ink ;
part vii
Without Sai, the apartment is unbearably cold and quiet.
Ino scoots over to his side of the bed. She buries herself under the covers, trying to catch warmth. She thinks she hears a flurry of paper wings somewhere in the middle of the night, but that could just be her imagination. She's been holed up in the apartment for three long days, and he isn't due back until tomorrow evening.
Stupid Sakura and her stupid house rest thing, she says through gritted teeth.
On the bedside table sits an ink rabbit, accurately drawn with a button nose, long ears, and prickly fur. Truthfully it gave Ino the creeps, with its blank stare that seemed to want to say something but can't. The only reason she hasn't destroyed the thing yet is because Sai found it cute.
Cute is overrated, she had argued, but Sai only grinned, the sadistic bastard.
Creepy Rabbit is going to keep an eye on you while I'm gone, he said coolly.
He was at the door by then, a rucksack slung over his thin back. He reached for his sandals and slipped them on, left foot first, then the right. He tapped each foot on the wooden floor to test the fit. Then, he lifted his gaze to Ino, who had been watching silently from the bed."You'll be fine without me for a while, won't you?"
It sounded less like a question and more like a plea, Ino thought. Sai had not wanted to go on this mission for her sake, but she couldn't ask that of him. "I'll be fine, Captain," she had said with a smile. "Go lead your team. I'm fine with Weirdo Rabbit here."
With a tentative and soft 'hm', he disappeared into the night. That was three days ago.
On the fourth day, Ino takes a long look at Sai's creepy rabbit, half-expecting, half-pleading for it to say or do something, anything. When she's met with an empty gaze and an even emptier silence, she throws back the covers, jumps out of bed, and groans. That's it, she says, shaking a finger at the silent ink creature. I can't stand this any longer. I'm going out.
The rabbit just stares as she takes out a decent pair of pants, a shirt (black, possibly Sai's), and her favorite lightweight coat. She stands in front of the mirror to fix her hair and she realizes she's been wearing more black lately. The last piece of clothing, at least, had color: an eye-catching red.
She turns to the rabbit again. Well? she challenges, Are you coming? She doesn't wait for it to respond or move. Truthfully, by now she's learned not to expect anything from Sai's stupid ink pet, so she's more than a little surprised when there's a somewhat wet shuffling at her feet. She's appalled, really - the creature had the audacity to beat her to the door!
She muses for a bit, wonders if Sai had given the command on the other end of… wherever he is. She recalls vaguely that Sai had a way of communicating with his drawings, and vice versa. The assumption gives her a vague sense of relief. Well, at least she knows he's alive and safe somewhere… probably.
The cool air outdoors greets her and she relishes the feeling by tilting her head back, letting the breeze run its fingers through her hair, not unlike Sai does. Once she's been walking outside with the strange rabbit for a full minute, she's hit with the next hurdle. Where to go on this pleasant day?
Definitely not Sakura's, she thinks. She loves her friend dearly but the woman could be a handful about rests and injuries and she doesn't need her lectures now, no thank you. Besides, Sakura would probably still be at Konoha General at this hour - really, how could she give people an earful about overworking when she's been straining herself to the bone as well? Ino has been practicing medical ninjutsu for over five years now but she still detests the hospital smell that's a heady mixture of antiseptic and blood, sometimes even piss. God, she'd take the pleasant air over that any day.
She contemplates going over to her mother's, which was a good idea at first, considering the fact that she hadn't seen her in two days. But she was probably over at Nara Yoshino's house, or Yoshino-san would be over at hers, and well… she really didn't want to answer questions right now about the way Shikaku's son was behaving.
She's been made aware, back when she was recuperating, that Shikamaru had left his post in Suna when he heard about her hospitalization. That was a direct and serious breach of protocol, which made the already irate Hokage even angrier. Rumor has it the fiancée wasn't happy either (who would really? Ino couldn't blame the girl. But then again no one understood what went on in that Nara genius' head after all.)
Yoshino had tried her best to hide her curiosity when she visited Ino with an armful of fruits and a vase of wild flowers grown from the Nara forest. Get well soon, dear, your mother and I worry lots.
They had grown up with three sets of parents - Choji, Shikamaru, and Ino did. She was especially close to Choji's mom, who would shower her with food and clothes from the time she was young. Nara Yoshino was more reticent in showing her affection, but occasionally she'd give Ino one of her sweet smiles Shikamaru had said she only reserved for the ones she truly cared about.
Shikamaru.
Her thoughts drift back to her teammate. He hasn't come to visit her at all. At least, not when she was awake, Choji corrected, and not when Sai was around. She allows herself to ask why that is, but deep down she knew. Even after all these years, she couldn't bring herself to admit it - couldn't bear acknowledge it, not even when it stared right into her face screaming. It's not that she didn't love Shikamaru. She'd take a kunai in the heart for him in a beat. But -
That inevitable but- that loomed every time they were alone together, circled their conversations, and dropped inadvertent hints like sudden rainfall in the summer heat. Choji, god bless him, always sensed the tension and dispelled it with his silly stories and rehearsed antics before it got any worse.
It had hurt when she noticed Shikamaru drifting away. Sakura was her best friend, but there were ways, much too important to ignore, in which only Shikamaru knew her. Her insecurities, the fears she didn't have it in her to reveal even to herself.
Yet the hurting ceased gradually when Sai came into the picture. Truthfully, she had not expected anything to come out of their relationship in the beginning. One year into their dating, she still had doubts. She had felt so terrible when he asked her if she only liked him because of his resemblance to Sasuke, and he had that kicked puppy look that made her heart twist in over itself. It was terrible, terrible, and she vowed never to do that to him again. For the first time since Sakura had outgrown her protection, she felt like protecting someone again, and this time it felt as if they're willing to let her.
It broke her heart, again, when Sai said he had trouble remembering his brother's face. She had explained to him that sometimes memories do act like files at the back of a very long room, and over time they become more difficult to pull out, even in the moments we want to see them the most. She offered to refresh his memories, using a jutsu her father had invented.
It's going to hurt, she warned, like a massive headache, but it's only temporary.
Sai nods, wordlessly. Already she could tell he's gathering his memories of Shin, putting the ones he'd like to remember more vividly at the front. She held the sides of his head with her palms, which were trembling a little. After all, it was the first time she was performing the jutsu on someone who wasn't an enemy. The jutsu had been created to weasel out information from shinobi who had erased or falsified their memories - naturally, pain was a necessary ingredient. But she didn't want to hurt Sai, not when he's already in so much emotional turmoil.
Relax, she said, though if she was being perfectly honest it was a reassurance for herself, too. You're going to be fine. Sai was implacably quiet, like he is when he' unsure and building a shell around himself, so she lowered her hands to cup his cheeks. Hey, she started, but he closed his eyes and wrapped his cold fingers around her wrists. He leaned forward, so that their heads were almost touching.
Do it, please, Ino. It was more a breath than an actual whisper. Ino closed her eyes, too, and started channeling chakra through her fingers. Dad, she thought. Please guide me.
The procedure lasted no more than fine minutes. Ino had barely moved her fingers away when Sai's head fell into the dip on her shoulder. He wasn't crying, she could tell that much from his breathing. She doesn't say anything; there was nothing to be said in that moment that they didn't already know. The next day, Sai painted a portrait of Shin on their balcony. So I wouldn't forget, he had said.
Ino is brought back to the present when there's a scuffling down at her feet - again, the rabbit, of course. She hadn't realized where her feet had led her to, but when she does she feels the need to come up for air, like she was drowning. She was standing in front of her father's grave.
Right next to it was Nara Shikaku's.
It was an unspoken rule in the Nara, Akimichi, and Yamanaka clans that their fallen warriors were to be buried shoulder-to-shoulder. They fought together, it only made sense they take their final rest together, too. In a way that was how she imagined - all three of them actually - she, Choji, and Shikamaru would go, too.
But the names etched on the tombstones seemed wrong, unreal, somehow.
Yamanaka Inoichi, Nara Shikaku.
They were too young, someone had said during the funeral. Too young to die, but no one dared say the last two words out loud. To this day she still remembers the way her mother's face had crumbled at the unfinished statement.
She's a second too late in sensing a shadow shift behind her (all that bed rest must be getting to her, she thinks, tutting inly, and makes a mental note telling herself to go back to work soon). Her first thought is the rabbit, but it's gone off to play in the meadows in between her musings. The shadow was very much human, and she swears she's become really rusty because long ago she would have been able to recognize this chakra a mile away. Or maybe they've just been away from each other for too long.
She says nothing but allows the shadow to stand beside her. Shikamaru stoops slightly to place a bouquet on each of the tombstones. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him rise to his full height before falling into his signature slouch again. They don't say anything for a while.
The silence breaks only when Shikamaru lights a match. He brings the tiny fire to the cigarette already clenched between his teeth, but stops halfway, as if he suddenly remembered how much Ino hated his - and Asuma's - smoking. He gives Ino a quick glance, like he's half expecting her to start the old tirade about how cigarettes are bad for you, for a genius you're really dumb, go away, you stink, like he's heard her say a hundred or so times before. He's almost disappointed when she just lifts her head to meet his gaze.
You can smoke you know, was all she said. It's none of my business anymore, the rest of the sentence seemed to go, but she doesn't say it. He doesn't want to - smoke, that is, not really, so he stuffs the cigarette and the matchbox back inside his pocket.
Didn't know you were allowed to get out of bed already, he managed in a voice that sounded painfully like a drawl.
I think I should be allowed to see my father. She says it in a whiny tone that's oddly reminiscent of their childhood. And just like that he's brought back to the smell of freshly cut grass that made her nose crinkle in displeasure, the feel of crushed tumbleweed under his toes, and kunais thrown carelessly in the air by tiny hands that bruised easily but weren't yet calloused. If he listened hard, he thinks he might hear Choji's cries behind them - they'd outrun him again - you guys - not fair - their friend pants - wait up.
He remembers Ino's laugh, piercing the late afternoon air. He hasn't heard that sound in a while, he concludes. The last time he did, her laugh had a sharper lilt to it, like the jagged edges of a badly cut knife. He doesn't recall her old laugh having that quality. It had always been… rounder, fuller, the way a child's laugh should be.
That's what war does to people, a voice in his head that sounds oddly like Asuma comments. It breaks you, turns children's chortles into sharpened weapons. Indeed none of them, not even giddy Naruto, had been the same. The blonde nin doesn't laugh his full-body, stomach-curled-in laugh anymore.
Lost in his own thoughts, Shikamaru forgets to respond to her remark, and a few time-filled breezes pass before they speak again. A black-and-white rabbit appears at her feet. It sits there quietly, with obsidian eyes that reminded him of -
Ink.
It dawns on him suddenly that the rabbit was made of ink. It had all of Sai's imprints, the careful but confident strokes, the swirly lines that seemed almost childish had they not been so masterfully drawn. He doesn't see Sai's drawing up close often, not outside battle anyway. The rabbit is so small, much smaller than the intimidating hawks and tigers he had seen him produce during the war, and yet, its gaze seems to hover over him like a giant.
Somehow, he doesn't like it.
"Hey," Shikamaru starts, but Ino interrupts, like she's always done in the past 20 or so years of their lives. It's strangely nostalgic, again, but this time the present doesn't let him reminisce the past for too long.
"You don't have to say anything," she says, through the golden veil of hair that's made its way between them. About us, about that, she seems to add voicelessly. I know.
And of course she does. Even Choji has known for quite a while. Their friend had a knack for knowing the things his teammates were too stubborn to admit or too scared to ask. Shikamaru is grateful when she doesn't press on. They work best when not many words are spoken after all. He wonders if he should apologize, at least, for putting her through all this, but doing so seems to make little of everything, like his feelings had been nothing but a silly mistake.
Were they, though? A silly mistake?
I want to be like the cosmos, he suddenly remembers a five-year-old Ino comment. They're lying shoulder-to-shoulder, the three of them, in the moon-soaked grass. The night wind was ruffling up their collars and playing with their hair. They had been waiting around for the stars to appear, but the moon was too bright to see anything other than thinly dispersed summer clouds.
Shikamaru didn't mind because he liked clouds, but Choji and Ino had been excited about this night for weeks. A meteor shower, young Choji had mouthed, nudging him at the ribs. He had started to feel sleepy when Ino made the remark about the cosmos.
The cosmos, huh, Shikamaru repeats. "You mean the flower or the universe?"
Ino grins. "Both!"
"Okay, I understand the flower," the young him says. "It's in your family crest after all. But why the universe?"
"Because it's so big, silly," Ino replies. "Like it's watching over us, you know?" She sweeps her arms sideways to demonstrate the vastness, hitting Shikamaru in the chest in the process.
"Ow!"
Beside him, Choji snickers.
Stupid Ino, the young him thinks. Used to be scared of the dark. How could she want to be something so... dark and huge and unreachable as the universe? Back then he couldn't really understand.
And yet the young woman standing next to him now seems exactly that - larger than life, full of mysteries, so close he could feel her breath beside him, and yet - unattainable.
In the present Ino nudges him gently on the elbow. "You should visit your mom more often. She misses you."
"Y-yeah." He doesn't know why he's stuttering.
"She gets lonely, with only my mom and Choji's mom and Choza-san to talk to."
"Yeah."
"Next time you come home, come see me too, yeah? Like in the old days. Me and Choji miss having you around, even if all we did was fight back then." She laughs, and this time it's not as hollow as he had grown to expect.
"Like the old days, then," he manages, with a small smile at the edge of his lips. I miss you too.
"And bring Temari along. We never had a chance to properly..." her voice breaks, but she gets it back. "Anyway, you know she's always welcome here. She can hang out with me and Sakura and everyone else if she wants to. Don't keep her locked away in some far-flung place, you pervert."
He mumbles an undecipherable reply.
"Well then, this is where we say goodbye, I think," she says looking up at the sky with her arms outstretched, palms up. "I have a feeling it's going to rain soon."
Shikamaru fidgets with the cigarette and lighter in his pocket.
"The first of many goodbyes," she amends suddenly. "Promise you'll let us know when you're leaving? You don't have to disappear on us like that anymore."
"Yeah."
The ink rabbit tugs at Ino's pant leg. Time to go, it seemed to say. Ino leans close to Shikamaru to squeeze his hand, like she used to when they were younger. He used to always tug his hand back in mock-disdain, but this time, he lets her let go first.
Ino finds it oddly pleasant to wake up in her own bed. The last thing she remembers doing after leaving Shikamaru was visiting her family's shop to pick up some blossoms for Shin's memorial. She must have blacked out because she cannot remember anything else.
Pushing the covers gently away from herself, she is startled by slow, steady breathing and a sudden groan at her side.
Sai, she says under her breath. Even without asking she suddenly knew what had happened: after blacking out at her mother's shop, the Ink Rabbit must have told Sai where to find her. One way or another, he must have come and brought her back home.
Taking care not to wake the sleeping nin beside her, she climbs out of bed - to search for the rabbit, she thought. It takes her a couple minutes to search every nook and cranny of the small apartment. She found a bouquet of lilies at the foot of Shin's portrait in the veranda (so she did manage to get the flowers, she thought happily), but no sign of Sai's ink creature. She feels a slight dull ache in her chest - bummer - she had, it seems, started to like the pet, after all.
She lingers at the veranda for a bit, listening to the city's sounds. The familiar chatter from the apartments nearby, the sound of swings, children running, and birds chirping, and the babble people made passing by the street. If she listened more closely, she could almost hear Sai's quiet breathing in the next room.
The ground smelled of rain - it must have poured while she had been sleeping. The sky was a mixture of rose and gold, a color palette Sai often said reminded him of her. Ino thinks Sai would have liked to paint this view had he been awake…
She is jolted away from her reveries by the gentle sound of a door opening. She turns and finds Sai standing a little ways from their bedroom. He rubs his temple with the palm of one hand. When he lifts his gaze, Ino sees the dark shadows under his eyes and the sunken skin where fuller cheeks ought to be. He looked dead tired, but his eyes were alive, searching.
A few years ago Ino would have never thought to wake up in the same apartment with this person. Cold-blooded outcast, was what villagers called him. She almost wanted to laugh. He had always been an excellent painter but back when they first met he was little more than a blank canvas with an inky blur on the edges. Now he was a rough sketch.
Her own reflection catches in the glass of the window. There are shadow lines beneath her eyes as well, and she looks sickly pale in the pre-evening light. She brings her eyes back to Sai. He looked younger and older at the same time: the shoulders broad but also hunched and exhausted. His arms were thin as a young boy's but there was strength in them, strength the young him could only dream of having - the strength of having a home to fight for and come back to.
Why do you fight? was a question raised at every Introduction to Combat class in the Academy. Family, love, power, peace, strength, honor - but above all, home.
"Ino." His voice is soft, gentle, battle-weary, like the shadows on his face. And then -
It didn't matter who had smiled first. The sun is halfway down now, and the golden rose light has been replaced by a calming blue. It bathed their skin in a cosmic-like glow.
"Come back to bed please," Sai says.
"One moment." Ino runs to the drawer in the living room and pulls out a thick white candle. For Shin, she says as she lights the wick.
A candle that will not stop burning.
There was an old song Inoichi used to hum young Ino to sleep with. About the dance of the sun and the moon. The sun, lonely at the top, looking for rest; the moon, cold and captivating, looking for reprieve for its sins. Shadows, stars, age-old clouds swirled around them. They were looking for things that were in essence the same but had different names. So they ran around in circles, never meeting, alone in the young galaxy, until the shadows, stars, and age-old clouds took pity on them.
Swirling, the ancient heavenly bodies allowed them to meet, once a year, on earth. They gave birth to the sunflower, which the painter liked to paint. For no reason Ino remembered the song as she placed the candle in front of Shin's memorial.
Shadows, stars, age-old clouds, swirled around lonely sun and proud moon, the song went.
looking for rest, looking for reprieve.
The heavens took pity, so out of their love a sunflower bloomed,
and starlight, starlight, a litter of stars born to keep the sunflower company at night.
Sunflowers at night, sunflowers at night, which the lonely painter liked to paint.
Ino hummed the song until finally, carefully, she and Sai fell soundly asleep.
a/n: My apologies this took so long to finish. I had nearly abandoned the story, thanks to a hectic work schedule and other unfortunate life events. But! I've put a lot of thought in this story, thus (excuse my vanity) I had the urge again to finish it. The SaiIno main story ends here, but there's a two-part epilogue coming up, featuring little Inojin (my heart T_T). I'll post it soon (hopefully).
In the meantime, I'd like to thank everyone who read and reviewed this work - wow honestly, I'm just happy you guys stumbled into this little story. I hope this chapter was worth at least half the waiting :)