hey I reread this fic and read a lot of fun ino fic and like. wow I sure do love that bitch your hair looks great and you're about to kill a man A+ i don't have a beta wanna be my beta if not just tell me where i fucked up thanks

this fic might feel like a filler but honestly i needed to come back to the characters and get to know them again. i don't think a chapter is a filler if it develops the characters or helps (even if only a little) to further the story so imo this isn't one but also ino doesn't like kill god in it or anything. this fic is so depressing lmao. ino really needs to like. find herself. this poor idiot loser

Song rec: Full Moon by The Black Ghosts

ASpHodeL

[clover]
I
will
never
forget

Ino slinks forward lowly, hips nearly touching the dirt, her stomach pulled taut. "In position," she whispers into her headpiece. She's so near the target she barely dares to breathe. When she's like this, she feels like a snake, staring out over the tall grass with her body tuned finely and turned sleek, smooth.

"I've hit a complication," Shikamaru's voice mutters. When he talks like that she can imagine him clicking a game piece down on the shogi board, giving Asuma-sensei an annoyed look. When he talks like that he sounds like a frustrated boy playing at being bored to hide his own miscalculations. It's cute. He's still Shikamaru, the boy she's known since birth, even now. Cute.

"I as well, beautiful," Sai mourns. She spares him an eye roll he can't see; it's more for her own benefit, anyway. She likes to tell Shikamaru Sai just got too used to being on missions with Sakura and Naruto, and they always use funny codenames. She likes to tell Shikamaru that, but she also really likes to hear Sai call her beautiful, even if it's just him being too used to the idiots and their silly codenames. She is beautiful. That's never been in question. She can hear the clashing of metal on metal through the headphone when he spoke, and she sighs; he isn't getting here anytime soon.

(She fought with him, once, yelled at him because beautiful was just a joke to him, just something cruel to say in between talking about Naruto's dick or Sakura's chest and what did he know, anyway, the boy who didn't have feelings at all, who faked his laughs at jokes and didn't know how to smile or how to speak and repressed himself so deeply she can't imagine there's anything left in his husk and when she told him that he'd recoiled like she'd slapped him and Ino knew she was beautiful then. She's always been beautiful. "I'm gorgeous," she'd said. "Fuck you."

"Your call, Beautiful," he retorted and it was the closest thing to a joke Ino had ever heard Sai make.)

"Can you take the shot?" Shikamaru asks her and she knows if she says no, he won't argue with her. He won't push her or guilt her for it. He might make some jokingly snide comments later, about kunoichi and shinobi and Ino's shameful act of being both, but he won't mean it and he won't bring it up if she tells him not to. He trusts her judgment, and if she says no, there will be no shaming or chiding. If she says no, it doesn't mean she doesn't want to take the shot. It means she can't. Ino keeps her eyes pinned to the campfire, to the two men sitting around it. Only one of them's a ninja. The other's just a noble. She's close enough, and they're still enough—she won't miss.

Still, when Shikamaru talks like that, it makes her feel like a genin again, a few feet from Tora the cat and only a few years away from warfare.

"I'll be there soon," Sai interjects. Sai trusts her, same as Shikamaru—but not in the same way. Even if she can take the shot, he probably doesn't want her to. Sai's lost a lot, and when you team up with Naruto and Sakura for longer than a week, you usually come out of it petrified that everyone's gonna leave you. But she's close enough, the poison already dripped over her senbon. She could destroy the ninja's brain and still have more than enough time to kill the target, to recoil back into her body.

"I can take the shot," Ino tells them. Sai makes a sputtering sound and Shikamaru an affirmative one. "If you get here and my body's in the grass—take care of her for me, okay?"

She almost does feel dismal about it. Falling face first in the dirt—her hair really had looked good that morning. Shame.

But the mission comes first, and Ino's nothing if not a winner. She brings her hands up in the familiar seal, the first real technique she learned, after years and years of practicing the clan taijutsu and begging her father and showing him she was responsible enough to wash her own face and sharpen her own kunai, after years and years of teaching herself to be strong and beautiful and pretending with Father that Mother wasn't so formal it hurt and—

The target looks up and it isn't a nobleman. For a second she's marred only by confusion. What's he doing here? She watches Sasuke scan the trees, his eyes lingering for a bit too long on her spot behind the grass. "The target—" she starts but then his eyes twist, warp, and he's staring at her, two swirling red pools. She knows Konoha put a kill on sight order on his bingo book entry—she'd cried over it, too—but she hasn't seen him in years. When she looks at him it's with regret, nostalgia.

But he stares at her and a shiver goes up her spine and even though it's impossible, even though Uchiha Madara must be dead by now, she suddenly thinks that's the face she's seeing. "What is it?" Sai asks and she wants so desperately to answer but she can't move. Fear has paralyzed her, but it is also as though she's no longer in her body at all. "Ino, what is it?" Sai says again, louder now, more alarmed, and he isn't calling her beautiful now.

(Is that because he's dead or because she's dead or because before he killed her Madara ran a knife over her face over her mouth over the plush lips she'd pursed at herself in the mirror a hundred times turned them into plush, fleshy scars the kind that never heal right and turn into raised ridges of skin, into mountain ranges echoing up and down her body—is it because she's ugly now? Or is it because he no longer has a mouth to speak out of?)

She wants so badly to answer him, at least to let him now they've been chasing the wrong marks, but when she tries to move she can't. She wants to tell him—he's been calling her beautiful and stopping in on her when she gets hurt after missions and she really wants to say something to him but she can't remember what. Ino tries again to speak but can't. She wonders if the vocal cords remain, if they're functional, after a throat is slit. It feels as though she's been ejected, that she's drifting away, and she watches Madara take those precious few steps toward her, tugging a kunai from a pouch on his hip and she knows what's going to happen.

("Little girl," he'd said, shaking his head, mouth twisted and he would enjoy killing her. His body on hers—she wished he would just kill her. One hand to grip her chin, to force her to look at him. "Don't you have any teeth to bare? Nothing sharp to show?")

He's going to kill her and Ino jerks awake in the Forest of Death just in time to stifle her own scream.

She sits up sharply. She was supposed to be on watch duty but she'd fallen asleep. Shame ignites in her—but it isn't strong enough. Fear still lingers. She can feel it in her own chakra signature, sickly and slow and grey like sewer water. Ino listens to the sound of Sakura breathing. She feels exposed, wind rustling the leaves and the rush of the river too loud. But Sakura inhales, exhales, asleep and peaceful. "I'll take first watch," Ino had said. It's been hours.

Ino stares at the shadow of her own hands in the darkness. It'll be impossible for Ino to fall back asleep.

There's no point in waking Sakura then. Sakura had been asleep before camp had even been set up. She probably needed the rest. Still, Ino had been left alone to wash Naruto's face and tuck him into his sleeping bag—he was still unconscious then, and he's unconscious now. She looks over at him in the dark and indulges herself. She brushes some of his hair back from his face. His forehead protector, in the sleeping bag, next to his head, gleams under moonlight.

She can't sleep, but she lays back in the dirt, closing her eyes, shutting out the shaded trees and the glitter in the sky. Her sense stretch, but the closest chakra she can find is over a mile away, just a dim spark. There's only Sakura's quiet warmth and the Naruto's soft rumbling. At first glance, he seems like he's asleep—but when Ino closes her eyes and searches out his chakra, it's like a pot about to boil over.

She lost Shikamaru. She realizes it now. When she looked into his eyes, bloodied and with Sasuke's body between them, she saw only something cursory. He'd been relieved. But the emotion was perfunctory, carried out with only the minimum thought. Ino's alive, he must have thought. Well, that's not bad. And that was all.

Is that not what Ino had thought, every time she watched Naruto crawl back into camp like an insect, like sludge slipping through a drain, alive again? Isn't that what she had thought, when she saw him again and knew it meant she'd have to live another day?

It isn't the same, Ino thinks and it isn't. What she'd felt had been worse. What Shikamaru felt was indifference. She was a familiar face from family gatherings, the one he spent festivals with and the one who used to mock him when he couldn't manage to catch a goldfish in a paper net. Before they started the academy, she and Shika and Chouji were each other's only friends. She begged her father to let her go to the academy early—"I can't only talk to them for the rest of my life!"—but he wouldn't break the rules for her, not even when she got Shikamaru and Chouji in it, too.

(Well, just Chouji, really. "If we go to the academy we can make so many friends," she'd said, talking a mile a minute, and she could already picture it. Yamanaka Ino in a room of girls with cleanly brushed brushed hair and boys with freshly washed faces and of course she would make so many friends. And they would have birthday parties and sleepovers and it would be so fun and she just had to go to the academy she had to go to school—she'd been practicing her forms for so long because she was going to make an amazing first impression and everyone would want to be her friend—

"Really?" Chouji asked, cautiously optimistic. Then, confused, "But I already have you guys."

Ino stomped her foot.)

She hasn't spent a festival with him in years.

Ino indulges herself; she leans closer to Naruto, letting her hand rest on his cheek for a selfish moment. She looks down at his face. Sleeping he looks even younger. Ino bends down without thinking, presses her lips to his forehead, and when he murmurs, "Ino?" she jumps so badly she kicks him.

"Ow," Naruto says.

"Sorry," Ino says hurriedly, ashamed of herself and the embarrassment flushing her face. She hates when this happens—when she embarrasses herself. It makes her feel like a child. And it would be so easy to act like a child. She'd thought that the morning before the Chuunin Exams, painting mascara over her eyes and carefully deciding on the best lipstick color, the most auspicious one. She had checked her correspondence chart, the astrology one she had gotten from her mother years ago. Ino can still remembering begging for that book. Please, Mother, she'd said. Then, again, quieter, Please?

Most children like Ino—children who were loud and confident and knew what colors went with what and how to paint clean lines on her and do their hair—are taught to be beautiful by their mothers. The children Ino would later meet in the academy: they have clean faces and finely brushed hair and if she squints hard enough she thinks she can see the spot on their forehead where they got a kiss goodbye. Most beautiful little girls are taught to be beautiful by their beautiful mothers. Ino's mother bought her a book on stars, told her to use to it to explain when a day would be good and when it would be bad, when Ino should wear her red kimono to formal gatherings or the blue one. Yamanaka Aimi scolded her daughter and chided her. She was too busy making herself beautiful to teach Ino how to do it.

But that's okay. Ino's never needed help.

She can brush her own hair.

"It's okay," Naruto says. He sits up slowly, cringing just a bit, although his wounds had sealed shut a couple hours after they'd been opened. He is still covered in dry blood, though. Ino decides this—his discomfort and uncharacteristic quiet—seems a reasonable reaction to waking up to some girl you barely know molesting you, with blood caked all over you.

Plus, it's nighttime. Even Naruto isn't enough of an idiot to start shouting at nighttime.

He blinks a few times at her and then, his voice a knife in the dark flashing so brightly she bets the group of chakra signatures resting a few miles south can hear him, "Wow, you look like shit!" She flushes in humiliation and anger, and even more anger at the humiliation, and he starts to backtrack, raising his hands in front of him and waving them. It would be placating except he's moving so quickly, just flailing. "Not that you look bad! Are you—"

"Shut up," Ino says. She's clamped a hand over his mouth. "Don't be loud. We almost died yesterday. Stop shouting."

He raises his hand to hers and slowly pulls her off his face. He keeps her hand, playing absently with her fingers, the back of her hand to his thigh. "What happened?" he asks, whispering exaggeratedly. She can't tell if he's doing it on purpose to mock her or if he honestly doesn't know how to shut up. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Ino says. She's shaking. She's sure he can feel it—he's still holding her hand. "We're alive, so, you know. I'm fine."

Naruto's watching her. She kind of hates to see him look like that, eyes so blue they become unreadable, unknowable, just watching her. When he looks serious, it almost fools her. But he's just Naruto. She has to remind herself of that again and again. He's just Naruto.

"Are you okay?" he asks again, quietly, not unkindly.

No, Ino wants to say. It should've been him that got lucky, that fucked up a family technique so badly he ended up possessing himself, lost to the swirl of Madara's eyes. She can imagine how happy he would be to see everyone again, can imagine the way he would cry over Sasuke's badly hidden humanity and Sakura's bright eyes. Naruto would have been so happy. He wouldn't have been like her, awkwardly flitting around the people she used to know and uncomfortably trying to soften herself into a hug from her father. He wouldn't be like her, spending hours into the night staring into the mirror and turning all the products in her cabinet over in her hands—wrinkle creams and eye serums and toners and astringents and lotions—he wouldn't be like her, washing her hair so it smells like vanilla and running her hands over the flat plains of her stomach, over the coiled, weak muscle under the skin of her back and calves. He wouldn't stare at the classroom and think of being a child and wanting to make so many friends, of staring at all the children with cleanly brushed hair and freshly washed faces, all the girls with nicely clipped nails and beautiful mothers. He wouldn't cry over the people who never existed.

He wouldn't have been like her. He would have been happy to forget her. He wouldn't have been so ill-fitting. He would have been so, so fucking happy.

"Do you, uh..." Naruto looks away from her, uncomfortable. He scratches at the back of his neck and plays with the ends of his hair. He seems determined not to look at her. She doesn't mind. It's so dark she can pretend he just can't see her. He links their fingers together, and then seems to have realized what he's done. He reddens and releases her. When Ino doesn't pull her hand back—just leaves her hand in his lap, limp, still warm with his body heat—he very slowly pushes it away. She feels her hand go plop to the dirt. "Do you wanna talk about it?"

"There's nothing to talk about," Ino says. He looks like he wants to protest this, probably because her shoulders are still shaking, but she continues with, "I'm fine. Go back to sleep."

She turns away, twisting in the dirt to face away from him and stare up at the stars, the way the dim light just barely colors the leaves. He mutters something. Ino turns back to him, one eyebrow raised, unimpressed. "What was that?"

Naruto's wiggling around in his sleeping bag, looking incredibly uncomfortable. He's put his hitai-ate back on. He looks—

She can't describe it. But it hurts less to look at him.

"I can't," he hisses, turning over on his stomach. After a few moments, he turns over again, this time on his side, facing away from him. Then he twists again, this time curling up facing her. He looks at her pointedly.

She sighs, takes the bait. "Wanna talk about it?"

"About what?" Naruto's nose scrunches up. He wiggles around in his sleeping bag a little more, stretching his legs a bit. "I'm fine."

He turns over again. Then again. A third time, and he's facing her. She catches his eye, but as soon as he realizes she's looking back, he flushes again and rolls over, again. Now it feels like he's mocking her.

"Are you mad at me or something?" Ino can feel something when she says it. It feels…normal. Like she's just some girl having a chat with one of her loser idiot genin teammates. Like she's just twelve-going-on-thirteen with a couple nasty bruises trying to pass a test. "If you're fine, just go to sleep."

"I'm not mad," Naruto says. He looks at her like she's said something dumb, even rolls to face her and wag a finger at her before rolling pointedly to leave her looking at his back. He's still speaking in what must be the loudest whisper ever. He looks over his shoulder at her, expression—betrayed? Annoyed? "Why would I be mad? If you're fine, I'm fine."

"Naruto."

"What? You're allowed to be fine, but not me?" He rolls over again, sleeping bag rumbled around him. It's pretty annoying. All that rustling could wake Sakura.

"If you're fine," Ino grits out—and her annoyance, her irritation, it feels so normal, "then go to sleep."

"I can't," Naruto responds, clearly grinding out his words in the same way. "Why don't you go to sleep?"

Ino scoffs despite herself. "What are you, twelve?"

The offended noise Naruto makes is loud enough to have her giving him a warning look. "I'm thirteen!" he sputters. "That's older than you! And I'll be fourteen soon!"

This is funny for reasons she can't explain to him. Her laugh clots in her throat.

Naruto gives her a look. It's clear he's making the same point he has with all the irritating rustling, with all the loud whispers—Ino's having an issue and apparently he's pissed she won't share. Why would he want to talk to her about it? She remembers her hand going plop in the dirt. Why would he want to know?

I could almost fall for him, Ino had said, words slipping out accidentally. She watched Naruto's grin and it wasn't until she saw the way Shikamaru was staring at her that she'd immediately bitten her tongue. It doesn't matter now.

Doesn't matter who you "fall for" if they don't fall back. She'd learned that lesson.

"I…" Ino pauses. He sits up to look at her, but with his feet still keep kicking around the end of his sleeping bag. When she closes her eyes she sees Orochimaru's blade coming to take Naruto's head.

"C'mon, Ino," he says, earnestly, sincerely. He scoots closer to her, puts his hands on her shoulders. "Thought we were friends."

She imagines he doesn't have many of those. She flinches.

"I'm just… I was really worried about you." She can't look at him. "I really thought you were going to die."

"Hah!" Naruto shakes her lightly, like he thinks she's mentally compromised. "I'm never gonna die, Ino!"

"I don't know about that," she whispers. She looks up at him. "There. Can you sleep now, drama queen?"

The light in his face goes out. The rush of guilt she feels—Ino frowns at him. "I just had a nightmare," he mutters, turning away from her. He looks embarrassed.

It's…cute. Endearing.

"What about?" When he doesn't say anything she bumps his shoulder with hers, her index finger drumming against her knee in impatience. "Oh my god—you can't build up to it and then not tell the story! What was it about?"

Naruto wiggles. She sighs. If this is gonna be another round of obnoxious squirming—

"It was about you, actually," he says and shamefully, her interest is completely caught.

"Oh?" Ino leans forward, enthused, but his face has her nose wrinkling. He looks so serious, so unnaturally solemn. The expression doesn't fit right on his face. It's killing her mood. Talking to him, hearing him laugh and seeing him smile—it can almost make her believe she's really the twelve year old girl she's pretending to be, that she didn't drown herself to be here. It almost makes her feel like she never saw war, never saw him, never tried to wipe the blood off her face only to realize her hands are covered, too. It makes her feel…normal, maybe. Happy, almost. He doesn't get to kill that. She leans even closer to him, so close her breath is probably able to touch his skin. Then, softly, as though she's telling a secret, Ino goes, "It wasn't anything gross, was it? Not a pervert dream?"

He recoils so badly he falls over. Ino stifles laughter.

"Of course not!" he cries, appalled. She puts her hand over his mouth again to keep him from waking the forest, but without her hand to cover her own mouth, she can't stop the immature snickering.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she manages to get out. He looks indignant, but she softens her expression. She pulls her hand from his face. It seems like Naruto to lick her hand when she does that, but he hasn't. "What was your dream about? Seriously, I wanna know."

"You were a lot older," he starts out. "You had this really pretty crystal necklace and your hair was even longer. Someone was chasing us—"

"Us?"

"I was there, too. Older."

"Oh."

"Someone was chasing us and I knew they were… They were really…scary." His eyes flash, wet and dark. Her hand goes to his shoulder and he tenses beneath it. "And then…"

"Yeah?"

"I died," he finally says. Her fingers tighten on him. "Knives to the back, to my throat. Couldn't breathe. I was bleeding all over you." He's staring at the ground and she feels numb. That isn't a dream. It's a memory. It's a part of her she used in a bargain—guilt. So much guilt. She really messed up, didn't she? The monsters of him were supposed to eat her up in return for her power.

But there's no monsters of him yet. He's just Naruto.

"That sounds horrible," Ino says softly. "I'm—"

"No," Naruto says and his voice is so sharp it pisses her off. Naruto's not sharp. He doesn't snap. When he acts like-like that it reminds her of the person she knew, the person that died for her. She thinks of the way it felt as though she were somewhere far, far away, looking down at her own body while it died. "It doesn't end there."

Ino's silent.

"I die. Blood's all over you and you run away. But he catches you."

Ino's silent.

"He puts a knife through your wrist. You scream. He starts to cut up your face. You're crying."

Ino's silent.

"He breaks your necklace. He says goodbye. And then he—"

"Kills me," Ino murmurs and she wishes she'd been silent.

"Yeah," Naruto says and she really hates seeing him look like that. He should be acting stupid, as per usual. She loves to see him stupid, to see him shouting stuff that doesn't matter or calling her mean for things she says about strangers they pass in the street. "He does."

Ino's silent.

"I think I'll be able to sleep if—if I tell you something. In the dream, you died because—you died because of me. Because I was weak."

Because you were unlucky, Ino corrects. Because I was a poor replacement for the people you love.

He jerks towards her, the movement sudden, knocking her hand off his shoulder, and his hands are on her shoulders now, shaking her just slightly. "I want you to know that won't happen in real life," he says, demanding, so honest and genuine and he's too earnest. She's glad for it, though. Because it will happen in real life, if she doesn't stop it, and if he keeps doing stuff that reminds her of him, she doesn't know if she can. "In real life, I'll protect you. I'll protect you and Sakura-chan and Kiba and Shikamaru and even Sasuke-teme." He pulls her closer, so she can see his pupils dilating to accommodate the low light. "If I die for you, I won't be an idiot about it. If I die, I'll make sure you're safe."

She focuses on the sound of Sakura breathing, on the warmth drooling out of Naruto, on his rumbling chakra and Sakura's soft heat. Ino closes her eyes. She can still feel the knife going down her mouth.

(In her head, she slides her hands up to grip his forearms. "I would die for you," she breathes, looking at him really looking at him. She can feel tears going hot down her cheeks, leaving paths over her pale skin, but the ache outweighs the embarrassment and she shakes him. Her nails are digging into him—she can hear him hiss in pain—but he doesn't pull away and she isn't letting go. Ino's never been one to care much for the comfort of others when it rivals her own wants. "Do you hear me? I would die for you, Naruto, and I mean that, so if you ever have to choose—you or me—you pick you, okay? You can't—you can't get yourself hurt trying to—"

Her words start to choke her, start to fight against her as she forces them up her throat like vomit. It feels like they're beginning to escape through the hole in her neck, through the slit Madara cut in her; all of her words slipping free, drooling out with the blood and turning into sludge when they meet the night air. "You can't get yourself hurt trying to save me," Ino forces out and it's like he still has his weight pressing against her, even now, like she can still hear his voice in her ear—Run, Ino—and feel his blood sticky in her hair, like the moment his hot breath stopped hitting her collarbone is on repeat. "You can't go and die," Ino whispers and her vision is so blurred she can no longer make out his wide blue eyes or gasping mouth. "You are all I have. I would die for you."

But she has more than him now, so she doesn't say that.)

Instead she opens her eyes.

"I thought you said you would never die," Ino says. "That works best for me. I would rather you didn't die."

"Ino," Naruto says. She can feel something hot on her cheeks. Her face is wet. She hasn't cried in years. It's been years, now. Two years in a body she stole and she hadn't cried once. She couldn't cry. She had a responsibility. The last time she cried was—

(When she died.)

"No," she says. "No, you listen to me. You aren't going to die. Ever. And if it's between you and me, pick you. The only mistake you made in that dream was dying first."

"Ino—"

She moves one hand up to her shoulder, fingers finding where he's gripping her. She makes sure not to let her nails dig into his skin when she takes his hand. "Are you listening?" she growls, keeping her voice low—but still, she's angry. She's so angry. Even when he started to scare her, when he started to scream instead of cry, that doesn't mean he's allowed to say these things to her. Are you listening? Are you listening? Ghosts howl in the valley of her ribs. "I would live for you. Are you—"

"Ino, stop," Naruto's saying and he doesn't get it. He doesn't know what she's trying to say, doesn't know what she needs him to hear. "I'm okay, I promise. It was a bad dream and I'm alive and it's okay." Her hand goes limp and he pulls his out of her grip. She feels numb, emptied, and sways back and forth, her shoulders shaking and her knees probably bruising against the forest floor. When she falls forward and he pulls her against him in a hug—in a child's hug, all innocent and tight and confident, like friendship is a promise and a promise can't be broken—she feels like a doll, like a tiny nesting doll finally being consumed by its older sisters.

Are you listening? Are you listening?

"I would live for you," Ino whispers and she needs him to be listening.

"I died for you," Naruto whispers back and she jerks away from him as though burned, as though she were touching wet, hot tar.

It's too much. Sometimes when she sees him it makes her feel like she never became a monster. But when he acts like this all she feels is unholy. She'd felt normal and natural and young and all she feels now—

"In a dream," she shoots back, forcing a disbelieving little laugh. She turns it into a scoff, dismissive. "You died for me in a dream. Don't act like you're a hero all of a sudden."

It's a weak joke. He laughs a little, too, though.

"Go to sleep," Ino says and this time he does.

…

The first time Ino kissed him she did it for a couple reasons.

She's said it before, maybe she'll say it again, but Naruto's kinda cute and she could almost have seen herself falling for him. That's what she said to Sakura back then: I can almost see myself falling for him. At Sakura's look, her expression jolting, Ino had said, You know. A guy like that.

Seems more likely you'd fall for me than Naruto, Sakura'd said, snorting.

Ino's built up a lot of regrets. She's a murderer, a mourner, a monster—and a ghost. She can still see the blood on her hands and the knives at her feet and they haunt her. She can see Shikamaru and Tenten and Tsunade and even Sasuke and these faces haunt her. Tsunade taught Ino how to heal, how to put bodies back together, and Ino watched Sakura excel at it while she struggled. Ino's only ever been good at pulling people apart. It's what she was born for. It's what the Yamanaka are made for. Her clan thrives in the T&I department because it's what they do. Yamanaka do surgery on thoughts, do incisions on memories and equally precise cuts on bodies. All Ino's been good at is pulling people apart.

Jiraiya was dead and Ino never really knew him. She remembers feeling bad about it—she'd always thought he was a creep, but now he was dead and everyone was so torn up over it and he died for Konoha. Back then Ino didn't know a lot of people who died for Konoha. She didn't know a lot of people who died for anything. They all talked about the Will of Fire and loving the village and doing anything for it, and dying, because ninja sometimes died, but Ino'd never had to face that. But Jiraiya was dead and he died for Konoha and Naruto was sad about it. She'd planned to set him up with a discounted plant and send him on his way, maybe bring it up to Sakura later.

He loved Sakura. Ino loved Sakura. Sakura was the main way she kept in contact with Naruto at all. Instead she kissed him.

Ino had always been impulsive and she had always been beautiful. Naruto looked so sad and maybe even angry and it wasn't the best look for him. That wasn't the boy she'd talked to Sakura about and Ino wasn't like Sakura, she wasn't good at fixing things. She still couldn't stand it, to see people that looked like they needed protecting. It was an instinct she had never managed to shake. She did it for Sakura when they were kids and she wanted to do it for Naruto, too. But she opened her mouth and no words came out so instead she kissed him. Kissing always makes Ino feel better when the world feels heavy. People telling her she's beautiful, proving they think she's beautiful—it's always made her feel better.

When she puts it like that it doesn't sound so bad. But it is.

She didn't expect people to get torn up about it—it was just a kiss. But when she mentioned it to Sakura Ino was met with scandal. When Sakura inevitably told Tenten she'd laughed so hard her hair had come undone from her buns and spilled around her face in tendrils. Naruto was a good person, a genuinely good person, and it was wrong of her, but it was fun, so Ino kept kissing him. Her mother was horrified and Sai gave her appraising mildly amused once-overs and he wasn't even a bad kisser and it was so funny. Even if people just saw the two of them walking together, they still always had to look twice to be sure it was real. It was hilarious. Was Naruto really that far out of her social circle?

Jiraiya was dead. Naruto was a good person. But Ino's only ever been good at pulling things apart.

She doesn't know when, but at some point Naruto started to actually like her, and she knew that, but she didn't really know how much she liked him. He was nice, sure, and good, and she liked him and all, but not as much as he liked her.

He liked her and she took advantage of that. She liked being liked. Naruto's a good person and he thought she was good.

Ino's beautiful but she's also quick to anger. She used to shout at Shikamaru and Chouji—do you wanna be losers forever? do you wanna be lame forever? get up! c'mon! we could be champions! let's go!—and clench her fists tight to keep from punching at the trees when her aim was off. She isn't easy to anger the way Naruto is. Naruto gets angry when he sees something, when something isn't right. He gets angry at injustice. Ino gets angry when things don't go her way. But Naruto thought she was good and beautiful. Ino likes being told she's good, likes being told she's beautiful.

Her father is also head of torture and interrogation. No nice civilian boy is gonna want to touch that, no matter how beautiful she is. She told Inoichi that and he said being the son of the head of torture and interrogation never stopped her civilian mother. It was different, obviously. And the only other boys she was really close with were Shikamaru and Chouji. Ew. That'd be like dating her dad or something. There were the guys who graduated in her year but she didn't really like any of them like that and none of them really liked her like that. Everyone else she was close with was a girl. And—

Everyone knows why you can't do that.

Ino loved being liked.

(It wasn't like the only reason she interacted with Naruto was because he seemed to like her. But it was so easy to get him to like her. He didn't seem to know there were other options or have even realized Ino was an option. And Ino loved being liked.

Other people liked her. Sakura and Hinata and Tenten and Shikamaru liked her. But she couldn't really date them.)

On Valentine's Day Ino gave him chocolate she'd mostly failed to make edible and he'd looked so happy that it embarrassed her. On White Day he returned the favor with only mildly more edible results and he'd looked so hopeful she actually ate it. But Naruto was mostly just fun. "I don't get why we weren't friends before," she'd said to him once. Both of them had personalities like tornadoes and when they were together the world went crashing down faster than she'd ever thought possible.

Naruto was a good person and she had taken that for granted.

The timing wasn't right for it. When Naruto was good and whole and sweet, free of nightmares and free from terror, Ino was selfish and vain and she missed it. He was a good person and Ino knew that, sure, but she didn't want it. The only boy she let herself want was Sasuke. She wanted the flickering glimpse of a boy she saw once, a boy who fed stray cats more than half his lunch and got the shit beaten out of him to protect people who mattered to him. Ino wanted a boy she had only seen in passing, a boy who had never appeared for her.

Later, when their lives were ruled by decay, sitting in a hastily put-together encampment as the world collapsed, Ino decided she could want Naruto—weirdly clever Naruto who held her hand and kissed her in a greenhouse—and by then he was gone.

She never promised him anything. It was just fun. Later, she realized he never promised her anything, either. Maybe it was like ships passing in the night. By the time Ino realized the boat was slipping by, that it hadn't dropped an anchor, it was gone.

...

"You're so smart, Sakura-chan," Naruto says, voice dazed and dreamy.

She glares at him. "I know," she says, indignant. "But the leaves are too thick. Someone has to climb up and see which way is east."

"You can see directions?" Naruto stares at her, apparently impressed by this. "I don't think anyone else can do that, Sakura-chan, so it'll have to be you."

"I think she means someone has to climb up and check which direction the sun is rising in," Ino says lightly, valiantly keeping from sounding annoyed. "Because the sun rises in the east?"

"Oh! Oh, right."

"I'll go," Ino says and when Sakura frowns, Ino frowns back. She ignores the way her collection of scabs have started to crack from too much movement. "It's just a tree, Sakura," she says.

Sakura grumbles, but accepts this, rescinding her frown with a, "Be careful."

The higher up the tree she goes the louder the wind gets, starting as a quiet hiss lost somewhere between her footsteps and the bark and becoming more like howling, more like the screams of a hungry ghost. Ino scratches at one ear and slows to a walk, each footstep more careful than the one before. She can't see the ground anymore, and the quiet pull of gravity on her body hurts just a little. The tree grows thinner and thinner, shaking in the wind, drifting from one side to the other like an unbalanced janga castle. She scratches at her neck the same way she had been all morning, but this time her fingers catch on something, like there's a tick or a scab or a mole—something on her neck, some kind of bump in the skin. She scratches a bit harder, dismissively, walking higher and higher. It doesn't come off and she digs in her nails in, ripping at her own skin. When Ino sees the sun, a glaring bright mark far off to the left, she almost sighs in relief. The tower's peeking up over the tree cover, even, eastward with the rising sun. She takes a couple self-indulgent seconds up there, face heating under the light. It doesn't do anything but her cuts hurt a bit less.

God. Ino scratches at her neck. This itch is killing her, though.

Something like a hiss slips along her ears. It's probably nothing—the same way the wind had been nothing—but Ino goes tense anyway, the warmth of the sun going from comforting to stifling. Ino scoots a bit down the trunk, maneuvering her feet around carefully, and she brings her hand up to scratch at her neck—

Something hisses. Loudly. Ino pulls her hand away and tilts her head down to see and a snake is hissing, outstretched, facing down Ino's hand like an enemy. Her other hand flies to her neck immediately and when she feels around, the snake has come from her own skin, has erupted out of her, scales breaking out of her body and leaving her skin in tangles. She's only ever seen that happen on curse seals. The snake leans forward and bites her finger, tiny jaw clenching down so hard Ino irrationally fears it'll take the tip of her index finger off.

The pain wakes her and she pulls at the snake, at where it's attached to her skin. It doesn't move. The pain wakes her, and Ino doesn't tighten her jaw in time to stop a scream. She tries to smack it off her hand, desperate and stupid and moving too quickly for someone so high up. The pain wakes her and Ino stumbles, falls.

The tumble brings her face first into leaves and branches, body twirling midair and panicked feet trying to catch a grip on the trunk again. Get off get off get off! The only one she knows with a curse seal is Anko and Anko got hers years ago from Orochimaru—Orochimaru who was in the forest Orochimaru who didn't put on one her she knows he didn't he didn't even put one on Sasuke she was there she stopped him whatever happens to Sasuke in this forest it isn't her concern and it wasn't her fault—

(kill your enemies kill your allies kill yourself.)

A kunai catches the side of her shirt and pins her to the tree the same way a kunai went through her wrist and pinned her to a tree. But it's Sakura staring at her, wide-eyed, and thank god for her aim. Ino presses a hand to her neck. Nothing's there.

She stares at her finger and there aren't any injuries. She hasn't been bitten. Nothing was there.

Ino picks at the kunai and drops smoothly down to the forest floor. "Sorry," she says shortly.

"Did something attack you?" Naruto demands. He looks up into the trees, hands shaking. "Why were you—were you—screaming like that?"

"A bug," Ino says. "It touched me."

"You're bleeding," Sakura notes dully, voice like a stone dropping in a river. Ino's hand goes to her neck so quickly so slaps herself. Her fingers turn sticky and wet.

"It was on my neck. Bit me." Sakura and Naruto are both looking at her and she hates it.

Sakura gives her an appraising look, eyes going up and down, lingering at Ino's shoulders, the neck. She undid the bun overnight and her hair hangs long in ruffled halfway curls over her shoulders and down her back. Sasuke likes girls with long hair. Two girls with short hair were best friends became two girls with long hair and painfully little between them became two girls with nothing in common at all—one living one dead. Sakura grew her hair out for him and when she cut it that was for him, too.

"Sasuke thinks he so cool," she'd said. "Strutting around like some bird. What a loser. Sakura's my best friend. She wouldn't like a loser."

Eventually Sakura snorts. Doesn't sigh, but does bite her lip. "You're a ninja, Ino," she says, just a bit teasingly. "You can't still be afraid of bugs."

"The tower's over there," Ino announces pointedly, waving her hand in its direction. "Let's go! Okay?" She hates the way they're looking at her. It was a simple mistake. She thought something was there and it wasn't. She's tired. Ino's just tired.

(They're looking at her the way she looked at Naruto. They're looking at her like she's crazy. And she's not.)

"Okay," Naruto says, slowly, carefully. He's looking at her like—like—like he thinks she's going to do something. Like he thinks she's gonna snap.

And she isn't. Because she's not fucking crazy.

She lingers, though, hand on her neck, feet moving just a hint too slow on the walk to the tower. She lingers and wonders if she's a self-fulfilling prophecy. She lingers and wonders if fixing things is just a chance to trade Naruto for the world.

"Hurry up!" Naruto yells back to her, skipping forward. Sakura turns just a bit, glances over, beckons with a sweep of her hand. Ino looks up and thinks of a life spent watching someone's back while they left you.

This time, she chases.