Shin came back from his visit to the Capital on the first day of March. He'd somehow shot up a few more inches in the time he'd been away, was now certainly among the tallest of the Nara, and was, at last, ready to get promoted.
Sakura and Juro, already field promoted, promised to help.
They really had to learn to stop promising things.
"Shit!" The word came out of Sakura's mouth without her recognizing that she was the one who'd said it. She only realized it had been her voice seconds later, after she'd checked and double-checked that she'd managed to dodge out of the way of Shin's fire jutsu. Juro was on him now, inflated and terrifying and hard to control even with shadow jutsu, but he'd need her to join back in within seconds or else this round of their daily practice session would end far too quickly.
Twice a day, two hours a day—before and after work.
That, combined with her ongoing taijutsu lessons, meant that Sakura had never been so combat-focused before in her life.
Or fit.
She could bench press her body weight without chakra now, and that was… new.
Probably a good thing, though, all things considered.
She'd gotten another memory of her world's future the day before, during meditation. It was longer, a sort of training montage without much actual information about the world outside of it, but it still imparted a message:
Worse was coming.
So Sakura did not mind, at all, when Shin asked for help with exam prep.
Admittedly, during times like these—with a burn racing up her right arm, bruises every few inches all over her body, a sprained ankle, and blood in her mouth—she kind of wished the exam put more emphasis on what could be written on paper.
But, useful.
Shin knew enough to avoid her eyesight, at least before he got too tired and started to slip, so rather than trying to use her own bloodline Sakura whipped out her whip.
Based on Hoja's initial design (may she rest in peace), Sakura had spent the last couple of weeks spending her free time at work improving the design and learning a simple lightning technique that could be easily amplified besides.
She'd tried it out in their last two practice sessions and was steadily getting better, but it was still new enough that Shin never quite remembered in time to respect it.
With a flick of her wrist, she unleashed the attack, and the glowing energy arced through the air, forcing Shin to make a very unpleasant decision. He dodged behind Juro, trying to divert the interest of the strike, but that was the wonderful thing about this particular jutsu and this particular whip—with the former's emphasis on control, and the latter's length, she had nearly half a second after the initial surge where she could redirect.
She twisted, forcing the whip up and over, and Juro careened to the side—they'd discussed the plan earlier in the day, after the morning's practice session.
Shin was caught by surprise and forced to use an earth jutsu—one of his least practiced and therefore most chakra-intensive skills—to outright block the strike.
In the short term, he was in the clear, and he could use the seconds it would take for Sakura to bring the whip back in preparation for another strike to either try to get her to drop it or attack Juro, but in the long term it would cost him: he simply did not have enough chakra to be wasting it on anything less than perfected jutsu.
They finished just as dusk was beginning to settle, and Sakura wasted no time racing home after Juro'd patched up what he could: she'd worked hard enough today to deserve a full meal and a good night's sleep, and with an hour of meditation to fit in too she was on the clock.
Two weeks later Sakura, in the middle of completing the paperwork to officially register her new weapon with Research while Uchiha Shuji muttered to himself across the room, leapt to her feet as Taro raced into the room, gasping and barely pausing to point at Sakura before running back out.
She was running beside him in seconds.
"Huge—party—back—war—prison—Kumo—rescued—Juro—said—get—
Get—
You."
Juro?
Juro was in pediatrics.
What—
Sakura's mind raced, trying to put together the pieces of Juro, his specialty, rescued people from a Kumo war prison, and her being summoned in a way that didn't have terrifying implications.
She was unsuccessful.
It took barely a minute, jumping from building to building and using their speed and direction as evidence that they deserved right of way (every ninja always let those heading to the hospital go first), to arrive at the nearest open hospital window. Taro led her to the fourth closest one, tantalizingly open but showing nothing but a crowded hallway. They slipped through.
Nara Taro, having run flat out for two minutes straight despite his (relative) lack of fitness, collapsed.
Sakura surged forward.
As she did, it became clearer that the crowd in the hallway was no normal crowd. The throng moved like a living organism as people slipped in and out of it, jockeyed for positions, and talked to one another in hushed voices and shouted commands and too many hand signals to keep track of. The crowd was mostly made up of iryonin, but also standard doctors, nurses, medics, what looked to be more than a few T&I. Every shinobi in it was on high alert, and Sakura saw and felt the eyes of each and every one take turns scanning her presence and threat level.
She'd barely had time to slow when a genin assistant—clean clothes, her brain noted, definitely a hospital worker—took her elbow and led her into one of the rooms the throng was, by its nature and intentionally, blocking.
There was Juro.
He was hovering over a body, a very small body, and as she entered, he whipped around to face her.
"Sit down. Now."
She sat. Juro, when he wanted to be, could be just as terrifying as any other medic. She didn't want to, though—his mass had so far blocked her from the child's face, and sitting on the ground meant she had no chance of seeing it at all.
Juro took a breath.
Sakura braced herself.
"Sachiko's dead. Ibiki has been rescued, but—it's not good."
Sakura did not remember standing. She didn't remember moving, shoving Juro out of the way, didn't remember actually seeing his face, the scars that now marred it, for the first time since he'd left with his mother all those months ago.
She came back to reality around the time that he burst into tears, having apparently held it back until now, and her arms wrapped around him and held him to her chest, rubbing his back and arms the same way her parents had when she'd been a one-year-old in that stark white room.
After some time—no more than an hour, but not much less—the sobs wracking the little body subsided, and she eased onto the mattress to rest alongside him.
"Koyo was slated to be his primary guardian," Juro supplied quietly, "but died of injuries on a mission two weeks ago. You and I are Ibiki's godparents so we're next in line."
"What happened to him?"
Juro grimaced. "They think Sachiko tried to protect him as best she could, but they found her out, and several other Konoha nin. I heard T&I talking—they're not trying to keep it quiet, but they think the most likely explanation is that Kumo has some sort of new technology or something. No one knows yet, though. We don't know how long he was there, the other prisoners are iffy on lengths of time, but all his wounds are… well, superficial isn't the right word. His internal organs are alright. It doesn't seem like they really targeted him much, so we don't know how he got the face scars yet."
Sakura grunted.
Juro stared at her.
"What?"
"What's the plan?"
"Why do I—"
"You're captain, right?"
"This isn't about chinmoku."
"It is, isn't it?"
Sakura stared at him, then at the tired nearly four-year-old in her arms. "My sisters run a daycare for a living, in the Yamanaka no less, and your job has far less steady hours. He'll live with in my family house, then, but we'll both take some time off work for the first week and—could you move in too?"
"Yes."
"Okay, so move you in too. And then—he's, um, he's been through things, so I'll find a therapist for him, and we'll need to get Sachiko's things. She lives—lived—with Koyo, who I suppose is dead too now…."
"I'll call in a D-rank mission."
"Yeah, okay. Um…"
Between figuring out everything else that needed to be done, filling out all the forms, and finishing Ibiki's medical check by the time they had left, the dawn of the next day was rising.
Juro carried Ibiki in his arms, his grip light as they kept to the main roads and quietly paced back to Sakura's place.
"His birthday's soon. Three weeks, I think."
Juro grunted.
Sakura's eyes watered.
They'd been doing that steadily since she'd first seen the boy—even her occasional bouts of tears did little to help—but she knew Juro was in much the same position.
They just had to get home.
Onto beds.
Just a few more steps.
.
By the next morning, everyone in Konoha knew of the rescue: twelve living shinobi, seven living Fire merchants, and one living child.
Sakura's house was very quiet indeed.
Ibiki, worn out over a period of months, hadn't woken up by the afternoon, and neither of his godparents saw any reason to force it.
Juro and her spent the day figuring out living arrangements, filling out yet more paperwork, and filling their families and friends in on what had happened—all, thankfully, knew enough about the situation to come to them, so neither new parent had to spend any time seeking anyone out.
Sakura, meanwhile, was having an internal crisis.
She didn't really mind the idea of being a parent, but she'd always imagined it far in the future. She wouldn't even be sixteen for two months!
But now.
Now she was a parent.
She and Juro and Shin—who, despite not being legally required to, had promised his services as an additional godparent to the toddler that now depended on them and was moving in besides—were now parents.
She locked herself in her room, the bathroom, and even the closet repeatedly over the course of the day, just to give her a few seconds alone to process.
Juro, she knew, wasn't doing much better.
They were parents now.
Sachiko was dead.
The war was over, people were supposed to stop dying, the grand memorial was being planned for the end of the month—
And Sachiko was dead, and Ibiki was now her dependent.
Now directly relied on her.
And the rest of chinmoku, too.
The second day of parenthood—she wasn't quite sure if she should count the day spent in the hospital, so she didn't—Clan Head Inoto arrived.
"May I come in?"
"Yes, of course!" Kohana jumped out of the way, nearly bowling herself over in her hurry to get out of the way.
Sakura, who had been coming down from upstairs to get a glass of water for Ibiki—he was refusing to leave the bed for longer than a few minutes, and Sakura didn't think it was wise to push him—stood to attention.
"Hello, Sakura. I fear I must give you my condolences once again. What has happened to your dear friend Sachiko is a tragedy. That is not why I am here today, however; I am aware that your new charge has been quite traumatized. As you know, until my retirement to the position of Head my career was actually focused on therapy for traumatized civilians, and in particular children."
Sakura couldn't speak. She nodded, instead.
"I would like to offer my services, and the services of my good friend Yamanaka Hoshi to assist you, Akimichi Juro, and Nara Shin in adjusting to your new role."
Sakura swallowed. "That would be… much appreciated."
Clan Head Inoto nodded, then gestured to the door for another clan elder, this one a woman with only one hand, could enter.
Sakura could feel the presences of Juro and Shin behind her.
"I'll meet with each of you one at a time, while the other two stay with Ibiki. We'll meet twice a week to begin with, and adjust as needed."
Chinmoku nodded.
Yamanaka Hoshi nodded sharply, then smiled—a kind, empathetic smile. "You are far from the first I've dealt with in this position, and I assure you I will be an excellent aid. Who is coming with me first?"
Sakura went second, after Juro but before Shin.
Her time spent with Ibiki and Clan Head Inoichi was quiet, mostly just soft talking and sparse questions and plenty of toys. She'd known, in some corner of her brain, that Inoichi had never quite 'retired' from this aspect of his career—was, in fact, the go-to therapist for all traumatized Yamanaka children—but it hadn't… occurred to her, until he was sitting in front of her and Ibiki and smiling softly while Ibiki narrowed his eyes at the new, old man he was expected to communicate with, that this was what the man had chosen to dedicate his life to; what he was, in fact, so good at he was able to continue even while running their entire clan.
Her time spent with Hoshi was much more… straightforward. It involved a lot of talking, clear descriptions about what to expect out of Ibiki's behavior and how to perform in response.
It finished with a powerful piece of reassurance: Ibiki would be expected to return to 'more or less traditional' behavior for his age after about a year—the younger the trauma was experienced at, the more quickly and more totally it could be recovered from.
Sakura… really didn't think the same was true in Arden's world.
No wonder child soldiers were more common in her own.
In general, though—and it really was in general, because behavior tended to vary quite a bit—Sakura and the rest of chinmoku were told to expect Ibiki to be abnormally clingy and fussy, hard to calm down, and quick to anger. He might also be delayed in milestones or unusually targeted in improving, he might be almost totally inactive or completely unable to sit still.
There was an additional list, a list Sakura had immediately bent to memorize, of behaviors to watch out for, as well as yet another list of how to help—identifying triggers, being available, remaining consistent and patient, not reacting emotionally…
That night, after Ibiki had been put to bed—he'd wake up several times, had had two or three nightmares both nights they'd had him so far, but Shin had volunteered for this night's shift—Sakura stared at her ceiling.
She considered meditating, but didn't want to add any new information of Arden's to the already dizzying quantity of changes she had to adjust to.
She didn't even know how to tackle that, though, and the mere idea of beginning was literally nauseating.
She didn't want to keep up, didn't want to do anything—she wanted to lie in bed all die and hide from the world.
She was fifteen.
She was a parent.
She was overwhelmed.
She didn't know how Sachiko had done it.
.
By Ibiki's birthday, he'd gotten used to living in her house. He was just as emotional as they'd been warned, was pressing hard to be allowed to start the Academy in the fall—his mother had apparently promised that he could—and absolutely hated the idea of doing nothing.
His mother's funeral—a mere three days before, part of a massive memorial for all those whose bodies were rescued—had been exhausting to get through, but they'd done it.
For his birthday, they just gave him an unusually sugar-filled diet and called it a day.
Just over a week after his birthday, the War Memorial was unveiled—a monumental structure meant to evoke a flame with the names of all dead and missing shinobi engraved on its curved sides.
There had been a charged debate over whether or not the Kumo rescued—and recovered—prisoners should be included in the memorial, as well as a concerted effort to convince the Hokage to allow a retaliatory mission against the Great Nation to the North, but both failed.
All of it, though—especially the reluctance to retaliate—reminded the people of Konoha all too much of the start of the Second Great War.
That night Sakura, Juro, and Shin went to the memorial and picked out the names they knew, the people they lost.
Sakura found her bunkmate first, his suicide ruled a result of the war and his name included alongside several of his family. It took her several read throughs of the list of Yamanaka casualties to find her brother—Yamanaka Aoi, MIA.
The end of March brought with it the return to work; even with tensions still high between Kumo and Konoha neither seemed eager to actually begin fighting quite yet, and so the teetering détente masquerading as peace remained, and Sakura and chinmoku could concentrate on suddenly having to juggle childcare and their careers for the first time.
All of chinmoku's bosses were very accommodating to ensure that all three never had simultaneous shifts.
Ibiki had finally convinced them and Inoto that allowing him to join the Academy in the summer was, if not necessarily 'good', then at least not harmful.
In the meantime, though, it was taking no small amount of effort—not only from chinmoku, but also from Sakura's sisters and the rest of their friends and family—to tread the fine line between not overly punishing Ibiki for his trauma and socializing him to the point that he actually could spend all day every day around a classroom full of peers and teachers without antagonizing anyone and everyone.
Sachiko's infiltration friends, or at least those in Konoha, were helpful there—they not only knew what Ibiki had been taught while undercover, but they also tended to have childhoods that were far more similar to Ibiki's than hers would ever be.
May came with Sakura's birthday and a slow but noticeable decrease in her constant panic levels. Konoha, however unwillingly, was also beginning to accept that the frequent small border scuffs—both sides trying to encroach a bit too much on the other's territory—might very well be all the tensions with Kumo amounted to for months, if not years. Both Sakura and Konoha had to live with reality, though, and so they did.
She made mistakes sometimes—they all did—but Ibiki was honestly a fun kind of kid when he wanted, blunt and dry and just the tiniest bit witty when he tried. He was also insatiably curious, would happily listen for hours while Sakura went over her latest project or Juro detailed the difference between how a broken bone was treated differently in a two-year-old versus a ten-year-old or Shin went over, for the fourth time that day, everything he would be expected to know for his special jounin exam.
He wasn't perfect—hated being respectful, was a bit too mean-spirited, had an unhealthy fascination with the dead, and was just too high maintenance—but his flaws were superseded, dwarfed, by the wonder that was the rest of his personality.
As Sakura felt herself begin to stabilize, she threw herself, once more, into work, particularly as it became increasingly clear that her taciturn boss's invention should work, probably did work but for some minor and so far overlooked details. She was wholly unsuccessful on actually convincing him to allow her to actually assist, but she did convince Shuji to submit the screen he created individually, and now a team of Researchers was using that to attempt to transmit images as they already did sound.
June was marked primarily by Sakura's siblings more or less adopting Ibiki as her child, and him adopting them as his true family in return.
They, according to Sakura's mother, just jived.
And then it was July, and one day before Ibiki was due to start school Shin was due for his own kind of education: the combat portion special jounin exams were beginning in ten minutes, and Sakura, Juro, Ibiki, and the rest of their family were staring down at the empty arena with as much rapt attention as was traditionally given to only the most fascinating of battles.
Ibiki squirmed next to her, trying to get a better view of the nothing below, and Sakura let him—he was a child, after all, and a (all things considered) well-behaved one at that.
Now it was just up to Shin to not make a fool of himself.