you left me breathless (found you in the vacuum of space)
rating: t
genre: romance/drama
pairings: inosaku
POV: Sakura
warnings: general political and military nastiness in the background
other notes: for Femslash February, "You left me breathless"
word count: 937
ii.
Ino kisses Sakura the way she always kisses her: violent and messy, like it might just be their last.
And Sakura is right there with her, all teeth and tongue, because the world is burning down around them and every moment they manage to steal together is worth surviving another bloody day and another sleepless night.
Ino licks the despair from Sakura's mouth, steals the breath from her.
Sakura barely feels the blade as it slips between her ribs, it's so sharp.
This is what betrayal tastes like: Ino's hands around a blade and Ino's teeth set to her lip and Ino's gaze boring into her, the only thing in the world Sakura can see.
Trust me, trust me, trust me.
As Sakura bleeds out, crimson and pink, her last memory is the sight of Ino's back as she dons a bone mask and slips away, tendrils pulling at her heels.
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.
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iii.
Haruno Sakura dies in her cold bedroom with nothing but the soft moonlight and a lingering perfume for company.
Yamanaka Ino sinks down, down, down into the dark, to find her rest at the roots of some great tree.
They are both deaths of a sort.
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.
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iv.
"Oh child," croons Shimura Danzō.
His fingers are skeletal on Ino's chin, a mockery of gentleness.
"Your Village thanks you for your sacrifice."
"What sacrifice?" Her face may as well be bone for all the emotion sketched across it, a gruesome slash of pink under two blue pools deeper than the most unknown of oceans.
Danzō smiles and curls his fingers tighter, all possession and sweet victory.
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.
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v.
A green-tipped hand pierces the soft night, disrupting a bouquet of sunflowers.
Then, a second hand, and a ghost pulls itself from its grave.
"Lee is going to cry when he visits, only to find that someone vandalized the flowers he brought you," Shikamaru drawls.
Sakura wipes the dirt from her eyes so that she can glance at him where he's leaning against her headstone, the bright cherry end of his cigarette the only colour in the world.
She tries on a smile that doesn't touch more than her mouth.
(It still aches for what is missing.)
"I'll apologize when I get the chance," she says. And catches the bag as it slams into her chest.
"Best run now," Shikamaru says. "The gap in the patrol is about to come up. Hinata will find you once you're out of the village."
Sakura nods. "Be safe."
Shikamaru barks out a laugh. It echoes in the curl of Sakura's hands. "Stay dead."
With that last order, that last well wish, Sakura runs.
Her hair streams out behind her in a banner, silver in the sliver of moonlight that dares peek around the clouds.
At her back, Konoha is dark and subdued, its night life snuffed out the way Tsunade-shishō was extinguished, the way Naruto is a shell of a man, bound with so many chakra chains that she doesn't know that they'll find anything of him left if they ever manage to break him free.
Sakura runs.
This is not the end.
Lingering under her tongue is the taste of champagne and blood, and Ino's promise.
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i.
"It has to be you," Ino whispers against Sakura's lips after they've caught their breath.
It's stifling under their cocoon of blankets, but here, in their bed, is the only place it is remotely safe to speak of treason.
"No." No. It cannot be Sakura; it never has been. She is only ever herself, and she has never been enough.
"Yes," Ino insists. "Who you are matters, Sakura. Matters in a way that is bigger than your insecurities. Who you are and who you are to so many people matters."
"I'm no one."
"Sasuke is dead, Sakura. And Naruto is captured and Kakashi is missing. You're the only one left. It has to be you."
Sakura could scream for it.
She knows. She knows.
But she cannot.
She doesn't have the strength for it. She never has.
"Sakura. Please."
"Don't make me, Ino."
This will ruin her.
This will ruin them.
Ino closes her eyes. "It doesn't matter what we want, Sakura. All that matters is what we can do. And I will not let this go on. I will not. I will die, if that is what it takes. I will kill all of us, if that's what it takes."
Sakura inhales sharply.
No.
Ino.
"I love you, Sakura, but I love Konoha more. And I will not let the children of my clan be ground down as fodder for Danzō's war machine. Not while there is still breath in my body. And I will use you and every single person who feels the same way, if I need to."
Sakura kisses her then, kisses the breath from her body so that Ino does not do this to them.
But even as she does so, Sakura is crying, because she knows that she's going to let Ino kill them both.
Sakura is the last of Team 7. And that means something when Danzō is so terrified and so envious of the long, long shadow that legacy casts.
And Sakura is more, too. Senju Tsunade's successor, carrying death in one hand and life in the other. The reminder that there is strength in weakness and that flowers bloom all the brighter in adversity. And, always, Ino's.
"I love you," Sakura gives to Ino, and she picks up the hand that is going to kill her, pressing kisses to the pad of each calloused finger. "I love you."
They die a thousand deaths in each other's arms.