A/N: I've been writing this since probably 12:30 am, and even though I really want to go to bed, I'm posting it now at 3 am instead so that I have an excuse for it's pure rambling nonsense. I just needed to stay up to write a oneshot to satisfy a craving for SasuIno I never thought I'd have.

So, er, forgive me if it doesn't make sense. It makes more sense in my head, with the whole Sakura thing. Really. It just didn't come out so well on the screen. At 2 am. Or so. Yeah.

Btw, I actually have nothing against Sakura at all, and frequently support the SasuSaku pairing. I just had this random craving for SasuIno. I think I may support it more often now. XDDD

Naruto and all related characters/universe (C) Masashi Kishimoto

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It was kind of like, after a while, she just did it for old time's sake.

Sure, she'd see Sakura—Sakura, her oldest bestest friend, the flower who'd finally opened only to show poison and wither where she bloomed—and she'd put up one hell of a fight. In the same way she knew every blossom's compliment, she knew every insult to poison and hurt. Since childhood, she'd been the coolest girl around—Ino's so cool. She's cute, and she's smart… and she has such good fashion sense!—so the coolest guy around would be hers and hers alone.

But her pink-haired friend obviously thought rivalry always meant bitterest enemies. (Guess she didn't look too hard at Kakashi and Gai.) So their friendship snapped as easily as a primrose stem in winter, and their eyes changed like the seasons, and for a very long time, they hated the sight of each other.

And after that, maybe she grew up a little. Maybe she cared more about the boys on her own team than the one boy one someone else's—the boy who had only looked twice at her because she yelled so loud he couldn't hear himself think. Suddenly, it was a world where she had to keep herself and her squadmates alive.

She sure as hell wasn't going to lose, so she stood up to Sakura, and she wasn't ever sure which one of them was the flower before the storm. Words beat down the fragile blossom just the same as wind and driving rain—so she guessed that made Sakura the flower after all. After a point, the words just didn't mean anything to Ino anymore. They just meant one more way to win, and if they got under Sakura's petals, well, that was the point, wasn't it? She supposed so.

When she stopped caring, maybe that was when he started.

No—that wasn't be right. The last time she ever remembered making a remark that really meant something, it was the day two hitai-ate had dropped to the ground like winter-touched blooms. (She hadn't sensed the prophecy then; so many more things had fallen that day.) No matter what you say, I'm not going to just hand Sasuke over to you! One last challenge to keep Sakura on her toes.

But only weeds could grow without whispers and water, and she sure wasn't going to water herself with her own tears. Yamanaka Ino moved on to a life where she could prosper.

And Uchiha Sasuke set fire to the same old tree in the forest every day for a week. Ino caught it burning, scorched and black and not ready to die. He never let it spread, which said something about his temper…. Then again, so did the fact that he was sending years of life up in smoke.

She knew her trees as well as her flowers. It was an ash—he still dreamed of grandeur (of power) long after his family was gone and his brother fled. He had nothing left to prove to anyone, and still his subconscious played off meanings he had never even known.

Ino had to be honest with herself. Once she'd found the burning tree, she didn't seek it out again, but she definitely didn't make an effort to avoid it. She wasn't going to chase Sasuke anymore, she was going to come out to the forest and find the flowers she needed. One more bit of one-upmanship to wave over Sakura's head just didn't rule her life anymore, but the cute guy could still get her attention.

She was almost ashamed to say that he really almost couldn't. She barely even looked at him when her path crossed with that smoking bit of home, merely gazed in wordless disgust at his brazen destruction and moved on.

He looked at her, though, when she forgot to be butterfly-quiet among the leaves. She thought she was going to die for a few seconds, before the chakra-fire died on his lips and the fear faded from her eyes. Before long, the haughty grin graced her face once again, though he scowled fiercely.

She could almost hear his thoughts. Damn obnoxious girl. She wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of being right. She wouldn't be his adoring fan, not today.

"Hey," she said, twisting an apple blossom from the ground between her slender fingers. "You better leave the trees alone, Sasuke. They sure haven't done anything to you."

He narrowed his dark eyes and turned his back on her. She watched a fed up bit of branch give a weary sigh and crumble from the tree, raining sooty darkness onto the forest floor and the Uchiha below. It dotted Sasuke's pale skin, a contrast as startling as two flowers that would only fight for attention in the viewer's eye.

As startling as the leech-like curse mark she'd seen that one day in the forest and never wanted to see again.

"Go away," he spat, without looking back. "I'm not in the mood for you squealing girls today."

She grinned widely, impulsively drawing a brightly-patterned gloxinia from her pouch. A proud spirit—it fit them both. "Do I sound like I'm squealing to you?"

He pivoted, maybe ready to kill her after all for disturbing his solitary display of roiling anger. She laughed and walked away and pretended not to care, deliberately dropping the blushing flower as she went.

That was probably actually the first time she noticed. What a story to tell Sakura she'd have—I gave Sasuke a flower, but with so many blooming embellishments the petals would fall from her fragile former friend as if winter had come early.

But the thought left no satisfaction inside her. In fact, the gleeful rush of having spoken to Uchiha Sasuke—alone—never even hit.

And it was probably pure curiosity that made her go back. But not actively—only if that elusive patch of lemon geranium happened to be lurking near the swiftly-crumbling ash tree, or if the wild honeysuckle mocked her good-naturedly from tangled branches nearby. She always grinned and took it as it came, especially if he spotted her.

She was waiting to see if she started to care again.

She finally realized that all she cared about now was breaking that shell of cold-fire anger and drawing some other bit of emotion from Uchiha Sasuke's dark eyes.

When she wandered on by and he was been waiting for her, snatching at her arm and demanding she stop following him around, she presented him with an iris and pointed out that he could always go burn down some other innocent tree, because she was only here for the flowers. When he flicked bits of chakra-lit fire at her, she laughed and tossed a lupine toward him, cleverly avoiding the sparks with a twist of her wrist. And when she finally, surprisingly, came across him asleep beneath his dying—ah, who was she kidding, it was long dead by then—ash tree, she quietly snickered and draped purple larkspur across his shoulders in a garland he would never appreciate.

She thought she was going to get away clean, too, that time. But as she skipped away, absurdly pleased with her antics, his hand snapped out and locked around her wrist. He pulled her down and devoured her in a fiery kiss that scorched her lips and burned her heart. For a moment or two, she wondered how she could have ever believed that Uchiha Sasuke didn't have a single emotion excluding fury and irritation.

That day, Yamanaka Ino was a flower who thrived on fire. And she never breathed a word of it to Sakura.

After all, if she did, Sakura might stop trying. And while it was just a little too late to lose a friend, it was always too early to lose a good kunoichi to winter's chill right in the middle of spring. She just had to have something to fight for.

It wasn't too hard for Ino to pretend the rose-haired girl still had that chance, that something. As long as she could still leave gardenias lying around Sakura's place, her last little torment.

For old time's sake.