The In-Between

Ino’s head hurt. She wasn’t sure exactly why. 

It had started with a small headache after she had returned to her body Wednesday morning, without seeing Hitomi. Shisui had looked disappointed, giving her a slight smile and a promise that they’d find her sooner than later. But all Ino could think about was that everything felt like it had moved a few centimeters to the left, and her body fumbled to catch up. Her brain struggled in the aftermath. 

And the day seemed to slip through her fingers, like sand. She watched herself from an unknown distance as she picked flowers for her daily bouquet. Candytuft, belladonna, red columbine. Someone was picking up her chopsticks to eat as her parents spoke. Someone was walking to school with the chill of either ghosts or autumn in the air. Maybe both. 

Nothing was real. Nothing felt solid. Maybe Ino hadn’t woken up from flying with Shisui. Maybe Ino had never woken up from her nightmare in the first place. 

Someone with Ino’s mouth joked with her friends. Someone with Ino’s hands worked through math problems. A part of Ino had never stopped floating aimlessly through Konoha. 

The world was cold, and Ino’s head pounded. Everyone was too fast and so far away, almost too far for Ino to catch. Why was everything so far away? She blinked furiously, trying to pull herself back. Iruka-sensei’s mouth was moving, and she could barely hear. 

“—explain your answer to Sasuke, Ino-chan?” 

The paper. She blinked quickly, took in her messy work. Genin teams and kunai. Ino nodded. 

“Genin teams always—” 

“Can you look at Sasuke-kun, Ino?” 

Ino liked Iruka-sensei a lot. He was always nice, and his lessons were fun, even if he yelled sometimes at Kiba and Naruto. Now, Ino wanted to leave the class. 

She bounced her leg under the desk. Took a breath. Swallowed the surrounding water. And stared at the forehead of Itachi’s brother. 

Pale skin. Black eyes. Sharp eyebrows. No, Itachi, no—

Ino pasted a smile on her face and explained her answer. She tried not to imagine Sasuke’s eyes twisting red and angry, tried not to imagine blood and shadows and the way swords reflected red under the moon. 

Iruka-sensei spoke more, but the words got lost in the air. That was fine, Ino did what she was supposed to. She could use her sketchbook, rub her fingers on the paper and pretend she wasn’t floating. 

But… she was also supposed to be normal, right? She was supposed to talk. People liked her better when she talked rather than being quiet. 

She swallowed again. Ino could barely hear herself as she offered Sasuke condolences. But she could hear Sasuke’s toneless question: 

Why did you miss so much class?

And those same black eyes morphed red. And the classroom—compound?—was so dark, cold and quiet and there was nowhere to run. Nowhere to run because Hiroki was dead and her knee had been shot since the first war, nowhere to go because Itachi—

“Ino?” she could hear someone say faintly. 

No, no, Itachi wasn’t there, there were no killers, only desks and Iruka-sensei and Itachi’s brother staring at her with confusion. She tapped the ground as fast as she could. Tried to bring herself back to earth.

“I was sick,” Ino said, and she tried to smile, but she couldn’t quite manage it. The distance was still there, still distorted her vision and made everything hazy. Judging from Sasuke’s expression, she really didn’t manage it. 

But Iruka-sensei walked in, and in a blink, they had started chakra exercises. She clawed back to reality as Iruka-sensei held up two balls. 

“I’m sure both of you remember the ball exercise.” And Ino did. With a pulse of chakra, the ball could either stay in your hand or bounce off. The goal was to either pass the ball to someone else, or stick it to your hand. Ino used to play with Sakura, trying to teach her friend how to make the ball launch from her hand, until they stopped picking each other in class. After Sakura, Ino chose Ichiko-chan. 

Now, Sasuke scowled five feet away from her. 

“We’ll start with getting you re-accustomed to the ball. Just try to keep it stuck to your hand, okay?” 

Sensei placed a fuzzy yellow ball in her hand. Across from her, Sasuke received a red ball. 

Ino closed her eyes and focused on swirling her chakra to make the ball stick. If you rotated it the right way, once you turned the ball over, the ball wouldn’t move. After you turned the ball over, you needed to keep circulating your chakra to keep the ball in place. It was easy—she’d been doing these exercises with Shikamaru and Choji for as long as she could remember. 

But this time, her chakra seemed to hide from her. Every time she tried to move more chakra to her hand, it twisted out of her grasp. It was like trying to grasp the falling Sakura petals at the Hanami parties the clan threw every year, where the wind blew the petals before she and her cousins could hold them. She frowned at the ball. 

Sasuke had already flipped his hand upside down, and was glaring at some odd corner of the room. With a dull spike of frustration, Ino tried to push the chakra to her hand, and the ball flew—

hitting Sasuke-kun in the shoulder. 

For a moment, only Ino’s horror filled the silence. That same horror somehow slotted her body back into place, and now she was no longer floating, no longer so hazy and far away from everyone. And it overwhelmed her: the chill of the classroom, the sound of her own breathing, the clammy sensation of her hands wringing together. 

She knew how to control her chakra. She had to learn how to focus her chakra to even begin her clan’s techniques. This was nothing. And now, she may as well have the chakra control of Naruto. 

She forced herself to look into the black of Sasuke’s eyes and pretended her skin didn’t crawl. “I’m so sorry, Sasuke-kun!” 

He opened his mouth, but he glanced behind her, towards the board, and scowled. “Whatever,” he replied, folding his arms. 

“Are you alright, Sasuke?” Sensei asked quickly, and Sasuke nodded. He picked up the ball and placed it on a nearby desk before stepping farther away. His ball, Ino noticed, remained connected to his other hand. 

Her eyes felt hot and itchy, and her hands shook at her sides. It wasn’t enough that her body didn’t feel right. It wasn’t enough that she didn’t know how to act and what to say anymore. It wasn’t enough that she couldn’t learn her family’s jutsu. Her chakra control had to go as well. 

She placed her hands on her eyes. Ino was not going to cry. She wasn’t. 

The air at her back was cold, even through her sweater. Maybe it was a ghost. Maybe it wasn’t. She trembled anyway, feeling oddly present in her body and even more unsettled because of it. 

“Ino?” Sensei’s voice was close. She peeled her hands back to see that he was right in front of her, kneeling. “Ino, it’s okay. Sasuke-kun wasn’t hurt.” 

A quick glance saw Sasuke staring at her coldly. Her breath hitched, and she looked away. She knew someone could quite literally glare you to death. Sasuke doesn’t have the Sharingan, she told herself. Ino wasn’t sure if she believed it, though. 

“…We can stop here for today,” Iruka-sensei said. He looked down towards her wrists, where her bracelets rested. Then, softly, only to her, “Maybe your bracelets are affecting your chakra control. I can ask your father about it later.” 

She felt worn, drained, cold, and she had barely done anything. She focused on Iruka-sensei’s chin and tried to keep herself in her body. But from the way awareness slid past her once more, it was yet another thing she had failed at.