Verdurous foliage delicately brushes along Ino's skin, the full moon's glow illuminating her pathway through the dense underbrush of the Nara clan forest. The air is still and cool, redolent with the aroma of blooming honeysuckle. A pair of owls hoot a duet in the distance as bats' tiny silhouettes zip to and fro overhead. A trio of deer scatters when she spooks them. Jutting twigs and thorns snag on her ponytail and clothes; she's already sporting a plethora of scratches and cuts on the exposed parts of her outfit, which sting fiercely, their pain amplified by sweat.
Eventually, the trees start to grow sparse and barren ground becomes visible through gaps in the foliage ahead. She slows, her heartbeat thunderous. Her throat swells with mild trepidation as she stumbles into the clearing. Because the forest is vast, it had been enervating to find this place – Shikamaru had never disclosed the location and she didn't dare inquire. Finally, however, after arduous searching, she'd finally found it.
Shakily, she lurches forward and balks at the edge of the large patch of ground where grass refuses to grow, her sandals scuffing in the dry, crumbly dirt. If wounds can't kill him, can malnutrition? It's nearly been a month. Surely he's dead.
...But what if he's not?
Ino truly has no idea what awaits her beneath the surface of the earth – when she met him, he was just full of surprises. This is what incentivizes her, what gives her faith. Who knows, she thinks, faintly amused, he may even be counting sake bottles on the wall.
She swallows back her misgivings, drops to her knees at the edge of the area, and sinks her fingers into the soil to test it. Digging will likely take longer than planned given its hard, unyielding surface, and she purses her lips in displeasure. She couldn't bring a shovel – too conspicuous, difficult to hide. Her hands will have to suffice. With a heavy, weary sigh, she sweeps her hair into a bun and pins her bangs back, then begrudgingly begins the grueling task.
...
By the time her arms start to ache and quiver, a four-foot deep, three-foot wide hole gapes at her feet. She casts a vexed frown at her dirty nails. Exactly how deep is the entire thing? Knowing Shikamaru and his rancorous grudge, it probably reaches to the other side of the world.
Rolling her stiff neck and stretching her sore arms and shoulders with a grimace, she blows out another gusty sigh and tips her head back to look up at the night sky. Stars twinkle, appearing to flicker in colors of red, blue, and white, and the full moon is splendent in its navy backdrop, its craters forming a grinning face. As she watches, a shooting star flashes across its expanse, lightning fast, only to vanish in a split second. She thinks of it as a sign of hope.
Resolved, she looks back down at the hole. I can do this.
.
No one suspects a thing.
Around others, her demeanor is exceptionally calm while, internally, she is flooded with anxiety. Her arms are sore and she can hardly pick up a glass of water without trembling, but her dark eye circles can easily be masked with her remarkable makeup skills. She naps with Shikamaru during the day to catch up on what sleep she loses during the night, and though he finds her behavior exceptionally odd, he – surprisingly – does not question it. In fact, he secretly enjoys the company of his normally loudmouthed, overbearing teammate during these times when she is quiet and peaceful.
And, secretly, Ino struggles to hide her increasing guilt around her friend.
.
It does take days. Six, to be exact. She'd already unearthed a fair amount of limbs – which disturbingly bore not a single trace of burns or cuts on the flawless beige skin – that she had shoved inside of a dead tree and hid with branches, fervently hoping animals wouldn't bother her stash. The hole is now about twelve feet deep and ten feet across. She's fortunate the Naras don't often enter the forest.
A right arm – disjointed neatly at the elbow, another bizarre aspect that unsettles her – now lies limply at her side. The ring is gone. She'd be damned if she spent even more time looking for the tiny thing, so she disregards it for now. Soon after she fishes out a left foot – still donning juniper green polish – she spies the jagged tip of a thin black object sticking through the ground beneath it. The pike pokes her thumb when she yanks it out.
She's forced to rest, slumping against a tree while she guzzles water from a bottle and wipes the sweat from her forehead. A whippoorwill calls high up in the canopy above her. It's startled silent when coyotes start to yip and howl off in the distance, and Ino's skin crawls at the eerie serenade. Mosquitoes hover greedily around her bare legs. Draining the last drops of water, she crushes the bottle and stuffs it in her pocket, then stands and stretches. Back to business.
Ino spaces out while she digs on her hands and knees at the bottom of the hole, her eyes unfocused as she thinks about this and that, her mind a tumultuous swarm of worrisome thoughts. I can't believe I'm actually doing this. What if he is dead? That means I'm touching a corpse. But I don't smell anything. Can he even rot? Oh my god, ew, a beetle just touched me- Then her fingers graze something soft, and she's instantly snapped back into reality with a jolt of alarm as she jerks her head down to look.
Hair. Silvery hair. She freezes at the sight, her heart pounding a corybantic beat in her chest.
This is it.
Gritting her teeth, she squares her shoulders and grips a fistful of the hair, then firmly tugs the head out of the dirt. She slowly rotates it to face her, and as the soil falls away, a pair of vibrant magenta eyes, wide with astonishment, lock onto her equally huge azure ones.
"...What the fuck?"
And that's the first thing out of Hidan's mouth.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Yeah, I'm one of those people that start 4 billion stories at once. What can I say? I'm just full of ideas. :3c
HIDAINO IS MY FAVE SHIP OKAY. WHY ISNT IT MORE POPULAR I DONT UNDERSTAND.
I know this is probably gonna look bad with my other...uh...fic...with these two in it...uh. Well. It's not like that, trust me. THIS IS WAY DIFFERENT.
Short chapter is short. I wanted to leave it at a cliffhanger, short and sweet as the beginning, because it didn't seem right typing more.