martyr

-lilacwrath-

12/23/2016

Shanghai

Disclaimer: Naruto © Masashi Kishimoto

A/N: This fic was inspired by monstersinmind's [Figures]. Go check out his/her amazing story!

I wanted to write Itachi, but as always, my love for Sakura prevailed—so this is what came out in the end. Thanks for giving this a try. See you at the bottom :)

-prologue-

rebirth

"I may not have ended up where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." -Douglas Adams

The one and only thing she does not and cannot remember from her past is how she had died.

Dulls her memory it does, but never does it sate her curiosity.

Did she die with a knife plunged between her ribs and into her heart? Was she burnt to nothing more than crisps by standing too close to explosive tags? Maybe, she'd aged gracefully into her years until she'd died a fulfilled life. Or, perhaps, she had fallen into a river after being injured, and hindered by her wounds, she had drowned.

She does not and cannot remember—not in the way she remembers blue, blue eyes and bright dreams, or dark hair and darker eyes, and the earth rumbling and splitting and shattering under fists forged from the hardest of diamonds, or the red, bleeding moon strung up high above the sky—

But she supposes it doesn't matter, not anymore, for death has withdrawn its clawed fingers from her cold remains, and has skittered away just far enough for the color to rush back into her skin, for blood to roar through her veins once more, and for her tongue to prickle and tingle with a peculiar yet deliciously familiar taste—ah, yes, life.

She tastes life on the tip of her tongue and along the seam of her lips, and it tastes absolutely glorious.

There, she feels it.There.

Her chest is thudding and pounding and convulsing with something she had long ago believed to be withered and blackened and gone. The sensation is almost painful, and she revels in the delirious ecstasy of it, for her heart has started to beat again.

Slowly but steadily, it picks up its pace.

Her death no longer matters, so instead, she knows how she is born—or reborn—with a clarity that is all too sharp.

Haruno Sakura had died.

But now, she is alive once more.

-to be continued-

A/N: Feedback is appreciated!