Disclaimer: The characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto and the Naruto franchise
Author's Note: Just a little one-shot near the start of the Ninja War. I hope you enjoy!
The last case of iodine dropped onto the back of the wagon with a rattle.
"After that it's bandages, sterilisation equipment and the antibiotics." Sakura looked down the list in her hand, and ticking off another three items with a satisfied flick of her pencil. "We're nearly there, Ino."
"Well, thank goodness, because I'm getting sweat all down the back of my neck and ears," Ino grumbled, but she smiled back good-naturedly and wiped her forehead on the back of her wrist and looked down at their handiwork.
They had been loading the wagon with supplies for the battlefield since a little after first light. Now the sun was higher, touching the tips of the pines with yellow. There was a wind blowing from somewhere, but it was gentle, and they could only tell by the smell of ash and resin, coming from a fire nearby that they could neither see nor hear.
Ino tucked her hair behind her ears. She should probably braid it at some point. She had snagged it once on an upturned bed frame in the store room, when Tsunade had ordered the two of them to take stock of the supplies they were leaving behind in Konoha. Just the other day, when her hair had flopped into her right eye, the temporary blind spot that her sparring partner had spotted with ruthless precision had nearly become permanent. She might have had to wear an eyepatch, or, god forbid, a fake eye.
She followed Sakura between the trail of wagons waiting in the shadows of the trees. They were loaded with knives, fresh armour, soldier pills, shoes and shirts, bound down under black tarpaulins and with a ninja guarding every one - some crouched underneath, some no doubt lurking under the tarpaulins, others, though, were sitting on top of their wares, eating field rations and passing round a flask.
"That had better be tea," Sakura reminded one man sweetly, as a flask soared over her head to the neighbouring wagon. The ninja snatching the flask out of the air and simply grinned as they passed.
"That barrel of concentrated shochu for sterilisation - I think we should set a guard on that when we get to the field," Sakura remarked to Ino, as they continued their way back to the town.
"Are you kidding? Hell yes. I'd be in that barrel up to my neck if my job didn't need a straight head to do properly," Ino retorted, and she ran her hand through her hair again. Yes, she definitely ought to braid it soon, or at least cut it. The last thing she wanted was for it to get in the way during a major operation.
The thought of cutting her hair made her look to Sakura, walking and talking blithely beside her, still checking and double-checking the supplies list she had been given by Shizune.
Sakura looked up from her list. "You're being weirdly quiet," she said with a raised eyebrow. "What are you thinking about?"
"Do you remember when we were little why we both grew out our hair?"
"Oh yeah! I remember! We grew it out for Sasuke, didn't we?" Sakura's smile dropped away and she sheepishly scratched the back of her head. "Although, we sort of fell out over him, as well."
"And now we know better, but, the World's Greatest Ball of Man Pain aside, you remember how it all began?"
"Well, you said that you'd heard Sasuke had a thing for long-haired girls. Ino, where is this even going?"
They still had a couple of hours before the supply train would be set off. Ino's face was a little warm but she wasn't embarrassed, not really. These days she even found the story funny. Shikamaru had certainly snorted when she told him the other day. She cleared her throat, and glanced across at Sakura. "I didn't hear that he liked long-haired girls from anybody. I came up with the story myself. Sasuke-kun probably never had a thing for long-haired girls at all. He probably still doesn't even know girls exist. I can't imagine Orochimaru or Kabuto giving him the Talk -"
Sakura clamped her hands over her ears and closed her eyes. "Stop! I don't want to know anymore! Just get back to your story, Ino."
"Yeah, I was about to cross into Forbidden Territory, wasn't I? Saved in the nick of time!" Ino whistled and the two of them shared a laugh that sounded just a little desperate. "Anyway, the story, the story. Basically, as Shikamaru might say, wrong facts, but correctly inferred given the interpretation of the perceived facts."
"You've been hanging around Shikamaru too much lately."
"More like hanging around my dad, who's been hanging around Nara-san too much lately." Ino frowned and pursed her lips. "Okay, so, where was I?"
It had been after school, when all the children had said goodbye and gone their separate ways, clutching the hands of the various adults who had come to pick them up. Ino had been filling in her mum on the number of ways in which boys could be so stupid, but how Sasuke was different from all of them, of course, when she had realised that she had left her pencil case in the classroom.
They hadn't gone too far from the Academy. Her mum decided to wait for Ino in the convenience store, to get some grocery shopping done, so Ino went back to the Academy on her own, taking the roads at a run.
The playground was empty but for one person, and it was somebody she hadn't expected to see at all. Sasuke was leaning against the wall of the school with is arms crossed and his mouth set in a line, looking like he wanted to crawl under a stone and disappear. He was looking unusually nervous.
When Sasuke saw Ino looking, he averted his eyes. He was so busy trying to blend in with the wall beside the Academy door she couldn't help but approach him with a big wide smile.
"What are you doing here, Sasuke-kun? I thought you always walk home by yourself," Ino said to him, as she stopped in front of the door.
"I do," Sasuke replied shortly, but he continued to glare at the school gates, as though daring somebody to fail to turn up.
"Are you waiting for somebody then?" Another thought occurred to her. Her heart sank. She raised her voice. "Did somebody leave a love letter in your shoe locker?"
"No, they didn't!" Sasuke snapped, irritable as ever, but Ino at the time had thought he was just angry that she had disturbed some deep Uchiha meditation technique, and hadn't realised that actually he had been annoyed that somebody was Intruding into his Sacred Personal Space.
"So you're waiting - ?"
"Iruka-sensei put your pencil case in the lost property box at the back of the classroom," Sasuke said, and then he shut his mouth and moved to sit on the rubber tyre embedded in the middle of the playground, still staring resolutely at the school gates.
Ino had wandered up the flight of stairs to the classroom in a sugared and buttered daze that Sasuke had so much as spoken more than ten words to her, and that he even knew which one was her pencil case, telling herself that, of course, Sasuke would know, because a Good Ninja would know.
She was rummaging in the lost property box, digging past a layer of dog biscuits that must have slipped out of Kiba's bag, a cream hoodie, a glasses case with a spare set of sunglasses and several empty spray cans that must have been Naruto's, when a shout caught her attention from outside the window.
There was a new figure in the playground. Its back was turned to Ino, so she couldn't see who it was, but there was no doubt about it. It was the person Sasuke had been waiting for. Sasuke's face was turned towards the school, and as a Yamanaka, before Ino learned how to take over and get into other people's minds, her dad had insisted she learned to observe people, and to read body language and lips, to learn to get into other people's skins.
Sasuke was smiling. His pale face was a cheery red. He seemed happier than she had ever seen him at school.
"I can't believe you actually came!" he was saying to the figure, but then he looked embarrassed and started muttering bashfully towards the ground.
The figure's shoulders shook, as though it was chuckling. It put one hand on its hip, and with its free hand raised two fingers to tap Sasuke between the eyes.
Ino couldn't see what Sasuke was saying any more, but it was obvious as the two figures turned towards the school gates, initially hand in hand, until Sasuke shook it off, that this person was extraordinarily special to him, and she wondered what it would take to get Sasuke to smile at her just as he had smiled to the person he was walking with.
When Sasuke and the figure had moved out of sight round the school walls, Ino brushed dog biscuit crumbs from her pencil case, pushed it into her rucksack, and quickly made to go home. The thought of the girl in black didn't leave her mind, because that was the age she had been Rhapsodising on a Theme of Sasuke and nurturing her crush as happily as the tub of violets on her window sill, and that evening when she thought of Sasuke she also thought of the girl in black.
The figure was obviously a girl – it was slim, petite, and a whole lot gentler than any of the boys she knew – and what had caught her attention in particular was the girl's long, sleek, dark hair, tied back with string.
To conclude, Ino decided firmly, as she finished her homework, Sasuke had gone home with a girl, who wasn't his mother, or his sister – Ino had done her research and knew Sasuke didn't have any sisters, only a brother who was already working in the ANBU, and probably a butch little twitching ball of muscle with it – and he had really, genuinely smiled at her.
And the girl really had had beautiful long hair, tied back in a ponytail.
Ino thought of her own short bob and wondered how it would look a little longer.
Loud, raucous laughter erupted outside of the hospital. Nurses counting cases of first aid kids for the field glanced up in united bemusement before returning grimly to their tasks.
Sakura doubled over and her chest shook with laughter. "You thought Itachi was a girl?"
"Shut up! I only realised a couple of years ago when I read Itachi's description in the bingo book for the first time," Ino replied reproachfully.
"And not only that, you thought Itachi was a girl Sasuke had a schoolboy crush on?"
"Sakura! You're just making it worse now," Ino protested.
"We both grew our hair to copy Itachi?" Sakura sucked in a lungful of air and held her belly. "I am so glad I cut my hair!"
They both laughed at that, until a medical-nin came towards them to give them a list of medicines already carried to the wagons and hovered meekly beside them, wringing his hands until they had added their signatures to Shizune's to say they had permitted the transportation of drugs for the field. When he left, Sakura breathed out slowly. Her eyes turned upwards the hospital roof, where a medical-nin was hanging up freshly washed sheets to dry.
"With Naruto running around all over the place, that's the first time I've laughed like that in a while," Sakura eventually said. "And to think, that of all people in this ninja world, we're laughing over Sasuke and Itachi – the Brothers Grim."
"Really? I thought we were laughing about how silly we were when we were little." A strand of hair tickled her right eye. Ino tried to blow her fringe out of the way. It didn't work. "We're still a bit silly now, I guess."
Sakura watched another medical-nin come out with white towels, and peg them up alongside the sheets. "When we get to the battlefield, we've got to be prepared to think he'll be our enemy, Ino."
"I know, I know. I probably won't really understand until I see him for real though." Ino followed Sakura's gaze up to the hospital roof. She had heard about the hospital fight between Naruto and Sasuke in bits and pieces, and only lately from Sakura herself. The first thing she had heard was from a regular customer at the flower shop, who had been walking his dog down the alley behind the hospital. Water had poured down on him from an exploding tank on the rooftop and he had spent the rest of the afternoon looking for his dog. "You never know. Maybe they'll be some freak incident that'll change his mind about Konoha and he'll come and help us. Hah! As if."
Sakura looked as though she was about to say more, but she cleared her throat and clapped her hands together. "Well, Ino, your hair is now a good deal longer than Itachi's now. Why don't I give it a little chop-chop before we leave - ?"
"No way, Sakura, are you bringing a blade anywhere near my face!"
"What about your fringe? You've been blowing it out of your eye for the last few minutes every time you think I'm not looking. And I know about the near miss you had in the training grounds the other day. You can't afford to have a blind spot," Sakura added darkly, and Ino raised her hand to the plaster just below her right eye, where the edge of a kunai had nicked her cheek.
Ino tried to put on a sunny smile. "I've got a vain blonde reputation to maintain here. You can't cut my fringe till this plaster is off my face."
Laughing and bickering, Ino and Sakura picked up a crate of heatproof glassware from outside the hospital doors, each taking two corners of the box, and set foot on the long dirt path to the supply wagons waiting to take them to the war.
Thanks for reading!
Best, Zen