Chapter Text
[. . .]
"I'm out of him, I'm out of time."
[. . .]
Chapter 1
Death is Like Falling Asleep
[. . .]
It's cold.
So, so, cold.
Steps trudge through thick blankets of snow, skin chafed by burns and winter. Arms huddle closer in an imitation of the warmth of a lost hug, pressing into emaciated flesh, attempting to preserve the last of what matters. Flesh cracks, blood gathers, and tired eyes blur past an eternal blizzard.
There is no one left.
No one is coming.
Strength crumbles, and the struggling footfalls falter. Knees hit a cruel arctic, and hands smear the puerile white with gore.
I tried.
Kind eyes close for the final time.
I really did.
Spring dies.
Winter never stops.
Haruno Sakura never makes it past sixteen.
[. . .]
Sakura is crying.
That's the first, and foremost, realization she has the moment her breath jumps back into her lungs in a feverish gasp. Unwarranted, sudden tears slop from her eyes in thick rivulets, dribble down her cheeks, and land on a dull, chipped kunai she grips with trembling hands, adorned in gloves she hasn't worn in months. She stares uncomprehendingly at every callous, every scar, trying to make sense.
This isn't real.
"No, Sakura!"
That voice.
Sakura's heart leaps into her throat painfully.
Kakashi-sensei!
For a second, she thinks he found her. That she won't die in the cold, even if she doesn't feel cold anymore. Her head snaps up so quickly that her neck hurts, eyes searching frantically for her beloved teacher.
But she doesn't find him.
Instead, she sees the eyes of the one person who had torn her heart out of her chest and stomped on it.
Black, distant eyes, the color of the void, look at her.
Sakura stares disbelievingly into the eyes of Uchiha Sasuke.
She stares.
And stares.
There is no purple Rinnegan, no dismissal, but just an emptiness. And hatred.
Is this a dream?
Her ache doubles and revolts inside her chest.
Is this a nightmare?
She lingers with disbelief before her eyes immediately catch his arm that's drawing back.
No.
No, this won't be the same.
Her astonished expression hardens into a visceral anger, and she quickly sidesteps Sasuke's attempt to grab her throat like her memory once haunted her with. That damned memory, of her letting herself be weak, be frail, in front of the man who has always mocked her for it. She grabs his hand instead and grips the kunai, bringing him closer to her.
"No," She hisses savagely, before sinking the kunai into his abdomen without thinking.
Wild, shocked ebony eyes cower with green.
And she blinks, suddenly older, suddenly the same way she left.
"...Saku...ra?"
Sasuke's voice is distant.
Blood blooms where it shouldn't, and her hands smear with the mucilaginous viscera.
Her breath stops.
She falls.
The world disappears.
[. . .]
She jerks into herself again.
Deep breaths of an old oak seep into her lungs, renewing her with an old wound she would rather forget.
Because before her, blurred by tears and the whiplash of returning to an old poison, is the boy who broke her heart all those years ago, with a backpack strung over one shoulder and staring back at her with nothingness in his eyes. The cruel moonshine lathers his old clothes, his old self. The dullness in his eyes is haunted by grief, reflected in her given form.
Her, young, about twelve, merely.
But she—she's not in her body.
She knows it instantly. Because the dispiteousness in the younger Sasuke's eyes fractures, shatters into a raw and unguarded horror, confusion, she has never seen smeared over his pale expression. He staggers back from her as if she's struck him.
But... It's not her, is it?
It's not the girl she sees from the third person.
The little girl she used to be spins around at the same time, dragging in a shaking breath as she follows the path of his gaze.
Her eyes land on her.
Sakura's head dips on instinct to look down at herself. The sight nearly steals the air from her lungs.
Her body stands just a few feet away from the two kids, swaying faintly and drenched in sanguine. Blood soaks into her torn clothes and mats into her hair, streaking her hands in thick, drying crimson. From her fingertips, a heavy clot of blood slips free and hits the ground with a wet, obscene sound, an indisputable proof of her effort spared and useless.
Little Sakura screams, utterly terrified beyond imagination and piercing enough to echo.
Instinct overrides thought.
Sakura lunges forward and clamps a hand over the girl's mouth before the sound can carry. The scream breaks against her smeared palm, turning into a strangled sob. The child trembles violently at her silence with eyes wide and glassy, with a fear unexplained and cast cruelly upon her.
Sakura's stomach twists.
She didn't mean—she never meant to—
Movement shifts behind the girl.
Sakura reacts before she thinks.
Her head snaps up as her body pivots on pure reflex, and her hand lashes out. Fingers close around a thin throat, so fragile that with a clench of her hand it'll snap. Little Sasuke's feet kick at her numb body as she swipes him clean off the air without meaning to. Her grip spasms from the fright, muscle memory overriding reason as he claws her wrist with eyes wide, though not with fear.
With fury.
"How dare—" He tries to spit through the strangle she keeps on him, not understanding what he's seeing. Not understanding who she is.
She can't understand what she's looking at.
Sasuke.
Savingher.
Her, little Sakura.
The realization breaks her focus for half a second, and it's a fatal mistake. Because instead of going for the throat, her body should have gone for his arms—it goes for his wrist too late when a kunai flashes in the dead of night. There's a sharp, brutal pressure at her throat that follows with a wet, sickening slide.
The weapon punctures straight through.
For a moment, there's no pain but a mere copper warmth that creates a noose around her throat.
She lets go of them both.
Air refuses to come. A choked, gargling cough tears from her mouth, spraying a hot splatter of blood across the cobblestone. It spatters her chin, her chest, and she is doomed to stare as it smears across the ground between them.
Her vision tunnels at the edges.
Through the creeping numbness, she sees little Sasuke hit the ground hard before scrambling up with a wild determination and throwing himself in front of little Sakura. His arms spread protectively despite how they shake, and the hand he used for her murder weeps with the blood she can't afford to spare.
He is... so small.
So furious.
So brave.
Sakura lets him stay there. She feels nothing.
The blade still juts grotesquely from her throat.
Her hand rises with wet, trembling fingers, and she grips the handle before removing it with a rough yank.
The kunai tears free with a nauseating, wet sound. Blood she can't afford to lose surges after it, pouring down her collarbone in thick, pulsing streams. Far too much for her to spare, but nevertheless the same amount she had given to her loved ones before she was dead to them, too.
She sways.
Her body is already depleted from battle, her chakra thin and reserves strained beyond her capacity. But still, her coils flare painfully, pulling tight as they strain to flood the wound with her healing. The sensation of her strength raging through her veins like barbed wire unbearable, doing their best to restitch what she can't spare. She just can'tspareit.
Pulling.
Pulling, pulling, pulling.
Her palm cups uselessly at her throat, but hot blood still seeps between her fingers.
She lifts her gaze.
The children stare at her with horror.
It... hurts to see.
When she moves, they flinch.
Slowly, carefully, she raises an empty, trembling hand as a show of faith.
I am not the enemy, she tries to say.
The words never form.
Only a wet, broken croak spills from her ruined throat as air whistles through torn flesh. Her vocal cords are shredded beyond use.
She cannot speak.
To them, she must look exactly like a monster.
Her fingers curl, forming a sign.
It is just her own.
It's just me.
The little girl gasps with recognition, and that's all she needs.
Sakura lets the darkness consume her.
[. . .]
Her eyes open again to the back of her own younger self's head.
Not even a second later.
Why.
Why why why!?
She is a silent nightmare standing in this shadowed darkness, wearing old blood. Weak beyond what she canstand.
Whywhy.
Why, if at all?
She doesn't say a word.
Instead, she lifts her gaze and lands it on her own body, before emptily watching it dissolve into the cemented ash of Kaguya's metal rods.
Her stomach revolts.
I'm still there.
I'm still not gone.
She staggers, clutching the ache in it.
Her sandal skids and draws attention, and the kids gasp at her, whirling and facing to see her losing her fucking mind.
She can't make any sense of this.
She can't think.
She cannot.
Think.
Shecannot—
Soft, tiny hands cradle her face.
"Sakura, stop—!"
Sasuke's younger voice is drowned out by the soft question uttered by the girl who looks down at her with horrified, kind eyes. "...You're me?" She breathes, and Sakura can't process that she's on the floor, staring at nothing but the moon and the mistakes it has seen.
She doesn't respond.
With a deadly swipe, she steals a weapon from the girl to plunge the edge directly into her own skull.
[. . .]
She wakes up in a different place, this time.
It's her old bedroom.
"You—you're back!"
Sakura cracks her neck with terrifying speed at the voice standing at the foot of the bed.
Little Sakura.
Her.
And...
"Who are you?" Sasuke snarls, Sharingan swirling red.
She can't help it.
She cries.