Day 34:

It's like gravel. Grind. Grind. Grinding.

Bodies and teeth.

Ino can't stop. Her jaw is clenched and her teeth are pressed together like she's trying to keep something between them – her sanity, perhaps? – but then her muscles contract and move sideways around the joint like the halves of her mouth are magnets of the same polarity. Sliding. Grinding. Like the bodies.

So many people moving in unified rhythm, raising their hands in praise to some vast ocean of human consciousness above them as the electronic music shrills its climax and the thrum of the bass rattles through her from foot to pelvis to the top of her skull. All the feelings are blue. The ocean is blue. Swirling emotion manifested in a force she can't understand, shared between them all –

So why can't she feel it anymore?

Thirty-four days of being caught in the Rapture and Ino is losing her place in heaven. The first two-and-a-half weeks had been euphoric. Everything touching, skin-to-skin and heart-to-heart, intermingled. Her feelings and thoughts made sense as they escaped her and came back charged and electric. The world held a beauty she'd never seen before. Life and people existed in a way that defied any explanation or definition she'd ever come to know as the truth.

Her heart opened to it in response, was flooded with so much ecstasy she could hardly contain it – couldn't, in fact, as it came flush up to her skin from the inside and told her to wrap her hands around that interconnectedness and never let go. To make herself conjoined in the seas of that shared humanity would be to know herself, the world. Happiness.

She hadn't, though. She'd resisted. Was that her mistake?

Ino of just two weeks ago would've told her that her mistake was ever taking the drugs in the first place. Ino of right now, Ino who is trying desperately to reach that climax of human existence once again, knows no such boundaries. She'd held the world in her palm and let it slip through her fingers – how could she just forget that, now?

That's what Sakura doesn't seem to understand. She's never known what it's like to be complete. Her mind is unfinished, wanting, just like Ino's is now, only Sakura doesn't know that she's missing anything at all. If she did, she'd be here, too. She'd be clawing, and fighting, and reaching for the missing aspects of herself, for that dazzling pinnacle of emotion so far above the ground where her feet are planted.

That's the problem between the two of them, Ino thinks as she pushes her way through the bodies, her eyes darting between faces, searching. That's the issue. Every time she goes back to their room since the day they fought – four days ago? Ten? Sakura's angry expression blurs in her memory like someone has dragged a dirty eraser through it – they fight again. Ino doesn't need that, damnit. She's struggling as it is. That negativity is merely drawing her back to the earth, keeping her from where she needsto be: so much higher than that.

The dopamine receptors in her brain are fried like seared meat. She doesn't know that, though.

In fact, all Ino knows is that she'd felt good, and that she's going to feel that way again. Fuck the mission. Fuck Sakura – you could, you could, you could, she'd let you – none of it matters anymore. Life hurts, now. Existing hurts. The patch on her arm may as well be a bandage. She wishes she could go back in time, but she can't, so instead she wishes only to find that closeness again. She needs people, thoughts, minds touching, kissing, fucking, anything but the emptiness like death's hand clutching at her skull.

Satoshi finds her first. He always seems to.

"Hey, princess," he whispers in her ear. Even that is a pale imitation of what it'd been three weeks ago.

Maybe it's because she hadn't known what else could be. The breath on her ear and the feel of him pressed against her had been thrilling – she thought it'd been one of the best feelings in the world, and then she slept with him, and that'd been even better – sex is a link of human life, a bondage of mortality, a reminder of start and finishcyclingeverandeveryinherbrain – and then she did it again, and again, but even that's lost it's joy. She needs something else now. Something more. Anything at all.

"Satoshi," she whines, pulling him close. She can feel his grin against her cheek and it's predatory and she doesn't care. She's giving him what he wants and she doesn't care. "I need – I need – "

"I know," he murmurs. His hands slide down her body to squeeze her ass, and when he picks her up, she wraps her legs around him tight.

It's like distant lightning. It should be closer.

Why can't it be closer?

He kisses her as he carries her through the throng of people. The sounds fade. Why? The music… she misses it. But then her head hits something soft, a pillow, and a mattress under that, and there are only three floors in this warehouse, and none of them have bedrooms, Ino thinks, but it's all washed out like someone's gone and bleached her brain. Only three floors, only three rooms – so where are they?

Satoshi is tearing at her clothes. She hears the fabric rip and it excites that spark in her – yes, please, please – and she wants to cradle it to her chest, breathe on it until it ignites inside her like a full-blown fire. Satoshi can give that to her. This is better. It's getting better. It has to be, she insists, because if it doesn't, she's just going to melt into the floor and die. Die, die, die.

It's the sixth sense of the Rapture that warns her there are other people in the room. She's so grateful to have that ability back – to be able to feel-know people in a sense beyond the five she's learned – that she doesn't care about the others. Whatever will make it real again.

"Nice catch, Satoshi," somebody growls. Somebody close to her. Somebody whose erection is pressed against her lips.

She still doesn't care. Anything. Anything.

(In the recesses of her mind that she can hardly hear, a doubtful voice reminds her, aren't you the one that caught him? Isn't that how it's supposed to be? But Ino is lost and gone and far away and she says, this is how it's supposed to be.)

There are many men here. Maybe half-a-dozen. Maybe more. Ino can't tell. She's got one in her mouth, two in her hands, and the one inside of her is sending hot waves of pleasure through her body, enough to make her stomach drop and her muscles clench as she cums, and it fills her, and he fills her, solid and then liquid as he groans guttural noise-sound-words in her ears, but she's so empty still.

Where is it? Where the fuck is it? The feeling she needs, the connection. Intimacy on a godly level that she can't reach, not anymore. Why why whywhywhy –

Satoshi tips her backwards so her back is against his chest. He fucks her until she cums again and it's like, for an instant, her mind is catapulted heavenward straight out of her body, and when she reaches her hands up, she can almost, almost hit the edge of that place, the edge of the world above her, but she can't. She rides him and sucks and fucks and swallows and fills until her body is liquid, useless muscles and fluids and shaking with dumb pleasure. Ino is determined. Whatever it takes, she'll do it.

Only, it doesn't work.

The men are gone. Satoshi is gone. The ocean and the blue and the rippling pool of human-thought-being-essence that she'd already only clung to by the barest thread is gone.

All she has is the pile of patches at her feet. Six. One for each man.

The Rapture taught her that, no matter what she'd thought before, she'd always been alone, and then the drugs changed that. But Ino is alone again. Only now, she knows what it was like to be really not alone.

And the absence hurts more than she thought anything ever could.