I have no excuse besides school. This may be a two-shot. We'll see.
The first time Sakura died she was 12 years old.
It was on her first mission to Wave Country and it was because she didn't duck fast enough.
Momochi Zabuza's sword cut cleanly through the top of head - there was lots of blood and brain matter ruining her dress but Sakura didn't care. Mostly because she was dead.
Except instead of any of the expected afterlives or reincarnation or even nothing, there was the words
YOU DIED. RESTART?
Y/N
That was the first time.
The second, Sakura didn't remember until she saw her client for her first C-rank mission. She dimly heard Naruto protesting the attitude of Tazuna and Kakashi-sensei's admonishment through the stream of panicdeathdeathdeath
"Maa, Naruto. You should follow Sakura's example." Sakura looked up and smiled, hiding her terror.
This time it was a stray kunai from the battle between Kakashi-sensei and Zabuza that did her in.
The third time, it was ANBU determining her a possible infiltrator and dragging her to T&I straight out of the Academy. (She bit off her own tongue and bled out rather than face her village's generous hospitality towards spies - the sad thing was, it was quite hospitable compared to the other Hidden Villages.)
The fourth time, she accompanied Naruto on the mission to retrieve Tsunade. One well-applied chakra scalpel from Kabuto was all it took to send her back to the restart screen.
The fifth, it was a murderous Sasuke burying a Chidori in her chest, Naruto's Ransengan in her back. (There was guilt there; even when she was saving his life, she always turned her back on Naruto)
The sixth, a quiet assassination by Zetsu for being far too bold.
The seventh, crushed to death by Pein's attack on Konoha.
The eighth was a long and painful death handed to her by a grieving and power-mad Sasuke, blaming her and Konoha for everything wrong with him and his family. (The image of him dropping his tanto, eyes wide with shock and remorse as Sakura breathed her last would not leave her for a very long time.)
After that, Sakura stopped keeping track.
It was probably the 40th time that she managed to die of old age (after, of course, getting offed by various members of the Akatsuki, bad luck (and similar events of the like), and in one memorable occasion, getting run over by an elephant summon), kicking the can before her husband and her child-turned-Hokage. When the restart screen appeared, she almost didn't choose yes.
Almost.
Haruno Sakura was a precocious girl, her parents had decided in order to save their sanity. She had always had very knowing green eyes since she was far too young, with a stare that nearly made her aunt drop her in her first two weeks.
So when Sakura returned from her first day of Academy with an expression that gave Mebuki an impression of her own grandmother - a long, calculating look - she wasn't particularly surprised, and, quickly recalling 17 stumped councilors and a bank account with contents only disappearing as fast as her sanity - asked instead how her daughter's first day of school had been.
Actually, it had been great. The earlier the better seemed to apply to massive timeline changes, Sakura had found, and remembering this early in her friends' lives meant that there was a lot she could still change.
This time, she had decided halfway through learning the proper angle to hold a kunai at, she would pull a Naruto and save everyone.
'Let's see,' she thought as she laid out her homework on her desk, 'The Uchiha massacre has nearly six months before it'll become a problem...'
(Far off in the dark, a tragically loyal Uchiha felt a shiver run up his spine.)
(After all, so what if she died?)
(It wasn't like she didn't have a second chance.)
