She leans down, looking at the still, pupil-less eyes staring back at her. Waits for Ino to blink, to lose their staring match and burst into breathless shouts -
"There's no way I just lost to you, Forehead! I demand a rematch!"
- louder than a bomb, impossible to ignore. She reminded Sakura of Naruto on days like those. They barely ever breathed the same air, after their academy days, would deny the comparison viciously, but the heartache that struck Sakura like lightning after Ino's death felt exactly like the night she lost Naruto.
That light-headed feeling can'tbreathewhereamineedair that doubled down on her lungs never changed. Sakura could recognize it within an instant.
She swipes at a strand of errant hair. The wind is blowing North, telling her to go home. Sakura wishes it was a real sign instead of a lonely woman's desperation.
She sighs, finally closing her eyes. Ino doesn't blink.
Sakura ignores the crusted trail of blood that dried hours ago as it slipped down the Yamanaka's dented-in forehead. She hefts up her best friend's corpse and carries her further from the battle field.
Five minutes away from the outpost is a cool, dark cave. Deeper inside, fields of stalagmites crop up from the floor of the little cave. The ceiling is similarly dusted in the formations.
Sakura is uncomfortably reminded of Sasori and his deaddead eyes. She shakes the image out of her head, jostling Ino in the process. The tips of her long, white-blond hair is already grimy with dried blood and dirt.
Ino would be furious if she could see herself. Sakura's been keeping a mental checklist of the things Ino would shrilly scream over, if she could:
Her appearance.
Her manner of death. ("Who the hell uses bows and arrows anymore? And rocks? I already know they're neanderthals, they don't have to prove it.")
The fact that fucking Sakura is the one burying her body.
There's no flowers in the desert, either. This would be a perfectly good alternative, except Ino also hates caves.
"You've always been hard to please. I guess I should have expected this," Sakura murmurs to the body.
Her mental image of Ino, acting snooty and immature as an eleven year old fresh academy graduate, fades back into the teenage corpse in front of her.
She carefully set Ino on the ground and takes out the singed tarp in her backpack. Sakura rolls the body into it, wrapping Ino up like a present.
Exhausted, she lies down against the tarp, head pillowed on what she guesses is Ino's stomach. She falls asleep trying to remember the sound of Ino's heartbeat.