A/N: Welcome again, dear readers and lurkers. I hope you've so far enjoyed the story. Prepare for another epic chapter. =)
Chapter Twenty-nine: Reality Check
He'd left behind Kakashi.
The promise binding them together that had lasted for so many damn years, that had survived thick and thin, blood and guts, war and peace, had at last been severed. His feeling at the moment was quite unidentifiable, what with the haze of physical pain behind his forehead and at the base of his skull, and the twist of emotional pain in the underbelly of his heart.
He was a caged bird outside his cage- -he didn't know what to do with himself, so he slowly limped along through the stifling heat of Konoha. Where he was going he had yet to decide. Somewhere that was private, where he could think and decide and get out of the heat. He glanced up as he rested in the shade of a building because the dizziness scrambled his vision, and saw the emblem for the Hokage Tower.
How perfect. The ANBU locker room and hideaways- -single bed, bare minimum bedrooms- -were both located there. He'd be anonymous and have his privacy. Getting there took longer than he anticipated with his pain and stiffness dragging him like dead weights, but he managed to slip into a private side entrance and climb (or haul himself up hand over fist) the stairs to the level which housed the ANBU hideaways and locker room.
Forgoing a shower and instead choosing enclosed, cold darkness, he entered a hideaway, clicked over the lock to show occupation and without even bothering to remove his boots, face-planted onto the clean and sharply tucked bed. He was asleep even before he registered the comfort of the pillow and mattress under his drained body.
Five minutes or five hours passed, he couldn't be sure, but somehow, the feel of hands kneading his shoulders and back reached wherever he'd fallen to in his unconsciousness. His brain told him the hands were female, then helpfully reminded him his room had been locked so the woman had broken in. But, his brain said, the massage felt good. Seriously, ridiculously, unworldly good. Like melted butter on a hot plate good.
A groan escaped him when her fingers worked a difficult knot between his shoulder blades and when he inhaled, he inhaled flower perfume. The honed reaction bred of a thousand-plus missions snapped through him, and in a second's span, he'd flipped the woman onto the bed, pinned her wrist over her head and aligned a kunai against the delicate skin of her throat. She did not struggle against him.
He assessed her by the fading sunlight leaking from the blinds. She was good, coming to him in Ino's skin; her hair and dress and measurements and smell were spot-on. Adrenaline spiked through him, he'd forgotten pain and exhaustion, and he panted with quick-draw anger for this kunoichi that had stolen Ino's appearance. His sacred Ino.
He dug the kunai into her skin and drew a thin, beaded line of blood. "Drop the transformation jutsu."
"I can't."
"Bullshit. Drop it now or I kill you," he said, biting the words off between clenched teeth.
"I can't," she repeated. Her calm unnerved him. "If you let up on the kunai, I can explain."
"You'll explain anyway."
"Not until you let up on the kunai."
He lost patience. "Don't fuck with me. Drop the goddamn jutsu and tell me who the hell you are."
She was silent, but her gaze was steady and he had time to track her soft breathing and notice that she wore silver bangles on the wrist clamped under his hand and that her other hand had settled on his nape, where the heat of her palm undid his efforts to be a cold killer. Plus the low-cut, sleeveless top that showed perfect cleavage and a skirt that didn't reach her pretty knees. This was all very Ino. But it's not Ino, he thought, because his Ino was somewhere he couldn't reach and was pregnant. This Ino was not pregnant, but her image, coupled with her presence, was powerful enough that he couldn't keep up pretenses and he stupidly eased the pressure on the kunai at her neck.
Disconcerted, he backed away to the opposite side of the tiny room because whoever this kunoichi was, she could've killed him while he slept. She wanted him alive for a reason, and if he wanted to know what her reason was, he'd have to play along. Ino, or the kunoichi portraying Ino, sat up on the bedside and gleaned a thumb across the bleeding scratch on her neck.
"No one is fucking with you except you," she said, at last. "I'm Ino, but not the real Ino. I'm a part of Ino she left behind inside you that you subconsciously implanted into a wood clone and transformed."
He had to work to understand. "You…you're…me? My wood clone jutsu?"
"Yes, but I'm also a piece of Ino." Her hand tapped her head and the bracelets tinkled musically. "Your subconscious released the jutsu when you broke up with Kakashi."
"Is this…I mean, is this…?"
"Normal?" She laughed. "Not really, no. But you're having a difficult time coping. Ino didn't want you ruining yourself, so she performed a little mind technique on you in case you needed some extra support."
"Ruining myself?" He sounded like a moron, but if Ino- -or whatever this was- -didn't spoon-feed him the information, he'd be lost. "What does that mean?"
She stood to approach him. The perfume drowned him. Tension crackled the air. "Look at you. Exhausted, starving, dehydrated, heartsick, in pain…horny."
Her fingers ghosted under his jaw. God, yes. She'd flipped his switch. Primal heat flared in every one of his nerves. As uncontrollable greed for her burned a path through him, he attacked her mouth with his teeth and tongue. He had a single thought, a single drive, which was to get inside Ino as fast as possible. His hands tore at her skirt, and when he couldn't get her panties down, he shoved her to the bed and shucked them off her, easily, because she was barefoot.
There was no slowing. His whole body was alight with blue flame. His shaking fingers couldn't figure out his fly, and merciful Ino unfastened it and helped to unleash his rigid cock, even with him devouring her neck and earlobe, and as soon as the necessary parts were liberated, he spread Ino's pale thighs wide and sank into wet, constricted oblivion. No time to spare for breathing or thinking, as he dipped his hips, rocking them, colliding with her, and couldn't see past the lightning that streaked his vision.
Oh, fuck yes, she was hot and snug and so, so slick and too easy to bone and his business would be concluded in record time. He grunted over her coos, coaxing forth a tornado of sheer, unfiltered ecstasy. Never had he been so greedy with Kakashi. Never so insane. He grabbed a fist full of her glowing hair to plant his nose into. Her scent drove him mad. A fissure of release spread through him, he flew towards that point of climax, and when Ino's short nails scratched up his sides, he was fucking there, riding a delicious wave as hard and long as he possibly could.
The zenith of release did not last as long as he'd wanted, but of course, it never did. When he came down, relief was waiting for him, relief from pain and the majority of stress he hadn't even known he'd felt. Ino's fingers stroked through his hair. He'd rested his forehead under her chin, keeping her pinned underneath him, and he let out a deep, satisfied sigh.
"Well, now that we got that out of the way," Ino joked, "perhaps we can solve some of your other problems."
"That was a pretty big problem solved already. Maybe we shouldn't push it."
She laughed. "Don't forget that I'm a placeholder. I'm not the real Ino, who is waiting for you. You don't have much time left before the birth of your firstborn."
"Then where did she go?" With her mention of the impending birth, panic took flight in his chest. "You can at least make it easy for me."
"I can't tell you that," she said. "I know only what you know."
"Which is nothing." He pushed off and rolled away as his eyes stung. Briefly, he struggled with the sensation before controlling it. "I don't know what to do."
Her hand passed under his shirt to his skin, but the skin-to-skin contact was intermittent, unsatisfying. "Shower, eat, and screw me again. Then we can talk about what to do."
He stopped her hand so he could scrunch up his shirt to show her his skin. Self-consciousness kept him facing the wall as he asked, "What's this growing on me?"
Without seeing it, he knew she examined the dark stone that plated his skin. "Hm, I see."
"Ino?"
"It's psychosomatic."
He prompted her when she didn't elaborate. "Meaning?"
"Meaning that your emotional stress has physically manifested as a stone-like substance on your skin, like a rash or a nervous twitch in other people. Just a guess, but, I think the trauma you repressed as a child has resulted in the nightmares you've been experiencing." She paused and pulled down his shirt. "These nightmares cause you stress, so until you resolve the trauma that's triggering the nightmares, this stuff will stay on you to allow your mind an outlet."
Twisting to face her, he said, "How the hell am I supposed 'resolve the trauma'?"
"There's no magic button you can press." She propped her head on her hand. Her face was lovely in the half-light from the window and unfazed with his sarcastic tone. "You have to confront your memories and find acceptance with them. From what I've seen, your coping mechanism has been to retreat from people who could help you, so it's not surprising your condition has worsened over the course of time."
"I don't retreat," he said, defensively. Butterflies swarmed in his stomach, and the topic of conversation made him profoundly uncomfortable. "A shower does sound good. Will you wait here?"
"Don't blame yourself when there was nothing you could do."
He stared at her. Inexplicably a knot had tied in his throat, and his insides shrank. He felt like a rabbit under a wolf's stare, frozen and hesitant to move; damned if he did, damned if he didn't. The walls of the room crowded in, suffocating, as Ino held him with her eyes. His skin crawled when he thought he heard a soft rustling, but she interrupted the rising fear when she leaned forward and kissed him.
"Go take your shower. I'll scrounge up food," she said, swinging her legs over the bedside and sliding her panties up her legs. "I'll see you in twenty."
She unlocked the door and was gone when it shut behind her. He released a shaky breath. She'd push him more if she could, he knew, and it was a matter of time before he couldn't evade her prodding. Then what would he do? Could he dispel her? She was a transformation jutsu layered on a cloning jutsu, but his heart skipped a beat at the thought.
Better to worry about these matters later. Rallying together strength, he got up from the bed and stiffly hobbled to the ANBU locker room, where he stood under a scalding spray of water for ten minutes to let the heat seep to his tense muscles and bones. Clean clothes were in his locker, but no flak jacket or hatsuburi, and by the time he dressed and returned to the hideaway, Ino had beaten him back. She sat, prim and collected, on a chair next to a small bedside table on which she'd placed a tray of food.
"Feel better?" she asked as he sat on the bed. "You certainly look better."
He hadn't thought he'd be hungry, but with the food set out so appealingly, he dug in. "Thanks," he said, after a few minutes of silent chewing, "for being here. And, out of curiosity, how long are you staying?"
"You're thinking of dispelling me, which you can." She told him this with a neutral mildness. "But I'm here as long as you want or until you run out of chakra. Or I can dispel myself, if need be."
"So aside from the mind technique Ino used on me, what else has she done that I don't know about?" He sipped from the glass of water provided on the tray. "Knowing Ino's tendencies, I'm sure there's more."
The Ino across from him paused. "Understand this. You are a very precious treasure, one that requires unique protection and care. Whatever she has done"- -her blue eyes hovered on a point over his shoulder, distant- -"was for that particular reason."
"Because of my kekkei genkai." He knew that he should feel used and outraged, but his soldier's reasoning agreed with the Third's decision to perpetuate the bloodline. Wood Release was essential to the protection of Konoha; he couldn't deny the significance or necessity of his technique.
"No, not because of your bloodline limit." Her eyes returned to his. "That was an excuse written to validate a young girl's selfish desire."
He set down the glass and considered her answer for a moment. "I don't understand. What selfish desire?"
"I'm you and you're me. You already have an idea of what it could be. You have the answer, you only need to see it."
But he couldn't think of what the answer was, and he felt as though he was letting down Ino for his inability to get what she attempted to tell him. "I don't know."
She smiled. "You'll find the answer soon. For now, we should discuss your current dilemma. Where is Ino and how do you get there?"
"Right. I don't know of any other clues." Not any were obvious. "The list of midwives should be in at the hospital, but even if I narrow her location to several dozen or so towns, how will I convince Lady Hokage to allow me the autonomy to leave and search?"
"You know, you could always resign." She continued in his stunned silence, "With your resignation, you would have the option of leaving the village as a civilian. Lady Hokage did it, as well as Jiraiya, when they left for other pursuits. In fact, you know Sarutobi Asuma resigned and was for a decade a member of the elite Twelve Guardians before returning to the Hidden Leaf."
That was true. But Yamato had lived his whole life with the assumption that his skills were best used in defense of Konoha, and the possibility that he wouldn't be defending his village, his home, seemed counter-intuitive. "Once I resign, then what? I wander around until I stumble on Ino's location?"
"Just…have some faith. I'll collect the midwife list from the hospital. You get the resignation papers from the Office, and we'll reconvene here."
He shook his head. "No. The map is at the house, and it's a more controlled environment, anyway."
"Sure."
Their conversation stalled. He wanted her closer, so he bridged the open space between them to touch a long ribbon of blonde hair. "Come here," he said.
Ino stood, and when she sat beside him on the bed, he flopped over on his side, tugging her down too. Their faces were close enough that he noticed how thickly her lashes framed her eyes, how the tendons flexed under the skin of her throat, how her lips curved and shaped. When he skimmed a finger along the smooth side of her face, she closed her eyes as though memorizing his touch. His heart swelled.
"Ino," he whispered, "why didn't you say goodbye to me as yourself?"
Her pause was brief. "Telling me the truth would've been harder for you if I'd stayed me," she whispered back. Her hand brought his to her mouth, where she kissed his fingers. "It was better for both of us that I used Kakashi's appearance."
That was Ino, through and through, presumptuous and correct in all her assumptions. "How is it possible for you to know me so well?"
Her eyes opened. "You are a young girl's selfish desire."
"That doesn't mean anything to me," he said, a bit frustrated with her non-answers. "What selfish desire?"
"We should get going." Ino pushed up from the bed. "The sooner we compile the list's information with the locations already on the map, the better." He wanted her to explain, to tell him everything, but Ino molded another henge and in a quiet poof of air, became a mirror image of him. "Ready?"
He pursed his lips in discontent, but stood in front of his clone. "Ready."
They left the hideaway and parted ways in separate directions. Yamato felt a lingering dullness in his head…leftover migraine pain, he thought, and his limbs weren't coordinating very well under the confinement of his psychosomatic stone layer. The Office was a few floors below, so Yamato descended the stairs as quickly as he dared and entered the floor. All was muted workspace, clean lines and cool efficiency. The directory pointed him in the direction of the Forms Officer, who handed him the resignation forms without fuss.
A few cubicles to the side allotted privacy and pens, and following Ino's advice of 'sooner is better', he sat to fill in the form. A few questions were thorny, and on one asking his reasons for his resignation, he ended up writing 'Conflict of interests' with some delicate explanations. He'd signed it and had folded it up to slide into an envelope, when information merged into his consciousness.
His clone had been dispelled…it had memorized the names and locations- -less than a dozen- -and had been apprehended by…Kakashi and, dammit, none other than Papa Bear, Inoichi himself. What the hell were they doing? A hot burst of anger plumed in Yamato's chest, and the headache returned like a boiling thunderstorm behind his eyes. Something was afoot, and the information transferred from the clone gave no indication of what it could be. If Kakashi was attempting to stop Yamato from a rash course of action, Yamato's single recourse would be to complete his rashness before Kakashi could intervene.
He'd have to turn in his resignation to Lady Hokage now.
He shoved the envelope into his pouch to free up his hands. Automatically, his fingers formed the seals to shape and mold his chakra to allow him to assimilate into the wood infrastructure of the Hokage Tower. But his chakra would not rise forth from the deep-seated veins inside him. Shit. He didn't have time for this. Yamato scrambled to the appropriate floor as fast as he could, which wasn't fast at all much to his frustration, and outside Lady Hokage's office he bumped into Shizune, who startled and laughed nervously.
"Oh! Commander Yamato. How are you?" she asked. Her big dark eyes had widened. "Well, I hope."
His smile felt forced. "I'm fine. I was wondering if I could see Lady Hokage about a personal matter?"
She tilted her head. "Are you sure? You look"- -he watched as she groped for an appropriate word- -"a bit disheveled. You don't even have on your hatsuburi."
Shizune was right, but whether or not he was disheveled made no difference. "I'm sure. I must speak with her immediately."
"I'm sorry, but she's in a meeting right now." Her hands tugged at the wide sleeves of her shirt. Then her hands twisted the material. "You'll have to come back later."
Yamato's paranoia screeched that Shizune definitely seemed flustered. "Are you lying to me, Shizune?" Direct, but he didn't have the time for subtlety.
Her mouth opened and then clamped shut as proof that yes, she was lying to him. Sweet Shizune lying to him? Of all people, he expected a lie from Shizune the least. Annoyed, exasperated, Yamato brushed past her to the ornate wooden doors of Lady Hokage's office.
"Wait!" Shizune grabbed his arm, and with surprising strength, hauled him back at the same time she put her positioned her body to block the doors. "You can't barge in!"
He crouched defensively out of arm's reach; she was cleverer than Sakura with the use of medical jutsu. "Out of my way. You know I wouldn't ask if it wasn't of extreme importance."
Her face showed her conflicting emotions, but duty won out. "No. I can't let you go in."
Yamato remained silent as he and Shizune stared each other down. He wanted to force her from the doors, but didn't want to escalate the situation. They were both finished with verbal repartee. Physical force was the logical next step, as much as he hesitated to use it against someone as talented and as close to the Hokage as she was. A beep interrupted the tense air.
"Shizune!" Lady Hokage's voice punctured the static from the intercom beside the door. "Shizune, is Yamato out there?"
Shizune, staring at him as if expecting him to retaliate, extended her arm and pressed a button on the intercom face. "Yes, milady. He's here."
"Send him in."
Yamato waited for Shizune to step to the side before he went to the large doors, and after unlatching them, pushed them wide open. The hinges were well-oiled, so even if the doors were heavy, they opened with firm pressure. Natural light from the windows had him squinting and blinking rapidly. Lady Hokage sat at her desk with her chin in her hand, and to the right stood Inoichi and Kakashi both. They seemed out of breath.
Yamato did not like the dread that clustered coldly in his stomach.
"Yamato," Lady Hokage said with a hard edge to her voice, "we've been expecting you. Get in here and close the doors."
A/N: As commanding as usual, Lady Hokage is truly The Boss. What will she have to say to poor Yamato? The next chapter, Resistance is Futile, will be out on Apr. 7th! Until then. =)
