AN: Well, it sure was fun to read all the guesses about what would happen. Ah...you don't get such cliffhangers every day. buffs nails.

Welp. There's only one way to deal with a cliffhanger, and that's rewind and pretend you don't remember how it happened the first time!

I mean.

Uh.

Resolve it.

The Next Dimension Over

Chapter Sixty-Five

The silence stretched on an unnatural length of time. She didn't know how long it was, couldn't bear to count or pay attention. She needed to be still. She needed to be strong, so she wouldn't shatter. She just needed to know her people, the ones she loved, the ones she failed to protect even a little bit, were alive and okay again. Even if she couldn't be there. Even if the price she paid was never going home.

They needed to be alive.

They needed to live.

She didn't know how long it took before he spoke, but the sound of the dragon's voice was so loud and sudden that it shook through her body almost violently. It stole her breath away, and made her stomach lurch.

"That wish is beyond my power."

She stared down at the ground, eyes wide open. It took her a moment before she could even summon the strength and determination to look up at the great beast. The great liar.

"You...That can't be true! Why? Why can't you?"

The dragon's red eyes glowed a slightly brighter red as it stared down at her in silence for another moment. "My power does not extend to distant dimensions."

She...she...

The energy and strength that remained in her limbs fled all at once, and she collapsed to her knees.

It...wasn't...

It...

Was hopeless.

A hand clasped to her mouth, struggling to forcibly regulate her breathing, to stop herself from hyperventilating. There were people around. A giant dragon loomed over her head demanding a wish and refusing to give her the only thing she wanted...and none of it mattered. None of it mattered. Because...everyone...

Everyone was really...

They'd never...never...

Her fingers dug into her forehead, scalp, hair. Her back hunched, part of her wanting to just curl up and disappear. She could disappear! She could disappear, she could vanish. If she wished herself away, maybe things would turn out differently in her world. It certainly couldn't be worse! And even if it failed...then at least she wouldn't be there, wouldn't be perfectly intact and whole while all of them were gone. She wouldn't have to live a lifetime knowing that everything and everyone she'd ever wanted to protect, everything she'd ever wanted to do...she failed.

She could wish for that, at least, couldn't she? She was in this dimension, and everything went wrong since she'd gone here. Clearly if she removed herself from it, then it would solve...it would do something.

The ground flashed golden around her, the air whistled, and then the relative darkness of the forest settled over the clearing again. Another wish granted. The dragon gone while she was still only thinking.

Probably...that was probably the moment the first sob broke free from her throat.

(*)

He...yeah, he'd never felt so confused or uncomfortable in his life.

For a bit there, he'd felt pretty irritated. After all the effort and the almost dying, they'd managed to get the dragonballs united, and despite talking to her just the other day about waiting a year for her own, for the sake of that kid and his village...she'd gone and demanded it then?

But...'bring them back' sure did seem to go along with 'they're gone', in the...vague breakdown she'd had during their visit to that fortune teller. If he were to bet (and he didn't, with women), it seemed like the two were probably the same. About when the dragon refused ...due to distant dimensions? Why weren't there instruction manuals about what the dragon could and couldn't do, anyway? If that were their actual wish, they'd all be pretty pissed after going through that trouble.

Except for her. Who definitely looked like she was suffering an emotional break instead. See, it was about that time when the annoyance and confusion changed to discomfort. He just...wasn't really sure what to do about upset women. Especially not ones that upset who weren't his girlfriend and were absolutely right in front of his actual, very jealous, girlfriend.

It was something of a relief that Bulma still had enough awareness to actually make the wish they were supposed to wish (and pretty cleverly, by wishing for all innocent people killed by the red ribbon army to be revived, instead of just that one village) before that dragon got any more uppity and impatient about their lack of wishing. Which also seemed kind of rude, in the 'planned out a wish but can't get it' scenario.

Goku reached out to shake her shoulder lightly, trying to get her attention away from whatever horrible thing must have been playing out in her mind. Krillin stood a short distance from the two of them, watching with a grimace of discomfort and probably more sadness than the kid probably would have admitted to.

And...well, he probably wasn't any better than Pu'ar or Krillin. He didn't do anything except stare awkwardly at the pink woman either. What exactly was a person supposed to do, anyway? He didn't even know what she was dealing with, other than...something awful.

Bulma suddenly appeared in his vision, storming across the area toward Sakura. Understandably, given the fact that the girl tried to hijack a wish like that, but...she seemed to be suffering more than enough without one of Bulma's lectures added on top of it. He frowned and reached out for the blue haired woman. "Bulma, wait..."

She smacked his hand away and glared up at him. "Back off, idiot!"

He winced and dropped his hand, grimacing between the two women. So Bulma was that angry, huh?

His girlfriend stormed over to where the other woman knelt, ignoring Goku's attempts at comfort, crying in a way that really just felt too vulnerable and open for him to feel in any way comfortable or appropriate being nearby for. But, he couldn't just escape to somewhere more neutral and not full of unstable women, because if said unstable woman were to attack Bulma over her aggression, he'd have to stop her.

Ultimately, Bulma knelt down next to the woman, and pulled her into a hug instead. Which was...

Huh.

He blinked, and glanced over at Pu'ar and then Krillin. Just to silently confirm he hadn't just imagined that.

Nope. They seemed kind of surprised, and...on a second look, still there.

He rubbed at the back of his head. Yep. There was definitely nothing he could do to help. And he was pretty sure it was about time to just go back to the house and ask what the hell just happened after things calmed down once more.

That sounded like the best plan he'd come up with all day, in fact.

(*)

She'd felt a wide range of things since watching her best friends die, since realizing that all of her dreams of the world back home were nothing more than that...but she couldn't even identify what she felt anymore. Maybe she felt empty. Maybe she felt tired. She probably felt tired, at least.

She'd run out of tears, eventually. Then again, she was under the impression she'd run out before, too, so who the hell knew? She didn't. She didn't know anything. She didn't have a future. Her past was gone. She didn't have a home. She didn't have a family. She didn't have her friends.

Nothing...Nothing could have prepared her for how alone she felt. Nothing seemed to mitigate it. She couldn't come up with a single damn answer to make things better. If an all-powerful magic wish granting dragon couldn't bring back her world...what...would she even do?

What was she supposed to do?

She couldn't try to get home. Even if she waited, it didn't matter! There wasn't a home to return to! She couldn't bring Naruto and Sasuke back. She couldn't free the world without Naruto and Sasuke. Even if she wanted to, even if she tried to seek revenge, how would she ever be able to defeat Kaguya?

It would only end in death. Trying to kill Kaguya would only mean she, too, would die.

She stared out through the window of the capsule home. Bulma had suggested she sit in the plush chair to relax and get rest, but she...didn't feel like sleeping. She didn't feel like doing anything. She wanted to cry again. She wanted to cry, because it was the only thing she ever did do. It was familiar, and at least it was something. It was more than just living and pretending her life before waking up in this nightmare never existed.

She couldn't muster the energy for that, and simply stared out the window.

Voices drifted through the air, and she listened only because she couldn't be bothered not to.

"You're going to need to find your grandfather's dragonball again in a year, right?" Bulma must have been speaking to...Goku. Goku mentioned his grandfather and dragonballs at some point, hadn't he?

"Yeah...I guess so." He sighed. "I was gonna catch it!"

"Well, at least you're just looking for one next time, right?" Yamcha's voice sounded bracing and encouraging.

"Yeah, and what are the chances of some other group of crazies trying to catch them again?" Krillin. He sounded pretty hopeful.

"They are able to grant any wish!" Pu'ar coughed then, and quickly spoke again. "A-almost any wish! I mean...they grant some of them!"

She didn't say anything. Correcting them didn't matter, anyway. She...

She honestly didn't know what mattered at all, anymore.

(*)

So...he knew it was rude to think it, but honestly, the way Sakura acted was starting to creep him out. Then again, maybe it wasn't the way she acted that did it. She...she kind of acted pretty normally from what he'd gathered with that failed wish and everything else. Or she was crazy. Dedicated crazy.

But...that wasn't it. He knew it wasn't that, because the big...freaky...downright terrifying dragon didn't tell her she couldn't wish back imaginary people. He said the people she was trying to wish back were in a different dimension. Like she insisted. Like he'd flat out ignored and refused to accept.

Whatever it was that happened...

So...maybe he felt a little more guilty than creepy. It wasn't like he killed anyone! He didn't stop her from making any wishes, the dragon totally did that! And probably, it was that damn witch who made her believe whatever it was she believed. Somehow!

It kind of made him want to seek the old hag out and punch her. Whether or not it was true.

Hey, just because she told the truth about the dragonballs, maybe she did lie? It could have happened. And that...surprisingly, he actually felt a little more angry about that than anything else. He'd shook his head, and peeked around the corner at where she sat. At some point she must have finally fallen asleep. He didn't get to see her sleep all that often...but...she looked just as frail as she had the first day they'd found her.

She was...pretty frail for being someone who could just punch a boulder across a field like it was nothing.

And somewhere out there, somehow. In a dimension he still had trouble believing existed...she'd just lost all those family and friends she'd done nothing but fight to find a way back to since she'd gotten here. Maybe it was a little irrational, but he couldn't help but wonder...if he'd helped sooner, would she have gotten those dragonballs and sent herself back in time to...do something...?

Well...

No, couldn't be. She'd just have died, too. Probably. Whatever it was. If she could even go back that way.

He huffed softly. It kind of felt reassuring to think of that himself, but...it probably wouldn't do anything for her. After all, it didn't exactly fix the problem at all. He gave a soft sigh and turned back toward the makeshift bed they'd set up for him. (His bed was way better back home. He should have stayed there, honestly.)

He made it about three steps before an idea hit him. An idea that...actually kind of surprised him by how clever it was. Sure, he still didn't really know for sure the details of what happened...but. Hey, it was pretty cool as ideas went.

AN: Did you know that the dragon can't grant wishes across dimensions? It's apparently true. It's also apparently true that Sakura literally, physically cannot seem to catch a break. I thought about including a little more in this chapter, but it felt a bit rushed to cram it into this chapter. Next time, Krillin's Bright Idea!

Merry Christmas! (it counts, I haven't slept yet.)