Her eyes gently flutter open.
As the blackness lifts, Sakura takes in her surroundings, noting that the room she was in wasn't quite as old as it should be and that the village she was in was a little bit younger than she remembered. But most of all, her blank jade eyes regard with the slightest amount of annoyance the presence of a one Sandaime Hokage that died 10 years ago.
Well, shit.
She gently stirs from the couch (thank you Kakashi, she thinks, eyes flickering to his form in the corner), head pounding. She felt like she just woke from too long of a night with Tsunade, drinking far too much sake. Sometimes to remember. Sometimes to forget.
Putting aside her distracting thoughts, she once again directs her gaze to the sandaime, taking in his imposing, yet gentle, presence. Slowly her eyes trail to the right, meeting the gaze of a suspicious Kakashi. She puts her throbbing head in her hands and mutters a soft "God, just kill me now, please".
"Those are some interesting first words," Kakashi remarks.
The familiar voice hits her like a truck and she grips her hair. A wave of emotions hits her - she doesn't know whether to laugh, scream, or cry. Filing away her death wish, she realizes that she may have genuinely gone insane and that she just doesn't care what they think anymore. If they decide she's insane, they'll just kill her anyways, no loss for her - but she feels compelled to ask.
"Is any of this even real?" she asks with a scoff, wary and bitter and tired. She's been in enough genjutsu to tell the difference, but with people like Madara in the world, you can never be certain. And maybe she'd rather it be a dream, because she really doesn't want to deal with this shit.
"As real as anything," the wizened voice of the Third cuts through the room, ending her train of thought. "Kakashi here found you by the Memorial Stone, and the two of you shared a rather… interesting encounter."
Sakura hears the door creak, dimly registers that Inoichi is now in the room and damn if that isn't another emotional overload. As she struggles to grasp the concept that she has literally travelled back in time, the Sandaime explains why Inoichi is present. He is to sift through her memories like a filing cabinet, discover if she's a threat, and eliminate the threat if needed.
She blinks, silently wishes Inoichi luck navigating through her trainwreck of a mind, and agrees to the restraints they bring forward as they explain why they're asking her to comply.
"All too often," Inoichi began, "battle-experienced shinobi have lashed out immediately upon the foreign presence entering their mindscape."
Sakura's eyes immediately darken. She knows all too well what it feels like to have your mind penetrated and torn through like an old and worthless encyclopedia of facts.
If the others notice her shift, if any of them find it curious - they don't say anything.
Once the restraints are secure, and her movements sufficiently suppressed, Inoichi steps forward. He presses his palm against her forehead, takes a deep breath, and begins.
Sakura bites back a gasp, fights against her instinctive urge to slam down her hard-kept mental walls, and lets Inoichi enter her mindscape. Soon enough, both her and Inoichi are standing in a field of cherry blossoms, pastel colors softly glowing and reflecting the hazy lights.
"I suppose I should introduce you to my mindscape, but I know you can recognize one when you see it. Come this way," she says, leading him deeper in. "I have no idea where to start, so I'll just ask you now. What would you like to know?"
Inoichi thinks for a moment, regarding the question and the woman in front of him with curiosity.
"Most people can't do… well, this. How do you have such practiced control over your mindscape?" he asks, genuine curiosity in his gaze.
Suddenly, the entire area went as black as a void, not a second later lit up by blood-red eyes. The sound of cackling and maniacal laughter echoes through the empty space, followed by a blood-curdling female scream. Blood splatters through a field of cherry blossoms. Not half a second later, the peaceful and hazy field returns, that memory locked down in chains and filed away in a distant corner. Still lingering.
Mindscapes are strange.
Inoichi's thoughts are flying at a thousand miles an hour. That half-second told him a great deal - one, the woman in front of him is no stranger to darkness, and the laughter she had faced sent chills down his spine and set his teeth on edge. Two, she has immense control over her mental state. Not often do you see a shinobi that can shut down a flashback (for that's what it was, but they can tackle that later) in less than a second. Still reeling from the intense emotion of her episode, Inoichi looks up and meets Sakura's eyes. They're harder now, eyebrows furrowed. The memory is still on her mind, but she's tamed it. It's no longer running wild. Understanding passes through their connected gaze, and when she turns and walks deeper into the recesses of her mind, Inoichi follows without a word.
"Where would you like to begin?" Sakura asks, ignoring the tenseness in the air as her steps left subtle ripples through her own grassy field.
Inoichi considers the woman in front of him as she walks, seemingly aimlessly across the expanses of her own memories.
"Who are you?" he asks, after careful consideration. Start simple. Well, he thought it would be, at least.
The hazy pastels of the field fade into a burning and bright spring day. The streets of Konoha buzz in the distance, unheard over the gentle, cool breeze of the rooftop. The scene unfolds as Inoichi registers what is definitely Kakashi, and is that Naruto and Sasuke?
Inoichi's thoughts are interrupted as Kakashi begins, asking in his typical lazy drawl for his new students (shit) to introduce themselves.
"I'm Sakura Haruno!" a cheery, high pitched, and innocent voice chirps out. Inoichi recognizes the voice as the owner of this memory, and looks over to the shinobi beside him. Sakura nods, answering his unasked question, and the memory dissolves into the distance.
Inoichi knows that wasn't a fake memory. Everything was too precise, too real. The details weren't unrealistically sharp or completely nonexistent, and the sheer amount of experience he holds allow him to be sure in his conclusion.
The woman before him is undeniably showing him the truth.
Sakura gives him a few moments to collect himself as she watches the realization dawn on his countenance, her mouth set in a grim line.
Inoichi turns yet again, fighting to slow the racing train of his thoughts, and asks her yet another question.
"How did you even get back here?" are the words that leave his lips, cautious and composed.
"Your guess is as good as mine," Sakura answers honestly, a lighter tone carrying her words through the space between them.
Again, cackling laughter shrieks through the air, Sakura's roar of rage heard over the sound of blood rushing through her ears, and a blinding flash of light.
Sakura grimaces and her right hand goes up to cradle her head.
"It's … complicated," she says, massaging her temple before slowly lowering her hand to her hip and shifting her weight to one foot.
Inoichi takes in her face. It's the same face he's seen from clients from the deepest parts of the battlefield, the ones who have survived and often wished they hadn't. Who had seen too much death, even for someone in their line of work. Who had killed too much, lived too little, survived too harshly. But there is still fire in those eyes, humor in the set of her posture, and wit in her sarcastic remarks. Whoever she is, he had crossed "enemy" off of the list of potentials about thirty seconds into their mind-walk. She proudly displays the Konoha headband, she was (is?) Kakashi's student - her memories are too real to be fake.
After a few seconds of stinted silence, Sakura clears her throat and speaks up.
"So, anything else you need to know, or can we get back to the office and explain this utter trainwreck to the Sandaime?"
Inoichi grins subtly and lets out a soft chuckle. All too quickly, the two of them are wrenched from her mind and thrown back into the real world; Inoichi stumbling backwards, and Sakura unceremoniously tipping to the side; abruptly adjusting her right leg to support her sudden shift she shakes her head to clear her vision.
In her peripheral, she sees Kakashi twitch in her general direction, ready to support her if needed - and she smirks fondly at the gesture; even if he was doing it out of habit, and due to the fact that Inoichi wasn't reacting as if she was a threat - it was comforting all the same.
After giving the room a few moments to settle, the Sandaime finally clears his throat ceremoniously.
"Well, Inoichi? What's the verdict?"
Sakura laughs, tossing a glance towards Inoichi on her left.
"Good luck with this one," she says, humor glittering in her eyes as both Kakashi's and the Sandaime's reflect confusion.
"Let's start with the basics, shall we?" the Sandaime suggests, glancing curiously between Inoichi and the woman in front of him. "Report."
Immediately, Inoichi's posture straightens at the authoritative tone of the Hokage.
"She isn't a threat. I left before I could gauge her skill level, so field testing will be required. Now, as for her identity, I'm afraid that's… complicated," he slows down in his speech, eyes flickering towards Kakashi before connecting with Sakura's own. She nods slowly, turning to face her old teacher as he regarded the both of them curiously.
Sakura hardly spares the Hokage a glance, wanting to tell Kakashi personally.
She takes a deep breath, steels herself, and opens her mouth.
"I'm Sakura Haruno, formerly of Team Seven of Konoha. I'm twenty-one years old, rank Jounin, and I'm from the future."
A/N: Sorry for taking so long with this chapter. Honestly, I just hadn't been motivated? I can never write the way that I want to to get the point across, and it takes a lot of mental energy for me to begin writing. I hope this chapter, short as it is, satisfies you in some way.
I'm currently figuring out the next chapter, but please bear with me as I don't have a beta reader and I do work full time and have other things to work on. As always, I accept constructive criticism as well as story ideas! Please let me know what you think.
Until next time
xAya