The Weight of Shadows

Chapter One: I can't undo what has been done

Life #9000

A hum escaped her as the two of them sat in the Prancing Pony, a noisy little inn found in the quaint little village of Bree. Sakura had, by that point in time, found great amusement in playing with her drink. Like a child, of so her Chieftain had told her with an amused fondness come from being forced to bear with her unusual company for a good few years. That fondness was like a dagger to her chest, an open wound in the making – because he would leave her. They always did. She could hardly live amongst her once-kin as mortal as she was.

Few could even recognise her, what with how she concealed her chakra. How she concealed the true nature of her soul from curious, prying eyes. It was why she strived to avoid the elves, her once-kin, what with their ability to perceive the Unseen, unlike her current mortal brethren.

It was necessary for her to conceal and repress the power which dwelled in her spirit after all her reincarnations, because it burnt her from the inside out. No mortal body in those lands was made to withstand that amount of power, and her skin trembled under the strain. Concealing her true nature and pushing her power down was only a temporary stopgap though, and Sakura knew all too soon her form would crumble to ash. And she was barely out of her teenage years in that cycle.

Closing her eyes, she pushed those thoughts and fears away. It never did to dwell on those thoughts – it wasn't like she herself could do anything about them. She'd had years of trying to stop her cycle of reincarnation in its tracks, and she had come to a realisation that short of a higher power interfering, she was stuck in a seemingly infinite loop. And her window of opportunity to bind her fate with Arda's had almost run out.

Sakura supposed she deserved it somewhat, after the mess which had been Life Two Thousand. That had not been a good cycle, despite her return to Arda. Though she hadn't realised that much at the time. Instead, her thousand-cycle anger had been unleashed upon the world that had stirred it up in the first place, and it had brought nothing but more grief in hindsight. That was always the trouble, well it had been, but the last few thousand odd cycles had taught her the value of patience.

Manipulating Danzo like a puppet on strings until he reached the moment of his final demise... and then detailing exactly what she had done to ensure he reached that point in the ensuing monologue... A happy look crossed her face, a contented sigh escaping her at the many faces Danzo had made in all of the later cycles she had been through at that moment. He did far too much wrong in pretty much all of her many reincarnations within Konoha, and she was always so very happy to take care of the trash.

"So," she finally spoke, staring at her grim-faced companion. "When exactly are you going to tell me of what we're doing here, of all places?" She sipped at the beer, humming once more as she judged it to be worthy of the Butterbur's who'd come before him – not that she could remember all of them. Rarely in her last incarnations had she stopped in Bree for too long.

"We are waiting on a certain someone," Aragorn said, keeping his eyes fixed on the entranceway to the inn. "Gandalf requested my aid. He said it was of vital importance... and given what he carries..." The last part was a murmur, barely audible over the din of the room.

"Hmm... Mithrandir, eh?" she mumbled, crossing and uncrossing her legs as she waited for her illustrious leader to spill the vague description of the one they were apparently waiting on. "I don't suppose the wizard will be meeting us wherever it is we're going."

Aragorn nodded then. "He will meet us. When, I am not certain, but there is no doubt he will find us – whether it be once we've reached our destination, or on the way to it," he said, and Sakura hummed in contemplation. Rare was it, that she interacted with one of the Istari – though of their number, she had only ever properly spoken with Mithrandir, as he was known to the elves as. The other folk called him Gandalf. Either name was fine, though she took care not to call the wizard by his maia name. Not in front of others, where it would raise too many questions.