From Shadows

Sakura was four years old, but she had the experience of a world-class medic who experienced battlefields firsthand. As it stood, she thought that might be her best bet to save Naruto’s parents.

Naruto told her what he found out from his parents about their deaths, but he didn’t know specific details like the location. It was outside Konoha. Though they intended to keep the village safe by having Kushina give birth far away and in secret, somebody—Danzo, she assumed—sabotaged it, resulting in damage to the village, deaths, and distrust in the Uchiha.

Sakura sighed. This was a lot to handle with such a small body, and there was no way she could train enough in the time she had to prevent every event that Naruto’s birth set off.

She grit her teeth together—careful of the loose ones that were ready to give way to her adult teeth. The truth was that she could only think of one way to save Naruto’s parents, but doing so would cost the lives of innocent villagers. 

It would be easiest to track Minato and Kushina using the immense chakra of the Nine-tailed Fox. Easy, but dangerous. Deadly for some.

It couldn’t be helped, Sakura decided.

Then, she needed to practice her speed and healing in the meantime. She knew that she couldn't prepare to fight against whoever released the seal, but she had to arrive at the location before Minato and Kushina died… even if that meant showing up after the culprit left.

The other issue was that she might have as little time as a few days to get this body used to healing so that she could at least ward off death. While she missed Shisui dearly during his missions—more than she ever expected, but she grew used to having his bright presence as her caring older brother to the point that their house felt dark when he was gone—she knew that he would never approve of the training method she had in mind.

Sakura found a kunai with ease, and she was glad that she was reborn into a clan that taught even its youngest how to use weapons to prepare them to enter into the Shinobi world. She stepped outside behind the house so that nobody would see her. With a quick motion, she sliced into the flesh of her forearm. Blood welled up, a stark contrast against her pale skin.

Red droplets fell onto the dirt as she set the kunai aside. Soothing, green Chakra enveloped her hand, although it took longer to form than she was used to. The healing process, too, was slower and left her feeling drained.

This wouldn’t do, she thought.

Over and over, she sliced her arm for the sake of healing it after. It wasn’t the cleanest or most efficient training method, but it was better than nothing.

She practiced until her Chakra reserves grew dangerously low, and after cleaning the kunai she used and putting it back where she found it, she crawled into bed.

Sakura scared him sometimes.

He recognized the look in her eyes, and it wasn’t one that should be on the face of a child. Yet, he was certain that she hadn’t seen the same horrors he had.

All he wanted was to keep her safe and happy. To give her the joyful childhood ignorant of the world that he hadn’t been able to experience.

Maybe that was too much to hope for. She was born with the Sharingan, after all. He would never forget the moment she opened her eyes and his blood ran cold at the sight. While he hadn’t spotted her using the Sharingan since then, he didn’t doubt that she had the ability. He knew that it hadn’t been a trick of the light or his imagination.

Did she know about it? She was newly born, after all, so she might not have realized that she’d be using Chakra.

Shisui sighed, his mission teammates ignoring him as he sorted through his inner turmoil. If it was up to him, they wouldn’t be camped out in the forest now. He preferred solo missions, but it was an inevitability that he was forced to work as part of a team now and then, especially with the war raging on.

If he was alone, then he’d travel through the night rather than stop and set up camp.

Shisui sighed again and flopped back to lie on the grass. He wanted to return home to Sakura as soon as possible. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Mikoto to watch her, but Mikoto had Itachi, Sasuke, and her own duties as the clan leader’s wife to take care of. Because of that, he resorted to asking all his neighbors to at least keep an eye out for Sakura. Maybe check in on her from time to time if they could.

But none of that could give him the peace of mind that being present next to Sakura did. When he was there, he knew that nothing bad would happen to her. He wouldn’t let it.

“Fine, I’ll be the one to ask,” one of his teammates said. “What’s your issue, Uchiha?”

Shisui turned his head to look at the man. As the youngest on the team, he wouldn’t be surprised if the others expected him to complain about their camping conditions. Regardless of his reputation and skill, it often seemed like his teams looked at his age alone as a measure of his worth.

“I want to hurry back to my baby sister,” Shisui said.

His teammate—Kisuke, he recalled—tilted his head to the side, confusion plain on his face. “That’s it?”

“It might seem trivial to you, but she’s important to me,” Shisui said. “I don’t just need to be there for her, I want to be.”

Kisuke took a seat beside Shisui. “That’s the reason we’re out here, isn’t it? To make sure that the people we care about back in the village can be safe.”

It wasn’t that Shisui disagreed with the sentiment. No, the problem was that Shisui and Sakura were mostly left on their own, and they were both just kids. He wouldn’t pretend to know Kisuke’s life or his circumstances, but wasn’t it too much that Shisui had to go out and participate in a war just to support his little sister?

Being part of a prominent clan didn’t mean he had endless support from the people around him. They had their own burdens to handle. They didn’t need Shisui bothering them for favors.

“All the more reason to accomplish our task and get back to the village,” Shisui said.

He would be back with Sakura as soon as possible.

The sun peeked through the window, barely rising at this hour, and Sakura felt miserable. It seemed that her body was too small and weak to get through her planned training regimen for restoring the level of medical abilities she had before dying in her previous life.

Over the last few nights, Sakura pushed herself beyond her limits, cutting and healing her own flesh because she didn’t have many options when it came to practicing in secret. In the end, she had nobody to blame but herself for falling ill. Her urgency made her careless.

Sakura groaned. Mikoto must not have come to check on her yet. It was only a matter of time, but Sakura would have liked it if she forgot. It wasn’t that she thought of Mikoto as a negligent woman. On the contrary, Mikoto would take it upon herself to bring Sakura to stay in her crowded house until she was well. She had a hard enough time believing that Sakura would be alright staying alone while Shisui was on a mission in the first place, and this would only confirm those beliefs.

She didn't want to burden anybody.

She felt the ache and discomfort of a fever and knew that she should try to lower her temperature. However, she was too comfortable in bed and her limbs were far too heavy to move.

It would be best if she got up to get water. She needed to stay hydrated if she was sick. But…

But her eyelids kept falling shut as sleep called to her. She was on the edge of consciousness when she heard the door slam open and Shisui’s loud voice echo through their small home.

“Sakura, I’m back!”