Glimpses of Eternity

Summary: She knows she is beautiful. (Ino stopped believing in love a long time ago.) OneShot, Introspection- Ino, Shikamaru and the possibility of a but. Rated for angst and adult themes.

Warning: OneShot, introspection. Fractured, features angst and adult situations.

Set: Story-unrelated. Vaguely AU time-wise because I need a bit more time for character development. My apologies.

Disclaimer: Standards apply.

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.
A. Camus

i. Flower Child

"Oh, Ino, love. Your beautiful hair."

Her mother sighs at the sight of Ino's hair that is straight, fine like gold threads but platinum blonde. Silver like moonlight. Now it's short and ragged, cut with a blunted tanto without regard for what remains, and even if this was what she wanted in the first place she does not like the way her wish was granted. Because this – it reminds her of Sakura, of the way her eternal rival and best friend hacked off her own beautiful hair without a thought in order to save her team, and Ino does not want to be compared to Sakura. Sakura found her own way, in her own team, and Ino will find hers. She does not need to look to other people to know the person she wants to be.

Not anymore.

Once upon a time there was a princess who grew up in a castle that was a flower shop. "What a beautiful child," the people used to say when they saw the girl among the flowers, "such a pretty girl." In the shop, Ino arranges the flowers, listening to the female customers chat about weather and husbands and children and to her mother giving male customers advice about flowers and women and life. And maybe it is here that she collects the conscious knowledge that she is pretty, but she also learns that beauty is fleeting.

"Mommy, the gerbera are withering," she calls out, and it is a memory she will carry with her for the rest of her life: her mother's sad smile and her soft touch on Ino's head, and her voice: "Love, every flower dies after it has bloomed to its most beautiful."

Ino's a gardener, always was. From a selfish and disturbing point of view that she only allows herself once and never again – because she's her friend, no matter what – Sakura is a project of hers that was never meant to live that long. Ino saw a small, budding plant that had yet to bloom and she did her best to take it to its most beautiful. Thank the Founders Sakura learned to stand by herself after that – something Ino will always be unspeakably grateful for – because she wouldn't have known what to do afterwards. The chuunin trials serve to show Ino that she has succeeded but also that she has been arrogant and selfish and stupid. For the first time in her life she actually listens to Shikamaru when he scolds her, kindly because it is Shikamaru, and she takes his words to heart. She does not approach Sakura anymore but watches her grow from the side lines: the chuunin trials end and Orochimaru the traitor kills the Third and what happens next happens so fast she can barely keep up with it. Sasuke disappears and Shikamaru breaks for the first time and Naruto leaves with Jiraiya to bring back the designated Fourth Hokage and Sakura becomes apprentice to Tsunade-hime and Ino and Chouji train.

Ino loses her hair on a mission, a surprisingly uneventful B-rank they're only allowed on because both Asuma-sensei and Shikamaru are with them which turns A-rank when assassins come into the play. She thinks she will not miss it much. Besides, if she was stupid enough to let someone get to her like that she does not deserve to carry her hair long like Tsunade-hime and Kurenai-sensei do, and Sakura, without doubt, soon will be able to do so as well.

"Don't worry, love. The short hair looks good on you, too."

Her father is biased, she thinks, because he never has believed her to be any different.

"I remember you when you were small," he says, leaning back on his hands and her father shouldn't be here in her favorite hide-out but figures he always knew where she disappeared to when she was angry and just never let it on. (That, or Shikamaru told him.) "Always around flowers. So pretty, and innocent."

"Is that supposed to mean that I'm not pretty anymore, or just that I lost my virginity?" Ino snorts and her father chokes on his dango, mortified, blushing a shade of scarlet that's just too good to let it go. Ino laughs until she cannot breathe anymore and after a while Inoichi starts laughing, too. "That's my girl." Then, he turns serious. "You know, don't you? You've always been pretty, always will be."

And that's the problem, isn't it.

Ino's always been pretty. Pretty and smart and cheerful, and sometimes mean and arrogant but at the same time it was kind of expected of pretty girls. What is expected of her is that she spends hours in the morning to fix her appearance – and she does – that she loves clothes and shopping and dressing up – and she does. It is expected that she makes fun of people who aren't as pretty as she is – which she does – and that she attracts the attention of the male representatives in her age group. And oh, she does. So there are four groups of female persons in her life: the ones that are like her, the ones that want to be like her and succeed; the ones that want to be like her and have no chance of succeeding, and the ones that don't care. The first are few. The second ones are fun for some time and then get boring, the third group hates her because she makes fun of them openly, and the fourth – well. The other way round, there are two types of men Ino knows: the ones that are attracted to her and the ones that aren't, either because they're too old, too young or not interested in women. Oh, and Shikamaru, of course. That probably makes three.

"You stole my boyfriend!"

And she cannot even remember the girl's name.

"You bitch! He just fell for your looks, nothing else!"

"Maybe you should do something to get him back," she suggests, and although she knows how this will end she still cannot keep herself from trying to make the other girl understand that she seriously, honestly didn't do anything. "Either way, if your guy is distracted that easily perhaps he's not worth-"

"How can you say that! You're beautiful, you got one guy on each finger of your hands! You don't know how it is to have to fight, people like you have everything we cannot even dream of, you never once in your life had to work in order to get something-"

So beautiful people have it easy. Ino cannot even deny this fact. Beauty is given advantages. People let her off for things they would punish others for. Her looks have given her many things other people have to work for, and work for hard. Ino thinks she understands: beauty is not everything. She has learned this watching Sakura grow and win against her, she has learned it from listening to Neji and Hinata talk and Naruto and Chouji fight and from seeing Shikamaru on that bench in front of the ER. There is resolve, strength of the heart, relentlessness and the knowledge when to fight and when to give up. There is kindness and pity and an iron will behind all of it, so bright and hot it blinds her when she looks at it. There is so much that is not based on looks and, perhaps for that reason, seems all the more important. More precious. Ino has learned her lesson.

Actually, she has learned it years ago. Beauty is fleeting, unbearable.

Prettiness has always been her defining trait, and has overshadowed everything else. It became something like "yeah, but she's pretty" when Shikamaru was "yeah, but he's smart" and Chouji "yeah, but he's kind". And for a while, it had been okay. Just like the way she had been able to live in the flower shop as a child, passing from day to day dreaming and listening and touching the flowers, she has been able to live her life so far, naïve and believing nothing would change and everything would always come towards her without her needing to do something. Maybe it's the most surprising thing to realize that Ino has changed, not the world around her.

She can rely on her prettiness, but there is so much more.

The memory of a child among flowers. Once upon a time there was a girl who lived in a castle… Even Princesses have to leave their castles in order to get to know the world.

"Are you seriously comparing yourself to a fairytale princess?" Shikamaru asks. His typical, skeptical frown makes her laugh, and she loves him for it.

ii. Troublesome Girl

The hallway is dark, the only light shining from her bedroom.

Ino walks into the small bathroom with bare feet, listening to the soft pitter-patter sound they create on the wooden floor, and finds the switch without needing to search. From the mirror, a girl looks back at her: her hair is short, so blond it is almost white in the white light of the lamp, and spills onto her shoulders in a fine curtain of silver. She's not wearing make-up. Her skin is porcelain in the bathroom light, her blue top the second spec of color next to her eyes, and she stops, her hand on the sink, and stares at herself. It's almost midnight. She should be asleep in order to gather strength for the chuunin trials tomorrow in which she will, for the first time, be part of the guards instead of the participants, but she does not feel tired. Ino looks at herself: she looks pretty.

She feels pretty.

She smiles at herself: of course she always feels beautiful when nobody is there to look at her. It is the way of the world, the Law of Fate. This is a different Ino: without make-up, without pretense. This is an Ino nobody else ever sees. Smiling, she turns off the lights and brushes her teeth in the darkness.

It is not her first time.

Her first time is reserved for a bumbling and shaking chuunin from Suna, at the chuunin trial in which she will make it to chuunin herself. He was different from what she had expected would be her first lover, so different, in fact, that nobody would have believed her had she told them. It was also the first time Ino hadn't planned anything, the first time her heart sped up and the first time the sight of someone made her light-headed, clumsy and only able to stutter incoherently. It was the first time in her life Ino actually had to train on her own because that summer Sakura was studying under Tsunade-hime in the hospital more seriously than ever, wanting to excel in the first medical-nin exams she was to take. Naruto was still gone, training with a strange, apparently perverted man Ino had never seen before, and Chouji and Shikamaru were half training with each other and half busy with their duties to their clans. It was the first summer Ino felt lonely until she didn't anymore. His hair was sun-bleached and his hands big and surprisingly gentle and he touched her like he worshiped her, like there was something underneath her face and her skin and her eyes that was so much more important than her beauty, but he was dead a few weeks later.

It is different now.

Ino's not in love, or at least she thinks she isn't. She's older, she has changed, she has seen her village threatened and her people fighting and whatever people say of a battle there isn't really anything that can be said that might be close enough to the truth. And it's not like good things come from fights because Asuma-sensei is still dead and Kurenai-sensei still will have to take care of her little daughter all by herself and Shikamaru still blames himself. Sometimes, things cannot be mended, but they can be protected. Ino would be lying if she said she didn't miss her teacher, if she didn't regret his death a million times a day. It feels like tiny, invisible needles burying into her, not painful enough to make her cringe in pain but painful, nevertheless. And she knows Shikamaru and Chouji feel it, too. But at least Shikamaru has stopped smoking with the last cigarette that was in Asuma-sensei's pack, and Chouji and she have taken to training together again, and if not for the rumors of Akatsuki and Orochimaru and stuff, life would be the same old. So things have changed, but maybe they haven't, and maybe there is no explanation for what happens that night. She didn't plan on kissing him but it happened, she didn't plan on following him inside but it happened. He didn't object, and he answered her kisses equally hungrily, and here they are and it sure as hell isn't her beauty that has him touch her like that because he's not affected by such things.

It is not her second, time, or her third. It hardly matters.

"Your feet are icy," Shikamaru mutters and does not roll away. Ino edges closer to his warmth and into the sense of protection he seems to emit like other people emit efficiency and sexiness, and overall she likes him more for being the way he is than she likes many other people for things they try to be. "This is a one-time thing, isn't it?"

She catches her breath at his question. It is calm and matter-of-fact. "Why do you think that?"

"Because I know you."

So this is it: this is the one stupid thing in life that is bound to happen, the moment when childhood friends and partners fall into bed with each other and wake up the next day, regretting everything horribly. This is Ino's own stupidity and it is not the worst thing. The worst thing is not that she can remember everything, that she was in full possession of her wits when she made her move. The worst thing is not that she has excuses, that they were too close and too exhausted and too aware. The worst thing is not that this is Shikamaru, the one person she knows she would trust with her life anytime and anyplace, or that they will regret it in days to come because they probably won't. The worst thing is that tomorrow, they will get up and get dressed and go on with their routine like nothing ever has happened. Because this is them, ShikamaruandIno, and they have been through every stupidity and every imaginable situation and sleeping with each other is just another layer that strips off without the heart of things ever coming into sight. (Or maybe it's a one-time thing because he wants a moderately pretty wife and two children and and it's a song she knows by heart.) For a fleeting second, she wonders how it would feel like if Shikamaru thought her beautiful, and desired her for it.

But she does not answer him. Ino does not know whether it is because she does not want to burden them with definitives or because she honestly has nothing to say.

"Troublesome girl." Shikamaru's voice sounds almost fond. His hand moves to push a few strands of her hair away from his neck where they probably are tickling him, tucks them back behind her ear, and Ino can hear the smile he never shows on his face in his voice.

"Yeah, but at least I'm beautiful," she returns their old, private joke, and Shikamaru snorts like he does every time.

Chouji will be back tomorrow.

iii. Kunoichi

"God, you're beautiful," he breathes.

His hands roam up and down her body, have long dipped underneath the material of her dress and are fumbling with the straps of her bra. His lips on her neck are hot and fervent, seeking her pulse point. "From the first moment I saw you, standing there in this light-"

There are men like this. Men that talk, men that praise her beauty and her body and her skin. She has heard enough to write elegies on her eyes, her face and her figure. There are other men, too, those who just claim her in silence and something very near to triumph. Men who take their prize and believe it is their right. There are men who take their time and men who do not care for her pleasure and men and more men and occasionally women. And Ino is so terribly good at this that she would hate herself, except that she doesn't feel much anymore these days.

Only sometimes, she feels sick.

Ino is on the verge of completing a long-term assignment, one that has stretched for six months almost and has had her working as a secretary to a wealthy business-man for the time. A known business associate of her superior had been particularly brash about his advances on the business-man's wife. It mostly came down to something like this: selfish and arrogant reasoning, power games between people who could afford to pump money into a half-a-year project that tasked them with the thrill and the necessity to continue a game for a long time until they reaped their reward. The money, though, was important for Leaf, and so was the reputation. Dirty jobs demanded dirty tricks. As it was, Ino is one of Konoha's best kunoichi, with everything that title entails. She does not fail.

She has long stopped thinking about it. She has long ago lost the naiveté and innocence she once had, too.

"So incredibly hot," her target pants, his whispers ghosts of hot breath on her breasts. "And you smell so good. Taste sweet." Ino moans and arches into him as he kisses her everywhere and recites flower names in her head alphabetically, their common and their Latin names.

It is over soon.

He dies quietly, slipping away painlessly because she does not care how much her client hated his rival. Her contract says kill by seduction and let him know but leaves the actual means to her. Ino takes pride in this: it might be the only thing she has left.

She looks at herself in the mirrors of the elaborately furnished room while she gets dressed. The wig has her still blond but more wheat-blonde than platinum, her short hair hidden behind angelic locks that are done in an intricate bun and only leave two or three strands to frame her face. She altered her features, too, heightened her cheek-bones, widened her lips and added dimples. There is nothing she can do to disguise her figure but she has learned that the way she walks, sits and holds herself can alter entire perceptions of people. Now, Ino has the tall figure and haughty, up-turned features of a young noblewoman whose family fell into debts and who had been forced to work in order to support her parents. She has the refined, long-fingered hands of a woman who never had to touch a weapon. Her limbs are thin and fragile, her muscles hidden beneath long sleeves and skirts.

She looks nothing like Yamanaka Ino, Konoha kunoichi.

Ino looks at herself in the mirror and feels empty. Empty like a book with blank pages, a jar without content. A shell without the song of the ocean. She can see she is beautiful. Her figure, her breasts and her waist and her features have been tools to her more often than she can remember. But she has also been told she was beautiful by people completely unrelated to her work. Her parents, some relatives, some friends. And Ino knows she is pretty, is pretty even now that a stranger stares at her from the mirror on the wall. She longed for it, ages ago, once dreamed that a man would look at her like that, touch her like that and tell her she was beautiful. Someone who looked at her and at her only and in whose eyes she could see her own reflection. A long time ago Ino wanted to be beautiful for someone, when she still was young and inexperienced. She has lost that, and now her beauty is nothing more than a means to an end, sharp, driven and relentless.

A weapon.

She extinguishes the light and slips out of a room that smells like sex and sweetly-scented perfume and her mind is already going over the next steps. She burns the wig and her faked identification papers, takes out the contacts and re-alters her facial structures, dropping the old genjutsu and quickly casting another one. She slumps her shoulders and directs her gaze to the ground in a mirror of shyness and Tanaka Hisoka disappears from the face of the earth, leaving behind not-yet Yamanaka Ino but almost.

Her beauty is the one thing that stays.

iv. Silver Lady

Yamanaka Ino never makes it into the Bingo Books.

She's a Konoha kunoichi, specialist for seduction missions, and she will never be featured along with the heroic shinobi and faceless Anbu. It is a fact she has known for a long time, even before she was old enough to choose her path, or after the war. She should have done what her father would have wanted her to do. Yamanaka Inoichi might have railed and complained over the fact that his only child was a girl, mourning the break in Ino-Shika-Chou tradition for the world to hear. But despite this, he had always intended for her to follow in his footsteps. He had trained her, he had taught her, and at the end of all things that had been the war and the death of the one man who had defined almost her entire life up until this point Ino found that he had left her everything. A position within the torture and interrogation squad would have been waiting for her, a small office, a few colleagues and everything he had known. Inoichi had prepared her for this: his last actions had been to hand her the mental overview he had on the ongoing battle, full of trust for her abilities. And although it felt like every death that had occurred after Ino had taken over was her fault, she had enough of her father's mind to recognize that she couldn't blame herself for each and everyone they had lost.

Still, returning to Leaf, she had been unable to take over his position.

Shikamaru had followed his father's footsteps into the Hokage's office and into the Council. So had Chouji, quietly and calmly taking over the position of Akimichi Clan Head with every duty it required. Only Ino – the girl, the coward, the failure – had shied away from taking her position in the Leaf society and instead had opted to just be a kunoichi.

Everyone knew what it meant but oh, she was good at it.

Yamanaka Ino never makes it into the Bingo Books, but she collects a nickname on the streets. It starts as a rumor, somewhere in the depths of the Flower District of the neighboring city, and spreads outwards until the prostitutes and the beggars, the thugs and the thieves whisper the name. It never reaches the ears of the respectable citizens, and, thus, never the attention of the Leaf Council. Only Mission Desk knows, because the underground tells the story of a woman with silver hair who can be hired to take out ones enemies, but who also protects and aids the lowest women who have no protection left. The name and the story remain. The Silver Lady has guilty men tremble in their boots while whores and pleasure girls whisper her name reverently, telling stories of how she protects them, how she is able to attack men in their own minds and how her beauty surpasses everything human. It is a bitter fame Ino never wanted.

Sakura marries on a beautiful spring morning.

It is cool outside but the cherry blossoms coat the trees like white snow, gracefully floating through the air and covering the ground. One blossom falls onto her hair and her groom picks it out with a smile. Ino watches the ceremony from the first row, Hinata and Tenten next to her, and feels her smile wide and free like it hasn't been for a long, long time. She might be a cynical, bitter woman but that does not mean that she cannot be happy for her best friend. Sakura's face is glowing, her eyes shining with happiness that Ino wishes her for every day of her life from now on and prays that will remain because if anyone deserves happiness it is Sakura.

"Founders, she's so disgustingly in love," Tenten sighs and yelps when Hinata's elbow hits her ribs. She shares a look with Ino and both smile.

"I know that look," Hinata says, her voice calm and matter-of-fact. "And I'd rather be a hopeless romantic than a cynical bitch."

And wow – the fact that Hinata, sweet, little Hinata, uses a word like bitch only shows how serious she is. Maybe, Ino thinks, maybe she is right because Hinata sure is a better person than Ino ever could be.

"Wow, Ino, you're beautiful." At the following reception, Chouji gapes at her open-mouthed and Ino cannot remember when she last had the opportunity to get all dolled up – to dress up for herself only, not for a mission. She loves the ocean blue of the dress she's wearing and the way it hugs her figure. She's left her hair like it is – short as it is there is not much she can do with it – and has applied only minimal make-up because nowadays she uses make-up thick as Anbu masks when she goes on a mission, so this is a nice change. There is a very thin line between preparing for a seduction mission and getting dressed up for the sake of someone else, and she isn't sure she hasn't crossed it a few times already. But not today. Today she feels pretty and real and alive so she smiles, does a spin for her old team mates and feels like a little girl.

"Thanks."

Chouji excuses himself after some time, spotting his parents-in-law and his wife, and Ino and Shikamaru stay behind. Shikamaru never was the one to do small-talk but they manage fine, mostly because they know each other so well. Silence is golden with Shikamaru. An acquaintance of Ino flits past at one point and she spends a short time talking to him about missions and work and the latest mandatory psych evaluations, and when she turns back Shikamaru is looking at her with a strange expression in his eyes.

Suddenly, the air is too warm.

"You don't think I didn't notice the way Shikamaru undressed you with his eyes, do you?" Sakura asks her a few days later and all Ino can do is shake her head in denial because really, this is ridiculous. She has known Shikamaru for ages and nothing has changed.

Besides, Ino stopped believing in love a long time ago. Somewhere between losing Hiro and Asuma-sensei, between fighting a war and losing her father, her illusions have shattered. There may be something like it for people like Sakura and Hinata, who honestly believe in love, and even for Tenten, who laughs and never talks about it but still wouldn't want to miss it. Ino isn't quite sure where the difference is, or if there is one, even. Maybe she's just become too disillusioned by her experiences and by life in general. Sometimes she asks herself where the child has gone that arranged her mother's flowers in the shop, the girl that was defined by her prettiness, the young woman that dreamed of love: maybe she simply grew up.

"Are you free next Monday?" Shikamaru asks her, his face the expressionless expression she knows so well, and the beat Ino's heart skips makes her feel very small, and very, very young.

Are you seriously comparing yourself to a fairytale princess?

v. Inoshia

For Ino, desire has always been connected to her beauty. It's nothing special, really, because of course it would be the one thing she would use in order to accomplish her missions. Her beauty is a weapon, and she has learned to use it. She only forgot that she could also influence people with it that weren't her targets, and that, perhaps, she would want someone back in return. Now, suddenly, everything she ever lived for is turned upside down because how much of him wants her for her beauty, and how much for who she really is?

On the inside, Ino is not beautiful. On the inside, Ino is tainted.

(She stops counting the kills and she stops counting the people, women and men alike. She casts her mind wider with every time she does it and loses herself a bit more with every time she dives into the head of someone else. She smiles until her smiles become poison and her heart is ice and she has done everything, everything, and her father would probably break down crying except for the fact that her reason is the same that drove him to sacrifice himself so he cannot really say anything against her path of choice.)

On the outside, she's still beautiful.

But oh. She's not perfect anymore and she has the scars to prove it. Most of them are small, like the callouses on her hand she has no trouble hiding until someone actually touches them. Or the tiny scar above her left eye that mostly disappears under her fringe. There are invisible scars, too. While Ino surely isn't the most normal kunoichi working for Leaf, she's hardly the most broken one. But some things remain with you forever: the eyes of a girl, terrified and wide, as she watches Ino kill her lover. Or the beaten and broken women on the ground after a few drunken men have rampaged through a brothel. A woman, once, who laughed while Ino stabbed her heart, laughed and told her she was just like her and would end up a whore and a murderer, just like her. And her mother's eyes, sad and still full of love and with a thousand words she never says that Ino still can hear because this is what mothers do: talk with their hearts. So Ino's heart is scarred and broken, but she's not the first one to be like that and she won't be the last. The first (second) time she sleeps with Shikamaru she screams at him to turn off the lights when he starts touching her and then breaks down weeping, and Shikamaru holds her and doesn't do anything else. And it's not like he can save her, or like she needs saving. Ino is as broken as any average Leaf shinobi, and Shikamaru is, too, and it's not like they can just fix each other like that. It's a process, and his wordless promise that this is not a one-time thing this time and that he thinks she is beautiful even though she has slept with more men than she cared to count for.

"Before, you were so beautiful it was hard to look at. It's different now."

And Ino thinks that she might have found the meaning of true beauty the moment she stopped trying to be beautiful for others.

Her greatest scar runs down her side, from her chest to her left hip. It is bulky, angry red and hurts, on nights when she is alone or the weather changes. She is neither proud of it nor does she feel animosity: this is what happens when you live for the ghost of a flame. The Will of the Fire. The scar divides her torso, divides and unifies her at the same time. But it also is the end of her seduction missions. No matter how much she can hide with genjutsu: as soon as someone touches her – and in her line of work it is kind of a prerequisite – the scar will be there. It's too dangerous, she might be found out, and Leaf cannot risk letting her work like that. Instead, it offers her the position she could have had years ago: Torture and Interrogation. Ino laughs, and takes the job. Naruto beams at her brightly, his smile saying Welcome back, Ino-chan.

Coming home is not always easy, but she never really left in the first place.

It is the same with Shikamaru, in many aspects, and in others it is completely different. It's strange, and embarrassing, and he makes her so angry she feels like kicking the ground and screaming at him, something she hasn't done since she turned fourteen. Shikamaru only sighs, and grumbles. He's still tall and lean, he's still long-haired and still carries his bored expression and well-known frown wherever he goes. But he also is Naruto's closest advisor, and member of the Council. Looking at him is like Ino can actually see what her father saw in her, what Shikaku probably saw in his son. The realization creates a weird hollowness in her chest that at the same time makes her feel like she is overflowing and she does not know whether she wants to kiss Shikamaru until she cannot breathe or wants to bury her head in the crook of his neck and weep until she has no tears left.

"Your scars don't make you ugly," he whispers, and his hand caresses her side and her scar. It feels so very, very different when he says it, and for the first time in her life Ino leans back, closes her eyes and just feels his hands ghost over her skin. Shikamaru's breath is hot at her ear, he is so, so close, and it takes her a while until his whispers percolate through the haze of distraction that are his hands and his body and his lips. He just says one word, over and over, and Ino realizes, with a start, that it is her name.

Inoshia.

"Why are you calling me that?"

It's hard to think, being this close to him, but when her hands hold on to his Shikamaru stops. "Because it's your name, remember?"

And Ino feels like falling into his eyes, dark and warm and so, so soft. When she was small she refused to react to her full name, stubbornly stating that Ino was so much better than Inoshia, and rarely anybody has called her by her given name since… Since her father died.

"Inoshia," Shikamaru whispers again, honesty in his voice and his eyes and his hands. "A beautiful name for a beautiful woman."

Ino screws shut her eyes and bites back a sob and surrenders herself to him. She ends up in his embrace, his arms a warm, protecting cave around her shoulders, and she tries to fold herself into him, clings to him with everything she has. He holds her while she cries, and all the while he whispers her name until Ino tilts up her head and seeks his lips. If he thinks she is pretty, then it is enough.

And he does. Every glance of his is proof, every touch of his hands a silent caress and a promise. He sees her as she is, with all her outer beauty and her inner flaws and despite her twisted and broken character he accepts and loves her. Beauty has always been a conundrum to her. Ino is beautiful, but in the grand scheme of things it did not matter. She believed beauty could give her everything and was proven wrong, she used it as an excuse and it wasn't accepted although it should have been but mankind is hypocritical like that. She has employed it as a weapon and it still hasn't saved her. It saved others instead, but it also hurt people. And the moment she finally accepted that it did not matter, that she did not care if anyone saw her at her most radiant, Shikamaru comes along and says that it matters to him. That she is beautiful in his eyes. That he is immune to her beauty but still is drawn to it because it is a part of her, not because she is a part of it. Shikamaru has managed to unearth the essence of her own beauty, Ino's heart, when she thought she never had one to begin with because she had buried it so long ago.

With him, Ino thinks, she might be able to learn to love again.

(Shikamaru just laughs and says she never stopped, and she can see eternity in his eyes.)