Author's Note:
This drabble is inspired by and a sort of crossover of the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. For those who aren't familiar with it: Outlander is an adventure/scifi/historical fiction book series (now a TV show) that follows the main character Claire Beauchamp, a army nurse in WWII, through her life and adventures. It starts in 1945 when she suddenly walks/falls through a crack in time (marked by a circle of standing stones) into the past. She wakes up from her fall 200 years in the past, in Scotland in 1743 when the second Scottish uprising is starting to take root.
This is a drabble, so obviously I'm only working with a small tidbit from the series. [[[SPOILER ALERT for those just watching or reading the series now!]]] For anyone familiar with it, they'll know I'm borrowing/playing around with an event that happens later on in the series (yes, I've read the first five monstrous books in the series, years ago).
This is unbeta'd. Appologies for the mistakes. Constructive criticism welcomed.
Title: A Long Journey
Summary: Sakura's journey that takes her from a doomed loved and back again. (Outlander AU / Timetravel AU)
Rating: K+
Word Count: 832
Sakura jerked to a stop from her desperate sprint toward the Standing Stones. Turning, she glanced greedily over her shoulder to see her fierce warrior once more.
He stood atop an adjacent hill, overlooking the valley through which she crossed, a lone figure in black. From her distance, he looked strikingly similar to a scarecrow with his slumped posture and head tilted against the autumn wind. He was silent and singular but always watching.
His soulful eyes, onyx night and resolute, tangled with Sakura's. They shared a universe between them for not but a heartbeat. Everything they spoke and left unspoken hung heavy in the air, leaving a bittersweet taste in their mouths.
Then, with her eyes stinging and his gaze glistening, they blinked.
Sakura turned back to her escape for safety. Never again did she turn her head as she swarmed up the hill to the stones. Because behind her careened the danger of war. And when she was gone her guardian husband would join in the clash of distant thunder and clanking metal.
With all her might, Sakura threw herself into the fissure in time between two elephantine stones. She flashed out of late Edo with a loud crack like lightning to tumble into her time of modernity.
The air around her smelt burnt and crisp when she landed in a field of wild grass and overgrown weeds. The roaring sound of battle that had rung in her ears suddenly replaced with quiet nothingness and the far away echo of cars. Sakura stumbled about, disoriented from the changes and her long journey.
Her friends, Ino and Shikamaru, found her hours later sitting disheveled and dazed outside of a gas station. The payphone she used to call them with was still off the hook as if she had forgotten to even hang-up.
They rushed her to the nearest hospital with urgency Sakura did not think necessary. The entire ride there they would glance at her, worried. It was clear they had questions, as Ino kept opening her mouth but was silenced by a furtive look from Shikamaru. When they both thought she was dozing she heard a quick exchange in whispers between them. She couldn't make out all the words, her mind too fogged still and her ears ringed. But she could understand that they thought her too delicate in mind and body to bombard with anything more than essential conversation.
At the hospital, Sakura was diagnosed as dehydrated, malnourished, in shock, and four months pregnant. The last bit of information had Ino in a fit, demanding to know what happened.
Sakura refused to elaborate beyond she accidently took a journey to a faraway place and was back.
The authorities weren't able to pry any information out of her that Ino wasn't able to for herself. They along with the hospital staff speculated about what happened to her and why Sakura had gone missing for three years. However, the psychologist they assigned to her while equally unsuccessful in gathering information suggested the speculation hurt more than helped.
The father was never found. As Sakura didn't say a word about him or where she gallivanted off to for three years. What her friends did know about him they gleaned from observing her son, Sakumo. They guessed his intelligence must have been phenomenal as his silver-white hair. Because while Sakura was smart and fair with pink hair, no one on either side of her family was that pale in complexion or lacked pigment in their hair or that frightfully intuitive.
Behind closed doors, it was different. Sakumo would eagerly sit propped up in his bed at night, listening to the grand tales Sakura told him of his father. It was their little secret. And while Sakumo's father wasn't there with them, Sakura was determined Sakumo would grow up knowing him through her.
When Sakumo was grown, he knew both very little about his father and a lot. Sakura said his father was a good, decent man that was highly intelligent and dedicated to people. He also knew his mother thought of his father as goofy and equivocal in his humor. He knew nothing of his father first hand however, not how he smiled or how he walked, nor how he was in public compared to in private.
Sakura wished son and father had known each other in the flesh. She often thought they'd frustrate and amuse the other in equal turns with their differences that seemed to stem from being men of their time. Occasionally she would have a good chuckle over Sakumo saying his father was too conservative when Sakura would share his beliefs he had had on certain matters.
When many more years passed, it came time for Sakura to take one last long journey. At the end of it, waiting in his warrior regalia with a happy eye-creasing smile was her husband of old, Hatake Kakashi.
He greeted her with an embrace and a witticism of, "For once you're the one that is late."