The Weight of Shadows

Blame it on her Phoenix Soul

Sakura is stuck, trapped in a cycle of endless reincarnation, each time as a different person, or in a different time, and sometimes even a different world entirely. Nothing is ever the same, and she moves on, with pain in her heart at each loss.

At least until every thousandth incarnation.

Sakura wasn't exactly sure why it happened to her. Maybe she had somehow forgotten, or worse, wiped her memory through some sort of seal. Either way, the results were the same.

The first time it happened, she had seen it as an opportunity. A way to correct her mistakes – the gods had given her a chance for a redo. A way to save everyone. She had strove to better herself, because she had been reborn as Haruno Sakura once again.

The second time it happened, she was confused – more so because she hadn't woken up as Haruno Sakura. Instead, it was Uchiha Sakura. She had taken that into her stride through, even flying blind as she was unlike what with her second life. There was no indication of what was coming her way, and Sakura didn't like that. She hated the unknown. She hated being unable to deal with things greater than herself. Because she had been reborn. Because she was supposed to be better than everyone else, because she had more experience. Her best friend should never have died. She never should have awoken the mangekyou. Her brother never should have given her his own eyes upon his deathbed.

The third time it happened, she was becoming accustomed to the fact that something strange was going on, but the so-called 'Will of Fire' burnt bright inside her. She was Senju Sakura then, born in the warring states period, and there were a lot of lives for her to save. Sakura had just ensured she kept the fact she still had a working, fully matured sharingan to herself. When she awoke the rinnegan towards the tail end of her life, she never spoke of it. Sakura was determined to ensure the so-called Infinite Tsukuyomi never happened in her lifetime again.

It had to be a blessing that she was reincarnating so many times. There was some sort of purpose she had to fulfil, and Sakura spent the first twenty lifetimes wondering exactly what it was. Her Yin Chakra grew at a phenomenal rate with each lifetime passed, and every time she incarnated again, her Yin-Yang Chakra balance became that much more skewed, and her chakra control became that much less perfect thanks to resulting imbalance.

But it was on her fiftieth life when she was forced to face the fact that there might not have been any purpose for her constant cycle of reincarnation – for on her fiftieth lifetime, she didn't incarnate as Sakura. She didn't even reincarnate in the Elemental Nations. Instead, she was reborn on earth, as one Hermione Granger. She wasn't a shinobi there. Instead, she was called a witch who could use a strange energy called magic. It didn't replace her chakra, and unlike her chakra, it never followed her between reincarnations. Even when she reincarnated in that world some fifty five cycles later as Callisto Malfoy.

She didn't even want to get started on the politics in that world. It was even more messed up, and far more corrupted than Konohagakure had ever been, and Konoha had Danzo.

Sakura was spiteful after a few lifetimes under his less than tender care.

So much so, she had felt terribly gleeful when she chidoried him in the chest. Multiple times. It had been oddly thrilling, and she had been laughing like a demented Uchiha – were there any other kinds? – and had swiftly found herself sympathising with the Sasuke in all of the universes where he had struck out on his own to kill the slippery bastard. If that wasn't a sign something was wrong, she didn't know what was.

She had borne so many names by that point, and she was growing tired. Tired of the constant cycle of death and rebirth she seemed to be trapped in. Every lifetime she found herself growing colder and colder towards her family members and friends, should she have any. Because at the end of the day they all died. They went to the Pure Lands, and she was reincarnated into yet another body. She couldn't love them without feeling the stinging burn of their loss when she woke inside the body of a baby.