Preventing The Inevitable

Chapter 2

Sakura had one thought, waking up screaming her lungs out.

Shit.

Because she wasn't supposed to be screaming. She wasn't supposed to have a voice at all. And she sure as hell wasn't supposed to know that.

Her last memory was a hazy mix of echoed shouts, blurred movements, and a warm liquid trickling down her limp body. Though she couldn't remember how, it was clearer than anything that she had died. And death wasn't reversible, last time she checked.

Of course, there was Edo Tensei, that eery, human-sacrificing, resurrection jutsu the Second had created in hopes of seeing his deceased brothers again, but that option was already crossed out since this wasn't her body.

At least, not the one she last remembered having. The small figure she looked down at was young. Very young compared to the adult body she had at the time she died.

Besides, if she really was resurrected by some future version of Kabuto and Orochimaru, one would expect her to wake up in some shady cave or a laboratory, reeking of strange liquids of unknown origin. Or perhaps even face-to-face with the reigning power of the future, asking to assist in a war against an enemy too great to subdue without help from powers of the past.

(Not unlike the situation the Hokage opened their eyes to, back in the first stages of the war.

Back when a peaceful future still seemed reachable.)

But Sakura found herself in none of the situations she would've expected to find herself in. She was currently lying on an extremely soft surface that had her wanting to melt into the material and never wake up again. Unfortunately, she'd already tried 'going to sleep and never waking up again' and last time, it got her into whatever this mess was.

Careful so as to not make any noise, Sakura—but is was even still 'Sakura'? This couldn't be her body. Did that make her someone else, a spirit possessing a body?—got up into a sitting position and surveyed the room she now had a better view at.

And as she looked upon a room that looked all too similar to her childhood bedroom that was destroyed decades ago, she could've sworn everything came to a complete halt for a short moment. Her heartbeat, the countless questions and theories circling around her mind, and even the constant ringing in her ears she hadn't been able to get rid of ever since the day Ino died.

The next seconds went by in a haze.

Stumbling on legs, too short and weak to be hers, to where she remembered the bathroom of her childhood home to be. Locking the door behind her, just in case she was in the enemy's lair—even though everything in her told her this was home).

Reaching for the chair her mother had gotten her when she first started walking—She distantly remembered holding a single wooden leg to her chest, as she kneeled in the wasteland that was once her home).

Looking up at the mirror at where she expected the face of a kunoichi, a warrior, to be, only to find a pair of too big eyes glaring back at her. And in those young, young eyes, an innocence and naivety that she had despised herself for not giving up on soon enough.

All whilst the ringing gradually got louder, drowning out rapid knocks and panicked calls from the other side of the door and the thoughts that should've been racing in her head by now, until it finally overwhelmed her and she could do nothing else but let go.

She felt herself falling backward as the door behind burst open, a voice she'd almost forgotten shouting her name.

"Sakura!"