The Last Ones Standing

Chapter 4

They jumped back and then once more. Forward, Madara said. This dimension was empty. So empty that the word just gained a new meaning for Sakura. It was black all around and there was nothing solid under their feet. Holding to Madara's elbow tightly (or desperately, but she would never admit to that), Sakura summoned Katsuyu slamming her hand against her own thigh. The slug only confirmed the obvious – the dimension was lifeless, sterile and void.

Despite that, Sakura was happy with the verdict and as happy as she had ever been to release Katsuyu. Summoning and supporting the slug multiple times in a row was taking a toll on her. The hours-long healing procedure performed beforehand wasn't helping either. Sakura closed her eyes – when they were open, she couldn't see the black spots dancing in her vision – all was black anyhow. Now when she closed them – spots were definitely there – shimmering gold-brown. They would have been beautiful if Sakura wouldn't know what they meant. And if she wasn't busy holding back the urge to puke that always accompanied chakra exhaustion.

Madara was still lingering in the void. Normally she would have been pissed that they were losing time, but now she welcomed this short pause. Though she would need not minutes but hours of rest to recover her strength.

Nevertheless, when they landed on the beach again, she was already enough in control not to sway on her feet. "Alright," she said, crossing out another circle on the sketch. "So now to the right one?"

"No. We're not going."

"Why?"

Madara eyes escaped sidewards, into direction somewhere above her shoulder. "This what you fixed – it ripped. You need to heal me again."

Sakura held down a smirk at his embarrassment and planted her palms against his chest. The fracture of his chakra vessels was back there, in exactly the same place. And it was almost as severe as before. His chakra, still excited from the jutsu, was pouring out and seeping into the tissues. "It's huge! When did it break?"

"After the jump into the void the small rip appeared. But it got larger upon the return jump."

"So why the heck did you jump?! Why didn't you tell me so I could fix it when it was still small?! You should always tell me such things immediately, before it gets worse. Just shove your pride into your pocket, will you?"

Madara pursed his lips. "Just fix me now."

Sakura let her hands fall. "I cannot." She paused and swallowed under his harsh gaze. "I'm too low on chakra."

"And still you wanted me to jump further? Without sharing this crucial information with me? Who here should be shoving her pride and into where…?" Verbally, he poured all the snide on her, but there was something off with his body language. His posture was stiff, as if he was avoiding moving too much.

"Oh, shut up." Sakura rubbed her forehead. "You said there's a village over there. I just need couple of hours of sleep, that's all," she announced and started walking.

She always loved beaches. She got to visit them much too rarely, and even more rarely had time to enjoy them. She might be changing her mind though. Her feet were sinking ankles-deep into the sand and walking costed more energy than she was willing to spare. Wind was blowing tiny grains into her eyes and into her nose. Next to her, Madara was moving at equally sluggish pace. Maybe she should have healed him at least a bit… Did it hurt to have a hole in your system? Irritated, ridden with guilt, and at her limits, Sakura waited until he came closer and wound her arm around his waist. "We should lean on each other. It will be easier…"

He didn't say anything, but reciprocated the embrace. Their arms crossed behind their backs. Holding herself steady became indeed easier, noticed Sakura taking the first step. Madara was leaning at her as well. And he was less bulky than she expected. Right, Sakura mentally corrected herself – they weren't eating much for a fortnight or so.

Food. Sakura wondered what kind of provision will they find in that village. For sure there will be a lot of preserved fish, salted and smoked… Dried konbu… And rice. For sure they had rice there. She was already picturing herself going through some poor peoples' storages and sleeping in someone's bed…

"You said there was a village!" Sakura exclaimed in disappointment when they took a turn around the rocks and faced a small bay.

"Yes? What else would it be?"

"Those are literally five huts!"

"Which makes it a village."

"Maybe according to your standards…" she murmured but pressed on. Five huts or not, she needed a bed.

She pried open the door to the first one and immediately backed off.

"What's wrong?!" demanded Madara, a tinge of alert in his voice.

"Not going there. Let's try another one." Sakura jerked her shoulders trying to shake off the image of a tiny cocoon dangling over a baby's cradle. It started to sway when the wind got through the open door. "Let's find such one where no one had been home, when Tsukuyomi happened…"

The third hut was empty. A cocoon decorated the porch, but Sakura bit her teeth, entered and started unbuckling her belt. With the last bits of energy, she summoned some water and whatever two items that happened to be first in her food scroll – a can of beans and some crackers.

There was a common sleeping pallet in the corner – shoving the third cracker into her mouth she separated one mattress from it, gather an armful of covers and blankets and went into the only separate space in the hut – a food storage. She dropped herself onto the makeshift bed ready to pass out. "Oh!" Sakura sat up remembering. "If you quiet your chakra," she shouted out to Madara who was still standing at the doorstep, "you'll stop losing so much through the leak. I'll get to fixing you first thing in the morning, I promise!"

She had no idea how long she slept. It was bright outside, but that didn't tell much. It could have been still bright, or already bright. Carefully moving stiff limbs, Sakura stood up.

In the main room Madara was sitting cross-legged by the low table. An empty bowl was to his left, and Sakura's own bingo book in front of him.

"There is cooked rice," he said without lifting his eyes from the paper.

"What are you doing with my bingo-book? And where did you get it from?" Sakura plopped by the table and reached for the cooking pot. "And where did you find this rice? I was sleeping in the storage…"

"Rice - in another house. And your bingo book in your pouch."

"You went through my stuff?!"

"You slept through the night and half of the day. It's long past noon. I needed paper for my calculations." Only now Sakura noticed that the front cover of the bingo book was three-quarters covered with fine, neat scribbles. "I didn't want to go through your scrolls, not to breach your… privacy..."

"But you didn't balk at going through my bag…"

"My respect has limits."

Sakura shoved rice into her mouth. It was so good that she didn't have it in herself to stay angry. "So, what are you calculating?"

"The number of dimensions. And how long will it take us browse through them."

Sakura shifted closer. "And? How many are there?"

"If the first layer around us is 26, then the next is 98, then 218, 386. I stopped at the fourth and now I'm formulating a general equation." Madara put the pencil down. "But it doesn't really matter. Up to fourth layer it's already seven hundred…" he glimpsed at the paper, "seven hundred twenty-eight and it's clear that we need a system. If I cannot make more than seven jumps, and you cannot summon your slug more than three times without passing out…"

"I didn't pass out!"

"Then it makes sense that we come back to this dimension," continued Madara smoothly ignoring Sakura's outburst, "only during the exploration of the first layer, otherwise we would waste more energy on getting to a new place than on actually checking it. We need to make our recovery stops in other dimensions and keep going from there. And if you need a full night and day of sleep…"

"I don't! I just invested too much into healing you!" Sakura smashed her palm against the table. The rice bowl jumped. A faintest mirage of her shishou behind Hokage's desk shimmered somewhere deep in Sakura's mind. She took a deep breath and came down from her high. Her wounded pride had no place here. "I think I could manage four summonings when I'm rested. And if we prove that entry dimension is the same for all travelers, I can think about summoning her smaller. If you will be telling me about fractures in your chakra system immediately when you feel them, the chakra cost for repair will be lower. Maybe I could even heal you preemptively…?"

"Yes. Good points, all. We should also define conditions under which searching a dimension is unnecessary."

"What do you mean?"

"That void, for example. Searching it was pointless. Your teammates have been gone for three weeks now. Had they landed there, or someplace similar, and didn't have a way out, they are dead by now. Face it."

Rice she was just swallowing stuck in Sakura's throat. "Don't say that."

"Will me not saying it make it any less real?"

Blinking tears away Sakura jumped to her feet and ran towards the sea.

Half an hour later she returned, eyes dry and lips pressed into a thin line. "We need more supplies. Transportation scrolls most of all. Weapons. And good, sturdy water containers. Because I assume there is a freshwater source somewhere here?" Sakura turned around. "Meaning, we need to get to some ninja village and loot it."

"Heal me, and I can get us to the tree."

"You want to loot the corpses?! At this stage of decay?!"

"That's one single most concentrated source of ninja supplies. In history, most probably. Would be a shame not to use it."

"I'm not touching the corpses again. Go by yourself if you want. I'll gather what I can from here - we'll need civilian food as well."

.

He didn't teleport, but summoned Susano'o and flew. Sakura caught herself being elated at the view. As if the ultimate destructive ghost-warrior of Uchiha clan spreading his wings was a landmark of old times when the world was still in order. Wasn't it one twisted notion…?

When he came back, she had all that was valuable in this tiny village piled and categorized on the beach. Bags of rice. Barrels of salted fish. Whatever firewood she could find. Cooking utensils, knives, leather straps, rolls of impregnated fabric, blankets, candles. If they succeed, when they succeed - the first thing she's doing is returning this loan to the villagers tenfold.

"You stink," said Sakura not even turning her head from the clay pots she was arranging. "Go wash yourself first."

"You don't smell with roses either, and I'm not complaining."

"You smell with corpses. And I think I have right to complain."

She only heard him undressing and going into the sea because she didn't turn from her work.

"Here," he handed her a scroll with a still wet hand a while later. "I suppose it will be sufficient."

Sakura undid the seal. Hundreds and thousands of scrolls spilled out of it and piled around her. Scrolls intermixed with kunai, shuriken, sets of explosive tags, couple of high-quality katanas… And Obito's scythe. And a huge gunbai. Sakura raised her eyebrows but she stopped herself from commenting. Everyone should be allowed some sentimental items. Of whatever kind they were…

She carefully stepped out of the mountain of scrolls. "I forgot telling you – I can only undid the seals on Konoha scrolls…"

Madara sent her a look that spoke volumes about what he thought of her negligence. And probably all her other shortcomings. "I might have seen the seal sequences of Suna and Iwa with my Sharingan… Given enough time I'll break the others as well."

"Then I'll start with the Konoha ones…"

Two hours later all empty scrolls lied piled next to her. She recovered tons of items out of them, and they should definitely secure them somehow, but for now she resorted to dividing them into 'useful' and 'not useful'. She hadn't imagined that it will be such a difficult task to go through the last earthly possessions of the fallen and to throw them away. Right now, she was playing with a silver chain, weaving it around her fingers. The geometric, vaguely floral pendant was exactly the same style she had once admired at a jeweler's stand in Suna. She remembered the street; she was sure she could find that workshop again. Maybe once it was all over, she could ask who had bought it? It looked rather new… Did it belong to a kunoichi? Or was it a memento given by a wife or a girlfriend to a shinobi going to the war? Maybe she could find the relatives and return it to them…?

"What are you doing?" Madara's sharp tone snapped her out of her reverie.

"I… I was thinking about the owner of this pendant. You don't remember per chance whom this scroll," she held it up for him to see, "belonged to?"

Madara looked at her as if she was crazy. "No? Why should I? I wasn't paying attention whom I was looting. And why do you even waste time on such divagations?"

"That's not a wasted time to spare some minutes to think about the dead!"

"There have been countless people dead throughout the history. Everyone that had lived had also died. How are those shinobi different from anyone else? Why should we spare thoughts on them?"

"How can you be so heartless?!" Sakura shoved the chain into her pocket. She will find the relatives.

"Why should I care about those people? Will my caring change anything? Bring them to life? Make their lives retroactively better? Thousands died on that battlefield. Tens of thousands would have died that very day in their beds, had there be no war at all."

"You know, that's exactly your problem! You don't see people as individuals! All you think about is some abstract concept of a 'mankind'! You claim you wanted to save us all, but in reality, you don't even like people…"

"Hmm. It's been quite a while since I held any sentiments towards someone in particular... And thinking about the human kind as a concept was what allowed me to see the bigger picture, to find a solution to stop all the suffering..." he broke off abruptly and went back to sorting the scrolls.

It took another half an hour for him to finish the task. With the corner of her eye Sakura saw how he sat down cross-legged and stared at the pile. "Or rather, I thought I found the solution," he said as if to himself. Sakura heard it alright, though…

"We should get going," she answered even though this remark wasn't directed at her. If it was on her to keep his spirits up, she will stand up to the task. Because that's what people do – they support each other. Even if he was the last person she would want to support, she will. Because he was the last person awake. And even if he didn't give a shit about camaraderie and friendship, she did, and she would always stand by her principles. "Let's check as many dimensions as we can today." Sakura had a feeling that practical solutions would work better for him than empty words of consolation. "If we proceed reasonably and not overdo it, then a normal night rest should be sufficient to recover."

AN: After a long break, I'm back! I'm publishing as I write from here on, and I am a bit unsure about the pacing, so feedback would be most welcome!