Day 48:

Physical deterioration or not, the withdrawal is still real for them both. Ino, having suffered through four days of it previously, is understandably distraught when they simultaneously realize they've run out of patches.

"I can't do that again," Ino whispers, and the pain in her voice registers in Sakura's ears and seems to amplify in the bloodstream straight to her heart.

They're both lying on the mattress and trying very hard to breathe. Is inhalation really natural? Sakura wonders. Has it ever been? It certainly doesn't feel like it now.

In. Out. In. Out.

She's never had to think to breathe before.

"We should…"

"Can't," Ino shakes her head. "I can't go back there. I can't do that again, either."

Sakura laces their fingers together. "I'll go with you."

It's a stupid decision to do a stupid thing to keep doing other, even more stupid things, but Ino is quietly panicking, and that is worse than anything Sakura could do.

So they go to the party together.

#

Sakura feels eighty-years-old. Her bones hurt, and her joints feel stiffer than the springs of their terrible bed. It takes fifteen minutes just to pull their clothes on. She sincerely hopes nobody will give them trouble on the way there, because she's not sure she can fight right now. It's a definite possibility, though, because they probably look as worn down as they feel, and predators usually pick easy prey…

Ino warns her to keep her eyes on the sidewalk, and so she does, letting Ino guide her by the hand instead. She's whispering instructions and etiquette that Sakura only half hears against the torrential late summer downpour that soaks through their clothes in the first thirty seconds of the walk. By the time they reach the party, she imagines they resemble two stray cats, sodden and lost in the rain.

Thankfully, the bouncers don't seem to care. She sighs with relief the moment the patch hits her arm. That's when she remembers that they're at a party, and parties are supposed to be fun, and that's something she thinks she can do, now.

They're back to their normal selves in less than a minute. …Or, was before normal? She's somewhat lucid, not having suffered the weakness of prolonged use yet, but her thoughts are still ooey gooey. She remembers that Ino somehow managed to keep her mind intact for three times as long as she has. The pride in her chest swells at that. They're barely through the door before Sakura pulls her in and kisses her just for the hell of it, just to show her.

Ino taps her on the shoulder and tilts her head toward a man on the other side of the room: Satoshi. Sakura takes Ino by the wrist and lets her body navigate instinctively to the stairs, climbing up, and up, and up, to the third floor, where Ino stops her in the middle of the room. She spreads her arms out.

This, is what she's trying to say. This is what she's talking about.

Sakura looks around, confused that she's been stopped, because shouldn't they be going up more? Her eyes travel around the room in search of what Ino is referring to. A couple is entwined on the couch. There's a man grinning dumbly at the ceiling. The dancers grind and sway to the music, hands lifted in revelry, and it takes her a second, but she does feel it.

It's definitely what Ino is talking about, but it's not exactly the same, because there's something else about it, too. Ino stares at her quizzically and Sakura shakes her head, hold on, to try and sort out the things floating in her mind. The thoughts stagger uselessly into each other. Still. There's something.

Maybe it's her precise chakra control. Or, maybe it's the fact that she'd had thirty-odd days of doing scans and analyses on Ino that she can feel the difference now. In the hotel room, Ino's chakra had been haywire, and hers too, like tongues of flame in a soft breeze, flaring uselessly from their bodies. But it's different here.

Something is different.

It's not a fire. Not a fire at all. Her consciousness running from her body, urging her higher, tempting her to hit the apex of experiential awareness, the needle-thin tip of existence as the music thrums, and her heart inflates to bursting with the emotions of these thinking, feeling, sensing humans around her –

No, wait. Sakura shakes her head like a wet dog. Wait a minute.

If only she weren't drugged, she thinks forlornly, but if she weren't drugged then she wouldn't be able to feel it, this magnification of unified minds that Ino has been describing to her. She would never have been able to tell. But it's so damn hard to think.

This is important, though. She's sure of it. She hasn't forgotten the mission – it's just hard to care, but the only other thing that Sakura cares about here is Ino, and Ino is with her, so if they're together, then she can think about it. Right?

She hopes that makes sense.

She grabs Ino by the wrist and pulls them into the bathroom, which she notes with some humor is actually cleaner than the one in the hotel. Unfortunately, it's also full of people. They find an empty stall and shut it. Ino doesn't say a word. She leans against the wall and waits, present and close, and that's all Sakura needs, so now she can think about thinking.

No more fires.

Right.

Not a flame, but. Something.

There's a tide of subsistence around her right now. She can literally feel the people in the bathroom, though she can't feel herself, but she knows they're all rising. Floating. But not quite. The feeling is smooth, like being swept away, like –

What Ino said. Like water. The people here are trickles of water, of color, all coalescing together. Their minds ascend as one like a plume of steam. Evaporating. Shared states of being combine into this force, a river flowing downstream, amassing, merging, spilling into each other in tiny waterfalls and traveling through the veins of some omnipotent pseudo-arterial network to…

Sakura tilts her head back.

Ocean. Color. Water. Consciousness and merged humanity, blue –

"Oh," she mutters, the realization sliding into her brain like a key in a lock. "Oh."

There is no ceiling. There is no drug.

Ino's tentative voice, "Sakura?"

Sakura's head snaps back down. She's grinning, though it's not really something to be smiling about.

"It's a genjutsu," she says proudly.

No sooner does the last syllable leave her lips than the bathroom door bursts open.

A few things go through her head at once, some useful, some not so much.

This is the ladies room. Not useful.

I can't break this genjutsu if I don't have control over my chakra. Useful.

I can't fight. Not useful.

…Wait. Yes I can.

Very useful. She suddenly remembers that she doesn't actually need chakra to hit people in the face, which is exactly what she does.

Unfortunately, Satoshi is in full possession of his mental faculties and physical abilities, and he's forming seals, but she's not about to let him finish that. Sakura throws her body weight into him, breaking the sequence mid chain. He's stronger than her. She flails like she hasn't fought a day in her life, throwing him off guard, but eventually he yanks one of her arms out to her side, and then the other, pinning her against the wall at a painful angle, but she's done what she needs to do, anyway.

"Hey."

He turns around. Ino, with not even the slightest urgency, pats him on the cheek. It takes him a second to realize.

His hand flies up to his face to pull the patch off, but it's too late. His chakra streams from his body heavenward, wherever that might be, just like the rest of them.

Together, they take him down easily. They split the fistful of patches from his back pocket and, laughing, at themselves, at the situation, at the absurdity of it all, perhaps, they make their way out of the bathroom to at last finish the mission. Or so they hope.

Ino's body is still weak. Her muscles have deteriorated, and though she doesn't seem to feel the urge to go and seek euphoric relief wherever she can find it since Sakura joined her on this elevated plane, Sakura is still unsure.

"Ino," she says, hoping she can reflect the solemnity this calls for. "Can you… do this?"

But it seems she's not the only one that's got what she needs to think now.

Ino shrugs. "With you."

They step out of the bathroom together.

It's sort of sad. Being connected as they are to all these people, beating up the bouncers and the dealers feels downright cruel, like an insult to the fundamental ideologies of what it means to be. All of them struggling in this world just the same despite differing beliefs and methods…

They do it anyway. When all is said and done, the commotion is enough to disrupt the party. The music is cut. The partyers scatter. There's a pile of unconscious bodies in the middle of every floor.

It's eerily quiet in the warehouse now, and she and Ino stare at each other from their own places on the floor. They've taken about half as many hits as they've delivered – which is still a lot. It doesn't help that, with their acutely attuned physical sensitivity, they hurt three times as much as they might've otherwise. It's painful to breathe, and they're still stupidly high, and she's still a trickle of water in a river in an ocean.

The ceiling. They have to get past it.

"Ugh," Ino groans. "This sucks."

Sakura stares upward and blinks rapidly, attempting to see past the spotlights wired above her. This does suck. Can't this just be over? Then they can go back to bed together, to that wonderful thing they've been doing for… ever? Five days? Who knows.

She's so damn tired…

A shadow blocks her vision. She's up in an instant (an instant that actually extends to five whole seconds, though she can't tell), trying to grab Ino's hand to pull her up too, but somehow she just winds up pulling herself down instead. Sakura waits for death, but Ino's rather calm breathing informs her that the danger has passed.

When she turns around, she's pleasantly surprised to find a familiar face.

A very amused, one-eyed familiar face.

"Kakashi-sensei," Sakura smiles at him as if she's just bumped into him on the street, not while flying high as a kite on the floor of a drug den. "What are you doing here? Wait," she frowns. "You don't do drugs, do you? Wait," her frown deepens. "You are real, aren't you?"

"Last I checked."

"Oh…" She trails off, thinking. "…Am I in trouble?"

"That's up to Tsunade-sama," Kakashi tells her amicably. He offers her a hand that she decides she's not ready to take. She sits up slowly and just stares, hoping he'll eventually be compelled to explain himself. It takes a while. "She sent me after you didn't reply to her last letter."

Sakura squints, as if that somehow might sharpen her thoughts rather than her vision. "I got that letter last week. Doesn't that mean you should've arrived three days ago?"

"I did."

"Huh? Why didn't you say anything?"

She can see his grin under his mask. "You seemed busy."

"Oh yeah," Ino snorts. "He's real."

There's a pause as Kakashi's head swivels to observe the empty warehouse and the pile of bodies. He returns his gaze to the two women on the floor, eyebrow raised. "Care to explain?"

Sakura and Ino share a look.

"Well, see, there's this ocean…"

#

Woohoo! Mystery solved! Just the epilogue left, which will be posted by Sunday, or perhaps sooner :)