Chapter Text
“This is also a journey of atonement. You have nothing to do with my sins.”
It had been twenty something months since that day, and those words still felt like a kunai in her heart. The pain lasted for a moment as she rubbed her aquamarine eyes to clear the fog of sleep from them. Immediately after, came the volcano of rage at having been pushed aside by Uchiha Sasuke yet again. The sheer number of times that she had tried to take a place by his side; only to be rebuffed by his complete selfishness had long become too numerous to count. The anger then turned inward, at her own idiocy for having loved the baka at all.
‘What kind of moron have I been for following him like a lost puppy the way I did back then?’ She clenched her fist and ground her teeth together in self-loathing. ‘Even after the ass had the gall to seriously try to kill me. Pathetic is the least I could say about myself.’
Pushing aside the desire to continue the well-deserved self-derision, she knew she had duties to attend to. Though the reason she had so much time for self-reflection was the tedium of her daily routine. As the second ranking leaf shinobi in Iryo-ninjutsu since Tsunade’s retirement from her post as Godaime Hokage, had called for her life to become routine and bland. Run the hospital, teach the young shinobi and kunoichi necessary techniques for team missions. Mostly academy students and new Genin were her daily experience, another reminder of her horrid behavior. Sometimes she felt like she’d been under a genjutsu and had finally broken free of it.
Her musings were broken as she was joined in her walk to the hospital by the most infamous kunoichi from her class for competing with her for the Uchiha’s attention. The Yamanaka heir gave Sakura a big grin. “Hey forehead-chan, we’re having a get together now, just us girls. Temari’s coming too.”
Rolling her eyes at the nickname, Sakura gave a sideways glance at her former friend, turned rival, come friend again. “What mundane occasion are we celebrating this time?” She inquired in a bored, resigned tone.
She laughed at the disdain in her friend’s flat tone. “Not celebrating, unless you count Temari being named the official Suna Ambassador.”
“When and where, Ino?” She asked, not even attempting to resist. As it was, hanging out with Ino, Tenten, Hinata, or Temari were the only times her routine wasn’t bland, but not too much of an improvement. Admitting that she’d become a semi-shut in, even in her own mind, made the kunoichi shudder at the dumpster fire her life had become.
The blonde gave a sideways glance to her pink haired companion’s souring facial expression. “Same place as always. Though it may be time to pick another place to hang out at. Usual time as well.”
She was, thankfully, spared any of Ino’s inclination to butt into her love life, however, as was more common recently, she was spared said irksome behavior, though she had no idea why her oldest friend hadn’t acted as was normal for the blonde the last few times she’d seen her. “I got it. See you tonight, Ino-baka.” With that parting remark, she finished her trip to work via Shunshin.
Once Sakura had flickered away, Ino’s cheery smile fell and a tired grimace replaced it. She was growing exhausted from having to pretend to be her normal self. Ever since her abysmal attempt at starting a relationship with Sai, she’d felt hollow and found it difficult to care about her normal, daily activities. She’d tried to connect with the emotionally disconnected former Root ANBU, but even trying to make herself feel anything besides a passing admiration for his looks wound up making her feel inadequate.
‘You baka,’ a voice in her mind scoffed, ‘of course you couldn’t feel anything for that husk of a person. You know where your heart lies.’ A furious scowl formed on her face. She imagined the voice being smashed by a facsimile of a Bijuu bomb, then ignited by a imitation of Sasuke’s Amaterasu, with a finisher of a mountain sized, simulated, rasen-shuriken. That, particular, part of her mind had been getting rather annoying since she had given up trying to date Sai. She wasn’t sure she wanted to remember or understand the implications of what the voice was telling her.
She pondered the thought of her initial attractions to Sai, and slowly the image of Sasuke interposed upon the image of Sai she’d conjured. The realization horrified her, and she suppressed a shudder at the reminder of her folly during the academy days after she first started learning the Yamanaka Clan Jutsu. An inadvertent activation of her latent mental abilities had ignited the horrid Sasuke fangirl epidemic.
It had taken her and her father, how she missed him, months of work to repair the damage to her mind. She was so glad that her experience within Sakura’s mind during the preliminaries for the third round of the Chūnin Exams had shown her how bad her fangirling was for her mental health. She felt much clearer in her own mind after that match.
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Sakura entered the familiar yet revamped Yakiniku Q, already wanting the night to end. She had a gut feeling that she’d wind up regretting events from the night sometime in the future, most likely the near future. She pushed aside the thought and headed toward the room they normally had during their girls’ nights, knowing that a change of pace could do her some good. Hearing the laughter of her friends, she slid the door open and made her arrival known.
“Sakura-chan!” “Sakura-san.” “Look who finally decided to show.” “Konbanwa, Sakura-chan.”
She gave them all a wave at their greetings, a glare at the blonde konoha kunoichi for the rude one, and took a seat next to the blonde Kunoichi from Suna. “Konbanwa, min’na.” She returned the greeting, after settling in.
“It’s nice to see you again, Sakura-chan.” Hinata told the second generation Sannin. “Have you been well?”
Sakura nodded at the Hyūga heiress, a barely forced smile on her lips. “I have been well, Hinata-chan. Thank you for asking.”
Sensing that she didn’t really want to converse, as usual, the other girls began talking amongst themselves. They laughed as they spent the evening commiserating over the antics of their former classmates/teammates. Ino’s sour mood worsens, as does Sakura’s self-loathing. The duo ends up drinking to bury the feeling of being left behind.
Hinata and Tenten began to seriously worry once both Ino and Sakura hit their fourth oversized glass. “You girls doin’ okay?” Temari intones, stepping in for the other two.
Ino looks at her blankly. “No worries here, Temari-chan.” she answers flatly. “I’m fine, promise.”
Sakura’s eyes narrow a bit and she crosses her arms. “Just tryin to unwind after a tough shift at the hospital.” She lies. “Don’t worry, I’m good.”
The three other kunoichi share dubious looks. “If you say you’re good, we can’t really argue.” Tenten retorts in defeat. “Just take care of yourselves, kay?”
They respond with halfhearted assurances that they’ll take it easy from then on. After a few hours pass, the suna kunoichi, weapon specialist, and Hyūga heiress all depart with well wishes for the well inebriated duo.
Hours pass and many drinks are ingested by the iryo kunoichi and new Intelligence kunoichi. They eventually start bantering about their shared romance woes and mutual disgust for their younger selves. Sakura gets heated in her self-derision for her stupidity in the whole Sasuke fiasco that encompassed her Genin and Chūnin years.
Ino spends a lot of time apologizing tearfully for her part in escalating the whole fiasco, eventually leaning on the ranting woman’s shoulder. It’s at this point that the staff come to inform the pair that they are closing for the night. This prompts the inebriated kunoichi to stumble drunkenly through the streets of the now silent Konohagakure no Sato in an attempt to return to their residencies.
They come to Sakura’s place first, deciding that it’d be safer for them to both stay at the closest place to the restaurant, in the interest of safety, regardless that they can both burn off the alcohol with a flare of chakra if they needed to fight. Silence encompasses the duo as Sakura fumbles with the key to the door in the haze of her inebriation. As the door swings open the duo fall over each other in the process of entering, ending up in a tangled heap on the floor. Sakura extracts herself from the now dozing Ino and closes her apartment door.
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Ino groaned mentally as she woke, her head throbbing intensely from the hangover caused by her abundance of drinking last night. She should have stopped herself the moment she realized that she was drowning her woes in alcohol. She blinks to clear the cobwebs, trying to remember why she was staring at an unfamiliar ceiling instead of her own. Propping herself up, she groggily looks around the room to gather her bearings. It’s both unfamiliar and familiar at the same time. Instincts begin to kick in and she catalogs what she can remember after the impromptu drinking fest she and Sakura had. Right, Sakura. With the memory of her childhood friend, she realizes she is in Sakura’s apartment. She feels a draft on her chest and abdomen and glances down to find herself completely naked.
A slight panic sets in and Ino flares her chakra to expedite her recovery from the hangover and to gather her thoughts. The haze from her alcohol binge clears, and immediately several hazy memories from the previous night after Sakura had closed her apartment door replay brokenly in her mind. This has a secondary effect; shattering the last of the mental blocks from the academy days that she’d had no success in undoing before the Fourth Shinobi war.
Her memory of the day when Sakura had come to the other girls about having a crush fills her mind; the searing stab of pain in her chest and the rapid haze of jealousy that clouded her mind at Sakura confessing that she has a crush on Sasuke ripped through her as if it were happening at that very moment. The voice she’d never even noticed telling her to make her best friend forget all about her crush on Sasuke, and the resulting fangirl fiasco; it all assailed her mind in a rapid deluge as she destroyed the block repressing those memories.
She felt so stupid and wanted to cry in frustration and anger. She’d foolishly used her clan’s innate abilities to sabotage the genin careers of her entire class because of her denying her own feelings for her best friend in a fit of jealousy. The realization that she’d forced herself to chase someone else and torture herself by repressing the memories left a foul taste in her mouth. She’d been so childish, repressed, and utterly naïve.
Sakura had to stomp on the instinct honed over the years when Ino’s chakra flare had roused her. The fact that she knew the chakra went a long way in helping in that regard. As the haze of battle instinct and last night’s alcohol binge faded, she noticed that her nose was itching something fierce. As she slid her hand up from her side, she immediately noticed that she had a distinct lack of clothing. Not that she hadn’t slept in the nude before, but that wasn’t a normal thing when she had company over. She put her hand to her forehead, itch forgotten, and mentally scrambled to stitch together the events leading to her sharing a bed with Ino together.
As she put together the hazy images of her hungrily kissing her friend as they undressed each other, hands clumsy from their shared inebriation, she first noticed that she’d actually felt emotions that she hadn’t felt in close to two years. Latching onto that thought, she disregarded any further consideration of the events and possible repercussions from them, instead, she decided that she’d rather do whatever she could to feel those emotions again.
Ino was snapped from her internal meltdown as Sakura sat up abruptly on the other half of the bed. She fought the instinctive blush and the rush of arousal heating up her cheeks at how adorable the pink haired woman looked with her hair mussed up from sleep and their tryst and at her nudity. She smiled softly as her eyes were met by the brilliant aquamarine she would subconsciously compare to gemstones. She blinked at the intensity of Sakura’s gaze, and she felt a heat begin coiling in her stomach. That heat erupted as her crush crashed her lips against her own. She fought off a moan and kissed back hungrily.
She felt desire and need well up as she kissed the surprised blonde with desperation. She wanted to fill the hole in her chest and what she was feeling now was enough for the moment, so she let her body lead the way. Thoughts faded away as desire was allowed to reign free in their need to reenact the previous night’s actions; this time without the haze and clumsiness that came with inebriation. Repercussions or consequences could be contemplated later. For as long as possible, she just needed to feel.
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AN: So it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything with this story. This was also written after I had stopped watching the series during the Akatsuki gathering the Bijū arc. I forgot most of what sparked my idea initially, but I found something new, and better in my opinion, to continue this idea. This is the first of, at the moment, 5 chapters that I have outlined. I’m already working on the second chapter, so I hope I don’t fall off in getting this done.
I apologize to anyone that follows my projects for my long absence, but life is life and mental and emotional issues can only be overcome with time and work. I have many new ideas in the works for new and old fics alike, so keep an eye out for future updates.