A/N: thank you all for the positive feedback on the first chapter QAQ I wasn't expecting such kindness, so here's another chapter! A bit slow-paced, this time. Also, I have some art for this fic up on my dA, ExileWrath.

Summary: Inoichi Yamanaka is confused, and Raku starts small. Small plans.

begin at the beginning

"-screaming for no reason, couldn't get a read-"

"Yamanaka-sama, do you know-"

Raku jerked to consciousness in the middle of the conversation, the sudden movement startling Inoichi and the nurse that he had been talking to, the Yamanaka clan head only narrowly missing getting his chin headbutted. "Bù kěyǐ!"

"Woah, steady there-" Inoichi struggled to hang on to the child before she fell down and hurt herself. "We're at the hospital, kid, it'll be o-"

"Bùnéng," Raku cried, squirming in order to escape, "Wǒ bùnéng jìn yīyuàn! Bà mā bù zhīdào - zhīdào le tāmen jiù huì bǎ wǒ kǎn sǐ!" he managed to overbalance and flip himself over one of Inoichi's arms, landing on the ground painfully, face-first. It was easy to ignore the pain of the impact, as the pain in his head hadn't abated yet. He doubted it would anytime soon. "Wǒ dāyìng nǐ, bùyòng dānxīn! Wǒ zhēn de bùyòng jìn yīyuàn!"

Before he could run away through the doors though, someone grabbed him by the collar and lifted him up high enough that his tiny five-year-old limbs couldn't reach the ground. Damn, he was missing his old body already. "What the hell are you screaming?"

It hit Raku like a sack of bricks. "Tā mā de, zhè jiù xiàng wǒ dì yī cì xué rìyǔ de shíhòu," he muttered. His mind had rerouted his usual language functions. Rather than the Japanese that "Sakura" had grown up with, or what he had learned in college, or the English of his youth, he had defaulted straight back to Mandarin, the language he had learned as a child.

"Wǒ de míngzì shì- Haruno Raku," he tried, the words coming out in the right language this time. Inoichi raised a very unimpressed eyebrow. "Sorry about that, uh, Yamanaka-san."

With the practiced patience of someone that had Seen Shit, "What were you trying to say?"

"My parents don't know I'm out at night, so I can't be admitted to the hospital," Raku explained with as much dignity as he could muster while hanging midair. "I'm fine, so I don't need to be admitted."

"One second, kid," Inoichi said, "You were screaming bloody murder for awhile there, and then you blacked out, and then woke up babbling. And now you're saying that you don't need to be hospitalized?" his tone was patient, the same voice he used to tell Ino to go to sleep.

Okay, well. Raku probably did need to be hospitalized, to make sure that the connection of the memories of his past life hasn't damaged his brain or anything. But that was beside the point. "I just can't. My parents don't know that I'm out at night! They'll kill me and okaa-san will say it's not proper and otou-san will get mad and agree with her and all my freedom will be gone and I can't." He didn't know how the parents of this life would react, actually, but in general it was safe to assume that it wouldn't be positive.

Well, there went Inoichi's assumption that the kid was from the red-light district. Shikaku would have a laugh if he heard. "Why would your-"

"Please, Yamanaka-san! I need to get home before my parents wake up or they'll-!" he looked around for a clock desperately, calming down the slightest at the sight of eleven-fifty on the wall. "Oh. It's not even midnight. I can get home by morning."

The sudden emotion switch made Inoichi feel torn between changing his grip on the kid to look her in the eye, or holding her as far away as possible. He'd dealt with enough people in his career to know that rapid emotion fluctuations never boded well. Even from a five-year-old. Especially from five-year-olds. "Look, kid," he began, the girl turning to look at him curiously, "If you say you have plenty of time to get home, how about we sit down and talk for a bit?" Feeling Raku start to tense up, Inoichi quickly added, "This is a hospital. They have quiet rooms aplenty. I want to know why you think you don't need to be admitted to the hospital, and a calmer environment would make that easier for you to argue your point, right?" Make the girl think Inoichi was on her side, or at least not entirely against her.

Raku regarded him warily. "... only if you help me sneak back into my house."

"Deal."

Admittedly, finding out why the kid was so against being admitted into the hospital was only part of why Inoichi wanted to have a private conversation. The other part was that he was... confused. Him, the leader of a clan of literal mind-walkers, and the Head of Torture and Interrogation, confounded by a tiny kid as old as his kid.

Admittedly, Inoichi, was curious as fuck.

Sitting down on a stool in a random hospital room (that the nurse that had been observing them had reluctantly lent) Inoichi watched as Raku (if that was really the kid's name) struggle onto another stool, and then a desk, sitting high enough that she was eye-level with him. Interesting. "So let's start with names,' he suggested. Basics .

A pause. "My name is Haruno Raku. But my parents named me Sakura."

"Sakura? A pretty little name for a little girl," Inoichi commented, thinking that it was safe to try to introduce commentary in the beginning, so that the kid wouldn't mind more questions as the conversation continued. Unfortunately not. "Why did you say your name is Raku, though?"

Her shoulders stiffened, and her fists clenched as she met Inoichi's eyes with a venomous glare that was much more intimidating than a normal child's glare. There was anger there, as if he had awoken some sort of old grudge. But he couldn't place what. "My name is Raku," she snapped. "Haruno Raku, Yamanaka-san. And I am a boy."

But you're wearing a dress, and you're very clearly a girl, Inoichi wanted to point out, but the set in her- his jaw made him hold his tongue. Best go with the flow, if Raku insists that she's a boy, there's no harm in going along. "I'm sorry, Raku-kun," Inoichi tried, watching what the next reaction would be.

Considering how surprisingly tight-lipped he was for a child, Inoichi was grateful that his body language was so expressive. Raku relaxed at the apology, fists loosening but not completely unclenching. "Apology accepted," he said. Strange wording. "What else do you want to know, then?"

A familiar topic to start with instead, then. "Why exactly can't you go to the hospital?" he asked. A simple enough question- the amount of alarm which Raku had displayed upon the idea that his parents would find out about midnight walks rang uncomfortable alarms in Inoichi's head.

"I don't want my parents to find out that I sneak out. I'll get in trouble," Raku said flatly, mouth set in a line and eyes narrowed in a way that looked wrong on a five-year-old. "And besides, I don't need to be admitted. I'm fine."

Well, that avenue of questioning was clearly going to go in circles. Inoichi had met prisoners that were easier to read than this kid- then again, he wasn't exactly going full T&I investigation mode. And he wouldn't, because, well. Raku was Ino's age. "How are you so sure about that, Raku-kun? Also, who are your parents? What would they do if they found out?" At the same though, Inoichi sensed that referring to Raku by name rather than he would a normal child would make questioning much easier.

Raku ducked his head, swinging his legs as he gripped the edge of the desk. "Don't know. I just don't want them to know. Oka- Haha-ue is Haruno Mebuki, chichi-ue is Haruno Kaito. And I know my body. I know I'm fine." It occurred to Inoichi that Raku's entire pattern of speech was strange. And inconsistent. A switch from the normal "okaa-san" to formal "haha-ue" was... unusual. The way he spoke, as well. Slowly, carefully, testing each word on his tongue before speaking. An unexpectedly calculating child- and wary.

As for the parents, the names weren't unfamiliar. A few seconds of recollection and Inoichi easily flagged them as a husband-wife pair that sat on the Merchant Council. He resisted the urge to facepalm. Raku had the exact same shade of unnatural pink hair as his father. Shikaku would really be laughing at me at this point, he thought mournfully. "Well, fair enough," he conceded, "Why do you sneak out and walk around at night, Raku-kun?"

The answer came out faster, this time. "I have a hard time sleeping at night," he explained, voice high and guileless. "And I like exploring! Exploring's fun. Seeing new people is fun! And all the shinobi are easier to spot at night, because most people are asleep except the people in Kabuki-chou."

Well, Inoichi thought grimly, if his parents found out that their precious dau- child had gone to Kabuki-chou, no wonder he doesn't want them to find out.

Child of wealthy merchants, claimed to wander at night frequently, with odd speech patterns and wariness that wasn't normal in children. It had all the markings of either a genius, or a simply precocious as fuck kid. Inoichi was willing to bet on the latter, especially since the 'genius' label was generally reserved for the bright kids that blazed through the Shinobi Academy, not five-year-old pink-haired civilians. "Even if you think you're alright," Inoichi began, "the nurse doesn't think you're alright. I don't think you're very alright as well. I was there when you started screaming."

Raku visibly winced, eyes darting side-to-side. "What if I promised to come to the hospital in the morning?" he asked. "I can fake a headache and persuade haha-ue to take me to the hospital! Or pretend I'm super super sick." Back with the inconsistent speech. Inoichi almost wanted to wince too.

He looked at a clock on the wall, the hands pointing to 12:32. I should get home soon, damn. Standing up, he held out a hand to Raku, who carefully grabbed it and swung off the desk. Inoichi crouched down in front of the child, and held up his other hand, little finger extended. "Do you promise?"

Green eyes blinked at his hand, and then Inoichi, and then back, eyebrows descending to a very confused furrow. "Sticking out a pinky is rude," Raku said matter-of-factly.

What? "It's what my daughter does with her friends," Inoichi defended, feeling a bit foolish. "It's a pinky promise." He'd thought that a 'pinky promise' or whatever would mean more to a child than a verbal one, but that had apparently been a miscalculation.

Raku stared half a breath longer, before his grip on Inoichi's hand tightened and he bent over, erupting in laughter. "Oh my god-" he wheezed, "Oh my god, you were doing a pinky promise." He giggled more, sounding childish for possibly the first time since he'd woken up. He reached out and linked pinkies with Inoichi, shoulder's still shaking. "I promise I'll go to the hospital tomorrow, Yamanaka-san."

Something in the back of Inoichi's mind said that Raku was humouring him, but for the sake of his dignity as an adult, he shoved it aside before standing up and walking out of the hallway with the kid.

The nurse manning at the front desk looked up upon hearing their footsteps, and her mouth tilted into a visible frown at the sight of Raku having apparently won the argument of not being admitted into the hospital. Before she could turn the acid Iryou-nin looks of doom of Inoichi in reprimand, Raku waved at her. "I'll be back in the morning with my parents!" he called, "But Yamanaka-san said I could go home for now if I promised to come back!"

Her frown became less severe, and she levelled her gaze down at Raku. "I work until noon, Haruno-san," she said, "And I better see you come in, or your parents will definitely know about you being here at two in the morning."

Raku's smile froze on his face and remained static until he and Inoichi were outside of the hospital. "Don't mess with iryou-nin," Inoichi advised abruptly. Raku laughed awkwardly, looking around the quiet streets of two AM Konoha.

"So, where's your house?"

"Motherfucking shit, I should've stayed there," Raku groaned as sunlight greeted him through the windows. He curled under his blankets, flopping his pillow over his eyes for good measure. Looks like I don't need fake a headache, this hurts like a bitch.

"Sakura?" This life's mother called, knocking on the door. Raku ignored her, throbbing pain in his head overriding any considerations of pretending to be 'Sakura" for the Haruno family. "Sakura! It's time to eat breakfast!"

Mebuki stepped in the room, and Raku groaned. "Morning, okaa-san," he said wearily, squeezing his eyes shut as he sat up slowly, rolling back his covers at the same time. He could feel her eyes watching him as he fumbled off the bed, trailing his fingers against the surface to keep track of his movements.

"Sakura?" His mother repeated. "Honey, are you okay?" He cracked his eyes open to see her looking down at him, worry evident in her face.

"Yes, okaa-san," he replied, putting up the farce that everything was okay. She looked him over in concern before turning away and heading downstairs to the kitchen. Raku trailed behind her. If it's just a headache, they won't see why I need to go to the hospital. I'll have to pretend that it's-

That was the last thought he had before he went slipped down the stairs, foot sliding off the edge of a stair too far away for his tiny body to reach. Only his headache prevented him from cursing up a storm at the bottom of the steps, after the most painful five seconds so far of this life. "Okaa-san- otou-san-" he cried weakly, curling up and clutching his head, eyes shut tight with splitting pain. "It hurts-"

There was a moment of shock before his parents started rushing about, this life's father picking him up. "Is it a concussion?" He heard Kaito panic.

"I- we should check the hospital, dear!" Mebuki pressed, and Raku was faintly aware of the flurry of activity round him as the couple left the house, heading to the hospital as fast as possible.

He kept his eyes closed the whole time, clutching onto Kaito's shirt. Raku could hear the people around them alarmed by Sakura- his parent's haste, and he gripped more tightly. They're not my parents, he thought idly, they gave birth to this body, but this isn't my body. He swallowed, hyperaware of how small he was, in a child's body in a land that he'd dismissed as fictional so long ago. A land where Chinese Mandarin was incoherent babbling and there was chakra and shinobi and-

And no Mikhail , he realized before shoving the thought aside. He couldn't let himself think of Mikhail, not now, not when-

"Foolish girl," he heard a somewhat familiar voice say as someone extracted him from his new father's grasp. He was placed on something soft, and Raku could feel cloth and mattress underneath him. "I'm glad you kept your promise, though." Ah, it was the iryou-nin from last night.

"Where does it hurt?" another woman asked, "This is just a quick scanning jutsu to check for a concussion," a strange sort of sensation passing over his face. Raku cracked his eyes open to see someone with their hand glowing green in front of him.

"My head," he whispered. "I have a headache. And I was seeing double ever since I woke up, and I fell down the stairs because of it."

The nurse from the early morning gave her colleague a look. "This is the kid I told you came in passed out in Yamanaka Inoichi's arms, and then woke up babbling." Raku was thankful to see that his parents weren't in the room when she said that.

"I'm Doctor Shiratori," the woman in front of Raku said after giving the nurse a passing glance of acknowledgement. "Only your head hurts? Your parents said you took quite a tumble."

Raku would have nodded if he didn't feel like his skull was going to explode from inside. "Just my head," he repeated.

The doctor frowned. "No concussion, but there's an abnormality there," she muttered. The nurse penned something down. "We'll have to run some more tests. You should rest here in the meantime."

"Wha-"

"I'll go talk to your parents now, okay?"

Raku was left blinking as he was gently nudged into lying down on the bed, the doctor and nurse walking out, turning off the lights as they left.

Jin An hated hospitals. White walls and pale desaturated green curtains and the stench of antiseptic and disinfectant with an underlying scent of disease and dying. They were a reminder of the ones he cared about who had died there. Jin An himself had never had to stay at the hospital, but he had... visited enough.

Raku hated hospitals as well, on principle. Except now he was... a patient. And five years old, so the doctors never consulted him about anything, just his parents. It grated on his nerves, being dismissed as a child, even though it made sense. Forced bed rest didn't help either, since that meant he had free time.

Too much free time meant too much thinking time.

Mikhail was always his first thought. Whenever they had gone together to a hospital, the pain was... eased, by Mikhail's presence, by the leaning of a head on his shoulder, hands clasped together, a strength in having someone with him making things... more bearable.

There was no Mikhail now.

The monitors beeped often, a tiny sound that sometimes rang too loud in the front of Raku's skull, and he would reach out to grab someone's hand for reassurance, but of course there was never one. Well, sometimes there would be "his father" or "his mother" but their hands weren't callused at the fingertips, thin and elegant like Mikhail's, and he couldn't delude himself into pretending that they were anything like Mikhail's. Wouldn't, because Mikhail wasn't here, and-

He squeezed his hands into fists, hating how small they were.

He hated everything, if he had to be honest. Hated this body, hated the lack of- him, hated that he knew barely anything of this world, hated being a child, hated-

Why the hell had he ever said yes in the first place to this deal?

I killed myself because that life wasn't worth living without Mikhail, Raku thought distantly. This world doesn't have any worth, either.

The deity. With eighty-four eyes and six wings and a voice straight out of the world's worst sound collection. The deity, and a conversation that he hadn't remembered anything-

He didn't know when he had started screaming, just that he only stopped after healers rushed into his room and knocked him unconscious.

He came to again on his third day in the hospital; Haruno Mebuki and Kaito were in the room.

I should call them my parents, Raku mused.

But Wu Jin An's parents had been... not worth thinking about, in those last seven years of his life. The happiest ones, because he had been hundreds of miles away from them and with- he shook his head, backtracking.

His parents hadn't been the worst. Or the best. But they had raised him, given him food and education and had cared. There had been... conflict about his gender, and his transition, but he had loved them enough to spare them the pain of watching him change and left. He wondered how they would react to his death. Or if they would find out. They would miss him, even if he had been physically gone for seven years. He had missed them, sometimes.

He didn't know what to think of the two people that he would be expected to call his parents now. Mebuki seemed to care much about propriety and appearances, in wanting Sakura to be a good daughter. Raku pitied her, for getting him instead. Kaito seemed much more laid-back, but the memories Raku had of before he had "woken up", so to say, had all the signs that the man was much more serious than how he presented himself to "Sakura" usually. Both were fairly normal in terms of disposition, he supposed.

But, no matter how kind or strict they were, Raku wouldn't be able to call them his parents. After all, they weren't the ones who had shaped him into the person he had become. Haha-ue and chichi-ue they'd remain. At some point in his musing, they had been called out of the room by Doctor Shiratori.

The care that they exhibited was... nice, though. It was strange to receive kindness from people other than Mik-

Shit. He'd been trying not to think about him, because thinking about Mikhail made Raku's heart ache, because even if this was a new life and a new name and a new body, he was still twenty-seven. He was still Wu Jin An, and he had killed himself for a reason.

"They made me make a deal which I was practically blindfolded in," he muttered, "They knew-"

Wu Jin An had died for a reason. Mikhail. He hadn't remembered that reason when he had encountered the being with eighty-four eyes, and had agreed to- to this. To living a life without Mikhail. To saving a goddamn world without the one person that he had lived and died for.

Raku would have cried, if he was able to. "They knew I would have refused if I had remembered."

In the face of human feelings, gods and higher beings will obviously place the fate of a world as higher priority. Which made sense, of course, but Raku didn't have to like it.

We expect you to save the world. 'Smiles and sunshine,' as you say, are not required for that. The being had said.

"Well fuck you, a female body isn't required either," Raku snarled to any asshole higher being that could be watching. He sat up in the hospital bed, looking around the room, and his eyes settled on his reflection in the window.

They want me to save the world. Staying a girl isn't required, just like smiles and sunshine. He thought savagely. I transitioned once. Even if this world doesn't have the same medicine as I'm used to, I can transition again.

Save the world, and he'd get a ticket to retry his old life. Another opportunity to live with Mikhail again. Maybe even... prevent his death.

"Haruno Sakura" was supposed to help the "Chosen One" save the world, though, not do it herself. Well, that just made things easier. He'd find Uzumaki Naruto and... look after him. Establish a rapport, act as an older sibling figure to the orphaned main character with a tragic backstory. Start as early as possible, because the smallest experiences as a child would influence adult actions greatly. The trick would be finding him, though. Konoha was a big city, and Raku's body was five-years-old and tired easily.

That's out of the question for the moment, then. I'll have to start small. Casting the thought of finding Naruto to the side, Raku continued to stare at his reflection. Green eyes stared back- (Mikhail had green eyes)- and his hair was currently a bob in a horrendous shade of pink. Goddamnit.

Raku hated pink.

Start small. So I'll start with this goddamn hair.

Extra:

"So, everything is okay, Haruno-san," the doctor told his parents. Raku remained carefully curious, as literally everyone in the room was expecting the proper reactions of "Haruno Sakura". "It seems that there's some abnormal growth in Sakura-chan's brain, though. The front of her brain- we call it the prefrontal cortex- has developed much more than it should in a child. Which is why her head was hurting so much. The migraines should have subsided, but we'd suggest that you keep her indoors for a few more days. Don't want to risk anything. And if the headaches come back, or if any head trauma happens, please have a healer check on it, okay?"

Mebuki and Kaito expressed relief and agreement, firm iterations of, "Did you hear that, Sakura? No playing outside for a few days, okay?" and "What does the abnormal growth mean?" passing through their lips.

Doctor Shiratori had no proper answer as to a cause- if anything came up, she assured them, she would let them know. But Raku knew the cause- his memories fully returning to him. The prefrontal cortex mostly developed in early adult years, after puberty, and was associated with decision-making and critical thinking.

If Raku had been more anime than he already was, he would have been struck by lightning with the realization. No wonder Mikhail complained so much about the Naruto characters' decisions, he mentally groaned, they're all idiot teenagers with poor decision-making skills.

Hopefully, he'd be able to make Naruto better than that.

Shit.

Raku wanted a refund on this deal again.

AN: would people prefer regular month-and a half updates with shorter chapters, or longer chapters with sporadic updates?

the dialogue he was saying in Mandarin translates to this:
"Not okay, I can't be admitted to the hospital, my parents have no idea- they'll kill me if they find out!"
"It'll be okay, I promise! I don't need to be admitted!"
"Ah shit, this is just like when I was learning Japanese for the first time,'
"I am-"

Sticking a pinky out at someone is apparently rude in Chinese culture, the equivalent to Western culture sticking up the middle finger, hence Raku was very confused at the pinky-promise.

Also! Yes, Mikhail/Wu Jin An was gay as fuck. Any pairing involving Raku + a guy is slash. Just to make that clear.

(reviews are kindly appreciated)