Towairaito

Chapter II

"If love is just a word, then why does it hurt so much if you realize it isn't there?"– Sabaku no Gaara

Haruno Sakura woke up with a gasp, expecting to be covered in filthy grime, pungent sweat, and the blood of her comrades and enemies, alike. She wiggled her limbs, anticipating the soreness of her muscles and the stiffness of her bones.

Nothing. She felt nothing. Sakura remembered feeling nothing when she came back from an especially weary mission with blood on her hands. The blood of a hopeful child, the blood of a loving mother, the blood of an innocent soul. It was the same type of nothing she had felt when her best friend had died and all Sakura's tears had dried up. Once upon a time, the feeling had been novel, but after Danzo became Hokage and the war started, the sensation was more of a general occurrence.

As Sakura moved to get up, she noticed she was snuggled in soft, pink sheets, with a comfy pillow lying under her throbbing head. Sakura couldn't remember the last time she felt something so soft and warm.

Where am I?

The pinkette unsteadily stood up on her wobbly legs and looked at the bright room around her. It was a small room that contained a futon, a table, and several kid toys. A calendar lay next to a door, which led to what Sakura assumed was the bathroom.

Abruptly, she felt a sudden urge to throw up.

Quickly running past the stuffed animals lounging on the ground, Sakura wrenched open the door to the bathroom and hurled into the toilet. Once she was done dry heaving, the kunoichi steadied her breaths and pressed her hands to her pounding head. The pain grew and grew until the pinkette sank to her knees and choked at the sharp hammering in her temples. She curled into a ball on the tile floor, silently withering at the agony in her head, hoping, wishing, that it would stop.

Suddenly, an onslaught of memories invaded Sakura's head as the spasms subsided.

Obito.

Kaguya.

Sasuke-kun.

Naruto.

Kakashi-sensei.

Where were they? What happened?

Sakura was standing behind a kneeling Obito with her hands resting on his broad shoulders. The kunoichi's Byakugō no In was unlocked as she transferred prodigious amounts of chakra into Obito's pathways. Kaguya had trapped Sasuke in another dimension, and Obito was using his Mangekyou Sharingan to open the portal in hopes of getting Sasuke back to the mountainous core realm with Naruto.

Beads of sweat gathered on Sakura's face as Obito opened yet another portal. The air got distorted and gradually a circular entrance to the desert dimension opened. Instantly, hot air blasted into the kunoichi's face, and vast gray dunes of sand stared back at her. In the distance, Sakura saw a small black figure.

"Sasuke-kun! Sasuke-kun!" Sasuke's body whipped around to face the open portal and he swiftly started running towards them. "Over here! Hurry!"

Sakura felt her chakra speedily deplete as she struggled not to faint. Obito's eyes were bleeding and the portal was steadily closing. They just needed to hang in there a little while longer. Sasuke was so close. Sakura clenched her teeth and pushed even more chakra to Obito, sucking her reserves dry. "Sasuke! No. Sasuke-kun! Hurry. Run faster. Faster!"

The circular opening rapidly started receding in size, until all that was left was a mere dot in the air.

The image of Sasuke's fingers reaching towards the portal, reaching towards her, would always be engraved in Sakura's mind, because in the end, Sasuke didn't make it through the portal.

She had failed.

"NO! DAMMIT SASUKE! Why didn't you make it? WHY? Why do I have such little chakra? WHY? Tell me! GODDAMMIT! TELL ME!" Sakura's shrill wails rang through the dimension with startling ferocity and she heard Obito's body slump forward as he fainted.

Tears were pooling in Sakura's eyes and she had trouble keeping them open. She felt as if all her energy had been sucked completely dry, and she was empty.

Again.

Sakura knew she had to keep her eyes open. If she closed them, they would never open again, but Sakura was tired, so, so tired, tired of the war, tired of the metallic scent of blood, tired of the nauseating hate that seeped into her pores.

So seventeen-year-old Haruno Sakura closed her eyes with a sense of peace and fell backward with her chakra completely drained.

The pinkette half-expected Sasuke to be standing behind her, catching her with a tired, but arrogant smirk resting on his handsome face.

However, Sasuke was still trapped in the desert dimension and Sakura fell to the ground with a soft 'thump', giving in to the darkness around her with a gentle smile.

Chakra exhaustion certainly wasn't too heroic of a way to die, but Sakura was fine with it because she would finally be free, free from her wretched life.

How ironic it was, 'I'm dying the same way Tsunade-shishou died. Chakra exhaustion. Heh, I guess I'll see you in the afterlife Shishou.'

Sakura never reached the afterlife.

Byakugō no In: Strength of a Hundred Seal