Chapter Text
If you were made of color, you'd be my golden hour...
The chilling premonition wouldn't leave Sakura. It was like the shadow behind a tree. You see it from the corner of your eyes, you turn to look and there is nothing there. Still you move faster, quicker, your heartbeat increasing because you know. You know you’re not imagining it.
It wasn’t her imagination nor a dream.
Rather it was an inference; a gathering of visible evidence consolidated to a predictable conclusion. An end was coming, it was on the horizon. It just wasn’t the end they had hoped for, not the one they had fought and bled for, watched those they loved die for.
They all knew it was coming. They, the last fighters of the Ninja resistance, had already reached a point of no return. Too many dead. Not enough were left to rebuild. They were the last embers of the campfire, the last rays of sunlight on the horizon at dusk.
The feeling was like a phantom limb of the future. Something they could feel, not see.
They were still waiting for word from Kakashi and Tsunade. Both oversaw their own legion of soldiers, while Naruto and her Co-led the one they oversaw now. They had split the last of their fighters, knowing it was better to not have all of them together as sitting ducks. Instead, each one of them was given a job to do. Tsunade, with Bee and the main Kumo force, were to take down that bloody statue. Kakashi, the mizukage at his side, would take on Obito and Black Zetsu.
Their own force was in charge of white Zetsu and Madara.
They had destroyed white Zetsu already, but Madara was a different beast altogether.
They were preparing for that end, gathering the last shreds of hope, but the vicious murder of Naruto's wife, Hinata...it tipped the scales in a way. The sound of thunder before the lightning strike.
Madara had taken the woman in the dead of night while their eyes had been turned. She could still see it. Naruto holding her torn body just as the illusioned sun gleamed in the sky for another fake day. The crimson stain of her blood across the ravaged landscape of Konoha as Madara had ripped pieces of her off, leaving trails of her like bloody rose petals-a grotesque gift and message to Naruto.
Sakura had been a Ninja for going on a decade and she had never seen something so…remorselessly macabre or unflinchingly depraved.
After that, it seemed as though their scraped-up hope had dissipated like vapor. There being no word coming from Tsunade or Kakashi didn’t help. The weight of the future, the future full of more lost, a future full of death, pressed down on her, a crushing burden she couldn't bear. Sleep offered no respite, only a relentless replay of the devastation, the agonizing screams, the crushing weight of failure. The desire for death to come because at least that was an escape.
At least there would be a finishing of all of this.
She could often hear Naruto's wailing screams at night. His calling for his wife, for his unborn son, for his god father, for any number of names they had lost.
They never told him about it. Pretended like the nights were quiet. But she knew he knew. Particularly, since he wasn't the only one who screamed. Other nights it was her. Still others, Shikamaru or Sasuke or Chouji or the few friends left from the other villages.
They had all loved and lost and knew there was still more to come on the horizon.
Driven to the brink of madness, Naruto had sought a desperate solution, a desperate gamble with fate. He had found it in one of the sealed compartments of the Hokage's office. Chakra sealed by her mentor and the fifth Hokage, Tsunade. Surprisingly, it was connected to the Fourth Hokage and the night he sealed the Kyuubi into Naruto.
Naruto refused to let her see it, but Ino had told her about it only because Shikamaru had given her tidbits.
It was a forbidden jutsu that held whispers of the Shinigami and a pact that echoed with the chilling promise of power, but at a price that was unclear.
Naruto, his single-minded focus turning to obsession, began to manipulate it. Mold it into an unholy amalgamation of various tomes of his father's jutsus. The group didn't question it, understanding grief too closely to do more than support, to be an ear to hear when it “Just wasn't working”. They moved to not bring too much attention to them, but they knew they were being hunted.
Then Ino left one day and never came back.
She went to patrol, to guard the last stand. There was an explosion. Then nothing. They waited for her, but she didn't come back to the meeting point. Shikamaru had taken a small team to investigate. All they brought back was Ino's headband and a few strands of beautiful, long blond hair.
Something broke even further in Shikamaru that day. A little something broke in Sakura too. Shika spent most of his time afterwards either alone or assisting Naruto, his genius aiding the blond more than anyone, other than Sakura, could.
And then they had it. Sakura didn't know what they had, but they had it.
They chose to carry it out in one of Orochimaru's abandoned hideouts, all agreeing that it wasn't likely that they would be found there.
They didn't tell her what their plan was at first. Sasuke was used to distract her, something she only realized much later. His sickness from the overuse of his sharingan was beginning to take its toll and she was concerned. Dark bags sank beneath his already dark eyes and his hands would shake anytime he tried to mold chakra.
But then Naruto completed the ritual and the seal. When he was finished, he approached her, the others behind him. Shikamaru wouldn't look her in the eye. Sasuke wouldn't look away, his deep eyes unwavering as he stared into her own.
"It has to be you, Sakura."
"Why?" She frowned, watching how uncharacteristically still his face was. Something was off. She knew they were hiding something.
"Just because..."
“That reasoning doesn’t work anymore, Naru-”.
Naruto had looked at her then and her mouth closed on its own. His face was so forlorn that she couldn't challenge him. They were all quiet for a long moment and then he whispered.
"Please...Sakura, please help me save them."
She had paused too, looking at him with a rising emptiness.
“Why can’t you tell me the cost, Naruto?” He looked away. His face a mask of solid stone she had never seen before and didn’t fit what she knew of him.
“Cause it doesn’t matter, Sakura. It doesn’t matter. I’d-we’d pay...It doesn’t matter.” We’d pay any cost. She knew that was what he was going to say. His voice had cracked at the end and all she could do was hug him and quietly say “okay” even as her stomach dropped.
His quiet tears on her shoulder was his only response.
Sakura had left it up to them to set it up. When they were ready for her, she had to strip nude and stand in the middle of the candlelit seal. She had long since let go of any squeamishness regarding nudity, she was amongst friends, comrades, here.
The others stood in places around the ritual circle. Her breath seemed to rattle in her chest as they began.
The air crackled with a heavy energy. She could hear the staccato of her heart in her ears, it vibrated against her ribs, a frantic rhythm in the silence. A figure began to manifest before her, the shinigami in all of his terrifying glory. The naginata it held within his mouth gleamed in the candlelight.
The shinigami seemed to unfold from billowing clouds, towering in stature, its form a vaguely humanoid cloaked in flowing, tattered robes that seem woven from shadow and smoke. The robes swirled like living mist, hiding much of its body and giving it an unsettling, spectral grace.
Its face is obscured by a haunting mask, protection to mortals possibly, she’s not sure. The mask itself is an expressionless, pale-white visage with deep, black eye holes that seem to gaze into her soul. She felt like she couldn’t look away without permission, so trapped by its gaze was she. Its long, spiky hair flows like a mane of dark fire, stark against the pale mask, giving the impression of something ancient and wild. Despite the mask’s stillness, an oppressive aura of wrath and hunger radiates from the being.
Her body shook as she realized what this was. The Shiki Fujin. The Dead Demon Consuming Seal. But it was different. At least, it was different from what she had heard from her Shishou. It stood before her, rather than behind her. Its skeletal hands were kept to its sides as it took the Naginata from its mouth.
Naruto...what did you do? What is this? She whimpered quietly to herself.
Its presence is oppressive, suffocating, as if death itself has stepped into the world—silent, inevitable, and irreversible.
Chouji fell. The sound drew her attention, noting the bleeding of Chakra from the others and the glowing streams which led back to the shinigami. Shikamaru gasped and she could see the sheen of sweat on Sasuke from where she stood.
She turned to help them, but Naruto screamed at her to not move.
"Shika and Chouji know the cost, Sakura. We've already started this, we can't stop now."
"The cost, Naruto? You didn't tell ME the cost!"
He just looked at her. His face was solemn, and his eyes rimmed red but no tears fell. He had no more tears to cry. Sakura could feel the beginnings of terror or grief, she didn't know, climb up her throat.
"What's the cost, Naruto!?"
"I'm sorry, Sakura. It had to be you. You're the only one. Sasuke is too sick. Shika didn't have the will. And I am the only one with enough Chakra for the full summoning. You're the only one who can go back and change anything. You're the smartest of us all. Aside from Shika, of course. We trust you to do this. Please. You said you would. Please. I'm sorry we're putting this on you. I would take it if I could, but...we need you to do this Sakura..."
His voice was a rasp at the end. She just shook her head. They were going to die. That was, at least, part of the cost. They would die in this ritual. Had she known...
She turned her back on him. He knew she would have said no if he had told her, that's why he, that's why none of them, told her anything.
And she had suspected. That's why she didn't ask.
"Do you accept the full sacrifice for this deal?" The shinigami didn't speak out loud, but rather her soul rattled with the vibrations of his words.
"What is the full sacrifice? Is the sacrifice different from the cost of the ritual?" She spoke aloud. Her friends could hear her, but not the Shinigami, the being’s words echoing only in her mind. Sasuke was already on his knees, his skin looking clammy from spending his chakra.
"The death of those whose energy is being used in the summoning is the cost of the summoning. The cost is great as the request is great. The request is to remake time and undo fate. The sacrifice to fulfil the goal of the summoning, however, is twofold. You will sacrifice your existence on the current timeline. There will never again be a Sakura Haruno. She will cease to exist as she is now. Secondly, you must sacrifice the life of someone in the timeline you will go to. They will die, cease to exist, and you will replace their position. You will not be them, rather you will continue in the place they were supposed to exist. An exchange of souls."
Sakura was horrified. She turned to Naruto.
"Did you know the full sacrifice? Did you know that the sacrifice is different from the cost of just the summoning ritual!?" When his eyebrows drew together, she knew he didn't. She pressed her lips tightly together. Just like Naruto! Jumping in headfirst with only part of the information.
"What's the full sacrifice, Sakura?" Her hands shook as she turned back to the Shinigami.
Oh, Kami...she didn’t want to do this. She’d be ripping out her own existence to replace someone else’s. There was no guessing who that was. It could be someone important, a parent, a teacher, someone who made a contribution to the world. Anyone could cease to exist, die earlier than they were supposed to. All because the world was going to shit. For the majority, perhaps the sacrifice would be worth it. Worth the possibility of changing the current world, but that one person...that one person had a life and she was about to destroy it.
This had the potential to make things so much worse. What if she killed someone important. Someone pivotal to making the world a better place. Like Kakashi or Tsunade.
But she had no choice, did she? This wasn’t even a real question, more like fully understanding the ramifications of what was about to happen. Sasuke and Naruto would die, regardless. They had put everything on her to do this. She had no choice! She couldn't go back and let their deaths be meaningless, even though she was so scared she could barely breathe. Even though she was so angry and bitter at another decision being taken from her, she wanted to reach her palms into the ground and bend the earth until she felt better.
She pulled her hands up to her mouth instead, the fingertips pressed against the underside of her nose as she whimpered quietly to herself.
"WHAT'S THE FULL SACRIFICE, SAKURA?!" Naruto's voice was desperate, and she could feel hot anger surging through her. Why did everyone always make decisions without her and then expect her to be the one to help clean it up?
"IT DOESN'T MATTER, NARUTO!" He shrank back from her. She knew he could see the tears streaming down her face. She knew he could see her terror. See her slumped shoulders. But truly, what did it matter? When had what she wanted ever really mattered?
She didn’t feel an ounce of pity for throwing his words back into his face.
"It doesn't matter. We're in it now. There's no going back." She felt like it was a message to him as much as it was to her. Naruto was the only one standing now, though Shika and Sasuke were still conscious, their eyes looking at her with rising horror.
"Sakura-" She whirled back to the Shinigami. She couldn't look at them. She didn't want this to be the last thing she saw of them.
"I understand the sacrifice and I...I accept it."
"SAKURA!" She knew if the ritual wasn't keeping them in place, either Sasuke or Naruto would already be by her side. She could feel their eyes on her back. Naruto had been a raw nerve of emotion for the last couple of months. She knew he was hurting, but-
She stopped her thoughts. It didn't matter. She would go through with it. She'd fix it.
She'd fix it like she always did.
“Very well. First, I must change you. You will not be Sakura Haruno anymore. What you call yourself will be up to you, but you will be remade and melded into that timeline. Time is not something you simply cut pieces from and replace with others, mortal. There is a steady stream within time with fated souls. I must rip a soul from that timeline and replace you within it. I must give you an equivalent position both in blood and importance. This deal is for a position that will offer you an opportunity to change the future by changing the past. I will give you this. In exchange, I will take who you are in this timeline and who you were going to be. I will take your future and the legend that would have been yours. I will also take the future and legend of the soul you will be replacing.”
She choked on the spit that pooled in her throat as she took a deep breath.
“Are you,” Her throat closed up for a second, “are you saying...we would have won the war?”
She could hear a choked off breath behind her.
Shikamaru sobbed.
“You would have won. Many would die, but your side would have won. You would have rebuilt. The world would have thrived again eventually. A new age of the world would have begun to emerge.”
She wished she didn’t know that. Now, it felt as though the sacrifice was almost meaningless.
Still...I could change some things. I could change as much as I can for the better. Perhaps that new age will still come, but with more people alive to see it.
She watched as the Shinigami took his blade and sliced open his stomach and pulled two strands of souls from it. The souls wailed as he ripped pieces off of them, before reaching for her.
He grabbed her body, his hand so big she could sit on his open palm, and blew on her. His breath was hot and cold, smelling of wintergrass, volcanic ash, and ocean breezes. For a fleeting moment she wondered if there was a heaven and a hell in the death god’s stomach.
And then he was pressing the pieces of torn souls into her.
She screamed. The sound was wretched, crawling up from the depths of her. She could vaguely hear voices calling her name, but it was like they were far away.
The searing pain as her essence was ripped and molded within her very being – it was a harrowing experience, a brutal maelstrom of sensations that left her breathless and broken. She was dying and being reborn simultaneously, stuttering breaths stolen and given.
Was she dead? Was she alive? Memories were blooming behind her eyes. Some were hers, some were others, but they were all melding into one. A new her was unraveling within her, a new identity.
Her old identity was fading. The pain was so immense she couldn’t actively think, only exist, only allow for the remaking of her.
Haruno was torn from her. She couldn’t even remember that name anymore. The name Sakura, the cherry blossom that flourished on a winter morning, was kept.
Senju replaced Haruno.
Memories of a traveling, merchant father and a stay at home, civilian mother disappeared.
Some memories are not replaced but become like dreams. Friends, loved ones...their memories became dulled at the edges. Sasuke, Naruto, Ino, Tsunade...she knows them, but in the sense that one sees a beautiful tree in spring, an acknowledgment with no roots in her mind.
In their place new memories, sharp with clarity and emotions, are melded.
An Uzumaki mother who died in childbirth and a Senju Dad, Kawarama, who raised her. A brother of Hashirama and a genius as at the age of 7 he approached the head of the Senju clan, his father, with the plan to fake his own death to escape the life of a Ninja. He reasoned with the man that it was only wise for their clan to have someone skilled living outside the clan, in case things happened to the ones still fighting, away to continue the Senju name no matter what, and it only made sense for it to be him as he was the youngest. He lived his life away from ninja battles, training and watching.
She loved him. He was a man who believed he was a coward for abandoning his brothers, but was too terrified to ever reveal himself, even after his father died, and completely made up his mind once his daughter was born, choosing to raise her away from the pressure of the Senju Clan. He was her rock, the only permanent fixture in her life growing up. Her heart could feel the emotions, every laugh and every tear, like she had experienced them.
She could remember their moments; how protective he was of her. How he had trained her in the Ninja arts and his secret love of medical ninjutsu. How amazingly proud and terrified he was when he realized she held the wood release that his brother had.
How she held him when she was 9 when his last brother was killed, the news of the second Hokage’s death echoing around the hidden villages.
How he held her at 11 when Uzushio was destroyed, leaving her with only 3 living family members in the world.
How they had gone into hiding when he realized that Madara, a man who had faked his own death and was in hiding himself, knew he was alive and began to hunt him down. How he had spent sleepless nights over two years writing up scrolls for her because he knew Madara would find him and kill him eventually. And then, when she’d turned 16, he left her. Left her in the abandoned village of Uzushio and ran like the hounds of hell were behind him.
Aside from his scrolls, one of which was to the Hokage of Konoha if she ever chose to go there, he left her with a single stone with his sealed Chakra. A gift to her worried mind. She would stay hidden to ease his worries and as long as his chakra vibrated within the stone, she knew he was alive.
She remembered the tears she cried at night for months, the only family she knew personally was gone, leaving her all alone, and how during the day she trained in secret, using her father’s handwritten scrolls. He gave her instructions that would last for years. Scrolls and scrolls on Kenjutsu, Ninjutsu, and Medical Ninjutsu. Sealed books on various topics, books he had picked up in his many years of traveling.
And he had left her his sword. She remembered crying the entire day when she discovered it as it meant he didn’t plan on returning. He had given up his one important weapon to her.
And then, two years later, when she was 18, she had woken, the sun beaming so brightly, and the stone lying lifeless beside her.
Her father was dead, and she knew it was Madara.
Her anger simmered and compiled with the memories from the future. She wanted revenge. She wanted to end the existence that would trigger the collapse of the Ninja world. She wanted to kill the man who had killed her father, making her one of the last Senju alive.
So she performed a ceremony, carving her father and mother’s names into stone and standing beneath one of the untouched cherry trees around the abandoned village. Senju Kawarama and Uzumaki Momo stood like two pillars, and she prayed there until the sun began to set.
She told her parents goodbye, tied her hair up high, put her father’s sword on her back, and sealed everything she didn’t need away into a tattooed seal on her shoulder.
Then she left, focused singularly on hunting down the one man who had hunted down her father.
Sakura blinked her eyes, these new memories crossing with the sight of the Shinigami’s hands around her. She lay slumped in his palm, her mind overwhelmed with everything.
She glanced to the side, noting the slumped figures.
...Sasuke? Naruto? Their names were whisper thin in her mind despite how loud they were calling her name.
“Sakura!”
How did they know her name? Who were they? Right...they were her friends, from before. Before? Before what? They were real? Yes, they were real. Was she real? Maybe. Was this real? She couldn’t be sure. Everything, even the Shinigami, seemed to blur at the edges. This must be a dream. This isn’t real.
Her mind was a confusing jumble of new vivid memories and old, dream-like ones.
The last thing she heard before the Shinigami dropped her into the swirling Vortex of his stomach was Naruto's voice screaming for her before being choked off. At least she thought it was Naruto. Who was Naruto? Once the ritual was done, he'd be gone too. Who’d be gone? Sasuke's chakra was already gone, like wisps of smoke.
Who was Sasuke?
-----
She awoke in a cold sweat, disoriented and confused. Her body shook, fear and adrenaline rattling around at the unfamiliar scent of fresh trees and earth. What she expected to smell, she wasn’t sure. She cracked open her eyes and watched the soft morning light as it filtered through the tops of trees, and she could smell the earth after fresh rain. Her body was that weird loose when you've been in immense pain and suddenly the pain was gone.
Why do I feel like this? What happened?
Her mind seemed to ripple, and images melted across her mind. A war...friends dying...a ritual...
I...was sent back to change things. But, everything just seems so...Maybe I dreamed it?
She nodded to herself, she wobbled to her knees, crawling her way to the base of a nearby tree, where she settled and pressed her back to the bark.
No. I was on the hunt, looking for information on current events so I can get that bastard. Then I ate that mushroom. How embarrassing.
She chuckled to herself with wry humor.
What a crazy dream. I best not eat any unfamiliar mushrooms again. They were edible but clearly had some side effects.
She let her arms rest on her knees as she just breathed for a moment. She just breathed, letting her hands flex every now and then as she let her chakra circulate within her body, healing those overly strained muscles.
Her heart ached. Dad...
She choked back the tears. She was tired of crying, but it was better to give herself a moment to cry than to let it build up and she exploded at some other moment.
She stayed there until the tears dried and her stomach began to ache for food. She pulled out one of her scrolls, unrolling it and unsealing some of the smoked deer meat and dried fruit she had made. She nibbled on it as she stood, taking a moment to evaluate her body. She knew she wasn't done grieving, but for now, she was okay.
She felt something brush her bare arm. Looking over she noticed it was hair. Her hair. She couldn’t pinpoint what was so bizarre about it, but the feeling of its length on her bare arms was strange to her. Like the world had tilted, but she didn’t know when, where, or how. Her hair was long, long enough to brush her hips even though it was in a high ponytail. It was also slightly darker, no... redder, than she thought it should be; a rosy, magenta color that shone like soft petals in the light.
Now that she was thinking about it, even her Chakra felt off. It still felt like her earth natured chakra, but there was more water than before. In fact, there was more chakra in general. It felt like she had just released her seal, though she could feel part of her chakra feeding into the center of her forehead.
A seal? What Seal? Why do I have a seal?
Right…her mother had taught her an uzumaki seal for chakra storing…didn’t she?
She pulled a compact mirror from a storage seal.
Her reflection shocked her. Her features, while still recognizably her, held a subtle undercurrent of something different— her eyes looked like her Shishou.
Honestly, a lot of her did. She could easily be Shishou's sister or daughter, though her coloring was different. Her eyes were no longer spring green, but a deep emerald. Her hair had darkened to the shade on the inside of cherry blossom blooms. The changes were subtle, barely noticeable, yet unmistakable.
The Shinigami hadn't simply transported her; it had woven her into the fabric of this new timeline using parts of other souls. She had also replaced a soul, but whose soul had she replaced?
A twinge at her temple had her hand pinching the bridge of her nose.
Wait a minute? What was I thinking about?
My Shishou? I have a shishou?
A woman with long blond hair and a diamond in the center of her forehead touched the back of her mind before fading away. There was a sense, like she should know something that couldn’t quite remember. Something like deja vu, there and gone.
What am I doing? Am I going crazy? A shinigami? Do they even exist? and I don’t have a shishou, I’ve always looked like this. I resemble my father with a mix of my mother's coloring.
She sighed and looked up to the sky.
“Maybe I’ve been alone too long, it has been two years.” She sighed to herself.
"People become stronger when they have things they cannot forget. That's what you call growth."
The twinge burst into a full migraine and she leaned against the tree.
A woman’s voice was echoing in her mind. Her Shishou's words.
She gave a cry, the pain curling behind her eyes.
No. No! All of this is real. Her father is real. Her Shishou is real.
The shinigami’s words echoed in her mind.
"The death of those whose energy is being used in the summoning is the cost of the summoning. The sacrifice to fulfil the goal of the summoning, however, is twofold. You will sacrifice your existence on the current timeline. There will never again be a Sakura Haruno. She will cease to exist as she is now. Secondly, you must sacrifice the life of someone in the timeline you will go to. They will die, cease to exist, and you will replace their position. You will not be them, rather you will continue in the place they were supposed to exist. An exchange of souls."
She remembered, but the memories were hazy and dull. Disappearing every second. Even the Shinigami’s stern words were shimmering away like gossamer. She knew it was real, but that reality was already fading. It didn’t exist anymore.
Who she used to be didn’t exist anymore.
But her Shishou was right. She couldn't forget why she was here. She didn’t think she’d be able to keep everything from before, it seemed that was a part of what the Shinigami had done.
Why was she here again?
She shook her head, trying to hold on to it. Hold onto her why. Haruno Sakura was dead. Haruno Sakura never existed. Would never exist again. She had died in a ritual in a future that will never be.
But Senju Sakura was alive.
Senju Sakura knew Madara was alive. She knew everything her father had found out about that man over the last half-a-century. She knew his plans. She knew she needed to stop him.
The headache softened and the nausea it brought ebbed away. She stood, thoughts she’d had flash across her mind already fading. Something about them made her want to cry. Like saying goodbye to a dream.
What was I thinking about just now? Jeez, I need to stay focused.
She needed to find Madara and then Zetsu, a plant-like being that her father had noted was a servant of Madara. She was the only one who knew what was on the horizon. Or at least, she knew something was on the horizon. There was fear when she thought of the future, and though she didn’t quite understand why she was afraid, she trusted her instincts.
Nodding she leapt into the trees. She needed information.