Disclaimer: Don't look at me! Wait, now that I think of it...how could you look at me? I mean, this is the internet, not a photo album...you can't see me to look at me. So: ha!
Chapter 35: Solar Eclipse 'Movie'
Sakura watched in confusion as everything seemed to disappear, even herself. Then things began to reappear, but they weren't what had just disappeared. She had been in the park with Sasuke, now she was somewhere else, somewhere inside. There were others there too.
Sakura focused on the people; there was a woman who had obviously just given birth, there was a man who was shrouded in the shadows of his cloak, and there was a baby, swaddled in a blanket. What surprised Sakura most about this picture was that both the woman and the baby had pink hair. What was going on? Who were these people?
Sakura noticed that the woman was bleeding more than was safe. Sakura felt pity for this unknown woman; she had given birth successfully, but if a healer didn't get to here soon, she'd be dead from blood loss. As she watched, the woman reached feebly to grab a part of the man's cloak and brought him nearer to her.
Sakura heard the raspy words as if she had been the one they were spoken to, "I have told you all the possibilities…but the best way for your goals to be accomplished…and for our daughter to be as strong as she can be…is for you to bring her back with you…and leave her with your half sister…"
The longer the 'movie' went, the farther away Sakura's feelings seemed to be. Now Sakura only felt the slightest sliver of emotion, and what she felt seemed to be far away from her, as if in another body other than her own. But Sakura knew she felt understanding with what was going on finally. That woman was her mother, and the man her father, and the baby…was her…this must be the story of her birth.
The woman gasped in pain, then continued weakly, "I've told you all I can, my love…now you must leave…hurry…my grandmother is coming…if she finds you, she'll take Sakura…and your goal…" The woman's voice had gotten so quiet that it was like she was merely mouthing the words. The woman released the man's cloak and with the last of her strength gave him a slight push towards the door. The man hurried to the door without a sound and left.
The scene changed, she was now watching as the same man whose face she could still not see, this time because of an ANBU mask, was speaking to her aunt, who was holding the baby. "Take care of her until I am able to be reunited with her." He said in a muffled voice, then he disappeared, leaving her aunt standing on the doorstep, holding the sleeping baby and trying not to cry. She went inside and closed the door.
Sakura distantly felt recognition flow through her, for some reason, she was watching the happenings of her life. It was a lot like her dreams, but at the same time, it was a lot like reality; everything was in color, nothing was blurred, and she could understand every word spoken. But unlike reality, it was skipping a lot of time, because there had been a week at least between her birth and her father going on his mission.
The scene changed again and this time Sakura distantly felt sick. She was looking at what must have been the battleground where her father and all the other ninja on that mission died. The Hokage had told her some detail about the horrible scene, but it could never have prepared her for what she saw. She was glad that her feelings seemed so distant, because if they hadn't Sakura might have been sick.
There were blood and body parts everywhere, and apparently she could smell things in this 'movie', because the stench of death hung heavily in the air. The sickness that she distantly felt dissipated when she saw something far in the distance that made her blood run cold.
There were two people, almost hidden by the trees, but Sakura wouldn't have been able to tell who they were anyways because of what they were wearing. It was what they were wearing that had made Sakura go from being sick to being angry. They were wearing the robes and hats of the Akatsuki, and one of them was smiling like a mad man while the other was wiping blood from his hands, his face in shadow.
The scene changed again, but only slightly. She was still looking at the bodies of the dead, but they were starting to decay, and the stench was almost overpowering. Now there were live ANBU who had just stumbled upon the slaughtering ground. Sakura heard one of the ANBU use a communicator, "We've found what we were looking for, in a sense…Get the Hokage right away!" The communicator buzzed off and the scene changed.
Sakura knew she was at a funeral; everyone was wearing black and many people were crying. They were in front of the stone where the names of the fallen leaf heroes were written. In the crowd Sakura found her aunt holding her and crying into her husbands shoulder. The Hokage was making a speech about how the fallen had had died protecting their village. Far away, Sakura felt sad, but as the 'movie' got longer, she felt less and less.
As Sakura watched, more scenes unfolded, and her rational mind told her that everything she was watching had really happened, and that she was seeing them in the order that they really happened in. The only difference was that they were only snippets of what had happened.
"What's blue as ice?" asked Itachi roughly as he dragged his brother with him to stand by Ibiki, who was still staring at Sakura's face. But Ibiki didn't need to answer him; Itachi knew the answer as soon as he looked at Sakura's face. It was her eyes. They had gone from their vibrant green to ice blue, but that wasn't all. Her pupils had shrunken to the point where they were almost inexistent.
Itachi also noticed that she wasn't blinking, and that she was staring at the sun, which had only just begun to disappear, wide eyed. If she kept looking at the sun she'd surely go blind. Itachi reached out and was about to touch her when he felt Ibiki grab his arm, stopping him. Itachi's head swerved and he glared at Ibiki, his Sharingan activating. Ibiki released his hold on him, but he shook his head, saying, "It's best not to touch her. This has to do with her Kekkei Genkai, so I'm sure she'll be fine, but you don't know what will happen if you interrupt her. It's better to just let her be."
Itachi turned his Sharingan on Sakura and saw her Chakra swirling up to surround her head. He blinked and his Sharingan deactivated. He looked at Sakura carefully, holding Sasuke back from running to her, or maybe he was holding himself back...he wasn't sure. As he looked, he noticed a few things. She was breathing, but just barely and other than that, he could see no other source of muscle movement.
He heard Sasuke ask, frightened, "What's wrong with Sakura? What's wrong with her? Why won't she move? What happened?"
Ibiki was the one who answered quietly, "Don't be worried, Sasuke, she's fine. She's just having her first experience with her Kekkei Genkai…you know, like your families Sharingan."
Sakura watched as she took her first steps and said her first words. She watched as her birthdays came and went. She noticed that however many times her aunt and uncle corrected her, she kept calling them mommy and daddy. Sakura watched as she slowly grew up, and she noticed that even when she was a toddler, she was picked on or left out by other toddlers.
Not long after she watched her fifth birthday something happened that had nothing to do with the 'movie'. It felt like there was an earthquake or like someone had grabbed her shoulders and was shaking her when she had been deep asleep. The 'movie' seemed to be being ripped apart, or maybe it was like the 'movie' was being forced off the screen, and something else was trying to replace it.
The 'world' shook for what felt like forever, but then it suddenly stopped, and the show went on…but it was different now. It was now just like the time when she was unconscious, only that there was no 'screen' because everything was the 'screen' and that she didn't seem to have a body that she was watching from. Instead she was watching the white on black 'movie' as if she wasn't really there to watch it.
The first thing she saw was her sitting up at the base of the cliff. As Sakura watched herself read the scroll, then try to move, she got an idea of what was happening. She was watching what had happened in her past…the 'earthquake' must have been when she invaded this time stream. It had happened because she wasn't supposed to be here, now, but she was, and this 'movie' wanted to show her what had happened.
Sakura watched as the white on black 'movie' played out. She saw herself collapse and she saw Itachi find her. She saw her time in the hospital and her time taking her tests. She saw things on her past missions that she hadn't noticed at the time, such as Kakashi reading more of that orange book behind her back.
Sakura watched as her time with the Uchiha's unfolded, and although she looked, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't figure out when she had fallen for Itachi, or even when he had fallen for her. The only clue she got was when she and Inuka had been walking just slightly ahead of Itachi and Inuka had said that there was something bothering Itachi, but that it hadn't been the fan girls.
Now it made sense, what Inuka had said, but at the time it had only confused her. The 'movie' showed her her mission in Suna, and she paid close attention, trying to see what she could have done differently. She watched her battle with the unknown ninja and critiqued it. Here she should have dodged left instead of right; there she should have killed this man rather than that one.
After Itachi had come and she had feinted, Sakura saw the three scenes she had seen during her time in the world of the unconscious. After that, she watched her time recovering and she noticed that Gaara kept sneaking into her room to watch her sleep. Sakura then watched as she and her teammates left Suna and began to travel back to Konoha. The night had fallen when the scene changed.
This scene was back in Suna…it was late at night…and something was terribly wrong. Sakura wasn't sure what, until she saw Gaara on the roof of one of the buildings. Sakura could tell that the demon was starting to come out. Half of Gaara's little body was covered in sand that was shaped like it had been when she had tried to save Sasuke from him all those years ago.
Gaara was attacking a number of ninja who were trying to restrain him. He had gone crazy; Sakura could tell that the demon had gotten a hold of him. Sakura watched as the possessed Gaara escaped the ninja and started destroying buildings. He was yelling something, but he was drowned out by the sound of the destruction that he was causing. He continued destroying things until Yashamaru appeared in front of Gaara and tried to get him to regain control.
At the sight of his uncle, Gaara had stopped fighting and started trying to regain his control. Finally Gaara seemed to be in control and Yashamaru noticeably relaxed as he slowly approached the little red head, asking, "What's wrong Gaara?"
Gaara sniffed and wiped a hand over his tearing eyes, "I'm all alone now…" He sniffed again as tears continued pouring from his eyes, "…she's gone…and now no one understands me!" The scene changed back to her traveling, but Sakura distantly felt uneasy. Had she been what had caused Gaara to go berserk like that? She had tried so hard to make him see she wasn't the only one, but apparently it hadn't worked.
But the show went on and Sakura had to watch because the 'movie' wasn't going to wait for her to think about Gaara. She watched as they got back to Konoha, and instantly were sent on another mission. The scene skipped straight to the battle. There she watched as she collapsed, but this time she thought she heard something that neither she nor her teammates had heard at the time.
She couldn't really understand what was being said, but she knew it sounded like a voice that expected to be obeyed. This time she saw something that no one had noticed when it had happened. After that 'voice' spoke, Orochimaru and his partner shared a glance before they jumped back and Orochimaru said that they had been lucky that they had to go. A thought hit Sakura: they had left because of that voice.
Just then she saw that flash of the eyes that she had seen the first time, but once again they seemed to come and go too quickly to really look at. But this time, Sakura had noticed that there had been something…odd…about those eyes, but she wasn't sure what.
Sasuke's little voice broke the silence of the darkening day when he asked, "How much longer?"
Itachi shrugged, and Ibiki said, "She won't wake up until the sun is back to normal…luckily solar eclipses don't last nearly as long as lunar ones."
Sasuke was confused but he nodded his head as if he understood. He was worried about Sakura, they had been playing and having so much fun, but then he had to mention the funny thing the sun was doing. If he hadn't told her, this wouldn't have happened.
His big brother was worried about her too, he could tell, even though his big brother didn't show it. Only the scary looking man didn't seem worried about her. But he didn't know her like they did, she never acted like this. Sakura had never done this before, so why was she now? The scary guy had said it had to do with her bloodline, but she had never said anything about having a bloodline…
Sakura had just gotten to the point where she was carrying Sasuke on her shoulders when the earthquake returned. Everything shook, and the 'movie' did the changing thing again. When the shaking finally stopped, things had changed yet again. Now the 'movie' was in black and white, like an old film. It was continuing where she had left off after her fifth birthday.
The show continued like that as she watched herself grow up. She could still hear and smell things, and it still wasn't blurry, but this was getting to be much like her dreams. She watched as she went to the academy, met Sasuke and Naruto, was put on a team with them, and went on missions with them. Then she watched as their team broke up, as Sasuke left, as Naruto tried and failed to bring him back, as Naruto left to train and as she became Tsunade's apprentice.
It continued like that until she saw the part where she had used the scroll and disappeared. The moment she had disappeared, the earthquake began again, but this time the picture didn't change much. All that happened at first was that it had become blurry.
She watched as Itachi reached the place she had disappeared from and as he motioned something that made the others split up in different directions. She watched as Itachi reached down and touched the mark that was on the ground…then the scene changed.
These scenes seemed to be jumping a lot more, and skipping over more time. For the next scene she saw was the full moon scene she had seen in her dreams, the one with Sasuke. She noticed that the speech was garbled most of the time, but every once in a while she'd catch a word or two that actually made sense. She watched again as he stepped on her mark, and then went on to destroy the villages. But this time the 'movie' went farther than where the dream had left off.
After destroying countless villages, they came upon a much larger village than those they had been attacking. Both stopped and conferred with each other. Kabuto brought out a photo and Sakura saw that it was a picture of a man in his mid thirties. Sasuke took the picture form Kabuto and said something. Out of what he said, Sakura only understood one word: Hoshi.
Kabuto took back the photo and said something else and Sakura caught the words: 'we' and 'need'. Sakura watched as they entered the village quietly. This time, however, they didn't start killing everyone. Instead they seemed to be searching for something. Finally they disappeared into a house and reappeared holding the man who had been in the picture. He was unconscious and Kabuto had him slung over one shoulder like a bag of potatoes.
They nodded and left the village as it was. Sakura now knew what they were doing, they were abducting the man, and if her guess was correct, he was a Hoshi…one of her relatives.
But then the scene changed again, and once again, it was one of her dreams. She watched as her dreams reappeared to her, showing her things she'd rather not see. Then she saw the dream about Tsunade talking to Jiraiya and the others about that mission (she still couldn't tell what the mission had been or what was on the scroll). It was like the time in her dream where it had been starting to not allow her to understand what was being said.
The 'movie' went past that and showed her other things until finally it showed her the scene with the old lady, the children, and the unknown Akatsuki member. But now Sakura knew where this was, because of what she had already been shown. This was the same village where Sasuke and Kabuto had taken that Hoshi man…this was the Hoshi village.
The Akatsuki member was holding the last child she had seen, this was the part in the dream where it had ended, but the 'movie' continued. The Akatsuki member was holding the last child, a boy who looked to be ten, roughly by the neck. He was about to kill the boy…he raised his kunai, but then something happened. He side stepped just as two little shadows landed where he had been. They were twin girls, identical in all but the length of their hair, and they looked no older than eight.
The old woman screamed something, obviously unhappy that the children hadn't run away while they had had the chance. She didn't know what the old woman yelled, but it had some effect on the Akatsuki member. He dropped the boy and grabbed the old woman by her hair as he held the kunai to her throat.
Sakura still couldn't see his face though, his hat and the high collar of his robe hid his face completely form her view. He said something to the woman in a no nonsense voice. The children were huddled together, the girls on either side of the boy. The old lady refused to answer the Akatsuki and he pressed the point of the kunai against her throat just enough to make her start bleeding.
The Akatsuki members said something again, his voice even more threatening than before, but the woman refused to speak again, but someone else did. The little girl with the longer hair shouted something at the Akatsuki member and the other two children tried to stop her, but it was too late…whatever she had said was what the man had wanted. He slashed the old woman's throat, killing her instantly. He dropped her like she was yesterday's news and turned to the three children.
He said something, and though Sakura didn't know what it was, she felt like something was going on other than him just speaking. The girl with the longer hair said one word, then the boy and finally the other girl. After they had each spoken, they each looked at each other, horrified.
The girl with the longer hair began to shout something at the Akatsuki member as the Akatsuki member stepped closer to them. The boy put his hand over her mouth and forced her and the other girl to stand behind him. He let go of the girl as he stood protectively between the girls and the Akatsuki member. Sakura was sure the Akatsuki member was going to kill them just like he had everyone else.
In a blink of an eye, all three children fell down, but to Sakura's surprise, they were still breathing…they were still alive. But then the scene changed, and Sakura still didn't know who the Akatsuki member had been or what had become of the children.
After she had seen more of the 'movie', things started getting weirder. The scenes started flickering more and more, coming and going quickly. Also, she noticed that some of what she was watching began to contradict itself. Until now, things had happened in what appeared to be a fixed fashion, but now things were jumping around…either that or they didn't agree on what to show.
For instance, in one scene, Sakura saw Konoha completely destroyed and in ruins, but in the next one, she saw Konoha prospering under the Hokage. Also, the position of Hokage seemed to change between the different scenes that had Konoha prospering. In some the Hokage looked to still be Tsunade, in others it looked to be Naruto, and in yet another set of possible Hokage's it was someone else, a female, but Sakura couldn't tell who the female was.
It continued like that until the 'movie' got so blurry that she couldn't even tell what was going on. Then suddenly, everything changed. The blurry world of the 'movie' flickered out like a candle flame when it's blown out. In its place Sakura saw first the sun, then everything else seemed to flow together, into her vision. The sun was too bright, Sakura quickly looked away and felt like the world was spinning.
Sakura didn't know she had begun to fall until she felt strong arms catch her. Then she felt herself being lifted up into those arms. Sakura felt so disoriented. Where was she? Who was holding her? What had happened? Sakura didn't know, and the world was still spinning. She closed her eyes, but it didn't help, she still felt as if up were down.
She was breathing heavily, trying to catch her breath and squash the felling of vertigo that was making her feel so horribly. But that wasn't all that was making her feel so awful, she distantly noticed that she couldn't find her Chakra, she was fresh out and she was exhausted. She felt as if she had run in a circle at high speeds through a forest that hadn't regarded her kindly.
She wasn't sure what was going on and she felt sick to her stomach, but as she breathed, Sakura recognized the sent. It was Itachi who was holding her. She could hear voices, but they meant nothing to her, she couldn't understand them.
She held onto Itachi as she fought to gain control of whatever was wrong with her. She heard and felt the rumble of Itachi's voice and it comforted her greatly, but she still felt as if the world had turned upside down and she was slipping…
The last thing she noticed before she lost all track of what was happening around her was that they were moving, and that Itachi was holding her close to him…
…and that with him, she felt safe…
There...that was long...I hope you liked it! It may not have been as long as the previous chapter, but then again, the previous chapter was really two chapters in one.
Reviews and constructive criticisms are welcome to know that the flames will not be joining us on the pretty list!
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