The title is #99 but for some reason, fanfic won't let me add the # in the title. So...yeah.

Chapter 2: Cloning

The best thing about memories is making them

Tsunade didn't know what to do. Her arms were crossed on top of her chest and her head bowed in deep thought. She was alone in her house, sitting on one of her living room couches. She had heard her student's explanation, who was then put into custody in one of the cleaner and safer prisons. Tomorrow Tsunade was to decide Sakura's fate, thank kami that Naruto was away on a mission with team Gai. Caramel eyes slid shut as the hokage thought back to what Sakura said in slight desperation.

Flashback

Tsunade stopped right outside of the cave's entrance, Sakura behind her and three ANBUs behind them, the others were searching the lab. But they were ordered not to touch anything….yet.

"Speak." The hokage demanded.

Sakura inhaled deeply and let the air out slowly.

"After that day, I preserved a tube of his blood and a few strands of his hair. I didn't really know what I was doing that time but they served as my key ingredient, the DNA source for the clones. Five days after that day, you sent me to the asylum, after all…I did try to kill myself. I just…couldn't imagine a life without him you know. I thought maybe, you would understand. But you wouldn't even tell me what happened to his body!" Sakura breathed deeply again, calming herself she wasn't planning to get so emotional. But Tsunade watched and listened with a solemn mask in place. "Anyways, I realized that I would never leave the asylum until I suck it up and get over my loss. But I couldn't do that sensei…I could never…."

Tsunade glanced down in guilt then quickly returned her gaze to her student.

"Then I got an idea, I remembered reading about clones in one of my past medical studies. A permanent one, an exact replica of a certain person's DNA. I admit I had thought about Orochimaru's forbidden jutsu of reviving the dead. But he would have just been a puppet, following my every command. I didn't want that, he was never submissive and would have hated it. But cloning is not a jutsu, its science and was only said to be immoral because the first successful clone was just a mere shell of a person. I thought and planned different ways to bring him back. Everyone was convinced I moved on and you know what happened next. I was released from the asylum and studied medical books related to cloning which brought us here."

Emerald eyes looked up to meet her sensei's eyes, both females' eyes wavered slightly.

"I never killed, kidnapped or even involved other people in order to make this project successful. I kept it a secret because I knew you wouldn't approve and would have tried to stop me. I did it all by myself shishou."

Tsunade groaned at all the intel she had received from her student. Folders with results of Sakura's experiments were scattered on the coffee table. She had read every word and information written in those papers along with some pictures taken of the subjects.

Sakura had first begun by creating a simple clone of him. As the previous experiments mentioned the clone was simply an empty shell. Sakura killed him with a painless syringe. The process of simple cloning was to grow the DNA into the original's body. Then in a few months or year, after the body was completely formed, it is released from the chemicals they were drowned in. After experimenting a bit more with the simple clones she discovered they weren't just 'empty shells', no, they were in the state of a newborn baby. As in the bodies didn't know how to walk, talk, eat, hold their bladder, read, and take care of themselves, they were clueless and lacked the experience every humans went through. It lacked the experience the original went through. Thus it was not him.

How could she bring back him as he was? Memories of these experience was essential and Sakura was stumped. There was the possibility that she could share her memories with the clone but it severely lacked the information he needed to be himself. Research after research for endless months and sleepless nights, Sakura found a strange solution that had a 35% chance of actually working. She had tried to create a clone through the process of aging. Thus he would be created as a newborn baby which would be grown faster than a normal being, evolve into him as a twenty-year-old, the same age he died in. Sakura had struggled a lot in balancing the chemicals with the DNA to form the body and help it grow at a faster speed; so that she didn't have to wait twenty years for the body to fully develop. Sakura had to make sure to put her test subjects into a deep slumber in order to make them into him.

Before she ended the last subject of her first generation of clones, Sakura had curiously put him in an EEG test which detected brain waves and discovered the clone could dream. Which is how she thought of the second generation of clones, the ones who went through the aging process. She hypothesised that only after the body was fully formed, whether it was the body of a infant, child, or teenager, could it dream. She had made sure to have an EEG test each time the clones grew another 'year' and the results proved her theory correct. It was her first actually victory in her project, a small one but a victory noneless.

She read about theories of dreams, that one could dream after they 'lived' and experienced the world even for a few seconds. The clones never got to 'live' as they were in a unconscious state, their experiences would be from the original's memories. Thus these dreams would be memories and when they…if they woke up, he would be alive. Not just an empty shell. They would actually be alive with his memories and would know how to function as a human being. Sakura's first successful subject that had woken up lasted seven hours before he exploded. It seemed that they had the original's kekkai gekkai of explosive chakra; the first test subject was too weak to control it. And the chakra went on a rampage within the body, clogging chakra lines then eventually exploding. Sakura was crushed.

But after a few days she would try again. Make them much more stable. Subject number 13 lasted ten hours then collapsed, unable to manage his breathing outside of a test tube. She made them stronger. Subject number 38's mind snapped and went into a stroke; Sakura had to end his misery. She made them mentally and physically developed. Subject number 44 committed suicide for an unknown reason, by stabbing himself with a nearby scalpel. Subject number 49 was reported aggressive. He had tried to kill her, so she snapped his neck in self-defense.

Tsunade squeezed her eyes shut, pushing back tears threatening to spill. How much had her student suffered? All alone. Why did she torture herself so? Having to kill one's beloved three times with her own hands. A sob escaped from her, and then another as tears streamed down the blond woman's cheeks.

Maybe if you just had let them be together….then maybe it didn't have to come to this.

There's another chapter.

Confused about the cloning part? You should be, I am too. I tried my best to find an understandable solution and this is the best I got without using a forbidden jutsu.