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Ino is sixteen when she and Sakura decide to get married.
It happens like this: Sakura gets injured on a mission that Ino isn’t on the squad for; she’s busy covering Anko’s T&I shifts at the last minute because the tokubetsu jonin’s undercover operation ran longer than expected. Ino practically sprints across the village when word reaches her that Sakura’s squad was ambushed and that the pinkette is injured.
She bursts into the hospital and demands to know the entirety of Sakura’s condition. To her surprise (and more than a little bit of dismay), Aki - the charge nurse that she’s come to know from her shifts at the hospital - gives her a sympathetic look before telling Ino that she can’t tell her anything.
“What do you mean you can’t tell me?” Ino demands. “I work here!”
Sakura seems to have open access to her medical status whenever Ino ends up as a patient, so why whouldn’t Ino in the same situation?
“I’m sorry, Yamanaka-san,” Aki says and sounds like she truly does mean the apology, “but patient updates are limited to immediate family and registered teammates.”
Sakura doesn’t have any immediate family. Ino knows that the Haruno Clan is a clan of one now, with Sakura’s parents having perished in the Crush two years prior.
“We are teammates,” Ino argues. “We were on the same squad for the Chunin Exams two years ago!”
“That was a temporary assignment,” Aki says. “Right now, Haruno-san doesn’t have any registered teammates with Team 7 having been disbanded.”
Ino grits her teeth. “We live together,” she says. “Isn’t that enough?”
They live together, they share a bed, and they have each others’ backs no matter what.
Aki blinks. “You and Haruno-san are married?” she asks.
“No, but-”
But Ino Ino prays that it’s enough anyway.
From the pitying look that Aki gives her, it’s not.
“I’m sorry, Yamanaka-san,” Aki says again.
Ino’s jaw clenches. She takes a deep breath to hold back the chakra that’s building inside her chest like an angry spring thunderstorm.
“Can I at least stay and wait for her?” she eventually asks once she feels as though she’s gotten a good enough hold on her anger.
Aki tips her head. “Of course.”
Ino makes her way to the plastic chairs lining the wall. She finds that they’re more uncomfortable than even the chairs that T&I has in their interrogation rooms, but she can’t bring herself to care too much.
(The other people in the waiting room give her a wide berth. Ino wonders if it’s because of her argument with Aki or if the sight of her in T&I greys is enough to make people wary, even if the black trench coat on top of said greys is still half a size too big for her).
Ino settles as best she can with her back against the wall and glares at a random spot in the floor, as if the floor is responsible for everything wrong today. She has no idea how long she sits there for. At some point, Choji and Shikamaru appear and take their places in the seats on either side of her so that the three of them are sitting together in silence.
Eventually, the sound of block heels clicking against concrete catches Ino’s ears.
Her head snaps up to see Tsunade approaching from the operating rooms. The woman has sweat on her forehead, but otherwise looks no worse for wear - something that brings Ino the slightest glimmer of hope.
“Tsunade-sama!” Ino’s on her feet before either of her boys can react to the Godaime’s presence.
“Yamanaka.” Tsunade blinks at the sight of her. “Is there something that-”
“Do you know what Sakura’s status is?” Ino blurts out. “Aki won’t tell me anything because, because I’m not family or a registered teammate-”
The words taste like ash in her mouth as she says them.
“Ah, that rule,” Tsunade hums. “It’s there for a reason, but considering that you and Sakura live together, I can give you an overview: my idiot genius of an apprentice is alive. She was just half a second too slow in avoiding a kunai while healing a patient in the field.”
Ino licks her lips. “The surgery, then?” she asks.
“Repair the damage,” Tsunade tells her. “The kunai went deep enough to hit the brachial plexus and one of the idiots on her squad apparently has never read even a basic field medicine manual, because he got the bright idea to remove the kunai in the field.”
Ino feels herself blanch, then flush with anger. She flexes her hands behind her back. It’s her way of telling Shikamaru that she wants the name of the man who did that. From the way she feels her shadow twinge for the barest of moments, it’s a message that Shikamaru receives loud and clear.
“But she’s fine now, right?” Ino asks.
Sakura has to be okay. She can’t lose her career as a medic because of someone else’s stupidity.
Tsunade nods. “She’s fine. The repair was simple enough, just delicate work,” she says. “Anything involving the nervous system is delicate work even for someone like me.”
Which means that if Sakura had suffered that injury before Tsunade returned to Konoha, this would be a very different conversation.
“Can I see her? She’d be in recovery, so it’s not like I’m someone asking for information about a patient,” Ino says. “I’d just be a friend wanting to visit her…friend.”
Behind her, she can hear Shikamaru cough into his fist.
“Right.” The way Tsunade looks at her tells Ino that the Godaime doesn’t exactly believe her. “Yeah, go ahead. Who knows, maybe you’ll be able to keep her in bed for more than a day.”
Ino feels her face flame when Shikamaru coughs into his fist again.
“I’m a lot of things, Tsunade-sama, but a miracle worker isn’t one of them,” she manages to choke out.
“Keep telling yourself that, Yamanaka,” Tsunade laughs. “I’ll be back to round on Sakura later. In the meantime, don’t do anything that’ll get you kicked out.”
She reaches out and cuffs Ino’s shoulder. Even though there’s no chakra behind the move, there’s still enough force that makes Ino stumble; if Shikamaru weren’t there to anchor her shadow to his, Ino knows she would have hit the ground.
“Tsunade-sama!” Ino sputters out as the woman walks off chuckling.
“Ne, Ino, time to go see your girl now, yeah?” Shikamaru drawls.
Ino turns around to scowl at him. “She’s not my girl, Shika,” she snaps.
“Uh huh.” The eyebrow he raises at her is the only indication that she has that Shikamaru is thinking about the conversation that she and he had a year prior. “Well, she’s your friend and a girl to boot, so therefore she’s your girl.”
Ino’s scowl deepens even as she feels her cheeks burn. “Shut up, Shika.”
-
Shikamaru and Choji don’t accompany her to Sakura’s room. Instead, they both claim that they have meetings to make. Ino knows that they’re both lying, but she doesn’t call them out on it because she’s thankful that her boys are giving her a moment of privacy.
Sakura is awake when Ino opens the door, something that fills Ino with relief at the sight of.
“Thought you’d be asleep, Forehead,” Ino says in lieu of a greeting.
Sakura shrugs as best she can with one shoulder heavily bandaged. “Dozed during the surgery,” she says. “Tsunade-shishou came by a bit ago.”
“Oh?” Ino drags one of the stools by the window over so that she can sit next to Sakura. “What’d she say? She find anything worrying during the procedure?”
“Nope. Just told me that the next time that I train with Tenzou-sensei, she’s going to have him work on my dodging.”
Ino shares a grimace with her at the thought. They’re both good at evading attacks - a consequence of who they train with - but having a training session dedicated to nothing but dodging isn’t something that either of them find enjoyable.
“Just make sure you don’t get hurt too badly, Forehead,” Ino says.
Sakura quirks an eyebrow. “Why, don’t want to tend to my wounds, Pig?” she teases.
“As if,” Ino scoffs. “There are children who are better patients than you are, Sakura.”
Sakura makes a mock offended sound.
Ino absently takes Sakura’s hand and rubs a thumb across the back of it. “It’s more because if you get hurt bad enough, they won’t tell me,” she admits quietly.
“Wait, what?”
Ino glances at her. “It’s why I wasn’t here sooner, Aki wouldn’t give me any information,” she says. “Something about how I’m not immediate family or a registered teammate.”
Sakura frowns. “I get information about you whenever you’re in here as a patient,” she says. “It’s why I’m usually your attending physician.”
A thoughtful look crosses Sakura’s face. “The mission desk has the same rule,” she mutters, although it seems more to herself than to Ino, if the faraway look in her eyes is anything to go by.
That’s news to Ino. “I get updates about your mission status if I ask,” she says.
“Really?” Sakura’s frown changes into an expression of surprise. “They tell me that they can’t divulge information because I’m not family or your registered teammate, which I think is bullshit because we live together.”
There’s an edge to her voice, accompanied by what feels like an echo of an autumn breeze. It lets Ino know that Sakura’s other half is bleeding through.
Out of habit, she reaches out with her chakra to quell the irritation that she knows is building.
“I told Aki the same thing - that we’re living together,” Ino says.
“What’d she say to that?” Sakura asks, curious.
It’s not a secret that the two of them live in the same house.
“She asked if we were married,” Ino tells her. “I told her no, but I think that if I told her yes, she would’ve-”
“Told you about my status,” Sakura finishes. “Funnily enough, one of the chunin working the desk asked if you and I were married when I told her that you and I were living together.”
“I’m guessing you told her no, then?” Ino guesses.
“I did.” Sakura nods.
“Huh.” Ino sits back on the stool. “I still think it's weird that they’ll tell me your mission status, but they won’t tell you mine. Especially since it’s reversed at the hospital, which I think is bullshit because I work here.”
Sakura hums. “I’m starting to wonder if it’s because of what we do,” she says slowly. “You’re Intelligence and I’m-”
“Medical,” Ino finishes, then tilts her head in thought. “It’s possible.”
Sakura is the Godaime’s apprentice. It only makes sense that she would get carte blanche access to medical information whenever she asked for it.
(Ino has a feeling that Sakura is going to be the director of Konoha General before she’s twenty).
Ino is what some in T&I have dubbed to be the ‘apprentices’ apprentice.’ With Anko and Shizune as her mentors and Yamanaka Inoichi as her father, there is no piece of information that can remain a secret to her.
“I wonder if being married would make a difference,” she continues, more to herself than anything else.
“Let’s do it, then.”
Ino blinks. “What?”
“Let’s get married.” Ino stares. “It’ll kill two birds with one stone - we’ll count as each other’s immediate family and then you can get updates on my medical status if I get hurt again and I can ask about your mission status if you go on a mission outside of the village and I’m not on the team.”
“Are you serious?” Ino asks.
Sakura’s eyebrow climbs higher. “Were you not?”
“No, no, I was!” Ino says hastily. “I just, I didn’t think that you’d agree to the idea so quickly, Forehead.”
Sakura sniffs with feigned arrogance. There’s a smirk on her lips that Ino would kiss off right then and there if she were sure that the rosette loved her back.
“You can be slow on the uptake sometimes, Pig,” she teases.
Ino huffs without any real heat before standing. “Well, I’m not slow now.” She pushes the window open. “Let’s go.”
She watches Sakura blink. “Right now?”
Ino shrugs. “Why not? The registrar doesn’t close until seven.” She holds a hand out to Sakura. “So, let’s go get married.”
Sakura takes her hand without hesitation.
In one single, fluid motion, Ino pulls Sakura close and into a bridal carry. The move draws a yelp from Sakura and makes Ino grin.
“Ready, wife?” she teases.
She doesn’t miss the way Sakura’s eyes roll in exasperation. “Not your wife yet, Pig,” Sakura fires back.
Ino laughs. “Let’s go fix that then, Forehead,” she says, then leaps from the window with Sakura in her arms.
Sakura’s laughter fills the air.
-
Shikamaru looks at Ino like she’s lost her mind when she arrives at his house with Sakura in her arms.
“You’re doing what now?” he asks.
“Sakura and I are getting married,” she tells him matter-of-factly. “You and Choji are coming with us because we need witnesses.”
“Okaaay,” he draws out. “But why are you getting married, exactly? I thought you-”
Ino knows what he’s going to say and fixes him with a stern look to shut him up.
(She thinks that his mother would be proud of the look on her face right now).
“It’s so that I can be put down as Sakura’s immediate family and vise-versa,” Ino says. “That way I can get updates if she’s hurt and she can get updates if I take a mission outside of the village.”
“And getting married is the best way to do that,” he says flatly.
“It’s less paperwork,” Sakura comments. “I also can’t register with another team because of how mine was disbanded, or so I’ve heard.”
All of Team 10 shares a collective wince at her words. Ino knows that whilst Sakura is the Godaime’s apprentice - and likely the woman who will succeed her - there are people in the village with powerful positions who see the pinkette as nothing more than Uchiha Sasuke’s teammate.
(Nevermind that Sakura actively tried to stop Sasuke from defecting and ended up unconscious on a bench for her troubles, or that she spent three days in the hospital after that with delayed chakra exhaustion).
“Alright,” Shikamaru sighs. “Do Choji and me need to get changed for this or can we just go in our uniforms?”
“I’m in my greys, Shika,” Ino points out dryly.
“And I’m still wearing patient clothes,” Sakura adds.
“Troublesome women,” he groans.
Choji pats his shoulder. “Look at this way, Shika, at least you don’t have to spend effort trying to figure out what to wear,” he says.
“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbles. “Ne, Ino, have you figured out what you’re going to tell your dad about this whole thing later?”
Ino gives him a sweet smile because, no, she most definitely has not thought that far ahead. “I’ll burn that bridge when we get there, Shika,” she says.
She watches his and Choji’s brow furrow.
“Don’t you mean cross-” Choji starts, but Ino cuts him off.
“C’mon, let’s get going before they close!” she says cheerfully.
“But they don’t close until seven-” Shikamaru tries.
“I will tell your mother that you’re the one who broke that vase with the petunias when we were eight if you don’t start moving right now, Shikamaru,” Ino threatens.
She watches him pale.
Shikamaru grabs Choji’s arm and starts jogging in the direction of the registrar, leaving her and Sakura behind.
“You enjoyed that,” Sakura says.
Ino grins down at her. “Definitely.”
-
The four of them arrive at the registrar’s office without much fanfare.
They must make for an interesting sight, the four of them, Ino thinks as she notices the odd looks that are shot their way.
She’s still in her T&I greys and black trench coat that hangs loose on her form, whilst Sakura is still in her patient clothes that are almost as unfitting as Ino’s coat because hospital clothes flatter no one. Choji in his family’s customary armour that fits slightly loose on his frame because even two years after the disastrous Sasuke retrieval mission, putting on weight is still a challenge for him. Shikamaru is still in his duty outfit with his chunin vest that wears loose around his chest because he’s always been lanky like that.
(They’re adults in the eyes of the village, but they’re also still children, still just sixteen).
“Name and reason for appearance,” the registrar asks in a bored tone without looking up from her paperwork.
“Yamanaka Ino, registration number 012604 applying for a marriage license,” Ino says.
The registrar finally looks up.
Ino has to fight a smirk at the surprise that’s clear in the registrar’s eyes.
“Your partner?” she asks.
Ino finally lets Sakura down. The pinkette stands with ease, but still throws an arm around Ino’s shoulders.
“Me,” Sakura says. “Haruno Sakura, registration number 012601.”
The surprise in the registrar’s eyes gives way to a thousand questions. She’s obviously used to dealing with shinobi, though, because all it takes from Ino is a quirked eyebrow and the questions get pushed behind a professional mask.
“Alright.” The registrar grabs a thin stack of forms. “I’m assuming that the Nara and Akimichi behind you are your witnesses?”
“Yup,” Shikamaru confirms. “Nara Shikamaru, registration number 012611, witnessing for Yamanaka Ino.”
“Akimichi-san?” the registrar questions.
“Akimichi Choji,” he says, “registration number 012625, witnessing for Haruno Sakura.”
The registrar’s pen scritches against the paper.
“Haruno-san, can you place your hand here-” the pen motions to a blank square on the right corner the size of a palm- “to confirm that you are entering this union of your own will and have not been coerced through jutsu or threats?”
Sakura obliges, pressing her hand to the aforementioned spot on the document.
The paper glows blue.
The registrar nods. “Great. Yamanaka-san, you’re next,” she says. “Please do the same to confirm that you are entering this union of your own will and have not been coerced through jutsu or threats.”
Ino does.
The paper glows blue once more.
The registrar hums and holds out two pens. “Nara-san, please sign under Yamanaka-san’s name to confirm you’re her witness. Akimichi-san, please do the same under Haruno-san’s name.”
Ino doesn’t miss the way that Shikamaru grumbles under his breath as he takes the pen. She can’t bring herself to be too annoyed with him because she knows that this is just how he is.
Both boys sign the document quickly. Ino isn’t surprised to see that Shikamaru’s signature is a barely legible scribble, whilst Choji’s is neat and tidy.
“Alright.” The registrar pulls the paper back to sign it then stamps it twice, once on the top of the page and once on the page underneath it. “Congrats, you’re married.”
She says it so bluntly that if it weren’t for Sakura’s arm around her shoulder, Ino thinks that she would fall over in disbelief.
“That’s it?” Ino asks, stunned.
“Yep.” The registrar tears off the top sheet and hands it to Ino, who takes it without a word. “Is there anything else you needed, Yamanaka-san?”
Ino exchanges a look with Sakura, before returning her attention back to the registrar.
“How long will it take for us to be listed as each other’s immediate family in the system?” Ino asks.
“Well, I’ll file the copy of your license at the end of the day. All the benefits that come with it should kick in by the end of the week, at the latest.”
Ino gives Sakura a look. “Hear that, wife?” she teases. “That means you can’t get hurt again until the end of the week.”
She watches Sakura roll her eyes.
“That goes both ways, wife ,” Sakura retorts. “Going to have to work on your dodging so that Anko-san doesn’t put you in the hospital.”
Now it’s Ino’s turn to roll her eyes. She doesn’t say anything, though, because she’s not stupid enough to challenge Anko like that. The purple-haired woman may not be here, but Ino knows that she has ears everywhere.
Out of the corner of her eye, Ino notices that the registrar has a small smile playing on the corner of her lips.
“Maa, Ino, you’ve got your wife,” Shikamaru says, cutting in before Ino can really get their banter going. “Can we go now? Choji’s stomach sounds like it’s about to eat itself.”
Right on cue, Choji’s stomach roars.
There’s a choked sound from Sakura as she tries and fails to stifle her laughter.
Ino bites her lip to keep from laughing at how perfect the timing is.
“C’mon, let’s head to Yakiniku to celebreate,” she says. “Shika can pay for all of us.”
“Oi, why do I have to pay?!” he demands.
Ino flicks her hair over her shoulder. “Because you were my best man and the best man always pays for the dinner party,” she says cheekily.
She laughs as he sputters behind her.
-
(Nothing really changes between them now that they’re married.
They still share a bed, Ino still brings Sakura dinner when the rosette works a late shift at the hospital, and Sakura still drags Ino out of T&I when Shikamaru pops by the hospital to let her know that Ino has forgotten what day it is.
Other than Shikamaru and Choji, no one knows that Ino and Sakura are married. It’s not because Ino’s embarrassed by her marriage or because they’re ashamed. Rather, no one knows because both girls forget to tell anyone else. With how busy the two of them are, it’s an easy thing to do and in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that big of a problem.
Then, Uchiha Sasuke stabs Sakura in the chest).
-
Ino is seventeen when it happens.
It goes like this: their team stumbles upon Sasuke because of course they fucking do.
(Ino used to think that Team 7’s bad luck was just a bad joke. Then she started taking missions with Sakura).
Ino senses Sasuke before anyone can even spot him. He’s not hard to miss with chakra that cold and that dark. By the time the rest of the team sees him, her hands are already moving to form the signs she needs to make Sasuke’s body hers. She knows she won’t be able to hold him forever but she doesn’t need to. She just needs to buy her team time.
She never gets the chance to carry out her plan because Sakura moves first.
There’s a flash of pink hair in the corner of Ino’s eye and then the cliff explodes with new trees. Even with the distance between them, Ino sees Danzo’s eye widen, then narrow.
“Sakura!” Ino shouts a desperate warning because she knows. She knows what Danzo is about to do because she recognises the look in his eye: it’s the same look he had when he came into her house all those years ago and left with her brother.
Sakura clearly hears her but the warning is just air against a man like Danzo.
Before anyone can react, Danzo’s arm is around Sakura’s neck and her body has become his shield. Ino knows what his plan is before his arm has even finished pulling Sakura in front of him and she knows that his plan, like both of theirs, is doomed to fail. She doesn’t have to be a Yamanaka to know what he’s thinking - she just has to see his face to figure out his plan and realise that he thinks that Sasuke will pause at the sight of an old teammate in danger.
But Danzo, for all his eyes and ears around the village, does not know that Sakura tried to stop Sasuke with the Mokuton years ago. He doesn’t know that neither of them consider each other teammates.
(Ino knows because Sakura whispered the truth to her in a field full of flowers).
Danzo knows nothing. He both overestimates the relationship between Sasuke and Sakura - something that Ino will later find laughably ironic given the warhawk’s insistence that such relationships are meaningless - and underestimates the man himself. He can’t feel what Ino does when she looks at Sasuke. He doesn’t understand the depth of Sasuke’s hate, doesn’t understand just how far Sasuke has fallen.
Ino does.
She feels the way Sasuke’s chakra turns darker, sees the way Sakura’s eyes narrow with defiance and then she’s running, screaming, begging Sasuke to not do what he’s about to do. She prays to anyone and anything that will listen that the Uchiha will hear her words and remember the oaths of his clan to give her this small mercy, but it’s all for naught.
The moment his electric spear pieces Sakura’s chest, Ino feels like her own heart has taken the blow. In a way, it has. She and Sakura have shared souls and now her chest burns because Sakura’s chest is also burning.
Ino can hear Danzo choke in shock, can hear the rest of her team shouting, but she pays them no heed. All she can focus on is the soft gasp that leaves Sakura’s lips.
She moves faster than she ever has in her life - even faster than when she rushed to Asuma’s side a year ago - because she’s already lost Fu to Danzo. She won’t lose Sakura too.
Doton: Doryuuheki needs four hand seals to be formed without a massive chakra drain. With the way that Sasuke’s chakra grows colder, Ino knows she only has time for one.
She doesn’t hesitate.
She slams her hands together. “Doton: Doryuuheki!”
Her chakra coils ache as a wall of mud shoots up from the water. It’s an ugly thing that Tenzou would shake his head and Sakura would tease her for, but Ino hasn’t made it for its looks. She’s made it to break through the lightning and put some space between Danzo and Sakura.
She hears Sasuke’s roar of outrage but Ino doesn’t even bother to spare him a glance because her eyes are on Sakura.
(They’ve always been on Sakura).
She shushin’s towards Sakura, feeling her chakra coils scream in protest at a jutsu being performed without seals just seconds after she’d used minimal seals for the other one. She vanishes in a flash of leaves one moment and reappears by Sakura’s side the next.
(Cosmos bloom at their feet, unnoticed by either woman).
Lightning flies towards her, but Ino isn’t bothered by the light or the scream it makes because she knows that Sai has their backs.
The Chidori Spear never reaches Ino. Instead, it’s intercepted by a furious ink tiger that explodes into a spectacular shower of blank ink that has the added bonus of giving Ino cover too shushin away unseen.
She lands on one of the nearby cliffs with Sakura in her arms.
It hurts physically and mentally to lower Sakura to the ground, but she has to because even with the distance between them and the fight below, this position is still exposed. She cycles through the necessary hand signs to create a barrier and the earth moves in response to the pull of her chakra. What forms is another ugly thing that Tenzou would sigh at, but it’ll serve its purpose regardless of how it looks.
She turns her attention back to Sakura just as another ink tiger appears.
“Cover us,” Ino orders.
It nods like it understands her. It probably does, Ino muses; for someone who is like Fu, Sai’s art always contains pieces of his heart and soul in a way that likely enraged Danzo.
She drops to her knees next to Sakura. The pinkette is still breathing, but she’s in bad shape. There’s blood on Sakura’s lips and her chest shudders with uneven breaths.
“You fucking idiot, Forehead,” Ino snarls, hands lighting up with healing chakra.
Sakura has the audacity to grin, albeit weakly. “Your bedside manner sucks, Pig,” she wheezes.
Ino’s jaw clenches. “At least I’m smart enough to not throw myself into a situation like that!” she snaps, ignoring the hypocrisy of her own words. “I mean, honestly, what were you thinking?! You put the whole mission at risk and-”
“Danzo was going to use you. I couldn’t-” Sakura breaks out coughing. “If it comes down to you or the village, I pick you. Every time.”
“Why?” Ino demands.
The smile that Sakura gives her is warm, even with the blood staining her lips. “Because-” she breaks with another round of coughs- “because you’re my wife and I, we, we can’t lose you.”
We?
Ino feels the earth shift under them. She glances down to see what’s happening and finds the both of them surrounded by flowers - orchids, carnations, tiny springs of yellow acacias.
Ino’s heart stutters in her chest as realisation dawns on her. She thinks that she would shout in joy if Sakura weren’t bleeding out under her hands.
Sakura’s head lolls to the side. Before Ino can start to panic and shout at her, she hears a soft, “Huh.”
Ino feels her stomach drop, and it’s not because of the blood on her hands.
“Ino…” It comes out as a whisper that Ino hears loud and clear.
She shakes her head. “No, we aren’t doing this right now.”
She’s not doing this right now. She’s not going to have Sakura declare her love whilst she lays bleeding out under Ino’s hands.
Sakura brings a hand up to Ino’s face, brushing a thumb under Ino’s eye. “You’re my wife,” she says again.
Ino’s body shakes from the effort of fighting back tears. She won’t cry. She can’t. Sakura is still bleeding under her hands.
Sakura’s smile turns wistful. “Ino, I…” Her hand goes slack as her eyes slip shut.
Ino panics.
Before she realises what she’s doing, she throws her chakra and her consciousness at Sakura in a desperate attempt to keep her awake.
No, no, no stay awake stay awake STAY AWAKE!
Someone’s voice crashes into hers, just as desperate and raw.
Sakura’s other half.
Open your eyes you bitch! Wake up! We have to wake up! Sakura’s other half is screaming, her voice a combination of fury and panic.
Out of habit, Ino reaches out to soothe that rage.
You- you’re here-
I’m here.
She won’t wake up, we aren’t waking up-
I know, I’m here though and I-
Ino bites back a cry of agony that’s echoed by Sakura’s other half as a burning sensation rips through her. She blinks past tears of pain to see Hinata kneeling in front of her, hands covering Sakura’s wound.
“She’s lost a lot of blood,” Hinata reports.
But she’s alive?
Ino shakes her head as the voice of Sakura’s other half rings through her head. “She’s still alive.”
She ignores the confused look that Hinata gives her.
“We have to get her back to Konoha,” Hinata says. “We’ve both done what we can, Ino-san, but-”
She needs Tsunade-shishou.
“She needs Tsunade-shishou,” Ino says. “Are we clear to move then?”
“Yes.” Hinata nods.
“Okay.” Ino places a hand on Sakura’s face. “You better not die on me before we get back, you hear me, Forehead? I’ll never forgive you if you do.”
We won’t.
“You better not.”
“Ino-san-” Hinata starts, but Ino shakes her head.
“Let’s just go. We don’t know if Sasuke’s coming back.”
-
(Ino learns that Sakura’s other half is called Inner.
Why Inner? She asks.
Because I exist inside.
If you exist, then-
Then she’s alive ).
-
Ino sprints back to Konoha faster than she ever has in her life.
Her squad struggles to keep up with her, but Ino can’t bring herself to care because Sakura is unconscious on her back and Inner’s anxiety hums under her skin like lightning.
(Sharing her soul doesn't feel anything like the way it's described in her clan's stories. There’s no euphoria or beauty, only desperation and fear - desperation that she feels because she needs Sakura awake, and fear for what it means if Sakura dies on her back).
She bursts into Konoha General shouting for Tsunade and other medics.
There’s a gurney in front of her in an instant.
It hurts to place Sakura on the gurney, but Ino does so anyway because she’s running on autopilot now and Inner has taken the lead.
The lightning chakra is centered near our heart.
“The lightning chakra is centered near her heart,” Ino relays.
Her hands are covered in green healing chakra once more as Inner guides them over Sakura’s unconscious form. Even with the healing chakra covering her hands, the lightning chakra in Sakura’s system still stings.
We’re isolating it, but we won’t be able to keep it up forever. We need to be in an operating room.
“She’s isolating it there, but she won’t be able to keep up forever. She needs to be in an operating room,” Ino says, looking up at the medics around her. “Where the hell is Tsunade-sama?!”
“I’m right here, Yamanaka,” comes Tsunade’s gruff voice from over her shoulder. “What have we got?”
Ino readies herself to answer, but then the lightning chakra goes from stinging to burning. Just like that, her attention is right back on Sakura.
There’s too much. It needs to be guided.
“There’s too much. It needs to be guided,” she echoes, more to herself than anyone else. “But how…?”
Breathe, my love. Ino exhales. You have us and I have you.
Ino syncs her chakra with Sakura’s for an instant. It’s a reckless move - one that she knows Tsunade will have Shizune and Anko kick her across the village for - but an effective one.
“Yamanaka, what the hell are you doing?!” she hears Tsunade demand.
Ino doesn’t give a verbal answer. Instead, she breathes when Inner does and then she pulls her hands back, gently coaxing Sakura’s chakra to follow hers.
It takes seconds to pull the excess lightning chakra out from Sakura’s system, but it feels like an eternity to Ino. Her hands feel like she’s taken a katon jutsu to them, but she pushes past the pain with Inner’s help because Sakura needs this.
There. That’s bought us some time.
“It bought her some time,” Ino says. “Now, let’s move-”
She snaps the guardrails up and readies to move, only to be stopped by Aki’s hand on her shoulder.
“You can’t go back there,” she says.
Ino’s nostrils flare at both Aki’s interruption and the fact that the other medics have finally gotten involved to wheel Sakura back.
“I was the responding medic!” she protests. “I’m not turning care of my-” wife “patient over!”
“You barely have enough chakra left to heal,” Aki says gently.
Ino grits her teeth. “Fine,” she spits out. “Then I want updates on her status.”
“Status updates are limited to immediate family and registered teammates, Ino-san,” Aki reminds her. “I’m afraid-”
“She’s my wife!” Ino blurts out.
The activity in the room freezes.
“Excuse me?” Tsunade questions, stunned.
“She’s my wife,” Ino says again. “We’re married.”
She has to fight the urge to sob because she’s wanted to say those words out loud and have them be real for so long and now they are, but not for the reason she wants them to be.
Ino gives Shikamaru and Choji a helpless look, begging them to back her up.
“It’s true, Tsunade-sama,” Choji says. “Shikamaru and I were witnesses.”
“We filed the paperwork and everything,” Ino tells her. “Just, please, Sakura’s my wife. I’m her immediate family. That means I have a right to know her medical status.”
She can’t stop the desperation bleeding into her voice now. She needs them to listen to her and believe her because she’s telling the truth.
Aki looks uncomfortable. “We would need verification-” she starts.
“I have our marriage license,” Ino cuts her off. “It’s-”
Her voice catches in her throat because she doesn’t have it on her. It’s at home on their shared dresser.
“I’ll get it,” Shikamaru cuts in smoothly. “If I get it and bring it here, will that work?”
Aki looks to Tsunade, who still looks stunned at the revelation but gives a curt nod in confirmation.
Shikamaru returns the nod then sprints from the hospital hallway faster than anyone likely thought possible for a Nara.
“Until he gets back, you’re going to park yourself here, Yamanaka,” Tsunade says. “You try and push Aki for information, I’ll have you kicked from the hospital until Sakura wakes up.”
“Understood, Tsunade-sama,” Ino says almost immediately.
She’ll accept it even if she finds an issue with it. Sakura is unconscious and Ino needs to know that the pinkette is going to be okay.
Tsunade turns her attention back to remaining medics. “Is the operating room prepped?” she asks.
“Yes, Tsunade-sama, the array is set and they’re positioning Haruno-san now,” the lead medic informs her.
“Good. Let’s move. Yamanaka bought us some time, but the window is closing and I’d like to get in there before it closes completely…”
Her voice fades out as she and the medics rush towards the surgical wing, leaving Ino standing in the hall with Aki, Choji, and the rest of the squad that had accompanied them on the mission.
“You should sit, Ino-san,” Aki says gently.
“I-” Ino starts, only to stop when Choji places his hand on her shoulder.
“Come on,” he says. “We’ve been on our feet for ages. Might as well take a load off until Shika gets back.”
Ino lets him maneuver her into one of the hard, uncomfortable plastic chairs that line the hallway. She sits, hands folded in front of her face as if to pray (because she is praying), numb as can be.
“Ne, Ino-chan, are you and Sakura-chan really married?” she hears Naruto ask. “Because it’s a really funny joke if-”
Inner’s rage at Naruto’s words crashes over her like a stormy ocean.
Ino’s head snaps up to glare at him. “It’s not a joke!” she snarls, the rage in her voice both hers and Inner’s.
He takes a step back in fear.
“It’s not a joke,” she says again, softer this time. “We, we are married. We got married a year ago.”
“Why?” Kiba asks.
What business is it of his to know? Inner demands.
“Why is it your business to know?” Ino echoes.
Kiba looks sheepish. “I’m just surprised, is all,” he says. “I mean, I knew you both had been dating for a while-”
“We weren’t.”
She watches Kiba and the others blink.
“You weren’t what?” he asks, confused.
“Dating,” Ino clarifies. “Sakura and I, we weren’t together. We aren’t.”
“But you’re living together,” he says.
“Sakura lives with me because her parents are dead, Kiba,” she says. “She didn’t have anyone to come home to, so I offered her my place.”
She doesn’t tell them that she and Sakura share a room or a bed. She also doesn’t tell them that it’s been that way since the day Sakura moved in.
A disbelieving silence settles over them.
“You are not together, but you are married?” Sai speaks up. “How does that even work, then? Everything I have read indicates that marriages require relationships before they are initiated.”
Ino shrugs. “It was...convenient,” she says slowly. “It made us each other’s immediate family, that way I could get status updates if she got hurt and so that she could get information about my missions if I had to take one out of the village.”
“You got married for information benefits?” Naruto asks.
I married Sakura because I love her, Ino wants to snap. Instead, though, she takes a deep breath to quell both her anger and the echo of resentment that hums under her skin.
“No,” she says, “we got married because your team abandoned her.”
Naruto looks stricken at her words. “I didnt-” he tries, but Ino isn’t having it.
“Save it for someone who might actually believe you, Naruto,” she cuts him off. “Sasuke left her on a bench, you went off with Jiraiya-sama, and Kakashi-sensei threw himself into the ANBU, which left Sakura as the last active member of Team 7.”
She knows that her words are a tad cruel, but they’re words that she feels that Naruto needs to hear. After all, how many nights had Sakura wept in her arms after Team 7 had been officially disbanded?
She holds her hand up to stop the words of protest that Naruto stutters out.
“I get why you had to leave, which is why I didn’t immediately kick your ass across the village when you got back,” she tells him. “It doesn’t change the fact that your team up and left her behind, which meant that she had no one to check up on her because she couldn’t register with another team.”
Ino’s met by looks of surprise.
“Oh, yeah, turns out when your team is disbanded because someone on it goes rogue, you can’t register with another team,” she says casually, like she’s talking about the weather instead of a bullshit policy that the Elders put in place after Orochimaru defected.
(She learned that little tidbit from Anko months ago. Just another reason why things need to change, Ino reckons).
“I didn’t know,” Naruto says quietly. “I just assumed that-”
That what, everything would be the same as it was when he left it? Inner questions. That actions don’t have consequences?
“That everything would be the same as it was when you left it?” Ino echoes. “That actions wouldn’t have consequences? Newsflash, Naruto, that’s not how the world works.”
The words that Ino says are words that have been building in Sakura’s heart for the better part of two years. Sakura can’t say them right now, so Ino will say them on her behalf.
“Ino,” Choji chides gently, “c’mon, I think that’s a bit harsh, don’t you?”
No, Inner snaps.
“No,” Ino echoes, “I don’t.”
“Beautiful’s wife was stabbed in the chest today,” Sai notes. “I think that means she’s within her right to be harsh.”
That’s our boy, Inner says.
“Thank you, Sai,” Ino says.
Before she can say more, Shikamaru reappears, chest heaving and sweat beading his forehead. To her relief, there’s a piece of paper in his hand - a piece of paper that she recognises.
(She’s spent more time than she’d care to admit looking at that piece of paper for months now whenever Sakura isn’t home).
Her relief doesn’t last long though, because she notices her father is standing next to Shikamaru.
Ino’s stomach drops at the sight of him.
Shikamaru stumbles forward, oblivious to the turmoil now twisting in her stomach, and shows the paper to Aki.
“Here,” he says. “Their marriage license. My signature is on the bottom as Ino’s witness. Choji’s is for Sakura. Date has them married a year ago.”
Ino watches Aki nod. “I’ll make the appropriate notes in Haruno, er, Yamanaka-san-”
“Haruno,” Ino mutters quietly. “She still goes by Haruno.”
Another nod from Aki. “I’ll make the notes in Haruno-san’s file and make sure that someone comes by to give you updates, Ino-san,” she says.
For the first time in hours, Ino smiles. It’s a weak one, but it’s a smile nonetheless.
“Thank you, Aki-san,” she says and she means it.
An awkward silence settles over them as the rest of the Rookie 9 and Sai notice Ino’s father.
“Oh, uh, hey, Inoichi-san,” Kiba greets lamely.
“Kiba-kun.” Her father tips his head, but his face otherwise remains expressionless. “Would you all allow me some privacy with my daughter?”
Shit.
Ino’s stomach drops further.
Her peers, with the exception of Shikamaru and Choji, quickly make a hasty retreat with stammered goodbyes.
Shikamaru stuffs a hand in his pocket and leans back slightly, casual as can be. Ino’s marriage license is in his hand at his side like it’s a weapon that he’s ready to deploy on her behalf.
Choji, for his part, shifts so that his body provides some form of cover for Ino.
Her father raises his eyebrow at her boys. “I’d like some privacy,” he says again.
“Maa, you’ve got it with us,” Shikamaru drawls. “Not like we’ll spill anything that’s said.”
Ino winces when her father smiles. It’s not a nice smile on his lips - it’s the one that he uses right before he takes a prisoner to task.
“I wasn’t asking, Shikamaru.”
All three of them flinch at his tone.
“Inoichi-oji-” Choji tries.
“Choji,” Ino cuts him off. “Go. I’ll be okay.”
He hesitates. “Ino…”
“Go,” she says again. “Both of you. I’ll stop by your place later, Shika, once Sakura’s out of surgery.”
She’s lying, of course and all three of them know it. Ino has no intention of leaving the hospital unless she’s ordered to by the Godaime herself.
“Troublesome woman,” Shikamaru sighs. He holds her marriage license out to her. “Want to hold on to it or want me to take it back to your place?”
Ino takes it. “I’ll hold on to it. Might need it again later,” she muses.
He nods. “Alright. Well, I’ll have mom make an extra plate for dinner when you stop by.”
Ino smiles. “Thanks, Shika.”
He squeezes her shoulder. “We’re Team 10,” he says.
“We stand by each other, no matter what,” Choji adds.
Ino’s heart aches at their words even with the warmth behind them. It’s a modification of the team motto that Asuma had all but beat into them during their genin days - a modification that she and Choji made when Sakura joined Team 10 for their second crack at the Chunin Exams. It had been their way of welcoming her to their little family and a way to keep Team 7 alive.
Both Shikamaru and Choji reluctantly take their leave.
Ino waits until her boys are out of sight before returning her attention back to her father. His face is still frighteningly blank.
“Tou-san,” she greets, bowing as best she can from her seated position.
She would stand but doesn’t have the energy to do so.
“Ino-chan.” Her father takes the seat that Choji had been sitting in earlier. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Ino hesitates. There’s a small part of her that wants to lie and say that they forgot, but her father knows her too well for such a lie to be believable.
“We married for convenience,” she eventually says. “I didn’t think that such a matter was worth bringing to your attention.”
It’s not a complete lie. Her and Sakura’s marriage is one of convenience.
“If I didn’t know that you and Sakura had been sharing a bed in addition to a room for the last two years-” Ino can feel her face turn red at his words- “I would believe you. Would you like to try again?”
Foreign panic spreads in her gut. She knows right away that it belongs to Inner and reaches out accordingly out of habit to soothe it.
Breathe, my love, she tells Inner. Otherwise, I won't be able to breathe either.
How can you be so calm? Inner demands. How can-
“Oh.”
Ino startles at the sound of her father's voice. She glances at him to find a neutral expression in his face.
She winces. It's clear to her that he had picked up on their exchange.
Before she can kick herself for forgetting to keep her barriers up, she hears him murmur, “You and Sakura…”
Her father trails off, clearly not willing to say the words aloud in such a public place.
Ino finds herself grateful for that. Some things are best left unsaid in a place like this because even with Danzo dead, there are still ears everywhere.
“Her soul is mine and mine is hers,” Ino says quietly.
The words are simple, but they hang heavy in the air. Ino is fully aware of their significance - along with the implication that they carry.
Her father is silent for the longest time, but Ino doesn't worry. She knows his mind must be reeling. Amongst the Yamanaka - to whom the mind and spirit are considered sacrosanct things - such words are not said lightly. To say them, to claim that you have shared your soul with another, is a declaration more sacred than wedding vows.
Ino knows that.
Her father does too. The next thing she hears him ask is, “Do you love her?”
“I do,” Ino says.
Warmth hums under her skin. It feels like love.
Her father must notice, because he tilts his head then sighs.
“Word of your marriage has already spread through the clan because Shikamaru wasn't particularly subtle in his search for your marriage license," he tells her. “I won't lie to you, Ino. The clan is...unhappy.”
“Because I’ve taken a wife instead of a husband or because my wife comes from a civilian family?” Ino asks before she can stop herself.
Her father clicks his tongue in rebuke. “Neither, actually,” he says, his tone just shy of chiding. “They’re more upset that you didn’t have a proper ceremony and that you’d kept it a secret for so long.”
Ino has the decency to look abashed by his words.
“What about you, tou-san?” she finally dares to ask.
Is he upset? Is he disappointed? Is he ashamed of her?
Her lower back tingles with the phantom sensation of a hand pressing against it in comfort.
To her surprise, her father wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her close to press a kiss to the side of her head.
“I wish that you had told me, blossom,” he says quietly, “but I’m not upset. Disappointed that I didn’t get to walk you down the aisle, yes, but not upset. I would never be upset with you for loving someone.”
He pauses.
“Well, except for the Uchiha boy,” he amends. “I never liked him.”
Laughter like a brisk autumn breeze echoes across Ino’s mind.
“I didn’t like him either, tou-san,” Ino admits. “I only said that I did to get Sakura’s attention. It’s...it’s always been her, I think.”
No, she knows it’s always been Sakura for her.
It’s always been you, Inner says quietly. Since that day under the tree.
Ino bites her lip to keep the tears that she can feel burning her eyes at bay. That’s funny, she says, fists clenching a top her thighs. I’ve loved you the same amount of time.
She startles when she feels her father squeeze her shoulder.
“She’ll be okay, Ino,” he says.
“You can’t be certain of that, tou-san,” she says.
Ino knows better than to claim certainty with anything that involves the hospital. She’s seen cases turn for the worst on a dime.
Her father merely smiles. “Your wife is a strong woman, Ino,” he reminds her. “Have some faith in her.”
Ino doesn’t know how to tell her father that she has faith. So much faith. But she also has fear, a deep crushing fear that didn’t go away just because she made it to the hospital with Sakura still breathing.
So, she doesn’t tell him. She hums instead and closes her eyes as the phantom sensation of arms settles around her waist. She can feel her back warm, almost the way it does whenever Sakura is pressed against it.
I have you, Inner whispers.
Her father’s arm joins Inner’s arm around her waist, grounding Ino.
“Thank you,” Ino says aloud to the both of them.
Both her father and Inner hum almost in unison as they wait for an update on Sakura’s condition.
-
Sakura survives with a scar above her heart, much to Ino’s relief. She doesn’t get a chance to enjoy that relief because Tsunade proceeds to inform her that Sakura is in a coma.
Ino nearly collapses when Tsunade’s words register with her brain. The only reason she doesn’t is because her father has a deathgrip on her upper arm.
“Are you going to need someone to say and monitor Sakura’s condition?” Ino asks quickly. “Because I can-”
“Not a chance, Yamanaka,” Tsunade cuts her off. “You’re going home.”
“Tsunade-sama,” Ino tries.
“Hospital policy - no treating immediate family,” Tsunade tells her. “Besides, you’re clearly exhausted. You may have had enough chakra for that little stunt earlier - don’t think that I’ll forget about that, by the way - but I doubt you have enough left to run a diagnostic scan, let alone provide care if things take a turn for the worst.”
Ino’s stomach clenches at the thought.
“Come back tomorrow during visiting hours,” Tsunade says.
Ino opens her mouth to protest, but the way her father’s grip tightens around her arm and the way Tsunade’s eyes darken make her pause.
“Go home or I’m demoting you,” Tsunade growls.
Ino’s half ready to say that she’ll take the demotion. Then, she feels Inner brush through her mind.
We don’t want that for you.
Ino exhales. “Understood, Tsunade-sama,” she says curtly. “Can I at least see my wife before I leave?”
My wife.
The words leave her lips so easy now.
Tsunade sighs. “I’ll give you five minutes. Come on.”
Ino follows without complaint. Five minutes isn’t ideal, but she’ll take it over no time at all.
She feels Inner brush against her mind again, stronger this time.
You should kiss her wrists before you leave, Inner says.
Ino raises her mental barriers to give them the illusion of privacy as she walks. Why? She questions.
Because it’s an old Haruno superstition that’s supposed to catch the attention of our ancestors and remind them that the person you love has someone waiting for them at home.
Ino’s heart flutters in her chest when Inner mentions the word love .
The door to Sakura’s room clicks open, drawing Ino out of her mind.
“Five minutes,” Tsunade warns.
Ino tips her head in acquiescence then steps inside towards Sakura’s unconscious form. The pinkette is paler than she should be, in Ino’s opinion.
Ino eyes Sakura’s wrists. How does it work? She asks.
The left wrist is for luck, Inner tells her. The right one is for protection, or so our parents told us.
Ino kisses Sakura’s left wrist. “For luck,” she whispers against the cool skin, then moves to kiss Sakura’s right wrist.
“For protection,” she adds.
She moves a hand from Sakura’s wrist to touch her face. “You better fucking wake up, Forehead,” she says. “You hear me? You better wake up.”
Is that an order? Inner asks, her voice a combination of wryness but also cautious questions.
You’re damn right it is. Ino just barely brushes her lips against the corner of Sakura’s lips. Do you know if she can hear it?
I can still feel what she feels, is Inner’s reply.
Ino strokes Sakura’s cheek with a thumb. “You’re my wife. I know we didn’t have a ceremony or exchange vows but…”
She leans down so that her lips are by the shell of Sakura’s ear.
“I have you,” she murmurs. “With my ancestors and the spirits of the Founders as my witnesses, I vow to be by your side for as long as the forests of Konoha are deep, to have you as you have me, and to love all of you with hesitation.”
Ino pulls back. “I love you, Sakura,” she says. “I’m sorry that it took me so long to say it.”
It’s okay, Inner says.
No, it’s not.
Ino should have told her the day that they got married.
“Time’s up, Yamanaka,” Tsunade interrupts. “You leaving under your own power or am I punting you out that window in front of your father and your wife?”
“Don’t worry, Tsunade-sama, I’m leaving for the day,” Ino says.
She pauses for the briefest of moments to fluff Sakura’s hair. “I’ll be back tomorrow with flowers,” she says.
There’s no response from Sakura, not that Ino expected one. From the way that her chest warms though, Ino has a feeling Sakura heard her.
-
Ino and her father make their way home in silence.
When they arrive, Ino immediately heads for the stairs to go to her (their) room, only to pause when she hears, “Sakura.”
Ino feels Inner rise in her chest in question.
“I don’t know how you and my daughter have come to share a soul and I won’t ask, as doing so goes against the laws of our clan,” he says. “However, would you permit me to ask a question directly to you?”
Yes, Inner says.
“Yes,” Ino echoes in comfirmation.
“Do you love my daughter?” her father asks.
I do, Inoichi-sama, Inner confirms and Ino knows that Inner is speaking for both herself and Sakura.
Something flashes through her father’s eyes - relief, approval, some combination of the two, perhaps.
“Will you allow me to make a request of you, then?”
Anything, Inoichi-sama.
“Love my daughter and do not let her go.”
I will, Inoichi-sama, Inner promises.
“Good.” Her father nods approvingly.
Ino can’t stop the sob that breaks free from her throat. She throws her arms around her father’s shoulders and starts to cry into his shoulder because she has approval for her relationship with Sakura, but Sakura isn’t here with her to hear it.
Warmth spreads through Ino’s chest.
I have you, Inner whispers.
“Maa, you really picked a good one, blossom,” her father says.
“I really did, tou-san,” she chokes out around her tears. “I really did.”
-
Ino finds out the next morning that when her father had told her that the clan was “unhappy” about the whole situation, it had been an understatement.
Her clansmen aren’t just unhappy. They’re furious .
The wall of noise that greets her when she enters the clan hall is proof enough of that.
She hurries through the crowd to take her place by her father’s side. The moment she sits, she’s immediately set upon by a group of older Yamanaka women. She thinks that they’re scolding her, but she can’t make out the words that leave their lips because they’re all so loud that she can’t tell any of them apart.
Breathe, my love, Inner says. I have you.
Ino takes a deep breath to center herself. It may just be a trick of her own mind, but she swears the noise clears ever so slightly. She turns her attention away from her aunts to find the Yamanaka Elders all but screaming at her father.
“You approve of this union, Inoichi?” Toru-oji demands hotly.
Ino’s jaw clenches at his tone. She will tolerate many things from the Elders, but outright disrespect of her father is not one of them.
She opens her mouth to spit something vitriolic, only for the words to die in her throat when her father says, “They’ve shared souls.”
Ino watches as the faces of her clansmen and elders change from hurt and irate to stunned disbelief and shock. They all know the significance of her father’s words. It is one thing to delve into a person's mind. It is another to delve so deep into a person that you end up sharing souls with them. Few in the history of the Yamanaka have done so and each occurrence is considered to be a rare, sacred phenomenon.
Now is no different.
The atmosphere in the room changes in an instant.
“When?” Hana-oba questions.
Eyes turn to Ino.
Ino licks her lips. “I saw a girl sitting under a tree, hiding behind her hair like a shy little ghost as she wept,” she starts off, “and I reached out to see if I could cheer her up.”
She hears Inner gasp quietly in the back of her mind.
“My mind met hers for an instant to offer comfort, but our souls didn’t truly touch until we were enemies in an arena.”
Inner’s smirk and a finger trailing down her cheek
Chakra that feels like a warm summer breeze
Heat in her soul and body to match it
Ino swallows. “Our souls were fully shared thanks in part to the actions of Shimura Danzo and Uchiha Sasuke,” she says. “I, I wanted to keep her awake so I reached out and her soul became mine and mine became hers.”
It’s such an elegant way to put an inelegant moment. The stories of her clan that recall similar instances always painted them as beautiful things, but for Ino there had been nothing beautiful about the moment her spirit crashed into Sakura’s. It had been raw and desperate with panic and ugly thanks to the blood staining Sakura’s body and Ino’s hands.
“Perhaps I was premature in marrying Sakura before our souls had shared fully,” she concedes. “And I’ll admit that it was a mistake to do so without informing any of you because I inadvertently denied the clan a chance to share in our joy. For that, I will apologise.”
Ino sits straighter and fixes her clansmen with a look of steel.
“I will not, however, apologise for the act of marrying her,” she says. “My soul is hers and hers is mine. It has always been that way, will always be that way, and to deny such a fact is to deny our sacred traditions.”
Silence reigns in the clan hall.
Ino feels her stomach flutter with nerves. Before she can start to fidget, she feels the phantom sensation of lips against her neck as the skin on her back tingles.
I have you , Inner whispers.
“Well damn, how can we say anything against that?” her uncle, Santa, asks.
“Easy, boy,” Toru-oji drawls, “we don’t.”
“Ino-chan.” Ino stiffens when Hana-oba addresses her. “Answer me this, girl: do you love her?”
“I do,” Ino says without hesitation.
She loves Sakura. She thinks that she’s always loved Sakura.
Hana-oba nods, like she finds Ino’s answer satisfactory. “You have my approval for your union, then,” she says.
Ino’s breath stops in her chest. Does that mean…?
“I take issue with how you were wed and that you concealed it from us for so long,” Toru-oji grumbles. “However, even as annoyed as I am, I still offer my approval for your marriage as well. I’m not fool enough to deny what is clearly a union guided by the spirits of our ancestors.”
“Are we going to ignore Haruno’s team history?” Yojimbo-oji’s voice rumbles from the back. “Her team consists of a traitor and-”
Ino’s chakra flares wild and hot like the rage that sears through her chest. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots her father leaning away as sweat beads his forehead.
“Team 7 was disbanded two years ago,” she snarls. “My wife is a member of Team 10, regardless of if the village recognises this fact or not, and she has served alongside us flawlessly.”
“She’s a civilian,” Yojimbo-oji tries to bluster.
The Haruno were samurai, once, Inner snarls.
“The Haruno were samurai, once,” Ino echoes. “My wife is a warrior and a loyal one at that. The fact that she’s in the hospital a second time as a result of trying to stop Uchiha Sasuke is proof enough of that.”
Ino rises to her feet and fixes her clansmen with a cold look that brooks no challenge.
“Let me make something clear to all of you: I will accept legitimate criticisms of my wife and I,” she says. “But painting my wife as a traitor because of who her teammate was or implying that she’s a danger because of another - that I will not stand for.”
Her eyes sweep the crowd.
“Sakura is loyal to the village. She is loyal to the clan,” she continues when silence meets her. “She tends to our gardens and they have flourished under her hands. She has cared for our clansmen like they were her family long before we were married. It is clear to me that some of you have forgotten these facts. I highly recommend that you consult with your fellow Yamanaka so that you might remember, because you dishonour yourself and the clan by allowing your own ignorance to colour your views.”
“Now,” Ino exhales harshly, “are there any further objections?”
None come.
Her father sighs quietly next to her. “Yojimbo, do you wish to continue with your objection?” he asks.
Ino watches her uncle’s jaw clench. “No,” he grumbles. “I withdraw my objection, Yamanaka-sama. It is clear that it was made with poor information.”
“Very well.” Her father nods. “A vote now, then, on whether or not the clan considers the marriage between Haruno Sakura and our heiress, Yamanaka Ino, to be valid. All in favour, raise your hands.”
Ino watches as a sea of hands rises almost in unison.
“Those against?” her father asks.
All the hands fall at his question. To Ino’s relief, none rise up behind them.
“Does the clan then acknowledge Haruno Sakura as one of our own through this marriage?” he questions.
The resulting, “AYE,” is unanimous. It rings through the clan hall with such force that it nearly makes Ino stumble back in surprise. The sensation of Inner’s phantom hand on her lower back keeps her steady, though.
“Kenta,” her father says, “please make a note for today’s meeting record that not only does the clan unanimously acknowledge the legitimacy of Haruno Sakura’s marriage into our clan, but that we have unanimously accepted her as one of our own as well.”
Ino feels her breath catch her throat at her father’s words. She, like many of the others in the room, can count on one hand the number of times that the clan has been unanimous in its votes.
“Of course, Inoichi-sama,” Kenta says.
“Also please make a note that I, Yamanaka Inoichi, the Fifteenth Head, approve of this union between my heir and the Head of the Haruno Clan,” her father adds, flashing a smile at her.
Ino feels Inner grieve at her father’s words. It makes Ino’s heart ache.
She presses a hand to her chest, both to salute her father in thanks and to comfort Inner, then turns her attention back to all of her clansmen.
“I thank all of you for your understanding and compassion for this matter.” She bows deeper than she normally would because she knows just how poorly this could have gone. “When the time comes for me to lead, I will do my best to ensure that my wife and I repay the kindness you have shown us.”
“What are you going to do about the Uchiha?” one of her cousins, Kohan, she thinks, calls out.
Ino straightens. “He tried to kill the wife of the future Yamanaka Clan Head,” she says slowly. “For that alone, I believe that I am well within my right to ask that the clan back me in demanding his head right now. However…”
She hesitates for a brief moment.
She doesn’t love him, Inner whispers.
But he was hers, once, Ino replies.
For that, Ino will hold her clan’s wrath back. For now.
“I believe that declaring a blood feud between our clans is unwise at this time.” She holds her hand up as murmurs break out amongst her clansmen. “I won’t put my own desire for vengeance above the needs of the village, nor will I ask the clan to do so. Uchiha Sasuke did that and look where it got him.”
Ino shares a glance with her father.
“Make no mistake,” she says, “the moment his Chidori pierced my wife’s chest, the Uchiha lost the Yamanaka as his ally. If, somehow he is apprehended and winds up escaping punishment-”
Because Ino isn’t blind. She knows how some people in power still value Sasuke.
“I will make the recommendation to my father that the Yamanaka formally renounce any obligations that we may still have to the Uchiha.”
It would only be fair, Ino thinks. Sasuke had broken his clan’s oaths and obligations to hers when he stabbed Sakura in the heart.
“And when you’re Clan Head?” Toru-oji questions. “Will you stand by your recommendation?”
Ino looks her granduncle directly in the eyes. “He will never have our clan as his ally as long as I lead them,” she says firmly.
“Will your wife back this course of action?” Hana-oba asks.
We will, Inner says. He tried to kill Naruto and Sai, and he would’ve killed you if Sakura hadn’t moved first. That’s unforgivable to us.
Ino presses a hand against her chest and nods. “She will.”
Hana-oba’s gaze seems to pierce her very soul as it sweeps over her. Before Ino can even start to tense, her grandmother nods.
“Good,” she finally says.
Her father claps his hands once to draw the attention back to himself. “Are there any further questions for my heir?”
A sea of blonde ponytails shake with denials.
“Very well. Then consider this meeting adjourned,” he says.
There are hums of agreement and thanks as their clansmen stand and make their way out, leaving Ino and her father alone. As soon as the last Yamanaka has left, Ino lets out a breath she hadn’t realised that she’d been holding and slumps to the ground.
“‘Unhappy’ you said,” she complains. “You really should’ve just told me that they were pissed, tou-san.”
Her father laughs. “You handled yourself admirably, blossom.”
“Still!” she protests.
“Consider it a taste of what you’ll face when you lead them,” he says as he sits down next to her. “You’re going to make a wonderful Clan Head, Ino.”
Ino blinks. “You think so?” she asks.
He smiles. “I know so,” he says. “I think that with Sakura by your side, you’ll be unstoppable.”
Ino casts a look to where the portraits of the past Yamanaka Clan Heads sit.
“Love can make us strong,” she murmurs absently.
“It most certainly can,” her father agrees. “Who told you that?”
“Asuma-sensei.” She looks back at her father. “He didn’t know that Sakura and I were married when he died.”
Ino wonders if he’d had some idea, though, because there had been something in his eyes when he told her to not be afraid of telling Sakura that she loved her.
Her father squeezes her hand in his. “Asuma was a wise man.”
“He really was, tou-san.”
-
When she visits Sakura later that evening to tell her how things went with the clan, Ino finds Sakura’s hospital room filled with flowers. She finds out from the nurses on duty that her clansmen have been stopping throughout the day to leave flowers for her wife.
What do they mean? Inner asks.
Ino brushes her fingers against the bluebells. Grateful.
She eyes the daffodils and sunflowers nearby. Respect.
She adds some red cosmoses and a few blue salvia stalks to the collection. Love and good health.
You should take her hand, Inner says.
Ino’s brow furrows. Why?
We have something for you.
Ino raises an eyebrow in question, but takes Sakura’s limp hand nonetheless. It’s still cooler than it should be, although Ino is relieved to feel that it is a touch warmer than it was the day before.
There’s a soft pulse of chakra against her skin that feels like the echo of a spring breeze. For a second, Ino thinks that it’s a sign that Sakura is about to way up. To her dismay though, Sakura’s body does’t so much as move even as chakra flows between them.
Moments later, Ino feels flower petals tickling the palm of her hand. She looks at their joined hands to see a single forget-me-not.
Tears sting Ino’s eyes at the sight.
It’s always been you for us, Inner says.
Ino leans down to kiss Sakura’s forehead. “It’s always been you for me too,” she whispers.
She brushes her free hand against Sakura’s cool cheeks. “I need you to wake up, Forehead. I need my wife back with me. I can’t lose you like I lost Fu.”
Who? Inner asks.
Ino keeps her eyes on Sakura’s unconscious face. “My brother,” she says quietly. “I had a brother. His name was Fu.”
We never knew that, Inner says.
“No one does,” Ino says. “Danzo killed him.”
A man with bandages over an eye, hair black as night.
The man’s hand on a young boy’s shoulder.
Her father at the dinner table with his head in his hands and grief etched into his face.
“I can’t lose you like I lost him,” she says again. “I can’t lose you because of Danzo too.”
Inner is silent for the longest time. Then, Will you tell us about him?
Ino pulls back and frowns. About who?
Fu.
Ino sits down on the stool beside Sakura’s bed. She almost doesn’t know where to start. No one has ever asked about Fu because to her clan he was dead and to everyone else, he never existed.
A smile brighter than the sun.
Ino absently rubs her thumb across the back of Sakura’s hand, careful not to disturb the forget-me-not still held between their joined hands.
“He was like Naruto, to be honest,” she starts. “He was always happy, always smiling. I saw him once after Danzo took him.”
They had passed each other in the street. Ino considers it one of the worst days of her life, topped only by the day that Sakura had broken off their friendship.
She feels her free hand twitch, like Inner is imagining squeezing it in comfort.
“I don’t know what happened to him after that.”’
She knows that he’s dead the way all siblings know when something horrible has happened to their family. She doesn’t know how he died though, and she’s not willing to think about it.
Her shoulder twinges - a sign that Inner is picturing her head on Ino’s shoulder. We’re sorry, Inner says.
Another flower forms between her and Sakura’s joined hands. Ino looks down when she feels it bloom and finds a soft purple aster next to the forget-me-not.
“Don’t be. Just…” Ino eyes Sakura’s comatose form. “Just wake up. Please.”
She kisses Sakura’s wrist. “Please,” she murmurs against the cool skin. “Please.”
Sakura’s eyes stay shut.
Ino can’t stop the tears from rolling down her face. She weeps and holds Sakura’s hand like her life depends on it.
-
(Ino’s visits go on for days. Each one has new flowers that have Inner asking what the meaning behind them is. Everytime she asks, Ino can’t help but chuckle.
Sakura always did need my help with flower arrangements back when we were at the Aademy, she muses a week into Sakura’s coma.
No, we didn’t, Inner admits. It was just an excuse to spend time with you.
Ino smiles fondly. That’s such a Sakura move.
The day that Ino finally notices that the flowers that she and her clansmen have been leaving for Sakura haven’t wilted, the day that Sakura’s hand finally twitches back in hers - that’s the day that Uchiha Madara declares war on the living).
-
It hurts to leave Sakura behind, but Ino has no other option. The pinkette is still in a coma when Madara and his forces begin their march across the continent, which means that Ino has to step into hell without Sakura by her side.
Ino thinks that she’s prepared for war. She has both her father’s memories of the Third Shinobi War and Inner in her mind. She quickly realises, though, that memories don’t make up for personal experience and having the person you love in your head isn’t the same as having them by your side.
She’s assigned to the front as a sensor. It’s a position that suits her well, but also one that feels wrong because Sakura isn’t next to her. She fights regardless of how off she feels, if only because there’s no other choice.
Fighting the White Zetsu is easier for Ino than most.
She cuts down White Zetsu after White Zetsu with Inner snarling all the while at the bastardised version of the Mokuton that the White Zetsu use. She feeds her strategies to HQ using Shikamaru (although, they’re less strategies and more her and Inner’s combined feelings that Ino passes off as hers alone) and slowly, the war starts to turn in their favour.
Then, Kabuto summons the dead. Suddenly, the battle turns the other way because how do you fight the people you loved and buried?
As hard as she can, Ino learns when Asuma-sensei appears before her and her boys. And with everything that you have.
Fighting him hurts, not just physically but mentally as well. It’s bad enough that he still kicks as hard as she remembers him being able to. It’s even worse to have to see his face. Her heart insists that he’s a friend even as Inner screams that he’s an enemy.
It doesn’t take Ino or Inner long to notice that Choji is having the hardest time with Asuma’s reappearance.
Inner’s rage burns almost as hot in Ino’s chest as Ino’s own grief does. Ino slaps Choji in the face, tells him to get it together, then shoves him out of the way to avoid a ferocious drop kick delivered courtesy of Asuma.
EITHER HE HELPS YOU STOP HIM OR YOU’RE ALL GOING TO DIE! Inner shouts.
“Either you help us stop him or we all die!” Ino yells.
That seems to be the thing that snaps Choji from his funk. The next thing Ino knows, there are chakra wings on his back and Shikamaru is behind her and then the three of them move as one.
They send Asuma into a cliff and pin him in place using his own knives.
“You three are a perfect Ino-Shika-Cho,” he tells them.
Choji weeps as does Shikamaru.
Ino does not. Instead, she looks her sensei in the eye and says, “I married her, sensei, and I told her.”
He smiles widely right as the seal wraps around him. “I’m so proud of you,” he says just before it completes.
Ino angrily wipes tears from her eyes as her back tingles with a phantom touch of comfort.
“Let’s go,” she says, catching her boys’ attention. She will not break down here. “We have a war to win.”
Do you have me? She asks as they leap towards the forest.
Her back tingles again. This time, the touch is stronger, firmer, like it’s grounding her. I have you.
-
Ino thinks that the reapperance of the dead will be the worst that this war has to offer. Were Kabuto the only player, that would be true.
Then Madara summons the Juubi and her father-
Her father dies.
Ino doesn’t see it coming.
(She will never see it coming).
No one sees it coming. The people who see it coming are, in a twisted moment of irony, the ones who are about to die. They’re hundreds of miles away unable to do anything but issue final orders and say goodbye.
Ino isn’t ready.
(She will never be ready).
I need you to listen to me, her father’s voice is sharp across her mind.
Tou-san, stop, please, she begs. She knows why he’s saying what he’s saying, but she doesn’t want to hear it. She doesn’t want him to die.
Ino, he says, you’ve grown up to be the embodiment of the Yamanaka clan’s symbol - the bush clover - and everything it symbolises. I’ve been lucky enough to watch you blossom into a beautiful bush clover. I’m proud of you, Ino. I am so proud.
Ino can’t shold back the sob that his words draw forth.
I only wish that I had been a better father to you and Fu, he says. Ino can feel his grief and regret clearer than she ever has before. Danzo, he wanted-
I know, tou-san.
Ino has known the truth for years, thanks to the grief in her father’s heart and the way that he wept when they trained away from prying eyes. She knows that Yamanaka Inoichi hadn’t given up the boy who was his son in every way but blood on a whim or because he was ordered to; he did it because it wsa the only way he could protect his daughter.
(Even though he is about to die, Inoichi will never tell her that Fu agreed to the trade. He will never tell his daughter that her brother lied through his teeth to the second most powerful man in the village and said that he was the strong one, just to protect the girl who had become his sister).
Her father’s laughter is warm. Of course, you do. She can picture him smiling. Sakura?
Ino feels a pang of guilt. She’s never bothered to correct his assumption that the person she shares her mind with currently is actually Sakura instead of her other half.
Inner, however, doesn’t seem to be bothered by the deception because she says, Yes, sir?
May I make one final request of you?
Anything, Inoichi-sama, Inner says.
Ino doesn’t know if she wants to cry or laugh at the honourific that Inner uses. Her father has always insisted that Sakura address him as Inoichi-san and yet here is her rougher half treating him with the respect the way that Ino knows Sakura would.
Stand by my daughter and support her. Help her lead our clan.
I will, Inoichi-sama.
Good. Ino can picture her father nodding approvingly. It’s an image that makes the tears roll down her cheeks faster. Ino?
Yes, tou-san?
I love you. Goodbye.
Ino weeps when he severs their connection. She can hear Inner weeping too and knows that the tears on her face belong to the both of them.
(Hundreds of miles away, tears roll down unnoticed on Sakura’s pale cheeks).
-
The fight against the Juubi is brutal.
With HQ destroyed, Ino and Shikamaru take up the mantles of their fathers and lead.
They do so with aplomb.
Ino finds that Shikamaru’s mind is a lot like Sakura’s, only quieter. It makes it easy to be his eyes. They move like a well-oiled machine - Ino with her hand on the back of his head, Choji at their rear to cover them. She works alongside her clansmen (all of whom immediately call her Yamanaka-sama when her mind touches theirs) to cover the battlefield with her sensory abilities and relays what she sees to Shikamaru and the rest of the Allied Shinobi Forces.
(No one but Shikamaru notices Inner. Ino feels the eyebrow that he raises, then exhales in relief when he wraps his mind in shadows to hide Inner from everyone but the two of them).
Ino doesn’t flinch when the Juubi roars or when it sends out its clones. She trusts Choji and the rest of the shinobi around her to buy her and Shikamaru the time they need to come up with a plan. It’s only when Naruto and Sasuke appear, that Ino filters.
Fury burns in Ino’s chest at the sight of Sasuke whilst Inner seethes.
“You should go with them,” Shikamaru says, snapping Ino from her revere.
“What?” Ino looks down at him, not sure if she heard him correctly.
“They both look like they’re going to head to the front. You’ve worked with Sakura the most, so you know how to fill in for her,” he says. “Besides, I need eyes up there too.”
Ino hides a smile. She knows exactly what Shikamaru is doing.
He’s a good friend, Inner says.
He is, Ino agrees.
Out loud, she shouts, “Haru! Kohan!”
The clansmen in question are by her side in an instant.
“Both of you cover. I’m going to relay from the front.” She pins them with a look. “Do not get him killed or I will kill you.”
Both men nod, then take their positions behind Shikamaru. They each place a hand on the back of his head because to do what Ino does by herself will take the two of them.
“Understood, Yamanaka-sama,” Haru says.
“We follow your lead,” Kohan adds.
Satisfied that they’re in place, Ino makes her way towards Naruto and Sasuke.
“Naruto,” she greets.
She doesn’t greet Sasuke. The Uchiha may be on Naruto’s side right now, but he’s not Ino’s ally. He stabbed her wife in the chest. For that, Ino vowed weeks ago that the Uchiha clan - what’s left of them anyway - would not have her or his clan as their ally with her as the Yamanaka Clan Head and it's a vow that she intends to keep. She will tolerate his presence because they are in a warzone and nothing else.
“Ino-chan!” Naruto looks pleasantly surprised to see her.
“I’m assuming you have a plan?” she asks, brushing his surprise aside.
“Yeah.” He nods. “Stop Madara from using his eyes on the moon.”’
That’s not a plan, Inner sighs.
It’s better than nothing, Ino points out.
“Fine.” Ino rolls her shoulders back. “Then let’s go.”
She takes a step, only to pause when she hears Sasuke scoff, “What, you’re going to lead us?”
She glances over her shoulder. ‘Why not me?” she questions. “At least I remember my oaths and responsibilities, unlike you .”
He betrayed the village and left Sakura unconscious on a bench. He tried to kill the woman she loves and threatened the village.
And he thinks that he should lead. Inner makes a sound of disgust. I don’t know what we ever saw in him.
I only saw you when I saw him, Ino says.
Then, she moves.
Fighting without Sakura physically by her side is hard, but she makes do. She lets Inner control her hands to form the necessary seals for Sakura’s favourite suiton jutsu one minute, then takes control herself to skewer the fallen enemies with spikes the next. She throws well-placed kunai and explosive tags in between jutsu all the while transmitting information back to Shikamaru through Haru and Kohan.
(Later, when people tell stories about this battle, they won’t touch too much upon the Uzumaki and his toads or the Uchiha and his snakes. Instead, they’ll speak at length about the Yamanaka woman who fought with the fury and force of two people).
Naruto and Sasuke join in the fray and slowly, they turn the tide of battle. Together the three of them whittle down the Juubi’s clones unil their force and the Shinobi Alliance Force’s numbers outpace the Juubis ability to produce them. For a brief moment, Ino allows herself to think that maybe, just maybe, they have this.
Out of nowhere, night suddenly turns to day.
Ino can feel the shinobi around her stutter and falter but she doesn’t. She’s too busy raising an earthen wall behind Naruto to protect the blonde from an axe that he doesn’t see coming. Seconds later, she sees the God Tree move in the corner of her eye, then spots a woman with chakra beyond description.
The chakra is overwhelming, but Ino forces herself to move because Naruto and Sasuke are moving.
White vines wrap around Ino’s wrists.
YOU ARE OURS! Inner’s voice echoes in her mind like thunder. THAT BITCH DOES NOT GET TO TAKE YOU FROM US!
Chakra rushes through Ino. It steals her breath away because it’s Sakura’s, but it’s also not. It’s protective and possessive the way that Sakura’s gets when they’re on missions together, but it’s primal in a way that Ino has never felt before. It’s like a spring thunderstorm and an autumn typhoon have collided within her.
OURS!
The vines wither away.
In the distance, Ino sees the air shimmer as space distorts. She takes a step and then she leaps and-
-
And Ino punches a god in the face.
She’s not thinking about the way that Kaguya’s cheek buckles under her fist from the force of the blow. She’s not thinking about how tired she is or how she’s probably broken her fist, chakra infused as it is. She’s not even thinking about how bullshit it is that she’s in a different dimension.
She thinks about her wife lying in the hospital in a coma, vulnerable. She thinks about Asuma and her father. She thinks about the way that the God Tree’s vines tried to trap her, almost trapped her and would have trapped her if not for Inner.
It’s those thoughts that fuel Ino. It’s those thoughts and Inner’s rage that drive’s Ino’s fist into Kaguya’s face. It’s those thoughts and her own grief that has Ino pouring every ounce of chakra she has into her fist.
(She will never have the chakra control that Sakura does, but it’s good enough for one punch. This punch).
“FUCKING BLEED BITCH!” Ino roars.
SHANNARO!! Inner shouts alongside her.
Kaguya may be a god, but Ino carries half of Sakura’s soul. She is a woman fueled by grief, desperation, love, and more than a little bit of fury. No god, not even the Mother of All Chakra, stands a chance against such a combination.
Her punch sends Kaguya into the waiting palms of Naruto and Sasuke.
I wish we could send her directly to hell, Inner spits.
Ino agrees. She wants Kaguya to bleed the same way that thousands of shinobi have bled over the last four days. She wants Kaguya to hurt the way that she is hurting right now. But most of all, she wants Kaguya gone. Forever.
And that, she figures as she watches the Rikudou Chibaku Tensei complete itself, is close enough to hell for someone like Kaguya that Ino will acept an eternal seal over a trip to hell.
Inner thinks that the moon created by the seal is ugly.
Ino tells Naruto and Sasuke as much.
Naruto sputters in indignation whilst Sasuke scoffs.
“I’d like to see you do better, Yamanaka,” he sneers.
Ino grins a vicious grin that she thinks Anko would be proud of. “I punched a god in the face, Sasuke-kun,” she says sweetly. “And I did that after taking the place of an entire sensor division by myself with my own power.”
His sneer turns into a scowl.
I really don’t know what we ever saw in him, Inner says. You were clearly much better from the start.
You say the nicest things.
Kakashi coughs. “Maa, maybe we can discuss this once we’re out of here,” he suggests.
“...how exactly do we do that again?” Naruto asks.
Inner sighs.
Ino echoes her.
-
(The Rikudo Sennin ends up bringing them back with the help of all the dead Kage.
Naruto, unsurprisingly, flips his shit when he notices that they’re surrounded by ghosts. Ino - with Inner’s help - makes a small crater with his body because really? After everything that they’ve done and see over the last four days, ghosts of dead Kage are what freak him out?
He’s an idiot, Ino complains as Naruto rubs his head.
He’s our idiot though, Inner says.
Your idiot, Ino corrects. I have my own.
Shikamaru and Choji? Inner guesses.
No. Ino smiles slightly. You).
-
“So, Yamanaka, are we good?” Sasuke asks with a cocky smirk on his lips that Ino wants to punch off.
Ino stares at him for the longest time. Then, without warning, she spits in his face.
She hears Naruto choke in the background as Sasuke stumbles back.
“What-?” Sasuke demands.
“You stabbed the woman I love - my wife - in the chest,” she says, voice like ice. “She’s in a coma.”
She doesn’t miss the way his eyes narrow at her words, almost like he’s offended by what she’s saying.
He doesn’t have a right to be offended, Inner hisses. He stabbed us in the chest!
I know , Ino soothes. I know. And he will pay.
“ Sakura ,” she stresses, “is in a coma. Because of you . And you have the nerve to ask me if you and I are good ?”
Before she realises what she’s doing, a kunai has sliced through her hand and then her hand is smearing blood across his chest.
“I lead the Yamanaka clan now,” she says, “and that is my answer.”
She doesn’t miss the nervous look Kakashi gives her. “Maa, Ino-chan, perhaps we shouldn’t be too hasty now and-”
“He tried to kill the wife of the Yamanaka Clan Head,” Ino cuts him off. “For that, I am well within my rights to demand his fucking head, but I won’t because it’ll make Sakura upset.”
She’ll support you no matter what course of action you take, Inner reminds her. We both will.
He was hers, once, Ino replies.
Which is why Ino will spare him. For now.
“So this is my compromise. Uchiha Sasuke-” She turns her attention to him and meets his Mangekyo Sharingan without flinching. “Your actions during the war may save you from execution. But they will not restore your honor before the Yamanaka. In trying to kill my wife, you have broken your clan’s oaths to mine, so I renounce any obligations that my clan may have still had to yours. You will never have my clan as your ally as long as I lead them.”
“I don’t need the Yamanaka,” Sasuke sneers.
Ino tilts her head. “No, but you will need the Nara and the Akimichi and they will follow me long before they follow you,” she says, her voice sweet and poisonous all at the same time.
There’s a sharp inhale from Kakashi as he realises what she’s getting at. He knows, just like Ino knows, that there will be a vote to spare Sasuke’s life. The hands that cast it will be the clan heads and Ino, as the Yamanaka Clan Head, will be one of them. Her vote will carry the heaviest weight because whichever way the Yamanaka vote, the Akimichi and Nara will follow.
Sasuke’s sneer turns into a scowl as he finally appears to come to the same realisation that Kakashi has.
“We should go check to see if everyone is still alive,” Kakashi says. “What do you say, Ino-chan?”
Ino smiles sweetly. “I think that’s a great idea, Kakashi-sensei.”
She shoves past Sasuke before either he or Naruto can say anything and makes her way to the God Tree. She doesn’t look back even as she feels Sasuke’s glare burning hatefully into her back.
You should have put his eyes out, Inner mutters darkly.
Ino places a hand on her chest to quiet the mullish anger that she can feel building. He’s not worth my time, she says.
He was never worth either of their time.
-
(She finds Shikamaru and Choji dazed but relatively unharmed. The moment she does, Ino drops to her knees and pulls them close. The three of them weep as they hold each other like their lives depend on it).
-
The trip back to Konoha takes three days.
Ino and her boys are at the helm of Konoha’s force with the remains of the Konoha 11 close by. Choji and Shikamaru stay by herself the entire trip, half to make the statement that the new generation of Ino-Shika-Cho is stronger than ever and half to keep Ino from collapsing from exhaustion.
Her father’s body does not accompany them.
(No bodies are brought back to any country. The memory of the dead rising at Kabuto’s hand is still fresh in everyone’s minds, so all of the bodies are burned on the battlefield until nothing but ashes and dust remain).
Ino’s hand itches to reach back for a body bag that isn’t there. The itch soon fades, giving way to the phantom sensation of a hand slipping into hers.
I have you, Inner whispers.
Ino’s hand flexes. Thank you, she whispers back.
She jolts moments later when she sees Choji tense in the corner of her eye.
“What’s wrong?” she demands.
“Those trees,” he starts, voice quiet, “they weren’t there when we left, right? And it doesn’t look like anything that belongs to the God Tree.”
Ino blinks. She follows his gaze to see a wall of trees before them. “Haru, Kohan, transmit stop to the back,” she orders. “Choji, Shika, with me. Shika, have one of your clansmen ready to stop Naruto in case he gets the idea to do something stupid.”
Ino hadn’t punched a god in the face to help win the war only for them to lose less than five hundred meters from the front gate just because Naruto got impatient.
She doesn’t wait for either of her clansmen to respond, trusting them to carry out her orders as she and her boys make their way forward.
“You thinking a trap?” Shikamaru asks conversationally, like they’re walking through the village instead of towards the unknown.
Ino shrugs. “Maybe. It could just be that the forest responded to all the natural energy the Juubi released,” she says.
“How troublesome,” he grumbles.
No kidding. Konoha’s forests are hard enough to cut through, Inner says. If they’re running on natural energy now-
Then not even all of Konoha’s katon users would be able to burn through it and their return would be delayed even further.
Ino reaches out to touch one of the tree trunks. She closes her eyes the moment her hand makes contact with the bark to better focus her sensory abilities. She frowns almost immediately because it-
It feels like Sakura.
She’s awake, Inner says.
Ino’s heart stutters to a stop. Are you sure?
She doesn’t want to doubt Inner because Inner is Sakura’s other half. She knows Sakura better than Ino ever will. But Ino doesn’t want to get her hopes up.
The forest woke up because she woke up, Inner says simply.
Ino’s fingers unconsciously dig into the bark.
“Ino?” Choji asks.
Ino’s eyes open. “It’s Sakura,” she says. “She made this happen, probably to protect the village.”
She hears Shikamaru sigh and mutter something about Team 7 being full of overachievers.
“That’s great, so how do we take it down?” he asks once he’s finished muttering.
You have to let her know we’re home, Inner says.
How? She may have been able to link the entirety of the Allied Shinobi Forces by herself, but that had been before she’d gone dimension hopping and punched a god in the face. She’s running on fumes now. My range-
Her sensory range won’t reach beyond the gate.
Inner laughs softly. We know you, Ino. We’ll always be able to know what you feel like.
Feel like?
Oh.
“Ino?” Shikamaru asks. “What’s your plan?”
Instead of answering him, Ino presses her hand hard against the tree and flares her chakra against the wood in a steady pattern.
One sustained pulse.
One short pulse, one sustained pulse.
One sustained pulse, two short pulses.
One short pulse, one sustained pulse.
Two short pulses.
Two sustained pulses.
One short pulse, one sustained pulse.
“Tadaima?” Choji sounds confused.
“What?” Ino glances over her shoulder. “We are home.”
“Yeah, but-”
Choji is cut off by the forest shaking.
Ino’s head snaps forward to watch as the trees start to move. Slowly, the trees unfurl and part to reveal a clear path to the village gate where a crowd has gathered. At the front is-
“Sakura,” Ino breathes.
Even at a distance, she’s hard to miss with her pink hair and red top. Ino can feel Sakura’s chakra brushing against her skin, pulsing like a heartbeat.
She hears Shikamaru sigh. “What’re you waiting for?” he asks. “Someone has to report in, might as well be you.”
He sounds so bored as he says it that anyone else would take his suggestion as a throwaway statement. Ino has known him long enough by now, though, to know what he’s really doing.
“Thanks, Shika,” she says earnestly.
Ino takes a step forward, then another, and then she’s running. She sprints through the forest like the Shinigami himself is on her heels.
The crowd is cheering when she arrives but Ino pays them no heed. Her attention is only on Sakura. Their eyes meet for the briefest of seconds and for a moment, it’s just the two of them in that space.
Ino leaps the final few steps and slams into Sakura.
Sakura catches her with the kind of ease that only partners share, arms wrapping around Ino’s waist the way that Ino has dreamed about for weeks now. Ino responds by throwing her arms around Sakura’s shoulders.
“Ino-” Sakura starts.
You gonna kiss us or not? Inner asks.
Ino kisses Sakura.
It’s a sloppy kiss. Ino thinks that she would be embarrassed by it if she weren’t so desperate to have Sakura’s lips on hers. In the end, it doesn’t even really matter because she finds Sakura kissing her back passionately.
Ino feels Sakura nip her lip and gasps. She can’t help what happens next - her chakra crashes into Sakura’s and then Ino is in Sakura and Sakura is inside her.
I’m here, I’m here, she hears Sakura whisper, her tone just shy of desperate.
I missed you so damn much, Ino whispers back. I missed you, I missed you.
Did you have her? Did you- Sakura starts to ask.
I had her, Inner says reassuringly. I’m back, we’re back.
I love you, Ino says. She kisses Sakura harder, as if doing so will empower the words that they’re exchanging between each other. I love you, I love you, I love you.
Sakura pulls away with a gasp, chest heaving. “You love me?” Her voice is so soft that Ino has to strain to hear it above the crowd. “I thought, I thought I had just dreamed that…”
Ino barely hears the words, but Inner clearly does because she hears Inner snort.
“My lips on yours wasn’t enough of an answer for you, Forehead?” she demands before moving a hand to brush a thumb against Sakura’s swollen lips. “Yeah, I love you.”
She’ll say it every day until she dies, provided that her ancestors and the spirits of the Founders are kind enough to grant her a run that is as long as the forests of Konoha are deep.
(They will. Her ancestors and the spirits of the Founders have heard her vows and seen everything that she has done. They decide that perhaps, the universe can be kind to the woman who punched a god in the face and the woman that loves her).
Tears well up in Sakura’s eyes. “Good,” she chokes out, “because I love you too, Pig.”
Ino takes in the woman before her: her pink hair that shines in the sunlight, the colour that’s finally back in her cheeks, her slightly swollen lips, the green in Sakura’s eyes - have they always been that green?
“Marry me,” Ino blurts out.
She watches Sakura blink. “We’re already-”
“Marry me again, then,” Ino cuts her off. “Because I love you and I want people to know that our marriage is more than just one of convenience and-”
She finds herself being interrupted by Sakura surging forward to kiss her.
“Yes,” she feels Sakura murmur against her lips moments later.
Now it’s Ino’s turn to blink. “Yes?” she whispers.
“Yes, Ino, I will marry you again.”
Ino grins and pulls back a bit. “Wanna go on a date while we’re at it?” she asks, only half-joking.
She doesn’t miss the way Sakura rolls her eyes. “You realise that most people go on a date or two before they get married, right, Pig?”
“When have we ever been like most people, Forehead?” Ino wraps her arms around Sakura’s shoulders. “So, what do you say?”
Sakura rolls her eyes a second time. “Yes, I’ll go on a date with you too, you idiot.”
“Who’re you calling an idiot?” Ino scoffs without any real heat. “ I dressed like Sasuke when we were younger to try and get your attention and it didn’t work.”
Sakura throws her head back as she laughs. Ino finds her grin widening at the sound; she loves it when Sakura laughs.
“We’re quite a pair, aren’t we?” Sakura asks.
Ino presses her forehead to Sakura’s. “We really are.”
“Ino?”
“Yeah?” Ino quirks an eyebrow.
Kiss us again, Inner says.
Ino smiles. “Never thought you’d ask.”
She pulls Sakura even closer and presses another kiss to her lips. She ignores the way the noise of the crowd seems to swell around them, instead choosing to focus on Sakura and the way Sakura’s lips feel gainst her own rough, chapped ones.
Ino cracks an eye open to chance a glance at the ground when she feels it shift under her feet. The sight of orchids, carnations, and yellow acacias blooming around them makes her smile, makes her kiss Sakura a little bit harder. The last time those flowers had appeared around them, Sakura was bleeding out under Ino’s hands. Now, Sakura is in her arms.
This kiss is salty with tears of grief and joy running down both of their faces. It doesn’t bother Ino, though. Even with the salt she can taste on Sakura’s lips, Ino presses herself even closer to Sakura.
The scent of forget-me-nots joins the other flowers around them.
Ino’s smile widens.
I love you, wife.
Sakura’s hand moves to rest a top Ino’s heart. I love you too, wife.
Ino kisses Sakura deeper. She decides that this kiss is perfect.
Because it is.