Chapter Text
On her twenty-fifth birthday, Sakura blew up.
That hadn't been the plan, obviously. The plan had been to spend the day at the hospital getting just enough done so that she could allow Ino to drag her to the bar that evening. She'd even had a dress picked out, and had looked forward to spending a night having fun like a normal, non-workaholic girl.
But then she'd gotten distracted by the box of dusty old scrolls she'd discovered in one of the hospital's storage rooms, and that had led her to what turned out to be a very unwise decision. She'd held up a particularly curious-looking scroll tied with a purple ribbon and used a kunai to cut it open. When she unrolled it and brushed off the dust, a seal with a lotus drawing had flared, and before Sakura had been able to say more than "Fu—", everything exploded around her.
It was just that kind of day, apparently.
The sound of the explosion filled her head with a droning ring, and she flinched, holding her arms up in front of her face. Surprisingly, the blast of heat that hit her didn't actually hurt, but what followed it was the sensation of all the air being sucked out of the room. Sakura opened her mouth to gasp and got nothing, and then, before she could properly panic, there was a popping noise and a rush of smoky air that filled her screaming lungs, sending her into a fit of coughs.
As the ringing in her ears began to subside slightly, she heard the sound of yelling and, nearby, that of a man coughing like she was. As the smoke began to clear, Sakura noticed three things in rapid succession.
For one thing, she wasn't in the hospital anymore. In fact, she seemed to be in the Hokage's office... even if it did look neater than she was used to seeing it.
For a second thing, a full contingent of ANBU agents stood around her, weapons drawn, shouting at her to keep her hands up.
And then there was the third thing, and that was the inarguable fact that the nearby man, when he stopped coughing, turned out to be none other than Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Third Hokage—who had been dead for over a decade.
Blinking, Sakura went to raise her hands, unmindful of the kunai that she still held that she'd used to cut open the ties of the scroll. She realized her mistake too late as the black ops agent to her left barked, "Weapon!" Sakura barely registered the sound of displaced air behind her before she received a sharp blow to the back of her head, knocking her down.
She didn't even have time to wonder what the hell had happened before everything went black.
It wasn't just her throbbing head that woke Sakura, but the feeling of being unable to move her arms. Frowning, she opened her eyes slightly, trying to figure out where she was. She was on a bed—a hospital bed, judging from the railings that her wrists were cuffed to. The room looked like one of the usual patient rooms that she walked in and out of every day, but the walls were a different color than she was used to them being. The other bed in the room was empty. At the door, a masked ANBU operative stood.
Seeing the operative brought everything rushing back to her. She hadn't imagined it—after the explosion, she'd seen the Third Hokage, looking the same as he had when she was still just a child training to be a ninja. Now she seemed to be in Konoha's hospital, but with a new coat of paint. What the hell was going on? Had the explosion done something to her—caused her to hallucinate, maybe? Could this all be in her head?
Sakura scowled. That couldn't be it. Why on earth would she imagine the Third Hokage?
That left only one possibility—and Sakura wasn't ready to consider whether she had just fallen backward in time.
She wouldn't focus on that now. Instead, frustrated and unable to resist the urge to test her bonds, Sakura tried to summon her chakra to use her monstrous strength to break the cuffs, but she soon found that she couldn't access her chakra at all. The cuffs were clearly more than the simple metal they appeared to be.
"Hey!" came the somewhat flustered voice of the ANBU agent at the door. "You can't break those!" he said, reaching out even as the door behind him opened.
"Calm down, Sparrow," came the gruff voice of the Third Hokage as he entered the room, gesturing for the ANBU agent—Sparrow, apparently—to relax. "She's not going to fight. Are you?" he asked, directing the last part towards Sakura.
Something about facing him made Sakura feel like she was twelve again, and she immediately and obediently said, "No, of course not." She ignored the part where she was actually feeling pretty fight-y. That wouldn't be helpful at the moment.
The Third Hokage smiled. Nodding toward Sparrow, he said, "Leave us, please."
Sparrow straightened slightly, like he wanted to argue, but instead he gave a meek, "Yes, Lord Third," and proceeded out through the door the Third Hokage had entered through.
That left them alone, which surprised Sakura. After all, she'd just exploded into his office with a weapon. What surprised her even more, though, was when he seemingly read her mind as he turned and said, "You're wondering why I trust you enough to be alone with you."
Startled into honesty, Sakura replied, "Well, I did just blow up in your office."
The Third Hokage gave a low chuckle as he approached her bed. "Yes. With a kunai in your hand." Pausing once he was even with her hip, he peered down at her. "I didn't imagine it. You have the same seal as Tsunade. How do you know her?"
Sakura's mind raced. Obviously, she wanted the Third Hokage to trust her, not the least because she wanted to get out of those damned cuffs. But could she tell him who she was? She really needed to be careful if she had, in fact, traveled backward through time. If he learned of things from the future, and acted on them, that could change everything—Sakura didn't want to think of how bad that could get. As the Third Hokage's eyes narrowed at her silence, she finally said, "I'm sorry, Lord Third. I want to answer you, but I don't know if I should."
His eyes remained narrow. "Are you from Konoha?"
"Yes," she answered quickly. She felt safe telling him that much.
"And you're a kunoichi—yet I don't know you. But you know me," he mused. He took a long, slow breath, sighing through the exhale, and then said, "Tell me how you made it past the wards into my office."
Maybe it was safe to tell him that much. "I came across a scroll. It was tied with a purple ribbon and had a complicated seal inside—"
"Shit," the Third Hokage said ineloquently, interrupting Sakura and shocking her into silence. She knew she shouldn't be shocked that a grown man could say a coarse word, but there was just something about seeing Lord Third say it. It was like seeing one of your parents naked.
Looking like he already knew what her answer would be, he asked, "Did the seal have a lotus in the middle of it?"
The seal had been obscured with dust before she'd brushed it off, but she'd gotten a pretty good glimpse of it before it had exploded. "I think so."
"Shit," the Third Hokage said again.
If Sakura hadn't been cuffed to the bed, she would have clapped her hands to her mouth. As it was, she merely jerked ineffectually against the cuffs, leaving her mouth uncovered, which left it free to release an obnoxious giggle. When he looked at her with raised brows, she said, "I'm sorry, I just—I wasn't expecting you to say that."
He let out another one of those world-weary sighs, and Sakura fell silent again, feeling as if she'd been scolded, even though he'd said nothing. When he spoke again, his voice was more tired than before. "I'm going to take a few guesses, and I'd like you to tell me if I'm correct."
She thought that would be okay—she shouldn't destroy any timelines doing that. After all, she wouldn't be telling him anything he hadn't already guessed. "Okay."
Shuffling to the side, the Third Hokage sat on the edge of the empty bed next to hers. Sitting, he looked smaller—older. He looked thoughtfully at her for a moment before saying, "You're a student of Senju Tsunade."
"That's correct," Sakura answered.
"Only, Tsunade doesn't have any students outside of Shizune. I would know if she'd taken anyone else on." The creases in his face seemed to deepen as he sighed again and said, "And then there's the matter of the time travel scroll."
The bottom of Sakura's stomach fell out. Even though she'd already surmised that she had managed to travel through time, hearing it actually spoken aloud was something else. It made it more real. Overwhelmed, she didn't speak.
"If you came here through the scroll, and you're a student of Tsunade's, that means you're from the future." Lifting a weathered hand, the Third Hokage smoothed it across his brow, as if he were trying and failing to remove the lines in it.
"I think so," Sakura said in a small voice.
"Are you alive during this time?" he asked.
Trying to judge his apparent age, Sakura finally asked, "What year is it?"
When he told her, the pit in her stomach grew. This was really happening. "I'm a student in the academy this year. I'd be eleven," she said after doing the math.
Sliding his hand from his brow down to his chin, he mumbled, "Yes. Pink hair—the Haruno girl."
Surprised that he knew her, she said, "Yes. I'm Haruno Sakura."
Looking at her, he asked, "And how old are you in your time?"
"I'm twenty-five," she said, leaving out the part where it was actually her birthday—her incredibly awful, horribly unlucky birthday.
"So, you can tell me about everything that happens over the next fourteen years," he mused, a piercing light in his eyes.
Sakura swallowed. That didn't seem like such a good idea. "…Yes."
Standing, the Third Hokage produced a key from somewhere amongst the folds of his robe. "Let's get you out of those cuffs and back to my office. We have a lot to discuss."
Back in the Hokage's office, Sakura absently rubbed her wrists. While she'd taken the time to heal the lump on her head where one of the ANBU agents had struck her, she hadn't bothered with the sore spots where the cuffs had rubbed her. She watched as the Third Hokage placed the cuffs he'd removed on his desk.
Turning, he walked back toward her, squinting at her as he came to a stop a few feet from her chair. Sakura opened her mouth to say something, but ended up saying nothing as he abruptly turned on his heel and meandered in the other direction. She blinked, watching as he slowly paced the length of his office.
Finally, he stopped, harrumphed thoughtfully to himself, and then walked straight over to the window. Opening it, he walked back over to his desk. As he began to write something, a small hawk fluttered into the open window. Straightening, the Third Hokage turned and fastened a small piece of paper to the hawk's leg. When that was done, he shooed it out the window, and it flew off.
Closing the window, he cleared his throat and then finally turned to face Sakura again. "Sakura—may I call you Sakura?" She nodded, and he continued, "Sakura, I'd like to share something with you."
When he didn't immediately continue, Sakura grasped for words and ended up saying, "I'd be honored, Lord Third."
Pausing, he gave her a slight frown, as if he didn't believe her obsequiousness. However, he didn't mention it as he finally continued. "There's something you should know about me. I'm not very good with seals. All of the seals that I have successfully used in my career were developed by the Second Hokage. The ones that I developed..."
When he trailed off, Sakura waited for a moment, finally prompting, "Lord Third?"
Giving a single embarrassed cough, he said, "Well, the ones that I made rarely worked, and when they did, they usually did something other than they were supposed to."
Oh. Sakura was beginning to get it, now. "Am I correct in guessing that the seal that I accidentally triggered was one of yours?"
The Third Hokage winced slightly. "I'm afraid so."
Sakura hesitated for a moment before asking, "What was the scroll supposed to do?"
He sighed. "Not that." Resuming his pacing, he said, "Figuring out what went wrong is going to be the key to getting you back to your own time. And I will get you back—it just might take a little while." His voice on that last part was way more sheepish than she was used to any Hokage being.
The sincerity in his voice as he promised to get her back to her own time was what finally drove it home—she was stuck there, in the past, and there was no telling when she would get back home. All of her friends were children. Her family would only know her as an eleven-year-old. More importantly, if she wanted to keep from telling anyone about the future, she had to avoid them all. She would be alone. Sakura turned her face slightly away from the Hokage, feeling the sudden embarrassing sting of tears in her eyes, which she quickly blinked away.
There were footsteps beside her, and then the Third Hokage rested his hand on her shoulder. Sakura looked up at him, glad that none of her tears had actually spilled, and he gave her a kind smile.
"Sakura, I have something else to ask you," he said. "How annoying can you be?"
Sakura's eyebrows raised slightly at the sudden change of subject. "...Annoying?" She frowned slightly, remembering a young Sasuke calling her that very thing.
"Perhaps annoying isn't the right word," he said, withdrawing his hand and folding them both behind him. Looking thoughtfully into the distance, he continued, "Encouraging, maybe?"
Sakura only looked at him in complete confusion.
He chuckled slightly at her expression. "I need you to keep out of trouble while you're here. However, you are a Konoha ninja, and a ninja does best when they have a job to do," he said with the kind of assurance of someone who has repeated something enough times to believe it.
A job? "I'm a medic nin," she offered. "And you know I have Tsunade's seal, so I can fight, too."
He waved a hand carelessly. "You won't be needing that. Your job will be much simpler. I'm going to introduce you to one of my jonin. He's quite a bit older than you in this time, and he's been in ANBU for years, so he won't know your childhood self. I'm going to tell him to keep an eye on you until you return home. And you… well, you are going to convince him that he needs to become a teacher."
Sakura was beginning to have that sinking feeling in her stomach again—the feeling that things were about to go from weird to weirder. Before she could say anything, there was a knock at the door, and the Third Hokage called out his permission to enter. As a certain very familiar, spiky-headed figure in jonin blues slouched into the room, the Third Hokage beamed.
"Sakura, let me introduce you to the shinobi who will be your guide while you're here. This is Hatake Kakashi."
And the masked man who was her future sensei—and her future Hokage—fixed her with one disinterested eye and said, "Yo."