sow/sew; reap/weep
rating: k+
genre: fantasy/romance
pairings: inosaku
POV: Ino
prompt: for NarutoFemslashWeek2017, Day 1: Family/Mythology
word count: 3,134
Ino is six when she finds the stranger sleeping in the Nara Forest.
The stranger is bloodied and dirty and too thin. Her arm is pulled in carefully to her stomach and, to Ino's untrained eyes, it looks like it's at a wrong angle.
She's curled in a tangle of roots at the base of a towering tree, almost invisible but for the scrap of unsullied white silk that is draped over one of the massive roots. It's what caught Ino's eye as she traipsed through the woods on her way to see if she can bug Shikamaru into playing tea party with her; when he deigns to, he does an excellent death scene as "unsuspecting Daimyo poisoned by beautiful undercover kunoichi".
Ino hovers as she crouches and looks down at the sleeping woman.
Ino should leave, should go find her Shikaku-ojisan or her tōchan and tell them that there is a stranger in the Nara Forest.
Ino should leave, because she is the Clan Heir, and her kāchan will be very disappointed if Ino gets herself killed for her curiosity.
Ino should leave.
But if she leaves, then who knows if anyone will find the stranger again and if anyone will find out what she was doing in the Nara Forest, where no one who was not supposed has ever entered.
Ino drops a leaf on the stranger's nose and springs back, kunai at the ready.
The stranger's eyes blink open, a slow sweep of eyelashes, revealing irises so green that Ino's hand wavers and she leans forward, trying to make out the shades of springtime as they swirl in eyes so deep Ino has to steady herself on the root she's perched on, lest she fall right into them.
For a moment, the stranger tips her head back—baring her throat as she hums, waking up—but then those too green eyes catch on Ino and she startles, pulling her arm closer to her body and flinching away, turning her back to Ino and Ino's kunai in an attempt to protect that broken arm.
"Who are you?" Ino demands, scowling at the way her voice is too high and too young, not enough force behind the command.
The stranger swallows and then her tongue darts out to wet her lower lip. "Are you going to kill me?" she rasps out.
"No!" Ino gasps. "Of course not!"
Well, tōchan might decide differently, but Ino isn't just going to kill the stranger. Not without knowing why she's here in the Nara Forest, purple bruises pressed under her eyes and her hair a colourless snarl.
"Well then," the stranger says, and curls back up in her bed of roots.
Ino stares.
Should she… do something?
Ino really can't just leave the stranger here.
She should… tie her up and come back with her tōchan?
"Do you need help?" Ino asks instead.
One green eye blinks back open in a catlike gesture of disdain.
"No," the stranger says. "I'm fine. Leave me alone."
"Because"—Ino wavers on her tree root—"I think your arm is broken. And I think you look like you need help."
"Go away, little girl," the stranger orders.
Ino narrows her eyes and purses her lips. "No."
"I said," says the stranger, "go away."
Ino startles backwards, off her perch, because suddenly the stranger is not a curled up hurt thing; she towers high, green eyes crackling, her voice echoing through the ages.
Ino sprawls across the forest floor and looks up and up and up at something that is not human.
For a brief, blinding moment, Ino is six and she knows in her bones that she is going to be washed away under the power of this stranger.
But then that shrieking otherness dissipates and, once again, Ino can breathe.
The stranger wavers.
And then she collapses.
Ino waits.
When, after long minutes, nothing changes, she gets up and pokes the stranger.
The stranger doesn't move.
Ino ties her up with the wire she keeps in the pouch at her waist, and runs to get her tōchan.
.
.
.
Kāchan inhales softly when their clansmen deposit the still unconscious stranger on a futon in a small room with no windows and only one door.
"Ino-chan," kāchan says, "where did you find her?"
Ino blinks. "Under a tree."
Slowly, so slowly, kāchan unfolds the stranger's arm from her stomach.
Ino stands on her toes to get a good look over her cousin's arm where he's barring her from getting any further through the doorway.
A small, cloth wrapped bundle tumbles down, spilling dirt, and kāchan hisses out an impolite curse, fumbling to catch the bundle before it hits the ground. Her hands are careful as she unwinds the soiled cloth to reveal…
A sapling?
The room holds its breath.
"Kāchan?" Ino asks.
"Oh, Ino-chan," kāchan sighs, something rapturous and filled with sunlight in her voice. "Oh, my love, do you understand what you have brought us?"
.
.
.
Ino swings her feet, humming as she stitches the tear in her practice clothes, tongue sticking out ever so slightly.
The sunlight streaming through the windows is thick and slow, painting the room in almost too bright colours.
Nothing, of course, is quite as bright as the washed and combed and completely foreign pink hair spread out on the pillow as the room's other occupant sleeps.
She's slept for days now.
Ino wants her to wake because she has so many questions, but she's been warned that she must let their guest sleep and recover.
So, Ino is waiting.
Impatiently, but she's waiting.
In the windowsill, a small sapling, barely more than a sprout, basks in the sunlight pouring in, content in its shallow dish and rich earth.
Ino sews, and waits.
.
.
.
"Your hospitality, Yamanaka-san—" their guest begins.
"A gift," tōchan interrupts gently, something ever so watchful lurking in his eyes.
Ino sits very still in her place at her tōchan's side; she doesn't dare fidget with the slightly too long sleeves of her new kimono. In this moment, with almost the entire clan assembled, Ino is her father's heir first, before anything else.
"Ah," their guest counters, her face twisting up with something wry, something wild, something Ino does not yet have the words to describe, "but even gifts must be repaid."
"We would never be so uncouth as to demand repayment for a gift," tōchan demurs.
The wry grin shifts into something wider, with too many teeth. "No," she agrees, "I am sure you would never. But shinobi are shinobi, and I am what I am. There are always rules in the end."
Tōchan nods ever so slightly.
"My kind do not suffer debts lightly," their guest continues. "I am tired of dancing around the subject, I have never had the patience for the wordplay so many of my kin enjoy; what will you ask of me, Yamanaka-san?"
Her hands rest gracefully in her lap, not a shred of tension visible in the tendons, and her green gaze is placid, but Ino shivers with a chill, with the unspoken threat in the air.
Her tōchan does not blink.
"Stay," he asks. "We Yamanaka do so love our flowers, Kodama-sama. Stay, and I swear my clan will see to it that your saplings flourish along every path a Yamanaka walks."
.
.
.
Their guest stays.
Ino breathes out a sigh of relief and doesn't quite know why.
.
.
.
"Can I ask you a question?" Ino asks, her hair a tumble around her face as she dangles at her knees from a branch.
"You just did," the Kodama informs her smartly.
Ino makes a face.
The Kodama laughs. It sounds like wind rustling through leaves. "Yes, child, you can ask me a question. I won't promise to answer though."
Ino weighs that response for a moment before shrugging to herself and deciding to continue.
"You're a tree?"
The Kodama laughs again. "Yes," she agrees, "and no."
"Huh." Ino pushes her hair out of her eyes so that she can smile at the Kodama. "Neat."
The Kodama looks up from where she's been tending her small sapling. Her mouth curls into something amused. She shrugs. "I am what I have always been, no more."
Ino stares at her skeptically. She's not sure how effective the expression is upside-down. "But you're a spirit."
The Kodama shrugs again. "And you're a girl. Is that really any more strange?"
.
.
.
"What can I call you?" Ino asks.
The Kodama watches her carefully from the corner of her eye. "Names have power, little one. You shouldn't go sharing them carelessly."
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.
.
Ino is eight when the raiding party attacks.
Tōchan and most of their fighting force are currently days away, bolstering an Akimichi defence against the ever encroaching Uchiha.
"Ino," her kāchan barks, her face streaked with gore and a bloody katana in hand, "to the grove. Our guest must be warned."
Ino wants to protest that she can fight. She isn't a baby anymore. But their guest is important too, and Ino is her mother's daughter: she does what she's told.
She runs for the grove, dodging around skirmishes as her aunts and cousins fight and kill and die. If she can do so without drawing too much attention to herself, Ino throws the odd kunai or applies her small feet to the back of knees and necks, but their guest is in the grove and Ino cannot, cannot let the accord they have their guest be desecrated by these would-be invaders.
Not only does the Yamanaka's honour rest on maintaining their hospitium, but given that their guest is Kodama…
One does not break a promise to a spirit. Not if they want their family to live on uncursed.
Ino runs, brushing off the sticking tendrils of fear as they try to cling. She is Yamanaka, she will not falter.
"Friend!" she pants as she skids into the grove. "We're under attack!"
At first, Ino cannot see her, but then, like breathing, a tall willowy figure steps forward, dark arms folding down into something that cannot touch the sky, the rough ridges of bark smoothing into something less harsh.
Green eyes blink open, and a hand brushes Ino's cheek.
"Ino-chan, are you alright?"
"The compound is under attack. Kāchan sent me to warn you."
Just as suddenly as before, the Kodama's soft face sharpens into something rougher than skin, her eyes narrowing to violent green slits.
Distantly, above the noise of clashing steel and cries of pain, Ino could swear she can hear the groaning of roots far beneath her.
"Let them come," the Kodama snarls, "and I will water my grove with their blood."
Ino stares, wide-eyed, and does her best to not cower before the not-woman towering above her.
Then, like sunlight filtering through leaves, that dark hand brushes Ino's cheek once again.
Ino looks the Kodama in the eye.
"Don't worry, Ino-chan," she says, "I'm here. I've got you."
When the invaders come, the ground yawns beneath them, and swallows them up.
.
.
.
"Ino-chan," tōchan croons.
Ino struggles to open her eyes, weighed down by healing teas and the pain still echoing in her forearms.
"You did so well, my love," her tōchan whispers, brushing the hair from her forehead. "I am so very proud."
.
.
.
When Ino wakes, familiar dark hands are smearing poultice on the burns covering her arms.
"My grove would have burned," the Kodama says, "if you had not stopped that man with the torch. I would have burned."
Ino tries to shrug, but she's still so tired, and every inch of her is still too heavy. "Promise," she rasps.
"You are a child," the Kodama says, "that is not your promise to keep."
Ino shakes her head. "Heir."
The Kodama frowns as she rewraps Ino's arms, then stands, and brings back a glass of water.
Her hands are steady as she holds Ino up to drink.
The water soothes the screaming in Ino's throat and clears some of the blurriness from her mind.
"Sakura," says the Kodama.
Ino blinks and cocks her head in confusion.
"My name."
.
.
.
"I broke Kazumi-obasan's favourite tea cup."
"If Shika beats me at shōji in less than fifteen minutes one more time, I'm going to just jump across the table and fight him instead."
"Purple or green for my new kimono?"
"…and he has such pretty brown eyes…"
"Tōchan is trying to teach me this new form and I just— ha— can't— ha— get it right! Ow! Damnit!"
"Hold this down while I stitch this?"
"I'm leading my first protection mission next week. (I think I'm scared.)"
As Ino grows, she comes and lays her secrets and worries at the base of the cherry tree growing ever larger in the grove.
None of them ever seem to fill up quite the same space as the three syllables that make up Sakura.
.
.
.
"Ino," Sakura smiles, melting out of her tree.
"Sakura," Ino breathes, and has to hold herself back from sweeping her friend into her arms and laying her head against the strong breadth of her shoulders.
Instead, Ino stops two feet away (too close and still too far), and tilts her head back to smile tiredly up at her friend.
"You're back," Sakura says, unnecessarily. "Are you hurt?"
Ino does not reach for the lashes peppering her back. "No, I'm not hurt. Just tired."
Sakura opens her mouth as if to argue, but then sighs and lets it go.
Ino tries to convince herself that she's relieved.
It's fine. She'll head to the healers after this.
She just needed to see Sakura first.
"I think the cutting you gave me before I left took," Ino says, rushing to find something to say, anything to say.
Anything that is not a torrent of how she missed Sakura when she was gone.
"Did it?" Sakura asks, green eyes sparkling with delight. "Where was it this time?"
"Ame," Ino says, "the not-so-rainy part."
"Thank you, Ino," Sakura says, so heartfelt that Ino wants to cry for the warm caress of it.
"You're welcome," she says instead.
"Now, let's get you to the healers," Sakura insists, ushering Ino out of the grove with a hand fitted to the curve of her spine.
Ino laughs, and does not melt into the weight it there, anchoring her down—steadying her, pulling her down beneath the waves.
.
.
.
"Tōchan is looking at suitors," Ino whispers, quieter than the rustling grass.
Sakura freezes for a moment, her stillness unnatural in a creature so constantly in subtle motion, before she forces herself to relax.
The sunshine drifts lazily through the pink flowers blossoming above them.
"Do you want to get married?" Sakura asks her.
Ino shrugs and doesn't let her face twist up into the ugly snarl that simmers in her veins. "I am the Heir. I owe it to my clan to marry and have children of my own."
Sakura frowns. "I don't understand, why do you have to marry? Choose a healthy mate, let him pollinate you, and then have a child. Why should you marry unless you do so for love?"
Ino closes her eyes against the tears.
"It doesn't work that way for girls," she says.
Sakura's frown darkens.
"It should."
Ino swallows and cannot find it in her to disagree (to lie).
.
.
.
Ino is wearing white when she appears in the grove.
"Ino!" Sakura exclaims in surprise. Her hands twitch once at her sides. "What are you doing here?"
"I just—" Ino hovers at the edge of the clearing.
"You're supposed to be getting married," Sakura says, confusion lacing every edge of her words.
"I know," Ino says.
She paces, sharp jerking movements that halt only when a familiar hand stills her with a touch to her forearm.
Sakura's hands look even darker against the white silk. Her fingers trace the burn scars they both know lay there through the layers of fabric.
Ino shivers.
"Why are you here, Ino?" Sakura asks.
"Will you answer a question for me?" Ino asks in return.
Green, green eyes, much too old and fae shine down at her, and Ino is helpless to do anything but lean forward into them.
"Perhaps," Sakura says. "It will depend, as always, on the question."
Ino flexes her hands once, twice, before reaching up and pulling Sakura down to meet her.
Sakura tastes like soil and growing things and the first blush of spring.
Sakura tastes like honeyed sunlight and dancing under starlight and everything Ino will never get to keep.
Ino kisses her for an impossible age, for the briefest moment.
When she pulls away, green eyes blink open with a slow sweep of pink lashes against a dark cheek.
"Was that the question?" Sakura asks.
Ino shivers at the rushing of deep waters and the grinding of rocks in her voice.
"Yes," she rasps.
"Did you get the answer you were looking for?"
Ino closes her eyes and tries to smile. "It's true, what they say about spirits, isn't it? Even when you're telling the truth, it's a lie."
"Ino—" Sakura starts, reaching out a hand to touch her.
But Ino is already at the edge of the grove, and farther still.
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.
.
"Is there a universe where we're together and happy and life is simple?" Ino asks.
Sakura cradles a dark haired, blue eyed child in the bower of her arms.
"Are we not here together, happy?" Sakura asks in return.
Ino looks at her son cradled in those arms that will weather storms years and years hence.
Ino looks at the sunlight kissing her babe's cheeks as it filters through the leaves and the way Sakura's tangled snarl of pink hair blazes in that same light.
"I suppose we are," she answers.
She wonders if Sakura can see the sadness in her smile.
She wonders how many more summer days like this she will get to keep.
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.
.
"I'm tired," Ino sighs.
Sakura pulls her closer, tucking Ino's head under her chin.
"I don't think I'm going to get the chance to plant that cutting you gave me in Iwa, on that cliff top I told you about," Ino says. "Forgive me?"
Sakura presses a kiss to the top of Ino's grey head. "Always."
.
.
.
It's decades of honey drenched summer afternoons spent under cool green leaves.
It's not nearly enough time.
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.
.
A woman curls up in a tangle of roots.
She does not wake.
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.
"Ojiisan?" the little girl asks. "Why is the cherry tree dying? Is it sick?"
The old man stares down at his granddaughter.
"Maybe it's heartsick!" he teases her.
Her nose scrunches. "Don't be silly, ojiisan! Trees don't have hearts!"
Half a continent away, a not-woman drops a leaf, but no blue eyes blink open.