Chapter Text
Sometimes death doesn’t come how you expected it.
Sakura chases all her life. She chases after Ino, after Sasuke, after Kakashi, and after Naruto. She chases for Improvement, she chases for acknowledgement, for strength, for power.
And to sum it all Sakura chases for love.
Of all things she gave and been given in return, sometimes when she mustered up the courage to ask herself. Does it matter after all? She hopes it does.
[Welcome to Aether Space!]
[Please Choose Your Character Attribute
Intelligence :
Charm :
Virtue :
Power :
Strength :
]
Sakura blinks tiredly at the screen
What
She raises one hand to poke at the blank feature of intelligence. Haruno Sakura was many things but unintelligent was never one of them.
Perhaps this is just some kind of sick joke and a pause on her way to hell, as she’s sure as a shinobi there would be no place in heaven for her.
She tries for sure, Sakura was kind, was taught to be kind.
But good?
Maybe in another profession
Though of all things Sakura takes a long sick drag of her gaze at charm—remembering her childhood days of bullying, the painful hurtful remarks from mere children. Ah, they still have quite the sting.
But it wouldn’t hurt, right? Yes this doesn’t seem to be real anyway
Wordlessly tapping at the line beside the charm and dragging it to full points
Yes, just some useless crap of daydream.
Sakura took her hand back as a sudden electricity coursed through the screen, tearing it apart. Everything seemed to fall apart around her and Sakura looked at the blank space being swallowed
The dead remains dead no matter what.
A bright light exploded before she could think of anything else
“My lady!”
“Call the healers quickly!”
Sakura wakes up with a stab of pain in her gut.
Viridian eyes open to the scene of frantic people in front of her
“Lady Sakura!” A brown haired teen evidently a civilian wearing those servant clothes from wealthy nobles in the land of fire she had seen before in her missions, the maid exclaimed in airy relief as Sakura regained her consciousness
Sakura closes her eyes once more as the pain ebbs, not noticing the sudden stiffness of the young woman before her
Green eyes, like the lush leaves in towering trees, like the vibrant meadows at spring as wildflowers dance among the breeze
Lady Sakura had been beautiful before but she seemed to become more exquisite every second now—
“You are?” Sakura asked after a moment, but then she nearly bolted out of the soft bed she was in when the maid suddenly clasped Sakura's sweaty fingers in hers
“Ashina my lady! Ashina! I was your stationed maid since last month, and you clearly remembered before you passed out. But I guess you only forgot about it momentarily, yes your forgiven I mean–”
Sakura looked stupefied for a second before forcefully removing the hand from hers and backing slowly out of reach from the young woman who seemed to be dosed under aphrodisiac
“Yes, Ashina-san If you could excuse me I’d like to rest some more”
“You remembered!” The maid squeals to Sakura’s horror reminding her of her younger days fawning over Sasuke
“But my lady, perhaps I can stay here as you rest, what if you need anything, you see—yes, I’ll be very helpful” The maid started to crawl to Sakura’s bed her brown eyes alight and her mouth seemed to foam over
Sakura wanted to gag at the sight no she’d seen worse
“So please, let me stay” The maid's words resounding animalistic to Sakura’s ear
Green eyes snapped “Fuck off!”
With a burst of chakra, Sakura flipped off the bed trapping the maid beneath as she smoothly slid away.
Maybe this wasn’t the normal foolhardy body Sakura had beaten with the ground with training because, with just that small use of chakra, her frail body seemed to topple over, her stomach flipping with motions that made Sakura vomit over the carpeted floor.
What the fuck just happened
Sakura made herself scarce, wanting to mould in the wall of the room she was in. There was the sudden sound of doors opening and several people entering.
Five muscled men lifted off the heavy wooden bed to reveal the, fortunately, still-breathing servant before she was not so gently dragged out.
Four new maids hurry to tidy off the room and change the now upright bedding before Sakura gently ushered them to rest.
Sakura didn’t look up to any of them, her gaze only drifting downwards, and her words remained clipped when the healer came in to take a look at her.
After everything was done and they seemed to notice the tiredness Sakura exuded they left her alone quietly with a differential bow.
Well, that’s new
A sole maid perhaps waiting for the other to leave first before she moves on to close the door
“Wait.”
Sakura lifts her gaze, directly to the maid's eye, wanting to ask about food when Sakura sees the change in the maid’s demeanour.
The calm startled look stiffened and morphed into something unhinged, wanting.
She sees her reflection in the maid’s eyes. Long scattered pink hair, a body that was the same age as Sakura plunges to oblivion and her death. The maid’s brown eyes were murky but there was something bright in her eyes’s reflection, like a burst of sun eclipsing, surrounding her soul’s window
Verdant enchanting green.
It’s Sakura’s eyes.
“Do you need anything? My lady”
Sakura was tired. But she called out whatever lick of chakra she had and in a burst of speed, tackled the door close and yanked the several locks more tightly. Dragging a heavy wooden dresser to even more secure the door, she hears the frantic scratching and calling outside.
Sakura then promptly collapses
She woke up again to the frantic knocking.
“Lady Sakura? Open the door this instant! You silly girl, after embarrassing your father with that uncouth behaviour at Lady Katsuhime’s court!”
A domineering feminine voice.
Her neck hurts
“Ojou-sama!”
The same voice screeched her title.
Sakura covers her ears and in a desperate attempt to ground herself
Where is she? She’s supposed to be dead, she’ll go down that road first and then wait slowly for her team to follow her, because even with all her selfishness Sakura wants them to live a long satisfying life
It’s alright
Calm down.
The surroundings seem to be still familiar, so Sakura can guess the culture wouldn’t be different. From what she can tell from her room, one thing can only describe the life the body she occupies lives. It is lavish, grand even.
Her hands were pure, without a single scratch on them, with dainty long fingers.
Sakura abruptly stood up and searched her dresses, uncaring about the noise on her door.
Stacks of jewels and other expensive items a growing woman her age would adore. Sakura sighs in relief after finally finding a mirror, golden and encrusted with jewels of all things.
Sakura blinks rapidly stealing and preparing herself. She half-assed expected a mangekyou in her eyes or anything alien, but was disappointed to see her normal face.
Haruno Sakura at eighteen stared back at her.
Perhaps a Sakura who was more well cared for. The Sakura that the only hardship in life was to be scrutinised for anything out of place in her hair or her makeup, or if she memorised the recent music script or the latest design of kimono at court because the Daimyo’s wife would certainly start a new trend and it’ll be a grave crime if she still wears clothes of similar patterns last summer.
How lucky, how unfortunate.
Perhaps she was still Sakura, just in the body of another life that she could have lived.
Identity crisis solved.
She only has a second of momentum before Sakura picks herself up throwing her body aside as her door along her dresser was bulldozed with a loud boom.
Sakura winced at the impact. Dust clearing as a woman with a tight expression enters, a gaggle of servants waits quietly before the wrecked door
“Now what do we have here”
Piercing blue eyes stared down at Sakura’s crouching form.
Sakura didn’t dare to lift her gaze
Possibly if she follows along she can learn more about what exactly she is. Sakura mentally prepares herself.
The good thing was she was still in the elemental nations. And to brighten things up she was just some noble in the land of fire’s capital, shinobi still existed too, and Konohagakure was thriving.
Sakura still stopped herself from asking too many questions about Konoha’s clans but from what she had read, at least, the Uchiha Clan was still alive and remained a popular intrigue.
She can deduce that perhaps she wasn’t in her exact time, and this was before the Uchiha massacre or this wasn’t her timeline entirely and Team 7 was already formed without a Haruno Sakura on it because frankly, she already knew and accepted at fifteen that out of all the members of Team 7, Haruno Sakura is easily dispensable.
The reality didn’t leave a bitter aftertaste as much as before.
Sakura settled comfortably as Lady Sakura or Lady Haruno. She had always been a fast learner and copied the strict woman’s Kuwa-san natural elegant posture and habits to make things work smoothly. Though with a slight problem.
As Sakura didn’t dare to look anyone directly in the eyes, or when she did it with a decorative silk fabric covering her eyes, it made her look meek, something that her guardian clearly disapproved of.
“A lady of your standing does not cower.”
How high her standing was, Sakura wasn’t sure or particularly cared.
She would leave this place after all, she was just taking her time to heal her chakra coils as they seemed to settle down to what was similar to her past body.
It seems she had to grow bangs as well, as the purple diamond in her forehead would be too noticeable soon
Her chakra capacity would come back soon but her body remains the same frail damsel weak thing, it’s no problem with the level of chakra control she has though.
Just a few more
She tells herself, as she calmly sips her tea leaving a crimson stain at the edge of her cup.
She leaves in the quiet of the night with every gold and anything worth of money in her room of two months sealed in a freshly created storage scroll.
She left a note saying that she’d explore the world like any sane human who’d been trapped all her life in a single city.
Sakura hoped that Kuwa-san wouldn’t get herself to work up in anger.
Sakura was in the forest for a week because it seemed she was a danger to innocent mundane civilians after all. Sakura made the ridiculous mistake of looking directly at a vendor’s eye, stupidly confident that her genjutsu would work and her green accursed eyes would be brown under the haze of genjutsu
Well, she was wrong and it resulted in half a small village’s population hunting her down with passion that would make Naruto’s exuberance to shame.
It was only because of a dramatic show of jumping on a cliff and they thought her dead that they stopped
But still, it’s been a week without human contact and as much as Sakura was trained to survive even a sandstorm. She needed to restock her supplies.
So this time she covers her eyes with a thin slip of fabric and she can still at least see but block others’ vision to fully see her eyes.
She was hoping this would work. Because she doesn't have the byakugan to cheat this off
Sakura calmly walks to the entrance of the town, muting her chakra into that of a civilian woman, purposely dragging her gait and her posture slightly slumped.
She quickly tracked the stores for dried goods where the owner gawked when she bought everything on one shelf, but money quiets him off.
It was already late afternoon and as much as her intuition told her to go back to her forest and pretend to be a dead stump there somewhere. It was probably the spoiling she experienced back in the Capital that made her nauseous with the state of her clothes as well as her smell.
Here’s to hoping nothing goes wrong
She murmurs a prayer as she enters what seems to be at least a well-off Inn.
“Welcome!” A woman cheerfully greets her
“Room for one please” Sakura makes her voice small but enough that the woman can still hear it.
“I’m sorry, but the only available individual room we have is quite pricey um—”
Yes, Sakura knows exactly that she looked like some abandoned woman in the woods thank you
“I’ll take it,” Sakura says briskly before putting down a heavy purse in front of the woman
The woman stares dumbly for a second before nodding frantically and smiles widening and brighter than it was before
“Here’s your key, enjoy your stay!”
Sakura moans at the sensation of hot water, as she relaxes in her room’s tub. Closing her eyes for a few minutes before deciding to brush off the dirt all over her body.
Sakura didn’t exactly know how much she gave, she just took out that pocket of ryo because it was getting heavy on her pack and her storage scroll was already full.
Still, she can just ask later or maybe check her memories of how much did she put in the particular pouch.
It doesn’t matter
As she finished cleaning off, Sakura paused as she heard the unnoticeable thump if Sakura was just some ordinary woman.
Too bad she isn’t
Steeling herself as she wrapped her body with a towel, Sakura readied a chakra-enhanced fist.
The smell of iron hit her, an all-too-familiar scent.
On her floor was a man half dead with how he was gutted in the chest, and the blood from his neck.
Or she was overthinking it and most the blood wasn’t his
She probably just had to scream and the Inn’s owners would handle this but no her bleeding oath-abiding medic nin’s heart
Sakura heaved a heavy sigh, tightening the towel on her body before going to work.
She probably at least assessed the man she was healing because halfway to finishing patching the man up, with the splintered Anbu mask in the corner, Sakura should have probably guessed how deep in trouble she would be.
Her chakra was indeed coming back from how she worked it before but not her body. And that realisation hit truer when the fucker she was salvaging just a second before pinned her to the floor, the flimsy towel covering her body almost failing her at keeping some of her most intimate parts intact.
But the most dangerous part was Sakura looked directly at a pair of sharingan eyes, no, mangekyou sharingan, spinning locked with her own.
Time freezes and Sakura waits for a reaction when nothing happens she dares to hope that perhaps the man was immune to it because he has the mangekyou
“Is that how you treat people who save you”
She wants to ask him, but the pain at impact in her skull prevented her so
Sakura wants to scream angrily af him which is impossible under the weight, as the hands-on her neck tightens, squeezing until her vision blurs with the lack of air
Sakura gaps trying to push him off, but he held both of her wrists above her head with another hand and as she futile struggles
Sakura curses how weak her physical body is at the moment when in the past, she can perhaps smash the Anbu operative’s head with a finger.
“Who are you”
Sakura wanted to roll her eyes at him
“Kami” Sakura spats struggling to even move a hairwidth
The hand on her neck loosened enough not to hurt. Green eyes looked at him in confusion, because Sakura was well confused if he deemed her a threat, why wasn’t he doing anything other than pinning her to the floor
Sakura notes his features more than was starkly an Uchiha. Sakura hadn’t seen more than Obito and Sasuke but, she was envious to know that being pretty, runs in the family, or is just being plainly attractive.
Because the asshole above her can be classified into that category although she didn’t recognize him, she numbly notices that his hair got that curl whereas Obito, Sasuke and even Itachi don’t.
Is this how she dies again? Scaling Uchiha attractiveness.
It doesn’t sound that bad though
She heard a rasp of cough or laugh, Sakura only cringed wanting to get out of her position when the Uchiha leaned down, face burrowing on her neck and–
Is he smelling her?!
“Hey, you damn pervert get off me!”
It’s useless Sakura couldn’t even move
She heard it again and she was now sure he was laughing
Even his laugh sounds attractive
He abruptly raised his head to look directly at her eyes again and Sakura looked away out of habit. Although he only moved his head to where her gaze was.
Crazy guy
“You sound believable you know” He says and Sakura felt the hair all over her body stand up as she shivered
“Then, Kami-sama” Sakura wished she could dig a hole using her head on the floor as he leaned down brushing their nose, while his breathing all over her face. “Why don’t you come home with me, that diamond in your forehead seems very familiar you see”
He smiles, a dangerous thing
“I don’t remember anything about Tsunade-sama taking a new apprentice, and that apprentice having the famed byakugou seal”
Relief, sadness, and happiness swept Sakura all at once
Shishou was alive
A lone tear runs down her cheek and Sakura squeaks when the Uchiha abandons his hold on her neck to wipe it.
Strange
A heavy sigh
“I’ll go with you” Sakura conceded
“Now get off” The Uchiha only quirked his lips at her
“Now, I don’t think so, I think I’m quite comfortable where I am now,” He says smoothly and Sakura flushed with anger as she was literally naked below him with a blooded rag excuse of a towel separating them
“Well I’m not, get off”
He thankfully listens this time with a chuckle. Sakura quickly fastens her towel before running back to the bathroom.
Uchiha Shisui
As much as Sakura wanted to go see Tsunade in the flesh, she didn’t want to go back to Konoha. She knows the village she studiously protected till her death for what it was.
A beast hiding in sheep's wool as it ate the young.
No
Sakura didn’t want to go back to the reminder of what she had lost.
And her companion seems to know this too.
Shisui was surprisingly gentle. After changing off the Anbu garb and putting on some decent clothes, Sakura doves down the bunch of mostly expensive clothes she has, as she only brought to eventually sell them, but still she missed the comfortable texture they have on her skin, so Sakura gives up on pushing out her vain side and dolls herself.
It certainly wasn’t because she felt like a drab next to the Uchiha that naturally gives the ‘I'm above you’ aura by just sitting
Sakura didn’t want to go back to Konoha.
Shisui seemed to have all the free time to indulge her grit and at the same time keep a leash on her because it was already three days after the pinning on the floor debacle and they were still staying in the Inn
Well he’s staying and Sakura paying for their stay
But then when you stay in the same place with the same guy, you're bound to notice some things in their body.
And Uchiha Shisui’s got a weird golden tattoo of ‘Kami’ on his right wrist
“Are you part of a cult or something”
Shisui stared at her blankly “What”
Sakura pointed a painted nail finger on his wrist. Shisui stares some more, while Sakura boredly sips her tea.
The Uchiha released a rasp laugh, though Sakura thought it sounded painful.
“It’s my soul mark”
Sakura chokes on her tea
“Yo-your what?”
“My soul mark” Sakura stared incredulously,
“T-then” Sakura stutters, Shisui looks away
“Yes”
Fuck this world
“I’m sorry” It was genuine
Shisui sat beside her “You don’t have to be”
Sakura wanted to break something
“If it helps, I don’t think I have anything similar like that in my body” She hopes it helps
Sakura squawked when a grinning Shisui dragged her to him, enclosing her in a warm embrace that melted deeply till it could’ve reached her soul
It’s better to have said nothing after all
“Thank you” He murmurs in her hair
First, the alien eyes that make people crazy for her, now the clusterfuck that whatever this world soul mates apparently exist.
Sakura felt that she’d be numb by any more surprises starting from now on
Shisui got to know why she hid in her room most of the time and the moment that Sakura got to know that Shisui was her soulmate he was tasked with buying everything she wanted.
Except for the times when she goes outside to heal some civilians injured nearby
She knows she probably should have had her eyes gouged and replaced with a new pair, it’s easy to steal and preserve from a funeral parlour but before she can do that.
The mess of someone accidentally uncovering the fabric covering her eyes when she was busy healing a child and soothing another. It seems silly she tied the fabric tightly she knew it wouldn’t just come off but it does, and all hell breaks loose.
“Pretty-pretty woman—”
“Why alone young lady?”
“Your so beautiful can I—”
It’s just the universe working against her
She swarmed at all sides, she could probably smash her way out but no these are innocent civilians and then she looked down at the child she was healing, the young boy and the girl beside her looking enchanted with her as they started to drool.
Sakura’s expression morphed into a horrified one as she hastily dropped the small child as gently as she could on the bench where the girl was sitting previously who was now walking slowly towards her.
“Sakura!”
Voices were ringing through the eardrum and Sakura pushed her way out sprinting when she got the necessary space but then maybe some of them were shinobi because someone grabbed her ankle and dragged her back.
Sakura screams and kicks the hand grabbing her but there’s not only one, and more hands chasing her ankles, Sakura hesitates to enhance her kick with chakra when she sees a child nearly crawling on her foot.
She was saved with the dilemma when she was grabbed by the waist and with a speed too fast for her eyes to follow they were off
Shisui whisks her deeper into the foliage of the forest only stopping once to check on her.
They finally halted on a meadow as Sakura collapsed on the forest floor, Shisui standing guard behind her.
It was long minutes of Sakura staring at silence as she calmed down the ranging thoughts in her head
“You’ve seen it don’t you?” Sakura quietly asks
A comforting hand settles on her shoulder
“I did”
“I shouldn’t be even near a small group of people much else Konoha”
The only answer she hears is a hum and she’s not even sure if it is an agreement or not. Sakura hopes for the former.
“It seems to be some sort of mind control”
With her glare Shisui elaborated
“A non-structural one, it’s unpredictable, it’s some version of attraction, maybe you can control them but they still retain their free will and would want something in return. In their case, it’s you”
Sakura burrows her head on her knees
“But, it doesn’t affect you right? You don’t act like them, so maybe if it was some dojutsu wielder it wouldn’t be affected—”
Shisui raised her head as he cupped her face into his palm, he’s so close so close
But Sakura’s mind was whirling with other things, theories, plans and doesn’t notice, of course she doesn’t, she was always too late to notice something in everything
She didn't want to look at what it’s in front of her. If she does, perhaps she would have seen that the man she held her hopes for looked at her, yes, differently but more dangerously, treacherous, perhaps if Sakura just looked more closely.
“I don’t think that’s the case”
He says before closing the space between them
Look closely, you're running away from preys all this while.
The hunter is what to fear for in the woods.