Wilted Efflorescence

Chapter 4

How could someone struggle to breath if they didn't have a body to breath with in the first place?

She felt weak.

It was understandable, of course. She had been gone for such a long time. It wasn't because Sakura was unhappy, which was obvious, it was because she struggled to take on Sakura's burdens.

Her hate was all consuming and eventually, caused her consciousness to be snuffed out like the flame of a burning candle. Drowned in wax and frozen in time until someone comes along and digs out the wick.

The image of the gate to Konoha dug out the wick and lit a flame of another type of despair.

Sakura was unaware of all of this though. She was unaware of Inner's struggle to move as the new emotions flood Sakura's mind. Slowly feeding her inner termoil.

Insecurity. Hate. Anguish. Pain. Longing.

There was no happiness.

Inner did not represent her happiness.

In fact, inner represented her resentment and insecurity, a part of her that she despised that festered like an open wound once it became infected.

She's been infected so long she doesn't know what it's like to not be infected.

Infected with images of bloated corpses. The eyes of her comrades swollen too large to fit in their skulls any longer. Eyes that bloated and poked their way out, pale and unseeing as they stared into nothing.

Festering flesh swollen until their features were unrecognizable.

Blow air into your cheeks, puffing them up, and stick your tounge out at the same time,with your eyes bulging out as much as possible, and look in the mirror.

What you're looking at is what she sees. Except, unlike what you see, the images she sees are swollen at least five times the size as your own features. The images she sees are pallid, clouded eyes, tinted blue, white, and purple.

With each rotting corpse came even more despair and with each loss came more insecurity. So much so that eventually, Sakura's minds cape froze. A wasteland of a hospital and in its basement lay her deepest darkest feelings.

However, just because her mind scape froze in her despair, does not mean that things weren't added to it.

In fact, every single death of every single shinobi filled each room in the hospital. Each their own gory scene. Like a haunted house that no one wants to enter.

Thousands and thousands of rooms filled with corpses. The most painful ones were closest to the basement. The root of Sakura's mind and the reason inner was stifled for so many years.

Inner understood why Naruto sent Sakura back of all people. She understood that she was completely broken. The fact that she even existed in the first place was proof of the first small crack within Sakura's mind and that Naruto, with his uncanny ability to read people and push their buttons until they see it from his point of view, saw that the only way to save his last friend was to let her go.

While inner understood, she was still the part of Sakura that absolutely resented Naruto for his choice.

She resented every single shinobi she has met and would meet on this journey to save the futures of the ones she loved.

She felt so much resentment that she absolutely loathed this new Konoha.

And while she loathed it, Sakura had sworn to protect it.

And because of that Inner hated Sakura as much as Sakura hated herself.

Inner groaned as she moved. Attempting to sit up. Her bones (Does she even have bones? What is she? Does she have some sort of existence, some sort of body, even within Sakura's mind? Or is it just another portion of their insanity?) ached as her thoughts slowly grew clearer and clearer. Grimacing at the constant ache that she's had her entire existence.