-Frisson-
Progress: Complete (maybe?)
Rating: T
Warnings: Hints of suicide, depression, childhood trauma (all the good stuff)
It seems to stare at her, taunting, mocking.
Brows furrow, eyes of the brightest green glare back with a matched fervor.
Small hands curl at her sides, teeth grind against one another—she can hear the scritch-scritch reverberating through her skull—a hiss of escaping hot breath, fogging in white puffs in the chill of the winter air.
"Stop it." She hisses, glaring at it as a personal affront to her sensibilities.
And it is an affront, its very existence sitting unperturbed peeking through the snow is a slight to all her hard work. The daisy seems rather unruffled by her attempts to glare it into submission, nor does it wilt in shame under her scolding. No amount of glaring or pointing fingers will get it to stop or go away.
The moment her hand approaches the wretched flower its corolla seems to perk up—if such a thing was even able to be expressed through the actions of a plant—stretching towards her as far as its stem would allow, almost as if she was the bright sun on a Spring day. But seeing as it was not Spring and she was not in fact the ball of life giving energy called the sun, there really should be no reason for it to reach for her like an overly eager puppy. Her hand grasps around its stem, mercilessly ripping it from the frozen earth. Inner takes much delight in this, spurring her on with vindictive pleasure.
Kill it! Make it rue the day it dared to cross us, cha! Inner screams loudly from within the caverns of her mind.
The buzzing sensation its chakra-that-isn't-chakra is still palpable despite having been plucked—a strange feeling unlike the balance of light and dark chakra people had—leaving it to reach towards her own, like a baby attempting to suckle its mother's milk. She bats the feeling away, glaring at the flower in derision—somewhere along the way she wonders if she's picked up her glower from her brooding classmate Sasuke.
"Stop it," She repeats. "You're supposed to be dead. Its winter, not spring. If you keep blooming people are going to start noticing. So just. Die. Already." With each emphasis she viciously plucks the petals, tearing them from the flower. For extra satisfaction she proceeds to stamp on the butchered daisy, Inner's cries of justice a heady affirmation of her own feelings.
Feelings of something other than numb.
Something stirs in the back of her head.
Haruno Sakura, despite the connotations of her name, or even her looks—Green, green eyes and flower pink hair—has quite the loathing for all things flora. Flowers in particular seem to have the greatest ease in inciting her wrath, with their annoying habit of facing towards her despite the position of the sun, her mother's flowers in the garden bed even had the habit of growing in the direction of her bedroom. Due to the harsh temperatures of winter and thusly its inability to support much growth, this particular season would always be her favourite, if not by default.
Of course this was the first time a flower had dared to encroach repeatedly on the one time of year she had sanctuary.
The something stirs again, moving sluggishly, almost sleepily from the depths of her mind where it usually resides. Unlike her Inner who is all blunt and hot, a reflection of her inner-most thoughts, her Other is…not.
You're unusually on edge today. Other comments, his voice sluggish. All the poor flower did was live.
"You know why we can't let it be." Sakura says quietly, crouching down to dust away the snow from the roots of the Daisy, already where the stem had been snapped clean off, new green shoots of growth were beginning sprout. She digs her fingers into the cold dirt, uprooting the base of the plant, plying the roots from its source of life, pulling, tugging—
—tugging, pulling.
Screams echo, rivets of blood drip from the walls, pool on the floor, on her face, her hands.
Someone is screaming—
—Sakura blinks, finally uprooting the flower.
She pulls this apart too, none too gently scatting the pieces, far enough away the chakra-that-isn't-chakra can't reform itself in her presence.
You know this is just a temporary fix. It'll keep coming back.. Other remarks idly, his presence stretching akin to that of a cat.
There is a pause.
…I could show you how to stop it you know. The subtle hopefulness makes Sakura weary.
No one asked you! Shut up and go back to sleep like you normally do! Inner declares loudly, her presence battering against his; he puts up no resistance as he's pushed down by Inner.
Sakura can feel a headache coming on.
He wilts, a tangible cloud of depression surrounding him as he pouts, slinking back into the depths of her mind sullenly, muttering lowly to himself. He doesn't sleep, watching like a sulking child from the corner of the room.
Not for the first time Sakura wonders if having extra voices in her head is normal for a ten year old.
Glancing at the scattered bits of daisy on the snow, she knows she can't keep going like this, not forever
. . . . .
They whisper to her sometimes.
The grass, the trees, the flowers.
Quiet things, unintelligible things.
Their buzzing life-force caresses her skin, begging, begging to be used.
Shaped, molded.
Commanded.
And she knows, can feel it in her bones, that she is more than capable.
Her fingers twitch sometimes with the urge, the itch, her Other feels it too—perhaps even more so than herself.
He pleads, bargains, cajoles…begs for her to relieve them of the itch.
Sometimes…sometimes she almost gives in—when the pounding in her head won't stop and her fingers ache from restraint—almost, almost.
She never does.
For she knows, a temptation once opened is a temptation seldom closed.
. . . . .
Steam from the scolding bath water rises lazily, fogging the vanity mirror.
The water laps at her knees and lower ribs, like waves crashing against islands rising from the sea. In here, amongst the artificial tiles and porcelain tub and vanity, away and sheltered from the natural world, she has a semblance of quiet.
Quiet is a luxury Sakura can seldom find.
She traces a finger over her sternum, over the discoloration of pure white skin that starbursts outwards between her underdeveloped breasts. A birthmark, she's been told—a chipped fingernail digs into the discolored flesh—yet she wonders why it feels alien, like its not really hers, like it belongs to someone else but is seamlessly molded into her skin.
She digs her fingernail in harder, hard enough she feels the prick of breaking skin.
It hurts.
Her stomach suddenly rumbles—she has the weirdest urge to eat soup of all things.
Mushroom mixed soup. His voice breaks the tentative silence. We should eat some…or a lot. Actually, more is better.
Sakura blinks.
Pink brows furrow.
"I don't like mushroom." Her voice rings into the empty air.
Well I do, and I've got a craving for the stuff.
"If I don't like it then you can't either." Clearly as he was apart of her, he couldn't like something she disliked.
I'm your other, not your inner. And as our stomach is clearly telling us we need mixed mushroom soup, I recommend we go and get mixed mushroom soup. He says with absolute enthusiasm. Sakura isn't sure where he gets it from, because all of hers shriveled up and died a long time ago. Perhaps he was like Inner in that regard, another mechanism to hold some of her repressed emotions.
We don't need your stupid soup, we have a figure to keep. Inner as always is quick to squish any silly notions.
Sakura can't remember anymore why she needs a 'figure'.
So Sasuke-kun will fall for us…remember?
"…yeah." She affirms numbly. She begins to pick at the birthmark again.
Tomorrow marked the start of the week again, the one and only day a week off from the Academy coming to a close. She despises every other day for that simple fact.
It hurts.
Other stirs—normally he would be asleep by now.
We need a hobby.
Sakura slips further down into the now cooling water, her chin half submerged.
"What kind?" Is muffled through bubbles and bath water.
There is a moment of careful deliberation.
I was thinking Bonsai—
'No. I'm not willingly letting a stupid tree near me.'
But they're so cute, and tiny and adorable…like puppies.
The only puppy here is you! Now go back to sleep idiot! Inner screeches threats, quickly stomping Other back down into hibernation within the depths of her head.
As Haruno Sakura sits in the cold she realizes that Other is becoming more active…and she not sure how she feels about that.
. . . . .
Haruno Sakura at age 6 whilst playing in her mother's garden goes missing.
She is returned exactly one year and six months later to the hour.
Returned with an aching numbness, a starburst patch of white skin and a new voice in her head.
No-one ever files a missing report.
. . . . .
Her breaths come in shaky pants, getting harder and harder to draw full breath as she works her tired muscles into overdrive. The black spots in her vision multiply to a frustrating extent, ears ringing. Ahead of her by quite a ways, the rest of her class runs their sixth lap. Only the loud blond Naruto, the Inuzuka clan member Kiba—toting his nin-dog along in his jacket—and the overachieving Uchiha Sasuke—Sasuke-kun, Inner coos—ahead by a lap and a half. And it is in dismay, watching through her long sweaty strands of pink hair as the three make it two laps past her, that she seriously begins to question why the hell she's even doing this anymore.
Only the usually lazy and reserved Nara, bothers to keep pace with her—bothers and keeps pace because even when she speeds up fractionally by pumping chakra harder through her legs, Shikamaru simply stays level with her tiring steps. He's not even breaking a sweat.
She glares at him, barely able to choke out her sentence between broken pants.
"Why are you, all the way, back here." She grunts, frustration beginning to seep into her words.
The Nara blinks, turning his head lazily towards her, clearly surprised she'd bothered to address him—she never did before. He shrugs, draping his arms behind his head, drawling,
"Its troublesome to run fast. This is the slowest I can go without Sensei calling me out."
A flash of hot bitterness rushes through her, making her teeth grit, eyes sting with unshed tears. She knows Shikamaru doesn't mean it as an insult, but the connotation is still there.
Weak.
Useless.
Her Other stirs silently.
She clamps down on her anger, using it to push herself faster, just to be a tad spiteful to the classmate jogging beside her, even if only for her own vindictive pleasure. She knows it doesn't really amount to much, a futility.
"Oi," She hears the boy call half-heartedly. "You don't have to speed up because I said that." He still keeps pace with her.
Its hard to keep motivation when everything as of late is a practice in the art of futility.
Sakura again questions as to why she even bothers putting herself through all of this.
Through the Academy
Through socializing.
. . . Through life.
Sakura's Inner is eerily silent for once, unwilling perhaps to respond. As a reflection of her innermost thoughts and repressed emotions it seems she has no conflict with this particular line of thinking.
…and if that's not a scary thought.
Stop it.
Sakura stumbles—decisively both from exhaustion and surprise—managing to correct herself before she gets a mouthful of cold dirt. Other's voice is clear, not a hint of drowsiness, or cheer, and he's close. Closer to the forefront of her mind that he has been in a long, long time.
'Stop what?' She evades.
A flicker of frustration, flavored differently from her own.
This. You're barely scraping by.
'I know that.' She knows it all too well, the intimate trappings of—
—Stop that! Stop moping and thinking all…all depressed. You're better than this, we're better than this. I can fix this. If you'd just let me use it—
He's. Right. There. Right behind her eyes, just beneath her skin, in her bones. The quiet buzzing of nature that she readily ignores on a daily basis, crescendos into a cacophony of noise. Her fingers twitch, a chakra that is both her own and not—his chakra, the Other's—flowing through her limbs, wiping exhaustion away, she feels light, like she could run forever. The tree from across the training field subtly bends towards her, the grass rippling lightly.
There is no wind.
'NO!'
She screams silently, attempting to wrestle the power back down, even as she feels the roots beneath the field shift and move, feels her fingers itch like they're on fire. He's happy, the grin on her lips isn't her own, so damn happy, so happy its like he's forgotten why, why they can't do this—
—Blood. Screams. Blood on her hands, and the walls—
—Inner wells up, surging downwards on the other entity within her head, pushing him down and back with such force Sakura wonders how her head hasn't split open. She's on the ground now, winded, her head splitting and her chest burning. She feels someone shake her.
Through the tight restraints of Inner, Other cries in aguish.
Oh—oh kami. I'm sorry. I d-didn't—I never meant- I forgot! I'm sorry I just wanted us to stop hurting.
Hurting.
Hurting?
She tilts her head back and laughs. And laughs and laughs.
Sakura, please.
Her maniacal laughter turns to sobs—hers or his or theirs—curling herself on the dirt she doesn't have an answer.
Worried classmates stand over her.
I'm sorry.
'I'm sorry too.'
She knows she can't keep going on like this forever.
. . . so she doesn't.
A/N: This came from way out of left-field. Never written for Naruto, never written a one-shot, heck I haven't written in over 8 months.
Dunno what this is...I think the plot bunnies have been left to graze in my head too long. lol.