Title: Red
Author: KStar
Pairings: Ino/Sasuke
Fandom: Naruto
30Kisses Theme: #19, Red
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
A/N: So I finally posted my next Sasu/Ino. My interest in Naruto has declined somewhat in the past few weeks, but I will finish the 30kisses challenge. I'm just trying to get some fresh ideas.

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Ino Yamanaka hated the color red.

Red was the color of everything she despised in this world, everything that made her sad, everything she feared. Her deepest, darkest nightmares were bathed in crimson. Perhaps that could explain her current situation. She had to be in a nightmare. The real world could never be this horrible.

The world was an odd shade of red. Red like Sakura's old dress. Red like Naruto's chakra. Red like Shikamaru's tongue. Red like Sasuke's eyes. Red like Asuma-sensei's blood. Red like that now ugly, withered rose she had offered Sasuke all those years ago.

This was not how Ino imagined her death would look like. It was beside the fact that she had never really thought about how she would die, but if she ever did-which she didn't-it was not supposed to happen like this. Her death should have been dramatic, a daring sacrifice for her comrades. She should have died in her teammates' arms, Chouji with his kind smile and never-ending offers of friendship and Shikamaru with his concealed concern and loving "Troublesomes". She should have died quickly, although not before telling her boys she loved them. She should have died a hero in a famous Konoha battle defending her home.

Instead, here she was miles from home, dying painfully slow in some unknown forest with no knowledge of the rest of Team Ten's whereabouts. There was no drama, no sacrifice, no heroic final battle. No, she was dying because she wasn't quick enough, wasn't perceptive enough, and ended up with a barrage of shuriken sticking out of her chest. There was no Shikamaru, no Chouji, to cradle her gently in her final moments. There was just Sasuke, Sasuke the S-class missing-nin and Orochimaru's newest plaything. Sasuke the young man who had broke her heart and turned his back on the village that raised him. Sasuke the traitor, Sasuke the killer.

He looked different she thought, although that could have been the delirium clouding her vision. His hair was longer and rather disheveled. It was drooping from the onslaught of raindrops, spattering water against her cheeks. His clothing was black, clashing with his far too pale skin. A katana was strapped to his back, the delicately carved snakes curled around its hilt reminding her of who he belonged to now. His headband was all wrong, a vicious musical note replacing the gentler swirled leaf. His face was carefully blank, his eyes cold, dead, and merciless. It was the face of a weapon, a killer, and a slayer of thousands. It was not the face of a twelve year old or even fifteen. Even if Ino had never met Itachi Uchiha, she felt as though she was looking at his mirror image. She supposed it was only right Sasuke was his younger brother. No one else could have pulled it off.

Ino shivered, her body chilling as her life seemed to seep out of her open wound. The rain soaked their bodies from the congregation of dark clouds above. Sasuke was not exactly helping either, and she had to wonder why he was still there, looking at her with those horrible Sharingan eyes. There were flecks of blood across his face and on his clothes, none of it his. Some of it was hers, but most of it came from the village he and his fellow Sound ninja had just massacred. Silently she cursed her stupidity. When her ninja team had come across the slaughtered village, she and the others had pushed down the waves of nausea threatening to spill over and searched for any possible survivors. Ino had come across a couple of Sound ninja making the escape, and she ignorantly raced after them instead of waiting for her comrades to catch up. She had always been far too impulsive for Asuma-sensei's liking, and now it had bitten her in the ass.

Damn it! She was DYING! She was too young to die. There was so much in life she wanted to do, so much she wanted to say. Who would look after the rest of her team while she was gone? Who would build up Sakura's strength by pushing her with their heated rivalry? Who would look after her family's flower shop? She had become the heart of her team since their sensei's death and she didn't think her comrades, her two best friends and brothers, could take it if she died.

"Ino Yamanaka," the rough, deep voice drew the blonde kunoichi from her anguish. She met Sasuke's red swirling eyes with her own fading cerulean. Far too much red.

"Sasuke-kun," she spoke softly then choked, splattering more flecks of blood onto Sasuke's face from the back of her throat. The rain made the blood slide down his face in a mockery of tears. "Imagine seeing you here. You're still drop dead gorgeous, I see." She smiled bitterly at her own joke only to be thrown into a coughing fit. She could feel the blood filling up her lungs. Ah, yes, she was most certainly losing her mind.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded annoyed but still holding her close. "Are…are Sakura and Naruto here?"

Ino's smile turned nostalgic. "Still obsessed with your teammates, as always, Sasuke-kun," she murmured in a breathy whisper. "You haven't changed a bit."

Sasuke released her roughly into the mud, glaring at her angrily for her implications concerning Team Seven. He stared at the kunoichi's broken, battered form and couldn't understand the emotions clawing at his heart. It wasn't supposed to end like this. This girl wasn't just some nameless face he killed and never thought of again. This was Ino Yamanaka, one of the Rookie Nine, Sakura's former best friend, and the girl who used to glomp him any chance she got. People like Ino don't just die, especially by Sasuke's carelessness. Pushing down any sentimental feelings, he clung to the much more familiar emotions of anger and cruelty.

"Neither have you, so it would seem," he sneered. "Still the weak little girl you always were, Ino."

"I've changed more than you know," she said. "Call me whatever you want…doesn't change the fact you're still the frightened, stubborn boy you always were." She didn't care if she pissed him off. She was dying; it wasn't like he could do anything worse to her. Besides, she still had her pride damn it, and she wouldn't let the monster before her step all over it.

Sasuke pursed his lips, eyes narrowing hatefully. "You know nothing," he snarled. Ino Yamanaka was the enemy, a symbol of all he had left behind in his search for power. She was lucky he even remembered who she was; his memories of Konoha were growing hazy the more time he spent with Orochimaru. He didn't know why he was still here, why he didn't leave before the rest of her little troupe showed up. He heard they had killed two Akatsuki members, and though he was fairly confident he could dispose of them easily, he didn't want to waste the strength.

"You're always running away aren't you, Sasuke-kun?" Ino asked softly, blue eyes shining. "Pretty soon you'll have nowhere left to go."

Turning, Sasuke glared at her. "What was that?" he demanded lowly. Stalking over, he grabbed the Konoha ninja by her shirt and pulled her close again.

"You're scared," Ino continued, looking at him with no fear. "You have been since your brother turned the world upside-down. You distance yourself from everyone. You can't afford to get close to anyone because they might stab you in the back just like Itachi did. You think you'll be weak so you flee from all of that. But, Sasuke-kun, if you stopped running, if you just looked back, then maybe you would see just how strong you could be." She didn't fight his grip.

Smirking, Sasuke jerked Ino forward, causing her to cry out in pain. "You finished with your little pep talk?" he sneered. When she didn't reply, he laughed cruelly. "All you Konoha goodie goodies are the same. You think the world exists in black and white; you think people can be saved. You believe in love, and you think if you love someone enough, you can make him happy. Loving someone can't save him, can't make all the pain go away and the truth disappear.

"You aren't even worth my time, Ino," he hissed. "You're loud and annoying and clingy because you are the one that's afraid. If you don't make your presence known, people will forget you. And you're right. You're nothing. You can't protect your teammates. You couldn't stop me. You couldn't save your sensei. You couldn't even save yourself."

Ino stared into Sasuke's red Sharingan, She could see Asuma-sensei's bloody face as he shakily whispered his final words. She could see the pink strands of slaughtered hair around Sakura's broken, battered body, her red dress torn. She could see the rise and fall of Chouji's chest as she sat beside his hospital bed, red stains on his bandages, begging him to wake up. She could see Naruto's unconscious form, blood spurting out of the hole in his chest. She could see so many little children in the village she had just been in, painted red with glassy eyes unseeing.

"I hate you," she whispered, her breath ragged and wet. "I hate you so much."

"Well, you should," he replied darkly, fingers digging into her blood-spattered top. Then he closed those final few centimeters and kissed her forcefully on the lips. The kiss was harsh and demanding, filled with all their unspoken need and fire that should have long been extinguished. It was not a kiss of sweet love; it was forbidden and wrong and tasted of death and blood.

Ino sagged to the ground as they broke apart and stared at the thin layer of blood now coating Sasuke's lips like a cruel joke. He looked at her with emotionless black eyes, his face ashen. Ino was shivering. There were tears rolling down her face, and she wished they would stop. She was not supposed to be crying over Sasuke Uchiha. "I hate you," she sobbed. "How could you?! How could you?!" Her body convulsed, shuddering with her tears and numbing pain. "You're going to die."

"Ino, you foolish girl," Sasuke chided. His lips were trembling slightly as his cruel anger melted away. "You stupid foolish girl." He didn't love her; Sasuke Uchiha was incapable of true love. It didn't mean he wasn't immune to other emotions: guilt, regret, angst. He had thought he had divorced himself from such simpering emotions long ago. This idiot girl wasn't supposed to be able to tear down those indestructible walls he had built around his heart, walls not even Naruto could break. Hesitantly, he reached forward and took the blond kunoichi's hand, rubbing his calloused thumb across her smooth skin. She wasn't his ally or his friend or anything, but it didn't mean that somewhere deep inside of him he didn't care. "I'm sorry," he whispered hoarsely, the words suddenly coming out of his mouth before he could stop them.

Ino clung to that hand, her cries dying away as her body grew heavy and numb. It wasn't supposed to happen like this. It wasn't supposed to hurt this much. It wasn't supposed to make her cry. It wasn't supposed to break her heart faster than it stopped beating. "Me, too," she murmured gently, meeting his spinning crimson eyes with her glassy cerulean ones. She focused on those eyes, never breaking their locked gaze, even as death welcomed her with open arms. "Me, too, Sasuke-kun."

Sasuke held onto her until her hand fell limp and her ragged breathing ceased. He reached up and tucked several loose strands of her straw-colored hair, now stained a vicious red, behind one ear. Then he gently laid her on the ground, closed her sightless eyes with two fingers, and disappeared into the forest, never looking back. The heavens cried for their lost shinobi, the ones who had died and the ones who were going to.

Ino Yamanaka hated the color red.

Red was the color of everything that she loved and everything she lost and everything she never had at all. It was the color of her broken heart.

She supposed it was only right it was the last color she ever saw.

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Reviews? Please?