CHAPTER 4

GOOD LIFE

He shouldn't have needed to be beaten into the ground to respect another shinobi. Yet now here he was. Sakumo found that respect, once given, came easy. It hurt his pride. Sent stabbing terrible pain down his neck and through his head. The lesson itself left a hollow, numb sort of presence.

Laying naked on the cold beach should have been uncomfortable. Being bundled up and carried to lay in a different rainy spot, surrounded by fat frogs should have been more secure. Sakumo should have felt warm in his friend's haori.

He couldn't feel the warmth. He couldn't feel anything down there. No tingles, nothing below his neck. It was disconcerting. Prone, unable to move, he struggled. Ineffective strain, effort exerted, but his limbs and feet remained unresponsive.

Rain stung his face. Which he might be imagining since Jiraiya shoved some pain killers into his mouth. Feeling hadn't returned to the rest.

Above him his dolt of a friend panicked. Paced back and forth muttering all kinds of reassurances. Then looped back to squat next to him and fret. He loved Jiraiya, but the man could write novels for how much he talked.

"That slip of a girl did this? If she can-"

"Don't call her that. It's disrespectful."

Sakumo shouldn't have made that mistake. By diminishing his opponent, he'd opened himself for a world of hurt. Then the numbness. Laying here, not able to do anything for hours, gave him too much time to think.

Jiraiya gaped, "What?"

"She's an ANBU. Ours maybe. But not. Either way, address her by her rank."

She could have killed him, twice. Held back even after he hadn't. The notion sat uneasy with him. If she wasn't an enemy willing to kill Konoha's Jōnin Commander, then what was she? What would she do? Was everything he saw in her head, actually true? A misplaced top ranking nin with no affiliations to the current administration.

This dilemma caused his friend to stand and start pacing again. They'd both seen 'Ade getting stronger, but she couldn't yet beat either of them. This was the first woman Sakumo had ever seen capable of it. He was humbled. He was thinking maybe all those times Tsunade yelled at him for being a misogynist jerk, that she was right. Jiraiya, likewise, struggled with this concept. That they could in fact be equals.

It felt like an explosive tag had been left in his head. About to blow his brains out for how dimwitted that logic had been. Of course they could be equals, even in fighting. There were a thousand ways to kill a body, someone just needed to match his weakness with their strength. Even with her chakra cut off she'd found several of his.

Sakumo, still bleeding a little from his nose and mouth, apparently didn't make a very good case. Choking on his own blood every few minutes and needing help breathing just made him feel pathetic. It was a novel experience.

"If you say so Hanchō. What are we going to tell the village? Sensei is going to be pissed if he finds out." The big man stood to pace again. "I don't know if we should tell them."

"We have to tell them something."

Jiraiya whined, "But you know, maybe not about the prostitutes. I spent half of my mission money upgrading to twins."

"They weren't even twins."

"Don't ruin it for me! If the old man finds out... He's always been soft on us, his team, but oh..."

"I was rather thinking we shouldn't tell him about the foreign ANBU."

"Oh." Jiraiya paused then whipped around, stalled mid pace, "OH."

"Your sensei has no love lost for my family."

Not when his grandfather nominated Uchiha Kagami as the 3rd Hokage. Not when it had been so popular it almost won. Kagami who actually did win the council and civilian vote. The final nomination stalled until a majority of top shinobi could return from the frontlines. This issue however soon got muddled. Became a moot point when Tobirama elected Sarutobi as his replacement. An informal move taken while they kneeled on the grass during a mission.

Kagami died shortly after their return to the village, at the age of 25. Circumstances of death the new Hokage never disclosed. Sakumo's grandfather, the second to last Hatake did indeed ask. In front of the Shinobi and clan councils, as is customary when a Jōnin is taken out. They'd need to discuss how to avoid such deaths in the future. The fact that report hadn't been released at the beginning of the councils' meeting was beyond the normal. Especially for someone as esteemed, skilled, and beloved as Uchiha Kagami had been.

Sakumo was young at the time, but allowed to watch from the seat behind his grandfather. The way Lord Third Sarutobi, the new Hokage, had glared at the two of them made him feel he'd been branded with a death sentence. The council was told it was top secret and above most members clearance.

It was a source of conflict within himself. To respect a superior, knowing they might not give the same to him. Something Sakumo struggled with, but tried his best regardless, for everyone depending on him. Yet this? How would Sarutobi Hiruzen and Shimura Danzō react to the Commander who presented them with a source of shame? An ANBU who had rather incriminating evidence stored in her head. He wasn't loved, not nearly enough, for them to take that well.

Of all the people who might get lenience from the Lord Third, it was not the last Hatake. Any scandal he might be peripherally involved in had to be airtight when presented to his esteemed leaders. Jiraiya knelt besides him, his long legs crossed and he clutched his knees.

"You don't think."

"We need to tell them something. Make sure it's something you can live with. He's your sensei."

"But you're my best friend. He wouldn't..." Jiraiya trailed off, uncertain.

"He was friends with Uchiha Kagami too." And look how that turned out.

Jiraiya tilted his chin down. Till it tucked close to his chest. His eyes pressed tight. A grimace Sakumo got used to seeing on the carefree boy turned man. The red marks on his face extra long, weariness weighed them down. Being in the village meant the best and brightest children easily stood out, were plucked from an early age to engage in Tobirama's and then Sarutobi's wars. They'd both done terrible things by the age of 13.

By 18 both of them were distinguished enough to be promoted into middle-leadership roles. It felt like wearing his grandfather's too big armor, something that had never fit. A look he hated every time he looked in the mirror knowing he'd killed a group the day before and it was a job well done. Viciousness and aggression were applauded by the strong men relying on it to stay on top.

His best friend and him, they'd never had a choice as kids, but it was beginning to feel ridiculous as young adults. To have this level of responsibility.

They were too young for this. They always had been. All they wanted was one night to not think about anything. To just treat some girls to a good time. Or rather, he and Jiraiya received a good time, then gave back in what ways their tongues and wallets could.

Sakumo was a bit of a blockhead. He knew. Yet Sakumo loved his people. Loved the dancing, the art, and those weapon crafts they spent long hours over a fire to smith. The way chakra blades were molded by the oldest metal workers. How those shops influenced the food and honed the loved equipment of chefs next door.

He loved the smell of baked goods and sweets waiting to be put in the freezer. Sometimes he pretended he had extra training he needed to do. An excuse cultivated so his superiors wouldn't find out where he spent his spare time. Those long training mornings he'd be up to his wrists in rice flower, designing little mochi balls to look like budding flowers. Only his old baker neighbor knew of this habit, because he bought all the best goods and shared them with Sakumo.

Sakumo thought everyone enjoyed something. Everyone kept the best things close to their hearts. He just didn't see how to share those things in a world which seemed to demand so much of them. There was no winning. He was either a brute, according to Tsunade when he beat her. Or he was a spineless wimp, according to Shimura when he let the younger Jonin win in spars. It was some expectation, that he should exist on a pedestal and please thousands of people at once. Impossible.

So he made blooming mochi sweets. Sakumo spent time with the old people who knew his grandfather. He helped them with their groceries and cleaning their houses. He found contentment walking through the village, knowing they were safe. That nothing had breached the border. At least nothing that he and the teams under him couldn't handle.

He gave everything he had to his community. Provided his "all" to the upper command. He acted in their best interest even when it was hardly recognized and more would be asked of him the next day.

Sakumo followed their rules to capture and contain and kill. Even when he didn't want to. Went on missions where chances of survival were low. Went anyways, because it was for his people, for his village. Sakumo had always been a good soldier.

Maybe he should have listened to his grandfather's advice. To protect himself, give their family and friends a stronger defense so upset leaders wouldn't be able to tear them down for a simple miscalculation. To help build a system which didn't use and discard its people as disposable tools. That was his grandfather's last wish.

Sakumo hadn't really understood it, until now. Now he'd failed and would face the consequences of it if the village ever found out. Somehow, he'd never imagined being in the position they'd want to dispose of him. But bringing back news of their catastrophic failures? Reporting he'd found a high level ANBU hardened on the Sarutobi-Shimura wreck of a village?

If he told them the truth of their failures and war crimes...of what that ANBU experienced...would Sarutobi order his execution?

Consider him a traitor for speaking the truth. Would they mask it for the public, bring shame on him, and encourage him to commit seppuku? One could not be so high up as the Jōnin Hanchō and fail. If they made it look like he failed badly enough, the village would expect him to take responsibility.

The painful thought mixed with rain and the tears built up in his eyes.

His grandfather once murmured over their campfire. When they were far from the village hunting with their pack. "Be wary. Ever watchful, ever careful. Hope for something better. Make sure it doesn't turn into something worse." He spoke of the warring states and the first Great Shinobi War.

That Sakumo must be wary of those willing to start conflict. Those who let war-mongering conditions linger for years. Till the victimized population was so desperate they would die if they didn't fight back.

"The leaders of our world don't like to be questioned. Don't like their orders ignored. If a farmer and his family doesn't fall in line. They'll cut off water supply and starve them. They'll give a reason. Might say it's self-defense. But you'll know it rings false if they're killing civilians and children."

His grandfather said this over their fire. The wolves snuggled up between them. Wet noses and the smell of thick mossy forest after a rain.

"Those people want to settle and take. They are never satisfied. They would throw their own people away, even at their own detriment, to avoid embarrassment. They will not assess mistakes nor make difficult changes. That would require leadership to admit they had part in wrong doing."

It felt like a lifetime ago, when Sakumo could still fit under his grandfather's arm. It was only a few years, really. Konoha had a way of using young talented people. Age didn't seem to matter much when sending pimple faced children out to die for old men's hubris. 18 was too young. His current 22 was probably too young.

Sakumo didn't want to believe his village was one of those. Maybe he'd been willful and blind to it. Yet seeing the destruction wrought, personally? He couldn't walk away from it. Couldn't go about as he had been, hoping the village leaders were following through on their ideal of peace.

He would die for them, if they asked him to. Sakumo was loyal to his core. Yet could he do that knowing what was in the ANBU'S memories might come true? That such a path would step over hundreds of thousands of dead bodies, all laid out. Till finally an opponent strong enough to level a village would follow those corpses to Sakumo's home. Then destroy it.

That's what the Elders' idea of self sacrifice led to. So, if Sakumo wanted to save them, he couldn't give them that option.

These thoughts whirled in his mind as he lay prone where Jiraiya left him. His friend's frantic reassurance that Gamabunta would retrieve Tsunade.

Being alone and aware of his own fragility hit him hard. The idea their elders led them down a path of their own destruction. While claiming they were doing what was best. He swallowed. The action sent blinding pain across his jaw. Shot through his face, deep behind what was left of his cheek bones.

What was in that ANBU's head, it haunted his waking thoughts. Drifted around the edges as possibilities.

Things he'd never thought of before, but which made so much sense. Danzō and Tobirama always claimed they had to be the strongest village to hold peace. That active engagement across borders would only help.

Yet, according to that ANBU, it instead brought wars. Huge wars. Followed by a string of vengeful nin. Who'd had homes destroyed by Konoha. Who came after Konohagakure for ruining their lives, killing their families, destroying their society.

Of course there'd be long-term aggression. That he could understand. He just always hoped the leaders would be able to pull through their promises and level it out. Make way on the peaceful negotiations they promised were almost finished.

If Haruno Sakura wasn't a spy, spreading misinformation, then it would suggest much of what he'd been told was a lie. It would suggest Danzō and Sarutobi weren't working for peace at all, but on preparing to expand their territory.

Now, the genius Hatake felt very stupid, very worn and used. Sakumo closed his eyes. The pain swamped him. He'd an unfortunate number of hours ahead of him to lay there and think. To consider his entire philosophy on his job had been flawed.

The only way to stop making enemies would be to stop destroying other peoples' homes. He wondered just how he was supposed to do that.

"I am not your enemy Hatake," She'd said. Yet he kept attacking anyways, knowing that's what they'd order him to do. Should they find out about her. Her radical wish for peace. To help people across borders, not steal from them.

The rain hit him and for the first time in his life, he was glad he'd failed. He might need that ANBU out and away from the Elders' notice.

Drops of water misted, grew heavier, and fell. The lightest rain which so characterized Kirigakure's outermost protected region now turned into a steady depressing stream. Just enough to hit her toes and spatter against her ankles from the ledge she found to rest. Breath hard and ragged from the valley she'd just escaped. A huge cliff of a rock face blocked her path.

It wasn't a mission she or Commander Nara would have ever planned. Yet here she was, sneaking along the border of three major nations and one newly destroyed Uzu. Tried her best to avoid patrols wearing different headbands. Almost got beheaded by a ninja wire trap, then almost blew her leg off with an explosive tag lined valley hidden by genjutsu. Had to knock out a scout from Kiri, then lull his team into a deep sleep, so they wouldn't suspect anyone had come near their camp.

It was a long, dangerous ascent up the island cliff, but safer than continuing to traverse stormy tides. This sea between the Lands of Lightning, Mist, and Whirlpool was as tumultuous a landscape as their disagreeing governments. Steep and sweeping mountains hit the waters edge, dropped cold wind down their slopes and into warm soggy swamps of oceanic flooded mangroves.

Islands large enough to support their own weather system. Around her the mist charged, threatened to be a bigger storm. In the sky above energy rumbled and created a crash of explosive sound. Clouds rose angry and ready to battle against everything around them. This was the border of Lightning and Mist Sakura knew.

She sneaked across enough times for extraction missions. Knew the islands well enough to navigate which waterways could sweep a body clinging to a log all the way north. She needed to go Northwest, but couldn't afford to cross through the land of Fire. Her body much too weak, chakra too depleted, to head straight west. In this condition crossing the huge deserts were impossible.

This left one option: by sea and sneaking into Lightning. Just along the border and hopefully avoiding patrols Sakura made her way as discretely as possible through hostile waters. Crossed from Kiri to Kumogakure protected lands, injured and sore she waited till night fell. Her genjutsu long since rendered useless hid till the cover of darkness made it less likely anyone would see (or remember) a head of pink hair.

The mud she smeared in it muted the bright pastel to dark brown. Almost black as she traveled up the cliffs at night. Her muddy hands and arms appeared as dark as the rock inlet they climbed. Shikamaru would approve. She'd chosen the easiest, least hassle way across.

It came easy, habitual. How often she'd spent nights huddled with Commander Nara and helped target Konoha's retrieval objectives. The logical part of her didn't even have to think about the path she'd take. Their area maps, hazards, and government grievances burned into her head. Only she wasn't in Shikamaru's study with a steaming pot of tea at their elbows. There was no kind and tired smiling Nara across from her.

By all the power within herself she was seriously injured and couldn't heal fully. Her friend, her best friend, if he was here would tell her to find a solid place to hide and stay there. To trick her pursuers with a series of false trails and then disappear beyond the untraceable sea channel. His tired voice sounded in her mind as it had a hundred other nights.

"If we need space and time, we'll have to make them. A distraction till we recoup our losses."

"Shika I wish you were here."

The water falling down her face turned saltier than rain.

"Well I'm not and I never will be if you don't get us out of this," The memory of Shikamaru's voice pushed her on.

He'd almost died once. Her first ANBU captain. Her best friend. The man who introduced her to sneaking around Lightning border patrols. She'd found him clinging to a log and floating with the strong current. His ANBU uniform so soaked through she'd had to wash it three times to get rid of the strong saline smell.

How she'd had to strip him, wrap him in both their blankets, and make sure his brain didn't continue swelling through the night. How he'd smiled against her back when she carried him from island to island.

"Nah, Sakura if I'd known you'd carry me I'd have tripped a landslide at the beginning of the trip."

"Shut up," She muttered this as if he were actually there.

He wasn't there. Her logical brain knew this. Yet Sakura heard Shikamaru laugh. The sound soft and distant.

The ANBU with a fractured head tried to gingerly and oh so carefully stop that feeling by placing hands over her exhausted, sore eyes. He wasn't here. Why was she imagining he was? Shika wasn't even born yet. He existed only in her head. A terrifying thought, that she carried her friends' entire existence in her. That they might never exist again as the people she'd met.

Hands lowered from tired, red eyes. She needed to find somewhere to sleep. It looked as if she wouldn't make it to that cave she and Shika marked. Her shoulder ached. The cloth underneath increasingly damp and not with rain.

She'd made it this far unobserved by hiding with driftwood floating through the north traveling current. Yet the next current she needed to reach was on the other side of this landmass and it seemed insurmountable. Her head felt too hot and full. She might be developing a fever. Her cuts reopened.

Her latest trip up the island's edge tore the wounds she'd hastily mended. First she wrapped them with the excess bandages standard with her kit. Those ran out two days ago. Since then, she'd been tearing the bottom half of her expensive uniform and wrapped the cloth as tight as she could manage. Her pants now dangled at her knees. Uneven where she ripped the strips.

The medic cleaned and re-wrapped as often as possible. She hadn't been able to sleep yet. Not truly. Not with those summons running after her. Sakura thought she might have lost them for the moment. The uncertainty stressed her.

Tonight the Land of Lightning and Mist's borders were ominous and threatening to make her lose all bearing. It was so dark, no moon, and water absorbed what little light there was. Her head felt light and floating. Blood loss. She stumbled, hit her knee on a rock, slipped off a mangrove root.

Ahead the larger island slope was a vaguely recognizable shape. She'd been here before. Squinted and pulled herself up till Sakura could see a route across uneven terrain. She knew this island group. Had traveled it a dozen times following with her first ANBU team, and knew she only had to push for another half hour before the solid bedrock changed into water soluble stone with deep cave systems.

It was a messy half hour. Stumbling, bleeding, sliding down a wet patch of moss when she passed out midstep. Sakura's lips pulled as she grit teeth and breathed through them. She pulled herself up despite blackening vision and pushed towards the location she thought safe to spend the night.

She made it to a slope protected from the harsh wind. With an overhang she remembered from the map. It wasn't as good as a cave, but she'd be mostly dry. Sakura had to scrape her reserves to seal the walls and ledge, then collapsed. The sort of seal work a sage might do, triggering their own chakra just enough to tie it to the land around them. It was the formula which mattered and her trembling fingers barely got the pre-written signs placed before her arms collapsed under her and left Sakura in a curled heap.

Her efforts and seal work glowed around her body. Passive sentries over her unconscious form. She must have been there for days because when she finally woke her uniform and the rock beneath her smelled rank. Each small movement might as well have been lifting a mountain. Just like Kakashi Sensei all those years ago she only remained awake for a few minutes.

She slept there for four days huddled on that ledge. Woke long enough to drink water, look for a place to go to the bathroom, and almost slid off a cliff for her effort. Then ended up squatting to piss off the side of the overhang.

That crawl back to her mostly dry corner, it almost ended her. The chakra deprivation left limbs so heavy she thought she might collapse midway and never wake up again. But she did make it back to that corner. She did pass out. Inner stitched her fractured mind back together and seemed to be funneling as much chakra as the construct could spare.

Days passed. Some nights brutally cold. Her thermal blanket pulled from the sealed pocket under her chest armor felt thin as a sheet when her fever turned to chills. Her swallowed mouthfuls of energy bars and chakra pills. A water bottle half forgotten at her side. Still she slept. Those moments in between were waking dreams.

In between she felt Inner moving about her head as if the other woman had a physical presence.

"It's worrying you can feel me. You've never been this weak before."

"I don't know what that means," Sakura had long given up on trying to control the voice in her head.

"It means that I'm the thing currently keeping you alive. Taking all of my energy to do it too."

"So rude," Sakura mumbled.

She almost felt Inner scoff. As if the breath was on the back of her neck. That wasn't possible. She was alone on a rock inlet in the middle of nowhere.

"That Hatake brat left your mind a mess."

"Urg," She gurgled a groan when Inner shifted something too far to the left. It felt as if the construct was physically there. She was on the brink of something she couldn't come back from. Too weak to put chakra through her hands and check, the dread built.

Sakura had never felt so sore. So on the edge of sleep and something else. During the war she'd exhausted herself. Paired with her two stamina maniacs, who fought so ruthlessly in close combat. Lee and Tenten always left bruises on her. The war had severely depleted her many times, but never this bad. She'd always had backup. Always had her squad. Her situation had never been so precarious.

"We don't have backup here," Sakura spoke aloud as if Tenten would be able to commiserate.

The woman always looked glorious in her matte black ANBU armor, lithe and strong. Sure of herself even in the worst trenches of an endless war. She'd always pushed Sakura to think clearer, to pick the best path. A sort of long-term planning Naruto and Sasuke never quite managed. The weapons prodigy had to know when and where to use her tools in case she'd never get them back. It was Tenten's voice which broke up her darkness.

"When you only have one kunai left you have to be more efficient, don't you?"

After the first Chunnin exams Tenten never made that same mistake again. Her opponents in the crush found a solemn young teenager who was armed to the teeth. The years passed and she turned into a shinobi not willing to miss a single strike.

Lee and Tenten were two of the best Black Ops from the war. They drove her to be better. Orphans themselves, they brought the situation back in the rougher districts to her attention.

"Yosh Sakura, can you swing by this weekend? We found another camp of kids outside the walls."

They could never just leave them. Konoha's hospital had only 7 orphans on record before she'd started visiting the camps with Lee's ANBU patrol. The hospital administration had turned several away.

The stoic face of the admittance desk manager as they'd explained, "Haruno-san they couldn't pay. Bandages and vitamins come from the general budget. Doctors and their staff must be paid."

The weight of Lee and Tenten behind her. Those 13 children they'd found wearing rags in the forest, huddled in tents in the winter, and half with chests filling with liquid. The other half so severely malnourished it turned their discolored nails and skin. That weight of them behind her as the administrator told her why they'd been turned away three weeks ago.

"I'll take them."

"But Haruno-san-"

Sakura cut them off, "I'll pay for the materials. My time is my own. My staff may volunteer or have the day off as they prefer. Any others who come in, but can't pay, you are going to add them to my schedule. Is that clear?"

The sound of a little girl crying behind her. Warmth of Lee's genjutsu to warm that girl up. His murmured voice reassuring her. The way Tenten's mask remained firmly in place, scaring everyone in their path as they led the children to their apartment later that night. Sakura gave them all the spare blankets she had so the children piled on the floor could be covered.

How many times had such a thing happened? Sakura truly couldn't recall, it was such a predominant reoccurrence during the war. When protracted conflict meant fewer and fewer of their force came back. Tenten convinced families to adopt one of the Shinobi children. Those she remembered, because her own workload of malnourished kids would ease. For a while.

Sakura had to shift one of her own staff to another floor when they complained about all the days off. A few others had quit when the volunteer hours were too long. They were sorry, they said, but they wanted a day job. Not to be running an emergency children's and homeless civilians clinic.

Tent cities didn't hold up well against thousand kilo bombs. It didn't even matter which village they came from originally. Sakura never asked and the hospital knew not to fight her on this. She may or may not have been responsible for bringing people into the safety of their village. Whom strictly wouldn't have been allowed otherwise. Tenten and Lee too, when their team came back, were in on the scheme. It was this which kept her going. Kept her smiling for children who otherwise wouldn't have gotten a chance.

How their time off nurtured her soul. Spent with those same patients others would have deserted. How she'd healed Lee's misaligned chakra pathways. How he'd gotten so good at genjutsu he often played tricks for the children.

The last time she was in the village he'd been teaching a group how to do proper pushups. He had a horde of kids piled on his back. Hung there securely with chakra as his back stayed parallel. He bent down, then in the middle of his serious explanation he pushed up and pushed off the ground. He clapped and sparkles shot out around them. The children squealed and laughed so loud at the fake animation.

Tenten sat under a tree nearby, two kids asleep next to her. The woman snorted. With a wink, his genjutsu morphed into a sunset with hearts floating into the trees. As they floated up the animated hearts exploded. Delighted shrieks and bright eyes watched the genjutsu play out.

Those kids who'd been piled on Lee's back all tried to cling to his neck as he stood, fists crossed on his chest while he gave his partner in love and life a cheery grin. The biggest grin, it grew wider as the kids scrambled to stay attached to his back. The gaggle of children about his shoulders enough to bury an untrained civilian.

The memory burned at her. Her still feverish body felt on fire with it. This memory meshed over others. Her head swam. She could feel Inner move around in the background. The spiritual energy which once was so strong. For most of her life, Inner was corporal enough to take control and have emotional outbursts. Now the other woman's presence was faded. Till Inner was little more than a shadow. Had given so much of herself to save the younger woman.

"Inner? Did you see that one? Can you save it?" She didn't want to lose herself. To lose the things which mattered most to her. It all felt like it might slip and disappear.

There were other memories too. Memories of a life she hadn't lived, but which featured Inner as she always appeared. Like a 25 year old nurse who hadn't trained a day in her life. Whose knuckles weren't bruised with taijutsu, but whose words range sharp as she manned the desk at the hospital. Sakura frowned. She'd never been a nurse at the hospital.

Inner responded, "No matter which life we live Haruno Sakura doesn't have patience for bullshit. She's gentle with elderly, always has kind words for children under her care, upholds the best standards for patients who've suffered the worst trauma. She isn't one to suffer fools."

"You talk as if there are multiple of us."

"Aren't there? You didn't think I was a product of your imagination did you? That would be a stretch, even for a child as keen as you were."

This silenced Sakura. The spiritual energy of her Inner didn't wait for a response. Inner's words held no viterol. Yet were honed and too closely point to be comfortable.

"I drifted away when you were 14, when it appeared you'd become more than I ever had," Inner lamented. "I'm not surprised you thought I wasn't real. I didn't accomplish nearly what you did and I'd lived so much longer."

Sakura looked at the persona of an older woman. The woman in her head. Whose colors and dimensions looked much too real. At the moment they didn't seem different people at all, but two halves of the same. Only with different perspectives and different experiences. They fit together in one untidy package.

"Your parents died. Your village was attacked. That didn't happen to me. I didn't know what to do or how to comfort you. So young. To be so alone and scavenging through the remains of your parents' house. Finding their bodies in the ruined seats of the stadium."

Sakura felt a surge of emotion. Her own or Inner's she couldn't tell. A memory surfaced of a ruined street. Of Sakura when her legs were scrawny sticks.

Her red kipao covered with dust and torn from where the broken framing of her house snagged the skirt. Her hands trembled as she removed pictures and slipped paper faces from beneath broken glass. How she walked away with a handful of pictures, her mom's jewelry, and her dad's old headband.

After the crush the city was a wreck. The sun dropped far enough below mountains Konoha was full of shadows and unpowered street lights. The smell of sewage from shattered cement pipes. The leakage pooling in some parts of the paving. She'd turned 14. Her parents were dead. Her teammates were gone.

She had vague notions of begging the Yamanakas for a place to stay. Yet before she could get there Sakura found her Sensei passed out on a bench. With pictures, headband, and jewelry clutched in one arm the other reached for the man. All thoughts of herself, her family, and her situation faded in the immediacy of helping her sensei.

The man who always protected the ankle biters following him around. Who treated them like three strays he added to his pack. Puppies who just needed head pats and water. The aftermath of the Konoha crush, of Sasuke and Naruto abandoning them, crushed the man. He clearly thought he was responsible for all that went wrong. Stupid man.

Stupid enough not to realize what he needed was friends and food and laughter. Who threw himself into work. Who struggled to take care of himself when she found him. The greatest of her parents possessions, and her own plight, was easily forgotten in that moment. Realizing that someone still needed her. She could be useful.

Sakura realized if she stayed busy enough it was almost as if that half of the village hadn't been crushed. As if they were still there, just inaccessible. Her parents were smiling, somewhere, hopefully. In a Konoha which hadn't yet suffered multiple attacks.

Inner's voice broke up her thoughts, "You never grieved. You went from finding them to...all of that which came after. Your mind still feels like its fresh." The older woman paused before suggesting, "Maybe you should, you know, go see them if you survive all of this. Even if they don't know you're related to them."

Sakura blinked. Where she lay on this cool, unforgiving rock on the side of a misty mountain. It couldn't bring any of the lost ones back, as much as she would give in order to do so. Sakura always thought the best way to honor them was to keep going, to keep doing work they couldn't now they were gone.

"You might be able to see them again. Even if it's just from a distance." Inner's faded form made a distant sort of sigh. She really was disappearing the more of herself she gave to keep them all together. Those memories. Sakura realized Inner was right. It'd almost be like saying goodbye.

Her parents would be younger than her now. What a strange thought. New immigrants to a village which didn't care for strange, if friendly, foreign-born civilians. It was tragic knowing their fate. Knowing she'd never see HER family again.

The fact no one in Konoha knew the new immigrants Kizashi and Mebuki. In this moment in time they'd have very few connections. They'd be alone. That no one cared what happened to them...it just tore at her. They'd be young and vulnerable and missing all the protections of longtime citizens. Her breath caught. She couldn't lose them again. Somehow the grief sat heavier. The feelings raged stronger.

How maybe her parents wouldn't have died if she hadn't asked them to come watch the final fights of the Chunin exams. She remembered how her mom's face looked tight and ashen, stiff and long gone, by the time they found them under the stadium rubble.

Sakura told Inner, "I should have looked after them better. I should have been a better friend and looked after you too. Even if you aren't real You were always there, in the background, and I ignored you."

The older woman scoffed. It echoed through her mind. The layer between them non-existent.

"Yes one more thing to look after. Such free time under a Sensei who'd been so broken he couldn't even feed himself before you showed up, yourself so rail thin. A grown man who had to be fed by his pubescent student. Who couldn't even see his own trauma let alone those of the Gennin under his command."

Inner rummaged through her brain. The being of spiritual energy was gentle, however. Soothing as she touched things. Pulled Sakura's mind back together as it tried to spill out. Maybe there was a reason only Yamanaka performed the mind walk jutsu. Sakura, if she didn't have Inner, suspected she would already be gone. The older woman's presence, even muted and disappearing, was the most comforting and gentle thing. Nurturing in a way Sakura herself had never really learned to be, much as she admired and needed it.

"I always felt bad for him, being stuck with you three. A walking hazard of a team, even for someone trained in psychology. Kaka-kun obviously wasn't."

"Kaka-kun?" Sakura sputtered. The name so silly. Laughing weakly to herself in the middle of nowhere was probably an indication of her sanity. Inner laughed with her, a ghost of a feeling across her head.

"Yes, that poor boy. He had a girl with anger issues. A traumatized boy whose family had been severely taken advantage of by the elders. A Kyuubi container who'd been fed so much propaganda he thought the way to gain love and respect was to sacrifice himself."

Sakura's guilt over not being kinder to Naruto surfaced. She'd never not feel that burden, after seeing so many children suffering. The knowledge she could have done more to help, to sway people's opinions, even as a young girl. She could have been a better gennin teammate.

"Perhaps." Inner placated, "But it's done now."

"I ignored his situation."

"You were there when that boy needed you most. You were facing A and S ranked nin. As a 14 year old. You didn't have the understanding, time, or emotional capacity to look after the boys."

Sakura didn't have anything to say to that.

"I however, was an adult. I should have helped you. For that I hope you forgive me." Inner made a sound which might have been a sigh, "I was so shocked the world had turned out different than the one I'd grown up in. I was coming to terms with the things I hadn't done. I lived my life. I was carefree and happy, but look where it led."

Inner paused as she shuffled things, tried to hold everything together, "I suppose we both could have done better. Been nicer to those around us."

The pain in Sakura's head was getting worse.

"I know it hurts. I've been compartmentalizing the memories from our two lives. It seems you being here is adding a third. There's a young Sakura who will be out there someday and she'll be different from either of us."

Maybe this was her curse. Her own kekkei genkai driving her to insanity. A stab of pain shot through the side of her head holding neurons for all the logic receptors. Sakura hissed.

"Sorry. Sorry, I'll be more careful." Inner muttered and hurried to collect all the things slipping past. She felt it all tumble sideways and Inner stop the worst of the weight.

Sakura wasn't coherent enough to respond.

Their multiple lives clashed. Some completely foreign. The image of a man laying half naked in the same gold sheets she bought. Only Sakura had never seen that man. He was kind of ugly.

"He's not ugly, he's hot," Inner admonished. "You should have seen the two of us when we were younger."

An ugly, rather flabby man who Sakura would never have invited into her bed.

"That's my life partner you're talking about. And everyone is a little flabby when they reach 60," Inner tutted. "I'm much older than you. Was much, much older before I got sent back. Clearly I messed up if no one you know lived to that age," She huffed.

60? So few of the people she'd ever known were that old. Sakura stared at the man. A little disturbed. He looked like a civilian. She mulled over that thought.

"There's nothing wrong with dating civilians." Inner added, sardonic, "I only dated civilians."

The younger girl might have cringed, might have argued, but she was so exhausted she just wanted all of this to be over. One way or another.

"Oh." She didn't have anything else to add. In theory, there was nothing wrong with it.

Only, it wasn't something she personally could do. Sakura stared blankly up at the rock overhang. She'd never let a civilian close to her, not after her parents had been crushed from moving too slow. She couldn't afford to love someone who got taken away so easily. It was a messy, cold truth she'd had to reconcile as an adult.

Inner seemed to pick up on her apprehension. For a time they watched the memory together. They stood side by side, even if one was only a shadow who occasionally flickered and disappeared from sight.

Inner admitted, "Sometimes I wonder if I'd done better. If you could have saved the people you lost. The love of my life, you never met. We're too different, I am happy you'll find your own path. I just hope you find someone so special."

Some of Inner's memories seemed real, but in the same way a genjutsu was real. Senju Tobirama once theorized a brain with one mode of spiritual energy couldn't take multiple layers of reality. Which is why a genjutsu took over. Being in the past, fractured mind leaking out, it was the most genjutsu-like sensation.

It left her laying in that rock inlet, utterly disconcerted and removed from her normal plain of existence. On that cold rock she wondered what she was going to do. It was a sort of fatalism. Sakura wasn't sure if she was going to survive this one. Wasn't sure she'd have enough information to save them all.

"But wouldn't it be nice to try?" Her words chased a surge of hope and Inner pushed, "Maybe your parents don't have to die in the Konoha crush this time. Maybe, if you are savvy and make the right friends there won't be a crush. You've always been a bit of a martyr trying to save everyone else. Why not go out with a bang?"

Sakura blinked slow and lethargic. She turned to look at the other woman only to see the form in her mind flicker and fade as more of herself was given to repairing. With this disappearance one less crack fractured her mind. It tied Sakura tighter to this reality.

The weight overwhelmed her. Fingers slipped from where she'd tried to put the lid back on the water bottle. It sloshed sideways, liquid poured out and soaked the right side of her clothes. Her thoughts became dim. She didn't feel anything as she slipped under. Sakura passed out to the distant reassurance.

"Sorry, sorry that's the last of it. Hopefully."