Ni hao! This is yet another idea of mine. Rather AU. Flames are grudgingly accepted.
I don't own Naruto.
Ino lay curled up on the floor in her room. How long she had been lying there, she did not know. All she knew was her head was pounding, her jaw ached, and her back felt like a herd of deer had decided to tap-dance on it.
She spit out the foul taste of blood in her mouth. She didn't quite recall what had happened last night, but she knew it must have been essentially the same thing as the other nights.
She had done something to earn her father's disapproval.
It had been like this since she was about ten. That was when her mother developed a tumor on her brain, and now she couldn't talk, walk, or help with the household. The doctors had said she only had a few months.
Well, she had survived much longer, but that didn't mean things were easy. Ino had to pull her weight around the house, and her father didn't take all the change so well.
He had resorted to drinking to forget his problems. It hadn't been a major problem at first, but pretty soon he began noticing things he hadn't while he was sober. Ino made quite a few unacceptable mistakes.
So he took it upon himself to teach her just what she was doing wrong. Problem was, a lot of it was things Ino couldn't help, like not knowing how to do dishes properly and not being able to lift her mother from her bed to her wheelchair without accidently running her into something. It was a wonder she could lift her at all, honestly.
Ino got in more and more trouble as time went on and he father drank more. Often he would see her do something and punish her later that evening, when he was most drunk. Now was one of those times.
Ino had a mission today, so she knew she had to get up.
Struggling, she put her arms in front of her and pushed, getting herself painfully into a sitting position.
She was probably a mess. What would her teammates think? What if they found out?
She shook her head, feeling like she had loose, clanking parts in there. She had to stop and think. She had to get up and get to the bathroom.
She slowly got up and put one foot painfully in front of the other, making her agonizing way to the bathroom.
When she got there, she looked in the mirror. She was a frightful sight!
Her face was black and blue. She had a long scratch running from just under her left eye to just below her chin.
The rest of her body was not a pretty sight either. Black and blue and covered in scratches, just like her face.
This was going to take a lot of makeup and medicine.
She pulled bandages and an antiseptic cream down from the cabinet and set to work on her scratches. She couldn't really do anything for the bruises, other than cover them up, which she did shortly after finishing the bandages.
The scratch on her face she had to leave unbandaged so she could hide it beneath makeup.
Today was a colder day, so she could wear more covering clothes. She was extremely grateful she had packed her bag the day before. After binding her legs and arms for more protection, she slipped on a coat and grabbed her bag.
As eager as she was to leave the house, she knew she had to go and tell her father where she was going, or else he would be painfully cross when she got home.
She saw with relief he was still sleeping and left a note on the fridge instead.
And then she was out of there!