Oneirophrenia C7

—

Sasuke Uchiha

—

The next morning we woke up at sunrise. The fire pit was still smoldering from the night before, a few coals glowing in the pile of ashes.

I threw some dirt on the coals to suffocate the flame and did a final check on our rations for the day. Our goal was to travel for a few hours at most, just a quick here and back trip to test Sakura's distance theory...but we packed enough for two days, just in case.

"Are you ready to go?" She asked, looking up as she laced her boots. Her backpack sat next to her, full of medical supplies she preemptively summoned last night.

I gave her a quick affirmation and pulled out a few barrier tags from my cloak. Placing three in a triangulated position around our campsite, I activated the seal with my chakra and watched the campsite shimmer into the background of the forest. That should protect us from unexpected visitors, at least the human ones.

Squirrels always seemed to find their way through these things.

Sakura walked up beside me and slung her bag over her shoulder with a determined smile on her face. "You're up first, Sasuke-kun."

Concentrating my chakra into my eyes I felt the Rinne-sharingan whirring to life. My vision shifted into hyper awareness and as a breeze passed through the forest I was suddenly aware of every leaf falling off the trees as the first signs of autumn made itself clear.

Out of my peripheral, I could see Sakura tightening the Velcro on her gloves, anticipating anything. Her forearms flexed and I could see her pulse racing in her wrist. I turned my head so she wasn't in my line of sight while I opened the portal.

Focusing all my chakra I picked a fixed point in space. Visualizing a pinprick sized hole tearing wider and wider still. The trees began to distort and the portal came into view, black and ominous and wildly unstable.

I could only keep it open for a moment or two. Widening the portal until we could safely jump through we were finally ready to begin our mission.

"Let's go."

—

Stepping through the portal felt like jumping into a magnetic field. You can feel the shifting of the atmospheric pressure as we entered the mountain range.

The sky glowed with an ominous green, but the sun rose in the east, just like home. You could see the hazy outline of the moon where Kaguya and Zetsu are imprisoned, fading into the sky as the sunlight filtered through the atmosphere.

Sakura looked around, scanning our surroundings for threats. "So far so quiet," she said, kneeling down to the earth. Grabbing a handful of dirt from the ground she examined the soil. "It's damp, and cool, it probably rained a few days ago. There's potential for sustaining plant life but..." she looked around again straining her eyes into the distance, "not a tree in sight."

"Grab a sample, everything helps." I allowed my eyes to rest from the strain, a headache beginning to form. Sakura took a vial from her bag, packing the dirt inside and capping it with a cork before labeling it with the Kanji for mountain again.

A wave of exhaustion washed over me as the flow of chakra to my eyes suddenly halted. I pinched the bridge of my nose and waited for the headache to pass. On my left I heard the sound of water sloshing in a bottle.

"Here, take a break. It's my turn," she smiled, handing me the drink. I gratefully took it while she rummaged through her bag for supplies.

Sakura pulled out a Kunai and a stack of what appeared to be exploding tags. I watched as she wrapped the handle of the knife with the parchment and pricked her finger on the blade, placing a drop of blood on the handle before embedding it in the dirt on the top of the peak we stood on.

"How good is your eyesight?" She asked, putting the extra tags back in the bag.

"Do you have to ask?" I said, raising an eyebrow at her.

She rolled her eyes, "If we run into trouble, this beaconing tag is coded to my chakra. Wherever we end up, I can activate it to send up a flare so we can find this location again." Sakura ran her other hand over the pinprick to heal. Her hand glowed green as she continued, "if we need to, can you use Amenotejikara to switch places with the kunai, or do you need something bigger?"

As to be expected, Sakura continues to surprise and impress me. Her analytical skill is almost at the level of Shikamaru.

"Theoretically, a kunai should work, but I've never brought anyone else with me with my Amenotejikara."

"Then we will have to test your range with it while we explore." She said smiling. Getting up off the ground and dusting off her knees she maintained the sparkling sense of optimism she had as a kid. I'll never admit it out loud but it made the work feel less heavy. I appreciated it.

"Your theory about relative dimensional space seems to be holding up so far. The sun seems to be rising in the same direction as back in our world. We should travel A few miles south. If you're right, we should be able to open up another portal closer to the main road we traveled on."

Sakura nodded in affirmation and we began to walk, the kunai glinting in the sunrise behind us.

—

"Sasuke?"

"Hn..."

"You see it too...right?"

"...yeah."

The valley in front of them shimmered like a prism, reflecting light in a soft wave that seemed to breathe with the landscape. It looked like a barrier of some kind, stretching out across the mountains for miles beyond where we could see.

Sakura picked up a rock from the floor and tossed it at the apparition from where we stood, a good 30 feet away. It appeared to fall right through, not disturbing or awakening anything, so we cautiously got closer.

Looking up towards the sky the shimmer stretched into the cloudless blue, its iridescent reflection glittering in the sun.

"Sasuke, look..." Sakura pointed straight ahead. Our outlines began to reflect themselves in the prism, like a cloudy haze. The figures mirrored ours as Sakura lifted her right arm, the reflection moved it's left. "Do you think it's some sort of genjutsu?"

"It's definitely a trap. Until we know what it does, we should be cautious," I said. Sakura nodded in agreement, grabbing a kunai from her pouch and preparing for a fight. Out of my periphery I see her try to take a step forward, and instinctively blocked her movement with my arm.

"Don't do anything stupid."

"Naruto isn't here, so one of us has to," her hand reached up to grab mine, "And you're out of chakra," she said, shoving past me without hesitation and approached the shimmer in front of her. Her hazy reflection did the same, gaining clarity with each step. Soon she was face to face with a mirror image with an iridescent sheen.

Sakura moved her head side to side and watched as the copy did the same. She side stepped, and the copy moved in sync with her, but with a slight lag. I readied my grip on my sword and stepped closer, poising to interfere.

Slowly, Sakura reaches out towards her shimmery self and smiles. The reflection smiles back. My heart suddenly raced with anxiety as they got closer...I had a bad feeling about this...

Their fingertips touched and it was like the world collapsed.

"Look out!" I yelled, drawing my sword. But it was too late...

The shimmer collapsed and I heard Sakura scream. Running towards her as she collapsed on the ground I don't see any sign of the shimmery Sakura or of the barrier that divided the valley. I scooped Sakura off the ground and propped her up against a nearby boulder.

Her face shimmered with an iridescent sheen before fading back into her skin.

"Sakura...Sakura wake up," I shook her shoulder and pressed my hand against her cheek. She was still breathing, but was fully unconscious. Great. Im out of chakra and my teammate is passed out.

I couldn't even tell if she was under a genjutsu or not. I drew my sword and decided to scan the surroundings again. The shimmer was gone, and the horizon looked the same as it did in every other direction. Full of fucking mountains. I grit my teeth and tried to strategize the next move when I heard a deep, guttural laugh from behind me.

A chill went down my spine as I turned around.

Another deep, sinister laugh erupted from Sakura's chest. She straightened up and her eyes glosses over with a dark haze.

The smile on her face was not hers anymore, it was sadistic and dangerous.

Ice ran through my veins as I saw her body become possessed. My heart dropped in my chest and I took a step backwards, gripping the handle of my sword.

"Aaah...Finally!," she laughed, her hands rising up in front of her face. She clenched her fists, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "Some fresh fucking air." She pulled the hitai-ate off her hair and shook it out, tousling it so it was more loose and messy than usual.

"Who are you?" I asked, ready to strike at any moment. Sakura looked at me confused.

"Who am I?" She asked, raising a finger to her chin to ponder she finally "What do you mean, Sasuke-Kun? It's just me..." She drawled out and feigned an innocent look before a smirk found its way into her face. She bit her lip playfully and I tried not to think about why I felt a blood rush.

Shit. This was bad.

I pulled the sword from its sheath and pointed the blade at her neck. I didn't want to hurt her though, so this was going to be difficult. I needed my sharingan so I could get inside her mind and figure out why she was acting like this.

"Leave her. Now." She laughed again, stepping towards me.

"Oh please," she said, her voice low and dripping with sarcasm, "I've been here the whole time, Sasuke-kun. Hiding in plain sight," she touched her fingertip to the blade and sliced it. Without breaking eye contact with me she put the wounded finger into her mouth and moaned. "That shimmery thing probably just scrambled my consciousness around," she pondered, healing her finger, "I have an awful headache..." she pouted.

I still didn't have enough chakra to activate my sharingan, I needed to stall her. I pressed the blade against her throat instead. "What are you?" She smiled sweetly, her face looking so much like the girl I knew but those ghostly eyes left me feeling uneasy. I had to think fast, how do I free her from this without...

With a flick of her finger, the blade shattered. Disintegrated down to the hilt until I was left with nothing but the leather grip in my hand. In my surprise she caught me off guard and stepped in closer.

"Mmm..." she sighed, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes. "Are you worried?" She sighed, melancholic and a little pouty. Her fingertips traced my collarbone through my shirt, I looked down to see her usual bright green eyes were now dark, like a forest. Her chakra felt the same, but it had a different flow to it now. Usually it ebbed as naturally as breathing, but now...now it was almost playful. It reminded me of the Ninneko, when their tails would sway back and forth before pouncing.

"Think of me like a Genjutsu. Sakura's hidden will. She created me on accident, a long time ago. When she was just a little girl struggling to find herself. I've been here since before we even met you."

Her hand reached up to grab my jawline and she held it firmly in her grasp as she leaned in, stopping just before kissing me.

"Do you want to know where she is?" She whispered.

I didn't answer.

"Don't worry, I won't hurt you. We share the same heart after all. My attraction to you however, is a little more...primal than hers...that is if you feel the need to differentiate. Technically I'm just unrestrained." She dragged her fingertip under my chin and stepped away with a flick of her wrist. "I'll give you some of my chakra if you want, so you can find her in my memories." She held out her hand, smirking. "Unless you wanna have a different kind of fun," she winked.

Ignoring the uncomfortable forwardness of THAT...her offer felt like a trap. "What's the catch."

"No catch, Sasuke-kun. But I'm warning you, it's not very pretty in here," she pointed to her head. "And now that I'm the one awake, all of her demons have come out to play. All the hatred, sadness, and suffering we endured is being let out of all the little boxes she put us in to 'compartmentalize'. You just need to find which one has dragged her under. Sakura manifested me out of her fear of being anything less than delicate," She sneered at the word like it was poison. "There is an entire realm in her mind that belongs to me and the illusion she created to restrain herself in reality. This is where you need to start your search for her consciousness. I'm warning you though...it doesn't take kindly to visitors, just ask Ino."

"What does the Yamanaka have to do with this?"

"See for yourself," She said, holding out her hand .

I weighed the options...and hesitantly reached out.

The rush of chakra filled my body like a glass of water and my sharingan spun to life.

—

Sakura Haruno

—

Am I ...dead?

I felt myself blink but the world around me was nothing but darkness.

What happened?

I lifted my hands and was pleasantly surprised I could see them. I looked down at my feet, bare and standing in...water?

Cautiously, I took a step forward. The sound of water splashing with my footsteps echoed in the darkness.

Where am I?

I looked around, but saw nothing but black. I took a few more steps forward but heard a sound coming from behind me. I turned around to find a younger version of myself, crouched down near the ground and crying softly.

Coming face to face with my younger self was...jarring. I was so small...

My hair was choppy and growing in uneven, it covered my tiny round face in a halfhearted attempt to hide. I kind of wanted to laugh, the little pout on my baby face was so cute and sad at the same time. I remember feeling like an outcast, being teased.

I know now that what I went through wasn't anything compared to what Naruto had to deal with growing up but as a child that was my reality. My world was so small, and I stayed safe for a long time.

I walked towards her and crouched in front.

She looked up at me and wiped her eyes, trying to compose herself. Putting on a brave face before looking up at me.

"I'm lost..." she said softly, wiping the tears from her face.

"Me too," I smiled, holding out my hand, "Do you want to look with me?"

I wasn't even sure what we were looking for, but it beat sitting in the darkness.

The little me nodded and took my hand, and without anything else to do - we started walking.

—

Sorry for the VERY late update everyone. I just had to pick up and move my entire life across the country so I've had a lot on my mind. But the new Sasuke Retsuden spoilers are giving me LIFE and I'm ready to jump into writing this story again.

I have a lot planned, and a lot of puzzle pieces to assemble so bare with me.

Hope you enjoy!