Chapter 3: Passing Rain
"I've been thinking a lot lately."
"Huh?" Naruto exclaims with a complete stupefied look upon his face.
Sakura sighs.
"Na-ru-to," she pronounces his name in an annoyed staccato. "Have you been paying attention to anything I've just said for the past hour?"
Right now, they are both at Konoha's top rated furniture store. The said man innocently shakes his head, and Sakura sighs once more.
"Ugh, this is what I get for marrying an idiot," she blurts out to no one in particular. Then she goes on ranting again about her thoughts on picking the ideal couch that accentuates the living room wallpaper of their home.
None of that reaches his ears anyway because Uzumaki Naruto is happy.
He finally marries the girl of his dreams. He is revered and acknowledged by all as the former Hokage of Konoha. Currently, he is working to achieve peace in the shinobi world as a travelling secret agent with his wife, the best head medic of the century.
For once, he feels as if he's done right with his life.
Years pass by like a dream in his idyllic, quotidian village. It's as if all the battles between clans never happened. Those violent memories of war and death are burned away with all the previous lightweight school textbooks. People across the globe remember the Fourth Shinobi War and its gruesome history clear as mud.
He hears the high-fluted voices of children outside of the store. A blue bird perched on an ancient grandfather clock is singing to signify that another hour just passed.
There is no merciless bloodshed, no screams of anguish, and no broken homes and dreams in his world.
Yes, everything is perfect, or so he believes.
"Naruto, wake up!"
The sound of her voice stirs him out of the daze.
He recognizes the familiar surrounding by the wooden tables, chairs, and the curtained entrance. It's the dango shop again, except that it's empty save for just the two of them in there.
So it was just a dream, he thinks. A very long and pleasant one, no less…
"Sorry, Sakura-chan," he apologizes. "What were you saying?"
She clenches the teacup with both of her hands.
"I've been thinking a lot lately," she tells him.
This feels like déjà vu, the inner voice residing in his head states, but Naruto ignores it.
"About what?"
"It's something that I've been meaning to tell you for a while now, so don't freak out, okay? I was able to construct all this out of the last remaining bits of my chakra, so listen carefully because this is the only time you're going to be able to hear me say it."
He is confused but silent, willing to listen to anything she's going to say. But he wasn't prepared for what was about to come next.
"I've read your letter."
He swears that his heart just stopped beating.
"And I think it's only appropriate to give you a response, so here it goes."
He definitely wasn't prepared at all.
"That day," she speaks softly. "Was just like any other day. It was a warm spring day, with cherry blossoms blooming everywhere in the field. That day was meant to be our wedding day."
Naruto narrows his eyes. "Sakura-chan, are you pulling a prank on me? Because if you are, this isn't funny."
"Just hear me out, okay?" Sakura pleads. Her eyes are begging for him to listen, so despite his dubiousness, he shuts up for her.
She continues.
"But then, right before our wedding ceremony was about to start, the moon appeared abruptly. It turned bloody red, and that's where chaos and disaster started to happen."
Naruto thinks that Sakura is telling him the latest fairytale that Sarada made up. At least, he wants to believe it that way because Sakura looks deathly serious, almost as if she let fear possess her.
"The sole descendant of the Otsutsuki clan, fueled with hatred toward humanity, stole the Byakugan in order to destroy the shinobi world. You tried to stop him with all your powers, but in the end, you…"
Sakura stops. She is still as a rock, and only the sound of the sozu outside echoes against the wooden walls of the dango shop.
She twists her lips into a wry smile. "I guess we weren't meant to be," she says.
"Sakura-chan," Naruto says, donning a visible crease on his forehead. "You know that's now how the story went."
"It's true. That's not how the story went, at least in this world."
With a puzzled look upon his face, Naruto stares at Sakura, as if she belongs to another realm.
"The story that I was telling you just now," she explains to him. "Is the story from my past in the first world."
In high hopes and desperation, she directs chakra to her hands. As they soon become luminescent, she shakily reaches for his hands under the table and clings onto it.
Like a scrapbook profusely decorated with photographs and memorabilia, her late adolescent years come back alive within him once more.
The proposal didn't go the way it was supposed to, starting with the dango picnic that Naruto carefully crafted especially for Sakura under the cherry blossom tree, and ending with Naruto eating a dango with the ring he put inside.
Regrettably, the supposed romantic day ends with both of them in the hospital. The stupid one with whisker marks is on the gurney, trying to relieve the seriousness of the event with his trademark canny shit-eating grin. Beside him, the sassy, motor-mouthed woman hurls more than a million chastisements at him, all while she tries to locate the ring inside his body with her mystical palm technique.
Sakura, and also the nurses who are working there, thoroughly disregard the first suggestion thrown in by Shizune —gallons of prune juice and high-fiber breakfast cereal approach.
After few hours in the ER, close to midnight, Sakura manages to pull the ring out using medical ninjutsu and throat suction pump. All is well in the end as Naruto rests safe and sound on the hospital bed. But Sakura still pontificates on how oh-so un-fairy tale-esque the event was, and how stupid her soon-to-be husband is while sitting beside him on a stool.
Naruto does not miss a beat on the 'soon-to-be' part.
"Does that mean you're saying yes?" he asks. Immediately, Sakura feels the scarlet blush spread across her cheeks.
"Idiot!" she responds sharply. She is about to cross her arms and turn away from him, but in a flash, Naruto entwine his arms around her waist and drags her into his bed.
"Thank you, Sakura-chan!" Naruto shouts joyfully as he hugs her suffocatingly. Sakura pretends to hate it by squirming and telling him to let go, but soon, she accepts it by looping her arms around his neck and kissing his cheek.
That was perhaps one of her happiest moments in life before her fateful wedding day.
His eyes are building pools of tears, even after the memory ends. Naruto steadily lets her hands go to wipe his eyes with the sleeves of his jacket.
"In the first world, Naruto, after you died, all people from every nation, including our friends, died fighting against the descendant year after year. Our civilization crumbled into dust. Only I survived till I was 50 years old, watching everyone suffer and eventually succumb to a miserable end," Sakura unperturbedly continues her story, though her eyes are cast down in desolation.
"Since I was the sole survivor, the Otsutsuki descendant cursed me to live in a time loop. I was assigned to be the witness of humanity's destruction, and was condemned so that my painful memories about the shinobi world would serve as a fuel for the descendant to justify his hatred toward humans. Once he tasted blood, he wanted more. He had the intense desire to live in that moment over and over again, and he did, through me.
"But I couldn't bear to live with the eternal memory of war and terror, and I couldn't live with the thought of seeing you die a thousand times over. I made a vow to save you in the next world, and in the end, I thwarted the descendant's plans by having you marry Hinata instead in this world. At least I did one thing right."
He wants to intervene, say something to stop her from talking nonsense. But the visions of the moon, and Sakura in her tattered wedding dress holding his mangled arm in the battlefield are now clear as day to him, and prevent him from uttering a single word. The memories afflict him to feel all the heartache and suffering from the first world, as if he lived through them before. His head is throbbing. Naruto rubs his eyes and shakes his head hard to purge the harrowing visions out.
The visions, however, ingrain into his mind, and he eventually gives in to alleviate the pain.
"It's funny," she continues. "Even though I wanted to protect you from all the painful memories of the first world, I somehow ended up giving them to you. I'm not sure how to explain it myself, but one day, I realized that I accidentally transferred some of my past memories of you and me to Sarada a while back. She told me about seeing visions of you and me in wedding gowns, and her explanations made me think that the same thing could have happened to you. I brushed them off to her as if they were fantasies, but in truth, I was hoping that you weren't affected to since I'm not good at controlling the powers yet."
"How did you gain the power, Sakura-chan?" Naruto asks, still reeling over the headache left by the subsiding visions.
"I believe that it's a side effect from the curse," she tells him quietly. "But I managed to control it a little through my healing technique."
All is noiseless in the shop, save for the clock on the wall ticking away mercilessly.
"Naruto," Sakura says to salvage what little moment they have left. "There's not much time. But I want to tell you everything before I leave you in this world."
This world? Naruto still doesn't understand.
"You asked me before my reason in choosing Sasuke-kun, so here it is: I chose Sasuke-kun in this world because I had to break you away from me. I wanted to never let you suffer again, to live and die in such agony. What is one little heartache compared to the fate of humanity?"
She laughs a hollow laughter, but Naruto doesn't back down. He sees her through with his piercing blue eyes.
He knows his answer all too well.
"Everything," he tells her. "It means everything, Sakura-chan."
It feels as if a kunai knife had stabbed her heart. Sakura's crestfallen jade eyes obtain suspicious moisture, and her lips tremble.
"And that's why you're a fool, Naruto."
"You already know that, Sakura-chan."
His statement makes it clear to her why he would never give up on her. He would walk across the fire pits of hell all for her sake because he loves her too much to turn back.
The treacherous, recalcitrant tears spring from her eyes.
"You're always too easily moved to tears, Sakura-chan," Naruto recites his age-old adage for her empathetically.
Suddenly, the confining walls and the furniture of the dango shop start to disintegrate into dust. Soon, all the surroundings, from the outside garden to the insufferable cityscape of Konoha, fade into the golden backdrop of astral plane they are both floating in. Naruto is at loss with words, but his confusion quells as Sakura embraces him tightly.
"You never changed your last name," he whispers while burying his hands in her hair. "And I think I know why now."
Pulling back a little, Sakura brushes tufts of hair away, and plants a kiss on Naruto's forehead.
"What was that for?" he asks.
"Don't tell me that you don't remember," she says, and soon, his teenage years come back alive to him again.
"But how did you..?"
"The first time you told me was when we were both nineteen," she says, placing her head on his chest, and listening to the maddening beat of his heart. "You confessed to me just like that."
Everything is fading fast away into the nebulous glow, and so is Sakura.
"Naruto," she tells him. "I'm sorry that I put you through such pain. But I was always happy to be with you no matter what."
"Don't go," Naruto begs, holding her tighter. "Please don't leave me, Sakura-chan. I need you. I always needed you."
In return, he plants a kiss on her forehead. "You were my dream," he confesses.
Sakura, still in tears, is smiling.
"You'll wake up soon, and you need to. The world still needs you, Naruto. And don't worry because we'll always be together in one form or another. This I know for sure now."
They both give each other one final kiss as the tender light absorbs them, leaving nothing behind.
The first thing he sees is the worn down ceiling above. The foul smell of ashes and dust linger around the confines of the little room.
Naruto jolts up like a jack knife from the bed, and looks around the surrounding area. There's barely any light source, and figures hiding in the shadows are huddling for warmth and comfort. They are mumbling something that he can't comprehend, even though he is close to their proximity.
Soon, he takes note of the hospital garb he's wearing —the only thing he has on— along with the medical tubes on his body, and the soot stained blanket protecting him from the chill atmosphere. He shivers, either from the cold or confusion.
Just then, a small voice calls out to him from the dark.
"Ah, you're finally awake, Hokage-sama," the mysterious stranger pipes. She walks beside his bed, and he recognizes her instantly.
"Sarada! What are you doing here? What am I doing here? What is this place?" Naruto asks her rapidly.
"We're in a secret room at the basement of the Children's Hospital," she says.
"But why?"
Right there and then, Uchiha Sarada tells him everything about the current world, including the inevitable clan feuds escalating into another world war despite his resignation; the destruction of Konoha along with the rest of the shinobi nations; the death of millions of innocent civilians; and finally, the death of Haurno Sakura.
He clenches the bed sheets at first while listening Sarada. He tries to calmly breathe, tries to keep it together, but the information Sarada provides him proves to be too much. In the end, Naruto starts gasping for air, and the bodies hidden in the dark cry out in panic as he gradually falls onto the floor.
Everything is pitch dark.
"Sarada!"
Naruto hears her familiar voice cry out of the darkness. His eyes flutter open to Sakura, kneeling in front of her daughter in basement of the Children's Hospital. He sees his unconscious body beside the two girls. The jacket on his body is wide open, revealing his bare chest, concrete and substantial. Carefully, Naruto takes a glance at his hands and arms, which are translucent, and immediately panics. He shouts to no avail for their attention.
No one can see him or hear him, despite his effort to be noticeable.
"Mama," Sarada says, her body convulsing madly before Sakura. "I still don't understand. What were those visions of you and the Seventh before? Why am I seeing them again now, and why are you telling me all this now? Is everything that you told me a lie up until now? Are you really my mother?!"
Wrapping her arms around her torso, Sarada begins to shed tears.
The whole the room is shaking from the impact of the jutsus innumerable foot above. Losing his balance from the violent quake, Naruto falls over to his knees and spots people huddling with fright in one corner.
Sakura places her hands on her daughter's shoulders.
"Listen to me well, Sarada, because this may be the last time I'll be able to badger you," she tells her daughter with a gentle, but bittersweet smile. "I only wanted to protect you… But I'm sorry that I wasn't able to do that, and I'm sorry that I won't be able to do that from now on."
Slowly, Sakura wraps her arms around Sarada, who can't help but weep intemperately.
"Let me just ask you one thing, Mama, "Sarada asks, choking over the words. "Did you ever love father?"
Sakura's eyes momentarily flee toward an unconscious Naruto beside them, and she closes her eyes in grimace.
An immaterial Naruto notices that one of Sakura's hands is clutching a folded paper that is slightly tattered.
It's his letter.
"I love you," Sakura whispers indefinitely. She soon pushes Sarada away from her and sprints out the door. Sarada tries to chase after her, but the people in the room grab her in protest. They tell the distressed child not to leave, not to be foolish, that her mother's wish is to protect everyone in the room, including the Hokage.
Sarada cries and screams, and flails her legs in the air as if every torture methods in Konoha befell her. Soon, she hits the floor in a dead faint.
Darkness engulfs Naruto again. But all he could hear is Sarada's screams echoing through the hollow dimension, steadily tearing his eardrums apart.
When Naruto regains his conscious, he sees Sarada's busy hands removing the tubes out of his body. Afterwards, she sits beside him on a stool, and dabs sweat away from his forehead with a wet cloth she yanked off her belt.
"My mother told me to take care of you in her place," Sarada says quietly.
Naruto solemnly stares at the moldy cracked ceiling above, not bothering to respond back.
"You were fighting against the rebel clans in Konoha, but they ended up knocking you down. My mother dragged you, along with 10 other civilians, into this hidden chamber. She told me to protect you while she went back up on the surface, no matter what. She said that she would return soon, but she never did."
The memories are all coming back to him. He remembers the fight clearly, but the memory of him seeing Sakura for the last time is hazy. He was losing too much blood back then, but Naruto still feels the warm iridescent glow of her healing hands on his chest. He slowly traces his fingers over his chest and presses them down on the fully mended scars.
He feels nothing.
"It's been nearly two years since then, Hokage-sama," the girl continues. "We don't know what is currently happening outside. None of us have dared to set our foot up on the surface."
Naruto still keeps his mouth shut. Taking note of the depressing mood, Sarada transitions to dinner topics with the promise of introducing the kind civilians living with them in the room.
None of her words reach his ears. Naruto soon falls asleep.
Three days later, Naruto decides to go outside.
Everyone in the room, including Sarada, begs him not to go, even though it's fruitless to try and stop Uzumaki Naruto once his resolution's set in stone.
With a tranquil composition, almost as if he's in a trance, Naruto moves out of the room and walks down the hall. The civilians and Sarada are treading behind him, still trying to persuade him again and again not to go. It's too late, though. He moves all the way to the end of the hallway, and twists the iron wheel of the heavy door with his arms. It takes him a while, but he manages to turn the pivot. The wheel creaks, and with a loud click, the door cranks open.
There's a seemingly endless staircase in front of him with a small, but heavily sealed door on the roof. Naruto climbs up, and the others follow. When he makes it to the top, he yanks all the locks and charms off, and pushes the barrier away. Soon, streams of lights and the gentle spring breeze graze his pallid skin.
With ease, he climbs out instantly, and merely stares at what used to be Konoha in silence.
Sarada and the others soon climb out as well, and they soon share the same reaction as Naruto.
There is nothing but the flat ground, stretching for miles and miles, aligning with the blue-gray sky. The Children's Hospital —or at least the remaining concrete and steel bits of it—is the only abraded building that stands aloof and apart from the barren wasteland.
Staggering to their feet, half of the civilians wander around the bizarre earth, unable to accept the fate of their beloved homeland. The rest, along with Sarada, are discussing about traveling to the Land of Iron for protection and safety.
None of the survivors' actions and behaviors piques Naruto's interest. He takes note of the damp ground, which indicates that the rain passed by a few minutes ago, before all of them were up on the surface. In just a few steps away from him, a lone cherry blossom petal in a puddle takes hold of his eyes, and he thinks of her again.
He instinctively tilts his head up. Staring at the blue-gray sky, Naruto wonders if Sakura is safe and happy in another world.
[END]