So.
Let's start with basics. Sakura didn't know them, and, you know—she's not sure if everyone's aware of this—but Sakura is super smart, so if she didn't know this, she's pretty sure most people don't know it either.
(It's okay for her to admit that she's smart. She's humble about other things. You just have to be, like, net humble.)
No matter how much Tsunade says it's totally obvious and isn't it being taught at the academy these days? It's not.
Sakura reads Ino's textbooks. You know—for fun. (Shut up.)
And it's definitely, definitely not.
Anyways.
The human chakra system has three parts:
The reservoir, where most of a person's chakra (aka their reserves) are located. It's about the size of, and Sakura is quoting Tsunade here, "a particularly aggressive grapefruit". (Yeah, Sakura doesn't know why Tsunade thought that meant anything, either.) Most ninja have no control over the chakra in their reservoir beyond a generic "pull".
The coils, which are the actual pathways that deliver chakra from the reservoir to the (three hundred and sixty-one) tenketsu. There are either six of them or twenty of them depending on how you count. There's six root coils that begin at the reservoir, but they split and divide as they spread through the body out into twenty—one root coil for each arm and leg, one for the crotch, and only one for both the trunk and the head. Most ninja have more coarse control here—directing their body to send more chakra to a particular limb or body in part.
The capillaries, which are the teeny tiny little tubes that direct chakra from the tenketsu that last little bit to the cells themselves—the teeny tiny little tubes Jiraiya insisted she needed to align her tenketsu with, when she was remaking them. There are, according to Tsunade, at least as many chakra capillaries as there are human cells. Sometimes more, never less. Meaning, oh, about thirty-seven trillion. Obviously, considering the numbers involved, this is an entirely autonomous process. There exists exactly one ninja who has control over the chakra in their capillaries.
That ninja is, of course, Tsunade.
Don't worry, she says to Sakura when Sakura makes what she thinks is fairly understandable face at the number thirty seven trillion, you don't have to worry about your capillaries.
(Then why are you telling me about them? Sakura only barely keeps herself from asking.)
But I had to entertain myself somehow while I got destroyed at mahjong.
Which, um—sure. Let's set that aside. Sakura will deal with when she isn't in eminent danger of being taken over by a stupid snake ninja.
Genjutsu functions by disturbing the chakra flow in one particular part of the victim's coils, and you might be thinking—
Chakra only goes one way, right?
Out, from the reservoir, and then to the tenketsu, and then out to the capillaries and into the cells—so a genjutsu should only be able to affect parts of the body downstream from the disturbance.
Right?
No.
Second option—
There's a system of veins. Arteries out, veins in.
Also no.
The correct answer, of course, is that when chakra reaches the end of a chakra coil, it just…
Teleports back into the reservoir.
Because sure.
Why not.
It's cool.
Did you never wonder where the chakra you were tracking went?
Sakura had not. Sakura had thought it just kind burned away.
You'd lose way too much chakra, if that were true.
(She's obviously right, but Sakura doesn't want to admit it.)
So, of course, teleportation is the obvious answer. It's cool. Sakura's life depends on her understanding this. It's cool. She's fine.
The closed-system nature of the chakra coils means that any genjutsu anywhere in someone's chakra coils affects all the chakra flow throughout the body, and, considering every cell in a (non-Yamanaka) body requires chakra to survive, that means that it can affect everything.
Genjutsu, that is—and possession jutsus.
There is no half-measure that can protect her. Any uncontrolled chakra can be poisoned, and that poison can affect all of her.
Ninety-nine percent is no better than zero.
It has to be perfect.
It's cool.
It's cool.
Sakura can do this.
Sakura breathes in.
Sakura breathes out.
(I can do it, Inner Sakura asserts, because Inner Sakura thinks she can do anything.)
Sakura blinks, and before her is a little boy, chest carved open but not yet dead, crying.
"Please," he says to her, and she laughs, and laughs and laughs.
She blinks again, and he's gone.
She's back in a sterile white room that likes to pretend it's a hospital room.
My name is Haruno Sakura, Sakura reminds herself.
At its most basic level, the closed loop technique is simple. You can talk about it in fancy, mystical terms like being in control of your chakra or whatever, but, when it comes down to it what your body requires of your chakra coils is a certain amount of chakra delivered to three hundred and sixty-one different places. If you don't care about chakra infusion syndrome because you're already just suffocatingly deep in it, then you can just go overboard. No need to give every tenketsu exactly the chakra it needs—ust pile it on.
Three hundred and sixty-one simultaneous streams of chakra, each held tight against interference.
Kind of like performing three hundred sixty-one jutsus at once.
Easy.
Easy.
Don't forget to wrap your reserves into a weird little twisting rotating donut.
Easy.
(I can do it, Inner Sakura asserts once again.)
She doesn't blink this time, because her eyes are closed. Instead, a new world grows out of the darkness.
She sees Tsunade, crumbling to her knees, skin pale as death, and she is there, holding Tsunade in her arms, feeling the unnatural of her skin, the cool dampness of the almost or recently dead.
Sakura's hearing is good, perfect, so she can hear Tsunade's heart not beating in her chest.
"No!" Sakura screams. "No, you can't die, I won't let you!"
She slams her hand against Tsunade's chest, pushes as much chakra as she can into Tsunade, but it's not enough. Even if she gave Tsunade everything she had, until she was a corpse right next to Tsunade, it wouldn't be enough.
Sakura raises her gaze to the dead and dying shinobi Tsunade had been holding off all around them.
A hiss pulls itself from Sakura's throat, and she licks her lips with her too-long tongue.
Well, if they didn't want Sakura to rip all of their chakra from their coils, then they shouldn't have fucking been here in the first place.
The darkness, swirling over the image of a half-dead man screaming as his chakra is unbound from his body.
My name is Haruno Sakura.
So, complaining aside—it's not as impossible as it sounds.
She can do this.
With her life on the line, she can do this.
She directs a single stream to a single tenketsu, and then another, and another, and another, and soon enough, she has nine.
"Fucking Sage, kid."
Sakura's chakra shatters out of her control from an inexplicable earthquake of chakra, and she looks up at Tsunade.
Tsunade looks a bit sheepish, and just shakes her head.
Well, well, well.
What's this?
Sakura can feel Orochimaru at the gates again. She can see him, just a little, see the pale off-white of his regrown hands.
Sakura had been hoping they'd stay gone.
So Tsunade's teaching you that little chakra loop jutsu of Hashirama's, then?
He leans against the bars, smiling at her, the skin of his face smoking.
It would work, but Sakura-chan—just how long do you think you have?
Ask Tsunade how long it took her to master that jutsu.
"Sakura?" Tsunade asks, pulling Sakura back to the present.
"It's Orochimaru."
Tsunade makes a face.
"He said—"
"Don't listen to what he says. First rule of interacting with Orochimaru."
"How long did it take you to master this jutsu?"
"About two weeks?" Tsunade says, not even hesitating a little.
She blinks, and Tsunade's sixteen again, on her back in the grass before Sakura, frowning thunderously at the sky.
"Come on," a teenage Jiraiaya says. "It took your grandpa like two years, right? Six months is nothing."
"Except I don't have it, yet," Tsunade responds with a frown.
"Have you considered that maybe trying to beat the First Hokage is a fool's errand?" Sakura offers.
"Shut up, Orochimaru."
"Just saying, three years would still be plenty impressive," she says, white-grey hands raised in defense.
She blinks again, and Tsunade is an adult once more, her face schooled into a liar's mildly bemused neutrality.
My name is Haruno Sakura.
What did she say, Sakura? A month? Two weeks?
He laughs, loud and long.
Good luck, Sakura.
Ten is her limit.
Up to nine, it was easy. An hour, and she had it.
But ten—ten feels like it's impossible.
She thinks of Neji, getting up time and time and time again—the way he never gave in to despair and still hasn't—the way his lilac eyes still shine with the determination that he will still beat her, someday, even though he's nowhere close, and hasn't been in years.
If he can do that, then she can do this.
She gets it.
Control over the chakra going to ten of her tenketsu.
She wants to die.
Her brain feels like it's going to split in two in her head.
Tsunade places her hand on Sakura's shoulder, soft and large and just a little too warm, her amber eyes meeting Sakura's.
"You're doing great."
Sakura loses control of her chakra, and Tsunade smiles comfortingly.
"You're doing great," she repeats.
Sakura gets to eleven tenketsu before dinner.
Tsunade and Jiraiya eat with her, which is weird. They're legendary ninja, but… they're eating with her.
It's weird. More weird than them helping her.
It brings back memories which aren't hers.
The Sannin, united again, she thinks despite herself.
Tsunade stays with her until Sakura internal clock says something like eleven, but she still can't get the twelfth stream. Two hours, and nothing.
(I can do it, Inner Sakura repeats.)
She's—
"Go to bed, kid—it'll still be here in the morning," Tsunade interrupts her. "Sleep deprivation doesn't help anyone."
Sakura sleeps, and as she sleeps, she dreams—
She sees Jiraiya crash into the bed beside her, already snoring, still dirty from the mission they just returned from.
"If only I could go to sleep that easily," Sakura comments dryly.
"You can say that again," Tsunade commiserates.
Sasori stands in front of her.
"Really? A Leaf nin? Please."
"You have a problem with missing Leaf nin, Sasori?" she says, voice a sibilant hiss. "Then I can—"
Sakura is interrupted by the agony of her skin starts dropping away from her bones, putting her on her hands and knees gasping against the pain, so strong it blanks out all the instincts she's supposed to have.
She doesn't get them back before the genjutsu fades, and to her right a man with a spiral mask stands near the wall, a Sharingan spinning in the one hole in his mask.
"If you have a problem with this pairing, then you can take it up with me," he says, voice low and dangerous. "Now, do we have a problem?"
Sakura turns back to Sasori, whose movements are jerky, revealing the hunchback for the puppet it is.
"No," Sasori says, the single syllable coming out like an agony in and of itself.
Sakura turns back to Madara, imagines ripping his eyes from his skull—no, stealing his body and—
"No," she says.
She'll figure out how she'll defile everything she loves with his own hands later.
"I like this one," Sakura says, crouching down before a boy whose hands glitter with crystal.
She blinks, and the boy is gone, a bloody mess of crystal shards in his place.
"Do you have a deathwish, Sasori?"
"We have a mission, Orochimaru."
Sakura runs her fingers over the broken shards that had once been a boy made of crystal.
"Such a shame," she says, thinking of all the ways she had wanted to cut him open, able to imagine exactly what she could find in her mind's eye.
Sakura wakes, and she can't breathe.
She is drowning in blood, nothing but blood blood and more blood, all of it bearing down on her, pinning her to dead, blasted earth of what is left of her mindscape.
Who is she?
What is she?
Why is she—
Sakura remembers.
She closes her eyes, and tries to will the blood away.
Go away go away go away—
Sakura's reserves drain away, but the blood doesn't. There's…
There's more of it than she has chakra.
Sakura's blood freezes in her veins. She tries to breathe, which is a mistake because now it's inside of her, oh Sage—
No, Inner Sakura says from beneath her skin.
Sakura opens her eyes, and finds someone else in her skin. Her hand is raised over Gamami's tiny little toad body, and there is a smile she is not smiling on her face. Orochimaru raises Sakura's hand, and—
No, Inner Sakura repeats from beneath her skin, and a kai Sakura did not make blasts out of her skin.
Gamami wakes up and catches Sakura's hand easily, her little toad arm reinforced with sage mode as her orange eyes bore up into Sakura's. Sakura is silent, nothing but a passenger in her own body, but she still has just a tiny bit of chakra she didn't throw away trying to purify her mind of Orochimaru's blood.
I'm sorry, Sakura says.
Shut up, Gamami says still holding Orochimaru at bay. He's trying to perform jutsus, but he can't, his chakra slopping messily within them. All he can do is try to set Sakura's noodle arms against a the world's cutest, tiniest toad sage.
Gamami places her hand again Sakura's side, and chakra pours from Gamami to Sakura (Sakura and not Orochimaru), but it's not enough. She needs more.
Gamami hesitates with remembered pain, then sets her little toad jaw, and—
"I leave you alone for five minutes," Tsunade says, sleep-rumpled and looking very irritated, lifting Gamami away from Sakura, before Gamami turns herself to stone to give Sakura a full chakra infusion before placing her own hand on Sakura's stomach. Sakura's coils fill in the blink of an eye, which Sakura immediately empty to clear Orochimaru out of her system. It's not enough.
She has to empty her chakra coils three times to clear him all out. Tsunade doesn't react, doesn't seem surprised, just keeps pouring chakra into Sakukra's coils until Sakura stops burning it away. Tsunade places Gamami back into her lap.
"We'll call that plan C," she tells Gamami.
So.
Orochimaru was holding back.
He knew we were coming, and he had to know I would teach you this jutsu. Which means he didn't think you could do it. The fact he's sped up his possession now is because he's now scared you can.
This took you six months, Sakura says, despairing.
To which Tsunade responds—
No, Sakura. It took me three and a half years.
How long does she have? Tsunade asks Gamami.
About a month.
A month? That's—
And how long before she isn't Sakura anymore?
About ten days.
Two hundred and forty hours.
That's more than a tenketsu an hour.
Last night, she spent two hours without getting one.
Oh, Sage.
(I can do it, Inner Sakura repeats, once again.)
Orochimaru is silent within her now. In that silence, she finds that she really would have preferred him talking—taunting her. If this is what he can do, if he's focused entirely on eating her alive, from the inside out, she really would have preferred him talking.
Sleeping is dangerous, because you can't push him back while you sleep.
I can keep you awake for those ten days.
On the tenth day, Jiraiya will do whatever he thinks is most likely to keep you alive and not Orochimaru.
Maybe that's removing Orochimaru, maybe it's applying a tighter second seal. Regardless, he hasn't done it yet for a reason.
It will probably kill you.
Sakura blinks, and finds an eighteen year old Tsunade before her, frowning.
"You should be dead."
"I'm glad to see you, too, Tsunade."
"You should be so dead. What were you thinking?"
"I was thinking if I didn't stay awake for five days straight, I'd get caught and killed."
Tsunade pulls Sakura's arm forward, and it screams in pain.
"It's going to take months to get you back to normal."
"I have a new mission on Monday."
"Are you fucking kidding me?"
Sakura blinks again, and Tsunade is forty-nine again.
My name is Haruno Sakura.
Ten days?
You can do it, Tsunade says.
Ten days.
She just has to—
She doesn't even blink this time. The process is not gentle, not a swirling in and out, but like the universe shorted out, and a new universe took its place.
Sasori is in his true body, for once, leaned over the corpse of a white-haired kunoichi. He is smiling.
It is an unsettling sort of smile—which is saying something considering Sakura is, you know… Sakura.
The woman had an ice bloodline limit—and not the kind Sakura's ever seen before, not the kind Mist ninja had during the war. This woman damn near froze the blood in Sakura's veins. That had been a unique experience.
Sakura had wanted her alive.
Sasori had had other ideas, the fucker.
Sakura spins through a half dozen seals, and oh—what a tragedy. The woman's body melts as acid boils up from within it.
"We have a mission, Sasori," Sakura says, and Sasori's fury is just delectable. "Did you forget?"
The world shorts again, and Sakura is back in her hospital room.
My name is Haruno Sakura.
Ten days.
She gets twelve tenketsu, and she just—she just can't get the thirteenth tenketsu.
She just—
I can do it.
Inner Sakura claws at her, and Sakura can see shapes she doesn't recognize on her skin.
No one else can see them, but she can.
Are you going to die to deny me? Inner Sakura says.
LET
ME
HELP
Something in Sakura cracks.
She gets thirteen, and then fourteen, then fifteen in a single hour.
Time… doesn't mean anything, when you don't sleep.
She doesn't know if an hour has passed, or nine. She doesn't know how much time she has left.
She doesn't know if she's on track, or way behind.
She should ask.
She's scared to ask.
She doesn't ask.
She's at twenty, she's at twenty-five.
Her head feels like it's going to split in two.
It's cracking, cracking—
With each fracture, more of Inner Sakura bubbles up to the surface, and the pressure eases.
With each crack, it gets a little easier.
With each crack, there's a little less Sakura, a little more Inner Sakura.
Twenty-six.
Twenty-seven.
Blink.
"He was—" Jiraiya's voice breaks. "He was the best of us."
They are in a dark, wet, damp, nasty forest in Cloud. Sakura didn't know Cloud had horrible swamp forests like this.
Now she knows how wrong she was.
Before them is the grave of Ryuuga. Clanless, like Sakura and Jiraiya were, and Tsunade pretended to be. Around them are six other ninja, all with their heads bowed.
Jiraiya was leading this mission, so he's speaking.
He's horrible at it, though.
He should have Tsunade do it. She actually gives a shit, unlike Sakura, but she knows loss—knows it better than all of them, really.
Sakura's always been an orphan, but Tsunade has slowly lost her clan, year after year after year after year. Her grandfather, her mother, her great uncle, her brother, her cousin, her father, her aunt.
She's almost clan head now, by process of elimination.
"I'm sorry, I can't. Ryuuga, man, you—" Jiraiya shakes his head, covering his face to cover his tears. "Tsunade, please."
Tsunade steps forward.
"You died so that we could live, Ryuuga. I'm sorry I couldn't save you, and I'm sorry we failed you, but you died for something. And we—"
Blink.
My name is Haruno Sakura.
Sakura spends most of her time with her eyes closed, doing her best to—
Not think about the memories she keeps having.
(Not think about who she'll be, even if she succeeds.)
Jiraiya comes and goes.
First time he comes in, there is a moment in which he looks at her like she's already dead.
It's only a moment but it's there, like he's trying to figure out what he's going to say at her funeral.
Jiraiya draws more seals, has her sit on them, briefly, and then leaves.
"Hang in there, kid," he says, before he leaves. His fingers are ink-stained.
Part of Sakura wonders why they're trying so hard to save her. Jiraiya is a spy, he never comes back to Konoha for a reason.
Tsunade is all but a missing-nin.
Tsunade probably wanted to see what came of Orochimaru, Sakura guesses, but—she still kind of can't believe that they haven't killed her yet—that they haven't decided to just dump her into some hole in the ground surrounded by one hundred feet of chakra reinforced stone on every side with some kind of death seal in the center, wait for her to die, and then wait for Orochimaru to die. Done, problem solved.
"If you have time to mope, you have time to practice," Tsunade says from behind her. "Start by clearing out Orochimaru's chakra, it's been too long."
Blink.
She curls the snake skin closer to her chest.
Some day, she'll make a contract with the snakes.
Some day, she'll meet her parents again.
Some day—she'll be a ninja as great as her teacher.
She'll know every jutsu in the world.
Blink.
My name is Haruno Sakura.
That's one way to count the time passing.
How many times Tsunade has told her to clear out Orochimaru's chakra.
How many times Sakura has had to slip down inside of herself, look at the rapidly growing pool of blood around Orochimaru's gate, slowly dripping down the hill, and then blinking it away.
Tsunade is still giving her full chakra refilles, but Tsunade is losing chakra now. Before Jiraiya left, she'd told him she'd need him for chakra infusions soon.
Blinking away Orochimaru's chakra is getting easier. Effortless.
That does not meaning it's becoming cheaper.
Orochimaru doesn't speak to her, anymore. Doesn't look up at her. Through the gates, she can see him, eyes closed, face serene.
He looks like a proper Sannin, even surrounded in a horrible fleshy nightmare. No disturbing smiles, no taunts, just sure, calm, confidence.
Serene confidence that Sakura can never win.
The blood starts seeping out from the base of the gate again.
She blinks, and there is dying boy before her.
He's bleeding from every orifice, even though his twisted and warped body is more wood than human now.
She didn't know wood could bleed.
Sakura growls.
She'd worked so hard. She thought this would be the one.
She looks back at Danzou.
"Is this really the best you can get me?"
"I'm not going to give you clan children, Orochimaru," Danzou says with a snort. "Make do with street rats."
"Sometimes, quality is more important than quantity, Danzou," she says with a bit of a hiss.
"Don't forget who you owe this lab to, Orochimaru," Danzou counts, voice low and face hard.
Sakura sneers. "You're nothing compared to the old man, and he doesn't scare me."
"He doesn't know how to use his power."
Sakura spins and crosses the distance between them in an instant, pressing his face into Danzou with a smile she has scared entire legions of jounin with. "Yes, but he does have it," she hisses into his face.
She relishes the instant in which Danzou face contorts in fear, and his instincts force him to take a step back.
"Get me the clan children, Danzou, before I start borrowing those pretty little root operatives of yours."
Danzou scowls, furious—at Sakura or himself, Sakura doesn't know—and steps back forward, his mouth in a hard line. "You want a war, Orochimaru?"
"I just might, Danzou. Do you?"
Danzou blinks first. He turns away.
The world shorts, and Sakura is back in her blasted mindscape.
My name is Haruno Sakura, she reminds herself.
She returns to her body to find Gamami in her lap, her tiny little toad hands on Sakura's stomach. She's not infusing Sakura with chakra, on Tsunade's request, but she is there, a tiny, calming presence.
Sakura hasn't forgotten the peace that natural energy promised her so many years ago, and she can feel it radiating out of Gamami's orange chakra.
Looking down at Gamami, her chakra sense awash with Gamami's sage chakra, she thinks if that there might be a way to seal Orochimaru away forever inside of her. She doesn't think his possession would work on a stone.
Am I still me? she asks Gamami.
You're still you, Gamami confirms.
Blink.
"Master, you can't be moving yet."
"Get off me," she growls, but when she tries to sit, she can't.
"I can try and mitigate the damage you sustained in your fight with Jiraiya and Tsunade, but you'll never be at full strength again. You've completed your Fushi Tensei technique. You need to find a host."
"How about you?" Sakura growls.
"I am, of course, always ready and willing to accept you, my lord. But I have nothing for you, all I know is what you taught me."
Sakura closes her hand around Kabuto's throat, and he goes limp. Ready.
Sakura throws him across the room, scattering tables and instruments and Sakura can see that Kabuto didn't have to take that and it infuriates her.
"Find me someone," Sakura hisses—
Blink.
My name is…
It takes her a second.
Haruno Sakura.
She's up to forty-three tenketsu, fifty-nine tenketsu, eight-two tenketsu.
Each is harder than the last.
(Crack, crack, crack.)
The first ones are getting easier to hold, through the earthquakes that even Tsunade can't explain—
(Maybe it's Orochimaru? Jiraiya offers.)
The head is driven by only seven tenketsu. She can now control them all.
Jiraiya whistles. "That's all the first was ever able to do! Nice job!"
Saskura loses control.
"Whoops," Jiraiya says, and—
He's a child again, squirming where he's tied to the post, snarling at Tsunade as she waves her bell in his face.
Behind her Hiruzen-sensei stands, looking a little unimpressed.
Tsunade turns to grin at Saskura.
"Come on, Orochimaru, we won!"
Sakura jingles her bell, weakly, and Tsunade frowns thunderously.
"Orochimaru," she says threateningly, and Sakura takes a step back.
The world shorts, and Jiraiya is a grown man again.
My name is…
What was it again?
Oh, right.
Haruno Sakura.
"Let me in!"
"Who the hell even let you in here."
"I want to see Sakura!"
Sakura opens her eyes to find Ino standing at the pseudo-door, fake hospital corridor behind her.
Tsunade takes a step back so that the door can at least close.
"Sakura!" Ino says, and she smiles for a moment before she really takes Sakura in. "Get out of my way," she says, trying to push Tsunade out of the way, but Tsunade doesn't move, instead placing a hand on Ino's chest and pinning her to the wall.
"Listen—"
"Let her go, Tsunade," Sakura says, killing intent boiling up and out of her, and she doesn't recognize her own voice. She's not sure if it's Inner Sakura or Orochimaru.
Jiraiya and Tsunade both turn to her, and Ino takes advantage of their moment of distraction to rush towards Sakura.
"What happened?" Ino asks, kneeling before Sakura and putting her hands on Sakura shoulders. "Why aren't you in your bed, won't this kill you?"
She jerks Sakura into a hug, and Sakura melts into it, burying her face in Ino's shoulder.
"What are you two doing to her?" Ino says, twisting her head back to the two adults in the room without releasing Sakura.
Sakura just wraps her arms tighter around Ino, crushing her more tightly to Sakura's chest. She needs—
"Ow ow ow."
Sakura releases the chakra from her arms.
"Sorry," she says.
"I have—" Sakura realizes she doesn't know how long she has. "Gamami, how long do I have?"
"Six days," Gamami says.
"Six days until Orochimaru takes me over."
Ino stares at her, mouth open.
"So every minute you're here," Tsunade says from where she stands towering behind Ino, "is a minute Sakura isn't training."
Ino face crumples in horror as she turns to look up at Tsunade, but Tsunade's face is pitiless.
Jiraiya's, face, however, is not.
"It's important to let the girl be human at least a little. Training like this will drive her crazy. Let her have a second with her best friend."
Tsunade makes a face.
"What's the chance minutes is really what matters here?"
Tsunade takes a deep breath, and then sighs. "Fine," she says.
"Take a nap, me and Gamami and Ino can watch Sakura and wake you when she needs an infusion or a re-application of the false sleep technique."
Tsunade sighs.
"Thank—" Sakura coughs, her voice a little hoarse from lack of use. "Thank you, Tsunade-hime."
Tsunade shifts her gaze to Sakura. A smile touches her eyes, even as her lips remain pressed together.
"Thank me by surviving this."
"I'm trying."
Tsunade actually huffs out a laugh at that.
"Yeah. You're doing great."
Sakura watches as Tsunade walks to the wall, slumps down against it, and then closes her eyes, head leaned against a hand propped on her knee.
"I've always been jealous of her ability to do that," Jiraiya comments.
Ino stays for fifteen minutes, tells Sakura about the academy, about her dad, about how she broke into the jutsu room again, and she can't wait to show Sakura the jutsu she learned.
"Here," she says, pressing her hand to Sakura's chest.
Sakura feels something enter her mindscape. She falls into herself to find a single water lily blooming in the barren expanse of her mindscape, not ten feet from the gate.
She blinks away the blood slowly encroaching upon it.
She will not allow Orochmaru's gross blood-chakra to touch it.
She rises back up into her body, to find Ino's face very close. "Now you have to survive," she's saying. "Or you'll never know what that's for."
Sakura's pretty sure it's an anchor for a long-distance telepathy jutsu.
Sakura nods, and Ino sniffles.
"You can't cry!" Ino says.
"I'm not gonna cry."
"Good, because you can't."
Ino sniffles some more, and then Sakura is sniffling and—
Sakura feels a lot more human once she's left.
As the door closes, the world changes. The world is blood and darkness and chakra and pain.
Tsunade's fist connects with Sakura's shoulder at the same moment Sakura's sword slices clean through Tsunade's midsection. Tsunade falls to the ground in two pieces, face twisted in pain but not dead.
Sakura can barely breathe. Her left lung is totally destroyed, and her heart has been pierced with one of her broken ribs. She's a dead woman walking, and Tsunade still won't fucking die.
Tsunade bares her teeth, and—
The room returns, white and sterile and clean.
My name is Oro—
Sakura stops herself.
My name is Haruno Sakura.
Kakashi comes, some time later.
Seven clearings of Orochimaru's blood?
One hundred and twenty-seven tenketsu in?
She doesn't want to know how much time actually passed.
She doesn't want to know how much time she actually has left.
Am I still me?
As Sakura turns her gaze up to Kakashi, she finds the third Hokage in his place, hat pushed back to better glare at her.
"How could you?" he says.
"How could I?" Sakura asks.
"You ripped those ninja's souls out."
"I did what had to be done! Tsunade would have died."
"There had to be another way."
"They would have died. Who cares!"
"There are some lines, Orochimaru, which you're just not supposed to cross."
This man who is everything to her looks at her like she's something dirty, and something in Sakura breaks.
A blink, and Kakashi is back, not scowling at her like she's everything wrong with the world.
Yes, Gamami says, and it feels belated even though she's sure not a moment has passed.
"Hey Sakura," Kakashi says, limping in on crutches.
I am Sakura…
Haruno Sakura.
I am Haruno Sakura.
I am Haruno Sakura.
"Hi, Sensei."
He leans back against the wall. She can see him trying to figure out how much of a dick he can be. She's sure she must look horrible.
"Give her shit, and I will kick you straight out of this room," Tsunade says, suddenly awake on the ground beside him.
"Me?" Kakashi asks. "I'm her teacher. I've never been anything but supportive. Look at me, coming to see her, even though I'm on crutches. Truly, has there ever been a more supportive teacher than me?"
Sakura laughs a little, despite herself.
"Cute," Tsunade comments. "Jiraiya, get on your end of the seal."
Jiraiya lumbers over to do as instructed.
Tsunade turns her gaze to Sakura, and Sakura moves to her half of the seal.
Tsunade kneels in the center, places her hands on the two activation points, and chakra passes from Jiraiya into Tsunade, and then into Sakura.
He isn't running out yet, but the amount of time he's full between infusions is going down.
Tsunade stands, places one hand on Sakura's neck and the other on her forehead.
The fog in Sakura's mind clears.
"So Tsunade-hime," Kakashi drawls from where he stands against the wall. "Any chance I get some of that chakra?"
Tsunade is running her glowing hands over Sakura's back, soothing away the growing pain Sakura now has in her everywhere.
"Even if you get extra chakra, you won't be able to use your Sharingan. Talk to Toumi to get off of those crutches if you want that."
Kakashi hums, and turns his focus on Sakura.
"I'm sorry," he says. "If I'd been—"
"No, shut up," Tsunade interrupts, standing from behind Sakura to settle herself back against the wall. "You want to engage in some self-flagellation, go somewhere else."
Kakashi smiles a little ruefully, and Tsunade closes her eyes.
Jiraiya heaves himself to his feet.
"You mind watching over her for a while, I need to get some sleep—and I need to be in an actual bed to do it, unlike some people." He jumps over Tsunade's leg when she lashes it out at him.
Kakashi nods, and Sakura relocates back to her original position as Kakashi waits for Jiraiya to leave.
"How are you doing, Sakura?" he asks, hobbling over to Sakura's side.
"I've been better," she says, honestly.
Slowly, he settles himself on the ground before her.
"Show me how far you've gotten so far."
"You won't be able to see anything," she says. She's pretty sure he wouldn't be able to see anything with his Sharingan, either, but doesn't say that.
"Do it anyways," Kakashi says.
Sakura closes her eyes, and the world changes, cacophony blooming out of the silence of her hospital room.
"He's full of shit," Jiraiya says to her, leaned over his sake, red-cheeked. "I think you're a rat bastard, but that ain't why."
"Oh?" Sakura asks, turning her sake cup before her, but not drinking it. "Then why, pray tell, am I a rat bastard?"
"Lots of reasons. Right now—because you're not drinking. You think you're too good for me, you piece of shit?"
Sakura smiles and takes a long drink from her sake. It tastes awful going down, and it heals just a bit of that broken little part of herself.
The cacophony of the bar cuts out, replaced with nothing but Tsunade's and Kakashi's even breathing.
My name is… Sakura.
What was her family name again?
Oh, right—
Haruno Sakura.
Right.
She sets to work.
A couple minutes later, Sakura's chakra shatters out of her control under another possibly-Orochimaru-induced earthquake.
She opens her eyes, raises her eyebrows.
"Hm, oh yes. Very good," Kakashi says, eyes faintly sparkling with mirth. "You look like you're really getting the hang of it. Try again?"
With a huff of a laugh, Sakura closes her eyes again.
Kakashi stays… well. For a while.
One hundred and forty-five tenketsu.
Nine clearings of Orochimaru's chakra that Tsunade needs to infuse her twice to get her through.
"You're doing great, Sakura," Kakashi says, one hand on her hair.
"How would you know?"
"Because I know you, Sakura. You can do this. I'm going to go see if I can get Toumi to see me tonight. Hold tight, okay?"
Sakura nods, and he leaves. He turns back, at the door, and—
Saskura is sitting before a cell with two ninja in it. One of them is unconscious, a young man bleeding pretty badly from the head.
She could fix that, but that would kinda defeat the purpose.
"Please," the conscious one, a middle-aged Kunoichi, says.
Sakura opens a scroll before her. She's starting to become fond of this body's hands. She'd been considering doing some work to modify this body back to her old normal, but—well, the whole point of this was that she could define her own normal.
(Well, not the whole point. The whole point was immortality.)
She had always wanted more slender fingers, though.
"Please, you can have me, just let Gouto go."
Sakura flicks those slender fingers forward, and the ninja's head tumbles from her shoulders. Sakura reaches through the bars, extending her arm a truly delicious amount (yet another perk of this body), and pulls some of the ninja's hair from her head.
Sakura scoots over until she is sitting before this "Gouto". He's still breathing and doesn't show any signs of stopping in the immediate future. She places the dead ninja's hair in the center, and activates the scroll.
The seals spread across the ground, enveloping Gouto, and oh look—he's proving how alive he still was with his screams of agony. They continue for quite a long while, until the body disintegrates into ash, and…
Nothing.
Fuck.
Alright, well—if at first you don't succeed, try, try—
The white door closes behind Kakashi, and Sakura recites her name to herself.
My name is Sakura.
Family name?
Sakura's never had a family name.
She's a clanless orphan.
…
Right?
Sakura's at one hundred and sixty-seven tenketsu when Ino comes back.
Am I still me?
You're still you.
Gamami is a comforting presence on her lap, a little orange beacon of the state of her self.
Ino tells Sakura a lot about how great the jutsus she's learned are.
About how Kinoki's Sweets has a new pink cake.
About how Sasuke hit a target behind a tree by hitting his shuriken against each other.
About how scrunched up and mad his face got when she learned to do the same thing.
Tsunade has taught Sakura a jutsu or two for cleaning hair without a shower (and broken Sakura's wood cuffs with a Everyone's so terrified of Orochimaru it's made them stupid so that Sakura can actually perform it), so she's not as horrifying as she could be, but—
"Can we not do anything about this?" Ino asks Tsunade, after she's run out of things to say, poking at the bags under Sakura's eyes.
"This is her fifth day without sleep, kid. I think she's looking pretty good for that."
Sakura's having trouble standing, now. Her arms are heavy.
"I'll bring some makeup next time," Ino promises.
"I could just use the transformation technique," Sakura says.
"Don't," Tsunade says, ignoring the look she gets from Sakura at her hypocrisy. "It'll interfere with your chakra flow. You need to learn to master your basic chakra flow before you go messing around with jutsu."
Ino leaves.
"You're doing great," Tsunade says. "It only gets easier from here."
Tsunade is a horrible liar.
Every tenketsu is harder than the last.
Blink.
"I don't have enough chakra?" Sakura sneers down at the tiny snake sage before her.
"Don't you sneer at me, boy. I'll eat your whole face off."
Sakura takes a deep breath, and clears her expression, pushes the rage down deep where it coalesces into cold, hard hatred.
"Yes," Majini continues once he's decided she's shown a sufficient amount of contrition. "You can try all you want," Majini waves his tiny head over the broken snake statues all around them. "But you'll just end up a failure. Sage mode requires a certain amount of chakra, and you just don't have it."
Rage blooms in Sakura anew.
How dare he. Jiraiya's nothing but a talentless hack and just because he was born with large chakra reserves he—
Blink.
My name is Sakura.
Ten cleansings of Orochimaru's chakra later, Jiraiya's chakra regeneration can no longer quite keep up. People Sakura has never seen before are starting to be cycled through her room.
"You're already going to have eighty percent chakra regeneration rate for a year," Tsunade says to Kakashi across the room.
"And if you give me an infusion?"
"It'll drop two thirds, at least."
"I'm okay with that."
Tsunade sighs.
"I can teach her just fine."
"Humor me," Kakashi says. "Please."
And then Kakashi is crouched before her, Sharingan active.
Every time her control fails, he nods.
"Again," he says.
It's—it's nothing.
It's everything.
He's just—he's just there. Calming and familiar.
It helps so much, just to have him there.
"Thank you," she says, when she loses control yet again.
"You never need to thank me," Kakashi says.
Tsunade clears her throat conspicuously.
"Thank you, Tsunade-hime."
"Thank me by surviving this," she says, for what is probably the fifth time.
Sakura can't help but cough out a laugh.
Blink.
"It's not funny, Orochimaru."
Sakura tries to stop laughing, and fails.
She covers her mouth and doubles over.
Jiraiya's hand slams into her back.
"What are you two, five?" Tsunade snarls.
"She just—" Jiraiya gasps for breath, "—straight into the river of shit."
Tsunade cracks her knuckles.
"Okay," she says, voice low and dangerously calm. "So you two want to die."
Sakura doesn't quite dodge, arm breaking, but she just cannot stop laughing.
Blink.
My name…
It doesn't matter, really.
Who cares?
She is who she is.
Am I still me?
Gamami hesitates.
Yes.
Blink.
"He's fully healed?"
"That's what they say."
"I burned out his entire chakra system," Sakura says, batting Kabuto's hands away. She can barely breathe—they were only able to fix one of her lungs, and even then not completely.
That fucker—she lost her leg to that piece of shit, and he's back? He should never be able to walk again. He should be lucky if he can think straight.
And he's fucking back.
Rage roars through Sakura.
Blink.
Three hundred forty-six.
Three hundred fifty-nine.
Blink.
Sakura sighs moresely as she slices the man's leg open.
He screams, struggling against his bonds, but chakra suppressors are truly a gift from the Sage himself.
Minato died yesterday.
The Third was reinstated.
She didn't think that someone would be sent for her, not really, but—
Sakura slaps the man's face to shut him up.
She's still disappointed, though. It's the hope that kills you, right?
Sakura flicks the leg bone before her, and the man starts up again. Iron. Literal iron.
Fascinating.
You know, she could beat the Third, now—not if he stays cooped up in the village, with ten, twenty jounin at his back, but one on one, she could beat him. She's sure of it.
The man's screaming reaches a fever pitch and—
"Oh be quiet—" Sakura snaps the man's neck, and enjoys a moment of blissful silence before she realizes what she's done.
She sighs.
This is why you don't experiment while trying to work through your problems. You go and do stupid things like killing an experiment subject because they won't shut up.
Sakura lets herself wallow in her failure for a moment before getting over it.
It gives her an idea. A long-term con, but, well.
She'll live forever.
Blink.
Three hundred and sixty-one.
One last piece.
All that's left is the chakra that spins in her reservoir.
One last piece.
Just a little bit—
Blink.
"Please—"
Sakura's immortality jutsu is wonderful.
It makes her immortal, for one thing.
But it's not just that.
It's also this.
"Please, I'll do anything," the ninja before her says, tears falling from his eyes.
Music to her ears.
"Anything?" she asks, her voice still a little feminine, even after all these years. She's come to like it, but she thinks she could like a masculine voice, too.
She can be anything, now.
Anyone.
"Anything, please—"
"Then give me your everything," Sakura says with a laugh, her mouth opening too-wide, and—
Blink.
One last piece.
Just a little longer.
Come on—
Blink.
Sakura leaps into the air, away from Kakashi, ducks under the stupid mist girl's lava, throws up a Rashoumon, sheds her skin.
All the while, she is thinking—this is all wrong. She has been getting reports on Konoha from her spy, and there was nothing about Kakashi being this strong, to say nothing of this pseudo-Kage she's dealing with.
Madara set her up. She—
Her chest is gone, she kicks the offender (her future host, no!) to the ground, and Kakashi is there, using the anchor on the girl to close the distance, and Sage dammit all—
Blink.
And it's done.
Finally.
It's done.
It's… the middle of the night?
Time's fake, but.
Tsunade is asleep, sitting straight up, her chakra still perfectly controlled, her chest rising and falling in deep, even breaths.
No one else is here.
She's pretty sure that means it's the middle of the night.
She can't move, her entire focus on all twenty of her chakra pathways, holding all of her chakra under her control, keeping it all going exactly where it needs to be.
If Sakura is honest, it feels great.
This knowledge that her chakra is hers—that Orochimaru's chakra can't touch her right no—that no one can put her under a genjutsu—that her chakra is truly sacrosanct.
The chakra inside of her chakra pathways belongs to her, and no one else.
(She just can't think about what part of her isn't her anymore.)
(Just how little of her is left?)
Either Tsunade or Gamami is always awake, always watching, always… making sure Sakura never loses her fight with Orochimaru, so Gamami is awake now, crouched in Sakura's lap.
Sakura wants to ask if she's still her, if she's still—wait.
What was her name again?
She knows this.
It's—
Haruno Sakura, Inner Sakura yells from within her, shaking Sakura skin with the force of it.
Right.
Right.
(Don't think about it don't think about it.)
She refocuses on how to get Gamami's attention.
She can't move—can't move her chakra at all. The only fluctuation she allows is the one that leads to her heart, in time with its pumps. That's required, it turns out. Don't do that, and uh… bad things happen.
She had tried it about halfway through, but found it eternally threw her off, So its was her last.
Thump thump thump.
Thump thump thump.
Her chakra and her heart, moving is perfect synchrony.
It feels good, like sliding a key into a perfectly fitted lock, or like executing a perfect jutsu—feeling your chakra slide into its matching hole in the universe. Just the right shape, so that no chakra goes to waste.
Thump thump thump.
Sakura can't move, but Gamami is perfect and great and wonderful, so she notices.
She looks up at Sakura, and Sakura wants to smile, but she can't even do that.
All she can do is sit here, hands together, and focus. Breathe in, breathe out.
Thump thump thump.
Sakura, Gamami says, and the rhythm of her chakra is so out of sync with Sakura's own Sakura's chakra almost shatters out of her control. You did it?
Sakura doesn't respond, but manages a bare twitch of her lips.
You did it!
Her adorable little toad mouth splits into a smile. A real one, like she never likes to let anyone know she has—even Sakura has only seen it a couple times.
Gamami sags in relief, her little toad head resting against the fabric over Sakura's belly button.
Oh, thank the first toad, she says, and Sakura thinks Gamami probably doesn't realize she's saying it.
Gamami lifts her head, looks up at Sakura, and then—
Oh, right.
She hops out of Sakura's lap, down to the ground, and then over to Tsunade's head in a single massive toady leap.
Tsunade snatches Gamami out of the air the moment before she would have hit Tsunade's head.
Her brown eyes focus on Gamami with a terrifying intensity before she blinks fully awake. She frowns.
"What the hell, Gamami? I thought we were over this."
She sets Gamami on the ground, releasing Gamami's head from her terrifying hands, and Gamami's chakra visibly relaxes.
Tsunade glances at Sakura, and then she freezes.
"She did it?"
Gamami nods.
"In eight days, by the Sage."
Tsunade stands, and makes her way to Sakura's side.
Her hands glow green, and she runs them over Sakura's front, which, in her current position (lotus style, hands folded before her), is her everything.
"Incredible. You really did it." She laughs, that low and rumbly laugh that is different from her higher and lighter polite laugh.
Sakura's body thrums with happiness, so of course that is when she loses control of her chakra.
Sakura blinks, and Hiruzen is looking across his desk at her, eyes tight with disappointment.
"You're dismissed," he says, and he almost spits it out.
Jiraiya's hand is heavy on her back as she steps out of the door.
"You know," Jiraiya says, the moment they've exited the Hokage's office, "I never thanked you for saving my life."
Sakura sneers.
"Because—"
Tsunade flicks Sakura in the forehead, shutting her up and also making the world spin.
"Because he's an idiot, haven't you forgotten?"
"Wow, fuck off Tsunade. I'm the Toad Sage—"
"So you can do it without your helpers, then?" Sakura interrupts, smiling a bit, despite herself.
"I'll fucking kill you, Orochimaru."
Sakura gives Jiraiya her best hurt look.
"And after I went to all that trouble saving your life."
"This is why I didn't want to thank you! I knew you'd be like this!" Jiraiya says, but his hand is still big and warm against Sakura's back, pulling her forward, out of Hokage tower, down the street to Jiraiya's favorite bar. Jiraiya jabs a finger at Tsunade. "I told you so."
"I don't know, that sounds like a you problem—"
Sakura blinks back into the present, and gathers all of her chakra under her control once again.
Ten minutes later, the wall opens, and Jiraiya steps into her room.
"She really did it?"
"She really did," Tsunade confirms.
Sakura's body sways as he claps a hand on her shoulder, but she doesn't brush it away.
(She couldn't, even if she wanted to.)
(She wouldn't, even if she could.)
"She did what took you three and a half years in eight days—what a little monster." Sakura doesn't know how to take that, but he's smiling as he says it.
Jiraiya turns his gaze to Tsunade and it's—
Sakura would look away, if she could.
He looks at Tsunade like she's the whole world—like she's the sky above him and ground beneath him.
It's a scene she's seen a hundred times before. It's equal parts comforting and infuriating.
Why don't you look at me like that? she remembers thinking, and she can feel a bit of that jealousy, even now, even after it was three of them, together, because—in the end, Jiraiya picked Tsunade over her. Even thinking about it boils her blood, makes her want to kill them both, rip them apart, and—
Sakura freezes.
What was her name again?
It was—
Haruno Sakura, Inner Sakura bellows from within her, and the shock of it shatters her chakra control. She starts regathering it—one two thirty-six one hundred seventy-one—
Sakura is in a vast world of flesh, sitting on nothing.
Beyond the gate is a wall of blackness, for the first time.
She feels a faint spark of fear, but smooths it away.
She will be—
She pushes the thought away.
She never knows which of her memories that host of hers will end up with.
She is immortal.
Sakura settles down to wait.
Two hundred eighty-four, three hundred sixty-one.
Then, finally, her chakra reserves.
Jiraiya whistles.
"Damn," he says.
"Nicely done," Tsunade says, and Sakura glows with pride.
"We'll need to take a look at your mindscape, if that's alright?"
She tries to nod again. This time, she succeeds, jerky and uncontrolled, caused by increasing chakra flow to the tenketsu that power her neck up way too much.
Tsunade laughs lightly.
Jiraiya reaches forward, makes a face, and waddles a little closer.
"Sorry," he says.
"Oh get over yourself, Jiraiya," Tsunade says, crowding in even closer on Sakura's other side.
"We could have her—"
Tsunade grabs Jiraiya's hand with her own and places them both on the fabric of Sakura's dress over her seal.
They go still, and, with some difficulty, Sakura follows them down, keeping her hold on her chakra the whole way.
She opens her eyes to her mindscape, and finds Jiraiya and Tsunade standing before the gate. The gate that is now opaque. A perfect, even black, more black than anything Sakura has ever seen—black like the end of the world.
For the first time since Orochimaru tried to take over her in earnest, there is not even a little blood around the gate. No matter how much she tried to clean it away, it was never truly gone, always a faint little redness boiling up around it.
Jiraiya turns back to her as Tsunade walks towards the gate.
"Great job, kid," Jiraiya says. "I never doubted you," he lies.
Tsunade's chakra surges into her, through Sakura and then into her mind, and she snaps a finger against the blackness. It doesn't so much as ripple or crack, stronger than any stone or steel.
Inside of her, Sakura feels no turbulence.
"You wanna know the best part of this jutsu, kid?" Tsunade asks, turning back to her with a smile. "Doesn't matter how strong the genjutsu user is—or, in this case, the possession jutsu user is. When your chakra is folded into a loop like this, not even the Sage himself could touch it."
"You're safe," Jiraiya translates.
She's free.
She isn't going to get eaten by Orochimaru.
Slowly, she grins.
Jiraiya and Tsunade grin back at her.
Just like old times.