I spun away from the maze of broken memories I’d been trying to piece back together to find her floating in the darkness with me, a worried frown on her face.
“Hinata? Wait, how the hell did you get in here?”
“All your defenses opened for me,” she said thoughtfully. “I had only meant to knock at your door, to get your attention. But nothing ever tried to stop me, and I could feel where you were. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Oh,” I said dumbly. Well, it was true that I didn’t really mind her being here, and my defenses were still rather shattered. But even so, that was very odd indeed.
“Hinata? What were we to each other?” I asked hesitantly. “I keep having these… feelings…”
“We’ve barely met, Sakura,” she said gently. “Whatever relationship you had must have been with the version of me in your loop. But apparently she and I are so alike that your reflexes mistake me for her, and I must admit I find that intriguing. I’ve been alone for so very long now, but… partners should be close, should they not?”
“I’ve always thought so,” I agreed. “I’d like that, very much. Just don’t hesitate to tell me if I get carried away, alright? I keep getting these flashes of… well, let’s just say your family must have been scandalized.”
She smiled faintly. “They often are. But I came here out of concern. What is this place, and why do you find the need to spend so much time here?”
I sighed. “This is me,” I said with a wave to the patterns of light around us. “The little glows are my memories. The patterns they form describe my personality. Sasuke told me to regain my full strength, so I’ve been trying to fix what I can. But I lost my true name somewhere along the way, and without knowing that it’s hard to get anywhere.”
“I can well imagine,” Hinata replied. “I don’t understand why Sasuke was so harsh with you. My own training was no more than a dozen sessions, once he realized he couldn’t erase my love for Naruto.”
I shrugged. “I guess I was really evil or something. Wait, you still love Naruto?”
“Oh, yes,” she said sadly. “I always will. But the man I love doesn’t exist anymore. We had fifteen beautiful years together, after I finally found a way to stop the invasion and win his heart at the same time. He defeated Pein and Madara, became the Sixth Hokage, even united the Elemental Nations. And I was his wife. We had five children together, three sons and two daughters. Little Maya had just entered the academy…”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “What happened?”
“The Kyuubi’s chakra finally killed him,” she said. “We knew his resistance was weakening, but there was always one more threat that only he could face. Then one day we were trying to seal the No-Tail Beast again, and he had to call out a fifth tail of the Kyuubi’s chakra, and it just… ate him.” She bowed her head, and a single tear ran down her cheek.
“To my shame, I was blinded by my grief,” she went on. “The No-Tail killed me in my distraction, and the loop reset, and… and now my children are gone, my husband is gone, everything is lost to me. That wonderful little boy you call Naruto? I can’t see the man I love in him. Not the one in my world, or in Sasuke’s, or even the one that loops like we do. The Naruto I love is the man who gave me my family, and he… never existed.”
It felt so natural to hold Hinata in my arms that it didn’t even occur to me how improper the Hyuuga would consider it until she was safely cradled in my lap. But she didn’t object. She leaned into me, and let me hold her for long minutes while the tears ran down her cheeks.
It did not escape me that when Sasuke found he couldn’t destroy her love for Naruto, attacking her ability to recognize him would be an obvious fallback plan. I was quite surprised to discover that being dedicated to serving my master didn’t prevent me from hating him.
Eventually Hinata stirred, and wiped away her tears. “I apologize,” she said softly. “I came here to help you, not to burden you with my own cares.”
“It’s alright, Hinata,” I reassured her. “I don’t mind. Besides, I’m not sure there’s anything you can do for me.”
“Oh, but there is,” she insisted. “You said you’ve lost your name, didn’t you? Well, here.”
She pulled my summoning contract out of her sleeve, and handed it to me.
I gaped at her. “But… I thought Sasuke had my contract?”
She shook her head. “No. He didn’t want to risk signing it, and without that connection he was unable to claim it. But I duplicated that trick Orochimaru uses to carry the Kusanagi long ago, so it was easy enough to take it with me when I reset. I lack your masterful touch with the sealing arts, but I’m certain the central figure of this contract must be your name.”
She unrolled the scroll, and I noted with irritation that there were quite a few signatures there I’d never wanted. Nagato was bad enough, but the name Yugito appeared four times. Wasn’t that the Nekomata’s jinchuuriki?
Then she reached the seals of the contract proper, and I leaned closer. The neatly organized shapes were as familiar as the back of my hand, and to my relief I found that I could read them as easily as ever. There were some flourishes that were quite different than the Toad Contract that Jiraiya had used as an illustration when we’d discussed this back on my mountain, but I could follow most of them. And there in the center of the array was a symbol Jiraiya hadn’t taught me.
Sakura.
Artful elegance and lighting calculation. Passionate love and brutal violence. A million ephemeral splashes of color weaving a dance of contradictions as eternal as time itself. Me.
I pulled Hinata into a hug and kissed her soundly before I realized that was probably overstepping my bounds. Fortunately by the time I stopped she was too dazed to be mad.
“Your kisses are dangerous,” she told me with a faint smile. “But my heart is taken, so please don’t do that again.”
“I can’t make any promises,” I said playfully. “You’re just to kissable to resist. Oh, thank you, Hinata! I think you’ve just saved me.”
Sasuke’s transformation template was much harder than I’d expected. Partly that was because I’d never done it for a man before, and that made enough of a difference to throw things off. It didn’t help that he had some crappy hack job of an enhancement set already, which I had to reverse-engineer and rationalize and then integrate with my own modifications. But what really slowed me down was the fact that it was so nerve-wracking being around him.
I so wanted to do well, to impress him and be useful and show that I was really truly a good girl now. The need was a burning ache that would have been a wonderfully effective motivational tool if I hadn’t found myself terrified out of my mind whenever he looked the slightest bit unhappy. But Sasuke has never been a cheery person, so I frequently had cause to be glad for my ability to consciously control my physical reactions. I’m not sure what he would have done if he’d noticed me cringing and trembling with fear all the time, but I don’t think it would have been pretty.
When the transformation was finally done Sasuke spent a couple of days sparring with Hinata to get used to it. I was amazed at how good he was, especially since I vaguely remembered beating him once before. But that was when I had a phenomenally superhuman body to work with, and his was just well-trained. Now when he activated his cursed seal he could almost match Hinata at taijutsu, and they were both much better than me.
Being the team weakling again really grated on me, but Sasuke wasn’t concerned.
“You were never suited to being a serious combatant, Sakura,” he told me one day. “The fact that you aren’t helpless anymore is convenient, but you’ll never be capable of meeting a serious enemy head-on. Your strength is your intellect, and your role is always to support the rest of your team. You should only engage a foe directly when you can easily neutralize them by exploiting some weakness.”