Date: January 6, 2010
Pairing: Sakura/Ino
Sakura really was a flower. Ino had just refused to believe it.
She'd poked and prodded and beat around the bush, but nothing was ever going to change, and she knew it. Missing meant missing. She'd take long missions with the old Team 10 (because without him they really weren't Team 10), months and months away from the village, the only girl who'd volunteer to do the dirty work. Hell, she'd do just about anything if it got her away from the village. She'd been through a lot, more than even her once teammates knew, because kunoichi were just pawns sometimes and they took what they had to, for the sake of the mission. She had to keep looking.
But she kept coming back.
Maybe she had the smallest fragment of hope she would return. Ino had been bent and broken into such small pieces that she didn't think anyone would ever be able to pick them up, but she still hoped. And whenever someone asked why, she'd say she was looking for a special flower, a flower she loved very much. Which wasn't a lie.