Phanes

It was almost midnight now, not that it was a bad thing, night was better suited for what she was doing anyway, more shadows to hide what would probably be considered a horrendous crime, specially to those annoying civilians that lived in those lands. 

Sadly, she was out of fucks to give. 

She looked at her victims, three unconscious men with several wounds, not dead though, no, never dead, she needed them alive. Her emotions were running wild inside of her, yet she still gripped them fiercely with a grip of fire, she would not like having the entire forest react to them, having already seen the consequences when she had newly appeared before these strange stars and some unfortunate souls decided to attack her. She wasn’t sorry but she didn’t want to clean that. 

She had already secured the perimeter with heavy layers of genjutsu, not that it was needed with no one else having chakra here, but she didn’t want to risk anything, especially now. She took her pouch, something that she had made here since hers was lost to another dimension, so it was of worse quality, most of the things from here were anyway and took out her most prized possessions, DNA. 

Naruto’s, Sasuke’s, and Kakashi’s DNA  

It had taken a while, a too long of a while but she had finally did it, she had reinvented the nidaime edo tensei. She did not have Naruto’s expertise of seals or Sasuke’s sharingan to give her an edge, but she had her knowledge and more importantly she knew the nidaime. Not much personally as she barely had time during the war to chat, but she had been a Senju, distantly, but still one and Tsunade had never been a sucker for rules anyway so the first time she expressed an interest in the hokage library she was just given the key. She hadn’t seen the edo tensei there, but she had seen many other jutsus, and more importantly she had learned how he thought, what he paid attention to, what mistakes he tended to make and that, had been crucial. 

She placed each item in front of each of the man, low lives and criminals that no one would miss, even if they did, she always made sure to tie all lose ends, after all she did not want to raise suspicion, every citizen already was already suspicious enough of her. 

Her hands moved from one seal to another with careful expertise, God knows she had waited too long for this, four years was more than enough. That visit to the palace had delayed her a bit but at least she had got her last victim there. 

Black lines started appearing circling each of her items, several strands of hair from Naruto, some of Sasuke’s ashes and a finger from Kakashi.  

Her heart sounded like it was placed right beside her ears.

A white mass surrounded the unconscious men. 

She wasn´t breathing, since when had she been holding her breath?   

Her team looked at her with black sclera and cracked lines in their skin. 

She broke down in sobs right then and there.  

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She did not know how long had passed but the sun had appeared a while ago. Her eyes were finally out of tears to cry but her eyes now felt puffy, she’ll heal that later though, now she just wanted to keep on basking in their presence.  

It just felt so subreal, like she was in a dream that she would wake up at any given moment, yet her eyes as swollen as they were did not fail her. Right now, Sasuke as expected, was analysing the territory with his sharingan, most likely having picked up on the strange atmosphere of this place, Kakashi looked consternated towards her, and Naruto… oh Naruto he still had to released her yet, he had taken a look at his body and then at her tear filled eyes and he had embraced her in a hug that maintained for hours as she cried. 

It took even longer to actually start getting some information out, by then they had already revived courtesy of Sasuke’s rinnegan but thanks to her explanation and the help of the sharingan they now possessed all the knowledge she had accumulated during these four years. It had definitely been a show, the disbelief and curiosity of a new world as well as the confort of her past solitude yet the hardest part however, was seeing them grieve the loss of their world just as she had once.

Now though, as the shinobis they needed to be, now they were planning. 

Setling in Fornost Erain for now was the most solid plan mostly since she already had a job and a house there but that was just plan A as she already knew they weren’t the most receptive folks, hopefully they would be too distracted with the royal wedding to pay too much attention but nevertheless they had till Z (Shikamaru would have been proud), they were powerful enough to afford it. Naruto did laugh when she told them she now worked as a seamstress which then made her blush and become annoyed and caused her to fume and team 7 finally felt real again. 

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A week had passed since the royal wedding, everything was going surprisingly smoothly and as Kakashi had predicted no one had yet to pay too much attention to them, they did made all heads turn however, so they went out covered or just mostly they stayed at her house. Now though she had to deal with a Naruto constantly trying to get her to dye her hair back because `` Sakura-chan hair shouldn´t be as boring as Sasuke-teme´ ´ which then caused Sasuke to go into a rage of defending his clan usual colouring and Kakashi firing up both parties even more, she had never though anoyance could produce such happiness. 

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Strong wind entered though the sorry excuse of a window carrying the stench of the city, a common enough occurrence and yet she felt so different, she knew she was getting a lot of weird looks from her coworkers, luckilly they still hadn’t asked though, maybe they were already aware of the new individuals that lived with her (rumours do travel fast) or maybe they were just too scared, it didn’t matter though.  

A voice reached her ears, Anoreth one of the girls from the shop was now talking with her friends about some kind of stir in the city, she played close attention, surely, they wouldn’t be so dumb right? but everything had been too peaceful lately, it didn’t suit them. 

Jumping out of the window she set off in pursuit of the gossip, finding in fact that the city was indeed riled up and swarming towards one location, brazing herself she allowed to be swept up in its wake. 

The crowd held a mixture of emotions which was quite surprising by itself, remembering the clear disgust and fear that had followed her for the first few months. 

Her question was soon answered though when she spotted a short procession. Everything was clearly meant to be eye catching, the inhumane beauty of the riders already giving away their race, her previous interaction with elves had been a short one-time thing, as it was meant to be, she had barely given much thought to the fact that there was variety of other human-like species that existed in this world, not even when she told her team about their existence, apparently that had been a mistake as now her own soulmark was in the forehead of the front rider. 

Soulmates, not everyone has them, yet their existence had shape history more times that she could count, one of the few things this world had in common with her own. She remembered what the kind old man had told her about them, the only person who hadn't judge her in the beginning and taught her to speak and write both Westron and Sindarin. Apparently there was a 65-35 soulmate ratio, with elves being the race with more soulmates and orcs with less. And yet interracial soulmarks were rare, hell they were more than rare with each having marked history on their own. 

She ran, she did not know what to do or where to go but she ran, she ended up in the shop somehow, the signs of a panic attack beginning to surge, she needed her team, where were they, she had to find them-  

“Lothris!” the shout brought her back to reality, the woman, Faindis, came ruining to her with a terrified and worried look, not worried for her that’s for sure, but for the honour of her craft house. 

“Lothris, what have you done?” She was touching her now.  

“What did you do when you were in the palace?” and Sakura could only watch when two soldiers entered, “Did you steal something? offend someone?”  

“Your name is Lothris, correct?” He did not give her time to answer, not that she could get herself to speak as he grabbed her arm, “You are hereby summoned to the palace on the orders of the king”.  

The next couple of minutes were a blurry until she found herself on a room, a room for important guests in the palace where she had been more than a month ago, well at least she was now sure this didn’t have anything to do with the scientific liberties she took with the criminals she caught..., yeah right as if they could ever guess it had been her, she knew perfectly why she was here-  

The door opening interrupted her thoughts, “You are Lothris, yes?” asked the servant looking straight at her soulmark, “As of this day, you have been made a ward of the king with all the status that brings,” he informed her tartly. She blinked, surprised, “Why?” 

“Because you are the soulmate of an elf,” looking oddly grim suddenly, “King Elendur desires to improve the relations between his house and that of the elves… and we can hardly present an elf lord with a street rat for a bride,” he remarked, sneering then. “Attendants will be along shortly to help you… improve yourself as much as is possible, given the source material they have to work with.” 

She continued staring then in shock while the butler quickly went away, then she let out a surprised snort which somehow transformed into full blown laughter. Well, she wasn’t exactly surprised about their attitude nor their comments, yet she couldn’t help but notice that two months ago she probably would have felt bitter and resentful, maybe even disappointed and disheartened, but now, now she just thought it funny.  

Maybe,  

maybe she was healing..., or maybe team 7 just had that ability to bring the best of herself. She smiled again, she needed to find a way to contact them from here.  

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Being prepared by servants was definitely a new experience for her, not a particularly pleasant one though, with several comments then and there, mostly about her dry hair and strange skin, Naruto’s small victory after not managing to convince her to dye her hair back, she was then clothed which brought a new sets of comments, this time about her apparently tawdry figure?, she found amusement at the different beauty standards of this place and the shinobi nations, the memory of Tsunade proclaiming her bosoms as a gift from god to the seven winds almost making her laugh.  

The dress they had forced her into wasn’t exactly ugly, but they couldn't have chosen one that suited her less, now though, she could finally start thinking on how to convey her location to her team, mostly so they don’t start blowing the city up to search for her. 

The new room they had left her in was mostly barren, yet it had the bare essentials, and luckily for her that included a piece of paper, a quill and a perfectly functional window, and was all she needed. It had been a while since she had attempted any other jutsu that held no relationship with the edo tensei or that helped her released accumulated tension in the forest behind several layers of genjutsu, but she still remembered Sai’s lessons, they were just small ink tricks had come in handy in several missions, after all it was his thing even if it wasn't a kekkei genkai, and yet she treasured them dearly. At the time it had been a sign of him healing and actually trusting them, she was glad he had found his deserved happiness with Ino in the end even if the memories now felt bittersweet. 

She scribbled her message mostly describing her location and how to find her, she could explain the soulmate situation later, right now she needed to make it as short as possible otherwise it might not work, finally a small black butterfly with white spots got out of the paper, she opened the window where it went away flying, carrying her message with her.  

It was finally then she noticed the noise down her window, several elves were loading boxes into a carriage, a dowry she realised feeling annoyed this time, as if they were selling her like a sacrificial item for that better relationship the king apparently wanted with the elves. 

So what, a voice in her whispered, what if the power ups wanna play pretend, you know your worth, they are the ignorant ones, not you, and she couldn't help but agree with it, after all, confidence suited her better. 

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Morning came to her sooner than expected, still no sign of her team but she wasn’t going to start worrying yet, instead she decided to do a bit of window watching to kill time as it seemed no one was coming to speak to her or informed her of what was going on. 

“Might you be Lothris?” asked a soft voice, she almost flinched, not many could sneak up on a ninja, even distracted as she was, interesting. 

“I am” 

“Come,” the she? elf said, “Lord Glorfindel awaits you, and then we must be on our way back to Imladris – that is Rivendell, in the common tongue.” 

“I’m aware, I am fluent in Sindarin” she retorted, getting up to follow the elf, “Would Lord Glorfindel be…” 

“Lord Glorfindel would be your soulmate, yes,” she said, leading her to their supposed destination. “Has no one explained anything to you?” the elf asked 

“Not really” she answered truthfully, feeling oddly interested in the estrange mixture of confusion, disappointed and happiness that the elf before her was currently feeling. “Would you be so kind to explain it to me though?”