Chapter Text
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” – Heraclitus
Betrayal is a taste that coats the inside of her mouth, viscous and bitter. A memory, sharp and truncated, plays in the back of her head like a genjutsu on loop. When she closes her eyes, or stops to breathe, or fails to keep her hands busy, it’s there.
The crisp night air on her tongue. Her hair, freshly shorn, brushing the back of her neck. Sasuke, back turned.
Sakura lays awake in her childhood bedroom, contemplating a ceiling she could trace in her sleep. It’s been 32 - no, 36 hours since she last slept more than a moment, and she doesn’t really feel like breaking her streak now. She knows what’s waiting for her when she rests.
Naruto left, perhaps a day ago. She had almost asked to come along, but choked on her words before they made it to her tongue. It wasn’t so long ago that Sakura had pledged to stop being a burden, during the Chuunin exams - and she couldn’t promise that she would be able to pull her weight on this mission. Her stamina, despite training, is underdeveloped, and her repertoire of jutsu is painfully limited.
She didn’t have any of Sasuke’s textbook-perfect technique, or Chouji’s raw strength, or Shikamaru’s composure, or even Naruto’s sheer tenacity. What she had was shuriken that hit their targets with minimal power, chakra control that didn’t seem to have any stunning application, and an inner voice that may well be some sort of undiagnosed mental illness.
There are cracks in the ceiling, interconnected webs that claw their way from the corners, reaching for each other all the while. Left unattended, fine spidery cracks will bring her house down. Maybe she could just lay here and wait.
On the rare occasions that she feels collected enough to think, she considers her team. Sasuke, she knew, had always been of single-minded focus; his primary goal had and perhaps always will be fratricide. She had just never thought that his macabre intent would be enough to push him from the village.
So he’s run off to Orochimaru. He will become powerful there, she supposes. Sakura wonders if she will recognize him when he emerges.
Then, Naruto. It’s a shame she ever thought of him as annoying. He’s got ambition in spades, and maybe even the will to achieve it, if not the patience. He’ll become powerful too, simply because he sees no other course of action. As traitorous as it feels, Sakura doesn’t think he’ll manage to bring Sasuke home - not when Sasuke doesn’t want to return. All the same, she’ll love Naruto for trying.
And last, herself. What is there to say, really?
She tries, but obviously not hard enough. She’s smart, but that’s hardly gotten her anywhere. She’s ambitious, but for what, exactly? She can see it already, now and forever: they’re leaving her behind.
She doesn’t sleep. She’s fine.
-----
Naruto returns soon enough, tired and filthy and defeated. They both visit Chouji in the hospital, and Naruto offers her an exhausted smile. It’s dim, as Naruto rarely is.
Seeing him like this only adds to the dull ache in Sakura’s chest, but she knows that he’ll be fine. His is an indomitable spirit, and he’ll bounce back as he always does.
-----
Naruto’s leaving again. He tells her when they get ramen after a lackluster sparring practice, scuffing the dirt with a nervous toe.
She’s happy for him, probably, so she smiles and hugs him and wishes him luck.
Recently, she’s discovered the frightening ability to seem cheerful. Still, the pep in her own voice surprises her. “Three years, huh? Write to me, or I’ll kick your ass when you get back.”
“Huh? Oh yeah, sure! My handwriting still sucks, though.”
“You’d better not slack off, either. I’ll get ahead of you if you do.” It’s an empty threat; she’s just going through the inevitable motions of conversation.
“When I get back, Sakura, I’ll be so strong you won’t even recognize me!”
He believes it so whole-heartedly that Sakura doesn’t even have to force her smile. They’ll be fine.
-----
For a while, she still went to the training grounds. Kakashi had never told her that they weren’t meeting to train anymore, so she went just in case. He never showed up, so she just practiced water walking; she hardly improved, because her control was already nearly perfect.
Eventually, there was news that Kakashi had left on a long-term mission. She stopped showing up.
-----
Sakura doesn’t have a team to take missions with anymore, and she doesn’t have anybody to teach her; she’s not really sure what to do with herself. She tries to stay home for a while, but she can’t stand to be alone with her thoughts anymore. If she sits still for too long, she starts to think about Naruto and Sasuke, in all their future might.
She finds she doesn’t really want to be left behind.
-----
She’s going to have to be strategic about this - creative, even. She doesn’t have the raw potential to simply train her way to greatness; for one, she’s limited by what her body can handle, and more importantly, her chakra reserves aren’t that big. Of course, there are ways to remedy this, but they take time. She doesn’t have time; three years, Naruto had said.
Sakura can think of two options to get around this: she can choose a specialty that requires more control than chakra, or she can find a way to forcibly expand her chakra supply. Both of these require research, so naturally, she starts at the library.
Medical ninjutsu. On paper, it seems perfect for her skillset, but it doesn’t appeal to her. She wants to feel strength flowing through her veins, and the singing of steel at her fingertips. She wants to be at the forefront of battle, not hidden away and protected.
Maybe it’s offensive to think of medical ninja that way. It’s totally possible that they’re complete badasses too, I guess. But still, meh.
There’s genjutsu. Useful, clearly, but mind games aren’t really Sakura’s thing. Maybe she’ll dabble, but she doesn’t really want to specialize.
Option number two, then: unnatural and possibly dangerous and unethical chakra enhancement. It sounds like a fun challenge, at least. With an indulgent groan, she stands up from the desk and shakes out the stiffness in her limbs. Gathering up the veritable horde of scrolls she’s amassed, Sakura begins the mind-numbing task of finding out where the texts resided before her gluttonous search for information.
After a time, she begins the search anew.
Senju Tsunade’s Strength of a Hundred Seal. It’s almost perfect for what she wants, but she discards the idea almost immediately. It’d take years of training in medical ninjutsu to even begin forming the seal, let alone learn how to use it. Seals, though. That was interesting.
Sealing, it seemed, was simply a way to guide chakra. If a shinobi could design a seal that suitably conveyed their intent, they could achieve almost anything that would otherwise require a lot of skill or power. Therefore, Sakura could, in theory, create a great many solutions to her problem; she could store chakra for later use, she could amplify chakra upon release, and she might even be able to transmute chakra into a different form. With sealing, the possibilities were endless.
It’s like a language, she thinks. There are near-endless words in the language, and infinite ways to combine them; nearly nothing you cannot communicate, given enough skill. At the very least, it’s worth looking into.
The library is closing in ten minutes, though, and the old lady at the desk is giving her some nasty looks. Sakura stuffs a number of scrolls in her arms, and heads home.
-----
Three days and fourteen hours, and she’s found jack shit.
There’s an abundance of information on the history of seals: how they came to prominence, why they were feared in battle, and how the practice was reduced to the occasional explosive tag. At the center of it all lies Uzushiogakure, the Hidden Eddy Village. Where was once Konoha’s smaller but mighty sister village, now lies a pile of dust and rubble, razed by war-crazed Kiri ninja.
The vast majority of the world’s knowledge on sealing was lost that day. Of course, the ruins have been picked over by ninja of all nations, hoping to glean a single shred of wisdom from the village’s famed libraries. Nothing was found - nobody knows what happened to the treasure troves of scrolls that were once held there, only that they disappeared before anybody could reach them.
Accordingly, there’s very little practical information on sealing. Countless symbols have lost their meaning, and what is a language if the words have no definition?
The last true experts were the Yondaime and his wife, Kushina Uzumaki - and wasn’t it a surprise to hear that last name? It’s hardly likely to be a coincidence. Sakura wonders if Naruto knows he had such powerful relatives in the famed Uzumakis of Uzushio.
Jiraiya of the Sannin is known to dabble in sealing, but can hardly be called a master. Besides, he’s off adventuring with Naruto, and even if Sakura could find them, she doesn’t think she could convince Jiraiya to teach her.
If she was practical, she would discard this fascination with fuuinjutsu just like she had discarded the idea of medical training. But even when she resumed her research on experimental chakra sciences, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The potential was astounding - the sheer amount of things Sakura could accomplish if she were able to learn this obscure art - she could make herself powerful. She could give herself a whole new chakra system, she could use any of the elemental chakra natures. She could create ready-made jutsu, finished but for a trigger in her hands.
The thought makes her neurons sing, makes ideas run through her head like liquid fire; her fingertips tingle when she imagines a brush in her hands, and raw strength in her chest. Sakura doesn’t think she could ever rest if she didn’t try.
------
She resumes her physical training. She doesn’t spend any more time practicing than she used to, but she makes a lot more progress. She's driven now, intent with her movements, focused on a nebulous goal that takes a more concrete shape with each passing day.
She starts trying to recreate any seals she has access to; there are instruction pamphlets on making utilitarian seals like storage scrolls and explosive tags, which she attacks with gusto. By the end of the week, she can store objects about the size of her head for a few days, and make explosions large enough to bring down a tree.
It’s not much - it’s not even quite standard, but it’s progress. Sakura can recognize patterns of scribbles and swirls that hold meaning, now; when she creates storage, she can understand the purpose of each stroke, and she can read the seals painted on her store-bought tags. Another week, and she’ll be modifying her own seals.
-----
Within the month, she’s consumed all the material on fuuinjutsu she can get her hands on. It’s not enough - what’s available to the public is enough to create only the most banal tools. Sometimes an inspiration will catch Sakura’s fancy, and she’ll start sketching out a plan for a seal, only to find that she’s missing too many pieces.
She tests her own seals, of course. It was rough going, once she started modifying them to fit her own purposes. But after more than one unplanned explosion, she’s managed to create twice-acting explosive tags, tags that release a variety of weapons, and on one interesting occasion, a tagged kunai that travels towards heat.
Sometimes, she takes C-class missions with groups of other lone ninja, and gets the chance to test out her new toys for real. They work most of the time, but when they don’t, the effects are annoying at best, and catastrophic at worst. Other genin in the village learn to avoid her for missions, because plans seem to go sideways around her.
Sakura’s not sure what all the fuss is about. Whenever she took innocuous missions with Team Seven, someone ended up on the brink of death. In the grand scheme, a mistimed smoke pellet explosion wasn’t anything to take note of.
The longer she tries to invent a new way to structure the same couple of base-seals, though, the less satisfied she becomes. It’s stifling, trying to write instructions with a majority of the dialect missing. She might have to get creative again - or desperate.
-----
She leaves in the middle of the night. It’s sharply reminiscent of another night not too long ago, a memory branded into her brain by a molten-hot poker.
She turned her back on the village, and looked to the East. Nobody had ever found anything in the ruins of Uzushiogakure, but maybe she would.