Sakura jolted awake, and for the first time in years, nothing hurt.

She was on her hands and knees, and the world blurred under her as she realized that her fingernails were clean. No brown dirt from when they still bothered to dig trenches, no blood of people she couldn't save, no black ash that ended up everywhere- /they wake with corpse ash crusting the corners of their eyes, corpse ash tangled in lashes, corpse ash creeping into the cots, corpse ash coating everything under the sky. doesn't matter how hard she scrubs, or whatever rags she stuffs into the holes of the tents, the corpse ash never really comes off, and it always finds its way back in/

Her torso shook with the impact of the memory. Focus, focus. She didn't let herself space out in the war-wastes- any loss of concentration meant certain death. She was the head of the med corps and a division commander, she hadn't faltered since the first destruction of Konoha, and Sakura would not fail here. She had bodies to burn, and things to do.

First- where was she? The sunlight was brighter than she was used to, Amaterasu no longer smothered by the haze of smoke, and she squinted at the reflection of it from the cold ground, the- ice? She hadn't thought about ice in a long time. The bite of frost was the first thing that made her sure that this wasn't a genjutsu. Still, after living through the Tsukuyomi once, Sakura was careful with reality and formed the sign for release. The world around her remained.

She was really here. They had done it.

Sakura took a deep shuddering breath, her head bowed as she rose to her knees. Long pink hair cut off her peripheral vision, which answered one question. She'd arrived sometime before the chuunin exams. Good- she could make this work. She'd wait to see if Shikamaru had made it too before she started making plans. For now, she needed to survive. She snapped her head to the left and saw the first ghost. Sasuke. If she was looking at him without the last few years of experience, she would say he looked dead. But she was a war medic, and she could see the little puff of breath, the tension in the shoulders, the jaw still clenched shut and the eyes closed tight. This body looked completely different from the other corpse, the other Sasuke—

/His heart stops beating in her hand, shards of rib broken off into Sakura's forearm. Sasuke is still weak from the wound Naruto had given him days prior- it probably would have taken him, in the end- but Sakura is the one to strike the killing blow. It's a messy kill, her fists driven by rage and agony and the anger that half the world was dead and yet Sasuke was still there. It is the kill of a younger Sakura, lacking any sort of precision. His innards squelch under her blows, she knows she punctured one of his lungs, and she can smell his blood even among the ever-present odor of the burnings, hear his bones cracking even over the din of distant fighting. She'd always thought she would scream when Sasuke died, but she doesn't make a sound, not even one of anger. She holds his heart in her hand and squeezes/

Sakura drove her fist into the ground to recenter herself. The rock below split with a crack, but she also felt her knuckle bones shatter. Shit. Looks like while she kept her chakra control, her body was definitely not the same as it had been. It was a good and bad thing- she was weak and vulnerable, but she found that she had full range of motion again in what had been her bad leg and the gnarled scar that encircled her thigh was gone, replaced with smooth skin. Sakura felt almost dizzy with the realization- months of limping, months of barely dodging because it would give out at the worst moments, all gone in an instant. She was healed. She didn't feel like she deserved it.

It was easier to distance this Sasuke with her Sasuke the more she looked at him. There were no other bodies around him, for one, that damned sword nowhere to be seen. This Sasuke was not a threat.

She turned away from him. Now to figure out where she was. Ice, long hair, no curse mark on Sasuke's neck. Her eyes darted over at the sound of a body falling. Zabuza. Oh, the Wave mission. Their first real mission. Sakura glued her eyes back on Sasuke, because that was safer than the alternative, than catching sight of the others. Kakashi— grey hair/ Lichtenberg scar on tan skin/ should have burned/ should have burned— She dug her too-clean fingernails into her palms with a snarl.

And Naruto. Gods above, she'd see Naruto alive again. She'd see him smile for real again. He always tried to be positive for her, but his last year his smiles were pale ghostly imitations of his old ones, blue eyes flat and dim, barely reflecting even the light of the bonfires.

She'd thought the only way she would ever see them again would be with the blackened sclera of Edo Tensei, and had never let herself dream of a day like this. Dreams were for peacetime, and Sakura didn't think she would ever really escape the war.

The hair on her arms raised as the air oozed with a faint ozone- she'd forgotten that too, the way the Kyuubi's chakra felt. Wait- it was too early- the danger finally made her face the others. Kakashi was slumping with the telltale posture of chakra exhaustion, and Naruto was wrapped in the fox's chakra- only one tail. She barely had time to calculate her next move before she noticed Naruto beginning to waver, his steps stumbling. She moved fast, cracking the ice behind her as she pushed off, skidding into Naruto and catching him- her best friend, her brother, her hokage in all but name- in her arms for the first time in over two years.

The chakra burned her arms before it completely faded, but Sakura didn't care. Naruto was here, and he was alive. She allowed herself one moment of luxury, a single touch to the marks on his cheek, before she returned her attention to their surroundings. Sakura could feel later. She needed to protect him.

Kakashi was beside her- his arm was almost out of commission by the way he was holding it, and he was panting with exhaustion. If it came down to it, she'd prefer him to take Naruto and run while she fought off the enemy. Sasuke was untrustworthy, but also unconscious so he was a neutral element. Zabuza and Haku were dead, and Gato's men were engaged with the villagers. Sakura's palms itched as she looked at the bodies just ahead, her fingers already unconsciously twitching towards the hand signs for a fire jutsu —her nature is earth and water, but like many, she forces her pathways into learning fire. She's their best medic, she needs to burn who she can't save—,

"Are you alright, Sakura?" Kakashi said, his voice gentler then she remembered. Gods, some part of her wanted to cling to him and cry into his flack jacket and tell him about the years of war he didn't make it to. But she and Shikamaru had discussed this- no one could know.

"Sorry, sensei," she stammered, letting some of her very real fear bleed into her voice. It was useful that she had landed here, as her reactions could be attributed to the violence of her first mission. "I'm- I'm okay. I just- want to leave."

She jolted as the villagers let out a cheer of victory, the few of Gato's men who hadn't been impaled by farming equipment or bashed by bridge stones casting off in their boat. Kakashi let out a barely audible sigh of relief.

"We can rest up tonight, and then we'll be going back to Konoha tomorrow. Thank you for catching Naruto, that was excellent teamwork, Sakura." He gave her a small smile, but then his brows furrowed. "Wait- where's Sasuke?"

"He's fine." Sakura said shortly, examining Naruto for any visible wounds. Kakashi cocked his head in surprise, and Sakura cursed internally. Right, this Sakura would have been losing her mind over Sasuke. She really didn't have the energy or the will to go that far, so she settled for chirping out- "I already checked him over, and he's soo strong, he just needs a good night's sleep."

"Right then," Kakashi said, already moving on, and Sakura had never been so grateful for his lack of concern for the interpersonal relationships of preteens. "Can you manage taking them back to Tazuna's? I need to ah, take care of something."

Sakura managed to keep herself from scoffing at his question. She might have been stuck in this weak little body, but she could handle something as simple as lugging two kids a couple hundred feet away. Remembering to feign some level of effort as she sat up, she lifted Naruto in her arms- had he really been this light? she needed to make sure he was eating enough- and turned, before freezing. Take care of something- oh, he was going to bury them. She contemplated making some excuse to do it, so that she could watch them burn with her own eyes and know that they weren't coming back. But asking to handle the dead would be so out of character for her that Kakashi would definitely catch on, and Naruto's safety was more important at the moment.

Ignoring the itch in her palms, she swung two not-dead bodies in her arms and made her way towards the house, the sound of cold iron- a shovel- scraping against earth hardened by frost behind her.

No one remembers who was the first to suggest burning the bodies. Sakura thinks it might have been her.

They build the first pyres eight months into the war, when their enemies are other nations, not Zetsu and Madara yet. It's for practicality- the dead need to be buried, and piling the fallen in the trenches and collapsing them isn't working anymore. Crows circle the battlefields, and disease is starting to kill more and more Konoha ninja. So the Land of Fire builds the first pyres, and some of the soldiers celebrate a win over Iwa with saki, while Sakura sits with the others of her class that still breath and watches the first plume of smoke spiral off into the twilight.

It doesn't take long before every battlefield, no matter the participants, sends smoke into the heavens. Fire spreads easily, after all.

Sakura relit the oil lamp, more comfortable with it than the electric lighting she knew waited for her back in Konoha. Everything about this was strange- the night alive with frog-song and not—coughing, begging, she stops hearing prayers because they all know the gods aren't— , the moon bright outside, she was inside and not buffeted by every gust of wind. There was no way she was going to be able to fall asleep like the rest of her companions had. Well, she hadn't had more than a few hours of sleep in a very long time, and falling asleep here meant that she'd be letting her guard down around Sasuke and they'd all be able to hear when she had a nightmare. So sleep was off the table.

She kept watch instead. Naruto was curled up on the bed in front of her, his chest moving with even breaths and his face peaceful with sleep. He'd already healed the majority of his injuries, and Sakura sent a silent thank you to Kurama. For a moment, she missed Naruto, her Naruto, the Naruto that got taller than her, that fought at her back for months, with a vehemence that stole the air from her lungs. But that Naruto was dead-burned, and he wasn't coming back, even if she and Shikamaru hadn't erased that future.

They had gone back. Sakura was back in the past now and she had three years to fix it. Everyone was dead but everyone was alive and she didn't know what to do. She was twelve and she was- well, she'd stopped counting- somewhere around eighteen or nineteen. She'd burned them all, she'd burned them all in the end, and now she was in the past with ash under her fingernails that only she knew was there. Everyone was alive but everyone was dead- /Ino is clutching her side, rose-red spilling through her fingers, and Sakura is out of chakra/ her feet are pounding on hard dirt, Kiri has found where they hid the refugees from Konoha and-/ Shikamaru nods at her and smears black shadow-blood to complete the seal Naruto drew so long before/ Sai is crying and she says nothing /gods she can't-

"Sakura? Why- why are you crying?" Naruto's voice broke her out of the spiral, and she touched a hand to her cheek in disbelief. She was crying. Strange. "Sakura?"

His voice was so timid. She didn't like it. It took a minute, but suddenly she realized that Naruto was awake and talking and alive, and she threw her arms around him and hugged him close. She only let go when he let out a little 'oof' as she squeezed his ribs a little too hard, sliding back to look over him.

Naruto was reserved, rubbing his head and staring at the pattern of the blanket over him unblinkingly. His behavior was strange, reminding her more of the older Naruto than the twelve-year-old ball of energy, and it worried her for a moment before she realized that he had just seen someone die.

"Sorry, Naruto. I just, ah, worried about you." She croaked out, a traitorous lump in her throat making it almost impossible to speak. "Go back to sleep, you idiot."

To her surprise, he didn't protest at the 'idiot' remark, just gave her a small smile, and laid back down without another comment. Sakura blew out the oil lamp and they were in the darkness again. Sakura let the dead sleep, her spine straight as steel as she stared out into the dark for the next battle. Tomorrow, she would find Shikamaru, and they'd- /sakura kills far more people with medical ninjutsu than she saves. / a few months after Naruto, she stops trying to heal altogether. It's pointless. /There's not enough people left to build pyres, so soldiers start wearing cremation tags. By the time she gets to them, they're already in flames. /She saves no one that year, and most of the time she kills her own men because it is more merciful than bleeding out/ a jonin whose name she never learns thanks her just before she severs his brainstem and he/-

they'd save them all this time.