She stared down at the glassy Rinnegan eye where it rested in her palms.
It had a slightly glossy sheen from countless days painstakingly caring for it. A gash remained across its surface, though cleaned up and tended to enough that it was almost unnoticeable from certain angles. When it settled within her cupped hands, it caught the glint of the unnaturally bright moonlight that fell through the window, as if in reminder of its owner and where he was now.
Reminders. That was all this eye had become, and Sakura clenched her teeth as she pulled back a wave of tightness from her throat, refusing to cry. Crying was useless. It didn't help her or anyone else.
Looking at the Rinnegan reminded her of that fateful day she'd managed to injure it, standing over Obito in his strange dimension, the eye glaring up at her wide and strange from the half of him that was in Black Zetsu's control. It had brought her a host of awful associations then, from legends to specific experiences; stories told over campfires, rumours of Uchiha eye evolutions, of sages and gods — as well as Pein's destruction of Konoha.
Now, the amount of things it reminded her of was exponentially increased. Daily different threads of memories wove into the way she looked at it, a year after taking it into her possession. It had been uncomfortable to behold before, carrying around her great enemy's disembodied eyeball with a painful gash through its center, but now the sheer emotional weight it hefted was unbearable, gut-wrenching. She could recall a hundred different memories of prodding it in visceral research examinations, and a hundred others that were of its twin in Madara's face, regarding her with all the life and capricious moods that the one she possessed could not.
She had spent a full year guarding this eye with her life, shielding it from harm, keeping it close to her heart; at first literally, and later figuratively as well. It had been all of why Madara had pursued her for so many months until he'd so briefly chosen her over it instead.
Angry tears prickled the corners of Sakura's eyes. If he'd just listened to her a moment longer he wouldn't have gone back into battle. If he had just decided to abandon the Rinnegan and his old dream entirely he could still be alive today.
Even though she understood his slowness to change and why he had still been unable to let his past go, Madara's attempt to choose both her and his eye wrung resentment from her still, searing her once more as she stared down at the true Rinnegan where it rested in her hands. He had been confident he had the strength to seize both, so he hadn't thought he needed to pick only one to keep. His arrogance in this had brought about his downfall.
But she should have been able to stop him; she should have effectively convinced him sooner, so that he wouldn't have considered the Rinnegan a choice at all. If she had done so, everything would be so much better: he'd have the second chance she'd fought for him to have; no one would have died — and she wouldn't be living in a daily hell of grief.
Regardless of her resentment of his choice to return to the fight, Sakura still fully considered all of the blame of it to be on her for not preventing it in the first place.
Sakura shut her eyes, unable to look at the gashed eye any longer. It brought her too many painful memories.
But she had removed it from the saline-case she had for it with purpose tonight. It wasn't just to torture herself with guilt she'd never be able to shake.
She had to make a decision on its fate, as difficult as it was; for it wasn't healthy to let it haunt her like it did now, a flag of her guilt, her shame, her failures. She knew she would never heal if she had to look at it each day, carrying its emotional weight with her.
Her heart twisted as her hands shook around it, wringing out more of why it made her feel this way. She had hesitated to tell Madara in their very brief reunion after he'd pulled her free of the Allied trap that she carried the true Rinnegan; hesitated to admit that the one they presented to him, the one Sasuke guarded, was a fake. It was a brilliant fake, so true to the original that it had fooled all the rest of them mid-battle, but it hadn't been worth Madara weaponizing his arrogant self-confidence and going for getting it back. Letting the Allied side have the fake had allowed that one to be destroyed while the real one remained protected with Sakura, but she knew it assigned all the more blame to her.
She hadn't fully trusted him, and her resulting hesitation had meant she ran out of time to tell him. While her love was true to her bones, that minute inch of fear that Madara still might just cast the Infinite Tsukuyomi with the eye anyway had kept her from just telling him the truth in the moment.
Was it worth it that it had ended in his sealing, keeping the world definitively free of infinite dreams? It didn't feel worth any of it at all, from the start of her first mission to steal away with the eye to the moment she'd realised what her teammates had done. A part of her that was increasingly difficult to defuse made wounded whispers of the life she could be living in an Infinite Tsukuyomi dream, even while knowing that Madara wouldn't have cast her into it with the others.
Sakura stared back into the eye's glassy, dead stare, filled with dread and despair.
It had come to represent so much over the past year. It was at first a curse and a burden as well as a precious hostage; then a useful tool to gain her sanctuary and resources from Orochimaru. It was a frustration during the months she studied it until she successfully managed to heal Sasuke's own Rinnegan; and by then it had become a cherished thing to guard, a constant reminder of the one she had come to love, and in a final time of desperation before her trial it had briefly served as her only way to contact Madara before she might have been executed for her crimes.
Now, it served as a reminder of that piece of mistrust that had made her hold her tongue a moment too long. It represented her lapse of communication, a reminder of her hesitance that had ended up functioning like a betrayal as Madara had risked his life and then ended it in seeking out what he thought had been his true eye out in the battlefield.
Sakura wiped at her eyes, shaking her head. No: she couldn't bear to be near Madara's eye any longer. She couldn't stand this symbol of her betrayal and failures; it looked at her with the anger and disappointment that he would regard her with now, if he could. She also couldn't take the constant question in her head of what might happen should she attempt to contact him in the same gruesome way she had managed to do before her trial again.
It wouldn't work, she knew, clasping her hands around the Rinnegan so she didn't have to feel its gaze anymore.
But was going with the plan she had for it a betrayal to Madara? Did it mean she was giving up on getting him back?
Sakura turned towards the window. She pulled the curtains open, staring up at the twin moons that glared back at her with sharp, serrated silver light. She kept the glassy Rinnegan safe within her gentle hands, her shivering grip unsure, but still protective.
Surrendering the eye to a detached but still safe fate didn't mean she was giving up. She asserted that with herself, her brows drawing tightly over her gaunt expression. It was her effort to be strong again in sending away what would prevent her from healing; and now that it was no longer the key to a war or a sought hostage, it was only serving as a painful burden. She needed to be strong in order to find any sort of way to pull Madara free — if he even still lived at all.
Seizing a pained breath, Sakura decided to go with the other idea she'd had, clasping her hands with decision around the precious eye she carried: the only plan she felt would bring her any relief from her guilt, as well as avoid betraying the fierce and undying loyalty she still felt for him.
Allowing her to take it from her hands, Sakura turned from this first clone she had made in a long time, her heart sinking through slow, saddened beats.
The shimmer of henge had already changed her appearance well away from her trademark pink hair and recognisable face. She put the small bundle in her hands into a pack under her arm, suspended in a small case of saline, protected and hidden.
Sakura knew her clone already understood what she was to do; that she didn't need direction, but she felt a need to tell her anyway, her grim, soft voice carrying through the hollow quiet of her bedroom.
"Make sure no one recognises you. You should be able to leave here without much question if you're careful. Suigetsu gets easily distracted, and he's the one on watch right now. Once you're out of the village…." Sakura looked back to her clone who now wore a new appearance, very different than any she'd taken on before.
She was older, with a weary crease beside her eyes like the stress of the last several days had been decades of it instead. Her green eyes were shadowed behind long, wild tresses of hair paled from a cherry blossom shade to snowy white. Her henge appearance was with more traditional robes, dark with woven threads of black in her mourning, and while such garb was still fairly common among older citizens around Konoha, the clone looked like a haunting ghost drawn to life from a past era; an aged version of herself from a lost time.
Sakura paused, taken aback. The appearance her clone had taken was familiar, though she didn't know how. It was as if she was staring at a different version of someone she'd been once, somehow; a person she used to be in a past life.
She quickly shook away the idea, though she had to ask. "Why that look?" she managed, feeling her throat inexplicably tighten.
The clone looked away, solemn and soft-spoken. Her voice sounded convincingly aged, even in her more youthful sort of sheepishness from Sakura calling out the unusual disguise. "I don't know. It was just what came to mind."
Sakura nodded, dismissing it, finished with what little conversation they'd shared. This effort was already exhausting her enough. She needed to bury herself in her bed again to rest, feeling her grief already pulling once more at her edges, sapping her strength and threatening to overtake her. Kakashi's support had given her enough strength to make this decision, but it took all that she had; she needed her clone to leave with the eye she now protected before she changed her mind.
"Are you sure?" she heard the clone ask where she'd paused in the doorway, a hand suspended over her bag.
Are you sure?
"Just go," Sakura said, her voice muffled in her pillow, her tears welling up. No: she could not bear to carry Madara's eye any longer. It was a mockery of her year of madness. What use was there in keeping it here when he was so far from anyone's reach?
But she also couldn't just give it up; she still felt duty-bound to ensure its protection regardless of her pain. This, was her compromise: a clone with a generous percentage of her chakra, made to guard it just as she was made to leave this place and rediscover herself in a search for purpose far away from here. Perhaps she might find that new purpose, for a part of Sakura longed to leave Konoha and wander the world in the wake of her grief, and as an incarnation of that part this clone was a way for her to figure out if that was the right path for her.
Her clone's other purpose was to investigate a lasting question that bothered Sakura through her harrowed hours. Where was Sasaki?
Surely she was captured or otherwise in trouble; Sakura knew she wasn't dead. It had struck her odd, even though her blinding grief, not to see her at the Union funeral. It was continuously strange that she hadn't made any appearances here. She must be trapped or imprisoned by an enemy somewhere, Sakura had concluded, for if she wasn't, she'd have wreaked havoc for what had been done to Madara — she might even lash out at his killers in her rage. Sasaki, too, valued him deeply. She would never stand for this end to the war.
It was important that she find and speak with Sasaki before she did something rash. She would certainly be grieving as Sakura did… but be much more predisposed to violence as her outlet.
Sakura shut her eyes, fighting an odd wave of feeling. She was grateful for Sasaki. As capricious as the path with her had gone these past months, she was glad for how the woman that had become her strange kind of friend was so strong as an individual, so different from her in so many ways but still respectable and powerful. How incredible it was to Sakura that Sasaki had become who she was, the respected and revered guard at Madara's back, the highest rank in the Union that she could have attained. It made Sakura proud.
Sakura gave her clone a final wave, trusting she would execute her duties well. She was glad to temporarily give up the burden that had become a cursed memento; and by the time her clone returned with it, perhaps she will have healed enough to continue to keep it with her, but without such guilt and pain.
She was still haunted throughout her nightmares, but tonight was different.
She didn't question her surroundings, cast free into the vivid dream. She walked slowly through a thick forest humid with the heady scents and clinging warmth of evening drenched in summer. It was a familiar landscape, comforting from years growing up amidst Konoha woods, gifting Sakura a sort of soothing that was both conscious and unconscious for her; she didn't question how or why her nightmares had made such a shift. Neither did she notice the figure who watched her from the trees behind her, making a slow approach.
Drifting past mossy logs and ancient trees, she was unaware of the fact that there was no civilisation nearby. The finer details went missed; how the net of stars beyond the tree canopy was as deep and dark as the void without electric lights; the deep quiet of no human interruption, the abundance of wildlife and insects making an almost loud, constant white noise rising over cricket-song so much more present than she was used to. The conclusion Sakura's dreaming mind didn't care to observe was that this meant there were no villages yet at all, in the era of this particular dream.
She closed her eyes as she arrived at the foot of a stretch of grassy hills. She turned away from the moonlight, not wanting to think of it at all. Breathing in the pollen and earthy scents around her, Sakura absorbed the comfort of what she felt was home; she had no desire to question what had brought her such a respite of a dream amidst so much pain in her every hour, both waking and not. As long as this remained not a nightmare she would savour it.
She was a figure in white, the soft fabric billowing around her in robes like snowy tresses clinging to her slender shape. The grasses rippled around where she stood, her head bowed, her hands clasped, almost as if in prayer. Silvery moonlight threaded over the breeze-rippled grasses, whispering over her clothes and through her hair, and the humid breeze warmed her in the deep breath she took, absorbing this needed moment of peace.
The prickling of her skin was so familiar. So were the strange sensations one could only assign to that inexplicable sixth sense; like a warning, or almost a greeting, telling her of the approach made in her direction of someone she knew well.
But when Sakura turned expectantly, her mind wrapped carefully in the thick cocoon of the dream, the first flick of her eyes over the visitor was confused: she didn't recognise him.
Nor could she look away as eyes piercing red glowed through the summer dark, set high in his pale face. Dark hair drifted over his elegant features; the shadows that clung around his eyes almost masked the curves of lavender around his sharp gaze.
She opened her mouth to speak, undecided between greeting or dismissal, but the burning red of those eyes punched through the very fabric of her soul, intense as the light of a flame.
Familiar.
Sakura had never seen this man before, she was certain, as he stood before her — close, too close. Yet, the prickle of her skin was still welcoming, as if he was somehow beloved to her. Searching his features like repetition might find her answers, Sakura continued to find that she didn't know his face; his hair was in a strange style unfamiliar to her, two strands of beaded hair framing his expression, the rest of his wild black-brown locks tied back behind his head, but his robes…
Sakura's confused gaze flicked down once as the visitor regarded her. He was silent for a moment while she tried to process who he was.
She skipped over the easy observations that he was tall, leanly built and exuded power, her eyes widening upon the familiar black symbols marking his long white robes. They were absolutely recognisable as that of the Six Paths style, as striking and old-fashioned as he himself seemed like; but this man was not Madara, nor the Sage of Six Paths. Sakura looked back up into his face, frowning both at him and at the stab through her heart as she reconnected with his piercing stare.
Her pulse swelled in her chest with an accompanying rush of adrenaline as he loomed closer. Her mouth tightened, the adrenaline Sakura felt simultaneously angry and excited and so confused: why did she know him? How did she know him? Why did she feel she had known this stranger for more than the whole of her life when she had never even seen him before?
Sakura couldn't look away anymore, green eyes captured by narrowing red.
Indra.
She'd tasted his name without needing him to tell her. It was heavy on her tongue; too heavy to say, and lingering there, as if to prevent her from speaking. She was here to listen, not to talk, this time. She knew this without understanding how.
She swallowed thickly: she shut her eyes. Before her mind began to emerge from the pleasant, hazy warmth of the dream a little further, she registered how real this felt, as if she was living this in waking hours.
Sakura was startled by the feel of large, rough palms around her face; commanding, intimate, ungentle, familiar.
Sakura's eyes flew back open, and she searched Indra's strange, haunting expression, breathing harder, stiffening with startlement within his grip. He was watching her calculatingly, his manner severe even with the gesture of his hands around her face so unhesitant and almost affectionate.
She set her jaw, her nose flaring with the automatic anger she felt at Indra's unwelcomed proximity. Even though her half-conscious mind had begun to recognise this was a dream, she didn't know him. He shouldn't be this close to her, touching her like this. She should pull away. She should push him out of her space. She should—
"My wife." His words were certain and strong, and they resonated sharply with something in Sakura that she couldn't ignore, the inexplicable part of her that knew Indra. Her pulse spiked with his declaration of what she was to him like it was an accusation instead.
Her eyes widened with shock and uncertainty, but his hold on her face prevented her from pulling back, her hands clasped over her pounding heart as if to protect it. Still she couldn't speak, her teeth clenching, a conflict of confused wrath and fearless self-defensiveness sparking in her expression. She did not belong to this Indra — and she wouldn't tolerate him claiming otherwise.
Those hard, unkind eyes narrowed on her were luminescent through the dark, like beacons of unnatural light; achingly familiar, haunting, calling to ghostly depths beneath. With a flicker of understanding dancing behind his bright red Sharingan stare, Indra was unfazed and almost pleased by Sakura's defensive reaction, ignoring it completely and pulling a breath closer.
My wife. Why did he call her such a thing when they had not met? Sakura's brows twitched. She searched Indra's face again, certain once more she had never encountered someone like him in her life. She'd have remembered such eyes; it would be impossible to forget his bold, intimidating presence, and he reminded her in this moment so much of both Madara and Sasuke. He was reminiscent of them in the elegant cut of his features, the jagged dark of his wild hair that framed his face, the confidence and sheer power she sensed he possessed. He was eerily like them… too much like them — like an echo, or perhaps even an origin. An… ancestor? Or just a wild invention of her mind?
Wife — something unfurled in her chest in response to the word. That part of her that knew him without explanation, who responded to his presence like she'd known him across several lifetimes, felt deeply warm in answer to what he so boldly called her. Like hints gifted to Sakura's confused mind, the feeling cast flickers of lost memories to her: strange fractured visions of herself from a different time, her hair silken and long, her green eyes a little more aged, a little more wise, and just as strong. Someone like a warrior in a different time; someone she once had been, now just an echo living on in who she was now.
Sakura breathed in sharply, struggling to understand. She realised she'd lifted her own hands at some point, gripping Indra's sleeves in white-knuckled fists, her shoulders drawn taut as she searched his face with uncertainty.
It was now that she recognised the way in which he was regarding her.
Indra looked at her exactly as Madara once had, his manner eternally imperious — and impossibly intense, his eyes burning fervently bright through the darkness, raking over her features and cutting through her wide-eyed gaze. He dug his fingers in around her face in a way that was both vehement and possessive. "Do not give up now."
Sakura breathed in slowly, Indra's words puncturing between her ribs and constricting her heartbeats. The fear most would feel beneath such intense and dangerous scrutiny did not cross her as she blinked back up at him, a new shade of recognition unveiling from her sight.
This man was not Madara, but his perfect echo of Madara's past words struck her. Her half-dreaming mind understood through instinct rather than any rational explanation: Indra knew everything she had been through. He had seen it all; and somehow, he was inextricably a part of it. She may not recognise him as who she was now… but there was a reason she was instinctively familiar with him without logical explanation like how one knows how to breathe.
The fists she'd made in his sleeves released, and with steady hands Sakura pressed her hands back over her heart, lifting her head and meeting Indra's burning red stare with pride and strength. I won't. Her voice came from the whole of the dreamworld around her rather than just from her lips as she bravely held Indra's frightening eyes; she read the subtly warm recognition in his gaze from something he'd seen in her face as she answered him. I promise.
Sakura turned over in her bed, pulling her sheets over her head, nearly suffocating herself in how she tried to hide from it all. No — she didn't want to awaken… she would rather return to her strange dream or even the nightmares than to reemerge into the world she viewed as leeched of colour and meaning. Terrible, sinking ideas steeped in hatred and violence had lashed her grief-stricken mind the longer the hours stretched on; things she refused to entertain, but that wouldn't go away. Feelings of resentment… bitterness, threatening to become so much worse. The only thing Sakura knew for certain is that she could never go back to life the way it was and pretend that everything was fine. Not like this.
Sleep refused to pull back over her mind, and Sakura exhaled into the mess of sheets she'd bundled over her face, her brows knotting and throat tightening in a wave of almost random tears that frustrated and angered her. She was so sick of crying; it made her feel weak, like shedding tears was the only capability she had left. Now, when little things like insomnia had become enough to upset her, Sakura felt impossibly fragile; an insult to everything she had worked to become.
Weak. She lurched forward in her bed, a misshapen pile of sheets, pillows and escaped tufts of pink as she hunched in against herself, pulling the comforter over her exposed feet so she could stay hidden from the confined little world of her room and the dreaded moonlight behind the curtains. Weak; a failure.
She hadn't felt like that in her newest dream, though. Sakura's tight throat loosened a little as she sighed against the blankets she held around herself, slowly beginning to recall it. No; she'd felt a bit of peace, actually, a sweet and much-needed respite from her feelings of failure and lacking strength. The beautiful summer forest she'd been granted for her dream was soothing; and she had felt both beautiful and desired as well as charged with new hope after her encounter with that stranger.
Indra? Sakura blinked through sheet-bound dark around her at her hands, troubled, thoughtful. What a strange dream that had been, the image of his burning red eyes cutting through her mind's eye even now like he was still keeping her attention hostage. Indra hadn't scared her in the slightest, being so much like Madara, but if he existed in Konoha in any capacity he certainly would frighten even the most stalwart of people.
Her heart twisted: how bizarrely familiar he had been.
All of it had been very strange. Sakura shook her head, pulling the covers around her shoulders in a cloak and allowing herself to emerge into the cool dark of her bedroom, pushing a mussed mess of pink away from her face and rubbing at her eyes. While she'd very much meant her promise to Indra while in the dream, she was dubious of the whole experience now that she was out of it. He had to just be an invention of her subconscious; a strange fusion of Madara and Sasuke forged from an ancient era she'd dredged from her imagination. No matter how real Indra felt — him, and his demand of her — she couldn't reasonably assume anything more than that it was just a dream.
And he'd called her his wife. Sakura snorted to herself, making that the deciding factor that her encounter with Indra was nothing but fantasy. It wasn't real; she was well beyond ever seeking love with someone else ever again, and while his conviction that she not give up was encouraging or even inspiring, she felt unable to keep the hope he had instilled in her in the dream. He'd demanded something impossible of her, too. She shouldn't have promised it, even to a stranger in a dream.
Sakura lifted her heavy gaze to the curtain-swathed window, able to feel the moonlight even without its touch. No… there was no hope. There wasn't a way to avoid giving up. How could there be? There was no saving someone who was cast out into the stars; not without being a goddess, herself.
Tears welled up in her eyes at this thought, and Sakura didn't blame herself this time, letting them fall down her cheeks in pained streaks, her breaths hitching and her heart breaking once more.
As if in cold, bitter reminder the early-evening moonlight struck Sakura's face from between the drawn curtains, a sword of light cutting across her face. The twin moons made the young night twice as bright, carving the world with deeper, bolder shadows that felt alive in their inconstant shifting.
What you feel is valid. Kakashi's words still brought Sakura comfort, but the guilt that wracked her would not relent as she found she could not stop from blaming herself for Madara's death. Feeling his suffering through phantom nightmares was a whole new level of torment, and with a frustrated cry she swung her legs over the side of the bed and hunched deeper into herself, wringing her hands in waves of anxiety.
The house was eerily quiet. Certain she was safe, Sakura was uneasy anyway, the silence so heavy that she could hear her own heartbeats, listening to the uneven cadence of her shallow breathing.
If she hadn't already lost her mind with grief and thus lost her trust in her senses Sakura might have felt that something was more than off; that she was being watched — and not just by anyone; but she ignored the feeling, dismissing it again as she shook her head and tried to straighten out her wild locks of hair, rubbing her temples as her head ached with her stress.
She'd had so many stress nightmares that matched what she felt throughout daylight hours, all spent trying to think of ways she might reach him and free him. But no matter the thousand creative ideas Sakura attempted to cook up, she couldn't think of anything close to plausible for a plan to break him free. How could she reach something like a moon? Even if she climbed the tallest mountain and reached its highest peak, she didn't have a way to fly there.
Her eyes returned to the window, rising to the moon. Shadows circled Sakura's wild eyes as she paged again through all she'd thought of while sinking deeper into a new despair.
Wild ideas of coercing Sasuke to fly her there in his Susano'o so she could punch the moon into pieces and snatch up its quarry had ended with the recognition that they'd both starve for air before actually reaching it. Poring through books about seals had all reminded her that she'd need physical contact or at least close proximity to break the seal. Ranged destruction of the moon would likely kill Madara if he even still lived, and there was the problem of retrieving him safely.
Do not give up now — but even if she did manage to break him free and get them both back here without killing her, Madara was most certainly dead by now. The awful phantom-sensation nightmares where she had shared in his torment had faded away slowly, though she thought she still felt pulses of a slow, dying heartbeat that wasn't her own sometimes, a hint that perhaps, perhaps he was hanging on.
Sakura released a broken breath, hanging her head in her hands. She had all the medical skill in the world, but even she couldn't simply heal a corpse back to life. She would have to resort to much darker jutsus with hefty costs to have any hope of that.
Edo Tensei… she seized up with the painful absurdity of that idea, should she have Madara's body in her grasp with the moon issue out of the way. She had half an idea that Edo-Tensei could be cast here and now, if he was dead, but then realised that both Madara and his soul was sealed into that moon; it wouldn't work, even if she derailed enough from her morals and loyalties to attempt such a dark and forbidden jutsu. It was a terrible idea, and she scowled at herself for thinking of it at all.
She lifted her head, searching the pair of moons in the sky like they were a set of eyes regarding her instead. Was he truly dead? Was she being delusional in hoping that he wasn't? Or even selfish? If he still persisted, he was most certainly suffering. Her nightmares had made sure she knew of that.
Sakura pressed her hand over her heart, letting out a soft, pained sound: she truly didn't know how she could fix this. It felt impossible… and it felt too late. She was ashamed of herself for all the wasted time these past three days: ashamed that with all her studies, with all she'd trained and prepared for all these years, that she couldn't create even one plausible, doable plot that could pull him free and reverse this mess. It didn't matter how difficult it was. She expected herself to be able to achieve a solution anyway.
Sakura's peripheral vision flickered. Pausing in her pained internal digressions, she sat up taller at the end of her bed, her gaze breaking from the sky to the streets beyond her window.
She thought she could see a flitting shadow in the alleys beyond her house. This time she was much more aware of the tingling sense that she was being watched.
Sakura's expression tightened with annoyance more at herself than anything: of course she was being watched; she had her subterranean teammates guarding her house from harassment and otherwise. Any movement outside was more than likely just one of them walking about in their rotating vigil, making sure snooping visitors and strangers alike kept away. It could even be Orochimaru, making his occasional appearances to effectively scare off the bolder ones.
Sakura looked away from the window, still as uneasy as before. She probably should get a thicker cover than loosely-drawn curtains for her window; photographers could zoom in to sneak shots of her through the glass, should they find a way to get safely close enough to her house. While she had stayed far away from the newspapers being delivered to her parents, she knew they were probably trashing her as well as Madara, so she remained purposely unaware of whatever cruel headlines they would come up with. She was going through enough.
Sakura knew she was undoubtedly still one of their favoured subjects. It was more than likely they'd still be trying to get pictures of her since it was impossible now to photo him. She tried to dismiss the alley shadow to that idea, angry that someone could be unfeeling enough to try and profit off of her grief.
Just as she looked to her pillow, wondering if she might yet find untortured sleep, she heard her name whispered to her, hoarse and distant but unmistakable.
She froze, recognising the whisper.
No. Sakura almost laughed. She really was losing it now. She immediately asserted with herself that she needed to get a grip and get some actual sleep before she genuinely went insane from the stress.
Sakura.
Sakura swerved, already on her feet, standing just out of reach of the window: her sharp ears had pinpointed the next murmur this time, originating somewhere outside of the window, perhaps in the alley beyond. That, and every part of her down to the marrow of her bones recognised his voice. There was no question; she knew him too well. That was his voice; his whisper, rasped as if in extreme exhaustion, soft through her ears.
Even in her instinctual alert excitement Sakura forced herself to pause, her face growing blank with the awful question: was she in such throes of grief that she had begun to hallucinate?
Her throat tightened: it was entirely possible. It felt as if her soul had been torn; as if a part of her had been affected by Madara's unexpected loss in ways even she could not comprehend.
Her clone's strange choice of appearance, her torturous nightmares, and her haunting dream-encounter with Indra (whom she was still certain was some strange fantasy her subconscious had invented) had worried Sakura enough. But for her to go so far as to begin hallucinating Madara's voice during waking hours…
There it was again, her peripheral perception sharp from years of training: movement outside, a jagged shadow in the alley catching her eye before it was gone, once more. It wasn't anyone from her team. It wasn't anyone but the one person she knew it was.
Sakura's heart kickstarted. Like throwing gas on a flame, a fire roared up through Sakura's chest, her heartbeat a desperate percussion, ignoring all the dubious anxiety her mind tried to dampen it with. Madara. She was both absolutely certain and utterly in denial at once as she stepped forward, one hand over her pounding heart and the other settling upon the glass. The glass was freezing beneath her palm, and she made a ghostly vision through the ice-crusted pane as she stared out into the night, watching the streets with her full attention.
There was no one in the side-street but whispers of lasting dead leaves from autumn long passed; snow drifts up against walls, and the teeth of icicles looming down from heavy eaves; but she waited, her sharp eyes scraping across the view from her window, drawing the curtains slowly apart completely so she could see everything. Twice-lit moonlight cut the night in vivid silver, glittering atop blankets of snow and shading the shadows with deep, velvet blackness.
Sakura saw nothing; but the warmth of that whisper returned to her, a breath she could almost taste, trickling through the air and sliding into her mind in the barest, sweetest wisp of sound. Her brows twitched in her excited, tortured expression as she heard the pain beneath his brief utterance of her name; his weariness, but also his relief: relief she was finally listening.
In a violent break away from that listening Sakura startled back from the window hard enough to slam her toe against a bedpost. Cursing and hopping on one foot, rubbing at the offended toe, she tried to snap herself out of it.
Sakura cursed another couple of times, shaking her head as if to make the whispers she'd heard fall loose from her brain. She knew better than to let herself lose her mental stability this much. She was more than allowed to grieve, but she could not let herself throw her strength and mental acuity completely away. As a kunoichi, especially one with any kind of reputation, she couldn't afford to let her guard down even in times like this; even with friends keeping guard outside. It was an affront to herself, as it would be an affront to Tsunade, and to Madara; the two individuals whom she admired and took influence from the most.
But—
Sakura's breath caught, her heart quickening its pace as her head swivelled and her attention cast back out into the shadowed streets regardless of her efforts. What if it was him? Even in the infinitesimally small chance that was possible, what if Madara really was out there, trying to call for her? She could easily reason why he didn't make a more direct approach to her where she was in her room; he could be too injured, too weakened from his intensive blood loss to bypass her home's makeshift guards, and of course he wouldn't want to be seen. It would make sense for him to try to approach her at night like this, when there weren't crowds outside her house or dozens of attempted visitors, when he would be less likely to draw unwanted attention.
Her thoughts racing, Sakura drew closer to the window once more, snared in indecision. She couldn't help herself.
Sakura… I need you.
Her pupils dilated as her gaze flicked back and forth over the empty alley, increasingly anxious, almost desperate, Madara's pained whisper reaching her once more. Please.
Sakura had taken hold of the edge of the windowpane at one point. It cracked beneath her white-knuckled hands, and her shoulders were hunched, her heart pounding desperately against her ribs. She had spotted him again for certain this time, that recognisable serrated shadow cutting across the dark alley walls just out of reach beyond her window and back out of her view.
Any doubt or question that this was a hallucination was thrown out of Sakura's mind as she threw her sheets around herself, swerving towards her bedroom door and throwing it open. She only just caught it in time to prevent it from slamming against the wall and consequently awakening her parents and alerting her guards outside.
The forced pause this gave her made her recognise she was only in underclothes, and she snatched a dark qipao and pants from her dresser, pulling them on in record time. Yanking on her boots and tugging a thick jacket over herself, Sakura was an unstable kind of giddy, her blood rushing with a powerful rush of adrenaline.
She hurried down the hall on rushed, silent feet, using every skill she had at hand in keeping quiet as she stole her way to the back door of the house. Her thick jacket whispered around her figure as she crept past her parents' room, stealing towards her escape through the quiet hush of the house. It was painstaking to make sure her tall winter boots didn't squeak, and to be certain she didn't knock over the many vases and pots of flowers she had to navigate that looked on to Sakura's stealthy passage like silent, watchful crowds. Petals in every colour fluttered to the ground in a trail behind Sakura as she brushed past geraniums and lilies, roses and ferns and a hundred other flowers that made the air heady and sweet.
Colour flushed her cheeks with mixed excitement and ire as she had to halt, paused briefly by the stack of newspapers and vases that blocked her access to the back sliding door. With quick hands she moved things aside, her pulse rapid and hot beneath her skin. She didn't notice the photos on the newspaper pages, the headlines screaming hers and Madara's names; she saw only the locks on the door that were the final obstacles between her and the reunion she hadn't dared hope she could ever have again.
If she achieved that reunion, she'd never allow anything, or anyone, to break it. There would be no compromising. Sakura's scowl set in a dangerous, sharp-edged expression as she stamped this powerful resolve upon her heart. Once they were reunited… there would be nothing to dare try and pry them apart ever again.
As she lifted her hands to the bolts and easily broke the padlock over them under pale, determined fingers, Sakura could hear Indra's words again, harshly spoken through her ears like he stood behind her. She swallowed hard as the locks fell away and the door was unlocked, finding that her promise in return to him crept back up her throat like she was ready to declare it again — that she would never give up.
Feeling more alive now than she had in far too long, Sakura stepped out into the cold night, poised to do whatever it took to make this right.
Her boots crunching through ice and snow, Sakura retained her footing on the ground as she shut the door in perfect silence behind her. Standing tall, she turned at the sound of a sharp breath of surprise, catching Jugo's eye where he'd straightened from leaning against the far wall of the house a stone's throw away from her. For a second, he blinked at Sakura while she narrowed her eyes at him, uncertainty in his face contrasting against the almost lethal determination etched across hers.
Sakura asserted a placid smile after a pause, adjusting her long jacket around herself. "I needed a breath of air," she explained with ease, "I'm taking a five minute walk and I'll be back."
Jugo seemed to relax slightly. He nodded to Sakura respectfully. "Of course. Let me know if you need anything from us."
She looked away from him, her false smile disappearing as soon as Jugo stuck his nose back into the book he'd been reading; she ignored the curious look he strayed back in her direction as she then strode quickly into the alleyway where she'd seen Madara from her window before.
Absolute confidence slamming between her heartbeats left no room for doubt to echo in her mind; no room for questions even as they rapidly formed and fell away like steam from her thoughts, trying repeatedly to gain ground. She didn't listen to them as they circled through her again. How had he escaped the moon but left it intact? How had he gotten here from the stars — how could he have possibly lived through such a journey? Surely, Naruto and Sasuke would have sensed the seal being broken, but Sakura shed those questions from her mind in another furious shove as she immersed into the full dark of the alley, finding it was an intersection between side-streets heavy with shadow.
She stopped dead-still, her heart halting its beating. Her lungs were frozen like they were made of ice, her eyes wide upon him.
He was barely visible in the swathes of dark that cloaked him, out of her reach at the other end of the alleyway. He was leaning heavily against the wall, and even in blackness the wild falls of his silver-white mane caught glimmers of the doubled moonlight; as did the shards of glass she could see that punctured his silhouette like blades through his body.
Madara lifted his head slightly. She could feel his eyes on her through the dark, relieved, searching, sweeping over her utterly petrified figure struck with fresh shock at the sight of him.
Come with me. His words were audible only just above the thick hush of ice and snow around them, just as thin and pained as before, and before Sakura could form a response he turned in a swishing of wild hair and a cracking of glass, disappearing around a corner into another side-alley.
She followed, then, without further hesitation.
Her steps were quick-footed and sure as she followed that jagged shadow at an increasingly swift pace, barely paying attention to where they were going — never through main roads, stealing through intersections of shadowed little alleys and forgotten streets, taking turn after turn. Breathless, her heart back to pounding like she was on some hazardous precipice rather than the precipice of a joyous reunion, Sakura kept herself stealthy and silent as Madara led the way, knowing already how vital it was that no one see where either of them went. While her thousand questions and sentiments were heavy on her tongue, she withheld them: now wasn't the time yet. Not until they were safe.
She arrived in time to see the ends of his long mane drift out of view once more. She saw that he was leading her deeper into the dark, down a stairwell she didn't recognise into a lower-level complex of narrow side-streets. While her heart twisted strangely, Sakura stepped forward anyway, prepared to heal, prepared to mend, her thoughts and heart tunnelled into passionate focus within the moment. She was shielded from doubt by her reckless inspiration and desperation to leave her grief behind.
Madara's cracked murmurs were just audible enough for her to keep following; enough that she made it to the very mouth of a tunnel where he'd just stepped through into a new level of dark before she finally halted in her tracks.
Her instincts were screaming, and they weren't roaring in celebration; it was in warning.
Madara had stopped, too, and he turned where he stood alone in the heavy darkness, obscured completely. Sakura stared back at him, a cold, terrible numbness spreading out from her heart in creeping fingers of ice.
Madara's eyes were not aglow. They lacked their strange, unnatural luminescence. That, in itself, should have been enough for her to realise it before; but it was also in how there was no telltale prickle down her skin from his presence, lacking the power and oppressive potency he always possessed. There was something wrong, something very wrong, and it wasn't that he was injured.
There was the subtlest ripple across his pale, glass-punctured expression, only just visible through the dark; first of hurried, lingering confusion, then of recognition of what Sakura was understanding about him as she stayed where she was just beyond the mouth of the tunnel he'd been leading her into.
Madara's elegant features tightened in visible frustration, his gloved hands balling into fists.
Sakura drew a sharp, shallow breath, the sound echoing in the vacuous, shadowy tangle of alleyways where she stood, staring at him in abject horror. All of her previous joy and luster withered from her face as her heart sunk to her boots and cracked into the snow.
He wasn't Madara at all.
A deep, rasping curse roughened the darkness from somewhere to the side, and like it was a command, the false Madara began to fizzle away. All the serrated edges and cutting features of his tall, untempered frame dwindled and diminished into the faded, snow-paled figure of who he really was.
White Zetsu took an immediate step back further into the dark, his contrived disguise now completely faded away. He shoved a hand through his choppy hair and eyed Sakura nervously as she continued to stare at him.
The silence stretched forward another slow, heavy heartbeat. White Zetsu blinked back at Sakura, at her gaunt, stricken expression, watching her former hope and joy suffer a slow death.
Hunching slightly where he stood, there was something like guilt that flitted over his strange face, and with visible, hurried unease he glanced over into the dark as if seeking reassurance or new orders. Sakura was like a phantom where she stood in the thinnest shaft of moonlight, any colour or life gone from her stricken expression as she fully recognised the Zetsus' trick; as all of her so fleeting resolves and renewed hopes were struck dead within her, leaving her again as a numb, empty shell.
Yellow eyes materialised beside White Zetsu as Black Zetsu stepped forward, a figure made entirely of shadow. He had his strange, inhuman grin stretched wide, smiling, as he took in the sight of her; that look on her face as she'd watched her false vision of Madara die away before her.
"Are you feeling guilty for it all?"
She didn't react as his familiar, hated voice unravelled around her in a gravelly spiral, echoing in the empty tangle of hidden side-streets where she had been lured to. Lured and tricked, like a desperate child. She paled even further, horrified, stricken, guilty.
"Good."
Black Zetsu leaned forward, his yellow eyes burning upon Sakura with all the hatred in the world. "You should; because his death," they were both aware of the dual moons high above their heads looking down on their exchange, "his death is your fault."
Sakura's unfocused gaze widened upon Black Zetsu, his words visibly puncturing her as he went on. "Madara pitied you. He amused himself with you, since you were so easy to play. But in the end he weakened himself by loving you… and letting you near him," Black Zetsu's hands furled into fists as he glared at her, "was the mistake that cost him his life."
White Zetsu had taken another step back. He looked on to the other two with wide eyes filled with uncertainty and an unwavering sense of hurried nervousness, his attention switching between Sakura's face and Black Zetsu's aggressive, hate-wrought poise.
"And what a waste Madara's loss has already turned out to be," he was gesturing at Sakura in general, at her hollowness, at her tangible despair so painfully returned in the welling of tears around her eyes. "Look at you, withered into a shadow of yourself. You're weak and broken." Black Zetsu's grin curled into a sneer. "He would be disgusted seeing you as you are now."
Sakura's vacant eyes fell to her feet. She was silent, the bitter winter wind whispering across her stiff, numb figure, her hair shadowing her face.
Black Zetsu stepped slightly closer, his words even harsher. "Is that what you intend to do with his sacrifice? Waste away like the useless nothing that you've allowed yourself to become?"
The cruelty of his words rang sharp between them. Sakura lifted her head, her haunted eyes beginning to regain a dangerous glint the more that he went on, and the nervous energy White Zetsu had was growing exponentially as he noticed this. He was shifting from foot to foot now, antsy to retreat further into the dark of the tunnel.
Black Zetsu showed no sign that he'd noticed or cared about Sakura's subtle manner change. His voice echoed forward, harsher and harsher, a flag waved before a bull. "Days spent hiding in grief, after sitting back and doing nothing in the final battles as he was killed in front of you — all because you were too weak to do anything about it. You disgust me, too, Sakura. What little you've managed to do for either cause in the end was pathetic… even for you."
A deep, terrible rage sparked within her ghostly stare.
"That someone as valuable and powerful as Madara would destroy himself over such a miserable, useless woman like you…"
Black Zetsu regarded Sakura without mercy or pity. In the thin moonlight, his eyes burned upon her, intense and unwavering. "The king of the world… wasted, on the dirt of it."
Red scorched over her face in a rage blazing and tangible. It sparked in her eyes, shadowing over green with vivid rage, and she'd stepped towards him with visible, homicidal fury — the final warning sign that Sakura was about to slaughter them both: her fists bleeding beneath digging nails, her eyes wild and mad with blinded, terrible anger at his cruel trick and crueller words. The light of the twin moons shone down on Sakura's toned shoulders and frame, still lithe and strong even in her recent days of hollow despair, and she was bleached red and white in the wintry light as she prepared to utterly annihilate the both of them with all the strength she possessed.
White Zetsu had long gone. Black Zetsu remained, sneering at her. A strange kind of gladness glittered across his flat stare in response to her fury. "Ah, a show of something other than sobbing or tears at last. Good—" he beckoned to her, his grin returned, taking an inviting step back into the blackness of the tunnel mouth, "this was why we brought you here, alone, without your little guard crew. It's finally time, Sakura. Have a final use for yourself before you waste away in your grief. You and me—" Black Zetsu's raspy laugh echoed through the tunnel, "Uninterrupted and alone we will fight to the death."
She stepped towards him again, barely listening in her burning rage. The air rippled around her, her eyes burning through the darkness like a demon's. The sheer innate power Sakura possessed had become a simmering aura around her as oppressive and as terrifying as Madara's once had been. He was echoed in her frightening presence, all murderous rage and unleashed fury, and Black Zetsu had to step back further even with the brave face he'd put on, intimidated somewhat by her unveiled latent power. She had become much stronger over the last year… and she had been too strong already.
"It's what we've both wanted all this time, right?" Black Zetsu beckoned again, his voice almost manic and now hurried like White Zetsu, stepping back once more, "We have hated each other since the very beginning. Held back from killing each other before only for Madara's sake — well. Now he's a corpse once more, worse than a corpse, he's sealed away for good — thanks to you. All the purpose I had left on this cursed pile of dirt of a world is gone and what do I have left but my need to see you dead, Sakura? Finally! Finally we can fight to the death…"
The dark of the tunnel swallowed them both. Black Zetsu's words were as quick as his feet, Sakura moving fast towards him in a blur of rage and power, "...you've taken away all that I worked and planned for! Everything I dreamed of and wanted. Everything. Killing you in revenge is the only purpose I have left. Come, then—"
Sakura surged forward into the depths of the tunnel after Black Zetsu with an enraged roar, his last words echoing back to die away in the light of the two moons. Try for your petty vengeance, and I… I will have mine.