All the Good Ones

Disclaimer: Do I look like Masashi Kishimoto? I don't own Naruto!

Those two bumblebees were offending her. It wasn't that she disliked bumblebees — they pollinated flowers after all, and she was a florist. The problem was that there were two of them, together, and they looked happy. (Well, she assumed they looked happy, since bumblebees don't really have expressions in the same way that humans do.) It made her want to throw a rock at them, just to see how happy they looked when they were squished little bees on the ground.

Calm down, Ino, that annoying, responsible voice in her head that sounded oddly like Sakura urged her. You shouldn't take your anger out on the local animals, just because they're happy and you're not. Ordinarily, she would have listened to the voice and just walked away. But the fact that it sounded like Sakura, on top of her current mood, pushed her over the edge. Ino scooped up a rock off the ground beneath her feet, and, in one smooth motion, hefted it at the two bees. It missed, so obviously that the bees didn't even seem to realize that she'd intended to hit them with the projectile. Childishly, she screamed in frustration before stomping away furiously.

I told you so, the Sakura-like voice told her smugly.

Shut up! she mentally screamed at it. The last thing she needed right now was to feel like Sakura was gloating to her.

She came to halt in front of a small lake in one of Konoha's parks. She was by no means physically exhausted—she was a ninja after all, with ninja-level stamina—but something in her mentally had tired out, telling her to stop here. Ino plopped down on the grassy earth, hugging her knees tightly to her chest, glaring out over the smooth surface of the water and allowing her emotions to surface.

She supposed it wasn't fair to be angry with Sakura. Sakura was her best friend for Kami's sake, and the pink haired girl had done nothing to wrong her (well, nothing significant at least…) since they'd patched up their friendship at age thirteen. Sakura was fine.

The problem was her boyfriend.

Ino had nothing against Sasuke, honestly. She'd had a crush on him herself at one point, and even though she'd long gotten over it, she still considered him to be an excellent man (and a really hot one). He wasn't good enough for her best friend of course, but no guy ever would be and Sasuke came about as close as they got. Ino had nothing against Sakura's boyfriend. What she had something against was the fact that Sakura had a boyfriend and she didn't.

It had been a little over six months ago when she found out. She'd been working at her parents' flower shop, something she still did when she didn't have a lot of missions, even though she didn't need the money. There was just something… nice about being among all those flowers. It reminded her of her childhood, when she'd still been her parents' little girl instead of an independent seventeen-year-old woman, and she enjoyed socializing with the customers. Business that day had been slow, which was why she'd had plenty of time to gossip when Haruno Sakura walked into the shop.

Before even one word had left her best friend's mouth, Ino knew that Sakura had something juicy to tell her. The light in her eyes practically screamed "gossip." The first words (or rather, word, the way it had come out) she said were:

"Sasukeaskedmeout!"

"Huh?" Ino had asked, not understanding at all what Sakura had just said.

"Sasuke. Asked. Me. Out!" Sakura was squealing like a schoolgirl, something she hadn't done in years, which showed Ino exactly how important this news was to her. So Ino put on a smiling face and listened like a good friend as Sakura described everything from the beautiful romantic setting—a path near the edge of the village where it passed through a grove of sakura trees that were currently in bloom—to how incredibly sweet Sasuke had been—there had actually been a faint blush adorning his face when he'd asked her. It sounded like every girl from their Academy class's dream come true. Ino tried to conceal exactly how much that knowledge hurt her.

She hadn't really liked Sasuke, not since their first Chuunin Exam if she was being honest with herself. Even before that, she'd never really liked the person Uchiha Sasuke. Like everyone other girl in their class, she'd fallen in love with the idealized romance story of a boy who was talented, handsome, rich, and had a broken heart just waiting for the right girl to come along to heal it. The Academy girls had merely tacked that role onto Sasuke without ever once realizing that he was a real person, not just some fairytale prince. She'd realized that during the Chuunin Exam, and she'd also realized something else. She'd realized that Sakura had done what none of the other girls had ever done: she'd gotten to know the boy behind the story, and her feelings had changed so that she was in love with that boy instead of just a dream. Sakura had cared about Sasuke for himself.

That didn't mean it didn't hurt. Ino attracted boys wherever she went; it was a fact of life. She was blonde, blue-eyed, slim, and beautiful. Uchiha Sasuke was the only boy who'd ever resisted her charms, and some shallow, self-obsessed part of her had always dreamed of breaking through that resistance. Their looks complemented each other perfectly; she was delicate and fair in coloring, he was strong and dark. They would have looked perfect together, and some small part of her had never been able to let go of the idea that she and Uchiha Sasuke together would make the perfect fairytale. Having that dream crushed hurt more than she thought it would.

But she smiled. She smiled because Sakura was her best friend and she only wanted what was best for her, and because Sasuke really was a nice guy deep, deep down and he deserved someone like Sakura who would love him for himself instead of for his looks. She smiled when Sakura started having to tell her that she couldn't hang out with Ino today because she had made plans already with Sasuke. She smiled when she saw the two of them together, surrounded by their own private bubble of love and contentment that all the old, gossiping ladies commented was just beautiful. She smiled, and her heart broke little by little inside her chest.

She would have been able to deal with it though, if it had been just Sakura. It would have hurt, and she would have cried inside each time she saw the two of them together, but she would have been able to deal with it.

That is, she would have been able to deal with it if it wasn't for Shikamaru.

She and Shika had been on the same team since the day they were made genin. At first, he was nothing to her except a lazy boy who couldn't be motivated to do anything and she was nothing to him except a troublesome woman. But ninja life was harsh, and even doing only simple D-rank missions forged bonds between the unlikeliest of people. Shikamaru, and Chouji as well, had become dear friends of hers, comrades that she would protect with her life if need be.

And, if she'd read the signs right, she'd become something more than that to Shikamaru. She wasn't sure exactly when it had begun, as she only noticed it after the Chuunin Exams—after she'd finally gotten over her worship of Sasuke and the ground he walked upon—but she had realized then that she wasn't just a friend to Shikamaru. He loved her. Of course, he would hide it behind comments like "troublesome woman" and "troublesome woman" (it was too troublesome to think up a new thing to say, he'd once told her) but Ino hadn't been considered the romance expert of the Academy for nothing. She could tell when a boy liked her.

At first, she'd done nothing about it. She'd never even really considered any sort of relationship with Shikamaru, because that childish part of her that still hoped for Sasuke was still in control. Even after she'd pretty much decided that he was meant for Sakura and not her, some part of her still longed to finally declare that she was the girlfriend of the one and only Uchiha Sasuke. But, once Sasuke came back—was dragged back by Naruto, just as he'd said he would do—and got together with Sakura less than a month later, she had begun to seriously consider Shikamaru as a potential boyfriend.

That was, until Temari came along.

Ino had been flirting with Shika ever since she'd realized that things really were never going to happen between her and Sasuke. It had thrilled her because, this time, when she flirted with a guy that she really liked, he flirted back. She'd assumed that they were pretty much involved with each other, even if neither one had technically asked the other out yet. Apparently, she had assumed wrong.

The first time Shikamaru had met Temari was during their first Chuunin Exams, when they'd fought. They'd seen each other again during the Retrieve Sasuke mission, when she saved him from that crazy girl, Tayuya or whatever. And then, Temari had become Suna's ambassador to Konoha, and she'd essentially moved into the village, in a position that meant that she saw Shikamaru an awful lot. Ino still had not thought anything of it, because after all Temari was from a different village, so nothing could really happen between her and Shikamaru, right?

Wrong. Apparently, Gaara, the Kazekage of Sunagakure, wanted his sister to be with whoever made her happy, even if they were from Konoha. She and Shikamaru were fine in his opinion, or at least as fine as anyone who was dating his sister could be in his mind.

Sometimes Ino really hated the fact that strangling Gaara would have very bad political repercussions for her village. (There was also the tiny matter of his protective sand, which had not vanished with Shukaku, but something like lethal sand paled in force next to the wrath of a jealous teenage girl.)

It didn't help her mood any that the way in which she'd found out was watching Temari waltz up to Shikamaru in public and have the two of them suddenly wrapped together in a passionate kiss. Ino's jaw had almost hit the ground in shock. It hadn't helped her mood either that the stupid tears had just had to appear, or that Chouji had been giving her such an incredibly pitying look. She didn't need pity. She needed a very, very sharp knife that she could drive into Temari's heart.

Killing Temari wouldn't solve anything though, her more responsible side told her. Because even if she killed Temari, and even if doing so got her Shikamaru, she would still have the knowledge that she had been his second choice and Temari had been first. She would always think of herself that way, as the second best. But still, it was so much worse knowing that she had lost Shikamaru than it had been when she lost Sasuke, because this time she had genuinely loved Shikamaru for himself instead of some childish romantic dream. She still did love him.

"I do love him," she sobbed, realizing for the first time that there were tears flowing down her face. She quickly wiped at her face with the back of her arm, wishing for once that she was wearing a T-shirt or something, instead of her fashionable sleeveless top.

"You love who, Beautiful?" Ino spun around in shock, horrified that someone had found her like this. The pale, smiling face she saw did little to alleviate her horror; if anything, it was intensified. Sai was Naruto and Sakura's third teammate, the replacement for Sasuke while he had been away from the village. And, more importantly, he was totally hot. He looked almost exactly like Sasuke, and acted pretty similar too except for one key difference. Sai actually acknowledged her. Heck, the nickname he had given her on their first meeting was Beautiful!

"No one, Sai," she told him, hoping to get him to leave soon, before she embarrassed herself too much. "I don't love anyone."

Her comments had the opposite effect from what she had intended.

Sai looked puzzled. "You don't love anyone? But in a book I read that if a girl is crying, it's generally because she feels her love is unrequited. At least, that's how it was for the Hag most of the time." Ino giggled slightly. She couldn't help it. 'The Hag' was Sai's nickname for Sakura, and while she knew it was rude to laugh at her best friend's expense, it made her feel better in an awful, petty way to hear about Sakura's shortcomings after so many months of hearing only how adorable she and Sasuke looked together.

"I really am a horrible person," she mused quietly. Confusion wrote itself over Sai's face again, and Ino got another small giggle out of how adorable he looked like that. His resemblance to Sasuke was so strong, it was almost like seeing the Great and Powerful Uchiha confused, and that was something she would pay to see any day.

"The books I read never talked enough about how confusing women could be," Sai told her. Troublesome, Ino's mind supplied automatically. The word is 'troublesome.' Aloud, she said:

"You sound like you read a lot of books."

"Oh. Yes," Sai stated, his omnipresent smile forming. "Almost anything I can find. I especially enjoy books dealing with emotions."

"Why is that?" Ino asked, genuinely interested in the conversation now.

"Naruto-kun and the Hag think it's probably because of the way I was raised. For as long as I can remember, I was part of ROOT, a separate branch of ANBU under the direct control of Danzou-sama. Since childhood, I have been trained to live without emotions. The Hag's theory is that I find myself so drawn to emotions because I feel some deficiency without them, and observing them in others helps me feel whole."

"You've never had any emotions?" For someone like Ino, the idea was inconceivable. Her entire life had been shaped by her feelings; from having her sense of compassion telling her to adopt shy, self-conscious little Haruno Sakura to her crushes on both Sasuke and Shikamaru. Not having those feelings would take away almost everything of meaning in her life. "How do you survive without your feelings?"

Sai smiled. "I never felt any need for them before I was placed on Team Kakashi. In ROOT, everyone was raised to show no emotion, so lacking them myself was nothing strange. And, once I was placed on my team, I began to learn them through watching how Naruto and the Hag, and now the Emo Guy respond to different situations. Sakura-san says that I am improving markedly." He smiled again, and Ino felt her own face mirroring the gesture. Smiles. Happiness. How could any person live without that? Sai said he was learning how to feel, but the concept was so alien to Ino that she could barely begin to grasp it. How could a person live if they were never able to feel love?

Her heart gave a painful twinge as she recalled her own experiences in that field. Perhaps it would have been kinder if she was like Sai, if she couldn't love. Then she would never have been broken. Then she wouldn't have to be in pain.

Sai's smile vanished, and he looked at her with concern.

"Ino-san, are you crying?"

"N-no," she sniffed, a tear falling in accompaniment to the word. She ducked her head in embarrassment, hoping that the tears would stop soon. To her surprise, she felt a warm, strong arm wrap itself about her shoulders.

"I'm not very good at this," Sai told her, "but I read once in a book that friends comfort each other when they're hurt."

"You're lucky, you know," she said softly.

"Oh?" he inquired, puzzlement appearing again. His face was so incredibly open; his every feeling was laid bare to the world. Even knowing that he probably did that on purpose did not change the strange, innocent sweetness of it.

"If you don't have emotions, then you can't fall in love. You won't feel pain. You won't be broken." He nodded.

"Aah, I've thought that myself, once or twice. Seeing Naruto-kun and Sakura-san in the days before Sasuke-kun was brought back occasionally made me think that." Ino nodded, remembering clearly how many times she had seen Sakura cry over Sasuke in the days following his defection. Even though she tried her best to hide it, the pain Sakura was enduring had been obvious. "But overall, I don't think that emotions are such a bad thing. Naruto-kun's greatest strength comes from his feelings, and Sakura-san says that the happiness makes it worthwhile. Sasuke-san never says much about it, but he came back to the village and risked the possibility of execution in order to preserve his bonds with Naruto-kun and Sakura-san." Sai fixed his fathomless onyx eyes on hers; looking like the handsome yet deep man Sasuke would never have managed to fully be. "How could feelings be a bad thing if my teammates are willing to go so far because of them?"

"How indeed," Ino repeated quietly. She wasn't sure if it was a question or not.

This time, Sai noticed the somber tone of voice in which she spoke. "Ino-san," he began, "have I said something to offend you?"

"N-no," she replied quickly. Sai had done nothing wrong. He had stopped to talk to her when she definitely had not wanted to talk to anyone, but apart from that mistake he really had been making her feel better by being here. "It's just…" It's just that I'm not sure if I'm worth anything. Back at the Academy, I was always better than Sakura at everything. But now, she has someone special and I don't. Boys aren't everything—if I thought they were I wouldn't be a shinobi—but I still can't help but wonder if I'm… if I'm good enough. "It's just… a girl thing," she finished lamely.

"Aah, I see," Sai said, nodding, "you are having your period." He said this in a perfectly calm manner, with the same smile on his face that he always had. Ino twitched, honestly unable to believe what she had just heard.

"Wh-what?" she asked him. There was no way that Sai—Sai—could have said that.

"You are having your period, is that correct, Ino-san?" Ino merely gaped in response, which Sai somehow interpreted as a yes. The kunoichi just sat there, her mouth hanging open like an idiot, for a solid half a minute before she collected her wits enough to make any sort of response.

"N-no, it's nothing like that at all, Sai," she stammered. The response was considerably more polite than what she would have given, say, Naruto if he had said something like that to her, but Naruto was becoming far too like Jiraiya-sama these days, while Sai was nowhere near as perverted. His explanation was possible; she had said 'girl problems,' and Sai was a teenage boy, even if he was incredibly mature for one most of the time. "I suppose the better way to phrase it would have been boy problems."

"Boy problems?" the fifth member of Team Kakashi repeated. "What do you mean boy problems?"
"Bitterness. Anger. Wondering if I'm good enough."

"But Ino-san, those don't really sound like problems with boys."

"No," she replied, "they don't. But they are boy problems, because it's the boys who're causing them." The expression of confusion on Sai's face would have been completely adorable had Ino been in a different mood. "It's because they never pay attention to me," she told him bitterly, turning away from those deep, black eyes to stare out over the water with an expression torn between anger and pain, her head lowered in defeat.

"But Ino-san," Sai addressed her, "boys pay attention to you all the time. There are many young men who seem interested in dating you—"

"Not Sasuke-kun!" she shouted at him, spinning to face him with her tear-filled eyes. "Not Shikamaru!" A few of the pearly droplets fell to the grass beneath her, shining on the plain green blades like diamonds. "To them I'm nothing, nothing more than an annoyance. The ones who chase after me are just mindless drones following the herd. The only men who actually possess a brain, the only ones I really care about, don't see anything special in me. They just see plain old Yamanaka Ino, and in Sakura and Temari they see the world. They love them. And I'm… just… nothing," she finished, a sob breaking out on the last word. She shook; crying violently for what might have been endless days or mere minutes, before the tears slowed to a manageable level, flowing down her cheeks in quiet rivulets instead of massive floods.

"Ino-san," Sai addressed her quietly, "Sasuke-kun and Shikamaru-kun don't see you as nothing. Sasuke-kun considers you to be an admirable person to have remained friends with Sakura-san for so long, and Shikamaru-kun thinks of you as a valuable friend and teammate. They both think highly of you."

"But they don't feel for me the same way that I feel for them," Ino said quietly. "Neither one of them does."

"Ino-san," Sai began, "I too know what you are feeling. I understand what it is like to feel that you occupy second place in the minds of those people who are important to you."

"H-how?" Ino sniffled.

"It was what I felt when Sasuke-kun first returned to Konoha." He needed to say nothing more. When Sai had first joined Team Kakashi for the mission to interrogate Sasori's spy at the Bridge of Heaven and Earth and later infiltrate Orochimaru's lair in the hope of retrieving Sasuke, Naruto and Sakura had felt one emotion for him: disdain. To them, Sai had been nothing more than a temporary replacement for Sasuke, a physical reminder that they had failed in their quest to bring him back. Over time, that view had changed, until Sai was as much a member of their family as Sasuke was. He occupied a different place in their hearts than the Uchiha, but he was family nonetheless. But then, something had happened, something that shook their little family to the core.

Sasuke returned.

To Naruto and Sakura, Sasuke's return had been bliss. Their long-lost teammate and friend had finally returned to them, after more than three long years of trying. Team Seven had been whole again.

It hadn't been the same for Sai. Sasuke's former replacement hadn't yet been on the team in the days before the Uchiha left. He didn't know how the cell functioned with Sasuke around, and where he could fit in now that he was no longer needed to serve as a replacement. He had been… unnecessary. Naruto and Sakura had tried to convince him otherwise, to tell him that they still thought of him as their Sai, but it wasn't the same. Because now, they didn't just have "their Sai" around. They had their Sasuke as well. And Sai, no matter how well he fit on the team, would never be able to properly fill Sasuke's place.

"In the beginning," Sai explained, "I honestly think I may have hated Sasuke-kun. Danzou-sama's teachings have instructed me against hatred since childhood, and yet what else can describe what I felt for the man who took my sense of belonging away form me? Naruto-kun and Sakura-san had been the closest thing I had to a family since my brother died, and now, in an instant, he had taken that all away from me. I was nothing again.

"But things didn't stay like that. It wasn't that my teammates had forgotten me, as I so feared during those early days. It was merely that, in their joy at finally having Sasuke-kun back with them, they lost sight of everything else. Sakura-san has apologized many times to me for those days. But, since things have had time to settle down, our team has become whole again. Naruto-kun and Sakura-san have Sasuke-kun back, and I have my teammates."

"But don't you ever feel jealous?" Ino burst out. "I mean, Naruto and Sakura both really, really care about Sasuke-kun. Don't you ever feel jealous that they care about him more?" Instead of looking angry at the implication that he ranked second to the Uchiha, Sai smiled. Again.

"Why would I be jealous?" he asked, that smile still on his face. Ino was beginning to wonder about that thing. "From the beginning, I have known that Naruto-kun and Sakura-san hold Sasuke-kun dearer to them than anything else in the world. I have known that I could never fill the place he had for them. Why would I be jealous of Sasuke-kun for something that was always his?"

"Be-because," she responded. "Just because. Because you wish that you could hold it, even when you know that you can't."

"If Naruto-kun and Sakura-san did not want me to fill Sasuke-kun's place, then there was no way that I ever truly would be able to. Attempting to do so would only widen the gap between us."

"But—"

"Sometimes, Ino-san, one must occupy a place one does not truly desire, for the sake of preserving bonds with another. Naruto-kun and Sakura-san could never have seen me the same way that they see Sasuke-kun. However, they can see me as myself, and they can hold bonds with me as such.

"Ino-san, do you care for Shikamaru-kun and Sasuke-kun?"

"Yes." The answer was instantaneous, without a moment's thought.

"Do you care for them enough that you would abandon your romantic feelings for them in order to preserve the bonds you possess?" The first reaction of Ino's mind was the instantaneous refusal of the idea. Give up on Sasuke and Shikamaru? She could never give up Sasuke and Shikamaru, not both of them, not at once. But… but the decision wasn't hers. Sasuke and Shikamaru had given up on her. If she… if she continued to pursue them romantically, then it would only widen the gap between them. Ino wasn't an idiot. She understood that Sasuke had honestly hated the fangirls he acquired during their days at the Academy. He just hadn't had any interest in girls at that point, and they had been practically forcing themselves on him regardless of that. If Ino acted that way towards him now, or towards Shikamaru, it would completely destroy the bonds they had. To Sasuke she was only "Sakura's friend" and to Shikamaru she was only "a teammate," but those ties were better than nothing. And if Ino did not know when to give up, then her bonds with the boys would become precisely that: nothing.

"Yes," she answered Sai quietly. "I do." The smile on Sai's face was different this time. It felt… more real, somehow. It seemed like Sai really meant to smile.

"There are times in life where we must content ourselves with the roles others grant us," Sai told her. "But, there are other times when we must rise above the foundations lain for us by others, and make our own roles. You wish to be more to Shikamaru-kun and Sasuke-kun than just a friend, yet you cannot be a lover to either. You must make your own role with them, one that is neither friend nor love interest. You must be something else. You must be Ino."

His answer was a small smile, one that was at the same time joyous and sorrowful, and a single word, "Yeah."

"Thanks Sai. Thanks a lot."

It wasn't perfect. There was no way it ever could have been. Because somewhere, deep inside of her, there would always be that hurt little girl howling that wasn't she good enough for anyone. But it was close.

And sometimes, that was all you needed.

A/N: Okay, so there wasn't actually all that much romance in that story. But come on, Ino barely knows Sai. She's spoken to him once in the manga, and then only briefly. It's impossible for her to fall in love with him (real love, not fangirl love) that quickly.

That being said, I have no idea where my thing for InoSai comes from. I'm aware that he didn't actually think that she was beautiful when he gave her the nickname (quite the opposite actually), but as one author put it, it was just too funny to pass up. Plus, Ino needs to be with someone, and since I already support ShikaTema and I just don't think she and Chouji should be together romantically, she wound up with Sai. I'm kind of a fan of the pairing, but I'm nowhere near as devoted to it as say, SasuSaku, which I absolutely obsess over, or NaruHina, which I immediately turn to whenever my SasuSaku well runs dry. This was my first attempt at writing a story with Ino as the main character (or with Ino doing anything more than appearing once or twice to yell at Sasuke for leaving Sakura in a SasuSaku story). It was definitely more angsty than she appears in the canon, but I think it was justified by the situation. Please, tell me how you guys think I did. If I was absolutely pathetic and you think I should give up writing, I want to hear that. As long as you have a valid reason. And no, "cuz lyk, u ttly suk" is not a valid reason.