and well-known in its diamond shape to be anywhere near safely hidden on her forehead. Changing the placement required some modifications to the seal that she painfully figured out over the course of a total of twelve hours, spread over two Shadow Clones and herself, when she wasn't gone to keep up the four-year-old facade.
During that time, Sakura and each of her Clones grumbled some variation of the sentence "If only Naruto or Sai were here." at least five times, while slowly unraveling the workings of the original seal and questioning which parts to leave as they were and which would blast her hand off at the slightest pulse of chakra. In the end, the seal was not really finished and far from perfect, but it probably wouldn't go up in flames or something.
It was recommended, as documented by Mito, to have someone else do the engraving since precise and unwavering control was needed. Not many could retain such focus while under high levels of pain.
But Sakura was the successor to Tsunade the Slug Princess, granddaughter of Mito. Sakura had healed hundreds of people at once by providing controlled amounts of chakra to the summoned fractions of Katsuyu all while fighting and fending off the armies of revived Shinobi and Zetsu.
She would manage. Probably.
There wasn't anyone inside Konoha—or even the Land of Fire, depending on Shishō's current location—that she could trust to do this job anyway.
So she'd do the procedure herself.
And hypothetically, besides the pain and needing to keep being focused all throughout, there wasn't anything that spoke against it working, right?
After three gruesome hours of slowly but somewhat steadily working her way through the seal and another two hours of lying flat on her back while trying to ignore the throbbing of her arm and the emptiness of her chakra coils, she left the room in which the air had become too stuffy.
Due to it being October—as she had informed herself some time ago because time was of the essence—she didn't need to worry about hiding the bandage around her wrist. After all was said and done, some things couldn't be avoided with this kind of procedure. Such as spilling blood and leaving a wound that Sakura didn't have her mentor around to heal up this time.
Tomorrow, she'd meet Shisui again. And there was one thing she needed to know before that.
Jade-green eyes followed the movement of a pink head of hair as it scurried around the room. He kept his shoulder-length hair in a low, short ponytail. It was a more muted tone of rose than her own soft one, just like their (late) father. Sometimes he came back with a braid at the side.
He'd come back from missions, she now knew. Sakura's eyes narrowed.
While she could accept minor changes to their house decor and how well it was maintained, Yūta was a completely different story.
She didn't have a brother; she had never even had siblings. So, how was he here?
"Hey, Sacchan." He suddenly whipped around from where he had been facing his back towards her at the cupboard. "Would you tell me what has you glaring at your Nīchan like he personally insulted your favorite stuffed animal?" He tilted his head in a lazy manner, looking slighly offended.
"I'm not glaring at you! It's called concentrating." she exclaimed in an outraged tone fitting of a young child easily angered.
"Then, our definitions of concentration must be different. I once read in a book though that what you were doing was 'frowning'."
"I'm not frowning, you are! See how you've been running around the room since forever? That's frowning!"
The corner of his lips twitched, and his eyes glinted with humor. "Fair, I guess."
It was easier than thought to fall into a state of bickering with this should-be stranger. Perhaps Sakura was getting sentimental and reminding herself of the old times, when her biggest worries were how to counter Ino's arguments and how to stop Naruto constantly asking her on dates.
Her own age must've somewhat regressed, too. Her brain was still underdeveloped and struggling with all of the information it had to store. Her thinking had gotten naiver, she noticed. She didn't feel the immediate instinct to doubt someone and their intentions anymore. The thought to just blindly trust seemed a lot more appealing.
Of course, Sakura would never let that happen. She had already gotten too close to giving in once.
She blinked, pushing back those thoughts. "How old are you again, Nīchan?"
It was risky, asking questions outright. But she—or at least this body—was four years old. It wasn't unreasonable for her to forget things that had to do with numbers and dates.
Yūta's green eyes widened in surprise. Contrary to everything she had expected, he didn't laugh it off or look offended. He simply continued to stare at her, wearing a puzzled look.
"But we–...?" he started, only to cut himself off mid-sentence. A calculating look crossed his eyes, and Sakura felt as if looking into a mirror, seeing the all too familiar way she would always weigh options and theories, in those matching jade-green eyes and in the expression her brother wore. He seemed to reach a decision then.
And all at once, the thoughtfulness and confusion were wiped off his face, so swiftly that Sakura almost doubted having seen it at all. Yūta's mouth pulled into a smirk.
"Don't tell me you forgot your only brother's age, Sacchan. I'm seven years older than you, you should know that." He probably aimed for his tone to be playful, yet it was slightly too faked to sound anything other than mocking.
Yūta continued on, and Sakura used that time to change her own expression into a matching, teasing one, interrupting the older one's rant.
"I'm four! Why'd I have ta' remember everything?!"
Yūta looked slightly relieved, seeing Sakura reacting to his words again. Strange. How often did this happen?
"Well, since you're so smart, how 'bout you figure my age out yourself? You already know all the other variables." He seamlessly changed the topic.
What was he hiding? "Why can't you just do it for me?"
"I'm not always going to..."
Yūta's and her own voice—still talking—slowly became muffled, as if hearing it from a distance. Sakura felt like a bystander in this conversation that she wasn't in control of anymore, like someone just passing by as Yūta continued to argue with—
With her.
Not herself. No, not this one. Because she had decided to let go of the wheel for just a moment, deliberately give in to the influence and the desires, and let her take over.
The young child sitting in a corner of her—no, their mindscape.
It—a soul, she guessed—had suddenly been there, appearing the day of her awakening. Of course she noticed, just as she noticed every miniscule change to either her mind or body. It was a habit—a combination of the medic training drilled into her, and seven years of war.
The soul of the child was always watching her, silently influencing Sakura's feelings and actions.
Her Inner Child, as she called it, didn't even look like a child, much less a person. It was more of a bright spot of energy or an intangible being, rather than a body. It was only thanks to the sheer innocence and brightness of the energy exuding from the presence that made it clear what exactly it was.
It was the other Sakura.
The one whose body she had taken over.