you know what actually? Sure.
So the thing about Inner Sakura is that at this point I've basically developed her completely from the ground up with minimal cannon scaffolding. So. I guess I might as well provide a semi-exhaustive explanation of my....characterization? Lore? whatever.
Inner is absoLUTELY another soul within Sakura, obviously. Like that's cannon. Which makes it literally horrifying that she disappears in Shippuden cause like. She was her own MIND and CONSCIOUSNESS what the? fuck?? WHERE IS MY GIRL.
Personally, I don't think that Sakura and Inner knew that their whole...THING wasn't normal until fighting Ino in the Chunnin Exams. Sakura. I think Sakura's a lot like the audience here, where up until that exact moment she thought that Inner was just an especially outspoken inner sakura, just part of her own consciousness that's more expressive then she dares externalize. And I think that Sakura, as a person, would NOT react to this revelation well.
Like…Say you had a mirror in your room. And one day, you realize that the mirror doesn't actually show your reflection; it's a window to another dimension, containing only the girl that looks exactly like you and instinctively knows how to read your mind and body to match it, so well you never even considered it being anything but a normal mirror. It would change your life, but the reflection girl not only already knew that, but doesn't know anything else.
Sakura would panic at Inner's existane, because like. How would YOU as a 12 year old child soilder react to being told that your coping mechanism for repression was actually a Human Person to some extent? I think Sakura's answer is You Kill It Before It Talks More! Especially given that she was going to work under the HOKAGE. Like the two options here are 1. Sakura locked Inner away and threw away the key before Tsunade could even know what was up or 2. Tsunade misunderstood the situation and gave Sakura the closest thing Ninja have to therapy, which was just Don't Repress Your Negative Emotions, Redirect Them!! And Sakura did but Inner didn't go away, so Sakura boxed her away so that Tsunade wouldn't think Sakura was doing something wrong.
This all means that, to my headcannon, Inner Sakura is effectively GONE by the time Sakura is a chunnin. A muffled thought in the back of Sakura's mind, a murky image sometimes seen in dreams, a little bowl to pour emotions into on the vanishingly-rare occasion that she needs to get rid of them. Inner, for her part, isn't all that conflicted lol.
Like ok first thing first: I don't think Inner ever ages past 12. I think that realizing that she was her own person was HORRIFICALLY traumatizing, especially when she wasn't ever given anything to do with this realization as she was then immediately cut off from the ONLY other person she could talk to. Her personal development froze there.
So she is eternally 12, which is a TERRIBLE age to be. She still loves Sakura, and doesn't really have a well functioning concept of Time now that she can't tap into Sakura's actual perspective anymore, so even if she ever gets dug up she won't be angry about how long Sakura trapped her, though that will certainly be the thing SAKURA is most guilty about. Inner's angst would mostly come from not being USEFUL for Sakura anymore, since Sakura didn't repress her emotions by shoving onto Inner, and Inner doesn't know ANYTHING except being a useful part of Sakura. In my mind, all that time trapped in the head just gave Inner INSANE control issues (because she is TWELVE and literally a god in her own plane and DESPERATELY holding onto any semblance of control) and give her a Photographic Memory, because she figured that's the next most useful thing she can be and it's not like she has anything better to do them memorize EVERYTHING that gets stored in memory.
(That would mean that Inner isn't actually behind on any events that happened- she just doesn't really. grasp the concept of time passing. She doesn't have to live through the memories in real time, just memorize them, and she doesn't have a physical body to slow her brain down or anything.)
So if Inner ever actually came back for, like, adult Sakura, it would be. Very interesting. I'm guessing it would happen after a conversation with Ino who can't help but ask after the possible-demon that used to possess her friend, and Sakura's like 'lol that was just me being 12 and having problems' to which Ino responds like. 'No I was there. And she definately was as well.....Hey Sakura. What Did You Do?' and Ino would go mind diving to find Sakura's kind-of-accidental-mind-prisoner.
And Inner would...mostly just try to pick up on their dynamic where it left off. And that would freak out Sakura, of course, because she was expecting a tortured banshee that had been gnashing at the bars for the past decade or two, and instead she's got this twelve year old who's, yeah, kind of a bitch, but in an aggressively 'take care of yourself you dumb mother fucker' way and who doesn't seem to hold ANY grudge. At first Sakura thinks that Inner doesn't fully understand what Sakura did to her, locking her up and throwing away the key for DECADES because Sakura was too much of a dumb teenager to process what Inner WAS and after that she literally just forgot. Like Sakura is drowning in guilt but Inner's like. Like Inner CAN'T hate Sakura. As far as Inner cares, she's still little more then a vessel for Sakura to love HERSELF through! Inner loves Sakura unconditionally, and wouldn't hate Sakura even if she did feel like she was being tortured for two decades instead of like she'd maybe been forgotten in time out for a little long but it's okay because it was long enough that she got to be in a library after dark and read all the books and redecorate the library and make herself perfect for when Sakura came back. Because Inner is PART of Sakura, so of COURSE Sakura would come back, she always knew that.
Sakura switches gears from 'oh no, kiddo, you don't understand what I did to you' to 'oh SHIT, you still don't realize you're a PERSON?' which Inner meets with similar amusement cause like. She isn't. It may have been a surprise for SAKURA that Inner was her own mind with her own thoughts, but Inner already knew that she had thoughts obviously. In Sakura's mind, them being seperate conciousnesses instead of just her one brain echoing back at itself changed EVERYTHING, but Inner never saw it as a big deal. What's the difference, really? Either way, Inner is part of Sakura. They're connected, they share a body and a mind space deeply empathic connection and most opinions. Inner still doesn't know HOW to care about anything but Sakura, and doesn't really want to, and that's never changed.
The problem with them is that they're BOTH supernaturally stubborn, so I don't think either one of them would win this argument. I think they'd keep arguing about whether Inner was Her Own Person and more whether it MATTERED until the end of time, but maybe Sakura makes Inner take turns actually controlling the body and interacting with the world on occasion (this is hell. Inner hates it. Constant overstimulation and she keeps getting bored because time moves at a fixed pace and she isn't LITERALLY GOD ugh why did she agree to this. Hugs are nice though she guesses) but mostly Inner would just. Be along for the ride with Sakura again, falling back into place like a reattached limb or restored lobotomy, slowly learning over time that she doesn't HAVE to be USEFUL for Sakura, she just has to be there. Trying, like everyone else, to be a person.
