Title: Two or Three Things
Author: Sintari
Rating: T for now,
MA/NC-17 in a few chapters (Will be posted elsewhere when that happens!)
Warnings: Angst, het/yuri/yaoi all possible, so read with an open-mind
Summary: A kunoichi's life is built on deception, so it stands to reason that, sooner or later, she will even lie to herself. The story of a kunoichi's career. Ino-centric. Parings t.b.a.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Chapter 1 - Unmourning
After the first death, there is no other. – Dylan Thomas
Kunoichi who fuck for their villages do not leave diaries. During my training, the only accounts I heard of our life's work were handed down by word of mouth from sensei to student. Ours is a secret art. It has to be. Everyone knows we exist, but men, in all their vanity, refuse to believe that they could ever fall for our ruses. It's the reason why I am a rich woman.
I am retired now, and I have every physical comfort I could ever want. An aging dowager ostensibly surrounded by her loved ones. The spoils of my career have assured that my family will never hurt for money for generations to come. And I can still bewitch a man with my gaze, or lack of it. The trick always was to catch his attention while making him think he was catching yours.
When it comes down to it, I suppose you could say I'm doing this because I have spare time. When you're in a life or death situation, matters of the soul do not seem quite as important as matters of the here and now. That has changed. I have time to breathe now. Time to remember, and time to regret.
Kunoichi who fuck for their villages do not leave diaries, so I'm writing this letter instead.
They lost the flower shop a week after Ino's fifteenth birthday.
She and her mother sat up the night before going over accounts. Math had never been Ino's strong suit, but even she could see that zero plus zero would never equal the staggering amount they still owed on the building, which included their upstairs flat.
"Your father made just enough for us to get by every month," Ino's mother, Momoko, said again. "We weren't turning a profit yet. We never did." She pushed the ledger away and looked out the window, watched a runnel of rain slide down the pane. "Not even the month of his funeral."
Ino reached out and clasped her mother's hand. The storm had knocked the power out hours ago, and a half-gone candle cast an unsteady light on their work. Sound has a different quality in the dark, Ino thought.
"I'll talk them into testing me for Jounin. I think I know one of the judges." Unlike the Chuunin Exam, the test for Jounin was a secretive affair. Candidates were spirited away in the middle of the night, showing back up weeks or months later. If they showed back up at all. Out of their graduation class, not even Shikamaru had made Jounin yet.
Her mother pulled her hand away sharply.
"You know one of the judges." Her voice turned hard. "You would."
The candle burned lower, casting her mother's face in shadow. Ino was glad. No, relieved. She'd already memorized the expression she knew she would have seen on her mother's face. Yamanaka Momoko had never been a shinobi. When Inoichi met her, she had been a member of the ubiquitous army of young girls who sell flowers on street corners and report to fat old men who demand a portion of their day's take.
Ino's mother thought she knew what it was like, but she didn't know. Not one thing. Outside, the rain slackened.
"I don't want to be a Jounin, Mother. But I would do it for us."
Her mother's hands fluttered along the ledgers, searching the plus column for a sum she would never find.
"Not even the month of his funeral," she said again.
"Sensei, you have to!"
But, fingering his cigarette, Asuma had the nerve to shake his head at her when both of them – if they just looked out the window of the Hokage tower – could see her heart shaped bed on the curb outside the flower shop.
"More missions, Ino. That's all I can do."
Ino crossed the distance between them and grabbed his arm. Still, she knew she couldn't even have touched him if he hadn't allowed her. He was a Jounin and that was the difference between them.
"I can be a spy," she said. "Dad had started teaching me our clan's ultimate jutsu before he died. I can figure out the rest. I can! I just need experience. Harder mission. Jounin missions."
Asuma twisted out of her grasp and suddenly he was across the room, retreating from her. The cigarette was back in his mouth and he addressed her in his usual laconic way before he left.
"You can survive losing your shop, Ino. You can't survive S-rank missions."
"I don't know how you ever had the balls to become a Jounin, Asuma," she hissed acidly at his retreating back. "You'll take on forty opposing shinobi by yourself but never could stand a confrontation with a single woman."
Asuma's troubles with women were notorious. She watched his back stiffen, perversely satisfied that her barb had hit home.
He didn't turn around.
"It'll never happen, Ino. Don't ask me again."
Ino was alone in the Hokage tower's back stairwell before she realized she was being shadowed. Like a good shinobi, she didn't change her pace. She did run her left hand through her long hair. If the shadow wasn't very experienced, the movement might disguise the fact that she palmed a kunai with her right hand.
"Clever girl," a voice from below her rasped. "You use your natural attributes to great effect."
Ino moved her hands to form a seal. Even in such a secure building a girl could never be too careful and if some creepy masked ANBU was trying to get fresh with her, maybe showing that she had some fight in her would make him back off. But before she could even complete the gesture, the source of the voice appeared, materializing from beneath the solid concrete stairs.
Ino rolled her eyes at herself for getting spooked. This guy looked like a lobotomy patient. He wore bandages around his head and covering one eye, and an x-shaped scar disfigured his weak chin. Blunt force trauma, Ino thought automatically. Probably he'd tried to accost some other kunoichi in the stairwell.
"Try that line in the old folks home," she snapped, then turned around and continued up the stairs. Her calves were rock solid from all the walking she and Asuma and Chouji had done on their dinky little C-rank missions lately. She could take the damn elevator just this once.
"Sarutobi Asuma is a cautious fool," the stranger acted as if he hadn't heard her. Ino stopped and turned around. He was looking up at her placidly, his hand at his sides.
So this wall-walking pervert had been eavesdropping on her when she pled with Asuma. She'd be embarrassed if she weren't so irritated. Ino gripped the kunai, though now that she realized he was a fellow nin and not some janitor with time on his hands, she knew that her missile would likely prove worthless.
"That's my sensei you're talking about, old man."
"Is that right?" The stranger remained at the bottom of the stairs, unthreatening. "The way he babies you, I thought he was your father."
That hurt. She felt a small twinge under her ribs whenever anyone mentioned fathers to her, and she imagined she would for the rest of her life.
She swallowed. "So what are you saying?"
The stranger's mouth was a neutral line. "I'm just saying that I would have done it differently, if I were Asuma. There's a place for you in Konoha's shinobi ranks. A vital position that only a woman like you could fill. But Asuma doesn't have the, as you said, 'balls' to recommend you for the program."
Ino's eyes narrowed.
"You tell me there's a job for me, but you don't even introduce yourself. What is it? Sweeping the Hokage's floor? ANBU water girl? I've never even seen you, and I sure as hell know you don't have the authority to offer me a job. Seriously, thanks. That's five minutes of my life I'll never get back." She took the steps two at a time now.
"Yamanaka Inoichi died in the Lightning Country daimyo's summer palace."
Ino stopped, but didn't deign to turn around.
"He entered the mind of a young servant. Even though we'd planted a spy in the house for several months, we didn't know that the boy was the Lightning daimyo's..." Ino's mind supplied the word. Her skin crawled as the gravelly voice behind her talked on.
"The Lightning Country daimyo, Minoru Daisuke, is notorious for his cruelty. I'm sure you've heard of him. Your father was supposed to steal a sample of a chemical that had been used to poison a village water supply in western Fire. Instead, when your father realized what was to happen, he withdrew from the boy's mind and attempted to rescue him. Against orders, of course. Yamanaka always had a weakness for children. The daimyo's personal guard released a chlorine-based poisoned gas into your father's hiding place. Before he died – nasty way to go, chlorine gas – he had time to say a few words to his teammates on his comm. He told Akimichi Chouza and Nara Shikaku that Minoru's guards slit the boy's throat in front of him. Then he died in pain."
Ino hadn't moved. Her foot was still poised, toeing the top step.
"You didn't know?" The man asked the question in a tone that told her it wasn't a question at all. "What'd they tell you? Assassins?"
Ino turned around.
"Only a woman like me, huh?"
Ino nearly bumped into Shizune as she emerged from the stairwell.
"Ino! Was just about to send a runner for you," the older woman balanced her chin on the massive stack of paper she carried. "We didn't know where you're staying now, and all. I need you to fill out a Change of Address form, by the way."
Ino shrugged. "You'll be the first one to know."
Shizune nodded, "Good, good. And listen, can you grab that blue piece of paper? No, the baby blue." Ino finally fished the correct piece from the stack. "Your team will be joining a contingent guarding a merchant caravan. They think they're in danger from enemy shinobi, but intel says that's bullshit. At least they're willing to pay up front. And it's only C-Rank, so bring a book."
C-Rank. Her wages from this mission would pay for the fanciest box under the East Bridge.
"Any special instructions?" she asked.
"Just support Asuma and Chouji, Ino. That's what you're there for."
Ino hadn't been too far off the mark when she made her crack about ANBU water girl. When she was with Asuma and Chouji, two of the most talented taijutsu fighters in the village, her skills fell by the wayside. If she had a ryu for every time she used her family's special jutsu to trick some guardsman into revealing where the reinforcements hid then she would own a whole chain of flower shops. If she had a ryu for the times she used it to do anything else, well – she did. Back outside the Hokage Tower, the first thing Ino saw was her heart-shaped bed, still on the curb. And on it, her bony butt perched on the very tip of the heart, was Sakura.
Ino plopped down at the head of the bed, jostling her friend. Her pillows were gone, probably at the Akimichi house with her mother though the specially made fitted sheet still clung to the mattress. Her prized bed looked all ready for sleeping, except for the fact that a cool breeze ruffled the bed skirt and Konoha's market day crowd parted to avoid it.
"You know," Sakura said conversationally. "I always wanted a bed like this, but I never got one."
Ino scooted to the middle of the heart and pulled her knees up to her chest.
Sakura didn't look at her. Sakura always seemed to know when she couldn't stand to be looked at.
"My best friend when I was a kid had one," Sakura continued, raising her voice over the street noise. "When I slept on it with her she would kick and elbow me until I invariably fell off the end. It took me years to realize that she was awake the whole time."
"Sounds like a spoiled brat," Ino grumbled. She snuck a surreptitious look at Sakura's back.
"I don't think she was spoiled," Sakura said lightly. "I think she was loved. Very, very loved."
Mindless of curious stares, Sakura crawled to the head of the bed, her usual position on the right side, and pulled her knees up to mimic Ino. It might have comforted her to lay her head on Sakura's shoulder, but Ino refrained.
They both looked straight ahead, a view dominated by an overflowing metal trash can.
"You can stay at my house, you know."
She could have said, "No way in hell," out loud, but it would have been wasted breath. Sakura knew.
"Thanks, but I'm staying at the Nara's until Mom and I can muster up a deposit for a place." As she said it, she thought of the stranger's, Danzou's, offer. If what he said was true, she wouldn't need to rent an apartment, she could get the flower shop back. And if she didn't, this morning would quite possibly be the last morning she could wake up in her heart-shaped bed, in her purple and silver room, and for a few blissful seconds believe that everything was going to be all right. That was the best part of her day.
"I have savings," Sakura offered.
Ino snorted, elbowed her friend in the ribs. "Keep it. You'll need it. I have good looks to fall back on."
But Sakura didn't jostle her back, and she sensed her friend's frown. Little lines formed on that big forehead.
Ino exhaled through her nose. "Jeez, not you too?"
Pink hair grazed Ino's cheek when Sakura spun to face her.
"I just worry."
"I wouldn't worry about me," Ino pointed to a commotion down the street. "I'd worry about him."
People glanced nervous at Uzumaki Naruto, who was standing in the middle of the street, fists clenched at his sides, scanning the roofline.
"Get your ass down here, you- you girly-faced fucktard! I'll break your fucking paintbrush next time!"
Sakura leapt up, flinging a wry apology over her shoulder.
"New teammate. I should diffuse this."
Ino hugged her knees and pretended not to watch Sakura stand behind Naruto and place two calming hands on his shoulders. Slumping, he turned to her. Sakura licked her finger and swiped a smudge of ink off his cheek. Then he said something that caused her to punch him not-so-lightly on the arm. After Naruto whined about it, they both scanned the roofline before propelling up to the third floor of a rooming house.
Ino smoothed the wrinkled sheet in Sakura's spot. She had no doubt that Sakura would save the day, capture the elusive teammate, bandage the wounds, and mend the paintbrush. Then she would go home to her same old bed and her same old two parents and polish the commendation medal she had received for some mysterious mission involving the Kazekage.
But hell, Ino had her good looks to fall back on.
When they had sleepovers as kids, before they were old enough for raised eyebrows, Shikamaru and Ino always preferred to sleep over at Chouji's house. For one, Chouji's mother always kept plenty of food on hand.
At Shikamaru's there was never enough venison steaks, venison sausage, and venison stew to go around. Everybody at the Nara house always went to bed slightly hungry. Those last few months living above the flower shop, Ino's mother had obsessively watched her eat, her hawk eyes tallying every grain of rice against a budget in her head. The worried lines had only smoothed when Ino stopped eating altogether, so she had. A person can get used to anything. And tonight, Ino preferred the slight ache in her stomach. It kept her mind of what she'd lost.
Nights were always the hardest. If the moment she woke up was the best part of her day, the hours lying awake at night were the worst. So she lay still until she heard all the Naras' breathing even out and then stole down to their front porch. The sky spit tepid rain, but the front porch was covered and the stoop was dry. The Nara's nubby welcome mat digging into her thighs, Ino leaned forward and caught raindrops in her hands.
Danzou's promises echoed in her head. Money, power, fame. Revenge. Work that would use her two greatest natural gifts – her charm and her beauty. She would still be serving her village as a shinobi, but there would be very little camping or hiding in trees while her teammates did the dirty work. Hell, she wouldn't have teammates. The success or failure of the mission would depend on her and her alone. And the reward - the reward was more than she could ever have sensibly hoped for. Ino realized she wasn't especially smart. She also knew she wasn't a skilled military tactician, and that she would always be an average fighter at best. She came from an old line, it was true, but she had barely begun to tap her father's store of family jutsu before he died.
But, despite all her shortcomings, there was one thing she was sure of. Ino wasn't going to live mediocre and impoverished, and she damn sure wasn't going to die that way.
She was nearly asleep, her crossed arms balanced on her knees, when she heard the refrigerator door shut. Presently Nara Shikaku eased the front door open and joined her on the porch.
One of Ino's first memories was Shikaku bouncing her on his knee. No more than three years old, she had reached out with sticky fingers and stroked the scar on his face. She remembers being confused and starting to cry when all the adults present gasped, but Shikaku had simply covered her hand with his and allowed her to memorize the texture of the puckered skin beneath his eye.
Shikaku's knees creaked as he lowered himself to the stoop until they sat shoulder to shoulder. He twiddled a midnight snack of dried venison between two fingers.
"Lot on your mind, kid?"
Ino pointedly stared out at the rain. It had strengthened, and judging by the absence of street lights the power was out again. It would be another turbulent Konoha summer.
She saw his understanding nod with her peripheral vision. He tore off a piece of the venison and offered it to her. Ino ignored it.
Shikaku finished his snack, and then sat quietly with her for so long that if he hadn't lit his pipe, she would have forgotten he was there.
"I know something I probably shouldn't," he finally said. His voice startled her and Ino glanced at him.
"Oh yeah?"
"It's dark business," he continued. "What you're considering."
Ino pulled her knees in closer to her chest. "But it's my business."
She wasn't a kid anymore and he wasn't her father. He couldn't bounce her on his knee and make everything all right.
The tobacco in the pipe crackled.
"And you're my business." He said it calmly, without a hint of anger. They fell silent again.
"How'd you know?" Ino finally asked.
Shikaku gestured vaguely.
"Dark night. Full of shadows." She knew that was all she would get from him.
He sucked on his pipe again, rain fell, and Ino fumed.
"You know what?" she suddenly turned to him. "I'm grown up. And goddammit, I would be good at this. This is my decision to make." She couldn't stop herself from adding petulantly, "You're not my father!"
At first Ino thought the low rumble she heard was distant thunder, but then she realized it was Shikaku chuckling. The sound turned into a cough.
"You're a lot like him. You know that, kid?"
Ino fell silent. Nobody ever said that. She cut her eyes sideways at Shikaku as he took another puff from his pipe. He was a shadow himself, there in the darkness, the tobacco's embers barely illuminating the lower half of his face.
"I should have been in there with him."
It was the first time she had heard Shikaku admit to a weakness. Neither had she ever heard her father or Chouza say a mission had gone wrong. They were the indomitable Ino-Shika-Chou. The perfect team. Mortality rate zero. Up until four months ago.
Ino didn't even dare breathe as Shikaku dumped the contents of the pipe on the sodden ground by the stoop.
He was just a pained voice from the darkness then.
"We were linked on the comm, kid. I heard him die." Ino didn't want to look at him. She didn't need to see dark memories warring on his face. "Kid, if you do what you're planning to do, no one will hear you die."
With a grunt, he heaved himself up from the stoop and lumbered back into the house.
Ino watched the rain.
The next morning, Ino went to the Akimichi's to say her goodbyes to her mother and meet Chouji before their guard mission. She'd put Danzou's offer out of her mind for the time being. If he knew how her father died, then surely he knew that she had a mission. He could give her a little more time to ponder her answer.
There was a wreath on the Akimichi's door and Ino recognized her mother's handiwork. There was also a flower arrangement in an urn by the stairs, and one in a vase on the kitchen table. They could take the woman out of the flower shop, but couldn't take the flower shop out of the woman. When Chouji's mother wasn't looking, Ino rearranged one of the cosmos so that it better showcased the lilies.
"She's out back replanting all my bulbs," Chouji's mother said with a small frown and a shrug. This was the closest Ino had ever heard Akimichi Sora come to a complaint. Ino felt a rare flash of sympathy.
"It must be hard having a permanent house guest. After a couple of missions I should have enough for a deposit on an apartment, Akimichi-san."
Ino waited in the foyer, and couldn't help but smile when Chouji bustled down the stairs, his half-zipped pack in one hand and the ubiquitous bag of barbeque chips in the other. When he saw her, he half hid the chips behind his back, blushing a little. Chips versus carrot sticks had become an ongoing debate between them and Ino didn't hesitate to press all of her advantages.
"What do you have there, Chouji?" she sidled up to him. She heard his breath catch when she pressed against his side. It was shameless to abuse his crush on her, but she reminded herself that it was for his own good really, and then snatched his bag. Chouji chased her – and his chips – into the kitchen and, for a few seconds, Ino was happy.
"You just take care of my boy, Ino," Sora patted both of them on the cheek with a doughy hand then pretended to have something in her eye. Ino and Chouji grinned at one another when Sora turned away and sniffled noisily. "And don't worry about your mother. She's welcome to stay as long as she needs. And you too, if you ever get tired of the Nara's dark old house."
Ino smiled. "Be careful what you wish for, Akimichi-san. I may take you up on that."
Without looking, Ino pinched the back of Chouji's arm as he reached for a potato chip.
"I'm a growing boy," she heard him say happily behind her. She went to the back of the house to check on her mother.
Ino saw from inside that her mother was taking the clippers to an azalea bush. She had no doubt that Momoko would make a mess of Sora's garden, and even less doubt that Sora would never say a word about it.
Her mother looked up when she opened the door. She didn't say anything though, and when Ino didn't either, she resumed her work.
"Plan didn't work, did it?" Momoko finally broke the silence, attacking the shrub with a new vigor.
"No," Ino said quietly.
"What's that?" her mother stopped clipping and turned to her.
"I said no. It didn't work."
Her mother stripped her gardening gloves off, wiped sweat from her forehead.
"Ah. I thought not."
Ino wondered again how her mother could go on, planting flowers, sowing them, talking to them, culling the leaves so that they bloomed to their fullest potential when all Ino herself wanted to do was lie down in one of the flower beds and die.
"I'm off on a mission then," she said instead. "The pay won't be quite enough for that deposit, but I should get there soon."
Her mother turned on the garden spigot. She cleaned her hands and never said a word. Her thoughts couldn't have been plainer if she had just come out and said, "It should have been you."
Danzou hadn't told her how to find him again, so Ino returned to the same stairwell between the second and first floor. Chouji had called after her when she passed him in the hall, but he didn't chase her and she assumed that he was probably at the gate with Asuma, waiting for her.
"What do I need to do?" she asked the scarred man when he showed up.
He had smiled then, not a reassuring sight.
"Just be yourself."
TBC
Thank you very much for reading. Constructive criticism or just plain feedback is greatly appreciated.