When the body dies, what happens to the soul? Does it linger on, trying to survive? Does it perish instantly, unable to exist without a body to sustain it?
Sakura took in a deep breath, letting her rib cage expand until it felt like it was straining out of her skin. A slender ray of light hit her face through the branches of the Hashirama tree she'd found refuge in. It was nearing noon, but she'd been awake since the cold blue hours of early morning.
It was going to rain, she noted absently. Maybe the rain would bring this dead tree back to life. Maybe the rain would find a seed lying dormant in this scorched earth. Maybe Konoha would be green once again.
But the gods were not so kind. She knew this through the bodies she'd combed through this morning—some so bloated and mutilated that they could be called human bodies only out of respect. It was dirty, desperate work, but it had to be done.
"Until the day the rivers dry and the mountains crumble," she sang quietly, picking dried blood out of her fingernails. "May the gods watch and preserve our land."
A dry voice joined her. "Shinobi of Konoha, to the Will of Fire, always stay true."
She couldn't decide if he was a terrible singer because he couldn't be bothered to find the right pitch or because he was always diminishing his abilities in the interest of pulling nasty surprises or because he was actually that horrible.
The words died in her throat, leaving him to finish the song by himself. "With this spirit and this mind, let us give all loyalty, in suffering or joy, to our nation."
It was their anthem, but mostly it was a bar song. Or at least it had been once upon a time.
The last time she'd sung this had been with a bar full of people in the aftermath of Pain's assault. It had reeked of sweat, blood, and vomit. There had only been tepid, flat beer to go around. But she'd been happy, yelling more than singing the words because she couldn't hear herself over the terribly dissonant crowd. Happy enough to grab the nearest body and plant a sloppy kiss somewhere between their chin and lower lip.
Neji had done that thing where he frowned only with his eyebrows and gingerly pushed her towards Sai's direction like she was a slobbering dog. Ino had laughed until she cried.
But still, she'd been happy.
She was cold all of a sudden. It wasn't simply the soft pitter patter of the rain hitting her bare arms. It was the fact that she couldn't close her eyes for fear of the ghosts that would come find her. It was the fact that she was almost always running on fumes because they were running out of rations. It was the fact that she'd seen a familiar face today in the pile of corpses.
It was the least she could have done for Ino–using her own shirt to dress the body so that Ino could depart to the afterlife looking as presentable as possible. Ino who'd always been beautiful and golden and well-dressed to a fault. Ino hadn't deserved such an ugly death. None of them had.
A hand reached out to steady her. It was calloused and dry, but it was warm.
"Sakura," Kakashi-sensei called. "Come down."
She nodded and let him pull her down from the tree.
"Ino—" she began before her throat closed treacherously around her voice.
Kakashi's eye closed briefly. "I know," he said. The delicate skin around his eyes was splotched with broken blood vessels. Sasuke wore the same look. There was nothing she could do for them.
They walked in silence back to the encampment. Naruto and Sasuke were sitting next to a small fire half-discussing strategy, half-bickering. Tsunade sat a ways away from them, looking for all the world like a woman in her prime before you saw the defeated slump of her back, the soulless set of her eyes.
No one said anything about Sakura's missing shirt. This time, it was Sasuke who threw her a wrinkled tunic from his pack without a word.
Somehow, it was that time of day again. They didn't have a designated time for it and it was completely void of ceremony, but it was the only semblance of normalcy they had left. Somehow, it was always Kakashi's job to split a ration bar meant for one adult into five pieces.
No one echoed Naruto's Itadakimasu, but that was because Sasuke had already finished and moved onto sharpening a brace of scavenged kunai, because Kakashi had his nose buried behind a bloodstained copy of Icha Icha even though his eye remained rooted to one spot, because Tsunade hasn't said more than a few words since they they'd found Shizune's body a couple weeks ago.
Because Sakura was mouthing a silent, wide-eyed prayer for Ino's soul to pass safely.
I saw you, she admitted in her mind. I saw you facing down the monster even though you knew you were going to die. I saw you flip your hair even though you were scared. I saw the monster cut you down but I knew you still had a chance.
You didn't die because of the monster. You died because I chose not to come back and heal you. You died slowly, watching the rot creep into your body because I decided that you weren't important enough to save.
In the next life, Ino, don't come looking for me. In the next life, Ino, find yourself some better friends.
She chewed her dry, crumbling rations with eyes wide open staring at the fire because she was afraid of the sights that would haunt her in the dark.
Three bites. The ration bar filled her mouth like ash.
31 days
"Your name is Haruno Sakura," Yamanaka says. "You're twenty-seven years old. You're a jounin serving under your teacher Tsunade."
Sakura nods, staring at the reflection of the pale little girl with knobbly knees staring back at her. Yes, she reminds herself. She had made jounin—not that the title had held much significance when Konoha's entire shinobi forces consisted of a dozen ragtag survivors.
"Could you show me?"
She looks down at two tiny feet wearing white sneakers with pink laces. They're the kind that light up in bright, flashing colors. Her mother had bought them full-price from a premium retailer instead of hunting around in the clearance sections in the hope that something pretty would set Sakura right again. Well, she thinks, kicking one foot and then the other. They're ridiculous.
"I can't," she says belatedly. And it's true. She's not trying to be difficult. She just doesn't have the chakra.
"Please," he repeats, flicking his gaze to her right.
She follows his gaze, catching sight of the ANBU standing against the back wall. Like every ANBU officer, this one too is anonymous, hidden behind a standard uniform and an impenetrable barrier that makes it impossible for her to make out the chakra signature. Still, she studies that shadowy figure, wondering if it could be Kakashi.
"Sakura-san," Yamanaka calls.
She rises to her feet, taking in the voice recorder whirring in the back corner, the sterile gray tile flashing blue, red, yellow with her every step, the tiny stream of chakra circulating through underdeveloped chakra coils.
The only jutsu she can manage is a henge. Her chakra is a floaty wisp of a cloud but she forces it into shape until a severe, gaunt woman stares back at her through the mirror. Haruno Sakura is not pretty to look at, she observes absently. Her hair is tied back in a severe knot secured by a cloth band, her skin is sallow, her eyes are bloodshot and weighed down by lack of sleep.
In this fantasy of peacetime, the woman standing before her looks silly. Like a caricature of a ninja. A civilian's rendering of a killer.
The henge breaks after mere seconds, but she's left lightheaded and panting from the effort.
"Taijutsu," he says. A clone emerges out of the ground next to her.
She obeys with trembling limbs, tripping back to avoid an onslaught of jabs. The clone is slow—each movement suspended in motion like one of Iruka-sensei's diagrams. But this body is too soft and doughy to keep up.
It ends with her flat on her back, black spots creeping in her vision, choking on the air that her body swallows in panic. Her mouth sours with bile.
"Genjutsu," says a distant voice.
"No," she bites out, clambering drunkenly to her feet. "No," she repeats for good measure.
"But Sakura-chan," whines a familiar voice. "You promised we'd get ramen after the mission."
She whirls around and stops dead at the sight of Naruto half-carrying, half-dragging a boneless Kakashi-sensei. Sai is there too, making a bland comment about the inverse correlation between a high sodium diet and penis size.
"Ugly," he says with that fake plastic smile as they pass by her. "Aren't you coming?"
They're so real, so lifelike, so familiar that her voice catches in her throat. She can't breathe. Sai is there, staring at her with that condescending quizzical smile. It's the whole package that gets her. That silly crop top—the one she'd always been slightly pissed off about because it shows a waist that's probably smaller than hers—is included. Whole. No blood. No intestines spilling out of a wound gaping like an open pocket.
Everything is in its proper place.
She jerks her head to the side, then forces her entire body to turn away from them. There should be a voice recorder in the left corner of the room instead of a flowering tree. Yamanaka should be sitting at his desk in front of the window. There should be tile under her feet instead of green, springy grass. The air should smell like stale cigarette smoke.
"Kai." Nausea bends her body in half. Vomit splatters on gray tile. It makes her feel a bit better, but not by much because while the illusion has faded, Yamanaka is still there which means that she's still stuck here. He looks up from his notes, studying her.
Something like hatred stirs and sharpens her focus. "Kai," she repeats. She hasn't allowed herself to do something as frivolous as want in a long time, but this—this is a need. She needs him to disappear so she can sink passively into nonexistence. The medic's voice in her head screams at her to stop before she permanently damages these fragile chakra coils, but none of that matters in the face of her need to erase him. She squeezes the last remaining dregs of her chakra out of her body like she's expunging a poison.
Yamanaka only gives her a pitying look.
Her hand twitches impulsively. Take a deep breath, Sakura. You are better than this.
"No," she murmurs, her hand twitching spontaneously towards the pen out of Yamanaka's hand and driving it into her thigh. The pain is warm and welcoming even if nothing else changes. She studies the wound with clinical fascination. It hurts, yes. But she floats above it like a disembodied spectre. This body is not hers.
Yamanaka rises to his feet. "You may find it difficult to believe me, Sakura-san," he says. "But this is no genjutsu. When you are ready, when you are willing, I would like to share my thoughts regarding your current situation. But for now, please rest assured that I do not intend to deceive you in any way. Your recovery is my chief priority."
He closes his notebook, considers the pen sticking out of her thigh, and crouches down next to her. She refuses to flinch when he pulls the pen out, doesn't react when he lays a hand glowing with green chakra to her leg, doesn't make a move when she feels the familiar itching sensation of skin closing around a healing wound.
All that's left is a tiny black ink stain healed within her skin. He's even healed her bruises.
Yamanaka considers the mark for a moment. "I apologize," he says, voice low. "I should not have pushed you so far."
She shakes her head mutely.
"You believe that your current situation is not real, but that you are in an extremely powerful genjutsu known as Infinite Tsukuyomi which can only be cast by an extinct doujutsu known as the Rinne Sharingan," he tells her.
Every word is a knife. She can't bear to look at him—this stranger who has forced his way into her head and dissected her memories piece by piece like a butcher. It's common practice for any shinobi of Konoha to be subjected to mental exams. But not to this degree. Not to the point of reducing a human being to a subject, memories to data.
A hand invades her field of vision. "You must know," he says, pulling her forcibly to her feet. "You must know this is real, but you would rather remain in denial because you think it will absolve you of any responsibility in this reality. Because you are tired and resigned. You have given up—"
"—Don't," she hisses, shoving his hand back towards him. "Don't you fucking dare think you know who I am or what I've done to—"
She chokes on the next word, "—survive."
It's a mistake to meet his gaze. She flinches and tears her eyes away from that tired, worn visage as if he's Uchiha Itachi himself.
Everything—the lack of chakra, the lack of sleep, the twisted talent show he'd just forced her through confronting her own fucked up tiny physicality and fucked up memories—compounds into something bordering on a panic attack. But not here, she thinks with gritted teeth, stomping down on the swell of terror rising in her chest, curling her hands into fists to hide the irrepressible tremor. Not in front of him.
"Fuck you," she concludes bitterly, hating the warble in her voice. Her heart tightens. She misses Tsunade who could tear him apart like a dog with a chew toy. Just this once, she wishes she could be irreverent and flippant like Kakashi. If she can't fight back, then please, please let her hold onto one shred of dignity.
Yamanaka stands still, silent. He leans over to pick up the notebook that he abandoned on the ground to heal her. "We will begin genjutsu rehabilitation exercises next week," he says by way of saying goodbye.
The moment he's gone, she turns to the ANBU desperately. "Kakashi?" she whispers.
The ANBU says nothing, standing watch as a silent sentinel as she collapses into a spineless wreck on the ground once all that nervous energy leaves her.
"Well, fuck you too," she declares, running her hands over face. There she laughs breathlessly. She laughs and laughs and laughs until laughter breaks into dry sobs.
75 days
Sakura is not religious. Sure, she'd light a candle for the dead and pray for their passing. But if lack of time and interest had stamped out any belief in a higher power, war had killed it. That, and the discovery that the gods are monsters.
Still, there's something sacrilegious about telling the Hokage to fuck off.
It's on the tip of her tongue anyway as the Hokage swipes a bloody thumb in the middle of the seal that will lock her memories. Jiraiya is the one to do it, wearing an uncharacteristically serious look as he explains the parameters of the seal. Only the Sandaime Hokage may command you to speak, write or communicate in any way about these classified events. It's a long process that has her chained to the floor surrounded by concentric circles of kanji and unintelligible scribbles.
For something so innocuous as a glorified ink drawing, it is painful. Blood pools in her mouth as each letter, each line is carved into her brain. From her fixed position on the floor, all she can see is the hazy outline of the Hokage staring down at her. And so she stares back, forcing her vision to focus.
This is the Hokage of wars past. She'd always assumed that he had monstrous chakra reserves like all other ninjutsu specialists she'd come across. But his footprint is small and quiet. Like hers. Miniscule compared to the contained tempest that is Jiraiya. She wonders what he was capable of in his prime, what nature mastery looks like from a man who has had decades to hone it.
"You are a dilemma, Haruno Sakura," the Sandaime remarks when the glow of chakra fades and Jiraiya graces them with a grim nod.
It's just the four of them in this room dampened so thoroughly by a privacy barrier that she almost feels like she's submerged in water. Yamanaka is kneeling next to her, coaxing her mouth open so he can heal her bitten tongue.
Her mouth twitches in an attempt to produce a smile. "You could kill me," she offers in slurred speech.
Yamanaka throws her the sort of reproachful look that mothers give to their misbehaving children. The sort of look that looks benign to the unsuspecting eye but promises consequences behind closed doors. She wonders offhand if he has a family and then discards the thought immediately. Useless.
The Sandaime hums thoughtfully, lighting his pipe with a carelessly perfect flick of fire chakra "Would you be content to die like this? To waste this opportunity and die an ignominious death? Would you be so eager to cut your life short without attempting to right the wrongs of your past life? Will you consign your loved ones to their doom? Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke, Hatake—"
"—I am dead," she cuts through.
"So you say," the Hokage says. "Yamanaka-san claims, in good faith, that you are a time traveler. Your memories provided us with intel of situations both ongoing and unfolding that we have verified as true." he continues, throwing a nod at Jiraiya, "I myself have committed several weeks to a careful study of the treatises on space-time jutsu written by the Nidaime and Yondaime…"
Sakura closes her eyes against the voice that tightens the noose around her neck. Time traveler, her mind agrees treacherously. Why would it be impossible when you can resurrect the dead? Anything is possible with enough chakra.
"...who provided a plausible framework—skeletal as it is—for the execution of a jutsu reversing time itself. The one caveat being the lack of an existing chakra source capable of fueling more than mere seconds of time travel. But if one were given access to, say, the fabled Ten-Tailed beast..." he says, trailing off.
"I died," Sakura says quietly. Her bones ache with a fatigue that shouldn't belong anywhere near a seven-year old body. Even Tsunade couldn't heal exhaustion, heartbreak. "This," she says, gesturing at nothing in particular. "This is some sort of mistake."
The sound of metal clanging against the ground forces her eyes open. A kunai is there in front of her, beautifully sharp, reflecting what looks like a modified Caged Bird seal on her forehead.
A dry laugh escapes her.
"I will allow you an honorable death if that is what you truly desire," the Hokage says, looking down at her.
She picks up the knife with two trembling hands.
"But I wonder what is possible," he adds, "given time to prepare with such knowledge. Is it possible to overcome the inevitable? Is it not worth it to try?"
Her hands still. The blade never touches her skin.
138 days
Ino throws her like a ragdoll into the ground.
Sakura closes her eyes against the sight of those blue eyes and that pale yellow hair. She could split the earth and swallow Ino up in it. She could reach out with a quick pulse of medical chakra and stop Ino's heart. She could shatter all the bones in Ino's body with a single punch.
But she doesn't. She can't bring herself to.
Iruka-sensei calls the match and she obeys mutely, picking herself up and retreating to the back.
"You need an anchor," Yamanaka says. "You need something impermeable, irrefutable, something privy to you that you know inside and out."
It's Sasuke's turn to beat Naruto into the ground. And while everyone watches the fight, she slices a thumb open with a thin blade of chakra. Before the blood can well up and spill over, the wound is already healing over. She studies that itchy sensation, the feeling of new skin crawling incrementally over broken flesh. Then she does it again. And again.
Every day, she pores over minute details, looking for those subtle inconsistencies and distortions that separate illusions from reality. And every day, she only finds more evidence that this isn't a genjutsu. She grows—not simply in height, but in chakra too. Her anatomy is perfectly rendered. When she pours her growing chakra reserves into scrapes and cuts, they heal exactly how real wounds should. Every day she collects more data proving Yamanaka's hypothesis.
She is alone.
Naruto doesn't know her. She sees it in the bright smile still unknowing of the Fox inside him, of the betrayal, the death of his teacher, the destruction of his home. He has only ever lived this one blessed life of seven ignorant years.
Sasuke is a roiling mass of grief and loneliness and anger, but without the jagged edges of cruelty he'd learned from Orochimaru.
Kakashi is nowhere to be found.
Excited yelling breaks her from the reverie. Silently, she picks herself up and slips into the crowd of students chanting Sasuke as if she'd always been there. A wistful smile touches her lips because it's exactly as she remembered. Sasuke and Naruto brawling, rolling around in an undignified fashion on the ground, completely abandoning all pretenses of a respectful academic spar. Iruka is fighting his own losing battle against the rowdy cheers of his students.
The air is clean as she breathes it in. She chooses to live. And if this is truly nothing more than an insidious fantasy, then she will twist it into a happy one.
Her tongue is sealed from making any reference to her past life. But there is nothing that prevents her from building old friendships anew. It doesn't take more than a quiet hello to make Naruto's eyes shine heartbreakingly bright.
180 days
There is a reason why genjutsu specialists are so rare—a realistic, convincing genjutsu requires millions of small details woven in complex layers. And without the Sharingan, it's almost impossible to cast during a real fight.
But the sessions continue after she's stopped carrying her blunt kunai, after the bruises on her thigh have long faded, leaving behind only a tiny, permanent inkstain.
She compares her drawing with the real gingko tree standing across the riverbank. There is no depth to her drawing, too many shadows color the base of the tree, the branches curl strangely, the proportions are wrong.
"Kai," she says, frowning when the illusion fades and the distance shrinks between the tree and the gently rolling river they're sitting on. It had been right in front of her all long. But slowly, beneath her notice, the river had widened inch by inch.
Yamanaka tests her at random intervals, playing with her depth perception, rearranging tiny, mundane details so that she trips over nothing and bumps into obvious obstacles.
She's gotten better, but the man is an oxymoronic combination of inventive and boring. That makes him unpredictable. And every trip and every fall is a reminder that she could have tripped into a kunai, fallen to her death. That he could kill her with nothing more than a subtle, boring, decidedly un-horrific manipulation of her perception.
They'd classified her as a genjutsu type. But that's bullshit. She doesn't own a pair of Sharingan. She's not a Yamanaka psychologist.
Yamanaka continues his brushstrokes, unperturbed by the frown she's directing at him. His painting is simple, but perfectly rendered. "You're wasting too much time trying to create a perfect image," he remarks. "Genjutsu isn't a mirror. Don't waste your time on the obvious when you can fool your enemy with their own blind spots."
"Look underneath the underneath," she mutters, balling up the failed drawing and rising to a crouch on the shifting water. She lays an open hand to the surface. It's cold and wet—of course it is. But she forces herself to think about the less obvious components that she's missing. How her reflection shimmers off the surface, broken up by the flow of water. How the sun warms the back of her hand. How the water vibrates with the chakra woven under her, keeping her afloat.
Yamanaka's lips curl. "Precisely," he says, drawing the curving branch she'd tried to conceal with genjutsu.
Excited yelling from across the river catches her attention. Yamanaka turns his head with her to watch the civilian children running to the playground. There's something wistful about his gaze.
"Do you have children?" she inquires.
He turns back to his painting, considering for a long moment. "Once upon a time," he says, resuming his brushstrokes.
It's impossible to hate him after that.
299 days
Something like excitement flutters in her chest when Yamanaka announces that the Sandaime has deemed her rehabilitated enough to end the genjutsu sessions in favor of using the time to teach her himself. The God of Shinobi. Teaching her.
"Sakura-san," Yamanaka calls after her as she heads to the door.
She pauses to tilt her head towards him inquiringly.
"You may not trust me, and you may certainly decline," he says, closing his notebook and clicking his pen with something like finality. "But if you have any inclination, I invite you to continue painting with me."
She doesn't need to say Kai to escape a genjutsu anymore. All it takes is a quick pulse of chakra to clear the haze from her perception. She doesn't need him to cast genjutsu over her seal anymore—she can conceal it herself without a passing thought. But it irks her that he can still see right through her genjutsu traps without batting an eye.
And he's the only one who knows her— this Yamanaka with a matching seal on his own forehead, holding terrible, lonely secrets.
"I will," she promises.