Sakura was the last to die. But before she drew her last breath, she had already died a hundred times.
It was the seal that did it. The seal that she'd been so proud to wear in her forehead kept her drawing in breath after unwilling breath, kept the blood running through her veins even as Kakashi was swallowed up by his own eye, as Tsunade shriveled into a withered corpse, as Naruto's chakra was torn from his body, even as Sasuke was thrown into a black fire of his own making.
And as the smoke cleared to reveal nothing—not even ash—and as the last threads of Naruto's vivid blue chakra vanished like a tenuous breeze, Kaguya turned to her with unseeing eyes and smiled.
"Weep not, girl," Kaguya said, smiling placidly. "For death is your freedom."
She reached out with a long, pale finger and tapped the diamond glowing on Sakura's head. "Now sleep the eternal slumber."
Sakura turned her face towards Naruto's empty husk of a body, wishing she still had limbs to reach out and close his eyes, wishing she owned a single tear to shed. She continued staring as the light was siphoned out of her vision and darkness took her at last.
Haruno Sakura died at the age of twenty-seven—the last of humankind.
"Sakura!"
A worried voice jolted her from the dream. She instinctively sat up and regretted it immediately, doubling over in white hot pain.
Someone grabbed her by the shoulders and eased her down into a stiff bed. There was a familiar smell—lemon ginger soap, the brand that her mother used.
Sakura's eyes fluttered open to take in the blurry sight of someone who looked like her mother but couldn't possibly be the woman who'd had her throat slashed out by a resurrected Asuma. She greedily took in the sight of the simple jade necklace worn by an unmarred neck, the brown hair tucked into a neat bun, the worried green eyes reflecting the image of a little girl with pink hair.
She took a shuddering breath. "Mama?"
"Sakura, honey, are you okay?" said the woman wearing her mother's face.
Her hands shook as she shoved all of her chakra into a resolute Kai.
But nothing happened. Maybe she didn't have enough chakra to offset the genjutsu so she needed to find the source, needed to break the illusion with—
Sakura grabbed the knife in her mother's hand, sending the plate of peeled apples clattering to the ground, and drove it into her thigh, ignoring the piercing scream from the woman sitting next to her. But despite the sharp pain, the image of her mother didn't waver, didn't melt away, didn't fade.
She stared, feeling like someone had stuffed her ears full of cotton because it couldn't, there was no way, because she herself had confirmed the mangled throat belonged to her mother, because she herself had lit the funeral pyre with a flickering flame.
"—what is wrong with you!" came the words piercing through the cotton in her ears.
Sakura looked up uncomprehendingly, keeping her gaze fixed on her mother, keeping her consciousness rooted in the hand holding hers in a vicelike grip as nurses flooded into the room.
"Mama?" she tried again, the word feeling foreign to her tongue.
"Sakura," her mother said tearfully, "What's gotten into you baby?"
She couldn't help it—couldn't fight the darkness flickering at the edges of her vision. It was the chronic exhaustion of fighting a hopeless war, the grief that she'd never had time to process, the sheer what the fuck of this situation.
There was a telltale pounding in her head before everything turned black.
"… never seen anything like this… dual consciousness… not possible… medical anomaly…"
When she woke up for the second time that day, she was in a white room carefully swept clean of any sharp objects, with her hands tucked into gentle but unyielding restraints.
Sakura took everything in, gauging her low chakra levels, the thin, starchy hospital sheets, the foggy effect of the tranquilizer pumping into her body through an IV.
It was a dream then, she thought. Nothing but a dream.
She didn't react to the tall Yamanaka who entered the room and gave her the patented bland smile of a medical professional. She didn't react to the trickle of chakra that poked at her consciousness. She didn't react to the frustrated frown that took over the man's face upon encountering the wrathful presence of inner Sakura blocking him from probing past her immediate flow of consciousness.
He sat back into the chair at her bed. "Well, Haruno Sakura, age seven," he said conversationally. "You're a very curious little girl."
"Thank you," she said politely, staring up at the ceiling.
The man leaned over her, blocking out the blinding overhead lights. "You're a smart girl, I hear," he said. "And because you're so smart, I'm sure you'll understand what I'm about to tell you."
His frown grew deeper, emphasizing the pale scar cutting through his lower lip. "The village of Konoha does not tolerate curiosities. Especially young curiosities like yourself after what happened to Uchiha Itachi—or rather what he did. It would be in your best interest to comply with our investigation."
She let her eyes close as he spoke. "You have a job," she said simply. "I want to help you, but I don't know how."
"Relax," he responded. "Focus on the events that took place yesterday evening when you were on your way home from school and made a sudden detour to the home of your classmate Uzumaki Naruto. Focus on the thoughts that prompted you to attempt a forbidden and life threatening chakra transfer jutsu thought to originate from the puppeteer corps of Sunagakure."
She let his words guide her through yesterday's events—the bell ringing at the end of class, the strange compulsion to finally accept Naruto's offer to walk her home, the strange twitching of her limbs as she stared at his open blue eyes, the sudden terror that gripped her entire being at the thought of Naruto's chakra violently sucked out of him.
"Hey Sakura-chan," Naruto giggled when she reached out to close those blue eyes with her hand, "What are you doing? You wanna play hide and seek?"
There was sweat dripping down from the Yamanaka's forehead by the time they were done dissecting every thought process, every decision, every random thought that made up the matrix of yesterday's events.
" Hey Sakura-chan what's that trick you're doing with your—erm what's it called again? Chatora? Hey that tickles! Can you teach me how to use chatura?"
"Oi Sakura-chan, you don't look so good—I mean you're still pretty, cause you're always pretty. But you're all sweaty. Are you hungry? I have cup ramen, it only takes two seconds to make, I swear! It'll make you feel better—it always makes me feel better! Ramen is the best! Oi—Sakura-chan! Someone help! Help! Please!"
He sat back, scribbled neat notes into his black notebook, and left without another word.
And then she was back—the woman who wore her mother's face.
"Oh Sakura," she said tenderly, laying a warm hand on her cheek.
Sakura struggled feebly against the wave of nausea that filled her when she caught the smell of lemon ginger soap for the second time since her mother died.
"Who are you," she whispered, asking not only her mother's doppelgänger but also the strange child with pink hair who sat in her skin.
For all intents and purposes, Haruno Sakura was an ordinary little girl with above average intelligence, below average physical strength, and below average chakra levels. All this served to place her on the lower end of mediocre.
Until she wasn't.
The little girl who'd compensated for her insecurities by showing off her intelligence retreated from the front row to the back of the class one day. Always watching, always focused, speaking only when spoken to.
She completed all of her exercises exactly as instructed, never going above and beyond, never doing any less than what was required to complete the task.
Her instructors noticed the sudden shift in personality, but remained unconcerned. For Sakura had never been a promising ninja nor would she ever become one. Their focus remained on the Kyuubi and the last Uchiha.
Her classmates whispered about her, casting curious looks at her corner. But their curiosity remained just that—the fading curiosity of a child soon replaced by something brighter and louder.
And Naruto behaved exactly as he had in her memories. Loud, obnoxious, desperate for attention, and latching onto Sakura who'd won his undying loyalty by being the first friend to play hide and seek with him.
It was heartbreaking. He was a perfect replica—down to the wrinkled orange jumpsuit, the raspy prepubescent voice, down to the exact shade of blue in his eyes.
She refused to pay him any more attention than was strictly required.
Every day, Naruto sat with her, eagerly pestering her for more tricks whether she paid attention to him or not. Every day, Sakura sat in her new corner in the back of the classroom, stabbing her mottled thigh intermittently with a blunted practice kunai.
But despite her best efforts, the genjutsu never broke.
"Report, Yamanaka," Hiruzen said, closing the scroll before him and devoting his full attention to the man who stood silently before him.
"Haruno Sakura," Yamanaka began, "born the 28th of March to Haruno Kizashi and Nohara Mebuki. Grade Three at the Academy, top of her class in history, theory, and strategy. Fiftieth percentile in taijutsu and weapons mastery."
"Yes, yes," Hiruzen said, waving a hand impatiently. "That was all in her file. Tell me what happened during the Mind Walk."
Yamanaka hesitated, glancing back down at his notes as if to make sure they were still there. "To summarize, Haruno exhibits signs of a dual consciousness."
Hiruzen lit his pipe. "A dual consciousness? Perhaps a symptom of overimagination? An imaginary friend, perhaps?"
"No sir," Yamanaka said. "This consciousness is fully fledged. Independent. It is quite curious—it emerges from the same root up until her recent interaction with Uzumaki Naruto where it suddenly diverges. A fork in the road, splitting into one dead end where Haruno Sakura resides. The other continues and spans the length of twenty more years. This divergent path, this consciousness—I refer to it as Patient B in my notes—now operates as a wholly separate entity from the original consciousness of Haruno Sakura. But even more interesting is the fact that the divergent path itself is currently being…"
Yamanaka paused, narrowing his eyes briefly. "It appears that the divergent path itself is being rewritten. Overridden."
Hiruzen felt himself frowning and relaxed back into a neutral expression. "This has never been heard of."
"Correct, Hokage-sama. This is completely unprecedented. Patient B—seems to have completely superseded the consciousness of Haruno Sakura. I—"
Yamanaka took a quick breath, smoothing a hand over his notes once more. "For all intents and purposes, the consciousness known as Haruno Sakura is dead."
"And how," Hiruzen said slowly, thinking of the likelihood of a sleeper agent implanted within the consciousness of a child, "How is this possible?"
"The human mind is a complex machine," Yamanaka replied. "Yet for all its complexity, there remains a singular nexus lying in the center of the neural network. This nexus is what we call the soul in colloquial terms."
"Yes, and what about Haruno Sakura?" Hiruzen asked.
"As of yesterday, the 20th of October, the soul of Haruno Sakura lies dormant and completely inactive. The soul of Patient B is the only active consciousness within the body of that child."
"Yamanaka," Hiruzen said sharply, drawing the man's attention away from the wrinkled notes in front of him. "What I want to know is how. Is there any evidence of soul tampering. Any genjutsu, any trace of a foreign consciousness? What I need is an explanation. Is this Patient B a threat we need to address?"
Yamanaka cleared his throat, tapping a finger against the table and scanning his notes for a nonexistent solution. "There is no trace of a foreign agent. There is no foreign chakra in her system—we had this confirmed by the Chief Medic. We called Hatake in to verify the results and to break any residual genjutsu with the Sharingan, but no such trace was found. The only explanation I can offer, Hokage-sama," he said, "is drawn from fiction. Fiction. Because a dual consciousness is not possible, because Patient B's memories are too vivid and detailed to be the work of genjutsu, because there is no other explanation for the fact that a seven year old carries the memories of a twenty-seven year old woman."
"You cite fiction," Hiruzen said, fighting to keep disapproval from coloring his voice. "This is truly your best explanation?"
"We kept her in a maximum security unit for seven days. Any residual foreign chakra or genjutsu—even of Mangekyou caliber—would not have persisted without a connection to the original source," Yamanaka replied. "Yet Patient B remains. I have considered all variables and all possible explanations, but the most plausible explanation I have for the existence of Patient B is time travel."
Hiruzen sat back. Ito Yamanaka was the most level-headed, the most rational, the most academically rigorous, the most scientific of the board-certified neuropsychologists in the Yamanaka clan.
"I need a complete report," Hiruzen said, reaching over to tap the ashtray. "I need every detail—from her earliest memory to the most inane thought to run across her mind. What do we do with her? Patient B?"
Yamanaka spoke with more confidence this time, looking Hiruzen in the eyes. "As far as I can tell—and with extensive research—I conclude Patient B does not pose a significant threat to Konoha or its people. Continued research into this novel case of dual consciousness may help us accomplish breakthrough discoveries into the nature of schizophrenia, the integrity and transferable qualities of the human soul, and if my hypothesis is correct—the dimension of time itself. Patient B poses not a threat, but a series of profound questions—of which this is the most intriguing: is it possible to extract a human soul from its native body and implant it into another?"
He paused for a moment to organize his racing thoughts. "If it is possible, if Patient B proves the possibility of a sustainable soul transplant, then we may very well unlock the secret to immortality."
Hiruzen set down his pipe at last, light flickering out at the revelation that a child of inconsequential significance suddenly held answers to those terrible creeping questions that Orochimaru had asked him so long ago.
"Patient B will be monitored," he said, summoning ANBU with a wave of his hand. "Secretly, of course. There will be no mention of this made to anyone—not even her parents."
"Sir," Yamanaka said, nodding sharply.
"She will return to her home, resume her education at the Academy," Hiruzen continued. "You will explain to her parents her official diagnosis—Haruno Sakura suffered a psychotic break. The severity of the incident warrants weekly visits to your clinic for the foreseeable future."
Yamanaka bowed.
"A complete report," Hiruzen reminded.