The Last Ones Standing

Chapter 16

Sakura stared at the tree. She hated it. Oh, how she hated it. She wanted to smashed with her fists, to tear it into shreds. To go and learn every Fire Jutsu in existence and use it on it.

"How many months?" asked Madara from behind her back.

"Thirty-four," she answered forcing herself to look at the battlefield. It's not that she had the position of each cocoon memorized. It wouldn't have been possible even with her memory. But there were fewer of them, significantly fewer. The battlefield was now sparsely littered by cocoons, not tightly packed as before.

And the worse thing was that even in their disappearance they remained anonymous. Who was dead already? Was Ino dead? Was Shikamaru? Chōji might be still alive, his excess fat was in the end chakra reserves transformed into a physical form.

Wiping her eyes Sakura jumped down the boulder. Hinata must there. She must still be there.

When she found the correct spot, it looked changed. Emptier. Without half of the cocoons some of the roots retracted and she could see so much further, almost to the horizon. Hinata was there, so was another cocoon that she always assumed to be Kiba. Akamaru was gone. Sakura shook her head – will it even be worth for Kiba to wake up now? Into the world so devasted, so marred? When all the bonds he had with his pack had been severed?

She approached Hinata. The strand of her hair was blowing in the wind, the same way it had been when Sakura had found her. But it wasn't the beautiful, deep, lustrous violet anymore. Worn out, matted and frayed, Hinata's hair was dull brown with almost orange hue. Sakura ran the damaged strand between her fingers. "Hold on in there, Hinata. Hold on."

She didn't have it in herself to tell Hinata that she would get her out. It made no sense. Sakura's hope was reaching its limits. They were too late. Even now, it was already too late. Even if they, by some miracle, find Naruto and Sasuke in that maze – what will be brought back to life? Couple of thousands of Shinobi? And then? What will they do? Starve to death on this desert?

A crease between her eyebrows must have been really prominent, as the first thing Madara did when she returned to their make-shift camp, was to run his fingers across her forehead.

"Stop that," he said. "No good will come from chewing on that. If you can change it – change it, if you cannot – make your peace with it," he told her. "You cannot bring back the dead."

"No, it's not that!" He must have interpreted her distress incorrectly. "Should I make my peace with the fact that waking them up makes no sense?!"

Madara arched an eyebrow at her. "And why is that?"

"Why? Look around! Everything's dead! This world is dead! It's too far gone! Like that toxic one, the one with huge craters… It is dead…"

Madara served himself the bowl of stew and started eating. Sakura already thought he just wouldn't answer, when he spoke up again. "Low numbers of potential survivors play to our advantage. This is a number that we can transfer to another dimension," he told her between the spoons of the stew. "At first through contracting them with the slugs and back-summoning them to Shikkotsu. For sure toads wouldn't be difficult to convince to cooperate as well. Then we can choose a habitable dimension and slowly move the survivors there. It would need to be nearby world, and it would take years, but it's doable. And who knows, maybe Katsuyu is able to back-summon also into a different world than her own?"

Sakura felt how the grimace on her face was transforming into a beaming smile with his every word.

"See, not all is lost. Don't give up just yet," he patted her on the knee. "A bit of out-of-the-box thinking can get you really far."

It was twenty-first dimension on their fourth, left-wards branch and it was completely ordinary. 'KCD4-FB-D21 – void,' noted Sakura in her logbook. She had switched to the abbreviations system some ago time already. Spelling 'Kaguya's Cardinal Direction, Forward Branch' thousands of times would have driven even the most patient person crazy. Sakura wasn't particularly patient to begin with and now, three years into futile their pursuit even less so… Th thought that 'Kaguya' could become the name she had written for the most of times in her life, was leaving a foul taste in Sakura's mouth.

It was completely ordinary dimension, yet Madara was still lingering.

"What are you waiting for? Jump!"

He shook his head, looking around. There was nothing around them, so Sakura assumed he was looking at the dimensions he could sense at the edge of his perception. Madara swept his gaze around the entire space once again.

"Too many," he said in the end. "There are twenty-seven of them. One too many."

Sakura jerked, turning her face him. "What? How can it be? Are you sure?!"

"There is an additional one there," Madara pointed upwards. "Between the up direction, and left-up-back corner. It's interjected between the regular dimensions."

Sakura licked her lips. "Let's check that out."

It looked all normal in the additional dimension. And so it did in the entire area around it, as they ended up scanning the perimeter of three dimensions around the anomaly. It seemed as if additional dimension just gave origin to perfectly normal continuation of the matrix. In the world neighbouring the one with the first occurrence of the anomaly, dimensions seemed a bit tighter packed to Madara. When Sakura tried sketching the three-dimensional map, he kept insisting though that the general shape of the cubes was preserved. It was quite an infuriating experience for her to have to constantly rely on his instructions when she was trying to work a system out. In the end, together they produced a sketch that according to Madara reflected the reality.

"An imperfection in the lattice?" Sakura squinted her eyes. "Why here, out of the sudden?"

"Maybe there've been more of those, but we never noticed. Unless we land in a dimension when a bifurcation happens, the slight compression of the branches isn't something I would notice during a casual jump."

Another surprise awaited them some dozen dimensions further. At first, everything seemed fine – a mountainous dimension with crisp, breathable air, its only peculiarity being very harsh sunlight. But then Madara tried to burn the crest in the stones… Sakura saw him taking the inhale, crossing his fingers into the seal.

No fire came out of his mouth. Neither the black one, nor the regular one. Madara scrunched his eyebrows and tried again. In vain.

He looked up to her. "I… I don't feel my chakra."

Sakura raised her hand to his chest – did his system finally broke completely down? Did he push himself too hard for too long? But then he should be in pain…

She tried directing diagnostic chakra into his body. And blinked with confusion. She couldn't sense his chakra; she couldn't direct her chakra… She didn't feel her chakra…

"Something's wrong. Activate your Sharingan!"

His eyes remained as black as they were. "I cannot!"

"Why did you even de-activate it? Usually you keep it on for hours trying to show me how tough you are."

"I'm not trying to show anything. It's a bother to switch it on and off."

"But why is it off now?!"

"I don't know. I didn't do it consciously. And Sakura?"

"Yes?" she turned to him alerted by his tone.

"Your seal is gone."

Sakura's hand flew to her forehead on its own volition. She didn't feel anything there, except for the beads of sweat. Not that she would have been able to feel a Yin Seal by touch…

For the next hour they tried out several types of jutsu from the easy ones to the complex. She attempted to gather natural energy. All in vain.

"It seems that this world doesn't have chakra," Madara spelled out that, what was rattling in Sakura's brain for some time already. She leaned more against him – they were sitting back-to-back and she was damn thankful for his solid form behind her. It was easier not to panic when she could feel his presence.

"So, what now?" she asked swallowing thickly.

"First we search for water. Then for food."

"And then?"

"Then we arrange a shelter. Finding firewood will be hard here, so we need someplace to take cover."

"And then?"

"And then we will allow ourselves to evaluate the situation. But not earlier. Come on, get up." He stood up and extended his hand to her. She grabbed it and didn't let go of it as they descended lower into the valley. She interlaced her fingers with him and he didn't make any attempt of letting go of her.

Water was easy to find; every steeper ravine held a trickle or a stream. The food was more difficult. In fact, after the entire day of harsh trek they didn't encounter anything that look edible or even biological. The dimension was barren rock, stone and sand. Mid-afternoon, despite not fulfilling their second prerogative, they mutually agreed on checking the supplies they had on them.

It wasn't much. A small bag of soldier pills and a packet of crackers in Sakura's pouch. Half-eaten riceball made of the leftovers from yesterday's supper in Madara's pouch. Each of them had a water canteen, set of kunai and shurikens. Madara had a broad-bladed knife and a filing stone. Sakura had her medical supplies, her notebook, and, for some unknown reasons, a not-exactly fresh T-shirt.

And scrolls. Completely useless now, scrolls that held all their supplies.

They stopped when it got dark. This world either didn't have a moon, or it was a wrong phase of it because the darkness was such as Sakura had never experienced before. Without her chakra she felt not only helpless but also blind, deprived of a sense that she came to think about as of a given.

The darkness came fast, too. They barely managed to find a hole in the ground to give themselves some shelter.

"It doesn't look good," risked Sakura pressing herself closer to Madara. "No food sources and we cannot jump out. I think… I think I will panic a bit now," she let off an uncertain laughter. "It's as good time as any other, the evening is still young…" she quipped, but in reality, she really did want to panic.

Madara shifted her so that she was sitting between his legs. He wound his arms around her. "Could be worse. We have water. Which means we have a month or two."

"A month or two of slowly dying?"

"No. Of waiting."

"Waiting? For what?"

"Katsuyu is bound to realize we're not summoning her. She will start to wonder…"

"… and a some point she will decide to back-summon us?! We're playing a waiting game, then?"

"Exactly."

.

The night they spent huddled in their hole, futily trying to keep themselves warm. Sakura supposed that Madara suffered much more, as he was holding her from behind all night, trying to shield her from cold.

The next morning, they shared the riceball, downing it with lots and lots of water to cheat their stomachs. They trekked across the main valley and - choosing the most accessible one - they climbed one of the peaks on the other side. It was damn hard without chakra and proper food for the entire day.

The landscape they saw from the top of the mountain wasn't any different from what they had seen already – endless mountain ridges divided by deep valleys, without any traces of green. Nor of any other color. They descended, followed the next valley downstream, looking for traces of life. None were to be seen. The valley mouthed into a lake – pristine turquoise and surrounded by high peaks. Sakura wondered where was all the water going. She gathered that either it was evaporating, or more likely, there was an underground drainage in the lake.

The lake was sterile. It only served them as a water source, because otherwise it proved to be a damn obstacle, as the rock faces descended almost vertically into it, and without chakra turned out to be insurmountable. Though it took them several painful falls to accept that. They were down to two crackers and seven soldier pills by then.

Sakura was trying to keep her spirits up. Katsuyu was bound to notice. And she would get the idea of back-summoning, right? She would at some point. She had to.

To distract herself from the creeping uneasiness, Sakura started to consider more practical issues.

"We need to keep the scrolls on our persons all the time," she told Madara when they were setting up another camp. Well, 'setting up' was an overstatement. They just picked out a dry and warm patch of gravel and levelled it to lie more comfortably. "If we expect to be back-summoned without a warning, I mean. Everything that we have is in these scrolls, all the food, weapons, utensils, everything…"

"Good point," agreed Madara picking up his pouch and rebounding it to his waist.

.

The next day, instead of trying to encircle the lake, they identified pass that looked the least demanding and crossed over another ridge. Sakura had troubles breathing – she didn't know if it was due to the altitude or to was it the first symptom of undernourishment - but she was panting and acts of lifting her feet felt like a serious work. She wondered how was Madara doing - his breath seemed still regular - she concluded with relief.

The view from the pass wasn't any different than from the previous outpost. The monotony of the landscape was broken only by vapours rising two valleys away from them. They went this direction, not knowing what other cues to follow.

The vapours turned out to be stinky and rather acrid, but the stream from the ravine held warm water. Hot water, even. It smelled and tasted foul, like rotten eggs, but its temperature was an asset. They followed the rivulet upstream until a cave it was coming from. After getting used to the smell, it wasn't even that bad. And the inside of the cave was a bit warmer than the, already cooled down, evening air.

Sakura was at that point too exhausted to go anywhere further. Her stomach hurt and she felt so empty. They overnighted in the cave.

Next morning, they shared a cracker. Their last one.

"What do we do?" asked Sakura trying to hold the dry crumbs in her mouth for as long as possible. If she suckled at them long enough, they were turning kind of sweetish. "I don't think I will manage to cross another ridge. I mean, I will manage, but I don't think it's worth the cost. We should save our energy."

Madara looked at her with furrowed brows. He was looking at her like that quite often the last days.

"Definitely. We can set a base here. The temperature will work to our advantage."

It was two weeks already, and they ate their last soldier pills three days ago. Sakura was holding on well mentally, apart from that mini-panic attack she had during the first night, but it was her health that was constantly on Madara's mind.

They set up their living space in the cave – they hauled fine sand from a nearby stream curve using Madara's shirt and her T-shirt as sacks, and piled it into a bed of sorts. They scouted the area for a satisfactory water source and found one that didn't taste weird. As temperature-drops during the nights were causing massive energy losses, they picked and piled up flat stones at the mouth of the cave. The were warming up during the day, and in the evening, they would push them down the cave and bury them in their 'bed'. If the day was very sunny the warmth that the stones radiated lasted even through half of the night.

They had couple of nervous conversation about differences in passage of time between slugs' dimension and the one they've been stuck in. Nothing conclusive came out of that, obviously.

He had impression that Sakura pushed her nerves away in order to conserve energy. And that she should have been doing. He was dead worried about her – she was slim to begin with, and over last two years became straightforward skinny.

That was obvious what it meant. Madara pursed his lips. Out of the two of them, she will be the first to go.

That meant he needed to do everything that she saved her energy. He bent over the half-empty water canteen and let another, so thin that almost translucent, slice of the leather-band fall into the water. He was slicing the band of his pouch. In the end it was leather - if sliced it thinly enough, and left to sit in the water, it should get soft enough to eat.

That meant he would have to make twice as much trips for the water, as they were now down to only one canteen. For the first days, they were making turns – once her, once him.

Already a week ago he forbade her to go. She protested, but in the end complied. Now he was going twice a day. At the spring he drank as much as he could, to save the entire content of the canteen for Sakura. But since a couple of days what would have normally been a leisure stroll, was taking a toll on him. There was a small ridge between their cave and the spring, and each time he was going uphill his breath was getting short and his heart pounded. He needed to pause and rest several times. Yesterday he needed to sit down.

Every morning they would leave the cave and sit in the sun. Every night, they cuddled desperately for warmth. He gave Sakura his shirt, and now she was wearing three layers – her normal clothing, that old T-shirt, and his shirt. She was shivering half of the night anyway. He couldn't sleep. And even if she hadn't been shivering, Madara doubted that his disquiet would have let him doze off.

Their nightly activities ceased. They did it twice, once on their first evening in the cave, second time some week ago. That second time was borderline unpleasant, Madara assumed that for them both. Sakura was dry, and he wasn't even sure if she finished. He was barely hard and had to force some measly excuse of completion out of himself by tensing all the muscles and evoking the most lewd image of Sakura he could come up with. He had imagined her riding him, feet planted on the ground, knees spread, and her nether parts stretched by his cock. He was disgusted by his thoughts ever since, but at least he had managed to come. A repetition though was at this point excluded. He supposed Sakura didn't want it either.

Sakura stirred and woke up next to him. She rubbed her eyes shielding them from the blinding sunlight. It was some hours past midday but she was sleeping a lot these days, and he was very happy about that.

Carefully, Sakura propped herself up and shifted towards him. She leaned her head on his shoulder.

"Look at those clouds – they have such peculiar forms… So fine, fluffy and evenly spaced. It will be a beautiful sight once the sun starts to set…"

He didn't answer. There was nothing he found beautiful in this damn world. Sakura sat up straighter and ran her hand over his hair and back. "Where have you been? You're all dusty!"

"Down in the cave. I was rearranging the sand."

She ran her fingers through his hair some more. And then started to comb them through it, squinting her eyes in concentration.

"What is it?" Madara stirred, trying to turn around.

"During your first life, at what age did you start getting grey hair?"

"No idea. Why? Did you find some?"

She nodded. "I've never noticed before… But there are quite many." She smoothed out his hair and snuggled closer. "But that doesn't mean anything! It may be this situation, you know? Sometimes the organism reacts this way on stress."

That little discovery of hers didn't make much of an impression on him. But, despite the mock light-heartedness in Sakura's voice, it made an impression on her. She didn't unglue herself from him for the entire afternoon. First, she invited herself onto his lap, and, later, when he returned with water, she sat embracing him from behind, stuck to him like a small, warm backpack.

"I don't want to lose you," she mumbled into his shoulder blade in the end. "I don't want to. I cannot even imagine…"

"You won't."

He kept to himself the remark that he won't be the first one to succumb to starvation.

.

Two weeks later and they were through both of the leather bands. The chunks of Sakura's sandals were marinating in the canteen now, but they weren't turning very edible. She threw up when he forced a small portion of leather slices into her.

The sorted out, most crucial scrolls were now bound at his waist with a strip of fabric from his trousers - one leg had torn open when he fell down the ravine the other day and he had to cut it at knee-height anyway. Sakura was very particular about keeping the scrolls on them – Madara suspected they served as a visual reminder of hope that Katsuyu will summon them. He didn't share Sakura's hope. The questions of how and when he should end it were appearing in his mind almost every day.

When he touched this topic with her, she vehemently protested, telling him she still wanted to spend more time with him. She clung to him non-stop that day. He hadn't raised the topic since.

He didn't have energy to go to the spring for good water anymore – they started to drink from the stream that was originating in their cave. All Madara's energy was now dedicated to carrying Sakura outside in the morning, so that she could be in the sun, because since last week she wasn't able to walk on her own anymore. Carrying her was proving to be more and more of a daunting task. Even though she was feather-light - all skin and bones, and those huge, green eyes burning with unhealthy glow - she was becoming too much for him.

Two days later he gave up on rolling the flat stones out of their sand-bed outside to get them warmed up. They were too heavy. After carrying Sakura, he just couldn't lift them anymore. He resorted to rolling new stones down the mouth of the cave. They weren't that comfortable to lie on, but they still provided warmth.

.

She was dying. She couldn't even prop herself up anymore. He didn't have enough strength to carry her out of the cave.

He still was going out, and rolling warm stones down. He could still somewhat function. Though it was getting black in front of his eyes alarmingly often, and he didn't dare to walk without propping himself against the wall. Nothing hurt anymore, and it was more alarming than any pain.

He looked at Sakura lying curled in fetal position on the sand-bed. She was almost gone. Couple of days more and she will just disappear… And it was all his fault. His plan, his doing, then his decisions to push the search. Should he have left her in honeycomb dimension? Or in Shikkotsu? Madara knew she would have never given up on trying to save her people. But should he have made this decision for her? In honeycomb she could have had a life.

Now she was dying.

His left arm. There was still enough substance there to carve something out, and he could maybe manage it. But in her state of deep starvation, he doubted she could bite, swallow and digest meat. But if he minced it finely enough? Maybe she could get something down?

Madara shook his head. As long as she was conscious, she would never agree. Once she loses her consciousness, she won't be able swallow.

Sakura stirred and whimper. Her chest was rising and falling and it looked as if it was a huge effort for her body. He shifted, no, he crawled closer, closing her arms around her. She didn't even react anymore.

He tightened the grip and buried his face into the hair at her nape. If only holding her like that could preserve her for him... If only they could stay like that forever...

He ran fingers across her stomach - she was still there. Still there. Tips of his fingers stroke her skin.

And fell into nothingness. Madara jerked. Wild-eyed he stared at the place where Sakura used to be a moment ago, his mind attempting to compute what had just happened.

Only for moment thought. He felt a powerful, violent pull and hundreds of lights flickered under his eyelids. When he opened his eyes, he was lying on the soft grass of Shikkotsu Forest. He turned, frantically looking around - Sakura was next to him, Katsuyu clone leaning already over her.

"Thank all the gods, Katsuyu..." he whispered and passed out.

AN: Thank you for reading, and please do share your impressions with me! The feedback that this fic is getting really keeps me going!