Thanks to everyone who kindly took the time to review last chapter.
Chapter XCI
Seized by panic, Death finds his gifts,
Powerless to mend the fracturing rifts,
That cleave Spring's existence apart in two,
Compelling her to face what she once knew,
Flung into her mind, into her conscience, deep,
Calling forth the binds of eternal sleep.
~x~
Sakura was limp and motionless against him, like a puppet severed cleanly from its strings. Pure, rampant panic exploded within Sasuke, causing his heart to careen violently in his chest. Her pulse was alarmingly faint. Barely there, irregular, struggling in its rhythm, like a feeble, ailed bird fluttering its clipped wings in agony seconds before death swallowed it whole.
He fought to reel in and restore calm to his riotous emotions, despite the prickling, sickening sense of dread that was crawling beneath his skin. He would halt this. He would reverse it. Just as he had every other instant that an attack had occurred.
Laying her gently down on the rug, he pressed a palm above her heart, willing it to beat more forcefully. Activating the link they shared through the pomegranate seeds that were rooted eternally within Sakura's abdomen, he directed his chakra into her bloodstream, supporting its continuous flow.
Her heartbeat steadied and grew in strength for several beats - but quickly faltered and fell back into its struggling, lethargic rhythm. He tried again - with the same results. Sasuke stared down at his hand in horror, as if it had betrayed him. Why were his powers not working to stabilise her?
His eyes darted to her face, and stone-cold fear clawed through him. Sakura was growing pale. Her breathing was slowing, becoming shallower by the second.
No, he thought. No! It could not be.
"Sakura?" He shook her shoulder in mindless desperation with his free hand. "Sakura!"
Terror seized him, its grip around his throat asphyxiating. Something was terribly wrong. What was happening to her? This was an episode unlike any other he had ever witnessed. She didn't appear to be in pain. She had abruptly collapsed, without warning, and seemed to be fading before his very eyes, and his hands - his treacherous, useless hands - were powerless to help her, to save her.
He attempted, once more, to settle the organ that was now pounding erratically beneath his palm. It was no use; her heart was not responding to his command beyond several feeble beats at once. It was as if something else was overriding his abilities, directly acting against and weakening her pulse, and Sasuke had never before felt so powerless. So useless. So weak.
Jagged shards of ice lodged down his spine. He grabbed the goblet of ambrosia and lifted her head, angling the drink into her mouth. But no matter how hard he tried to tip its contents, it spilled from her lips. She was out cold, and could not swallow it.
Shaken by how little control he had over the situation, he tossed the cup aside, bundled Sakura up into his arms and warped straight to Chiyo's hut, bursting in upon her.
The old crone glanced up from her seat beside the hearth.
"Help her!"
Chiyo immediately rose from her chair, her expression grim. "Lay her down here," she instructed, gesturing toward the straw bed.
Sasuke lowered Sakura onto it, then placed his hand over her heart again. He compelled it to beat steadily, and once more, it briefly obeyed - before faltering, speeding up and becoming irregular. He struggled to slow its rhythm, and was horrified when it skipped several beats, growing chaotic. The sound of its disorderly rhythm was deafening in his ears. With adrenaline coursing through his veins, he pooled his chakra directly into her heart's chambers, compelling the organ with every ounce of authority he wielded to be at ease - and was relieved when her pulse finally began to slow - before quickening once more.
"Her pulse will not settle!" He turned wide, frantic eyes to Chiyo, who shook her head, the grave expression on her face causing a fresh wave of panic to surge through Sasuke.
"That is because you command only mortal death. Her soul is immortal. You cannot reap it, you cannot stay it - and your hands are not intended to prolong a life beyond its natural demise. The force that acts upon her now is beyond your abilities."
Sasuke felt as though his entire world was spinning wildly on its axis. "What's happening to her?"
The old goddess stirred the brew in the bowl she had retrieved from the hearth, and lifted her gaze to meet the Underworld king's anguished eyes. "The very same thing that has happened to this poor child since the seal was first placed upon her. Her body is nearing its natural demise, and with it, her heart is failing."
Sasuke gritted his teeth, and listened tensely as Chiyo expanded, "In each lifetime, her episodes begin only in spring, as is to be expected given the nature of her gifts. Gradually, they begin to increase, and become more unpredictable, until they eventually occur without prior discomfort or symptoms. She simply loses consciousness, without warning. If we are able to revive her, it is not long before another episode occurs and so it repeats - until her mortal body can no longer sustain the burden of her immortal soul, and she dies in sleep."
"But I have stabilised her before," Sasuke glanced down at Sakura. She had broken out into a cold sweat. Her lips were tinged blue, and she was deathly still. She barely seemed to be breathing. It was a most disturbing sight, giving birth to a cascade of anxiety that was wholly foreign to him. "How is this different?"
"In the past, you were able to sustain her because her body was strong enough to withstand the attacks. But the more time passes, the older she lives on - the more her human blood is contaminated by the immortal fragment sealed within her, and the weaker her ability to recover inevitably becomes. You are not simply willing a mortal heart to beat. Her immortal soul has a will of its own entirely, and it does not answer to your call. Any attempts you make to stabilise her, it will fight against you to discard what it recognises as a false shell."
Sasuke gripped the edge of the bed, tightly enough to turn his knuckles white. He had arrogantly - foolishly - believed that he could keep Sakura's heart beating indefinitely due to his absolute dominion over death. He had not, however, factored her immortal soul waging a war against him.
"When she has reached this stage in past lives, it has always been an indication that the end is soon approaching." Chiyo warned. "The attacks are no longer linked to her gifts alone. The essence inside her does not simply wish to trigger spring now. It is rejecting its host entirely. It recognises only immortality as its true form. Anything less, it will always destroy. She is being poisoned, Sasuke. The cycle is repeating - but there can be no rebirth as a mortal for her this time, as you are aware."
Sasuke's lungs felt like they were incapable of drawing a breath as he was forced to come to terms with the harsh reality of Sakura's fragile state of mortality. Of the supernatural fragment locked away, unseen within her, that contained her soul - one he had absolutely no control over. He could do his utmost to keep her heart beating - but he could not predict how her immortal soul would respond. It was a terrifying unknown. What if his attempts to force her heart to beat beyond its natural capacity resulted in it rupturing, or some other horrific consequence?
Plagued with guilt, he wondered whether he could have prevented the attack from happening. Could it have been avoided had he kept his hands to himself? Why had he not stopped the kiss sooner? The moment he had noticed her growing breathless? Why had he let things escalate by pulling her onto his lap and selfishly indulging his gluttonous need for her touch? Had he so stupidly allowed himself to forget that his hands were capable only of breaking and maiming? He was certain that had he pulled away sooner, he surely would have seen the signs more clearly. Had the haze of lust and desire not obscured his vision.
Now, the very thing he had feared happening was unfolding before his disbelieving eyes. He had been blindsided. Distracted by the brief respite afforded by the bliss of holding Sakura close, of touching her - before the illusion of contentment had cracked around him once more like shattering glass. He hadn't even had time to prepare. He struggled to suppress the spikes of panic that seemed to be trying to claw their way out of his chest.
"What must be done?"
"We must attempt to stabilise her blood with ambrosia. It is the only thing that stands any chance of helping her - and she must be given a substantial amount. It should allow you to regain control of her heartbeat, at least."
"But that will also poison her," Sasuke's eyebrows knotted in concern.
"Yes," Chiyo agreed solemnly. "Yet it is the only option we have to try to neutralise the venom in her veins. If you rely on your powers alone, you will be unable to revive her. They will only sustain her vital functions. Mentally, she will be lost within a limbo, neither conscious nor dead. When she reaches this stage in the cycle, even the ambrosia is not guaranteed to return her to consciousness. It could take days for her to wake - or she may not wake at all."
Sasuke's heart constricted painfully, as if it were being squeezed by an iron hand. "You must know of some way to counter this," he urged.
The old crone pursed her lips and shook her head. "There is no magic I know that can reverse this cycle. I cannot see the seal, just as you cannot. Only the ones who forged it can see and affect it."
Hurriedly, she hooked up one of the medical drip lines that Tsunade had supplied to her from surface hospitals, and poured her brew, mixed with ambrosia, into a glass bottle that fed into it. "I will also add a drop of her preserved, deity blood, in hopes that it will assist in neutralising the poison and allow us to rouse her."
She retrieved a small, jeweled ampoule from the supply pouch attached to the corded belt around her waist, which Tsunade had given to her ahead of Sakura's departure from the surface, then slipped the needle carefully into Sakura's right arm. "I need you to focus with me now." She said to Sasuke firmly. "Keep regulating her pulse as best you can. Some healthy heart-beats are better than none. Use the seeds to enhance the effects of your chakra."
Sasuke nodded, and watched as Chiyo tipped a single drop of blood into the glass bottle. "This is how we have managed to prolong Sakura's life in the past. I have added a brew, which will allow her blood's chemistry to adjust more slowly, to better protect her against adverse side-effects.
"But whether or not she wakes, is beyond our control. If she does, our efforts could delay another attack for only a day or two. Or perhaps it could allow her to live for several more weeks. We have no influence over how her soul responds. We have no option but to temporarily change the chemistry of her blood, to dilute it, and hope that a balance will be restored between body and soul for a time."
Through the use of ambrosia, they were essentially tricking her soul into believing that its shell was returning to immortality, Sasuke knew. But it carried a high risk, and surely would result in an even more aggressive reaction once the effects wore off.
"And when the ambrosia's effects wear off?" he demanded.
"We repeat this again. Until you awaken the eye you need to save her - or she responds no longer."
A cold chill swept through Sasuke at the thought. He had assumed that his powers were capable of reviving Sakura, no matter how dire the situation became. How sorely mistaken he had been. There was no use of sustaining her heartbeat, if she could not return to consciousness. That was no different to losing her permanently, if she fell into a coma of sorts from which he could not compel her to wake.
He watched as Chiyo fed the contents of the bottle directly into Sakura's veins. For several heart-stopping minutes, nothing happened.
"It may take time to settle her blood," she told the death deity. "I am altering it as gently as possible. Do not remove your hand from her."
"What happened in the past, when she woke up?"
"She would feel disorientated and tired. I have tonics to soothe those effects, and provided we manage those symptoms, she should be normal for a short time," Chiyo stated. "But we must keep a close eye on her henceforth. There are no triggers to this attack. You cannot predict it. It can occur at any moment, just as all those before it. If it does, return her straight here, and we will try again. We can only hope," her eyes lowered to Sakura's face, "that it will work each time, but if it does not... you must prepare yourself for the inevitable."
A surge of rage tore through Sasuke, lighting like an inferno within him. He couldn't lose Sakura. Now that he had come to know her, to care so deeply for her, the idea of returning to the lonely, cold existence that he had once been condemned to was unbearable. He felt a crushing weight upon his chest. Losing her was not an option. He would sooner raise hell itself than allow it to happen. But Chiyo had just told him that for all his efforts, it might happen anyway. His heart pounded frantically against his rib-cage. The only thing that could save her, was removing the seal and restoring her immortality. And he was no closer to knowing how to do that, than he had been before.
He opened his mouth to vent his frustrations to Chiyo. She knew how to obtain the eye he needed. He knew she saw the past, the present and the future, and had all the answers. Sakura didn't have to suffer so needlessly. Surely the crone could at least provide him with a small hint, with the tiniest clue that would turn him in the right direction? Something. Anything. He could not afford to simply wait. Not when Sakura's body was weakening by the day, and it was now more painfully apparent than ever how direly at risk her life was.
"You-" he began.
But the old crone shook her head. "Hush. Not now. Do not disturb my focus. You must concentrate on sustaining her throughout the procedure. Let me work."
Sasuke clenched his teeth tightly, and with great reluctance, swallowed back his words, turning his full attention to keeping Sakura's heart beating.
~x~
The sound of pleasant music drifted to her ears, a combination of harps and flutes that gently pushed her from the sea of oblivion back to the shores of consciousness. Sakura opened her eyes to a starry night sky, and became aware of the distinct sensation of grass beneath her fingertips. Slowly, she sat up, feeling disorientated and nauseous.
What had happened to her? It took her a moment to remember.
"Sasuke?" His name was the first word to tumble from her lips, an uncertain whisper. Where was he?
Hadn't she just been in the parlour with him? Had they not been sitting together by the fireplace, reading through Rhea's journals? Hadn't he then pulled her into his arms, and hadn't his lips been on hers? She couldn't recall anything else beyond that.
"Still we call his name?" A sweet, breathy voice that was both familiar and foreign to her ears, sighed sadly.
Sakura's head whipped around in surprise to find a young woman sitting with her knees drawn up on the grass beside her. She blinked, stunned, as her eyes trailed over the girl's features; a silky cascade of waist-length hair, deeper pink in hue than her own, a small, pert nose, plump, alluring, rosy lips, soft, sun-kissed skin and long-lashed, vivid green-gold eyes. There was a purple diamond mark in the centre of her forehead.
Her entire complexion seemed to glow. She was dressed in a white chiton, and decorative gold bangles adorned her slender wrists. There were beautiful, delicate pink and white flowers laced in her hair. She was a vision of loveliness. Sakura couldn't break her gaze away - not because of her beauty, but because she knew who she was looking at. Somehow, she felt it - an instinctive recognition rooted deeply in her very bones.
This was her. In her first life. In her glorious, original, immortal form. She was seeing herself as she had once been.
"Did we not learn?" Her past self questioned, lips twisting to form a rueful pout. "Was one betrayal not enough for us? He ruined us. But it seems we have forgotten the calamity that befell us."
Sakura stared at her, feeling inexplicably on edge. She opened her mouth to argue, but Kore - as she had once been named - was gesturing somewhere into the distance with a small, slender hand. Sakura followed her gaze, to find brightly-lit torches and jubilant celebrations taking place ahead of them. She realised that was where the music was coming from, and spotted some dancers moving in time to the seductive rhythm of the composition.
"Where am I?" she finally managed to find her voice and question.
"This is Hellas. Where we first met him," Kore said, emphasising the last word with a bitter edge. "At a festival, it was. This is the night that sealed our fate." She sighed again, as if she were carrying a tremendous burden. "Aphrodite fancied it to be a game, at first. So many times I wished to blame her for allowing me to set eyes on him, though I know it was never her intention for him and I to begin anything forbidden." She looked down at her hands, folded neatly on her lap. "I have nobody to blame but myself for that. Nothing but my own foolishness and stupidity. I should have listened to Mother's warnings. I had chances enough to turn away and run. But I did not wish to..."
Her words chilled Sakura to the bone. "How are you here?" she asked, at a loss to understand the strange phenomenon she was experiencing, how it was even possible that they were able to interact directly at all. "You're locked away in my memories. How can we be talking?"
Her past self's eyes lifted to watch the festival ahead pensively.
"In every lifetime we have lived, our soul rejects the mortal shell we are forced to inhabit. It slowly poisons our veins. Mother will attempt to delay the effects. Ambrosia, and other healing tonics she gives us, but she cannot stop it. None can. The more time passes, the more we succumb to our sickness, and the lines between past and present begin to blur within the deepest subconscious of our mind. Memories begin to overlap in sleep. This is one such occurrence."
She reached out, and took Sakura's hand in hers. Her skin was warm.
"It feels real, does it not? The night breeze on your face. The grass beneath your hands."
Goosepimples surfaced along Sakura's arms. So she was in a loophole of sorts, that allowed her to experience past events alongside her original self with vivid clarity? She withdrew her hand uneasily and rubbed at her arms, feeling displaced and unsettled. That surely could not bode well for her, in terms of the timeline of her final lifecycle.
"Have we ever spoken like this before?" she asked, almost dreading to learn the answer. "In other lives?"
"Many times we have dreamed of what happened to us." Kore nodded. "Always we meet, shortly before our demise. It is the paradox of our curse. The more we remember of our original existence, the closer we inevitably draw to death. Then we are reborn, and forget anew."
Sakura swallowed back the sudden dryness in her throat. So her being here and being able to experience her past memories with her original self meant that she was close to dying? A wave of despair crashed over her, suffocating and intense.
"How long do I have left?" she whispered, watching the dancers in the distance unseeingly.
"It could be a day," Kore replied. "A fortnight, perhaps two. It matters not. In the end, it is the same. In the end, we perish."
Sakura's hands balled into fists. She felt tears stinging at her eyes. No, she told herself. She had to survive just a little longer. Long enough for Sasuke to find a solution. There had to be a way, a loophole, just like the one she found herself experiencing. Otherwise what would have been the point of all their efforts and struggles?
"It's my final life," she informed her immortal incarnation. "I can't be reborn, not this time. The seeds prevent the cycle from repeating."
Kore's luminous eyes widened. "The seeds?" she echoed, confusion evident on her lovely features.
Sakura hesitated. It suddenly occurred to her that her past self didn't know anything about what she was experiencing. How could she? Kore's memories were limited only to her own experiences - including meeting her subsequent selves within their shared subconscious.
Turning toward Sakura, she frowned. "Why speak you of seeds? You cannot mean-" her voice dropped to a low, fearful whisper, "you do not mean the Fruit of the Dead?"
"I ate six seeds," Sakura confessed. "So this is my final life and-"
Kore's hand flew to her mouth in horror. "No! Say it is not so! How can this have happened?"
"It doesn't matter," Sakura dismissed. "What matters is I need more time. Sasuke hasn't found the eye he needs yet to-"
Her original form's features morphed into fury. "Why speak you his name?" she demanded. "We have never uttered it in any life beyond our first, curse him eternally! Were my warnings not enough?" She turned accusing eyes to Sakura. "In every life, I warn you. What have you done to us?!"
Sakura was taken aback by the vehemence of her past self's anger. But she could understand it; after all, Kore was limited to her own experiences, and in her mind, Hades had betrayed her. She didn't know the truth behind her kidnapping, or the war. She didn't know what Sakura did about everything.
Taking a deep breath, she told her immortal incarnation, "I'm in the Underworld with him right now."
Green-gold eyes widened in shock. "That is impossible," Kore whispered. "The seal keeps us hidden from all eyes. He could not have recognised us."
"He didn't. He doesn't remember you. I mean, he doesn't remember being with me before." Sakura shook her head, thrown by the confusing pronouns she had to use to separate herself from her original form. Though they were one and the same in soul and function, their personalities, their life experiences and memories were decidedly different. One had been raised in immortality. The other, a fragile human. It made Sakura wonder what would happen if the seal was ever removed. Would she be the same person? Would it change her, to remember everything of her first existence?
She decided to skip the details around how, exactly, she and Sasuke had encountered one another again. "We met, and I know the truth about the war now. He didn't kill me. I mean you. Us." It was unnerving, referring to herself in multiple identities. "It was Cronus. He sacrificed his entire clan. He stole away Sasuke's memories of not only you, but his friendship with Naruto and Kakashi, and even lied to him about what happened to his own family. He was only ever trying to help you escape!"
"No," Kore leapt to her feet, enraged. "If you have met him, and you believe him again, then you are a fool!"
"I've met Cronus, too!" Sakura exclaimed, rising in turn. "It's the truth! Sasuke didn't kidnap you! He loved you then, and now we're-"
"No!" Kore placed her hands over her ears, her features tormented. "No more lies! He took me to the surface, and he let me die! He betrayed me! He used our gift! He used us all along! Why do you not listen?!"
Sakura reached out, gripping her by her wrists. "Listen to me. Hades wasn't the one who took you to the Underworld. It was his brother, Thanatos! Those masked men wove the seal so that you- we- could live on. He was a victim in the war, just as you were. We were meant to meet him again. He's the only one who can break this cycle! And right now, I need to get back to him. He's trying to save me-!"
Kore wrenched her hands free and grabbed Sakura's upper arms in turn. Her grip was surprisingly firm and there was a fierceness in her eyes that startled Sakura.
"You have been blinded by him, seduced, just as I was. If you will not see any reason, then you leave me with no choice. You think that he loves you?" She released a strangled, pained, almost hysterical laugh. "His love was nothing but a lie! Sweetly he wooed us, and then he threw us to the wolves! To Cronus himself! In the end, he cared only for his own kin! He learned what our gifts were, and he told Cronus of them, and that was how we were caught. Trusting him! I would rather we sleep eternally than trust his words ever again! I would rather we die forever than give him any part of us again!"
"What...?" Sakura frowned in confusion, her mind initially refusing to process what she was hearing. What did she mean by not having a choice?
Then Kore spoke six words that seemed to turn Sakura's blood to stone. "I will not let us wake. You must stay with me, here."
Sakura stared at her, horrified. She pulled at her arms in vain, but her immortal self was far stronger. "What're you doing?" she exclaimed. The dangerous possibility of her consciousness somehow being forced into a permanent, dreamlike coma was terrifying. How was it possible? Was she so far gone, physically, that she was incapable of waking up on her own?
"It is safer for us here. Where he cannot hurt us." A chilling calm had fallen over Kore. "We must not listen to his lies as we once did. He is not in earnest. He has never been in earnest."
"It wasn't him!" Sakura cried. "You aren't listening to me-!"
"You are the one who has been blinded. Our love for him killed us. He set me free to poison the earth. I cannot let it happen again. I will not!"
"Stop!" Sakura struggled. Panic crested inside her and she wrestled frantically for possession of her arms, finally succeeding in tearing one of them loose. "Let me go! I have to wake up! I need to go back to him! Please! You don't know what's at stake. I need more time!"
"There is nothing you can do to stop it," Kore whispered. "The end comes. Better we die alone, than die at his hands again."
~x~
The heart beneath his palm was racing impossibly fast. Sasuke's concerned eyes lifted to find that Chiyo's were closed, and the old goddess was chanting mystical words in the ancient tongue beneath her breath.
His horror mounted when abruptly, Sakura's heart stuttered - before ceasing in its rhythm entirely. Ten seconds passed. Twenty. Half a minute without change and Chiyo's eyes flew open. The concern that etched itself on her brow caused pandemonium to erupt within him.
He flooded his chakra into her desperately, wrapping it around her heart, commanding the organ to beat again, willing it with every fibre of his being to respond.
"The ambrosia is not working!" he snapped at Chiyo.
"Do not lift your hands from her!" The old crone's voice also rose in volume, betraying her own alarm. "You must compel her to live!"
He clenched his teeth, and manually pumped her heart with his chakra. His ears roared with the rushing throb of his own blood pounding through his veins, and the deafening sound of the heartbeat he was directly controlling. Without his interference, he knew she would already be dead. His body trembled with adrenaline, the sheer horror of their situation crashing over him with all the might of a devastating tsunami flinging Sasuke out into a murky abyss of uncertainty.
This wasn't happening. She was meant to be responding to the ambrosia. She had been given enough of it for it to have some form of effect, surely. Something was wrong.
"Why isn't she waking up?!" he demanded, wincing when a sharp pain stabbed through his left eye, as if an iron-hot skewer had been impaled through it. He ignored it, letting nothing distract him from maintaining Sakura's heart-beat.
"This..." Chiyo murmured, shaking her head, visibly disturbed. "This has never happened before- her body is not responding to the ambrosia. I sense no change in her. Almost as if-"
"What?!" Sasuke bit out.
"Almost as if she cannot respond," Chiyo shook her head. "We must try another way." She turned away, hurrying to her collection of brews and potions. "Keep her heart beating!"
~x~
Urging herself to wake up wasn't working. No amount of pinching herself or screaming at herself to open her eyes had any effect. It was as though her consciousness was locked in a vicious struggle of wills with her original self. Her entire body felt oddly heavy and lethargic. Was this how it ended, Sakura wondered? Without her having the chance to say goodbye to the people she loved?
No, she told herself fiercely. No, she had to wake up!
Feeling desperate and trapped, her free hand closed into a tight fist - and she swung at her goddess form with all her might. Kore abruptly vanished, her grip finally relinquishing - but spoke up again behind her. Sakura spun around to face her, ready to claw her way back to consciousness - to do whatever was needed to break free of the mental prison she'd somehow plummeted into and wake up again.
To her horror, she felt vines wrapping around her arms and torso. Kore was holding a hand up, trapping her in place.
"Do not struggle. It will be over soon, and we can finally rest."
"No!" Sakura cried. "Please! You have to let me wake up!"
Kore wasn't listening. "He should never have found us again." She spoke almost to herself. "It should never have been. This is for the best."
"You don't understand!" Sakura screamed in anguish, fighting to wrench herself free, but with every passing second, her body was growing more and more exhausted. Somehow she knew that if she closed her eyes, she would never open them again - not in this strange dimension she found herself in, or the real world. "You don't know the truth! I can be reborn as a goddess! The cycle can be broken! You have to let me go-!"
"This is for the best." Her original form repeated, and Sakura felt the vines around her tightening. Her eyelids felt like lead. She struggled to focus on anything around her and blinked frantically through the blurriness of her vision, battling against sleep with every last ounce of willpower she possessed.
"No..." she gasped. "I won't... let you... kill us!"
"Kill us?" Kore repeated. "I am not the one who is-" Abruptly, her body tensed. A strangled sound escaped her lips as her gaze came to fix on something behind Sakura's shoulder - something that clearly frightened her.
"You," she choked out, trembling at once.
Before Kore could say or do anything else, her eyelashes fluttered shut - and then, to Sakura's astonishment, she crumbled to the grass, as if a sudden deep slumber had been cast upon her.
The vines around her immediately slid away, falling harmlessly to the ground, and with them, the sleepiness that had threatened to drag Sakura under vanished. She stared down at her original self in bewildered uncertainty. What in the world had just happened?
The exhale of a light sigh in the air behind her caused her to freeze in place as she came to realise that she was not alone.
"A pity I did not correct such ignorance, but I suppose our lack of time was to thank for that."
She blinked. The voice was smooth and pleasant, calm and composed in its tone. Unfamiliar. She pivoted around to face its source - only for her eyes to widen in disbelief.
Standing against a skyline of stars was the fetching, tall form of a young man cloaked entirely in black. The close-fitting, high neck collar of his richly-woven tunic was intricately-sewn with silver stitching that matched the burnt silver of the elaborate mask that concealed half his face, and the silver and onyx droplet earring that adorned his left earlobe. The mid-length dark hair atop his head was wavy and unruly in its nature, and his poised bearing radiated a self-assured air of confidence, power and grace.
Sakura was instantly struck with a bolt of recognition that set her heart hurtling. How it was possible for her to feel the organ pounding so profoundly when she was not truly there in physical form at all, she did not know. She knew only that this was unmistakably one of two of Sasuke's noble kin, who had invoked the seal upon her, trapping her in a cycle of rebirth.
"You...?" she whispered, scarcely daring to blink for fear that she had somehow hallucinated him into existence. "Hypnos...?"
"Well met." The formal words of greeting were polite and well-spoken, but the ebony irises regarding her through the eye-openings of his ornate face-mask were cool and calculating. The omniscient power and magnetism of his gaze caused prickles of apprehension to surface along her skin. Was it a favourable sign that he had appeared? Or an ill omen of her impending doom? She could not tell.
"So you know of me," he continued. "Then you have learned the truth."
Sakura stared at him, stunned by his unexpected appearance and proximity. It took her several attempts to form words again.
"I don't understand," her voice was hushed, afraid that if she spoke too loud, the phantom apparition would dispel before her very eyes. "What is this place?"
"A meeting of memories within the deepest layers of your most subconscious mind," he explained. "That is how you were able to interact with your past self - and why her will is so powerful here."
"Then..." Sakura regarded him with thinly-veiled apprehension, "why are you here?"
He flashed her an all too brief, thoroughly disarming smile, as if he found amusement in her evident mistrust of his presence. It did little to settle Sakura's nerves. If anything, it amplified them. "You have no reason to fear me. If you are truly sensible to the truth, then you will be assured of that fact."
"Why are you here?" she asked again.
All mirth swiftly vanished from his lips. "When we wove the seal upon you, I infused some of my chakra directly within its workings. A safeguard, if you will, against a crisis such as this."
"A crisis?" Sakura echoed, dazed by how surreal it felt to be conversing with the remnants of a deity who had long since perished.
He tilted his head. "It is your final life-cycle, is it not?"
"How do you know that?" Sakura was unnerved by just how much Shisui and Itachi had evidently been aware of while alive - about everything and anything - and how meticulously they had clearly planned and factored for every possible outcome. Brilliant seemed far too lukewarm an adjective to use to describe the power of both their individual and combined intelligence. Here was one of two dangerously clever deities who had outsmarted the formidable Cronus himself, despite being nowhere near the Titan's age at the time.
"There is no conceivable way we would be speaking like this otherwise." He gestured languidly into the space between them with long, slim fingers adorned with onyx-studded silver rings. "My chakra can only be released when you can no longer be reborn."
Sakura shook her head incredulously. "How could you have been able to predict when that'd be?"
"I am one of the three responsible for its creation. I know the seal's limitations and all its mechanisms." He paused, noting the perplexed look on her face, before clarifying kindly, "Under ordinary circumstances, your mortal body is gradually poisoned over the years by your immortal soul. You grow weaker, until eventually, your spirit's rejection of its human shell ceases your heart entirely. You then perish.
"That is not what has happened, now. That I am here means your heart has already failed - but has been revived and maintained through unnatural, divine interference - something that has never occurred in any of your past lives. You linger, neither awake or dead, trapped between both states. That was the trigger that released my chakra."
Sakura gaped at him. "You knew back then that I'd be prevented from being reborn by eating the seeds?"
It seemed impossible. She couldn't grasp how he and his cousin could have possibly possessed such remarkable depth of foresight.
Shisui's lips curved into a small, knowing smile. "Not quite, Persephone," he answered, and Sakura felt a chill wash over her at the use of her formal deity name. The name he had known her by, back when they had both lived as immortals. "However, I did know that you and Sasuke would inevitably cross paths in the future. I made it so that he would find you again. The cycle was always intended to end when he did, for he holds the key to restoring you to your original form."
Faced with one of the two responsible for directly placing the binding seal upon her, Sakura found herself overwhelmed with so many conflicting emotions. Anger. Anguish. Sadness. Frustration. Gratitude that they had given her a second chance - a thousand chances to live again, and yet she could remember nothing from any of those lives. The seal on her had been a gift, saving her from fading forever, just as much as it had been a curse most cruel.
She had so many questions for him. They rushed through her mind, dizzying in their urgency.
"Was there really no other way to save me?" she demanded. "Why did it take centuries to reach my final form? Why did my mother and I and everyone else who cares about me have to suffer for so long?!"
"That was a consequence unfortunate, indeed," Shisui stated, his voice sincere in its regret. "Yet there was no alternative, for Madara had already discovered you, and so we had no other choice. Not without placing Sasuke's survival at risk. He was always our priority, you must understand."
"Then why did I have to be reborn as a human?"
"Following your initial passing, it was imperative that you remained hidden as a mortal of no significance. Your gifts, commanded by the wrong hands, can destroy the balance of life and death on the surface, and Madara would never have stopped hunting you. With the Olympians' abilities all sealed away, it was the best way to protect you - until the conditions were opportune to permit your meeting with Sasuke once again."
"Opportune?" Sakura repeated. "You mean once he'd ascended the throne he had no choice but to accept?"
Shisui cast her an unreadable look. "Many of us had not the luxury of choice. There were no winners in a needless war. At least Sasuke was able to live on, to grow in power and wisdom so as one day to avenge his kin."
She shook her head. "All the secrets your family kept from him - do you have any idea how much that's hurt him? Cronus twisted the truth and tortured him with it! It almost destroyed him!"
"And do you believe that we were insensible to that fact?" he responded quietly. "We knew precisely the pain our actions would inflict. None regret my cousin's fate more so than his brother and I, and yet - our hands were tied. We had to keep him alive. He needed to be the one to ascend the throne, or else it would fall to Madara, and to ruin. Would you rather we have spared his feelings with honesty, and allowed him to perish with us?"
"No," Sakura shook her head, feeling a pang of guilt. She had no right to act so protective in the face of the beloved cousin who had laid down his own life to ensure Sasuke's survival. Meeting Hypnos in person - or a chakra manifestation of him, she supposed was what it was, akin to the Zeus they had seen in the relic site - cast into sharp relief just how young he - and by extension, the younger Thanatos - had been when they had sacrificed themselves by sealing the Titans away. They had surely had their whole immortal lives ahead of them, the possibility of bright futures and having families of their own and yet, when forced with an impossible situation, had not thought twice about forfeiting everything and terminating their own existences for the sake of the greater good.
What right had she to question their methods at all? Sasuke had survived and accepted the throne. He had indeed grown into a just and wise and powerful ruler. He did desire revenge on Cronus. And she had met him again, just as Shisui and Itachi had intended. Their complex plan had been a painful one - but it had outwitted Cronus, and most importantly, it had worked.
"I'm sorry," she apologised sincerely. "I know how much you both did for him. I just wish it hadn't taken him so long to find out, and he hadn't spent so many millennia living in hatred."
"It was an unpleasant, but necessary evil," Shisui answered simply. "One of the reasons we erased his memory of you was not only to protect him. But to protect you, in turn."
"I still don't understand how you planned all this." Sakura frowned. "You took a huge risk. I could've died anytime right after I met him. I've had attacks-"
"Not if he took you to the Underworld, as intended."
Sakura inhaled sharply. "What? Wait. You mean- you planned for him to abduct me?"
Shisui's lips parted slightly in surprise and he suddenly appeared uncomfortable, as if learning of Sasuke's actions mortified him.
"Ah. If that is indeed the unchivalrous course of action my foolish little cousin chose to pursue, then please accept our sincerest apologies for his reckless behaviour," he offered. "And for any distress it caused. That was never the manner in which we hoped you would be re-introduced. However, we could not control how or when you crossed paths again."
Sakura folded her arms across her chest unhappily. "It's not like we ever could've met under normal circumstances. He hated my mother and the surface gods."
"Madara's influence. We had no time to remedy that."
She rubbed at her arms. "So why did Sasuke have to take me to the Underworld?"
"Because being in the Underworld is advantageous to you. Time's flow differs within it, and so you are better shielded from the influence of surface time, which slows down the process of degeneration."
"If that's true," Sakura frowned, "then why has this attack happened to me now, while I'm in the Underworld?"
"I said it slows down the cycle's progression," Shisui corrected. "It does not make you immune to it in our realm. The speed of your demise will inevitably escalate the longer you spend on the surface, because it is on the surface that the seasons exist and a mortal body is not intended to govern the coming of spring indefinitely."
Realisation trickled through her and Sakura felt sick to her stomach. Sasuke had granted her an entire year on the surface. Had he unwittingly placed her at greater risk by allowing her an extra six months, that had advanced how close she was to her cycle's natural end? Had even the act of abducting her - which had been reprehensible - shielded her, with both she and Sasuke, and everyone else oblivious to the fact that being in the Underworld actually protected her human body by slowing down the cycle?
She shook her head. "I spent six months in the Underworld when he first took me, and then he let me go back for a year..."
"I see," Shisui remarked. "That would mean you consumed six seeds from the fruit, is that not so?"
She nodded mutely.
"There, then, is your culprit. The longer you are on the surface, the faster your body deteriorates, because that is where your gifts take root. Sasuke has stopped previous attacks, has he not? In your mortal shell, he retains an element of authority over you and is able to sustain your heart's rhythm - he is surely doing so right now. But this episode is not like the others."
"Why?" she began apprehensively. "What's happening to me...?"
"The rejection of your mortal coil is in its advanced stages," he supplied. "Your episodes will no longer be temporary slumbers in response to triggering springtime, from which you can be healed or compelled to recover. Sasuke can keep your heart beating, but for all his valiant efforts, you will remain comatose and linger here."
"What do you mean?" Her eyes widened in alarm. "Are you saying I can't wake up?"
Shisui walked slowly toward her. The stars in the sky behind him had begun to wink out. An ominous sign that her surroundings were starting to fade. "You will not regain consciousness as you did in times past. I suspect you are being treated now with ambrosia. That will help stabilise your blood - but it has its own adverse effects, and it will not be long before another occurrence transpires."
Sakura felt raw, helpless panic bubble within her chest. "What do I do?"
"There is nothing you can do. That is why I left my chakra here. It can restore you to the waking world and will grant you some more time. I will quell your soul's rejection of your body for a while longer and neutralise the balance within your blood - but you must remain in the Underworld, or risk its effects wearing off sooner." He stopped just before her. "Take heed," he warned grimly. "I can do this but once. Should you fall into this place again, you will not recover alone. No amount of ambrosia or magic will allow you to regain consciousness, and your soul will depart as soon as your heartbeat ceases."
Sakura felt ice encase her entire body. The ominous words 'you will not recover' echoed thunderously in her ears. Shisui meant that it would be the end for her. She would be lost to a sea of unconsciousness from which she would never awaken, no matter how hard Sasuke tried to reverse her death. He could keep her from dying biologically - but he held no sway over her soul and her return to a sentient state.
"But the seeds," she got out, feeling breathless and broken by the fragility of her own existence.
"They are capable of anchoring your soul to your body in death - for a brief while at least, delaying its parting. But they will not restore you to awareness. Once your body's rejection is complete, the seal will swallow your consciousness and prevent you from waking. That is how you forget."
Shadows were beginning to gather around Shisui's form, stirring the air around them and Sakura sensed that his chakra was starting to fade. It spurned her to ask the more important questions she knew she ought to have at the start - but a selfish part of her had needed to understand more about her own fate. To seek her own sense of closure from one of the enigmatic entities who had condemned her to rebirth.
"Wait! How can Sasuke get the eye he needs to break the cycle?" Sakura was frantic to gain answers before he vanished and she lost her chance forever. "His brother told him he'd have it when the crow wakes up. We found a crow in the last relic site, but haven't seen it since. We don't know what to do, or even where it is. Please, help us!"
"It is the key to unlocking your seal, but cannot be willed into appearance, to protect it from falling into the wrong hands. Rather, there is a trigger to activate it, one that requires a great fluctuation of chakra within the body."
"What does that mean?" she pressed.
"The crow must first fully assimilate within Sasuke to allow the eye to manifest."
"A fluctuation of chakra?" she got out. "You mean, the same way he's awakening the Rinnegan?"
A heavy pause ensued. "The Rinnegan?" Shisui murmured at length, as if he had not factored for that particular outcome. "He has it?"
"It's beginning to activate in one of his eyes," she told him.
"I have not much chakra left to spare." The unseen breeze was picking up force around them, tossing wavy locks of hair across Shisui's forehead, and sending his dark cloak billowing out behind him. "Tell me quickly; how came he to acquire Senju cells? Only Madara could have access to those, and the Rinnegan is not a gift he would ever willingly share."
"He was trying to find a way to break the cycle. Cronus gave those cells to him in return for a serum the enemy had lost."
"How?" Shisui demanded. "From whom were they acquired?"
"From Zeus and Hera. They were trapped on the summit in crystal after they died. You knew that, didn't you?"
Shisui ignored her question, not having the luxury of time anymore to discuss anything but the most pressing of matters. "Sasuke ascended to Olympus?" he asked sharply. At Sakura's nod, he cursed, "The fool. He was forbidden to venture there. Madara does not offer power unless he seeks to gain from it or take it for his own. How could the Lady Hecate have allowed that to happen?"
Sakura shook her head, nonplussed and anxious at the tension she detected in the lines of Shisui's broad shoulders, tension that had not been there minutes earlier. "It was a trade he made, but Cronus infected Sasuke with the Curse Seal of Heaven in return."
Shisui now had an urgent air about him, as if he were mindful of his limited time, and was racing to arrive at a solution before he began to fade. "He should not have pursued that eye. Though it affords exceptional gifts, it will delay the awakening of the crow."
"What?" Sakura was dismayed. "No. That can't- he didn't know! You didn't leave him any guidance. He thought the Rinnegan would help him see and undo the seal on me! He got those cells long before we ever went on our quest to retrieve the relics!"
"Your seal is cloaked from all eyes except the one that cast it. He would see only a concentration of unidentifiable chakra. Not the runes themselves." Shisui's eyes narrowed. "And you say he has already spoken with Itachi? Did he reveal nothing of this to his brother?"
Sakura shrugged helplessly. "I don't know if they talked about the Rinnegan before he restored Sasuke's chakra after the curse seal infected him."
"Listen closely. If the process of awakening the Rinnegan has truly begun, that eye must manifest first."
"What?" Sakura stared.
"Senju cells bind to the chakra pathways and blood vessels of a Sharingan." Shisui explained hurriedly. "They are more sensitive and receptive to extreme fluctuations in chakra. So they will always feed off surges of chakra first. These cells consume chakra to accelerate the awakening of the Rinnegan - at the expense of chakra flow to the Sharingan. The eye he needs cannot manifest in an eye that has started awakening the Rinnegan."
"Wait. Are you saying he can't have True Death's eye until he gets the Rinnegan?" Sakura asked, staggered by the revelation. "That it's somehow- blocking it?"
"Exactly so. He must complete the awakening of the Rinnegan, before the eye he requires can accumulate enough chakra to merge with his Sharingan. The transplant is internal, but it needs an uninterrupted flow of chakra - and until the Rinnegan is awakened, all surges will be devoured by Senju cells."
Sakura fisted her hands into her hair, a purely senseless gesture. "But what if the Rinnegan doesn't fully activate for a long time yet?"
"Then you had better hurry it along."
"How? And what if it starts activating in his other eye, too? What if I have another attack before he gets it?"
Shisui did not immediately answer. His silence was disconcerting. It filled Sakura with more terror than any verbal response might have, and spoke volumes in itself. Finally he said, "Rarely do Senju cells attach to more than one Sharingan. It is difficult enough to awaken one Rinnegan, alone. But if they did... then there is no way the crow could bestow its gift. Let us hope that is not the case here."
"Please!" Sakura gasped. "You must have thought about that outcome! There must be a way around it!"
He hesitated, something she instinctively discerned was a most uncharacteristic action for him. "Nobody has awakened the Rinnegan in millennia. We did not think he would find a means to pursue it, much less be capable of beginning its activation. Countless other Uchiha have made the attempt, only for those cells to remain dormant all their lives. He should never have been able to obtain Senju matter from Zeus or Hera. Itachi and I did our utmost to plan for every eventuality we perceived - but we were not infallible. Even our powers and foresight had their limitations. It is Sasuke's error to accept anything Madara offers. I thought he would know better than to trust him."
"Didn't you think by leaving him to figure all this out on his own, he might go looking for power in places he wasn't meant to?!" Sakura cried.
"We had not the luxury of time to write down any explanations." Shisui reminded her. "Nor did we anticipate that Madara could use him to harvest a Rinnegan for himself. That is unprecedented. He has never shared any Senju cells with any of his kin before. There is no sense to it, given that he has likely already implanted those cells into his own eyes long before. Sasuke should never have been able to meet with him. He should have been halted, by force if necessary."
"So that's it?" she exclaimed anxiously. "You're telling me that I might really die next time unless we find a way to make his Rinnegan appear before my next attack happens, so that the eye he needs can activate?"
"Yes. Or else," Shisui added, "your death will be the trigger required to awaken both."
Sakura's eyes burned with tears of despair. No. She couldn't put Sasuke through an experience so harrowing and cruel as being forced to watch her die to obtain the key he needed to save her. There had to be another way. A kinder way. "But what if even that doesn't work?! He found out the truth about your deaths, he almost watched me die and still the Rinnegan hasn't appeared! Please, there must be another way to get the crow to-"
"Enough. I can spare no more chakra here," Shisui interrupted abruptly. He lifted a hand to his mask, dispelling it into fine, shimmering silver dust, revealing the entirety of his face to her. Sakura's breath caught in her throat. He was handsome, with a strong, angled jawline and chiselled features, bearing resemblance to Sasuke's - as was to be expected given their direct blood kinship - but it was his dark-lashed, feline-like eyes that startled her most, skewering her to the spot.
"My priority is to restore you to the waking world, now." He reached out, pressing his index and middle finger to the centre of her forehead and she watched, wide-eyed, as his ebony irises slowly bled to crimson. They locked onto hers, piercing, mesmerising - and all at once frighteningly, hauntingly familiar - as if Sakura recalled the intricate pattern of their kaleidoscope from a faraway, long forgotten dream. A chill swept through her, right before she felt a searing, stabbing pain radiating in her skull and chest. It was crippling, made it impossible to speak, to ask any further questions. She lifted her hands, clutching them over her heart in alarm, panting for breath as warmth bloomed through her.
"You will awaken, and your body will be restored to balance again - for a while. Do not squander the time I have given you." Shisui's voice echoed hauntingly around her, the vivid, glowing imprint of his spinning Sharingan burning like flame in her mind's eye. "Once the Rinnegan activates, the crow will soon follow. Take heed Persephone; when your life is next at risk - be it through falling to this place, or otherwise - Sasuke must be prepared. He must have True Death's eye. Or else you will be lost within this void, and none other can aid you."
The shadows were whipping around them now like powerful gusts of wind. Shisui and her original form had vanished completely from Sakura's sight, swallowed up by darkness. The pain was ebbing away, and her entire body was beginning to feel impossibly hot as the last of Shisui's chakra worked on stalling the effects of her seal and neutralising her blood. A fire was roaring to life within her - or perhaps it was simply the sensation of being brought back from the brink of the void. The brink of death itself.
Sakura desperately tried to call out to him again, but she was paralysed. Her eyelids were once again impossibly heavy and her body was turning to dead-weight. She fought to retain consciousness - but was already surrendering to the shadows as sleep dragged her under its irresistible tide.
~x~
Sasuke was close to despair. The ambrosia had still not brought Sakura around, and Chiyo had quietly informed him that they could do nothing more except wait. She would not tell him what they were waiting for, and nearly driven out of his mind with worry, Sasuke had angrily confronted her again about knowing exactly how to undo the seal, about knowing precisely how to awaken the crow and obtain Itachi's eye, and had accused her of endangering Sakura's life needlessly and increasing her torment by remaining silent.
Chiyo had merely listened to him, aggravating him further by stubbornly refusing to respond, and he'd had no choice but to simmer to himself in frustration while continuing to manually ensuring Sakura's heart kept beating.
He blinked when he sensed its rhythm suddenly growing stronger, as if it were functioning on its own again, a split second before the chest beneath his open palm heaved as Sakura dragged in a deep breath. Her eyes flew open. She gasped, panting for oxygen, and reached up to grip Sasuke's forearm unseeingly.
The death deity's eyes widened, and he looked to Chiyo in alarm, who exhaled quietly in relief.
"It is done," the old crone croaked, then mumbled beneath her breath, "By Elysium, I had almost worried that you had quite disappointed me."
Who was she talking about? Sasuke's eyebrows furrowed together in confusion, but he was distracted from asking any further questions when a whimper escaped Sakura's lips. His gaze instantly flew back to her, to find that her eyes had closed again. Although her heartbeat now felt steady, natural and strong beneath his hand, he was fearful of pulling his palm away, his tightly coiled nerves jarred by the trauma of almost losing her forever. Every part of him felt on edge, as if he were standing in the midst of an endless circle of razor sharp knives, poised to slice him open from all directions.
Chiyo placed a gentle palm briefly on Sakura's forehead. "She will be stable, now," she reassured him. "She is safe. You may remove your hand."
Sasuke hesitantly drew his palm away and leaned forward, inspecting Sakura intently for any remaining signs of distress. But the lines of stress that had been blighting her features had smoothed over, and she appeared to be merely sleeping. Her breathing was steady and regular, and to his profound relief, the colour had been fully restored to her complexion. It was almost as if nothing terrible had happened to her at all.
He scarcely dared to believe that she had fully recovered, even despite Chiyo's assurances. He did not take his eyes off her, wary that another unpleasant event might unexpectedly rear its ugly head.
Removing the needle from her arm, the ancient goddess added, "There is no way to predict how long she has left until this occurs again. Watch her closely for signs of delirium, or exhaustion. Should she collapse again, return her straight here. Now," she straightened, and gave Sasuke a curt nod, "Take the poor child to rest."
"How did she wake?" he demanded. The ambrosia hadn't taken effect. It had merely allowed him to regulate her heart more easily, but Sakura had not responded to him willing her back to consciousness. What had changed her status so suddenly, restored vigour to her pulse and allowed her to return?
"You may ask her yourself, when she awakens," Chiyo responded cryptically. Then she waved a dismissive hand. "Away with you."
Sasuke glowered at her, but wordlessly gathered Sakura up into his arms, and departed the hut.
~x~
As he returned to the palace and placed Sakura gently down on her bed, Sasuke perched on the edge of the mattress beside her, afraid to so much as blink. Shaken by the realisation that he had almost lost her - truly lost her - and been helpless to prevent it, left him anguished and frustrated. Not even the seeds had allowed him to rouse her. Without Chiyo's intervention, what might have happened?
His eyes lowered, and the burden of breaking her cycle - the weight of carrying that and the awareness that she could pass at any moment into a sleep from which she would never recover - was crushing. He had believed that by maintaining her heartbeat, he could compel her soul to stay, could will her back to consciousness. But her immortal soul had a mind entirely of its own. It answered to nothing except the seal that had been placed on it.
He lowered his forehead into his right hand, raking his fingers through the fine raven strands of his hair, an instinctive, unguarded gesture that openly expressed the stress and turmoil that were waging war upon his mind and emotions. A wave of anger and dejection surged through him. What more could he do than this? Why had Shisui and Itachi entrusted him with such a difficult, impossible struggle? He exhaled quietly, and turned his eyes to the underside of the canopy of the bed, horrified and furious to feel his eyes stinging.
He was still not strong enough. Still weak. Nothing had changed. He was helpless to prevent the very thing that he had sworn he would never allow to happen. What use were all his gifts, his exalted station, when he couldn't even protect the one who had grown to matter to him more than anything else in the world? He had not been able to protect his family in the past - and he was failing in protecting Sakura in the present. That cruel reality cut him to the bone, haunted him beyond measure.
"Sasuke...?" The soft voice immediately commanded his attention, and he straightened, walling off his emotions. She needed him to be strong - even if that was the last thing he felt at that moment.
Sakura was awake. She blinked muddled, bleary eyes up at him, eyes he had been terrified would never open again.
"I'm here." He leaned over her, inspecting her closely for lingering signs of discomfort. When she attempted to shift, he reached out, placing a halting hand gently on her right shoulder. "Don't move. Rest, Sakura."
Her eyelids lowered sleepily, and he watched silently as she began to doze off again. Troubled, he continued to observe her for several more minutes, before slowly rising to his feet. He would have Ume and Chizu keep constant watch over her, he told himself, until she fully recovered her strength.
Until it happened again.
His hands balled into tight fists, and he made plans to return straight to Chiyo's hut, to demand just what she had meant with her odd choice of parting words. To not leave until she relinquished some crumb of information about how to awaken the crow. He was sick of her mysterious statements, fed up of all the time he was wasting going in circles while Sakura-
A weak tug on the ends of his cloak gave him pause. He froze, and turned his head, to find Sakura looking up at him with tearful eyes. She was clutching onto the fabric in her hand with a desperation that caused a peculiar stillness to fall over him.
"Don't go," she whispered.
Sasuke felt something twist violently within his chest at the sight of her, so frail, with such sadness in her eyes. A fracturing, as if his heart, which had slowly been mending by the touch of her grace and company, were on the verge of being ripped apart all over again. His throat clogged shut. A most paralysing thought struck him - that all of his efforts for the span of over a surface year trying to save her, could be for nothing if the same awful thing were to happen to her again.
"Sakura," he began with difficulty. "I-"
"Please," she swallowed thickly. "Can you stay with me...?"
He blinked, and wordlessly returned to her side.
She pulled his cloak closer to her chest. "Would you hold me?" she closed her eyes, tears pooling at the corners of her lashes. "Please...?" she whispered.
"..." He stared at her, internally distraught and stricken speechless, engaged in an internal tug of war. He wanted nothing more than to hold her - and yet he loathed himself at that moment, was hesitant - almost afraid - to touch her.
Her eyes opened again, mournful and emotional, and the decision was made for him.
Schooling his features into careful neutrality, he obliged her request, moving to sit on the bed. Awkwardly, he leaned back against the artfully carved headboard, then gingerly - gently - he pulled her up to rest against him, letting her head fall on his chest, and closed his arms securely around her petite form. He gave her what physical comfort he could offer, the comfort he knew his lack of words could not. When she trembled against him, his arms tightened instinctively, protectively, and he soothed her into a comfortable sleep.
Sasuke remained with her a long time, holding her, disregarding all his duties, telling himself that Sakura's wellbeing was his priority at that moment. Everything else could wait.
~x~
She regained consciousness to the calming sensation of a chest rising and falling rhythmically against her right cheek and the soothing sound of a strong, steady heartbeat against her ear.
Slowly, Sakura became aware of herself and her surroundings, blinking to find that she was back in her candle lit room within the palace. She then grew conscious of two arms wrapped warmly around her, and released a quiet sigh, burying her face against the fabric of the tunic beneath her, deeply inhaling his familiar scent. Elemental, like a forest after a thunderstorm, fresh and clean, with undertones of intoxicating, warm spice. He smelled of comfort, of strength. Of reassurance and stability. Of all the things she so desperately needed at that moment.
She squeezed her eyes shut again, taking a moment to enjoy the feeling of safety, of being enveloped in his arms. She vividly recalled everything that had happened to her. The way she had found herself trapped in her deepest subconscious, held hostage there following her unexpected attack, by her own past memories and the powerful will of her original self. How close to dying she was in her final form. Her mind was spinning with rapidly unravelling threads of thoughts. She attempted to reel them in, to compose herself. They had no time to waste, she knew; she needed to tell Sasuke about everything she had learned and experienced.
"Sasuke?" she whispered.
There was a pause. Then he questioned, "Can you sit?"
She nodded, although she was reluctant to leave the sanctuary of his arms. Carefully, he helped her into an upright position beside him.
She turned her eyes to him, and found herself overwhelmed with emotion. With the poignant awareness of how very little time she had left. Heavy with the burden of knowing how desperate and precarious their situation was. Of how much that knowledge would hurt the very one whose eyes were drinking her up, assessing her intently. She couldn't imagine the fright she must have given him, but the tension she detected lining every inch of his body was a clear enough indication of the stress her sudden collapse had doubtlessly caused him.
"Are you hurt?" he brushed his hand fleetingly over the back of hers, as if he needed to touch her to convince himself that she was truly well.
"No," Sakura swallowed. "Just a little nauseous, that's all."
"The ambrosia," he informed her.
She leaned her head back against the headboard, and pressed a palm to her forehead. "Yeah. That explains it."
"We tried to neutralise your blood. Your soul is-" he broke off, unwilling to say the rest of the words out loud.
"Hellbent on poisoning my body, the same way it has for thousands of years?" Sakura asked dryly.
Sasuke regarded her for a moment, and then turned his focus toward the fireplace beyond the gauzy barrier of the canopy drapes enclosed around them. Sakura glimpsed the tautness of his jawline, the way it clenched as he supplied tightly, "I could not wake you."
She recognised the barely concealed, tortured look of guilt that was simmering in those bottomless, stormy irises. He was frustrated. Angry. He blamed himself.
Reaching out, she took hold of his left hand and squeezed it tightly.
"Sasuke. This isn't your fault," she whispered hoarsely. "None of it is. You can't stop the attacks from happening." She paused, before continuing, "This wasn't like my other ones. It didn't hurt beforehand. It just happened. You can't stop my soul rejecting my mortal body. If anyone could, I wouldn't have had to be reborn so many times to begin with. It was bound to happen eventually." She laced her fingers through his, the awareness of how far along the course of her final lifecycle she was filling her with a near-urgent need to touch him. "I knew this was coming," she added quietly. "We all did."
He remained silent, staring down at her fingers entwined with his, a firm scowl fixed on his face.
Sakura inhaled deeply, preparing herself to share the alarming revelations Shisui had imparted to her.
"When you saw your brother while you were unconscious, did you tell him that you were activating the Rinnegan?"
He cast her an odd look. "No." It hadn't even crossed his mind as being the most pressing thing to discuss with Itachi in the limited window of time they'd had to converse. "Why?"
Sakura bit her bottom lip anxiously. "Something happened while I was unconscious," she started, and immediately he shifted, turning toward her. "I saw my original self. I don't mean I just dreamed of her - she was actually with me. We were able to speak and she told me that we'd met in past lives, too, and always when my time is almost up."
"How?" he questioned.
"I don't know. It was some kind of weird loophole - but when she found out that I needed to wake up to get back to you, she told me she wouldn't let me leave."
Sasuke's eyebrows drew together in concern.
"It sounds crazy, but it was like there was my consciousness, and there was hers inside the seal where all my original memories are. I tried to wake myself up, but I couldn't."
"Then how did you?" He regarded her intently. "The ambrosia did not rouse you alone."
Sakura placed her free hand on his chest. "I saw your cousin."
His eyes widened in astonishment. "Shisui?" he got out, after a brief pause.
She nodded. "He worked some of his chakra into my seal, like how your brother left some of his with you. He sent my original form to sleep, and I was able to speak with him for a short while."
She then proceeded to share the details of her encounter with Hypnos. Sasuke listened in stunned silence as she explained how Shisui had sealed his chakra within her, and that it had been set to trigger when her heart stopped and was revived - and how it had brought her more time by bolstering her seal and restoring balance to her body to stall the speed of degeneration.
She detailed how being in the Underworld would slow down the rate at which the effects of his chakra would fade, and relayed everything Shisui had told her about the crow internally transplanting the eye they needed, how the Rinnegan had to be activated first because its cells obstructed chakra flow to his other Sharingan - which was preventing the crow from fully assimilating and gathering the quantity of chakra it required to manifest.
"He was surprised when I told him about the Rinnegan," she said. "I don't think they'd anticipated that you'd seek it out, much less be able to wake it. He said you were forbidden to even go up to the summit, and that Chiyo shouldn't have let it happen."
Sasuke was silent. It was strictly against the laws of the High Council for any deity to venture to Olympus and engage with Madara. Chiyo had warned him at the time - and now that he thought about it, she had possessed the power to stop him, if she had truly wished to bar him from making the journey. But she had mysteriously chosen not to act, and instead assisted him with modifying the contents of the phial. He had also paid her warnings no heed, and was at that moment furious to realise that he had inadvertently complicated things by choosing to pursue the Rinnegan. If its chakra-sensitive cells were greedily devouring all fluctuations in chakra within his body in response to emotional and physical stressors, then it was no wonder that was slowing down the manifestation of the crow. That had not even occurred to him as being a problem. He didn't know enough about the Rinnegan to understand just how it materialised. But surely Chiyo had known?
Why then, had she allowed him to go? It would not have been any rejection of her role had she acted out the laws of the High Council and stopped him. His suspicions flared wildly.
"I couldn't ask him exactly how the crow works." Sakura added. "I ran out of time. He had to use the rest of his chakra to restore me, but from what I understood, it'll need a lot of chakra to wake up. I think it's meant to somehow fuse with your own Sharingan."
There was now no mistake, Sasuke thought to himself; based on everything Sakura had told him - the summon had entered into his body. He had initially almost believed that the crow had perhaps vanished elsewhere, but recalling the sensation of it colliding into his chest just before it had disappeared, cemented that fact in stone.
Was the crow then a physical manifestation of his brother's chakra and genetic cells, which would trigger the awakening of Itachi's eye? Or did it possess the Sharingan itself, and had it burrowed into his body to remain hidden from the enemy? If Itachi's Mangekyou had been placed into the bird directly, then how could an internal transplant and fusing even take place? Why could Sasuke not summon the creature at will to perform a more commonly known external transplant? He had never before ever heard of an internal one being possible. It was not the usual method used by his clan to implant an eye amongst kin. Was it different because he and Itachi had shared the same base chakra element, courtesy of their mother and father? Or because he had also directly inherited Itachi's actual function? Were they an absolute genetic match that allowed their Sharingan to somehow merge together, provided each were present?
A sudden possibility then crossed Sasuke's mind. Could 'True Death's eye' in fact be both his brother's and his own combined to form one kaleidoscope? One that had both their individual patterns ingrained? The more he thought of it, the more likely it seemed. And it accounted as to why the Rinnegan needed to be activated first; to prevent any chakra from being redirected to its cells instead, rather than the actual eye Sasuke needed to activate and merge with his own. Until he was able to fully unlock the Rinnegan and directly control chakra flow to it in the same manner he could with his own eyes, it would hungrily consume all chakra directed toward his ocular pathways indiscriminately.
Sakura had told him that Shisui had mentioned the crow needed to be triggered by fluctuations in chakra, one that the Rinnegan's cells were blocking. But dramatic surges in chakra were only possible under conditions of great physical stress, or in response to extreme emotions. Unlike the Rinnegan, which responded to continuous stressors and turmoil and required a greater length of time to awaken - a Mangekyou Sharingan's evolution was sudden, immediate, and most often in response to a most catastrophic pain and extreme emotional strife. Such as losing what was most dear to someone-
His mind stuttered to a stop, as a horrific possibility snuffed out all other thoughts. No. It couldn't be. And yet, why else had Shisui stated the Rinnegan needed to be activated first, implying that it needed to occur before Sakura's next attack? Sasuke had always assumed that the crow would lead him to the eye he needed. But what if he actually had to awaken it himself, manually, through the same means that an ordinary Mangekyou was awakened? By losing a precious person?
Did he have to witness Sakura dying, before the eye he needed would manifest?
"He said the next time my life is at risk," Sakura was going on, drawing him from the hurricane of his thoughts, "you have to have the Rinnegan and be prepared. He said-" she bit her lower lip again, before divulging the awful news, "if I ever fall unconscious again like I did earlier, there'll be no other way to wake me up." She hesitated, before venturing, "If that happens before we get the eye we need, then I'll be-"
"Stop," he interrupted tightly, pulling his hand out of her grasp.
"Sasuke," she wet her lips and tried again carefully. "I'm at the most advanced stages of the cycle. We need to be prepared for all outcomes. The Rinnegan still hasn't appeared, and if another episode happens before it does, there's nothing you can do to-"
"I will not let you die," Sasuke hissed fiercely. There was no way he would risk doing nothing if she had another attack. But the thought of her not waking up filled him with dread. What if she was right - what if the Rinnegan hadn't appeared by then? Did that truly mean the crow never would, and there would be no way to return Sakura back to the waking world? Did he truly have to let her die, to experience the loss, before True Death's eye could be triggered?
He had no command or influence over her immortal spirit. It was too unpredictable an action to risk, simply standing back and doing nothing - and no viable solution in his mind. The very idea was preposterous to his ears, and extremely perilous. He could not gamble with her existence so carelessly.
Sakura's heart constricted painfully and she spoke the words he had already considered. "What if my death really is the only way to make the crow appear? Even Shisui said that might be the only way to make it activate at all, if the Rinnegan still hasn't by then. The Rinnegan has complicated things, so this isn't going to work out the way they intended."
She recalled the mysterious fortune teller at the last Spring festival, who had said something similar to her about death. Words she had never quite been able to shake.
'You must die. Quietus. It is the only way to achieve release.'
The notion was terrifying, but what if a leap of faith was what they had to take to break the cycle once and for all?
She could tell that Sasuke was not happy to hear the suggestion. "If your heart stills, your soul will be at risk. I have no control over it." His hands balled into fists, his expression thunderous. "No. There must be another way."
"Shisui said the seeds can delay the departure of my soul. I think that's because I can't be reborn into another body, so they can anchor my spirit for a short while if I die. Maybe that's when you need to unlock the seal?"
Sasuke hesitated despite himself. Was it true? Would the seeds indeed have that effect, stalling her immortal soul even if her heart stopped completely? He shook his head. Even if they could hold that ability, it would surely not be for long - and the idea of relinquishing all power over keeping her biologically alive at that point disturbed him greatly. Again, the risk was too great.
He frowned. There was still the uncontrolled variable of the Rinnegan to consider. If it did not appear before the next attack, and if that attack was the last of her cycle, Sakura's soul would be in danger of departing before the Mangekyou even had a chance to manifest. Or was she suggesting the two could somehow appear simultaneously? There was no guarantee of that, either. He would not watch her die without knowing for certain that their theory would work. And that was all they were going by. Speculation and theory. All they knew for certain was that the Rinnegan had to be activated first - not how the crow would manifest and the seal broken following that.
"If your heart stills and I do not immediately revive it, I would have no further influence on you, and no way to bring your soul back. I cannot risk your life, Sakura."
"But say we do have the eye we need then? Maybe with the seeds, that'll be enough time to undo the seal, and restore me to immortality?"
Sasuke lifted his left hand, and touched it to the corner of his left eye. The stabbing pain from earlier had once again ebbed, but he instinctively knew that he was close to unlocking the Rinnegan. It was frustrating, how slow the process was. Hadn't he been exposed to enough stressors already? It was no easy prize to acquire, but how much more did he need to endure? It was a cursed thing to require such turmoil to manifest, even more so than the Sharingan.
Sakura cupped his cheek, bringing his attention back to her. "If we can just get it to appear sooner, somehow," she brushed her thumb gently over the heavy lashes of his left eye, "then surely we'll get the crow in time. It responds to extreme emotions, right? There has to be a way to speed it up. Chiyo has to be able to help us, somehow. I know she can't reveal anything that affects fate, but there must be something she can tell us."
"..." Sasuke lowered his hand slowly, holding her gaze. "Did Shisui tell you how much time his chakra grants us?"
She shook her head, withdrawing her hand from his cheek. "He just told me I'd be stable for a while longer, and so long as I'm in the Underworld, its effects will wear off more slowly." She looked down, and reached for his hand again tentatively. "We don't have any more time to waste." Swallowing thickly, she confessed, "I had no idea I was this close to the end. I thought I'd have more warnings. But now I know it can happen at any moment, before I even have the chance to say goodbye to anyone, and I-" she broke off emotionally.
She felt his hand grip her shoulder, and squeezed her eyes shut. "I know my tomorrows have never been guaranteed, but... we need to make the most of the time we have left. So please, whatever happens, don't blame yourself. You have to be ready if I-"
"Stop talking." His voice was quiet but contained undertones of anger as he pulled her close, silencing her by lacing his fingers into her silky hair to cradle her head comfortingly against his chest. Sakura buried her face into it, wrapping her arms around his midriff, drawing reassurance from his warmth. Tears welled in her eyes and she didn't bother to keep them in check. She had believed she had made her peace with dying, but now she was afraid of dying suddenly. Of collapsing at any moment, due to how far along she was in her final lifecycle.
She had always assumed that the seeds, and Sasuke's powers, would keep her safe indefinitely, but how naive she had been. Neither of them had factored her falling into an eternal limbo that could only be reversed by an eye that was now being hindered from manifesting by the Rinnegan itself. It was an alarming and distressing turn of events for them both.
She had believed herself ready to die. But she knew she wasn't. She never would be. She wanted to live long enough to at least see the threat of Madara removed. She wasn't prepared to leave her friends and her mother yet. She didn't want to lose them - and Sasuke - forever.
As he held her against him, Sasuke's mind sprinted, mapping out his next potential courses of action. If Sakura's death, as his most important person, had the potential to trigger both eyes, then that surely meant, if things unravelled that way, he would only have a very short window of time in which to save her. But there was still the risk that neither eye would manifest. After all, the Rinnegan still had not, even when he had experienced a great deal of horrific physical and mental torment already. And if it did not appear then - then was all hope truly lost?
He clenched his teeth, feeling frustrated and out of options. Was there truly no other way? He refused to believe it. There had to be a loophole. Something he simply wasn't seeing. A final life-line his cousin and brother had left for him. Surely they had to have planned for a worst-case scenario, even if they had not believed it possible for him to ever awaken the Rinnegan? It seemed impossible that they'd left no solution at all to his current predicament. If not, then what had all their valiant efforts then been for? Everything would have been in vain.
He swallowed back the bitter taste in his mouth, knowing that the reality was he could not fault them. They had done everything they could to account for all outcomes in the high pressure circumstances and time restraints they had been under. Choosing to pursue the Rinnegan had been his error and miscalculation. Itachi and Shisui would've had no way of anticipating that he would seek Madara out following the massacre of their clan, much less that Madara would willingly share precious Senju cells with him.
His heart thudded unpleasantly. They had to visit Chiyo again. He needed more light shed on the crow and its mechanism, and he needed to know if there was a way to somehow draw it out from his body, so that he could implant the eye externally instead, a manner that would be quicker - if it possessed the Mangekyou physically at all. If the crow was merely a collection of chakra and genetic cells, then he also needed to understand what an 'internal transplant' meant and how, exactly, it worked and allowed his brother's Sharingan to manifest through his own.
Only one positive had transpired from Sakura's attack. Shisui's chakra had brought them more time. If Sasuke knew anything about his cousin, then he calculated that he had granted them, at the very minimum, at least another surface month - if not more. If Itachi had stored enough chakra within Sasuke to return him from the brink of eternal paralysis and force his curse mark to retreat into its own seal, then certainly Shisui's was capable of an effect that was just as potent. He would surely not have gone through such pains to intervene unless he was confident that his chakra could delay the effects of Sakura's soul rejecting her body for at least a decent amount of time. Time that would allow them to take action and prepare accordingly.
Time that would allow him to find a safer way to awaken the eye he needed and remove the seal on Sakura.
He had to believe that. He had to trust in his cousin, and the lifeline he had given to them. Because the only other alternative - taking a gamble and allowing Sakura to truly die - was far too terrifying to even contemplate.
"Can you stand?" he questioned, trying to gauge whether or not she required more rest. He detected no discomfort in her body. She seemed entirely restored and healthy.
Sakura drew back, and wiped at her eyes. "I feel fine now."
He took her hand, and rose from the bed, helping her to stand after him.
"Where are we going?" she asked, gripping onto his tunic as he pulled her in close, wrapping an arm around her waist.
"Chiyo," he said simply, as shadows encircled them.
~x~
Author's note
If you're confused about the crow, here's a broken down summary. I tried to explain it as clearly as possible but in case it wasn't clear already:
1) True Death's eye can't manifest until the Rinnegan appears because it needs a large surge of chakra to 'kick-start' the crow which is the key to obtaining it. Right now it's quietly fusing with Sasuke's chakra and cells. But the chakra being fed to it is being hindered. Why?
2) Because the Rinnegan cells are what're devouring any major spikes of chakra in response to external stressors. Once Senju cells 'activate', and the Rinnegan is then on its way to appearing, they pretty much consume all chakra to accumulate enough to make the eye appear. This is a very rare occurrence and also why Sasuke's left eye keeps bleeding and causing him pain. It's the eye that he's forced to use more than his right one.
3) The crow needs a huge explosion of chakra to 'trigger' its awakening - which it can't get at the moment, because of the greedy Rinnegan that sucks all chakra toward itself and redirects it from the unaffected Sharingan eye.
4) Since the eye Sasuke needs can't manifest in an actual Rinnegan (it needs a compatible Sharingan) he needs the Rinnegan to appear first, after which in theory he can then control the chakra flow to it as normal and switch it on and off (unlike canon) - and allow his other Sharingan to receive the chakra it needs to trigger the awakening of the crow's gift. His left eye is now in transition and no longer just a pure Sharingan, hence the complications.
5) Shisui suggested Sakura's death might trigger both because she's Sasuke's most precious person now, and there is a chance the trauma of that will awaken the eyes together. However, this method does contain risks as explained, hence Sasuke's dilemma and need to find another way.
6) Madara was cunning. He gave Sasuke the cells intending him to harvest the Rinnegan for himself in the event his own did not manifest, gambling on the fact that Sasuke has strong emotions for his deceased kin. Shisui and Itachi did not anticipate Sasuke would be used to harvest a Rinnegan in this way because it's unprecedented that the power-hungry and arrogant Madara would ever trade Senju cells - and also extremely rare that a Rinnegan can be awakened by any Uchiha. An oversight on their part - or they simply ran out of time and resources to factor for that, too.
7) Chiyo ought to have barred Sasuke from going to Olympus to make the trade. She didn't, outside of offering warnings. Hence Shisui's remark and confusion. Why didn't she, you wonder? They'll be visiting Chiyo next chapter :)
I hope this makes things clear. More next chapter about why they have implanted the crow in this way and how an 'internal' transplant works.
Also, a head's up - shortly chapters on FF will start to be heavily edited. The unedited versions will be on Ao3. I think you all know what that means is coming, but due to having double the usual editing to do, upcoming chapters may take a little longer to release.
Reviews would be appreciated.