Fragmented Memories Make Us Whole (Again)

chapter one.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

TW: Death and Gore, Allusion to an Eating Disorder, general Naruto trigger warnings.

AN: I hope y'all are excited about this because I am eheh. Time travel Sakura is always best Sakura, enjoy! 

I. Sakura

Sakura dreams of a battlefield.

The landscape isn't familiar to her. It's a rocky mountain terrain that surrounds her, the trees are sparse and foreign to Konoha. (She knows because she's read a tremendous amount of books regarding the flora of Konoha.) Around her, bodies litter the ground and what Sakura somehow recognizes as the medical tent is in flames in the distance, the people trapped inside are screaming; unable to escape from the fiery clutches of their deaths. Sakura ignores them, knowing that saving the shinobi still able to fight is much more important at this point in time. It's cruel and unfair, she supposes, but those are words that describe war and she doesn't feel guilt for her decision.

(She wants to do something because leaving behind shinobi is something she had never wanted to do and Lee is in there, bloody and bruised and healing and she can't just leave him. Those who abandon their friends are worse than scum! Still, it's like she's in the backseat of her own body as she turns away and moves faster than Sakura thinks she's ever moved.)

Shinobi were scattered about, the ones who were alive were fighting viciously and Sakura couldn't make out the symbol on anyone but she knew the people who were enemies weren't wearing a headband at all. Her hands, which were calloused and had dirt and blood and other gross things caked under the nails, were shaking and Sakura couldn't tell if it was out of adrenaline or fear. It was probably both if she was being realistic. The ground shook below her, the sound of explosions ring through her ears alongside screams and Sakura can only stare open-mouthed in shock at the sight of a man flying through the sky; bombing them from above.

A man attacks her and she slams her fist into his jaw. It detaches from his face gruesomely, skin and muscle ripping and a strangled mimic of a cry coming from his mouth until Sakura silences him by another punch to his chest. His ribcage caves in around her fist and she holds his beating heart in her hands, staring him in the eyes as she squeezes. He chokes and melts; it's satisfying to kill him just as it is with any other Zetsu shinobi clones that surround them. (She pauses at her own thoughts, it's a weird dream she's having and she doesn't understand half the words or names her brain is making up, she wants to wake up now, she wants to go home.)

She breathes out through her nose looking helplessly to the sky; watching a bomb fall from the sky in a trajectory that is far too close to her, that it'll explode and she's directly in its radius. She should move but she can't, frozen in place with grimy and shaking hands. She can barely even stand because of the bone-deep exhaustion that's taking over her body.

She feels useless like this, surrounded by shinobi she doesn't know, about to face her death knowing her comrades, her team, would find her body among the rubble of this camp.

The explosion was bright and it painted the back of her eyelids white in starburst patterns. The ringing in her ears drowns out any screams the shinobi around her may have let out. She breathed in the smell of blood, and dirt, and ash, and smiled as the blistering heat of the explosion reached her body. Ironically, she's happy it was ending like this. In the dirt somewhere far from her home and teammates and friends. Here, right now, she would just be another casualty of war.

It's reassuring in the most sardonic of ways.

II. ???

Finding her body in the rubble of Deidara's most recent bombing is enough to have his heart in his throat. She's crushed under debris, one arm missing (presumably under the rocks somewhere) and a steady flow of blood still dripping onto the ground below them. He thanks whatever deity is watching over them when he realizes she's still alive, that her body is still forcing in ragged, painful breaths even crushed as she was.