Preface: This is a preview to a sequel to 'Freedom.' I actually hoped to be finished it by now, but it's proving a little more difficult and lengthy than I first thought. My plan is to whittle away on it now in spare moments, but to tide people over here's a preview!
It'll be a three parter that I'll post it as a separate story when it's finally done, so if you want to be alerted, an author alert is the way to go.
"Sakura-honey?"
I sighed. It was my mother.
"Mmmph," I acknowledged her with with a moan, face-down in my pillow. Wasn't really in the mood to deal with her. With anything, really.
"Are you alright?"
"Mmmph."
"I just spoke Inochi-san at the flower shop," my mom began, ignoring my non-committal grunts. "He told me that your friend Sasuke has awakened."
I perked up almost immediately. "He is?" He was a awake? So... he wasn't brain dead? "Is he alright?" I shuffled up so I was sitting in bed and flipped the light on in at my dresser. I probably looked horrible, but I needed to hear this.
"He is, but Inochi-san said he was all out of sorts," my mother replied. "He said it was amnesia. He can't remember who he is."
Amnesia? The can't remember anything kind? So that's what my future-self had meant. Did she show mercy last minute, or was that her plan all along?
"He doesn't have any family, and Inochi thought he could use a friendly face. You and Ino-chan should visit him," my mother offered. "You know... Get of out bed."
Oh. That was her angle.
It had been a week since the incident, and any time when I wasn't studying or training at the Academy I spent moping in my room. She didn't actually care a fig about Sasuke and had no reason to, but she was worried about me. I suppose my mother figured with my crush on him, that I was for bedroom-cowering out of worry.
She had no idea. No one did.
"...Maybe." I replied meekly as she left. I had visited him while he was in a coma, but the truth was now that he was awake, I intended to avoid Sasuke-kun at all costs. Oh, don't get me wrong, I was thrilled he was well enough for 'friendly faces,' but that person was not me. I had failed him in every conceivable way. He didn't need trash like me in his life after what happened...
The incident... It was so surreal, and if Sasuke-kun wasn't currently recovering in the hospital from the ordeal, I'd question if it really happened.
Just a week ago, I woke to find myself terrified as my own body refused to obey my commands. It was soon apparent an intruder had possessed my body and I was forced to sit back and watch.
The woman who invaded me was... something else. She spoke to me the entire time, explaining her plans, making eccentric and fantastical claims as she went. She maintained that she was actually 'me' from the future, and that she had used a time jutsu to travel back seven years in the past. That she was on a mission, one to kill a traitor who would one day murder her... her person. Her precious person.
Don't say his name.
I didn't believe her at first, and was convinced she was an enemy assassin, who was using my body to infiltrate the village. The more she told me, however, it was clear the theory wouldn't add up. She knew way too many things to just be some enemy nin. She knew a lot of secrets and tossed them around like candy, and they all made too much sense to be lies.
So I started to believe her. Sorta. It got me through the day, at least. What my elder-self didn't tell me was the traitor she was actually targeting was a fellow student. Worse...
It was Sasuke-kun.
I couldn't believe it and only realized what she intended when she started charging up the strange eye-genjutsu she had on her. Nothing I did could even hinder her, and when her final genjutsu went off, it blew both her and Sasuke away.
When I found myself in control again a moment later, Sasuke's body was on the ground in front of me... I ran for home, and passed out.
When woke the next day, I learned Sasuke was hospitalized and in a sort of a coma. No one knew what happened, and ashamed as the incident left me, I was too terrified of reprisal to tell anyone. The future-Sakura had hinted there was a conspiracy and distrust surrounding Sasuke's clan, and I best kept my nose out of it...
I sighed to myself. What mattered was Sasuke-kun was alive. The fact he was left with amnesia instead lent a lot more meaning to the future-Sakura's final words, the ones she whispered to me before she faded away.
"Now... now he's free. Take care of them both."
Both. One was Sasuke-kun. The other was...
Don't say his name.
Part of me was forced to acknowledge it really was an elegant solution. If revenge really was what would turn Sasuke against the Leaf somehow, robbing him of his motivation to do so would avert it. Who goes on quests of revenge for people they don't know?
Still, to rob him of his past was a monstrously cruel act in itself. He survived, sure, but that shouldn't absolve me of my shame. That any version of myself would be ruthless enough to do such a thing... And that I had failed to to protect Sasuke-kun from it...
And I claimed to love him?
Ugh.
I had tried to fight her, I really did. She was in control, but the whole sharing-a-brain thing left us linked in a weird way. I found we were able to project our feelings on to each other and I tried to use that to fight back by bombarding her with my own emotions. I hoped that I could use them to appeal to her... well, nostalgia, I guess. We did share a past at some point.
I tried to convince her that Sasuke-kun didn't have to die, and now that we knew, we could avert his betrayal. It did very little to move her, and she was certain that Sasuke would pursue revenge at all costs. To emphasize her point, she smacked me with a memory so vicious that it left a hole in my heart.
..."My goal is to crush the Leaf!" Sasuke declares proudly. A moment later, he narrowly misses skewering her with some sort of raiton jutsu. He's raving now, about his lost family, of all those he'll murder to make it right. It's a long list. The cold hatred of his chakra can be felt by all, a grinning demon beings to manifest around him, burning with a black fire...
That had hurt. The hatred... I could feel the cold-hate coming off of him as if I was there. It just left me filled with so much doubt, and I couldn't help but wonder if I misjudged Sasuke-kun. Was the cool-calm he exuded actually something much more sinister?
Still, I had to keep trying, I loved him, right? I hit her again, and the second time with the full force of my feelings for Sasuke-kun.
In retrospect, I really wish I hadn't.
She fired back everything she had, hammering me with more of her memories, this time wrapped in intense feelings. Visions of sunny smiles, first kisses, happy moments, pledges of devotion, promises broken and promises kept, blanketed in the simple feeling of loving and being loved back, and topped off with the crushing despair of losing it all.
I never really had a chance, did I? I was truly defeated in that moment. My lov- No... My crush. My school girl crush. It couldn't hope to compare with what she felt and was smashed to pieces by her own very real and intense love for... Well, it wasn't for Sasuke. She was me, but loved someone else...
Someone I was pretty sure I despised.
Don't say his name!
It was most enlightening and humiliating moment of my life so far. She broke me with just the conviction of her feelings, and used the opportunity to casually sweep me aside and fire off her eye-jutsu. The ruthless bitch. I don't care if it meant hating my self in a weird way, but I hated her!
Life was... simpler. And she ruined it.
'Did she? Maybe she saved it,' a voice inside me disagreed. My inner-self was getting more obnoxious since the incident. 'Maybe she showed you how tough you need to become!'
'You shut up!' I snapped back at myself, though I realized I was being defiant just for the sake of it.. 'I hope I don't ever grow up to become her.'
'You're lying. You admire her,' my inner-voice protested, and I realized she had a point. In many ways, the Future-Sakura represented the beautiful and dangerous kunoichi that I dreamed of one day becoming. Part of me was dreading the day I might reach her level, while another was excited for it.
'She was badass! Nothing stopped her!' my Inner-voice went on, exuberantly. She broke time it self to save her man! To save Naru-
Don't say his name!
I screamed at her, but it was too late. At his mention, one of the memories the witch inflicted on me bubbled up and...
...The two entwined together in pleasure, the eve of the final battle. "Sakura-chan..." he whispered breathlessly into her ear...
I buried my head into my bed, my blankets muffling my embarrassed wail.
Don't think about Naruto! Stop thinking! Suppress! Suppress!
'But it's so HOT!' my Inner-voice protested.
'Shuutuuuuuup!' I whined, trying to smother myself with the pillow.
will be continued, promise.