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The Beginning of a Certain End

The more that you say, the less I know. ~ T. Swift

"Do I know you?" He asked.

Sakura wasn't sure.

The boy—not a man, but a boy—who stood in front of her surely looked very much like Hatake Kakashi, but he was not the Hatake Kakashi she knew.

This boy with an uncanny resemblance to Kakashi was just a child.

A child.

Did Kakashi have a secret illegitimate child? Nothing about her teacher surprised Sakura anymore, so she wouldn't write it off. That was one way this bizarrely identical likeness could be explained away.

"Who—who are you?" Sakura tried, her face still mired in consternation.

The boy stared at her with even unimpressed eyes, and nonchalantly said, "You just said my name. Do you, or do you not know me?"

He had a certain air of maturity about him, but he had to be a whole foot shorter than the Kakashi she had known for the last four years of her life. The physique didn't make sense, but his face looked like someone had held a mirror up to the real Kakashi's face.

Then, there was the matter of the missing sharingan.

"You're Hatake Kakashi?" She asked, highly skeptical.

"Yes," he said, without missing a beat. Perhaps, Kakashi had named his secret illegitimate child after himself. Her former sensei was just arrogant enough that she could believe it. But, she remembered regretfully that he was definitely not dumb enough to do that with a son he wanted to hide.

"How old are you?" She asked, suspiciously.

"Kakashi-kun is twelve," The redhead offered. "And, I am Uzumaki Kushina! Hello!"

Uzumaki?

Sakura had never known another Uzumaki outside of Naruto, and more recently, Uzumaki Karin.

"I'll be thirteen in three months," The boy corrected Kushina, rolling his eyes. The gesture was so familiar yet not at the same time that it threw Sakura for a loop.

She shook her head, and shifted her gaze to Kushina. "Do you know Naruto?"

"Do I know who now?" Kushina asked, brows furrowed in confusion.

Sakura realized at that point that the three people in the room—Dr. Kato, Uzumaki Kushina, and Kakashi's potential illegitimate child—were all staring at her with varying levels of confusion and concern painted on their faces.

"Did she hurt her head?" The boy asked casually, turning to Dr. Kato.

"Kakashi-kun! Let's not forget to be polite," Kushina admonished, sharply. "I'm sure she just needs some more rest."

"No, no," Dr. Kato said as she checked Sakura's charts on her clipboard to confirm. "There was no head trauma, but they may have missed something."

"They didn't miss anything!" Sakura snapped, in a fit of irritation. "There's nothing wrong with my head!"

There was a pause where the three exchanged nervous glances among themselves.

"No offence, lady. I don't think you would know if anything was actually wrong with your head." The boy said, every word packed with condescension.

Sakura could almost feel smoke coming out of her ears. "You listen here, kid. I'm so attuned with my body that it knows how to heal itself even when I'm unconscious." Sakura turned to Dr. Kato, and continued, "That's how I recovered so quickly. It's nothing anyone fed me, just some good ol' medical ninjutsu."

"That's not… possible," Dr. Kato said, hesitantly.

"Of course it is!" Sakura yelled, hysterical now. "I literally just did it!"

What in the world was going on here?

"Sakura," Dr. Kato began, carefully. "Medical ninjutsu is not advanced enough for that. We had a talented medic, who was researching self-healing through chakra, but she had to report for active duty before she could learn anything substantial."

This wasn't just about whether or not her body had the capacity to heal itself, or about the possibility that she may have cracked why Kakashi was always late, or even the fact that she was being labeled a foreign-nin in her hometown.

Konoha had fallen. The shinobi world as they knew it was to be no more. She had died.

As her mind was reeling, her eyes fell on the clock that ominously hung on the wall across from her. Her breath suddenly caught. Reluctantly, she voiced the question that had just popped into her head. "What year is it?"

"It's the year of the Monkey," Kushina said.

No, no, no. That couldn't be right, it's the year of the Rabbit. She turned sixteen in the spring.

"No," She whispered, feeling terrible dread settle in the pit of her stomach.

"Yes," The boy contradicted, cooly.

The pieces were coming together now. They were jagged and made very little sense, but no matter which way she looked at it, only the impossible seemed possible, and the unthinkable seemed to have somehow come to be. The window was still propped open, letting in a cool breeze into the room, but Sakura was suddenly sweating bullets.

"Who's the Hokage right now?" She asked, dreading the answer she was likely to get.

"Uh, the Sandaime?" Kushina said with an unsure inflection, like Sakura had asked a trick question.

"Sarutobi Hiruzen," The boy said more firmly.

"I need to meet the Hokage," Sakura said urgently, looking at the three almost strangers who stared back at her in alarm. "Right now."

The disadvantages of being a child prodigy easily outweighed the benefits.

His age was a detriment when any kind of important mission was being assigned because the danger was too great. Mission Control thought he was too young, too inexperienced. Never mind that he had been a chunin for years, and was this close to taking his jounin oath. What made it even worse was that he was considered strong enough to carry out simple missions that were tinged with just a touch of danger—running scrolls across nearby checking points, becoming a contraband mule for people that were actually guarding the borders, and now, babysitting a strange pink-haired girl, who had literally fallen out of the sky.

Some days, Kakashi wondered if being a regular kid would have yielded a better career trajectory. Maybe then he could have saved himself from this existential discontent. No one would dump an unidentified foreign-nin on a genin.

Kakashi kept a close eye on her as she walked just a few paces ahead of him. Since she could not prove who she claimed to be—a Haruno Sakura—headquarters wanted him to play chaperone until further notice. She really should have been taken into Interrogation, but they were criminally understaffed there, so he had been saddled with the task instead.

She had been discharged from the hospital and, staying consistent with her lunacy, immediately requested an audience with the Hokage again. As if the old man didn't have anything better to do, especially with heightened political tensions on all sides. He could not believe her audacity.

"I had no idea this used to be a meadow, and such a beautiful one too," She said, looking at the vast open fields facing the front of the hospital in awe. "Now it's just—"

"Now, it's still a meadow," He finished for her.

She spoke in a strange way too. She talked about the meadow like it didn't exist anymore when it was just right there. There were cows grazing the grass, and a couple of shepherds herding a large flock of sheep as the afternoon came to a close. There were people sitting on blankets laid out on the slopes and looking out into the fields, just enjoying the scenery.

Did she see none of that?

"If you say so," She replied, glaring, but Kakashi refused to back down. She had been looking at him weirdly since they met at the hospital—like he too, was like the meadows; there but not really. More than once, he had wondered if it was the mask that was throwing her off.

She was just a very strange girl, he decided.

She didn't say much for a while, but she did continue to look around like she had never been around the village. That sure was odd for someone who had doggedly insisted that they were born and had been raised in Konoha. Kakashi had a distinct feeling that things weren't as they seemed. He had even looked at her belongings the other day, but had been left with more questions than answers in the aftermath.

Kakashi didn't think this girl was up to anything nefarious. Maybe it was the pink hair, but she looked pretty harmless. He couldn't imagine her commanding the level of cunning and deception that a ruse like this would require.

"Hey, the Hokage Tower is that way," She said finally, when Kakashi took left at the next corner.

"I am aware."

"I thought we were going to see the Hokage."

"Whatever gave you that impression."

Kakashi turned to look back when he didn't hear her footsteps follow. She was glaring at him again, hands bunched into fists on her side. Before he could say anything, she turned around and started running in the direction of the Hokage Tower.

"Hey! Hey, you—" Kakashi yelled after her, hot on her trail. She had taken to the rooftops, and for someone who had just recovered from a set of broken ribs, she was going incredibly fast. Too bad for her, Kakashi was faster. He caught up to her at the fifth rooftop, leaping right in front of her so she was forced to halt.

"What do you think you're doing?" He grabbed her shoulders, completely exasperated.

"I told you I need to talk to the Hokage," She said through gritted teeth, and shrugged his hands off with a force he had not anticipated.

"You can't just march up to the Hokage Tower! No one even knows who you are!" He said, accusingly.

"Yes, I am aware, which is why I would really like to talk to the Hokage, tell him who I am, and where I came from," She spat out.

"Do you think the Hokage is just sitting up there twiddling his thumbs? He doesn't have time for trivial things like this—not when Kiri is breathing down our neck on one side while Iwa waits for a chance to pounce on the other?"

Sakura's face fell but she pushed on. "Okay then, who can I talk to? This is very, very urgent."

Kakashi couldn't imagine what could be more urgent than the war looming over their heads, but he decided to play along. "You can tell me," he said evenly, trying to mask how annoyed he was.

She looked at him, like she was considering but then shook her head like she had talked herself out of it. "Kakashi, you're twelve," She said, patronizingly.

"So-, so what?" Kakashi stumbled. She had hit him right where he was sensitive. "I'm going to be promoted to jounin next month, for your information."

"What about Kushina?"

"What about her?"

"I could talk to her."

"She is with Biwako-sama today," He said, gruffly. "I am the only person you can talk to right now."

She took a few seconds to mull over this. One of her hands flew to her temples like just talking to him was giving her a headache, which was well and good, because Kakashi still hadn't ruled out the possibility of a concussion.

She let out a big sigh, and straightened up. "Okay, I will tell you. And being the insufferable, precocious child that you are, I am certain you will understand the severity of the matter, and promptly take me to the Hokage."

"I'm not making any promises, but go on," He said, cautiously. "Tell me what's going on."

"I don't even know where to start but I guess…" She hesitated, and took a deep breath. "I guess…"

"Yeah?" Kakashi prompted when she seemed to struggle to find the words.

"I guess… Look, I'm actually... I'm not… You're not…," She kept starting and halting, shaking her head as if in disbelief. "I'm from… This isn't the… Everyone has..."

"Are you okay?" He asked, as she looked to be on the verge of another bout of hysteria.

She ignored him. Her hands flew to her head, and she pulled at her own pink hair, as she yelled, "What in the ever loving FUCK is going on?"

Kakashi shook his head pitifully. This girl was definitely concussed.

Haruno Sakura thought herself a fairly level headed person. Yes, sometimes her emotions got the best of her, but for the most part, she knew how to keep her cool in the face of adversity. Take the last two days for example: she had somehow woken up in a place that felt like an eerie imitation of the home she had just lost, thought her aloof former sensei had been hiding an illegitimate child, only to realize it wasn't some secret love child she was seeing, but the younger version of her sensei himself, which then led to the incredible revelation that she had somehow traveled eighteen years back in time.

That was a mouthful, and a headful, and she was still reeling a bit. Regardless, she had remained calm because she knew what she needed to do.

But now, standing atop a tiled roof that had probably seen better days, her patience had finally run out.

"I'm from… This isn't the… Everyone has…," She concentrated with every ounce of her being to form the words and get them out. She had the words in her throat, could feel the gravity of them weighing heavy, but she couldn't get them to move. It was almost like her truth—that she came from almost two decades in the future—was being held back by an invisible force.

"Are you okay?" Kakashi asked, looking at her like she was some wild animal, and that did it.

"What in the ever loving FUCK is going on?" She screamed. She wasn't sure who to direct her frustration at, and cursing out everything under the sun felt like the next best option.

"Maybe we should head back to the hospital…"

"I am PERFECTLY FINE!"

"No, you're not."

Sakura seethed with fury. Beyond the incredulity of it all, she felt especially incensed that a mini Kakashi was stood in front of her, looking at her like he was carefully weighing her worth. It instantly brought back painful memories of her sensei ignoring her in favor of the boys for most part of their time together. She knew she was leaps and bounds stronger than the little genin girl he had never spared a second glance for, but she probably would have never reached this place had it not been for his careless negligence. She was furious and confused.

The righteous anger sobered Sakura a little. Side eyeing her sensei was not going to get her out of this predicament.

"No, I'm not," She admitted, defeated. "But my head is just fine! It's… it's something else."

Kakashi raised a brow. "I've been all ears, you know. What is it?" He asked again.

"I can't… I can't seem to…" She tried again, in vain.

"You can't tell me what's wrong?"

"...yes."

"You can't or you won't?"

"I can't."

He took a moment to contemplate. "Can you nod or shake your head if I ask some questions?"

Sakura felt like she didn't even know which way was up right now, but she wasn't about to give him more ammunition to hold over her head. "I'm not sure."

"I'll ask some questions, and you can see if you can respond," He said, mechanically.

She nodded.

"You're not from around here, are you?" He asked, narrowing his eyes calculatingly.

"In a sense, yes."

"Where are you from?"

"I'm from Konoha, but…"

"But you're not from this Konoha?"

She nodded, still in disbelief herself.

"So what? Did you come from a parallel universe or something like that?" He deadpanned.

Sakura's eyes widened, but she couldn't verbalize just as she had feared. She waved her hand, asking him to keep going.

"From another dimension?"

Well, technically, time was a dimension even though that was probably not what he had been referring to. She nodded, slowly.

"That diamond tattoo on your forehead. Is it a seal like Tsunade-sama's?"

Sakura instinctively reached for her forehead, fingered the contours of her seal. "Yes, it's my Byakugo seal. Tsunade shis... "

"You know Tsunade-sama?"

She nodded.

"Do you know me?"

She nodded again.

He paused for a moment, his monotonic gaze remaining fixed on her. "Do I know you?"

"Yes," Sakura said sadly, knowing there was no way she could prove it.

Kakashi looked troubled at that. He let out a deep sigh, and said, "Did you come from the future?"

With eyes wide open, she nodded frantically.

"Most people are not going to believe you." He said dismissively.

"Do you?"

"I remain to be convinced one way or another."

Sakura rolled her eyes, scoffing. This Kakashi was half the size of the adult Kakashi that she was familiar with, but he spoke like an old man. She could never tell if her former sensei was joking or being entirely serious, and this seemed to apply to the boy in front of her too.

"Space-time ninjutsu is not a new thing. There's never been any documented success, but in theory, time travel is possible." He said, very clinically. "Considering everything you have said, it's a very likely possibility."

Sakura looked at him thoughtfully, trying to get a read of his position.

"You insist you are from Konoha, yet there is no record of your existence in any of the record books. You have that seal on your forehead, when it's widely known that Tsunade-sama is the only one who has ever had one. Your clothes, your healing ability, the one kunai you had on you—they're all different from what we use here. They're better than what we've got today."

He seemed to have gotten into some kind of a groove, so Sakura let him prattle on, "Your jounin vest has aerodynamically improved design. It's been calibrated to enhance speed and balance. Your kunai is made of more durable materials. And you really healed your own broken ribs in a matter of two days."

Sakura gaped at him. The Kakashi she knew was so frustratingly distant and aloof that she often didn't think about the fact that he was one of the most feared shinobis across all five nations. She saw the makings of that great shinobi in the boy in front of her now. Her own head had been full of nothing but Sasuke at twelve, so this level of intellect at this age was almost incomprehensible to Sakura.

"Excellent deductive skills," She said, trying not to sound too impressed. He just shrugged like he got this on a regular basis.

It occurred to her then that Kakashi—even his smartass, prepubescent self—would probably prove to be a very useful ally. She didn't know anyone else here, so it wasn't like she had a long list of contenders to pick from. She decided to try to win him over, and see where that got her. In any case, going to the Hokage or any other authority would be futile if she couldn't verbalize her predicament. Grimly, she wondered if she would be taken captive since she was a suspicious figure, who could not state her purpose or origin.

"Maybe you can write it out?" Kakashi suggested, looking at her expectantly.

"Do you have a scroll? And a pen?"

"No."

"Can you find them somewhere?"

Kakashi nodded. But not before he let out a long sigh, like he was some elderly grand-father who had just been asked to skip his afternoon nap.

One of the strangest things about traveling back in time—which, as preposterous as it sounded, was the only plausible explanation for this madness—was realizing the village she grew up in predated her. Of course, she knew about Konoha's founding and history. Konoha's history had been a large part of their academy curriculum, but history in itself had always been an abstract concept. Many great shinobi had lived before her, but that knowledge didn't affect her everyday life. She didn't ever stop to think about the past Hokages even when their faces were right in front of her day and night. Going from being only peripherally aware of time past to actually being thrown into the fray of things was quite disorienting.

As she trailed behind Kakashi, it occurred to her that she had never thought of him as anything but an adult. The boy trudging ahead of her was shorter than her. His shoulders were narrow, his build lanky like that of a teenager that he was. It was all extremely jarring.

Kakashi led her down roads she had never traveled, and after a good ten minutes of walking in complete silence, they reached their destination.

"What is this place?" She asked, when he stopped in front of a huge iron gate. A tilted square that had been sectioned off into nine different smaller squares had been wrought onto the gate. Something about the symbol reminded her of her own Byakugo seal.

"This is where I live," He said.

Sakura balked at that, as he moved to open the gate and let her in. This place looked huge, so much so that she had to wonder if Kakashi secretly came from a wealthy background.

"You live here… with your family?" She asked, even as she had a strong feeling that would be the wrong thing to say.

"I thought you said you knew me," he said, unimpressed.

"I do!" She said, indignantly. "If you must know, you are a very secretive man."

It didn't escape her notice that his eyes crinkled as he smiled under his mask at that.

"What are you smiling about?" She grumbled, narrowing her eyes at him.

"It's nothing."

"Look at that!" She accused, pointing a finger at him. "You are secretive, even as a child!"

The lightness suddenly left his demeanor. "I am not a child," he said, distastefully.

It was getting increasingly clear to her that she actually knew very little about her sensei, if anything at all. Sakura wanted to dig deeper, but she couldn't afford to piss him off. Her curiosity would have to be shelved for now.

A massive three-storied traditional house sat right at the center of the compound, surrounded by large stretches of open fields. There were some sections of the land that looked to be used for farming and gardening, but most of it was just covered in grass. Wordlessly, Kakashi led her through the front door.

Unlike the outside, the floor plan did not follow a traditional design. Instead of a hallway leading up to designated rooms, the front door led into a large, open tatami-covered space that looked like a common area. This room was bigger than the entirety of the house she grew up in. A sudden sense of irritation creeped up when she thought back to all the times Kakashi had fled before the bill got settled. If he lived in a house like this, why the heck was he going around making broke genin pay for his meals?

She stared at the back of his head as he walked to a drawer by the entryway and plucked out a scroll and a pen for her. He held them up to her without turning around. She snatched them from his hand, and haughtily walked up to the dining table that sat in one corner of the living room.

Sakura spread the scroll on the table, and took a deep breath. It was illogical to get mad at young Kakashi for the scoundrel that the adult Kakashi apparently was, she reminded herself.

She raised the pen and tried to write.

The Fourth Shinobi War—

"Fuck," She cursed, under her breath. She was thinking the words, willing her hand to write them out, but it was not working. Her hand seemed to have a mind of its own.

She wasn't one to give up so easily.

I came from the futu—

She could write up till the point she started with 'future'.

"So this isn't working at all," Kakashi sagely observed, as if she didn't already know. She ignored him, and made another attempt.

Uchiha Madara has destroyed the world—

Holy fucki—

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't move her hand to write what Madara had actually done. Her hands were shaking with the effort to carry on, but they wouldn't budge.

The pen fell from her hand, and landed on the floor with an offensive clatter in the quiet. Sakura slumped into a chair dejectedly.

What am I gonna do?

She wondered again, if she might be under some kind of a genjutsu. But with her chakra control, that was very improbable. What motive could anyone have had to put her under a genjutsu that took her back two decades? Or even if what she was living and breathing was real, what could anyone hope to accomplish from it?

The war was lost. Everyone she cared about was either dead, or just an empty shell of themselves. The world had slipped away from their grasp because a mad man believed his way was the only way.

Morbidly, she wondered what she even had to go back to. What would 'going back' even mean for her? Hadn't she died?

"Uchiha Madara?" Kakashi asked, looking over the scroll. "Is this related to the Uchihas?"

She looked at him but didn't say anything. Her eyes must have spoken for her.

Kakashi shook his head in a knowing way, and said, "Why am I not surprised?"

"What do you mean?"

"Uchihas are troublesome people. I know because there's an Uchiha in my team," He said, with an air of superiority.

With a start, she realized that the Uchiha Massacre had not taken place yet. She had been so caught up in the absurdity of it all that the implications of what was happening had flown right over her head.

Was it divine intervention, that she had been dropped here at this point in time? Was she supposed to prevent all of the catastrophes she knew were going to plague Konoha in the future?

The Eye of the Moon was a blip in the very, very distant future. There were Uchiha Itachi, Yakushi Kabuto, Orochimaru, and so many other horrors to contend with before Madara even appeared on the horizon.

Sakura felt dizzy when the enormity of it all struck her. She trusted her strength and tenacity, but she was but one person. What difference could one person make in what was to be a lifetime of tragedy and mishaps?

"Sakura?" She startled, and turned to look at Kakashi. He still had the same straight face as always but instinctively she could discern that he was annoyed with her. "You're not listening to me, are you?"

"No," She said sheepishly, in an attempt to avoid ruffling his feathers. "I'm sorry. What were you saying?"

"I said, you can come to my team practice and meet him. He's pretty useless, but who knows, maybe he can help you."

"Who can help me?"

"Uchiha Obito," He said, with the irritation that came with having to repeat himself. "My teammate."

She had only ever heard that name at one other place—on the battlefield where the five great nations' armies were decimated.

Sakura's blood ran cold.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Kakashi asked, awkwardly reaching for her shoulder. "You look like you've just seen a ghost."

A ghost—she bitterly deliberated. Isn't that exactly what Uchiha Obito was?

Haruno Sakura was indeed only one person. But she could take on a ghost, destroy it before it turned into a monster. "I'm going to kill that sorry bastard."

tbc

/

isn't it wild just how much sakura DIDN'T know in canon? well, we're going to have fun with that here.

i would love to hear what y'all thought so please consider dropping a review!