i'm back! as always, thank you all for the lovely feedback! i laughed at the overwhelming sentiment of 'wow can sakura pls get a break?' - she can't. that is the life of a protag ;)
some shoutouts!
thank you to Fluttershy2051923 for their reviews of each chapter, that was a genuine pleasure to read!
thanks to i dredhur for making me laugh while reading your comment!
another thanks to Fluttershy for bringing to my attention the fact that there's another story out there whose second chapter is an almost copy-and-paste of my first chapter. luckily, the story seems to be destined for a COMPLETELY different course than my own, and they do credit me, in a very backhand way of saying 'i realise there's a lot of borrowed elements from PMW'. however, as the story is currently on 3 chapters and was last updated over a year ago, i dont particularly care either way, just in case anyone was worried.
also, for those of you hoping for an OT3? you're welcome ;)
When Sakura came to, she was surrounded by darkness.
Her right arm was throbbing in a way she had long since learned to associate with serious injury, but when she tried to move her left to investigate, she found that she couldn't. A quick investigation revealed that all her limbs, while accounted for, were immobile.
Sakura forced her sluggish brain to focus and wiggled the fingers of her left hand to try and feel the material around her; concrete.
The memory of laying in bed with Shikamaru and Chojuro came flooding back, as did the sudden darkness that had descended on them out of nowhere, and the sense of danger! that she got from the pulse of chakra that brought the building falling down on them.
Building. Right. That's why there's a metallic taste at the back of her throat and she can't quite take a deep breath. A building collapsed on them.
A sudden noise to her right made Sakura jump which brought a fresh wave of pain with the movement, but she couldn't turn her head to even try and make out what was happening.
"Sakura?" a blissfully familiar voice rasped from the darkness, and Sakura almost sobbed with relief.
"Shika?" she croaked back, wincing at how the dust made her throat feel like sandpaper. "I'm here."
"Where's 'here'?" a dazed, pained voice joined from her right, and some of the weight lifted from Sakura's shoulders. Alive, at least.
"Our accommodation." she answered shortly, then an idea struck her. "Can you try to reach me? I might," she coughed, the dust burning as it got deeper into her airways, "might be able to get us out of here."
The idea of using Hiraishin with three people out of a confined space terrified her, but the options were try or waste away awaiting an extraction squad to find them, or a summon to squish them like bugs.
The boys seemed to understand that their options looked bleak and diligently set to trying to push through the piles of rubble and debris that separated them. After a few minutes of working blind, Sakura felt Shikamaru's fingers brush her shoulder while Chojuro's wrapped around her elbow.
Here we go.
She sought out the Hiraishin seal-tag she felt was the safest bet, not trusting any of the ones she'd placed in Konoha, sent a quick prayer to whoever was listening, then she pumped chakra into the connection, uncaring of how much she wasted and pulled.
A split-second of neither-here-nor-there later, her knees hit rock, sending a pulse of fire radiating from the joint upwards and tearing the skin of her knees. Sakura's head throbbed dully and she tried to blink her eyes against the sudden brightness of dust-free air.
"...Pinky-chan?"
Sakura jerked, her knees and arm protesting, but before she could get a word out, she was suddenly coughing, blood spilling past her lips as her cracked or broken ribs shifted and her lungs burned.
"Pinky-chan!" there was a careful arm around her waist and something was pulling her hair back as she coughed, and after a few more disoriented seconds, Sakura's eyes focused and zeroed in on Yuki's concerned face.
"Hngf." she mumbled and slumped in his arms, her ribs screaming. Then the chakra exhaustion from making a jump from Konoha to Kiri with two other people suddenly registered and a violently throbbing headache settled in her temples.
"What the hell happened?" another voice, gruff but familiar, asked, and Sakura barely listened as Shikamaru explained, her brain trying to remind her that there was something that she was missing.
"Chojuro!" she gasped into Yuki's chest and tried to wiggle free, managing to poke her head over his shoulder; Chojuro was laying still, his head bleeding sluggishly, and a sharp piece of debris was sticking out of his ankle, the ground around it also stained brown. "I have to-!" she renewed her efforts to wiggle free, but if anything, Yuki held her tighter.
"If you try to heal a head-wound in your current state, you might as well slit his throat with a kunai and call it job done." he announced gruffly, turning so she couldn't see Chojuro anymore. "Ao, up for the challenge?"
There was a snort and a sound of quiet footsteps, and Sakura was finally able to put a name to the voice she'd heard before.
But what were Ao and Yuki doing on her cliff?
"Beating the shit out of each other and calling it a spar, pinky-chan." Yuki told her, laughter in his voice, and it took Sakura longer than she'd care to admit to realise she'd spoken out loud. "Now, I'm going to put you down, and you're going to heal your arm while Ao fixes sword-boy, while your boyfriend explains what the deal with that seal on your arm is."
Sakura allowed Yuki to sit her down on the same boulder she'd etched her Hiraishin seal into. She tried to blink through the migraine and focus on her arm, but the harder she tried, the more debilitating the pain became. All that she was aware of was that she was losing moments, because her vision felt more like a flip-book with missing scenes than a steady image.
A cool hand suddenly settled on her forehead and the migrane abated, and Sakura's chin was tilted up until she was looking at Ao's stern face; the jounin snapped his fingers right in front of her nose and Sakura blinked sluggishly, more bemused than startled.
"Did you hit your head?" Ao asked out of nowhere, "Your reflexes are nonexistent."
"We had a building fall on us." Shikamaru grouched from somewhere to her right, and when she tracked his voice she found him helping Chojuro sit up. "That's not unlikely."
Ao's lip curled in a scowl but he brought his other hand to her head and the gentle ebb of medical ninjutsu eased away the haze over her thoughts and dulled the throbbing to nothingness. She didn't even have it in her to protest when he grabbed her injured arm and healed that too, not trusting herself to not make it worse.
"In case your shinobi reflexes make a sudden comeback, I am going to touch your side now to heal the punctured lung. Do not try to kill me." Ao informed her, drawing a snort from Yuki, but Sakura barely had it in her to jump when Ao's hand settled a half-inch under her breast and his chakra wrenched her ribs into place.
When her senses finally returned, Sakura noted that Yuki was staring at her with an odd look in his eyes, but he waited until Ao was done before ambling over.
"So. You still mad at Shiranui?" he asked, and Sakura jerked, a wave of fresh pain and guilt hitting her like a tsunami.
"I- no. It was just- He didn't have to-" she trailed off, unsure what she actually wanted to say. He didn't have to follow orders? Sell her out? Not tell her what was going on?
"When d'you last see your shrink, pinky-chan?" Yuki switched tracks, and Sakura startled at the non-sequitir.
"Wha...? Do you think I over-reacted?"
"That wasn't what I asked." Yuki snapped, and Sakura felt a twinge of fear for the first time in literal years since she'd known the man. "When. Did you last. See your shrink?"
"I..." she trailed off, wracking her brain. Yuki was looking more and more unimpressed by the second, and Sakura didn't know what to think, was still reeling with bloodloss and a concussion and the fact that they'd almost been killed by a building. "I- when you broke me out from the hospital. With senpai. After I brought back the Uchiha."
She saw Yuki's eyes widen at that, and even Shikamaru jumped, shooting her an incredulous, concerned look.
Yuki seemed to relax, but even in her current state Sakura could tell he'd forced himself to let the tension in his muscles go.
"Ask me again." he demanded, and it took Sakura a second to realise what he meant, and she shrunk in on herself when she did.
"D-do you think I... over-reacted?" she repeated, hiccoughing, feeling like a child in the face of Yuki's disappointment.
The right side of her head was suddenly smarting, but Yuki's hand hadn't seemed to move from his side even though she was sure he'd been the one to smack her.
"If you give her another concussion, I'm not healing it." Ao announced, so deadpan Sakura would've laughed, but presented with a serious Yuki, she didn't dare.
"After this shitshow with your Village is over, you're going to your pretty blond shrink and you're telling him the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, are we clear? If not, I'm telling you now, I'll bring you over here and introduce you to what passes for psychiatrists in Kiri. Everyone hates them, but at least they don't let their patients walk around like ticking time bombs or get away with hiding shit."
Sakura stared at Yuki for a few seconds, uncomprehending, then nodded.
"Good!" he grinned, and Shikamaru rolled his eyes, not for the first time getting whiplash from the man's mood-swings. "Now c'mon, hug it out."
He pulled Sakura to her feet and wrapped his arms around her, and Sakura found herself comforted despite herself. There was just something untouchable in Yuki, and the part of her that kept getting terrified by the frequent reminders of her mortality clung to it with all her might.
"Right," Yuki said, pulling away and shooting her a sly smirk, "reckon you can make that jump again, but with four this time?"
"Wait," Ao ordered, at the same time as Shikamaru groaned out a 'now hold on-!', but Yuki wasn't having it.
"I'm going and that's that. Cover for me, Ao-dear?" he asked, fluttering his eyelashes and looking so ridiculous Sakura couldn't help but laugh.
Ao hissed out a string of obscenities and Sakura was certain he was going to refuse, but instead, he unbuckled his harness and tossed Kubikiribocho into Yuki's surprised hands.
"I hate you." the jounin snarled, "But if you die, I'm bringing you back and strangling you myself." and with a swish of his kimono and a cursory nod at Chojuro, Ao disappeared in a sealless shushin.
Yuki was left blinking stupidly for a second, the Executioner's Blade digging a furrow in the rocky cliff, then he scowled.
"Who does he think I am? Fucking Zabuza? I'm an assassin, not an ape with a big stick! Now if this was a measuring contest, sure, but-!"
"Here," Sakura called, cutting off the tirade, hilarious as it might have been, and swiped a bloodied thumb over her hammerspace seal, pulling Orochimaru's sword out of the confines of space-time and tossing it at the assassin much like Ao had done.
He quietened almost immediately.
"Is this-?"
"Kusanagi." Sakura confirmed. "I took it off Uchiha Jr who took it off the snake himself. Figure this might be more your style." She teased, laughing when Yuki seemed to almost vibrate with excitement.
"Marry me?" he asked, still staring at the sword and ignoring Shikamaru's startled cough and Chojuro's exasperated sigh. "Seriously, pinky-chan. It's not even my birthday."
Sakura shrugged. "You deserve nice things." She said, a bit awkward, remembering the awful things Yuki'd shared with her about his childhood. "And you'd look ridiculous with the other one."
Yuki looked at her then, and the genuine happiness in his eyes was joined by mischief.
"Then here," he said suddenly and tossed her Ao's sword, and Sakura had a split-second to reinforce her arms with chakra or the sword would've fallen to the ground and taken her down with it, "you can have Ao's 'gift'."
It was Sakura's turn to blink stupidly. "I'm not a Swordsman. Or from Kiri."
"You have the sword? Then you're a Swordsman! And you have a headband, so it's as good as having been born here. Any other silly excuses? No? Wonderful. Let's go!"
Shikamaru caught the assassin's elbow before the man did something stupid like jump off the cliff. "Not yet. Chakra exhaustion is a thing, dumbass. Take this."
Sakura took the small, brownish pill Shikamaru gave out, and blinked curiously at the brunet.
"They're soldier pills, but without the drowsiness and nausea. My Clan owns a large garden with medicinal herbs." he elaborated when Sakura's expression shifted to disbelieving. "And we're quite big in R&D so..." he shrugged.
"Medicinal herbs?" Yuki echoed, laughing, "Does that mean the same in Konoha as it does in Kiri?"
Chojuro groaned and slapped his hand over the assassin's mouth, shooting her and Shikamaru an apologetic look. "Ignore him. Thank you, Shikamaru."
Shikamaru hummed and took the pill dry, which Sakura mirrored. The rush of chakra was a wonderful feeling, but her heartrate stayed stable and she didn't feel the usual jitters that associated soldier pills.
"Okay. Let's jump."
They landed in chaos.
The Main Gates were no more, though Sakura's Hiraishin tag had survived on a piece of debris where the gate used to be. She staggered, and Shikamaru wordlessly pushed another soldier pill to her lips which she accepted gratefully.
Orochimaru had brought death and destruction. This... This made Orochimaru look kind.
Half the Village was flattened. Not even broken or destroyed but simply not there save for some debris. Grotesque summons the size of the Hokage Mountain towered over the shinobi, seemingly resistant to the barrages of jutsu that hit them, and apparent electromagnetic force fields prevented any distance fighters from landing a single hit.
"This is not an invasion." Chojuro muttered, despair in his eyes. "This is a massacre."
Sakura took a deep breath and rattled off what she'd learnt of the Paths; "The Rinnegan allows Pein to control six extra bodies beside his own, each with its unique abilities. One is capable of interrogation and can heal, one can read minds but has little combat prowess. One absorbs chakra, one manipulates attractive and repulsive forces, one has a body made of metal and one can summon these monsters."
"Did you just say 'body made of metal'?" Yuki demanded, a crazy glint in his eyes. "I think I just found my opponent!" He laughed, absently dodging a ricocheting kunai. "All Cutting Sword, meet Metal Man!" and then he was off, gone before Sakura could wish him luck or ask him to be careful.
She turned to the two with her, a wry smile on her lips. "Any preferences?"
Shikamaru's eyes were fixed on the giant ox and multi-headed dog. "Take out the monsters and you even out the odds." he murmured, getting a nod from Chojuro.
"So we find the summoner." he agreed, a grim expression on his face. "Right."
Sakura grabbed the boys before they ran off, a hand on each of their arms. "Neither of you is allowed to die on me. We go together, or not at all." she demanded, pleased that her voice was only a touch hysterical.
Shikamaru smiled, the expression heartbreaking, and moved his hand so he could twine his fingers with hers, which Chojuro quickly mirrored, adding a gentle squeeze. Unspoken words and promises and confessions spun beneath the surface, each fighting to be voiced, but they stayed silent and untangled their hands.
They all knew this could very well be the last ever moment they get like this.
"Let's go."
"Scatter!" a voice called from above, and Iwashi jumped away just as every member of the group trying to pin down the Animal Path did the same, disengaging from the monster wearing human skin.
Three figures landed where the dozen of them had stood, and it took a second for their identities to register.
Shikaku's son, Genma's partner, and the baby Swordsman.
All three were clad in their pyjamas and covered in soot like the majority of the other shinobi, evidence of the whole Village having been caught unawares by the preliminary attack that had leveled half their land.
But all three were also wearing grim expressions of determination, their reserves at almost full capacity.
Haruno chanced a glance at the group they'd displaced, her expression caught between anger and resignation, acknowleding those she recognised with a jerky nod. Then she closed her eyes for a second, and with a flex of her chakra, the gathered shinobi felt a net of warmth settle over their minds, lifting their spirits, buoying their courage from the despair that had overshadowed it. Iwashi noted that while his energy was by no means replenished, the illusion of strength and resilience was a potent one.
It was then that he realised that, although his eyes saw three children, those same children were jounin, no strangers to battle and carnage.
"Go!" Haruno advised, eyes sweeping over the group then falling to her companions. "We've got this covered."
And Iwashi watched as she unsealed Kubikiribocho, a weapon she had no rights to have, at the same time as the Swordsman ripped the bandages off Hiramekairei and Shikamaru crouched between them.
Iwashi didn't even have the time to wonder how the rosette planned to wield the Executioner's Blade, before, as if on some unseen signal, all three stilled, the personification of the calm before the storm. Then, the Nara's shadow lashed out and the other two were moving, working in perfect tandem and with deadly grace even though they hefted weapons taller than them and their target was a self-proclaimed God.
Suddenly, the rosette's claim of 'having it covered' didn't seem quite as ridiculous.
Iwashi nodded at the group he'd been with and tried to not think of Genma's reaction as he left the teenagers to their task, setting his sights instead on the enormous summons still wreaking havoc on the Village.
There was work to be done.
Sasuke didn't expect Tsunade to be the one to break him from his prison of debris and shattered stone, but he figured the lightning bolt he'd brought down in the general vicinity had been enough of a hint that he needed some help, thanks.
What he saw once he was pulled out of the dust made him freeze.
"You would've brought the same destruction down on the Village if you'd been allowed to roam free, don't play coy now." Tsunade snapped, wrenching his shoulder into place none too gently. A swipe of her finger down his forearm brought burning, searing pain along with it, but it dissolved Sakura's seal limiting his chakra. "This isn't a clean slate, but Haruno was right; you can be useful. Go find that blond brat and get to Jiraiya - he'd found where the real Nagato is hiding."
"And what do you want me to do then?" Sasuke snarled, wrenching his arm from the Godaime's grip. "Let the idiot try his talk-no-jutsu on a God? Be the shield to his sword?"
"No. You like sticking it to the big man, don't you, Uchiha?" she asked, but Sasuke had a feeling it was mostly rhetorical. "I'm giving you permission to do just that. Shove your Raikiri up Nagato's ass for all I care, just make sure it gets his heart." She looked tired all of a sudden, wry instead of fierce. "God knows Jiraiya raised Naruto to live like a hedonistic pacifist, and Haruno is a broken mirror of my other teammate. Guess you're mine, hm?"
Sasuke wanted to scream that he was Orochimaru's pupil, but then the rest of the blonde's words registered and he gaped. The corner of Tsunade's lip quirked up at Sasuke's bafflement, and he absently thought that if the circumstances had been different, he might've actually liked the hag as his Hokage.
Slowly, he nodded.
"Stick it to the big man." he echoed, absently testing his shoulder, before he let a dark, vicious smirk surface. "I'm good at that."
He was surprised when Tsunade's answering smirk was just as ugly as his own. "It's one of your few uses, I'll admit. Now go kill a God."
Go kill a God.
Sasuke didn't need to be told twice.
Yuki sighed, amused despite himself even as his breath rattled in his chest, guttural and wet from the pierced lung and shattered ribcage.
Around him lay the excess limbs of his opponent that he'd lopped off, All-Cutting Sword living up to its name even when faced with a man with metal under his fucking skin, although getting close enough to actually do the cutting had been costly. The fucking pièce de résistance - the fucker's head - had rolled the closest to him, and he stumbled over and kicked it with all his might, feeling his toe break from the impact against the metal skull, but the pain was almost unnoticeable by now.
"I win, metal-dick." he rasped, wincing when the words brought more torturous coughing and red, frothy spittle from his mouth.
He shuffled over to the edge of one of the few buildings left standing in the Village, his lame leg dragging behind him with every step, but he forced himself to sit down anyway, legs dangling over the edge, in full view of the battle raging below.
The fucking detachable limbs and goddamn head cannon had caught him off-guard, and he'd paid for it, and more. He'd taken a missile through the knee joint and a cannon ball through the meat of his left upper arm, his forearm hanging by a strip of skin and some sinew that hadn't been obliterated by the projectile.
He blinked the black spots from his vision, letting them gather at the edges instead, and focused on the three little monsters clad in human skin fighting below.
Sword-boy had finally grown into his legacy, using Hiramekarei with the same brutal viciousness of his predecessors, throwing his opponent and hispets dozens of feet every which way whenever one of his chakra constructs connected. Pinky-chan seemed to have grown some balls of steel when he hadn't been looking, or perhaps she'd entered a dick-measuring contest of her own and used Kubikiribocho as her 'sword' of choice, because she was swinging the blade with the same brashness and devil-may-care Yuki remembered in Zabuza before he'd defected.
And little shadow-boy, for all that he didn't seem to be involved in the fight, kept catching the Path and his merry band of beasts with his shadows, no longer than a second or two at a time, but without fail, almost as if they were all connected by some psychic link, one of the other two would capitalise on the moment of stillness, hacking off a limb or punting the target in concussion-worthy blows across the battlefield.
Then, Chojuro's chakra-hammer smashed the giant rhino into a pulp of blood and metal at the same time as Sakura jumped on another millisecond of shadow-granted stillness, and this time, the Executioner's Blade served its function to a T, beheading the Path in one decisive swipe.
Yuki remained conscious long enough to see the grotesque summons still terrorising the outer edges of the Village burst into clouds of smoke like particularly violent fireworks, then he closed his eyes and knew no more.
Sakura staggered, her vision swimming, chest tight. The burning of her broken fingers and the gaping hole where an Earth Spike had gone through her foot was suddenly overshadowed by the pain in her heart, the beat kicking into overdrive now that the adrenaline was almost wearing off.
Chojuro shot her a blearily alarmed look, also clutching his chest with his good arm, the shirt over his abdomen stained muddy-brown with dried blood from where he'd been impaled on the rhino's horn.
"Shika?" Sakura choked, struggling to draw a breath. "What was in those chakra pills?"
Shikamaru, although he hadn't participated in the open combat, also hadn't been spared from his share of injuries. His right leg was shattered and his head was bleeding profusely, dripping over his right eye, and he looked panicked.
"I don't know." he said, slurring slightly, his visible eye wide. "But I'm sure they were tested!"
"I think I'm having a heart attack." Chojuro managed weakly, then slumped against one of the flat boulders, and - yes. That made sense, Sakura thought, feeling oddly detached from her body. That matched the symptoms.
She pulled herself onto the boulder beside the Swordsman, tangling the fingers of her good hand with his as she tried to breathe past the tightness in her chest.
She watched through half-lidded eyes as Shikamaru shuffled closer, could see the moment the pain of his shattered leg stopped registering, and opened her other arm for him to fall into.
"Thank you." she managed breathlessly, Chojuro's hand warm in hers and Shikamaru burning a line of sluggish heat against her side. "I'm sorry we didn't have more time."
Chojuro squeezed her hand and the smile he shot her was broken and bloody. "In the next life, Sakura-chan." he promised quietly, and she felt Shikamaru hum against her collarbone.
"We'll find each other. In every one." he murmured, voice wet with blood or tears she couldn't quite tell, but heartbreaking all the same.
It struck Sakura how they'd never spoken about it, never said 'I love you' or worked out how a polyamorous relationship was going to be received, or how they were going to navigate Chojuro's status as a Mist-nin, but here they were, all three on the same page, promising each other forever in any and every reality they might find themselves in.
It was with that reassurance that Sakura let her eyes fall shut, and listened as the breathing of the boys at her side grew quieter and quieter, before it eventually stopped completely.
She was on the precipice, almost ready to succumb to the eternal sleep, when an enormous, impossible to ignore pain and urgency erupted in a place deep inside her, the same place she reached for when she missed Genma, and she had little doubt what it meant.
Sakura had the presence of mind to untangle her fingers from Chojuro's before she let the whirl of Hiraishin take her along. She had a split second to meet familiar brown eyes staring up at her in horror and she smiled.
Then, Sakura turned, finding a pierced face with death in its grey-ringed eyes and a snarl twisting its lips, and she knew she wasn't done yet.
Genma stood with Aoba and a dozen or so other shinobi, all of them trying to find a way to get past the defenses of a man who could absorb chakra and send their attacks back at them, doubled in force.
He tried to ignore the smattering of bodies broken against the rubble that was left of his home, his Village, tried to focus on the comfort of Aoba's presence by his side and the cool viciousness granted by rage and grief. It was hopeless, their opponent wasn't tiring, the Sannin were dead or dying, he had no idea where Sakura was and -
And then Kakashi appeared, seemingly from nowhere in a way that was eerily reminiscent of the Hiraishin, materialising in mid-air above the Preta Path's protective chakra dome, an oddly familiar blazing yellow sword in hand. He dropped, swinging the sword as he fell, Chidori in his other hand. When the jutsu and what Genma belatedly realised was the Sword of the Thunder God connected with the Path's chakra technique, it almost seemed like the protective dome shorted out, and within seconds, the sword was cutting through it like butter, chirping with pure lightning all the while.
Genma had no time to wonder how Kakashi got his hands on the second sword of legends, because their target was suddenly fair game.
He flashed through the seals for the Earth Dragon Bullet just as Aoba did the same for Fire, and they watched as their jutsu mingled, almost seeming to dance together, before they neared the Preta Path and connected.
Kakashi landed not far off, the Sword of the Thunder God chirping cheerily in his grasp, and when Genma send him an incredulous look, he had the gall to grin tiredly. "What? You think you're the only one who can reverse-engineer sensei's technique?" he asked, and Genma snorted, stumbling over to wrap his arm around Kakashi's middle and squeeze while around them, jutsu were being fired left and right in a cacophony of sound and destruction.
"Don't you think you're taking the Thunder God aesthetic a bit too far?" Genma teased, delighted when both Aoba and Kakashi chuckled, feeling like the laughter was needed in the nightmare they were trapped in.
"I'm a desk shinobi now." Kakashi whined in reply, and Genma swore only someone as fucked up as Hatake Kakashi could refer to the post of ANBU Commander as a desk job. "That joke about desk shinobi all being bored out of their minds isn't actually a joke, you know."
And then Kakashi was moving, the Sword of the Thunder God blazing behind him, and Genma had a split-second of panic because it seemed that their opponent had wisened up to who exactly was responsible for his sudden vulnerability, and he was not happy.
Genma might've had an issue with Kakashi-the-genin-sensei, and he recalled wanting to punch the man's teeth in, but people change, and Kakashi as he was now was the perfect example of that. It seemed Tsunade had hit the nail on the head when she'd had him taken off the active roster and put in charge of ANBU - the man was healthier, smiled more, actively sought out human contact; this Kakashi was someone Genma called a friend.
It wasn't a difficult decision to kawarimi with Kakashi and face the Preta Path head on, even as the impact send him flying back over thirty feet, his back crashing painfully against the rocks, his legs suddenly numb.
Searing pain made its way up his spine, to his ribs and arms and crested at the top of his head, and all he could see was the furious face of the Path and the sharp, metallic pike-like receiver aimed at his heart.
And then his vision was obscured by pink.
Familiar pink.
Sakura.
His partner stood in front of him, a heartbreaking smile on her face as she met his eyes for a second before turning away, facing the oncoming Path with her fist drawn.
Genma felt his vocal cords tear but he didn't hear himself scream, because in the next second, the metal pike was driving through Sakura's gut and tearing through her back, and her arm was rising, curled fist blazing blue meeting the Preta Path's face with shattering force.
Aoba was on the Path the second he landed, kunai driving through the man's throat, but Genma's eyes were on Sakura.
Her knees buckled and she fell, slumping beside him, and it was only then that Genma realised that the girl's eyes were glazed over, that there was nothing more than instinct and muscle memory driving her body.
She was already at death's door.
"Hey." she rasped, mangled fingers rising to the bruised-black skin of Genma's cheek. "I told you I'd punch the Shinigami in the face for you."
And then Genma was laughing through his tears, drawing sharp, wheezing breaths through his sobs, because she had and he hadn't believed her.
And now she was dead.
Kakashi had been better.
He'd gone to the Yamanaka for help, had rekindled his friendship with Tenzo, had reclaimed his spot as the Head of the Hatake Clan, was a renowned jounin and the ANBU Commander and a friend.
And suddenly, he was back to square one, because he'd seen this before. And just as every other time, he could do nothing but watch.
Rin had thrown herself onto his Chidori to protect Konoha, to protect him.
Haku, a boy who'd shaped his team's understanding of death and sacrifice, had thrown himself onto his Chidori to save Zabuza, because his devotion to the man was that great.
And now, Sakura, one of his first students, even though he could admit now he hadn't been much of a teacher at the time, Sakura had done the same, had thrown what remained of her life away for what was precious to her.
Suddenly, Kakashi fiercely wished everyone would stop being so fucking selfless.
He was sick of watching people die.
When Sakura opened her eyes, she was surrounded by darkness, with no measure of up or down or any sense of depth perception apart from the knowledge that the surface she was laying on was solid and the wounds she'd sustained in the battle against the Path were gone.
On second inspection, once she'd slowly sat up, she became aware of two things: one, all her injuries, new and old, were gone - a quick flutter of fingers over her throat assured her of that - and two, there was a flickering source of light, a bonfire, if she had to guess, a few feet away from her. Silhouetted by the light were two figures, perched on what seemed to be a log, one of them with a very distinctive, five-pronged hairstyle-!
Sakura's breath caught in her throat.
It couldn't be.
She rose and carefully made her way over until she had circled the pair and stood by the log opposite them. She felt her throat close up, felt tears rise to her eyes and her lower lip tremble.
"Hahaue?" She asked hesitantly, disbelief and the promise of tears making her voice jump an octave, sounding as lost and innocent as it had back when she was just a child, seeking attention and affection from her parents, only to be denied. "Chichiue?"
"I suppose having you call us this formally didn't help in bridging the gap between us, did it, Sakura?" Her father mused, but there was something on his face, something she hadn't seen since she grew taller than waist-high - he was smiling.
Her mother snorted, the action at odds with the dainty, fiercely feminine woman of Sakura's memories. "The fact that she talked to our graves more than she'd ever talked to us alive didn't help either." She pointed out, but it wasn't in bitterness. If anything, Sakura thought she heard... regret? "Sit down, child."
Slowly, Sakura lowered herself onto the log, never taking her eyes off her parents. "What is this?" Sakura asked at last. "Why am I here?"
"Don't ask pointless questions." Her mother replied, a line she'd directed at Sakura so often, hearing it now was like a slap in the face. Then, her face softened, and this time, Sakura didn't have any problems with identifying the regret for what it was. "You're dead, Sakura. And this... this is Nowhere. And you're... You're here at least sixty years too soon." And then, her mother's lip wobbled, and a single tear rolled down her cheek, followed quickly by another.
"Hahaue?" Sakura found herself repeating, alarmed; she had never seen her mother cry, and the novelty of the scene shook her a lot more than the fact she was dead.
She had expected death. She had accepted it as a very likely possibility when surviving only served to bring more frequent and more difficult missions. This time, she had gone into the battle knowing that death was more likely than survival. But her mother, crying...
"Foolish child," Mebuki hiccoughed, raising a hand to carelessly brush away the tears, "this is why I never supported your chosen career. Ninja don't get to grow old. They don't get to retire peacefully or settle down, they die before their time on a nameless, godforsaken battlefield. Barely seventeen, not even old enough to drink, and never going to grow any older. And what have you got to show for yourself? A sea of blood separates you from the child I remember, hundreds of corpses across all the nations bear your signature, and what did you gain from it? Fame? Renown? In your world, that's a target on your back. You threw away your youth for a thankless nation and got nightmares, a few friends and a marriage with a man twice your age to show for it. You should've had more. You deserved more."
Sakura's brain stalled.
That was probably the most she ever remembered her mother saying. Still, she had to defend herself.
"I was good at what I did." She pointed out sharply, ignoring the dissonance of referring to herself in the past tense. "I was excellent."
"You were an excellent killer." Her mother snapped, though her voice broke on the last word.
Sakura's anger evaporated. Instead, she just felt...tired.
"Yes, I was. And I did what I did so no more little girls would lose their parents to madmen they had no hopes of touching." When a few seconds of silence ticked by, she felt the need to add, "And Genma and I were not married."
Her father made a sound that on anybody else Sakura would've called a stifled laugh. "You were a little married, Sakura."
And that- that was her father joking.
There was humour in his voice. He was teasing.
Her parents were acting like parents for the first time in a decade, and she was dead.
"What happens now?" she asked, and her voice was small, hesitant.
Scared.
"You move on." Her mother said, a strangely soft look in her eyes. "We couldn't, because we died with regrets. Now we might be able to."
"Do I have regrets?" Sakura murmured, unsure. "I... I can't think of any."
Her parents exchanged an unreadable look, before her father reached across the campfire and grabbed her hand, running his thumb over her knuckles.
"Whatever happens, wherever you go from here, know this. We loved you, Sakura. Still do. And we're proud of you." he said, and Sakura felt tears gather in her eyes and spill over, her heart light, free.
She stood and knelt between her parents, letting them wrap their arms around her in the first hug she remembered getting from them since she was six years old.
Then the warmth and comfort of that embrace were being wrenched away from her, and she was thrown back into the cold, into the fear of death and what lay beyond, and she had enough time to watch her parents turn into blinding streaks of white light and the campfire die out before she was forced out and away, felt the doors to the beyond shut in her face.
Her spirit was forced back into her body, melded and unified with all the subtlety and grace of a sledgehammer, and then it was over.
With a deep, shuddering breath, Haruno Sakura came back to life.
for anyone wondering, Itachi died in the initial Crush and he's staying that way. writing him gives me a headache and frankly - unpopular opinion ahead - i dont really like the 'martyr patriot' idea. it's just squicky.
also, the OT3 will be well and alive, kakashi is not as much of an asshole as previously believed and people change.
as always, tell me what you thought!