"Who is in control?"

The threads of pain spreading from her neck to her toes rippled and split her open.

Orochimaru let go immediately, cursing a miss, before fleeing before Sasuke could even throw a shuriken his way.

Sakura threw her head back and let out an ear-piercing shriek, one that echoed through the forested area and caused the three Sound ninja to clap their hands over their ears and wince away. Her legs quivered before giving out, and she crashed to the ground, boneless, clawing at the ground in agony.

Sasuke grit his teeth and slowly opened his eyes, only to gasp sharply as he beheld the malevolent purple chakra surrounding her body.

"Sa- Sakura," he breathed in horror.

Her body was convulsing, her mouth still agape, still screaming - and he whipped his head around to see the ninja standing there in shock.

"Wh- what do we do?!" Zaku asked, panic seeping into his voice as he whirled around to face the one in bandages. "Dosu! We still get the Uchiha kid?!"

"We might as well knock out two birds with one stone," Kin replied over the raucous noise. She growled. "I've been itching to shut that brat's mouth!"

Sasuke's eyes turned crimson in a flash, and he stepped protectively in front of her. "You will not lay a hand on her, or Naruto," he seethed. "You'll have to get through me first!"

"My pleasure," Zaku barked a laugh.

Sakura moaned in pain, reaching for Sasuke's ankle. "Sa- aaaaaaaa-"

A dull hum reverberated through her brain, sending static through her ears. An almost pleasant whisper of evil chakra spiked through her shoulder, making her shiver. Why was it so cold all of a sudden?

"Who is in control?"

Orochimaru - the damned snake - he bit her!

She could feel her body burning - though she couldn't feel the heat. It was as if the bite had simultaneously spiked and dropped her core body temperatures to extreme levels - she could hardly feel her extremities anymore. The foreign chakra was lapping at her life force, draining her meager reserves and sending her mind into a dizzying fog.

Memories flickered past her mind's eye at a snail's pace: her mother singing to her, her father taking her to Ichiraku's to celebrate all A's, Ino laughing with her in the Yamanaka household, Naruto asking her out, Kakashi giving her pointers on chakra control, Sasuke calling her annoying...

Sasuke-

Sasuke-

Sasuke-!

"Who is in control?"

She felt a cold shock of realization at the thought of his name. She still had to help him fend off those Sound ninja! She still had to protect Naruto!

But she just felt so tired...

She found herself slipping away quickly, as if her meager grip on the fabric of her life force had just been cruelly yanked away from her.

She was falling, falling...

...

...

...

... then, from the suffocating darkness, a familiar voice whispered to her. It beckoned with a seductive tremor, reverberating through her skull and lulling her into a deep, comfortable sleep. A faceless blanket of security wrapping itself around her soul, as if to shield it further from the acidic chakra seeping in.

"It's my turn."

Sasuke grit his teeth in pain, wiping the blood from his bottom lip. Another barrage of sound attacks, and all the more pissed off they were making him.

He'd already moved both Sakura and Naruto to the bottom of a tree and placed traps around them as well as he could, but having to fend off the three ninja while working was an arduous task.

Kin chuckled. "How cute. One minute, you're all high and mighty and tough, and the next, you're shaking with your tail between your legs just because your pathetic little friends got knocked for the count."

"Don't get too ahead of yourself, Kin," Dosu warned. "The other two may be unconscious, but I sense another team coming near."

"Pah! These Konoha brats are all the same!" Zaku added with a scoff, grinning maliciously at the boy. "Once we take them out, we can get the scroll and head home!"

Sasuke's hand clenched into a fist.

"Sakura... what's happening to you right now?"

She was floating in a world of nothingness, unable to even see her own hands in front of her face.

Was she dead? Did the seal kill her?

She craned her head to the left, only to be greeted by black.

"Where... am I?" She wondered in confusion. "Is this the afterlife?"

"You are in my domain."

She flinched at the sudden disembodied voice, looking around for its source, yet finding nothing.

"H- hello?" She called timidly, finding enough strength to move her left leg. It only budged an inch, sluggishly, as if she were wading through molasses.

An amused sound, much like a chortle, rippled through the dark space. It sounded as if she were talking to anyone else right in front of her, but the unease that the darkness carried made her stomach clench.

"How cute. As much as you should be thanking me for saving your life, I suppose it's only fair that I show myself so that you can do it in person."

Sakura blinked. "What's that supposed to mean?"

There was a noise, a splash, just before her, and she willed herself to take a step back as she felt a rippling sensation all around her legs. It felt like a disturbance in a pool of water.

The fear was beginning to creep in as the noises continued, with no sign of the other presence. She could feel them now; they were beginning to push against her own mind, almost as if they were trying to force her down. She gathered all of her strength and shoved right back, and if she concentrated, she could feel their faint surprise at her movement.

"So you do still have some life left in you... interesting."

"Why am I here? What do you want with me?" She asked, more boldly this time. She clenched her fists tightly for a second before relaxing them, focusing her glare on the ever-changing mass of chakra somewhere before her.

There came another splash, a louder one this time, and all of a sudden she could see a being rising from the ground as if it were a pool.

Her jaw dropped open in abject terror as the being's lips curled into an unnatural smile, their eyes opening to reveal twin blank white voids. The words "Inner Sakura" appeared in glowing white on its forehead, and as she watched, it shapeshifted into a reflection of how she'd remembered looking just that morning.

Its eyebrow rose at her panic, and it held up a hand.

"Please ease your fear. If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it years ago."

Sakura could hardly will her voice from her throat. Swallowing hard, she squeaked, "T- then... wh- what do you want...?"

The being, Inner Sakura, grinned wider, and 'she' created a ball of light with her hand, temporarily blinding the girl. She clenched her eyes shut until the light dissipated, and when she opened them again, she was looking up at the sky, almost as if she were collapsed on the ground. She could faintly hear Sasuke shouting at someone in the background, and a shuriken whizzed past and connected with something with a dull 'thunk'.

Inner Sakura watched her shock and said with visible glee, "I'm here to make you a deal."

Ino took one look at the scene and gasped out loud. "Sasuke-kun is in trouble! We've got to help him!"

"But how are we gonna do that?" Chouji asked, pointing out the ninja. "He's totally cornered. Sure, it'd be four on three, but those guys are seriously bad news."

"They would clobber us in minutes, no doubt," Shikamaru grunted. "What a drag."

"Well we can't just hide!" Ino persisted with a glare. "If we don't do something, Sasuke-kun's gonna get pulverized!"

"Give me a minute, would you..." Shikamaru sighed heavily, surveying the field. His eyes widened when they rested on Naruto and Sakura's unconscious forms. "Wait. Ino. Look."

"Naruto? And Billboard Brow?" She asked, shocked. "What about them?"

"Something... feels off with Sakura's energy," he explained, pointing towards her still form. "Don't you feel it?"

Ino concentrated, narrowing her eyes at the pinkette. When the girl's hand twitched, she shook her head slowly. "No, I... I don't feel anything except her chakra."

Chouji frowned, leaning in to look. "What's wrong with her?"

"She's got weird marks on her neck, but..." Ino trailed off. "That's weird, it's in the shape of a diamond in a circle."

"You don't think..." Chouji hesitated, "... they ran into someone dangerous, do you?"

"This is the Forest of Death, dummy, of course they ran into someone dangerous!" Ino snapped, focusing her pale-blue eyes on her ex-friend.

The girl's fingers twitched again.

Then, a sudden wave of panic filled her mind. "Wait, no... I think I feel something. Something... really sinister."

"From Haruno?" Chouji questioned. "You sure?"

"Something really bad happened to them, no doubt," Shikamaru mused with narrowed eyes. "The question is, what the hell happened to her to give her that horrific energy?"

Purple wisps of smoke began to gather around her neck. The puncture wounds had disappeared, only to be replaced with the mark of a black rhombus in the center of a circle.

Sakura's fingers twitched again.

The chakra was back, although more muted this time, singing songs of blood and fire. It thrummed with latent, carnal desire, twisted around and coiling tightly against her own chakra, pulsating with the beat of her heart.

"Power, power... do you desire the power?"

Sakura's fingers twitched again.

"To fell your enemies, make their voices sing?"

Distantly, she could feel something envelop her, like a butterfly's cocoon.

Sakura's whole hand twitched.

The tuneless humming of a thousand voices reveberated through her chest, making her entire body vibrate.

Her mother and father's beaming faces flashed past. Her grip slackened for a split-second before she held fast to her own consciousness, determined not to yield to the demonic seduction.

"The power can be yours..."

She resisted a little longer, until the images of her teammates and sensei flickered through her mind.

A sensation akin to ice-cold lips melding against her own startled her from her drowsing, and she could feel herself slipping again, although this time she went with a smile, falling into the abyss with outstretched arms.

"The power will be yours..."

From her spot on her back, the girl's lips slowly stretched into a curling simper.

"Looks like it's my time to tag in."

The skin at the back of Sasuke's neck stood on end, and as he watched, Kin's eyes widened a fraction as they stared past him.

He turned his head to see a violet mist swirling and pulsating around Sakura's body, and the girl herself looked to be in a state of euphoria in her slowly-waking state.

"What the hell...?" He muttered in disbelief, raising his uninjured hand to his own neck. That could've been him right now? That mass of evil energy?

... No, it wasn't all Orochimaru's. While her chakra reeked of the snake-eyed Sannin, he could faintly detect another presence, one far more... malevolent in nature.

He stared as the girl's eyes slowly fluttered open, although they weren't the glistening grassy green they usually were.

Sakura's eyes were a dark forest green, nearly black, and glassy. She looked like she was possessed as her neck sloooooooooowly craned, allowing her to look around at the clearing. Her lips pursed into a frown when she saw him kneeling, cradling his blood-slick arm in his lap. All of his instincts were screaming at him, danger, danger, run away now.

When her haunting eyes locked onto the Sound nin, her lips painfully stretched into a wide, toothy grin, the blood smeared across the corner of her mouth nauseatingly flaking with the movement.

As if in a trance, she staggered to her feet as the cursed seal glowed, and black lines crawled from the rhombus and wrapped around her body like wires, glowing a brilliant green once they culminated in a phrase on her forehead.

Inner Sakura.

"Wh- what the hell is this?" Zaku shouted, voicing his own thoughts. He took a step back, clenching his fist. "Isn't she supposed to be dead right now? How is she getting back up?!"

"Whatever she is, she's not worth fighting!" Dosu replied, his visible eye wide in horror. "Do not engage! We must flee!"

"How much harm can one little girl do?" Kin asked, narrowing her eyes. "Lord Orochimaru's chakra or no, she's still the weakest member on this stupid little genin team. I bet I could knock her block with one shot!"

"Don't try it!" Dosu warned shakily. "Zaku, let's go!"

"Y- yeah!" The once-proud fighter suddenly turned tail and jumped into the trees, leaving Kin alone with the genin.

"You cowards!" She shouted over her shoulder at them. "When I'm getting praised by Lord Orochimaru, I just know you're gonna be on your knees apologizing for leaving me in this dump!"

She turned back to the girl, only to find an empty spot where she was a minute before.

Her eyes widened, and she whipped her head around. "What the hell? Where'd she go?!"

A raspy voice breathed across her ear from behind, at the same time that a kunai was brought to her throat. "We've been dying to shut you up ever since you showed your ugly-ass face to us. How do you suppose we should get to doing that?"

Kin glared, gritting her teeth. "You don't intimidate me, little girl. You have no idea how fast I could kill you if I wanted."

A hum, and a chortle.

"That's where you're wrong," the girl chirped in a sing-song voice.

In an instant, the girl's tight grip disappeared, and as Kin whirled around to attack she got a solid suckerpunch to the side of her jaw, the girl's bony wrist swirling with blue chakra.

It sent her flying, and she crumpled against a tree like an accordion, a scream of pain echoing from her throat when her head smacked against the trunk hard enough to send painful, screaming lightning bolts of agony through her skull.

The girl inspected her own fist, looking amazed at the lack of bruising on her knuckles. "Damn, what an impact! And here I was expecting even a little bit o' blood! Shannaro! I knew I made the right choice saving her ass."

She whirled around, grinning wide at her petrified teammate. "Sasuke-kun! So good to finally meet you person-to-person! Well, maybe not person, per se, but I've been beggin' Sakura-chan to let me out to see you for forever!"

He swallowed, stone-cold silent.

"Aw, whatsamatta? Did we scare you with that little display back there?" She laughed boistrously. "You know she's totally in love with you. It gets so annoying sometimes! I doubt she'd even stay quiet enough to let me hurt you, even with this seal!"

"... wh... who..." his voice was too quiet for her to ear.

"Beg your pardon?" She leaned forward, cupping a hand around her ear. "You're gonna have to speak up."

"W- who are you?" He finally asked, his voice smaller than he wanted. He narrowed his eyes, shakily got to his feet, and clenched his fist, his Sharingan searching her empty husks of eyes the best he could. To his chagrin, he couldn't read her at all. Did she even have a soul anymore?

"Who am I... heh, what a question." She mused, tapping her chin. "She is me, and I am her. Call it a bit of an identity crisis if you want, but the reality goes way, way deeper than just that."

"Answer the question." He spat, gripping his knife.

"Dear dear, someone's touchy today!" She cackled. "Don't worry about Sakura, I'm not planning on doing permanent damage to this body. As long as this seal is activated, she gave me full permission to do whatever I want except get us both killed. A pretty sweet deal, if you ask me."

"You can call me by my given name, Inner," she bowed mockingly, gesturing to the glowing words on her forehead. "I'm not gonna hurt ya unless you give me a very good reason."

For a moment, her eyes scanned the bushes where Team 8 was hiding, and she smirked for a moment, her eyes glazing over all the more.

"Anyways!" She chirped, clasping his good hand in hers. "It's a pleasure to meet'cha, make sure you treat us right, and I'll definitely be sure to persuade her to let me out to play with you again!"

She saluted him with her other hand, grinning playfully, before the seal began to recede across her skin and her eyes fluttered shut, and Sakura's body dropped like dead weight.

He barely managed to catch her, grunting in pain as the wounds on his injured arm were aggravated.

He looked back towards the bushes, bewildered.

Slowly, Ino popped her head out, looking viscerally disturbed by what she'd just witnessed.

"Sasuke-kun, what the hell was that?" She asked quietly, her eyes wide with fear.

He slowly shook his head, not having a clue about what to say.

Shikamaru strolled out of the bushes, a contemplating frown on his face. If he was shaken by 'Inner's' behavior, he wasn't showing it.

He inspected the unconscious girl and sighed. "I still feel her chakra, so she is alive. What the hell... it's like a totally different person was inside her body just now."

He gave Ino a questioning look. "This a Yamanaka's doing? Some weird prank?"

"D- don't look at me!" She insisted, clenching her fists. "It wasn't a technique I recognized at all."

Chouji was the last to come out, eating a potato chip and looking quite stressed.

"We should head for cover, I don't think it's safe to stay here for long." He advised, watching as Kin's body slumbered. "Those shinobi might come back for their comrade."

The sun had just begun to set as Sasuke wearily lay his unconscious teammate down on the grass, flopping down with a heavy sigh.

His mind was still racing, especially when he looked over to see her troubled expression. She was burning with heat, possibly her body's delayed reaction to the invasive chakra in her system. He'd already pressed a cold cloth to her forehead before, but the heat just kept sapping away the water and forced him to go get more.

Naruto was of no help, still unconscious himself, leaving the Uchiha a rare few moments of peace in which to think of a plan.

So far, they still had their scroll, and he'd need to be extra vigilant tonight if he wanted to be able to get his team to safety.

He cursed the forest with all of his heart, glaring up at the mocking visage of the moon through the treetops. Where the hell was Kakashi when he was needed?

Especially when Sakura was fighting an uphill battle like this...

He heaved another sigh as he sat back against the tree, his eyelids drooping. He had to admit, of all the things he was expecting going into the exams, this definitely was not one of them. Who could have ever expected one of the Legendary Sannin to show up and try to bite him? Who could have ever expected that Sakura would take the bite for him?

He just couldn't wrap his mind around it. He'd spent the past five years of his life sequestered in the darkness. He breathed it, basked in it. All of it was necessary to aid him in his quest for the ultimate power to kill Itachi. And yet... this girl, this- this annoying crybaby with too strong an affection for him - she was the one suffering in his stead.

His frown deepened. Everyone he'd ever loved had died. His mother, his father, his relatives, and the Itachi he'd known was long dead. He had no one but himself, no one but himself to pick up the shattered pieces of a life he could never go back to. It was a dream that he couldn't wake up from, instead a cruel reality that made him wish each and every night that he wouldn't see tomorrow's daylight.

No medications they gave him could ever help him. He'd stopped taking the first batch when he realized that all they would do was impede him in his goals - they were a roadblock deliberately designed by this damned village to hold him back, to keep him complacent and docile as they willfully allowed a mass murderer to prance about the Elemental Nations.

The very thought of going back to those medications made his stomach turn. He couldn't - he just couldn't afford to become comfortable in his inadequacy. As long as he had Naruto's friendship, as long as Sakura gave him her love, he could become stronger. They were tools to aid him in his goal, but he'd be damned if he said it didn't feel... nice, to some degree, to have not one, but two people who gave him attention. It gave him a warm feeling to know that he had people left in this world that willingly liked him, ones that didn't seem to give a damn that he was the last of his kind, the orphaned prodigy with nary a friend to his name, and even lesser amounts of family members.

A shiver went down his spine when he thought back to the manic emptiness in Sakura's face. What the hell was that entity? It certainly wasn't the Sakura he knew - he knew her and Naruto's chakra signatures as well as his own. It didn't speak like her, didn't act like her, didn't... didn't even look like her. Her face had been contorted in such a way that it felt like a totally different identity.

If he was honest, it frightened him. It shook him to his very core, watching as this husk of a person went about like a marionette on a string, someone else's voice coming from Sakura's chapped lips. Someone else's eyes taking place of her own.

He groaned quietly, resting the back of his head against the tree. If Naruto had been awake, what would he have done? Would he have wigged out again, like he had on the mission to Wave? Would he have smothered her in the process of trying to get them both the hell outta dodge? What would he even say, if he were awake right now?

"That idiot," Sasuke thought fondly with a glance towards the blond's form, curled up near Sakura's. Even though he had a penchant for irritating people, he sure drew them to himself like moths to an open flame. A sense of pride flickered through him as he recalled Naruto's drive to surpass him. Sure, he must've done it partly because of his crush on Sakura, but the bigger part of him wanted to finally beat his rival - and get his acknowledgement.

Sasuke wasn't stupid. He was brooding, he was broken, he was emotionally damaged beyond feasible repair, yes, but he certainly wasn't stupid. He knew exactly how Naruto felt, because he felt the same thing. He had longed all his life for some kind of acknowledgement, first from his brother, then from his father. Even though he had grown up in his brother's shadow, he had adored him, longing to be just like him: a great man that his father respected and lauded. Bitterly, he recalled how ironic it was to remember just how much he'd loved Itachi. Perhaps a part of him still did; perhaps a tiny part that had remained unscathed from the massacre still pined to have him back again, to pester him for training, to ask him all sorts of questions about what it was like to be such a great shinobi.

Perhaps... perhaps he still longed for Itachi's love, too.

He scowled at the ground, clenching his fist. No, he couldn't afford those kinds of thoughts. Itachi had killed whatever bond they had the night he murdered their parents right before his eyes. Now all that remained was the drive to avenge them. He would take whatever paths necessary to do that, as long as he had his team at his side. It sounded cliche, yes, but they really did give him the strength to go on, no matter how annoying they could be.

A soft groan alerted him, and as he turned his head to look, he noticed Sakura's eyes slowly sliding open.

His breath hitched for a second before his shoulders relaxed, seeing her usual peridot-green rather than the sickening blackish-green they'd been before.

She looked around, confusedly, before her eyes rested on him and she managed a weak smile.

"Are you... okay?" She croaked.

He stared at her in disbelief, his lips pressed into a thin line. "You tell me. You're the one that got bit by that freak."

She squinted for a moment before her head jerked in a nod of understanding.

Neither of them spoke for a few moments as Sasuke rummaged around in his pack for a water bottle. He found it and popped off the lid, tilting her head upwards so that she could take a couple of large swallows of the cool liquid.

When she was done, she sighed in content, eyes rolling upward to look at the night sky. They were dazed, feverish, and as he removed the cloth and patted her forehead he noted that she was burning again.

He soaked it with a bit of the water from the bottle, wrung a little bit of it out, then replaced it.

She squirmed at the cool feeling for a moment before she turned her eyes to look at him, with more clarity.

"Sasuke-kun," she started tiredly. "I... I'm sorry."

"For what?" He asked, raising an eyebrow down at her.

She swallowed hard before continuing. "I haven't... been honest with you or Kakashi-sensei..."

She trailed off, looking over again, trite.

A wave of annoyance washed over him for a second and he wanted to snap at her to just get to the point, before he realized just how wrecked she looked. She looked to be about five seconds from bursting into tears, not uncommon for their team, but this time it looked to be a different kind. Less from hurt feelings, and more from just plain exhaustion.

A beat.

"I... uh..." she swallowed again, eyes darting towards the grass for a moment before she looked back at him. "... I've had this... this person, inside my head. For a while now."

So she did know. So the words from 'Inner' before were true.

He opened his mouth, but his voice was quieter than he wanted. "I- I know. I've met her."

This time, her smile was forced, grim.

"I think... I think I wanna get this chakra sealed..." she mumbled, her eyelids fluttering shut as her breathing evened out.

She was unconscious again, and she'd somehow burned through the water in the no more than ten minutes that she'd been awake.

He sighed again, standing to take the cloth to the river again.

"... I'll make this up to you," he promised, sparing a glance towards Naruto. "Both of you. I'm sorry that I keep making you both suffer for me."

He looked up to the moon with a pensive frown.

"First thing in the morning, I'll have to tell Kakashi-sensei about Orochimaru's seal." He decided. "And then, when it is sealed away, I'm getting answers."