VIII - The Inevitable Fall (It Still Hurts)

Fourth Shinobi War

They sprinted ahead into the fray, Sakura's monstrous strength, as usual, proving to be a life-saving skill in times of peril.

"Sakura?!" cried an incredulous voice, which they both ignored. Sakura had taken to dismantling broken buildings and using their pieces as projectiles, Kakashi finishing her targets off with quick decisive slashes of his kunai across their throat.

And then they saw him, a man of legends, in all his former glory, wrecking havoc upon anyone within his path

Kakashi fell back as if he had gotten scalded, Sakura in tow. "Kakashi …" she said in alarm. "Is that …?"

"Bloody hell," Kakashi uttered under his breath, shell-shocked. "Madara freaking Uchiha."

Sakura swore as they watched him burn a squadron of ninja to a crisp without breaking a sweat. He cackled madly, like a demon that had descended straight from hell to destroy the entire world and everyone in it.

"What do we do?" she asked Kakashi, never taking her eyes off Madara. She was afraid that if she got distracted for just one second, he'd rip her apart from the sheer power of his presence.

"So much for staying as safe as possible," Kakashi lamented, his fingers coming together in rapid signs. "I'm going to try to strike him down with lightning release."

Seconds later, Kakashi was dashing towards Madara, Sakura gaping where she stood.

"Kakashi!" she screamed, horrified that he'd charge in head-first— that had always been her style.

The skies darkened as Kakashi drew lightning to his palm, and then came a sudden, violent spray of cold water from above, putting out some of the fires raging in the distance.

Madara turned to face Kakashi, surprise written on his face. Kakashi's fist sank through his chest, wild sparks of electricity bursting from his elbow down. Kakashi jumped away as Madara sank to the ground, clutching at the gaping wound in his chest.

However, after a moment, Madara slowly rose, and goosebumps resurfaced on Sakura's skin as she watched him straighten and wipe a trickle of blood off his chin. "Ha. I couldn't sense you. How strange. I thought you were dead, Kakashi Hatake."

Sakura's spine contracted with fear but she sprinted up to Kakashi's side, ready to teleport them both away when Madara's attention shifted to her.

"Sakura Haruno," he smirked. Another, much colder chill ran down her body. "Didn't Obito kill you, Haruno? It sure seemed that way ... that Tsunade brat destroyed our battle ground in a bout of rage. Of course, she suffered thoroughly for that."

Sakura's blood froze over. Her shishou?

An iron rod materialised in Madara's hand. "Let's send you back to her—"

Sakura didn't wait for him to finish his threat; she'd already teleported Kakashi and herself as far away from Madara Uchiha as her chakra could bear. So far, in fact, that she found herself at the coast, where the signs of previous battles were littered all around. She heaved, her legs shaking. Looking around, she saw hundreds and thousands of dead bodies lying pitifully on the ground.

Instinctively, she fell back against Kakashi, her eyes settling on the familiar face of Hiashi Hyuuga, elegant even in death.

She trembled as she took in all the corpses. Not a single soul alive, and then—

"Sa-Sa-kura?" wheezed an old, familiar voice laced with pain.

She spun around and let out a horrified scream as she fell on her posterior, the sight of Tsunade torn in half and impaled on a rock, jarring, terrifying, the very stuff of her nightmares.

"Oh my god!" Sakura cried, getting to her feet instantly and running to her mentor. "No no no, oh gods, oh gods please." Sakura started tearing up as she got closer to Tsunade, noticing that her henge was down, her once blond hair white and thin, her eyes shadowed and sunken. "I-I-I …" Sakura frantically searched for Tsunade's bottom half, spotting her foot peeking out from under a tree. "Please—please hang on—I'm going to fix you."

Using her monstrous strength, Sakura heaved the trunk up and tossed it aside, finding the bottom half of Tsunade's body semi-crushed. The tears escaped and rolled down her cheeks, "Kakashi," she choked, "help me drag them closer."

Kakashi was by her side in a second, and Sakura rushed back to her shishou's body, yanking out the kunai embedded in Tsunade's torso and arms and healing the wounds as she went. It was a miracle, unbelievable really, that Tsunade was still alive even when missing everything from the waist down.

Tsunade had never reeked so acutely of death and blood; it was sickening. Sakura trembled as she chipped away at the sharp rock in her shishou's side, gingerly freeing Tsunade and laying her on the ground next to her other half.

Sakura unleashed her strength of a hundred seal, the rush of power positively intoxicating as it healed her injuries and refreshed her dwindling reserves. Her hands glowed green, and she set about painstakingly reconnecting Tsunade's torso to her legs while Kakashi watched over her shoulder and surveyed the area for any more surprises.

Tsunade was beginning to regain colour under Sakura's diligent healing, so much in fact that her henge came back up and she was once again the familiar blonde woman who mentored her, not just the shell of the great woman she once was.

As soon as Tsunade was stable, Sakura's mind started whirling again. This was beyond—way beyond—comprehension. There were too many factors, too many variables, too many possibilities, and she was scared shitless of this nightmarish world and its demons.

Madara Uchiha … good gods, what hope did those people have? What hope did she and Kakashi have?

It was way beyond anything ever expected of them to be able to defeat a legend like Madara Uchiha. They'd probably die a thousand deaths trying … this didn't seem right at all; Sakura wasn't used to doubting herself so brutally, but she was so outlandishly outmatched the most apt analogy she could think of was betting a genin against the Hokage. The genin in that case didn't stand a single fucking chance.

Sakura was still hopelessly outmatched by her sensei—she never for a second doubted that Sakumo could so easily flip the tables on her and end a fight. If she couldn't even beat him in a decent spar, what were her chances here?

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," she muttered, falling back on her haunches as she let Tsunade's regenerative abilities take over her healing. "Kakashi, I don't mean to sound gloomy, but you do realise we've got about, roughly speaking, zero percent chance of surviving this, right?"

"Gee, you're such a joy to have around, aren't you?" Kakashi muttered sarcastically before his tone hardened into something more serious. "I know that. Well, unless we stay here and spend the rest of our lives avoiding him at all costs."

"Is that even an option?" Sakura wondered, thinking back to the terrifying sensation of having Madara's eyes on her, sizing her up. "After all the battles were fought and all the ninja killed, wouldn't he come for us? Because I'm not convinced anyone can beat him and that army of aliens."

Squinting, Kakashi looked around, once again taking in all the death and destruction. "What choice do we have?" he finally said. "Maybe something will happen before then and we'll get magically switched back. This is wrong ... we don't belong here. Surely some natural law is being violated, and nature will have to re-right itself, right?"

"Or ... Something drastic and completely awful will happen instead. Maybe we'll just disappear like we never existed," Sakra muttered, looking down at the battered Tsunade, who was watching her like she just saw the sun for the first time.

"Or that," Kakashi sighed, hopelessness seeping into the sound. "This is depressing."

Sakura snorted humorlessly. "Yeah. Look around you; depression is everywhere." And then she went silent. "I wonder how it works though. Do these universes co-exist? As separate planes of existence? Or by us being here, does that mean our world ceased to exist and we're stuck here? Is our only way of going back tied to our alternate selves? I mean, I have to assume they popped up in our world right? Right? There can't be two of us running around in the same timeline ... that, like, breaks ten different natural laws."

Running an agitated hand through his hair, Kakashi huffed, "We can't be sure of anything … goddammit …"

Tsunade's ginger touch ghosting up Sakura's arm dragged Sakura's attention to her. "W-what … What are you talking about?"

Kakashi and Sakura shared a look, realising now that they needed to explain their predicament to Tsunade and hope she had the answer they were seeking.

"Oh, where do I even start?" Sakura groaned.

*Third Shinobi World*

For the next few days, Sakura all but camped out in the Hokage tower with one Shikaku Nara, and with each passing day a new heaviness took a hold of her frame and a new darkness shadowed her eyes.

Kakashi knew, logically, that she was as scared as him, that nothing about their circumstances was normal by any means, and that any decision they made would affect more than just him and her. But he wondered what she was thinking—after all, she brought them here. She had held onto him tight and ripped him away from the universe, quite literally.

Did she blame herself? Did she view this as a personal failure?

For three days, Kakashi stayed up all night watching her sleep; she was restless and plagued with nightmares, whimpering his name and Naruto's and Ino's, and constantly pleading forgiveness with a breathless intensity. And each day it hurt just a little bit more. By the fifth day, he didn't think he could take it anymore.

She'd told him that Shikaku had some potentially helpful classified information about a time-travel mission Minato had attempted and succeeded at before, the only time-travel mission recorded in history.

What Shikaku and Sakura were trying to figure out was the way Minato had switched back. They now knew that the chances of both universes co-existing was high, given that Minato was able to travel between the both of them. But that didn't mean that there was any hope of Sakura and Kakashi returning to their world; there were just too many unanswered questions.

"Sakura." Kakashi shook her shoulder and watched her eyelids flutter over glittering emerald, bleary and tear-soaked. "Hey."

"Mhm?" she startled and quickly wiped at her eyes, seemingly confused by the evidence of her distress. "What is it? Are you okay?"

In a heartbeat, she was sitting up and leaning over him, inspecting him for any new injuries. Would she ever stop worrying about him?

He sat up, causing her to lean back, but his fingers framed the nape of her neck before she could put too much distance between them and watched her eyes roam his face cautiously. "I'm fine. Are you okay?"

Immediately, her eyes flitted to the space over his shoulder, and she swallowed. "Uh? Yeah, why wouldn't I be?"

Kakashi raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "Then why won't you look me in the eyes?"

Reluctantly, she met his gaze again, beautifully defiant.

He sighed and pressed his forehead against hers, soaking up her warmth and closing his eyes. "I know you, Sakura. I know when something is wrong. You know that none of this is your fault, right?"

A quiet intake of breath and then a broken whisper: "How could it not be?"

"We were going to die," he told her, brutally honest as always. "I know it, you know it. That was the end of the line. And you bought us more time."

He peeked at her to find her eyes rapidly filling with tears. "I know." she croaked, pressing her nose against his cheek and muffling a quiet sob. "I'm sorry it wasn't enough."

His heart squeezed, very painfully, and thumped hard against his ribcage. "Sakura," he tried gently, "even if we had forever, it wouldn't have been enough. There will never be a day that I wake up and decide that we've had our fill. We're selfish creatures ... we'll always want more."

Sakura's face pressed against his neck, and he felt her tears spill onto his skin, her fingers digging in his flesh like the thought of this being all they got was too painful to take. "I know," she choked out and let a few shuddering breaths leave her before scooting closer to him, all but sitting in his lap and curling completely against his chest.

He wished he had his adult body then so he could wrap her up completely, so his frame would be large enough that her smaller one could fit in his arms.

He wished there was a way he could soothe her, or offer some answers that would make this right.

Kakashi had promised himself he would never try to shelter her again, but having her like this, frail and quaking in his arms reminded him of the desperation he felt to protect her. He wished he could make the world disappear. Even more he wished he could whisk her away to a place where he could love her forever and not have to worry about how much time they had left.

He pressed his mouth to her hair and mumbled soothing, sweet nothings until she fell back to sleep in his arms. He was left with the bitter taste of what-ifs and lost hopes.

"No, no, no," Minato shook his head as he reviewed the seal. "Sensei, it's too unstable. It'll kill them before they get there."

Jiraiya twirled the brush in his hand, looking pensive. "But if I remove the unstable component, there's a risk one of them will be left behind."

"Then alter the layering of the seal," Minato suggested. "I'm more worried about them travelling at the same time. So many things could go wrong ... bodily deformities or something crazy like body-switching. And what if the energy it takes to get them there causes a rip in the fabric of space and they get launched into another universe?"

"All we have are what-ifs," Shikaku cut into the conversation. Minato and Jiraiya had been at it all morning, trading ideas, drawing and redrawing and rearranging seals over and over again and getting nowhere. "They're here now. That means something is possible."

"Yes, but …" Sakura spoke up from beside Shikaku, her eyes tracing the seal. "I had my adult body on the first trip. It had my chakra reserves of three years. And on the way here, I had to keep Kakashi alive every second of the way. The strain of it was almost too much. And it's—it's quite traumatic, the journey. He coded on me a few times. His heart tried to stop. I don't remember much besides that."

"Do you not remember the seal you used?" Jiraiya studied her with something akin to curiosity but not quite so obviously defined … like he might be cautious. He had been staring at her all morning, more intent on her than the seal, and she didn't understand why. Perhaps he viewed this—her being here—as a miracle.

Sakura dragged a palm down her face. "It's more complicated than just a seal. I remember the seals. But it's—different. Clearly something went wrong; I mean, I ended up in a different timeline instead of the past. It needs to be rewired accordingly, except I have no idea how to tell it to take us back home instead of a different universe happening in the future. I think I need something that ties back to the world we came from."

"So what do we do? What's something that's continued to exist exactly the same regardless of time? That you have here?" Shikaku demanded.

Sakura understood how frustrating this was for him; after all, they were at war, and she and Kakashi were taking up time and resources that couldn't be spared. The guilt gnawed at her again—she did this. This was all her fault, why did she ever attempt—

"My ninken." Kakashi interrupted that trainwreck of thoughts before she spiralled down a dark tunnel. She turned to stare at him with wide eyes as he elaborated. "The summoning scroll still has Sakura's signature even now. That means it's not affected by time and space."

Three people spoke at once.

Jiraiya: "Sakura can summon your ninken?"

Shikaku: "Summoning scrolls are unaffected by time and space?"

Minato: "That's genius! That might just work!"

What followed was a bit of organised chaos, rearranging the room for Sakura to do the summoning, Jiraiya and Minato trading theories rapid-fire in the background, Shikaku listening pensively.

As Sakura prepared to summon Pakkun, she thought about how embarrassing it'd be to cry if she failed—and how much more embarrassing it'd be if she cried either way.

But clearly some things were still right in the universe, because Pakkun materialized in a poof of smoke, their Pakkun, with his missing ear and scarred eye. Sakura nearly collapsed from the sheer relief of seeing him alive.

Pakkun blinked at her and then at Kakashi, clearly younger, clearly different. "You two better start making sense soon," he drawled, unimpressed. The scar gave a severity to his face that made him a little terrifying.

That was definitely their Pakkun.

"Hello to you too. We might've time-travelled or dimension-hopped or whatever," Kakashi said, cutting straight to the point. "And we're here to figure out a way back."

Pakkun gave him a flat look. "If this is your idea of a prank to cheer me up, I will bite you."

"Do I look like I'm joking?" Kakashi motioned to his slighter and younger-looking body. "We're stuck in an alternate reality. But it seems the summoning world and contracts are unaffected by the switch."

"Which begs the question of whether your alternate selves could summon this Pakkun too," Shikaku said, eyes glinting again with mental calculations he was probably making too fast for any of them to follow. "Or better, if Pakkun could reverse-summon himself in their world."

"Uh, sorry to disappoint you, old man, but even I can't dimension-hop at will," Pakkun sniffed. "Kakashi needs to figure out a way to summon me. The other Kakashi. There's another Kakashi? Lord help us …"

Jiraiya sniggered. "He's sure a ray of sunshine, that one, isn't he?"

"I will throttle you all," Shikaku began with exasperation, "if you don't focus."

"Yessir," Jiraiya sniggered again.

"Is there no way you can get Kakashi to summon you?" Shikaku turned his attention back to Pakkun. "Isn't the link between summons a two-way street?"

"I could try, but you've literally just told me he's in a different universe altogether—how could I distinguish between this Kakashi and that one?" Pakkun asked, trotting to Kakashi's side to sniff at his foot. "You smell different … too many hormones. Blegh, puberty, you're doing that again?"

"Not by choice," Kakashi glared at him.

"So is the other Kakashi in your adult body?" Pakkun sniffed at him again. "You seriously reek of teenager."

Kakashi sent the ceiling a long-suffering look while Jiraiya continued to quietly lose it in the background. "Yes, we have to assume so. Can you please stop now?"

Pakkun gave a huff but backed off. "And you, pinkie. You smell a little sick."

"Just chakra drain," she assured when four sets of alarmed gazes settled on her. "I'm fine."

"So what's the plan, except trying to make contact with the other Kakashi?" Pakkun jumped onto Sakura's lap and settled there, blatantly uncaring.

Sakura scratched behind his healthy ear. "We were wondering if we could use you as an anchor to travel back to our universe since you remain unaffected by the laws of physics and time."

Pakkun gave her a skeptical look, "Assuming this doesn't kill all of us, can you even time-travel in your condition?"

"He has a point," Kakashi pointed out.

"We don't have many choices here. I have to fix this, I need to—" Sakura began defensively, but Kakashi cut her off before she could spiral.

"Not at the cost of your life," he hissed at her, his expression a mixture of fear and conviction. "Would you stop trying to quit on me?"

"I'm not quitting ... I'm trying to help!" Sakura threw her hands in the air.

"Well, you're not!" Kakashi snapped.

They glared at each other, both of them breathing faster, caught up in their own feelings of despair and hurt.

The tension in the room could be cut with a knife.

"Alright kids," Jiraiya sighed. "Let's take a breath. There's a much simpler solution than Sakura-chan burning herself out."

Kakashi turned his undivided attention on him. "What?"

Jiraiya spread his arms like a showman. "We get Tsunade to power the seal."

"Hah," Shikaku laughed incredulously. "Good luck bringing her back here."

"I never said I would be the one bringing her back," Jiraiya said dismissively.

"Who else even stands a chance of being heard by Tsunade?" Shikaku was developing permanent frown marks at this rate.

Minato made a thoughtful sound, reminding the room of his presence. "Sakumo-san, perhaps."

Jiraiya looked like he had bitten into a sour lemon. "I was thinking the same," he admitted begrudgingly.

The room seemed to collectively fall into agreement, much to Sakura and Kakashi's bafflement.

"My dad?" Kakashi tilted his head. "Why him?"

The adults in the room glanced at each other before Jiraiya opened his mouth, and with all the tact of a bull in a china shop, blurted. "Everyone pretty much knows they had a thing going. Not that they ever came out with it."

"What." Kakashi and Sakura demanded at once, sharing a bewildered look, then stared at the other occupants of the room.

"Sensei," Minato face-palmed with a whine. "Ever hear of tact?"

"Don't sass me punk," Jiraiya chimed gleefully. "Anyway, clearly Tsunade-hime has zero taste, but we'll get to that later."

"No, I'm sorry, I'm still at the part where my father has a thing with the Tsunade Senju." Kakashi was shaking his head, clearly in disbelief. "Where is she then?"

"Yeah about that … she kinda dumped him." As soon as the words were out of Jiraiya's mouth, Minato winced. "She was hell-bent on leaving, and he refused to leave with her."

Kakashi had resorted to staring at the ceiling with the crumbling patience of a man about to snap. "Okay. So wouldn't that make him the least ideal candidate for the job?"

"Not if he could convince her he was wrong," Minato offered.

"You want to convince my dad to go beg his—ex-lover? Girlfriend? Whatever?—to come back home because he was wrong?" Kakashi was growing more and more skeptical.

"I think it'd be more ideal to send you, Sakura, and Sakumo to explain your predicament. Surely she'd hear you out," Shikaku cut in before they lost Kakashi entirely.

"You clearly don't know her," Jiraiya pointed out.

"There's no way shishou would turn us away!" Sakura exclaimed, offended. "I'll talk to her."

"Sakura-chan, you threw the biggest tantrum ever in all of history when she left," Jiraiya revealed, but it didn't seem to deter Sakura. "If she suspects you're there to try to bring her back, she might hightail it out of whatever hole she's in right away."

Sakura crossed her arms, "We'll see about that."

Kakashi shifted, bringing the attention back to him. "Anyway, until then, perhaps Pakkun and I could spend some time seeing if we can establish a link between me and the other Kakashi."

Pakkun shrugged and jumped off Sakura's lap to settle on his master's again. "Sure. You know, your Sakura smelled different too."

"I know," Kakashi resumed scratching Pakkun's ear but didn't elaborate.

Sakura took an experimental whiff. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Kakashi raised a challenging eyebrow at her. "You really want me to answer that right here?" He looked pointedly at their company, who were watching them with various degrees of curiosity.

"... maybe not," Sakura said, a little sulkily, as she leaned back in her seat.

Shikaku cleared his throat. "I'll call Sakumo in for a meeting, but I think it's best we carry on this discussion tomorrow. I have another meeting to get to."

"The council?" Minato guessed, voice sympathetic.

Judging by Shikaku's faint wince, he'd hit the nail right on the head. "Those old bats will give me white hairs before I'm thirty."

Their party slowly dispersed, Jiraiya proclaiming to Minato that, by the way, he was "over Tsunade-hime," and Shikaku threatening bodily-harm if he didn't shut up. In the wake of their departure, the room was eerily quiet.

Kakashi and Sakura stared at each other, Pakkun like a shield between them. "I smell different?"

Kakashi sighed, "Not in a bad way, Sakura, just different. More mellow. Less … feminine. Okay, that's not the right word. But you get what I mean?"

Judging by the tic in her brow, she didn't. "No, I don't."

"He means you smell like hormones too," Pakkun sniggered. "Puberty. Very charming."

"Okay, that's just gross." Sakura made a face at Pakkun. "Stop sniffing me."

Kakashi's hand on his back made Pakkun look at him. Kakashi had an unreadable look in his eyes, a tenseness in his shoulder. "Will you tell me about everyone now?"

That immediately dampened Pakkun's mood. "I guess … we're fine … coping. Uhei will never walk again. You know I can't see with this baby anymore. Bull's … Bull. Stubborn bastard, should just retire already and raise his pups. Akino, Bisuke, Shiba, they're rough around the edges after … but we're coping. This is the life we chose; we have to live with it."

So that meant Urushi and Guruko didn't make it. Sakura's heart twisted, especially as she watched Kakashi's back bow and his face touch Pakkun's head.

"Dammit," he murmured, his voice wet with unshed tears.

Sakura was on her feet and by his side before she realised she'd even moved. She wrapped her arms around his shaking shoulders and buried her face in his hair, unable to blink her tears away. "Shh," she said brokenly and tightened her grip on him.

Pakkun's paw touched her arm in solidarity.

No one offered words of comfort. Sakura ached to say they would be fine, except she knew very well that they might be next.

She held tightly onto Kakashi and prayed to any god that was listening to grant her the small mercy of going first, so she'd never have to live in a world without him.

Selfish as that might be, she couldn't get herself to feel guilty.

So. I just realised it took an entire year to update this. I'm SO sorry I'm absolutely terrible but it's here now, it's been ready for a while, I just needed to find the right time to post it, I hope you enjoyed! Reviews are much appreciated~