It was enough like what Sasuke had done to turn my stomach. After so many months of what might as well be brainwashing it was entirely possible that Hinata’s obsession with Naruto was the only reason she cared about morality any more. She’d worshipped my demon almost as much as she did him by then.
Except that in the end she’d turned on her dark mistress to side with me. No, she’d known all along what was happening to her, and jumped at the first chance of escaping. Kami, but she was strong.
I released her wrists, and ran a gentle hand through her hair. “I can do that for you, my love.”
“Promise?” She asked. “Because I’m not sure I could handle it, if we picked up where we left off and then you got tired of me in a few months.”
“I promise, Hinata. If you can’t control yourself, I will control you. If you don’t know what to do, I will tell you. If you want to remember how to be sweet and kind and gentle again, I will help you. You can borrow my strength when you need it, and as long as you keep trying I will never give up on you. I love you, and I will see you whole again no matter what it takes.”
A familiar sense of finality settled around me, and I blinked in surprise. “Um, and apparently my promises to you are binding, so it’s a good thing I meant that.”
She smiled shyly. “Celestials can’t break their word, supposedly. I guess you got some of that along with the aspects.”
My reply was cut short by the tug of Naruto’s summoning.
“Oh, here we go,” I said, pulling Hinata into a tight embrace. “Hold on tight, sweetie. I don’t think you can get stuck between worlds, but I’m not taking any chances.”
I closed my eyes and let go of my surroundings as the second tug came, and we were yanked away together.
“Sakura? Did it work this time?”
I opened my eyes to Naruto’s face, and smiled. “Yes, I’m the real me now. I take it your technique isn’t completely reliable?”
He sat back with a frown. “Yeah. Some loops it doesn’t work at all, and when it does it always takes two or three tries.”
I sat up and stretched, grimacing at the sluggish weakness of my original body. My chakra coils were so underdeveloped I’d probably fry them if I tried any significant ninjutsu, and I couldn’t even boost myself without mangling feeble muscles and twig-like bones. I absently transformed myself to a more bearable state as I thought out loud.
“Ug. I hate waking up like this. Um, maybe our timelines aren’t perfectly in sync? I have to make an effort to let the summon grab me, so it’s usually the second or third time I feel it that I actually get pulled here.”
“That makes sense,” he nodded, but he still looked unusually serious. I sighed, and put up a sound barrier.
“Ok, no one will hear us now. What did you want to yell at me about?”
He sighed. “I know it’s not fair to blame you for what this demon version of you did, Sakura. It’s just, damn it, she stole Hinata’s soul! What are we going to do about that? I can’t even begin to see a way to make it right. Can’t you just let her go, or something?”
Well, that killed my mood. “She died, Naruto,” I replied glumly. “I think I could let her go if I tried, but her soul would go on to the afterlife. We’d never see her again.”
“I was afraid of that.” He lurched to his feet and started pacing. “What was that crazy bitch thinking? Tell me you at least killed her.”
“Actually, I passed out after I ripped out her… um… demonic essence, I guess you’d call it. Both our minds were pretty shredded in the process, and by the time I woke up all three versions of me had pretty much merged. So if you want to blame me for this I don’t think I can argue the point.”
He stared at me. “You… but… gah! What do I even say to that? Why does everything you get involved in turn into such a mindfuck, Sakura?”
I sighed. “I’m sorry, Naruto. Look, I’m not happy about it either, but it’s really not as bad as it sounds. She’s still here with me, and I can lend her my body or make a clone for her to inhabit whenever I want.”
“Yeah, great,” he said harshly. “Can you give her back her own body, with Byakugan eyes and everything? Can you make it so there’s only one of her again, so we don’t end up with two Hinata’s murdering each other to get me all to themselves? You can’t fix this, Sakura!”
I thought about it for a moment. “Actually… I think I can, Naruto,” I said slowly. “I haven’t done it with anyone else, but it should work…”
“We are not going to use Hinata as an experimental subject,” he said firmly.
“Of course not!” I said hotly. “How could you think—”
“I don’t know what to think anymore!” He shouted. “I thought I could trust you, and you’re telling me it’s not so bad that Hinata’s a ghost?”
“But she’s—” I began.
“Dead. You said it yourself. And then you tell me you’re the person who killed her! What’s next, you turn her into a zombie and make her think she’s still alive?”
I slapped him.
“I would never do that!” I shouted. “How could you think that? I carried her inside me for years and never touched her mind, even when I knew you loved her more than me, and it would have been so easy…” I choked back a sob. “Damn it. I swore I wouldn’t turn into a monster, but even you don’t believe in me, do you?”
“If you slap me again I’m going to flatten you,” he growled. “And right now I don’t even know who you are. I’ll give you a chance, Sakura, but you’ve got to stop this crazy talk. You can’t bring back the dead.”
“Yes. I. Can!” I insisted. He looked at me like I was crazy, but I shook my head and plowed on. “Look, I know what you’re thinking. Resurrection techniques don’t work because you can’t summon more than an echo of the soul back from the afterlife, and that gets mutilated when you try to stuff it into a body, and there are all kinds of technical issues that make the damage even worse than it sounds, so you end up with a crazy, crippled mind with just a few traces of the original personality. But this isn’t that kind of situation. I don’t have to summon her back, because she’s here with me right now. I don’t have to hurt her by shoving her soul around with brute force, because I have a legitimate claim on it. And if I can get a tissue sample from your loop’s Hinata, I can make her a real body to live in.”
“What do you mean, a real body?” Naruto asked suspiciously. “Cloning a whole body takes months, and it usually ends up with a soul of its own.”
“And you know this, how exactly?” I asked. He looked away, and I snorted. “Yeah, and you say I’m the one with questionable ethics. But fine, I’ll show you.”
I pulled the kunai out from under my pillow and cut myself with it, then applied my transformation to the blood. I was so upset I didn’t even realize I’d used the template for my familiar twenty-year-old form until it was half done, and by then it was too late to switch to a younger one. I finished the transformation, and did a careful double-check to make sure everything was normal.
“There you go,” I said defiantly. “One perfectly normal, healthy copy of the body I was wearing the last time I did serious training. Hinata, do you want to try it on?”
I’d love to, Hinata said, but Naruto said not to use me for research. Can you give me a clone body so I can ask him for permission?
I rolled my eyed. “God, you two are going to drive me nuts. Fine, here you go.”
Fortunately Naruto caved. That evening we sat on the shore of one of the little lakes that dotted the Konoha training grounds, watching Hinata review jyuuken kata on the water in her own body. I’d made her nineteen because she said it felt comfortable, and given her the same insane level of fitness I’d developed for myself. Now she was dancing naked in the moonlight, supposedly because she wanted to get a feel for her new body and that was her preferred approach to serious training. I think she just wanted to show off, and maybe distract Naruto and me from shouting at each other, but I wasn’t complaining.