Sasuke stumbled forward, in a daze. Each footfall kicked up a plume of dust. An alien moon shone brightly in the foreign sky. There was no vegetation, no sounds of local wildlife. There was nothing but a broken man moving aimlessly forward.

He looked thoroughly disheveled. His clothing was ripped in places and soaked in blood. His skin was covered in bruises and slowly-bleeding scratches. His hair was still spiky, but it was askew from its normal configuration. His lone arm, despite clearly being broken, was carefully cradling his wife to his chest.

Several steps further, and his feet gave out from under him. He pitched forward, unable to stop himself. At the last moment, he pivoted, protecting Sakura from the fall, letting his back take the blow. He grimaced in pain, his eyes squeezing shut for a moment.

When he reopened them, he accepted that he had reached his limit.

He gently set Sakura beside him, adjusting her limbs so she looked like she was sleeping. If he squinted, he could almost believe they were laying in their bed and her chest was moving.

He stared at her, brushing his fingertips along the lines of her face, as he bit back a sob.

She always liked it when he touched her like that. He brushed a few stray strands of hair behind her ear the way she liked too. Except she was cold now and didn't respond to his touch like she should have.

Tears slipped from his eyes against his will, sliding down and onto the ground under him. He hated the moments right before they fell and blurred his vision, because those dreaded moments obstructed his view of her face.

He pulled her body closer, ignoring the protest from his broken arm and giving in to the tears that came faster now, burying his nose in her hair and breathing in the last traces of her scent under layers of smoke and dust.

"Sakura," he said in a small voice, wishing more than anything that she would answer him, "Sakura, wake up."

He felt like a child again, covered in the blood of his family and left to grieve alone in an empty house.

He had been the last Uchiha for so long, until the day she married him. His clan grew that day from one to two.

She was not one by blood, but she embodied every noble thing that being an Uchiha meant. She was strong, brave, passionate, talented, loyal, and so many other things…

Was he to be the last Uchiha again?

His thoughts drifted their only child. He remembered tearing up when he held her for the first time, gazing into her tiny sleeping face and committing every detail to memory, the ways that she looked like him and the ways that she looked like her mother. Sakura had watched them through exhausted eyes, unwilling to sleep just yet when her daughter and husband were getting acquainted. His heart had been so full, looking at his wife and child, accepting that the Uchiha had grown from a clan of two to a clan of three.

Was Sarada still alive? Had the enemy already found and killed her too?

He let his hand leave the back of her head to search for a kunai. If he was the last Uchiha once more, then there would be no more Uchiha after today.

He stopped after finding one, knowing that he could not risk dying yet if Sarada still lived. He knew that's what his wife would want most, for him to protect their child now that she could not anymore.

Where his heart should have been, he only felt a bottomless pit. How could this have happened? Why couldn't he have saved her? It had been his unspoken job to protect her since they were genin. Of all the times to fail…

He felt his body creeping towards unconsciousness. He knew he couldn't keep fighting it; he was too weak to save his wife and he had no strength left to try to find a way back to their daughter in his current state. Perhaps if he slept, he would wake up and find a way back to Sarada. Perhaps if he slept, he would die dreaming of Sakura and wake to find her in the afterlife.

He was okay with either outcome.

He began to nod off, despite willing his eyes to stay open so he could look at her face a little longer.

As he began to dream, he relived the last hour of his life, intermixed with memories of long ago. Images of his clan's bodies flashed before his unconscious mind's eye, seamlessly integrated with the new image of Sakura and the way he imagined he might find Sarada if the enemy had found her.

He saw his wife alive again, her Yin seal unleashed and her fists glowing blue. He saw her take swing after swing at the enemy, pushing the Otsutsuki back little by little.

He saw her hands outstretched, glowing green, her eyes weary yet full of concern for him and Naruto. She gave them one more shot as she recharged their reserves with her chakra.

He saw her take longer and longer to heal herself with the creation rebirth jutsu, her reserves of chakra dwindling fast.

He saw her laying next to Itachi, next to his mother and father.

He felt her in his arms, life draining from her body, chakra gone. He saw her loving eyes go vacant.

He jerked awake as he felt her body being pulled out of his arms. Or rather, he was being pulled away from her. He reached for her desperately, trying to catch ahold of a limb or her clothing. He was too late.

He found himself back in his own world, surrounded by Leaf shinobi, but his wife's body had been left behind.

"Send me back," he pleaded with Boruto, who looked exhausted. Sasuke's eyes were wild, still recovering from his dream and the fact that Sakura was taken from his hold.

"I can't," Boruto answered.

Sasuke found a second wind and gripped the front of the boy's clothes, lifting him up slightly, "Then bring her here."

Hinata took a half-step forward, ready to intervene if needed.

Sarada stepped forward on her teammate's behalf, "Papa, Boruto would have brought you both back if he could, but he could only do it if he locked onto both your chakra signatures. He…he couldn't find mama's anymore…to bring her with you."

Sarada fought back tears, and as Sasuke watched her struggle to hide her grief, his own eyes began tearing up once more.

He let go of Boruto, defeated. He no longer had a Rinnegan to help bring her body home. She would lay there forever, never laid to rest properly.

The thought tore him up inside. The pain of leaving her there was almost as bad as the pain of losing her in the first place. He fell to the ground, and two medics rushed forward to treat him.
"We need you Mr. Sasuke," Boruto said, face aged with grief and responsibility, "Kawaki has my dad somewhere and the Otsutsuki guy is with him."

Sasuke did what he had done as a child; he pushed down his grief until there was only anger, only the knowledge that he must avenge his family, his wife. Blood must spill to pay for her blood. The one who took her life and the one who betrayed them would both suffer before begging him for death.

Glancing at his daughter, he tempered the rage. For her sake and the wishes of his wife, he must not let revenge consume him again so he could be level-headed and able to protect Sarada.

He would use the anger and revenge this time, instead of allowing them to control him like they had in the past.