It's March, and the sky weeps for it. Cold rain drizzles down the fresh leaves, dripping into the puddles of blood that collected beneath the bench on the side of the road.
The sky weeps for her, and weeps for her, the unmourned, unloved daughter of Konoha. Sakura's eyes are as green as the leaves, and the rain collects in them and drips out over her face like tears. Her hair is stained red, the cherry blossoms of her name nearly white against the luster of her blood. Her face is pale as the sky and cold as ice, her colourless lips parted in silent shock.
Ino's legs are black to the knees with the fresh, raw mud, her hands still stained with the blood she tried to keep in. The rain does nothing to clean her skin, the history of the day sticking to her like--
Like--
Ino's throat makes a tortured keen, the parts of herself moving in disharmony, like a song where half the notes have fallen away. She's weeping with the sky, dull shock radiating through her every bone. It wasn't fair, Sakura deserved so much more than this. She'd deserved someone noticing she was missing, someone going to look before Sakura had gone cold and stiff, bled out onto the grass.
Grief is agony inside her, burning up alongside fury and wrath. Her fingers find Sakura's lips, cold as ice, her mouth filled with rain. Ino's teeth clench with fury, hatred for whoever did this a vibrant chord inside her chest. She rests her fingertips on Sakura's eyelids, intending to close them, to allow her to rest, but--
The shape of her hands is so close to the seal for the mind-body switch jutsu, and Ino's head tilts to the side, her freshly cut hair brushing over her shoulders as she contemplates a terrible, destructive idea. Sakura's spark is gone, the lamp left empty, but the memory of fire remains, surely.
Ino does not close Sakura's eyes.
***
Sakura doesn't know why Sasuke seems so very surprised to see her. Or maybe she does. Being honest with herself has been harder since he left her by the road, too many truths creeping through her mind.
She dries her lips with the napkin they’d scrounged from dusty drawers and smiles at him with all her teeth, just fucking beams at him.
Sasuke flinches back, draws a sword that he'd never used to have. It was like he didn't even miss her after all these years. How cold.
"Who the hell are you?" he demands, like it's not obvious.
"Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke," Sakura says from behind him, leaving Ino to their tea. "What a way to greet your old teammate."
He turns round on her, his eyes wide and red, but there's no genjutsu in this world that can shake Sakura free from reality anymore. "Ino--!"
"Wrong name," Sakura giggles, sees Ino's matching smile on her own red mouth. "Do you remember, Sasuke-kun?"
"Remember what?" he answers, backing up so he can see both of them.
Sakura flickers from Ino’s body and crawls into his, casting Sasuke’s spirit aside as she puts his pretty sword straight through his coward belly. His hands are strong and sure, just as they were when they took her life.
"How you killed me?" Sakura asks in Sasuke’s voice, giving the blade a brutal twist before she slips out and lets his spirit snap back into his soon-to-be corpse.
The memory seems etched into Sakura's soul, the sharingan's mysterious power surviving the mind-body jump with ease. Ino's body standing placidly, waiting for Sakura to return. Ino sipping tea from a delicately pink cup that she holds with Sakura’s hands.
Sakura’s hitai-ate set very carefully on the table to show the scar he left on her throat.
They do not represent Konoha today.
Sakura switches with Ino again, slower this time, their spirits tangling as they pass. Ino's hope and query echo--was this enough?
Sasuke's trying to put pressure on the gut wound, to hold himself in place around the ragged hole Sakura made, but blood is gushing out of him. He makes faint, frantic sounds, but his life is fading fast. Sakura narrows her eyes, studies him. She could still heal him. So could Ino. They've learned that much.
“It is enough,” Sakura decides, using her own throat instead of Ino’s. Her voice is still a ragged thing, but Sakura supposes that she could heal that, now.
Ino joins her at the table, the house so quiet that they can hear Sasuke’s blood drip down between the floorboards. Sakura pours Ino a cup of tea, and, with a nod to her murderer, pours a third cup for Sasuke.
His eyes are blazing red as he looks at her, and a faltering, weak genjutsu tries to settle over her and Ino. Sakura bats the cobwebs of his chakra away, and the genjutsu shatters. Sasuke smiles, blood staining his teeth pink.
Before he’d killed her, Sakura had really thought that they were friends. It’d hurt so much to find out that only she was.
“What do you want to do next?” Ino asks her, lifting the cup of tea to her lips.
Sakura bites her lip and thinks about it. So much of the last few years have been about her, about hiding what they’d done and concealing what they were planning. “Well...what do you want to do?”
Something ripples through Ino’s heart, the echoes touching Sakura’s spirit. Ino smiles, a bit mischievous. “Hot springs vacation?”