La La Lie
Yugao
Summary: She was supposed to be beautiful, but now she felt as if she didn't deserve the word.
Author's Note: Okayokayokay. So it's not a SasuIno in essence since Sasuke's not actually in it. But I tried, I swear I did, and this was the result. I was starting to wallow in the misery of realizing that Shikamaru and Temari easily have a way bigger plausibility of happening than Shikamaru and Ino have, and I've always been a ShikaIno fangirl since forever, but now that it's starting to sink in I'm starting to reread the manga, especially around the part that Asuma tells Ino not to lose to Sakura on the battlefield or in love, and who else connects those two but Sasuke? So that gave me the idea that she still likes him and stuff, which is probably why she's suddenly clinging to Sai and everything… okay. I'll stop now. xD
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, I don't own Jack's Mannequin whose song was used for the title.
It had been a lie that day, when he called her beautiful.
It wasn't that he thought she was ugly. Far from it, really – she had everything, looks-wise. She had long, shiny platinum hair that looked soft to the touch; her eyes were a strange, curious shade of blue-green. She had skin like porcelain, if you would please pardon the cliché, and a figure that most other women in the village could only dream of having. But if he had to be fiercely honest he wouldn't have called her beautiful. She was aesthetically pleasing at the most. Good-looking. Pretty. But not beautiful.
He had an artist's eyes. He knew these things.
She had the aura of a doll – lovely, with all the right pieces that seemed to fit together to make the generic formula for beauty, but fell short of its meaning. Hollow. That was the word he was looking for. He looked at her then and thought she was hollow, plastic, fake. She moved as if she owned the world, as if it lay at her feet, but it was all just a façade, a front. He knew that the moment he saw her, though he didn't know it in so many words, nor could he explain it very well if anyone ever asked him. He just knew that the Yamanaka Ino everyone else saw wasn't the same person she saw whenever she looked in a mirror. She was hollow.
As if he was one to talk.
He knew that she knew he lied. She wasn't stupid. She may have been hollow, but not blind. She noticed how fake his smile was. She heard how his voice betrayed the lie. She was, after all, not a stranger to matters of the heart, while he knew practically nothing of them. She could see through the lie, but she couldn't care less. Still she smiled and smiled at him (genuine smiles, none of the fake, forced ones he gave back to her) and it puzzled him to no end.
The next day, he saw her carrying a basket of flowers so large she didn't see him at first, but she bumped into him (accidentally, she swore) and apologized. He had no idea how, but soon he was walking alongside her carrying the basket while she talked animatedly about the fairness of the weather and how lovely the day was, although he couldn't recall exactly when he'd offer to carry her flowers. Maybe that was the point.
On another day (night really) he found her closing up shop, yawning to herself as she put her keys away and turned to leave. She looked tired, after a long day of helping out at her parents' store, but when she saw him she somehow managed a smile, a real smile, and a short wave. She didn't go talk to him, no, but she took so painstakingly long tying a shoelace that it was rude just standing there and staring (the books he read told him that it was rude; he didn't see why appreciating another person's appearance was considered that). He walked over to where she was and they talked, like friends would.
On yet another day he was sitting under a tree, his dark eyes on his sketchpad. He was too immersed in his drawing that he didn't realize there was someone else there. In fact, he didn't notice her there until her pretty blond little head was on his shoulder as she gazed on what he was drawing. Usually he would have recoiled at the sudden physical contact, but he didn't move an inch.
Somewhere along the way she stopped being 'aesthetically pleasing' and started being beautiful.
He had an artist's eyes. He knew these things.
It had been a lie that day, when he called her beautiful.
It was too easy to read him, though people would have thought otherwise. Sure he was emotionless, but that was what made it so simple; when he was being fake, you could hear the happiness in his voice, as if he had forced it where it didn't belong. She didn't look it, but she understood people. She understood the way their minds worked, the way they thought and they way they couldn't bear to think. She understood the ins and outs of their psyche.
She had to. She had been in people's minds long enough to say that.
But he looked so, so much like Sasuke that it hurt her to even look at him at first. She wanted to see how Sakura was taking it, having to be teamed with someone who was the spitting image (sans the spiky hair) of their once-love. But the pink-haired ninja didn't get the joke, passing it off as Ino's insensitivity, as per usual.
But he looked so, so much like Sasuke. Her Sasuke-kun – no, he had never been hers. He had never been anyone's. He hadn't been Sakura's, no matter how much the girl pined after him day after day. He hadn't even been Konoha's, even though this was the village that raised him, the village he grew up in and found his first friends, his first moments of life. No, Sasuke was not and will never be hers. But this one, this one was in her reach; this one was not quite as cruelly perfect as Sasuke had been, not quite as untouchable. Did she dare?
But she was Yamanaka Ino. Of course she dared.
She insisted on calling him Sai-kun, no matter how much he argued that the suffixes hindered any sort of getting-to-know relationship. She didn't listen to him, though. Did she ever? Did she ever look at the dark-haired, dark-eyed boy and see Sai, instead of seeing Sasuke?
Once, she called him "Sas… I mean, Sai-kun", and Sai was starting to wonder.
She insisted on hugging him from behind, and she loved his warmth. It felt so, so similar to the warmth Sasuke had given off when she did the same to him. She loved the way he smelled, the way he felt when she nuzzled her face into the back of his shoulder and idly dreamt of the many, many times she had wanted, had planned to do something like this to the Uchiha. Of the many, many times she'd wanted him to let her.
She insisted on calling him hers and only hers, and to hear him say them back, because she knew he didn't mean them and that he didn't understand them. Her heart did little flutters when she looked into those dark eyes, those same dark eyes that looked too familiar, too familiar. And she could only hold him tighter because of it.
And one night under the stars she fell asleep with her head against his shoulder, her hands entwined in his as she drifted off into a half-sleep, murmuring, though not intentionally, the name that she had not spoken ever since she found Sai. "Sasuke…" she whispered into the chill night air, and all at
once everything, everything seemed colder. Her eyes fluttered open when she realized what she had said and hoped against hope that Sai hadn't heard.
His hand was still on hers, if not holding on tighter than before. "You're beautiful, Ino," was all he said. Her heart pounded in her ears. It didn't sound like a lie anymore. And it didn't sound like he didn't understand. Maybe he understood, maybe he understood too well, and she had taken his heart (or whatever part of it that he had regained for her sake) and shattered it.
"I'm so sorry."
She was so sorry that she didn't hear the lie anymore. She was beautiful. She was supposed to be beautiful. But as she sat there beside him she felt as if she no longer deserved the word.
Author's Note: This was originally to be titled either "Artist's Eyes" or "Beautiful", whichever part won out after I was through with it, but both seemed rather trite—hence the need for a third title, which I have used here. Please tell me what you thought!