The Choices Made
Chapter One: The End of Always

It happens like this.

One minute you're a child. You make friends when you share your lunch in the cafeteria and best friends when you share your secrets on the playground. You fall down a lot and cry when you scrape your knees. You seek comfort in your parents' soothing embraces. You trust them, because they are the parents and they keep the bad things away, and when it comes down to it, you've made it this far so they must be taking pretty good care of you.

From day one, they teach you to embrace the possibilities. To hope. When you go to bed at night, they tell you to dream, and when you start pondering the concept of the future, they tell you to dream bigger. You believe them when they say you can be anything and do whatever you want- that the sky's the limit. You believe they'll always be there to hold you close when the nightmare strikes. You believe they'll always be there, period.

And if you can believe all that, why should you doubt them when they say that no matter what happens, they'll always love you? It's just another lie you accept, because the idea of the people you trust the most turning on you is enough to make anyone paranoid.

Here's the truth, though:

Always ends in a moment. What that moment consists of may vary, but the result is inevitably the same. Always ends.

For Ino Yamanaka, the moment is defined in pieces. Air thick with tension. Silence wrought with anxiety. Three strangers that had been a family just minutes prior gathered around a kitchen table, waiting for a confession she'd do anything to not have to give.

They can't have been sitting there for a quarter of an hour, but for Ino it feels like years have passed. Like her entire life is slipping away with every second she spends stalling.

"Ino." To her right, her father gives her hand a gentle squeeze, urging her to tell them whatever it is she's summoned them here for.

She resists the urge to squeeze back. Instead, catching her mother's cool and calculating gaze across the table, she pulls away and clasps both hands firmly in her lap.

Inoichi frowns. "What's the matter, kiddo?"

Kiddo. For a moment, she muses absently on the pet name. Then she bows her head in shame, because even though she's protested that she's not a kid anymore for years, she knows it has never been so inaccurate in all her life as it is in this moment. It doesn't fit anymore. It will never fit again.

Her life continues to pass her by as she struggles to find the words to tell them how she's ruined her life. How all the time and effort they put into raising her to be a model citizen has been in vain. She wants to cry into her father's shoulder like she did when she was a kid, finding comfort in the affectionate way he patted her head. Her father has always been the understanding one, and she has never needed him to understand as badly as she does now.

She sees the concern etched into every line on his face and tears come unbidden to her eyes. As she bites down on her lip to keep them from spilling over, her hand rises subconsciously to her flat stomach. It's not the confession she planned on- she hadn't planned the motion at all, but her mother is nothing if not excessively analytical. She never misses a thing, and this tiny gesture is no exception.

"Ino," she begins, and her voice wavers uncertainly. She looks up to meet her daughter's eyes and blanches when she finds her own horror reflected there. "Oh, Ino, no."

"Mom, it wasn't… I didn't mean…"

Inoichi looks between the two, oblivious.

And of course he is, Ino tells herself. There is no way that Inoichi, who began doting on her before she took her first breath of life, and who hasn't stopped doting for even a moment since then, could ever expect something like this of his baby girl. There is no way he could even consider her capable of something so horrible.

And yet.

Ino isn't sure which breaks first. It might be the mixing bowl that falls from her mother's lap when she jumps to her feet and turns away to bury her face in her hands. It might be her father's heart when he realizes that she is, in fact, capable of something so horrible. It might be her own resolve, but whatever the case, she finds herself in a room full of shattered glass, green eyes full of devastation, and the sound of her own broken sobs.

"Ino," her father finally manages to choke out. "You're not… You can't be serious."

She adopts her mother's position, pressing her hands to her face in the desperate hope that if she can't see the scene before her, it isn't happening. The sudden silence almost convinces her that it's worked. And then the calm gives way to the storm.

"Who-" Inoichi begins, just as his wife whirls back around to face her. "Ino, how could you do this? What were you thinking?"

They are yelling over each other now, each attacking in their own way- her mother with accusations ("I can't believe you did this! What is the matter with you?") and her father with questions ("Who? When Why didn't you tell us sooner?")

She is buffeted with a thousand demands, none of which she knows how to answer. What good would it have done to tell them sooner? Even if she'd come to them right after, it wouldn't change the outcome. What is the matter with her?

She realizes somewhere amidst the chaos of the raging war that there was one she knew the answer to. What was she thinking? The answer should be obvious. She wasn't thinking. If she had stopped to think about it, there was no doubt in her mind that they would not be in this situation now. If she'd thought about it, she never would have done it, because common sense was all it would have taken to know that doing so would ruin everything. If she had stopped to think about it, she would not be sitting here now, terrified by the yells tearing through the kitchen like knives. If she had stopped to think about it, she wouldn't have found herself in a state of shock when the doctor came in with the news she'd forced herself into asking for. If she had stopped to think about it, she would not be avoiding the one person she had always been able to go to in times of need. If she had stopped to think about it, she'd be eating a peaceful dinner with her parents right now. Not wishing the floor would open up and eat her alive. Not trying to convince herself that in just a while she would wake up to find it had all been a horrible dream.

If she had stopped to think about it, the only thing that would be growing inside of her right now would be the hope that she'd remain the daughter who could do no wrong forever. She'd still be her father's kiddo, and her mother would tolerate her. Always.

Always ended in a moment.

Author's Note: So, this is just another AU idea that hit me upon my return to Fanfiction. I'm pretty excited about this one, but I think it's going to be a bit challenging to keep everyone in character with the storyline. I'm going to do my very best to live up to everyone's' expectations, so stick around and we'll see how it goes! As usual, thanks for reading. See you for chapter two! And, if it's not too much to ask, please take a second to let me know what you thought. Thanks! ~Ani

Author's Note (2): This is a repost. I've moved to a new account since I first posted this in April 2012, so I'm hoping that in posting it here, I'll be inspired to continue. The above was the original A/N from nearly a year ago!