Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

When she found them in the Valley, her heart stopped. She had always known that if they were to fight, to truly clash, they would, at the very least, cause irreparable damage to each other and themselves. She just hadn't imagined they'd both lose an arm. Still, she moved quickly, turned herself into a medic and began to work. It was no easy task, closing both their gaping wounds at the same time, but, she thought wryly, Sasuke's chilling genjutsu had given her a chance to rest.

She held it together, for the most part. Sasuke's apology ripped her heart open, but she held it together. She worked through her tears and pumped chakra into the boys - her boys - till they could function well enough to travel back to Lightning Country and dispel the Infinite Tsukuyomi the rest of the world was trapped in. She had her moment of glory, her ten minutes of fame, but it wasn't long before Tsunade met her eyes with a grim look. Sakura nodded in silent understanding and they slipped away to regroup with any other medic-nins who may have survived.

For the soldiers, the war was over. But for the healers, it had only just begun.

Bodies everywhere - some breathing, some missing pieces, many dead. After a half hour of assessing and administering primary emergency treatment - it was then that Sakura located and took care of her injured friends - Tsunade entrusted her with the task of triaging while she moved to set up a medical tent.

The hardest thing Sakura did in her life came about that day. She decided who got to live and who would die in the dirt.

For the next few hours Sakura played god, and when she finally slowed down, the lack of remorse she'd displayed during the process made her want to vomit. She stood amidst the blood and moans of dying men and remembered one of the first lectures Tsunade had given her.

"You will lose people," she had stated, blunt words cutting deeper than blunt should. "People will die under your care and you'll remember them more vividly than you will the people you've saved. They will follow you for the rest of your life, Sakura.

"But you can't let them weigh you down. You need to push forward, grow stronger, put on your thickest skin. And when you're alone, you need to pretend you don't care because death weighs the heaviest when your heartbeat is all you can hear."

Sakura had listened intently, had thought she understood the brevity of her shishou's words. She hadn't, though, not really. Not until she lost her first patient. A fifteen-year-old boy by the name of Daiki, stab wounds to the abdomen and neck, a smile too sweet for a Shinobi and two parents who cried pure agony when she gave them the news.

But this was different. She didn't know these men and women's names, where they came from or who would grieve them. She just knew that the blonde man with the crushed ribcage and severe internal bleeding would be a waste of resources, but the Hyuuga with lacerations to the face and torso and a broken leg would make it, even without emergency treatment. He breathed a sigh of relief when she handed him a green card to hold and thanked her profusely from the bottom of his heart.

At the end of the day, she wouldn't have been able to pick him out of a crowd. Not like she would the blonde man.

Around her she could hear medics rushing to transport those she had deemed an emergency, shouting to each other across the living graveyard she had created. When they didn't have enough stretchers, they carried who they could on their backs. Those who couldn't be carried were deemed a lost cause and Sakura's list grew longer.

When the triaging was almost complete, she passed her tags to another medic and put him in charge before rushing to the tent Tsunade had erected. She pulled off her combat gloves and snapped on a pair of latex ones, and she didn't need orders to know where to go. A woman in bed 3 was struggling to breathe and her treatment so far had come in the form of a young, inexperienced medic panicking and calling for help. "Pneumothorax," Sakura informed her shortly, grabbed the biggest needle she could find and shoved it in the girl's chest where she estimated the collapse to be. She slowly sucked the air out and within minutes was moving on to the next one.

Before she could offer her help setting a bone, Tsunade's voice echoed shrilly across the tent. "SAKURA! HERE, NOW."

She didn't waste a second, and when she finally reached her shishou she was met with a gruesome scene. A boy, probably the same age as Sakura, lay sprawled on a gurney in front of them, both legs missing from just below the knee. He was conscious, whimpering and asking for his mom and the sight of him tore Sakura to pieces. "I need you to handle this," Tsunade said sternly. "There's a similar case outside that I'm heading to now." With that she was gone, and Sakura was in charge.

She grabbed a fresh towel and mopped some of the blood up to give her a better view of what was going on, and as she wiped she asked, "what's your name?" The whimpering paused. "Hiro," he sniffled. "And what village are you from, Hiro?" She had figured his legs had been blown off, but as she examined the stumps she knew she figured right. "Iwa...Iwagakure..." She moved closer to his head and offered him a bright smile. "Okay,
Hiro from Iwagakure. I'm going to help you sleep now so I can fix you, okay?" He nodded meekly and she placed her hand on his forehead, easing chakra into the divots in his brain, and soon his breathing evened out and Sakura rocketed into action.

She glanced around and grabbed the closest medic, and she tried not to be disappointed when it turned out to be the girl she had aided with the pneumothorax earlier. "What's your name?" Her voice was squeaky when she responded.

"Mei."

"Okay, Mei, I need your help. This kid's legs are obviously missing, and the explosion that blew them off left a pretty ragged hole. I'm going to need to amputate further or else he'll never be able to wear a pair of prosthetics. I need you to be ready to start healing when I finish slicing. Okay?" Mei nodded, her determination unmistakable in the way she set her jaw, and she shifted closer to the gurney, hands at the ready. Sakura took a deep breath and concentrated her chakra into a scalpel to make the first incision just above the kneecap. As she slit neatly through flesh and muscle, she carved her chakra into a bigger and bigger blade - something that could cut through bone. A horrible grinding sound filled the tent, and she could feel people stopping what they were doing to watch her.

After what seemed like an eternity, she sawed right down to the gurney and pulled the disembodied kneecap out of the way. Mei was quick to cover the fresh stump with her hands and a green glow encompassed the area as Sakura moved to the other leg. As she repeated the process, she glanced over to check Mei's work and was pleased to see muscle knitting together neatly. "Keep it up, Mei," she ground out, and once again the chakra blade hit bone and Sakura tried to ignore the blood spattering across her face and the bone dust filling the air as she sawed away. Finally she hit the gurney and immediately discarded Hiro's knee to make room for her own hands to heal the wound.

It wasn't long before she was finished and there was a raw but smooth stump where a gaping hole had been. She reached over to help Mei finish up and soon they were admiring their handiwork, pale and shaky but proud nonetheless. After turning to a nurse and requesting bags of O negative, Sakura put a bloody hand on Mei's shoulder. "Because of you, Hiro gets to go home to his parents now," she pointed out, and she reveled in the younger girl's beaming face.

"Stick with him, okay? He's going to need to hold someone's hand when he wakes up and that nurse should be coming back with blood any minute now." Mei nodded and with that, Sakura exited the tent, gulping in fresh air like a fish out of water. She caught sight of Tsunade a few feet away, covering a body with a tarp solemnly, and stumbled over to give her the good news - and hopefully help ease Tsunade's own loss. "He made it," she reported. "I had to amputate above the knee, but he's going to be okay. He's getting transfusions now and I've got a medic glued to his side."

Tsunade offered her a tired smile. "You did good, Sakura. You should head to the barracks and clean up...you look like you just stepped out of a bad horror movie," she quipped. Sakura's laugh was hollow.

"Didn't I?"

Without waiting for a response, she turned on her heel and made for the barracks. Halfway there, though, she thought of Sasuke and Naruto, and she was overcome with an overwhelming need to see them. So she turned right back around and headed to the patients' barracks. It didn't take long to track them down, as they were both terrorizing their nurse in the loudest way possible. She gave no warning before entering, and Naruto's face paled as he caught sight of her.

"Naruto," she growled, "are you giving Asuka-san a hard time?" He gulped. "N-no, Sakura-chan, of course not..."

"Good." She turned to the petite nurse and smiled sweetly. "You can go, Asuka-san. I'll deal with these two idiots." The woman nodded, and was halfway out the door before she turned around and addressed Sakura. "Ah...the surgery you performed just now was amazing, Sakura-san. We're all very impressed."

Sakura blushed and stammered out a thank you as the woman turned back around and left. "S-Sakura-chan...why are you covered in blood?" Naruto's tone was cautious, as if saying the wrong thing would trigger her into a killing spree.

She rolled her eyes at the implication. "I've been saving lives all day, baka." And taking them, she thought, smile wavering on her face. "Anyway, I have to shower, but I wanted to make sure you were doing okay. Are you?"

Naruto nodded vigorously. "Yeah! Never better, dattebayo!" Sakura turned to their silent teammate next and this time she spoke cautiously. "Sasuke-kun? You're okay too?" He grunted his confirmation and Sakura smiled as she backed out of the tent.

"Good! I'll be back later to check your arms and read you a bedtime story," she teased, and she was gone before Naruto could retort.

The shower she spoke of was nothing more than a couple of basins next to a river. When Sakura got there, it was dusk and she was alone. Grateful, she stripped out of her soiled clothes and slipped feet first into the water, entranced by the blood that washed off her body and downstream.

As she combed her fingers through her hair, she basked in the victory that was Hiro. After all the death she'd experienced since the beginning of the war, she took particular pride in being able to pull off such a procedure in their current conditions. She would have to check in on him before bed, she decided, and she was just pulling herself out of the water when Mei ran up, red-faced and panting. "Sakura-san! It's Hiro! Please...please come!" She didn't wait for the pink-haired girl to respond, she just spun around and ran back the other way.

Shit. Shit shit shit.

She threw on a fresh shirt and pair of pants and took off at breakneck speed, and as she ran she could feel her one victory slipping away, hear her world crashing around her.

They will follow you for the rest of your life.

"Don't follow me, Hiro. Please don't follow me," she gasped and she knew it was no good.

Dead men don't hear the pleas of the living.

Because I needed to write post-canon. and I've got like 2 chapters already written out so yaaaay!