Preventing The Inevitable

Chapter 6

A/N before chapter:
I edited in a detail that is quite important in retrospect. For some, it could be major for understanding this story, so anyone coming back to this chapter can skip to "And that was what mattered" to find it.

Sorry and ty.

–

This wasn't her home, Sakura realized some time later. Yes, the building was the same, and her bedroom walls were painted in that same, obnoxiously bright pink color (contrary to popular opinion, she didn't actually like every shade of pink), but that was it.

Her room was, upon closer inspection, missing a lot of furniture. Her clothes hung on a clothes hanger on a metal bar, the ones that didn't fit on the bar lying on a wooden table underneath it. There was no wardrobe or closet. The bookshelf – the one with all of the old books that her mother had hoarded decades ago and brought here when they moved into this house during her pregnancy – was still there, albeit missing a bit too many books, making that collection her mother had prouded herself in seem a lot more sparse.

Her bed turned out to be one of those couches that could be folded out, which was probably uncomfortable for the average person and even more for a child, but it was still like heaven for someone like Sakura, who had slept on the wet and sticky grass of the wilderness, or the rough stone of a cold cave for the last months of the war. By then, opening another camp had been out of question, and they had had to take shelter wherever seemed save enough as a hiding spot at the moment.

The kitchen and the dining room were also only sparsely decorated if the table and the two flower pots in the corners could even be considered as such. Even though Sakura had yet to have the chance to explore the house more (it would seem too suspicious, and she had already drawn too much attention earlier), she strongly suspeceted the other rooms to be in a similiar state.

There was also the matter of her dead father and, more importantly, Yūta, who was apparently her brother.

Was she in a parallel universe? If so, did Kaguya and Zetsu even exist? Was Akatsuki still a thing? Would she even need to fight at all? If the world wasn't going to end, there was really no need to go ahead and tray to save everyone, right?

Because then, Sakura would be just like any other person trying to keep their loved ones safe and she, just like them, wouldn't be able to predict any deaths, as she had assumed so far, with the time-travel and all.

Maybe the world wouldn't end after all. Maybe she'd live and die like anyone else, being subject to the unpredictability of the world once again.

She didn't feel particularily relieved by that, somehow.

Yet, that was only assuming the world outside had changed drastically. Her parents saving more money when it came to house decorations (aka being poor) wasn't such a huge change, compared to the possibility of Kaguya never having happened.

But she couldn't know that. Couldn't know what was changed until she came across it. (And then it would be too late.) This could be all that had changed, or just a fraction of the hundreds of differences that awaited Sakura outside of her home. Nothing could be the same as she remembered. Everyone she once knew could be a completely different person leading a completely different life. Like her parents who now had two children instead of one. Or her father, who would've still been alive. Her father who wasn't supposed to die before the fourth year. Her father, who she should have reunited with. Who she had wanted to–

But still.

At least– At least she was still Sakura Haruno. And that was what mattered.