Chapter 9
Chapter Summary
"Swallowed by a vicious, vengeful sea,
Darker days are raining over me,
In the deepest depths I lost myself,
I see myself through someone else." - Black Water, OMAM
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Yet again, Sakura celebrates her birthday on the battlefield, but this time she turns seventeen. She's seventeen twice over, now - but it isn't until March, when she's back in Konoha, that she feels the significance. On March 28th, she goes to sleep and dreams a dream unlike those she'd experienced before.
She of a world made of white, her dream-parents smiling sadly at her from within.
"We're so proud, Sakura. So proud," they tell her, and her heart aches with grief.
They're dead, she knows. They're dead and she's dead and that's the only reason she can see them now. The knowledge hurts.
"We're dead," Her mother confirms, voice going firm as she reaches out to cup her daughter's face. "But we're not lost."
"What do you mean?" Her dream self asks without her will. "Everything's lost. So many people died… too many. Tens of thousands. "
"We know. But…" Her father says, trailing off to glance beside him.
On queue, a man flickers into appearance, kneeling down and holding a staff just like Naruto's. He pushes to his feet, exhaling a heavy and exhausted breath, and Sakura winces a bit at his appearance. He's grey-skinned and alien, with horns and three eyes instead of two. And all three of them stare at her as he takes a step forward.
"I have a request for you, Sakura." He says grimly and her parents fall back a bit, the man approaching until he's just in front of her. She looks up at him, pink hair sticking to skin that's still sweaty from her exertion in life. "My sons, in every life, have become enemies. And in every life they've killed one another, one way or another. Every life except this one. This time, there was a chance we'd never had before." The man murmurs, holding his staff tightly, and his hand trembles slightly around it.
Somehow, she knows it isn't shaking with age or tiredness.
No, there's an alertness to him that makes her uneasy.
"For once, my sons were reborn together. Friends, teammates and rivals, but together. Together, with a bridge between them." He says quietly. Sakura's brow furrows at the implication there. "I failed when I focused on the two of them alone. I gave them my power, my endurance, my chakra. I even gave them my lifeforce when their own began to flicker." She remembers her hand around a stilled heart and flinches a bit at that. "But no mind did I pay to the one who stood between them."
"Their teammate." He concludes grimly, gaze uncomfortably intense. "The third. It was the first time they've been teammates - and I made the mistake of overlooking the one who had the most potential to bind them together. To not stop them from killing one another, but to stop them from becoming enemies to even begin with."
She both flinches and bristles at that. "I did everything I could! Everything!" Sakura argues fiercely and the man immediately nods.
"Yes." He agrees instantly, snatching the wind from her sails, and then quietly says, "But I did not."
Sakura blinks, startled, and stares at him with deep green eyes.
"I did not do everything I could. I overlooked you, and that was a mistake. You had the potential to bridge the distance between them before it could grow too far. And I ignored it." He says solemnly, lowering his eerie gaze in shame. Sakura stares at him, utterly confused, until he looks back up and meets her gaze again. "Sakura Haruno," He begins gravely and she stares at him, eyes wide and chest feeling strangely compressed, "I have a request for you. A request that will give me the chance to not make the same mistake again. Will you listen to it?"
Sakura stares at him for a very, very long time, heart racing and fingers shaking. His words feel enormous even though he speaks so little, and her mouth is dry when she opens it to speak. "I will."
The man closes his eyes with a strange expression. Relief and sorrow in one.
Then he opens them and meets her gaze fiercely.
"I need you to save them, Sakura."
"I need you to save them all."
She wakes up and something clicks in her mind. A piece of a puzzle sliding into place, fitting so well it was like it had never been missing.
Akihito finds her late in the morning, lounging on her window seat and looking out at the compound.
Her mind is whirring - going nonstop at full speed ever since she'd woken up.
It's March 29th.
She would have been eighteen, but instead she's seventeen for the second time.
And she has no idea what to do.
"Akihito?" She asks quietly, watching the world outside with narrow eyes. Her window is on the side of the house facing the compound, so she can see the people mingling in the streets.
Their numbers are slowly growing, judging by the number of infants and toddlers she can see being carted around.
"Yes, Sakura-sama?" The man questions, and the never-ending politeness of his tone is more gentle than usual.
Her arms are folded across her chest and she grips her elbows lightly. "If you were told you had to save the world, how would you do it?"
He pauses at that. "...Well that would depend on what I'm saving the world from, Sakura-sama."
"What if it was from me?" She asks, just out of curiosity.
"Then I would poison your tea, Sakura-sama." He responds so promptly that her lips twitch into the beginnings of a smile - but it dies quickly. "I hope that's not what I'm being asked to do."
"It's not." Sakura assures him, tilting her head back as she looks out the window. So many people in the Clan compound now... "The newborns," Sakura starts, "are they carrying the name Uzu?"
"Yes, Sakura-sama. We… are the Uzu clan, now." Akihito says with some hesitation.
"Yes. We are, aren't we." She murmurs, trailing off and thinking about her dreams.
Thinking about her life. There's no denying now that that's what it was. The final dream had slotted everything into place, and instead of it being like two lenses overlapping, it feels like the two worlds are one in the same.
And for her, maybe they are now.
"Akihito." She asks quietly.
"Yes, Sakura-sama?"
She stares out at the compound, at the swirling statue in the center of it, and silently watches the people for several seconds longer.
"Go to the Hokage." She commands, pausing for a long moment. "Tell him he's invited for tea, if he has the time to spare."
Akihito is dead silent for several seconds, undeniably shocked.
Four years has the compound been sealed off and locked away from the world, there to see but never to enter. The compound rests on the edge of Konoha, much like the Nara compound did, but very firmly cut off.
Close, but unapproachable.
Kushina herself had been the only new person allowed through the seals in all that time.
"Go now, Akihito." She orders quietly.
"Yes, Sakura-sama."
When Akihito returns to tell her that the Hokage will be coming that afternoon, Sakura dresses for him.
She almost never wears anything but her uniform, but it would be discourteous to greet him wearing battle armor when she's been out of the war for nearly two weeks.
Instead of her usual attire, she wears a sleeveless dress. It's low cut just enough to show a hint of her cleavage (which was slightly bigger than her last life) and went down to her ankles. There was a slit in the front from her pelvis all the way down, allowing her movement if she has to fight, and she wears her usual black, mid-calf length pants underneath. She puts on the heeled version of her kunoichi shoes, and wears her silver-clothed Uzushio hitai-ate around her waist in lieu of her Konoha one.
Mostly because she doesn't want to wear both at once.
She goes to greet him at the gates, where he's waiting when she arrives. "I hope you haven't been kept long." Sakura says sincerely and the man hums lightly.
"No, I've only just arrived." He assures her. He offers her his arm and she takes it, guiding him seamlessly through the seals and through the compound's gates.
"I've set them to allow you in. I'll do the same for your ANBU when we both have the time." Sakura tells him and he glances sideways at her, lips twitching downwards slightly.
"Not that I disapprove, but what's changed?"
"I have." Sakura answers truthfully as she guides him into the compound. Immediately there are some looks of surprise or even disapproval - but they both ignore them, heading for her home. "Come, this way." She says, pulling away from his arm when they reach her house. She guides him to the tea room, where Akihito has helpfully set up before apparently taking his leave. They sit across from one another, carefully preparing their tea. "I've held onto this grudge for too long." Not long enough, half of her instantly argues. "I've let it fester in my anger."
"A justifiable anger." Sarutobi acknowledges, to her surprise. She blinks at him and he frowns softly. "I am not blind to my faults, nor my mistakes. This war would have happened with or without us - but my mistakes are why it happened so soon. And they are why Uzushio has suffered so much."
Her hand shakes slightly as she lifts her cup to sip at the too-hot tea.
"I have done everything in my power to bridge the gap between our villages-"
"And I have not." Sakura interrupts. "We are Uzushio, Hokage-sama." She reminds him, setting down to the cup. "With or without the village. We are Uzushio. But our children will be part of Konoha, and soon our earliest children will be the age to become students. We need to bridge this gap, as you say, before that time." She pauses for a moment, then exhales slowly through her nose. "Those of us that lived through it will never forgive Konoha for what happened to us. But that doesn't mean it needs to be the same for those young enough to forget, or to have never lived through it.
Sarutobi considers her for a moment before sipping at his tea. "What, then, do you suggest, Sakura-hime."
"Don't call me that." She says sharply. Too sharply. She grimaces softly. "You know what they call me."
"They will call you that forever." He reminds her none too gently.
"I'm aware. But I'm no princess. I'm the Clan Head."
"Sakura-sama, then." He says politely and she nods curtly.
"What I suggest," Sakura pulls them back to the subject, "is opening our gates. Slightly." Sakura says, and then looks away so he can't see the glint in her eyes. "I hear there's a chūnin that was trained by Jiraiya-sennin."
Jiraiya, who had vanished in Amegakure only a few months ago. Her knowledge on it is limited, but her memories tell her it's related to Pain and his comrades.
"I assume you mean Minato Namikaze, given who I'm speaking to." Sarutobi notes a bit dryly and she nods, looking back at him.
"I'm no seal master, Hokage-sama. But I've spoken to one. His name is Kahan - he's one of our two masters. Tabane, the other, is training Kushina. Kahan's a cousin of mine. He's open to the idea of teaching Namikaze-san the Uzushio way, if he's as gifted as he's said to be."
"He's even better." Sarutobi assures her, a small smile pulling at his lips. "He absorbs knowledge like a sponge absorbs water. If you are willing to teach him, he will learn it with ease."
Sakura smiles softly, sipping at her tea. "Well, then. I dread to hear how much more Kushina will complain about him if he dares to get better at fūinjutsu than her."
Sarutobi looks at her over his tea cup and chuckles.
It's not much, admittedly.
But it's a start, Sakura thinks.
Sakura's seventeen, but sometimes, in eerie moments, she feels thirty-four instead.
Two lifetimes in one body, and the confusion it causes sometimes is beyond unnerving.
"Hello," the familiar man greets her. "We've met before, but I'm Dan Kato. I'll be leading this mission."
Sakura's gaze darts to the necklace half-hidden behind his vest, then meets his warm smile with a strained one. "Sakura Uzumaki. I'll be your medic for this mission."
Dan Kato dies.
But in this life, he doesn't.
In this life, Sakura struggles to keep him alive and fails through conventional means.
For the first time since Uzushio's fall, she activates her Yin seal fully. Instead of just using it to power her seals and the Mystical Palm Jutsu, she uses it's second level - the one Tsunade had taught her, but hadn't yet created in this life.
The Strength of a Hundred flows through them both, his organs mending and his skin sealing, and Sakura sacrifices just a little bit of his life force in the process.
A slightly shortened life is still better than no life at all.
Sakura's eighteen and she's outlived herself.
It's a strange feeling.
"Akihito?" Sakura asks as they are, once more, on the battlefield. This time in the heart of Amegakure - the worst place to be, but the best place to have her, strategically speaking.
Tsunade may have her slugs, and she may still be learning to use the Yin Seal in tandem with them, but Sakura has her seals.
"Yes, Sakura-sama?"
"How long has this war been going on, now?" She questions, a little out of breath and leaning on a tree a bit too heavily.
"Seven years, Sakura-sama."
Seven years.
The Second Shinobi War lasted nine years the first time around.
"Akihito?" She asks over the blood and the smoke and the distant screams of war.
"Yes, Sakura-sama?"
"I really hate this place."
"...So do I, Sakura-sama." He agrees quietly.
It isn't even two years before Kahan comes to her and offers a faint shrug. "I can't really teach Minato more than I already have." He admits to her slight surprise.
She'd known he was a genius, but Uzushio-style sealing was…
Difficult.
To say the least.
"He really is a genius, then." She notes and Kahan nods.
"Yes. But he hasn't overtaken Kushina. I'm not sure he ever will, actually. She's taking to the fūinjutsu like a fish to water - Tabane tells me her father was a seals master as well and had taught her some when she was young."
Before she was offered up as a war token, Sakura thinks, borrowing her father's phrasing. "I see. Well. Have you given her a hitai-ate?"
"I did today. She cried, and then hit me when I mentioned it." Kahan huffs, shaking his head. "An Uzumaki through and through, that one."
"Hey." Sakura protests weakly and gets a roll of the eyes for that. She snorts and pushes away from her desk, scooping up her own Uzushio hitai-ate and tying it around her forehead. "I'm not that bad."
"You aren't." Kahan allows, "But that girl has the Uzumaki in extreme."
"Stop saying it like it's a disease. You're Uzumaki too." Sakura reminds him.
"Yes. And I'm surrounded by family members who can't stop shouting at one another over everything. We're a rare, sane pair amidst the utter insane, Uzumaki-sama."
Sakura pauses at that.
"...You may have a point."
"I know I have a point." He huffs. "I'm glad I'm not in Tabane's shoes."
Sakura's brows furrow for a second. "I thought you said Kushina was still ahead of Minato-... ah." She blinks in realization. "He's still training her as an apprentice?" She clarifies slowly and he nods.
"She's interested, he's interested, so I suppose we've got ourselves an up and coming seals master."
"Interesting. And Minato isn't following the same?"
"I didn't offer." Kahan corrects and she arches a brow. "Jiraiya's way is too ingrained in the boy. He'll never be an Uzushio seals master, but he'll be an excellent Konoha one."
"Ah. Well. They'll make an incredible pair one day." Sakura muses, mind casting back.
Hopefully, this time they'll live long enough to train Naruto.
Then the boy would really be an unstoppable force.
Her mind drifts to the boy, and it's a long time before she realizes Kahan is still there, watching her with a hint of concern. "You're dismissed." She says quietly and he nods before flickering away.
Sakura turns to the window, looking out at the clan compound, and frowns deeply.
Somehow, she's supposed to save the world - but she has no idea where to even begin.
Luckily, she has approximately twenty-eight years to figure it out.
She just hopes she lives that long.