This was another world of pain.
Every pathetic limb in his body was being torn, ripped, shredded. At a cellular level, this was hellfire, and then multiplied by seven. It was the kind of pain that was so agonising that it hurt to even scream. Sasuke was silent, whimpering like an injured rabbit. He didn't even care how pathetic he must've looked. The only thought available to him was how much it hurts, when it was going to end and how much he regretted this shitty idea.
He might've figured out why the time travel process into the past carried a risk of death: the pain could send you into shock and ultimately kill you. Sasuke diverted his mind with a degree of success - he was counting the seconds. One, two, three, forty, seventy nine, one hundred and sixty three, one hundred and eighty four, two hundred and twenty seven, three hundred and nine, four hundred and eighty one-
Eight minutes and one second. The majority of the pain subsided from death-like to excruciating, but it felt heavenly in comparison.
With his mind no longer focused on the pain, it was free to roam and scour the surroundings. It was tranquil if you got past the agony. Sasuke was literally floating in space, presumably some kind of medium for time. His breathing was fine, if a little ragged. There was a good oxygen supply, though he supposed science couldn't compete with whatever the hell this was.
Another aspect of the pain was the chakra depletion. Chakra seemed to be getting siphoned out of his body, and yet Sasuke somehow clung onto a morsel. If it weren't for his accelerated healing schtick, it'd take a whole week to recuperate. He watched his own body float around in space before ink-like tentacles wrapped around his torso and viciously tugged him towards one of the mirror-like stars.
Sasuke recalled a 'risk' from Kushina's notes: he would be transported to the right time, but could end up anywhere, whether it was twenty miles underwater or in some violent jungle full of lions. He thought he could manage before, but the previous pain and his lack of chakra assured him otherwise. Sasuke really hoped that his luck hadn't run out.
"Shit." Every now and then, he deserved to bluntly curse.
Spoiler alert: It had. Other than being dropped into an active volcano, this was the worst possible outcome. Because this was literal enemy territory. When the air twisted, Sasuke hit the ground with a bit of a thud and a very sore bottom, finding himself smack dab in the middle of a fucking battle. Namely, one of the Senju-Uchiha's many, many battles.
Under normal circumstances, Sasuke would've shrugged the issue off and high-tailed it out of there. Now, hundreds of confused (but more furious) ninja, who happened to be some of the strongest of their time, glared at him ferociously, and to top it off, his chakra supply was pretty much exhausted, a sliver of chakra keeping him conscious.
"Uchiha! What unfathomable trick have you pulled?" The Senju positioned their swords towards him, so he had several swords on his left side poised and ready to wakizashi his neck. He vaguely made out Hashirama somewhere trying to blend in desperately.
The Uchiha wrinkled their noses, like he was dog sh*t on their shoes, and then he had another myriad of sharp-looking swords on his right sizing up his carotid artery. Well, it looks like he temporarily united the Senju and Uchiha. They could bond over how killable he must've looked.
"How dare you accuse us of such insincere methods? We've no foreknowledge!" This was Madara.
The Uchiha were so temperamental in their declaration that Sasuke thought they'd ignore him and move back to squabbling. He should've known neither of them would have the decency to just ask him.
And then it got violent. Approximately twenty swords were flung towards him, keeping him on his toes. Sasuke somehow mustered up the stamina to dodge all of them, stumbling and ducking and dodging despite the panic that stirred within him. At least, he kept it up for a few seconds before one lucky motherfucker nicked him with his sword.
"Fuck!" He yelled, momentarily confusing them both long enough for it to heal up (oh, at least his healing got quicker), which confused them even more.
"It speaks vulgarly, and yet it heals akin to lightning," Some Uchiha muttered. Yep. Sasuke hated the people and he hated their dumb old ass language.
"I'm not an 'it', you bastards," The wrong thing to say, since it seemed to piss off everyone in the vicinity, which wasn't a typically good idea if they all had swords fashioned on you. Sasuke had literally nothing except his hair and his clothes (thank god it didn't happen like last time, being stark naked while the Senju-Uchiha tried to kill him would be mortifying).
Sasuke felt his fucking life seem to flash before his eyes when some fucker's sword came at him. His dumbass even shut his eyes in anguish, and yet, there was no stab or even a pinprick of pain. He opened his eyes reluctantly, feeling his heart surge in joy.
"Sup," She winked at him, her measly kunai successfully warding off the sword strike.
"I've never been happier to see you," Sasuke exhaled, feeling his worries dissipate. Everyone else seemed shocked beyond belief, enough to temporarily halt. Then she dropsaulted, sending a dude flying several feet, and it was back to the fight.
He had no idea why she was here, but Yugito seemed intent on saving his life, and he didn't really want to make her job harder, so Sasuke decided to shut up and hide behind her. Hiding behind someone wasn't really macho of him, but honestly, in a life or death situation, who cares? The people around them apparently.
They were probably about to comment on her being a weak-looking woman when Yugito literally burst into flames, halting the forthcoming attacks because she was literally smothered in azure flames. She exuded raw power and pure fury, enough to chill the soldiers and unsettle even Madara and Hashirama.
"You would burn," she calmly warned. She held his arm (okay, now his ego was getting hurt), though he was fine. They vanished in a Shunshin.
"Alright, Sasuke. I feel like you know something. Explain." Yugito let his frail, chakra-depleted body flounder to the grassy ground, right next to a lake. He peeked at his reflection. No wonder he was referred to as an 'it', his appearance was rather ghastly.
Yugito crossed her arms, tapping a foot on the ground rhythmically. Her expression was unreadable, so he really couldn't tell whether she was curious, pissed, or both.
He took the opportunity to examine Yugito's slender visage. Her hair suffered: she used to sport these beach waves, and now, it was tousled and kind of charred (he supposed her hair just wasn't as fireproof as the rest of her). Yugito retained her lean figure and didn't lose her mettle, so she couldn't have arrived long before him.
"Um," he struggled for what to say. Never has Uchiha Sasuke been this lost for words.
"When did you get here?" He felt like an idiot deflecting the question.
"A week ago. It hurt like a bitch," she replied. Well, he supposed he owed her the truth, considering he may or may not have dragged her into this mess.
"This was not supposed to happen," he stated dumbly. Yugito joined him on the forest floor, sitting cross-legged.
"So you do know something. Spill." She refrained from saying 'no shit'.
"It's a long story," he remarked, though of course she'd make a snide comment about time.
"Good thing we have a century," Ah, just as expected. Yugito was so predictable.
"I'm from the future," he started, and continued before she no doubt would say 'me too', "Even more into the future. Twenty years approximately ahead of your present." For a ninja, Yugito wasn't very good at hiding her shock.
"The world goes to shit, by the way. Madara causes three of the four ninja wars and kind of runs the world into the ground." Sasuke cleared his throat abashedly, "Therefore, I took it upon myself to prevent it, and the best way is to kill Madara before his uprising." He gave Yugito a minute to process this.
"So...you went back into the past, and it wasn't enough, so you went even further back?" Yugito stared at the ground in apprehension. When it was said like that, it did sound pretty pathetic. But Sasuke was adamant in his decision: Madara was a transcendent, almost omnipotent man and a mere twenty years couldn't do much to prevent him. And there was the added mystery of whoever was distributing time seals.
"Yeah," he admitted, shrugging his shoulders. Yugito stared at him.
"Konoha hasn't been founded yet. If you kill Madara, you'd be preventing the founding of Konoha and thereby all the villages." She looked at him like she expected him to have already thought of that.
Sasuke would've preferred to call himself stupid rather than admit the truth: he probably did think of that, if subconsciously. And he couldn't bring himself to care too much if Konoha ceased to exist. Kushina might've glossed over that but Konoha's existence really only affected her in a negative way. If Konoha didn't exist, her clan wouldn't have been wiped out and his clan would be safe too. Even Minato might've been better off.
Kushina knew that. She was smart enough to know that he wasn't going to adhere to the plan. He'd bet that she thought of all this before it even crossed his mind, and maybe she trusted him enough to send him anyway.
He was silent. Here, he had several options: spoiled for choice, really. Sasuke could choose to veer the future in any direction he wanted. He could destroy it, breed chaos and hate, cease chaos and hate, dominate the world, introduce peace, whatever the hell he wanted. What do you do when you have the ultimate free will? He had a choice here: to choose the good, light, friendship, sunny side, or the 'evil' side.
Many people pegged Sasuke as a complicated, difficult guy. In truth, he was rather simple. His revenge was over, there was nobody he could rationally take revenge on, since his family was alive. All Sasuke ever wanted was a little bit of everything: power, family, happiness, strength, peace. There didn't have to be a good vs evil choice. Why couldn't he have both?
Yugito leant forward, her brown eyes tinged with something akin to concern,
"Sasuke, don't do anything stupid." Sasuke grinned a grin not very in character for him. He patted Yugito's shoulders with an odd fervour.
"Wonderful advice, Yugito. I won't heed it." He leant into her ear.
"How do you feel about building a village with me?"
Note: Thank you all for the positive feedback! It makes me so happy fr. also, I have a question for y'all. What do you think of me doing an omake every now and then?