夢

Bonus Chapter

"--Sakura, wake up."

She is shaken awake by soft palms and calloused, padded fingertips. She flips around in bed, letting out a grunt into a mattress she never remembered sleeping on before (with the village being new, resources were cheap, including bed matresses). She sits up, gabbling sheets she never saw before--they used to be a dark purple, but were now a patterned black and red--and turns to see a woman. 

A raven haired woman, with onyx eyes and a scar running down her left temple. Familiar. But the expression on her face--a relaxed, amused smile on her face--was foreign. 

"Miyako? Is that you?"

The woman laughs, her broad shoulders shaking. "Of course it's me, Sakura. Come on, let's eat breakfast."

"What happened?" She asked, rubbing her eyes and yawning. How could this happen? Miyako, the night before, had been emotionless as ever, only managing a smirk or a small smile every so often. Yet here the woman was, with a scar on her face, and a wide smile on her face, as though it had always been there. 

"What do you mean?" The woman leaned closer and held her shoulders. "You alright? Let's go eat, Sakura."

Sakura. A name she hasn't heard in a long time. 

Sakura nods and gets out of the bed, walking out the room and past a mirror--to which she looks in, only to find her disguise gone. Her pink, pastel hair is back, and her emerald eyes are gleaming as bright as ever. She's suddenly awake. 

"Wh-What happened to my--"

"Sakura, you got rid of your genjutu a year ago," the woman laughs. "Are you alright? Do you have a fever?"

"A year ago?" She mumbles. She kept the genjutsu on the entire time, and not once did she let it falter. 

"Sakura?"

There she stands in the hallway of their apartment, the one they've had for five years, yet glances at it as though it is someplace foreign. There she stands, not recognizing the clothes she's wearing and the woman before her. 

"Am I dreaming?"

"No." The smile on Miyako's face drops. "Wha--"

"What day is it?"

"Third of January, why?"

"What year? How long has it been since we traveled back in time?"

Miyako pondered. "Hm...that's quite a long time, I'll say...a decade or so, maybe? I--"

"What happened?"

"What? In those ten years?"

Sakura Haruno stays silent, holding out a hand before her. It's still calloused, it's still hers, yet it has more scars than she can imagine. Down by her thigh, she sees a big mark, a huge circle, as though something had plowed straight through flesh and bone. The skin is still pink, and upon resting her weight, she finally realizes the small ache in that limb--the ache she hadn't noticed in her panic, up until now. 

"Wh-Where's Hideki and Satoshi?"

"Oh, they're at the pond, I'll bring you there," Miyako marches forward, grabbing Sakura's arm with a gentle embrace, and pulls her down the hallway. "After we eat breakfast, alright? We were supposed to meet them anyway."

Sakura sits down at a dining table she can't remember buying, and catches sight of couches, windows, even curtains she hasn't seen just yet. She watches as Miyako dives into the kitchen, preparing two plates and settling an already-prepared set of waffles and syrup onto two plates. Sakura watches a soft smile forms as the woman absentmindedly messes around with the chocolate chips and the syrup.