this was deleted so i could put in interludes so you may have already read it! i edited it tho. i feel like the chuunin exams are under a lot of pressure to not be tired and boring. idk if i succeeded? I was nervous for this arc. disappointed I didn't finish it in one chapter but there's a lot I wanted to happen and i'm a detail-oriented writer and i just LOVEEEEE going on tangents, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i appreciate every review and every reader. i'm really bad at chatting so it might not come across but each one of you makes me so happy

Ino fic rec: Lespedeza by JinnySkeans

Song rec: Flesh and Bone by The Killers

ASpHodeL

[daffodil]
and
again
unrequited.

The forest of death still frightens her. Not even the pleasant, newly-turned July skies, bright with the promise of summer, can alleviate the way her body shakes. The trees above her shake with silent life, with danger, and Ino presses in a bit closer to Sakura, so that she's guarding one side of the girl with Naruto on the other. The other genin along the forest borders push at the edge of Ino's sense, but she can only see Sakura and Naruto. Sakura has her hair braided back into a bun for the occasion, and Naruto's kunai seem mildly sharper than usual. The two of them are so bright it's almost like they're the entire world.

If she didn't know better, Ino might think it was just team seven and an angry forest. But the forest is only one of many enemies. Sakura plays with her hands, wringing them together and taking small steps under mild urging from her teammates. "I can't believe we have to attack another team," she frets. Her fingers shake just a bit as she holds her own hands. She's learned basic first aid, has brought with her the poisons Yuugao helped with and the weapons disguised as jewelry that kunoichi class taught her. Ino never thought poison was Sakura's style, but this isn't the same Sakura.

(Even though Ino would have thought the suspense of the oncoming chuunin exam would've kept them on their toes, training went the same way it always did. It was like nothing'd been announced, like Yuugao hadn't taken them on a group trip to the Hokage's office to turn in their forms and Naruto hadn't been throwing Sasuke sneering glances in the street the past few days. It was still just Naruto throwing kunai with accuracy she wouldn't expect and still just Sakura only pacing along the river. Ino, in an uncharacteristic show of laziness but a perfectly accurate display of luxury, lounged in the grass, occasionally rising to her feet to pick flowers.

"I'm confident you can pass," Yuugao said, looking at the three of them. Naruto paused, kunai held up by a finger hooked in the ring.

"Really?" he asked. Ino started to smile, and Yuugao tapped her foot against the side of Ino's leg, giving her a sidelong unimpressed look.

"Maybe if your teammate gets up," she suggested wryly. It felt to Ino that Yuugao's voice was a wet towel, and each word only a bit of water being wrung out.

"Maybe I want to poison my weapons," Ino had claimed, twirling the long foxglove stem she'd picked earlier. This was false—she did not want to poison anything. "Like my ninjato."

Sakura, though, paused in her trip back up the tree, and something in Yuugao's face changed by just a swivel. "Maybe I want to poison my weapons," Sakura murmured, and it wasn't something Ino had considered before.

It wasn't that Sakura wouldn't be good at it. She'd be amazing with poison, just like she'd be amazing at genjutsu, and just like she'd been amazing at medical ninjutsu. But these were things Ino hadn't thought about. Genjutsu and poison seemed too...underhanded. The Sakura she knew was so straightforward. Her fighting style, while clever, wasn't sneaky. She and Naruto had never been typical shinobi.

Sakura's honor—her refusal to use tactics she deemed dishonest—was something Ino wanted to keep. But that wasn't her decision.

Yuugao didn't have these reservations. She began to nod in approval, Ino sitting up to watch Sakura scuttle down the tree.

"I know a lot about that," Ino said. She thought of Sakura with larkspur, with lily of the valley in her hair, with morning glory seeds ground up in a paste and mountain laurel left to soak overnight. It was an offering, she felt. Sakura wasn't right and Ino was all wrong and it was an offering. She held up the foxglove towards Sakura. It was beautiful and poisonous. Ino had never thought of Sakura as that type but it was an offering.

"That's a pretty flower," Naruto said. "Can I eat it?")

Sakura isn't the way she was once, and she isn't some sort of prodigy, but she's smart and she's stronger than she wants to think. Ino bites back a scoff as Sakura goes on. "Is there anyone we can beat? Everyone looks so much stronger than us—"

Naruto claps his hands together, resolute. "Of course! We can beat any other team in this forest, dattebayo!"

"Any other team," Ino echoes. She laughs at him. "You think we could beat any of them?"

"Of course," Naruto announces, and Ino goes tense, a new chakra edging along the trees. She pulls Sakura back just as kunai land at their feet; her eyes go wide when she sees the exploding tags.

"Move!" she howls, one hand in Sakura's and one hand on Naruto's wrist, leaping up. The tags explode while they are midair, and Ino releases her teammates to drop into a roll, elegantly spinning to land, skidding, on her feet. Sakura slips, tripping onto her knees, her hair miraculously staying up but for a few strands; Naruto drops like a rock.

"Good dancing," a genin from Kiri says, coming forward out of the trees like a hidden beast. Ino draws her ninjato. She goes flying forward just as he does, a kunai in his hand, and one hard hit to the knife sends it flying from his grip. Sakura yelps just outside of Ino's line of vision, and her head snaps in the other girl's direction to see Naruto in front of her, fighting off another genin. The third chakra she can sense is somewhere above them and Ino twists, neck craning, blade raised as she scans the trees. "You shouldn't have looked away," the genin crows, and when Ino turns back she's just in time to watch the boy finish his jutsu. "Suiton: Juudan!"

A condensed shot of water hits her squarely in the stomach and she falls backwards from the force of it, rolling with the hit to rise shakily on her feet, dashing forward again to knock the grip of her sword against the back of his head. The force of it vibrates through her hand and up her wrist. "Eat dust," Naruto shouts from a couple feet away, so she assumes that's going well. She watches the Kiri genin's eyes roll back with something akin to pleasure coiled in her. She pulls open his haori, digging through his pockets.

"No scroll here," she calls.

"Not here either," Sakura reports back.

The third energy signal—Ino twirls, going through the air like an arrow, rushing up one of the endless trees, blade unsheathed. There's a girl shivering against a tree trunk, and Ino's halfway to cutting her open before she stops, hand shaking. "Give me your scroll," Ino says, and it's then that she sees the girl isn't shaking out of fear—she's laughing.

Her pale hand rises into the hand seal of the snake. The seal of the snake—using it alone? The only things Ino uses a single snake seal for are exploding tags—

"Do me a favor," the girl says, and Ino takes a step back. "Okay? Die."

The force of the explosion knocks her ninjato out of her hand—it flies away from her, bouncing in metallic clangs. Ino hits the ground like a stone, her head knocking back against solidly packed dirt. A noise escapes her involuntarily, ears ringing, back aching.

"Ino!" Sakura's hands are soft on Ino's arm, and she blinks her eyes open, blinded briefly by the white light flickering under her eyelids.

"I'm fine," she manages to croak. "All good. Fine."

She'd been about to kill that girl, that stranger, but her hands shook and she stopped. Some ninja kill people and she'd been a murderer before but—

(Some ninja kill people, but not you, Ino.)

"Naruto's got your sword," Sakura says, voice low and reassuring, a hand brushing through Ino's bangs. "Let's get up, okay? Can you get up?"

Sakura slips an arm under Ino's, Naruto taking control of her other side. "I'm good," Ino says, echoing her previous sentiments. "That girl blew herself up. I don't think the scroll survived."

Sakura gasps and for a second doesn't say anything. "She's dead?"

"Probably," Ino says. She can't tell if she feels hollow or not.

"That sucks," Naruto decides. Ino pulls her arm away, shaking herself a bit. "We totally beat them up, though," he adds after Ino and Sakura both stay quiet. His voice is like a chirping bird. Ino tugs her other arm away from him, too, taking her ninjato from his hand and sheathing it. Shame stings at Ino, sharper than the bruises forming along her spine. She'd walked into the forest thinking herself better. She'd walked in with her head high and her fists clenched. Ino had walked in feeling as though it would be simple.

Ino likes to think highly of herself. She likes to romanticize herself. She likes to think about herself, likes to pretend she used to be grinning and glowing and happy, with sparks of laughter and spills of sunshine. She likes to look in the mirror at her young, young, too young face and pretend the girl in there is worth protecting.

Sometimes, though—sometimes she can admit it.

The girl she was, the girl that became her, was never much for anything. That girl was petty and cruel. That girl was vain and selfish. That girl was never worth saving.

"That's not a fair trade," Naruto had said and he was right. Ino's fought in warfare, and yet when she'd walked in with her weapons sharpened, with her eyes glazed by indifference, she got caught off guard by some twelve year old girl.

A crazy twelve year old girl, Ino corrects. There's no way she could have survived the blast. Ino stretches her senses out curiously—the Kiri girl's chakra is gone. She's dead.

Ino rubs her thumb against the hilt of her ninjato. It does little to reassure her.

...

Come day three they still haven't found a heaven scroll. Ino gnaws on her portion of the rabbit they'd caught—Sakura'd shed a couple tears when team seven found the animal in the trap, and Naruto had looked a little ill, but Ino's done worse things than kill cute animals in her lifetime and she only felt mildly empty when she broke its neck—and tries to hide her restlessness. Still, she can't stop herself from saying, "We should be at the tower by now." It's a useless comment.

"We aren't," Naruto says helpfully. He flings a bit more dirt into the fire. It hisses.

"We still need a scroll, too," Sakura adds. She sighs. "We almost had it on the first day..."

Ino chews a bit more, then flicks her makeshift skewer to the side. It lands point down, digging into the dirt like a discarded knife. The trees shake from thrashing within them. The clearing is small, hallowed by tree trunks, and even if she feels painfully exposed, the shaking leaves have her scooting a bit back in the dirt. "Maybe we should—"

Naruto raises one hand suddenly, sitting up straighter, head tilting to the side as if to raise his ear; she's so shocked at his nerve to interrupt her that she does actually go quiet. "Do you hear that?" he whispers. He's staring into the trees.

"Hear what?" Sakura starts, rising to her feet, and—

It's distant, but Ino's been paying attention to the fights in the forest since they sparked the fire. "What about it?" Ino demands. So someone's fighting. "It isn't any of our business." The noise comes louder. Sakura stares into the trees, reaching for a kunai.

"I think it's Sasuke," Naruto says, words coming faster now. He comes up to his feet, eyes wide, tense like a frightened animal. "It sounds like Sasuke!"

"We should leave," Ino decides immediately.

At the same time, Naruto shouts, "We have to go help them!"

For a bare second they stare at each other. Then, "Ino, we have to go help," Sakura says.

"We don't!" Ino spreads her hands in a plee because she knows something goes wrong for Sasuke in this forest. She doesn't know what—she doesn't know when—but she knows it starts him down a path to nowhere and she doesn't want any of them to be involved in it. Sasuke's a black hole. All he manages to do is ruin. "Sasuke can take care of himself, and we still need a scroll—"

Naruto turns away, kicking a bit more dirt into the fire. It breathes out a final growl and dies. Sakura stands with him. Something about the image—Sakura and Naruto standing together as though they've been that way for centuries, Sakura with verdant eyes of steel and Naruto with a jaw harsher than it has a right to be—sends something sharp through Ino's chest. It was always the three of them, Naruto used to tell her, and when the two of them twist, turning away from her, the image glows golden in her eyes.

Maybe it never mattered at all how strong she became and maybe it was never going to be a happy ending for her but Sakura dies and Naruto dies and, "Sasuke isn't worth dying for," she says, she begs. Leave him, she doesn't say. Stay with me.

"I don't plan on dying, Ino," Naruto tells her, looking back at her, mouth downturned a bit like he thinks she's said something stupid. Sakura extends a hand, waving Ino on, and it was always the three of them. Ino knows she never had a chance. Sakura pulls her hand back; she and Naruto run into the trees. The branches are shaking from the force of the fight now, and Ino catches a shout, a cry of pain. It was always going to be the three of them it was always going to be just them, but—

The best she can do is go with.

"Fine," Ino mutters and she frees her ninjato.

She leaps into the branches and drops from from the tree tops, foliage stabbing at her bare skin. Ino's just landed, head flicking up and her ponytail following as she finds her footing just behind Naruto and Sakura, in front of Sasuke like a shield, legs bent in a crouch. "Leave Sasuke alone!" Naruto shouts and Sakura's holding one kunai, small tendrils of shiny pink hair falling into her face, green eyes sharp and fingers white around the knife hande. Sasuke's on the branch behind them, splayed over its massive width. Ino risks a look back at him; his eyes are closed. She pushes two cold fingers against his neck, against the steady pulse. She lets her hand go to his shoulder, shaking him. At the touch, his eyes flutter, halfway to conscious, alive. She would never expect anything less. He could survive the end of the world.

(But she was still there when Naruto killed him.)

He isn't worth it and he isn't worth this and he isn't worth her, but Naruto flicks a kunai up into his hand, and she resigns herself. The grass-nin frowns. Ino can sense Shikamaru and Kiba down below them, on the forest floor. If she can sense their chakra, then they aren't dead. Not yet, something inside her mocks, voice the same way she had talked to the ten year old girl first living in this body. No one's dead yet,Ino.

The grass ninja—a woman, Ino thinks, but it's difficult to tell—sighs. "You three should get out of my way," she says. "That's what his teammates did. That's why they aren't dead."

Naruto sucks in a shocked, sharp breath. Ino's never known Shikamaru or Kiba to abandon anyone. They'd been there almost as long as Sakura, Kiba with his teeth bared and Shikamaru with the chess board hidden inside his mind and—

Oh. Oh. Ino blinks, hard, her hands shaking. Those people don't exist. Madara may have killed them, but Ino did worse; she erased them entirely. Those people never existed. They have the chance to be anyone now. Shikamaru and Kiba could grow up to be anyone now.

"We aren't leaving him," Sakura hisses, feral, predatory. It's like she's declaring war. "You aren't touching him!"

The woman sighs again. Ino tenses, and then the stranger moves.

There is no other way to describe it. Once, the grass-nin was across from them, pressed to the tree trunk instead of in the open air on the branch, and then she's just there, parrying Sakura's kunai with a bare hand, a cut going down her wrist without notice. She moves to smack her hand across Sakura's face, to send her flying, when Naruto pulls the girl back by her wrist, Sakura safely behind him.

Naruto takes the hit and he soars.

Ino's breath catches when he hits hard against the tree trunk, head snapping back from the force of the blow. The woman is beside him faster than Ino can physically follow and she realizes, the acknowledgment burning in her stomach, that she is afraid.

They can't die here. There's so much to do—she can't die here there's so much she still has to do so much she has to fix so much she has to say—if she dies here who will save the world who will save Naruto who will save her parents if she dies here what will they become? She can't die here—

(She erased the people she loved for this. She destroyed herself for this. She desecrated Sakura's memory for this. She lost Shikamaru and Chouji for this. They are not dying here.)

Ino catches his eyes over the woman's shoulder, hers rounded with fear. His are red. She's ashamed that they terrify her. "The demon brat," the grass-nin murmurs thoughtfully, hand around Naruto's throat now, holding him against the bark, nails long and digging into his skin. His neck begins to bleed in tiny lines that run over the woman's hand and drip lazily along his skin. The grass-nin's hand drifts over Naruto's stomach—

"Don't touch him!" Ino shouts, rising higher on her toes as if it will afford her power. The panic of being powerless, the pain of helplessness that she thought was behind her: it rises in her chest. "Don't touch him!"

The grass-nin looks over at Ino, a smile coming over her face. "Don't worry, little girl," she says. Ino can't decide to look at Naruto's scrunched up face or at the cruel tilt of the grass-nin's chin. "This should be enough to subdue your little monster."

Little monster—Ino's face goes twisted.

The woman's free hand goes over his face and Naruto screams. The sound goes into Ino like knives and Sakura echoes it and Ino knows they will not die here and she isn't willing to fight for Sasuke. He doesn't deserve her.

It is a surprise, though, to know she is willing to die for Naruto. When the grass-nin releases him, he drops; Ino leaps over the grass-nin's head, spinning in the air, landing between the two of them, her ponytail flicking and her eyes raging.

"I said not to touch him," Ino snarls, a hand pushing Naruto behind her and the other drawing her sword in one smooth movement. She's forced to parry the grass ninja's gleaming blade but she doesn't manage to avoid it, only succeeding in forcing the blow upwards, so a clean scratch cuts into her cheek instead of her chest. The blood oozes, drips down her face. Naruto slumps into her shoulder, the movement so reminiscent of when he died that for a moment she forgets how to breathe.

Naruto slides down her body, landing in a heap behind her. The moment does not last and Ino exhales out, inhales in, eyes a sharp, hard glare. She is outclassed; Ino blocks and attacks, ninjato moving so quickly it is almost more liquid than solid, her body shifting around attacks, pale limbs graceful, dodging expertly and receiving small red cuts for her efforts.

"Ino!" Sakura cries and Ino thinks what she can't say: Run, Sakura.

"You will lose," the grass-nin says. Ino looks almost instinctively at the cut on their wrist—the cut from Sakura's kunai.

All of Sakura's kunai are poisoned.

Ino's ninjato flies up to block their next hit, the force of the blow sending her feet backwards a few steps, sweat dripping down her face, and there is no time to rest; she nearly trips over Naruto, her body going faster than ever to block the blows, taking hit after hit, the metal singing in high pitched screeches with each match of the blades and—

The grass-nin's weapon clashes against Ino's. Her eyes are wide, sweat beaded along her hairline, and the blade of her ninjato breaks, shatters, bits of metal flying, cutting into her arms and her hand, small shards of hardened metal biting into her neck. She ducks under the next swipe, whirling around in the same movement, hands sliding into a seal she's known for. "Shintenshin no Jutsu," she breathes. Ino's body drops; Naruto's eyes come open.

The power of it, of him, surprises her. It's nothing compared to what he used to be, compared to the beast she used to slip inside of and destroy battlefields with—she thinks of the grass-nin, of little monster, and decides maybe this is a good thing—but it still surprises and bites at her just how much more chakra his body has compared to her own. The first time she took control of Naruto's body, the first time she owned his flesh as though it were her own, Kurama was long dead, and the power belonged entirely to Naruto. If Naruto was compromised, the power of the Kyuubi was put under threat. It was Ino's job to be sure their largest asset never stopped moving. If he died, Kyuubi's power would reincarnate somewhere after escaping his body. Now it's different. Kurama lives. She still rises with grace Naruto has never had, eyes blue and hard.

It's a deal she never perfected, but to gain power one must give; with Naruto, she always threw a bit of herself down the chute, down the void, and the crawling animals living inside him ate the scraps of her sacrificed soul—then spat up power for her to use in return. Now, she figures the same rule applies.

Ino's always been skilled with the mind. She pulls off a piece of herself and lets it drift down-down-down, into the spiraling blackness hidden inside Naruto, feels the sharp sting as another part of her is consumed. She's always done this for Naruto. He never had to give up any of himself. It was only ever other people he lost. She was the one to cut free a finger a limb a heart and offer it to him as if tribute for a god.

("Does it hurt?" Naruto asked her once, his back to a cliff face and Ino next to him. The stone ached against her spine. "When you make the trade. Does it hurt?"

"Yes," Ino'd said. "It does."

He didn't say anything. Ino felt a strange coldness at the silence.)

Her eyes—Naruto's eyes—go red. She parries the grass-nin's sword with a kunai, her limbs bleeding out chakra. It burns at Naruto's skin, eating it the same way it eats at her mind. She doesn't allow herself to feel guilty for it. She's clawing at the grass-nin like an animal, swipe after swipe, leading the fight with aggression and anger.

"You," she spits, the fire burning at her body burning at her soul and she aches with it, "will lose."

Ino dodges backwards from a nasty looking sweep of the grass-nin's sword and she doesn't time it right—this body doesn't know her well enough or perhaps she doesn't know it—and oh god she isn't just going to kill herself but she's going to kill Naruto—

The hit doesn't come. Ino shakes from the anticipation of it, and Shikamaru's familiar voice calls out across the trees, "Capture successful."

Ino falls to her knees in relief, the jutsu canceling and sending her flying back to the body she stole nearly three years ago, bloody and arms quivering, muscles biting. Her blood hisses when she forces herself onto her hands and knees. Sakura's kunai was poisoned, and as Ino watches the skin around the grass-nin's cut begins to curl, to shrivel inwards, the woman's entire body unraveling as it dies. Do me a favor, Ino thinks, crouched on the thick tree branch, nails digging into the bark. Okay? Die. The grass-nin's eyes go wide, and then her body begins to fall away, like it was only a shell she'd been hiding inside and the skin flakes off, vanishing, turning to pale petals, floating away—

Oh god. Oh god. It is Orochimaru of the Sannin behind the woman's skin.

(She can't die here.)

"I can't hold it," Shikamaru grunts and that's the only warning before his shadow withers, sliding off Orochimaru and leaving Ino defenseless. She flings herself backwards, stretching, arms first followed by her entire body as she flips, going far enough to avoid the reach of Orochimaru's blade is that kusanagi it can't be oh god and Ino loops one of Naruto's arms around her shoulder, flipping even further back, going up the tree, clinging to Naruto's body, her feet leaving grooves in the bark.

Her fear is for nothing. Shikamaru's hold has broken, but Orochimaru doesn't make any other movements. He laughs, the noise broken and terrifying, and she watches him swallow his sword, watches each inch of metal disappear. "You're a difficult little group," he says. Die, Ino thinks. "Sasuke," he calls and Ino takes a step back, further up the tree. "Remember my offer."

He twists, then, moves fast enough to send shrill bombs of fear over Ino, but he only flees the scene, a flash of pale against dark trees. Ino drops down the tree trunk, going flat against the branch, Naruto suddenly weighing so much more than before. She drags him back to Sakura and Sasuke, back to Sakura's still tense defense position and Sasuke's barely conscious body. Kiba's next to them now, shaking Sasuke sharply and glancing wildly around the forests. She doesn't see Akamaru. He must be in Kiba's jacket. She looks at Naruto's face. His eyes are closed, but his arm thrown around her shoulders is tense as though he's trying to hang on. She goes back to watching Kiba shake Sasuke, watching Sasuke's eyes come open fully and start to focus.

"You weren't worth it," Ino hisses. Sasuke recoils from her, scrambling back. She wants him to be afraid, and he is, but he isn't scared of her. His fear isn't meant for her and she bares her teeth. Ino falls to her knees in front of him, Naruto supported by her arm. Her body stings, the cuts so sharp she barely realized they were there until now, until this tired moment with blood escaping her from everywhere.

Shikamaru leaps to their tree branch, landing beside Sasuke. Before she remembers herself, she reaches out for him with her free hand, fingers fluttering. He looks at her, looks back at Sasuke. Her hand stutters and falls. "I'm glad you're okay," she says and she means it.

He surveys her. A moment passes; she looks into his eyes and thinks of the way she can always feel his stare on her, sharp and dark. "You, too," he says, quietly, mouth barely moving.

Ino closes her eyes on tears.

"We have to go," Kiba hisses urgently, loading Sasuke onto his back messily, all splayed limbs and visible bruises. "Sasuke's really badly hurt."

"We won't take your scroll," Shikamaru says. Ino chokes on a laugh. Shikamaru was always an asshole like that. Too bad Ino's never been as polite. Sakura bristles.

"Sasuke-kun's hurt, some monster just nearly killed Ino and Naruto, and that's what you say?" she growls, pushing hard on his shoulder, the movement disturbing the wisps of pink hair loose around her face. Shikamaru falls back from the shove, and Ino finds she's leaning into Naruto as badly as he's leaning against her. Everything hurts. "I should beat you up for that!"

"Sakura," Ino says. One of her hands goes to the branch to help support her weight. "Take Naruto."

The other girl instantly takes Naruto's other side, kunai now tucked away, his arm thrown over her slight shoulders. "You'd better take care of Sasuke-kun," she says, voice bitter and displeased.

Ino laughs. She wants to hurt him. She wants to watch Sasuke scream. She wants to beat him so badly he stops breathing. Instead she helps Sakura carry Naruto away, her feet steady where Ino limps, and although Ino hears Shikamaru leaving with Kiba and Sasuke, she does not look back.

(She'd really, really wanted to look back.)

...

"Will Naruto be okay?" Sakura asks, and shrugging seems a rude answer, but Ino's too tired for more. She is ravaged, exhausted, broken, empty, and she shrugs. Naruto's always okay, she almost says, but he was always okay until he wasn't, so Ino says nothing. Naruto's unconscious beside them. Ino dips one hand into the flowing river at their side, the water rushing over her skin. "Will you be okay?" Sakura asks, quieter, urgently.

I'm always okay, Ino almost says. It's the kind of confidence she envies of herself. When she was a genin, she'd thought she could take over the world. Now, she knows this world can be taken by any number of people, and she isn't one of them.

"We'll be fine," Ino says eventually, looking at her hand under the water, feeling Sakura's eyes on her.

"Maybe Yuugao-sensei was wrong," Sakura blurts and Ino looks up. "Maybe we weren't ready for this."

Sakura's wringing her hands together again, looking at her lap. Bits of hair have escaped her bun, although it's now closer to a ponytail. She looks very young. It surprises Ino a bit, although it shouldn't. Looking at her face hurts. A part of Ino wants to scream when she looks at her, wants to howl—this world is tainted, this world is cruel, this world will eat you whole. It would be better for Sakura to learn it from Ino than from experience, wouldn't it? It would be kinder, wouldn't it?

"Maybe we weren't ready," Ino says carefully. "I don't think it matters now. We're already here, Sakura."

Sakura looks afraid. This hurts, too. "We still need a scroll," she says, disheartened.

The words inspire something in Ino she'd thought long dead. A light goes up in her chest. Ino grins. "Do we?"

Sakura frowns. "Yes," she says slowly, and Ino digs through her kunai pouch. She's still smiling widely, secretively, when she produces a heaven scroll from the depths of it and her mouth only stretches further at Sakura's gasp. "Where did you get that?" she demands, leaning forward into Ino's space to stare at her, wide-eyed, pulling the scroll from Ino's hands. "When did you get that?"

Ino laughs. The noise is like a barking dog, like a hungry ghost. It burns at her lips on the way out. "I took it!" she cries, fingers flying from the river and flicking water across Naruto when she spreads her hands.

"Took it?" Sakura repeats. She leans closer, eyes wide. "Ino, from—"

Ino bites her lip on another laugh. "I took it from Sasuke, Sakura," she says, clasping her hands together primly. "While he was unconscious."

Sakura's so shocked she covers her mouth with her hands, scroll dropping from her fingers to hit the dirt.

"Be more careful with it," Ino chides playfully, rescuing the scroll and tucking it back inside her kunai pouch.

"You took this," Sakura repeats. "From Sasuke-kun?" Her voice has gone flat. Then she says it again, and this time her words shake a bit. "You took it from Sasuke-kun?" Ino nods, pleased. "He was—he was—" Sakura sputters, stuttering, reaching forward to take Ino's hands. "He was unconscious! That's so-so dishonorable!" Sakura's anger is genuine, but it only makes Ino laugh harder. It feels like a rebellion—Uchiha Sasuke just might fail the chuunin exams, and it'll be because of Yamanaka Ino. Her laugh goes high-pitched, shrill. Uchiha Sasuke! Fail the chuunin exams!

"Don't you have faith in Sasuke?" Ino teases, her voice a squeak. Sakura's fingers tickle along Ino's side when she recaptures the scroll from Ino to marvel at it. She rubs her fingertips over the edge of it. "Come on," Ino needles. "If Sasuke's so great, he'll be able to pass."

(He killed her family he killed her village he made her want to kill herself—Ino laughs harder.)

"You know he's injured," Sakura says sharply. Still, her eyes are wide as she turns the scroll over in her hands. "I can't believe you!"

"You would have been thanking me," Ino insists, but she doesn't finish the sentence because she isn't sure it's true. Sakura never talked about Sasuke, not after. She never brought it up, never answered any questions about it. Before she died, the only true connection to Sasuke was Naruto. Naruto killed him, and his ghost hung between the two of them, marked on them like a stain.

("I don't know," Sakura said once. "I don't know—I don't know, Ino, okay?"

"If you loved him, you would know," Ino said because she loved pushing things, loved prodding things, loved waiting for people to snap and loved prompting people to hurt her. It was easier than hurting herself.

"I don't know!" Sakura shouted, and Ino grinned at the shock of it, at the harsh grate of a loud voice in silence. Then, quieter, so quiet it was difficult for Ino to catch, "I don't know if I ever knew him at all."

Ino'd cried when his bingo book entry got a kill on sight order. She had sobbed into her hands at the thought of him dead. It was less than a year later that there was nothing she wanted more.)

"It's fine, it's fine," Ino says, waving her hand. Her teeth in her lip are beginning to draw blood but she refuses to let more laughter escape—it's starting to sound hysterical to her, starting to sound frightening, starting to remind her of what Naruto sounded like five or six years into the end. Ino takes the scroll from Sakura's twitching fingers, shoves it in a pocket on the inside of Naruto's jacket. She zips his jumpsuit up all the way to her neck.

Sakura glares at her. "I can't believe you," she says again.

"Okay, okay, fine!" The process of loading Naruto onto her back is messy, with her blood staining his clothes and the bruises on his face pressing against her shoulder. She's bleeding from everywhere, but it doesn't hurt. "If we see team ten again, we'll give the scroll back. Okay?" She peeks at Sakura's face, and her lips pull apart again into something broken splitting her face. It is almost a smile. "Let's get to the tower, okay?"

Sakura mutters something derogatory, but stands up, brushing off her skirt. Naruto makes a strange noise from his position on Ino's shoulder. The forest feels complimentary, its winds light and the darkness of the trees like the gleam of a night sky.

"We're going to be completely fine," Ino says and there is nothing to contradict her.