Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or any of its characters, merchandise, TV rights, ect… (I think you get the point.)

Summery

ONE SHOT – It was one of the first rules all ninja were taught, that it was essential to control ones emotions. He just never expected that she would have learned it so well. (Sasuke/Ino)

Like all of my work this is just something that happened to float through the empty void inside my head. Like it or hate it please R and R as honest opinions are always welcomed, as are random acts of worship.

Lamb: 09.09.09 how could I not write a fic on a date like that? Well quite easily as it happens but I just love the look of it so much that I had to post something.

Muse: Girl you are so far round the bend you're not even out of sight any more, you're now coming up from behind.

Dedi: Well if you will insist on encouraging her madness. This fic is dedicated to shelvesinthecloset, because Lamb thinks her work is amazing. So, shelvesinthecloset, this is for you.

Lamb: As always sorry for any bad spelling and if you feel the need to throw things at me please wait until I've hidden behind the sofa kay!?

Muse: On with the fic!

You can see it in my eyes,
I can feel it in your touch,
You don't have to say a thing,
Just let me show how much,
Love you, need you, yeah,
I wanna kiss you all over,
And over again,

Heartless

There was absolute stillness. Complete darkness. And a total unrelenting silence broken only by the rhythmic sound of his own steadily beating heart. The wall was cold stone against his back, thankfully not damp but possessing a chill that sunk bone deep into his flesh. It was the same as the smooth unforgiving surface on which he sat and neither offered either rest or reprieve. He had thought himself so wise, so clever, so completely untouchable and yet he had fallen for the oldest trick in the book.

He had fallen in love and with a silly little girl no less.

He called her so many things at the start; idiot, stupid, annoying and a brat. She was the very image of the stuck up little princess, her voice was loud and irritating and she never seemed to give it a rest. She had always acted as if the world and all the people in it were of no importance. It had irritated him no end the way she just walked over everyone and it had infuriated him beyond reason that people, whether they knew her or not, let her do so.

But, years on, there was more to her than met the eye, of that much he had been sure. Yes, she really was a brat, far too used to getting her own way, but there had to be more to it than that. He had thought that while it was true that everything about her was really her that she had embellished it to a point where it was all you could see. She was hiding what she really was and that had made her dangerous.

Apparently it had made her more dangerous than he had thought possible, for here he sat awaiting his fate, all because he had underestimated what she was.

The plan had been taking a long time to come to fruition and he had predicted it would be at least another year before everything was in place. It would have been easier if he hadn't of been working alone but there was no one who could have accompanied him. It had been a huge risk even letting him infiltrate the village after all he had done. And yet the people of Konoha, always so willing to look for the good in someone, had welcomed him back with open arms.

He had thought then that their actions had told him all that he needed to know. That the Hidden Leaf Village was populated by people with soft hearts and soft heads. They were trusting fools who dissevered no more than what they would get. They had welcomed him back into the fold like a lost child not realising that he was really a viper in there midst. Or so it had seemed to him at the time.

Within less than three months he had had them all eating out of his hand. No, he corrected himself; he had had almost all of them seemingly eating out of his hand. She had been the one problem, the thorn is his side, and yet he had seen no reason for it. As a girl who had once viciously competed for the title of his number one fan she should have been ecstatic that he had returned. And the fact that he had returned and was paying attention to her should have erased every other thought from her pretty little head.

But it hadn't and that had worried him though evidently not enough.

To all the world she acted just as he would have expected, all flirty giggles and teasing looks. He had been force to admit that, though it may have done nothing for her personality, time really had done incredible things to her body and lust was a feeling he had becoming well acquainted with. She was a walking indiscretion, a security leak just waiting to happen, or so he had thought. It had seemed a stroke of luck when he found himself teamed with the loud mouth female.

As it had turned out he was wrong.

She trusted him with her body, had done so with in a week of them being teamed together. Whether it was in the field and she was using her clan jutsu or whether they were in bed and she was screaming his name. she never feared him having his hands on her, but that was as far as it went. With her body he could do as he pleased, but her soul, her heart, these were the things that were held just out of his reach.

She acted the part so well that no one ever suspected and most of the time he too had been unsure, but looking back now it was so easy to see. It had almost been as if she hadn't really cared if he found out, she was that sloppy at concealing what she was up to, but it had just been another part of her spell. All the signs were there, had always been there, if only he had had the sense to look. Or, more accurately, if he hadn't been too blind to see.

He wasn't sure when or how the lust he felt towards her began to transform into something more. No more did he know why, once he had realised what he felt and how dangerous it was, did he allow it to continue. The sensible thing would have been to distance himself from her, but by then common-sense and logic had little to no place in his world. She was his world, his whole world. He was heading straight to hell but was arrogant enough to believe he was the one still in control.

Fate makes a mockery of men and all that they feel. And Fate was a cruel unforgiving bitch with ice blonde hair and rain hued eyes, who had seemed to tell him everything while in truth she told him nothing at all.

He hadn't been in control, had probably never been in control since the first moment her eyes had locked with his. That had been when it had started, he had been at the top of a slippery slope but had been totally unaware of it. He had thought Konoha had trusted him without question, but had learnt too late that when confronted with a snake The Leaf let lose a serpent of their own.

In the isolation of his cell he came to understand why it was that people feared her. This airhead doll whose mind was filled with nothing more than idle daydreams. It was because this pretty little golden flower with apparently no more sense than a butterfly could hurt people in ways that made what most people did look like Childs play. She could make people fall in love with her.

She could make you fall in love, make you want to give up everything just to be near her. Make you want and need and feel until your whole being was on fire and she was the only one who could douse the flames and she did so by making you burn all the more. And now here he was about to give up his very life all because of the feelings that she unleashed in him.

But, and he wondered if he was the only one who had noticed, there was one problem. It was true that she could make just about anyone fall for her, make them so infatuated that it drove them crazy, but she would never be able to feel anything in return. One day someone would come along who she would want to be with simply because she could not live without them, but she would be unable to.

They had trained her well, too well in fact. Yes she was a shiny new toy for the powers that be to play with. But their pretty little doll was also broken beyond repair. In her own way Konoha's little blonde angel was probably every bit as damaged as he was. The only difference being that he had betrayed The Leaf while the village was the one that had betrayed her; she just didn't know it.

Yes, she was broken beyond repair, and though he knew it was an exercise in futility he couldn't help but want to put her back together.

It was the price that she had to pay for being what she was. She would never know what it was like to be in love with someone other than herself. Shifting on the unyielding floor he signed softly, 202/20 hindsight was both a wonderful and terrible thing. She had trusted him with her body, but not with her heart or her soul, not because she wouldn't but because she literally couldn't.

She was as messed up as they came and she ruined the lives of people who unthinkingly got too close to her. He knew it, could hardly fail to do so, he was sitting alone in a cell because he had been one of those foolish people. He knew it and yet he knew that if he had his time over again he would to the same thing and once again end up in the same place.

It was irony at its best, she had broken his heart, something that he didn't think he possessed and she had managed it because out of the two of them she was the one who was truly heartless.

Lamb: It seems that my SasuIno world has turned into an angst playground.

Dedi: What d'you mean turned? I thought it always was.

Muse: Well with me designing the rides what did everyone expect?

Dedi: That's my point, also please check out the poll on our profile page, we really need the input.

Please R and R I'd love to know what you thought.

Big love and inspiration

Lamanth