Time-travel fic, because I'm v tired of how SS became canon. I might've shipped it, but... for the love of god why wasn't it written a little more balanced god dangit Kishi

You're Worth It Too

by hashtagartistlife

When Sakura was twenty-seven, ten years after the Great Allied Shinobi war ended, Shikamaru invented a time machine.

"Technically, 'time machine' is the wrong word," the man (now five years the head of Konoha's Research and Development department) grumbled into his goatee, "it's a highly advanced mix of ninjutsu and genjutsu that manipulates and accelerates the body's perception of time and brings it to a state it has experienced in the past. The only reason this contraption is necessary is because in order to be able to amplify the ninjutsu/genjutsu mix to physically relocate a person to a different timeslot we need a mechanical conduit; so—"

"You built a time machine?!" Naruto exclaimed loudly for the fiftieth time, cutting off Shikamaru's explanation, and Shikamaru realised that no-one was listening and gave up.

"Yes, it's a time machine," he sighed, resigned, as approximately ten other jounin crowded round his newest invention, nattering away at each other. "It can only take you back into the past, though, and not the future. At least not yet. We're working on it."

"Is it safe?" Tenten asked him, eyeing the machine warily. "For a person, I mean? Or living organisms? How do you know it works?"

Shikamaru sighed again; if people would just listen to his explanations, they would know exactly how he and his team developed said time machine, how it worked, and its limitations and safety concerns, but apparently (according to his wife Temari, anyway, and she was a fairly astute woman) his explanations tended to be lost on anyone who hadn't been studying advanced theoretical ninjutsu for at least the past twenty years. Apparently.

"Yes, it's safe. Well, we don't actually know 100% yet. That's kind of why I called you guys here. I need Hokage approval for a mission and a jounin to undertake it, if they're willing."

Suddenly all the nattering stopped, and all eyes in the venue (a small back room in the heavily guarded Hokage's place; Shikamaru didn't want to risk news of a time machine being leaked prematurely) turned to him. He shifted uncomfortably; despite his tendency to go off on explanatory tangents about advanced theoretical ninjutsu, making speeches in front of people (no matter the fact that they had all been his friends for at least fifteen years now) still wasn't his forte.

"What do you mean, you don't know 100%?" Haruno Sakura said carefully, her short hair catching the candlelight in the room and casting pink shadows on her face. "A mission? What rank?"

"S rank," Shikamaru replied, dead serious, and the bubbly atmosphere in the room cooled by a few notches. He turned to face the Hokage and spoke to him directly.

"Obviously we did extensive testing to make sure the time machine is safe for living organisms. We first sent through small mammals, but we couldn't verify that they actually travelled in time; we could only see that they disappeared before our very eyes. Then we sent some summonings; they were very helpful, as they could understand and execute orders, and through sending them we could verify that they did ineed travel back in time and could come back intact. But summonings are quite different in composition to actual, live organisms such as mammals and humans, and the fact that they could go back unscathed doesn't 100% prove that it's safe for human beings. Of course, we had summonings accompanied by small live mammals, such as chickens, and they were all brought back in perfect condition, but as I said, that doesn't necessarily guarantee survival…"

Shikamaru suddenly became very aware of the oppressive silence in the room, and dry-swallowed. What he was saying was absolutely ridiculous. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced no-one would take the mission. It was practically akin to suicide.

"… so what's the mission you had in mind?" Naruto asked in an uncharacteristically serious tone of voice.

"… I would need," Shikamaru said, looking his old friend in the eye, "a volunteer. To enter the time machine, travel back into the past, carry out a series of small, simple tasks, and to return and present the results of said tasks."

Silence.

"…An S-rank mission?" Hinata's soft voice piped up. "That doesn't sound too onerous for an S-rank mission… I trust your ability, Shikamaru-kun. I can do it."

"It's not that simple," Shikamaru turned to Hinata and smiled at her ruefully. "If that were all there was, I'd go back in time myself. Unfortunately, the current scope of this time machine is quite limited. We can only transport a person back to a point in their past that they've experienced, and this point must be at least ten years to the past; the rate of acceleration of the time-stream makes it currently impossible for us to just nip back to yesterday. What's more, you have to be 100% sure that you're not going to meet your past self while you're there, so you have to know exactly where you were and what you did on that exact day at least ten years to the past. I may be a genius, but even I don't remember things that far back."

There was another silence while everyone contemplated his words, and then—

"I can do it." A confident toss of short pink hair. Sakura stepped forward to stand in front of the time machine. "I know the exact date and time. I can promise you 100% I know where I was and what I was doing. Will that do?"

Shikamaru goggled at Sakura in utter surprise. Sure, he had called his jounin friends here in the hope that he might find someone willing and able, but he hadn't actually expected… "You mean you actually remember exactly what you were doing on a specific day at least ten years past?"

Sakura blinked those jade-green eyes of hers. "Yes," she replied, simply, and for some reason, Shikamaru believed her. Absolute, unshakeable confidence was written in those clear depths. She turned to Naruto, who was now looking at her with concern.

"Well? Does the mission have your approval? I have full confidence in Shikamaru, you know, and you can only imagine the kind of advantages this technology will be able to give us over other countries. I'll be safe, I know it."

"Sakura, are you sure—"

"Yes."

"Shikamaru? Will she be safe?"

"As safe as I can guarantee under experimental circumstances. I told you, if I could, I'd do it myself. I'm willing to bet my own life on this thing working."

Naruto nodded. "That's good enough for me." He stepped back, nodding once to Sakura as well.

"You know Sasuke will kill me if he comes back from his mission and you're not here," he said to her, and her expression softened.

"I'll do my best to keep Konoha's Hokage alive and well," she replied, and turned to face the machine.

"Be careful, Sakura," Ino muttered from behind her, and Sakura nodded.

"Alright. Here's a list of the tasks I want you to do while you're back in time; there shouldn't be anything too onerous. You'll move back in time, but not in place; you'll end up transported to this exact same location, but that's okay, because before Naruto built his house here this used to be a tiny patch of deserted forest so there won't be anyone around. It's not a huge catastrophe if someone else sees you, but try not to be seen anyway. The important thing is not having your past self see and recognise you. Just get there, do the experiments, and when you want to come back, pour a little bit of your chakra into this ring here. It's calibrated to resonate with mine, so I'll know to respond and pull you back to this time period. Other than that, you should be fine."

Sakura silently absorbed Shikamaru's speech and accepted the things he handed to her; a rolled-up piece of parchment with her instructions and the chakra ring that would be her lifeline back. She glanced back at her friends once; they all stared back with varying degrees of worry on their expressions. She pictures the one face she wanted to see above all if this was to be her last mission in the plane of the living, but he was away on an S-rank mission of his own. No matter. Sakura trusted Shikamaru.

She told him the date and time quietly, and felt Naruto flinch behind her. She smiled twistedly. No doubt the date held some significance for him as well. After all, it was what had set them all on this path. The beginning. The trigger.

A trigger for her, as well, to grow and change. The end of her childhood.

The machine started up, whirring faintly, and various technicians called out stats to Shikamaru. He gestured at her, and Sakura stepped into the time machine.

A bright, blinding light engulfed her, and all who were present were temporarily blinded by the explosion of photons that accompanied Sakura's disappearance. In her smoking wake, Shikamaru worried aloud: "I hope she's okay. Just what the hell is that date? How can she remember what she was doing?"

Naruto hacked and coughed out the dust he had inhaled, and placed a hand on Shikamaru's shoulder.

"Oh, don't worry," he said ruefully, looking at the negative space where Sakura had been, "she knows exactly where she was and what she was doing that night."

"But how?" Shikamaru demanded, and Naruto's sad blue eyes met his own.

"The day she specified… That was the day Sasuke left Konoha."

The smoke cleared on a Konoha of fifteen years ago, and Sakura stepped out of the woods, coughing and hacking, into a village that was now, unknowingly, one genin short. She checked her wristwatch; Yes, by this time, Sasuke had definitely left with the Sound nins and she was on a bench at the mouth of the village, unconscious and heartbroken. The anguish of that night came back to her as though it had been yesterday, and she fought off the urge to chase after twelve-year-old Sasuke; to make him return, to save herself the trouble of the next fifteen years as they rebuilt their relationship from the ground up.

She shook her head. If Shikamaru told her not to contact her past self, there was good reason for it. She should just get on with her list of tasks. She unrolled the parchment; Shikamaru had asked for simple things, such as breaking off a twig from a nearby branch and bringing it back with her, drinking some water from a stream, and otherwise interacting with the environment around her. The whole list took no longer than fifteen minutes to complete; and when it was done, Sakura found herself dashing through the sleeping town to where her younger self had been.

It wasn't as if the temptation to see herself had won out; she was not so vain as to want to see what her twelve-year-old self had looked like. Well, maybe slightly; but she could justify her decision with the fact that a) she had been knocked unconscious for the entire night, so it wasn't as if her younger self would see her anyway, and b) Sasuke had knocked her out and by all rights she should have collapsed onto the ground, but when she had woken up she had found herself on the bench. This implied that someone had moved her; perhaps that someone had been her older self, back from the future? It was a bit of a reach, she knew, but for some reason, Sakura felt compelled to seek out the younger girl going through one of the darkest nights in her life, even if all she could do was look at her sleeping form from afar.

But when she reached the entrance to the village, Sakura found to her surprise that she was already resting on the bench; obviously, someone had put her down and arranged her with extreme care, her hair and dress falling neatly around her lying figure. She felt a rush of emotion as she realised- maybe- maybe Sasuke had placed her on the bench that night. Maybe he had cared, even just a little, even back then. But no amount of pretty arrangement could hide the tear tracks glistening on the little girl's face, and Sakura, her heart aching all over again, quietly walked over to stand in front of the sleeping girl.

God, she had been so little! She seemed such a fragile little thing, with her baby-fine pink hair, soft white skin, and cheeks still reddened from the desperate confession earlier that night. But the older Sakura knew she had steel under that satin exterior, even if her younger self had not; and that despite her coarser hair, acid-burned skin, and numerous scars from past battles, they were still the same person at the core. Same softness. Same passion. Same love.

But her younger self didn't know. She wouldn't know for another good ten years, till at least five years after the last major war had ended and she and Sasuke attempted to repair the damage between them. It had taken her so long; so, so long to understand that she was equal to him; that she could live without him; that she was her own person, and it had cost them— both of them— so much time in establishing a balanced bond.

She could help her. She needed to know. Maybe it would save her some heartbreak; maybe it would exacerbate it, but Sakura desperately wanted to tell the poor little girl in front of her that she would be okay.

An idea struck her, and Sakura sat down carefully next to the sleeping genin.

Sakura had always been extremely talented with genjutsu, and fifteen years of training had only honed her fine instincts for the art. She knew of a genjutsu that allowed one to insert themselves into other people's dreams without waking them up, and that formed the loose basis of her plan for tonight. Relaxing herself and ensuring she couldn't feel anyone's chakra around her within ten minutes of walking distance, she slipped her consciousness alongside the girl's and melded her mind with hers, entering the dream state with ease.

In the dream, she found herself huddled in a crouching ball, attempting to suppress her sobs, and her heart wrenched. She placed a hand on the girl's shoulder and she jerked, turning around with wild eyes.

"Who are you?! Why are you here?" the girl demanded, staring up at the older woman at first with hostility then with dawning recognition as her eyes locked onto the signature pink hair and bright green eyes.

"Don't be alarmed," Sakura said gently, "I'm Haruno Sakura. I'm from the future. Well, actually, you're dreaming, but that's neither here nor there. I'm rather hoping you won't be able to remember any of this when you wake up."

"Haruno… Sa—" the girl broke off and stared at Sakura's forhead. "You've got a Yin seal on your forehead! Like Tsunade-sama!"

Sakura smiled at the girl's observance, even through her heartbreak. "Yes. But I can't tell you a whole lot about it. I'm sorry. You'll get there on your own one day, though, so you'll be okay."

The hint of a delighted smile looked set to break through younger Sakura's sadness, but then scurried away behind a fresh veil of tears. Younger Sakura turned away hurriedly, once again trying to repress her sobs.

"Oh, sweetheart," Sakura said, pulling the girl closer to her, "don't cry. You'll get through this. You survive. Tell me why you're crying. What's wrong?"

"I— I… hic— Sasuke-kun— he… hic— but I— you're from… hic— the future, aren't you? Don't you already know?"

"Well, maybe I need a little refresher. And maybe it'll help you if you talk about it. What's wrong? Who broke your heart?"

"Sasuke-kun— he… I couldn't… I couldn't stop him. I couldn't stop him. I couldn't STOP HIM! I couldn't— I couldn't do anything. I wasn't— I wasn't enough for him to stay. I offered him everything— my entire life— and I wasn't enough. And I… I wasn't joking. I really meant it. I would have— would have given him everything— I wanted to make him so happy that he'd never think of leaving again, and I could do it, I know I could, but I— I wasn't enough and— and I don't think I ever will be—"

"Sakura," Sakura said, and the girl looked up, red-faced, crying. "Do not ever think you are not enough. You are enough for existing. I know what it seems like now; I know what it will seem and feel like for a long time after this. I have been through it. And I am telling you right now that none of it is your fault, and none of the bad things to follow will be your fault. You don't become strong. You ARE strong, already. And you will live through this and come out even stronger than you are now."

"But I— but he…" the younger girl trailed off into silence, and stared at the ground. Sakura clenched and unclenched her fists in helplessness; she had jumped into the dream on a feeling, but now that she was actually here, she found she had no idea how to console her younger self without compromising her existence in the future.

"I know… you said you can't tell me a lot," the younger girl finally said, "and I understand that… and I understand that I come through this experience like you said, that you're proof I get stronger… but please… tell me this at least…"

Sakura looked down at herself, and the younger girl looked up. Their green eyes met, one full of tears, one full of understanding. Younger Sakura's expression twisted with anguish.

"Please… tell me… I need to know… is he worth it?" she asked, voice trembling with emotion, fresh rivulets of tears carving their way down her cheeks. Her clenched fists shook by her sides, and Sakura knew the nails would be digging into her palms, hard and sharp. She knew that no matter what she said, it wouldn't change a thing; she knew how desperately in love she had been; how desperately in love she was still to this day. But she also knew that she had been angry and confused and guilty that night; she had felt abandoned and drained, like she would never be happy again. Like Sasuke had pulled all the emotions she had out from her heart and taken them with him. And Sakuraunderstood. She wasn't asking that question for confirmation. Deep down, both of them had always known. She just needed someone to say it. For someone to agree with her. So that she seemed less alone in the world.

"Oh, sweetheart," Sakura said, placing a hand on her younger self's shoulder, "he is."

And Sakura saw those green eyes of hers light up with the faintest touch of hope, and decided to say what she had wanted to say to her younger self for so many years. Something that she would not truly believe till much later on, and, perhaps, had trouble believing sometimes till that very day. Something she still had to constantly remind herself of. Something she needed to understand about herself in order to keep her relationship with Sasuke stable; balanced.

"He's worth it," she repeated, firmly, "but so are you."

And as the little girl looked up at her with wide green eyes, Sakura smiled a brilliant, radiant smile and allowed herself to fade out of her dreams, hoping that if she remembered nothing of their encounter or dismissed it as a simple dream, that she would remember that last line, that she was worth it, because she was; she was worth all of it, the pain and the tears, the laughter and the love; she was worth it all.

And if, as she faded back into reality, a single tear escaped her eye and rolled down her cheek, exactly in the manner of the sleeping girl beside her, well, that was nobody's business but her own, wasn't it?

Praying that she hadn't monumentally fucked her chances of returning up, Sakura dashed back to the little copse of woods where Naruto's future house would stand, pouring her chakra into the ring and activating the return sequence. The ring responded immediately; Sakura breathed a sigh of relief as the world around her disappeared once more in a bright white haze and the woodsy decor of Naruto's back room came into focus.

"Sakura!" Naruto exclaimed in her face, before being pushed out of the way by Shikamaru, who promptly proceeded to grill her on her trip.

"Are you feeling disoriented at all? No illnesses? Any pain? How was it? Did you see anyone?"

Sakura looked him in the eye and smiled lightly.

"No. No-one at all."

Fifteen years previously, a little girl with pink hair and green eyes woke up on a bench in the entrance to Konoha, dizzy, disoriented, and heartbroken.

She remembered nothing of her dream except for a deep-seated conviction that he was worth it.

(But maybe, later on, some remnant of that dream would remain in her and remind her, that maybe, just maybe, that she was worth it too.)