Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

Author's Notes: This is the re-upload of the first chapter. I will be uploading and editing my work as I go on, when I am done, feel free to continue to read.

Sakura stumbled. Her hands left bloody prints on the bark of the tress around her, slippery and slick, the wounds that peppered her fingers filling with splinters. She didn't dare wince, didn't dare make a sound—just in case.

Just in case they heard, and they caught her—even though, logically, she knew they were dead there was still a lurching, uneasy sense of paranoia climbing up her spine as she wove and ducked between trees, stumbling and staggering to make her way to Konoha.

There had been too much loss this month, too much tragedy—she didn't need to come home in a body bag; wouldn't, couldn't, come home in a body bag—so she didn't breathe a sound.

The deep wound in her side throbbed; infection ran rampant beneath her skin, festering in her veins, ready to strike out at the first sign of weakness. Her breathing was raspy and rattling, and occasionally, her breath would hitch, once, twice, blood coagulating on her tongue and Sakura knew it was because something had hit her lungs.

The Yakuza had been frantic at the end, scrabbling at her thighs to catch any inch of her, to harm her in any way possible, and by the way her vision was fuzzy, and how she was struggling to land one foot in front of the other—slow acting poison, she was sure—he had made that last hit a good one.

Almost there, she thought to herself as she spied the edges of Konoha's wall. Almost there, she repeated, her fingers trembling with exertion at the way her body moved quickly and soundlessly through the trees.

Her vision blackened for a moment, white spots dancing in front of her eyes and her food slipped. She wheezed, louder than she should have, as a branch smacked her in the middle of her chest, her entire body crumbling as her hands jerked away from the branch she had been grasping above her.

Kaizo, she thought sparingly as she urged herself up, biting down on her lip so hard she drew blood, would have laughed himself sick at my clumsiness.

Even in her mind, the humor fell flat, sickening in the legacy Kaizo had left behind. Kaizo who was sweet and kind, who never failed to bring a smile to others' faces, Kaizo who had managed to make even Boar-Taichou chuckle, although Sakura was sure that in hearing those throaty echoes, her lifespan had been shortened twice over.

Kaizo is dead, she thought despairingly, trying to blink away the tears that threatened to overcome her. Dead, dead, dead.

She'd had to leave him in a mess of his own guts; sliced limbs and a butchered face, eyes hanging out of their sockets. A bloody, gory mess of what used to be, and what could have been. She'd choked on her nausea when she'd seen him there—a mountain of blood and chalky-white bone, sticking up at odds and ends—and had heaved before she had to hightail out of the yakuza's base with a speed she hadn't used since she had been a genin and in Team Seven, twisting away from Sasuke's sharp fists.

Sakura bit down on a sob at the memory of her teammate's glazed, glassy eyes and pale skin, blood pooling around him. She had tried at first—to scoop up the intestines and clutch at the decapitated head—to put him into a sealing scroll marked for desiccated ANBU bodies; but she had heard the skitter of incoming footsteps and chatter of impending voices and she'd had to leave his remains, hands stained with blood, gore sticky underneath her fingernails and leap out of the compound.

It had taken her more than a month to get to the edges of the land of Iron, during the course of which, she'd taken it upon herself to hunt down the men who dared to follow her. She'd left them in messy piles of blood, choking on their spines; but there were still some who had managed to clip her and one particularly skilled yakuza had carved the two thick, twisting wounds that crawled down her throat and temple.

She had been blinded by the blood, the trauma of the wound on her neck—a twisted, mockery of a lightning bolt with echoes of the chidori she remembered Kakashi-sensei using—and that of the one that inched down her temple, curving through her cheek, ending at the edge of her mouth. Once she'd recovered, spending three agonizing days groaning into the mud, she had jerked herself awake and made herself move.

Sakura had promised herself she wouldn't end up home in a body bag, and she wouldn't.

Almost—Almost there, Sakura. She thought again, and a breathless smile curved her face as she came nearer and nearer to Konoha's safe walls. If she squinted, she could even see the guards at the base of the two doors.

As she leaped from branch to branch, she noted that her knees were getting weaker. The constant strain of movement and the fact that she had barely rested four days was making her head woozy and blinking black spots fill her eyes. As her eyes fluttered dangerously, she was glad that she could see the red of the Uzushio spiral.

Please let me make it. Please, please, please. She begged some foreign kami, they're waiting for me.

It took her long—too long—to stumble onto the paved path that led her to Konoha. Her breath hitched painfully in her lungs, the jarring of the wound at her side making her breath shorter and shorter and the nasty, pasty scabbed wounds on her face and neck pulsed with dirt, infection and sweat.

It hurt too much when she dropped from the trees to the ground, the painful jolt of her side, the way she could feel how her wounds were slowly but surely tearing more of her skin apart, but she hobbled as quickly as she could, making her way to her village as soundlessly and easily as possible.

As she stepped inside the gates, she saw the shocked-white faces of the guards and the only thought she had before the edging black at her vision finally took over, was that the guards must have been happy to see her if they were rushing to catch her.

Again: Author's Notes: This is the RE-UPLOAD of the first chapter. Read everything again when I am finished because I will add and take away new and old parts.

Enjoy!