heritage

Chapter Four: Daisy Bouquet - Two Stems

          Sakura is not surprised when her eyes open to her mindscape. She is already ankle deep in the water, the soft sound of crashing waves coming from behind her. The cliffs beyond her stretch as far as the ocean's horizon. Sakura's breath stutters as her eyes catch thin branches drooping serenely over the craggy rock. Her mindscape looks the same as when she left it. Well, for the most part.

Impossibly, the willow is in bloom.

Pink blossoms crowd together on the drooping branches. They are pastel, fragile things easily broken off of their stems. Sakura watches almost listlessly as the petals drift toward the ground. Her chest tightens when, almost immediately after touching the ground, the petals wither and crumble.

Sakura's eyes burn. She can feel the wetness of her cheeks and the itch on her chin as something drips off. It is difficult not to think of the willow as Hibiki herself. Witnessing its blossoms fall apart and disintegrate instead of gathering in pale pink piles on the ground...

It feels like Hibiki is scolding her, somehow.

Telling her that nothing stays forever. Reminding her that love does not end when life does. Because for all that the petals crumble, Sakura still remembers them when they were full and beautiful.

She can almost see Hibiki shimmering in the willow's branches, lounging near the trunk of the tree with hardly a care in the world. Sakura thinks she deserves it, that peace. She blinks, and the mirage is gone.

Hibiki's voice, an octave lower and slightly hoarser than her own, comes in with the ocean breeze. "It's almost time to go, neh, Sakura-chan?"

Sakura whips around at the sound. Her eyes search fruitlessly into the rolling waves and never ending horizon. She knows no matter how hard she looks, Hibiki won't appear. She knows that like her namesake, what is left of her merely echoes.

Sakura feels her knees wobble and weaken. In seconds, sand is digging into her shins. The salt water splashes around her, droplets flying onto her arms as she wraps them around herself.

When her chest jerks in a hiccup from trying to hold in her sobs, Sakura lets them go.

Her throat immediately swells, growing sore and hot. Her eyes clench shut, heat rushing to her face. She wants to scream. Cry out, shout, anything. But nothing makes it out over the lump in her throat.

Sakura had played confident in front of Tsunade. Had played calm, if weakened, in front of her team. But in the privacy of her own mind, where doubts and fears thunder physically overhead, Sakura feels no need to play any part.

So when her ears twitch, when the wind brings more than salt and sea and instead takes on the voices of a choir, Sakura lifts her fist and punches the ground with as much force as she can muster.

Again.

And again.

And again.

She does not stop until she can no longer feel the fragments of seashells cutting into her skin. She ignores the voices clambering in near shouts. Ignores the instruments and the pleas. They are only vestiges of the weeks she suffered. They are not real and hold no substance. The kami are not calling through them. No.

Her memories are.

The ocean waits for the fight in Sakura to ebb away. It gently pulls in an undertow; constant and ever patient. Sakura peers through her lashes at the frothing water underneath her. Her arms are screaming in protest, desperate to give in.