Preventing The Inevitable

Chapter 4

She was Sakura Haruno.

Twenty-four, turning twenty-five in a few months.

Not a five year old child.

That's what she told herself, pacing around the room while muttering curses she shouldn't know at 'her age' under her breath. Sakura had believed, for a terrible few seconds, to have dreamt all of this. There had been relief, of course. The war never happened. Ino was alive and thriving. Her Shisho, god Shisho, was alive. Kakashi was, even considering the almost-dead state his current depressed self was in, alive. And she had no reason to expect an all-destroying war to be coming right at them. Because, honestly, wasn't it too unrealistic? A rabbit goddess' sons reincarnating throughout the centuries and as her teammates? It had always felt like some kind of twisted reality, something straight out of a horror-tale or someone's wild imagination. Thinking of it as a simple nightmare seemed much more uncomplicated.

And while she had been relieved, happy even, the thing she felt first and foremost was disappointment. The heavy boulder that was lifted off her shoulders was almost instantly (maybe even before the wash of relief) replaced by a heavy blow to the gut. Had all of her hard work, all of that training and drilling, been for nothing? It had never even happened? Was this dream supposed to show her a false version of herself that she herself could never reach? The Sakura in her dream could go toe-to-toe with some of the most powerful people alive (besides Kaguya, of course, but she was anything but a person.), heal dozens of people at the same time, bring people back from the brink of death, punch holes into mountains, and so much more.

And, although she had been in constant danger in that dream, she had been strong. Not stronger than everyone, but most people. Sakura had craved that as much as she knew that it was impossible for her to ever hope to reach that level, as it was all just a dream at the end of the day.

And then logic kicked in.

While some part of her hoped that the future of a never-ending war and the inescapable end of mankind was just a wild dream, something too unrealistic to ever actually happen, her brain told a different story.

Sakura wasn't a child. Not with the things she knew, not with the things she remembered. And once she realized that, she made sure to eradicate all thoughts of just a nightmare and decided to avoid all trains of thoughts and theories implying that she had imagined it all. Because that was what Sakura was best at; thinking.

She was a paper-ninja at heart. She knew that and had learned to be proud of it. And Sakura had Tsunade's training to back her up to avoid the 'paper-ninja are fated to die young'-destiny. That didn't keep her from going down the usual route, of course. War forced people to learn how to fight dirty. No more carefully thought-out attack patterns. War was all about survival, and survival meant stabbing everything that came too close to you. However, the longer it went on, the harder it became to completely rely on the rush of adrenaline to kill all your enemies. Only those that realized that early enough and changed something in order to not be killed after exhausting oneself, survived the next years. For Sakura, it came down to her origins as a paper-ninja. Knowing how to calculate the angle of a thrown kunai wasn't going to save her from the limitless waves of Zetsu, but knowing how to throw a kunai just right to kill someone [or somezetsu, haha] was critical during a war against an enemy with an endless supply of armies.

She had come to appreciate the theorist and thinker inside of her. It helped her remain rational during the worst times (usually after someone died, and that was every other day).

Looking at the current situation, she could cross out a few branches of possible directions.

First, this couldn't be a Genjutsu. She had learned from Sasuke sometime during the war how to spot the signs of a false world and break out of it, and the only ones capable of trapping her in a Genjutsu after that, were said Sasuke and Kaguya. But Kaguya couldn't know what her childhood bedroom or her mother looked like. And the method of using the target's memories as the basis had one fatal flaw; consistency. Especially with early memories, Sasuke had told her, when recalling them, one tended to unconsciously fill up the missing parts. A child's brain could only know so much. But a Genjutsu-caster wouldn't know where in the memories to look in order to fill in blank spaces. So, when coming across one of those places, the jutsu fills it with either the memories of the caster, or whatever the person at the time of the memories had expected to be there. For Sakura, that meant she had to look for something current-her knew, but neither Kaguya nor child-Sakura could know. And that was relatively easy.

She went up to the mirror a second time that day and lifted a few strands of her short, rose-colored hair near her ear up. And there it was. A birthmark the shape of three small dots behind her ear. Sakura had only noticed it after she had had to get rid of a part of her hair when an enemy grabbed her by it. It was eerily similar to the chunin exams and her cutting off her long hair. Just this time, the Zetsu had been clinging so close to the roots (ridding them of their limbs apparently did nothing to stop the Zetsu from moving them) that she had been forced to medically cut off the connections between the roots and her head with a few pulses of chakra sent the way of the pain. That was the one thing good about having someone yanking at your hair, since you could be sure where exactly to sever the connections.

But anyway, the birthmark was there and Sakura hadn't known about it until she was twenty years old. And Kaguya was the last person who could know about it.

So Genjutsu was off the list.

Next, a really elaborate prank. Or, when put into context, someone intentionally planning to confuse her. Of course, it didn't make any sense, nor was it of use to anyone to get Sakura to think of the other option. But she had often thought that something was impossible, only for exactly that to be the case, which is why she decided to keep that theory in for now. Again, it was extremely unlikely for that to be the case, considering the amount of detail and digging one must do to find this kind of information (How else could someone replicate her bedroom and the face of her mother?).

Which is why the third and last option was the most likely and also the most confusing.

Time-travel.

She didn't want to think it was true. She didn't want to hope for something and be disappointed by the truth. She didn't want to unnecessarily get her hopes up.

And yet.

Sakura couldn't help but wish that she was thinking about this correctly. That everything did point to this conclusion. That she wasn't having her thinking influenced by this bias. That there was actually the possibility that she had once dreamt of. Had never stopped hoping for, somewhere in her heart. The possibility of saving everyone.

And she knew that even if that wasn't the case – even if she was wrong about it –, she'd still cling to that tiny strand of hope, like a drowning man to a lifebuoy. Because once she had been given the prospect of a peaceful future, there was nothing that could stop her from fulfilling it.

[1299 words]

A/N

I'm pretty sure I didn't keep anyone waiting by disappearing for half a year, which is the only benefit of having 0 readers.

I'm hoping to actually update consistently now, since the views aren't going to come if this story has only 4 chapters.

I forgot which way I did the date, so here's both:

22/4/24

4/22/24