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The kyuubi had a secret. A splendid, delicious secret that it held close to its heart: Kushina and her lover had made a mistake. A terrible, wonderful mistake that had left only half of the kyuubi’s essence sealed.
The mistake lay in Minato’s calculus of value. He put two half-souls against three objectives: ripping the kyuubi’s yin from its yang, imprisoning the kyuubi’s yang in his infant son, and casting the kyuubi’s yin into the shinigami’s eternal realm. With the shinigami’s help and half of one soul, Minato ripped the kyuubi’s essence in two. The other half-soul went to imprisoning the kyuubi’s yang (and, incidentally, the remaining halves of Kushina and Minato’s souls) into Kushina’s squalling brat.
With no payment for its services forthcoming, the shinigami released the kyuubi’s yin. Howling gleefully, the kyuubi’s yin half searched for, and found, an ideal vessel: one that was innocuous, close, and empty.
One that was female.
The kyuubi’s yin half reincarnated itself.
The Haruno household was on the outskirts of the village, nestled against the village’s outer wall. Haruno Hanako and her husband were both medic nin with distinguished service records and iron-clad reputations for discretion. They had met during the war in the emergency triage area and had quickly fallen in love. They had married a few months later.
Nearly nine months to the day after their hurried wedding ceremony, their first child had been born. She had been six pounds and eight ounces with fine blonde hair and bright blue eyes. They had named her Haruno Sakura.
When the Yondaime Hokage asked them to attend to his wife’s pregnancy and his child’s birth, Sakura’s parents quickly accepted the assignment. Recent events had given them a thorough working knowledge of pregnancy and childbirth. To prepare for the birth, the elder Harunos converted their spare room into a private delivery room.
The night that Uzumaki Kushina’s water broke, she and a coterie of specially chosen kunoichi were transported to the Haruno household by an anxious Minato. Some of the women were there to aid in the delivery; others were there to act as guards. Minato himself reinforced Kushina’s seal.
The Haruno home was the first structure leveled by the kyuubi.
Haruno Sakura died in an instant.
Kushina had housed the kyuubi’s essence for most of her life. Her chakra coils had been stretched aside, near to breaking, when it had been thrust into her by her cousin, Mito. Over the years since then, her chakra matrix had grown over and around the demon, mirroring Kushina’s own acceptance of the kyuubi into herself.
She had expected them to be parted only in death. Kushina had never imagined that the kyuubi might be ripped from her body, from her very soul, by a lone Uchiha.
Kushina’s chakra matrix, her very soul, was badly damaged the violation. It was an injury that followed her into death and through reincarnation, into her next life.
Of course, time only applied to mortal beings. The spiritual realm was governed by different laws. Thus it was that the half of Kushina’s soul that had passed into death, her yang, was reborn as a squalling infant with a full head of dark hair, thick eyebrows, and round eyes.
His new parents named him Rock Lee.
Kakashi was sleeping when the kyuubi’s attack began. By the time he fought his way through the fleeing civilian population and the various barriers that the clans had erected to protect their children (and prevent their genin from joining them in a hopeless battle against the kyuubi’s advance), Kakashi was too late to help his sensei or Kushina. He was too late for a lot of things.
Kakashi was in time to watch them die.
He was the first to reach their bodies, to pry Naruto from Kushina’s cooling arms. Sick with grief, Kakashi took their son to the hospital.
Minato’s reincarnation was born a month before his death. More specifically, the half of his soul that had been bartered to the shinigami and subsequently passed into death was reincarnated. (The rest of his soul, specifically the yang half of it, was locked away behind his son’s bellybutton along with the halved souls of a demon and his lover. It was a tight fit.)
As Minato’s soul was intact, if halved, the yin half of his essence was born into a new body with a perfectly healthy chakra matrix. The new body had fine blonde hair, blue eyes, and a piercing voice.
Her parents named her Yamanaka Ino.
Kakashi helped with the relief effort. He, his ninken, and the partnered members of the Inuzuka clan ranged through the worst hit areas, sniffing at and pawing through the rubble in the hardest hit areas as they searched for survivors and only found charred corpses, some no more than lumps of twisted charcoal. Their search was quick but thorough.
When one of Kakashi’s ninken signaled another find, this one at the origin of the kyuubi’s advance by the look of it, Kakashi reluctantly signaled to the search and rescue teams.
They started digging, slowly, methodically, and without much hope.
Hours later, a long, thin wail pierced the night. It was the cry of an infant.
Then they began digging again, more quickly but no less methodically. A genin runner was sent to the public records room of the Hokage’s tower to discover whose house, and more importantly whose infant, they were digging out. An Aburame and Kakashi were sent for, the former so that her insects could more thoroughly assess the situation and the number of people buried. The latter so that he and his ninken could re-survey the area for other survivors.
Rather than arguing that he had done a thorough job the first time, that there were no other survivors, Kakashi quietly set his grumbling dogs to reviewing every millimeter of the area.
He wanted to be there when the baby, the first known survivor in that sector of the village, was rescued.
The genin returned and, by eavesdropping, Kakashi learned that the house had belonged to a family called Haruno. The child in the rubble was most likely their infant daughter, Haruno Sakura. Her hand and footprints, which had been taken shortly after her birth, were on file with the records office but there were no known pictures of her. If any had existed, they had most likely been destroyed with her parents’ home.
Kakashi was still there, still pretending to search for overlooked survivors (or bodies) when they finally dug the bawling infant out. He only got a glimpse of her, this tiny, screaming life that Minato-sensei and Kushina had saved by their sacrifice, but it was long enough to see healthy pink skin and a head covered with shockingly pink hair.
Content, Kakashi resumed his search for other survivors.
The day that Kakashi made one of his infrequent (and grudging) visits to his civilian uncle’s house and discovered a toddler – specifically a somewhat familiar pink-haired, green-eyed one – Kakashi’s stomach lurched.
“What’s she doing here?” he demanded, whirling on his uncle.
“She’s my daughter,” his uncle calmly replied. “She lives here.”
There had been a spat of adoptions since the kyuubi’s attack, especially among the civilian population. Kakashi had never imagined that his aunt and uncle would follow the trend, however.
It felt like a blow.
“Why?” Kakashi demanded, hating the hurt tone in his voice. It was so childish.
“Because it seemed unlikely that you would ever deem to be our heir,” said his aunt briskly. She gently wiped mashed peas off of the little girl’s chin. “Unless you’ve changed your mind about the shop?”
“No,” said Kakashi curtly. Why make ninja gear when you could use it instead?
“Then it’s settled!” his uncle said cheerfully. “You’ll be Sakumo’s heir and Sakura will be mine.”
Words, sharp, unpleasant, and spiky, sat heavily on Kakashi’s tongue. Rather than saying any of them, Kakashi made his excuses and fled his uncle’s house.
There was something weird about Haruno. And Ino did not mean her hair (although that was pretty weird in its own right) or her (enormous) forehead or the fact that she was a civilian. (Civilian kids were always odd. They cried a lot and freaked out over the tiniest bit of blood and they never knew how to do anything, which meant that they asked a lot of dumb questions in class. Haruno did all of those things, of course, but somehow she was worse.) Her painful lack of confidence was beyond irritating. And, although Haruno worked hard to say and do the right things, she never, ever fit in. There was just something weird about her.
So, all in all, Ino understood why the other kids hated Haruno. That did not make it right, of course, but it was hard to disapprove when she felt the same way. As normal as Haruno looked, she was abnormal. She did not belong. And, not so very deep down, Ino had an instinctive urge to drive Haruno out of their class, the academy, even the village.
Appalled (and more than a little ashamed of herself for hating a clumsy, civilian crybaby), Ino avoided Haruno. And, even though Ino hated bullies, she tried to keep her distance from the entire Haruno Situation, she really did, until the afternoon that she stumbled on Haruno crying in an out of the way corner of the playground.
Like most shinobi children, Ino had a healthy scorn for people who were foolish enough to display their flaws and weaknesses for others to see and take advantage of. But, despite the things that she felt when she looked at Haruno, Ino was not cruel. And so she was not cruel to Haruno. She treated Haruno like she was Shikamaru instead of the class pariah.
Sakura lapped up Ino’s kindness like it was sugar water and she was a rose.
The way Sakura looked at Ino, like Ino was the brightest, shiniest, most perfect thing that she had ever seen, made Ino’s breath catch in her throat. It was amazing. And slightly terrifying.
Staring down into Sakura’s happy, trusting face, Ino wanted to help her, take care of her, and shove her out of the village’s gates.
She’s a bud now, Ino thought, but if I tended her, she could bloom into something amazing.
Ino told herself that she wanted to see how strong someone could become under her tutelage. She told herself that it was applied botany, nothing more. She promised herself that she definitely was not going to get attached to someone as weird as Haruno Sakura.
Ino loved Sakura fiercely.
The first time that Naruto laid eyes on the pink-haired girl in his class, he knew two things. Firstly, that she was the prettiest girl in the village. She was so pretty that it made his palms sweat and his bellybutton ache. Secondly, that he wanted to stay as close to her as possible, closer even. He wanted to hold her and squeeze her and let her feed him ramen.
Unfortunately, she seemed to hate him on sight, like everyone else.
“You’re so annoying, Naruto! Leave me alone!”
“No way! We belong together!”
“Tch, you wish! I don’t want anything to do with you!” As she turned to storm away, Sakura sent one last, furious glare at Naruto over her shoulder. “I mean it, Naruto!”
And, for a moment, Naruto thought that maybe Sakura really did mean it.
No way! Naruto thought in the next moment. He rubbed his stomach, which felt hot and tingling. She can’t mean it! We belong together!
Then, because an aching tummy was a hungry tummy, Naruto went to beg ramen off of Iruka-sensei.
Sakura repulsed Sasuke in ways that no one, not even that idiot Naruto or the rest of his fan girls combined or even Itachi, could ever manage. She was pretty enough but something about her made Sasuke’s skin crawl, his stomach clench, and his eyes ache. He wanted to get as far from her as humanly possible, which was somewhat difficult as she seemed to want to get as close to him as possible.
Sasuke endured her presence for six long years and her affections for two excruciating ones. He looked forward to genin team assignments, when he would leave her and Naruto and the rest of their stupid classmates behind and focus on his own training.
When Sakura got saddled with the class’ dead last loser, it seemed like karmic retribution. Hidden behind his hands, Sasuke smirked at her misfortune.
When he discovered himself saddled with both Sakura and Naruto, Sasuke choked on his shock and disappointment. (Was he never to escape those two?)
Sasuke’s genin years were going to be hellish.
When Sakura rushed home and told her parents about her new teammates and new jonin sensei and, best of all, Sasuke, Sakura’s father grinned broadly and said, “So they’re keeping it in the family, eh? Good!”
“What?” Sakura asked. “I don’t understand.”
And that was when she learned that she had a cousin, a cool and famous and completely elite shinobi cousin, who could have been helping her with her taijutsu assignments and poison formulations and traps all along.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Sakura demanded. Frustrated, she buried her hands in her hair, arched her back and moaned, “Do you know how much easier the academy could have been? I bet I would’ve been a way better kunoichi than I am by now if I could’ve gotten a few tips off of Kakashi-sensei!” Straightening, Sakura released her hair and flailed her arms for emphasis as she added, “Ino gets all sorts of tips off of her dad!”
Sakura’s parents exchanged a look before Sakura’s father said delicately, “It… takes awhile for Kakashi to warm up to people.”
“I’m twelve!”
“Kakashi hates people,” Sakura’s mother said much more bluntly. “It took him ten years to warm up to his jonin sensei, six of which were spent practically living on top of the poor man. And then he died, proving all of Kakashi’s worst fears about people to be true. He isn’t going to like you.”
“Before you’re twenty-four,” Sakura’s father hastily amended. “You’re very likeable, Sakura.”
“Not ever,” Sakura’s mother disagreed. “He isn’t ever going to like you because Kakashi hates people, period. Learn what you can from him and move on.”
“But be gentle with him,” Sakura’s father added. “Kakashi has a gentle heart.”
“Okay!” Sakura said determinedly. “I’ll do my best!”
And she really, truly did.
When Kakashi-sensei was especially mean to her during the survival test, mocking her and using a really hurtful genjutsu on her and asking her to make impossible choices, Sakura tried to learn whatever he was trying to teach her.
And, because Kakashi-sensei was her cousin and her teacher and she trusted him, Sakura accepted his nindo as her own.
She ran all of his stupid laps, walked all of his stupid dogs, and tried not to mind when he taught Naruto and Sasuke things while she was still doing her conditioning. Sakura tried her hardest to be a good teammate to her boys, even if Kakashi was distant and creepy, Sasuke was distant and cruel, and Naruto was too close and too creepy. Every time that Sakura turned around, there was Naruto. It was like he was trying to absorb her through his skin or something.
In Wave Country, Kakashi broke Sakura heart and then mended it whole again. And Sakura thought that, finally, finally, he might be beginning to warm up to her. She was pretty sure that the boys were warming up to her too, especially after the first two rounds of the chunin exams.
The third round of the chunin exams, when all three of her teammates disappeared without a word, thoroughly disabused Sakura of that notion. Sakura cried into her pillow, trained on her own, and bought daffodils for Lee as a cover to spend time with Ino.
After ten miserable days, Shikamaru stopped by Sakura’s house. Rubbing the back of his neck, Shikamaru said, “Ino said that we should invite you to Team Ten’s practices. Asuma-sensei’s okay with it and I could probably use the help. But, uh, don’t tell Ino that I told you that it was her idea, okay?”
“Okay,” Sakura agreed, smiling so widely that her cheeks hurt. Warmth sufficed her chest and washed through her limbs. “Thanks, Shikamaru.”
“No problem,” Shikamaru demurred. He sighed. “Practice starts at eight. It’s so troublesome.”
Sakura grinned.
Kakashi discovered that he found Sakura as unpalatable at twelve as he had at thirteen months. It was stupid to hold the adoption against her, especially since it had worked out and everyone in that family seemed happy, but he apparently did. Or there was simply something subtly unlikeable about the girl.
Kakashi conducted an exhaustive investigation of the girl (which meant that he spent a lot of time staring at her over the top of Icha Icha Paradise.) He eventually concluded that she was a perfectly normal teenage girl and he was a petty moron.
Acknowledging the problem did not make it better.
After the bridge builder’s duplicity had come to light, Kakashi had had every intention of canceling the mission, returning to Konohagakure, and making the bridge builder hire the appropriate level of ninja. He had changed his mind and gone along with Naruto’s melodramatic vow because Sakura proposed that plan of action first. Kakashi endangered all of their lives simply to spite a twelve-year-oldn.
When Sakura proved herself a more adept pupil than Naruto or Sasuke, Kakashi damned her with faint praise, used her accomplishment to mock and goad the boys, and sent her to buy groceries.
He neglected her training, a sin among the shinobi ranks, and silently dared her to challenge him on it.
And Sakura took it. Not only that, she forgave him and let him continue to treat her poorly. Worst of all, she admired and even liked him.
If Kakashi was not already deeply ashamed of himself, he would have been then.
When it came down to a choice, he could either ensure her continued existence or the boys’, Kakashi was even more shocked than she was that he chose her. It made no sense. There was one of her and two of them. The village’s last Uchiha and the kyuubi’s jinchuriki were far more valuable than Sakura could ever be. She was his least favorite student. There was absolutely no reason for Kakashi to choose Sakura over the boys.
And yet, Kakashi chose Sakura. He left the boys to fend for each other, hoping that they could survive long enough for him to kill Zabuza and come to their aid.
Afterwards, between bouts of shivering and vomiting from chakra exhaustion and thanking whatever god had interceded on their behalf for all of his students’ continued existences, Kakashi decided that ignoring Sakura would be best. Hopefully, decreased exposure would make him less of an idiot regarding her. Failing that, he would have less of an opportunity to act on his stupider impulses.
Kakashi regretted that decision too. When he was finally ready to treat Sakura as a proper student, Sakura rejected him as a teacher as thoroughly as he had initially rejected her. The only thing that surprised him was that it had taken her so long.
For Rock Lee, it was love at first sight.
He instinctively knew, in every drop of his blood, every shard of his bones, and every corner of his soul, that the pretty, pink-haired girl was meant to be with him. She was a part of him, lost and then found again. She was better than properly formed chakra pathways or a bloodline limit. And she was worth every drop of sweat and every ounce of tears that he would shed in pursuing her because, when they finally came together, he would finally be whole.
To Lee’s mind, her devotion to another was no barrier to their love. Neither was her lack of interest in him. Lee was used to having to work for what he wanted. Working hard made his victories all the sweeter. Lee was willing to work as hard as it took for as long as it took to make Haruno Sakura fall in love with him and be his girlfriend.
After (Sakura was nearly crushed to death by a raccoon-dog demon and) everyone finished putting down the attempted invasion during the chunin exams, Kakashi visited Sakura in the hospital. She was never awake during his visits and he never left any trace to indicate that he had visited (or cared.)
A couple of months later, when Kakashi woke up from Itachi’s genjutsu attack, he found a cup filled with daffodils at his bedside table. For the life of him, Kakashi could not think of a single person who would bring him flowers while he was in the hospital.
When Sakura showed up, bearing a single daffodil, Kakashi had his answer.
“Kakashi-sensei!” she exclaimed. Beaming, Sakura rushed to his bedside. “You’re awake!”
She chattered at him, added the daffodil to its brethren, and cared for Kakashi’s bouquet of flowers.
It was nice but kind of stressful.
When Sakura showed up the next day, bearing another daffodil and an apple, Kakashi was shocked. Sakura told him the latest gossip as she added the daffodil to the bouquet, cared for the flowers, and carefully peeled the apple for Kakashi.
“Did you bring me a flower every day?” Kakashi asked, interrupt a vaguely interesting story about Ebisu, who was known to Sakura as That Closet Pervert Who Tutors the Third’s Honored Grandson.
“Of course,” said Sakura, looking up from where her hands were skillfully removing the peel in one long, red ribbon. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Uncertain of what to say, Kakashi looked away from Sakura, who stayed uncharacteristically quiet while Kakashi tried to sort out his thoughts.
“Here,” Sakura said presently and Kakashi turned to find her offering him a slice of apple. “For you, sensei.”
Kakashi took the bit of fruit and, when Sakura tilted her head to look down at her remaining lump of white apple flesh, ate it. The piece of fruit sat heavily in his stomach. But, when Sakura offered him another carefully portioned sliver of apple, Kakashi took it.
In that way, piece by piece, Kakashi ate the whole damn apple.
Ino had done such a good job of turning a strange outcast into a popular girl that even she forgot her instinctive reaction to Sakura. The third round of the chunin exam was a rude wake up all to Ino.
Afterwards, Ino split her time between training Shikamaru, rebuilding her friendship with Sakura, and reading in her clan’s archives everything ever written on the subject of split personalities.
In the broadest strokes, what Ino had encountered in Sakura’s mind matched the descriptions of what it was like to try to take a brain with a fractured mind without preparing properly first. But in the details, it was all wrong. The case studies in the books had battled her kinsmens’ invasions but they had not grown or captured her kinsmen. The people described in the books had not possessed the power to crush the intruding mind. They had not fed on those other Yamanakas’ fear and grown stronger from it.
Whatever Sakura had, it was not a split personality.
Ino read other, scarier things about ghosts and possession and jinchuriki. She read legends about gods and demons taking human form and creatures that stole living-but-empty bodies. Ino read everything that she could get her hands on and a few things that she officially was not supposed to know existed.
Eventually, Ino decided that Sakura was not human, not really. Sakura was… something else.
But Sakura thought that she was human. She loved her family, teammates, and friends, loved Ino, as fiercely as if she were human. And she was loyal to the village. And, as far as Ino could see, there was no harm, no danger, in letting Sakura continue on believing that she was human, as she had always done.
Her decision made, Ino wrote a note and hid it somewhere that her father could find it, just in case.
Tsunade liked Sakura on sight, much as she had adored her grandmother and Kushina on general principle. She did not, however, let on as much to the brat. In her considerable experience, it was better to make them work for her regard, rather than lavishing it on them from the start. (And it was much more fun for her that way.)
The first thing that the girl ever says to Tsunade was a bald-faced request that, as a personal favor, Tsunade take her on as a second apprentice. Tsunade was flabbergasted. And, a moment later, amused.
Tsunade howled with laughter. She laughed until she cried, something that Tsunade had not done in decades. And through it all, the girl patiently waited, her face slowly flushing a shade of red that clashed horribly with her hair.
“Okay,” Tsunade finally said gaily. “Why not?”
It was a decision that Tsunade never regretted, not on her earliest morning or in her darkest hours; not even when she (and everyone else on the battlefield) saw Sakura for what she truly was. She loved Sakura as a daughter. She was proud of her. And there were worse things than being owed a personal favor by a higher level demon.
When Naruto left the village to train with the Toad Sanin, Lee took his absence as an opportunity to press his suit for Sakura’s love. He invited Sakura to watch him train, to watch him in his challenges with Neji, to eat with him. Sakura always demurred, citing personal training, trained with a new team, and training with Ino.
Sakura was always training or with Ino. Lee tried not to feel angry or hurt by that. Friends were precious blooms to be nurtured and enjoyed, especially best friends. But it was hard when Sakura always seemed to have time for Ino and never for him.
Worried that he was competing against her affection for Naruto or, worse, her memories of Sasuke, Lee tried harder. He loitered in places that he knew she frequented, trained on her favorite training fields, and challenged Neji in places that she could not fail to notice their manly battles as Eternal Rivals.
When Sakura ran into him, she smiled, said hello, and made small talk. When he was on training fields during the times that she had booked, she either chased him out or challenged him to a taijutsu match, no chakra allowed. (He tried to go easy on her. It would be a shame to mar her beauty with cuts or bruises.) When he and Neji fought in front of her, Sakura cheered him on and tended to his injuries afterwards, which made all of Lee’s efforts feel worthwhile.
Sakura never, ever accepted Lee’s invitations to dinner, dancing, festivals, or anything else.
Frustrated, Lee once said, “They’re both gone, Sakura! And they didn’t want to be your boyfriend, anyway! I’m here and I like you and we could have something special if you’d just look at me!”
“Lee, this isn’t about Sasuke or Naruto or even how much you want me,” Sakura snapped. “I don’t want you! It’s as simple as that. You’re a good friend and an even better comrade but I just don’t want to kiss you or date you or be your girlfriend!”
“Because you’re still waiting for Sasuke,” Lee said bitterly.
Her fingers twitching, fisting, and un-fisting, Sakura made a loud, irritated noise, threw her hands up, and walked away.
After her chunin battle with Ino, Sakura worked hard at integrating the two parts of her mind. Apparently, having an inner mind and an outer shell was not normal. Apparently, it was strange enough to frighten even someone as brave as Ino.
From Tsunade, Sakura became a brilliant healer, a vicious combatant, and a poor loser. (She also learned to gamble, drink, and go after the things that she wanted.) From Shizune, Sakura learned patience and poisons. (She also learned how to pitch a tent, breathe fire or poison, and to play dominos.) For herself, Sakura learned how to rebuild (or break) a mind.
Sakura’s efforts, while sincere and at times obsessive, had mixed results. She seemed to absorb Inner Sakura into her mind (or, perhaps, reabsorb Inner Sakura, if the other part of her personality was really a split like her medical textbooks suggested.) But the knowledge, information, and even the emotional responses embodied by Inner Sakura were never Sakura’s to access or command, even after the merger. When she tried, her head throbbed and her skin ached like she had been sunburned.
Sakura was fairly certain that pictures of mental health did not have psychosomatic sunburns.
But, on the bright side, Sakura’s sudden and exhaustive interest in the mind and mental landscapes, especially her own, gave Sakura something to discuss with Ino. Slowly, over tea and textbooks, sleepovers and private practices, Sakura rebuilt her friendship with Ino, as equals (and friendly rivals) this time.
And if, sometimes, Sakura put her lips where Ino’s had been on their shared water bottles or Ino’s hand lingered on Sakura’s when passing her notebooks or pens or their taijutsu blows occasionally resembled tweaks and caresses than blows, well, who else was going to notice?
When they made chunin, Ino kissed Sakura in a quick, dry press of lips. It made Ino tingle everywhere that they touched and in a few places that they didn’t. When she pulled away, Sakura’s lips chased after Ino’s mouth and kissed her again, another quick press of lips. Ino might have retaliated with another kiss but that was when Asuma-sensei ambled over to them and said, “Congratulations, both of you.”
By then, Shikamaru was hugging Choji and slapping his back and maybe crying a little in his shoulder as if they were all still ten. Shikamaru was still such a crybaby.
Ino and Sakura parted, first to bask in Asuma-sensei’s praise, then to exchange hugs and teasing with Shikamaru and Choji and more formal congratulations with the other shinobi who had also passed. Then there was a team feast, which Team Kurenai attended and mooched, and a victory party, and falling into bed half drunk and giggling.
Drunk kisses were wetter and sloppier than victory kisses and not quite so sweet, (probably because they tasted like rice wine and whiskey,) but they were every bit as satisfying, (probably because clumsy mutual groping made up for a lot of shortcomings.)
Shizune liked Sakura well enough (and she had learned to mostly suppress and overlook the way that Sakura’s mere presence sometimes made her skin crawl) but she was leery about letting her have access to Konohagakure no Sato’s sealing records, particularly to the ones detailing how to seal a demon into a host. It seemed imprudent at best and foolhardy at worst.
“Do you think she’s disloyal?” Tsunade demanded. “A traitor?”
“No!” Shizune immediately protested. “But doesn’t her interest seem, well, strange?”
“She loves Naruto,” Tsunade said carelessly. “As a teammate, possibly a brother, if not a lover. It’s natural that she would be curious about him. Besides, she has to see our records if she’s going to write a comparison of Konohagakure and Sunagakure’s methods of creating a jinchuriki.”
It seemed odd to Shizune that Sunagakure, a village so secretive and paranoid that no one outside of the village had ever even seen any of its Kazekages’ faces before Sabaku no Gaara became Kazekage, would cheerfully allow a foreign nin access to their jinchuriki sealing scrolls. Sakura’s explanation, that Sunagakure’s Council of Elders had liked her, seemed lacking to Shisune. Rather than mentioning any of that, especially since it was ostensibly good for Konohagakure’s interests to come into such information, Shizune asked, “What about her clearance level?”
“I can fix that, if you’d like,” Tsunade replied, carelessly waving off Shizune’s worry. Pinning Shizune with a piercing look, Tsunade asked, “What’s really your problem with Sakura reading those scrolls?”
“I don’t know,” Shizune admitted. “It’s just – just a feeling, I suppose.”
“A feeling,” Tsunade snorted, leaning back in her chair. “I have a feeling too, Shizune. I think that the village is going to need a sealing master at some point in the future and Jiraiya and I aren’t going to live forever. As sad as it is, Sakura is the only one inclined to take on that role. Unless you’ve changed your mind, Shizune?”
Shizune hesitated, searched her heart, and chewed her lower lip for awhile before she finally, grudgingly, said, “Maybe.”
“Let me know,” Tsunade said seriously. “Because I don’t think one’s going to be enough.”
It was terrible to admit, even to herself, but Shizune started training to become a seal master so that they were not just relying on Sakura’s benevolence. She would never, ever admit as much to Tsunade, however.
“Why are you doing this?” Kakashi demanded on Sakura’s third visit. Kakashi had had an assortment of visitors since his teammates had carried him home from Wave country but the only one who visited every day without fail was Sakura. And every day, Sakura brought him a daffodil and an apple.
“Most people prefer apples without the peel,” Sakura replied serenely as she removed the peel in one long ribbon. “Even though that’s where a lot of the nutrients are.”
“Sakura!” Kakashi snapped. “You know what I mean.”
“I really don’t,” Sakura replied. “Why shouldn’t I visit you?”
“I’m not your teacher or sempai or friend or even your team leader.”
“What makes you think that I need some sort of acknowledgement from you to care what happens to you?” Sakura asked, dumbfounding Kakashi. The apple peeled, Sakura caught the strip of skin and put it on his rolling tray. “Apple slice?”
“Thank you,” Kakashi replied hoarsely.
Sai found Sakura’s instructions on how to interact with humans to be clear, succinct, and remarkably clear. And, while he did not enjoy pain as a general rule, he could tolerate her abrupt and rather brutal methods of correction, especially since Sakura seemed to take care not to do any lasting harm to either him or Naruto. Sai never even developed bruises to remember her lessons by.
Sometimes, Sai wondered if Sakura had once been like him, alone and surrounded by people who found her strange and discomforting. Similar experiences would certainly account for the care that she took when explaining concepts and interactions to Sai.
Despite his musings, Sai took care never to ask. If Sakura wanted to share such things with him, she would. Sakura did not hesitate to share her thoughts and opinions. It was one of the things that Sai liked best about her.
Relying on her forthright personality, Sai once asked, “Why did you, Naruto, and Yamato-taicho bring me back to the village after I’d defected to Orochimaru?”
“You saved Naruto’s life when you didn’t have to,” she replied. “You couldn’t be all bad. And there was that story about your brother Shin. That definitely showed your good side.”
“You think I’m a good person?”
“Of course!”
Sai felt peculiar warmth spreading through his chest and down his limbs. If Sakura said it, it had to be true. She only lied with her smiles.
Sakura thought that he was a good person.
Sai clutched Sakura’s opinion close to his heart.
Yamato liked Sakura on sight, her presence buzzing through his senses like bubbly soda or a first crush. Yamato did not enjoy carbonated beverages and he was too old to for a first crush, but the comparison still stood. He liked her hair and her face and the way that he felt around her. He liked that she listened to him, carefully and soberly, and tried to do as he wanted. He liked that she apologized when she was wrong about him and that she would have killed Sai for betraying Konohagakure no Sato. He liked how hard Sakura tried.
Being assigned to Naruto’s training, both in the village and on Cloud’s secret flying turtle, was something of an enormous disappointment to him. (Killer Bee and) Naruto’s sense of humor did nothing to soften the blow.
After he was captured, but before he was tortured or stuck in the giant lotus blossom, Yamato said a small, heartfelt prayer. He hoped that, when the allied shinobi forces learned of his capture, they sent Sakura to rescue him. He hoped that they sent anyone but Sakura to kill him.
Shizune resurrected with the vague impression that she had seen something enormously important in that split second between life and death and between death and her new life. But, whatever it was, Shizune had forgotten it.
Frustrated, she picked her way through the village’s rubble, searching out the others who had died in Pein’s unprovoked attack. When she found them, digging out people, clearing debris, or erecting temporary shelters, Shizune asked them what they had seen in that split second.
Some of them, such as Kakashi, bluntly refused to discuss what he had seen in his death and a few claimed not to have seen anything but the bulk of them were like Shizune, convinced that they had seen something important but unable to remember the huge and horrible thing that they had seen.
It made Shizune nervous and snappish.
When Tsunade finally confronted her, Shizune admitted her pursuit of memories, her own and others’.
“Never mind,” Tsunade said brusquely. Rising from her seat behind her desk, Tsunade made her way across the room, patting Shizune’s shoulder in passing. “It’ll come to you or it won’t. Some things are better off unremembered.”
As Tsunade briskly marched out of her office, Shizune wondered for the first time what Tsunade had dreamed in her coma. She never quite got around to asking.
Sakura and Ino were alone in the hospital’s records room, working late to put things right and catch up on the paperwork after Pein’s invasion, when Ino said seriously, “We shouldn’t part with any regrets, just in case.”
“No ‘in case’,” Sakura snarled, fisting her hands into Ino’s new olive green flak jacket. Division assignments had gone out that morning. Sakura and Ino had not been assigned together. “We’re both going to make it.”
Her eyes flashing, Ino opened her mouth, probably to argue with Sakura or call her an idiot or an idealist. Either way, Sakura did not want to hear sensible, realistic things about their chances of both surviving the war. The scar on her belly throbbing, Sakura smashed her mouth over Ino’s and kissed her fiercely.
Ino being Ino, she did not just passively accept being kissed. She gave as good as she got. Things quickly got out of hand in the best way possible and Sakura ended up using a transportation seal to get them back to her place.
Much later, as Sakura lay drowsing next to Ino in her bed, Ino whispered, “I love you, Forehead.”
Rolling onto her side and curling an arm around Ino’s waist, Sakura sighed, “I love you too, Pig.”
Sakura cornered Kakashi one night in the Hokage’s tower. They were in the antechamber to the Hokage’s office, he was exhausted and worried, and she was grimly determined.
“Someone told me that we shouldn’t leave the village with any regrets,” she began, “so I’ve been trying to remember to say the things that I need to say before we leave.”
“Sakura –”
“I don’t need your acknowledgement,” Sakura snapped, interrupting Kakashi. Even in the office’s gloomy half-light, her coloring seemed bright and bold against her drab shinobi’s uniform. “But I want it. And I’m willing to wait as long as it takes for you to warm up to me, Kakashi-sensei, even if it takes another five or even ten years.”
Without waiting for a response, Sakura turned and stormed out of the office.
When war was declared, Lee dreamed of glory and honor and romance. He dreamed that, during the fighting, Sakura would see his bravery, worry for him, and come to value his worth. Lee dreamed of a future in which Sakura fell in love with him during a time of danger and strife. As fellow members of the First Division, they were perfectly placed to fall in love in a time of danger.
War was nothing like Lee had imagined it. There was nothing at all romantic about it. There was just desperation and a hanging sense of evil, probably from the fiendish, undead zombies. Nevertheless, Lee was not the only one to pine after Sakura and write her love letters.
She was supposed to only accept Lee’s letters. Instead, she turned him down like all of the rest. According to talk around the campfire, Sakura apparently had a script. Every time someone presented her with a love letter or a declaration of love or even a token of their affections, Sakura always smiled, thanked her admirer for his regard, and promised to cherish their letter or token. But Sakura always gently but firmly turned their advances down.
“Maybe she already has a guy,” opined a rejected Rock nin one night, when a group of them were sitting around the fire, drinking illegal sake and commiserating about Sakura.
“She doesn’t,” Lee said gloomily. He was carefully abstaining from the alcohol, for obvious reasons.
“Maybe she likes girls,” suggested another nin, this one a Mist nin.
“No way!” Lee protested hotly. “When we were genin, she was crazy about Sasuke.”
“She still might like girls,” the Mist nin insisted. Sliding a sideways look towards the Cloud nin that everyone was pretending not to know that he was sharing a bedroll with, the Mist nin added, “Enjoying one doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy the other as well.”
“Not Sakura,” Lee insisted, fiercely ignoring all of the times that Sakura had blown off his invitations to go practice with Ino.
“So maybe she has a secret guy,” suggested that Rock nin again. “He’d have to be someone that she spends a lot of time with.”
There was a pause while everyone thought about that. Almost as one, their gazes all slid to their fearless leader, where he sat with Gai-sensei and several of the other jonin-level old-timers.
“Naaah,” said the Rock nin and everyone, including Lee, broke into raucous laughter.
It was not productive but it definitely made Lee feel better about his own failures with Sakura.
Obito, more recently known as Madara, had done everything right. He had invoked the statue of the bound god and, using the combined power of Akasuki’s recently resurrected members, sacrificed Kakashi’s student to it so that he could release the demon from its flesh and blood prison and add it to his own collection.
Naruto screamed and thrashed. His comrades screamed and fought to rescue him. Kakashi fought and screamed and cried. It was a sight that Obito would have killed to see two decades ago. Now, Obito laughed and gloried in his coming triumph over Kakashi, the Shinobi Alliance, and the entire world.
The kyuubi’s essence was wrenched free of its most recent prison, Naruto’s voice rising to a crescendo as his body spasmed and arched past its breaking point. Naruto collapsed, still and silent but not yet dead thanks to his Uzumaki heritage, while the kyuubi’s essence churned over and around his body. It looked smaller and more energetic than Obito had expected.
Obito watched, waiting for the nine-tails demon to coalesce and materialize, waiting for it to be borne alone the bridge of chakra and into the statue’s empty eye. Everyone waited, the battlefield falling still and silent around them.
The kyuubi did not coalesce and materialize.
It was not borne along a bridge of chakra into the statue’s empty eye.
Instead, it simply hung there, churning, waiting, until a blur of green and pink crashed into the beam of chakra, through the kyuubi’s spirit, and sailed out the other side, taking the kyuubi’s essence with it. She landed in a crouch, gasping and panting, and swallowed the kyuubi’s essence whole, using both hands to shovel it into her gaping maw with gluttonous abandon.
Furious at her presumptuous interference, Obito threw himself at the kunoichi only to be violently rebuffed by a pulse of malice so strong that it was a tangible thing capable of affecting change in the world. Before Obito’s eyes, the girl’s body was incinerated and replaced by the hulking form of the kyuubi, its malevolence a tangible, sickening thing. Then the kyuubi’s form began to flicker, moving as rapidly as the wings of a hummingbird, and was eventually replaced by the pink-haired kunoichi, her body remade.
The nine-tails fox demon had a new jinchuriki.
Enraged, Obito screamed. Almost as a counterpoint, the kunoichi began to laugh.
Obito’s blood ran cold.
The kyuubi had no jinchuriki at all.
Kabuto had never mentioned it to anyone. In fact, he had nearly forgotten it. But, much later, he would remember that afternoon that Naruto had lost control of the kyuubi and injured Sakura with one of his tails and laugh. What Kabuto had not mentioned, had nearly forgotten in fact, was that as badly as Sakura was injured that day, she should have been dead.
At the time, he had assumed that she had invented a self-healing technique similar to his own through independent study. He had always liked Sakura, ever since that ill-fated chunin exam in Konohagakure, and that particular day he had been impressed with Sakura ingenuity so he had voluntarily healed her as best he could, saying whatever needed to be said to her team captain to get access to her.
Thinking about that day outside of Orochimaru’s base, Kabuto laughed, rasping out a hoarse, hissing sound that betrayed his inappropriate delight in this turn of events. He laughed and laughed and laughed and, on the battlefield, the girl who had been known as Sakura laughed with him, her howls of mirth reverberating across the bloodied ground.
There was an ugly moment, just after her original body was incinerated and before she got around to building herself a new one, in which the kyuubi slotted itself together and there was no Sakura. It was whole, immortal, and very, very male.
The kyuubi was looking forward to rampaging its way through the mortal bugs scattered around its paws and punishing them for locking him and his breathren away, in flesh and bone, tea kettles, and statues. He was going to start with his most recent prison, which was being crouched over by another bug, a spill of sunshine hanging over her shoulder.
That was when the changes that had taken place in the kyuubi’s yin during its brief flirtation with humanity began to assert themselves. Sakura clawed her way out of oblivion, battling to remake the kyuubi’s yang in her image, rather than simply allowing herself to be consigned to oblivion.
There was no way that Sakura was going to let herself be destroyed; Ino and Tsunade had taught her to be stronger than that. And there was absolutely no way that she was going to step on Ino.
For a small eternity, the kyuubi’s yin wrestled with its yang. Its yin was a fully formed personality, capable of controlling itself, directing its emotions, and seeing a goal through to its end. Its yang was pure emotion, immeasurably powerful but capricious, undirected, and destructive, with inchoate desires and unfinished thoughts simmering beneath its surface.
The whole that formed out of its churning, seething parts was stronger than either of its parts. And the kyuubi, newly reincarnated within itself, was stronger than it had ever been before. It had changed itself and been changed by its self into a being fully capable of controlling and directing its own actions.
The kyuubi was something new.
Its first act as a newly born creature was to re-form its human body. Physical sensation was amazing. The kyuubi gloried in its newest body. It may have laughed, just a bit, and slightly manically.
Its second act, when Ino and the others (but mostly Ino) began to look worried, was to swoop in to steal a kiss from Ino, whose kisses were just as fantastic as the kyuubi remembered, even if they were clumsier, saltier, and more desperate than the kyuubi remembered them being.
“Sakura?” Ino breathed hopefully. She was still as brilliant and fierce and pretty and utterly Ino as the kyuubi remembered her being, despite now remembering that Ino’s soul had, in a previous life, been Minato’s yin. She may have shared (part of) her soul with the Fourth Hokage, but Ino was no one’s shadow.
The various shinobi forces around them started fighting again, apparently feeling safe enough from the threat of a rampaging demon to focus their attention on other things. If they thought that this body was its new prison, the kyuubi had no intention of changing that perception.
“Yes,” Sakura agreed, gently rubbing away Ino’s tears with her new thumb. It was pale and soft, not yet tanned or calloused by life. It was nice to touch Ino gently. “I’ll be right back.”
Leaving the fighting to the others, Sakura went to melt the wretched statue, freeing her comrades and shepherding them into the spirit realm, well away from madmen who wanted to unmake them (and remake the Ten-Tails) and potential human enslavement.
When Sakura returned, Ino was still struggling to save Naruto’s life. Kneeling next to Ino, Sakura asked, “May I help you with Naruto?”
“Can you help me with Naruto?” Ino asked skeptically.
Sakura considered that, looking inside herself to see if she had remembered to reform her the chakra coils that had belonged to her yin’s previous incarnation. They were there, looping and curving and exactly as capacious as she remembered them being.
“Yes,” Sakura decided. “I can be as human as you need me to be, Ino.”
“Just be Sakura and I’ll be happy,” Ino said gruffly. “He’s going to die if you keep blabbing, Forehead.”
Even though Sakura was more ambivalent than ever about Naruto, she helped Ino save his life (and his chakra coils) anyway.
“Were you always the kyuubi?” Tsunade asked, the moment Sakura was shown into her tent. She studied her second apprentice with all of her senses, trying to discern a difference between this Sakura and the one that she had taken on as her apprentice.
“I think so, yes,” Sakura replied. She smiled the exact same smile that Tsunade had seen every day since the girl had introduced herself to Tsunade. “The original Sakura was killed the same night that Minato and Kushina died. She was sleeping in the room next to Kushina’s birthing room. The part of that kyuubi that wasn’t sealed took her as a temporary vessel, a hiding place, if you will.”
“That kyuubi?”
“I’ve changed.”
“Who doesn’t?” Tsunade asked, the horrible tightness in her chest easing. She kicked back, putting her hands behind her head and resting her feet on her makeshift desk. “All right, if most of the shinobi world wants to assume that you’re the kyuubi’s new jinchuriki and not the kyuubi it’s – her –“
“’Herself’, for the time being,” Sakura helpfully supplied.
“Herself,” Tsunade repeated firmly. “Then we’ll let ‘em. At least I know now why I liked you on sight.” At Sakura’s interested look, Tsunade added, “The Senju clan has always been partial to demons. My grandfather’s wood release wasn’t so much a stroke of luck as a quirk of genetics.”
“We’re pretty partial to you, too,” Sakura said, flashing Tsunade that grin again. “I liked you and Captain Yamato on sight.”
Tsunade smiled, pleased that the blade cut both ways.
“If you still want a family, I’d give it to you,” Sakura added, shocking the hell out of Tsunade. Only a lifetime of being a ninja stopped Tsunade from dumping herself on her ass.
“What?” she gasped, wondering if her apprentice had lost her mind when she regained the other half of her soul.
“Ino suggested it.” Tsunade abandoned her chair, lest she accidentally killed herself with it. Perhaps trying to reassure her, Sakura added, “Ino cultivates a fluffy exterior but she’s terribly practical. About five minutes after she ferreted out that I could father her heirs if she wanted, Ino started making plans to increase Konohagakure no Sato’s shinobi population. She doesn’t want her children or grandchildren to serve a dying village, you see.”
“So she’s putting you out to stud,” Tsunade said flatly.
“She’s not that altruistic,” Sakura snorted, “or that good at sharing. And neither am I. But you’re important to me. You should have what you want, shisho. Our bond is strong enough and platonic enough that it could easily withstand a couple of illegitimate children. Ino would get a rallying point in her campaign for repopulation, a close tie between the Yamanaka and Senju clans, and the assurance of knowing that it would never go any further than friendship and parenting between us. And you’d get your family, of course, but you would also have the assurance of knowing that I’m never going to die or leave you and the kids behind.”
“And what would you get?” Tsunade asked.
“Lots of kids,” Sakura replied with a cheeky smile. “And I’d get to see the pair of you plotting together and being happy.”
“I – I need to think about this, Sakura,” Tsunade said weakly, even though it was everything that she had always wanted. Her grandfather had always said that one should examine a demon’s gifts closely.
“Don’t think about it too long, shisho,” Sakura said before she bowed and slipped out of Tsunade’s tent.
As soon as she was gone, Tsunade collapsed in her camp chair. Sakura had clearly lost her mind in regaining the other half of her essence.
It might not be such a terrible thing, though, Tsunade mused, children with pink hair and brown eyes or, slightly less likely, blonde hair and green or blue eyes mingling in her mind’s eye with the children that she had never had with Dan.
Before she got too attached to the idea, Tsunade had a bracing cup of tea (She was going to have to lay off of the alcoholism for awhile if she was going to do this mothering thing.), rose, and went to find the new Yamanaka clan head.
A few days later, Lee limped into the First Division’s medical unit with a leg room. Even though someone else was the next available medic on the duty list, Sakura took care of Lee’s treatment anyway. And Shizune, who had been distant and unreadable since the day that Sakura remade herself, let it slide. As Sakura led Lee back to one of the treatment areas, she hoped that things would go back to normal with Shizune sooner or later.
The disappearance of the other tailed beasts and the kyuubi’s relocation to what was ostensibly a new prison, was not enough to end the war. The shinobi villages wanted their slaves returned, the enemy still wanted to awaken the Ten-Tails and trap everyone in a waking dreams, and there were still a shit ton of cannibals and zombies marauding their way through the countryside. And there was still Sasuke, mad and rampaging and lashing out at everyone and everything in his reach. Everything had changed and nothing had changed at all.
In the present, Sakura tended to Lee’s injuries, healing them and assigning him to a bed for rest. She ignored Lee’s teary eyes and piteous looks.
“How long, Sakura?” he finally demanded.
“That’s none of your business,” Sakura replied. “Stay off of your feet as much as you can until tomorrow, Lee.”
“Why her and why not me?” Lee demanded. “I love you too, Sakura!”
Because you’re you and, even if you had never been my jailor, you would never have been anything that I ever wanted, Sakura thought but did not say. Being human, for however short a time, had taught her mercy. Aloud, Sakura said, “I told you from the very beginning that I valued you as a friend and comrade but that I simply didn’t return your feelings. It never had anything to do with you, Lee.”
“But I’ve worked so hard! I can’t fail!” Lee protested. “Love doesn’t just go away, Sakura!”
“I know,” Sakura agreed, remembering the pain of Sasuke’s first betrayal. “It’ll fade eventually, though. And someday you’ll meet someone who appreciates you and how hard you work and love you back.”
That was probably even true. There was at least half of Minato’s soul for Lee to fall in love with and lay claim to, as he seemed prone to doing. Minto’s yang would be male-bodied, of course, and Lee might have to compete with the other half of Kushina’s soul, her yin, for that half. Or maybe they could all be happy together? Or maybe, Lee would find someone new and all on his own.
Judging by Lee’s stubborn expression, he still seemed to think that he had a chance with Sakura. Tired of his insane perseverance in the face of repeated rejections, dismissals, and blatant disinterest, Sakura added, “But that person will never be me, Lee. Even if I wasn’t in love with Ino or was looking for a man, I still wouldn’t choose you. That’s just the way that it is.”
And that was the final word that Sakura was willing to say to Lee about his love for her or Ino.
Yamato awoke from his tangled nightmares to the feeling of a soft hand stroking his hair back from his brow and the sense that someone had replaced his blood with carbonated water. It actually felt very nice. Sighing, he leaned into the touch.
“Wake up, lazy bones,” Sakura gently chided. “You’ve missed almost the whole war.”
“Who’s winning?” Yamato demanded, without opening his eyes or really bothering to worry about it. If things were going badly, Sakura would have been much tenser and less indulgent.
“We are, I think,” she replied.
“Kabuto?”
“Still on the run as far as I know.”
“Madara?”
“Was secretly one of Kakashi’s old teammates, posing as Madara. It’s put my plan to get close to him back at least ten years. Anyway, he’s gone missing. The current rumor is that he got himself eaten by the kyuubi.”
“Do you believe it?” Yamato asked, cracking his eyes open. Sakura’s hair was longer than he had ever seen it and her face was slightly older but she looked good.
“Oh yes,” she said, favoring him with a wide, toothsome smile. “He was delicious.”