Sakura had been too afraid to sleep, so she spent the night silently reciting an old medical textbook from memory. Even so, her focus would occasionally slip into some idle thought about what Sarada would like for dinner, or whether Kakashi would come over for a sparring session later. Her entire body shook with tension, like she was vibrating. Her heart beat so fast it hurt. When the sun finally rose she was up and ready to bug out before some of her tent-mates had even opened their eyes. The sooner they were on the road, the sooner she could get reacquainted with her real life in Konoha.

Or so she thought. After half a day of hard marching through Fire Country, the pace of the convoy slowed, and then stalled completely. From somewhere in the middle of the line, Sakura glanced around for a danger that didn't seem to be forthcoming.

"What's going on?" Shinobi were standing on the backs of carts to try and see to the front of the line. "What's happened?"

Slowly, far slower than before, the convoy resumed its march, and after a few minutes Sakura could see the reason for the delay.

She had a vague recollection of passing through the town of Shiroito when they had first left the village. It had been small but prosperous, with a main street wide enough to turn a bullock cart. The locals had all gathered to throw wildflowers in their path, shouting blessings and encouragement to the troops.

Now, that busy little town lay almost silent. The road was littered with bodies; some were the unmistakable pallor of the Zetsu clones, but most were human. Shiroito hadn't had much in the way of a militia, and it was clear they hadn't put up much of a fight.

"They weren't supposed to get this far," a nearby shinobi murmured, apparently to himself. "We were supposed to be heading them off at the border."

"Apparently, we failed."

Sakura glanced up at the familiar voice. Kakashi was heading back down the convoy, moving against the flow of foot traffic. He caught Sakura's eye and raised his hand in greeting.

"There you are. Tsunade wants you up at the front."

"Do you know what happened?" Sakura asked, weaving through the crowd to keep him in her sights. "How did the white Zetsu get so far into Fire territory?"

"Like I said, we appear to have failed in our mission to keep them out." Kakashi was speaking more quietly now, and Sakura had to fight to stay within earshot. Shinobi parted instantly for Kakashi, but barely acknowledged her.

"Are there any survivors?" Sakura asked the back of his head, side-stepping a particularly burly jounin.

Kakashi's gloved hand grabbed hers, tugging her closer to his side. Out of the corner of his mouth, he murmured to her: "Some. That's why Tsunade wants you."

Sakura watched the last shinobi as they marched on down the main road and out of sight. They would probably reach Konoha by midnight if they didn't stop.

As for her, Kakashi was leading her to a side street with a tall building that might once have been a school. Tsunade was waiting by the large double doors.

A pair of jounin carrying a stretcher rushed past, sending the doors swinging. Sakura caught a glimpse of more stretchers inside, as well as several more civilians standing in a loose huddle. Walking wounded, she thought to herself.

"Sakura," Tsunade nodded to her, "I see Kakashi managed to find you." Her mistress wasted no time in explaining the situation. "You and Kakashi work together on recovery. Anyone in a critical condition gets treated at the scene, otherwise they walk or get carried here. I have to return to the convoy, so I want things running efficiently by the time I send reinforcements back from Konoha. Understand?"

"Yes, Hokage-sama," they said in unison.

"Then go."

As terrible as it was, Sakura was grateful for a new distraction. Sure, every child's body she pulled from the rubble seemed to have Sarada's face, and Kakashi kept glancing at her as if trying to read her thoughts. But there were no crowds, no friends with too-young faces. There was only the rubble, the wounded, and the bodies.

"Let's take a break," Kakashi said, tapping her lightly on the shoulder.

She frowned at him. "We've only just started." There was a pile of concrete and wood that had been cleared and checked, and an even larger pile that remained an unknown.

Kakashi gave her a deadpan expression that was almost nostalgic. "You've been healing and clearing nonstop. You're almost at your limit."

"No I'm not," Sakura protested, before a wave of exhaustion slammed into her like a Water Dragon. She staggered, falling back against a slab of concrete that had once been part of a house. Kakashi grabbed her shoulder to steady her.

"You okay?"

She pulled back from his touch, and he released her instantly. "I'm fine, Kakashi," she replied, but the lie was so hollow it was almost laughable. "I just thought I had more stamina than this."

"You've been going for five hours," Kakashi reminded her gently, but Sakura shook her head.

"In my dream," she began, but stopped. She could hear a noise coming from within the rubble; a faint but insistent tapping.

"Help me move this," she said, grabbing one side of the concrete slab. When they had started, Sakura was moving pieces of rubble twice its size without any help, but now it was all she could do not to drop it on their feet.

After a few minutes of clearing, they found the source of the tapping. Three villagers: a man, a woman, and a small child, lay inside a tiny cavity between two larger pieces of rubble. They were covered in a fine film of dust, but the father and child moved feebly toward the light. The mother wasn't moving at all.

They pulled them all free, Kakashi helping the man and child while Sakura surreptitiously checked the woman's pulse.

"What happened?" The man said, voice hoarse even after Kakashi had offered him his water flask. "What happened?"

"You were caught up in an attack from the enemy," Kakashi explained.

"My wife?" The man asked, and Sakura could see his eyes were glassy with shock.

Kakashi looked at Sakura, who shook her head. "I'm afraid she didn't make it."

Sakura left the woman where she lay, moving on to check the child. They were so young and filthy that Sakura couldn't tell if they were a boy or a girl. Using the sleeve of her shirt, she wiped away some of the dust and inspected the depth of a cut on their forehead. The child squirmed at the pain, lower lip trembling.

"Atsuko?" The man's restless gaze cast around. "Where's my daughter?"

"Is this her?" Sakura gestured to the child in her lap, who sat up and reached for the man.

"Papa."

The man stared at his daughter, but there was no hint of recognition in his face. "This isn't Atsuko," he said, voice flat.

The girl began to cry, streaks of snot and tears running through what remained of the dust and blood. Sakura's maternal heart crumpled at the sight.

"Are you sure?" Kakashi asked, while Sakura tried to comfort the girl. "She was with you when we found you."

"My daughter is almost ten." The man was becoming agitated, waving his hands for emphasis. The girl cried harder. "This child is far too young to be Atsuko!"

"Papa!" the girl sobbed, burying her face into Sakura's jacket, "Mama!"

The man remained unmoved, staring through his daughter and the body of his wife as if they weren't even there. "My family must be waiting for me at the park. That's where we were before we got separated."

A cold ice cube of realisation slipped down Sakura's throat. She grabbed a fistful of the man's shirt, forcing him to look her in the eye.

"How long had you been dreaming before you woke up?"

"Dreaming?" The man's brows creased, but he didn't look away.

"Yes, dreaming. Everyone got stuck in a dream-world early yesterday." She told him the date. "How long has it been for you since then?"

Sakura's undershirt was growing wet with Atsuko's tears, and she could feel Kakashi's eyes on her, but she forced herself to ignore everything but the man. He gaped like a fish drowning in air.

"Five...five years?"

Sakura nodded sympathetically. "And before that, back when the white creatures attacked your town, do you remember what happened?"

Silence.

"Do you remember your house collapsing, and hiding in the rubble with your little girl?"

She could almost see the thread of sanity she was tugging on, but it was time for the man to wake up.

"Do you remember what happened to your wife?"

The thread snapped. "Take me back!" the man cried, lurching away from her. He threw himself onto the ground, crawling toward the dark crevice where they had found him.

"Stop!" Kakashi grabbed the back of the man's shirt before he could disappear back into the rubble. "It isn't safe in there."

Sakura watched as Kakashi pulled him upright. He might have been a civilian, but he fought the entire time, kicking and scratching Kakashi with such ferocity that Sakura put Atsuko down and stepped forward to help.

"You have to let it go, sir."

"Don't say it wasn't real!" The man broke free from Kakashi's grip, taking two hasty steps backward. In his hand he gripped a shard of glass so tightly that trickles of blood were running down his hand. "Don't you tell me it was just a dream!"

Sakura eyed the glass; it must have come from a broken window or some other scrap of the man's former home. It wouldn't do much against two seasoned ninja, but Sakura suspected it wasn't for them.

"I would never tell you that," she said softly. "Of course it was real for you. It was real for me too. But then it ended."

"I have to go back. She's waiting for me."

"No." Sakura shook her head. "I'm so sorry, but I don't think we can go back."

"You don't know that," the man said, before plunging the jagged point of the glass toward his neck.

Sakura had known it was coming, but still she barely reached him in time. She threw her hand out, and the glass sank into her forearm instead of his jugular vein.

The man looked at her with an expression that was half surprise and half disappointment.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, right before Kakashi knocked him out.

"The man's name is Ikeda Hikari: he and his wife Kumiko were gardeners," Kakashi told Sakura that night, when all but the necessary personnel had settled in to rest. Sakura was one of the youngest medics present, but the others respected her skills (and her inability to take no for an answer) enough to put her on night-rounds.

She took the bottle of water Kakashi offered her. "Gardeners," she repeated, shaking her head. "So much for a low civilian body count."

Kakashi slid into the chair next to Sakura's. They were plastic and child-sized, but more comfortable than sitting on the floor. "You know," he told her, looking out at the rows of sleeping patients, "everyone I spoke to about the Infinite Tsukuyomi said that their dreams lasted no more than a week or so."

"Hmm."

"I can only imagine how jarring it must have been to wake up after five years."

Sakura took a swig of water. "Quite a shock, I would assume."

"And then to wake up and find that instead of a utopia, you're back in what must be one of the worst days of your life." Kakashi turned to her. "On an unrelated note, I noticed you've started dropping the -sensei honorific after my name."

Somewhere, a baby began to mewl. Sakura watched Kakashi from the corner of her eye. "I meant no disrespect by it, Kakashi-sensei."

He smiled at her, the eye-crinkling smile that made her feel like a genin again. "Think nothing of it. I just thought you might want to talk to someone about, well, everything that happened in the last forty-eight hours or so."

"Not particularly." Her shaggy hair was tickling her face again, and she raked it back so forcefully that a few more singed strands broke off in her hands. She eyed them with disgust.

"Your hair will grow back eventually," Kakashi said gently.

Sakura knew he was trying to be nice, so she bit down on her sarcastic reply. "It's the unevenness that bothers me more than the length," she said instead, showing him the patches of longer hair near her nape.

"Want me to fix it up for you?"

She hummed. On the one hand, Kakashi was too shrewd for his own good and Sakura didn't want to return to the topic of her dream until she was ready. On the other, her hair was a mess.

"Alright then."

They worked outside, where the glow of their lamp wouldn't disturb the sleeping patients. Kakashi used a kunai to trim the burnt ends of her hair and even out the back. Sakura had expected to feel unsafe with a blade at her neck, but it was so nostalgic that she couldn't help but smile.

"Ino did the same thing for me during the chuunin exam."

"I did wonder how you managed to get such a snazzy haircut in the middle of the Forest of Death."

The moon came out from behind a cloud, and Sakura shivered.

It took another two days (and two restless nights) before reinforcements arrived from Konoha and Sakura was finally able to go home. It was only when she passed through the village's A-n gates that she felt some of her tension ease. So much about her future seemed unstable, but at least a warm bath could be more or less guaranteed.

She turned off for home with barely a nod to Kakashi, who after three days of sorting through rubble looked just as filthy as she was. He gave her a strange look, but she was too tired to ponder its meaning.

At the first glimpse of her beautiful house, the biggest one on the nicest street, it was all she could do to stop from breaking into a run. She reached for the handle unthinkingly, and found it was already unlocked. Sarada must be home.

"I'm ho-"

Her voice cut off immediately, stolen by a sucker-punch of wrongness that made her double over. This wasn't what her house looked like at all. Everything was different, from the layout to the furniture to the pictures on the wall. Pictures of strangers.

"Who are you?"

A woman stood at the foot of the stairs (which were in the wrong place), gripping the banister and staring at Sakura with a mixture of fear and anger. "What the hell are you doing in my house?"

Slowly, too slowly, Sakura realised what she had done. The biggest house on the nicest street didn't belong to her. She had passed by it many times and imagined what it would be like to live there, but actually buying it and moving in had only happened in her dream.

"I'm so sorry," she bowed her head hastily, face burning with mortification. "Forgive me." She ducked back through the door and sprinted down the street, blind panic guiding her steps.

After a while, she arrived at her actual home. Her parents' apartment looked the same as it always had, even in her dream. Still, she took a few seconds to stop and find her keys rather than just barge in again.

"I'm home," she called, kicking her boots in the rough direction of the family genkan.

Her mother ducked her head around the corner to the kitchen. Her face was less lined, her hair less grey. It was strange to think that the woman was only a decade or so older than Sakura's mental age.

"The others came back days ago." Her parents had been part of the home defence forces, keeping Konoha safe while the rest went to fight the enemy on neutral ground.

"I got held up at another village." Sakura couldn't think of anything to say to her mother. She usually talked about Sarada, but that wasn't an option anymore. "Medic stuff, mostly."

Haruno Mebuki frowned at Sakura's boots. "Back for two seconds and you're already throwing your stuff around anywhere you please." She flapped her hand. "I guess not even the army could make you a tidier person."

The familiarity of it was like a wave, washing away more than a dozen years of adulthood and exposing her raw, teenage insecurities. Her mother couldn't know how much had changed in the few short weeks since Sakura had left for the war, but it didn't stop a bubble of anger from rising up in her. If she truly had been that same girl, she might have snapped out some rash comment. As it was, she had too much experience with her own daughter to take the bait.

"Mother," she said, and her voice sounded weary. "We have to talk."

"About the state you left your room in?" Mebuki wasn't backing down. "I agree! Perhaps you could clean it up before your father gets home?"

Sakura stared at her mother for a few seconds before finally nodding. "Sure. I'll go do that. By the way, I'm thinking of moving out and finding my own place. Just so you know."

"Really?" That seemed to dampen her mother's fire slightly. "Well, I suppose that's your choice...but you've only just gotten back. We can talk about it over dinner."

"Okay." Sakura turned for the stairs.

"Sakura?" Her mother stepped out of the kitchen to lay a hand on her arm.

"Hmm?"

"It is nice to have you back."

"Thank you." Sakura forced a small smile before disappearing upstairs.

It was true, her childhood bedroom was a mess. Clothes were heaped on the floor, dirty mixed in with clean. She used to think of it as 'organised chaos,' and claimed to have a system for navigating it. But even if that had once been true, she certainly couldn't remember it now.

"Bath first," she said, turning for the bathroom.

The shower water was turned reddish from weeks of blood and grit. She hadn't been able to bathe properly in too long, and her body practically sang with the relief of hot water and soap. Once she was clean she turned to the bath. Her burns were little more than raw skin and bad memories thanks to her healing chakra, but the sudden heat still made her heart race.

After a few minutes the water began to work its magic, easing her aching muscles and soaking away the last of her fear. She closed her eyes…

...and opened them with a jolt that sent a wave of water sloshing over the side of the bath. She couldn't fall asleep.

You'll have to sleep properly at some point, the inner voice of reason reminded her.

"Not here," she said aloud, hoping her words would dispel the sleepy haze around her. She'd fallen asleep in the bath before, once or twice had even slipped below the surface of the water. Her instincts always kicked in and woke her before she drew breath, but she wasn't willing to trust in that instinct now.

Her fingers were barely starting to prune, but still she pushed herself up and reached for her towel. Any tension she had been able to loosen in the water returned with a vengeance, and she hugged the fabric around herself like it was an old lady's winter shawl.

She checked her hair in the steamy mirror. Kakashi had cropped everything short at the back, but there was still enough length at the front that with a little evening out it actually looked intentional. She was surprised at how glossy her hair was, actually. And her face was fuller than it had been in her dream. It wasn't just the return of her youth; dream-Sakura had always seemed more haggard than her age warranted.

"You're still young and happy," she murmured, forcing herself to smile at her reflection. The girl in the mirror smiled back.

Back in her room, she surveyed her options. All of her old clothes were there: her red vest, her yellow undershirt, even her old medic skirt. She remembered trying it on once in adulthood, only to find it no longer fit over her post-baby hips. Now, of course, it would fit perfectly.

But was that what she wanted? If she put on her old chuunin clothes, some part of her would be forced to acknowledge that this was her one-and-only reality. She'd go back to the same Sakura she was before she dreamed thirteen years of new life.

She lifted her red vest from the pile of clothes, examining it critically. She felt no more connection to it than she did her old genin dress, which was sitting in storage somewhere. Carefully, she folded the vest and placed it on her bed. Fetching her pack from where she had dumped it by the door, she grabbed out a clean set of standard-issue Konoha fatigues. It was impersonal, but at least it was a step in a new direction.

Dinner was a quiet affair, at least from Sakura. Her father made the usual annoying puns while her mother continued to pick good-naturedly at everything from her freckles ("don't you ever wear a hat?") to her method of eating ("you're supposed to stir the egg through, not just eat it off the top"). Sakura knew her role was to groan in mock-agony at her father's jokes and rise to her mother's increasingly-outlandish bait, but the whole routine belonged to a different person.

The comfort of a real bed, even her narrow childhood bed, was difficult to resist. Once again she formed a quick genjutsu release seal, and once again nothing happened. With a small sigh of resignation, she slipped under the girlish pink covers and closed her eyes. She prayed that she would wake up in the same place.

After a fitful, shallow sleep, Sakura rose with the light of dawn. The first thing she did was check her surroundings, then form the genjutsu release seal. Nothing seemed amiss, so she slipped out of her bedroom window to watch the streets of Konoha slowly come to life. It was odd; the Konoha in her dream had changed so much that it was a separate place entirely. Seeing the 'real' Konoha again, it struck her just how different her dream life had been. Walking these old, quiet streets was a homecoming of its own.

It took the rest of the morning to write a report to Tsunade, and another three hours of waiting outside the Hokage's office before she could deliver it. Her mistress received it with a distracted smile, scanning its contents.

"You dreamed that you helped defeat a goddess named Kaguya, and then the war ended and everyone was happy. Then you broke out of the dream world using genjutsu kai release and assisted the rest of Team 7 plus Obito in defeating Uchiha Madara. Correct?"

Sakura nodded. "That about sums it up."

"The brevity is uncharacteristic for you, but I can't say I'm complaining." Tsunade glanced meaningfully at her overflowing in-tray. "If you have nothing further to report, then we'll move on."

In truth, Sakura had much more she could have added, such as the fact that her genjutsu dream had lasted more than a decade longer than anyone else had reported thus far, or that in order to break out of the genjutsu she'd been forced to drown herself. She told herself she was just being efficient, sticking to the pertinent details, but in truth she wasn't sure why she couldn't bring herself to talk about it.

"Nothing else to report, Shishou."