Chapter Text
Sakura is saved by the presence of her seal. The simple purple diamond on her forehead is innocuous to any who do not understand, but speaks volumes to those who do.
Sakura wakes from a deep slumber with gasping violence. She finds herself on the outskirts of an unknown village, bereft of clothing, supplies, and understanding.
It is raining and visibility is low, but she can see the silhouette of a village in the distance.
She does not know it is Uzushiogakure yet, a village long destroyed. She does not know she is in the past, but she will.
The chill from the rain settles deep into her bones and her chakra exhaustion is startling. She hasn’t felt this drained since—
Sakura blinks, squinting through the sleet and into the distance when her sight grows dim. She blinks again, and swears she sees two horned figures rapidly approaching. Another blink and the village in the distance begins to warp and twist until it is nothing but a curling spiral.
The oni kneels in front of her prone figure, and its grotesque snarling face consumes her vision.
Sakura blinks and does not open her eyes again.
When she wakes—dry, coherent, clothed—Sakura’s trained awareness is front and centre. She is immediately on high alert, and catalogues her surroundings in an instant.
She was asleep on a futon, and now sits in the middle of a room in a traditional style house. Grand, but minimalistic. Understated. She is comfortable and warm. The room is decorated with tapestries and screens depicting art Sakura has never seen, of red-haired women bathing in deep, surrounded by white foxes and swirling pools and terrible monsters she could never conjure in her imagination.
There is the sound of water; the gentle, rhythmic lapping of the ocean rather than a still lake or babbling river. She is dressed in a simple blue yukata, undecorated yet finely made. She is alone, but she senses the chakra of others close by. Not guarding her, but living separately from her.
Sakura is not a prisoner. Maybe. Probably.
Her temper rises, frustrated with lack of knowledge. She tries to remember how she got here, but her recent memory ceases to exist, stopping right after she woke up in the rain. She recalls the shinobi in the oni masks—they must be ninja, for who else could get so close so quick?—and the fatigue, but not how she ended up in a different place. She can’t even remember where in Konoha she was prior to her… impromptu spatial displacement.
It unsettles her. It annoys her. Sakura is not used to being kept in the dark, and certainly not by her own mind.
Sakura is startled by an approaching chakra signature, clearly not allowed to be left to her own devices for long, nor is she allowed time to properly (snoop) investigate her surroundings.
A shoji screen opens revealing a petite red-haired woman kneeling on the engawa. Beyond her lies the water.
Against common sense, the engawa appears to have been built over the ocean, like a modified dock. Is the entire building over the water? She cannot hear any water beneath her, but she hardly has the senses of an Inuzuka. Even in Wave they did not build their homes like this for fear of the rising tides.
“I apologise for the intrusion.” The woman bows from her knees. Sakura isn’t sure anyone has ever shown her this level of respect, even at the hospital after she’s stitched them back together. “I was told you were still sleeping.”
Sakura clears her throat awkwardly and glances around. There was no one else in the room, but clearly someone had been with her. Someone potentially bathed her and definitely dressed her, and checked on her welfare closely enough to inform another. It is deeply unsettling to have unknowingly put her care into the hands of someone who is not herself or one of her own; Tsunade or Shizune or Ino.
“I only just woke up,” Sakura finally replies, intending to keep her answers vague and noncommittal. “Is this… your house?”
The woman laughs as she enters the room, shuffling forward on her knees before closing the door. Sakura already misses the fresh air; the clear escape route.
“This is my clan’s estate, but not my house in particular,” she explains, already busying herself with a chest in the corner. “This building belongs to our clan head, specifically his honoured granddaughter. I am from a branch family and act as one of the clan head’s granddaughter’s attendants.”
Sakura observes her take out a kimono from the chest, along with an obi and a bone-handled hairbrush. Even more antiquated. Worry builds, the elements slowly coming together to make a very concerning image.
“I’m sorry,” Sakura says, vaguely embarrassed underneath her calculations. “I didn’t catch your name.”
“I never gave it.” The woman presents the kimono to her, the fabric dark red lined with deep blue embroidery. The colours are reminiscent of a life she once dreamed of. “Isn’t it lovely? Mito-sama has given permission for you to wear it when presented to the clan elders. How lucky! Now, up we get.”
Mito-sama. A name, albeit not a very informative one. It’s a common name since the founding of Konoha—but Sakura is not in Konoha, that much is very clear.
Sakura allows herself to be pulled from the futon and dressed by this mystery woman. Although she does not try very hard, she finds she cannot resist her. Her strength remains at an all time low, even with her sealed reserves. Sakura is torn between it being a result of whatever brought her here and the careful exhaustion her rescuers-turned-captors have kept her in.
Delicate matters, torture.
As she is in no place to fight it, Sakura allows the manhandling.
The woman strips her and redresses her with the efficiency of someone who has done this before, at least lending to her story of being an attendant. Sakura has her hair brushed and her face powdered—that she tried to avoid, knowing how many shinobi use powders to deliver toxins, although it seems to be an inefficient way to eliminate her considering how weak she currently is—and she is primped until the woman deems her suitable for presentation.
“How lovely!” the attendant declares. “Now, shall we? My lord is having his lunch as we speak, and he is always in a better mood after his belly is full.” She giggles, as though Sakura is in on the joke, and begins to lead her from the room she woke up in. “Isn’t that all men, though? My lady is different. She is much more poised, although her ire is more… hm, tempestuous?”
Out on the engawa, Sakura can see the vast extent of her current residence. There are dozens and dozens of connected houses atop the water, seemingly floating, although she can see the supports dip deep below the dark, swirling surface of the ocean.
The ocean. Why is she by the ocean? She cannot recall being anywhere near Wave or the coastline, her duties keeping her firmly within Konoha‘s tall walls, within the need to protect all medics in the case of another war.
Was she kidnapped by an enemy? Was she drugged to ensure her compliance? Is this an elaborate genjutsu? No answer comes, and Sakura finds her panic finally cresting over.
Her breath comes quick, her eyes wide and strained. There is nothing for her to see, no clues besides that which she has already obtained, no information to glean. She is low on chakra, has no supplies, is a captive of a mysterious woman and her clan who will not say her name, and she is very, very alone.
The attendant is oblivious to Sakura’s quiet breakdown and continues to guide Sakura down the winding engawa, past identical building after building with no clear direction. If anything, Sakura swears she is being led in a circle to the centre of this maze.
“The temper comes with the name though, I suppose,” the woman muses idly, as though they are having a conversation between friends. “Now my cousins are much more calm, but that is because they are from the branch concerned with all the biting and—”
Sakura cannot take this any longer. “Excuse me!” she exclaims, digging her feet in. “I just… What is your name? And—where am I? Who brought me here? You said… Before you said Mito. I don’t know anyone who goes by that name—“ Not personally, and not in this century. “—and I’m frankly very confused, so if you would be so kind, could you give me some actual answers?”
The attendant stops in front of a large shoji screen, her eyes wide and surprised. “Oh. Um. My apologies. I did not…” She flushes a deep red. “I was not purposefully keeping it from you. I just forgot to tell you my name. It is Tsubaki.” The woman smiles and bows, a quick version of her earlier greeting. “Uzumaki Tsubaki.”
Uzumaki.
Houses atop the water. Deep, dark currents. A spiral. Many spirals. The oni masks. The rain. She is numb as she processes this information.
Sakura has found herself in Uzushiogakure, which was destroyed over two decades ago. It is a pile of rubble, it’s secrets lost to time, but somehow it now stands. Somehow, Sakura is standing in Uzushio. An impossibility, yet…
“My lord is Uzumaki Ashina-sama,” Tsubaki says quickly, and Sakura allows herself to be shuffled forward to the large, grand shoji screen. Figures move inside, preparing to open it. “He wishes to meet you, along with the elders and his granddaughter. They’re inside waiting for you.”
“His granddaughter…” Sakura murmurs, the pieces of this twisted puzzle finally slotting together in her mind.
“Mito-sama,” Tsubaki repeats, and tugs her down into a deep zarei bow. “She is the one who spoke on your behalf. You owe her your life.”
I owe Uzumaki Mito my life, Sakura thinks, her mind distressingly blank as the shoji screen is opened to reveal two seated figures, one of which passed not long before Sakura was born.
I am in the past.