Disclaimer: All credit for the Naruto franchise and its characters go to Masashi Kishimoto.
Notes: This is an alternate universe story that takes place after Tsunade takes office, but prior to what would be the start of shippuuden.
Originally beta'd by BonesxBreak
Constellation Love - Chapter One
"Each moment of a happy lover's hour is worth an age of dull and common life." -Aphra Behn
Yamanaka Ino tapped her fingers against her desktop while the instructor droned on at the front of the room. Umino Iruka had been lecturing the class for the better part of an hour and somewhere along the way Ino drifted out of focus and was barely hearing him over the bubbling anticipation of the lesson being over. Iruka's words had flowed, without pause, in one ear and out the other.
A wandering mind was something new to Ino, she hadn't earned the highest scores of her class by daydreaming after all, but since Konoha had started their new training system things had gotten stale. The program involved a merger between villages, where the curriculum was combined into one to help build better rapport between villages. The result was two villages, on two different wavelengths of education being forced to restart the lesson plans to ensure everyone was on the same page. Each day she became more and more distant from the lessons and it had gotten to the point that she wondered why she even bothered showing up. The previous week she sat through a three-hour long discussion on the invention of the shuriken and its uses.
The crescendo of pages rustling and chair legs scraping against the floor yanked Ino out of her thoughts. "What's going on?" she asked flatly.
"Hand sign speed tests." Akimichi Choji answered as he squirmed out of his seat.
A woodsy scent met her nose as Nara Shikamaru walked down the steps to her left. "Again." he groaned.
With a heavy sigh she scooted out of her seat. "Oh man." She was growing tired of these; they did them nearly every day for the past few months.
Scanning the room, she searched for a partner. She would take on one of her teammates, but Choji and Shikamaru always teamed up together. After them billboard brow was her next choice, but the flake was absent.
She needed to pick someone she could beat. The objective in speed tests, obviously, was to be fast. They would complete a series of hand signs and whoever got through them all correctly, and the fastest, won. There wasn't an actual prize, other than being able to leave class early. But that was sounding about as good as a free meal or winning the lottery about now.
Making her way into aisle she continued to scan the room. Her trip back from daydreaming was costing her choices. Naruto had partnered with Kiba and most of the others viable choices were pairing up as well. Before long she would be forced to pair up with a sand ninja.
Aside from the importance of being able to form hand signs faster than your opponent, the point of doing these tests were to get the students to work together in pairs. However, neither village wanted to work with anyone from the other. There was nothing wrong then the sand ninja, per say, but Konoha ninja paired up with Konoha ninja, and the same applied for Suna. So when someone from each village was forced into a pair it was an awkward match neither could wait to be free of.
Although most of the students from Sunagakure didn't catch Ino's attention, there was one she found herseld drawn to. A genin named Gaara.
Bounding down the steps to the front of the class Ino thought about how everyone seemed to shirk away from Gaara. Even his own siblings seemed to keep their distance. As Ino crossed over a line of tables her eyes fell on the two ninja in question. Temari, the sister, a wind-style user with a large black fan strapped to her back, and the brother, Kankuro, a puppet-master, were paired up and had already started their tests on the opposite side of the room from their brother.
As Ino reached Gaara she tapped her nails against the table he was sitting behind. "Do you want to be my partner?" she asked swiftly.
Gaara's had his hands up to his face, fingers laced. Whether he had been focusing on the instructions Iruka wrote on the board Ino couldn't tell. His features didn't change after hearing her question.
"The hand sign assignment." Ino closed her eyes and gave a slightly nervous laugh, bringing one of her hands to rub the back of her head. She turned and threw her other arm out, pointing to the guidelines Iruka had written across the expansive blackboard. "We have to practice those signs and whoever finishes first is the winner." Ino wasn't sure if she sounded too eager wanting to participate in the exercise or if she sounded desperate to work with Gaara. "Weren't you paying attention?" She gave a nervous laugh as her voice began to squeak when she spoke now.
While he eyed over the instructions Ino examined his features. His pale skin, surrounded by a mop of short fiery hair. His eyes, deep and commanding, surrounded by deep dark circles. But the kanji on his forehead was perhaps one of the most appealing things about him. Love.
"Ino."
She was still admiring his features when she heard his voice. So gravely cold, but so powerful, so marvelous she wanted to get lost within its range. Ino couldn't help but to let her smile escape while she became intoxicated by his beauty and his sound. Ino had heard him call for her, but she was too far gone to conceive a response.
She'd be lying to herself if she said she didn't find him somewhat attractive. Part of her attraction to him was that she felt as if he had no one. Since coming into Konoha she'd watched everyone alienate him. She dismissed it as merely shying away from the new ninjas, but even seeing Temari and Kankuro keep their distance upset her.
At first she merely admired from a far, she was still weighing her options with Sasuke and didn't want the Uchiha to get the wrong impression. But after billboard brow got teamed up with him she began seeing her chances with him slip away. That was when Gaara became her main focus, she wanted to be his one and only; to be the one he would depend on.
"Ino."
A sudden change in his voice made Ino snap back to the present. Gaara seemed upset or irritated. Ino felt as it if she'd failed before even trying to begin.
"Sorry, I was just – thinking about the seals." She spat out her response slowly.
"Let's get started." Gaara said and slowly rose to his feet.
She turned back to the board for another look at their assignment. "The first hand signs we have to do are Ox, Rabbit, Ox, Rat, and Monkey."
Ino and Gaara moved their hands in front of their bodies and stared each other down with a sudden intensity.
"Go."
Gaara's voice caught Ino off guard, causing her to lose focus; Gaara finished the five sign combination before Ino had begun to move her hands for the first.
"C–Can we try another one?" She spoke with an almost pathetic sense of defeat.
"Rat, Tiger, Ox, Rabbit, Boar, Monkey, and Tiger."
"Is that the next one?" Ino asked and turned to look at the board.
"Go."
Ino jumped. "Wait!" She closed her eyes for a quick moment to visualize the hand motions and instantly began to curl and move her fingers and hands to form the appropriate signs. She opened her eyes as she was nearing the end of the chain in doing so she raised her gaze to notice Gaara's motionless stance.
"You, you're not done are you?" She gulped down hard and dropped her hands to her side in defeat. "I'm still too slow."
"You're not slow, you're just not focused." Gaara said. "In battle there is no room for mistakes or absent mindedness, mistakes will get you killed."
As dark as it was, Ino managed to find an air of comfort in his words. He hadn't patronized her like Sasuke might have, or rubbed it in her face like Sakura. It was the truth.
"Thanks, Gaara." A childish grin spread across her face as she let out a bubbly giggle.
Gaara opened his eyes slightly at the feminine action. Having not spent much time around humans limited his exposure with females, he wasn't entirely comfortable with everything they did.
"Would you mind helping me work on my timing with the seals?" She composed herself from the girlish flirting fit to focus on the real goal.
"If you insist." Gaara closed his eyes momentarily before returning them to their original content position.
"Great!" Ino clasped her hands together in front of her face. "Why don't we meet up outside Ichiraku's later?"
"Fine." Gaara grabbed the back of his chair and shoved it inwards under the table. "I'll be waiting." He turned and slowly began to walk down the aisle towards the center.
Ino brought her hands to her chest and sighed happily. "Score!"
After Ino left the classroom she made her way back through the village on auto-pilot. The only thing on her mind was meeting up with Gaara later.
When she made it back to her home she hurried up the steps to her room, dumping all of her academy supplies onto her bed. She plopped herself down on a small chair placed in front of her vanity.
"I'm so excited to hang out with Gaara!" She gave singing her sentence the best try she could manage, but ultimately ended up sounding like a squeaky child. She curled her fingers around a white hair brush that was lying sideways on the dresser and began to run it through her blonde hair. She took hold of her long pony tail and brought it forward over her shoulder while she brushed down its length. She smiled sweetly up at herself in the mirror as an image of Gaara formed behind her smiling.
"He's different, from him, but different is good." She said as she set the brush back down on the dresser and flipped it gracefully over her shoulder.
It was a short distance from her house to the agreed upon meeting spot she didn't feel nervous; however, her body disagreed. Her palms began to sweat the moment she left her house and the butterflies in her stomach wouldn't rest.
She continued on her walk until she turned the corner of a building and noticed the paper lanterns hanging from the roof of the ramen shop. She reluctantly turned her head to get a view full of the shop and its surroundings, the butterflies only flew more rapidly when she got a glimpse of Gaara standing stiffly in front of the building.
"Hey, Gaara, I'm here." She tripped over her feet as she attempted to move towards her classmate causing her to stumble.
Gaara opened his eyes slowly and lifted his head to get a view of the girl.
"Glad you made it." She smiled weakly, feeling as if she would be the only one contributing to this conversation.
"This is not an ideal place to train." His cold voice was the same as ever, but Ino felt as if there was something deeper behind it. Gaara sighed and threw a look over his shoulder into the shop.
Ino knew that this would be a rather crowded area and she wanted that, she had no real intention of training with Gaara on hand seals; this was Konoha's number one date spot for a reason.
She placed her hand on her chin in an effort to look as if she was concentrating, but really it was to contain her ever-growing grin. "Weren't the Suna students given residential apartments to live in while this program was going on?"
Gaara's gaze changed. He was observing the masses of academy students running amuck around the area before he locked his eyes on Ino. "Are you saying we should practice at my house?" It was a simple question, but to Ino it sounded almost like a threat.
"Well... It was a suggestion; but we could also go to my place." She pretended to keep her gaze focused downwards, but couldn't help but look at Gaara to see how her latest suggestion was sitting with him. His expression hadn't changed. "Or we could try and find an empty training field."
Gaara started moving and was past her before he verbally acknowledged her final choice. "Let's go."
Ino blinked a few times, for some reason she hadn't noticed Gaara's movement at all and was surprised when she turned to see him heading off from the shop. "W–Well hold on, wait for me!" She spun around and trotted after her classmate on their way to the field.
Ino followed Gaara through the village while giving instructions and directions on shortcuts out of the suburban area and to the training field.
The field was a wide open grassland with trees planted around the area, not interfering with the main scene. There were three thick tree logs stuck into the ground side by side by side. They headed in towards the middle of the field, barren of grass from the years of constant trampling, and paused in front of the logs.
Ino turned around looking over the area that she was familiar with. "Early stages of the Chunin exams and other training exercises are held here."
Gaara dragged his feet across the ground, sending up trails of dirt behind him. "Let's begin."
The genin began their training session of hand seal combinations and speed early, when the sun was high. They continued on through the day and afternoon until it was almost an automatic response.
Gaara had written out a sequence of hand seals in the dirt that they would run through every time the winner of the previous set yelled go.
The first was the entire list of seals from start to finish. The second was the entire list backwards, and from there the list continued on to include all combinations possible with the given seals. There was hardly a break given in between each command of go; after so long of repeating commands their arms and hands moved almost automatically. There was no second guessing which command was which or which seal needed to be formed next.
Starting out, Gaara was the victor every time, but after repeating the same moves over and over again Ino's speed increased. Performing the seals was becoming an instinct rather than a thought. She was able to keep up and soon finish faster than Gaara, often becoming the one to yell their starting command.
By the time the sun was low, casting an orange glow across the sky, their reactions to the starting command had delayed by several seconds, definite indicators of their exhaustion.
Ino hunched over, placing her hands on her knees, while she took heavy slow breaths she spoke with a dry mouth. "Gaara, can we stop for today, my arms are so sore."
The constant movement and adrenaline was keeping them from realizing how tired and sore they truly were. As their speed slowed, their unintentional breaks between commands grew longer and gave their bodies time to realize how hard they had been working.
Gaara's breaths were similar to Ino's, he leaned against the nearest tree log while he watched her, sweat dropping off from the ends of his hair and onto the ground.
"Fine." He turned to his back and rested against the upright log as he slowly slid down until his body ground. His eyes fell on his sand gourd sitting a few feet away. It was at Ino's suggestion he removed it. He protested at first, but was thankful now, the added weight would have been awful.
Ino straightened up for a moment before lowering herself down to the ground. She took in one large breath and exhaled off the side, avoiding blowing it in Gaara's direction.
"Thanks for practicing with me, Gaara." Even though a day sweating in the middle of the training field, performing hand seals, and yelling go wasn't what she had in mind, she felt grateful to spend any time with him at all. "I'm sure it'll help."
Help bring us together.
Gaara accepted her gratitude with a simple nod while he caught his breath. Ino moved her feet outwards and dug the backs of her shoes into the ground, pulling herself closer to Gaara with this motion after repeating it several times. Gaara opened his eyes while Ino moved closer and eyed her suspiciously. He adjusted his posture and sat up straight against the log as he continued to observe her.
She moved closer and until she reached her destination, next to Gaara. She pushed off the ground and moved her body around so that she could learn against the log along with him. While Gaara's puzzled face remained on her, Ino looked upwards to the sky, noticing the first bright stars in the night.
Ino closed her eyes and gave a slight chuckle after a brief period of star gazing.
"What is it?" Gaara turned his head upwards to the sky in hopes to see what was worth the laugh.
"Oh nothing, just one of the star groups up there reminded me of something I had seen." Ino opened her eyes slowly and turned her focus to Gaara.
"Groups of stars that resemble something are called a constellation." Gaara squinted and looked for what she might have seen.
Ino placed her hand gently against Gaara's forehead, moving it upwards causing his hair to be lifted from his forehead exposing the skin.
"What are you doing?" His brow line furrowed slightly from the unexpected touch.
Ino smiled and rubbed her thumb against the kanji on his forehead, something she'd wanted to do for the longest. To know whether it was a permanent mark, or something he drew on each day. Her pleasure in seeing it wasn't going to rub off was interrupted as the sand struck her.