Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto
A/U: Canon up to conclusion of 4th Great War. OC love triangle, Sakura-centric !
Rated M for lemons, language, violence, PTSD
…
Chapter 1
Blood trickled down a small, sender hand, a harsh red against pale white as it enveloped the length of Sakura's finger. She was entranced by the onslaught of red, how it twisted and turned in a disturbingly slow roll to swallow up her flesh. She clenched her hand and released it, coating the length of it in red. Clench and release, clench and release.
"Ahem" her assistant stood across from her, concern etched into his features as he observed his superior lose grip of reality. In another time she would've found him quite handsome; unsure if she possessed such feelings of admiration for anything any longer.
Sakura brought a pointed stare up to meet his eyes in warning; he was not to speak of this to the Hokage. She was on a tight leash already, the man had been hovering over her as her morning shifts at the hospital had slowly begun to mold into nights, and then overnights.
It was her solace, the stark whites and calculated organization of the sterile walls a dysfunctional comfort in her lackluster life. She needed a distraction, maybe not one quite like this, but a distraction from her purposeless life all the same.
She sighed, moving to heal her infliction, the soiled sample of tissue beneath her just another example of her many failures as the head of the hospital in Tsunade's absence. Her assistant coughed again, eyeing her still bleeding thumb. Maybe she was too distracted, she hadn't even healed herself entirely.
"Miss Haruno, are you okay? You seem…off lately" Sakura turned inward; the formality not lost on her. Two years of working beside her and she hadn't even acquainted herself enough to make the poor man comfortable enough to drop the surname. She sighed again.
"Let's take a break, Koya, yeah? Hour lunch today, I'll dispose of the ruined sample." Sakura's pathetic attempt of a reassuring smile didn't meet her tired eyes, nothing more than an uncomfortable twitch upon her features, the worry stretching further across the man's brow.
Sakura's shoulders sagged under the weight of her own ineptitude as Koya departed, leaving her alone with her thoughts once more. Another failed sample from a failed physician, what in the world would Tsunade say if she were still around.
It was true, Sakura had been thrust into the role without so much of a warning, Tsunade disappearing off to who knows where after the war concluded. The twinge in her chest came and went, a familiar feeling of loss, of regret. She didn't blame her, she wished she could disappear, too.
Give yourself more credit, Sakura-chan! You're working so hard; nobody has come this far! Naruto's one-hundred-watt smile chased back the monotony lingering in her mind, his words of encouragement falling on deaf ears as she shooed away his voice within her mind. Nobody had come this far because she was the only one left.
She had been working hard, maybe to a point of obsession. She had wanted something to focus on after failing to save so many nin in the war. So many deaths, a collection of her failures. What better way to distract herself than to dissect the body parts of Madara himself, retrieving Hashirama's tissue samples and configuring the science behind their compatibility.
There had to be a way to solve this puzzle; just how did he inject himself with such a concentrated dose of lethal chakra laced tissue and live? And how was he able to control it so well? These were questions for her superior, not her. Regardless, the problem consumed her, desperate to deem herself more useful in the aftermath of the war.
Sakura made her way to the classified entrance at the back of the lab, typing in a quick code only she knew, the heavy metal cracking open in response. Disposing the sample, she peered over the endless rows of body parts, tissue and limb in their respective jars of chakra-laced preservative. The fridge in the corner taunted her as a ghost from the past would. This room was a gateway to her own personal hell.
She swore some days when she opened it in a hurry to grab supplies, Madara's jarred head was laughing at her, exposing her for her weakness. Those damned three-eyed rinnegan daring her to come near, to remember that final night on the battlefield.
She envisioned his body parts shattering the glass, moving across the floor in a grotesque display to reattach themselves to their master in the fridge. Naruto had thought her insane when she put a lock on it, she had half a notion to agree with him.
A shudder breezed its way down her spine as she moved about the room, quickly washing her hand and removing herself from the void that was Madara's anatomy closet. Unsurprisingly, she found a takeout box resting on the table. Poor Koya, the man really was kind, it was a shame he was stuck with her.
She frowned down at the contents, wondering when she had lost her appetite altogether. Had it been after the war? No, she vaguely remembered inhaling meals with Tsunade in the midst of sixteen-hour shifts, desperate to cram anything of nourishing value into her so that she could continue her work.
It had to have been months after, when Naruto had come to deliver the news that her parents had been killed in a terrorist attack on their bakery. Sweets had lost their pull on her, everything was too bright and colorful, too sugary or tart. She deserved bland, her stark white routine. Eating alone only made her appetite worse.
Her chopsticks moved in slow circles around the sweet and sour chicken, the red sauce further reminding her of the bright red blood that she had squeezed between her fingertips prior, the sound eerily similar to the food below her.
She discarded the contents into the toilet before Koya returned, knowing he would check the trash can, all of her actions closely observed and reported to their beloved Hokage. She didn't blame him for being worried, he was a good friend, better than her. She didn't blame anyone but herself.
Sakura-chan, it'll be okay, we're all family, okay? We'll all get through this together! Naruto had pulled her into a fierce, desperate hug then, smelling of smoke and blood as he delivered the news. He had tried to pull them from the flames himself while she was here, working. Always working.
Except they weren't family. Naruto had his own family now, set to marry Hinata this year. He had become so overbearing she could hardly stand it, monitoring her every move as if she might just jump off the roof at any moment's notice. It was too much, all of the time.
Sasuke had tried to kill her in a genjutsu-masked world of terror, his fist impaling her chest over and over for an eternity, her sanity slipping with each impact. She wished for death in that moment and would've succeeded had it not been for Kakashi.
It had been the nail in the coffin for her, swearing off the damned Uchiha and his solidarity, it was the end. Like fragile glass shattering from within a shaky frame, her determination to save him from himself-the dream for them to end up together-had dissipated, leaving nothing but a gaping hole.
As soon as the tides turned in her favor, her displeasure with the brooding man evident in her dissociation with him, he had a psychotic break under her care. He seethed like a child; a giant unstable homicidal child, threatening her that she couldn't leave him as she relieved herself from his care after his and Naruto's respective surgeries.
She had been so surprised at the proclamation she remembered choking out a laugh, the sound alien to her as Sasuke's face twisted into a blatant dumbfounded confusion. He clearly had not been expecting her to abandon him in his selfish, arrogant rage. In another time, she may have even pitied him. Poor Sasuke. But not anymore.
His threats no longer scared her, was he to attempt her murder for the third time, or were they at four now? She held her life at an arms reach, not bothering to nestle into a heart once so full of fortitude and love. Enough had been enough, she had nothing left to give to the man, or to any man for that matter; she despised his very existence.
She was glad Kakashi hadn't been around to witness the unraveling of team seven, the disbanding of their family, as Naruto liked to remind her every God forsaken day. Their sensei was reenlisted as anbu, choosing instead to escape their crumbling village. She didn't blame him, either.
She only wished he would've taken her with him, away from this tarnished, broken village. He had left her here to rot like the rest of them. Another nail in her coffin, another foot beneath the ground.
The rest of the shift flew by without a hitch, the meticulous plucking of cells so tedious her fingers were stiff, temples throbbing. Koya looked worn out, the mundane task no easy feat; he didn't have the same endless patience as she, there was nothing for her to go home to afterall.
They called it a day, cleaning up the lab and switching the lights off as they exited. Koya eyed her wearily as she made a turn for her office instead of the exit, lingering at the door, unsure of what to say. Sakura's plain stare urged him on without her, her assistant's deep sigh doing nothing to sway her.
"I'm just grabbing some things from my office, I won't be staying long" her words felt uncomfortable, tangled in the lie that she was always weaving. Always lying to everyone around her, lying to herself.
Confirming his retreat, Sakura changed directions and moved slowly to the critical wing, her limbs aching in protest. It was if she had just ran to Suna and back, her arms and legs feeling as though someone pulled them off one by one and poured cement into them, reattaching each solely to laugh at her fatigued condition.
The wing brought back memories, the single greatest success in her career had occurred here: the development and reattaching of Naruto and Sasuke's new arms. Tsunade and herself had worked tirelessly, welcoming the distraction so soon after the war.
The bodies of the injured and broken had piled up within the hospital, but they had never lost focus. The limbs they had created were near indestructible, herself and her superior had laced them with their regenerative chakra in order to maintain a constant healing state from within.
Attaching them, however, had been a different experience entirely. She recalled Naruto, bright eyed and bushy tailed as he practically bounded around the room afterward, grabbing at everything within his newfound reach. Sakura almost wished she had lingered longer to bask in that energy, because what she had experienced next had been truly mortifying.
She had performed her last checks on Sasuke, weary around him in his partially psychotic state. The large man was a ticking time bomb, one core memory trigger away from combusting. Sakura moved around him as if he were a feral animal; looking similarly so as his fists clenched dangerously tight in his lap, usually stoic face distorted with a such an intense stare it had made her want to turn and run.
She hadn't, because she was no longer afraid of the Uchiha, or so she told herself. She was his doctor, and this would be their last visit together. He didn't need her anymore, he never had.
"Don't overexert yourself for the first seventy-two hours, then you have no activity restrictions. Let Tsunade know if you are having any complications with pain or loss of sensation" she spoke plainly, leaving no opening for questioning.
"Why not you?" his voice was deep and firm, a suspicious layer of apprehension crawling its way in as the end fell into a mutter. There was no other way to do this, she would face his suffocating chakra as it reached out to her, threatening to pull her down with him.
"I am relieving myself of your care." Sakura's words were quick, to the point, direct. Time, however, was not, it slowing into a painful drawl as she watched his head snap toward her with furious whites bleeding into red.
She had enough sense to clamp her own green eyes shut, promptly revealing that she was in fact, still afraid of the damned man and his horrifying eyes despite all she told herself. Sasuke roared around her, throwing tables, dishes, anything he could get his hands on. Glass shattered all around her, the force of his rabid movements physically blowing her hair from her face.
"Sasuke, stop, you're going to lose your arm again" she was relieved to find her words calm and firm; her heart was slamming within her chest.
His response was maniacal, she couldn't believe her ears. "If I rip it off, you'll have to stay."
Sakura flew to his side as he tore open his own flesh, horrified by the sheer strength it took to decimate her work with just the whites of his teeth, now stained red. Sasuke had become unhinged after the war, but she didn't believe him to be this entirely psychotic.
She had no other choice but to straddle his chest, pinning his arms down with her knees as his body went slack beneath her. She quickly healed the lacerated skin, then rendering it completely useless as she manipulated the chakra within it. Sasuke's eyes widened in disbelief as his arm went limp before turning them toward her.
"I built the fucking thing with my chakra, it's under my control as well" she hissed breathlessly down at him, frantic to focus on anything but the trickle of blood making its way from the corner of his lips down to his jaw. Sasuke's eyes softened as he peered back at the arm, the realization that a part of her now lived inside of him. It had made her sick to her stomach.
"Please don't leave me, I can't lose anyone else" his deep voice reduced to a pained whisper. Red had reverted back to black as the look of utter despair graced his features once her fingertips left his skin, gnawing at her resolve.
Her response was blunt. "You left me, Sasuke."
Sakura rendered his arm moveable once more as she slid off of him, taking all of her willpower not to turn back for a second glance as Sasuke Uchiha began to cry behind her. She bit down on her lip hard enough to taste metallic on her tongue as she exited his room, the desperate face of Naruto blocking her path.
"Please, Sakura, he really does love you, he's just bad at portraying it!" his voice no more than a croak. Naruto had heard everything. She pitied him for having to see team seven fall apart once again.
"I can fix this! As soon as he's stable, we can all-" Her hand came up to silence him, abruptly cutting him off. Naruto had completed one of his lifelong dreams: bringing Sasuke home. He probably never imagined it would mean losing another in return.
"If he so much as comes near me, I will leave this village and never return" The entire hall was still as she exited, the weight of her promise lingering long after she had left.
Sakura released an audible groan at the memories, wincing at the patient beneath her, hoping it had not been enough to wake them. These were not the distractions she had been hoping for today. The patient's instability was a saving grace in that moment, the wounded person's lagging strength preventing them from rousing.
She moved toward the last bed, brushing her hair from her eyes as she peered solemnly down at the child, having underwent such extensive burns for such an extended period of time that even she had not been able to heal them completely. They would always remember the horrors they had been though.
Sakura moved meticulously over the sedated child, checking and rechecking once more. It had been nearly two years after the conclusion of the war. As soon as the hospital had been able to tolerate the lessening influx of wounded suffering nin from the battlefield, the riots had begun.
There were still those who opposed Naruto as Hokage, having seen what beauty there lay in Madara's Infinite Tsukuyomi in comparison to the horrors of reality they had sucked them back into, and they wanted that peace back in their lives.
Sakura could understand their pain, but not their actions. They called themselves Revolutionists, what they were revolutionizing for, she didn't know. To be put out of their misery, maybe, as they claimed to do for those they murdered. The group had lost grip on reality, committing terrorist attacks on various parts of the village. It claimed many, they didn't discriminate against women, children, nor her parents in their attacks.
Burned bodies had piled up, the smell nearly lost on her now as it became more and more familiar. If seeing the lost nin corpses from the war pile up in her dreams hadn't been enough, now there were burned bodies in every nook and cranny of her mind. It was a wonder she even had room left for sane thoughts.
Sakura exited the hospital, her cement-filled limbs shuffling down the empty street as she made her way home. This had become her routine: early mornings, late nights and lead feet. The curfew Naruto had instilled in order to protect the villagers was waived for her due to her work, but she still occasionally felt eyes on her as she moved toward her home.
What was once a bustling, lively village had been reduced to crumbling foundations, boarded windows and empty streets. As soon as one building was restored, another was blown to pieces under terrorist effort. It was a wonder anyone kept rebuilding after all that had been done.
She unlocked her door, moving toward the bathroom before she could collapse onto the couch. Blank eyes captured the reflection peering back at her, unamused by the sick joke that was her appearance. Dark circles stained her eyes, her hips jutted out far too much for her liking, and her unkept hair had grown out again from blatant neglect.
She shrugged her shoulders at herself in apology, it wasn't as if she had any male suitors nearby. Anyone who had ever tried ended up shying away at the Hokage's outright disregard of her privacy, letting anyone and everyone who listened know that Sasuke Uchiha was always watching. She flipped her reflection the bird, hoping he could see that, too.
Nestling into the couch where she preferred to sleep most days, Sakura picked at a bowl of rice, forcing herself to consume something in an effort to liven the possibility of sleep. How was it that she could be so exhausted and so restless at the same time?
A loud knock at her door had her reeling back, jumping out of her skin as the dish slipped from her hands, clattering to the ground. Rice was strewn across the floor, Sakura cursing al she stepped over it. She pulled on a pair of loose cotton pants to match her oversized t-shirt.
"Oi! Sakura-chan are you okay?" Naruto's concerned voice slipped through the crack of the door, Sakura groaning as she contemplated feigning sleep. His face was all too chipper as she threw the door open, her scowl doing nothing to deter the man.
"I was sleeping" she lied coyly, blocking his view of the mess of rice strung all over the floor. He pushed past her, inviting himself in.
"Liar! You just got home from work!" her eyebrow twitched; the hovering was becoming too much. It all made her want to scream. He held his hands up in surrender, a familiar sheepish toothy grin plastered on his face. He held up two containers of ramen as she pointed her finger to the door, urging him out.
A loud growling erupted from her stomach, betraying her wishes as Naruto narrowed his blue eyes in her direction. Sighing, she plopped back down onto the couch, Naruto refusing to let her clean up the rice, moving around her home as if it were his own.
"You're about to be married, you can't keep showing up here in the middle of the night, you know" she mumbled, surprised at the twisting hunger pains that tore through her when she opened the container. Naruto seemed to pull unwanted feelings from her in increasing increments as of late.
"Hinata's sleeping, so it doesn't matter!" Oh Gods, that poor woman, he could be such a fool. Their silent eating lasted all of five minutes before the Hokage's rambling began, chattering away with his mouth full of noodles.
Sakura suddenly became serious, placing the dish on the table as she turned to face him. "Naruto, you can't keep doing this, following me and hovering over me" his eyes widened in protest as she continued "I'm suffocating, Naruto." The end of her sentence fell to a whisper as she wrapped her arms around herself, hardened eyes fixated on his.
His arms wrapped tightly around her in a tight, panicked embrace, an uncomfortable silence passing between the two before he nervously laughed. The was a lengthy pause before he released her, seemingly embarrassed by his explanation.
"I can't do that, Sakura" pink brows furrowed at that, slender arms coming to fold across her chest as she glared at him, demanding an explanation. He was slowly stripping her of her sanity, the lack of privacy damning her further-was that what he wanted?
"Sasuke will have my head if I do" the words stung her, tiny needles piercing her skin as it dawned on her. Sasuke Uchiha was always watching. How dare he, allow that monster of a human being to keep tabs on her from wherever the hell he was. The betrayal struck a deep, wavering chord.
"He loves you Sakura, and we're a family, I don't want anyone to get hurt" Green eyes widened in disbelief; she wanted to disappear, to fly away in the night and far from this ridiculousness.
Her response was icy, calculated. "I'm the only one getting hurt while you two play house; enough of this. I will start attacking anyone I find trailing me. You tell that bastard if he wants to know what I'm doing he can drag his ass back to the village himself."
Naruto pleaded with her at that. "The only reason he hasn't is because you said you'd abandon the village." The tension between them grew as their differences electrified.
"You know I can't do that" she hissed, instantly regretting her words. Sakura's tongue pressed against the back of her clenched teeth. They knew what kind of position she was in without Tsunade here, she could never leave this village, even if she so desperately wanted to; everyone would die. They had cornered her into admitting it.
"Please leave" her face was in her hands then, the mortification of that damned Uchiha knowing her every move enough to want to bury herself alive. Naruto was a traitor and a fool if he thought this would help the situation. It was insanity.
"I'm sorry Sakura, I just want everyone to be happy, okay?" she half-groaned, half-sobbed as he left. He wanted Sasuke to be happy, and they didn't give a damn about her. It was as it had always been, those two against the world and her strung up behind them, clinging to life.
If Sasuke Uchiha wanted to watch her every move, she would be damned if she didn't give him a fucking show. He was going to wish he had left her alone.
...
