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Working directly for the Hokage comes with a number of perks, not the least of which being that Ino gets to threaten to tell Naruto’s dad when he’s being an especially annoying brat, and then turn around and threaten to tell Naruto embarrassing stories about Minato when she wants to get her way. But it also means that Ino is there when a team of ANBU arrive escorting a girl with a braid in her hair and seals tattooed on her arms, a girl who seems oddly familiar.
“Yes?” Minato says, standing from his desk and frowning at the girl, with the crinkle in his nose that means he’s got a headache from too much paperwork. The girl glances up at him briefly, but doesn’t fidget as his sharp gaze takes her in, hovering for a long moment over her inked arms. She’s tense enough to be nervous, but she doesn’t seem truly afraid, not even of the ANBU surrounding her.
“Hokage-sama,” says the ANBU in the crow mask, “Our squad was flagged down by this girl while patrolling, and she requested to come speak to you at once. She says that her name is Shikako Nara, and that she’s the daughter of Shikaku and Yoshino Nara.”
The Hokage frowns. Ino stares. The girl appears to be around her own age, and she definitely looks like she could be a Nara, but Ino knows for a fact that Shikaku and Yoshino have never had a daughter. It has to be a blatant lie. And yet… her chakra still seems so familiar. So similar to family she’s claiming to be from. So similar to...
“I see,” says Minato slowly. He makes eye contact with the ANBU, who tilts his head in a way that must be meaningful. Minato eyes the girl again, gathering his hands in front of him, and asks, “You have something that you wanted to tell me?”
“Yes, Hokage-sama,” says the girl, bowing respectfully. “Um… probably a lot of things, actually. But probably the most important is about Orochimaru.”
Minato frowns even deeper at that, and unfortunately gestures for Ino to leave the room. Ino goes, but she’s not going to just drop subject. She needs to know more about this girl who knows dangerous secrets, with eyes that look like Yoshino Nara’s, with seals all across her arms and chakra that feels like an old memory.
Once, when Ino was undercover as a civilian in a town in River Country, while blending in at a bar during a local festival, she kissed a girl. Everyone around them had been singing loud and chaotically, and the cups of sake had been passing freely around the room, and the local girl sitting next to Ino at the bar had kept on leaning in and smiling at her with a coy, secretive glitter in her eyes that made Ino feel tingly. She had leaned in and kissed those smiling lips, and they had tasted like sake and sweetness. If she could have - if she wasn’t on duty - Ino would have followed where that sweet smile invited, to a quiet corner of the bar where the two of them could kiss again and explore where that tingling feeling led; as it is, the memory of that moment is a teasing and exciting one, making her wonder what the future could hold.
Ino hasn’t always known that she liked girls this way; not exactly. But suffice it to say that when Sakura and the other girls in the Academy had cooed and sighed about the boys they liked, Ino had played along, but she had never really understood what feelings they were talking about. Boys are - okay, by and large. Ino likes the attention that boys give her, and she likes knowing that her attractiveness is an asset that she can use to control people. But she’s never really been drawn to a handsome boy the way she’s always had an appreciative eye for beautiful and strong women. It just took a little while for Ino to realize that that appreciation was slightly more than platonic.
“Your Jounin Sensei was Kakashi Hatake ?” Ino demands, caught between outrage and hilarity. “Who let him have students ?” Then she pauses to consider, and adds, “I mean, your version, was he still...?”
“Kind of a huge mess, yeah,” Shikako confirms with a grin. (There’s a little bit of sadness still hiding behind it, Ino can’t help but notice.) “He used to be hours late for training every day, and he kind of had basically no social skills besides blowing people off with bullshit, but since he was a super elite Jounin, nobody wanted to call him on it. It took him months to actually start teaching us anything instead of just giving us D-ranks while he just slacked off.”
Ino laughs at the mental image of Kakashi, the moody loner, with a trio of genin following around behind him. “Oh man, that’s terrible. I’m trying to imagine what he would be like without the Yondaime to keep him in line, and I can’t think of anything good.”
“Basically,” says Shikako. “ I’m trying to imagine a Kakashi who’s actually obedient to his Hokage… I don’t think I’ve ever seen him take an order as anything but a suggestion.”
The two of them laugh some more at the conflicting images of the eccentric Jounin. Shikako’s team is, Ino has noted, mostly a pretty safe topic of conversation. Shikako tends to shy away from talking about the big differences between their worlds - between her old world and this one - as if she’s not sure what’s safe to tell; and questions about what happened to her and her personal history tend to make her act more sad and withdrawn, which is the opposite of what Ino’s trying to do with these conversations. But Shikako seems to love telling stories about the shenanigans that her old team used to get up to, as unbelievable as some of them are.
Neither of them tries to bring up Shikako’s family. Neither of them has said a word on the subject since the two of them had visited Shikamaru’s grave, and Shikako had spent the rest of the day in dead-eyed silence. And if Shikaku or Yoshino have made any other attempt to speak to the girl claiming to be their daughter yet, Ino hasn’t heard about it.
(“It’s okay, I don’t blame them,” Shikako whispers one night as they’re lying beside each other in bed. “I’m not the Shikako they lost, and seeing me is probably just painful.” But her arms are wrapped tightly around her own stomach, and her voice is suspiciously wobbly.
Ino doesn’t say anything, but she scoots closer to the middle of the bed, shifting her pillow along. And after a moment Shikako cencedes to the silent offer, coming forward to meet Ino in the middle and allowing herself to be wrapped up in Ino’s arms. She lays her head against Ino’s shoulder, and Ino feels a few ragged breaths against the skin of her collarbone. They lay there for a long time into the night.)
“-and then Naruto actually farted, right in Kiba’s face!” Ino laughs. “In the middle of the spar!”
“That sounds like something Naruto would do,” Shikako agrees. There’s a crooked little smile on her face, like she’s thinking of an in-joke she can’t share.
“So did you come find me just to have lunch?” Shikako asks eventually. Ino shakes her head, finishing off the last bite of her onigiri.
“Not that I wouldn’t, because you and Minato-sama coop yourselves up in those ‘super secret’ meetings for way too long to be healthy when you start dorking about seals again-” and Shikako looks just a little guilty, which makes Ino grin to herself as she continues, “but I actually wanted to tell you that I’m leaving on a mission tonight, so you’ll have the place to yourself for a couple of days. Should be a pretty quick in-and-out job.”
Shikako nods understandingly. It’s the first time that Ino will be going on a mission since they struck up this cohabitation arrangement in her little apartment, and it’ll be the first time Ino isn’t leaving an empty place behind since she moved out of her family’s house. Absurdly, Ino finds herself wondering for a second whether Shikako is going to sleep on the futon in the spare room, or in the bigger bed in the master bedroom that they so often share.
“Have a good mission, stay safe,” Shikako says. She wipes a crumb of rice from her mouth and smiles at Ino, and behind her eyes there seem to be a dozen thoughts going by that don’t reach the surface. Ino wishes she could read every one of them. But maybe… next time, she’ll ask.