heritage

Chapter Nine: Consequence

Dear Naruto,

You are from the main branch of the Uzumaki, so we carry different burdens. Yours is to lead and keep the Great Sage's children safe. Mine is to protect and send the dead to the Pure Lands. We are all that's left, Naruto. Be strong for me. I can already hear the kami singing from the hōnden.

—Sakura

—

"The ground has been drenched in Uzumaki blood."

Sakura wishes this was a nightmare. Wishes she could wake up screaming. Because at least then, she would be rid of them. At least then, she could move on.

Beloved...

The voices call again, pleading and sorrowful. Sakura shakes, vision blurry with tears. How could they? Call her 'Beloved' after everything that has happened? The scars covering her chest and back ache, stinging with pain. It would have been easier to forgive them if they had never come back. The thought burns through her mind, begging to be said. But what good would it do?

Her eyes feel hot, her chest rattling with each breath. She forces her eyelids closed, ignoring Fū and digging deep into the wrath flaring up from her chest. Her tongue is burning with horrible, horrible things.

Sakura breathes in deeply, unable to help the sniffle that comes afterward. Her teeth bite into her tongue, the metallic tang of blood filling her mouth. After all, what could she say? For all the voices professed to love her, the deed was done. Irreversible. And beyond that; they were kami. Fickle as a spinning coin.

You.

The voices speak all together. The music slows, leaving a scant few string instruments building a sense of suspense.

"What are you?!" Fū shouts into the room, the anger and emotion in his voice sounding more real than any of the masks he had worn so far. The noise coming from his direction tells Sakura that the shinobi has jumped to his feet. The sound of metal against fabric tells Sakura that he has even drawn a weapon.

She opens her eyes, vision obscured by the tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. She ignores them, intentionally looking past the blurry sight of Fū in his panicked stance. She locks her gaze onto the clock. That perfect, pristine clock.

She watches as the hour hand stiffens before falling from its place, hanging to point at the six.

Fū is not a threat anymore. From the moment the music began, he had lost his advantage. No shinobi currently alive was strong enough to even put up a decent fight against beings stronger than the Tailed Beasts. After all, the kami do not call Sakura by name. They call her Beloved.

She watches the beginnings of a spider web crack appear in the glass as the kami's choir of voices thunder into the air.

You do not belong here.

Their voices lack the warmth she is used to hearing when they speak to her. It is alien, to hear their voices so cruel. Have they always been this way? She wonders briefly. And then, she hears screaming.

The music reaches a crescendo.

The minute hand ticks twice.

Everything shifts.

Sakura lunges upward with a gasp, eyes fluttering open. She coughs, forcing herself to stand in the shallow water. It reaches to her ankles, soaking the cuffs of her pants. The ground below the water is made of sand, soft and easily parting around her foot as she shifts her weight and sinks slightly deeper. The sticky feeling from Fū's fabricated world is gone from her skin, replaced with a cool, dry breeze that smells of salt.