"Naruto?"
The figure's voice was muffled by the many scarves they wore. Kakashi approached cautiously, one hand raised and the other pressed to his bleeding side. He didn't want to startle them back into a fight when they were so close to his genin.
"Yes…?" Naruto cocked his head to the side. "Do I know you?"
The hand still fisted in his orange jacket released its hold. "Is this an illusion?" They backed up.
"No illusion," Kakashi said, trying to keep his voice even. "Nobody has cast a genjutsu on you. And if you aren't working with that man," he pointed a finger toward Zabusa, who also had a hand pressed to his side, "then we aren't your enemies at all."
The newcomer's gaze never seemed to rise higher than his navel, tinted goggles revealing nothing.
"Who are you?" Sasuke interrupted, eyes narrowed. "And where did you get that?" He pointed at the sword, and now Kakashi could see the braid of long pink hair wrapped around its hilt.
"Sasuke…?" They said his name like they could hardly believe he was real. "Sasuke-kun!" The voice rose in pitch, and now it was clear they were female. She ripped the hood back from her face, revealing her own head of pale pink hair, falling out of sight beneath her jacket in dozens of rope-like braids.
A terrible, icy fear collided with a terrible, burning hope and then exploded in his chest. If this was Sakura, then she was alive. But she was also very, very wrong.
"Hey!" Tazuna the bridge builder had been all-but forgotten in the excitement, but now he was pointing back out toward the lake.
Kakashi turned, kunai raised, but Zabusa was already gone. In his place, a water clone was rapidly destabilising. Within seconds it had lost all form and splashed back into the lake.
"Who was that?" the woman asked.
"Who are you?" Naruto screeched, and Kakashi agreed that it was the more pertinent question. "And where did you come from?"
"Naruto," she said, dragging her scarves lower to reveal a pale face with identical scars on each cheek. "It's me, Sakura."
"No…?" Naruto shook his head, taking a step back as Kakashi took a step forward. She was too tall, her hair was too long, she had new scars that were too faded. It wasn't her. It couldn't be her.
"It's…look, are we safe here? Where's The Watcher?" the newcomer (he refused to think of her as Sakura just yet) glanced around warily, face still angled toward the ground.
"Who?"
"The Watcher, the one who brought me here." She pointed at her face. "He's got a mask, and a bloodline limit in his eyes; or at the very least, he can perform genjutsu without seals."
"Kakashi-sensei has a sharingan," Sasuke pointed at his still-bare eye. It no longer felt like it was spinning and the pain was starting to subside ever so slightly, but it was weeping bloody tears that probably looked terrible.
The woman gasped, pressing her hands against the dark glass of her goggles. "You did this to me?" she whispered, and Kakashi could feel the situation slipping from his control. Naruto looked confused, Sasuke looked vicious, and the woman looked terrified. As for himself, he was close to passing out and wanted to make sure nobody would start fighting again if he did.
"I have a sharingan, yes." He tried to make his voice as calm and authoritative as possible. "It was given to me, freely, by an Uchiha before he died. I did not use it to harm or abduct you." Whoever you are.
The moment stretched out, the four ninjas eyeing each other off while Tazuna glanced around nervously for the return of the mercenary. Eventually, the woman removed her goggles and stared at him with a pair of jade green eyes that he could no longer deny were Haruno Sakura's. They hadn't changed like the rest of her had.
"I trust you, Kakashi-sensei."
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"So how did you take me out?"
They had reached Tazuna's house after a short, quiet trek. Sakura (it was still odd to think of this full-grown woman as the same girl whose photo he currently carried in his pocket) had stopped several times to smell grass and trees, or stick her hands in mud. When she spoke, it was either too loud or too soft, as if she had forgotten how sound worked; but most of the time she had walked silently, and whilst that was easier to bear it also made Kakashi sad. She told them she ran out of things to say ages ago, and when she didn't elaborate, they didn't push.
But now that they had reached civilisation, it was time for a proper debriefing.
"I don't understand your question," he told her. It was just them, sitting out on Tazuna's back porch while the boys helped his family with dinner and tried not to eavesdrop. He was currently trying to treat the wound in his side, and she was watching the sun go down. More than once he'd had to remind her not to look at it directly. "Take you out where?"
"Take me Outside," she said, watching the dark blues that had replaced the sunset oranges. The twilight air was filled with the sound of crickets, and he kept losing her attention to them. "Only The Watcher can do that."
"And The Watcher is the man who abducted you?"
"Yep." She popped the 'p' like an insolent teenager, though in reality she was looked as old as him. "Male, tall, masked, dark hair, distinctive clothes. That's what I managed to figure out in the first few…years?" She frowned. "Time's weird there."
"We'll get to that," he said gently, because yes, time seemed to have affected her in strange ways. He hiked his shirt up to examine the damage. The cut was clean; Zabusa's sword must have been razor sharp. "What else did you figure out?"
"I figured out if I cut different fingers instead of just my palms, I could get more than two answers each time I went Outside." She raised her hands to show him a constellation of pale half-moons. "So I tried to figure out what seal starts the genjutsu he uses on us, and when that was inconclusive three times in a row, we figured out that it's probably an ocular jutsu. Those don't require seals." She glanced at his left eye. It was once again hidden under his forehead protector, aching dully and eating his chakra almost as quickly as he was regenerating it.
"And what did it look like, where they kept you?" You could narrow locations down a lot from the shape of a plant, or even the colour of a rock.
She gasped, and Kakashi turned his head quickly to see what had hurt her; but she was pointing up at the sky. "Star!"
The sun had completely gone now, and the first stars were coming out. Sakura started counting them like a small child, marvelling at each one.
"You never saw the stars, wherever they kept you?"
"No sky," she said dismissively. "Did you want help with that?"
Before he could respond her hands were on his side, prodding his wound. Foreign chakra entered his system, and pure instinct made him shove her roughly away.
She didn't cry out, or even look upset that he had struck her. She just raised her hands patiently. "Healing. Yes or no?"
"You know medical jutsu?" He asked, and she nodded.
"You want?"
"I…yes please." He still didn't trust this new Sakura, but if this was a trap then it was better to learn it now and not when he took her back to Konoha. And if she could heal him, it would make the next few days a lot easier. "Sorry," he added, belatedly, but she seemed to take it in stride.
"It's fine. Forgot some people don't like to be touched." She got back to work, her chakra washing over his wound and easing the pain almost immediately. They both watched as his flesh began to knit back together.
"You're good at that."
She smiled. "Learned it from Sensei."
"You had a teacher in there with you?"
"No, Sensei as in doctor. He knew all kinds of medical jutsu. He's the one who helped me figure out The Watcher probably had an eye technique. He didn't know exactly who The Watcher was, but I guess he knew enough to be dangerous, so The Watcher put a gag seal on his tongue. But I figured out a way we could communicate."
"How?" He wanted to keep her in a talking mood, learn as much as possible before he decided what to do with her.
She lifted her hand, still burning with chakra, and placed it over his heart. "Your name is Hatake Kakashi," she said.
He frowned. "Yes...?"
"Mhm. You trust me."
Did he trust her? His instinctual response was a resounding 'no,' but that didn't mean he wanted to hurt her feelings either.
"False," she declared, putting her hands back on his wound. "Sensei couldn't say anything outright, but I could make guesses and see how his body reacted. We were just starting to get really good at it." Her smile faded. "I don't suppose I'll ever see him again."
"You never know," Kakashi hedged. He still didn't really understand what Sensei and 'the others' were to Sakura.
"All done." She ran a finger along the pinkish line of new skin where the cut had been. "Do you want me to…?" she gestured at his covered eye. "It's still hurting, right?"
He hesitated. "It just needs time to heal on its own." Letting this woman heal a flesh wound was one thing, but the sharingan was virtually unique. Even if it seemed to be acting up worse than usual, he couldn't risk her making it worse.
She continued to stare anxiously at his forehead protector, but Tsunami, Tazuna's daughter, called them in for dinner and she let the subject drop.
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Dinner was a strange, tense affair. Tazuna's grandson Inari clearly disliked the ninjas, and Naruto was making it worse by arguing with him. When he got into his stride about becoming the Hokage, Inari slammed his fists on the table so hard that his ceramic cup toppled over and shattered.
Meanwhile, Sakura bolted her food down like a wild animal, one arm curled protectively around her plate. Kakashi was surprised she even used chopsticks.
Tazuna and his daughter were too polite (and grateful) to comment on the strange rabble of ninjas who had taken over their dining table, but Inari stared openly as Sakura finished her meal and began licking the plate.
"You're weird," he said.
Naruto opened his mouth, and Kakashi knew he was about to start yelling and set everything off again, but Sakura didn't miss a beat.
"You're young."
Inari scowled. "So? I'm not that young."
"You're the youngest person I've seen since I was their age." She pointed at the boys.
That strange statement was met with a silence that lasted the rest of the meal. Afterward, Kakashi checked the bin where Tsunami had thrown the broken cup and found that it was empty.
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The ninjas were given the tatami room connected to the back porch. Tsunami offered to leave one of the sliding doors closed to divide the room and give Sakura some privacy, but she just cocked her head to one side like she didn't understand the question.
"Kakashi-san?" She offered next, as he was the other adult present, but he also politely declined. He wanted desperately to have a nice long sleep without Naruto muttering or kicking him in the ribs as he slept, but he needed to keep an eye on things.
He fought his own exhaustion to watch the others as they drifted off. They had laid traps around the house to make sure nobody tried to ambush them in the night, so there was no need to set a watch.
Sakura laid down and closed her eyes obediently. She was still wearing her overcoat and sword (she had declined the offer to bathe before bed) but she didn't seem to have any trouble drifting off to sleep. The boys were in a slightly more excitable mood, the events of the day warranting far more discussion that they had received, but Kakashi ordered them to get rest while they could, because he would be giving them plenty of training tomorrow while he recovered his chakra.
Before long, sleep claimed Kakashi too, offering some reprieve from his aching eye and turbulent thoughts.
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Sakura couldn't sleep.
She hadn't slept in years, obviously, but she'd hoped it would all come back now that she was free. Instead, she remained as empty-feeling as she always had Inside. It wasn't difficult to fake genuine enthusiasm for dinner, even though she hadn't felt hunger, and at some point when her sense of self-preservation allowed her to strip naked, she was sure she'd enjoy taking a bath. She had made herself walk into the room where the toilet was kept a few times in the evening, even though all she did was turn on the tap, rub her hands on the towels, and stare at herself in the basin mirror.
It wasn't that she intended to lie about it forever, but she could already tell she was making people uncomfortable and she wanted Kakashi to let her stay. He had been able, somehow, to take her out, and if she was still connected to The Watcher then she might be sent back Inside at any moment.
So she closed her eyes and tried to ignore how unsafe the darkness made her feel. Inside, the endless void of the ceiling was certainly dark, but you could never avoid the weird brightness of the floor stones. Here, bundled up in soft blanket with all the outer screens pulled shut against the light and bugs and other Outside things, she felt like she was lying in the warm, soft mouth of a gigantic beast.
She slipped outside as silently as she could, pulling the sliding door back before the starlight could wake the others. Oh, stars. She'd taken them for granted when she was a kid, but now they made her want to scream and cry all at once. They were all out now; it was still the same spring from her childhood, and the sky was split open with all the same constellations she'd never thought to memorise.
She lay on the hard wood of the porch, more familiar to her than the soft futon Tsunami had provided, and watched the stars wheel above. How many hours had it been since she was taken out? How many weeks or months did that translate to for The Others?
After an unrecorded amount of time, the door slid open and she turned to see who had found her. Kakashi stared at her, and she stared at him. Neither of them spoke, and after a few minutes he closed the screen and disappeared.
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"You're up early." Tsunami smiled at Sakura as she entered the kitchen. "Breakfast should be ready soon. Dad gets an early start." She was moving about making something that already smelled amazing, looking so domestic that Sakura ached.
"Can I help?" The answer was probably 'no', because unlike Sakura's mother Tsunami was clearly a competent cook, and Sakura had probably forgotten what things were actually meant to taste like by now.
Tsunami shook her head. "You're a guest, and you saved Dad. Please just sit down and relax."
Sakura had been sitting around for roughly a decade, but chairs were still something of a novelty so she took the same seat she'd used last night and watched as Tsunami added dashes of this and that to something on the stove.
"There is one thing I thought you could do, if you wanted," she said, and Sakura straightened. "Dad and Kakashi-san mentioned briefly that you had been…away from home for a while." Her eyes wandered over the long coat she'd patched with scraps of this and that until it was more scrap than coat, the dark goggles she'd bartered off Pinch for ten whole braids once she'd deduced that the genjutsu was an eye technique, and finally the sword hanging off her hip by a braid of red human hair. "I just wondered if you'd like to take a look at my wardrobe later, maybe pick out a change of clothes? Shoes, too," she added quickly, glancing at Sakura's bare feet. She'd outgrown her original pair a few years ago, and never got the chance to upgrade.
Sakura nodded eagerly. "Gift or trade?"
"Gift," Tsunami assured her, placing a bowl of miso soup and a plate of rolled omelette in front of Sakura like it was the most normal thing in the world to hand people food. "Take your time," she smiled gently, and Sakura forced herself to savour each bite.
While she was eating, Tsunami packed a small bento and put it aside. When the boys woke up and filed into the kitchen, she started preparing something for them too. Then Tazuna appeared, and Tsunami wrapped the bento box in a lavender furoshiki and placed it in his work bag.
"If you're all still here then I assume that means you've agreed to stay and help even though our contract is technically done?" he spoke to Kakashi, who nodded.
"We have to stick around for a few days while I recover, so we're happy to escort you to and from the job site in exchange for your hospitality. Naruto and Sasuke?"
The boys jumped to their feet and put their dishes in the sink. "Let's go before that Inari jerk wakes up," Naruto said.
"I'll go too." Sakura rose and put her empty dishes in the sink, but Kakashi held up a hand to stop her before she joined the boys at the door.
"Actually Sakura, can you stay here with me this morning? I want to make sure I have a medic handy if my injury starts acting up."
"My work was perfect; you should feel fine." Sakura wanted to go with the boys. She hadn't seen them in years, and unlike Kakashi they didn't look at her like she might explode.
"If you stay, we can spend some more time together," Tsunami offered, and Sakura relented. She liked Tsunami, and she wanted to ask her something that would be easier if they were alone.
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"How about this one?" Tsunami held up a pink shirt with thick red trim. "It'd go well with your hair."
Sakura nodded automatically. Everything Tsunami owned looked a thousand times nicer than anything she'd seen in years, but the woman seemed determined to find her something she truly liked. She decided to just pretend. "You're right. Can I try it?" She started the slightly daunting process of removing her clothes, making sure none of her possessions left easy reaching distance. If The Watcher took her now, she'd lose it all.
Tsunami watched her layers peel back, and Sakura tried not to feel self-conscious. She'd stripped in front of The Others as a precursor to sex, of course; but that was always a shared experience, and not a particularly sensual one. Now, in front of someone as nice and normal as Tsunami, Sakura felt like her appearance was somehow offensive.
She got down to her underwear, and Tsunami gasped softly.
"It's really old," she explained, fingering the human hair lacing that she'd added sometime around puberty. "I know it's too small for me." She knew proper bras were probably expensive even Outside, but Sakura would happily trade her entire head of hair for one if Tsunami could spare it.
"How did you get those?" Tsunami wasn't pointing at her ratty bra but at the ladder of raised scars running down her back and legs in somewhat even increments. It was clear that they were separate from the other scars dotting her body from various fights (some that she couldn't even remember). Like the ones on her face, these were intentional, not incidental.
"I was measuring the length of my hair as a way of keeping time," she explained, but the explanation clearly upset Tsunami. The woman's hand hovered, aghast, against Sakura's back. Those were the earliest scars.
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The girls had gone quiet in the bedroom, and Kakashi's imagination raced through images of slaughtered civilians and orphaned little boys receiving terrible news. Sakura was his responsibility, but he couldn't confidently vouch for her sanity. And she hadn't put her sword down once.
"I just wanted to check-" he opened the door, preparing himself for a pool of blood and a broken window, but instead finding something differently terrible.
Sakura's body was thin; not necessarily unwell, but devoid of even an ounce of extra fat. Scars, more scars than even he had collected, covered every inch of bare skin that he could see. And due to some clearly unfortunate timing on his part, he could see quite a bit. She wore only a bra and pants, white with tiny cherries and what he assumed was pink trim but realised was actually Sakura's own hair extending and connecting the cups at the front. Even with the amendment she was practically falling out of it, and the pants were little better.
Tsunami gave a little cry of surprise, and grabbed a scrap of clothing off the floor to cover Sakura with, but Sakura herself just stared at him like she had last night. He looked away first.
"Sorry," he muttered, closing the door so quickly that it banged on its hinges. He chalked his poor judgement up to chakra exhaustion.
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Sakura ran her hands down her front for what felt like the thousandth time, marvelling once again at the softness of her new outfit. Tsunami had let her take two shirts, a skirt, some sturdy boots, and, best of all, had offered her a new bra even before she figured out a way to ask. It was sightly too big, but it had a real underwire and was heavenly compared to one that was too small.
Tsunami had offered to throw her shabbier clothes away, but she'd packed it all up and tucked it in her bag on top of the broken pieces of cup from last night. Nothing was too far gone that she couldn't find some use for it; and besides, she couldn't bear to throw out even a strand of hair that had come from The Others.