my solemn vow, my pledged troth

rating: t
genre: hurt/comfort
pairings: inosaku
POV: Sakura
warnings: weird soulmate magic
prompt: I will tell you my life's dreams in the depth of the blue night. / My naked soul will tremble in your hands / on your shoulders my burden will weigh down. ~ Delmira Agustini
word count: 1,201

It's instinct when she wakes—gasping, the dark pressing down on her chest and crushing the breath from her, screams in her ears, blood on her hands—to pull on a shirt and bolt through her window and across the skyline.

Sakura is a whisper, flicking so fast between buildings that the only sign she was ever there are bloodied footprints. She left her boots behind in her panic; there's nothing but skin between her and the rough patchwork of wooden shingles and ceramic tiles and brick.

Eyes hidden behind porcelain masks track her movement, but they look away quickly, not daring to intrude on her hurting.

Sakura runs and, as always, the bedroom window is flung wide.

It's like breathing to snag the kunai coming at her head out of the air as she swings herself through the window, feet first, palm planted firmly on the sill.

Ino is there to catch her, the two of them colliding in midair.

Sakura trembles, her hands glowing as she pulls them across Ino's skin, trying to find the wounds she'd dreamt gouged into Ino's skin. There's nothing there but warmth and scars, so Sakura pushes her chakra deeper, making sure, and there is Ino's heart pumping, her lungs inflating, her blood rushing, her bones creaking, her neurons singing. There she is: alive.

"Ino," Sakura sobs into Ino's throat.

Ino has one hand cupping Sakura's head, the other clutching her hip. "Sakura," she says, and presses a kiss to Sakura's hair. "Sakura, Sakura, Sakura." With each iteration of her name, Ino presses a kiss to her forehead, her temple, her nose. "You're alive. I'm alive. We're alive."

Alive, alive, alive. The word crawls under Sakura's skin alongside Ino's hitched breathing and her steady, steady heart.

They're alive.

It was just a dream.

Sakura's knees give out, and Ino hauls them backwards. They collapse onto the bed in a flurry of limbs, unwilling to let go, lest the dark crawl between them and rip them to pieces.

(Sakura is small and quiet and so, so scared the first time Ino drags her up into the bright purple bedroom with flowers exploding in every corner: in vases and on walls and stitched onto blankets. Ino pulls Sakura under those flower blankets and they hide and giggle and they are so very, very safe there, in this purple room.

Sakura is heartbroken and lost and so, so alone the hundredth time Ino drags her up into the muted purple bedroom with flowers tucked into corner: hiding pressed in books and floating in perfume and stitched delicately onto kimonos. Ino pulls Sakura under blankets that are no longer flowered and they hide and cry and Sakura is so very, very safe for the first time since the mission to Nami no Kuni and everything that followed in this purple room.

Sakura is bloodied and war-stained and so, so weary the thousandth time Ino drags her up into the no longer purple bedroom with flowers gone to seed for lack of tending, dried out husks of colour, vases left with the remnants of rotted things. Ino pulls Sakura under dusty blankets and they hide and hold each other and they are no longer safe because war now lives in their minds and inside this no longer purple bedroom and nothing will ever be the same again.

But they are alive.

It is enough.)

"I dreamt—" Sakura begins, but Ino interrupts her.

"I know. I dreamt it too."

Of course she did.

Because what Ino did in the war, diving so deep into so many minds, spreading herself so thin, that took an anchor so as not to lose herself amidst the thousands of shinobi she spoke to, spoke with, spoke through. And no one quite knew Ino the way Sakura knew Ino.

And now no one quite knows Ino the way Sakura knows Ino.

Because Ino dug herself deep and planted roots in Sakura's mind and, guarded by the ghost of a girl never realized, she grew down, down, down and held firm even as she grew up, up, up and spread wide.

Afterwards. After it was done, Ino ripped herself free, but what was done was done.

There are some things you can't undo.

Shoots of Ino spring up out of the soil of Sakura's mind, bright dandelion things, and just as persistent.

They dream the same dreams some nights, and Sakura always knows when Ino is craving her favourite, outrageously expensive chocolate.

They dream the same nightmares too. Sakura wakes some nights, her hands outstretched, and maybe if she could reach a little further she could catch her father, rip him out of the way of the bijūdama, rip him out of her head because he is saying goodbye and he doesn't get to say goodbye to her like this, not when she's too far away, not when he's not an old man dying peacefully in his bed at home and oh. Not her father. Not her tōsan.

They dream the same dreams. Sakura has seen herself die so many times.

That's what woke her tonight, a gaping hole where her heart should be as blood burbles up over her lips. "No," she'd said, she'd screamed, she'd whispered. "No. C'mon Sakura. Not like this. Don't you dare die on me. Are you Senju Tsunade's apprentice or what?" Her hands had trembled, spluttering green, not enough.

The life had spluttered out of green eyes, too, and she'd woken and run.

She'd forgotten who was Sakura and who was Ino, had forgotten everything but choking on blood and scrabbling at the last grains of chakra and the need to find that other piece of herself, make sure she was safe.

Under her ear, Ino's heartbeat is steady and familiar. Sakura digs her fingers more firmly between the lines of Ino's ribs. Ino pulls her closer by the shoulders, Sakura mostly on top of her from their inelegant stagger backwards. It's all skin and warmth and breath and moonlight spilling through the window.

Distantly, Sakura's feet ache, but it's more important to touch her tongue to Ino's pulse and taste the salt there, more important to breathe in the subtle scent of flowers and iron and weapon oil, more important to feel Ino under her, solid and warm and real.

"If you die," Sakura swears. "I'll kill you."

Ino laughs, a golden thing that rings Sakura's mind, shakes in Sakura's ribcage. "I know." She bites Sakura's jaw. "If you die, I'll hate you forever."

(In the deepest darkest parts of her, Sakura is running through ideas for how to bring back the dead. Because she isn't kidding, not really; if Ino dares go get herself killed, Sakura is going to drag her back to the world of the living so that she can kill her herself for daring leave Sakura alone.)

Eventually, their breathing slows and they fall into dreams, chasing each other through forests and under blankets and across meadows.

They fall into dreams, wrapped up together.

(In the deepest darkest parts of her, something golden and shining laughs.

"Silly girl," a tree whispers to a ghost of a girl never realized, "you'll never be alone again.")

FIN