Time Braid

12. Despair

A ninja war is a fantastic place for a Sharingan wielder to level up.

I ran three long loops back-to-back trying to exploit all the opportunities, and picked up dozens of techniques in the process. The invasion of Konoha was exactly the kind of thing ninja save their best tricks for, so no one was holding much back. A lot of the Sound ninja were actually medical experiments using grafted-on weapons, but I stole most of Hidden Sand’s jutsu arsenal just from watching the battles.

When that got old I went back to short loops in the Forest of Death. There wasn’t much the other genin could teach me, but stalking and murdering the exam proctors one by one turned up all sorts of new material. Then there was Orochimaru, an unbeatable opponent who seemed to have the perfect counter to every technique I tried. It always took him a few minutes to spot my Sharingan eyes through the illusion I wore, and that was time enough pick up dozens of new moves. From him I learned how to beat every style I’d copied, and after a dozen epic battles I was starting to hope I’d actually be strong enough to defeat him one day.

But the continued silence from my mortal self was starting to get annoying. Half the time she wouldn’t even wake up when I visited, and even when she did it was like she was only half there. I’d spent months training Hinata up as a perfect companion for us, and she’d barely noticed.

At first I thought she was waiting to see where I went next, and I seriously toyed with the idea of forming an actual harem. But managing a bunch of clingy human girls would be a huge pain in the ass, and any guy who’d let me do that to him is hardly worth my time. Besides, there was no one in the village who could hold a candle to my Hinata.

Yeah, even demons can get a little sappy when we’re in love.

Most humans couldn’t handle a relationship with a demon. We’re just too honest about being bloodthirsty agents of destruction. Humans will kill an enemy readily enough, but when you rip his still-beating heart from his chest and eat it while his blood runs down your face they suddenly get all squeamish and judgmental. My lovely assassin didn’t bat an eye.

Mind you, it probably helped that her first encounter with my vicious streak came in a loop I’d set aside for a little personal bonding. I suggested we take a vacation from training and practice taking revenge on our enemies instead.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she’d protested. “The other me, the one that’s looping, made herself miserable focusing on revenge. Naruto told me to be happy, remember?”

I had only a hazy idea of what had actually been said at our last meeting with the real Naruto, but I know human nature. “He didn’t tell you to be a doormat,” I pointed out. “Look, too much revenge is like too much alcohol. If you do nothing else for months at a time of course it’s going to mess you up, especially if you do it alone. But we’re not in that position. We’re going to spend Hild knows how many loops training and spying and plotting together, and if we do nothing but work we’ll eventually crack. So this loop we’re going to cut loose and celebrate. We’re going to drink and dance and fuck and make every guy in Konoha jealous, and at night we’re going to skulk through the city doing terrible things to people who deserve it. No one is safe from us. We’re both jounin-level fighters, and I have every Sharingan power any Uchiha has ever discovered. Wouldn’t you like to ask the advisors some pointed questions about the way they screwed up Naruto’s life?”

“Of course I would. But I’m not that good without my eyes…” She temporized.

“Then we’ll start with Neji,” I said firmly. I pulled her close, and whispered sweet temptation into her ear. “We’ll catch him alone and cripple him, and then I’ll transform his body into yours and help you possess him. We’ll lock him in a little cage in the back of his head where he has to watch what you do without being able to stop you, and whenever you like you’ll be able to step back into your mindscape and…punish him. Would you like that, Hinata?”

“Yesssss,” she whispered, and I knew I had her.

Her talent for vengeance was breathtaking.

There was a grocer who for years had sold Naruto only ‘brat specials’ consisting of spoiled food and expired ramen. We chained him in a basement and force-fed him rotting garbage until he died of food poisoning and a dozen competing diseases.

There was a nurse who, when Naruto came in with a broken arm during the Minato Day celebration at the age of six, paralyzed him with a medical jutsu and kicked him back out into the street for the crowd to find again. A bit of careful medical work left her permanently paralyzed and wearing the face of a local beggar. Then we left her on a street corner to die of dehydration, unable to move and ignored by everyone around her.

There were dozens of others, young and old, rich and poor, civilian and ninja, and for every one of them Hinata had the perfect plan. The thing with the butcher and his family still gives me goose bumps. It was exactly the sort of punishment the professionals would cook up down in the Pit. The stern justice that the Bright Kami know is necessary, but can’t bear to inflict themselves. I was so proud of her I spent hours at a time ‘rewarding’ her creativity with my best jutsu, until I began to see that adorable lust-fogged devotion from our first week together in her eyes now and then.

Against people who’d wronged her personally her revenge was less artful poetic justice, and more brutal retaliation. She was all cool efficiency against faceless bodyguards and bystanders, but when she faced the men who had hurt her so many times every blow was accompanied by screams of pain and the satisfying crack of breaking bones. Our confrontation with her family was the most beautiful bloodbath I’d ever imagined.

By the time ANBU scraped together a team that could actually stop us I was about ready to marry that girl. The lust and affection I’d inherited from my human side was flourishing, growing rapidly into the timeless devotion of a celestial’s love, and I could see in her eyes that the feeling was mutual.

But that only underscored the importance of winning this contest. I had to make my human side see that actually taking what we want works better than languishing in polite uncertainty forever the way she does. If she took control now she’d agonize and apologize and pull away until she ruined things forever, and we all deserve better than that. But if showing her what a happy relationship with our pet assassin looks like wasn’t enough to get through to her, what else could I do?

Hmm.

“Sir! I’ve got an emergency situation!”

I dropped off the roof and staggered to my feet in front of the pair of shogi players, panting heavily. Asuma looked up slowly, taking in my ripped and bloodstained clothes and the empty state of my shuriken pouch, and his ever-present cigarette fell from his lips. “Sakura? What happened to you?”

“I picked the wrong spot for some last-minute training,” I replied. “There’s a party of over four hundred Sand nin approaching the city from the south, maybe four or five hours behind me. I don’t know what’s going on, but their scouts tried to kill me when I ran.”

Shikamaru sighed, and began picking up the shogi set. Asuma stood, and gave me a concerned look. “You’re right, this is serious. But why did you come to me instead of telling the gate guards?”

“There’s no way a force that size could get so close to the city without inside help,” I pointed out. “You were the first jounin I could find who I’m sure wouldn’t be in on a plot against the Hokage.”

He nodded. “Well done. Come with me, we’re going to see my father.”

Without the element of surprise Orochimaru’s plan fell apart like a house of cards. He was forced to abandon his Kazekage disguise and retreat when Sarutobi and Jiraiya confronted him with three squads of ANBU as backup, and after I killed off half of his infiltrators the rest apparently received orders to pull out. The Sand ninja quickly realized they were being played, and elected to retreat instead of pressing forward with the invasion plan. The modest force from Hidden Sound was more determined, but against the full might of Konoha the best they could manage was a valiant last stand.

The city was never touched.

The tournament was held a day later than originally scheduled, probably to drive home the point that Konoha was as strong as ever despite our enemies’ plots. With half the entrants gone it was a smaller event than usual, but I put on a good show. Kiba was dumb enough to fall for my helpless waif act until I set off a sensory overload genjutsu under his nose and knocked him out, while Sasuke wore himself out beating Neji and failed to notice that my fancy shuriken and wire tricks were only intended as a distraction. What actually got him was the knockout gas I blew in his face while he was looking the other way.

That afternoon I finally got my promotion, along with Shikamaru and Neji. The celebration that night was the first time most of the rookie nine had ever had alcohol, which made for some funny moments. I managed to pair up most of them over the course of the evening — Ino with Shikamaru, non-looping Hinata with Naruto, Choji with some chuunin girl who stopped by to offer congratulations. At one point I dragged Kiba off to a motel room for a demonstration of his ‘special’ man/beast techniques, but he turned out to be a big disappointment. I left him passed out on the bed an hour later, and returned to the party with a ‘clone’ that was actually my Hinata. Nothing revs up the chuunin boys like hot twins dirty dancing with each other, and it wasn’t long before I found a more satisfying date.

But the best part was that I awoke the next day, not in my own bed, but in a dingy motel room with some guy whose name I didn’t remember behind me and Hinata cuddled in my arms. I banished the hangover with one of my mortal side’s medical techniques, and turned my attention inward to her prison.

“Wake up, sleepyhead!” I called, reaching between the thorns to shake her awake. “You’re going to want to see this!”

She blinked at me owlishly and stifled a yawn. “Huh? See what?”

“It’s the day after the chuunin exam!” I replied excitedly. “See, I told you I can get things done.”

“What?” She gasped. “No! I was so close to figuring things out!”

I shrugged. “Now you don’t have to. So, are you ready to admit defeat yet? Tell you what, we can even stay aspected if you want. We’ll just do a temporary merger to get you hooked up to my power feed, and then split back into the old brains vs. brawn division. How does that sound?”

She stared at me for a moment, and gave the viewport an uncertain look.

“If we’re out of the loop, where are the real Naruto and Hinata?” She asked pensively.

“Beats me,” I admitted cheerfully. “Maybe they’re here too, or maybe they’ve got different world-streams and we’d have to dimension hop to find them. But I’ll point out that our Hinata is every bit as real as the other one now, and she’s right here with us.”

“I can’t quite decide if that’s a good thing or not,” she complained. “What did you do, anyway?”

So I explained. A few loops of scouting out enemy positions with Hinata made it easy to throw a monkey wrench into Orochimaru’s plans, and I was expecting my mortal self to be impressed with my ingenuity. Instead she frowned.

“If we’re really out of the loop you’ve blown our cover completely,” she pointed out. “Kakashi will know there’s no way we could have learned all those techniques you used in the arena in a month.”

I sighed. “See, that’s what I need you for. I suck at that kind of detail work. So stop sulking in here like a human and come help me fix things.”

She gave me a troubled look. “I can’t do that. Not yet, anyway. Look, I’ll admit you’re not as crazy as I thought, but that doesn’t make you sane. You’re living in a house of cards, and the loops were the only thing that kept it from collapsing. If we’re really out you’re going to be in trouble fast, but I don’t think we are. I can’t believe something as vast as the time loop could be ended so easily.”

“It could, if it was a wish,” I pointed out. “Once the terms are met those things can go away instantly. Besides, you can’t seriously be telling me you want to risk dying for real just to prove a point.”

“If we’re in danger of dying, call me out and I’ll do everything I can to help,” she offered. “I’ll even promise to go back here without a fight once we’re out of danger. And if I’m wrong, and we don’t loop again, of course we’ll have to resolve things at some point. But first I want you to live with the consequences of your actions for a few months, and see what happens.”

Obviously, the first thing I did was move out. I’ve been avoiding my mortal self’s parents for so long I barely remember them anyway, and mom’s lectures about ladylike behavior were definitely going to cramp my style. So I used my meager savings to rent a tiny little apartment and moved in with Hinata. Things would be tight for a few weeks until I started collecting mission pay at my new rank, but we’d get by.

Getting my girl a body to call her own was the second order of business. We were both getting sick of the clone act, and to be honest I was really starting to miss her real body. But merging her back with her younger self again would just get her father after us, so I had to make do with kidnapping a civilian girl for my Hyuuga hottie to posses.

“I’m not happy about this, Sakura,” Hinata had protested. “This body is weak, and slow, and it…itches, or something. I don’t feel right. Wait, is this a real person? What did you do to her?”

“Relax, girl,” I tried to reassure her. “She’s one of the civilians we caught spying for Sound, remember? I just sent her soul on to the afterlife without killing her body. Give me some time to work at it and I can make her body match yours, aside from the eyes. And that weird feeling will pass in a few days when her residual life force finishes fading.”

“So not only do I stay crippled, but now I’m a zombie. Lovely. I’m sure Naruto will be thrilled,” she grumbled. “Was this what you had in mind, when you promised to take care of me?”

I winced. “I’m sorry, Hinata. I promise, it really will get better.”

But it didn’t.

Kakashi grilled me intensively over my newfound skills, despite the fact that I was hiding virtually everything. I’d blown off Ebisu to train on my own in the last loop, so no one knew where I’d been, and I think the only thing that saved me from a trip to Torture & Interrogation was the fact that I was the one who’d brought the warning about the impending invasion. Instead of transferring me to someplace that needed a fresh chuunin I was left with team seven, no doubt so my old sensei could determine whether I was an imposter or something. But since my old teammates were still genin, that meant I was back to doing D-rank missions.

A few weeks ago I’d held the fate of the village in my hands, and now I was painting fences and picking up poop in dog parks. Kakashi watched my every move like he was waiting for a mistake, Sasuke contemptuously dismissed me as a weakling, and even Naruto was ignoring me in favor of a budding relationship with the younger Hinata. Not that having him follow me around like a lost puppy looking for attention would have been any better.

After a week of that I was ready to snap, and being sent to catch Tora was the last straw. Catching that stupid cat without giving anything away to Kakashi was nearly impossible, but after six hours of crawling around the woods collecting cuts and scrapes we finally managed it. But then on the way back Naruto suddenly decided he had to take a leak, and handed the thing to me to hold.

Have I mentioned that animals can recognize demons, and they don’t like us? How about the fact that a cat has five pointy bits, and I only have two hands? Ten seconds later my arms and face were covered in scratches, and Tora was leaping for freedom.

Whap!

I backhanded the furry menace into a tree before I even realized what I was doing. It struck with the distinctive crackle-snap of broken bones, and slid limply to the ground.

Needless to say, my superiors were not impressed. The Fire Lord’s wife went after my head when she found out her precious pet was dead, and I don’t mean that figuratively. By the end of the day I’d been busted back to genin, docked two months of pay, and put on probation for six weeks while an ANBU specialist decided whether I was stable enough to be employed as a ninja of Konoha. Then Kakashi went out of his way to point out that I was getting off lightly, since any other village would have cheerfully executed a chuunin stupid enough to piss off someone that important.

It was all I could do not to kill everyone involved. I didn’t have the money to pay the fine, so they’d dock my pay instead, and being on probation meant I couldn’t take any mission that involved leaving the village. It could be months before I cleared my debt doing D-ranks, and the rent was already late.

Hinata gave me a reproachful look when I explained the situation, and I almost cried. But she didn’t complain. “I suppose teaching myself to fight properly without my eyes will have to wait,” she said quietly. “Ino’s mother is looking for help at her flower shop. I’ll talk to her in the morning.”

“No!” I protested. “I won’t have it. You, spending all day smiling at customers and bundling flowers and calling random civilians ‘sir’? Fuck that. You’re better than that. Pack your things, Hinata, we’re done here.”

She glanced around nervously. “Sakura, that isn’t a good idea. Please don’t be rash.”

“I’m not rash, I’m assertive,” I informed her. “This is no life for a pair of S-rank badasses like us. We’re going missing nin. I know a couple of yakuza bosses who’d pay us ten times what I make here, and if that doesn’t work out we can always kill people and take their stuff until we find better work.”

“But Sakura—”

“That’s an order, Hinata,” I snapped. “I’m not staying in this shithole another night.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Hinata replied tightly, and rose to collect her meager possessions. Ten minutes later we were out the door.

A block down the street an ANBU team dropped off the rooftops around us.

“Haruno Sakura,” their leader said, “You’re under arrest for espionage, attempted desertion and harboring an unregistered ninja. You really ought to know better than to plot treason when you’re already under observation.”

I laughed. “You think you can stop us? All you ANBU guys are good for is dying dramatically. Step aside, and maybe I won’t litter the street with your dismembered corpses on my way out.”

I manifested my Sharingan, and the dog-masked ninja stepped back nervously.

“Will you kill me too, Sakura?” Came a voice from behind me. I turned to find Naruto watching me with an uncharacteristically serious expression. Hinata gasped, and shot me a panicked look. Then her face froze, smoothing into an expressionless mask, and she stepped between us.

Facing me.

“Hinata,” I protested. “Don’t do this.”

“Don’t make me,” she answered stubbornly.

“But, you know you can’t beat me!” I shouted. “Oh, I’m going to punish you!”

“I know,” she admitted quietly. “Even so, if you want to hurt him you must kill me first.”

“There’s no need for you to die tonight, Hinata,” came the voice of the Third Hokage behind me. “Although I’m quite interested to hear how you came to be in a body not your own, in the company of a demon.”

That was pretty much the end of it.

Oh, I fought them. I killed an ANBU with Amaterasu and body flickered away, knowing Naruto couldn’t keep up and Hinata would only fight against me for his sake. But by that point there were too many ninja on the rooftops, and there was no way I could break contact. I ducked and wove through blasts of fire and water, cloaked myself in earth armor and fought back as best I could. But I was up against the best Konoha had to offer, and killing high-level ninja is never easy. I chewed through dozens of opponents in a matter of minutes, but most of them were only clones. Then Kakashi showed up with Gai in tow, and it was all I could do to stay alive.

Kakashi was overconfident enough to meet my gaze, and I overpowered his transplanted eye in a burst of demonic power. Three days of torment was more than enough to take him out of the fight, but the effort tired me enough to matter. Gai saw his friend go down and whipped a blindfold over his own eyes, then proceeded to demonstrate that he could fight perfectly well blind.

Hinata hadn’t followed me. I caught a glimpse of her on a rooftop far behind me, talking to a young Naruto who had his arm around her shoulders. Bless it, I’d get no help from her now. I tried to drop into the ground, but someone had already sealed it against my technique. I batted a cloud of shuriken away and barely dodged another Grand Fireball as I turned to leap towards the wall again. I was faster than all but the most skilled jounin, and most of them were too old to keep up for long. If I could just get across the wall I might still get away.

Then the Hokage appeared in front of me again, the seals of a banishment already glowing in the air around him. A wave of power crashed into me, trying to force my demonic essence back to Hell, but my mortal self’s life still anchored me to the material world. I screamed in agony as the banishment tried to rip my soul apart, and staggered back.

Right into a pack of ANBU.

I took four killing blows in the blink of an eye, and everything went dark.

I expected to wake up in the Pit, or perhaps back in my mortal self’s bed. Instead I found myself in my mindscape. I sat up to find my mortal self regarding me steadily, while Hinata sat in her little bubble of non-awareness with a resigned expression on her face.

“Bless it!” I cursed. “That was not how it was supposed to go!”

“What did you expect?” My mortal self said calmly. “You’re a misery demon. Your purpose is to spread suffering wherever you go. What made you think your own life would be immune?”

“How do you know that?” I said sharply.

“It was in your memories,” she explained. “It was clear enough, once I took the time to look.”

How does she keep surprising me like this? A mortal shouldn’t be able to read my instinctive knowledge like that, and she was nowhere near qualifying for ascension.

“There’s some truth in that,” I admitted reluctantly. “But you don’t understand. Yes, demons can affect fate just by their presence, and the type of effect depends on our breed. But my aura of misery shouldn’t affect me! That would be stupid. It just spreads over my enemies, and the mortals around me.”

“Like Hinata?” She pointed out.

I gasped in horror. “No!”

“Yes,” she insisted. “I can see it, you know. The dark power welling up from that thing you call the Nidhogg system. The way it flows through your half of our soul, shriveling everything it touches before leaking out into the world around us. The way you shape it to work your techniques, and the patterns it forms on its own when you aren’t paying attention. You can never have a mortal lover for long, demon girl. Your own nature will destroy your happiness every time.”

I could feel the truth in her words even as she spoke them. “No. Please, no. I can’t be alone forever.”

“You won’t be,” she reassured me gently. “It’s time to end this.”

Then she grasped the veil I’d woven over our mindscape, and ripped it apart.

The darkness around us parted, revealing the ruins of the forest that had stood here when I first arrived. Hinata shot to her feet and looked around wildly, and I realized that for the first time she could see where she was.

“Sakura?” She turned to me uncertainly. Then she caught sight of the second pink-haired girl, and gasped. “Sakura! But, two of you?”

A civilian might have been confused, but Hinata has never been one of those. Her eyes narrowed as she made the obvious deduction, and whirled to face me again. “You’re an imposter!” She cried.

“Not quite,” my mortal self corrected. “She’s half me and half demon, the creation of a trap that was supposed to corrupt me. But it isn’t going to work.”

“I’m not giving up!” I snarled in frustration. “You can’t get out, and Hinata can’t save you. If you won’t give in I’ll just have to use stronger measures!”

For the second time Hinata stepped between me and my goal, her face settling into an expressionless mask to hide her fear.

“What are you doing?” I shouted at her. “Hinata, you can’t do this. Naruto I can understand, he was part of our deal. But you belong to me! Why are you trying to go against me?”

“I belong to Sakura,” she explained. “But if there are two of you, I can choose light over darkness.”

I ground my teeth. “Fine. I’ll deal with you later, ungrateful little bitch.”

Wounded as she was she had no hope of resisting my power. I bound her with a casual thought, and turned back to my other prisoner with bared teeth.

But my mortal self…laughed.

A cold knot of fear clenched in my gut at the sound. Why wasn’t she afraid?

“Hinata, just relax. You can’t fight her here. Her nature gives her control over misery, suffering and despair, and the more of those things you’ve felt in your life the more power she has over you. An innocent child would be immune to her techniques, but a woman who’s suffered as much as you have is too vulnerable. I didn’t free you to ask for help, sweetie. I just thought I owed you the chance to watch this.”

“Watch what?” I stalked towards her with clenched fists. “So what if you’ve figured it out? You’ve suffered too much to resist me. No matter how strong you are, you can never break free.”

“Do you remember the Sakura that Naruto made?” She said sweetly. “The girl with a heart big enough to love the whole world, and enough courage to face down the Kyuubi? We merged once, and because of that we’ll always be connected. And when he hasn’t summoned her in his loop, I can do it in ours.”

I froze, and looked around nervously. I didn’t feel another presence, but I didn’t like the sound of that…

“Oh, don’t worry, our soul is only big enough for two aspects at a time,” she reassured me. “She can’t manifest here tangibly right now. But she can lend me her dreams, and let me give her my nightmares to keep.”

Oh, crap.

A soft blue glow sprung up around my mortal self, tinged with flickering sparks of gold. The prison that bound her hissed where the sparks touched it, as they burned tiny holes in the dark metal.

“She can lend me her hope, and take my hurts to herself. Lend me her joy, and love, and indomitable courage, and take all my moments of hatred and despair. Until the me that’s standing here is a girl who’s never given up…”

Her bonds began to smoke. I tried vainly to reinforce them, hoping desperately that she couldn’t actually complete such a transformation.

“…never given in to hate…”

The vines began to sag, their thorns drooping like melting plastic.

“…and never known any pain deep enough to scar her soul,” she finished. Then she stepped out of her prison as if it were nothing but smoke and shadow, and it quietly faded away.

“You…can’t possibly hold that state for long,” I said, grasping at straws.

“I don’t need to,” she said firmly. “I’m sorry, child, but this is going to hurt.”

Then she reached for my conduit to the Nidhogg system, as if she were going to rip it out.

“Are you nuts!” I shouted, now completely panicked. “You can’t get rid of that! The contract enforcement system won’t let you!”

“I have signed no contract,” she replied.

“You formed the seals and filled them with your blood!” I insisted. “You’re stuck with it now!”

But she shook her head. “If that were true, you wouldn’t have needed to make Hinata say she was yours. I won’t make that mistake.”

Then she sang, in the First Tongue, in a voice that burned my ears with fierce compassion.

I do not consent. I deny obligation. I refuse to comply.

There was a subtle shift in the flow of power from the infernal system, and I realized my account had just been locked out. At the moment she was our dominant aspect, and mortals aren’t allowed login rights. But she wasn’t finished.

I have signed no contract, offered no vow, accepted no bargain.

The flow of demonic power that sustained my was abruptly cut off, as that free will clause the Bright Kami always insisted on kicked in. “How are you doing this?” I demanded. She wasn’t a celestial. She was as mortal as Hinata. How could she speak the First Tongue at all, let alone work a Ninefold Refusal?

I refuse your power, reject your demands, spurn your influence. I am Sakura…

I fell to my knees with a strangled cry as my elder aspect Named us both with a word I didn’t fit.

“…and you are no part of me. Begone!”

Then she reached into my soul, and ripped away the umbilical cord of demonic might that bound me to Hild’s will. I screamed as the roots of evil tore free, leaving behind gaping wounds that reached deep into every corner of my being. Little bits of darkness were left behind, burrowing frantically into me to escape the fingers of light that reached to pluck them out, and the pain was too much for even a demon to bear.

Mercifully, I knew no more.