The sun rises on the next morning, but Ino is already awake. Sleep has been a skittering thing for a long time now; it comes and it goes without any discernible pattern. Her dreams wreak havoc on her nerves, and she often breaks out of them with a wail, tears streaming down her face. But not this morning.
She has scarcely slept. Guilt roils wave-like in her gut, sluggish but powerful. She will apologize – she, Ino, who hates to be wrong, and hates even more to admit to being wrong – because lashing out at Chouji is unconscionable. Especially without the excuse of having been emotional; in truth, she had been ruminating over this shock-and-awe maneuver for a long while. She had regretted it the moment Chouji left the restaurant – she had expected some kind of protest, some manner of self-defense. But there was none. He had apologized and gone out quietly, leaving her cold and shivery all over, too sick with guilt to even pay attention to Shikamaru's infuriated tirade.
She is still nauseated with herself. Chouji should never be disparaged or belittled. He is the one person she knows who never mocks anyone. The memory of the calm acceptance in his eyes when he left makes her weep. She had essentially called him a big fat liar, and he had nodded and removed himself from her presence.
Ino sobs, perched on the edge of her bed, burdened with guilt in her belly and heartache in her breast. And yet, what could she have done? She can feel that she has wronged him, but he refuses to listen to her. Hadn't guilt been the only tactic left to employ? He and Shikamaru both ignore her warnings, brushing her aside like an annoying fly – and isn't that part of the problem? The oddball in their group has never been the lazy genius or the compulsive over-eater, but the perfectly ordinary kunoichi. She intruded on their special friendship, and secretly fears that they would just as soon not have her around. And that is truly sad, because she cares deeply about them both.
Asuma's injuries had been beyond her ability to heal – she can accept this. She can forgive Asuma for leaving them honorably in battle. But when the bone-jarring reality of his death had settled in, she had realized that the kind, funny, brilliant, incredible people she with whom she had once been forced to spend her days, and whom she now deliberately seeks out, would not always be there.
Having just learned to appreciate them, it frightens her to see her teammates self-destructing. The guilt surges, and for more than her spiteful remarks yesterday. Is she so useless, that she cannot make them protect what she now holds in such high regard?
Shikamaru's smoking is out of hand. Two, three packs a day sometimes. He coughs constantly and reeks of cigarettes. He spends an hour with her, and by the end of it he is entering withdrawal, trembling, moody. She points it out; he escapes to smoke. Chouji eats like a teenager, stuffing himself with junk food and pop. The medic in her sees visions of blackened, useless lungs and a dysfunctional heart, whenever she looks at them. Maybe it won't happen for years. But it is happening – they're dying, killing themselves slowly. And the med nin in their team cannot seem to do anything to stop them.
She tries. She steals Shikamaru's cigarettes and won't eat with them unless Chouji orders a reasonable meal. But an hour later, one is smoking and the other is downing barbeque potato chips as if he'll never see food again. Monitoring them every second is impossible; she feels like the mother of rascals hell-bent on turning her hair gray. So she scolds and pleads, and yesterday, she punished.
Ino buries her face in her hands. Chouji will forgive her. He shouldn't, but he will, because his kind heart will not permit him to hold a grudge against her. His sweet, gentle, fatty heart. She shudders and starts to cry. Open on her nightstand, with broken bindings, are well-read books outlining the dangers of her teams' bad habits, and her unwilling mind makes pointed, cold calculations, figuring up how many kilos of flesh Chouji has to move just to inhale, how hard his heart has to work to pump his sodium-rich, cholesterol-laden blood through his body. How much arsenic, formaldehyde, and ammonia Shikamaru breathes in everyday. How much money he spends replacing the cigarettes she steals, unwilling, or unable, to do without them.
It would be better, she thinks bitterly, still weeping, to give them up to death violently and young, than to watch them destroy themselves from the inside.
She forces herself out of bed and onto the scale in her bathroom, as she does every Saturday morning. Forty-seven and a half kilos. Scowling, she curses Chouji for making her eat out so much – she must, to exert any control over his diet, and in the doing she has gained weight herself. Black coffee for breakfast, she thinks darkly. Chouji had best not be stuffing his face when she finds him. Hungry herself, she will probably foul up the apology he is already owed, and end up having to apologize twice. And the only thing worse than admitting that you were wrong is doing it often.
The warmth of a hot shower comforts her, smoothing away the tension in her back, the knots and thorns left over from a restless sleep. A critical examination in the mirror reveals no noticeable swelling or bulges, and her irritation fades. She opts for street clothes anyway, clothes looser and less revealing than her usual kunoichi garb. Just in case. She drinks her black coffee, much to her father's amusement – Inoichi is used to her little vanities. He gives her a piece of dry toast; she raps him on the nose with it and stalks out of the house.
It is late morning, now, and Chouji will be training alone, near the river. Geese sometimes hunted fish there in the autumn, when the river was slow; she would feed them with Inoichi's joke of a breakfast.
Chouji doesn't like an audience when he trains, but Shikamaru and Ino sometimes go to watch him anyway. It is a sobering reminder that however harmless he appears, with his chips and his plump cheeks and cheerfully exuberant demeanor, Chouji is first and foremost a very powerful shinobi warrior. His weight conceals thick, well-trained muscle, his kind spirit an indomitable will. The earth moves, the river churns, and the forest trembles when Chouji trains – he is a force of nature. Ino actually enjoys watching him, enjoys the feeling of the ground rumbling under her feet.
Despite having once told him he would never get a girl because of his weight, Ino is now aware enough to know that the raw power of Chouji is very attractive, in a primal, animal sort of way. This, coupled with his gentle soul, leaves her with no doubt some pretty thing will fall in with him eventually.
Dancing between the leaves to hide her footsteps, keeping to the shadows, she sidles up to Chouji's favorite training spot. The pine grove stays mostly cool in the heat of early fall, mostly free of ice in the winter, and the tall pines give him plenty of headroom even when he is at the limits of his expansion justsus. It smelled good here, the river and the earth and the pines, fresh and clean, the best parts of Leaf all wrapped up into one tantalizing fragrance.
Chouji isn't training. He looks as if he is meditating, cross-legged on the bank of the river - probably taking a break, the lazy bum. But he isn't eating either, and as Ino's stomach whines plaintively, she decides that's enough.
All of a sudden, his hand grows, swelling like dried roots in water, smashing through the undergrowth, to where Ino is concealed. She grins. This is an old game, from their Genin days, and if Chouji is willing to play it with her, he has already forgiven her for her words yesterday. Better still, it's a game at which she excels. Even Shikamaru isn't as good as she is – probably because Chouji knows him more intimately, and can guess his movements more accurately. She leaps clear of the massive, searching hand, darting forward, still clinging to the shadows.
It's cat-and-mouse and blind-mans-bluff, as his giant hand strikes from the clearing. She giggles. Laughing feels strange, a good feeling she hasn't had in a long time, but she's given away her position, and the hand comes hurtling toward her again. She beats a hasty retreat, eyes fixed on the searching fingers – and smacks solidly into a second, gigantic palm, which promptly closes around her. Ino has literally played into Chouji's hands, and the thought tickles her so much that she begins to laugh in earnest.
"Chouji, you pervert – you're feeling me up!" She grins bigger, knowing he can't see her. He's so shy about this kind of thing that he does exactly as she guesses he will, dropping her like a live stick of dynamite. She flies through the air after the retreating hand, laughing still, and lands lightly beside her flushing teammate.
"Sheesh, Chouji. You're such a prude," she teases. She plants her feet in front of him, trying to assume a serious face. "What if I had been an enemy? Would you have let me go, just like that?"
"Probably," he admits. He's so honest about it that she can't even pretend to be upset, and she giggles again instead. Then she realizes that his breath is shallow, and that the redness in his face isn't just from embarrassment.
"Did that wear you out?" she demands incredulously, worried, tugging on his wrist for a pulse. "Just that little game?"
"No!" He jerks his hand back. "I've been here since before sunrise," he explains, quickly.
"You've been training since sunrise?" She eyes him, skeptical at first. But she sees the dirt and the sweat and the weariness, and decides he's telling the truth. "Well," she says, confused but pleased, "good for you, then. I'm glad – but you know, Chouji, in your case, extra training doesn't necessitate extra…"
She looks around, then, ready to remind him that he doesn't need more food just because he is working out harder than usual, but the empty bags of chips and remains of breakfast she expects to see are nowhere in sight. "Where are your snacks?"
His face tightens a little, and the expression is all wrong on him, because Chouji's face is expressly made for smiling. "I didn't bring any." He looks at the ground, rubbing his neck with a sheepish, sweaty hand.
"You didn't bring any." Ino's voice is flat, because even if he wants to avoid an argument, he shouldn't lie to her. She trusts her teammates with her life, mission after heartbreaking mission. He can't lie to her about something as stupid as food. He can't.
"None." He shrugs, hands limp at his sides, hunched over like a little boy waiting to be chastised. "I'm…" He draws a quick breath, releases it in an explosive, frustrated huff of a sigh. "I'm trying, Ino. You were right, yesterday. I did promise Asuma-sensei that I would try."
She rakes him over with her blue eyes, and he fidgets nervously under her gaze. "You're serious?" she asks after a moment, uncertainly. She would like to believe him, but this is Chouji. Preparing for a mission means gathering enough rations to feed an army for a year, rather than a week's worth of food for one shinobi. A morning's training, especially as strenuous as this one seemed to have been, required at least two bags of chips, on top of a hearty breakfast, and he should be complaining for lunch. She can't decide if he looks hungry – she has never seen Chouji stay away from food long enough to get hungry.
"Yeah." He huffs again, still looking at the ground. "I'm sorry. I haven't been living up to my word." A gurgling sound squeals from his midsection, and his crimson face blushes even brighter.
Ino is speechless. He isn't lying – his stomach is genuinely empty, probably for the first time since they've known one another. Her pride is significantly marred by her guilt – he believes she sees him as a gluttonous liar who doesn't keep his promises. But if guilt worked… it didn't matter. He still deserved an apology – he couldn't be left believing those terrible things she had said. She pinches the bridge of her nose.
"Chouji," she starts, carefully, waiting for him to look at her. "I don't…" He won't meet her gaze. "I mean," she tries again, "I came out here to…" To what? A snide little voice in her head berates her. Hurt his feelings? Lecture him like a child? His downcast eyes are embarrassed and sorrowful. It isn't worth it, she decides sadly, regretting the imminent loss of this morning's progress – a whole morning's worth of exercise, and without snacks! But he is too soft-hearted for tough love – she must find a better way to encourage him.
"I really just came to tell you that I'm sorry about what I said." The lump forming in her throat makes her voice hoarse. She swallows it, and says strongly, "And that I'm not apologizing just because Shikamaru told me to." He had, of course, and stridently. Shikamaru is furious with her, angrier than she has ever seen him. But Yamanaka Ino doesn't do anything on anybody's say-so but her own.
"It's okay." Through her bangs, she can see that he's looking up, now, and that the flush has faded from his cheeks. "It probably needed to be said." He rubs a weary hand over his jaw – he hasn't even shaved yet – and finally catches her eyes.
There is no reproach there, only resignation, that same sad acceptance she had seen at the restaurant. Ino flinches – she should have realized that he didn't have the sense of self-worth it takes to turn a personal attack into worthwhile criticism. All she had done was hurt him. Pliable and disposed to please, he had taken her words at face value, without the indignation with which most people would have protected themselves, measuring himself by the ignominy of an insult – and a manufactured one, at that.
So she breaks it down for him, as she would for a bullied child, and hopes he listens. "It's never okay for someone to insult you, or say hateful things to you. Even – especially – if there's a grain of truth to them. It's not okay for anybody to hurt you." Her eyes flash to his armor-plated side, and she bites her lip. She had bruised the tender flesh, she must have. "I wouldn't let anyone else talk to you the way I did yesterday, and I won't do it again. So I hope you can forgive me."
"It was true." He shrugs, but he's standing upright now, as if he has accepted yesterday's scathing critique and moved on.
"No," she corrects him swiftly, anxious to make him understand. "You're the last person on earth who would ever intentionally break his word. You were just taking your time – and no one can blame you for that. I shouldn't have – I don't. A lot has happened since you made that promise."
He frowns a little at that, thinking. It's a start, Ino decides, and gives him a confidential smile and taps his armor with a pink fingernail. "You're one of the only people in the world I really do trust, you know. Shikamaru, too. Sometimes I don't think he trusts anyone but you."
With a sigh she lays her last shameful card on the table. "Whether or not what I said was true is beside the point, anyway. I only said it because I hoped that I could guilt you into taking better care of yourself. It was stupid, and I really am sorry, Chouji. A good friend wouldn't have tried to get her way by making you feel bad."
"You are a good friend, Ino." He sounds sincere. "That's why I don't want you to worry about me anymore." Behind his armor, his stomach groans again.
Ino chuckles. "That is so bizarre," she marvels. "I've never heard that before."
"It isn't that funny," he mutters petulantly.
"It's a little funny," she teases. But looking at his armor, she bites her lip again. "Chouji... I pinched you, has it bruised?"
Some odd feeling flashes in his eyes, passing too quickly to be identified, but he shakes his head. "No, it's fine. You didn't hurt me."
"Don't lie – I got you good. Here, take your armor off, and let me fix it."
She recognizes the expression in his eyes now as horror. One big foot slides backward, like a wary animal retreating. "It's really okay, Ino," he tells her in a strangled voice.
"Hold still, Chouji, it'll only take a minute." She reaches out to lift the metal plates from his tunic; he jumps away from her hands as if she were offering him venomous snakes. Ino grinds her teeth. "What's wrong with you?"
"It's… uh…" He can't explain himself, but she can see his body is rigid with tension. He's afraid.
"Are you embarrassed?" she asks suspiciously. "Just to take your armor off?"
He latches onto that explanation, nodding his head furiously. She studies him, not quite sure what to think. "It's not like I haven't seen you shirtless before, you know. It's not a big deal."
"Sorry, Ino. It didn't really bruise, so can you just let it go?"
She frowns, then sighs and raises her hands in defeat. "I guess since I'm wearing my fat clothes today, I can't complain if you're suddenly self-conscious."
That calms him; the tension eases. "You're not fat, Ino." He must have repeated this sentence a hundred thousand times since the day they were first teamed up, and he manages to smile as he says it. She can never believe him, of course, but the positivity is nice.
"I'm getting that way," she grumbles, "because of all the eating out we've been doing lately." She looks up with a rueful smile, to let him know she's mostly teasing, but he looks serious.
The big shinobi crosses his arms and stares her down. She forgets, sometimes, just how tall he is. "An hour after noon," he says after a moment, "I'm going to get an ice cream cone." She stamps her foot, but before she can protest, he holds his index finger in front of her face. "Only one. If I'm by myself, I'm going to eat it. If you're there, I'll give it to you – but you have to eat it."
"Chouji!" Ino stamps again. "That's not fair – I have to diet, too!"
"I can be on a diet, or you can. But it's too depressing for both of us not to be able to eat." He grins beatifically, and Ino knows she's been beaten. He walks away, a little swagger in his step for his win, and Ino glares daggers at his back.
Looks like it's going to be black coffee for dinner, too.