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They get back to Konoha, somehow.
Ino doesn’t remember the trip. She doesn’t remember anything, really, beyond Chōji’s gentle hands on her shoulders, guiding her to stand. She remembers looking away as Raidō sealed Asuma—sealed his—sealed the body away for transportation back to the village. Remembers seeing Shikamaru turn to watch, forcing himself to look when she and Chōji couldn’t. And then – nothing. The rain, cold and hard against her skin, the impact of her feet against branches that she barely sees.
She hadn’t been able to look Tsunade in the eyes during the debrief – hadn’t wanted to see whatever expression might be waiting there. She’d focused on a point just beyond her shoulder, where a drop of rain was making its way slowly down the window, and she must have said something, answered some question, because Tsunade had thanked her, and she’d been dismissed.
And now she’s here, outside Sakura’s tiny walk-up apartment and she doesn’t remember exactly how she got here, or why she thought it was a good idea, and she’s not entirely sure how she’s still standing, or why. But knocking on the door had taken the last of her energy, it seems; now she’s frozen in place.
Sakura is wiping her hands with a towel when she opens the door and all Ino can think is – she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know and Ino’s going to have to be the one to tell her, and she doesn’t know if she can.
Sakura looks at her and it’s like her face takes a minute to shift through expressions – a smile, first, then her eyes flicker across Ino’s face, her soaking clothes, the blood – Asuma’s blood, Asuma who she’ll never – the blood Ino knows must be crusted beneath her fingernails despite the rain, and Sakura’s eyebrows are pinched with concern, the towel dropped, forgotten, on the floor.
“Ino—”
Ino opens her mouth to explain herself but—there’s nothing. She can’t make herself say it, can’t make herself say anything so she just stands there, instead, staring blankly at Sakura and trying to remember how to speak.
She watches as Sakura slowly, carefully brings one hand up to her cheek, and even though Sakura telegraphs the movement Ino can’t stop the hitched breath at the contact.
“Ino,” Sakura says, eyes wide with worry, hand so warm against Ino’s frozen skin it feels like burning, “are you alright?”
There’s a stinging in her eyes and Ino can’t, not yet, she isn’t ready, so she squeezes them shut and wills the tears away and shakes her head, not looking at Sakura.
“No,” she finally manages, and her voice is hoarse and wobbly, “no—”
She doesn’t finish the sentence because Sakura hugs her so tight the breath is momentarily knocked out of her. It’s only when Sakura’s strong, steady arms are around her back that Ino realizes she’s shivering, only when she sags against Sakura that she realizes she’s not sure how she’s been standing, this whole time.
They stand there in the doorway and Ino waits for Sakura to ask her what’s wrong, something cold and twisting settling in her stomach all the while, but she doesn’t.
“You’re filthy,” she says gently, instead, “and soaking wet, you must be freezing. Come on – let me run you a bath?”
Wordlessly, Ino nods, allows herself to be led through Sakura’s tiny apartment back to the bathroom, towards the small tub that had been the selling point when Sakura had moved – “you don’t get it,” she’d said, when Ino laughed, “your family’s house has such a nice bathroom but we just have a shower – I want to be able to take a soak when I get home, the rest of it doesn’t matter.”
Sakura guides Ino to lean against the counter, then turns on the faucet. The ancient pipes creak and groan before water starts to thunder into the tub, and Sakura pours something into the water that instantly fills the room with a floral-scented mist.
“Are you hurt?” she asks, eyes probing over Ino once more, and some of the tension seems to leave her shoulders when Ino shakes her head no.
“I’m going to go get you a towel, alright?” she says, unsure, like she doesn’t want to leave Ino alone for too long. “You let me know when I can come in and I’ll put your clothes in the wash, ok?”
Ino just nods, undresses without thinking. Weapons in one pile, clothes in another. The tub is nearly full when she remembers to turn off the tap, and the bathroom seems oddly quiet without the sound of rushing water.
The water is hot – a little too warm to be comfortable, but Ino sinks in all the same, until she’s submerged up to her chin. Sakura’s put bubbles in the bath and it feels – frivolous, and wrong, for a moment. But the floral scent is familiar, like something she’s smelled on Sakura’s skin before, and despite the wrongness of being here, taking a bubble bath, when everything’s gone wrong—
She’s not going to think about it. She’s here, and the water is warm and Sakura’s apartment is safe and familiar and comforting, and that’s – it’s going to have to be enough, right now.
Sakura knocks quietly on the doorframe before coming in. “Alright?” she asks, and Ino nods before remembering that Sakura can’t see her.
“You can come in,” she says, and the door slides open to reveal Sakura with a towel. She sets it down on the counter next to the sink, in easy reach whenever Ino wants it, then bends to pick up Ino’s clothes from where she’d dropped them haphazardly to the floor.
“I’ll just—” Sakura nods towards the bundle of clothing in her arms. “You just let me know if you need anything else, ok? I won’t be far.”
She turns to leave and suddenly Ino can’t hold it in anymore, doesn’t want to tell Sakura but can’t bear her not knowing, either.
“Asuma’s dead,” she says flatly, just before Sakura reaches the doorway, before she can think about it too much. She hears, rather than sees, her clothes fall to the ground with a dull thud.
It’s the first time she’s said it, she realizes absently, watching Sakura’s faucet where it’s leaking, just a bit, at the other end of the tub. Saying it out loud doesn’t make it feel any more real – it hadn’t felt real while it was happening, and now there’s just numbness, an empty space that her brain just – skips over, when she gets too close. The water from the leaking faucet coalesces into a droplet until it’s too heavy; she watches as it falls into the water by her feet with a quiet plop because she can’t look at Sakura as she walks slowly across the bathroom and comes to her knees next to the tub.
“Ino, I’m—god, I’m so sorry,” she says finally, voice wavering. “Are you—do you want to talk about it?”
Ino considers it – but then, she doesn’t know what she could possibly say. Should she tell Sakura about how she’d been too late to be of any help in the fight? That all her medical training hadn’t been enough to save him, in the end, so what was the point? That he’d asked her to watch Shikamaru and Chōji, but how could she do that when she was barely there herself?
Would it help?
“No,” Ino says, closing her eyes. “Not really. But—could you—”
Sakura pauses from where she had been moving to stand.
“Could you stay?”
“Oh,” she says, sinking slowly back to her knees. “Of course, Ino. Of course.”
--
Sakura stays, and talks to her in low tones about nothing in particular – how she’s planning on getting back at Sai for insulting her food pills, how she’s been putting in a maintenance request for her leaky faucet for days but nobody from building management seems to care and she’s started to wonder if maybe she should just try to fix it herself, about a new recipe she’s been meaning to try but never remembers to pick up the ingredients for.
She scrubs Ino’s hands gently, one at a time, taking care to get all the blood out from beneath her fingernails, and Ino almost wants to tell her to stop, that that’s all she has left, but she recognizes it’s ridiculous or maybe hysterical before she opens her mouth and so she stays quiet, watches as the water turns faintly pink, listens to Sakura tell her about how she’d gone to the new flower shop down the road, just to see, but it couldn’t compare to the Yamanaka’s.
It’s not important, what Sakura says – just that she’s saying it, just that she’s there. Finally, finally the cold starts to seep out of her, and she’s warm, in Sakura’s bath, buried up to the neck in bubbles, and she starts to drift off like that, listening to her best friend murmur about whatever comes into her head.
“I’m going to wash your hair, ok?”
She nods sleepily, safe and comfortable, and then she remembers why it’s so wrong, that she could be safe, when Asuma—
“Oh, god,” she chokes out, and Sakura’s hands go still against her scalp. “Oh, god, Sakura, he’s dead.” And then she’s bent forward, forehead pressed against her knees and every awful emotion she’s been holding in for the past – has it been hours? A day? She doesn’t know anymore – comes pouring out of her in one awful, strangled noise that she barely recognizes as coming from her own mouth.
Sakura leans over the side of the tub – her shirt must be getting soaked – and pulls Ino towards her. Ino turns her face into the crook of Sakura’s neck and cries, loudly, messily, cries so hard her throat hurts and her lungs feel like they’ll never get a full breath again and through it all Sakura kneels on the cold tile next to her and strokes her hair and runs a warm, soapy hand up her arm and down again, pausing at her shoulder to rub small circles with her thumb.
“I’ve got you,” she murmurs, “shh, Ino, I’ve got you,” and this isn’t how they’re supposed to be – they’re not meant to be so careful with one another, she doesn’t think, and Ino’s not sure she can bear it.
You’re supposed to tease me, she wants to say, you’re not supposed to be this kind, but in the end all she can do is cling to Sakura like the world is ending, because it is, a little bit.
--
Later, when Ino can breathe again and the water is starting to go from hot to lukewarm, when her face feels hot and blotchy but her eyes are mostly dry, Sakura moves away, slowly, carefully. Her knees pop as she stands and she gives Ino a small, tired smile.
“I never did put your clothes in the wash – I’ll go do that, ok? I’ll be back in a minute.”
Ino listens to her moving around the apartment and inspects her fingers, which are now well and truly pruned. She stands and wraps herself in the towel, inspecting her puffy eyes in the mirror, before toeing the door open.
“I’m borrowing a shirt,” she calls down the hallway as she crosses into Sakura’s room.
“Take whatever you need,” Sakura says, so Ino digs through her closet and takes the softest, biggest t-shirt she can find. She’s just slipping it over her head when the phone rings.
Sakura’s voice is muffled through the wall as she answers, so Ino can’t hear everything, but she can hear enough to know what kind of a call this must be when Sakura sighs.
“I know – Ino’s here. She’s—”
Her voice drops to something quieter, then, and Ino can’t make out the words anymore, isn’t sure she wants to. From her place on the end of Sakura’s bed all she can hear is indistinct murmurs, before Sakura says firmly, a little indignantly, “of course I will! She’s – important to me.”
There’s a long pause, and Ino can’t tell if she’s listening to whoever’s on the other end of the line or if she’s hung up, until: “Kakashi-sensei—you know that we—I mean, that you’re—” and Ino falls backwards onto the bed and closes her eyes and tries not to resent her too much, for being able to say things like that, for having the luxury of being so indirect.
--
There’s more movement, this time from the kitchen, and then Sakura comes down the hallway carrying two mugs of something warm and steaming.
“Oh, sit up, you’ll get the covers all wet with all that hair of yours,” Sakura grumbles, handing her what turns out to be hot chocolate. She slides onto the bed behind Ino, up against the wall, then pats the space in front of her. “Come here – I’ll comb it for you, I know it gets all tangled otherwise,” she says, as if she does this every day, and Ino just – goes along with it. Maybe it helps Sakura – maybe it’s helping her. She can’t tell if she feels any better, still.
Sakura’s hands are careful in her hair, and she works the comb slowly through the tangles. She’s quiet, now, doesn’t seem to feel the need to fill the air with talk like she had before. Ino had appreciated the talk, then, but this feels right, too – gives her space to think, now that she can breathe again. Everything about Sakura’s movement is measured, calm – a quiet companionship Ino hadn’t realized she’d needed.
“We were so proud, to be chuunin,” she admits into the quiet. Sakura hums, gives her room to continue. She hadn’t turned the light on, when she came in, and the fading sunlight casts deep purple shadows across the room. “We thought we were so – so grown up, you know?”
“He was proud of you, too,” Sakura murmurs. “I remember the earrings.”
“Yeah—” her voice doesn’t break, somehow. “I guess – when he gave us those, it was like Team 10 was – you know, like we were done. Like we were all supposed to move on. But he was still—”
The steady movement of Sakura’s comb stops, and she pulls Ino into a hug. It’s an awkward angle, uncomfortable for both of them, probably – Ino doesn’t move.
“We still needed him,” she finally admits, voice small.
“I know,” Sakura says, stroking her hair, “I know. I’m sorry. It’s not fair.”
Ino shifts to lay on her side, looking at Sakura, finally, in the dim light filtering in through the window. “I don’t know what to do,” she admits.
“Me neither,” Sakura murmurs. “I’m sorry.”
Ino shakes her head. “No – I mean, you don’t need to apologize. Just – don’t go anywhere, ok?”
“Ok,” Sakura says, brushing her thumb against Ino’s cheek. “I can do that.”
They don’t talk, after that – just lie there, perfectly still, foreheads pressed together and legs all tangled, Sakura’s hand warm against Ino’s face and Ino still doesn’t feel better, not really, but it’s the most solid she’s felt since—since.
And maybe, she thinks, eyes fluttering shut the same way Sakura’s had just moments before – maybe that’s enough.
--
She’s too hot when she wakes up the next morning, and there’s a warm weight sprawled out half on top of her – Sakura, she remembers blearily, bits and pieces of the previous day filtering in, and then the everything else comes crashing back and she sucks in a breath and it’s enough to wake Sakura, who rolls off of her but seems otherwise uninterested in moving.
“Hey, Sakura?”
Sakura blinks one eye slowly open, and Ino’s reminded that she’s never been much of a morning person. “Yeah?”
“Thanks,” Ino says, feeling her face heat but not looking away. “For everything. I needed—I’m glad it was you.”
Sakura smiles sleepily, then shifts forward, pressing a kiss to Ino’s forehead before Ino realizes she’s doing it. “Of course,” she says, “Anything, for you.”
“Oh,” Ino says, watching Sakura’s face turn bright red, certain hers must be doing the same.
“Oh,” Sakura agrees, and then they both have to look away.
“He told me not to let you win,” Ino says to the ceiling. “So this doesn’t – we’re still rivals, Forehead.”
“Ok,” Sakura says, and when Ino chances a sidelong glance her nose is scrunched up in irritation or amusement, Ino can’t tell which. “Alright, Ino. Whatever you say.”