a flowershop in the sky
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A/N—Because Ino is just so much fun to write with. And I absolutely adore ShikaIno, even though this is rather (very) (very) light. Team Ten's dynamic is… (:
I am also not sure if this is complete. Maybe. Maybe not. For now, though, my muse is ready to move on. Critique would be lovely.
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You learn to dot the petals (roses, tulips, azaleas) with poison and hand them to the person you're supposed to love. —Ino. Team 10.
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It is only after the Chuunin exams that she realizes she doesn't want to be the damsel-in-distress. She doesn't want to be something they have to protect, a burden, another spoiled girl who can't do anything.
Not after watching Temari, seeing the other kunoichi (kunoichi like brave Hinata who almost dies or Tenten who keeps fighting). It's disgraceful; her match with Sakura. That's how low Ino feels, as a ninja, as a protector of Konoha, as a woman.
Is she that pathetic? Weak? Stupid? Just a simple pretty face?
Disappointment, is that what her teammates and sensei think when she comes home from another failed mission or blotched job?
Her fist coils tightly, and she remembers Daddy. He wanted a boy, didn't he? To be the next generation of Shika-Ino-Chou. But he got her instead.
And suddenly, she's envious of Temari, so strong, so defiant, so text-book perfect. No wonder, she thinks, Shikamaru can't stop staring. It hurts, but Ino knows it's the truth.
No surprise there, he doesn't land the final blow on Temari—and there's a silly, sick voice in Ino's head, telling her, reminding her—he's been landing final blows on her all his life.
Later, after the match, after Shikamaru becomes Chuunin, Ino wants to know why.
"Why is it her?" It's the first time in a long time that she's spoken to anyone like this; the soprano, simpery quality is gone, and it sounds strange even to her.
Shikamaru is quiet as Chouji snores, but Ino knows he will understand her vague question. He always has. Does.
But this time, Ino thinks he simply won't reply. So she shut her eyes, and pretends she never asked. Maybe its better this way, she won't have to—
He coughs and rolls over on his side, that his back faces her and he can't see the look on her face. "I won't have to protect her."
Quietly to the stars, after she is sure everyone is sound asleep, Ino vows that she will be just as powerful as the rest of them. She wakes up later in sweat, reminding herself to look up the medical field for kunoichi.
(—but it isn't until Sasuke leaves the Leaf Village though, does Ino truly commit to her plans)
—
—
For a long time, Ino works outside of Team 10. She leaves on various missions with other shinobi, anyone besides Shikamaru and Chouji.
It would be utterly useless to become accustomed to them always stepping in to look after her.
Tenten and Hinata and Sakura provide excellent sparring partners, contrasting with her teammates' own styles. It's not long before Ino can, to a certain degree, manipulate their mannerisms (from pure memory and instinct) to fight back. She doesn't need the mind-affecting jutsus anymore to know Billboard Brow's style of attacking by heart. It is as familiar to her as her own careful methods.
Her clan's techniques have become the ultimate tool for learning how to adapt.
But Ino still insists that her father work with her on perfecting the performance of Mind Body Switch and Disturbance Techniques. There are still other mind-controlling methods she has yet to learn, and the vulnerability of her body during is a definite setback.
(—if she is vulnerable, then she needs to be protected. And Ino doesn't want to be protected by them. Not anymore)
They're all surprised when she lets it slip at the dining table that she has been under a medic's (she never exactly tells them who) apprenticeship. Ino doesn't blame them for underestimating her, especially since she doesn't possess the concentration and control required for medical ninjutsu—they still see flighty, scatter-brained Ino who can't keep her priorities straight.
Yet, she can always learn how.
It's only natural. Ino is a girl, a woman, a kunoichi. So she will protect them. Motherly instinct maybe; she's just as territorial as the rest of them.
(—and no matter how much Chouji laughs when she tells him her theory of why there is always one female ninja on a team, it is never a feminist thing)
When her boys get hurt, she will not hold back and be pitifully alone like Sakura, crying her eyes out and doing a damn nothing. Ino realized that after visiting her best friend after Sasuke's betrayal, just like the rest of Konaha 11's kunoichi.
They won't be princesses ever again, because princesses will just keep waiting, and there's no time to wait during this war. Prettiness is what gets you killed, violated, and exposed.
Maybe she should have been more scared of death, but Ino wasn't. It was her highest belief she would be one of the few to die from old age.
Screw honor, for all she cared.
There was no such thing as an honorable death. You simply died, and that was that. She watched it happen, day after day, night after night. Every flower, no matter how strong, how sweet, how beautiful, must wither in the end.
Some, she is disgusted to find out, are instead crushed beneath the heel of someone's worn shoe.
Except, deaths are part of her job, and Ino has already accepted that. She separates her past from the future, the present stacked neatly in the middle.
And, perhaps, that's the reason that she can never be like Sakura. To Ino, impossible is really just impossible. It's funny, actually. Wasn't she the one to adore the fairy tales and romantic legends? While Sakura rolled her eyes and giggled while Ino danced to a pretend melody? Hm. She wonders.
(—forget about the handsome price and sparkling gown already, he'll just forget his kunai and she'll just have to wear shorts underneath)
But, to be bare, naked, transparent to the world is a different matter.
Every morning, Ino puts on makeup. She refuses to look at the mirror until, afraid of what exactly she will see reflected back.
She hates the way Sakura stumbles in the dark walking home past the Yamanaka's lit porch, looking limp and desperate and so miserable. Ino can see through the fake smile, and there's no doubt who truly looks can too.
It will take months for Sakura to finally piece together herself, to be able to separate her ideals from her dreams from her responsibilities. Putting up a glass wall, hiding the cracks in her shell would take even longer.
Even then, Forehead is luckier than many. Betrayal is common in their field, and most who deal with it personally do not come back whole. They get cut from trying to pick up the shattered pieces, and simply fade away. Ino knows from experience taking over betrayed, broken minds.
Tsunade-san and Sakura are the fortunate ones, Ino muses.
She, however, may not be as lucky. Truth be told, Ino thinks her spirit weak: self-absorbed, fickle, unreliable, inconsistent, and impatient. Once exposed, she can never go back. If Chouji or Shikamaru betray her, like Sasuke betrayed Sakura, Ino will undeniably fall apart. She is nothing without them, nothing at all.
Watching her best friend, there is a swell of pride for the bullied little girl Sakura was. She is rebuilding her crumbled walls, ignoring the scars left behind from open wounds, and painting over the cracks with sunny strength and her heart on her sleeve.
Eventually Sakura will no longer flinch at Sasuke's name.
Ino never hates Sasuke, though; because she knows he's won't always be the bad guy. And she's absolute that the rest of Konoha knows it too. Even though Chouji and Shikamaru and Neji and many others get hurt, Ino will forgive him.
Not because she loves him, since she doesn't. He belongs to Naruto and Sakura; she has nothing to do with them, just like Sakura has nothing to do with Chouji and Shikamaru. They are hers, and hers alone.
The Leaf has always been Sasuke's home, and who would Ino be to deny him—no, anyone, of their home?
—
—
Secretly, actually, delivering the flowers for Sakura and Sasuke's wedding is pretty high up there on Ino's What To Do Before I Die Youthfully list. Every (cool) (hip) (non-emotionally stunted) ninja has one now, thanks to the massive chainmail from .
(—she still remembers laughing when reading through the caps-lock abuse, telling specifically for HYUGA NEJI and UCHIHA SASUKE and NARA SHIKAMARU to PAUSE FROM UNYOUTHFULLY punching the DELETE OR JUNK button)
—
—
"Did you get the chainmail from Lee-san, Shikamaru?" She finds him on the roof where he and Chouji often were when he wasn't alone at the grassy fields on the other side of town.
Only slightly tired from the run (from the fields to the training grounds to his house), Ino is smiling brighter since the failed Sasuke Retrieval Mission. He nods slightly, choosing to stare up at the sky instead of looking at her. So she flops down beside him, where Chouji always sits, and wraps her arms around her pale knees. It makes her feel warm inside, when she is cold and tired of the tension here in their village.
It is awkward being with him without Chouji to play referee, to smile and eat, to make it seem soft and light. They don't ever talk together, to each other, not without Chouji in the middle.
But Chouji is in the hospital, weak and empty inside like Shikamaru is outside the infirmary walls. She searches for the words to say, to make everything like it used to be.
Yet, everything isn't what it used to be, not with Kiba wounded with lacerations, Sasuke seeking vengeance the wrong way, Neji collapsed near death with a hole in him, her teammates like they were, and Naruto…Poor Naruto who is maybe worse than Sakura, frantically trying to keep a promise, a bond, a friendship already so severed.
Ino swallows hard and tries to forget what she thinks of.
"Did…you fill it out? Or was Lee-san right about you thinking it was troublesome and," her lips quirk into a sad little half smile facing up towards the sky, "unyouthfully ignore it and put out the youthful flame of your blossoming dreams."
Shikamaru nods, again, and doesn't say a word in reply. And frankly, Ino is quite sick of him being a bad friend. Never having time to talk to her, never dropping by the flower shop anymore, never asking if she's okay, never telling her the important things like a mission that almost takes his, their, lives.
(—stupid, stupid, stupid boys…don't you know anything? we can hold a kunai too)
Ino blows a stubborn puff of air out, pouting all the while. She's still good at that, even without her baby fat and those brightbrightbright eyes. "Lazy bastard." Her words, already barely a whisper, crack and falter at the ends.
Then, she sniffles. Chouji is frail and lifeless, everyone is dying inside, and Ino is sniffling like a shriveled up maiden locked in a tower. It's just wrong.
"Troublesome woman." He smirks a tiny bit though, and she stops from punching him, letting her arm hang uncertainly in the air between them. Rolling eyes, heavy sighs, bags of barbecue chips littered on training grounds, cigarettes, and worn shogi boards… she doesn't want to lose any of it. Shikamaru snorts suddenly, and her arms drop quickly. "He's stupid for putting the Uchiha's name on the list. Like hell he would reply."
"No, he isn't. At least I don't think he is. Even Sasuke-kun has goals, other than murdering his brother and…" Ino doesn't drop the –kun yet, because she still might love him. Shikamaru's face clouds, but she takes no notice, already too busy searching her pockets for something.
There's a crumbled little square of paper in her fist when she turns towards him moments after, victorious.
(That's just enough time for the boy to rearrange his features back into that blank, uninterested position)
"Let's visit Chouji together. I, well, printed out a copy. Or…you know, three."
"I don't know Ino…"
On impulse, Ino grabs his hand. "Our dreams. Together. Like back then, okay?"
Her smile is so brilliant (so positive, so sad) he forgets to argue.
Don't ever leave me behind again, bastard. We're a team.
They spend the entire afternoon in the hospital, sprawled across Chouji's room, scribbling and laughing until the nurses kick them out.
Ino dots her letterswith little hearts, Shikamaru answers with one-word replies, and Chouji smudges his notepaper with barbeque.
(—it'll last, days like this, Shikamaru thinks, not forever, but just long enough)
Before the visitors leave, when she shares Number Four, catering the bouquets for Sakura and Sasuke's wedding, they stare at her for a long time. It is nothing like Chouji's fatfree barbeque ice cream or Shikamaru's pet parrot that would talk for him.
"Dreams, they don't always come true, right?" Chouji murmurs hoarsely in between hackled coughs, looking kind, however fiercely honest. It's has always been his job to tell Ino the truth. The other boy has long ago stopped bothering.
She shakes her head, fixing them with the same focused gaze used in her mind techniques. "But they can. They always can, Shika-kun." No one inquires why Shikamaru is the one addressed and not Chouji.
Ino dreams, Shikamaru sighs, and he understands. That's the way things work for them; an endless pattern of InoShikaCho.
They pocket their bucket lists in an awkward silence.
(—it doesn't last long, because Chouji demands for another bag of chips, and the bickering over who has to buy it starts)
—
—
Ino sees an unsure Tenten outside holding pale, delicate lilies (pink paper, a silly limp string of white, they're for Neji) and breathes slowly.
He opens the door for her, eyes unreadable and face oddly calm, walking close enough their shoulders bump, the first sign of anything since they were ten.
—
—
It's blatantly possibly because of the flower shop that Ino became a medical-nin. She works with life at its very fullest; Ino basically lives among the botany, and those are the components that make medicine…or poison, in another retrospect.
That could also be the reason Shizune decides to take her on.
But—Ino insists that's not true.
She knows, Shizune knows, that there is more to medical jutsu than just chakra.
And why lie? Ino has horrible, horrible chakra control for a medic. Shizune tells Ino that, straight to her pretty ashen face, two minutes before declaring she'll withstand any challenges the Yamanaka girl provides her.
Right then, Ino thinks Shizune is far more beautiful than the Hokage could ever try to be, potions or not. Dark, and quiet, and graceful. She is a stark contrast to the showy blues and reds and yellows—a raven to the doves.
It's just perfect.
Tsunade says nothing, limbs loose on the desk, painted lips pursed and righteous eyes blank. In spite of everything, she is the woman that refuses to train Ino into another Sakura, another Shizune.
So they leave the hallow room. Together.
There is no paperwork to be signed, no stamps of approval, no documentation at all. The connection between Ino and Shizune doesn't exist. Not officially, anyway, on public record. Shizune tells her quietly it doesn't matter.
Ino begins through training on a Wednesday, and she starts in the flowershop.
(—truthfully, everything Ino knows, will ever know, starts in that little flowershop)
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