Chapter Text
"What was that?" She asks Sasuke, stopping in her tracks. They've been running all day towards their next mission in the Hidden Rain Village. The sun is setting and they just heard what sounded like an explosion off to the left.
"Stay here, I'll check it out," he instructs. He draws his sword from his chest harness and is gone before she can nod.
Sakura wants to protest but she rubs her stomach possessively instead, she just started showing 2 weeks ago. It's a constant reminder that she can't be a shinobi right now.
She sighs, sitting under the nearest tree. Her cloak falls around her like a protective shroud. She feels like she's wearing a tent. Her clothes don't fit anymore and she can't replace them until tomorrow. She's already forgone her obi, but her shorts feel too tight now.
She reaches inside her cloak and tears the waistband a few centimeters. More content, she sighs and takes out their lunch from her pack.
She's just about to take a sip of water when the world goes white. Gravity seems to shift to the sky, and then back to the ground 10 times stronger than it had been before.
When air can reinflate her lungs, she screams. First just in terror and then for help. "Sasuke!!!!" She bellows.
There's nothing but silence and white in the world for several minutes. She can't move her body, she can feel the baby's chakra but the world needs color and sound again.
"Sasuke!!!" She tries again, she squeezes her eyes shut. Her brain reels through every possibility. She's just decided that she must be bleeding to death from some unknown injury when she hears a voice.
It's Sasuke's voice. "What did you do!?" He asks, sounding impossibly angry. Did someone attack them?
It now occurs to her to try opening her eyes again, so she does. She sees the forest she was in first, but it looks wrong. The trees are different. She's crumpled beneath her cloak against nothing. She had just been up against a tree.
Sakura stands and looks ahead, her eyes finally adjusting. "Huh?" Is all she can say. In front of her stand Naruto, Kakashi and Sasuke.
Her teammates have two arms, her husband isn't looking at her. He's looking at Naruto and Kakashi with hatred in his eyes. Naruto looks away from him and finally notices her, standing like a dear who spotted the hunter.
"How'd you get over there?" He asks her.
"I think the more important question is how did we all get here, Naruto." Kakashi says, he doesn't turn to face her. Sasuke is looking at her now but she's not sure if he can even see her.
"This isn't where I was either," she says, stunned. She shrinks beneath her cloak under Sasuke's stare.
Kakashi finally turns to look at her, his eyes immediately snap to her forehead. "Who are you?" He asks, but there's no accusation in his voice.
"What do you mean? That's Sakura, ya know!" Naruto says, he turns back to Sasuke. "You need to apologize to her by the way, you bastard. What was that? You trying to kill her?" His fists ball but his feet waiver.
Poison, she remembers. From her kunai. She sighs and reaches for a scroll from her bag. She summons the appropriate antidote before the others can question her and approaches Naruto with the syringe.
"The kunai was poisoned," she says quietly, she hopes they can't hear the shame in her voice. They just came here from the biggest sin, the biggest mistake she will ever make.
She stabs Naruto in the cheek next to the cut, he winces but smiles. "Thanks, Sakura! Hey wait are you taller?" He pats her head.
She turns to Kakashi. "I'm 20 years old." She says simply. "Somebody took us from where we're supposed to be."
Kakashi crosses his arms and Sasuke laughs. It's a laugh she's heard before. She heard it on the day that they came from.
"This is a good genjutsu, Kakashi," Sasuke says when his episode is over. His smile hurts her eyes, she has to look away.
"Could be," she says with a shrug.
"Release," she tries. "Nope, now let's figure out how to get home. I heard an explosion shortly before and the world went white, it felt like the world spun a few times and then everything got heavy."
She crosses her arms under her cloak, stopping herself from touching her stomach. Kakashi looks to be digesting, Sasuke is glaring at her and Naruto looks confused as ever.
"No explosion, but everything else is familiar," Kakashi decides.
Sakura nods. "Let's see if we can find a town, see when and where we are first. I was close to the Rain." She taps her chin, trying so hard to act casual while her heart explodes. Where is Sasuke? Her Sasuke.
"I was going to suggest the same." Kakashi says with a proud tone in his voice.
"Alright! Team 7 back again!" Naruto pumps his fist in the air.
Sasuke walks up to a tree ans stubbornly sits down. "I'm not going anywhere with any of you," he says, still glaring at her. Maybe he's just trying to see her through the darkness she knows is clouding his eyes.
"Bastard, get up! We have to figure out how to get home." Naruto whines. Kakashi walks to stand next to her.
"Then send us home," Sasuke challenges.
"I didn't do this you stupid bastard, get up!"
Kakashi, leads her a few meters away while the boys bicker.
"What should I know?" Kakashi asks quietly to just her.
What a question that is. The man that's about to show up is your friend Obito? Sasuke ends up okay but they both lose an arm? Sasuke married her and she's pregnant and everything is perfect?
"I don't know," is all she says. Without any information as to who took them and why, not giving him enough information could be just as dangerous as telling him everything.
"Were you headed to the Rain alone?" He offers her a branch.
She shakes her head. She whispers when she answers, eyes locked on the sitting boy with crazed eyes. "I was with Sasuke."
Kakashi's eyes go wide before becoming so warm it feels like he's hugging her. "I see, do you think he's here too?"
"I haven't felt his aura anywhere, maybe?" She says, she hopes he is.
"Would his aura be familiar to me and Naruto?" He asks. 'Is he better?' He leaves unsaid.
"No," she says with a smile. He never went back to the boy she loved as a genin. The man she loves now is better, his presence warms her from the inside out.
Kakashi nods, he looks suspiciously between his pupils. "Do you think you could settle that?" He asks his favorite student.
She laughs and nods, walking up to them. She can't help it, she grips her hand over her uterus as she approaches him. He's like a trapped and injured wild animal. He's not her husband, she reminds herself.
"Sasuke, I want to go home." She says gently. "You have a lot to get back to as well, busy schedule and all." She smiles and she hopes he doesn't notice how it hurts her face. "Please get up, if you get left here the future will change."
"So?" He asks, tilting his head. He's appraising her in a calculating way his older self only uses in the bedroom, she blushes despite herself. "I just told you I'm going to destroy everything you love. Leave me here, Sakura."
She grips her stomach harder, irritation becomes the driving factor in her brain. She closes her eyes and thinks through everything she knows about Sasuke.
Power, this Sasuke seeks it. Every version of Sasuke respects it.
When she opens them, she's smirking at him and his eyebrow twitches. She walks slowly away from the men, approaching an old growth tree 30 meters away. She looks back at them, making sure to make eye contact with Sasuke even if he can't see her.
She smiles before turning back to the tree, the moment she makes contact with the tree it explodes. So do hundreds behind it in a triangle shape, fanning out over hundreds of meters. She cracks her knuckles and walks back to Sasuke with her eyes closed.
She doesn't open them again until she's at his eye level, squatting before him. "That feels so much better, now we can talk properly!" She says with as much cheese in her voice as she can force.
He's glaring at her in a very 12 year old Sasuke way now. She smirks again, reveling in her victory. She stands and walks in the direction she'd been running in with her husband less than an hour ago.
"Let's go boys," she calls over her shoulder.
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The town they find is not the Rain, if it will be one day is unclear. All they can ascertain is that they're in the distant past, and that this region is unreasonably hot when you leave the trees.
She has to keep her cloak on, there's an Uchiwa on her back and an Uchiha on her front, but she's boiling. "I'm hungry," Naruto whines.
"Our money is no good here, Naruto," Kakashi chides.
Sakura leads them to a small clearing skirted by trees on the outskirts of town and unseals a spread from the plethora of scrolls she has from her travels with Sasuke.
"You seem prepared," Sasuke comments as he reluctantly eats, 3 meters away from the group.
"I live on the road," she shrugs and takes a bite of her bento. The one she was meant to share with her husband.
"Hn," is all he says.
"What do you do on the road? Oh yeah and how come you have that thing on your forehead like Granny does?" Naruto asks with his mouth full.
She smiles with exasperation at him. "The Sakura from your time has been working on the 100 healings seal for 2 years," she says. "It's nice to not have to hold back all the time now that it's up there permanently," she adds casually.
"Holding back?! But you can already destroy the whole ground around me back home!" Naruto has forgotten his food for the conversation and she laughs at him freely. She missed him more than she thought she had this last year.
"You should be nicer to her," she teases.
"SHUT UP!" Sasuke snaps, throwing an apple at her head. She catches it and glares at him.
"It's because I'm laughing too much, isn't it?" Her eyes look angry but all she can hear is concern in her voice, she digs her nails into the palm of her hand. Concern is weakness to this Sasuke. She closes her bento and stands. "I happen to know that you used to like my laugh," she says as she packs her bag again.
As she passes him, she pauses and meets his eye. He's still glaring. "You think it sounds like bells," she says. Finally, after hours here, his face betrays the shock of the situation. She keeps walking.
__________________
"You need to sleep or let me heal your eyes," she says to 16 year old Sasuke again.
He's sitting with his back turned to her, she stares at the Uchiwa on his back. She sighs, all day she's been trying to get this asshole to cooperate and all day it's been like this.
"Fine, you won't play fair then I won't either." She says, standing to walk in front of him. "Listen, you are one of our best defenses against whoever sent us here, and you don't have Itachi's eyes yet which means you're going blind. It's not just blindness though, its damage to the nerves and blood vessels around your eyes. If those shit the bed before surgery, Itachi's eyes will probably lose their light too. Understand?"
Her hands are on her hips and her cloak opens a few centimeters, she slams her hands back down against her sides. Sasuke looks like he might kill her for a moment but her strategy works. He closes his eyes where he sits.
Elated, she sits in front of him too fast and he flinches. "Sorry," she says feebly. For a while all she hears is Naruto snoring as she heals his eyes. She's aware that Kakashi is watching but doesn't care.
"I hadn't decided to take his eyes yet," Sasuke says after 10 minutes. His brows are still angry but his jaw has relaxed.
"Sorry," she says again. Sorry for it all.
"Hn."
There's a long pause again. He speaks again when she withdraws her hands. "Why would you know that?" He asks. now that his eyes are open, he's measuring her carefully.
"I'm your doctor," she tries.
"I'm an international criminal," he retorts.
"You're a lot of things, Sasuke. And so am I. Go to bed," she says gently, getting up to go lay between Naruto and Kakashi.
"Why?" He asks, he's not asking about bed.
"Which part?" She asks, impossible tiredness is creaking through her bones.
"All of it. Why try to kill me then, why heal me now?" He doesn't look as angry now, but he looks even more lost than he'd looked under the bridge.
She sits next to him, knees almost touching. "If I told you everything right now, I don't think it would change anything." She looks to Kakashi, he twitches from his spot on the ground, undoubtedly listening.
"But there are things it could change that have to happen. You have to get right back where you came from and carry on." She pulls some grass from the ground, fidgeting. The wind blows at night here. She's finally grateful that she has to keep the cloak on.
"I'm going to destroy the Leaf." He says, looking at her suspiciously. She meets his eyes. They're wrong, the eyes she loves don't match.
She sighs. "Okay then," she says. She claps her hands on her knees as she stands up. "I have to pee." She announces, heading towards the trees.
When she comes back, Sasuke is asleep where she left him. She sleeps next to Naruto, too exhausted to think. She dreams of Sasuke, her Sasuke.
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"What is that?" Naruto asks, sleep heavy in his voice.
"What? Um, go brush your teeth Naruto!" Kakashi sounds panicky.
'Why are they here?' She thinks, her head hurts. Using chakra while growing a human feels worse than 10 bottles of sake. Her muscles ache, she needs to heal herself but her back aches from the rock she rolled onto too much.
She reaches behind her to retrieve the cursed object so she can sleep longer, but it bothers her that she's on her back. Why is that? Her eyes flutter open and she's met with a sky of trees, the light filtering through them takes her a few blinks to adjust to.
"What is that?" Sasuke asks this time. She smiles at his voice.
She's groggy and wants to go back to sleep, her eyes fall closed again. Her chakra network is overworked from how much chakra an Uchiha fetus needs. Stupid tree, why'd she punch a tree again?
Her eyes snap open and she's on her feet ready for an attack in the next moment, only she's the only one standing. The three men sit around her, all staring at her varying levels of shock.
"Dammit," she curses her carelessness. She typically wakes up with the sun. Stupid tree. Stupid Sakura.
"What?" She asks when no one speaks.
"It's none of our business," Kakashi says, an amused look in his eye.
She groans. "I have to pee," she whines, trudging off to the woods once more.
No one mentions it for 2 hours, as they search the area for any sign of the explosion she'd heard when she left her time. They're looking for anything really.
"Take off your cloak," Sasuke demands, he's walked up to her as they stop for lunch.
"No." She says, taking a bite of her bento. It has 3 of Sasuke's favorites, meant for him.
He squats in front of her, his sandals squeak as they bend. "It's a million degrees here." He's glaring at her. He doesn't move.
She takes another bite. "Since when do you hyperbolize?" She asks, a smirk on her lips. Teasing him is too fun to resist.
He flusters for a moment and if this were her Sasuke she would have won. This is not her Sasuke, this is a broken boy who had a blade pulled on him by the only girl he might have ever loved so he says: "Since when do you get hyperthermia while pregnant with some idiot's kid?"
Anger flashes in her veins before she fully processes his words. "Some idiot's kid," she repeats more out of shock than anything else. She cackles. It's the kind of laugh that hurts her sides and face and threatens her bladder.
He stands and glares down at her, brows furrowed. "Take it off," he demands again.
"That's enough, Sasuke," Kakashi warns from behind him.
Sasuke only turns his head to reply. "I told you yesterday, stop acting like you're still my sensei." He turns back to Sakura. "Why won't you take it off?" His Sharingan has sprung to life. As a threat? Because of emotion? The result is the same regardless.
She gulps. "I don't want to hurt you," she says quietly. She looks at Kakashi, he's slowly approaching. Naruto is just glaring at Sasuke's back.
"You think I'm as easy to kill as some trees, Sa-ku-ra?" He squats again as he says it. She can't help the blush that comes to her cheeks when he says her name that way.
She closes her eyes, even as traumatized and in the darkness as she knows him to be, he's impossibly beautiful. "Sasuke, there will come a day where you think back on yesterday and look so desperately sad that I don't even know what to do. Please stop. Let's just keep going, and go home." She tries, she really does.
But he's laughing again, and it's still not the right laugh. "You're so dramatic and so annoying," he laces malice into his tone.
She wishes he'd killed her back then for a moment, her bladder reminds her that she doesn't wish that really. Her child will never be born if he goes back and kills her. She's stuck here in this moment whether she likes it or not.
She wants to cry, but she allows Sasuke of the future to comfort her instead. "You called me annoying the day we got married too," she says with a quiet smile. Her eyes are still closed, she lays her head back against the tree behind her.
"Granted I did destroy the temple you'd picked out. It was so pretty too, surrounded with Sakura in full bloom." She sighs contentedly at the memory. "You said it was so annoying that I knew you inside and out but I couldn't figure out that you were proposing to me."
She peaks an eye open, he's staring at her intently. His face is a carefully carved mask of neutrality. "I thought you were taking me somewhere nice and buttering me up to make dumping me go smoother." She sticks out her tongue. "I was wrong then too."
"Too?" It's Naruto that asks, Sasuke seems completely frozen.
She nods. "You're usually right, you know." She points to the blond, leaning forward for emphasis. "That's what's annoying." Kakashi chuckles from his place standing a meter behind Sasuke.
"Take it off," he says it quietly now. It reminds her of Naruto Bridge. 'Sakura you're heavy, I can't breathe.' So she stands, turns and removes the cloak.
There's a gasp from Naruto as it falls around her feet. She feels the ghost of a finger over the Uchiwa on her back.
"Why would this hurt me?" He asks quietly, still no emotion leaking out.
She turns and looks into his face, into his eyes. She can't tell what he's thinking at all. "Because Sasuke, I married you. This is your child. But you… You are not my husband. You are the nightmares he hides from." She turns and walks away without waiting for him to speak.