Freedom

by Anonymous

Sasuke idly played with kunai, impatiently waiting for class to begin. He was becoming annoyed; Iruka-sensei, for whatever reason, was late. The girls behind him were using the opportunity to gossip, which wouldn't be so bad if he wasn't their subject of conversation. They had become loud and were getting impossible to ignore.

He didn't know what he was doing that drew the attention of so many girls in the academy, but it really had to stop. His training was the only thing that mattered at this point and he simply didn't have time to dally with the fairer sex. Perhaps when his brother was dead he could worry about courting one of them to find a worthy wife, but certainly not while Itachi was still out there.

As it was, they were just annoying. Pestering him with gifts, requests for dates... The constant violation of his solitude were becoming very trying. He kept them at arms length, doing his best to respond to them with patience and dignity, hoping one day they would take the hint and realize that the cold indifference he responded with was exactly that.

He glanced over at Sakura, the pretty pink-haired girl. It wasn't saying much, but of all the girls giggling and squabbling about him, he disliked her the least. She was... shyer then the rest, and thus, quieter. Still a bother, but less so.

His eyes met hers for a moment, and she returned a cold, hateful glare.

He turned away, flabbergasted. What had happened? Up until yesterday, she had nothing but sunny smiles and crimson blushes where he was concerned. He wondered... Had she taken the hint? Did she figure out he didn't give a damn for any of them? If that was the case, then good for her. His respect had gone up for her a tiny notch.

He put the thoughts aside when Iruka arrived, deciding he would revisit after class. Perhaps he would even ask her. He wasn't sure.

He didn't have much time to make decision, however, as Sakura approached when class was complete. A little curious, he decided he would hear her out.

She looked troubled, as if she was struggling with herself to find the correct words. He waited patiently, and when the last of the their classmates filtered out, she pulled him close and moved her mouth to his ear.

"Meet me behind Ichiraku Ramen at midnight," she whispered sharply. "I have information regarding Itachi."

He didn't know how she knew about Itachi, or what information she promised, but it better be damn good. Discussion of brother was not something he shared in willingly, as it was his mission and his ambition alone. He wouldn't allow anyone else to interfere with it.

He doubted the girl she actually had anything substantial to offer, and his mind began to search for alternative reasons she could be doing this. Perhaps he was wrong earlier when he assumed the girl had taken the hint. She had been desperate for his attention before, and she might be feigning information as a means to getting it.

This wouldn't do. He would not stand for some love-struck child to dig through his past, only to wield a weapon to earn his affection. If that was a case, he decided he would no longer tolerate her transgressions with patient indifference. She would cease her pursuit of him, even if he had to do so by force her to.

"What's the meaning of this, Sakura?" he demanded, having arrived at Ichiraku. She was alone, the night was cold, and the sky pitch black.

The girl was somber, quiet, and looked to be shaking as he approached. She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. She was calm when her eyes opened again, and his gaze met her own. He noticed something curious about her left eye, drawn to it. It was a brilliant green, but that's not what caught his attention. It appeared to be... rippling?

Boiling?

It was if the iris itself was melting away, revealing something else underneath...

He gasped. The emerald green was gone, replaced with a blood red iris orbited by three black tomoe! The eye warped again, and the tomoes exploded outward, forming a strange black and red elliptical pattern that he found he could not look away from.

Then the barriers into his mind were shattered, and everything changed.

It was but a moment later, and the whole world was different. Konoha was gone. The ground was hard and rough, and the sky was consumed by a bright and beautiful moon that shone vividly overhead.

Sasuke frowned, as he tried to collect himself. He was a little shaken, but was conscious enough to known the night hadn't been this bright a moment before. There should be no moon this time of the month.

He quickly realized he wasn't alone. Sakura was a few short feet away, and there was... someone else... The girl sat on her knees and was bound by a pair of manacles that were strapped to each wrists. Curious. She tugged at them futilely, but they were chained tightly to the cold earth.

Another women was standing over here. She was older then Sakura, perhaps eighteen or nineteen. There was a strong resemblance between the two, and Sasuke wondered if she was a relative of hers, perhaps a sister.

The shackled girl screamed as soon as she caught sight of him, her pretty face contorted in fear. "Sasuke-kun! You have to run! She's me! From the future! She's here to..."

"Hush," the older women interrupted. "He can't run. There's no escaping from this."

So this WAS a trap. Sasuke frowned as he considered the woman. She looked too much like Sakura, sounded too much like her, they were even dressed similarity. It was if she WAS Sakura, only older...

"What's going on?" he demanded. "Where are we?"

"A place where our minds can meet. You've been here before, have you not?" Sakura's doppelganger replied. She raised her arms and gestured at the moonlit sky for emphasis.

Comprehension struck and Sasuke's widened his eyes in fear. No...

"This place..." Sasuke stuttered. Rough memories of Itachi torturing him as a child began to emerge.

His earlier meeting with the younger girl came back to him now, and he remembered the blazing red flash... He made eye contact with this older Sakura look-a-like, and there was no mistake.

Her left eye stored a sharingan, the famous mark and blood line of his clan!

Terror seized him, and he began to babble. "Tsukuyomi! How? Who are you?"

"It is as my younger self said," the woman sighed, too calmly for his liking. "I am from the future. As for this..." she paused, gesturing to the sharingan, "I took it from your corpse."

Sasuke was baffled, speechless; unable to process such an impossibilities. The women began to circle around him, eying him wolfishly as she continued to explain. "Before this eye was mine, it was yours. You took this eye from Itachi, just as I took it from you."

She paused, giving him a moment to adsorb this. Sasuke shook his head, unbelieving. It seemed so unreal. "Time travel?" he finally asked.

"Izanami." She was almost reverent as she breathed the name. "A forbidden Uchiha technique. At the price of one's own soul, those who wield it can craft a new beginning."

"With your Eternal Mangekyou, it was easy to send my soul back. The price is not yet fully paid, but I will be happy to when the time comes."

"She's not... She's not lying," the younger-Sakura stammered, almost too quietly for Sasuke to hear. "She knows things."

He mulled over the information, his mind numb by the ramifications. He had other questions. She had not attacked yet, and despite her use of Tsukuyomi, perhaps she did not mean him harm.

"...What do you want?" he managed. "Why are you doing this?"

She smiled proudly. "I intend to save Naruto, the man I love, from the traitor who killed him." Darkly, she added, "From you."

"Naruto?" Sasuke stammered incredulously, unable to help himself. "Dead last?"

It was silly - the women had just claimed that he would eventually betray his homeland, kill one of his classmates - and the only thing he could focus on was how this beauty in front of him could possibly be in love with Uzumaki Naruto.

He glanced to the younger Sakura chained a few feet away as she mumbled something. Her eyes were downcast, her face flushed red with embarrassment. Or was it shame? He wasn't sure.

"Don't laugh," the woman scolded with a coy smirk. "You all owe him more than you could possible realize."

Sasuke frowned, but the gears in his head began to turn as he considered these impossibilities. If what she claimed was true... In this woman's future, he had betrayed Konoha and killed Naruto - who, believe it or not - was very special to this Sakura. He had killed Itachi as well, and at some point was killed himself. This woman had taken his eye, and used it to travel back in time. Did the Sharingan have this power? He knew a Mangekyou Sharingan could do many things, but could its gaze actually pierce through time itself?

And what about her intentions? Why did she come here? Was she here to warn him of the future? Perhaps persuade him to a different path? Or did she...

"You mean to kill me."

It was the most logical explanation. She clearly inhabited Sakura' young body, and wouldn't have the strength to kill him physically. Choosing genjutsu as her weapon made sense. Tsukuyomi, though... He didn't know how she could bring the eye back with her and not the rest of her body, but the moonlit-genjutsu would be perfect weapon against him. He could kill him with it, and Naruto would survive.

His suspicions were confirmed when the younger Sakura sobbed, tears spilling from her eyes. She had known, and that was why she had told him to run the moment she saw him.

With his survival suddenly on the line, he crushed the terror the was boiling within. He had to gamble and hope that maybe Sakura's Tsukuyomi was not as formidable as Itachi's. He might be able to resist her illusions...

He dashed forward, prepared to snap the pink-haired woman's neck with his hands and break the illusion...

..only to blink and find himself paralyzed. Sakura was now standing elsewhere and he was buried waste-deep in the cold, hard earth. Unable to move, he could do nothing more than glare hatefully as the witch as she took a step towards him. She was indeed mistress of this realm and the blind hope he had mustered a moment ago had all but fizzled

"You can't resist," she said softly, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, its not totally your fault. You could never help but be what Itachi made you to be."

She turned away from him at that, and addressed the little girl cowering on her knees. The young-Sakura was whimpering while pathetically pulling at her manacles. She would be of no help to him.

"The burden I'm leaving with you will be heavy one, Sakura," she consoled her younger-self. "You must endure it."

"I'm sorry, I would not have had you watch this if I could help it," she continued. "This last doujustsu will consume what little time my soul has left, and I will fade with the future I left behind." The women seemed happy, eerily content for someone who claimed she was about about to cease to exist.

"Sasuke," the woman murmured and turned to him once more. She had formed a hand-seal and her sharingan blazed alight. He found he could not look away as her the eye inverted on itself and began to slowly spin. The world around them – along with the younger-Sakura – vanished, replaced with pure whiteness.

His feet were no longer pinned, but just as he thought he could move again, an intense numbness overtook his body. He looked down at his arms and was shocked to see them... peeling... No, not, peeling... Fluttering. Dissolving, into cherry blossoms of all things.

He stared back up at Sakura in horror. She was frozen in here stance, but the same pink blossoms that were engulfing him were swarming around her as well. He watched as the petals fluttered off of her, as clumps of her being simply vanished from her body.

A realization struck him... She had said that her soul would be consumed by the doujutsu, so did this mean he was going to share her fate? Would he not only die, but simply cease to be as she eroded both their souls?

"What is this?"

"Freedom," she explained, her voice sad. "And also... Oblivion. I'm sorry, Sasuke. I've failed Naruto too many times in my life. I won't waste this chance."

The finality of such a fate rocked him. He'd be gone, his mission unfulfilled and his loved ones unavenged, with no one to even remember them. He pictured each of his family. He found as his thoughts turned to them, his mind was drawn away, as if every one of them was fading into blossoms just as he was. Thoughts of his grandfather, cousins, mother and father... simply dissolved, until only image of Itachi and his black smile remained... and even that had began to unravel. He tried desperately to cling to that hatred, to hold onto some small sense of himself, before he lost it all and was scattered in the wind.

Please! his mind cried out, finding he could no longer speak. It was a vain and silent plea for mercy, but Sakura's face remained a cold, emotionless mask, determined to punish him for crimes he had not yet committed.

She too was almost gone as she dissolved into blossom petals, until only the sharingan remained... spinning...Slowly and cruelly...

He reached out his hands, hoping for something, ANYTHING, to reach back. Nothing did, and his finger tips numbed and dissolved in a haze of blossoms and petals.

And then he felt nothing at all.

It was a mystery to all involved. The boy had been found lying unconscious in the village streets and would not awaken. There was no sign of attack or injury, but he was immediately brought to Konoha Hospital anyways. He slumbered there for six days, and in that time he was visited by his classmates.

They left gifts and flowers; the sorts of things you would leave a friend struck by illness, though none who visited could truly claim friendship with him. In particular, a pretty pink-haired girl lingered the most, most somber of all who visited.

On the seventh day, he awoke. The nurses attending him asked him all sorts of questions, as they needed to know what happened to properly treat him. How did he come to be lying in the streets? Was he attacked? Or did he simply pass out? Not knowing any of the answers, the boy was his silent as he struggled to find his bearings.

"Uchiha-san," the nurse repeated again firmly, interrupting his pondering. "Do you know what happened? It's important to-"

"Where..." the boy began, cutting her off, though he struggled to find the right question to ask. He thought about it for a moment, and suddenly felt very scared as he realized something was wrong. Very wrong. 'Where' was not the question. No... "Who..."

"Who am I?" the boy sobbed, realizing he did not know.

End.

Story Notes

Sasuke's a dip. I hate him, but I hate character bashing more. This was the kindest thing I think I could do for him: to free him from his past. Sakura, though? I love Sakura. She's such a fantastically flawed character early on, but has some strong redeeming qualities that cause her to grow into a real badass. She ultimately doesn't have it in her to kill Sasuke, but there's a strong part in her that realizes she probably should.

Author Notes

This is just a one shot for now, unfortunately. I am in the insanely fortunate position of being able to write for a living, and I really shouldn't be wasting my personal writing time on fanfics. Still, they're a fun, no-pressure sort of writing that make for a nice distraction. Sometimes I really do need that vacation from work-writing where I can bang away and not agonize about things like passive voice and tenses and just be as sloppy as I want.

But! But! I do plan on eventually doing another one-shot. Sasuke's story is done, but I want to explore the fallout with young-Sakura's perspective, and how she deals with the fallout of her older self's actions and the insight that was forced upon her, especially where a loud blonde kid is concerned.

If you want that follow up one-shot, please leave reviews. I am powered entirely by my own ego, so I suggest you feed it!