The Nearest Star

By: WhisperedSilvers

Prompt: "Part of me still believes you'll come back."

Summary: The quest for strength comes from the spirit or in this case, the soul.

—

constellation

The dirt is wet beneath her feet, she can tell by the way it splatters on her calves and the way it drips down her knees. She's not sure if she's exhausted or if she's just looking for a way out. Whirlpool country is different terrain altogether, it's rocky with the remains of buildings and metal jaggedly pointing upwards. It's not hot because it lays on the same latitude as the Leaf village, though, it's humid.

"Sakura-chan," Naruto's voice crackles with a high-pitch against her earphones, she winces because goddamn it's Naruto, and her fingers clumsily dial the knob down.

There's static and a crackle.

"Who gave the dobe an amp?" Sasuke's sounds annoyed.

"Dickless, please refrain from screaming," Sai replies, a crackle of static follows, "We are under discretion, our objective must remain the utmost focus, you're feminine screeching is highly inappropriate."

Deciding to intervene before Naruto begins to yell expletives and speak in such a Neanderthal, repulsive matter – her ear can't really take in any more noise – she sighs, "What is it Naruto?"

Crackle.

"Where are you?" Static. "We're regrouping at the big metal pointy stick stature," he pauses, "Thing."

She rolls her eyes and jumps over a particularly wobbly section of what looked like a shrine. It's a brick color, shale-like in texture, she could tell it used to pump chakra by the fibers of the threading. "I'm almost there," she pauses, "I found the scroll by the way."

Sasuke sounds confused, "What? Where?"

"A shrine by the water," Sakura frowns, "It was hanging on a piece of seaweed, it was the only place that wasn't destroyed. Didn't you guys scout the perimeter?"

It's silent for an entire minute.

"We didn't find any shrines," Sai answers her.

Sakura blinks slowly, even in the abandoned country, where her teammates could not see a perfectly good shrine by the ocean, in the midst of the ruins—that didn't make sense. There are no inhabitants of this ghost land, but it's not entirely improbable that one building survived the destruction. Unless it's a genjutsu.

"Sasuke, do you see any chakra signatures? Anything at all?" Sakura asks quickly and she speeds up her pace, but then deliberately comes to a stop. She turns back and sends a pulse of chakra through the earth, just enough to touch the shrine. Even from far away, she sees the tip of the shrine transform back into rubble.

It makes her stomach tighten.

"No," He replies, "Did you send a chakra wave?"

"It was a genjutsu," She says, she doesn't like how this feels—it feels like it's a trap.

"How far are you?" Sai asks.

"Five thousand yards."

"We'll meet you half way," Naruto promises.

"Remind me," She starts, her pace picking up, "What does the scroll look like?"

"Blue, ruby embedded and black cotton thread on rice paper," Sai drones on, it sounds like he's reading the mission scroll, there is that sound of crinkling of paper before he zips back his pack.

Sakura glances at her scroll and yelps. There are sapphires on this scroll, not rubies, so which scroll did she take? Trepidation fills her veins because she was so sure that she picked the right scroll – why should there be more than one scroll? The country is abandoned! – underneath the archives of the shrine. Her voice feels like a swing, "Guys—I don't think this is the scroll," her voice cuts off into a squeak because there is water slamming through the air and she has to dig her elbows into the ground to dodge the swipe, "It's an ambush!"

How convenient.

Water jutsus in the Land of Whirlpool is just unfair. It's an island for heaven's sake! Sakura leaps into the trees to get a better vantage point of her enemy and much to her dismay, the jutsu comes from the ocean. It's a water dragon, but it's thinner and faster, "Earth Style: Partition!"

Unfortunately, Sakura only knows a handful of elemental jutsus. The water dragon barely hits the earth wall, splatters of water coat few pink strands and the collar of her top. The earth disintegrates and she jumps back. The shinobi – two of them – they have masks, white as bone, but they are faceless and expressionless. At least ANBU has figures or animals, these shinobi lack any traits—it's depersonalized, and it's really, really creepy. There are three of them, one with an ax and the other two are weapon-less.

Sakura tries to reason with herself. What could the scroll possibly entail – if that is, they want her scroll, the wrong scroll – or is it the scroll that the mission required? She isn't sure which one they are looking for and she isn't going to stick around to find out. She reaches for her kunai from her back pouch, threads them with explosive tags and scatters the metal. Then she runs, hopefully, she'll pick up Naruto or Sasuke or Sai's chakra signature.

The tags begin to detonate.

She hates running, it's the coward's way out and it doesn't make her feel any better about herself, but she needs someone to watch her back.

"Sakura-chan!" Naruto's voice is godsent, he stops in front of her and she hears the sounds of her tags exploding, one by one.

"Naruto," She sounds tired, "Where are the rest?"

"Finishing the perimeter, we found two more nin on the outskirts, and the other three Sasuke handled."

Two plus three, plus another two equals seven.

Sakura's eyes widen, seven nin? Whoever sent those nin, really wants the scroll, that, or they want to make sure they receive the scroll. Whatever's going on, it doesn't sound good. She presses her lips together before she explains quickly, "We need to lead them inland. They use high-ranking elemental ninjutsu, if they are too close to the water they are going to drown us."

They need to cut their resources off at the source.

It takes some of Naruto's goading and more explosive tags to have them just where they need them. Naruto takes the one with the ax, unsurprisingly, Sakura takes the other one and tries to flatten them with her strength. He's slimy, she grimaces, that much she'll give him, he uses chakra with his katana, which isn't abnormal, but it's different. It's elemental chakra he's using, but he's not using elemental ninjutsu which is strange, because elemental chakra is required for elemental ninjutsu.

It does not make sense.

He can apparently use lightning ninjutsu, he draws the lightning, bright like silver and uses the water trail from his previous jutsu as a conductor, but Sakura sees it too quickly and she destroys the earth with one chakra-infused blow. She uses his sudden blindness to fling a tree at him and then transforms a clone into a kunai. Using the wind like a whip, she flings her kunai, he dodges it obviously, but it transforms back into a clone and she damages his leg with her foot.

He screams.

His voice rings in her ears, he inhales hard and uncaring, but he's too pissed to think of the consequences. Anger runs thick in his veins, he pulls out his katana and rakes the earth. Sakura is too confused to realize what he's doing, the ground disappears from her feet and she's flying through the air.

When Sakura looks up, she sees the scroll in front of her, unraveled and she winces. She sees the nin coming, limping, broken and he snarls at her through his bone mask and she hears it. She's healing herself unconsciously, that much she's aware of, but healing takes time so Sakura makes a desperate grab for the scroll – even if it's not her mission objective, she would be damned to give this bastard his glory – her fingers wet with her own blood, grabs the blue, sapphire embedded, black cotton, rice paper scroll and now, it's a little fuzzy.

And then she can't see.

It takes her teammates ten minutes to find her. They found the scroll apparently, it was hidden in the handle of that big ax, but here, they stand in the forest not fully understanding the situation, because to the rest of the team, Sakura looks completely fine. She has some dried blood on her fingers, but she lays on the ground as if she's stuck to the earth itself and it's really, really weird. Her eyes are blank, her pupil shrinks to the point where it looks like a small ink dot, and her eyes are so green.

The unraveled scroll in front of her is blank and the other nin—masked nin or whatever the hell he was, he's disintegrated into what looks like sand. And it's really, really weird.

"Sakura-chan?" Naruto's hesitant when he calls her, crouching low his hand touches her upper back carefully, "Are you okay?"

"Naruto?" Her voice sounds faint, even to his ears.

Naruto glances up at Sasuke and Sai who look more confused than worried or as close to concerned as they can look. He pats her on the back, "Yeah?"

"I can't see."

He blinks, "What? Your eyes are wide open."

She tries again, "Naruto," she pauses to emphasize her hysteria, "I can't see."

"Oh," He breathes shakily, his other two teammates stiffen as the weight of her words hits them, "Oh."

Then it's a race back to Konoha.

Sakura is blind for twenty-four hours, which to her sounds reasonable, but what is irritatingly confusing is that she doesn't know how or why she went from vision, to no vision, to vision again—medically, it's impossible, because there was no damage to her head – at least she doesn't think so – or her eyes.

But then Tsunade explains that scroll that had unraveled during the mission contained chakra.

Now, that, that makes sense.

Rapid chakra absorption can cause sudden blindness, the chakra pathways are consumed with a high volume of energy and that energy is raw, meaning that it hasn't been converted into chakra that's usable. It's like being shocked. Sensors, certain bloodlines and other types of nin that can use chakra just by touching another person is different, their DNA is programmed with an enzyme that immediately breaks down the energy into useable chakra.

People like Sakura, who come from a civilian based family, with no bloodline limit or anything remotely abnormal— is not born with that enzyme. She's someone who is extremely sensitive to chakra, to have her overloaded with raw, natural energy caused her body to go into shock, thus forcing her body to compromise her optical nerves for the time being.

Tsunade does not have that much information to give her, instead, she tells her to rest a little more while she goes to the archives and tries to find something.

But Sakura is tired, so she sleeps some more.

The next morning, she feels like her shoulders are heavy, like the weight of the world rests on her fine shoulder bones and she's just miserable. She feels almost like she's hardwired on caffeine, her body feels jittery, like she has to train or do something remotely active. Her brain isn't working as fast as her body, so when she leaps out of the bed, she leaps to high and suddenly she's on the ceiling.

"Um, Sakura-chan," Naruto pops in from the hospital door, he looks at her strangely, "Why are you on the ceiling?"

"Um," She pauses not sure how to answer him, she hops back down, slowly almost as if she's testing her own reflexes, "I don't know. I feel like I have to train or something. I think I slept too much."

"You have too much energy?" Sai asks from the window, he stares at her, "How convenient."

"What Sai means is," The blonde rolls his eyes, "Baa-chan just discharged you from the hospital. You have to be careful."

Sakura grumbles and warns him, "I'm the med-nin, Naruto."

"Like that means anything," Sasuke snorts, his body lays against the doorframe, "You don't listen to your own advice."

"Shut up, Sasuke," She frowns and then crosses her arms over her chest, "I clearly remember someone snapping their femur two weeks ago and ran out of the hospital before receiving his pain meds."

Naruto snickers, "You're even worse than sensei, bastard."

Sasuke scowls.

"Besides," Sakura scratches her shoulder, "It was just chakra overflow. Ironic how it's not exhaustion."

It's quiet for a few moments and Naruto who is uncomfortable with the silence, asks no one in particular, "So, ramen then?"

—

Sakura ditches the ramen for tempura. Her walk back home, with her three bickering teammates behind her, is surprisingly uneventful, she was sure that Ino would ambush her, but she shrugs that thought off when Naruto whines, "Sakura-chan, we totally should've got ramen. They have a special on pork ramen."

"Too much salt will give you hypertension,"

"I would willingly die if I don't eat ramen again,"

"Really?" Sasuke makes a sound of interest.

She rolls her eyes and she hears a faint sound, something that sounds like a chuckle.

Her apartment complex is surprisingly modern because it's the shinobi part of the village, clans tend to stick with traditional housing and furniture. Modern housing is usually reserved in the civilian part of the village, where things were to more of their convenience whereas clans and ninja families tend to keep things a little less complicated.

"Alright, now go away," Sakura tells them as she opens the door of her apartment, her landlord passes the halls and smiles at her before disappearing down the stairs.

"But Sakura-chan—"

"Away," She's firm, but she has to snicker when Sai looks at her with what looked like a trying pout, she has to remember, he's trying, but it's really, really—

"You look like a blowfish, Sai."

Even Sasuke snorts.

"Away. Now," Sakura repeats, slipping off her boots, and then she sighs forcefully with exasperation, "Ino will be here in maybe an hour to ambush me, I would like to gain some sanity before she arrives," she pushes them out of her doorframe, "Go. I've had enough of you morons for one day."

All she wants is some peace and quiet.

There's a faint thought of storing her excess chakra into her Yin seal, but it disappears the moment Sai says something rather colorful.

"We'll come back with dinner, Sakura-chan!" Naruto's voice is muffled, but she can't help but smile. They mean well and she loves them, but sometimes they're just too much.

Tossing her pack on her couch, she walks into her bedroom and rummages her draws for something comfortable to wear. As much as she likes wearing her standard shinobi outfit, she really isn't in the mood to shave her legs. Pulling out a big sweater that nearly swallows her whole, she turns to her full-length mirror and unzips her red shirt. Her bindings are the only thing that's left that is covering her chest, her skirt and tights still on her bottom. When she turns her vision back to the mirror, there's a familiar man staring right back at her.

She blinks.

The blonde does not move, but he blinks too.

Sakura is still staring at the mirror and she's not sure what's happening, because she's pretty sure that blonde is dead, but he's still staring at her and she turns around slowly. There's nothing there—she looks like she's staring into blank space, so she turns back and he's still there.

Sakura is still staring, because she's half-fucking naked and there is a man in her mirror.

She thinks she's taking this surprisingly well. Sakura is a medic, her first intuition is to think and then act. Identify the problem, understand the symptoms and then act, because stranger things have happened.

The man in the mirror looks like he's behind her, his reflection, like he's standing a few feet from her bare back and he looks like he's in her room, but when she turns he's not there and it's just—?

"Um," Sakura breathes, if she moves to the left, she wonders if he'll disappear because her back will cover his right side of his shoulder and if it doesn't cover his shoulder—then he's in her mirror, but the question is, what if it does cover?

She moves and his shoulder is concealed.

She feels like she's been stabbed—again.

"Holy shit," Sakura swears so roughly that the man in the mirror flinches.

Minato Namikaze is in her room.

The infamous Yellow Flash, Naruto's father, the Fourth Hokage—the very dead Fourth Hokage is in her bedroom.

Sakura has effectively identified the problem, but there is no solution, so she believes, hysterically, that she is indeed, allowed to freak out.

—

.

.

.

Cough.

Feedback is appreciated.