part 1
Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally comes to realise that nothing really belongs to them. ― Paulo Coelho
When the light fades, when the song is quiet again, Shikako is still injured, still laying on the altar in the temple at Hot Springs, but she’s alone .
There’s nothing trying to use her as a gateway. There are no priests. Aoba’s corpse doesn’t hang upside down from the ceiling, throat slit. The room is covered in dust, not blood. Well, except for her. She’s still got that gut wound. Still got Aoba’s blood in her mouth, in her hair, down her throat —
Shikako rolls over to throw up and doesn’t even care that it hurts like hell to move her torso like that or that she rolls straight off the altar and onto the dusty floor. On her knees, Shikako heaves and heaves, tries not to think about Aoba and his broken sunglasses, and fumbles for her necklace.
The stone is still there. Shikako feels like she’s dying, but the stone is still there. Too weak to crawl, she collapses to the floor and just barely misses her own bloody puke. Her hands are filthy and she spares a thought for infection but her vision is grey at the edges, her heart pounding in her chest. She pries the Gelel stone from its wire cage and shoves it without ceremony into her abdomen where the priest’s staff impaled her.
Then she passes the fuck out.
Shikako wakes up some time later feeling marginally better. When she sits up and feels her abdomen, it’s covered in gore but healed. It doesn’t even hurt anymore. All the blood on her has dried and so has her puke, which is super gross. There’s a carpet under all the dust and she’s completely ruined it, although a little vindictively she thinks that the temple deserves to be ruined.
Her head spins when she stands up. Blood loss. Gotta do something about that, she thinks. She scrapes the inside of her mouth with chakra and spits. Then she takes a blood pill. Dumps a packet of rehydration powder into her canteen and chugs.
Everything about Shikako feels super gross, and not just physically. She wishes she’d gotten Sasuke to teach her how to set herself on fire using the fire-style chidori. Maybe it could be expanded to cover every inch of her body and the inside as well. Burning alive sounds pretty great now.
But, no. Shikako has to get home. She has intel. She has to find out what happened to Aoba and what happened to the monks. Maybe the seal deleted them from the universe? That would be convenient, but it seems unlikely.
She changes out of her ruined clothing and cleans up barely at all before she changes into a clean set of clothes. Shikako doesn’t want to stick around the temple looking for a bathroom or something. She wants to go home . The blood-drenched clothing she changes out of are dropped into hammerspace instead of left behind — there’s a hole in her shirt that says stomach impalement was here and she doesn’t want anyone asking questions about that at inconvenient times. It will be gross to dispose of them later, but hammerspace had kept a severed arm fresh and this isn’t exactly worse than that in any notable way.
Outside the temple, the village is just as it was when she and Aoba arrived. All of these people, Shikako knows, are dead. Or, should be dead. Even the weakest civilian, even the kids, grate and press on her chakra sense. It’s loud. It hurts . Shikako knows she should investigate but blood itches on her skin. The acidic prickle of vomit lingers in her throat. She doesn’t even slow down to look around; she just heads south for Konoha.
Hours later, after crossing the border with no trouble, she scrubs herself raw in a freezing creek in the Land of Fire. She’s never in her life been so happy to be carrying a full complement of toiletries. She brushes her teeth over and over. She shampoos three times. The wash cloth she uses is just as ruined as her clothes were.
This could be worse, Shikako thinks as she puts on clean clothing. Then she thinks of Aoba and isn’t sure.
She has to keep her hair loose because she lost her braid fastener in her rush to escape and save Aoba and the one thing she doesn’t have in hammerspace is anything that might be useful for tying her hair back. That’s the problem with getting used to having one special, useful hair accessory: you use it every day for months and then when you use it you don’t have anything to replace it with.
It’s just another thing to feel unbalanced about.
Moving keeps her from having to focus on it. She doesn’t make camp. She dumps another rehydrating packet into yet another canteen of water, and keeps going.
When the main gate comes into her sensory range, Shikako is surprised to feel Sai there. There’s something... different to his chakra signature. Sai should be a precise swipe of ink being laid down for calligraphy, a purposeful, meaningful mark. Sai still has the feel of ink on paper, but... it doesn’t feel like the same ink, the same paper.
Something as simple as being sick can sometimes change how chakra feels, though, and Shikako is just glad someone she knows is at the gate, although she didn’t think Sai ever took gate duty. Maybe Tsunade figured out that Sai needs to be kept as far away from Danzō as possible. Maybe Danzō is planning to fish for information on her S-rank again.
The other chakra signal is a stranger, and Shikako doesn’t puzzle over it too much as she waits to reach the front of the line. There are a lot of people who might get stuck on gate duty who she wouldn’t know by chakra alone, and it’s more important to prepare what she is and isn’t willing to admit about her mission to Sai. And to whoever else will ask her about it before she can report to Tsunade.
She knows that Sai is at the desk, so she looks at the other person on duty first.
It’s Morino Idate. Who should be in Land of Tea, pretending to be dead with Ibiki’s help. He has a chūnin vest. Shikako feels the whole world tilt, a sharp and sudden line of wrongness suddenly running through everything.
“Next,” says Idate, and looks up at her. “Papers?” he adds, holding a hand out.
Shikako looks at Sai. Sai is on his feet. Sai is wearing a wide-collared Uchiha shirt and he’s looking right at her. With Sharingan eyes. The hair on the back on Shikako’s neck stands up. He’s taller and broader-shouldered and older . So is Idate, for that matter, they’re both years older than they should be.
“Sai?” she says.
There’s no genjutsu; there’s too much detail in her chakra sense. Really, why would anyone genjutsu her into seeing this? And who would have done it, anyway?
Something is very, very wrong — an effect of the seal she’d used — and Shikako knows she should retreat. It’s dangerous to be here. But Shikako is tired, and slow, and very, very caught up in Sai being an Uchiha .
“You’re not her,” Sai says. He’s angry , an expression she’s never seen on Sai’s face before. Not just angry but enraged, practically. And seeing his face like that... there is something Uchiha about it. There’d been an old woman Itachi killed in the police station who’d looked like that, the moment before she died.
“I’m just me?” Shikako says, confused and hurt and tired. Her eyes slide up, to the Hokage Mountain. Tsunade’s head is there, looking just like it should.
Sai must make some kind of signal because the ANBU who are on duty at the gate appear and Idate springs to his feet. Behind Shikako, the ninja waiting to check in tense and the civilians startle, some of them screaming, others tripping over themselves to back up, away from her.
Shikako just wants to go home . When she woke up back in the temple, when the villagers were all fine... but of course they should all be dead. Aoba is dead. Shikako didn’t save anyone.
The ANBU take her away — she doesn’t fight — and she has to consider that she probably hasn’t even saved herself. Not in any way that matters.
She surrenders her clothing easily. In preparation for blending in with civilians for the foreseeable future, she and Aoba had tucked anything important away in her hammerspace seal — an absent minded tucking-away of the Sword of the Thunder God had revealed that the seals on her lightsaber aren’t affected by being inside the hammerspace seal. It means she’s only losing some kunai, some standard exploding seals, a flare, and so on to the T&I intake officers who order her to strip. Nothing important.
Not that anything feels important at the moment.
The best part is the shower, watched over by strangers who’d been startled to see her scars. Especially the through-and-through over her heart.
“What’s your name?” they ask her when she’s redressed in clothing provided by T&I, her wet hair loose to soak the back of her shirt.
She could lie, or refuse to answer, but she has nothing prepared and no idea of what sort of on-the-fly lie might be bought. Tsunade’s face was on the mountain, so she’s probably in charge. Giving in and answering is the path of least resistance.
“Nara Shikako,” she says.
“Try again,” says the one T&I officer.
“She was wearing the Nara crest,” says the other.
Shikako says, “It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe me.”
Then there’s a great deal of waiting, and more waiting, and a woman from Konoha’s R&D department comes in. Shikako has to pull the sleeves of her shirt up to show off the seals on her arm, has to lift up her shirt and ease her pants down to show the woman the tattooed BOOK on her hip that hides the Book of Gelel.
The woman from R&D looks her over, and shrugs. “Sure,” the woman says. “They’re seals. But hell if I know what they’re for. We’d need Jiraiya-sama for that, I think.”
Finally, more waiting, and no food which is fine because Shikako’s not sure she’ll ever want to eat again, and then she’s being led to a new room.
This room hums quietly with seals. When she steps inside, she stops being able to sense more than the faint spark of chakra signatures even when they’re just on the other side of the door. She also feels her own chakra retreating, banked until it’s out of her reach, slipping through her grasp when she reaches for it out of curiosity.
There’s a table and two chairs in the room. Shikako is led over to one of them and left to sit there, and sit, and sit. Eventually she folds her arms on the table and puts her head down to try and pass out. Sitting still is awful. It feels like there must be something she could be doing .
She only raises her head when someone takes the chair across from her. Morino Ibiki looks at her. Shikako looks back, slumping down in her chair. It’s surprisingly comfortable. The chair, that is, but also being looked at so intently by Ibiki.
The chair is probably meant to make her comfortable, of course, since this is a fairly pleasant interrogation set up, all things considered. The staring... less so. It’s a sort of authoritative look. Very serious. It says that Shikako is in a lot of trouble. Which isn’t inaccurate, but Shikako is feeling pretty numb to her current predicament.
Ibiki is clearly waiting for her to speak first. Shikako could probably zone out and outlast him, but what would be the point? Anyway, she has questions she wants answered and this is an interrogation room; might as well go for it. The first step to getting something done is getting information.
“Can I see the top of your head?” Shikako asks.
Ibiki’s expression doesn’t change. “Maybe,” he says. “Why?” His tone manages to imply a sort of infinite patience for stupid questions.
“It’s been kind of a long week for me.” Shikako sighs and slumps a little further in the chair. “How about you show me, and then I’ll tell you?”
For a moment he just looks at her, and then at last he reaches up and unties the bandana that covers his head. He pulls it away and Shikako sits up a little. His head is smooth, bald, no scars. She’s already been fairly certain, but this is proof: this Ibiki is not her Ibiki. Not the one who administered her first chūnin exam, who questioned her in a room like this one about her supposed interrogation skill, who made a joke about a papercut.
It’s still Morino Ibiki. But it also isn’t.
“I see,” Shikako says, and leans forward until her head can rest on the top of the table between her and Ibiki. “Fuck.”
Ibiki is good enough to keep silent while Shikako closes her eyes and pushes back the edge of panic creeping in to her breathing. It’s fine. It’s fine . She’s not dead and the Ibiki she knows — Ibiki-taichou — he probably isn’t, either. Everyone is fine (except for Aoba) it’s just that they’re... far away .
When the worst of it has passed, Shikako levers herself up, just far enough to rest her elbows on the table and cradle her head in her hands. She wishes desperately she’d been given something to tie her hair back. Having her hair braided like it should be would make this much easier. Somehow.
“Okay, I guess I promised,” Shikako says. “But it’s not... going to sound true .”
“Things that are true don’t always sound true,” Ibiki reassures her. “Do your best to explain.”
She huffs out a breath. That actually does make her feel better, even though she knows Ibiki is only saying it to get her talking and build rapport.
“I had a sealing accident. Using the Hiraishin.”
“You’re right that that doesn’t sound true,” Ibiki says. He’s putting his bandana back on, fixing the illusion of being Ibiki-taichou back in place. “It also doesn’t sound related.”
“It is related,” Shikako says, “but it’s hard to explain.”
“Why don’t we start somewhere easier, then,” Ibiki says. “Your name. You told the intake officers that your name is Nara Shikako. We didn’t find any identification in your things.”
Shikako’s ninja ID is safely tucked away in hammerspace, but she says, “It was a rough mission,” in explanation instead of producing it.
It’s stupid, it’s not like her slightly-scuffed identification will magically allow her to get home, but if she hands it over she might not get it back and she wants to keep it. She wants to keep every tangible piece of evidence she has that her home existed. It’s not like producing it would prove anything, anyway, given how randomized the security measures are. Plus, well. Admitting she’s got hammerspace would probably be a mistake.
“Nara Shikako,” Ibiki says carefully, “was a seven year old little girl when she was last seen. She’d be sixteen by now. You’re.... twelve? Thirteen?.”
She’s almost fourteen, but the point stands. The Nara Shikako native to this world is surely dead, and even if she weren’t, Shikako is too young to be mistaken for her. Of course, that brings up some questions about who Sai meant when he said you’re not her , but — but then, Shikako considers with a shiver down her spine, maybe that makes perfect sense.
When she was young, she’d worried about catching Danzō’s attention in the worst possible way. Maybe this world’s Shikako did .
Shikako presses her lips together, considering. This doesn’t seem like her displacement should be a hard thing to explain, but really — alternate universes are the domain of science fiction, and Konoha is somewhat lacking in the genre. Also, most ninja don’t really have time to read fiction.
When Shikako looks up, Ibiki is looking at her.
He’ll wait as long as it takes for her to continue with her explanation. She sits up and then slumps back into her chair. Fine. It’s not like Ibiki is stupid , it’s just that she’s not sure there’s words for what she needs to explain in this life and there hasn’t exactly been anyone to ask. Senju Tobirama and Namikaze Minato might have known, but they’re both dead. Jiraiya had never seemed to have a very keen interest in time-space techniques. Maybe Orochimaru knows, but Shikako doesn’t think she’ll have a chance to quiz him on physics and vocabulary.
Shikako says, “The replacement technique briefly folds space — reality — and switches the user with some other object. The Hiraishin is um, more direct. It folds space and then punctures it, so the user can move directly where they want to go with no exchange of... physical stuff. Probably.”
Ibiki makes an expression that says, Probably?
Shikako shrugs a little helplessly. “I used it wrong, so my theory might be wrong. But what definitely happened to me is that I left my reality, my world, and ended up here, in your world. The Morino Ibiki I know has scars on his head. And your chakra feels different.”
“So your explanation is that you’re Nara Shikako from a version of Konoha where I’ve had a head injury,” Ibiki says.
“I’m Nara Shikako from a world where I didn’t die at seven,” Shikako says.
“This isn’t the strangest theory that’s been floated in an interrogation room by someone seeking entry into the village,” Ibiki says. It’s too bad Shikako doesn’t have a more plausible excuse handy than, ‘Sorry, I fired up a space-time technique no one really understands and missed the exit for my own dimension.’
“I wasn’t really seeking entry to the village,” Shikako says. Is it rude to contradict your interrogator?
“Tell me about your mission,” Ibiki says, instead of addressing that. “You said it was rough, but you don’t have any injuries.”
Shikako has no way to know whether or not information on the Akatsuki is considered classified on this version of Konoha. She also has no way to know who might be watching this interrogation, but very much doubts it’s happening with no audience whatsoever. This is an alternate universe, but Shikako is still a Special Jōnin of Konoha and she has to keep ahold of that. She’s going to get home.
Shikako says, “Even if it was a different Konoha... it was S-rank. I can’t tell you much.”
“I appreciate your commitment to information security,” says Ibiki. His tone is so much like Ibiki-taicho talking about that papercut that it makes Shikako crack a smile, just a small one — and her expression surprises him, she thinks, although it’s hard to tell with Ibiki when his expressions are genuine and when they aren’t. He prods gently, “What can you say?”
“There was a seal, it was July, I was trying to escape.”
“Your team?” Ibiki asks. His face is totally neutral. A blank wall, impossible to read.
She doesn’t want to think about this or deal with it and Ibiki has probably already guessed the answer and is just trying to get a reaction. And thinking about Aoba — it makes her vision white out for a second, makes her breath catch. A dangerous reaction, the kind of reaction that could kill her if this were combat. And stupid, too, because it’s not like she’s never seen anyone die before.
“My partner didn’t make it,” she manages, and at least her voice is level, factual, almost unbothered. Strangled down to the slightest of minor tones, the way one might talk about weather ruining a planned picnic.
“That’s always very hard,” Ibiki says, and his expression opens, just a bit — sympathy. Understanding. “We’ve all been there,” he adds. “They’d be happy you got out alive.”
They made me drink his blood, she thinks about telling him. He died thinking I’d die, too.
“I might be willing to talk to Tsunade-sama,” Shikako says instead.
“I’ll see if she can pencil it in.” Ibiki shuffles some papers. Opens a file that may or may not be for show. “No one thought that Shikako-chan would be a field ninja,” he says. “She was always behind her classmates in physical activities.”
Shikako blinks at him. “I got better at chakra enhancing as I went through the Academy. I had to learn to do it consciously.”
“No one has to learn to do that consciously,” Ibiki says.
Shikako shrugs. “ I did.”
Ibiki asks a bunch more questions about her early life — her academy years, her time before that. She answers them, because he’s probably going to check with this universe’s Shikaku to see if they match up and she’s curious to see if they will. Besides, none of it is dangerous information to give out, really.
Eventually Ibiki leaves. When he opens the door, chakra floods into the room and into her. The ambient chakra had been sucked out of the room so gradually that she hadn’t noticed, but now that it’s back Shikako sucks in a breath and coughs, feeling like she’s choking for a moment. Ibiki notices, of course, and turns back, letting the door close behind him again. Shikako’s chakra is immediately suppressed, but the chakra in the air lingers.
“I’m fine,” Shikako says, evening her breathing out through sheer force of will. “It’s just the chakra in the air.”
“The... chakra in the air,” Ibiki repeats. He probably thinks this was some kind of weak stall, or the beginning of an escape plan or something — a less careful person might have lingered with the doorway open. But really it’s just slightly embarrassing.
“Yeah. It’s my hypersensitivity. I used to do it as a baby, too?”
Ibiki turns and leaves. This time when the door opens Shikako holds her breath so she doesn’t get distracted.
The faint pinpricks of chakra she’d been sensing flare into recognizable signatures with the door open. Sai is there. And chakra that feels like her father. And Inoichi.
The door closes.
Eventually she returns to trying to sleep, and Shikako isn’t her brother but nothing is on fire or currently trying to kill her, so slipping into a light mission sleep with her head pillowed on her arms the way Shikamaru used to slump over his desk in the Academy is both easy and satisfying.
When she’s roused, it’s by the door to the room opening, breaking the circuit of the seals, just like when Ibiki left, and Shikako chokes even as she grabs for her chakra and shoves as much of it as she can into the stone lodged in her abdomen. She doesn’t know if shadow state could actually help her here, but it can’t hurt. It had let her cross the threshold of the Jashinist’s seal.
There’s no audience in the room next door this time, no small sparks of power hovering by the observation window that to Shikako looks just like the other four walls. It’s just her visitor, Tsunade, who leans against the wall instead of sitting down. Seeing Tsunade should be reassuring, but it’s... not. Tsunade’s chakra is banked low by the room almost immediately, tucked away, but Shikako has time to feel it and it feels wrong . Hard. Brittle.
Shikako straightens up and pushes her hair out of her face. “Tsunade-sama,” she says.
“I don’t have long, so get to the point.” She looks at Shikako like Shikako is something she’s considering disposing of — but not in an interested way, because she also looks at Shikako like Shikako is a dull waste of time.
Not something she’s seen on her own Tsunade’s face.
“I was investigating an S-rank threat,” Shikako says, “on your counterpart’s orders.”
It bothers her that Tsunade stands with her arms crossed, looking unimpressed. It bothers her that Tsunade isn’t dressed the way Shikako would expect. Her clothing is a little more combat-ready. She isn’t wearing kunoichi heels. Her hair is loose.
“And why would I send you?” Tsunade asks.
The question stings a little, but Shikako knows she probably doesn’t look like much, really. She’d arrived unarmed. Currently she’s wearing sweatpants and had to roll the waist a few times to make sure the elastic would keep them up — they’re prisoner-issue, the same kind she’d seen Tayuya wearing. No drawstring, since that could be used as a weapon, but clearly no one had been quite prepared for a slightly-built fourteen year old.
“I’m a special jōnin,” Shikako says. “I brought you Sand’s uncensored file on Sasori of the Red Sand. I found the information that lead to my last mission.”
Tsunade says, “Clearly not very good information, if it got your mission partner killed.”
And that should sting. That should make Shikako have to control her breathing carefully, should make her vision tunnel a little. But... it just makes this woman in front of Shikako feel obviously fake. Like someone wearing an inaccurate transformation jutsu and acting wildly out of character. The illusion of familiarity slips away. Ibiki was close enough that she couldn’t tell, but this Tsunade could never be Shikako’s Tsunade.
“There were some unavoidable complications,” Shikako says, her voice perfectly flat.
“There always are,” Tsunade says. Where Shikako’s Tsunade would be reassuring (or maybe frustrated) this Tsunade is callous and bored.
In a conversation with a ninja she’d come all the way down to T&I to try and get information out of, Shikako would expect her Tsunade to at least feign some sympathy.
Shikako says nothing in return, looking up at Tsunade and thinking how odd Tsunade’s body language is. It’s an academy basic to mimic the body language of the person you’re speaking to, to be open if they’re being open, but Tsunade is closed-off. Arms crossed, across the room, uninterested.“Do you want my information or not?”
“Well. Let’s hear it.” Tsunade waves a hand like she’s encouraging Shikako to get on with it. “The information that you think is so important.”
On one hand, this does not fill Shikako with a desperate need to deliver her likely very important information to this Tsunade. On the other... things are similar enough that Tsunade is still Godaime, that Ibiki runs T&I, that Sai’s chakra feels like Sai’s chakra. The Naruto here is probably still basically Naruto and still in basically the same danger.
These people stopped being characters to Shikako a long time ago. It’s not her responsibility to save this version of Konoha, but that doesn’t mean she can just... turn her back on it when she could help so much. But she’s also not going to give this Tsunade this information for free, not while being held prisoner and being looked at like that .
“I know who all the members of the Akatsuki are,” says Shikako. She leans forward. “And I know what their leader’s goal is.”
“That... would be important, useful information,” Tsunade says, “if it could be trusted.”
“They have a long history,” Shikako says. “Much farther back than when our realities probably diverged. The leader and his goals will be the same. Of course you’d have to double check it, but you’d be doing that legwork even if I were a trusted source.”
Tsunade studies her, carefully, slowly, and her expression slowly changes until she’s looking at Shikako like Shikako might be something that could be torn open and dissected. Each piece of her held up to the light to be examined and then on to the next part, every shadowed place stripped away until her every secret is laid out anatomically.
“You do have a point.” Tsunade steps away from the wall and just having her get a foot closer sends a chill down Shikako’s spine. “But you’re going to tell me and my people what we want to know whether or not you want to.”
She thinks it’s intent, at first, Tsunade’s feelings leaked into the air via near-imperceptible levels of projected chakra. But the air is still just as chakra-dry as always. There’s no additional power to this feeling, just body language and tone.
“I don’t know what you were planning on asking for in return for this information,” Tsunade continues, “but you won’t be getting it. We don’t negotiate with prisoners.”
Without saying anything more, Tsunade leaves. Shikako stores more chakra away in her stone, and doesn’t even consider trying to make a break for it right then — maybe she could get out, but she wouldn’t rate her chances of actually getting away from any version of Tsunade as very good.
Shikako is so tired and in so much trouble. She puts her head down again and closes her eyes.
But she can’t sleep.
With her head down, this time with her forehead pressed flat against the cool surface of the table and her arms folded over her head like a loose tent, Shikako tracks the pinpricks of chakra she can sense outside the room.
Should she be able to feel them? She gets the impression that the room is supposed to cut off all of her ability to sense things outside the room. The air the the room is dry of chakra, her own chakra ducks her grasp when she reaches for it, and she can’t sense any natural chakra. Just the movement of people. Lingering in the observation room to keep watch on her, coming and going in the halls, what feels like it might be someone being physically carried into an interrogation room down the hall.
Maybe it’s just her strong chakra sense. Maybe Tonbo-senpai would be able to sense this, too. The T&I department moves around Shikako’s room like a galaxy turning in some bizarre but ordered pattern.
The people feel like stars.