Yamanaka Ino (Iris)

From: iris@fandomhigh.edu
Cc: karla@fandomhigh.edu; zackf@fandomhigh.edu
To: [Fandom Island, yes everyone]
Re: Zack's Birthday Party!

Yo!

Tomorrow is a very important day! One that cannot pass without notice! Or else the world will end.

Okay, probably not, but I'm writing this email (Karla had nothing to do with this; she's cc'd because it felt wrong to send out a party notice without her!) and so what I say goes!

Anyway, tomorrow is Zack's birthday!

Neither Zack nor I are actually sure exactly how old he's turning, due to shenanigans with timelines and other, less fun, things. But there's still going to be a party!

Get your asses down to the park. That's right, the park as soon as the sun starts setting (or later, whenever's good, really) for good food (Zack asks me to remind all of you that there will be vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free options available for those with dietary restrictions and that if you have any others, let us know; or not, I don't care. You're all old enough to avoid dying by eating something you shouldn't and I could heal your stupid asses anyway if you're not), good times, and free booze (I'm bringing three types of beer; you want something fancier, bring your own) and celebrate the fact that Zack's getting older!

Or laugh at him for getting older! I get to tease him for, like, a whole week about being older than me.

Presents are great, but not necessary. Just come on down and have fun!

If you got any questions, hit me up! Or hit Karla up, that'd amuse me a lot.

See you there!

-- Iris

[Quite naturally, puppy_fair has approved this email going out! Open for any emails or phone calls!]

Ino wasn't avoiding Zack. She really wasn't. This wasn't like the situation they'd been in last year, with both of them ignoring the elephant in the room and coexisting without ever really living with one another.

This was different because Ino had drowned herself in research since Kueng had left and had barely looked up from it for long enough to eat and shower and sometimes (maybe) sleep.

So, in a way, she was perhaps to be forgiven for not realizing just how much time she'd spent buried in years and years of painstaking work—a great deal of it done after her death—by a man whose love for her showed in the sheer amount of information he'd provided.

There was a lot of think about. And not all of it was about her death either.

Ino frowned at the report she was rereading.

[For ze guy, yo.]

Ino's day had been peaceful. She'd gone for a run with Girl, then they'd both gone into her shop so that Girl could nap and Ino could amuse herself in her lab for a few hours. Then they'd gone out again while Ino had fielded a phone call from Tseng wanting to know how she'd misplaced Zack (the answers she'd come up with hadn't pleased him much) and eventually they'd wandered back to the Boards and the apartment above it.

Silly had spent most of the day in her hair or cheeping at Girl. Ino wasn't sure what Silly hoped to accomplish but, hey, Girl hadn't eaten Silly yet. That was good.

After they'd all eaten, and Ino had gone for shower, they'd all somehow wound up on the couch together while Ino went through her notes from the day's work at the lab and Girl dozed contentedly. Silly sat on the back of the couch and surveyed them both with beady eyes.

Fine. Fine, it wasn't so bad having a dog. Maybe.

[For that boy. And phone calls, if you want.]

It was the middle of the night, closer to morning than evening, when Ino appeared in the apartment she and Zack shared in a near-silent puff of smoke.

( Cut for blood and minor gore! )

[For the boy! Warning for blood and minor gore. Just to be safe, yo.]

It had taken her ages to fly across the greater part of a continent, and then over a piece of the ocean, in the dead of winter. Ino never wanted to repeat that journey, but it had given her plenty of time to think. Getting into her emails without being noticed was still a… well, she'd managed. But it had been a challenge. Ino was a born hacker of minds, not of machines.

It had been worth it though, when she'd found the first piece of the puzzle. Her phone bill was higher than it had been in years. At first, she'd thought it was due to her calls to Fandom, but while that made a bit of a difference, the bigger one was… Zack's account was in use.

She'd lost two days to that revelation, what it had to mean, and the rage and guilt and horror that it had inspired in her. What had kept her in one place had been less the rage and more the twin emotions of stark betrayal and incredulous joy. Neither had been conductive to stealth, so she hadn't tried. She'd taken her time.

If Zack's account was in use, if Zack was alive… then she'd been lied to for years. It sent her straight back into the empty, ugly spaces of herself where she could do anything, the empty, broken places she'd retreated into after losing him the first time around.

It took two days for her to shake that off, to pick herself up, to be an adult. She had to know the truth. She had to go home.

( Now, she was home. )

It was a fragile, ephemeral conclusion that she came to, but it was the only one that made sense:

I think he was trying to protect us. Or maybe even just me. But from what, and why?

[For the one she's waiting for, please.]

[OOC: So yeah. If you're seeing this... I have no idea why you're reading Ino's journal years after I dropped her, but hi! This post was written waaay back in 2011 as a companion piece to this post over on puppy_fair's journal. (And you should go read that one because it's way, way better than this post.) Then it got lost in my inbox and I didn't feel like posting it and now I do? I'm feeling nostalgic tonight, I guess.]

It's pretty weird for you to be summoned directly to him and when you consider the fact that you've not gotten yourself in trouble--not even because of Silly--you realize that, really, he's probably summoned you to talk about the future and how to proceed with it.

And you're right, in a sick and twisted way that leaves you trying not to vomit on the carpet, as he tells you that he is dead in action and that he (not he) is sorry. He doesn't look at you as he says this. That's right, he was his friend too. You shake your head, long hair tumbling with the movement, tumbling like your thoughts, like your world is spinning and trying to realign and can't because the foundation you've found, made, used here is--

Gone.

You'd been told you had years. To change things, to fix them, to make the world a better place. That he died at some point during all of that.

You'd thought you had years to figure that out and change it. They'd let you go on thinking that, knowing you knew, and beneath the shock is a current of red-hot fury, but the shock is winning now. They lied. You're certain at least one of them loves you, but they lied and let you believe and let you wind your life around his and now… now you're all alone, in a world that's not even yours.

In a world that, maybe, you can still even save. You know a lot, though you didn't know enough.

He's gone, after all.

You realize hazily, belatedly, dizzily, that he, your boss, is waiting for an answer of some sort. Acknowledgement.

You've got none to give.

"No," you say, in a voice that might as well be dead, because you wish you were dead just then, and without hearing an answer (perhaps he gave one, perhaps he didn't) you walk out. You don't even know what you're saying no too. Just that--no. That's it, that's all there is: no. No, you refuse to deal with it. No, it didn't happen. No, he didn't, wouldn't, couldn't, just leave you like that.

No, he couldn't be gone is the same as no, this can't be happening. Except that it has and it did and you're all alone and even if you were to call someone, who would you trust? Those who knew lied to you. That means there's no one to trust. Not in your crumpled up, closed off heart that trusted little and loved few already.

You find yourself at the top of many, many stairs. You don't remember getting there. It makes sense not to go to your room, or to your other room. Too easy to be found by other people and you don't want to talk to them. If you're spoken to right now, you think you might go violent. It would be a release, since you can't cry. (Because this isn't happening. Your birthday is in a few days and he's got a surprise for you so it can't be happening.)

Your hands are trembling, shaking, when you look at them and consider the easiest way to get out of this nightmare. There's so many. Your room is filled with options, your person has others. You shake, wrapping your arms tight around you, leaning against the door and consider it.

But if you did, he wouldn't understand. That's still important to you, his understanding.

Instead, you force yourself down those steps. Waveringly, alarmingly, as they pitch and roll in your eyesight because everything's out of focus and worse, but you keep going, clinging to the railing like it's a lifeline, because it is. One step of steps, around a corner, then another. Then you start picking up your pace as you go spiralling down and down and down which is exactly how you feel and somewhere on the twentieth floor, tears start spilling down your cheeks and you keep running.

Reaching the bottom is like hitting the end of the line. You stand, shuddering, on the last step and refuse to take it. Refuse to touch rock bottom.

Instead, you turn and force yourself to go up and up and up so that you can go down again. You can't talk to anyone, you can't go outside--who knows who'll see you, and here you can at least move, run--you just have to hide from one person, that's all, because if he says anything right now, you might try to kill him and you don't want to do that just because he looks like someone who broke your trust. So you'll avoid him.

That's easy, when you don't feel like you exist anyway. What's one more layer to this farce?

You continue up and up and up so that you can go down and down and down.

And that's fitting too, whispers your thoughts, under the haze of no.

Ino had felt—good, stable, all the way out of Fandom, off the island, and into Midgar, which was her own home now (and that was something she still had to remind herself of), even while they stopped to let her change into her uniform.

It was only as Zack pressed a kiss to her cheek, in the lobby of the ShinRa building and headed off for his own orders, that Ino felt the clawing uncertainty come back.

Talk to the receptionist, she’d been told. Ino could do that, though she despised walking into a situation blind. It was a comfort, at the least, that she already had her uniform, her I.D. , and that she was supposed to be here, so far as anyone was concerned.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t nervous, still, underneath the cool demeanour. This was her first time, after all, on the job, in this capacity. Her hair was down, flowing in careful waves down her back and her shoulders were straight as she approached the mission--reception desk.

“Excuse me?”

And Ino ignored the creeping panic that reminded her she had no idea of what else to say.

[NFB, please! For them that're in the building.]

Being back in Fandom was a peculiar… sort of disconnect.

Ino was curled up on hers and Zack’s pushed together beds and pretending to read. Which was rather futile because she knew it was pretence and so it would have been more productive to actually do something…

But she didn’t really feel like it. There were a lot of things she had to think on, but those thoughts felt almost like she was clinging to broken glass in her hands, and that hurt.

Like a toothache, however, she couldn’t quite stop poking at them. Even when doing so only hurt things more.

And, turn the page. Keeping up appearances, even just to herself, was important.

She was supposed to be reading. Would claim to be reading.

But her gaze wasn't on the book.

[Open door and post!]

The trip to Konoha had been blissfully uneventful and a tension that Ino hadn't even been aware of drained away as the day had gone on, which almost, but did not quite, eradicate the peculiar feeling that she was on vacation in truth and not… home.

It was nice to see her parents, however, and Ino pretended that she didn't notice the way her mother frowned at her appearance or the glances over her head between them (at seventeen, Ino was resigned to never getting to be taller than they were) and concentrated on enjoying just being at the shop and explaining to Zack what each flower was and what it meant when combined with other flowers.

That was a topic that kept her well entertained until supper, wherein the talk had turned to more general matters and Ino found herself trying to stifle yawns over her rice. Zack's dietary habits earned her a raised eyebrow, when Zack wasn't looking, but were handled otherwise without comment for which Ino was grateful for.

All the gratefulness in the world, however, was going to keep her awake long once they'd retired from the table to the living room and had settled themselves on the couch. It wasn't more than a few minutes before she was fast asleep.

And that, all unknown to Ino, was when her father set his tea down on the coffee table and gave her boyfriend a blue-eyed glance that verged on hostile.

"So," he said, "my daughter."

[NFB, for ze puppy, la la la!]