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

Summery

ONE SHOT – Time changed her or so it seemed at first glance. For maybe it hadn't and it was simply that it would take time for me to see the beauty through her pain. (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: I know I say this a lot but I really don't know where this came from or what to really make of it. Though I have to say that there is something about it that I do like and can only hope that you like it to Yammy.

Muse: Can't imagine why anyone would like anything that you produce, most of it doesn't make sense and you seem to have a vendetta against anything resembling a plot.

Dedi: He's so charming. But this fic is dedicated to Yoruichi 'Ino', as to day it her birthday. So Yoruichi 'Ino', 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!

And though I can't understand why this happened,
I know that I will when I look back someday,
And see how you've brought beauty from ashes,
And made me as gold purified through these flames,
After all this has passed I still will remain,
After I've cried my last there'll be beauty from pain,
Though it won't be today someday I'll hope again,
And there'll be beauty from pain,
You will bring beauty from my pain,

From Pain Comes Beauty

Pure and cold would be how I would have once described her. But not cold like ice but more like a distant star that could burn you with its freezing touch. But that was before. Before the war that almost broke us all, that turned friend on friend. Before I abandoned Konoha only to returned years later and before she was held prisoner by Amegakure no Sato. Back when things were good and living was easy. Her hair alone, a pale shimmering mass of silver blonde silk could have cast such an aura over you that you were lost.

But time changes many things and her incarceration had modified her in ways that left her almost unrecognisable.

Of course, she retained some of her beauty, even that place could not strip all of her charms away. Her hair had still been so mesmerising, even though it had to compete with sunken in cheeks and hazy eyes. Eyes, the colour of rain that had once held such light and life but now contained only darkness and deception. And when I asked her what it was that they had done to her in those long years, she laughed at me and turned over in the bed, knowing that she couldn't ignore me forever.

And when I said that I knew what it was like to be isolated, she laughed again, a hollow mirthless sound and she told me that I didn't know and that I shouldn't think to presume that I did. Then I showed her. I showed her what true isolation was like. The cold and bitter pain that could be caused by it, and she loved me even more.

I was forceful with her. I always had been with my partners, but more so with her than any of the rest. Maybe it was because I wanted to imprint myself on every aspect of her being. Or maybe it was simply because it was the only way I had of showing her that she was no longer alone. And it was between those sheets, on those warm summer nights, or during those cool autumn rains, that she was the most faithful to me. The she reminded me that even after all that had happened and all that would happen she was still mine.

But eventually, as secretly I had always known that it would, it got to the point where she wouldn't take it. She wouldn't, couldn't continue to live like that anymore, to live with me like that. So she took a walk and she didn't come back not even when I called to her. I remember the rain poring down as I screamed out her name, but she didn't so much as turn her head to look at me. But I wouldn't call for long, because in truth she was just an object, a simple toy. I had many toys, more willing and compliant then she had ever been. And in my naiveté I thought that they could make me as happy, if not even happier, than she had.

They didn't. They couldn't.

We had never been a suitable match as mission partners but I watched her from a distance at meetings and debriefings. As plans were made to rebuild our ruined village I would study her as she sat closer to me than custom dictated that she really should because she couldn't stray that far from me for long, no matter how hard she tried. I could call her in ways other than words, in ways that could sting more than any physical pain. Even my silence, in the end, would become it's own form of request.

She wasn't a fool; no matter what once might have been concluded with the first impression she gave, and she knew that I needed her. She knew that I needed to feel her touch and that I needed to touch her in all the places and ways that I really had no right to do. But she wouldn't, or perhaps it really was that she couldn't, do that anymore.

And for the first time in my life I had know what it meant to be lonely. Then, when she had left me and I was all alone with only myself and the voices that whispered constantly in my head. My thoughts my only company. Only being able to watch her from afar and remember that in spite of everything I was still her master.

I could call her back to me. Call her and do the things that I so wanted to do to her body, because I was that master. She always had been and always would be mine. But I could not make her do the same to me; I couldn't force her to touch me the way she once had. I couldn't do it without hurting her and maybe braking what was left of her beyond repair.

I could not force her to want and need me as I needed her.

Days drifted into weeks and eventually into months. But eventually, in the end, she came back and things were much the same as they had always been. We always had sex in the same room, the room with the bare white walls. The four empty walls that I knew reminded her of her lonely prison. She had told me once, back before she left, between her moans and soft cries. And I used that knowledge to abuse her.

Perhaps I shouldn't have, but then again, why not? I was her master, and always would be, and I had never forgotten when she had told me what isolation was like. And somewhere beyond her pain and her fear we both found an inexplicable form of peace. It was almost like standing at the eye of a storm, the world around you is crashing and drowning but in that small space in which you stand all is clam. But to get to that point, to stand in that blessed silence, first you must be forced to pass through the nightmare of your own privet hell.

Our relationship, empty sex within those empty walls, but it hadn't been built on anything but us. I could have stopped using her and gone to another girl, a whore who looked better than this wilted flower now did, but I didn't. For some reason, it seemed right that it should be her. Throughout the years I had, knowingly or not, taken everything from her so it felt right that now I would give her the only thing I had left.

She was the first thing in my life that was right in such a long time.

Those mornings when she visited, those days that she stayed with me, and those afternoons lying in bed were the best I've ever had. But it was the nights when we were alone in the darkness, when we held each other tight that meant the most. And the more I thought about it, the more I came to understand that I could love that girl.

And it was a fact that scared me more than anything ever had before. She wasn't supposed to be something for me to love. She had others to be loved by. Friends and family. Oblivious people who couldn't see what it was that she needed. What I gave her. What she gave me. And she was supposed to just be sex. Just the sex.

But now I don't think that it ever was just sex with her. All that time between those sheets, all that time with her the only thing between me and a wall, it wasn't sex. It was something more, a way of claiming something that should have forever remained unclaimed. Untameable. Untouchable. Unlovable.

Yamanaka Ino was supposed to be unlovable.

But it isn't like that now, and it isn't just sex either. Nothing is right, but on the other hand nothing is wrong. But nothing was like I thought. So now I'm thinking that those hazy eyes of hers maybe aren't so bad after all. That the hair is still a pale shimmering mass of silver blonde silk. That she is still that which she always was and it is I who have changed.

She changed me. Though for better or worse it is impossible to say. I am still her master; there is no power on heaven or earth that can change that fact and she will be mine for all eternity. But just maybe in some strange twisted way she is my master and I will be hers until the end of time.

Lamb: I'm not sure where the whole thing about mastery and ownership and belonging to one another came from and I'm not about to try and find out.

Muse: Probably a wise idea, no one should look deeper into your twisted psyche than they absolutely have to.

Dedi: Says the voice that lives in her head. Happy birthday Yoruichi 'Ino', and we hope you liked your fic.

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

Big love and inspiration

Lamanth