Her first thought upon being stabbed in the chest with a couple of senbon is "Man, I'm glad he didn't use his hand."
Hands are messy, really, with blood and heart matter going everywhere.
Her second thought upon being stabbed in the chest with a couple of senbon is "Well, this is Kakashi."
And that's the crux of the matter, really, because Sakura was expecting to be killed days ago, weeks ago. In her Konoha, an interloper like herself would have been discovered and dismantled within hours. So, when telling two ANBU agents point blank that she's wearing old Sakura like a meat suit, she expected the attack.
She was pleasantly surprised, however, when the three senbon in her chest didn't touch her heart. Kakashi had gone nonlethal in his approach, meaning this was possibly just a test of her healing capabilities. Sakura had undergone worst tests.
So, with Shisui's shocked exclamations in the background and Kakashi's stare penetrating into her forehead, she pulled the senbon out and healed herself, just like the other day in the marketplace. She could feel the hit to her reserves now, after a day of traveling and an unexpected night of healing, but Sakura was unparalleled in her ability to ration to the smallest amount of chakra possible to heal a wound. As Tsunade put it, she went beyond chakra control to just being plain stingy. It had been funny at the time.
She tossed Kakashi's senbon back at him (which he lazily blocked with his book) before patting her chest solidly enough to show it's newly healed state. "Happy now?"
"Maa, you really were a student of Tsunade, hm?"
Shisui then delivered a solid kick to Kakashi's stomach, folding the older man in half. "You tried to kill her for a stupid test?"
"If it's any consolation, Uchiha-san, they weren't actually lethal." She tried patting him consolingly on the shoulder but it seemed like he was still tense. She tried to picture an ANBU agent not being used to violence before she realized he wasn't used to violence between teammates, friends. Konoha was a village where teamwork was everything and Kakashi was the poster child for it.
But this Sakura wasn't Kakashi's teammate. This Sakura took Kakashi's teammate's life, body, and soul and paraded it around. This Sakura wasn't just a stranger to Kakashi, she was an enemy.
So Sakura wasn't mad. Sakura remembered the fourth shinobi war, the dirty trenches, and the bloodstained shinobi, remembered seeing old friends and enemies jerking their way across the battlefield, puppeted around even after their death.
Sakura was controlling Kakashi's teammate like a puppet, and in his shoes she would have done much worse than throw some nonlethal senbon.
"If she's being honest, it wouldn't hurt, and if she's not, we could easily take her to T.I." Kakashi drawled as he unfolded himself from the floor. He was stuck between serious and ambivalent, too shocked by Sakura to decide upon a persona.
So Sakura got it, she did, but she was also angry, the kind of angry special to being stabbed in the chest. So, with a charming grin, she turned to Kakashi and said "Extra credit!" before taking a chakra scalpel to his Achilles Tendon.
He was up with a curse, face twisted into a snarl, but just as quickly as she had cut him she healed him right up, still grinning.
Shisui from his spot in the tent looked very unhappy.
"Maa, I deserve that, don't I?"
"Don't you want me to show off the full extent of Tsunade's teachings?" The tent was silent for a moment, each occupant wondering who was going to get stabbed next, before Sakura started rooting around for her notebook. She undid the seal she had layered over top of it and opened to the next blank page, pen in hand.
"So, Shisou, tell me about the hospital."
It wasn't pretty. By all accounts, Orochimaru was the perfect head of the only hospital in Konoha, turning the once unorganized building into a well-oiled machine. He was efficient, he was committed, and he was good at what he did. The bureaucratic oversight was done by Councilman Danzo, who used to advise the Hokage but was mysteriously given a new position by Minato.
According to Shisou and the records in the Uchiha police department, several missing persons cases all lead to the hospital. On top of that, some workers reported discrepancies in drug inventory - those same workers were soon fired and refused to talk to the police again. Danzo had neatly consolidated power around the hospital and any rich citizens who helped fund it, making it so even Minato couldn't see deep into what went on within the hospital. All in all, it was exactly what Sakura feared it would be.
Shisou's report finished within about an hour, all of it recorded by Sakura and most likely memorized by Kakashi. She tapped her pen against the paper, thinking hard before she was interrupted by Kakashi taking the notebook out of her hands and studying the page.
"ROOT mentioned again. What exactly is it, then?" He asked, nonchalantly flipping through the earlier pages. She tore the notebook out of his hand and whacked him over the head unconsciously, a move she often repeated in their time as partners together. They both froze, staring at the journal between them before Sakura cleared her throat.
"In my world," she said carefully, parsing out what to reveal and what to keep hidden, "Danzo retained his position as one of the most powerful men in Konoha and used that to form a secret offshoot of ANBU called ROOT, almost exclusively filled with children he took, brainwashed, and experimented on in order to make them perfect soldiers."
Shisou startled next to her. "You were a part of that?"
"After Danzo became Hokage, every shinobi was subject to his whims and orders. ROOT was his personal army and we were all made his soldiers." She practically spat out the words. She remembered the cold underground hallways, the empty dorms they were forced into. She hadn't a part of ROOT for long before her inability to be controlled was covered and she was killed, but it was long enough to make her stomach turn. There was no place farther from Konoha than ROOT, buried in her village's own heart.
Kakashi was stone-faced during her tirade but Shisou looked almost sick. Once again, Sakura thought him too kind by half in a world where a heart is a blazing target. She liked him all the more for it, liked him how she loved Naruto's infallible goodness. Sometimes, being kind can be a shinobi's greatest weapon. It's almost never enough.
"How could an organization like that exist without us knowing?" Shisou whispered and Sakura thought:
Well, it was mostly white noise going through her head. The giant toad summons in the room - the Uchiha Massacre. Possibly the most important difference between the two worlds. How was she supposed to explain it? Could she?
She decided no, not now. Probably never. It was one part her being unable to explain it and one part wondering that if telling Shisou the truth could destroy him. She couldn't imagine how he would react knowing he gave his life to save his family and Danzo destroyed them anyway. Sakura was many things, make into a weapon and a murderer and a liar, but she wasn't cruel. In the mornings she would wake up, look in the mirror of an apartment that didn't belong to her and never would, and told herself she would be better. Would at least try to be what this Konoha deserved. So no, she wasn't going to tell Shisou until Danzo was already in the ground.
"He had too much power in my world," she concluded would be the best truthful workaround, "And he was very good at using it."
"So now he's using what he has to build an army out of experiments in the hospital with the help of Orochimaru and Kabuto," Kakashi finished for her.
"Bingo."
Kakashi chuckled then caught himself and she had to mentally catch herself as well. The two of them were really the last ones standing when all was said and done, and that meant they knew each other better than anyone. Or they did. The two of them in the tent were the last ones left, an unmatched set, a Sakura who knew her partner too well and a Kakashi that forgot his student entirely.
Shisou ground his fists into his eyes in frustration. "Goddamit, how long has this been going on?"
"We can't really know. Maybe since he started working for the hospital. Maybe since Orochimaru was appointed the head," Sakura shrugged. Kakashi started twirling a senbon between his fingers distractedly, searching his own memory for anything he could dig up about ROOT or Danzo.
"What I don't get," he eventually said, "Is how Sakura found out before even the Hokage."
Sakura and Shisou both paused to consider it before Sakura's gaze was drawn back to her wrists. "Kakashi, was it common knowledge among shinobi why Sakura was dismissed from the genin corps?"
He picked up on her train of thought immediately. "No, but Orochimaru was the one she originally asked for training."
"And I'm assuming she had to go to the hospital when she hurt herself more than she could heal."
"So," Shisou interrupted with dawning horror, "Danzo actually came to you knowing you someone with a skill for healing-"
"But no formal training," Sakura concluded. "Perfect to work in the hospital and perform illegal experiments."
"And Sakura immediately went to Shisou about it and tried to act as a spy inside the domain of the best liar in Konoha. And that's why she was killed." The senbon Kakashi had been holding was thrown into the ground with such force that it buried itself. Sakura couldn't even see the top of it.
And there's was Kakashi's infamous sense of guilt. Over Sakura's fate, over her time as a genin all those years ago, and over the fact that in her time of need she didn't trust her old sensei. On one hand, Sakura was worried for Kakashi, she couldn't help it, but on the other hand, she knew that this guilt would cement him as one of the most formidable allies she could find. She would get her partner back, even if it was just a shadow of him.
"Shit," Shisou swore viciously. vocalizing what the other two occupants in the tent were too trained to say. "So, now Tsunade then. You think she can fix this?"
"And how did you meet Tsunade in your 'world,' Rat?" Kakashi asked. Sakura inwardly flinched at the name but accepted the reasons for why it was given and decided it was worth fighting about. But she did find it funny that Kakashi could barely say the name 'Sakura' at all, either calling her a civilian or reducing her to an agent. Then again, Naruto would sooner give up on his dream of being Hokage than Kakashi would stop being a village full of issues.
"She became Hokage when I was twelve and I asked her to be my mentor. That's how I met her. And she was one of the strongest, bravest, most honorable shinobi I ever knew. And she is the one person I trust to destroy Orochimaru, Danzo, and Kabuto."
"Was?"
"Most everyone from my world is a 'was,'" Sakura said softly. Shisou reached for her hand then, barely brushing the top of her palm. She tried to grasp his hand but her fingers wouldn't answer and eventually, Shisou drew back.
Kakashi also seemed softer, more of a tired soldier than a wary ANBU agent. "You were the last of your team?"
"I was the last of every team in the Rookie Nine. I was the last truly loyal shinobi in Konoha."
Shisou gasped. "How?"
"It's the price of immortality, I suppose, and that's what the seal grants to a user strong enough."
"But you did die. That's how you're here." Kakashi was blunt and Shisou hit him for it but Sakura appreciated the clinical tone. It wasn't easy to talk about her own death.
"I had used my seal full up just weeks ago trying to save Suna. The Hokage had sent a hidden squad to release Suna's jinchūriki. It was…. a natural disaster. I did everything I could to save as many as I could."
"Could it have been done deliberately to deprive you of your seal?" Kakashi wondered aloud.
Shisou punched the ground. "How could someone like that every become Konoha's Hokage?"
"He murdered anyone who could oppose him and bought the civilian citizens, those left of them, with a combination of money and fear."
"And you won't tell us who it is?" Kakashi looked poised to throw some more senbon at her but she didn't break.
"If our plan to stop what's happening at the hospital works we won't have to worry about it."
"And we should take your word for it?"
Sakura snorted. "You've already trusted me with something impossible, why stop? Konoha will always be my priority, no matter what. Not the man wearing the Hokage's robes but the village. What it stands for. Who stands with it."
Her hands were shaking again, she noticed, and she clasped them together. Shisou let out his breath in a whoosh, chuckling slightly. He turned to Kakashi and they did a bit of silent communication, the kind earned through years of partnership. Sakura did her very best not to feel bitter. She, as always, failed.
"Okay," Kakashi finally said, "We'll find Tsunade. I'm assuming you're telling her?"
"Yes. She'll know if we try to pull something over on her."
"Okay. Once we tell her, we're revisiting this conversation."
Sakura's sigh of relief almost made her collapse. This was a better outcome than she could have expected, honestly. Shisou gave a small laugh, the kind one makes after experiencing an adrenaline high. She gave a grin in return that only made him laugh harder. She hadn't experienced that kind of teasing in a while and, hoping she wasn't too rusty, threw his own letter at him.
"What kind of secret ninja," she said, laughing, "Let's the enemy know that he's onto them?" Shisou batted ineffectually at the projectile before Kakashi picked it up, read it over, and then punched Shisou in the head.
"This is the worst thing you could have done, Shisou. What the hell?"
"Well, I mean, I thought she was friendly at least! She healed the man in the marketplace!" Shisou's impassioned defense sent Sakura into another fit of hysterics.
"Kami, Shisou, how are you a police officer, much less a shinobi?" She kept laughing but petered out after she noticed the tent hadn't laughed with her. Instead, Shisou was looking at her in curiosity and fear.
"Did your Shisou not tell you, Sakura?" he asked. Sakura didn't know how to respond so she just shook her head no and tried to change the subject.
"Isn't your shift coming up, Kakashi?"
Kakashi nodded and turned to Shisou, giving him the eyebrows again. Shisou nodded then turned to look sadly at Sakura again. "I'll follow you in crow form for now. As far as Konoha is concerned, I'm on an extended visit to some outer towns to talk about the disappearances. So, you know, I'm not lying."
Sakura nodded, still not trusting her voice, and in a flash, Shisou was gone with one parting touch to the hand. That left Sakura and Kakashi alone, something she both would kill for and something she would die to avoid. It wasn't going to be fun, basically.
"Rat, why did you ask Tsunade to be your teacher?" He finally asked, positioned to be out of the tent in seconds if he didn't like her answer.
"You know why," was all she could say, but as he nodded and moved out of the tent she couldn't help calling after him. "I forgave you for it."
He didn't reply.
She woke herself up the next morning three hours before dawn. It was cold, as summer mornings are, with the sense of impending rain hanging over the small camp. She took time to put on her clothes - black, nondescript, and which covered every inch of her skin - before she forced herself to face the outside world.
In the confines of a tent, nothing had to be what it was. Sakura could be home, or in the past, or maybe in a future where the world is a kinder place for children with dreams. Where young girls don't have to burn their friend's body in the woods or in a trench. Where she never learned to be so cold.
But outside the tent, she saw Naruto and the fantasy was forced to end. He was sitting in front of the campfire, a luxury they would soon not have during the nights, and looked like he was concentrating intently on a kettle. It was odd for him to be making ramen at the end of his shift but she didn't want to draw attention to herself, so instead she just quietly sat down across from him.
That seemed to have the opposite effect of what she had been going for and the instant he realized she was there he was up with a shout.
"Sakura-chan, when did you get so sneaky?" He mimed crying, or maybe he was actually crying, and sat back down again in a huff.
The kettle started to steam but didn't whistle, confusing Sakura until she caught the edge of a seal. It was silenced as to not wake anyone else. It was kind of Naruto to do that and unexpected as well.
Her Naruto was kind, of course, all kindness and heart even to the end. He turned his humanity and compassion into a shield and a sword, could have saved the world with it in any other scenario. Her Naruto was kind enough to make her cry, but he was loud about his kindness. His kindness was over-the-top, something seen coming from a mile away, and so unsubtle in its approach it was charming.
So the silencing seal surprised her. What surprised her even more is when Naruto poured the hot water into a mug, stared at it intently until the tea inside steeped, and then handed it to her with a sheepish grin.
"I forgot milk and sugar, but I remember you bringing tea to training sometimes, and I thought it would totally get you ready for the mission!"
Sakura - who was an ANBU agent, who survived a war, who took three senbon to the chest last night, who looked in the eyes of dead men and smiled – started to cry. Silent tears because nothing could make her scream out loud anymore, but tears nonetheless. She didn't even grab the mug she was too surprised because this was Naruto, her best fucking friend, her hero, giving her tea when he didn't even know her, not really. Her Naruto had fought for her, with her, had bandaged her wounds when she ran out of chakra healing him, had died trying to give Konoha the Hokage it deserved. But she couldn't remember if he had ever made her tea.
So Sakura grabbed the mug and cried and Naruto panicked in the background and she couldn't find it in herself to be composed. She was a world away from year and what felt like a decade away from happiness and she hadn't cried in so fucking long so she cried now, in some small throwaway camp in the middle of the forest. She cried because she missed her family more than she could say and even in this mirror of her reality she would never really get them back. She cried because she really did like tea.
"Thank you, Naruto. I'm excited to be on this mission with, with you." Her voice only marginally cracked, something she was proud of. Naruto was staring at her with concern, eyes broadcasting every emotion, before he lunged around the fire to give her a big hug. The force of his affection nearly made her spill her tea but a hand pressed against the mug and offered a counterbalance. Naruto had planned to be so enthusiastic then, but still wanted her to have her tea.
Was it his parents that allowed him to be so consciously kind? That gave him tools he never had before? Was it his parents that gave him kindness he could turn on and off, so dismissive in the Hokage's office and so sweet in camp?
Sakura didn't know. She didn't even know if she cared. Naruto had made her tea. Shisou trusted her. Even Kakashi knew the truth and was still going to find Tsunade. Naruto had made her tea.
She would give herself this cry. She really hadn't slept in the past few weeks/years and she deserved it.
Naruto rubbed the back of his head in the familiar way he always did and gave her the same smile he always gave. "You're welcome, but if you're so happy I can make you tea whenever, Sakura-chan!"
"Really?" She asked, smile teasing the edge of her lips. Naruto's ability to say impossible things and believe in them wholeheartedly was something she had missed.
"Yeah, believe it! I know we haven't talked a lot cause I've been training hard to be the Hokage but you were so cool the other day! I bet you could be like the Vice Hokage if you wanted to be!" Sakura laughed at that and she couldn't even tell if he was choking. But he was nice and the tea was warm and the morning was quiet. Sakura had never had so many nice things happen at once in the longest time and she was going to treasure this, goddamnit. Because Naruto wouldn't lie to her, not in this universe and maybe not in any universe. Naruto wouldn't interrogate her in a weapon's store or try to kill her to prove a point – Naruto trusted her. And she knew it was dangerous for him to trust so easily, knew he shouldn't, but Sakura reveled in it. Though she could stay in this Konoha once all was said and done if that meant she could have her best friend back.
Sakura gave herself plenty of allowances that morning, until the tea ran cold and Naruto went back to his tent. Sakura let herself be happy.
Then she got back to work.
They traveled for four days on the way to Tsunade's most likely whereabouts. It was silent for the most part, for which Sakura was thankful, but she could tell things weren't really perfect.
Kakashi and Shisou had another few meetings in her tent trying to hammer out a general plan, but the conversations weren't as productive as they could have been given Sakura's reluctance to reveal too much detail about her world and Kakashi's reluctance to acknowledge her existence. It was getting pretty fucking annoying. Shisou was trying at the very least, but she had a feeling he was wary of her as well.
He should be, she knew, but it still hurt.
Third night, third meeting, he had asked her what she planned to do when they won. Never if, with Shisou, always when. Kakashi then gave her a look, almost the first time he had looked at her all day, and in an instant their language was formed. Because Sakura was more like Kakashi than ever before - a child soldier, carrying remnants of dead friends - and both of them knew that Sakura didn't have a plan for after. Or, more accurately, she did and it involved dying or leaving forever.
And then Shisou saw the look and understood what it meant because despite everything he really was an ANBU agent, and then he got angry because why would Sakura waste her life like that anyway? And then Kakashi got pissy and started yelling because she wasn't Sakura, and then both started yelling at each other and Sakura left the fucking tent.
So it could be better. (Kakashi, despite being one of the fastest ninjas alive, did end up with bird shit on his uniform the next morning, and Sakura laughed so hard that even Naruto told her to be quiet. Sasuke was silent in such a way that everyone knew he was silent and it was for a very important reason.)
Team Seven was left in a surprisingly quiet mission until the small village of Jecho rose out of the forest. It was a small place, surrounded by woods and bisected by a river; it subsisted mostly on trade and travelers, which meant the three biggest buildings in town were the inn, the brothel, and the gambling den.
They stopped about 500 feet from the perimeter, hoping Tsunade wouldn't sense Naruto's monster chakra, and tried to come to an agreement about who would go in and who would stay behind.
"I'm going!" cried Naruto.
"No, I'm going, idiot," snarled Sasuke.
"We're both going!" cried Naruto, and on and on and on until Sakura wished Kakashi would throw a chidori her way instead of some measly senbon.
Sakura sent a pulse of chakra to Kakashi and caught his eye, hoping he would work with her as an operative if not a person. He tapped his finger on the edge of his book - twenty five. She would have twenty five minutes then, to find Tsunade, before Kakashi would lose control of the boys. She could do that.
Her substitution with the log twenty feet below was seamless, and she was confident enough in her shadow clone to be a believable Sakura. One who was quiet, didn't talk, didn't fight.
She was in the town, chakra masked and hair up, not thirty seconds later. Another half a minute after that and she was in the casino. No time to waste and all that.
The building had one floor and was about as big as Sakura's childhood home. There were only a few tables and from first glance Sakura could tell Tsunade wasn't here. She released a heavy sigh before letting her hair down, unzipping the front of her shirt a bit, hiding her weapons, and sauntering over to the barkeep.
He was young, mostly staring at the waitresses walking around, but seemed confident enough behind the bar to make Sakura think this had been his job for quite a while. With any luck, he had seen Tsunade pass through and maybe even heard her drunkenly ramble about her next destination.
"Sake, please," she asked, bending over the bar just a bit. He took a peak and winked at her before turning around and sighing.
"I'm afraid we're out, miss. Can I get you anything else, something fruity, perhaps?" His hand moved to touch hers on the table and she giggled at the contact. Her other hand toyed with an empty shot glass on the bar as she pouted.
"Did my sister drink it all up again?" She collapsed on the bar in exasperation and she knew she already had him, plus every other patron of the bar, hooked. "Tsunade always drinks too much and never leaves anything behind for me!"
"You mean the bust- beautiful blond who was in here a few nights ago?"
"The same." She pouted again and leaned back on her bar stool. She had about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes left before she could report it was a bust and she wanted as much information as she could find. "Hey, do you know where she's going? We're supposed to travel to Suna together for a wedding but she always breaks off on her own to gamble and now I need to find her."
The barkeep looked a bit skeptical but another flash of cleavage won him over. She loved civilians. "Well, I heard her say she was planning on staying till the end of the week, but she split town when some ex-boyfriends of hers showed up and she hasn't been here since."
Sakura froze for a millisecond before smiling again. "Oh Kami, which one was it this time?" She giggled again, waved her hand, took a sip of the fruity drink he ended up giving her and immediately purged it from her system. At least it didn't taste poisonous.
The barkeep smiled when she drank and started to make another one. "It was two guys, actually, both in some dorky cloaks. Weird, right?"
"Oh," she said, staring directly at the crow on the building across the street, "That is weird."