Sakura ran, as fast as her cramping legs could carry her. Every step sent shockwaves of pins and needles through her entire body, and for the thousandth time she wondered just how long she had been trapped.
The sound of lightning jutsu was growing stronger, but if Kaguya awakened before Sakura could arrive, she would miss her chance to join the fight before it was whisked off to another world entirely. She grit her teeth, urging her aching body forward.
Golden light burned in her peripheral vision. Turning sharply, she made a beeline for its source and arrived just in time to watch the bodies of the reanimated Hokage become human-shaped motes of light. Before she could even call out to them, they scattered into nothingness and the clearing in which they had stood fell dark and quiet. Namikaze Minato, fourth Hokage and father of Naruto, had left without being able to say goodbye to his son.
"No," Sakura whispered, reaching out as if by sheer force of will she could bring them all back for a minute longer.
"Child?" The Sage of the Six Paths appeared beside her. He, at least, was still present. "How did you manage to evade the Infinite Tsukuyomi?"
"I didn't," she replied, stomach churning with food she had eaten more than thirteen years ago. "But it's a very long story."
"No time to explain, then. The battle continues to the west." The Sage pointed. "You have to hurry, child; I have given Naruto and Sasuke all my power, and so only they can end the Infinite Tsukuyomi. If my form fails before the fight ends, you must teach them the way."
She remembered Naruto and Sasuke forming the Rat seal in a canyon of destruction, the blood on her hands and their arms lost forever. "I'll tell them."
"The seals are: Rat, Tiger, Dog, Rat, Ox, Dragon, Rat." The Sage demonstrated each seal as he spoke.
Sakura stared. Not just Rat? She forced herself to nod. "Rat, Tiger, Dog, Rat, Ox, Dragon, Rat," she repeated. "I'll tell them. But I need to go now, before Kaguya awakens."
"Kaguya?" The Sage gave her a strange look, but Sakura had no time left to explain.
"I have to go." She turned to leave, but The Sage reached for her shoulder.
"Remember: you've been dreaming, child." His eyes were wide and urgent. "Don't trust anything you think you know." He stepped away from her as another peal of lightning jutsu sounded in the distance. "Now go; and good luck."
There was a game Sakura had played once, on a mission that had drawn out into a siege. It described battle as a series of six-second increments, with each combatant able to take a limited number of actions within that 'round' of combat. Six seconds might have seemed like nothing to a civilian, but shinobi knew better. Every second counted in a real fight, and any fight that lasted longer than a minute would be a dangerous drain on both chakra and stamina.
When she finally homed in on the sound of battle, creeping close enough to see but not so close as to give herself away, she would have guessed that her friends had been fighting Uchiha Madara for about two minutes. A crater had formed around them, and it was this broken earth that she crouched behind as she assessed the situation. There was Naruto, glowing with the power of the Sage as well as that innate positivity that Sakura had rarely seen on his adult face. And there was Sasuke; her heart leaped instinctually at the sight of her absent husband. Sarada would be so happy…
She gripped the jagged rock tightly. Don't do this now. Lock it away for later.
There was something human-sized lying on the ground near Madara's feet. Kakashi?! No; looking closer, she realised it was the lifeless corpse of the Black Zetsu. But that couldn't have been right; in her dream, it had betrayed Madara and awakened the true enemy.
Don't trust anything, remember? Her inner voice chided her for her foolishness. She had expected to swoop in and save the day with the power of foresight, but there was no guarantee that anything at all would play out the way it had in her dream. Her breaths came in shallow puffs, the smell of blood and dust making her head spin.
Keep it together. You can't help them if you panic. Sakura forced herself to breathe properly, balling her hands into fists and watching the battle for an opening. She was the only help that was coming, and her friends couldn't hold out much longer. Naruto and Sasuke still glowed with power, but Sasuke's eyes were bleeding with strain and the last time Naruto looked that tired was just after Sakura had removed her hand from his heart. He was down to three shadow clones at a time, and each time they fell it seemed to take a split second longer for Naruto to reform them.
There was movement on the banks of the crater opposite her. Obito was still alive, but Sakura doubted he would last much longer without medical attention. He hung back, kiting Madara with ranged attacks while the others went in close. It was a shock to see the man after thirteen years of believing him dead. Perhaps this time she could change his fate.
And there, leaping into view from behind the cover of a boulder, was Kakashi. He didn't look quite as bad as Obito, but unlike Obito it was clear he wasn't hanging back at all. The twin slashes on his chest had stained his flak vest a sickly brown and his movements were uncharacteristically sluggish, but still he persisted. Obito aimed a fireball at Madara, and Kakashi attacked from the blind spot it created with a fist full of lightning. Sakura watched, biting down on the urge to cry out as Madara aimed a vicious kick at the man's chest. Kakashi groaned, sliding to a halt on the ground.
There was a sound like the whistling of a kettle, and Sakura turned her attention back to Naruto and Sasuke. They were standing close together, hands outstretched as they formed something similar to a Rasengan but crackling with purple electricity.
Black fire surged from Madara and Sakura realised that her 'perfect opening' would never come. If Naruto and Sasuke went down here, the entire human race was doomed. Her legs moved on reflex alone and she sprinted, forming seals with shaking hands. Kakashi and Obito were also racing for the pair, but with their injuries and the distance Sakura knew they would never catch it in time.
It's just like that day on the hospital roof, Inner Sakura whispered. Except this time, she wasn't coming between Naruto and Sasuke, but shielding them both from something else. And this time, she swore to herself, she would make a gods-damned difference.
She slid to a halt in front of her two best friends half a heartbeat before Amaterasu struck. There was so much she wanted to say to them, but then fire burned away all thought. She screamed, wrapping her arms around her face to protect her eyes. Her scream died as quickly as it began, the air sucked from her lungs by the vortex of black fire. She had managed to activate One Thousand Healings in time, but she knew it would only buy her a few extra seconds of agony against a flame that could burn for seven days straight. She was writhing on the ground, as far as she could tell, curled tightly against the flames as they reduced her clothes to ashes and scorched her flesh to the bone. Her cells regenerated as best they could, muscle stitching back together and skin trying desperately to seal her wounds. She could hear voices, but it might have been Amaterasu or it might have been the blood rushing in her ears, her body's feeble response to the trauma. How ironic, that she should drown and burn to death all in the same day?
Her grip on Thousand Healings finally slipped and she braced for oblivion; but instead of finally consuming her, the pain actually seemed to lessen. Her nerves must have finally reached their limit, unable to be regenerated any further. Soon, much sooner than she had wanted, she would look upon the face of death again.
"Sakura."
A voice. She wanted to face it, but there was still too much pain.
"Wake up."
The rushing in her ears had gone from a waterfall to a gentle stream. It felt like the flow of chakra, soothing her burns with its cool healing power. But there was no way she'd had this much in reserve.
Something fell onto her raw skin and her body flinched away from its touch. She removed her arms from her face and took a slow, shuddering breath.
You're still here, her own inner voice said.
But where was 'here'?
"Sakura, open your eyes."
That was Kakashi's voice. Her captain. Her friend. But it was also the voice of the liar, the one who tried to trick her into staying asleep. Should she trust it?
The pain dropped down to a bearable level and she was able to think more clearly. She opened her eyes, gingerly taking in her surroundings.
There was light all around her, emanating from her very body. Naruto's chakra cloak. And there was Naruto himself and all the others, standing over her. She wasn't sure how, but the battle must have been over.
"You lived." Obito was standing a little ways back, his expression mild.
You're one to talk.
She looked down at herself. Her skin was an angry red, shiny with her own blood. Her clothes were little more than charred rags, sticking to her body in dark clumps that would be hell to remove later on. There was a purple cloth over her shoulders, and though it stung she wrapped herself tighter in its folds. Modesty was a privilege in the shinobi world, but the normalcy brought her comfort.
"What happened?" she said, or at least tried to. It came out as a raw whisper, and the others flinched.
"Try not to speak," Naruto said, kneeling down to her level. "I'm lending you my chakra but it's not healing you as fast as it heals me."
So that's how she was still alive. "Amaterasu?" She coughed, but he seemed to understand.
"Obito removed it with the mangekyou sharingan," he said, "while we finished Madara." He glanced back at the far edge of the crater, and Sakura followed his line of sight to a charred and broken body. It was over.
She flexed her fingers. Her tendons and ligaments were badly damaged, but she could still perform the basic healing seals. She sighed in relief; Naruto's chakra had prevented her death by sheer force of power, but medical jutsu focused that chakra and sped up the healing process tenfold.
"How are you even here, Sakura?" Sasuke looked down at her with an inscrutable expression. She realised it was his purple robe that she was currently wearing.
"I…" She stopped. Her story wasn't the important thing right now. She tried to get to her feet.
A hand reached out to steady her; Kakashi's eyes were wide with concern and it was clear he was trying to touch her skin as little as possible. She stared at him, his masked face. It didn't make her head hurt, but she still had to look away.
"You need to break the genjutsu," she said, addressing Naruto and Sasuke. "The Sage showed me the seals."
She had to be ready for what came next. She tied the robe around herself like a makeshift dress, leaving her free to move if it came to it.
"Tell us then," Sasuke said. There was no hint of impending betrayal in his voice, but Sakura would take no chances this time. She avoided his eyes, watching his torso instead. Any subtle changes to his stance and she would put him down without hesitation.
She told them the sequence of seals, and braced herself for a new fight. But it never came; Sasuke cooperated, and the branches of the world tree came crashing down.
It should have been a relief; despite everything, the final battle had gone far smoother than her dream had predicted. Obito was still alive, and Naruto hadn't been forced to fight Sasuke at the cost of both their arms. In fact, as soon as the Infinite Tsukuyomi was released Sasuke simply sat on the ground and waited.
But Sakura couldn't relax. Her eyes flicked from Sasuke to the body of Madara to the edges of the crater, searching for the next surprise.
"Why are you here?"
Her gaze turned to Obito, who had shifted closer and was watching her with a curious expression.
"What do you mean?"
"We saw you, from inside Susanoo," Kakashi finally spoke up, his voice soft. "We lost you."
The memory of that moment flashed across her mind once more: Kakashi and Naruto's stricken faces, Sasuke's expressionless mask. She suddenly felt less guilty for dreaming of a reality where Sasuke would trap her in a genjutsu. "I wasn't close enough to the rest of you. Susanoo missed me."
She glanced at Sasuke, but he was ignoring the others completely.
"But why did you escape?" Obito pressed.
She blinked. "'Why?'"
"It was meant to be paradise. Even if you could leave, why would you want to?"
"Because…" she didn't want to do this here, half-dressed and hurting. "It wasn't."
Something in Obito's expression shifted. He grabbed her hand, his odd eyes boring into hers.
"Don't you want to go back?"
She couldn't move, couldn't look away. Why would anyone assume she would want to return to a dream, a lie? And yet…
"Sarada," she murmured, the name slipping from her lips before she could catch it. The hand wrapped around hers squeezed, once, then let go. Uchiha Obito turned away from her to say something to Naruto, leaving Sakura alone with her turbulent thoughts.
The two Uchiha traitors were arrested without argument or incident, Naruto promising to vouch for them both. Sakura watched them go, hugging the purple robe to her body.
The Fifth Hokage arrived, pulling Sakura into a painful embrace. "You did it," she said, and Sakura could see the pride shining through the exhaustion and pain. "You actually did it."
Sakura gave her mistress the same smile she gave Sarada when she was lying about her headaches.
"Of course, I'll need a full report as soon as possible," Tsunade continued, turning to include Naruto and Kakashi. Naruto was almost invisible at the centre of an entire crowd of ninja. As a division commander Kakashi had also attracted a sizeable group. "The world will want to know what happened here."
"What happened," Sakura repeated quietly. Her inner voice was silent.
Perhaps sensing Sakura's mood, her mistress backed off. "For now, I'll let you rest. Kami knows, there will be time for formalities later." After a final pat on her shoulder, she disappeared into the crowd.
Sakura was alone. People probably assumed that she was just another ninja who had come to greet the conquering heroes. In another life that would have stung, but now she welcomed the anonymity. She turned to leave for the main camp, but paused when she realised something.
"Shit," she muttered under her breath, trying to avoid bumping into the stream of ninja coming the other way. After thirteen years' worth of false memories, she couldn't remember the layout of their camp; specifically, which tent had been hers.
She pushed her hair away from her face, and a whole section crunched to dust in her hand. Slowly, she ran her fingers across the back of her head. Burned hair fell away in acrid-smelling clumps. Her forehead protector was also gone, probably little more than a blackened metal plate lying in the crater somewhere. It seemed she was doomed to lose it no matter what.
She sped up, avoiding the concerned glances of her comrades. Each row of tents began to blur into the next. "Please," she whispered, gripping her robe so tightly that it bit into her still-raw skin. She was at her limit. "Please just give me somewhere to hide."
"There you are."
Sakura spun on her heel, hands balling into fists. Kakashi raised a hand. "Sorry, didn't mean to startle you."
She forced her body to relax. "No, I'm sorry. I'm just…" having a breakdown. "Stressed."
Kakashi nodded. "Understandable, all things considered. Can I help?"
"I can't find my tent." Sakura gestured helplessly at the identical structures.
"I see."
She laughed sheepishly. "Pathetic, isn't it?"
"That's not a word I would ever associate with you, Sakura-chan." Kakashi guided her forward. "But I was a little worried you might have been...troubled, I guess, by everything that just happened."
"You think I'm 'troubled'?" She arched an eyebrow.
"I'd be surprised if you weren't, frankly."
"And yet you didn't chase after Naruto to check if he was okay." Sakura knew she was being unfair, but this was the first time she'd properly spoken to the man since waking up.
Kakashi's eyes narrowed, those same eyes that had so recently glared at her from an otherwise empty face. "Naruto didn't just break out of the world's most powerful genjutsu less than an hour ago," he said. "So I thought I'd check up on you first."
Sakura deflated. "I'm being a bitch, aren't it?"
Kakashi chuckled. "Also not a word I would ever associate with you. 'Assertive' maybe..."
She grimaced. "I'm just processing a lot of stuff right now. But I am sorry for being 'assertive,' Kakashi."
They fell silent, Sakura chewing her lip and avoiding Kakashi's glances in her direction. Eventually they stopped at a tent with a small tear in the canvas that Sakura vaguely remembered.
"This is you," Kakashi said.
Another awkward silence fell over them as they both lingered at the entrance. Sakura couldn't help but be reminded of the day Kakashi had almost kissed her.
Not Kakashi, she reminded herself. Just a dream.
But then Kakashi tapped his index finger against her forehead, and her face blazed with heat at the familiar gesture.
"What are you-"
"That's going to take some getting used to," he smiled, seeming not to notice her blush. "Your seal," he clarified, when Sakura didn't respond.
"That's right; my seal is new." Sakura fought to get a hold of her scattered thoughts. Of all the jokes the universe was playing on her today, this one had the cruelest punchline.
"It suits you," Kakashi added.
"Oh, um, thanks. Anyway," she gestured to her burnt clothes and flimsy robe, "I guess I'd better get cleaned up. See you later, Kakashi." She forced herself to smile at him before practically running inside the tent.
"Until then, Sakura-chan."
The tent had six basic beds, little more than stretched canvas on a wire frame, with a small bench at the base where you could store whatever you weren't carrying into battle. At the far end of the tent, a mirror sat propped against a shared basin. She remembered that her cot was the one furthest back and to the left of that basin.
Slowly, she approached the mirror. She remembered the times she'd adjusted her forehead protector in its reflection, or washed her face with water from the drum that flowed into the basin. She leaned forward to look at herself now.
The face that looked back was barely recognisable. There was a hint of the teenaged girl who had once slept in this tent and fought in this war, but her face was red and puffy, and her hair was a charred mess. Covering her face with her arms had somewhat protected her hairline and temples, but the rest was singed back to her scalp.
Sakura covered her mouth to stifle the scream that had been working its way up her throat ever since she had woken up in that silent battleground. Never again would she look into the mirror and see the grown woman she was, the woman who wore civilian headbands and clothes with the Uchiha fan on the back. That woman had died in the river. And this…person was a stranger.
The mirror shattered against her fist, her warped reflection scattering into shrapnel. She continued to stare, unseeing, at the space where it had been. Her body registered cuts along her knuckles, but in that moment such pain was trivial.
"Rule 25," she whispered to herself, the words hissing against her hand. "A shinobi must never show their tears."
And indeed, no tears were forthcoming. That would have been the final humiliation, the final reminder that the last thirteen years of her life were a fantasy. Haruno Sakura did not cry. Not anymore.
Silently, she healed her cut hand and scrubbed the ruined skin and hair from her body.
"You should rest."
Sakura didn't even look up from the broken leg she was setting. "Hey, Hinata. Did you know that you're the tenth person to tell me that since the war ended?"
The girl gave a sheepish shrug, moving closer to the bedside Sakura was working at. "I'm sorry. It's become almost habitual, hasn't it? Everyone is telling everyone else to go to sleep, but nobody really wants to try just yet."
Sakura gave a sarcastic snort. "Can't imagine why."
A cool, calloused hand briefly rested upon her forearm. "I hope your dream wasn't too difficult," Hinata said, her voice even quieter than usual.
With a final crick, the bone pieces moved into their proper place. It would have been excruciating if the patient were still awake, but the morphine drip in the man's arm kept him from feeling anything. Sakura envied him.
"No more difficult than anyone else's, I'm sure," she finally said, turning to smile at the other girl. Hinata's hair was longer than Sakura remembered, glossy and straight even after a brutal battle.
"Are you alright?" Hinata asked.
"I'm fine," Sakura lied. "So, what brings you to the medical tent?"
The girl's ivory skin turned a little pink. "I wanted to check up on Naruto."
"Ah..." the nostalgia almost made Sakura smile. She jerked a thumb over to the far corner of the tent. Even in a hospital cot Naruto managed to get comfortable, sprawling out and snoring. "He's doing pretty well for a guy whose heart stopped beating a few hours ago, but that's Naruto for you."
"May I go see him?"
"Of course," Sakura said, stopping herself just before saying 'he's your husband after all.' "He's asleep at the moment. You should have come earlier."
Hinata clasped her hands in front of her. "Unfortunately I was busy with my clan. Making funeral arrangements."
"Oh. Right." Sakura could have smacked herself. "I'm so sorry about Neji-san, Hinata. That should have been the first thing out of my mouth."
Hinata shook her head, her hair rippling down her back. Had it truly been such a length? "A lot has happened today," she said, and Sakura felt a pang of chagrin even as she gave the girl a grateful smile. You have no idea.
"I'm done with this tent, so I'll leave Naruto in your care." She stepped quietly toward the door.
"Sakura?" Hinata's soft voice made her pause. The girl was watching her closely, and even though her face was impossibly young, it was filled with shrewdness. "You really should try to get some rest."
"Damn Hyuugas," Sakura mumbled to herself when she was certain she was out of earshot.
In the past few hours since the war's official end, she had kept herself as busy as possible. This mostly involved moving between the medical tents offering assistance where it was (eternally) required. She had expected people to comment on her appearance, but luckily everyone seemed preoccupied with their own problems. At one point she had run into Naruto, setting him up in an empty medical cot for want of any better arrangement. He had wanted to talk, ask her again what happened, but she shut him down and he had the good sense not to pursue it. The speed with which he'd fallen asleep was almost baffling; but then, he was one of four people in the world who had nothing to fear from their dreams.
Sakura's chakra was too low now to be of medical use, and at such a late hour she doubted anyone would even take her. But she couldn't go back to her tent; if she closed her eyes, she wasn't sure where she'd be when she opened them.
So she wandered, ignoring the various ways her body was making its exhaustion known. After a few minutes of stifling yawns and forcing her eyes to stay open, she caught a whiff of smoke in the breeze. At the site of Madara's defeat and the war's end, a bonfire had been lit. Ringing the flames, she could make out dozens of shinobi, from all different villages. Many were carousing together, drinking deeply from shared flasks. Others were simply staring into the fire with haunted eyes.
She hung back, avoiding the heat of the fire but drawn to the promise of further distraction.
"Want a drink?" Someone from the Hidden Cloud shook a flask in front of her face.
The alcohol burned on the way down, and she coughed into the crook of her arm.
"Hey, are you sure she's over the legal drinking age?" another shinobi joked, taking the flask from her. "Are you over twenty, little girl?"
"I'm over twenty," she glared at the men through watering eyes. "The taste just caught me off-guard."
They laughed. "Do you not have saké in Konoha?"
She ignored them, moving in a wide orbit to the other side of the fire. Her first taste of alcohol had been a celebratory cup of saké with Tsunade just after her second Chuunin exam. It had burned then, too. But later in life the taste of alcohol had seemed quite agreeable. Another lie her dreams had told her.
"Sakura-san!"
Sakura glanced up to see a boy in a Hidden Rock uniform waving at her with his free hand. The other was bound in a sling against his chest.
"Hello." She gave him an automatic smile, mentally scanning her memories from the war.
The boy cocked his head to the side. "Are you alright, Sakura-san? Your hair…"
She had done her best to even out the burned patches, but she was sure it still looked terrible. Maybe if she ran into Ino, she could do something about it.
"It's fine," she answered wearily. "Listen, this is going to sound incredibly rude, but what was your name again?"
"Morio." The boy blushed. "I, er, gave you a love letter the other night."
"Right! I do remember that," Sakura nodded emphatically. "I'm sorry Morio-san, I'm just a little disoriented after everything that happened. You know." She gestured vaguely.
Morio seemed to understand. "There's no need to apologise! A lot of people feel that way. That genjutsu was...very convincing." His blush deepened. "Um, would you like a drink?"
Sakura eyed the flask he offered. "What is it?"
"Coffee." He shook it gently, revealing a little puff of steam. "Though I think I saw some saké if you'd prefer-"
"Coffee is perfect." Sakura took a grateful swig. The gentle warmth helped soothe her shock even as the caffeine helped take the edge off her exhaustion. "Thank you, Morio-kun. I needed this."
"No problem!" the boy gave her an eager smile. "I'm happy I could do something for you."
They fell into silence for a few seconds, while Sakura drank more coffee and Morio scratched absently at his cast.
"I'm glad you survived the war in the end," Sakura offered.
Morio grinned sheepishly. "You too. Did, er, did the boy you're in love with also…?"
"Ah." Sakura paused.
"Sorry, I shouldn't have asked!" Morio waved his hands, before wincing and clutching his broken arm.
"No it's fine. I just don't really know how to answer. He's not...it's not like that between us anymore." It never was.
"Oh. Well if you ever need anything, it would be the least I could do after how much help you've given me." He gestured to his sling.
A sudden impulse struck her. "Actually, could I try something?" Before he could answer, she leaned in and kissed him.
For a second the boy froze in place. Belatedly he returned the kiss and raised his uninjured arm to place on her waist. A few seconds later, Sakura broke away.
"That was my first kiss," she murmured, absently touching her lips.
"I...why did you do that?" Morio's eyebrows had disappeared behind his forehead protector. "Not that I mind, but…"
Sakura laughed self-consciously. "Kami, you're so young." She handed back the flask. "I should go. Thanks for the drink, Morio-kun."
There were still a few more hours before bug-out, but Sakura decided that even if she wasn't willing to sleep, she wasn't fit to be around others either. Sneaking into her tent, trying not to wake her companions (always a challenge with fellow kunoichi), she lay atop her cot and waited for the sun to rise.
Back home, her dream home, she would never go to bed without first wishing Sarada goodnight. Even when she was by herself, she always paused by her absent daughter's bedroom door and said a quick "sleep well!" as if Sarada would still hear it while away on her missions.
"Sleep well," she whispered now, so quiet that it was almost silent. "Wherever you are." And then, just as quietly, her hands formed the genjutsu release seal. "Kai!"
The dark, quiet room remained unchanged, and Sakura closed her eyes with a sigh.