It's dark outside, and the night is as sticky as those cinnamon buns Choji once described (his eyes alight with wonder and desire). Her limbs are leaden and she is dimly aware of the itchy sensation of grass against the back of her uncovered knees, but she can't find it in herself to care. She's stretched out on her back, and her head is pillowed against her forearm, and her wrist is resting against her stomach, and there are more stars in the sky than she can remember ever seeing, and there is a warm presence at her side, and a warm feeling of anticipation and happiness bubbles inside her when she thinks about that presence, and if she could just turn her head—

Her eyes remain fixed on the starry scene above her. She plays that silly game she started as a child: any minute. Any minute now she'll turn her head. She'll turn it—now. Any minute she'll do it. She feels her muscles bunching in response everytime, readying to turn at the slightest instruction, and still she plays to trick herself.

The truth is, some moments need to last forever, and even the slightest twitch can remind time to move again, and she desperately, desperately wants this moment to last forever.

Moments pass in this small infinity, and she's thinking about the bright lights far above. She's wondering whether they burn small as a candle or as big as an Uchiha Katon, or maybe they are bigger than all the candles and Katons in all the Uchiha district combined. She's thinking about heat, and flame and the vast distances it travels across the dark to touch her small corner of the world, and she's not thinking about the soft creep of his hair as it brushes against her arm and crosses that strange chasm between them (it never used to exist. She despairs over it now).

There is a movement and she wants to cry out as time lurches into existence again, but it is the movement itself which stops her—slowly, softly, his fingers caress her arm like a whisper (Like he is afraid that she is a wild doe, and any sudden movement will startle her away). Movement inspires movement, and her eyes flutter shut against the vision of celestial Katon and candle-light. His touch leaves fire in its wake, but she is convinced it is the type of fire that could never burn her. She softens into his fingers and just for a moment it seems that maybe time will leave them alone once more.

His voice cuts low and fiercely into the night (into her ears, into her soul), and the words at odds with his gentle touch: "You were born free, Ino, but everywhere you are in chains1."

She opens her eyes with a gasp, but she cannot turn toward him, cannot meet his gaze. The wind is picking up and it carries the scent of electricity with it. Far off in the distance, where clouds cover the stars (the glimmering collection of flames, the exhalations of a mighty fire-clan) she sees the heat lightning crack open the sky and she feels it in her chest—

"It's time to wake up, Ino." His voice is growing softer, more distant, though his fingers are still whispers on her skin.

She gropes for him, blindly, "Wait Sasuke!"

And suddenly she is turning her head (finally. At last), and suddenly she is staring into the face of someone she has never seen before, with his dark head resting against his arm and his body turned toward her in what suddenly seems a mockery of intimacy (as his hand stills against her arm). But his eyes are deep and shadowed in his haggard face, and they are brimming with an emotion that she almost knows and almost recognizes, and it cuts her where his words had not. She knows, beyond a doubt, that whatever it is that is reflected in his eyes is also in her soul.

She wakes up, and the sheets are hot and twisted around her legs, and her face is wet from tears or sweat, and her stomach is cramping and the back of her mouth is dry. She wakes up with her heart racing and a headache blooming behind her tired eyes. She wakes up with a feeling of loss that is so profound that her hand raises slightly to catch the lingering wisps of a dream, even as it escapes her. There are tears prickling in the corners of her eyes and she is bewildered by them but just this once she wants to give into them because it hurts so goddamn much and she doesn't even know what it is she is missing or why everything seems too much for her. "You're stronger than this, stupid," she sniffs fiercely into the silence. The rain continues to fall outside her window, unimpressed. "Real women don't cry. Real women fix shit and make others cry." The words taste flat and lifeless on her tongue. The small tears trailing down her face taste like salt and weakness. She methodically wipes her face with her hands and goes to pull up her blankets and settle in once more. Her wrists catch the faint glow of the streetlight. Her heart skitters and the blood drains from her face and there are metal bands glinting around each wrist with a small delicate chain in between. And even though she knows they aren't real, even though she knows there are no chains attached to her wrists and that she is safe and she is at home and she has locks on every window and both doors, she can see the cruel metal etching into the soft skin of her forearms long after the madness subsides.

This time, she does not check her tears with brave words.

She marches into their corner of the café like puppet: all stiff limbs and rigid expression and absent mind. He worries at how dark the smudges have grown under her eyes, and at the translucent tone of her pale skin. She settles her bag into the booth and slides in after it, somehow still a queen in her exhausted state. Her blue eyes are dull but regal as she finally glances up at him,

"You look like shit," he intones blandly.

She narrows her eyes at him, "I'm sure a lifetime of staring at your own reflection has left you well-qualified to make that assessment." The snide comment barely registers as he relaxes slightly, satisfied to see that spark back in her eyes. She's looking at him like she expects something though,

"Hn." He asserts. The perfect answer. She rolls her eyes.

For the most part, the morning passes like every other Tuesday or Thursday, and for a while it seems as though the strange mood of earlier was nothing to worry about. Ino is silently absorbed in colour-coordinating her notes from the lecture, and Sasuke is smugly pleased with the silence: the better to brood in. Ino makes tiny notes in the margins of their textbook and scoffs at ideas ("Listen to this, Sasuke-baka: 'I think, therefore I am'2—I guess this is just another confirmation of your non-existence!" "Don't be stupid, the inverse of that statement cannot be taken for granted. Grow some logic next to those ovaries." "Maybe you should worry more about your testicles descending for the first time. We can plan a 'WELCOME TO THE WORLD, SASU-CHAN'S TESTICLES' party." "Bitch." "Jackass.").

Sasuke is frowning at the coffee grounds in the bottom of his mug when a sharp intake of breath from across the booth halts the pleasant mood. He glances up and Ino's face is drained of colour and her hands are clutching her book even as her eyes stare sightlessly, like beads of the bluest glass. His hands are clenching into fists and then they are reaching across the table toward his childhood friend (he wants to hurt the things that turn her into this fragile china doll). "Ino." He shakes her hand. "Wake up, Ino." She stirs under his sharp gaze and as she comes back into her senses his hands vanish from her like little birds, coming back to clench into fists again. The table hides them from her view. He wants to shout at her and demand answers, wants to tell her to stop it and to just be normal and to not make him worry. Instead, he grates out a quiet question, "Dreams again?"

Her hands are shaking as they tuck soft blond hair behind her ears. "Yeah," she whispers.

"There were none of the normal triggers." He's frustrated, and it grates through his voice and she flinches. He hates himself for his anger and the way it wounds her, but more than that he hates the way she has turned into a scared little creature. She may as well be a rabbit, with that soft hair and those frightened eyes, he thinks, scornful.

"No. Not this time. It was words, Sasuke," he cuts her off,

"The fuck are you talking about it's been just the two of us since Nelson left an hour ago." He's glad they are the only two in the diner. He doesn't want anyone else to see her like this, it's wrong. She's fierce and she's strong and she's all lion and he wants to stand over her fallen body and snarl at anyone who so much as looks at her because no one should see such a proud beast quiver like prey.

"No, I mean in here. In our book. 'Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains'." He's nearing the end of his patience,

"Stop being so cryptic Ino. What does Rousseau have to do with your-" he breaks off, grimacing. His hand tugs at his hair and he looks away from her.

"I swear to god I have never heard those words before I read them just now, but I did, Sasuke. I did. Last night, in my dreams. There was someone in my dreams—someone I've never seen before and we both know that's impossible because dreams always have people you've seen before but even in my dream I knew he has a stranger but he wasn't and it was so confusing— Why are you looking at me like that? Why do you always get angry? Goddamnit Sasuke, you think I asked for this, or that I'm making it up?" He's trying to get a word in edgewise but she's too frightened by her own thoughts and too carried by the steam of certainty (fighting with Sasuke is something she can cling to in the middle of so much that is unknown). "I need to get some air, okay? Don't follow me. I'm fine." She lurches toward the door (her arms are swinging oddly, like there is a weight around her wrists). He buries his head in his hands for a few moments before he remembers that Uchiha do not get frustrated and Uchiha are not helpless and then he is packing up their separate bags and paying their tabs and sauntering out the door after her.

"Go to hell," she says in thanks, as he drops her bag at her feet and ignores her to check his iphone. He'll take her lion's temper any day over the vulnerability she showed before. He spares a glance toward her face-

"We're already there, Dante."

Later, hours later, she's sitting in her leather armchair by the window that overlooks the winding road (the stream. The endless flow of brains in jars. The quiet garden). It's the golden hour of afternoon, when the day is uncertain whether to start turning in for the night or not, and there are dust-motes dancing the stray beam of light that filters through the window. Ino's eyes are transfixed on the silent play of that light, and there is a gathering certainty that something has changed since last night, and a gathering trepidation for the evening hours ahead. Who knows what the shadows might hold, the words whisper through her mind, when you aren't even certain that you own your own. Ino is watching the dust motes dance in the light, and her adrenaline is seeping into her limbs. The book on her lap stares up at her, when did you trade freedom for chains? Ino is captivated by the dust motes, for they are no longer content with their graceful cavorting but are spinning, faster and faster until they appear as sparks and embers in the dying sunlight. It's time to wake up, Ino.

The sun sets, and the shadows blink across the room and seize her small frame as it slumps forward in oblivion.

"Did you ever wonder what life would be like if you were a civilian and not born shinobi?" little Ino questions her father, and her eyes are big with the innocence of her curiosity.

"What if there is a little girl in Waterfall, and she has my hair and my eyes and my Hachi-doll and a mommy and a daddy just like you and like mommy? And what if one day we are both kunoichi and we meet? Do you think, maybe, we'd be best friends?" her eyes are big with innocence.

"What happens when we go into someone's mind, Daddy? When we use our clan genjutsu and step into their mind? What happens to us and to our bodies and what happens to them? How do we know that we are still us and they are different if we are in their mind? Aren't we the ones that are different, then? Are we just thoughts and dreams, or are their minds the thoughts and dreams?" There is less innocence in these eyes, but it still warms the blue of them.

"What happens when we put genjutsu on someone? Is what they experience real, or is it just a scrambling of their nerves to trick them? How do we know when the genjutsu is over?"

"Ino. Repeat after me: KAI."

Footnotes:

1 A rephrasing of the philosopher Rousseau: "Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains," referring to the way that society binds and alters man to depend on it, although man is born independent from the virtues and vices, in a state of savage freedom.

2 Rene Descartes most famous conclusion.

A/N: It's a bit of a slow-burn to start with, but I have plans for this piece, and a certain "Lazy Genius" will start to occupy a much larger role in the chapters to come, true to the assigned pairing. Let me know what you think! this is a different approach to a story than I've ever tried before, but I'm pretty excited for it.