Broken Glass

She found herself standing in the middle of an empty, dimly lit room. The room was painted a dark color, perhaps a dark green, but she couldn't tell from where she was lying. The lights, located in the corners of the room, were very low, just enough so that she could see that she was alone. She couldn't remember how she got here. There was something odd about the room. At first, she couldn't figure out what it was that was bothering her. Her mind seemed to be working very slowly for some reason. Suddenly, she realized that the room had no doors or windows. Although it made her wonder how she got in, it actually did not disturb her, the way she thought it might. She looked at the mirror and thought that she couldn't see herself in it. Perhaps it was the lighting. She stood up and walked right up to the mirror. Still, no reflection. She reached out her hand, slowly extending a finger. Why couldn't she see herself? Isn't it a mirror? Maybe it is just a large piece of glass, then. When her index finger made contact with the cool, smooth surface of the glass, she felt a shock. Her mind started playing video clips of the death of her friends. Everyone she knew were all being slaughtered over and over again before her eyes. She knew at once, that those images were real, her friends were all dead. She felt sick. She tried to pull her hand off the glass. It wouldn't budge and the images felt like they were beginning to drown her. Her strength left her and she felt herself moving past her breaking point. "NO MORE!" She screamed. She ripped her hand free of the glass and it shattered.

She awoke to someone shaking her. "-ake up. UGGH. Wake up, idiot." The voice sounded familiar.

"I'm up, I'm up. What's the emergency? Who is hurt?" Then she looked up, into her own face. The same short, pink hair and green eyes stared back at her.

"You, obviously."

She just looked up at her twin, blinking. "Who are you?" She managed to ask.

"I'm you, of course. Well, technically I'm the real you."

"Oh, right," she replied, as if that made perfect sense.

"Come on, you have to put the shards back," her other self prodded. "Besides, I can't maintain a physical manifestation for long."

She could no longer remember how she got here, how the glass broke, or what would happen if she touched the shards. However, she felt as though something gripped her heart when she so much as glanced at the pieces of broken glass.

She clenched her hands, "NO. I don't want to touch them."

No response.

"Something…bad…awful…will happen," she added, lamely.

Her "other" self was silent.

"Did you hear me? I'm not-" She stopped as she looked up to find her other self gone. She glanced over at the shards and quickly looked away. Time passed, or at least it should have, she couldn't really tell. She looked at the shards again and felt her heart clench. As she continued to stare (mostly because there wasn't anything else to do), the initial discomfort began to fade to a dull ache. She inched over to the shards on the floor and picked up the nearest piece. It was heavy and cut her hand. But the physical pain was preferable to the images that assaulted her mind and the feeling that her heart was being stabbed by a million kunai. It was all she could do not to drop it. Just picking them up is a monumental task, she thought, I can't do it. There is no way I can put all the shards back.

"I can't do it," she choked.

"No, you won't do it."

"All I want to do is curl up into one of the corners and die." She dropped the shard and immediately returned to a state of numbing forgetfulness.

"Why don't you have the strength to fix a simple piece of glass? You have always been the weakest in your team. A burden."

She was pissed now. Clearly, her other self knew just what buttons to push to motivate her to do something. Clenching her fists in anger, she stood up and she stomped over to the shards. Quickly, she analyzed the shards. While she could no longer remember exactly what happened when she picked up the shard, she knew that it would be painful. That being the case, she should get the worst over with and go from the largest to the smallest. The large corner piece on top, probably fit into the top right corner of the frame. She braced her self and picked up the largest piece. It dug deep into her hands and she was soon covered in her own blood.

The images of his death assaulted her and tears began rolling down her cheeks. Her throat felt like it was beginning to close up. She choked a few times, before she managed to breathe again. She started to drop it, but stiffened her resolve when she remembered all the times he went through hell to get stronger. "Naruto," she whispered, staring deep into the shard. She gripped the shard tighter and felt one of the edges hit one of her middle phalanx bones.

Sobbing, she said, "For Naruto." A burst of chakra in her arms and legs let her stand up and set the piece into its place in the mirror with ease. Collapsing onto the floor, her heart felt oddly lighter. This time, she remembered how the glass cracked.

After taking some deep breaths, she propped herself up again. She was on a mission now. She touched the second biggest shard and recoiled. Kakashi, her beloved teacher. Always there for her, gently pushing her to do more. Taking a deep breath, she touched the shard and let his death rip out her heart. When numbness set in, she drug the shard out from under the pile. It was difficult, since she was bleeding all over it. He would have wanted her to keep getting stronger, to keep trying. She had to pick it up to put it into place, so she placed the edges into her palms and lifted. It cut deeper into her hand than the last one and she felt one of the tendons get cut before it hit one of her metacarpals. She practically let it fall into the frame.

More deep breaths. Again, her heart felt a little better and this time her head felt a little less clouded. She used some chakra to heal her hands and replenish the lost blood. Not much chakra left, she would have to do the last ones without healing. She grit her teeth, and picked up the next piece. Tsunade. And, so it went. As she continued to work, the pain dulled until it just felt like her heart was bleeding into her lungs so that she was slowly suffocating. On the other hand, she was thinking clearer. If all of my friends are dead, why aren't I? Why can I remember each and every one of their deaths as if I had been there? Why didn't I heal their wounds?

She picked up the last piece. It was a tiny shard. She didn't even notice it prick the tip of her finger. It slipped from her hands in all the blood. Upon picking it up again, she realized that this one didn't seem to have a memory associated with it. She put it into place in the center of the frame. She fell down, exhausted. Now what? The mirror was back together, although with several dozen cracks in it, covered in blood. She began to ponder what she should do next now that the task was accomplished, when her eyelids closed on their own. She started to dream of a wide open space at night. When she looked up, the number of stars astonished her. Their bright light lit up the sky like fireworks at a festival. They seemed to call her. She wanted to go to them, to-

"Wake up! You don't have time to die!"

Jarred back into her body again, she looked up into the glass. "I put the shards up, what more do you want from me?" She moaned.

"Is the glass whole?"

She reluctantly sat up and looked into the bloodstained shards. "No," she said, disappointed.

"You need to mend the glass."

"Fix the glass? How do I do that?"

"With your chakra."

"I'm pretty sure my healing chakra won't work on inanimate objects."

"Not with healing chakra, with your water-natured chakra."

"Water, huh? Even if I knew how to manipulate the nature of my chakra, I do not have the energy and the chakra to do so. Besides, glass is made from super heated sand particles. I would need Fire chakra, not Water chakra."

"It is YOUR mind that shattered and it is you who will have to put it back together."

"That is supposed to represent my mind? Kinda lame."

"Just the part that's broken."

"Why is part of my mind broken?"

Her other self remained silent.

She sighed. Fine. She returned to the problem of nature manipulation. She was familiar with the process and had watched Naruto do his nature manipulation. But seeing and doing were entirely different things. However, she had used water to extract the poison from Kankuro. So, maybe if she just had some water to start with, she could use it as a centering point and conduit for her chakra. A droplet of sweat or blood would probably do the trick. Sweat was probably better, higher concentration of water molecules. Grumbling to herself, she thought that it was good that she had such a large forehead.

She wiped her forehead with her hands. The water beaded at her fingertips. She send a stream of chakra to her right hand, that infused the water droplet. Using the water droplet as a centering point, she expanded the water droplet so that it was a bubble around her chakra. She was now out of ideas. Everyone knew that chakra was made of energy, but how to turn that energy into water was beyond her at the moment. Water was an ever changing, ever moving element, and would not be held in one shape for long. Since she was exhausted, this was probably the only chance she would get.

She closed her eyes and thought about a giant bubble of water in her hands. Moving, swirling, and changing shape within, but contained in the bubble of actual water molecules. She peeked down at her hands. Well, she did have a large bubble in her hand filled with chakra, but it didn't look much like water. She decided to separate the chakra in her bubble from the rest of her body and closed her eyes again. How can I get it to turn into water? She thought for a long while about what to do. She tried a few things that occurred to her, but nothing seemed to help. Since she was just about out of strength and ideas, she decided to do something that would be unconscionable otherwise: she let go of her control over the chakra in the bubble. She hoped that since her chakra was water natured, it should return to a water-like form when separated from her body. Didn't she always feel her chakra as a stream in her veins? She continued to focus on maintaining the water molecule barrier on the outside of the bubble. After a long moment, she opened her eyes. The chakra within the bubble had turned blue and was beginning to look slightly like water. She felt a wave of relief and then room began to blur. She didn't have much time left if she was going to finish.

"I'm not going to make it," she groaned.

"You've run out of time."

So, Sakura stood up. She braced herself for the faint dizzy spell she knew would come from the loss of so much blood. Carefully, she walked through sticky pools of her drying blood, maintaining her glowing blue bubble. She reached out to the mirror with her right hand and felt the bubble hit the pieces of glass and almost bounce off. It wasn't going in. She sighed. True nature manipulation is when you manipulate the shape as well. If it really is water…If I put it on the top of the glass, it will flow downward and coat the glass. So, she reached as far as she could up, pressed hard on the bubble, and let it break. It didn't fall quite as quickly as water, but it did slowly spread over the lengths of the glass as it dripped down. After awhile, the cracks glowed blue and an even coat could be seen over the whole length. But still, it was not mending. She closed her eyes and used the last of her strength to put healing energy into the shards and water chakra. She concentrated on healing the cracks. No, she thought, not cracks. Her eyes opened in surprise, when she realized that they were actually gaps in her synapses and cuts in her brain tissue.

"Probably my amygdala," she mutterd.

The mirror was finally whole again.

She fell to the floor on her knees and then sideways onto her right side, staring up at the mirror. She was fighting off sleep, which would probably lead her back to the plain with all the stars, which would be her death. As she looked at the glass, it finally had her reflection in it. But something was odd, the reflection was not mimicking her position.

"I knew we could do it, if I kept you safe here in my space." The reflection said.

My other self, she thought in recognition, for she did not have the energy to speak.

"You fixed the scars that the Sharingan put in your mind."

Itachi is confirmed dead, that only leaves…Sasuke. That one name held so much meaning, so much pain in it. She realized that he had been torturing her with images of her friends' deaths, breaking her mind before destroying her body. But, why didn't he kill her and get it over with already? Perhaps someone had stopped him before he got the chance…

She suddenly realized that she felt better. She sat up. Then, she managed to stand, on wobbly legs. Soon, she steadied and felt more solid. When she looked down, the blood was gone and her hands were unmarked from the shards. The glass was glowing blue and green. Well, mostly blue now, the green healing chakra was fading. She stepped up to the glass, her other self leaned towards her. She tentatively touched the glowing blue wall and, while still firm, it rippled at her touch. All of her memories returned to her in a flood, and she remembered how Sasuke had ensnared her mind with ease. And, how he had broken it with equivalent ease.

She had been naïve. She had been trying to convince him to come back to the village, like they both knew she would. All he had to do was wait until she looked at him with both eyes, while she pleaded with him to come to his senses. She was a fool, a weak fool.

She felt the urgent need to return to consciousness. She had to go help. The only thing that even vaguely looked like a door was the glowing blue glass. She leaned on the glass and it gave way for her. As she continued to push herself through the glass, she thought she felt her other self push back from the other side. She felt them both merge into her full stream of chakra and then into her mind where she plunged into her synapses again. She was drowning in a wonderful rush of sensations.

It was odd, she felt different than before. Whole. She felt the blue wall within her mind expand, thicken, and surround the delicate tissues of her brain. It would give, but it would never break again. With her mind now protected by her water chakra, she realized that she would no longer be susceptible to the Mangekyo Sharingan. I did it, she thought with surprise. She had done what no one else could claim to do – she had beaten the Mangekyo Sharingan with her mind. She would no longer be a burden. But, at what cost? How many of those images were real?

Sensation from her body started to feed into her mind again. She was lying on her side on the ground. She began to feel her heart beating, felt a fierce wind brush against her skin, and heard an explosion.

She braced herself and opened her eyes.