Victrix

Disclaimer: Not for profit. I do not own Naruto.

Beta: ouranchimaru. tumblr. com (Who has been kind enough to also edit this prologue.)

Notes: AU reimagining. Likely not canon compliant.

Some Things You Can't Go Back To

On the brink of the war, the battle looked fierce and fast and ready. The tide was turning, all the major villages coming together for a common good. Enter Konoha and the magnificent fighters it hailed, beasts among men and gods among insects. All of the other villages were not without their own power and fury. Angry as the world was threatened, their way of life in danger of being swallowed whole by a mad, alien goddess. Ancient tribute was not without strife, the fighters, ninja, not without bravery. When it finally appeared that all was triumphant for the villages, she came and she wrought. The alien goddess consumed them and their world.

A young medic with pink hair staggered across the battlefield. The girl was named for cherry blossoms, which, although beautiful, inevitably do one thing in the end; they fall. She stumbled but would not rest. Her best friend, a hurricane of blonde hair and blue eyes, stared glassily at her from a distance, her body cold and her eyes dead. The flecks of blood spattered the ground and her clothes were a deep rust. Her name was Ino, and the medic loved her like a sister, but now she was gone. There was another, though, that she could still see across the battlefield of broken bodies. His body was encased in the fires of a demonic fox, and he had killed the boy she loved and she was not sorry for it. The boy she loved, who had turned against them, who had tried to kill her, who she once thought he at least considered her a friend. He was too far gone in the clutches of villainy and she was far too weary and jaded to care.

As the demonic golden light of her best friend went out before her eyes, the battle was lost and won in a second. Before her scream of rage could explode into the ashen air, the length of her neck was torn by the enemy, red seeping down her clothes. Sakura fell. She closed her eyes and prayed for one last time.

From there she could tell neither space nor time. She could not even tell or feel if she had a body. She was everywhere and she was nowhere.

Open your eyes, healer child, a voice seemed to seek her ears. Sakura couldn't tell where it came from. Open your mind's eye.

She struggled to open her mind, she had been in pain and seen so much death, her entire village, her entire world slaughtered on the whim of a mad woman and made possible by men who had nothing better than a delusion of grandeur to live for. It was impossible to quell her thoughts of anger, fear, and most of all, sadness. Her wonderful, beautiful friends, the people that had taught her, and subsequently adopted her, raised her completely and made her who she was. All of them gone, lost to the shinigami.

I do not want your rage. I do not want your sadness. The voice sounded male, but lilting and musical. I want your love for this world, free of its sins.

Though the depression was there, she tried desperately to think about the good. The people in her life. Naruto Uzumaki, the fiery trickster who had given everything he had to everyone else. Ino Yamanaka, her blue-eyed, blonde-haired best, best, friend. Kakashi Hatake, her late teacher, who had taught her not just how not to get killed, but also how to value your teammates, fellow warriors and friends alike. Tsunade Senju, who taught her that her fists could destroy, yes, but so could they heal, the woman she would want to have as a mother, if fate had let her pick her cards. Sasuke Uchiha, the boy she once claimed to love, and maybe even did still. He had the potential to save, yet he had laid so much to waste and killed people she had known and loved. And yet, he had the chance once to rebuild the name of an entire disgraced clan. He could have been remembered a hero.

Sakura was overwhelmed by the beauty and potential and greatness in all of these people. All the things they could be - all the things they could have been.

Your love is commendable and your spirit hardly weak, the voice resounded in her mind and soul, I am the Sage of Six Paths, or the idea, the belief of yourself in something that made me real. I wish for your vision for my children and for your people. Not for the one that came. I can let you go back, remember the future, be ready for the things that may come to pass. I only need your word and an equal exchange.

'I will be me with all of my knowledge?' Sakura's thoughts focused down to that one fine point. 'I will remember everything?'

Yes, the voice hummed, no change at all in his tone. You will have to redevelop your skills, but knowledge is its own bounty. You will have to give up something to gain something, though. You must choose a life without your best friend, or without the boy you love.

'Will they be dead? Or never born?' She puzzled.

Her answer was just as puzzling. Only in a manner of speaking, the boy you know as Sasuke Uchiha will still be there. The girl you know as Ino Yamanaka will still be there. But you won't be able to talk to them ever again, for whomever you decide.

'I can't go back to be my small self though?' Sakura asks.

No, that life you haved lived. You can only go forward. You must be somebody new.

Sakura was silent in her thoughts for a very long time. She thought of all the memories she had of Ino. Telling her to be confident, rivaling her for Sasuke's affections, and healing when she was better suited to other things, all because Sakura was there to be her best friend and sometimes challenger. Ino, drove Sakura her to confidence, Ino was confidence.

Sasuke Uchiha she had decidedly less memories of, and only some of them happy. He treated her childish crush on him, her first innocent love, with indifference at best and scorn at worst. Sasuke had betrayed their village to take up arms with the enemy… but he had been tricked and betrayed by the village as well, as she had come to understand it. His own brother had set him up to kill him without real thought of what would come after. Sasuke was no longer the good little boy that she knew, that his brother believed he could be, and had grown up instead to be a lot of power on the wrong side of the Great War. Sasuke needed help.

Sasuke wouldn't appreciate her affections, but she owed it to Naruto to bring him back to the village. She owed it to herself to save him even if it meant breaking his legs and talking some sense into him, or possibly getting him put under house arrest.

Ino would be fine. Ino would always, always be okay. She would be a fine ninja and a pillar of the village intelligence unit without having ever said a word to Sakura. She could watch her from afar, she could make sure that she was okay without ever talking to her, or about her, or anything having to do with her. Ino was never anything but okay until she was dead in front of Sakura.

Sasuke hadn't been okay from the moment she met him. She had a chance to maybe change that, or make him at least a little more okay.

'Okay,' She thought intently. 'I will exchange my best friend, for the boy I love.'

Her consciousness faded and waned, her soul moved from one plane of existence to another by the belief in a sage and an equal sacrifice. She heard the the confirmation before exhaustion consumed her and she fell asleep. It is done.