ZERO / BLEACH / TWIST / REVERSE / DYE (here) / RED

This world does not deserve my respect. It is not worthy of my kindness or compassion. - Xiran Jay Zhao

As it turned out, it was very easy to cut someone out of her life. Even if it was the person who had taken her in and raised her. Madara texted her. He called her. Even sent old-fashioned letters. All to let her know that he was sorry. Asking her to just come home.

Ino lay on her stomach on her bed. She kicked her feet back and forth, occasionally marking something in the pages of a big book.

"You're not going to talk to him?" Ino asked.

"You didn't see his face, Ino. It was… beyond scary. It was like I didn't even know who he was," Sakura insisted.

"Oh… I get it. I mean, I don't. But you've always been such a daddy's girl that it had to have been bad for you to cut him off like that," replied Ino with a grimace.

Sakura sat up. "Daddy's girl?"

Ino flapped a hand at her. "Maybe I said it wrong, but I didn't mean it like it's a bad thing. Like… besides the fact that you look nothing alike, I never would've guessed he wasn't your real dad. You two were always so close, you know?"

Sakura bit her lip. Ino took in her friend's expression. "Sorry. Me and my big mouth again," Ino said.

"No. It's alright," replied Sakura.

Ino had taken a few days off before the winter holidays to help with research. There were a dozen books from the Senju Academy that Sakura had smuggled out of the library. As the year came to a close, Sakura had resigned herself to yet another loop. All she could hope for was the death to be a little less painful this time around. But if anything, the passing days had made everyone more desperate to figure out even a small piece of information.

Everyone looked exhausted. But none of them uttered a single word of complaint. Even when Itachi had to quit his job with the police to keep tabs on Naruto, he had simply smiled and squeezed her shoulder as he delivered the news. It was his dream job that he had been working towards for as long as she had known him. He shrugged it off like it was nothing as he asked whether she had eaten dinner yet.

Madara didn't come to find her.

Shisui spoke to him instead. He let him know that Sakura was safe. That she just wanted some space for now.

It seemed impossible that he didn't walk into the dream shop. It was his. Or for him to show up at the Senju Academy in his car that was so old that it was fashionable again.

But she never saw him. Never felt the familiar ping of his magic tickling at the edge of her senses. She avoided his door in her dreams. Only checking to make sure that the lights were on behind the frosted glass. Checking to make sure that his heart was beating, even as it felt like hers was eroding away each day.

When New Year's Eve finally arrived, Sakura found herself drifting through the darkness. This was beneath the dream somewhere. But not in her upside down room. It was just the pitch darkness of nothing. A void. That somehow felt familiar and upsetting all at once.

She felt herself turn, moving closer to a huge presence. Slowly, a crack appeared in front of her. It opened to reveal a shining clock face.

"But you're empty," she said to it.

The clock face disappeared. When the crack opened again, it was replaced by a large yellow eye. It swiveled around, searching frantically before it focused on her. The pupil narrowed, then grew huge. She felt like it would swallow her whole. It loomed before her, like a black hole.

Sakura gasped as she jolted out of the dream.

The shields and wards she had painstakingly layered over the doors and windows shattered. The shards of magic bounced off her head and shoulders as she sat up. They glittered in the folds of her pajamas as Shisui stumbled out of his room. Shirtless, as always.

"You okay?" demanded Shisui. A small flame glowed in his right hand even as his sleep-swollen eyes struggled to open.

"Nightmare… I think," she told him.

Shisui scrutinized the living room for another moment before he finally relaxed. He was still gripping the doorknob, as if prepared to rip it out to use as a weapon. He released it, flexing his hand as he stepped toward her. Sighing, he settled on the floor next to the couch that had become her bed for a couple weeks.

"It's today." She had to be the one to say it.

But when she met Shisui's eyes, she knew he had been thinking the same thing. He grimaced. Maybe it was supposed to be a reassuring smile. That was alright.

She reached out to grasp his hand. The one that had been prepared to fight for her with sleep still crusted in his eyes. Shisui squeezed her hand back. And then he placed his other hand on top of hers.

"We'll figure things out. We have to," he muttered.

A little while later, Shisui was making coffee. A bagel sat warming in the toaster oven. Sakura hunched over the coffee table, poring over all the different notes and marked passages she had ripped out of books from the library. She would have felt guiltier about destroying academic texts if she didn't expect things to reset all over again.

Her phone buzzed. It was a call from Tobirama. Even as she read his name, a sick feeling rose in her gut. She swiped to accept the call.

There was crackling and rustling from the other end. And then there was a long, shaky breath.

"Are you alright?" was the first thing he asked her. Tobirama grunted and then let out another sigh.

"You're hurt," she realized.

Her eyes found Shisui walking into the living room with a mug of coffee in each hand. He froze as he read the look on her face. Shisui set the coffee down on the corner of the table before he ducked into his bedroom.

"I've got bad news. The warding spells broke. He's escaped," Tobirama told her. The ends of his words were shaky.

"The headmaster?" She demanded. She heard him cough. It was a wet, wheezing sound. He wasn't just hurt. He was dying.

"Dead."

"Fuck."

Tobirama sucked in another long breath. And then he was coughing again. "Yeah," he agreed.

"Shit. I'm sorry. He's your brother. I'm… sorry," Sakura petered off, suddenly feeling too hot and too cold all at once.

"Look, I appreciate the sympathy, but we don't exactly have time for that," Tobirama said. He grunted, hissing right after, as if he had moved in a way that his body protested.

Shisui walked out of his bedroom, his face pinched. He looked from the kitchen to her. When Sakura patted the ground next to her, Shisui sat beside her, leaning in closer to her phone.

"Did he eat his heart?" Sakura demanded.

Tobirama winced again. And then he huffed. It might have been a chuckle. "There we go. Good question. And no. Next one."

"Any idea where Naruto is headed?" Shisui asked.

"Not really. He did jump through the window facing north, if that helps." There was a rustling sound. And then a soft string of curses.

"Look, I'm going to send you whatever data we could gather. Our guess was that this unusual flow of time is tied to this demon contract. It's likely that the contract must be fulfilled to end this all."

As Tobirama spoke, Sakura's phone vibrated to notify her that she had a new email.

"You didn't die in all the other loops. This is my fault," she said. She didn't know why she told him that. Would that even matter to a dying man?

Tobirama sucked in another ragged breath. And then he sighed. "Well, if you're correct and this repeats, I hope I'm more helpful the next time around. Sorry to let you down."

The call ended in a set of beeps.

Sakura sat there staring at her for a long time. Shisui tried to speak. He started and stopped several times before he gave up. He nudged the coffee closer to her hand. They sat drinking their coffee in silence. It was the perfect balance of bitter and sweet.

It didn't take long for Itachi and Sasuke to arrive. Ino was there too, despite the fact that she had no makeup on and looked like she'd just rolled out of bed.

Itachi and Shisui retreated to the kitchen to make more coffee while Ino and Sasuke sat with Sakura. Ino kept her hands clasped around Sakura's. Coaxing the words out until they began to flow from Sakura's mouth. A little at a time. Then all at once. Sasuke sat on Sakura's other side, forehead wrinkling as he tried to keep up with the flood of information.

"Okay, I know we've all been avoiding asking about it… but we need to know, Sakura," Sasuke said as Itachi and Shisui entered the living room with a hovering procession of mugs and muffins. Sakura glanced at her cold cup. Following her line of sight, Sasuke flicked his fingers toward the drink. Steam began to rise from the surface as it warmed.

Everyone was quiet as Sakura struggled to recount all the details of all those different versions of that night. Ino flinched as Sakura got to the part about stabbing Madara. Her hands rose to cover her mouth as Sakura recounted choosing not to twist the knife. Itachi and Sasuke exchanged a look but refrained from saying anything.

"In the last one, we found Itachi dead. And then Shisui died trying to kill Naruto," Sakura went on.

"What about Sasuke?" Ino wondered.

"She left me out… asshole," Sasuke snorted. That almost made Sakura smile.

"So ultimately, the last time you died because of Naruto?" Shisui queried.

The edges of her vision blurred. She raised her hand, feeling the magic pool in her palm. But it scattered like sand slipping through her fingers as her last spell failed. She remembered the world tilting sideways as she fell. Staring straight ahead as Madara's face turned whiter and whiter. Blood gushed from his stomach, spilling across the floor like thick wine.

"I think I died because I killed Madara," she realized.

The moment the light left Madara's eyes, she had felt her heart squeezing, like an invisible hand was crushing it. And then, she was certain, that she had felt her heart explode in a hot pulp of blood and muscle fibers before everything went dark. No pain. Just the cool hands of death grabbing both her ankles before she woke again.

"That makes no sense," grumbled Shisui.

"None of this shit makes any sense," Sasuke snapped in return.

"…Good point," Shisui replied.

Itachi's face was tight. He cleared his throat a little to refocus the conversation. He nudged Shisui with his elbow. A look passed between them before Shisui spoke again.

"You asked Tobirama if Naruto went for the headmaster's heart. Why?"

"Because he didn't." Sakura counted off on her fingers. "He ate yours, Itachi's, Sasuke's…" She hesitated as she stared at her hands. "And then… he was definitely aiming for mine. Madara's too."

"But not mine?" Ino spoke up.

All eyes found her. There was a long pause. Then Sakura nodded.

"Not yours," Sakura confirmed.

"What about Gaara's?"

Sakura shook her head.

"So it's just our family then," Itachi mused. Her other cousins nodded.

Sakura blinked at them. "But I'm not related to you by blood."

Shisui lifted his chin to look at her with genuine surprise. He exchanged a look with Sasuke. "Oh yeah. I keep forgetting that," sighed Shisui, rubbing a hand through his already messy hair.

As Sakura shifted her legs, she felt one of the scrying bones poke her from inside her pocket. "The woman beneath the dream apologized to me," she recalled.

"The one who looks like you?" Ino asked. Sakura nodded.

"She said that she didn't mean to hurt anyone. But she said 'we'. So…" Sakura trailed off as she recalled the sadness in the woman's eyes.

Laying out all these clues only added to her frustration. Like tangled Christmas lights that looped and twisted together. It felt like she was tightening knots when she attempted to tug on the end to untangle it all.

The scrying bones had told her that this was all Madara's fault. She had gathered that this was referring to the demon contact he had struck with her heart as the payment. But why would he do such a thing? What powerful magic was he trying to enact that even the might Arcanist couldn't manage it on his own?

The other thing was at the beginning of this loop.

At the end of the tandem dream when she had woken after twelve hours. The memory of everyone's panicked and then relieved faces had grown a little fuzzy. But the face her other self had made was fresh in her memory. Her eyes were bright, even a little manic. And she had smiled like she was holding onto some delightful movie spoiler.

"All you need to do is wake up."

Sakura pinched herself. No. Definitely awake.

What had the woman been trying to prove? It was all supposed to be a hint. Weren't hints supposed to help?

It wasn't like she hadn't experienced something like that before. Falling asleep as soon as her eyes closed, only to open them to the blare of the morning sun. Or closing her eyes just for what felt like hours of dreams, only to realize that a few minutes had passed.

Sakura rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes. She felt someone pat her on the back. The gesture reeked of pity. She didn't have the energy to feel annoyed by it.

"I think that dreams can… warp the fabric of time. That's… probably what she meant to show me," Sakura took her time stringing the thoughts together.

It was such an absurd idea that no one understood her at first. Itachi's eyes were the first to light up.

"You're proposing that the time loops are connected to your dreams somehow," Itachi said.

Sakura nodded.

Sasuke's forehead wrinkled. "This isn't a dream now, is it?" he worried.

"I already pinched myself. So I'm not dreaming," Sakura answered.

"But that could mean that this is someone else's dream," pointed out Shisui.

"Or you could have started dreaming partway through," Itachi observed.

Ino folded her arms across her chest. She finally seemed to remember her coffee. She picked it up, took a sip, then sighed. "You dream casters make my brain hurt."

Sasuke offered her a sympathetic grimace. And when that didn't seem to do anything, he waved a finger toward her coffee. Steam began to rise from the surface of the drink. Ino's expression brightened a little.

"Okay, if Sakura is correct and these are all loops, there has to be a trigger to return back to the beginning," Itachi mused. Shisui scratched his chin as he thought about that.

But Sakura didn't have to guess. She already knew.

"I have to die. It resets when I die."

No one responded. Maybe they didn't know how.

She spoke again then. If just to fill the silence. "I don't know if there's a limit. But when I die, it resets back to the beginning. So if things go bad, make sure I die."

"Sakura-"

"Make sure I die," she said again. Meeting everyone's eyes until they nodded or looked away.

After a pause to drink their coffee, they put together a plan.

They argued a lot over who would go where. But in the end, they agreed on securing Shisui's apartment and Sakura staying there with Itachi and Shisui there to guard her. Sasuke and Ino would head towards Madara's apartment, but only to monitor from a distance. They would make themselves scarce the second that it no longer seemed safe.

As Ino and Sasuke pulled on their jackets and hats, Sakura followed them to the door. She squeezed Ino in her arms. And then, as she began to let go, Ino grabbed her and hugged her again.

When Sakura went to hug him, Sasuke didn't resist. In fact, there was a pause. Then, she felt him return the gesture, even patting her on the back a few times. The beginnings of a linking spell tickled across her skin. She reached out and linked her magic with his. She imagined their neurons like a million empty hands with five million empty fingers. Her magic split into countless threads, tangling in with each finger, binding their thoughts together.

He was terrified.

So was she.

"Thank you," she murmured.

His arms tightened around her for a moment before he pulled away first.

Their eyes met.

"You're the same to me," Sasuke told her. When her forehead wrinkled, Sasuke gestured towards the inside of the apartment. "As them, I mean. You're the same to me. So… don't… don't think stuff like that anymore," he finished in a mumble, suddenly not meeting her eyes.

It took a second for her to understand. But when it clicked, she couldn't help but smile. She squeezed his elbow before she let him go.

As Sasuke and Ino departed, Sakura cast a shield over Shisui's place, layering barrier after barrier over every brick and every pipe. She felt the scrying bones hum something from inside her pocket. When she asked them to repeat themselves, they were silent.

The hours ticked by at an agonizing pace. Itachi pretended he was busy doing research in the living room. And Shisui acted like he was immersed in cleaning his kitchen. But the second she made any noise, the typing and the clattering stopped before it resumed like nothing had happened.

She didn't bother to point out to Shisui that he could easily clean the fridge out using magic. Or that there was really no point in doing research this late in the game. She supposed that it comforted them to give them something to do with their hands. Maybe it even helped keep their brains somewhat busy. Although the way that Shisui peered around the doorway when she sneezed made her doubt that theory.

At the very least, she could feel the low hum of Sasuke's boredom in the background. Occasionally, he mused judgmental comments about the people who walked past. Or he would grumble about how Ino kept the heat blasting in her car. To which Sakura retorted that not everyone was a literal furnace like he was.

She knew something was wrong right away late in the afternoon. She had forced herself to take a few bites of the dinner Shisui had ordered. She didn't even remember what it was. Just recalled shoving a few pieces into her mouth to see the relief shine in Shisui and Itachi's eyes.

But as she sat trying to digest the food that sat like rocks in her stomach, she felt a prickle across the linking spell. He was trying very hard to control himself.

It was like floodgates opening.

Disgust. Fear. Rage.

They boiled together in a sludge that burned its way up Sasuke's throat.

You see him?

He's… prowling.

That made her sit up. On the other end of the sofa, Itachi's head jerked toward her.

Prowling? Like, he's not breaking in? He always smashed the window.

There was a pause before Sasuke returned with another thought. He looks like he's hunting. You know how lions look in nature documentaries when they hunt?

The confusion morphed to something else.

Oh fuck.

The linking spell snapped like a rope stretched too tight. The recoil prickled the tips of her fingers.

"Sakura?"

"Sasuke's dead," she said, already getting to her feet.

Itachi's grabbed her arm hard enough to hurt her. She tried to shake him off, but he held on tight.

"Did you forget the plan?" he demanded.

"Fuck the plan. Nothing ever goes according to plan," snapped Sakura in return. She ripped out of his grasp. As she hurried to grab her coat, Shisui stepped in her way. She glared at him.

"You have to stay here," he pleaded. "You'll die again if you go there."

"The sooner I die, the sooner you get Sasuke back. Move," Sakura ground out.

"Sakura!" The sharpness in Itachi's voice made her flinch. He never raised his voice at her.

"There's no guarantee that you'll get another chance. I can't lose both of you at once," Itachi said from behind her. Sakura turned to face him.

There were tears gathering in the corners of his eyes.

Beware.

"Itachi, look me in the eyes and tell me that you wouldn't give up anything to save your baby brother. Including me," Sakura demanded.

Do not give your heart away.

Itachi met her challenge. He stared her right in the eyes. She kept waiting for him to finally avert his gaze. But he didn't.

"I would give up anything to save Sasuke, including myself. But not you. Not Shisui," he stated, a little tremor in his voice.

That caught her off guard.

No matter how much everyone showered her in affection, she had never stopped thinking for even one second that she was an addition. Not really family, but told that she was. From the day that Madara had taken her from the Senju Academy, she had promised herself not to expect anything. No matter how much everyone smiled and treated her kindly, she had told herself a million times not to forget the truth.

She would never really be part of this family. Blood was blood. She was not.

Sakura searched Itachi's face for some hint of irony. There was none.

"…If you're telling the truth… then… I'm sorry for this," Sakura declared.

Before either of the men could react, Sakura grabbed the strings of her shields. They thrummed like the strings of a guitar, vibrating in her grasp. She had played around with the possibility of manipulating the structure of a shield. If all a shield did was keep things outside of the boundary from entering, what would happen if the properties were reversed?

She pulled the threads that wove the shields together. With a twist of her wrists, she inverted the spell.

The translucent strings of the shield fell across Itachi and Shisui like spiderwebs. As they reached up to swat them away, the threads solidified. The spell locked their arms into place. Shisui struggled against the binding, but they tightened the more he thrashed. Itachi tried to summon fire to his fingertips but the fire suffocated under the weight of the spell.

Abandoning her coat altogether, Sakura yanked the door open.

"Sakura!"

She tried to ignore their calls as she sprinted down the hall, nearly tripping down the stairs on the way to the lobby.

Shisui's apartment wasn't far from the place she had called home for so many years. Sakura ran until her lungs began to ache. As she rounded the corner to her familiar block, she could already feel the spark of magic buzzing against her skin.

Her key still fit in the front door. A swarm of panicked water spirits met her in the foyer. They tugged her hair and her hands in the direction of the library, squeaking in their panicked voices all at once. She could barely understand their jumbled words. Not that she needed to.

She extended her pointer finger, snapping the lock to the library. When she entered the too-large room that couldn't possibly fit in their home, Naruto and Madara were already fighting. Arcs of fire spurted from Madara's mouth. Naruto scrambled along the walls and shelves to dodge the attacks.

There was also a sound. Muffled. Crouching at the top of the stairs, Sakura peered through the slats in the balustrade. Naruto was bleeding. So was Madara. But there was no one else in the room as they slung spells at each other.

Still, the sound persisted. Was it the sound of a woman crying?

Sakura looked down at herself. She patted her pocket. The scrying bones weren't hot, but she could feel the prickle of magic running through them.

She scooped some of the bones up in her hand.

The scrying bones were weeping. Clear liquid just like tears gathered in the cracks.

Broken. Break. Break break us. Me.

"Us?" Sakura whispered.

Me. You.

"What does that mean?" she wondered.

Her head whipped around as she heard a snarl.

"There you are."

They had stopped fighting. Naruto's mouth stretched in a blood-stained leer.

"Sakura, what're you doing here?" Madara whispered.

She hissed a very ugly word under her breath. As she braced herself, for the claws, she couldn't help but lament what a hassle it would be to re-explain everything from the beginning.

"Sakura!"

Her eyes snapped open.

"She's up!"

"Finally!"

Someone was snapping their fingers in front of her eyes.

Sakura grabbed hold of them. Ino let out a yelp as Sakura crushed her fingers.

"What day is it?" Sakura demanded. And when Ino could only reply with a bewildered stare, Sakura turned her attention to Sasuke sitting right next to her. He fumbled to check his watch.

"November 3rd. It's a Friday," he told her.

Sakura released Ino's hand. Ino didn't say anything else, but she winced as she rubbed her fingers together.

Shisui sat in a half-crouch, like he had frozen on the way to move closer to her. Itachi sat beside him, his eyes narrowing as he scrutinized her face.

Hashirama sat on the other side of a huge circle drawn in chalk. He blinked long and slow, like someone who had just woken up. Tobirama was leaning against the desk, arms folded across his chest.

"No fucking way," Sakura whispered as she looked down at her hands.

As if in response to her words, pain shot through her left side. Right along the curve of one of her ribs. The same place as always. Blood began seeping through the white fabric of her shirt. There was a flurry of noises and movement as everyone rushed to help her.

The pain barely registered. She let them fuss over her bizarre injury as her mind struggled to piece something together.

In the end, all she could manage to do was put her head in her hands as she sighed: "What the fuck."