moor

Unbidden, Sakura swallowed in the hopes of concealing all the emotions that threatened to pour through her eyes upon seeing the Shodaime.

For his part, Hashirama’s eyes were fixed upon hers.

The wind rustled the branches around them, the darkness of evening encroaching on them as they stood, rooted in place not by his jutsu but something stronger. Something truer. Something crueller.

Her chest rose and fell and her breath caught and Sakura knew this was not the time to flee. She had tried that, once, running from her problems. Running from the people and places where she felt she would never belong. 

It seemed that fate was there to strike her twice. 

“Sakura,” he finally said, his voice hoarse, as if he were still trying to convince himself of something. Perhaps he was trying to determine if she were real. 

She knew what that level of desperation, of delirium, felt like. Every engraving, every book, Hell, the damn mountains, in Konoha they all carried his likeness. Every time a leaf or vine had reached out to grasp her, stroke her as she passed through the ancient forests, she knew. 

Her red and black cape fluttering around her, Sakura’s jaw tensed.

“Hashirama,” she replied, softly. She couldn’t be mad at him. She wanted to be, but that particular emotion wasn’t directed at him.

“You shouldn’t have come,” she said, trying not to choke on the words. The guilt. The sudden shame that flooded her.

“Why… is that cloak part of your uniform, now? In your time?” he asked, his warm eyes shadowed by his furrowing brow.

Oh, she ached with his innocent question.

“In a way,” she said, trying to smile, just a little, just for him. She turned away.

“Wait!”

Her heart rose in her throat as he called for her. Gods, the same words, said the same way, again—

“The village…” said Hashirama, frowning. He glanced up, spotting the highest peak of the cliff face that bore his image. “It’s that way.”

“I know,” she said, looking over her shoulder at him. 

There was no where she could run that he wouldn’t follow. Even when she raced back through time to protect him… Back to a time that she found hurt too much without him, with his stony eyes gazing down upon her every day.

His knowing eyes held her beautiful green; her eyes were the truest reflection of her heart. He remembered her heart. He had touched that heart, once—had touched so much more…

“I have to go—”

“No,” he challenged, and suddenly she was tethered to the forest floor by his mokuton.

Her eyes narrowed. “Hashirama—”

“Stay!” he demanded, with all the authority imbued in him. “You will stay!”

His fists tightened, as did his vines, and she was jerked to the side, her cape flowing open.

He gasped.

A flick of her wrist snapped the vines and she stood straighter, wrapping the cape securely around herself again. Her arm rested protectively over her swollen abdomen.

“Sakura,” he breathed, reaching for a nearby tree to steady his weakened knees. 

“I have to go,” she repeated, erasing the emotion from her tone and face. The hand over her stomach, over her last connection with Hidden Leaf, fisted protectively. “Goodbye, Hashirama.”

She refused to apologise for anything. She couldn’t. Just like she couldn’t let him touch her heart again. She couldn’t bear hurting him to be able to walk away from him… again.

“You never should have followed me,” she said, taking to the trees as he fell into her genjutsu of them parting, him assuming her a strange vision or hallucination.

When he came to, hours later in the dark, Hashirama glared at the direction she had disappeared in.

“That’s exactly why I did,” he murmured. He swept away the genjutsu and lifted his chin. “West,” he muttered to himself. 

He rifled through the pack that he’d brought with him to ‘modern’ Konoha times and pulled out a heavily protected scroll. He would need someone with sensor-type chakra to find her.

Nicking his thumb, Hashirama slammed his palm down on the scroll as he finished his last hand sign.

Thunder and lightning chakra exploded around him.

When his guest glared at him, Hashirama smirked.

“Tobirama,” thought Hashirama as his brother materialized before him. “You’ll finally get to see the Konoha we built together.”