When Sakura wakes up in her twelve-year-old body, she screams, loud and desperately. She screams and screams and screams because – fire everywhere, death everywhere and she is couldn't breath and it's just so painful.

Death comes quicker than you wish and Sakura Haruno does not drift away peacefully or quickly. A medical-nin is trained to avoid getting injured in any way, because if they are injured, then there would be nobody to heal the other members of their team. Sakura, who mastered the Strength of a Hundred Technique, fights in front lines and the medical tents.

No medic ninja shall ever die until they are the last of their platoon, and Sakura keeps healing until there are no one left to heal. She keeps fighting, because beneath her lies woman and men of courage, who fought valiantly but now lay slain. Each dawn she awakes for them and face the storm.

(Several years have rotted away and she have never felt so alone.)

She wanted so badly to fight until there was no more enemies to fight, but in the end, she wounds up with deep gashes to her legs, arms and neck. Six broken ribs and a collapsed lung. Severe intra-abdominal bleeding. A crushed spleen. Perhaps a subdural hematoma too, she had certainty hit her head hard enough to earn one.

The accumulation those injuries could have killed her given enough time, but Uchiha Madara was impatient and cut her head off.

Huh.

How odd that she could still scream without a head. Her hands moves to touch her neck, her head and body, all still attached together. She still screams, because it's not her body. It has none of her scares, her muscles or her efforts. Screams and screams and screams because something – everything was wrong.

"..ku!"

"..eeti-….poor…Sak-"

She died, so why is she breathing? Could she just…stop?

She wraps her hands around her neck, infusing chakra and then –

Sakura closes her eyes and see Naruto there on the front line. Full of life, shining so brightly, that she and everyone else hang on to him with everything they had. Sakura's eyes are too fogged to see the light, her mind too cluttered to think right, but Naruto a force of nature that is impossible to ignore.

Bang

Screams

Bang

It was such an awful sound.

Naruto yells loudly, "I'm not gonna run away, I never go back on my word!" drowning out the sound of death and pain for just a moment. God, how she loves him for it.

Sakura wakes up again, but at the same time, she doesn't. Sitting on the bed, Sakura breaths purely out of reflexes and observes the world confused. She doesn't know how much time had elapsed, her perception feels strange. Much like her mind. She sees things that is not there, because she shouldn't be there. The same scene plays each day. Her (not) mother helps her eat her breakfast, sometimes she would also clean Sakura's body, slowly as if afraid any sudden movement would make her screech in terror (it would). Then her (not) father sits her in a wheelchair and push her around outside the garden for a couple of hours, so she can benefit from the fresh air or something.

It didn't feel real, so Sakura didn't respond. She hopes that if she ignores the oddness around her, it would just fade away. That she would just fade away. She feels calm only when she is back in what appears to her room, under the several covers, safe for the everything.

Sakura is rocking back and forth when the routine changes. The door to her room opens, slowly, as if the person on the other side hesitates to enter. A young girl arrives, with long (pretty) blonde hair worn in a ponytail and kind eyes.

It takes a moment before Sakura's eyes manages to focus, to identify what the lines and shapes and colors before her mean. The name is on the tip of her tongue, but it won't come to out.

The girl stands in the doorway and watches her for a moment that seems to stretch on forever. Then, softly, the blonde says, "….billboard brow?"

Sakura blinks a few times. Finally, she whisperes "Go away" in a weak tone as she slowly turns the other way and cuddles under her sheets. It was the first words she had said since – since dying.

But Ino never liked being ignored, so she tries again, less careful, "Hey…I thought I already explained that trying to hide is stupid when you have a billboard brow."

It was a poor attempt at humor, lacking Ino's usual fire when insulting Sakura, far too half-heartily. And yet, it sounds so real. Sakura shifts slightly and peers out at her through her sheet. Ino rewards her with a smile, a strange mixture between uncertainty and smugness colors it. Her old friend makes her way to the bed, sitting down at the edge. Close enough for Sakura to feel her presence, close enough to touch.

"You look ridiculous," Ino says, "Absolutely ridiculous, Sakura."

Ino visits her every day after that. She talks a lot, even though Sakura rarely responds. The blonde complains about her lazy teammates, her sensei and the weather. Sometimes she gushes about the newest fashion or cute boys she has seen. Ino laughs and jokes, Sakura just nods his head, thankful that Ino's voice is drowning the sound of the war – of Sakura's death. She is graceful Ino keeps coming, but she does not say before Ino stops.

For two weeks, Sakura lies on her bed, getting more agitated by the minute, anxiously waiting…waiting and waiting. When Ino finally returns, Sakura throws her pillow at her. Then, her books, pens and anything she can get her hands on. Much like her first day in this prolonged death, Sakura screams. Only this time her actually words are formed, cruel and callous words. She calls Ino a traitor, a villain, a liar and hundred different cursing words so terrible that twelve-year-old girls shouldn't know them.

Ino pets her head and sings her meaningless songs, cuddling safe with her under the bed sheets… and Sakura eventually fall asleep.

The next day, her room is filled with Orchids, Tulips and Carnations.

"Ino…I'm so sorry," Sakura looks down, not able to meet Ino's eyes.

Ino does not hesitate in forgiving her, "Me too, I didn't think the mission would last this long."

Biting her lips, Sakura strives to be worthy of that forgiveness, that endless kindness Ino keeps giving her. She forces a smile, "I'm the one who overreacted…pig."

"Who're you calling pig you billboard brow?!" Ino grins immediately.

As the days and months passed by, Sakura grows accustomed to the odd state of being. She was still in the process of dying, she thinks, but things were different now. Before things had been… complicated … painful. Now Ino was here and Sakura remembers the way Ino hair shined through the sunny day, remembers being with how being with her washed away her fears. Sakura is dying and she is grateful her mind is conjuring up Ino.

It is in this state of contentment that reality came crashing back.

Sakura's (not) mother came to her room. "Sweetie, I need you to get dressed now," she says looking more anxious then Sakura ever remembers seeing her. Her (not) father is not there, and the smell of fire and blood fills the air.

Sakura's breathing starts becoming more rapidly. "Mother… W-What's going on?" she asks her. Her mother smiles as she touches Sakura's head. I love you, she mouths as the sound outside becomes louder and louder. Mrs Haruno looks so gentle, so caring (so real). Sakura wants to nestle in her arms and be held like child. Wants comfort and warmth, so badly she almost cries. She can't remember last time she cried in her mother's arms (maybe when Sasu- he left?).

Sakura is in the process of dying – but she dies again, much earlier than her first life, when Orochimaru invades the village.

The roof of her house collapses upon them.

Sakura navigates through masses of rotting corpses carelessly piled atop each other. Their flesh was torn, wrecked and twisted; looking more like squashed insects than fallen humans. The foul, rotting stench of decay festered in the air, almost making Sakura's stomach lurch and beckoning flies to cautiously hover in midair nearby.

Where is he? Please, please God, let him be alive.

The third-time Sakura wakes up in her twelve-year-old body, she is a little bit calmer, a little more rational. She brings her shaking hands together and whispers, "Kai," and she says it again and again. She is still twelve, weak and in her childhood room.

When she finally leaves her room, still scared and confused, her mother sends her a concern glance, her father smiles absentmindedly - and suddenly Sakura wonders if she has the chance to make things right. She can save her parents and Ino and Sai - she can save the village, save the world, save Naruto.

Then she remembers a red moon and a lie cast upon the world. This could not be real. She would not allow herself to be enslaved in a dream, no matter how sweet it is. If there is even a slightest chance that she could still fight and kill her enemies, she would take it (even if I'm alone?).

She had to march on, because that was what soldiers did. Naruto would want her to fight (Naruto is gone, everyone is gone), so she had to.

There are several ways to combat genjutsu, the illusion technique dissipation wasn't working, but maybe pain would. The Infinite Tsukuyomi is a powerful, powerful genjutsu and breaking it will not be easy. Sakura knows how the body works, knows how to heal and how to break.

(The weapon of the mind, chiseled hard by blood, death and war)

"Sakura," her mother says, "you okay sweetie?"

"She probably just worried about the Genin exam, isn't that right?" her father says, as he looks up from reading the paper. He looks younger than she remembers, happier too. Once, before the war, he had joked that that he had aged twice as fast this last years (because of her?).

Genin Exams. Sakura blinks. Oh. She was not a genin yet. Good, she is not certain if this fabricated world follows the same rules as her, but leaving the village is a lot easier without the Missing-Nin- stamp.

Pain, is the way out, and the moment Sakura put some distance between her and disturbing elements, she experiments.

Kunai-stabs probably wouldn't do anything, Sakura knows this, but she tries anyway. Being crushed alive didn't break her free either, so she avoids similar stuff. First, she tries see if simple sensations like fire or acid is enough to shock her out of this illusion. Then she tries more creative methods: Ripping off her own nails. Poison that scalds her genitals. Heating up a softer metal until it was liquid, putting it in a bowl, and then pour it inside her own ear canal. It burns off the flesh inside her ear, making her deaf and disfigured on that side. Gouging her own eyes out. Unfortunately, while she is knowledgeable enough to avoid dying of the infection, she is in too much pain to fight off the bear. Note to herself, being eating alive doesn't work either.

The inferno is extinguished, leaving behind a dark residue that infested the soil with blood and sorrow. No longer could the clangor of the kunai be heard and the shouting of the slaughter was silenced; a hush rested over the crimson-stained field.

In the midst of the mass destruction, slaughter and ruin, a lone boulder stretches defiantly towards the sky. And beneath it, a body, still; as in death. Naruto lies like a doll over the ground, limbs at awkward angles and head held in such a way that he cannot be sleeping. That figure, once the sun of Sakura's existence, is now an abandoned shell left to rot in the open.

She steps closer and barely notices her own sanity dissolving into the surrounding darkness.

A man, with blood and chaos swirling in eyes, regards her. He does not move, almost as still as Naruto. His swords is dripping with blood and he looks a little annoyed that Sakura is here, interrupting.

Then again, Sasuke always looks a little annoyed when he is looking at her.

The fourth-time Sakura wakes up on the eve of her Genin exam, she feels furious.

(I built shrines in my eyes to you)

And this time, it was not herself she intends to kill.