"Forgiveness isn't supposed to be easy—that's the whole point."
In which, a time hopping Sakura from the worst timeline learns to forgive past wrongs and herself. She doesn't really have a choice, when she has been thrown into the past with a pretty boy Uchiha for company who insists comic books, apple pies and tree fortes are the only cure for her "fatal, brooding condition". Worst of all, she can't get past this itch on her skin that she already knows him. If only they could survive long enough past the Uchiha massacre without being flung to the reset point every time they fail, she might finally catch herself a break.
Or, Sakura is seven years old again and doesn't appreciate the universe forcing her into the whole "save everyone and their mother" storyline that has been rehashed one too many times.
(She's a shinobi—that doesn't mean she has to be hero.)
When she had first awoken as her seven-year-old self, her first thought was that she took too much again.
As a medic, she knew the risks of military rations pills better than anyone. All it took was one swallow and she was stronger than she had ever been—more capable than she could ever hope to be. With the promise and instant gratification of power at such a small action, it's no wonder people became addicted.
War took its toll on everyone. As a field medic, she was expected to give until the war was over or she was dead. Days spent slamming her fists against the enemy, nights spent gliding her bruised knuckles over impatient, ungrateful patients. It was endless—and no amount of sacrifice on her part would change this because she had become cynical and apathetic enough to know that human nature will never change, and so war will always be her reality.
Sakura gave and gave, and when she was expected to give some more, she rose up to the challenge. It was too easy to pop a pill into her mouth and work her chakra for another hour until it was sucked dry, and she would collapse on her patient's bed. Another hour, another life or two saved.
She promised herself she would watch her intake. She heard stories of shinobi who become addicted to military rations pills, and they never end well. Some hold out longer than others, but their fate was inevitable; textbooks described them as exhibiting manic, psychotic behaviour with a detestable look of bloodshot, sunken, flighty eyes, a blueish tint to pale, sweaty skin, gaunt cheekbones. It wasn't pretty, and once the victim had reached that point, there was no hope for them. Whatever was to become of her by the end of the war, it wasn't that. Hopefully, bitter, cynical, browned, wrinkled skin from days under the sun exposed to powerful jutsu and exhausting her own chakra and surrounded by lifelong friends just like herself. Likely, dead.
She underestimated the rush that came with military rations pills. She could never be as powerful, optimistic and charismatic without them. She could never be as happy and content with herself. It didn't just boost her chakra levels—it pumped pure elation into her veins, and the corrosive poison of her exhaustion that ate away at her bones waned until she felt like she could stand tall again.
Her best self was her on military rations pills, and that was the problem.
She supposed the world had taken pity on her sorry life and gave her a second chance. She wasn't sure what she had done to deserve it, but she was sure she didn't want it.
Her seventh birthday came and went, and she managed a pleasant smile throughout the entire celebration. As soon as the guests were thanked and seen to the front door, she let the smile drop and shatter like a mask of translucent glass and painted fairytales.
Naruto knocked on her door an hour later, and Sakura could only stare blankly as she soaked in his youthful—alive—appearance.
Whatever he was about to say died on his tongue, and he shook his head and apologized for disturbing her. He left, his form of a bowed head and hunched shoulders adjacent to the flickering lamppost casting forlorn shadows on a brown fence.
Sakura kept staring long after he was gone, a fury of emotions in her chest circling and encaging her heart like a looming bull shark.
Ami was just as mean as she remembered, and Ino was much more sensitive than she realized. Sakura didn't know that Ino ever experienced bullying like she did, but she was proven wrong after she watched Ino run away in tears from the cruelty of little girls wanting so desperately to fit in.
She had been certain that her parents were going to accuse her of being an intruder wearing their daughter's body when they called her down to talk. She decided she wasn't going to run or hide—she wanted to face the consequences of her actions. She very rarely did. But when they told her they were to leave in a week's time for an urgent business trip, she found herself dismayed.
"Don't worry, Auntie Jin and I will look after everything while you're gone," she said.
And then she went back upstairs to her bedroom, and there were no consequences to be spoken of for her deceit.
Her leg bobbed up and down under the table. Four days, she had gone four days without military rations pills. Weak, weak, weak in her veins, in her blood, in her small, bony fists. Sakura hated every moment she went without the enhancing drug in her system.
She hated herself even more for her dependency on an addictive substance.
"Are you alright, dear?"
It was her mother, concerned. The dead, rotting corpse of her mother as she pumped chakra and willed the cold body back into life was frowning at her. As always, nothing passed the keen eye of Mebuki Haruno.
She wore a lie on her mouth—a bright and cheerful smile.
"Of course. Why wouldn't I be? I am having dinner with my favourite people in the world."
Mebuki said nothing as Kizashi Haruno placed a hand on the top of her head and ruffled her hair. Her frown stayed.
"I'm your mother, dear. I worry regardless if there is a reason to."
It took her mother throwing open the curtains, ripping off the blanket and clapping her hands to stir Sakura from her slumber. Her first instinct was to reach for her bedside table where she stored her military rations pills, but her hand landed on a plush bear instead. Instantly, her mood soured. She whipped her hand back as though the toy had physically harmed her and turned to glare at her mother.
"What?" she bit out.
Mebuki narrowed the emerald eyes that Sakura had inherited from her and folded her arms.
"Is that any way to talk to your mother, young lady?"
She tried to recall a time when she had ever been disrespectful to her parents and failed. Her stomach clenched but she held her hard stare. She wouldn't lower her gaze, not even if it was Madara Uchiha himself standing before her.
Times were simpler back then, and her main concern was impressing a boy who clearly wanted little to do with her and saw her as beneath him.
She couldn't maintain that goody-two-shoes act. Not when she felt as though just the rattling of the secondhand fan would make her punch a hole into the wall and confront her parents on the matter that they never spend their money and go without when they were very obviously well off. Even the birds outside were agitating her—they could be summons spying on her for all she knew.
"What do you want?" she repeated, this time softer, and curled her fingers into the bedsheet and pulled it up to her chin.
Mebuki sent her a sharp smile, but her eyes were on her hands. On her worn nails, bitten down to the point of blood.
"The academy, dear. You're going to be late."
She didn't want to see them. They would be young, naïve and weak. She wouldn't be able to look at them without seeing ghosts and fisting the impossible size of her regret into her pockets. She wasn't sure if it was regret or if it was just guilt under the guise of regret.
Did it matter?
All she knew was she didn't want to see them full stop, regardless what it was poignant on her tongue.
They would look at her, and they would see an outcast. They would look at her, and they would see her sins written on her skin. They would look at her, and they would see her lies.
She promised she would be better—and she had in small bursts, but for every step forward she took, she stumbled three steps back.
They didn't understand. She was born to civilians, and as much as they sympathized with her difficulties, they could never know how far behind she started and how much work it took just for progress. It wasn't easy.
She tried to make them understand, but all they heard was excuses.
Everything about Sasuke was standoffish, smug, bratty and proud, and it told her exactly where she fitted into the timeline. He hadn't lost his clan yet—but he was about to. It took all her control to stay where she was seated and keep her hands squeezed around her pencil to stop them from squeezing around his neck. They had given him too many platitudes and opportunities, and he had responded with brutality. He was the reason she was here in the first place, and she wasn't going to make the same mistake the second time around.
One foot out of line, and she will rip out his throat with her bare hands for it.
She nearly tripped over her feet as she made her way to meet Sasuke on the training ground in a daze. He appeared bored as he appraised her with dark eyes and his hands shoved into his pockets—his typical 'too cool for school' stance that she knew all too well, and that she had once fawned over as a lovesick puppy. Now she could only think how vulnerable he looked; one swift roundhouse kick to his knees before he could reach out with his hands and it would all be over.
"You can do it, Sakura-chan!" she heard Naruto's voice over the cheers of girls calling out her opponent's name, and her skin warmed as she felt her affection for her best friend rise in her chest.
She couldn't recall ever facing Sasuke in a training session at the academy, but it didn't matter. She would win, prove to herself that she was strong on her own merit and then she would have nothing to fear. This version of Sasuke couldn't hurt her, and that might as well mean she was invincible.
She came to a stop meters before him, and her right thigh that remembered his Chidori from when they last fought ached. She inhaled.
"You may begin," Iruka-sensei called out.
She was on him before she could even exhale. It might have been luck. It might have been his underestimation of her skills. It might have been her battle experience. Likely, it was all three, but she was holding him down with the entirety of her weight, locking him as he struggled against her with her chakra enhanced legs. His body was more trained, but she had years of skill and experience on him. This was the only outcome, the only way this would go.
Still, she was surprised at her quick victory. Any moment now, and his eyes would bleed red. Any moment now, and he would flip them, so he was on her, his sword plunging into her as he killed her several times over. Any moment now, and his brutality would show.
She held her breath—but it never happened.
He stared at her with wide eyes, and his bottom lip quivered. He wasn't struggling, she realised. He was trembling, shaking, buckling like a wild animal caught by a predator. Her heart dropped. He was just a scared little boy, and she was his terror.
She looked up, and the children looked in equal parts queasy and fearful. Even Iruka-sensei had gone white.
It was her killer intent, she thought. Her control wasn't as good as she thought it was.
She rolled off Sasuke and stumbled to her feet without any of her usual grace. She couldn't be here—this wasn't her world, and she wasn't meant to be here. She was meant for war, and little else. She looked down at Sasuke once more. He hadn't moved—he was still staring at her, his hand clenching and unclenching. She looked away, no longer able to stand his fear.
She met Iruka-sensei's gaze.
"I quit," she sneered, and she marched away.
Nobody attested her words, and she knew she wouldn't return.
If she had it her way, this would be the last time she saw any of them.
For the longest time, she thought killing Sasuke would bring her satisfaction. He took so much from her, but she knew the world had took everything from him and left him only with his hate. What good would letting someone like that live? They would only cause chaos and destruction—and that was exactly what he did when he came to Konoha with vengeance on his mind and an army of the undead behind him. They hadn't been prepared, and the revelation of the masked man being Madara Uchiha was just another misfortune. There had been nothing left of her village by the night, and it had taken a week before the news reached the other Hidden Villages.
They scrambled to form an alliance to protect themselves, but it was too late for Konoha. For her friends and family.
In the end, Madara Uchiha had underestimated the reanimation jutsu—or perhaps he simply misunderstood it or made an error in the hand signs, whatever the case it went terribly wrong somewhere along the line—and the undead was an army not even Madara could control with the sole purpose to destroy.
Who could win against an army in the thousands of talented shinobi that never tire, never exhaust their chakra, never hurt, never die?
They were doomed from the very start, and they were foolish to ever believe they stood a chance.
She formed her seal not too long after the destruction of Konoha, but her achievement felt hollow. She no longer had anyone to fight for but herself.
It should have made her happy. Every logical bone in her body dictated that this was her only path, this was the only course of action that would bring her content. Vengeance was the word for it, but closure sounded better.
If not for her seal, she would have been dead many times over.
She was exhausted, apathetic and chasing highs that just didn't bring that same rush as the first time. With every pill she swallowed, it felt like an even lousier imitation to the euphoria that drove her to take the next pill. It would never be as good, and she had to take more to feel the same effect, and even then, it was weaker. She was at the point of injecting the venom into her veins—and still, nothing. She could hardly jump when before she could soar.
She was tired of living, and she was ready to die.
She went into that battle with her seal spent up on destroying a few hundred reanimation soldiers, and she wanted to die at Sasuke's hand. It would be a poetic ending, she thought, to die at her childhood crush's hand. To die at the hand that killed her friends, her family, her village. She had always been a sucker for the bittersweet.
But then, the bastard had to go and die on her, and she had to return to the medical tent healing shinobi that would end up dying anyway once they returned to the battlefield. And that wasn't poetic in the slightest.
The worst part is that it felt like he purposefully let her win. A final fuck you, where he would be free and at rest while she was stuck in hell.
As their numbers dwindled and the undead army became bigger, it became apparent that they had to change tactics.
They brought their own reanimation soldiers to fight their battles, and some even chose to die so they could be revived stronger and better. She should have been happy when her dead friends were beckoned to the battlefield, but all she saw was the disappointment on their flaking, cracked, grey faces and in their sad, black eyes when they looked at her.
"You're home early," Mebuki Haruno commented mildly.
She supposed it wasn't unusual—before befriending Ino Yamanaka, she had often retreated into the comforts of her home to escape the snide comments and jeering laughs of her childhood bullies. Still, that would have been months before now, and she wasn't sure if she could fall back on that excuse. Her mother had always been observant, and she already noticed that she had been acting unusual in the past week. Sakura didn't need to give her more reason to be suspicious.
"I felt ill," she said. "I won't disturb you, mum—I'll be resting in my room."
Her mother's eyebrows rose.
"Oh? I can make soup if you like, dear. It won't be any—"
"No," she interrupted. "That's alright."
Mebuki eyed her as her mouth twisted into a thin rope of concern.
"Well, I'll be down here if you need me. Don't hesitate to call."
She allowed a genuine smile.
"Thank you, mum, for everything you do for me—you're the best. I love you and dad both so, so much."
The corner of her eyes wrinkled as Mebuki frowned at her.
"We love you too, dear. Are you sure you're alright?"
Sakura looked past Mebuki's shoulders to stare at a painting on the wall, not wanting to lie while looking directly at her mum.
"Of course. Just feeling sentimental, is all."
It wasn't much, but it would do.
She had packed a change of clothes, several kunai and shrunken, basic medical supplies and two photos: one of her class taken on the first day of school, and a family portrait. This is all she would bring with her in her abandonment of Konoha—she brought even less the first time she abandoned Konoha, a skeleton village of rubble, rumbling fires and corpses.
The hike up the Hokage cliff face was no less rigorous than she remembered.
Her legs ached as sweat stuck her hair against the nape of her neck. It was a cloudy day, but that didn't mean that the Summer heat was no less oppressive.
Her hand inched to her pockets, where she had stored her stolen military rations pills. It stilled before it could make its descent into her shorts. It was too early to use them—she hadn't even left the village yet. And she wasn't sure what its effect would be on a young body unused to its effects and large amounts of chakra.
Better wait, until she hit rock bottom and could rely on little else. Still, the raw hunger turning in her gut that couldn't be sated by food alone made it hard to follow, but logic prevailed, and she fisted her hand instead; a humourless whisper told her that her old body, as dependent on the pills as it was, wouldn't have listened as well as this young, undamaged one.
Most people thought that there was only one way in and out of the village, and that was through the village gates. That was, unless they wanted to climb the towering gates—but in broad daylight surrounded by civilians and shinobi alike, that wasn't the brightest of ideas. Though, Sakura held a special position in Konoha as the student of the Fifth Hokage and the best friend of the village hero, and she was privy to secrets that even the most talented and loyal of shinobi were not. There was an inbuilt system of spiraling tunnels in the cliff face, and its entrance was only revealed through a combination of jutsu only known to Konoha shinobi. Obviously, it was extremely complicated fuinjutsu, and as it needed to be, to prevent the tunnel network being taken advantage by foreign shinobi.
One tunnel led straight to the boarders to the Earth Kingdom, and it was the one she planned on taking.
Once, she had been young and hopeful and daring. Once, she had cared about the world and her place in it.
Once, she wanted to be a shinobi to help people who couldn't help themselves.
To people like her teammates, she was sure her reason for wanting to be a shinobi sounded weak. To people like Kakashi, she knew for a fact her reason for wanting to be a shinobi made her to be naïve and idealistic. She could understand now, of course—it was an ambition guided by a helplessly uninformed and ignorant view on shinobi. But how was she to know? She was only a young girl born to civilians that lived in a Hidden Village and knew of no violence. She couldn't have known that by protecting her precious people, she was to kill the precious people of her enemy. She couldn't have known that by making yourself to be an example shinobi, she was to become a tool to dash when her Hokage threw and to slash when her Hokage swung. She couldn't have known that by protecting the peace of Konoha, she was to destroy the peace of foreign villages.
She wasn't even a good tool.
In the eyes of her Hokage, she was just a stupid civilian playing a shinobi's game, with shallow thoughts and little potential to ever reach the heights of her clan born schoolmates. In the eyes of just about anyone with any common sense.
And it was true. For as misguided but noble her intentions were, she was easily distracted from her ambitions, choosing to chase troubled boys and pretty clothes over training. Only when the shinobi world slapped her in the face and she lived to tell the tale did she consider taking her chosen career seriously.
She wasn't as good as her clan born classmates. They had reserves of chakra that she could never hope to dream of, kenkai genkai and family jutsu, specialized combat developed over centuries by their clans' ancestors. Just about the only assets she had were her chakra control and ability to absorb information, and so her path had become obvious. She would be a medic—and her Shinsou ensured she would be the be best damn medic the world had even seen.
She had returned to her quest of helping those who cannot help themselves.
Indeed, the beginnings of her shinobi career started good and noble —but as with everything in the shinobi world, it wasn't long before those noble intentions plummeted and slammed to the ground with the inevitability of death, tragedy and failure.
With the despair of falling short of the envisioned hero and champion of justice.
She had just reached the end of the tunnel when she had fallen to the ground, struggling for oxygen as she gulped air. It didn't make any sense—there were trees everywhere she could see, and the birds were singing their call just fine. It felt as though she were drowning, but there was no water to fill her lungs.
Ring, ring, ringing in her ears, and it wasn't the wildlife.
One minute, she was wondering where her journey would take her from the boarders of the Earth Kingdom, and the next she was dead.