Chapter Text
Sakura flies down towards Kaguya, herByakugoupaintingherfacewith stark,threateninglinesanda chakra-charged fist raised and ready to rearrange the goddess's face.
Yet milliseconds before her fist has a chance to connect, Kaguya raises her eyes from where they were trained on Sasuke and Naruto and that odd, otherworldly glare settles firmly on her. Sakura feels a splinter of energy, not unlike a static shock enter her chakra coils, a wave of cold travelling up her spine and cresting at the base of her skull, but she's come too far to stop now.
So she doesn't.
She lets her fist connect, discharges all the chakra she's got left in that one punch, and the resulting explosion of energy throws her hundreds of feet away from her old teammates and the goddess, and that cold feelingspidersoutfromherskulland spreads over her whole body.
She doesn't recall hitting her head, but she passes out, blinding white light exploding behind her closed eyes moments before the blazing battlefield is swallowed by oppressive, cold darkness and she knows no more.
Sakura hits the ground with a tumble and a curse, and she feels so worn out, all she wants is to close her eyes and sleep for an age. She's warm, the sand is soft, and it's quiet, and she feels the desire to open her eyes and get back to the fight wane with every passing-
Wait a second, sand?! Quiet?!
She shoots up and swears again, her hand flying up to her forehead, the reflex to heal the pounding headache an instinct at this point, yet no healing chakra appears. A quick inventory reveals that her coils aren't just empty, they're completely depleted, and, honestly, it’s no wonder she feels so exhausted.
Then, she forces herself to focus on what distracted her in the first place: sand and quiet. The battlefield was never quiet, not even when she would finally the chance to retire to her tent and try to get some shut-eye before the next day of fighting and the new batch of injured patients would come.
Carefully, because her common sense is telling her that something went very wrong in the precious seconds between her punching Kaguya and ending up...wherever she currently is, she pries her eyes open.
And curses.
Again.
It’s far too bright.
Then, a quiet chuckle, one that is definitely not her own, and so quiet she'd have written it off as a breath of wind or a simple exhale if she wasn'tas thoroughlytrainedin interpretingStoic-Asshole-eseasshe is, breaks her assessment of her surroundings.
She startles and forces her eyes to focus, then freezes at what they land on.
About twenty feet to her left sits a boy, a bunch of papers and miscellaneous wooden pieces strewn around him, yet his attention is trained entirely on her. That in itself wouldn't have been odd, if not for the fact that he's the only person in her immediate vicinity, instead of the bustling battlefield she remembers from mere seconds previous. Though, if she's honest with herself, she could've forgiven that too, what with her momentary lapse into unconsciousness, but what she absolutely cannot ignore is the fact that she recognises this boy.
She recognises the flat amber that gazes at her like she's a particularly interesting science experiment. She especially recognises those eyes because helped shut them not three years earlier.
Akasuna no Sasori.
But why is Sasori alive, and looking not a day over twelve? And why can she see the pink of sunburn clearly on his cheeks, and a face still lined with baby-fat?
The Akasuna no Sasori she knew was ashes and dust, and she helped make him so twice.
Even with her coils as depleted as they are, she can still interrupt her chakra flow and restart it again as a substitute for the standard genjutsu-breaking technique. Yet, when the scene before her doesn’t change, Sakura takes a few seconds to, simply put, freak out.
She’s not on the battlefield. Kaguya is nowhere in sight, neither are Sasuke or Naruto or Tsunade or Kakashi. In fact, it looks as if she’s somewhere in the Land of Wind, because no other country to her knowledge has sand as far as the eye can see, and there’s a soon-to-be S-Rank nuke-nin sitting casually in front of her, looking a good twenty years younger than when she last remembers seeing him.
She closes her eyes in despair, hand flying up to her mouth to stifle the quick, panicked breaths she’s making, trying her damnest not to hyperventilate. Sakura can feel the cold claws of panic sinking into her heart and lungs, and she should probably be a lot more worried than she is about showing weakness to Akasuna no Sasori, but this tween version of Sasori with the Suna headband still around his neck has yet to kill the Kazekage. At this point, he's just an unhinged kid, and his taijutsu is doubtless worse than what it was when she faced him in that cave.
In short, if worst comes to worst, she can take him.
Finally, she gets her panic under control, bundles it up and shoves it into the deepest corner of her mind, to be dealt with later.
“Where am I?” she asks at last, voice scratchy from her panic attack and dehydration.
“Border of Wind and the Land of Rivers.” Sasori replies, just as quietly, and that same lazy, bored tone that she remembers from his thirty-year-old self is present in his teen self. “Were you expecting to be elsewhere?” he asks idly, but Sakura is not fooled by the apparent disinterest.
She tries for a smile, but her muscles have long forgotten how to make that expression, and she ends up with a tiny quirk of her lip that is wry and self-deprecating and only a few lines shy of a grimace.
“Wind is good.” She says at last, wiping the back of her hand over her eyes, surprised when she doesn’t feel any tears. “Why are you so far from the Village?” she asks, her mouth running before her brain can tell it no.
Sasori raises an eyebrow, tilting his head, birdlike.
“A question for a question?” he inquires, and when she nods reluctantly, he lifts a shoulder in a half-shrug. “The Village suffocates me. Here, I can think, and make art in peace.”
Art.
Sakura almost laughs. It seems some things never change.
“Who are you?” Sasori demands, his stare becoming more weighted as he studies her. “You appeared in a burst of white light and chakra so potent, I'm surprised the border patrol hasn't come running yet. You bear the Byakugou, and I do not recognise your uniform, nor your colouring.”
Sakura sighs as she tries to come up with something that won’t get her reported and killed quicker than she can say ‘dimension-travel’, and casts an inconspicuous glance at her hands, relieved to note that the thick black lines of the Byakugou are nowhere to be found.
“My name is Sakura.” She says slowly, raising her gaze from her hands and meeting Sasori’s eyes. “I…don’t know who I am.”
A lie, while also not. She’s the Godaime’s apprentice, Assistant Head of the Konoha General Hospital, one of the second coming of the Legendary Sannin. She has perfect chakra control, has surpassed Tsunade, and, most recently, punched a goddess in the face.
Yet, what is she here, around two decades in the past, in a time when she wasn’t even born yet?
“How can you not know?” Sasori presses, and now, his eyes narrow, though Sakura absently realises that the action is more thoughtful than suspicious.
Thinking quickly, she mirrors his earlier shrug and offers a wry smile.
"I was a lab rat." She offers carefully, suddenly immensely glad the ribbon of her ‘shinobi’ headband had frayed a few days earlier and she'd been too busy to get it replaced. "I was taken really young and experimented on. This,” she gestures at her forehead, and Sasori’s eyes follow her hand, “is the result of Senju DNA.”
She can see the gears in his head turning, yet when he opens his mouth to ask something else, she shakes her head.
“A question for a question.” She reminds him, and she wonders where her sense of self-preservation has gone. Sasori frowns, caught out, but nods reluctantly. “Who are you?”
“Sasori. Suna jounin.” He answers brusquely, and Sakura should not be surprised he’s a jounin so young, knowing what she knows, and yet. “How did you end up here?”
sh*t.
Sakura looks around desperately, trying to recall everything she’s said and what Sasori has told her in turn, racking her brain for any technique she knows that could result in white light and instantaneous teleportation.
“I…tried an experimental space-time ninjutsu to get out and it dropped me here." She says at last, hoping her tone sounds more confident than she feels.
She remembers the design on the Yondaime’s kunai, remembers the sealing array on Katsuyuu’s summoning scroll, as well as the four-corners sealing barrier. She's skirting the edgesof plausibility and testing her luck, but she’s almost sure she could mock-up a transportation seal if Sasori calls her bluff.
"And I suppose you killed your captors before getting out, which is why you have blood under your nails?" Sasori asks casually, calm as could be, seemingly forgetting about his own rule of question-for-a-question, and Sakura snorts despite herself.
The way he is now, Sasori reminds her of Gaara after having Shukaku extracted from him. Blunt. Unruffled. Always distantly amused.Try as she might, it’s difficult to remember to keep her guard up.
"You suppose correctly." She replies, because she can't deny that she has blood under her nails and streaking up her arms, not to mention multiple cuts and bruised and hastily-healed injuries, only some of which could be explained aswoundsgainedin a lab or during escape attempts.
"Hm." Sasori hums, considering. "It's a decent alibi." He decides at last, and Sakura's blood runs cold.
“My turn for questions. And you owe me two.” She announces, swallowing around her suddenly-dry throat and not letting herself drop eye-contact. “Why haven’t you reported me to the borer patrol you mentioned earlier? Surely, an unknown kunoichi appearing in a ‘burst of white light and chakra’ is reason enough to be suspicious.”
To her shock, the corner of Sasori’s lips twitches upwards.
“You’re a break from the monotony.” He tells her simply. “And I’d like to hear the true version of your alibi one day, which I can’t do if Suna executes you."
Sakura gawks. “That’s it?”
Sasori blinks slowly, as if confused by her disbelief, and Sakura allows herself an incredulous,relieved laugh.
"Okay. In that case, any advice for how I could turn 'decent' alibi into an 'airtight' one?" She asks, because she's had enough experience with child geniuses to know how to graciously admit defeat, and this situation is ridiculous enough as is that she throws caution to the wind.
"Dye your hair." Sasori suggests immediately, and Sakura does a double-take. "Your colouring, while intriguing, is too exotic. Anda moreearthy tone will lend more credibility toyour storyabout Senju DNA."He pauses, tilts his head and narrows his eyes thoughtfully. “What are your specialisations, Sakura-san?”
“Healing.” Sakura answers instantly, because she will forever be proud of how far she’s come from ‘no-name, cry-baby, Billboard-Brow’, even if that means she won’t hesitate to boast in front of a tween version of her first S-Ranked kill. “Chakra-aided combat. And…fuinjutsu, at a stretch.”
“Hm.” Sasori hums, and those analytical eyes are far too similar to his thirty-year-old self for Sakura to feel entirely comfortable. “A dark red could mark you as an Uzushio survivor, if you wished.”
Uzushio. Uzumaki. Oh, god, Naruto.
She bites her lip and uses the pain to shove down the panic that threatens to bubble up again. She will not break down, not in front of Sasori. Not until she has a clearer grasp on just how screwed she is.
“If I dyed my hair red, we’d look like siblings.” She runs her mouth, giving voice to the first random thought that comes to mind once the panic recedes, then almost smacks herself at her stupidity.
Sasori, however, looks contemplative.
“Perhaps not siblings, but…cousins, certainly.” He allows, then his eyes brighten, and Sakura sees the intelligence that shines in them clearly, and wonders how much longer until that genius turns to madness.
Then, Sasori speaks.
“I’d like to suggest an alternate alibi, if you’re willing.” He announces, and at her hesitant nod, continues. “My father had a sister, but she defected from the Village before I was born, not wanting to be a shinobi. That’s who my parents were visiting when they were killed.”
Sakura has a moment of absolute incredulity, then she narrows her eyes thoughtfully and considers what Sasori is offering. “And did your father’s sister have children?”
“I don’t know.” Sasori answers, and there’s a pleased glint in his eyes, as if surprised she’s following his line of thought. “But she was killed along with my parents six years ago.”
By now, Sakura knows what he’s planning. “That would’ve made me eleven years old.”
If Sasori is surprised by her age, he doesn’t let it show. “Perhaps too old for human experimentation, but old enough to be of use to rogue shinobi in other ways.”
Sakura blanches at Sasori’s words, and even his expression twists into one of distaste at the notion.
“As a last resort, then.” He decides when she merely stares at him wide-eyed. “Even amongst shinobi, it should get you some sympathy.”
Sakura swallows and shakes off the last of her shock.
“Yeah, okay.” She agrees, not recognising her own voice. “Have you got a Bingo Book?” she asks, just to get her mind off the topic.
Sasori tilts his head at the non-sequitur before his eyes widen minutely and he regards her with something akin to respect. Sakura knows she should be alarmed at how easily he catches on to her train of thought, but she’s still trying to wrap her mind around the events of the last few minutes.
“Not currently with me.” Suddenly, Sasori gets to his feet and begins sealing the miscellaneous tid-bits strewn around him into a scroll. “Come.” He beckons simply, and Sakura shakily gets to her feet.
Sasori leads her to one of the rock formations, only stopping when Sakura staggers as her head swims. Chakra depletion. Right.
“Here,” Sasori offers, holding out a tiny box, waiting silently until Sakura regains her balance and blinks the black spots from her vision, “chakra pills.”
Hesitantly, Sakura takes one, glancing up at Sasori briefly before popping it in her mouth and swallowing. It takes a few seconds, but then she feels a boost of chakra so strong and sudden she gasps. Yet she can’t deny the results, and though it only replenishes her reserves by about a third, it’s still a third more than she had before, and she shoots the redhead a small smile.
“Thanks.” She murmurs, getting a nod in return before Sasori turns his attention back to the rock. He flashes through a few seals and presses his hand against the closest one, and Sakura watches as a drawing of a tiny red scorpion blooms where his palm was once he takes his hand away, before a web of chakra spiders out from the centre of what she realises is a seal, and the rock moves aside, revealing a furnished cave within.
Sasori steps in, dropping his scroll onto what she realises is a makeshift workbench, and goes around the cave, pulling things out from secret compartments and natural shelves. Sakura follows him in, looking around curiously – bypassing the fact that it’s a hollow in a slab of rock, the cave is surprisingly…homey. She glances at Sasori, wondering just what it says about his life within the Village walls that the grandson of an esteemed Elder has made a cave look lived-in.
“What are you doing?” she asks at last when Sasori assembles what appears to be a miscellaneous pile of items next to a charred circle in the ground.
“The nights are cold in the desert, and I have to head back to the Village.” He looks her up and down, the corner of his mouth quirking infinitesimally upwards. “Unless you want to be executed or freeze if you choose to loiter?”
Instead of deigning that with a reply, Sakura takes a closer look at what Sasori has assembled: a few branches and acorns, a rolled-up blanket and a few airtight packets she assumes contain some form of rations.
Surprised and more than a little touched, she turns to Sasori.
“What do you gain from this?” she asks, and he must notice the change in her tone because he stills and turns to face her. “Honestly?”
Sasori eyes her for a second, considering, then sighs.
“I already told you. A break from the monotony.” He turns his back on her and heads towards the mouth of the cave, pausing just before he steps outside. “But…what I would hope to gain from this, if I entertained the notion of favours…would be a promise.”
Sakura narrows her eyes, immediately on-guard, but nods for Sasori to continue.
“When Sunagakure has nothing more to offer me, and the time will come for me to leave, I’ll need your help.” He looks over his shoulder, his silhouette outlined by the setting sun, and there’s just enough light to illuminate the edge of madness in his amber eyes and the wicked smirk pulling at his lips. “I’ll need your help to kill my grandmother and the Sandaime Kazekage.”
Sakura freezes, stunned speechless, and he walks out of the cave, the wall closing behind him, though not before he adds, “If you’re still here when I come back tomorrow, I’ll take that as your answer.”
Sakura barely sleeps for the first part of the night.
Although the small fire she manages to get going and Sasori’s blanket are enough to ward off the worst of the unforgiving desert cold, her thoughts refuse to slow down.
Somehow, she’s over two decades in the past. If she’s right, having only Sasori’s relative age to base her guesses on, the Third Shinobi War is yet to happen, though the political tensions are likely already there. Sarutobi Hiruzen is still in his first term as Hokage, the Yondaime only ascending to the post after the war. The Uchiha Clan is still alive. The Kyuubi hasn’t attacked the Village yet. None of her classmates, or the Rookie Nine have been born yet. Kami above, Kakashi is probably younger than she was when she graduated the Academy right now.
Weirdest of all, Akasuna no Sasori is helping her.
And…she’s genuinely considering helping him.
Chiyo was old when she met the woman, riddled with grief and regrets. She all but admitted to being what drove Sasori out of the Village. She sealed the Ichibi in Gaara using a storage seal. And Sakura doesn’t know enough about the Sandaime Kazekage to care about him either way, and she’s seen and done too much during her War to be able to take the moral high ground in this situation.
Then, as if working that out settles her, she succumbs to sleep.
When Sakura wakes up, she feels more rested than she has in months.
Then, she becomes aware of another presence in the cave and her momentary relaxation vanishes in a blink. She tenses and rolls from her lying position into a ready crouch, hand snapping out for the kunai she stashed by her bedroll.
Then, her eyes fall on red hair, amber eyes, and a single, raised eyebrow, and she tries to tell her muscles to relax, but even at 12, Sasori still triggers her fight or flight instinct, so it turns into a silent battle between her mind and her body.
They eye each other up for a few seconds, silent, then Sasori’s raised eyebrow lowers and a tiny smile – surprised, if she’s reading him well – quirks his lip instead.
“I really didn’t expect you to stay, Sakura-san.” He says, and it’s as if that’s what her body needs to get with the programme and unfreeze, and she lets herself drop from her crouch and onto her butt, switching from gripping the kunai with desperate fingers to twirling it idly around by the ring at the top.
“I don’t know your grandmother.” Sakura lies, pretty sure Sasori had expected her to balk at the prospect of treating assisted homicide as a ‘favour'.
“And the kagecide doesn’t bother you?” Sasori asks, an if Sakura suspected him to be surprised before, he’s definitely surprised now.
She shrugs.
“Don’t know him, either.” She admits, and this time it’s the truth. Apart from the Sandaime’s Iron Sand she’d become unfortunately acquainted with when it was doing its level best to tear her apart back in that cave, she doesn’t know anything about him.
“Do you think you could kill him?” she asks, because Sasuke had some lofty dreams at twelve, but killing one’s brother and killing a Kage are two vastly different concepts, even if said brother was S-Rank at the time.
“Currently, no.” Sasori says, and there’s none of the embarrassment, none of the bluster that Sakura would’ve expected of a boy his age at the idea of not being able to do something. “But in two, three years? And with your assistance? I think I’d have a ninety-percent chance of success.”
Sakura’s eyebrows soar.
“That’s a lot of confidence in my skill level.” She observes, ill-at-ease. She’s not used to being treated like a threat.
Sasori’s eyebrows mirror hers.
“I had a suspicion yesterday, but this morning just confirms it.” He tells her flatly. “Even now, when you’re unconsciously suppressing your chakra, you have the reserves of a high-chunin.”
Surprised at his words, Sakura’s innate control slips and her chakra flares momentarily before she hastily smothers it back down, and Sasori just looks smug.
“As I thought. You’ve got the reserves of a seasoned jounin and you’re a woman.” Sakura isn’t sure she likes his tone, but Sasori must realise because he explains, even though his lip curls down with impatience. “You’re at a biological disadvantage, yet your coils don’t reflect that.”
Sakura’s mind races. She never thought she had particularly large reserves; her skill was always control. But… maybe, just maybe, that stemmed from her backdrop. Sasuke, the second son of a Noble Clan, Naruto, a literal jinchuuriki with Uzumaki heritage on top of that, Kakashi, S-Ranked across the Nations even with the veritable leech in his skull that was the Sharingan constantly gnawing on his chakra, and Tsunade, a Sannin. A quick probe into Sasori’s coils – suppressed, like her own – and then deeper, because she knows how to, reveals reserves only about half the size of her own. Interesting.
Still –
“Raw power isn’t everything.” She says, a tad defensively, but it has the opposite effect; Sasori brightens.
“I agree. But healing was the first thing you mentioned when I asked about your specialisations. That’s power and control.”
Sakura scrutinises him for a few seconds, eyes narrowed and trying to discern whether he’s truly being sincere, then she huffs a laugh.
“Alright. It’s a deal.” She agrees at last, and something in Sasori relaxes, and she realises belatedly that he’s relieved. “We use your alibi. I’m your aunt’s kid, ran away when your parents and aunt were attacked by the White Flash. Then,” she reaches over to her bedroll and rummages around for the Bingo Book, “I was taken by…” she grabs it, flicking to the page she’d dog-eared and presenting the book to Sasori.
“The Gold and Silver Brothers?” he asks curiously, eyebrow rising.
There isn’t a photo of the two, but Sakura knows about them from the Bingo Book of her own time, remembers reading reports about an ANBU team springing the traps around their hide-out a year before the War.
“Do you know anything about them?” Sasori checks, and she nods.
“I know enough.” Sakura replies vaguely, noting the downwards twitch of Sasori’s lip. “They were swallowed alive by the Kyuubi and survived by eating its flesh. They have jinchuuriki-level chakra. And they have a hideout near the northern border of Iwa.”
“I suppose it would be easier to justify why it took you six years to make your escape.” Sasori muses, and Sakura’s once again floored by how easily he follows her thought process.
“Precisely.” She agrees, throat oddly dry.
“Hm.” Sasori hums. “That’s acceptable. Now, come.”
When Sakura stays where she is and raises an eyebrow, he scowls, the first signs of that famed impatience showing since she met him yesterday.
“I am going to teach you puppetry. With your control, it shouldn’t take longer than a fortnight.” He explains.
“I don’t have a puppet.” Sakura says immediately, then winces at the dumb response. Sasori’s eyebrow climbs up his forehead again.
“And I’m a puppet-master. That’s easily remedied.” He informs her, dryer than the desert surrounding them. “Now, come. My grandmother is a proud puppet-user, she taught all her children the puppet jutsu, even those that wanted nothing to do with shinobi.”
Smiling to herself at the ridiculousness of her situation, she follows Sasori out of the cave.
It takes four days.
Despite the fact that he was the one to sing her praises about her control and the size of her reserves, all Sasori can do when she successfully stretches her strings out to ten metres and makes her puppet flow through the first defensive kata Tsunade had taught her, is blink owlishly.
In a move eerily reminiscent of the last few seconds of his life in his puppet body, his head turns almost mechanically to look away from her puppet and stare at her, eyes wide and mouth slightly agape.
Then, not even five seconds later, he shakes himself off and lobs two scrolls at her.
“Ninjutsu.” He elaborates wordlessly, and Sakura wonders whether she’s rubbing off on him; he’s surprisingly talkative, and she’s only seen his temper flare when she’s been intentionally difficult about three times so far. “Every Sand-nin is either Wind or Earth-inclined. Even those whose primary Nature is Suiton learn these.”
Sakura unfurls the Wind scroll and frowns, but the Earth one is familiar.
“I know this one!” she declares brightly, rolling the scroll back up.
The Hiding Like a Mole technique is as familiar to her as breathing, and Kakashi’s abuse of the jutsu during the handful spars they’d had before the War meant that she’d eventually caved and learnt the damn thing.
Then, she realised why he liked it so much.
“Demonstrate.” Sasori says simply, and Sakura does so without further prompting. She only needs half the suggested seals due to her control and the fact that her secondary nature is Earth, but she doesn’t account for the lessened density of the sand beneath her feet compared to the ground back in Konoha and she doesn’t lower herself down so much as sink.
Once she reduces the chakra flow, moving beneath the ground is like swimming with a weighted vest – far faster and smoother than she’s used to, but she still has to move against some resistance. She swims around some, then concentrates and looks for Sasori’s chakra, heading over and quickly breaching the surface with her hand to tap him lightly on the ankle before disappearing again and remerging from the ground a few metres to his left.
There’s a hint of a smile on Sasori’s face and he nods once, apparently satisfied, and Sakura doesn’t preen, she’s long since gotten out of the teacher’s-pet habits, but-
“Have you ever thought about teaching?” She blurts out before she can stop herself, and Sasori’s eyebrows soar.
“Excuse me?” in anyone else, the words that tumble out of his mouth would’ve been ‘what the f*ck’ but apparently, the redhead’s restraint is just that great even at twelve.
“I think you’d be a good teacher.” Sakura rephrases her question, then elaborates at his incredulous look. “You’re thorough and patient, and you praise success.”
“I don’t have the patience for the average shinobi and I will not suffer fools.” He shoots back with a scowl, but Sakura’s undeterred.
“Then don’t.” she replies with a shrug. “You’re a jounin, aren’t you? The best puppet master of your generation? I’m not saying you should take a genin team immediately, but an apprentice of your choosing? Wouldn’t that interest you?”
Sasori narrows his eyes at her, and if Sakura once thought that Sasuke looked older than his years when they were genin, the only thing cluing her into the fact that Sasori is, in fact, a teen, is his physical appearance.
“Most of the villagers fear me.” He says at last, and Sakura suddenly understands the furnished cave and the lack of anyone looking for the boy.
“I’d hazard that they fear your potential. What you could do, with enough motivation.” Then, she quirks a wry smile. “Like, say, kagecide.”
Sasori hums thoughtfully. “Assuaging their fears by taking a student would give them a false sense of security and would make it easier for me to carry out my plan.” He muses, and Sakura’s momentarily thrown by the connection, then sighs.
Apparently, Sasori is more set than he let show on the idea of killing the Sandaime.
What have I gotten myself into?
“I will consider your suggestion.” Sasori allows at last, and the fact that the thoughtfull crease between his brows proves his words to be true. “Now, let’s focus on that Wind jutsu.”
Two weeks after her arrival to the Land of Wind, Sasori is sent on a double mission, both solo, one to the still-unstable Amegakure, and one to the Wastelands between the Land of Earth and Wind. Sakura frowns when she learns of the destinations and scrutinises Sasori’s seemingly unruffled façade. He doesn’t seem to find it to be anything out of the ordinary, but there’s a tiny frown creasing his brows, and Sakura’s familiar enough with the redhead’s expressions by this point to draw her own conclusions.
“They don’t expect you to come back, do they.” She says, more statement than question, and something in her gut twists when Sasori merely smiles humourlessly.
“But I will.” He tells her simply, then reaches into his pack and presents her with a rolled-up scroll marked with the same scorpion of the cave she’s been staying in. “I expect you to be competent with this by the time I come back. His name is Karasu. Treat him well.”
And as he sets off with no formal farewell, Sakura unfurls the scroll and freezes once the puppet appears. It’s Kankuro’s Karasu.
But she’s always been a diligent student, so by the time Sasori makes it back a week and a half later, a little sunburnt and dusty, but looking largely unharmed, she’s almost figured out all of Karasu’s tricks.
“Good.” Sasori acknowledges simply, settling heavily on the stone in the alcove they’ve taken to training in, and Sakura notices the wince he doesn’t quite manage to stifle. “Here.”
She catches two sachets of what she realises belatedly is hair dye and shoots the redhead an amused smile, but she puts the dye aside and makes her way over to him instead.
She holds out green-lit hands like a peace-offering and the teen sighs but nods obligingly. Twenty seconds later, she’s knitted up the hastily-patched gash on his abdomen and brought down the fever she suspects was caused by his foray into Amegakure and purged the traces of poison from his lungs and bloodstream.
“Were you chasing down missing-nin?” she asks curiously and Sasori jerks under her hands before she takes them away, amber eyes narrowing dangerously.
“What makes you say that?”
“There’s poison in your lungs and around the wound in your stomach. Low-level, likely plant-based, so either someone who doesn’t fully know what they’re doing or doesn’t have enough resources for the chemical stuff. Suna is renowned for poison, so…” she trails off, and Sasori closes his eyes and sighs.
“Yes.” He says simply, the corner of his mouth curling with distaste. “A chunin and a jounin. They stole some important artefacts when they defected, and were smart enough to split up after leaving our borders.”
“A hunter-nin mission and they sent one teen jounin?!” Sakura asks incredulously, eyes wide, and she realises with a jolt that the indignation she feels, the concern is for Sasori.
Because he could’ve been killed. And his Village wouldn’t have cared.
“There is a reason the villagers fear me.” Sasori just sighs, though the look in his eyes is softer than she’s used to, and Sakura can’t quite stop the hand that reaches out and lightly ruffles her hair, despite the fact that the teen freezes under her touch.
“Whenever you bleed the Village dry of everything useful it can give you, come find me. I’ll help you do what you must.” She tells him simply, and he must notice the change in wording because he turns and looks at her with slightly widened eyes.
“And where will I be able to find you?” he asks eventually, the shock still visible on his face but not as obvious.
Sakura smiles. Was that ever a question in the first place?
“Konoha.”
Two months after landing in the past, and three weeks after Sasori returned from his mission and a week after he went to the Kazekage with the request for a student, Sakura stumbles to her knees, less than half a kilometre from the Main Gates of Konohagakure.
She decided to go all-out when she left Sasori, raiding a small shop in one of the villages she passed through in the Land of Rivers for civilian clothing. After that, it was the case of putting in a few artificial rips and tears, rubbing against trees, dipping liberally in mud-puddles and working grass into the material until it stained at the knees and elbows.
Her body is littered with a myriad of small injuries, some self-inflicted and incompletely healed, others from creatures she’d intentionally allowed to get too close, a burn here, a bruise there.
Overall, last time she’d glimpsed her reflection in the stream, she looked rough. She could only hope her chakra would make her look like rough-after-escaping-captivity-shinobi rather than a beggar.
But as it is, she drops to her hands and knees on the dirt path leading to the Village because she feels three chakra signatures moving in the trees about half a kilometre behind her, and this way, assuming they don’t try to kill her on first sight, she’ll have an even easier pass into the Village than trying to bank on her helpless-and-hard-done image.
“Namikaze, I swear to god-!” an irritated voice reaches her ears seconds before she feels feet hit the ground a few metres to her left.
She curls up slightly, the tensing of her muscles not entirely faked, and the figure moves closer.
“Excuse me, are you alright?” she hears a deep, yet undeniably kind voice ask, and she unfurls from her protective position and peers up at the shinobi, seeing him wince slightly in sympathy at her dirtied, scratched face and wide-eyes.
Blond hair, cerulean blue eyes, a slight tan, and the Konoha jounin uniform. Blond that spills over the headband around his forehead in jagged, though soft-looking spikes, and when she meets his eyes, he sends her a hesitant smile, offering her a hand up.
Oh, sh*t. Sakura thinks absently as she accepts the hand and lets him pull her to her feet, making sure to sway a little, then runs a hand through her dyed-maroon hair to push the bangs away from her forehead, no doubt smearing dirt in them, but it’s worth it when the blonde’s eyes zero in on the diamond on her forehead and his eyes widen, though the warm smile doesn’t falter even as his eyes grow cold and calculating. Oh, sh*t.
Naruto’s dad is hot.
Then, her eyes fall on a wild-looking kunoichi, her hair a mane, and the upside-down scarlet triangles on her cheeks only accentuating her eyes framed in that same shade, her lips pulled back in a scowl and a ferocious glare aimed right at Minato, before it falls to her, and Sakura's brain turns to goo.
Oh, no. She's hot too.
