Chapter Text
Darkness.
That was all which greeted her as she cracked her eyes open in the murkiness. Groggy, she lifted her arms, confusion creeping in as she felt the silky feel of water surrounding her. Where was she? Squinting, she peered through the water, blinking at the three blurry shapes she could see outside of the thick sheet of glass keeping her confined.
Though very soon that wasn’t the case as glass shattered and scratched her in places. Water gushed out, the mask covering her face removed just as swiftly, and then she was being carried out of the strange tube. Her mind worked overtime, memories rushing to the forefront of her mind as she tried to remember how she’d ended up there.
Kaguya. Her sealing. But everyone was already dead. Naruto. Stupid idea. Seal. Flare of light. Then—there. Sakura groaned, blinking the last of the water from her eyes, peering up at the three figures standing over her.
Two heads of red hair. One white. Lips moved, voices sounding murky and far away, but as she regained her senses, she realised exactly what the hell was going on. “Is it Sakura?” the one with silky straight hair asked, big black eyes peering at her curiously, three damning whisker marks on either cheek telling her exactly who it was. “She’s the only living experiment left… and she’s a girl…”
“Really?” the slightly spiky-haired one muttered, rolling his eyes. “I couldn’t tell.”
“We’ll find out soon enough, Naruto-kun,” the white-haired one spoke that time, snorting and shaking his head. “See. She’s coming around.”
Sakura found herself being lifted by the soaking white shift she wore. “Sakura-chan? Is it you? Neh, it is you, right?” Naruto asked, shaking her back and forth as though that would make things better – it made things worse.
She really wanted to throw up.
“Give her some space, idiot!” Sasuke hissed.
It seemed his duck butt had grown out.
There was a pause, a moment of absolute stillness, before the one she assumed to be Kakashi-sensei snorted yet again. “Yep. That’s definitely Sakura-chan.”
“Hn.”
“What’s goin’ on?” Sakura blinked at the raspy voice which escaped her. Was that a lisp? She found her feet, careful of the broken glass and brickwork which seemed to be littered about the large white slabs of tiling. A quick look around the room now the water had been cleared from her eyes showed it to be a lab of some description, with four large glassy tubes stretching across the wall on one side, including the one she had just been freed from. “Sh’eal?”
“Her file is here!” Sasuke called from a filing cabinet across the room, tucking yet another file into his chest. There were four of them in total now. One for each of them.
“Orochimaru probably has spares somewhere else, so there’s likely to be some record of our existence—”
“Hol’ up.” Her tongue felt like sandpaper. Heavy sandpaper. “Wha’s happenin’ here?”
“No time to explain, Sakura-chan!” Naruto declared, just as Kakashi scooped her small sodden form off the ground. She was shorter than all of them, annoyingly enough. “ANBU are infiltrating the place now, and we can’t afford to be caught… otherwise who knows what’ll happen…”
“Danzo got a hold of Yamato from a lab like this one, and I do not want him getting his sticky fingers on any of us. We can bring ROOT down from the outside swiftly enough,” Kakashi said, eyes narrowing on all the various exit points. “Come on you two,” he ordered, sparing a glance at Naruto and Sasuke before he hurried out into a darkened hallway.
His hair, now a stark white rather than a dull silver, fluttered in the wind as he ran towards the exit of the lab. Sakura curled her hands in the white shift he wore, noting how it was only slightly damp. Kakashi must have escaped his containment earlier than the three of them, she mused, shivering as cold air hit her sodden hair and skin.
Rubble and broken light casings were scattered across the floor, and Sakura could only wince when bare feet trampled over it in their hurry. Stains marred the walls, numerous and each as foreboding as the next as Kakashi carried her through a maze of corridors.
Naruto and Sasuke followed on their heels, the sounds of other, larger feet making their way through the compound only encouraging them all to hurry away from the scene. Sakura didn’t particularly want to be caught, especially when she had no idea what was going on. Shivering still, she burrowed into Kakashi’s warmth as best she could as they ascended up a thin ladder.
Grunting, he pushed away the covering, revealing a sky studded full of stars. They were all exactly as she remembered them, but there was no way to tell where she was just by that. She had never been good with any form of navigation, aside from when it came to reading maps.
Blinking slowly, she peeped out from Kakashi’s shoulder, staring at trees… and more trees. The kinds that grew in Konoha’s forests. “Kono’a?” she mumbled feebly, trying to get a sense of where exactly she was. She could barely remember what Naruto’s seal had been supposed to do.
It had to be some sort of time travel, though, or so she realised as Kakashi led them to the very borders of the forest – because there, down the steep hill, lay the bustling very much alive village she had once grown up in.
The streets were darker and far more larger than she remembered, but part of the eeriness might’ve been to do with the fact she was pretty much dripping water left, right, and centre. The shivers running down her spine might have just been water droplets for all she knew. Curling into Kakashi for warmth as much as she could, she flinched whenever she caught sound of people nearby, going about their usual nightly routines – whether it be stumbling home from the bar, or bringing the washing inside and dealing with the menaces that were small children.
Small children… like her, like the ones she’d babysat before on the dreaded D-Ranks. She hated babysitting missions with a passion. A pure, unbridled loathing, which was rather unfitting, considering she looked to near enough be a bitty baby in body. Her toes were so much smaller than she remembered.
Kakashi hummed contemplatively as they reached a flickering streetlight, just as it sputtered and finally blinked out. “This is the place.”
Sakura watched through heavy-lidded eyes as Naruto and Sasuke rounded the corner, arguing quietly between themselves as per usual. “Neh, Kakashi-sensei, where are we?” Naruto asked, peering around the street. It was in the civilian sector of Konoha, a part not frequented by shinobi. “What’s this place for?”
Kakashi raised one white eyebrow. “You really think we can walk around looking like we just came out of one of Orochimaru’s labs?”
Sasuke grunted under his breath, no doubt recognising the clothing store for what it was.
“Naruto-kun,” Kakashi spoke, setting Sakura carefully down on her shaky feet. “Keep an eye on Sakura-chan and keep a look out. Me and Sasuke-kun will go and acquire some better clothing for us.”
Sasuke nodded sharply.
“If a shinobi comes past, though I highly doubt they will, then hoot like a barn owl – there common enough as it is around here,” he instructed, tugging Sasuke around to the alleyway and the back entrance to the store, leaving her there with Naruto on the quiet street.
“Naru,” Sakura slurred, huddling close to him as he sat down, leaning his back against the storefront. “What did that sh’eal do?” she asked, cursing internally as her tongue struggled over the words thanks to its disuse. The only way to cure that though was to speak more, so speak she did. No matter how humiliating the sounds were.
“Oh, I pulled us all back in time,” Naruto said, grinning widely as he scratched the back of his head. “Don’t you remember, Sakura-chan?”
She shook her head. “Fuzzy,” she mumbled, rubbing her forehead. It felt smaller than she remembered. More proof on their space-time jaunt then. Her body was different, both her wide forehead and her pink hair having vanished. At least she wouldn’t get teased about them this time around… Well, that was supposing they didn’t immediately graduate from the academy and go out on missions. Only little children would think to tease her about things like that. Real shinobi had better things to be doing with their time.
“Oh… Maybe it’ll get better over time?” he offered. “Or maybe after you’ve got some rest – you’ve got some wicked eyebags going on there.”
Sakura resisted the overwhelming urge to sock him one right in the face, settling instead for pinching her nose and sighing with vengeance as she waited for their two teammates to return with their stolen goods. Her head ached something fierce, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up on end the clearer everything became.
An underlying sense that something was wrong.
Frantic, Sakura glanced around, wondering whether anyone was watching them – a possible cause for her unease – but there was no one there, and she had always been rather skilled in finding potential enemies. It was something she’d had to learn, given Team Seven’s penchant for finding trouble.
“No trouble out here then?” Kakashi inquired, and Sakura jolted at the sound of his voice so close behind her. He’d never had much trouble sneaking up on them.
“Nope, Kakashi-sensei,” Naruto chirped.
Sakura looked at his hands, pausing as she took in the scroll in his grasp. “Is that…?”
“A sealing scroll. Drew it myself just now,” Kakashi said, hovering in the shadows of the alleyway beside their shop of choice. “Obviously there wouldn’t be one in a civilian store, but there was this scroll – and while it might not be shinobi-grade sealing paper, it does the job.”
Sasuke materialised next to him, rucksack on his back, and Sakura could see a single corner of the files sticking out from the little blue bag. So that was where those had gotten to. She needed to read through those, if only so she actually understood what exactly was going on with her life nowadays. “So we’ve got our supplies for the most part… which means the next thing on the agenda before morning—”
Naruto tilted his head. “Agenda?”
Sakura sighed. “The next part of the plan, Naruto,” she grumbled. “Which reminds me, when ish someone going to explain our… mission, whatever it is we’re doing next?”
“Once we’ve found somewhere to stay, we can hash out what exactly we’re going to do,” Sasuke said, running a hand through his silky red locks, which, Sakura noted, had been tied back with a pretty black ribbon. “Oh, that reminds me,” he continued, lifting his hand so she could see the matching black ribbon in his hands, face turned away so she could see the red flush to his ears. “I got this for you. Want me to tie your hair up for you?”
Sakura almost squealed. It was like all her childhood fantasies come true. “Sure!”
Naruto cleared his throat as Sasuke pulled her hair back into a low ponytail. “Uh, Sasuke… where’s mine?”
He moved away from her, his task complete. “Hn.”
“Sasuke!”
“Quiet,” Kakashi barked, beckoning them into the alleyway out of sight. “We can’t be found right now, unless you want everything to fall to pieces, so ideally keep your mouths zipped shut until we find some camping grounds.”
Sakura blinked. “Camping?” She tilted her head, mind racing a mile a minute as she tried to be of some use beyond the deadweight she’d been so far. She hated being the one letting the side down. “Would a disused training ground work?”
“My thoughts exactly… looks like you’re still the smartest out of the three of you,” he said, and Sakura felt a part of herself preen in response to his words. She was still the horrible teacher’s pet Ami had once accused her of being. Some things never changed, she mused, glancing at her two teammates’ hairstyles and appearances, other things did.
“Where will we go then?” Naruto bit his lip.
Sasuke looked contemplative. “Wouldn’t an ordinary park work just as well?”
One stark white eyebrow rose. “And have a civilian adult discover us instead?” Kakashi shook his head. “It would be better to go somewhere nosy civilians aren’t allowed.”
“But all the training grounds are pretty much always in use,” Sasuke complained, glaring up at the eldest of them. “The park would be a better option – Naruto even survived there for a time, and we all know how thick he was back then.”
“Hey!”
“There’s one training ground—”
Cold rolled down her spine, and she stood straighter, hiding the shudder as best she could. “I’m feeling an ominous shiver down my spine all of a sudden,” Sakura said, glaring at Kakashi pointedly, praying he wasn’t talking about where she thought he was. “Please don’t tell me it’s—”
“The place usually used for the Chunin Exams.”
Sakura whimpered, remembering the snakes, oversized lizards, and the terrifying tigers which roamed in those trees. “A place usually called ‘The Forest of Death’ for a damned good reason,” she hissed, gesturing to her tiny body. “I barely survived there when I was a twelve-year-old genin – and now I’m some six-year-old child in body…”
“Sakura-chan, don’t flatter yourself, you’re more like three or four-years-old going off your appearance, though we’ll know for sure once we check your file.”
“Pssh. Maybe I’m just short for my age,” she muttered, glaring at the grimy grey walls of the alleyway.
Kakashi’s expression told her exactly how likely he thought that was. “Anyway, you all remember where that place is, don’t you?”
Sakura shuddered. “I don’t think I could forget.”
He clapped his hands together quietly. “We’re splitting up, just in case,” he informed them. “Naruto will be with me, so I can keep him from walking into trouble, and you two will be going as a pair.”
“I’m not that bad,” Naruto grumbled, folding his arms as he pouted.
Sasuke rolled his eyes. “Are too.”
Sakura stepped between them, sensing the impending fight. “We need to get going,” she said, excited and somewhat horrified at the idea of traveling with Sasuke to the Forest of Death – on one hand, Sasuke, but then again, it was the Forest of Death for a reason, and she had no idea how the jump had messed with her chakra… if it had at all. Personally she prayed it was the latter. She liked being able to punch things and watch them break. It gave her a sense of pride and accomplishment.
She would no longer be staring at their backs.
“Let’s go then,” Sasuke said, throwing a set of shorts and a hoodie her way. It near enough matched what he was already wearing, having changed inside the shop.
She pulled the outfit on, adjusting the now somewhat damp white shift until it was mostly covered by the hoodie. It could pass for a long shirt, she decided, content in the fact she no longer looked like one of Orochimaru’s experiments.
“How good is your chakra control?” Sakura asked, peering between him and the retreating forms of their two teammates.
Sasuke tilted his head, as if weighing up her words. “Rooftops?”
Sakura jumped up, scowling as her little legs only took her three-quarters of the way there. Her face slammed into the brickwork of the nearby building, a quiet huff escaping her lips as the air was knocked out of her. Chakra lashed out, clinging to the bricks, latching her to the wall like a terrible imitation of a starfish.
A quiet snigger sounded, and Sakura glanced up, a bright blush blooming on her cheeks as she spotted Sasuke crouching on the edge of the roof. He peered down at her, eyes spinning from red to black, and Sakura loathed Naruto in that moment. It had been his idea for Sasuke to capture happy moments with that sharingan of his. Back when the war had been going on, there had been no opportunity for him to do that, but now he had started at the worst possible moment – when she was making a fool out of herself. Seemed Sasuke was actually taking up Naruto’s advice, which was good in some ways.
“That was deliberate!” she hissed, rubbing at the grazes she could feel on her face from the harsh impact. “I was just testing my chakra control, and it’s still perfect, thank you very much.”
One eyebrow arched. “Hn.” Which Sakura automatically translated into I do not believe you whatsoever. The urge to strangle Naruto overcame her, and she longingly glanced in the direction he and Kakashi had vanished.
They’d meet up at the Forest of Death soon enough. She could strangle him then, Sakura decided.
“Come on,” Sasuke said, and Sakura accepted the hand offered out to her. “We need to get going, otherwise Kakashi will get worried I’ve… wandered off again.”
“It’s called defecting, Sasuke,” Sakura muttered, thoughts going back to the bench he’d left her on when he’d vanished that first time. “No point in saying it like that… unless you’re actually ashamed of what you did.” Unless he regretted leaving her behind on that bench, and somehow Sakura doubted he did.
Sasuke was silent, and then he was jumping to the next roof with barely a whisper of sound. Sighing quietly, she followed. The bench he’d left her on probably still existed there, thanks to Naruto taking them back before Pein razed the village to the ground. She glanced down at the street, double-checking the street stands, shoulders sinking in relief when she took note of how modern they seemed. People were still bustling about, the lights were on in Ichiraku Ramen, a mother was carrying her sleeping toddler down the street, Senju Tobirama was carrying a brown paper bag of shopping, and—
Sakura paused, grabbing a hold of Sasuke’s arm before he could bound onto the next roof over, rubbing her eyes furiously, peering down at the chalky white head of hair. “Sasuke…”
Black eyes bore into the side of her head, eyebrows arched minutely in question.
“Are my eyes going funny or is that Senju Tobirama walking down there?” she hissed, jerking her head in the direction of the man with three red lines on his face. “Carrying shopping… looking ridic-ridiculoushly domestic?” she questioned, cursing internally at her continued lacking pronunciation. But it was definitely getting better. She only slipped up occasionally now, unlike when she had first started talking after the tube.
His eyes scanned through the crowds, widening when they fell on the man in question, and his head jerked up along with her own – both of their eyes locking on the Hokage Monument.
“Four faces…” Sakura mumbled. “Then we should be in the right…”
Sasuke elbowed her in the ribs with his annoyingly bony elbow. “Second face. Second face!” he muttered, looking seconds away from a panic attack, or a full-on meltdown.
She turned back to the monument, peering at the second face in question, blood freezing as she realised its likeness. “That’s… not the same,” she said, staring at the stone likeness of Uchiha Madara. “Definitely not the same.”
“Naruto screwed up,” Sasuke snarled, lightning sparking around his fingers as he looked ready to chidori their favourite ex-blonde. “That… goddamn idiot. I’m going to kill him when I get my hands on him… Uzumaki Sealing Master, my arse!” He leapt over onto the next roof, spitting curses all the while.
Sakura followed.
At least until he started using his lightning element, leaving her behind in the dust. Like always. A snarl pulled at her lips, temper rearing its ugly head only this time it was directed towards the boy who had never really tasted the full extent of it the way Naruto had. “SASUKE!” she yelled, momentarily forgetting the need for stealth, and the usual honorific she added to his name. “GET BACK HERE YOU BASTARD!”
She popped her hand over her mouth almost instantly, blush rising in her cheeks as she prayed no one had heard. Or at least Sasuke hadn’t. She had grown far too used to Naruto affectionately calling him that when they’d spoken of him. Just the two of them. Though how to affectionately call someone a bastard was something she hadn’t quite managed to do just yet.
Racing over the street tops was far more tiring than she remembered, probably thanks to her tiny body which had been stuck in a tube for who knew how long. And Sasuke hadn’t bothered to slow down for her, too caught up in his rage. Like always. Sakura let out a long sigh for what felt like the thousandth time that day.
So when she finally made it to the Forest of Death, she was panting for breath. It was far too close to the outskirts of the village, with only a mile or two of forest between it and the village wall, located slightly to the north of the training ground of its preceding number.
“Sakura-chan…” Kakashi smiled at her, the usual mask back in place, white hair dancing in the breeze. White hair which suspiciously looked at though it had been cut hurriedly with a kunai. “Glad you could make it.”
“Where are the other two?” she asked, glancing around for the duo.
Kakashi waved a hand, scooping her up in the next second before he jumped over the barbed fencing and into deadliest training ground inside of all of Konoha. Sakura gulped. “Don’t worry. Sasuke-kun just started trying to affectionately stab Naruto-kun for some reason a couple of minutes back.
Sakura blinked. “How do you affectionately stab someone?”
Kakashi continued smiling. “No clue, but Sasuke-kun is certainly doing just that,” he said, just as a hand of lightning speared through the chest of a clone, Sakura realised, as it popped into a cloud of shadows. “Me and Naruto-kun arrived a while ago, and we’ve been setting up camp. I’ll give you your file once Sasuke-kun stops running about with it – and would you look at that,” Kakashi remarked, touching down in the little clearing by the river. “There they are,” he said, glancing between the two panting children with an alarming amount of cheer. “Sasuke-kun, be a dear and give Sakura her file. She’s the only one who hasn’t seen hers.”
Sasuke harrumphed, but took the bag off his back, sifting through the four files until he found the correct one. “Here.”
The thick brown file slammed into her chest – right into the gut – and Sakura found herself gasping for breath, glaring menacing at the boy whose actions were irritating her more than she thought possible. Maybe her new tiny body wasn’t as good at holding in as much rage, she mused, opening the file, scowling in the darkness as she tried to make out the words.
Something hard and plastic slammed into the side of her head, and Sakura whimpered, feeling tears building in her eyes at the impact. Definitely her new body, she decided. Clearly some of her reactions and mentality had drifted more towards her body’s younger age. Sakura glanced down at the object Sasuke had thrown at her. A torch. “That makes things easier,” she muttered, switching it on, wincing at the brightness.
“What’s it say?” Naruto bounced eagerly on his toes. “Who’s your mother and father?”
“Mother and father…?” Sakura echoed dumbly.
Kakashi chuckled. “These bodies didn’t appear randomly. We were shoved into them by Naruto-kun’s seal.” He hummed under his breath. “Try the second page in. That’s where the information was for our files.”
Nodding, she flicked over the page, focusing the torch on the picture and the words around it. “Maternal DNA…” Sakura blinked, staring at the photo of the woman. “Uzumaki Kushina?”
Naruto gasped. “No way… My mum is your mum this time around…”
Sakura stared at him. “Are we actually… siblings… this time around?” she asked, heart thumping as she glanced over at Sasuke. Well there went any chance of a future with him… but at the same time, she couldn’t help but feel excited – she’d never had siblings before, never grown up with any, at least until Team Seven had rolled around.
Naruto shook his head, and Sakura felt a part of herself relax. “All the rest of us have Uzumaki Mito listed as ours.”
“Oh,” she mumbled. “Who are your fathers then?”
Kakashi shrugged. “Senju Tobirama,” he said, pointing at his white hair as though that was supposed to explain everything.
Naruto grinned, scratching the back of his head. “Senju Hashirama. Me and Kakashi-sensei are half-brothers and cousins… cool, isn’t it?”
Sakura glanced over at Sasuke, ignoring the exasperatedly fond look Kakashi gave his new little brother-cousin. “Uchiha Izuna,” he offered flatly. “He looks alarmingly similar to my… old self. Seems the idiot’s seal was good for something.”
“And if the theme continues, I’m fairly sure I can guess who your new father is, Sakura-chan,” Kakashi said. He chuckled under his mask. “The hair is a bit of a giveaway.”
“It also means we’re cousins,” Sasuke said, staring at her, and Sakura felt the little flame of love in her chest promptly get extinguished. Well the romantic flame that was. The little part of her that loved him like family remained. Because apparently they were related… well, if they were correct in guessing who her paternal DNA came from.
She shifted the torch down, blood running cold as she stared at the picture and the name written next to it.
Uchiha Madara, it read proudly, in bold black lettering.
The torch hit the ground with a dull thud, lighting the grass, the page of damning information cast back into the shadows of the night.
“Well, you did always want to be an Uchiha, didn’t you, Sakura-chan?” Kakashi said, smiling in a way that made her really want to punch him. Once she got over the shock of the fact that Uchiha Madara was now apparently one of her birth parents.
“How the hell did Orochimaru get his hands on the required… DNA of Uchiha Madara?” she all but cried.
Kakashi shrugged, along with Sasuke. “I’m not entirely sure I want to know the answer to that, but we were all seemingly grown in test tubes, so I’m hoping it was some sort of science.”
“Brilliant. Just brilliant,” Sakura mumbled, now carrying the knowledge that she was genetically related to a mass murdering madman who’d wanted to plunge the world into an eternal illusion. And the madness was apparently genetic. “Motherfuck.”
She might get sparkly red eyes, which evolved the more trauma one was exposed to, and one of the evolutions caused blindness unless replaced with the eyes of a brother.
“Motherfucking shit.”
And according to Kakashi it was somewhat obvious who her father was thanks to her… hair? Sakura’s hands went to her head, freezing as they felt a fluffy spike in her hair. She picked up the torch, shining it back on the picture of the wild-haired Uchiha. The untameable locks of her nightmares from her pre-genin days stared back at her. The file and the torch slipped from her hands, and Sakura ran to the river, praying under her breath that her sense of touch was skewed and Kakashi’s eyes were just as bad.
But… alas…
Sakura stared into the river, at her fluffy untameably bed-headed reflection with a sharp cry. “NO!”