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runespoorPart 1
At least it looked like a smile; admittedly, an Itachi-like kind of smile, so minuscule Ino wasn’t sure it wasn’t just wishful thinking, she reflected before she opened her eyes onto green trees topped by an azure patch of sky.
She blinked in suprise, then determined that she was warmish, wet, and propped up against a tree with a security blanket pulled around her and a small fire crackling merrily before her.
She shot the audacious flames a dirty look, which they ignored with merry crackling sounds, and she felt a sneer pull at the corner of her lips. It wasn’t completely rational, but given that not very long ago, she’d been part wood and in the process of being eaten alive by mental fire, she supposed she might be forgiven the current lapse in sanity.
However, as she had no wish for it to perdure as more than a lapse, she shook the feeling and tried to stand up.
She grimaced as the move awoke a few bruises her body must have received when she’d abandoned it with no warning, but she was pleased and more than a little relieved to find herself steady on her own two feet, without even a bout of dizziness. Pretty much perfect post-shintenshin physical condition.
It must’ve been pouring while she was unconscious; the ground was muddy even under where the trees acted as a natural sort of roof. In fact, she’d been sitting in the only patch of dryness – that looked a lot like it’d been dried by a doton of some kind, now she thought about it.
A heap of what could only be articles of clothing – torn, dirtied and in various states of bloodiness – stood (Ino used the word loosely) not far away. Ino thought she recognised one of Karin’s cloth thighboots.
She could only imagine how miffed the other girl must have been at the sacrifice. In Karin’s place, she’d be miffed as well. The cloth thighboots were an accessory Ino had already been planning to add to her wardrobe when she was back in Konoha. She’d have to never let Sakura – or, kami forbid, any of Team Hebi should they end up at the village for some reason – see them, but the effort’d be totally worth it.
Time to go and find them, then, since it was obvious they were back.
There hadn’t been anyone at her side; and while it didn’t sit all that quietly with Ino, at least it meant that no-one had died. Otherwise there’d have been one of them there, waiting for her to wake up. Supposedly to tell her; in fact, all she’d have needed to do was look at their face. It wasn’t all legend that you could read on someone’s face when they were about to announce a death.
Ino had gone through it once already. A chuunin on an escort mission, a few years older than her. She had been the one to announce it to the last one, who’d fainted in the middle of the fight due to bloodloss.
Of all of them, the only one who might be able to school his features well enough that she wouldn’t gather the news at first glance was Sasuke (unless, of course, it was Sakura or Naruto who’d died... but Ino didn’t think she’d have woken at all if it’d been the case), and she couldn’t imagine why anyone in their right mind would leave him with such a role.
Especially not when there were much more suitable candidates for the task, Sakura to begin with.
All of which didn’t explain where they’d gone.
Or how long she’d been out, now she thought about it.
It wasn’t anywhere near sunset, and she didn’t feel as if she’d spent the night propped against a tree. They wouldn’t have dared. Sakura wouldn’t have left her in damp clothes, either.
“Oh, you’re up.”
Ino turned at the voice.
Suigetsu was grinning his toothy smirk at her, before he added, “Welcome back to the world of the living.”
He walked up to the fire, smiling at it a bit too widely for entire comfort, with a spring in his step. Ino stared. Definitely a spring. She tried to come up with the last time she’d seen Suigetsu walk with more than a Shikamaruish slouch, and drew a blank.
“You look happy.”
Her tone made it perfectly clear she wasn’t getting it.
He was also bared-chested, except for the bandages wrapped around him. Ino supposed his shirt must have been one of the casualties in the fight against Kisame. Karin must just love that.
“I’ve got Kisame’s sword,” he answered easily. His smile had turned a shade darker.
Ino nodded; over the past three weeks, the topic of what drove the other nin had arisen more than once. It was unavoidable, with Naruto in the group. Except that Ino suddenly realised Naruto hadn’t ever spoken of his goal of becoming the Hokage during their discussions. He only spoke of getting Sasuke back to Konoha, sometimes with a smile as if there was a huge joke he wasn’t sharing, when Team Seven had had a good day, sometimes with a glare at Sasuke, when the Uchiha had proven difficult.
“Where are the others?”
Suigetsu pointed to the left.
“We’re just over there, there’s a pretty little stream. Sasuke and his guardians are...” He made a very vague encompassing gesture. “Somewhere around. I don’t know exactly where and Karin refuses to share. They’ll come back when they’re done.”
His careless tone seemed a little forced, but Ino didn’t call him on it.
“Done?” she interrogated.
“Yeah, with whatever it is those three feel they have to deal with. I think that includes how to dispose of Itachi’s body, though, so I wouldn’t be actually all that surprised if bits of the landscape started taking fire and rising into the air.”
Ino nodded; Suigetsu sent her a knowing glance. She hadn’t really thought of how they’d deal with the immediate aftermath of Itachi’s death, or even if any of the three had, and now Suigetsu mentioned it, it seemed likely that there’d be another Team Seven argument about how to go at it. Well, at least Sakura was likely to have. She could oppose whatever stupid notion Sasuke came up with at least long enough that Naruto caught up.
Well, she couldn’t do anything about it right now.
“Karin agreed to wait at a place you suggested?” she asked in a blatant attempt to think about something else. “Is there a concussion you’re not telling me about?”
Which, once she’d said it, didn’t seem half as funny as it did in her mind.
Suigetsu looked amused again.
“I think she wanted to wash badly enough that she leapt on the idea. Now, not that I mind talking with you, but Karin sent me get you when she sensed you’d awakened, so maybe we should get moving?”
“I’m just up,” Ino complained even as she fell into step behind him. “Why am I the one who has to move?”
“You’d say no to a bath?” She couldn’t see his face, but she knew he was amused.
There were times she wished he’d treat her a little less like he treated Karin. Even if Ino wasn’t as bothered as the Sound girl, it didn’t mean she wasn’t annoyed. However, the suggestion deserved her attention, no matter the tone it’d been uttered with.
Damp clothes were not comfortable, and Ino had the disagreeable sensation that they – or she – carried a faint smell of musty, unpleasant dirt and sweat.
“That depends. Is the onsen co-ed?”
And maybe they’d be able to tell her how Itachi had been killed.
He may have snorted in answer, but it was drowned out by Karin’s loud calling when they turned after a particularly huge tree and came out onto the stream.
“Oh, good, it only took you fifteen minutes to get her here.”
Karin and Juugo were both sitting on convenient-looking stumps, the sun falling on them. Juugo had had his eyes closed, soaking in the sun’s warmth, when Karin spoke; his eyelids opened, and he greeted Ino with a serious nod. He was bandaged-up too, Ino noticed, but more extensively than Suigetsu, and there was a black cloak folded next to his feet. A similar bundle rested to Karin’s.
Karin, even with the dressing covering about half her face and setting her glasses slightly askew, looked clean and scrubbed, even her hair seemed less awful than it’d been lately. Her right boot had been torn at mid-calf level, the leg emerging from the boot covered with a thin layer of bandages, indicative of skin injuries and not grave wounds.
Watching them, Ino suddenly shivered, realising that she really was pretty cold.
Suigetsu’s only answer was a wide grin Karin’s way. Karin bristled and crossed her arms tighter, but relaxed after only a few moments. That was different.
“You should sit down, Ino. You look cold.” Juugo was looking at her with something like faint concern.
“Yeah yeah,” Suigetsu interjected. “Hey, Karin, move your fat ass and let Ino sit. She got hurt.”
“WHOSE ASS IS FAT?!?”
Ino let herself drop on the stump vacated by Karin when the Sound girl launched herself at Suigetsu with a howl, welcoming the caress of sun on her skin, easing the bone-deep chill that clung to her. Karin could only blame herself for being dumb enough to fall for it. Nice of Suigetsu, too. Or else he was so used to mocking her that he couldn’t let the obvious jibe pass.
Between Karin’s claws, Suigetsu was losing his smirk as the girl continued shrieking at him, and Ino could feel the moment he’d start grimacing and pleading with her to release him. Loudly. Or change into water and run between her fingers, which would only frustrate her more.
Her head might hurt a little, after all. Which wasn’t too bad, she’d had worse in the wake of some possessions which had really gone out of hand – though, all things considered, she wasn’t sure there’d been one that had ever got as out of hand as a S-class criminal setting fire to her in their own mind – but was bound to get worse if the noise level rose higher.
With a start, Juugo stood up.
“Here, Karin. You can have my seat.”
Ino removed her fingers from the temples she’d been massaging and looked at him. Karin looked up from the place she’d been attempting to throttle Suigetsu.
“Juugo, you’re not supposed to move around. Sit down. Now, this bastard—” she shook Suigetsu, in case anyone could have missed who she meant, “—is going to use one of his two giant swords and make me another one.”
“Hey,” Suigetsu flatly said, managing to convey the force of ten ‘I’m not your servant’ speeches in a single word and still appear totally unaffected by Karin’s assumption.
“You, shut up. Do something useful,” she ordered.
Something to do with the fight, Ino figured when Karin let go of him and, grumbling, he hauled his older sword to his shoulder. Maybe he felt guilty over Juugo’s wounds.
“Now,” Karin called Ino’s attention away from her teammate, standing in front of her with her hands on her hips, “I’ll just wait until he’s back with my seat.”
She looked like she wanted to impress upon Ino the sacrifices she was making for her sake.
Ino could sympathise. She’d done this enough herself to know how it hurt when you were forced to let go of your rightful privileges when one of your teammates needed them more than you did.
Her team – that is, Shikamaru and Asuma-sensei – used to say she had entitlement issues, which was why Chouji was the only one with whom she’d have been amenable to sharing a seat with even when he wasn’t hurt, had 1)the seats been big enough to accomodate both of them (Chouji’s fault, Ino could fit anywhere, where even Sakura couldn’t), and 2)the idea of being pressed against Chouji’s side not made her goddamn uncomfortable.
Instead, Chouji was the only one she pretended was here when the rest of her team had made her angry. And she made sure she was sickeningly sweet toward him.
Karin was eyeing her.
“You look like you’re okay for someone who’s been knocked out by the Sharingan.”
Which wasn’t news, as Suigetsu would have hardly missed an opportunity to tell her how shitty she looked, with cheerful matter-of-factness, but Karin made it sound like a criticism. You had to admire it.
“Mhm,” Ino acquiesced. She could only take their word on it, she thought, running a hand through the tangles in her hair and grimacing inwardly at the sticky, rough texture. Ew ew ew. Thank the kami for streams. “How long have I been out, by the way?”
Karin crossed her arms and took a speculative air.
“What with the time since we came back – and then how long they said they thought you’d been out—” they, in Karin’s mouth and given the context, being Sakura, but Karin didn’t mention directly Sasuke’s girl teammate if she could avoid it “—about three hours.”
She gave Ino a critical one-over. Ino felt acutely her lack of physical injuries, and restrained her retort that she had been the one keeping Itachi occupied while Sakura healed Naruto and Sasuke was too busy being in shock to be of any help.
“Congratulations,” Karin deadpanned.
Ino ignored the remark. There were more pressing matters to be kept in mind.
“How were they?” Was Sakura alright? Were they hurt?
“Naruto was wounded; I think it must be completely gone by now. Unless he got himself injured since then,” Karin allowed. Ino thought she was referring to Sakura, until she saw Karin wasn’t smirking. Then she realised Karin was thinking of Sasuke.
“Sasuke was a bit peakish,” Juugo added. “I think he may have been beaten up but Sakura had healed him already.”
“She didn’t have anything?” she wanted to make sure.
“I don’t think so. But it was hard to see, there was so much blood...”
“They were drenched in it,” Karin muttered with a far-away look.
A shudder broke over Ino. Images of Naruto – Naruto’s wound ran through her mind. Impaled. Blood splashing everywhere, Sasuke’s white shirt gone dark, not so much scarlet as crimson. Naruto’s clothes black with the liquid. Sasuke’s skin, as if he’d been struck by a paintball. His arm, when he’d pulled it out of Naruto’s chest. Sakura’s hands, and the stains she was getting on her skirt.
And then there’d been Itachi.
“How much did you see of what happened?”
Karin’s clear gaze was fixed on her. Intense but devoid of animosity, this time; only shining with a determination that reminded uneasily Ino of – other people.
Her eyelids batted once, and she looked down. So they didn’t know either...
“You can’t ask her to answer that, Karin. Sasuke’ll tell us when he tells us, or he won’t at all, but it’s not fair that you put Ino on the spot for it. Not fair for anyone,” Juugo said softly.
“...I know.”
Karin had sounded unsure, almost bitter. Ino couldn’t bring herself to look up yet, and it was a huge wave of relief when she heard Suigetsu come back to them. He seemed to make a point of making as much noise as he could when he walked, generally, and right now he was being even noisier. Dragging stumps, Ino assumed. Until she’d met him, she hadn’t believed it was possible for anyone to be even less discreet a walker as Chouji (something about crisps bags).
“Alright, Your Highness, your seat’s arrived, so you can shut up now and do us all a favour.”
He casually threw a large log at Karin’s feet, so she had to jump backward to avoid it, grinning cheekily as he did, clearly challenging her to rebuke him when he’d just complied to her command.
“In my opinion, that was worth it,” he commented, dragging his own log closer until the four made a circle, and allowing his arm to return to its normal twiggy state as he sagged on his new seat with obvious satisfaction.
“In mine as well. Five more minutes without your incessant babbling, just imagine,” Karin replied, crossing her legs. The bandage on her right leg went almost all the way up to the hot pants, with less than one inch between the upper band and the black fabric; if Ino put two fingers there, they’d brush both bandages and shorts.
“Guys,” Juugo interrupted quietly.
Watching the three of them was like watching a team. Karin and Suigetsu were frequent and loud in their claims that they didn’t care in the slightest for the other two, but there was a sort of familiarity in the way the three of them interacted that tightened Ino’s throat.
She missed Konoha so much. She missed her team so much. She missed the genin brats just learning how to work together when they generally had nothing in common – and so loud about it, as if they feared if they didn’t make a scene people would actually believe they could get along with that crazy bitch/useless loser/stuck-up jerk/them – so much.
She missed Sakura so much, too, when she saw her every day.
If things had worked out differently they could have been like that, Sakura and her, and someone else. She’d thought she’d had a taste of it when the three of them, Sakura and Naruto and her, had left on their chase for Sasuke. In parts she hadn’t been wrong. But nothing could erase the difference in Ino’s status then. She’d known it before, obviously; Sakura and Naruto were chasing after Sasuke, and Ino was mostly there for Sakura. She hadn’t resented Sakura for it.
But today, sitting with Team Hebi, she couldn’t stop the regrets over what could have been.
She felt like an intruder.
She had no idea why they’d asked her to join them – the seats, everything, made it clear they’d wanted to discuss things.
Ino hated blind guesses, and she didn’t feel up to mind games either.
That may have been because she wasn’t sure any of them might possess the trickiness and motivation needed for it.
Oh, Suigetsu was tricky alright, but he liked blunt truths and his own amusement far too much. Interacting with him was a bit like interacting with Temari if Ino tried to get her to help Ino make Shikamaru carry the shopping bags. He was more of a spectator.
Karin, Ino didn’t entirely dismiss. She’d worked for Orochimaru, after all, and it certainly hadn’t been for her combat abilities. But if she was playing mind-games, she was a far superior actress than anyone Ino could hope to take off-guard.
So she asked.
“Why am I here?”
She eyed each of them as she carefully spoke. None of them pretended to misunderstand her question; it saved everyone a great deal of cutting through the rubbish and double-meanings ripe with the unsaid and potential paranoia, and as such Ino welcomed it.
Suigetsu shrugged. “You’d have gone looking for them. And we’re curious.”
“It wouldn’t be fair to quizz Ino about it,” Juugo repeated.
“And we wouldn’t want you to be all lonesome by yourself at such a moment. We’re nice people like that.”
Karin sent Suigetsu the sort of glance that’d have been more appropriate if he’d confessed up to liking girls with a spirit – disgusted and thoroughly unimpressed.
“How do you come up with all this shit?” she demanded. “Is it a natural skill or do you just do it because you know it causes me pain?”
“A natural gift enhanced by your inspiring presence,” Suigetsu replied without batting an eyelid. “The sign from above that we have great teamwork.”
Karin snorted.
“The only way we have ‘great teamwork’, dipshit, is how I daily refrain from killing you by boiling you into thin air. And the only way that could be considered teamwork is when you’re using the same dictionary as our three crazy Leaves over there.”
Ino wanted both to point out that they had succeeded in killing Uchiha Itachi, and to protest that Team Seven’s definition of teamwork was not the norm in Konoha.
“Did they tell you where they went?”
To her own ears, she sounded... anxious. Shaken. Hurt. Maybe. Which she wasn’t; she got that they wanted to be alone to deal with Itachi’s remains, and maybe talk. Really, she did.
“Dispose of Itachi’s body, I’d say.”
“Stop Sasuke from doing something stupid. And probably take his mind off of it at some point. Oh, come on,” Suigetsu said off Karin’s expression. “Stop with the denial already. The pug-face’s not an attractive look for you, even if you’re a bitch.” He grinned at her.
“Or they’ll blow up the forest and we all die,” he added as an after-thought.
Basic defense mechanism meant to undercut the weight of what he’d said before. Suigetsu was like that, Ino supposed. Putting up weak excuses to avoid being taken seriously when he, presumably, was most. That or he wasn’t one-hundred percent convinced of what he said and he didn’t want the ridicule if he turned out to be wrong, and so pretended it was a joke all along. Ino wasn’t sure.
“I don’t know,” Juugo said pensively. “I don’t think they are going to fight. Or... not with jutsus, anyway.”
A brief pause that made Ino wonder what she’d missed when she’d been out.
“How were they when you arrived?”
The normal question was ‘Why do you think they are going to fight?’ but given who they were talking about, it wasn’t even worth considering. Cold day in Suna before Team Seven didn’t have an excuse to fight, and didn’t give the impression massive maiming was liable to occur in a very short future.
Ino looked at each of them as she waited for their answer and they exchanged looks.
Her heart was beating too loudly in her chest, she didn’t know why.
“Team Seven-ish,” Suigetsu succinctly replied.
As if was enough. As if it was an explanation. As if it was supposed to explain everything.
And it was – it explained that some things couldn’t be explained.
Ino got that as well as the members of Team Hebi.
They may be less blind of Team Seven’s bonds, to use Naruto’s much-loved word, they’d only ever be outside looking in. Team Seven may rush into things without thinking, not realise how far they were going, how frightening that was, never get the big picture, they were the only ones who could make sense of the details.
“This feels so weird,” Karin grumbled darkly.
Suigetsu laughed incredulously at her. “What, you mean you actually didn’t see it coming?”
Karin glared. Suigetsu’s eyes curved into a malicious smirk. “Or do you mean to tell me you actually thought there was a chance it might not happen? I smell denial!”
Ino, for once stumped, frowned and looked at Juugo for a hint. Who had an impassive air, as though he’d witnessed a similar scene a thousand time already and was only waiting for this one to end or need be ended.
“You can’t seriously mean you’re jealous; travelling’s going to be such a pain tomorrow, you should be glad—”
This time, he obtained what he was aiming for. Karin scrambled to her feet, flushed and glaring, and screamed at him, “Shut up! Okay? Just because you got your life dream today—can you please just SHUT UP?”
Sometimes Ino felt like the Team Seven disease was spreading. Sometimes she felt like she was the only one with a normal team relationship in the world. Then she remembered that it obviously must be it, because out of the teams of the Konoha Twelve, Team Ten was the normal one.
Suigetsu wasn’t done snickering, though.
“So, so uncomfortable. You should be glad you won’t be the one hurting all over, really.”
Karin was well on her way toward livid.
Juugo’s calm voice cut through the impending drama. “Let’s talk about something else,” he said.
At another time, Ino might’ve agreed, more because she was fed up with Suigetsu and Karin’s tension than out of cautiousness concerning his abilities. She’d had the feeling that last was at least part of the reason why Suigetsu and Karin ever listened to him.
Had she known him under different circumstances, she might’ve done the same – she was intentionally abrasive, not brain-dead – she’d witnessed two of Juugo’s crises in the first week the two groups had joined up. But since then Sakura had put together pills that left him in control, and despite that Suigetsu and Karin hadn’t changed their way of dealing with their fourth team member.
That was one of the reasons Ino suspected there might be more to Team Hebi than mutual putting up with the others because Sasuke had told them to.
In any case, her curiousity had been piqued, and that took absolute priority.
“Why do you think the walking will be so unpleasant, anyway? I don’t expect them to resolve their problems all in one day, obviously, but still, Forehead and Naruto should be able to beat off the depression, don’t you think?”
“They’ll have resolved it all right,” Suigetsu sniggered.
Ino looked at him strangely.
“But it’s so weird,” Karin insisted with a sniff. “I mean, we are here, pretending to be busy and blissfully ignorant, and they are out there, doing—” She cut herself off. “Weird,” she concluded.
“That you’re passively waiting instead of marching in to interrupt them?” Suigetsu charitably asked. Then, turning toward Ino, “I don’t think it’ll be unpleasant, except for one or two or all of them—” he smiled wickedly “—but it’s certainly going to be interesting.”
“You’re talking as though it was a done thing,” Karin accused. “And we’re not sure yet, it might not be!”
Ino was feeling more and more like she’d stumbled into a reunion between spies who were only talking in jargon.
Juugo shifted.
Suigetsu let out another incredulous laugh.
Karin glared at him a white-hot glare. “They might not. Maybe it’s too soon!”
“Karin...”
She ignored Juugo’s careful intervention.
“Well, maybe it is! We all know how repressed Sasuke is, so even if he’s aware of—of it, and our observations are far from conclusive, there’s no way he’d act on it.”
Half-formed, untold ideas were starting to seep into Ino’s mind as she stared at the Sound girl, and a deep weight settled at the pit of her stomach.
“I think if they start fucking the awareness into him, even he’ll be hard-pressed to deny it. Specially given the way he’s been.”
“He might not,” Karin persisted; but she was clearly grasping at straws. “Maybe he won’t—maybe they’ll be too busy burning Itachi’s body!”
“And nothing’ll happen in front of the funerary pyre?” Amusement had gone out of Suigetsu’s countenance now. He sounded mostly exasperated. “Karin, I know it’s hard to accept and you were wetting your panties at the mere idea of popping Sasuke’s cherry, but you really gotta stop the denial – I swear, you’re worse than he is – and admit that even as we’re speaking, his teammates are sexing him up. And I’m not discounting the option that there might not be any travelling tomorrow. At all.”
Karin hotly replied; or maybe she threw herself at Suigetsu again to bash his skull in.
Ino didn’t know.
At some point, she’d stopped listening. Stopped paying attention to anything at all as Suigetsu’s words echoed through her mind again, and again, and again. She couldn’t make anything out except how hard breathing had suddenly become (teammates are sexing him up). The buzzing drum in her ears deafened the noises from outside, like she was under water (they’ll have resolved it all right).
Images flashed through her mind of what she’d seen but never read (the way he’s been), not missing the big picture but stopping at its interpretation (so weird). Sakura and Naruto and Sasuke, always... (Team Seven-ish)
Words were coming back to her, that she’d said without meaning them (YOUR BOYFRIEND IS ALIVE, SO), only to get a reaction out of them, and also because that was exactly how it looked like, and she’d never realised, she’d never thought, even as she watched how all about Team Seven Team Seven was, it was exactly what it was (stop the denial). Phrases and expressions she’d shared with Team Hebi she’d never realised they didn’t mean metaphorically, when she’d just been using them as mocking remarks, to quell her exasperation and her slight hurt (you actually thought there was a chance).
It was always Sasuke first.
(and they are out there, doing—)
Ino stopped paying attention.
Some time later, Sakura and Naruto and Sasuke returned, the three others welcoming them almost as if nothing had happened. Maybe Karin was scowling a little, and Suigetsu was smirking, and Juugo wasn't looking at anyone in their eyes.
All she could focus on was them, the sated glow in their eyes, the rumples in their clothes, the way their hair was sticking out in every direction.
How, when they prepared dinner, Naruto and Sakura dropped the mask and clung closer to Sasuke than they’d ever done before and Sasuke let them, one on each side of him and so close he must feel their body heat. The cautious manner Sasuke was moving, Naruto’s too frequent touches on both his teammates, his too proud, too happy grin.
How Sakura was smiling.
At nothing in particular, at both of them, affection shining off her face and relief and so much—so much love Ino wanted—
Ino didn’t know what she wanted. To cry, to weep, every time she looked at them and every time she heard them – wondering if Sasuke was talking more or less than usual, wondering if Naruto was speaking in his normal tone, wondering it there might not be deeper, hidden meaning to their words she would never understand...
So many things around the three of them like a warm blanket of soft, cottony sunshine blinding Ino with tears.
Things like need, want, devotion, loyalty, team, only you and never let go, things Ino wasn’t sure were really there or she wasn’t just imagining them through the brilliant blur, because there was love so much, so impossible to ignore she couldn’t see past it.
When it was time to go to sleep, the three of them pushed their sleeping gear in the same area, as though they had always only slept this way. Sasuke moved his things slightly less far than the other two, not because he was unable to do more but because Sakura had put her things at one place and looked like she refused to step a few meters back to placate Sasuke’s pride. Naruto’s grin was gowing larger and larger by every ever-so-slightly stiff step Sasuke was taking and Sakura crossed her arms and didn’t back down.
Naruto casually, gleefully put his arm on Sasuke’s shoulders and around his neck, Sakura rested her hand on top of Sasuke’s, the two of them entangled their legs together. Sasuke didn’t break away. Ino couldn’t see his face. With his free hand, he tugged higher the part of his shirt that had been threatening to slip down his neck and shoulder, then he leaned into his teammates.
They didn’t say what they had done with Itachi’s body.
Ino wasn’t in a state to care. Their clothes were equally encrusted with blood.
The next morning Sakura sought her out when Ino had gone to take a bath. She was clutching a bundle of dark fabric. She’d emerged from between the trees and coughed to announce her presence; Ino had turned around, and gazed at her best friend standing there for a long while before realising she was naked in the stream, and, in spite of the warmth pooling in her insides at the sight of Sakura, she was cold with the water and the breeze chilling her skin where it wasn’t underwater anymore.
Sakura didn’t tell her what they’d done with Itachi, but she gave her the bundle.
“Could you keep it safe until we reach Konoha?”
Ino nodded.
“What is it?” she dully asked. She couldn’t shake her mind off the reflection of how Sakura would look like when she kissed, her eyes closed and her hands pulling at Sasuke’s shirt, Naruto’s hand sliding under her skirt.
Sakura opened the bundle slightly, showing Ino the other side of the dark fabric.
Black, with red clouds.
Ino stared at it, stuck on the memory of the fight, and the strange facing-off with Itachi, in his or her mind.
“When we’re back in Konoha, Naruto and I will be able to take it back. But as long as we travel, we don’t want Sasuke that close to his things.”
“His things?” Ino asked faintly.
“The cloak, his hitai-ite. His necklace. Things like that.”
His eyes.
Sakura wasn’t telling her everything. Ino knew it. But it was all right. Sakura had come to her, had entrusted her with her team’s sanity.
The obvious question was, why don’t you dispose of it, but Ino knew better than to ask it. For one, if she did, Sakura might change her mind. For another, Ino had long stopped trying to make normal sense out of Team Seven’s coping mechanisms. Everyone had their own, and after a while it either did or didn’t go. Shikamaru was only smoking when he’d gone to see Kurenai now.
Ino couldn’t even guess who Itachi was to Sasuke any more. She didn’t know him well enough. She just knew that Sakura trusted her enough with this.
Even if she didn’t trust her with her team’s secret, with the fact that they were together now.
“Of course,” she heard herself speak.
Sakura smiled, tightly, like during the days she was alone in Konoha and Ino managed to break through her shell and get her to speak about her team. ‘I can’t tonight, Pig, I have three scrolls to read and Tsunade-shishou expects me at half past six at the hospital tomorrow morning.’
Ino’s heart broke a little when Sakura turned around and disappeared between the trees again, toward her team. Only after she couldn’t hear or see any more of Sakura did she look down again toward the bundle.
At least it looked like a smile; admittedly, an Itachi-like kind of smile, so minuscule Ino wasn’t sure it wasn’t just wishful thinking, she reflected before she opened her eyes onto green trees topped by an azure patch of sky.
She blinked in suprise, then determined that she was warmish, wet, and propped up against a tree with a security blanket pulled around her and a small fire crackling merrily before her.
She shot the audacious flames a dirty look, which they ignored with merry crackling sounds, and she felt a sneer pull at the corner of her lips. It wasn’t completely rational, but given that not very long ago, she’d been part wood and in the process of being eaten alive by mental fire, she supposed she might be forgiven the current lapse in sanity.
However, as she had no wish for it to perdure as more than a lapse, she shook the feeling and tried to stand up.
She grimaced as the move awoke a few bruises her body must have received when she’d abandoned it with no warning, but she was pleased and more than a little relieved to find herself steady on her own two feet, without even a bout of dizziness. Pretty much perfect post-shintenshin physical condition.
It must’ve been pouring while she was unconscious; the ground was muddy even under where the trees acted as a natural sort of roof. In fact, she’d been sitting in the only patch of dryness – that looked a lot like it’d been dried by a doton of some kind, now she thought about it.
A heap of what could only be articles of clothing – torn, dirtied and in various states of bloodiness – stood (Ino used the word loosely) not far away. Ino thought she recognised one of Karin’s cloth thighboots.
She could only imagine how miffed the other girl must have been at the sacrifice. In Karin’s place, she’d be miffed as well. The cloth thighboots were an accessory Ino had already been planning to add to her wardrobe when she was back in Konoha. She’d have to never let Sakura – or, kami forbid, any of Team Hebi should they end up at the village for some reason – see them, but the effort’d be totally worth it.
Time to go and find them, then, since it was obvious they were back.
There hadn’t been anyone at her side; and while it didn’t sit all that quietly with Ino, at least it meant that no-one had died. Otherwise there’d have been one of them there, waiting for her to wake up. Supposedly to tell her; in fact, all she’d have needed to do was look at their face. It wasn’t all legend that you could read on someone’s face when they were about to announce a death.
Ino had gone through it once already. A chuunin on an escort mission, a few years older than her. She had been the one to announce it to the last one, who’d fainted in the middle of the fight due to bloodloss.
Of all of them, the only one who might be able to school his features well enough that she wouldn’t gather the news at first glance was Sasuke (unless, of course, it was Sakura or Naruto who’d died... but Ino didn’t think she’d have woken at all if it’d been the case), and she couldn’t imagine why anyone in their right mind would leave him with such a role.
Especially not when there were much more suitable candidates for the task, Sakura to begin with.
All of which didn’t explain where they’d gone.
Or how long she’d been out, now she thought about it.
It wasn’t anywhere near sunset, and she didn’t feel as if she’d spent the night propped against a tree. They wouldn’t have dared. Sakura wouldn’t have left her in damp clothes, either.
“Oh, you’re up.”
Ino turned at the voice.
Suigetsu was grinning his toothy smirk at her, before he added, “Welcome back to the world of the living.”
He walked up to the fire, smiling at it a bit too widely for entire comfort, with a spring in his step. Ino stared. Definitely a spring. She tried to come up with the last time she’d seen Suigetsu walk with more than a Shikamaruish slouch, and drew a blank.
“You look happy.”
Her tone made it perfectly clear she wasn’t getting it.
He was also bared-chested, except for the bandages wrapped around him. Ino supposed his shirt must have been one of the casualties in the fight against Kisame. Karin must just love that.
“I’ve got Kisame’s sword,” he answered easily. His smile had turned a shade darker.
Ino nodded; over the past three weeks, the topic of what drove the other nin had arisen more than once. It was unavoidable, with Naruto in the group. Except that Ino suddenly realised Naruto hadn’t ever spoken of his goal of becoming the Hokage during their discussions. He only spoke of getting Sasuke back to Konoha, sometimes with a smile as if there was a huge joke he wasn’t sharing, when Team Seven had had a good day, sometimes with a glare at Sasuke, when the Uchiha had proven difficult.
“Where are the others?”
Suigetsu pointed to the left.
“We’re just over there, there’s a pretty little stream. Sasuke and his guardians are...” He made a very vague encompassing gesture. “Somewhere around. I don’t know exactly where and Karin refuses to share. They’ll come back when they’re done.”
His careless tone seemed a little forced, but Ino didn’t call him on it.
“Done?” she interrogated.
“Yeah, with whatever it is those three feel they have to deal with. I think that includes how to dispose of Itachi’s body, though, so I wouldn’t be actually all that surprised if bits of the landscape started taking fire and rising into the air.”
Ino nodded; Suigetsu sent her a knowing glance. She hadn’t really thought of how they’d deal with the immediate aftermath of Itachi’s death, or even if any of the three had, and now Suigetsu mentioned it, it seemed likely that there’d be another Team Seven argument about how to go at it. Well, at least Sakura was likely to have. She could oppose whatever stupid notion Sasuke came up with at least long enough that Naruto caught up.
Well, she couldn’t do anything about it right now.
“Karin agreed to wait at a place you suggested?” she asked in a blatant attempt to think about something else. “Is there a concussion you’re not telling me about?”
Which, once she’d said it, didn’t seem half as funny as it did in her mind.
Suigetsu looked amused again.
“I think she wanted to wash badly enough that she leapt on the idea. Now, not that I mind talking with you, but Karin sent me get you when she sensed you’d awakened, so maybe we should get moving?”
“I’m just up,” Ino complained even as she fell into step behind him. “Why am I the one who has to move?”
“You’d say no to a bath?” She couldn’t see his face, but she knew he was amused.
There were times she wished he’d treat her a little less like he treated Karin. Even if Ino wasn’t as bothered as the Sound girl, it didn’t mean she wasn’t annoyed. However, the suggestion deserved her attention, no matter the tone it’d been uttered with.
Damp clothes were not comfortable, and Ino had the disagreeable sensation that they – or she – carried a faint smell of musty, unpleasant dirt and sweat.
“That depends. Is the onsen co-ed?”
And maybe they’d be able to tell her how Itachi had been killed.
He may have snorted in answer, but it was drowned out by Karin’s loud calling when they turned after a particularly huge tree and came out onto the stream.
“Oh, good, it only took you fifteen minutes to get her here.”
Karin and Juugo were both sitting on convenient-looking stumps, the sun falling on them. Juugo had had his eyes closed, soaking in the sun’s warmth, when Karin spoke; his eyelids opened, and he greeted Ino with a serious nod. He was bandaged-up too, Ino noticed, but more extensively than Suigetsu, and there was a black cloak folded next to his feet. A similar bundle rested to Karin’s.
Karin, even with the dressing covering about half her face and setting her glasses slightly askew, looked clean and scrubbed, even her hair seemed less awful than it’d been lately. Her right boot had been torn at mid-calf level, the leg emerging from the boot covered with a thin layer of bandages, indicative of skin injuries and not grave wounds.
Watching them, Ino suddenly shivered, realising that she really was pretty cold.
Suigetsu’s only answer was a wide grin Karin’s way. Karin bristled and crossed her arms tighter, but relaxed after only a few moments. That was different.
“You should sit down, Ino. You look cold.” Juugo was looking at her with something like faint concern.
“Yeah yeah,” Suigetsu interjected. “Hey, Karin, move your fat ass and let Ino sit. She got hurt.”
“WHOSE ASS IS FAT?!?”
Ino let herself drop on the stump vacated by Karin when the Sound girl launched herself at Suigetsu with a howl, welcoming the caress of sun on her skin, easing the bone-deep chill that clung to her. Karin could only blame herself for being dumb enough to fall for it. Nice of Suigetsu, too. Or else he was so used to mocking her that he couldn’t let the obvious jibe pass.
Between Karin’s claws, Suigetsu was losing his smirk as the girl continued shrieking at him, and Ino could feel the moment he’d start grimacing and pleading with her to release him. Loudly. Or change into water and run between her fingers, which would only frustrate her more.
Her head might hurt a little, after all. Which wasn’t too bad, she’d had worse in the wake of some possessions which had really gone out of hand – though, all things considered, she wasn’t sure there’d been one that had ever got as out of hand as a S-class criminal setting fire to her in their own mind – but was bound to get worse if the noise level rose higher.
With a start, Juugo stood up.
“Here, Karin. You can have my seat.”
Ino removed her fingers from the temples she’d been massaging and looked at him. Karin looked up from the place she’d been attempting to throttle Suigetsu.
“Juugo, you’re not supposed to move around. Sit down. Now, this bastard—” she shook Suigetsu, in case anyone could have missed who she meant, “—is going to use one of his two giant swords and make me another one.”
“Hey,” Suigetsu flatly said, managing to convey the force of ten ‘I’m not your servant’ speeches in a single word and still appear totally unaffected by Karin’s assumption.
“You, shut up. Do something useful,” she ordered.
Something to do with the fight, Ino figured when Karin let go of him and, grumbling, he hauled his older sword to his shoulder. Maybe he felt guilty over Juugo’s wounds.
“Now,” Karin called Ino’s attention away from her teammate, standing in front of her with her hands on her hips, “I’ll just wait until he’s back with my seat.”
She looked like she wanted to impress upon Ino the sacrifices she was making for her sake.
Ino could sympathise. She’d done this enough herself to know how it hurt when you were forced to let go of your rightful privileges when one of your teammates needed them more than you did.
Her team – that is, Shikamaru and Asuma-sensei – used to say she had entitlement issues, which was why Chouji was the only one with whom she’d have been amenable to sharing a seat with even when he wasn’t hurt, had 1)the seats been big enough to accomodate both of them (Chouji’s fault, Ino could fit anywhere, where even Sakura couldn’t), and 2)the idea of being pressed against Chouji’s side not made her goddamn uncomfortable.
Instead, Chouji was the only one she pretended was here when the rest of her team had made her angry. And she made sure she was sickeningly sweet toward him.
Karin was eyeing her.
“You look like you’re okay for someone who’s been knocked out by the Sharingan.”
Which wasn’t news, as Suigetsu would have hardly missed an opportunity to tell her how shitty she looked, with cheerful matter-of-factness, but Karin made it sound like a criticism. You had to admire it.
“Mhm,” Ino acquiesced. She could only take their word on it, she thought, running a hand through the tangles in her hair and grimacing inwardly at the sticky, rough texture. Ew ew ew. Thank the kami for streams. “How long have I been out, by the way?”
Karin crossed her arms and took a speculative air.
“What with the time since we came back – and then how long they said they thought you’d been out—” they, in Karin’s mouth and given the context, being Sakura, but Karin didn’t mention directly Sasuke’s girl teammate if she could avoid it “—about three hours.”
She gave Ino a critical one-over. Ino felt acutely her lack of physical injuries, and restrained her retort that she had been the one keeping Itachi occupied while Sakura healed Naruto and Sasuke was too busy being in shock to be of any help.
“Congratulations,” Karin deadpanned.
Ino ignored the remark. There were more pressing matters to be kept in mind.
“How were they?” Was Sakura alright? Were they hurt?
“Naruto was wounded; I think it must be completely gone by now. Unless he got himself injured since then,” Karin allowed. Ino thought she was referring to Sakura, until she saw Karin wasn’t smirking. Then she realised Karin was thinking of Sasuke.
“Sasuke was a bit peakish,” Juugo added. “I think he may have been beaten up but Sakura had healed him already.”
“She didn’t have anything?” she wanted to make sure.
“I don’t think so. But it was hard to see, there was so much blood...”
“They were drenched in it,” Karin muttered with a far-away look.
A shudder broke over Ino. Images of Naruto – Naruto’s wound ran through her mind. Impaled. Blood splashing everywhere, Sasuke’s white shirt gone dark, not so much scarlet as crimson. Naruto’s clothes black with the liquid. Sasuke’s skin, as if he’d been struck by a paintball. His arm, when he’d pulled it out of Naruto’s chest. Sakura’s hands, and the stains she was getting on her skirt.
And then there’d been Itachi.
“How much did you see of what happened?”
Karin’s clear gaze was fixed on her. Intense but devoid of animosity, this time; only shining with a determination that reminded uneasily Ino of – other people.
Her eyelids batted once, and she looked down. So they didn’t know either...
“You can’t ask her to answer that, Karin. Sasuke’ll tell us when he tells us, or he won’t at all, but it’s not fair that you put Ino on the spot for it. Not fair for anyone,” Juugo said softly.
“...I know.”
Karin had sounded unsure, almost bitter. Ino couldn’t bring herself to look up yet, and it was a huge wave of relief when she heard Suigetsu come back to them. He seemed to make a point of making as much noise as he could when he walked, generally, and right now he was being even noisier. Dragging stumps, Ino assumed. Until she’d met him, she hadn’t believed it was possible for anyone to be even less discreet a walker as Chouji (something about crisps bags).
“Alright, Your Highness, your seat’s arrived, so you can shut up now and do us all a favour.”
He casually threw a large log at Karin’s feet, so she had to jump backward to avoid it, grinning cheekily as he did, clearly challenging her to rebuke him when he’d just complied to her command.
“In my opinion, that was worth it,” he commented, dragging his own log closer until the four made a circle, and allowing his arm to return to its normal twiggy state as he sagged on his new seat with obvious satisfaction.
“In mine as well. Five more minutes without your incessant babbling, just imagine,” Karin replied, crossing her legs. The bandage on her right leg went almost all the way up to the hot pants, with less than one inch between the upper band and the black fabric; if Ino put two fingers there, they’d brush both bandages and shorts.
“Guys,” Juugo interrupted quietly.
Watching the three of them was like watching a team. Karin and Suigetsu were frequent and loud in their claims that they didn’t care in the slightest for the other two, but there was a sort of familiarity in the way the three of them interacted that tightened Ino’s throat.
She missed Konoha so much. She missed her team so much. She missed the genin brats just learning how to work together when they generally had nothing in common – and so loud about it, as if they feared if they didn’t make a scene people would actually believe they could get along with that crazy bitch/useless loser/stuck-up jerk/them – so much.
She missed Sakura so much, too, when she saw her every day.
If things had worked out differently they could have been like that, Sakura and her, and someone else. She’d thought she’d had a taste of it when the three of them, Sakura and Naruto and her, had left on their chase for Sasuke. In parts she hadn’t been wrong. But nothing could erase the difference in Ino’s status then. She’d known it before, obviously; Sakura and Naruto were chasing after Sasuke, and Ino was mostly there for Sakura. She hadn’t resented Sakura for it.
But today, sitting with Team Hebi, she couldn’t stop the regrets over what could have been.
She felt like an intruder.
She had no idea why they’d asked her to join them – the seats, everything, made it clear they’d wanted to discuss things.
Ino hated blind guesses, and she didn’t feel up to mind games either.
That may have been because she wasn’t sure any of them might possess the trickiness and motivation needed for it.
Oh, Suigetsu was tricky alright, but he liked blunt truths and his own amusement far too much. Interacting with him was a bit like interacting with Temari if Ino tried to get her to help Ino make Shikamaru carry the shopping bags. He was more of a spectator.
Karin, Ino didn’t entirely dismiss. She’d worked for Orochimaru, after all, and it certainly hadn’t been for her combat abilities. But if she was playing mind-games, she was a far superior actress than anyone Ino could hope to take off-guard.
So she asked.
“Why am I here?”
She eyed each of them as she carefully spoke. None of them pretended to misunderstand her question; it saved everyone a great deal of cutting through the rubbish and double-meanings ripe with the unsaid and potential paranoia, and as such Ino welcomed it.
Suigetsu shrugged. “You’d have gone looking for them. And we’re curious.”
“It wouldn’t be fair to quizz Ino about it,” Juugo repeated.
“And we wouldn’t want you to be all lonesome by yourself at such a moment. We’re nice people like that.”
Karin sent Suigetsu the sort of glance that’d have been more appropriate if he’d confessed up to liking girls with a spirit – disgusted and thoroughly unimpressed.
“How do you come up with all this shit?” she demanded. “Is it a natural skill or do you just do it because you know it causes me pain?”
“A natural gift enhanced by your inspiring presence,” Suigetsu replied without batting an eyelid. “The sign from above that we have great teamwork.”
Karin snorted.
“The only way we have ‘great teamwork’, dipshit, is how I daily refrain from killing you by boiling you into thin air. And the only way that could be considered teamwork is when you’re using the same dictionary as our three crazy Leaves over there.”
Ino wanted both to point out that they had succeeded in killing Uchiha Itachi, and to protest that Team Seven’s definition of teamwork was not the norm in Konoha.
“Did they tell you where they went?”
To her own ears, she sounded... anxious. Shaken. Hurt. Maybe. Which she wasn’t; she got that they wanted to be alone to deal with Itachi’s remains, and maybe talk. Really, she did.
“Dispose of Itachi’s body, I’d say.”
“Stop Sasuke from doing something stupid. And probably take his mind off of it at some point. Oh, come on,” Suigetsu said off Karin’s expression. “Stop with the denial already. The pug-face’s not an attractive look for you, even if you’re a bitch.” He grinned at her.
“Or they’ll blow up the forest and we all die,” he added as an after-thought.
Basic defense mechanism meant to undercut the weight of what he’d said before. Suigetsu was like that, Ino supposed. Putting up weak excuses to avoid being taken seriously when he, presumably, was most. That or he wasn’t one-hundred percent convinced of what he said and he didn’t want the ridicule if he turned out to be wrong, and so pretended it was a joke all along. Ino wasn’t sure.
“I don’t know,” Juugo said pensively. “I don’t think they are going to fight. Or... not with jutsus, anyway.”
A brief pause that made Ino wonder what she’d missed when she’d been out.
“How were they when you arrived?”
The normal question was ‘Why do you think they are going to fight?’ but given who they were talking about, it wasn’t even worth considering. Cold day in Suna before Team Seven didn’t have an excuse to fight, and didn’t give the impression massive maiming was liable to occur in a very short future.
Ino looked at each of them as she waited for their answer and they exchanged looks.
Her heart was beating too loudly in her chest, she didn’t know why.
“Team Seven-ish,” Suigetsu succinctly replied.
As if was enough. As if it was an explanation. As if it was supposed to explain everything.
And it was – it explained that some things couldn’t be explained.
Ino got that as well as the members of Team Hebi.
They may be less blind of Team Seven’s bonds, to use Naruto’s much-loved word, they’d only ever be outside looking in. Team Seven may rush into things without thinking, not realise how far they were going, how frightening that was, never get the big picture, they were the only ones who could make sense of the details.
“This feels so weird,” Karin grumbled darkly.
Suigetsu laughed incredulously at her. “What, you mean you actually didn’t see it coming?”
Karin glared. Suigetsu’s eyes curved into a malicious smirk. “Or do you mean to tell me you actually thought there was a chance it might not happen? I smell denial!”
Ino, for once stumped, frowned and looked at Juugo for a hint. Who had an impassive air, as though he’d witnessed a similar scene a thousand time already and was only waiting for this one to end or need be ended.
“You can’t seriously mean you’re jealous; travelling’s going to be such a pain tomorrow, you should be glad—”
This time, he obtained what he was aiming for. Karin scrambled to her feet, flushed and glaring, and screamed at him, “Shut up! Okay? Just because you got your life dream today—can you please just SHUT UP?”
Sometimes Ino felt like the Team Seven disease was spreading. Sometimes she felt like she was the only one with a normal team relationship in the world. Then she remembered that it obviously must be it, because out of the teams of the Konoha Twelve, Team Ten was the normal one.
Suigetsu wasn’t done snickering, though.
“So, so uncomfortable. You should be glad you won’t be the one hurting all over, really.”
Karin was well on her way toward livid.
Juugo’s calm voice cut through the impending drama. “Let’s talk about something else,” he said.
At another time, Ino might’ve agreed, more because she was fed up with Suigetsu and Karin’s tension than out of cautiousness concerning his abilities. She’d had the feeling that last was at least part of the reason why Suigetsu and Karin ever listened to him.
Had she known him under different circumstances, she might’ve done the same – she was intentionally abrasive, not brain-dead – she’d witnessed two of Juugo’s crises in the first week the two groups had joined up. But since then Sakura had put together pills that left him in control, and despite that Suigetsu and Karin hadn’t changed their way of dealing with their fourth team member.
That was one of the reasons Ino suspected there might be more to Team Hebi than mutual putting up with the others because Sasuke had told them to.
In any case, her curiousity had been piqued, and that took absolute priority.
“Why do you think the walking will be so unpleasant, anyway? I don’t expect them to resolve their problems all in one day, obviously, but still, Forehead and Naruto should be able to beat off the depression, don’t you think?”
“They’ll have resolved it all right,” Suigetsu sniggered.
Ino looked at him strangely.
“But it’s so weird,” Karin insisted with a sniff. “I mean, we are here, pretending to be busy and blissfully ignorant, and they are out there, doing—” She cut herself off. “Weird,” she concluded.
“That you’re passively waiting instead of marching in to interrupt them?” Suigetsu charitably asked. Then, turning toward Ino, “I don’t think it’ll be unpleasant, except for one or two or all of them—” he smiled wickedly “—but it’s certainly going to be interesting.”
“You’re talking as though it was a done thing,” Karin accused. “And we’re not sure yet, it might not be!”
Ino was feeling more and more like she’d stumbled into a reunion between spies who were only talking in jargon.
Juugo shifted.
Suigetsu let out another incredulous laugh.
Karin glared at him a white-hot glare. “They might not. Maybe it’s too soon!”
“Karin...”
She ignored Juugo’s careful intervention.
“Well, maybe it is! We all know how repressed Sasuke is, so even if he’s aware of—of it, and our observations are far from conclusive, there’s no way he’d act on it.”
Half-formed, untold ideas were starting to seep into Ino’s mind as she stared at the Sound girl, and a deep weight settled at the pit of her stomach.
“I think if they start fucking the awareness into him, even he’ll be hard-pressed to deny it. Specially given the way he’s been.”
“He might not,” Karin persisted; but she was clearly grasping at straws. “Maybe he won’t—maybe they’ll be too busy burning Itachi’s body!”
“And nothing’ll happen in front of the funerary pyre?” Amusement had gone out of Suigetsu’s countenance now. He sounded mostly exasperated. “Karin, I know it’s hard to accept and you were wetting your panties at the mere idea of popping Sasuke’s cherry, but you really gotta stop the denial – I swear, you’re worse than he is – and admit that even as we’re speaking, his teammates are sexing him up. And I’m not discounting the option that there might not be any travelling tomorrow. At all.”
Karin hotly replied; or maybe she threw herself at Suigetsu again to bash his skull in.
Ino didn’t know.
At some point, she’d stopped listening. Stopped paying attention to anything at all as Suigetsu’s words echoed through her mind again, and again, and again. She couldn’t make anything out except how hard breathing had suddenly become (teammates are sexing him up). The buzzing drum in her ears deafened the noises from outside, like she was under water (they’ll have resolved it all right).
Images flashed through her mind of what she’d seen but never read (the way he’s been), not missing the big picture but stopping at its interpretation (so weird). Sakura and Naruto and Sasuke, always... (Team Seven-ish)
Words were coming back to her, that she’d said without meaning them (YOUR BOYFRIEND IS ALIVE, SO), only to get a reaction out of them, and also because that was exactly how it looked like, and she’d never realised, she’d never thought, even as she watched how all about Team Seven Team Seven was, it was exactly what it was (stop the denial). Phrases and expressions she’d shared with Team Hebi she’d never realised they didn’t mean metaphorically, when she’d just been using them as mocking remarks, to quell her exasperation and her slight hurt (you actually thought there was a chance).
It was always Sasuke first.
(and they are out there, doing—)
Ino stopped paying attention.
Some time later, Sakura and Naruto and Sasuke returned, the three others welcoming them almost as if nothing had happened. Maybe Karin was scowling a little, and Suigetsu was smirking, and Juugo wasn't looking at anyone in their eyes.
All she could focus on was them, the sated glow in their eyes, the rumples in their clothes, the way their hair was sticking out in every direction.
How, when they prepared dinner, Naruto and Sakura dropped the mask and clung closer to Sasuke than they’d ever done before and Sasuke let them, one on each side of him and so close he must feel their body heat. The cautious manner Sasuke was moving, Naruto’s too frequent touches on both his teammates, his too proud, too happy grin.
How Sakura was smiling.
At nothing in particular, at both of them, affection shining off her face and relief and so much—so much love Ino wanted—
Ino didn’t know what she wanted. To cry, to weep, every time she looked at them and every time she heard them – wondering if Sasuke was talking more or less than usual, wondering if Naruto was speaking in his normal tone, wondering it there might not be deeper, hidden meaning to their words she would never understand...
So many things around the three of them like a warm blanket of soft, cottony sunshine blinding Ino with tears.
Things like need, want, devotion, loyalty, team, only you and never let go, things Ino wasn’t sure were really there or she wasn’t just imagining them through the brilliant blur, because there was love so much, so impossible to ignore she couldn’t see past it.
When it was time to go to sleep, the three of them pushed their sleeping gear in the same area, as though they had always only slept this way. Sasuke moved his things slightly less far than the other two, not because he was unable to do more but because Sakura had put her things at one place and looked like she refused to step a few meters back to placate Sasuke’s pride. Naruto’s grin was gowing larger and larger by every ever-so-slightly stiff step Sasuke was taking and Sakura crossed her arms and didn’t back down.
Naruto casually, gleefully put his arm on Sasuke’s shoulders and around his neck, Sakura rested her hand on top of Sasuke’s, the two of them entangled their legs together. Sasuke didn’t break away. Ino couldn’t see his face. With his free hand, he tugged higher the part of his shirt that had been threatening to slip down his neck and shoulder, then he leaned into his teammates.
They didn’t say what they had done with Itachi’s body.
Ino wasn’t in a state to care. Their clothes were equally encrusted with blood.
The next morning Sakura sought her out when Ino had gone to take a bath. She was clutching a bundle of dark fabric. She’d emerged from between the trees and coughed to announce her presence; Ino had turned around, and gazed at her best friend standing there for a long while before realising she was naked in the stream, and, in spite of the warmth pooling in her insides at the sight of Sakura, she was cold with the water and the breeze chilling her skin where it wasn’t underwater anymore.
Sakura didn’t tell her what they’d done with Itachi, but she gave her the bundle.
“Could you keep it safe until we reach Konoha?”
Ino nodded.
“What is it?” she dully asked. She couldn’t shake her mind off the reflection of how Sakura would look like when she kissed, her eyes closed and her hands pulling at Sasuke’s shirt, Naruto’s hand sliding under her skirt.
Sakura opened the bundle slightly, showing Ino the other side of the dark fabric.
Black, with red clouds.
Ino stared at it, stuck on the memory of the fight, and the strange facing-off with Itachi, in his or her mind.
“When we’re back in Konoha, Naruto and I will be able to take it back. But as long as we travel, we don’t want Sasuke that close to his things.”
“His things?” Ino asked faintly.
“The cloak, his hitai-ite. His necklace. Things like that.”
His eyes.
Sakura wasn’t telling her everything. Ino knew it. But it was all right. Sakura had come to her, had entrusted her with her team’s sanity.
The obvious question was, why don’t you dispose of it, but Ino knew better than to ask it. For one, if she did, Sakura might change her mind. For another, Ino had long stopped trying to make normal sense out of Team Seven’s coping mechanisms. Everyone had their own, and after a while it either did or didn’t go. Shikamaru was only smoking when he’d gone to see Kurenai now.
Ino couldn’t even guess who Itachi was to Sasuke any more. She didn’t know him well enough. She just knew that Sakura trusted her enough with this.
Even if she didn’t trust her with her team’s secret, with the fact that they were together now.
“Of course,” she heard herself speak.
Sakura smiled, tightly, like during the days she was alone in Konoha and Ino managed to break through her shell and get her to speak about her team. ‘I can’t tonight, Pig, I have three scrolls to read and Tsunade-shishou expects me at half past six at the hospital tomorrow morning.’
Ino’s heart broke a little when Sakura turned around and disappeared between the trees again, toward her team. Only after she couldn’t hear or see any more of Sakura did she look down again toward the bundle.
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Date: 2007-11-05 03:17 pm (UTC)this was an absolutely amazing piece of work. i loved ino, loved seeing her view of everything that happened. your characterizations were fantastic and very, very true in my mind. and the interactions between everyone! so freaking perfect, the bickering and concern and all of it, absolutely perfect.
my heart was breaking for ino, even as it cheered slightly for team seven, because ino/saku is awesome :D
i'm totally meming this one :)
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Date: 2007-11-07 01:19 pm (UTC)That was my first time writing Team Hebi so, heh, nervousness. Glad it came out all right.
Writing this was a very odd experience, because NaruSakuSasu is my OT3 and I was cheering for them and getting them exactly where I thought they'd be best, and at the same time Ino was really hurting. ...It was weird.
:D!
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Date: 2007-11-05 03:19 pm (UTC)Thank you for the wonderful read!
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Date: 2007-11-07 02:21 pm (UTC)o_o Y-you spoke about that? *b-blushes* Yay, she wrote me an e-mail to tell me she liked it, actually.
I'm very glad you liked - er, if there's anything I can do with the confusing parts?...
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Date: 2007-11-07 03:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-07 03:59 pm (UTC)You have NO IDEA how long I spent bashing my head against various hard surfaces because Ino needed to be kept confused and at the same time the reader needed to have SOME IDEA of what was going on. ...Of course Ino was in denial, so that helped.
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Date: 2007-11-05 08:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-07 02:36 pm (UTC)Anyway, glad you liked!
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Date: 2007-11-05 10:16 pm (UTC)AHAHAHAHAHA. You characterize Ino beautifully; her thoughts are just so her. And the Team 7 interaction!--I love the scene where Naruto and Sasuke are haggling over the time period, and when they're all sleeping together. :D And Hebi was hilarious; the Suigetsu-Karin bickering never fails to amuse me, and Juugo was just awwwwww. They're so much a warped version of Team 7 that it's really quite interesting to see the contrast.
And Ino! I never disliked her, although I was always a little meh, but--well, I think it'd be hard to find someone who writes her as well as you do. :D
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Date: 2007-11-07 02:56 pm (UTC)Aw, I'm glad you liked! I'd never written Team Hebi before, so I wasn't too sure I wasn't mangling them too horribly, but I think the NaruSakuSasu-ness of the piece seeped into their interaction. Or SuiKa, at least.
The NaruSasu bickering scene was very fun to write. The three of them are just always fliiiirting.
Ino's one of my favourite characters - thank you! :D
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Date: 2007-11-06 08:06 am (UTC)Oh INO. Oh INO. I just... I just... you write her heart-break and her dilemma and the fact that she risked so much and loved so hard and hard everything thrown back in her face so damn much...
Oh Ino. My heart is breaking for her here. Maybe she would have been better off with psychotic Itachi after all. ::sob::
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Date: 2007-11-07 03:00 pm (UTC)INO IS A CLUELESS HERO.
*snerk* Can Ino's pimpiness overwhelm Itachi's asexuality? (hum, possibly aside from Sasuke and Kisame?)
awwww...
Date: 2007-11-06 10:40 pm (UTC)*cries* You SO made me root for InoSaku...ordinarily, I would have placed Sakura first, horrible though that sounds, just based on the preferences I've had since she grew a backbone, but right now I want to strangle her for not making Ino happy.
Your portrayal of Ino's feelings was heartbreakingly beautiful.
Re: awwww...
Date: 2007-11-07 03:05 pm (UTC)(And, well, maybe I'd have gone that route had Ino realised it. Maybe if she'd been slightly less self-sacrificing, Sakura would have stayed closer to her. Maybe she'd have stayed out of the physical aspect of the Team Seven threesome and she'd have got with Ino. ...Or maybe Sakura's one day going to start recruiting for her harem, and Ino will be first in line. Which is always a possibility.)
But yeah, this turned out as a happy-ending fic where the main character doesn't get the girl. Which technically isn't a happy ending, but I can't shake the feeling that it is.
Yay for changing your opinion on Ino!
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Date: 2007-11-08 12:25 am (UTC)But I love this one even more.
A FEW THINGS I LIKE
- The style. It's Ino, it's really her. The confusion that is still clear enough to tell us what happened and the way the scenes sort of merge into each other is perfect. The battle scene is great, you really feel like you're right there in the middle of all that turbulence.
- Ino and Karin interacting. It was hot. Even if they hate each other.
- Team Hebi. I don't really lik Team Hebi, except for Karin who I adore. But here...their interaction is subtle. And how they get along with team 7, how they all put what's happened aside to work together....You don't forget that these are all ninja who can adapt easily. And still they're very much a bunch of teenagers.
- I CRIED SO MUCH WHEN INO OFFERED TO DIE FOR SAKURA HOLY HELL T_T Oh Ino.
- Yeah, it was really touching and had me on the edge of my seat not knowing what was going to happen, but you still had enough doses of humor to keep this...not angst. I don't know what genre this is, to be honest. XD Awesom, maybe.
I could seriously quote you almost every line. This is an amazing birthday present and you're so sweet for writing this for me. ♥
And you know, what
I WANTED TO SAY SO MUCH MORE >/ and sound a lot smarter. Rofl I'll probably terrorise you with emails or something.
♥!
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Date: 2007-11-08 03:53 pm (UTC)I AM GLAD YOU LIKE THIS ONE MORE. It was a very strange writing experience.
- CHOREOGRAPHING fight scenes is hell x4. >_> that took so much procrastination (which is why Ino's thinking so much before the fight starts, btw. I reeeeally didn't want to start writing it.).
- Ino and Karin: DID YOU NOTICE HOW INO IS ALWAYS NOTICING HOW KARIN LOOKS LIKE?? SO PROUD OF MY HINTS THAT INO REALLY IS BI.
- Oh god I love Team Hebi. The reason they're able to work together is that except for Karin - who is having the most difficult time out of the three of them working with the others - they're not really personally attached to Sasuke. It was harder for Naruto and Sakura, but they'd alreadey practiced that lesson when they started working with Sai, so they weren't as obtuse as they could have been. Plus they were kinda overjoyed with :DDDD Sa-su-ke~~~! :DDDD so it made it easier for them. And they honestly liked Team Hebi. (why yes Naruto and Suigetsu would try and drive Sasuke mad. I have this image of Suigetsu telling Naruto all the dorky things that Sasuke did in Sound.) Suigetsu and Karin kept trying to steal the show, that was so embarrassing.
- I didn't think Ino was going to realize consciously she was most likely going to die when she attacked Itachi/glued herself to Itachi's mind. It... just happened.
- God I know what you mean about the genre. When I was writing this, I kept telling myself that it was all very well and all, but? it's not just action/adventure, I never thought it was going to be angst, it could've been romance except for the fact that Ino doesn't have a happy romantic ending, and I really thought of it as gen except it was all about romance.
YOU ARE TOO GOOD TO ME AND I ALWAYS KEEP MY WORD. THAT'S MY WRITER'S WAY. Except it's totally not because I'm of the 'oooh, shiny' school, but let's forget about this for this once, mmmkay?
Smartness is overrated. Really. *snuggles* *you can't terrorize meee, mwhahaha*
MUCH MUCH LOVE.