The Academy holds a darker tone now.
To her, to the instructing chuunin, to the scant few children who can hear the word 'massacre' and understand what that means. Empty hollows mar the classrooms; spaces gouged out like gaping wounds; unoccupied seats, unattended tables, absent friends. Most of the children greet that night with confusion, some with whispers, some with a strange, irrational glee. To those languid in blissful ignorance, the alarms and the dashing shinobi were exciting. Exciting, and nothing more.
Ino doesn't get it, at first. Shika and Chouji don't get it, at first. She has to tell them and, credit due, they learn. When Uchiha Sasuke finally returns to the class, that lesson looks to have been carved right down into his very bones.
Part of her is glad to see at least one child is now taking their training with genuine sincerity.
After a while, they start getting paired against each other in spars. There's a hauntedness to his eyes; a gibbering echo of a terror she cannot help but recognise. Cannot help but reciprocate. This boy understands. He knows, exactly, how much he is small.
Theirs may be but a silent understanding – the boy communicates mostly through grunts and she's hardly a font of words herself – but it is an understanding nonetheless. They communicate with their punches, their kicks and the scrape of dull-bladed weapons. This is the weakness in that stance. This is the counter to that attack. Each spar a debate. Every bout an argument, meaningful and measured, culminating in some definitive answer. With every punch and kick, even if they bruise, they are building each other up, that the both of them might live.
The one time she tries to explain it, Ino bursts out laughing. She almost renders her as a pig out of spite, but the work comes out too disturbing to find humour. The half-finished painting burns instead; her style has been left too realistic. The words lie dead on her tongue.
Ino does spar with her too, Chouji at her side, Shika on the very rare occasions he can be cajoled to take part. She wants them to learn and they each try but Sakura hits too hard and cuts too deeply, never knew how to teach; there are no pulled blows in the bloody river or the Astral Clocktower, in a land where death holds no meaning. It feels like a chasm, like a great crack in the ground ever growing, and every attempt to bridge it only pushes it apart all the wider.
Eventually, Inoichi takes her aside and asks her to stop. Sakura trains with the smiling Inoru-san, Ino and her friends train together with their respective fathers, laughing and joking like it's all some great, grand game with a guaranteed happy ending. For the better, she is told.
Once again, she finds, she cannot comprehend Inoichi's advice.
The chasm beneath her feet grows ever wider. Her dreams leave her in a bloody river with ever more frequency. Her spars with Sasuke leave them gasping and wheezing into the dirt. There's medical visits, sometimes; angry noises.
They have to persist.
They have to learn.
The world won't wait for them otherwise.
~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~
As dryly inevitable as it is every time she dreams, traditional night clothes are not the most ideal survival wear. She sleeps in practical attire; sturdy shirts, long trousers; socks, gloves and boots even on the warmest summer nights. When she awakes, she knows, she will always be clung by Yharnam's wintery chill.
The bloody river is becoming familiar now; though it shifts and twitches at times from her memories, the broad span of it remains approximately consistent. Constantly re-mapping the place for her superiors is a... frustration, yes, but at least it absolves her of blame. There is usually a bridge – the same bridge, though its precise positioning has a habit to wander - serving as a semi-reliable landmark. The cave network is the worst of it, ever shifting and consistently inconsistent, and of course, at the river's source…
That accursed horse-creature that dreams itself a man.
It yowls and it gibbers. Every once in a while she can get it to stand upright and talk to itself with enough cajoling. Mostly it just slams her into the blood-slick floor with the rest of the skinless wretches. These days, a broken bone is becoming mundane.
Repeated exposure has numbed the horror at the beast's appearance, if not the disgust. Describing it to Maria just gets a droll snort. Showing the beast to Ino only gets a horrified scream and some rather stern words. Unfortunately, the adults she is allowed to show it to have no better ideas either. Ninjutsu never works correctly in the dream, and beasts of this size and ilk are not the traditional shinobi fare besides. Even Inoru-san's smile shifts at the sight of it.
These nights, its getting to be a routine. If and when she wakes to the bloody river, she makes her way downstream along unfamiliar tracks, tracking familiar landmarks, awaiting the wearily expected ambushes with a readied sword and a bottle of flame. She finds the horse-man's chamber and the horse-man finds her. They duel.
She focuses, she experiments. She tries wild strategies and tries focusing on her fundamentals. She smashes into the chamber walls, the bloody floor, the ceiling every once in a while. Never does she actually progress. Can't even dodge past the thing; some accursed, binding fog.
It's lair is a stagnant place; charnel house; the butcher's messiest draw. The slop and ruin and detritus of a thousand flayed and bleeding wretches, pushed and crushed and slathered across the wallsides with no-one's care, still the odd limb still erroneously twitching. Still the odd torso still helplessly begging. Maria doesn't have an answer for that. Inoichi doesn't have an answer for that. After a while, she stops including them in her paintings. Too much detail not the focus it's a matter of expediency.
The excuses will run dry eventually.
~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~
A new child joins the class, and he earns her ire immediately.
Uzumaki is… not human. Can't truly, entirely be human. Every honed sense, all her blood-soaked experience tells her this, screams it in her nostrils and pounds it in her ears. He smells like fire, smoke, an animistic musk beyond even what the Inuzuka have wearily taught her to tolerate. The eerie brightness in too-intelligent eyes. The unnatural carvings of whiskers in skin. The pointed, elongated toothiness to all his smiles. For all his pretended, childish idiocy, he reeks of a seething beast in a cage.
Some see it, some don't. Or- no, if they're seeing it, how are they remotely acting sensibly? Such beasts must be hunted, put down, slaughtered before it breaks free. There's no point to keeping a beast captured; such a mindless thing will only bite you. Yet no-one is doing that obvious thing, and the monster that sings it's a child goes free, throat unslit with nary a knife in the dark. Shinobi indeed!
To Inoichi, she tries to explain, but once again she finds she cannot comprehend his advice.
More the pity she can still comprehend his orders.
The monster-child will live, against all rational judgement.
~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~
She tries talking to it, sometimes.
Oh, it's not reliable, and she's tried to route around it enough times to know that it's guarding something. Every time she finds a new path, the man-horse finds her first. The base of the river is simply the most reliable, detestable as it is.
It can take some prompting, cajoling, mild encouragement. The horse-beast is a beast, first and foremost, and the part that dreams of being a man has to be dragged forth and made to wake. But she manages it, now and then. A shock and a very quick death the first time, but... after a while, she thinks she's starting to become remembered.
"oo—o-ooh, forgive me I-" it whinnies and gibbers. One last dim pupil shudders and twitches, only vaguely able to track on her face, its vast carcass-like body still looming even when so toppled and broken and diminished. "My- you are a faint one. You youth-" it flops and stumbles, dragging itself on broken hooves and bleeding limbs, "-grow younger every year-"
Even so wounded, that sword in its hands is terrifyingly real. Even as it leans its weight upon it; a swordsman is never disarmed until the blade is out of hand. She very wearily knows this.
The horse-head looms, so stretched and warped and flayed and twisted, but none of it Sakura's doing. The other head – the stump – dribbles madness and pale ichor from a thousand festering eyeballs.
"-t-tell me- good Hunter-" It rattles out with fecal breath. One eye dead and sunken. The other, the last, is almost sane.
Sakura finds a hunk of coral for a seat, because on this, she knows, there will most definitely be questions. Even Maria will want to know.
"h-have you- seen the thread of light…? My guiding moonlight..."
~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~
It's a curious thing, the Haruno Clan; this is apparently not the first time this has happened.
It takes some digging, with both Inoichi and her parents' efforts, but over time the records are found, collated, reconstructed, sparse as they may be. They call it the Warring Clans era, that time before the Villages were founded, and the paranoid chaos of that age makes surviving records hard to come by.
There's barely any trace of her.
In the chaos of the Warring Clans, child mortality wasn't entirely unexpected either. There are a few odd, scattered hints. Notes of mental instability, in babes that barely lasted a few scant years, paired notably with the vibrant pink of their hair like an omen. A peculiar, family-bound madness, self-described by one distant ancestor as a curse, echoes of heartbreak and rage still smudged in faded ink. She's not the first, just the first to receive proper treatment and care.
This means she has a future, Inoichi promises for some reason. Words get repeated like a mantra; there is no need to worry.
She tries to smile and nod, but against Inoichi that doesn't entirely help either.
He tries to explain, and she cannot understand his advice.
She tries to explain, and he cannot comprehend her point of view.
It's not an argument or even a debate. Words blab and fall and fail to connect, and that chasm grows ever the wider.
~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~
She has an assignment.
She has an assignment and, for once, it isn't a question. Part of her feels overjoyed; the rest of her fears the worst.
It's a specific, curious assignment. Long duration; immediate results not expected. Some required preconditions that are quite beyond her control.
Above her head, staircases spew and unfold. Books and jars and musty dead things line booby-trapped shelves. Patients gibber. The distant, shivering scraa-a-a-ape of nails on stonework, the eerie drip of twinkling water.
One of the shinobi elders she reports to has a theory. A hypothesis for her to test; a prediction for her to verify. And he has a more than a passing interest in Sealing.
Her back is against the stonework, and her feet move with ever such caution.
The laboratory is empty of patients; small mercies. What it is not empty of is papers: books strewn and scattered about, mingled in with the broken shelves. More's the pity; now she has to look through them.
She flicks through dusty, battered tomes, skims across the stained and ruined almanacs. She's taken enough cues from Maria to know there's knowledge not worth reading about. But the articles are not what she is looking for.
The first she finds by the twinge in her eye. The little, crawling jitter at the back of her skull.
She watches it; observes it; faded ink on paper. Turns it about; a view from every angle. A piece of string with carefully placed knots serves as a measure.
A symbol is an aid, but never the truth.
She measures and memorises and scribbles little test runes with charcoal on foul-stained bedsheets until the twinge persists. The shape of an imprint of a carving of an echo that she knows she can recreate, come morning.
The hypothesis is confirmed, it seems. The icon seems to shiver.
~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~
There's more… interest now. The years are crawling to a close, the Academy shoving them closer and closer to the door. Two months, now, to that final examination.
There's problems with her chakra, but there's always been problems with her chakra; a known and expected exception. She's not even the first, apparently, but compared to a shinobi who cannot use ninjutsu at all, a shinobi that has to bleed on everything to get anything done is apparently not beyond the pale.
She has her swords, her dreams and her training, and that will have to do. That passing hypothesis she answered has planted a hunger, a demand, and now she has people teaching her brushstrokes with chakra and bloodied inks, esoteric etymological theory, the foundations of algebraic geometry. The most basic of basics of basics needed to comprehend the Sealing Arts; fuinjutsu.
Not for its own sake, of course, but for the hunger.
She has to explain, to Maria, when their nights come. Has to apologise to Ludwig's gibbering heads. The questions have bubbled and multiplied; they want the research halls now more than ever.
Maria's mouth can cut a very thin line.
~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~
In the dark of that broken laboratory, one final test remains.
On the cleanest piece of paper she can find, with the cleanest brush she can improvise from a pen, old twine and cuts of her own hair. A dribbled mixture of quicksilver, ink, charcoal and her own blood. The strokes are careful, slow, precise.
It's not a powerful seal.
It's not even a useful seal.
But it is a toe in uncharted waters.
The last stroke finishes. The brush sets respectfully aside. A curse of her nature and this Dream; even with her blood in the ink there is no chakra to be found upon which to call. Not in herself, at any rate.
The seal is not powerful. The seal is not (typically) useful. But it is certainly no beginner's work. 'Natural' chakra is a tricky thing to work with, she has been very repeatedly told in no uncertain terms. Even this 'simple' detector array; she is not to pursue further; she is not to reverse engineer; she is not to concern herself with the exact nature of its meanings and mechanisms and operations. Dangerous knowledge.
...A gaggle of hypocrites, truly.
The process will take time; akin to a slow-burning reaction; like waiting for moisture to condense; burning down a candle to see what smoke emerges. Sakura is content to wait. Remaining by the seal permits her to protect the seal, and meaningless wandering leads to meaningless injury besides. Nothing to gain.
It finishes, eventually. She's only had to gut two; having long learnt the folly of stabbing into their bloated heads. Just so long as it's done far enough away as to not risk the paper; blood can splatter further than intuition might provide.
There are results, and they are to be recorded for posterity; memorized and measured so she can report them when she wakes.
What facility will they store
these numbers in, she wonders?
~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~
What indeed? Where indeed.
There are experiments, now, here on this side.
Oh, in fairness, there'd been experiments before, but those had been more focused on her herself. On understanding, on the management of symptoms, the quirks of her mutated chakra coils. In the hospital with Inoichi, there to tell her it's for the best.
Now…
The focus has shifted. They teach her more; more theory, more fuinjutsu, until she can almost grasp the faint, outlined shape of the vast monolith they will never teach her truly. What arts of sealing they will allow her to posses are focused upon detection; measurements; scientific instruments in paper and ink. Existing to serve the questions and no more. Their frustration is pent; present; plain to see. Any discovery, any inquest, any hypothesis, is required to go through her first. Requires her to even dream of the correct place, first.
It is how it is how it is, and what it is is satisfying no-one.
She graduates almost in passing, the only excitement the alarm that sounds the night after the exam (no massacres this time, small mercies). Taken in as an in-Village mentorship with the Yamanaka clan, a research apprenticeship rather than a position in a traditional three-genin cell; Uchiha becomes less available for spars. He also gets the Uzumaki for a squadmate, so she forgives him out of pity. Every once or twice in a week, they can still match blades in a training field.
Most of her swordwork lies elsewhere. The monsters, the man-horse, the dreams. Maria remains, as ever, like ash upon the wind. A speed beyond speed; beyond the physical barriers that limit the human form. She's heard of and studied the Shunshin and Kawarimi techniques of course, but the Dream and her own issues make that difficult to apply in practice.
If she's going to- if there's anything she can do about that, it's going to be in the blood, she knows.
The questions haven't reached that far, yet. The questions have been waylaid; fuinjutsu, runes and moon-soaked laboratory documents. Not an intentional distraction, but…
Maria has explained, before. They've tested her blood, before, on this side of the Dream. A few noted oddities in how it transports chakra, but that's apparently a coils problem. All the rest of it is still but young blood; nothing but weak and fallible human.
That world outside can still chew her up and grind her down. Like it will to all of them.
It isn't enough.
~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~
Sakura, for once, has a question of her own.
To be fair, she has other, assigned ones too, but the natural chakra seal is ticking away on its own now, and whilst the results tick down, she has only her own to tend to. The battered, decrepit room is familiar; memorized; already preserved in watercolours and ink. One of the first things they asked of her once their interests bubbled; to map, to record, to uncover every nook and chamber. Down in the depths of the Konoha R&D's halls, a little room of her own rests like an art gallery, a scale little model with flags and markings and information. Recreations in miniature.
This room is a study, probably, other voices have already decided.
She wonders, sometimes, why they question so much. Why they insistently pressure, constantly pry, ceaselessly speculate and evaluate and measure and judge. Wonders what exactly they expect to get out of it.
Wonders indeed what they have, already, gotten out of it.
There must be something, yes? The runes; they always file them away, consume every one greedily yet never explain- the runes, the seals, the Dreams, the blood-
They all have to add up to something, yes?
It's only her life and body and bones and mind.
It's natural to be curious, yes?
Her fingers ruffle through pages, grace the stems of books and ledgers. An alphabet only she knows how to read.
More than anything, she has learned this: she does not have to answer questions they do not think to ask.
A/N: Weird ffnet linebreak errors fixed, thanks NlaEid