"The pendulum will swing,
Everything will start again,
So live..."
© Piknik
Sensitivity returned gradually. His numb skin tingled faintly all over. His heart thudded noticeably against his ribs, blood roared in his ears. Too loudly.
...never realized before how much noise her body made. Who was she?
Lightness...
Darkness.
Eyelids twitched and opened. Still darkness, shapes emerging...
...tried to rise, but her body wouldn't obey. Who was she? What was this place?
Memory pumped into her consciousness in surges.
Tall man. Black hair covering his left eye. Resentment. Rage. Cold stone. Stuffy air and books. Oversized dark blue knit cardigan dragging on the floor, flipping pages. Trembling knees. Trembling all over. Explosions. Screeching wail of some animal. Dead people and nine orange furry snakes writhing against the faces of the Hokage—four faces, not seven. Thirst. A kid darting around like a rabbit. He has water. Don't go, stay! Share water... Freshness of a warm evening. Shame. Disgruntled people. Uncomfortable and dirty, sharp urine smell. Crows, warm breath of a young boy, and burning Sharingan just ten centimeters from her nose.
And after...
What came after?..
Sarada jumped up from the floor. Her body finally obeyed her command.
Her head ached from thought and memory overload.
She remembered...
She was Uchiha Sarada. And she had died.
But then why was her heart beating, lungs breathing?
Why was there no cold object in her chest that had hindered life just a minute ago?
All a nightmare? Genjutsu?
Her eyes adjusted to the dark. Moonlight fell through the window into the room. Sarada looked around and realized she was in Grandpa's study. Not a dream. It all really happened. Then... why was she alive?
No one was around.
Her gaze fell on the tatami—where Grandma and Grandpa's bodies had lain, a dark bloodstain had soaked in. The corpses were gone.
Something cold and sharp stabbed her heart again. Gasping, Sarada touched her chest, trying to find the kunai handle, but there was no kunai. This pain was emotional: she recalled the last minutes before blacking out.
Tear-soaked cheeks; iris burning red. Sharingan tomoe merging into a horrific pattern. Dead bodies of Grandma and Grandpa. Man in orange mask with no body; glint of Sharingan in the black hole's opening. Death.
Her mouth was parched. Unbelievable, impossible. The man who looked at her lovingly at night and listened to tales of the future—couldn't...
Memories returned slowly, echoing pain near her heart. Guesses built even slower: they wandered question mazes without answers, dead-ending every time.
Two Uchiha killed her and wiped out the whole clan. Two. A faceless, bodiless man and Uchiha Itachi. A fact that wouldn't fit her head no matter how she turned it or tried logic. She understood nothing. The world had gone mad. Itachi had gone mad.
Sarada wore no watch. How long had she knelt in the empty study of her late grandpa? Minutes maybe. Or hours. She didn't try to stand, look around, figure out where she was, what was happening in the village, how much time passed, how she survived. None of it mattered now.
The Uchiha clan's history, shrouded in secrets. Documents classified, parents silent. Dad never spoke of Uncle, just one fleeting name mention...
Lead weight of realization crashed on her mind: there it was! What happened to her clan.
Thrown into the past, her father's childhood era, Sarada filled her known world with new details. Sought reasons, ways to save loved ones. Chose as ally the most reliable, wise, strong person possible—her own uncle, Uchiha clan genius. Hoped he'd do what she couldn't: save the clan, preserve peace. And it turned out he was the one who needed saving from—not saving by.
Emptiness unfolded in her chest, pillars of the world she'd believed in for thirteen years crumbling into the abyss. Doubt flooded her, stripping the good from Itachi's image she'd loved. Rare caring moments, soft voice, warm gaze... Sarada clung to them as if they defined Itachi. But what if all a facade, hiding a monster behind the kind boy mask? Only a monster could kill his own parents.
Sword thrust in the back.
The stuffy study air stung her nose. Sarada sneezed and sobbed.
Damn tears again.
And he cried too. Itachi's face streamed with tears as he pulled his bloody sword from his dying father's back. Seeing Uncle sobbing—that was abnormal.
There he rises, arms loose at sides. Black hair strands veil his face. Beaten patrolmen lie on the pavement around. Kunai stabbed into the fan emblem, web of cracks splitting the red-white crest.
Sarada hadn't given it weight. Never pondered how deep the rift between Itachi and Uchiha ran. Never imagined the darkness in this boy's soul, gaze of an adult.
Itachi was always odd, but had madness long nested behind that impenetrable wall of impassivity and coolness?
The world she believed in was illusion; Sarada realized she'd viewed it through rose-tinted glasses all along. Even surviving Kyuubi's tragedy, witnessing mass deaths and human pain horrors, she still believed...
...in friendship, justice...
...her dream of becoming Hokage...
...human kindness and mercy...
People she met in the past only strengthened that faith. Whatever happened in her life, Sarada saw the glass half full: Uncle, cold and indifferent, but sometimes flicked her forehead with a warm gaze; Shisui, suspecting her a spy, yet spent time, talked, protected...
I saw what I wanted to see. I was born and raised in a fairy tale, a peaceful future shielding me from life's horrors. But life is horrific, people false...
A fresh pain surge shot through her mind: what if it was all her fault? What if history changed because of her, Father didn't survive that night, and Uchiha Itachi became killer just because she...
Dark room, viscous time. Head splitting, thoughts whirling, tangling, punching new soul holes to the abyss. Deep disappointment, weakness, guilt swirled around Sarada, driving her mad. Chest pain intensified, as if her heart perfectly recalled the kunai inside.
Weak... useless... worthless...
Chakra raced through the circulation system, scorching her body with inner heat, faster the wider the doors flung open to the darkness long lurking in her heart.
Eyes burned. She didn't notice right away the familiar room now in red shades. Sharingan. Whatever. Nasty thoughts. Why could she think at all? Better without. Easier.
Gods...
It worsened minute by minute, and suddenly Sarada realized: questions evaporated from her mind; she no longer sought answers or untangled the tightening thought knot—what occupied her was searing eye pain.
Too much chakra flooded them.
Gods, it hurts so much.
She pressed cool palms to closed lids, trying to ease it somehow, but no help. Eyes burned, pulsed. Stronger... hotter. Guilt swelling ocean-scale in her soul, pushing her to madness's edge, seemed to mix with chakra and rush to her eyes. Eyeballs pumped with molten iron. Agonized groan tore from her chest. Unbearable. Sarada struggled desperately against the urge to claw her own eyes out for relief. Something warm trickled down her cheeks... Were her eyes melting? Blind?
Sarada screamed, as if it could ease the torment.
Why this? Why this world with nothing right, nothing reliable, all light just mirages people create to deceive each other?
Shinobi in tiger mask with red patterns stabbing her hand with kunai; people with limbs torn off lying in Konoha street blood puddles during Kyuubi attack; Uchiha clan corpses in the district streets. And this unbearable hellish eye pain now...
Why a world with so much pain? Why cling to life—what's it worth? I died once, unsuccessfully somehow. Wasn't that scary or painful. Living hurts more. Then—why?!
Pulsating pain began to subside little by little. Sarada pulled her hands away from her face, cautiously opened her eyes, and saw her palms smeared with something dark and wet.
Blood?
Not blind, she could see.
She wiped the blood from her cheeks. Her entire body was shaking.
And suddenly instincts screamed: danger! Sarada jerked. A shuriken buried deep into her shoulder. Several more shurikens whistled past and embedded into the tatami mat with a loud thud. After eyes burning with hellfire, the new pain simply dissolved into the old one. The enemy, whoever it was, was aiming for vital points, but Sarada's jerk saved her life.
The Sharingan saw the attacker. In the crimson world, a blue chakra focus darted across the ceiling at lightning speed. Sarada drew a kunai and deflected the new attack, too slowly, barely in time. Her legs were numb, but her body felt alien. Her body would have reacted much faster!
What was happening?
The Sharingan greedily absorbed chakra. Weakness…
Sarada suddenly felt a connection to her late grandfather's study. A new sensation of astonishing unity.
She was no longer an ordinary girl—she had become part of something greater. The world accepted her into itself and nullified distance: Sarada looked at the ceiling and felt it, delving deeper into the wood's texture, into the silence, darkness, and stuffiness of dead fibers. She felt the room like her own organism. Not all at once, only the point her gaze focused on.
Right above the spot where the assassin clung upside down.
She needed to attack him immediately.
Chakra surged through her pupils toward the opponent even before thoughts of possible attack plans formed in her mind.
Unity.
Strike.
The ceiling cracked and collapsed with a roar. The enemy, not expecting his perch to be so fragile, lost his grip and fell. Weakness buckled Sarada's legs, and she collapsed onto all fours, nearly dropping the kunai. The shinobi, just above the floor, managed to regroup, landing on his knee and outstretched arm, and lunged at her.
Sarada struggled to her feet. The Sharingan read the attacks, but her body couldn't keep up… Disastrously couldn't keep up! The assassin drew his sword; Sarada fended him off with two kunai, but fighting a strong man in this state was too difficult.
The disobedient body, as if alien, sudden weakness, mind shattered by new revelations… The sword clashed and scraped against the kunai blades with a grating clang. Sarada could barely stand. The last few minutes, she had survived only thanks to the Sharingan. Genjutsu didn't work. She couldn't catch the man's gaze, hidden behind a white bear mask with patterns.
Anbu.
Sarada didn't think about why an Anbu had attacked her. She wasn't surprised. Nothing surprised her anymore. Fighting an Anbu member even in top form would be suicide, and now especially so. The only thought spinning in her exhausted mind insisted: as soon as the chakra runs out and the Sharingan deactivates—you'll die.
Sarada, retreating under the onslaught of attacks, stumbled, and in that instant, a powerful kick to the stomach hurled her against the wall. She saw it but couldn't dodge. Her insides clenched. Tonight, Sarada was simply swimming in pain. She was ready for any salvation from this hell, even death, but for some reason kept fighting. Clinging to life with all her might, a life she saw no meaning in. Instincts were stronger than reason.
The shinobi in the bear mask was over her in an instant and slashed diagonally with his sword, aiming for her neck. Sarada barely held him off with crossed kunai. Her weak arms trembled. A strike to the face. The kunai slipped off the blade; the assassin switched the sword to his right hand and thrust it straight into her stomach. Sarada's eyes widened in horror. Burning in the retinas… and…
Unity.
Time seemed to slow.
She saw the inexorably approaching sword tip, the broad chest of the man before her, and… The metal breastplate, mesh of clothing fabric. Skin, soft, slightly fatty, and damp with sweat. Beneath it—warm liquid in some loose tissue, resilient vessel tubes… A contracting muscle, pumping blood from chamber to chamber in sequence.
Defend. Survive at any cost.
Once more, will outpaced feverish thoughts on how to avoid the lethal strike in a fraction of a second. Chakra, scorching the retinas, surged through her pupils. The Anbu's heart, which Sarada felt even clearer than her own, froze mid-contraction…
More chakra!
…and burst.
Turned into shapeless chunks of meat.
At the same instant, the sword blade entered her side and pinned her to the wooden wall of her grandfather's study. The assassin's heavy body crashed onto Sarada, numb from pain and horror, jostling the sword, its sharpened edge ripping through flesh, widening the wound. The Anbu fell sideways onto the tatami. His body suddenly ignited in blue flame. Sarada was afraid to move. Motionless, she watched as the former Anbu burned to ashes along with his clothes and mask, leaving only a pile of soot on the tatami.
Gathering her courage, Sarada yanked the sword from her stomach.
The heart had stopped the moment the assassin struck, and he missed. Maybe that's why she was still alive, and the sword hadn't gone deep into the wall.
Sarada slid down the wall, clutching the wet wound on her side. No more time for thoughts and self-pity. She needed to get out and find a medic. The Sharingan detected no living souls nearby.
A little longer, and she'd pass out. No one would find her here, and she'd simply die from blood loss.
Where had this thirst for life come from?
Sarada struggled to her feet and, supporting herself on the wall, made her way out of her grandfather's study. Corridor, entryway… Closed front door, deathly silence. Sliding the shoji panel aside took enormous effort. Sarada stepped outside.
The warm night air brought no relief. Her skin was covered in sticky cold sweat. Darkness occasionally clouded her vision, but Sarada kept moving forward through the dead Uchiha District. She felt nauseous from the fans on every fence section, on flags and signs, and on tatters of awnings over empty stalls. Under this crest, Itachi slaughtered the clan. The cursed clan. And this devilish fan, like a symbol of death itself. What did people feel, dying at her uncle's hand? The same as she felt now?
The district seemed endless. Sarada dropped to all fours countless times, nearly losing consciousness, but squeezed out her last strength to rise and keep going. Leaning on house walls, leaving bloody handprints on the light walls.
Keep going forward, anywhere. Just get out of this place, to people. To life.
Gates appeared ahead. It felt like hours had passed, but if so, she'd have definitely passed out. The gates were open but draped with yellow tapes. Bending down to crawl under was beyond her strength. Sarada simply leaned into them with her chest, got tangled, thrashed… The tapes tore.
She kept going.
The streets around the district were also empty, as if people deliberately avoided the place. Or it was late, and everyone was asleep.
Then she'd die.
Sarada prepared to kneel and gather her strength again to continue, as she'd done many times, but the pavement suddenly rushed up to meet her, turning into a deep black abyss on the way.