A Clockwork, Dreaming (Naruto / Bloodborne)

[Guessmyname]

It is something she has always been aware of, even as a mindless babe.

It manifests in the small things; the little things. The twitch of a finger, the pulse of a heartbeat, the warmth that can course through arteries and veins. The tricks of the body to react before the mind. The cool, soothing chill of a moonlit night. Always present. Always there. Never known the lack of it.

Her parents laugh; joke. Call her 'little owl'; awake beneath the moon and lethargic under the sun. Her teachers just think her slow; a Nara without its wits. It gives the bullies in the Academy yard all the ammunition in the world.

But still she is aware of it, always, even if she hasn't quite noticed it yet.

And yet, for all this, she remains a child. Still finds heroes to look up at in awe. Still quails at insults and seeks out attention. Still examines the world with innocent curiosity and eyes wide open.

And she has dreams.

Oh, like all children, she has dreams.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

The walls are high, especially by a child's estimation. The ceiling towers; looms; just out of sight; all rafters and shadows and the glint of unseen mechanisms. The floor is almost familiar; all wooded panels. Cracked here; broken there; warm, sticky and red in various places. The great, clock-faced window shines down upon all with shimmering, ephemeral hues. This is where she goes when she dreams.

Imagine a babe, and how long it sleeps.

Imagine a babe, with nothing to do for long hours in the empty darkness, their only oversight a slumped, pale corpse.

Imagine it. Ponder it.

Splinters and broken wood. Blades shattered, bent and twisted. Scorch-marks and gouges mixing charcoal with other, fouler things. Cracked barrels and exploded chambers; the broken remnants of ruined firearms; metallic innards of blood and quicksilver rolled all across the landscape to be lost, to be found, to shine and to congeal.

A babe, as everyone knows, will put anything in its mouth given half the chance. A babe, as everyone knows, knows nothing at all before it can learn. And a babe that wakes at strange hours screaming is nothing particularly new either.

What becomes of such a child, do you suppose?

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

She calms as she grows. Learns quickly and instinctively; pain is a teacher that carves its lessons deep, and the human mind can adapt to anything once it becomes familiar. For a little while, she is almost an ordinary child.

This doesn't stop the screaming, sometimes. Not every dream starts before a glimmering clock face and an occupied chair. Not every jolt of wakefulness stems from a body sated with rest.

Her parents worry, as parents will always do, and the child explains, as children will always attempt to do, and the end result is a stalled Inoichi Yamanaka, for the first time in his career; attempting to enter the dreamscape of an unresisting child and getting absolutely nowhere.

Things... shift, after that. The adults want explanations and she tries, she tries so very hard but she does not know the answers and she does not know the words until, one day, she is handed a bag of crayons, a sheet of paper and given a single instruction.

She tries, once again, but children are not born artists either.

The questions never stop.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

Once she can walk, she walks. Toddles, really; stubby little arms balancing for stubby little legs. Delicate little balancing acts across shattered and creaking floorboards, all with a single target in mind.

It is the first time she has attempted to do this.

Stubby little feet toddle and stumble; wary of splinters; wary of the little silver balls and points. The sticky warmth upon the floor grows the closer she gets, and it sticks and squishes against her feet as she slips and slides, tacky with every footfall, painting toes and fingers in raw, metallic-scented red.

She reaches the goal and she tugs upon its sleeve. The pale corpse begins to stir.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

Little by little, she is taught; instructed; guided. How to glide a straight line across a canvas, how to measure perspective and lighting, the gradients of colour and how they mix and intertwine. How to fix and recall a detail, how to measure a face or recreate an angle, all with an eye to what is seen over what the brain perceives. Symbols, as she learns, are aids, but never the truth. Tricks of the mind.

She learns, she sees, and in the waking hours of dawn she paints and she draws and she explains, as best as she is possibly able. Sometimes – the screaming times – she does not want to, would rather forget, pretend its unreality, but her hands are guided, gently and kindly, and she is told that it will help. Perhaps it even does.

The questions, still, never stop. Slowly but surely, her life becomes one spent less with the Harunos, more with the Yamanakas; appointments and sleepovers stretching into days and weeks and her own private guest room, all set up with a waiting dream diary, easel and frame.

Her parents never voice a complaint.

It is time spent with metal headbands bearing symbols she recognises, worn by faces she does not. With doctors and nurses and blank-eyed Hyuugas, in white-walled rooms with antiseptic floors. With needles, gauges and measures and always, always so many questions.

She answers them, as many as she can. She answers, and they only fester and sprout even more. When she passes them along, she is lucky to even get a reply. The words of the corpse are like nothing she has ever heard before in her own short life. Sounds and vowels that go typically unlamented; can't quite form on her tongue. A linguistic impasse.

But it is not always the questions.

Inoichi Yamanaka's daughter is a happy, loud little thing; all sunshine and grace and eager, playful demands. Ino Yamanaka is a hand, grabbing and tugging at her own, dragging her outside into gardens, parks, streets, her family's flower shop; Ino forging ahead and her own self tugged along gamely in her wake. It is Ino Yamanaka that teaches her to smile and laugh.

Inoichi cottons on quickly, if he ever had to cotton on at all. At meetings, tests, interviews, Sakura is always the most eager, most compliant, when Ino is the promise at the end of it.

Ino is simple. Ino is clear. Raises no questions and demands no answers. When she hears about her paintings, all she asks is for one of herself one day.

Sakura loves her fiercely for it.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

"Mariya" is a creature of many things, but mostly:

Swirling blacks and deep-ocean blues like whirling ink. Wet-slick with white, smearing highlights, resplendent in a thousand tiny details, muddied in stains and wear. All cuts and angles, from the sharp points of her hat to the crisp lines of coats and boots. The style is foreign and so unfamiliar she cannot describe half of it beyond the most basic of terms, but she can remember it and she can paint it, when the morning comes.

Skin, meanwhile, is pale as cream; a drained, unnatural colour like tainted milk. It is visible only in the face, matched by the thatchy off-white of her hair, colours so stark and empty against the fading vibrance of coats and jacket. The cloth around her throat (a "cravat", she is eventually informed) almost matches, but only almost, because the last thing that makes up Mariya is red, and the throat-cloth is soaked straight through.

It dribbles, sometimes; fresh like a trickling river. It spills; slick stains and colours on slick, inky clothing. It runs into ridges and winds down into creases until there is nowhere left to go; then it drips. Splish. Splat. Like dew, dropping from the end of a leaf. Little droplets.

Sometimes, she tries to ask (-or has been reminded to ask-) about it; sounds and gestures and hopeful expressions. Mariya-san never replies. She wonders, as she does every time, if it is solely because Mariya cannot comprehend the questions.

Makes her a little envious, really.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

She goes to the Shinobi Academy as a matter of course. It's only when she learns people can drop out of it into 'civilian' schools that she discovers it was ever even a question.

She's already been taught how to count and she's already been taught how to read, so the first year passes languid and dull, doodling sketches in notebooks of training grounds and headbands and "cravats". She chatters to Mariya-san when she gets the chance; trying to communicate the highs and lows of her days in a mixture of two languages that each only half comprehends, mixed with awkward hand gestures and a desperate wish for paper and charcoal. Mariya-san rarely comments, but she listens; lounging with legs crossed in her chair, chin rested on her hand. Cut sharp and crisp, the light of the clockface at her back, it is an image Sakura always knows she can recreate come morning.

One night, when she dreams, she finds a pile of books, ink bottles and scratchy metal pens, stacked neatly for her on one of the more intact areas of floorboards, the air feeling suspiciously cleaner. She can't ask Mariya-san – doesn't know the words – but she grins and laughs and hugs her all the same. Under the older woman's coat, the body is cold and stiff. So is the hand patting awkwardly at her hair.

She laughs and she draws and she introduces and she completely forgets all the questions she is meant to be passing along, but on that night, Sakura has no regrets.

The days pass, tick marks on a calendar, plodding along. They read, they count, they run a track in little circles, pass balls in games of catch, play silly contortion games with their hands. Running doesn't really tire her, and Ino laughs at her side. At night, most of the time, she wakes in Mariya's chamber and wakes Mariya in turn; Mariya teaches her 'alphabet' and she tries teaching her kanji. Tries not to laugh at the older woman's expression, once the full scope of her home's writing system finally begins to dawn.

Some of the time, she wakes in a river of blood beneath a maddened and bloated sky, and knows the night will not end happily.

Once, twice, rarely, she wakes in strange halls with criss-crossing bridges, endless bookcases and screaming patients bubbling over with mindless babble. Even when she escapes, recalling and painting these incidents is just as worse; the questions always multiply; always force her to think; always force her to stare deep into the details and the implements and tease out the implications. It happens rare enough for each visitation to be spaced well apart; for her grasp of the foreign language to have grown between every incident. With every painful iteration the mindless babble becomes something more coherent, and she doesn't know what terrifies her more.

She calls her 'Lady Maria' once, and only once. The dead, gimlet stare she receives ensures she will never try it again.

She learns to fear the sound of dripping water.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

She doesn't know why she keeps trying to talk to people. Sometimes, it works, but usually-

"-FOUL BEAST!"

The blade shrieks through the air, smashes into dirt, crashes through rock and coral. Sakura has long learnt not to scream.

She's almost learnt not to bother running, but survival is a difficult habit to break.

Bare feet tear upon broken, merciless ground. Desperate hands grasp at every hold. No thinking, only running; past dirt and grime and gravestone and river and-

A violent bang, and her legs just stop. She crashes down the embankment like a tumbling stone.

Pain etches. Breathing labours. A tainted, yellow sky beneath a tainted, broken sun. Sulphur in the air. Tastes like iron and metal on her tongue. Ah… she's slipping into the river…

Footsteps crunch. The man looms. The blade rises, then crashes down, and crashes down, and crashes down-

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

The seasons pass, a lazy turnover of calendars, trundling along. They run tracks in larger circles, throw balls at each other and learn to dodge, are taught how to tumble, how to roll, how to fall. The history of the Village and the strength of the Will of Fire. The weakpoints that exist upon the human body and where to strike them. The glory of the Hokage with all their wisdom and might.

She has less opportunities to doodle in notebooks.

Inoichi has words with her, sometimes. The worst nights; he sits by her bedside, lets her cry ugly tears into his floral pyjamas, stays and talks with her as she sketches and inks out the scenes. It is Inoichi who first hands her a kunai.

Ino is with her, bouncing and eager and rocking on her heels. He hands one to them both; an eerie solemnity in his eyes. Almost Maria-like, in a fashion. She knows the comparison would go unappreciated.

"It's… possibly a little early for this, but I think you both should know. The Academy will improve on these lessons when you're older, but I want you to know how to defend yourselves now." His eyes flick to Sakura, but are gone so fast she thinks she imagines it. A kunai of his own twirls in his hands.

"This will only be the very basics, adapted for a larger opponent. You use these moves, and then you run and find a Konoha shinobi. The two most important things are speed and commitment-"

When she tells the tale to Maria, her corpse goes completely still. It remains so for the rest of the evening.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

Sakura is a girl who does what she's told.

There are no kunai when she dreams, but there are shards; broken things; twisted swords and shattered bottles. Enough garbage that carries an edge. She learns to tear and strip cloth; to wrap and pad handles and exactly what it feels like when an improvised mess comes apart in your hands at the worst possible time.

She learns how terribly, uselessly inapplicable fighting to disable is when your opponent is an ugly mass of bloody, snarling fur and slathering, clawing teeth.

Maria does not always reply. Maria does not always permit the conversation; leading it astray into debates upon the meaning of colours and shapes, or the descriptions of flowers and animal species foreign to one but native to the other. Maria is admiring of the chrysanthemum and the hashirama tree; awes her with tales of the enchanting lumenflowers and chirruping little robins.

Maria relents, eventually.

Her sword is one that splits in two – or rather, it is two swords that can be joined together at the handles for reasons Maria never properly explains. Maria never speaks its origins and Sakura is never brave enough to ask, but having two swords – one large, one small – certainly makes for a convenience.

Her first lesson is a disaster. Maria is fast like ash upon the wind and Sakura is clumsy, the smaller sword still a little too big, but they persevere, they train, and they have all night to pass without ever feeling to tire.

When she explains this progression to Inoichi, that solemn look in his eye begins to linger.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

The years pass, clumsy and slow; a procession of discarded calendars, all filled up and thrown away. The classes start to merge; people leave and leave and seats go empty until all of a sudden they are full again, like a desperate injection. She meets people she hasn't met before, even if Ino has; Shika, Chouji, a boy named 'Kiba' who stinks of wet animal fur and bares his teeth in ways that make her reach for her pouches on a level pure instinctual.

They are older now, some invisible threshold she never knew she'd crossed, and they run full tracks around the Academy's perimeter, thud shuriken and kunai into targets set up in the grass, hold weighted wooden dummy blades in this grip then that, forms and stances and strikes repeating in vast, regimented unison under the bright Hi no Kuni sun.

In her dreams, Maria dances like ash upon the wind. All the stances and forms flee her in an unyielding avalanche of dodge and weave and never stand still.

Sometimes, she stands in a bloody river beneath a bloated sun, and has to swing and cut her way to any illusion of safety. Sometimes, she even gets close. Inoichi listens, as he always does, and after a while her evenings are spent with a tanto and a pale-eyed jounin's cheerful tutelage. His advice is never quite as helpful as Maria's, but then Inoru-san only knows how to fight people; not bloodsucking ticks with the size and temperament of raging bears. Sometimes, her sword feels woefully small.

Then the sparring begins.

She has a year's worth of swordwork and a lifetime's worth of bloody, desperate, clawed out deaths in the mud and the muck and the mire. The Academy spars are for beginners, she knows, but they are so timid, so slow, so limp-wristed, she cannot see any worth in them at all. They're teaching them to fight with their fists for mercy's sake!

If this class waded out into the bloody rivers with that kind of training, she knows, that world would tear them to pieces. With no pity or remorse.

She whispers it at night, confesses it into Inoichi's calm embrace. He brushes a hand through her hair, lets her cry out into his pyjama shirt of daffodils and marigolds. He tells her it's okay.

It is the first time she has felt she cannot comprehend his advice.

Maria offers no words of comfort either; cold and silent as a stone; dancing like ash with a punishment for every distraction. Swords crash and sing until the break of day. In a way, that is perhaps her answer.

The Academy's lessons progress, yet nothing truly changes. The children remain soft. The lessons remain worthless. The world will still chew them up, grind them down and spit them out like so much mangled gristle and bone.

When she realises this list includes Ino, her heart almost stops in her throat.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

It is, usually, obvious which world she is living in at any one time. Simple to tell the waking from the dream. Usually, this is the case.

When alarms blare and sirens wail, she is on her feet and stumbling; there's a moon in the sky, a knife in her hands and absolutely no idea why.

Clarity takes the form of a jounin with straw-yellow hair and a faint peel of panic in his pale, wide, pupil-less eyes.

Yes, there is something happening. No, there is no need for her to respond. Academy students should be staying indoors, staying out of things, perhaps even going back to sleep. He has to go.

Returning to the guestroom in Inoichi's house, she succeeds at following two of these three orders.

By the morning, she hears, the Uchiha Clan has been cut down to two.

 

[Geaux]

Oh wow I love this so far. Captures the feel of bloodborne extremely well

 

[hyperspacemage]

I very much enjoyed this. I agree it does capture a very bloodborne feel but I also enjoyed how the naruto sections felt like they made sense on how the people of Konoha would react to it trying to get Sakura to establish communications and taking her seriously instead of just writing it off as the imagination of a kid.

 

[IHev9Sun]

Surprised the Yamanaka clan head didn't get traumatized looking through Sakura's bloody noggin.

Also, I can't wait to see how she reacts to Naruto.

 

[AlmightySouls]

Oh, oh, oh I sense a reckoning. The shinobi will get too curious and an old one will come to shit on them. i can see it now while shinobi are physically powerful they have no conceptual defense other than sealing and the only thing that comes close to even touching an old ones shear alienness would be summoning the shinigami.

 

[Dromeosaur]

This is brilliant.

 

[clockworkchaos]

A evocative and interesting beginning, on top of me being a sucker for both trauma and Sakura fics.

 

[zinay]

This is excellent. You can really feel Sakura develope.

 

[Jonnoda]

Came into this not expecting much, came out of it 100% sold! Looking forward to how this goes, totally followed.

 

[somnolentSlumber]

Incredible. This has amazing potential, but one chapter is, of course, too soon to tell. But what there is is very high quality. Watched for sure.

 

[Sylent-M]

This is very good, you've crafted the atmosphere excellently. Yet I can't shake the mental image of Maria stoically babysitting this pinkette girl wearing strange garb who speaks in tongues.

 

[Guessmyname]

The Academy holds a darker tone now.

To her, to the instructing chuunin, to the scant few children who can hear the word 'massacre' and understand what that means. Empty hollows mar the classrooms; spaces gouged out like gaping wounds; unoccupied seats, unattended tables, absent friends. Most of the children greet that night with confusion, some with whispers, some with a strange, irrational glee. To those languid in blissful ignorance, the alarms and the dashing shinobi were exciting. Exciting, and nothing more.

Ino doesn't get it, at first. Shika and Chouji don't get it, at first. She has to tell them and, credit due, they learn. When Uchiha Sasuke finally returns to the class, that lesson looks to have been carved right down into his very bones.

Part of her is glad to see at least one child is now taking their training with genuine sincerity.

After a while, they start getting paired against each other in spars. There's a hauntedness to his eyes; a gibbering echo of a terror she cannot help but recognise. Cannot help but reciprocate. This boy understands. He knows, exactly, how much he is small.

Theirs may be but a silent understanding – the boy communicates mostly through grunts and she's hardly a font of words herself – but it is an understanding nonetheless. They communicate with their punches, their kicks and the scrape of dull-bladed weapons. This is the weakness in that stance. This is the counter to that attack. Each spar a debate. Every bout an argument, meaningful and measured, culminating in some definitive answer. With every punch and kick, even if they bruise, they are building each other up, that the both of them might live.

The one time she tries to explain it, Ino bursts out laughing. She almost renders her as a pig out of spite, but the work comes out too disturbing to find humour. The half-finished painting burns instead; her style has been left too realistic. The words lie dead on her tongue.

Ino does spar with her too, Chouji at her side, Shika on the very rare occasions he can be cajoled to take part. She wants them to learn and they each try but Sakura hits too hard and cuts too deeply, never knew how to teach; there are no pulled blows in the bloody river or the Astral Clocktower, in a land where death holds no meaning. It feels like a chasm, like a great crack in the ground ever growing, and every attempt to bridge it only pushes it apart all the wider.

Eventually, Inoichi takes her aside and asks her to stop. Sakura trains with the smiling Inoru-san, Ino and her friends train together with their respective fathers, laughing and joking like it's all some great, grand game with a guaranteed happy ending. For the better, she is told.

Once again, she finds, she cannot comprehend Inoichi's advice.

The chasm beneath her feet grows ever wider. Her dreams leave her in a bloody river with ever more frequency. Her spars with Sasuke leave them gasping and wheezing into the dirt. There's medical visits, sometimes; angry noises.

They have to persist.

They have to learn.

The world won't wait for them otherwise.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

As dryly inevitable as it is every time she dreams, traditional night clothes are not the most ideal survival wear. She sleeps in practical attire; sturdy shirts, long trousers; socks, gloves and boots even on the warmest summer nights. When she awakes, she knows, she will always be clung by Yharnam's wintery chill.

The bloody river is becoming familiar now; though it shifts and twitches at times from her memories, the broad span of it remains approximately consistent. Constantly re-mapping the place for her superiors is a... frustration, yes, but at least it absolves her of blame. There is usually a bridge – the same bridge, though its precise positioning has a habit to wander - serving as a semi-reliable landmark. The cave network is the worst of it, ever shifting and consistently inconsistent, and of course, at the river's source…

That accursed horse-creature that dreams itself a man.

It yowls and it gibbers. Every once in a while she can get it to stand upright and talk to itself with enough cajoling. Mostly it just slams her into the blood-slick floor with the rest of the skinless wretches. These days, a broken bone is becoming mundane.

Repeated exposure has numbed the horror at the beast's appearance, if not the disgust. Describing it to Maria just gets a droll snort. Showing the beast to Ino only gets a horrified scream and some rather stern words. Unfortunately, the adults she is allowed to show it to have no better ideas either. Ninjutsu never works correctly in the dream, and beasts of this size and ilk are not the traditional shinobi fare besides. Even Inoru-san's smile shifts at the sight of it.

These nights, its getting to be a routine. If and when she wakes to the bloody river, she makes her way downstream along unfamiliar tracks, tracking familiar landmarks, awaiting the wearily expected ambushes with a readied sword and a bottle of flame. She finds the horse-man's chamber and the horse-man finds her. They duel.

She focuses, she experiments. She tries wild strategies and tries focusing on her fundamentals. She smashes into the chamber walls, the bloody floor, the ceiling every once in a while. Never does she actually progress. Can't even dodge past the thing; some accursed, binding fog.

It's lair is a stagnant place; charnel house; the butcher's messiest draw. The slop and ruin and detritus of a thousand flayed and bleeding wretches, pushed and crushed and slathered across the wallsides with no-one's care, still the odd limb still erroneously twitching. Still the odd torso still helplessly begging. Maria doesn't have an answer for that. Inoichi doesn't have an answer for that. After a while, she stops including them in her paintings. Too much detail not the focus it's a matter of expediency.

The excuses will run dry eventually.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

A new child joins the class, and he earns her ire immediately.

Uzumaki is… not human. Can't truly, entirely be human. Every honed sense, all her blood-soaked experience tells her this, screams it in her nostrils and pounds it in her ears. He smells like fire, smoke, an animistic musk beyond even what the Inuzuka have wearily taught her to tolerate. The eerie brightness in too-intelligent eyes. The unnatural carvings of whiskers in skin. The pointed, elongated toothiness to all his smiles. For all his pretended, childish idiocy, he reeks of a seething beast in a cage.

Some see it, some don't. Or- no, if they're seeing it, how are they remotely acting sensibly? Such beasts must be hunted, put down, slaughtered before it breaks free. There's no point to keeping a beast captured; such a mindless thing will only bite you. Yet no-one is doing that obvious thing, and the monster that sings it's a child goes free, throat unslit with nary a knife in the dark. Shinobi indeed!

To Inoichi, she tries to explain, but once again she finds she cannot comprehend his advice.

More the pity she can still comprehend his orders.

The monster-child will live, against all rational judgement.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

She tries talking to it, sometimes.

Oh, it's not reliable, and she's tried to route around it enough times to know that it's guarding something. Every time she finds a new path, the man-horse finds her first. The base of the river is simply the most reliable, detestable as it is.

It can take some prompting, cajoling, mild encouragement. The horse-beast is a beast, first and foremost, and the part that dreams of being a man has to be dragged forth and made to wake. But she manages it, now and then. A shock and a very quick death the first time, but... after a while, she thinks she's starting to become remembered.

"oo—o-ooh, forgive me I-" it whinnies and gibbers. One last dim pupil shudders and twitches, only vaguely able to track on her face, its vast carcass-like body still looming even when so toppled and broken and diminished. "My- you are a faint one. You youth-" it flops and stumbles, dragging itself on broken hooves and bleeding limbs, "-grow younger every year-"

Even so wounded, that sword in its hands is terrifyingly real. Even as it leans its weight upon it; a swordsman is never disarmed until the blade is out of hand. She very wearily knows this.

The horse-head looms, so stretched and warped and flayed and twisted, but none of it Sakura's doing. The other head – the stump – dribbles madness and pale ichor from a thousand festering eyeballs.

"-t-tell me- good Hunter-" It rattles out with fecal breath. One eye dead and sunken. The other, the last, is almost sane.

Sakura finds a hunk of coral for a seat, because on this, she knows, there will most definitely be questions. Even Maria will want to know.

"h-have you- seen the thread of light…? My guiding moonlight..."

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

It's a curious thing, the Haruno Clan; this is apparently not the first time this has happened.

It takes some digging, with both Inoichi and her parents' efforts, but over time the records are found, collated, reconstructed, sparse as they may be. They call it the Warring Clans era, that time before the Villages were founded, and the paranoid chaos of that age makes surviving records hard to come by.

There's barely any trace of her.

In the chaos of the Warring Clans, child mortality wasn't entirely unexpected either. There are a few odd, scattered hints. Notes of mental instability, in babes that barely lasted a few scant years, paired notably with the vibrant pink of their hair like an omen. A peculiar, family-bound madness, self-described by one distant ancestor as a curse, echoes of heartbreak and rage still smudged in faded ink. She's not the first, just the first to receive proper treatment and care.

This means she has a future, Inoichi promises for some reason. Words get repeated like a mantra; there is no need to worry.

She tries to smile and nod, but against Inoichi that doesn't entirely help either.

He tries to explain, and she cannot understand his advice.

She tries to explain, and he cannot comprehend her point of view.

It's not an argument or even a debate. Words blab and fall and fail to connect, and that chasm grows ever the wider.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

She has an assignment.

She has an assignment and, for once, it isn't a question. Part of her feels overjoyed; the rest of her fears the worst.

It's a specific, curious assignment. Long duration; immediate results not expected. Some required preconditions that are quite beyond her control.

Above her head, staircases spew and unfold. Books and jars and musty dead things line booby-trapped shelves. Patients gibber. The distant, shivering scraa-a-a-ape of nails on stonework, the eerie drip of twinkling water.

One of the shinobi elders she reports to has a theory. A hypothesis for her to test; a prediction for her to verify. And he has a more than a passing interest in Sealing.

Her back is against the stonework, and her feet move with ever such caution.

The laboratory is empty of patients; small mercies. What it is not empty of is papers: books strewn and scattered about, mingled in with the broken shelves. More's the pity; now she has to look through them.

She flicks through dusty, battered tomes, skims across the stained and ruined almanacs. She's taken enough cues from Maria to know there's knowledge not worth reading about. But the articles are not what she is looking for.

The first she finds by the twinge in her eye. The little, crawling jitter at the back of her skull.

She watches it; observes it; faded ink on paper. Turns it about; a view from every angle. A piece of string with carefully placed knots serves as a measure.

A symbol is an aid, but never the truth.

She measures and memorises and scribbles little test runes with charcoal on foul-stained bedsheets until the twinge persists. The shape of an imprint of a carving of an echo that she knows she can recreate, come morning.

The hypothesis is confirmed, it seems. The icon seems to shiver.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

There's more… interest now. The years are crawling to a close, the Academy shoving them closer and closer to the door. Two months, now, to that final examination.

There's problems with her chakra, but there's always been problems with her chakra; a known and expected exception. She's not even the first, apparently, but compared to a shinobi who cannot use ninjutsu at all, a shinobi that has to bleed on everything to get anything done is apparently not beyond the pale.

She has her swords, her dreams and her training, and that will have to do. That passing hypothesis she answered has planted a hunger, a demand, and now she has people teaching her brushstrokes with chakra and bloodied inks, esoteric etymological theory, the foundations of algebraic geometry. The most basic of basics of basics needed to comprehend the Sealing Arts; fuinjutsu.

Not for its own sake, of course, but for the hunger.

She has to explain, to Maria, when their nights come. Has to apologise to Ludwig's gibbering heads. The questions have bubbled and multiplied; they want the research halls now more than ever.

Maria's mouth can cut a very thin line.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

In the dark of that broken laboratory, one final test remains.

On the cleanest piece of paper she can find, with the cleanest brush she can improvise from a pen, old twine and cuts of her own hair. A dribbled mixture of quicksilver, ink, charcoal and her own blood. The strokes are careful, slow, precise.

It's not a powerful seal.

It's not even a useful seal.

But it is a toe in uncharted waters.

The last stroke finishes. The brush sets respectfully aside. A curse of her nature and this Dream; even with her blood in the ink there is no chakra to be found upon which to call. Not in herself, at any rate.

The seal is not powerful. The seal is not (typically) useful. But it is certainly no beginner's work. 'Natural' chakra is a tricky thing to work with, she has been very repeatedly told in no uncertain terms. Even this 'simple' detector array; she is not to pursue further; she is not to reverse engineer; she is not to concern herself with the exact nature of its meanings and mechanisms and operations. Dangerous knowledge.

...A gaggle of hypocrites, truly.

The process will take time; akin to a slow-burning reaction; like waiting for moisture to condense; burning down a candle to see what smoke emerges. Sakura is content to wait. Remaining by the seal permits her to protect the seal, and meaningless wandering leads to meaningless injury besides. Nothing to gain.

It finishes, eventually. She's only had to gut two; having long learnt the folly of stabbing into their bloated heads. Just so long as it's done far enough away as to not risk the paper; blood can splatter further than intuition might provide.

There are results, and they are to be recorded for posterity; memorized and measured so she can report them when she wakes.

What facility will they store these numbers in, she wonders?

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

What indeed? Where indeed.

There are experiments, now, here on this side.

Oh, in fairness, there'd been experiments before, but those had been more focused on her herself. On understanding, on the management of symptoms, the quirks of her mutated chakra coils. In the hospital with Inoichi, there to tell her it's for the best.

Now…

The focus has shifted. They teach her more; more theory, more fuinjutsu, until she can almost grasp the faint, outlined shape of the vast monolith they will never teach her truly. What arts of sealing they will allow her to posses are focused upon detection; measurements; scientific instruments in paper and ink. Existing to serve the questions and no more. Their frustration is pent; present; plain to see. Any discovery, any inquest, any hypothesis, is required to go through her first. Requires her to even dream of the correct place, first.

It is how it is how it is, and what it is is satisfying no-one.

She graduates almost in passing, the only excitement the alarm that sounds the night after the exam (no massacres this time, small mercies). Taken in as an in-Village mentorship with the Yamanaka clan, a research apprenticeship rather than a position in a traditional three-genin cell; Uchiha becomes less available for spars. He also gets the Uzumaki for a squadmate, so she forgives him out of pity. Every once or twice in a week, they can still match blades in a training field.

Most of her swordwork lies elsewhere. The monsters, the man-horse, the dreams. Maria remains, as ever, like ash upon the wind. A speed beyond speed; beyond the physical barriers that limit the human form. She's heard of and studied the Shunshin and Kawarimi techniques of course, but the Dream and her own issues make that difficult to apply in practice.

If she's going to- if there's anything she can do about that, it's going to be in the blood, she knows.

The questions haven't reached that far, yet. The questions have been waylaid; fuinjutsu, runes and moon-soaked laboratory documents. Not an intentional distraction, but…

Maria has explained, before. They've tested her blood, before, on this side of the Dream. A few noted oddities in how it transports chakra, but that's apparently a coils problem. All the rest of it is still but young blood; nothing but weak and fallible human.

That world outside can still chew her up and grind her down. Like it will to all of them.

It isn't enough.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

Sakura, for once, has a question of her own.

To be fair, she has other, assigned ones too, but the natural chakra seal is ticking away on its own now, and whilst the results tick down, she has only her own to tend to. The battered, decrepit room is familiar; memorized; already preserved in watercolours and ink. One of the first things they asked of her once their interests bubbled; to map, to record, to uncover every nook and chamber. Down in the depths of the Konoha R&D's halls, a little room of her own rests like an art gallery, a scale little model with flags and markings and information. Recreations in miniature.

This room is a study, probably, other voices have already decided.

She wonders, sometimes, why they question so much. Why they insistently pressure, constantly pry, ceaselessly speculate and evaluate and measure and judge. Wonders what exactly they expect to get out of it.

Wonders indeed what they have, already, gotten out of it.

There must be something, yes? The runes; they always file them away, consume every one greedily yet never explain- the runes, the seals, the Dreams, the blood-

They all have to add up to something, yes?

It's only her life and body and bones and mind.

It's natural to be curious, yes?

Her fingers ruffle through pages, grace the stems of books and ledgers. An alphabet only she knows how to read.

More than anything, she has learned this: she does not have to answer questions they do not think to ask.

 

[Tamarind]

Has Orochimaru taken an interest in her? Or rather, what happens when she 'finishes' bloodborne and devours the infant gods. How much will that change her in the present?

 

[Guessmyname]

Thank you all for the kind comments; I'm glad people like the prose because bloody hell it takes a fair bit of editing to achieve it. Not to mention an embarrassing habit of typos I only catch weeks or months later to the point reading my own work feels vaguely like stepping through a minefield. It's particularly for the latter reason I'll be posting new chapters to SV/SB first before FF/AO3, simply because it's easier to fix them here. If you do spot any please, please do tell me.

Chapters 1 and 2 and parts of the next one were all originally one big block, sitting on my hard drive that I've been polishing up and posting simply to get them out there instead of just sitting on them for all time. If the first two chapter ends feel a bit cut-off or arbitrary that's probably why. While I could have posted the whole dang thing in one big blob A) I find those hard to read, especially if you need to stop and wander off for some reason and B) it probably greatly reduced the odds of me ever finishing the damn thing. I think I've gotten a feel for chapter length and pacing now. At a very early estimate I'd call this around 10 chapters or so in length.

Next chapters may or may not take longer to arrive than a week, as I'm actively writing and editing them from scratch instead of mostly editing them, but hopefully the deadline time pressure will help. Seriously, I've sat on what you've seen here for years randomly picking at it from time to time; that's why it's so carefully edited. Hopefully, the quality can be maintained.

Thank you again for reading!

EDIT: oh right I forgot to mention this- if you want a fic recommendation that has a similar style to Clockwork Dreaming (though it's not a BB crossover), I strongly recommend Beloved, Once by searchingforenadi; stumbling across it was a major inspiration for finally dusting this thing off.

 

[Nitramy]

I think Sakura's going to learn a very odd song, something to keep her centered even while the world goes to shit around her.

Spoiler

AND I SAY WAY HEY HEY IT'S JUST AN ORDINARY DAY
AND IT'S ALL YOUR STATE OF MIND
AT THE END OF THE DAY
YOU'VE JUST GOT TO SAY IT'S ALL RIGHT


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzFks3VhU3A&t=1381s

 

[Sylent-M]

they want the research halls now more than ever.

Click to shrink...

Fools, the lot of them.

Only an honest death will cure you now.

 

[Dromeosaur]

Poor Sakura.

Also, Konoha is heading towards Beast Plague or at least Amygdalla infestation. Maybe a winter lantern or two?

 

[clockworkchaos]

Sakura be like. "Sasuke is a mentally healthy person and you should all be more like him."

 

[Darik29]

I admit, Sakura literally Smelling out Naruto as a Beast on first sight is pretty neat. And that she became an Apprentice to the Yamanaka clan thanks to managing to copy the Symbols of Yahrnam well enough to retain there sanity scouring effects is, well.

In all honesty i anticipate when Sakura finally gains Blood. Beast blood, Cainhurst blood, Old blood. It matters not from Where the blood comes, that it flows is enough.

Very interested to see if Sakura becomes the Hunter, or if she is simply yet another soul trapped in Yahrnam that the Hunter will meet on the road to Ascension…

 

[Undead-Spaceman]

In all honesty i anticipate when Sakura finally gains Blood. Beast blood, Cainhurst blood, Old blood. It matters not from Where the blood comes, that it flows is enough.

Click to shrink...

... metallic innards of blood and quicksilver rolled all across the landscape to be lost, to be found, to shine and to congeal.

A babe, as everyone knows, will put anything in its mouth given half the chance. A babe, as everyone knows, knows nothing at all before it can learn. And a babe that wakes at strange hours screaming is nothing particularly new either.

Click to shrink...

I'm fairly certain it already flows.

 

[Darik29]

I'm fairly certain it already flows.

Click to shrink...

Given her own inblner monologue near the end of chapter 2, she's thin blood only by now. She took in the dregs of the dregs as a babe, and now is running into the limitations of such as she grows. She needs more, Stronger blood to become truly Powerful.

 

[PinkGooseYaga]

Of course when I start reading this, the first song to start playing from my 9k+ spotify playlist is "Cleric Beast" from the Bloodborne soundtrack. OFC LOL

 

[Guessmyname]

Given her own inblner monologue near the end of chapter 2, she's thin blood only by now. She took in the dregs of the dregs as a babe, and now is running into the limitations of such as she grows. She needs more, Stronger blood to become truly Powerful.

Click to shrink...

She didn't take anything in as a babe; not permanently. Death and injuries in the Dream don't matter, it's just a projection. Not to mention, consuming congealed mixtures of blood and quicksilver is an exceptionally fast route to mercury poisoning, especially in an infant. So it's probably for the best it had no effect on her waking body.

 

[PinkShadowReader]

It was by luck I stumbled upon this gem. I love your writing style. How you're writing down all these feelings.
Hopefully she will not be crippled by her lack of ninjutsu. I'm certain you have plans about it.
Good luck! It's a fantastic story. It will remains to be seen if you can continue with great quality and intrigue in your story but I think you will.

 

[Guessmyname]

All of a sudden, the questions stop. Are stopped. Active effect; direct command.

The Third Hokage is a man with aching bones and a tired smile he only vaguely remembers how to wear. Skin like old worn paper, pinched and fraying like old worn twine. Bare scalp of liver spots and the dead wisps of hair. A creaking, teetering ramshackle of ancient muscle and bone.

At his word, the questions stop.

There is a shuffle; a reassignment; new rearrangements made. She will be a genin now; a 'proper' genin who ventures beyond Konoha's (protection) walls, and the questions will stop. The treatment of Haruno Sakura, the medical observation of Haruno Sakura, is now to be the responsibility of the Yamanaka Clan, alone. To pursue further investigation is forbidden. To plumb the depths of the runes she brings is forbidden. Her lessons with the sword will continue.

It's for the best, Inoichi whispers quietly.

She wonders what happened to the village elder that taught her Sealing.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

As it turns out, she has been pulled as a replacement.

Hasegawa Ami is not a… familiar name, but it rings with a faint notion of recognition. If she ever wants to remember it properly, it can be found written and engraved on a convenient slab of stone; left in the training grounds with perfect pride of place. Another victim to the world outside, it seems.

She arrives to a team in pieces. Sasuke, Uzumaki and the Jounin Hatake. Any evidence of unity is gone from them; the jounin has given up on his leadership, Sasuke has given up on his team and Uzumaki, continuing to play the fool, has seemingly never had hope at all. She wonders if he was responsible.

There's a look in each of their eyes that day, when she makes her reintroductions in the training field. Sasuke; familiarity, a weary acceptance, a grim refusal to hope. Uzumaki; hurt and confusion, something in the wound still raw, a lack of recognition despite their shared space for all those years. And Jounin Hatake, whose face is so tied up he can make barely any expressions at all, the smile of his one visible eye like a painted on mask.

It's expressed in different ways, but the 'I wonder how long this one will last' is plain to read.

In their minds, 'Haruno Sakura' and 'Hasegawa Ami' overlap.

In their minds, Haruno Sakura is already dead.

With the way her dreams always go, the notion is almost laughable.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

Unfortunately, there still remain questions.

They are of a changed nature, true, but their propensity to split and divide, split and divide and then endlessly repeat themselves has only intensified. No delays caused by the dream cycles, no respite, not much improvement at all.

How is she feeling what is she feeling what are her thoughts and opinions and dreams with the lowercase 'd'. An unexpected inquisition, made all the more alarming for how half her answers are apparently wrong.

So they just keep asking, expecting her to somehow divine the correct responses, yet deviations are to be noted and reprimanded. In the past, what they wanted to know was clear; Sakura might not have had the answers, but she knew where she needed to look. Here there is no such guidance and Inoichi's advice, as usual, fails to clarify. If she is 'not meant to think in terms of right and wrong answers' then what is the point in asking.

One of her younger doctors even apologises for it. Smiles helplessly, pushes up his glasses beneath his mop of grey hair, offers to just discuss the theories like they used to do. It's bizarrely a relief. He's surprisingly insightful about it, too; clever inferences, smart deductions, clearly read in on a lot of the old topics. Her old private room with the maps and models are sealed now, but he has pens and plenty of graphing paper, so the efforts restart anew. Starting from scratch is… daunting and frustrating, but at least she knows the right answers.

Talking about it to Ino gets her pity, but that doesn't meant they know what do about it.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

Determining her new role is… awkward. Determining the team's role is somehow even harder.

She does not know personally how a Konoha genin team is expected to operate, just snippets and tidbits and flashes of Ino complaining. She is, however, quite reasonably sure it isn't this:

Sasuke, willing to train as always, but never bothering to consider the others.

Jounin Hatake, more willing to stare at a name-engraved stone than his own living charges, who will raise his eyes to Uzumaki or the Uchiha but never at all to her.

Uzumaki, a permanent state of restlessness, his words and 'pranks' distinctly barbed; mistrust recognising mistrust. He aggravates Sasuke out of misplaced pride, but her? It seems 'replacement' is a highly objectionable existence. When grief and denial combine, they paint an ugly picture.

In some ways, it almost feels like she and Sasuke are the team's only members, being the only ones actively willing to work together in their mutual sparring practises. She can't quite put a finger on why but some part of that sentence still rings distinctly cruel.

Inoichi's advice still doesn't help, but he does promise to look into it. In the mean time, she and the Uchiha spar and spar and spar and spar.

There are no missions.

There are no team meetings or sessions or laughter or agreement.

Her breath will not be held.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

Someone somewhere – likely in the Hokage building – evidently ran out of patience.

Mission assignment, C-Rank, Land of Tea, three weeks estimate. Escorting a caravan from one place she's never heard to some other, different place. Dotted lines on maps. Uzumaki makes an aggressively loud haw about it being better than D-Ranks, and it belatedly occurs to Sakura she's never actually participated in any.

...She knows what they involve – Ino complains – but. Never participated in any. A hollow absence of experience she'd never noticed she was missing. Her old assignments back when they cared about the Dream Worlds were never organised as such. Nor, in hindsight, paid.

Ino grins and gives terrible advice. Her parents wish her well. Inoichi seems to… stiffen slightly, but pats her on the shoulder nonetheless; eyes stormy but none of it directed at her. Maria can only blankly tilt her head; clearly unsure what advise she can give from too-many worlds' distance.

She has to apologise to her new grey-haired friend, but his smile is understanding.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

Back in the day, there'd always been one point of curiosity they'd never been able to test for.

What affect did location have upon the Dreaming? Sleeping within Konoha or outside Konoha, did it make any difference?

As she slumbers in a sleeping bag beneath a moonlit sky, awakening before an ephemeral clockface, she suspects the answer may prove disappointing. No matter. She has a far more exciting development in mind.

She wakes Maria with an almost giddy smile, her mentor visibly caught off guard as she rushes about to and fro, gathering paper, gathering inks. They're somewhat… short for pigments around here, but she's learned to improvise. That old sealing brush from twine and cuts of her own hair has been iterated on multiple times by now, canvases and makeshift stands beginning to crowd Maria's echoing chamber.

A fresh pot, a fresh paper, and Maria sits and watches as she paints and draws and sketches and describes. The flick and curl of grass in charcoal monochrome. The bunching and petals of unfamiliar wildflowers in reds, quicksilver and strangely pearlescent oils. The sight of a village – an actual, civilian village; first she'd ever seen in this life – with all its people and buildings and clothing and stalls, scratched out in pencil and ink. Murakasa-san, their client, old and grey with few teeth left in his smile. Kei-chan, a short little thing with too much energy constantly bursting from her short frame. Carts and pack animals. Rabbits and nesting birds.

There's something sonorous; a gentle, sibilant sound. Maria has a hand before her mouth, shoulders shaking, soft chuckles fading into the chamber walls, too faint to echo. Her other hand raises, hesitates, fingers stopping a bare inch from brushing across the bare canvas, before being reluctantly retracted. Mindful of the still-drying inks, Sakura imagines.

Slowly, with uncharacteristic hesitance, Maria moves. A blank canvas, and a blank stand. At her request, Sakura hands her a brush and a bottle of ink.

Maria is born no artist either, but from that night, she learns.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

The mission is… slow and boring in some ways – the expected ways, as she vaguely understands it – but honestly, Sakura couldn't be happier. Fresh greenery, fresh sights, fresh air upon the breeze, and she doesn't even have to sleep to see it! The civilian kids on the wagon train are a right pack of chatterboxes, and Sakura listens and asks and lets it wash on over like a cleansing stream. A civilian's life and a civilian's work are, strangely, foreign territory. Fascinating to look upon.

She keeps talk away from her shinobi life, partly from shinobi training, partly from a gut instinct she can quite identify; warns her to withhold the details, warns they would not be welcomed. Was this is what Maria felt like, way back when? Intuition says 'yes' but can't say why. It's a strange, unfamiliar feeling.

Conversation thus remains merrily and pleasantly simple; their wants and worries and hopes and lives. Things they value and things they choose to miss. She learns the sheer difficulty and effort of basic textile production, the tricks and wiles of money-men and coin mints, the precision and mysticism of planting and growing seasons, the longing and fear of falling rain. Someone actually takes the time to explain what a 'goat' is.

Oddly enough, it's Sasuke who gives her the strange looks for all this, and Uzumaki who shares the interest. Not an attempt at camaraderie or anything, just- an interest. Shared.

What foreign existences they must seem like to him, she dares not safely speculate.

The Jounin Hatake, for his part, is just the Jounin. Stoic, stiff, eye on every underbush; he tries to mask it with an air of lazy nonchalance but it's apparent just in his stances, the way he prioritises his lines of sight. His only words to her are orders. This is actually an improvement.

They reach the destination and the cargo gets off-lifted and then all of a sudden, they're going home. Nothing happened.

Nothing happened: Uzumaki seems to breathe out a breath of air he'd been holding in the entire mission, Sasuke seems to twitch and constantly scan the treelines, Jounin Hatake subtly tenses like a silently taut bowstring, hovering and looming constantly at their back. She has the very distinct impression she's missing something, urgent.

Absolutely nothing happens on the way back either, even as they pass Konoha's towering gates. She never quite relaxes her sword arm until she reaches the Yamanaka estate, and never quite gets an understanding why.

...Ino finds it all hilarious, of course.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

Gliding lines across a canvas, gradients of colour mixed and intertwined. Texture laid out in the grit of charcoal, the dapple of a coarsebrush or the whirling curves of ink. Shapes and shadows and lines and arcs.

Upon these structural foundations, images are built.

Cainhurst, a castle locked in snow, a grim opulence wrought in solid stone, draped and adorned in ice. Maria sometimes has to mention that the monochrome of her charcoal drawings is actually accurate, and not some concession of style. Images of knights, of pale-skinned women matching Maria's austere features, of foreign-faced men with well-dressed facial hair and strange looks in their eyes. Old friends, old family. Left behind, she says. Her statement bears an odd tone of finality.

Byrgenwerth, a sky-viewing dome and austere halls, neat little lawns surrounded by tame forest and a tranquil lake. Eager students in simple robes, surrounded by musty tomes and books, star-charts and diagrams, freshly unearthed artefacts and sketched-out tunnel maps. An old man in a rocking chair, watching as a moon in a lake reflects the moon in the night sky. Great circular halls, rising steps like the classrooms of the Academy; passionate teachers, fascinated students. Learning, exploration, curiosity, awe. There's a fondness in her eyes and a fondness in her voice, choking in the back of her throat; turning bitterer the longer she talks.

Yharnam. Great spires of architecture, cobbled streets clutching tight together, piling on top of each other, climbing higher and higher into the sky with almost desperate grasp. Vast buildings – 'churches', Maria explains – with grand, ornate windows and looming, towering buttresses. Statues and fountains and carriages and horses. A great city Sakura can actually recognise; the one by the bloody river, now buried and consumed in the coral. A once proud place, as Maria tells it. The seat of the Healing Church.

The Healing Church.

The Chapel Ward.

The Choir the Cathedrals the Astral Clocktower the-

Maria's last few works are hushed, scrawled things. Things forced to be drawn, compelled to be dragged forth and laid to paper. She draws them perfunctory. She describes them perfunctory. The Healing Church healed. It founded Yharnam. Healed the sick.

...It sounded like a noble goal.

Maria never says anything to that.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

Revelations spark an interest, there in her grey-haired friend. And why should it not? He is a medic after all, to understand methods of healing – however foreign – is well within his purview. A route of inquiry she is happy to indulge, happy to discuss and theorise. Even the Yamanaka doctors let her investigate, if begrudgingly, once it is clear they are stepping wide of the runes. Who indeed can turn aside the power of healing?

In exchange, her grey-haired friend tells her stories. The First Hokage, the previous Shinobi Wars, the Sannin; Konoha's three great Sages. Jiraya of the Toad Seers, Orochimaru of the Great Snakes, and Tsunade of the Phantasmal Slugs. Her in particular her friend choses to highlight, a budding curiosity in his voice: a great healer so praised for her medical insights, he muses, should have held great interest in the Healing Church and its methods, yet she'd possessed a noteworthy fear of blood. He hadn't thought much of it in the past, he sheepishly admits, but now…

A fascinating curiosity indeed.

But the Sages are gone from Konoha's walls, so alas. Her friend can only shrug. Nothing to be done there. Tsunade left Konoha well before Sakura's birth, besides.

Instead, they try to focus. The blood, and what can be done with it. Chakra is a union of energies; the physical and the spiritual, this they know. The quirk to her coils ensures all her physical energies are tied into her bloodstream, hence the limitations on her ninjutsu, but in the Dream?

It's not as if she cannot bleed in the Dream, yet there's no chakra there to speak of.

A quick hypothesis and a few simple tests overnight confirm a few things, and from there, it's off into the realm of yin releases and nature transformations. Her Dreaming self, as her grey friend quickly proves, is a construct entirely of spiritual yin, even right down to the blood; not a speck of the physical to be found. It's a serious challenge, a unique challenge, the sort that brings a gleam to one's eye; even the yin releases and transformations known to Konoha have some component of chakra to them, either in the ignition process or as part of the energy transformations. Pure physical yang techniques are not unheard of either – every person in the world has at least a physical body – but completely pure yin, with no yang to work at all? An unfamiliar territory that not even the Konoha Medics or Yamanaka Clan can boast to explore.

Even he, Kabuto confesses with an almost dazed awe, cannot achieve that level of refined technique.

She has some things easier; while they're focusing entirely on yin techniques, her Dreaming self doesn't have to worry about control, filtering or having any yang trickling in to pollute things, might even let her explore some purely theoretical areas with nothing but pure, isolated yin to manage. But there are old books and dusty scrolls and quite some ways to go yet.

For once, these questions are all entirely hers.

~ ~~ ~~~^~~^~^V^~^~~^~~~ ~~ ~​

In the human physiology, as recorded both by Konoha and in the Dream, it can be said there actually two brains. The first, of course, is the obvious; the one housed inside the skull. It handles the complexities of things; sight, sound, movement, empathy. It makes plans and draws conclusions, comprehends speech and writing. Predicts the future and remembers the past. This is the brain that thinks.

The second is the stomach. Woven into the lining; from the throat to the intestines; enough nerves to wire a cat.

Before life could think it still had to eat. The bestial prime brain, elder and more primitive than even the first outgrowths from the base of the spinal chord, it holds a subtle but inescapable sway upon behaviour, as certain as gravity. Hunger doesn't change a man; it just changes which half is presently in control.

In a way, you could say that the thinking mind is its natural evolution and superior. A quite literal elevation of thought.

In another way, you could call that very same process just a clever means to keep a beast well sated.

In all honesty, Sakura would have expected this to come up in the Dream, but-

The bandit swings, the bandit misses and her sword cleaves through thinned skinned and weakened muscle. Carving right through a starving gut. The body crumbles, just skin and bone, so absurdly easy it's actively jarring.

It's a similar story elsewhere, the rest of team making their own clean-up, the merchant caravan quite unmolested. She's only dimly aware of why these men were starving and the sturgid merchant isn't, but just by the fading looks in their eye she can tell they weren't being guided by rational thought.

Her blade flicks, the blood flinging off into the undergrowth, sheathing it a well-ingrained motion. Across, Sasuke stands, facing another body slump limply to the floor, his back to her still tense with expectation. Leftwards, on the opposite side of the caravan, Uzumaki is blinking twitchily, staring at his hands and one gory kunai; something in his eyes wide and confused. She hopes he doesn't start trying to eat anything.

The rest have died already, the bodies vanishing in puffs and flickers. The efficiency of a Jounin for you.

"He- he had a thing around his neck." Uzumaki blurts suddenly, waggling a hand about his throat in a circular motion. In his other hand: the blood-soaked kunai remains in a blood-soaked grip. "A charm. F-From Wave."

The name means nothing to her, but by the way Sasuke tenses-

"The road ahead is clear." The Jounin announces, a little too loud to just be addressing their client. "We should move on, Sanada-san."

"Y-Yes," the merchant stutters hesitantly, reaching for his reins, "let's..."

There is given no explanation.

.
.
.

A/N: If I chant 'better late than never' enough times it becomes true, right? I'll be delaying posting this to Ao3/FFnet for a week to catch typos, because they're a pain to fix on those sites.