Author's Note: Hello! I know that there probably isn't anyone out there anymore, but I got some inspiration for this story and since I haven't updated in a long time I hope that yall will be able to forgive me for it not being as long as it usually is. It was just a nice place to stop. I know the chapter is pretty slow and uninteresting, but it'll start progressing soon! For all three of you still out there, thank you for your support! Thank you for over 400 comments! XD Let me know what you think! Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I own nothing!

Warnings: Language, OOCness, Unbeta'd.

Word Count: 4,010

Sakura is drained. Emotionally, mentally, and physically drained.

She feels like she's been thrown all about in a raging maelstrom of wind, hail, and pain. She can't believe they did it to her again. They managed to get close enough to cast another genjutsu on her, one that was just like her old life. She was back in Konoha, back in her academy class with all of her friends and family. Her mind was jumbled with what she thought she knew and what was a dream and some odd vision of the future.

Len has put her back into bed and rushed off to grab her something light to eat before she goes back to sleep. Sakura feels completely drained. She just can't figure out who was after her, and what they wanted. Is it to drive her mad? Because it's working. Is it to take away her safety? Because they have. Is it to make her feel helpless? Well, that isn't going to happen.

Whomever Sakura Shirakawa may be, Sakura Haruno is anything but helpless. She fought too much, too hard, and for too long to be that person again. Princess or not, Sakura Haruno is not helpless. Not anymore. She may need help and someone to watch her back sometimes, but she won't be dependent. She won't be weak. Not like she was before. She's grown too much as Sakura Haruno to go back now. No matter how hard these people try to make her feel like her safety is out of her hands. She is in charge of her own safety. She will always be her own last defense.

Sakura got a little bit of food in her and went back to bed, needing to rest. Her body was exhausted from being inside the genjutsu. Well, her mind was exhausted, but it trickled down into her body, making it feel like she should be tired. Sakura feels gross, wanting to take a bath but she wasn't going to bathe, wait for Len to change her bedding, then go back to bed. She'll be gross, sleep in her filth until she wakes up and then she will bathe and scrub until her skin turns red. Len isn't going to like that, but if Sakura's suspicions of what Madara, Hashirama, their brothers, and her father are talking about down the hall, then she's sure there is going to be a lot of things in the future that Len isn't going to like.

Like Sakura isn't the princess that Len raised. Not anymore.

"Len," Sakura says softly, her throat hurting from being so dry.

The older, plump woman perks up at the sound of her name. "Yes, Princess?" She looks over at Sakura with large, worried eyes. But she looks like she's ready for anything. If Sakura told her to jump, all she would need to know was how high.

"Can you make me something? A set of clothes more convenient than these kimonos. Something I will be able to travel easier in," Sakura says, turning her eyes toward the ceiling, exhausted.

Len looks confused for a moment as if the string of words that made those sentences didn't make sense to her for a moment. She doesn't seem to know what question she wants to ask first. "Travel?" She decides on. "Are you planning on going somewhere, Princess?"

Sakura nods. "Yeah, I have a feeling that I'm going to be getting what I originally wanted. And I can't do that in all these heavy kimono. I need something easier. Can you make something for me?" She looks over at her maid who was probably her primary caregiver for a long time. "Is that okay?"

Len blinks once, twice, three times, before grinning broadly. "Oh! Yes!" She seems excited about the prospect of being able to do something for Sakura. "Now, get some rest, Princess."

"Okay, thanks."

Even though she's laying in bed, her back to Len who was humming quietly to the pink haired girl to "help soothe her to sleep" Sakura couldn't even close her eyes without worrying about what it would bring. Would she dream of her home again? Would she get stuck in another genjutsu?

Sakura's ashamed of that genjutsu getting the best of her. Sakura Haruno wouldn't have been tricked by it. But... she wanted it to be real. She wanted to be there with her family. She wanted to be with Naruto and Sasuke. She wanted to be with her own Mother and Father. She didn't want the prestige of being a Princess, or the wealth of knowledge seeing this time would offer her. She wanted to go back to her time with her people and her family and her memory. She liked Hashirama and Madara well enough and it was a strange honor to be with them but...

They weren't her family. They weren't her home.

Sakura closes her eyes, feeling sadness and hopelessness washing over her once more. She swallows it down, forcing it away, but bits of it lingers. But she can't forget it, and regardless of how tired her body and mind are, she can't stop thinking back to it. Her mind will drift back to "what if" and she has to force it away again, over and over until her mind just shut down.

Going to bed without bathing was a gross mistake. One she won't repeat. But being able to spend as much time as she wanted to laze around in the bath until the water gradually chilled to room temperature was cathartic. But nothing that good lasts forever and it is time for her to get out and change into a pretty light green kimono with a sky blue obi. Sakura was just fluffing her hair, wishing she could just keep it down before Len came in and did it up into some intricate knot on the top of her head when there is a knock at the door.

"Come in!" Sakura calls, sagging in her seat a bit with a sigh. An unwelcome tap to the spine by Len makes her straighten back up again. Len smiles playfully in the mirror at Sakura's weak glare sent the older woman's way.

"Princess?" Another maid pokes her head into the room. "Lord Daimyo wishes to speak with you down in the sitting room."

"Okay," Sakura says as Len does a once over for her hair to ensure it was good. "Tell them I'm going to be done in a few minutes."

The maid nods and pulls her head out of the room and closes the door as softly as she can behind herself. Sakura watches in the reflection of the mirror as Len just plays with Sakura's long pink hair, fluffing it or just pushing the loose strands around on her head. She can tell the older woman is trying to build up the courage to say something but is having some trouble trying to do it.

But Sakura will wait. She is in no rush at this point. Even if her father is waiting on her, she knows that he wouldn't mind.

"What do you think the Daimyo wants?" Len asks, not really all that curious, just using the question to fill the open air between them.

"I'm sure it has something to do with the Uchiha and the Senju," Sakura offers. She has her suspicions, but she won't know for certain until they go downstairs and speak with her father. She's still tired and would like to laze about for a while until she feels better, but she spent all night and morning building up her chakra control. Something that she has been training her body to do passively.

Whenever she would awaken, she would send chakra into the fabric of her covers and watch as the strands move about based on her will. It's something she's been practicing since she came back here. It's actually helping her more than she figured it would. She knew that using small objects to manipulate using her chakra would help her a lot, but her skill in the genjutsu with her chakra control was always so good it was hard to improve it because of that. Now that she has considerably more chakra than in the genjutsu and not nearly the same control, it's a dramatic shift.

"Hmm," Len says, touching Sakura hair for a moment more before lowering her hands to Sakura's shoulders. "We should go downstairs, Princess, Lord Daimyo shouldn't be made to wait for long."

Sakura nods. Len gives her shoulders a loving squeeze, unable to help herself as she leans down and kisses the top of Sakura's head. She beams at Sakura through her reflection in the mirror. Sakura smiles back at her, pushing herself up to her feet and turning around to look at Len. "Yeah, I'll head out then."

Len tilts her head a bit. "Do you want me to come with you?"

Sakura pats her arm. "No, Len. You've been doting on me for days, get some rest. A bit of time to yourself, maybe."

Len waves the pink haired girl's words away as if it was a fly buzzing around her head. "Oh, posh, Princess. I rest all the time. Looking after you is my joy! I'm glad to be able to spend my time with you, Princess." Her smile is fond. Sakura just loves her. She is such a loving, wonderful woman and Sakura is fortunate to know her and privileged to be important to her. Sakura is very fortunate indeed. She may not remember the type of person that she was before, but she has a feeling that she wasn't nearly as good to Len as she should have been.

"Thank you, Len," Sakura says. "Go rest."

Len looks reluctant but agrees, giving Sakura's arms a squeeze before dismissing herself from the room, making sure to remind Sakura to not make her father wait much longer.

Sakura leaves her room and heads down the stairs to the foyer and goes searching about for her father. Her father, as well as the two sets of brothers from both the Uchiha and the Senju clans, were in the large sitting room looking very uncomfortable. No doubt the four of them are used to sit on tatami mats or pillows, not the lush, fluffy furniture in this room that they are practically sinking into. They look like if they were physically able, they would run away from this room and jump onto a bed of spikes or something.

Sakura smiles a bit in pity, when Kizuki spots her in the doorway, jumping up to his feet. "Oh, Sakura!" The four young, limber lords struggle to their feet. The Uchiha heir - Izuna, was it? - falls back into the couch while halfway out and struggles quicker to climb to his feet. He grabs onto Madara's elbow to steady himself, looking exasperated and annoyed.

"Hey," Sakura says, pointedly trying not to grin at the Uchiha heir, who looks thoroughly embarrassed. "You called for me, father?"

Kizashi nods, walking across the room to take Sakura's hands to look her up and down. "How do you feel, sweetheart? Here, come sit." He drags her over to the couch he was sitting on. Sakura tripped into it and sank. Sakura feels bad for finding amusement in their plight as she struggles to find a comfortable position. She sends the Uchiha heir an apologetic look, having now seen the error of her ways.

"I'm alright, father," Sakura says, patting her father's hand. "I'm just tired, is all. Which is natural."

Kizashi stares at her, confused. "How? You were sleeping. How can you still be tired?"

The answer springs up to her lips and it takes all of her strength not to just explain it - because a princess wouldn't know the answer to that. At least, not the shinobi answer to it. She swallows her words and looks over at Hashirama, begging with her eyes for him to be able to understand that she can't answer that. He nods, catching her silent prayer.

"Even though it appeared as if she was asleep," Hashirama says, "her mind was still active and her body wasn't actually resting. Genjutsu don't work the same way dreams do. I know it's hard to understand, but just know that she's going to be feeling this drag for a few days. She was like this after we initially saved her from the first genjutsu, but it wore off before she made it here, so I'm not surprised you didn't know it."

Sakura smiles gratefully to the Senju clan leader. Hashirama offers a smile and a little nod back. Kizashi looks contemplative, at least understanding enough to not ask more.

"I'm sorry," Sakura says, partly feeling like she has to, but also genuinely feeling it. When the five men stare back at her vacant-eyed, she figured she should explain, "For jerking you guys around, I mean. You have to be feeling pretty exhausted and annoyed at how you're being treated." Sakura lowers her head in a very slight bow, which is all she can do at the moment, but she hopes that it is as respectful seeming as it appears. "But thank you for coming back. Every single time."

"Oh," Kizashi says as if the thought hadn't occurred to him, "Yes, thank you. You all have truly gone above and beyond what I expected. Thank you." He smiles at them kindly, but Sakura's sure that he's oblivious to how inconvenient this had to of been for them. He comes privileged in believing that the world revolved around him, which Sakura's sure is how she was raised too, but having the life of Sakura Haruno under her belt makes her better equipped than Kizashi in seeing this for what it is - a pain.

"It's no problem, really," Hashirama says kindly, offering a genuine smile. Sakura doesn't believe him for a second but does think he's kind for saying that.

"You don't have to lie," Sakura says, smiling back at him, "but thank you."

Hashirama shakes his head, eyebrows pulling together. "No, I'm not lying. I promise." His dark eyes are honest and kind. Sakura just can't wrap her mind around how someone could be like that. The only other person that Sakura's seen that was always just so kind and honest and good was... well, Naruto. And if Naruto really was the genjutsu version of Hashirama, then it would make sense. But it would also make sense that Sakura simply misses her teammate and her life so much that she is superimposing the image of Naruto over Hashirama.

And she's not sure that's fair. To either of them.

"So what are we going to do?" Sakura asks, giving her father the side eye, knowing that they are going to have to get to the point sooner rather than later. Now is the best time, she thinks, as if she didn't already have suspicions already.

"As much as I don't want it to be so, I can't protect you here, not against people who can use magic," Kizashi says. Sakura has to stop herself from flinching at that word. It's not magic. It's chakra. But the two sets of brothers don't respond, or react, to his words. They've probably heard it all from people who don't understand because they haven't been exposed to Shinobi a lot. They don't know any better. Sakura didn't have to deal with that. By the time she was alive, it was the norm to deal with shinobi, or to at least know about them.

Er... well, it was in the genjutsu…

Kami, this is so confusing.

"Until we get this figured out here, I have asked to rehire the Uchiha and Senju clans to protect you," Kizashi says, defeated. He grabs her hand and holds it between both of his. Kizashi sighs, looking troubled. "At this point, I am not certain I know who to trust," he looks into Sakura's eyes, "and I don't know how to trust strangers with your life, but they brought you back. They kept you safe. I want to believe that you will be safe with them still."

It's touching, and so like her father to worry about her. She may not be able to protect herself now, but she's on the road to being able to again soon. She doesn't mind the help watching her back, but at the end of the day she will be her own last line of defense. She's not going to just sit around like a damsel in distress unable to look after herself. She will get herself back up to snuff. She will be able to look after herself.

"She's your daughter..." Hashirama says slowly, looking sad. "I can't imagine how you feel in this situation. But I can understand that it must be hard to send her off, even with the intention of keeping her safe."

"I just got her back," Kizashi agrees, squeezing Sakura's hand tightly. "I don't want to let her go yet. But I will, if it'll keep her safe."

"This will be an unorthodox solution," Tobirama admits to them. "It is likely that she would come into our care, if you perceive that her life is still in danger, but she will be safe in our village. She will be amongst our clan. She will be safe with us. If they want to get at her, they will have to go through all of us and our allies. I think that will give us all sufficient time to investigate and see if we can track the perpetrators down."

"I don't want to put your families in danger," Sakura says, worried. She was so immersed in the idea of being able to go to see Konoha grow that she hadn't even thought about what her presence there would do, especially to the founding families. The last thing she would want is to put their lives in danger just to stop a bunch of freaks from messing with her mind any more than they already have. She would never want someone to get hurt on her behalf. Especially an innocent person who may not be able to defend themselves. Like the elderly, children, the untrained.

"Trust me," Izuna snorts, shaking his head, "these people, thus far, have used genjutsu as their weapon of choice. They are going to have to use something a lot stronger to get one up on the Uchiha." Madara nods his head in agreement, both brothers taking pride in their clan's ability in genjutsu, which Sakura hadn't thought about, but feels better knowing it now.

"And not to mention," Tobirama adds, "our village resides surrounded by the forest, hidden amongst the leaves and a mountainside."

Sakura frowns at that, not immediately understanding what he was trying to say without saying it.

"What?" Kizashi says, then, "Ah, yes." Sakura eyes him curiously, wondering how he could have guessed it when she didn't. He catches her look and explains, "It's a Hidden Village."

Sakura's eyebrows pull together a bit, not sure if that was what he was trying to say. A movement catches Sakura's attention. She pulls her eyes away from her father to look over at Hashirama, watching as he stares down at the teacup he was no doubt drinking from before she came in. He is leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees and one hand dangling between them. The other hand is by the cup. His pointer finger is running across the rim of the cup while the rest of his hand lays onto the wood of the table. The nail on his pinky finger is scrapping lightly against the table top. He seems sad, but thoughtful.

He feels her eyes on him. He looks up at her with dark eyes, blinking curiously. Her disbelief in her father's reasoning must have shown on his face because Hashirama smiles thinly at her, leaning back in his seat and interlacing his fingers together at his chest. He stares back at her, and does the motion again, purposefully.

It takes Sakura embarrassingly longer than she would like to admit before she realized that it wasn't a hand motion, but a hand sign. And Sakura recognizes the hand sign well. It's the same hand sign that Captain Yamato uses when unleashing his wood style. Sakura opens her mouth in shock, almost about to say something before realizing that it probably not smart to say anything. Her father wouldn't be able to understand the power Sakura is starting to suspect that Izuna Uchiha is alluding to. Sakura can think back to the Forth Great Ninja War in the genjutsu Hashirama and if the real one was anything like him, then it's probably a good insight into the power that she's trying to quantify in her head.

She closes her mouth, nodding slowly, green eyes shinning in admiration.

Hashirama offers a tiny smile back.

"I don't want to do this," Kizashi cuts in, pulling Sakura's eyes away from the nature sage. Her father looks defeated and sad, his shoulders bowing inward. "I know that it's for the best, but it's hard to know that I failed my baby girl a second time."

"You didn't fail me," Sakura insists, clutching his hands tightly between her own, waiting until he looked into her eyes before continuing, "with this, you may have just saved me. And besides, other than keep me safe, I can be your eyes on the inside."

Kizashi blinks. "What do you mean?"

"The Hidden Village," Sakura says loosely. "By me being there, it ensures that your investment is being met accordingly. I want us all to succeed. So don't think of it as sending me away... think of it as a business venture. I'm your partner, your voice all the way in the Hidden Village."

"That would be nice, princess. I like the idea of having my girl there to make sure everything stays in line," Kizashi says, lifting one of Sakura's hands up to his lips and kisses the back of it, offering her a thin, but kind smile.

The thought of a girl being a business partner - especially in this time - was laughable, but Kizashi didn't laugh. He must have been able to tell that Sakura was trying to give more purpose for her leaving, not making it about her being unable to stay, but the idea of her doing something other than living in constant fear in the shanty homes of the woodland people who have barely left war and discrimination - sorta - in her time away is almost too much bear. Sakura figures her father can only imagine the worst hell on Gaia being thrust upon her by this decision, but Sakura is optimistic.

Is everything going to be absolutely perfect and wonderful? No, definitely not. Especially with the way her luck is turning out lately, but it will be better than anything the Capital will be able to offer, she's sure. While the aesthetics are nice and cosmetics of the Capital are probably more to her taste, it's not something she can't live without, or wait until it becomes available.

And besides, what other Sakura can say she's seen the start of Konohagakure no Sato?