Quickly but surely, Sakura had acclimated to the Senjus' way of living. Within just a couple of weeks, she had learned how to behave like a Senju, think like a Senju, talk like a Senju, live like a Senju. Sakura rationalized that she needed to blend in with the system in order to accurately move time along in accordance with history. If there was anything inconsistent than what she memorized from her history books from long ago, then she knew she would have had changed time and possibly screwed everything over for everybody's future.
But she couldn't know for sure, as she could have already changed absolutely everything with just her mere existence in the past. Not to mention, her new job as the Senjus' resident doctor required her to be in such close proximity to the future Konoha's very founders themselves.
Sometimes, Sakura wished that she had woken up far, far away from Konoha when she landed in this time, if it would have been of any help to keeping her Konoha, her Konoha. But even then, she knew that adjusting the future was inevitable because, well, to simply put it, all life was connected somehow, in some way. If she had found herself in, as an obscure example, the Land of Wind, she could have very well unwittingly influenced even the tiniest alteration there in which greater impacts could have manifested themselves in the forms of political policies or international relations, in turn ultimately affecting Konoha in some way or another. Thinking about the effect of her presence in this light, she reckoned it that maybe it was actually for the best that she ended up right at the doorstep of her future home.
Sakura simply figured she already screwed everything up. The only thing she could really do now was to not mess with the past any more than she already had and to keep living her life earnestly and diligently, sticking to her own principles with pride.
Within the approximate two weeks Sakura had started her new life on the Senjus' settlement, she managed to heal all of the curable wounds of the patients at the clinic to a non life-threatening point. Hashirama was keen on observing her, but she was extremely cautious of revealing the extent of her abilities. She knew for a fact that some of her medical jutsu hadn't even been invented yet, much less conceived as ideas at this point in time. But Sakura being Sakura, wouldn't forsake the lives of her patients in exchange for keeping her identity a secret. Thus, Sakura would never hesitate to shut the door of the clinic in Hashirama's face whenever she experienced an emergency that required advanced jutsu or medical knowledge, providing him with the excuse that his presence was a distraction and that she needed all the concentration she could acquire. Hashirama's disposition left him pouting and displaying his acute depressive tendencies. Sakura had quickly become immune to those puppy eyes, but she did allow him to observe her when she knew for sure that she wouldn't reveal anything drastic about her healing abilities.
Of course, Sakura wasn't an omnipotent god or deity; she had lost patients as well. For the unfortunate who were beyond saving, the sole thing she could do to help was to make their last moments as comfortable as possible. Her heart especially broke when she had to helplessly witness the fear some of her patients expressed when they were afraid of death or couldn't accept it. Whenever Sakura couldn't save a patient, she always felt and would always feel just as sorrowful and mournful as she had when she lost her very first patient as a fourteen-year-old. Her inimitable compassion and love for people defined who she was, and she refused to throw those qualities of her away just for the sake of preserving a future that she wasn't even sure if she had already altered or not.
Although she hadn't lost as many patients as she had saved, Sakura had still seen the death of many within these past two weeks. It pained her even further to know that the loved ones of the recently deceased lived with her, in the Senju community. Observing their grief and hearing their doleful cries threw her into a bout of depression, to which even the sharp and harsh Tobirama didn't know how to approach.
Wartime had been different, because Sakura couldn't afford to grieve. Grieving cost time, and there simply wasn't any time during battle. Wasting time resulted in death.
Anyone would think that surviving through a whole entire war would have hardened Sakura's heart. Sakura couldn't save every single injured person on the battlefield; she simply didn't have enough chakra, physical strength, and time. But even Sakura surprised herself with her emotional capability. Some considered it a weakness; feelings got in the way of the difficult, brutal, cold shinobi lifestyle. Sakura, however, had come to understand that true strength bred from human emotion; Naruto was a living example. Was. So she let herself wallow in the grievance of her lost patients, even though she never got the chance to personally know them individually.
After a collective funeral and burial procession had taken place a little ways outside the boundaries of the Senju community, Sakura had shut herself in the little clinic and had been staying there for the past few days, refusing to see anyone even at Hashirama's insistence. The only consolations Sakura had were to continue to care for the lives of those patients who had won their life-threatening battles and only needed follow-up treatments and to continue to care for the clinic's small herbal garden. The only person she allowed to see her was her young assistant, Kenta.
This didn't stop Hashirama from taking advantage of the boy—he secretly paid him with a little pocket money to feed him with updates as to how Sakura was faring. Oh no, this wasn't bribery! Hashirama insisted. He swore he was just doing this out of concern for the young woman who must have been through a lot by being thrust into a new environment so suddenly.
Tobirama, unlike his older brother, was less about compassion and more about suspicion. Because really, who could actually be that depressed about the loss of a few lives? Granted, Tobirama was also quite upset that the blood of his kin had to be spilled and demanded retribution by severing the heads of a few Uchiha as his idea of serving justice. But he had deemed dwelling on these lost lives as a waste of time and would much rather have been practical about what he could have accomplished in the same span of time. Everything about this girl's behavior annoyed him to no end, so he decided for himself to find out what she was really doing behind the closed doors of that stupid clinic.
Consequently, Tobirama found himself standing in front of the said doors, arms folded and contemplating with a frown whether to knock or to just kick it down. He chose to go with the more amicable gesture, lest he faced the annoying wrath of this annoying girl. He knocked against the wood twice with obviously restrained force. There wasn't an answer. Leaning in, he heard her voice in a stern and instructive tone. She probably hadn't heard him. He thought to hell with it, and rolled the sleeve of his blue yukata up before vigorously opening the door.
The pink-haired girl in the corner of the room paused as all heads in the room turned towards the doorway. The beige jinbei fit loosely on her lithe figure, and Tobirama was taken aback at her masculine choice of a work outfit. The sleeves of the kimono were tied back with a strip of linen. It seemed she had opted to tie her hair into a half ponytail, as it was too short to hold everything in a full one. Her left hand held a small, wooden slate and a few pieces of parchment paper. Her right hand had been in a pointing position, as if lecturing Kenta, who was at her side, about the patient in the bed in front of them. She had been frozen in this pose for a few seconds before she blinked and cleared her throat.
"Excuse me, did you need something?" Tobirama couldn't discern if he detected a little rudeness in her tone of voice or not.
"... Carry on. I'll wait until you're finished."
Sakura sighed, "Alright. This is the last patient anyway," she turned her attention back to Kenta, "so overall, not only do you want to properly change Tadashi-san's bandages every day, but you should apply the herbal salve I just showed you how to prepare as well. This ointment possesses great antibiotic properties that will fight off most infections that may result from his amputated leg. Remember, the healing arts are not all about what you can do with only your chakra; you must be fully knowledgeable on how to use every resource available around you too. This is extremely important and might even save you if you're ever in a situation where you completely run out chakra."
Tobirama remained impassive as he watched the brown bushy muss of Kenta's hair enthusiastically shake about as he nodded energetically, listening intently and jotting down notes in his leather-bound notebook with determined eyes. It kind of reminded him of a happy wet mutt shaking off excess water from his fur...
"What?" Sakura questioned, having finished her little lesson. She made her way to Tobirama's spot against the wall next to the door and tilted her head in question, clutching her papers against her chest.
"Just checking up on you, because Anija seems to be afraid of your temper." Which was completely true. Hashirama had tested Sakura's patience one too many times with his insistence of watching her heal the wounded.
"And?" Sakura sounded tired. Her eyes were red, rubbed raw, and slightly puffy, and her usual impeccable posture was slouched. She seemed... so resigned.
"Don't tell me you're still hung up on the dead shinobi," Tobirama scoffed. Sakura stiffened.
"Not just shinobi, but people," she corrected but didn't care to expend energy to argue. She slipped past him, setting her papers down on the nearest table and sliding open the door, walking out into the garden. Tobirama impulsively trailed after her.
"People who were Senju. Senju who were Shinobi, admirable shinobi who died with the pride of the clan attached to their backs. There's no need to feel such sadness for admirable deaths. They had been very fine shinobi." Tobirama's ideology was heavily influence by his father, but he more or less agreed with this way of life.
Sakura crouched down, softly caressing the large leaves of a plant. She smiled sadly.
"They were once human beings, each who once had a unique personality, who once cultivated their own special bonds, who once held their own principles to life, who once had their own souls. You should treat life better. Don't think just because you've been through so many battles that you can just become desensitized to death. Treat people's lives with respect, and in turn, yours will be treated just as preciously," Sakura rested both of her hands on her knees and closed her eyes, feeling the wind rush through her hair.
Tobirama's eyebrow twitched. Who did this little girl think she was to lecture him in such a condescending way? Nevermind the fact that they were apparently the same age. She was just as idealistic as his brother. He nearly gagged at the thought.
"It's war," Tobirama brusquely replied.
"It's life." Sakura opened her eyes and looked up at him. When he glanced down into those shining jades, though, he knew she wasn't just pulling things randomly from thin air. She was speaking from experience, with the aura of a seasoned shinobi. He wondered what she possibly could have experienced for her to say such... mature words. She didn't seem to want to argue or fight with him like she usually did.
Perhaps he had been wrong, and maybe she truly was just grieving the lost lives. He coughed, and a moment of silence passed.
"Err, here, tell me what you think of this jutsu." Tobirama, on impulse, molded his fingers into a cross shape, to produce his latest creation.
Two exact copies of Tobirama popped into existence, all mimicking his slack pose of hands-on-the-hips.
"..." Sakura stared for a good five seconds before—
"Pfft!"
Tobirama felt his eyebrow twitch again.
"What?" He demanded.
"Bunshin?" Sakura laughed behind her hand, "so anticlimactic."
"No! Look at them carefully. Ugh, I thought you were supposed to be smart," Tobirama huffed, a little red from embarrassment that she found the new technique he'd been working so hard on to perfect to be unimpressive at first glance.
Sakura peered at the clones, giving them a once over. After looking at the ground at the clones' feet, she gasped.
"Shadows! They're corporeal!" Tobirama was showing her kage bunshin! She remembered, this technique had originally been created by the Niidaime Hokage!
"Which is why I named them kage bunshin. Fitting, right?"
Sakura nodded. "What exactly can they do?" Not that she didn't already know, as she spent half her life with a master user of the said jutsu. But in this time, she wasn't supposed to know, so she decided to entertain him.
And so Tobirama explained all the functions of a kage bunshin to her, and Sakura only half-listened. She noticed the way his usual rough self was replaced by one sparked with excitement and sprinkled with pride at inventing a new jutsu. When he himself realized he was uncharacteristically getting too excited, he would cough into his hand and then continue his explanation with his normal rugged tone.
To be honest, Sakura was really amazed at how Tobirama had created the jutsu. It always took her a lot of time and practice to perform already known jutsu—she wondered just how much time it exactly took to find the right amount of chakra needed, to envision what the jutsu's purpose and function was supposed to be, to actually create an entirely new jutsu.
"Can I try?" She asked, and he stopped, raising his eyebrow.
"If you want. But let me tell you, don't come crying to me when you don't get it on the first try—"
"—Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!" and a perfect shadow clone of Sakura appeared next to her. Tobirama's jaw nearly dropped.
"Ahaha, I don't think I can make as many as you though," Sakura pretended to modestly mention. Her eyes twinkled with laughter.
Tobirama could see the smug look in her eyes at one-upping him. He grumbled under his breath.
"I'm going home!" He snapped, and he swiftly turned on his heel and stalked off. He swore he could hear Sakura's muffled laughs from behind him.
"Thank you for showing me!" She called after him. She sounded bright, just like she did when she first came here. He ignored her.
When he was a good distance away, he momentarily stopped.
Didn't he go see her to find out her secrets? Why did it turn out that he had cheered her up instead? And showed her his new jutsu?
The very next day, Sakura decided to let Hashirama watch her do her daily round of treatments like he so badly wanted. When he asked her why the sudden change in heart, Sakura had cheerfully replied, "because I felt like it," and Hashirama knew better than to question her further. Oh well, he decided to milk this opportunity as much as he could and for all that it was worth.
This was also how he found himself in his current predicament, at a table in the clinic with a dying fish lying still on top of a scroll with black ink holding it in place and keeping its life barely sustained.
He kind of understood what Sakura was doing just by watching her and her not having to explain anything to him with words when she used chakra to heal people. It seemed like she concentrated chakra to her hands and used precise control to convert it to some kind of chakra that healed the intended target wound. When he mentioned his observations to Sakura, and the fact that he thought up of an idea to maybe even self-heal by controlling chakra to specific points in the body without having to use hands as an outlet or medium, Sakura paused, thought for a moment, and then ushered him to try what she called "medical ninjutsu."
Hashirama hesitantly hovered his hands above the fish, and commanded absolute focus and control. He tried to envision these "cells" in his mind's eye, having intensely studied a quick lecture about human cell biology from the young woman. He concluded that she couldn't have possibly made such a massive amount of bogus up so everything had to be real.
Sakura sat, legs crossed and arms crossed, watching him with apprehension. She found it odd that Hashirama hadn't already been exposed to the healing arts when she arrived at the Senjus'. He was already around twenty, and she clearly remembered that the Shodaime was supposed to possess unprecedented skill in medical ninjutsu. It was even the answer to question eight on her final written exam for graduation at the Academy! She was sure of it. Her memory never lied to her.
She initially felt uneasy when he expressed such persistent interest in her abilities, because she didn't want to expose herself and completely ruin the future. That was the whole reason why she denied his requests so many times in the first place!
But then creeped another thought into her thinks-too-much-for-her-own-good brain.
What if... what if, she was supposed to introduce him to medical ninjutsu?
What if she was stuck in something like a time loop? And her existence in the past actually wasn't by mistake but her actual destiny?
Sakura's head spun. She still didn't even know if she was in the same timeline or a different dimension. But she knew for certain that she wasn't going to spend the rest of her life as a rock.
She would take the risk.
"Wo-woah, Sakura-san, look! The fish is flopping!"
Sakura's jaw nearly hit the floor. This was only Hashirama's what, second or third time attempting the jutsu?
"A... prodigy," she murmured.
"Or so I've been told," Hashirama sheepishly laughed, scratching his head in embarrassment. His eyes lit up, "So what's next? Can I start healing cuts and stuff like that? Do you think I'm ready for that yet? Or maybe I can help heal the patients? Man, this stuff is so new and exciting!"
Sakura was still in shock. She had no words to say. She gulped, throat dry.
"Uh, well—"
But Sakura never got to finish that sentence, as a flash of white suddenly filled her vision and crashed to the floor right at her feet. She jumped up and screamed. Hashirama was taken by surprise as well.
"What in the world!"
Tobirama was sprawled on the floor in front of her, a glowing blue ringed seal pulsating right on the spot he appeared. He gasped, as the wind was clearly knocked out of him, and then groaned.
"It... it worked," he breathed, and promptly lost consciousness.
Sakura blinked.
Well. Things certainly didn't turn out the way she expected them to.
Author's Note: Happy New Year!
To answer FAQs:
1) Yes, this IS a SasuSaku!
Even if Sasuke wasn't here or he like died or something, my strong personal opinion is that even then, Sakura wouldn't be able to let him go because she loves him that much. In this chapter, Sakura just comes to accept her friendship with Tobirama, and Tobirama's just confused about his feelings lol.
2) Sorry, I won't change my mind on the pairing :/ if this isn't the fic for you, I apologize. But I can't change the pairing just for like two readers when everybody else is expecting SasuSaku.
3) Sasuke and Sakura will meet. Don't worry, it'll come. Remember, I already time-skipped two months in chapter four for Sasuke because he spent that time healing from his injuries. Sakura's still on like week two L O L. Not to mention, I still need to develop Madara's and Izuna's plots more. So there's still much to be left done before Sasuke and Sakura can meet.
4) I promise to put more content and length in Sasuke's side of the story :)