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Sakura knows she shouldn’t have entered the restricted section of the Hokage Tower’s archives while looking for a med scroll Tsunade requested her to find.
She knows she shouldn’t have opened that scroll with the big ‘TIME-TRAVEL SCROLL, DO NOT OPEN AT ALL COSTS’ warning signed by the Third Hokage himself.
She knows she fucked up when that whatever jutsu stored inside opens a hole beneath her feet and makes her fall into a time rift.
. . .
She’s confused at first. The hole dropped her right at Training Grounds 3; she knew the exact place because of the stream she loved to go to cool her feet on after some rough training with her Shishou. Maybe that was only a teleportation scroll after all?
“Oi! Who are you? Identify yourself!”
Genma’s voice is unmistakable and she’s ready to complain to him about how could he not recognize her with her stupid pink hair, but she stops when she notices he’s way younger than what she remembers him to be.
“Well, I'm screwed.”
. . .
“So,” the Sandaime starts. “You are telling me that six years in the future you opened the scroll in which I wrote clear orders on never opening, and now you have no idea how to go back and what to do.”
“... Yes, Hokage-sama. That’s about it.”
Hiruzen rubs his temple with tiredness. “Well, I can’t say this hasn’t happened before. The only thing you can do right now is to wait. Someone in the future will look for you and find the scroll opened, and hopefully will reverse the seal to get you back. You should pray that the people who know how to do this are still alive.”
“Well, who are they? I can easily tell you if they’re alive! Jiraiya-sama, for example-”
“Stop, Haruno-san!” Hiruzen interrupts her. “Don’t tell me or no one else in this timeline about the future. The sole knowledge of anything that happens there can already disrupt the future. I want you to remain as discreet as possible while you wait for your people to rescue you, do you understand?”
“Yes, Hokage-sama, I apologize.” She says, bowing to him.
“I also have to warn you that if something does change, which I honestly hope to not be the case, you have to understand that the people in your timeline won’t be able to know about it. For them, it will be like the changes you recognize have always been that way, because time will write itself and you’ll be the only variable out of place. I once had a worker of mine be pulled to the past and we brought him back in three hours, but he went to his wife in the past where they still weren’t married and something happened in a way that when he came back, they were never married and we didn’t have marriage certificates or memories of it ever happening,” Sarutobi sighs tiredly from. “Well, you’re free to go now. You are to use the accommodations here in the Hokage Tower while you wait, I’ll make sure there’s a room ready for you to rest in. And remember, no messing with the timeline. I’ll keep an eye on you”
“Of course! Thank you, Hokage-sama. I’ll be on my way then.”
She walks patiently down the Hokage Tower. And when she’s out, she sprints towards the Academy.
Let’s go find Sasuke-kun to make him love me and date me since our younger years!
. . .
A very gentle lady from a dango stall tells her what time is it (and she thanks the inflation, because six years ago her money was worth the double and she bought so much dango for a cheap price that she could develop diabetes), Sakura is sure that in about half an hour the kids at the Academy would be allowed their lunch time in the courtyard. She waits near there, already orchestrating the perfect four-step plan.
- Sasuke-kun will come out and be his generally shut-in, self-isolated person.
- A really cute genin onee-chan will show up in front of him, and of course he’ll be in awe because she’s cute and she’s older and she can teach him cool new ninja tricks!
- The cute genin onee-chan will talk to him about her little cousin, Haruno Sakura-chan, and how she’s too shy to make any friends besides Ino. But she’s smart and pretty and gentle and caring and he could use some friends because he’s always by himself! Didn’t he know that recent studies prove with 100% accuracy that ninja who have a female best friend are way stronger than those with no friends?
- They would become friends and when little Sakura would become infatuated with him, he would for sure reciprocate her feelings!
When the kids finally start leaving for the courtyard, Sakura is truly surprised to spot Sasuke-kun in the middle of the laughing children, playing around and wanting to share lunchboxes. That’s definitely not how she remembers him being! She never paid much attention to him when they were seven, though.
“How did he change so much in so little time? What happened?” She asks herself as she watches him laugh in a way that she never thought he was physically possible to.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Sakura’s scream is muffled by a hand on top of her mouth, and her instinct is to gather chakra to her fist and punch the person who sneaked behind her. Her blow is easily avoided, though, and her unknown assaulter finally releases her. She quickly turns to face someone in an ANBU attire.
“Don’t try this at me, it won’t work. Either way, the Sandaime made me tell me about your circumstances and I’m responsible for keeping an eye on you while you don’t go back to the future,” the ANBU explains, and Sakura finally relaxes around him even if her plans on changing the timeline to speed up her happy ending with Sasuke-kun can’t be executed anymore.
“Oh, okay. Nice to meet you, ANBU-san, my name is-”
“Stop. I shouldn’t know your name. I don’t know from which year you came from, nor your name or circumstances, and I ask you to refrain from telling me those things. You must remain a stranger to me,” he interrupts her, and Sakura reminds herself about the orders the Third gave to her.
“Oh, of course. I’m sorry, ANBU-san. Well, since I can’t be here to see people I know in their past forms and I don’t want to be at Hokage Tower right now, I’m going to take a stroll around Past Konoha. See you!”
. . .
She has a good time walking around both the civilian and shinobi shopping districts, having fun reading old newspapers and trying on horrendous clothes that were considered the last fashion six years ago. She even finds the first edition of the newest Icha Icha book released that year and that was so explicit it had been considered ‘inappropriate for all ages’, collected from all bookstores and replaced with censored versions of it. She used a henge to take the appearance of an older man and bought it with the intention of using it as bribery against Kakashi-sensei.
When her stomach starts rumbling she thinks it’s a good time to eat the dangos she bought for herself early on, and remembers that she just loved eating at a small park that was destroyed during the Konoha Crush. Heading there and finding a nice bench to sit on, she muses about the superfluous amount of dessert she bought and calls to the air:
“Hey, ANBU-san, do you want to eat with me? I bought too much dango and it’ll be bad before I manage to eat it all.”
There were no rustling sounds of leaves or footsteps, but in a second her masked babysitter was right in front of her. “Are those the dangos from the Aikawa shop?” he asks.
“Yeah! Do you like them?”
She sees him hesitate answering for a few seconds before saying, “... they are the best ones in the village.”
She beams at him, agreeing wholeheartedly. “They sure are! Come on, have a seat and eat some. It’s on me. It must be a pain in the ass to babysit me until they drag me back to the future, so that’s the least I can do.”
The ANBU does sit, but he still doesn’t accept the dango. Sakura remembers, then, that ANBUs are never supposed to let people discover who they were. It wouldn’t make a difference for her, though.
“If you’re worried about me discovering your super secret identity, don’t worry about it! I don’t know anyone with your hair or voice, so we probably never met. I’ve never been around that many jonins if they aren’t mine or my friend’s senseis,” she reassures him. “And come on, you said it yourself! It’s the best dango in Konoha. And for free!”
She sees her guard pondering with his head directed towards the desserts between them on the bench. And, finally, he removes his mask.
Sakura thought he would be an adult by his voice and height, but she sees he’s still a teenager just like her. She can’t tell much about his exact age though because his eyes bear a weight so heavy she might think they were there since the Founder’s time. But he’s handsome as hell. His long, black hair compliments his fair skin, and his features are almost androgynous, being delicate yet sharp, in a complete contrast to his already deepening voice, already past the stage of being raspy and unstable. She actually thinks he’s a mix of Neji and Sasuke-kun. But, in the end:
“Yep. Never seen you in my entire life. What’s your favorite dango? Kinako, mitarashi or hanami?”
“... I will go with the hanami one, thank you,” he says as he gets one of the sticks holding three colored dumplings.
They eat in silence for a while because Sakura knows he wants to know as little as possible about her and she’s actually trying to control the oversharing monster that she is. That’s why she’s completely surprised when her companion speaks.
“How can you be so… peaceful?”
Sakura’s brain fails to register what he’s asking at first, but then the realization comes to her. Her babysitter wasn’t that much older than her, but he was a black op already. His appearance and behavior also denounced it: the strange marks under his eyes she only now realizes are stress lines, his ancient-looking eyes, and the easy bribery with simple things probably denied to him in the past, an easy technique Team 7 always used with Kakashi-sensei. Kakashi-sensei, a child soldier.
ANBU-san had probably seen and suffered more in his short life than what she would in her next 10 years, been denied his childhood and dragged to a world of way at god-knows-what age. She never stopped to reflect about how the Third War affected those she sees working and living by every day of their lives, but now she realizes how privileged she was to be able to be born and raised during peace times. To graduate from the Academy at 12, to not be used in missions even if she barely knew how to use a kunai because there was no one left to do them, to lose people every day and to not know if she would be alive tomorrow.
And she knows she shouldn’t, she knows… But if she can soothe the ache in this boy’s heart in any way by telling him of the peace times ahead of them…
“Well, why shouldn’t I be? All of you in the past worked so hard to allow us to grow up living good lives! Peaceful times produce peaceful youngsters,” she smiles at him to make him see she took the hint, and his eyes sparkle for a fraction of a second.
“Are you serious? There were no wars in the period between now and where you came from?” He asks. No, he hopes.
“Not in Konoha, no. I mean, stuff happened because it happens all times, and of course there were some events in which we lost people. But no, no wars,” she confirms.
The ANBU looks completely amused by her words, staring at the green fields of the park almost dreamingly. “Living in a generation that isn’t scarred by wars, with no suffering…” he muses.
“Well, there is suffering,” Sakura adds, more to herself than anyone else, her expression turning painful just from remembering. “It’s more peaceful, yes, but it’s still a shinobi world. Sasuke-kun, for exampl-”
Sakura realizes she talked too much and restrains herself from saying more by putting her own hands over her mouth, but the damage was already done. She sees the ANBU’s expression shift instantly, and she thinks he would instantly send her back to the Hokage Tower to be isolated from being able to mess with the past.
But he doesn’t.
“What… What were you saying right now?”
“No, it’s nothing, I shouldn’t have said that, I’m sorry,” she apologizes, but lets out a soft gasp as the ANBU reaches for her hand and squeezes it.
“Please. I need to know what you were saying. I promise I won’t tell anyone. But please, this means a lot to me.”
The ANBU’s expression, until now very guarded and calm, shows an edge closer to desperation. His hold on her hand remains strong and even if she was often oblivious and easily misguided by her emotions, she understands then that this was bigger than her. Something primal in him needed to know what she was going to say, and well, he is an ANBU. He has the power to change stuff way more than she did.
So maybe, if she tells him, if he can somehow prevent Sasuke-kun from leaving…
“Well… There was this teammate of mine. He was always number one in our class, perfect in genjutsu, ninjutsu and taijutsu alike. Since we were kids he was always alone and shutting everyone away from him… At the time we thought it was because he was so cool and mature and wasn’t interested in kid’s play,” she started. “But it wasn’t the case. It took me months as teammates to finally understand that he was so scarred by his past his heart became too full of sorrow to let anyone in. And we tried, but… But in the end he still left because he thought Konoha and our team could never help him in getting his revenge.”
The boy by her side tries to process all the information he received, but he needs to ask just to make him understand better. “Alone? Leaving Konoha? Revenge?”
Sakura knows then she’s threading into a much more dangerous territory. But it’s for Sasuke kun…
“I-I don’t know what happened because they never talk to us about it and I never had the courage to ask, but it seems like he was an orphan. His entire family was murdered by a man and he was the last one left. He became obsessed with getting revenge from the man who destroyed his life and his days were spent training and getting stronger to kill him someday. We tried to get him to open his heart to us, to find strength in being together with people who cared and loved him. But he thought of Konoha as weak, and there was this man… I never saw someone so wicked and evil in my life. He promised my teammate he could offer the power he wished if he went to him. My teammate… He left without looking back, and he almost killed our other teammate when he went to bring him back. He was always so cold and bitter to everyone around him, no matter how much we loved him, now matter how much I still love him, and I don’t know if he’ll ever come back home. I think he never thought of Konoha as home.”
“I… I see,” her bodyguard says as he puts his mask back on his face, but he seemingly has no other words left. Maybe he can’t say much, considering his position? Maybe he has guessed who that man was, and what had been done to Sasuke-kun? Maybe it had already happened, or the ANBU knew of something going on?
Either way, an immense feeling of dread for breaking the rules settles in her stomach. She had disobeyed direct orders from the Sandaime and she isn’t even sure now that ANBU-san could do anything about the situation. What if she had dropped a bomb that was about to happen and she just made things worse?
“You should return to the Hokage Tower now,” he suggests, but she knows well that it was an order.
“Yeah, I think it’s for the best… I’m sorry and thank you for the trouble of keeping me company,” she agrees, grabbing the rest of her dango and leaving without looking back. She knows he won’t be there anyway.
. . .
She thinks she’ll arrive in the tower with the Third already knowing all about her adventures on messing with the past, but she doesn’t see him at all. There is someone responsible for showing her the sleeping quarters the moment she arrives, and there is also someone to deliver her food and clean clothes for the night, but it seems like ANBU-san never told Sarutobi-sama about her revelations.
She’s trying to sleep when she hears a rustling by her window. Getting instantly on guard, she relaxes when the dim light of the streets reveal her babysitter using his catlike mask.
“Oh, hello?” She greets him not knowing what to say. “Does Sandaime-sama need me for anything, ANBU-san?”
“No, I’m here on a personal errand. I want to thank you deeply for what you told me earlier today,” he says, approaching her bed. “You have no idea about the difference it made in my life. If you haven't returned to your world yet, it will probably happen very soon, but I had to show you my appreciation before then.”
ANBU-san removes his mask to properly speak with her eye to eye, and removes something from his pocket. Sitting by her side, he continues:
“The world you will return won’t be the same you left, but I promise you I am doing my best to make it better. If I am still alive in the future you came from…” He grabs her hand and she has the reflex to open it to receive whatever he had in his pocket before. She feels the cold metal of a necklace with three tomoe brooches distributed around a black leather cord. “... I will know you are the girl who met me back in the past when I see this token of mine. Please, keep it with you.”
She feels she needs to be just as grateful as he is for her, but she doesn’t know what for. She knows he probably won’t explain what the hell is going on, so she asks instead: “Who are you? What is your name?”
He smiles gently at her. The gentlest of all the smiles, that makes her heartbeat flutter in a completely new way. No one had ever looked at her like that, like she was so valuable. “You will know once you go back, if I manage to make things right. But I want you to know that I am forever indebted with you. Thank you for saving my family and loving my little brother, Future Girl.”
Sakura’s brain enters on short-circuit at the same time that ANBU-san —Sasuke-kun’s brother?!— taps her forehead with affection, gone in the next moment she blinks.
. . .
She is swept back to her timeline during her sleep, so to say she was pissed at being woken up by falling from a time rift right on the hard ground is an understatement.
Around her are Tsunade-shishou, Jiraiya-sama and five more people she never met before. And if she is pissed at being woken up that way, she instantly forgets it when she sees her teacher’s face. If anything, she would have to put on a purchase order for her very own coffin.
She gets an earful so absurd about never being allowed in the restricted section ever again she thinks of never entering the archives again just to avoid the headache, and the Godaime proceeds to take her to her office so Sakura can report on exactly what happened during the 19 hours she spent in the past.
Sakura reports it all while also giving Tsunade a small letter written by the Third himself telling Tsunade to never let anyone besides those who brought Sakura back that she was in the past in the first place. That is, Sakura reports it all with the exception of saying how she probably altered their entire timeline by telling Sasuke-kun’s deceased brother about their imminent doom. She thinks it’s best to never tell a thing about it; if nothing changed at all, she would be suspended from her shinobi activities for gods-know-how-long. But if he succeeded in whatever it was that he wanted to do, probably everyone would think that this was how things always were, just like the Third told her. She only tells about the nice ANBU-san who guarded her and took her dangos home with him when she offered.
“You listen up kiddo, you gave me so much trouble that I don’t want to see your face for the next three days. You stay out of my way while I find a way to let this scroll away from stupid people and come back on Friday. And you better be ready to deal with three day’s worth of work for you, because I’ll count that you are absent without leave!” Tsunade points her finger at Sakura, warning her that she was going to work her ass off to be forgotten for her adventures.
“Understood, Shsihou. I deeply apologize again and I promise I’ll never do something so reckless or dumb again. I’ll come back prepared!”
She goes back home but can’t sleep at all. She sees that the streets are different; just like they were before the Konoha Crush. So that meant there was no invasion during the last Chunin Exams, or the damage was severely reduced. She searches for more information in the Academy’s textbooks, but they don’t have any new information about Konoha from the last seven years. One thing didn’t change, though: on her nightstand stands the first picture of Team 7, with her in the middle and Naruto and Sasuke-kun apparently fighting about something instead of smiling at the picture. Behind them, with each hand on top of the boy’s heads, is a smiling Kakasi-sensei. Her team was gladly the same, then.
When the sun finally rises and her parents are finally up, she asks when the Third Hokage died. If there was no Konoha Crush and Tsunade was there as their Hokage, it must mean that he died in another way, right?
“What are you talking about, Sakura? Sandaime-sama is still enjoying his retirement, isn’t he? Did Lady Tsunade tell you something different about him? Is he fine?” Kizashi answers her.
Okay, so the Third is alive and retired. He apparently had a heart attack shortly after the Chunin Exams and decided to retire, so the council decided to find Tsunade-hime and appoint her as the Fifth. She initially didn’t agree to it, but Jiraiya convinced her to. She wonders what happened in this timeline for her to request Tsunade to train her.
Knowing that if Team 7 kept the same habits they would have a training session two hours from then, she gets ready and goes to their usual meeting spot near Training Grounds 12. When she arrives, Naruto is already there and treats her the same way as ever, being his usual goofy self.
“Listen up, Sakura-chan! I was going to wait for Sasuke and Kakashi-sensei to arrive and tell the good news, but I’m so excited I can’t hold it! Ero-Sennin decided the date we’ll leave to travel the country. We’ll be going in three weeks! I’m already thinking about showing y’all the cool stuff I learn and beating Stupid Sasuke in a spar!”
She reacts with enthusiasm for her friend, because in the original timeline Naruto was also going to leave to train with Jiraiya for two years and she already grew used to the idea of having him away from them. It seemed like major events were bound to happen anyways, like Tsunade-sama being the obvious choice to be the next Hokage, she becoming her apprentice and Naruto leaving to train with Jiraiya.
She might have given it some deeper thought if Kakashi and Sasuke had not arrived together, and Sasuke-kun was so damn different. He still bickers with Naruto 90% of the time and their stupid rivalry surely remains strong, but Sasuke greets her —he greeted her before she did!— with a nice smile and asks her if she managed to learn that tricky incision she complained about the last time they met. He treated her like they were friends!
He is more reserved than them and is obviously still the same prideful person as before, always wanting to take leadership and showing off his phenomenal skills (and is he even better than before?!), but he was happy. Yes, she can see in his eyes that there was no haunting behind them, no vengeance, no sorrow.
Her heart fills itself with pure joy. They had made it! His older brother had been able to save him. She even says she’s going to a nearby public bathroom to quietly cry from happiness, knowing it would be strange as hell to her teammates to see her reacting strangely. Being friends with Sasuke-kun, having the opportunity to have her presence welcomed, her team being together… It was truly a miracle. Maybe now they could even develop the romance she always dreamt about?!
She immediately gets uncomfortable with the idea, her hand automatically reaching for the memento resting around her neck and hidden by the high collar of her qipao dress to clutch on the metal tomoes. It’s not that she stopped liking Sasuke-kun, no. But she just got something she always wished for, which was his acceptance, and she feels like the right thing to do is to let things run their course and just enjoy being his friend and becoming stronger to be on par with her teammates. She may not have to train with the purpose of bringing Sasuke-kun back to Konoha, but now she just had to train to make sure she would never be left behind by them again.
Sakura feels that it was destiny that made her go against her own good judgment and open that scroll, and it was destiny that she had to meet Sasuke-kun’s older brother and tell him things she shouldn’t have. She thinks it’s also better to let destiny take her from now on, too.
. . .
Team 7 is eating at Ichiraku after their training session, just as always, when Naruto suddenly says, “hey, look! It’s Itachi and Shisui!”
Sakura turns her head wondering who are those people Naruto is calling to join them, and her eyes rest first in the tallest of them. He has unruly curly hair and the biggest grin on his face, and seems like a genuinely good person. And the person next to him was… Yes, it was him. He was an adult now, and gone were his boyish and androgynous features, replaced by manly traces, but it was truly him.
Sasuke’s older brother (Shisui? Itachi? Which was his name?) greets them one by one. He bows respectfully to Kakashi and greets him calling him senpai, pats Sasuke’s head once and smirks endearingly at his otouto’s embarrassed Itachi-nii, stop that! Then he gives Naruto a shoulder tap and, finally, turns to her.
“Good afternoon, Sakura-chan. How are you?”
He realizes right then that something is different with Sakura, but she knows he will wait for her to approach him. So she smiles at him and says, “I’m good, what about you?” as casually as she can.
They all eat together and Team 7 finishes first considering they were already eating before Itachi and Shisui arrived. They pay their bill and are giving their goodbyes for the day when ANBU-san’s voice calls from behind them.
“Sakura-chan, do you mind staying behind to talk with me for a second? I need to ask you something Tsunade-sama requested me to,” he asks, but she knows it’s an excuse.
“Sure. See you guys tomorrow!” She waves to her team as each of them head to their own directions.
Alone with Itachi, she reaches for her neck to remove his necklace, offering it to him. “I guess this is yours, right?”, she offers.
“No, please, keep it. It’s yours now,” he requests. “I wondered when you would arrive here, I spent seven years waiting. Nice to meet you, Haruno Sakura-chan. My name is Uchiha Itachi.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Itachi-kun,” she beams at him. “Sasuke-kun is… He’s saved. You saved him. Thank you.”
“You saved him, Sakura-chan. And me. Actually, you saved my entire family. I’ll be forever grateful for what you have done for us,” he assures her, giving her again that gentle smile that made her blush from head to toe.
“But what have you done? How did you manage to change the future with what I told you?”
“I’ll tell you when you’re older, all right?” He pokes her forehead like he did the last time they met, and there is the heart flutter again. “Until then, please take good care of my little brother. He thinks of you as a precious friend and truly loves all his teammates.”
If she thought of herself as too flustered to talk, Itachi’s words made her explode with happiness in a way that she managed to recompose herself and answer him. “Count on me for it, shannaro!”
Itachi laughs a little at her excitement. “I have to go now, Shisui is waiting for me. But stop by our home soon, please. My mom adores when you go over, she thinks of you as a daughter figure to dote on. Her name is Mikoto, by the way.”
“I’ll go for sure! But before that you have to tell me about everyone and everything I should pretend to know, okay? Don’t you make me embarrass myself! I’m Sakura-sama The World Savior, after all.”
Now Itachi truly laughs. “Of course. We’ll meet again soon and I’ll repay you for those dangos from last time. I can help you then.”
“That’s a promise!” She waves goodbye at him and sees him disappear back into Ichiraku’s booth to reunite with Shisui, who was probably another family member by their resemblance. Maybe cousins?
Anyways, she thinks she needs the whole three days to properly process what happened and to digest the happiness that seems about to implode her body. Maybe she could find a journal to see what the Past Sakura had written there? That would surely help her!
She goes home with the biggest of all the smiles and Itachi-kun’s necklace on her again.