Journey Back In Time

Interlude: Keep Going, Keep Fighting

I refused to open my eyes.

But I knew I wasn't dead. I knew I was back in the white space because I didn't feel my bones shatter into pieces when I was supposedly about to die from that fall. The bracelet must have gotten me back here before I hit the ground. Hell, I could've saved myself. Even so, I refused to open my eyes.

My head was kept buried into my knees as I sat on the nothingness of the time-space. My skin was tainted with wet tears and I could feel snot slowly dripping from my nose. Not that I cared.

"Sarada."

It was that anonymous voice again. Really, I'm not in the mood to talk. On second thought, maybe my mind was going crazy and the voice wasn't real after all.

"Sarada."

Uh, nope. It was definitely real. Just as real as the fact that my body was still trembling and the image of my insane father was still imprinted in my mind. I'm not so much as angry as just feeling rather confused.

I take it back when I thought that I was ready for anything. No one could've been ready for this. No one.

"Go away, you creep." I said, managing to force some ugly words out of my mouth. But as soon as I spoke, I felt myself beginning to break even more. "None of this is even real. I need to go back home."

".. This is real." My heart dropped as the voice reminded me of this harsh reality. Dammit, I was having a moment. I let out a tiny whimper before I felt the waterworks starting up again.

"You have to keep going. There's no other way."

"I have to go home." I said again, probably still in denial, in hopes that this weird anonymous being would know how to get me out of here.

"Everything you see is only a small portion of a bigger scenario" It said. "The time-space only gives you fragments of many different pieces. You're not going to leave with every single detail covered, but you can't leave like this. You have to continue."

I don't want to see more.

Of course, I knew what it meant. After all, I came here to figure out the history of my entire family. I'm getting what I was looking for. But after seeing that last time-point.. who knew if there were more fucked up things to come.

"You came to decipher your family's history, right?"

The voice read my thoughts as if I had been speaking with them. Slowly, I looked up from my closed position, red faced, staring into the nothingness of where I thought the sound was coming from.

"You interfered with a battle, Sarada, and it could've led to severe consequences." The voice continued. "But thankfully no one died and you didn't change much. Everything afterwards still remained the same."

Well. I take it that's a good thing. Not that I really wanted to stick around to see what happened next.

".. I promise you you're not seeing anything right now. You have to keep going."

I took a long, staggered breath. I was scared of so many things. Of time, of death, of the truth.

But I knew the voice was right. I'll never fully know unless I keep fighting.

It's just my thoughts would always run back to my father's vivid image inside of my head. The way he charged towards my mother like she meant nothing to him, the way he charged towards me, a complete stranger to him.

Nothing made sense. But I had to start somewhere. I'm going to be the future Hokage, after all. I need to connect with as many people as I possibly could.

And in order to do that, no matter how dirty or dark it is, I have to start with my family.