Disclaimer: Well, ah do disclaim.

A/N: Not sure how to explain this one away. My very first Naruto fic and it's not a happy one. I feel I must point out, though, that I'm only a recent addition to the fandom and had only seen up to Episode 97 at time of writing. I've done my research, but if I screwed anything up most heinously then … sorry about that. I was just too possessed of love for these characters to wait any longer.

Feedback: Yes please! Email, LiveJournal or the review button, it's all good to me.

Blood, Sweat and Guts

© Scribbler, July 2007.

'There's a lot of blood, sweat, and guts between dreams and success.' – Paul Bryant.

Ino didn't catch Lee because she was his teammate, or because she was wildly in love with him. She caught him because she was there, and because he needed someone to catch him.

His breath was wet and he smelled like blood. Her stomach didn't roil anymore, but she hated it all the same, and tried not to let it show in her face as he looked up at her, all round eyes and mussed hair and he was bleeding all over her front and it smelled –

"I am sorry."

"What?"

"I believe I have dirtied your shirt."

Ino snorted. "Like that matters? Where's Sakura? You need healing." She glanced around, but it was hard to tell anything with all the smoke and debris. Sakura could've been one of the lumpish mounds nearby, or she could've been somewhere else entirely. Combat had moved on from here. Ino could hear the distinctive cries of distant fights to the death. They were different cries than those of an ambush, and different again than a sudden, unexpected rescue by someone who wasn't even supposed to be there.

Sakura might be on the other side of the hill, tending the wounded there while she, Ino, held onto Lee on this side and felt helpless because she'd used too much chakra.

Lee coughed. Funny, a part of Ino thought, how she never felt alone until she wasn't anymore. Even outside her own head, invading the bodies of others, she never felt as lonely as she did right then. She desperately wanted someone – her team, his team, any damn team – to crest the hill and find her because, damn it, she didn't know what to do.

"Lean on me," she instructed, sounding far calmer than she felt. The wound was too serious for her measly chakra reserves, but she refused to do nothing. Tsnuade wouldn't do nothing. Sakura wouldn't do nothing. Lee didn't protest, but her leg buckled and they fell almost instantly. Ino cried out in pain. "Damn it!"

"I believe it is you who needs healing," Lee said with one of those stupid, ingenuous smiles. "You should concentrate on yourself."

For some reason that smile irritated Ino. "Why the hell did you save me?" she demanded, holding her leg and his arm and getting thoroughly tangled. She didn't let go of either, though.

He blinked. "Because you could not get out of the way, and he would have killed you."

Ino specifically didn't look at the caved skull and smashed ribcage three feet away. Pieces of her own kneecap were swimming free and blood was coursing down her leg, and maybe it was her who smelled, not Lee at all – except that he coughed again and his chin was scarlet as the hole in his gut where the kunai had ripped in.

"But I'm not Sakura!"

"But you are important to her." Lee said it like he honestly didn't understand why she couldn't see this for herself. He coughed again, and this time tugged away from her so he could vomit.

Smells upon smells upon smells … cordite, sweat, blood, smoke, and the tang of burning grass, like when they burned old stock in the yard behind the flower shop. Sakura and she used to play in that yard when they were kids, and Shikamaru and Chouji often snuck through to the back when her father wasn't looking, but Lee had been there only once. She remembered him vaulting the wall in search of Sakura, face flushed, a smudge of green and black and yellow as he left just as fast. He was never a big part of her life; just a face in the crowd, a pair of hands to watch, wondering what it felt like to wear their skin.

"You shouldn't have saved me," Ino gritted, angry, because anger was an easy emotion to fall back on. She was always angry, always boxing Shikamaru's ears, or chasing Chouji down the street, or threatening Sakura with a beating that would never come – not now, perhaps not ever. "You should've waited until you could save Sakura. She's the one you're in love with. I'm not your concern."

"You're Ino," Lee slurred, his too-round eyes with their ugly, too-long lashes fluttering weakly.

"Exactly. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Lee said nothing, just slumped against her, his breathing rapid. She shoved him upright and felt bad because he was dying, and it was all her fault, and she barely had enough chakra to heal herself, let alone an injury like that, and he was ugly and she hated ugly people and, damn it, how dare Sakura not be here for this.

It sluiced through her that now it was up to her to make Sakura see what she'd thrown away when she chose Sasuke's coattails over Lee's reckless compassion. Ino didn't have a good track record with making Sakura see what she'd thrown away.

"I'm not Sakura," she kept saying, over and over, until it was just her, and the smoke, and the smell of blood.

Fin.