Chapter 11
Chapter Summary
"I won't just survive,
Oh, you will see me thrive.
Can't write my story,
I'm beyond the archetype.
I won't just conform,
No matter how you shake my core,
Cause my roots, they run deep." - Rise, Katy Perry
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
The Second Great Shinobi War starts when Sakura is eleven, and ends when she's nineteen. It lasts just short of nine years, and as insignificant as it sometimes feels, Sakura can't shake that thought from her head.
Because the first time around, it had lasted just over nine years.
Ripples in a pond, Sakura muses as they celebrate the signing of a treaty to bring around the official end of the war.
"You don't look happy." Tsuru notes from her side.
Sakura probably couldn't turn her head to look at her if she'd wanted to. She's not here as just a shinobi, but as the head of the Uzu Clan, and that had meant getting dressed up. The kimono she wears is layered and heavy, silver with white swirls embroidered into the thick fabric, and she's probably one of the least dressed up of the Clan Heads.
Her people stand behind her, and her shinobi lined up just a step back. Akihito to her right, Tsuru to her left, and the rest branching out at their sides. Kushina's beside Akihito, sixteen now, and the sight of her wearing a kimono sends a bit of a shock through her - because she's not a girl anymore. Not a war token - but a beautiful near-adult woman with hair that blazes like fire in the sunlight, unlike Sakura's, which resembles a dark wine instead.
Kushina looks beautiful, and more importantly, her slightly rounded face looks eerily like one from her dreams and past.
She's distracted from her thoughts when the Hokage signs the treaty and the crowd breaks out into loud, booming applause.
Someone throws confetti.
Sakura presses her painted lips hard together and wonders how long peace is supposed to last this time around.
Someone had added a koi pond to her backyard, and there are four fish swimming in it - one for each shinobi they'd lost in the war. Uzushio's surviving shinobi had dropped from a meager fourteen (including herself) to ten.
To be fair, it was rather impressive they'd made it out with so many left. None of the other clans had faired so well - not even the Uchiha, though they'd only lost a few percentage more than her clan had.
Sakura stares down at the fish contemplatively, her hands tucked into her sleeves, and she watches the four creatures swim lazily around. One of the koi was solid silver, one blue and white, one bright gold, and the fourth was brilliant red. An Uzumaki.
She exhales a slow breath, closing her eyes and listening to the water running. It's the middle of the night, the compound silent and unmoving around her.
There's no war anymore. Not even a border skirmish between two overzealous teams in the last month and a half.
She never thought that peace would feel so uncomfortable.
With the end of the war, Jiraiya returns to Konoha, silent about his time away - though he does confess to meeting an Uzumaki to her.
"An orphan boy," He explains, three months after the war is over and a week after his return. He won't tell her much else, even when she offers him a place to stay in their compound. "I'll pass it on," He offers, "but I doubt he'll take it. He's with friends, now."
She nods and wonders about that, only knowing vague details about Pain and the orphans from Naruto's encounter with the man.
She wonders if Pain had been Uzumaki. She'd only seen his puppets with orange hair, and that could be from him being half-Uzumaki, perhaps? Or perhaps it was the third orphan, the one that had died long before Pain's attack, that had been the Uzumaki.
Regardless, the man isn't coughing it up, and the boy isn't coming to Konoha.
But Jiraiya's arrival has good timing, and it serves as yet another reminder that things have changed in wild ways for her new life.
Because he come back just one week before Tsunade's wedding to Dan Kato.
With Tsunade's status and her own, Sakura's automatically invited to the wedding, which she goes to with Akihito at her side. Together they quietly observe the proceeding, and Sakura tries to ignore the sensation that twists through her when she watches the woman smile beautifully at her newly proclaimed husband.
It feels an awful lot like loneliness.
Sakura's twenty, but she sometimes dreams that she's still seventeen, learning from a woman that doesn't quite exist anymore, and living in a world that might never exist to begin with.
She's never sure if it's good or bad - it just is what it is, and it leaves her unhappy. She looks at Tsunade and her heart twists. She looks at Kushina and feels sick.
Then she looks at a blonde teen and his trio of Genin and feels like something died in her chest.
Blonde hair identical to her dream-best friend, blue eyes the same shade and with the same sparkle, but a harder set to his jaw.
And in his students…
"Congratulations, Minato-san, on your team." Sakura says on automatic, gaze lingering on one of them. Not the boy with silver hair and two eyes, not the Uchiha with two eyes and clear skin which wouldn't flake away under her palms, but the girl.
The girl with brown hair, purple tattoos on her cheeks, and a kind, shy little smile aimed her way.
"Thank you, Uzumaki-hime." Minato says politely and as always, the title sends an itching roil down her spine. "This is Obito Uchiha, Kakashi Hatake, and Rin Nohara. Everyone, this is Sakura Uzumaki - the head of the Uzu Clan." He introduces quickly and Sakura nods slightly at them in hello, while they quickly bow politely to her - even Kakashi.
Rin beams up at her, eyes as wide as her smile. "You're the best medical ninja in history."
"Supposedly." Sakura allows, offering a faint smile to touch her face. She doesn't feel it.
She feels mostly like someone had just punched her in the head.
"Tsunade-hime is better than I, in my opinion." She hears herself say, but barely notices. She forces her gaze to move from Rin's faltering smile to Minato's strained one. "You should visit us some time, Minato-san. Kahan has wondered how you're doing." Sakura informs him, and she's already turned to leave when she thinks to add, "And so has Kushina-chan."
To her surprise, red splotches across the sixteen-year-old's cheeks. "Oh, er. Right, I'll, um. Head over soon?"
"Dinner tomorrow?" She suggests and he nods quickly. She offers him a small smile and an incline of her head. "I'll let Kahan know." She starts to leave, pauses again, and looks back at them once more. "I'll open the seals to your team as well. Six o'clock, Minato-san." Sakura reminds him gently when all he does is blink at her.
She walks away before they can stare at her any longer, and tries to keep her breathing even.
Everything's wrong, she can't help but think, her mind practically screaming at it her.
She walks through the streets, gaze darting from building to building, and the feeling only grows worse.
Everything.
She doesn't stop until she reaches the compound - her compound - and almost the moment she's in her office, she starts hyperventilating. She throws off the heavy top layer of her kimono, ignoring the way it lands in a small pile of dust, and grabs a piece of paper off her desk.
She quickly scribbles away on it, remembering two different worlds at once, and writes out all the differences she can think of.
There are so many that by the time she's done, she's standing over a desk full of papers and desperately panting for air.
"It's all going away," Sakura realizes aloud, staring down at the papers.
"Everything's changing."
The Hokage finds her the next morning. She's standing by the koi pond, watching it silently, and turns when she smells his pipe. She finds him stepping up beside her, Akihito bowing to her quickly before shutting the back door with him inside the house.
"Hokage-sama." She greets, quiet and tired from her sleepless night.
"You look unwell, Sakura-hime."
She feels unwell. "I'm no hime, Hogake-sama."
"You're the Head of your Clan, Sakura-hime. That makes you a hime." He tells her wisely and in a tone that books no argument.
And maybe he's right. Maybe he's right, and she's the princess of her clan. "Then shouldn't my title be Uzu-hime?" She asks blankly and Sarutobi's hand moves in the corner of her vision, rising to grasp his pipe and pull it away. He breathes out slowly, spiced smoke filling the air.
"No. Because you are an Uzumaki, Sakura-hime." He pauses for a long time, letting the silence linger, and exhales another mouthful of smoke. "Do you know why I was named the God of Shinobi?" He asks mildly.
She glances at him, surprised by the question, and finds him peering up at the sky from under his hat. "...Your mastery of the five elements." Sakura tells him and he hums lightly.
"A part of it, yes. But it wasn't my mastery that I was named for. It's what I did with it." He says quietly. He draws from the pipe, fingers lightly tapping the cup of it. "There have been times in this past war that I was on the front lines - but it was only in the First War that I lived on them like you yourself did." She blinks, turning her full, tired attention to him. "I grew up on the front lines, much as you did. And there was a point in time that I, too, earned a name for myself. And we earned them on the same pendulum, if on the opposite sides." He exhales a breath and Sakura's eyes narrow, processing that until he continues, confirming her thoughts.
"I used my skill in jutsu to destroy an entire village overnight. We took the village, we took the fort the enemy had built in it, and before they could even get word of it, we destroyed the next one. And the next. In two nights, I destroyed four villages." Sarutobi says heavily. "Regardless of who was inside of them."
Her fingers clench into a fist at her side before she carefully slips her hands inside her sleeves to hide her display.
"Oh, I hate myself for it as well, Sakura-hime." He sighs softly. "And like you, the name disgusts me just as much as the acts that earned it. I killed over a thousand innocents that day. Likely more. But I also killed countless enemies." He says on a slightly lighter tone, and she understands where he's going with this now.
"There's no upside to my name." Sakura says sharply and he looks glances at her, eyebrow lifting.
"No? I believe that there is. Dekishi-hime. An interesting name to give to someone such as yourself."
"A mockery." She corrects and he hums softly. Her eyes narrow at that.
"It's a mockery so long as you allow it to be. The Drowned Princess, they call you. But so long as they call you that, they'll never forget who drowned to earn you that name."
She pauses, blinks twice, then her brow furrows.
"So long as you carry that title, Sakura-hime, you'll carry your people with you. In the worst light, yes, you're correct to think so. But use it, and it will stop being a title for mockery." Sarutobi says with quiet ferocity.
"It will be a title for vengeance."
Sakura is twenty one years old, sometimes seventeen, and on occasion she's a combination of the two.
She feels the latter when she holds Tsuru's daughter for the first time.
"She's tiny." Sakura murmurs, tapping her finger to the nose of the dozing newborn. Her eyes immediately pop open to frown at the finger, lips parting wide… to yawn, thankfully. Sakura exhales a small breath of relief.
"You would've deserved that." Tsuru tells her warningly. "She screeches like a bat, this one." Tsuru huffs plaintively. "Kahan hates it."
"I didn't even know you were together." Sakura confesses. Tsuru flashes her a grin.
"Good. We're private people, both of us. Which is strange for Uzumaki, I know, but here we are. The three most secretive Uzumaki to live."
Kahan snorts softly from in the corner.
"Shut up." Tsuru, who breaks rules of secrecy constantly to tell Sakura things only the Hokage is supposed to know, says sharply. "There are exceptions." She complains.
"What's her name?"
"Sakura the Second." Tsuru tells her instantly, at the same time Kahan says,
"Saka."
Sakura blinks.
Tsuru looks at Kahan and frowns. "I thought we were naming it after her?" She asks in confusion, pointing vaguely at Sakura and the infant.
Kahan sighs loudly. "We are naming her after her. Stop calling her 'it'. Saka is a perfectly good name."
"Saka means hill."
"Sakura means cherry blossom, what's your point?" Kahan fires back. "Both are nature based. And they sound similar."
"But that isn't how it works. You're supposed to use the entire name-"
"The first half of her name is fine enough, don't you think?" Kahan complains.
"Her hair isn't even the right color!" Tsuru protests in a sudden turn.
"You wanted us to name her after Sakura. Make up your mind!"
She's still twenty-one, almost twenty-two, when tensions start rising again.
"Tanigakure's signed an alliance with Ishigakure and Amegakure." Jiraiya tells them all in the first war council in just over two years. All of the Clan Heads are there, along with Sarutobi, his remaining two Council members, Tsunade, and Orochimaru.
Sakura looks over at the faces around her - some of which are starting to become recognizable now. The Nara Clan's Head has been replaced since the end of the war, and Shikaku Nara's expression is grim as he listens. Fugaku Uchiha sits as his clan's Head, while the Hyuuga's Clan Head - Hiatari - is joined by his son, Hiashi, who hovers at the elderly man's back.
"But against who?" The Yamanaka's Clan Head - Inori - asks grimly.
"I don't know." Jiraiya admits. Orochimaru makes a soft noise that they all ignore. "But," He adds, folding his arms across his chest and looks darkly at them all, "Takigakure's been speaking with Kusagakure as well. And from the north, I have heard word of Yugakure approaching Shimogakure, but that's so far just hearsay." He pauses, grimacing. "So far."
Sakura closes her eyes for a moment, then opens them and frowns at the group. "Then we should assume the worst."
"And what is that exactly, Uzumaki-hime?" Sarutobi prods politely and she leans forward a bit, bracing an arm on the half-moon table in front of her. Sarutobi and his two council members are against the far wall, facing the half-moon, with Jiraiya standing in the center and Tsunade and Orochimaru off to the side, standing together against the wall.
"The absolute worst? We never touched Tanigakure. Never once. Suna's conflict was only ever with Iwagakure, until we all clashed in Amegakure. But they're joining an alliance that includes Amegakure and Kusagakure, which we warred with heavily. That implies they intend to help them. Takigakure, the same. We never touched them." Sakura reminds them all, getting a roomful of acknowledgements for that. "Amegakure and Kusagakure are no doubt bitter for what was done to them in the war."
"And frankly, they deserve to be."
"It was war." Hotaru, one of Sarutobi's councilmen, says sharply.
"I'm not arguing that. But I'm stating facts. They're out for blood, blood that's justifiable, which means more people will be on their side when the time comes." Skirmishes had already started around the borders, though Sakura wasn't supposed to know that. Tsuru hadn't even been the one to tell her, but Uma, one of her jōnin, who had been part of one of the skirmishes. "We're looking at an alliance of five minor countries - one which holds the two largest of them. An alliance that has their own jinchūriki." She can't help but point out with a grimace.
"An alliance that we've thoroughly pissed off. The only good bit of news is that we aren't the only ones that did." Sakura adds with a huff. "But the Great Countries, all of us, have been hit hard."
"She's not wrong." Shikaku cuts in, looking at a few of the faces beside her who she couldn't see. And who had apparently looked disagreeable, she assumes. "It doesn't look good. We lost far too many people in this war, and we were hit by the worst of it. Which means we'll be the first target."
And the Land of Fire was nestled nice and pretty between every Major and Minor country there was.
"Uzumaki-hime's wrong on one point, though." Shikaku adds and she blinks, arching a surprised eyebrow at him. "That isn't our only good news. The good news is that none of the Major countries can take advantage of this without getting past the Minor ones. There's also the good news that Amegakure joined this alliance of theirs - it means they need time to rebuild, first. Amegakure's all but gone, but so long as they have Hanzo, the other Minor countries need it. They need him. He and the jinchūriki from Taki will be the primary two able to stand against our strongest forces."
Here, he nods at Jiraiya and his teammates, who straighten a bit. "And," Shikaku adds with a small, bitter smile, "We also have the best spymaster in the countries." Jiraiya blinks, but Shikaku sweeps on severely before anyone else can say anything. "Which means we have more time to prepare than anyone else."
One thing that's clear to her in that moment is that there's something that will never change.
Shikaku's destined to be Jōnin Commander.
Silence fills the room for a long minute before Hiatari clears his throat. "As you all know, my son will soon be replacing me as Clan Head - which means I'll be able to dedicate my time to personally training my Clan." He says hoarsely, age showing through, and a few of them nod at that.
"My wife and I will begin the same immediately. Our eyes are yours, Hokage-sama." Fugaku chimes in, and Sakura clears her throat so she can speak next.
"And my seals as well, Hokage-sama. Inori-sama, I understand your Clan mans the seal that monitors Konohagakure's walls?" She asks politely and he looks over at her, squinting a bit before nodding. "I know the level of secrecy you hold over this role and I wouldn't presume to ask were the situation not so, but if you would be willing, I would be honored to take a look at the emergency seals."
The man raises a brow, his gaze unreadable, but nods. "I would be honored as well, to have an Uzumaki's touch on the matter. Hokage-sama?" He questions and the man gestures quickly.
"Be my guest - but be ready to be sworn to secrecy, Uzumaki-hime."
"Not me - but Tabane, one of my seals masters. He knows both Uzumaki-style sealing and outside, so he'll be the best option for working with foreign seals." Sakura corrects quickly, then glances around to double check they're still in agreement before she nods sharply. "I'll inform him immediately. And I'll have my people work on mass producing stasis seals, Hokage-same, for food and supplies."
Mass produced or not, they won't last them long once the war breaks out, but anything is better than nothing.
Still, Sarutobi looks mildly relieved as he nods his head at that. "Do so immediately, Uzumaki-hime."
Tabane eagerly sets to work and Sakura contemplates life and all it's many mysteries.
The Third War was an extension of the Second War. The losses in the Second War directly led to the Third War, the Minor countries rising up against the Great countries who had dealt such immense collateral damage to them.
The fact that they'd had a year of actual peace had surprised her, because the border skirmishes never really ended in the world of her dreams. But they'd had two years, not just one, and that was strange.
Because she can't say why they had the unexpected peace.
She can only guess, and her guess isn't a pleasant one.
"Danzō." Sakura determines when she pores over her notes. It's the only difference she can find that could possibly be linked to the two. "Danzō and ROOT."
Removing the rotten core of Konoha had, somehow, led to the Second War ending earlier, and the Third War's unofficial start to come later.
The realization is unnerving.
"How much strife was that man the true cause of...?"