Chapter Text
The pink-haired girl with green eyes brought a hand to her head, as if an invisible pang was piercing her temples as she woke up. Her breathing became erratic. A shiver ran down her back, and in the blink of an eye, something inside her changed.
Because this time, Sakura was asleep. But Inner was awake, who had been hidden, silenced for so long, was now free.
From what they had told her, Sakura had hit her head on a mission. Therefore, Inner already assumed she would be the one to control the body.
...
Sasuke looked at her with a raised eyebrow, confused by the sudden change in her expression. Of course, the usual sweetness of the kunoichi's face vanished. A fake smile was drawn on her lips because her eyes no longer shone with love, but with a sharp and dangerous spark. She was angry and resentful, an image Sasuke usually saw in the mirror.
"Sakura?" he asked, his brow slightly furrowed.
"Hello, Sasuke," Inner responded with a calm, almost mocking smile.
Within her own mind, Sakura woke up in alarm. It was like being submerged in cold water. She was trapped, conscious but without control. And realizing this, fear took over her.
"Inner? What are you doing? What are you going to do?" her voice was a whisper of desperation.
"Did you wake up so soon?"
"Inner!" she called with urgency.
"Don't worry, I'll tell him what you've always wanted to say," Inner replied softly. "Just listen."
"Did you forget your luggage?" Sasuke asked.
Inner took a deep breath. She held her gaze steady, without hesitation.
"I won't travel with you."
Sasuke blinked, perplexed.
"What are you saying?"
"That, I no longer want to follow you."
"Let me out!" Sakura screamed from the depths of her mind. "You can't do this! I want to travel with him!"
"You wanted to travel," Sasuke retorted, his jaw clenched.
And then, with a clear and firm voice, Inner let it out:
"For years I thought I loved you... but I was clinging to an illusion," she began. "I'm no longer that girl who idolized you. In fact, you don't matter to me enough now to follow you on your redemption journey."
"Enough, Inner, enough!" Sakura sobbed within her mind. "You're ruining everything!" Tears ran down the cheeks of the body she no longer controlled. "I don't want this."
Sasuke remained silent. His face was inscrutable, like a statue. His jaw tense. Until several seconds passed before he finally spoke.
"As you wish," was all he said.
And he turned around to leave the village.
That back. That damn back that Sakura had seen walk away so many times before. Once again, she watched it leave.
"Goodbye, Sasuke," Inner whispered calmly, when he disappeared from sight, and turned around towards her apartment.
"Go after him! Catch up to him! Explain! Apologize!" Sakura cried desperately. "There's still time!"
"No, Sakura," Inner replied with a painful calm. "You know you no longer want to beg him."
"You don't know anything!"
"I am you... and you are me. I know you better than you know yourself."
"Y-You loved him too, like I did..." she said, sniffing hard as she continued to sob.
"Yes, we did. But then, we didn't," she assured. "Only you didn't admit it, because you locked me up. You hid me as if you no longer needed me, as if you were a new, stronger, more mature version. But there are parts of you that are still broken, that are still silenced out of fear of not being what others expect of you. You still want to be the good girl who fulfills expectations, everyone expects you to play a role, and you don't want to disappoint them."
"You didn't have to do this," Sakura complained. "We were going to be with Sasuke... finally. The dream of going out with him, of being reciprocated... it was going to happen, and you ruined it, Inner!"
"Did I ruin it?" she questioned incredulously. "Or did he ruin it when he didn't even flinch at what I said? He doesn't care about you. He doesn't care about us," she said firmly. "Don't you realize? Your childhood love has turned into an obsession. A burden," she paused. "Don't you hate him, even a little? Don't you hate that it was you who waited for him, who chased him, who humiliated yourself over and over again?"
"Shut up!"
"He tried to kill you, Sakura!" Inner retorted angrily.
"I also tried to kill him!" she objected.
"If you really wanted to kill him, I know you could have grazed him with the poisoned kunai. But you hesitated, you hoped he wouldn't intend to kill you, but he continued because the hatred was stronger."
Sakura fell silent.
"I gave him the chance when I said those words, but what did he do? He left. That was going to be your fate, to see his damn back over and over again. Accompany him? You were going to end up following him and waiting for him."
"That's not true. It was an opportunity to get to know each other, to spend time together."
"Keep being naive. Please stop crawling. For once, wouldn't you want him to be the one chasing you? That he be the one who can't let you go?"
Sakura fell silent for hours.
Until Inner began to unpack, seeing how her clothes, items, and scrolls were being taken out of the travel bag she was going to take with Sasuke on their trip together.
As if that wasn't enough, she then saw her stop in front of the mirror and observe her reflection. She ran her fingers through the tips of her pink hair, which barely reached her chin.
"We'll start with this," she murmured.
"Now what are you going to do?" Sakura watched her from her inner prison.
"I'll let the hair grow."
"I cut it because it was more comfortable..."
"That's what you tell yourself every time you cut it," she confirmed. "But you do it because you don't want to look like the superficial, weak and useless girl you used to be. As if the length of your hair defined your strength."
"I..."
"Are you going to deny it?"
"I just didn't want to go back to that version of myself."
"But you're not that anymore, and you won't be again. Hair doesn't dictate who you are. You do. So you can let it grow. You're strong... and you know it," she assured. "Trusting me is trusting yourself."
Sakura didn't respond. But Inner took her silence as acceptance.
"That's just the beginning," Inner continued, opening the closet.
She took a short, red, and provocative dress, a gift from Ino on one of their many frustrated outings, and began to put it on.
"No..." Sakura uttered as she realized where this was leading.
"Oh, yes. Do you remember how you rejected every boy who confessed their feelings to you? Some seemed cute to you, but you didn't look at them twice."
"Because I love Sasuke! I'm not interested in anyone else!"
"Or because you felt that if you didn't remain faithful to him, you'd become someone... Superficial? Easy?"
"You're not going to do what I think!"
"But of course I will, Sasuke is gone, he left you. You're free to go out with whoever you want."
"You left him."
"Let's not start again, Sakura," she said tiredly. "He didn't look at us again. We ended up seeing his damn back again, he never turned around. And you know I waited for him."
Inner finished dressing, and started showing off, turning in front of the mirror several times, smiling mischievously.
"The night is young."
...
"You think he's cute too."
Sakura didn't answer. She had her arms crossed, hoping that cold indifference would work.
"Come on, I know you like the way he looks at you. You like to be desired."
Sakura remained silent again. Until the third boy who spoke that night went to the bathroom and didn't come back, and she ended up pointing it out to Inner.
"I told you we had to leave," she said embarrassedly. "The dress doesn't fit me."
"Oh, please. You know it fits you perfectly. Don't hide behind your insecurities," as she took a sip of her alcoholic drink. "Someone is getting in the way."
"Could it be Sasuke?"
"You know he's gone."
"He could come back."
"Ha."
When the fourth boy got up with an all too predictable excuse, Inner raised an eyebrow.
"Why are you in such a hurry to go to the bathroom?" She said, gripping his wrist tightly. "Tell me immediately the name of who you're watching before I break your wrist."
Before he could respond, a figure appeared behind him like an elongated shadow.
Kakashi.
She released the wrist and his mere presence was enough to make the boy say goodbye clumsily and flee.
Inner drank her drink in one gulp. She had already lost count of how much she had drunk, but everything seemed brighter.
"So you're the one scaring them away?"
"Me?" Kakashi responded, sitting next to her naturally. "I was just passing by."
"In a bar? Did you get lost on the road of life?" Inner asked without humor. "I don't need protection. I'm an adult."
"So this is part of the improvement plan?" Kakashi asked, pointing to the drink in her hand.
She blinked in confusion until she understood and let out a snort.
"I left him. It was I who decided not to follow Sasuke."
"I see..."
Inner looked at him with narrowed eyes. She didn't like the way he was evaluating her.
"Are you saying I didn't get over it?"
Kakashi shrugged, as if it didn't matter.
"I wouldn't go that far."
Inner got irritated.
"Think what you want," she ordered another drink.
"You've had enough," Kakashi said. She looked at him intently, her eyes observing him carefully, his eyebrows, even that mask. She had always been curious about what was hidden behind it.
"Not at all."
Inner drank the glass in one gulp, and the glass tinkled when she set it on the bar. The alcohol burned her throat, but she could no longer tell if the heat in her chest was from the drink or the adrenaline. She felt her cheeks flushed, her head light, as if the world were spinning just a little faster than normal.
"I'm just having fun, Kakashi-sensei," she said with a crooked smile, slurring her words a bit. Her fingers rested on his arm, caressing the rough fabric. She leaned towards him, too close, feeling the air spinning around her. "Didn't you come to have fun too?"
"What are you doing, Inner!" Sakura's voice thundered within her mind, tense. "Drunk or not, you're going too far!"
Inner smiled impudently.
"You know what I'm doing. You also want to know what's under that mask. Years with the same doubt..." her fingers clumsily, trembling from the alcohol, reached up to touch the edge of the fabric. "It's time!"
But firm hands stopped the movement.
Kakashi didn't speak right away. He just gripped her wrist with controlled force, enough to immobilize her. His eyes, usually lazy, were now narrowed, icy.
The silence stretched between them. The din of the bar seemed to fade around them. Inner swallowed, and for a second, the dizziness mixed with a deeper vertigo.
Finally, Kakashi tilted his head slightly, his voice grave, low, almost a whisper.
"What did you do to Sakura?"
Inner remained motionless. Her heart leapt and for the first time in a long time, she felt fear.
And deep within her mind, Sakura also trembled.