Request received via LiveJournal. Details at end. I own neither the anime nor the song, nor a bound book dictionary. I love the internet.

Have fun, not really for kiddies, but whatever.

Numb

I really wanted to, you see
But all those broken bodies
Well they, they really got to me
-Ballad of Bitter Honey, Eef Barzelay

A shinobi is a cold, merciless tool. A weapon of death. She is a shinobi, but he had been one too. And in the end, she was only there because she was a tool in his death. In the end, Yamanaka Ino aided the death of Uchiha Sasuke.

There was only so long she could tell herself Sasuke would come back, Sasuke wasn't a traitor, Sasuke wasn't leaving. She hadn't let go after he left the first time. Or the second, or the third, the last time.

She didn't let go when Hokage-sama declared his status as nuke-nin. She loosened her grip a little when Naruto finally stopped smiling, but she didn't let go. She shut her eyes and held her hands close to her heart as she watched Kakashi-sensei training his genin harder, more intensely, forcing them to understand what he did and did not tell them. She knew she wasn't the only one who saw the light dimming in his one visible eye.

A shinobi is a cold, merciless tool. But a shinobi was a person once, and a person has emotions, however hidden. A shinobi often finds it within him or herself to draw upon those emotions to keep fighting, or to give in to the inevitable and die. Unfortunately for Konoha, and for one Haruno Sakura, Uchiha Sasuke had transcended that definition of shinobi. Uchiha Sasuke no longer felt his emotions, didn't remember what it was to feel them. Sakura hadn't gotten that trick. Sakura didn't know it till too late. Sakura was a medic, not a fighter. Sakura tried to fix problems, not eliminate them. That was why she died. That was when Ino let go.

Ino has a friend in Iwagakure, the Village Hidden in the Rocks. She had them make a necklace for her. She had them fuse a roseate lock of hair within smooth green glass. The afterglow of her bright light. She took it, uncaring of the blood still on her hand. She nodded her thanks, throwing down the severed head, the life she had traded for this favor. The necklace was the last thing Uchiha Sasuke saw. She made sure of it.

He had tried to use the Mangekyo Sharingan against her. As if a mindwalker needed hand seals to do what she did best. A blink and she was the wielder of the Tsukiyomi. It was true that to completely hate someone you had to love them. She didn't know she had such a sadistic streak, making him watch death after shattering death. Before he lost consciousness, she made very certain he saw what she did, whipping blue chakra, crackling energy in a pale hand, and the red cosmos it painted when it emerged from Sakura's ribcage. Kakashi and Naruto had been there, panting, wounded, bloody, but otherwise silent as they watched her return minds to their rightful bodies.

It was with cold but steady hands that she forced the blade into his shoulder while he slept so quietly. Even with numbed skin and numbed mind, she felt as if she were severing her own muscles, her hands from her mind, her way of the ninja. Eventually he'd wake up, unable to move his limbs, only a little better off than dead, and he'd be interrogated before he was executed.

She stood and fled, the first prickles of nausea assaulting her. She trusted Kakashi-sensei and Naruto to do what she couldn't. She trusted they would understand, even though she knew it was harder for them than for her. They were better shinobi than she was.

They rested for two days, three powerful shinobi battered emotionally and physically in the defeat of the last Uchiha. That was the first time she turned to them for relief. Shinobi didn't weep; shinobi didn't give confessions under the moon; so they didn't. Instead they wrapped numb limbs about each other, clung together with cold hands, stared with uncaring eyes. But they weren't empty yet.

A shinobi is a weapon of death, so who better than a shinobi to appreciate life and all its possibilities? The possibilities that might end by one's own hand, spilled because they were labeled 'enemy'. The possibilities created when that crimson seeped into the ground.

He didn't have the use of his limbs; he was nothing more than an angry, pained soul, trapped in a shell she had loved once. So in another fit of sadism, she had the necklace hung from the bars of his cage. No one protested. And the day he was executed, her hands took the necklace of their own accord; her feet conspired against her and took her to him, leather cord fisted in her delicate, deadly hand. Somehow he knew she would be there, even though Kakashi and Naruto were getting very, very drunk despite the early hour. His eyes caught hers, and she held them. A whispered chant and his eyes dropped to the pendant and did not waver. Even as life left him, his eyes could not leave the glimmering stone.

She found them, drinking, as she had thought. They saw the dead look in her eyes and after a quick rock-paper-scissors match, Naruto paid the bill, and they found themselves in Naruto's apartment. Kakashi said he was there to make sure they didn't do something stupid out of grief. Ino said she could still smell blood on her and left her clothes wherever they fell and the bathroom door open. Naruto said his clothes reeked of alcohol and death and followed her. Kakashi repeated his purpose to the empty room before joining them.

"Ino, are you crying?"

"I'm in a shower, Kakashi-sensei."

"Naruto, are you crying?"

"I got soap in my eye."

"Kakashi-sensei…"

"Shinobi don't cry, Ino."

"I know. I was going to ask if you were going get in or not. It'll be cold if we leave the door open too long."

The Themes

-af·ter·glow (ftr-gl) n.

-The atmospheric glow that remains for a short time after sunset.
-The light emitted after removal of a source of energy, especially:
-The glow of an incandescent metal as it cools.
-The emission of light from a phosphor after removal of excitation.
-The comfortable feeling following a pleasant experience.
-A lingering impression of past glory or success.

-Cold hands- scattered throughout

Bitter honey- lyrics that seemed to suit