the voices of the voiceless things
Summary: If she has learned anything it is to read the silence around her. OneShot- Yamanaka Ino. One year passing, or more. Somehow.
Warning: Starts out angsty and hopefully turns lighter in the progress.
Set: Story-unrelated, future-fic, part of my personal Ino-canon
Disclaimer: Standards apply.
A/N: This was written in 2011. I re-read, corrected and polished it repeatedly and then tucked it away, wanting to post it sometime or other. In fact, I was completely convinced I had already posted it…
If Ino has learned anything in the course of her life, it is to listen to the voices of the voiceless things around her.
The weather outside is pretty and summer has just begun the day she tells her parents what she has decided on doing for the rest of her life. She has tried different things: medic nin and teacher and florist. She has watched the people around her – Shikamaru, Chouji, Sakura, Hinata, Neji and all the ones they call Konoha Eleven today – and she has realized that there is only one gift that belongs to her and to no one else. Sakura is pretty, as she is, and Hinata is kind. Tenten is intelligent and as swift as Ino is. Shikamaru is patient, like she can be if she wants to, and Chouji is loyal, as she imagines herself to be. Neji is as haunted as she is and Lee as exuberant as she is and Naruto – well, Naruto is a special case and probably the person most like her, only a thousand times better. Maybe that is why they get along pretty well nowadays. To cut a long story short, the only thing that makes Ino special, even if she still doesn't stand out from her friends, is the fact that there is no place she belongs to. She is a part of the Konoha Eleven, a part of her generation, a part of the village population, a part of the shinobi society. But there isn't more to it and she feels like there is something she cannot grasp, right out of her reach, and even though she tries so hard she exhausts herself completely she can't reach it.
It is late June when she tells her parents.
Why? Her mother's sobs mourn. Why, oh why, my daughter? What have I done wrong? Why are you breaking my heart? The silent tears are unnerving and cause Ino no small amount of shame and pain. They stream from her mother's face down into the dishwater while her slim shoulders shake and for the first time in her life Ino sees lines in her mother's face. Seeing the strong woman devastated like this makes her feel like a small child again, helpless and unable to help, and it only strengthens her resolve even further.
Her father's shouts are less subtle, more aggressive. They scream from the way he refuses to look at her during the entire dinner, the way he directs his words at his wife even if Ino is the addressee. His shaking hands are angry and desperate and yet as pleading as her mother's bottomless sorrow. Behind words, threats and accusations, the message remains: I forbid you!
If she had only found her place in the world earlier, maybe all of this wouldn't have happened. But it's too late.
The sun is beating down onto the training grounds so hard she feels like every ounce of oxygen is being pressed from the air she tries to force into her lungs. July is hot and unrelenting and her clothes stick to her body like a second, horribly uncomfortable skin.
She hurts. Everything hurts. Her body is a mass of black and blue bruises, her muscles are so strained every inch of movement is agony. Yet she continues on, forces herself forward even though the sweat stings in her wounds and the colors in front of her eyes blur. Ino has been trained as a shinobi for the last ten years of her life and still she hasn't encountered anything as painful and exhausting as what she is going through now. She never would have thought the calluses on her hands would break open and bleed again. She wouldn't have thought she'd experience sore muscles again, something that hadn't happened since she had been elected into Team Ten. Nothing she ever had been trough – her chuunin exam, her first missions, the fights during the Third Ninja World War – have prepared her for the relentlessness she is being shown right now.
Each one of Anko-sensei's punches is one great challenge, each one of her jabs and kicks mock her. You can't do it, they chant, somewhat satisfied, somewhat taunting. You'll never make it. You'll never succeed. She hears their voices when nobody else hears or understands them. For that reason, again and again, she grits her teeth and continues on. Forces herself out of her bed every day with muscles screaming in pain, stays awake until late, studies and trains, trains and studies. She knows her taijutsu are weak. Using her family's special technique, she never had a great part in the physical aspect of Team Ten's fights. Her ninjutsu, on the other hand, lacks training, and she reads and experiments, tries, fails and tries again until she falls asleep in the library. Merely her genjutsu abilities seem to satisfy her harsh trainer. Anko-sensei never would have said anything but Hinata told Ino she had mentioned her to Kurenai-sensei and suggested additional training for her. And this tiny bit of acceptance from her teacher makes Ino try even harder.
Still, she can hear it. You're a lady, not an ANBU. What do you want from me? But she grows. Ino never was particularly good at anything. Perhaps that is the reason why she chooses this path: there is nothing else left for her to do, nothing else to try. She will succeed.
Shikamaru and Chouji both are busy with their own lives, work, genin teams and training. For that reason they only meet up once or twice a month nowadays.
Ino has spent three weeks persuading the aggressive woman to train her and still hasn't been accepted as her student officially now, eight weeks into what has started when Ino desperately attacked the other shinobi and what has become, somehow and tentatively, a weekly training session in anything but in name. It ends with bruises, on her body and her mind alike, every time they clash. But it's fine with her. Anko-sensei is harsh and pitiless and violent and strict but there is a soft spot somewhere deep within her. Sometimes, Ino finds a jacket thrown over herself carefully when she wakes up on the training grounds after having collapsed again, and sometimes there is a little bag of dango besides her and the sweetness of the sticky rice balls and their warm encouragement brings tears to her eyes. Well done. Now rest. One late August day, Anko-sensei looks down at her from the branch of a tree on their training field from where she has watched Ino perform genjutsu and ninjutsu.
"Go home," she says curtly. "We'll call it a day."
And she disappears in a whirl of leaves.
So Ino finds herself walking down the street of Konoha's shopping district in the early evening and marvels at how well her body seems to have adjusted to the strain she has put herself under day after day. Almost two months have passed and the skin on her hands is hard and callused again and her muscles don't scream out in pain whenever she moves. She almost smiles and stops as she sees a hairdresser's shop announcing special offers. When she leaves the shop again, her long ponytail is gone and her blond hair falls down to her shoulders. The sensation of strands of hair tickling her shoulders is alien.
Chouji and Shikamaru almost pass her without recognizing her and she has to address them first before they stop. They stare at her like she has two heads and three eyes and then, when they have gotten a grip on themselves, ask her whether she would like to join them for dinner. They have a good meal in Chouji's favorite barbecue restaurant. And when it comes to her turn in telling what she has been doing for the last few weeks she sees the surprise and shock register in their faces.
Shikamaru's eyes question while his lips remain closed and his right hand opens and closes where it lies on the table next to his plate. What is the reason? They ask. Where is the sense? What is your drive? And, worst of all, because it feels like an accusation and Shikamaru doesn't accuse: Why didn't you tell us before? Chouji has not stopped munching his meat but his grin has vanished from his face and his chewing is slow and thoughtful. Don't do this, his silence says. Don't do this to us. We've already lost Asuma-sensei. Yes, they have lost their teacher, the wound is still raw and edged and discarnate, like bleeding out internally and being unable to do anything against it. The pain is threefold: it bounces between the three of them, joins, separates and reflects and grows, gains intensity until it is impossible for them to be in the same room anymore. We lost him. We can't lose each other. But this is different, she thinks, we can't even look at each other and yet being apart is unthinkable, and just shrugs and finishes her meal. She doesn't feel like talking and because Shikamaru never talks much and Chouji eats they end their dinner in silence. When they part Ino waves good-bye and turns to leave, and Shikamaru grabs her arm. Both look at her: Chouji and Shikamaru, her boys, the two people who are most important to her next to her parents. The warmth of Shikamaru's hand around her elbow is reassuring and desperate at the same time.
We can't keep you. We can't lose you.
Ino smiles.
Take care.
It's a small smile but it feels more natural than any other of the bright, unreal smiles she has used for the greater part of her life before.
September arrives in an amazing display of colored leaves and late summer flowers and Anko-sensei tightens her training schedule. They train five times a week now, from morning to evening, and sometimes Ino feels like her head cannot remember all the moves, the ninjutsu, the techniques. Even when she doesn't fight she is being drilled: about the rules of ANBU life, about tactics, strategies, codes and emergency procedures. It's just was well she has already learned the basic medical jutsu so she doesn't need to ask Sakura for a crash-course. Ino learns to use the short and sharp tanto that are the trademark weapons of Konoha's ANBU. She learns to carry the chest armor – she never would have thought the light chest plate would prove so uncomfortable and heavy once she wore it – and how to hide in the shadows. Day after day she makes herself go past her own boundaries and often she returns tired to the bone and unable to even undress herself before she falls into her bed.
One time, she almost dies.
Sakura gives her some horrible-tasting medicine and she sleeps for two days until her chakra reserves start refilling. Kurenai-sensei has a serious talk with her about the backlashes of genjutsu and Anko-sensei almost seems sympathetic – until she makes Ino run one hundred laps around Konoha to burn the consequences of her own stupidity into her mind for ever and ever.
Kurenai lets her hold her daughter on another day.
The girl is tiny. A handful of short, brown hair and tiny hands and feet. She looks sweet and fragile and Ino almost is afraid to hold her. When the baby opens her eyes, they are of a red so bloody that it unsettles her to the point that she almost drops her but then she looks at the girl properly and sees Asuma-sensei's features so clearly her breath catches in her throat. The baby watches the stranger holding her intently, completely without fear. She's not even one year old but the baby girl speaks to Ino: speaks with the voices of Asuma-sensei and Kurenai-sensei, and maybe, with a voice that is so familiar to Ino that it sounds alien in her mind. It echoes in her head and she tightens her grip on the child in reflex until it starts to squirm and she loosens her grip again, and then the girl turns to her and gives her a huge, beautiful smile. Her hand reaches up and threads through Ino's short hair and she starts telling wordless stories while playing with the golden strands that frame Ino's face. Ino doesn't understand the girl but the hand in her hair and next to her face is warm. We want you to grow old and have children of yourself, it says, and Asuma-sensei's voice is deep and warm and Kurenai-sensei's sounds like laughter, both happy and sad at the same time. We want you to see your own children and grandchildren.
Ino excuses herself and leaves shortly afterwards, the black hole inside her expanding and eating her from inside out. Kurenai-sensei is shinobi, too, and she knows the duty she has towards Konoha. And Asuma-sensei is dead already and never will see his daughter. She turns one last time to see Kurenai-sensei and Hinata play with the little girl and something in their laughter reaches out to Ino. Protect my childhood. Protect my children.
But Ino isn't sure whether it is the voice of the child she probably will never bear, of the child Hinata is carrying, or of Kurenai and Asuma-sensei's little girl.
Sakura heals her broken wrist and several stab wounds while a steady stream of rain falls down outside the hospital windows. The air is cool but as a nurse attempts to close the window Ino asks her to leave it. The scent of wet pavement and leaves and arriving fall mingles with Sakura's shampoo (cherry and lavender) and the faint hospital smell that clings to her and to the entire hospital: mild disinfectant, medicinal alcohol, despair and hope.
Some strands of Sakura's beautiful hair falls into her face, long and in the wonderful color Ino has envied for so long. Her eyes avoid her best friend while her hand runs down her bruised leg carefully. Ino reminds herself not to flinch and looks at the shadows which dance on the woman's face before her.
"So they accepted you," Sakura finally remarks as she heals the open fracture and bruises a hailstorm of stones has caused to Ino's left leg. "Congratulations."
She doesn't answer. For one, because she knows Sakura knows she has been accepted. ANBU have special medical registration sheets and they are processed swiftly. Ino's old medical file has already been replaced. And, secondly, because seeing Sakura in her element, in the hospital, Ino suddenly feels at peace. The pain is a constant, dull pounding at the back of her head but Sakura's hands are soft and gentle, her presence is familiar and for the first time in her life she is able to look at her friend without envy. Haruno Sakura always knew what she wanted, and she always knew where she belonged. Through time and places Ino has watched her: Sakura might have taken a few wrong turns, but she always returned to her own path. Ino, however, never felt like she could have what she wanted, not with people like Shikamaru, Chouji and Sakura around her. And only now she has found a place she belongs to, only now she knows who she is. Only now she realizes how much she has depended on Sakura, and how much the other woman means to her.
Sakura gets up and throws a quick smile at her, and Ino sees the honest kindness and friendship in her friend's gaze. She smiles back and slides down from the examination table.
Sakura sighs. "ANBU for three and a half hours and already you've absorbed the notion that staying in a hospital longer than a few hours might have a lethal outcome."
When Ino returns from her parents' house that evening she finds a small bouquet of flowers in front of her apartment door. We'll always be friends, the violet ribbon wound around the stems whispers. October's last sunflowers say Stay safe.
Ino chooses her mask herself.
The cold, white porcelain is painted with blood-red lines and curves which depict the animal whose face she will carry from now on. It is a doe. She always liked the shy, beautiful animals with their huge eyes and their protectiveness towards their fawn. When she and Shikamaru were children they used to spend time in the Nara forests early in the morning, just sitting and watching and waiting for a flock of deer to appear. That was the time when she was Ino, not troublesome girl. Her mask reminds her of times long past, of silent mornings and the scent of green leaves and the sound and warmth of a person breathing next to her. And then, suddenly, the sound of hooves on soft, moss-covered forest floor, the rush of a flock breaking through the foliage, and the soft ring of the leading doe's bell.
It reminds her of the time when she first realized there was only ever one choice for her, before their world fell apart and Shikamaru, Chouji and Ino followed.
Outside, fall mists cover the grounds as she walks towards the training grounds. November is cold and uncomfortable and though she loves the rain she grieves for all the lost leaves and dying plants. The weight of the mask in her pocket is heavy, reassuring and threatening at the same time. Behind the painted porcelain she will hide, will become one with the anonymous cadre of elite shinobi of Konoha. Wearing the mask she will be one of many, nothing more. From behind the mask she will watch, behind this mask she will live. She feels exhilarated and terrified at the same time but she is calm, too. She chose a path and she followed it until here and she will continue. For the first time she remembers, she is proud of herself.
She sits down on the stone at the side of the training grounds where Team Ten used to meet their teacher so many years ago and lifts the mask to her ear. She listens intently but, to her surprise, the doe remains silent. Stunned, she frowns, because she is used to hearing the voices. Yugao-san, who passes by by chance and sees her regard her mask thoughtfully, moves over to sit with her for a minute. She doesn't say a word, but her eyes find Ino's for a second before she looks away again. She is dressed in her loose training gear, her bare arms full of scars, the expression in her dark eyes as sad as always. Her loose hair whispers in the evening wind, sings silently.
Don't lose yourself behind it.
Tsunade-sama hands her the mask in a brief ceremony and Ino disappears behind a plain, white porcelain face, as do the faces of two other new ANBU recruits. The speech that follows is traditional and short. The words are empty and yet full and Ino repeats them, prayer and vow at the same time: I vow to fight. I vow to protect. I swear loyalty. She never was religious but she feels cleansed. Stars burn short but bright. And in the Fifth Fire Shadow's sorrowful shoulders and in the glances from the dead people on the walls around them crystallizes the voice, grave and simple: We honor your sacrifice.
Her first kill doesn't whimper, doesn't shake and doesn't back down.
But the woman behind him does and the child at his side is too small to understand the reason but knows the consequences. It cries softly, tears streaming down its cheeks, hair tousled from interrupted sleep.
Not all ANBU missions are like this, she knows by now. There are boring ones and exciting ones because she gets to leave the country, gets to see the world beyond the borders of the Five Kingdoms. She has guarded princesses and fought terrorists and spied on corrupt Lords. A year has passed and a month since she took up her mask and this, finally, is what will change her forever.
"Please," he begs. "Spare me. My woman and my son need me."
She lets him complete his sentence and makes the mistake. The one thing an ANBU is not allowed to do, the one thing that distinguishes her and her partner from their colleagues. She holds her tanto still enough to give him the courage to turn and look at her.
Never let your kill find your gaze.
The child sobs and clutches at his mother's hand. Civilians, nothing more and nothing less, unable to defend themselves. The child is too small – it doesn't understand yet, doesn't understand that his pretty toys and expensive clothes are bought with money that is made by selling drugs to the already forsaken. In a city which doesn't care about her inhabitants it is easy to take a side. Necessary. Imperative. Kill or be killed. There is too much corruption, too much crime for one ANBU team to protect the civilians from. They have every reason but not enough time, again and again. So tonight, she is here for this man only. And then: blue eyes stare at her, frightened and pleading, and they scream for mercy right until the moment she grabs the man by his collar and hurls him around, putting her own body between him and his courtesan and son. But the act of mercy – of cowardice – is futile. When she turns around again, her mask and her armor splattered with hot blood, the child has stopped crying even though it still clings to its mother's hand. The woman has collapsed, fainted onto the frozen, cold December ground. Blue eyes bore into her, full of hate, and the open wound inside her that never heals, always only scabs over, breaks open again.
God, how she wants to go home, but her home is closed to her.
Ino hasn't hesitated and yet she has failed. She has already killed – the last Shinobi War hasn't passed her generation untouched, she has seen combat situations, the horrors of war and of fights, she has fought and killed herself – and yet this feels different. This isn't combat, isn't self-defense. This is murder. But murder in the name of everything she believes in.
Her hands shake as she thrusts the tanto back into its sheath on her back after carefully wiping it clean.
The first snow of the year falls onto her hair, onto her hands and her face and she lifts a gloved hand to regard the melting ice crystals on dark leather. Behind her her partner approaches, unheard by any other person than her. She can sense him, sense his now strangely-calm attitude, his silent presence that is so different from the one he had when they were kids. He, too, has changed, but Ino is pretty sure he was the better person between the two of them in the beginning and always will be. You are a murderer now, the stars in the black sky above whisper. You killed. You'll burn in Hell.
Every encounter like this fractures her heart a little bit more.
"To choices," Naruto tells her, one night late in January, in a dark bar somewhere in the outskirts of Hidden Leaf. Snow whirls through the streets in angry patterns and the cold walks the streets, clothed in wind and snowflakes. The former Konoha Twelve, down to Eleven since Sasuke defected, never come here. There are prettier places in town: restaurants nicer than this one, bars less mangy, less smoke-filled and less dirty. Naruto and Ino do come here, sometimes, and it is as much for the reason that they need some time off from their lives as well as for the fact that they won't meet anyone there they know.
Her partner's voice isn't bitter, merely matter-of-fact. Ino doesn't turn but looks over the bar, into the wide, dusty mirror hanging there. She sees a man with a mop of wheat-yellow hair and sea-blue eyes and woman with shoulder-length, platinum hair and similarly blue eyes. Both are wearing the unmistakable Konoha forehead protector. Sometimes people mistake them as siblings, they could use it as a disguise if not for the fact that ANBU don't do covert missions in disguise. But Naruto's her brother in everything except for blood and she trusts him in a way she only ever trusted three other people before and most likely won't ever extend to any other people. But, contrary to those other people, Naruto is there, and she is insanely glad for his presence. Sometimes she wishes for him to be more to her, so she can let herself go completely. But then he gets this special expression he has when he thinks of Sakura, and Ino feels her heart withdrawing. There is no way to forget herself like that, and she refuses to do so. Her ANBU tattoo burns hot on the skin of her left upper arm, a constant, ever-present reminder of what she is and where she will go even while hidden by the long, plain arms of the black shirt she carries underneath her vest. The bottles on the shelves, dusty and stale, whisper of lost dreams and realized hopes, broken hearts and fulfilled dreams but there is no meaning to it: it is the normal background music of every bar, of every hopeless and hopeful person that comes to drown his sorrows in alcohol rather than drowning himself. The voices are both triumphant and sad and she barely listens. She has fulfilled her dreams and has left behind other hopes in exchange. Has she made a good deal? It probably depends on the point of view one takes on.
Naruto drowns his cup of soda quickly.
They come to this seedy bar, spend both time and money, but they don't drink. It's an unspoken rule. ANBU can't afford to be out for a day, ANBU don't lose control. Ino hates losing control. One night in the past, one night, one moon, too much alcohol, and she lost herself (in him) that night only to realize that there were things she couldn't have in the morning. She is not going to repeat that mistake. So she clamps a hand hard against her left upper arm and digs her fingers into her skin in order for the pain to remind her that this is what she chose. What she chose to be.
"To our choices," Naruto repeats and his smile is crooked, but real. The mirror laughs, silently, and maybe there is a hint of sorrow in its voice but Ino doesn't really listen. The whole room is full of them: silent and mournful and happy and elated. She doesn't need to listen to hear the words she knows by heart. She reads them in the scars that cover her hands and in the line of Naruto's shoulders, in the snow on the other side of the window and in the steady beat of her own heart. She reads about volumes of guilt and sadness and yet there is fulfillment, too, as strange as it might seem. This is what she wanted. This is what she lives for: long journeys and little breaks, a cold apartment, dusty and stale, a room in the ANBU HQ she knows better than any other one. Colleagues, not friends, but good comrades nonetheless because ANBU only rely on each other and on few others. A partner she trusts with her life, someone who's there with her on cold nights far from the one home she will never have.
Has she always been that cold?
Ino reads volumes of loneliness in her surroundings those days but no regret and she wonders whether the same is written in her heart.
The white-clad man looks down on her with a mixture in between clinical interest and compassion. She prefers the first to the second and loathing instantly flares up inside her. She tries to move and finds it hurts, her arms and her legs and even her head are heavier than massive granite. Panic starts building up inside her. She frantically tries to suppress it and it works, works because she has learned to do so. She knows that in such a situation she has to either escape immediately or take care of the fact that she isn't taken alive, she has to deny every possible captor the satisfaction of possessing a living Konoha ANBU and…
Where is she?
Terror engulfs her and she swallows it down, forces herself to think as rational as possible. Take inventory: she is in a white bed, in a white room, and a man in a white coat stares down on her. She tries to remember her mission and how she came to be here and why is she bound to the bed?
"Who are you?" She demands sharply. "Where am I?"
She tests her bindings. They are, she realizes, nothing to hold her for long, merely straps which already loosen as she strains against them. Her hands snap free in an instant and despite the pain in her body she tries to jump from the bed.
"Ino, no!" The door has opened and a pink-haired woman walks in, sees what she is about to do and pins her to the bed again. She is fast and strong, amazingly so, and she finds herself unable to move. Only now the pain in her whole body strikes her, weakness washes over her and she wonders how she has been able to sit up in the first place. Adrenaline. But even worse is the next thought: They got us. Where is Naruto? Did they get him, too? He must have been hurt, otherwise no one would have been able to take him. He must be hurt or even dead. Fear washes over her and makes her forget her training and everything else and this is why we don't forge bonds. And she can't remember her own name, but the terror is light in comparison to the fear that courses through her because her partner is gone.
"Where is he?" She demands, her voice almost climbing an octave. "What have you done to him? What do you want?"
The woman still pins her to her bed and she fights her, fights with everything she has. She has to escape, has to go and find Naruto and if there is no way out they'll have to see that they can't be questioned anymore. She fights, screams, threatens and pleads and something pricks her in her left arm. The doctor – she has pretty hair – pulls back a syringe and she fights like a wounded wolf. They call her by a name that isn't hers, a name she doesn't know. Strangers surround her, their words and faces blurring together, their nearness terrifying and their calm voices all the more threatening.
Ino, the white walls scream at her, a sound like finger nails scraping across a blackboard, and the sound is so horrible she presses her fists onto her ears and screams wordlessly in order to drown them out. You are Ino. Ino. You are safe. But she doesn't believe, she can't believe because she has never seen those people before, how would they know her name? She screams while they ask questions, ask and ask and ask and she refuses to listen. They are drugging her and she tries to fight them but hands like steel vices clamp around her arms and she can't move from the pain in her lower body and legs.
"Naruto! Naruto! Naruto!"
She screams for him because he has to be there, somewhere, and she has learned he is the only person she can trust. It's not working! She's ANBU, they're used to that kind of tranquilizer, give her more. Bring him over here, quickly! But we can't, he's… I don't care, bring him here! The numbness starts in her legs and spreads all over her body and she appreciates it because it drowns out the pain but it doesn't make the screams stop. She still fights but her strength wanes, her body trashing from one side to the other, her voice hoarse. She gasps for air. February. It was February when they left home (home a village hidden behind but where and why can't she remember the names and the faces and what have they done to her what have they done to him what will she say if she doesn't bring him back will she be mad and there are so many more she wants to see again all the things she never said but where is she where is this why can't she remember?) and time can't have passed too quickly, so where is she, how did it happen, did she fulfill her mission? The fact that she can't remember her name seems less terrifying to the prospect of having lost Naruto and having failed the Hokage.
Having failed her home.
You're Ino, you failed, you failed, you… The walls scream and she can't move. Strange, she never was afraid of dying but the prospect of captivity scares her even more. And she has failed, is a failure, a disappointment, she couldn't even protect her partner…
The door opens and a bed rolls through the wide entrance, and there is Naruto, still unconscious, covered in bandages, but the steady beat of the monitor next to his bed shows he's alive. At least we're together, the soft light on his golden hair and his heart beat hum and she gives in.
I want to go home.
Shikamaru.
Shikamaru.
Shikamaru...
Eight days after she regains consciousness, they send her a shrink.
Ino wakes with an aching throat, with pain pounding through her body, her arms and legs feeling like foreign limbs that aren't part of her body and with tears in her eyes. The haze has left, the merciful layer of mist that has settled in between herself and her memory lost in between dreams and nightmares. At first, she just lays there and mentally takes inventory: she is in a hospital, there are flowers on her night stand and she is stiff and weak and unable to move. A nurse checks on her after some time and when she realizes Ino is awake she goes running for a doctor. Sakura enters her room and the relief on her face doesn't quite fit the calmness of her voice but Ino chooses to ignore it.
"Do you know who you are and where you are?"
Two weeks, they tell her, she has been out cold, even though her injuries have been healed as fast as possible. She has even been in the ICU for some time but she has survived. Ino isn't so sure about that. The doctors talk about self-protection and shock and actually, she doesn't care much because the images are too fresh in her mind, replaying again and again and blotting out everything else. They talk and talk and many people enter and leave the room and she ignores all of them, including her parents and Shikamaru and Chouji. She cries at night, when nobody is there to listen, and forces herself to exercise when nobody is watching. She has to get better fast.
The flowers on her nightstand vary. They speak with different voices of which she knows every single one, deep and high, rumbling and honey-soft, sharp and coaxing. But their voices can't blend out the images in front of her eyes.
The psychiatrist comes to talk to her every day and after a week she is so fed up she shouts at the woman to just leave her alone. The woman smiles and stays where she is. And even though she doesn't want to, Ino starts looking forward to her visits. She never tells the shrink what she tells Naruto and she and Naruto never talk about the things they have seen. But it's good to spend time with him. To see him heal. Slowly, but steadily, and with him, Ino heals a little bit, as well.
Three weeks into March, the psychiatrist tells her she is getting better and the doctors tell her she should be able to leave the hospital the next week. She doesn't feel healed, or sane, or even remotely fine, but there is nothing she can do about it. She'll be going back, as is Naruto. What they have experienced at the Zernhan Pass is nothing that they can just put aside easily and Ino can still hear Ouka-Sama's voice clearly. You're doing the right thing. She wakes up crying most nights and she knows Naruto has nightmares, too. But because of what they have seen, because of what they have done, they know they have to go back.
Konoha is thankful for every shinobi, no matter how mad or broken.
April passes as she returns to active duty again.
"It's been five years," Hinata tells her one day, when they meet in the shadow of the cenotaph accidentally and the shy woman smiles at Ino from behind a silky curtain of long, black hair.
"Since you joined ANBU, I mean."
Taken aback, Ino stares at the memorial stone unseeing for a few seconds until she understands the meaning of the Hyuuga heiress's words. Then she counts back the time in her head: Hinata is right. It has been five years this year since she joined ANBU, five years since she took up her mask. It's typical for the silver-eyed woman to remember such anniversaries when nobody else does because Ino hasn't and Naruto hasn't, either, most probable. Hinata should know, she probably remembered because of Naruto, and her warm glance carries strength and pride at the same time. And kindness. Ino smiles a little and shrugs and shortly contemplates whether she should wonder where the time has gone so fast. But it is as it is, she guesses.
Five years.
She tells no one, and Hinata doesn't, either, but Ino celebrates it in her own way. She prepares a few small things. Nothing new, nothing expensive, just small presents for Sakura, Shikamaru and Chouji, for Kurenai-sensei and Tsunade-sama and others. She delivers them at night, places them on doormats and on window sills, and she enjoys it. Thank you, the gifts say. I'm not alone.
Summer returns in a glorious display of colors.
On some nights, her mask finally talks to her. Silent words, soft whispers like incorporeal caresses on her skin. Stay alive. Remember. Don't lose yourself. Sometimes the words are like a faint whisper, sometimes a song. And it helps. It reminds her of who she is and what she is doing for what reason, and she stays sane – or, at least, as sane as possible. Her mind belongs to herself again and though she still has nightmares, there are other dreams, as well. She dreams of Kurenai-sensei and her daughter, eight years old and determined to marry Shikamaru one day. She closes her eyes and sees Chouji and his very first genin team, the one that foolishly decided for a Team Seven break-apart-remake. She dreams of her parents, growing old together, and of Sakura and Hinata and Tenten and all the ones who welcome her back from her missions with open arms again and again and no matter how dirty she feels. And when she wakes up on a damp and cold forest floor the first thing she sees is Naruto, keeping watch quietly.
Naruto is the only one who has no silent voices speaking for him. His words reveal everything he wants them to and nothing more and what he doesn't say she can read in his eyes. He is her best friend, her partner, and she is glad she has come to know him so much better than in the past when they were only children. One day she will be able to repay what kindness he has shown her, what faith he has in her and what strength he gives her. With Naruto, Ino doesn't have to read between the lines or look underneath the underneath. Naruto is Naruto.
June, Ino realizes, is the month she loves most. In June, too, she notices something else change, years after she made her decision to join ANBU. Lately, Shikamaru has been behaving strangely. If he was someone else, a colleague or team member, she would have said he was giving her mixed signals, but it is Shikamaru, for God's sake! And yet, she is confused. First he smiles at her, then he stops to exchange a few pleasantries, and finally he invites her out for dinner. She isn't sure what to do, they see each other so seldom, but she finds herself looking forward to those short meetings. If he would only talk to her. The voices of voiceless things around him go silent when he's close, or start talking all at once, and they only confuse her even more. It is troublesome, to use his own word of choice. A younger Ino would have become impatient. Ino finds she has patience now, and so she smiles a bit and wonders why he stares at her rather strangely in return.
One night, on the open plains of the country of Rain, Naruto asks Ino whether she has noticed that Shikamaru is falling in love with her.
She has a million reasons and even more excuses. She has a lifetime of waiting, and hoping, and then of separating herself again from him. The girl Ino that fell in love with her childhood friend has long ago died. The woman Ino who kept loving him has grown, and long ago accepted the fact that he wouldn't reciprocate her feelings. But she has loved him since she can remember, since he first showed her the flock of wild deer, since he listened to her sing in the forests of his family's grounds. Since she kissed him, one time, when they were young and stupid, and since they lost Asuma-sensei and started to drift apart. In bits and pieces, Ino has always loved Shikamaru. It has become a part of her to the point that she cannot separate herself from the feeling anymore.
And now she should be terrified, but she isn't.
To her surprise, happiness fills her, hot and searing, and Naruto answers her smile. June comes to an end, and summer starts in all its beauty. The next time she meets Shikamaru, the question in his eyes is clear.
She lets him squirm a bit, though. Just for the sake of it.