chapter title: your leaves have drifted away

summary: They die under a red sky in mud and blood and bitter regret. Team Seven at the end of the world…at least until Sasuke wakes up, twelve, sharingan-less and back on his old genin team.

dedication: middle sis, who will never ever read this but whose birthday it was at the time i started writing this chapter. can't remember life without you, wouldn't even want to imagine it tbh.

dear friend as you know

your flowers are withering

your mother's gone missing

your leaves have drifted away

Divergence

Some things were universal.

In every parallel world, every universe, every timeline that exists twelve year old Naruto would walk into the Land of Waves with a chip on his shoulder and enough determination to change the world. And in every parallel world, every universe, every timeline that exists, Inari would take notice – dead father or no dead father.

Tsunami turned in her quiet kitchen, soap suds still drying on her bare hands. There was a scream, a scuffle, a young boy hesitating in the face of danger while his heart beat with the force of a drum inside his rib cage –

not mother not mother not mother

– before he ran after them.. This would always happen, again and again regardless of any ripples disrupting the time-stream, like a stone cast into a still pond. Gaato was always going to target Tazuna's family.

You could call it fate, call it destiny, call it bloody chance and a careless roll of the dice; some things were destined to happen when the same players crossed the board, over and over again. The past was not a pre-written page, not a book already read – just a shogi match with the same pieces and the same players crossing the board. No destiny involved at all, just people being who they always were, who they always had been.

("Leave her alone!" Inari shouted, frantic, furious and very, very afraid. The men exchanged a look he didn't understand, but the identical smirks that crossed their mouths spoke volumes. And he knew, in that moment, that things were about to get very bad.)

This time around, the pieces were arranged a little differently on the board. Naruto would not appear to save the day in a blur of orange fury. He did not wake up alone in a wooded grove and arrive, late as always, to the party. Such a small and seemingly insignificant change, but it meant that this time he would not stumble across Inari's and Tsunami's plight and stop to defend them from Gaato's machinations.

Only an arrogant person could believe that simply throwing enough stones in the same places would create the same ripples as before – the same way that a man with an ear for music could try and play a tune from memory alone and never realise that he is not quite producing the same music he remembers.

But then, arrogance was and always has always been Uchiha Sasuke's fatal flaw.

"Have you had enough now?" Haku asked impassively. He'd paused in one of the mirrors, but Sasuke knew better than to think it was because the other boy was getting tired; if anything, he was giving him a temporary reprieve from the constant barrage of attacks.

Sasuke was too humiliated to be grateful. Spitting blood out between his teeth, he said, "Nowhere close."

His eyes burned, but not with the power of the sharingan. He knew what it was supposed to feel like, but it was only rage that made them itch like that. He didn't understand what he was doing wrong.

I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be!

Behind him, Sakura let out a loose, rattling breath. Though his own body was littered with senbon he'd been unable to dodge, he knew she had to be considerably worse off. Sakura had never had his speed or his skill; what she thought she could do here, he had no idea but it was too late for her to leave, to send Naruto in her place and make things go the way they were supposed to – the way they had before.

Is it her fault?

Time had ceased to mean anything. Every moment was agonising, every part of him taken up with trying to avoid the senbon flying his way as he moved too slow, too unsure, too weak while Haku danced through his mirror prison like a ghost. He was just a fleeting shadow at the corner of his eye.

"This isn't working," Sakura hissed behind him, but he ignored her. Haku was on the move again and he couldn't afford to be distracted, not by Sakura and not by the desperate pounding of his heart.

He'd forgotten how it felt that day, before the Sharingan bled to life; how tired and hurt and afraid he'd been, deep down under his rib bones, that he would die before he ever got to face Itachi. It was coming back to him now. It was coming back in the blood that soaked through his clothes, the perspiration on his face, the frantic beat of his heart in his chest sounding like a drum, an earthquake.

His mind remembered the outcome of this fight, but this body did not. This body was twelve and useless and afraid just like it had been the first time around.

I'm not going to die, Sasuke told himself, even as another senbon struck his shoulder – white hot agony and then icy numbness spreading from the point of entry. Just a little longer and I'll get the Sharingan.

It had to happen; it already had happened once. It had to happen, because he remembered it.

It would have been better for you not to come back, the boy in the mirror had said. Sakura would've hated to admit it to anyone – especially Sasuke – but the part of her that was not frantically working out the trajectory of his senbon could see he'd had a point.

She was not strong enough for this. Neither of them were.

Blood ran in rivulets down her arms and legs and Sasuke didn't look much better. It felt like they'd been in this icy, reflective prison for an age; her arms and legs felt like lead and the boy, Haku, was barely winded at all, somehow in all the mirrors and none of them at once. It was like – like he was just toying with them.

That only seemed to make Sasuke angrier.

"Come on!" he screamed, though he was barely standing. There was a look in his eyes, something manic and furious that she hadn't seen since the night he woke screaming from his nightmare. "Come on, I know you can do better than that!"

Though Haku was wearing a mask, Sakura could practically see the raised eyebrow behind it – it was so clear in his voice as he said, "Are you trying to antagonise me?"

Sasuke blew a fireball at him.

It didn't do anything; Sakura could feel the wave of intense heat against her skin, could feel it singe the tiny fine hairs on her arms, but the cage of mirrors remained pristine.

"Sasuke," she said, eyes flitting around them, trying to detect which image of Haku was the real one, "Sasuke stop, we have to come up with a strategy –"

He shook her off, black eyes following Haku's reflection. "The strategy is you stay out of my way," he snapped, "This is my fight! I don't need you!"

"We're supposed to be a team!"

He wasn't listening. He blew another fireball and another and another, each to no affect and each one was sloppier than the last – he was too angry, too…desperate.

And wasn't that an odd thought?

She didn't think Sasuke was afraid of Haku, wasn't afraid of dying but something was riding on this fight, something he needed…?

"Don't you understand that it's useless?" Haku said. "You don't learn, do you?"

She saw the movement before he did. "Sasuke!"

He didn't quite duck out the way in time; another two senbon caught him as Haku stopped in the mirror to her immediate left and Sasuke hit the ground. Sakura moved before she could think about it, kunai in the hand of her unbroken arm and deflected most of the ones that followed while behind her, he managed to gain his feet.

"I told you to stay out the way!" Sasuke snarled, pushing her aside so hard that she almost lost her own balance.

"Oh and you're doing so well on your own!"

A real sliver of fear was making itself known beneath her breastbone as she pulled three senbon from her useless arm – she could hear snippets of Kakashi's own battle happening outside and if he didn't finish up soon, Sakura really thought Haku might kill them both before she could get Sasuke to listen to her.

He's never listened to us once in our entire lives, a small voice whispered at the back of her head. What makes you think he'll start now?

He had to. Sakura would make him listen. They were a team and she hadn't trained so hard and fought so much just to – to –

"You showed some promise," Haku was saying in a voice which was cool and full of a restrained regret, "but this is not worth my time without those famous eyes. I would have liked to see them one day, but I can't have you interfere any further."

"No!"

"This isn't over," Sasuke snarled at the boy, but the hits he'd taken had made him too slow. He was flagging. Sakura could see it, just like she could see the senbon, could predict the trajectory they would take in the time it took for her knees to bend.

"I am sorry," Haku said and the worst thing was he seemed to mean it, to genuinely regret their deaths. And he was going to do it anyway.

It won't be so bad, that same quiet voice whispered as Sakura threw herself forward – her body moving without conscious thought the same way it had on their journey here, when the Mist nukenin had struck and she had known what to do without knowing how she knew.

I can do this, Sakura thought and the quiet voice inside her agreed. She was already reaching out to push, to protect, to save and it was instinctive the way her chakra moved, like the next step in a dance she could only half remember as it flowed to her outstretched fist –

The senbon pierced her throat, her chest, her stomach – and it was such a sharp, exploding pain. A thousand knives inside her, all at once. There were shards of ice flying through the air past her extended fist and she coughed, just once. There was blood on the concrete at her feet.

At least this time, she thought dizzily – started to think –

and then there were no more thoughts at all.

He was barely aware of Sakura moving. All his focus was on the senbon he still could not see coming, the way he still could not predict where Haku would appear in the mirrors – but before he could move, or even turn to face the boy who was supposed to trigger his greatest weapon, something smashed into him so hard he was lifted off his feet and thrown through the air.

The world spun sickeningly. For a frightening moment everything went black. He felt like he'd been punched through a concrete wall headfirst. There was nothing but white noise ringing in his ears, the feeling that his left side was on fire as he skidded across the ground.

"What the hell?!" Naruto's surprised voice was muted beneath the ringing in his ears, but he felt hands on his back, flipping him over and then blue eyes were in his face, wide and concerned.

"Sasuke!"

Sasuke coughed, raised his head and saw a trail of destruction behind him; great splinters of ice as big as his forearm, gleaming in the fog like broken glass and a long streak of blood following the path his body had taken from the centre of Haku's mirror prison –

"What?" he tried, but his voice had no sound. Someone was shaking him, shaking him hard. Behind Naruto's bent figure, Tazuna had a hand over his mouth, eyes fixed on the wreckage. It didn't make sense. He didn't understand what he was seeing, what his eyes were telling him.

"….what happened?" the blond screamed, real fear in his blue eyes. "What the hell, Sasuke? Where's Sakura-chan, where is she?"

"I –"

"You better not have let anything happen to her!" Naruto howled, still shaking him. Sasuke shook him off and tried to stumble to his feet, he couldn't waste time –

But he'd barely taken a step when Haku appeared in the gap where his mirror had been and they all saw it; the figure crumpled at his feet with needles through her throat, lying still and pale among shards of broken ice which were twice as thick as her thin, little girl arms.

No. No that wasn't supposed to happen!

"Extraordinary," the boy breathed, bending down as if to touch pale pink hair. "No one has ever broken my prison before."

"Don't touch her!" Naruto's voice was feral as he stalked forwards. "Don't you dare touch her!"

Haku paused with his fingers just brushing Sakura's throat, his head cocked as he stared across the bridge at the approaching blond. Naruto was shuddering all over his body, that strange, burning chakra Sasuke now knew belonged to the fox already charging the air the same way an oncoming thunderstorm would. Already the scarred whiskers were thickening on his cheeks and were those claws appearing on his fingers?

"You hurt my friend," Naruto growled in a voice that was not entirely his own and Sasuke had forgotten what that sounded like – a Naruto who was not completely in control.

"She got in the way," Haku said regretfully, straightening up and stepping over her carefully. "It was the boy I was aiming for."

Naruto was screamed wordlessly – no elegant speeches that Sasuke had long ago learned to tune out, just a wordless howl of pain. The fox's chakra was blazing, orange and dead and lethal – a forest fire just getting started. He'd missed his chance; this was the start of the fight that he'd never seen, the part he'd been dead for last time. Except this time it was Sakura lying dead on the cold, stone bridge –

She's not dead. She's not dead, you know she's not dead, she'll wake up once this is over.

But Sasuke could not look away from her deathly pale face, the blood pooling beneath her body and how it was not a new sight, how he could still see the older Sakura behind his eyelids sometimes, lying face down in the mud and he hadn't cared, he hadn't cared one bit –

But this Sakura was twelve and something inside him, something he'd thought long, long dead, screamed seeing her like that. He wanted to lift her up and carry her away from the carnage about to be unleashed, but he couldn't move – he felt like all the bones in his side had been pulverised. His legs were weak and wobbly beneath him.

"Is this the first time you've faced the death of a comrade? This is the way of a shinobi," the masked boy said, something pitying in his voice. "If you want to protect that which is precious to you, you have to be prepared to die for it."

"Shut up!"

"She used her life to protect a comrade. That is worthy of respect."

The chakra exploded outwards, knocking Sasuke and Tazuna to the ground. It was so strong he thought even in Konoha, they must be able to feel it, the raw power there, the untamed, wild hatred pouring out of Naruto in tsunami waves that could flatten everything if he wasn't careful.

"What the hell?" Tazuna gasped behind him. "What's up with the kid?"

"It doesn't matter," Sasuke muttered, backing away and pushing the bridge builder back with him so they were out of range. "Just stay out the way."

Inwardly he was thinking of the other Naruto, the older one who had stood over him on the battlefield with a golden, iridescent glow. There had been nothing feral about him then, no lashing hatred tearing at Sasuke's skin like a razor wire. Naruto's eyes were fully red as they glared across the bridge at Haku and they sent a chill through Sasuke's stomach that he would never, ever admit to feeling.

"I won't forgive you for this!" the blond howled, in that same strange voice which did and didn't belong to him. "I'm going to kill you!"

She lay face down on the battlefield, the smell of blood heavy on the air. The sky was red and endless and red. All around her was nothing but a crackling silence; the battlefield was empty.

She sat up and felt the hole where her stomach used to be, that yawning, gaping emptiness punched right through her. Mud and blood and tears.

Oh.

Her voice had no sound. She was only a ghost and this was only a dream. It didn't worry her.

"It should," said a voice she knew and didn't know. "You need to remember this."

Why?

"Because he's going to rip your heart out and step on it," the voice said and she realised, with a start that it was her own. "This is what it looks like when he does."

There was not so much a fight as a one sided punching match and it ended the same way it had before. The mirrors melted to freezing puddles on the ground, Haku's mask broke under a blond's enraged fist and as he always would in every lifetime, a boy with a pure heart stood between his undeserving master and a painful death.

This was a fixed point in time; no amount of wishing or hoping for something better would ever change it.

He reached Sakura just as Haku collapsed to the ground on the other side of the bridge, the bright burning flash of Kakashi's Chidori already fading. She was so dreadfully still as the ice melted around her. Sasuke reached for her with shaking arms, batting away Tazuna when he tried to help.

There was no sign of a fluttering pulse in her neck.

"Is she….?"

Sasuke couldn't answer. Every part of him ached, like he'd fallen from a great height and landed on concrete and there were still senbon sticking through his limbs. He was distantly aware of Gaato's men arriving in bulk, but his attention was on Sakura's pale, blood-stained face and Haku's words still ringing in his ears.

"If you want to protect that which is precious to you, you have to be prepared to die for it."

The weight of her in his arms was so familiar it hurt – like he'd last held her yesterday, not long years ago. He'd never held her when they were older, had forgotten the feel of her body until that moment when it came stinging back, precious and unwanted.

"Let me take her," Tazuna said gently, but Sasuke shook his head. He was dimly, distantly aware of Gaato and his men arriving on the far side of the bridge, but he was so achingly tired. He didn't understand anything. Nothing had gone the way it was supposed to.

In the middle of the bridge, with Kakashi by his side, Naruto was screaming. "Haku lived for you! You were the most important thing in the world to him and he meant nothing to you? Nothing at all?!"

A shiver rolled down Sasuke's spine. He could see the myriad of expressions passing over the Naruto's face; anger, hurt, outrage – so painfully childlike that it almost hurt Sasuke to look at him. But if it was a child's anger it was a child's tears too, streaming down the blond's face thick and fast and unashamed.

"If I become stronger does that mean I'll become as cold-hearted as you are? He threw his life away and for what, you and your dream? You never let him have a dream of his own! You tossed him aside like he was nothing, just – just a broken tool! And that's so wrong. That's so wrong!"

He expected Zabuza to scoff, to declare that Naruto was weak, a child, a crybaby. Tears had no place on a battlefield. But he didn't.

"Kid," was all he said, in that low, gravelly voice that had once inspired fear. "You don't need to say anything more."

The mist-nin looked down at the dead boy he'd treated as a tool and a terrible stillness rolled over him, just for a moment. That's when Sasuke realised the shinobi who had once been so terrifying was crying – crying the same way Sasuke had when Madara told him the truth about Itachi. They were the tears of someone who'd just felt their entire worldview crumble to dust around them, somehow at once helpless and unfair.

"Your words cut deeper than any blade," Zabuza growled, shaking the bandages free from the lower part of his face and revealing at last, a man like any other. Just a human.

He didn't understand. It should've been ridiculous to see tears on a ruthless shinobi like Zabuza, but he couldn't scoff at it. He couldn't do anything at all – was numb, frozen below the neck and he watched with wide eyes as Zabuza turned on Gaato and his men, a ruthless killing machine even with his arms hanging useless at his sides. It dawned on him that he was going to do it, was going to kill every single one of those small, little men for the dead boy still lying at Kakashi's feet.

(Once upon a time in a shadowed forest, Sasuke almost tore off the arms of a boy several years his elder, for the battered girl who now lay in his arms. He would have killed them if she hadn't stopped him.

But it was never the cursed seal that made him do it.)

"Kami," Tazuna breathed, one hand on Sasuke's injured shoulder. "He's really going to kill them."

"You might be right," he whispered, disbelieving. There was nothing for Zabuza to gain from this. It didn't put him closer to his dream.

How is this strength?

And then that disgusting little man screamed, "Bring me the hostage!"

"Hostage?" Tazuna repeated hoarsely, the hand on Sasuke's shoulder sliding off as he took an involuntary step back. "Who –"

Somewhere in the back of his mind, an alarm bell began to ring. He didn't want to look, but there she was – dragged forward out of the mob with a sword to her throat. Sasuke could not even remember her name, this woman who had housed him twice. He had eaten her food and slept under her roof in two different lifetimes and he couldn't even remember her name. She hadn't been important enough to remember.

There was blood crusted all down her front. Something between a gasp and a sob and a scream escaped Tazuna's mouth and Sasuke – Sasuke knew that feeling, that terror. He'd been consumed by it the day he ran through the streets of the Uchiha district under a full moon and he could see it now, what would happen just as surely as Tazuna did.

"Call the dog off," Gaato shouted at Kakashi, "Or I'll kill her!"

And even though the woman was nothing to Zabuza, the mist-nin hesitated. Everyone on the bridge froze. He wouldn't have believed it if he wasn't seeing it with his own Sharingan-less eyes.

(Once upon a time, Sasuke had stabbed a teammate in order to kill his prey. Karin had looked at him so trustingly and he'd run right through her with his Chidori to get to Danzou and he'd felt nothing, nothing at all except vague annoyance at a useless asset, a broken tool –)

He looked at the tears running silently down Tazuna's daughter's face, knowing he should find such weakness abhorrent – but she was a civilian. A mother. It was different.

Tazuna made a wounded noise behind him. "W-where's Inari?"

She shook her head. Sasuke's stomach lurched, his grip on Sakura tightening. And in the same instant, Zabuza and Kakashi moved. Neither of them impaled Tazuna's daughter to get to their target, the way Sasuke might have done. Kakashi, with the speed and grace he was so known for, disabled the two men holding Tazuna's daughter with a single flash of his kunai and jumped cleanly to safety with her in his arms.

Zabuza went for the kill.

Even though Sasuke had seen – and mastered – much more impressive, powerful justsu and taijutsu in his lifetime, he couldn't stop himself from watching as Zabuza carved a bloody swathe through the remains of Gaato's men with nothing more than the borrowed kunai clenched between his teeth.

Is this strength? he wondered numbly. Gaato stumbled and choked and an axe cut deep into Zabuza's spine, but the mist-nin never flinched and he never faltered – the same way Sakura had not faltered as she turned her back on him and ran towards the death she must have known awaited her at Madara's hands.

If you want to protect that which is precious to you, you have to be prepared to die for it.

It was such a useless sentiment…wasn't it? Sasuke had learned this lesson long ago. Power was gained for your own sake or not at all; it was what he'd repeated to himself through all the dark days in the tunnels of Sound, Orochimaru's slithering voice in his ear, screams and screams and screams echoing at night.

It wasn't the dying part he had trouble with. Sasuke had always expected to die facing Itachi, had accepted it, almost. It had seemed a fair price to pay in the balance of it; his life for Itachi's death.

(Once upon a time, Sasuke had thrown himself into the path of flying senbon to save the life of a teammate, a friend)

What had Haku died for? A man who didn't care one way or the other if he lived or died, so long as he was useful?

What had Sakura died for that day at the summit? What was Zabuza killing himself for now? He didn't understand, he didn't want to understand…but those damnable words kept floating back to him in Haku's soft-spoken voice.

…that which is precious to you….

It was what Naruto – the older Naruto – had said to him all along, right up until he won. As Kakashi touched down with the woman in his arms, Sasuke looked down at Sakura's lifeless, heart-shaped face. She had been a precious thing to protect, once.

"Tsunami?" Tazuna croaked, such a massive man stumbling in the face of his daughters despair and he wanted – he wanted to look away, but there was so much blood. "What happened? Where's Inari? He's not –"

"They didn't – didn't kill him," Tsunami sobbed. "They didn't kill him."

"But the blood –"

"He tried to stop them taking me. All on his own. And – and they didn't like that."

"How badly is he hurt? Tsunami, what did they do?" Tazuna demanded, true panic in his voice now. "Tell me!"

The woman's face crumpled like wet paper and he couldn't watch, couldn't stomach this pain, this strange, sick feeling in his stomach because he didn't care, he didn't care, but this –

It didn't happen this way last time.

Last time, he'd woken from a darkness so complete he'd wondered if he'd been dead – and Sakura had been there, thin arms wrapped so tight around him he'd struggled to breathe. No one had held him like that since his mother died and he'd told himself the burn in his own eyes was just the lingering effects of the Sharingan, finally awakened.

But the Sharingan hadn't come. Sakura was lying in his arms as though dead and Tazuna's family had come to a harm that should have been preventable, because it had been prevented before.

I don't understand.

He'd followed the same course as before. He was in the right place at the right time. Why had things gone differently this time? Why did he feel so…guilty?

He couldn't look at anyone – not his teammates, not his sensei, not the civilians clinging to each other in their grief and horror. Not Naruto, watching it all from a few feet away with solemn blue eyes that seemed to reach across time and knock the breath out of him with their clarity. The only person who'd ever beaten him. There was a question inside him, uncertain and afraid – something he'd been hiding from since the moment he woke up twelve again.

Was I the one who was wrong?

tbc

whose side are you on?

whose side is this anyway?

put down your sword and crown

notes: lyrics borrowed from moths wings by passion pit.

notes2: i didn't actually want to go this dark originally. it was not in the original plan. but the more i wrote, the more i realised a simple failure to acquire the sharingan wasn't going to be enough to make sasuke change. he has to see what the stakes are, that he can actually get this wrong, that he may leave collateral damage behind him which cannot be undone. he has to make something worse the second time around before he'll ever think, maybe i'm in the wrong here

notes3: new laptop, baby! the website called it 'soft mint', but it's fucking silver. still love it, but i miss my flashy hot red number that lasted 9 years before starting to die a slow painful death. why are laptops so boring now. why is windows 10 a thing when windows 7 was so much better. i will accept no other opinions on this.

notes4: come share your theories with me. but not your concrit cos i do this for fun and for free and i'm not looking for an editor thx.